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PO effect postponed?

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Mon 24 Jan 2011, 08:47:12

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DoomersUnite', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', ':')roll: Ayup, everything is just hunky dory. Gas at the local station is up to 3.15 a gallon and going up just .02 per week in the off season.


Peak oil isn't about real gasoline prices being lower today than they were 30+ years ago. If you object to current gasoline prices, I would suggest an obvious solution...use less. Change your lifestyle so that it doesn't bother you. A suggestion we should all follow I might add, regardless of how much we like the current gasoline prices over the ridiculously high ones we had in the 70's...accompanied by rationing and shortages I might add. Something peak oil sure hasn't caused...so I'm more worried about PEOPLE caused oil problems than any geologic lack of supply.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '
')This summer it probably won't go over 4.50 or 4.75. And just 24 percent of mortgages are underwater nationwide, nothing to worry about.


Lots to worry about. The real estate market is certainly one of them. Oil isn't. Energy isn't. Easy solution? Big downpayments, rather than the ridiculous stunts people were pulling with NINJA loans and such.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '
')Did I miss anything?


Yes. All the stuff which was supposed to be related to peak oil, rather than American excesses with houses or the bursting of some bubble or another with the predictable, and normal, results. I'm sure the "housing market sucks" routine would play better at "housingdisaster.com" or some such place?

What you fail to see is that all of these problems were triggered if not caused by the oil spike to $143bl as brief and perhaps artificial as it was. A sustained oil price over $100 will cause much more disruption and even the most promising substitutes are more then five years away.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby dsula » Mon 24 Jan 2011, 08:48:58

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DoomersUnite', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leutnant', '
')And then there is the EROEI factor.


What EROEI factor? Lets face the reality of EROEI, if it mattered, we wouldn't be producing unconventionals at all.

What do you mean it doesn't matter? Of course it matters, but it's a "built-in" effect showing up on your balance sheet. The smaller the EROEI on your project, the smaller will be your profit margin. And clearly once you use more diesel to operate your machinery than what you get back you have a problem.

EROEI on conversions is of course different. That's where you take a cheap energy source, burn it and convert it into something more valuable. Then it becomes a matter of money only.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby DoomersUnite » Mon 24 Jan 2011, 20:18:04

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dsula', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DoomersUnite', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leutnant', '
')And then there is the EROEI factor.


What EROEI factor? Lets face the reality of EROEI, if it mattered, we wouldn't be producing unconventionals at all.

What do you mean it doesn't matter?


Pretty much what I said. There is some 150 years of history behavior to examine since modern oil was discovered, ever noticed anyone mentioning how EROEI caused a field to be shut in? Or stopped one from being developed in the first place? Me neither.

Seems like if you want to pretend EROEI is of value, you should at least be able to POINT at someone doing it and advocating a change in behavior because of it.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dsula', '
')Of course it matters, but it's a "built-in" effect showing up on your balance sheet. The smaller the EROEI on your project, the smaller will be your profit margin.


EROEI is all about energy, it has nothing to do with dollars. For example, I will trade you energy in the form of natural gas for energy in the form of crude. I will deliver 6000 standard cubic feet of natural gas to any location of your choice, and I will retrieve an equivalent amount of energy from that point in the form of crude oil. 1 barrel.

I will do this all day long and become richer than Bill Gates because people pretend that the form of the energy does not matter. I will get rich. You will go bankrupt. Yet in your EROEI world, we are doing nothing but trading even up.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dsula', ' ')
EROEI on conversions is of course different. That's where you take a cheap energy source, burn it and convert it into something more valuable. Then it becomes a matter of money only.

