# The Archdruid Report

Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society

## Wednesday, July 06, 2011

### Salvaging Energy

The peak oil blogosphere this year seems to have decided that the Fourth of July needed a Grinch of its own to compete with Christmas, and a fair number of blogs duly went up denouncing the day and its entertainments. I can’t say that these added much to the peak oil dialogue or, really, to much of anything. It’s hardly a secret, for instance, that intellectuals on the two coasts like to belittle working class people who live in between, nor that it’s still quite fashionable on both ends of the political spectrum to characterize our system of government in terms that would get those who do so dragged away by a death squad if their rhetoric had any relationship to reality.
Me, I enjoyed the Fourth; I usually do. My wife and I spent a quiet day gardening, dined on chicken fried tofu – hey, don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it – and walked down to the city park that runs along the old Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, where we met friends, munched watermelon, and watched the annual fireworks display. The Fourth of July is one of the high points of any small town American summer, and I’m also sufficiently old-fashioned to celebrate the ideals that sent this country along its historical trajectory all those years ago. Since the United States is a country inhabited and governed by people rather than abstract ideological mannequins, those ideals got put into practice no more consistently than any other country’s, but they’ve lost none of their relevance, and I’d be a good deal less worried about the future of my country if I saw more people paying attention to them and fewer people waving them aside as obstacles to the pursuit of some allegedly glorious future.
The theme of this week’s post isn’t primarily about the future, glorious or otherwise. Strictly speaking, it’s a response to circumstances that will almost certainly go away within the lifetimes of people now living, and only exist today in those few nations that can afford the overblown consumer economy that budded, bloomed, and went to seed in the second half of the twentieth century. That response, curiously enough, has more than a little to do with the theme of independence central to the holiday just past, but the easiest way to make sense of it is to start with the nearly complete state of dependence expressed by another fashionable topic under discussion in the peak oil scene.
That topic is the return of electric cars to American roads. A dozen large and small automakers are in the process of bringing out battery-powered cars of various kinds, ranging from generic compacts like the Ford Focus and Nissan Leaf to more exotic items like the Aptera and the GEM. Most of them are pricey, and all of them have their share of drawbacks, mostly in terms of range and reliability, but a significant fraction of people on the green end of things are hailing their appearance as a great step forward. As things stand, that’s a bit of an oversimplification, since almost all the electricity these vehicles use will be generated by burning coal and natural gas, and the easy insistence that the grid can easily be switched over to solar and wind power has already been critiqued at some length in this blog. Still, there are a couple of other points that would be well worth making here.
First of all, of course, the best way to reduce your ecological footprint isn’t to replace a petroleum-powered car with an electric car, it’s to replace it with a bicycle, a public transit ticket, or a good pair of walking shoes. This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned that option, and I know I can expect to be belabored by commenters who are bursting with reasons why they can’t possibly do without a car, or even leave the car parked in the driveway most of the time. Granted, the built geography of much of rural and suburban North America makes it a little challenging to do without a car, but something close to a hundred million people in the United States live in places where a car is a luxury most or all of the time, and a significant fraction of the others choose to live in places where that’s not the case. Still, let’s set aside for the moment the fact that the one energy-related bumper sticker that might actually make a difference these days would belong on the back of a bicycle, and would say MY OTHER CAR IS A PAIR OF SHOES. For those Americans who actually do find themselves in need of a car, how about the new electric vehicles? Will they really decrease your carbon footprint and your fossil fuel use, as so much current verbiage claims?
The answer is unfortunately no. First of all, as already mentioned, the vast majority of electricity in America and elsewhere comes from coal and natural gas, and so choosing an electric car simply means that the carbon dioxide you generate comes out of a smokestack at a power plant rather than the tailpipe of your car. The internal combustion engine is an inefficient way of turning fuel into motion – around 3/4 of the energy in a gallon of gas becomes low-grade heat dumped into the atmosphere via the radiator, leaving only a quarter to keep you rolling down the road – but the processes of turning fossil fuel into heat and heat into electricity, storing the electricity in a battery and extracting it again, and then turning the electricity into motion is less efficient still, so you’re getting less of the original fossil fuel energy turned into distance traveled than you would in an ordinary car. This means that you’d be burning more fossil fuel to power your car even if the power plant was burning petroleum, and since it isn’t – and coal and natural gas contain much less energy per unit of volume than petroleum distillates do – you’re burning quite a bit more fossil fuel, and dumping quite a bit more carbon in the atmosphere, than a petroleum-powered car would do.
