[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I') think you are right, Gazzatrone. We may be "retired" sooner than we think. What do we do then? I think that will be the chance to radically downsize our lives. We'll just have to mellow out. We won't have enough money to run around. I think I'll cut some wood, make some woodblock prints, plant a garden and tend it. It won't be so bad. It won't be so great either.

We are living in some interesting times. Since we can't change the overall situation, we'll just have to deal with our own personal way of living. We may be able to get through this. Maybe...

[TheTurtle]

I envision "retirement" as the time when I finally sever the umbilical connecting me to the dominant paradigm ... the 9 to 5 work, the computers, the healthcare insurance, etc. It doesn't mean I will no longer need to exert myself in order to feed, clothe and shelter myself. Instead it means that I will step into the realm where all of my needs are taken care of through my efforts and those of my tribe, with no external support.

I'm not currently at that point. But I hope to be soon and I like to think I could fake it now, if that need were forced upon me.

[Ibon]

Retirement from the harnass of the 9-5 tread mill is sometimes delayed because we feel we need to build in all these securities and store all these nuts and secure that piece of land etc etc. Is that not also still staying fixed in the old paradigm?

I have a friend who was a school teacher 20 years, she raised her only son to his adulthood, she quit teaching. She has a total life savings of $ 50,000.00 and since 5 years has been travelling and connecting with permaculture communities etc. She has accessed a resourcefulness that would not have been possible had she saved 10 times the money.

I sold a business 2 years ago and travelled with my two daughters. This decision was against all logic from a financial or "security" point of view. And yet I haven't looked back because taking off the harnass also opened up access to another strategy of survival, meeting a whole new set of people, opening up time which eventually led me to the project I am now working on in Thailand.

To all those preparing for peak oil and looking towards retirement try to remember that all that preparation you are doing might still be of a mindset that is fixed in the same paradigm as the security based 9-5 work schedule. Don't underestimate the resourcefulness and the time that opens up and connects you with a whole other group of people who are no longer in the treadmill.

This is just to encourage anyone to take the leap sooner rather than later. No guarantees but I have never known anyone who regretted doing this.

[gego]

I have been digesting information on EROEI as best I can over the internet. It seems that while a nice theoretical concept, solid numbers are not easy to come by.

It seems that the 2010 date for peak oil is more verifiable than what the EROEI numbers are and have been. However, it seems logical to assume that these EROEI numbers are falling for oil. We are progressing from shallow wells to deeper and deeper wells; we are progressing from light sweet to sour to heavy; we seem to be progressing from larger fields to smaller; technology has accelerated production in existing fields, but at more cost; other resources are also becoming more costly to acquire. These are reasons to believe that EROEI will depart from the apparent 3.5% rate of decline for the worse.

Currently we are producing oil at the rate of about 85 mbpd. If the EROEI ratio really currently is 6.25:1, this leaves us 71.4 mbpd net.

What would we net under different cases by 2030 if we assume 2010 as a peak oil date with about the same gross production as today?

Apparently EROEI is halving every 20 years, but let us assume a miracle happens, contradicting the past and intuition, and EROEI suddenly only halves every 40 years from here on. Assuming an also modest 1.75% post peak depletion rate, the combined effect of lower gross production and the new improved EROEI rate of change, then in 2030 this best case yields 50 mbpd net production.

Alternatively, using the current rate of decline in EROEI (3.5%) and a similar 3.5% post peak rate of fall in gross production, this mid range case yields 28.9 mbpd net production in 2030.

And now for a worst case, lets assume that EROEI starts to fall at a 7% rate from 2010 on, and that gross production also falls at 7% post peak. The combined effect of these worsening situations gives us only 7.65 mbpd in 2030.

It is hard for me to imagine the ramifications even of a drop to 50 mbpd, much less the less palatable cases. And of course, we do not need to wait until 2030 for the effect to be felt since each year henceforth should be one more step down this stairway to hell.

