Robert Paterson's Weblog

Oil Prices - PEI and King Canute - We all have to work together

 

Craig Avery, a lobster fisherman from Northport, says fishermen already struggling to make ends meet have been dealt another blow. He said his fuel costs alone will increase this year by more than $5,000. (Guardian)

“With the low price of lobsters that we already have, we have no way of making that up,’’ said Avery.

Fishermen have been receiving $4-$4.50 per pound for lobster.
“Bait prices have gone crazy. Fuel is going up. We’re catching the same amount of lobsters. Expenses will be up $8,000-$10,000. There’s nothing there left.’’

Fishermen and farmers are not the only ones affected by skyrocketing gas prices. Tourism operators are bracing for the worst. A new Rand McNally survey says two-thirds of Americans planning road trips this summer are either altering their plans to shorten their trips or cancelling altogether.

High fuel prices are also pushing up food prices and taxi drivers in Charlottetown are calling for an increase in fares to cover the costs of skyrocketing gas prices.

The issue was front and centre at the P.E.I. legislature Wednesday. Conservative Mike Currie called on Premier Robert Ghiz to honour his promise to end mid-month gas price adjustments.  “You broke that promise,’’ said Currie. “Clearly he’s not concerned about the well-being of Islanders. I guess when you have a gold credit card to buy your gas, you’re not really concerned.’’

Ghiz said when the promise was made last year world oil prices were not as volatile.  “I wish I could control the price of oil,’’ the premier said.

The people also thought that King Canute was all powerful. He was held responsible for the weather, for crops, the the health of his people. Fed up with taking responsibility for things he could not control - he set up a demonstration. He had his Throne taken down to the tide's edge and commanded the tide not to come in.

Of course it did.

Folks the energy tide is coming in and there is nothing that "King" Robert can do about it and shifting the blame onto the government for massive forces acting in the world is as much use as hoping that King Canute could stop the tide.

So what can we do then?

We have to pull our head out of the sand and start to thinking our way through our new reality. The trends for energy prices have been clear for years. We are now going into a new world where most if what we took for granted will have to change. Let's explore this.

We can't hope to keep the world we had.

Fishermen who have $200,000 worth of capital tied up in a diesel boat and who sell to a broker have a business that cannot work anymore. There may be a fishing business but not structured as it is now.

Farmers who rely on oil based inputs and on moving their produce across the world and on selling not to customers but to middle men will have no business. There will of course be farming but not designed as it is.

Cab driver driving Crown Victorias getting 14 miles to the gallon and taking one passenger at a time have a business that does not work anymore. There will be cabs but not like this.

A Tourism business that relies of quick road trips aimed at lower middle income people will not have a market. There will be tourism but not like this.

A school system that buses all the kids for up to 2 hours a day and that heats big schools will not have a model that works. There will be schools but not like the ones we have now.

Businesses that rely on their workers to drive in every day will not have a workforce. There will be businesses but not like the ones we have now.

People who heat with oil, drive a gas guzzler and have no insulation in their houses will not be able to afford food let alone taxes.

People who struggle to feed and eat will not be able to pay taxes. You can expect the tax base to come under pressure and so on.

There will be a future but not based on how we have structured our lives for a world of cheap oil. Our first act is to "see" what is really going on and to stop looking for help from people who cannot help us - this is about us and not "them".

Time to start thinking how we all live and work through. We don't have a lot of time. When we are pushed to the wall - we can become very creative - but not if the debate is confined to what can the Premier do for us. Not if the debate is all about "Bring back the life we have had.

Let's please accept what is going on and then start to think together abut what we could all do - I think that we will surprise ourselves with how smart we can be.

 

Oil Prices - A blip or a Tipping Point - You Choose

What does this tell you about the future? Now look at Peak Oil. This post was written in 2005 - see how prescient it is

This is THE context for all decisions today.

What's your plan?

