The Way I Saw Things
Posted by Robert Rapier on August 23, 2013 - 7:56pm
I often find myself wondering where my life would be today had I not stumbled across The Oil Drum in 2005. I don’t know that I would still be writing today were it not for my early experiences with TOD readers. As TOD winds down, I thought I’d share my story, which I have not told before.
In 2005 I was a chemical engineer at the ConocoPhillips Refinery in Billings, Montana. I worked in the group that among other things did refinery economics. We optimized the refinery for which crude slates to run and how the refinery should be run, depending on the crude slate as well as whether margins were higher for diesel or for gasoline. We could shift production about 5% one way or the other. We often joked about the fact that my boss was the Director of Optimization, Process, and Economics (the “DOPE”).
At that time the Montana government was in the midst of trying to implement an ethanol mandate for the state, and the refinery manager knew I had some background with ethanol from my graduate school days at Texas A&M University. So whereas other refineries in the state were sending their plant managers to testify, I was asked to go to the Montana State Legislature to provide testimony on this bill. As I was preparing for my testimony, I wanted to be sure I also emphasized the dangers of being overly dependent on a depleting resource like petroleum. I wanted the legislators to know that my testimony was not to maintain the status quo, but that instead we needed a different model. In the course of preparing my testimony, I read The Long Emergency and Twilight in the Desert – both books that had a big impact on my thinking -- and I began to frequent The Oil Drum and make comments.
I had started a little blog I called R-Squared – a play on my initials but also a term frequently used by engineers – to document and archive my findings as I prepared for my testimony at the legislature. I found that there was so much misinformation related to ethanol that I began to write essays debunking these claims. At some point Kyle Saunders, aka Professor Goose, asked me if I would become a contributor and share some of these articles at The Oil Drum as he felt like they could use some people with oil industry experience.
As a side note, when I started my blog I was really looking for a hobby. I wanted something to take up a bit of time in my day. I narrowed it down to learning to brew beer (I actually read some books on this and investigated setting up the equipment) or to start writing about energy. Needless to say, I chose the latter and I still don’t know how to brew beer.
Not long after joining TOD, I talked a TOD poster known as “thelastsasquatch” into posting under his real name. I thought his postings were superb, and that the moniker behind those postings should take credit under his real name. That’s how TOD and the rest of the world came to know Nate Hagens. You’re welcome.
In those early days on TOD some people didn’t know quite what to make of me. I certainly agreed that we faced a serious problem and had to do something about it, but also, because of my experience from working in the industry, took the unpopular position that in 2005 oil was not yet reaching its peak. I also took issue with the Hubbert Linearization (HL) technique that was being used to suggest that peak was taking place in 2005.
I devoted several posts to showing that the HL technique didn’t in fact work that way by doing a series of backcasting. What I discovered was that using historical cases, the HL could not have reasonably predicted peak oil in the US until about seven years after the fact. But the most damning indictment of all is that I took a hypothetical case of a country in which oil production increased slightly each year for eternity – and yet the HL predicted a peak.
I took a lot of flack from some TOD posters for this work, but I also received support from popular posters like Stuart Staniford who proclaimed that this case indeed showed that HL can’t be used in the way it was being used to make a peak claim in real time. As Stuart said, I had shown that the HL technique doesn’t really work that way. Some readers responded by suggesting I had ulterior motives, and the experience left a bad taste in my mouth.
Usually my posts were about how the energy industry really worked. I also spent a lot of time debunking claims around various biofuel technologies. I highlighted the problems at Range Fuels early on, and think I was the first to publicly proclaim that the emperor had no clothes long before they went bankrupt. Along the way I coined the term “XTL” (right here on TOD) to describe various (biomass, coal, or natural gas) “to liquids” technologies in which the carbon source is converted to synthesis gas and then subsequently to liquid fuels by the Fischer-Tropsch process.
I also coined the term “Peak Lite” to refer to a situation that behaves like peak oil, but isn’t a true peak because production is still rising. After all, peak oil really means that there is not enough oil to meet demand, and prices will become very volatile. But that situation doesn’t require a production peak to occur; rapidly increasing demand in the developing world can achieve the same thing: Not enough oil to supply demand at a certain price point, and prices inevitably rise.
Some interpreted my usage of peak lite to mean that peak oil will be a “lite” event, but that’s not what I meant. It is simply “lite” because it has the symptoms of peak oil without actually being peak oil. Another way to think of peak lite would be to consider it as peak oil as a function of price. Peak lite may imply for instance that the world has already passed peak $25/bbl oil. If oil prices were at that level, we would see oil production declining rapidly. But supply and demand work together to set prices, and I think many peak oil advocates underestimated the effect higher prices would have on oil production.
I eventually met quite a few contributors and readers at ASPO conferences I attended (and presented at) in Sacramento, Washington D.C., and in Austin. What sucked me in and kept me writing were the debates with others in the TOD community. People were reading, and they were engaging. This kept me interested. I like to write to educate, but in many cases I found that I learned just as much from readers – many of whom also had industry experience. I was happy after writing an article if I had learned something new.
Most people at TOD would consider me a bit of a contrarian in that I was not in the early peak (~2005) camp, but I still took peak oil very seriously and thought the world needed to be preparing for the possibility of a crisis. My position falls very much into the category of people like Robert Hirsch, Jeff Rubin, and Stuart Staniford. I was particularly concerned that by loudly predicting a date for peak oil (e.g., 2005) that the implications would be severe loss of credibility if that was shown to be another incorrect prediction of the timing of peak oil. I was worried about the boy crying wolf too many times. My own position tended to be “Peak oil soon, but not yet. I believe we have a few more years, but we can’t waste them.”
I tried to explain to people why we really use (and will continue to use) fossil fuels. I tried to give people a better understanding of how the oil industry works, as I feel most people have a comic book understanding of what goes on inside the industry. I tried to reason with people who protested the oil industry in general and to get them to understand what the world would be like if the oil industry suddenly stopped producing oil. (I am not suggesting that the oil industry is without flaws, but I think most people can’t comprehend what their lives would be like without it).
I ultimately found myself more at odds with the general consensus of TOD readers, and as a result I spent more time writing on my own R-Squared Energy Column. (Those of you who like to talk energy are more than welcome to drop by and engage in discussions with our many columnists). I was also sidelined for a while because I was asked to write a book along the way (Power Plays: Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil), and in it I very much emphasize the risks to the world of peak oil.
In the end, I wasn’t contributing as much to TOD, but I did contribute half a dozen articles last year (including the most read and 7th most read articles of the year). But I also checked in with Drumbeat every time it was posted, because I don’t think there is a better collection of energy-related news links out there. I am amazed that Leanan continued to do this as long as she did, and many of us are grateful that she did.
To close, I will repeat something I repeated many times here. I know many of us think we are dead certain about what the future holds. But nobody on TOD predicted that US oil production would turn around as the fracking revolution began to turn oil and gas resources into reserves and subsequent production. In 2005 if someone suggested that by the end of the decade US oil production would be rising rapidly they would have been laughed off the site. We should take those lessons to heart. Keep an open mind.
There will be many surprises along the way. So remember that there is a lot of uncertainty about the future, and we shouldn’t be too quick to ridicule alternate viewpoints about how things may play out in the interim. It is my philosophy that it is much better to operate with some level of uncertainty and be generally correct than to operate with dead certainty and be dead wrong. Although admittedly I am amazed that some can be dead wrong again and again and still maintain faithful followings.
Yes, peak oil is still very much a threat, but we don’t know exactly when the most serious consequences might manifest themselves. $100/bbl oil is certainly a hardship for many, but it is still mostly business as usual to this point. People sometimes ask me for advice on what to do given the threat of peak oil, and I generally say "Live your life, take care of your loved ones, and just try to make the world a slightly better place."
Thank you to the TOD community for the influence you have had on the course of my life. I am not sure which direction I might have gone without the early opportunity to write for TOD, and more importantly without the valuable feedback I got from TOD readers. Don't be strangers. Stop by my site, or find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook and let's keep the conversation going.
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Thank you, Robert
I have learned a LOT from your articles.
Perhaps the most important thing you have done for me , and countless others,is to constantly remind us that conventional wisdom, no matter the quarter it is associated with, is usually short on nuance and long on arrogance.
Now as it happens, I have no professional training as an engineer, a shortcoming I have often sorely regretted, but I have enjoyed the free time needed to keep up with the literature in a couple of fields which are at least as important as engineering in arriving at an understanding of our behaviors --and our fate.
Anyone who desires to truly understand human beings in a scientifically informed fashion should start by reading read Stephen Pinker and E O wilson , who are leading edge thinkers and chroniclers of the "hows and whys" of the human mind.
There are many others working in the field of evolutionary psychology who are doing comparable work, but imo, these two are the best actual writers, as opposed to researchers, by a long shot .
Readers will will find their work both highly illuminating and highly enjoyable, and as important to understanding our problems the thermo laws .
Well Robert, what can one say?
Thanks very much for all your input. Your knowlegde on ethanol and other biofules have been eye-opening. I have learned so much here. Had a lot of fun. I sort of lost my primary interest but still know that PO will eventually define a large part of my childrens' future. I'm sorry to see TOD on its' last toes, but it has been inspiring.
I was, possibly still am, in the doomer-camp. I am gratefull that time is still on our side and the world around us hasn't come apart just yet.
Thanks to all contributors for the insights. All the best and so long:-)
Robert, thanks for all the great postings here and on your blog. It has indeed been a great ride. Nothing ever before in my life has grabbed and held my attention like this peak oil discussion. And I have been around a long time and studied a lot worldly phenomena. I just hope to be around a while longer and not check out right when it is getting interesting like Matt Simmons did.
And I do find this is the most interesting time to be a peak oiler. Right now, just when almost everyone who has ever heard the term "peak oil" is writing it off as a passing phase followed by a few eccentric people who simply don't understand how the real world works. But we will have the last bitter-sweet laugh. Bitter because of the terrible consequences peak oil will very likely have and sweet because we will at last be proven correct.
Like you I have started my own blog and it has met with more success than I ever thought it would. I am getting ping-backs from all over the world where some of my articles and charts have been reproduced.
Take care and keep the faith.
Ron P.
Even the Archdruid gave you a thumbs up this week, Ron. Nice work!
