Peak Oil

[Christopher Weeks]

Someone referred to this issue in one of the other threads -- maybe the what do I hate thread.  It's something that I've just recently been researching.

What do you think about Peak Oil?

If you think it's real, what are you doing about it?  If you think it's a hoax, why?  And why do you think it's being perpetuated?

[Eero Tuovinen]

Something like that isn't really a hoax, as the perpetrator knows at best only a little more than the victim. Really, do you know somebody who can gauge the socio-military-economical geographical effects of an oil shortage and project those changes 20 years to the future? At best you get reasonable approximations or guesses, which that page essentially is.

That said, I could see it happening. Much depends on the actions of various political bodies around the globe; I find it unlikely that India or China would take steps to develop alternatives, but some western societies might. Which will mean that they'll share those solutions with the USA when the time comes, because otherwise the US military comes aknocking with force. Hopefully the solutions are portable and scalable, otherwise we'll get to live in some interesting times.

As for me personally - don't really care. I've not been vested with political power, so I have no opportunity to help people about this thing. The best I can do is what I do anyway: live nice and prosper. If societal breakdown reaches here, I'll be one fuckin' survivalist bunny you soft city people wouldn't believe. More likely Finland will just scale heavy industry back for a couple of decades, go through a massive rearrangement of agroindustry, and continue on it's merry way. We don't even have oil, so no reason to come kill us.

So my attitude is wait and see - and educate myself in case I some day end up in position of responsibility and have to do something about these matters.

[Keith Senkowski]

I'm with Eero on this one (except for the fact that I think we already live in interesting times).  Wait and see.  I started digging through the links on that site and found all sorts of suspect leaps in logic inorder to make facts bend to a certain point of view.  That immediately raises red flags to me.

Personally I see it as a real issue that will have to be dealt with in the near-term.  However, I don't fell the need to panic.

Keith

[Ben Lehman]

I'm nearly as skeptical about the pessimism as I am about the optimism.  My guess is that times will get hard, the massive megalopoli will fall on terrifying economic hard times as the price of gasoline spikes, but there won't be an end of civilization, just a move away from the modern, suburban style of life.  I think we may look back on right now as a "golden age of energy" but not that the entireity of the world society is going to collapse.

But

My father is an energy researcher (hydrogen fuel cells) and pretty well connected in the field.  HE is enormously pessimistic about the energy future of the US.  Like, way more than most people.  Probably way more than that site.  And he knows more about the issue than I do.  Probably than all of us on this forum combined, unless there is another person who has devoted his or her life to the study of energy resources engineering around.

[Valamir]

People have been talking about running out of oil for 30+ years.

Fact is far from running out we have more today than we did in the 70s with more being found all the time.

Technology improves and we can now extract more oil from wells that used to be considered dry.  We can take oil out of places that we couldn't ever even reach before.  While its true that no new Oil Refineries have been built in the US since 1976, the efficiency improvements that have gone into place means that those same refineries are able to produce much more useable product from a barrel of crude.  So not only has the number of barrels of crude increased, the amount of energy we can extract per barrel has increased.

When you look at the VAST reserves still in places like Iraq and Russia and realize those places are still using 1970s era technology...and then extrapolate how large their reserves might actually be if they were exploring, and drilling using modern techniques...and refining using modern techniques...

No friends.  We will not see an "Oil Shortage" of civilization threatening proportion in our life times, or our childrens (for those that have 'em).  Life will go on...big business will continue to use oil as long as its cost effective to do so.  They will bring online alternative energy sources at the rate required (after some lag) to offset any unbearable price increase.

Oil shortage is hooey...

[Andy Kitkowski]

Yeah, I saw that interview on the Daily Show, too: Basically every time a shortage in "usable" oil is spotted, technology improves to the point where a huge source of oil, previously untappable, becomes tappable and refinable.  The next oil on the horizon is called, IIRC, "sand oil", which apparently there is a HUGE supply of in N America. They can't refine it yet, but they're working on it...

That was an interesting point of view. Dunno if it'll hold, but again: Interesting times.

Plus, I've got fingerless leather gloves and mismatched football pads in my closed anyway- If the oil wars come and go, I'll be there alongside Mad Max.

-Andy

[Valamir]

I'm nearly as skeptical about the pessimism as I am about the optimism.  My guess is that times will get hard, the massive megalopoli will fall on terrifying economic hard times as the price of gasoline spikes, but there won't be an end of civilization, just a move away from the modern, suburban style of life.  I think we may look back on right now as a "golden age of energy" but not that the entireity of the world society is going to collapse.