ENERGY return on ENERGY invested has nothing to do with money. Humans put the value on it, and the value of energy says that I can exchange you 1.6 energy units to create 1.0 energy units and make so much money off that ability that I can carve EROEI IS A JOKE across Mount Rushmore I would have so much money.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby Sixstrings » Mon 24 Jan 2011, 20:25:21

If peak oil is postponed, why are the Brits talking about 8 pound per gallon gas and RATION TOKENS:

http://peakoil.com/forums/uk-considers-rationing-fuel-issuing-tradeable-tokens-t60640.html
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby americandream » Mon 24 Jan 2011, 20:50:47

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dsula', 'S')o it looks like we got the serious effects of PO postponed, no collapse, die-off, zombies for long time to come as it seems (I remember it was scheduled for Christmas 2008)

1. more oil found than used in 2010
2. tons of NG available
3. high oil prices spur research in all kind of alternatives
4. high oil price spur research and investemnt in oil recovery


What dou you say, we postpone for another 20 or 30 years, and then meet again?


You're about right although I would more properly term it, a moment of material dialecticism. Anyone who thinks that capitalism is about to collapse within the next decade (at the most generous) is going to be seriously disappointed. They simply aren't looking at the econimic facts of an as yet, immature globalisation process. I have even had learned Marxists going ape on me when I point out and have consistently pointed out that America will ride out this partucular dip and at least the next two before she is sufficiently integrated within a comprehensive globalism for valorisation to assume terminal consequences in the finality.

At the moment, value is still sufficiently regional to be counterbalanced by the latent surplus in the twin new economies of India and China. It is evident to all but the most blind that energy, whilst an increasing concern, has not yet sufficiently fed through as a constant. Agreed, there will be increasingly violent paroxysms as the energy sector faces mounting demand (along with a raft of other commodities) but we are still living the luxury of growth driven inflation in the Chindians. When capitalism's demise finally arrives, inflation will assume a stubborn constancy for items not usually counted whereas items that are counted, will enter into a cliff dive to the bottom of cut throat competition.

If you have any young children in primary school, they will be the ones to confront doom.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby DoomersUnite » Mon 24 Jan 2011, 21:07:34

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'I')f peak oil is postponed, why are the Brits talking about 8 pound per gallon gas and RATION TOKENS:

http://peakoil.com/forums/uk-considers-rationing-fuel-issuing-tradeable-tokens-t60640.html


This is good. Peakers should be dancing in the streets in England. Rationing means something important is happening...prioritization. Peak oil has never been about running out (at least since the 70's), it's always been about getting people to face the reality of the value of crude oil.

Rationing and prioritization are a great way to make DARN sure the SUV craze and living 50 miles away from work goes down the tubes pronto.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby DoomersUnite » Mon 24 Jan 2011, 21:15:00

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '
')If you have any young children in primary school, they will be the ones to confront doom.


Yeah, that pretty much is what Ehrlich said as well in the 60's. 'Sure, we aren't suffering through the effects of use the human scourge upon the earth, but our kids sure will!".

It's kick the can, and we've been doing it since Malthus tried it on for size.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby americandream » Mon 24 Jan 2011, 21:43:46

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DoomersUnite', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '
')If you have any young children in primary school, they will be the ones to confront doom.


Yeah, that pretty much is what Ehrlich said as well in the 60's. 'Sure, we aren't suffering through the effects of use the human scourge upon the earth, but our kids sure will!".

It's kick the can, and we've been doing it since Malthus tried it on for size.


Neither of these analysts dealt with the issue of value and surplus in the global context and neither one of them really contemplated the nature of accumulation and its systemic implications.

Two things would have to occur for capitalism to assume some long term profile:

1 A technical Singularity (of the sort that Carlhole is fond of evoking) and a closed waste loop. Both have fairly self evident implications. There are additional issues of labour value and it's continued mitigation within a maturing capital...the implications there and whether full scale autiomation is feasible to counter these effects. OR;

2 A sufficiently viable access to offplanet resourcing. Of course, again we are confronted by capital's waste profile and labour value issues.

Capital will not fail for being unkind to morther earth whatever that is meant to signify or for the earth being overrun by consumers, consumer numbers being a function of capitalism and the markets, it will fail for having exhauisted it's capacity to accumulate. The other issues will clearly, in one form or another either be elements of that exhaustion or associated issues which will act to render that collapse dialectic.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby kildred590 » Tue 25 Jan 2011, 01:18:56

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o it looks like we got the serious effects of PO postponed, no collapse, die-off, zombies for long time to come as it seems (I remember it was scheduled for Christmas 2008)

1. more oil found than used in 2010
2. tons of NG available
3. high oil prices spur research in all kind of alternatives
4. high oil price spur research and investemnt in oil recovery


What dou you say, we postpone for another 20 or 30 years, and then meet again?