And Robert, Greer also says that brewing beer will be a useful and valuable skill as catabolic collapse proceeds. It's never too late ;-)
To RON AND ALL other GREAT CONTRIBUTORS
For the past three years, Practically every night, I read your comments and I educated myself about PO. After my medical reading, TOD has been my passion to read and LEARN. Words cannot express my appreciation for your contributions on PO and energy in general. Ron, I do go to your blog and enjoy reading it since I found out TOD is closing its door. Let us all assemble at " Ron'S Place " and continue these great conversations.
Thank you all.
NDL, MD
R^2, truly enjoyed reading your last piece on TOD.
[BTW, Peak Oil is definitely happening in 2014 ;]
I agree that it is not a good idea to make definite predictions. Science always has error bars. And the system is too complex to make accurate predictions anyways. We don't have a full inventory of all the buried hydrocarbons, we don't know how extraction technology will change, we don't know how consumption efficiency will change. But we can make estimates and scenarios that can help guide our future activities.
“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”
― Richard P. Feynman
You are right. Please see Seismic&Electromagnetic together initiate surprising response from deposit
www.binaryseismoem.weebly.com
I don't recall if I had seen that particular Feynman quote, but it definitely resonates with me.
A similar quote I heard attributed to Einstein (in the eccentric, but worthwhile Nick Roeg movie, INSIGNIFIGANCE ) ..
"I refuse to claim I 'know' something, because then I stop thinking about it." (very loosely remembered)
The quotes page I found has a few doozies on roughly the same theme,
_______
“Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me?”
—Albert Einstein --- Quoted in an interview with New York Times, March 12,1944.
_______
“People like you and I, though mortal of course, like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live. What I mean is that we never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we were born.”
—Albert Einstein --- To Otto Juliusburger, September 29,1942.
________
“Most teachers waste their time by asking questions that are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning is to discover what the pupil does know or is capable of knowing.”
—Albert Einstein --- Quoted by Moszkowski in Conversations with Einstein (1920) 65.
I didn't pick up on the anti RR stuff that much to be honest. I probably wasn't paying attention. All the best Robert
Wow...I did not know you were in Mt...I too have enjoyed reading your post as well. And while I do agree with you that we did not think that production would rise etc...maybe we did...We are still in a very bad economic quagmire....and it is all interconnected. I often wonder how Mt will fair with peak oil...seems like we are very vulnerable to it just as we are too wild fires these days....
"I often wonder how Mt will fair with peak oil"
They are sitting on top of part of the Bakken and have good access to Canada. They also have several refineries. On the downside, they have a lot of people moving there which will make things more challenging. Was it Jared Diamond in Collapse who wrote about Montana as a case study by showing they were already in pretty bad shape?
Yes, though Diamond chose to make the Bitteroot his second home.
That area has been burning all this last week. Not sure, but I thought Diamond has his home within the Lolo Creek drainage.
http://missoulian.com/news/local/low-winds-drizzle-keeping-lolo-creek-co...
I am not sure but I know that before WW2 we used to grow 80 percent of our food and now we grow less than 80 percent today...the Bakaan is great but in 3 years where will it really be? and are the tar sands going to continue to be profitable? I guess we just don't know.
Montana is an interesting case study, but not as a candidate for collapse. In his book, Diamond complained about a 40-acre farm not being viable any more, but a 40-acre farm was never viable in Montana. It has low soil fertility and a semi-arid climate. A century ago they used to give away 320-acre homesteads, but that was marginal even then - 640 acres was really the minimum homesteaders needed to make a go of it. Not that you can't make money farming in Montana today, You just need a few thousand acres to make it profitable. You can offset the low fertility and low rainfall by running a big, efficient, highly automated operation.
It's true that Montana sits on the Bakken, but its oil production is still about what it was 30 years ago - 80,000 bpd. It hasn't seen the big rise that North Dakota has. I would deduce from that the "sweet spots" in the Bakken are in North Dakota, not Montana. Amidst all the hype, people don't realize that the large incremental production coming from the Bakken is from a few choice areas, and those are limited in size. The entire Bakken is not that good.
Montana does border on Canada, but it borders on three Texas-sized Canadian provinces with vastly greater amounts of the same resources it has, including oil, gas, timber, farmland, and most of all - water. They also have considerably more people and are among the most affluent areas of Canada, so Montana's gain is primarily tourist money. In terms of resources and industrial capacity, the provinces to the North are much better off - a reversal of the usual US/Canada relationship, and Montana can't really compete with them. Their educational systems are also better - educational systems vary regionally in Canada, and the West is the high-performance end of the country, scoring with the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese in international testing.
Montana used to be a world-class producer of copper and that was its biggest industry, but unfortunately all it has left is a world-class environmental problem - the Anaconda copper mine in Butte. It is the biggest Superfund site in the US and will cost billions to clean up. It has to be seen to be believed, and has actually become a tourist attraction. Other than that, Montana has never really recovered from the exhaustion of its copper resources, so it is interesting as a study of Peak Copper. Peak Oil won't hit them as hard.
"I would deduce from that the "sweet spots" in the Bakken are in North Dakota, not Montana."
You are correct about that, but I think as you see the sweet spots play out that production in Montana will increase. In fact, according to the EIA, after years of declines Montana oil production reversed direction in 2011 and is up about 25% since then (albeit still at a fraction of North Dakota's production):
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPMT2&f=M
"I didn't pick up on the anti RR stuff that much to be honest."
I don't want to rehash that, but if you are interested I documented the hostility from some of those I deemed the "lunatic fringe" who couldn't seem to handle viewpoints that contradicted the narrative they had built in their heads.
http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2007/03/24/peak-oil-and-the-lunatic-f...
To be fair, they represented a minority, but a very vocal one. After a while all that name-calling takes its toll.
I see where you are coming from; there is a lot of emotion on this on both sides. A lot of PO people wake up with it everyday on their minds and struggle with how things will turn out for the children and grandchildren. I became aware of our oil problems in the late 90's then I read an article in rolling stone about it and where would be the best place to ride out peak oil. And if someone asked me in the 90's what would be a sign we are at peak oil I would have to say : there would be wars for oil---check...there would be political strife in countries with oil as other world powers try to manipulate them----check and we would be doing everything that we could to find the last bit of oil----check..Oh and economic instability... So we don't know when peak oil is we can see signs of it coming...the key is to contain emotions on all sides so we can be of help rather than a hindrance. I wish it was not happening I love to drive...
Yeah, peak oil has not been much of a problem in the USA so far except for stagnant economic growth. That's annoying but not too big of a deal considering how bad things could be.
But I think peak oil is at the heart of the problems in Egypt despite the fact that most of the media has completely missed the story. Why is it that both Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood have been BOTH thrown out of power . . . it's not politics . . . it's the economy, stupid. And the economy is a disaster due to the fact that they no longer have oil to export. And it has been compounded by the fact that once the disruption started, the tourist economy has collapsed.
Yemen is another economic basket-case because they no longer have more than a pittance of oil to export. The other Gulf states have been helping prop up both of these collapsed states but they can't do that for long.
I've just re-read that whole episode. I'm appalled at the hysterical lashing out against you that occurred. You were posing a reasonable (and correct, I might add) criticism of H-L. Some people responded by lashing out, over and over again, without ever once addressing the criticism you made. To me, some of those people seemed like blinkered, hysterical true believers who couldn't tolerate any disagreement with their doctrines.
I found it especially amusing when one person said to you: "keep being unreasonable or start thinking". How ironic...
-Tom P
Yes, those commenters were very fringe.
I picked out one of my comments from one of Robert's posts back then and I still stand by it:
The rule of heuristics is that when the heuristic stops working, you go to something else. Robert spotted the HL problem early on, but this upset lots of TOD regulars.
"Robert spotted the HL problem early on, but this upset lots of TOD regulars."
Some of them never got over it. To this day I see some of those people making nasty comments about me.
It was this episode that made me realize that for some, peak oil is like a religion not to be challenged. This obviously represents a minority, but that minority would tend to concentrate on TOD.
Confirmation bias is extremely powerful.
If you are not willing to adapt to new data then you are not doing science. As the data changes, so must our views.
There are a lot of strange psychological factors. One thing that I think I have seen is that often times some older people have the most pessimistic views and a tilt toward the apocalyptic. It can happen with the very religious and it can happen with peak oilers. I think that as some people approach the end of their life they don't look so kindly at the fact that the party will go on without them. So some convince themselves that the world will be ending around the same time that their lives will be ending . . . whether it be by religious apocalypse, peak oil collapse, or climate change. Sometimes the easiest person to fool is ourselves.
Try PeakOil.com - they are far more religious about it than the doomers are / were on TOD ;-)
I appreciated all your work, especially coming from the upstream refinery angle. It was a hole here you filled well. Looking back at the great debate with WT, I think maybe we all hyped it beyond what was right at the time.
I think most people can’t comprehend what their lives would be like without (oil)"
Our lives would be just fine. Aviation and the car industry would be smaller (though EVs, rail, biofuel, and eventually synthetic liquid fuel would have filled part of the gap), but maybe we wouldn't have spent #2T on an Iraq oil war, and be spending roughly $500B less per year than we are on the military and various forms of "homeland security".
Now, of course, a sudden disruption in oil supply could be very, very painful. And, the historical move from coal to oil has very likely reduced CO2 emissions, which is all to the good.
But...we shouldn't glamorize oil, or we'll risk slowing down the necessary conversion away from it. Oil is *now* relatively dirty, dangerous and expensive, and the faster we convert away from it, the better.
"Our lives would be just fine."
I think the difference in our views would come down to the speed at which we could go from the status quo to something resembling "just fine" in the absence of oil. It is easy to say things would be just fine, but that's speculation. We can imagine that we could get by without oil, but which country in the world can we point to as an example? The lowest per capita users are the poorest countries. Of course "just fine" is relative, because I grew up poor and I considered my life "just fine."
I believe that society could function without oil, but life would be extremely different than it is today. We would certainly pay a lot more for the energy we use, and a larger percentage of society would be involved in the energy industry in some fashion (because it takes more people to produce oil replacements than it does to produce oil).
the speed at which we could go from the status quo to something resembling "just fine" in the absence of oil.
