There is plenty of oil but . . .
Posted by Gail the Actuary on December 14, 2009 - 10:25am
This is a post related to a talk I am giving this week. (A PDF can be found here).
There is a huge amount of oil which theoretically can be extracted, but the question is whether the cost will be cheap enough for us to be able to afford to extract it. If the oil is too expensive to extract, the shortage of oil seems to cause a recession, similar to what we are having now. I discuss this in purely monetary terms, but it is also an issue with respect to low energy return on investment (EROI), for those of you used to thinking in EROI terms.
In many ways, the folks who say we a have lots of oil are correct. All one has to do is include the oil which is extremely expensive and slow to extract. Much of the cheap, easy-to-extract oil has already been removed.
What economic theory really says is that oil prices will rise, and substitutes will be found, which will tend to bring prices back down. When oil prices rose, we found substitutes, but they were poor substitutes. They are more generally more expensive, when all of the costs are included. Biofuels interfered with food supply; wind is a substitute for natural gas and coal in electricity production, but it is not as a transportation fuel, which is one of the things that we specifically expect to be short of.
In the above slide, I purposely exaggerated the impact of an oil price rise on food and gasoline. The effect would be greatest on a low income individual. It would also be very great, if the price rise were to something like $400 barrel.
This is pretty obvious, if you think about it. Does it sound like anything we have run into in the last few years?
Many people think of the effects of peak oil as a future event. But we are really experiencing them here and now. Oil production stopped rising in 2005, so by 2006, we were feeling the effects of the squeeze. The effects were being felt as early as 2004, when oil prices began to rise.
I have omitted several slides, showing the rise and fall of oil production in the US 48 states, Alaska, and the North Sea. At this point, most of the fields that are in easy to access locations are in decline, and we are "stuck" with what is left--the slow to extract, expensive oil from difficult locations.
So many people have equated high prices with oil shortages, that people have come to believe that if prices are low (or at least relatively low, compared to last years' prices), everything is OK. But we really need lots of quite inexpensive oil to fuel the economy, or it goes into a recession. Reduced credit reduces demand, and has the effect of bringing oil prices down.
In the above slide, the cutback in credit is especially important. Without credit, many people cannot buy new cars, new houses, or expensive Christmas presents. All of these use oil in their manufacture and distribution, and keep oil prices up.
US consumer credit (including things like credit card loans and auto loans) peaked the same month as oil prices. Mortgage loans peaked about the same time, and many types of commercial credit have been affected. The government has tried to pick up the slack with additional borrowing, but this is not the same.
The EIA indicates that on a constant dollar basis, energy expenditures more than doubled between 1990 and 2008. Going forward, the EIA sees more increases in energy expenditures, on an inflation adjusted basis.
I might mention that one of the major uses of new technology is to bring down prices. There are limits to what can be done--if oil is very deep in the ocean, it is likely never going to be cheap to extract. The need for new technology to bring down prices is probably as great or greater with fossil fuels as it is with things like wind, solar, and biofuels. Fossil fuels are at least well adapted to running our current infrastructure. Anything that is very different will require huge expenditures for conversion.
In my view, the big question mark is how debt (and financial institutions) will do. The front page story on today's Atlanta Journal Constitution is "Troubled banks find it hard to stay afloat". How long will bailing out failing banks with printed money work?
The growing gap is the concern. Regardless of whether oil production remains flat, or declines fairly steeply, we have a major problem. With many people from around the world interested in using oil products, and many new cars in places like China and India, the gap between production and what we would normally consume (if prices were low and credit were available) is likely to continue to grow, even if somehow oil production could be kept flat.
In the recent past, the advanced economies have been able to "offshore" their energy intensive industries to places like China, giving the illusion that countries can get along with only non-energy intensive services like finance. But for the world as a whole, there seems to be a close relationship between growth in oil consumption and GDP growth. Since finance and some other services don't need much oil to grow, the relationship is not exactly 1:1. Efficiency growth would also tend to raise make GDP growth higher (but declining EROI would tend to lower it).
My big concern is international trade. If debt defaults are a problem, this could interfere with the workings of the whole system, especially if it leads to major countries (perhaps Greece) defaulting on their debts.
In the years since fossil fuel use has developed, world population has greatly expanded.
We are already seeing problems with people in some of the poorer nations having adequate food. Even in the US, there are people at the margins who are "food insecure". Currently, there are government programs to help, but states are finding it increasingly necessary to cut back, because of falling tax revenue.
It would be a lot easier to get politicians to talk about the situation if there were a good solution in sight. There are some partial mitigations, but they likely don't get us back to "business as usual". Voters are likely to be very unreceptive to such news.
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Gail, You obviously get it.
Tell us if you don't mind, please, a little about your audiences-thier reactions and thier educational level,ages, and backgrounds.
Thanks, AND THANK YOU AND ALL THE REST FOR TOD.
I am giving this talk tomorrow night, to an "Evolver" group. I doubt most attendees will have much background.
The other speakers are talking about off-grid living (Bob Burns and Isabel Crabtree). For those in the Atlanta area, the information I have been given about the location is
Evolver Spores: "Take Back the Power"
Tues. December 15
7 PM - 9:30 PM
@ ParkGrounds Coffee Shop
142 Flat Shoals Ave SE
Atlanta, GA 30316
Gail,
You forgot to include the "astronomical" quantities of hydrocarbons available elsewhere in our solar system
Not to mention that there is enough hydrogen in the universe to power the universe!
/sarcasm
What? And you think that makes it special or something? No dice ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
More pictures of Saturn may be found here and here
---------------------
oil oil everywhere
but not a drop to end our despair
Since this is part of a presentation, you might consider placing another layer at the base of the pyramid, and label this "snake oil".
Then you can say that Shale Oil is right above Snake Oil.
And the snakeoil salesmen are busy. Here is the text from an email blast my wife received this morning:
"Do ya' think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists?"
I always did suspect those environmentalists were Saudi terrorists and come to think of it, because they were born here, that makes them traitors too.
An eye opening report, eh Ghung? I wouldn't waste my time checking their numbers...easier to just assume they're correct. And this highlights the point I'm sure some at TOD are now bored hearing from me: the U.S. is not running out of oil. Joe6Pack will easily understand that fact when, at some point, the MSM will repeat the USGS report until our ears bleed. Of course, the report doesn't state the obvious: 10's of billions of bbls of oil sitting IN THE GROUND does nothing for our economy. What's really important is how much it will cost to produce and at what rate.
The U.S. has a huge amount of oil left in the ground. Of course, it will be expensive to produce and will also be at rates far too low to have a meaningful impact on PO IMHO. And a lot will likely never be economic to produce. Bad enough for the MSM to be throwing around such garbage but these are the words coming from the Federal gov't which some expect to eventual inject the idea of PO into the public conversation. Good luck with that expectation.
I'm just glad I read it! Its just that you TODers have had me so scared for people. I can go back to tweeting now.
Good for you Ghung. I have my own warm friendly place I slip back to when it starts to mount up.
Yeah, my warm friendly place is called Heaven Hill (although I prefer a good single barrel) by the woodstove.
this might be a good place to point out the difference between oil shale which, in common usage, refers to kerogen contained in marlstone, and shale oil which, in common usage, refers to oil produced from fractured reservoirs such as the bakken. the bakken shale was a target of an earlier era, but more recently, the target is naturally fractured dolomite, silt and sandstone. imo, a more correct term for shale oil would be uno -unconventional oil.
i infer that what the chart refers to as shale oil is actually, in common usage, oil shale. if the chart is intended to include unconventional oil, such as is produced from the bakken, it would certainly be above heavy onshore and tarsands in your triangle but the amount available is miniscule in reality.
the usgs has placed the technically recoverable oil for the bakken in the 3 - 4 gb range and is most likely overstated.
the "only" 10 % of original oil in place refered to is pure fantacy. first, the calculation of oil in place is meaninless because the majority of the oil is tied up in ultra low permeability rock which to any sane person would be below the minimum permeability cut off. second, performance data suggests that as little as 1% of the bogus calculated oil in place is recoverable. not only that, but the 500 gb oil in place is wildly optimistic.
and i predict that the inhofe, limbaugh, palin triumvirate of nit wits will continue to repeat this bu11 sh1t.
Shouldn't there be at least some chance of a prediction being wrong? With a "prediction" like that you cannot go wrong. Where is your sense of sport?
You are right--I meant oil shale, rather than shale oil, but neither one is going to save us.
Well crap my pants.Apparently those Saudi sympathizing terrorist environmentalist Americans didn't care to much for the Great Alaska Wilderness in the same way they do about N. Dakota.Hell, they allowed those pesky oil corporations to cut a swath of land right down the middle of the Alaskan Wilderness with a pipe line demarcating the state in half.
Makes perfect sense to me though: it is common knowledge on how much more pristine N. Dakota is to that dull monochrome state of Alaska.There's not much up there worth protecting anyway.
And one more thing: if people choose to believe this sort of fecal matter they deserve what is coming to them.What the effin' hell does this person think, or know, what is going on in the real world right now (particularly in Iraq) because of oilpolitic? Nearly two million people have been killed by the recent Gulf War - BECAUSE WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH DOMESTIC SUPPLY!!!!
Man the internet sucks
Hope a posting this far up will get read. I have a question and don't know where to start looking.
How closely does the dollar cost for extraction of petroleum follow or track the energy and resources required for extraction?
In other words energy out vs energy in. Fuel for the extraction operation, energy for making the equipment and so forth.
As I see it, the two big costs are energy costs and debt, and debt can be quite variable, depending on availability, government subsidy, and whether a company can finance the new investment out of cash flow.
EROI studies completely ignore debt, which is part of the reason wind comes out as well as it does (besides ignoring a lot of other costs, beyond the wind generation itself). Somehow, ignoring all the debt doesn't seem quite right to me.
The money that is spent on expenses relating to the debt (fees and interest payments) goes to someone, and they use these payments for a lot of things that use energy-- to go on trips, to buy new cars, to pay their utility bills. (Or alternatively, if an investment produces an equivalent amount of energy, but if the energy is not really available until some distant time in the future, in some real sense it is not worth as much, but this is not considered in EROI calculations.)
So it seems to me that in general the dollar cost of extraction follows the energy resources for extraction, except if a lot of debt is required, in which case costs are higher than energy costs by themselves would suggest.
I think one thing that people miss is there are reasons why we are where we are.
For example take sailing ships they are still used quite a bit and where used more extensively all the way into the 1950's and even into the 1960's.
The point is where sailing ships have made sense they remained competitive even against cheap oil for quite some time. The dieoff was not a simple process.
Across the board what ever the real reasons for the end of sail where as we will probably be forced to return to more sailing vessels this reason will resurface.
Same holds for all renewable they all have disadvantages vs oil otherwise someone would have fond larger niches for their use and these niches would have grown despite the reliance on oil. And we never have given up completely on any technology although many have been reduced to hobbies.
Thats not to say we can easily identify what the real issues are today things are simply to different and the future will not repeat the past. A simple example is composites developed after sailing ships died for the most part along of course with the most advanced design capabilities.
Perhaps if they had just lasted a few more decades these later advances could well have turned the tide. Maybe maybe not the point is this time mix can cause different things to succeed or fail. The new windmills obviously rely on advances in composite technology for example.
Also of course financing outlook etc etc.
Regardless no matter how you do it you still will have less than we do now in my opinion.
Not that thats a bad thing just different. I'd far rather have less but higher quality and there is no reason for energy problems to cause quality to fall in fact we can expect the opposite with a renewed focus on quality as throwing stuff away becomes less of a option.
I'm not sure how well I've explained what I'm trying to say just that I don't think that how the future unfolds will be clear and in general I expect most of what we try will only be partially successful as the real problems become clear. We are simply going to be fundamentally a lot poorer in the future period no matter what. At least in terms of material goods. Future wealth will have to be created via quality not quantity. If you look at our long history then hopefully you can see that four thousands of year this quality refinement was real wealth thus once we are again constrained I think we will return to this fundamental definition of wealth not a cheap plastic chair from IKEA but a work of art from a craftsman handed down through generations.
The "substitute" that is actually going to be found and implemented is mostly just doing with less of it.
This isn't just going to be a matter of increasing efficiency, either. Yes, there will be those who replace a gas guzzler with a Prius. For every one of those, there will be many more who simply stay home or go to a local park for a picnic rather than take a 1000 mile vacation trip like they used to.
At some point people will start car pooling - not because they want to but rather because circumstances have left them no alternative.
At least as far as the US economy is concerned, there is a lot more potential to get by with less oil than some people realize.
It seems like for real efficiency improvement, you need to make major changes in how things work--use combined heat and power, for example. Or add a lot of insulation to homes. Or build new more energy efficient cars. All of this takes a lot of energy resources (and $ resources) to do, so only a limited amount will be done. Offsetting this is the greater fuel use because of declining EROI.
It is much better if we can carpool with the autos we have, or walk, or use bicycles. We have way too many stores, and they use a lot of resources. The university near where I live has lots of lights on 24/7, for security reasons. It seems like a large number of these could be turned off (but this saves electricity, not oil). A lot of food is shipped from distant locations. If these were stopped, it would reduce oil usage.
Gail,
Great summary above and I agree with you on the cost of mitigation. Another imoportant issue for mitigation that is overlooked is time. Even if we wanted to reduce oil consumption, had unlimited money and the alternatives (solar, wind, geothermal, coupled heat, etc) it still takes real time to change. Not everyone can change simultaneously. So there will be a delay even if we all agree on what needs to be done.
I think that we can develop a lower energy consumptive society (I am in a positive mood today!) but it will take time to build capacity for the alternatives. Time to train the people to install. Time to build the integrated electric grid to do some of what the integrated liquid fuels grid does now. Human labor fueled just by food can do a lot, given time and that is the overlooked issue. We didn't build our complex global liquid fuels network in 10 years using just liquid fuels. We shouldn't expect to replace it in 10 years with just the replacements. We need to be focused on the problem for decades and we still don't have a leader that is showing us the way. I see that the early adopters are doing all the right things but they are merely the leading edge of what has to happen.
"...people will start car pooling...there is a lot more potential to get by with less oil than some people realize."
Well, yes. However, let's not delude ourselves that this will be cost-free. Even should the far future become a rerun of Elizabethan times (which seems wildly infeasible at the current population size), it seems more likely that within the working lifetimes of most or all reading this, actions such as car pooling, use of bikes or buses, etc., will essentially ameliorate monetary poverty by replacing it with even greater time poverty than Americans already suffer.
For example (and as usual this won't apply to the tiny minority who live in Manhattan), buses or carpools tend to convert a brief trip to work into an interminable grand tour that furthermore rarely gets underway on time. Should other measures that are bandied about - such as spending countless hours to grow trivial quantities of luxury vegetables on rather less than ideal urban plots - actually be taken up, they will have a similar effect.
And yet the length of a day will remain fixed at 24 hours. So although some of the vast quantities of time thus consumed might conceivably come at little cost out of, say, TV viewing, one might expect "civil society" - cultural, social, and charitable life - to take even more of a thrashing than it already has. Many people, with their 45-minute roundtrip commute bloated to two or three hours or more, will simply have no time left for, to pick something at random, "Evolver" meetings. While I'm unclear about precisely what costs this will incur, I can't help but expect them to be significant.
PaulS, what about the time lost in traffic jams nowadays ?
Under most circumstances, the traffic jams simply multiply the time cost of taking the Grand Tour on the bus or in a carpool rather than traveling directly. So - get this and get it good - the traffic jams make it even more attractive/imperative to travel solo by car! Obviously, the greater the number of miles one crawls at five or ten mph, the longer the trip takes. With separated rail lines, this problem is diminished, but those serve such a tiny minority that they're nearly invisible in the Big Picture.
Now, this can take us to an amusing conversation about the game theory of traffic jams, out of which pops the coercive option of forcing people - well, non-rich people anyhow - out of cars. The confiscatory "congestion fees" in London and elsewhere seem to have been devised with this in mind. OTOH, very little of the USA resembles London; such fees would just shift customers away from businesses whose owners would rightly howl, and would also shift businesses away from cities, a migration which is even now seen as a negative. After all, who's going to spend an extra $13 stop by a store to pick something up when they can just stop by a different store and keep the $13 for something useful? And why keep a business in the city if it's going to take employees and customers a long drawn-out trip (or else lots of money) to get there, when - to repeat, as is already happening - one can take one's business out to the suburbs where the trips will be comparatively direct and therefore comparatively quick?
You have fun with that. I'll just give up suburban living and rent a small room close to work. Or a public transport line. Or telecommute.
Mitigation doesn't have to be one-size-fits-all.
Or live and work in a small town. Too many people here seem to think that living on a farm in the country or a cubicle in the city are the only two options. Being a small town resident myself, I am inclined to see the many, many advantages of small town life.
Man, the joke sure is on me, you really had me going there for a while, I was sure you were dead serious! LOL!
