Energy Usage is Changing Fast. It Needs to Change Faster

Things are changing fast in the world's energy consumption. For over half a decade, the oil industry and people who observe it have debated when peak oil would come: the point when global oil production would begin to decline -- the point when the world began to run out of oil. More recently, a growing number of people have expressed the opinion that peak oil demand would come before peak oil: that the global demand for oil would begin to decline. Some foresaw peak oil demand in 2050, others predicted 2035. Recent estimates have been around 2025.

 

And some say that peak oil demand has actually happened. They say the decline in demand during the COVID pandemic is the beginning of the end of the growth of the oil industry, that the world will never burn fossil fuel at a fster rate than it did in 2019.

It's not such a crazy opinion. Sales of EV's are surging, sales of vehicles which burn gasoline or diesel oil are declining. Solar and wind power are growing rapidly too, and every kilowatt of electricity produced by solar, or wind, or geothermal, or nuclear, or hydro, or tidal, or biomass, represent less demand for fossil fuels. 

Some of this change is being driven by free markets, by consumers and entrepreneurs who believe that clean energy will save them and make them more money than fossil fuels. (They're right about that, by the way.) 

Much more change can be caused by laws. Governments intervened and gave us seat beats, air bags, catalytic converters, gas mileage standards, scrubbers on smokestacks and a lot of other healthy things. Free industry didn't ask  for any of those things. They resisted all of them. 

We can wait for free industry to change the world over to clean energy, and the human race can die waiting, or we can pass laws to make it happen faster. It's about as simple as that. 

What about all the workers on oil rigs and in refineries? Climate change will kill them too, along with everyone else. That's one thing about them. 

This is all pretty simple, and very serious, and none of it is a secret. Vote for people who support the Green New Deal, and whoever your representatives are, call their offices and bug them, tell them to make these changes happen faster. 

Call them every day. Let them know you're very serious about this.

Energy Efficiency: Fossil Fuels vs Solar and Wind

In the process of powering things with fossil fuels, first geologists make guesses about where exactly oil, coal and gas deposits may be; then miners dig to where they hope the deposits are. Sometimes they have to dig several times before they find anything, because the geologists, after all, were just guessing. 

Once the fuel is found, it is transported, by ship, train, truck, or, in the case of oil and gas, pipeline, to refineries, where the raw material is made into usable products. Then coal, oil and gas are sent, again, by ship, train or truck, or, in the case of oil and gas, pipeline, to power stations, which burn them to generate electricity, which is sent to the grid, where utilities distribute it to businesses and homes. 

In addition, diesel oil and gasoline are sent, by pipeline, tanker ship, railroad or tanker truck, to gas stations and other users. Coal and kerosene are still burned by millions of people for heat and cooking in some of the poorer regions of the world.

The entire trip, from being in the ground to where it is burned for energy or heat, can be dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of miles. Just think for a moment about the distance from Saudi Arabia to the United States. 

Now compare this to solar or wind energy. In the simplest example, the journey is measured in feet, from where sunlight is converted to electricity by the rooftop solar panels on a house and then travels to the house's wiring and to its battery storage. The electricity may travel as much as several miles if there is some left over and it is fed into the grid. Or the distance may be dozens or, in rare cases, hundreds of miles, if the electricity is generated by solar and wind farms operated by utilities. But no ships, pipelines or trains are needed, and the only trucks involved are the ones carrying workers who build, install and maintain the electrical infrastructure. 

Building, operating and maintaining solar cells and wind turbines is a very simple and inexpensive thing compared to mining, refining and distributing fossil fuels. And solar and wind energy keep getting less and less expensive as more of it is generated, while fossil fuels keep getting more expensive. The point where electricity from solar or wind will be cheaper than electricity from fossil fuels? That point is several years ago, and the gap just keeps growing.

Plus with fossil fuels, there are those pesky little details of pollution and global warming. And also accidental fires and explosions.

Dream Log: Civil-Service Exam for Top-Level Post

I dreamed I was taking an exam to attempt to qualify for a Federal job. What job exactly it was, was not specified in the dream, but judging from the exam, it must have been some sort of top-level Secret Service Jedi ninja post. It was the present day. There was a distinctly cheerful, upbeat, Biden-administration, the-Dragon-has-been-slain vibe about the place. COVID did not exist. I was my real age, 59 years old. Most of the applicants appeared to be one-third to one-half my age.

I got there late, after the test had started. Whatever explanation of things might have been given before the test started was not going to be repeated for my benefit. I was just given a booklet in which to mark my answers, and let loose. 

There were about 1,000 questions under glass on tabletops in the exam room. The questions were numbered, and it seemed clear that the later questions built upon the earlier ones, but we were not required to answer the questions in any particular order. Some of the questions were about history, some about science, some were mathematical or had to do with formal logic, some were ethical, some were a combination of the above, some were trick questions, and some were in French. 

 What bothered me above all about the questions was the French -- neither my first, nor my second, nor my third choice for a second language. Not my fourth either.