We don't need to completely eliminate oil any time soon. Over a period of 15 years the US could reasonably easily reduce oil consumption by 50%. We already know how to build cars that use 50% as much fuel, as well as none at all - it's a matter of ramping them up. Remember, cars less than 6 years old account for 50% of VMT.
Reducing coal by 80% in the same time period would be even easier - heck, solar power on Industrial/Commercial and residental rooftops are starting to take off uncontrollably - that will only stop if utilities are allowed to put up pricing barriers.
We can imagine that we could get by without oil, but which country in the world can we point to as an example?
Several European countries are planning to dramatically reduce their oil and fossil fuel consumption, including Germany. Germany is arguably the most economically successful country in Europe - it prides itself on it's hardheaded engineering and economic planning.
It really shouldn't take much imagination to see a world without oil: the US really was not oil reliant in 1910. It could have continued using rail. EV cars and trucks were very successful - they would only have continued to grow. The Model T was designed to use ethanol - without gasoline it would be grown far less, but it would have had it's niche. Fuel efficiency would have been far more important, hybrids would have been commercialized (they were developed in 1905 by Ferdinand Porsche!), and synthetic fuels were and are obviously feasible.
We would certainly pay a lot more for the energy we use, and a larger percentage of society would be involved in the energy industry in some fashion
Not at all. It's much cheaper to power the Nissan Leaf, or Chevy Volt. They cost 3.3 cents per mile, and use 300 watt hours, while the average US vehicle costs 16 cents per mile, and use 1,500 watt hours. The Nissan Leaf is less expensive to purchase than the average new car (without tax credit!), and saves $18,000 over it's lifetime in fuel. Hybrids and EVs already have a lower Total Cost of Ownership than ICE vehicles - those costs will continue to fall, with economies of scale.
Similarly, a heat pump is cheaper to run than gas forced air (let alone fuel oil), and uses much less energy.
Wind power costs less per kWh than new coal. Solar is competitive with gas peaker plants in many places. Those costs are falling, and their EROEI will only improve further (from 50:1 for wind, currently).
That's just considering out of pocket costs - external costs like pollution and security (remember that $2T oil war) can't be forgotten, right?
Putting this all together: the wind capacity needed to power an EV for it's lifetime costs only $2,000. With no pollution, no climate change, no volunteering for oil wars.
For it's lifetime!
"Several European countries are planning..."
So when I ask for an actual example, you tell me what countries are planning to do? I can make a very long list of what countries/companies/individuals planned to do that didn't mesh up at all with what they did. So, as I said it is based on speculation. There are no actual examples. I am not saying that we can't imagine it, nor that we can't do it, but I am saying nobody has shown it. Nobody is running an industrial society on extremely low per capita fossil fuel consumption.
"the US really was not oil reliant in 1910."
As I said, the world would be a very different place. The US population was also less than a third of what it is now.
"synthetic fuels were and are obviously feasible."
Technically feasible, of course. Economical and scalable? That's a different question. We would require a large reduction in our current oil consumption to be able to produce enough synthetic fuel for our needs.
"Not at all."
The renewable energy industry prides itself on claims of creating more jobs than the fossil fuel industry. The reason for that is that it takes more people to make a unit of renewable energy than it does to make a unit of fossil energy. So, yes, in the future a lot higher percentage of society's time will be spent acquiring energy -- just as it was before the age of fossil fuels.
"It's much cheaper to power the Nissan Leaf, or Chevy Volt."
I won't go down that rabbit hole, as it will end up with half a dozen more posts. Suffice to say is that I have written that electric cars do offer the only real replacement in the long run for oil that doesn't enormously restrict our mobility. Biofuels and synthetic fuels do not, as they can cover only a tiny fraction of our consumption.
as I said it is based on speculation
Robert, you're an engineer. You know that engineers (as well as many other people) are in the business of planning things that are in some way novel. That's what they do. To suggest that analysis of something that is in some way new is just "speculation" is not really an argument, is it? After all, to suggest that changing from what we have now is risky, could just as easily be described as speculation. Really, we're talking about your and my respective intuitions about risk, right? And, I'm writing this to try to educate your intuition. I would argue that sticking with oil is far, far riskier than transitioning away from it ASAP.
The fact is that all of the tech we need to replace oil is here now, and most of it is very, very old, and obviously perfectly feasible and viable. EVs and rail have been around for more than 100 years. The Tesla is the best car Consumer Reports ever tested, and will only get cheaper. The Nissan Leaf is cheap, and will only get cheaper. Once we get past that risky R&D stage, cost reductions in manufacturing via production experience and economies of scale are incredibly well tested, and reliable.
There is nothing here that is comparable to the speculative biofuels that you have debunked repeatedly.
There are no actual examples
I suspect there are, but I haven't had time to research that. When someone is planning a skyscraper that's a little higher than the last record holder, does the customer ask for actual examples before approving it? Humanity would never have built above five stories.
Anyone looked at this? Alan Drake, perhaps?
world would be a very different place
Yes, it's likely that it would have developed in a significantly different way. Significantly worse? We'd have rather less aviation, no doubt. The suburbs would be a bit smaller, and organized around rail. There'd be fewer vacation road trips. That's not really terrible.
The US population was also less than a third of what it is now
Well, that leads into an extended discussion of coal, it's supply limits, and the historical development of alternatives to it. Perhaps it's not worth going down that rabbit hole. Still, it's clear that we have good replacements for coal, now.
We would require a large reduction in our current oil consumption to be able to produce enough synthetic fuel for our needs.
Extended range hybrids, like the Chevy Volt (again, developed more than 100 years ago), use about 10% as much fuel as the average US vehicle - ethanol (with optimized compression!) could provide that 10% right now. If synthetic fuels cost $10 per gallon (and I suspect that's high), the combination of 90% cheap electricity and 10% expensive fuel would still be less expensive than oil is right now.
The renewable energy industry prides itself on claims of creating more jobs than the fossil fuel industry.
Yeah, I wish they'd stop saying that. I don't think you'll find the more quantitatively sophisticated advocates making that argument.
reason for that is that it takes more people to make a unit of renewable energy than it does to make a unit of fossil energy.
Well, no, it doesn't, at least for wind. I wish those people would stop saying that. I hope they mean that it creates domestic jobs (at the cost of jobs in other countries). Otherwise, they're just economically illiterate, and hurting their cause.
won't go down that rabbit hole, as it will end up with half a dozen more posts.
Yeah, that could be a long conversation. Still, you can see what I mean about 3.3 cents per mile, compared to 16 cents for BAU, right?
"When someone is planning a skyscraper that's a little higher than the last record holder, does the customer ask for actual examples before approving it?"
We aren't talking about "a little higher." I didn't claim that we can't get by with "a little less" oil. I said people can't comprehend "life without oil." Going from 22 barrels per person per year down to 20 isn't "life without oil." My point is that oil plays a critical role in our lives today, and it isn't clear how this would be replaced affordably and with similar levels of mobility. Again, we can't point to any industrialized country with 3rd world types of oil consumption. We can sketch it out on paper, but sometimes real life constraints prevent theories from becoming reality. Or, another way to put it is that it might be a lot harder than you think.
"Well, no, it doesn't, at least for wind. "
Do you have an references for that? There are two reports at this link that contradict your statement: http://energy-ecology.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-many-jobs-are-created-by-...
Robert you are being trolled by an expert.
Reading the back and forth with R squared is like going back to 05 and 06 here at the Oil Drum. His technical expertise is not his only attribute; common sense IMO is his most common virtue.
Thanks RR for enhancing my knowledge of the down stream oil industry and much more.
Just another farm boy with 35 years with an oil service company, now retired for 15 years.
BTW when I was in school digital was punch cards and analog was King.
Smeagle,
Did you notice what Robert said about being attacked for being too "optimistic"?
Deja vu all over again...
. Going from 22 barrels per person per year down to 20 isn't "life without oil."
I agree. Yet, people are buying Priuses, Volts and Leafs and experiencing 50%, 90'% and 100% reductions, nd liking it quite a lot.
My point is that oil plays a critical role in our lives today, and it isn't clear how this would be replaced affordably and with similar levels of mobility.
My goodness - we seem to have hit that point where we repeat ourselves, and don't make progress. Again, my point is that oil is only critical in the short term: it would only take 15 years for a 50% reduction, and perhaps another 15 years for another 50% reduction from that base. Hybrids, PHEVs and EVs are just as cheap, and can provide essentially identical levels of mobility.
Again, we can't point to any industrialized country with 3rd world types of oil consumption. We can sketch it out on paper, but sometimes real life constraints prevent theories from becoming reality. Or, another way to put it is that it might be a lot harder than you think.
And, we don't need to point to an example. It's perfectly obvious that hybrids, PHEVs and EVs work just fine. Again, they're 100 year old tech: there's really no serious question about whether they will work.
Thatt's the point of the building metaphor: engineers and architects can look at similar buildings, and know for a fact that a new building will work, even though it's not identical. PHEVs and EVs are functionally identical: it's highly unrealistic to suggest that they're a new "system". They're essentially identical dropin replacements: the factories are impossible to tell apart; they charge in our garages and in charging stations a lot like gas stations,, they drive on the same roads.
Well, I looked at the reference for renewable system costs. The two references track each other moderately well, so they appear to be measuring the same thing. The 2nd study is normalized for dollars of output, and that suggests that what we're measuring isn't really labor differentials, but rather different levels of pay and savings: if the average pay per hour is is 50% lower in industry 2 vs 1, then #2 will create twice as many jobs. Simliarly, if workers (and owners) are more affluent, they also save more, and the multiplier effect is smaller: they pass on less income to other people.
Ultimately, cost is the most important measure, and wind power in an EV is much cheaper per mile than gas/diesel in an ICE.
"I agree. Yet, people are buying Priuses, Volts and Leafs and experiencing 50%, 90'% and 100% reductions, nd liking it quite a lot."
And because it is a small number of people who actually do it (for various reasons), overall the decline has been small -- around the magnitude of what I mentioned.
"that suggests that what we're measuring isn't really labor differentials, but rather different levels of pay and savings:"
First off, I am unaware of a study that shows that green energy pays more than the oil industry, for instance. I can tell you without a doubt that there is a substantial difference between what operators are paid in an oil refinery versus an ethanol plant.
