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The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastrous.

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby shakespear1 » Fri 08 Sep 2006, 14:00:29

Lets also remember that WHEN the market senses that we are on the decline side of the supply curve, I think, we will see a dramatic reaction to this information. What it will be I have no clue, but at the moment that MARKET is still living with the idea that there is no serious supply problem. 8)
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby MonteQuest » Mon 11 Sep 2006, 01:12:13

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', ' ')
Well, yes, but neverless it will not be much comparing to the second halving.
Most of redundand travel agents, car dealers, and exotic hotels stuff etc will find some alternative, but miserably paid jobs, I guess.



Your list is much too short. Look up and down any street and count the businesess tied to the auto industry. 1 in 6.

And redundant? We have redundant body shops, insurance agents, etc?

If you cut the jobs because you don't have the energy, where does the energy come from to remploy them?
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby MonteQuest » Mon 11 Sep 2006, 01:13:56

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', ' ')There will be plenty of unlucky folks, but essential services would not be affected.


If you cannot afford them they will be.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby gego » Mon 11 Sep 2006, 01:58:42

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')
If you cut the jobs because you don't have the energy, where does the energy come from to remploy them?


This is why I think if you look at the expansion of the economy as a result of energy over the previous centuries, you cannot assume that things will unwind in a smooth fashion by comparison. On the way up there was excess energy to facilitate the transition to new technology. On the way down there will be a shortage of energy to transition to alternative ways of doing things, most all of which will be less productive themselves. Simply, when the economy starts its long term contraction, it will shrink much more quickly than it expanded, disasterously so.

If you look at this doubling/halving idea and apply it to human population levels I think the implications are down right scary. What happens when the cause/effect between energy and population maybe gives us a population decline rate of somewhere in the 5% range. Plug that into Ayoob's halving period and add that to your peak oil, or peak energy dates, allowing a slight lag time for "population depletion" to follow "energy depletion".

Maybe a good job for the future is in the undertaking business.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby MonteQuest » Mon 11 Sep 2006, 02:12:17

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', ' ')If you look at this doubling/halving idea and apply it to human population levels I think the implications are down right scary.


Yes, especially when you know that the population is growing exponentially, and will continue to grow even in the face of declining energy due to overshoot and demographics, it gets even scarier.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby jato » Mon 11 Sep 2006, 02:49:51

Image

The dates are old. I did this chart for peak oil in 2005. The yellow line is a 7.5% depletion curve. 10 years after the peak (starting with 85 MB/d) production would be at around 40 MB/d.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby Ayoob » Mon 11 Sep 2006, 05:07:54

In 2040, I will personally be around 70. I will see everything from 84MBD to 10MBD. Three halvings. I wonder what life will be like during the transition from one halving to two.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby rwwff » Mon 11 Sep 2006, 06:09:20

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob', 'I')n 2040, I will personally be around 70. I will see everything from 84MBD to 10MBD. Three halvings. I wonder what life will be like during the transition from one halving to two.


If peopled started the process on ANWR and the florida coast in 2012, after four years of Democrat banter on conservation and sacrifice, the fields would start to commercially produce in 2020, and would be hitting their peaks in 2040; thus by saying 10mbpd global production in 2040, you are suggesting the US will be producing a third of the worlds oil.

If that is true, we are going to be richer than anyone could possibly imagine.

Realisitically, I think the world runs in the 80mbpd-100mbpd range for the next couple of decades, with demand coninually bumping the hard limit, driving up prices, and then being economically curtailed. IE, twenty years of insane jitter.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby gego » Tue 12 Sep 2006, 00:30:54

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob', 'I')n 2040, I will personally be around 70. I will see everything from 84MBD to 10MBD. Three halvings. I wonder what life will be like during the transition from one halving to two.


Man, you are a positive thinker.

I think that world population was in the range of 2.5 billion last time world oil production was at the 10MBD level. What makes you think that the 4 billion added on since then would make it with the loss of the 74MBD that provides them life?
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby Ayoob » Tue 12 Sep 2006, 01:41:31

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob', 'I')n 2040, I will personally be around 70. I will see everything from 84MBD to 10MBD. Three halvings. I wonder what life will be like during the transition from one halving to two.


Man, you are a positive thinker.

I think that world population was in the range of 2.5 billion last time world oil production was at the 10MBD level. What makes you think that the 4 billion added on since then would make it with the loss of the 74MBD that provides them life?