I don't follow.
Now that the European and US economies have stppoed crashing, the oil prices are rising just as expected.

1 - That doesn't mean squat. Consumption dropped dramatically during the GFC and production therefore also dropped. Now its going back up with increased demand.
Nothing to see here.

2 - This is not a "new" discovery, simply the extraction of already known reserves using a new technique.
This has been driven by the fact that 900 of the next 1 000 new power plants will be using natural gas, so it's demand driven not discovery driven.

This is a result of government policy which favours gas over coal, the latter which is cheaper to produce electricity and therefore made shale gas unviable previously.

3 and 4 - what alternatives ?
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby Loki » Thu 27 Jan 2011, 22:45:12

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'O')ne thing about it, the time is approaching when we're going to have to start re-evaluating the more sexy Zombie doomstead aspects of peaker doom. At some point it begins to hurt credibility, like Rupert predicting collapse every year and what if civilization lasts long enough for Kunstler to start a "World Made by Hand: The Next Generation" series of novels.


I completely agree, but I’d also add that many of us who have posted on PO.com for a while have never supported die-off scenarios. I’ve long thought that a slow decline, an unending Great Depression, was the most likely result of peak oil and the other problems on the horizon/already here (global climate change, etc.).

Mass die off, zombie mutant biker scenarios have never struck me as likely. Possible, sure, but a low probability of occurrence. A slow but inexorable decline in living standards for most of us is far more likely. Thuja has also posted regularly about the slow decline for many years, as have others at PO.com. We’re not all die-off doomers, those who say so are burning strawmen. A Great Depression is bad enough for me, I don’t need to entertain ‘piles of bodies’ fantasies.

I’m not even sure that “collapse” is a good term for what we have in store for ourselves. I prefer decline or depression. But unlike previous depressions, the Long Depression will last for the rest of our lives, and maybe our children’s lives, and possibly their children’s as well. There will be peaks and troughs (green shoots and such), but the trendline will be steadily downward, and I think it will span multiple generations. I doubt the “big change” will be a sudden event or something detectable by internet trolls in the span of a year or two, hence the utter futility of arguing with the various "anti-doomer" cornucopians that seem to have nothing better to do than troll this forum.

Heck here in the US it might even begin manifesting itself in the form of $4+/gallon gas, double digit unemployment, bankrupt state and federal governments, stagflation with no end on the horizon, the louder and louder whirring of the Fed’s printing presses, and the like. Sounds kinda familiar now that I think about. We’ll blame it on excess credit or not enough credit, global trade or not enough global trade, government or not enough government, but oil depletion has played a role and it will continue to do so. Any rational person will understand that an infinitely expanding demand for a finite resource poses some basic mathematical problems.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')ltimately, I think the important thing is that people not make major life changes based on the timetable for collapse. It's just my opinion, but whatever you do make sure it fits in with either scenario -- fast crash or thirty years from now. There's a lot to like about a powered-down, rural lifestyle so hopefully those that choose that now also happen to enjoy it anyway regardless of peak oil.


You hit the nail on the head, very well stated. Been doing the “powered-down, rural lifestyle” thing for almost a year now after 15+ years in the city. Not an easy life, but pretty satisfying so far. Can’t say as I miss the city.

I do, however, occasionally miss those cushy office jobs I used to have, especially after a week like this week. Yesterday I spent all day on my hands and knees planting strawberries, today was another day of hands and knees work weeding garlic. And tomorrow is another full day of garlic weeding. Winter work on the farm kinda sucks sometimes.
A garden will make your rations go further.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby Xenophobe » Fri 28 Jan 2011, 09:25:08

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Loki', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')There's a lot to like about a powered-down, rural lifestyle so hopefully those that choose that now also happen to enjoy it anyway regardless of peak oil.


