World Energy and Population

[Link: World Energy and Population]

This article is the first of two articles on global availability of energy through the first half of this century. This article discusses the actual energy likely to be available and the second article delves more deeply into the consequences of these trends and is shown here. This is not the only attempt to approach this subject in the popular press. Several writers, most of the peak oil variety, have done these same sorts of projections. Some of those articles are more strident than this one and I consider that a plus. We don't need additional reasons to fear the future. I like the scope of this presentation though, because the author has tried to isolate the effects without overly complicated or hopeful assumptions about future developments in the field.

With gas and heating fuel prices heading for the sky we have all begun to feel that something new and momentous is happening. When new circumstances arise unexpectedly, it is sometimes difficult to keep from looking for a magical cause or maybe even hoping for a magical cure. Forget it. That won't happen this time either. The best we can do is try to understand what is really happening. Articles like this can help with that. A rational solution can only be derived from a realistic perception of the problem at hand.

'Humanity's very survival' is at risk, says UN

Thirty per cent of amphibians, 23 per cent of mammals and 12 per cent of birds are under threat of extinction, while one in ten of the world’s major rivers runs dry every year before it reaches the sea.

[Link:
Times Online]

When I read an article like this I realize that all life on earth, including humanity itself, is in anywhere from serious to fatal trouble. It isn't what is in the article itself that scares me though. It is the fact that an article like this can be written about the conclusions of a huge number of learned scholars in pertinent fields of study, representing the only international "governmental" body there is, and nobody, especially those who might have some chance of doing something about it, will even notice. From where will a solution to the problems we are facing come I ask myself. There is no one seeking a solution. We have the brains, certainly, to see the problem and even to imagine a solution but we don't seem to have the intellectual courage or political will to face those answers.

Global over-population is the real issue

"The UN last year revised its forecasts upwards, predicting that there will be 9.2 billion people by 2050, and I simply cannot understand why no one discusses this impending calamity, and why no world statesmen have the guts to treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves."

[Link: Telegraph]

I have actually seen a few articles in the media recently on the subject of population. It is about time. It is probably way too late in fact. As the author of this article recalls, there was a time a few decades ago when the subject was discussed but the moment quietly passed. Today we are not only neglecting to discuss the subject we are purposefully avoiding it.

The world is facing a myriad of problems today but most, if not all, of those problems can trace their roots to over-consumption of resources by humans. Even the global warming problem is derived from excessive burning of hydrocarbons and the subsequent loading of the atmosphere with carbon compounds. Consumption is, in turn, a product of both increased living standard and, most importantly, increased population. A few are suggesting that we should voluntarily reduce our living standards but not as many are suggesting that we should similarly limit our population in order to curtail consumption. In fact, it will probably need to be both.

Let's face it. Most exercises in population control are not only controversial they are actually unpleasant. Simply put, either less people have to be born or more people have to die. One solution toys with the very essence of humanity and the other smacks of murder. That is probably why we can't talk about it but it shouldn't be the reason we can't do any thing about it. That is because the other side of the coin is that we will all die if we don't.

We are how many we are essentially because of the use of hydrocarbon fuels, insecticides and fertilizers in the growing and delivering of our food. Without hydrocarbons we would not be able to achieve nearly the crop yields we have become accustomed to. But hydrocarbons are soon to be less available than they have been in the past. We must find a way to limit our numbers consistent with that reduction and/or we will suffer a proportional reduction in living standard. It is that simple. I cannot say that any woman (or family) should be denied the opportunity to procreate. That is what being human is all about. But I am willing to ask that everyone consider the possibility of limiting one's contribution to the human gene pool. If I were to put it in a simple phrase it would be: Have two if you must but one is best with the understanding that it is admirable to remain childless. More than two children today is unfair to the future. Even with this constraint it will be decades before any serious population reduction will occur but we should think of it as preparation for the real future. We will never again have the energy resources we have today. Clearly, there will be a way to keep our population in line with this new reality. It is up to us to make that way our choice rather than nature's.

Manufacture and Transport of Export Goods Accounts for About 25% of Chinas CO2 Emissions

"The study, carried out for the Tyndall Centre, suggests that counting carbon emissions within national borders, as is currently the case under the Kyoto Protocol, may be inadequate in deciding who is responsible for emissions reduction. Fair, globalized trade might imply that a nation’s entire carbon footprint should also include imported goods and services manufactured elsewhere, the researchers suggest."

[Link: Green Car Congress]

One of these days the jig is going to be up for the United States. It is common knowledge that we have, for quite awhile now, been using an inordinate amount of the worlds oil for our own purposes. Now it looks like we are producing a lot of other people's pollution as well. It won't be possible for us to pull this off for long I'm afraid. If you follow the energy news you know that oil producers are already hedging their future commitments in favor of assuring oil supply for their own citizens. It can only be a matter of time, in this age of global accountability, until exporters of manufactured goods start refusing to accept the responsibility for the pollution associated with the manufacture of goods for other nations. The United States will have a lot of decisions to make when the global accounting books are opened to the public.

Did Katrina Hide the Real Peak in World Oil Production?

"We also look at the question of whether the impact of Hurricane Katrina may have hidden the real peak in world oil production. We find that if an adjustment is made for hurricane impacts, the peak month of production seems to be December 2005 on a crude and condensate basis, and September 2005 on an all liquids basis. The higher adjusted peaks, and greater declines since the adjusted peaks, further suggest that we may be post-peak."

[Link:The Oil Drum]

This is a very enlightening article. It points out very clearly that one can't base one's opinion about Peak Oil on one, or even a few, country's oil production numbers. The production of oil is effected by a multitude of factors, many of which are specific to only one producer, and obviously can't be viewed piecemeal. I think that the most significant insight that this article provides is the clear graphical evidence that the powerful production growth areas are not keeping up with the multitude of declining sources.

