For a minute there I thought I had to get off my couch, when all the while the fact is we don't have to do anything much but keep things afloat for just a few decades more! In fact, we'd best shut up about PO, because if our offspring finds out we knew about it all along, they'll turn and wring our necks come 2036!
In today's information intensive, accelerating and shrinking world, we need to be able to see, feel, and experience the bigger picture. It is the Big Picture that connects us to the whole, enables us to see across borders and barriers, turns data to knowledge, and knowledge into understanding. In my six months as a member and poster of peakoil.com, I have seen many a solution proffered and many a consequence over-looked. These issues are complex and they are not easily thought-through, but I see a genuine lack of effort on the part of many to even broach some of the more obvious drawbacks to their myopic thinking.
As a society, we seem to be focused on the ground in front of us, rather than the path before us. We need to look up once in a while, shake off the fuzziness, and open our eyes and ears to the sights and sounds that are making so much noise all around us. We are not a stable population, neither in numbers nor political mindset. The last time we were this divided we were at war with each other. And I am not just talking about just the Civil War; I mean the World War.
We have the "fundies" ready to embrace the "rapture" and the Second Coming of Christ, while global-warming, peak oil, and genocide run rampant across the globe. We have a President who encourages consumption. We are in double-dip debt. We have no savings. Our wealth is an illusion. We are growing exponentially. We are at war. And we have no plan, not for a powerdown society that seeks sustainability, nor for a nano-tech, space-based power system to further the status quo. Nothing is changing in a world where the only constant is change.
Doesn't anyone think it a bit odd that in 150 years we have gone through half of the greatest treasure ever found? And to think it was squandered on a short-term indulgence that has given us neither peace nor equality, much less, equity? Here's a graphic example of just how fast we have failed to consider our actions and their impact on the future. This is a reconstruction of the growth of Baltimore, Maryland, over the last 200 years. The U.S. Geological Survey used historical records as well as Landsat satellite data to create this sequence.
Over the weekend, I listened to the 4th hour of the Financial Sense News hour. If you are not visiting this site daily, you are out of the Big Picture Loop.
The Big Picture
Bubble Troubles
Double Debtor
A Wild Ride for Energy
Peak oil will not have easy solutions. Let us try to think our proposals and solutions through, if for no other reason than to avoid the inevitable "holding of our feet to the fire." We all post here to be heard, but do your homework first, and for sure, do the math. Coal to gasoline will not solve the problem. More nuclear power will not solve the problem. This isn't a problem that must be solved with technology. This is a consequence that must be coped with and adapted to. Mankind will eventually, either willingly or unwillingly, evolve a steady-state economy which fits within the planet's ecological limits. If we develop it willingly, it could become more efficient, more rewarding, and more enjoyable than the infinite growth monster system we have now. If we fight the transition, we will experience nature at her best, finding once again, balance, where there was none.
"The only sustainable level of technology is the stone age. -- George Draffan _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Sun Apr 10, 2005 10:33 am; edited 1 time in total
Every time I hear someone say that people are too pessimistic about the post-peakoil world, my mind goes back to an era not so long ago for a quick reality check. Until the Industrial Revolution, most of the world's population was rural. However, by mid-nineteenth century, half of the English people lived in cities, and by the end of the century, the same was true of other European countries. Between 1800 and 1950 most large European cities exhibited spectacular growth. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were scarcely two dozen cities in Europe with a population of 100,000, but by 1900 there were more than 150 cities of this size. Goods that had traditionally been made in the home or in small workshops began to be manufactured in the factories of the cities.
Michael Faraday demonstrated how electricity could be mechanically produced as early as 1831, but it was not until 1873 that a generator capable of prolonged operation was developed--42 years. Throughout the nineteenth century, the use of electric power was limited by small productive capacity, short transmission lines, and high cost. Up to 1900, the only cheap electricity was that produced by hydroelectric power in the mountains of southeastern France and northern Italy.
