Unfortunately, virtually everyone in the engineer camp always seems to ask the same questions:

Given that we have invested in all of this infrastructure, how can we possibly abandon it?

Well. I can imagine a fellow on Easter Island looking up at the last tree, listening to the local doomer who wants the fool to preserve the tree in order to harvest the seeds and replant the island. That fool then looks about at all the really big heads and says, "How can we give all this up?" And he starts chopping.

Money and debt are created under a fiat system that presumes that population and energy aquisition will grow forever. This is, of course, bollocks. Complete economist spoo. But, as long as the oil can be found and the population run up, the pyramid scheme will work right up until it doesn't. Then what? Catastrophe, I expect. Runaway inflation. Lives ruined, businesses crushed, hopes dashed. You know, doom. That anyone would be concerned about money and debt when real actual work in the real actual world needs to be done speaks volumes about the human spirit. Think of all the people who have died trying to enrich themselves. The miners who die every day for a bit of yellow metal. Think about it!! Ahhhhhh. That's human idiocy hard at work there.

How will economics work in the future? Here. I have an orange. You have a tin whistle. Trade? See. That ain't so hard, darling.

As far as the current infrastructure, tear it down. I can't remember which economist suggested it, but he said we might as well bury money and pay people to dig it up. Money is conceptual. In a post-oil economy, especially a chaotic humongous clusterfuck of an economy, you want to employ people to do the work we need to do to restore the earth. Restore the wetlands. These are very, very important. Enrich the soils using techniques that do not stripmine nutrients and create deserts. Get people out on the farm.

If you really want to see what we need to do, go to Communitysolutions.org. They have a lovely film on what Cuba did when it went through peak oil. Now, if we follow in their footsteps, we may have a chance. But we cannot stop there. We need to devolve the tech world as much as possible. We need to relocalize.

You ask, "How would you incorporate avoidance of over-harvesting?"

As best you can. Unfortunately, nature already has a plan for that. It's called -- starvation. Works quite well. In no time we will reach a stable population, or at least a bouncy range, and lots of our problems will be solved.

I do not expect any engineer to want to participate in the deevolution of the tech paradigm. That would go against his or her character. It just saddens me to see people who make some sort of claim for rational thinking make such boneheaded, magical-thinking mistakes as the lot here seems to make on a daily basis.

I understand why. They compartmentalize. The man who invented asbestos never stopped to think, "Is this healthy for humans?" No, that was not his problem. His job was to make a good fireproofing material. The man who financed it did not worry about the health problems associated with it. Nor did the marketer, the salesperson, the architect who used it, the boilermakers who loved it. No. It was another scientist, specializing in health, who realized, "Wait a minute. This crap is highly toxic." Of course by then, it was too late. Many people died extremely horrible deaths by the time it was banned. Thousands of buildings were contaminated, school children put at risk.

Why? Because engineers have tunnel vision. They do not think holistically. While at Cessna, I never once heard an engineer wonder about the toxicity of methyl ethyl ketone. Nor wonder about the effect of contrails on the upper atmosphere. Nor about their contribution to global warming. They could give a damn about sealer poisoning those who sealed the wings. No. They worried about this or that screw, or whether a mis-drilled hole would result in the scrapping of a wing.

Until engineers stop thinking they can fix things with more half-assed, non-holistic, measures that end up causing more problems than they fix, we are screwed.

I think chimps make great engineers. They take a part of nature, a stick, and use it to fish termites from termite mounds. Once sated, the chimp drops the stick and goes off for a nice nap. No harm, no foul.

That is some primo engineering there.

As a physicist, you should consider our friend "irony." He is hard at work here. I know it is an "English" term, but it would describe the delicious fun we are having quite well.

For, you see, that an English instructor has a better grip on physics than the lot here does, that's irony.

