Peak Oil is You
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Page added on July 3, 2014
Collapse and Survival
Systemic collapse, the coming crash, overshoot, the die-off, the tribulation, the coming anarchy, resource wars — there are many names, and they do not all correspond to exactly the same thing, but there is a widespread belief that something immense is happening. This event has about ten elements, each with a somewhat causal relationship to the next. (1) Fossil fuels (e.g., oil, natural gas, coal), (2) metals, and (3) electricity are a tightly-knit group, and no industrial civilization can have one without the others. As those three disappear, (4) food and (5) fresh water become scarce. Matters of infrastructure then follow: (6) transportation and (7) communication — no paved roads, no telephones, no computers. After that, the social structure begins to fail: (8) government, (9) education, and (10) the large-scale division of labor that makes complex technology possible.
Systemic collapse has one overwhelming ultimate cause: world overpopulation. The world’s population went from about 1.7 billion in 1900 to 2.4 in 1950, to over 7 billion today. All of the flash-in-the-pan ideas that are presented as solutions to the modern dilemma — solar power, ethanol, hybrid cars, desalination, permaculture, enormous dams — have value only as desperate attempts to solve an underlying problem that has never been addressed in a more direct manner.
Fossil fuels, metals, and electricity are intricately connected. Electricity, for example, can be generated on a global scale only with fossil fuels. The same dependence on fossil fuels is true of metals; in fact the better types of ore are now becoming depleted, while those that remain can be processed only with modern machinery and require more fossil fuels for smelting. In turn, without metals and electricity there will be no means of extracting and processing fossil fuels. Of the three members of the triad, electricity is the most fragile, and its failure will serve as an early and very noticeable warning
of trouble with the other two.
Fossil fuels not only provide the energy for internal-combustion engines. They also provide us with fertilizer, pesticides, lubricants, plastic, paint, synthetic fabrics, asphalt, pharmaceuticals, and many other things. On a more abstract level, we are dependent on these fossil fuels for manufacturing, for transportation, for agriculture, for mining, and for electricity. As these fuels disappear, there will be no means of supporting the billions of people who now live on this planet.
A good deal of debate has gone on about “peak oil,” the date at which the world’s annual oil production of useable, recoverable oil will reach (or did reach) its maximum and will begin (or did begin) to decline. The exact numbers are unobtainable, but the situation can perhaps be summarized by saying that dozens of large-scale studies have been done, and the consensus is that the date for “peak oil” is somewhere between 2000 and 2020, with a maximum annual producion of about 30 billion barrels.
It should also be mentioned that the above-mentioned quest for the date of peak oil is in some respects a red herring. In terms of daily life, it is important to consider not only peak oil in the absolute sense, but peak oil per capita. The date of the latter was 1979, when there were 5.5 barrels of oil per person annually.
In the entire world, there are at most about a trillion barrels of usable, recoverable oil remaining — which may sound like a lot, but isn’t. When newspapers announce the discovery of a deposit of a billion barrels, readers are no doubt amazed, but they are not told that such a find is only two weeks’ supply.
After the “peak” itself, the next question is that of the annual rate of decline. Estimates tend to hover around 4 percent, which means production will fall to half of peak production by about 2030, although there are reasons to suspect the decline will be much faster, particularly if Saudi reserves are seriously overstated.
As the years go by, new oil wells have to be drilled more deeply than the old, because newly discovered deposits are deeper. Those new deposits are therefore less accessible. But oil is used as a fuel for the oil drills themselves, and for the exploration. When it takes an entire barrel of oil to get one barrel of oil out of the ground, as is increasingly the case, it is a waste of time to continue drilling such a well.
Coal and natural gas are also declining. Coal will be available for a while after oil is gone, although previous reports of its abundance were highly exaggerated. Coal, however, is highly polluting and cannot be used as a fuel for most forms of transportation. Natural gas is not easily transported, and it is not suitable for most equipment.
Alternative sources of energy will never be very useful, for several reasons, but mainly because of a problem of “net energy”: the amount of energy output is not sufficiently greater than the amount of energy input. All alternative forms of energy are so dependent on the very petroleum that they are intended to replace that the use of them is largely self-defeating and irrational. Alternative sources ultimately don’t have enough “bang” to replace 30 billion annual barrels of oil — or even to replace more than the tiniest fraction of that amount.
