Christ, you'd think we all live in Fisher Price's Weeble Wobble's Little People's Discovery Village. I'm almost ashamed I live in this idiotic nation. We've now got Joe the Plumber, Sally the Seamstress, Hank the Handyman, LuLu the Luthier, Bill the Bailbondsman, Carla the Crack Whore, and Sam the Sheetrocker living next door to us on Elm Street in all our little Main Street towns.
This is unconscionably moronic -- referring to people with these simplistic, childish, cartoonish tag lines. So I must be Ernie the Engineer. My sister -- Amy the Aging Caregiver. My other sister -- Connie the Construction Manager. My mom -- Donna the Donations Lady. My dad -- Fred the Francher.
It's not hard to understand why Joe the Plumber endorsed McCain on Tuesday -- Joe hired Pedro the Publicist to manage his public appearance requests...and presumably he'll quickly find his way into the top tax bracket in short order and will work to keep as much of this publicity money in his own hands as he possibly can. It won't be long before he's in the top 2% of all earners in Merika. And he should be able to keep every damn dollar he can possibly earn, even at the expense of all of our dignity.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Breakdown
My commuting breakdown for 2008 (1/1 to 10/31):
Total 5,437 miles
Bicycle 40%
Transit 35%
Drive Alone 19%
Carpool 6%
I commute ~6,300 miles a year. So if I were a standard Elk Grovian I would do all of this solely through private, single occupant automobiling. Because no one can work in Elk Grove as there aren't any jobs that pay the median living wage, they are forced to commute at least 30 miles a day elsewhere. Assume a population of 125,000, 60% of them work, and 92% of them drive alone 30 miles a day, 50 weeks a year...that's over a half billion miles just commuting. Tack on another 50% for recreation and other utility trips and Elk Grovians drive ~1 billion miles each year.
Now with gas at two fifty, the long forgotten oil crisis of a few months ago has been superseded by a credit crisis. Both were incredibly cheap and abundant for most of this decade, fueling our special compound growth formula to finance the construction of more suburbia and fuel the [un]happy residents on their longer and longer commutes between the home and work and home again via strip shopping malls so they could spend money they didn't have on things they didn't need. This is the Elk Grove of today -- a badly designed suburban wasteland of cheap foreclosed bank owned homes, filled with cars owned by finance companies, strip malls owned by outsiders, and half-started aborted tract parcels owned by bankrupt developers. No one who lives in Elk Grove owns anything in Elk Grove.
But Elk Grove still drives its 1 billion miles each year, crisis or no crisis. Imagine the collective savings if even a fifth of Elk Grove did even a fifth of my commuter breakdown. How much less the city would have to pay to expand roads and perform road maintenance, how much less citizens would have to spend on motorized personal transport, how much less the fire department would have to respond to accidents, how much less insurance companies would have to pay for their less obese, better fit clients, how much less time Elk Grovians would have to sit in congestion when they did drive...
Total 5,437 miles
Bicycle 40%
Transit 35%
Drive Alone 19%
Carpool 6%
I commute ~6,300 miles a year. So if I were a standard Elk Grovian I would do all of this solely through private, single occupant automobiling. Because no one can work in Elk Grove as there aren't any jobs that pay the median living wage, they are forced to commute at least 30 miles a day elsewhere. Assume a population of 125,000, 60% of them work, and 92% of them drive alone 30 miles a day, 50 weeks a year...that's over a half billion miles just commuting. Tack on another 50% for recreation and other utility trips and Elk Grovians drive ~1 billion miles each year.
Now with gas at two fifty, the long forgotten oil crisis of a few months ago has been superseded by a credit crisis. Both were incredibly cheap and abundant for most of this decade, fueling our special compound growth formula to finance the construction of more suburbia and fuel the [un]happy residents on their longer and longer commutes between the home and work and home again via strip shopping malls so they could spend money they didn't have on things they didn't need. This is the Elk Grove of today -- a badly designed suburban wasteland of cheap foreclosed bank owned homes, filled with cars owned by finance companies, strip malls owned by outsiders, and half-started aborted tract parcels owned by bankrupt developers. No one who lives in Elk Grove owns anything in Elk Grove.
But Elk Grove still drives its 1 billion miles each year, crisis or no crisis. Imagine the collective savings if even a fifth of Elk Grove did even a fifth of my commuter breakdown. How much less the city would have to pay to expand roads and perform road maintenance, how much less citizens would have to spend on motorized personal transport, how much less the fire department would have to respond to accidents, how much less insurance companies would have to pay for their less obese, better fit clients, how much less time Elk Grovians would have to sit in congestion when they did drive...
Housal Units
How unfortunate!
Forty Eight percent of Nevada homeowners owe more than their unit is worth. So the next time you're driving through the suburban wasteland of Summerlin South in West Las Vegas, every other housal unit that isn't already foreclosed upon is upside down. Cumulatively, Nevadans owe 89% of their units worth...meaning they've only paid down 11% of their mortgages.
Then, as you look in each upside down driveway, 100% of every new vehicle that's been financed (i.e., 99.44% of them) is also upside down...the owners owe more than their worth.
For some reason we look upon underwater homeowners as hapless victims of an unfortunate economic downturn, but in every fucking driveway in America are vehicles that are also underwater and they have been since the 1950s. we routinely accept one circumstance, but not the other.
My neighbor the cop sold his housal unit in ~2004 and used the equity to pay off his loan on his Infinity SUV and then declared it was "paid for." They moved on, and wouldn't you know it, moved up...and as I've said before, the equity gains he realized were never plowed into reducing total debt, they were used only to help finance another larger house and take on even more debt. He didn't reduce his vehicle debt because he's taken on a 30-year repayment plan when he put that much less down on his new housal unit.
The golden rule has been that consumer spending rises 1% for every 10% rise in home values. For the life of me I can't understand how this works, how it could ever work in our moronic nation that has never been conditioned to pay off their mortgages. This golden rule could work if people moved down, took on less debt and then spent the difference, but that never happens!
When I sold my first house (the rental) in 2006 and plowed most of it into my current house mortgage and commodities, the buyer's broker, the Wells Fargo bank manager, my 401(k) manager and the escrow lady all told me how idiotic I was for paying the capital gains and taking the money, all suggesting I do a 1031 like exchange (i.e., buy another property and defer the capital gains.) Well...aside from the 40% loss I'd have taken in the real estate downturn since, more relevant to me was the fact that, at some point, I'm gonna have to pay those taxes! Not one of these people made mention of that! It's as if the rule of the game was to keep the machine rolling, to keep inflating housal unit prices, to keep paying commissions to each player for each new transaction, ad infinitum.
I have to admit that when my long time rental tenant decided in 2006 to buy the house, I urged him not to do it. I'm no idiot, I certainly sold it with a massive gain, but I know the guy and I didn't think it was a good idea. And I looked over what he was being charged for his mortgage and urged, urged! him not to go with that broker, but he did so anyway. He will be in that house until 2023 before its value is in excess of his mortgage, but you know, it really doesn't matter how much the house is (or isn't) worth. It's what he owes than matters. It's all that ever should matter.
Forty Eight percent of Nevada homeowners owe more than their unit is worth. So the next time you're driving through the suburban wasteland of Summerlin South in West Las Vegas, every other housal unit that isn't already foreclosed upon is upside down. Cumulatively, Nevadans owe 89% of their units worth...meaning they've only paid down 11% of their mortgages.
Then, as you look in each upside down driveway, 100% of every new vehicle that's been financed (i.e., 99.44% of them) is also upside down...the owners owe more than their worth.
For some reason we look upon underwater homeowners as hapless victims of an unfortunate economic downturn, but in every fucking driveway in America are vehicles that are also underwater and they have been since the 1950s. we routinely accept one circumstance, but not the other.
My neighbor the cop sold his housal unit in ~2004 and used the equity to pay off his loan on his Infinity SUV and then declared it was "paid for." They moved on, and wouldn't you know it, moved up...and as I've said before, the equity gains he realized were never plowed into reducing total debt, they were used only to help finance another larger house and take on even more debt. He didn't reduce his vehicle debt because he's taken on a 30-year repayment plan when he put that much less down on his new housal unit.
The golden rule has been that consumer spending rises 1% for every 10% rise in home values. For the life of me I can't understand how this works, how it could ever work in our moronic nation that has never been conditioned to pay off their mortgages. This golden rule could work if people moved down, took on less debt and then spent the difference, but that never happens!
When I sold my first house (the rental) in 2006 and plowed most of it into my current house mortgage and commodities, the buyer's broker, the Wells Fargo bank manager, my 401(k) manager and the escrow lady all told me how idiotic I was for paying the capital gains and taking the money, all suggesting I do a 1031 like exchange (i.e., buy another property and defer the capital gains.) Well...aside from the 40% loss I'd have taken in the real estate downturn since, more relevant to me was the fact that, at some point, I'm gonna have to pay those taxes! Not one of these people made mention of that! It's as if the rule of the game was to keep the machine rolling, to keep inflating housal unit prices, to keep paying commissions to each player for each new transaction, ad infinitum.
I have to admit that when my long time rental tenant decided in 2006 to buy the house, I urged him not to do it. I'm no idiot, I certainly sold it with a massive gain, but I know the guy and I didn't think it was a good idea. And I looked over what he was being charged for his mortgage and urged, urged! him not to go with that broker, but he did so anyway. He will be in that house until 2023 before its value is in excess of his mortgage, but you know, it really doesn't matter how much the house is (or isn't) worth. It's what he owes than matters. It's all that ever should matter.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
82 MMBPD
We saw the global peak in oil production in July of this year, and I will blog for the record that that month will be the all time peak, ever. We will never see crude oil production in excess of that produced in July of 2008.
