quote=green_achers
Instead, I'm pretty sure the curve would have a very long tail followed by the hockey stick shape we're all familiar with. The area under the curve for the entire time period up to now could be a lot larger than the area under the curve for the time period between now and 2050.
Anyway, I'm just making the comment because it looked like a couple of people had pretty strong emotional reaction to that idea.
[/quote]
The nature of doublings is independent of the time function…as long as the rate is relatively constant.
Imagine that we are back to putting 2x the number of grains of rice on the chessboard, our classic doubling visualizer.
If the grains go 1, 2, 4, 8, 16…we can see that each new board square gets more grains on it than exist on all of the previous squares combined.
But what if humans went from 1 unit of food production to 2 over the course of a year, but then held that constant for 100 years, and then suddenly jumped to 4? Then we'd be comparing 1 + 2(100) = 201 to 4, which doesn't work, does it?
But there are two things that make the statement about "more than in all of human history" stand up, more or less.
The first is that food production has been, more or less, rather steadily chugging along, as it has been a function of population. The second is that the long, fat tail is thin and puny compared to the post-fossil-fuels explosion in population.
So even if there was a thousand years of chugging along at a million tons of annual food production, that will be matched in quantity by a single year of a billion tons of food production.
Using grains as a proxy for food production, consider that between 1960 and 2010, annual world grain production jumped from 643 million tons to 2.2 billion tons.
So taking 37 years to go from ~2.2 billion tons to 4.4 billion tons is a big, huge, gigantic pile of food tonnage, which I can pretty easily mentally visualize as matching cumulative world output over time. Of course, we could also drop this into a spreadsheet and prove it all out using reasonable assumptions, but just noting the increase from 1960 to 2010 gives a good approximation…
Ocean acidification is the thing that concerns me the most about increasing CO2 levels…
This ~9 min video is well worth watching because it shows that acidification is not a future concern, it is happening right now and could well alter the entire balance of life in the ocean.
Such things are hard to really internalize because they are so faceless and so enormous, but to those able to really sit with the information, it merely says we have to either begin doing things very differently, right now, or accept that we may well trigger changes that are utterly beyond our control and comprehension.
It is against such a backdrop that the stock market's wiggles and jiggles just fade into complete noise for me…
Since some very deep thoughts and opinions have been shared here, I would like to share one myself. There is an old history book that mentions these very thing happening, life in the sea dying(ocean acidification?), as well as the sun scorching men with fierce heat (climate change?)…I have to admit to myself it seems rather amazing that someone a few 1000's years ago could even dream up such facts?Now what I find even MORE amazing is the account links these events to the actions of people…
"and they did not repent of their deeds"
When I read the whole account and read between the lines I see it saying that all of these calamities are consequences of our acted upon choices.
I firmly believe it is soooo time for us to truly and completely 'repent' from our collective destructive life style.
I don't believe advanced organized civilization can be saved…but I do hold to the hope that LIFE can be saved, most likely greatly reduced in numbers for a time, but as the living systems of the earth heal perhaps mankind could heal as well from the 'nature' that has lead him to bring life to this brink in the first place…
Digging
Overpopulation is generally a taboo subject for most because of the extremely difficult questions it raises, and deep moral issues attached. It makes the problem solving monumental when you can't even name the problem in a meaningful way!
Easter Island is an interesting case study, but it strikes me as only partially helpful. The island is small enough that the events probably unfolded in a homogenous way. In an earth-scaled overshoot, it seems likely that the impact will manifest itself unevenly and over a longer time scale. Geography and differences in self-sufficiency at a country/region level would exacerbate the impact of the crisis and the time horizon of the consequences.
So the tough question: we collectively believe in building resiliency in our communities; how do we respond in a crisis if a neighbouring community isn't prepared or has bad luck and comes to our community for aid?
ps From the fictional and nonfictional stories, in my experience the narrative usually divides the participants into 2 philosophical camps: the 'share the limited resources equally and try to save everyone' camp (good) and the 'consolidate the resources to maximize the chances a few survive' camp (evil). It seems the rare exception that someone is well regarded after having to make an extremely tough call.
"If a man doesn't want to work than neither should he expect to eat"
I believe we will have to make these kinds of choices in the future so thinking about it now is a good idea. Thus the quote above, myself I wouldn't have a problem helping anyone who was also willing to fully contribute to the efforts. How many people have seen the movie "Alive"? The man they saved ended up saving them all.