This isn’t something you’ll see discussed very often in e-car websites and sales flyers. It’s even less likely that you’ll find any mention there of the second factor that needs to be discussed, which is the energy cost of manufacture. An automobile, petroleum-powered or electric, is a very complicated piece of hardware, and every part of it comes into being through a process of manufacture that starts at an assortment of mines, oil wells, and the like, and proceeds through refineries, factories, warehouses, and assembly plants, linked together by long supply chains via train, truck or ship. All this costs energy. Working out the exact energy cost per car would be a huge project, since it would involve tracking the energy used to produce and distribute every last screw, drop of solvent, etc., but it’s probably safe to say that a large fraction of the total energy used in a car’s lifespan is used up before the car reaches the dealer. Electric cars are as subject to this rule as petroleum-powered ones.
The energy cost of manufacture has generally been downplayed in discussions of energy issues, where it hasn’t been banished altogether to whichever corner of the outer darkness it is that provides a home for unwanted facts. (I’ve long suspected that this is not too far from “Away,” the place where pollution goes in the parallel universe that cornucopians apparently inhabit.) Promoters of the more grandiose end of alternative-energy projects – the solar power satellites and Nevada-sized algae farms that crop up so regularly when people are trying to ignore the reality of ecological limits – are particularly prone to brush aside the energy cost of manufacture with high-grade handwaving, but the same sort of evasion pervades nearly all thinking about energy these days. I’ve mentioned before that three centuries of cheap abundant fossil fuel energy have imposed lasting distortions on the modern mind; this is an example.
Still, factor in the energy cost of manufacture, and there actually is an answer to the question we’ve just been considering. If you really feel you have to have a car, what kind involves the smallest carbon footprint and the least overall energy use? A used one.
I suppose it’s just possible that one or two of the readers of this blog will remember a strange and politically edgy comic strip from the Sixties named Odd Bodkins. The rest of you will just have to forgive a bit of relevant reminiscence here. Somewhere between an encounter with the dreaded Were-Chicken of Petaluma and a journey to Mars with Five Dollar Bill, I think it was, the Norton-riding main character, Hugh, and his sidekick Fred the Bird had a run-in with General Injuns – the resemblance to the name of a certain large American automotive corporation was not accidental. I forget what it was that inspired Fred the Bird to shout “Buy a used car!” but the General’s response – “BLASPHEMY!!!” – was memorably rendered, and will probably be duplicated in a good many of the responses to this week’s blog. Most people in the industrial world nowadays are so used to thinking of the best option as new and shiny by definition, that the homely option of picking up a cheap used car as a way of saving energy is likely to offend them at a cellular level.
Still, the energy cost of manufacture needs to be taken into account. If you buy a used car – let’s say, for the sake of argument, a ten-year-old compact with decent gas mileage – instead of a new electric car, you’ve just salvaged the energy cost of manufacture that went into the used car, most of which would otherwise have been wasted, and saved all the energy that would have been spent to produce, ship, and assemble every part of the new car. Since it’s a ten-year-old compact rather than a brand new e-car, furthermore, you’re not going to be tempted to drive it all over the place to show everyone how ecologically conscious you are; in fact, you may just be embarrassed enough to leave it in your driveway when you don’t actually need it, thus saving another good-sized chunk of energy. Finally, of course, the price difference between a brand new Nissan Leaf and a ten-year-old compact will buy you a solar water heating system, installation included, with enough left over to completely weatherize an average American home. It’s a win-win situation for everything but your ego.
The same principle can be applied much more broadly. Very few people, for example, actually need a new computer. I’ve never owned one; I need a computer to make my living – publishers these days require book manuscripts to be submitted electronically – but I get my computers used, free or at a tiny fraction of their original price, and run them until they drop. One consequence is that I’ve salvaged the energy used in manufacturing the old computer, rather than burdening the planet with the energy cost of manufacturing a new one; another is that I’m keeping a small but measurable amount of toxic e-waste out of the waste stream; still another, of course, is that I save quite a bit of money that can then be directed to other purposes, such as insulation and garden tools.
Most Americans buy most of the things they used new, and dump a great many perfectly useful items into the trash; the more conscientious package them up and donate them to thrift stores, which is at least a step in the right direction. As a society, we have been able to afford this fixation and its attendant costs – new houses, new cars, new computers, new everything – because we’ve been surfing a tidal wave of cheap abundant fossil fuel energy. As we get further into the territory on the far side of peak oil, and as peak coal and peak natural gas come within sight, that state of affairs is rapidly coming to an end. One option, as I suggested in last week’s post, is to plunge into the emerging reality of scarcity industrialism, which centers on an increasingly savage competition for access to a shrinking pool of new and shiny things produced by what’s left of the world’s fossil fuel stocks.