Petroleum is required to extract, process, and transport almost any other form of energy; a coal mine is not operated by coal-powered equipment. It takes “oil energy” to make “alternative energy.”
The use of “unconventional oil” (shale deposits, tar sands, heavy oil) poses several problems besides that of net energy. Large quantities of fossil fuels and water are needed to process the oil from these unconventional sources, so net energy recovery is low. The pollution problems are considerable, and it is not certain how much environmental damage the human race is willing to endure. With unconventional oil we are, quite literally, scraping the bottom of the barrel.
More-exotic forms of alternative energy are plagued with even greater problems. Fuel cells cannot be made practical, because such devices require hydrogen derived from fossil fuels (coal or natural gas), if we exclude designs that will never escape the realm of science fiction; if fuel cells ever became popular, the fossil fuels they require would then be consumed even faster than they are now. Biomass energy (perhaps from wood or corn) would require impossibly large amounts of land and would still result in insufficient quantities of net energy, perhaps even negative quantities. Hydroelectric dams are reaching their practical limits. Wind and geothermal power are only effective in certain areas and for certain purposes. Nuclear power will soon be suffering from a lack of fuel and is already creating serious environmental dangers.
The current favorite for alternative energy is solar power, but proponents must close their eyes to all questions of scale. To meet the world’s present energy needs by using solar power, we would need an array (or an equivalent number of smaller ones) of collectors covering about 550,000 square kilometers — a machine the size of France. The production and maintenance of this array would require vast quantities of fossil fuels, metals, and other materials — a self-defeating process.
Modern agriculture is highly dependent on fossil fuels for fertilizers, pesticides, and the operation of machines for harvesting, processing, and transporting. The Green Revolution amounted to little more than the invention of a way to turn petroleum and natural gas into food. Without fossil fuels, modern methods of food production will disappear, and crop yields will be far less than at present. Because of the shortage of food, world population must shrink dramatically, but we conveniently forget that war, plague, and famine are the only means available.
The problem of the world’s diminishing supply of oil is a problem of energy, not a problem of money. The old bromide that “higher prices will eventually make [e.g.] shale oil economically feasible” is meaningless. This planet has only a finite amount of fossil fuel. That fuel is starting to decline, and “higher prices” are quite unable to stop the event from taking place. Much of modern warfare is about oil, in spite of all the pious and hypocritical rhetoric about “the forces of good” and “the forces of evil.” The real “forces” are those trying to control the oil wells and the fragile pipelines that carry that oil. A map of recent American military ventures is a map of petroleum deposits. When the oil wars began is largely a matter of definition, though perhaps 1973 would be a usable date, when the Yom Kippur War — or, to speak more truthfully, the decline of American domestic oil — led to the OPEC oil embargo.
There is no “big plan” for dealing with these problems, and there never will be, although most people assume the leaders of society are both wise and benevolent. Instead of the “big plan,” there will be only the “small plan,” person by person, family by family. Everyone’s way of life will change as time goes by, but over the next few decades the following principles will apply.
A better way of life would begin with finding a saner connection to the natural world. It would be a good idea to leave the busy city for that strange, long-forgotten place called the countryside. Living in the countryside will be more useful than living in urban areas. Rural communities are closer to the land and the water, and any disruption of such ties is more easily resolved in a rural community. One’s community will certainly constitute no more than about a hundred people or so, perhaps far less than that. Each family or small group will then need to find some way to provide itself with the necessities of life, because transportation and communication will be on a much smaller scale that they are today.
It would be best to start looking at how things were done in the 19th century, or even before that. This will mean living independently of the modern equipment and chemicals with which most people nowadays are familiar. The members of the community should learn to use the sorts of tools and materials that were common long ago. They should not own devices that cannot be repaired personally or at least locally. Finally, they should learn how to get by with no more than can properly be used, as was the case in earlier times — even as recently as the 19th century, the average bedroom was hardly big enough for more than the bed.
29 Comments on "Collapse and Survival"
Plantagenet on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 5:18 pm
There is no reason to look at the 19th century for hope. All we have to do is shift from oil to Natural Gas. According to Obama, we’ve got a 100 year supply of NG, so we should be in good shape on the energy side for the foreseeable future.
