[onlooker]

Well the whole point Dyy, is that modern economies run on a humungous amounts of energy which fossil fuels can uniquely supply. Yes we can try a slow powerdown all the while converting to some source or sources of energy which their are. However, the problem is what about jobs and the concomitant need to travel to work in car. You see at least here in the US our whole economy revolves around this insane need for energy. Poorer countries can and have adapted better because they are not so dependent on oil. So this is something we should have gradually transitioned to weaning off oil. However, the reality is we did not. So now the predicament is much more difficult as transitioning to renewable sources itself requires much fossil fuel use. A substantive loss of net power would severely cripple the US economy and other first world economies. Lots of material on this website about this. I suggest going to archives as peak oil was even a hotter topic some years back.

[Dybbuk]

However, the problem is what about jobs and the concomitant need to travel to work in car.

Of all the dilemmas surrounding fossil fuel depletion, this one seems like one of the least significant. People can live closer to work, telecommute, carpool, take public transportation, and electric vehicles can run on whatever non-fossil power source we might have. It's manageable.

transitioning to renewable sources itself requires much fossil fuel use

I read this assertion all the time here, but I haven't seen any convincing support for it. Does it require fossil fuels specifically, or just energy in general, or some combination?

A substantive loss of net power would severely cripple the US economy and other first world economies.

If it happens quickly, yes. If it happens gradually, probably, but then again we don't know, because we don't have many good analogies from history to go on. That's one of my problems with people trying to predict the future. They are way too confident about how they think things will play out. That goes for all sides in the debate.

[onlooker]

Dybbuck

Of all the dilemmas surrounding fossil fuel depletion, this one seems like one of the least significant. People can live closer to work, telecommute, carpool, take public transportation, and electric vehicles can run on whatever non-fossil power source we might have. It's manageable.

I use to also think similar to you about this sector of the economy. However, I will distill your points to shed some doubt to this perception. First people living close to work is actually not very feasible, in so much as people cannot just find easily the "right" job near where they live nor move closer to their job. Second telecommuting is only appropriate for a limited amount of jobs. Third carpool, well this is promising but it would entail many making sacrifices and much coordination on behalf of govt. and the private sector. Fourth, public transportation is actually not so common as people would think at least here in US. I know this because I live in NY area and once thought much of country was like here, NOT the case. Finally electric vehicles lead well into the second major point about renewables, creating a whole new fleet of EV would be daunting in terms of fossil fuels is how we construct cars. Same with windmills and solar panels. Finally, you echo my point that this transition should have been done with time gradually. At this point the deviation of fossil fuels from the normal uses to creating a renewable infrastructure would in itself create serious disturbances in the economy. See the Hirsh Report which is a good primer on all this. Having said all that I still think we should transition as much as possible anything to stop burning FF and feeding the Global Warming monster.

[frankthetank]

The alternative...as far as i can see...is electricity...produced mainly by nukes, solar, wind and hydro. There are many many issues with all of that...batteries, meltdowns, no wind, no water, no sun...storage... nope..there is no alternative (good) to oil. The key is getting by with less...until its madmax.

[Dybbuk]

Dybbuck

Of all the dilemmas surrounding fossil fuel depletion, this one seems like one of the least significant. People can live closer to work, telecommute, carpool, take public transportation, and electric vehicles can run on whatever non-fossil power source we might have. It's manageable.

I use to also think similar to you about this sector of the economy. However, I will distill your points to shed some doubt to this perception. First people living close to work is actually not very feasible, in so much as people cannot just find easily the "right" job near where they live nor move closer to their job. Second telecommuting is only appropriate for a limited amount of jobs. Third carpool, well this is promising but it would entail many making sacrifices and much coordination on behalf of govt. and the private sector. Fourth, public transportation is actually not so common as people would think at least here in US. I know this because I live in NY area and once thought much of country was like here, NOT the case. Finally electric vehicles lead well into the second major point about renewables, creating a whole new fleet of EV would be daunting in terms of fossil fuels is how we construct cars. Same with windmills and solar panels. Finally, you echo my point that this transition should have been done with time gradually. At this point the deviation of fossil fuels from the normal uses to creating a renewable infrastructure would in itself create serious disturbances in the economy. See the Hirsh Report which is a good primer on all this. Having said all that I still think we should transition as much as possible anything to stop burning FF and feeding the Global Warming monster.

Yep...the bottom line is that it will be a major challenge. But what else is new? Life is full of challenges. Some people just assume that any deviation from business as usual is unthinkable, and people will just roll over and die rather than lift a finger to do things differently. I foresee herculean efforts being expended to overcome this challenge. Maybe not as soon as we would like. Will it be enough? I don't know. And nobody else knows either.

[Tikib]

It all depends how you define 'alternative' . Oil essentially plays three roles in our society:

A source of energy
A transportation fuel
Feedstock for plastics etc.

