[Falconoffury]

This post is mostly meant for the cornucopians. I have been hearing about alternative energy technologies for a long time now, but I have to wonder if they can be implemented without lowering the standard of living for the first world.

I believe that none of these technologies can provide access to greater total amounts of energy and a lifestyle of increased access to energy for the middle class of first world countries. Here are the basic challenges to alternative energy.

1) Depletion of hydrocarbons. In order to give the middle class greater access to energy, alternative energy has to not only make up for depletion, but also steadily increase the total energy production.

If the world is going to divert resources to fund massive wind, solar, or coal liquification projects, then energy prices will go up for a number of years or even decades while these projects are being developed. Energy prices will go up, and the common man will not be able to afford as much energy. We are already seeing this, even without the massive energy projects that are going to replace oil.

2) Physical constraints. A number of alternative energies have certain constraints on how they can be applied. Windmills are only effective on a fraction of the world. Same with solar. Hydrogen is limited by its difficulty in storage and the fact that fuel cells require platinum, a rare and valuable metal. Biofuels are limited by arable land. Add these limitations, and I do not see how alternative energies are going to improve the quality of life for the middle class.

3) Population Growth. The population of the world has been growing steadily since the beginning of the industrial age. Our economy depends on population growth, and energy growth. Remember that energy is limited, and the more people you put on the planet, the less energy is available to everyone. Everyone's piece of the pie gets smaller.

In order to increase the lifestyle of everyone, enough energy has to be produced to make those pie pieces bigger for everyone. Since population growth is necessary for the economy, the alternatives have to continue growing over time in order to keep growing the pie pieces.

Alternative energy will have to continue to increase indefinitely to support an economy based on the assumption of unlimited population growth, unlimited energy growth, and unlimited increases to energy lifestyle.

In summary, alternative energy will have to offset hydrocarbon depletion, work around physical constraints, and continue an increasing curve forever in order to support a population and economy based on growth. The moral of the story is this... No matter how effective the alternative energies are, they can't keep increasing the size of the pie pieces forever. The challenges are too great, the demands too high, and it cannot continue forever.

Whatever happens, expect less access to energy for everyone.

[SoothSayer]

Whatever happens, expect less access to energy for everyone.

Err - not quite.

If you are poor or lower middle class expect less access to energy.

Top techies, medium & high level politicians, police, medics will all have access to energy as before.

However telephone sanitisers, office admin staff etc will be going home to cold houses.

Moral: Find a high status protected job. Or opt out and be self sufficient.

Do you remember the film Soylent Green? I want to be one of the elite in the fancy apartments ... not one of the masses on the streets.

[EnergyUnlimited]

I observe, that population growth is often quoted as a problem for energy business.

However it is known that in INDUSTRIALISED nations population is now AGEING and begins to FALL.
This holds true as well for US as for Japan, Western Europe and Eastern Europe with Russia (where we already can see quite dramatic population COLLAPSE).
China had managed to stabilise its population and many african countries are catastrophically DEPOPULATING now (AIDS, civil wars and famine are main reasons).

The overall (net) growth of population is mainly due Middle East, Bangladesh, India and may be few other countries.
I would note that these countries do not consume much energy per capita (there is no evidence of massive SUV use in Bangladesh for example).

I do not understand from where are those scaring stories about more and more people and less and less to eat.

It appears to me that similar to oil, the population is also close to its peak and shortly should start to shrink.

The problem will solve itself to everyone benefit and some other scare story will have to be made.
It also appears that growing wealth is actively discouraging peoples from having children and shrinking population problem is puting state pensions at risk (in the UK at least).

[Velociryx]

This post is mostly meant for the cornucopians. I have been hearing about alternative energy technologies for a long time now, but I have to wonder if they can be implemented without lowering the standard of living for the first world.
I believe that none of these technologies can provide access to greater total amounts of energy and a lifestyle of increased access to energy for the middle class of first world countries. Here are the basic challenges to alternative energy.


While I do not consider myself a Cornucopian, I will try to honestly answer the questions you have posed.