MSN Fanboy on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 5:39 pm
“Alternative sources ultimately don’t have enough “bang” to replace 30 billion annual barrels of oil — or even to replace more than the tiniest fraction of that amount”
Agreed
“The current favorite for alternative energy is solar power, but proponents must close their eyes to all questions of scale. To meet the world’s present energy needs by using solar power, we would need an array (or an equivalent number of smaller ones) of collectors covering about 550,000 square kilometers — a machine the size of France. The production and maintenance of this array would require vast quantities of fossil fuels, metals, and other materials — a self-defeating process”
Agreed
“The old bromide that “higher prices will eventually make [e.g.] shale oil economically feasible” is meaningless”
Disagreed, if people can pay the higher price, they will. Oil production will maximise this price until people can’t pay. Then we will be “fucked”
All in all, a very good article explaining our prediciment.
And as the wise-seer Plantagenet mentions, the God king, his most omni-potent and omni-present self Obama, assures us 100 years of natural gas.
How quaint.
All Worship Obama
God-King
So powerful in his might to actually create natural gas
.
.
.
every times he opens his mouth
J-Gav on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 5:44 pm
Gee Plant (Mr 100-year supply dude), everything really is simple, isn’t it?
Plantagenet on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 5:49 pm
Gee 3-Gav (Mr. sarcastic dude) are you disputing Obama’s claim that the US has a 100 year supply of NG?
Satori on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 6:50 pm
people in my state were told that there was a 100 year supply of fracked gas
next thing you know they were talking 40 years
then it was down to 5 years worth
and now
not one commercial company is willing to go after whatever tiny amount might actually be there
the state is spending tax payer dollars to drill test wells because no commercial company will touch it
this would be funny
if it wasn’t so sad
and oh
don’t let me forget about the bazillion jobs that will be created
or is it two bazillion ?
I can never remember
HARM on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 6:57 pm
Obama is just another technocopian puppet and mouthpiece for the 1%, in a very long line of such “leaders”. In the end, he –like most politicians– are followers, just following the money.
Kenjamkov on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 7:21 pm
100 year supply at current consumption rates. If everything switched to natural gas, consumption rates would be 2-3x what they are now. And that is without a growing economy. So 25 years (maybe more) on natural gas, and the cost of the changeover? Who foots that bill?
Newfie on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 7:25 pm
“electricity is the most fragile, and its failure will serve as an early and very noticeable warning of trouble with the other two”
The Olduvai Theory. It’s coming…
Plantagenet on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 7:25 pm
Obama didn’t say “at current consumption rates”. He said a 100 year supply of NG. period. Full stop. Do you really think Obama was trying to fool people into thinking there was a 100 year supply if there is only a 25 year supply?
GregT on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 8:36 pm
Actually Kenjam,
Consumption rates could be 10 to 20 times what Obama envisioned, especially if gas is exported. More like 5 to 10 years worth.
Makati1 on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 9:47 pm
Population is always brought up although it is not to blame for our current situation except in that the “Exceptional” West thinks they are being deprived of their “rights” if the other six billion want to get out of poverty and consume more.
Take the World GDP for 2013 and divide it equally among the earth’s population and you get a life style almost twice that of the Philippines. Something on the level of Ecuador or Thailand. A quite comfortable existence, with most necessities and some of the ‘luxuries’.
Like any other animal, humans will breed until they run out of resources and then they will die out until the land can once again support their number. We should have been intelligent enough to educate and provide for our fellow men and women so that we would limit our reproduction to the available resources. But, we were no better then the lowly rat or bacteria. So, we now pay the price.
“… It would be best to start looking at how things were done in the 19th century, or even before that. …”
farmlad on Thu, 3rd Jul 2014 10:19 pm
. “In terms of daily life, it is important to consider not only peak oil in the absolute sense, but peak oil per capita. The date of the latter was 1979, when there were 5.5 barrels of oil per person annually” Is this accurate? If we take the 76,662,000 bpd x 365 days, is almost 28 billion barrels per year divided by the 7.25 = 3.862 barrels per person per year. are my figures close? big difference if you ask me. and my guess would be that per capita, americans had even a bigger share of that pie in 1979.