We know they had developed metallurgy prior to the Industrial Revolution as is evidenced by the development of bronze and iron. Early iron smelting (as the process is called) used charcoal as both the heat source and the reducing agent. Charcoal, derived from the charring of wood in a kiln, was an excellent source of energy to smelt the iron; however, its widespread use caused a serious depletion of England's forests during the 18th century. And while charcoal easily created the heat required to melt tin and copper for bronze, and to smelt pig iron and steel, the production of the large quantities of steel required by a burgeoning modern society using wood was just not scalable. Making charcoal in huge quantities is a relatively slow process compared to mining coal. Burning coal directly was found to be unsuitable, because the impurities which it contains (especially sulphur) are transferred to the metal. In the early l8th century, a significant breakthrough came when pig iron was successfully smelted using coke made from coal.
Petroleum and its derivatives are used in the manufacture of medicines and fertilizers, plastics, building materials, paints, cloth, alcohols, detergents, synthetic rubber, glycerin, fertilizers, sulfur, solvents, and the feedstocks for the manufacture of drugs, nylon, plastics, paints, polyesters, food additives and supplements, explosives, dyes, and insulating materials.
So, the question must arise: How much technology would the world have achieved without the advent and exploitation of fossil fuels? Or better still, how much of this technological advance can we maintain in a world that soon will not have fossil fuels in cheap abundance?
Will there be motorsports? Private autos/planes/boats/toys?
One has to think to the future, beyond grandfather-father-son. What renewable energy will directly smelt steel, make plastics, rubber, medicines, and fertilizers? There are plenty of existing alternatives to oil and other fossil fuels, but none of them are cheap, and none offers a comparable EROEI, much less can be fractionalized into the myriad products we find in a barrel of oil, nor can be produced on the scale we will need. Can we grow the food and the biofuels for some soon-to-be 9 billion people?
I doubt it very much.
If we don't save a significant amount of our fossil fuels (this includes the tar sands and oil shales)for the maintenance of our infrastructure, rather than burn them up trying to meet our energy demand, where will the replacements come from? A Star Trek replicator?
We have trillions of barrels of oil shale and tar sands, you say.
So? We had trillions of barrels of oil and trillions of tons of coal at one time, but we managed to "burn" through half of them in about 150 years.
Peakoil means peak production of everything that was ever made or sustained from oil, coal, or natural gas since the Industrial Revolution. It's worse than running out of water, which is an absolute necessity for life.
Much of our industrial production will become cost prohibitive.
Recycling will become mandatory, and allowing metal to "rust" might even become a crime.
If it is true that the Age of Growth is over, and the Age of Entropy has begun, and if we are to retain any hope of a reasonable quality of life without destroying other people's, then our infrastructure, our settlements, our industries and our lives require total reconstruction. There will be no easy fix, techno-fix or otherwise. That is not pessimism, that is reality.
Quote:
"Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it"
--Swiss playwright, Max Frisch
_________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Sat Nov 19, 2005 8:30 pm; edited 5 times in total
In the November issue of National Geographic, there is a fold-out map of the earth at night taken from space.
http://peakoil.com/fortopic2981.html
This photo shows the population centers and the bright glow of electric lights. But the map in the magazine also shows the forest fires, night fishing, and one other very telling detail--the flaring off of natural gas around the world. The highest concentrations are in Nigeria, Iran and Russia. Nigeria alone accounts for 20 % of the world's flares. Northern Russia is ablaze as well as the North Sea. This map is a must see! More than 100 billion cubic meters are burned off annually, enough to power France and Germany for a year. Oil companies searching for oil regularly burn off the gas and consider it worthless unless it can be transported. It appears that 80 percent of the world's reserves lack pipelines to transport it to consumers. Sounds like a lot of pipeline building to me. Is this "big oil's " back up plan?
Natural Gas Burned As Worthless Gets New Life
Quote:
Last month Exxon Mobil inked an agreement with Qatar Petroleum, the state-run oil company of the OPEC-member country. The deal calls for Exxon Mobil to construct a plant that will produce 6.5 million gallons of fuel a day when it comes on line in 2011. Cost: $7 billion.
Harry Longwell, Exxon Mobil's executive vice president and director, says the company's official stance is that crude oil will continue to reign well into the middle of this century and probably beyond, but conversion of natural gas into liquids can give them flexibility.
The company's commitment in Qatar shows gas-to-liquids is no mere pipe dream. Exxon Mobil has spent 20 years and $600 million on front-end investments in this technology. It holds a staggering 3,500 U.S. and international patents related to this work.