A saner alternative, though, is to move directly into the stage that will follow scarcity industrialism – the stage of salvage economics. That’s what I’ve been discussing here, under a less threatening label. Right now, while the tidal wave of cheap energy has not yet receded very far, the beachscape of industrial society is still littered with the kind of high-quality salvage our descendants will dream of finding, and the only thing that has to be overcome in order to access most of it is the bit of currently fashionable arrogance that relegates used goods to the poor.
Now of course that’s not a small thing. One of the reasons that Thoreau’s concept of voluntary poverty got rebranded “voluntary simplicity,” and repackaged as a set of fashionable lifestyle choices that imitate authentic simplicity at a premium price, is the stark panic felt by so many middle class Americans at the thought of being mistaken for someone who’s actually poor. Those of my readers who decide that the advantages of voluntary poverty are worth pursuing are going to have to confront that panic, if they haven’t done so already. Like all supposedly classless societies, America makes up for its lack of formal caste barriers by raising caste prejudice to a fine art; the cheap shots at small town America mentioned toward the beginning of this blog are an expression of that, of course, and so is the peer pressure that keeps most Americans from doing the sensible thing, and buying cheap and sturdy used products in place of increasingly overpriced and slipshod new ones.
We are all going to be poor in the decades and centuries to come. Yes, I’m including today’s rich in that; the stark folly that leads today’s privileged classes to think they can prosper while gutting the society that alone guarantees them their wealth and status is nothing new, and will bring about the usual consequences in due time. Voluntarily embracing poverty in advance may seem like a strange tactic to take, at a time when a great many people will be clinging to every scrap of claim to the fading wealth of the industrial age, but it has certain important advantages. First, it offers a chance to get competent at getting by on less before sheer necessity forces the issue; second, it sidesteps the rising spiral of struggle that’s waiting for all those who commit themselves to holding on to an industrial-age standard of living; third, as I’ve already pointed out, buying cheap used items frees up money that can then be applied to something more useful.
It’s probably going to be necessary here to insert a response to what used to be the standard objection to the piece of advice I’ve just offered. No, buying used goods instead of new ones isn’t going to put any significant number of Americans out of work. Very little is actually manufactured in America these days, and most of what is, is produced and sold by conglomerates that pump money out of American communities and into the black hole of the financial economy. Nearly all used-goods stores, by contrast, are locally owned and circulate their earnings back into the community, where they generate jobs by way of the multiplier effect. The calculations would be fiendishly difficult, and you won’t find a mainstream economist willing to touch the project with a ten-foot pole, but I suspect that when the differences just listed are taken into account, buying used goods actually yields a larger number of jobs than buying new ones – and while thrift store clerks don’t make as much as corporate office fauna, to be sure, I have to admit to a suspicion that the former contribute a good deal more to the world as a whole than the latter.
For the time being, at least, the office fauna and their corporate sponsors are likely to continue to thrive after a fashion, lumbering through the jungles of deindustrializing America like so many dinosaurs, and the thrift store clerks and their customers will play the part of smart little mammals scurrying around in the underbrush. Still, like the mammals, those who opt out of scarcity industrialism to embrace the first stirrings of the salvage economies of the future will have certain advantages not available to their brontosaurian neighbors. One of them, as already suggested, will be a certain amount of spare room in the household budget, which can then be turned to other projects, or used to free up a family member to work in the household economy, or both.
Another will be the chance to learn skills that could well become income sources in the not too distant future; as I’ve suggested more than once here, salvage trades – that is, anything that involves taking the leftovers of industrial civilization and turning them into something that people need or want – will likely be among the major growth industries of the next century or two, and the ground floor is open for business right now. Still, the advantage that comes to mind just at the moment is the one suggested by the holiday fireworks I mentioned toward the beginning of this post. Not uncommonly in history, people face a choice between being comfortable and dependent, on the one hand, and poor and free on the other. It’s been a particularly important theme in American history, driving phenomena as different as the settling of the Appalachians and the counterculture of the Sixties, and I’ve come to think that it’s going to become a live issue again in the decades ahead of us.
In time to come, those who cling to the narrowing circle of scarcity industrialism will likely discover that most of the freedoms that remain to them are going to have to be handed over as part of the cost of admission; those who choose otherwise – and there will be a range of other options, though you won’t learn that from the mainstream media – will have to give up a great many expectations and privileges that are standard issue in the industrial world just now in order to preserve some degree of autonomy and individual choice. That’s the way the future looks to me, at least; if I’m right, the simple act of salvaging energy by buying used goods instead of new ones – a step that Ben Franklin would have appreciated, interestingly enough – might just turn out to be a useful step in the direction of the ideals that some of us, at least, were celebrating a few nights ago. We’ll talk more about this in the weeks ahead.