Right now we're seeing OPEC cutting back production by ~2 million barrels per day to offset the 'economic harm' doled out by the falling price of crude. Tack this on to the crashing production profiles of Indonesia, Britain, Norway, Mexico, the US of A, Peru, Ecuador, Australia, Gabon, Malaysia, Oman, Columbia, Argentina, Syria and Egypt, and we'll never see 82 mmbpd ever again. Never.
By the time we all get back to the fossil fuel burning spree we were on before this economic 'crisis,' the US will be a few percent further lower, Mexico will be in the double digits lower, and all the deepwater, ANWR, Arctic, Switchgrass, Algae, Brazilian Tupi, and Oil Shale/Oil Sand production won't be enough to offset the losses we'll be seeing from the nations above.
A chicken dinner for every reader if we ever produce more than 82mmbpd again.
Right now we're seeing OPEC cutting back production by ~2 million barrels per day to offset the 'economic harm' doled out by the falling price of crude. Tack this on to the crashing production profiles of Indonesia, Britain, Norway, Mexico, the US of A, Peru, Ecuador, Australia, Gabon, Malaysia, Oman, Columbia, Argentina, Syria and Egypt, and we'll never see 82 mmbpd ever again. Never.
By the time we all get back to the fossil fuel burning spree we were on before this economic 'crisis,' the US will be a few percent further lower, Mexico will be in the double digits lower, and all the deepwater, ANWR, Arctic, Switchgrass, Algae, Brazilian Tupi, and Oil Shale/Oil Sand production won't be enough to offset the losses we'll be seeing from the nations above.
A chicken dinner for every reader if we ever produce more than 82mmbpd again.
Demand Reduction
There are now as many cars on Franklin Blvd. as ever, now that gasoline is on the cheap. Tonight we had our first substantial rainfall of the year and as I rode my bike over Hwy 99 it was stopped stopped! as is the usual pattern during inclement weather. When 99 is dead, Franklin Blvd. becomes a parking lot, and my little bicycle is about three times faster than any motor vehicle. I can routinely beat cars from the Campbell Soup factory on 47th all the way home when it's raining. Six full miles.
I'm not the only one to report increased driving, and it flies in the face of Mrs. Palin's Drill! Drill! Drill! mantra of two months ago while now she's silent on the issue. Drilling more doesn't do shit if all we're doing is driving more. The same goes for Sean Hannity, who two months ago claimed that our eight hundred dodecaheptaseptaquadrillion barrels of oil in the Bakken shale deposits in the Rockies would relieve us of our foreign oil dependence. As far as shale oil goes, we've extracted precisely dick in eighty years, and for good reason -- it would cost three hundred dollars a barrel to extract, and with oil now at $60 and falling further, who's gonna do it? You?
We're driving more because the 'crisis' was so short lived that we've failed to permanently address our asinine behavioral decisions. Instead of true demand destruction, it was only demand reduction while we parked our Denalis in the garage for a brief summer hibernation. We will soon return to luxury SUVs for everyone with a pulse (as should be expected in our exceptional nation) and we'll fuggeta about the 'crisis' of ought-eight. Then, perhaps in 2010, or 2015, we'll have another 'crisis' and we'll hear the Drill! Drill! Drill! mantra again.
I'm not the only one to report increased driving, and it flies in the face of Mrs. Palin's Drill! Drill! Drill! mantra of two months ago while now she's silent on the issue. Drilling more doesn't do shit if all we're doing is driving more. The same goes for Sean Hannity, who two months ago claimed that our eight hundred dodecaheptaseptaquadrillion barrels of oil in the Bakken shale deposits in the Rockies would relieve us of our foreign oil dependence. As far as shale oil goes, we've extracted precisely dick in eighty years, and for good reason -- it would cost three hundred dollars a barrel to extract, and with oil now at $60 and falling further, who's gonna do it? You?
We're driving more because the 'crisis' was so short lived that we've failed to permanently address our asinine behavioral decisions. Instead of true demand destruction, it was only demand reduction while we parked our Denalis in the garage for a brief summer hibernation. We will soon return to luxury SUVs for everyone with a pulse (as should be expected in our exceptional nation) and we'll fuggeta about the 'crisis' of ought-eight. Then, perhaps in 2010, or 2015, we'll have another 'crisis' and we'll hear the Drill! Drill! Drill! mantra again.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Would Ducks
Concurrent with a personal call to eat less meat, I went out this morning to hunt ducks at the Stone Lakes state refuge, and bagged two wood ducks:
What a seemingly hypocritical stance, eh?
Stone Lakes refuge is about a 15 minute drive south, 15 minutes down...Franklin Blvd.! It's not the typical direction I usually take, but it's Franklin Blvd. nonetheless.
The refuge is the last refuge of an entire region that's slowly destroying its wildlife population and its habitat with relentless suburban sprawl. Where I live and what I've done by buying my own home played no small part in its destruction, and I admit to that. At this point, there's nothing I can do to change the past. I can only hope to blog to alert others of what will come if we (collectively) choose to continue BAU.
Today, grapes, winter wheat, and alfalfa are grown all around the preserve while suburban sprawl has crept within 4 miles and appears primed to creep even closer. There isn't sufficient cover for birds anymore, and coupled with fertilizer run-off from both farms and lawns which are choking the waterways with hyacinth and other 'bloom', there isn't any healthy water either.
This is the pattern repeated in every flyway in the nation. Let me be a partisan prick for a moment and make the assumption that all hunters are Republican. The party of guns, wildlife, and conservation. Sportsmen for McCain. On one hand, hunters espouse conservation and firearm rights, and on the other hand, drive their oversized trucks back to suburbia to jobs that promote further suburban sprawl, waterway destruction and fossil fuel depletion. Let me ask a question...what would a wood duck be? Would a wood duck, in an effort to keep his water clean, his habitat preserved, his source of food consistent, be a Republican?
Did State Republicans sponsor and endorse SB 375, the first meaningful attempt at reducing Californian suburban sprawl? Did Republicans, who espouse free market choice, not fight tooth and nail to prevent the ban of lead shot in SB 821 even for upland game? Did Republicans ever give a shit about the externalized cost of water pollution so long as the internalized maximization of free market profit is realized? Have Republicans ever stepped outside and declared "the air is plenty clean enough" even during 8-hour ozone non-attainment periods?
What wood a would duck be?
What would a wood duck be?
What a seemingly hypocritical stance, eh?
Stone Lakes refuge is about a 15 minute drive south, 15 minutes down...Franklin Blvd.! It's not the typical direction I usually take, but it's Franklin Blvd. nonetheless.
The refuge is the last refuge of an entire region that's slowly destroying its wildlife population and its habitat with relentless suburban sprawl. Where I live and what I've done by buying my own home played no small part in its destruction, and I admit to that. At this point, there's nothing I can do to change the past. I can only hope to blog to alert others of what will come if we (collectively) choose to continue BAU.
Today, grapes, winter wheat, and alfalfa are grown all around the preserve while suburban sprawl has crept within 4 miles and appears primed to creep even closer. There isn't sufficient cover for birds anymore, and coupled with fertilizer run-off from both farms and lawns which are choking the waterways with hyacinth and other 'bloom', there isn't any healthy water either.
This is the pattern repeated in every flyway in the nation. Let me be a partisan prick for a moment and make the assumption that all hunters are Republican. The party of guns, wildlife, and conservation. Sportsmen for McCain. On one hand, hunters espouse conservation and firearm rights, and on the other hand, drive their oversized trucks back to suburbia to jobs that promote further suburban sprawl, waterway destruction and fossil fuel depletion. Let me ask a question...what would a wood duck be? Would a wood duck, in an effort to keep his water clean, his habitat preserved, his source of food consistent, be a Republican?
Did State Republicans sponsor and endorse SB 375, the first meaningful attempt at reducing Californian suburban sprawl? Did Republicans, who espouse free market choice, not fight tooth and nail to prevent the ban of lead shot in SB 821 even for upland game? Did Republicans ever give a shit about the externalized cost of water pollution so long as the internalized maximization of free market profit is realized? Have Republicans ever stepped outside and declared "the air is plenty clean enough" even during 8-hour ozone non-attainment periods?
What wood a would duck be?
What would a wood duck be?
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Hallucinated Wealth
We've seen the evaporation of a few trillion in equities, in people's retirement accounts, in housing valuation, but I maintain that most of this wealth was hallucinated to begin with. It never really existed. My dad described home equity as Chinese dollars several years ago, and it's an apt term today; a Chinese dollar might look good until you try to put it to use, and like everything ever imported from China, it either immediately or eventually turns out to be a worthless piece of shit. Equity is only valuable if you sell.
Home equity is given too high a mark. What really matters is how much you owe...it has always mattered how much you owe. We've heard a thousand times how the 2001-2006 buyer planned on re-financing when values rose. But none of that equity ever impacted how much debt they carried...because no one ever did a cash-out re-fi and moved "down" to unload their debt. No one. And they never, ever, planned on doing that.
To (sorta) switch gears for a moment -- in 2003 I had my credit files from Experian, Transunion, and Equifax frozen under what was then a new California state law. I wrote each a letter, paid each a $10 'fee', and to this day my files are frozen, unable to be accessed by potential creditors.
The 'fee,' by the way, can be waived if you have proof of being an identity victim. Beautiful. Just fucking beautiful. One cannot even be preventative without having to pay. I'm convinced convinced! that the state law includes this fee as a bribe, a kickback, to the massive consumer credit lobby that fought tooth and nail to prevent this law from ever seeing the light of day. What this 'fee' is, is a payment to the credit bureaus to offset the fact that they can now no longer sell your information to others.