"It's important to look at the total energy growth requirement," Longwell says. "We look to 2020 and think we'll need 20 percent more energy than we do now. We're interested in products that have interchangability."
Royal Dutch-Shell, ConocoPhillips, ChevronTexaco, Marathon and South Africa's Sasol are all in various stages of development for gas-to-liquids plants in the Middle East.
The focus for projects to prove this technology is Qatar. It's a natural starting point because the producer of oil sits atop the world's largest natural gas field, and many of the biggest oil companies have operations in the Persian Gulf state.
In the arena of public discussion the pessimistic camp on the future of oil production is at a certain disadvantage, as people, particularly during good economic times, cannot fathom that storm clouds may be forming. Furthermore, it is generally more difficult to obtain a sympathetic hearing for a worrisome viewpoint than an optimistic one, as belief in progress, both technological and societal, seems to be universal. But I suggest we take it a step further, and take a hard look at what we think we want to happen, and why.
I admit to being an idealist. I would surely like to envision a world powered down to a sustainable level that wouldn't entail a constant crisis management, but realistically, I know it is futile. But, then again, it doesn't detract from the notion that a little backwards is better than more forward. To me, the issue is no longer how to solve the peak-oil energy crisis, but how to cope and live with it.
Now, this should get a response: To me, given our current cultural mindset, the worse thing that could happen would be to find some inexhaustible new source of energy. We would doom the human race to extinction by making the planet uninhabitable through our wanton consumption. Now if we developed fusion and also reverted back to the population of the mid-1800's, did away with the "throw-away" society, recycled and downsized everything, instituted de-centralization, embraced environmental constraints, and generally practiced a conservation ethic, then that would be a good start--even in an entropy world where it all ends anyway. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Mon Nov 14, 2005 1:02 am; edited 1 time in total
Some countries have become almost totally dependent on income from oil. What happens to economies and social structures which have been built largely or almost entirely on the base of a nonrenewable resource like oil? This is the situation of the Persian Gulf countries of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman. Iran and Venezuela, with modest agricultural bases, are not quite so dependent on oil, although both countries get most of their foreign exchange from the sale of oil. Elsewhere, both Libya and Brunei are almost totally oil-dependent.
Contrary to the common idea that increased prosperity results in a reduction in birth rate and population growth, with the social programs supported by oil income coupled with the Muslim tradition of large families, the growth rate of all the Gulf nations has been well above the average for the world...which is about 1.3%. For example, the annual growth rate of the population in Saudi Arabia and in Libya is 4.1% (doubling in 17 years), Kuwait 6.0% (doubling in 11.6 years), Qatar 6.5% (doubling time 10.7 years), and United Arab Emirates 7.3% (doubling time 9.6 years). As a result of these high growth rates, about half the population of the Arab world is now under the age of 15. This fact has ominous portents of a huge increase in the population growth rate over the next two decades as they move into prime reproductive age. Also, this new generation is the first to live predominantly in cities. This has been made possible by oil wealth which allowed people to move beyond primarily agrarian and nomadic economies.
What is their long-term plan to provide for these population increases? Reduce production and raise the price so they can subsist on the revenues longer? _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Sat Jan 27, 2007 1:59 pm; edited 1 time in total
In a post-peak world, we know things are going to change and change dramatically. But, how fast will the onset of peak-oil be? Who, and what will be affected first. As you all know, I see the airlines as the "canary in the mineshaft." This will start a domino affect reaching out to the parcel carriers, aerospace industries, tourism, travel agencies, hotels, motels, restaurants, cruise ships, theme parks and many other forms of recreation. Fewer tourists mean fewer dollars and fewer dollars means loss of jobs in places where the tourist dollar is the primary source of income. Delivering mail, transporting raw materials to manufacturers and sending products bought over the Internet are just some of the everyday transactions that will take more time and money as carriers downsize and put fewer planes in the sky.