If the traffic is moving slowly, the time cost of taking an extra detour (to reach a carpool partner or by way of a typically circuitous bus trip) is even greater than if the traffic is moving freely. Is this not blindingly obvious?
Now, on an abstract global view, it may be a perverse incentive; that's where we get into the game theory. But what is so hard to understand about it?
PaulS, you didn't get the point. When time has come that carpooling is necessary, there will be less cars on the road: less traffic jam.
Yes, one would think that to be BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS, wouldn't one?
Game theory notwithstanding...
I think we are confusing the incremental time effect of one commuter making a change, versus the effect of systemwise changes. If economics forces those changes to ocurr anyway, then the calculus of wasted time changes.
Yes.
Which was what I tried to say to begin with.
However the cumulative effect of individual commuters making incremental changes becomes a new feedback into the system that can then engender a system wide tipping point. This can have both beneficial and negative consequences.
If we rationally promote such behaviors we may have a small chance at pushing the system into a controlled decline rather than a fast collapse. Which may give us the time to switch to a completely new paradigm. (my assumption is that we agree that the current paradigm is unsustainable and that we must come up with something different)
High taxes on the use of fossil fuel for personal automobile use and incentives for mass transit might be a way to solve both the road and infrastructure maintenance issues while making mass transit more desirable and attractive to the users.
The end goal might be a system where the majority of the population doesn't "need" to commute back and forth to a "job". We would still need both roads and mass transport.
Anyway I think this whole discussion is pretty much moot as I don't see any rational discussion about system wide change taking place. It's still all about drill baby drill and grow the economy! Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!.
Happy Holidays! Cheers,
White Wine In The Sun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q
Ahhh, but at that point there will be less of a desire to keep the roads all fixed up.
And with less bulk demand for low occupant xport the model numbers will decrease or the price will increase (or both). Thus one maker at some point it would seem.
And fewer tax dollars. One of my major frustrations is that people aren't taught to think systematically. They don't realize what a tangled web we have weaved (woven? li'l help here).
I wonder if Darwin thought about that while sailing to the Galapagos? Or Leonardo da Vinci while painting the Mona Lisa which he started circa 1503 and finished about 35,000 hours later...
Perhaps a new social paradigm would include a very different view of time and productivity as well?
Huh? WTF??? Most people are not Leonardos and will not be painting Mona Lisas, but the more time they are forced to dissipate on the basic chores of daily life, the less time they will have for painting whatever, if anything, might be their equivalent of a smidgen of some Mona Lisa. No amount of abstract professorial re-conceiving of paradigms of time will alter the underlying arithmetic by even as much as one jot, nor will it add even one millisecond to the time available in a day.
So could you please clarify - what possible connection with the number of hours Leonardo spent painting the Mona Lisa are you trying to establish?
I just don't expect that there will continue to be a need for everyone to commute to a job at all so the whole concept of time spent on commuting ceases to make sense. Commuting to work is part of the BAU paradigm and I don't see it continuing.
As for not everyone being a Leonardo, it doesn't mean that people will not be spending time very differently than they do now. Have you ever seen a good piece of scrimshaw or a carved piece of wood.
It takes a lot of hours to create those as well. The degree of talent not being the point.
In case you have never sailed a small boat across a large body of water I suggest you try it, it gives you time to think.
Hmmm...I guess I'm still not getting it quite 100%. Even in Zimbabwe considerable numbers still commute to jobs, enough that the concept of spending time commuting hasn't "ceased to make sense" even though it's not universal. Even there, some work must remain that can't be done at home. So I imagine your vision of doom is far worse than even Zimbabwe (BTW do you have a time-frame in mind?) But under such circumstances, I'd expect whoever's left would be spending every waking second on subsistence, except for a few warlords. So who in blue blazes would have time, even a moment, to create scrimshaw???
Paul you might be surprised to learn that there are still artists living and working in places like Zimbabwe and they were creating art way before they started commuting and I'll wager they will continue to create art long after the majority of them have stopped commuting.
http://www.zimsculpt.com/index.html
Just for the record a non BAU paradigm is not automatically a doomerist vision. People have been creating things with their hands since the dawn of humanity. I could be wrong but I believe that in a post peak oil world more people will be making things with their own hands and some of it will be artistic.
Driving a tractor or plowing with a mule also gives you time to think and is one of the most attractive aspects of farming.
An old black man once explained to me why he kept his humble job looking after the floors and hallways as a school janitor when a somewhat better slot was offered to him in the same exact words.
He had trained himself to slip into a sort of trance ( as he pushed his dust mop down the long quiet hallways all alone ) wherein he relived his youth and his life and could see and feel his middle aged children as two year olds on his knees as if it were "Just yesterday".
I understand Paul's Point perfectly and it applies in the short term but in the end one way or the other we will solve the transportation problem and personally I don't believe it is nearly as intractable as most people make it out to be.Most of those commuter jobs are going to disappear or get relocated as things go further downhill.
Ten or twenty cars in a super market parking lot might be replaced by a teen ager driving a specially equipped minivan with a helper or two who will deliver groceries door to door using an automated order system if traffic gets bad enough and gasoline gets high enough.I can see this evolving easily out of the pizza delivery model.
With a few changes in our automotive, labor, and common carrier laws we could for instance remove many thousands of vehicles fron the roads in any large city quickly and painlessly except at the cost of the howls from entrenced business people who benefit from the status quo.
For a instance any large apartment community near downtown would most likely have a dozen or more residents who work the old eight to five downtown rat race.One or two vans operated by thier owners could take them all if the law allowed the owner to charge for a ride tax free and exempted him from excessive liability.Since in such a case the owner himself would be late his riders WILL learn to be ready on time-or drive thier own car or take a cab or whatever.
Such a solution would require just about zero capital expenditure, reduce traffic, conserve gasoline,and build resilience into the economy.
Over the long term it should certainly save the overall economy enough to justify any expenses to society, such as screening the drivers records and making sure they maintain a certain level of insurance coverage.
If necessary it might be justified to force the auto insurance industry to write the policies and subsidize them directly or indirectly.But if this were handled on a "pool" basis,any expenses would more than likely be amply recovered because with less vehicles the overall accident rate declines making other policies more profitable.
Someone might even come up with the idea of delivering milk that way!
:-)
There is a lot of experience with not driving to work and elsewhere, this was ordinary routine up until 50 or so years ago.
A hundred years ago there were few cars. Most townspeople didn't own horses because of the expense of a stable. Town dwellers used trams or or rode short- line railroads. Others lived close to - or in apartments above - jobs and walked. In 1909, the majority of Americans lived on farms or in small, farm- centered towns. In 1909, cars were scarce enough to cause commotions when they appeared.
Goods bought and sold were delivered. I recall the milk delivery. It ended in the early 1960's, right when milk cartons started to appear in supermarkets.
This country could use 10% less oil by simple means; 55 mph speed limits, $3/gallon gas tax, odd- even rationing, car pool and bus lanes, etc. Mandating turning off commercial building lights overnight would also save a lot of electricity.
In the depletion environment which is unfolding, a 75% reduction will be required. Doing so would require removing most autos from the highway and require severely rationed electric use. Energy will be needed for transition. A reduction of this magnitude would be a tectonic shift in American behavior; our country simply isn't designed around expensive fuel.
But, it can be done. My - and yours - grandparents did it.
For bonus points, work out how much fuel that saves, even if you use a H2 to get the groceries and everyone who would have gotten their own groceries has a prius.
Out of curiosity, how many of those commenting on Gail's post remember having milk (Brits excluded because I believe it still exists there) delivered to their home. I do.
BTW David Strahan authored an excellent summary of the oil decline dilemma entitled "Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel" in December 5 2009 issue of "New Scientist" This well illustrated article nicely shows new and proposed methods for extracting "extreme oil". It contrasts energy and monetary costs of the various technologies vs the same for dwindling "cheap oil".
Unfortunately, the magazine is not read by the average "Joe 6 Pack". That is a shame because it is quite readable and understandable by those not knowledgeable about the subject.
yep! and with email and web sites with a spot to click margarine and a menu appears that asks what brand, what size , how many, in nice fat print even old Grannies can learn how-or alternately orders can be phoned in.That van with racks and plastic totes and a helper can just go farther and faster mainly and the driver won't have to apply a club to the horses head to get it to keep going at a stop where nothing is wanted or to make a new stop or turn right whereas the routine has been to turn left.
As a matter of fact if I were knowledgeable about computers I would start writing the software-there is a serious potential here but probably it has been done dozens of time already.Just too soon.
OFF TOPIC FROM HERE ON
I know a woman who sells cosmetics to lonesome old women -her customers are extraordinarily loyal and buy because her visits are bright spots in otherwise lonely days.But she is absolutely confident that even in times such as these she could earn big bucks by applying herself to her work.
This lady's husband makes good money and she does not "push " her business, being satisfied to earn her own pocket money -a couple of hundred a week in a couple of EASY afternoons a week.
I know the world a state where lots of people are paranoid but it is still possible to build up a simple cash business in any area where most people are still financially on thier feet if you are willing to work for a modest cash wage.
For example every ten blocks of houses with small lawns in a city has at least a couple of dozen old folks who still do thier own yard work..
If you pass by and give them a wave FROM THE SIDEWALK after a few weeks , maybe even the first time, they will stop work to chat.
They will want to know who you are and all about your family and your job -this is the way old folks estabish relationships and form thier judgements of strangers.Tell no lies!Not even little white ones.!But try not to appear desperate.
When the moment is right mention that you do odd jobs to supplement your income or because your savings are getting low while you look for full time work.After a while , maybe a you will get a few hours work raking leaves.Don't expect much money -the customer would have a lawn service and live in a nicer house if HE had a lot of money.
Over a few weeks or months of being seen regularly trust begins to grow from the seeds of familiarity.
The jobs that can be had this way won't pay much but once you have a customer if you handle things right there is repeat work to be had and there will be referalls. Grown up kids who are too busy to come by and do thier parents yard work will get in touch.
I may be the only regular here who has lived in close contact with really poor people most of my life.Social workers and teachers (been there) and physicians see this elephant from only one pov thru professional spectacles.
Most of us who have lived in the middle class have been so thoroughly brainwashed about thieves and lawsuits and shoddy work and murderers snatching children in the night that we have a truly major job in front of us readapting to life as to used to be where nieghbors knew each other.
If we are right about the coming crash, there will be no f-250 with a long trailer pulled up un front of hoses with three guys jumpinp off and running twenty thousand dollars worth of giant mowers for a half hour.Thier business phone and thier book keeper and thier insurance agent and thier landlord will all be history.
But the local guy who arrives pushing his lawn mower and is on personal terms with his customer will take thier place and collect his pay mostly in cash, partly in food and drink, sometimes in unneeded winter clotheing or furniture or maybe in exchange for a ride to a doctors office to far away to walk if his customer still has a car.
The fluff-advertising, insurance, office and shop properly zoned- associated with the service just cutting grass-will dry up and blow away.
The nieghborhood roofer will do the jobs within a mile of two of his own house, instead of two roofers passing each other crossing town on the freeway both heading to cross town jobs.
In all of the "solutions" and mitigations, I don't think people are really thinking about the time aspect.
My husband asked me what I would like for Christmas, and I told him "26-hour days".
If farmsteads are to be sustainable, they really have to produce what is needed for food, transportation, clothing, and for heat energy, or enough funds from goods produced to buy the things not produced. The permaculture set-ups I have seen don't even come close to providing a full living. If a person is trying to do everything himself/herself (without the help of, say, draft horses), it seems like the work takes so much time that it is hard to do everything that needs to be done, to produce a reasonable living.
"If a person is trying to do everything himself/herself...it seems like the work takes so much time that it is hard to do everything that needs to be done, to produce a reasonable living."
Well, yes, exactly. I think that's why the economists some posters love to scorn so gratuitously will generally tell us that autarky is not a very good idea - even if it appeals to romantic notions about frontier life that became obsolete long ago when the frontier closed.
it seems like the work takes so much time that it is hard to do everything that needs to be done, to produce a reasonable living.
That 'reasonable living' has many parasitic loads. Taxes and insurance are 2 examples.
#3-Compound interest
#4-inflation
to name a couple more
Just getting close to self sufficiency working with simple tools usually means very long hours and very hard work.
Line drying a load of clothes might take twenty to thirty minutes on a typical day-as opposed to three minutes and less than a quarter's worth of juice using the elrctric dryer.
I spend roughly a week a year gathering firewood and at least twenty minutes a day tending the stove-this in a well insulared house where the climate is moderate and using power tools and a truck or tractor to haul the wood.I could earn enough to buy fuel oil a LOT faster on any reasonably well paid job.
Any one with a good job can buy eggs and DEAD chickens ready for the pot with thier after tax earnings in a small fraction of the time required to raise thier own.
Airdale and Todd any the other older folks who have lived this stuff or the ones like me who caught the tail end of it as a kid are telling it straight -self sufficiency means working a lot of hours at some very hard work.
It may in some ways be more satisfying to the soul but only a very few people are going to like it.
Most won't be able to make it if required to do so on short notice even if they have the necessary resources in terms of shelter, land, and tools.The learning curve is too steep and Nother Nature never grades on a curve.
"self sufficiency means working a lot of hours at some very hard work.
It may in some ways be more satisfying to the soul but only a very few people are going to like it."
The body too. If people did even a fraction of the actual physical work necessary to be self sustaining, obesity would quickly come to an end.
And of course with a strong community, some bigger chores can be done in groups, with various other sorts of benefits.
So there are social, physical and spiritual benefits to a more self-sustaining lifestyle.
What this kind of lifestyle lacks is a good advertising budget.
Widespread car poolig and busses will be a major relief for the congestion since single occupant wehicels are removed from the roads.
All true. However, in the case of time, the good news is that the Pareto principle does tend to become operative. For example, if one selects one's activities properly, one can probably produce about 80% of what one would need to be self-sufficient in food for about 20% of the time that it would take to reach 100%. You just concentrate on doing first the things that give you the most foodstuffs for the least amount of effort. Similarly, you can probably get to about 80% of the places to which you have to get on foot or on bicycle or on public transport for about 20% of the time that it would take to get to 100% of the places to which you have to go via those non-automotive modes. You can rank order all your trips over the course of the year, and you will find that most of them are short and close to home, a few are much longer, so concentrate on eliminating one's dependence on the automobile for those shortest trips first, and keep working on it until you are down to just the longest and most difficult trips.
The trouble is that Pareto or no Pareto, these notions are not always terribly helpful. The transportation example is especially illustrative. Taking 20% by car and 80% otherwise will usually be a very silly option. It's simply a way to waste lots of time to save very little money, inasmuch as car expense - despite all the moaning during the oil price spike - is on the whole fairly insensitive to usage. Some people may see exercise or enjoyment as an auxiliary benefit from a degree of bicycling, though I'd expect that might be exhausted for most (and in more ways than one) at far below 80%. And I can't conceive of any auxiliary benefit whatsoever from taking a bus or train, while in my experience there were auxiliary drawbacks such as more colds and flulike illnesses.
Foodstuffs are more complicated, but even there, I can't say I really yet understand the obsession with autarky, which seems likely to do little more than encourage some to squander countless hours to grow a few tomatoes and whatnot. After all, the main portion of dietary sustenance derives from grain, not from what people typically grow on small garden plots. In addition, and setting aside for a moment romantic autarkical notions handed down from the long-since-closed frontier, in the event that TS is permitted to HTF so hard that, for g-d's sake, grain can't be given priority for shipment over reasonable distances, then most people aren't going to be subsisting on the produce of their garden plots anyhow - instead, armed gangs, who will starve last, will be eating it, and even then only if they haven't destroyed it first by dint of their own sheer stupidity.
I will agree that current approaches to self-sufficiency seem to be not very practical. Raising a handful of vegetables in raised beds (with lots of soil amendments) is interesting, but I have a hard time seeing them doing much for the long haul.
Somehow, some person or organization must be growing grain or potatoes in fairly large quantities, or people won't be fed. This will likely require either fossil fuel or animal power to assist in the endeavor.
Not to sound too snide, but a huge numbers of people on this planet still survive on animal-powered agriculture. To suggest that industrialized societies will not adapt to the realities of low fossil fuel inputs assumes that people are either unable or unwilling to do so. (That said, unwilling is certainly a possibility, but a path I would not accept)
As far as veggie plots: I would assume (perhaps a big assumption) that the purpose of home gardens would be to supplement (rather than replace), farm grown calories. You're right that SOMEONE will need forty acres and a mule to harvest surplus grain to sell (barter?) to the townspeople. I think in the event of a true collapse (rather than a managed decline), we can expect to see 18th century patterns of daily life return. Hopefully that return won't involve too much serfdom and debt slavery...
There weren't 300 million people in the U.S., 6.8 billion globally, in the 18th century. Population changes everything.
I had just posted this on another topic here,, but im not sure if anyone would see it there... or here either... but I was thinking there might be a way for us, "in the west" to manage a "Population Decline" in a way that didn't "crush" us.
