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Page added on June 5, 2016
Peak Oil and Climate Collapse: Can Society Make the Transition in Time?
As the independent investigative journalist Dahr Jamail has detailed in his regular climate dispatch for Truthout, there are signs that excessive amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are wreaking havoc on the globe’s atmospheric and ocean systems.
From the Wildfires raging near Fort McMurray in Alberta, to the increasing acidification of the oceans which cover 70% of the planet, to the mass die-off of species, to rising sea levels, to record shattering heat persisting for three months straight in early 2016 coming on the heels of record high global temperatures persisting for the last sixteen years, it is clear that Earth’s ecological systems are under assault.[1][2]
Click to download the audio (MP3 format)
Then there is the question of peak oil and gas.
As energy writer Richard Heinberg argued in a previous installment of the Global Research News Hour, the discovery of cheap accessible oil and natural gas was akin to ‘winning the energy lottery.’ He indicated then that all aspects of life were altered as a result of incorporating this extremely potent energy source into our economic system. Agriculture, petro-chemicals, plastics synthetics, consumerism, the techno-boom and the resulting six-fold increase in the human population all resulted from the oil century.
There are credible signs that conventional oil production peaked around 2005. Unconventional supplies such as Alberta tar sands oil (bitumen) and shale oil (kerogen) have unexpectedly resulted in the current glut on the market and given the oil age a new lease on life. However, extraction methods for these substances have proven to be extremely harmful to the environment. In any case, these supplies are finite and will eventually run out.
Given the realities of peak oil and climate change, our high tech civilization would seem to be an energy castle, built on a foundation of fossil fuel sand.
Transition to a non-fossil fuel based economy, sooner or later, is inevitable. The question is how could that be achieved in time to address the hazards on the horizon? Is it feasible? How could that be pursued in a meaningful way? What political and other obstacles need to be overcome to get to a truly renewable economy?
The Global Research News Hour focuses this week on how to respond to the modern day energy dilemma with three guests. Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon institute and Gordon Laxer, founder and former director of the University of Alberta-based Parkland institute take up the bulk of the show discussing the role of trade agreements in undermining energy security, US imperialism as part of the problem, obstructionism from elites, and the compromises that will be necessary to achieve a sustainable future.
With a less optimistic take is returning guest Professor Emeritus Guy McPherson, who explains in the final segment of the program why near-term human extinction due to runaway global warming is not only likely but inevitable, why he feels the renewable economy is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” proposition, and yet continues to promote action rather than resignation as a strategy moving ahead.
Richard Heinberg is a Senior Fellow with the Post-Carbon Institute. He is a journalist, and author of thirteen books including The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003, New Society Publishers), Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels (2015, New Society Publishers) and his most recent Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy co-authored by David Fridley (2016, Island Press). Heinberg is considered one of the world’s leading educators on the subject of Peak Oil, the opposite side of the fossil fuel energy coin.
Gordon Laxer is a political economist and the former head and founding director of the Parkland Institute based at the University of Alberta where he is Professor Emeritus. He is widely published in newspapers and magazines and the author of several books including Open for Business: The Roots of Foreign Ownership in Canada(1989, Oxford University Press), and his most recent After the Sands: Energy and Ecological Security for Canadians (Douglas & Mcintyre.)
Guy McPherson is a Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. He has spent years assembling and collating available peer-reviewed research on climate. He hosts the Nature Bats Last website, and is host of the Nature Bats Last radio program on the Progressive Radio Network.
38 Comments on "Peak Oil and Climate Collapse: Can Society Make the Transition in Time?"
Survivalist on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 8:23 pm
“Society” is not exactly a homogenous organization. M. Thatcher once said it does not exist. Communities, populations, groups, tribes; these I have all seen and have measured. Society is a hypothetical construct. Communities and populations of people will all soon change greatly. Famine will be the key influencing factor in the near future. Famine due to peak oil/decreasing EROI (decreased net energy flow through a complex organization of people) and climate change will soon be upon us. The result will be a Hobbesian scramble for the resources necessary for survival.
Plantagenet on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 8:35 pm
There is a small possibility that the world will transition to renewable energy. There is little or no possibility that catastrophic climate change can be avoided—-because its already started to impact the planet.
Cheers!
Survivalist on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 8:57 pm
Renewable energy? There is no such thing. Try making wind turbines and solar panels without fossil fuel inputs and mining activities. Renewables is a bullshit word.