Taxis on PEI - Appeal for a $1.0 increase in fares

This weekend I posted about the stress that cab drivers were having trying to live with higher gas prices. My post also looked into how Mayor Bloomberg in New York was making long term changes to the regime in New York and will be replacing the traditional Crown Victoria that does 14 miles to the gallon with Hybrid Escapes that do 36.

Today it is reported that the cabbies in Charlottetown are asking for a dollar a fare raise - good for them - they need it. I would ask that the city say yes fast BUT ALSO begin plans to make structural changes that will reduce the cost of the fleet.

Please start the process of coming to grips with the end of cheap oil and the changes that costly oil will make on all parts of our lives.

Yes this is also the context for making Charlottetown a bike friendly city

Chi Chi - A parable for how we die today

Once upon a time there was a shipwreck and 3 sailors made it to the shore of a desert Island.

As they crawled up the beach they were met by a band of natives. The natives seemed friendly but firm as they were taken back to the village.

There was a huge feast that was shared with the sailors - things looked good. But when the meal was over, they were brought before the chief who of course spoke English.

"You have a choice" he said to the first sailor - "Death or Chi Chi"

"Chi Chi" said the first sailor - He was tied to a stake and slowly skinned alive dying hours later in agony.

"You have a choice" the chief said to the second sailor - "Death or Chi Chi"

The second sailor was a shrewd man. This was obviously a trick question. He answered "Chi Chi"

He too was tied to the stake, skinned alive slowly and died hours later in agony.

The last sailor was horrified and knew that there was no trick. So when he was asked what he would choose shouted out "Death!"

"Good choice" said the chief. "But first Chi Chi."

Remind you of how things work in the medical world?

Dying at Home - PEI now allows palliative medication at home

On the left is Dr Mireille Lecours - the nearest to a saint that we have on PEI - she attended both my in laws in their last year and was Robin's GP during her Cancer treatment.

How we are born and how we die is surely a marker of who were are as a culture. We have made both birth and death a mechanical process where all the control has been given up to the profession of medicine. There are cracks in this regime with births and now we are seeing the same cracks appearing for death - at least on PEI.

There has been a change this week in policy that I think will make a huge difference in reclaiming being human on PEI. The government will now pay for palliative care drugs at home.

For my American readers in Canada the government will pay for your drugs only if you are in a hospital. This means that most people who are terminally ill or just dying of old age, end up being aggressively treated in hospital. For that is what they do in hospital, they try and make you better. Hospitals do not do palliative care, they do treatment. There is a world of difference between the two.

The result is that we spend more than the entire prior lifetime spend on the last year of life - effectively doubling the cost of healthcare - and we make dying a mechanical and inhuman matter. I will never forget two nurses arguing over a bit of gear in front of a family member in her last hours. It was as if she was not there or was a lump of meat.

The truth is that for many of us who will be terminally ill or who are simply dying of "old age" there is no cure. What there is, is the opportunity to die with our dignity. To be without pain. To be with our loved ones in a human setting. The best place of course is to be at home.

Until now this was not possible. Until this week, drugs would only be paid for on PEI if you were in hospital.

I think that this is a historic and welcome step - well done all who have ben involved!

Tip to Tip - getting ready

Here is a link to the Tip blog where I have posted:

• The Itinerary
• The guides and maps
• What to bring

Is this the problem stated in Money terms?

Here is Diane Mermigas talking about the commercial networks - is this the same for NPR and PBS?

The Big 4 broadcast networks’ probable loss of substantial upfront ad dollars raises pressing questions: Where will as much as an estimated $1.5 billion in spending go instead? How will their corporate parents offset such losses? How quickly can they master multi-platform monetization of increased TV viewing on smart phones and other smaller screens?

The broadcast networks’ most formidable challenge is no longer prime-time supremacy–it is adequately pricing and recouping the ad dollars and licensing fees in the digital media spectrum. The broadcast networks’ parent companies may be unable to generate enough digital and cable network revenues to collectively offset upfront and scatter market ad losses. In that case, deep cost cuts are inevitable, as are other fund-raising efforts–such as selling equity stakes in prime-time programming blocks to outsiders, as the CBS-Time Warner CW Network has done with independent studio Media Rights Capital.

