by MrBill » Mon 11 Feb 2008, 11:14:24
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'I') suggest that everyone play around with an excel spreadsheet.
Plug in data about current energy use, plug in expected growth/decline in the various sources of energy, plug in expectations about future demand (with varying degrees of increase based on expectations about conservation and efficiency).
I've played around with the data a lot over the years and I come to the same conclusion over and over again. Peak Oil is a manageable problem that will result in neither the collapse of industrial civilization nor a noticeable decline in the Western world's quality of life.
So, you think that energy sources are our only problem, that ramping up electricity to cover fossil fuel depletion and rise in developed and developing nations' usage takes no resources, and that all of this will smoothly happen at exactly the pace required?
That's a whole lot of wishing.
TonyPrep, do you have a rose colored glasses scenario?
***
RE airplane travel, if airfares went up fourfold they would still probably be cheaper when adjusted for inflation than they were before airline deregulation. I think there will still be commercial aviation, it will just cost a LOT more.
Big Tex, I did not have enough time to go through all the responses. It is nice to see that Tyler_JC is quite optimistic. The problem I see with the nay-sayers is that they do not have to be very imaginative. All they have to do is shoot down every individual idea as being impractical, uneconomical or unscalable whereas the optimist has to do a lot of explaining.
The reality is that we do not know what we do not know? As one other poster wrote, we are mainly talking about technologies that we already have. They may not be as good as petroleum, but they exist. Once we factor in accelerated research and development into all kinds of alternatives - including just adopting best practices everywhere - then we make serious gains. But we still do not know what large break-throughs will be made, by whom, where and what effect they will then have on the direction of future R&D.
This in no way assumes a smooth, painless transition to a new economic reality based on endless, cheap energy. But it may be enough to avert a societal crash for a few decades while we adapt.
And by 'we' I do not infer that all transition and/or future development will be anything like equal. There will be a few winners and many losers in the transition. Just factoring in legacy costs and lost investment alone. Much less different starting points in terms of wealth and infrastructure. But as someone else said, there is a whole lot of money to be made in the transition, so where wealth is destroyed, new wealth is created.
Completely off-topic, but Rotary International are doing an environmental project, and our motto is going to be
'The Environment Needs You!'. To that end we need to design a recruiting poster or whatever you want to call it. Can you send me the URL from your avator? I think it is classic and I wanted to share it with some friends as we try to design the other logo. Probably a cross between a cartoon-style dolphin and an 'Uncle Same wants you' design. Sorry off-topic.
Why am I optimistic? Because groups like Rotary International through their voluntary fund raising and organization have helped to 'almost' eliminate polio worldwide, and we are in our last spurt to make sure it is eliminated before it has a chance to make a comeback just because the battle is almost won. Worthwhile projects attract money and talent.
Once sporadic, regional shortages, and some local economic collapses, happen it will drive home the need for change for everyone and help focus minds. If not amoung the powers that be then amoung like-minded individuals, companies and volunteer organizations. They will look for local and community solutions to their own problems, and by their example others will follow suit. It is how we built our communities in the first place, and it is how we will keep them running. By trial and error, and sometimes by sheer effort despite the odds.
Borderline cornucopian I know, but you started this thread! ; - )
UPDATE:
I had the chance to spend a day recently with someone who's family is involved in fish farming, so I had the opportunity to pepper him with all sorts of questions.
Basically, he said they could grow 300.000 fish in a cage 20m[sup]3[/sup] in size. That is without the need for over-crowding and therefore the over-use of anti-biotics for example. Those fish would be fed to an average size of 500 g or about 150 tonnes of fish could be harvested.
Most of the problems that I have read about fish farming is growing commercially valuable species, of which many just so happen to be carnivores that eat other fish. The real gains would be made by growing species of fish that eat plant or vegetable matter. Or in some cases domestically feeding plant eaters to be fed to the more valuable carnivore species. However, that is a question of variety and taste. In terms of total calories gained farmed fish on vegetable matter is preferable if that is your over-arching aim.
Approximately one billion people currently rely on wild fish stocks for some or all of their income and/or protein consumption. Wild fish stocks are collapsing. Some estimate that by 2030 they may be below replenishment levels. Obviously, a serious economical and environmental problem with social and political consequences. Not least of all that of the tragic of commons where fishermen try to harvest immature fish in a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion of plenty.
However, with farm fish here in Cyprus costing upwards to 48 euros per kilo or $32 per pound (on the plate that is) there is also obviously a clear economic incentive to expand fish farming. Putting better controls in place to prevent escape into the wild is a technical detail much like any of our environmental rules and regulation already in force.