Before oil we had sources of energy and transportation. So there are alternatives. Although they weren't anywhere near as good as cars and planes; sailing ships and horses allowed for a pretty vibrant society before oil came along. And wood, wind, water and peat provided enough energy for a semi industrial society.

So if you ignore climate change and the effects of the massive population crash you could argue that our society would just fall back a couple of hundred years to what it was like before oil and coal were in common use.

So is there anyway of preventing this fall backwards in time?
In my opinion only one: fusion.
I actually doubt that even fusion would provide as good a energy source as fossil fuels do. It would however be sustainable for thousands of years.

I know many on this website are skeptical of fusion, but it breaks no physical laws, it just requires a larger investment of time and money than we have so far been able to put into it.

[onlooker]

Interesting about fusion, I have read that cold fusion is really viable in so much as we would need a source as big as the sun. I am be wrong about that though. But still, by all accounts the time and monetary investment are impressive so I wonder at this point if with the disruptions to come from peak oil and in other manner, how we will be able to fund this investment.

[Tikib]

Onlooker your making the assumption that I said fusion will save us. I did not, what I meant was that if we had developed fusion by now it might have saved us.

[onlooker]

Sorry Tik, your right if we had, also if we had deviated much more towards renewables we could have powered society in a more sustainable and longer term way. Lot of if's, if we had not gone on this consumerism Earth damaging binge we all would all not be so doomy in our points of view.

[Tikib]

I am pretty sceptical of renweables ever since I read preato and halls EROI analysis of solar power.

That said I beleive that wind power is a viable source of energy IF you can find a cost effective way to store it.

[StarvingLion]

An alternative? Well, here it is, a month ago, from the junk university called MIT, a 360 page report:

https://mitei.mit.edu/futureofsolar

https://mitei.mit.edu/system/files/MIT% ... ressed.pdf

I especially like this one where they show the solar refinery:
https://mitei.mit.edu/system/files/Sola ... r_0805.pdf

Basically, they want to spend 200 trillion dollars on infrastructure to delude themselves that combustion is evil.

Fusion is irrelevant. You get clumsy expensive electricity same as fission. So what? France has already learned the hard way that the world does not bring its manufacturing to you just because you have fission reactors that generate electricity. Those dopes with the new fission reactor paper designs are so stupid that they haven't learned that it has to be a very high temp design that generates PROCESS HEAT. The value is in the HEAT, the electricity has to be FREE. Kirk Sorensens lousy MSR is not even a contender. He's wacked out on that mass electrification nonsense and then he called california The Peoples Republic? The guy is commie too.

Let me boil it down to this:
Semiconductors (solar pv cells) = Marxism
Combustion = Capitalism

The USA is bound and determined to go broke...because the new economy is nothing more than bozo clowns behind digital computers demanding "justice" (aka stealing from one another) while they steadily bankrupt the industrial economy.

All these universities produce are STUPID PEOPLE.

[jedrider]

Well, a nuclear battery would be nice to have, if it doesn't requires gobs of fossil fuels to manufacture.

http://phys.org/news/2013-03-revolutionary-nuclear-battery-closer.html

I don't think MIT has a monopoly on stupid scientists/engineers. They are engineering our future even if they will have nothing to run it on, such as fossil fuels.

[Keith_McClary]

I especially like this one where they show the solar refinery:
https://mitei.mit.edu/system/files/Sola ... r_0805.pdf

That is bizarre:

SOLAR_REF.png

[kanon]

Let me boil it down to this:
Semiconductors (solar pv cells) = Marxism
Combustion = Capitalism

Solar PV cells do not equate to Marxism. While they may not promote Capitalism the way that fossil fuel combustion does, one major political issue with PV cells is the difficulty of centralized control. It is not much of a stretch to see PV as dividing marker between the haves and have-nots. It is also not a difference that some PV advocates recommend huge governmental spending for their visions since there are plenty of examples of capitalists doing the same.

The technology to generate and use energy will have a major effect on social organization, but I doubt the accepted "ism" philosophies (capitalisn, socialism, marxism, etc.) would apply very well to a renewable energy based society. Therefore, I think it is almost axiomatic that we will never discover an "alternative to oil," because the question is asking whether we can preserve the social status quo with a different energy technology. Obviously, that cannot be done since the different technology will lead to a new status quo.

[evilgenius]

There are possibilities. It depends upon whether you interpret the question as asking if one thing will replace oil or a whole host of things. Like Tikib said, fusion is probably the most likely candidate, if you seek a single thing. Otherwise, the entire renewable phalanx, along with some nuclear and other high cost or experimental sources is likely.

Still, if you interpret the question as meaning can we replace the largess, then probably nothing we know of right now. That doesn't mean, however, that replacement is impossible. Just because we don't know of a thing, or how to use a thing right now doesn't mean we won't. For all any of us know we will learn how to harness electrons from time itself, or learn how to make a single electron do many times the work that we can make one do now. Perhaps the question to really ask, though, is whether even with such a discovery mankind still needs to change?

