What "Lower Consumption" Means
Posted by nate hagens on November 5, 2009 - 10:06am in The Oil Drum: Campfire
Note from the author (Dan Allen): As a high-school teacher, I wanted to give my thoroughly-industrial, suburban-NJ students a more detailed peek at their upcoming post-industrial future. I felt the need to challenge their prevailing mindsets regarding our resource-depletion predicament: the “shorter showers & change the light-bulbs” crowd, the “engineers will surely come to our rescue” folks, and the “problem? -- what problem?” people. This essay and the before/after comparison chart that follows are part of my ongoing (unsanctioned) attempts at doing so.
WHAT LOWER CONSUMPTION MEANS
by Dr. R. Daniel Allen
Most of the kids have a good laugh with the before/after comparison chart, and I laugh along with them. The contrasts between the present and (likely) future presented in the chart are striking to the point of unbelievability to them, and their reactions are honest and humorous: “So, Dr. Allen, where can I buy this mule I’ll need?”
But I also laugh with some sadness and a touch of fear; sadness that prudent suggestions to prepare for a difficult future are still regarded as a joke; and fear for a possibly much darker future I don’t think they yet comprehend -- a fear that we might not be able to pull this off.
Note that this is directed at high school kids as part of my ongoing series of “important side notes” to the regular Chemistry curriculum. Even though topics such as EROEI and the “net energy curve” are very relevant to this discussion, I have not introduced them yet in this essay for the sake of simplicity. For these topics, I highly recommend many related posts on www.theoildrum.com by Ugo Bardi, Charles Hall, and David Murphy, as well as the references contained therein.
Executive Summary: The fevered frenzy of Industrial Civilization’s resource consumption appears to have finally reached its apex and begun its decline in this, the first decade of the twenty-first century. A closer look at the physical realities of resource extraction reveals that the resource situation is, in fact, terminal for our high-consumin’ civilization. Resource depletion is a predicament requiring adaptation to an entirely new low-consumption paradigm, rather than a problem to be solved with technological or social solutions. As a country, we need to start the conversation about what a lower-consumption, resource-poor society would look like, and begin the appropriate preparations.
The Insatiable Hunger of Industrial Civilization
Over the past 150 years, the relentless combination of exponentially-increasing population and exponentially-increasing per-capita (i.e. per-person) consumption has significantly depleted a wide-range of resources necessary for the continuation of our modern Industrial Civilization. These include both non-renewable resources (ex: fossil fuels, metal ores, phosphate fertilizers, etc.) and theoretically-renewable resources that are being abused to such an extent that they are becoming essentially non-renewable on useful timescales (ex: fisheries, topsoil, freshwater, etc.).
Pick any of these key resources and the annual extraction rate data will likely show an exponential increase from the mid-1800’s to the present. Ask scientists about the resource and they will tell you the bad news: the annual extraction rate curve is near, at, or past the point of collapse. Ask conventional economists or politicians and they will tell you the good news: “Everything’s going to be OK; the market will take care of it; It always has.”
So who do we believe? Taking a quick look past the rhetoric, the situation becomes clear -- alarmingly so for those who wish the industrial party to continue, as well as for those who fear we are not properly prepared for what follows.
The Easy Stuff’s Gone
As modern Industrial Civilization built momentum, the easiest resources, the “lowest hanging fruit,” were logically picked first: the high purity coal, metal ores, and phosphate-bearing minerals at or near the surface; the light, sweet crude oil and gas that burst at great pressure from shallow wells; the huge, dense schools of protein-rich fish that practically jumped into the boats; the deep-rich top-soils that required minimal inputs to produce bountiful crop yields.
While the ease of extraction and high quality of these resources gave us a great confidence as a civilization, ever-increasing consumption rates actually became ingrained as a necessity for the continuation of our industrial economies. As this consumptive frenzy gained momentum, however, these once-easy resources became “high graded;” meaning that as the easiest stuff was skimmed off every year, the resources that remained were of increasingly lower quality.
What remains now, of course, at our currently-advanced stage of depletion, are resources that are much more expensive, of much lower quality, and much more difficult to extract. These are the low-purity metal ores thousands of feet underground; heavy crude oil and gas laced with toxins that must be coaxed with great effort from beneath thousands of feet of ocean, rock, and salt; sparse schools of lower-quality fish requiring monstrous nets and huge ships for their economical extraction; and the nutrient-depleted, thinned-out top-soil requiring significant inputs to obtain reasonable yields.
The Difficult Stuff’s Too Difficult
Let’s assume to a very rough (but not entirely unreasonable) approximation that half of all theoretically-extractable resources have been depleted as we begin the 21st century – fossil fuels, metal ores, phosphate fertilizer, fisheries, etc. The industrial consumers say, “Wow, that still leaves half remaining to be extracted. We still have another 150 years of fun. Party on!” There are, however, two key problems that will undermine their (understandable) exuberance.
First, due to much-increased population and per-capita consumption rates, we are burning through these resources at a significantly faster rate than at the start of the first 150 years. Even if the second half of the resources were easily obtained, they would be likely be gone in a matter of a few decades. Secondly, the first half of the resources was the cheap, easy half. What remains is so increasingly difficult to access that it would require actual extra-terrestrial energy inputs for their complete extraction – i.e. it’s not gonna happen. Not even close.
Here’s the dark irony of our resource predicament: The low-quality, difficult half of the resources that remain require an infrastructure for their extraction that can only exist in the presence of the high-quality, easy half of the resources -- the ones that no longer exist. Please read that again.
In other words, a relatively large percentage of the low-quality, difficult resources that remain will likely never be extracted. The age of cheap, easy, high-quality resources to power the current version of Industrial Civilization is over, and the age of expensive, difficult, low-quality resources to power a future version of Industrial Civilization will simply never occur.
Our beloved Industrial Civilization, this pinnacle of human ingenuity, this shining beacon of light in an otherwise backward Universe, (this destructive monster killing the biosphere) is just about out of fuel. It’s time to get out and start walking.
Lower Consumption Is the New Higher Consumption
So what does all this “bad” news mean for our everyday lives?
The short answer is that we can expect a rather drastic involuntary reduction in resource use in the not-too-distant future, gradually worsening, and extending into the distant future. This coming resource supply-reduction may well proceed in a stair-step fashion -- unexpected drop, period of stability, unexpected drop, period of stability…etc, giving repeated temporary illusions of “the bottom.” The steady erosion of the resource pipeline will not only utterly cripple our growth-requiring Industrial economy, it will send ripple effects through every facet of our formerly-industrial lives, changing them almost beyond belief.
We will not only have less and less of the “primary” extractable resources available to us every year -- less oil, less coal, natural gas, less phosphate fertilizer, less metals, etc; but we will also have less and less of the “secondary” resources that the primary resources make possible: less electricity, less nitrogen fertilizer, less water treatment, less transportation, less computers and electronic communication, etc.
Again, it’s important to state here that not only will this decline be involuntary, it will not be preventable by any combination of political, social, or technological solutions. It will simply occur, and we must simply respond to it.
How we respond, of course, will make a great deal of difference as to whether our predicament becomes disastrous or just very difficult. Moral guidance will be greatly needed throughout. The varied fields of Ecology, Biophysical Economics, Permaculture, and Natural Systems Agriculture (among others) have much to teach us about adapting to our changing resource situation, and we certainly should listen to them. (Note to Obama: Please contact the Post Carbon Institute. Invite Wendell Berry over for a beer. Heck, Derrick Jensen too.)
Also realize that there are many important facets of our lives which need not decline in the upcoming future – indeed, they may even increase: personal connections with our families, communities, and the natural world; block parties and potlucks; tag-football and pickup-basketball; joking around and shooting the breeze; love in our hearts, etc. In other words, it’s quite possible we just may find a lot more important and fulfilling things than we’re losing.
Much is still up to us.
What Lower Consumption Means
The following chart is meant to give a brief flavor of our coming lower-resource future. A quick read down the left column gives a pretty good overview of our current Industrial society, in all its fast-paced, consumptive glory.
I’ve been told by my students that the right column reads seems suspiciously Amish-like. That’s really not an accident -- the Amish generally lead a much less consumptive lives. Whatever you happen to think of their social structures, the physical lifestyles of the Amish will probably gradually become the lifestyles of a majority of the population.
Another accusation I get is that I’m predicting the 21st century will increasingly resemble the 18th century. I respond with this: if that’s what the Laws of Thermodynamics and the finite material limits of the Earth dictate, I don’t see how we have a choice.
Let’s try to make the best of it.
|
NONE/LESS OF… |
REPLACED WITH… |
|
Cars & trucks |
Bicycles, walking, electric scooters, horses, & mules |
|
Airplane travel (domestic & international) |
Infrequent long journeys by trains and boat |
|
Power boats, barges, ocean liners, cargo ships, & super tankers |
Sailboats, row-boats, canoes |
|
Supermarket food shopping |
Home gardens & local farmers markets |
|
Vacations (domestic & international) |
“Stay-cations” to local beaches, rivers, lakes, forests; Sunday’s at the creek |
|
Restaurant & fast food meals |
Cooking at home & family meals |
|
Electronic gadgetry (TVs, computers, ipods, cell phones, DVDs, etc.) |
Entertaining friends at home, block parties, visiting among neighbors, |
|
Hollywood movies & CDs/downloads of your favorite bands |
Community theater & neighborhood concerts by local artists & musicians |
|
Power tools |
Hand tools |
|
Electricity on demand |
Partial/multi-day electrical blackouts & limited-use electricity restrictions |
|
Electric light bulbs |
Candles & early bedtimes |
|
Universities & colleges |
Community colleges & trade apprenticing |
|
Large grade-schools & high-schools |
Small community schools & home-schooling |
|
Huge farms in California & Mid-west supplying our food |
Small farms everywhere (even in suburbs & cities) supplying our food |
|
Oil/gas/electric home-heating |
Wood stoves, passive solar, insulation, sweaters, blankets, & long underwear |
|
Air conditioning |
Shade trees, swimming holes, cool drinks, & sleeping on your porch |
|
Hot showers |
Cold showers, luke-warm baths & solar water heaters |
|
Running water |
Cisterns & hand pumps |
|
Swimming pools |
Swimming holes; local rivers, lakes, & oceans; dipping your head in a bucket |
|
Parking lots |
Bike racks & hitching posts |
|
Skyscrapers & huge office buildings |
Bat habitat & salvage projects |
|
Refrigerators & freezers |
Root cellars, smoke-houses, drying racks, ice-houses, & salt barrels |
|
Credit card, loans, & debt in general |
Cash, bartering of goods, trading work |
|
Skiing & snowboarding |
Sledding, snowball fights, ice-skating |
|
Budweiser, fine wines, & mixed drinks |
Home-made wine, beer, hard cider, & moonshine |
|
One-family households |
Extended-family or multi-family households (i.e. Grandma’s comin’ home…and so is Uncle Bob) |
|
Divorce & re-marriage |
Gritting it out (& hopefully working it out) with support of extended family |
|
Clothes shopping |
Hand-me-downs, mending, making |
|
Not knowing (or barely knowing) your neighbors & little interaction with them |
Intimately knowing your neighbors & relying on them for your survival |
|
Terrorist threats (i.e. trying to grow commerce in an increasingly hostile global political climate) |
Climate threats (i.e. trying to grow your food in an increasingly unpredictable physical climate) |
|
Overweight & obese people |
Malnutrition & “just enough”; lean & skinny people |
|
High-fructose corn syrup & table sugar |
Honey & fruit |
|
Putting out recycling & garbage |
Re-using everything & fixing stuff |
|
Police protection |
Neighborhood-watch groups |
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Very nice. Well done and easy to understand.
Hi.
Thanks.
Someone deep below in the thread (Bert in RI) expressed concern that I was damaging my students' psyches. I responded to his comment & it's worth reading.
-- Dan
Unfortunately, this is all a little beside the point. We here at TOD are so wrapped up in oil depletion speculation that we've missed the main game. Listen to all these podcasts and then ask yourself if global warming is not the real endgame:
4o and Beyond : International Climate Conference
It's all over bar the shouting, I'd say.
Not really, this is TOD not www.realclimate.org, however I think to pick one issue such as climate change over the myriad of synergistically interconnected feedback loops that make up our support systems is, I believe, somewhat short sighted.
To be very clear climate change is a biggy but it can't be dealt with in isolation from everything else.
We need a more comprehensive systems analysis type of approach. Otherwise we end up like the blind men examining the elephant and saying it is like a snake, a tree or a wall, none of which are accurate or useful descriptions in and of themselves.
To be honest, I find the posters and commenters here at TOD to generally have a firmer grasp on the big picture than most other sites.
Good essay Dan! As a quick intro to the "predicament" it should stay in their memory.
A suggestion would be to add a few examples of the "infrastructure" you mention in the third section. Examples can bring ideas to life.
Oil isn't hard to replace. We can see that from how easy it is on a personal level:
If fuel prices double, why not just buy a Prius (which will reduce fuel consumption by 50%)? Or, if Priuses are suddenly back-ordered (because everyone else has the same idea), put in your order and carpool with one other person (which will reduce fuel consumption by 50%) until it comes??
If they double again, put in an order for a Volt (which will reduce fuel consumption by another 80%), and carpool in your old vehicle with 3 other people, or your Prius with one other person until it comes. If you want to eliminate fuel consumption entirely, put in an order for an EV, like Nissan's Leaf, and again, carpool till it gets here.
Carpooling - the horror.
So when oil prices double, meaning you have less cash, your solution is to... spend more cash?
If I can't afford to fill the fuel tank, how am I supposed to afford a new car?
Seems like, if fuel is too expensive, people will just stop burning it. And in fact we find that's what happens. Here in Melbourne when petrol went from $1/lt to $1.65 in a month, more people used trains, and walked or cycled from here to there. The people who had been taking international vacations took interstate ones, the people who had been taking interstate vacations took in-state ones.
Still not changes on the scale the authour is suggesting, but in the same direction.
So when oil prices double, meaning you have less cash, your solution is to... spend more cash?
Of course. You'll save money pretty quickly. Heck, in the long run PHEVs and EVs will be cheaper to run than ICE vehicles are today.
Nick
I do not think you understand what is being said here. The point is that there is not going to be enough resources to build the PHEV's and EV's and...
What is being said here is doomer nonsense. EVs are already in production.
Specifically which ones, how many, where are they sold, who is buying them and what do they cost?
We already have EVs here where I live. The bigger ones can squeeze two people in!
Obese or lean?
I have EV cars where I live too. They were converted by enthusiasts who spent $20k to turn 10 year old Dihatsu charede inot a ten year old EV (with new batteries). Nobody is rushing them with orders.
Yes, I understand. I disagree.
Very little oil is used in manufacturing, whether it's PHEVs and EVs, or wind turbines. We have plenty of electricity, steel, glass, etc.
What planet do you live on? It's not earth.
What you said is like saying the earth is flat, it's that far from reality.
We have virtually unlimited electricity resources in spent nuclear fuel, depleted uranium, and thorium. We have technologies to use these resources effectively, however blocked by regulating the nuclear energy to clinical death. It is reasonable to expect that these asinine regulations will be reformed or dropped, depending how much shit hits the fan, and how fast the fan blows.
Besides having large resources of iron ore, we can already recycle almost everything using plasma arc technologies. There is clearly plenty of sand around to make glass.
It seems that what you are saying is indeed a doomer nonsense, likely based on fear perhaps leveled to increase perceived scarcity and therefore related profits, not clear thinking. It is safe here: have a cookie :-)
What happens when you lose your job? I can't see too many unemployed people dashing out to buy a Prius.
I don't see too many unemployed people dashing out to buy any car.
Exactly. With half a million people losing their jobs every month, even before oil production is really declining in earnest, the "hybrids/EVs will save us" argument is a delusion. As Bill Clinton said famously, "it's the economy stupid."
We've had bank panics before, and we'll have them again.
The US's trade deficit in oil certainly contributed to our current recession, and it will certainly slow it down in the future. But an inexorable decline? No.
$12 trillion national debt (and growing), with $500 trillion in derivatives (among other ponzi schemes) left to unwind is hardly a temporary "bank panic". A more accurate term is "insolvent". Good luck with your Prius dude.
$12 trillion national debt
I think the generally accepted figure is about 2/3 of that - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
That's in the same range as other countries such as Germany, and rather less than the category leader - Japan.
Nick wrote:
"But an inexorable decline? No."
This is called a 'bald pronouncement'. For a more in-depth discussion, check out "The Party's Over" by Richard Heinberg from your local library (or buy it, it's worth every penny).
To assess how our society can respond to these problems, we have to evaluate the various proposed solutions. The problem with Heinberg, Hanson, Kunstler, et al? They don't understand wind and solar, and haven't taken them seriously. They've just assumed that they aren't adequate. Look through their writings and you don't find an accurate, detailed analysis anywhere.
His treatment of wind and solar in "Powerdown" is relatively undetailed. "The Party's Over" is a bit more thorough, with 4 and half pages devoted to wind, but there's still no detailed, quantitative analysis. It has some numbers, but they're oddly uneven, and ultimately it's overall conclusions don't follow. For instance, on page 152 he says: " Current storage batteries are expensive, they are almost useless in very cold weather, and they need to be replaced after a few years of use. Currently, there are no batteries available that can effectively move heavy farm machinery or propel passenger carrying aircraft across the oceans."
Well, with the exception of the last bit about aircraft, none of this is accurate (which he would have discovered, had he looked at the numbers). See http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2009/07/volt-battery-costs-part-3.html as well as http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2008/09/can-everything-be-electrified.html .
loiz
The doomers are motivated by profit at the expense of others is an argument commonly used by anti-doomer types. From my experience and a small research project I did in college, I would say that the vast majority of doomer types in no way benefit financially from their doomer believes. Most doomer types are highly educated and are far less money motivated than the norm.
Maybe this argument is a case of projection?
Ever try to fertilize a thousand acres using spent fuel rods? Make a list of things we use/need that don't require petroleum somehow. I did and it was REALLY short.
There are very few things that require oil. See http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2008/09/can-everything-be-electrified.html
A small quibble - fertilizer is produced from natural gas, not oil.
Regarding agriculture: I recently read McKibben's book Deep Economy: I like a lot of what he has to say. Oddly, I don't yet see any sign of a sharp choice between prosperity and, say, local and better food.
For instance, he says that low-input farming requires twice as much labor per acre, but then that it produces twice as much food per acre. That sounds like it requires no more labor per unit of food. What's not to like?
Well Nick If you care to jion me out in the creek bottom on a sunny August day and hoe some corn you will soon find out.You will need a physical and a note from your doctor and you will have to sign a release-unless you are young and lean-if which case some blisters and a few sore muscles are the only likely issues.
If it can possibly be avoided I will never dhoe corn again but I did it as a youngster.
I agree - farming is a very tough life.
Low input farming is a very tough life-farming using modern methods involves a lot of hours and some occasional hard physical work but except for the uncertainties of weather and markets it is really no harder than many other hands on businesses-it's just riskier.
And you ARE OUTSIDE a lot.;)
however blocked by regulating the nuclear energy to clinical death.
Given publicly documented sleeping guards at a fission plant - only documented after the failure of the internal management....how exactly do you arrive at your conclusion?
"Very little oil is used in manufacturing, whether it's PHEVs and EVs, or wind turbines. We have plenty of electricity, steel, glass, etc."
Rubbish. Most modern cars are full of petroleum derived plastics. Try building one, even an EV, without plastics and see far you get. Steel begins it's life as iron ore and coal, both of which are dug up and transported using diesel trucks and trains. Glass begins as silica sand transported on trucks and trains. Electricity infrastructure is built and maintained, oh yeah, with trucks. The last wind turbine I saw go up was made from steel, tranported on a truck, lifted in place with a diesel powered crane, and hooked up to the electricty lines that had just been installed by the diesel powered machinery. And thats before we even started drawing the plans for the EV factory let alone produce one.
Nick, you appear to know very little about manufacturing and engineering and what goes into building cars or anything else and your commentary on technology lacks any technical analysis or depth. You seem to be passionate about energy issues, but please take off the rose coloured glasses and try to provide some evidence for your assertions.
You mean ... you mean ... that Santa Claus does NOT bring all the toys to all the toy stores in all the malls via Fed-Reindeer Express every night so that we little bitty itty children can have things to play with the next day? No instant and free gratification?
Bwahh bwahh (sound of child crying)
Manufacturing oil consumption (including plastic and other parts) vs lifecycle oil consumption:
per the CMU study cited by ILEA ( http://web.archive.org/web/20080210034026/www.ilea.org/lcas/macleanlave1... ), fuel and the fuel cycle is about 85% of the total. Only a small part of the manufacturing energy is petroleum.
----
Yes, diesel transportation is used for manufacturing. OTOH, roughly 50% of overall oil consumption is for personal transportation.
We're going to have enough oil for many decades for the minority of oil consumption that is most needed, and it will be gradually replaced.
See: http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2008/09/can-everything-be-electrified.html
-----
This link has some data for the industry in US.
http://www.epa.gov/ispd/pdf/energy/ch3-9.pdf
Electricity accounts for 40% of energy used,NG48% and gasoline and fuel oil 10%
The link states energy accounts for 1% of the total cost of vehicle production. If that's say $200 per vehicle and 10% is for oil that would be $20 worth of oil(<10gallons gasoline), or 1/4 barrel oil/vehicle.
--
"This report looks at motor vehicle manufacturing
operations—specifically facilities that assemble Major fuel sources: Electricity, natural gas finished automobiles and light duty vehicles from Current economic and energy consumption data are premanufactured automotive parts including the summarized in Table 48 on page 3-78. engine, chassis components, and wheels and
tires (NAICS 33611).249 The assembly process generally includes stamping, body welding, general assembly, and painting."
"The majority of sector energy demand is met by electricity, with natural gas and other purchased fuels meeting the remainder. Energy expenditures comprise approximately 1 percent of total vehicle production costs.254"
"From 1998 to 2004, electricity purchases have ranged between 50 to 60 percent of total energy costs for the industry.258"
"Energy Intensity in 2002: Energy Cost per Dollar of Value Added (share): 1.1%"
"Primary Fuel Inputs as Fraction of Total Energy Supply in 2002 (fuel use only)kkkk: Natural Gas Net Electricity Other
48% 41% 7%"
http://www.epa.gov/ispd/pdf/energy/ch3-9.pdf
In other words, we could have 40 million extra barrels of oil per day and no place to put them.
You can sign up for a new EV here Termoil:
http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/#/car/index
You can sign up for a new EV here
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Minor opcode: 0
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Not if it crashes the browser.
Your system doesn't like flash intros. Try the link from this CNBC report:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33137794
Seriously Nick you have been a member for +4 years on the Drum and you are still working with this? Have you been cutting class? Macro/Micro Resource depletion will most likely nix the easy progression you are hoping for. I really think you are under estimating the population, social and economic dynamics we are facing accentuated by the throbbing momentum of universal consumption. Stay engaged and thinking it will get you there eventually. I do agree with the carpooling comment grew up in the 60-70s and with a carpooling Dad and the party line phones, 1 TV home etc. Survived quite well and experienced the smaller world concept, worked well for me and certainly a necessary step to where we are most likely going. The faster we make that progression the longer we get to play even if its a bit muted. I think the whole program being suggested by this discussion is relevant maybe a bit beyond my expectations but truly within the scope of possibilities and would say well done and good luck.
Macro/Micro Resource depletion will most likely nix the easy progression you are hoping for.
What, specifically?
I really think you are under estimating the population...dynamics we are facing
Well, Population growth in the US is only about 1% per year.
I really think you are under estimating the...social and economic dynamics we are facing
Well, that's a different discussion - the Original Post is talking about physical limits. It's clear to me that technical solutions exist for PO and CC. On a personal level, that's especially clear: anyone who wants to buy a bike, or carpool, or buy a Prius (and then modify it into a PHEV pretty cheaply) can do so.
On a social and national economic level....that depends on a lot of things, including resistance to change from those who stand to lose careers and investments. That's tougher. My best guess is that oil importers like the US have a large risk of some years of economic stagnation (roughly on the order of Japan's recent experience) or reduced economic growth - definitely not BAU as defined by most people.
Where to start...Lithium for batteries, REE's for wind,solar that are required for your technical adaptation. Limited Phosphorus, Potassium for ferts., record low grain stocks and the decreasing capability of replacing them due to declining water and arable land resources.
The U.S. population growing at 1% how about the world growing at much higher rate 100's of plus millions per year. How about declining capital (credit) to squeeze out the last drops of resources to name several keys. The word is Overshoot we are there the question when does it fully slap us in the face. Seriously are you being sarcastic or what? The constraints the good Dr. outlines are not heresay. You're arguments imply the world ends at the borders of the U.S.
No physical limits are on a collison course with the Worlds demand for more western world lifestyles we can't make all that stuff whether it be Kobe beef, or Prius's without the raws. More and more want the stuff that will never be available due to the inability of the earth to provide for all those wants. The population increases exacerbate the diminishment of the resources. Cheap easy FF has allowed this to occur and their increasing scarcities will initiate and then accelerate our demise as our ability to access and consume will be terminally impaired.
Well said, Crude. "our ability to access and consume will be terminally impaired" is the best way to put it, me thinks. :)
Nick, using "%growth of population" doesn't indicate anything until you tie a real number of something being consumed. The problem is not about having more people - but about meeting their needs! The average american consumes 72 times what an average Bangladeshi consumes. Its all about the volumes. For the US, the problem is made worse by the _predicament_ of a life-style utterly dependent on heavy use of energy. US is the largest user of road transportation, not just the citizens but also their life support services. All of this is supported by an economy that relies on ever increasing consumptions to distribute "profits" to capital providers via a 'stock market'. As the consumption decreases due to Reality's limits, many businesses will go bankrupt. Some of these might be your very life support systems! To rub salt into an already bad looking wound, there is the problem of Suburbia.
We don't need to run out of oil. Mere onset of ripple effects are enough to introduce chaos. Have you considered what would be the impact of fuel shortages to the Police department or to Medical facilities?
We'll not only "go back" to the 18th century, we'll probably be worse off.
... or maybe we should optimistically look at this as an opportunity to get to a saner life-style. Like the "Talking Heads" song "Nothing but flowers" goes :)
Lithium for batteries
See http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2009/02/could-we-run-out-of-lithium-for-ev...
REE's for wind,solar that are required for your technical adaptation.
I presume you're discussing neodymium for permanent magnet motor/generators. As it happens, neodymium isn't that rare. OTOH, if there were a supply problem, permanent magnet motor/generators can be replaced with induction versions.
Limited Phosphorus
The following reference seems to answer the question, given that Florida provides 25% of world production:
How Long Will Florida Phosphate Mining Go On?
For decades, it has been said that the phosphate in Florida could be mined for about another 25 years. Technological advances and market changes, however, have continually lengthened the expected life of phosphate mining, allowing mining of rock that wouldn’t have been mined in previous years.
The Hawthorne Formation, which contains much of the Florida phosphate deposits, covers much of the Atlantic Coastal Plain of the southeastern United States. In the heart of the Central Florida phosphate district, the Bone Valley Formation overlays the Hawthorn Formation. The two are separated by a limestone layer of varying thickness. It is the Bone Valley Formation that has produced the majority of mining activity in central Florida to date. The Hawthorne Formation is being mined in North Florida. It is also the Hawthorne Formation that is being mined in the southern extension of the central Florida phosphate district.
Florida phosphate reserves alone contain about 10 billion tons of soluble phosphate rock. Based on the current mining rate in Florida, this would last more than 300 years if economic and technological conditions allow. This gives us quite a lot of time to set up recycling.
http://www1.fipr.state.fl.us/PhosphatePrimer/0/D180A63B2294832985256F770...
More later, I hope...
Hey Nick, ever heard of this?
True Cost Economics
What Does True Cost Economics Mean?
An economic model that seeks to include the cost of negative externalities into the pricing of goods and services. Supporters of this type of economic system feel products and activities that direct or indirectly cause harmful consequences to living beings and/or the environment should be accordingly taxed to reflect the somewhat hidden costs. Investopedia explains True Cost Economics
This school of thought is on the rise as a result of the perceived need for ethical consideration in neoclassical economic theory. However, the cost of many goods and services that are currently affordable, and often taken for granted, could see an extreme rise in costs if their "true costs" are accounted for.
For example, if one accounted for air, noise and other types of pollution caused by the manufacturing and the use of a new car, then the price of the new car would, by estimates, raise by over $40,000.
Hey Nick, ever heard of this? - True Cost Economics
Sure. It's a good idea - the sooner the better.
I think you may be assuming I'm saying things that I'm not.
The Original Post said that we're running into inexorable physical limits. That's what I'm disagreeing with.
OMG! Nick! Population growth of 1% per year doubles population in 60 years. How do you propose feeding the next 6.5Billion people? Using what, exactly, for fertilizer? Your BS?