These three credit bureaus were accomplices to this 'credit crisis.' For example, a number of businesses popped up in the last decade that would buy information from the bureaus, combine that info with all other public info they could get, such as court records when you bought or sold property or public bank records, then 'combine' these data and put you into a profile tranch or 'trigger list' with a few million other similarly profiled Merikans. They'd then sell this info to issuers of credit who then agressively targeted those in the trigger list.
Then, as soon as someone bites on a trigger, other information on this person is gathered and used to build a predictive model for the next round of credit offers, sent to people with similar financial profiles. Equifax themselves sells a product called TargetPoint Predictive Triggers, a list of people with a statistical propensity to take on new credit.
Then somewhere, someone applies for a mortgage! The mortgage company would almost certainly ping the credit bureaus to determine their creditworthiness. But then each credit bureau would immediately turn around and sell a list of these people to other banks or brokers, who would then aggressively market their offers to these people. So imagine average Joe the Merikan Plumber: he wants to re-fi his house he bought in 2003, so Joe goes to bank X to apply and within days he gets a call from another lender offering exactly what he wants to do. He's thinking "Man, I can't believe you just called me! I was just getting ready to do that with bank X!"
Let me tell you, freezing my credit immediately stopped, stopped! the thousands of pre-approved credit card offers I used to get in the mail or by phone. I can't go into my Wells Fargo bank and even change my home equity line info without the bank running into a credit roadblock...as would someone trying to open or change any line of credit in my name. I can get all the financial details of an offer by a cable subscriber only to have them stop dead when they can't access my credit...so I don't have to commit then and there. I can tell a car salesman at any dealership "assume I'm your best qualified buyer" and negotiate the price independent of my credit score because they can't ping my creditworthiness ahead of time.
To all these people, any wealth I may have is hallucinated. To every credit issuer, I may as well not exist. My dad said years ago he was denied a credit card because he 'had no credit history.' He rhetorically asked, "How am I any more a credit risk than an 18 year old applicant with no credit history?"
Home equity is given too high a mark. What really matters is how much you owe...it has always mattered how much you owe. We've heard a thousand times how the 2001-2006 buyer planned on re-financing when values rose. But none of that equity ever impacted how much debt they carried...because no one ever did a cash-out re-fi and moved "down" to unload their debt. No one. And they never, ever, planned on doing that.
To (sorta) switch gears for a moment -- in 2003 I had my credit files from Experian, Transunion, and Equifax frozen under what was then a new California state law. I wrote each a letter, paid each a $10 'fee', and to this day my files are frozen, unable to be accessed by potential creditors.
The 'fee,' by the way, can be waived if you have proof of being an identity victim. Beautiful. Just fucking beautiful. One cannot even be preventative without having to pay. I'm convinced convinced! that the state law includes this fee as a bribe, a kickback, to the massive consumer credit lobby that fought tooth and nail to prevent this law from ever seeing the light of day. What this 'fee' is, is a payment to the credit bureaus to offset the fact that they can now no longer sell your information to others.
These three credit bureaus were accomplices to this 'credit crisis.' For example, a number of businesses popped up in the last decade that would buy information from the bureaus, combine that info with all other public info they could get, such as court records when you bought or sold property or public bank records, then 'combine' these data and put you into a profile tranch or 'trigger list' with a few million other similarly profiled Merikans. They'd then sell this info to issuers of credit who then agressively targeted those in the trigger list.
Then, as soon as someone bites on a trigger, other information on this person is gathered and used to build a predictive model for the next round of credit offers, sent to people with similar financial profiles. Equifax themselves sells a product called TargetPoint Predictive Triggers, a list of people with a statistical propensity to take on new credit.
Then somewhere, someone applies for a mortgage! The mortgage company would almost certainly ping the credit bureaus to determine their creditworthiness. But then each credit bureau would immediately turn around and sell a list of these people to other banks or brokers, who would then aggressively market their offers to these people. So imagine average Joe the Merikan Plumber: he wants to re-fi his house he bought in 2003, so Joe goes to bank X to apply and within days he gets a call from another lender offering exactly what he wants to do. He's thinking "Man, I can't believe you just called me! I was just getting ready to do that with bank X!"
Let me tell you, freezing my credit immediately stopped, stopped! the thousands of pre-approved credit card offers I used to get in the mail or by phone. I can't go into my Wells Fargo bank and even change my home equity line info without the bank running into a credit roadblock...as would someone trying to open or change any line of credit in my name. I can get all the financial details of an offer by a cable subscriber only to have them stop dead when they can't access my credit...so I don't have to commit then and there. I can tell a car salesman at any dealership "assume I'm your best qualified buyer" and negotiate the price independent of my credit score because they can't ping my creditworthiness ahead of time.
To all these people, any wealth I may have is hallucinated. To every credit issuer, I may as well not exist. My dad said years ago he was denied a credit card because he 'had no credit history.' He rhetorically asked, "How am I any more a credit risk than an 18 year old applicant with no credit history?"
Monday, October 27, 2008
A Week From Wednesday
As a former vehicular commuter I used to listen to conservative talk radio while slogging to the office and home. Only after I changed the pattern, to biking and busing, did I notice the absence of the radioactive bombardment I got from of all those AM commercials. Free radio? Today I use a DVR that lets me blow through TV's advertisements, and I have a strong ability to ignore the ads in my Sacramento Bee (so I think), much to the chagrin of McClatchy whose stock is being defibrillated as I write.
What I find amazing is how political advertisements are still somehow able to reach me. I am cognizant of who/what has more money in each game because I can't escape the bombardment. I can't seem to hole myself up even though I know it's coming, as regularly as the sun on leap day. Amazing...and every year everyone says this year is the most important election cycle in our history. Really?
I won't presume the election of 1840 was any less contentious -- an economic depression ensnared the nation (brought on by the 'speculative' banking panic of 1837) and Van Buren was painted as a wealthy snob living in luxury at the nation's expense. Senator Harrison won decisively. But imagine me -- a late October Whig blogger of 1840 -- whose pen vitrioled all those Democrats who espoused different ideals. I might have penned some clever fakery -- perhaps a forgery suggesting the British Ambassador supported Van Buren in an effort to bring out the Irish vote for Harrison in swing states. Or some shit like that. Perhaps I may have only been one step removed from a common vandal. Nonetheless, here we are one hundred and sixty eight years later with bad blood still spilt via the TV, the web, and email; lawn signs stolen/destroyed in broad daylight; phone/cable lines cut; "Nigger Lover" painted on garage doors; cars keyed and brake lines cut; effigies hung.
This secondary infusion of drama is an additional avenue for others to get their message to my already saturated synapses. I really am looking forward to a week from Wednesday.
What I find amazing is how political advertisements are still somehow able to reach me. I am cognizant of who/what has more money in each game because I can't escape the bombardment. I can't seem to hole myself up even though I know it's coming, as regularly as the sun on leap day. Amazing...and every year everyone says this year is the most important election cycle in our history. Really?
I won't presume the election of 1840 was any less contentious -- an economic depression ensnared the nation (brought on by the 'speculative' banking panic of 1837) and Van Buren was painted as a wealthy snob living in luxury at the nation's expense. Senator Harrison won decisively. But imagine me -- a late October Whig blogger of 1840 -- whose pen vitrioled all those Democrats who espoused different ideals. I might have penned some clever fakery -- perhaps a forgery suggesting the British Ambassador supported Van Buren in an effort to bring out the Irish vote for Harrison in swing states. Or some shit like that. Perhaps I may have only been one step removed from a common vandal. Nonetheless, here we are one hundred and sixty eight years later with bad blood still spilt via the TV, the web, and email; lawn signs stolen/destroyed in broad daylight; phone/cable lines cut; "Nigger Lover" painted on garage doors; cars keyed and brake lines cut; effigies hung.
This secondary infusion of drama is an additional avenue for others to get their message to my already saturated synapses. I really am looking forward to a week from Wednesday.
The Return of Complacency
Well, I was wrong about the return of $3.xx a gallon gas. More like $2.xx. There is such a massive pullback in commodities this last coupla months -- presumably because investor's positions are so far upside down they are dumping everything they can to raise cash. At the top, you gotta be in cash...at the bottom, you gotta be fully invested, yet people are almost always backward on this idea. In 2006 everyone was fully invested -- in houses, in equities, in accessories...neighbors sat together in white plastic chairs in their driveways alongside their new Land Rovers & Armadas, sipping Bordeaux, chatting about how well their foreign growth fund was doing and how much better their rentals were doing now that they've hired management professionals to handle the bothersome chores of maintenance and rent collecting.
These people are now privy to the deflation boom going on. With oil at $60, even Saudi Arabia can't seem to turn a profit anymore, and there is no way, no way!, anyone will be looking at Palin's drill, baby, drill program in northern Alaska where lifting costs are in excess of $60 a barrel. The same goes for ultra deep water drilling -- the only two sources of new oil we have in this exceptional nation. $60 a barrel exclusively means continued increasing imports, to import it from cheaper Mexico and Venezuela. Even the Canadian tar sands don't pencil out at $60, no matter how many quattuordecillion barrels they are sitting on. All $60 oil will do is increase our dependency from 65% to 69%.
The gas crisis is over, and now we've returned to complacency. Discussions regarding Merikan energy independence are no longer relevant...only the cratering rest-of-everything.
To verify...this fine morning I rode the bike alongside a crush of Monday traffic that I haven't seen since 2007. Everyone seems to be enjoying the reprieve in energy prices as there is clearly a strong return to 'normal' commuting patterns, regardless of how many people aren't commuting to their evaporated jobs. All my co-workers lament the return of the extra 10-15 minutes to their commute times. We offloaded money for time; but apparently, it's a worthy trade.