The developing world with its inexpensive labor should have a clear advantage to not only develop this as a local industry, but like Vietnam also become a major seafood exporter. We already expend large amounts of energy to comb the earth's oceans looking for wildfish. It would be more efficient to farm them and then spend considerably less energy to ship them to market.
The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
by TonyPrep » Mon 11 Feb 2008, 14:37:21
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', 'W')hen is this die-back going to occur? And how large is "extensive"? I'm not trying to pin you down to exact numbers here, but please give us something in the ballpark so we can envision what you're talking about. When you say "extensive", what are we talking about in terms of body count? Millions? 10% of the global population? 50%? 90%? And what's the time frame? Are we talking years away? Decades?
I don't know when it is likely to occur and how large it will be. As a rough ballpark figure, I think it will take several years of energy decline before we see it starting. As the severity will be very lumpy, in terms of distribution, it's difficult to say what the level will be, but 10% seems low, to me.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', 'I')'m very curious as to why appropriate measures will not be taken. You frankly admit that the current population can be fed.
I don't frankly admit that, merely that it may be possible. But those measures will almost certainly involve population redistribution, population stabilisation and much smaller scale food production, with orders of magnitude more people involved in it. I don't think those things will happen, voluntarily, quickly enough to avoid problems.
by JohnDenver » Tue 12 Feb 2008, 08:51:41
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', 'I')'m very curious as to why appropriate measures will not be taken. You frankly admit that the current population can be fed.
I don't frankly admit that, merely that it may be possible.
I'm not sure why you say "may". It's patently obvious that everyone can be fed. As I noted above, the amount of energy devoted to the world food system (including fertilizer, on-farm production, processing, packaging, marketing, transport, home prep and restaurants) is certainly less than 17% of global energy consumption. So there is no reason to believe that we can't continue to feed everyone using the current system for decades, at the very least. Peak oil is not going to cause us to lose 83% of all energy in the course of a few years.
So, I don't understand why it won't be possible to feed everyone. Clearly we have the technology and the energy necessary to do it, so why wouldn't it be possible?
by BigTex » Tue 12 Feb 2008, 14:14:36
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', 'I')'m very curious as to why appropriate measures will not be taken. You frankly admit that the current population can be fed.
I don't frankly admit that, merely that it may be possible.
I'm not sure why you say "may". It's patently obvious that everyone can be fed. As I noted above, the amount of energy devoted to the world food system (including fertilizer, on-farm production, processing, packaging, marketing, transport, home prep and restaurants) is certainly less than 17% of global energy consumption. So there is no reason to believe that we can't continue to feed everyone using the current system for decades, at the very least. Peak oil is not going to cause us to lose 83% of all energy in the course of a few years.
So, I don't understand why it won't be possible to feed everyone. Clearly we have the technology and the energy necessary to do it, so why wouldn't it be possible?
JD, I like your blog. It is perhaps the best reply to the OP of this thread.
I love your comparison of peokoil.com to a "doomer feedlot."
That's good stuff.
by Alcassin » Tue 12 Feb 2008, 16:53:09
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', '
')I'm not sure why you say "may". It's patently obvious that everyone can be fed. As I noted above, the amount of energy devoted to the world food system (including fertilizer, on-farm production, processing, packaging, marketing, transport, home prep and restaurants) is certainly less than 17% of global energy consumption. So there is no reason to believe that we can't continue to feed everyone using the current system for decades, at the very least. Peak oil is not going to cause us to lose 83% of all energy in the course of a few years.
That's an important figure you mention. Everyone can be fed, but is not fed even today
5 billion people are quite well fed, and the rest... However:
There is estimate made by UN that population will reach 9 billion in 2050. So we've got another 2,3 billion people to feed, Its about another 1/3 of current population. Another Chinindia in 40 years. That's a challenge, don't you think?
To feed this people, we have much less topsoil to do that, and it's energy intensive to make another surplus to meet the demand. It's for me quite clear - we clear the forests to get the soil which isn't 1st class soil. The story goes on - some of our intensive techniques make the land less fertile, and the need for the fertilizer inputs is growing or the cost of food is likely to go up.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'G')lobal fertilizer use was merely 27 million tons in 1959 and 1960; it increased five times to 141 million metric tons over the forty-year period ending in 2000. The projected fertilizer demand for the year 2020 is 220 million metric tons. Intensive fertilizer use on input-responsive cultivars grown on prime irrigated land was the basis of the green revolution in South Asia and elsewhere that saved millions from hunger and malnutrition. As the world population increases and cropland becomes more valuable, total cropland acreage is beginning to diminish, increasing the reliance on fertilizer.