Grow up and think about what is going on. I am considered an optimist by most of my family; I am realistic and see where things are headed. There is not enough time to build what it would take to replace our infrastructure with all nuke power [neglecting that we are at or near peak Uranium, and even depleted fuels are limited - having said that I agree we will need quite a bit of that, but it ain't the answer you think it is, my friend], supplemented by water, wind and solar.
The greatest problem we will have as oil slides is the excess population. We cannot continue to grow 1% a year - we cannot afford to limit decrease to 1% a year, but no one thinks we will try that. It will take a few decades of starvation, possibly resource wars, and eventually determination for the world, and that includes North America, to discover its limits. Past history shows that we will overshoot on the way down, and then come back a bit. My hope is that TOD people will have enough influence on decision makers to dampen the bad, so that what we have is not a 'doomer' world.
Population growth of 1% per year doubles population in 60 years.
The US fertility rate is roughly at replacement - growth is mostly coming from immigration.
The world's growth rate is leveling off: take a look at the UN projections.
Nick,
Being skeptical is good but try scratching a little bit below the surface. The U.S. is not the world and the worlds population is demanding an increasing amount of resources. Why should the U.S and the West continue to be the dominant consumers of the worlds goodies? Asia dwarfs the west'a population and they are wanting more of our lifestyles. Check out this presentation on the worlds food and phosphorus dilemna. Its not pretty and growing worse by the day. The U.S. is past peak in her P production and is now an importer. So what does it say if a major producer is now dependent? Page 10 addresses this but most of the presentation is worth the view. I happen to think that Legend is a good place to park a few shekels. (full disclosure I own some)
http://www.lgdi.net/
You seem to want to soft sell the scale required to supplant the current paradigm of energy consumption. Check some math out to see how the replacements will go. Then kindly inform me of the numbers for current replacement that the Nuke's, solar and wind under (and even planned) construction will help us cancel out. You didn't comment on Lithium maybe because its tough to find a life vest that makes the nums work for a car centric world
Like a lot of REE's and essential minerals you have to find a deposit that can be mined with a reasonable return on the energy and capital required to make it work. There is a pattern here that repeats itself across a lot of the resources that make the current and (your) envisioned world work at a managable pace. That pattern is deficit in its ability to uphold the current state much less the evolving one. You seem to be at the quest point here in trying to make this work out in your head. There is a lot of additional material you can look up, the Drum is hard to beat in a lot of ways but its also good to go for a big picture view. I suggest the biggest bang for your reading time is Overshoot by William Catton. Available on Amazon beyond that try Jarod Diamonds Collapse. These are by no means the bomb on the subject lots of other too. Catton was the great epiphany for me. Good Luck Grasshopper.
Catton has new book called Bottleneck: Humanity's Impending Impasse
I notice that oil is prominently featured on the book cover, so I presume PO is central.
His treatment of wind & solar in Overshoot is, of course, badly dated. I would hope that he's brought himself up to date.
So, what does he say about wind and solar power as a replacement for oil?
Phosphorus: see my other comment about Florida production. It looks like about a 300 year supply.
You seem to want to soft sell the scale required to supplant the current paradigm of energy consumption. Check some math out to see how the replacements will go.
Wind power would need about 50 GW per year in the US. That's only $100B per year. That's less than the manufacturing idled by reduced car production.
You didn't comment on Lithium
I did, in another comment. Lithium supplies don't look like a problem.
I looked at "Overshoot". It's treatment of wind and solar is out of date.
I really think you are under estimating the population...dynamics we are facing
Well, Population growth in the US is only about 1% per year.
Okay. This is what Bartlett means by his claim that people don't understand the exponential function.
1% doesn't sound like a lot. For example I pay 9% in sales tax on $100, I pay $9. Its easy to understand.
But take the population growth as an exponential function:
The current population size is 308,000,000. A growth rate of 1% per year means we add 3,080,000 people to the population per year.
That is the size of a very large US city. To determine that new population's environmental impact, you multiply the average impact per capita by 3.08 x 10^6. What you get is a huge number. Furthermore, that product, 3.08x10^6, is added to the total population, N, for calculating total population at year 2.
So in year 2 you are at 311,080,000 million people, and with a growth rate of 1% are adding 3,110,800 people in year 2. That is another large US city, or, for example, in those two years, are adding a city comparable in size to New York City to the cumulative environmental impact.
If you study this concept and begin to understand the exponential function, you begin to understand why some projections have the population of the United States reaching 1,000,000,000 (a billion) by the year 2100. If you would like to see the cumulative impact of 1 billion people in a population, take a look at India or China... and then ask yourself, where are all the cars going to come from? All the resources these people will need? The fresh water and energy?
Well, Population growth in the US is only about 1% per year. - Okay. This is what Bartlett means by his claim that people don't understand the exponential function.
Except..that population growth for both the US and the world isn't exponential - it's barely linear. That't the difference.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
Now, people not understanding that exponential growth starts slow and ends fast is a classic example of Bartlett's claim. That's why people have such a hard time understanding why wind, solar and PHEV/EVs will take over.
Nick:
The problem with your scenario is the vehicle production and replacement cycle. If your old vehicle is a gas guzzler that has lost its resale value prematurely, you can't afford to buy a new car. If oil prices are high, used small cars hold their value, so you can't afford them either. We can only replace about 8% of the vehicle fleet per year (guessing here, and it's less now than last year), so if everybody tries to do this at the same time, there's a huge bottleneck. Also, the car companies may be unable to deliver a fuel-efficient car lineup in a timely manner if/when there is another gas crisis. Even if they could provide the car you want, the credit crunch will make it harder to buy once federal incentives run out(unless you have the cash in hand.) The current North American production lineup is still tilted towards large and/or overpowered cars and small trucks. These are the used cars of tomorrow. If you can't afford to put gas in them, then somebody has to walk.
As for car pooling, it only works if people who live beside each other work in the same place, on the same schedule. For this to be the cornerstone of an energy policy would work, but only because of the law of unintended consequences: the population would be drastically reduced by carpoolers shooting each other over continual lateness, bad hygiene, and not putting the seat far enough forward. As I have said before, the US is not a communist country, and more's the pity. I fully expect the path to energy efficiency (or Malthusian die-off) to be paved with the bodies of people who got in the way of someone's feeling of entitlement just a little too soon.
Yes, you've identified 2 problems:
1) premature obsolescence, which reduces the value of a car buyer's low-MPG tradein, and
2) capital expenditure lag, which delays the purchase.
Ok, these fight each other. If people can't afford to buy new vehicles, then a lack of supply isn't a problem, right? So, which is more important?
Supply: a significant portion of new cars are bought in cash. Another large % of buyers could afford to throw in enough cash to offset any loss of trade-in, if they had to. The primary problem will be a lack of supply.
So, what do people do while they're waiting? Carpool.
it only works if people who live beside each other work in the same place, on the same schedule.
Not at all. They only need to live and work somewhat near each other. Keep in mind that one only needs a 2-person carpool to cut costs by 50% - that's not hard to schedule. Also, keep in mind that the potential pool of partners is huge - just look around at how many people live within 2 miles of you: what % will work in the same direction as you do? Also, keep in mind the potential of online matching.
I find it absurd that people won't find a way to get to work, by bicycle, motorcycle, or carpool. The average commute is only about 16 miles...
3) A third problem
Not going to happen. Obama is too busy negotiating secret copyright treaties and shovelling gold into sacks for the master class he so well serves. As Jensen so nicely puts it, "hope" is something over which one has no control - and for most of us, the best we can do is "hope" the political classes do something useful. But they will not. Hoping that Obama et al will do something useful is suicide.
He is a lot smoother and thus scarier than George Jr.-he pushes stuff like this and a very high % of the public not only swallow it, they don't even want to know about it.
You are ignoring the fact that a ten year wait (the minimum time to completely replace the vehicle fleet) is a long time. There will be haves and have-nots in this game.
Those with money will avoid car-pooling as long as possible to maintain status. The aspirational will cut other corners to drive. The pool of poolers will be smaller than you think, and there will be stigma attached. It is about social re-organization and the threat of class war.
You sound like someone who has never done a long term carpool (I have.)
There are other benefits to a car besides getting where you're going- freedom to come and go from a remote location, privacy, status concerns, choice of the music on the radio. There are also time costs- waiting for others, driving out of your way to pick up or drop off a passenger, and they are all multiplied by each additional passenger in the car. They can add up to hours a week. There are also many other tasks we do in a car that are not work related. You can't car pool to your mother-in-law's, for instance. We gave up our second car about 5 years ago. I live in Toronto on a streetcar line (the stop is 50 feet away)so this has not been a problem. If my wife and I both commuted and worked at opposite ends of the city(which occurred in the late '90's), it would be a different story. Car culture has effects on labour market availability, job choice, and job retention. Carpooling is not an answer to fuel shortage. It is a sign of the apocalypse. Carpooling means that the low-hanging fruit (spare car, discretionary travel, short trips that could be walked or biked)has been picked. It is a sign that people are hurting. A society which depends on ad-hoc transportation solutions is a society that is either in a growth spurt (government can't keep up) or a decline (government can't be depended upon.)
You are ignoring the fact that a ten year wait (the minimum time to completely replace the vehicle fleet) is a long time. There will be haves and have-nots in this game.
When oil was $147, the wait was 6 months. Now, there's no wait (though sales have only dipped slightly, even in this recession). So, if you anticipate a 10 year wait...have you bought yours yet?
The pool of poolers will be smaller than you think, and there will be stigma attached.
Sure - most people don't like it.
There are other benefits to a car
Sure.
Carpooling is not an answer to fuel shortage. It is a sign of the apocalypse.
Perhaps. You're right - there are many other good strategies. I too commute via electric train, or telecommute. Much better. Still, carpooling would work if necessary.
A society which depends on ad-hoc transportation solutions is a society that is either in a growth spurt
Sure - that's what I'm talking about: a transitional strategy. Wasn't that clear in my very first comment that started all this?
The time stated is a minimum time to replace the whole vehicle fleet- the hundreds of millions of cars and trucks in the developed world. The industrial capacity to replace them before the end of their life cycle does not exist- we would need 10 times the # of car factories, assuming a 10 year replacement cycle (which is now more like a 15 year replacement cycle, and which would stretch even longer with higher gas prices or lower incomes.) Likewise, the factories that do exist are not tooled for small, or hybrid, or electric vehicle production (with the exception of Tesla, Prius and Volt lines, and a few other niche brands. All told, probably less than 2% of global production.) Converting to the production of highly efficient vehicles quickly would require the save kind of industrial miracle as World War II military production. And it would still take 5 years to completely change over the fleet. So if it was handled in a timely fashion by the government, and the money and energy were available, and the problem of the factories becoming obsolete almost as soon as you put them up is ignored(because once you've replaced the fleet, you're on a probable 20 year replacement cycle (if you build electrics to be driven short distances), so you need only half of the factories you had at the beginning(one quarter of the number you have at peak production)) you could do it. Not impossible, but unlikely.
A transitional strategy that takes 10 years and doesn't address the social upheaval it would cause is not very well thought out. Vehicles have a 10 to 15 year lifecycle. People have to consider that this purchase is going to follow them for a long time, and plan accordingly. Of course, they don't, or there wouldn't be a lineup to buy the new Camaro. Plain and simple, the transition has to happen before the crisis happens- it has to prevent the crisis. Because your transition strategy probably won't work.
As for me, I drive a 2001 Swift. 10 year old technology that is more efficient than anything in it's class (non-hybrid subcompacts) being produced today. The efficiency of subcompacts has dropped in the past 10 years. I'd like to replace it with a subcompact EV with a short range battery pack (say 40 miles). Where do I line up? Until someone can answer that question in an affordable fashion, I'll stick with the Swift.
The industrial capacity to replace them before the end of their life cycle does not exist- we would need 10 times the # of car factories
World car production capacity is probably about 70 million per year, and there are about 700M on the road. So, that's about 10 years.
See http://www.worldometers.info/cars/ and keep in mind that world car production capacity is badly underutilized.
I agree - replacing most vehicles with PHEV/EVs will take at least 20 years. Thing is, ASPO projects that liquid fuel production will have only dropped 11% in the next 20 years - we have time to transition. (page 40 of the presentation: http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/References/Aleklett/20090611%20Sydney4.pdf )
*Only* sixteen miles? Nick, you're reaching...
I took that thought from somebody who was advocating for bikes, and I probably took it too far.
OTOH, the point has some truth: people will find a way to get to work, and many people will be able to use bicycles, motorcycles, etc. Will it only be 25%? Well, that makes a difference - that's a lot of people who will be more able to wait for their PHEV/EV.
This is pretty basic stuff. The problem isn't paying for gas to fill up the car. The problem is having a job at all to which you will drive.
The Original Post disagrees:
"A closer look at the physical realities of resource extraction reveals that the resource situation is, in fact, terminal for our high-consumin’ civilization....this decline...will not be preventable by any combination of political, social, or technological solutions. "
He's talking about physical limits.
I really don't know if I should ROTFLMAO or bawl my eyes out. Even if we forget for the moment that we can't produce a Prius for everybody let alone fuel all the Priuses, how do you suggest the average unemployed American with his maxed out credit and upside down on his mortgage is going to be able to get the funds for this spur of the moment purchase?
What bothers me the most about this is that I'm sure there are millions of people out there who think like this.
Even if we forget for the moment that we can't produce a Prius for everybody
Why not? Priuses cost less than the average new car. It will take a little while, I'll grant you.
let alone fuel all the Priuses,
Well, it'll take only 40% as much as now. World liquid fuel production, adjusted for BTU's, is likely to only drop about 11% in the next 20 years.
how do you suggest the average unemployed American
The unemployed will have a harder time. Of course, the poorest 20% of americans tend not to have cars eve now.
Sam's best case is that the (2005) top five net oil exporters, accounting for about half of current world net oil exports, will be down to less than 5 mbpd of combined net oil exports in 20 years (versus about 24 mbpd in 2005), and their post-2005 cumulative net oil exports will be around 95% depleted.
Meanwhile, closer to home, combined net oil exports from Canada, Mexico & Venezuela--three of our four largest sources of imported oil--dropped by one-fifth in only four years, from 5.0 mbpd in 2004 to 4.0 mbpd in 2008.
OK, you're projecting that these 5 exporters comprise 50% of overall net exports, and that they will shrink by 80%. So, overall net exports will shrink by 40%?
How does that fit with Aleklett's projection?
Nick, Aleklett is writing about total liquids; westexas about oil.
More. Many small exporters have to import oil 'soon', making the situation worse.
Strictly speaking, Net Oil Exports is a Total Liquids number, but IMO, from the point of view of importing countries focusing on total production is like have a pleasant chat with your seatmate about your dinner plans as the aircraft you are on does a near vertical dive into the ground.
westexas, I suspect that Aleklett also counts CTL and GTL. And scaled up much.
Because ASPO has 'all liquids production' from under the ground down much more than 11% in 20 years.
Aleklett is president of ASPO International. Please, take a look at his assumptions: page 40 of the presentation: http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/References/Aleklett/20090611%20Sydney4.pdf
Nick, thanks for the link. I know Aleklett is head of ASPO.
Page 40 shows crude oil down to 55,1 mbd in their study. World oil supply (75,8 mbd) includes NGL which are carbon chains from C2-C6, so NGL substitutes oil only in a limited way. That 55,1 mbd is about half what 'the world' is expecting. Now, IIRC, crude oil-export is about 40 mbd. In the ASPO scenario, how much would that be in 2030 ?
NGL substitutes oil only in a limited way
It will work nicely as a feedstock for petrochemicals.
That 55,1 mbd is about half what 'the world' is expecting.
Well, that's according to the EIA, probably. We both know EIA projections aren't useful.
In the ASPO scenario, how much would that be in 2030 ?
That's what I was hoping Westexas could tell us.
Nick, the point is that most governments and industries are using that projections. That is why the transition is moving too slow.
He wrote that many times. I don't recall the exact numbers, but in the middle case scenario in 2030 there is not so much left to export. Even in the best case scenario it doesn't look good. I know that you consider westexas projections as too pessimistic. The problem is that a country past peak doesn't have many years left for a considerable amount to export. If production declines only a few percent, the export goes down like a rock.
When time goes on more and more countries have to look where to get 'their' oil from while less countries are able to export. Let's take Mexico: probably in a few years the U.S. cannot get oil from there, so the U.S will look f.i. in African countries where China also is trying to get as much oil as possible. So in the future there is many potential for conflicts, which could make the situation worse. Above ground factors allready don't look good in many countries.
most governments and industries are using that projections. That is why the transition is moving too slow.
True, that's a big problem. I think the larger problem is that big change to FF industries and the industries that use them, would cause a lot of change. That change is threatening to the career of anyone who works in them, or has invested in them.
He wrote that many times.
Could you help me find that? I've been reading his comments for a long time, and I've asked him explicitly lately, and he hasn't provided an overall net exports projection.
I know that you consider westexas projections as too pessimistic.
Also, too simplistic. The idea that KSA consumption will continue to increase in a linear fashion, when their per capita oil consumption is already at the level of the US, seems highly unrealistic. The projection that KSA production will fall dramatically is somewhat plausible, but speculative.
Aha, now I understand; an overall projection probably never. But the percentages for the past peak countries look very bad. Take into account that only 11 major oilproducing countries/regions are pre-peak. More than 50 are on plateau or past peak.
Nick, I agree. It won't continue in a linear fashion.
Actually, I'd say that ELM is far worse for the exporters than the importers. For the importers, it means freedom from an addiction to oil.
That freedom may be forced, painful and slow, but in the long-run most importing countries will be far better off.
http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2009/09/would-we-have-been-better-of-witho...
Yes Nick, painful and slow. With a lot of people losing their job, social unrest, panic and maybe worse.
...and don't expect stock markets and banks to simply slowly decline. Larger investors will flee first, roiling the markets, and folding many (or most) of the banks just hanging on right now. What would that do to currency values?
Larger investors will flee first
Flee where? To Euros? Europe imports just as much oil per capita as the US.
Nick, I'm not interested in putting you down personally but responding to your arguments would be like trying to discuss the fine points of the GS84 coordinate system based on the fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid with someone who believes it is as flat as a dinner plate.
Your perception of reality is profoundly flawed if you do not understand that we really *CAN'T* produce a Prius for everybody.
Nick does seem a bit starry eyed, but I think that we all did learn in the last price spike that gas usage is more elastic than many, myself included, had thought. -
It is certainly true, and should not be over looked, that car pooling is the fastest and least expensive way to cut back on transportation costs and fuel use. With current communications capacities, this could be much more flexible than in the past. We will also likely see a great increase in multi-use cabs and jeepneys (Pat Murphy has a whole chapter on these in his "Plan C").
And SOME people will continue to buy new cars. Of course, not everyone will have a Prius or Volt (I'm not sure that was part of Nick's claim, anyway), but if people car pool at a snug five-per-vehicle rate, that is only one in five that need a car, or a shared car...
For the record, I would prefer that the whole car culture be scrapped entirely, but I do think that many will desperately hold on to their habit of driving and riding in a car until it is absolutely impossible (or beside the point, since they have no where to go).
But certainly public transport, bikes and walking will be a larger and larger part of the mix as the post above notes.
I also agree with the post that there will be far fewer restaurants, but I wonder if they will disappear entirely. Certainly, there were inns and taverns that served food as well as other refreshments long before the ff age.
I'm always curious how people will respond when I object to this broad, unrealistic idea of Peak Oil-induced economic collapse.
There isn't really a good argument for it.
The most common appears to be circular: energy-shortages will cause economic collapse, economic collapse will cause energy shortages.
I'm surprised by this non-argument argument, though.
The traditional form of this argument is the skeptics: unusual claims require unusual proof. The odd thing is that this argument is usually used against claims that go against the broad consensus. In this case, the broad social consensus is what you might call BAU, not the concept of oil-induced economic collapse.
Really, the idea of PO-induced economic collapse is the one that needs unusual proof.
I think this kind of unusual proof has been provided on TOD for Peak Oil. It hasn't, for PO-induced economic collapse.
This isn't a very good characterization of the argument, esp. as made by Gail (the Actuary), but I see now why you think the way you do.
Don't worry about it Nick. Most people do not understand mutual causality and coevolution. You're just in a big boat with many others who like the idea of linear thinking. Extrapolation from the past helps them sleep at night. You know, like, "we've always had plenty of energy before so we will continue to have it in the future", or "this has never happened before so it can't happen now." Does that logic make you feel better?
Something similar happened before: Easter island. It is not only about energy what is going on.
Yes, and a truly wise species would have been able to learn from that. Diamond's book can be read by anyone. But all too few actually get it.
I'm not sure what your last sentence means to convey.
The Original Post said "A closer look at the physical realities of resource extraction reveals that the resource situation is, in fact, terminal for our high-consumin’ civilization. " IOW, that we're running into inexorable physical limits. That's what I'm disagreeing with.
Now, your reframing of the economic argument is plausible, but there are 2 problems:
1) That's not what this Post says, and
2) I've been reading TOD ever since it started: no one has provided evidence for the kind of complex argument you're suggesting. Usually it's on the order of: "when PO hits, utility worker's won't be able to get to work, so EV's won't work". That's really not convincing...
That's a very condescending reply that doesn't begin to prove your position.
Contrary data points: Countries in war operating on far less oil or other energy sources. Germany, Switzerland, the USSR during WWII all continued to function under far worse conditions. Factories produced goods.
The collapse argument has to explain far lower per capita energy economies that remained industrial and organized.
This isn't a very good characterization of the argument
Actually, it's not bad for being so short.
Most people do not understand mutual causality and coevolution.
And most people on TOD have no idea of the complexity of energy production & consumption, and the dynamics of the transition from one energy source to another.
linear thinking. Extrapolation from the past
Like "we've always used and depended on oil"? Something that, btw, hasn't really been true for very long.
I'd say that the assumption that we'll always depend on oil and FF is a very simplistic, linear thinking kind of thing.
I believe I see where you are struggling with the concept. Energy shortages will indeed create economic downturn, which in fact does not induce energy shortages, but means there will be less money to purchase energy, other commodities, and 'durable' goods.
This doesn't even get into the topic of the reliance of agriculture on cheap oil. Sure, we could reduce our other consumption to make sure all the agricultural production obtains what they need, but we don't even do that today, and it's no secret developing countries are struggling to feed their people.
As I said above, the Original Post said "A closer look at the physical realities of resource extraction reveals that the resource situation is, in fact, terminal for our high-consumin’ civilization. " IOW, that we're running into inexorable physical limits. That's what I'm disagreeing with.
Now, your reframing of the economic argument is plausible, but there are 2 problems:
1) That's not what this Post says, and
2) I've been reading TOD ever since it started: no one has made the kind of complex argument you're suggesting, let alone provided the kind of sophisticated support that it would need.
Regarding agriculture - you said "Sure, we could reduce our other consumption to make sure all the agricultural production obtains what they need". I think that disagrees with the Original Post.
"no one has made the kind of complex argument you're suggesting, let alone provided the kind of sophisticated support that it would need."
I've seen many discourses that provided the support you seek, though obviously you haven't read every post on here.
If you simply think "we'll just easily use less oil year after year, and alternatives will emerge that will take the place of oil and we'll keep consuming everything else at the current BAU levels", you obviously do not understand physical limits that have been discovered by societies throughout the history of civilization.
I've read many. They don't provide any evidence. Usually the discussion is on the order of "when PO hits, utility worker's won't be able to get to work, so EV's won't work". That's really not convincing. Now, some have gone into theoretical models of interdependency and resilience, but haven't connected them to the real world. LTG is probably the best known model, and it doesn't prove anything: it just shows how an economy might behave, if it were to hit hard, simple limits. It doesn't show that substitutes for FF, for instance, aren't possible.
If you simply think "we'll just easily use less oil year after year, and alternatives will emerge that will take the place of oil and we'll keep consuming everything else at the current BAU levels",
No, I don't think that. I don't think "alternatives will emerge" by magic, and I'm sure we'll run out of many things. The question is: will we see anything like the Original Post's scenario, in which the best substitute for a tractor is a mule???
See http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2008/09/can-everything-be-electrified.html for some of my thinking.
I see things at your website such as, "Trucking can be electrified ", which is clearly not going to happen for a majority of trucks for at least two decades. In order for that to happen, the economy needs to keep growing continuously. On top of that, you reference hybrid trucks, not EV trucks (which are infeasible for all but the lightest of lighweight cargo).
You are highly optimistic, and are trying to convince people that peak oil won't be so bad afterall. I'm sure there were people on Easter Island, Greenland, Anasazi, etc that felt the same way. Afterall, we are conditioned to think this way by watching movies, going to pep rallies, and seeing the historical growth created by fossil fuels. However, everytime you have a glass of wine or beer, think of the heady optimism of the yeast until they hit terminal resource limitations.
"Trucking can be electrified ", which is clearly not going to happen for a majority of trucks for at least two decades
1) review some of the comments on your last Original Post. You'll see that trucking can reduce it's diesel consumption very quickly with speed reduction and improved aerodynamics.
2) Inter-modal rail can replace trucks fairly quickly, and
3) Diesel will be around for decades for essential uses. Personal transportation will give up fuel for commercial transportation.
In order for that to happen, the economy needs to keep growing continuously.
Not at all. During the great depression, investment levels in new tech remained quite high - for many companies, it was their path to survival.
On top of that, you reference hybrid trucks, not EV trucks (which are infeasible for all but the lightest of lighweight cargo).
Not for short range. Electric drivetrains power freight trains, tanks, and enormous devices of all sorts. Actually, the larger the vehicle, the easier it is to carry batteries or backup generators.
You are highly optimistic, and are trying to convince people that peak oil won't be so bad afterall.
I took a slightly lighthearted tone, I'll admit. But..you're jumping to conclusions about what I think. I just think this Post is highly unrealistic, that's all. There's a great range in between this Post and BAU.
Nick, thanks for all the time you invested in this discussion. Your views are refreshing. Peak Oil will cause some major adjustments to the way we live, but there is no reason to assume a zombie apocalypse. Sure, some black swan might throw us back into the stone age... The original post successfully generates good discussion here on TOD, yet it is blinded by fear and will mainly turn people away from constructive discourse and awareness.
A) There will be reduced access to oil
B) Cavemen had little access to oil
C) We will be cavemen
(A & B) --> C
Rather
B) Business as usual
P) Living like primitives
~(~B --> P)
It is not the case that not BAU results in living like primitives.
I live in rural Mississippi, and we will not be riding mules 10 miles into town. There are plenty of trucks and SUVs around which can be used for scheduled "bus routes" with full loads and insanely high per person fuel efficiency.
Rather than abandoning televisions and computers, we will continue to turn to virtual "travel" and home entertainment as inexpensive alternatives to driving all over the place. My extended family heats and cools 4 houses on the old family land. If it comes to it, we can cool a single sitting room for the whole group to beat the summer heat; and that cuts the energy consumption for cooling down to 5% or less without even considering some intense new insulation for that room.
You actually may not be using computers or the internet. Most computers are obsolete and begin to physically fail in about 5 years. Hard drives crash, memory chips fail, CDs and DVDs delaminate in about a decade or sooner and flash memory drives could die in 25 years or sooner. That's a lot of plastic, rare metals and industrial high tech, meaning oil scarcity and/or metals scarcity will drive up prices. Then there's keeping the power grids up and sufficiently stable to host it all. And there's the negative wealth effects of deflation. I don't see a rosy high tech internet future for us or the PC. But hey, it's been fun!
Good thoughts.
It's amazing how easy it is to use a small fraction of the energy we're used to consuming, isn't it?
If we have to conserve for several years in order to get past an PO transition, we'll make it.
Is this JD in disguise?
1. Trucking is already down due to the contracted economy. Lowered speeds can help, and aerodynamics can help a little, but the oil production decline will continue past the point that these factors help; then what?
2. You don't understand long, medium, and short haul. True, freight trains can replace some long haul, though capacity would need to be significantly increased. Is that taking place right now on all (or most) freight lines?
3. Wishful thinking. Too many people will cling to their auto use through one flimsy justification or another.
You cannot replace a full fleet of a nation's trucks (at least not the developed countries) with a down economy, no matter how much you wish it to be so. New technology R&D is one thing, but recapitalization is something different. Have you had college-level economics yet?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hybrid-trucks
"Coca-Cola Enterprises is the most avid consumer of hybrid trucks in the U.S., deploying 327 hybrids out of a total fleet of 30,000." A tiny drop in the bucket.
So now you limit EV trucks to only short range.
Your other referenced vehicles are driven primarily by large diesel engines, not some little backup generator. If you really want to consider this as an alternative, calculate the required motive force to move a loaded 5 ton truck on its daily 100 mile rounds a) on flat land, and b) over mountains with at least 40 stops along the way. Then determine the amount of LiON batteries that will take. Then determine the cost of those LiON batteries. Hint: Fully 1/3 of the price of the Volt is wrapped up in the batteries, and that's for a lightweight passenger vehicle to go only 40 miles.
Do you have an engineering background to be able to do the calculations required to back up your claims?