Leisure oil use activities will surely be hurt, especially the recreational vehicle industry. The demand for motorhomes, jet-skis, off-road vehicles, pleasure boats, snowmobiles, ATV's, (motorcycles may be a growth industry, though) private airplanes, and the biggest industry of all "racing" will drop dramatically as shortages occur and fuel costs rise. Think of all the industries that racing and recreational vehicles supports: helmets, insurance, auto parts/repairs, etc, etc. Bottom line; a lot of people's jobs are going to disappear almost overnight. It won't be just about paying more for gas and using less as a lot of people think. Post-peak oil prices will start a pandemic that will spread throughout our economy like a wildfire fanned by a strong wind.
What will governments do? Will oil go to the highest bidder? Will we see countries like China, Japan, and the US competing for oil to meet their growing economies? Or will we see the US taking the oil by military force? Will there be hoarding? Will conflict we create exacerbate the crisis that peak-oil will cause? These are all questions with few answers. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Sat Jan 27, 2007 2:03 pm; edited 2 times in total
Tires. We almost take them for granted. In the post-peak world, tires may be worth their weight in gold, as the saying goes. Why? Tires are basically petro-chemical products. It takes 22 gallons of oil to manufacture one new truck tire, about 6-7 gallons for a passenger car. Retreads use about 1/3 of that, as most of the oil is in the casing. Passenger car tire consumption is approaching 250 million units a year, 50 million of which are on new vehicles. Truck tire consumption is on the order of 50 million, not including about 15 million retreads.
Most people think of a tire as being made mostly of rubber. There are actually many components that go into the construction of a tire. Some of those components include:
1. Raw Rubber 30%
2. Steel
3. Nylon
4. Polyester
5. Rayon
6. Carbon Black
7. Synthetic Rubber
8. Fiberglass
9. Aramid
10. Brass
So, what will we do? I envision a rebirth of the railroad system. You don't need tires. You don't need a road; the roadbed and rails are much easier and cheaper to maintain than a highway. The trains are mostly diesel and can haul a bunch of stuff for far less energy. We might see the birth of communities near the railheads and rail-way stations of yore. The long-haul trucking industry will be gone. We won't ship across the country, and if we need to, the trains will do it.
What think ye? _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
There is no easy way to make a transition from a mechanical world view based upon the idea of permanent material growth to a world view based on the idea of conserving finite resources. It took thousands of years to make the transition from a hunter gatherer existence to an agrarian one. It took hundreds of years to move from an agrarian existence to an industrial one. In both instances, we had plenty of time and resources to make the radical adjustments required. Today, we are being forced to make a transition from the Industrial Age of non-renewable resources to a new and still undefined age based once again on renewable resources or some new primary science--and do it in less than one generation, or even less.
Throughout human history, mankind has struggled with the availability of resources, such as food, land, energy, and water. People have tried to create systems, contraptions, and laws that promised unrestricted access to such resources. This was often accompanied with fears and explicit threats of annihilation if such laws would be disobeyed or such systems would not be deployed. In relatively recent times, humans have gathered a fundamental understanding about the energy and resource balance of the earth and the universe. A lot of it involved the discovery of the nature of the solar system (a planetary system revolving around the sun), as well as the laws of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is the study of the inter-relation between heat, work and internal energy of a system. While the laws of thermodynamics were discovered in laboratories--often referred to as closed or isolated systems--they have demonstrated universal validity outside of the laboratory in the real world. Today, the most widely accepted theory about the origin and development of the universe is the big bang theory. It postulates that the universe began with the explosion of a tremendously dense source of energy and mass. As this dense energy expanded outward, it began to slow down, forming galaxies, stars, and planets. As the energy continues to expand and become more diffused, it loses more and more of its order and will eventually reach a point of maximum entropy, or an equilibrium state of heat death. Everything will be the same temperature, approaching zero point energy.
The big bang theory coincides with the first and second laws of thermodynamics:
The First Law states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; only transformed from one form to another. This is also known as the Conservation Law.
The Second Law states that whenever energy is converted from one form to another, there is an energy loss in the form of heat. It is also known as the Law of Entropy. Entropy is a measure of this loss in usable energy. No evidence has ever been shown to contradict the Second Law and it is the most scientifically backed and proven statement ever made.
The Third Law states that the entropy of a system at zero absolute temperature is a well-defined constant. This is because a system at zero temperature exists in its ground (lowest energy) state, so that its entropy is determined only by the degeneracy of the ground state. Or, in simpler terms, as this minimum temperature is approached, the further extraction of energy becomes more and more difficult.
