13 thoughts on “Got Anchovies? Part 2”

1. ohiaforest3400 June 29, 2012 at 10:49 am

   And, speaking of creatures that love fishy things, whither Feline Friday?

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   1. Ian Lind Post authorJune 29, 2012 at 11:14 am

      Just posted.

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2. Ken Conklin June 29, 2012 at 11:03 am

   Amazon doe not collect Hawaii sales or excise tax on things we buy. The State of Hawaii income tax forms require us to faithfully calculate and pay the tax on things we buy from out of state. And we all know those taxes go to provide social welfare programs for the poor and downtrodden homeless and starving people, who cannot afford anchovies. So I do hope that all liberals who support having taxes, and raising taxes on the wealthy, will be sure to pay those taxes on the anchovies and other luxury goods they import from out of state. (Besides, Kippen de alba Chu needs the money for air conditioning the Palace.)

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   1. ohiaforest3400 June 29, 2012 at 5:40 pm

      Actually, it’s use tax, Mr. Conklin, and don’t be such a buzz kill. With all the tax handouts to corporations, minimal taxation of passive income, etc., I don’t think Ian’s box of anchovies — or any other consumer purchase — even remotely compares.

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3. Tim June 29, 2012 at 11:11 am

   Rubinsteins Salmon Red Sockeye, 3.7500-Ounce (Pack of 8 cans)

   delish. eligible for free shipping to Hawaii.
   http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0046H1OJ4/ref=pe_175190_21431760_M2C_SC_dp_p1

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4. Larry June 29, 2012 at 3:18 pm

   Don’t know about Rubinsteins, but Costco has Sockeye salmon three 6-oz cans for 10.29 exclusive of tax. Even with tax it’s cheaper. We like it, anyway.

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5. Tim June 29, 2012 at 3:34 pm

   I’ll give it a try, but having been born in the Northwest, I am picky about Sockeye.
   Canned sockeye was one of my favorite Christmas presents as a child. (not video games, oddly enough.)

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6. Ulu June 30, 2012 at 9:44 am

   The best sockeye is Copper River Red They have a ‘high’ fat content because the fish have a long run up to their spawning grounds. But any sockeye is better, way better, than Atlantic salmon which are farmed and doped up with antibiotics and other goodies.

   Costco usually has CRRs fresh at this time of year.

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7. skeptical once again June 30, 2012 at 12:29 pm

   One can find out if Amazon.com will ship an item to Hawaii by scrolling down to the product description. In general, a lot of products containing liquids that are packaged in plastic or glass containers (not metal) will state “Shipping only to the 48 contiguous states”.

   Will Amazon’s free shipping policy be around for Hawaii residents in seven years, as post-peak oil kicks in?

   I recently read about a report (don’t ask me where) that pointed out that a lot of Americans have an erroneous view about the coming “oil shortage” and it’s effect on transportation.

   Energy sources have diversified in the US to such a degree that most aspects of life (manufacturing processes, heating and cooling, etc.) won’t be effected at all by post-peak oil. Road transport at short distances won’t be effected either. For example, all car production in Japan is now switching to electric vehicles. Because of this and the burgeoning of mobile technologies, battery technology costs will be falling at a rate similar to the current dramatic drop in solar panel costs. (I suppose that this will be good news for distributed generation and bad news for some local utilities….)

   The coming problem will supposedly be with shipping and air travel costs because they will still be reliant on liquid fuels.

   That’s a big problem for Hawaii. Again, people worry about the future cost of their daily commute. That supposedly won’t be the big problem. The big problems will supposedly be food prices and the changing nature of tourism.

   In a post-peak oil world, tourism won’t die, it will just be closer to home (just the way it was in 2008). So the working-class Japanese (e.g., “OLs”, or “Office Ladies”) who come to Hawaii regularly will be going to places like South Korea instead (although they will still honeymoon in Hawaii). Affluent Japanese and Californians who now spurn Hawaii and prefer Paris will visit resorts on Maui. Hawaii’s tourism in a post-peak oil world presumably won’t collapse, it will just change. (This might mean that Waikiki would need to be redeveloped to appeal to a new kind of tourist….)