#### 226 comments:

«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 226 of 226

Cathy McGuire said...

  There was something in the mainstream press today that exemplifies the delusional thinking that JMG has been writing about:
  Jordon Cooper writes: “When you are talking about peak oil, many authors see this as the end of mechanized civilization and suggest we will head back to a pre-industrial revolution existence.
  Since I'm not much of a horseman and don't have a lot of oxen around to plow my backyard, I find the more hopeful scenarios a little more plausible.” So he has basically admitted that he “believes” what he wants to be true!
  It’s mostly an article about Saskatoon Canada’s future, but the mindset is too common in the mainstream media.
  Read the whole thing ag: http://www.thestarphoenix.com/business/Energy+presents+tricky+choices/5082025/story.html#ixzz1Rr3H4sDy

  7/11/11, 9:55 PM
Glenn said...

  Hal,
  Draft dogs, besides the obvious sled dogs of the boreal circumpolar region. Holland and Germany, right into the 20th century until WWII. Usually used to pull carts for urban peddlars and food sellers.
  References: "We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea" by Arthur Ransome and "Three Men on a Bummel" by Jerome K. Jerome. Both are works of fiction, but the details of both are from the authors personal experiences. Jerome had travelled extensively in Germany in the late 19th and early 20th century. Ransome sailed to Holland in the 30's as part of the research for the book.

  7/11/11, 10:27 PM
Jason Heppenstall said...

  Okay, really my last comment here this week. Yes, it would be a good idea to monitor under-reported extreme weathere events. I don't suspect a conspiracy of covering these things up however, the news editor simply said there were too many extreme weather events nowadays and that people generally have lost interest in them ("Oh look, another flood - yawn"). The only thing I could find on it outside the country was a report that 20 years of scientific research was lost when a biobank flooded in a cancer research lab.
  I'm onto the practical uses for reusing alternators and am planning to build a wind turbine. I note, however, that most people advise against using old alternators as they are designed to spin too fast to be of much use for anything powered by something other than fossil fuels (without the addition of gearing). Instead they recommend using fixed magnetic generators.
  Finally I'd just like to say that I picked up a fascinating book that I'd highly recommend to everyone on this thread looking for an old craft to revive. It's called 'Lost Crafts - Rediscovering Traditional Skills ' by Una McGovern. It focuses mostly on Britain, and I appreciate that most people reading this aren't from there, but if you want to learn how to do everything from building a coracle or brewing hedgerow beer to carving a Welsh love spoon, then this is the book.

  7/11/11, 11:22 PM
gregorach said...

  Do I guess correctly from your online handle that you're Clan MacGregor, by the way?
  Well... Probably. Clan ancestry is a tricky business at the best of times, and the history of Clan Gregor is not exactly filled with the best of times. ;)

  7/12/11, 1:40 AM
hawlkeye said...

  Can't resist piling on...
  "If we’re going to save a dog instead of a person, then that had better be a really, really good dog that we’re saving."
  And not vice versa? If we're going to save a person instead of a dog, then that had better be a really, really good person that we're saving.
  It all depends for me on how either of them behave around my children. I tend to agree with Mark Twain on this one...
  "Feed a dog and he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a man and a dog."

  7/12/11, 6:47 AM
Hal said...

  For the record, I wrote the last response before seeing Don Mason's clarification about draft dogs, so it was not a direct response to that post. I think we might be talking past each other in more ways than that, though.
  On draft dogs, it's the idea of using them for tillage that has me stuck, but I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with trying them out for light hauling. For that, you'd probably need to go with something pretty well bred, because left to their own, dogs return to a size that is more environmentally "fit," as per true Darwinian evolution.
  For dirt work, I wonder if a miniature horse or pony might be a better "poor man's horse." But hey, in the spirit of the green wizard project, give it a shot. Letting a thousand flowers bloom seems to be the purpose of the project, but keep in mind, a lot won't make it. I think one of the purposes of the forum is to raise legitimate technical concerns, rather than people discovering them the hard way.
  I think that also applies to ethical concerns. JMG clearly didn't like my tractor and pickup truck, and the way it struck me, it was hard not to see that as coming from a place of values. So I need to seriously consider that. There had already been plenty of discussion by that time of transitional strategies, and that's how I look at my choices. But how we go forward with at least some of our civilized values intact is another issue worthy of our discussion.
  There is definitely plenty of discussion available as to how post-transition life is bound to be (ahem) "dog-eat-dog." I'm not so sure it has to be, and think it's worth discussing ethics and institutions as part of the subject of cultural conservation.
  Having ethical concerns might label me as soft, unrealistic, liberal, even "urban" in some circles, and not up to the serious discussion of hard choices and triage, but codes of behavior and ethics are at least as old as Hammurabi and the Old Testament. I think people mostly go along as long as they can in the existing framework, including societal rules.
  I think plenty of people have already pointed our Russia as a model for post-collapse demographic change, so I won't beat that one. It will be very interesting to see how things go in Southern Europe in the next few years.
  Anyway, this has wandered further than I wanted. Meanwhile there are lots of lovable doggies (and don't forget cats!) going wanting in pounds in the overwhelmingly urban nations of the world. And there are a lot of people who could really benefit from a good buddy. Bruno more than earns his chow on the farm, whether he ever hauls a bag of groceries or retrieves a duck.

  7/12/11, 6:47 AM
Brad K. said...