I try not to think about positive vs negative. This is going to happen with or without my permission, and I will be alive during this course of events. It only makes sense to try to look at this situation with the long term in view. I shoot for accuracy in the long term.

I'm 34 right now. Under the most optimistic decline rate of 2%, if oil peaked on my birth date, right now would be the end of the first halving. I would spend my time from now until the age of 68 dealing with the 2nd half-life. My girlfriend's sister had a baby this year. I keep up with the blog they set up with his pictures and stuff.

If oil peaks this year, he lives the life I just suggested. He is born the year of the peak and marks his time by half-lives. If it is a nine year half-life, what kind of presents does this little boy get on his ninth birthday? A cake and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bedspread and a bicycle helmet? Or does he get an education on how to knap a used brick into a knife? By his 18th birthday, do you think he will get a set of keys to a used Subaru to get him back and forth to his job at the factory for the summer between Freshman and Sophmore year, studying theater or history? Get the fuck outta here. I don't want to curse his future by writing it down today, but I think we all know what his 18th birthday present is going to look like.

The difference in that five month old boy's life whether oil production peaks in 2006 or 2012 is very close to zero. What matters most is when the half-life shows up and what the effects of that are. What happens? How do we react?

And there's no way to know what the carrying capacity of the world will be once oil production drops to zero. Maybe we'll figure out a way to support 20 billion people, as long as we all cooperate. Or maybe we'll tear each other to pieces until there are ten thousand of us left and we're all in such remote corners that there's nobody left to kill as far as we know. Those are the polar opposites, the truth will likely be found in between them.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby Anthrobus » Sat 16 Sep 2006, 18:16:04

lin a few years most people will ask themselves

"how was it possible, that we just thought, this way of life will go on forever".

I hardly can imagine the state of mind of the pepole when, in some years, the graph of the decline becomes clear, the economical and social effects go from bad to worse and it will be clear that it is just going to become worse and worse and worse. If the bleak future can be anticipated and no way is shown out, it might really be over. Like, last year you gave your car to scrap metal, this year the phone goes dead and the brown outs become longer and longer and you try to build a woodstove from a oil barrel.

Looks like in coming times, lots of deprived people might easily demand strong measures by some kind of fuehrer. Maybe the news will be full of propaganda, giant oil discoveries here, terrorists attacking oil tankers or pipelines there, us or them ideologies, drafts inevitable ...

Our daughter is 1 now, our son yet unborn. Maybe we shall start developing a finite resources concept with dinner for educational purposes. Yet, despite all the doomerish talk above, i am very happy to have them and will do all i can for their future.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby neocone » Sun 01 Oct 2006, 15:13:02

I don't think we will even get there... nothing is linear. For exemple loosing 20% of your water body can cause death.

Likewise on a system optimized for energy growth, even flatlining will result in major political upheaval... and the ensuing die-off will be a quick recentering into a state where energy won't be a problem. Human beings have the ability to be both prey and predator. And Nature always keeps the balance.

Look at Rwanda... a small overpopulation created the genocide.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby jupiters_release » Mon 02 Oct 2006, 03:36:27

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')
If you cut the jobs because you don't have the energy, where does the energy come from to remploy them?


Maybe a good job for the future is in the undertaking business.


That business will probably be monopolized by big companies and prove very lucrative. Assuming death camps can be sustainable during the die-off (never thought I'd type that) then you can multiply 1 or 2 billion by whatever the going rate is, with government collusion, who knows how much they'll make. But if 2 billion die from the first world alone then doubt any business would still exist. I always think I've reached peak doomerism, then I find new imagery for it to grow.

:o
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby Doly » Mon 02 Oct 2006, 04:13:59

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')If you cut the jobs because you don't have the energy, where does the energy come from to remploy them?


Monte, tying energy to jobs is simplistic. In fact, if we have less energy, it could be argued that there will be plenty more jobs, because things that were before machine-made before will have to be made by people again. Remember that during industrialization people thought machines were taking away their jobs?

When the economy crashes, I would expect unemployment in the short term, but in the longer term, I would expect everybody's hands to be full of work.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', '
')This is why I think if you look at the expansion of the economy as a result of energy over the previous centuries, you cannot assume that things will unwind in a smooth fashion by comparison. On the way up there was excess energy to facilitate the transition to new technology. On the way down there will be a shortage of energy to transition to alternative ways of doing things, most all of which will be less productive themselves. Simply, when the economy starts its long term contraction, it will shrink much more quickly than it expanded, disasterously so.