Our behavior was being observed as we took the test. Cheating in the conventional test-taking sense did not seem to be prohibited, as the test-takers were openly helping each other. Perhaps, I thought, the way in which we observed one another was being observed. Perhaps we were rewarded, when grading the test, for choosing to work with those of the others best-suited for the jobs we were all applying for.

But, I reasoned, I did not KNOW what sort of criteria were being used to judge us. I didn't know what sort of instructions the others had been given -- indeed, I didn't even know whether they had been given any instructions at all. So I figured the best I could do was answer the questions and behave like a decent human being. I was still in the middle of the test when I woke up.

Dream Log: WW II Soldier in Italy

I dreamed I was an American Army private on a ship just off the coast of south-western Italy in January 1944, part of the force which was going to invade Anzio.

In real life, when the Allies came ashore on Anzio's beach on January 22, under the command of Major General John Lucas,  they spent days building up their position on the beach, unloading men and equipment, instead of taking advantage of weak German defenses and attempting to seize territory and expand their beachhead. The result of this was to allow German troops to rush in and surround the beach from high ground on all sides. The Allies didn't break out from their position on the beach until May, after having suffered tens of thousands of casualties. 

In my dream, Lucas had been replaced by General George Patton, who was popular with his troops because he had a reputation for getting relatively few of them killed. In my dream I was in one of the first waves of troops to hit the beach, and by the time we got there some were already far ahead, marching on the road to Rome, and we were ordered to catch up to them double-quick. A while later American tanks caught up with us, and took on as many of us foot soldiers as they could carry. I was on of the soldiers riding on the outside of a tank.

After less resistance along the way than we had expected, we arrived in great numbers in Rome on the 24th of January, to find that the Germans had evacuated the city and taken up positions to the north and west. While most of the invading force had little time to recuperate before pushing on beyond the city, I was stationed there more permanently. 

I was promoted from private to sergeant first class, and then a while later to second lieutenant. As soon as I became an officer, my lifestyle changed completely. My quarters changed from a warehouse, which I had already considered to be quite nice because it had been dry and clean and even fairly warm, to an upper-middle-class mansion which just a handful of us had all to ourselves. I spent my days in palaces, working mostly as an interpreter and translator, hobnobbing with international aristocracy and famous artists. 

All of this was definitely preferable to slogging through mud for days at a time, beaten eaten alive by fleas and mosquitoes while being shot at.

 

A crooked Major was stealing just as much fine art as was able to load onto trucks, using my name so that he could attempt to frame me if his business went south. It did, I was arrested, but soon exonerated. The Major had picked a fall-guy who was friends with way too many artists.

A beautiful young Italian princess fell head-over-heels in love with me. To my astonishment, her family approved of me. (Speaking privately to me, her father, the Prince, shared some remarkably enlightened concerns about aristocratic inbreeding and a too-narrow gene pool.) After we finished trouncing the Axis -- sooner than irl because Anzio and some other things had gone better than in real life -- I retired from the Army and married her, adding the new title of viscount to my Army rank of captain. In addition to our always being much more than welcome in the family's numerous homes, we were presented with a lovely little (compared to some. Huge compared to most) house of our own near Tivoli as a wedding present. Well, la-dee-da.

Up until then the dream had been fairly realistic apart from telescoping time. Now, however, things took a decidedly abstract-dreamlike turn, as the beautiful Princess and I -- the shimmering luxury of her long black hair! Her dark eyes smoldering with passion! Her ivory skin! Her form like that of a goddess! -- spent time in an activity in which we were ourselves, life-size humans, and simultaneously each of us a polished wooden tile about two inches long by three tall with a portrait of her or me or someone else done somewhat in the manner of the portraits on playing cards, and we would take ourselves and other people -- that is, we would take these little wooden tiles -- and arrange them in patterns which were symbolic and powerful and endlessly fascinating. Somewhat like tarot, somewhat like the Glass Bead Game. Unlike tarot, instead of interpreting the world, this activity shaped it, changed it. This went on for quite a while before I woke up.

Dream Log: Grunt Work in NYC Theatre

Last night I dreamed I was working in a New York City Off-Broadway theatre, something I've done a lot of in waking life. Many New York actors make ends meet, when they're not acting, by taking tickets and ushering, and so forth, in theatres. Besides the pay it's also a chance to see a show for free, and tickets can be sort of expensive.

 

In my dream it was my first time working in this particular theatre, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I was one of a dozen or so people who were given receipt pads. We were supposed to help out when the line at the box office got too long. We were all wearing the standard usher outfit: black shoes, black pants and a white shirt provided by us, with a black vest and clip-on bow tie provided by the theatre,

I started flirting with an actress who was standing around holding a pad like the one I had. Pretty soon we were snuggling and kissing. She was wonderful. Beautiful and intelligent and witty. Just made me sigh to be around her, let alone having her permission to touch her. She reminded me of a wonderful actress I knew once in real life in NYC, who, amazingly, seemed to like me a lot, and it seemed as if she and I were beginning a romance, but I managed to screw it up.

One man came in, got a ticket and went into the theatre, and then another one did, and then the show started. None of us seemed interested in watching the show, so there were only two spectators this evening, each prominent New York theatre people themselves. 