Of course we -WILL- hurt and suffer loses, perhaps millions of Americans will starve. However, I've tried to game out a "scenario... and please do keep in mind this is a ROUGH draft... and its NOT done... and I tried to keep it short so I left a lot out. I do have "climate change" elements in it, but didn't mention them here in detail. Anyways... here it is:
The U.S. Federal Reserve raises interest rates
-------> -Value of the U.S. Dollar goes up-
U.S. Banks raise interest rates on Existing loans
------->U.S. Farms need to raise prices to pay for loans
Higher costs for Nations that import US grains
Higher world food prices
-------> More nations purchase African farms
Food EXPORTED to nations that now own African Farms
More Africans Starve
More Political instability, Civil war in Africa.
States that bought the farms send weapons, funding.
-------> Lower Crude Oil, Mineral, food production in Africa from Famine/War
Higher prices and demand for Oil/Minerals OUTSIDE of Africa
Political -INSANITY- in South America [Chavez gives millions to FARC, or Invades someone]
-------> Global Crude Oil production "crunch"
GLOBAL CRUDE OIL AND GASOLINE SHORTAGES
Lower World trade
Lower demand for Asian Exports
Less demand for South America Exports
-------> More unemployment starvation in Asia, Africa, South America
Less exports from Asia, New factories in US/EU/RU
Lower Employment in Asia
Higher Employment in US/EU/RU
Less money for food + Gas subsides in Africa/Asia/South America
-------> More starvation, Higher fuel costs, Unemployment in Africa, Asia.
Northern Arctic Oil/LNG pact between North America, Europe, Russia
Lower Oil/LNG prices in US/EU/Ru
Higher food and Gasoline prices in Asia
Political violence in Asia
Political instability, Civil war and War between states in Asia
New Political and TRADE alignment of "Global North" [US/EU/Russia]
Less Confidence in Asian Economy, Lower foreign investments in Asia
-------> Less employment in Asia, more violence in Asia
Lower oil demand from Asia, lowers oil prices outside of Asia
Better Economic prospects for North America, Europe, Russia
You need to live near or with communities that practice autarky, such as my Amish neighbors. While I agree that individual autarky is a little far fetched, small communities
do seem to be able to obtain significant autarky. Autarky becomes very practical if something(s) are no longer fungible (i'm going to be fast and loose here). Consider the 2008
super spike in rice where japan despite many seemingly advantages found out the limitation of financial instrument convertibility. We may actually see this repeated in a couple
of months.
One could take a POV on the Amish and say that their inability to maintain fungability in clothing, transport, farming with the rest of Pennsylvanians was the DRIVER for autarky.
What is interesting in the "new neighborhood networking" is the realization that my vocational expertise as a life support technician is untradeable to my other neighbor who
is is a web designer. Whereas the other neighbors are trading small engine repair, firewood, brown eggs, vegetables.
I raise more than a handful of vegetables, and you'd be surprised how much you can amend with soil from creek bottoms and the banks of streams, but i agree with the one poster
that you need to do local grain at the small scale (2-10 acres) to make things work. people (including me) are working on that, but small scale farm implements are not easy to
find.
Those who deride individual subsistence farming have to answer the larger question: If not farming, then what?
Most around the world do not farm because they prefer it to being a well-paid web-designer or chiropractor, but for the simple reason that the only other choice they see is starvation. To prevent starvation, we will need jobs for those who are unemployed, and more jobs for those high-end service jobs which will no longer be in demand.
The value of a sophisticated economy with specialization is obvious, and there will always be a role for that at every scale. However, as products become relatively more expensive and complexity dwindles, we'll need a solution for the unemployed, and for many that will probably be farm-work. Others will help out at shops and such, as once minimum-wage goes away there will be new niches for unskilled help.
I don't think commuting will be the main issue -- as jobs go away and carpooling and mass-transit usage increase, traffic will be much less. People will tend to localize, as businesses move closer to their customers and workers move closer to their work. Small operations make more sense when you can tolerate less worker efficiency and real-estate cost is less. With lower wages and empty shops, that should happen.
JMHO.
In swaziland where I go in Africa, they don't do subsistence farming, the find free food or die.
Some cultures that were quasi-nomadic, and focus on "animal husbandry" on "anyone's land" do a
form of the "trajedy of the commons" and create moonscapes. When you fence in a portion of
the land and manage it in any manner the difference is stark.
I have been told by locals in iceland during my travels there, that this was also the situation
there not too many decades ago. In my last trip to wales in the boonies the locals seem to struggle
with this a bit as well on public property.
Fortunately the US still has a strong sense of property; however, when i put a crossbow bolt through
my neighbors goat/sheep that is eating my blueberry bushes, we'll see how truly strong it is.
Oh come on, that's pure *BULLSHIT*!
Now that was an illuminating and edifying response if ever there was one.
So let's see, insurance is nearly fixed. Sure, they ask how far you commute, and so on, but the effect on the premium is so small that they don't try very hard to verify your responses.
Rust never sleeps, as Simmons is fond of saying, and that's not just in oil infrastructure. It's not terribly sensitive to usage but it sure can be expensive, especially in states such as Virginia with 'body shop welfare laws'.
Deterioration never sleeps either, and occasionally it's even reduced by usage - those obscenely expensive potted electronic modules are best used often enough to keep the plastics dried out. Even tires deteriorate. (My grandfather left a "new old" car that had few miles on it, but it cost somebody a bundle to put it back into shape.)
Even auxiliary costs such as parking are often on the monthly plan rather than usage-sensitive. The owner of the space may have little other use for it if it's only available intermittently, so you're paying for access rather than usage.
We're pretty much left with mechanical wear and fuel as the only costs directly proportional to usage.
Not one iota of this will be altered even one jot by any conceivable quantity of shouted expletives. So what on earth are you so angry and upset about???
I'm not angry at all, I just think that what your are saying is pure highly refined yak dung, if you prefer.
I'll address this statement for example:
Really?! You are saying with the straightest of faces that you can't conceive of *ANY* auxiliary benefit whatsoever from taking a bus or train?
Let's just say that I can...For example: I happen to enjoy reading, it relaxes and me and when I lived in New York I found it easier to read while riding on the subway than I did while driving over the Queensborough Bridge.
Have you ever tried a catnap while driving? Perhaps in your mind taking a snooze is not in any way beneficial? How about composing your thoughts on your laptop? Playing a game of cards or a game of chess with a friend.
Perhaps you don't consider any of these examples to be in any way beneficial to you? If so, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
Though I'm pretty sure that if you made half an attempt you'd be able to come up with a list of your own.
I met a really nice girl once, on the train...........
I was going to say much the same thing, Mag.
I also found it a hoot that the only thing that came to mind for PS about being around other people was communicable diseases! I guess he is just happy with zero social life, never being in physical proximity to anyone. I presume he doesn't fly, go to parties, work with others...
On regular routes where you see the same people every day at the same time, the passengers and driver of buses often become a kind of community, getting to know each other and sharing in each others' joys and sorrows. But the idea that being part of community could have any benefits would be completely lost on this guy--community to him, apparently, just looks like a flu waiting to happen.
I'm not sure what you mean about welfare body shop laws in Virigina.Our state safety inspevtion covers emissions in place, all safety and related parts or equipment working and in reasonably good repair such a brakes and tires and operable doors and windows with a good windshield wguch will pass with a small chip or crack , the glass doesn't have to be perfect.
If you have a covered accident you can use the shop of your choice if the estimate is reasonable in comparison to the carriers estimate.
As far as rust is concerned the passenger compartment must have good floors so any carbon monoxide from the exgaust system cannot enter the assenger space.
Otherwise a car can be rusty indeed so long as in the opinion of the mechanic it will not suffer a structural failure before the new safety sticker expires.A few cars, mostly ones kept in the mountians where the roads are often salted or used cars brought in from the northern states are rejected for structural rust but mostly they are already at least ten years old and usually much older.But make no mistake , the wheels have fallen off of some carscars and the brakes have failed on others due to excessive rust.
In a world based on consumerism cars lose a lot of value from depreciation without a doubt.But a savvy car buyer who researches his case and buys carefully can drive an older car for many years unless he puts a lot of miles on it.Nearly everybody I know, living in a poor area, runs a car for two hundred thousand miles and most of them buy used.The ones who buy new keep then until they are fir only for the wrecking yard.Our last new vehicle (a ford ranger pickup )was purcheased in 1992 and will be with us or another ten years if we are able to drive that long.My personal truck is an 84 toyota that gets over 25 mpg and as it neede a major repair I got it for two hunfred and fifty dollars.It too will be around for the duration.
Taxes on such older vehicles come to less than one cab ride a year and insurance is cheap.It should be a lot cheaper and as the number of cars and car trips decline the state will probably apply some pressure to lower then further.
So cars do not necessarily have to be expensive to own or drive occasionally as long as tey are nt used extensively.What I would like to see is a tax policy and streets management policy that strongly encourages the use of nieghbor hood electric vehicles along the golf cart line which could be well enough enclosed to make them servicable on cold rainy days.
Eventually there might be a way we could all rent utilitarian vehicles very cheaply by owning a share in a car coop with parking spots reserved for use of these cars at service stations and other businesses or even street spaces being used . Some of them could be electrics nv.Usage rights at very heavy use periods could be deteremined by lottery or by peak pricing for daily and mileage use.
I share a small fishing boat using a similar arrangement with two old friends and it has worked out just great.We split the maintainence expenses except for gas and any accident damage and toss a cion if there is a conflict about using the boat any certain Saturady.The losers have first did for the next conflict dates and toss again for first use.But we only need to do this once a year or so.
My relatives in Virginia have given me the impression that even minor rust has to be fixed, at least as a practical matter down in the cities along the lower James River and the Bay. Perhaps mechanics in rural areas tend to be bit more sensible, (or a bit less self-serving.) That can happen in other fields of endeavor. But after all, it's a bit like having a building inspector sign off on something, the inspector has every possible incentive to be overcautious.
The repair of rust is not required unless it allows the entry of exhaust gases or structural failure is threatened.
Your folks should complain to the Va state police if someone at an inspection station tells them otherwise.I just double checked with the local guy who does my vehicles and he does it "by the book".
Snow and ice are not all that common in that area and little salt is used on the highway.
It is rather unlikely for a Va vehicle in the tidewater area to be rusted out STRUCTURALLY in less than ten or fifteen years unless it has been run off the paved roads and on the beaches and thus exposed directly to salt water , in which case three or four years of such use will leave a typical car looking like a sieve and likely to literally collapse in the street when it hits a big pothole at speed.
Finding a "problem" with a car brought in for inspection or service that can be very profitably "repaired" is as old a racket as the automobile itself.
Mass transit on time tables............sounds familiar.
Huh?
Gail and Paul,
Wonderful article as always Gail.
Paul, I agree that time factors are often overlooked and are critical to the discussion. It is certainly one of the reasons that modern American life is less desirable than it could be. However, I believe that people have given it far too little attention. For example, as much as 35% of americans do not take their lunch but work through it instead. 20% of American workers fail to take paid holidays that do not roll over (i.e. they are lost). Americans are also dying from stress as a result of overwork. So you are completely correct to state that increasing the time workload would be nearly impossible.
The amount of energy (especially liquid fuels) that could be readily dispensed without severe consequences with in the US (and elsewhere, e.g. Canada) is still large. For example, how many people really NEED a large house in suburbs (and commuting) when they could live closer to their work in a smaller house or an apartment? How about telecommuting? Too many jobs are simply computer and telephone intensive that could be done from a home office (or desk). How many people simply work too hard because they are driven by the culture (and their genetics) to "overachieve" (and work too long)? Couldn't many "workaholics" get by with less work? (less time spent)? Wouldn't it be better for many of them? How about less energy intensive vacations? I recently took my wife to a wonderful local hotel on a river and roller-bladed around the bike-paths instead of flying or travelling long distances. It only took us 40 minutes to drive there. Very nice vacation indeed.
In summary, I believe that there are many alternatives that would simultaneously reduce liquid fuel consumption AND address your (and my) concern about time stress. That is even with only my limited imagination.
Hope this helps,
IWylie
The time and stress crunch is largely because people have been asked to do the job they had ten years ago plus a number of other jobs of the various people who have been laid off during that time. The benefits of the huge increases in worker productivity have not gone to the workers. Those still fully employed are overworked while the rest are underworked.
So some people have no time and others have too much time.
This sounds like a rather solvable problem, to me.
But probably not under the system that got us to where we are today. As long as profits are more important than people, there will be an ever growing pile of inanities like this.
Our economy as presently configured is unsustainable. Ultimately and inevitably, the limitations of depleting non-renewable resources will force us down to a sustainable level. The only question is whether we will get there by decline or collapse. Those are the only two "solutions" on the table. We won't hear any politicians talking about, or even acknowledging the possibility, of either. The US system of governance is constitutionally incapable of coming to grips with a reality like this and dealing with it in an effective manner. That is too bad, because if we had a government that really could come to grips with reality and pursued a policy of "managed decline", then that would definitely make things a lot easier for our citizens, and go far toward avoiding a total collapse.
That does not mean I am ready to join the ranks of the doomers yet. I am still a declinist. However, I do think that it means that the best we can hope for is a decline that is going to be a very bumpy and scary ride downhill, and a leveling-off that is going to be lower than it would have to be. Again, too bad.
That also means that managing decline is pretty much left up to "we the people", and that we can expect little-to-nothing in the way of any real help from the FedGov. Gail is right about her emphasis on localization. We need to understand that this is going to have to grow from the bottom-up, without Federal assistance. Indeed, the FedGov is more likely to be an obstacle than a help. It is, nevertheless, an obstacle that must be overcome.
"Our economy as presently configured is unsustainable. Ultimately and inevitably, the limitations of depleting non-renewable resources will force us down to a sustainable level."
I agree with this...I would probably say that 'limitations will force us to live sustainably' It could be 'down', but with good planning, 6 or even 9 billion people could live sustainably on earth at a higher standard of living than the current average...although it may be hard to sustain the average American.
"The only question is whether we will get there by decline or collapse."
This seems to be the orthodox position around here, but note that you have ruled out adjusting. We need specifics about the time scales. An economic decline (10-30 years) is possible since it will take time to adjust many parts of our economy, but it is very hard to predict much about how big the decline could be or when it will occur. If strong political action on climate change occurs in the next few years and we get lucky with cost decreases in renewable energy sources and electrical transportation technology, we could avoid a decline altogether. If a big decline occurs, then it is unclear whether that can be managed without economic collapse, but in any case economic growth will return. It will likely be slower than the 20th century, but renewable energy and improved efficiency can grow an economy just like fossil fuel if you have enough time to build the infrastructure. Humans who understand modern science are much more adaptable than some give us credit for. Farsightedness seems to be rare, but once everyone on the planet faces obvious evidence of the requirement of sustainability, we'll adjust in a few decades. It will be a very different world than we have now, but it will be even more different than the world of 200 years ago. Humans who understand quantum chemistry, Maxwell's equations and thermodynamics will never live like they did before we understood the basics about how the universe works.
"we can expect little-to-nothing in the way of any real help from the FedGov"
This is only true while most people are able to ignore the constraints we face. Democracy is a pretty good tool for environmental action when the problem is an obvious fact of present living conditions. We should be spending more time educating the world about adjustment options and less time preparing to live in the 18th century. The depth of the decline will depend on the level of understanding of voters when the problem becomes obvious to everyone.
I totally disagree with the notion that we can ignore government. The single most important question is what kind of international economic and political responses will follow the widespread realization that the current system is unsustainable. If the world resorts to wars over resources, then we are in big trouble. There is always going to be enough energy available to transport a missile and even an army across the ocean...although that is clearly a bit unfortunate. So too much ephasis on the local could turn out really badly.
Thanks for your reply. We obviously don't agree - I'm much more of a declinist than you apparently are - but it is refreshing to have someone other than a doomer around here with which to disagree!
The probability of your optimistic outlook ending up as the reality is non-zero, but IMHO it must be pretty small.
I am operating under the assumption (just an educated guess at best, nothing provable, and maybe only a vain hope) that we will be lucky if that sustainable level that we (here in the US) end up with is no less than about 25% of present per capita GDP. We could end up much worse than that (I suppose anything between 25% and 0% has some probability attached to it), but I see little reason to hope things could end up much better than that; the renewable resource base simply isn't there to support anything much higher than that. I don't see that outcome as an altogether terrible thing - 25% of present per capita GDP takes us back to around 1941, or to something close to Costa Rica. Life could be much, much worse than that; some might even see some things about that type of life that could even be considered better (although much of that depends upon how equal or unequal the range of variation around that per capita average is).
Time frame is anyone's guess right now. I am suspecting that it is going to take a while, probably beyond my lifetime, to get all the way there. Sooner may actually be better for the rest of the planet, but it would be a lot harder for people to adjust to that steep a rate of decline, and also a lot harder to level off into a non-crash landing.