Absolutely, lifestyles may well change.

The network of roads and highways built in depression era America combined with cheap energy, cheap cars, and the post WWII prosperity led to the suburbanization of the country.  Could traffic congestion, higher energy prices, concern with commuter polution, and efforts by municipalities to revitalize down town areas lead to a re-urbanization of American cities?  Certainly within the realm of possibility.  Or could the development of new wireless technologies and ever increasing internet band width lead to a major trend towards telecommuting? Which could allow Americans to avoid the traffic and energy costs without having to move back to urban areas.  Lots of possibilities.

Lifestyles change and adapt to conditions.  As long as capital is free to flow to where its needed to finance that adaption life goes on.

[Ben Lehman]

As long as capital is free to flow to where its needed to finance that adaption life goes on.

BL>  You make that sound simple, or easy.  Capital flows freely when people live well.  "When people live well, people live well" is a bit of a tautology.

In order to keep capital freely flowing in the future, we need to start looking into non-oil solutions soon.  Because exponential demand means that, no matter if the entire earth is made out of oil, we're going to run out with 2-3 generations.  A society interested in the next quarterly report will crash and burn when that happens.

yrs--
--Ben

[Keith Senkowski]

Or could the development of new wireless technologies and ever increasing internet band width lead to a major trend towards telecommuting? Which could allow Americans to avoid the traffic and energy costs without having to move back to urban areas.  Lots of possibilities.

Lifestyles change and adapt to conditions.  As long as capital is free to flow to where its needed to finance that adaption life goes on.

Telecommuting still uses oil.  Food transport uses oil (when was the last time you ait something grown and processed locally).  Fuck, everything uses oil.  Plastics, heat, electricity.  Telecommuting isn't a solution for dwindling supplies.  

Capital flows on a river of oil.  When that river becomes a stream, that capital stops moving the way it did.

Keith

[kenjib]

There are a couple of folks on dailykos that have been giving very informed analysis of peak oil from a progressive viewpoint over the last few months:

http://www.dailykos.com/user/Stirling%20Newberry
http://www.dailykos.com/user/Jerome%20a%20Paris

I think that it is pretty clear that oil supplies will not be able to keep up with rapidly accellerating demand in the near future, even factoring in attempts to utilize difficult to extract reserves (some of which, like shale and sand bound oil take more energy to extract than they produce).  The oil companies know this today as do many officials of various governments (definitely including the U.S. White House).  While Ralph points toward the improvements that have been made in the recent past, investment by oil companies in new technology and exploration has actually been rapidly grinding to a halt.  They know that it won't be profitable and they are maximizing their profit potential accordingly.

How this will play out is much more tricky though, and here is where I think the Peak Oil predictions in those web pages are entirely speculative.  The problem is that there are several other issues that could be coming up soon to dramatically change the playing field to the point of making predictions now highly suspect.  The rise in assymetric warfare, the potential for a reinvigorated nuclear arms race (except now proliferating more quickly into a larger number of less stable nations), the dramatical accelleration of imbalance in wealth and ownership, global warming now beginning to show signs of practical and immediate impact on our lives, and the potential impending collapse of the U.S. dollar that holds up the world economy, are just a few examples.  Then there are the very dramatic issues that could show up suddenly and almost without warning yet also have a huge impact, such as the unification of the Islamic world under a centralized political entity, a constitutional crisis and the collapse of democracy in the U.S. caused by either fraud in the electoral process or a hasty fear-filled reaction to another major terrorist attack, a dramatic realignment of the world order based on the shockingly rapid disintegration of the U.S.' status as benign post-WWII world hegemon, or the rapid emergence of a new and unexpected energy source like cold fusion.

All of these things and countless more have the potential to emerge as major issues in the near future, along with peak oil, and the interaction between these various forces are very volatile and unpredictable.  Any one of them could rise to enough of a crisis level that something like peak oil would become totally eclipsed or at the very least play out from within a very different political/economic frame.  Any one of them could also simply never really become a problem.

[Vaxalon]

I'm of the opinion that the rising cost of oil will drive the development of replacements.  Cleaning up coal and nuclear, renewables, etc.

[Ben Lehman]

I'm of the opinion that the rising cost of oil will drive the development of replacements.  Cleaning up coal and nuclear, renewables, etc.

BL>  You are a man of great faith.  I admire that even as I think it is wildly incorrect.

yrs--
--Ben

[Vaxalon]

That's not to say that there won't be huge economic displacements while that happens.

