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News for Seattle, Washington
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So now Mike, a sheet metal contractor, has enlisted in a growing movement to change the way America does business. Whenever possible he and his men work four-day weeks – 10 hour shifts – as a way to cut costs, reduce pollution and congestion.
“It would be astronomical what states, the federal government and the nation and the world could save on energy consumption, pollution traffic congestion and everything else,” he said. The idea isn’t new one. The oil crisis of the 1970s prompted some employers to switch to a four-day work week, but the idea never took hold nationally. These days, though, energy and congestion issues may give the concept more traction. Several petition drives for a shortened work week are now circulating on the Internet.
A handful of cities in Nevada, California and Arizona are experimenting with the idea. Working four days instead of five would mean 20 percent fewer trips to and from work, reducing oil consumption by an estimated 40 percent. That’s about 65 million fewer gallons of gas used per day, not to mention more time with family, and for Mike Cummings, a bit more hope for the future.
Seems like a relatively easy solution. I switched to a 4 day work week about a year ago, between the fuel savings and the improvement in my attitude overall, its been nothing but positive. I highly recommend it.
I had no idea John was French!
#19
Link 1: Daniel Yergin and CERA have been consistently wrong on oil reserves and projected prices. Oil is currently priced three times higher than Yergin says it should be.
Link 2: The shale oil fields in Utah and Colorado are worthless, with current technology it would take a couple of barrels of energy to extract one barrel of oil from shale. This is primarily why no one has bothered with it.
Link 3: Iraq is one of a few countries left still growing in oil production, but obviously the war is getting in the way. Its not about the reserves in the ground, it is about what they can pump.
The truth is I’m worries about life in America in a few years myself. A lot of this could have been avoided had we prepared for it back in the 80′s, but we didn’t. In fact “Globalization” made it worse.
For 5 years I had a 3-day work week (12.5 hour shifts, for a total of 37.5 hours, with the ability to claim the additional 2.5 hours to round it up to 40 for time spent reading e-mail during the “weekend”). It’s been difficult to get back into the 5 day grind.
Those long days were pretty rough, but the 4 days off made up for it.
13 MM.
“the news I have read is that that there are vast untapped amounts of oil yet to be
realized.”
Link?
http://tinyurl.com/52w3q
“By conservative estimates, the underground deposits around Fort McMurray hold 1.6 trillion — with a “t” — barrels of oil, making them the largest lode of hydrocarbons on Earth. Up to 330 billion barrels of the crude here in Canada’s oil sands region are recoverable, geologists say. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, possesses 262 billion barrels of proven reserves.” USA Today
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands
These are the Athabasca-Wabiskaw oil sands of north northeastern Alberta, the Cold Lake deposits of east northeastern Alberta, and the Peace River deposits of northwestern Alberta. Between them they cover over 140,000 square kilometres (54,000 sq mi) – an area larger than England – and hold proven reserves of 1,750,000,000,000 barrels (280 gigatonnes)
We just need to wait until the Arabs price themselves to make recovery worthwhile by American Free Trade takeovers.
RBG
Didn’t I just read the news about Brazil striking oil? Something like the third largest oil field in the world?
#25 those are good links. I wonder what the price point of imported oil is going to be when it will be feasible to extract from this resource. $5, $10, $15 per gallon U.S.? Personally I think the economy in terms of the living wage and U.S. trade competitiveness will be badly damaged beyond $5.
Can we recover?
The talk show host David Ramsey said that one of the reasons we are not as up-in-arms at the price of gas (this is a few weeks ago..) is that we are
now (as apposed to the 1980s squeeze) is that we are mostly paying by credit card now. If we were all required to pay with cash we would not be talking about this oil squeeze, but taking action. I am tired of parking next to Lincoln Navigators that tower over me (at 5′-10″) with 5′-6″ moms with maybe a kid or two shopping for a dozen eggs. If we really had to pay for our gas with real money we would be well on our way to handling this. Try it for a week, see if you are more outraged at the price of energy.