Digging
Counter trend (Backwater eddy).
Esperance ports shipped 8% more iron ore out than last year. And still the ships keep coming. I thought it was because the Chinese were converting $US for commodities, but it cannot be that because PM Julia Gillard trades iron ore for Yuan.
Tentative conclusion: The Chinese have decided to print Yuan, just like the US. They do not value their own paper. I wonder if we would ship as much Iron Ore if we asked for Rare Earths in exchange.
I think that we have "Muggins" tattooed on our foreheads.
please translate I don't understand the point you are making?
Digging
[quote=cmartenson]Ocean acidification is the thing that concerns me the most about increasing CO2 levels…
Such things are hard to really internalize because they are so faceless and so enormous, but to those able to really sit with the information, it merely says we have to either begin doing things very differently, right now, or accept that we may well trigger changes that are utterly beyond our control and comprehension.
It is against such a backdrop that the stock market's wiggles and jiggles just fade into complete noise for me…
[/quote]
Chris,
There is certainly a strong argument for ocean acidification having more immediate large-scale consequences than global warming. Since both are triggered by the same carbon dioxide emissions of our industrial civilization, I agree that ocean acidification might be a better entry point than climate change for understanding these very large destabilizing shifts in the third E. Recently, on PP's climate change thread, there have not been any refutations of the problem of ocean acidification caused by human-emitted CO2 releases, at least not since this topic was brought up there last week. So, for those people that are still hesitant to recognize anthropogenic global warming, ocean acidification might be a worthwhile problem to ponder, and it does seem that the latter's consequences are likely to be more immediate.
But whether we're talking about climate change or ocean acidification, these are global problems that the free market cannot solve by itself, and that makes a lot of people, including the Ludwig von Mises Institute, uncomfortable. Von Mises' perspective has many great points when it come to free markets and monetary debasement, and I certainly appreciate the insight this offers into our current fiscal and monetary endgame. But just as Austrian economists are right to challenge current applications (or misapplications) of Keynesian fiscal stimulus and Friedmanite monetarism, those concerned about the global environmental problems such as Lester Brown have a very good point when they say that markets alone cannot solve these problems. The pursuit of individual interest works very well on some levels, but it does seem to be a major contributing factor to the very rapid series of depletion and degradation dynamics that are happening all across the third E. How to best respond to global problems, such as human-emitted carbon dioxide leading to ocean acidification, is a harder question. But it does seem that unless we engage in some coordinated action, we're looking at some very big environmental collapses that, as you say, would make even a fairly large fall in stock prices fairly insignificant in comparison. What I do hope is that any policy responses towards CO2 emissions will take into account the fact that humans are at lease semi-rational economic actors. A fee and dividend policy on carbon emissions seems to try to use a free market approach.
I can find no example in the paleoclimate record of another time when so much CO2 was released this quickly: The atmosphere has increased from about 290 to almost 400 ppm in about 100 years. Does anyone else at PP know of a time in geologic history when CO2 levels increased by over 30% in 100 years? Before humans were around, natural CO2 releases of this magnitude took thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of years. For more on the speed of our current climate shift, check out James Hansen's Storms of My Granchildren.
But this all might be pretty overwhelming , especially if one wishes to focus on personal responses. Why even talk about such big shifts when ultra-loose monetary policy and hard limits to growth imposed by passing the oil peak provide enough cause for concern and action?
Chris, I respect your answer to this question. Recently, one of my teacher-mentor's gave me the article When Words Decide in which author Barry Schwartz cites a number of studies that suggest that the way people think about things can be influenced in significant ways depending on how a topic is framed, or a question is asked. Schwartz, for example, cites Tversky, who people here at PP might appreciate for his work on the money illusion and why people have such a hard time understanding the costs of inflation. But he also cites Dan Ariely's Try It, You'll Like It, a study of people's preferences for doctored beer. And, one of the last parts of the article cites Cass Sunstein's concept of libertarian paternalism, which may sound like just plain paternalism to those concerned about the official story of 9/11 and Sunstein's apparent recommendation of cognitive infiltration.
