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Hofmeister: A Difficult Decade Ahead For Oil Prices and Supplies
Posted by Robert Rapier on October 19, 2012 - 2:20pm
I, along with my editor Sam Avro, recently conducted a broad-ranging interview with John Hofmeister, former President of Shell Oil. The topics touched upon included future oil supplies and prices, climate change, U.S. energy policy, and topics familiar to R-Squared Energy readers such at Peak Lite and the Long Recession.
I will present this interview in a series of stories covering some of the various topics. In this first story, I will discuss Mr. Hofmeister’s detailed answer to the question, “What do you feel is the potential for expanding global oil production, and the time frames?”
Readers may recall that I have put forth a pair of hypotheses with respect to future oil production and prices. One is called Peak Lite. (See also: Five Misconceptions About Peak Oil)
In a nutshell, we all know that peak oil is a phenomenon in which global oil production begins an irreversible decline, and the shortages that ensue drive global oil prices very high and cause widespread hardship. However, as I began to see spare global oil production capacity erode away over the past decade, I began to ask myself how that situation was really distinct from peak oil. Technically the difference is that production can continue to grow in that scenario, but if demand growth is higher than production growth, for practical purposes you have a situation that mimics peak oil. I referred to this situation as peak lite.
The Long Recession hypothesis is related. Historically, the oil industry undergoes boom and bust cycles. When oil prices are high, the oil industry invests more money into infrastructure, the economy slows (and often ends up in recession), and consumers begin to conserve. This results in a major correction — and often a crash in oil prices. This leads to underinvestment by the oil industry, and people once more are attracted to gas guzzlers. This ultimately tightens up supplies, and the cycle repeats.
But what if the supply situation was so tight that spare capacity could not be built out? In either a peak oil or a Peak Lite scenario, it will be impossible for the oil majors to build out sufficient spare capacity because it simply isn’t there to be had. So high oil prices slow the economy, and people begin to conserve, but supply can’t build out ahead of demand as in years past either because demand is growing too fast, or supplies are declining. This prevents a collapse in prices which previously enabled the economy to recover. Therefore, what’s waiting on the other side of the recession is more recession: The Long Recession.
Mr. Hofmeister’s views very much reiterated my positions on these topics. The first question I posed to him was:
RR: How great do you feel is the potential for expanding global oil production, and over what time period? Some people have suggested 100 million bpd of oil, some even higher. My former CEO Jim Mulva (at ConocoPhillips) was quoted as saying he didn’t think we could get to 100; he didn’t know where that oil would come from.
In response he reminded me of the studies from the late 1990′s and early 2000′s that claimed that oil production could reach over 120 million barrels per day (bpd). But he suggested that this was before a more realistic understanding of the nature of the resources evolved, and concluded “I think that 120 million bpd of global production probably remains on the outside of optimistic. So I am not sure we will ever get there.”
On the topic of Peak Lite, he stated “I think the course that we are on, with China growing rapidly, India not too far behind – I think that demand for oil is going to exceed the supply by the middle of this decade – the current decade. And I think we are going to be hard-pressed to keep supply growing as rapidly as it needs to grow to meet the demand.”
Gas Lines — U.S. At Greatest Risk
What might that mean? “And so what I actually anticipate is that even with the shale oil of North America, the Canadian oil sands, the bare beginnings of Arctic development, with Brazil coming in on time, which is late in the decade, and the other kinds of basin development that are taking place, I am not sure that in this decade supply will keep up with demand. And I anticipate shortages, gas lines — at any price — because of the growing demand, without alternative fuel technologies yet grabbing hold and picking up some of that demand.”
This is very much in line with my assessment of the upcoming decade, which thus far is playing out as I expected. Oil prices are high by historical standards, and I see little relief over the long term due to very strong demand in developing countries. Mr. Hofmeister agrees: “Possibly by 2020 and beyond we could see alternative fuels beginning to play a bigger role than they do today, which could ease the pain on the oil front, perhaps even ease the price on the oil front. But in the meantime I think this decade is going to be a struggle, and countries like the United States are going to be the greatest countries at risk from suffering the effects of not only high prices, but insufficient supplies.”
Mr. Hofmeister has been helping to shape content for the launch of Total Energy USA as a member of the Executive Committee. Total Energy USA is the groundbreaking conference and exposition that addresses the greatest uncertainty in the energy industry today — the cross-fertilization of energy sectors and technologies. More information about Total Energy USA, November 27-29 in Houston, Texas at www.TotalEnergyUSA.com
This post originally appeared on R-squared Energy Report.
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Conventional oil production is what really matters, and that is still the same as in 2005, heading into a permanent decline which will be obvious by 2014, and the EROEI is plummeting. Poor Al Bartlett and Roscoe Bartlett have been waiting thier entire lives for this, and I hope they're still around awhile to see it. We are going back to 1900.
Any fellow peakists want to meet up to talk about the situation? I am still suffering withdrawal from the end of Matt Savinar's site.
Sometimes I wish I was American so I could meet people f2f for discourse about the doom.
After analysing the critical situation on the oil production and oil market, there is now time to act. There are several attempts especially in the USA but also in Europe to get the situation under control:
One attempt which is essential is individual electric transportation:
There are two very interesting manufacturers of electric bikes in the USA:
-BRAMMO www.brammo.com/
-ZERO www.zeromotorcycles.com/
Those bikes only consume between 4-6 KWh per 100km, or an equivalent of 1/4 gallon of gazoline per 100miles, they really need way less energy to drive. Those quantities of electric energy easily can be produced with renewables, at your home for example with solar panels, placed on your roof.
Electric cars are still expensive, but increasingly popular, they could help to achieve the break through. All of the major automotive giants have announced or are already producing one or two electric cars, mainly for commuting distances, but also for middle and long distances.
-TESLA http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/forum.php
Those cars consume more energy, about 15-20 kWh per 100km or between a half and one gallon per 100 miles, are quite expensive. In my opinion, they will remain a niche product. More efficient vehicles are announced, and we can hope that this german startup will finally succeed after about the fifth attempt:
-LOREMO http://www.loremo.com/index.htm
This car only will consume 5-7 kWh per 100km (7-10kWh per 100miles)
Electric cars can serve double purposes, not only to move around, but also they can store electric energy, captured through your solar panels on the roof of your garage or house, and deliver it for your home usage:
-NISSAN http://reports.nissan-global.com/EN/?p=5664
Besides of electric transportation, energy conservation will be crucial. A better insulation of the houses and energy convervation in the manufactory processes are urgently needed.
The critical point in all those attempts is to make them sufficiently popular and common. We all know here, that there is not so much time left to achieve a breakthrough on so many different levels. The Obama-Administration has funded several of the above mentioned manufacturers, and I hope they will continue and intensify their efforts!
Time is critical, and those technical breakthrough alone won't still be sufficient, we also will have to moderate our extensive lifestyle. It's important to get those efforts rolling, before the great recession is completely setting in. We also can only hope that the climat change won't come too fast and too catastrophic, because they also could cause a severe pressure on our societies.
I wish we would ditch this idea that demand will outstrip supply, it really is misleading. This statement has no basis in economic reality. The potential demand for oil is infinite. Most of us would love to have our own personal spaceships and go orbit the planet for a refreshing weekend getaway, but that isn't going to happen. If oil was 10 cents a barrel, maybe it would. The fact is, demand is tempered by price, and the two must come together over the long haul over the broad market. If price skyrockets then we won't see line-ups at gas stations, because demand will fall to match it.
The times when we see line-ups at gas stations are when there is some localized shock which hasn't had time to balance with the greater market environment, for example in hyperinflation where people turn to buy hard assets as a way to protect wealth. Another example would be if local or national supply chains are broken for whatever reason but the price is maintained at the greater market price by the government and gasoline gets rationed. But in this case there would be an opportunity for those who do get some gas to sell it at much higher prices than the government rate at the gas stations. Over a longer time frame this would present an arbitrage opportunity for the market as a whole and if the world price for oil was allowed to infiltrate that country then it would sort itself out, no line-ups needed.
"I wish we would ditch this idea that demand will outstrip supply, it really is misleading."
I usually present this argument in one of two ways. Over the past decade, demand growth has outstripped supply growth. That has had the impact of reducing spare capacity. Alternatively, you can say that demand for $20 oil has already outstripped supply, which is why we no longer have $20 oil.
Spare capacity is something that has existed, several times in the past, when OPEC deliberately cut supply in order to support prices. There was no spare capacity in the summer of 2008 when world oil prices hit an all time high. OPEC, crude only production, at that point was was 31,673,000 barrels per day.
Nine months after that peak OPEC crude production had dropped by 3.589 mb/d and that was about how much spare capacity existed at that time. This past April OPEC crude only production was withing half a million barrels per day of that previous peak. It reached 31,619,000 bp/d in April. There was no spare capacity at that time, and there still is no spare capacity except perhaps for what Iraq could produce if the embargo were lifted.
Since April OPEC crude production has dropped just over .5 mb/d but there is still no spare capacity. Next year Saudi will bring the first phase of Manifa on line with about .5 mb/d and that will make up for Saudi's declining production in its older fields.
I know some may doubt that Saudi is currently producing flat out but a former Aramco executive let it slip that this is exactly the case.
U.S. Reliance on Saudi Oil Heads Back Up
On page 2 of this 2 page article:
Ron P.
I'd like to point out that sometime at the beginning of 2009 we have also run out of 1 trillion dollar oil (in Zimbabwean dollars).
In your opinion,would the (US) dollar printing (http://mises.org/content/nofed/chart.aspx) have anything to do with the fact that we no longer have the $20 (US Dollars) oil ?
There seem to be a slight correlation...
Have you tried charting the oil price versus a more stable measure of value (in gold for example?).
http://pricedingold.com/crude-oil/
If it were only inflation responsible for high oil prices then everything else would be more expensive than the past in more or less equal amounts. Your house would cost more, software would cost more, a T-shirt would cost more, etc. But they are NOT all up equally. Oil is up significantly more than other things.
Certainly inflation does contribute to the rising price of oil. But what is of interest to this web site is why oil has gone up in price more than everything else you buy.
Nope. That's not true. Oil has not gone up more than anything else...
I'll let you discover what has gone up more than anything else.
In meantime take a look at the price of soybeans...
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=soybean-meal&months=300
or cocoa beans:
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=cocoa-beans&months=300
We're surely on the cusp of "peak banana"...the 20 cent/kg banana is long gone:
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=bananas&months=300
"Peak oranges" anyone? We seem to be on the "ondulating plateau"...
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=oranges&months=300
"Peak sugar"?...the Ghawar of sugar must be dying...
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=sugar&months=300
What about rubber?
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=rubber&months=300
or copper?
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=copper&months=300
or sunflower oil?
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=sunflower-oil&months=300
or nickel?
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=nickel&months=300
or urea?
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=triple-superphosphate&m...
or steel wire rod?
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=steel-wire-rod&months=300
and I could keep on going...
We're at "peak BS" my friend and that's despite the fact it could be produced at no cost and in unlimited quantity.
Well, he said "everything else", not "anything else". IOW, he was talking about growth faster than inflation.
Now, if you go back far enough you'll find that inflation-adjusted oil prices at this level aren't hard to find, but you have to back a little ways...
Well Nick,
the word "inflation" was nowhere in my posts.
Indeed - that seemed like an omission.
Otherwise, I'm not really sure what you were arguing.
NH, I agree with you. As Rockman often points out, demand and supply are in balance at whatever the current price is, ie about $90 today. If the price doubles, there will be less demand...
Yes, he is exactly right on that point. That is why it is so aggravating when some Saudi official says "The world is well supplied with oil". And it is more aggravating when so many wags agree with him. This rattles my cage every time they do it and I try to never miss a chance to rebut this silly assertion whenever it is made.
Yes the world is very well supplied with oil at the current price of about $111 a barrel. And whatever the price rises or falls to, the world will be well supplied at that price also. After all, that is what the price does, it is the arbiter that always assures that supply equals demand.
Ron P.
And why would they say otherwise when candidates of the Empire promise energy independence even if on a North American basis everyday ?
At least it is a way of saying : you'll have to do with that (before we say it's less), now go on with any stupid song you like.
(as long as the "west" keeps on calling the first oil shock the "arab embargo", they clearly are the most stupid of the bunch anyway, and by far, that's for sure)
In all fairness, we are trained from birth to be as stupid and beligerent as possible. By the end of 6th grade most of the hard work is done and we can coast through the last few years to our pinnacle as Wall Mart greeters.
But truly your rant is a first stage response. Wait till you hit stage 5, and like me you'll be drooling in anticipation of the "Zombie Apocalypse". I reckon that once it starts, the carnage will continue until it's a full days walk to your nearest next victim.
Good luck on all that. :)
It seems to me that some kind of a variation on an EV (hybrid, plug-in hybrid, extended range EV, or pure EV) is the sensible answer to reducing and then eliminating oil consumption for personal transportation.
Consumer Reports said that a Prius was cost competitive at $3 gas; Kiplinger just said that the 5 year Total Cost of Ownership of a Chevy Volt is within $1,500 of a much inferior Chevy Cruze.
Consider the Prius C: it costs 2/3 as much as the average US new light vehicle($20k vs 30k), and uses 40% as much fuel. If oil prices tripled the cost of fuel per mile in a Prius C would still be no higher than the average US light vehicle. As best I can tell (based on Edmunds data), the C has the lowest total cost of ownership for any light vehicle.
Then, if we add $10k in batteries to the Prius C (20kWh, assuming a conservatively high cost per kWh for cells of $500), bringing the cost only up to that of the average US new light vehicle, we'd have a plug-in with an electric range of 60 miles (3 miles/kWh x 20kWh), reducing fuel consumption to less than 10% of the average US light vehicle. That's a scale small enough to be covered by solely by ethanol.
Electric vehicles of various sorts will work very well (though some people will have to wait for them to become available used). The only thing stopping them now is artificially low fuel prices.
I only drive about 1,000 miles per year - I mostly use electric trains. Otherwise, I'd invest in something new and electric.
What do you drive?
This side of a major breakthrough in battery technology, and very clever people with serious money have been trying very hard to do this to no avail yet, the physics with regard to EVs remains the same: It's all about weight.
EVs are currently available, affordable, and competitive tech at <1/2 tonne. IOW very light vehicles; scooters.
Better to move to a place where you can scale down your private vehicle travel demands than expect a wholesale transition to EVs and life to go on as it is now. Or do everything to improve the electric transit and local focus of your current economy and society. Oh and buy a bike. Get very active in changing the direction of your local transport dollars towards transit and active modes and away from highways.
http://transportblog.co.nz/2012/05/30/futurissimo-the-new-city-street/
the physics with regard to EVs remains the same: It's all about weight.
Actually, that's not true at all. With EVs, it's all about aerodynamics, and weight has very little to do with it. Electric trucks are very feasible.
Electric trucks aren't here yet because commercial users are cautious, and trucks are sold in much lower volumes than light vehicles, so the economies of scale aren't as easy.
Electric vehicles will just take a little while to scale up, that's all.
"Actually, that's not true at all. With EVs, it's all about aerodynamics, and weight has very little to do with it. Electric trucks are very feasible."
No, indeed weight is a fundamental parameter in the energy required for a vehicle, and this is true whatever the engine and fuel technology is.
(in pure physical terms, the propulsion technology has no influence on the energy required)
And also true that as todays batteries have a much lower energy density than petroleum, this makes the weight aspect even more critical for EVs.
Below a formula for the power required for a vehicle :
(Taken from : http://www.hkw-aero.fr/pdf/energie_utile_voiture.pdf)
The first term is the power required from aerodynamics aspects (and so it depends on the frontal surface S, multiplied by aerodynamic factor Cx and v(speed) at power 3)
Second term the friction aspects (depends on weight(m), and speed)
Third term the acceleration aspects (depends on weight and speed)
And below the result in Energy required for a "standard" medium size current car (weight 1390 kg) on a "standard" run (defined by European agency) :
And below in blue same car less 900 kg, in green a car with less frontal surface better aerodynamics and also lighter than the blue one :
In the end aerodynamics becomes the main factor at high speed and on rather constant speed runs, on typical suburban or urban trips weight is by far the main factor (plus in aerodynamics, the key factor is also the frontal surface, ie more or less the size).
No, things change with electrification.
You see, electrification allows regenerative braking. That means the energy of acceleration isn't lost, it's recovered when you brake.
So, a vehicle with twice the mass requires twice the energy to accelerate, but if that energy is recovered on braking it just doesn't matter.
That's why hybrid electric vehicles get better fuel efficiency with city driving - with much lower braking losses frictional losses to wind resistance become the important factor.
Regenerative breaking is very far from removing the weight aspect for acceleration, no zero sum at all there.
You might want to provide a little more detail (evidence and logic) for your arguments, to move things along.
No, regen braking does a pretty good job. Li-ion batteries are 90%+ efficient. More weight will increase tire flex, but tht's not major. It doesn't change drivetrain or aero losses.
How about you providing numbers ?
By the way, logic is a very tiny bit in engineering, even if used throughout
(this fascination with logic always amuses me, ever heard of maths equations and physics ?)
fascination with logic always amuses me, ever heard of maths equations and physics
That's called "evidence".
We're not doing "engineering" here, we're doing "debate", even if the subject is engineering.