In fact...with my prospects of being mortgage free in just over a dozen months and the rise of the dollar against other currencies and falling jet fuel prices, I'm gonna do the same. What, you think I'm an idiot? Goteborg. Palermo. Santiago. Bremen. I can prove to be just as complacent as the next.
These people are now privy to the deflation boom going on. With oil at $60, even Saudi Arabia can't seem to turn a profit anymore, and there is no way, no way!, anyone will be looking at Palin's drill, baby, drill program in northern Alaska where lifting costs are in excess of $60 a barrel. The same goes for ultra deep water drilling -- the only two sources of new oil we have in this exceptional nation. $60 a barrel exclusively means continued increasing imports, to import it from cheaper Mexico and Venezuela. Even the Canadian tar sands don't pencil out at $60, no matter how many quattuordecillion barrels they are sitting on. All $60 oil will do is increase our dependency from 65% to 69%.
The gas crisis is over, and now we've returned to complacency. Discussions regarding Merikan energy independence are no longer relevant...only the cratering rest-of-everything.
To verify...this fine morning I rode the bike alongside a crush of Monday traffic that I haven't seen since 2007. Everyone seems to be enjoying the reprieve in energy prices as there is clearly a strong return to 'normal' commuting patterns, regardless of how many people aren't commuting to their evaporated jobs. All my co-workers lament the return of the extra 10-15 minutes to their commute times. We offloaded money for time; but apparently, it's a worthy trade.
In fact...with my prospects of being mortgage free in just over a dozen months and the rise of the dollar against other currencies and falling jet fuel prices, I'm gonna do the same. What, you think I'm an idiot? Goteborg. Palermo. Santiago. Bremen. I can prove to be just as complacent as the next.
Friday, October 24, 2008
An Inconvenient Diet
I last blogged about my goal to eat less than 60# of meat this year. That's all meat -- everything with a liver: calves, scallops, frogs, squab, llama, and mutton. None of this 'I still eat chicken' horseshit...all meat.
My reasoning is based on information I've read over the past several years suggesting that raising animals for meat is among the most environmentally irrational things we do. I read Robbin's book Diet For A New America in 1992 and I still recall the passage about how much water is conserved by eating just one less pound of beef per year. The actual number is immaterial and besides, I don't exactly remember it...but it was profound enough for me to retain the concept.
I read Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet a few years back, and more numbers: 7# of vegetable matter (grain, grass, soy) on average to produce 1# of edible meat. Beef cows are 16:1. Of the 540 billion pounds of meat consumed by the world every year, 3.2 trillion pounds of grain then becomes inaccessible to human consumption.
Now I'm not particularly concerned that if we used this to feed people there would be no starving people in the world...because hunger is always more a scarcity of democracy than of food. Neither am I particularly concerned about animal welfare. And I'm not terribly concerned (for the purposes of this blog) with the billions spent to bypass heart arteries. No, my real concern lies with the fossil fuel inputs needed to convert ~3.8 trillion pounds into meat. Sure, a bunch of that requires no inputs at all (grass grazing) but we don't do much of that here in the U.S. anymore. Production feedlots, feeding grain to animals not entirely biologically designed to eat grain -- all this takes heroic amounts of energy vs. what's required to grow vegetable matter directly for human consumption.
If I'm gonna blog about energy and Merika's wasteful practices, then this is one more thing I gotta take personal action with...and it's not easy, because I follow an inconvenient diet.
I am an off again but usually on again meatarian. But when I'm off I'm pretty sure that every time I avoid meat I am polluting less (36# of CO2 for every 1# of meat), and that's about all I can do. So my goal this year is to eat at or below the 90# per person per year world average because the people in the bottom half probably emit a fifth of the overall pollution the top half does. And the very top (those living in the Fattest Cities -- Houston, Kansas City, etc...) both suffer from myriad health issues along with being disproportionately gross indirect polluters.
This is an important point -- this indirect pollution. Most Merikans climb into their vehicles, motor to the store and buy styrofoam packaged pre-cut meat without a single thought as to where their food comes from. I'm OK with this concept (I don't need to know how the TV signal gets to my TV or how the damn thing works to be able to watch it), but I'm not OK with blinkering an entire sector of pollution only because we don't see it happening directly in front of us.
I will reiterate my long held position that pollution is always acceptable but only up to the point that the environment can absorb it. I am personally convinced we are exceeding the carrying capacity of our environment...so I will try to take further personal action to represent that belief.
My reasoning is based on information I've read over the past several years suggesting that raising animals for meat is among the most environmentally irrational things we do. I read Robbin's book Diet For A New America in 1992 and I still recall the passage about how much water is conserved by eating just one less pound of beef per year. The actual number is immaterial and besides, I don't exactly remember it...but it was profound enough for me to retain the concept.
I read Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet a few years back, and more numbers: 7# of vegetable matter (grain, grass, soy) on average to produce 1# of edible meat. Beef cows are 16:1. Of the 540 billion pounds of meat consumed by the world every year, 3.2 trillion pounds of grain then becomes inaccessible to human consumption.
Now I'm not particularly concerned that if we used this to feed people there would be no starving people in the world...because hunger is always more a scarcity of democracy than of food. Neither am I particularly concerned about animal welfare. And I'm not terribly concerned (for the purposes of this blog) with the billions spent to bypass heart arteries. No, my real concern lies with the fossil fuel inputs needed to convert ~3.8 trillion pounds into meat. Sure, a bunch of that requires no inputs at all (grass grazing) but we don't do much of that here in the U.S. anymore. Production feedlots, feeding grain to animals not entirely biologically designed to eat grain -- all this takes heroic amounts of energy vs. what's required to grow vegetable matter directly for human consumption.
If I'm gonna blog about energy and Merika's wasteful practices, then this is one more thing I gotta take personal action with...and it's not easy, because I follow an inconvenient diet.
I am an off again but usually on again meatarian. But when I'm off I'm pretty sure that every time I avoid meat I am polluting less (36# of CO2 for every 1# of meat), and that's about all I can do. So my goal this year is to eat at or below the 90# per person per year world average because the people in the bottom half probably emit a fifth of the overall pollution the top half does. And the very top (those living in the Fattest Cities -- Houston, Kansas City, etc...) both suffer from myriad health issues along with being disproportionately gross indirect polluters.
This is an important point -- this indirect pollution. Most Merikans climb into their vehicles, motor to the store and buy styrofoam packaged pre-cut meat without a single thought as to where their food comes from. I'm OK with this concept (I don't need to know how the TV signal gets to my TV or how the damn thing works to be able to watch it), but I'm not OK with blinkering an entire sector of pollution only because we don't see it happening directly in front of us.
I will reiterate my long held position that pollution is always acceptable but only up to the point that the environment can absorb it. I am personally convinced we are exceeding the carrying capacity of our environment...so I will try to take further personal action to represent that belief.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Gulliver's Waistline
I believed that higher food prices would lead to more obesity, not less. However, with the massive drop in commodities pricing that will eventually lead to a drop in food prices, for the moment I'll not be able to test my hypothesis.
Now that gas is less than three bucks, more people are filling up with premium grade -- a grade that many of their cars needed to begin with. The exact same thing applies to food -- when the price goes up, people buy the cheapest shit; macaroni and cheese (refined starch and fat), top ramen (refined carbs, fat and sodium), soda in lieu of milk (sugar in lieu of animal fat and sugar), and Taco Bell fifty-nine, seventy-nine, and ninety-nine cent menu items (refined flour, the cheapest cuts of beef and some token lettuce and onion for vegetables).
Bad food leads to bad waistlines. Now your Monologueonian is certainly not immune to fat; far from it. I prefer to eat 1,500 calories a day in excess of my needs. But, I've kept at my local CSA and I eat my veggies; I eat ~45 grams of fiber a day with a long term goal to eat less than 60 pounds of meat this year.
The world average is 90 pounds of meat per person per year, so my intention is to eat at or below this value. Aside from the potential health benefits, there is growing awareness of the massive fossil fuel inputs necessary to support meat based diets. If I'm going to criticize Fat Merikans and our wasteful energy practices, I need to walk the walk.
Walk? Ha! In our auto dominated world, there is no walking:
With gas now below three bucks, even walking the dog is considered too much for us. When someone in the US goes on a program diet, it usually means nothing more than some over-fed under-nourished cretin paying top dollar for what's essentially a third world diet. Merikans are the Gullivers of the world -- bigger, fatter, and unhealthier than every other nation's citizens.
But the tide is lapping at our waistlines:
In my opinion, we cannot continue to grow fatter without growing poorer. With the tide lapping at Gulliver's waistline, the world's Lilliputian's are already two feet under...
Now that gas is less than three bucks, more people are filling up with premium grade -- a grade that many of their cars needed to begin with. The exact same thing applies to food -- when the price goes up, people buy the cheapest shit; macaroni and cheese (refined starch and fat), top ramen (refined carbs, fat and sodium), soda in lieu of milk (sugar in lieu of animal fat and sugar), and Taco Bell fifty-nine, seventy-nine, and ninety-nine cent menu items (refined flour, the cheapest cuts of beef and some token lettuce and onion for vegetables).
Bad food leads to bad waistlines. Now your Monologueonian is certainly not immune to fat; far from it. I prefer to eat 1,500 calories a day in excess of my needs. But, I've kept at my local CSA and I eat my veggies; I eat ~45 grams of fiber a day with a long term goal to eat less than 60 pounds of meat this year.
The world average is 90 pounds of meat per person per year, so my intention is to eat at or below this value. Aside from the potential health benefits, there is growing awareness of the massive fossil fuel inputs necessary to support meat based diets. If I'm going to criticize Fat Merikans and our wasteful energy practices, I need to walk the walk.