Since you also also integrate Dan Ariely in your approach, Chris, I spent some time thinking about the presentation of the three E's and paths to resilience here at PP. It may be that framing the issues in a way recommended by Ariely's cognitive psychology is the best approach here at PP, and perhaps elsewhere.
Nonetheless, one of the most powerful aspects of your analysis is your generalist approach and your ability to get real when analyzing a problem, by which I mean, your ability to clear away the superficial and identify the independent variables driving the destabilizing shifts within the economy and energy systems. For example, you astutely teach us that no matter what Bernanke says or does, he can't print the US into prosperity, and you show us the evidence behind that. In some ways, Bernanke's zero interest rate policy and his QE are a type of language, trying to trump reality. After all, the only reason that the Fed can delay the almost inevitable dollar decline is because people believe in the dollar, and Bernanke's words and actions are part of this fiat illusion. The same is true for energy. While human beings have all kinds of great ideas and new technologies, you point out that none of these new ideas has really solved the problem of needing ever-expanding oil production to keep our growth-based industrial capitalism going. Again, in this case conventional wisdom tells us that human ideas - not quite the same as language, but thought and language are both human creations - in the form of technological innovation can solve the problem, but people like you, Robert Hirsch, and Charles Hall tell us that much more of this issue is about energy as opposed to technology, and that means that we're really going to feel it when the oil decline begins in earnest. The real again trumps words.
The same is true for ocean acidification. In the end, the pH of the oceans won't really care what we say or think, and they won't care how questions are framed. I don't mean to suggest that there is no value to using Ariely's or Tversky's insights when teaching things to people. They seem to be very valuable, and if they have informed your masterful teaching approach here at Peak Prosperity, then they clearly have many beneficial aspects. But it does seem likely that facing some of the large third E shifts, including ocean acidification, needs to be part of the picture as well. And hopefully people can respond to these large shifts in all sorts of individual ways, such as the family that is changing the way they are seeding and catching oysters in the video you linked.
For that reason, I think I will continue to have my students look at the extent to which CO2 and other GHG emissions that drive both ocean acidification and climate change is the core and the keystone of the third and largest shift in civilization, what we call here at PP the third E. Having said that, I think I could stand to learn a lot from your approach to presenting this information in a way that encourages people to feel empowered and in control of their own lives, as opposed to overwhelmed. Perhaps I need to set aside a whole month at the end of the year, dedicated to solutions, whether on the micro or macro level. I can still rearrange my course to achieve that second semester.
Cheers,
Hugh
[quote=Phaedrus the younger]Overpopulation is generally a taboo subject for most because of the extremely difficult questions it raises, and deep moral issues attached.
In an earth-scaled overshoot, it seems likely that the impact will manifest itself unevenly and over a longer time scale. Geography and differences in self-sufficiency at a country/region level would exacerbate the impact of the crisis and the time horizon of the consequences.
[/quote]
Overpopulation is a taboo subject. I bring it up from time to time. I get some responses, but mostly people prefer to talk about the effects of overpopulation as if they were separate issues. The moral issue I see with population is the "sin" of bringing a child into this world that you have no reasonable hope of supporting. The second even less popular "sin," in my lonely opinion, is increasing the current already insane population with a house full of children. I hold the unpopular view that having a slew of children is the moral equivalent of commuting to work in a Hummer H2, perhaps worse.
2X2X2X2 = 16 4X4X4X4 = 256
Second, your comments imply overshoot is a future event. I argue that a lot of the 3E topics we focus on here are clear indications that we are well and truly into overshoot already.
Speaking of Hummers, yesterday I was filling the tank on my 80+ mpg scooter, parked beside a man filling a 1 ton diesel dually pickup. Of course he left his engine running the entire time he was parked. I'm guessing he is a member of what my wife and I refer to as the 10 mpg crowd. There were no obvious accessories on the truck that would imply it was set up to perform heavy duty work. As a species, we are so misguided. Taking the human race as a whole, I don't see any obvious evidence that we are behaving any more intelligently than an algae bloom created by an abundant food supply.
Les
Hugh,
When you speak of seeking solutions are you referring to mitigating anthropogenic environmental degradation or averting human extinction?
For my part, I think we've long passed the "separate the recyclables and change the light bulbs" phase and are now in the "can any part of the human species survive?" phase.
Recognizing that we are on the brink of a singularity, any thoughts on what the survivors of the transition might expect and how to respond?