I don't know what a sustainable population for North America would be. I suspect that the world as a whole will end up with a smaller population than it has now, but I don't know for certain how much smaller, or when it will get there, or how that will happen. I do suspect that just because the global population will have to decline that does not mean that the North American population will have to decline by a proportionate amount. North America has a lower population density to start with, and a pretty good mix of renewable resource endowments. I have yet to see a really credible argument demonstrating why North America should be incapable of sustaining a population of at least several hundred million, which means there need not necessarilly be all that much of a long term population decline here.
I've stated here before that I think a distinction needs to be made between GROWTH and IMPROVEMENT. Given a finite renewable resource base, a sustainable economy must be a zero-growth economy. That doesn't mean that human intelligence and creativity can't come up with things that improve people's lives, and strongly suspect that will continue to happen. However, it is just confusing the issue to call that phenomenon "growth".
Given the realities of how our political system actually works (and I am a total realist, historically informed, and a registered independent with zero partisan agenda or ideological bias), I just can't share your optimism when it comes to the government, especially the FedGov. Something like a military coup d'etat would, of course, change the game completely, and given the dire straits we are going to be in that cannot be ruled out as a possibility. I actually would give that a much higher probability than I would a sudden change of thinking and turnaround of the modus operandi in Washington, much as I hate the thought. Nevertheless, if it is forceful and decisive action at the national level that you are looking for as our "salvation", that is unfortunately the only direction from which it is likely to come. For myself, I would prefer to just see the FedGov shrink into a mere shell of its present self (very likely to happen under lack of funding more than due to anything else), with most governing powers devolved down to the states, and from there on down to the local communities. I see that as the best hope for your "democracy" to actually be able to effect some positive changes that will result in effective decline management. Mainly, however, it gets us right back to what I was saying: decline management is pretty much going to be up to we citizens, working individually and collectively in our local communities.
I wonder about your 25% getting us to 1941 (a 75% decline). As someone who grew up in the 60s and 70s: 50 amp elec service, 1 TV, 1 Stereo, 2 Used Cars,
1 bathroom, 1200 sq ft 3 bedroom house on half an acre, what would that be? a 50% decline? Look at all the junk in my house and in my life, can I honestly
say that they bring me any real good? For the US, did going from 2 hours/day of TV watching to 8/day improve life? then moving to that 8 going to video
game, browsing, and tv? Realistically we can cut a lot out of the current US middle class lifestyle and end up with a possibly better physically/spiritually/socially
lifestyle say around 1971style. Post the financial workout of housing situation for american citizens (let's kill that consumer word), the big question will
be what to do with these giant houses. Is it going to be Walton world (grandma/pa live with the family) or is it going to be Dr. Zchivago (house reconfigured
to hold 3-4 unrelated families), or the colonial period (from a great book on american historical household formation), waltons+2 unrelated young adults.
On an inflation adjusted basis, per capita GDP for 1941 was about 25% of what it was in 2008. I was born about ten years later, but because I was born and grew up in small town America, I am not far removed from 1941 - the echoes from that time period were all around me in my youth. A lot of the houses had not changed all that much, and a lot of the older adults were still living very similarly to how they lived back then.
In 1941, television was still experimental; what almost all households had was a radio - and usually just one. There were only a few other electrical appliances as well: maybe a record player (with a built in speaker, no amplifier), a vacuum cleaner, an iron, a washing machine (no dryer, everyone used clothes lines), a sewing machine, a refrigerator (small by today's standards), and maybe one or two small kitchen appliances like a toaster, plus lights in each room. Not everyone had it that well, either.
For transport, many households had a car - ONE car - but by no means was even this universal. There were still quite a few Model Ts in operation; 1941 being the tail end of the depression, lots of people were still driving old cars rather than trading them in, hoping to stretch the family budget. Quite a few people would still walk to work, and kids would walk to school unless they lived way out in the country and had to take the school bus. Every kid wanted a bike, but not every kid had one. It was not altogether uncommon to see some adults riding bicycles; these would just be adult-sized ordinary bikes, and they wore ordinary clothes - the idea of bicycling as a "sport" would have been totally foreign. Most people living in the cities and even in mid-sized towns would get around locally mainly by street car or interurban, or maybe by taxi occasionally. Those making longer trips (and not that many did) would take the train. Only the rich and famous flew, and even then not very often.
Households were somewhat bigger back then, but the most notable thing about them was that the larger number of people were tucked into less space. Also, hardly anyone lived in a NEW house. Construction had pretty much shut down during the depression and would not resume until after the war, which meant that even the newest housing stock was at least ten years old with very few exceptions. More typical, people would be living in houses or apartment buildings that were built a quarter or a half century ago. To the extent that any of these were remodeled at all, it was mainly to install indoor plumbing and wiring. The reality is that most people put up with living in old, cramped housing. It would also be hot in the summertime (even the rich were unlikely to have air conditioning - if you wanted that, you went to the cinema) and cold in the wintertime. Heating would most likely have been a coal-fired, or possibly oil-fired, boiler, and every room would have its cast-iron radiator.
Those old houses didn't have a lot of closet space, either. Not that people needed all that much, because hardly anyone had the money to buy much stuff. Just about every woman had been taught how to sew, and a sewing machine was a prized necessity. Women would sew much of their own and their children's clothing, and keep the men's clothing mended. People tended to have just a few outfits, made of good sturdy cloth and made to last.
Not everyone raised a garden in 1941 - the victory gardens wouldn't reappear for another year - but quite a few people did, especially in the smaller towns. Every farm family raised a garden without exception; the phenomenon of a farmer being too busy with his crops for the family to put is a garden would have been unheard of. If you did have a garden, you usually would have a basement or root cellar, and you would put up a lot by canning. Hardly anyone had freezers back in 1941. Whether or not the household raised a garden, however, almost everyone prepared their meals at home, and every woman knew how to cook them. Other than canned soups, there really were no prepared foods available at the grocery store, and restaurant meals were expensive. Since meals were a production, everyone tended to sit down together at the table, and meal time was family time. Of course, those working or attending school might not have been able to come home for lunch, so they packed their lunches in a lunch box. Food back then tended to be pretty bland by today's standards. Other than salt and pepper and just a few things like cinnamon, most kitchens just didn't have many herbs and spices around. Whatever flavoring most main dishes and vegetables got came mostly from meats - ham or bacon - or fats - butter or lard. If cooks had reference to any recipes at all, it would be the Fannie Farmer cookbook. There were a few Italian and a few Chinese restaurants in the big cities, but unless someone had an ethnic heritage, most foods tended to be British bland.
I'm not at all sure that I can say that life was "better" back then. In many ways, it wasn't. There were some things that were better, though. Families did tend to be closer, as did neighbors. Life tended to be less cluttered, less hectic, more calm. I'm not at all sure that having to adjust downward to a 1941 standard of living would be all that terrible. Difficult to make the adjustment, for sure, but we could live at that level, and live pretty good lives.
People had to be constantly propagandized and steadily seduced by advertising to convince them that the stable, mostly satisfying lifestyle you describe should be jettisoned in favor of one much more dependent on fast food, highly processed foods, and all sorts of other consumer crap. This agent of consumption doesn't get much discussion here.
I would propose that one of the most important things to change is the advertising industry. More is spent convincing people they need things that they don't need than is spent on all of higher education every year in the US.
What if all this money and expertise were spent educating the public about our predicament and encouraging people to raise gardens, insulate their houses, cook at home from unprocessed food, cut back on meat and long trips...instead of doing the opposite?
Until we start moving significantly in this direction--away from propagandizing massive consumption and toward encouraging frugality--progress will be incremental.
I see no chance of us moving significantly in this direction.
It is good to compare reasonable guesses about our uncertain future with articulate people.
I would guess that 25% of per capita energy useage might happen, but 25% of per capita GDP is much less likely. We are already much more energy efficient than we were, and it will only take a decade of oil shortages to turn America into an energy efficiency innovation center.
Total estimated US energy usage is 250 kWh/day per person. In Europe it is a bit over half of this. (source: David MacKay -- Sustainable Energy without all the hot air -- available free online) A quarter of the US usage is 62 kWh/day. This is easily avialable from renewable sources in the US if we have a few decades to build the infrastructure. As a reference point, the most expensive option is residential rooftop solar photovoltaic and a system to generate 62 kWh/day (granted only enough for one person) fits on a typical residential roof, costs roughly $50k, lasts 30 years, pretty much pays for itself over its lifetime at current electricity prices, and produces much more energy than is required to build it (EROI at least 6). (with a lot of details suppressed about location etc). Large scale solar is less expensive and wind and nuclear are much less expensive. I find it hard to believe that Americans won't figure out how to build infrastructure to access these quantities of energy when it is out there to be harnessed. It is just that no one has convinced Americans that they need to do it yet.
But if we have 25% of our energy supply, how will we not have much more than 25% of current GDP? Will energy efficiency decrease in an energy starved future? My point is that resource depletion alone can't justify the scale of decline you propose. A similar but stronger argument can be made for other resources that can utilize recycling or replacement. It will require a social collapse to fall to 25% of GDP in the US. Could happen, but it is not a direct consequence of 'renewable resource base simply isn't there'. Short term there are big problems transitioning, and it might produce societal collapse, but long term the constraints are not as tight as you imply.
Your comment about 'growth' reminded me that growth is a charged word around here. I simply mean increasing standard of living, which sounds like what you mean by improvement. The notion that finite resources somehow mean that improving standard of living is impossible is foolishness. Some resources are permanently abundant: salt water, silicon, aluminum ore, sunlight, etc. After (big) transients from leaving our dependence on fossil fuels, humans will steadily improve the quality of life using the things that are available. They will also steadily increase their economic activity based on these things...hence economic growth. Point is that the end of oil is not the end of economic growth...it is just a transition to growth from a new baseline. Then we'll see whether future humans are smarter in handling their planet than our generation has been. But making tomorrow better than today is too deeply engraved in the human brain for us to ever really give up on economic growth. It will usually not be exponential, but it will have a positive slope. The options are rationally constrained growth that fits the limits of our planet's resources and irrational growth that gobbles up whatever can be grabbed. Zero growth only makes sense if you don't think very carefully about how humans think.
ganv, I admire your faith in our species as problem solvers but maybe you need to study the fundamentals of overshoot. I understand that western cultures have room to "adjust", but submit that many people on Planet Earth are about as "adjusted" as they can be.
Witness Copenhagen. Movement on any of these issues is nearly impossible in a time frame that will mitigate the consequences of overshoot, politically, economically, socially. Many of the forces that bind societies together must be undone before we can remake the world in any sustainable way. Most of these forces took centuries to develope and will take longer to restructure than, IMO, we have to minimize the pain.
Ghung, I largely agree that the political problems seem almost insurmountable. This is likely to be the center of the problem. But remember, that many people are still not willing to accept the fact that our fossil fuel usage is completely unsustainable. My faith, or maybe hope is a better word, is that enough people can be convinced to respond rationally as the problem becomes clear to everyone.
About people who are as 'adjusted' as they can be: It is going to be rough and the poor will suffer the most as always. But humans are amazingly adaptable. I recently heard a story that was both heartbreaking and inspiring about the adaptability of humans. In Zimbabwe, some of the poorest who have no farms have turned to panning for gold. Much trade is now in gold, and they have precision balances to measure the price of a loaf of bread in gold grains. Clearly this is a big problem ecologically, but it highlights two of my points. First, modern technology is not going to disappear. Second, no one ever stops adjusting. The question is whether we have good political and community structures that can organize humans to adjust to the problems we face in productive ways or whether we amplify the problems in trying to survive. Bad government and wars are my biggest fears for the future. Resource depletion is a problem that we can adapt to...but we might not succeed in adapting. Whatever happens, we are in it together. You can't become an island unto yourself.
That you find something that you admit is "a big problem ecologically" to be heartwarming and inspiring tells me all I need or want to know about your views.
'heartbreaking' not 'heartwarming'. You totally misread a clear sentence and then proceeded to insult me.
Looking back, I note that I didn't completely tell this story and it probably will continue to be misinterpreted so it was a bad example for TOD. I was thinking of the point that their government has destroyed their economy and they are finding a way to make a new economy...the poorest pan for gold making just enough to survive. This allows the farmer to earn some hard currency, and a basic economy to reform. But the unsustainable ecology is probably too hard to see past at TOD. The main lesson is simple...we're adaptable even when things go bad...and politics is the easiest way for things to go bad.
but with good planning, 6 or even 9 billion people could live sustainably on earth at a higher standard of living than the current average...although it may be hard to sustain the average American.
Estimates on the pre-FF carrying capacity do vary, but I've never seen any credible number even close to 6-9 billion. Pre-FF, the average was closer to 300 million.
Pre fossil fuel was pre modern science. The 18th century has very little to tell us about what is possible for humans in the 21st and 22nd centuries.
I wonder if the Greeks and Romans said the same thing, looking back at their industrial production levels and intricate clock-works and mathematics of the relatively recent centuries? Yet all that was either lost or largely useless for 1000 years or more.
A number of highly-motivated barbarians can significantly impact the scientific prowess of a large population. Remember Afghanistan under the Taliban? They were working to create a modern 8th-century utopia. Except with some modern weaponry to keep order of course.
History has little to tell us about technology, but a lot to tell us about humanity (and inhumanity).
Agreed. And I probably overstated my case. But do note the big differences between modern science and Greek science. 1) Printing press and now the internet has made basic discoveries known worldwide and archived in a way that they won't be lost. 2) The power of modern science is known to essentially all of humanity. 3) Modern science is completely different than Greek knowledge in the comprehensive nature of its explanations an its quantitative successes.
In the end, you are right. "History has little to tell us about technology, but a lot about humans." Humans will keep being humans but we won't go back to 18th century technology.
Ganv:
Strange you should talk about an orthodox position on TOD... no such exists.
I have never seen sustainability figures near that high. First of all, today we are at 6.5 Billion, more or less. The topsoil in the productive regions of the planet are depleting at an alarming rate. The only thing keeping food production going right now is commercial fertilizer, made from gas. That and diesel fuel, propelling the assorted tractors and trucks, pickers and ships and all the things used in large scale commercial farming.
Oh, and water. Did I mention water? Large scale irrigation has taken natural aquifiers to record low levels; rainfall in watersheds is becoming unreliable due to AGW.
So... if you have any figures that show Planet Earth being able to support 6 to 9 Billion, "with good planning," I would like to know it so I may review it.
Thanks.
Without fossil fuels, I would have a hard time seeing 6 to 9 billion people continuing to live on earth. The world would be a very different place and, as you point out, many resources are fairly depleted.
This not true - of course it is not possible to support 10^9 with the actual behaviour. But it is possible - stop eating meat is only one example.
Surely the actual american lifestyle is not sustainable, but that is one thing. The other thing is that with enough technology and enough smart people with IQ>200 (or even higher, kybernetics) i suggest we are theoretically capaple of "feeding" or better supporting 10^100 individuals and even more - not only on earth alone of course.
The core problem is that our brains/humans are limited (in cognitive skills - so we must overcome them and leave our biological orgins in the long run or whe are finished either way) and the most limited brains spread most (have the most offsprings)...
"not only on earth alone of course"
And this is about all I need to know about your position.
Please note that it was largely high-IQ people that got us into this mess.
Once you stack enough caveats, the original point is lost. Not totally theoretically impossible doesn't define our daily world -- what's reasonable viable does. Your "suggestion" lacks a theoretic and practical framework to even propose it as an option, let alone as an apparently viable reality.
I would think most of us, when properly marketed the plan, will accept the unfortunate death of a billion obscure foreigners than to deny our children meat. We'll pretend that we wouldn't because that's the way we rationalize our own self-image, but we will.
Most people more than standard deviation or two from the norm in intelligence have their own excess baggage to contend with (as to some extent do we all), and they are no more likely to agree or help than the rest. What if they all do happen to agree that the best thing is for population to reduce precipitously? What if only a few them decide that, but have the means and ability to engineer a super-virus?
We're on the cusp of complexity-driven frailty already, let's not presume that additional complexity or advanced science can automatically cure what it's help create.
@ dohboi
I talked about the very long run and the supporting of 10^100 kybernetic "creatures" or thinking machines.
Of course this will only be possible if we have enough smart poeople nowadays and deal with our current problems. I would only suggest that we are finished in the long run either way if we don't get it. Because earth will be finished also - in cosmic terms in the not long foreward future - with or without us. There is no "stady-sate beautiful nature thing" like some here think. It doesent matter when earth is cooked up if a nice frog more or less lived 100 million years before!
Furthermore i suggest that with actual technology we can support 10^9 humans - but shurely not like we do this now, especially in the US.
@ Paleocon
This is a good point - but one reason we have trouble with the complexity of technical systems is that we are not smart enough do deal with the complexity we need in the long run...
Your other point is also very good - when people get supersmart for whatever reason, they can destroy the earth easily. Thats true and i have tough about this issue many times.
But if you think all this to the final end - you came to this:
1) From a certain point of the technologycal evolution a technical society destroys herself.
2) Because of (1) there are not many smarter other races around (in the universe)...