Walk? Ha! In our auto dominated world, there is no walking:
With gas now below three bucks, even walking the dog is considered too much for us. When someone in the US goes on a program diet, it usually means nothing more than some over-fed under-nourished cretin paying top dollar for what's essentially a third world diet. Merikans are the Gullivers of the world -- bigger, fatter, and unhealthier than every other nation's citizens.
But the tide is lapping at our waistlines:
In my opinion, we cannot continue to grow fatter without growing poorer. With the tide lapping at Gulliver's waistline, the world's Lilliputian's are already two feet under...
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Infrastructure
Last night on the NBC evening news they punched down a list of things needing future attention by our future president; schools, Medicare, infrastructure (roads and bridges)...
I stop there. Implied in their verbal mentioning of infrastructure as "roads and bridges" is that infrastructure is only roads and bridges. This is exactly what I might expect to hear from an autocentric nation hell bent on creating a fully paved over automobile slum.
What about agricultural drainage ditches, transmission power lines, flood control dikes and levees, phone networks, train stations, tidal breakwaters, municipal solid waste dumps, wiers, moles, berms, cast iron sewer pipes, fiber optic SONET rings, rainwater sump pumps, natural gas regasification terminals, wastewater treatment plants, airports, greenbelts, communication satellites, water canals, parks, jettys, water treatment plants, and earthen dams?
No, take away even one mile of roadway and this precious exceptional nation of ours would shut down, couldn't function...
I stop there. Implied in their verbal mentioning of infrastructure as "roads and bridges" is that infrastructure is only roads and bridges. This is exactly what I might expect to hear from an autocentric nation hell bent on creating a fully paved over automobile slum.
What about agricultural drainage ditches, transmission power lines, flood control dikes and levees, phone networks, train stations, tidal breakwaters, municipal solid waste dumps, wiers, moles, berms, cast iron sewer pipes, fiber optic SONET rings, rainwater sump pumps, natural gas regasification terminals, wastewater treatment plants, airports, greenbelts, communication satellites, water canals, parks, jettys, water treatment plants, and earthen dams?
No, take away even one mile of roadway and this precious exceptional nation of ours would shut down, couldn't function...
$2.99 Gas Guarantee
When I posted several months back that gas would be returning to $3.xx a gallon, this was referring to my local price here on Franklin Blvd. Apparently, gas has dropped nationally under $3 a gallon.
So...what's happening to all those who bought new Chryslers and new Dodges last summer, what with their $2.99 gas guarantee! Those idiots! Now only 3 months into their 60 or 72 month payment terms, they're about to get schlonged by falling gas prices! Are they banging on the glass showroom doors, demanding renegotiated financing? Where's their bailout, huh?
It seems not everyone benefits from cheap gasoline...
So...what's happening to all those who bought new Chryslers and new Dodges last summer, what with their $2.99 gas guarantee! Those idiots! Now only 3 months into their 60 or 72 month payment terms, they're about to get schlonged by falling gas prices! Are they banging on the glass showroom doors, demanding renegotiated financing? Where's their bailout, huh?
It seems not everyone benefits from cheap gasoline...
Monday, October 20, 2008
Crisis and Complacency
This is a very interesting lull we're in. Markets are flat, housing starts are flat, gas prices are flat -- all of which came crashing down from all time highs recently. We are complacently awaiting the next crisis.
I blabber on that as oil again goes on the cheap, we'll lose our collective ability to see very far down the road. In 2003 gas was uber-cheap and Detroit couldn't produce large vehicles fast enough. There was zero discussion regarding drill, baby, drill. Five years later, for a brief moment, we all thought we could only afford scooters and hybrids to keep our perpetual motoring dreams alive. My guess -- we're going to see a fresh resurgence in the volume of big vehicles on the road again, because the used car lots are stuffed with such inventory and credit to those least likely to pay it back will soon be available again. They will overextend themselves to get the 'steal' of '09-- the used '06 Yukon that had been defaulted on by its previous 'owner.'
On Franklin Blvd., I've noticed a substantial reduction in the really big bling. There aren't nearly as many $48k Escalades and Hummers with $5k rims and $6k sound/DVD systems as there were even two years back. It's no coincidence that I see fewer of them at the same time we see the failure of cheap credit, telling me that these machines were never owned by their drivers.
This fresh SUV resurgence will soon again put upward pressure on global oil production, again raising both price and alarms. Merika can only live in two states it seems; crisis and complacency. For a very brief moment here we are living in a complacent lull, waiting for the smoldering remnants of the last crisis to ash over and the tsunami of the next crisis to wash over. As we wait, we do nothing to prevent/prepare ourselves for the next [inevitable] crisis, even though we can see each of them coming a hundred miles down the road. Ecological unsustainability? The end of cheap oil? Aging population/aging infrastructure? 27% annual health care premium increases? Eviscerated manufacturing? Failure of Medicare & Social Security?
I blabber on that as oil again goes on the cheap, we'll lose our collective ability to see very far down the road. In 2003 gas was uber-cheap and Detroit couldn't produce large vehicles fast enough. There was zero discussion regarding drill, baby, drill. Five years later, for a brief moment, we all thought we could only afford scooters and hybrids to keep our perpetual motoring dreams alive. My guess -- we're going to see a fresh resurgence in the volume of big vehicles on the road again, because the used car lots are stuffed with such inventory and credit to those least likely to pay it back will soon be available again. They will overextend themselves to get the 'steal' of '09-- the used '06 Yukon that had been defaulted on by its previous 'owner.'
On Franklin Blvd., I've noticed a substantial reduction in the really big bling. There aren't nearly as many $48k Escalades and Hummers with $5k rims and $6k sound/DVD systems as there were even two years back. It's no coincidence that I see fewer of them at the same time we see the failure of cheap credit, telling me that these machines were never owned by their drivers.
This fresh SUV resurgence will soon again put upward pressure on global oil production, again raising both price and alarms. Merika can only live in two states it seems; crisis and complacency. For a very brief moment here we are living in a complacent lull, waiting for the smoldering remnants of the last crisis to ash over and the tsunami of the next crisis to wash over. As we wait, we do nothing to prevent/prepare ourselves for the next [inevitable] crisis, even though we can see each of them coming a hundred miles down the road. Ecological unsustainability? The end of cheap oil? Aging population/aging infrastructure? 27% annual health care premium increases? Eviscerated manufacturing? Failure of Medicare & Social Security?
Need Amidst Scarcity
In early 2002 my late friend Kevin bought a new Ford truck with 0% financing. Afterwards he lamented that he stupidly put a few thousand down even though borrowing costs were zero.
Kev did what Bush wanted everyone to do...what Americans ought to do in times of national stress...he bought shit on credit. That was the extent of our national sacrifice to support Merikan 'values' following 9/11 -- we bought shit we didn't need with money we didn't have. And we placed small, thermoplastic stickers of American flags on our vehicles. This was the extent of our national sacrifice.
Two years later we're off to war -- and the extent of our national sacrifice? With heavy hearts, we climbed into our cars and drove to the mall to do a little 'extra' shopping.
Now five years later in the midst of arecession slowdown, we gotta get consumers spending again. Incomes have remained flat while personal credit debt has risen. I don't know what to think of those numbers being thrown around, something like each family having $8,300 in credit card debt. Pick your number. +/- 30% is the range I've heard lately.
Eight months ago I called up my only credit card issuer and asked them to cut my credit limit from $22 thousand down to $4 thousand. How the hell did I ever get a twenty two thousand dollar limit to begin with? It was something I never really noticed...one day they'd jack it up, then a few months later, jack it up again, and over fifteen years it ballooned. I don't think I ever carried a balance over two thousand at any given point, so I had them drop it. Last week, my co-worker mentioned how my credit score was likely lowered because of my action.
Lowered? If access to credit far in excess of any reasonable ability to pay it off raises my credit score, then fuck my credit score. Fuck it. I now enjoy knowing that I can only borrow about half the credit debt the rest of this nation already carries.
FDR later recalled the depression as a time of want amidst plenty -- the nation was flush with ore, timber, oil, gas, jobs and steel but still economically crashed. I like to think that our immediate future (5-10 years) might be more like need amidst scarcity. The scarcity will be in dollars, water, oil, productive jobs, etc, but our needs will still be the same: Nintendo consoles, HDTVs, underwater camcorders, iPhones, iPods, Pringles, fish sticks, fried chicken, mufflers, brakes, hair styling and personal storage rental spaces.
Kev did what Bush wanted everyone to do...what Americans ought to do in times of national stress...he bought shit on credit. That was the extent of our national sacrifice to support Merikan 'values' following 9/11 -- we bought shit we didn't need with money we didn't have. And we placed small, thermoplastic stickers of American flags on our vehicles. This was the extent of our national sacrifice.
Two years later we're off to war -- and the extent of our national sacrifice? With heavy hearts, we climbed into our cars and drove to the mall to do a little 'extra' shopping.
Now five years later in the midst of a
Eight months ago I called up my only credit card issuer and asked them to cut my credit limit from $22 thousand down to $4 thousand. How the hell did I ever get a twenty two thousand dollar limit to begin with? It was something I never really noticed...one day they'd jack it up, then a few months later, jack it up again, and over fifteen years it ballooned. I don't think I ever carried a balance over two thousand at any given point, so I had them drop it. Last week, my co-worker mentioned how my credit score was likely lowered because of my action.
Lowered? If access to credit far in excess of any reasonable ability to pay it off raises my credit score, then fuck my credit score. Fuck it. I now enjoy knowing that I can only borrow about half the credit debt the rest of this nation already carries.