Worst-case estimates call for CBS and ABC each to decline as much as 15% in upfront ad sales (to about $2 billion in revenues each), and for NBC and Fox each to be down about 13% in upfront ad sales (to about $1.6 billion each). The ad dollars could shift to cable, online and connected mobile devices, or be withheld by reticent advertisers. Even with CPMs up as much as 4%, this might not make up the fiscal difference.

Anticipated ad spending declines and shifts will reflect the long-suffering loss of broadcast network TV viewers, the crippled economy and the allocation of growing portions of ad dollars to other platforms. There also is the threat of a Screen Actors Guild strike in July and uncertainty about the amount of makegoods the broadcast networks owe to advertisers from missed ratings guarantees in the season just ending. In late March, the networks were down as much as 7% collectively–ABC was down 18% and CBS off 12%, according to Morgan Stanley. They track the continued decline in prime-time ratings: 15% for ABC, 11% for Fox, 8% for CBS and flat for NBC.

Ideastream - Cleveland - Winning Locally - Carnegie's Views

Carnegie have just produced a comprehensive report on the work in Cleveland at Ideastream - what is it like to combine TV and Radio? What is it like to live in one building? What is it like to be a keystone in solving local problems?

I have this paper at Corps here

Independence Day - What is the New Reality of a Locally Sustainable Station?

Here are some stories of how some stations are breaking free from the old contract and finding the new local one.

• Vocalo
• Ideastream
• WETA
• WOSU
• KETC
• MPR
• KPBS

All are different but have the same DNA I think. All about strengthening the local relationship in one way or another. All about getting ready for a world where network content will have to bypass and or move to free.

I smell smoke in pub media - Is there fire?

I smell the smoke of the economic slide in the model for pub media and I smell fear with the smoke.

I think that the smoke and fear are related to the deal between NPR and PBS and their stations unravelling.

Is the draw of their programming falling and hence are the costs of being in the system starting to mount?

As the draw of their programming declines are we also seeing a decline in underwriting and sponsorship?

Is there a future for a station that is in effect an NPR or PBS repeater?

What would happen to the system if the local station became truly relevant to its community?

Would this "new reality" free up the system to adjust?

Adjust to the new truths that content on its own in a infinite content world has little value. Adjust to the truth that content that is not interactive has little value. Adjust to the truth that content that is not available at the time and the convenience of the participant has little value.

Am I close?

KPBS and Google tell the Map Fire story - Imagine what you can do?

Corps of Discovery - The Best of Rob's Writings and Interviews - Future of Public Media

I first arrived in DC to talk with NPR about Public Media in the fall of 2005. I knew nothing about public media or indeed public Radio and TV then.

In 2 1/2 years, I have talked with over a thousand people in the Radio and TV systems. Since the end of New Realities, I have talked with hundreds more, I have interviewed many recently and I have written hundreds of posts.

I think that all of this conversation must have a purpose. I hope that it is that I may be able to offer back a record and synthesis of the best thinking and the best thinkers in the system.

I find it hard to find even my own material. So I have created an aggregation site that I have called "The Corps of Discovery" where I have collected what I think are the pieces that might help us all the most.

Over time I will add new material, in the hope that I can offer back the wisdom of you all to each other.

This site is roughly organized as follows:

• Stations and People - Perspectives of individual stations and their leaders
• Culture - Why it is how we see the world that will be the decisive barrier or opportunity
• Technology - What is proving to work well - how is technology affecting the economics - what is now clear about technology?
• Papers - Mini Books that include many of these parts in pdf form that you can download and then read on the plane, in the bath or on the beach

All of these posts were posted originally on my main blog or on Fast Forward. My purpose here to aggregate all of these stories into one place so that they might be more easily found.

 

City of Charlottetown to look at making Biking Safer

The City of Charlottetown is looking at what to do to make it safer to bike in town - phew!