Second, the first study clearly shows total job-years per GWh of energy. As I said, in every case it requires more man-hours to produce an equivalent unit of renewable energy versus fossil fuel. I have seen numerous studies that indicate this, and it is entirely consistent with the claims of the renewable energy industry itself. You have also not quoted a study to the contrary, so my point stands. This is simply a case of wishful thinking on your part, and not based on data.
To date I have seen zero to contradict my point that the future will see a larger proportion of society devoted to securing energy.
The Prius is the number 1 selling car in California. Change is happening but it takes time. Old habits die hard. I think a lot of people are sadly causing themselves more financial difficulty that they should be having by not recognizing that the world has changed and continuing to buy gas guzzlers like they always have. They'll learn the hard way.
It's not just this year's sales numbers; it takes a while to turn over a vehicle fleet. Meanwhile, population increases which challenges our ability to see really steep declines in consumption.
We can speculate -- as Nick is doing -- about how things could possibly be. I am looking at how things are and why they are that way, and I don't believe there will be a pleasant transition to a low-oil society. The only examples we have are of 3rd world countries, and even they are increasing their oil consumption.
Indeed . . . it will take a long time to transition. It is evolution not revolution.
But I'm a bit worried that people are not taking it seriously enough. Perhaps we are fine for now since we are on a plateau of oil prices that can probably last for a while due to deepwater, tar sands, shale oil, reduced consumption, etc. But if gas prices spike up again, I think a lot of people will be in trouble and have a hard time paying to fuel their gas guzzlers. People stick to what they are familiar with. But times are changing. People really should look more to hybrids, PHEVs, and even pure EVs.
The transition could be relatively easy if people bought smaller more efficient cars. But they'll just continue to buy what they've always bought. And although the fuel efficiency of all cars have improved, it might not be enough if a gas price spike happens.
it takes a while to turn over a vehicle fleet.
Not as long is often assumed. Again, 50% of Vehicle Miles come from vehicles less than 6 years old. 10-12% comes from vehicles less than 1 year old.
population increases
Not much in the US and Europe. The US is less than 1% per year, now that immigration from Mexico has fallen dramatically.
We can speculate
Again, that's not an argument. How would you react if you made a presentation to a manager, or a potential client, investor, and they dismissed anything that hadn't already been done elsewhere in an identical fashion as "speculation'?
-------------------------------
I am looking at how things are and why they are that way, and I don't believe there will be a pleasant transition to a low-oil society.
Well...yes. It's certainly possible that we'll continue to do too little, and the forces of political resistance (in the US, that takes the form of the Koch brothers, to a large extent) will succeed in putting us in a position where we have a serious oil shock, and a serious oil recession.
That's a real risk. Still, change is happening: hybrids, PHEVs and EVs are proliferating, and industrial/commercial oil consumers are seriously moving towards greater efficiency and substitutes (like truck and ship LNG, for instance).
And, it's important to be clear: this isn't a technical problem. We have all the tech we need. It's a political problem...
"How would you react if you made a presentation to a manager, or a potential client, investor, and they dismissed anything that hadn't already been done elsewhere in an identical fashion as "speculation'?"
When I give a presentation about some future potential possibility, I always give the risks and discuss the things that might go wrong. That grounds it in reality.
Sure. You'll describe specific risks, and quantify them as much as possible, using reliable engineering sources such as General Electric (major supplier of wind turbines), the NREL, and official German analyses & plans.
You'll also do that for the alternatives to your proposal - in this case, for instance, relying for 90% of our transportation fuel from a source that could double in price overnight when a key supplier has the political problems that all of it's major neighbors have already suffered...
There are risks to anything - I would never claim that any major energy plan doesn't have real risks. But, really - don't we agree that the path of least risk is to transition away from oil & fossil fuels ASAP??
"But, really - don't we agree that the path of least risk is to transition away from oil & fossil fuels ASAP??"
Yes. Our disagreement I think is merely in the difficulty of making that transition. I think it's going to be pretty rough, and I think we are going to give some things up. But we have to do it.
What do you think is the most important thing we'll have to give up?
We will have to give up the level of mobility we currently enjoy at the price and convenience we currently enjoy. Air travel, for instance, will be much more expensive if the fuel has to be biofuel or synthetic fuels.
I would estimate that a conservatively high projected cost for synthetic fuels would be around $2.50 per litre, given current conversion efficiencies and somewhat higher industrial electricity costs: 10 kWhs per litre / 33% efficiency x $.08/kWh. Does that sound reasonable to you?
Yeah, the synthetic fuel price is probably OK. Electricity costs sound low. I pay $0.45/kWh in Hawaii right now.
Electricity costs sound low. I pay $0.45/kWh in Hawaii right now.
Well, that's a residential price (on an island that generates most of it's power from fuel oil). I'm assuming that synthetic fuel would be processed in a central, industrial facility. I believe such facilities are typically charged around $.05.-06 per kWh in both the US and Europe, so an assumption of $.08 per kWh for an industrial user seems conservatively high.
Does that make sense?
Does your powerprice include delivery? I pay about 11c for power and another 11c for delivery.
Rgds
WP
The reason my power price is so high in Hawaii is that they use oil to produce electricity here. That has a long history, but in the past decade when oil prices skyrocketed, so did our electricity prices.
Hawaii is a very interesting energy lab for the USA . . . it is our Germany. A place where high electricity prices (due to oil-based generation) and a good state incentive has created a rapid build out of solar. So much so that they are starting to have grid stability issues. It will be interesting to learn from Hawaii's experiences in this area. I suspect Hawaii is probably trying to learn as much as they can from Germany.
I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing starts happening in the Southwest lower 48 states. California's incentive program is out of money for most areas yet the build out is going strong. I got a note from PG&E that they are back-logged in approving net metering agreements:
"So much so that they are starting to have grid stability issues."
Exactly. I always point this out to people who think that price parity for solar power necessarily means that solar power is going to supply a large fraction of our power any time soon. It hasn't worked out yet in Hawaii because other issues have to be worked through.
Well, just because the Hawaiian utilities are having trouble coping doesn't mean that solar installations have slowed down. This fits with Speculawyer's note about California installations going strong despite running out of state credits - customers really, really want solar. I understand that the primary bottleneck in Hawaii right now is overloaded municipal permit offices, which again fits with PG&E having an approval backlog.
And, Hawaii is not a good example for the mainland - not only is it small and isolated, but it's made of an "archipelago" of islands (with very deep water between!). For the same reason that they use oil, they have trouble taking advantage of grid management strategies available in places like Germany and California.
Iowa has substantially higher market penetration of renewables than Hawaii - I would guess that it's a much better analog to Germany.
On the other hand, I agree - there are several "above ground" problems:
First, utilities are threatened by rooftop solar - it is competition that doesn't fit into their business model of steadily growing consumption paired with guaranteed ROI.
Distributed power, efficiency, Demand Side Management - these are all effective, and in the latter two cases very low cost, strategies that don't fit into utility business models and regulatory frameworks.
2nd, solar is low CO2, so it should be "subsidized", but again there is no regulatory framework for this yet - utilities are simply losing business while dealing with greater demand variance.
3rd, Hawaiian utilities seem particularly resistant to renewable power - Hawaii has always had good wind and solar resources, and has been very slow in taking advantage of them. This is not uncommon - Japan has been very slow to adopt wind power, due in large part to utility monopolies, despite blindingly obvious economies compared to imported oil.
This would be a relatively capital-intensive project, but that makes less difference than I'd expected.
A quick search suggests GTL plants cost in the range of $1B per 10k bbl/day. 2% O&M + 5% ROI (as rough ballparks for ongoing costs plus cost of capital) would be about $20/bbl, or 15c per litre.
As a result, it looks like there's a good chance energy would represent the large majority of the per-litre cost.
Yes.
One possibility: a plant that operated during 6-8 months of the year when renewable power was in surplus, and cheap. That might raise the capital cost to around $.25 per liter, but likely would still be more optimal than year round operation.
I just shared a picture on Twitter of what concerns me more than anything. China's growth trajectory of energy consumption: https://twitter.com/RRapier/status/372768871138086912
overall the decline has been small
Well, recently. Of course, the average fuel efficiency of US cars has roughly doubled over the last several decades. And, it seems blindingly obvious that another 50% reduction is very straightforward. Reductions after that point might have slightly higher marginal costs, perhaps, due to infrastructure costs. OTOH, the BAU infrastructure will need replacement in any case, and the new infrastructure looks awfully similar - charging stations instead of gas stations; parking meters with outlets, just as is done in Canada right now. Pretty easy, straightforward stuff.
Again, human innovation takes place in a wide continuum of risk: things like algae fuels are at the silly end of the spectrum, and things like rail, hybrids, PHEVs, and EVs are at the other end: well proven, and used for many decades. Only the engineering implementation is changing somewhat.
Heck, Extended Range EVs have been in use for 100 years in the most demanding of applications: diesel submarines. They require enormous reliability for those sailors whose lives depend on them in time of war, and they work extremely well.
Another example: diesel trains are powered by electric motors. They are extended range EVs, just without the batteries.
This is very old tech, just the engineering implementation varies a bit. It's a classic case of an easy to plan, very low risk "system".
I am unaware of a study that shows that green energy pays more than the oil industry, for instance. I can tell you without a doubt that there is a substantial difference between what operators are paid in an oil refinery versus an ethanol plant.
That's exactly the point: if wind installers are paid $30 per hour, and nuclear operators are paid $60 per hour (these are completely made up numbers, of course), then sixty dollars will buy 2 hours of wind installation, and only 1 hour of nuclear operation. For the same money, you get twice as many jobs in the wind industry.
And, higher income people tend to spend less, and save more. That means that paying them a salary has a lower "multiplier" effect, and creates fewer jobs.
the first study clearly shows total job-years per GWh of energy.
Yes, and the 2nd study, which is normalized for dollars of output, is consistent with it. That means that the "higher jobs" effect is due to the two factors discussed above.
So, again, all the studies show that windpower doesn't *cost* more than new coal or nuclear, at least in the US and Europe. And, solar is pretty competitive with gas peakers. And, wind and solar costs are falling, while fossil fuel costs are rising.
Now, if renewables cost the same, but create more lower income jobs, is that a bad thing in a world where unemployment is much higher for lower income people? I wouldn't think so.
And, again, that doesn't include the "external" costs of security, pollution, etc. You agree those are real costs, right?