FDR later recalled the depression as a time of want amidst plenty -- the nation was flush with ore, timber, oil, gas, jobs and steel but still economically crashed. I like to think that our immediate future (5-10 years) might be more like need amidst scarcity. The scarcity will be in dollars, water, oil, productive jobs, etc, but our needs will still be the same: Nintendo consoles, HDTVs, underwater camcorders, iPhones, iPods, Pringles, fish sticks, fried chicken, mufflers, brakes, hair styling and personal storage rental spaces.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Independence II
I think I'm going to skip the final debate this evening. I don't think I'm going to hear anything different than what's been said already, although, I like the fact that Obama has on multiple occasions referenced the US has 3% of the oil reserves whilst using 25% of the world's production. I like it, but he doesn't ever take it anywhere, and alas, he couldn't. He's not allowed to upset any voter block three weeks from election day.
So armed with this fact (and is true based on everything I know), what could come of it? What conclusions could come from this?
It's suggesting that, eventually, we will be importing 97% of our oil if we don't do something different. We import ~62% today, while we imported ~35% in 1980. The trend is ever upward. He doesn't mention that.
It's saying that 5% of the world's population uses 25% of the oil, but it's never stated like that. That could make Merikans aware of their inequitable appetite for oil, and Obama can't go there...because then he's attacking our "quality of life." When he says 25% of the oil, it's a meaningless number. He could just as easily say "we use 15% of the world's coal." So?
As I see it, U.S. energy independence doesn't make any sense. I keep blogging this point, but I keep hearing this bullshit statement that we will 'get' it by 2018. But why would we?
Why? Unfriendly nations don't account for the bulk of our imported oil. Terrorism flourishes when oil is $15 a barrel or when it's $140 a barrel. Domestic oil is far more expensive to produce than imports...so even if we could go all domestic, it'd be a hell of a lot more expensive. Oil is priced globally, so even if we produced 100% we would still be subjected to price volatility. "Independence" would also likely mean a much larger push into domestic coal, which would only be more environmentally damning.
My point is, the U.S. can reduce its economic vulnerability to oil only by using less oil in total.
This is as true for me as an individual as it is for us as a nation. But this is something that Obama can never, never discuss. To do so would expose our unsustainable economic model, the model that shows increased ad infinitum oil [energy] consumption growth. In our poisonous political climate, who can possibly get up and state this, let alone take any action? Al Gore? Only because he's out of political office, never to return.
So armed with this fact (and is true based on everything I know), what could come of it? What conclusions could come from this?
It's suggesting that, eventually, we will be importing 97% of our oil if we don't do something different. We import ~62% today, while we imported ~35% in 1980. The trend is ever upward. He doesn't mention that.
It's saying that 5% of the world's population uses 25% of the oil, but it's never stated like that. That could make Merikans aware of their inequitable appetite for oil, and Obama can't go there...because then he's attacking our "quality of life." When he says 25% of the oil, it's a meaningless number. He could just as easily say "we use 15% of the world's coal." So?
As I see it, U.S. energy independence doesn't make any sense. I keep blogging this point, but I keep hearing this bullshit statement that we will 'get' it by 2018. But why would we?
Why? Unfriendly nations don't account for the bulk of our imported oil. Terrorism flourishes when oil is $15 a barrel or when it's $140 a barrel. Domestic oil is far more expensive to produce than imports...so even if we could go all domestic, it'd be a hell of a lot more expensive. Oil is priced globally, so even if we produced 100% we would still be subjected to price volatility. "Independence" would also likely mean a much larger push into domestic coal, which would only be more environmentally damning.
My point is, the U.S. can reduce its economic vulnerability to oil only by using less oil in total.
This is as true for me as an individual as it is for us as a nation. But this is something that Obama can never, never discuss. To do so would expose our unsustainable economic model, the model that shows increased ad infinitum oil [energy] consumption growth. In our poisonous political climate, who can possibly get up and state this, let alone take any action? Al Gore? Only because he's out of political office, never to return.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Taking In Each Other's Laundry
Thumbing around the newspaper this morning, I was struck by two items in the business section:
1) PepsiCo to re-focus on soft drinks, and
2) GE tumbles 22% as expected.
What's not said about #1:
"Population only grows at about 1% per year. Assuming everyone is already drinking as much Pepsi as they ever will, our growth rate is...1%. This is far too anemic for Wall Street, a piddly-ass one percent, so we've had to expand our business into water, sports drinks, orange juice, and fake fruit drinks to be able to expand at the growth rates our shareholders expect in the consumer staples sector."
I would think that company growth could occur, sure...but at some point, don't you run back into that 1% limit? You can only get people to eat and drink so much. Humans make terrible consumers because there's an artificial market limit...their stomachs. They've worked around this limit over the past twenty five years or so by substituting high fructose corn syrup in most of their products that (apparently) causes people to eat more...hence our slobbish, overweight cartoonish nation.
Here's what's not said about #2:
"Our General Electric production lines, producing everything from jet engines to medical imaging, are actually doing OK. What's got our ass however is GE Commercial Finance and Ge Capital. These has been, far and away, our largest growth engines...but with the recent 'financial uncertainty' swirling around, well, we're not doing so well."
No shit! This is just one of a hundred other companies that realized fifteen years ago they can't compete in any globalized manufacturing capacity and have re-invented themselves as financial services companies. And man, wasn't that great for the bottom line or what? Pretty soon, everyone was involved in this racket...GM stopped making profitable vehicles and started making profitable financial products through GMAC. And then GMAC mortgage! They are getting a double dose now as both mortgages and vehicle sales are all fuckered up.
This is our service economy at work, folks...we think we are gainfully employed taking in each other's laundry, but no one is manufacturing any new clothes, washers or dryers.
1) PepsiCo to re-focus on soft drinks, and
2) GE tumbles 22% as expected.
What's not said about #1:
"Population only grows at about 1% per year. Assuming everyone is already drinking as much Pepsi as they ever will, our growth rate is...1%. This is far too anemic for Wall Street, a piddly-ass one percent, so we've had to expand our business into water, sports drinks, orange juice, and fake fruit drinks to be able to expand at the growth rates our shareholders expect in the consumer staples sector."
I would think that company growth could occur, sure...but at some point, don't you run back into that 1% limit? You can only get people to eat and drink so much. Humans make terrible consumers because there's an artificial market limit...their stomachs. They've worked around this limit over the past twenty five years or so by substituting high fructose corn syrup in most of their products that (apparently) causes people to eat more...hence our slobbish, overweight cartoonish nation.
Here's what's not said about #2:
"Our General Electric production lines, producing everything from jet engines to medical imaging, are actually doing OK. What's got our ass however is GE Commercial Finance and Ge Capital. These has been, far and away, our largest growth engines...but with the recent 'financial uncertainty' swirling around, well, we're not doing so well."
No shit! This is just one of a hundred other companies that realized fifteen years ago they can't compete in any globalized manufacturing capacity and have re-invented themselves as financial services companies. And man, wasn't that great for the bottom line or what? Pretty soon, everyone was involved in this racket...GM stopped making profitable vehicles and started making profitable financial products through GMAC. And then GMAC mortgage! They are getting a double dose now as both mortgages and vehicle sales are all fuckered up.
This is our service economy at work, folks...we think we are gainfully employed taking in each other's laundry, but no one is manufacturing any new clothes, washers or dryers.
Friday, October 10, 2008
At The Gates
This new development is just over one mile north of my house on Franklin Blvd:
It's beautiful, no? Again we have flag waving...more developer's semaphore for "we are special." But they also fly The American Flag. No one would dare criticize this place because The American Flag Is Flown Here.
Except for your Monologueonian.
First of all, are there four units in this photo, or only three? What exactly is that out-of-scale narrow unit? In any event, a full seven eights of the first unit's frontal facade is the blank garage door, so to embellish it they added four-square windows to the garage door. An illusion. An illusion as they are unusable. The garage windows are so high that no one will ever be able to look out of them. There are no other windows at ground level, which in earlier times was an integral feature to the street-feel of a neighborhood, when windows were proportioned taller than wide, to 'frame' a human standing in them. The opposite proportioning is true today. More importantly, windows provide security for the street because humans might appear in them at random. Nope. There's no expectation that anyone will be outside unless housed in a motor vehicle, so there's no longer any need for them.
We also have fake white window planter boxes mounted underneath the upstairs' small bathroom/bedroom windows. Another illusion; a begging for a return to old architecture when window planter boxes were actually built and held dill, sage, or basil.
I suppose, however, the most egregious thing this developer did was to erect a big blank stone wall around the whole of this 'community.' One could argue it's a sound wall against all the Elk Grovian thru-commuters, but the upstairs bedrooms would hardly be shielded unless the wall were thirty feet high. No. This wall's purpose is to segregate this society by income, because what you can't see in this photo is that this walled community is surrounded by twenty year old second-suburban-tiered South Sacramento sprawl that is already turning to liquid shit. It's an effective way to suggest that "if you lived within our walls and gates, you can consider yourself more successful that those chowderheads outside."
This is a fundamental problem with sprawl: not only the zoning of land by activity but the indirect zoning by income. Say I buy an Elk Grovian starter home, and as I live there for several years, I (perhaps) engage neighbors, develop friendships...I become part of a community. But to move up forces me to move out, and as I move every six years (the Merikan average) I am forced to move to a different community. The same thing would happen if I'm just about to retire at 64 and I wanted to downsize. Seniors are forced to abandon their familiar communities just to seek a smaller place to live and they have to start all over.
And any kid, growing up within these gates and walls, will be ill prepared to live in a diverse society...and indeed they never will.
I went to the Chicago Power Metal Fest in 2005 and toured the city for the first time. The most striking thing I remember about that trip wasn't the metal music or the Cub's home opener, but how one moment I'd be driving north on Michigan Ave. among the most valued places in the city, to turning west and within seconds be driving through the burnt out, bombed out craters of what was then left of Cabrini Green. The contrast was absolutely stunning. A place where the social meltdown was so complete that it had to be demolished...this is what happens when 'affordable' housing is built in dense concentrations...or what happens when you completely segregate by income.