I've been thinking about this same issue longer and harder than most people here, and the only answer I can offer is: economists have never given a thought of the place that energy plays in the economy, they don't even think that energy has any particular importance, and nobody has the slightest clue of what could happen in a contracting energy scenario.

There are good reasons to think the economy would contract as a result, but how, when, and how fast is simply impossible to guess.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', '
')If you look at this doubling/halving idea and apply it to human population levels I think the implications are down right scary. What happens when the cause/effect between energy and population maybe gives us a population decline rate of somewhere in the 5% range.


One of the first things that they teach you on a statistics course is that when two things are correlated, it doesn't mean that there is cause and effect. If you get a lot of children, you will find that their shoe size is correlated with their general level of knowledge. This doesn't mean that if you teach children less, their feet (or even them) would get smaller.

I wouldn't take the historical correlation between energy and population as a cause and effect one. In fact, the cause and effect could very well be inverted: we used more energy because there were more people to use it.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', '
')Maybe a good job for the future is in the undertaking business.


There are other alternatives for those with a delicate stomach. Second-hand shops always do well during recessions.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby gego » Mon 02 Oct 2006, 08:11:55

Gee Dolly, just when I was starting to like some of the people on this site, you point out the need for proof of the connection between population growth and energy consumption, which proof will require something other that statistical analysis of two unbelievably rare events, superimposed in a very narrow time frame out of all of human history. What are the odds that these events are just random and unrealted to oneanother and just happened to have happend in tandem? Maybe there is an external, as yet unidentified common causative factor??

Now I need to go through the thought process of imagining what would have happened to the stored energy if humans had not existed with the capability of extracting that energy. Could the unextracted energy have been depleted? Then I will need to go through the process of think of what would have happened to human population had the stored energy not existed. Could 17th centruy man found a way to expand his numbers to 6.5 billion in 400 years, in defiance of the experience with population limitations of all prior human history?

I guess I need to abandon my intutive thinking on the topic and find a way to explain the relationship between population and energy consumption that rises to the level of "proof" that the extraction and use of the energy to support additional population, and better support existing population, was the cause of the population explosion. I won't bother to come up with the proof that mankind's population growth caused increased energy extraction and use, as I am more interest in proving the opposite.

I guess I will need to calculate how much energy it takes to keep a person alive and reproducing, how much renewable energy was available per capita 400 years ago, what the population was 400 years ago, and how many more people could have been added given any possible renewable energy excess. Give me a few months to get back to you.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby GoIllini » Tue 17 Oct 2006, 02:41:03

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')If you cut the jobs because you don't have the energy, where does the energy come from to remploy them?


Monte,

Out of curiosity, how did we employ 100 million people back in 1900 when we had at least 1/3 the population but used 5-10% of the oil?

Are "jobs" purely determined by energy?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he dates are old. I did this chart for peak oil in 2005. The yellow line is a 7.5% depletion curve. 10 years after the peak (starting with 85 MB/d) production would be at around 40 MB/d.

Jato,

Will oil production decrease in a manner similar to exponential decay or will it look more like a skewed normal curve?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')
Gee Dolly, just when I was starting to like some of the people on this site, you point out the need for proof of the connection between population growth and energy consumption, which proof will require something other that statistical analysis of two unbelievably rare events, superimposed in a very narrow time frame out of all of human history. What are the odds that these events are just random and unrealted to oneanother and just happened to have happend in tandem? Maybe there is an external, as yet unidentified common causative factor??

Perhaps both oil and increasing populations were both consequences of modernity, and there isn't a causal relationship.

In any case, 100 years ago, Earth's population was 1 Billion, and we used less than 16% of the energy we use today. Clearly, hundreds of millions of these people were unemployed and starving, and there was a huge die-off. The only way we got through it was by employing Peakoil.com buzzwords like "permaculture" and "powerdown" to get the stable, sustainable society we have today. Just kidding! :)

In reality, the fact that we had 1 Billion people on this planet 100 years ago using a much smaller amount of energy suggests that we can do the same thing. History also shows that countries like China managed to have a commercial revolution without having anything like modern industry. China demonstrates that a market economy with a high standard of living for people in the service industry is doable without massive amounts of energy.

I don't want to downplay the ideas on this forum, and I think there's merit to a lot of merit in many of them, but I think that (Oil=Standard of Living in the long term) is an awfully big assumption.
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby Ayoob » Tue 17 Oct 2006, 04:04:48

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GoIllini', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')If you cut the jobs because you don't have the energy, where does the energy come from to remploy them?