1) Depletion of hydrocarbons. In order to give the middle class greater access to energy, alternative energy has to not only make up for depletion, but also steadily increase the total energy production.

Yes. That is an accurate assessment of the picture, and there is no single "magic bullet" solution. There are, however, a number of partial solutions that are all quite viable, and several REALLY strong options that aren't quite viable yet, but will become so as the price of oil continues to move higher. While you are quite right that there is no single solution that will provide the answer, there are a number of approaches that, when taken together, can provide more than enough energy to meet global demand (especially if conservation and increased standards are built into the equation, as they must be in the years ahead).

If the world is going to divert resources to fund massive wind, solar, or coal liquification projects, then energy prices will go up for a number of years or even decades while these projects are being developed. Energy prices will go up, and the common man will not be able to afford as much energy. We are already seeing this, even without the massive energy projects that are going to replace oil.
The world will not fund such projects, at least, not on any wide spread scale. What will happen here will be a purely economic function. There are, and will be subsidies to jumpstart the production of alternate energy sources, but the real magic happens when oil prices rise high enough to make production of power (fuel/electricity) through other means a good investment....when that happens, expect to see a lot of smart people who are savvy with their money, invest heavily in the technology to make it happen.

Some will get burned.

Some will get buried.

Some will hit the jackpot and will be at the helm, ushering in a new era of prosperity.

In any case, your point is a valid one, and it is sadly true that the increasing prices will be felt by those at the bottom first and hardest. One way to mitigate that impact is education and conservation, but even that can only take you so far.

2) Physical constraints. A number of alternative energies have certain constraints on how they can be applied. Windmills are only effective on a fraction of the world. Same with solar. Hydrogen is limited by its difficulty in storage and the fact that fuel cells require platinum, a rare and valuable metal. Biofuels are limited by arable land. Add these limitations, and I do not see how alternative energies are going to improve the quality of life for the middle class.

They will each play their part, although some regions will be better off than others (being blessed with more energy abundance). Nonetheless, every region has *something* that they can use...perhaps not enough to sustain population levels at where they are now, which will prompt some level of relocation. I do not see it (energy shortages) causing massive die-offs or an economic meltdown that the diehard doomers talk about.

That's a worst-case scenario based on an incomplete understanding of the facts as we know them, and combined with a total lack of understanding of economics.

Stir well and let simmer for a while, then serve up as much fear as your readers can stand.

It's interesting reading, but ultimately, rather melodramatic and overblown.

The important thing to remember is that while nothing has an EROEI comparable to oil, there are good alternatives out there, and two things will serve to improve them: 1) as oil prices increase, the incentive to find an alternative increases (and several options that were prohibitively expensive become fashionable as oil prices continue to rise), and 2) continued experimentation, scaling up, and economies of scale will improve existing technologies and make them more viable than they currently are.

3) Population Growth. The population of the world has been growing steadily since the beginning of the industrial age. Our economy depends on population growth, and energy growth. Remember that energy is limited, and the more people you put on the planet, the less energy is available to everyone. Everyone's piece of the pie gets smaller.

In order to increase the lifestyle of everyone, enough energy has to be produced to make those pie pieces bigger for everyone. Since population growth is necessary for the economy, the alternatives have to continue growing over time in order to keep growing the pie pieces.

Alternative energy will have to continue to increase indefinitely to support an economy based on the assumption of unlimited population growth, unlimited energy growth, and unlimited increases to energy lifestyle.

Economics does not need infinite population or energy growth for its survival. It might shock you to know this, but during the dot com boom of the 90's, the supply of gas actually shrank.

According to doomer mythology, any contraction of the gas supply is supposed to cause immediate social, political, and economic collapse.

In fact, we've already been down that road twice. In the 70's we experienced a minor bout of stagflation, and in the 90's, we bounded ahead with one of the strongest periods of growth in our history.

The only thing that Peak Oil absolutely mandates is that the need to find viable alternatives becomes more pronounced, and, as oil prices rise, finding those viable alternatives and putting them into play becomes more profitable.

