Sign of the times (oil and tremblor related)

[damian 0]

Due to unacceptably high inflation figures, Australia is about to put up interest rates to 6%, pretty much the highest in the 'first world'. In the meantime, Australia has been on such an economic boom that household debt is the highest in the world. Ouch. (That isn't a paradox in a Monetary Economics world: booms come from spending and spending comes from borrowing)

 

Reason for high inflation: petrol prices at the pump and the price of bananas. There was a cyclone in northern Oz that destroyed lots of nana's, so the price went up. According to the Government, due to the substitution effect demand increased for other fruits and their prices went up as well.

 

I think the price of fruit is going up because the price of growing and transporting them is going up. Fuel prices are making food more expensive. It is easy to spot in Australia as all fruit is grown and transported within the confines of a small domestic fishtank. It is an easily observable experiment that isn't complicated by massive farming operations in Chile that export apples via a complicated wholesaler-distributor-reseller-redistribute-retailer network where simple cause and effect transissions are blured by operators along the way absorbing or passing on costs slowly and indirectly to the consumer.

 

Australia has always referred to itself as 'the lucky country'. What happens when the lucky country starts to be much less lucky and has to rely on brains. Oops.

[soubriquet 0]

Here's a paradox for you, le spud (are potatoes masculine?). Australia exports natural gas, and iron ore from the same port (Port Headland), yet it imports steel. And Toyotas. I've always thought that demonstrates a lack of will.

[Ocean11 0]

There's a good article about oil here .

 

I'm very much looking forward to taking a big step towards opting out early next year.

[damian 0]

Soubriquet - that's all Australians know how to do: dig stuff up or chop stuff down and sell it offshore, only to buy it back later once it has been turned into something more useful. The Australian labour force is neither smart nor entrepreneurial.

 

Ocean - thank you, that was an excellent article. If it didn't involve the future deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, I'd call America's oil bind almost ridiculously funny.

[Rag-Doll 0]

Wasn't the "Lucky Country" term originally intended to be ironic?

 

In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond makes some interesting observations about why some communities/societies thrive whilst others die out. A strong parallel can be drawn with evolution and species extinction. Australia’s dig it up and sell it approach is about as stupid and as short sighted as one is likely to find anywhere.

[daver 0]

"Australia’s dig it up and sell it approach is about as stupid and as short sighted as one is likely to find anywhere."

 

we do it in canada too. especially with softwood lumber, but also with natural gas, petrolium, hydro electricity, ect. the list is depressing. i wonder if this approach/mentality is due to each of our countries' histories as british colonies?

[Ocean11 0]

Canada seems to have exhausted its supply of capital letters too.

 

I'm shortly going to purchase a largish quantity of Candian lumber, so I hope they don't run out soon.

[damian 0]

I was reading an opinion piece today that relates to the short sighted "dig it up and sell it" approach popular in Australia (and Canada). If Saudi Arabia is the oil king then Australia is the uranium king. Proposals at hand include mining the ore, processing it, leasing the enriched product to the China's of the world and then taking back the waste yellow cake and burying it in Australia's vast unpopulated uninhabitable land. All at a very high priced lease.

 

It doesn't sound very pretty, but it could make Australia very very rich, particularly if the process includes down stream "value added" processing and waste disposal.

 

Canada has a similar sized uranium deposit, plus all its oily half useless sand. The Canadian Dollar has been heading one way for a long time for good reason. It is likely going to become one of the most powerful western nations within a decade. 60% of the known uranium reserves exist in three countries (Australia, Canada and Kazakhstan)

 

And poor old America with its unwinable war has 4 gallon per mile SUV's and a 20 million barrel per day oil demand. America is a nice place, but its days as a world power are over. Unless of course it becomes unpatriotic to drive anything bigger than a 1.5 litre hatch back at no faster than 50mph.

[damian 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Ocean11:

I'm shortly going to purchase a largish quantity of Candian lumber, so I hope they don't run out soon.

You probably don't need me saying this, but its a pity you aren't buying US lumber, the wholesale the price of which has fallen by up to 25% in 2006. Lack of construction demand in the States. I don't know how that flows into the retail export prices. Currently wholesale home-building lumber changes hands for about USD27 per 100 feet of 2x4. Historically very cheap lumber is around US20 per 100 feet and expensive is $40-45 per 100 feet. How many feet of lumber is required to build an energy efficient home for 3 people?

[daver 0]

"I'm shortly going to purchase a largish quantity of Candian lumber, so I hope they don't run out soon."

 

CAN YOU TRACK IT TO FIND OUT WHERE IT WAS LOGGED? WHO LOGGED IT? IS IT OLD GROWTH? WAS IT CLEAR CUT? BEST OF ALL, WAS IT CUT IN CANADA, MILLED IN THE STATES, THEN SOLD BACK TO CANADA, AND FINALLY SOLD TO YOU?