If you want to convince your audience, you have to provide good evidence (e.g., math & physics) and then pull it all together with a logical argument.
I've seen a really good, quantitative discussion of the various components of vehicle efficiency on the Tesla website - if I have time, I'll find it. OTOH, you haven't provided any arguments (math/physics evidence) at all, so the burden of proof is really on you at this point.
Sorry , not interested at all with this discussion.
(and don't believe you went through any analysis from you previous mesages)
hhmmm.. too bad.
BTW, it's not my analysis, it's that of the best in the automotive engineering world.
What exactly was the debate again? You seem to want to argue about arguing. Was it that weight has no effect on EV efficiency because of regenerative braking? As I pointed out below, you are both right. It does inevitably have an impact, but overall it is small and really not an issue of concern; it's less of an issue than with an ICE, as you mention because of regen braking. It's really not worth getting worked up about.
Nick your two arguments are poor:
1. Electric trucks exist, yes they do, but are not competitive. Whereas electric scooters not only exist but are widespread. What is the critical difference?; size of the vehicle and load in proportion to power and range.
2. Regenerative breaking is fantastic, but suffers from efficiency losses as noted above, and does not improve with the scale of the vehicle in proportion to the work still required. Which is to say with a big mass there is more resistance which can generate more power when braking but then more power is needed to move that same mass forward again. And of course this is further exacerbated by air resistance which as Yves has pointed out above is increases with the size of the vehicle..
Perhaps you are thinking that all of your journeys will only ever be down hill? I hope live at the top of a mountain and no longer wish to stay there. Actually that's quite a good test; if beginning at the top of a very high location with an almost flat battery, how far back up the hill could a particular vehicle take you on the energy generated on the trip down...? Smaller will get you further back up every time.
Here's another real world way of looking at it: What system solves the scale problem yet still is capable of benefiting from regenerative breaking?: Tethered EVs, usually trains, trams, or trollies. Unlimited power while connected and much less weight because the power source is not being carried, or at least not all of it if some storage is included for regen. capture.
So: Outside of a revolution in battery technology, principally the quantity of available power stored per kilogram, effective EVs will remain lightweight, small, battery ones, eg scooters, and large tethered ones, eg trains.
The Prius nor the Telsa have altered the laws of physics. Are not game changers.
Moving to within scooter range of a train station is a safer bet than investing in a big heavy battery of limited life in a clumsy metal box.
1), I think I see your objection. Yes, I agree, long-haul trucking won't go to pure EVs anytime soon, or ever. I haven't argued that they will. Instead, long-haul trucks will be replace by rail, with a much smaller contingent of EREV trucks.
Local truck delivery will happen.
2) yes, of course, regen braking can handle very large vehicles. Heck, a 10 ton truck can carry a 1 ton battery a lot more easily than a 1.5 ton car can handle a 1/2 ton battery!
Regenerative braking can recuperate a lot of that motion energy which partially offsets the extra weight penalty of an EV, but there is always an efficiency loss when energy is converted from battery -> motion -> back to battery, so in the real world a heavier EV is always going to need more energy than a lighter EV that's identical in all other respects. But, as someone who's done lots of bike touring with heavy loads on the bicycle, the extra weight isn't a deal breaker. Barrelling down the highway, it doesn't matter. It matters on acceleration and hills. It's not a real issue though.
Here is Car and Driver's review of the Tesla Model S. It's basically already competitive with its Mercedes, Audi, and BMW gasoline powered cohorts, assuming you can live with the limited range. Also note that the inherently better aerodynamics of an EV (no front grill, smooth underside) could offset the increased weight in terms of the energy needed to move it down the road (plus there's he whole issue of how much more efficient producing and using electricity is than oil).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kCG-WqpVnI
I just can't agree with people who pick apart the flaws with EV's and say they will not compete with gas powered cars - considering that we've had 5 EV's out in the market so far, and only for 2 years, I think there's still TONS of opportunity for advancement.
Seriously though, anyone who drives an EV will never go back, there is no comparison to driving a gas banger. The only real sticky points are the long recharge time, and uncertainty about battery replacement in 10 years.
Break even between aero losses (Eua above) and rolling resistance losses (Eur above) is about 40 km/hour (24mph) for the typical sedan. At 100 km/h (60mph), aero losses are six times greater than rolling losses. So the loss dominator is completely dependent on the makeup of whatever driving profile is selected.
Braking losses are, as suggested, dependent on percent recovered, and those figures have no been posted here yet.
That's a nice chart. Do you happen to have a link?
Do you know if it's for ICE or EV? EVs have much lower drivetrain losses, and tend to optimize other rolling losses as well. Of course, aero loss can be reduced as well...
I once saw a shock absorber that captures energy, instead of dissipating it into heat.
MacKay
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/cA/page_259.shtml
Ah, yes, MacKay is pretty good. He used to be pessimistic, but after some good feedback (a bit from me) he's gotten pretty optimistic about what can be done.
Thanks.
His assumptions seem a bit off. Other "real world" (specific car models) I have seen show aero = rolling resistance in low to mid 30 mph, not 40 kph.
Yes, his numbers are kind've old and generic. Pretty good for illustration purposes, though.
MacKay's assumptions there for all to see.
cd*A car = 1 m2;
mass car = 1000 kg;
and Crr = 0.01.
And reading through his tome it is quickly evident that the goal to illustrate, not to exactly characterize the existing fleet on the road. Which would serve what useful purpose?
Break even at 25 mph for a typical vehicle versus ~30 mph for some specific vehicle mean his assumptions are off? Ok, so perhaps there are *some* vehicles out there with very low drag coefficients (i.e. sports cars), and with high handling performance tires which equate to relatively high rolling resistance coefficients (i.e. sports cars).
perhaps there are *some* vehicles out there with very low drag coefficients (i.e. sports cars), and with high handling performance tires which equate to relatively high rolling resistance coefficients (i.e. sports cars).
Hybrid and EV designers pay much more attention to those than do those of ICE vehicles. Further, electric motors have much lower drivertrain losses.
Of course, but that has no impact on the break even speed, aero vs rolling loss.
It could potentially change the ratio of aero vs rolling loss, which would would change the breakeven.
Aero is a little harder to reduce than rolling losses.
I like MacKay "theoretical enveloppes"(based on basic physics) a lot.
And clearly the best reference today in that respect with realistic numbers.
But on the car, seems that he misses the energy tied to acceleration periods (but didn't take enough time to reread the chapter in details maybe)
The energy scale on they y axis assumes an ICE, i.e. 25% efficient. Using an EV at ~80% instead only changes the energy consumption scale; does not change the shape of the curve or break even velocity.
Fuel efficiency vs. speed was hotly contested during the USA 55 mph speed limit fiasco of the 1970s. I recall Popular Science articles and advertisements saying that fuel consumption was proportional to trip length, i.e. the faster you go the less fuel is used. Not much explanation as to why, but I suspect the high displacement engines back then had large internal losses and were optimized for acceleration rather than fuel efficiency at highway cruising speeds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles gives a couple of examples where fuel efficiency at 65 mph tested higher than at 45 mph. So constant ICE efficiency may be a bad overall assumption.
Hybrid drives can optimize the ICE efficiency at some design speed and then use electric assist for acceleration, probably putting them closer to the theoretical break even speed.
saying that fuel consumption was proportional to trip length, i.e. the faster you go the less fuel is used.
The reason that usually fails is that increasing speed from, say, V to 2V gets the vehicle there in half the time but, since the energy loss goes as V^2, the losses due to drag don't just double with the higher speed they increase by a factor of four.
...couple of examples where fuel efficiency at 65 mph tested higher than at 45 mph
Well I'm skeptical (the wiki link to the report is dead), but I suppose it is just barely possible that an old ICE might have such a terrible efficiency at the lower RPM that it uses less fuel pushing against the exponentially higher drag forces at 65 mph.
Probably that data comes from
http://cta.ornl.gov/data/chapter4.shtml
Download the pdf link there for all sorts of interesting graphs.
http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb31/Edition31_Chapter04.pdf
Table 4.29 shows the 1997 Toyota Celica gained 1 mpg going from 55 to 65. Figure 4.2 is interesting, from 1984 to 1997 it shows the fuel economy flattening over the range from 35mph to 60mph, with a shift to slightly better efficiency at 55 mph.
Kiplinger just said that the 5 year Total Cost of Ownership of a Chevy Volt is within $1,500 of a ... Chevy Cruze.
Within $9,000, because those $7,500 tax credits don't scale.
Sure, they do.
They're a bass-ackward way of recognizing that oil's external costs are much higher than it's market costs. How can markets work well with bad accounting?
Of course, the credits are temporary. Fortunately, EREV costs are falling.
Which is to conflate the way one might want things with the reality that the resources of the federal government are not infinite. It is not feasible to scale a $7500 tax credit to ten million cars a year plus interest (since much of the money must be borrowed).
And I don't see a realized falling price yet. The only EREV in mass production, the Volt, has its 2012 list price as $39K (minimum) before the credit. Where's the decrease?
Which is to conflate the way one might want things with the reality that the resources of the federal government are not infinite.
The reality is that oil costs much more than the sticker price. That's not a wish, it's just a reality.
The US is in the process of spending around $2T on oil wars - every low-liquid-fuel vehicle sold reduces the need for such wars, and reduces the need for military & security spending.
Not to mention the reduction in health care costs, much of them paid for by government; reduction in climate change mitigation, such as sea walls, flood insurance, crop insurance, etc, etc.
These are all real costs.
I don't see a realized falling price yet.
Pricing is a messy beast. Cost, on the other hand, is much easier to analyze, even if it's not always visible. The cost of new tech falls reliably with volume and manufacturing experience. Battery costs fall reliably 7-10% per year, and the costs of the new engineering needed for EREVs will gradually be amortized.
Now, I agree with you wholeheartedly: we should simply tax liquid fuels and fossil fuels to internalize their costs. Unfortunately, this is the best we can do at the moment.
The US is in the process of spending around $2T on oil wars
Yes some military spending could be said to be allocated to problems caused by oil. But Afghanistan? Not so much.
Also, the US's oil import share from the Middle East has grown small. And should US imports go to zero some how, there's still China, India et al to keep the price up.
Afghanistan? Not so much.
We're there because we were attacked from there. That happened because of oil (we left troops in KSA after the 1st Gulf oil war, and more importantly were propping up many "client" regimes because of oil).
the US's oil import share from the Middle East has grown small.
If the US eliminated imports from the ME it (and it's allies) would still be vulnerable to oil shocks. That's why the UK and US have been so involved in the ME since WWI. I still remember the US trade balance going positive in the 1st quarter of 1991 because of remittances from our "allies" in the first Gulf war.
The 2008 recession vaporized what, $6T in wealth around the world? We still have a $1T annual output gap because of that recession. If that recession was partly caused by oil, shouldn't we allocate some of those losses to our oil consumption?
That happened because of oil (we left troops in KSA after the 1st Gulf oil war, and more importantly were propping up many "client" regimes because of oil).
Yes Bin Laden mentioned US troops in SA, but that makes an excuse not a cause. All US troops pulled out of SA in 2003; did AQ's jihad go away or even slow down? No. Bin Laden wanted a caliphate, as does his successor Ayman al-Zawahiri, as does the Taliban, as does the radical component of the Muslim world.
If that recession was partly caused by oil ...
Which is to idealize that which you would replace oil as somehow eliminating future recessions because its automatically less expensive, a big reach. And as far as I know the the recession was caused by a huge bubble in a bogus mortgage market, bubbles being something an EV filled future are unlikely to replace.
Bin Laden wanted a caliphate...
Yes, the radicals are...radical. But, they wouldn't exist without US/UK interference in the ME (caused by oil).
replace oil as somehow eliminating future recessions
No, just that oil imports contributed to the recession. The RE bubble was the proximate cause, but the RE bubble was a distortion caused in large part by very low interest rates, rates that had to be low to stimulate an economy slowed down, in part, by oil imports.
Remember, the RE bubble was created in part by CDOs which were in large part a way for oil exporters to lend directly to US consumers.
Oil imports, over the last 50 years, have caused enormous harm to the US.
Yes, the radicals are...radical. But, they wouldn't exist without US/UK interference in the ME (caused by oil).
I can't conceive of any possible (accurate) reading of history that makes than true, that radicals would cease to exist but for the fault of US/UK interference. No because Chomsky said so does not it make it fact. Was the Ottoman empire's arrival at the gates of Vienna also because of interference? The point being: one will look in vain for an Islamic philosophy that says, in effect, "leave us alone and we will remain peaceful inside our borders."
The Ottoman empire was quite a long time ago - painting Islam as the cause of ME violence is an enormous red herring.
Radicals would still exist, but no one would pay attention to them.
Iran had a functioning democracy until the US suppressed it in 1954. That was the cause of the 1979 eruption - the Shah was a direct imposition by the UK/US, and everyone knew it. The Shah's regime simply folded when Carter withdrew his support.
The KSA monarch couldn't/wouldn't exist without US support.
Egypt's Mubarak regime was a direct and obvious client of the US.
Most of that is free from the constraints of logical or historical argument, or relevance ...
Radicals would still exist, but no one would pay attention to them.
Until AQ fly planes into buildings, blows up subways, an IRA car bomb injures 220, or an Egyptian group massacres tourists at Luxor, or a string of movie theater's in Karachi are burned down on "Love of the Prophet Day" just because they were movie theaters.
Egypt's Mubarak regime was a direct and obvious client of the US.
And Egypt was propped up because it was an *oil* client? C'mon.
Most of that is free from the constraints of logical or historical argument, or relevance ...
I don't understand that. US/UK interventions in the ME aren't relevant?
hhmm. Do you agree that the US and UK helped overthrow a fledgling democracy in Iran in 1954, and install the Shah?
Yes Eisenhower and the UK intervened in Iran* sixty years ago during the cold war, and yes the intervention is not relevant to the risible claim that radicals, like Bin Laden or al-Zawahiri, "wouldn't exist without US/UK interference in the ME (caused by oil)."
*The Iranian PM at the time, though popular and received approval from the parliament, was appointed by the Shah, not elected.
US/UK interference in the ME (caused by oil)
Well that does leave the creation of Israel question open. How much of that was about oil (putting hard working colonists, western style govt and a strong ally in the neighborhood of the big oil producers)?
Must be some decent books that rely heavily on source material (memorandums and the like) out there but then again maybe not.
I don't recall the subject getting much attention in Churchill's little exercise in dictation The Second World War. I did find the source material at the end of each of those six volumes more instructive the Winston's official version in the front half of each.
...Israel question open. How much of that was about oil
Apropos, per Wright's The Looming Towers, Bin Laden cared nothing for the Palestinians, assassinating the one Palestinian member of his own group. His interest in the region carried only to the reestablishment Islamic control of the relevant historic cites now in Israel.
You aren't going back far enough. Bin Laden was not raised in a complete vacuum. The creation of the State of Israel has affected thought in the region in a big way since it occurred. What I am really interested is good source material from the 1940s. I would love to hear the conversations of the real power brokers of that time or at least to see a representative collection of their memos.
The radicalism of that region may well have risen without Israel's existence, but very likely having such a handy nearby focal point to despise helped it congeal and come to the fore much quicker and with much greater force than it otherwise would have. Bin Laden seems a more of a symptom than a cause in my eyes.
It is amazing what you can glean out of source material when you read it yourself. It became obvious to me as I read Churchill's volumes that he was mostly worked around and kept out of the important loops by sometime in 1943--and I picked that up reading material he allowed included after he'd told his version of the story.
Does The Looming Towers include large tracts first hand attributal to Bin Laden and his cronies or only chopped up little excerpts?
The wiki article is pretty good. Wright starts with Sayyid Qutb's visit to the US in the 1940s, Qutb being the father of the radicals in Egypt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Looming_Tower
The book won the Pulitzer. To my mind it is extensively researched.
I'll take a look. Have you read The Prize (also a Pulitzer winner)? It provides a nice history of oil's influence in the ME and over US foreign policy.
It seems to me that a good history has to start with the end of the Ottoman Empire, look at the French invasion of Egypt in the early 1800's, the creation of British Petroleum in Iraq, WWI, the partition of the ME after WWI, etc.
At first glance the book appears to be a bit too narrow, with it's examination of irrational personalities rather than overall history. I wonder if it captures that Bin Laden crystallized a regional/nationalist sentiment that was already very strong, and had perfectly rational historical origins?
Why should we be surprised when the pawns in the Great Game start to object to being moved around the chessboard?
Have you read The Prize (also a Pulitzer winner)? ...
Yes, when it was fist published, and The Quest, and many of his company's energy reports along the way.
Bin Laden crystallized a regional/nationalist ...
Not nationalist, in part tribal (Sunni), but mostly Wahibist Islam. The latter was not crystallized by BL but by those he came before him like Qutb in Egypt. BL enabled AQ with finance.
intervened in Iran* sixty years ago during the cold war
We can choose to frame it that way, but no one in the ME does. The UK wanted to intervene because BP had been nationalized. The cold war was only relevant because of US-USSR conflict over control of ME oil. Just because it was 60 years ago doesn't mean that anyone in the ME has forgotten. We may have, but they haven't.
the intervention is not relevant to the risible claim that radicals, like Bin Laden or al-Zawahiri, "wouldn't exist
Well, Bin Laden was a child of the royal family. Given that the royal family would not have been in power without western support, I'd say he wouldn't have existed in the same way.