[Ludi]

The good thing about never expecting to retire in leisure is that one does not experience the disappointment many of those who expected to might feel. I never expected to retire in that way. I already work my own hours and have a great deal of "free time." So the transition might not seem very shocking to me.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'T')he good thing about never expecting to retire in leisure is that one does not experience the disappointment many of those who expected to might feel. I never expected to retire in that way. I already work my own hours and have a great deal of "free time." So the transition might not seem very shocking to me.

[TonyPrep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', 'C')urrently we are producing oil at the rate of about 85 mbpd. If the EROEI ratio really currently is 6.25:1, this leaves us 71.4 mbpd net.

[gego]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', 'I')n terms of oil equivalent, that may be true but it's important to remember that the energy inputs that go into that EROEI are not all in the form of oil, so the net oil production will be greater than 71.4 mbpd.

Tony

[Gazzatrone]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', 'I')t boils down to being precise with imprecision, so that the concept has usefulness, but applying it results is a picture that appears clear, but in fact is fuzzy.

I have seen many comments that peak oil only means that we have used half the oil and the other half is still there, so we have plenty of time to adjust and find substitutes. What I have taken from combining the EROEI and Peak Oil concepts is that the problem is much bigger and closer than most would like to believe.

[JustinFrankl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gazzatrone', 'T')hanks to you gego I am now convinced that EROEI will be the singular cause of mass energy disruption and NOT Peak Oil. I think we can make a definitive distinction between Peak Oil and EROEI, and based on your research I think the claim can be made that we are definitely looking in the wrong place.

[gego]

Thanks for the compliment, Gazzitrone, but you deserve the credit for bring this thread to life. It is interesting how feeding on oneanothers' thinking processes can yield results none of us might have come up with individually; we are simultaneously students and teachers.

On Justin's comment about interdependence.
Peak Oil deals with gross production. EROEI looks at the cost of this production. It is sort of like an income statement of a business; there is a strong relationship between sales and cost of sales, but there are also factors that independently influence each, which is why businesses can change from profitability to losses and back again as the independent influences exert pressure. In the oil business, I think you can say that costs are increasing relative to increases in production; we are on a one way street in this regard, and Gazzitrone has pointed out that the cost are more likely to bankrupt us than the falling production, although both are lethal. (If it's not one thing, it's another.)

Does the falling EROEI ratio cause peak oil? Does peak oil cause the falling EROEI ratio? Are they both caused by the law of diminishing returns?

It looks to me that there is in fact interdependence and independence. I think gross production and EROEI are changing in different ways, so it is beneficial to view them separately in this regard to then yield a clearer picture of the future.

[Revi]

Things have a good chance of going dangerously awry in the too near future. I was a bit shocked to read this revisal of the Olduvai Gorge theory by Duncan. He revised his original thesis to say that the lights would start to go out in 2007, not 2012 as he said originally. It seems like oil production may have to be revised to take into account Gazzatrone's EROEI cliff as well. Here's Duncan's revised (gloomy) forecast, as of 2001:

http://www.mnforsustain.org/oil_duncan_ ... isited.htm

[gego]

Here is an article from last summer about the post peak depletion rate for the Cantarell field in Mexico.

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/7/12/10421/4972

First you can see that a good deal of "extra" cost would have been incurred by injecting nitrogen to keep production up. This both affected EROEI because extra cost were incurred, and it affected peak date for these fields because it delayed to onset of falling production.

The startling revelation is that production, post peak looks to be falling at an astounding rate. We know that Saudi is also using injection techniques to keep up production, but as yet the peak in Saudi is not clear.

If 2005, with the benefit of hindsight, turns out to be the peak date, and if we use at high depletion rate like 7% (which based on Cantarell might turn out to be a low estimate of the depletion rate) then we are screwed. Duncan's 2008 date for the beginning of his "cliff" event is seeming more and more real to me when I refine the previously posted charts to reflect a possible 2005 peak and experiment with varying high rates of post peak depletion.

Of course there will be a conservation scramble (more appropriately described as an economic depression) that will probably prevent immediate dieoff, but then Duncan has incorporated that into his idea when he estimates a 2015 world population peak, followed by one hell of a human population depletion rate.