[StarvingLion]

Nanostructures and Nanotechnology, Cambridge University Press @ 2015, Doug Natelson

"A central theme is that storing energy in the form of chemical fuels can have real advantages over direct conversion to electricity, depending on the application. For example, the volume energy density of a lithium-ion battery (see the next section) is around 2 MJ/L, while that for gasoline is around 36 MJ/L."

There is your hopeless fantasy of ever replacing the dual-fuel diesel engine.

As for fusion, there is no chance in hell of taming those instabilities within a hot plasma. In fact, there is no way of even anticipating them. Plasma physics is not well understood. The ITER project is a 1 billion dollar experiment. Thousands of such experiments could be required.

The uranium reserve situation is far worse than fossil fuels. And the centralization of power caused by nuclear energy would even be worse than what we have today with fossil fuels.

Research is bullxxxx. The so-called best and the brightest have accomplished absolutely nothing in the past 40 years except run scams. The fracing "revolution" is tech from the 1950's. And lets face it, fracing is the only thing floating this banana republic.

[ennui2]

All these universities produce are STUPID PEOPLE.

And what's your own academic credentials?

[StarvingLion]

All these universities produce are STUPID PEOPLE.

And what's your own academic credentials?

I graduated the K-12 education system with exceptional mediocrity. Never could figure that idiotic academic system out with its sole purpose being algebra-->quantum mechanics. Armed with symmetry principles, was I magically supposed to make manufacturing come back when it had already left?

I guess I didn't miss much. Nothing matters in academia anymore except for a musical chair routine of who gets the few seats of robotics engineer. Finland, a hotbed of academia, and a dead country walking, today has pretty much given up on building nuclear reactors. They are so smart that they can't build anything. And if you want to know why, just peruse through the laughable academic gibberish in the link below:

http://www.aka.fi/en/about-us/media/pre ... -for-2016/

Anyways, the current world capitalist system is obviously bankrupt, no longer able to fulfil its promises, but carries on in a form of economic sleepwalking: 2009 as a 1989 without a rival system to fall into the arms of. Ideologically this has some truth, but economically less so – the Soviet system fell because it no longer satisfied manager or worker, and capitalism can go on for some time making a tiny minority rich and a large minority comfortable.

[DesuMaiden]

There are alternatives to oil. But none of them work. The only alternative to oil that MIGHT work is algae biofuels or nuclear fusion, but even these power sources have their limitations. I don't think any alternative energy source(s) (or in any combination) will replace oil in all of its uses. Oil is just used in too many things for an alternative to magically replace all of oil. We just need to accept a lower standard of material living in a post oil world, regardless of what the alternatives to oil may offer.

[DesuMaiden]

And here's why. Read the following article.

http://energyskeptic.com/2013/oil-can-n ... resources/

Just accept this fact, and change your lives accordingly. Just admit we doomers were right the whole time. Btw, I digress. I'm still a doomer. I'm just not 100% certain peak oil will cause a die off of humanity, but I'm still 100% certain peak oil will cause industrial civilization to collapse. I studied psychology, so I'm probably able to persuade more people to join the doomer cause.

Yes, dream on. Dream on that some magical energy fairy will come and save you from peak oil. It will never happen. You just need to accept what Richard Heinberg and other peak oil experts have been saying for years. You need to learn how to live like people did during the Middle Ages before any fossil fuels were available. I'm sorry for bursting the bubble of any cornucopians. I do respect your beliefs (as fallacious as they may be). But cornucopian beliefs are all bunk! Doomerism is actually true. Your techno futuristic fantasy of flying cars and space travel will likely never happen, cornucopians. You just have to respect the laws of nature, and try to live within them rather than trying to foolish defy nature. Defying nature will never bring humanity any good. The laws of nature will always triumph human technology and ingenuity.

Aside from peak oil, I've brought up other resource restrictions this civilization is facing such as peak coal and a peak whole list of resources i.e. natural gas, wood, fish, fresh water, uranium, rare earth elements and various metal ores. Like Michael Ruppert once said, we are facing a peak everything crisis. I've already shown proof of how rare earth elements are becoming scarcer and scarcer, yet some cornucopians deny this. There is no use denying reality because you will only end up endangering yourself and others. Let's just embrace reality instead of finding some scapegoat to blame the upcoming economic troubles on.

By the way, mainstream economics is a pseudoscience because mainstream economists believe the environment is a subset of the economy, and we can exploit the environment however we want. That's just nonsense. In actuality, the economy is a subset of the environment, and when we run out of resources, the only outcome is economic collapse. Economics is a pseudoscience just like many other social sciences. I studied psychology in university before, and I believe much of psychology is also a pseudoscience.

The bottom line is simple. Your days of recklessly consuming the Earth's resources are over. We need to reduce consumption and population in order to survive the upcoming deindustrialization we face.

It has become very apparent to me that doomerism is correct and accurate. Unless someone can prove that some magical alternative energy source will work, I will always maintain that doomerism is correct.