It's easy to be optimistic. Ben Franklin once said, "Those who live on hope will starve." Tough times HAVE occurred in the past (e.g., Great Depression, World Wars) and we had cheap oil to bring us out of those times. Can we adapt without pain? I sincerely doubt it. What will adaptations look like 30 years from now? 50% of what Dan wrote may be exactly what transpires. Or 95%...
Is this JD in disguise?
No, some things are obvious to a lot of people - JD doesn't have a monopoly. I suppose I'm similar to him in that I'm willing to put energy into this kind of thing.
Trucking is already down due to the contracted economy. Lowered speeds can help, and aerodynamics can help a little, but the oil production decline will continue past the point that these factors help; then what?
Trucking will be replaced by rail; trucks will electrify; truckers will out-bid personal transportation for fuel.
capacity would need to be significantly increased. Is that taking place right now on all (or most) freight lines?
Yes, there's a pretty good level of investment going on. It's not for nothing that Warren Buffet is buying rail.
Too many people will cling to their auto use through one flimsy justification or another.
True - that's one of the reasons that more foresighted people will have less trouble buying HEV/PHEV/EVs.
You cannot replace a full fleet of a nation's trucks (at least not the developed countries) with a down economy, no matter how much you wish it to be so.
Sure, you can. Investment in heavy equipment continued very strongly during the Great Depression. Wind and solar are growing strongly right now.
New technology R&D is one thing, but recapitalization is something different. Have you had college-level economics yet?
Sure - you're talking about permanent depression, which isn't in college-level economics, or indeed, any mainstream economics. See the Phil Fed article again.
"Coca-Cola Enterprises is the most avid consumer of hybrid trucks in the U.S., deploying 327 hybrids out of a total fleet of 30,000." A tiny drop in the bucket.
Sure. All of the big fleets are moving slowly. OTOH, they are moving. Don't forget - an exponential function starts slowly. Remember what Bartlett said about understanding exponential growth...
So now you limit EV trucks to only short range.
That's what I said all along. Not that long-range couldn't be done, with swappable batteries in trucking fleets. I just don't think that's the most likely thing.
Do you have an engineering background to be able to do the calculations required to back up your claims?
The calculations aren't hard. Trucks get about 6 miles per gallon, and there are about 40KWHs in a gallon of diesel - at 30% efficiency that's about 2KWH/mile. To go 100 miles would require 200 KWH. In 5 years 2nd gen li-ion will probably cost about $200/KWH, so that's $40K in batteries. Expensive, but doable.
Can we adapt without pain? I sincerely doubt it.
I agree - we're not moving fast enough/
What will adaptations look like 30 years from now? 50% of what Dan wrote may be exactly what transpires. Or 95%...
Only if we really screw up. Possible, but not likely IMHO.
More later...
"Really, the idea of PO-induced economic collapse is the one that needs unusual proof.
I think this kind of unusual proof has been provided on TOD for Peak Oil. It hasn't, for PO-induced economic collapse."
That's because peak oil as a concept is stunningly simple once you get it. The interactions between energy and the economy, on the other hand are enormously complex. I think that people HAVE in fact provided some pretty strong arguments that show that our economic system is premised on ever-increasing availability of energy. But these are harder concepts to follow than the idea that the rate of extraction of a limited quantity of a certain black viscous fluid will reach a maximum at some point that it will never again be able to recover thereafter.
I think that people HAVE in fact provided some pretty strong arguments that show that our economic system is premised on ever-increasing availability of energy.
1) they haven't. If you can find them, it would be interesting to review them.
2) first you have to show that wind, solar, nuclear, etc can't provide more energy.
All of this has been discussed exhaustively; you seem to be simply au contraire.
As far as 2) goes, this was well described by the Hirsch Report.
Robert Hirsch is perhaps the most visible advocate of this idea.
He has published several studies. The last one suggests that oil consumption is related to GDP in a 1:1 ratio - in other words, if oil consumption drops by 10%, GDP will as well. Here is what he said recently: "So then if one calculates a range of 2 to 5 percent, some people think the number may be larger, 2 to 5 percent per year increase in oil shortage, one comes up with a rather disastrous indication world GDP will decline by 2 to 5 percent a year in tandem with increasing oil shortages."
Is this realistic?
No. We can see this from economic history: in the US, oil consumption fell by 19% from 1978 to 1983, and yet GDP grew slightly. Similarly, world oil consumption has been flat for the last several years, but GDP growth has been (despite the current recession) quite strong, stronger than for the US (which itself has grown a net of 8% in the last 4 years, with 10% lower oil consumption, despite the current recession).
Hirsch seems to have looked at the relationship between oil and GDP over the last 20 years, noticed that the ratio of oil increase to GDP increase has dropped from the previous 1:1 to roughly 1:2.5 (an analysis which he attributes to the DeutcheBank, but which can be derived straightforwardly from IEA statistics). In other words, in previous decades as the economy grew, oil consumption grew as quickly, while lately less oil has been needed. Hirsch drew the very strange inference that GDP has become more dependent on oil, rather than less.
An important and relevant researcher here is Robert Ayers . We see that he showed that GDP is related to applied energy (exergy), and only very loosely linked to energy, let alone to oil consumption. The research indicates that BTU's only explain 14% of GDP,and that the source of those BTU's can change (coal to oil to wind, for instance). Both energy efficiency and energy intensity can change. Further, oil is only one source of BTU's. Oddly enough, many energy commentators seem to misunderstand Ayre's research, and think that it supports the idea of a strong causal connection between oil consumption and GDP.
US (and world) GDP would grow much more quickly than it's energy consumption (even including electricity). The best example of this is California, which has kept per capita electricity consumption flat over the last 25 years, while growing it's GDP relatively quickly.
Ayres used "exergy services", which are not "very close to BTU parity". Exergy services are work performed. So, for instance, a Prius performs the same work as a similar vehicle with half the MPG, but uses half the BTU's. Strictly speaking, a Prius can perform the same work as a Hummer (transporting people), and use 20% of the BTU's. An EV also does the same work as a Hummer, and uses about 1/3 of the BTU's as the Prius, and 1/15 of the Hummer's...and so on.
Another source for this argument is here: http://www.postpeakliving.com/downloads/Sill-MacroeconomicsOfOilShocks.pdf from the Philadelphia Fed. It concludes that a 10% decline in oil availability would reduce GDP, on a one-time basis, by about 2%. This means that GDP growth would be 2% lower than otherwise in roughly the year following the oil shock, then go back to it's historical growth rate. Interestingly, it finds no impact on inflation.
First, let me point out that I have agreed with you that many types of accommodations to PO oil, in the short run at least, and many on the thread have criticized particular predictions in the original post, particularly in the short term. There are indeed huge inefficiencies that can be taken advantage of to do the same work with much less energy input.
So I wonder if you would concede that an economy that has developed over the last two hundred years with overall increases of energy available to it every decade will need to make some quite basic adjustments as we head into a future where available energy, particularly from fossil fuels, decreases constantly and for ever?
The period between 1979-'83 was characterized by one-time shifts that cannot be repeated--shifting much production to electric from oil and off-shoring even more. With the Fed printing money like there's no tomorrow, one would have to be pretty myopic to think GDP numbers represent anything very real.
We can increase efficiency, but not indefinitely, and many efficiency measures take considerable up front costs. Same with renewables. Do you think we can increase the amount of available energy for ever?
I don't think you have to accept that everyone will be living with candles next year to see that the system will be challenged to its core in a world of ever lessening and ever more expensive energy from ff's.
Are you by any chance an economist? If so, what school of economics would you say you ascribe to?
There are indeed huge inefficiencies that can be taken advantage of to do the same work with much less energy input.
I agree. Surprisingly, others have disagreed with me most strongly on the idea that there are short-term accomodations that can deal with the declines in oil imports in the next 20 years.
So I wonder if you would concede that an economy that has developed over the last two hundred years with overall increases of energy available to it every decade will need to make some quite basic adjustments
Absolutely. It's going to a big, painful job. Actually, I think CC is a much bigger challenge than PO.
as we head into a future where available energy, particularly from fossil fuels, decreases constantly and for ever?
Unfortunately, we have a lot of coal, so we're not going to be running short of electricity anytime soon. I think we'll be able to ramp up wind & solar (and some nuclear) more than quickly enough.
The period between 1979-'83 was characterized by one-time shifts that cannot be repeated
Yes, electrical generation from oil was mostly eliminated (though there's still 5M bbl/day around the world being used that way), but there are other, very large low-hanging fruit. Personal transportation is the biggie. It accounts for 45% of oil consumption in the US, and just moving to Prius-like vehicles would reduce that portion by 60%. Moving to Volt-like vehicles would get rid of another 80% of the remainder of that portion, for a total reduction of about 40% of our overall oil consumption.
many efficiency measures take considerable up front costs. Same with renewables.
Well, a Prius is cheaper than the average US vehicle. PHEVs and EVs will only cost slightly more than ICE tech, with economies of scale. Wind power is certainly capital intensive, but the utility business is used to that. Wind will cost about the same as current ICE & FF tech over it's lifecycle.
Do you think we can increase the amount of available energy for ever?
It depends how you measure it. We'll have all the electricity we need, I'm reasonably confident. We don't normally count the primary energy in the wind, so wind power is automatically counted as only 1/3 the BTU's as FF electrical generation, and maybe 1/6 the BTU's of ICE fuel. So, if we account for energy in our traditional way, energy consumption will fall quite sharply.
Are you by any chance an economist?
No, though I use economics in my daily work. I've found that Jim Hamilton has been my best single source of economic analysis. You can find his blog on the TOD main page, or here: http://www.econbrowser.com/
"Do you think we can increase the amount of available energy for ever?
It depends how you measure it."
Did you mean "It depends whether you measure it"? Not measuring it is the only way to say energy (or anything else) can increase forever.
Thanks for the Hamilton link.
By the way, I, too, see CC as the greater challenge (or cause for despair).
OK, now I understand. A guy thing, perhaps.
Not measuring it is the only way to say energy (or anything else) can increase forever.
I'm not suggesting that it will increase forever. Really, no one is. It will flatten out. In fact, in the OECD it already has to a great extent.
1. You are misapplying Hirsch's statement; he was talking about oil shortages, such as the 1979 time frame. You have conflated 1980-1983 in, and need to go back to the drawing board. You'll see GDP did drop considerably in 1979, then as the North Sea and Alaska came on line, the tight oil market turned into an oil 'glut'.
2. Ayers: "The research indicates that BTU's only explain 14% of GDP,and that the source of those BTU's can change (coal to oil to wind, for instance)." Leave it to an economist to wave a magic wand and magically change infrastructure willy-nilly. He barely even mentions oil, so it's safe to say this is a theoretical exercise with little basis in real world energy dependencies.
3. "US (and world) GDP would grow much more quickly than it's energy consumption (even including electricity). The best example of this is California, which has kept per capita electricity consumption flat over the last 25 years, while growing it's GDP relatively quickly."
More low energy services (insurance, litigation, pharmaceuticals, etc) have been replacing heavy industry in the US, and the real estate bubble, derivatives, etc pumped up false 'earnings', so of course energy 'intensity' dropped, which shows that's a relatively meaningless metric, especially when so many goods are produced elsewhere.
Your Philadelphia Fed quote is also wrong; "The empirical evidence suggests that a 10 percent increase in the price of oil is associated with about a 1.4 percent drop in the level of U.S. real GDP". So according to your source, if oil went up 50% (e.g., from $2/gal to $3/gal), expect a 7% drop in GDP
You are misapplying Hirsch's statement; he was talking about oil shortages, such as the 1979 time frame. You have conflated 1980-1983 in, and need to go back to the drawing board. You'll see GDP did drop considerably in 1979, then as the North Sea and Alaska came on line, the tight oil market turned into an oil 'glut'.
Well, this was a complex period. Volcker had just raised interest rates to 18% to deal with inflation that was only partly caused by oil (much of it came from the Johnson-Nixon era - remember those price controls?),
North Sea and Alaska oil didn't arrive right away, esp Alaska.
Oil demand responses are typically delayed, as short and long-term elasticity of demand are very different, and there's capex involved.
I don't understand what you mean about Hirsch's statements: isn't this a general discussion of oil shortages?
*EDIT: Please note that high oil prices persisted until 1986.
I'm surprised you reject Ayres' work. He's very often quoted as an authority on TOD. In any case, his research is pretty thorough, and the periods he looks at start before those of oil's dominance, so it's not too surprising he doesn't assume that oil is somehow irreplaceable.
More low energy services (insurance, litigation, pharmaceuticals, etc) have been replacing heavy industry in the US, and the real estate bubble, derivatives, etc pumped up false 'earnings', so of course energy 'intensity' dropped, which shows that's a relatively meaningless metric, especially when so many goods are produced elsewhere.
You might want to quantify that. In fact, there's more US manufacturing than you think - remember all those Toyota and Nissan factories in the US South. The FIRE bubble has popped, and yet US GDP hasn't been affected nearly as much as that statement would suggest.
*EDIT: On oil vs GDP: Both your quote and mine are correct. Look closely at the paper: it's describing a cumulative temporary effect. So, if the economy is reduced by 7%, then we're talking about 3.5% for about two years, then a return to normal economic activity.
Now, I would argue that the paper exaggerates the short-term effect, due to an over-emphasis on the 1980 oil shock, and underestimates the long-term effect of a permanent price/supply change...but that's me.
.
I think it's reductionism again (my favorite topic). Nick thinks in a reductionist framework.
Nevertheless, he expresses a very common view, and other than the fact that repeated posts are really disrespectful of the general discussion, we do need to hear that viewpoint (once in a while). Nick is not convinced the case has been made that lack of affordable oil will lead to collapse. Most of the rest of us have been convinced of it.
I think he might be right that each problem, when viewed separately, has a solution, of course.
But what I am convinced of, is that here and there, some of the solutions that might have been will be found to be unavailable precisely because of the lack of oil. And that each of these situations will have a repercussion. This is because most of us work to provide others with "luxuries". What if most people (and businesses), faced with the unemployment rate they see, don't buy a hybrid? Loss of personal mobility will impact consumer spending, lead to further unemployment, and a (further) deflationary spiral.
And so our lives will be transformed radically, not because most of us can't adapt, but because enough of us will fail to adapt. I have become convinced that civilization as we know it is that fragile. Nick may think otherwise.
Paranoid
Sort of like needing 10 problems to be solved to have a successful outcome and all 10 have a 90% chance of happening. Looks good right... Wrong!
The chance of success is .9 x .9 x .9 x .9 x .9 x .9 x .9 x .9 x .9 x .9 = 35%
Little better that 1 in 3 chance.
Well said.
A misunderstanding of the basic nature of aggregate probability is often one of the "missing filters" in the minds of many otherwise functional folks.
The fellow who did the space-power post comes to mind.
If we spend enough time thinking of all the bad things that could happen to me tomorrow and conjuring probabilities, then we will quickly enter into the realm of 100%+ where I am doomed to tragedy. Aggregate probability works great when you are working with 52 cards.
Except, I don't see 10 critical problems. I see only two: species extinction and climate change.
These two are the really serious, dangerous ones. They're completely missed by the Original Post, and will show up in ways that are completely different from the scenarios in the Original Post.
----------------
You might ask, what about energy & mineral/metal supply problems?
Look at the model of multiple, parallel items in reverse: for every one of these problems, there are many tech solutions, each with a good % chance of success, adding up to very high chance of success at the system level.
Radically. Fundamental. At the root.
I think it's reductionism again (my favorite topic).
Not at all. I'd say that the assumption that we'll always depend on oil and FF is a very simplistic, linear thinking kind of thing.
Nick thinks in a reductionist framework.
You're starting to slip, just a little, into ad hominem thinking.
repeated posts are really disrespectful of the general discussion
I only wrote one comment on this Original Post - the rest have been replies to others.
How often does Westexas repeat the exact same comments? Have you objected to his comments?
I think he might be right that each problem, when viewed separately, has a solution, of course.
That's a complex idea that's completely missing from the Original Post.
, some of the solutions that might have been will be found to be unavailable precisely because of the lack of oil.
The economic feedback argument. An argument for which I haven't seen anything concrete beyond "utility workers won't get to work, and people won't buy PHEV/EVs".
The problem? There's little evidence for them. During the great depression, investment levels in new tech remained quite high - for many companies, it was their path to survival. Utility workers never had a problem in the US in 1979. Hybrid market share is still rising. Wind & solar installations are continuing. Sure, the latter two have stopped growing in absolute numbers due to the current recession, but they're still quite strong.
I have become convinced that civilization as we know it is that fragile
As suggested by "futurepundit" elsewhere: Countries in war operating on far less oil or other energy sources. Germany, Switzerland, the USSR during WWII all continued to function under far worse conditions. Factories produced goods.
The collapse argument has to explain far lower per capita energy economies that remained industrial and organized.
The evidence has been provided. Gail's post today of slides from her last ASPO talk is just one of many of them. There have been many other posts over the last year plus.
What you mean to say is you are not convinced by the evidence presented and you do not accept it. There is a big difference. The Pope didn't accept Copernicus.
I'm a simpleton and the case is obvious. Work is proportional to energy. [The more efficient the work, the more direct the link - so efficiency doesn't get around the case.] One can argue about the link between work and GDP in a world where derivatives dwarf real work - that's a material difference I'll suggest. [But still, information is the highest emergy - those bastards at Goldman Sachs are sucking the cream from everything and efficiency would suggest the guillotine and compost heap for all of them were they not toxic.]
What I can do with my own human energy is far less than what I can do with cheap fossil energy. Go dig a hole. Go cut down a tree. If you use fossil energy, you can do something else. If by hand, you will be the next week or so on the project - your annual productivity just fell to 10% of what it was with fossil energy.
If fossil energy is priced out of reach, stuff stops. I can tell that with a pencil in my brain.
If you use fossil energy, you can do something else. If fossil energy is priced out of reach, stuff stops.
Nah. Wind and solar can replace oil. See http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2008/09/can-everything-be-electrified.html
Sorry, but describing a feedback loop isn't the same as making a circular argument.
See my comment above.
(Which comment above? You have about 50 in this thread. None of them that I can see respond to what I said.)
I was not necessarily endorsing the reasonableness of the feedback loop argument regarding peak oil. I was simply pointing out your incorrect and rhetorically empty use of terminology. You might want to study a little logic theory and find out what a circular argument really is, before the next time you use it as an argumentative club.
I was talking about "An argument that commits the logical fallacy of assuming what it is attempting to prove." http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/circargterm.htm
As best I can tell, analysts like Gail and Stoneleigh assume that energy problems will cause the economy to crash, and then assume that a crashing economy will cause energy problems*.
That seems to meet the definition. Now, I know that logicians are jealous of their categories of fallacy, so if goes under a different category please let me know.
-------------
*Certainly, this could be a sophisticated analysis of positive feedbacks...but I don't think it is. If it were, the analysis of positive feedbacks would be much more substantive - I haven't seen any good analysis to back that up. Much of it is on the order of "when PO hits, utility workers won't be able to get to work, so electricity won't be available, and EV's won't work". That's really not substantive. Another is the idea of Receding Horizons - even a superficial look at the wind and solar markets will make it clear that this is unrealistic.
For the record, I generally find Gail's opinions too pessimistic for my taste. (See the conversation between myself and her farther down in this thread.) BUT...
Those are two logically separate statements. (Specifically, they are the converse of each other, and thus neither entails the other.) There is no logical fallacy, circular or otherwise, in using them to form an argument that a feedback loop can occur, and you were just utterly wrong to say that there is, as you did above. What you are actually arguing, and should be honest about arguing, is that they are empirically false assertions.
You've now gone beyond what you originally said, and said that that the arguments (two of them) being made for these assertions are also circular. Frankly, and this is just my opinion, I think that given the amount that Gail and Stoneleigh have written on the subject, that it's grossly unfair of you to say that. I'm certainly not impressed or convinced by your saying it. Although I've hardly been convinced by all their reasoning, they've at least gone on at length in the past regarding the reasons why they believe what they believe.
For the record, I happen to think that the first assertion - that energy problems will cause the economy to crash - is almost certainly correct, and that the second - that a crashing economy will cause energy problems - is not necessarily so reasonable. (Is that substantive enough for you?)
From a logician's point of view - you're right: this isn't is a logical fallacy.
I'm suggesting that the logical error comes from an single incorrect intuition about the importance of oil. From my readings (which I think are sufficiently thorough), both Gail and Stoneleigh assume that oil is irreplaceable & therefore PO is catastrophic. I believe there is the same assumption behind their analysis of the feedbacks from economy to investment in renewable energy & electric transport.
I'll try to add more later...
Okay, fair enough...
I'm certain that if I were to look back through my comments here, I could find more than a couple cases where I've also criticized Gail for assuming that oil was irreplaceable for various specific activities. But specific cases are one thing. Substituting renewables for oil on a macro-scale is something else. Simply put, if renewables can't supply the same amounts of energy as oil, then not everyone will be able to make the substitution. In that larger picture, the "importance of oil" has been argued for on this site in reference to EROEI, and also oil's cheaper cost in today's economy, which seems to confirm the EROEI talk. Maybe Gail and Stoneleigh haven't presented those arguments themselves, but others have. If you're going to add more later, you should probably address those issues. (Spread it around to a wider audience though, as I don't expect I'll check this thread again...)
Substituting renewables for oil on a macro-scale is something else. Simply put, if renewables can't supply the same amounts of energy as oil, then not everyone will be able to make the substitution.
That's by far the easiest part of this argument. It's so basic that I forget that there are still questions about it.
The resource available is huge: 72TW for wind, and 100,000TW for solar. see http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-there-enough-wind-resource-to.html
Wind and solar have high E-ROI (wind's is very high, and solar is high enough), as is well established by people like Charles Hall.
Wind is just as affordable as FF, and can be installed quickly.
Nick, how quick, how much GW per year you think ?
Electricity is not the biggest challenge: when oil starts to run downhill, there follows economic downturn. Because of shortages or high oilprices. And there is the population increase issue. As explained in one of the comments, 1% a year doesn't seem a lot, but is only in the U.S. one big city/year. Which need a lot of extra energy, water and food. Until now it is mainly FF what supports this (grow).
how much GW per year
Well, the US in 2008 installed 8.5GW - that was about 40% of new generation. The US could easily ramp that up to 50GW per year - enough to provide all new generation, and start replacing coal.
when oil starts to run downhill, there follows economic downturn.
First of all, look at the whole world. Sometimes, oil importers are hurt a bit, and exporters are helped. From 2002 to 2008 world growth was uninterrupted and strong.
2nd, this is a short term effect. Look at the US in 1979-1982: despite high oil prices, and interest rates at 18% due in part to Nixon-era inflation, the US started growing again.
there is the population increase issue.
1st, this has been the case for 200 years. 2nd, it's slowing down - see the Demographic Transition.
50 GW per year for many years ? Optimistic, maybe possible.
Nick, from 2002-2005 oil production was rising. From 2005-2008 there was plateau production. When plateau becomes cliff 'everything' will change. Oil importers will be hurt more than a bit.
Yes, but it was the pre-worldoilpeak period and 20 years ago the world was very different with not so many industrialized countries. Now the U.S. depends f.i. on China. Because of globalisation it is a world trade, most countries depend on a lot of different other countries. Do you think that oilshortages will be divided nicely between the (coming) super-powers U.S., Japan, Europe, China, India without (regional) conflicts or worse ?
Coincidentally, the last 200 years there was the rise of coal, gas and oil.
It's slowing down: the increase is slowing down. Still rising with 200.000 per day. Each day adding a moderate big city.
50 GW per year for many years ? Optimistic, maybe possible.
That's only $100B per year. That's less than the manufacturing idled by reduced car production.
When plateau becomes cliff 'everything' will change.
Aleklett/ASPO projects an 11% reduction by 2030. Westexas projects a 40% reduction in net exports by then. That's not a cliff.
Oil importers will be hurt more than a bit.
Well, that's true by BAU standards, but by the standards of this post, we'll barely have our hair mussed.
Do you think that oilshortages will be divided nicely between the (coming) super-powers U.S., Japan, Europe, China, India without (regional) conflicts or worse ?
Probably. I have a little less confidence since we started one in Iraq, but I think such war is unlikely - everyone knows it would be counterproductive.
Coincidentally, the last 200 years there was the rise of coal, gas and oil.
And, unfortunately, we still have plenty of coal and gas. PO is going to be the least of our problems.
No Nick, that 40% was your question for westexas.
Look at what WT wrote:
Sam's best case is that the (2005) top five net oil exporters, accounting for about half of current world net oil exports, will be down to less than 5 mbpd of combined net oil exports in 20 years (versus about 24 mbpd in 2005), and their post-2005 cumulative net oil exports will be around 95% depleted.
And then what you answered:
OK, you're projecting that these 5 exporters comprise 50% of overall net exports, and that they will shrink by 80%. So, overall net exports will shrink by 40%?
Your expectation (presumption,hope) is that only the top-5 exporters go down considerably. If the top 5 is down to 5 mbd export in 20 years, how about the rest of exporters ? 40% less is about 24 mbd left to export, so the smaller exporters then have to export 24-5 = 19 mbd. That can never happen. Maybe all the smaller exporters could export another 5 mbd, that totals 10 mbd of export in 2030. Down from 40 to 10, not considering declining EROEI, that is an export cliff.
Nick, that 40% was your question for westexas.
Yes, and he didn't answer, so I'm using my math as a working assumption (it is pretty simple math).
If the top 5 is down to 5 mbd export in 20 years, how about the rest of exporters ?
Very good question. A 40% drop in overall net exports simply assumes that the rest of the exporters stay stable. Keep in mind that some exporters have rising exports.
Let me clarify the math: WT says that 24mbd is 50% of current net exports. That indicates that total net exports are 48mbd. He's projecting a decline of 19mbd from the largest 5 exporters, and not giving any information about the rest. If the rest stay flat, that's a 40% decline.
Now, Aleklett projects a decrease of maybe 9mbd per day of total liquids by 2030. That suggests that production is going to be pretty stable in most of the world, with some places (both exporters and importers) increasing their production to offset some of the declines that whill happen elsewhere.
That doesn't look like a cliff to me.
Yes, some. But as time goes on, less. And the expectation that Brazil ever will export considerable amounts: many doubt it.
No, I wrote that 24 mbd is the export if it would be 40% less.
I don't see the rest can stay flat. In 5 years more exporters are past peak and some countries that have now rising production will be on plateau. Also most of that countries will have rising consumption. Not lineair, but rising.
That means that a very limited number of countries will have to compensate for the big export-losses from other countries.
Could be that Aleklett is too optimistic. When one looks at the activities of KSA right now, that is very suspect. They probably don't come close to their claimed 264 Gb of reserves.
Then Aleklett don't look at declining EROEI and a lot of total liquids is NGL. It is true that NGL can be used for many things, but 55,1 mbd of crude oil production in 2030 is not too much, if only 10 mbd, or let's say 15 mbd, will be exported.
No, I wrote that 24 mbd is the export if it would be 40% less.
Well, Westexas wrote: "Sam's best case is that the (2005) top five net oil exporters, accounting for about half of current world net oil exports, will be down to less than 5 mbpd of combined net oil exports in 20 years (versus about 24 mbpd in 2005)"
If the top 5 account for about 24 mbpd in 2005, and that's about 50% of the total, then the total equals 48 mbpd.
most of that countries will have rising consumption.
Maybe. Countries like Venezuela & Iran are having enormous problems due to their price controls. China just eliminated their price controls. Many exporting countries showed a drop in consumption in 2008.
Could be that Aleklett is too optimistic.
I'd like to see a really good analysis of that. He seems like a pretty good source.
When one looks at the activities of KSA right now, that is very suspect.
I can't imagine that Aleklett isn't thoroughly familiar with KSA's reserve manipulation.
Then Aleklett don't look at declining EROEI
Are you sure? Surely the head of ASPO takes E-ROI into account.
55,1 mbd of crude oil production in 2030 is not too much, if only 10 mbd, or let's say 15 mbd, will be exported.if only 10 mbd, or let's say 15 mbd, will be exported.
48 mbpd to 10-15? Seems too large a drop.
Right, Nick. But the 48 mbd must be 'total liquids'. C+C is about 40 mbd.
OTOH, China and India have strong rising car sales. Some African oil producing countries show rising consumption. KSA and some other ME countries have still rising consumptions.
Indeed, he must know it. But the reserves there could be even more pessimistic than he thinks. Saudi-Aramco is planning a huge CO2-EOR project in Ghawar and is looking for oil in the Red sea, under saltlayers. That seems an act of desperation.
Ok, but in that case only 11% less in 2030 seems very optimistic, especially if peak gas follows in 5-10 years.
I took the C+C export of 40 mbd. If the total C+C production in 2030 is 55 mbd and 15 mbd is exported, it leaves the exporters with a consumption of 40 mbd. Yes, that must be too high, though some exporters are industrialising countries.
the 48 mbd must be 'total liquids'. C+C is about 40 mbd.
Isn't total liquids what consumers care about?
China and India have strong rising car sales.