I didn't say radicals wouldn't exist, I said they wouldn't have popular support. Bin Laden was royalty. al-Zawahiri was a doctor. They didn't arise because of poverty, they arose because of middle class revolt against an elite, and nationalism (Bin Laden was trained by the CIA to oust the Russians in Afghanistan).
As long as the US supports dictators it will be the object of radicalism.
but no one in the ME does.
Self attribution for the entire ME, not just Iran?
The cold war was only relevant because of US-USSR conflict over control of ME oil.
No doubt oil was a factor in 1953 at least for the UK. The cold war was also relevant because, post 1944, a dozen non-USSR countries fell to Marxist-Leninist communism and Soviet influence, and Iran shared its northern border w/ the USSR.
Bin Laden was a child of the royal family. ... Bin Laden was royalty
No. Bin Laden's father was a Yemeni immigrant who became wealthy and has no blood relation to the Saudi royal family.
Bin Laden was trained by the CIA to oust the Russians
No, Afghans, not Bin Laden's Arabs who were ridiculed and isolated.
I'll stick to engineering discussion of electric transportation going forward, as I'm interested in your ideas there and you've clearly run the numbers. The above has become conspiratorial and dogmatic and thus unproductive; I half expect the next claim to be that Bin Laden worked for the Koch brothers.
Self attribution for the entire ME
Residents of the ME probably do blame the West excessively for their failures. Nevertheless, wouldn't you agree that the US & UK did intend to engage in "regime change" in Iran, and they did intend to quash a fledgling democracy that was acting in ways they didn't approve of?
The cold war was also relevant because, post 1944, a dozen non-USSR countries fell to Marxist-Leninist communism and Soviet influence, and Iran shared its northern border w/ the USSR.
But, why did the US care about USSR influence over Iran? Mostly because it and Afghanistan gave entree to the ME. Why was the ME important? Mostly because of oil.
Bin Laden's father was a Yemeni immigrant who became wealthy and has no blood relation to the Saudi royal family.
Yes, that looks correct. Nevertheless, my point stands: Bin Laden came from a wealthy family, not from poverty. My larger point: He was part of a middleclass/upperclass revolution against an elite supported by outside countries, not a poverty driven movement.
"The bin Laden family (Arabic: بن لادن, bin Lādin), also spelled bin Ladin, is a wealthy family intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family. The family was thrown into media spotlight through the activities of one of its members, Osama bin Laden, who was involved in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on US government and commercial buildings. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden_family
Bin Laden's Arabs who were ridiculed and isolated
Interesting. I don't have time to look that up, but does it matter? The CIA would have been happy to train him, and he would have been happy to be trained by them.
conspiratorial and dogmatic
Well, the question of whether the US's conflict in the ME has its origins in oil seems awfully important to me. I appreciate your engagement.
“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil”
Alan Greenspan, in his 2007 memoir.
Apparently you are both right:
"On 28 April 1951, the Majlis (Parliament of Iran) named Mosaddegh as new prime minister by a vote of 79–12. Aware of Mosaddegh's rising popularity and political power, the young Shah appointed Mosaddegh to the Premiership"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh
Yeah, there isn't much oil in Afganistan but there might be a couple of trillion dollars worth of our berylilium, lithium, tantalum, niobium, etc that apparently somehow ended up under their land! Of course I'm sure that has absolutely nothing to do with it, eh?
You don't suppose, do you, that your version of Tesla and Chevy Volt BAU, might benefit just a wee bit from all those rare earths? Nah, It's all about being attacked from there...
Lithium isn't a rare earth, and it isn't especially rare.
As best I can tell, it's mainly the Chinese that are benefiting from Afghan mining...
And neither is oil but I guess that little detail was completely lost on you.
The problem is attempting to maintain BAU with limited resources from a finite planet, my guess is that we will continue to see all kinds of resource wars under the convenient guise of some terrorists from somewhere attacking us... but that's probably just me.
neither is oil
Oil as a commodity behaves rather differently from most others. We're misled if we assume that we can extrapolate from oil's problems to other commodities.
The problem is attempting to maintain BAU
The BAU that is attempting to maintain itself is mainly the oil & FF industries, trying to maintain their economic position. The sooner we get rid of them and their wars, the better off we'll be.
...neither is oil ... with limited resources from a finite planet,
An illustrative point for comparison of elements (mass) with oil (energy):
o The amount of lithium on the planet today is the same as it was a hundred years ago, and will very likely be same amount a hundred or a thousand years in the future.
o The amount of fossil oil on the planet today is some trillion barrels less than it was a hundred years ago, and the energy from that oil is gone forever.
Falstaff,
While it may be that lithium is not all that rare and that a thousand years from now the mass of lithium on earth will still be the same as it is today, it is still a disingenuous statement!
For starters recycling lithium from batteries is a rather energy intensive and uneconomic process.
http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/2011/05/why_advanced_lithium_ion...
http://sf.france-science.org/2011/03/25/the-lithium-used-in-electric-car...
http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/B/644.PDF
A Review of Battery Life-Cycle Analysis:
State of Knowledge and Critical Needs
Dwight Bradley
U.S. Geological Survey
4210 University Drive
Anchorage, AK 99508 USA
Current Research:
Lithium resources. When lithium emerged as a critical element in the transition from gas-powered to electric cars, it became clear that lithium itself is a finite resource and that lithium deposits have never been a high research priority in global metallogeny. It became one for me starting in 2009. I’m working on ore-genesis models for the two deposit types that account for virtually all of today's lithium production: brines and pegmatites.
That first article by Petersen is kind've amusing.
The article contends that recycling is uneconomic, but actually shows that material costs are very low for new generation batteries. His metal values are suspect - $25k of cobalt per ton of 1st generation li-ion battery looks too high, still, they claim $3-400/ton for LIMN/LIPO 2nd generation li-ion batteries, which is only $2.4-3.2% as much!
That means that li-on batteries have very low material costs. Now, if lithium got scarce, recycling would be incentivized...
Another TOD contributor feels quite strongly that Petersen is just trying to pump up his Axion Lead Acid battery stock. Here's the disclosure on a linked article: Disclosure: Author (Petersen) is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and has a substantial long position in its stock. He also holds a small long position Exide Technologies (XIDE).
I took a quick look at the other articles: I don't see any showstoppers. Do you see anything specific you'd like to point out?
lithium is not all that rare and that a thousand years from now the mass of lithium on earth will still be the same as it is today, it is still a ... is still a simple statement of the conservation of mass law, no more, no less.
...became clear that lithium itself is a finite resource
A truism. Everything is finite. The relevant questions are i)how much ore is available now, and ii) how much manufactured product can be recaptured later?
Scrap steel, including in the form of discarded autos with lingering brake pads, paint, used oil, etc, sells for only $150-$250/ton, half the price your link gives for non-cobalt Lithium compounds. Yet 75% of steel manufacturing in the US comes from recycled metal, all without some grand government program to save the world from 'BAU'.
Robert,
I don't expect you to cover it with Hofmeister who is a supply side expert, but the demand side needs to be looked at as well, especially when talking about the possibility of a Long Recession.
The evidence so far seems to be that US households feel the pain when gasoline costs get above 5% - 7% of their houshold budget. High prices kept the gas slice of the budget at or above that level for several years now.
In short, what matters is not the cost of a gallon, but the weekly spend on gas. A subtle difference but a crucial one.
As a result of the increased weekly cost, people are slowly adapting. Vehicle miles travelled is falling. People are switching to smaller cars. The effect of the Obama administration's accelerated CAFE standards will start to show up in the statistics in a couple of years, too.
If and when these adaptations pick up enough speed so that they outrace supply problems, the result would be to drive spending on gas back down below the 5% zone of pain. Because of the delay built into the adjustment process, it could well overshoot, leaving people with an extra 2% or 3% of their household budgets for other things, starting soon. The Long Recession could be postponed for a decade or so.
I've used a few "ifs", "coulds" and "mights" in there. As I said, the demand side needs looking at -- I don't have the answers.
Looks like Californians at least are reacting to the price of fuel in their state. So the pricing mechanism works given time and the correct range of products are available to the market.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/toyota-prius-dominates-californ...
Yes, this is the way it happens. As you say, given time.
Here are two predictions: there will be "Peak Oil is dead" stories in the US media in 2022, full of the usual fallacies and falsehoods. But -- this is the main prediction -- they won't say that the US's liquids consumption is 15 million barrels per day, the same as it was in the late 1960s. And falling.
Edit: Bill McBride at Calculated Risk has published this chart, from the US Dept. of Transport. As the baby boomer population bulge ages, we can expect an increased rate of decline in vehicle miles travelled. Time is helping all by itself.
No, the US will not go down that adjustment slope easily.
The people who buy new vehicles have larger incomes so the cost of gas is a smaller percentage of their income. They tend to buy all the bells and whistles in more impressive vehicles and don't worry about resale when they buy. When you add up the insurance, capital costs, depreciation and maintance costs the fuel costs are not that much for them.
Those driving to their jobs at Wallmart are driving used vehicles. A used SUV with non functioning AC looks to be better value than small car without AC that can't carry Honey bo-bo and her whole family. If you can only afford one car then it better well be big enough. GM, Ford etc doesn't sell to them.
Remember- one candidate said he was going to scrap the mandated fuel requirements, we got lots of oil...
When you add up the insurance, capital costs, depreciation and maintance costs the fuel costs are not that much for them.
It's true - gas is badly underpriced.
one candidate said he was going to scrap the mandated fuel requirements, we got lots of oil...
That's the Koch financed candidate.
Why would EVs be "the answer" when their production and use also hinge on a fossil fuel based economy?
Why not ditch the auto paradigm altogether? Oh yeah, Americans.
Because their production and use don't hinge on fossil fuels in the economy.
I like electric trains - they account for most of my travel. But, personal vehicles are far better for many things.
They aren't dependent on fossil fuels? Really? They aren't made of metal? They don't have rubber tyres? They don't run on electricity generated by coal-fired power plants? Even your electric trains have an inherent fossil fuel cost, in production, operation and maintenance.
They aren't made of metal?
Metal doesn't require fossil fuel. Mining and smelting can be done with electricity (although I suspect synthetic liquid fuels may be handy for a small % of uses like certain forms of mining).
Mining is a common concern. Much mining, especially underground, has been electric for some time - here's a source of electrical mining equipment. Caterpillar manufactures 200-ton and above mining trucks with both drives. Caterpillar will produce mining trucks for every application—uphill, downhill, flat or extreme conditions — with electric as well as mechanical drive. Here's an electric earth moving truck. Here's an electric mobile strip mining machine, the largest tracked vehicle in the world at 13,500 tons.
don't run on electricity generated by coal-fired power plants?
They certainly don't have to. Even now, wind and nuclear are rather more important at night, when EVs would mostly charge. There's a very, very nice synergy between wind and EVs.
your electric trains have an inherent fossil fuel cost, in production, operation and maintenance.
No, they really don't. Manufacturing is mostly electric. Where fossil fuels are essential to operation and maintenance I really can't imagine.
The windmills and nuclear power plants don't have to be built, run and maintained? You honestly don't see the fossil fuel component ingrained in these activities? You're not convincing me that the auto paradigm doesn't need die.
We currently need fossil fuels to manufacture things but if our energy supplies can be switched over to renewable then there may be other ways of manufacturing. It's easier to say that than to do it though, it's a monumental challenge. Electric transportation is not about continuing on with BAU, although many will see it that way, and many of the BAU haters will by extension hate EV's because they see them fulfilling that role. If even 10% of current automobiles are eventually replaced with EV's I'd consider that a huge success. It's not about maintaining BAU, it's about maintaining basic mandatory services that society needs in order to continue functioning. Yes, there are huge problems and challenges, as you've noted. But we basically have no other alternative since bicycles, by themselves, simply aren't gonna cut it.
It won't "cut it" no matter what.. The doom has us.
It's easier to say that than to do it though, it's a monumental challenge.
It's really not that hard. The Koch brothers would like us to believe that, but it's not true.
The windmills and nuclear power plants don't have to be built, run and maintained?
Of course, but you don't need fossil fuels to do it. That's like saying that because the first ICE trucks were built with parts that were transported by horses that we'd always need horses for freight.
I don't see many horses transporting freight, do you?
AT PRESENT you need fossil fuels to do the aforementioned activities. There's nothing that suggests this fact will change. Maybe if one gullibly believes that since we moved from muscle power to fossil fuels there will be something grander on the horizon, when in fact we'll just return to the medieval past or succumb to doomish circumstances altogether.
People who are pessimistic about dealing with Peak Oil wonder: which processes happen to use oil today, because of historical accident, and which truly have to do so? What part of manufacturing, transportation etc, is specifically reliant only on oil?
So many things run on oil - can we possible replace oil in all of these applications?
The answer is yes, primarily through electrification of surface transportation and building heating. Aviation and long-haul trucking can be replaced with electric rail and water shipping, and aviation will transition to substitutes.
This will proceed through several phases. The first is greater efficiency. The second phase is hybrid liquid fuel-electric operation, where the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) is dominant - examples include the Prius and, at a lower price point about $20K, the Honda Insight. The 3rd phase is hybrid liquid fuel-electric operation, where electric operation is dominant. Good examples here are diesel locomotives, hybrid locomotives, and the Chevy Volt. The Volt will reduce fuel consumption by close to 90% over the average ICE light vehicle. This phase will last a very long time, with batteries and all-electric range getting larger, and fuel consumption falling.
The last phase is, of course, all electric vehicles, which are are slowly expanding, and being implemented widely (Here's the Tesla, here's the Nissan Leaf). Electric bicycles have been around for a long time, but they're getting better. China is pursuing plug-ins and EV's aggressively. Here's an OEM Ford Ranger EV Pickup, and a EREV light truck (F-150).
Here are electric UPS trucks. Here is a hybrid bus. Here is an electric bus. An electric dump truck. Electric trucks have much less maintenance.
Kenworth Truck Company, a division of PACCAR, already offers a T270 Class 6 hybrid-electric truck. Kenworth has introduced a new Kenworth T370 Class 7 diesel-electric hybrid tractor for local haul applications, including beverage, general freight, and grocery distribution. Daimler Trucks and Walmart developed a Class 8 tractor-trailer which reduces fuel consumption about 6%.
Volvo is moving toward hybrid heavy vehicles, including garbage trucks and buses. Here is the heaviest-duty EV so far. Here's a recent order for hybrid trucks, and here's expanding production of an eight ton electric delivery truck, with many customers. Here are electric local delivery vehicles, and short range heavy trucks. Here are electric UPS trucks, and EREV UPS trucks. Here's a good general article and discussion of heavy-duty electric vehicles.
Diesel will be around for decades for essential uses, and in a transitional period commercial consumption will out-bid personal transportation consumers for fuel.
Mining is a common concern. Much mining, especially underground, has been electric for some time - here's a source of electrical mining equipment. Caterpillar manufactures 200-ton and above mining trucks with both drives. Caterpillar will produce mining trucks for every application—uphill, downhill, flat or extreme conditions — with electric as well as mechanical drive. Here's an electric earth moving truck. Here's an electric mobile strip mining machine, the largest tracked vehicle in the world at 13,500 tons.
Water shipping and aviation can also eliminate oil: see my separate post on that topic.
Here's a terminal tractor that reduces fuel consumption by 60%.
Farm tractors can be electric, or hybrid . Here's a light electric tractor . Farm tractors are a fleet application, so they're not subject to the same limitations as cars and other light road vehicles(i.e., the need for small, light batteries and a charging network). Providing swap-in batteries is much easier and more practical: batteries can be trucked to the field in swappable packs, and swapping would be automated, a la Better Place. Zinc-air fuel cells can just be refueled. Many sources of power are within the weight parameters to power modern farm tractors, including lithium-ion, Zebra batteries, ZAFC's and the lead-acid developed by Firefly Energy (before their demise), and others.
It's very likely that an electric combine would be an Extended Range EV: it would have a small onboard generator, like the Chevy Volt. Such a design would be more more efficient than a traditional diesel only combine, and would allow extended operation in a weather emergency.
Most farmers are small and suffering, but most farm acreage is being managed by large organizations, and is much more profitable. Those organizations will just raise their food prices, and out-bid personal transportation (commuters and leisure travel) for fuel, so they'll do just fine. As farm commodities are only a small %of the final price of food, it won't make much difference to food prices. The distribution system, too, will outbid personal transportation for fuel. Given that overall liquid fuel supplies are likely to only decline 20% in the next 20 years, that gives plenty of time for a transition.
Even hydrogen fuel cells could be used, though they're not likely to be cost-competitive soon with the alternatives. PV roofs certainly could be used to extend battery life, though the cost effectiveness of that will depend on how much of the year the tractor is in the field. Electric drive trains are likely to be much more cost-effective than liquid fuels, but locally produced bio-fuels would certainly work. Also, fuels synthesized from renewable electricity, seawater and atmospheric CO2 would certainly work, though it would be rather more expensive than any of the above.
Any and all of these is several orders of magnitude cheaper and more powerful than animal-pulled equipment. One sees occasionally the idea that we'll go back to horses or mules - this is entirely unrealistic.
The easiest transitional solution may be running diesel farm tractors on vegetable oil, with minor modifications. Ultimately, farmers are net energy exporters (whether it's food, oil or ethanol), and will actually do better in an environment of energy scarcity.