Safety is the barrier for me. I know I am not alone either. I have come very close many times to being hit by trucks and cars who just don't "see" bikes. When I mean safe - I mean when this kind of experience is normal:

Safe is when you can take your granny and child out for a ride. 40% of traffic in Copenhagen is bike traffic now!

There is a lot at stake now too. 3 years ago I spoke with a friend who did bike all summer. She saved about $500 worth of gas. That would be closer to $1,000 now. What might that be in 3 years?

We cant change our winter weather but we can make it much safer and easier to bike from May to November.

I would ask that the City think about the approach roads to town as well. I live on the Bunbury Road and that is an accident waiting to happen. I bet it is no better coming in from Cornwall either.

In Denmark all of public transport carries bikes as well - please use a wide enough scope in this project. Alan tells me that Kingston does this too - here is the web page that shows you what this could look like:

Rack and Roll is a convenient way to travel by closing the gap between cycling and transit. Now available on every Kingston Transit bus during the cycling season for no extra charge, Rack and Roll offers cyclists a convenient way to travel with their bikes when they choose not to ride.

Some of the reasons cyclists list for using Rack and Roll include:

•     Sudden changes in the weather  
•     Travelling through high traffic areas  
•     Mechanical problem with bicycle  
•     Take your bike to work so you can bike on your lunch hour or bike home at the end of the     day  
•     Any of the same reasons you would put your bike on your car.  

Kingston Transit uses The Sportworks^TM  bike rack. The stainless steel rack is lightweight and designed for easy loading and unloading. It can be raised and lowered with one hand, and will securely hold two bikes with wheels as small as 16 inches.

 

  Opening   the rack.  

 

  Loading   the bike.  

 

  Securing   the support arm.  

The Follow on has the criteria for evaluating a city's progress to having a truly bike friendly city

 

Taxis and Oil Prices

Taxi drivers are always a useful source of local information. I got the same news from a cab driver in St Louis and on PEI this week. It's hardly worth their while anymore.

In both cities the "standards" force them to drive large cars. In both cities the fares adjust very slowly so all the increase in fuel is absorbed by the driver.

Time I think to rethink what a cab looks like and time to rethink the approach to fare setting.

Here is what New York is doing: (Far and Wide Blog - AP)

It's easy being green, just ask New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg announced a plan Tuesday that will turn the city's entire yellow taxi fleet into fuel-efficient hybrids within five years.
   
Over the past 18 months, some 400 hybrids have been tested. They include the:   

• Toyota Prius.
• Toyota Highlander Hybrid.
• Lexus RX 400h.
• Ford Escape.

Under Bloomberg's plan:

• There will be 1,000 hybrid taxis on New York City streets by October 2008.
• That will grow by about 20 percent each year until 2012.

Fast facts:

• A standard yellow cab, the Ford Crown Victoria, gets 14 miles per gallon.  The Ford Escape taxis get 36 miles per gallon.
• There are about 13,000 yellow cabs in New York City.
• Hybrid vehicles run on a combination of gasoline and electricity.
• Yahoo Inc. said it would donate 10 hybrid Ford Escapes for the city's effort.

PEI School Buses

The big news here on PEI has been that the school buses had to be pulled off the road for maintenance.

But for me there is a larger issue lurking. How will the school system be able to afford the increases in fuel for the buses? Is our entire approach of having large schools pulling in kids on buses sustainable as we enter a new pricing regime for energy?

Or another view - Is our school bus fleet really a public transport system in waiting for the time when many Islanders will not be able to afford to run their own cars/trucks?

In Cuba, during the crisis of the Special Period, public transport and a more distributed school system were two of the major solutions to the fuel crisis.

If we don't start to think like this - what will be out response? For the average salary on PEI is $26,000 a year. Food, a car and heating don't fit into that number.

Long Time no Post

Sorry I have been quiet - Hope's wedding (preview pics) kept me in the real world as did a trip to KETC this week.