There is no free lunch. I believe I've heard many a physicist say that. Am I incorrect? Energy is not the sole problem on a finite sphere in space, am I correct? Let's name a few things that engineers and physicists cannot pull out of their collective wazoos. Land. Water. Aluminum. Iron. Tantulum. Iridium. Uranium. Fish. Bio-diversity. As you can imagine, on a sphere in space, the list of things that are finite on said sphere must, now correct my grasp of physics here if I am off, necessarily include EVERYTHING. So, if we run out of Iron, we can't just run to the lab and whip some up, can we? So, let's say we do find that magical energy bullet. We will call it, Nukcoabiowinshalidium. Having applied the bullet, we now have plenty of energy to use up the rest of the necessary ingredients to life. Land, who needs it!! We can just boil up some algae!! Clean drinking water? Bah, we'll just desalinate the oceans! (Never mind the effects on the biota there.) Out of copper? Why we'll just use plastic for our pipes!!

These overarching issues never seem to figure in the conversations held here. No one ever runs the problem out to its logical conclusion or examine everything that said "solution" will affect and how. The holistic view of reality seems to escape the engineer tribe. You see, I do not need to know any formulae, or how to use a graphing calculator, or how close we are to finding the Higgs particle. That is your tunnel vision at work. That is the scientist/priest mentality hard at work. It is the presumption that knowing how to put on the blinders in order to achieve tunnel vision is somehow a good thing. All I need to know is the fundamentals. Sphere. Finite.

I guess the real question is: What is your endgame, Stuart?

How many people? 6.8 billion? 10 billion? 1 trillion?

Will this be a mobile society traveling around the planet in planes and trains and automobiles? Will we all be hooked up to our crackberries sending text messages to each other about our wonderful lives now that there is no drinking water? That the oceans are dead? That we live in a runaway greenhouse effect? Will we be living close to the land? If so, how did we get there? Do you see a world with bio-diversity, or are we shooting for pure dominance -- to become the ONLY species on the planet?

My guess is, like so many of this tribe, your thinking extends only about as far as ten years from now. Maybe twenty. After that, what do you care?

Have you ever heard of the Heechee?

Hmmmmm. I think, Houston, we have a problem.

I agree totally with Stuart about mitigating PO on both the supply and the demand side, and that the doomers are plain wrong. Dooming (PO & GW) is a mood. Perhaps it’s a displaced emotion from the growing sense of mortality of the 60’s kids (of which I’m one). From boomer to doomer...

Remember 20% of oil is still used for electricity production which gives a big cushion. On the supply side sunlight dwarfs all other energy sources and this industry is only getting started. The solar industry is charging scarcity prices at the moment because of the shortage of silicon. Costs will come way down when the volume gets serious. A solar farm is a machine that turns capital into cash flow; get the numbers right and literally trillions of dollars will come your way.

On the demand side the scope for energy savings is vast. All the technology exists for zero net energy buildings. We don’t need 200hp moving 2 tons of steel for transport. It’s just something you do at a particular 'price of oil/price of time'.

Let’s take a look at one aspect of oil demand.

The following table shows oil production, consumption and imports in millions of barrels per day and the population for North America. The last column is daily consumption * 365 / population giving barrels per person per year. Obviously Mexico has some catching up to do.

Source: Oil, BP Statistical Review 2005 data; Population, Wikipedia 2005 data. Values are rounded.

Now let’s look at the comparable figures for Western Europe. I’ve deliberately left out the countries in Eastern Europe to arrive at the worst case in both regions.

Source: Oil, BP Statistical Review 2005 data; Population, Wikipedia 2005 data. Values are rounded.

Notice the wide variability of oil consumption in both regions. A few points:

1. Belgium and Luxembourg consume more oil per person than the US. I would love to hear Washington using these numbers back at Belgium the next time the eurocrats harangue the US about oil and global warming.
2. You can still drive your 1001hp Bugatti Veyron at 250mph on the German autobahns so it’s not all micro cars over there (here for me). Think of all those 400hp BMWs, Mercedes and Porsches, not the mention the 600hp Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Of course these are ‘top’ cars for ‘top’ people so that’s ok.
3. There is similar degree days. Norway, Finland Sweden and Central Europe in winter, Italy, Greece and Spain in summer.
4. I believe we do comparable miles but haven't found any figures.

