The Unwoven Rainbow

Oh, man… I just read something scary but very real, written by Alice Friedemann way back in 2006.

I have been aware of peak oil for almost a year now, and modestly doing what I can to prepare for what is coming in the next several decades. But every once in a while I come across something — like this paper — that knocks me off my feet.

When I first blogged about peak oil back in January, I asked whether in 50 years we would still be manufacturing electronics, and whether the internet would still be around. After reading Friedemann’s paper, I think 1) the relevant timeframe for my questions is more like 20 or 30 years, not 50, and 2) the answer to my questions may well be ‘No’.

This is a great paper, well worth 20 minutes of your time to read. Friedemann wanders around a bit in the beginning, citing plenty of alarming but relevant facts about the upcoming energy descent, but she finishes with a very strong argument that computers will not be with us for much longer, and that we should be thinking now about non-electronic preservation of knowledge for future generations. Even many of the books that are around now will not survive the century.

It can be frightening to think about a world without all of the things we take for granted: plenty of food, easy transportation, cheap electricity, relatively affordable housing, plentiful clothing, corrective lenses for our imperfect eyes, medicines to address many of our common ailments, electronics to keep us entertained, informed, and educated. But all of those things (and a thousand more) are the direct result of the nearly-free energy stores we discovered a while back (~1860) and have been burning up at an increasing rate.

We are currently living our lives at the top of an enormous house of cards that will soon be tumbling to the ground (and the house may come down much faster than it took to be built). Enjoy your computer and your ATM and your cable box and your router while you can. By the time my generation leaves this world, those will be things of the past.

So shouldn’t we spend some time and money figuring out how to pass on some basic learnings to future generations?

Older peak oil blog posts here, and lots of bookmarked articles here.

According to an energy audit I did last year, our hot water heater comes in (a distant) second in electricity consumption in our house, accounting for about 7% of our total use (our heat pump for central heating comes in first at ~40%, averaged over all seasons).

Since a timer to shut off a water heater during off-hours is pretty cheap (~$30), and I’ve read that using one of these is an effective way to cut energy consumption, I decided to get one. I got around to installing it this last weekend:

Right now it’s set to turn on a couple of hours before we get up, then turn off once everyone is out of the house in the morning. It turns on again in the evening for dishwashing and nighttime showers. All told, it will be on for about 8 hours a day. It has a manual switch that allows you to easily override the timer (say on the weekend, if you need a shower in the middle of the day); we just need to remember to hit the switch ahead of time.

Unfortunately, since the heater is on a 240 V circuit, I can’t trivially measure its consumption over long periods of time (like I can for appliances using a Kill-A-Watt). Yeah, I could wire something up to do this, but I’m not willing to put that much time into this investigation  ;-)  For the time being, I’ll have to judge effectiveness based on our total electricity consumption…

[My earlier audit was based on estimates of power consumption for the hot water heater and heater combined with measurements of most household appliances, tweaked to match actual consumption numbers from the power company.]

Something worth noting for the DIYer: I’ve done a modest amount of electrical work using 14 ga wire for typical circuits (ceiling fans, lights, etc.). This installation required 10 ga wiring, and the switch itself required working in some pretty tight areas. I had no idea how difficult it would be to wrestle this heavy wiring into place in those conditions… yikes!

Tropical Storm Hanna dumped a ton of water on us here in northern Virginia today.

Sugarland Creek runs through the woods behind our house. The creek overflowed its banks in a big way today, going higher than at any time since we moved here in 2000. Normally it is about 30 feet across, but right now it must be over 300 feet wide, and running very rapidly.

When we were checking it out at the peak of the flooding, we saw several deer (must have been trapped on a sudden island) struggling to make it to shore. A couple of them made it, and bolted by about 50 feet from us. Another deer was trapped, swimming wildly, in the middle of the creek. We couldn’t see her very clearly through the trees and the rain, and after a moment lost sight of her. I don’t know if she survived or not 

More pics in the gallery.

Update  9/11/08: Using the aerial photos on Google Maps, it looks like the floodwaters were about 250 feet wide at peak.