Solving Fermi's Paradox

...On another level, though, Fermi’s Paradox can be restated in another and far more threatening way. The logic of the paradox depends on the assumption that unlimited technological progress is possible, and it can be turned without too much difficulty into a logical refutation of the assumption. If unlimited technological progress is possible, then there should be clear evidence of technologically advanced species in the cosmos; there is no such evidence; therefore unlimited technological progress is impossible.

[Link: The Archdruid Report]

I have proposed occasionally on this blog that I think the belief in ongoing technical progress that defines the human world view of the future, is probably wrong. It is my opinion the future of mankind will be much more humble than most of us imagine and that our dreams of space travel and unlimited growth will prove to be an unobtainable destiny. Up until now my doubt was based on a gut-level instinct and I felt that for someone to make the move to this trend of thought would require a major leap of faith because my, and most of humanity's, world view has been severely distorted by living in the midst of the age of hydrocarbons.

To my delight, however, I stumbled on this article by John Michael Greer of the Archdruid Report in which he develops a logical and, for me, cogent argument for the impossibility of unlimited technological progress not only for humanity but for any living species. I really believe that in order for us to begin to repair the damage we have done to the earth and to prepare for our "real" future we will first all have to accept this reality of ultimate limitations. In this article, Mr. Greer has done a good job of helping us to get to that point. Read it and see if you don't agree.

We are all peakists now - Schlesinger

[Link: David Strahan | An interview with Dr. James Schlesinger]

Wow. The big boys are coming out of the Peak Oil Closet now, aren't they. The papers and airwaves have been filled with Alan Greenspan's claim, from his new book, that Iraq was indeed about oil. Of course he is backing down in the heat of day. Now this linked interview with former US Energy Secretary Dr. James Schlesinger in which he admits that behind closed doors the oil company executives have conceded that Peak Oil is eminent. And I expect Dr. Schlesinger is not only privy to the information he is sharing but probably is sharing it with full knowledge of those he claims to be quoting. I have often wondered what form the official disclosure of Peak Oil would take. I always supposed it would be a stream of increasingly more authoritative pronouncements subtly fed to us over time until we could no longer deny their message. I would not be surprised that we are beginning to hear our "official" warning signals.

Putin's ambition

By American estimates, 25 percent of the world's oil and mineral deposits are locked beneath the northern ice cap, but will become available if the world warms enough. It would not be the first time that the Arctic has been free of ice. Analysis of soil samples drilled beneath the mile-thick ice cover have shown that Greenland was in the past rich in forests, vegetation and animal life.

[Link: The Washington Times]

This may be one of those situations where everybody in the world is crazy but me, but I think not. Am I the only one who reads these stories of everyone scrambling for the oil riches in the Arctic and can't believe that the only concern seems to be whether the ice is going to melt fast enough and who is going to get nuked getting at all that oil? Come on guys. The reason the ice is melting is that we are burning too much oil! The best chance for the survival of our way of life, and maybe even us, is if that oil stays locked up by the ice. By the time the Arctic is ice free we will be in the throes of a massive environmental/climate shift that will alter our way of life beyond anything humanity has endured in the past and that will last indefinitely into the future. I have to believe that by that time we will have realized what we have done and removed ourselves from the hydrocarbon age.

Last Light - A Peak Oil Novel

There is a new novel out called Last Light by London author Alex Scarrow. This video is a promo for the book.

The novel deals with a breakdown in society when oil supply is disrupted by terrorist activity all over the world. I haven't read the novel yet but I have corresponded with the author and I have seen reviews (see video) and it sounds like a good thriller built on a Peak Oil premise. He is not sure when the novel will be available in the United States and I don't see it on Amazon yet (one of his earlier novels is there) so if you are in the U.S. you will have to keep an eye out for it. I will update this post if I get any further news.

OPEC countries ignore West's agenda

"Washington apparently didn't note the recent statement of Saudi oil executive Sadad Al-Husseini: 'There has been a paradigm shift in the energy world whereby oil producers are no longer inclined to rapidly exhaust their resource for the sake of accelerating the misuse of a precious and finite commodity."

[Link: St. Cloud Times Opinion:]

It is hard to fault the logic of the Saudis on this one. If there were a hint of logic in the human race, that would be what we would all be trying to accomplish. Oil has been so undervalued these last 100 years. By using oil for heating and transportation we are going to use all of this precious resource up in the next couple of decades even though both of those uses could be done in other, granted less convenient, ways. In the meantime critical uses such as advanced medicines that are derived from hydrocarbons will be withheld from future generations.

I doubt if OPEC will be able to hold on to that goal when the U. S. starts running short of gasoline. Mr. Bush or those that will follow in his footsteps would never be able to let that happen. We are far too committed to this valuable commodity. We are determined to go down driving.

Accumulating risks' to world energy supply

The world is not running out of crude oil and natural gas but there are "accumulating risks" to securing global supplies through 2030, a high-level board of U.S. oil company executives found in a report obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

Those risks include "political hurdles, infrastructure requirements and availability of trained work force," according to the study by the U.S. National Petroleum Council, conducted at the behest of U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman.

[Link: Reuters]

I have seen a lot of these kind of articles lately. Basically they follow a line of logic as follows. We don't really have an oil supply problem. There is plenty of oil out there. Enough to last us for a long time. The only problem is that we are having some difficulty getting to it, or there are political problems barring access to the oil, or there is insufficient funds to provide adequate levels of development of new reserves, or there is a shortage of critically skilled workers to work the fields, or that inadequate technological innovations are being applied to the existing fields, or..... Doesn't it strike you that maybe that is, in fact, exactly what peak oil looks like. When the easy oil is disappearing there are probably uncounted ways that are going to make the rest of the oil hard to get at. Peak oil chroniclers often state that we won't be able to know whether we have reached peak oil until long after the event has actually occurred. The reason for that must at least partly be due to the fact that many of the early manifestations of peak oil just look like another bad day at the office.