3) When 1 is not reached (for example because of dysgenic tendencies) the race is finished either way in the long rung, due to self-destruction or due to suppression by a new race (which can but must not be smarter) or due to the end/destruction of their basis (in our case earth).
Surely you are not serious that no orthodoxies exist on TOD. Every community has its set of unwritten orthodoxies. The posts and the response of the majority of the commenters clearly assume a big decline is inevitable. It is a good orthodoxy for drawing this community together, but it is important to be aware of these orthodoxies in case some are not listening to other voices as well.
The 'figures' you want are impossible to obtain. There are many guesses based on assuming that certain parts of the past won't change. But the central piece is impossible to predict...how will humans adapt to clear knowledge of limited resources. History shows that humans are quite adaptable to different circumstances, and our knowledge of modern science makes us even more adaptable. The big question mark is sociological, not resource based: Will we be able to avoid using our knowledge for warfare?
Agriculture can adapt in many many ways...the most obvious will be to stop focusing most of agriculture on feeding animals. Crop rotation can replace much of fossil fuel fertilizer. The problem is that right now there is no incentive for farmers to explore large scale sustainable agriculture, so we have no idea about what is possible. It is no good extrapolating manual labor agriculture. Humans will find ways to use electrical power and available liquid fuels to grow a lot of food.
6.5 billion people are more or less getting by with current fresh water resources. Unfortunately some of this is threatened by climate change, but the net amount of fresh water shouldn't decrease much...it will mostly be redistributed. There are a few regions that have been depleting ancient aquifers, but there are more regions that are using far less water than is available (Canada, New England, and most of Europe are among places that I know of).
"6 to 9 billion"
The WWF estimates that in order for all humans to live with a high degree of luxury (European standards), we would be spending three times more than what the planet can supply.
A factor of three decrease from current European energy/scarce resource usage sounds reasonable to me. Note that 'the degree of luxury ... the planet can supply' is a completely undefinable notion. In practice we'll have to adjust to use less of what the planet can't supply, and the word luxury will adapt to a new meaning. The key to my statement is 'planning'. The realists will note that humans are not very good at that, and I have to agree. But I suspect we'll get better when the necessity becomes obvious to everyone. Efficiencies driven by necessity and a somewhat lower standard of living from cutting back on meat eating and returning to human centered agriculture, eliminating flitting around the planet on vacation, and many other little things can provide a globalized 'modern' world with 6 billion people if we work together. However, history does suggest that we will have a very hard time working together. It is the sociological part of post-peak oil decline that is most well founded. The claim that hard resource limits keep earth from supporting 6 billion people is not well founded because it assumes we can't adapt. If humans are anything, we are creatures that have evolved to adapt.
Well, since there is thick black smoke billowing up to the rafters and the curtain is already engulfed in angry orange flames, do you think that whoever whispers "I think it's getting warm, here in the theater and btw, psst, the exit is that way", would just be told to shut up, sit back and enjoy the show?
Let's face it the theater is already well on the way to burning to the ground I think that very shortly the
theater goersvoters will start becoming more and more receptive to the suggestion that there is a fire and it's time to leave the premises. No?We aren't talking about stopping on the way out to pick up your coat either. We are talking about getting out alive and building a completely new theater, the old one is a goner and there is no solution that will keep it from turning to a pile of rubble and ashes.
The next show will be at the open air, stone amphitheater, step right up and get your tickets now!
Now I'm about as cynical when it comes to politics and human nature as the next guy, but comments like this just provide ammo for the conrucopian crowd when they dismiss TOD as a Doomer-porn site. There *are* solutions that don't involve a massive die-off or catastrophic collapse of what one might term "civilization". It's just not likely that the public, titans of Wall Street, or their paid whores (known as politicians) will embrace any of them *willingly*. Doesn't mean they won't eventually get implemented.
"Americans can always be relied upon to do the right thing --after they've already tried everything else."
--W. Churchill
"It's just not likely that the public, titans of Wall Street, or their paid whores (known as politicians) will embrace any of them *willingly*."
Nicely put. But by the time they do so even unwillingly, it will be too late, at least for that solution. And of course many of the "solutions" will actually exacerbate the problems or become new problems themselves.
The Arctic ice cap is well on its way to totally melting, probably a dynamic that is now irreversible given albedo feedback and shifting wind patterns, with unknown (though probably large and largely negative) consequences to global weather patterns. What solution do propose for this?
The tundra is similarly now in irreversible melt, releasing GHG's in another feedback loop. I look forward to your solution.
The "third pole" glaciers in the Himalayas are in terminal decline, and there melt will deprive nearly half the world's population with a dependable source of water. Ancient aquifers in the same regions are also in decline. Solution?
I could go on, and on, and on...but perhaps you get the point. If you want to designate a hard look at the reality of the predicament we're in "doomer porn," I guess that's your business.
Perhaps economists like Simon can find economic replacements for the ice caps, tundra, glaciers, even water itself. Or perhaps not.
Don't forget Blue-13 ROTF LMAO!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=A2+Blue-13
Here is the "Solution"
Too bad it is toxic to aquatic organisms, may cause long-term adverse effects in the aquatic environment. Now that is really hilarious!
Hey you want french fries or healthy aquatic environments. I mean really now. It's a no brainer.
Plus the cymoxanil sales guy has got to make a living too you know.
Harm,
That is pretty insightful. I'd say that they will do it 'willingly' once they realize that it is in their personal interests to act. Unfortunately, they seem to only look a few years ahead in calculating their personal interests.
The big question is what will trigger 'eventually' so that some solutions start getting implemented.
Gail, thanks for another interesting post.
The consequences from the end of increasing amounts of cheap oil follow directly from the needs of the greatly expanded population and the structure of society (globalisation).
I don't agree however with: "The growing gap is the concern. The shape of the downturn in oil production isn't even all that important." This only is true if because of deepening economic recession (depression) oil demand stays lower than possible supply.
WNC observer wrote:
WNC observer, they always say that the U.S. uses so much oil. Take f.i. Holland, which uses 'only' about 1 mbd, but has 20 times less inhabitants. Almost 50% of this 1 mbd of oil goes to shipping and air traffic.
Instead of saying "the shape of the downturn isn't that important", I should say, "Regardless of the whether oil production stays flat or declines, we have a major problem to solve." I think there will be major implications for the financial system, whether oil production stays flat or goes down. We need to be working on local solutions, regardless. But there is more hope for managed decline if world oil production stays flat (and China and India continue to get more of it), than if we have to deal with a steep geological decline.
I also think so. Because this economic system needs grow (though some argue that grow doesn't require increasing oil production) and because of the consequences of high oilprices.
Indeed Gail, that was my point. And between flat and steep decline there is something like a decline of 1-2% per year (however with a relatively bigger decline in oil exports). Imagine a decline of 3-4% or more per year.
There is plenty of gold and silver in the ocean - but
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/oceano/seawater.htm#composition
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/08/31/gold-from-the-sea/
"Either we miss debt payments or we cut back on everything else." I find this a rather 'assumptive' statement from you. If you live in an oil exporting country, 'we' do pretty well when the price rises and inversely when it falls. The oil exporting countries who have debts to pay will certainly be more capable of paying them if the price rises. The money doesn't go away; it is merely distributed differently.
Currently, the industrialized world is flat out making and marketing shoddy and disposable goods in order to provide a quick and fat margin to the investors at a huge environmental cost which is externalized. Within this disaster is multiples of the human time and initiative required to transition away from fossil fuels. High oil prices have to Go Somewhere. Getting those who receive the prices to redeploy them in such a way as to maintain the BAU in the US isn't looking likely, as lending them back has proved.
13 million barrels a day times $70 times 365 would be 330 billion a year toward alternative energy. Putting that amount of money into home grown renewables would give Americans real jobs doing something they could be proud of. High oil prices will either make or break the US. History favors the latter.
First, we have to make good products to last in order to maximize the utility/energy input ratio. There is no option here. Then the labor freed up will have to go to retooling the energy, agriculture, transport and housing sectors - most everything else in other words - to work sustainably. There is no option here either.
It won't happen.
We have had much discussion of late about the role that population plays in driving demand. And, that until "Mother Nature" forces the issue, there will be no real change there.
And, since we do not have the time needed, or the energy capital necessary for that matter, to remedy the disparities present, our situation is pretty grim. All of your ideas: home grown renewables, reto9oling energy, ag., transport and housing. All of them, are great. The problem, IMO, is that they are not possible. As a consequence, we will undoubtedly see the "Long Descent" or the "Long Emergency." The real danger would seem to be that the number of people Ma Nature will decide must "go" may not like the methods used for selection, and use their own blunt weapons, making matters many degrees of magnitude worse.
How we transition can only be by cutting back. Maybe, if you are into such things, you might pray. We will not be into a sustainable situation until population, and hence need for energy, retreats to what the Big Blue Marble can manage. Most likely in the vicinity of 1 Billion, more or less.
My point was that the money involved in the high prices goes somewhere. Maybe to an overpaid worker in the Tar Sands or to the government of Nigeria - wherever. But it isn't gone. Directing that money into renewables - a potentially winning proposition - instead of labor blown on scrabbling for increasing low yielding fossil energy - an inevitable loser - is functionally very doable but politically impossible currently.
Cutting back has nothing to do with current capital but will be the inevitable result of not having deployed it previously in an effective way. Having not done so thirty years ago is why we are facing cutting back today. We blew human initiative and effort on the wrong things. Measuring that in money terms is a distraction from what happened. We're a half century late and six billion people long.
And I would put the sustainable population at about 500 million max. You're such an optimist!
I'm not sure I've ever run across an economic theory that truly says this. What I think the theory really says is that as price goes up, overall potentially available quantity of an item or its substitutes also goes up, other things being equal (i.e. the partial derivative; peak-oil arguments tend to hold that other that are not quite equal need to be taken into account.) The theory also suggests the side-effect that as price goes up, research into substitutes will tend to increase. But my quibble is that none of that means we should necessarily expect the substitutes to bring prices back down, even if the random vagaries of economic cycles sometimes suggest that is happening.
Research might indeed yield substitutes effective enough to "bring the price back down". However, it might not. Either way, economic theory must needs be silent on the point since it can have little to say about how well the research succeeds, a matter that is up to physics, chemistry, and often politics. What remains is that:
...or at least they were poorer substitutes, vide what I said nearby about car pools and buses.
I'll see your comment and raise you one.
The economics I studied said that when there's a change in supply or demand, in the short run prices will change to a new equilibrium. In the long run, if that equilibrium price isn't sustainable, there will be increases in supply, substitution, or reductions in demand to reach a new equilibrium price.
We in the peak oil blogosphere seem to keep forgetting that for economists, demand destruction is a perfectly valid way of dealing with rising prices due to falling supply. Or put another way, I haven't seen many economists that claim that rising prices of oil products due to falling supplies (extraction) of oil can only lead to greater extraction or substitution. They almost always allow for the possibility of demand destruction as well. (Lynch might be an exception to that, though I don't think he has a degree in economics.) We're not really giving economists fair credit when we pretend that they don't see the possibility of people not being able to afford gas.
Economists certainly haven't been coming out and saying that things might get worse and worse, as oil supplies deplete. It seems like all we hear is "when the recession is over" or "when things are back to normal". Demand destruction isn't so great, when it is poor people who were previously on the edge of having adequate food and energy products, and are now being pushed over the edge.
Didn't you get the word that the recession was most likely over last June or so? Don't forget that the term recession is a "significant decline in economic activity lasting more than a few months." We can roll in and out of recession for decades, have in the past, and probably will in the future. Things don't have to generally head up to have periods of recession and growth. And be careful about whether you're noting what economists said, or what the MSM said about the economy.
Calculated Risk just had a post noting that Nova, a frequent poster, had published a book about things completely falling apart, "American Apocalypse". CR's review is here. CR's not really an economist either, but he gets that things could just keep getting worse.
Krugman keeps pointing out how miserable the jobs situation is. James Hamilton is looking into the idea that high oil prices could keep crashing the economy. Really, I think most of them get that things are bad and aren't guaranteed to get much better soon. They may not agree that we're doomed to a new dark age due to peak oil, however. I agree with you (I live in SE Michigan after all) that demand destruction can be devastating, at personal and societal levels, but economics doesn't say the world has to be rosy. Whether demand destruction is nice or not, it's a perfectly valid way, in an economics sense, for things to be dealt with. We'd better get used to it.
The Hotelling model is a normative model of the pricing of a non-renewable resource. The model assumes a "backstop technology," but there is generally no assumption that the price will fall. The backstop technology only becomes viable when the price of the exhaustible resource reaches some threshold (which of course raises the question of whether we have such a technology in the case of fossil fuels). Have a look at the price trajectory in Figure 6 of the following linked article:
http://www.mpch-mainz.mpg.de/~jesnow/MineralEcon/habil/econ/econ.htm
Jeff Rubin is an economist that has been explicitly predicting higher oil prices. Different analysts use different assumptions.
Gail,
In my experience most economists don't really know what they are talking about. They are primarily ideologues and apologists, in the service of an economic system, or socio/economic paradigm that no longer "works properly". I should add that I think this applies to our political institutions as well.
I actually don't think that "ordinary people" are anywhere near as dumb as many people on the Oil Drum seem to think they are. I think the idea that if one tells them the truth, they will reel away in horror, is false, though it may be a comfort to imagine that if only the masses were smarter, and understood more, then change/reform would be easier to accomplish. Wrong. This puts the emphasis on the wrong people who are blocking change. The masses aren't citizens in democracy. They are consumers in marketplace. It's not in their alloted role to take part, and their views are of marginal or temporary importance. Their role is to produce and consume, these days, given the wanton destruction of manufacturing, mostly it's to consume, but unfortnately even that passive role is coming to an end as the debt economy is bust for ever. No the belt that binds them is going to be tightened beyond imagining.
When I travelled around the United States doing research for a novel. I deliberately sought out the poorest people I could possible find everywhere I went. I found them really interesting, full of insights, stories, intelligence; and they were really generous towards me. I thought that despite their poverty and poor educations, they certainly didn't lack intelligence. I thought they saw how society functioned with incredible insight and understanding. When they found out in conversation what I was doing, all they wanted from me was the promise that I'd have the courage to tell the truth about their lives. If any people understand and can take the truth, it's the poor.
I, for one, try to never imply that people are "dumb". Many folks I know that are deniers or totally disagree with my positions are admittedly "smarter" than I. My point is that too many of our population are misled, distracted, or too invested in the current system to admit that the system is severely broken and that BAU won't continue much longer (in fact isn't continuing). Our society also puts great emphasis on wishful/positive thinking, and bad news isn't well received. Those in positions to bring change are usually more concerned with protecting their status quo. This isn't dumb, its human nature. In fact I think that smarter people are much harder to convince (of anything) because they think that they have a good handle on things.
Thanks for that Writerman
it is rare to acknowledge the other 80+% of the population yet at some point I have to believe that they will be relevant...and not necessarly in a good way.
By the way we all are alot closer to becoming part of the 80% than we are to being part of the top5%
"We in the peak oil blogosphere seem to keep forgetting that for economists, demand destruction is a perfectly valid way of dealing with rising prices due to falling supply."
And since "demand", in the customary colloquial meaning of "the aggregate of all that everyone feels entitled to" is essentially infinite, it couldn't possibly be otherwise.
But it's even more complicated than that. After all we do get into strange comments such as (from up above)
Now that's demand destruction on the grandest scale - and presumably a widely fatal scale when you consider that even in Zimbabwe, which is so far gone that considerable numbers seem to have left in order to survive, substantial numbers still commute to jobs. (Apparently, for example, they still have hospitals and schools of a sort, to some limited extent; I suppose there remains work to be done that a person can't practicably do off their front porch.)
Where in anything that I have stated did you read that *NO ONE* needs to commute *ANY WHERE*?
What I said was that the need for the mass commute might be greatly diminished under a different paradigm. Not quite the same is it?
"the whole concept of time spent on commuting ceases to make sense" seems more than close enough to make it a distinction without a difference. If the need to commute is diminished but substantial numbers are still commuting, then clearly the whole concept doesn't "cease to make sense."
And that does make sense?
How do you figure substantial numbers still commuting if as you say they no longer have a need to do so?
Perhaps I am missing something.
Supply demand curves with discussion of elasticity. Obviously substitution can affect demand. Although individuals such as John McCarthy and the late Julian Simon may believe in unlimited substitution, I remain skeptical. A possible Campfire subject. "In an inelastic world will dieoff be the ultimate free market mechanism?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand#Elasticity
Good grief, Gail, we're in the middle of the Copenhagen conference on climate change and you've completely forgotten to show us the key slide....
AND THE WORST THING WE COULD POSSIBLY DO IS BURN THOSE FOSSIL FUEL RESOURCES
Apologies for shouting.
Phil
Nice chart, but you forgot the arrow that describes declining energy return.
There is a limit as to how much you can cover in a short talk. Maybe in the questions.
Do remember that Plant oils and Animal Fat are also "oils" - so you have another part of the pyramid to consider adding.
