So I've spent the last week and half studying Peak Oil and its ramifications for our society. It took me a long time to take it as seriously as Matt Savinor does, but after a while I woke up to our Matrix: we ARE plugged into the oil infrastructure. Almost everything we do requires oil. Very soon that infrastructure will be unsustainable, a "growth" economy will likely never again exist, our system will probably collapse and billions of people will die.
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This has been on my mind alot recently. What can we do? Please, will someone say something to make myself (and my spouse) feel better?
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The best advice anyone can give you on the impending crash of the world economy is to do everything you can to prepare for a self-sufficient lifestyle.
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MACK-- no kidding, I've been thinking about Lasik for the last week and a half. The health care system will not survive without cheap oil.
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Dag, I suspect the survivors will be mostly found in places where the populations are best suited to community-living. When you are forced to abandon the growth model it becomes imperative to work together.
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Here's the big question: Assume for a minute we can produce unlimited electricity. How much oil would we need at that point?
Unlimited electricity would fix at least one of the problems with hydrogen powered cars - even if creating hydrogen from electrolysis inefficient, it's a better power carrier than current battery technologies.
Unlimited electricity would also allow high-speed rail systems to be made for carrying goods and people. The highway system could be replaced with a magnetic rail system with personal cars available.
But the petroleum in products and fuel for boats and planes cannot be solved by unlimited electricity. What to do?
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More than that, you cannot produce high-speed rail systems--or the goods which you intend to deliver with them--without an abundance of cheap oil. Where does the energy to feed 220 million people come from if you can't buy 75 million barrels of oil every single day?
The US daily diet consumes 10 times more energy than it produces.
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Yes, we do need to and we will. This will have consequences for the environment.
But nuclear power will not allow us to continue living in the kind of world we live in today. It's just not possible. And the immediate economic repercussions of losing the abudance and cheapness of energy (the capacity to do work--you can't add more jobs to the economy without more oil; hence the jobless recovery) from oil will catapult us to economic anarchy within a few short years.
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Maybe we can learn to make biodiesel out of liposuctioned fat.
Speaking of fat, I'm not so sure the status quo is so worth keeping. Also, temporal self reliance brought to you by the LDS church. Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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It's probably good it's happening now. There are societies all over the world that don't rely on oil for basic survival needs, yet. Anyway with the imbalance created by our crazy oil consumption things were just bound to get worse one way or the other. It will be interesting to see how things go. I thought I was a pretty tough chick, but now I'm trying to picture being a survivalist without a thermarest and Gore-tex materials. It won't be very fun.
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You're forgetting about plant-based fuels. Can't we just grow our fuel?
To a certain degree we can, but biomass, ethanol, and biodiesel will never be able to replace fossil fuels for the following reasons:
1. Depending on who you consult, ethanol has an EPR ranging from .7 (making it an energy loser) to 1.7. Methanol, made from wood, clocks in at 2.6, better than ethanol, but still far short of oil.
2. By 2050, the US will only have enough arable land to feed half of its population, not accounting for the effects of oil depletion. In the years to come, there won't be enough land for food, let alone fuel.
3. While a handful of folks have adapted their vehicles to run on biodiesel, this is not a realistic option on a large scale. There is simply not enough biodiesel available in the world to replace even a fraction of the energy we get from oil.
4. Current infrastructure, particularly manufacturing and large-scale transportation is adaptable to plant-based fuels in theory only. In reality, retrofitting our industrial and transportation systems to run on plant fuels would be enormously expensive and comically impractical.
Finally, when evaluating claims about plant-based fuels, be aware of who is providing the data. As Dr. Walter Younquist points out:
Ethanol production survives only by the grace of a subsidy by the US government from taxpayer dollars. Continuing the production of ethanol is purely a device for buying the Midwest US farm vote. [Not surprisingly] the fact that the company which makes 60% of US ethanol is also one of the largest contributors of campaign money to the Congress – a distressing example of politics overriding logic.
quote:When examining alternatives to oil, it is of critical importance that you ask certain questions:
1. Is the alternative easily transportable like oil?
2. Is the alternative energy dense like oil?
3. Is the alternative capable of being adapted for transportation, heating, and the production of fertilizers, plastics, and pesticides?
4. Does the alternative have an Energy Profit Ratio (EPR) comparable to oil? Oil used to have an EPR of 100 to 1. It only took one barrel of oil to extract 100 barrels of oil. This was such a fantastic ratio that oil was practically free energy. In fact, at one point in Texas, water cost more than oil!