Energy crisis cannot be solved by renewables, oil chiefs say

The world is blinding itself to the reality of its energy problems, ignoring the scale of growth in demand from developing countries and placing too much faith in renewable sources of power, according to two leaders of the global energy industry

[Link: Times Online]

This is very serious talk from the heads of major oil. Most of the things they are talking about are not news to anyone who has been following the oil depletion story line. Maybe not news but a little more intimidating when you consider the source.

Demand for hydrocarbon fuels will outstrip supply. Inadequate supply will not be sufficiently bolstered by renewable fuels. Attempts to deal with climate change will falter as we resort to burning coal and trying to convert it to liquids for transportation. If the heads of Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil say so it might make sense to listen.

But what do they suggest we do to tackle these problems? Are you ready for this? Reduce our consumption (otherwise known as conservation or, as they suggest, "energy efficiency"). That is really the revolutionary message in this article. I have not seen anyone of any stature in industry or politics(especially the oil industry) suggest that we actually try to consume less. Isn't consumption what makes America tick? Certainly a politician couldn't say something like that. Let's keep our eye on this trend. It could actually change things.

Coal-to-Liquid Boondoggle - washingtonpost.com

To turn coal into liquid fuel it must be fired up to 1,000 degrees and mixed with water. Then the gas that's created is transformed into fuel that can be used in cars and jets. Unfortunately, creating CTL, as it is known, is a very intensive process requiring coal, water and cash. To wean the United States off of just 1 million barrels of the 21 million barrels of crude oil consumed daily, an estimated 120 million tons of coal would need to be mined each year. The process requires vast amounts of water, particularly a concern in the parched West. And the price of a plant is estimated at $4 billion.

[ Link: washingtonpost.com]

Does anyone notice a huge hole in this discussion of the pros and cons of coal liquification? The purpose of this new wonderful technology is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, right? Supposedly, that will help us with our national security, help fight climate change (if we handle it right) and lead the way in our response to oil depletion. The only problems are water and financing. We have all the coal we could ever want. The article does mention in passing that the process is accomplished by heating the coal up to 1000 deg. F. However, where that energy is going to come from they don't say. Natural gas? More coal? Oil? Nuclear? Whatever is going to be used to heat the coal is either going to add back to our dependence on foreign energy and/or limit the net energy from the process, isn't it? By definition we don't have any extra fuel laying around or we wouldn't be doing this. And what about all of the energy required to catch and store all of that CO2? I'm sorry but I don't see how this is going to help.

From Peak Oil To Dark Age?

Even if the peakists are wrong, we would still be better off taking these actions. And if they're right, major efforts right now may be the only way to avert a new Dark Age in an overheated world.

[Link: Business Week]

I will have to say that I am surprised at this reasonable opinion under the banner of a publication like Business Week. Like many recent Peak Oil discussions in the media, this article seems to be picking up on the causal relationship that Peak Oil and Climate Change enjoy. A while ago they talked about the two subjects as independent problems. Now they have started talking about the two being like two sides of the same coin. Eventually they will understand that the two problems are really just two, admittedly bad, side effects of recklessly using (AKA: releasing back to the atmosphere) the vast accumulation of carbon pulled from the atmosphere and stored in the earths crust over many millions of years. When they understand that, they will start to comprehend what a real solution looks like. Less consumption or fewer people. Almost certainly both.

As oil production fails to meet demand our climate is going to have more than coal to worry about too. Every thing that can be burned for heat or eaten will be stripped from this earth by the hydrocarbon hordes that have arisen to feed off of the cheap and plentiful oil. If it can't be burned for heat or eaten it will be stripped from the earth to make room for something that can. It won't be pretty.

Reducing your personal footprint while you still can.

Resource limitations and climate change are on the tongues of everyone nowadays. Most of us have a vague idea that we are facing some big change in our lifestyle sometime in the future. Almost nobody, however, has stepped up to the reality of that impending change.

Consider the conversations we all have about reducing our environmental footprint. How many of us really understand why we should do that? Most of our thinking is still stuck in the '70s mindset. We are reducing our energy/resource consumption to do our part in reducing environmental degradation. Wrong! There is little we can do to limit the environmental change that is overtaking us. We (humankind) will use all of the hydrocarbon resources that we can obtain and then some. The climate will adjust to that full load of carbon saturation by reverting to the searing climate profile that it demonstrated the last time all of that carbon was out in the open. No, you are not going to prevent that from happening. There are too many of us.

In fact, what you are doing when you reduce your use of resources is practicing. You are getting ready for a new world that is coming, no matter what any of us do. You are making adjustments to your consumption profile while you still have a choice. Listen carefully. This is not a temporary belt tightening. While you have time, buy a new belt. Better yet, learn how to make one. There are no significant new hydrocarbon resources being created for our next energy binge.

Those who are looking for a change of technology rather than a reduction in consumption are fooling themselves. They are still doing their thinking in an oil-age brain. We should not accept any technological fix until we can see it producing a viable net output entirely independent of hydrocarbons. Show me a windmill that has been built entirely from scratch using only windmill energy to obtain and move raw materials, manufacture the infrastructure and build, install and maintain hardware on site. We won't get nearly enough net power from that model to provide anything approaching the present Western lifestyle for even a fraction of the present population of the earth let alone the projected overshoot population that is set to increase into the future. Technology is energy. With less energy there will be less technology. With less technology there will be less energy.

So make your lifestyle changes. It is important. For you.

Global warming exaggerated, insufficient oil, natural gas and coal | EnergyBulletin.net | Peak Oil News Clearinghouse

Climate change and global warming has become part of our everyday life, and central to this debate is the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). The fossil fuels that we use contain carbon and hydrocarbons, and in the combustion of these fuels, carbon dioxide is released along with energy.

In the present climate debate, however, the amount of available fossil fuels does not appear to be an issue. The problem, as usually perceived, is that we will use excessive amounts in the years ahead. It is not even on the map that the amount of fossil fuels required in order to bring about the feared climate changes may in fact not be available.