Yes, but they're much more efficient than US vehicles, at 37MPG. Also, China is pursuing PHEV/EVs much faster than the US. See http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2009/10/will-chinese-oil-demand-grow.html , http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2009/10/will-chinese-oil-demand-grow-part-... , and http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2009/10/will-chinese-fossil-fuel-consumpti... .
"Some African oil producing countries show rising consumption. KSA and some other ME countries have still rising consumptions."
KSA's consumption declined in 2008.
But the reserves there could be even more pessimistic than he thinks. ...in that case only 11% less in 2030 seems very optimistic
Unfortunately, we're guessing. I have to say, he seems like someone who'd know as much about this as we do. It would take some strong, specific evidence to make a strong case that his analysis isn't as comprehensive as anyone.
If the total C+C production in 2030 is 55 mbd and 15 mbd is exported, it leaves the exporters with a consumption of 40 mbd.
Well,
1) again, isn't total liquids more important? and,
2) some production comes from importers like the US.
Consumers in the first place are using gasoline, diesel and jetfuel. Oil export dropped from 46,3 mbd in 2005 to 44,8 mbd in 2007.
Are you sure ?
ASPO, Ireland is less optimistic. Yes, it's anyone's guess, but the optimistic scenario's expect a considerable amount of 'yet to find' oil. What Saudi-Aramco is doing in the Red sea looks like a pessimistic scenario for 2030 comes true. Not only is that kind of oil much more expensive, it has also a much lower EROEI. And ,in general, offshore projects show a (much) lower peak than the expectations (as published on Wikipedia's
megaprojects'). Also, with time more heavy oil and unconventional oil will come on the market
Consumers in the first place are using gasoline, diesel and jetfuel.
I'm not sure what you're thinking about here. Consumers include users of petrochemicals, propane, bunker fuel, asphalt, ethanol, etc.
KSA's consumption declined in 2008. - Are you sure ?
Well....I looked again, and that was wrong. It did grow. I think I might have been fooled by a big seasonal component.
ASPO, Ireland is less optimistic.
It would be interesting to see a comparison.
You call it circular, but it's just a direct simple relationship. Work is the product of force and distance. And work - production - is the economy (minus all the free stuff nature provides so really it's way worse than GDP indicates. Oil - the work is sucking it up through a straw. Wood - the work is cutting virgin trees.
The thing about humans is their wonderful ability to convince themselves - to deny - whatever it takes to justify their actions. We act first, then we justify. Nick, take your arguments and go tell them to a salmon bashing itself against a dam, or to a tree about to be felled. Hug a rock, because that's all that will be left by your standards: science and answering the wrong questions. My 16 year old son is in that state - where he is applying science but failing to ask questions that make any sort of sense. You know, like science, if we're running out of this planet, just get another. Yeesh.
cfm, the growlery, gray, me
Work is the product of force and distance. And work - production - is the economy (minus all the free stuff nature provides so really it's way worse than GDP indicates. Oil - the work is sucking it up through a straw.
Yes, we need energy. We don't need oil for that: see http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2008/09/can-everything-be-electrified.html
The thing about humans is their wonderful ability to convince themselves - to deny - whatever it takes to justify their actions.
Oh, I'm not suggesting we don't have problems. I think species extinction and CC are much worse problems than commodity resource supply problems.
Don't forget - even if someone disagrees with you on something, 1) they might agree with you on other stuff, and 2) they might know something you don't.
Nick says:
Is that a relevant consideration? Is it even true?
The need for a hybrid will leave a majority of people car-free, I would guess. More likely, people will drive a lot less, or pay a lot more for any available gasoline and keep their car, with consequences (on their ability to be a "good" consumer) that need to be thought through.
Prius costs less than the average new car - Is that a relevant consideration?
Sure. It's a reply to the idea that hybrids are more expensive, and less affordable than existing cars.
Is it even true?
Sure. The average Prius in 2008 was roughly $24K.
The need for a hybrid will leave a majority of people car-free, I would guess.
Again - put in your order for a hybrid (Prius, Insight, Fusion, etc) and carpool until it arrives. Inconvenient, but perfectly workable.
My July, 2007 "Iron Triangle" essay:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2767
Electrification of transportation and HVAC, and replacement of FF with wind, solar, nuclear, etc, is definitely not the status quo.
It is, in fact, what these sectors are fighting.
I agree, they're doing a fair job of it.
But, that's not what this Post is about - it's about physical limits.
Nick,
I am amazed at your persistence. I am a bit new around here and was very surprised that you got almost no support during that long run even though your responses were almost always more sensible than your dialog partners. The orthodox assumptions around here seem to be that peak oil means the collapse of society. I fully agree with you that this implication is far from established. It doesn't take wishful thinking to realize that there are many other possibilities. None of them BAU, but not 18th century technology like the original post proclaims.
There is a fellow in Canada who has put together quite an elaborate Power Point show for explaining why the jig is up without oil.
If you are truly new to the concept of Peak Oil and what it implies, maybe a slow and thoughtful walk through Chapter 1 at the following site will help:
http://www.peakoilandhumanity.com/chapter_choice.htm
Chapter 1 doesn't help much. That is just a simple walk through the many ways we use oil. Those are going to change. Its is the certainty that the way they are going to change includes the collapse of society that is the unsubstantiated step. Some retrenchment sure, but the end of electricity requires a much more complete explanation.
I'm sorry you can't seem to "get it" despite the overwhelming evidence.
There is of course, the possibility that you interpret "society" in a completely different way than most of us do. By collapse, we mean TEOTWAWKI.
No doubt you answered me by letting your fingers tap on a keyboard full of "plastic" key caps, mounted over a printed circuit board whose bulk is composed of a "plastic" compound and which is populated by so-called integrated circuit chips (ICs) packaged in "plastic" encapsulations. Your signals traveled over plastic-coated wires mounted on large telephone poles and/or they lit their way through underground buried fiber optic cables. The entire infrastructure is kept going by field hands who use diesel vehicles to dig trenches, to re-right felled poles, to re-string snapped wires, to replace failed amplifiers, and so on and so on.
We've heard your kind of story many times about how society will be able to "muddle" through whatever hits it. If you have ever been in a major city when the traffic lights go out for even a few blocks, you would know that is BS. Everything comes to a grinding halt; and just because of a couple of lights. No. We're not going to "muddle" through it. We are going to sink into and freeze within the mud that will envelope us if we don't do something drastic now.
That's not what the Original Post said. He's not talking about complex systems, he's talking about really simple commodity supply problems:
"A closer look at the physical realities of resource extraction reveals that the resource situation is, in fact, terminal for our high-consumin’ civilization....this decline...will not be preventable by any combination of political, social, or technological solutions. "
"The orthodox assumptions around here seem to be that peak oil means the collapse of society."
That depends on what you mean by 'collapse' and 'society'. I think the general consensus here is that we will see a drop in earnings, vehicle miles travelled, higher prices for items that rely on cheap oil, and a generally lower standard of living. The money needed to transition to new energy forms has for the most part been thrown at propping up the BAU economy. All of this was discussed in Dan article above.
If we had started major changes 10 years ago, then things might be different. But just the opposite occurred in the US (e.g., Bush killing the PNGV program that would have brought 72-80 mpg family cars to the market), so now we are hamstrung as a nation by wasted time, wasted efforts, and no money to make the massive infrastructure changes. And still, some new road-building goes on...
"I think the general consensus here is that we will see a drop in earnings, vehicle miles travelled, higher prices for items that rely on cheap oil, and a generally lower standard of living."
I think you are assuming a bit more cool headed logic than is the norm around here. The original post implied the end of electric power for computers and power tools. That is a collapse far beyond what you describe. The links the doomers keep posting talk about moving to small towns that can be defended against invading city folk.
You are absolutely right that our national response to the environmental crisis has been shortsighted and destructive. But doomers who are unwilling to separate their fear based guesses from evidence based predictions make it much harder to implement rational responses.
Any time you are sliding down the spiral from (1) peak oil to (2) no oil available to (3) no energy available to (4) society collapses, take a few minutes and contemplate a few simple ideas. It only takes a factor or 2 in electricity prices to make wind power grow exponentially. Nuclear power would also see huge investments. Solar thermal and the newest photovoltaics are cost competitive with a price only a bit more than a factor of 2. The EROI on these are all above 5, and will probably be higher when energy shortages encourage conservation so it is simply false that they are energy sinks. So a reasonable model might be that in the long run we have adequate electrical energy at prices 2 or 3 times higher than what we currently pay. Some resources might become more expensive which would tend to raise these numbers, but in fact technological advancements have steadily lowered these numbers. There are interesting questions about the economics of getting from here to there, but anyone who tells you that consideration of physical constraints alone implies the end of electricity is not well grounded in reality.
One thing we have to keep in mind; most of our manufacturing depends upon a complex, unbelievably extensive web of interdependency, much of which is Just-in-time supply. A drop in oil availability means that economic disruption will result in many companies going out of business, an effect that will only grow with time. How are all the parts for wind turbines moved around right now? Materials and components for high voltage towers and lines? What powers planting, fertilizing, cultivating, harvesting, shipping to processors, shipping to warehouses, shipping to supermarkets? Where do plastics come from? Asphalt? Jet Fuel? Ok, let's really talk about how we are going to do without Ammonia, Anesthetics, Antihistamines, Artificial limbs, Artificial Turf, Antiseptics, Aspirin, Auto Parts, Awnings, Balloons, Ballpoint pens, Bandages, Beach Umbrellas, Boats, Cameras, Candles, Car Battery Cases, Carpets, Caulking, Combs, Cortisones, Cosmetics, Crayons, Credit Cards, Curtains, Deodorants, Detergents, Dice, Disposable Diapers, Dolls, Dyes, Eye Glasses, Electrical Wiring Insulation, Faucet Washers, Fishing Rods, Fishing Line, Fishing Lures, Food Preservatives, Food Packaging, Garden Hose, Glue, Hair Coloring, Hair Curlers, Hand Lotion, Hearing Aids, Heart Valves, Ink, Insect Repellant, Insecticides, Linoleum, Lip Stick, Milk Jugs, Nail Polish, Oil Filters, Panty Hose, Perfume, Petroleum Jelly, Rubber Cement, Rubbing Alcohol, Shampoo, Shaving Cream, Shoes, Toothpaste, Trash Bags, Upholstery, Vitamin Capsules, Water Pipes, Yarn...
It's easy to say, "we'll just tighten our belt, but live pretty much the same", but the scope and breadth of the change means that too many critical paths will become interrupted. As another poster pointed out, even if there were a 90% chance of success to maintain all the supplies necessary to make wind turbines, .9 x .9 x .9 x .9 x .9 x .9 only equals a .36 overall chance of success. Do that for solar PV, geothermal, etc.
Have you read the DoE report yet? Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management
Will the government step in and ration fuel to make sure it services critical infrastructure, or will such a move be attacked as 'socialism'? When will a crash switchover to a non-oil-based economy take place? What is required to realize that? The entire electrical infrastructure needs a complete overall. Where is all the lithium for the batteries going to come from? How many will truly be able to afford Chevy Volts in a contracted economy and with crushing personal and national debt?
Sure, when oil drops to 80% of it's peak output, we can tighten our belts, and expect our government to be broke as well. When it hits 50%, we'll have more belt flopping around free than actually around our waist, and even less government; note that road maintenance wasn't even completely funded before the crash and it is being pushed off far into the distance except for some stimulus projects. When it hits 30%, how are we going to maintain anything, such as the road system, electrical grid, international shipping, heavy manufacturing?
The Mayans went through a very long slide in the 8th and 9th centuries, where each successive generation saw (on average) a very slightly lower standard of living than their parents. The overall effect was collapse of their society from it's heights. The decline we will likely see will be much swifter, though a full discussion of what the word "collapse" means bears examination, and I'll refer you to;
- Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, (article, video presentation), and
- Joseph Tainter, Collapse of Complex Societies (TOD article)
Over the decades, how will we define 'failure' and how will that definition evolve? How will we define 'success'? Did the non-extinction of Eastern Islanders constitute success? If we make a shift to coal-to-liquids and disrupt the climate over decades to the serious detriment of global agriculture, is that a success or failure?
Nick.
Its.
Not.
About.
Price.
Its about supply.
Price is only an indicator. The point Dan is making is that supply reduces so all the things that were driven by that supply (including the ability to mine and process the steel, rare metals etc to make your Prius) reduces as well.
To make that Prius you will have to compete for resources with everyone else who wants to use them for something else. THAT's why Dan talks about the social side of this, unless you want a world that looks like Somalia there needs to be a mechanism for applying resources to the most important uses, not merely those determined by the people with the most money.
Imagine an America where there is all the money anyone wants but only half the oil. Half of every oil-using activity would have to stop, at the least. Since that would certainly collapse all the airlines who would then use zero % of their previous oil, it would release some for other purposes.
But the cost of that is all the jobs in airlines, plus most of the jobs in aircraft construction, travel agencies, hotels, resorts etc etc. Even if we find things to do that earn us money, they will be, necessarily, radically different things from what we do now and they will fit together is different ways.
It wont, probably, happen overnight, but in 5% or 10% steps and slides.
We have two choices, we can be forced along the path of least resistance - which may involve mass starvation BTW, the universe really doesn't give a damn about you and your family living through this, or we can use our brains and try to get there ahead of the game.
Me, I'm converting my urban property into a small, bio-intensive, farm. So far 150 sq metres of gardens, 5 compost heaps, 2 chickens and room for a 500 square metre orchard, coppice and herb garden. Plus fencelines in full production. My wife works full time, I build and garden and learn stuff from people like Dan.
Our aim is to be able to live here on about $200 a week - did I say we paid off our mortgage as item one? We are also adding space to the house (without increasing its footprint more than a few metres to make room for my daughter and son-in-law if they need it, my sister-in-law if she needs it and my elderly parents in law.
Rule number one, turn money into real stuff by paying off debt, then only into real stuff that has a multiplier.
Or just keep rubbishing people like Dan, at least the hot air will keep someone warm on a cold night, for a while.
Imagine an America where there is all the money anyone wants but only half the oil. Half of every oil-using activity would have to stop, at the least.
Not even close. We could easily run on 50% of our current oil consumption. Consider: personal transportation is 45% of oil consumption, and most of that's discretionary (remember carpooling?).
Trucks can reduce their fuel consumption per mile by 20% just by slowing down, another 20% with improved aerodynamics.
See http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2008/09/can-everything-be-electrified.html
very very good summary of our situation re energy. a lot for young men & women to take in.
i noticed u'r unsanctioned aspect of this work. cudos.
i think wendell would prefer a cider.
i do notice u avoid our economic predicament. perhaps a line like those thoughtful ones u give about our very energy production/delivery systems being dependent on the first half of the curve stuff, the cheap energy.
again nice thoughtful overview; wish my grandson had u.
Perhaps it has already been done. I see a need to create a real world model of this transformation. A group of several hundred volunteers/families who are willing to live together in a village and go through an accelerated resource decline, ending up at the right side of the column. Might want to make the initial group size even larger, I suspect the drop out rate might be high:) Perhaps a three year time frame would be adequate to run the experiment.
The project could prove or disprove some of the assumptions as to how people will adapt to diminishing resources. My guess is there will be substantial criminal, emotional and ethical problems amongst the people in the group. It is one thing to be born into an Amish family lifestyle. Falling into it, quite another. I saw the failures of communes in the late 60's and early 70's in Vermont, and they could choose the resources they used. A constant downward spiral in available resources is quite different.
I'll leave the details as to how this would be funded and who would want to do this to others to debate. My point is it would be infinitely more valuable than what has been portrayed by a couple of TV shows recently. Hmmm, maybe the TV rights to this experiment would take care of the funding?
PriorityX
Just a thought, maybe the failure of the 60's communes had more to do with the negative influence/pressures/restrictions from the greater society and if this is removed we might find that the basic communes system would work.
Hey. I resemble that remark. I spent about ten years living in various communes. They do indeed experience intense pressure along many dimensions from the larger society. However communes are definitely alive and well. Check out www.ic.org for an introduction to intentional communities.
Paul
But, in this scenario, not only do we lose outside pressure from society, more importantly, we lose the ability to draw any resources from society it as it no longer exists! Commune members got some dirty looks at the hardware store from the locals, but they had a hardware store! And I don't deny zoning and other regulations were used against them. Communes evolved over the last 40 years, consist of like minded people, and learned from the mistakes of those who failed before them. A downward spiral in resources will involve people who are not willing participants, and there will be no blueprint to follow.
Think about simple things like firewood replacing gas/oil/electric heat in the winter. Communities will not have the luxury of choosing optimum locations with the appropriate amount of farmland, woodlands, and water. What happens when you have to chose between burning your woodshed, outhouse and furniture in the wood stove or freezing because you have run out of firewood? How will limited renewable resources be managed to insure they are not depleted?
Will people come together and share resources evenly and responsibly? Or, will the community fracture into groups and individuals with opposing ideas of how things should be run? If there is a drought, how will the community hold together? Will lack of food lead to stealing? Will prosperous communities accept refugees from failed communities?
My biggest concern is will we see concentrated power develop in a small group of people who run the community through intimidation rather than consensus? How will our justice system survive and adapt?
I don't think we can look to history to predict how a resource decline will progress. Historically, we have gone from a lower standard of living to a higher standard of living, albeit with some setbacks. People had every reason to believe things would eventually get better. Going from a higher standard of living to a lower standard of living is a whole different animal. Knowing life is only going to get harder is a huge psychological hit and may bring out the worst in many people.
However, I would argue that once a steady state or bottom is reached, communities will adapt and what we call a "lower standard of living" will become a misnomer. Getting there is the hard part. That process of getting there is what I'd love to see tested.
But the upslope of civilization world wide was not a straight line. There are many examples of previous civilizations regressing or crashing because of resource depletion or environmental degradation. I dont think we can just dismiss what happened to them as not relevant to what we are about to go through.
Good point. Which past transitions would you say are the most useful to study?
Deforestation is a problem because its resource depletion and climate change rolled into one. It did a lot of them in including the Maya, Nasca and Easter Islanders.
Some civilizations got it right though. According to Diamond the Japanese re forested preventing a catastrophy and medieval Europe had a stable population for several hundred years between the black death and industrialisation.
I lived in Japan for a while. It was amazing to see foresting practices where individual trees are selected for harvested and ingenious devices were used to cut and remove the tree in the middle of a huge, near-vertical, heavily forested hillside.
My brother lived much of his adult life in China, much of it involved in conservation work. He tells me that in many areas of China there are centuries old practices and traditions of forest conservation. Where forests have been decimated, it is usually because the Red Army has come in and done the logging over the opposition of locals.
Science is beginning to take a serious look at traditional ecological knowledge unfortunatly politics is still not taking science seriously.
We did have a few contrived reality shows like Frontier House and 1900 House, but those were short-term, small scale experiments compared to what you're talking about.
PX,
Actually this was done on a small scale in the PBS "House" series some years ago (Colonial House, Frontier House, etc.) where families lived the life of that time for an extended period. I found it fascinating.
Todd
IIRC, survival was not guaranteed. Choose the wrong crop or livestock (sheep versus cow versus chickens) and you're dead.
I don't remember if it was Frontier House or another one, but I was really annoyed by the competing families, ala 'survivor', where jobs to be done were too hard for one family alone, (..fail! You're the weakest link!).. yet would have clearly been jobs shared by such neighbors to overcome burdensome obstacles.
Saw that. Some of its is rough viewing, especially the hungry boy crying.
I've no doubt this is monumentally difficult for kids to absorb. Adults have a monumentally difficult time absorbing it.
Looking at the list on the right, it almost reminds me of wartime.
Of course, it is 70 years since the UK experienced a war on their own soil and roughly 150 years since the USA experienced one.
Most of us have no idea what wartime conditions are like, and most of the folks who knew are gone.
One could liken the list to living during the Great Depression, also, but let's not forget that was temporary, as were the wars. People had a good idea that, at some point, they'd come out of it on the other side.
Our energy and resource predicament is going to be permanent - maybe that's why it's so hard to grasp.
I read a lot of commentary using the words "hunker down", "weather the storm", "lay in stocks" - all terminology relating to, essentially, a temporary situation, where we'll "come out on the other side".
Really, there isn't any coming out on the other side. We are in it, and will continue to be in it, permanently. Unless someone solves the problem of cold fusion, of course....
Unless someone solves the problem of cold fusion, of course
Lets say one can. Now what security issue would exist - how much energy could be how quickly released AKA a bomb. And what would that do to the idea of money?
Even if we did solve the energy problem, we'd still be past the peak of fish, water, phosphorus etc etc. I don't think cold fusion would really be any help at all, unless we could mine the moon for resources using it. It was just the sort of thought that pops up as a consequence of trying to deal with permanence.
+1
Unless you deal with capitalism, unlimited access to energy will not help, and expansion in a finite world is a must. Expand or die.
The last 2 humans on the planet would have one exploiting the other.
This is a common misconception. Energy consumption is not GDP growth. GDP growth is masked by expansion in monetary base, which is on the 10-15% p.a. level. Per capita energy consumption in capitalism levels out, and often tapers off with more progress.
This is an illusion caused by the exporting of energy intensive manufacturing to the developing world. If you take into account the embedded energy of ever expanding imports, there is not a nation on earth that increases GDP without increasing energy consumption. It is possible to increase GDP put unit energy by using the energy more efficiently (better engines, smaller cars etc) or by organising society to need less energy (but in practice we have been doing the reverse for the last century) or by bringing more human labour into the measured workforce (both parents working full time jobs, short holiday allowance, lots of over time). However, the all these options facing diminishing returns, and the last actually increases GDP at the expense of quality of life.
RalphW, you give a technical answer that one can dispute based on efficiency and the probably invention of Maxwell's Daemon. I use a simpler explanation: people want more GDP because it means more stuff; that's human. More stuff requires more resources - including energy. :-)
require actual extra-terrestrial energy inputs for their complete extraction – i.e. it’s not gonna happen.
The extra-terrestrial energy input is exactly how extraction will happen - photons from the Sun.
At some point the energy to extract minerals from the solvent of water (seawater, old mines) will be less energy than traditional mining.
And if humans still have a level of technology in the future, the prefered method will be to deploy robotic technology that can mine asteroids, refine the material, and send the refined back to Earth/man's efforts to leave this solar system.
Eric, if man could leave this solar system, where exactly would he/she go? To Alpha Centari? How many light years is that? Got any habitable planets? No no no, we are stuck in gravity wells and even with sub-light travel speeds (that need to be developed), space is a big place. But maybe you were thinking of quantum worm-hole space travel tricks?
Why do I keep thinking of that sinking ship at the end of "The Perfect Storm"? You know, the guys fight like hell to find an air pocket on a rapidly sinking ship. Saved, for now....
Our Earth is just a small dot next to the Sun.
Currently, we intercept just a tiny fraction of the energy output from our nearby fusion reactor.
There is no shortage of energy.
There is however an extreme drought of imagination.
True, but there is a major shortage of infrastructure that will enable us to harness this energy and this infrastructure will require more available energy and resources to build out than it appears we have available.
While it is true that an infrastructure upgrade is needed to move renewable electrical energy around, there are very easy starting points for non-electrical solutions that require virtually no infrastructure;
- http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/5095
- http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/WaterHeating/water_heating.htm
- etc...
Beats the torrent of extreme optimistic chauvinism which is rapidly turning Big Blue into grey goo.
"There is no shortage of energy."
There is, on the contrary, far too much energy. The huge quantities of energy that we have already harnessed and used have allowed us to alter the planet in millions of permanent and harmful ways--think species extinction for only one large set of examples.
I see absolutely zero evidence that we would use any new source of energy any more wisely that we have used past energy resources.
We are four-year-olds playing with live chainsaws--using power far beyond our collective maturity level and at enormous damage to ourselves, our surroundings and our future.
Take the chainsaw away from the four-year-old, wait a few thousand or tens of thousands of years till he has grown up, then introduce much milder and more benign tools.
I am truly baffled that so many accept to blindly the assumption that humanity's primary problem is that it does not have enough power.
IF (that's a big if) mankind is going to continue maintaining a population this large, there will be a lot of sea water that has to get de-salinated, there will be a lot of nitrogen that will have to get pulled from the air and fixed to carbon, ... all that takes massive amounts of energy.
Sure our civilization is filled with insane profit-manic chainsaw users who are hell bent on cutting down every Amazon rain forest they can find ... but that is a different problem.
"IF (that's a big if) mankind is going to continue maintaining a population this large, there will be a lot of sea water that has to get de-salinated, there will be a lot of nitrogen that will have to get pulled from the air and fixed to carbon, ... all that takes massive amounts of energy."
And that will allow for...
presumably an even greater rise in human population with an even bigger negative impact on the systems that the future depends on and and even bigger eventual and inevitable die off.
The main thing we need to control is not the energy, water, and other resources to serve our endless needs and desires. The main thing we need to control is...
us
Our own needs and desires are 99.9% of what we should be focusing on controlling.
But self control is no way cool or neat. Great new technological gizmos ARE way cool, in no small part exactly because they hold out the promise of never having to face anything as terrifying as self control.
Take a couple volumes of Wendell Berry and call me in the morning.
I wouldn't have known what you're talking about except for the fact that by chance I heard the guy on public radio the other day (talking about the evils of big agri-business).
Sorry, I should have provided a link, as you kindly did. Thanks.
we are stuck in gravity wells
Yup.
That is a big problem. But 'solutions' have been shown - that is why the GPS network exists as an example.
Some of the unsolved problems are:
1) 'Smart enough' AI to run machine only mining in space.
2) material science to harden machines VS the radiation of space and VS the force needed to grind rock for processing. (its why rock processing eq has replaceable parts.)
Then you get to man:
For Man to leave this solar system, Man would have to figure out the egg/sperm -> birth process to be able to replicate it. Then master the raising of a child -> functional adult thus allowing just the genetic material to get to someplace and continue Man.
Considering Man has trouble raising others of the species of Man to functional adult - there is not even thus far a 'working model'.
Even if Man did not expand into space, solving the AI/Material handling/egg->baby/baby->adult problems could be a boon to Man.
Much of the chart assumes the end of electricity, or something close to it. (An article on Countercurrents arguing the same outcome has gotten some play in the last couple days as well.) I think this outcome is hardly a forgone conclusion, even in a post peak oil world.
First, it does seem that our energy sources for electricity are not going to peak in the same near term as our transportation fuel (i.e. oil). Problems with those source will be a latter stage of collapse, perhaps decades from now. Second, and more importantly in the long term, it's not clear yet that the EROEI of renewables isn't sufficient to sustain an electrical infrastructure on its own, once they were built out. We've debated the latter question in numerous threads here at TOD and in my opinion not reached any clears conclusions.
The chart really has us (by which I mean those of us "thoroughly-industrial and suburban") going backwards about 200 years in the near future. But just as it doesn't follow that because we used half of some set of resources in 150 years that we have another 150 years of BAU, it also doesn't follow that collapse involves losing everything that was invented since the industrial revolution. I'm not sure that in my lifetime (next 40-60 years) things like refrigerators, Budwieser, clothing shops, universities and divorce are going to disappear for most people, even if airline travel, credit cards, and hot showers do. To repeat, much depends on the particulars of what, if anything, renewable sources of electricity are sufficient for.
Finally, an non-argumentative suggestion. I think the chart could use an entry on communications and the future of the internet.
I think there is room for a difference of opinion as to whether electricity production can continue for any significant time after oil production drops off.
The way I look at things is that our economy is a highly networked system. Changes in one thing (such as higher oil prices) cause a change in other things (such as debt defaults), The debt defaults in turn cause other impacts (fewer loans) which affect businesses of many kinds.
I think that problems in one sector are likely to ripple through the system, primarily because of financial linkages. (In fact, we are already seeing this, with the current recession following peak oil.) One likely reason to lose electricity is because some of the companies involved in its production go bankrupt, and by that time, there is no real way of bailing out any more businesses. Another scenario is that we lose imports from overseas because of various financial issues. In a few years, we find ourselves unable to replace necessary parts from electrical power stations and electrical transmission because we cannot obtain the necessary imports, and we don't have the manufacturing capability here (or if we do have manufacturing capability here, we can't obtain some of the raw materials.)
Hi Gail,
It seems to me that a modest electrical supply is a critical element if we have any hope of a somewhat graceful "Powerdown". War and other catastrophe aside, I can imagine various "work arounds" (like in the chart) for transportation, food, shelter, clothing, etc. But, without some amount of semi-regular electricity, life will be dramatically different - for the worse.
JaggedBen commented:
I tend to agree with JaggedBen that we now have the benefit of many technologies that could be utilized in a post-FF world. It would seem that we would understand the value of electricity and make every effort to anticipate all the issues and impediments you raise (all very valid) and invest in solutions and work arounds before it is too late - I know - overly optimistic again.
When I worked in India, electricity was very unreliable - but it was there and it was a total game changer for India. I remember tripping over electrical cords spread all over office floors and UPS boxes everywhere - but it opened up vast new business opportunities. Without electricity India would simple not be on the world stage as they are today (for better or worse).