Furthermore, most studies show global population topping out by ~2050 or thereabouts, and then, beginning a decline. It's been a while since we've had a Pandemic of any kind, and we're overdue for one, so this number may be modified in the downward direction at any time (Bird Flu, for example), and if not, then we humans can always be relied on to kill plenty of our own, and barring that, there's always AIDS and other nasty diseases to cull the herd....this should provide enough death and misery to keep all but the diehard doomers happy, and in the meantime, one way or another, global population is gonna predictably level off.

In summary, alternative energy will have to offset hydrocarbon depletion, work around physical constraints, and continue an increasing curve forever in order to support a population and economy based on growth. The moral of the story is this... No matter how effective the alternative energies are, they can't keep increasing the size of the pie pieces forever. The challenges are too great, the demands too high, and it cannot continue forever.

Whatever happens, expect less access to energy for everyone.
I disagree with your conclusion, but of course, you are free to hold whatever position you wish.

-=Vel=-

[julianj]

Are you THE Velocyrix?

You are most welcome to the board - from a former.....not disciple, perhaps pupil is the right word.

But I must say, as a medium-doomer, that I think you underestimate the potential for a vast amount of ordure hitting the whirly thing. I have been on this forum for a couple of years and after a great deal of analysis of all sorts of scenarios, I have the conviction that a whole lot of really bad things can happen. I take it you haven't read the Hirsch report? Search on this board and you'll find a link.

Aaron - head honcho here has a saying that its not Peak Oil that's the main problem, but how our fellow monkey's will react to it. That is, badly.

On another level, I hope you appreciate the irony that you and I get to play Drones in some of the rather nastier societies/scenarios envisaged. GW Bush gets more like Chairman Yang every day.

cheers

Julian

[Velociryx]

*Looks cautiously around the room, and then nods*

Based on that last sentence, I'm guessin' you mean "The SMAX Guide Velociryx," and yep....that'd be me....our secret tho, 'k? (well, ours and everybody reading here...*G* !)

I think Aaron is right. There's a danger that things could get nasty when scarcity begins to rear its head, and I believe that there will be (regional) shortages (especially in the cold north).

IMO, this will cause more dislocations than deaths and riots, however....not that dislocations are good things, but then....neither is that the complete destruction of the world as we know it, which is the oft-touted mantra here.

No doubt, there will be some pot holes in the road ahead. And some of the pot holes might be big enough to drive an old relic Chevy Tahoe through, with room to spare on either side, but the world, and human society, has endured far, far worse things than running out of a single resource, and we're still here.

I'd say that, using history as a guide, our chances are significantly better than average despite what those who peddle in fear would have you believe.

This is not a conclusion I've come to without the benefit of careful research and consideration, so I hope you don't think I'm shooting from the hip here.

Cos I really don't wanna be a nerve stapled drone...

-=Vel=-

[jmorris]

In the beginning it must be asked that how is the ever increasing use of energy in terms of consumption actually increased the quality of life of people. Is the ever increasing consumption of natural resources and energy and therefore economic growth the ultimate goal of mankind?

Were people living 50 years ago unhappy with their lives? They didn't have this kind of possibility to consume. Living a good live is not all about consumption of goods and energy. It is in many ways much more based on our close social networks and need to belong to a social groups.

The problem is that how does the humankind react as it finds that there is no source of never ending and increasing energy. This means that we need to base our being to the different kind of values. As we find this truth on a level of an average person it will shake the findings of our societies.

Peak oil may mean returning back in time where we had communities living at close proximities. However it does not need to mean that we go back in time where we do not have sofisticated means of communication over the world. It does not mean either that our cultural evolution takes a leap back in time. Our global cultural memory will remain and develop further still. Science does not disappear and trade does not disappear. They will develop further under different framework.

Many times before evolution has been under test. Maybe peak oil is the situation where our cultular evolution will also be put under test. Everytime before evolution has ever boosted under strenuous times and is has evolved at great steps. Hopefully this will apply at out cultural evolution.

[gg3]

Jmorris has it exactly right with "Many times before evolution has been under test. Maybe peak oil is the situation where our cultular evolution will also be put under test. Everytime before evolution has ever boosted under strenuous times and is has evolved at great steps. Hopefully this will apply at out cultural evolution."