[Link: Kjell Aleklett - Original article translation from EnergyBulletin.net | Peak Oil News Clearinghouse]

Now here is a classic good news/bad news situation. The shorter version: we may not be destroyed by climate change because we may not have enough fossil fuels to do full damage to the climate. It looks like a race to the bottom doesn't it. Will we destroy our climate or our civilization first. Of course, that is a simplification. If he is right, we will be fighting what climate change there is with a much reduced tool kit so it will be a mix of both.

This should not be a surprise, because climate change and fossil fuel usage are joined at the hip. The climate is a function of how much carbon is in the atmosphere. By returning all of the carbon that was locked up in the earths crust to the atmosphere we have fiddled with that carbon balance. We are getting exactly what we bargained for. Take your pick, livable climate or 100 years of free and easy energy.

Scientists link world's big dams to methane and global warming

In a study released earlier this month, the scientists claim the world's 52,000 dams contribute more than 4 percent of the warming impact linked to human activities. The study even suggests that dams and reservoirs are the single largest source of human-cased methane, a gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.

[Link: Shaun McKinnon - AZCentral.com]

Well, that pretty much does it. All of this time I have been quietly patting myself on the back as I used all of my electrical tools and toys. I live in Seattle. Most of the electrical power in these parts comes from the massive Columbia hydroelectric system. No greenhouse contributions from me, I thought, as long as I keep my power usage electric. This article has torn a big hole in that construct. So much for electric cars and public transport as a way for Seattle to do its part for global warming. The more we understand the less we know it seems.

So you want to save the planet? What should you consider first?

When the OPEC oil embargo hit in October 1973, Rosenfeld did a little math. He discovered that if Americans used energy as efficiently as the Europeans or Japanese, the United States could have been exporting oil in 1973, rather than sitting in rationing lines at gas stations. The solution, he realized, was not to bend the Arab oil regimes to America's will but to end America's thralldom to them by wasting less energy.

[Link: OpEdNews.com]

I remember those days after the OPEC Oil Shock. Gasoline rationing, everybody trying to figure out how to save energy, Jimmy Carter's "moral equivalent of war" speech, all of those things. I did my part. I added insulation and bought some double paned glass for my house, even bought a cool little gas-stingy car from Detroit which is the worst car I ever owned, by the way. The double paned glass in particular was a direct result of the realization that, as the author notes, conserving energy is every bit as good as finding new energy or, more importantly, not using imported energy. My purchase was subsidized by my power company, acting on that logic. That is all good and society has used it to save a lot of energy in the intervening time period. I am sure there is much more savings to be made in that way. I think that to really deal with the energy problem that we have, however, we are going to have to take energy conservation to a another level.

Peak Oil, or more correctly oil depletion, by definition has one principle cause. Excessive consumption of hydrocarbons and the products that depend on hydrocarbons. Global warming is really just a symptom of that same excessive hydrocarbon consumption. Both of these issues have come to crisis even with the great improvements in energy effciency that have been introduced since the energy crisis in the '70s. Clearly a more drastic reduction in consumption is needed if we are to have a chance of dealing with these two problems. Consumption is the product of the number of consumers and the average level of consumption of those consumers. With that in mind, it is my personal opinion that nothing will be accomplished until there is real population reduction. I don't have any idea how society will deal with this reality but I know that somewhere down the line mothers need to have many fewer babies, and they need to teach those babies to consume less by consumming less themselves. I am going to leave that one there. There is almost no common ground in our society where that discussion might be held. Which leaves us with the other factor, consumption itself.

Like it or not we live in a society that promotes consumption. Consumption is jobs. Consumptions is sales. Consumption is the preferred social activity. Consumption is the economy, stupid. I am old enough that I was raised by parents who became adults during the great depression. Consumption, for them, was painful. Things were precious and needed to be protected. The less consummed the better. Somewhere along the line that philosophy has gotten stood on its head. My children do not consider anything permanent. If a new trend comes along, they chuck the "old" to make room for the new. This is not a knock on them. Society has driven that behavior down their throats. If you have the resources that is the way you do it. It is not just my kids. Our friends kids act that way as well. I will admit that, as a consumer, I am somewhere in the never-never land between my parents and my children. I tend to turn over my stuff and pursue the latest toys, but it hurts.

Is there a way to get out of the consumption-as-a-way-of-life mode of operation? Maybe. What would have to change. First, we would have to start looking at our stuff a little differently. We would have to put a premium on durability. The best stuff would last forever and come with full instructions for maintaining it with that in mind. If it didn't last forever it would have to be easily repairable and the replacement parts would have to be readily available, forever. And it wouldn't go out of style. Technical improvements would be slowly introduced after thorough testing and would really be improvements. Ideally, the old stuff could be upgraded. Hey, you might even be able to make it yourself. Taking care of your stuff would be important so you would only have stuff you really needed. In a best case scenario, the big stuff would be pooled with neighbors and family. Everybody doesn't need everything all the time. Specifically, since we are ultimately trying to eliminate hydrocarbon consumption, we would buy our stuff to minimize hydrocarbon depletion. The best stuff wouldn't require hydrocarbons to run it, or produce it. No plastics. Low energy, sustainable production methods. Recycled supplies. The best stuff is produced and sold locally. No global supply networks. In a word the best stuff is not much stuff.

Doesn't sound like a very good economic model does it? That is the rub. For most of history that is the way things worked, you know. It is only when the hydrocarbon wind-fall came along and allowed us to imagine there were no limits that this consumptive economic model could really take off. Maybe we can get back into that old pre-oil frame of mind. One thing is certain. The people in the yellow pages aren't going to like it at all.