Personally, I truly dread the idea of losing of electricity. Pumping water from my 300' deep well will not be fun without electricity; nor running my saws; or using my computer; or not using the microwave; or wondering how my dentist will fix a tooth; or how my doctor could do surgery; on and on.
As a nation, if we have any sense, we will address your concerns as a highest priority to assure some level of sustainable electrical generation.
I agree with the general idea that things are networked. That's part of the reason I think this is so uncertain.
One should probably distinguish between "continue at all" and "continue, but only for those privileged enough."
I could be wrong, but it's my impression that US power plants are not currently very dependent on imported parts, materials, or knowledge. It seems to me, looking at the names of companies, that that's one thing Americans are still doing for themselves.
The experience of places like Iraq and Cuba under sanctions can be instructive here. I think if you look into those experiences carefully, you'll find that engineers managed to repair, refashion, and rehabilitate broken parts to a remarkable degree, keeping equipment running longer than anyone could reasonably expect. In the case of Iraq, engineers kept the electricity infrastructure at fairly stable levels for 12 years despite an almost complete blockade on parts and materials (far more complete than a country would experience just for financial reasons). But after the invasion in 2003 electricity production plummeted and recovered very slowly, despite parts and materials suddenly being available again, because engineers fled their jobs and insurgents attacked infrastructure. If nothing else I think that shows that the human factor is far more important than the availability of particular materials.
John Michael Greer has talked about industrial societies going through the phases of "scarcity industrialism", followed by "salvage industrialism." The first involves something like Iraq under sanctions. The second involves salvaging the embodied energy of our infrastructure to create new infrastructure at a lower level of technology, perhaps resembling earlier industrial eras. "Salvage industrialism" might still be capable of providing electric lights and power tools, but not, say, new working computers and televisions. I think all this describes plausible scenarios on a long descent stretching beyond this century. That is assuming that renewables don't at some point prove capable of stopping the decline and perhaps even reversing it.
Very nicely done! I'm sure that some could up with some niggles about what is and isn't included, but that would rather miss the point. It's really pretty upbeat, too (like, the alternative to fat people is thin people rather than cannibalism and mass famine). Probably a good thing I'm no longer a HS science teacher, eh...?
Now that's something I'd like to hear Obama say.
Failing that, it's good to hear a high school teacher say it.
TheOilDrum has a very high DROEI (Depression Returned over Enthusiasm Invested). Seriously, this must likely be the only website which is popular despite being very depressing.
www.theautomaticearth.blogspot.com
A++++++ would doom again!
http://desdemonadespair.blogspot.com/
http://www.malthusia.com/viewforum.php?f=1
http://peakoil.com/forum.html
http://www.kunstler.com/
Or just about any thing else on the blog roll.
But yes, in most main stream media, there is an unwritten (or maybe it is written somewhere?) rule that any problem presented includes a happy suggestion that there is a workable solution. This is not, of course, reality based journalism.
www.foxnews.com
Thanks Nate, now pass me the happy pills please ;-)
In a few years, you might mean this literally.
TheOilDrum still beats all these other sites because here, every piece of news which might give us some hope is exposited; criticized by highly trained geologists, engineers and numerates; expounded in greater detail and quantified; and finally rubbished as false hope.
The other sites are mostly hotbeds for pessimists, conspiracy theorists, survivalists and fear mongers.
Hope is merely the wish that something over which you have no control will turn out OK.
True despair - despair embraced - beats hope every time.
I can not accept that this might be true therefore it is not...
I am a old eco-hippie type that has been thinking about this stuff since the late 70's. What is amazing to me is how long it has taken to get to this point. Forced change might happen quick from here but...
Of the items on the chart one hits home. In spite of everything I know, I love to ski. This is one of the hard to accept items I would rather not face. I was thinking about how to justify that skiing does not really take all that much energy, but it does. Likely all of us have things of high energy intensity that we love to do. We need to learn to accept the limits of the world within which we live.
Then again I live within horseback riding range of a ski resort and will hike up the mountain and ski down on ungroomed natural snow... :)
The unreality to me is in not really knowing how things will play out. We can make a lot of guesses, and extrapolations based on prior experience, but we can't really *know*.
Some things may turn out better than expected, some worse.
My high-intensity activity was adventure travel. Oh well...I'm only a mile from the river - I can still paddle...
spring_tides
Not knowing, me too. If our human population numbers were at some reasonable level then a transition could at least theoretically be contemplated. Its how we get to reasonable population numbers that is so scary.
amen re the pop nos.
i was already starting the partial 'back to the land' when i learned of PO; so that part multiplied won't be easy but hardly foreign.
but now i've actually increased my footprint significantly as i fear we are too close to a million folks, & i am focused on having an alternative option or 2 if this area goes too far south.
having 'other options' meant buying a 3/4 ton truck, & hefty trailer. we also bought a very rundown house in a village on a river for 3 grand; but i have to now go there some; still tin blown off part of the roof, etc..
not the kind of life i had in mind at all.
Hi ryeguy, I recommend Lester Brown's Plan B - I recall he even does a cost analysis on the number of condums needed.
dave
thanks, I was wondering if anyone had put a number to the energy requirement of downhill skiing. It seems like if you keep everything simple, mass transit to the mountain, low key accommodations, depend more on natural snow, etc the energy/resource cost might not be so bad. If you compare it to snowmobiles, it likely looks down right green. Of course global warming will likely melt this option.
But the point is trying to get a handle on what is prudent based on the earths long term ecological limits.
I saw some numbers a few years back. Think about the lifts, the artificial snow, the groomers [let alone widening 50 miles of Rt 26 here in Maine]. And after all that work, what is the "output"? A heated ski lodge top of some mountain. A lot of emergy. Including the ATM machines, of course.
I loved downhill skiing. For me it was a sweaty zen abstraction. Top to bottom at Stowe as fast as the (AIG owned) high-speed chairlift ran. But it was immoral. Cross-country doesn't have the same level of sweaty zen abstraction - though for Bill McKibben, perhaps it did - freezing my balls to the lycra because it's that cold??? No, if I have less energy, I need to spend it digging in the garden in the winter under a hoop house set up for just that project.
I'm only a little further than that from the ocean and then less than a mile to a coral reef... you can be sure I'll be out there paddling as long as I can catch fish and lobsters.
BTW I'm going to see this movie tonight and meet the kayakers who took this trip.
http://www.dudesonmedia.com/PADDLE_TO_SEATTLE.html
FM
Wow - looks fantastic !
A few years back a group of us got together to help sponsor a couple of guys who were trying to circumnavigate Greenland. They didn't make it, unfortunately, but a grand adventure, nevertheless.
I can get to a wild life preserve in one direction, and Lake Michigan in the other. I think lake paddling will be great when we no longer have to dodge the power boats at the harbor entrance, and we aren't knocked about in the wake, deafened by the engines, or overcome by the fumes...
There's always a positive side....
I'm only a little further than that from the ocean and then less than a mile to a coral reef... you can be sure I'll be out there paddling as long as I can catch fish and lobsters.
BTW I'm going to see this movie tonight and meet the kayakers who took this trip.
http://www.dudesonmedia.com/PADDLE_TO_SEATTLE.html
Or you can try the Alaskan version of the trip, via packraft, by Erin and Hig:
http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/WildCoast.php
It's OK, Rye. You will discover le faire de la randonee--backcountry randonee, telemark, skate skiing, classic skiing, kite skiing, iceboating, and others. Life doesn't end after downhill.
And downhill skiing might not end after PO. Jimminy Peak ski area in western MA installed a wind turbine that generates 1/2 the energy needed to run the lifts and snow making. If they add a 2nd, they have 100%, a third and they'll have enough energy to trade for spare parts and maintenance?
As an engineer, I just can't accept the idea that when oil is gone, all is lost and we might as well take the black pill. Oil is simply concentrated energy. The other sources are less concentrated and not as efficient but they're there. The Hudson river is not going to stop flowing, the wind is not going to stop blowing and the sun is not going to stop shining. We've simply got to get to work planning how to do with less. There is a huge amount of wasted energy in our current system(s) and we can probably go 5-10 years just on being more efficient, maybe longer.
Yes there will be problems. Probably a lot of discomfort, but as someone commented up above, there were restaurants and taverns long before Drake stuck a straw in the ground. I live in a downtown urban area in upstate NY and if we have to repel boarders I will be assisting at the remaining tavern(s) down the street from my house.
Maybe there will be mass chaos and destruction but that's not the universe I intend to live in.
Well, it looks like it's time to feed the dog and stroll down to the "field office" for a cold one.
So how exactly are you going to get to that alternate universe to avoid mass chaos here?
Moose , we need to hear from you more often.I get kinda lonely sometimes.
All may be lost-but its still an open question.
Mac, Thanks for the kind words.
As I may have mentioned previously I'm new to commenting but have been viewing the site for 2-3 years. I refrained from commenting as many others have far more knowledge of the PO issue(s) than I. However I feel more than confident in responding to the doomer/gloomer types on the far end of the spectrum. Some of the more outrageous possibilities they hypothesise make my head feel it's about to explode and I needed to post to relieve some of the pressure.
For example: "Electricity will be gone".
Will electrons cease to carry a negative charge because we run low on oil? Up next will be the reversal of gravity causing all loose earthly objects to be spun into the dark freezing void of interstellar space. While anything is POSSIBLE, it is the PROBABILITY of a certain scenario coming to pass that I hope to become informed on.
In 4 years I have gone from a sceptic of PO to a 90%+ adherent. I fully agree that there are to be negative consequences resulting from the transition from FF to other energy sources. However, I believe (hope/pray?) that we will use our brains to prevernt the more dire possibilities. I am constantly reading various other sites on alternative energy, Hybrid car research and other, some rather far-out, proposals that are being researched. Some say PHEV's and EV's are bunk because they cost too much and the batteries are too heavy and costly but then I read of researchers claiming to be close to zinc-air batteries with 4X the energy density at half the cost. If they get it right it could change the ecomomics dramatically. And there's lots more stuff they're working on. I took a gamble and invested in a company developing lithium-titanate batteries than can be recharged in 10 minutes. they are in the all electric PROTERRA concept bus that gets an alleged 17mpg equivalent. Really good, if true.
Plants make hydrocarbons, or whatever, out of air, water and CO2 why can't we? Folks are working on that. I could go on and on but you get the idea. In 5-15 years the people working on printing solar cells on fancy ink jet printers at 1/5 today's cost might just be successful. That would be pretty good, huh? Probably have a big change in probable outcomes too.
I might be way too optomistic but I bet, at the beginning of the auto age, when it became apparent that cars were taking over, the blacksmiths, livery stable owners, saddle makers, etc probably sounded a lot like PO Doomers. Some surely went out of business or even jumped in the river, but the adapters became auto mechanics, tire manufacturers, etc.
As someone said up above, some of the doomers actually WANT bad things and chaos because, like one well-known blogger, their hatred of things like the suburbs blinds them to other possibilities.
One last comment: 3 yrs ago or so, when a co-worker started me on the path to PO knowledge by forwarding web sites, he pointed out that big box stores and shopping centers would be soon vast wastelands.
I, somewhat jokingly, replied that the walmart and target stores would be converted to affordable housing (put in a 2nd floor, punch windows in the outer walls and cut an atrium in the center?) for the workers who would toil in the greenhouses that would go very nicely in the vast parking lots. Perhaps not the most probable scenario but certainly possible.
I'm an enjuneer by profession. Engineering, at it's basic level is simply problem solving. PO and the ensuing transition might be the biggest problem mankind has faced but I really think we can get thru this without 90% human die-off and soylent green. In 1960 the USA couldn't even launch a bowling ball into orbit. Less than 10 years later we had sent several crews to the moon (or was it the sound stage at area 51?). I went to college in '64 with a slide rule, 3 years later the first calculators cost over $300 (well over $1,000 in today's coins) and now look at what you get in an i-phone.
The problem might be huge but I really think there may be stuff coming from left field that may as good or better than the bad "unknown unknowns" at least in my little fantasy world.
There, now my head feels much better.
I have high hopes for a few key breakthroughs myself.
But even without the breakthroughs we can adapt faster than most folks assume.II rc the average person moves once about every five years-that in and of itself creates an enormous opportunity to shorten commutes-and it will be siezed once gas prices are seriously up again.
A good many technologies that may be too expensive for mass adoption now may also decline in price in a big way once manufactiring volumes are up and patents expire.
If solar hot water were to be mandated in building codes my guess is that the price would decline by half in short order.
For a couple of thousand bucks you could dig a pit under a new house, line it with insulation, put in a coil of pipe and backfill it with the excavated soil and use it to store all the excess heat from an oversized solar hot water system,thereby saving considerably on space heating.
I have seen several dozen such proposals on various sites which taken together Could cut househoold energy use in half easily-with no loss of comfort or convenience and NO NEW TECHNOLOGY REQUIRED.
But I am doing things to deal with a crash-and I am sure that one is on the way.
But it does not NECESSARILY mean teoawki.
Sorry. No. Do the math. I used to have a drawing of this little house floating on huge underwater lake.
Do the math. It's not even within an order of magnitude. Two maybe. Of course, that's Southern Maine. Probably work fine in Honolulu.
Unfortunately, a company that wants to build more condos has put a major roadblock in Jimminy Peak's way and there may be no more wind turbines there, the courts will tell and it doesn't look hopeful.
As someone else said here the problem is not that there are not possible alternative solutions but that we will fail to do them. When you say "We've simply got to get to work planning how to do with less." I say, "Absolutely!" but I see very little support for anything other than BAU in the places that REALLY matter. I would say that there is nothing simple about it. Lack of customary levels of energy will have unpredictable, but generally negative effects on the way societies function until we figure out what is hapening to us. The lack of serious discussion in the mainstream culture, from the political establishment to the press to opinion leaders, does not bode well for the implementation of any remedial course of action.
I do disagree with some of the items on the chart as being a too much of a regression, but generally it fits what I would anticipate as a long term landing place.
We will be pressing more cider this weekend. We have pressed some 20 gallons or so this Fall and probably have another 5 to 10 to go. All human powered. Yum! And some of it is bubbling away through a vapor-lock...
Great summarization of the situation we face and the post peak world we will experience. The before and after colomns sound very similar to what Kunstler envisions, and seems very plausible.
I think the problem is regarding how the transition will take place. Will it be a gradual step down to the column on the right, or will it be bitterly resisted via war? It seems like the conservatives in this country, the tea baggers like to solve perceived problems with military strikes or full military involvement. So to a great extent the battle between liberals and conservatives will eventuate during the transitional decline phases, to either peacefully accepting the new column, the new paradigm (which will look like the distant past) or there will be a great deal of hellish damage done militarily.
My sincerest hope is the U.S. will be so far in debt that military action to satisfy angry constituents to somehow placate their thirst for continued BAU, will not be possible and we will move forward to our new reality in a peaceful manner.
You're on to something about the possible human reactions to a post-peak world. The Palin/Beck/Yergin line of thinking will lead to some serious conflict in the future. Fortunately, the US will be drowning in so much debt by 2030, foreign military adventures will be un-financable (is that even a term?).
Quick side note - hopefully the then-POTUS won't think 'well, if we can't pay for things tomorrow, let's just blow up today!' I'd like to think self-preservation is a stronger instinct then attachment to the status-quo.
On the down side, drowning in debt will NOT keep Americans from turning on each other. One does not need a 10,000 mile supply chain to conduct military operations against the town/city/county/state down the road (see the US Civil War for precedent about how efficient we are at killing each other in a lower energy world). Any thoughts?
Generally, violent crime actually goes down during recessions and depressions--maybe people are just too depressed to get violent?
On the other hand, I did not find this very comforting:
http://www.startribune.com/69003682.html?elr=KArksDyycyUtyycyUiD3aPc:_Yy...
"In a year of job losses and foreclosures, Americans have spent record-breaking amounts of money on guns and ammunition. The most obvious sign of their demand: empty ammunition shelves. At points during the past year, bullets have been selling faster than factories could make them.
Gun owners have bought about 12 billion rounds of ammunition in the past year, industry officials estimate. That's up from 7 billion to 10 billion in a recent years."
I think fear most is this kind of fear.
I've read that as well. My thinking was that as prices rise and resources dwindle, people may turn all those guns on each other.
It would be interesting to see stats on who is buying the guns and ammo. My bet is 80% are middle-class family men, very few of whom intend to be any threat to society.
Paleocon,
I know people buying ammo and it seems to me that you are right-the guys buying it are mostly middle class or working guys who are afraid that in times to come it will be unavailable-in thier view mostly because they expect guns and ammo to be either outlawed or taxed out of existence.A smaller portion are simply afraid-of a general collapse or of a possible police state.
But most of them imo are simply buying and stashing for no other reason than everybody else is doing the same-it's an ammo bubble.
But if tshtf ammo is going to be a very highly regarded trade and barter item-easy to store, easy to count, compact, and intrinsically a DOUBLY powerful sort of currency-if you don't have enough to buy what you must have, only a very little is enough to commit an armed robbery.;)
I'm one of the ones concerned about a general collapse of our society and the possibility of anarchy.
It's ironic in a sense in that I am much less of a doomer than most regulars here but I apparently have done a lot more hardnosed thinking than most about what collapse is really going to mean if it comes.
Or maybe others refrain from posting thier thoughts in this respect out of a desire to appear more civilized and genteel to the rest of the audience.
I do note the fact that those who are actually in favor of a fast collapse, or simply expect a fast collapse,never say in so many words just what it will be like.I guess they haver a hard time wuth words like murder, prostitution,starvation,martial law,refugee camp, and so forth.
"Not enough bullets," I used to say. Now there are.
Finance and productivity are two different things.Most of us may emerge from our current financial crisis well sheared and shivering but that's what we get for being sheep , rather than wolves.
Proof?Germany produced a good enough war machine in ten years after having a runaway inflation to come within easy striking distance of world domination-there is a real possibility Hitler would have won if he had stuck to politics and let his general staff run the war.
That is one xxxx of a lot of productivity coming from a thoroughly busted country.
We aren't going to die because debts go bad-unless the debts lead to WWIII.Most of us will be ok , in terms of eating and staying warm and rudimentary medical care no matter how screwed up the money system gets-unless the civil authorities lose control of the country.
But when we add peak oil and a few other things to the mix,I am not so sure the civil authirities WILL remain in control.
To his list I would add:
Asphalt and Concrete Streets and Sidewalks ----- Dirt Tracks, CobbleStone and Brick, and natural paths.
deleted
Well that doesn't make any sense. All of our roads already exist. They wont just disapear.
You don't make any sense. Roads disappear pretty quickly without being paved again.
Yep, it's astonishing how quickly asphalt roads deteriorate, especially under two specific circumstances:
Without regular maintenance, the potholes show up within a few winters when the cracks aren't filled and sealing is neglected. Next time you are on the road, take a look at how much effort goes into filling the cracks. The reason is that if the maintenance crew isn't right on the ball, those cracks turn into more significant damage very quickly as the moisture gets in.
Pavements serve well for years under time and traffic, but then fail precipitously. The right timing of periodic pavement preservation activities — at the ‘Preventive Trigger’ point — will prolong the service life of pavements again and again. Source: Pavement Preservation: It's All In the Timing
Typically during recessions road maintenance is deferred, but that just costs plenty later when the road has to be rehabilitated at great cost.
I expect as the money stays tight, essential road maintenance will again be deferred. Eventually we will have so many roads that need to be completely rehabilitated (a very costly activity) that there will not be enough money to go around. The average travel speed will drop bit by bit and trucks will be prevented from going on certain roads and bridges in an effort to keep whatever road is left a little longer.
So, in my view, buying this sort of car makes little sense:
There simply will be too few roads in good enough condition to make all the extra work put into the aerodynamics worth it.
Aww, darn aangel! I like the Aptera...
But the idea that because the roads already exist so why worry is not well thought out. Road crews in New England, and I assume any northern situation, are not happy at all about a 3-fold increase in asphalt costs. I really do not see how small towns will be able to keep the paved roads paved, and bus their children to the schools, and heat the schools when energy prices go up much more, forget about during oil shortages. Towns here in New England are up against the wall as it is.
The culvert in the paved road by our house should have been replaced a few years ago. This summer they came and filled in the growing slump in the road with hot-patch. I doubt that culvert is going to be fixed any time soon. Maybe if the water it drains starts flowing across the road...
Excellent job. And likely appropriately upbeat for their first introduction to the topic.
I find a graph can have a lot of impact, too. Would you show this to your students? Maybe at the end of the semester ;-) ?
This is a scenario generated almost almost four decades ago by a certain now-famous team at MIT:
I haven't confirmed this yet, but apparently their model did not include depleting oil. (I have Limits to Growth: 30-year Update, I just haven't checked the oil parameter yet.)
And here is a researcher whose work seems to show that we are following the curves pretty well (there is a podcast):
http://www.csiro.au/multimedia/Growth-Limits.html
Here is his working paper:
http://www.csiro.au/resources/SEEDPaper19.html
aangel - I am pretty sure (from memory) that the MIT study used the composite variable called "Resources" to represent things like non-renewable energy, key minerals, etc. So you see in the graph a Resources line that represents all of those. They did not call out oil by itself.
You are correct TE. And this is, I think, the flaw that causes some peculiarities with their results. I think they got the basic idea right but by conflating energy flow with materials they may have missed some important dynamics. The separation of energy and material flows is, I believe, a needed correction. I am working on it myself.
Electronic gadgetry to disapear ? candles ??
I really think you missed the point on those one.
I really doubt that the 3 trillon $ ICT industry will completely disappear. It make me want to stop reading this whole thing.
common, I still sell 10 years old computer for internet surfing because they still do the job.
And these things are getting exponentially more energy efficient and use less and less resources to make. Some electronic IC and display are done with organic material as we are speaking.
Could be more like, "that'll be the only cheap entertainment you'll have left." (including friends)
Also , Electric light bulbs ! Are you really saying CANDLE ??? Sorry but my 2005 old LED flashlight stay on for 100hrs with one 6AA ni-mh charge. (rated 1000 recharge)
I would like to read something related but with more dept and research,
any suggestion ?
How many 20 year old computers do you work with?
Computers are the most embedded energy dense materials in mass production in the history of humanity. They have the longest supply chains, the biggest uses of exotic minerals and other rare resources, they have an economic production model based on a doubling of performance every 18 months, and a 100% replacement cycle every 3 -5 years. The end product has built in obsolescence, modern tin-free solder has a limited shelf life, even the product is left on the shelf and never switched on.
In the zero or negative growth economy all the existing electronics companies would collapse. There would be no new hardware being made.
pkoi
I think perhaps you miss the point.
In energy terms you are right, LEDs are incredibly more efficient and much easier to maintain (you just buy new ones at very low opportunity cost - light will cost you almost nothing for years). But, as other posts indicate, LEDs are a product of very complex infrastructure, division of labour, and at base like any ecosystem, delivery of resources having an equivalent to the photosynthesis energy capture that underpins the natural world.
If you however, due to loss of complexity you are back to candles (via loss of the interlinked infrastructure and etc) then light (candles) will cost you personally an arm and a leg and will need to be weighed against similarly costly food. Very lucky if you get candles, more likely back to dipping rushes in tallow residues not worth eating, which is what most of my not very distant ancestors had to do.
Sorry, I'm not buying this list. Many of the items on the list seem to be poorly thought out.
Electric lights, for example. LED lights use little energy, and you can already get solar-powered flashlights suitable for lighting a room or reading: http://www.bogolight.com/ (BTW, I have some, and I recommend them. You buy one, and it pays for sending one to poor folks in Africa.)
Fossil fuels will not instantly go to zero. There will be shortages and pain, but there will be time to adapt and plenty of motivation to adapt.
We use vast amounts of energy and resources because they are available and cheap; we can get by on much less. I have reduced my personal fossil fuel consumption by something like 90% with no reduction in lifestyle: solar PV and solar water heating, better insulation, ride a road bike and e-bike to work, etc.
My parents went through the Depression (my mother remembers jack-rabbit stew) and rationing during WW II. We can have a good life with much lower energy and resources. There will be changes, but many things will be better than what is shown on this list.
I highly recommend this DoE report to you;
Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management
E.g. the first Hirsch report. Some key points:
I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusions (I really don't know), but it isn't clear that the Hirsch report paints quite as stark a picture as you do above. I'd say Westexas' ExportLand modeling is more concerning than Hirsch's, but Hirsch may be understating things for political reasons. Either way, Techsan is right, Hirsch says 20 years of pain, but we'll most likely adapt. As Hirsch points out, we'll have ample motivation to adapt.
Let me highlight a few quotes;
You said, "but we'll most likely adapt."
Oh, I have no doubt we'll adapt, and it might resemble what Dan lists above; even the Easter Islanders adapted, but it certainly wasn't back to anything like the lifestyle they had previously. The Greenlanders and Anasazi had a different way of adapting...
The land export model is going to be the real kick in the teeth for importing nations.
Cars & trucks - Electric cars and trucks.
Airplane travel - Airplanes powered with anhydrous ammonia.
Power boats, barges, ocean liners, cargo ships, & super tankers - Solar/ammonia hybrid.
Supermarket food shopping - Automated online shopping.
Vacations - Hotels in low Earth orbit.
Restaurant & fast food meals - Online reservations. Order by keypad (no order takers or waiter/waitress). Automated meal preparation.
Electronic gadgetry (TVs, computers, ipods, cell phones, DVDs, etc.) - Fusion of internet and cable TV. 3D sets (without glasses). All programming on demand from servers. Virtual reality video games.
Hollywood movies & CDs/downloads of your favorite bands -Movies and concerts on demand PPV.
Power tools - Robots.
Electricity on demand - Distributed smart grid. Grid tied PV and wind generators. EV batteries connected to grid for power leveling.
Electric light bulbs - LEDs.
Universities & colleges - Virtual college. Trade specific online training centers. Brick and morter schools will become outdated.
Large grade-schools & high-schools - Home schooling online. Interactive video conference classrooms. No need to travel to school and back.
Huge farms in California & Mid-west supplying our food - Automated food production. Genetically engineered plants and animals. Robotic field workers.
Oil/gas/electric home-heating - Fossil fuels to renewables to fusion reactors.
Air conditioning - Solar powered.
Hot showers - Please. Hot showers have been around for 12,000 years.
Running water - See hot showers.
Swimming pools - An essential part of every home in the suburbs.
Parking lots - All parking lots include high voltage charging stations.
Skyscrapers & huge office buildings - Housing and office integrated so people can live work and shop all in the same building.
Refrigerators & freezers - Automated. Dispenses food on voice command.
Credit card, loans, & debt in general - All cash and paper transactions eliminated. All transactions done electronically.
Skiing & snowboarding - Indoor ski resorts open year round.
Budweiser, fine wines, & mixed drinks - Automatically mixed and dispensed from refrigerator.
One-family households - More people living in apartments.
Divorce & re-marriage - Done online for a small filing fee.
Clothes shopping - Online ordered, custom made to specs. Everyone can custom design their own clothes.
Terrorist threats (i.e. trying to grow commerce in an increasingly hostile global political climate) - Automated surveillance, AI enhanced crime prevention.
Climate threats (i.e. trying to grow your food in an increasingly unpredictable physical climate) - Geoengineering.
Overweight & obese people - Engineered foods that don't make you fat.
Putting out recycling & garbage - Recycling will become the major industry.
Police protection - Complete 24 hour surveillance. Security computers monitor and allert police. Convicts have chips implanted for monitoring.
Probably my favorite item on the list, but perhaps you should add high schools in low earth orbit--kind of like "Orbit High School" in the Jetsons.
A slightly modified Jetsons intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpBqYcGqaaw&NR=1
Yeah, that really gave me a laugh, too.
We will have to recycle everything because of shortages, but apparently we will have plenty of energy for everyone to blast regularly into space for a nice little vacation.
This gives a whole new meaning to techno-fantasy.
Thanks for the nostalgia. I used to be a true believer back in the day ... sigh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyinD6ZDqeg&feature=related (the not so cool George version)
IIRC, a certain wealthy space tourist coughed up some jing to spend of few nights at the ISS. That makes it a hotel in my book. ;)
I think you forgot to mention;
Industrial Civilisation => The Singularity! Always liked that bedtime story.
What's so bad about interacting with real flesh and blood people?
Do we really need to seal our selves off from eachother?
What's a criminal, and who decides?
Sounds like everyone will have all their material needs reached, but what about the spirit? What about a chance meeting with an old friend on the street? What about passing notes in class? What about fights on the playground? What about doing what you're not "supposed" to? The future you're proposing doesn't sound to me like life at all. It sounds like a poor facsimile, a staged existence, a trip to Disney Land. No thank you. I want to live the life of a wild animal, not the life of a bear at the zoo. I want to see real people, face to face. I want real food, prepared by human hands and delivered with a smile. I want to flirt with the waitress, and bullsh!t with the bartender. I want to climb real trees, feel the scrape of the bark and the sweet sent of sap.
