Chicken boy takes his stick for a walk. My head cold is still awful, but I reluctantly admit that I might not die from it. The temperature reached almost 70 and the sun was hot. I was doing the laundry in 5 gallon pails when Ed Foster showed. up. "That's right, you don't pay for anything!" he said. Not quite. if you read Ran Prieur's column today you note on his 10 got to have list a Swedish small axe. I bought one as a Christmas present to myself and I'm having it shipped to Scotts. There is a lot of good information on his website. I recommend it. And I recommend the AZ sunshine - do you believe it cloud people?

Left: Went outside to see if there was still a world outside my head cold and indeed the desert mornings are still spectacular. I'm a little more functional this morning and will have the petroglyphs finished today. Those who wish a petroglyph disk with full sized images, gps coordinates, and a google maps satellite view need to email me their physical address

Tuesday, January 2, 2007 6:43 PM
Here's a quick read that ask the really relevant question. When energy runs out or goes low, do we devolve all the way to "Mad Max?" or do we have a civilization; mass transit, shipping, just less?
Tuesday, January 2, 2007 2:01 PM
Someone asked me last week "What is your website about? Are you a survivalist?" No, not at all, I do not expect to survive that which comes. I am a diabetic and dependent on genetically modified insulin. I am, this site is, and you should be, about preparation and a new flexibility and a new way of thinking about your world, your property, your life.
We are creating a new model of civilization. I think this quote nails it.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - R. Buckminister Fuller
And if that is too philosophical for you Ed, maybe I'll leave you today with this.

"...At a very basic level, people are beginning to wonder exactly how our society is going to heat its houses and grow and transport its food in about 20 years or so. (editor's note: 20 years is highly optimistic- peak oil is now!)

"Twenty years? Who cares, right? You scoff at such a time frame? For perspective, just understand that about 50% of all the petroleum ever consumed by mankind has been consumed since 1984. That is, people have been watching Tom Cruise movies and listening to Madonna sing for a longer time than it took to burn 500 billion barrels of petroleum. Talk about Nero fiddling? And about 90% of all the petroleum that has ever been consumed by mankind has been consumed since 1958. So 90% of the world's oil consumption has occurred in the time since the Beatles were a warm-up act in Liverpool. Does this not give you some sense of the rapidity of the developing energy storm? And if not now, just when is it going to be the right time to begin being concerned about the world's depleting energy supply over the next 20 years, let alone the next 50 years?" excerpted from a Whiskey and Gunpowder investment newsletter.

Tuesday, January 2, 2007 1:19 PM
A reader made the point that solar is not a good choice for many of the northern states, including Oregon where many freechickens are reading this. She made other comments that I will address at another time. After twenty seven years involved with alternative energy, I can say that while everyone would like there to be choice besides solar, in the practical day to day of things, solar is the only choice right now when the oil runs out.
Hydro, meaning a small pelton water turbine is a choice if you have elevation drop and a year round stream on your property, but few properties have that. Methane digesters to run a generator work, but the effort to create or support them is beyond almost everyone's ability. Wind is the big disappointment. Except for people in the coast range or Cascades of Oregon and Washington, it is very unlikely that there will be enough consistent wind speed (consistent, not intermittent) to replace even a fraction of what solar can provide. There is a lot of good work being done with wind, yet you can bet that every dollar of solar you buy (in panels) is worth ten dollars of money spent on wind. Google homebrew wind generators, and you'll find links, and no doubt there are a lot of enthusiasts out there, especially in Australia who can make wind power from almost anything that has a motor (windshield wiper motors, radiator fan motors, etc.). But we're begging the point.
Oil is going, going, soon gone. We can't say, my life must be unchanged and everything must remain as it is - how do I do that. You don't. Relocate will be the answer for most people. Before everyone is up in arms, realize that we have expanded to the uninhabitable areas of our planet and country only because cheap oil has made it possible. Las Vegas cannot exist without air conditioning which electric fueled by natural gas and hydro power. We cannot stay in the Northeast, my home, without massive quantities of heating oil. Didn't they live there before oil heat? Yes, they burnt wood, but there were 1/50 the number of people there are now.
As a people we will be withdrawing from most of the energy intensive areas into areas that are easier for us to survive with solar, wind, and hydro. So to the blog question, solar in Oregon, I first refute the assumption that solar is a bad choice for Oregon. For six months of the year, April through the end of October. Western Oregon has wonderful solar radiation. Eastern Oregon has good solar throughout the whole year. So when our reader is talking about Northern states, we really are talking about cloudy areas. Cold northern states with clear skies for the part of each month are good solar choices too. Western Oregon and the Coast Range is a survivalist dream except for winter electricity. At the current time I see no answer for those people. Perhaps more technologically difficult answers such as wood gas generation running generators for the cloudy months.
In an emergency period in Western Oregon (cloudy - winter), I would still setup the biggest number of panels that were possible and a big battery bank. Then beginning in November I would use a generator and a battery charger to keep the batteries topped off, running it only to do that and pump water if needed. I wish there was a better answer for Western Oregon, and of course you all know my answer - be MOBILE, go where the energy is easy and free. Many people here in Q are buying property in the Prescott AZ area because they have a summer area to go to when it is too hot here, then back here for the winter.
Snow birding is not just about old folks and their bones creaking. Anytime you can have daytime temperatures close to 70F in the day time you can see that your energy usage is going drop considerably. No matter how you heat, if you don't have to heat, that's energy saved. This year it cost me $285 of gas to move the airstream truck and contents from Elmira OR to Quartzsite, AZ. There will soon come a time when that price becomes prohibitive. The answer for a mobile liver is to make the trip shorter and shorter, and when there is no gas available at all, switch to an alternative like ethanol for the twice a year trip, or wood gas.