Doing right thing isn't easy, even for those who want to

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that more Americans than ever — 60%, up from 48% a decade ago — believe that global warming has begun to affect the climate. A slightly larger percentage think it will cause major or extreme changes in climate and weather during the next 50 years.
And in a reflection of the impact the environmental movement has had on Americans' attitudes in the nearly four decades since the first Earth Day celebration, most people now believe that they should take more steps as individuals — such as riding mass transit and making their homes more energy efficient — to help reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.
Even so, most people are wary of any government effort to protect the environment by imposing restrictions on how they live, work or get around. A majority of those surveyed in the poll, conducted March 23-25, said they wouldn't want a surcharge added to their utility bill if their homes exceeded certain energy-use levels. And most Americans would oppose any laws requiring cars sold in the USA to dramatically improve their gas mileage or restrictions on development to try to limit suburban sprawl.

[Link: USATODAY.com]

I believe in the reality of Peak Oil. I believe that the consequences of excessive oil use has permanently altered the earth's climate. I believe that there will be dire consequences for all living things resulting from the climactic superposition of these two unprecedented events. I did not participate in USA Today's poll(see link) but if I had I am not sure whether I would have answered much differently than the people who did. I am a victim of my times like everyone else. I was raised on the leading edge of the oil age and it encompasses the entirety of my world view. I have very little to work with in building a new reality. It is intellectually easy for me to say that the problem we all face is eliminating excessive consumption. It is emotionally difficult, in the extreme, to make a list of things I am willing to throw out or, in a way even worse, things that I will newly adopt to take the place of the things that I have thrown out. I am retired. A lot of my reticence can probably be attributed to the fact that I fit the "old horse not being able to learn new tricks" model. But not all of it. The oil age is a pretty strong addiction.

Peak Soil: Why cellulosic ethanol, biofuels are unsustainable and a threat to America

The author looks ahead to post-petroleum living with considered conclusions: "Biofuels have yet to be proven viable, and mechanization may not be a great strategy in a world of declining energy." And, "…only a small amount of biomass (is) unspoken for" by today’s essential economic and ecological activities. To top it off, she points out, "Crop production is reduced when residues are removed from the soil. Why would farmers want to sell their residues?" Here’s an Oh- god-she-nailed-it zinger: "As prices of fertilizer inexorably rise due to natural gas depletion, it will be cheaper to return residues to the soil than to buy fertilizer." Looking further along than most of us, Alice has among her conclusions: "It’s time to start increasing horse and oxen numbers, which will leave even less biomass for biorefineries."

[Link: Culture Change]

You should read this article if you believe that Peak Oil is real but that we will come up with a technical fix that will allow us to continue living our lives of consumption, but in a different way. The only technical fix that will be viable will be high speed down-scaling combined with massive population reduction. There is no way to suck enough energy out of the world to support even a fraction of our present global population at a level of existance remotely approaching today's western culture without access to the billions of barrels of oil we have been using up to now.

GAO Report on Oil Supply

[Link = GAO Report(pdf)]

This is a link to the recently released report from the United States Government Accountability Office titled "CRUDE OIL - Uncertainty about Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production." I have not read through it yet and there is a lot of commentary out there to sort through so I will not add my comments at this time. After I have absorbed all of the discussion, I will post my thoughts. I will say one thing. This appears to be a real escalation of visibility for the peak oil problem in the United States. As the report states, the United States must be concerned because the United States is the most vulnerable to oil disruptions.

Energy crisis demands immediate attention

“We are not going to reach energy independence in this nation and have better control over our national security as long as we remain dependent on the internal combustion engine and air traffic to move people and goods,” Schlesinger said.

With $5 billion worth of oil being used daily and the world’s existing oil fields in a decline of about 4% a year, Schlesinger detailed three relatively immediate alternatives: conservation, renewable resources and nuclear power. However, his prediction that future demand for oil would mean finding the equivalence of nine Saudia Arabia’s had more of an impact on the crowd.

[Link: CollegiateTimes.com]

People with real credentials are beginning to talk about the energy crisis now. James R. Schlesinger is a bonafide insider and person of knowledge. If you read the message between the lines of this article, it is impossible to deny the need for speed in any solution we bring to the energy table. Sadly, we have very few energy solutions available to us and all of them involve, at least, the whole of American society and probably the entire globe. More unfortunately, there are so very few solutions at the societal level that can be implemented in less than a generation. There is no margin for error and if we fail there will be hell to pay. I wish I were more optimistic about our ability to deal rationally with a problem of this magnitude.

I recently heard someone say that we will be OK because all of history has had a record of progress and advancement of society. I wanted to say that he needed to talk to a few people in Italy during the middle of the dark ages about all of the improvements they saw in their life compared to the Roman empire. We are not on a constant upward slope. "*%$?@" happens and when it does we are not guaranteed a rain check.

The Peak Oil Crisis: The 4 Facets of Peak Oil

Looming just over the horizon are four great storms that soon will have a major impact on nearly all the world’s peoples and their descendents for decades to come. We know these storms are coming, for we can clearly see their outlines and some are already beginning to feel the winds.

We don’t know the exact timing nor the order of these storms’ arrival. We do know that the order in which they come will be important to how these storms interact with what our lifestyles will be like in the years ahead.

[Link: Falls Church News-Press]

Tom Whipple at Falls Church News-Press is always a good read. Sometimes his observations on Peak Oil and the real future are humorous and sometimes not but they are always informative. This article is pretty direct and to the point as usual.
We are facing the four horsemen of the petrocollapse. Physical, geological depletion; political chaos due to the uneven distribution of supplies and consumption; catastrophic environmental effects from uncontrolled oil use, culminating in significant global climate change; and finally economic meltdown as the costs of a critical resource become astronomical. These four "storms" are brewing as we speak and their effects are visible to those who are willing to see. They will all probably become obvious to everyone within a generation. But, as Tom observes, the details are still up in the air. The riders are visible on the ridge, we still can't tell who will get here first.