I sat and watched a field of cows a couple days ago. I marveled at the simple life of a cow. How every aspect of the cow's life was under the direction of a farmer. From birth, to mating, to death. I wondered how centuries of this simple life must have transformed a wild animal into a domestic beast of burden. Then I began to wonder; is man the same way? Have years of domestication made us into something less? I can only imagine that the kind of future you propose will guarantee this fate.
Here's to being alive!
-Steve Hemstreet
I agree - this list sounds poorly thought out and overly negative.
I mean seriously, lower consumption means less divorce & re-marriage, with a revival of the "traditional family values" of just gritting your teeth and staying in an unhappy relationship instead?? Or less police protection, with or without neighborhood watch groups (remember, we've had police of one sort or another for a very long time, even back when human civilisation consumed a great deal less than we do now)?
Lower consumption means a lot of things, and many of them will negatively affect our quality of life. But I don't think this list is a good summary of the effects of contextually enforced lwoered consumption levels.
I'm not quite as fargone as Nick, but I think many of the items on the righthand side of the chart don't make sense. Partly this may be a matter of timescale, I'm thinking roughly a generation out, maybe Dan is thinking about a sustainable situation a couple of centuries out. In any case a few items stood out as old fashioned energy inefficient means, among them horses and mules, and candles. They have the advantage of not needing a high tech support structure, but in terms of energy efficiency, these are pretty inefficient. We've talked about horses, versus bio-fuel powered tractors on the farm, and IIRC concluded that animal power takes a much greater fraction of the available land area. Same thing for candles, very few lumens per BTU.
I don't see energy as being forever short either. On an energy basis, wind solar, and probably a few other developing "renewable types" are bootstrapable, i.e. they could be built out with renewable energy inputs only. Of course as higher quality materials get scarcer, things will get tougher. But, with recycling, and the mining of garbage dumps, we will have a large pool available for quite a while (although these materials will gradually be dissipated). But, I think the material dissipation timescale is probably a couple of lifetimes. So for our kids lifetimes at least, the RHS chart goes too far.
Of course the key, is to make the transition in a relatively peaceful manner. Resistance, is not just futile, most forms will accelerate the descent rate. So it depends upon having a critical mass of people that know what is going on, to oppose those who will be looking for scapecoats (like you know environmentalists), rather than making their own transitions.
Anyway. This is a great start. Just a few mods needed. Its by far the best intro to the subject I've seen!
Horses have been proven to be able to power a farm. As far as I know no example of a bio-fuel run farm has been demonstrated that produces the same level of production as the horse. All the in theory studies I've seen do not include the energy needed to produce the fertilizer and extra equipment required, tractors, bio-fuel production equipment, etc.
Decennia or centuries, the current cargo ships could be replaced by electric ships, not only by sail-boats.
"They have the advantage of not needing a high tech support structure"
I have questions about some of the points on the right, but I think you have put your finger on the central issue here--if there is a total or near total collapse of the support structure, all sorts of things that would have made sense from a purely energy efficiency stand point become impossible.
For example, no matter how poor the BTU per lumen ratio is for candles, if you can go into your back yard and get the wax for the candles from your bee hive, but there is no where to get an LED or the electricity to run it (or the money to pay for it), which are you going to use? (And I speak as one whose house is mostly lit with LEDs and CFLs, with only the occasional candle for romantic purposes ;-)
Per-capita energy consumption could be potentially tripled just by dropping the population by 2/3!
Right-wing lunacy of course, but I wonder if we'll be hearing more like this when the real suffering begins.
We are surely going to hear all manner of rubbish as things devolve, and some of this demogoguery will doubtless affect policy.
Of course, people never include themselves in the tally of those to be eliminated. Most are imagining eliminating their imagined image of the great mass of mostly brown, black and yellow poor women and their broods.
Of course, these poorest of the world's population use essentially none of the world's fossil fuels so eliminating them is simply a racist, classist, sexist fantasy, not anything that could ever increase availability of energy to anyone.
Now it you eliminated just the top fifth of the world's top consumers of energy, that would in theory free up vast quantities for those that have been deprived of almost any benefit of the ff bonanza. But the top fifth would almost surely include those proposing such means, so they don't want to actually look at this.
I do wonder, along with WT, when the world will decide that the quarter or so of the world's energy and resources that the twentieth or so of the earth's population (USA) uses will be seen by the rest of the world as an intolerable inequality.
dohboi,
I am sympathetic-but-
One fourth or another of that other four fifths is sure to emulate us if we emigrate to Mars or something-the whole show will play out again in a generation with nly minor changes in the script but a new cast..Things happen faster these days-the third world would industrialize in a small fraction of the time it took us, given the resources.
As far as WT'S question goes-they(the ones literate and intelligent enough) already see it that way-they just haven't figured out how to do anything about it.
About a fourth of them are intent on joining the party, seeing that as a possibility.
The rest would gladly be rid of us if they could.My personal opinion only of course.
"the whole show will play out again"
This is indeed the problem. That's why in a sense the poisonous idea of industrial expansionism that the West has bequeathed to the world is potentially even more dangerous than the actual chemical toxins that western industrialism has produced.
But it still is something of an assumption that 'everyone else will be just as bad as we were.' It sounds a bit like that last recourse of scoundrels: If I don't do it, somebody else will--a line of thought that can be used to rationalize pretty much any kind of immorality.
Hi dohboi,
You make a very good point, but it is also a troubling one. Our nearly 7B humans is not sustainable over the long run even with vast new sources of energy. (I assume this statement is accepted by most TOD folks.)
I'm a fan of Lester Brown's Plan B and his ideas for population reduction - which don't seem to be "racist, classist, sexist fantasy". It seems that humans could cut the global population to 2 or 3B by 2100 with sensible family planning - obviously many issues involved, but I think it could be done in a voluntary and respectful manner.
I think it is obvious to most TOD folks, that the developed western nations (US in particular) need to acknowledge thier disproportionate consumption of natural resources and take the necessary steps to correct that imbalance by consuming less per person and also reducing our population to a 100 million or so by 2100(of course lots of issues with implementing this statement).
My main point is that, hopefully, we can agree on both a solid goal (say 2.5B by 2100), and also do it in a fashion that is not "racist, classist, sexist fantasy". Do you think there is any hope for this notion?
Most religions are for-profit business organizations.
They demand increasingly larger flocks of believers to be dropping their tithes into the collection basket.
Which is why they tell their flocks to "be like fruit flies and multiply".
Probably a good 80% of the population is filled with unthinking believers.
So it ain't going to happen. Not in a civil way.
Sounds like a good description of the "global warming" scam.
Much of what is described I have lived. For more than two decades my wife and I lived in small Native villages in northern Alaska. For seven of those years we followed what could be described as a primitive lifestyle relying for most of our basic needs (shelter, food, heat, etc.) on what we could take from our immediate environment. During that time we lived in small cabins with no electricity, running water, telephone, indoor toilet, etc. We hunted, set fish nets, cut firewood, traveled by dog team and picked berries. There were no roads to the outside world and no tv, Internet, restaurants, theaters, shopping malls or doctors within 90 roadless miles. We never considered it a hardship. Indeed, those were some of our fondest memories. Could we go back to those times? Perhaps not, at least not entirely at this stage of our lives. However, we certainly feel confident that we could get by with much less than most people now take for granted. We had one very big advantage in those days. We lived with Native Alaskans who welcomed and incorporated us into their subsistence based lifestyle. In the times to come being part of a close knit, cooperative group will be essential.
IMO a lot of the hardship predicted will be psychological, not physical. Matt Savinar discusses this quite often on his site. People in general, Americans especially, want to "succeed" and to most all of these predicted changes add up to failure. There is very little correlation between wealth and happiness, but happiness is elusive when one feels like a loser, and these changes predicted will transform a far greater % of Americans into "losers" (from a societal perspective). To witness this is action, talk to almost any 70 year old about today's 25 year olds-they are lazy, stupid, blah blah blah-none of this would be mentioned if the overall economy had grown as it did during the prime of the 70 year old's life. The system still commands that money =respect and as long as that dynamic holds, these changes will cause many to lose self respect, illogical as that may be.
Ex-soviet Russia is a good place to look into this. A lot of previously high status men drank themselves to death. Definition of success was different in theory, but just as illusory.
About 5 or 6 years ago, Paul Thompson posted The Twilight of the Modern World where he described the Four Stages of Collapse--recommended reading for those here who may not have run across it already.
Global warming, end of petrol, end of humanity... Always the same things.
As we have done in the past, we'll find the ways to get a good life.
In 1850 people thought towns will be buried under the dung of horses, but we found coal then petrol, then electricity.
We will reduce petrol consumption, increase the use of electricity for the vehicules, find solutions for every problems.
Horse manure makes excellent fertilizer and as manures go it is non offensive to deal with. Farms were close in back then so likely it was see by many as a valuable resource.
Collapse has occurred numerous times in the past. You appear to be ignorant of that fact. Further, you appear to have a near religious belief in our current civilization's ability to always find a solution. Good luck with that combination!
"As we have done in the past, we'll find the ways to get a good life."
Evard, I am often told by friends that I do not have enough faith in Human Ingenuity, etc., but I do indeed have a great deal of faith in human ingenuity. Many of the examples used to illustrate the great power of human ingenuity are along the lines of the US military buildup after Pearl Harbor, or the Space Program after JFK's speech, but in these examples there was an external threat which was viewed as an existential threat to us as a Nation. Before Pearl Harbor there was nothing like a unified national voice in favor of the anti-fascist fight. The threat of the Soviet Union "taking over" space or the moon was a serious threat to the average American in those days. I am not at all convinced that the Average American will recognize that the very way that he or she lives... the way we have been taught is the best way to live on the planet — the envy of the world... is an existential threat to America and to the rest of the planet as well. I just don't see it. It is not that we are not ingenious, it is that we will not understand that we must change the way we live, because it is the way we live and conduct business that is the threat. The great rush to actually do something is likely to be very much to late.
It is also true that humans lived well during the times before the Industrial Revolution, but these ways of living were not some new discovery but were the product of centuries of development. Before the introduction of steam power and fossil fuels the pace of change in the human condition, over thousands of years, and the application of Human Ingenuity was a snail's pace.
i love that this list got panned, because it gives me renewed faith in the oil drum audience. there will be gloom - heck, there's gloom now and there's been gloom since the dawn of humankind - but doom is a long way off.
i feel bad for the kids he's teaching. as he's delivering a deathblow to their hopes, dreams and aspirations and undermining all the positive things their parents have ever told them about working hard in school and paying attention in class, they must be thinking, 'if all this end-of-the-modern-world-business is true, why am i sitting here right now? there's no opportunity ahead.'
A lot of interesting ideas. Some practical...and some not so much. But these discussions seem to often miss THE issue IMHO. Yes...we are a huge comsuming society that can significqntly cut a good bit. But what do we do with that huge chunk of the workforce which depends upon that consumption to earn their living. Just consider one segment: the food industry. Yes...it would be a great benefit if we cut the fast food industry out of the loop. But what do we do with the then millions of unemployed and relatively unskilled folks? Don't say retrain. If that were a solution it would be happening now. And retrained to do what? Build wind turbins? Please...get a grip. There are some ways of dealing with such a transistion but those would take decades (generations, actually) and huge amounts of capital. If you feel we have the time and the capital: great. Then from your perspective all it will take is for all TPTB to immediately start doing so. Good luck with that dream. But if you see the situation as I do we have neither the time, the capital or the will to make those changes. It's very difficult for me to not expect the transition to forced reduced consumption to be a very terribler time for a very big portion of our society.
That's why Robert Hirsch said a reasonable transition would take at least 20 years.
I hope he's right Will. I tend to think of something like 40 or 50 years. It's not difficult for me to think of a generation or two being greatly displaced.
"what do we do with that huge chunk of the workforce which depends upon that consumption to earn their living"
A crucial point, rock, largely overlooked.
ROCKMAN, Nick writes it will be less than 20 years because Hirsch didn't look at EV's.
Non of these peak oil prognosticators know what they're talking about. That's why no one (outside of the doomer community) takes the issue seriously.
Hirsch didn't look at water, environmental impacts, social equity, credit overshoot, non-energy limiters etc -in effect his and Rogers analysis just looked at liquid fuels when we are facing broader limits to growth than just that one.
i hear you, rock. transition always leaves some behind. definitely, things will be tough or terrible for lots of people, but i'd argue, by your definition, things have been very terrible for lots of people even in the best times in america (read: the last thirty years).
lots of folks point to an expected unemployment problem post-ff. for me, that makes no sense. if you are predicting that a great deal of mechanized oil-powered energy will be drained from the system... imagine:
...then we'll need tons and tons of people to do very menial work - like shoveling drainage ditches and repairing roads and carting stuff around town. will the pay be good? heck no. but will people have jobs? i would think post-ff lots of people with low academic attainment (and some with high academic attainment) would be needed to do lots of things that machines now do.
That assumes there's money available to pay people menial wages that each would do less than 1/100th the work of the machine you show above.
A hundred laborers cannot even start on the work that backhoe can do-and while it might not be possible to build new ones once the oil and coal are gone, I have no doubt that biofuels will go farther than human or horse fuel in getting heavy work done.
I do believe we are generally too dismissive as a group of the possibilities of making lemonade out of our current crop of lemons-nothing is certain of course but we just might find the will power to speed up a transition trowards sustainability nand ts might not hit the fan as fast as we expect,giving us a bigger window of opportunity.
I don't expect BAU to continue but I don't believe the case for it's early demise is airtight.
There are lots of possibilities that may not have yet been fully considered- for instance as times get tougher we are also going to see a generaton of oldsters die off, many of whom live in places close to jobs-thier houses will instead of selling for a song perhaps a few years down the road actually bring a premium price.
Large elderly vehicles may make it to that scrap yard faster than we think-and it is absolutely a sure thing imo that the average working person with a job can cut his energy use substantially and that he will do so-but not until he is forced to-gasoline and electricity are still ridiculously cheap in terms of labor-even a person on a limited fixed income can still use a clothes dryer and drive a paid for car.
Over the last year or two we have cut our personal use of gasoline by a fourth and we can cut it again by an other fourth with no real loss of anything except convenience.
Most of my Scots Irish nieghbors are not broke although very few are well off.They have looked at savings account interest returns and bought a small car in addition to thier pickup trucks and expect to wear the car out and only drive the truck when a load needs hauling.They have bought double glazed windows and extra attic insulation.
This sort of thing might take off faster than we think-there are a lot of people with cash who may decide thier money will earn a better return spent on conservation.
If the cost of electric cars turns out to be reasonable after the next five years or so, and the cost of gasoline is way up-and energy is rationed-the well to do may start buying pv on a grand scale.
Wind and pv might be the basis on the next big bubble-with the result being that the electricity will be useful whereas dead derivatives aren't.
I'm not actually predicting that things will play out like this-only that they might, possibly.
As far as the poor countries are concerded, I see little hope for them.
I'm quite confident that there won't be enough formal work to absorb all those people. Much of the infrastructure you say they might work on supports an economy that will be contracting and properly belongs to a past era. And, as Will points out, although we will likely prioritize infrastructure works to some extent, how much a society can spend on its infrastructure is closely related to its overall wealth. As wealth goes down, there is just no good reason to expect us to try to maintain or be able to maintain all our existing infrastructure. We are seeing early signs of this in Detroit as it shuts down neighborhoods because the cost of providing services there isn't worth it. Elsewhere in Michigan, paved roads are becoming dirt again because it's cheaper ($10,000 per mile instead of $100,000 per mile to repave).
So, I think that there will be oodles of "formally unemployed" for the next 100 years, minimum. (This is an opinion, so before anyone asks, no, I'm not going to back up the 100 year assertion.)
They will be forced to move to the informal economy and most everyone will scrape by as best they can. However, virtually no one is preparing for the informal economy because everyone is expecting a recovery of the formal economy so that they can get their old jobs back.
(The numbers for the first graph are actual as of 2007.)
The currently unemployed — including and especially Dan's students — really should be preparing for the rise of the informal economy which looks closer to how Africa's economies look:
One of my biggest concerns is the looming mass of unemployed people, especially young men...
"But what do we do with the then millions of unemployed and relatively unskilled folks?"
Typically, we go to war. Alternately, we have the CCC as an example. We could always pay people to put in rail lines the old fashioned way. If the government is paying for food and shelter, you might find a low-bidder on such a project that decides to do it that way. Maybe that's what Buffett is thinking.
"But what do we do with that huge chunk of the workforce which depends upon that consumption to earn their living."
That is the question everyone dances around trying not to get too close to it. The answer, of course, is brutally simple. They will either find a viable alternative way to make a living, or they will fall by the wayside - literally. The future will be far less abundant in terms of basic necessities, and the social safety net of modern society will be replaced by a far less accommodating system. Think the Great Depression of the 1930s. People went hungry, and many died from malnutrition-related diseases. The so-called "Okies" who wondered around the country desperately in search of work and who lived in ramshackle huts, tents and rattle trap cars and trucks had previously been people who had made a decent living, some in relatively high status jobs. Much will depend on how rapidly the current economic system contracts, but it could be a mistake to expect that the government will somehow come to the rescue and take care of those who cannot or will not adapt the the realities of survival in the coming years.
Hi Bert.
An analogy for you: The teenagers on Easter Island were likely indeed working very hard and paying attention in statue-making school. I'm sure they had great statue-making teachers telling them the exactly-correct way to make statues, and giving them inspiration that if they worked even harder, they could make even bigger statues.
I'm glad they didn't have any teachers expressing concern about resource depletion. That would've bummed them out, I'm sure.
-- Dan :-)
dan, teaching kids about resource depletion is great! but it's much much different than forecasting severe hardship. certainty is the calling card of the small-minded.
Hi Bert.
If I saw some real national preparations for our resource-depleted future, I'd be more confident. In the absence of such preparations (or even any real national discussion about their necessity) I have a feeling that material hardships are becoming more likely.
I claim no special knowledge of the future -- just trying to extrapolate trends, as everyone should.
--Dan
i hear you, dan.
if i may be so bold, i'd suggest that outlining the predicament might be a call-to-action to which your students could rise. perhaps your lecture would drive one student to choose to study tidal energy and another would get curious about plant breeding to make the most disease-resistant, prolific cucumber plant ever! who knows.
telling them that the future is a foregone conclusion is counter-productive, because at the root of your lesson is the concept that they are helpless.
As a professor, I can assure you that most students don't even follow what we are saying. Most of those that do, don't believe it. Those that are attentive and accepting are often emotionally mature enough to also handle hard truths. (Perhaps this suggests that the other strategies are really psychological strategies to avoid hearing things that the students cannot yet handle.)
I think we should all be humble enough to say that we cannot know for sure what the future holds, but we also should give our best judgment about what is coming, and certainly give students the important relevant information to draw their own conclusions.
I have found that many, especially the brightest, students find the information troubling but also exciting. A whole new world means that they are on the same level or better than most of their older peers, who only know how to do things the same old ways, ways that will soon be obsolete.
It is on the ecological front that I have the greatest conflicts about telling students just how dire our situation is.
Bert,
The root of my lesson is not that they are helpless, period. It's that industrial civilization is helpless in its efforts to revoke the Laws of Thermodynamics and the material limits of the Earth.
As I think I stress in the essay, they are very much not helpless in many other ways -- namely, in helping to make a transition to a liveable, lower-consumption society. I'd say that's a pretty big, complicated task requiring great intelligence, skill, and moral strength -- and I stress that we should probably start thinking about beginning the journey.
-- Dan
There have been doomers predicting malthusian declines for hundreds of years. You're always proved wrong. If you really believe in the sort of lifestlye you have presented, perhaps you should join the Amish church. I suspect most doomers wouldn't last long there. Railing against modern technology whilst using the internet is rather hypocritical, IMO.
Its just maths and logic. You cannot have an exponetially increasing population growing forever in a finite environment. At some point a limit will be reached, resources will be used up, environment will be degraded and the population will crash.
Humanity, using conservative estimates like eco footprint models, is already in 30% overshoot of carrying capacity according to mainstream environmental scientific thinking. There are plenty of other smart fellas like James Lovelock and Jay Hanson who think that we are nearer 90% overshoot and they have a case for thinking so.
There is a famous quote although I dont know who originaly came out with it;
"The only people who believe in constant growth on a finite planet are idiots and economists."
And since these "smart fellas" have this all figured out, when do they say the "population crash" will happen?
They both say this century.
Well that narrows it down some!
A good rule of thumb for charlatans is to make your predictions far off into the future so you can't be proved wrong until after your dead. lol
For 25 years people have told me I'm going to die some day, but I'm still alive. They must be wrong, and I'll live forever?
Please.
Leave the facts and logic out of this discussion.
Of course you are going to live forever. We all are.
Malthusian declines are an observable fact of nature. There aren't many ecosystems on the planet that aren't presently experiencing massive multi-species extinction events. If you choose not to look outside your own species, have a look at Africa. The United States seems to be in the first stages of its own collapse (and as a Canadian, it has my attention).
The neat thing about these principles of nature is that nature has equipped humans with finely tuned instruments to further one's understanding of them: Eyes.
In my experience (versus your opinion), there's no hypocrisy in railing against high-tech while using the Internet. Point of fact: One can use the Internet to reduce one's need of technology. The list of low-tech practical skills that I've picked up as a result of the Internet is large, from gardening to driving a team of horses. One can even go so far as to reduce one's dependence on the Internet via the Internet. Most of the two-hundred or so low-tech skills books on my shelves, not to mention a work-shop full of hand-tools, were attained with the help of the Internet.
Thanks for a great article Dan,
I've always thought that if you want a good look at what the future likely holds for the current crop of wealthy and/or highly industrialized countries you should look no further than the teeming cities of the so-called "developing" countries. South Asia. South America. Sub-sahara Africa. Come to think of it, just about anything near or just south of the equator.
After all, hundreds of millions of people already live in "modern" urban environments, but with much, MUCH lower resource consumption per capita, and so too much lower standards of living:
Painting a bright shiny picture of an idyllic Amish lifestyle with healthy happy people dancing the hours away at potlucks and farmers markets is actually an insanely unrealistic picture of what awaits us on the downside of resource depletion in an extremely overpopulated world. IMHO.
Cheers,
Jerry
Hi Jerry,
I worked in one of those places for awhile - air pollution was almost overpowering. It is amazing what environmental issues people will tolerate.
Jerry,
I hear you loud and clear.
But drugs can only be a real problem when they are against the law either locally or elsewhere.
And problems with guns have a way of sorting themselves out if everyone has access to a gun.
Lotsa dead people in the short run-but a safer and politer society in the longer run.This sounds very callous doubtlessly but over any extended period of time ....maybe armed is better.
I have taught several young women-social acquaintances and former wives and girl friends- the use of a pistol.
All of them were opposed to the idea at first, excepting a couple of country girls but now none of the will ever give up the feeling of security that comes with a personal weapon and the ability to use it.None ever felt safe on the street depending on society in the form of police to pritect them.
The first thing nasty govts do, once in power, is to collect the weapons of thier people.
Every big city today is built on the back of the supply of energy that they have had access to in the past, which has been high. Take those same cities and drop the energy levels that they have coming in to near zero, or even to the point where only the rich have it. The city will die-off in a bad way. In an energy limited Future cities that we know today will vanish in a few years time. Food and water are the big limiting factors for any city, cut that off and the city dies.
When will Water become a problem? Look around at fresh water resource depletion and you will get a better picture of things to come.
Bert wrote;
Funny, what Dan wrote about pretty much describes how my parents grew up in the depression, and they had very fond memories of their childhood. There will be opportunities in the future, but not quite like the one's people thought were going to be the norm just a couple of years ago.
And it is a public service to remove the certainty they have that they will just go on living just like they always have been. The future the Dan describes is not in absolute terms as you suggest, but in general ones;
From the article;
You might not like to hear this, Bert, but that is a different subject - denial.
will,
if dan is not certain about the future, then he should focus on teaching about resource depletion and the risks associated. one who *is* certain of the future uses language like this:
i don't know about you, will, but i can't see the future, and i don't pretend that i can. i hem and haw and hope and get depressed and all the rest. i do my best taking in as much information as i can, but still, i have a great deal of uncertainty. a good part of healthy maturity is becoming comfortable with uncertainty.
suggesting that i am in 'denial' implies that there is an unquestionable truth that you *know*, with which i refuse to agree or that i refuse to recognize. there is an unfathomable range of possibility ahead - for Earth and for humankind. i don't pretend that everything ahead of us (near-term or long-term) is going to be gumdrops and butterflies, but neither do i pretend to know 100% that we are destined to light our houses with candles.
certainty is delusional.
I say you are still in denial, and here's why; you hold out hope that Dan does not "know 100% that we are destined to light our house with candles", when in fact even if 75% the changes he mentions comes true, even you would admit he had a point.
Don't look at the list as "This has to be 100% exactly correct" but more of a direction we will be going as a result of energy descent. And why look at something like that with horror? It's how my parents grew up, and they reveled in stories about their childhood.
I see that you are relative new here; have you read the DoE report Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management? Did you know it was written close to 5 years ago? After reading the report, please share your thoughts on this question -If the global peak in oil production were to occur in 2012, what does that say about our economic prospects? What would the prospects be if it has already peaked?
will, now you're giving me homework? dewd, while you were looking up how long i've been commenting on tod, you may as well have read all my previous comments... since you seem very interested in what i think.
up above (under the backhoe pic) you talk about no one in the future having any money to pay workers. if that's the future you imagine -- the total collapse of the us economy -- you and i are at odds, and i feel a bit sorry for you that you must be leading your life just 'waiting for the big one'.
i don't view the future with horror (please extract your words from my mouth). i am making preparations for possible calamity, because calamity is possible, but that is not what i expect to happen, and that is absolutely not what i would tell any children in my care to expect.
"you talk about no one in the future having any money to pay workers."
That's not what I said, I simply questioned the same amount of liquidity to fund public works and private construction in a future economy that I project will be much more contracted than now.
I didn't say total collapse (and you would have to define your terms), I said the world he describes sounds like the one my parents grew up in.
You used the term "severe hardship", and most Americans would recoil with horror at the thought of enduring that in a permanent decline. If you prefer 'calamity', that works too.
Will, I see that you are relatively newer here. Wasn't it exciting when the Hirsch report came out? I would say that Hirsch would say we're likely to get more of the kind of crash we've already had. However, I'm near ground zero for the most oil-related parts of the crash (SE Michigan), and while it's clear that Hirsch et. al. were right, there is little sign that we're headed for what Dan's pointing out. That doesn't mean he's wrong (it would be nice to have more fellow cyclists), but I suspect Hirsch would disagree with Dan's prognosis.
I completely agree with you that kids shouldn't look at even that prognosis with horror (OK, maybe the war bit upthread). We live a lot like that - both parents bike to work (just put on the studded snow tires yesterday), one kid takes the bus, the other gets walked/biked to school, we live in a yuppie town but heat with wood, I bagged my first deer this year, etc. The kids think a lot of it is really cool. It's nice heating with wood. It's usually a lot of fun walking 4 miles to the farmer's market and back. They really like backpacking, horseback riding, driving small tractors, archery, planting/harvesting, tapping the maple, getting honey from our bees, etc. It's different, but it's no less enjoyable.
It's good that Dan is challenging their assumptions and pointing out problems. But Bert's right. Certainty is delusional.
Here's another point. I've been reading Prof. Richard Wilkinson's "Poverty and Progress". (A bit of research into the English wood/coal transition.) He points out that throughout human history, technological progress is usually in response to a challenge. Usually when there's no reason to change, there is very little change. However, when people are faced with a problem, they start looking for ways around it. The result is usually less satisfying in some way than the previous status quo, but as people adapt to the change they find ways to improve it further. In the end, though the transition was painful, things turn out well in the end. (He also points out that before major religions, people did a fine job controlling their populations through traditions, natural forms of birth control, and infanticide. He posits that this is also the case in the vast majority of natural, non-human populations. Malthus' original ideas, which he later modified, only occur in unusual cases where there is an unusual loss of natural resources.)
As Stuart pointed out many months ago, we really could switch to solar. It wouldn't take 20 years to make most of the switch.
I don't think Bert was dismissing the concern about resource depletion. He was dismissing the doomsaying that we will return to the 18th century. What the teenagers on Easter Island needed was someone who could give an accurate assessment of their resource predicament and productive proposals about how to respond. Nate Hagens has given us neither. His assessment that all resources are just like oil is foolish. And he gives no productive responses except to learn survival skills. The survival skills approach clearly didn't work on Easter Island.
Hi ganv. Nate didn't write the post. I did. -- Dan
Tell that to the few that survived. Oh, you mean they didn't have credentials like all the certified telephone-sanitizers?
I'm guessing that you don't anticipate teaching in high schools in low earth orbit? (See item about hotels in low earth orbit up the thread.)
hee hee. Yea -- Maybe it's just my small mind, but I'm pretty absolutely positive I'll be fully robotic at some point in the next few decades, floating in my hovercraft over a white-capped sea of microchips. Instamatic! That list is precious.
Yeah it's your small mind. That's why you have high school students laughing at you.
You mean...wait...They've been laughing at me? I thought they were laughing with me.