I have said that I wanted to live long enough to see how this turns out; maybe at age 62 I will not have all that long to wait after all.

[Revi]

I just read a pdf of Duncan's latest (2006) revision. He is even more set on 2008 as the date of the cliff, and the population peak around 2015 at 6.9 billion. He really seems to be sticking to his prediction. According to him we are going over the cliff as early as next year! I believe it with what they are saying about natural gas and it's ability to hold up the grid. I wonder what the plan really is. Are we going to be able to function without electricity? Duncan feels that the loss of the grid will lead to the dieoff, and that starts the long slide down to his end of industrial civilization in 2030. That's the date at which the energy per capita slips to a third of what it is now. It's a scary thought.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I') just read a pdf of Duncan's latest (2006) revision. He is even more set on 2008 as the date of the cliff, and the population peak around 2015 at 6.9 billion.

[gego]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I') just read a pdf of Duncan's latest (2006) revision. He is even more set on 2008 as the date of the cliff, and the population peak around 2015 at 6.9 billion.

[gego]

I refined, uploaded, and overwrote two of the charts that I posted back on page 6 of this thread to show greater detail. The basic data is the same, but it is easier to see the values for particular dates. You might need to refresh that page if the new charts do not come up.

[shady28]

There are a lot of problems with the scenarios being described, and they are obvious ones that I have to think people are simply failing to see.

For one - demand destruction. Most of the world has 'self adjusting' market economies now, the concept does work. No, these won't create energy from nothing. What they will do is cause prices to go up as energy becomes more scarce. Look at the very charts you reference, in the period 1979-1983 there is a huge drop in oil consumption while natural gas levelled out. The world population was not affected.

A most important fallacy here is the direct causal relationship between energy and world population. Consider this : half the world lives on $2 per day or less. Over 1.2 billion people live on $1 per day or less.

http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2001/english/ch03.html

"More than a billion people cannot fulfil their basic needs for food, water, sanitation, health care, housing and education. Nearly 60 per cent of the 4.4 billion people living in developing countries lack basic sanitation, almost one third do not have access to clean water supplies, one quarter lack adequate housing, 20 per cent do not have access to modern health services, and 20 per cent of children do not attend school through grade five. Worldwide, 1.1 billion people are malnourished, unable to meet minimum standards for dietary energy; and protein and micronutrient deficiencies are widespread.8 Nearly 2 billion people in developing countries are anaemic."

The point is that you don't really need much energy to live. In fact, roughly two-thirds of world population already lives and multiplies without the comforts of western civilization.

Couple this with the market economy, and the picture becomes clear. *IF* the peak energy / peak oil theories are correct, we will have a very very long period of price increases accompanied by greater and greater levels of conservation and consumption declines.

In fact, the initial stages will probably be larger consumption declines than than drops in supply. Consumption can drop a *lot* faster than supply drops.

*None* of these human and market factors are ever throw into the analysis by these doomsayers. The most I ever see from them is a sideways remark about how the decline will run over human ingenuity, conservation, and market forces acting on each other to adjust. So far, these doomsayers have been wrong, and I expect they will continue to be wrong for quite a while longer.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('shady28', '"')More than a billion people cannot fulfil their basic needs for food, water, sanitation, health care, housing and education. Nearly 60 per cent of the 4.4 billion people living in developing countries lack basic sanitation, almost one third do not have access to clean water supplies, one quarter lack adequate housing, 20 per cent do not have access to modern health services, and 20 per cent of children do not attend school through grade five. Worldwide, 1.1 billion people are malnourished, unable to meet minimum standards for dietary energy; and protein and micronutrient deficiencies are widespread.8 Nearly 2 billion people in developing countries are anaemic."

[TonyPrep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('shady28', 'A') most important fallacy here is the direct causal relationship between energy and world population. Consider this : half the world lives on $2 per day or less. Over 1.2 billion people live on $1 per day or less.