 

IT SEEMS AS THOUGH I WAS ABLE TO FIND A RESERVE STOCK OF CAPITALS, BUT I MIGHT HAVE TO SCRIMP ON THEM FROM THIS POINT ON, THERE ARE IN HIGH DEMAND YOU KNOW. I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND.

[NoFakie 45]

House prices soar in Australia, as do education, health care and everything else not made in China if its anything like anywhere else, and they start complaining about inflation when the price of fruit goes up? Bananas!

 

Canada's future depends on what extent they sold themselves down the river when they joined NAFTA. With that super-highway they're building and the murmors about currency union, its looking like their fate is increasingly linked to that of the USA. Don't blame the Brits. We didn't sign it for you.

 

Cuba seems to be surviving without much oil, but they've never gone through the anti-social super-consumerism of the USA. So long as Americans do not cling to the selfish individualism capitalism has taught them, they'll manage post peak oil too. Like Cuba, a sudden disruption might be the best thing as a wake up call. If its just creeping scarcity, little will be done.

[Rag-Doll 0]

MW, I might be one of those glass half full optimists but I reckon creeping scarcity would probably be manageable. As the price increases alternatives are developed, become increasingly economically viable and are brought on line. People and communities would also have time to adjust. The water problem in Aust provides a good example of this process. People have known about the shortage of water and the need to do something about it for ages but things like imposing real prices for water or using recycled water was always too politically sensitive for any government to actually tackle as a preemptive measure. Now of course with water storage levels at the lowest they’ve been for years the community has been sufficiently inconvenienced by water restrictions and limited availability to appreciate and in some case demand, that the governments do something about the problem. Using recycled water and restricting industry’s use of potable water seem to be hot topics at the moment. The difficulty is that it may not be a problem of creeping scarcity. A sudden and significant reduction in the availability of oil would catastrophic.

 

The whole uranium thing in Aust that Spud mentions is an amazing change (but not necessarily a good one) from where the country was 20 years ago when there was a lot of opposition, particularly from environmental groups, to the idea of mining uranium. Now they’re talking about becoming a world supplier and processing and storage of nuclear waste. It would have been inconceivable 20 years ago. If I understand it correctly, even though Aust (and Canada) have a lot of uranium, on a global basis there really isn’t that much available. Nuclear energy is still a non-renewable energy that will eventually be exhausted.

 

Perhaps the ITER will come through with the goods.

 

 

Ocean,

 

Why Canadian lumber?

[Ocean11 0]

If you want a 2x6 house built in Japan, chances are the lumber is imported from Canada. That's because although there is plenty of lumber in Japan, it isn't managed properly so that most of it isn't suitable for building with. What is suitable comes at a very high price.

 

The Canadian lumber that I intend to buy is from sustainably managed forests. If and when Japan gets their forestry act together, they could have enough so that it doesn't need to be imported from Canada. A case of rocks in the head again I'm afraid.

[soubriquet 0]

I did some work at Honeymoon Well a few years ago. It's a uranium mine out in the Curnamona Basin (NE South Australia). Don't bother looking for it, because it's existence and location are, ahem, not well publicised. I collected some drill cuttings including samples from the ore body. When I took them back to CSIRO, I informed the Health and Safety officer that I had some uranium samples. He came with his geiger counter, and they turned out to be less radioactive than the brick walls of my office, and much less radioactive than your average lump of granite.

 

Honeymoon is quite a neat mine. They pump acid into the orebody, and pump uranium in solution out. The uranium is extracted and the acid recycled. The mine comprises a big steel shed and a grid of well heads (like fire hydrants).

 

Australia has a lot of uranium.

[soubriquet 0]

Here are a couple of links. This one has a map with ore body calculations:

 

http://www.scimitarresources.com.au/index.php?id=45

 

This one on uranium mining:

 

http://www.nukefreeaus.org/campaigns/Uranium_Mining/Uranium%20Articles/Letthemeatyellowcake.html

[js 0]

Family member worked on oil rigs out western Qld and NSW.

 

Apparently there are huge reserves of oil/NG out there that are not 'released'.

 

Similarly to the uranium debate, it all falls to politics, stock market listed companies, traders (futures) and shareholders ... all of which I seriously despise.

 

Lets pollute the world for millenia because urbane prats wanna blow-dry their hair?!

[daver 0]

Ocean, sorry to hi-jack this thread, 2X6 frame? i can only suspect that is to give space for insulation. i am curious, was that difficult to aquire here? and a 6" cavity is the room needed for R40 loft. yeesh! why so extreme? have you had trouble working around the earth quake resistant building codes? i have always just assumed that is why all the buildings here are made entirely of concrete.

[Ocean11 0]

daver, I'm not sure where you got your ideas about Japanese housing, but they all seem ... way off.