Jay Hanson has an interesting comment on renewables at the interview linked here:
http://jayhanson.us/rr-jhanson-16kbps.mp3
sunweb on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 9:06 pm
survivalist – The whole picture needs to be included not just the installed devices. I am not a supporter of fossil fuels or nuclear. I am concerned about continuing business as usual and its devastation of the earth and humanities future.
Solar and wind energy collecting devices and their auxiliary equipment have an industrial history. They are an extension of the fossil fuel supply system and the global industrial infrastructure. It is important to understand the industrial infrastructure and the environmental results for the components of the solar energy collecting devices so we don’t designate them with false labels such as green, renewable or sustainable.
This is a challenge to ‘business as usual’. If we teach people that these solar devices are the future of energy without teaching the whole system, we mislead, misinform and create false hopes and beliefs. They are not made with magic wands.
These videos are primarily concerning solar energy collecting devices. These videos and charts are provided by the various industries themselves. I have posted both charts and videos for the solar cells, modules, aluminum from ore, aluminum from recycling, aluminum extrusion, inverters, batteries and copper.
Please note each piece of machinery you see in each of the videos has its own industrial interconnection and history.
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2015/04/solar-devices-industrial-infrastructure.html
This is about wind:
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2014/11/prove-this-wrong.html
Is this more elitist technology for the few. It seems to me all this promotion of solar and wind energy collecting devices are either envisioned as worldwide or it is simply more imperial colonizing of countries with resources and no power. Then think of the resources and energy required to meet global need for the global population.
John Kintree on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 9:21 pm
One can find estimates of EROI for photovoltaic solar energy as low as 2:1, but also claims that PV solar generates as much energy in one year as was used to manufacture and install the panels. Those seem to be contradictory claims.
Davy on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 9:24 pm
“It is important to understand the industrial infrastructure and the environmental results for the components of the solar energy collecting devices so we don’t designate them with false labels such as green, renewable or sustainable.”
Yea, SunWeb, personally I feel few devices can be designated green, renewable, and or sustainable. There is a way to make everything more green, renewable, and or sustainable and that is attitudes. Few people are capable of the proper attitude to fit to the devices to make it green, renewable, and or sustainable. In many ways it is not the people’s fault it is the system’s fault. Our system is not allowing this because it can’t. It is not constructed to be green, renewable, and or sustainable. You can’t retrofit a tank for anything other than killing because it is useless as anything other than killing. Our system cannot be retrofitted and consequently we cannot change. We are hardwired because the system is hardwired.
eugene on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 9:59 pm
I’m a simplistic man so don’t waste my time with all the discussions of how we could survive. To me those are nice cup of coffee discussions of speculations based on nothing of any substance. It’s a done deal. Whether any humans survive really doesn’t matter. Species come and species go. It’s the way of things.
Boat on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 9:59 pm
John,
http://www.leonardo-energy.org/blog/date-analysis-energy-performance-pv-systems
Plantagenet on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 10:14 pm
@Survivialist
Denying that renewable energy exists doesn’t change the fact that non-renewable energy technologies rely on extracting a finite supply of fossil fuels while wind power, sun power and hydro power rely on self-renewing natural processes that are essentially infinite.
Cheers!
makati1 on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 10:28 pm
Plant … but, but … how do the windmills and panels get made, transported, installed and maintained without oil? Transport is over roads paved in ether oil (asphalt) or concrete (1 cu.yd. = 1 bbl of oil to exist.) Wind towers are installed with the use of huge cranes and trucks. Both powered by diesel. Not to mention the transport from mines to factories to warehouses to …
GregT on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 10:49 pm
“Denying that renewable energy exists doesn’t change the fact that non-renewable energy technologies rely on extracting a finite supply of fossil fuels, while wind power, sun power and hydro power rely on fossil fuels in resource extraction and refinement, manufacturing, transport, installation, and maintenance. Self-renewing natural processes that are essentially infinite, require fossil fuels in order to generate electricity from them.
There, fixed it for you planter.
Boat on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 10:56 pm
mak,
But..but..oil will be around for decades/centuries. In 20 years trucks and cranes will run on nat gas. The world is entering a new era. Wind is getting to scale, solar in a few years. The dependance on oil will be diminished significantly over the next 30 years. but..but Oil will be an expensive viable commodity.