Toyota picks Mississippi for new plant

Toyota Motor Corp.'s Highlander sport utility vehicle should start rolling off the assembly line at a new, $1.3 billion plant in northeast Mississippi by 2010, company and state officials said Tuesday.
Toyota disclosed the site for its eighth vehicle assembly plant in North America, saying it will be built on a 1,700-acre site at Blue Springs, about 10 miles northwest of Tupelo. It also considered sites in neighboring states Arkansas and Tennessee.
The Mississippi plant will manufacture 150,000 Highlanders a year. It also will create 2,000 badly needed jobs in an area with an economy that has slowed because of losses in furniture

[Link: Houston Chronicle]

So Toyota expects surging SUV demand in the U.S. by 2010. I guess I would have to question that projection. There are always many ways to look at the future of course. If you are a big auto manufacture, however, they must all be through rose-colored glasses. There aren't many good post-peak oil scenarios out there for auto manufacturers.

In depth - Study sees harmful hunt for extra oil

A report from Wood Mackenzie, the Edinburgh-based consultancy, calculates that the world holds 3,600bn barrels of unconventional oil and gas that need a lot of energy to extract.

So far only 8 per cent of that has begun to be developed, because the world has relied on easier sources of oil and gas.

Only 15 per cent of the 3,600bn is heavy and extra-heavy oil, with the rest being even more challenging.

[Link: FT.com]

The concept of ERoEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) is thrown around a lot in discussions of energy depletion and Peak Oil. Most of us think of it as a measure of the difficulty of obtaining the oil but its real importance might be its relationship to reserves. Think about it for a second. If a barrel of very difficult to extract oil has an ERoEI of 1.0 (ie it takes the energy equivalent of a barrel of oil to extract it) it really doesn't exist. There is no reason to go after it. In other words you can't really count that barrel as part of our energy reserves if we count the barrel we will use to get it out. Taking that a little further, we really should degrade all reserve estimates by the ratio of ERoEI of the oil in reserve. If oil is twice as hard to get out, it should only count as half as much oil when we add up our reserves. I am going to have to think about this some more but if I am right the world's oil reserves have just gone down a lot.

Running out of oil may not be the issue at all

Watson said other above-ground risks include higher costs of finding oil that could chill production and the lack of enough engineers and other professionals to replace the industry's aging work force.

"Above-ground peak oil will trump below-ground peak oil every time," Watson said.

[link: Chron.com - Houston Chronicle]

The shorter version of this article is "there is plenty of oil, we just won't be able to get at it so Peak Oil is a myth." I guess I am just dense but I don't remember anywhere that the phenomenon of oil depletion is only related to physical reserves or that it will occur without any difficulty. That is what peak oil is for Heaven's sake. It is like picking fruit on a tree. The first half of the harvest is no problem then you realize that those beauties up in the top or over the neighbors fence are going to be a lot more trouble than they are worth. That is when you leave them there and move on to the next tree. Unless, of course, there are no more trees. At that point if you want more fruit you are going to pay the price. At some point even that last branch may not be worth the effort and the birds are going to get the benefit. Those "above-ground" peak oil problems that he is complaining about are part and parcel of the peak oil problem.

Matt Simmons (Bloomberg): Peak Oil Now, Oil Perhaps to $300

Watch an interview of Matt Simmons on the Bloomberg Report. This is the interview where he predicts $300/barrel oil and declares peak oil is here.

A battle over biofuels

"To see where corn production can go, it is helpful to see how far it has come. In 1945, U.S. farmers harvested about 40 bushels of grain per acre. Today, thanks to elite hybrids, new technologies and growers' management practices, the U.S. average is 160 bushels per acre. Many growers consistently produce 250 bushels, up to a record of 400-plus bushels."

[Link: DesMoinesRegister.com]

It is interesting that nowhere in this article did the author discuss net-energy or try to estimate how much of the increased yields that he does mention are derived from the application of petroleum derived (natural gas) nitrogen fertilizers. I am not an expert on crop yields, I probably couldn't even be considered a knowledgeable layman, but I am pretty sure that a lot of the reason we are continually pulling really high yields from the same land is because we are able to artificially ignore soil replenishment and pest resistance by using hydrocarbon based fertilizers and insecticides. I suspect, as misleading as it is, that these dependencies are hidden in his phrase "management practices." We are going to have to do much more than add technology to our farming practices to increase yields. We are also going to have to find a way to replace the petrochemical fertilizers and insecticides that we rely on now. It would be very interesting to hear about the yields without any petrochemical help.

The Olduvai Theory: Terminal Decline Imminent

Richard Duncan has released an update to his Oldavai Theory and it is much like the others. He has looked at recent data and it doesn't really change anything. In a previous post I explained my recent epiphany regarding the essence of his idea which is that the collapse of per capita energy availability (which can be considered a measure of civilization's prosperity) is not dependent on a collapse of oil production itself but merely a reduction in the rate of increase in oil production. Since this is something that is already clearly happening we are almost certainly in the throws of an impending descent. Read his report, we all have a need to know.

Mr. Duncan has released his report in the form of a Report.pdf, Figure1.pdf and Figure2.pdf

(You will need to have javascript enabled to view these files.)

Global-Warming Report Gets U.S. Emphasis

[Link: WSJ.com]

The IPCC report predicts sea levels will rise by between one to two feet over the next 100 years. Mr. Delworth said there remains "much more uncertainty" over how much accelerated melting of glaciers might add to that.

A second area of continuing uncertainty has to do with the impact of clouds on climate change. Warming the ocean sends more water vapor into the air, and the resulting clouds accelerate global warming by trapping more of the sun's heat in the atmosphere and further warm the ocean. Jim Butler, deputy director of NOAA's global monitoring division, called this "a very scary feedback mechanism."

I must admit that I am surprised by what I am reading in this article. I have always thought that the rising water level was mostly the effect of adding melted ice and increased rainfall into the oceans. Increases due to the expansion of the water at higher temperatures seemed like it ought to be a secondary effect. Well...it seems that the reality of the situation is just the opposite. The UN report only considered expansion due to heating in the 1 to 2 foot increase in sea levels from Global Warming. The melting ice and effects of increased cloud cover weren't included because of the uncertainty.