Makati1 on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 12:24 am
farmland, oil use by Americans is about two gallons per day, per person. Here in the Philippines, it is about one pint per day, per person. That is an example of how far Americans have to fall, just to get to our levels here.
At Philippine consumption levels, the world could supply about 60 Billion people with a pint of oil everyday that would maintain a Filipino level lifestyle. See the problem?
ulenspiegel on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 12:45 am
“Alternative sources of energy will never be very useful, for several reasons, but mainly because of a problem of “net energy”: the amount of energy output is not sufficiently greater than the amount of energy input. All alternative forms of energy are so dependent on the very petroleum that they are intended to replace that the use of them is largely self-defeating and irrational.”
What an intellectual crap.
Jimmy on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 5:34 am
Plant shut the fuck up for a change. You’re a fucking troll.
BC on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 5:57 am
when tne bubble bursts within a couple of years we westerners may well have to survive on quite a bit less a pint of oil a day would lead to us having a frugal lifestyle
Davy on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 6:47 am
Mak, said “That is an example of how far Americans have to fall, just to get to our levels here.”
So true Mak but we have space to fall and open spaces to fall into. The P’s have neither and will be left near the end of the line for the last scramble for energy and food when the SHTF. You been down at the beach sippin your San Miguel Beer too long. Get a grip Mak, you are facing a collapse of an overpopulated third world Island in the cross hairs of climate change. Your economy is a low value added export economy of which the only export really is low labor cost. When the global system contracts there will be no need for these products because consumerism will be over and all the P’s export are consumer junk. Your food exports are likewise not food chain basics more on the order of tropical luxuries that will no longer be needed in a much poorer global economy. The food will be needed in the P’s for all those hungry slum dwellers pouring out of the overpopulated cities. Get ready for the horde of coastal people descending on you little bitty farm when towns and cities get destroyed from mega typhoons and these desperate folks walk about in search of food. These towns and cities will never be rebuilt
Dredd on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 7:08 am
“When the oil wars began is largely a matter of definition …” -survive peakoil blogspot
Yes, one definition is when the largest Navy on Earth at the beginning of the 20th Century switched from coal to oil for their warships (~1912).
The Western Powers then concurrently set the policy of controlling Mid-east Oil into action.
Arthur on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 7:54 am
I have to agree with Davy here, Makati. Although the potential cold turkey is much, much bigger for Americans, in the end of the day the raw conditions for an ‘american organism’ to survive are identical to those of a ‘philipino organism’, if you forgive my bluntness of expression. The conditions for survival in the US are much better than in the Ps.
It is not of my business, but I am still curious for your motivations for picking the Ps, of all places.
Arthur on Fri, 4th Jul 2014 8:10 am
“Plant shut the fuck up for a change.”
Ahem, this is a discussion forum, not a north-Korean shut-the-fuck-up-forum. Plant has the constitutional right to utter his opinions, irrespective of how wild they are. As long as Plant does not call for violence against president Obama, he can accuse him of anything… the bad weather, the high price of mayonaise, the defeat against Belgium, peak-oil, anything.
Mike in Calif. on Sat, 5th Jul 2014 12:55 am
Arthur and Davy are right. The Philippines is in bad shape for transition. Its population was 7.6 million in 1903. Today it’s 92 million. Even if we adjust the 1900 reference number up – allowing for some surviving tech and energy – the country is still in severe overshoot.
The risk for the US isn’t energy (which it has plenty if rationed) or population (which is only in minor overshoot). It problems are structural, temporal, political and demographic.
At 90% urbanized/suburbanized its structure heavily reliant on liquid fuel. An abrupt event would be catastrophic. However, IF the transition is gradual and IF the government discovers competence and IF the demographic powder keg doesn’t explode, the US could shift gears smoothly and maintain it for a few decades.
But I don’t see these IFs falling into place. I see some break point leading to high casualties not so much from over-population as from over-concentration, ideological war and ethnic violence. In short, fragmentation and civil war. This will further destroy structure and distribution and reduce the capacity of the “country” to sustain population even more.