  @ Lloyd Lincoln Clark,
  "Gail - the scythe link made my day"
  The video was grand, and helpful -- if you use the Austrian style scythe.
  What caught my attention was, beyond that she worked barefoot, was that the field was a grain field, not mixed weeds and grasses.
  The other was timing, most especially people time and time in the field.
  Look carefully. What likely took her an hour would take the tractor maybe 10-15 minutes. She could do maybe 10-12 times as much cutting in a day; the tractor could do 50 times or more. That means, at a minimum, five more people, or five more days, to harvest the same amount.
  Consider that that means feeding and nurturing five people for the year to get the field harvested in a similar amount of time, or five times as many days that the harvester isn't available for other work. If this were wheat, oats, or another food crop, you would be diverting part of the harvest to sustain the farmer(s) (tractors don't eat wheat, directly), resulting in less of the harvest available for feeding others.
  Using a scythe for agricultural purposes has significant community aspects. Scything takes people, and time. The McCormick harvester was an important tool when it appeared. It was ground driven, had a sickle cutting bar with gather wheel to position the stems for clean cutting, and canvas belts to arrange and stack the cut stems for efficient drying in a windrow. The McCormick harvester might well be one of the more important advances in modern agriculture.
  The advantage remains with the scythe, though, for cutting small and irregular shaped fields, road ditches, empty lots, etc. Or around my chicken coop and pony yard.
  Cutting the harvest and gathering it to preserve or thresh are weather sensitive. Rains while the grain is down, or that delays harvest too long, can diminish or ruin a harvest.
  So what I noticed about the video is how much using the scythe to harvest grain diminishes yield of a given field, and how many more hands, or days, are required to harvest the same field.
  Extra 'hands' have to come from somewhere. They aren't in the pipeline at present, and they need to eat -- which fewer are prepared to promise today that was true when scythes were in general use. And you might consider how many of us that are "available" are in shape for five or ten hours of continuous physical labor, daily.
  And when working tired, or with other people around, expect more injuries using scythes. Farming has always been one of the more hazardous occupations.

  7/12/11, 7:30 AM
GHung said...

  I've avoided the dog discussion, since, as someone involved in both breeding, showing, training, rescuing, placing, trialing, and service work with dogs, it's an old disscussion for me. I groom dogs for a living.
  Folks do get emotional about the subject of dogs, and extreme in their arguments. It's tantamount to religion for many. We like to think our approach, our program, is far more pragmatic and scientific. While our relationships with dogs certainly involve a lot of emotion, our decisions to breed or not to breed are never, ultimately, emotional ones, nor for profit.
  While there are some extreme examples of breeds that have been bred for conformation (looks), the #1 rule for conformation is "form follows function". The GSD's hind quarters were originally the way they are to provide power and agility vs. speed, and not all GSDs have hip problems; far from it. Someone mentioned Golden retrievers as well. These are fairly new breeds that still have a lot of variation. Many older breeds, Sight Hounds and Mastiff breeds, (thousands of years), some herding dogs, and water dogs, incl. Poodles, Water Spaniels, etc., have many hundreds of years of trial and error behind them. While poor breeding can undo the tests of time, many great bloodlines still exist in most of these breeds.
  Don M. has done a fine job of posting most of what I could say, though there has been a tendency here to require dogs to have some utilitarian purpose. While this is important in many respects, I'll submit that their most important function is companionship, as "man's (human's) best friend".
  Anyway, for those of you considering a purebred, registered breed, in the US, only two registries matter: AKC and UKC ( http://www.akc.org and http://www.ukcdogs.com ). Our dogs are all registered with both, some have shown in both. We currently show our Standard Poodles in UKC, mainly for two reasons: UKC doesn't allow professional handlers and Standard Poodles are shown in the Gundog Group, where they belong, as opposed to AKC: Non-Sporting Group (silly). Also, UKC allows Poodles to be shown in a much more sensible "sporting clip".
  When considering a breeder, if the breeder isn't publishing ALL of the pedigree and health testing results, they likely have something to hide. Health testing results are published at http://www.offa.org/ , and any breeder worth considering will produce hard copies of all test results without question. We had an opportunity to breed into one of the top Standard Poodle bloodlines in the USA. When they refused to produce their test results for SA (sebaceous adenitis), we backed out.
  Our breeding program has produced only 16 puppies in 6 years. We know where each one is and they are under strict contracts. All but 3 have been spayed/neutered or are scheduled to be when old enough. If any of these dogs 'don't work out' with their owners, by contract, they are to be returned to us before being rehomed.
  Virtually all breed clubs have purebred rescue and adoption programs,and many great dogs, some with papers/pedigree and health testing are available.
  Oh, yeah, I also have a little terrier mix that we found in a ditch one rainy night. We named him Gutter, and he is my constant farm/garden companion, and a great mouser. His sense of humor is unsurpassed.

  7/12/11, 8:05 AM
Tyler August said...