Now let’s see what happens if we give the whole of North America the same oil consumption per person as Western Europe. We are going to be really generous to Mexico by giving them the same consumption as Canada and the US. I’m sure they could handle it.

The following table shows North American consumption at European rates and the resulting imports. The consumption column is EU barrels/person/year * population / 365 giving millions of barrels per day.

This leaves net oil imports of 1.741 million barrels per day. Ethanol and biodiesel can cover that easily. Obviously Mexican production is down since 2005 but Canada is up.

What we are looking at is major US policy failure. That may be because the lobbyists are producers who equate oil with revenues. Consumers, who equate oil with cost, are not nearly as well organized. And someone should be treating oil imports as a cost to the economy but trade deficits aren’t fashionable subjects on Wall Street at the moment.

Peak oil will not be the end of the world so get over it. Just let the price mechanism and the engineers do their stuff!

Engineer-Poet,

Once again you fail to run out the simulation. You seem to think the population has stopped growing and that all other resources are infinite. Your solution is operating in a vacuum. Where are the rest of the variables?

No, I do not want the collapse to happen in the worst way. I want it to happen in the BEST way!!!

There will be a collapse. The only question is will we be smart enough to use the remaining cheap energy supplies to work our way back to a more sustainable lifestyle or will we stupidly keep trying to save the failed paradigm?

What do you want? If you want automobiles, then you want the entire ball of polluted, earth-destroying wax. Remember, new autos mean using up our resources, our finite resources. Is there enough stuff -- iron, aluminum, copper, etc. to build this new generation of autos? What about the next generation? Correct me if I'm wrong, but most auto's do not last forever. You do realise it costs energy to make autos. You do realize it costs energy to maintain roads? You do realize it costs energy to recycle said autos? All of this energy is going to come from photo-voltaics?

My dream is of a green earth with blue skies. Is that not your dream? I dream of oceans filled with fish and not gigantic gyres the size of Texas where our plastic crap revolves slowly. Is that not your dream? I dream of trout streams with actual trout in clear, clean water. Is that not your dream? I dream of clean drinking water. Is that not your dream? I dream of my children eating enough to avoid starvation. Is that not your dream? I dream of cropland that increases in fertility. Is that not your dream?

In my dream, there is no intervening, competing vision that calls for some part of the earth to die in order to satisfy a macho need to control. In my dream we are not the reason the earth exists. We are simply lucky to be alive on such a beautiful, well-designed entity.

I have dreams. Good dreams. Don't ever accuse me of not wanting the best for humanity. I suggest you look into your own soul first.

EngineerPoet, Thanks for going and thanks for writing it up!
I'm really encouraged by the prospects for solar, I'd like to put it at my house in Galveston, feed the excess into the grid.But I'm a babe in the woods at figuring how much I need, what's economicially feasable.

You're so kind...

Thanks !
You see 650 all over as a holy grail but know one says exactly why :) I even read that article and missed that this is the key problem :)

The major point is that any silver bullet that requires a operating temperature over 650 C or probably even better 500 C can probably be dismissed. I've had that rule of thumb for a while and so far anything that breaks it does not seem to make it past the R&D stage.

Thanks again !

Stuart:

The longish exerpt below is from the Hirsh report, begining at page 22. Would you care to comment on the apparent divergence of opionion between you and the reports authors in respect of the extent to which achiving year over year reductions on the order of 4% are "no big deal"? As I read Hirsh he seems to be saying this is a "deep" problem, or have I / he missed something in your opinion?

Exerpt follows:

Energy efficiency improvements and technological changes are typically
incorporated into products and services slowly, and their rate of market
penetration is based on customer preferences and costs. In the 1974-1983
period, oil prices ratcheted up to newer, higher levels, which lead to significant
energy efficiency improvements, energy fuel switching, and other more general
technological changes. Some changes came about due to legislative mandates
(corporate average fuel economy standards, CAFE) or subsidies (solar energy
and energy efficiency tax credits), but many were the result of economic
decisions to reduce long-term costs. Under a normal course of replacement
based on historical trends, oil-consuming capital stock has been replaced in the
U.S. over a period of 15 to 50 years and has cost consumers and businesses
trillions of dollars, as discussed below.