Iron smelting currently uses a lot of coal, which isn't oil, but is a fossil fuel which we'd like to eliminate. Iron used to be made with charcoal, and iron oxide can be reduced with hydrogen from any source - about 30% of all smelting is done with electric arc furnaces (http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/coal-steel-statistics/ ). Most of the steel used in the USA is reclaimed from scrap (and when industries mature, essentially all of their steel can be recycled); all it takes is an electric furnace to re-melt it, and the electricity can come from anything.
The US Navy plans to go reduce it's 50,000 vehicle fleet's oil consumption by 50% by 2015. They plan by 2020 to produce at least half of its shore-based energy requirements on its bases from alternative sources ( solar, wind, ocean, or geothermal sources - they're already doing this at China Lake, where on-base systems generate 20 times the load of the base), and it's overall fossil fuel consumption by 50% by 2020 with EVs and biofuel.
Some question the stability of the electrical grid, in an environment of expensive fuel. Utilities like the idea of "eating their own cooking". Here's an electric utility boom lift. Here's a consortium of utilities considering a bulk purchase of plug-ins (and a good article). Here's an individual utility buying electric cars. Similarly, utilities are buying hybrid bucket trucks and digger derricks. Here's a large commitment by two major utilities .
Here's a good quote from the Governor of Michigan: "For automakers, replacing the internal-combustion engine with an electric powertrain is both revolutionary and daunting. In a world where economic Darwinism threatens slow adapters with extinction, U.S. automakers know that they can either lead this historic transformation or become history themselves. Even today, as they engage in a struggle to survive, the Big Three are leading the way: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are scheduled to introduce electrified vehicles next year."
France is planning for a market share for EV's of 7% by 2015, rising to 27% in 2025.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/10/france-20091002.html#more
------------------------------
What if our current system is less like a train running out of power, where it will just slow down and stop, and more like a jetliner running out of power, energy which it crucially needs to have a safe landing? Do we really have the resources to build out an alternate energy infrastructure?
Well, at least in the US, there's so much energy used for things with very marginal value that we have a very big cushion. We have an enormous surplus of energy (used for single-commuter SUVs, for example) , so we have quite a lot of flexibility.
EVs don't require significantly more energy than ICEs to manufacture. Wind turbines have a very high E-ROI.
Even if PO reduces the energy we have available, we currently have such a large surplus that we have plenty of leeway to reduce consumption in some places to free up the oil needed for such an investment.
Isn't this a tricky transition, with fragile balances between politics, communications, labor, logistics, public-calm, etc?
It's true - a transition away from oil will put stress on a lot of institutions. On the other hand, this isn't any bigger than similar transitions, like going from coal to oil, or from mules to tractors. And, isn't it good to know that there technical solutions?
Where will the needed electricity come from?
From wind, mostly. Wind has a very high E-ROI, and is plentiful. Solar, nuclear, geothermal, etc will also be important. Coal is extremely abundant, but we have to hope that we don't use it.
Aren't we going to have to live within the limits of our environment?
Sure. Fortunately, energy isn't one of those limits. I'd say that climate change and species extinctions are much larger problems.
What about the invested-in infra-structure for our oil-based life style and what it will take to tear down the old infra structure and replace it with an entirely different one? Won't we have to tear down the suburbs, and similiar infrastructure?
Yes, we'll have to toss out some ICE trucks and cars before the end of their natural lifetime. On the other hand, we do that all of the time: the average US car/SUV/pickup gets 50% of it's lifetime mileage by the time it's 7 years old. They could last 25+ years, if we wanted them to, but we throw them away. The premature retirement of commercial trucks will hurt investors in some trucking companies, but that's a sunk cost.
The real question is, can we afford to build new infrastructure, and the answer is clearly yes: new rail tracks and rolling stock aren't that expensive, and EVs are no more expensive than ICEs.
We won't have to toss out housing - Kunstler is just wrong, completely wrong. A Nissan Leaf will allow a 50 mile commute, or 100 miles with workplace charging.
EVs can be built with the same factories - for instance, the Volt shares a factory with 2 other cars. They drive on the same roads.
Except.. no, it won't happen.
Except...it's already happening now.
The US reduced oil imports by 25% in the last 5 years, while GDP rose.
From Congressional Research Service April 2012
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42465.pdf
Edit According to World Bank http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.CD/countries/US--XS?disp...
GNI per capita, Atlas method (current US$) hardly changed at all overall 2008 to 2011, having dipped in 2009. (US population still growing @ 0.7 to 0.9% per year).
Yes, oil prices have risen.
The point remains: we have made some progress by reducing consumption by about 10%, and increasing production a little. We could eliminate imports entirely if we wanted to. The problem: the oil industry doesn't want to, and it has bought enough politicians to prevent it.
It is unrealistic to say that eliminating oil imports would be hard, or bad for the economy, and agreeing with that idea only strenghtens the misinformation created by the Kochs of the world, and disseminated by Fox News et al.
Have to say I agree entirely. And this election has been nothing more than a protracted power grab by those very oil special interests. And, I believe, should they manage a return to power, they will reinforce policies and conditions that make economic decline certain. The old model of trading pollution and cheap fossil fuels for growth can't work any longer. The pollution sinks are full and overflowing. And all the new fossil fuel energy is more expensive. Costly environmental damage and costly fuels do not a formula for growth make.
Well I don't agree Robert. We still import about 8 million barrels per day. To say that we could eliminate imports if we wanted to except for the fact that the oil companies have bought enough politicians to prevent it is the most foolish thing I have read in years.
A lot more things would be involved in reducing imports to zero than just paying off a few politicians. And how could they possibly pull it off if all politicians agreed? Absurd!
US total net imports of petroleum from the EIA in KB/D. Last data point is May 2012.
Ron P.
Ron,
That was me, not Robert.
Read the rest of my comments to see why I argue for elimination of oil imports.
By the way, that's a striking chart: we see that imports have dropped from 12.5M (2005) to 7.7M(4th qu 2011, 1st qu 2012), or by 38%!
I know it was you but Robert agreed with you. I was just shocked that anyone with agree with such nonsense.
Ron P.
You might want to be more specific with your objection...
Are you serious? How can one be specific with objections when all you give is vague generalities. For instance:
"We could eliminate imports entirely if we wanted to."
Really? How about some specifics?
"The bottom line is that there are wide range of effective and cheap ways to eliminate oil."
Oh boy, that is really specific. All you do Nick is wave your hand and make vague and really absurd assertions. Get off oil? Yeah, a wide range of effective and cheap ways to do that! Yeah right. How about a few specifics?
You cannot name one because there are none. We are locked into oil and there is no way off without massive die-off.
Ron P.
I've given a wide range of specifics elsewhere. Here are just a few:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9560#comment-924574
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9560#comment-925068
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9560#comment-924469
http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2008/09/can-everything-be-electrified.html
http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2008/09/can-shipping-survive-peak-oil.html
a wide range of effective and cheap ways to do that! Yeah right. How about a few specifics?
You cannot name one because there are none.
In my forthcoming chapter on freight in "Transport Beyond Oil" (Island Press, release March 2013) I go into some specifics.
"Cheap" in comparison to maintaining BAU.
$50 to $80 billion to electrify the main lines - life expectancy 50 years.
Expansion to carry most truck freight faster and more reliably - depends how far you want to go. Low end perhaps $80 billion, high end pushing $200 billion.
Life expectancy 30 or so years for electric locos, 40 years for ties, all else longer lived.
We subsidized cheap gas with $101 billion in non-transportation taxes in 2010. Burning almost 2 million b/day of refined diesel for haul intercity freight. So I see the capital investment #s as "cheap".
I wish I could quote some specifics from the chapter - but ...
Best Hopes for Realizing the Possible.
Alan
France is 1/5.75 the population of USA.
22 billion euros for 1,500 km of new tram lines in almost every town of 100,000 and larger.
21 billion euros to double the Paris Metro (+200 km, 2 million more daily pax).
Convert euros to $, multiply by 5.75 and I see that as "cheap".
We could certainly eliminate imports of oil entirely if we wanted to. But we don't want to! That would be unbelievably unpopular and all the politicians that tried to do that would be swiftly kicked out of office. And not because of the oil companies but because of the people.
People are lazy, greedy, and cheap. Oil provides the cheapest & easiest way to move people & things around. So if you tried to take it away people would go nuts.
We need to provide incentives for alternatives since that puts a ceiling on oil prices and provides us with something to transition to. But just banning foreign oil is a bridge too far.
Absolute nonsense! How could we do that? I find it astonishing that anyone could make such a sweeping statement without one word of explanation as to how we could pull that off.
But of course. We enjoy sending money to other countries for all that oil. Oil Economics
The government cannot do anything without serious and very dire consequences. Banning foreign oil would send gas prices to $20 a gallon, send the nation into a depression that would make the 1930s look like a picnic. Unemployment would go well over 50% and we would likely never recover. The nation would sink into anarchy as starving people rioted in the streets.
Ron P.
TOD Oct 24. Shale Oil: The Latest Insights, Rembrant.
banning foreign oil is a bridge too far.
I would never suggest that. Just tax oil properly.
Oil provides the cheapest & easiest way to move people & things around.
It really doesn't. Oil is more expensive even now. For instance, what's the cheapest car on the road over it's full lifecycle? The partially electric Prius C. If we didn't subsidize oil then hybrids, PHEVs, EREVs and EVs would be clearly cheaper.
Nick,the oil imports declined because the economy tanked(not only US but worldwide) . U6 is at 20%(see John Williams "Shadow stats"),VMT is down as people stay home and avoid going 15 miles to enjoy an ice cream cone .As to GDP grew, what kool aid do you drink ? After adding $ 4 trillion i.e TRILLION(4,000,000,000,000,000 now that is impressive) in debt and deficit over 4 years you have a measly below 1.75 % growth .And just for your info this is as per the Fed, the biggest department of BS after the EU+ECB .If you calculated with the correct deflater the US is in a recession since 2008 . You are welcome to la-la land and false figures of the US govt,but the truth is invincible . As to your examples,when I was young in school I created an explosion in the chem lab by mixing stupid chemicals but does that mean I can make a N-bomb when I grow up ? A few sample products for PR by companies are in order ,try scaling them to mass production and see them file for bankruptcy. What is stopping them , I wonder ? Depressed a lot is correct "it ain't gonna happen " . Of course reminds of Eurythemics song "Sweet dreams are made of these,who am I to disagree "
the oil imports declined because the economy tanked(not only US but worldwide).
Oil imports fell by 38% while GDP rose. The fact that GDP rose tells us that the decline was due to greater efficiency (and a little more oil production), not a depressed economy.
Yes,the GDP rose but not due to efficiency but due to the recession and a 4( FOUR) TRILLION deficit spending .Get real and visit Shadow stats to know the real situation . No time for hedonistic accounting . Of course you are at liberty to believe BS from the Fed,BLS etc but like I said the truth is invincible.
GDP rose but due to...a 4( FOUR) TRILLION deficit spending.
GDP still rose. The US produced more stuff with less energy. The deficit is just paper accounting, not biophysical reality.
Get real and visit Shadow stats to know the real situation.
That's not very reliable. Here's a sample comment on TOD:
"Shadowstats.com calculates the consumer price index (price inflation) as just under 8%/year while the US Govt says it's about 0%, big difference.
The short version is that Shadowstats claims household purchasing power has fallen by 40% in the last 15 years, whereas official figures claim it's increased slightly. If you take a look at household budgets, spending patterns are basically the same; in particular, essentials such as food took up no more of the household budget in 2005 than in 1990. This is not consistent with a massive drop in spending power, but is consistent with stagnant real wages, meaning empirical evidence supports the official figures. "
hedonistic accounting
That's "hedonic", and it's pretty well accepted around the world.
the truth is invincible.
If only that were true.
"A lie travels around the world twice while the truth is still putting on it's pants". Mark Twain.
Nick,
1.GDP still rose . If you throw a lot of s*** at the wall some is bound to stick .
2.Do you expect the USG to tell the truth ?They have WMD and they will attack us if we don't attack them ? The CPI is zero because the Fed does not incorporate food and energy costs in its CPI calculations .Maybe you do not eat and do not cook,do not have heating or travel ? The rest of the public does .
3.Hedonic accounting is accepted in the world .Boss, I have the Brooklyn bridge to sell you .Make me an offer .
4.Mark Twain is correct but that is at the start of the race . At the end it is the tortoise that wins and not the rabbit .Truth is invincible and no doubts about that . See all scriptures Bible,Koran,Gita,Buddha, etc (I am an atheist)just for your satisfaction .
The CPI is zero because the Fed does not incorporate food and energy costs in its CPI calculations.
You're thinking of "core" CPI. That's important, but far from the only measure. The full CPI certainly includes food & energy.
Truth is invincible and no doubts about that .
I hope you're right. Heck, that's why I'm here, and clearly that's why you are.
If you take a look at household budgets, spending patterns are basically the same; in particular, essentials such as food took up no more of the household budget in 2005 than in 1990. This is not consistent with a massive drop in spending power,
But it is consistent with a massive buildup of personal debt, which is partly why interest rates are now at zero.
The increase in debt could finance only a very small portion of a 40% deficit.
I read the increased GDP/lower oil imports a bit differently though that does require making a few inferences from the chart I posted down the page.
I'm addressing a narrow question: did the reduction in oil consumption come from efficiency, or a declining economy?
Clearly, it came from efficiency.
OTOH, I agree that we have real income inequality problems, and that everything (including saving energy) is harder when you're poorer.
Clearly, it came from efficiency
not that clearly--this latest increase in GDP does seem to be a bit more slippery animal to peg than usual--but yes efficiency is no doubt the biggest contributor.
Efficiency or a declining economy?
Sadly sometimes they are the same. If you have someone that is schlepping a long distance in a 70's gas guzzler to their minimum wage job they may end up quitting that job because it just no longer makes sense. They may be better off collecting food stamps than working if the job barely pays their transportation costs. It may be more 'efficient' to not have that person work than have job that makes no economic sense.
That is a big problem for that person and for the economy as a whole. The old way of doing things just doesn't work as well. Hence we need better cities, more public transportation options, fuel efficient cars, alternatives to gas cars, etc.
in a 70's gas guzzler
The easiest, most direct solution is to buy a 20 year old Corolla or Civic for $1,000, which would pay for itself in 6 months. If they can't afford $1,000, society needs to expand micro-loans.
VMT is down as people stay home
Yes, but VMT only fell 3% or so.
http://www.peterfrase.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/silver_dr...
Imported oil has fallen much, and started falling well before the recession, so something other than an economic slowdown is responsible for much of the imports drop.
Good point.
Also, reduced VMT isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's undoubtedly partly due to kids texting rather than "cruising", playing video games instead of hanging out at the mall, and more online shopping.
More video-conferencing, and less business travel, would be better for everyone.
Nick+Falstaff, VMT is one of the factors and not THE factor . The economic slowdown is not only VMT .Other's like outsourcing all manufacturing overseas ( iphones,ipads made in China),outsourcing services (call centers,software to India),not enough interesting investment opportunities,margin squeeze,etc etc .This is " A death by a thousand cuts".To try pinpointing a single source is being on the wrong track .This is a cumulative effect .
outsourcing all manufacturing overseas
Actually, this just isn't true, at least in absolute terms. The US manufactures 50% more now than it did in 1978. People are misled by the fact that US manufacturing employment has dropped substantially in that period. But, that was caused by sharply rising manufacturing labor productivity, rather than by a decline in absolute levels of manufacturing output. See nice charts from a left-leaning source: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/15/the-myth-of-u-s-manufacturing-dec...
and from the right: http://www.dailymarkets.com/economy/2010/10/03/increases-in-u-s-worker-p... .
Here's production data at http://www.census.gov/manufacturing/m3/index.html, including http://www.census.gov/manufacturing/m3/historical_data/index.html , especially Historic Timeseries - SIC (1958-2001), "Shipments".
Here's a very detailed analysis, including IT investment & data on where imports are coming from. We see in Chart 5 that output rose through 2000 while employment stayed flat. Starting in 2000, roughly when China entered the WTO, production flattened out and employment dropped like a rock.
So, China had a big impact, but not quite the impact that people think: they took the growth in production, which so that productivity growth started reducing employment.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/10/technology-explains-dro...
The US manufactures 50% more than it did in 1978(35 years ago,no efficient computers,NC but no CNC machines,no internet etc) . Hey why not go back to 1778 .The US manufactures 500% more . You are like ObamRomney ,kick the deficits down to the next 30th year. Just as Rockman,Darwanian say for all the abiotic oil guys, if it is there then why are the oil prices so high ? If the US is doing so well then why is U6 at 20%(shadow stats)? Why are 40 million + on food stamps ? Don't hide behind one chart of computer and IT.This is not the economy .The fact is that the US has both a trade deficit and a current account deficit covered only by printing of dollars . If production was great guns how come the trade deficit let alone the current account ? By the way VMT is a(not THE) symptom and not the cause ,just as pain in the body is as symptom of some problem in the physique(a broken bone,impinged nerve,stomach ulcer) . Don't weigh too much on this .In your argument to paint a rosy picture that BAU will continue, you remove the greatest element which is human nature . So let me tell you a story .Have you ever heard of Hermann Kahn ? A one man think tank on a wheelchair(no offense intended) who traveled with a suitcase full of books instead of clothes .When he was young he worked at a food store on the very first day told his boss that he had calculated the best size of the carry away paper bag for the clients . His boss told him " Hermann,they will always take the largest size so that they can use it back home to dump the garbage " . Like Depressed a lot said "It ain't gonna happen" and like I said "The truth is invincible " . Of course you are allowed to smoke hopium ,but then "Hope is not a strategy" ,it is just what it is HOPE (all air no punch or as in Texas (all hat no cattle)
To try pinpointing a single source is being on the wrong track
Agreed, but several will serve to explain oil imports dropping a third:
Supply Side:
-Increased domestic crude production
-Increased other liquids production like ethanol and refinery gains, but especially natural gas liquids.