But in some sense, this is exactly what we are doing here in SACTOWN and in Elk Grove. My point is to suggest that we've learned precisely dick about where income segregation takes us.
It's beautiful, no? Again we have flag waving...more developer's semaphore for "we are special." But they also fly The American Flag. No one would dare criticize this place because The American Flag Is Flown Here.
Except for your Monologueonian.
First of all, are there four units in this photo, or only three? What exactly is that out-of-scale narrow unit? In any event, a full seven eights of the first unit's frontal facade is the blank garage door, so to embellish it they added four-square windows to the garage door. An illusion. An illusion as they are unusable. The garage windows are so high that no one will ever be able to look out of them. There are no other windows at ground level, which in earlier times was an integral feature to the street-feel of a neighborhood, when windows were proportioned taller than wide, to 'frame' a human standing in them. The opposite proportioning is true today. More importantly, windows provide security for the street because humans might appear in them at random. Nope. There's no expectation that anyone will be outside unless housed in a motor vehicle, so there's no longer any need for them.
We also have fake white window planter boxes mounted underneath the upstairs' small bathroom/bedroom windows. Another illusion; a begging for a return to old architecture when window planter boxes were actually built and held dill, sage, or basil.
I suppose, however, the most egregious thing this developer did was to erect a big blank stone wall around the whole of this 'community.' One could argue it's a sound wall against all the Elk Grovian thru-commuters, but the upstairs bedrooms would hardly be shielded unless the wall were thirty feet high. No. This wall's purpose is to segregate this society by income, because what you can't see in this photo is that this walled community is surrounded by twenty year old second-suburban-tiered South Sacramento sprawl that is already turning to liquid shit. It's an effective way to suggest that "if you lived within our walls and gates, you can consider yourself more successful that those chowderheads outside."
This is a fundamental problem with sprawl: not only the zoning of land by activity but the indirect zoning by income. Say I buy an Elk Grovian starter home, and as I live there for several years, I (perhaps) engage neighbors, develop friendships...I become part of a community. But to move up forces me to move out, and as I move every six years (the Merikan average) I am forced to move to a different community. The same thing would happen if I'm just about to retire at 64 and I wanted to downsize. Seniors are forced to abandon their familiar communities just to seek a smaller place to live and they have to start all over.
And any kid, growing up within these gates and walls, will be ill prepared to live in a diverse society...and indeed they never will.
I went to the Chicago Power Metal Fest in 2005 and toured the city for the first time. The most striking thing I remember about that trip wasn't the metal music or the Cub's home opener, but how one moment I'd be driving north on Michigan Ave. among the most valued places in the city, to turning west and within seconds be driving through the burnt out, bombed out craters of what was then left of Cabrini Green. The contrast was absolutely stunning. A place where the social meltdown was so complete that it had to be demolished...this is what happens when 'affordable' housing is built in dense concentrations...or what happens when you completely segregate by income.
But in some sense, this is exactly what we are doing here in SACTOWN and in Elk Grove. My point is to suggest that we've learned precisely dick about where income segregation takes us.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Economy Is Community
Sitting in a car in a big box shopping parking lagoon here some time ago, I am reminded that Elk Grove, particularly, doesn't have an economy of its own.
Aren't we suddenly becoming attune to our globalization experiment, now that the rest of the world is following us into economic free-fall? I should mention that the nations that are suffering the worst are also the same nations, like Merika, who built economies around finance, leisure, and information. Great Britain and Iceland come to mind -- but Elk Grove...it it 110% dependent on economic value developed outside the city's borders.
One point that I try to get across, rather poorly I might add, is that a local economy is the basis for a community. The two are practically the same. A community is not tangible, it isn't something you can buy, and it is something that Elk Grove absolutely can never, ever obtain.
If you head to Estes Park, Colorado, about a 20 mile drive from my dad's ranch, visitors to this mountain resort town presume that this place has a local economy of its own, that there's a web of practical interrelationships between citizens there, all of whom understand their mutual dependency and show it by caring for their city, their work, and each other. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's completely service based, code for restaurants and retail. Their economy is almost wholly based on resources that are not local. The retail clerks, waitresses and porters who perform the work cannot afford to live there and thus shuttle themselves from Loveland, from Lyons, or farther. The wealthy visitors who rent the hotels on weekends are seen plying around Wonder View (i.e., Main Street), the women shopping for remotely manufactured goods with their men in tow, carrying twine-handled bags with their wives's booty. Why do they come to Estes Park? Because they know that their own living arrangements are so fucked up that they have to escape them to find any sense, any illusion, of a real place. Estes Park is an illusion of what everyone wants their communities to look like. These visitors are likely to be southern Denver strip mall developers, people whose livelihood is based on building patterns resembling nothing like an Estes Park.
I compare Estes Park to Elk Grove because both aren't local communities, while the former thinks it is and the latter knows it isn't.
I mentioned here that there are no practical relationships between Elk Grovians. Neighbors don't depend on other neighbors because our economy is dependent on non-Elk Grovian resources. That's why they don't give a shit about Elk Grove, why it's destined to become a suburban slum...if they don't give a shit about it now, they will not give a shit about it 30 years from now.
Aren't we suddenly becoming attune to our globalization experiment, now that the rest of the world is following us into economic free-fall? I should mention that the nations that are suffering the worst are also the same nations, like Merika, who built economies around finance, leisure, and information. Great Britain and Iceland come to mind -- but Elk Grove...it it 110% dependent on economic value developed outside the city's borders.
One point that I try to get across, rather poorly I might add, is that a local economy is the basis for a community. The two are practically the same. A community is not tangible, it isn't something you can buy, and it is something that Elk Grove absolutely can never, ever obtain.
If you head to Estes Park, Colorado, about a 20 mile drive from my dad's ranch, visitors to this mountain resort town presume that this place has a local economy of its own, that there's a web of practical interrelationships between citizens there, all of whom understand their mutual dependency and show it by caring for their city, their work, and each other. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's completely service based, code for restaurants and retail. Their economy is almost wholly based on resources that are not local. The retail clerks, waitresses and porters who perform the work cannot afford to live there and thus shuttle themselves from Loveland, from Lyons, or farther. The wealthy visitors who rent the hotels on weekends are seen plying around Wonder View (i.e., Main Street), the women shopping for remotely manufactured goods with their men in tow, carrying twine-handled bags with their wives's booty. Why do they come to Estes Park? Because they know that their own living arrangements are so fucked up that they have to escape them to find any sense, any illusion, of a real place. Estes Park is an illusion of what everyone wants their communities to look like. These visitors are likely to be southern Denver strip mall developers, people whose livelihood is based on building patterns resembling nothing like an Estes Park.
I compare Estes Park to Elk Grove because both aren't local communities, while the former thinks it is and the latter knows it isn't.
I mentioned here that there are no practical relationships between Elk Grovians. Neighbors don't depend on other neighbors because our economy is dependent on non-Elk Grovian resources. That's why they don't give a shit about Elk Grove, why it's destined to become a suburban slum...if they don't give a shit about it now, they will not give a shit about it 30 years from now.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Wal*Mart
The Florin and Franklin intersection is my automobile slum de jour. Nothing within a .5 mile radius exudes any measure of safety for bicyclists or pedestrians. The extreme southwest corner houses the motherbunker, the supermarket-turned-personal storage facility, but what is hard to comprehend is that this is just the beginning of an entire dog-legged half-mile of large format retail on Florin Road...the largest being Wal*Mart.
Last evening I saw a Wal*Mart commercial that mentioned exactly two ways to survive these tough economic times -- 1) combine your trips when shopping, and 2) save when you get there.
Here's what's not said about #1:
"Implicit in combining trips is that you must drive your car here, because you won't save shit by combining trips if you walked. You will drive, or else you're not worth our business. And to further ensure you drive, we've placed our store six thousand feet away from the nearest residential 'community', set it back four hundred feet from the sidewalk, and provided for a four hundred by six hundred foot asphalt moat so every Mexican woman pushing her pram will compete against three black guys racing their Neon through the parking lot."
Here's what's not said about #2:
"This Wal*Mart is just one of 7,390 stores that employs ~250 associates, all but the top 15 of whom do not make enough to buy the median house even in the foreclosed wasteland of South Sacramento. The bulk of our merchandise is shipped into the Oakland port from Asia because you only want to buy cheap shit that doesn't last and not have to pay American manufacturing wages to make it. We've eliminated all other local competition, so you or your neighbors are either working here, working to maintain Florin Road as a six-lane cross town expressway, or not working at all. Yes...you'll save $2,300 a year by shopping here, but you won't have anything resembling a decent community anymore."
To cap this all off, about another .5 miles down Florin Road, a new Super Wal*Mart lies in wait in the rubble-strewn wasteland that was the site of the now demolished Florin Mall. Construction was halted just over two months ago. Nope. It wasn't halted due to the economy...it was halted by the County of Sacramento because they failed to adequately address...parking. Yes! Everyone is fully aware that no pedestrian in their right fucking mind would shop there, so several acres of illuminated asphalt are required. When the kinks are negotiated through and construction resumes and the store eventually opens, along with the closure of the Franklin and Florin store, what will become of the old site? What retail chain will take over the existing location that will (more than likely) have to compete with the Super Wal*Mart?
Last evening I saw a Wal*Mart commercial that mentioned exactly two ways to survive these tough economic times -- 1) combine your trips when shopping, and 2) save when you get there.