Automobiles represent the largest single oil-consuming capital stock in the U.S.
130 million autos consume 4.9 MM bpd, or 25 percent of total consumption, ... Autos remain in the U.S. transportation fleet, or rolling
stock, for a long time. While the financial-based current-cost, average age of
autos is only 3.4 years, the average age of the stock is currently nine years.

Recent studies show that one half of the1990-model year cars will remain on the
road 17 years later in 2007. At normal replacement rates, consumers will spend
an estimated $1.3 trillion (constant 2003 dollars) over the next 10-15 years just to
replace one-half the stock of automobiles.

A similar situation exists with light trucks (vans, pick-ups, and SUVs), which
consume 3.6 MM bpd of oil, accounting for 18 percent of total oil consumption.
Light trucks are depreciated on a faster schedule, and their financial-based
current-cost average age is 2.9 years. However, the average physical age of the
rolling stock is seven years, and the median lifetime of light trucks is 16 years. At
current replacement rates, one-half of the 80-million light trucks will be replaced
in the next 9-14 years at a cost of $1 trillion.

Seven million heavy trucks (including buses, highway trucks, and off-highway
trucks) represent the third largest consumer of oil at 3.0 MM bpd, 16 percent of
total consumption. The current-cost average age of heavy trucks is 5.0 years,

Because of the lack of national average "replacement value" estimates, current-cost net capital
stock provides a suitable substitute for the estimates. Given the capital equipment depreciation
schedule used, the total replacement value of the capital stock is projected to be 4.5 times higher
than the current-cost net value

The estimate of net stock includes an adjustment for depreciation, defined as the decline in value
of the stock of assets due to wear and tear, obsolescence, accidental damage, and aging. For
most types of assets, estimates of depreciation are based on a geometric decline in value. but the median lifetime of this equipment is 28 years. The disparity in the
average age and the median lifetime estimates indicate that a significant number
of vehicles are 40-60 years old. At normal replacement levels, one-half of the
heavy truck stock will be replaced by businesses in the next 15-20 years at a
cost of $1.5 trillion.

The fourth-largest consumer of oil is the airlines, which consume the equivalent
of 1.1 MM bpd, representing six percent of U.S. consumption. The 8,500 aircraft
have a current-cost average age of 9.1 years, and a median lifetime of 22
years. Airline deregulation and the events of September 11, 2001, have had
significant effects on the industry, its ownership, and recent business decisions.
At recent rates, airlines will replace one-half of their stock over the next 15-20
years at a cost of $250 billion.

These four capital stock categories cover most transportation modes and
represent 65 percent of the consumption of oil in the U.S. The three largest
categories of autos, light trucks, and heavy trucks all utilize the internal
combustion engine, whether gasoline- or diesel-burning. Clearly, advancements
in energy efficiency and replacement in this capital stock (for instance, electrichybrid
engines) would help mitigate the economic impacts of rising oil prices
caused by world oil peaking. However, as described, the normal replacement
rates of this equipment will require 10-20 years and cost trillions of dollars.

We cannot conceive of any affordable government-sponsored "crash program" to
accelerate normal replacement schedules so as to incorporate higher energy
efficiency technologies into the privately-owned transportation sector; significant
improvements in energy efficiency will thus be inherently time-consuming (of the
order of a decade or more).

Spot on Stuart! There are lots of possible solutions, its almost impossible to predict which will dominate, but its a fascinating topic!

"It's like they really don't want the problem to get solved and so they try to silence discussion of solutions...."

As you know Stuart, it's a very real and increasingly powerful philosophy, and has been known for at least decades if not centuries...the "noble savage" myth, Jean-Jacques Rousseau writ large, the Luddites, John Ruskin's neo-Gothic flights of fancy, and now the more modern anarcho-primitivist, Gren Anarchist, and "Deep Green" movement, predicted by Alvin Toffler in "The Third Wave" in what he called "The Yearning For A New Dark Age."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism

I made the argument many months ago here on this board that TOD would at some point have to take sides and choose, because the primitivist movement does not accept comprimise. For them, any modern technical solution or even attempt at one is viewed as life support that will only serve to salvage a culture they consider hateful and aesthetically and morally abhorrent to the very core.