I guess you do learn something every day. Today I learned to not trust your intuition when the phenomena you are considering is as complex as planetary physics. Tomorrow, I suspect we will learn that the seas are going to rise a lot more than we have been told so far.

Scientists blame global warming for rising hurricane intensity

Link: MiamiHerald.com | 02/01/2007

"That means the world's scientists are 90 to 99 percent certain that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible.
Worse, the study reportedly describes global warming as a runaway climatological train that already is racing down the track and will ``continue for centuries . . . even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized."

You know it really takes a lot to get people off of the mark nowadays. When I was a youngster, and the G.I.s were in charge, if a reasonable number of experts decided there was a serious problem looming on the horizon, well, then something would be done. It wasn't necessary for the train to cut your car in half before you might think about moving the car or getting out of it. When you were sitting on the track and heard a whistle, even if you couldn't see anything yet, you started getting your butt in gear.

I don't really know when that changed. It probably began picking up steam back in the Nixon days, when the Republicans and Conservatives started belittling the experts and educated people in general, claiming their book learning was somehow inferior to the "wisdom" of the common man. It certainly has been strengthened by the claim of the common man's press that the best way to extract knowledge about a subject is to listen to "experts" from the fringy, opposite ends of the subject's spectrum beat each other up with half truths and innuendos. True knowledge has no place in these discussions. The holders of true knowledge are aware of these extremes and try to filter them out of the mass of information in the center that actually holds the truth. The first thing a scientist does when he analyzes statistical data is to throw out the extreme data points, recognizing them for the oddballs that they probably are. We need to somehow get back to a point where we can react to reasonable concern when it shows it head and not argue about it until the whole monster crawls out of the hole.

We should have been on top of this 20 years ago and we might have had a chance to actually do something about it other than survive.

Once a Dream Fuel, Palm Oil May Be an Eco-Nightmare

Link: New York Times

Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.

Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

As we desperately try to replace oil as a primary fuel for our civilization's transportation needs, this is going to be an ongoing story I'm afraid. Most high capacity agricultural projects are high impact operations. We have developed agricultural methods that are efficient and energy intensive. That is the way things are done today. But that is for food. The fuel industry is going to be added on top of the food industry. There will be no place safe from the gasoline farmers. Of course it will be an eco-nightmare. How could it not be.

Daniel J. Popeo: The state of our energy is dangerous

Those of us who are convinced that hydrocarbon resources are in finite supply, and that we might be challenging the limits of its availability, are often reminded of the many flaws in our logic. For instance, we are encouraged to remember the power of the market. When the price of scarce hydrocarbons gets high enough more will appear. The invisible hand of Supply and Demand will guarantee that we can produce what we need. Maybe more expensive, but there. Others implore us to take into account the force of technology. The ingenuity of man will come through as it always has. Like the market, when there is a need there will be a solution.

This author however reminds us of another way that we have misjudged our predicament. It seems that the energy is there if only our poor energy companies were not throttled by the powerful government bureaucracies and all consuming environmental organizations. In other words, we are not short of energy resources, we are merely keeping ourselves from using it. He doesn't mention that we have had a national administration in power for six years that came from the oil industry and instead of tearing down those impenetrable barriers set up by the environmental juggernauts that control our country's resources they invaded a weak middle eastern country to insure our oil interests there. He also mentioned that we have not built a refinery in 30 years. I don't think he mentioned, however, that a refinery was proposed in the western United States last year and it wasn't built because, after getting all of the environmental approvals they needed, they couldn't find anybody that would guarantee a supply of oil that could be refined.

He is obviously unwilling to accept any restraints on our use of resources that might limit his lifestyle. If he could just roll back those pesky rules and regulations he would get us all the energy we would need. That may have made some sense a couple of decades ago, but I would think that the immediate threat of Global Warming would have been a strong enough signal that, hey, maybe the environmentalists have a point here.

[Link: Daniel J. Popeo: The state of our energy is dangerous - Examiner.com]

Board's ban on global warming film challenged

In Federal Way, Washington state, a suburb of Seattle, a controversy rages on the propriety of showing Al Gore's film on Global Warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," in the classroom. The "controversy" is that some parent's have complained that the school district has not presented alternative viewpoints to that presented in the film. Specifically, these parents would like to see counter arguments, including religious ones, to the contention that Global Warming is caused by man's activity. Well, I'm sorry, but I think we are a little late in the game for this to be happening. There is no longer any controversy regarding Global Warming or its primary causes. That is not just my opinion it is the accepted opinion of all of the appropriate experts. Any alternative argument is almost certainly wrong.

Education is never perfect, but there is no justification for deliberately teaching information that is probably wrong. If you do that you are not educating you are indoctrinating and that can not be tolerated in a free nation. Today's children will be living their lives in a world subjected to the climate changes caused by global warming. They will be the ones who have to face it and find a way to live with its fury. It is too late for us to prevent global warming from effecting them so we must prepare them for it. "An Inconvenient Truth" can only be a small start for that immense task.

[Seattle P.I. Link: Board's ban on global warming film challenged]

The hype over hydrogen cars

You get a sense that the Post senses the oversell of this hydrogen car when you see the word hype used in the headline. The story, however, is less skeptical.

The Ford Edge gliding along the George Washington Memorial Parkway doesn't have spinning rims or a booming sound system. The bling in this SUV is the technology. The vehicle runs almost silently. It needs no gas and releases no polluting exhaust.

The devil is in the details my friend. Two million dollars to produce this SUV. Can you even imagine the pollution produced in all of the processes involved in that cars production. A car like this is merely pushing its pollution back a step. The pollution will now be expelled in the extraction and manufacturing processes involved in producing the hydrogen and batteries. The hydrogen in particular will probably require a lot of power and natural gas feedstock for it production. And this doesn't even consider the building of a completely new infrastructure to deliver these new products.