Oh no! Maybe I am a fool. Maybe all this "finite Earth" and "Laws of Thermodynamics" business is just nonsense. Maybe I'm wasting my time...my life...with this nonsense. Maybe it's just all wrong!
I'm sorry, sir. I don't have access to the revised Natural Laws that you seem to possess. (Heck, perhaps my "small mind" couldn't even understand them.) But I'm glad you do.
Keep up the good work debunking the Laws of Physics -- Dan
Dan, don't let Conservationist give you a hard time. He hits and runs negative bantor on this site thinking he will change people's minds about what lays ahead. He's a right wing extremist in his own myopically viewed world.
Funny how someone that promotes the idea that civilization won't collapse. That new energy technologies are available. That there is no mass "dieoff" just around the corner. And the general belief in human progress and potential for achievement is considered "negative banter".
The Negative Bantor: is you calling someone small minded. TOD has had folks post here that did not agree with the Die-off or Resource collaspe issues that the site tends to deal with. But when you call people names, or tend toward using other insults, you get labeled thusly.
Be more civil and you might get better play on your posts.
A good scientist should always consider the possibiltiy that his theories, or his understanding of theories could be wrong. Absolutes are for politicians (James Hansen for example).
http://www.glossynews.com/artman/publish/laws-of-nature-repealed-1291.shtml
Laws of Nature to be Repealed
Funny piece.
As I understand it, Industrial Civilization Inc. formally filed for exemption from the Laws of Nature around 1860, after the discovery of easy oil.
The application was denied by The Earth in 1861.
Industrial Civilization, however, chose to ignore the Earth's exemption denial on sound Conventional Economic reasoning. The executives figured that by just pushing ahead, maximizing short-term profits, and then investing them in the stock market, the eventual fine could be covered many times over.
We are currently waiting for the information on what the fine will be. Preliminary word from scientists suggests it might be a doozy.
-- Dan :-)
Are all the other teachers at this school Luddites as well?
Dan
Did you see this report posted at Energybulletin ?
"Continuously less and less (paper abstract)
by Chris Clugston
Abstract
The fundamental enabler of our industrialized American way of life is continuous access to enormous quantities of inexpensive nonrenewable natural resources (NNRs)—energy resources, metals, and minerals. Unfortunately, future NNR supplies will be insufficient to perpetuate our American way of life, for both geological reasons and geopolitical reasons.
Geologically, an ever-increasing number of NNRs are near, at, or past their peak production levels; NNR supplies available to the US are or will soon be in terminal decline."
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50623
The pdf report is pretty scary. See the tables with regard to peak minerals.
Hi.
Yea. Interesting. I think a prudent (and truly "wise") species would've started the transition back in the 70's, even when the resource projections were more controversial.
At this late stage in resource depletion...scary indeed. I think we really will need to change our species name to Homo Colossus, as Catton suggested. More appropriate.
sigh -- Dan
yea - sigh...
All one can do is try and get the message out, any way possible.
The fine itself might have been so manageable... it's the compounding interest and penalties that are going to knock our socks off.
You mean the "disasters and extreme weather" that the global warming scamsters have been predicting that never happened? IIRC, increased CO2 levels were supposed to make for MORE storms not LESS storms! lol
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6697013.html
Define "opportunity". If you mean the opportunity to trade derivatives, do Ponzi-finance, get filthy rich on other people's money, buy big cars, big houses, lots of plasma.... you're probably right.
Good.
If you are talking about the opportunity to live a good, meaningful life, to meet a mate, to raise a family, to learn, to teach, to develop useful skills, to build, to repair, to create, to contribute in countless ways.... you're wrong.
The future will likely be a time of enormous challenges. Such challenges always present opportunities. The future will present untold opportunities for good, meaningful, important lives. They just won't look like the lives lived over the past 50 years. The opportunities will be different.
I happen to think that the future will be more difficult. That's just my opinion. Perhaps there will be global awakening and concerted effort, and the future will be easier. That would be nice, but would, I think, still be very different. In any event, I do not believe that business as usual can continue, so the future will be inevitably be different than what we have experienced. So, the opportunities in the future will also be different. But there will be opportunities.
Who knows, these kids may have better "opportunities" than you, or I, ever did.
Brian
well said, brian. i agree entirely. i guess i meant 'opportunity' in the context of the question: 'what do you want to be when you grow up, timmy?' and timmy would tend to answer that question in terms of his current surroundings and circumstance.
but like i said, i agree with you entirely. there is a great deal of good that is possible from peaking energy supplies. see the final comment here: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5916/555071
Yes, but only if one starts by denying hope.
I've had this discussion with my ex-wife regarding the education of our children. It's taken her a few years, but she's finally understood that false hope is the worse thing we can give them.
I'm sure high school kids are smart enough not to take his teachings seriously. They probably get a lot of good laughs out of it (laughing is healthy). The question I have is why is he getting paid? If I were a taxpayer with a child in that school, I would want the child's time spent productively preparing for the future. This blog post highlights the problem with American schools and their pot smoking commie hippie teachers. Especially when they get to the college level. This is why American students are falling behind other countries in test scores. And why American companies can no longer produce competitive products.
Well said, sir. I think you have it all figured out.
dan, for the record, i don't subscribe to conservationist's tone or message here. conservationist isn't much of a conversationalist apparently.
this site is a place for people to put forward ideas, theories, predictions, expectations, etc. and to debate, discuss and, yes, argue. i think i set the wrong example with my talk about certainty. i apologize. my point is or was, we cannot be certain of the future, and i should have left it at that.
dan
Sometimes it's best to not feed the trolls.
Now I am convinced that you are in fact joking, Conservationist. From your name to this, your best screwball post, I realize now that you are not intending to be taken seriously. It is kind of you to take the time to bring some humor to this thread and others like it.
Bravo. This is priceless:
"This blog post highlights the problem with American schools and their pot smoking commie hippie teachers. Especially when they get to the college level. This is why American students are falling behind other countries in test scores. And why American companies can no longer produce competitive products."
What they should be hoping for is living better with less. Dashing their dreams! No, teaching them that learning is never done. That skills they thought they might need in the enconomy that they see out there window is not the only skills they should be preping for to use in their lifetimes.
Give them the picture of doom and gloom, but tell them they have the ability to change some of the doom and gloom by changing their actions now.
Having them learn how to make beer, bread, grow food, forge metals, wood work with hand tools, and many other skills will round out their educations that just learning to use a Computer can't.
Great food for thought. I wonder, what is the expected timeline for when I will wash my head in a bucket of cold water pumped with a handpump from my own hand dug well?
I fully agree that some things we do now is utterly unsustainable. Air travel three times a year to a warm island doing nothing all day, oversized vehicles, and intensive farming for meat production only. Those are the energy and resource intensive activities that will get rapidly more expensive. I can see that fading away and I could not care less.
But my solar panels will produce electricity for 40 years for a fixed price already lower then grid electricity costs: PV = ~20Euro ct, grid = ~25Euro ct. This is based on a 30 year writeoff, initial investment without loan and including an inverter replacement midway. Putting your money on the bank really doesn't make sense these days anyway.
Regular tours around the house to locate and eliminate standby electricity consumption and careful appliance selection will ensure not to exceed my own production of about 2100kWh, even while cooking and baking with electric power.
With carefull applicance selection means choosing an economic A++ refrigerator instead of an two-door American model with ice making machine included. A hifi set and television with low energy usage (just test it in the shop!) and a real on/off button, etc. Just thinking about the energy usage before buying something really helps (and don't believe the shop attendants).
Working on further isolating my house will make passive solar replace most of the natural gas usage for heating. I expect my solar hot water collector to function for the next 20 years with minimum maintenance.
Choosing to live close where I work means I can use my bicycle for 90% of travels and about 50% of all traveled kilometers (I intend to get that number up ;-) ). It's also a boost to health without having to pay for a gym subscription. It just makes me smile when hearing people complain about traffic, but not willing to do anything about it. On the other hand, I do get the occasional rain shower while the raincoat is still at home. Oh well...
The savings in energy expenditure and vehicle writeoffs are used to further reduce consumption and allows me to choose better (e.g. organic) nutritious foods and for buying a piece of land for when the shit really hit's the fan.
So you *can* have a comfortable life while maintaining a low resource footprint. Having (used to) that small footprint will perhaps make you less sensitive to the high prices that will come with resource scarcity.
Maybe a useful way to think about it is akin to an organization having to make repetitive rounds of budget cuts. The first round you cut out the discretionary stuff that is easy to let go. The next round you really have to start changing the way you operate, and become more efficient. A further round and now you really are having to get lean and mean. Yet another round, and now you completely reorganize and reconfigure, droping some of the things you have been doing completely. And on it goes, until either the organization reaches some level that is sustainable, or "sustainable" for that organization means "out of business".
What you've done so far have put you ahead of the game for the next round or two. That's the place all of us should want to be. The trick is, though, in keeping ahead of that downward-sloping curve, because we aren't done. There is a lot more ahead, and this is probably going to go on beyond all of our lifetimes.
If one goes out to walk, the first few steps are close to home, and close to our neighborhood. Styno is detailing many of the steps close to home- kudos!
My family has been taking many of these steps, and more, for the past ten years. Bigger gardens, more Permaculture, more insulations, energy saving, moved closer to work and community, etc. etc. Real retirement planning these days consists of such activities, and is less and less concerned with the financial world's money-money-money vision of future life. I am surprised at how much difference it makes to not spend every day, to buy food in bulk, shop at thrift stores, double up on housing, etc.
I don't know all the places we will go on our walk, but we are walking, and at least the changes to our home and neighborhood have become familiar. Hopefully, as we walk further, we'll become accustomed to all the changes, instead of simply trying to resist them.
seraphima
I suspect that the future is unpredictable enough that even in hindsight it won't be clear whether Nate Hagen or the Nick (see comments) was closer to right. Nate's story is simple and understandable, but makes simplifications that are closer to false than true. Take for example the approximation that we have used half of the resources. That is true for oil. Partly true for a few other things like gas. And simply false for almost everything else. The most interesting other thing is energy, and we currently use a tiny fraction of the solar power incident on the earth. It will be expensive to access this energy and we will use energy much more carefully in the future, but something like a factor of 3 in energy prices makes even silicon photovoltaics competitive.
Nate's list of things that will change seems pretty counter-productive to me. I plan to keep using my laptop. It pulls 30W and I can afford solar panels and batteries to supply 30 W. I suspect we will figure out how to make similar or more powerful devices even post-oil. Nate's list depends not primarily on the technical knowledge of limited resources, but on a guess that resource conflicts will pretty completely destabilize modern society. And that is a guess about the behavior of a very non-linear system under entirely new conditions...in my experience such guesses are almost certain to be mostly wrong.
Environmentalism has been plagued by doomsayers who predict dystopia that doesn't happen as predicted. I am pretty sure Nate is wrong that we will stop using power tools. (Peak oil does not mean peak electricity except with the addition of a bunch of guesses.) And as such, I think he (and many around here) are extending the problems of converting society to a rational environmentalism.
We should focus on the features of the future that can be predicted and give the students honest assessments of our uncertainties. Oil is going to get scarce and that will dramatically change their lifestyle. There are plenty of interesting consequences of this to explain to students without attaching so many guesses.
Again, Nate didn't write the post. I did. -- Dan
Sorry, I confused the poster and the author.
And your DSL modem? And the phone-line power and the GW of backbone routers and servers?
I charge my mobile phone via solar but I have no illusions that this means that the GSM/3G network requires nearly no power
.
The power to run the internet is nearly negligible compared with out total energy usage. It can easily be obtained from renewable sources. (See David MacKay's book if you want the detailed numbers. http://www.withouthotair.com/) The harder part will be contriving to power transportation, space heating, and agriculture from renewables. The argument that electronic gadgets and communications will not be available does not rest on shortages of energy. If the argument has any merit it rests on the guess that fossil fuel shortages will lead to the destabilization of society so that we can't maintain the infrastructure for the network and manufacturing the components. My point is simply that the connection of fossil fuel shortages to a full destabilization of society is a guess about a highly unpredictable system. Human ingenuity can't avoid the laws of thermodynamics, but I wouldn't bet against people finding ways to keep their computers and cell phones working in 100 years. And I definitely wouldn't conflate this guess with the hard reality that our fossil fuel based lifestyles are going to change.
In fact some developing countries have skipped traditional phone and power line installations. And instead have installed microwave towers for cell phone and wireless internet.
I run an ISP. Have for 15 years. The power to run the internet is NOT negligible. It is surprisingly large. I think of my business clients - every one of them with a big hub, multiple rack mount machines and whole call-centers of PCs running 24x7. Not like me, the ISP, where everything runs on a laptop - except the big machines in the 5 floor air conditioned multiple power sourced colo facility.
What is the "internet"? Just the routers? Just the amplifiers every ten or so poles on every road in every state? Just the servers in the colos? Just the servers in content provider sites? Do you add in the 24x7 client machines that contribute so much spam? What about Skype, Vonage and VOIP - now that many telcos run over packet? What about VISA, MasterCard, Amazon, FedE?
There are a number of studies on this. The net is communications of all sorts. And it has to be up 5 9's. 99.999. That alone boosts the emergy off the chart. The 5 9s is a huge energy suck. A net that worked 3/4 of the time - not even one '9' - would be much less energy intensive. But if the routers on your path worked only 3/4 of the time - let's see, 3/4 to the 20th power.... Might be ok in your neighborhood though.
You pay for the reliability with energy.
Agreed that it is difficult to define the net. But what fraction of total US electrical power goes to any reasonable definition of the net? Estimates are that total US computer electrical usage is 3% of the electrical supply, and the total usage would go down dramatically if power were more expensive so that people shut down machines not in use. I would be very surprised if you could defend a number for total net usage that was not a negligible fraction of the non-fossil fuel electricity supply (nuclear, hydro, and a bit from other sources.) The point is that people around here lump energy intensive activities like transportation with energy efficient high tech activities like computer networks and that leads to unreliable projections into the future. Transportation is going to change much more dramatically than computers or computer networks will.
The giant server farms for making searches in unsorted data could be optimized away by sorting the data in libraries and making net searches more like old time library searches.
"I plan to keep using my laptop."
Maybe not, or maybe YOU DO, but your PC chips may have other plans. Please see my post up aways re: computers fail in short order.
For anyone feeling a bit dislocated, I heard a great comment on the radio this morning :-
Interviewer : "So, how does the employment picture look, going forward ?"
Talking Head : "The jobs recovery in the future is closer now than it was a few months ago"
Anyone feeling better now ?
Having read most of the comments above it is clear that the big problems are denial and and those that are not able to think systemically. People just don't get it (or don't want to). They will be like the Katrina people at the Dome: "somebody do something!". Know this: people like me will be too busy saving their own butts and providing for their core group to help those that have their head in the sand. And when these unprepared folks decide that they are entitled to my preparations they're gonna find out how prepared some of us really are. Many of these people are long time friends, the ones that joked when I started 15 years ago building a sustainable home (passive/ active solar, gravity water, plenty of firewood and farmable land, etc.) They are the same ones that scoffed when I didn't sell the farm to developers when prices were sky high. They are the same people that will show up for a handout and find out that they just weren't great friends to begin with. Soon the sign goes up: Lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. In my version of the fable, the ants eat the grasshopper.
You sir, are spot on. Sometimes there is a lot of talking and very little communicating.
How does one subscribe to your newsletter?
I don't know what's more absurd. The fact that you think civilization will miraculously collapse (for whatever reason), or the fact that you think you could hold off a hoard of zombies with your shotgun. lol
Here's a clue for ya - it didn't happen in the past 15 years, and it won't happen in the next 15 years either. You're better off selling some of those dried tomatoes and shotgun shells (half off,) and put the money in the bank. Stop being the brunt of other people's jokes.
Civilization did collapse after Rome fell, so why not take a look at what happened there? A good place to start is "The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization" by Bryan Ward-Perkins, Oxford University Press, 2005. He looked at the archaeological evidence for the period immediately after the Roman collapse, which is the closest thing to where we find ourselves (assuming that our rapid exponential rise is nearing an end. At the end of the Roman period there were large potteries all over the empire that supplied local populations (even up into the Britain) will high quality pottery wares that you would love to have on you table today; beautiful finely glazed and decorated household goods that were widely distributed. All of these huge manufacturing facilities disappeared and the pottery that appears after is of late Neolithic quality and appears only in the households of the (limited) upper class. So it WAS back to the stone age, in effect. Coinage also disappears for hundreds of years: the monetary system completely broke down. Roman buildings were roofed with fired clay barrel tiles (still called Roman tiles). These also completely disappeared and were replaced with thatch and wood shake roofing, all of which is a very different level of shelter that must be laboriously replaced on a much more frequent basis. It's not as watertight, harbors insects, burns down easily and is ...primitive in comparison to the tile roofs. Archaeologists know when they have a Roman site because of the roof tiles. Writing as a commonplace skill disappeared. Pompeii provides a great window into writing as an essential and everyday part of life. Political posters have graffiti written on them, the brothel walls have numerous inscriptions from satisfied (or not) patrons, expressing their post-coital sentiments; signs at the front of businesses are essential for commerce, literacy was hard to estimate but was essential for business. All of this disappeared and literacy retreated to the confines of the church where it was used more often than not against an illiterate populous who was at the mercy the few literates in power. Books, including huge Roman libraries almost entirely disappeared. This is a fascinating story in itself; see "How the Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill to learn how little of that made it through to the present). A common theme in this thread is that such a thing can't happen!! (surely you're kidding Mr. Feynmann) You can study our civilization as a complex process that can be analyzed important indicator variables such as population size, or the amount of wealth in the system (global GDP) or the growth of the various financial indexes (sort of like looking at temperature and pressure in a steam engine). This has been done by Didier Sornette (Frenchman) at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics. Sornette found that these variables seem to increase at faster than exponential growth: the rate of change increases as the system size increase. The larger they get the faster they grow. This kind of thing happens in the physical world - earthquake ruptures, collapsing piles of sand when they are built one grain at a time; black hole formation. The system goes to infinity in a finite amount of time. The rock stress builds up faster and faster, then, BOOM earthquake. The BOOM is called a singularity. The singularity occurs at a critical time. Sornette calculates (in a more complex model) that the Dow Jones IA for example,seems to be headed for a singularity in 2042 - 2062. Other (feedbacks) factors may change the date of the singularity. Indeed, if you look at water shortages, soil loss, agricultural output decline, dead zone formation, ocean acidification, oceanic fish stock depletion, animal and plant species extinction, peak oil and minerals, and climate change disruption, there is plenty of reason to think that the faster and faster rate of change is gathering momentum. Sorry Nick, but there will be no Prius orders taken at the singularity. (See "2050: The End of the Growth Era?" by A Johansen & D Sornette, www. ess.ucla.edu/faculty/sornette/ENDofGROWTHeraESSAY3.pdf
I don't agree that civilization collapsed. Rome was conquered yes, but many of Rome's developments continue to this day.
You may not agree, but historical evidence shows quite conclusively that Roman civilization collapsed. Collapse doesn't mean everything was lost, nor does it mean that there is no chain of events between the civilization of that time and the renaissance a thousand years later. What it does mean is that the social and technical complexity of that civilization was lost and reverted to a lower level, as did the concordant use of energy and raw materials.
It's not hard to agree on the first part of the article, the current resource extraction cannot continue infinitively, and that we will be forced to dramatically step down our resource consumption - but it's harder to agree on the second part of the article.
Would we ever go back to 1800-style conditions? A full collapse of civilization as we know it is a possible scenario. It doesn't help i.e. that we've invented super-efficient LED lamps (headlights charged by small domestic solar panels, windmills or even a handcrank would be easier in use than a candle, using far less energy) as long as there aren't any factories producing them, or as long as the materials needed to construct such things are too expensive. With the "full collapse of the civilization as we know it"-scenario one will be pretty much limited to the technology that can be found on the scrapyard, repaired at home or made at home. Still, there should be significantly more technology available to us now than hundred years ago.
I believe that almost whatever happens, there will be some kind of civilization, global trade and an economical system. Maybe the downturn won't be too dramatic (i.e. is the OPEC "proven" reserves nearby realistic, and are their current production level restricted by political will or by natural constraints? We may be at peak oil now, but some people predict that the global oil production will be on a relatively steady plateau for decades. Maybe fusion power will be a reality)
New technology can seriously slash energy consumption, i.e. LED lamps, human-electric velocipeds instead of SUVs, battery powered "power" tools doesn't use that much energy, ships running on a combination of solar cell covered stiff sails, diesel engine and high-altitude power kites may get around using only a fraction of the diesel, etc. Arguably, there is more than energy that is over-consumed today, but we'll never be in shortage of carbon or silicon (only in shortage of electricity making such). The economical realities will gradually force people to cut down consumption drastically, repair and reuse instead of throw-away tools and resources, etc.
this post falls firmly in the camp of
"why can't we all just get along"
or
"all you need is love"
... we need to go back to a simpler time, where people lived in small towns, worked the land, and really cared about each other, and the environment...
if we could just get rid of the big city and the noise, pollution, bad morals, bad food, drugs, violence and alienation, we would be OK
here is a good slogan for this
Change You Can Believe In
"Hollywood movies & CDs/downloads of your favorite bands vs Community theater & neighborhood concerts by local artists & musicians"
Being near the entertainment factory – I have to disagree. The energy to create good theater or exceptional music physicaly is a full time job. In the depression traveling musicians would be supported by people who would willing give up a little bit of their extra energy (ie money) to listen to a Charlie Patton type person. It’s the economic basis for circuses
As for mass media – look at Indian cinema ie Bollywood” – most movies exhibitions were a simple outdoor projector over a physical medium in an intermittent power society. If the depression told us anything its hard times demand escapist entertainment.
As one who has been actively preparing for a low carbon lifestyle for over three years,(and we are baby boomers!!) I know how difficult it will be for most people survive in a permanently crashed economy..
We are attempting Radical Simplicity - Growing our own food, off grid, minimal income off our small holding - but it is constant hard work, and you are hostage to vagaries in the weather.
It must be remembered that we transited when things were good - very good and it would be well nigh impossible to have created our little place from a grazing paddock if we had no money or other resources...
Dan you are too optimistic - most will never be able to live as well as the Amish - they don't have the knowledge, nor the skills, nor the land - most will live in urban poverty - and it has already stared.
Dan is a declinist; so am I. To doomers, declinists are too optimistic, while to technocopians declinists are too pessimistic. The truth is, we really don't know for certain how the future is going to play out. There are a range of scenarios, each with a probability < 1.0. The declinist scenarios are midrange. Their probability is not certainty, neither are they zero.
Dan,
Thank you for the insightful post and for sharing your thoughts with your students. I hope you will also encourage them to appreciate how much we have to be grateful for and to use that as motivation for resource conservation and sharing.
This discussion is interesting because the one emotion that is running through all this that no one wants to mention is fear. The story that Dan presents is scary to some and totally accepted by others. It is hard to wrap our brains around having less. Our primitive brain screams "be afraid, you may not survive, be careful" so we lash out at the messenger. Super article and actually I am so far gone with what I think may be possible in the next hundred years that I found it optimistic!
Karen
There are a lot of layers of fear around here. There's the fear that out lives might become difficult. There is fear of the human capability to plunder the earth. There is fear of the unknowns in the future. And we try to grab control when we are afraid, which explains some of the survivalist responses. But if you found Dan's article optimistic, then I recommend pondering the huge range of possible futures of which he paints just one. I think the most likely is economic retrenchment and reorganization for much slower growth without societal collapse. Try reading David MacCay's book on sustainable energy http://www.withouthotair.com/ for a sensible non-fear-driven take on the energy situation.
Dan is leading this discussion with his high school students. I would call that fearless - at least I would were he doing that here in Portland Maine. Because he would not last long here. I hope he has a better clime. Though I cannot imagine much better.
"Do the right thing". I try to live by that. You bring up fear, Karen. Gear shift. And the important point isn't the fear Nick or Conservationist have, but the courage that Dan has. Dan is doing the "right thing".
I forgot. Thank you Dan. I hope you have a thousand students. Ten thousand students. (Sounds a lot like some Chinese curse, so let's hope you have help grading their papers.)
We think this and we think that, this guy is painting a picture of the stuck in time Amish(I respect them)in your head.
We can't go back in time is my personal opinion. We move on and make it work. Thinking that we can't do it, is just what this is all about. A groupthinking problem.
=A large group of people thinking that the problems ahead can't be overcome. We panic and convince eachother and that's it.
It really amazes me that you have gotten this far. How far would our ancesters have come with such an attitude.
Back to caves it is I guess. rince and repeat.
These are offcourse all personal opinions.
What never seems to be explained properly by anyone 'debunking' the 'doomer' views is how a many-variable chaotic and disintegrating system will suddenly ejaculate the technological miracles at the drop of a hat. The world we live in is heavily interlinked with countless subsystems all depending on each other. For the past century, roughly, the system has been on an up - due to plentiful supplies of energy and growth. 'If oil starts to become scarce we will just drive less and everything will be just the same. Or we could share cars!': It's a classic soundbite from someone who hasn't thought the situation through further than what they see is the primary problem. What about all the people *dependent* on the waste of others? The economy would suffer a major hit (taxation from fuel, businesses that rely on happy-motoring, car companies, repair shops,etc,etc,etc). Imagine this happening accross the whole system with each little economic crevice that relies on oil cutting back and conserving. Then, if by magic, we all feverently start heavily building replacement infrastructure with money from....... Its ok we can go into space and get what we need with money from......... Nevermind I can buy my new Prius with money from......... oh.
Since I was recommending caution about the doomsayers, I would like to point out that I didn't see anyone conjuring technological miracles. I am just skeptical of the guess that the end of oil means the end of electricity and the end of humans working together to solve our problems. The 'doomers' could be right, but that would be a result of a political collapse and descent into violence that is predicted with no more evidence than the cornucopians use to predict long term growth. ("It happened in the past..." doomers say "Rome fell", cornucopians say "10% stock growth for 80 years") Both of these are essentially driven by emotions of fear and greed. The one thing we have clear evidence for is the end of cheap oil. Why not focus what we tell the next generation on the things we know and separate out the guesses about what might result?
One thing that's missing off the right-hand side of this list, opposite electronics, is "books".
Hopefully, there will be enough print media on the downslope to preserve the most important information. Beyond a certain point, all of these exabytes of information will be lost - no electricity to retrieve it.
Jumping in late, and haven't had time to read all comments. Just a few responses of my own to the left column in Dan's chart:
"Bicycles, walking, electric scooters, horses, & mules": Might add a few things to that list. Best case there might be things like street cars in the larger cities and towns; worst case, there would at least be horse/mule drawn omnibuses. Best case railroads between towns and cities; worst case, stagecoach.
"Infrequent long journeys by trains and boat": Yes, for most people. I do not see regularly scheduled commercial airlines surviving. Must air travel go away altogether, though? The advantages of being able to span such great distances so rapidly are pretty high. We can't grow enough biofuels to keep all of the present level of civil aviation flying, but we can certainly grow enough to keep a few planes in the air. It is important enough that considerable effort will be expended on it before it is finally given up entirely.
"Sailboats, row-boats, canoes": Locally, mostly. I suspect that ferry boats will become more important again as bridges are permanently shut down for lack of maintenance funds. Barges on rivers and canals are very low energy transport, we should still have those. Maritime shipping really is pretty low energy; again, we could produce enough biofuels to keep some shipping going.
"Home gardens & local farmers markets": largely, yes, although I suspect that in any community of any size at all there will be some sort of retail establishment selling some foodstuffs, some imported at some distance from the local area.
"“Stay-cations” to local beaches, rivers, lakes, forests; Sunday’s at the creek": "Vacation" is an upper-class idea that gradually moved down the ladder to the middle, then working classes. It will gradually retreat back up the ladder again, but will probably not completely disappear, as long as the rich don't completely disappear. For most people, though, there won't be vacations, just holidays and recreation, all enjoyed locally.
"Cooking at home & family meals": Largely, yes, although there likely will be a return of boarding houses, and most communities of any size will likely still have places where one can buy a meal if that is what one needs and can afford.
"Entertaining friends at home, block parties, visiting among neighbors": Also local fairs and festivals, probably still some local participatory sports (with lots of spectators), civic functions.
"Community theater & neighborhood concerts by local artists & musicians": People used to make their own music in their homes. Anyone who could afford it had a piano; those who could not afford a piano might own a less expensive instrument. Only the very poorest had no way of making music, other than their own voices and simple rhythm instruments like spoons; they would still use those.
"Hand tools": Yes, but also to some extent a narrowing of present-day DIY and a return to local tradesmen and craftsmen. Tools are expensive. Some need some source of power, and if it isn't an electric motor, it is going to either have to be a foot treadle or a rotating belt that is powered by a water or wind mill. The scale of power tools is going to have to reverse, away from the portable, electric, and ubiquitous and back to a slightly larger scale that can be directly powered by renewable energy.