Source
Biofuels are now in the direct competition with food, so if the biofuel goes up there is ultimately less food. We can expand the agriculture, sure, but it has major shortcommings - higher demand for energy, and less forests - and this will accelerate climate change.
Plus you get the problem with fossil fuels - while population goes up, the fossil fuel base is falling down. We put the pressure on resources every year higher than the year before, this cannot continue forever. However I'm not that one who predicts that in 5-10 years we will be struck and in deep recession.
The change is gradual, and the pattern is known - we use more than it's being replenished. Our ecological footprint exceeded the biocapacity. It's possible for a period of time - how long? Who knows? Do you know how many GigaWatts of solar energy there will be in 2030? Obviously you don't...
What peak oil means that we enter the new era of expensive energy. This will cause problems in many societies and they will gradually grow and sometimes explode. The problem with oil is just the beginning what we will try to do - find alternatives. They aren't so dense or solves merely nothing - like coal (due to climate change). I'm sure we are all interested in booming the renewable energy industry - but at this point I want to ask - how long and how many resources (e.g. rare metals in Nanosolar) it will take and exhaust, and if we overcome even this - how long it will be possible to mantain our current lifestyles with consumption rate globally exceeding the capacity.
Anyway, I like your blog JD however I don't agree with you
Peak oil is only an indication and a premise of limits to growth on a finite planet.
Denial is the most predictable of all human responses.
by MrBill » Wed 13 Feb 2008, 10:20:01
Alcassin wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hat peak oil means that we enter the new era of expensive energy. This will cause problems in many societies and they will gradually grow and sometimes explode. The problem with oil is just the beginning what we will try to do - find alternatives. They aren't so dense or solves merely nothing - like coal (due to climate change). I'm sure we are all interested in booming the renewable energy industry - but at this point I want to ask - how long and how many resources (e.g. rare metals in Nanosolar) it will take and exhaust, and if we overcome even this - how long it will be possible to mantain our current lifestyles with consumption rate globally exceeding the capacity.
Whoa, hard charger! Anyone that has stuck around peak oil dot com knows the underlying issues. I do not think there are many of us that honestly believe we can 'maintain our current lifestyles' with or without post peak oil resource depletion? As a matter of fact it is said every single day that the current system is unsustainable. And what is unsustainable must by definition end. Some feel sooner rather than later. We must change our current environmental impact or footprint.
However, when you say, we, who exactly do you mean? Those in the rich world that use the lion's share of resources because quite frankly we can pay for them and the developing world is happy to have something of value to sell? Or do you mean the developing world where the majority of population increase is taking place? There is a big difference.
I am not going back to the 18th century or even the Stone Age because some backward countries cannot, will not, do not want to get their reproductive impulses under control for religious, ethnic, cultural or status reasons. That is a none starter!
So is getting people to voluntarily to agree to freeze to death in the dark! It ain't goin' nowhere!!
The last thing any of us needs is a lecture about the evils of increasing efficiency, decreasing reproduction and harvesting higher standards of living.
Expensive energy - as any other input to production - will be dealt with by improving efficiency, and producing something of value that can be traded for that energy. Selling babies may qualify, but it is not a good starting point on which to build a sustainable comparative trade advantage.
Do not get me wrong. We have some serious problems that we (collectively) must solve. However, my attempts to deal with resource depletion as an individual will be frustrated if we keep expanding our population by another 3 billion or so. I did not ask them to keep having - as of yet - unborn babies. Why should I accept that my own - or my family's - standard of living fall below a certain minimum acceptable level, so that I can support another 3 billion - as of yet - unborn babies?
Think about it! ; - )
The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
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by roccman » Wed 13 Feb 2008, 10:36:39
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', ' ')I did not ask them to keep having - as of yet - unborn babies. Why should I accept that my own - or my family's - standard of living fall below a certain minimum acceptable level, so that I can support another 3 billion - as of yet - unborn babies?
Think about it! ; - )
Mr. Bill, I do not have a link to support this, but I have read several times we in the industrial world have somewhere between 30 and 70 energy slaves per capita.
So each person in the US has a much (by magnitudes) larger carbon footprint than someone in Africa's bush country.
How do you think you are supporting an african?