And with a buttered+sour cream baked potato having more energy by weight than shale oil rock - at a certain point the conversion of photons to oils via plants may be a good idea.
Gail, this may seem nit-picky, since I'm in agreement with the piece, and it's well done--
But "available" seems to be the wrong WORD. The availability of all that "oil" is the very issue.
"A huge amount of oil is PRESENT" in the Earth's crust,
but MOST of it is probably very, very UN-available. the bottom third of that pyramid will most likely remain (safely) in the ground.
Cost kills.
Hi Gail ... I agree we are at Peak Oil but disagree w. your economic conclusions & projections, specifically:
1. Oil is used our transportation fuel, so while it is important, it is not the whole economy; indeed the US. has been on a very well defined path where less and less oil is used per $GDP ... it is important to keep some perspective: oil will continue to be important, just less & less so as time goes on
2. Pre-recession, the US. was using approx. 20 million boe/d, and for simplicity, let’s assume that all of it was used for transportation fuel (it’s actually 90%, but we’ll ignore that for now) ... it is my understanding that you get approx. 1 b gas/diesel for every 2 b of oil, so the US. was consuming around 10 million b/d gas/diesel ... CAFE is currently around mid-20’s, so go trade your car in on one that gets 40-50 mpg ... presto, problem solved ... new car, chrome, power windows, air, shiny, and you drive the same amount consuming half the fuel ... you doubt me? ... check out Audi, BMW, Mercedes, VW, Honda, Toyota, and even Ford
3. Please also note that the single largest user of fuel in the US. are the Class 8 trucks known as 18 wheelers ... I believe that legislation is making its’ way through your Congress to stimulate conversion of your fleet to natural gas fuel ... North American shale gas reserves are huge, and switching the big trucks over to natty (over a 7 year period) would save (if my numbers are correct) in excess of 10 boe/d ... ie: if the bigs go to natty, then US. retail fuel demand drops over 50%
4. It is really, really important for us folks in the high consumption part of the global neighbourhood to cut back on our consumption (notice I did not say cut back on our lifestyle) ... if you want a truly bad day, try an oil war against nations that feel angry, aggrieved and desperate ... nobody wins ... if we adjust to Peak Oil intelligently, then we leave room for Chindia, and all the rest of the developing world to move towards our standard of living ... it does nobody any good on any level to have billions of people living in poverty; it will enrich the global economy (and our own pocketbooks) immensely to have those people move towards the middle class
5. Kindly also note that this sort of conservation is quite powerful and has a real economic sweet-spot through an Asymmetric Principle (cf: Peter Tertzakian: The End Of Energy Obesity) ... for every 100 barrels of crude extracted, only 17 b. are actually used in movement; the rest goes in inefficiency & heat loss ... now the thing to note here is the 5x leverage ... for every b. of fuel not used, there is the need for 5 b. less of oil to be extracted, or to be extracted by someone else & used for their growth ... that is a fairly powerful lever
6. The Oil Drum has been key in getting the Peak Oil story out there, now you must take the next step; $150/boe is not the problem, it is the solution ... the economy will not crater as long as the delta is measured: take the price up too quickly & we crash, otherwise we adjust ... oil is the price umbrella that our high standard of living operates under ... high oil stimulates production, encourages conservation, stimulates alternative energy production & research, rewards changed behaviour (ie: your new 50 mpg Mercedes), and reduces demand ... Gail, I hope you are cheering wildly, we need to get to $150 oil in a smooth and careful and reasonable fashion, and we need to demonstrate how this is in everybody’s best interest
Keeping things in perspective, JMc:
Converting the entire fleet, especially in the timeframe you suggest is, IMO, unrealistic. Considering that millions of diesel engines would have to be replaced, huge fuel tanks retrofitted for CNG (the tanks would need to be about the size of the current sleepers to provide about 1/2 the range of current diesels), a nationwide infrastructure for the delivery of fuel, manufacturing ramp-up, technicians trained, and changing a well-entrenched diesel-stinking, gear-ginding teamster culture will be nigh impossible in the short term. Plus, finding hundreds of billions of dollars (trillion plus?) to do this will be tough considering the nation is effectivly broke and trucking companies are not known for large profit margins as of late. Gas turbine/electric drive trains may be more efficient, but we still have to consider the enormous cost in (fiat) money and resources. This is the reality of things when we have become almost totaly reliant on one system.
A major propane delivery company in our area bought a new fleet of propane powered delivery trucks. They got rid of the entire group of trucks after 2 years citing reliability and cost issues. They couldn't afford the transition. Plus, their drivers were fighting over their remaining diesels.
Actually, Ghung, converting the fleet to NG in that timetable IS possible, if the industry, and government, are suitably motivated. An example of "suitably motivated" would be a (real) war, where supplies of imported oil from outside North America are not available (like an oil embargo), and/or needed for the military. This is just what happened in Europe in WW2, when over a million private vehicles, trucks and farm tractors were retrofitted to run on wood, charcoal, and coal gasifiers, in less than two years. It is a very interesting example of a large scale rollout of an alternative transportation fuel (a biofuel, at that), driven by necessity. It did not even need a government mandate, the restricted availability of conventional fuel forced both a reduction in private vehicle use by rationing and the use of alternatives. In Australia, the car companies (Ford and GM) published specifications for gasifiers to suit their vehicles and assisted with conversions (gave the dealers something to do 'cos they weren't allowed to sell cars!). Of course, it was much less convenient to run on wood than petrol, but if that's what people had to do to keep driving their vehicles, that's what they did -desperate needs call for desperate deeds holds even .
This is a rather long winded way of saying that if we really had to, we could make big changes in a small time. Problem is, of course, that presently we don't have to - though I think it is very economically advantageous to do so.
Large scale adoption of Natural Gas could happen fairly quickly. One of the great things about running with NG (or propane) is that you can modify an existing engine , petrol or diesel, to use NG, in addition to the liquid fuel, in almost any ratio. For diesels, you can add a "gas carburettor" that feeds NG into the air intake, and it is then ignited by a small(er) amount of injected diesel - many engines running on biogas do this. When set up properly, the diesel throttle does not "see" as much demand for diesel fuel - you can run at full power while using 10% of the normal volume of diesel. You can, of course, make the engine dedicated, and almost all industrial NG engines are diesel blocks with injectors replaced by spark plugs. But for trucks, you stay with the dual fuel configuration, so you can add as much NG storage as is convenient/practical, and when you run out, you just use more diesel. One expert in NG engine is quoted as saying the best spark plug for an NG engine is a diesel injector.
Trucks running around the cities (delivery trucks, garbage, buses etc) would probably average 80% diesel replacement. On the highway, you fill up both, and drive for as long as you normally would, probably getting 30-50% substitution. Of course, for trucks, or any business that depends on vehicles, they will quickly appreciate that NG is about 2/3 the cost of diesel, so a long haul trucker can quickly work out, from their hourly time cost, when they should stop to fill up on the cheaper fuel. It's a fuel version of Snell's law of refraction (I think the economist's would call it yield management, or something like that) . CNG, by volume, has only 25% of the energy of diesel, so yes, to replace it entirely would be a large tank. LNG has 60 % of the energy per gallon, and has the added benefit of cooling the intake air as it vaporises, so it's a much better way to go. More expensive, of course, but for a truck that drives every day, it would be worth it. One of the benefits of the hydrogen fuel cell research, has been the development of more efficient storage of cryoliquids, so LNG tanks are much better than they used to be. There is still a space issue, but that there is an "outside the truck" solution to that too - there is usually lots of space under the trailer, that is where refrigerated trailers keep the tanks for their diesel engines. There would be some issues because the trailer doesn't always stay with the truck, but that could be worked out, and doesn't precludes storage on the tractor unit, but it would give it the range needed to go on NG the whole way.
If the industry really got behind it, they could make add on LNG kits in large volume, and the add on would only take a few days per vehicle. Refrigerated transport is a prime candidate for LNG as their is lots of space under the trailer for LNG tanks. And major trucking and cold storage companies could set up LNG systems at their major depots using mainline gas. So a 50% decrease in truck diesel use could be achieved in an expedient manner, given the motivation.
Additionally, diesels running with 90% NG also meet the emissions standards that straight diesels don't - this is one of the reasons why city buses are converting to NG. And, some trucking companies are starting to follow.
BUT, for all this talk of trucks, we have missed the lowest hanging diesel fruit of all, the trains. This is where space it not such an issue, as you could add an LNG tender behind the locomotives, and one tender could fuel the multiple units that haul the trains. Since they retain their diesel only autonomy, switching operations are not affected. One railroad in Australia is seriously looking at this option. You could easily get 80% fuel substitution here.
And, of course, you could also do it down on the farm. You would have to bring the fuel to the farm, of course, but that is what happens already. You can have a small auxiliary tank mounted on the tractor itself, usually at the front where the counterweights are, and for broad acre operation, you have a towable tank, that connects in between, or behind the tractor and the implement. Farmers that fertilise with anhydrous ammonia (my brother in Australia is one of them) are well used to towing a pressure tank around behind the plough, and it's no big deal.
In all of these industries, they would realise significant operating cost savings, and the conversion cost would be paid back in less than a year.
Finally, an equally concerted effort can, and should, be made to end the use of heating oil. To use a valuable, scarce, and imported transport fuel for space heating is simply absurd. These can be replaced by anything from propane to LNG to wood pellets, or even electricity (heat pumps). Once again, if we were in a war situation, this would be the first thing to be rationed.
If this was done, it would also accelerate the conversion of cars to NG (be it CNG or LNG), Again, existing cars can be retrofitted to be dual fuel, just as they are with propane. I drove two different dual fueled propane vehicles in Australia for years and had no problems. Running on NG removes the underground parkade issue that dogs propane vehicles.
So consider this; a large up front cost (= investment in clean tech), that reduces operating costs for industry, and the economy generally, and would make a permanent 20% hole in offshore oil imports, uses the one fuel where domestic reserves are increasing rapidly, AND, for those who consider such things important, actually reduces CO2 emissions - sounds like an ideal candidate for a "stimulus" project to me.
And compared to this, investments in solar panels, which largely displace natural gas (at least in the West) achieve much less CO2 savings for their dollar, and do ZERO to reduce our dependence on imported oil. While we can debate about the EROI on biofuels, they do at least displace some imported oil. It is a less efficient way than simply NG conversions, but it does do something.
While solar and wind and renewable electricity are clean (and I have built micro hydro systems) they miss the real target, which is imported oil. If we focussed on displacing (imported) oil rather than coal fired electricity, the atmosphere would be equally well off, the economy would be much better off and national security would be infinitely better off.
To see evidence of this in action, you only need to dig a little to see what is happening in China. They are running lots of NG vehicles, making large efforts on biofuels, building coal to liquids (methanol) plants. In short, they are quietly, but forcefully doing whatever they can to reduce their dependence on imported oil.
To see all these tax credits going to solar PV's is simply wasteful of increasingly hard to come by tax dollars. To return to my opening comparison, if we were in a real war, you would see a rapid, if not instant, re-allocation of those resources to oil reduction strategies. And we would all accept the (mild) inconvenience of these measures because they are truly in the national interest.
I don't think we will see such a war, indeed the US government is (rightly) all about preventing such. But a war-worthy concerted effort to make permanent reduction in oil imports would be major step forward, regardless of when peak oil occurs. And we have the tools, and the fuels, available here and now, to this and slow down the $1billion/day drain on the economy.
what is the benifit of cooling the intake in a diesel engine ? at least i think you were talking about a diesel design engine, couldn't totally follow your meandering discussion.
and one other obstacle: the supply of ng.
Yes, it was a bit meandering - .
While I was talking about diesels, cooling the intake air, on any internal combustion engine (incl gas turbines), has two benefits. Firstly, cooler air takes less energy to compress, so the engine is doing less work on the intake stroke, which leaves more of available as output power, so you get more work for the same fuel. Secondly, with cooler air you can fit more in the same space, increasing the power output, so you get more power from the same engine. Drag racers know this well and often run their intake air through an ice box, or even a dry ice box. Some industrial gas turbines are set up to mist and humidify the intake air, which achieves the same result. This alone can increase power by 15% Combine the two (turbo charging and intercooling) and you get more power, more efficiently. This is why almost all heavy duty diesels are turbocharged and intercooled, and can get 40% thermal efficiency. Large marine diesels can get up to 50%.
The evidence of both these effects can easily be seen as manufacturers de-rate the output of their engines for altitude (less dense air) and for operation in higher temperatures.
As for supply of NG, it, like coal, is one thing this continent has lots of, that can be extracted. The extraction technology of NG has improved dramatically in recent years, this is why we are hearing about the Marcellus shale and the like, huge volumes of gas in "tight" formations, previously considered unrecoverable. Not mention large amounts of coal bed methane (and US and Canada has lots of coal). There is a well proven large NG field in northern Alaska/Yukon/Northwest Territories, just no one has built a pipeline for it, yet. The so the reserves of this are increasing, hence the decline in prices lately.
One other little discussed fact about NG is that it is also has great potential, and is in production today as a biofuel. It can be captured from landfills and anaerobic digestion of sewage sludges, animal manure, municipal wastes food and crop wastes and so on. Unlike yeast, it can be produced from cellulose (though not lignin). It needs some processing to upgrade biogas to pipeline quality, but it can, and is being done, even on small scales. There is a dairy farm near Bakersfield CA is doing just that with it's manure, upgrading to pipeline quality and selling back to the gas grid. Some landfills and sewage treatment plants do this, but there is potential for lots more. Theoretically, a corn grower could digest their stover to saleable NG, and still burn the residual material to power their ethanol process, though an EROEI would show they are probably better off digesting the whole crop. They reason they don't is because there is more money (though less net energy) in ethanol.
Of all the available alternatives to oil, NG is the one that is (domestically) available in the largest volume, can be supplemented easily with biofuel, and can be implemented relatively easily. Doesn't mean we ignore other biofuels, of course, but NG is the one that can take the biggest bight out of oil.
Pre-recession, the US. was using approx. 20 million boe/d, and for simplicity, let’s assume that all of it was used for transportation fuel (it’s actually 90%, but we’ll ignore that for now) ... it is my understanding that you get approx. 1 b gas/diesel for every 2 b of oil, so the US. was consuming around 10 million b/d gas/diesel ...
Wrong.
CAFE is currently around mid-20’s, so go trade your car in on one that gets 40-50 mpg ... presto, problem solved ... new car, chrome, power windows, air, shiny, and you drive the same amount consuming half the fuel ... you doubt me? ... check out Audi, BMW, Mercedes, VW, Honda, Toyota, and even Ford
According to http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/advancedSearch.htm, taking 40mpg HIGHWAY as the ONLY filter, 2010 models at or above this figure are:
2010 Toyota Prius 4 cyl, 1.8 L
2010 Honda Civic Hybrid 4 cyl, 1.3 L
2010 Honda Insight 4 cyl, 1.3 L
2010 smart fortwo convertible 3 cyl, 1 L
2010 smart fortwo coupe 3 cyl, 1 L
2010 Audi A3 4 cyl, 2 L
2010 Volkswagen Golf 4 cyl, 2 L
2010 Volkswagen Jetta 4 cyl, 2 L
2010 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen 4 cyl, 2 L
Note: NOT A SINGLE BMW, Ford, or Mercedes (unless you include the Smart...), and definitely NOT a Merc capable of 50+mpg. And these are HIGHWAY miles, not urban...
Hmm... that may be the case in the USA but not elsewhere.
Searching Australia's equivalent site http://www.greenvehicleguide.gov.au/ reveals a lot of options.
Don't get me wrong, I think peak oil is going to seriously hurt us and change industrial civilisation as we have known it, but some countries will be hit harder than others.
All of the cars below are listed with a combined fuel use of 5.8l/100km or less which is equivalent to 40mpg (sourced from here http://www.tdiclub.com/misc/conversions.html ). Some are cheap (Suzuki Alto), but most are not.
Note I have tried not to include multiple model variants, otherwise the list would be about twice as long.
Ford Fiesta Econetic
Toyota Prius
Mini Cooper D
Volvo C30 DRIVe
Fiat 500
Smart fortwo
Fiat Punto
Citroen C3
BMW E87/E88/E82..
Audi A3
Citroen C4
Honda Civic Hybrid
Fiat Ritmo
Hyundai i30
Peugeot 308
Suzuki Alto GL
Peugeot 207
Volkswagen Golf
Volksvagen Polo
Kia Soul
Mercedes-Benz A class
Mercedes-Benz B class
Audi TT Coupe
Renault X76 Kangoo
Skoda Octavia
Citroen II Berlingo
Skoda Roomster
Mitsubishi Colt
Ford Focus
Volkswagen New Beetle
Proton Savvy
Peugeot 407
Holden (GM) Cruze
Holden (GM) Astra
Saab 9-3
Volkswagen EOS
Audi A6
Audi A4
Renault X84 Megane II
Alfa Romeo 147
Volkswagen Jetta
Peugeot Partner
Even restricting to 50mpg (4.7 l/100km) gives this list.