   Food import costs will supposedly skyrocket. Mayoral hopeful Kirk Caldwell likes to point out the reality that it is cheaper to grow food in California than in Hawaii (therefore it is supposedly okay to develop ag lands in Hawaii for housing). No one ever suggested otherwise. The problem is that this will not be true in years to come as liquid fuel prices inexorably rise. At some point, it will be cheaper to grow certain foods locally. (This is not just true in Hawaii, but everywhere; but it will probably be especially true in Hawaii more than in other places because Hawaii is the most geographically isolated urbanized area in the world.)

   So stock up on those anchovies!

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8. skeptical once again July 1, 2012 at 9:01 pm

   A good resource for understanding energy policy in Hawaii is the blog by Dr. Patrick Takahashi, former UHM HNEI director, entitled “SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR PLANET EARTH AND HUMANITY”.

   http://planetearthandhumanity.blogspot.com/

   Here is his self-description:

   I am Director Emeritus of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii and co-founder of the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research. My most recent book, SIMPLE SOLUTION ESSAYS, was published last September as #3 in the series of two earlier books on SIMPLE SOLUTIONS. I have written more than 100 articles for the HUFFINGTON POST and am working with an enlightened team to pioneer the BLUE REVOLUTION (http://bluerevolutionhawaii.blogspot.com/), beginning with the development of the Pacific International Ocean Station.

   Here is something he wrote about several years ago that touched upon the issue of air travel and oil prices.

   http://planetearthandhumanity.blogspot.com/2009/12/umar-swine-flu-dmfch2c-and-bio-jet-fuel.html

   3. I think the national energy policy focusing on the plug-in electric car, ethanol and clean coal is flawed. We should be developing the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC, Toshiba began selling one for portable electronics in October, but the Department of Energy has essentially forbidden work on this technology) and do a lot more for baseload sustainable electricity options, such as hot dry rock geothermal and ocean thermal energy conversion. I also once advocated making clean hydrogen free. That got nowhere, fast. My greatest concern today is about sustainable aviation. I finally can cheer on a government agency, as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency appears to now be strongly supporting the production of jet fuel from algae. Yet, close to nothing is today being spent on a next generation aircraft powered by hydrogen. This was once the National Aerospace Plane, and was supported by DARPA, the Air Force and NASA. It is reported that a sum of $10 billion was spent, although much of this work was secret. The Hawaiian Hydrogen Clipper (H2C) could well be the solution, but I don’t think the developers have secured a cent of Federal or private funds yet.

   I do not follow this blog. I just stumbled upon it years ago because when the Big Wind was first proposed, he stated that intermittent sources of energy like solar and wind do not really make sense for a statewide energy grid, but that geothermal and OTEC make sense. (He is a huge fan of OTEC, although he acknowledges that it is not yet a commercially viable technology. Hawaii has no continental shelf, which means that cold deep water could be utilized close to shore with OTEC, turning Hawaii’s coasts into the equivalent of energy gold mines.)

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9. skeptical once again July 2, 2012 at 1:18 pm

   The following blog entry is by a peak oil skeptic, who points out that no matter how high oil prices might rise, shipping prices will be little effected because shipping is really cheap and efficient.

   http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2005/08/55-will-peak-oil-make-long-distance.html

   MYTH: The rise in fuel prices occasioned by peak oil will make it too costly to transport food over long distances. Food production will have to be relocalized. As the peak oilers say: “The 3000-mile salad will be a thing of the past”.

   REALITY: A kilogram of rice (in Japan, where I live) costs about $3.64. The fuel cost of transporting this rice by container ship, at current fuel costs, over a distance of one-half the circumference of the earth, is about $0.015 (one and a half cents). Ship fuel accounts for 0.4% of the cost of the retail product.