GregT on Sun, 5th Jun 2016 10:59 pm
Boat,
https://shawglobalnews.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/5_9_16_andrea_tempspiraledhawkins.gif?w=720&h=775&crop=1
onlooker on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 12:29 am
We are cooked. World wide civilization is not about to even attempt hardly to transition to “Renewable” energy as that itself would break the back of our interdependent societies and economies reliant on Oil for almost everything. Remember Oil is used for transport, manufacturing of a great diversity of products etc. And of course food production and distribution. Besides it is NOT just about climate change and peak oil, it is also about the systematic takeover, destruction and degrading of ecosystems and their pivotal-life sustaining functions. That is being done every day with our vast consumerism society and by virtue of our vast numbers. That is not going to change voluntarily either. We are like a huge train now that has gathered too much momentum to stop before it hits the wall. Finally, the climate system is now itself out of our control and probably will doom not just us but most higher life forms currently existing.
GregT on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 12:42 am
Sad, but true onlooker. Welcome to the rest of our lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0NrS2L6KcE
And if I might add, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Survivalist on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 12:53 am
Renewables is a bulkshit word. I have PV panels. I like them. I use them to charge 12v batteries which I then use to power 9000 lumen underwater lights which help me fill my freezer with fish. It’s a great return on investment. But I don’t delude myself with slogans and marketing bullshit. My 12v batteries contain lead that can from a mine and my PV panels contain plastic, copper, silver and a few other metals. There’s nothing renewable about them. It’s simply a device manufactured with fossil fuel and mining inputs (which also requires fossil fuel imputs). I’m very well aware that wind and solar are fossil fuel extenders. I use them as such. To assume I don’t understand something so blindingly obvious just because I think renewables is a bullshit word speaks to the dichotomy that exists in your perception of how people think about these issues.
GregT on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 1:22 am
Absolutely Survivalist,
I have also embraced solar PV tech. In the room that I am sitting in right now I have 520 watts of panels just waiting for me to install. Considering the cost, and the amount that we pay for hydro electric here, any system that I install would have a break even point of somewhere between 22 and 25 years, not including parts or battery replacement. People in general are clueless, and will latch on to anything that helps them to believe that the continuation of BAU is possible. The term renewables is not only misleading, it is a total and complete downright lie.
theedrich on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 2:02 am
Nice talk. Also meaningless. Most of the discussion is about Canada and the U.S. (with the expected side shot at Trump). Nothing about China, India and the rest of the colored world, where the population explosion continues unabated and whence massive hordes are flooding into Whiteland as “refugees” of one sort or another. Unquestionably, America squanders resources of all types and its politics are dominated by multi-billionaires (and by arms manufacturers who control our belligerent foreign policy, with the ongoing spewing of GHGs into the atmosphere such as the 141 million tons of CO2 released in the first few years of the Iraq war.) But completely aside from America and its sins, the ThirdWorld mass of dark-skinned, low-IQ consumers clamoring for ever more biosphere-destroying goodies from “guilty” Whites cannot be stopped, because it is politically incorrect even to mention such an attempt.
Moreover, to one who surveys the growing infantilism of large numbers of university students on American campuses, there seems little chance that the rising generation will decide to go back to living like their forebears in the nineteenth century.
GregT on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 2:15 am
“Nothing about China, India and the rest of the colored world”
If not for the colored world theedrich, you would have no base to allow you to continue to wallow in your exceptionalism. Without them, you would be nothing more than the usual garden variety, white trash, troll.
Perhaps a wee bit of acknowledgement is in order? Oh exceptional one.
Plantagenet on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 3:01 am
@mak. You are correct that it would be very to difficult to manufacture things without oil, but that isn’t a concern at the present time. The world is still in an oil glut.
Cheers
Anonymous on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 3:21 am
What about that king salmon glut plant? Think we can turn those excess king salmons into fuel too? Maybe we can store some of the glut in your freezer till the economy recovers.
makati1 on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 4:22 am
Plant, until, maybe, tomorrow. At the rate oil companies are committing harikari, it won’t be long.
onlooker on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 5:07 am
Yes Greg, sad and it will only get worse from here. Stay well.
pinkdotR on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 5:16 am
Fortunately we have one more undiscovered giant field of oil (and many other resources) – it is called Waste. There is even better news – it is not located in Saudi Arabia or Russia – it is available in every country, for every company and every family. I can tell you more – most of this oil is free! We can use it in many ways (just a few ideas):
– moving closer to your workplace and not having to commute by car
– spending your holidays less than a few hundred km away from home instead of a few thousand km and not having to fly there
– producing most goods and food locally and not everything in China
– producing, buying and using goods that last 2x/5x/10x longer (like it used to be in the 70″)
– insulating your office/house and/or not heating it to 25 degrees (Celsius) in winter and cooling to 20 degrees in summer but swapping the temperature settings
– buying 2x/5x/10x less needless/useless gadgets/toys/clothes etc.