The British scientist and author C.P. Snow had an excellent way of remembering the three laws:
1. You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).
2. You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).
3. You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).
There will be those who will stubbornly refuse to accept the fact that the Entropy Law reigns supreme over all physical reality in the world. The laws of thermodynamics provide the overarching scientific frame for the unfolding of all physical activity in this world. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Mon Dec 12, 2005 8:25 pm; edited 2 times in total
I thought I would start a new thread to focus on what our options really are, as dictated by the laws of physics. The Second Law of Thermo Dynamics states that whenever energy is converted from one form to another, there is an energy loss in the form of heat. Technology is a transformer. Every technology ever conceived by the genius of man is nothing more than a transformer of energy from one form to another. We have come to see technology as if it were something almost magical, as if it was creating a new form of energy and adding it to that which already exists, so that we get more out of what was there to begin with. We call it, "increased efficiency."
Technology never creates energy; it only uses up existing available energy. Energy is always transferred from an available state to a dissipated form, or from an ordered state to one of disorder. Technology is merely the transformer. The faster we streamline our technology, the faster we speed up the transforming process, the faster available energy is dissipated, the more pollution and waste amounts, i.e., chaos.
The world we have created is not the world we think we created. Much like Orwell's 1984, we have come to believe that disorder is order, that waste is value, and that work is non-work. And yet, here we are on the brink of peak-oil, still thinking that somehow technology will come to the rescue, when in fact, the opposite is true; it will seal our fate.
History has shown us that every technological breakthrough has produced unforeseen secondary effects more disastrous than if it had never been invented. Every technological invention has appeared because the ones which preceded it rendered necessary the ones which followed. The faster we make new "transformers," the faster available energy is used up. We are always playing "catch-up." The problems proliferate faster than the solutions.
In all the other civilizations before the machine age, technology was limited in the functions it performed. It was a tool, but not a way of organizing life. In our utterly futile attempt to create order through exponential growth of centralization, mass production, efficiency, urban sprawl, technological complexity, and resource exploitation, we have created the crisis we now face. The exponentiality of the technological fix is a one-way ticket to disaster for life and for the planet. We need to stop "developing" new energy resources and live with what we have naturally, however hard, cruel and un-American that may sound. We don't really have a choice if we wish to be sustainable. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Mon Dec 12, 2005 8:19 pm; edited 2 times in total
How important is understanding EROEI with regard to peak-oil? What does it mean? When the EROEI ratio for oil exploration declines to the point that it merely breaks even--that is, when the energy equivalent of a barrel of oil must be invested in order to obtain a barrel of oil--the exercise will become almost pointless, regardless of any economic consideration. . Even if oil remains a useful lubricant or a feedstock for plastics, it will have ceased to be an energy resource. EROEI is also an essential consideration in the substitution of one energy resource for another. If we replace an energy resource that has, say, a 4:1 EROEI ratio with an alternative that has a 2:1 EROEI ratio, we will have to produce twice as much gross energy to obtain the same net quantity. Thus, when a society adopts lower-EROEI energy sources as we find with solar technologies, the amount of energy available to do work in that society will inevitably decline.
In any human activity, there tends to be what is often referred to as the Law of Diminishing Returns. This means that for any activity, the first part of the process produces the greatest profits or advantages. For example, when a successful oil well is sunk, the oil gushes up under considerable pressure. As the oil reservoir depletes, more energy has to be applied to extract what remains. The amount of energy required to extract the same amount of oil increases as the depletion grows. You finally reach a point where it takes more energy to pump and refine the oil than you get once it is extracted. For each barrel of oil you extract from the Middle East, it costs you approximately the energy of 1 barrel of energy to extract 31 barrels, refine it, move it around the world and pump it into the tank of a vehicle.
To produce any energy, whether it is pumping oil out of the ground, or building and operating a wind turbine, you need to use some energy in the process. If the energy returned is less than the energy you produce, it is considered a "heat sink." No power sourcing project can sensibly be undertaken without Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROEI) assessments. Purely financial analysis is wholly inadequate, especially where signals are distorted by government subsidies as with ethanol and tar sands.