Monte,

Out of curiosity, how did we employ 100 million people back in 1900 when we had at least 1/3 the population but used 5-10% of the oil?

Are "jobs" purely determined by energy?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he dates are old. I did this chart for peak oil in 2005. The yellow line is a 7.5% depletion curve. 10 years after the peak (starting with 85 MB/d) production would be at around 40 MB/d.

Jato,

Will oil production decrease in a manner similar to exponential decay or will it look more like a skewed normal curve?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')
Gee Dolly, just when I was starting to like some of the people on this site, you point out the need for proof of the connection between population growth and energy consumption, which proof will require something other that statistical analysis of two unbelievably rare events, superimposed in a very narrow time frame out of all of human history. What are the odds that these events are just random and unrealted to oneanother and just happened to have happend in tandem? Maybe there is an external, as yet unidentified common causative factor??

Perhaps both oil and increasing populations were both consequences of modernity, and there isn't a causal relationship.

In any case, 100 years ago, Earth's population was 1 Billion, and we used less than 16% of the energy we use today. Clearly, hundreds of millions of these people were unemployed and starving, and there was a huge die-off. The only way we got through it was by employing Peakoil.com buzzwords like "permaculture" and "powerdown" to get the stable, sustainable society we have today. Just kidding! :)

In reality, the fact that we had 1 Billion people on this planet 100 years ago using a much smaller amount of energy suggests that we can do the same thing. History also shows that countries like China managed to have a commercial revolution without having anything like modern industry. China demonstrates that a market economy with a high standard of living for people in the service industry is doable without massive amounts of energy.

I don't want to downplay the ideas on this forum, and I think there's merit to a lot of merit in many of them, but I think that (Oil=Standard of Living in the long term) is an awfully big assumption.


GoIllini,

Good post, very well argued. And I agree with most of your assertions.

I'm not on board with Monte and his ideas for the most part... not that that's good or bad or anything, it's just that the two of us don't see eye to eye on this whole topic.

I fail to see why the exact shape of the downward slope that Jato posted means much. Who cares whether the shape of the curve arches this way or that, if it crosses the 50% line in 7 to 10 years? Isn't the more important thing to recognize that it does so and to consider the aftereffects of that event?

And it could hardly be exact in any case.

Now let's move on to some very juicy meat you leave unattended in your post.

-------------------------------------------
1. Perhaps both oil and increasing populations were both consequences of modernity, and there isn't a causal relationship.

2. In any case, 100 years ago, Earth's population was 1 Billion, and we used less than 16% of the energy we use today. Clearly, hundreds of millions of these people were unemployed and starving, and there was a huge die-off. The only way we got through it was by employing Peakoil.com buzzwords like "permaculture" and "powerdown" to get the stable, sustainable society we have today. Just kidding! Smile

3. In reality, the fact that we had 1 Billion people on this planet 100 years ago using a much smaller amount of energy suggests that we can do the same thing. History also shows that countries like China managed to have a commercial revolution without having anything like modern industry. China demonstrates that a market economy with a high standard of living for people in the service industry is doable without massive amounts of energy.

4. I don't want to downplay the ideas on this forum, and I think there's merit to a lot of merit in many of them, but I think that (Oil=Standard of Living in the long term) is an awfully big assumption.
-----------------------------------------------

1. Absolute nonsense.

2. I kind of agree with you to a certain extent on this one. We used to get by with much less. We can again, most certainly. My personal opinion is that as we start to circle the drain and we realize that we are losing the energy slaves that make our lives so easy and carefree that we will begin to get angry. That is the crux of my doomerosity. It is the human reaction to losing that which we have grown accustomed to. It is true that in an absolute sense it's no problem to cut our energy use by 50% as long as we all cooperate.

As long as we all cooperate.

3. For a while.

4. Here's where you and I most strongly differ. I think that 99.9% of the posts on this site are complete horseshit. Permaculture indeed. Kumbayah and sharing and love and bullshit like that. How ridiculous. When your children are hungry, you must feed them with something. If the only food available belongs to your neighbor then you do that which is required.

It is the human reaction, not the "possibly could-happen" techno-fix solution that I am concerned with. There are a number of possible fixes in the wings. It's just that they are not actually being done.