– not eating so much 🙂
To increase your use of this oil you just need to come up with new ideas – the smarter get more!
Everyone can choose whether to use his/her share of this free oil voluntarily or wait to be forced to. Everyone is welcome and everyone will join sooner or later 🙂
Starting to exploit Waste we can improve our energy efficiency not by a 10-20% like better car engines but by a few fold.
This is not exactly going to be BAU but still better than mass starvation.
Cheers
Davy on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 6:06 am
“Starting to exploit Waste we can improve our energy efficiency not by a 10-20% like better car engines but by a few fold. This is not exactly going to be BAU but still better than mass starvation.”
Diminishing returns is part of efficiency process and efforts also. Jevons Paradox problems are another issue that happens because attitudes are not adjusted to efficiency savings. We should and we must look towards reduction in waste but systematically there are limits of how much waste reduction we can realize.
Most of our problem is our mentalities and attitudes. We as a people are showing little desire to change our expectations and desires. In fact as the pie shrinks we are showing even less desire to make sacrifices because economic realities of decline are already taking their toll on people’s wellbeing.
Waste is an aspect of what needs to be included in our tool bag of tasks ahead to navigate collapse but it will not be the answer. The biggest issue is population size. Overpopulation is a kind of waste and one no one want to deal with. The best way to deal with aggregate waste issues is a greatly reduced population. It is systematically not possible to have our globalized world without a healthy growing population. Unfortunately overpopulation as waste is a Catch 22 predicament of globalism. Reducing population at the rate needed will destroy globalism’s growth basis.
When discussing waste saving we must consider scale and economies of scale. Our production process has to have a certain amount of waste to run efficiently. Not everything can be saved without slowing the process down. When you slow down economies of scale they are no longer economies of scale. Scale as in size is also an issue. If you have big organizations you are going to have more waste relative to a smaller organization. Just look to the Pentagon and their waste. Look at any government and their waste.
We are not going to save ourselves cutting waste but it is one more tool in the tool box to buy us time. If nothing else it is an attitude and mentality thing. Waste is actually a lack of respect and laziness. You see very little waste in nature and we should be emulating nature not that which is disgusting in humanity.
pinkdotR on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 6:54 am
Davy, I agree that reducing waste is only a (powerful) tool to buy us time. This is like a giant free oil field that nobody likes to use because of our mentalities and attitudes or lack of respect and laziness as you described. We should and we will have to use it while learning to live in a shrinking economy and shrinking population. Not living on debt any more? Quite a challenge!
Hello on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 7:10 am
EROEI doesn’t matter much.
pinkdotR on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 7:29 am
EROEI of not wasting energy? Whatever you can get:0 = infinity 🙂
JuanP on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 7:31 am
Should I waste my time reading an article about Peak Oil written by someone who thinks Shale Oil is Kerogen? Me thinks not!
Dustin Hoffman on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 7:47 am
Sure we can…as soon as the human population decreases to about 1 to 2 billion or so. We are working on that issue too. First, the experts claim it will top to over 10 billion and gradually decline….just like fossil fuels. See, nothing to be concerned about…really.
Stuifzand on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 7:54 am
“Can Society Make the Transition in Time?”
If “in time” means continuation of BAU via smooth, plug-and-play replacement of fossil fuel equipment by renewables, the answer (for most countries, apart from lucky bastards like Canada, Norway and similar hydro Nivana’s), is going to be: no.
In the very long term there is no energy problem. To generate all the world’s energy as currently consumed, if suffices to plaster an area like Spain with solar panels to generate the raw energy equivalent.
It took the developed world less than a century to evolve from the ENIAC to the iPhone 6.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
Likewise, we are going to need many decades to install this new energy base and develop means to store energy. But there is no real obstacle to achieve that goal, provided of course that humanity hasn’t destroyed itself first in a nuclear war.
But a smooth transition, no we are too late for that. Embrace for the dip the size of the Grand Canyon.