I have also made the case that this is a battle that I think moderates, modernists, technicians, and science in general is starting to lose, especially here on TOD.

Many months ago, I was shaken and went on a bit of "diatribe" (I admit readily that's what it was) about this issue on TOD after Ken Deffeyes made his famous, or infamous remark about "Stone age by 2030". It was such an insane remark from a person regarded as a serious spokesperson on the peak oil and oil depletion issue that I was taken completely aback, as I was sure any moderate would be, and found the remark by Deffeyes astounding.

Almost a year later, Leanan, in another discussion found, dug out my post, and repeated it and used it against me to demonstrate to me my insincerity and irrationality. It woke me up to how this game was played, and the fact that I was on the loosing side.

It was frankly a surprising and hurtful shot, given Deffeyes outragous remarks, and given the type of "thought" we see here not daily, but hourly now.

Some ask "Why is it we cannot use the tools we know we have now, why cannot we seem to get anything in the way of a solution underway?"

I am more and more convinced each day that what we are seeing, and are, whether we know it or not, taking sides in, is a philosophical, an aesthetic struggle, and not a technical or scientific one. We are trying now to justify (or refute) human destiny as more than a hunter gatherer. It is a valid philosophical question to ask "Why should man aspire to more than the level at which we lived as a species for hundreds of thousands, millions of years?

More troubling, what is to become of the losers in this dispute? What will become of the ones who wanted to be more than primitives, or the inverse, what will become of those who wanted to be nothing more than primitives, depending upon which side ends up controlling the guidence of human destiny? There is no denying that there are down sides to both philosophies.

This is not about science. This is about philosophy. What do we as human beings want to be, want to do with our lives here on Earth?

I have cast my vote, in my actions, in my writings, in many hours of thought. That does not make it the right vote, it simply makes it my vote. From that moment on, it was no longer about goals, that was decided. It would be about methods, techniques and tools to attempt to achieve those goals with the greatest possible regard for all humanity, and yes, for myself. As much as it is hated, is denied, humans are individuals. What I want does matter, at least to me.

Others are casting their votes now, whether they know it or not. And TOD, as an entity, is casting it's vote. Like all of us, it will have to live with it's choice.

I can tell you now, for myself, that the conditions of "sustainability" as defined by the neo primitivist, the anarcho primitivist, the "deep green" philosophy, is anything but sustainable.

The late great Congressperson Barbara Jordon once asked, "When we say we must change, we must ask ourselves: change, from what, to what?

Change is coming. From what, to what?
I do not know. But I do know that it will have much more to do with what we want to be, what we see as the goals and the correct mode of living for human beings, than it will have to do with the limits of human abilities, or the exact volume of oil or gas in the Earth.
(edited for corrections)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom

Our problems have far more to do with convincing the public to take the problem seriously and act than they do with a lack of viable technical options.

Having studied PO for a few years, I come to the same conclusion. The real problems are in areas like society and the human brain, which have no easy answers.

Our problems have far more to do with convincing the public to take the problem seriously and act than they do with a lack of viable technical options.

Quoted for truth. That is the core problem we have, not engineering, not materials, not proving our positions (because the facts speak for themselves). The core problem is people - psychology, sociology, and politics. If the best technical solutions always happen regardless then why did betamax lose to VHS? Because of people. Solve the people problem and the rest is very doable. But solving the people problem is not nearly so easy as some would think.

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett

"Our problems have far more to do with convincing the public to take the problem seriously and act than they do with a lack of viable technical options."

Are they still viable technical options if the behavior of human populations & societies render them unviable?

How can you seperate technical issues of society-changing scale from the societies where they must occur?

In the case of peak oil, how is public behavior NOT a "technical problem?"