  Don,
  I'm glad to hear that someone has been keeping these breeds alive! No doubt that breeding stock will come in handy as we slide down the far side of Hubbard's Peak. Looks like we don't disagree too strongly after all.
  Re: bicycle farming, I see your point. I'm in my 20s and I wonder how I'd hold up under it! (I suspect I'm not likely to make it through triage, though.)
  Hal,
  If your Internet connection is up to it, there are dog-pull videos on you-tube, and it's really quite astounding the loads these dogs can haul--thousands of pounds. Sure, they're not Belgians, but that's okay. Not everybody needs that much pulling.
  Also, I don't think "urban" was meant as an insult-- but maybe I'm biased from my townie viewpoint.

  7/12/11, 8:36 AM
Adrian Ayres Fisher said...

  @LuisLucanBooks and others re walking:
  I had heard of Scott Savage, but haven't read his book--it sounds like one to keep in mind.
  Walking for peace and for other purposes is an old tradition among Quakers. I know several, conservative and otherwise, who have walked for peace and also for environmental purposes. I've read an account by one who walked through Central and South America. When traveling in the southern U.S. John Woolman (18th cent.) walked, rather than use conveyances that involved slave labor (drivers, grooms, etc.) as he traveled and spoke against slavery.
  Secular walking: Charles Dickens routinely walked twenty miles or so while working out plots for his books.
  Wordsworth walked the hills of the Lake Country--oh wait--he wasn't secular--more of a panenthiest!

  7/12/11, 8:59 AM
Don Mason said...

  Hal said:
  “I'm still skeptical about draft dogs, though...
  Dogs like the Bouvier were used in World War I as ambulance dogs to ferry the wounded from the trenches to the hospital facilities in the rear. A dog is not as powerful as a horse, but dogs are an order of magnitude smaller, and therefore much more maneuverable. Dogs can get into places that a horse cannot.
  Dogs can pull a tremendous amount of weight; a Bernese Mountain Dog in Europe was able to pull a 2,000 pound load. Pound for pound, dog muscle is much more powerful than human muscle. Dogs are lower to the ground than a horse, so their dog harness has a better mechanical advantage than a horse harness (more energy goes into pulling forward rather than upward).
  However, Berners are not a generic "dog". They have been specifically bred for draft work, just as Clydesdale horses have been specifically bred for draft work.
  If you compare a well-bred Berner to your Lab mix, you will immediately see the difference: both are about the same height at the withers, but the Berner weighs 20 or 30 pounds more. The Berner's leg bones are much sturdier; the chest musculature is stronger.
  Labs are bred to run, so they have light, thin bones. Berners are bred to plod along pulling a dog cart, so they have good bone and strong muscles.
  The temperament differs, as well. As you noted, if you had gotten your Lab mix at a younger age, it probably could have been trained to be an excellent hunter because that’s what breeders have bred into the Labrador Retriever: the excitement of the hunt.
  But most of the hunting instincts have been bred out of Berners because the instinct to chase after a rabbit is definitely not a desirable trait in a dog that is pulling a fully-loaded milk cart down a country road.
  Berners are bred to be stable, stoic, hard-working doggie citizens. Not the world’s most exciting breed, but exhibiting "sagacity, fidelity, and utility."
  Neither Labs nor Berners are generic, yellow street dingos. The various breeds have been bred for many generations to perform specific tasks that make them useful to us humans. We don’t want to lose the rich diversity of these different breeds by throwing all the genes into one enormous yellow genetic stewpot.

  7/12/11, 9:20 AM
jeffinwa said...

  Thanks JMG and all who post here.

  7/12/11, 9:28 AM
idiotgrrl said...

  It's not just fear of seeming poor -
  I was driving away from the library in my 1998 Honda and passed a Smart Car and a Prius, and realized that vehicles send a message. And that some people who really want to save energy and are passionate about it are even more passionate about being *seen to be green*. So --
  The Smart Car and the Prius send the message "I have made a conscious decision to be green. Aren't you SO proud of me?"
  The Classic VW Bug (also seen on Central Ave)sends the message "I was a hippie back in the day, and it's quite likely I'm as ecologically conscious now as I was then."
  The 13-year-old Honda Civic sends absolutely no message about ecologically-conscious virtue. The only message it sends is "retired office rat with nothing in this car worth stealing." Heh-heh-heh, snicker, snicker...
  And to add to the thief-proofing, I am going to follow a suggestion by one of the Prepper community and get a used diaper bag to be my urban go-bag. It carries a lot; it carries a wide variety of things; it is especially designed for *women* to carry around all over the place -- it runs about $20 new -- and any would-be thief would hesitate to take one, for fear of what smelly things it might contain.
  Snicker, snicker, evil laughter.

  7/12/11, 1:42 PM
dltrammel said...

  "artinnature said...
  Cathy McGuire an/or Panidaho, or anyone else moderating Green Wizards:
  I'm one of those who have been unable to complete my log-in/registration right from the start due to the early glitch, and have been "locked-out" ever since. Could
  one of you please email me and help me get this resolved?"
  Hi, sorry you're having difficulties. Looking at your log-in I show you active not blocked. Have you tried posting recently?
  Let me know if you can't. I'll send you an email.

  7/12/11, 3:41 PM
Greg Reynolds @ Riverbend said...