And, again, we started talking about oil, not fossil fuels in general. It's also obvious that 3.3 cents per mile for electricity is cheaper than 16 cents per mile for oil, right?
------------------------------------------
The funny thing here is that we actually agree on a lot. Looking through your responses, I noticed that the 1st sentence for each paragraph was often an agreement. And then, you'd add a cautionary comment, with a tone that felt unnecessarily negative to me.
And, I guess that tone is what I'm trying to address: your intuition that this transition away from oil and FF is a relatively negative one.
I certainly agree that there are risks. But, I see the negatives of oil & FF as being very high right now, and their risks going forward as even higher.
And, clearly, the price of energy is going to go up. But, that's largely because it will begin to include costs that we're already paying, like security, health and pollution costs. And, of course, those costs will only go up with oil & FF, while they'll go down dramatically with renewables.
Does that make sense?
"Of course, the average fuel efficiency of US cars has roughly doubled over the last several decades."
And at the same time people like Amory Lovins were arguing that this would lead to a dramatic decrease in fossil fuel consumption. Just the opposite happened. That's my point. One could easily make the assumption Amory did and think they had a good reason for making it. Doesn't make him any less wrong about what happened.
"That means that the "higher jobs" effect is due to the two factors discussed above."
There really isn't any other way to spin "total job-years per GWh of energy" because it doesn't have a money term in it. You are just wrong about this, no matter how long you want to argue about it. My point stands: It will take more of society's efforts in the future to secure the same amount of renewable energy versus fossil energy.
This is probably true, in my opinion, but I don't think it will make a large difference. I don't think renewable energy ultimately requires much more effort than FF energy. My reason is that the price of renewable energy is declining to the point that it won't be much more expensive than FF energy, and I think price is a fairly good proxy in this case for the amount of "effort" it takes to do something (of course there are exceptions like monopolies, etc, but that's not the case with renewable energy). Bear in mind that price includes wages paid to everyone in the industry and all supporting industries, plus capital investment, profit, rent on land, and so on.
Right now, the energy industry in the US employs about 750,000 people (http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_207.htm). That's just under 0.5% of all employment. I wouldn't be surprised if that number increased to 0.75% or more of all employment after a transition to renewables.
Who knows, though. I suppose it's possible that the cost of renewables will continue to drop and ultimately be cheaper than FF are now. We're projecting decades into the future here, and it's hard to anticipate technological development in industries which are not yet mature. In the future, 50 years from now, maybe large machines will put solar panels into place. Who knows.
-Tom P
50 years from now, maybe large machines will put solar panels into place
There's a company that has developed that, already, for utility-scale PV. hmmm...where's that link...
Lovins
1-It did reduce consumption 50% over the status quo, and
2-the CAFE program was not implemented fully - it was frozen around 1990 due to...the car industry's political resistance.
3-it was an enormous success - it's only major flaw, the SUV loophole, was the result of the aforementioned political freeze.
money term
Robert, I learned new things from those studies - have you fully read them, and thought through the concepts?
Isn't overall dollar cost generally used to measure overall resource consumption?
Okay, let's give an example. Let's say you give your boss two alternatives: hiring a scarce programmer at $50 an hour, or two teenagers at $10 an hour (who are plentiful, due to youth unemployment), all else being equal?
Which would your boss choose? Which is a better use of scarce resources?
Nick, by any chance was that you on the Richard Stubbs program the other day?
No, not me - do you remember who it was?
If the green credits and EV incentives were removed it might suddenly get $20k more expensive. I wouldn't trust any price that is supported by government mandate. It can change at the stroke of a pen.
Detroit squeezed costs out by cutting labour hours per car, automation, making fewer rejects aka better quality control, and substituting plastic for metal.
Tesla is built by robots. The car is already aluminium and plastic. They can't go to cheaper materials because they are heavier, affecting performance. i.e. There is little scope for cost reductions.
All that is left is the battery pack, and gains will be hard to come by. From a BBC article on cellphone batteries (which Tesla uses)
What green incentives and credits are you referring to? I'm not aware of any that affect the list price. Tesla did have a loan, but they paid that back very quickly.
Cedar is talking about features like energy density - I'm talking about manufacturing costs, which fall inexorably.
How do they reduce costs, when they've already heavily automated? One important area will be economies of scale: as volumes increase, those robots will produce more and more cars per unit of capital investment.
If the assembly process is heavily automated, then most of the cost is in the parts, and those manufacturers will be gradually squeezing out cost, and reducing prices, in part with economies of scale as order volumes rise.
"What green incentives and credits are you referring to?"
I would guess he is talking about the emission credits they sold that made the company profitable. Details can be found here: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1084403_tesla-didnt-make-a-profit-on...
Ah, yes, I forgot about those.
Still, Tesla says those credits aren't part of their near term plan, and their elimination won't affect Tesla's near-term profitability:
"On the Q1 earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and CFO Deepak Ahuja said that its financial planning assumes that revenue from selling emission credits would fall to zero by the end of the year...Now that parts vendors are starting to believe that Tesla is actually building the volumes it claimed it would--perhaps 21,000 this year, against the 3,000 one vendor supposedly tooled up for--the company will benefit from economies of scale that drive down parts prices. It's also steadily cutting the number of worker hours that go into each car.
...Tesla suggests that Model S cars sold in the second and third quarters should have a lower Cost Of Goods Sold. That's how you get to profitability."
There aren't any examples of modern societies collapsing from lack of oil, either. There are no examples either way. No modern, industrial civilization has ever tried to do without oil, except perhaps South Africa.
However, industrial civilization has gone through energy transitions many times. We are no longer operating trains with reciprocating steam engines powered by coal. We are no longer operating riverboats on the Mississippi with reciprocating steam engines powered by wood. We transitioned to oil for transportation. Even natural gas was basically not used 60 years ago.
One example of an energy transition, is France. France decided to ditch all its fossil fuel-burning electricity, and switch the entire country to nuclear power. It took them just under 30 years to do it. There's a reason for that. 30 years is the rate at which industrial capital equipment turns over anyway. So 30 years is the time it takes to transition without any special effort.
As long as the transition is fairly gradual (30+ years) I think society will look fairly similar after oil. There will be some differences, of course. Cars will have range limitations imposed by batteries. Air travel will be more expensive and rarer. Transport of cargo will be somewhat different.
I don't think energy will be much more expensive than it is now. Oil is not a cheap form of energy. The alternatives to oil-powered cars are not much more expensive (on a TCO basis) once they're mass-manufactured.
I'm not saying the future is a bed of roses. I'd guess that oil declines (once they occur) will cause a nasty recession similar to what we underwent in the late 1970s, but longer.
That said, I don't think oil is ultimately that important. It was convenient, but not fundamental.
-Tom P
"And, the historical move from coal to oil has very likely reduced CO2 emissions, which is all to the good."
Again, label me confused. Coal production/consumption has increased virtually every year for the last 200 years, with a couple of blips in the 1990s, more than doubling from 1980 (3,752,173,000 short tons) to 2011 (8,144,308,000 st). Looking at the historical charts, increasing use of petroleum barely made a dent in global coal use.
Explain to me again how the world economy backs out of using over 8 billion tons of coal annually and over 30 billion barrels of oil each year, to be replaced by diffused, low carbon sources, and our economies, "our lives would be just fine."
http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/world-energy-consumpti...
Methinks someone has a problem with scale.
Looking at the historical charts, increasing use of petroleum barely made a dent in global coal use.
Well, obviously, in an alternate universe in which petroleum did not exist, coal would have grown faster.
Explain to me again how the world economy backs out of using over 8 billion tons of coal annually and over 30 billion barrels of oil each year, to be replaced by diffused, low carbon sources, and our economies
Wind and solar are no more diffuse than petroleum source rock, right?
Big Gav's recent post was a pretty good description.
a problem with scale.
What, 100,000 terawatts of solar power isn't enough?
Nick, I think you actually bring some things to the table with your discussion, but you often belittle what others say, and then say some really outlandish things.
A case in point: oil is an enabling technology that enabled us to extract and burn much more coal (and do many other things, including wind and solar) than would have been the case otherwise. Everyone else seems to get that, but you don't. You have some great ideas, but you also need to be more receptive to others here who have more of a grasp of physics and systems thinking than you do; there are a lot of them here, you could learn a lot, and they in turn would be more receptive to your ideas.
And actually, wind and solar -are- more diffuse than the vast majority of producing petroleum fields. That doesn't mean that they're not worth going after, but it does affect their applicability. And I don't know about everyone else, but since I'm actually more interested in biological forms of life than pure energy, I'd rather devote most of the earth to that, so the 100 petawatts of theoretical solar power striking the earth is a completely useless number to bandy about; please stop doing it.
I don't see why that matters. Suppose oil fields were twice as far across as they are today. How much difference would it make? How much of the Earth's surface right now is devoted to oil wells?
Right now, we could power all of civilization using solar panels in 1% of deserts. Is that too much space?
Clearly there are some sources of energy which are so diffuse that they're just unworkable (like many kinds of biomass) but solar PV doesn't suffer from that.
So people back then figured out how to build oil wells, how to find the oil, how to refine the oil through fractional distillation, how to transport the oil, and how to design and build diesel engines to use the oil. Wouldn't they have figured out to gasify coal (something widely understood back then) and then use that in internal combustion engines, if oil weren't available?
Also, there were other options back then, like batteries, which are much older as a technology than oil extraction. There were even steam powered trucks in the early 20th century. Oil was chosen as the best alternative among many.
However, even if oil were absolutely essential back then (speaking hypothetically), it's not now.
-Tom P
The actual size of the oil (or other energy) fields doesn't matter *directly*; it's the Energy Returned on Energy Invested. There is, however, a loose correlation of the two. The somewhat disperse nature of the energy from sunlight puts an upper limit on the EROEI, if from nothing else, from the support structure to hold the cells normal to the sun and protected from the weather, but I agree that it's not a show-stopper; solar works.
Yes, we did learn to gasify coal, and would have done it without oil. And yes, I'm pretty sure we would have also learned GTL to make a similar product to oil, even without oil. However, none of this would have happened so fast, because of the much greater infrastructure to be built to get the same result as oil (EROEI is raising its [ugly ?] head again). I don't know if the technological development (including making PV) would have just been slower without oil, or if the high EROEI of oil enabled some kind of critical mass that would never have happened without it.