Both have been momentous. It's something to have your daughter married. It's also something be be part of what might be the breakthrough project in public media.

More on both next week.

Now on a marathon trip home

Weddings - The Cycle continues

This weekend my daughter Hope and her man Charlie get married. As the father of the bride, I have kept my head down and have been obedient. I have my wardrobe selected, had my haircut, nose hairs too! I have stayed out of a planning exercise similar to D day. All I have to do is be present.

I have to confess that I am very excited. Charlie is a wonderful man. It took me at least 20 years to win the confidence of my in laws and he is already like a second son.

His own father, like mine, died young. But Lorne will be attending his son's wedding - he is buried on the hill above Charlie's boyhood home - and so will look out at us this weekend. There is a stone bench by his grave and I am sure that he will get lots of company and maybe even a drink or two.

I can't help thinking of my own wedding 33 years ago. What a different world it was then. The Vietnam war had just ended. Robin and I were so young, 24 and 22 compared to many who marry today. I had long hair and a mustache and looked very sixties with flair pants on my going away suit. In our first year of marriage we moved 3 times and I put on 30 pounds!

I can't help thinking about my own parents' wedding either. It was in 1948. The war was just over and Dad was at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Mum was 20 and he was 22. They went back as a couple to Oxford in the midst of austerity and rationing. On the trip back to England my dad was overcome with sea sickness and confined to his cabin. Mum befriended a nun who chaperoned her during the crossing. There was a coal shortage that winter and it was also the coldest winer since the 1660's. My mum would go to bed in her sweater, a scarf, socks, gloves, a hat and her dressing gown. No wonder it took them 2 years to conceive me.

I wonder what life will be like for Hope and Charlie these early years. It was hard for Robin and I and for my parents - but looking back these early years were good ones for both Robin and I and my parents. We had no money and were buffeted by life but we were young and in love. My mother's letters of that time are full of hope and joy as were mine.

I wonder what their life will be like in 33 years from now. I won't be around to know. It feels strange to know your own mortality. Lorne and I will just have to keep an eye out in our own way as he will this Saturday.

The radiology scare on PEI - another perspective

Now we have our own scare and 5,700 images are in question and nearly 5,000 people are involved.

Point #1 - Volume - But as I heard the story last night, I got to wondering - there are 47,000 households on PEI.

10% of Islanders are involved? Doesn't this sound odd to you too? What is going on that so many of us "need" imaging?

Point #2 - Volume - A huge challenge for all rural societies is to have skilled technicians locate in the hinterland. Realistically will PEI ever get a lot of technical talent here? When I say technical talent I mean the ability to interpret complex situations such as interpret pictures and to do complicated but routine operations such as knees. To be any good you have to have talent and you have to have lots of volume.

Why not have a strategy to define a sector of treatment that has to be done in a large centre and send the images there and send the patient there if necessary?

It will never happen that a place like PEI can have a critcal mass of such talent here.

Circle of Trust Meets the Long Tail - Trusted Space?

Many of us agree that in a world of infinite content, that the value will no longer be in the mass market but in the niches in the Long Tail.

Our intuition tells us that it is in the niches where the scarcity and hence value lies - attention, attraction and hence energy. If this is true, then how do we find the right niche and unleash this power? What is the best filter?

I think that our best filter is our small circle of trust. It has both the power and the reach. I believe that this "circle of trust" is defined by our biology and not by software. Real "friends" are not an infinite resource but exist only in small numbers that fit the "Magic" or "Dunbar Numbers" that in turn fit the Fibonacci sequence.

So here is the data - based on the early part of the Fibonacci sequence and where I have assumed that the Circle of influence may be to the Power of 4.

So a circle of 8 - the ideal Trusted Space - can attract, affect and influence 4,096 people. If I have 144 in my circle we can reach just over 400 million others. BUT my bet is that just as the reach goes up, the gravitational pull goes down.