Oil's EPR is now down to 10 to 1, which is still pretty good. If a proposed alternative energy source doesn't have an EPR comparable to oil, the amount of good it does us is very limited.
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Supposedly CNN is airing a program tonight with Paula Zahn called "Crude Awakening". I don't know what it's about, but it wouldn't surprise me if this is another Peak Oil story. You may want to watch it.
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Please don't flame me, but I have a *hard* time convincing myself it's actually going to happen. Part of it might be because there was supposed to be no oil left on earth by the year 2000. But that's probably not all of it. Maybe it's because deep down, I'm just like a little kid that refuses to belive that things are ever going to change.
Of course, if it's true, then billions of people will die because of people like me.
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Makes me wonder. Is globalization such a good thing after all? Bringing the American way of life to the world's population is just not possible. If the entire world consumes oil at the rate the US does, the supply will be gone in less than 10 years, not 40.
Developing countries are being encourage to adopt the US model. But I think this model is too wasteful with resources. Instead of striving for an ever increasing standard of living, developing countries should just focus on providing adequate food, shelter and healthcare for their populations.
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John I read the article you linked to on the other thread. I strongly disagree with their population/food analysis, and the U.S. being unable to feed its own population by 2050 but I don't have the time to rebut it right now. The problem that I see with most of that data is that it has all been deliberately selected to make a point. In other words none of the stuff I read is balanced. They don't even try to present alternative arguments. They have an agenda before they begin, which isn't good science.
That said I think that there is a place for the "wake-up" call. The problem is that it is alarmist, and not balanced, so that a lot of normal logical people are going to discount it for that reason as another left-wing alarmist wacko.
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It took me several days to accept our destiny, so don't expect me to flame you for going through the same process that I did.
Our Way of Life must and WILL change. The growth model will die a violent death. All work that is done requires energy. An amazing amount of work is done to keep us all alive. The energy to do that work will become, within the next ten years (if not sooner) prohibitively expensive to use, so much so that our infrastructure will collapse--but only to the extent to which we are unprepared to live in post-carbon humanity.
We were not "supposed" to run out of oil in 2000. We should not run out of drillable oil for another 40 years. But the problem here is not the lack of oil, it's the lack of CHEAP and ABUNDANT and HIGH QUALITY oil. We are going through the peak in oil production right now, meaning that every passing year we will only be able to produce less oil of less quality than the year before--even as demand raises exponentially along with our population.
EVEN IF WE HAVE 25 YEARS left of oil, it is a finite resource that is keeping us all on life support. The computer you are on right now cost ten times its own weight in fossil fuels just to be constructed. How many gallons of oil did it ultimately cost to get those cheerios in your cereal bowl this morning? Our oil infrastructure is just like the fictional world of the Matrix, with energy roles reversed. We are all inextricably plugged into the oil system, but very few of us actively realize the extent to which civilization itself is a mirror image of our ability to harvest and use energy.
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Well Banna, you'll have to provide me with one of those "alternative arguments" before I agree that these conclusions are biased-beyond-accuracy or inappropriately alarmist.
It is a biological inevitability that humanity must revert to sustainable numbers or be completely wiped out.
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Ever done much reading on self sustaining high yield per square foot gardening? A lot of them are run in conjunction with fish farms for fertilizer and don't require massive amounts of petroleum based products...
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A 5'x5' high yield static hydroponics system requires nothing more than a 5 gallon bucket and a growing bed with drainage back to the bucket, and a nutrient tea easily provided by compost. Extremely low energy, other than the person has to actually pick the bucket up and sit it on a table two or three times a day, and occasionally add a bit of extra water and nutrient tea.
(It is being used highly sucessfully in 3rd world countries...)
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We still have plenty of time. We'll find or build other energy sources. But we should realy start now.
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You'd be surprised at the numbers of people in power who live "off the grid". This problem is not new.
Re: self sustaining high yield per square foot gardening...
But where's the energy come from to work those fields? The imbalance is nearly insurmountable. The agriculture industry used up three billion, five-hundred fifty-eight million, seven-hundred and fifty thousand barrels of oil last year. The work cannot be done without energy.
And if you are talking about each of us running their own little garden project, that's nice but... can you really wait six months for an adequate food supply? Especially in America, where everyone has guns?
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Yes, about energy I am not alarmist. I believe things will happen gradually, and that as the oil prices rise, alternatives which are now too expensive to compete will begin to look better.