John G
…there are global implications to what I'm about to describe, but we each have to balance the practicality of our actions against those implications.I recently discovered there is a gas station near where I live that sells gas without ethanol. The nominal price is more expensive, but improved mpg makes it cheaper than ethanol gasoline. Also, I store gas at home for the various machines I still rely on. If you don't know, ethanol infused gas separates out into water and gas, a lot of water, which fouls any engine it fuels. It led to constant problems with my machinery. I am using the non-ethanol exclusively for my home machinery, but trade off based on convenience for our cars.
I suppose I rationalize my view on this subject, but I fail to see the advantage to subsidizing Iowa corn farmers over using oil based fuel when they burn far more fuel than I do, and their product results in so many headaches for me.
Let the crucifying begin.
Doug
Hi John,I am not sure if we're in danger of extinction or not. Maybe you're right to frame the question this way. I agree with you that we're past the "separate our recyclables phase." (He he…) A co-worker recommended a recently published book on population and Earth's sustainable carrying capacity for humans today called Countdown by Alan Weisman. Here's an LA Times review. And, we don't have to be anywhere near extinction for it to get very hard, even without consequences related to increases in atmospheric CO2.
I'm still on the, "let's learn about the three E's" phase, quite honestly. My wife is not really focused on these issues right now, and I'm not trying to get her to do so because it doesn't seem like the right time. As far as what to expect going forward, I try to stay optimistic about my ability to be happy and grounded even in a very hard world. I'm not preparing in most of the ways that some people are here due to my my work and financial situation. Basically, the best way I can prepare right now is to generate as much income as possible and turn it into some type of asset that is still likely to be valuable in a harder future, as well as to deepen my relationship in a community where in many ways I remain very foreign, since I live in a Swiss-French town but work and reside in an English-speaking boarding school. (OK, I concede that I could be doing more…)
But in a recent post, Arthur said something to the effect of, you don't know how bad things get until you see your children go hungry. (Sorry if I've mis-attributed such a statement, Arthur.) I think that's a fair way off for most of us in the developed world, but honestly, I have no idea what our future holds. Doesn't Chris say something to the effect of, all battle plans are great until the first engagement with the enemy?
In terms of specieis bottlenecks, it does seem that we made it through the Toba Catastrophe, though. Although, the term "we" only works on the downstream side of the bottleneck. On the upstream side of the Toba species bottleneck, if such an event actually occurred, then most of "us," by which I mean most homo sapiens, didn't make it. Only a few families made it, and we're all the offspring of those families.
Cheers,
Hugh
...if you buy a loaf of bread for three dollars in the local supermarket, probably not more than 15 cents of that three dollars was actually spent on the wheat that goes into the loaf.Even if you add in the energy to bake it and other ingredients, a loaf of bread costs me about 30 cents USD to bake. No ad campaigns. No trucking. And it's healthier. We have been sold such a bill of lying goods as a culture: cheap store-bought food and convenience over nutrition and sustainability. Well, it's not going to be cheap much longer. A debased currency, here in America and elsewhere (try India this week), overshot population and the limits of modern agriculture--all of which your podcast covered beautifully--will make food incredibly expensive.
The 12 pints of of home-grown pickles I canned yesterday might seem a quaint time-wasting hobby while one could buy the equivalent amount of pickles on sale for $21 dollars. I'm doing such things anticipating a time when food will be scarce.
Phaedrus the younger? Nobody talks much about the overpopulation elephant in the room here because the community at PeakProsperity.com is trying to light candles rather than curse the darkness. We know. Believe me, we know. We just put our energy into the few small things we can do to solve whatever personal, family and maybe community things we can change. As for the very real possibilities for mass starvation, famines, wars over food and water, and human (and other species) die-offs due to extreme weather, pollution, climate change…our awareness is under the surface, fueling our preparations.
I, at least, try not to stress myself over things I cannot change. Can I get my neighbors to even stop spraying Round -up weed killer on their lawns when there is a apiary a block away? No, and I have even less control over Fukushima. Can I stop the corruption of the banking cartels doing things like manipulating the precious metals market or re-hypothicating funds? No, all I can do is put my assets in hard goods like a well, a garden, canning supplies, seeds, and a paid off house. Can I change my government and its response to the 3Es? Not really. Maybe locally, a bit, but the power politics at the federal level seem out of control, and I have even less control (i.e. none) over other countries. You have no power "over there," either, and less in your home country than you think.