2 - 16

3 - 82

5 - 625

8 - 4,096

13 - 28,561

34 - 1,336,336

55 - 9,150, 625

89 - 62, 742,241

144 - 429, 981, 696

Notice anything? As we look at the sequence we see a Pareto or power curve - it's the Long Tail.

So what do I also "see"?

I think that there are two power curves here. One is reach and the other is power or gravity.

The greatest gravitational pull is at 2 - the most effective reach is 144. There is likely a "sweet spot" along the curve where reach and pull are best found in concert.  My bet is that it is in using the circles of 8 - 13 - 34. You can reach more than a million people with 34 and you can really attract 4,096 powerfully at 4.

If my intuition is correct, then the full power of social software might be revealed as we explore these numbers and their meaning. Does this not put a new face on marketing? Does it tell us how we will find and attach to content in a universe of infinite content? Does this say something about how to organize anything?

I am a historian by training - can you help by testing this and also by drawing it?

The Web - Signal to Noise - The Circle of Trust?

When I started blogging in spring 2002, there were about 60,000 of us. 60,000 is a very small town. Charlottetown on PEI has a catchment of about 60k. In effect we all knew everyone.  We all had to behave as we all do on PEI.

Now! - Hundreds of millions of people are using social software. It's a jungle out there. Not only is there a lot of very bad manners but also crime and vandalism. I am finding much of the web more like New York in the 1970's.

Not only is it risky but the amount of noise is blocking the signal. Here is Seth Godin on the matter:

For a decade, the web kept delivering an ever better signal to noise ratio to me. I was able to hear more things, more clearly, in less time. Websites and email and my RSS reader were bringing me signals from everywhere, and processing them (and creating, I hope, new signal) was a joy.

Lately, I’m feeling noise creep.

Lately, the noise seems to be increasing and the signal is fading in comparison. Too much spam, too many posts, too little insight leaking through. I don’t use Twitter, but I know a lot of Twitter users are feeling this. So are folks who go to too many conferences. And don’t get me started on victims of Blackberry cc: disease.

I wish I could tell you the easy answer. I can’t. I just know that the faltering signal is a problem.

My answer is to keep my own community still in the bounds of magic numbers and limit my world to 150.

If you have 1,000 Twitter followers, 3,000 Facebook friends you are going to be not only overwhelmed but exposed to noise and vandals.

"I will lose touch with only 150 people in my world!" you might ask. But 150 to the power of 4 is a lot of people - it's 500 million people. I think that is enough for me.

This is my point that each "Friend" 'Follower" has their own world which gets added like a virus to yours. 1000 people to the power of 4 is a Trillion!!!!!

My bet is that the noise and the risk goes up exponentially with the number of people we allow into our circle. It's like sex and the risk of STD's. So here for fun are the key magic numbers taken to the power of 4 - assuming that each friend of mine has a close circle of 4 that I don't know. Let's see how the reach of this world scales:

• 8 - 4,096
• 15 - 50,000
• 35 - 1,500,000
• 80 - 40,000,000
• 150 - 500,000,000

I confess to be a bit stunned by these numbers. If I have a trusted group of 150 people, I can reach 500 million people.

At first glance I see a few things here.

Just because it is easy to add "friends" and "followers", your risk of noise, vandalism, crime and ennui expands into certainty as your close circle expands. There is only a small risk of missing things with a close group of 15!

Logically Trust must diminish also on a log scale as I expand my circle. So the power of your world is greatest with the smaller groups as well. So if you want to get something done, pay attention to your inner group - don't waste energy with groups larger than the 150 Dunbar number. The most power and the most support live in the 8 - 15 - 35 realms. Small potatoes for those who have thousands of friends and followers.

Imagine the web in 10 years? If you think it is a zoo now..... How we will get though the noise? How will we keep the vandals out of our world? How will we find things that we trust and that are important to us?

So how do I have a healthy life on the web? How do I want to have more support, more influence and less shit? The same way that we have to have a healthy life in the real world. We have to locate ourselves into communities that fit our biology. We have to protect and live in our "Circle of Trust".