I too have heard this same thing (the world's petroleum is in imminent danger of running out) since the late 60s at least.
I believe there are big changes in store, and the exponential growth spurt in standard of living to which we are all accustomed is not a given. It comes from advancing technology, and responsible use of resources. There are many zigs and zags in the road ahead, and we need to be looking out for them and doing the smart thing at each juncture, even if it means controlling ourselves (which we seem very bad at managing to do).
But there is no reason to panic just yet and go into survivalist mode. But the more people we have realistically looking at the actual underpinnings of our society, and figuring out how to keep things going, the better. A democracy only works if people are educated. The model where 99% of the people look on technology as magic and the other 1% keep it going isn't a good one.
So I applaud your concern, John Keats, and hope people will vote for wise public policy decisions in the light of this information.
(But we've got to do the asteroid defense thing too, of course. No use in having a perfectly running economy the day the big one hits.)
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Telperion, my father had the same reaction:
"Necessity is the mother of invention".
But you're both missing something:
If necessity is the mother of invention, OIL is the Father of invention. No product or invention has ever been or likely will be mass-produced without the use oil.
What we need to understand is that our society is structured on unending and unlimited growth, which is simply unsustainable without an unlimited power supply. The way we live has to change, and it will. Whether we go down kicking and screaming or helping each other transition to a post-carbon society is, in my opinion, largely dependant on our acceptance of the gravity of the problem today and our committment to contingencies tomorrow. Neither seem very promising, to be honest.
Why, imagine the uproar if I suggested that it was vitally imperative that we start to impose enderverse-style population laws? It wouldn't and couldn't fly. And yet this is the most basic and effective thing we could do to protect the integrity of our species.
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I don't think it would take six months and I don't think everyone is going to starve all at once anyway.
As I said before I think you are seriously underestimating the potential for human ingenuity. I think it would be possible to be sustainable in most suburbs in the U.S. though city dwellers without a backyard would feel more of a pinch with what they could grow on an apartment patio.
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another reason to continue to fund a space program (besides asteroid detection and prevention), is because they are actually solving the sustanibility problems first. These problems have to be solved for a trip to Mars. There have been extensive studies on growing wheat in space and how much wheat needs to be grown. Most of the energy required would be from solar energy as well...
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You've been hearing about Peak Oil since the 60's because that's when Peak Oil theory was created. Dr. Hubbert accurately predicted that US oil production would peak in the 70's and decline everafter. No one believed him.
Then it happened.
Peak Oil is a fact of life. Demand is starting to exceed supply. Conservatively, we expect demand for oil to raise 3-5% per year while our capicity to produce it falls 3-5% per year--and these are conservative estimates. The Oil Party is over and the ramifications really ARE this bad. Alternative energy sources will work for an alternative economic structure--one which is not dependent upon non-stop growth, and one which is not capable of sustaining 6 billion people--but a magic bullet energy alternative does not exist as of yet, or we would already be using it.
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The LDS church for years has counseled its members to have a year's supply (or two year's supply) of all essentials, and to practice self sufficiency in food growing and storage, home production of clothes and so on. This is extremely wise counsel, for a number of reasons.
They're not being alarmist or encouraging panic or lack of participation in greater society. But since I've started doing this 3 years ago I've realized there are many contingencies in which one is very grateful to have things stored.
Your food storage is like an alternative savings account, in fact. If you get laid off or need to take time off from your job for any reason, you can get by on what you've stored. If you are sick or disabled, you will also be extremely glad to have done this. Even something so simple as running out of some vital commodity is made less worrisome because I can borrow from storage then replace it when I make it to the store. I LOVE the food storage program. It's so very smart. My church is so great! Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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quote: can you really wait six months for an adequate food supply?
Actually, I think my family could. So could a lot of Mormons. We are advised to have a year's supply of food storage.
How much lange would a family theoretically need to survive off of? I don't think that our little 1/4 acre lot would be enough. It would help, but wouldn't we eventually starve?
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Jon, are you saying that we use less oil now than 20 years ago? The goes against my intuition. Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Well the Mormon's are likely to have an advantage anyway because of their storage practices, but probably moreso because of their tightly-knit communities.
On the contrary I believe human ingenuity is about all we have to go on. But energy cannot ever be "created". Oil prices will go up, and demand for alternatives will also go up, but the demand in and of itself cannot create the energy we need. What I'm sensing here is a general ignorance of exaclty how MUCH of our infrastructure is dependent entirely upon fossil fuel energy.