Some simple definitions:
An EROEI of 1 means that for every unit of energy you put in, you take 1 unit of usable energy out.
An EROEI of greater than 1 means you take more energy out than you put in.
If you burned more calories chewing your food than the food had it in, every mouthful would be a net energy loss to your body and you could not sustain life. That is what an EROEI of less than 1 amounts to. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Sun Apr 10, 2005 10:39 am; edited 1 time in total
If the Law of Entropy were clearly understood, society would have to face up to the fact that every time we use some of the stockpile of available matter and energy, it means two things: First, that however it may happen, we end up paying more for the disorder created in making a product than the value derived from the use of the product; second, less energy is available to be used in the future. This reality flies in the face of the way we think the world works. Sounds like nonsense to most people.
Whenever energy is extracted from the environment and processed through society, part of it becomes dissipated or wasted at every stage, until all of it, including the part made into products, ends up as waste in the end. Economists cannot accept this simple truth. They are indoctrinated with this notion that human ingenuity plus nature?s bounty creates greater value, not less. They don't understand that machines and people cannot create anything. All we can do is transform available energy from a usable state to an unusable state, while allowing us some "temporary utility" along the way.
A study was done on how much energy was required to build an automobile. The study concluded that many times more energy was actually used than was necessary. Why was all the extra energy used? To get the automobile off the assembly line faster. "Haste makes waste" is a well-know idiom attesting to the intuitive reality of entropy at work. We need to start building machines that last (quality vs quantity), and to pursue the development of technologies that will operate with efficiencies closer to the ideal limits set by nature and as defined by the Law of Entropy. Implementing this last and most crucial goal are at odds with current economic policies and the general perception of reality that most people have of the world around them.
Thus our economy is dependent for its maintenance, growth and development on the acquisition of low entropy energy/matter and on the waste assimilation capacity of the environment. This means that beyond a certain point, the continuous growth of the economy (i.e., the increase in human populations and the accumulation of manufactured capital) can be had only at the expense of increasing disorder (entropy). This occurs when consumption by the economy exceeds production in nature and is seen through the accelerating depletion of natural capital, reduced biodiversity, air/water/land pollution, and climate change.
Our current economic production is utterly dependent on the availability of low-entropy inputs like oil. We basically have two sources of low entropy: the solar and fossil fuels. Solar is relatively infinite, but is strictly limited in its flow rate of arrival to earth. Fossil fuels are finite, but can be used at a flow rate of our own choosing. Industrialism and technology represents a shift away from the use of abundant solar energy toward major dependence on the scarce fossil fuels in order to take advantage of the controllable rate of flow at which we can use it.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that we should be fueling our cars with alcohol from food crops that gather current sunshine. This approach is different in practice from the money-based "least cost" method of optimizing production, so it is important to stress the differences between economic and thermodynamic analysis. Economic analysis is based upon perceptions of present value and scarcity as expressed in the marketplace, where the supply and demand framework is modeled on an instantaneous evaluation of the popular perception of shortages.
The late M. King Hubbert put it quite succinctly:
The world's present industrial civilization is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and incompatible intellectual systems: the accumulated knowledge of the past four centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy and the associated monetary culture which has evolved from folkways of prehistoric origin.
To put it simply: The knowledge of matter and energy + monetary policy=peak-oil.
Since the current monetary system wants growth, we need a system that wants stability. Would it be a monetary system based upon EROEI, rather than matter wealth? Instead of correcting inflation, we would correct a decrease in EROEI, or slow down entropy. A money system triggered, not by scarcity (supply/demand) but by thermodynamic flow-through efficiency. If entropy increased, you would curb the money supply. If people conserved more, you would free the money supply. The reverse of what we have now.
Money would be created based upon available renewable energy, while fossil fuels would be for key, non-profit energy use, and energy emergencies. The less energy you use, the cheaper it becomes. Bulk cost more than small amounts. The faster you drive, the more it costs you for fuel when you stop to fill up. Conservation would pay you a dividend. Perhaps we could have a carbon tax on hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) making the use of renewables more attractive.