  I haven't read all he comments yet, we're just getting back from a week away from the farm, so I'm a little behind... So if someone has mentioned the following, please discard this comment.
  A used car should be from the late 80s - early 90s. By the late 80s they had made a lot of improvements in fuel economy, brakes, air pollution control, etc.
  Before the late 90s manufaturers did not use as many computers to control every function and had not realizd that even dealer mechanics get paid by the hour.
  New cars are so complicated that sometimes even dealer mechanics can not fix them (or actually figure out which part to replace) and they are needlessly difficult to work on.
  A recent trend has been for manufacturers to keep the computer trouble codes secret which makes it even harder to figure out what is wrong with the car.
  Norton, that's a fine motorbike (even better than a '51 Vincent). They are a product of 1940s engineering. They are very simple, were made to be repaired, can be made reliable, get 50+ mpg, and are a lot of fun to ride.
  Greg

  7/13/11, 5:51 AM
RPC said...

  Wow! 200+ posts! You must be hitting a nerve (or two).
  I'm going to play devil's advocate here on the car front. Don't get me wrong; I don't buy new cars - I generally like to get "certified pre-owned", which means somebody leased (and depreciated) the car first. But, as much as I loved my 1977 Accord, it required a lot more work to keep running than my current 2008 Fit. Things like regularly changing spark plugs, Rotor, points and condensor, and rebuilding the carburator simply no longer exist. The quality of the steel and rustproofing is much better. And if the car does misbehave, an OBD tool will let it tell you what's wrong. Granted, it can't be repaired by a blacksmith, but in its lifetime I think there'll be donor cars available for parts should the supply infrastructure collapse.
  Don Mason: regarding population, Dmitri Orlov has remarked on the degree to which this seems to take care of itself. When times get tough, folks have a lot fewer babies - see post Soviet Russia and Depression-era USA for examples. And a lot of the "marginal" die sooner than they would have otherwise. What worries me is the preponderance of elderly in a shrinking population; we're going to be hale and hearty into our old age or we're simply not going to make it.

  7/13/11, 6:01 AM
Zach said...

  Wouldn't the correct Sith name for The Bernanke be Darth Terest? :)
  peace,
  Zach

  7/13/11, 6:41 AM
Steve said...

  Bernanke = Darth Flation
  Sorry, I just had to.

  7/13/11, 9:31 AM
jeffinwa said...

  Ha, I had a moped about 20 yrs ago made by Norton; best transportation I've ever had (don't let my '95 Escort hear that)

  7/13/11, 9:54 AM
LewisLucanBooks said...

  @ Jason Heppenstall -Weather. There's a site that has a pretty good round-up of world-wide weather events. Just click on "Weather" in on the tool bar.
  www.heatisonline.org
  Hope you see this. Late in the week.

  7/13/11, 10:13 AM
Lance Michael Foster said...

  Why don't/can't they make cars that can once again be repaired by an average home mechanic? Sure, a lot of the bells and whistles would go away, but I think there is a market, and you would think American automakers would gamble on one since they are declining anyways.
  As far as dogs vs horses as draft animals, don't forget the lowly but versatile donkey! Easier to take care of and feed than a horse (no shoes needed), and can handle more weight than a dog. Lots of them used all over the world.

  7/13/11, 1:52 PM
Don Mason said...

  Hal said:
  “On draft dogs, it's the idea of using them for tillage that has me stuck…”
  Me too. I know they’ll work for protection and draft work, but tillage? I doubt that they would work for sodbusting, but after the soil is broken up and planted with vegetables, they might work. It would definitely be experimental. We’ve just got a lot of small plots around here that aren’t big enough for a tractor or horse, but are larger than our aging muscles can handle.
  Tyler August said:
  “Re: bicycle farming, I see your point. I'm in my 20s and I wonder how I'd hold up under it! (I suspect I'm not likely to make it through triage, though.)”
  We’re not looking forward to hearing that knock on the door, “Greetings! We’re from the Triage Section of the Department of Agriculture. Would you like to take a little ride with us to see the new compost facility…”
  GHung said:
  “Folks do get emotional about the subject of dogs, and extreme in their arguments. It's tantamount to religion for many.”
  Remember that G-O-D spelled backwards is D-O-G. Coincidence? Perhaps. But dogs do work in mysterious ways…

  7/13/11, 2:38 PM
Bill Pulliam said...

  Brad...
  The comparison is not between a scythe and a fueled-up mechanical mower. if the scythe could beat the mower it is unlikely that it would have suffered the near-extinction that it has. The comparison is between the scythe and the mower parked and gathering weeds because there is no fuel for it, either from scarcity or poverty. You can grow your own scythe fuel much easier than you can grow your own tractor fuel.
  If you compare the scythe to, say, a gasoline string trimmer or a heavy-duty walk-behind mower (for things like clearing between trees in an orchard or along edges, ditches, feincelines, slopes, roads, and paths), in my experience the comparison in terms of time and effort is much closer. Plus the scythe is quieter and can be used in the early morning while it is cool and the dew is on the grass -- a BIG plus in summer heat.