   So let’s look at how fuel costs for long-distance shipping will affect the price of this bag of rice as oil prices skyrocket:

   If crude=$65/barrel, rice=$3.64/kg
   If crude=$130/barrel, rice=$3.655/kg
   If crude=$260/barrel, rice=$3.685/kg
   If crude=$2600/barrel, rice=$3.775/kg

   Clearly, demand destruction is going to occur long before crude costs make long-distance shipping too expensive. Fuel costs for long-distance shipping are a minute fraction of the retail price of food. (Author’s emphasis.)

   One of the counter-intuitive realities of the transport industry is that as oil prices rise, shipping by boat thrives in relation to other forms of transport; rail becomes vastly cheaper than trucking, and ocean shipping is vastly cheaper than rail. So one of the ironies of peak oil is that as oil prices rise, it might become cheaper to ship food grown in California to relatively far-away Hawaii than it will be to truck it into relatively close-by New Mexico.

   Nevertheless, the shipping industry will be taking a hit on profits when oil prices rise.

   Also, when oil prices rise, the world economy will go into recession, and world trade will plummet. Like airlines that must still send half-full airplanes aloft when air travel is down, ships will have to still deliver goods even though those ships are not being used to capacity. The costs will be passed on to customers. (In fact, I believe that this is what is happening right now even though the world economy is not in recession.)

   Also, different kinds of goods are shipped differently. Produce like lettuce must be refrigerated during transport, and that will become much more expensive. So peak oil might indeed mean the end of the proverbial “3,000 mile salad” that originates in another side of the planet, contrary to the above peak-oil skeptic. This also goes for fresh or frozen shipped meat. But meat production may itself become prohibitively expensive with peak oil.

   So canned or bottled goods packaged in factories that run on natural gas or coal may still be competitive with similar local products, as will sources of starch (rice, grains, potatoes, etc.). But all of these products’ prices will be increasing because of general inflation.

   So we may still get our free shipping with Amazon.com, but we will be buying less in general with peak oil. You will be eating fewer anchovies because their price, and prices in general, will rise.

   Also, the Amazon Prime free two-day shipping may become a thing of the past. That’s not surface “shipping” proper over the seas, that’s air transport via FedEx.

   Of course, someone local who has thought out much of this is the local farmer Richard Ha, of Hamakua Farms. Here are his thoughts on food security.

   http://hahaha.hamakuasprings.com/food_security/

   Here is part of his latest entry:

   After the oil shocks of the early 1970s, the cost of oil per barrel was around the mid-$20 per barrel. That lasted for nearly 30 years.

   In this graph above, one can see that oil would have cost around $35 per barrel in 2011, had inflation been the only influencer of oil price.

   The cost of oil spiked in 2008, contributing to or causing the worst recession in history. In fact the last 10 recessions were related to spiking oil prices.

   From late 2008 until mid-2009, the price of oil dropped as demand collapsed for a short time. But demand picked back up and the price of oil has climbed back to $100 per barrel – in a recession.

   It is important to note that we in the U.S. use 26 barrels of oil per person per year, while in China each person uses only two barrels per person per year. Whereas we go into a recession when oil costs more than $100 per barrel, China keeps on growing. This is a zero sum game as we move per capita oil usage toward each other.

   What might the consequences be as China and the U.S. meet toward the middle at 13 barrels of oil per person?

   People are having a tough time right now due to rising energy-related costs. Two thirds of the economy is made up of consumer spending. If the consumer does not have money, he/she cannot spend.

   This last paragraph may be the most important issue in food security and peak oil.

   It’s not just the cost of shipping, but the cost and methods of shipping certain products, as well as the shift in what people will be eating because of simultaneous inflation and recession (‘stagflation’) that could make local agriculture more viable and necessary after peak oil.