Davy on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 8:08 am
Stu, it is folly to project long term. Today long term there is no energy problem is meaningless. This is especially true considering the many short term problems we have and problems that are converging and magnifying. It would be better to stick to the short term and looking at the short term we are failing miserably.
Renewable capacity penetration into the major energy sectors is miserable even with recent improvements. Climate change efforts a complete failure. Economic stabilization efforts a Ponzi Scheme. Nowhere is there a validity for optimism. To say a transition is possible but without difficulties is a big understatement.
Kenz300 on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 8:16 am
7 Charts Show How Renewables Broke Records Globally in 2015
http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/03/renewable-investment-broke-records/
Dubai Utility DEWA Said to Plan 1,000 MW of Solar Power Plants
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2016/06/dubai-utility-dewa-said-to-plan-1-000-mw-of-solar-power-plants.html
joe on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 8:21 am
Peak oil will mean peak populations. Industrialisation requires a boost in workers then an decease of the poor to make things more affordable, this is what contraceptives are for. They are the secret weapon of the globalists. Take India for example. They are rapidly industrialising yet they have horrible poverty, the rich are getting richer but the poor are still 12 to a family because of Hinduism and Islam. Without liberation of women and freedom of expression people will diverge their outlooks and wealth will be only temporary.
Stuifzand on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 8:30 am
“It would be better to stick to the short term and looking at the short term we are failing miserably.”
Davy, you are creating excuses to do nothing. You are BAU man! 😉
Seriously, planning until 2024 is short term. Investing a few billion in a new energy system is peanuts and it creates a completely new branch of the economy, including acquiring new offshore skills that can be sold world-wide.
Davy on Mon, 6th Jun 2016 9:00 am
Stu, not at all if anything I am offering constantly more realistic options than many here. My important point is this is a human software issue with hardware secondary.
You are the BAU man advocating more of the same blind trust in technology and economics that got us here in the first place.
First call is to embrace the collapse process with attitude and second call is to do what we must physically to adapt and mitigate a collapse process.
It is people like you that are misleading yourselves and others that we can have our cake and eat it. We most certainly can’t as demonstrated recently by all the failure of climate change efforts and the economic fiascos of the global central banks.
techkno on Tue, 7th Jun 2016 7:27 am
It is fascinating the way some on this site are more than willing to “let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough.” this ‘Nirvana fallacy’ is a defeatist position. Anyone with children should be embarrassed to surrender saying ‘what’s the use in trying?”. Many Americans my age have enjoyed a life of relative abundance. It is quintessentially Republican to believe “I got mine! Screw everybody else.”
Our Sun is a G type star half way through it’s lifecycle. There remains billions of years of solar energy.
Our solar system has the resources to provide for us. We need to be innovative, as humanity always has been. This resource challenge we all acknowledge is not insurmountable. We ADAPT or yes we die.
As unlikely as it seems, homo sapiens may be the only sentient species in the galaxy. It would be criminal to discard this evolutionary pinnacle. We, perhaps, are the consciousness of the cosmos. We know lots of stuff! We have harnessed atomic energy. We can destroy ourselves and the world in a day. We have begun to explore space. We have some cosmological insight. The dinosaurs could not destroy the Earth. We are actively engaged in terraforming our planet. If we are to be as gods, we might as well get good at it.
We can stop destroying our own nest. The minerals that were our inheritance reside in our automobiles and weapons and ships and airplanes. We can repurpose those minerals into solar panels and wind turbines. The Sun itself can be used to smelt metals and power machinery for making machinery.
There is no doubt the clock is ticking on our species but we are not at the mercy and whim of other gods.
makati1 on Tue, 7th Jun 2016 7:38 am
techkno, you are an uneducated unicorn huger. You know just enough to put your foot in your mouth. That touchy, feely, ‘god like’ bullshit is just that, bullshit. Do you know how much power it takes to melt steel? Or Aluminum? Or that it takes an even higher temperature for glass? Obviously, you do not, or you would not be saying that solar can do it all.
Also, odds say that we are likely to NOT be the only sentient being in a galaxy that has billions of planets. To believe that is pure arrogance. We came, we plundered and now we are going. Even the brainless dinosaurs lasted 100 times as long as we did and it took an asteroid the size of Mount Everest to do them in. We are doing it to ourselves. That you get to experience it is just luck. Good or bad. Adjust.
Or see a shrink…. lol