We've gotten over bigger & worse many times as a species. Though, very often at the expense of much death & suffering.

That being said, I don't believe that reduced energy & resource throughput requires giving up the core basics of personal wellbeing (at least for those who are not caught up in the dieoff or related events). Here we are not just talking about the minimum essentials of food, clothing, and shelter, but of one step beyond that: warmth, cleanliness, privacy, a literate "life of the mind," and so on. All of these can be provided through technologies that are sustainable indefinitely.

For example, in a water shortage you can stop flushing the toilet except for poop, and the result is a pervasive stench of urine. Or you can flush the toilet with graywater recycled from the laundry and possibly from the shower: no waste, no foul stink. As for showers, you can take them less often to the point of constantly feeling grubby, or you can use a low-flow showerhead, with an almost-off setting (rather than on or totally off) so you don't even have to endure feeling cold while soaping up.

As a purely technical matter, we can conserve and build our way out of this, assuming of course that human population can be reduced over time to the sustainable level of about 2 billion. The problem is primarily cultural: for example watering lawns in desert suburbs competes with taking showers and flushing toilets, when there shouldn't even be an issue which of these gets sacrificed in favor of which-else. Or, more significantly, for example, people who not only refuse to use contraception but also attempt to prevent others doing so.

[ohanian]

bacterial growth

Figure 3. The typical bacterial growth curve. When bacteria are grown in a closed system (also called a batch culture), like a test tube, the population of cells almost always exhibits these growth dynamics: cells initially adjust to the new medium (lag phase) until they can start dividing regularly by the process of binary fission (exponential phase). When their growth becomes limited, the cells stop dividing (stationary phase), until eventually they show loss of viability (death phase). Note the parameters of the x and y axes. Growth is expressed as change in the number viable cells vs time. Generation times are calculated during the exponential phase of growth. Time measurements are in hours for bacteria with short generation times.

Hint: replace the word bacterial with the word human

[pedalling_faster]

OK, i figured out what a "doomer" is.

let me guess - a cornucopian is someone who -
A. believes there will "be enough for everybody".
B. believes there will "be enough for everybody", if we re-organize our communities so that there is "enough for everybody".

i would add - a partially reduced energy lifestyle is not that bad. for example, instead of driving to the gym, walking to the market. you still get the equivalent of shoulder shrugs (a weighlifting thing), walking home with the day's bounty.

[sch_peakoiler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'I') observe, that population growth is often quoted as a problem for energy business.

However it is known that in INDUSTRIALISED nations population is now AGEING and begins to FALL.
This holds true as well for US as for Japan, Western Europe and Eastern Europe with Russia (where we already can see quite dramatic population COLLAPSE).
China had managed to stabilise its population and many african countries are catastrophically DEPOPULATING now (AIDS, civil wars and famine are main reasons).

The overall (net) growth of population is mainly due Middle East, Bangladesh, India and may be few other countries.
I would note that these countries do not consume much energy per capita (there is no evidence of massive SUV use in Bangladesh for example).

I do not understand from where are those scaring stories about more and more people and less and less to eat.

It appears to me that similar to oil, the population is also close to its peak and shortly should start to shrink.

The problem will solve itself to everyone benefit and some other scare story will have to be made.
It also appears that growing wealth is actively discouraging peoples from having children and shrinking population problem is puting state pensions at risk (in the UK at least).

[sch_peakoiler]

EnergyUnlimited,

look here

http://grid2.cr.usgs.gov/globalpop/afri ... dix_2.html

This stats ends in 2000 but this shows that at least before 2000 ALL the african countries were in a BIG plus. NO SINGLe with a minus. Do you see one with a minus there?? Ok if you say now in past 6 years the trends broke - I would not believe this just because you cannot break the trend in EACH f.ing country!

And neither AIDS, nor wars, nor drugs, nor sex nor rocknroll - can reverse that. Those africans just give birth to two kids for each killed in the civil war. I mean, they have no industry, no jobs, what else shoud they do in the meantime??

Sorry my dark sarcasm. I just wanted to point out that Africa does not move in a direction western countries would find appropriate.