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10. skeptical once again July 3, 2012 at 12:27 pm

    What will peak oil mean for the United States and Hawaii?

    Better health, in some ways.

    Here’s an NY Times interview with a mathematician who studied obesity.

    His conclusion is that obesity is all about cheap food.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/science/a-mathematical-challenge-to-obesity.html?_r=1&em&exprod=myyahoo

    He states:

    Between 1975 and 2005, the average weight of Americans had increased by about 20 pounds. Since the 1970s, the national obesity rate had jumped from around 20 percent to over 30 percent.

    The interesting question posed to me when I was hired was, “Why is this happening?” …

    … And it’s something very simple, very obvious, something that few want to hear: The epidemic was caused by the overproduction of food in the United States.

    Beginning in the 1970s, there was a change in national agricultural policy. Instead of the government paying farmers not to engage in full production, as was the practice, they were encouraged to grow as much food as they could. At the same time, technological changes and the “green revolution” made our farms much more productive. The price of food plummeted, while the number of calories available to the average American grew by about 1,000 a day.

    Well, what do people do when there is extra food around? They eat it! This, of course, is a tremendously controversial idea. However, the model shows that increase in food more than explains the increase in weight. …

    … Society has changed a lot. With such a huge food supply, food marketing got better and restaurants got cheaper. The low cost of food fueled the growth of the fast-food industry. If food were expensive, you couldn’t have fast food.

    People think that the epidemic has to be caused by genetics or that physical activity has gone down. Yet levels of physical activity have not really changed in the past 30 years. As for the genetic argument, yes, there are people who are genetically disposed to obesity, but if they live in societies where there isn’t a lot of food, they don’t get obese. For them, and for us, it’s supply that’s the issue.

    Interestingly, we saw that Americans are wasting food at a progressively increasing rate. If Americans were to eat all the food that’s available, we’d be even more obese.

    So what can be done?

    His research revealed that all diets are good, it just takes several years for the diet to kick in. So the trick is to nip obesity in the bud, so to speak, by not getting kids started with overeating. Hopefully, this seems to be happening. And the recession helped out a lot in this respect as well.

    One of the things the numbers have shown us is that weight change, up or down, takes a very, very long time. All diets work. But the reaction time is really slow: on the order of a year. …

    … One thing I have concluded, and this is just a personal view, is that we should stop marketing food to children. I think childhood obesity is a major problem. And when you’re obese, it’s not like we can suddenly cut your food off and you’ll go back to not being obese. You’ve been programmed to eat more. It’s a hardship to eat less. Michelle Obama’s initiative is helpful. And childhood obesity rates seem to be stabilizing in the developed world, at least. The obesity epidemic may have peaked because of the recession. It’s made food more expensive.

    I think the food industry doesn’t want to know it. And ordinary people don’t particularly want to hear this, either. It’s so easy for someone to go out and eat 6,000 calories a day. There’s no magic bullet on this. You simply have to cut calories and be vigilant for the rest of your life.

    So, thanks to Michelle Obama and the recession, obesity levels may plateau.

    If peak oil and the national debt create hyperinflation and high unemployment, better yet. America is going to slim down.

    Of course, it might help to end corporate welfare in the agriculture industry. Did you know that in 2003, President Bush increased farm subsidies by 83%? Those farm subsidies don’t help family farms, they go to factory farming, especially corn-based farming that is the foundation of junk food. Interestingly, I understand that Canada and Australia — supposedly socialistic — do not have any farm subsidies.

    Look at France, where government services comprise 65% of the national economy. Yet food in France is expensive (and high quality and fresh), consuming one-third of the typical French household budget. Because food is expensive in France, French women are famously slim. So there is a culture aspect, where some cultures seem to value quality over sheer quantity and the effects ripple through society.

    Vive le France!

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11. Shipping to Hawaii July 5, 2012 at 12:26 pm

    I really like it whenever people come together and share
    thoughts. Great site, stick with it!

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