You hit the nail on the head, very well stated. Been doing the “powered-down, rural lifestyle” thing for almost a year now after 15+ years in the city. Not an easy life, but pretty satisfying so far. Can’t say as I miss the city.


An implicit assumption in this exchange appears to be that everyone should enjoy the coming Amish-lifestyle caused by peak oil, or a hint that human communities (called cities) are somehow not what we should aspire to.

Some people don't want to plant strawberries, and as long as they have experience in a field where someone will pay them, such pay which can be exchanged for someone else's strawberries labor, they certainly don't have to become a farmer. It has already been demonstrated that not only won't peak oil stop cities from continuing to do what they have been doing for millenia now, but it won't even stop large scale agriculture, random commuting, transoceanic shipping or even the 1500 mile salad. Fortunately, this means that a majority of people can do something other than being farmers.

People left the farms of America for valid reasons over the past century, and peak oil hasn't caused them to suddenly go back.

Has anyone seen a large scale "return to farming" movement anywhere in this country, in response to peak oil? Or have we instead seen the design, testing, mass manufacture and widescale distribution of random transport using something other than crude to power them? Seems like people are voting for continued traffic in the cities with non crude powered machines rather than flocking to the closest Amish community.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby kublikhan » Fri 28 Jan 2011, 18:20:49

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DoomersUnite', 'E')ROEI is all about energy, it has nothing to do with dollars.
The price of energy already has EROEI factored into it. As Dsula said, it shows up on your balance sheet. Hard to extract/refine, low EROEI oil is expensive to produce oil. Easy to extract/refine, high EROEI oil is cheap to produce oil. Expensive energy can slow/reverse economic growth and cause mass hardships:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he passion for renewable energy might make sense for highly developed economies, but for a country such as South Africa, which has pressing social needs, the authorities should focus on cost, not expensive renewables, Prof Lloyd suggests. It costs about 250 per cent more to produce electricity from wind, the next cheapest option, than coal,he points out.

Prof Lloyd says that Eskom has had to substantially raise tariffs to pay for new generation capacity, to the point where many of the poor simply cannot afford electricity. People are again turning to wood, coal and paraffin for heating and cooking. The result is a rise in smoke pollution, and he believes the reversion to burning fuels at home may also explain the rise in fires that flare up from time to time in shanty towns, destroying hundreds of homes. Costly renewable-energy projects will only burden the poor further, he says.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n early 2008, the world’s food and energy train came off the rails. What was startling was that it didn’t happen either gradually or in a linear way - instead, things simply fell apart at an astounding rate, faster than anyone could have predicted without being accused of lunacy.

Haiti was an early canary in the hunger coal mine. Desperately poor, by early 2008, tens of thousands of impoverished Haitians were priced entirely out of the market for rice and other staples, and were reduced to eating “cookies” made of nutrient rich mud, vegetable shortening and salt to quiet their hunger pangs. Women stood on the street, offering their children to any reasonably well fed passerby, saying “Please, pick, take one and feed them.” Thousands of Haitians marched on Port Au Prince, yelling, “We’re hungry.”

The UN warned that 33 nations were in danger of destabilizing, and the list included major powers including Pakistan, Mexico, North Korea India, Egypt and South Africa. Up to 100 million people who had managed to raise their incomes above $2 a day found themselves inexorably drawn back to the world poverty level.

The energy train and the food train were inextricably linked, and indeed directly (as the costs of diesel rose rapidly) and indirectly (rising energy costs created the biofuels boom) drove the food crisis.

While the food crisis in the poor world made headlines, the energy crisis there went almost unnoticed. More and more poorer nations simply could not afford to import oil and other fossil fuels, and began to slowly but steadily lose the benefits of fossil fuels. Nations suffered shortages of gas, electricity and coal. Tajikistan, experiencing a record cold winter found itself with inadequate supplies of heating oil and a humanitarian crisis. South African coal supplies were so short that electricity generation dropped back to intermittency.