First off — how about overtime at 32 hours?
Now, the four day work week won’t catch on unless schools can do it too. They’re a driving force in scheduling.
“#25 those are good links. I wonder what the price point of imported oil is going to be when it will be feasible to extract from this resource. $5, $10, $15 per gallon U.S.? Personally I think the economy in terms of the living wage and U.S. trade competitiveness will be badly damaged beyond $5.
Can we recover?”
First, we are already extracting oil from this resource. Second, the process need to extract requires water and lots of it. It only rains so much in Alberta.
In other words, it does not scale up. Alberta cannot produce any more oil from oil sands than it is producing right now. We wouldnt want to anyways, the process contributes heavily to global warming, and the oil sands oil is low grade oil which limits its uses.
All these articles about huge oild deposits are worthless if we cant get it out. Another huge deposit is the Bakken shale deposit centered around North Dakota. Virtually untapped because the cost of drilling is too excessive.
And it is not an economic matter either. If you put more energy into drilling than you get out in barrels, its not viable no matter how high the price of oil gets. This is quickly becoming the case in Ethanol production.
Bottom line is this: Our energy future is based on electricity from renewable sources. We have to get off this “fuel” kick. Say goodbye to the internal combustion engine, hello electromagnetic motors.
7-In California (and am sure other states as well) overtime is deemed any week over 40 hours or any workday over 8. As good an idea as 4-10 hour shifts would be, there’s no way businesses would be in favor of it.
“How To Bring an Infidel Superpower to its Knees without Firing a Shot” by your Middle Eastern Friends and Allies.
OUT OF IRAQ NOW! AND BRING HOME ALL THEIR DAMNED OIL!
#31–Brian==if the employee work group votes for the 4/10, overtime does not need to be paid. Forget if that is true of 3/12.
Saving of gas is quite minimal as other people drive in for the other days, but yes, slight savings are achieved==unless the off time is used for nascar practice?
Like all difficult to solve problems, the issue is multi-factorial with interacting issues.
Along with coal and ethanol, this all highlights for me the need to alternative energy sources to be carbon free/greatly reduced.
I’ve been working a 10hr/4 day work week for the past year and I love it. It has been saving me approximately $40 a month in gas alone from my previous 8hr/5 day work week. I also find myself eating out less and spending more time doing various projects and hobbies that I never had the time or energy for before. It’s going to be tough going back to a 5 day work week.
Don’t see any replies from those of us in competition with offshore software people making half or less as much. Which is not to say we are making a lot. Get another job? Funny. Ah, none of my cohort is typing here because we’re spared access to blogs &c. at work.
When Bush gave gave away piles of cash back in 2001, I argued that the money would have A MUCH LONGER stimulating effect had it been used to get fiber optics into every home.
My conservatives friends called me a socilist.
(apparently Bus’s habit of simply taking cash out of the pockets some and giving it to others is not socialist.)
My thinking was that fiber optics in every home would could encourage the free market to become more efficient.
… I suppose I should add that one of these efficiencies, is to save workers two wasted hours a day on the road.
(most of you probably got that.)
what aboot all the people that want something for nothing?
To all those people who are so sure we are at our limets on oil all I can say is you do not live by a oil field. I live in one of the largest oil areas and I can tell you at least 30% of the rigs are turned off. Not because of no oil but because the owners do not need the income and know the oil will be worth more later.
>>#27 those are good links.
No they’re not. They’re just more links to sites describing the myth of extracting oil from sand and shale. Ethanol is a losing proposition (takes more energy to produce than it provides); extracting oil from sand and shale is a disaster, and abortion. Sure, if oil goes up to $300/barrel, it might be economically feasible to develop the technology (currently vaporware), but BFD. We’re still despoiling the planet, and just putting off the inevitable. Once everybody in India and China starts driving, how long do you think even the sand and shale oil reserves will last?