"Partial/multi-day electrical blackouts & limited-use electricity restrictions": Some people will simply have no electricity at all - either unavailable or unaffordable. Most will have some electricity, intermittent, unreliable, and costly; they will need to adapt to being able to live with as little of it as possible, and coping with long and unpredictable blackouts. Some might be fortunate enough to supplement or even entirely replace that costly and unreliable grid electricity with power that they generate themselves, either with PV panels or WTs or (in a very few cases), hydroelectric. Even these fortunate few are going to find that they have to cut way back and economize greatly on their electricity consumption.
"Candles & early bedtimes": Not quite so sure that electric light bulbs will be totally past history. The invention and introduction of electric light was a really, really big thing. There are a lot more houses still standing that were built in the electric light era than there are houses surviving from the pre-electric light era, because most of those burned down. I think it is more likely that people will have to get by with just one or two light bulbs rather than a whole house illuminated brightly, and yes, they might indeed have earlier bedtimes.
"Community colleges & trade apprenticing": To a large extent, yes. Actually, even the community colleges are somewhat questionable. We are going to have to do better and get people finished with their education sooner than that. We really need for students to have completed what is now a high school diploma when they are no older than 16, and if they need additional education for a trade, they need to have completed that study by the time they are 18. Only those few going on to the professions like law, medicine, or engineering will society be able to afford to keep in school past their 18th birthday. Thus, all of education is going to have to reinvent itself.
"Small community schools & home-schooling": One reason why schooling needs to be compressed is that we won't be able to send students very far to school each day, and there are limits to what communities will be able to provide within that local area. Home schooling works just fine for the younger kids, then some sort of small neighborhood cooperative school can suffice for the middle years. If they want to study for any sort of trade or profession, though, they will need better teachers and facilities than what most local school catchment areas can manage. Thus, students will need to leave home and board at the schools that provide that more advanced instruction. Only in the larger cities will students be able to advance all the way through high school and community college without leaving home. Boarding is more expensive, so students will need to be able to get through it fast and get going with their careers.
"Small farms everywhere (even in suburbs & cities) supplying our food": Yes, although there will still be some regional specialization and transport of some foods at a distance. Bananas were being shipped to cities throughout the US from Central America even in the late 19th century. Citrus can't be grown everywhere, but it can in FL, TX and CA, while cranberries can only be grown commercially in a few places like New England and the upper Midwest; products like these will continue to be shipped to other locales. I also suspect that grains will be produced in quantity in places well adapted to them, and shipped to the cities.
"Wood stoves, passive solar, insulation, sweaters, blankets, & long underwear": In the cities and towns, district heating might well become more common. These can utilize things like geothermal and CSP more affordably than individual homes can. This means a return to radiators, forced air might become just a memory.
"Shade trees, swimming holes, cool drinks, & sleeping on your porch": One old-time pattern that might make a comeback, if the railroads manage to keep running, is to pack up the family and send them up to the mountains for the summer, if you are well-to-do enough to afford that. Many of the large Southern cities used to become pretty depopulated in the summer, as anyone who could would just head to the hills if they could - as much to avoid contagion as for the sake of comfort.
"Cold showers, luke-warm baths & solar water heaters": And, unfortunately, maybe less-frequent bathing, and a necessary re-adjustment of attitudes about what level of personal smell is socially acceptable.
"Cisterns & hand pumps": Even the Romans had running water to some extent, I suspect that we are going to fight really hard to keep our municipal water systems running.
"Swimming holes; local rivers, lakes, & oceans; dipping your head in a bucket": The big question is whether we will be able to keep any open water safe enough to swim in. The only places where it might be safe to swim are places where no people are around for hundreds of miles; since those places will have no people, that might mean that swimming becomes mostly just a memory.
"Bike racks & hitching posts": And maybe Livery Stables, or a more modern day equivalent. Even in the days before automobiles, there were ways to rent transport when you only needed it now and again.
"Bat habitat & salvage projects": I suspect that most commercial buildings will go back to being no taller than the number of stories that most people can reasonable ascend by stairs - maybe 5-6 stories max. They will be no larger than what is possible to provide all offices with working windows. There might be issues about the amount of water pressure municipal systems are able to maintain, so fire fighting might be the thing that really vacates the skyscrapers for good.
"Root cellars, smoke-houses, drying racks, ice-houses, & salt barrels": Refrigeration is another really big thing, I think that we'll fight hard to retain it if at all possible. Household refrigerators will have to get much smaller, though. People may have to go back to shopping several times a week, rather than relying on the refrigerator so much to preserve perishables. Milk delivery will probably make a comeback. I don't know if the ice business will make a comeback, though. The water quality might be so bad that the ice is unsafe to use.
"Cash, bartering of goods, trading work": I suspect that credit unions might stay up and running, so there might be a little bit of credit to help out local self-employed business people and tradespeople. Checking accounts might still be around, too.
"Sledding, snowball fights, ice-skating": Cross-country skiing should still be around in areas with dependable snowfalls.
"Home-made wine, beer, hard cider, & moonshine": To some extent, although traditionally a brewery went in to any community that was large enough to support it. Wine and spirits transport well, and have traditionally been one of the most important trade goods.
"Extended-family or multi-family households (i.e. Grandma’s comin’ home…and so is Uncle Bob)": To some extent. Also plenty of unrelated boarders and live-in hired hands. Also lots of boarding houses.
"Gritting it out (& hopefully working it out) with support of extended family": Not sure if we'll just go back to the old ways, too much has changed. We'll transform and adjust to the new realities, but I'm not sure what that will actually look like when it comes to relationships.
"Hand-me-downs, mending, making": Sewing is due for a big comeback, though a new generation learning the skill is going to be an issue. I doubt that many people are going to go all the way back to homespun and home weaving, though. That took an absolutely huge amount of work for very little clothing. It is no accident that textiles were one of the very first things to be industrialized. They will be one of the last to be completely de-industrialized.
"Intimately knowing your neighbors & relying on them for your survival": yes, we'll get there. There will also be a lot of intermediating local institutions - churches, civic clubs, etc. - and those will be very important.
"Climate threats (i.e. trying to grow your food in an increasingly unpredictable physical climate)": Dealing with refugees might be a big issue in some places, too.
"Malnutrition & “just enough”; lean & skinny people": Eventually we'll get back to that. Food quality rather than caloric intake is likely to be a more immediate problem in places like the US.
"Honey & fruit": There are indeed going to have to be a lot more backyard beekeepers. CCD is spelling the near and certain end of the big migratory beekeepers. I suspect that there will still be some sugar production, though - beet sugar in appropriate parts of the US, and cane sugar imported from the tropics. Sugar has traditionally been an expensive luxury good. However, it is transportable and desirable enough that it has usually been an important trade good.
"Re-using everything & fixing stuff": Even more important is that stuff last in the first place and not need to be fixed or re-used. Durability is going to become extremely important, because people are not going to be able to afford to replace things.
"Neighborhood-watch groups": At the least. I suspect that eventually police departments are going to have no choice but to organize and supervise "police auxiliaries", which are essentially going to be militias. Better to have them under their control than have people off doing militias freelance - and possibly becoming an alternative and a rival to the police department. As these militias expand their focus, the police are going to have to narrow theirs, being perpetually underfunded and undermanned.
Glad to see you included "church" in your list -- I was going to add it otherwise. While the US is far more secular than it once was, I strongly expect local churches we grow in popularity if for no other reason than socialization. Sunday picnics and informal after-Church get-togethers will likely be where local business gets discussed, and the "in crowd" is determined.
As for police, I think many neighborhood groups under they eye of the local police would be better than the alternative, which is organized crime and protection rackets. Hopefully those 12B rounds bought last year will be put to good use preserving societal structure rather than destroying it.
One thing I think we are going to find is a reversal of the splintering process. It has gotten so bad that congregations will split because half think the front door should be painted red and half think it should be painted blue. That is going to have to go by the wayside as people come to value connectivity with their neighbors enough to set aside minor differences in opinion. That is not to say that everyone in a community is going to become one happy family, just that the multiple choices for church brands are going to become less multiple.
We are also likely to see a considerable decline in the phenomena of people driving considerable distances to attend a church, and of megachurches. People will attend a church that is within walking distance, and churches will only be as big as the population covered by a reasonable walking distance radius, at most. Churches that are willing to be open and tolerant toward newcomers that may not see eye to eye with them about everything will grow, those that are rigidly dogmatic will likely fade away.
An example of possible future housing, Fujian Tulous - secure, efficient, communal fortresses.
I'm of the opinion that this description can be applied (to some extent) to most or all of the items in Dan's list.
Senior moment, it was actually Dan's right-hand column that I was responding to.
Very handy, crystal-clear list of befores & afters.
It's exactly young people (like my two sons) I worry most about. I've just been fine-tuning my new site that gives them a whole system to scale down their eating to something like the majority of the world eats, but tasty, convenient, healthy, and simple to do (with a few easy new skills). Inspired by the 10:10Global.org carbon campaign, it's also a good way to gird ourselves for the post-oil great contraction. I had an email from an unemployed single dad who thought he could manage to make ends meet if he used it.
Lynn Shwadchuck
http://www.10in10diet.com/
A very interesting article and discussion. I would just like to mention that while the article makes sense possibly in the first stages of resource collapse (use less energy, walk everywhere, garden, etc.), later stages of collapse are likely to have no resemblance to the ideas presented. Why? The human overshoot is just too great.
At some point in the collapse process (possibly after many complex processes have broken down - financial system, economic way of life, transportation, etc.), maybe 10-50 years in the future, food and water distribution will break down. And then we will realize quickly that most places where huge segments of population live might are practically as barren as the the surface of the moon. I'm not just talking Las Vegas type areas - virtually any area that is overpopulated will quickly see almost every living thing gone as starving masses try to survive.
I doubt a swarm of locusts would be any worse than thousands, millions, or even billions of people devouring the last shreds of usable bio-mass in their immediate vicinity. History is full of civilizations that seem to be thriving entering a down phase that lasts for a while and then poof - mass starvation and everyone gone. All the home gardens in the world won't help if there are twice (3, 4, 5, 6 times?) as many people as are sustainable in an environment - the carrying capacity can rapidly go to ZERO if people takes all measures to not starve....
Whereas I expect some people to make it (like those living in great isolation and surviving on their own), the vast majority of those expecting to learn some depression era or Amish survival skills and survive within the context of a larger society will be overwhelmed in the final stages of collapse. Either by the insanity of the masses around them (killing for resource type stuff), or by the human-locust stuff mentioned above - the complete destruction of virtually all life-sustaining processes.
McCarthy. "The Road".
Agreed. The whole issue of "can't get there from here". For the past couple of years I've been living a much energy reduced lifestyle. Even almost a month without a car. Almost being about 1 week. I've learned things about "transition" and steps, but mostly I've come to understand how it will not happen until society is beyond the point of mitigation. Individuals and groups may have taken action, but society as a whole will not. And the individuals and groups will have to act counter to and in the face of an increasinly intolerant society.
Thank you for this great summary of the future, and for having the courage to tell the high school students the truth. They will eventually thank you; perhaps sooner than later.
The psychological demands of the future really mandate young people get a thorough exposure to the great thinking, i.e. literature of the ages. I'm talking about Dickens, Swift, Thoreau, Sinclair Lewis, Goethe, Cervantes, etc.
Corporate teamplayers will scoff at this, but the heyday of the teamplayer has come and gone. They are has-beens.
The future belongs not to the corporate conformist (butt-kisser), but to the humans with the courage to take the hero journey. Great literature read, discussed, and digested, shows young people that path.
Oil Future/s
Let me begin by saying that Oil does not exist in isolation and that there are many other factors involved.
I would suggest, however, that it is possible to glimpse some likely overall trends.
That said, if Oil were to remain the pre-dominant Global Energy source for the next 30-40 years, then Supply & Demand would suggest that the basic cost of Oil to the total GDP would increase significantly, over that time, given the general agreement that we are at or close to Peak Oil.
However, as the Costs of Oil Supply/Production escalate compared to total GDP, it will invariably reach an Oil Cost (based on a US$ Index) to GDP ratio, at which the Real Economy stumbles and heads back into recession.
In addition, the newer Deep Water fields and Unconventional sources, such as Tar Sands & Shale, the Costs will be much greater & the EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested) will be much lower.
Given these facts and that we will most likely face several more Oil Related Financial shocks, the time will come, in the not too distant future, when OIL/FOSSIL FUELS will cease to be perceived as THE VIABLE GLOBAL ENERGY SOURCE!
When that time comes, there will be a Tectonic shift away from the OIL/FOSSIL FUELS sector, as capital pours into a desperate search for alternative Energy sources.
As this occurs, investment in Exploration & New Technology for the OIL/FOSSIL FUELS sector will be decimated, causing the DEPLETION RATES for the OIL/FOSSIL FUELS sector to escalate rapidly.
The upshot of all of this is that both $20 & $200 are possible and may happen several times, over the short to medium term!
The real hard questions I've been asking myself and my kids lately are these:
How many cars will we need for a planet with 8 billion, or 9 billion, or ten billion people?
Will we need 4 billion cars, or maybe 5 0r 6 billion cars?
How many trucks and trains and boats will we need?
How many i-pods and i-phones and big screen televisions or computer monitors will we need?
How many weapons -- and which ones -- will we need?
We have a planet of billions of people who aspire to living something very close to the "Wealthy Developed World Lifestyle that is actually only lived by a small and shrinking class of people.
Bottom line: about 6 billion of us need to leave the planet in a very peaceful and orderly manner over the next ten years or so. No fighting about it.
How shall we do this? Draw straws? How many straws will we need for that?
How do the people who volunteer to exit the planet -- or who are chosen by others to leave the planet -- actually leave?
This is quite serious. We are producing more weapons than we did last year, and last year we produced more than the previous year, and so on.
The weapons we make and scatter over the planet are also increasingly lethal to humans as well as to the habitat we rely on to provide us a niche with the right kind of air, water, and soil to keep us alive.
I've been giving talks to kids at my childrens school for years -- and will continue to do so.
The key fact about human response to human overshoot is that we become violent, thus further wasting time and energy in the process of depleting and poisoning our planet further.
The key question then, is this: can some humans survive without resorting to mass murder -- war -- in order to survive.
This situation makes us ask what it means to be human, and whether or not violence -- to others and to our own habitat -- is our key characteristic.
War is an efficient way of aquiring resources, several billion years of evolution based around this cant be wrong. If we managed two world wars on the upslope of industrialization I'm sure we can squeeze in another on the downslope of ever diminishing energy and commodities... unfortunatly.
“I spit upon luxurious pleasures, not for their own sake, but because of the inconveniences that follow them.”
–Epicurus
This is reality as perceived by high schoolers, yes.
And they are ready for leadership - they KNOW they are living in a hollywood film at this point and this is the point in the movie when things get awesome and exciting. Yee haw!
In Portland, we have created a social glue across all 95-neighborhoods, based around creating living soil in yards and lawns, full of fruit and nut trees as well as bountiful gardens.
Mind you, we are WAY behind schedule and don't have enough per household to sustain the city with food for very long in the event of a liquid fuels disruption. One family's 60 day food supply could easily become 60 families' 1 day food supply if so many people became so senseless at the same time.
SO, let's look at the positive things we have in our arsenals:
1) I-phones: Steve Jobs has done more for America than either leading political party. Thank you Apple!
2) Smart use of technology to foster community preparation projects like this one: http://portland.brightneighbor.com/publicevent?id=318
3) "We The People" works in Portland. There is no one leader - there are many leaders and people actively involved with their own self-governance, though we are also chained to the US dollar and are dependent on paying back dollar debts incurred through everyone's collective, yet individual financial decisions.
4) Food Stamps. Let's face it - many of the kids in this teacher's experiment are probably on them - and without the US government subsidizing people's food cabinets, we would already have unacceptable disorder.
So, I view this study as a business plan for America... the right column is the hot new job sector. Those kids should learn a trade - quickly.
Respectfully,
Randy White
www.brightneighbor.com
www.brightneighbor..tv
PS - You should lobby to have Imidacloprid banned in your community to save the lives of your bees.
Hi POB,
whats the current head count for the city of Portland and is that increasing or decreasing at the moment?
Another thought, something Dan really didn't include in his list, is the whole category of communications. A very great deal depends upon whether or not we are going to be able to continue to manufacture silicon wafers and the integrated circuits imprinted upon them. If we can, then even with intermittent, non-universal electricity we should be able to continue to have some computers, some internet, some television, some of most of the electronic communications technologies we enjoy now. It is a pretty big "if", though, as IC manufacture is some of the highest of the high-tech stuff we do; I just really question if a society can decline so far in so many other ways and still sustain a technology and industry at that level. Without the ICs, we are back to vacuum tube technology at best. In that case, that means no cell phones, no cordless phones, no ipods, no GPS units, no FRS walkie talkies, no digital cameras, no satelites, no portable calculators, no computers, no internet.
What could we still have?
We could still have local telephone systems with manual switchboards. To what extent we could maintain long-distance telephony would be questionable. I'm sure that great effort will be made to sustain the ability of government officials in Washington to place calls across the country. Whether ordinary people will continue to be able to make or receive long distance calls is more questionable, as is overseas calling; I suspect that the transoceanic cables will gradually blink out one by one and few will be replaced. We might get down to a single cable between North America and Europe, for example. Tremendous effort will be made to keep at least a skeleton transoceanic network in place, but bandwidth will be extremely narrow and available only for national governments and a few corporations. That might just about do in the internet by itself.
If we can at least produce vacuum tubes (and if we can produce light bulbs, we can produce vacuum tubes - both are 100-year-old technologies, not that difficult to bring back), then we can still have radio. Of course, for those who can't afford electricity, there are still crystal radios. Television might still be possible, too, but not DTV. TVs draw a lot more power than radios, though, especially tube-technology TVs, and they are a lot more expensive. First the cable channels will go down with the sats, then local broadcasters will sign off one by one as advertising revenue drops off, and there will be less and less to watch. You have to wonder if at some point television is going to lose the critical mass of viewership and advertisers needed to keep the whole enterprise going - maybe PBS becomes the government chanel, the only chanel available, and is only on for a few hours in the evening. Furthermore, if the only thing one can see on TV is how good things used to be, and how bad things have become, I wonder if it really would be in the interests of the power elites to keep television up and running?
Mail is pretty much an 18th century technology, some way will be found to keep postal systems up and running. Mail service will be pretty reliable and commonplace locally, less certain and take longer at a national and continental level, and very iffy and slow and costly internationally. Letter writing will make a comeback when first the internet, and then long-distance telephony, fade away. Direct mail will become too expensive for advertisers, so junk mail will become a memory.
If electronic communications diminishes or fades away, then print communications might make a comeback. Newspapers and magazines might florish again. Local newspapers will do well; I am less certain how well mass-circulation periodicals might do, given that mail is likely to be very expensive, slow, and not always reliable. If people no longer have the boob tube to watch, then they might be more interested in reading.
The telegraph might also make a comeback. The energy required to run telegraph systems is very low. Telegrams are what we had before we had e-mail, so if the e-mail goes, the telegrams probably return.
If digital photography goes, then we are back to chemical photography. A little bit of silver goes a long way, and celluloid can be made from renewable feedstocks. Film cameras will make a comeback, although photography will pretty much be a hobby just for the middle and upper classes. The motion picture industry could go back to film-based cinematography, and if TV diminishes and disappears, there might be a return to habitual weekly attendance at the local theater. One attraction might be a return of the newsreel if TV news is no longer available. Ticket prices for motion pictures are going to have to drop way down if they are going to attract such a mass audience again, and that is going to preclude the ability of Hollywood to produce big "blockbuster" films. All the digital CGI graphics would be gone, so we would be back to human actors and cleverly constructed sets, or painstakingly drawn animations.
If computers go, then so goes word processing, so we are back to typewriters, and secretaries, and typing pools, and file clerks. I don't know if we go back to secretaries and typists and file clerks being almost exclusively female or not. Just because we have to retrace our steps somewhat with technology does not mean that we go backwards socially. It is not just a matter of running the film backwards, some things have changed profoundly.
"If we can at least produce vacuum tubes (and if we can produce light bulbs, we can produce vacuum tubes - both are 100-year-old technologies, not that difficult to bring back), then we can still have radio."
Your not thinking very clearly if you think vacuum tubes are going to replace CMOS in an energy starved future. Just because something is high-tech does not mean that it disappears without fossil fuel.
I know that solid state pulls a lot less juice than vac tubes. The issue is what will be feasible to produce. We are looking at a future where whatever manufacturing is still being done is going to be pretty small scale, and supply chains are going to be a lot shorter and more localized. I just wonder how much high tech that sort of economy can really support on a sustainable basis? I feel pretty confident that we can keep 1850s-1950s technology going, less confident about very many things much past that.
I am assuming that wireless communications is so extremely valuable that people will move heaven and earth to keep some minimal, low tech version of it up and running. I am not nearly so sure that preservation later refinements of the initial technology is going to be viewed with quite the same degree of urgency. Thus, I'm pretty doubtful of predictions that even vacuum tubes will cease to exist, short of a collapse all the way down to the paleolithic bottom. That might happen, but I'm a declinist rather than a doomer and I'm more interested in entertaining alternative possibilities.
There is a huge untapped efficiency potential in the electronics industry thru standardization. This is not used since the state of the art advances quite fast. The development of higher spec electronics has a large momentum and it is likely that we will get more generations even if things would start falling apart. Then can the known and proven processes be optimized for the new circumstances.
I expect that we in a realy bad post peak oil scenario will have better electronics then we have now but that the cost will be higher and that the optimization will change to flexibility and longevity. The innards of your mobile telephone might cost as a good wedding ring but you can use it for 20 years and wear out three screen, five keaybords, six batteries and two cases. And half of the innards will be identical with you "WIFI" interface to the local cable, your laptops net interface, etc.
The manufacturing of these devices with its supply chain will move to where there is dependable electrical power and advanced mechanical and chemical industry. This will at least be todays high tech countries with plenty of hydro power.
Those that can keep this running will have an enourmous economical and also military advantage.
I am quite sure that advanced electronics will be one of the technologies that will help us thru lean decades.
Well, maybe. I tend to be most sceptical toward claims that we'll be able to keep it all, and claims that we are going to lose all of it. I'm more inclined to think that what we'll see in the future is more of a mixed bag, where heaven and earth will be moved to retain technologies that are really important, while things that we really could live without will be allowed to fall by the wayside. I'm not sure exactly where the dividing line ends up, but I suspect that it will move over time.
The problem is by ading durability to products you crash the consumer economy we have built up. If I by a new bike which is rugged enough to last 20 years instead of falling apart in 3 as they are now designed to do I'm not spending money to grow the economy.
Good riddance to the crap consumption economy, its not aiding my or my cultures survival.
I rather spend more money for less product of higher quality and then buy services like having a pro service the rugged bicycle every 12 months.
Gratur:
Yeah, that's the whole point: we won't be ABLE to grow the economy. Consumer economy, RIP. That model isn't going to work once we are forced into a sustainable mode. Actually, it won't work before that, even, because we are going to have to go through a protracted decline first before we even get to level out into something sustainable.
I've gone out on a limb on some of my predictions, but I feel very confident about this one: durability is what it is going to be all about when it comes to stuff being made and bought in the future - and that includes the near future, probably starting within the next decade.
You are right, too, this implies a fundamental paradigm shift in how our entire economy operates. I am guessing that a large majority of today's Fortune 500 won't even still be around 25 years from now. There may be a Fortune 500, but most of the companies on the list will be different, and probably smaller, than what is on there now. I suspect that a lot of those companies don't even exist today.
Magnus Redlin,
I think this is right. Semiconductor fab requires very complicated and somewhat energy inefficient technology partly because it changes so fast they don't optimize it. We are not going to forget how to do the basic processes, so someone is going to be selling cell phones that use CMOS integrated circuits or something better for as long as any semblance of human society remains. Price may be high, and a certain level of civil order is required to keep the network running, but cell phones, radios, computers, and internet communications are among things that are very valuable and are not directly threatened by oil and energy shortages so are likely to be maintained.
From where I am in the growlery to TOD is 18 hops. Not so much nowadays. But if network reliability falls much below the 5 9's, 99.999 TOD becomes useless. Likewise my digitized health records (is that good or bad???) and so forth. Credit scores, VISA/MasterCard et al.
In a world of vacuum tubes, not so many people would have web sites, so it might be only 15 hops - and bear in mind, that 24.* and 10.* stuff is virtual - more like 10 hops right there but b uried in 10.* addressing. Hosting for TOD would cost $1000 per month. And people like me wouldn't have time to spare from planting/weeding/harvesting/preserving/sewing to read TOD.
Dryki:
I suspect we'll end up seeing the internet unwind in something more or less in reverse order to how it built up. Isolated, remote places will disconnect, households will no longer be able to afford their connections. It will eventually get down to just schools and colleges, libraries, governments and corporations, and just in the more advanced countries. More and more even of those blink off, until we end up back with the original DARPA network. I can see research institutions stocking up on an inventory of PCs and other equipment to canabalize, and keeping the network barely up and running for a very, very long time. If the internet does go entirely, it might take centuries to happen, because the unwind will be slow-motion compared to the very rapid build up of the past couple of decades.
Somethig not included in the list is:
Medicine, hospitals and doctors.
I expect that people will be healthier because of having more physical activity and eating unprocessed food.
Maybe there will be fewer doctors and more of the general-medicine type.
Thanks for bringing this up, I was going to but didn't have time.
Public health is going to be a huge challenge. We have the benefit of germ theory now, and that is one reason why we are not just going to run the film in reverse back to the late 1800s. Maintaining sewerage systems and protecting water supplies is going to be a challenge, which is why I doubted there is going to be as much swimming in open water as there was in the good old days, or today for that matter. That's why the ice business isn't going to revive, either. Safe food, drugs, water, etc. are all going to be challenges. Most of the gains in life expectancy and other metrics of people's health are due first and foremost to improvements in public health. It is going to be difficult to hold on, but it is definitely worth trying.
You are probably somewhat right about chronic diseases, although on the other hand we might see an upsurge in malnutrition-related ailments. Climate change is going to move the frost zone north, bring more tropical diseases into North America. We don't know what kind of refugee movements there will be, how successful the US will be in keeping them out, and what they will bring with them. People will be living in more crowded housing, getting around in more crowded transport, living with less heat in the winter and more heat in the summer, and generally living a poorer standard of living. The future reality (for the USA on planet earth, rather than the other planet that Washington DC is contemplating at the moment) is that the national economy is not going to be able to afford to spend anything close to as much for medical care as it is right now. The people at the bottom of the pecking order will get someone toting a copy of "Where There Is No Doctor". The people at the top will still get some pretty good care, although some diagnostic gadgets and gizmos might no longer be available. The people in the middle might get some care, but not as good as what we are enjoying now.
I expect that on balance more people might have more health complaints rather than less.
I was thinking rising insurance costs would open up a new field in physiology and nutrition. Occasional trips to nutritionists and excercise physiologists to keep track of and control long term health indicators, else you pay a higher premium. Folks that maintain a prescribed fitness level, control obesity and other health indicators affected by diet and excercise pay less.
As we go down the energy drainpipe we will start to see things that we have heretofore taken for granted disappear. Do you know how energy intensive it is to produce Copper? What about mining metals that are found in most of our electrical devices that we use all the time? Mining 2 tons of ore to get several ounces of a metal is not something that you will be doing with animals, or human power.
I think the biggest question is how long do we have before we can't support our technology?
LED's are great but can you make them with anything less than the scale at which we are currently? If we loose the ability to generate the energy needed to produce the light bulb won't we be better off going back to tallow candles?
Almost all the easy to get to oil is gone, so what do we have left? And more importantly is how long will it be able to maintain the technology it needs to be able to be found and pumped out of the ground?
I don't see this crash happening overnight, but each step down, makes it harder to get back to where you were before you slipped down the slope.
Having goals where people tried to live less energy intensive lives, thinking about what they do use in terms of the total costs energy wise, might help them do the job.
Teaching kids today that they might have to learn how to make things from scratch can't taught fast enough.
We have to teach them that we are all in this together. We could never have gotten as far as we have by living on a farm alone.
But we have to look at what 7 billion people are doing to the planet and think about what it might be like for someone in 100 years to live around here. Another thought, Do we even have the skills to live without power tools? Is that something that we'll have to relearn in 100 years?
At a certain point you transition into a mostly recycling mode. Instead of mining copper ore, most of your copper comes from melting down and refabricating recycled copper products. There are losses in this process (from the 2nd law of thermodynamics, mainly), so there might still be a little bit of ore mining injecting fresh new minerals into the stream. This can't go on forever, either, but if done on a very small scale, it can be stretched out for a very long while. As I have posted on another thread, sustainability isn't forever; the sun will eventually go red giant, and there are other things that might do us in long before that. We just want to stretch things out and keep human society running as long as we can.
Hi, Dan,
Your article is a simple way of saying somthing difficult to say - I have enjoyed it and I have translated into Spanish - it is in my humble blog.
I have tried to be accurate, but I removed a couple of "American" details to internationalise it. I hope you don't mind.
Trabirio.