I think we are not yet thinking clearly about our problems here. The article notes that we will have to "leap high technological hurdles" to make this work. That is probably an understatement. There may not be enough energy left to get us over the top.

[Link: WP: The hype over hydrogen cars - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com]

A Post-Oil Man

Check it out!

Cutbacks Impede Climate Studies

The government's ability to understand and predict hurricanes, drought and climate changes of all kinds is in danger because of deep cuts facing many Earth satellite programs and major delays in launching some of its most important new instruments, a panel of experts has concluded.

Oh great! Just as the need for ever more vigilance and precision in weather and atmospheric monitoring becomes critical, the funding is cut. We couldn't make global warming go away by denying it. Now apparently we are going to try ignoring it. It is just another case in a long list of incredibly misplaced priorities by this administration.

We are fighting the wrong war. Instead of fighting for control of the worlds oil in order to assure an uninterruptible supply of fuel to support our existing lifestyle, we should be fighting the threat to our existence from using that oil at all. Eventually we will realize that the only way to get out of the trap we have set for ourselves is to quit using oil. We must do this for two reasons. To survive the climate catastrophe that is Global Warming, obviously we have to stop adding carbon to the atmosphere as we have been doing. We can best do that by not burning hydrocarbons and thereby releasing all of the carbon that has been sequestered in the earth's crust all these millions of years. But also, because we will begin to run out of oil in no more than a generation, we have to find a way to survive, as a species, without it. I think the only way to do that, painful as it might be, would be to go cold turkey for all uses of oil that could be done another way. That includes transportation, direct energy generation, fertilizers, asphalt and so on. That would force us to build a rational way of life using renewable resources while we still have some petrochemicals around for those situations where that is the only way to do it. Think of lubrication, medicines, exotic plastics, electronic components, etc. Let's not burn up those possibilities. In the long run there are no hydrocarbons. The bad news is that you probably can't hand off the long run to your children and grandchildren anymore.

[Link: Cutbacks Impede Climate Studies - washingtonpost.com]

Big Coal's Dirty Move

As the world heats up, the coal industry is racing to build more than 150 new power plants before Congress decides to crack down on global warming.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a suicidal act is one that is 'dangerous to oneself or to one's interests; self-destructive or ruinous.' By this standard, the coal boom that is currently sweeping America is the atmospheric equivalent of a swan dive off a very tall building. At precisely the moment that scientists have reached a consensus that we need to drastically cut climate-warming pollution, the electric-power industry is racing to build more than 150 new coal plants across the United States.

[ Link: Rolling Stone : National Affairs: Big Coal's Dirty Move]

Another clue that we (people generally, American's especially) are not going to be able to deal with global warming and energy depletion rationally. I have noted before that people are a group of clever individuals interacting in infinitely complex ways such that the final result is a totally irrational species. There is no way that we will not use up all of the supplies of hydrocarbons that can be profitably extracted. The climate will have its way.

Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism

By now a disturbing trend becomes clear: the two problems of Climate Change and Peak Oil together are worse than either by itself. Strategies that might help to keep lights burning and trucks moving while reducing emissions are questionable from a depletionist point of view, while most strategies to keep the economy energized as oil and gas disappear imply increasing greenhouse gas emissions. As we will see, the closer we look, the worse it gets.

As noted above, both groups need to design a survivable energy transition strategy in order to “sell” their message to policy makers. Carbon emissions come from burning depleting fossil fuels, the primary energy sources for modern societies. Thus both problems boil down to energy problems—and energy is essential to the maintenance of agriculture, transportation, communication, and just about everything else that makes up the modern global economy. [Link]

(Thanks to PeakEnergy (US) for directing me to this article.) I agree with Jon S. that this article is a very important addition to the public dialogue on energy issues. I have long claimed that the issues of Climate Change and Peak Oil are really two sides of one coin which is hydrocarbon dependency. We are not going to solve either problem alone because, as Mr. Heinberg explains, the two problems are really just symptoms of another common problem which is uncontrolled hydrocarbon exploitation.

Imagine if we had somehow limited our use of hydrocarbons over the years to some small fraction of todays consumption. Today we would probably have neither global warming (at todays rate, anyway) or peak oil (by definition). I suspect we would also have a lot fewer people as well because there would not have been the green revolution or globalization to encourage population increases. They are really the same problem.

We need to be thinking on this level. We need to be thinking about the real problems that confront us. We need to be thinking.

Bush Lifts Oil-Drill Ban in Alaska's Bristol Bay

Royalties to Rise for Some Offshore Wells in Advance of Democrats' Plans to Roll Back Tax Breaks

The Bush administration yesterday moved to boost U.S. oil and gas supplies by lifting a long-standing moratorium on drilling in Alaska's Bristol Bay, as OPEC accelerated plans to reduce supplies in order to prop up sagging crude prices. [Link]

This is not a surprise. But the reaction from Congress may look a little different now that there is a Democratic majority. In their remaining two years look for this administration to leave no stone unturned (literally) in their quest to open up our common resource legacy to corporate exploitation.

EU: Days of secure, cheap energy over

These kind of headlines are starting to show up pretty regularly now. You can see discussions like this on any given day in the news. In the United States it is still glossed over with a yawn and a comment about how the market or technology will take care of it "somehow." In the rest of the world, though, reality seems to be taken more seriously. Sometime, very soon I believe, awareness of this new reality is going to achieve critical mass and we are going to be living in a brand new world. We have used our hydrocarbon reserves to artificially boost crop yields and increase consumer goods production levels to such a degree that our population has attained unimaginable levels. Also, we have consumed hydrocarbons at such a high rate that we have managed to destabilize the climate. All of this, just as we are running into energy production limits. This is really going to be interesting.
[Link: EU: Days of secure, cheap energy over - Yahoo! News]