[Walt Freitag]

I'm the one who mentioned the issue (on the Get It Out Of Your System thread). I expressed the worst-case scenario purely for amusement value. I believe that the problem is real but the predictions of its effects are exaggerated.

It's always easier to predict, and proclaim, "total collapse" than it is to think through the complexities of what is actually likely happen, taking into account that humans do stuff to adapt to changes. This is a failure of imagination. It reminds me of all those nuclear-holocaust stories that conveniently assumed an eventual 100% death rate, because even a 1% survival rate would leave an enormous number of people who would then, y'know, do stuff, and who knows what?

But, things are going to change. I can't walk through a suburb at nighttime and look at the decorative outdoor lighting illuminating trees and walkways without thinking, "Do these people have any ideea how hard you have to pedal a stationary bike to generate enough power to keep even one of those bulbs lit?"

The key to predicting the changes, I believe, is to examine current uses of energy in terms of labor actually saved.

A single gallon of gasoline contains the energy-equivalent of 500 hours of human labor... It only takes one gallon of gasoline to propel a three-ton SUV 10 miles in 10 minutes. How long would it take you to push the three ton SUV 10 miles?

An irrelevant question. It would take me one hour to bicycle the 10 miles. (Maybe less, if I no longer have to worry about dodging speeding three-ton SUVs!) Thus that particular one gallon of gasoline, as it was actually used, yielded only the functional equivalent of 1 hour of my labor, not 500. Which means (1) the SUV has a very high fuel-to-benefit ratio which makes it a prime candidate for it to be vastly reduced in usage, as we all already knew; and (2) if that particular gallon of gasoline were unavailable, the consequences would be 500-fold less severe than stated.

The implication that without cheap oil, everything suddenly requires 500 times as much labor, depends on the assumption that if gasoline were unavailable I would instead push my SUV, and many many other assumptions like it. Which is clearly absurd. It's a distorted picture that arises when you take current life, remove most of the energy supply, and change nothing else. It kind of reminds me of a TV commercial I've seen for an automatic garage door opener with a battery backup feature, depicting the plight of a family trapped in their car in their own fucking driveway because of a power failure that prevents their garage door opener from working!

One wonders whether the authors have ever been poor enough to be unable to afford to drive cars or to heat their homes as comfortably as they'd like to. If not, it may be understandable that they'd imagine life coming to a halt under such dire circumstances. I, for one, know otherwise.

Statistics like "making a computer requires X amount of fuel and Y amount of fresh water" are false. The falsehood is in the word "requires." Computer manufacturerers currently use that much water and fuel because it's most cost-effective to do so. Manuacturing is an optimizing game. If using twice as much fuel would reduce the total manufacturing costs enough to offset the cost of the fuel plus save an additional ten cents, the manufacturers would do it. Let's suppose they've done that already, reducing the unit manufacturing costs by ten cents while doubling its fuel requirements. What's going to happen when the cost of the additional fuel rises by eleven cents per computer manufactured? Suddenly they'll go back to using half as much fuel, and the cost per unit will go back up by twenty-one cents (ten cents because the ten cent savings previously achieved go away, and eleven cents because of the increased cost of the portion of the fuel they're still using).

On the other side of the coin, there are some uses of energy where the energy equivalent of a few gallons of gasoline would save, not a mere few hundred hours of labor, but years or lifetimes. Chainsaws, computers, and telecommunications are good examples. Using scarce expensive fuel or limited alternative energy sources for such purposes will continue to make economic sense. Hence we will still have chainsaws, computers, and data networks. And trains, and probably busses, and some (but not all) farm machinery.

It's interesting to speculate on what life looks like when you mix present and near-future technology with limited energy. We won't stop making microfiber because warm clothing (and/or heated clothing) is more energy efficient than heating houses to near 70 degrees F. Electronic systems that darken any part of a video screen that your eyes are not directed toward at that moment become worthwhile. Your washing machine might have to wait for a sunny afternoon, or a breeze, before starting its load. Nonperishable goods might be moved by fleets of low-speed robotic trucks powered by the heat collected by the road surface, or semi-robotic ships powered by a combination of water temperature gradients and sails.

Alas, all that tech might not prevent hot baths and showers from becoming infrequent luxuries. Genetically engineered anti-BO body bacteria might be a good business opportunity for a biotech startup.

- Walt

[Keith Senkowski]

Alas, all that tech might not prevent hot baths and showers from becoming infrequent luxuries. Genetically engineered anti-BO body bacteria might be a good business opportunity for a biotech startup.

Man I would kill for that right now.  I went running today at lunch and boy howdy!

Keith