Party Vibe

Living near the North sea would make no difference either way, as the oil reserves in the North sea are all high grade crude, and never used for petroleum – mostly they are refined into chemicals to make medicines and whatnot.

Afraid most of our petroleum grade crude comes from the middle east…

A better question is how come we pay £1 a litre, when over in the states they are complaining about $3 or $4 a gallon…

Can we say the words “price fixing cartel”?

Nobody is holding back hydrogen cars, they simply aren’t economic in both money and energy terms because hydrogen is not a fuel.
Hydrogen is an energy storage medium very much like a battery, and like charging a battery it takes energy to produce hydrogen (from salt water by electrolysis).
The energy now stored in the hydrogen is less than the energy you put in to make it, therefore producing and using hydrogen is a net loser of energy, which is why there will never be hydrogen powered cars (on any large scale) and the fact that its a pain in the arse to store and very flammable.

Now veg oil/biodiesel is a different matter, it should be very lightly taxed and actively encouraged since its pretty much carbon neutral (the same carbon produced by burning was removed from the atmosphere by the oil seed plants).

Its true that the oil from the north sea is a pretty good grade, indeed its got its own name Brent Crude and has its own price the other standard grade is West Texas Intermediate Crude.
However, chemicals for medicinces, plastics and pesticides can be produced from any grade of oil and account for only a small percentage of it use, most goes in your fuel tank and then out the exhaust pipe.
The UK was until a few years ago completely self sufficient in oil production from the north sea, we were actually an exporter of oil, however north sea oil production peaked (the point at which you’ve extracted approximately half the existent oil in the ground) around 1999 and has been decling since then, we are now a net importer of oil (only just though).

The scary thing is the implication of a peak in global oil production, some are suggesting it is happening now or will happen in the very near future (the next decade), this will not be good news for the global economic system which is fuelled by cheap, easilly available oil.

If you want more information about this monumentally important issue have a look at this site (and join the forum, we need more members):

http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/

or here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

Sorry to be a bit of party pooper, it just this issue is… well, you get the point.

Its good to know that there a few people on here that are aware, the public seem to be completely ignorant of the various problems, except climate change, that seems to be gaining in awareness.
However, its seems that no one wants to mention the elephant-in-the-corner which is that there are too damn many of us.

I’ve often wondered about the implications for the rave/free party scene of the coming energy crisis.
Although as you say, raves are quite resource intensive they are no where near as bad as many other things, such as driving the kids a mile to school in an SUV.

It very much depends on what you think will be the outcome the peaking of world oil production, views range from “not much of a problem, the market god will save us” to “shit, this is gonna mean big unpleasant changes for everyone but its do-able” all the way through to “Its the end of the world as we know it, ahh we’re all going to die”.
I personally am fairly optimistic about it all, i’m in the middle here, but it could go either way.

One of most worrying implications is the potential for a break down in law and order, Mad Max style, when the authorities can no longer afford the fuel.
Now perhaps even more worrying is how the powers that be may try and prevent this, their solution could be an Orwellian police state, “The UK is now under martial law” [/Jello Biafra voice], and in some ways we are
already seeing this with lots of new draconian “anti-terrorist” laws which could easily be extended in order for you to be classed as a terrorist and shot on sight for simply having a party or disagreeing with the government.

It could go the other way though, without fuel to power the giant bureaucracy that is government it might just crumble and slowly die away, leaving local communities to look after themselves, we will have to do that anyway when we can no longer ship mass produced crap from China and fly vegetables around the world.

I personally hope it plays out this way.
In this scenario raves could actually fulfil a very useful role (not that dont now), that of entertaining people, which will be very important in the uncertain times which are approaching.
The need for community/tribal gathering together for partying is very deep seated in our psyches (no wonder the authorities cant stop it), with the strengthend local communities that peak oil could bring there will almost certainly be a place for the rave and possibly no authorities to prevent them anyway.

That just leaves one problem, how to power them when energy is scarce.
It may be that a certain ammount of down sizing would be necessary but i am confident that it is possible to power a moderate sized (whatever that is) rave using only renewable energy, indeed i’m sure it has been tried by someone (if not i’d certainly like to have a go).
To power a rave from renewable energy would of course limit the choice of site to one which has an abundance of renewable energy, which conveniently means a beautiful rural location on a hill somewhere.

The rave scene today could even help by spreading the message about sustainable living (even if many already get it), thus preparing many of its members for the coming crisis.
So overall i think raves will almost certainly have a future and perhaps a pretty instrumental one.

Rob

I do consider bio fuels as renewable because they are, you just grow more crops if you need more fuel.

I’m sure a rave powered by wind, solar and bio fuels would gain much more respect from the public, although it doesnt solve the problem of people leaving rubbish on the site, perhaps a “leave no trace” campaign like they have at the big chill would help.

…QUIET SIMPLE…:lol_crash