How many people do you know that would be so much more happy if they just quit smoking, divorced the bitch wife, got a gym membership and worked out, stopped eating frozen pizza, and got the job they really really wanted?
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Re: The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastro

Postby GoIllini » Tue 17 Oct 2006, 13:36:59

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')'m not on board with Monte and his ideas for the most part... not that that's good or bad or anything, it's just that the two of us don't see eye to eye on this whole topic.

Monte does a great job of presenting his ideas, but they require a massive paradigm shift to accept. I accept Peak Oil, but I haven't seen enough evidence to switch from the "world is going to keep on turning until we have a nuclear war in 500 years" paradigm to "peak oil is going to destroy civilization". Maybe that's what makes me such a contrarian on these boards.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') fail to see why the exact shape of the downward slope that Jato posted means much. Who cares whether the shape of the curve arches this way or that, if it crosses the 50% line in 7 to 10 years? Isn't the more important thing to recognize that it does so and to consider the aftereffects of that event?

I think it is important. In one case, production declines resemble an S-curve. The market has more of an opportunity to react. In the other case, our biggest production decline happens our first year, rather than halfway through the decline.

I, personally, think that something in terms of the back end of a normal curve- or a backwards S curve would be the most realistic. Exponential decline, take to it's extreme, is to say that at 2:37 GMT on June 12th, 2007, every major oil company in the world will randomly stop drilling new oil wells- let alone stop searching for oil, thus sending oil production into exponential decay.

IMHO, production declines in the first ten years after oil peaks will be much smaller than ones in the following ten. IMHO, this kind of situation would actually be more conducive to a "techno-fix" (AKA, the natural course of the economy; to move on to a new energy technology). By having production declines gradually set in, new technologies would have more time to respond.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '1'). Absolute nonsense. [Oil not causing population growth]

Maybe. I see the fact that many cities developed modern sanitation before oil came into huge use as evidence that there are some benefits to modern society that can exist without oil. Modern sanitation is one of the things most responsible for increasing the average lifespan from 40 to ~75.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') kind of agree with you to a certain extent on this one. We used to get by with much less. We can again, most certainly. My personal opinion is that as we start to circle the drain and we realize that we are losing the energy slaves that make our lives so easy and carefree that we will begin to get angry. That is the crux of my doomerosity. It is the human reaction to losing that which we have grown accustomed to. It is true that in an absolute sense it's no problem to cut our energy use by 50% as long as we all cooperate.

I don't know if we'll lose what we've grown accustomed to, and people adapt pretty quickly. For example, when gas prices hit $3.00/gallon, did we have rioting? For two weeks, it seemed like people in SUVs were pretty crazy drivers, but eventually, those people in SUVs calmed down, got used to conserving a little more and spending a little less on other things. As long as gas prices don't go from $2/gallon to $20/gallon overnight (and I don't think they will), I think people will have time to adapt in ways that are less destructive.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ere's where you and I most strongly differ. I think that 99.9% of the posts on this site are complete horseshit. Permaculture indeed. Kumbayah and sharing and love and bullshit like that. How ridiculous. When your children are hungry, you must feed them with something. If the only food available belongs to your neighbor then you do that which is required.
The irony is that civil society may be what saves us. Most people aren't that confrontational. Think about it; people who are driving people to the hospital- even if that person is a family member or loved one who's bleeding to death- might speed, but they're not going to cause fatal accidents in the process. They know that they'll have to confront those peoples' family members. Or take the fact that if you live in a big city, most people refuse to look at each other. There are so many social barriers to overcome when it comes to killing your neighbors for food that I'm convinced many people would starve before they overcame them. Of course, nobody wants to starve, so the next best thing would be to work together, as you suggest.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t is the human reaction, not the "possibly could-happen" techno-fix solution that I am concerned with. There are a number of possible fixes in the wings. It's just that they are not actually being done.
Again, we're on two sides of the paradigm shift that many people on these boards have adopted. My view is that it takes overwhelming proof to suggest that society as we know it will veer off the course it's been on for at least the past 500, and possibly the past 5000 years by 2020.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow many people do you know that would be so much more happy if they just quit smoking, divorced the bitch wife, got a gym membership and worked out, stopped eating frozen pizza, and got the job they really really wanted?
Pardon me for perhaps making up my own word, but I've seen social workers use this term before, and we're on a subject that pertains to them. There's a lot of "inertia" in peoples' lifestyles. However, there's even more inertia in peoples' social behavior. Think about it; what are the odds that if the guy's too poor to buy frozen pizza, that he'll commit an armed robbery to keep eating it rather than Ramen noodles, even if he could somehow get away with it?
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