Demand Side:
-Heating oil consumption in New England, especially Maine, cut in ~half since in 2005 (insulation, switch to alternative sources)
-Ever increasing car/bus/plane efficiency.
-Replacement of oil with natural gas for petrochemical feed stocks.
-Increasing natural gas fueled transportation fleet.
and, yes, finally
-A slight (3%) slow down in total VMT from the recession.
Going from building 2 million new homes per year to 0.4 is responsible for a huge decrease in energy consumption.
True.
The crash of the RE bubble was quite a hit to the economy, but the overall economy has managed to grow to above the point it was before the crash.
Majority of oil consumption is in transportation, which is reflected in VMT.
Reading your post really drives home the point that BAU is not constant, but rather continuously changing at various rates in various places.
I see it at work as well in simple things like new motors being the high-efficency versions, and the increasing use of variable frequency drives to control the pumps instead of a fixed speed pump and a control valve.
It's true - a transition away from oil will put stress on a lot of institutions. On the other hand, this isn't any bigger than similar transitions, like going from coal to oil, or from mules to tractors.
Well yes and no. If the transition has to happen as agriculture is stressed by 'little things' like the weakening of the jet stream (just thought I'd mention one source of the recent 'erratic' weather) and the rollover of dollars in the economy requires so much energy used for things with very marginal value just to keep people employed in the medium term, the cushion might not be quite as large as you envision.
Or put differently as we start chewing away at the cushion the extent to which it still underpins our strained middle class will become more and more apparent. And former middle class consumers with much reduced needs (to match their much reduced incomes) will not generate the increased tax revenues needed to both service our massive debt and build out new publicly funded infrastructure. Those same former middle class consumers will not be able to move the fleet to more efficient vehicles all that quickly either. It is touch and go right now and the state of the finances of the all important (to the economy) middle class consumer is a big part of why.
This as a big complex machine--far beyond anything that existed during the transitions you mentioned above--and though I don't believe size and complexity themselves are any indication of weakness (look at the resilience of our, by animal kingdom standards, very large and complex bodies for god's sake) it does make predicting how the system will react to multiple new stresses at once a very dicey matter. Availability of food supply has been a major, if not the major determinant of all species paths, and no other species has ever been able to tap into the stored solar 'food' supply like we are now doing. We are treading all new ground on this planet.
It is good to know technology keeps providing solutions, but lots of species have not found solutions fast enough in the past our success at that is by no means a sure bet.
If the transition has to happen as agriculture is stressed by 'little things' like the weakening of the jet stream
Well, the transition from horses to tractors happened during the dustbowl and the Depression. Surprisingly, business investment stayed fairly high during the Depression.
the rollover of dollars in the economy requires so much energy used for things with very marginal value just to keep people employed in the medium term
I'm not sure what you mean. We can make Volts instead of SUVs, and employ people just as well.
no other species has ever been able to tap into the stored solar 'food' supply like we are now doing.
Our current solar income is far greater. That stored solar power in the form of FF is greatly overestimated.
-----------------------------------------
I agree that things are complex and unpredictable. On the one hand, the physical supply of energy is very far fom the biggest problem. We shouldn't cooperate with the Kochs of the world by saying it is.
OTOH, humanity can certainly screw up things.
The least risky path forward is aggressive implementation of renewables, EVs and other ways to eliminate FFs.
During the depression an area the size of South America was not under till world wide--not so very much wiggle room for agriculture these days--not with seven plus billion and growing. And in the mature economies the migration from the land to the manufacturing centers is complete--these times do not compare with the 30's in a very meaningful way. Well that is not quite true, what makes humans tick is still quite the same.
I'm not sure what you mean. We can make Volts instead of SUVs, and employ people just as well.
I mean exactly what I said
Or put differently as we start chewing away at the cushion the extent to which it still underpins our strained middle class will become more and more apparent. And former middle class consumers with much reduced needs (to match their much reduced incomes) will not generate the increased tax revenues needed to both service our massive debt and build out new publicly funded infrastructure. Those same former middle class consumers will not be able to move the fleet to more efficient vehicles all that quickly either. It is touch and go right now and the state of the finances of the all important (to the economy) middle class consumer is a big part of why.
The extra trips with the latte or mocha bought on the run keep people employed. The overbuild of retail and residential kept of lot of people working. I could go on and on about how much the economy has come to depend of wasteful uses of energy. Govt spending has thus far taken up a lot of the slack income loss created but at cost to the future. It's not only about changing about changing from Suburbans to Volts--or some such.
Another thing that has been as cheap for US consumers as oil is food (both have taken a very small chunk of family income for all of my lifetime). As both take a larger share of the family income less is available for all else. Sure lots of cushion as more actual basic cooking gets done in the home and far fewer meals out are bought but again at the cost of jobs (predominantly in the service sector which employs what percent of OECD workers?) and the income and tax revenue those jobs create.
...well there is one area ripe for cut back--one that has been taking an increasing share of income year on year for some time now--family medical expenditures. Plenty of people to step up and do the work as the stricken become unfit...yes quite a bit of cushion there come to think of it. All kinds of resource savings come to mind if we just cut way back on health care especially to those who are no longer or have never contributed there own energy to our society's production effort.
Just a 'little change' in the BAU (88KB PDF) but targeting just the 'unfit' this time around and we are out of this mess...wonder how far things have to slide from the precarious balance we are holding them in for these type of 'solutions' to start to gain traction?
I have to thank the Totoneila for the above linked piece. He gave it to me here on TOD years ago as explanation to one of his rather pictorial replies. I've linked it a couple times now and I make sure I reread it whenever when I do. It is one of the most powerful first person narratives I've ever come across. Tadeusz, the author, did survive that place. BAU is certainly not static over time.
I could go on and on about how much the economy has come to depend of wasteful uses of energy.
Are you talking about shopping that would be harder if fuel were more expensive? I don't think expensive fuel is going to stop anyone from much shopping - they'll just buy online, or plan their trips a little more carefully, or buy a more efficient vehicle.
Seriously - almost anyone can afford to trade in for a used Honda Insight or Prius.
You travel in different circles than very many I know. Just what percent of the over 10% (real not official) unemployed can afford that high priced a used car? Are reliable versions those cars in the $1000-$2000 range already? The folks at the bottom, and there are many more low wage employed than unemployed, get no trade in value for their exhausted vehicles. Been there in good times, glad I'm not there now.
Just buy online you say. Why do you think the local merchants are now spending much of their very tightly budgeted advertising money on a buy local campaign--because more people are driving 350 mile to Anchorage to shop than ever before now that our gasoline rarely gets under $4/gal--I don't think so. Buying online does hit local business/employment/taxes/property values(retail first residential as employment/wages suffer). And of course that doesn't at all address my point about the recent overbuild of retail and residential, as a matter of fact it exacerbates it.
remember I said
how much the economy has come to depend of wasteful uses of energy
replying to your
so much energy used for things with very marginal value
but as usual you have shifted a bit when your position became untenable and now wrote
would be harder if fuel were more expensive
Energy waste and fuel waste are not synonymous though our current US mix taking into account all fossil fuel uses brings it close.
Luke,
what percent of the over 10% (real not official) unemployed can afford that high priced a used car?
Very many of them can't afford cars at all. The per capita fuel use of the poorest quintile is much lower than for the next more affluent 20%.
----------------------------------
The bottom line is that there are wide range of effective and cheap ways to eliminate oil.
On the other hand, there's no question that when you're poor, everything is much, much harder.
On the 3rd hand, used vehicles turn over every 3 years on average, and I've known a lot of poor who were driving the wrong vehicle out of ignorance. That's not their fault, it's the fault of the oil and car industries that prevent the media from telling everyone to dump their SUVs and land yachts.
The per capita fuel use of the poorest quintile is much lower than for the next more affluent 20%.
Well we are talking 21st century USA here. The second lowest income quintile works pretty low wage jobs and I've a strong inkling works more jobs per earner than the quintile on either side of them, but the center quintile is rapidly slipping their way and the one above that is following along. That 60% of the middle or so may soon be one amalgamation of working poor if current trends accelerate.
Yes one seemingly easy and cheap way to radically reduce oil consumption in the US is to jam a much larger portion of the population into the working poor--a solid quintile or two more might just do the trick--but it does run into a bit of glitch when you realize a whole lot of that segment of the population lives in the poorest public transit served 1970s-1990s era build out. A good breakdown on where each segment of the populations sits on the CAFE standard/commute mile train might be instructive.
...but to absolve all but two 'antichrists' it's the fault of the oil and car industries that prevent the media from telling everyone to dump their SUVs and land yachts really smacks of the 1960s liberal stick, and darned near made me throw up.
Nick I'm totally behind you in what you want to do but I think you are being way too optimistic. I used to be a techno-optimist too until I looked at the scale of the numbers we're dealing with.
Aren't we going to have to live within the limits of our environment? Sure. Fortunately, energy isn't one of those limits.
That is just wrong, energy is THE ultimate limit that defines everything else, and we are seeing the unpleasant impacts of those limits beginning now. 95% of our energy use comes from harvesting ecological net primary production. The amount of energy we harvest is about 5 times greater than what the planet could sustainably provide for us, and we are therefore so far beyond the threshold of a Malthusian collapse it's scary. The only thing currently separating us from certain death is fossil fuels. You are proposing we can shift that 95/5% ratio around to something like 20/80% so quickly so easily? So far it hasn't happened; increases in fossil fuel consumption (gas and coal) outweigh increases in renewable energy simply because of scale, despite the current exponential rise in wind and solar. So that 95/5 ratio is actually moving closer to 96/4.
We have an enormous surplus of energy (used for single-commuter SUVs, for example) , so we have quite a lot of flexibility.
No, the only reason the US has a "surplus" of energy is because it is the center of the world's financial empire and can therefore import over half its oil. Plus the economic problems have hit the middle class hard and consumption is dropping. When the financial system flips, and it's coming soon, then that "surplus" of energy will become scarcity. The US does have a lot of coal which I pray will be used to build out the infrastructure you suggest; however history as a guide is not so supportive of this. But, if the exponential rise in solar and wind can continue for decades to come, and if coal can power this, then the US may be able to develop enough infrastructure to continue limping along.
95% of our energy use comes from harvesting ecological net primary production.
95% of human energy production, not consumption. 90% of consumption comes from solar energy. We just add a little HVAC to the heat that makes earth habitable, and a little interior lighting to the blaze of sunlight we take for granted.
The sun pours onto the earth 100,000TW every day, 24/7.
We haven't shifted yet because we haven't tried very hard, not because we can't. OTOH, we have made progress, even blocked by the Kochs of the world - oil imports have dropped 25% with higher GDP, over the last 5 years.
As this is the basis of your argument for the time available, where do you get this figure from?
ELM clearly shows that in 20 years time there will hardly be any oil available in the market for importers. Many countries will have a massive reduction in liquid fuel availability, how do you intend to counteract this?
Your link to farm tractors is again pointing to toys, not real tractors and your link to the Case hybrid tractor is 7 years old, with nothing happening on that front. (not that it matters as they still use lots of diesel).
This is one area where you just do not understand the real world. All that "wasted" use of fuel is someones job providing a good or service. By cutting out lots of these 'waste' jobs unemployment goes up, taxes decrease and the multiplier effect reaches far and wide. Then the population cannot afford to just go out and buy a prius as you suggest.
A better question is What part of manufacturing, transportation etc, can currently exist without oil? Answer, nothing in todays world.
How is it that you don't understand the difference from trading up to a better source of power (easier, cheaper) to trading down? Example, a farm gets a few thousand litres of diesel delivered into tank, then uses this fuel for planting. With any future scenario you have indicated, it is going to be more difficult, hence the trade down.
where do you get this figure from?
Kjell Aleklett, President of ASPO International...warned a Senate committee that the International Energy Agency had wildly overestimated oil production, lulling nations such as Australia into a false sense of security.
Rather than oil production rising by 20 per cent to 101.5 million barrels a day in 2030, he says production is likely to fall 11 per cent, to just 76 million barrels a day.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/highly-vulnerable-to-oil-...
Look at page 40 of the presentation: http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/References/Aleklett/20090611%20Sydney4.pdf
We see that Kjell Aleklett, President of ASPO International, is predicting only a .5% annual decline rate over the next 20 years.
On page 42 of the presentation - we see that this projection is precisely in the middle - between the "Standard Case High End" and "Standard Case Low End".
Look at the table on page 40: you'll see that he doesn't project 75mb/d of oil in 2030, he projects 55mbd: that's pretty consistent with other forecasts on TOD. His projection of 75 is for all liquids - that's a distinction that is often lost on TOD.
We can see that the presentation was in fact too pessimistic - crude oil has stayed on a plateau, while the presentation shows a distinct decline from 2008 to 2011.
Many countries will have a massive reduction in liquid fuel availability, how do you intend to counteract this?
First, even Westexas will tell you that the ELM is just a general guide to the problems coming, not an exact prediction. Obviously, KSA would never allow export to go to zero.
2nd, the obvious solution is to eliminate imports. That would be pretty easy for the US to do, and would be quite good for the economy. We only think it's hard because of propaganda from the oil industry, and a misguided notion that oil has mystical powers.
Again, there is this puzzling assumption that oil can't be replaced, that it is somehow magically necessary for industrial/modern civilization. Oil has been cheap and convenient for the last 100 years, but the industrial revolution started without it, and modern civilization certainly will continue without it.
• 130 years ago, kerosene was needed for illumination, and then electric lighting made it obsolete. The whole oil industry was in trouble for a little while, until someone (Benz) came up the infernal combustion engine-powered horseless carriage. EVs were still better than these noisy, dirty contraptions, which were difficult and dangerous to start. Sadly, someone came up with the first step towards electrifying the ICE vehicle, the electric starter, and that managed to temporarily kill the EV.
Now, of course, oil has become more expensive than it's worth, what with it's various kinds of pollution, and it's enormous security and supply problems.
• 40 years ago oil was 20% of US electrical generation, and now it's less than .8%.
• 40 years ago many homes in the US were heated with heating oil - the number has fallen by 75% since then.
• US vehicles reduced their fuel consumption per mile by 50% from about 1978 to about 1990.
• 50% of oil consumption is for personal transportation - this could be reduced by 60% by moving from the average US vehicle to something Prius-like. It could be reduced by 90% by going to something Volt-like. It could be reduced 100% by going to something Leaf-like. These are all cost effective, scalable, and here right now.
I personally prefer bikes and electric trains. But, hybrids, EREVs and EVs are cost effective, quickly scalable, and usable by almost everyone.
Sensible people won't move to a new home to reduce commuting fuel consumption. That would be far, far more expensive than replacing the car. It makes far more sense to buy an EV and amortize the premium over 10 years at a cost of about $1,000 per year (much less than their fuel savings), versus moving to a much higher cost environment (either higher rent or higher mortgage).
• As Alan Drake has shown, freight transportation can kick the oil-addiction habit relatively easily.
We don't need oil (or FF), and we should kick our addiction to it ASAP.
The only reason we haven't yet is the desperate resistance from the minority of workers and investors who would lose careers and investments if we made oil and other FFs obsolete.
Some might ask, what about our current debt problems?
Debt is a symbol, a marker - what matters is the underlying productive capability of our economy, which will be just fine. Could we screw up the management of our economy, and go into a depression? Sure. But it's not likely.
Don't these transitions take 50 years?
The transition from kerosene to electricity for illumination took roughly 30 years. The US transition away from oil-fired generation took very roughly 20 years. The transition away from home-heating oil was also faster than 50 years (though uneven).
The fast transition from steam to diesel locomotive engines is illustrative. There were a few diesel locomotives in use in the U.S. during World War II but steam dominated in 1945. However, the steam locomotives had been very heavily used during World War II, and they all wore out at approximately the same time the first few years after 1945. When steam locomotives wore out, they were invariably replaced by diesel in the mid 1940s. By 1949, almost all steam locomotives were gone. There were still some steam locos made in the late 40's, and they were still in service in the 50's but dwindling. The RR's also relegated the steamers to branch line and switcher use - replacing the most used lines with diesel first as you would expect. Cn rail retired its last steam engine in 1959.
Other, very slow transitions are not a good guide to the future. For instance, the transition from coal to oil could be very slow, because there was no pressure - it was a trade up, not a replacement of a scarce resource. Many transitions occurred because something new & better came along - but the older system was still available and worked just fine. Oil may become very expensive very fast and that would provide us an incentive to switch over much more quickly.