Does that mean I don't write my senators and complain, or work on campaigns? I used to, but the form letters from people like Senator Hillary Clinton (when I was in NY) and Senator Lindsey Graham kept thanking me for writing and then explained why they were going to do whatever the hell they wanted. The last local campaign I worked on ended with my idealistic and qualified candidate losing to monied interests. I vote anyhow, carefully trying to find the least toxic persons for the jobs.
Change will only come when people are in enough pain to be jolted out of their ruts. There is a world of pain coming, and we can ultimately only deal with those we live near and are responsible for. Concentrate on becoming the change you want to see. When others ask you for help, they'll finally be ready to listen. Sadly, for many of them that time may never come, or come too late.
Wendy, you nailed it. I wish I could give you more thumbs up.
John G
[quote=Doug]…there are global implications to what I'm about to describe, but we each have to balance the practicality of our actions against those implications.
I recently discovered there is a gas station near where I live that sells gas without ethanol. The nominal price is more expensive, but improved mpg makes it cheaper than ethanol gasoline. Also, I store gas at home for the various machines I still rely on. If you don't know, ethanol infused gas separates out into water and gas, a lot of water, which fouls any engine it fuels. It led to constant problems with my machinery. I am using the non-ethanol exclusively for my home machinery, but trade off based on convenience for our cars.
I suppose I rationalize my view on this subject, but I fail to see the advantage to subsidizing Iowa corn farmers over using oil based fuel when they burn far more fuel than I do, and their product results in so many headaches for me.
Let the crucifying begin.
Doug
[/quote]
Doug,
There is no need to rationalize. Subsidizing Iowa farmers so we can have ethanol is a political decision, not an ecological decision. If it were such a good idea, it wouldn't need subsidizing. If Iowa wasn't first in line for electing a president, they wouldn't receive a subsidy.
I don't know the chemistry involved when ethanol is combined with gasoline, but alcohol and water are totally miscible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscible) so adding ethanol to the gasoline should cause any water in your tank or lines to combine with the ethanol. That solves freezing line issues.
I haven't looked into the amount of CO2 that is emitted from an engine using a gallon of 10% ethanol blend versus a gallon of 100% gasoline. It may be lower, but there isn't as much energy contained in ethanol compared to gasoline, so you'll have to use more blend to accomplish the same goal. If anyone has these numbers handy, I would be interested to know what the real output difference is. I can't imagine that there would be a significant difference after adjusting for energy content.
There is simply too much energy contained in fossil fuels for them not to be used for economic advantage. As long as fossil fuels can be extracted and used as fuel profitably, humans will use them. It doesn't matter if it is burned in your lawnmower, Les' 80 MPG scooter, the 1 ton dually that gets 10 MPG, or a factory in China. It will be burned.
The problem is somewhat like a prisoner's dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_Dilemma.) It is in everyone's interest if we all stop burning fossil fuels, but it is really better for me to accomplish my goals quicker by using machinery powered by fossil fuels. There is no immediate consequence of me burning fuel (other than my wallet feels the pinch,) so there isn't anything to keep this action in check.
Nature has a way of fixing stupid. The fossil fuels that we burn will increase the CO2 in the atmosphere. The Oceans will sense the difference and absorb the surplus CO2. We end up with a lower pH in the ocean. This will benefit some species and will harm others. As soon as it harms humanity sufficiently, the driving force will stop and eventually, balance will be restored.
It is almost surreal to view our plight this way, but there really isn't anything that can be done to stop it. (I'm open to suggestions.) Enjoy using your power tools while you still can.
Grover
I haven't looked into ocean acidification too too much but I have to admit I had some nagging questions about it. CO2 concs have been way higher in the not-too-distant past, so it's not like shellfish aren't going to be able to make shells anymore. But we could see major ecological upheavals as the concentrations change so fast.
I think it will be a long time before people are starving in N America due to a lack of food, we are the world's bread basket and coal will be around long enough to make fertilizers.
But we will have major economic disruptions here, and other parts of the world particularly Africa may experience famine. I think the greater risk is that a world war will start and that will cause massive loss of life, and a general downward spiral will start where social organization breaks down and never really recovers, and therefore the steps we need to take as a society to move to wards sustainability won't happen.