None of us standing around with our receipt pads had had to do a thing. But each of us still got paid a $20 bill. Judging from this evening, it did not seem that the show was a huge commercial hit. But I didn't know anything about it. For all I knew it might have been playing for years in that theatre already, might have made a fortune before winding down.

We were discussing what we were going to do with our newfound 20 bucks when the house manager, a beautiful young woman, looked like an actress, approached with a clipboard holding a form she was filling out, and asked each of us in turn what our major non-theatre job was, and what our biggest weakness was at that job. 

I replied that I test drove EV's for the manufacturer (in real life I haven't yet had been employed by an EV maker), and that my biggest weakness was not concentrating on what I was supposed to do. "Asleep at the wheel?" the manager asked me, and some people laughed. "No," I replied, "I haven't actually caused any accidents yet. Not that absent-minded. What I mean is that I'm supposed to be talking into a tape recorder the whole time about the vehicle's performance, comfort, user interface and so on, and a lot of the time I just forget to do that, and drive, and think about show business instead."

Some of the others decided to blow their earnings on dinner. I and the actress whom I had been hugging and kissing went for a walk, holding hands. It was a pleasant evening, brisk but not unpleasantly cold. We told each other our life stories, window-shopped, people-watched. A nice stereotypical beginning to an NYC showbiz romance. Then I woke up.

G-Shock

I was annoyed yesterday when I noticed that my G-Shock was running almost a minute fast -- until I remembered that it hadn't been set since early May 2020. 1 minute fast over 10 1/2 months comes out to less than 6 seconds fast per month. Not too shabby. The official specification is within plus to minus 15 seconds a month.

My G-Shock DW9052-1ccg looks like this:

I think the -1ccg suffix refers to it being all-butch black. But I'm not completely sure about that. There are a huge number of G-Shock models, and I'm still new at this. In any case, a DW9052 is a G-Shock which has that same basic configuration, and DW9052's come in a lot of different colors, as well as black with many different colors of accents, besides all-butch black. 

Casio, as far as I know, does not refer to this color scheme as "all-butch black." I made that phrase up to make fun of myself and a lot of other people. 

Besides keeping track of hours, minutes and seconds (in your choice of 12-hour AM/PM or the all-butch 24-hour format which I naturally prefer), day of the week, month and day and year (on a separate screen because there's only so much room and you probably know what year it is), my DW9052 features

-- an alarm, and a chime which sounds every hour on the hour, which I finally figured out how to to turn off yesterday. There are watch aficionados who prize alarms and hourly, or even minutely chimes very highly, and pay huge amounts for mechanical watches which sound them. The charm is so far lost on me. But, mind open must be amen.

-- Countdown timer; input range: 1 minute to 24 hours; measuring unit: 1 second; auto-repeat function,
1/100 second stopwatch; measuring capacity: 23:59'59.99"; measuring unit: 1/100 second (for the first 60 minutes). No, I do not understand what all of that is. I do know that it's a pretty fancy timer and stopwatch.

-- Everything on the dial lights up into nice bright lume when you push the big button marked "G."

Casio has sold over 100 million G-Shocks since 1983. They say that its designer, when a small boy, was given a watch by his father, which he cherished until one day he dropped it, it shattered into many pieces, and he vowed to devote his life to designing a watch which was indestructible. This story strikes me as being very -- Japanese. Perhaps it is also perfectly true, how would I know. 

I still don't know for sure what sort of battery my G-Shock will eventually need. I could screw off the back and look and see, but I'm not going to do that. Not today.

The thing which makes G-Shocks G-Shocks is toughness. They have been hit with hockey sticks like hockey pucks, thrown off of the tops of tall building onto concrete sidewalks, intentionally run over by huge trucks, and come out undamaged. There may be tougher watches than G-Shocks, but I sort of doubt it. In any case, their toughness is legendary.

From the basic all-butch black plastic-and-rubber battery-powered models with their digital readouts, G-Shocks have expanded into a variety of colors and functions, many with analog displays instead of or in addition to digital, some powered by light or radio waves instead of or in addition to batteries. Some are now smartwatches. Some are covered by metal instead of plastic and rubber -- sacrificing some durability, I would imagine. They run from around $40 to four figures, maybe higher in some rare cases.

I  honestly never wanted any of them besides my all-butch black DW9052-1ccg until the day before yesterday. I was set. I was perfectly content in the G-Shock department. 

And then I saw the GM-110RB-2A (Also known as The Rainbow) in a video:

-- O sweet Richard Mille! 

But apparently 500 people felt similarly before I did and it was a limited edition of 500 and it sold out very quickly, months before I knew it existed. I'm trying to make myself want it less by telling myself the truth: that those gold-colored parts on the sides are metal, not shock-resisting rubber, as I had assumed when first seeing it in the video. That's helping a little bit. Transluscent gold rubber would've been even better. And more durable, as one braved the deepest techno raves of California. Tell me I'm wrong. 

Look how beautiful. MSRP $280. All gone. And now I'll be searching the newest G-Shock releases and reading the G-Shock news. Waiting for them to do it again.