On the other hand, we can point to many energy transitions that were sideways or down. The early transition from wood to coal in the UK was a big step down: harder to find and transport, dirtier - a pain in every way. Coal's only virtue was it's abundance. The transition from EVs to ICEs took a while - only when ICEs started to electrify did they become competitive. And, of course, we hid the external costs of oil from consumers: freeways (built by "engine" Charley Wilson after he went from President of GM to Secretary of Defense), pollution, overseas wars, etc. I'd argue that ICEs were never better than EVs - they just appeared that way.
On the other hand, EVs are better right now. They have better driving performance (better acceleration, better handling), and lower total lifecycle costs.
Unfortunately, we have more than 50 years worth of things we can burn for electricity. Fortunately, it doesn't look like we will. For instance, coal consumption in the US dropped 9% last year, about half of that due to loss of market share.
The transition from heating with wood to heating with coal took a lot more than fifty years. Electrification of the U.S. from small beginnings in the late nineteenth century to finishing rural electrification during the Great Depression took at least forty years.
Sure. These involved an enormous amount of infrastructure. On the other hand, EV/EREV/HEVs are manufactured on the same assembly lines as ICE vehicles, and roughly 75% drivers in the US have access to an electrical plug where they park.
If we mobilized all our resources as we did in World War II with the single objective of getting off fossil fuels as fast as possible, wouldn't the transition still take at least twenty years, and probably longer than that?
It would be much easier than that. A transition to EVs requires only a change within the automotive industry (for most drivers).
But are we actually seeing any replacements of oil?
Consumption in the US has fallen by more than 15% since it's recent peak in 2007 (while GDP has risen by 3%), and it continues to fall. Production has risen (both C&C and all liquids), and net imports have fallen by 25%.
Didn't past transitions occur in a environment of growth, when making new investments was a good idea, and banks would lend?
The transition from horses to rail occurred mostly during the Long Depression from 1873-1890. The move from horses to tractors and automobiles continued at a very good speed during the depression, as did general electrification. The transition away from oil for electrical generation accelerated during the 1979-1981 recession(s), and CAFE standards rose.
Isn't this expensive?
EVs and their cousins (hybrids, plug-ins, EREVs, etc) already have overall Total Cost of Ownership equal to or lower than ICE vehicles. Making long-haul trucks and coal plants prematurely obsolete is, of course, somewhat expensive, but the US has a big output gap (IOW, we have a lot of people and resources hanging around waiting for something to do), and really, it would cost a lot less than another oil war.
I wish that the national debate were over how to most rapidly transition to an electrified transportation system. Instead, to use my commercial airliner analogy below, Romney and Obama are like two airline passengers arguing over where to go to dinner, oblivious to the fact that the airplane is in a steadily steepening dive. Copy of a relevant Drumbeat post follows:
I think that Greece is a good example of what an uncontrolled crash of a "Wants" based economy looks like.
This is why I think that we need to focus on advocating for training of young people and retraining of older people--in vocational and agricultural skills--in order prepare them for the reality of our ongoing transition from a "Wants" based economy to a "Needs" based economy.
I also think that we need to consider an "Enemy of my enemy is my friend" approach, i.e., I think that we should seek support from people who, while they may not agree with us about Peak Oil/Peak Exports (although I think that the GNE/CNI data speak for themselves), they may agree with us about a desperate need to reform our educational system.
Following are some excerpts from an article I am working on:
A Gradual Descent Versus a Crash
The GNE/CNI Data
I wish that the national debate were over how to most rapidly transition to an electrified transportation system.
I really, really agree with you.
we need to focus on advocating for training of young people and retraining of older people--in vocational and agricultural skills--in order prepare them for the reality of our ongoing transition
I think this is highly unrealistic.
We don't need oil, and we can have a high tech civilization very nicely without it. Agricultural labor productivity does not depend on oil.
It's essential when considering our dependence on oil, to distinguish between various time frames.
In the short term, agriculture is very dependent on oil for farm equipment and transportation, and natural gas for fertilizer and chemicals.
Farming only uses about 1.5% of liquid fuels. In the short and medium term personal transportation will take the brunt of consumption reductions, sparing ag fuel supplies. We'll have plenty of fuel for it for many decades.
In the long-term, it's pretty easy to electrify farm equipment and transportation (including electric rail); use synthetic fuels and biofuels for a small percentage of power where it's really useful (e.g., intense seasonal combine runs); and substitute low-fertilizer crops (e.g., soybeans for corn) and produce ammonia fertilizer via electrolysis. Synthetic fuels and electrolytic hydrogen would be more expensive, but wouldn't increase overall food costs much.
Farming only uses about 1.5% of liquid fuels.
I don't know where you got that statistic from, but FAO estimates that 1/5th of global energy use is for the production, transport, processing, storage, and preparation of food.
We don't need oil, and we can have a high tech civilization very nicely without it.
The Jetson's don't need oil, but we do. Maybe if we had an extra century to make the transition I'd agree with you, but we don't. The only reason oil is diminishing as a percentage of world energy use is because we've hit Peak Oil and the stuff just isn't available at a cost that's competitive with the alternatives -- coal and gas. As I pointed out before, although wind and solar have the highest percentage growth rates, due to their miniscule scale, the increases in coal and gas use far outweigh the additional contributions from wind and solar. Oil is being replaced with other fossil fuels, not with wind and solar. Our dependence on fossil fuels is INCREASING, not decreasing.
Therefore, the question becomes: will we have enough coal and gas to be able to power the exponential growth in wind and solar capacity long enough for them to grow to a size where they can take over the role of supplying the brunt of the energy supply? And secondly, when we are forced to rely on wind, solar and nuclear because fossil fuels simply aren't available anymore, will that be enough energy to keep 10 billion people alive without entering a Malthusian collapse? It all comes down to timing. The assertion that we are bathing in energy is ludicrous.
FAO estimates that 1/5th of global energy use is for the production, transport, processing, storage, and preparation of food.
Most of that is for refrigeration far from the farm. That, of course, is powered by electricity, not liquid fuels.
although wind and solar have the highest percentage growth rates, due to their miniscule scale, the increases in coal and gas use far outweigh the additional contributions from wind and solar.
1) That's a favorite talking point of Fox types, but don't listen to it. Exponential growth wins every time.
2) coal is declining in the US. That's due to both gas and wind growth.
The assertion that we are bathing in energy is ludicrous.
You might want to be more specific. That 100,000TW of solar energy feels pretty abundant to me, especially compared to the 10-20TW of human energy production.
Most of that is for refrigeration far from the farm. That, of course, is powered by electricity, not liquid fuels.
Do you have a reference to back up your "most" claim? To me, "most" implies greater than 50% and I highly doubt that. Refrigeration is only one component of many inputs. The whole food supply chain includes, as I said, everything to do with tilling, planting, fertilizing, irrigating, harvesting, primary processing, primary transporting, heating, refrigerating, final processing, packaging, secondary transporting, selling, final transporting, more refrigerating, cooking, and finally washing your dishes afterwards. A lot of that is powered by liquid fuels, and a lot is from electricity.
That's a favorite talking point of Fox types, but don't listen to it. Exponential growth wins every time.
Your faith that solar and wind energy will save us is based on the premise that "exponential growth wins every time"? What particular aspect of exponential growth are you referring to, because in every system I've ever studied, exponential growth fails every time.
Go to the BP Statistical Review. Bring all the energy sources into the same units and compare the relative contributions of each. Then extend solar's and wind's recent % growth trends (20% in the case of wind and 40% in the case of solar) and you'll see that they won't be of a scale large enough to begin to offset fossil fuels for another 20 years. And you seriously believe that solar will be able to maintain an exponential 40% annual growth rate for 20 straight years???
That's the thing about exponential trends -- they're great fun at small scale, but when they get a bit bigger they tend to not behave exponentially anymore. See Tom Murphy's recent "Ruthless Extrapolation" post. When you adjust for a more realistic growth rate for solar and wind then we're no longer looking at 20 years, more like 100. And believe me, the US will be in deep trouble energy-wise long before even 20 years is up. We're probably looking at 1 or 2 years, if it's lucky. If and when the US can no longer import oil, then upgrading its factories will be of minor concern!
Do you know how all the different energy inputs to factories correlate with one another to make the place come together and actually work? Do you have an idea of how long it takes to make the kinds of radical fundamental changes to our energy systems that are required for a seamless transition away from FF’s, that will pass the test of social cohesion and not result in something like a civil war?
I’ve been working on designs for a major overhaul of a smelter for 5 years now and it’s the project that just keeps coming back. I started in 2007, at which point it had already been open for a couple years. Then the 2008 crash happened and it went into hibernation for a year or so. Then it got re-opened and I’m back at it. We are now at the stage where next year they are going to start implementing some of the new changes to the plant. That is 2013, or 8 years after the upgrade project began (financing began before that). It will take several more years to transition the whole plant in stages, so it will take over 10 years to implement a process upgrade and some energy savings.
You’re trying to tell me that every factory in the US is going to go beyond what the above-mentioned project did and completely overhaul where their energy comes from, all buying pipes and pumps and electrical equipment etc., all at the same time (from whom? Using what energy?), and we’ll have the transition all complete within about 20 years time? You’re dreaming. And by the way, this is an electrical smelter, but it needs lots of oil, tar, and other fossil fuel products to operate.
Do you realize how much silver solar uses and how little there is left in the world? Will manufacturers just find another substitute for silver or use a different process in their solar panels? What is that? They're going to make this substitution and ramp it up to world scale, all within 20 years? How will mine production ramp up that quickly to supply the specialized metals needed for this high tech? I've worked on a few mines as well and again, you’re looking at 10 years to go from deciding to make a capacity increase to actually realizing it.
And we're going to be able to totally overhaul the electrical grid within 20 years to accept this new form of electricity supply that has huge storage problems? See Tom Murphy's "Nation Sized Battery" post. How do you propose we even out supply with demand? A nation of EV’s plugged in? We’re going to do this in 20 years? We’ll need it within 5. There is no way mine production could ramp up that fast to build that many batteries.
The US transition away from oil-fired generation took very roughly 20 years.
Did they use the same power plants with just a different fuel? Because I can pretty much guarantee that they didn’t fully replace all those power plants over 20 years. It’s one thing to shift from burning oil in a boiler to instead burn natural gas, quite another to ditch the boilers altogether and restart from scratch using a totally different energy source.
When steam locomotives wore out, they were invariably replaced by diesel in the mid 1940s. By 1949, almost all steam locomotives were gone.
Look at the percent growth rates for energy over that time span. Without that growth, I guarantee that transition would not have happened like you describe. Growth is finished.
US vehicles reduced their fuel consumption per mile by 50% from about 1978 to about 1990.
Do you have a reference for that? The chart I have shows about a 20% reduction over that period, and since then it’s been pretty much flat with a minor improvement in the last couple years.
a transition away from oil will put stress on a lot of institutions. On the other hand, this isn't any bigger than similar transitions, like going from coal to oil, or from mules to tractors.
It's WAY bigger because, as I explained above, exponential systems don't behave exponentially anymore when they reach a certain size. Those previous transitions all happened when we were in an exponential phase and things could happen quickly. We have now exceeded our limits. It's not the same dynamic.
You claimed in another post that you do indeed provide the answers in your posts, that it's just up to readers to more carefully read what you say and we shall find the answers. But I've scrolled through every one of your posts here and I can't find any reference you make to the big energy picture, in terms of providing real numbers from reliable sources. Please show numbers about how much energy the world, and the US in particular, uses, where it comes from, what the trends are, and what the relative contributions of each are, and furthermore, numbers showing how we’re going to power these monumentally unprecedented transitions you’re advocating in a time when we’re running out of energy, not growing it! You provide lots of individual statistics like, "Car x is y% more efficient than z", followed by a lot of hand waving to relate this to the bigger picture which you then characterize with, "energy isn't a limit".
And I reject the argument that we won't need solar and wind to scale up to the current level of fossil fuels because we can instead make efficiency improvements to offset energy decline. While there are certainly opportunities, they will be harder and harder to make as we run out of energy, and they will soon run up against cold hard laws of physics. There are minimum energy requirements for supporting billions of people on a planet that has exceeded its carrying capacity.
Sorry to pick at you because I'm all for being optimistic if there's a chance things could turn out well since it provides motivation to do the hard work and make the political changes that will be needed to succeed, but there is a difference between being a cautious optimist and a delusional polyanna. I feel you're doing a bit of a disservice to the winds of change by portraying this as something that's going to happen within the framework of a continuation of the BAU growth model. It just isn't going to happen.
Refrigeration is only one component of many inputs.
Yes, but the odd thing is that the mass production/farming end of things is much more efficient than the home consumption end of things.
Here's a source, conveniently on TOD:
"The most energy-intensive segment of the food chain is the kitchen. Much more energy is used to refrigerate and prepare food in the home than is used to produce it in the first place. The big energy user in the food system is the kitchen refrigerator, not the farm tractor. While oil dominates the production end of the food system, electricity dominates the consumption end."
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5533#more
in every system I've ever studied, exponential growth fails every time.
Not at all. Very often, exponential growth simply ends in a nice sigmoid/logistical curve: growth ends gradually in a plateau. Cell phones and automobiles are both examples of that, though maybe the cell phone market isn't quite mature yet.
The point: in 1983 absolute growth in land lines was greater than absolute growth in cell phones, because the cell phone market was small. But, large exponential cell growth has killed land lines.
What's that quote by Bartlett about exponential growth?
Bring all the energy sources into the same units and compare the relative contributions of each.
Don't forget to adjust for energy quality. Electricity is worth about 3x as much as primary heat energy. Also, don't make the common mistake of comparing energy in the electricity market to overall energy consumption: that doesn't really make sense.
they won't be of a scale large enough to begin to offset fossil fuels for another 20 years.
Right now, wind power is about 3.25% of US kWhs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_States ). It only needs to grow at 40% per year for 7 years to get to about 35%.
Will it do that? Probably not, but it certainly could if we as a society chose to. We should choose to, which is part of why I spend time writing stuff like this...
the US will be in deep trouble energy-wise long before even 20 years is up. We're probably looking at 1 or 2 years, if it's lucky.
Clearly you're just thinking about oil (and I am too, mostly, for the moment). The US has plenty of electricity, which is what wind and solar generate. We shouldn't get distracted by wind & solar - the Original Post was about PO, which is a different market.
have an idea of how long it takes to make the kinds of radical fundamental changes to our energy systems that are required for a seamless transition away from FF’s
Again, for the moment let's limit things to PO. Electrifying personal transportation and moving freight to rail is a pretty straightfoward process. EREVs are made in the same factories, and drive on the same roads. Rail already handle more than half of all freight.
I’ve been working on designs for a major overhaul of a smelter for 5 years now
What are you smelting? Just curious.
every factory in the US is going to...completely overhaul where their energy comes from...within about 20 years time?
1st, that 20 year timeframe was framed by a question about a WWII style effort, which would be a horse of a different color. 2nd, I think that answer wasn't well written, as I agree with you: it would make no sense to try to eliminate 100% of FFs within 20 years. No, it would make much more sense to try to achieve 75% reductions in fuel consumption by road transportation and coal consumption for electrical generation. Those would be ambitious, but doable.
this is an electrical smelter, but it needs lots of oil, tar, and other fossil fuel products to operate.
Any idea of the actual numbers? I'd be very curious how much oil, tar & other FFs were needed.
Do you realize how much silver solar uses and how little there is left in the world?
Silver conducts power and and is a reflective substrate in crystalline PV. Copper can conduct power and aluminum can reflect. Substitutes might be used for the reflector and rear conductor before the front conductors. Thin film PV uses no silver. The PV industry leader with the lowest product costs in 2011 was First Solar, which only makes thin film PV. Silicon PV production costs continue to fall even as the price of silver rises: takes only 0.1 grams of silver per watt for a traditional silicon PV panel.
this new form of electricity supply that has huge storage problems? See Tom Murphy's "Nation Sized Battery" post.
I think Tom Murphy is well intentioned, but his posts in general, and this one in particular, are exercises in tearing apart straw men.I objected to his article, and he replied: "I'm not saying we can't come up with adequate solutions: just that scaling up lead-acid will not do the job."
A shortage of lead isn't the primary problem with LA. The primary problem is that the large capital cost of LA needs to be amortized over 300-1,00 deep discharge equivalents (perhaps 100 per year). That doesn't fit with a need for extra power on a seasonal basis: perhaps 1-2 times per year. Pumped storage is a more extreme example of high capital cost paired with high efficiency and low operating cost: used daily for 30 years it's extremely cost effective.
What's needed is something with very low capital costs, even if the operating costs are higher. That's why NG peakers and diesel generators are popular for this. In a non-FF world balancing solutions include supply diversity (including negatively correlated wind & solar; hydro; nuclear; geothermal, wave, tidal, etc); geographical dispersion; Demand Side Management; storage of H2, synthetic methane, ammonia, compressed air, etc; modest amounts of biomass (wood, etc).
So, LA or any electrochemical battery is really just the wrong kind of solution - it's like trying to use a hammer to drive a screw.
I can pretty much guarantee that they didn’t fully replace all those (oil) power plants over 20 years.
Actually, I believe they mostly did. Coal and nuclear plants ramped up, and oil plants were junked. Don't forget, 20 years is the majority of the useful lifetime for most plants, and they were *very* expensive to run.