 

First of all, quake resistance codes for private homes don't seem to be applied with any rigour at all, so you can build something that will fall down if you want to. There's nothing to 'work around'.

Secondly, one of the big selling points of 2x4 construction is that it doesn't fall down like traditional Japanese housing does.

Thirdly, 2x6 is not really extreme. Some builders are standardizing on 2x8 or 2x10, to bring running costs to nearly zero, or even a positive balance with renewables (which is what we aim for by being frugal as usual).

Fourthly, most houses here aren't made of concrete. They're poorly built of wood. And the concrete here uses too much water, so it collapses in earthquakes.

 

I'm just hoping that cases like what spud describes in his opening post, which seem to be mounting up all over, are the first sign of people waking up to the foolish unsustainability of our world economy. Hopefully individuals and businesses will start working to dismantle the more insane aspects of it.

[js 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by Ocean11:
First of all, quake resistance codes for private homes don't seem to be applied with any rigour at all, so you can build something that will fall down if you want to. There's nothing to 'work around'.

You may consider adopting the best bits of the NZ Building Code pertaining to earthquakes. According to a NZ mate (Ungineer), apparently they have a quite advanced set of recommendations, etc which may exceed those of J-Land.

[daver 0]

Ocean, i am the first to admit that i know very little or nothing really about building in japan. like i said, i've simply made an assumption. an assumption based on the layout and designs of my home and the homes my friends have recently had built. i ask them about insulation, they gave me a blank stare, or tell me that japanese homes are different and thus can't have insulation. i tell them it will dramatically aid in energy costs during the winter and summer, they tell me they have a kototsu and air con. apparently the concept doesn't exist up here in the hinterland.

 

 

as for the cavity; i now recognize that i was well off in my estimations. yes i know that 2x6 frame is standard, and by no means would an R40 loft fit into said cavity. but my question still remains, and i am genuinely interested, did you have difficulty aquiring insulation?

 

as for quake codes; i just pressumed, given the scandles last year regarding building short cuts amounting in sub standard earth quakes codes that seemed to flood the daily papers, there were strict building codes in place. not so? that is surprising.

[Ocean11 0]

> i ask them about insulation, they gave me a blank stare, or tell me that japanese homes are different and thus can't have insulation. i tell them it will dramatically aid in energy costs during the winter and summer, they tell me they have a kototsu and air con. apparently the concept doesn't exist up here in the hinterland.

 

Insane isn't it? Japanese houses haven't typically had any at all, that's part of why life in Japan is like camping indoors. There is a tremendous amount of info available about it in Japan in fact, but it obviously doesn't get through to some people.

 

> but my question still remains, and i am genuinely interested, did you have difficulty aquiring insulation?

 

Not at all. All the Japanese builders we looked at are well up on all the latest technologies and techniques. You can even get recycled newspaper insulation which is easy to apply, cheap, fireproof, and very effective. Our windows will be double glass with argon insulation and low-E coating in insulated frames.

 

But there is a huge difference between what we expect and what some other Japanese expect and get, although they will end up paying far more than we do.

[soubriquet 0]

This is the home soubriquette had built.

 

It is earthquake-proof.

 

 

Here's the insulation ready to go in.

 

 

You can see the insulation where the line of plasterboard finishes.

 

 

The windows are double glazed and the frames are UPVC (non conducting). It has full central heating and air conditioning as well as forced ventilation incorporating a heat exchanger.

 

I've been watching with great interest as nearly all the houses in my locality have been demolished and replaced in the past three years. They are being built to a very high standard.

[Ocean11 0]

soubs, do you happen to know what kind of foundation that has - is it nuno or beta kiso (foundation walls or poured concrete slab)? Do you know if that makes a whole lot of difference to earthquake proofing, assuming both are done properly?

 

Amazingly some people are still asking the local daiku-san to throw up something made of sticks and straw, while others are going fully wolfproof as you note.

[soubriquet 0]

It's a shame you didn't ask me last week, because I could have photographed my neighbour's footings going in.

 

It's a foundation wall. The footings for the columns go down about 1 metre, and for the wall, about 60 cm. All double-row steel reinforced. For the above-ground part, the outer row goes up the foundation walls, and the inner row is bent 90 degrees inwards to tie in to the slab. When the foundation walls were poured, bolts were set in the concrete, to tie in the upper lightweight walls.

 

Yamagata is one of the least earthquake prone parts of Japan. However, north Yamagata gets about five times more snow than southern Yamagata prefecture and City. This is because they sit in the lee of Gassan, and we are completely open to the NW. We have to build robustly here, or risk waking in the night wearing the roof.

[AET 0]

"Yamagata is one of the least earthquake prone parts of Japan."

 

So, you're next then?

(Weren't the Kobe and Niigata ones in places that were not that earthquake prone?)