  7/13/11, 3:38 PM
Glenn said...

  Hal,
  No, I have never heard of dogs being used to pull a plow. but the term "draft animal" covers a far wider range than plow horses. So, a dog pulling a cart, or a dog sled is, indeed, a draft animal by the common definition.
  I don't think JMG denigrates either your truck or your tractor, in his definitions of the states of decline, these are appropriate tools for current farmers and other rural dwellers _at this time_. We should all certainly have an eye to how to replace them though.
  For my money, oxen, dairy cattle used for part time draft work (Brown Swiss are good for this), donkeys and mules are all under rated. Discussions of this sort seem to concentrate too much on horses as far as I am concerned.
  Glenn,
  Marrowstone Island
  Jefferson County
  Washington State
  Former USA

  7/13/11, 7:34 PM
Red Neck Girl said...

  @ Chris,
  I don't recall any forests here in Oregon with the name Cherokee, they / we are an eastern tribe from Georgia and the Carolinas.
  The tribe is a cousin to the Iroquois people, split off about a thousand years ago. LOL! They didn't call themselves Cherokee, that was the name an enemy tribe gave them and I imagine it means something derogatory! The
  name they use for themselves is Tsalagi, which usually means The People.
  If you've seen the movie 'The Last of the Mohicans' with Madeline Stowe and Daniel Day Lewis, you've seen a near pure blood Cherokee, Russ Studi who played the bad guy, Maugua. I look like later generations that intermarried freely with whites, usually the Scots or Irish. I have a resemblance to the character on the cover of a paperback from the 80's, titled 'Cherokee Mission,' enough so that the man used for the model could be my literal brother!
  If you like the language here are several links, only about 15% of the people still speak it every day.
  http://mypeoplepc.com/members/cherlyn/onefeather/id7.html
  http://www.wehali.com/tsalagi/
  http://www.native-languages.org/cherokee.htm
  The tribe is quite large, not to mention one of the most prosperous. (Currently they're 'fighting it out' with the Navajo for which is the richest. Both fortunes were or are based on energy resources. Petroleum for the Cherokee and coal and uranium for the Navajo.)
  The capital of their country within a country they tried to make of their homeland was called New Echota. But they were forcibly moved to Oklahoma in 1830 in what was called The Trail of Tears. They were the first but not the last tribe to make such a forced march.
  @ Whoever posted the link for the AI Dog.
  In a quick scan of the dog discussion I saw the link for the American Indian Dog and I checked it out last night. I'm intrigued and Song Dog Kennel isn't far from here. Unfortunately for you JMG, the dog looks almost exactly like all feral dogs. Almost like the Pharaoh Hound I liked the looks of, if smaller. (And from the AI web site more mentally stable!)
  For stock dogs I'm still going for the Aussie's, full sized instead of the miniatures they're breeding now. From the ASKA registry instead of AKC, I want something that can still take down a Brahma Bull, like the half trained, 6 mo. old pup my room mate had bred. It was at the stock yard and a local rancher was so impressed he offered her a $1000.00 for the pup on the spot! Foolishly, imo, she accepted.
  I'd prefer Aussies over Catahoolas although with the feral pig population I might be better off with the Catahoolas out of Louisiana. That's part of what Catahoolas are bred for in modern times, wild pig hunting. I think because of that they are rougher with regular livestock.
  When it comes to used and horse furniture I LIKE old saddles! If they've been well cared for they'll last a life time and a half. My room mate had an antique saddle that was around a hundred years old when it was stolen and still totally usable. It was also rare and quite valuable which she found out "after" it was gone. And yes, I know who stole it and I know he didn't make as much profit as he could have if he had only known!
  Wadulisi Tsalagi

  7/13/11, 10:01 PM
Brad K. said...

  @ Bill,
  I wasn't looking at a comparison of using the scythe vs. the tractor. What caught my attention was the difference in infrastructure, about how many people-days that field increases in cost when going to the scythe.
  My comment wasn't about how good the tractor is, but how socially and economically difficult it will be to gather and employ the people needed to harvest that field, about the reduction in yield just because of the need for more people. My presumption was that the yield from that field, and others under cultivation, will be needed to continue feeding people.
  Only the yield of such fields, after feeding the workers, will be lessened. Injuries will increase. And we are way behind the training curve, of getting people used to working the fields and of getting the tools needed to get the work accomplished in a timely fashion.
  Absolutely a scythe/scythes can bring in a harvest in a post-industrial age. Craftsmanship and skill are always beautiful to watch, and well-made tools make their own species of glory. But creating craftsmen that farm, that harvest and plant and store and process the bounty of the land, like other crafts, takes time and apprentices and toolmakers. And this video brought that part of the picture home to me, again.

  7/13/11, 10:40 PM

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