Here's what's not said about #1:
"Implicit in combining trips is that you must drive your car here, because you won't save shit by combining trips if you walked. You will drive, or else you're not worth our business. And to further ensure you drive, we've placed our store six thousand feet away from the nearest residential 'community', set it back four hundred feet from the sidewalk, and provided for a four hundred by six hundred foot asphalt moat so every Mexican woman pushing her pram will compete against three black guys racing their Neon through the parking lot."
Here's what's not said about #2:
"This Wal*Mart is just one of 7,390 stores that employs ~250 associates, all but the top 15 of whom do not make enough to buy the median house even in the foreclosed wasteland of South Sacramento. The bulk of our merchandise is shipped into the Oakland port from Asia because you only want to buy cheap shit that doesn't last and not have to pay American manufacturing wages to make it. We've eliminated all other local competition, so you or your neighbors are either working here, working to maintain Florin Road as a six-lane cross town expressway, or not working at all. Yes...you'll save $2,300 a year by shopping here, but you won't have anything resembling a decent community anymore."
To cap this all off, about another .5 miles down Florin Road, a new Super Wal*Mart lies in wait in the rubble-strewn wasteland that was the site of the now demolished Florin Mall. Construction was halted just over two months ago. Nope. It wasn't halted due to the economy...it was halted by the County of Sacramento because they failed to adequately address...parking. Yes! Everyone is fully aware that no pedestrian in their right fucking mind would shop there, so several acres of illuminated asphalt are required. When the kinks are negotiated through and construction resumes and the store eventually opens, along with the closure of the Franklin and Florin store, what will become of the old site? What retail chain will take over the existing location that will (more than likely) have to compete with the Super Wal*Mart?
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Summer Hibernation
Now that we've returned to a comfortable $3.xx per gallon of petrol, we've decided not to jettison that Nissan Armada just yet. Indeed, we are seeing the re-emergence of owners' SUVs following a summer of sleepy hibernation.
Trips to the Bay Area are up. People are loading their families up in the minivans and SUVs for visits to their relatives...the relatives they can't afford to live next to. So the next best thing is to live about 120 miles away and drive every other weekend. Bay Areans rarely come to SACTOWN to visit...it's almost always the other way around. This is a very common thread from all my Asian co-workers from WAPA to the CAISO to SMUD, and all my Asian neighbors.
A big problem, I see, is that now that we've returned to energy complacency with lower energy prices, combined with the broader tight crediting that's occurring, any renewable energy efforts will be deferred. Indeed, SMUD has just announced that due to increased borrowing costs or in some cases, an inability to borrow, capital projects [will likely] be deferred. That is...transformer replacements, transmission line projects, new wind generation in Solano county.
This is a double whammy. Sure, we're not using as much oil, but the truth is, we are still burning an awful lot. Presume a resurgent economy in a few years, and when oil demand takes off again, we will have gotten a few years farther behind in developing any alternative energy infrastructure. We will be playing catch-up -- repairing asphalt roads that laid neglected, deferred gas-fired generator improvements...all the while domestic oil production will be down a further 4.5%.
Surely it can't be that bad, you say. Besides, Congress just passed the seven hundred thousand million dollar bailout to open up credit (our economy is wholly dependent on the ability to borrow) and they attached the renewable energy credit bill which will keep renewables alive for eight more years. Come Monday, things will be bright and beautiful again!
Trips to the Bay Area are up. People are loading their families up in the minivans and SUVs for visits to their relatives...the relatives they can't afford to live next to. So the next best thing is to live about 120 miles away and drive every other weekend. Bay Areans rarely come to SACTOWN to visit...it's almost always the other way around. This is a very common thread from all my Asian co-workers from WAPA to the CAISO to SMUD, and all my Asian neighbors.
A big problem, I see, is that now that we've returned to energy complacency with lower energy prices, combined with the broader tight crediting that's occurring, any renewable energy efforts will be deferred. Indeed, SMUD has just announced that due to increased borrowing costs or in some cases, an inability to borrow, capital projects [will likely] be deferred. That is...transformer replacements, transmission line projects, new wind generation in Solano county.
This is a double whammy. Sure, we're not using as much oil, but the truth is, we are still burning an awful lot. Presume a resurgent economy in a few years, and when oil demand takes off again, we will have gotten a few years farther behind in developing any alternative energy infrastructure. We will be playing catch-up -- repairing asphalt roads that laid neglected, deferred gas-fired generator improvements...all the while domestic oil production will be down a further 4.5%.
Surely it can't be that bad, you say. Besides, Congress just passed the seven hundred thousand million dollar bailout to open up credit (our economy is wholly dependent on the ability to borrow) and they attached the renewable energy credit bill which will keep renewables alive for eight more years. Come Monday, things will be bright and beautiful again!
Thursday, October 2, 2008
SB 375
Excellent! The governor signed into law yesterday this senate bill. My earlier blog here described the guts of this anti-sprawl bill. Darrell Steinberg authored it, two years in the making.
When I lived in Colonial Heights in South Sacramento, Darrell Steinberg was on the City Council and worked on several areas of improvements for the low income district he represented. I attended several meetings he hosted for my neighborhood for improving after school programs, crime associations, and other endeavors. As a Republican at the time, I didn't think much of him...I was anti-Democrat, all the time. He moved on to State Assembly and now State Senate.
I note that the politicians who seriously work on the all the things the Franklin Monologues takes issue with are...only Democrats. They would also likely be Greens -- if they could ever get voted into office.
When I lived in Colonial Heights in South Sacramento, Darrell Steinberg was on the City Council and worked on several areas of improvements for the low income district he represented. I attended several meetings he hosted for my neighborhood for improving after school programs, crime associations, and other endeavors. As a Republican at the time, I didn't think much of him...I was anti-Democrat, all the time. He moved on to State Assembly and now State Senate.
I note that the politicians who seriously work on the all the things the Franklin Monologues takes issue with are...only Democrats. They would also likely be Greens -- if they could ever get voted into office.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Seersucker
This month I reached into the highest tiered rate, tier III. I really, really need to get to an R-34 insulation level in the attic and a split zone, SEER 17+ AC unit. This will significantly drop my usage.
Armed with a stopwatch, and knowing my bi-directional digital meter has a 1.0kH constant, I can count the pulses over a minute to calculate total kW draw. With the AC, both refrigerators, and both TVs, both DVRs and a game console on, I measured 100wH per minute...which calculates to a 6kW demand. With the AC off, it dropped to 21wH per minute, or 1.2kW.
My AC is pulling 4.8kW! No wonder my original 100A service panel caught fire during the 2006 heat storm.
I believe this to be a SEER 8 or 9 unit, and I know it's 4 ton. Let's assume it's a SEER 9, a $.12 kWh electricity rate, and a 4 ton unit (with one ton roughly 12,000BTu/h) at 48,000BTu/h, and it operates 1,000 hours a year:
48,000BTu/h * 1,000h * $.12kWh / 9BTu/Wh / 1000W/kW = $640 per year...total yearly load -- 5,333kWh.
Now, the above calc of 5,333 kWh doesn't match up with my own calculations (using 4.8kW over 1,000h, I'd use 4,800kWh) so there's an error in my estimated SEER or the tonnage. If I assume it's a SEER 10, then I'm dead on:
48,000BTu/h * 1,000h * $.12kWh / 10BTu/Wh / 1000W/kW = $576 per year...total yearly load -- 4,800kWh.
If I migrate up to a 17+ unit, I should expect to see:
48,000BTu/h * 1,000h * $.12kWh / 17BTu/Wh / 1000W/kW = $338 per year....total yearly load -- 2,823 kWh.
The difference (1,976 kWh) is 2/3rds as much as my entire PV array's yearly output! Again, it tells me that this should have been done first...I should have maximized energy efficiency and conservation before I bought into a PV array. Not only would I save cash I'd also live in a more comfortable house. My existing inefficient system is sucking money and energy away through an R-19 attic. I live in a SEER sucker.
Armed with a stopwatch, and knowing my bi-directional digital meter has a 1.0kH constant, I can count the pulses over a minute to calculate total kW draw. With the AC, both refrigerators, and both TVs, both DVRs and a game console on, I measured 100wH per minute...which calculates to a 6kW demand. With the AC off, it dropped to 21wH per minute, or 1.2kW.
My AC is pulling 4.8kW! No wonder my original 100A service panel caught fire during the 2006 heat storm.
I believe this to be a SEER 8 or 9 unit, and I know it's 4 ton. Let's assume it's a SEER 9, a $.12 kWh electricity rate, and a 4 ton unit (with one ton roughly 12,000BTu/h) at 48,000BTu/h, and it operates 1,000 hours a year:
48,000BTu/h * 1,000h * $.12kWh / 9BTu/Wh / 1000W/kW = $640 per year...total yearly load -- 5,333kWh.
Now, the above calc of 5,333 kWh doesn't match up with my own calculations (using 4.8kW over 1,000h, I'd use 4,800kWh) so there's an error in my estimated SEER or the tonnage. If I assume it's a SEER 10, then I'm dead on:
48,000BTu/h * 1,000h * $.12kWh / 10BTu/Wh / 1000W/kW = $576 per year...total yearly load -- 4,800kWh.
If I migrate up to a 17+ unit, I should expect to see:
48,000BTu/h * 1,000h * $.12kWh / 17BTu/Wh / 1000W/kW = $338 per year....total yearly load -- 2,823 kWh.
The difference (1,976 kWh) is 2/3rds as much as my entire PV array's yearly output! Again, it tells me that this should have been done first...I should have maximized energy efficiency and conservation before I bought into a PV array. Not only would I save cash I'd also live in a more comfortable house. My existing inefficient system is sucking money and energy away through an R-19 attic. I live in a SEER sucker.
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