I believe that technically, we could change today towards a sustainable future. The energy is available via solar, and we could organize our societies around all this. But the problem is cultural, so few people actually understand the issues. It's amazing the kind of denial techniques I see from people to avoid having to acknowledge reality. They'd rather believe the BS from our political and economic leadership which is telling everyone to just keep on consuming. But our leadership doesn't have a clue either, and even if they did they are too corrupt to do anything about it.
This relates to the above anecdote of people seeming to pride themselves on how much gas their giant SUV's burn. There is a widespread confusion between the concepts of "production" and "consumption". It seems many people believe that if they just consume more stuff then this will be good for the economy because it will provide incentives, and therefore jobs, for people to "produce" that oil (this seems to be what modern Keynesian Economics is all about). Most people actually believe that oil is "produced", and even here in Canada the official organization promoting fossil fuel interests calls itself the "Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers". I'd sure be interested in learning how they "produce" oil.
There is a complete mismatch between the direction our energy systems are headed and where they need to go. Here in Canada, which has arguably a quarter of the world's remaining oil reserves in the oil sands, there is a monumental push to get this pipeline through to ship it to China, for "economic" reasons purportedly. Never mind that the entire reserve represents only 10 years of global oil consumption, and that N America already imports 1/3 of the oil it burns. Those unfortunate facts aren't relevant to our economists, because economics has never had anything to do with representing reality.
[quote]I don't know the chemistry involved when ethanol is combined with gasoline, but alcohol and water are totally miscible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscible) so adding ethanol to the gasoline should cause any water in your tank or lines to combine with the ethanol. That solves freezing line issues.[/quote]It doesn't work like that. Before I realized what was going on, I was having all kinds of problems, mostly with my garden tractor. When I heard about the ethanol problem, I pumped a gallon plastic jug full from my partially filled 50 gal. tank just to see what it looked like. The pump pumps from the bottom of the tank where separated water naturally settles. Nearly the entire gallon was water. Car guys tell me that's the way it always works.
Apparently there is enough mixing in a car's tank that the water doesn't settle out so easily. Obtw, I haven't had any problems since using the ethanol free gas and have been getting nearly 20% better mpg when the car is filled with it. I know that doesn't make intuitive sense when the fuel is only 10% ethanol, but my mileage is back where it was before ethanol was mandated, roughly 30 mpg, compared to slightly over 25 mpg with ethanol.
Doug
Doug and Grover-There's truth in what each of you have written. Water and ethanol are totally miscible, in all proportions, over a wide range of temperatures above 32F. Water and gasoline are immiscible for practical purposes. Having 10% ethanol in the gasoline would initially INCREASE the solubility of water in the mixture, but only to a point. (ethanol "likes" both gasoline and water, so it makes them "dislike" each other less) But once too much water is added, and the critical point passed, then much of the ethanol will stay with water in a second liquid phase. So the volume of the bottom phase will be larger than if no ethanol were present, but it's not ALL water. The main ingredient in fuel stabilizers like Stabil, which prevent formation of the lower liquid layer due to water contamination, is isopropanol. Isopropanol is a three-carbon alcohol, very similar in structure to ethanol (a two-carbon alcohol).
Hope this helps clear things up!
Julie
[quote=Doug]Apparently there is enough mixing in a car's tank that the water doesn't settle out so easily. Obtw, I haven't had any problems since using the ethanol free gas and have been getting nearly 20% better mpg when the car is filled with it. I know that doesn't make intuitive sense when the fuel is only 10% ethanol, but my mileage is back where it was before ethanol was mandated, roughly 30 mpg, compared to slightly over 25 mpg with ethanol.
[/quote]
The State where I live mandates 10% ethanol during the winter months. I used to have a Prius that averaged 54 MPG during the summer months and 46 MPG during the winter months. This happened year after year. I could always tell when the winter blend was being sold. I wish people understood that the total parts exhausted are more important than the parts per million.
As I said, I don't know the chemistry that well. Perhaps the ethanol isn't as miscible with gasoline when it has a high load of water. I'm wondering if the separation you are experiencing in your tank is due to oxidation effects. Do you use "Stabil" at all? How long was the fuel in the tank? Just curious.
Grover
Edit: I just read grandefille's reply that explains the phenomenon. Thanks Julie!