Each person receives wages according to the amount of order they add to the system as a whole and pays fees/taxes for how much 'stuff' they turn into useless chaotic energy. Like reverse depreciation. No way to make anyone accept such a system of course, people are not intelligent enough to contemplate such a thing, and in addition you would have to have a great deal of control over people's private lives. But it is in the general direction I feel we should go governed by our decision, and not by the ruthless laws of nature over which we cannot escape.
As mankind continues to try to maintain the status quo, and energy consumption continues unabated, the question of peak oil occurring sooner, rather than later, seems almost assured. In the end, this question of disruption may be the most crucial of them all; for it is not simply change that affects us, but the rate of change--how quickly and easily one way of life is exchanged for another. A swift, chaotic shift in our energy economy almost guarantees disruption, uncertainty, economic loss, even violence. By contrast, were we able to somehow manage a gradual phase-in over time, we might be able to adapt and cope to these changes without a socio-economic upheaval.
Americans, it seems, have an insidious disease that is pandemic across the country; energy illiteracy: most of us have no idea whatsoever how our energy economy works, much less are we able to discern, with any degree of certitude, when it is beginning to unravel. Beyond the price of gasoline and maybe heating oil, most consumers understand very little about the energy that they use. It is taken for granted. Few can say how much energy they consume in the course of a day or a year, or where it comes from. In fact, most people feel that most of their electricity comes from hydroelectric dams, when, as most of us here know, it is produced primarily by coal-fired and nuclear power plants with natural gas increasingly replacing coal.
Whereas residents of poor nations are acutely aware of every aspect of their energy use; every stick of wood, (sometimes carried for miles) and every gallon of cooking fuel is closely watched. Oil, in our affluent culture has become an invisible commodity, something we vaguely understand as to be important on a national and international level, but something that doesn't really affect our personal daily lives, except in the price of gasoline. This energy obliviousness helps explain why we have so often misspent our "efficiency dividend;" we make lights more efficient, and we install more of them. Gas mileage improves and we build bigger cars. These mindsets help make it clear why, despite great improvements in energy efficiency, demand continues to spiral upwards. No matter how efficient we become, we must somehow alter the historic trend whereby any gains made through energy efficiency are more than wiped out by a corresponding increase in overall energy consumption.
As energy historian Vaclav Smil points out, "whatever the future gains may be, the historical evidence is clear: higher energy efficiency of energy conversions leads eventually to higher, rather than lower, energy use."
As a possible catalyst for the next energy economy, conservation finds itself in an awkward position, caught between it s great potential for saving energy and the obstacles facing it, ranging from consumer ignorance and prejudices, to a market and political system that still assigns greater value to producing energy rather than trying to conserve it. It is awareness of these stark realities that often gets me the label of doomsayer. I just cannot foresee any viable way to overcome these ingrained obstacles and make that all important transition to a renewable energy world without chaos and economic collapse. And even post-collapse, there will be a predominant will and desire to once again try to rebuild the "empire" of old. There is an old saying, "The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
The set of possible futures includes a great variety of paths. But the possible futures do not include indefinite growth in energy nor physical output. The only real choice is to decrease energy consumption to sustainable levels by choice, or to let nature force the decision through lack of food, energy, and materials, or through a severely compromised environment. I'm sorry to say, that many of those choices have already been made for us, due to inaction on our part, many, many years ago.
10 things I think that every human being should know about energy.
1. A basic understanding of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. "There is no such thing as a free lunch."
2. In an energy system dominated by oil, energy independence is a myth.
3. The world's production of oil, gas, and coal will soon peak.
4. No "single" magic bullet or techno-fix will solve our energy crisis.
5. There is no substitute for conservation and efficiency if you can overcome Jevon's Paradox. (Good chance to make matters worse over time)
6. No matter what we do near term, we still have to deal with exponential population growth and the associated increase in energy consumption.
7. Our entire debt-based monetary system is designed for an infinite resource world.
8. We cannot buy primary science to fix the crisis.
9. Increased use of other fossil fuels to replace oil will accelerate global warming and climate change.
10. We can't control oil prices due to Peak Oil. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Sat Nov 26, 2005 7:02 pm; edited 2 times in total
The United States is flirting with a low-grade depression, (deflation) one that may last for years. The meaning of deflation is that assets of almost every kind, from financial investments and real estate to manufactured goods and commodities, will be revalued downward
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