I'm pretty sure it would have been very different, and it's also quite possible that we would have taken a more sustainable path because of that; one can dream !
I do disagree that oil is not essential now. There's a difference between a single process being technically possible because it has an EROEI > 1 (I don't mean to imply that solar EROEI is only slightly greater than 1; this is just the definition of a single process being technically possible) and what is systemically possible and probable. A very high EROEI, like most onshore crude oil, allows the energy infrastucture to support the system to be a small part of the whole, leaving much more room for other stuff.
In order to move over to solar (say, 50% within 20 years), we have to devote more energy to energy infrastructure, and this will require cutting out a lot of the "waste" that we currently have in the rest of our economy. There are (at least) 2 problems with that.
First, a part of that "waste" (not all of it) is someone's job right now, and that job cannot necessarily be easily moved over to the solar energy infrastructure, even if it were a 1:1 swap, which it's not likely to be. This is, shall we say, politically unpalatable.
Secondly, solar infrastructure requires significantly more up-front investment than oil. This has been discussed extensively at (I believe) Robert Rapier's blog; I don't have the link right now. The upshot is that our energy investment will be negative for a number of years (and it gets worse the faster we try to grow solar). While I'm sure most here agree that that is a *very* worthwhile investment, the current (and foreseeable future) political climate simply will not allow it, and accordingly, the changeover will probably be too slow to keep us running well. We could, of course, prioritize it and greatly reduce the waste, but that puts us back to the 1st problem.
I'm not actually a *complete* doomer, but in order to move forward, we have to acknowledge what we're up against, so that we can combat it at its root. Glossing over it like some do does not help us.
David V.
A very high EROEI, like most onshore crude oil, allows the energy infrastucture to support the system to be a small part of the whole, leaving much more room for other stuff.
"Highly positive EROEI" is a bit of an illusion. The difference between legacy oil at 100:1 and modern natural gas at 20:1 is the difference between 99% net energy and 95% net energy. IOW, really not much.
It's similar to MPG - the upside down ratio is very misleading. Which is better: moving from 10MPG to 20MPG, or from 50MPG to 100MPG? Well, the first goes from .10 gallons per mile to .05 gallons per mile, while the 2nd moves from .02 gallons to .01 gallons. So, the first alternative saves 5x as much fuel!
a part of that "waste" (not all of it) is someone's job right now
When I say waste, I mean things like single passenger SUVs. Two people in a Prius can commute to work just as well as one person in a SUV, and use 15% as much fuel!
solar infrastructure requires significantly more up-front investment than oil.
It's a mistake to focus on solar in the short term. Windpower has an EROI of 50:1, and costs half as much as solar. It should do the heavy lifting for a while.
often belittle what others say
No, if you look through my comments, you'll see that I very rarely do that. Usually, if I do, it's in reponse to someone who's used that tone towards me. Of course, that's almost always a mistake. Look at this example: "Ghung" used that kind of tone towards me, I responded a little the same way, and it's distracted you.
That's one of the nice things about TOD: the lack of that kind of tone.
say some really outlandish things....oil is an enabling technology that enabled us to extract and burn much more coal
No, it's really not. Tom P's thoughts on that are great. One more: if you actually look at coal mining, you'll see that underground mining uses electrical power extensively: you really don't want to be running diesel motors underground, with high methane concentrations in the air.
more of a grasp of physics and systems thinking
I'd be delighted to learn more - what specifically?
wind and solar -are- more diffuse than the vast majority of producing petroleum fields.
Measured in what units? Seriously, do you have numbers?
Wind consumes very little land - roughly 3/4 acre per 1.6MW wind turbine (.3 hectares permanent impact) - much less than other forms of generation, when you include fuel mining and the overall footprint of generating plants (nuclear plants can take up more than a square mile).
NREL's "Land-Use Requirements of Modern Wind Power Plants in the United States" table 4.1 (page 10), http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy09osti/45834.pdf 79% of this land is for roads (table 3, page 13), and this data is for turbines averaging 1.6MW - as turbine capacity rises the land per MW will fall proportionately. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/46635.pdf
Right now 60 acres per turbine is pretty standard (probably 1.6MW), for 37.5 acres/MW.
Farmers have often gotten about $4K per 1.6MW turbine, which meant about $40K on a 640 acre farm. 10 turbines means they only lose 5 acres of productive farmland (less than 1%), and perhaps double their net income. That's huge money for a farmer.
Farmers love wind power and in the US there is an enormous wind resource in farm areas. Rooftop solar doesn't consume any land at all.
Some analyses use average wind speed over the entire land mass, a bit like estimating the average oil content of the earths crust or the energy in hydro electricity on rainfall/m^2.
Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, tidal energy are all concentrated in specific regions so using average power density is meaningless. I don't see how energy density of renwewables is relevant, electric wires can carry very high energy density thousands of km, to where its needed.
more interested in biological forms of life than pure energy, I'd rather devote most of the earth to that
That's not what Robert Rapier, or most of TOD are talking about. They're talking about human civilization...
We implement a carbon tax, thereby making coal-burning plants more expensive than renewable or nuclear plants.
Then, we wait 40 years. The economy will transition on its own, just as it has always transitioned, just as it is transitioning now. Every time a utility needs to retire a coal power plant (about 3% of them per year) it will be replaced by a nuclear plant or some combination of renewables instead, because those are cheaper. Every time some heavy duty truck wears out and needs to be replaced (about 3% of them per year) it will be replaced by an electric truck instead. Similarly with the industries which make equipment for power plants. In this manner, the entire fleet of trucks and coal plants is transitioned at about 3% per year. It's the result of basic economic calculations which economic decision-makers carry out all the time, every day. Economic decision-makers do not just automatically replace every retiring coal plant with another coal plant, regardless of cost. They face a decision. The decision would be no more complicated than noticing that the TCO for one thing is higher than another.
Could you explain to me how the economy would fail to transition in that case? If coal-burning plants were more expensive than renewables or nuclear, then why would utilities order new coal plants as the old ones are decommissioned? Aren't they trying to minimize losses? If gasoline-powered trucks are more expensive than battery-powered ones, then why would a trucking company order new gasoline-powered trucks as the old ones wore out, despite being obviously more expensive?
Do oil companies fail to carry out these kinds of calculations? If a well runs dry, do they wonder why it happened and then just drill another well of the same type in the same place, over and over again, for decades, each time wondering why nothing comes out? Do all oil companies do that? How do we have any oil?
I'm a student of economics, which makes me persona non grata around here. I just don't understand how the economy would fail to transition in this case. Oil decline will be a protracted thing over 5 decades or more. That is much longer than it took to build suburbia.
Anyway, I try to keep an open mind, just in case I'm mistaken about anything.
-Tom P
tom_p
Re transition rates.
To get a preliminary glimpse of the engineering challenges in transition, please read Robert L. Hirsch et al, The Impending World Energy Mess, and the Hirsch Report to DOE 2005.
i.e. it will take 20 years BEFORE the peak with a full war time effort to just replace existing oil decline. Adding a carbon tax is perverse by moving industry offshore to China resulting in much faster CO2 growth rates - using coal imported from the USA.
See R^2 article King Coal gets fatter while the US goes on a diet
David,
Hirsch's reports were low quality - their estimates of fleet turnover were far too low, and they didn't even consider hybrids, PHEVs and EVs. They only considered liquid fuel replacements!
And, of course, we've been adapting to PO for quite some time. That's why we have so many hybrids, PHEVs and EVs on the market. Frustratingly, fuel taxes for personal transportation (which don't move industry offshore) are far too low, so manufacturers actually have quite a bit of unused alt-vehicle capacity at the moment.
Regarding coal - yes, it's a big problem. China is building wind, nuclear and solar pretty fast, but not fast enough.
I get a real kick out of all this talk about transition. I live in the boondocks and, in a way, have watched people try to transition from urban/suburban life to a "different reality".
Although they have most of the accoutrements of the places they came from, the vast majority give up and move back because they can't hack it. There are a variety of reasons but they aren't important to my point - they give up.
Sure, on theoretical grounds society could transition. However, looking the numerous crisis that aren't being aren't being addressed right now, it is pie in the sky to actually believe there will be a planned transition. Rather it will be chaos and something different will arise.
Good luck.
Todd
And to Robert - thank you.
"However, industrial civilization has gone through energy transitions many times.
The transition from coal to petroleum occurred while there was still a surplus of coal and virtually every other industrial commodity. These transitions occurred when there were few limits to growth, and during a period of massive, mechanized, industrial wars. Transitioning to petroleum had no real downside to economies or the coal industry; coal production and consumption continued to increase throughout the entire process. In short, these transitions were economically advantageous for virtually everyone. The need for energy of all types was growing exponentially.
Conversely, the transition away from fossil fuels is being forced by climate considerations and commodity surplus constraints. Few can see the economic advantages in doing so. Indeed, this transition, such as it is, represents contraction for most. People don't react well to going backwards. See Greer's essays on the religion of progress.
"We implement a carbon tax..."
I submit there is no universal "we" during an energy and economic contraction. There is no "we" when it comes to reducing carbon emissions. An enormous campaign is on to do exactly the opposite; manufacturing demand for continued consumption of just about everything.
Further, no one owns the rights to harvest the sun - one can't buy an exclusive mining claim or drilling play. It's availability to virtually everyone represents a disadvantage in a greed-based, profit-driven economy; a threat to powerful interests. That's one of the reasons I'm living on solar power, but most people don't care where their energy comes from; only that it's the most affordable, reliable energy available to them. Those with the most capacity for change currently have little incentive to do so.
Transitioning in an age of unprecedented growth, or an age of necessary contraction are two very different processes, with very different stories attached. Transitioning to renewables requires that people acknowledge that our fossil fuel based economies are failing us. So far, that hasn't become obvious, and as it does, it may well be too late. The level of rationality some of you assign to society at large is quite remarkable, if not overly optimistic. The status quo of growth and progress is being vigorously defended, possibly to the death of us all.
In short, intermittancy, conservation, and contraction is a much, much harder sell than previous transitions.