Ford Fiesta Econetic
Toyota Prius
Mini Cooper D
Volvo C30 DRIVe
Fiat 500
Smart fortwo
Fiat Punto
Citroen C3
BMW E87/E88/E82..
Audi A3
Citroen C4
Honda Civic Hybrid
Fiat Ritmo
Hyundai i30
Peugeot 308
I think the triangle is meant to represent increasing size of the resource base, but that is not necessarily true. The chart also lacks a direct reference to net energy. It is there of course via the proxy of expense and harder to get, but people will not immediately jump to that conclusion if ever. You could turn the triangle over to represent deceasing net energy. In addition you could add Euan Mearns net energy cliff slide later in the presentation to explain the concept.
Actually the triangle is very much in keeping with the so-called "resource pyramid" used by cornucopians to justify continued abundance of resources. The claim being that technology and price signals will make more of the pyramid available over time thus obviating any near term geophysical limits.
The arrows on either side of the triangle are the obvious counter-argument to cornucopians, namely "at what cost (in terms of economy, energy, and environment)?" and "at what rate?".
In five years of reading both sides of the peak-oil/limits-to-growth debate I have found those two perspectives really sum up the entire argument in a nutshell.
The ecologically minded folks scream:
To which the cornucopian minded folks scream back:
And 'round and 'round we go.
Of course, there is a wide range between those two extremes. As Gail points out, there are some economists who increasingly recognize the ecological constraints on continued growth. And, as well, there are many peak-oil and renewable energy folks who are pathologically fixated on technology.
Given the decades (if not centuries) of damage already done to the Earth's biosphere by our continued ecological overshoot, and given the fact that the lag time involved in the Earth's feedback mechanisms is also measured in decades (if not centuries), then my own opinion is best summed up by this quote: (which I once suggested for the quote box up in the corner, but alas to no avail)
Cheers,
Jerry
Gail, good presentation.
I know you are looking at the financial impacts, but on that end I think the US housing market and the businesses and infrastructure that serve it are still the biggest issue.
This whole complex, the "non-negotiable" American way of life, which is more or less the model for the way of life of the middle class the world over, has been and will be increasingly devalued by increases in the price of oil. This is the collateral backing the major part of the world's outstanding debt. How can this not be catastrophic in one way or another?
Commercial real estate looks like it is going the way of residential real estate. All of this is going to continue to wear away at the balance sheets of banks and other financial institutions. We are likely to have more and more bankruptcies, and yes, this will be catastrophic.
As catastrophic as all of the bankruptcies in this country will be, I am more concerned that all of this will act to cut back international trade (perhaps because sellers are not convinced they will really be paid for the goods they sell.) I can imagine international trade descending to something closer to barter, with much less trading done. This would be a real problem, because we depend so heavily on international trade, especially for manufacturing things. How would a computer, or a car, be made without international trade? How would we get replacement parts for the vehicles and other things we have?
You won't for a lot of things. Better learn to keep things simple. I try to keep spares/alternatives for important stuff. With transport costs sure to rise and unknowns like piracy and counterfitting, it'll be a brave new world.
There will have to be some sort of means of exchange, maybe some electronics based non-fiat currency backed by gold or carbon credits.
Without oil backed currencies global trade will be slow, limited, and expensive.
Well, true enough, international trade coming unstiched will certainly be a big step in the unwinding of parts of the global economy. To some extent this is already happening, especially but not only in Latin America. But this is not so much a blow against the global economy as it is against US (and Western) domination of that economy. Barter is a sensible alternative to dollar denominated transactions in many instances. The US doesn't like it because it weakens the hegemony of the dollar (and the restricts its free printability). The biggest problem from the US and western point of view is capital flows, the free flow of dollar investments. The spread of barter undermines that whole regime.
You are also right that barter does solve the problem of trade between insolvent partners: a continuous reciprocal interchange of goods of agreed on quality and quantity can be conducted. The US again seems to be pushing nations in this direction by imposing sanctions on this or that "rogue" nation. We'll end up with a "rogue" international trade regime, with the US trading in dollars with, well, I dunno.
Anyway, the whole thing is of a piece, and it is going to be far too interesting seeing how the whole thing plays out -- that's the one certainty.
If one chooses the right units, a graph of world energy use produces a line almost congruent with the population graph in this post. That's about all the information one needs to understand what a hellish several decades will ensue when the 85+% of energy provided by fossil fuels begins the steep decline toward levels last seen in the 19th century.
Oil Drum posts (sometimes) and comments (often) suggest that our leaders just don't get it. But the existence of sites like The Oil Drum is evidence that many of us do to some extent understand the situation and I see no reason to think that elected officials aren't at least as capable of interpreting the data (excluding those whose thinking is restricted by religious views). I can see why they aren't saying much about it - public acknowledgement of impending doom without any useful program to do anything about it is not the path to re-election.
David Bacon
Aspen, CO
I expect that quite a few "get it", but are hiding the situation. How many elected officials could expect to have their posts, if they pointed out our predicament, and lack of a good solution?
If one chooses the right units, a graph of world energy use produces a line almost congruent with the population graph in this post. That's about all the information one needs to understand what a hellish several decades will ensue when the 85+% of energy provided by fossil fuels begins the steep decline toward levels last seen in the 19th century.
Oil Drum posts (sometimes) and comments (often) suggest that our leaders just don't get it. But the existence of sites like The Oil Drum is evidence that many of us do to some extent understand the situation and I see no reason to think that elected officials aren't at least as capable of interpreting the data (excluding those whose thinking is restricted by religious views). I can see why they aren't saying much about it - public acknowledgement of impending doom without any useful program to do anything about it is not the path to re-election.
David Bacon
Aspen, CO
Not in America. I cycle past lots of big 4WD's on the way to the railway station, I found it was quicker than driving to the station due to a traffic jam in between. One statistic I found odd was that over 30% of crush hour traffic was education related.
Gail your GDP and global oil demand has got me thinking...
Have you had a look at indigenous energy production and trade balance figures take a look at figure 7 in Paul Mobbs recent submission to the UK Parliament, Peak Oil Committee.
Perhaps the inertia for a collapse might come from a combination of world GDP decline with one of the former oil exporting countries like the UK with a 7% decline rate in oil and gas production, which currently accounts for 30% of government income.
Financial services is another major taxation income source for the government, that is unlikely to recover while world GDP is depressed.
That is a double whammy creating the decline rate for a collapse i.e. double digit decline.
http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/articles.shtml#appgopo
Nice article.
I gave a Peak Oil talk to my second local council audience last week and got active participation this time.
They actually asked me what they could do to provide enough energy for the area.
I know Euan Mearns has drawn very similar graphs and talked about UK's impending problems, as oil exports become imports and the balance of trade worsens. Britain is viewed as a better credit risk than Greece, but I don't know how long that will last.
Slightly
Thanks for link to Paul Mobbs recent submission.
Assume you are UK.
Like the idea of your talks to local councils.
Would value contact if you can get in touch via my spam protected email at my ToD bio?
Phil
Every once and a while, someone needs to repeat Wizzard's First and Ninth Rules.
Wizzard's First Rule:
Wizzard's Ninth Rule:
Terry Goodkind was on to something... the deniers of AGW and PO would seem to fall into this trap.
Based on the few times I was foolish enough to try to explain the oil situation to someone who is preprogrammed not to believe there is a problem, the argument that 'there is lot of oil down there but that it will be expensive and slow to pump' tends to be almost totally unpersuasive.
The predictable response goes something like this: 'Well, if there is so much oil down there, why can't you engineers get off your arses and figure out a way to get it out faster? Why don't you just drill some more holes, for Chrissake!' Then if you start trying to explain some basic geology, their eyes glaze over and you've lost them.
That is why I agree with a previous poster that saying 'a lot of oil available' is using incorrect and highly misleading terminology. The oil may 'exist'; or to use geo-speak, 'oil may occur in many formations'; but to say that it is 'available' gives the impression that it is all there for the taking if you just only figure out how.
No matter how you slice it, it is really a tough sell. Logical, well thought-out scientific arguments tend to be largely ineffective for a large fraction of even well-educated people. Perhaps the peak oil community needs the likes of a Josef Goebbels to be its Minister of Propaganda.
Joule: Our comments should be juxtaposed!
I've had pretty good responses from Jay Hanson's funny little cartoons ( http://www.dieoff.org/ ) Maybe we need some updated versions of that sort of thing. As old as they are, I've still seen them convince people to rethink things.
Maybe TOD could recruit someone in MSM marketing, put some of this into 30 sec soundbites. It's tough when the BAU crowd has infinitly more financial resources.
Or we could do whatever Slightly said below....
Joule:
Keeping it simple only using one equation 70 / interest rate and one graph before a series of couplets that most referred back to either.
Like a lesson plan, no mention of geology only the direct link between trade balance and indigenous energy production.
Simultaneously building up knowledge of the doubling rule with its effects on the UK.
Propaganda for sure, they can see the virtue of the rule so repetition on the various themes around energy supply creates synergy in their minds.
Well perhaps at least one or two people seemed to get the picture.
Gail,
Excellent talk. Only somewhat off topic, since you did such a nice job of showing how expensive energy and economic reorganization are connected, is the question of what a sustainable business model looks like.
I heard a talk a few months ago by guy who designed and built a green development in London. It was great for lowering carbon footprint until the residents went to work. Getting to work, via carpool, bus or bike is great, but what do we do when we get there?
I am afraid I have a hard time seeing big cities being sustainable for very long, however their buildings are built. If not enough food is produced, it will stay close to where it is produced. Also, as Jason Bradford has pointed out, to keep fertile soil, one needs to recycle nutrients back into the soil. Shipping the food (and the nutrients) off to the city doesn't work.
The grass is always greener over the septic tank!
Are you talking about the Beddington zero energy project? I worked on that as a bricky.
The slide should read "A 'huge' amount of oil is available"
There is not a huge amount of oil because the amount of recoverable unconventional oil is only about 10% of the resource.
The USGS 2003 gives the recoverable resouce as 430 Gb of heavy oil,650 Gb of bitumen and 1000 Gb of conventional oil.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs070-03/fs070-03.html
One can always hope for technology improvements to get out the rest. And of course, if we could use 10 units of energy to extract one unit of energy, we would be able to extract a lot. But where would the 10 units come from?
Aw..things aren't that bad.
Tar sands/bitumen has an EROI of at least 1.5(net energy positive) probably 3. Oil shale(which is not included in my image) by Shell's method is 3.6:1 electricity of with coal fired electricity 1.2:1.
This EROI approach is way too theoretical.
We need energy for our cars.
Unfortunately we need a lot of it.
Consider GTL--it is net energy negative, however an alleged bounty in stranded gas makes us consider it. Super heavy oil and bitumen of which we have a good deal are net energy positive.
We can get energy from ethanol.
In the US we have plenty of coal but electricity doesn't help our cars.
Grid electricity is extremely net energy negative on a BTU basis EROI=.33.
We CANNOT get off oil cold turkey because our civilization is oil based and beyond that fossil fuel based(85% of energy).
Try getting off water or getting of air.
We need time to put substitutes in place.
Gail, Great job, but I have one small suggestion...
I'm concerned about title of the first slide: A huge amount of oil is available. I'm worried that when that slide goes up, that's the final message that would be nailed into the audience's head. When asked what they heard later they will say something about huge amounts of it still available. You can almost bet that it'd be the pull quote, or even the headline for a write up in a local paper of the presentation.
I'd suggest Where is the oil? as the title, making it instead a question to be answered in the underlying notes. I think your notes are superb but hearing the paragraph starting "There is a huge amount of oil which theoretically can be extracted..." while reading in big letters "Where is the oil?" will draw the listener in.
You've planted the question, they'll listen for the answer.
It's otherwise a superb presentation. Good job!
You know, I'm really getting tired of the repeated implications that "peak oil caused the credit crisis" that graces an otherwise excellent site like this. Enough already!!!
Mortgage defaults rose because ARMs RESET!!!!
Certainly higher oil prices hurt, but those people who bought those houses were gonna default no matter what. It was a bubble, people. Bubbles don't go on forever, regardless of the underlying energy costs. The ARM reset chart indicates the timing of the housing implosion. It actually started blowing up about a year before oil spiked at $147/bbl, but it took a while for the shockwaves to cascade through the entire global financial system. So let's get off on this revisionist history of attempting to give a trophy to "peak oil" for causing the housing crunch. It doesn't deserve it and peak oil awareness is not served by it.
It's been a year already. Let's move on.
There can be multiple causes. ARM RESETS don't explain why the downturn started in Japan, and a lot of other things. See for example what Jeff Rubin has to say on the subject.
You will never convince mos on this one. A great guy otherwise, but this seems to be his hobby horse. He is sure that his correlation--between ARM resets and the recession--explains everything, and that every other correlation explains nothing.
That oil hit the equivalent of $80/barrel shortly before nearly every recession in recent history doesn't seem to impress him, nor the fact that the recession was (famously) global and the resets were American.
Your excellent point about the possibility of a plurality of causes will doubtless be lost on him.
Oil only hit a real price of $80/bbl before two (three if you drop that to $70/bbl) out of the last seven recessions. That's a very unique version of 'nearly every recession' IMO. ;)
This gives a great overview of the credit/asset bubble behind this last recession. W/ more credit available in general, that changes the income elasticity of demand for all sorts of things, including oil. Now, I wouldn't go so far as to say that there would have been no increase in oil prices w/o the credit bubble, but given the choice between a credit/asset bubble in the tens of trillions being the primary driver behind the current recession, and an increase in oil prices in the hundreds of billions, maybe 1+ trillion at most, causing it, my bet's on the credit/asset bubble.
Copenhagen, 37% of people commute by bicycle, and the world does not come to an end.
http://blog.greens.org.nz/index.php?p=8567
Biggest problem I had cycling in blizzards in London was getting snow in my mouth. I would turn up to work, rather warm and steamy and be about the only one there. I suppose some people would consider it doomsday - the day they are stuck waiting 12 minutes at a bus stop on a cold day.
Caldwell, are you saying Gail's analysis doesn't hold water because some people worldwide get to work via bicycles, and if things get real bad more people can bicycle to solve the energy crisis?
Please, you're kidding, right? Will bushels of wheat be transported in bicycle baskets? Will boxes be transported by way of Fedexcycle?
Perk Earl, most people get to work transporting (almost) nothing. With writing this I'm not suggesting that much more (electric) bicycling will solve an economic crisis.
Yes they will. BTW I grew up in Sao Paulo Brazil and a lots of stuff got delivered by couriers on tricycles.
What? You not able to tow your own sailboat, psst, gear ratios...
Nice picture, mag. I've thought of doing something like this for my canoe.
One of our local coffee distributors does much of its delivery by bicycle:
http://www.peacecoffee.com/pedaling.htm
Perk Earl--nice handle, especially with a British accent.
Great presentation Gail. To the point, and convincing. I've seen an evolution taking place here at TOD, from expose's about seperate aspects relating to peak oil in the early days, to greater understanding of the economic ramifications influenced by oil supply and demand. I don't know if anyone else has noticed this ongoing transition, but the results are in part simplified presentations like yours that have clarity, which should help convince people, willing to listen, of this dire situation.
I thought about oil today as I drove some of my custom wares to a client in the mountains. I had 2700 pounds of extra weight added to my truck, including a trailer. As I drove up steep grades to 7,000 feet with the 4.0 engine gurgling, I thought, 'How the heck could I ever do this with an electric truck?' Just wouldn't work in a practical sense. I guess that's why its predicted that goods will become more localized.
Glad you liked the presentation and the understanding of the economic ramifications. We end up talking about quite a range of things. The staff members learn from each other, and each has something to offer.
While overview posts are nice, especially for the newcomer, we need other posts as well. And quite a few people are unwilling to believe that there could be any economic implications of peak oil, so we need to talk about oil production amounts, and other issues that we need to understand, to bring everything together.
With the issues we have on the shortage of minerals, I find it hard to believe electric vehicles of any kind will scale up. I am afraid electric trucks (if there are any) will be akin to golf carts.
Again, electric cars do not need to use lithium. Lead acid batteries are tried and true--they just don't charge up as fast or take you as far or as fast between charges. But most urban trips are under 40 miles on residential roads, well within the range of EV's now on the market.
Large trucks probably won't be electrified, but as was noted above, there are plans to converting the fleet of commercial long distance trucks, the ones that use the lions portion of our transport fuel, to natural gas.
Is there a lead post planned on this development? This seems to be something that could play a major role in how things play out on the demand side in the US.
Moving long-haul to electric rail makes a lot of sense. Moving to CNG trucks perpetuates the same BAU on a new fuel -- this only makes sense to road-maintenance personnel, associated bureaucrates, and of course truckers. And Fed-Ex and such who charge a major premium for expedited delivery.
CNG for local vehicles makes a lot more sense, as a transition energy to EVs or hydrogen or whatever storage technology (if any) wins out.