US vehicles reduced their fuel consumption...chart I have shows about a 20% reduction over that period
Looks like my memory was off: light trucks improved their efficiency by about 62% from about 76 to 91, which is about a 38% reduction. Cars improved their efficiency by about 50% from about 76 to 91, which is about a 33% reduction. Of course, we weren't really trying very hard, as shown by the fact that engine power increased significantly in that period.
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/10/20/51230/831
numbers showing how we’re going to power these monumentally unprecedented transitions you’re advocating in a time when we’re running out of energy, not growing it!
I think you're getting at oil inputs into manufacturing, and EROEI.
Oil inputs into manufacturing are relatively small. Again, we have plenty of electricity, the main thing needed by manufacturing.
EROEI: Wind is at about 50:1, so it will be easy to afford. Unfortunately, solar's EROEI isn't as well documented, in part because of the very rapid pace of change in the industry. About 15 years ago I think researchers decided that it was "good enough", and studies in that area were no longer attractive. Given that the cost of solar panels has dropped below $1 per peak watt (and full installations in Germany are below $2), it seems pretty clear that it is indeed "good enough".
Nick, it would be nice if you could come up with some answers rather than cut and paste repeatedly. Just saying something often enough does not make it true. Also many of the arguments that you continue to use do not pass the logic test.
For example,
For the first part to happen, then logically something has happened to peoples ability to spend the money on their private transportation, most likely much higher prices of oil. Following this line of thinking, at some point the oil got more expensive over a period of time and before people were forced to abandon their private transport they spent an increasing percentage of their income on fuel. At the same time the farmers were paying more for fuel and food prices rose.
Suddenly you have the scenario where discretionary spending is reduced in the economy, unemployment in discretionary industries rises and the economy goes into recession. A new car is in the category of discretionary spending, an old exixting one will do the job. Remember what happened to the carmakers in 2008?
Another wave of the hand, problem solved. Except of course, it isn't.
The whole "put freight on electric trains" argument does not hold water as it does not understand logistics. Typically businesses load goods onto trucks to go to a final destination, even interstate. It is the double and triple handling that is the killer cost wise by using rail. If you have to truck something to the rail from the warehouse, unload it using forklifts, store it, then load it again with forklifts when the train arrives, then at the other end unload it from the train, store it until the truck arrives, then load it again to take to the delivery point your efficiency is way down. It is also possible that the overall energy use is greater with this method when all things are considered.
The simple fact is that with vastly larger and spread out populations in cities, the businesses that need goods transported are not all near rail points. In fact the percentage is quite low for those in reach at both ends without the use of trucks and the consequent multi-handling.
You keep repeating this even though it is plain wrong. So as to keep the repetition going, let me repeat from a prior drumbeat, if we had no oil or FF tomorrow then civilization would collapse by next week, ergo we do need oil and FF.
Considering the growth rate of wind power has declined from above 30% pa in 2009 to less than 15% in 2012, where is all this energy coming from?? Currently wind provides less than 1/400th of world energy consumption and with the declining growth rate is clearly not the answer. We've discussed solar before but you changed the conversation to wind as solar does not cut it either.
EREVs require oil and currently FF for the electricity, your the one who keeps stating that we don't need oil or FF, then you use the vehicle that uses both as your example, care to explain that logic?
When the ICE car runs out of fuel, it is not too difficult to get a few litres in a jerry can from close by (I've had people knock on my door after running out of fuel down the road), and be on their way to the nearest petrol station, fill up and complete the next 300km of their journey in the next 3-4 hours. An EV driver runs out of power down the road and....... The car must be towed to a power source, then there is the wait of however many hours for the car to recharge, then the journey continues, but of course they wont get the 300km to their destination as the range is not that far.
Please explain how the EV is a trade-up and not a trade down again??
I don't know how commuting is free, but assuming you meant carpooling, it is certainly not free. There is a cost of inconvenience and time. Most commuters prefer the time and convenience. How could this be changed in weeks as you suggest?
Again your arguments defy logic. ANE has declined from ~40mbd to ~35mbd between 05-11, which is why oil is over $110/bbl. This high price has enabled all sorts of expensive extraction methods, which has led to the production plateau instead of decline, so far. Producing more now has to mean higher decline rates later. When we start to go down the back-slope of peak oil, ANE will go into a rapid decline forcing oil to unheard of levels while crippling the economies of importing countries. The investment climate in such a situation will not allow for a rapid change-over to electric, there just wont be the funds available.
The objections you raise to shifting freight from truck to rail are *ALL* being resolved. Just too slowly for the common good.
The clearest indicator of this is that Class I RRs are investing 18% of their GROSS revenues into capital projects. This is far higher than any other industry. Add to this some economic development $ from the states. There is a compelling investment opportunity, only projects with IRR of 21% and higher get done ATM.
The number of multi-modal transfer projects are exploding.
Just 7 years ago, no Walmart distribution center was served by rail. Several new ones are. The number of factories and warehouses served by rail are expanding.
And this is despite the competition getting part of the $101 billion subsidy. And RRs paying property taxes on their roads.
MUCH more needs to be done - but has not yet.
But the rational economic choice is to move more than half the current truck freight to rail.
Alan
Alan,
When you look up Walmart logistics from their site, rail does not get a mention. Instead you get the following..
"Walmart’s 158 distribution centers are hubs of activity for our business"
" Walmart logistics has a fleet of 6,500 tractors, 55,000 trailers and more than 7,000 drivers."
"Every distribution center supports 90 to 100 stores in a 200-mile radius."
I did however find this add fro a Walmart Distribution Center for sale...
http://www.exp1031.com/pdfs/Walmart%20D.C.%20-%20Statesboro,%20GA.pdf
..but in the add it states "The property has railway access, but it is currently not being used".
I hope it is not one of the 7 you mentioned.
FEC’s Ft. Pierce intermodal ramp facility is just a few miles from the huge Wal-Mart Distribution Center located in Ft. Pierce. FEC makes it easy for motor carriers to ship trailers destined for the Ft. Pierce area by providing destination drayage shuttle service to and from Wal-Mart Center. With an offering of one-train per day to and from Ft. Pierce, a quick turn-around on equipment creates a balanced lane for customers.
http://fecrwy.com/intermodal-customers/ramp-terminals
This is roll-on/roll-off service (ship the trailer as well as the container). A railroad owned truck tractor will haul your trailer from the railyard to Walmart & back.
Alan
it would be nice if you could come up with some answers rather than cut and paste repeatedly
I repeat things until people read them carefully, and respond with something new that makes me change my mind. Most of your questions would be answered if you would read that material carefully.
Suddenly you have the scenario where discretionary spending is reduced in the economy, unemployment in discretionary industries rises and the economy goes into recession. A new car is in the category of discretionary spending, an old exixting one will do the job. Remember what happened to the carmakers in 2008?
Even at the depth of the Great Recession car sales were at least 60% of normal. During the Depression business investment still held up.
Used cars were and are still turning over very 3 years, giving high-mileage/low income drivers an opportunity to switch to a more efficient vehicle.
And finally, even with currently high oil prices car sales have recovered to about 14M per year, which is pretty strong.
It is the double and triple handling that is the killer cost wise by using rail.
Inter-modal container handling is well tested and is pretty efficient. More importantly, current distribution patterns were shaped under cheap oil. With higher oil prices the optimal mix of rail & truck has shifted sharply towards rail.
Considering the growth rate of wind power has declined from above 30% pa in 2009 to less than 15% in 2012, where is all this energy coming from??
I've answered this question before - you didn't absorb it, I guess. I'll say it again, in different words.
There are good answers to your questions about wind/solar, but, they're a distraction at themoment. It's not very important to look at wind generation when analyzing PO, because we have plenty of electricity from other sources. Now, in the long-term we'll need to switch away from finite FFs, and of course we should switch ASAP to deal with Climate Change, but those are different questions.
EREVs require oil and currently FF for the electricity, your the one who keeps stating that we don't need oil or FF, then you use the vehicle that uses both as your example, care to explain that logic?
A Volt uses about 10% as much liquid fuel. On the one hand, I think that's a pretty good transitional vehicle. On the other hand, that volume of liquid fuel is small enough that it can be supplied by ethanol.
An EV driver runs out of power down the road and.......
That's the beauty of an EREV - it's dual fuel. Of course, eventually batteries will be larger, they'll charge faster, there will be lots of recharging points, etc, etc.
carpooling...is certainly not free. There is a cost of inconvenience and time.
True, it's not an ideal long-term strategy. OTOH, it would work; it would eliminate congestion, which is why there are HOV lanes; and smart phones and modern telecom are making carpooling much easier.
Part of the point here is that we could reduce oil consumption very quickly, if we wanted to. If the alternative were really economic doom, carpooling wouldn't seem so bad, would it?
Producing more now has to mean higher decline rates later.
Mostly not. Tar sands and tight/shale oil weren't economic with $15 oil, and now they are. We're producing oil that simply would not have been produced otherwise.
Please explain how the EV is a trade-up and not a trade down again??
Well there is the fact that the limited range will keep us from being behind the wheel for as many hours--that could be seen as a trade up as more time/activities might actually require actual leg/aerobic exertion. This in turn would reduce obesity and improve cardio health. I don't think reducing the distances we drive at a crack is really all that much of a trade down, the EV range really does handle the big bulk of what really needs to be driven but...
I don't know how commuting is free, but assuming you meant carpooling, it is certainly not free. There is a cost of inconvenience and time. Most commuters prefer the time and convenience. How could this be changed in weeks as you suggest?
...actually with so many people needing to work two and three jobs just to keep the rent/mortgage paid, food on the table and health insurance coverage intact the massive switch to ride sharing is not near as feasible as Nick claims. The varied schedules and varied direction between different jobs are a couple of major reasons why the two daily rush hours have morphed into two daily rush couple/three hours with very heavy traffic in between them in the major cities.
People working two and three jobs very often do not have enough time in the day to make it to all of them without their own personal motor vehicle transport...and these people will not be forking over the money for an EV any time soon...this segment of the population is growing not shrinking and reduced disposable income has these workers in a real vice. Their older cars suck up a lot of their money (tags and insurance are felt much more by the poorer older car driver) but without them there is not enough time in the day to keep the rest of their operation afloat.
This chart says a whole lot about this recovery and which boats it is floating
(image linked document 138KB PDF)
...actually with so many people needing to work two and three jobs just to keep the rent/mortgage paid
You might want to quantify exactly how many people are working 2 & 3 jobs. It's certainly not most people.
Now, I agree that carpooling won't work for everyone. OTOH, it's bigger than bus & rail already, it's really cheap, and it's getting easier everyday with smart phones and telecom. It would eliminate congestion, which is why there are HOV lanes.
The point is that we could reduce oil consumption very quickly, if we wanted to. If the alternative were really economic doom, carpooling wouldn't seem so bad, would it?
In the long run, different vehicles make more sense. The average vehicle gets resold every 3 years: there's plenty of opportunity for higher mileage/lower income drivers to move to higher MPG vehicles, even if they drive used.
Nick,we at TOD know the solutions . But,but and but what about the rest of the world ? Do you expect people to change behavior ? Believe me it is + 10 on a scale of 1- 10 . I have been at it for the last five years and with nothing worth the effort(no, I do not give up and keep on shouting) .What makes sense to a TOD guy is nonsense to the general public . BTW in the long run we are all dead
Do you expect people to change behavior ?
Yes, definitely. It's happening now, in many ways. It's just not nearly as fast as we would like, especially to deal with Climate Change.
Nick,it is not what we like . It is what nature likes that is important . Like I said " Too little , too late ". The pie is baking and the goose is being cooked ,when will they be ready for the table ? Your guess is as good as mine .
I'll will throw out one undocumented number and bet it is right. Way more than 1% of the wage earners are working more than one job. (I just mention 1% as it is the top 1% that captured 93% of the 2009-2010 income growth).
But I'm not going shake down the numbers on two and three job workers, the increase in part time relative to full time jobs is well documented and holding multiple part time jobs is very common. I'll let you find the numbers since you say Commuting is free, fast, and highly scalable, given that the average car only has about 1.15 passengers. Double that, and reduce overall fuel consumption by 25%. It could be done in weeks or months.
Now since you threw out the 1.15 per car number I want to make sure you aren't including commercial vehicles in that total--you know dead heading cab drivers, delivery route drivers and the like. Very likely these groups have tightened their belts most of the notches they can with current fleet and will not be chipping in to help decrease the average single passenger mile number.
I wonder how many of those single passenger miles were driven to locations other than work--and how much that number has changed in the last ten years or so--it would seem those miles get chopped first and fewer would still be on the block now. The 25% reduction in fleet fuel consumption in a month or so you envision would require something beyond mere voluntary commuter arrangements. Ride sharing with strangers will not take off quickly in this day and age, not without some big push (the disregarding of which would entail major negative consequences) from 'the man.'
I've never argued that in the long run different vehicles don't make sense. Of course the up front cost of batteries seem to be keeping EVs at a disadvantage in Europe where relatively efficient km/l (I'm guessing that is their version of mpg) ICE rigs are far outselling EVs even with high tax European petrol.
cab drivers, delivery route drivers and the like.
Those groups have different strategies: they're going to hybrids and CNG ASAP.
Ride sharing with strangers will not take off quickly in this day and age
On the one hand, it would be an emergency measure. OTOH, your fellow passenger would start where you start, and end up where you end up, so how strange would they be? On the 3rd hand(!), carpooling is already bigger than mass transit, right now.
ICE rigs are far outselling EVs even with high tax European petrol.
As best I can tell cost conscious Euro drivers go to diesel, which appears to be subsidized in a way that gasoline isn't, due to pressure from industrial diesel users.
Those groups have different strategies: they're going to hybrids and CNG ASAP
I covered that when I said with the current fleet
We are addressing the ability of the US to go from 1.15 passenger/car mile to 2.30 passenger/car mile in a month or so.
My question is whether or not the 1.15 passenger per car mile is the segregated number as you present it to be or is it actually 1.15 passenger per road driven vehicle mile. If it is a segregated number (as you present it) it will be easier to double than if it is not segregated but rather includes all commercial miles driven.
I don't think it would make much difference. The numbers of those vehicles are small, even though they use a very disproportionate amount of fuel.
The vehicle miles driven by those vehicles is inordinately large as well and may make a significant difference, because like you say they use a disproportionately large amount of fuel (though size of the rigs has a lot to do with that).
Just asking for real numbers here not what difference you think it would make without checking them. I want to know just how much ride sharing commuting will have to implement to reduce oil consumption 25% in a month or so.
Heck extra miles to pick up and drop off the extra passengers might knock 5-15% of the ride share savings right off the top. Personally on ten to twelve mile commutes I've had to add a mile or more each way to collect and deposit fellow workers--adding in the start and stop and occasional wait time and that easily sucked up 10-20% more fuel than I would have used if I just drove myself to work.
You gave the numbers break them down, make them work...it might well show that it will take 3.3 average commuters per vehicle to get the savings you are talking, maybe even 4.5. See I can toss out unsupported numbers too. When you are talking 25% fuel use cut in a month or so all done by commuter ride sharing we need way harder numbers than you gave and what I am now assuming is just the US fleet average of 1.15 passengers per road driven vehicle mile.
All that "wasted" use of fuel is someones job providing a good or service.
I'm thinking of the 50% of overall liquid fuel consumption that goes to personal transportation. That could be reduced easily and quickly, and without anyone losing their job.
Carpooling works nicely: about 10% of all commuting is done via carpooling, more than mass transit and 3x as much as is done via commuter rail. Commuting is free, fast, and highly scalable, given that the average car only has about 1.15 passengers. Double that, and reduce overall fuel consumption by 25%. It could be done in weeks or months.
Chevy Volts take as much labor to manufacture as vehicles that use 10x as much fuel. No problem there.
The average vehicle gets resold every 3 years: there's plenty of opportunity for people to move to high MPG vehicles, even if they drive used.
A better question is What part of manufacturing, transportation etc, can currently exist without oil?
I've already answered that. Most manufacturing runs on electricity, not liquid fuels. See my other comments for more info.
How is it that you don't understand the difference from trading up to a better source of power (easier, cheaper) to trading down?
EREVs are nicer than ICEs: quieter, more reliable, more powerful, etc. Synthetic fuel is generally better than fuels refined from oil. Rail is a much nicer way to travel, and works really well for freight: more than 50% of US freight already goes by rail.
See my other comments regarding transitions.
This is what happens when you project the future just using linear extrapolations from the present.
If much of the mid-East stopped exporting oil then their revenues would slow to a trickle. They need to sell oil to buy goods from other countries. So all sorts of feed-back loops will kick in because they'd rather not starve because they can't import food w/o selling oil. So here are the things that will happen:
-They'll get rid of domestic subsidies on oil
-They'll switch to natural gas, solar, wind, etc for electricity generation.
-The price will go up such that they don't need to sell as much to get the same amount of revenue
-Importers will become more efficient with their use of oil such that they don't need as much of it.
All of these things are currently happening and will continue happening. I don't mean to say the CNE analysis is all wrong. It is indeed very important analysis. But it shows us a problem that will force many changes, not an accurate prediction of the future.
Speculawyer ,how very correct and how very wrong .Let us take your assumptions one at a time .
1.Subsidies will be removed .Yes but then the House of Saud and the House of Sabah will be no more . Welcome to Wahibbi land .There is a subject called political science .