The US could transition gently, but for reasons mostly unrelated to energy, I don’t think it will.
theedrich on Sat, 5th Jul 2014 5:09 am
The current POTUS assures us that everything would be rosy and peachy keen if it just weren’t for those pesky Republicans who want to kill everyone. Meanwhile, by sluicing in vast torrents of unsupportable Third Worlders, he himself is increasing the overburden that will magnify the post-PO crash. Naturally he and his oligarchic string-pullers (Georg Sörös, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, TBTF CEOs, the media tycoons &c.), who pay for his elections, sway the masses with sedative lies and infotaining drivel. “We” (i.e., the taxpayers) have to solve a new “humanitarian crisis” (which he himself created and abets) of Central American sob stories. And when the global downturn starts in earnest he will say he (and his kleptocratic masters) just learned about it on the news like everybody else and never expected it. And the TV-hypnotizees all across the land will swallow it whole. Because their Hope-and-Change (i.e., Bait and Switch) god has revealed the gospel to them: pay now and fly later.
nwcruiser on Sat, 5th Jul 2014 6:43 am
Unfortunately the outcome of resource depletion is not going to result in small communities living a harmonious life styles. But rather there will be massive labor camps extracting what ever is left manually so the worlds elite can continue on with there exuberant life styles while most of the Earth will be uninhabitable due to nuclear waste dumped into the sea, decaying power plants and unimaginable wars.
Davy on Sat, 5th Jul 2014 6:58 am
Mike, very well put!
Davy on Sat, 5th Jul 2014 7:17 am
Cruiser, your mind’s eye view is too cut and dry. There will most likely be forced labor and or slavery. There will be desperate people that will be lead so they survive. Yet, it is not all together certain if this will play out everywhere. There are a huge amount of “elites” now and that will change in a drop in economic activity or outright collapse to a much low level. I suspect there will not be the coordination of global elites but rather regional warlords “negative” and or regional elders and leaders “positive” if a significant descent occurs. Most likely a sprinkling of the two depending on the population demography. Some areas are prone to warlordism other to cooperation. We can be certain that government and leadership will shrink but how much and how quick. These questions allow for a whole range of arrangements we have seen throughout history and see today. We may also see a smaller than today multipolar world remain after a relatively minor descent leaving multiple failed states here or there but regional powers that are coherent and functional. The shear amount of predicaments and corresponding tipping points and their feedbacks into new predicaments and tipping points are staggering. To predict outcomes with these type of influences is difficult at best. With descent there is randomness so predicting descent is akin to going to the casino but worse because in a craps game you know the odds. Our descent will not have recognizable odds and possibilities that can be predicted. Complex systems fail in complex manners.
clueless on Sat, 5th Jul 2014 12:03 pm
The delusional americans are here again parading their idiotic nation as a safe haven come SHTF….AMERICA WILL BE THE BIGGEST JAIL ON EARTH COME THAT TIME..GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN !!! Mexico and Canada are your safest bets.
Do some research and statistics why thousands and thousands of fresh american college grads are denouncing their US citizenships and migrating somewhere in Canada,and believe it or not, South East Asia, and South America.
Wake up SHEEPLE !!!
Arthur on Sat, 5th Jul 2014 2:46 pm
What’s ‘your’ country, clueless?
Repent on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 8:55 am
I had difficulty with the claim ‘electricity is the most fragile’. There’s no evidence for this. Small scale power generation is available anywhere, including from renewable sources such as solar and wind. You don’t need a billion dollar central generating plant to have electricity; a small windmill or a set of solar panels and a 12 volt batter will do just nicely for an average person with a scaled down lifestyle.
If every family on the planet had a set of solar panels; then electricity would be global without the giant power plants, long distance power lines, and so forth. Your claim is evidently false.
Davy on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 9:35 am
Repent, I agree and disagree, first the systematic implications of mainline power instability can train wreck BAU that will ruin the AltE renaissance. In a perfect world of 40 years ago with Jimmy carter attitude changes, solar panels and solar hot water in every home, no sprawl build out, and fuel efficient cars maybe we would be where you describe. Unfortunately we are here and now with population overshoot to carrying capacity, limits of growth, diminishing returns, AGW, whole ecosystem failures, and a financial system in a deflating bubble. All these issues point to a systematic disequilibrium bifurcating to a lower economic activity level. In a normal world of a manageable population and low complexity we could say “so what” but today in our hyper complex overshoot world it does not bode well for survival of all of our locals that depend on a sputtering global economy.