Industrial agriculture, described as “the process of turning oil into food” began to struggle to keep yields up to match growing demand. Yield increases fell back steadily, with more and more investment of energy (and higher costs for poor farmers trying to keep yields up). Yield increases, which had been at 6% annually from the 1960s through the 1990s fell to 1-2%, against rapidly rising demand.

the costs of fossil fueled agricultural skyrocketed, with Potash rising by 300% in less than a year. What should have been a boom for farmers was actually the beginning of an increasingly precarious spiral of high prices, high indebtedness and market volatility. Agricultural indebtedness rose dramatically.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DoomersUnite', 'F')or example, I will trade you energy in the form of natural gas for energy in the form of crude. I will deliver 6000 standard cubic feet of natural gas to any location of your choice, and I will retrieve an equivalent amount of energy from that point in the form of crude oil. 1 barrel. I will do this all day long and become richer than Bill Gates because people pretend that the form of the energy does not matter.
Huh? Who pretends the form of the energy does not matter? Of course it matters! Oil is a highly desirable from of energy. It's energy dense and easy to transport. That's why you have many more gasoline powered cars instead of natural gas powered cars.
The oil barrel is half-full.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby Xenophobe » Fri 28 Jan 2011, 22:11:11

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DoomersUnite', 'E')ROEI is all about energy, it has nothing to do with dollars.
The price of energy already has EROEI factored into it.


Nah. If that were true, natural gas would be priced much higher than crude oil, based solely on the ease of production because of the viscosity difference between it and crude oil.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby Xenophobe » Fri 28 Jan 2011, 22:22:07

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'A')ll energy types (carriers) are not fungible, otherwise then Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa would have succeeded converting coal to oil using Fischer–Tropsch CTL technology.


Not to put too fine a point on it, but both Nazi Germany and South Africa DID succeed in turning coal into oil.

9 million barrels in 1938 for Nazi Germany. 124,000 bbls/day during 1944 when just having any infrastructure left was a surprise, let alone a process that some can't even take the time to fact check before being wrong....

Sasol is cranking out what, 160,000 bbls/day from CTL's?

http://www.sasol.com/sasol_internet/dow ... 264478.pdf

For those who aren't familiar with it there is this thing, called a search engine, named Google...oh...well...nevermind....
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby kublikhan » Fri 28 Jan 2011, 22:38:18

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'T')he price of energy already has EROEI factored into it.


Nah. If that were true, natural gas would be priced much higher than crude oil, based solely on the ease of production because of the viscosity difference between it and crude oil.
I did not say EROEI was the sole factor in price. Price covers a multitude of factors. Including a very important one I mentioned earlier, oil is a much more desirable form of energy than natural gas. It is so much more desired, that sometimes the natural gas is simply flared off:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he World Bank estimates that over 150 billion cubic metres of natural gas are flared or vented annually, an amount worth approximately 30.6 billion dollars, equivalent to 25 percent of the United States’ gas consumption or 30 percent of the European Union’s gas consumption per year
The oil barrel is half-full.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby Xenophobe » Fri 28 Jan 2011, 22:51:41

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'I') did not say EROEI was the sole factor in price. Price covers a multitude of factors. Including a very important one I mentioned earlier, oil is a much more desirable form of energy than natural gas. It is so much more desired, that sometimes the natural gas is simply flared off:


I understand. However, EROEI as a concept doesn't include other measures of "desirability" either. Its just a calculation, usually cherry picked in such a way as to ignore the actual energy inputs into the calculation so that the obvious consequences of the 2nd Law of Therm don't get involved.

"Desirable" is all relative....the energy calculation itself is not. We can just as easily "desire" CNG powered cars if, for example, a particular country decided to save its crude resources for something more important than transport (a smart decision versus the ignorant one most have made) and requires CNG transport.

I think the reason crude got its early start was because you could ladle it into a barrel, strap it to a donkey, have the donkey carry a couple barrels down to the barge, and the barge could move it up or down river to a refinery, also along the river. There certainly weren't cars around to do this when crude oils history was young.
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Re: PO effect postponed?

Unread postby Xenophobe » Fri 28 Jan 2011, 22:53:58

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'Y')ou still don't get it. Do you? .


Lets all sing it together now...Pstarr doesn't know diddly about Fischer Tropsch and gets cranky when his ignorance is exposed....again....for the world to see.

Grow up.
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