Other than speed of delivery, is there any real advantage to over-the-road long-haul trucking?
Electrifying railroads is very expensive, in the order of $10m per mile, plus the replacement of the locomotives. And unless you electrify al the line, you will create switching problems where the electrified lines ends (though his is manageable, it's just more cost and time) I have always thought that if you couple railroad electrification with new high voltage DC transmission lines, then you would have a winner - until the first derailment takes them both out. I think we'll see the railroads go the other way and start using natural gas, or even coal, for their locomotives
The real advantage with trucking is the autonomy, for the one truck go point to point. Moving containers from truck to train to truck adds time, but more importantly it adds cost. It's not a big deal sending something from coast to coast, but for intra-state, or in town shipping, trucks have a huge advantage. Paradoxically, in a future, more localised economy, we could actually see an increase in local trucking compared to railroad, rather than a decrease. After all, it was railroads that first expanded the localised economies, not cars or trucks.
And as for lead-acid electric cars, been there and done that, in the 1890's. The batteries have improved a bit since then, but not that much, and we would have to live with golfcart like performance. Oddly enough, they ARE good enough for use in "mild hybrid" vehicles, for regenerative braking and acceleration assist, which can give meaningful city driving fuel savings. Lead acid electrics are finding their way into specialist uses (forklifts, airport tarmac vehicles, landscaping, mines, factories, container ports, resorts, university campuses etc), but these are all cases that do not need high speed, and are intermittent use. All the technology for lead acid battery cars is here now, and has been for over a century. As long as you are prepare to accept a 50 mile maximum, you can make (and buy) such a car today. But if you run out of "fuel" then you are stuck or calling for a tow, not a prospect anyone welcomes.
The search for the better storage medium will continue, and will probably, eventually, come up with a workable system. Until then, I think NG is the best (though not only) alternative to oil.
Yes, but it's a tradeoff between capital costs and operating costs. North America has historically had very low diesel fuel costs, so the balance has tipped in favor of diesel locomotives, but in much of the world the higher operating costs of using diesel fuel outweighs the costs of stringing the overhead wires. Electric locomotives also have the advantage that they can be much more powerful, faster, last longer, and require less maintenance than diesel ones. However, American railroads have always preferred short term profits to long term investments.
The US may be at the point where the high cost of diesel may make the electric alternative cost-effective. It's unrealistic to assume that the current prices for diesel will continue to be as low as they are. Most major countries have assumed that diesel fuel will be increasingly expensive and are electrifying their main lines to avoid the projected higher operating costs. (For branch lines with low traffic it's generally cheaper to continue to use diesel.)
A diesel-electric locomotive is really just an electric locomotive carrying its own portable diesel generator, so it's not really a big transition to electric. You're really just removing the expensive diesel engine and generator and taking the power off an overhead wire instead. If you're going to use natural gas or coal, it's more efficient to burn it in a stationary power plant rather than a portable one.
No. The efficiency of thermal plants is about
30%. The efficiency of diesel engines is 30%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine
So why hang the stupid wires?
If we run low on diesel, we can convert to LNG engines with LNG tenders behind the locos.
The electrification of rail in huge North America is crazy.
The key point about power plants is that almost none of them use diesel fuel.
Hydro plants are about 85% efficient, gas fired plants about 60% efficient, coal fired plants about 45% efficient, nuclear ones about 35% efficient, wind generation is about 40% efficient.
At this point, North America has a large surplus of cheap natural gas, so that would be the obvious way to go. However, it would be extremely inefficient to pull LNG tenders behind the locomotives - just pipeline the gas to stationary powerplants and use overhead wires to get the energy to the locomotives.
Don't reinvent the wheel. Electric trains are ubiquitous in Europe and Asia.
No, the key point is about wasting trillions of dollars to electrify 50000 miles of rail, which is not justified even by your devotion to efficiency.
Your argument is so illogical, it sounds facetious..
Hydroelectric is 85% efficient so lets build hydro everywhere.
Except you can only build it in certain places.
This is the same mentality which caused Soviet central planners to build hydroelectric dams all over 'flat' European Russia flooding perfectly good farmland. Same with building the Three Gorges Dam in an earthquake zone.
And are we back to wind powered trains?
First, it wouldn't cost trillions to electrify 50,000 miles of rail - it would be in the hundreds of billions, and second, you wouldn't electrify all 50,000 miles - you would follow the 80/20 rule and electrify the 20% of the track that carried 80% of the freight. So, if you electrified 10,000 miles, and it cost $10 million/mile, that would be $100 billion. However, I think you could do it for a lot less than that.
With the current cost of diesel, electric trains are probably cost-effective right now. When diesel hits $20/gallon, it will look a lot better.
I mentioned hydroelectric because I live in Canada, and Canada still has lots of undeveloped hydroelectric potential in the north. Other places could use other means.
Wind powered trains worked for me. I rode them to work for years.
I hope you realize that the mainline railroads are looking at wind power quite hard because it is a viable alternative in the current regulatory environment. It's getting to the point where they might not be able to run diesel trains in California. However, they have lots of right of way they could build wind turbines on.
Well, yes, actually, RockyMtnGuy is right that it is more efficient in stationary plants.
A combined cycle natural gas plant (gas turbine + heat recovery steam cycle) is closing in on 60% thermal efficiency, and the state of the art in coal is close to 40%. Mind you, Wikipedia is wrong here too, most large industrial diesels get 40% efficiency.
But the main idea is to get the trains off oil, fuel efficiency of the replacement fuel is a secondary consideration - I would accept a low efficiency of a non oil fuel.
And that replacement fuel is either coal (yes, you can run a diesel engine on coal) or natural gas, be it burned on the train or at a power plant. So they will use less of either with electric as the intermediate, but at huge cost. I do like the idea of a train that can run mainline elec, or it's own engine, and I'm sure that exists or could be developed easily.
But that cost for electrification would be billions, and the payoff on that capital would make a big impact on their freight rates and volumes. Don't get me wrong, electrification would be great, but I'm not sure it would be a good business decision for the railroads. If they can switch to NG and/or coal at modest cost, and get a substantial fuel saving, versus electrify at massive cost, for an even better saving, I'm sure the good business decision would be to go NG. And for the country, having got the trains off oil, the billions for electricification would probably be better spent chasing the next oil using target, such as trucks, and heating oil.
Here is a good analysis from 2007 by Alan Drake at the Assciation of Peak Oil, on the electrification subject
//
"Japanese and most European railroads are electrified. The Russians recently finished electrifying the Trans-Siberian Railroad, from Moscow to the Pacific, and to the Arctic port of Murmansk. So there are no technical limitations. Electrifying railroads and transferring half the truck ton-miles to rail should save 6.3% of US oil consumption.
Electrified railroads also expand rail capacity since they accelerate and brake faster.
Today’s diesel railroads are roughly eight times more energy-efficient than heavy diesel trucks. Railroads carried 27.8% of the ton-miles with 220,000 barrels/day while trucks carried 32.1% of the ton-miles with 2,070,000 b/day (2002 data).
When we convert trains to electricity, the rule of thumb is that 1 Btu of electricity will do the work of 2.5 Btus of diesel on rural plains, and 1 to 3 in mountainous and urban areas. Generating electricity back into the grid when braking is the difference.
These savings are multiplicative. Switch freight from truck to diesel rail (x8 savings) and electrify the railroad (x2.5 savings) and end-use goes from 20 BTUs of diesel to one BTU of electricity.
Faced with cheap oil and toll-free interstate highways for decades, US railroads reduced their capacity (often by tearing up one of two tracks) and ceded much cargo to trucking. Today, intermodal shipments (local trucking, long distance by rail via containers) are growing rapidly – but this trend must be accelerated.
USA railroads have pointed to property taxes as the reason that they have not electrified (no taxes on their diesel, property taxes on electrification infrastructure). Exempting any rail line that electrifies from property taxes under the Interstate Commerce clause would promote the rapid electrification of many rail lines. Expanding capacity would then be more economically attractive without the burden of property taxes. Removing property taxes on electrified rail lines would take the thumb off the scale in the economic competition between rail and trucks. Trucks pay no property taxes, directly or indirectly, on their right-of-way. Trains do. Local property tax losses above a certain percentage of total taxes could have the excess compensated by the Federal Government."
//
I know from Canadian experience, that the prospect of the railroads paying property taxes on the railways themselves, let alone the electrification, is a huge drain on their competitiveness with trucks. Electrification is a great solution , but I think re-powering with NG is a much more pragmatic one.
You're not counting transmission losses so it is less efficient. Can you back up your assertion that Wikepedia is wrong?
There's a problem with the ton per mile analysis. It only applies to bulk shipments like coal, grain and cows. Barges are more efficient than trains in Btus/ton-miles, maybe we should build a vast network of canals?
In value of goods transported per mile trucks are overwelmingly favored.
If we would produce more goods locally we wouldn't need electrified freight trains. And we would STILL need trucks.
Is it not amusing that rail freight only uses 2.0% of all US transportation energy? And you want to send trillions(or hundreds of billions) to fix this tiny portion of US transport system?
See Table 2.5 below.
http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb28/Edition28_Chapter02.pdf
http://www.bts.gov/programs/freight_transportation/html/shipment_choices...
Yes, it is amusing, because railroads carry 42% of US intercity freight on a ton-miles basis. They are extremely fuel-efficient even operating on diesel fuel, and their overall costs are much lower than trucks.
I want them to make rational economic decisions based on long-term energy pricing rather than concentrating on short-term profits. I don't think we're talking about trillions of dollars, or even hundreds of billions.
As energy prices rise, I think the railroads will carry a larger and larger share of the freight traffic because of their extreme energy efficiency. In the long term, as fuel costs rise, I think a lot of the long-haul truckers will simply go out of business. I don't think many of them could survive with $20/gallon diesel fuel.
The US interstate highway system was the largest public works program in the history of the planet, but as energy costs rise, it is looking more and more like a bad investment.
The cost of the 47000 mile long ISH system was figured in 1991 to be $128 billion dollars. Just a tad more than the $100 billion you calculated that it would cost to electrify 10000 miles of rail.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/faq.htm#question6
There are in fact 70300 miles of high density rail in the US, not 50000.
http://www.aar.org/PubCommon/Documents/AboutTheIndustry/Statistics.pdf
You are quoting pre-inflation 1960-ish dollars, which were worth considerably more. If you look at the Wikipedia article on the Interstate highway system, you will see that the cost, in constant 2006 dollars would be $425 billion. At this point in time, in current dollars, it would be a half-trillion dollar investment. As I say, the largest public works program in the history of the world. The Pyramids? the Great Wall of China? Hah! Just hobby-scale projects.
The $100 billion was not my number, it was someone else's, and I think it was too high. I found an engineering estimate of the cost to electrify the 36,000 miles of mainline Class 1 track, and it was $72 billion. There's no real point in electrifying the branch lines unless diesel fuel gets really, really tight (which is a possibility in a decade or so, don't discount it).
And, the smart thing to do is apply the 80/20 rule and electrify the most economic 20% first. That would be $14.4 billion. That's just a starter system in international terms. It's not as the US trying to compete with the Chinese or anybody big in terms of global competitiveness. No, these days the US is just trying to stay ahead of Poland and Korea. Sad, but true.
To be specific, I did say Wikipedia is wrong here, meaning that site. If you look up their site for "diesel engine" you will find a much more accurate description, which correctly states 35-45% for most modern diesels, and up to 50% for large marine one.
But, you still can't always trust the Wiki, so here's some manufacturer's data to illustrate the point. The Deutz TCD21013 is a 7L, turbocharged diesel putting out 230-250kW at full load (1/10 the size of a locomotive diesel). The Brake Specifc Fuel Consumption ( a standard metric for all engines) is a miserly 200grams per kWh at full load. Diesel is 45.3 MJ/kg, so the 200g is 9.06MJ/ One kWh is 3.6MJ, and this is 39.7% of the 9.06Mj of fuel burnt, close enough to 40%. This number gets better as the engines get bigger.
Transmission losses for electricity are in the order of 5-10%, but there is also a transmission loss for diesel (trucking or pipelines from refinery), or even NG (compressor stations), and they are equally small.
Barges are only marginally more efficient than trains, it is the large ocean ships that are better. Barges, of course run on flat water, and when trains are running on flat ground, they get better too. Stop and start a barge/ship for locks to go up and down and your efficiency drops, and it uses water which could have made hydro electricity, so you lose even more. Railroads won out against barges in Britain two centuries ago, and would win again today, unless you already have a water way, like the Mississippi, St Lawrence Seaway, etc.
Like Rocky Mtn Guy, I have done the Ride the Wind thing in Calgary, a great marketing exercise, and a successful, and growing wind industry in southern Alberta.
The one ace that the railroads do hold is that their lines criss cross the prairies, which are prime wind sites. And since you are electrifying the railroad, a wind turbine next to it is thus next to the transmission line, eliminating, or at least sharing this cost. Even in the mountains, their lines are in natural wind tunnels, though it tends to be gusty there.
I will maintain my position that I think the railroads will need to cost share with something else (or get subsidised, like very other industry seems to) to make the capital $ of electrification worthwhile on anything but their busiest routes. But the wind turbine angle is interesting - a 21st century version of the windmills that used to pump groundwater up for the steam trains!
You've proven to my satisfaction that diesel-electric engines 40% are no worse in efficiency than most power plants 30% and that there is no advantage to electrifying them.
Windpowered trains which put out nameplate power about 30% of the time will need FF/thermal plant back up.
Given that only 2% of transport energy goes to diesel freight trains, I can't imagine a less
important oil conservation measure than electrificationb of trains, after all supposing you fund electrifying by 50%, you'll only save 1% of transport fuel.
Truly crazy devotion to electrified rail.
Majorian, I think that that 2% have to be increased. Much more freight trains, less (heavy) trucks. If that happens, it means that a lot of oil can be conservated.
See Table 2.5(2007) below 556/28000 = 2%
http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb28/Edition28_Chapter02.pdf
You think freight by rail today is higher than in 2007??
Only low value, bulk products are shipped by rail. Egad!
THINK HARDER!
I'm sure people at TOD are above average in intelligence, so why don't they show it?
Majorian, I think you're missing the point.
When the ship hits the fandeck, the amount of fuel used by railroads (currently 2% of the total) will possibly double. However, the 19% used by medium/heavy trucks will go POOF! and disappear. So railroads will end up carrying almost all the freight. They did this a century ago, they can do it again.
The amount used by cars (33%) and light trucks (27%) will also go POOF! and everybody will take the bus, train, bicycle or walk to work, or not go at all (always a possibility).
So, there's 75% of the oil consumption gone, and the oil supply crisis is solved! (Although possibly not to your satisfaction.) It's called "demand destruction", and we're already started down that road.
All this stuff that people are tearing their hair and beating their breasts over is just so highly predictable. Get with the trend, sell the car, and buy a new bicycle!
Majorian, I'm not writing or thinking about the past and this year, but from the moment oilproduction goes down: the 'past peak' world.
That is the situation now.
I thought allready hard enough about all the bad things that possibly can happen. The world during declining oilproduction will change a lot, but one will look for alternative ways to transport goods and people.
Diesel electric locomotives are no worse in efficiency than coal-burning power plants, but they have the disadvantage that they burn diesel fuel, which in the case of the US is made from expensive, mostly imported, crude oil. The coal-burning plants are burning cheap, exclusively domestic, coal.
That's where the 60% efficient combined-cycle gas turbine generators come in, burning mostly cheap domestic natural gas (except for the 15% that comes from Canada.)
Didn't you have a model railroad set as a kid? They're great fun and all the really rich billionaires seem to like them. I want one like Warren Buffet's (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) but I can only afford a few shares. Bill Gates has made a few billion playing with his train set, too (CN Rail). I wouldn't be surprised if Buffet started stringing wire soon - he also has his own electric power company to play with, and it seems like an obvious move.
So you're just back to mock poor dumb TODers again.
What makes more sense burning NG to make electricity or just making LNG
(energy required is 3.6% of heating value of LNG).
http://tiny.cc/J6fwM
http://tiny.cc/KxL8F
BTW, the Russians are giving up on electrification and are going for LNG locos.
What's your real agenda, RMG?
Gonna sell that tar sand syncrude to the Chinese?
The efficiency of subcritical plants is in the low to mid thirties, and supercritical plants are in the low to mid forties. If you look at the U.S. electricity generating info you'll find that coal is in the low thirties on average and natural gas is in the low forties IIRC. The reason for hanging the stupid wires is to use something like distributed wind since it doesn't have the possible supply/cost issues or externalized costs of FF electricity or diesel.
People wouldn't bother w/ an electric truck, just a smaller more aerodynamic version, maybe a hybrid but probably something w/ a smaller engine and suitable gearing. Something like a VW Saviero w/ an actual frame. Ironically some of the Japanese minitrucks have the same carrying capacity as some of the small optioned out pickups here in America. Braked trailers are nice too, as long as the owner isn't a speed demon.