Tuesday, January 2, 2007 8:30 AM
I have a wicked cold and will be posting little today, depending on how this goes. If you're a free chicken just back to work, you might look back over the last few days on the blog, it was a pretty interesting time.

New Years Day, January 1, 2007 6:11 PM

Near Year's coffee at 9:30am at la casa blanca on the banks of Tyson's Wash. Left to Right: Ed, Ed, Phil, Vicki, Kent and in the foreground, Ginger. I made three French pressed pot after the first one and we went through banana nut loaf that Vicki makes (she bakes!), and a host of other goodies that I and Ed F brought. An unlikely group for revolution, but then Marx, Engels and John Adams didn't look like much either. Oh, I have a cold so I took the picture.

Monday, January 1, 2007 1:10 PM
Happy New Year's Freechickens! I've just enjoyed a nice brunch with five of my Quartzsite like-thinkers. You can image there is a wide diversity of opinion but it was mostly about the coffee, the banana nut bread that Vicki and Kent brought and VA programs, social security, and the like. Mostly it is the slow process where we realize that the very government, of the people, by the people and for the people, really, uncomfortably, is not any of those things. Two or three of the men there this morning are vets, and many of us used to wave the flag. I still love my country dearly, but I recognize that each of us is on our own.
There was feedback from several people over the last few posts, especially the "appropriate technology" piece which was deemed too unspecific at the end, too vague. Everyone, me included, wishes there were something "to do." We have that American spirit to solve a problem: define it, plan, solve. That is the thinking of Empire, and it doesn't work for what comes. I nor anyone I read in government or out, has the slightly idea of how such a complex system self destructs, but to strain and metaphor, everyone can hear the bearings going out and the noise of failure is all around. Complex systems like our world, and our social place in it are so complex that it is impossible to model accurately. That does NOT mean that we don't know it will crash, as it surely must as it runs completely on natural gas and oil and they are running out. That is not complex. We have used a million years of oil in 80 years. We are still, every day, accelerating our oil consumption. It is what makes every complex aspect of the world around you work. Please read about Peak Oil as I don't want to spend time on that. Rather that each of us needs to understand that it an UNCERTAIN future, with NONE of the scenarios pleasant, that awaits us. As Will Roger's the cowboy philosopher said long ago, "it ain't the bad times comin, it's the good times goin that bothers folks." The good times are going and in the middle of that collapse there are some things that will be wonderful.
Your life will be returned to you, along with the responsibility of how it progresses. You will not be bored as most of you are now. A child will once again count as an important part of a family. You will know and come to depend on your "close people." You will go to bed tired and alive, awake in spirit. What you think will count again. What you do will count again.
But in answer to the mention of vagueness in my technology article, blog reader Rick wrote a short essay on practical things a home owner can do now to position themselves better for whatever comes. I have a slight disagreement over hte assumption of the article, but give it a read first, and then jump back here.
Homeowner preparation by Rick T; click here to read the article!
Ok, you're back, good! Rick will be adding to that as he has time. But to create the article Rick had to narrow the possiblity of what kind of collapse. I support that technique just realize there may be many reasons why staying put is NOT an option. Nuclear scenarios, biological agents via terriorism are just two that would mean you don't get to stay where you are. But accept his criteria that whatever the problem is that we encounter, the result will not be rioting and of course prices will increase, hugely. I agree that will be true for a while. But here is a quote from the article where I believe we will lose most people in a worldwide disaster. "My point of view for this article is I’m not mobile like Alan. I have a wife, a house and dogs and we’re not going anywhere."
I personally don't seen anything about dogs or a wife that ties you to your house. Staying in many scenarios is a very bad idea if you are the person with power and food and medicines. I think, and Rick, please refute me if I'm wrong, what most people mean when they say that they can't leave is that really, they won't give up their stuff that they have worked so hard for. I think that is a dangerously static view to hold in times of uncertainty and unrest. There are dangers in leaving and there are dangers in staying, weighing those with a clear understanding of your personal biases is critical in that period.
Thank you for stepping up Rick!!!
Lisa F. has asked some good questions this morning that we all need to chew on and I'll put that up a little later today. I have a cold and I'm feeling puny.