No doubt this will be a different and more difficult transition. Previous transitions were upgrades to better energy sources. And that will be true this time as well. The difference is that this time we are not finding a new better energy source, it is that the old energy source (oil) is becoming worse over time because it is harder to find and more expensive to extract. EVs have some great advantages and I can talk all about them . . . but I'm not wild-eyed dreamer . . . I realize that the ultimate reason why we will slowly switch toward electrified transport is because the oil-based system will ultimately become too expensive. (I'd like to believe that climate change would also push us to move away from oil but I've come to the conclusion that we are no smarter than yeast.)
No smarter than yeast? You may enjoy this then:
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/08/coping-skills/
I think that gasoline-powered cars will become more expensive ($5/gallon or more, in 2013 USD) while battery-electric cars become considerably cheaper. At some point, the lines will cross and people will start buying EVs en masse.
They may not react well to the range limitations, etc, but that's just too bad for them. They didn't react particularly well to gasoline prices doubling in 2006.
But the transition to other forms of energy for transport is mediated by economic decision-makers carrying out decisions. For example, trucking companies will order electric trucks as replacements for worn-out diesel-powered trucks, when electric trucks are cheaper, as I suggested above. That mechanism of decision-making is independent of whether energy is getting more expensive or less.
Has the economy failed to transition to higher oil prices thus far? GM discontinued the Hummer, Toyota made more Priuses (and released new Prius models), the fuel economy of non-hybrid cars increased, all manufacturers released plug-in cars, railroads expanded, trucking companies contracted, Maersk ordered the triple-E, and so on. Bear in mind that oil production hasn't actually declined yet. It seems to me that the transition is already happening, and is happening faster than oil production declines. Bear in mind that two car companies (Nissan and GM) overestimated how quickly EVs would be adopted, and they built more manufacturing capacity for their EVs than has been used. They could have manufactured EVs much more quickly than they did.
In my opinion, the real threat of peak oil, is that consumers will be caught off guard in the face of higher oil prices. Oil prices could spike suddenly. Consumers will be stuck with a fleet of gas-guzzling cars (gas-guzzling compared to what's needed) which will then take years to turn over. It could cause a recession like the one that happened in the late 1970s, but longer. It would force consumers to sacrifice some discretionary travel until they can buy a new EV and ditch their old car, which will take years. I think that's the worst-case outcome. The best-case outcome (IMO) is that oil prices creep up very gradually over decades and the transition happens more smoothly.
-Tom P
"The best-case outcome (IMO) is that oil prices creep up very gradually over decades and the transition happens more smoothly."
Yeah, right. Since we're in the process of ruining our biosphere for our purposes, and causing a mass extinction, this could be viewed as a worst case scenario. But, strictly from a short range human economics point of view... I think it's quite provable that our collective situational awareness sucks.
Yeah, that is the way I see things playing out. It will take a while but it seems inevitable unless there is some major technological change in oil extraction, fuel cells, or something else.
"The best-case outcome (IMO) is that oil prices creep up very gradually over decades and the transition happens more smoothly."
I always said that I thought the best-case outcome would be for oil to become very expensive before it peaked, thus shocking people into drastically cutting back on their consumption by making changes in their life. The more dependent a person has made their life around oil, the worse the shock will be.
Ain't no cutting back from what I can see and hear and smell—45th is alive with the sound of motor vehicles, diesel buses delivering cartloads of workers from the hinterlands, move SOV than I can shake a stick at, the second garbage truck of the day is idling diesel fumes in the alley, oh! leaf blower man now adding to the racket, and a little to the south the light rail folks (opening to customers maybe sometime in the next decade?) were operating a non-electric forklift and non-electric crane and unloading supplies from a non-electric 18-wheeler (after having a few weeks ago having spent much diesel to deconstruct then pave the entire now empty lot with a lot of asphalt). Flame on!
However, the transition from wood to coal not only happened during a shortage of wood, it happened in large part because of that shortage of wood. See, for example, here or here.
As a result, there is historical precedent for transitioning to a new main energy source during a time of worsening energy shortage. That doesn't mean it'll happen smoothly (or at all), but it does suggest that it's not rational to dismiss the idea out of hand.
Wood to coal would have been a relatively easy transition as there would have been little or no cost involved in converting a wood furnace over to coal use. That's not the case in transitioning away from oil and coal as huge amounts of oil and coal dependent infrastructure and machinery will have to be replaced. We are looking at huge investments in renewable or nuclear power generation, expansion and electrification of our rail network and replacement of ICE vehicles with electric vehicles. It would be a monumental change even if we redirected all our investments starting today. Of course we are doing no such thing -- most investments are still being made into things such as highway expansion that assume oil will be plentiful well into the future.
By the time our society figures out that it needs to get off of oil it will likely be too late to do so in an orderly manner. We'll need to have oil and coal to bootstrap into a world that doesn't depend on fossil fuels and that will be problematic if oil production is dropping several percent each year.
We are looking at huge investments in renewable or nuclear power generation, expansion and electrification of our rail network and replacement of ICE vehicles with electric vehicles.
Yes, but it's investment that would have been made anyway. Infrastructure, buildings, vehicles and plant wear out and have to be replaced with something. What matters is the difference in 5-year cost or lifetime cost between fossil-fueled vehicles and plant versus the alternatives, and that's steadily shrinking.
Really, almost no effort at all is required--as long as fossil fuel prices are high enough. With all we know about materials now, the transition off fossil fuels should be no harder than the transition off wood was.
OK, so there's a lot of investment being made in highways, not rail. We'll end up with something less than what an engineer would call optimal: electric cars and biogas/biodiesel trucks, instead of trains and virtual presence devices. Well, maybe the next cycle of investment will take care of that. Or maybe cars and highways are what people want, after all...and they'll be able to afford them.
As for doing things in an orderly way: about ten percent of current oil consumption would suffice for essential activities, with transport plant and vehicles as they are now. We'd notice that production is seriously declining well before we get to that level, and we'd adapt. We're already adapting.
It should be obvious that increasing taxes reduces discretionary incomes. Leading to a reduction in spending, slowing economic growth or causing a rescession, in which case government support systems ie SNAP increase, straining government budgets etc. etc. The kicker is that demand for electricity will decline, reducing profitability and investment.
Gail does very thorough analysis of this topic on her website.
http://ourfiniteworld.com/
It should be obvious that increasing taxes reduces discretionary incomes.
No, it's more of an accounting thing. You increase taxes on oil & FF, and reduce taxes on other things - FICA, perhaps.
That sends the proper incentives/signals to buyers, yet it doesn't hurt the economy. In fact, it improves the economy, because we're spending less on oil & FF.
Well it really depends on how it goes away. If it were to disappear overnight then it would be a disaster that would kill millions, maybe billions.
But if it slowly goes away over 300 years . . . we'll adapt. I suspect living standards will drop and growth will virtually stop but we'll get by.
"Our lives would be just fine."
Perhaps, but likely not. Most of what you are talking about involves system level change. There are lots of things that are possible, but that does not mean that those things will actually come to exist. And if it involves system level change the likelihood decreases.
As an example, the concept of hypertext has been around since at least 1945 when Vannevar Bush published the essay "As We May Think", yet it took until the early 1990's before a usable system was implemented. It was not for the lack of trying and I was one those trying. It is one thing to implement hypertext code and quite another for it to become part of a world wide system that is used by billions of people. The resulting state change that the internet and its Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) has brought us has been revolutionary. But just because we could imagine elements of it did not mean that it was an engineering problem to be solved. The transition to the internet as we know it today was a sequence of inventions following a haphazard course. It was not something that could be planned and executed.
I believe that we are starting a forced state change to a civilization that will have less oil and we can imagine elements of what a world might look like, but we cannot really plan and engineer for that new state or even know what the new state will be. It will develop on its own haphazard course. Your vision says that technology can manage the state change transition smoothly. Others, including myself, do not believe that the state change transition will be smooth and think that it will at best be bumpy if not outright catastrophic.
See my responses to Robert, above, about relative risk.
I always though that your early call for a "peak lite" was spot on, Kudos Robert!
Likewise. As a model it's met actuals quite well, vague as it is, but specifics aren't really called for anyway here, which was the crux of Deffeye's joke putting the date of world peak on Thanksgiving.
Thanks as well for me for your contributions over the years, Robert.
Many thanks for interesting posts and your wise words this last time in TOD. I'll try to navigate to your blog sometimes. Greetings from a Oil Drum follower in Denmark since 2007.
I have heard R2 speak at ASPO-USA meetings. He is among the most riveting lecturers.
Thank you Robert, for your excellent posts. I especially want to thank you for your handling of the constant critics of your ethanol posts. You showed remarkable stamina and grace. I caught a glimmer of Galileo in watching you. Carry on!
Cheers, Robert. I second Jon's praise for your ability to remain respectful and yet ardent in your discussions.
I hold it as a model that I strive to meet in my own comments.
"We should take those lessons to heart. Keep an open mind."
Wise words - its something I have also learned over the years
(the rapid drop in the cost of PV also comes to mind)
Thanks for all your TOD posts over the years
Yes, thanks Robert. I too learned a lot from you. You even appeared in various biblios in my Masters degree so I am grateful for that as well.
Thanks Robert Rapier for all your contributions to The Oil Drum.
I appreciate the knowledge you have shared. I also appreciate your fairness, your ability to ask good questions, and your sense of calm when facing the difficult challenge of Peak Oil. Technology is a wonderful and useful thing, but it is not magic. Technology takes time and money to work properly, and to be commercially successful. I miss the days when gasoline was reliably cheap. However, now thanks to your work, I realize how to avoid wishful thinking, especially about corn ethanol.
I was trying to spread the word about Peak Oil, and encountered hostility. Some of my old friends never want to talk to me again. For those who are open minded enough to listen, I send them to your blog. Many people prefer to believe in their favorite conspiracy theory from commodity speculators, big government, or big oil companies than the idea that a resource extracted for a long enough time can become more difficult and expensive to extract.
Haven't found a copy of your book in my city, but it will probably be as well written as your blog. Wish you the best in whatever you do next.
oilskeptic
Please post the address for Ron's blog as well as Robert's site. Thanks!
Google (Ron Patterson oil) and (Robert Rapier). They should pop up.
Ron's is http://peakoilbarrel.com/
Robert's is http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/columns/rsquared/
Thanks for the discussions and your contributions Robert. May the future bring you happiness, regardless of what happens with oil.
Thanks for bringing us a reality-based viewpoint, Robert.