I, on the other hand, take real issue with mothers in the industrialized world on welfare with 6 kids...or 420 energy slaves.
In my mind America and the "rich world" have the biggest strains on all global ecosystems and the most overly populated.
I will drive to work in a car that produces 115 HP...my african counterpart will walk.
Do you follow me?
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roccman on Wed 13 Feb 2008, 10:54:52, edited 1 time in total.
"There must be a bogeyman; there always is, and it cannot be something as esoteric as "resource depletion." You can't go to war with that." Emersonbiggins
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by MrBill » Wed 13 Feb 2008, 11:36:33
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', ' ')I did not ask them to keep having - as of yet - unborn babies. Why should I accept that my own - or my family's - standard of living fall below a certain minimum acceptable level, so that I can support another 3 billion - as of yet - unborn babies?
Think about it! ; - )
Mr. Bill, I do not have a link to support this, but I have read several times we in the industrial world have somewhere between 30 and 70 energy slaves per capita.
So each person in the US has a much (by magnitudes) larger carbon footprint than someone in Africa's bush country.
How do you think you are supporting an african?
I, on the other hand, take real issue with mothers in the industrialized world on welfare with 6 kids...or 420 energy slaves.
In my mind America and the "rich world" have the biggest strains on all global ecosystems and the most overly populated.
I will drive to work in a car that produces 115 HP...my african counterpart will walk.
Do you follow me?
The answer, of course, is for westerners (a generic concept admittedly) to consume less and conserve more, and for those in lesser developed countries (LDCs) to stop putting increasing economic and ecological burdens on their local environments by having fewer children. Period.
However, these concepts become quickly blurred when we consider that two-thirds of the increased demand for energy is coming from Chindia, and China consumes 25-percent of the world's copper while being on its way to becoming the world's number one producer of aluminum, steel and other metals.
The fact is that over the past 40-years that Asia has developed approximately 34-times faster than Africa. And in the past 40-years many middle income African countries have gone backwards in their economic development due to BIC Syndrome - bureaucracy, incompetence and corruption - by their own local leaders, but that poverty has been exacerbated by civil wars and ethnic conflicts between tribes.
When you talk about energy slaves, I say bull$hit! If that were the case there would be trade links between those poor countries and rich consuming nations. As far as I know resource extraction industries use proportionately more technology - primarily western technology - and less unskilled local labor. That may create problems of its own, but I would reject the label slave.
The truth is that in some screwed-up backward country, cheap, unskilled labor may be all that these retarded countries have to export. And the price of labor has to be kept low, well, because it is unskilled, and there is a lack of infrastructure, so the cost of prodution is relatively high because labor productivity is low. One symptom of this is China Inc.'s preference to bring over low paid, but disciplined Chinese labor to work in their African mines, rather than hire locals. How screwed up is that as a development model?
If Hugo Chavez wants to grind his country into poverty then I fail to see how I enable that? The Bolivar Revolution is a smoke screen for him and his cronies robbing the country blind for their own benefit. Poor countries are usually poor because of poor decision made locally. Sorry, there is no global conspiracy. Show me an up and coming emerging market and I will invest in it!
If there were a conspiracy, why did America use her oil first? Dumb, dumb, dumb! ; - )
I can make up meaningless statistics, too. Whoever made up this argument about having 30 to 70 energy slaves per capita obviously has a philosophical axe to grind. I doubt their methodology would stand up to even cursory scrutiny. And that is too bad because there are so many serious economic and ecological problems to address in ernst that any exaggerated claims tend to distract from rather than add to the argument! ; - )
The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
by MrBill » Wed 13 Feb 2008, 11:42:22
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'W')hy should I accept that my own - or my family's - standard of living fall below a certain minimum acceptable level, so that I can support another 3 billion - as of yet - unborn babies?
Think about it! ; - )
If you cannot do anything about it, the only way forward is to accept it.
I think more to the point is that 'they' will have to accept poverty and low standards of living if 'they' are born into a post peak oil world where resource depletion will mean less for everyone!
If we have not solved the world's problems pre-peak oil then I highly doubt they will be solved in a satisfactory manner post peak oil. Peak oil may well mean peak international cooperation on these and other issues as well!
The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
by roccman » Wed 13 Feb 2008, 11:53:28
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', ' ')Peak oil may well mean peak international cooperation on these and other issues as well!
Translation:
Enjoy the die off.
"There must be a bogeyman; there always is, and it cannot be something as esoteric as "resource depletion." You can't go to war with that." Emersonbiggins
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