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JK, I don't say your concern is misplaced at ALL. We definitely need to be spending money on research into alternatives, on fusion research, for instance. We also should never have let our nuclear power program languish to the degree that it did. We need a healthy up-to-date thriving industry in coal, natural gas, methane, ethanol, fission, fusion, and hydrogen fuel cells too, as well as good development of wind, solar, and hydroelectric (though I believe these last three will be useful only for niche applications. They just don't provide enough energy otherwise.)
Yes, space is very important for a lot of different reasons, not the least of which is the fact that in order to keep the earth healthy, we will need to learn a whole lot more about ecosystems. Things we will by necessity have to learn in order to colonize space.
I'm so glad you guys are starting to wake up to the difficulties we have facing us. I don't think there is cause for panic, but the more people we have who understand the realities of the situation, the better. We may be forced to do some things which are unpopular along the way, in order to be smart about it. And in a democracy we need lots of intelligent, educated adults who understand what is at stake in order to make the right decisions.
[ May 25, 2004, 01:32 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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quote:Jon, are you saying that we use less oil now than 20 years ago?
No, we use TONS more oil than we did 20 years ago. But we PRODUCE probably about 85% less oil in the US than we did 20 years ago because US oil production peaked in the 70's. Today we import almost all of our oil, and the largest source is Saudi Arabia.
My grandfather rode a horse. My father drove a car. I fly around the world in jets. My son will ride a horse.
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JK, I don't disagree that we need to get off our dependence on petroleum. I don't even disagree that we need to do this ASAP. What I don't like about the arguement you are presenting and why I don't trust it is that it all seems so structured to convince us of DOOM but doesn't seem to be offering any light at the end of the tunnel. And that is why I think it will go largely unheeded.
Another reason why I distrust this arguement is that it assumes we will continue the status quo until the day before we all starve to death. I think this is patently absurd. Economic forces will dictate quite a number of changes before we all starve. As the price of things rise, people will change their habits. This gas price rise this year is really just a blip. We're just now getting to prices (adjusted for inflation) that we were paying in the 70s for gasoline, but already manufacturers are worried that the SUV boom is over. They are all over the radio talking about surpluses and shortage of sales for trucks and SUVs. Why? Because people, not wanting to pay $50 every time they have to fill their tank, are realizing that the SUV is not a necessity.
The main article you linked talks about food production and how our consumption will outstrip it in the near future. Well, that assumes our current consumption extrapolated into future population growth. While that might seem logical, I don't think it is likely. We are an extremely, embarassingly wasteful society here in America. Why? Well, in part because everything is so cheap. So many of us eat at McDs 3 or more times a week because even though we know it isn't healthy, it is (to some) tasty, fast, and cheaper than cooking at home in some cases. (If you doubt this last, buy all the ingredients to make a "quarter pounder with cheese" at home and tell me how much you spend. I know that if you make a lot, the per-unit cost will go down, but try it for a family of 2 or 3 shoppping as they normally do.) My point is, if oil causes the cost of that burger to triple or quadruple or more, people will eat a McDs less and less. And even if it is still more expensive to make a burger at home, people will change their habits to eat what they can afford.
My basic point is we probably waste more than the entire 3rd world consumes. If we cut the waste, all the figures you've cited become skewed beyond meaning. Personally, I think it's good for the environment that oil prices are going up right now. We've had an easy ride too long. Europe has been paying twice what we have for gasoline for decades, yet they survive.
The one point I do agree with is that our society will not survive unchanged. But where I disagree is that I don't think that is a cause for alarm, or even mourning.
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JK, your son will not have to ride a horse if we are smart! I am glad you realize what is happening, though, because there's no guarantee that we won't all be riding horses again. We have to make the right decisions before that point.
About population, the population growth in the U.S and western industrialized nations is negative except for immigration. I believe that if we get the whole world up to first world standard of living, of education and medical care, then they will choose to have fewer children. When people don't have to worry about the children they have dying of childhood diseases, and when they don't need more hands for manual labor on the farm, (and also when women are empowered equal to men), then they will naturally choose to have fewer kids and invest more in each child. I think that is the key to population growth. We need accomplish this as soon as possible, though, so that earth's peak population will not get so high that very ugly disasterous things like famines and plagues happen.
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But we should realy start now.
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anne kate!