On Hubbert linearization, I did an example for myself to try and figure out what the technique was. I drew a crude curve representing the extraction from an imaginary oil field from start to finish. Then I plotted the Hubbert linearization of the process. Then I tried to derive the total oil extracted from the linearization. Then I realized it's all just guesswork.
If you had a very large oil field and capped production at some level (Saudi Arabia?), Hubbert linearization will tend to underestimate the total recoverable.
And yet Deffeyes (using HL), at a minimum, accurately predicted a major inflection point in global crude oil (C+C) production.
Up to 2002, the very long term (1930 to 2002) rate of increase in global crude oil production appears to have been about 3.4%/year, from about 6 mbpd in 1930 to about 67 mbpd in 2002. We saw pretty much the same rate of increase from 2002 to 2005 (3.3%/year, rounding off to nearest one mbpd).
Circa 2005, Yergin was predicting a multi-decade similar rate of increase in production of about 3%/year and in late 2004, Yergin predicted that rising production would bring oil prices down to a long term index price of about $38 per barrel (which caused me to suggest that we price oil in terms of Yergins, with One Yergin = $38 per barrel).
Circa 2005, Deffeyes had predicted that we would hit a global maximum crude oil production rate, i.e., Peak Oil, between 2004 and 2008, most likely in 2005.
As we all know, global annual (Brent) crude oil prices approximately doubled from $55 in 2005 to $112 in 2012, with one year over year decline in 2009, i.e., six of the past seven years showed year over year increases in annual crude oil prices.
Global crude oil production did not peak in 2005 (when we averaged 74 mbpd), but even if we exclude the 2009 production rate, when we saw a year over year decline in annual oil prices, the average global crude oil production rate for the six years with year over year increases in oil price was 74 mbpd, the same rate as 2005.
After seven years, global crude oil production did show a slight annual increase in 2012, up to 76 mbpd, but this was a rate of increase of only 0.4%/year relative to 2005, with flat overall average post-2005 crude oil production after 2005 (excluding 2009), versus the recent--and long term--rate of increase of more than 3%/year.
At the 2002 to 2005 rate of increase in global crude oil production, we would have been up to about 93 mbpd in 2012, versus the actual rate of 76 mbpd, a gap of 17 mbpd.
Let's think about this for a moment, and look at the big picture. Global crude oil production rose at about 3.4%/year from 1930 to 2002. Annual crude oil prices more than doubled from $25 in 2002 to $55 in 2005, and global crude oil production continued to increase at about the same long term rapid rate.
As noted above, as annual crude oil prices doubled again from $55 in 2005 to $112 in 2012, global crude oil production barely increased, and on average, (so far at least) post-2005 global crude oil production not materially increased at all.
Looking back at specific predictions in the 2005 time frame, who most accurately characterized post-2005 global crude oil production, Yergin or Deffeyes?
IMO, especially when we look back at the long term multi-decade increase in global crude oil production, I think that any objective observer would have to conclude that Deffeyes made a remarkably accurate prediction for post-2005 global crude oil production.
as an urban youth, the pleasure at feel at the suffering coming to the "middle class" is immense. may those who have stolen the future hang themselves in shame, & may we till them into our community gardens.
Well said. Sadly there have been some folks on TOD who are more intent on bludgening others with their preconceived ideas, rather than on an honest debate backed up with evidence.
Thanks for all the great contributions to TOD.
What has always disappointed me about peak oil research is that there has been, and still is, no real way of telling whether the amount of energy in oil has peaked. What we know is that for the last 8 years global total liquids have increased by about 6%, to a total of around 90mbpd today. That's about 33000 barrels a year. But there is almost no attempt at all made to determine how many BTUs are in that 33000 barrels. How does it compare to the 31000 barrels produced in 2005? Sure it is 6% more oil, but what if it is of lesser quality? What if it contains 6% less BTUs? Is it possible that oil production could keep growing but the actual energy content flattens or even contracts? Is there any way to know? How bad would it have to get before we knew? I know that Bakken oil cracks into 36% NAPTHA vs only 32% for WTI. Surely that means something? I was hoping this site would get into that but to my knowledge it never did.
We can either increase the energy supply or use less energy. Either way we can do the things we want to do with energy.
Now we take farmland and build subdivisions.
The greatest energy use is for heating and cooling. If we build underground houses set into hillsides, we would have more food and use less energy. An underground house costs almost nothing to heat and cool.
Most of our oil is used for transportation.
The easiest way to get more gas mileage is to make cars smaller. But Detroit makes money as a percent of the car price. A small car costs less and therefore generates less profit. Detroit hates small cars.
If a car were half as wide, with the passenger behind the driver, it would use half as much gas.
If we alter zoning laws to allow business, residential, and retail next to each other,
we would eliminate most car trips.
By merely changing the way we do things, we would not be dependent on foreign oil.
The predominant housing style in America is cookie cutter. A cookie cutter house has many triangles, making it similar to a Christmas cookie. The angel has many points on her wings. The star has 5 or 6 points. The Christmas tree has a triangle for each branch.
The greater the number of triangles seen from the street, the greater the status of the home owner. More triangles means more curb appeal.
But more triangles cost more. Each triangle requires labor and tools to cut the boards at an angle. The more cuts, the more labor. Each cut generates a little waste piece. The cookie cutter style generates more waste.
When roofing a house with many triangles there is more labor cost and more material cost. The maintenance cost is higher.
The greater the number of triangles, the greater the surface area the house has. So a large number of triangles means a large utility bill.
We are wasting energy for vanity and pride.
A little more thrift would be better.
The oil well drilling frenzy in North Dakota is producing hundreds of new oil wells a year. The depletion rate for a fracked well is quite high. The wells run dry quickly.
The ground temperature under North Dakota 2 miles down is about the boiling point of water - 212 degrees F. Most of the energy used in North Dakota is used to heat buildings during the brutal cold winter.
It seems we could harvest some of this underground heat for space heating. It is not very economical to generate electricity from such a low temperature, but it is perfect for winter warmth.
Bicycles use no energy but the food we eat, and they are good healthy exercise.
Most bikes sold in the United States come with mountain bike tires. Mountain bike tires have a coefficient of friction of over .3 Street tires have a coefficient of friction of over .2 Street tires have less rolling resistance.
I had 2 bikes, one with street tires, and one with mountain bike tires. We would fight for the street tires because it was so much easier to pedal. The mountain tread would slow you down with a buzzing noise. The street tires would glide quietly down the street.
Walmart has mountain bike tires on pink bikes with training wheels. The purpose of mountain bike tires is to give you traction on steep muddy slopes. Any parent allowing their little one to learn to ride on a steep muddy slope is crazy. Walmart is crazy for selling them.
To get people out of cars and on to energy saving bicycles, it is necessary to provide them with a good experience. Huffing and puffing to maintain speed on a ribbed mountain bike tire is not a pleasant task.
Whizzing quietly along is fun.
Walmart does sell old fashioned style bicycles with street tires for under $100.
The best ones have one derailer. Five gears is plenty for most city hills. One derailer is simpler and cheaper than two. And they come with street tires like the bike many of us had when we were kids.
No one I talk to in Walmart who is buying a bike has any clue that the mountain bike they are getting is not fun to ride in the city. This is an education issue.
Use mountain bikes where they are intended, for dare devils on challenging courses. Use mountain bikes on mountains and street bikes on streets.
Many years ago I found a rusty barbecue grill beside the road. I grabbed it and saw it had a hole rusted in the bottom about two or three inches across. This was the mini barrel style
grill.
I welded a pan to curve above the existing hold with about an inch of clearance. There was also about an inch on either side.
Then I welded a sheet metal shroud around the bottom of the grill. It also had about an inch of clearance.
The incoming air had to enter on both sides,
flow along the bottom, go up through the hole, flow under the fire pan, and oxygenate the fire. The air supply was preheated by heat which would ordinarily be lost through the bottom of the grill.
I was able to cook two pounds of food with 9 pieces of charcoal and 3 sheets of newspaper. I crumpled the 3 sheets in the middle of the fire pan. Then the 9 piece of charcoal went on top of that in a tic tac toe pattern.
I wrapped a pound of hamburger and a pound of mixed vegetables in aluminium foil. I took 1 hour to cook perfectly and stayed hot for another three hours. I could go to class an come home to h hot meal even though I was off grid with no electricity.
If modern barbecue grills were made more efficient, with a serpentine preheater for the air, we would save energy. They would use less charcoal.
Another way to do it it to insulate the grill with rather expensive materials. The larger the grill, the more the energy savings.
Much of the energy in the summer us used for air conditioning. It would be nice if air conditioners could be made more efficient.
Using reasonable assumptions, like 95 degree F outside temperature, I calculated that the maximum coefficient of performance is about 40. Since the max I have seen at the store is 11 or so, there is room for improvement. We should be able to get at least 20 in a real world device.
Perhaps we could have a window unit which is as expensive a 12,000 BTU model which puts out 5000 BTU with a COP of 20. Use bigger coils outside. Inside you need low temperature to condense the humidity out of the air. But outside the coil can be energy efficient large.
At Texas A&M university, they had a decorative fountain in front of the engineering center. On a hot summer day, the water was ice cold from evaporation. The chillers for the air conditioning system were hidden on a back street. Why can't we make a chiller tower pretty? There are issues with poison algicides but there must be a good solution. Up high, harmless to humans, something?
A home air conditioner can be made more efficient with imaginative use of water.
A small unit which runs all the time and is very efficient, would save the most energy. There is a tradeoff as it would cost more than the standard model.
One of the things I did which worked great and saved energy was to put a coil of copper pipe behind my refrigerator. The water input to my hot water heater goes through this pipe. I used a 50 foot coil of 3/4 inch copper pipe. It holds 1 1/3 gallons of water. There is an insulated pipe coming from the center of the coil to the hot water heater inlet. A thermometer shows 135 degrees F at first. The water heater uses no electricity if I use less than one gallon, like when I wash my hands or wash a spoon. When I take a shower, using more than 1 1/3 gallons, the temperature is 85 to 90 degrees F. The water does not get cold as quickly. The end of a long shower is more pleasant. The water heater recovery time is shorter. We can take another shower sooner. The fridge had to be turned down as the food in the back was freezing. It is also obviously using less energy. It is a win win and saves me money. There is a sheet of styrofoam behind the coil to insulate it from the wall. It works great.