2.They will switch to NG,solar,wind etc . NG they don't have enough and Iran,Qatar are the big boys .Do you expect Iran to supply KSA ? Solar : With all the dust storms you sure have a problem of cleaning them and as to wind the less said th better .By the way the sandstorms are highly abrasive for the wings of the turbines .
3. Yes ,possible .But how high ? Definitely not so high so as to crash the economic system .Who will buy their oil if such happens ?
4.The low hanging fruit is done for . Now the importers have to cut to the bone and make drastic(not around the fringes) . I know all those arguments of car pooling and blah blah . Are we prepared to adjust ? Curtailment is not suffering .Several years ago the chief at NYPD said that if people had their way they go from the bedroom to the bathroom in the car . We already eat (Mcdrive) in our cars and have sex(backseat) in our cars . Difficult to see how change is going to happen until you hit the public with a hammer .
Yes, changes are happening .The problem ? Too little ,not much time .You cannot clear a ravine in two jumps . BTW I always find your viewpoint interesting .
Well I can sarcastically dismiss your view as well. OK, the Saudis will just stop exporting all oil and they'll all just starve because they could no longer import food but at least they'll enjoy their last few days driving around in Lamborghini's with 80 cent per gallon gasoline.
Of course that won't happen!
Subsidies can and will be removed. Iran did it! Is it going to be painful? Yes. Are the people going to be upset? Yes. But they'll deal with it. When faced with the prospect of not being able to afford food, they'll gladly deal with ditching the Range Rover for a Prius.
The economists constantly get hammered here on TOD and they do deserve a fair amount of mockery. But they do have a point . . . changing prices changes the way people behave and what happens. If six years ago I posted "By 2012, the USA will import less than half the oil it consumes." I would have been flamed like crazy. Heck, *I* would have flamed the person that said that. Yet here we are. Higher prices worked to reduce domestic consumption AND increase domestic production by making previously uneconomic plays like the tight oil in the Bakken very profitable.
I don't think any of this is going to be easy. It is not easy as we currently know right now with relatively high unemployment and high gasoline prices. But over time people adjust.
And let me add another to the Saudi adjustment:
5. Exports of heavy sour crude from Saudi Arabia will increase over time as it becomes more valuable. As oil prices go up, people will realize that heavy sour oil is very valuable and they'll modify existing refineries to handle it. Heck, oil stained dirt is big business in Canada. Over time, that heavy sour crude that is just left in the ground now will become very big.
Good thoughts. One quibble:
It is not easy as we currently know right now
Things are hard because of our dependence on oil. They will get easier as we kick the habit.
Note that of the top 33 net oil exporters in 2005 (countries with 100,000 bpd or more of net exports in 2005), 18 of them showed flat or declining production from 2005 to 2011 (Primarily BP data, total petroleum liquids). Of these 18, only one--Nigeria--showed a production decline rate (-0.6%/year) in excess of the net export decline rate (-0.5%/year), 2005 to 2011.
Denmark is a more typical case history of a net oil exporter, showing a production decline, that has successfully cut their consumption (via heavy taxes on fuel consumption). Their 2004 to 2011 rate of change numbers (BP):
(P = Production, C = Consumption, NE = Net Exports.)
P: -7.9%/year
C: -1.0%/year
NE: -19.9%/year
ECI Ratio (P/C): -7.0%/year
Here is the key problem:
In Denmark’s case, their 2004 to 2005 net export decline rate was 12.5%/year, while their 2004 to 2011 net export decline rate accelerated to 19.9%/year.
In simple percentage terms, a 43% decline in Denmark's production from 2004 to 2011 resulted in a 75% decline in net exports, even as consumption fell by 6.5%.
Incidentally, we lost an average of one major net exporter per year from 2005 to 2011 (either below 100,000 bpd in net exports in 2011, e.g., Denmark, or in net importer status, e.g., Vietnam).
No sarcasm intended and like I said I appreciate your POV . But to get back to the issues:
1. I never said that KSA will stop exporting oil . Just that there are political consequences . Which way will the cards fall ? My guess is as good as yours .
2.Subsidies can be removed . Yes, but then again this has its consequences . If it was so simple why not try it in the US where oil is subsidised (indirectly) thru the MIC,tax breaks to the oil companies.I wish it was so simple .
3. Higher prices reduced consumption .Yes but tanked the economy . Take your pick high prices ,high unemployment or low prices, low unemployment . Can't have it both ways . You can have it fast and cheap or safe . As to increase in production from shale plays etc . It hardly makes a dent in the import bill by value and that is why the US has a trade deficit on a regular basis . For further on the increased production read Rune on the red queen analogy .This is a short time spike in production and will shortly decline and possibly just end as the sweet spots pan out .
4. So we agree on this one . Only difference being you say people will adjust ,I say people are going to go crazy . Only time will tell just like PO in the rear view mirror .
5. Heavy sour : Possible as a matter of fact I think very much possible but not 100% . As of today there are no plans by any NOC or oil majors to modify .Only KSA is putting up a refinery to process the high vanadium content heavy oil coming from its future Manifa field . If conditions were so rosy why the sale and closure of refineries this year ? The problem now is the money . Like Cuba Gooding or was it Tom Cruise says "Show me the money"
Meanwhile, as noted above, if we look at nine years of declines in the GNE/CNI ratio*, in three year segments, the rate of decline in the ratio has accelerated. While we all agree that China & India will not be consuming 100% of GNE in 18 years, the fact remains that the data show, through 2011, that we are headed toward that theoretical point at an accelerating rate of decline. As noted above, I compared it to passengers on an airplane discussing dinner plans, as the plane noses over into an ever steepening dive into the ground. And Greece is an example of what that crash might look like for the US.
*Link to post up the thread, with data & definitions:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9560#comment-924707
I think you'd find something very similar if you looked at Japanese imports before they hit the wall 20 years ago.
China's resource consumption is a bubble, based on unsustainable capital spending.
If Japan is the model for China, I wonder what the difference is between Japanese per capita oil consumption (now & 20 years ago) and current Chinese per capita oil consumption?
Japan:
1990: 4,900,000 per wikipedia.
2001: 5,290,000 per Index Mundi
2010: 4,452,000 "
I don't think per capita is that useful, as most Chinese oil consumption is industrial/commercial. Personal consumption may rise, but not as quickly as I/C consumption falls.
Based on BP production data and Wikipedia population data, for 2011, it appears that Japan has cut their annual per capita consumption (total petroleum liquids) to 12.6 barrels per year/per person (total consumption of 4.4 mbpd, 2011 population of 128 million).
In 2011, China's consumption was 2.7 barrels per year/per person (total consumption of 9.8 mbpd, 2011 population of 1.35 billion).
So, if China were to hit Japan's current (reduced) level of consumption, at the current Chinese population of 1.35 billion, this would imply a total consumption level of 47 mpbd, versus 2011 Chinese production of about 4 mbpd, implying a projected net Chinese import demand (assuming zero population growth and flat production*) of about 43 mbpd, versus current 2011 Global Net Exports of 44 mbpd.
In any case, it's hard to know what may happen, but what has happened is clear. The rate of decline in the ratio of Global Net Exports (GNE) to Chindia's Net Imports has accelerated in recent years, so through 2011 we were headed, at an accelerating rate, to the point in time that the Chindia region alone would theoretically consume 100% of GNE.
*Of course, a more likely scenario is increasing population and declining production, but I'm not sure what effect the one child policy is having on China, other than potentially destabilizing the country, given the shortage of females
if China were to hit Japan's current (reduced) level of consumption, at the current Chinese population of 1.35 billion, this would imply a total consumption level of 47 mpbd
Yes, and I was saying that I don't think that means much. Japan uses oil for central electrical generation, as it has no coal. China has a great deal of coal. As best I can tell, much of it's oil consumption is for very inefficient diesel generation at manufacturing plants because of an inadequate Chinese grid. That consumption will go away as the Chinese I/C capital expenditure bubble ends, and as the grid becomes adequate.
The rate of decline in the ratio of Global Net Exports (GNE) to Chindia's Net Imports has accelerated in recent years
And that very likely means nothing, as the Chinese I/C capital expenditure bubble is ending even as we speak.
Just as Japan's I/C capital expenditure bubble ended 20 years ago, ending their meteoric growth in oil consumption.
"Very likely means nothing." An interesting way to (indirectly) characterize a (so far) relentless, and (so far) accelerating, rate of decline in the GNE/CNI ratio. As they say, we will have to agree to disagree.
Incidentally, even if the rate of increase in Chinese oil consumption slows, which seems likely, note that their production appears to have stopped increasing, which will result in additional demand for net imports.
EIA data show that US net oil imports increased at 11%/year from 1948 to 1970, when US production peaked. US net imports then increased at 14%/year from 1970 to 1977 (when North Slope production began to come on line, and then demand fell later in the Seventies). The 2005 to 2011 rate of increase in Chinese net oil imports was 9.1%/year (BP).
Jeffrey/Westexas,
I would like to thank you again for your work and persistence with the ELM numbers (Sam gets these thanks as well). I personally feel that it is a huge part of the peak oil problem that goes totally un-noticed by most. As this thread shows, some of those who do notice, just don't believe it.
Real numbers in the real world is what matters and if we cannot make people here in this forum understand what is happening, then where do we go?
As your model increases in the number of former exporters who are now importers, do any of the rates of change seem to be varying compared to the original former exporters? In other words is your confidence growing or shrinking in regards to the future outcomes of oil exports as portrayed by the model?
I have noticed that I generally qet qualitative objections to what is a mathematical observation, with way too much time debating the endgame, e.g., what happens as Saudi consumption approaches production levels.
Here is the "Net Export Math" problem, which is not subject to debate:
A corollary to this is if the rate of increase in consumption exceeds the rate of increase in production, net exports can go to zero, even before production peaks, e.g., the US & China.
There is actually a slow increase in attention to some aspects of "Net Export Math," e.g., the recent Citibank report on Saudi Arabia, but almost no one is focusing on depletion.
Let's look at post-peak CNE (Cumulative Net Exports) for the ELM (Export Land Model), assuming a production peak in 2000, and for the Six Country Case History*, where combined production virtually stopped increasing in 1995. Export Land took 9 years to go to zero net exports, and the Six Country Case History took 12 years, after 1995.
ELM post-2000 CNE:
60% shipped in first third of decline
32% shipped in second third of decline
8% shipped in final third of decline
Six Country Case History post-1995 CNE:
53% shipped in first third of decline
39% shipped in second third of decline
8% shipped in final third of decline
Note that the ELM showed that 92% of post-2000 CNE from "Export Land" were shipped two-thirds of the way into the net export decline period. This is also what the Six Country actual case history showed too, i.e., 92% of Six Country post-1995 CNE were shipped two-thirds of the way into the net export decline period.
If Saudi Arabia, by 2030 or so, has already shipped about 90% of their post-2005 CNE, I don't think that it will make much difference to the world economy if they are able to maintain one mbpd or so of net exports after 2030. For example, based on the 2005 to 2011 data, I currently estimate that post-2005 Saudi CNE will be on the order of about 45 Gb. Let's assume that they ship 45Gb through 2034, and that they then maintain one mbpd in net exports from 2034 to 2044. This would boost their post-2005 CNE to about 49 Gb.
This is my principal point regarding depletion. In my opinion, the post-2005 CNE depletion crisis is happening right here. Right now.
And if we look at estimated post-2005 Available CNE (Global CNE less Chindia's Net Imports), based on extrapolating the 2005 to 2011 rate of decline in the GNE/CNI ratio (ratio of Global Net Exports** to Chindia's Net Imports), I estimate that the remaining volume of post-2005 Available CNE is falling at the rate of almost 1% per month. Note that if we extrapolate the 1995 to 2001 rate of decline in the Six Country ECI ratio (ratio of production to consumption), it produced an estimate for post-1995 Six Country CNE that was too optimistic.
Here is the simplest way yet I have found to portray the wide gap between production and CNE depletion. The chart shows normalized Six Country production, with 1995 production = 100%, and it shows remaining post-1995 CNE by year, with post-1995 CNE = 100%.
By the end of 1999, when production was slightly above the 1995 production rate, they had already shipped 53% of post-1995 CNE. So, even as production increased slightly, post-1995 CNE were being depleted at the rate of 1.6% per month. This is a prime example of how an "Undulating Plateau" in production hid a catastrophic CNE depletion rate.
*Six Country Model (IUKE + VAM), Indonesia, UK, Egypt, Vietnam, Argentina, Malaysia; as of 2011, all members of AFPEC, Association of Former Petroleum Exporting Countries
**Top 33 net exporters in 2005, BP + Minor EIA data, total petroleum liquids
Yes, but you can check the numbers for oil containing stuff in a wind turbine, it's only about 12 kg per 1 kW installed power.
So you calculate the amount of energy that is necessary to produce these 12 kg as syn-fuel (200 kWh-400 kWh), this will eat less than 1% of the life-time production of the turbine. The EROEI is still ~40. The rest (concrete, steel, iron) can without any problem be produced with electricity, this energy by the way is already included in the EROEI of ~40.
You can estimate the price of syn-fuel, lets take 400 USD /barrel (2.5o USD/liter), this adds only 30 USD per kW installed power, or less than 3% of the price of a kW.
My conclusion is, that the alleged dependency of renewable on fossil energy is nonsense.
Nick, your statements are in some cases flat-out wrong. Virtually every industry--and I say "virtually" only out of respect of not being blindly absolute--depends in some way on fossil fuels. Even those electric earth movers need lubricants, and the supply train at some point certainly will.
With regard to personal electric vehicles, a comparative study on the environmental impacts of internal combustion versus electric vehicles has been done, and the results are closer than you might think:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00532.x/full
And when scientists--as I have read, but don't have a specific citation--say that in order to make much more efficient batteries, we will need to improve our understanding of physics and thermodynamics, I start to think that electric batteries as a viable power source for personal vehicles are quite far off. A wholesale switch of an entire sector--personal transportation--is in fact a pretty traumatic revolution you're proposing, and also one entirely beyond the capacity of our industry as we now know it. It's a classic case of the cure likely being worse than the disease.
A wholesale switch of an entire sector--personal transportation--is in fact a pretty traumatic revolution you're proposing, and also one entirely beyond the capacity of our industry as we now know it.
I disagree, because we did it before, in just twenty years.
From 1897 to 1916, over 500 cities, towns and villages built streetcar lines. In several richer rural areas, vast networks of interurban rail lines were built.
This was a nation with very limited "advanced technology", a half rural, half urban population and 3% to 4% of the real GDP of today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streetcar_systems_in_the_United_States
http://www.railsandtrails.com/Maps/Interurban/default.htm
Best Hopes for Understanding the Possible. We once put the French to shame with our efforts,
Alan
That wasn't so much a switch as new construction. There wasn't an existing infrastructure to be dismantled and simultaneously replaced.
Virtually every industry depends in some way on fossil fuels.
Almost every industry "uses" fossil fuels, but they could operate without them, with a proper transition.
electric earth movers need lubricants
Lubricants were produced before the age of oil, and they will be produced long after. We don't need FF to produce small amounts of hydrocarbons.
a comparative study on the environmental impacts of internal combustion versus electric vehicles has been done
1) We're not talking about environmental impacts, we're talking about dealing with PO.
2) A careful reading of that study tells you that it's simply a warning that EVs have to be produced and powered thoughtfully to achieve lower impacts.
when scientists--as I have read, but don't have a specific citation--say that in order to make much more efficient batteries, we will need to improve our understanding of physics and thermodynamics
Yes, you'll need a citation, because that's unrealistic.
a classic case of the cure likely being worse than the disease.
Nah. We need to stop listening to Fox news...
Um, Nick, most of those pre-indsutrial lubricants were whale or vegetable-based oil. And they weren't being put into use on anything like the industrial scales we know now. I'd also love to know what source of energy and propulsion you blithely say will replace jet fuel and engines for air travel. Perhaps that particular rabbit it still hiding at the bottom of its hat.
A thoughtful reading of that EV environmental impact study, on the contrary, shows that EVs still require considerable consumption of fossil fuels during their lifetime: the overall reduction in greenhouse gases may be inferred to mean reduced fossil fuel consumption. It is important to understand that that is a reduction, not elimination. I do believe that electric vehicles have an important role in any escape we are to make from fossil fuel dependency, but I'm not so dreamy about it.
Here's the link on the speculative future of batteries:
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201207/electriccars.cfm
(btw I absolutely never watch Fox News, aka the conservative porn network. I have much better sources of entertainment.)
Nick, most of those pre-indsutrial lubricants were whale or vegetable-based oil. And they weren't being put into use on anything like the industrial scales we know now.
Interesting question. Per wikipedia, lubricants consume about 700k bpd ("In 1999, an estimated 37,300,000 tons of lubricants were consumed worldwide.[1] Automotive applications dominate, but other industrial, marine, and metal working applications are also big consumers of lubricants. Although air and other gas-based lubricants are known, e.g., in fluid bearings), liquid and solid lubricants dominate the market, especially the former." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubricant ).
Now, if we switch to electric transportation we'll reduce that volume by at least 50%. So, we're left with about half of 1% of the current world oil production. Could we synthesize that from other hydrocarbons? Of course.
what source of energy and propulsion you blithely say will replace jet fuel and engines for air travel.
Air transport is the most difficult area in which to eliminate fossil fuels, but on the other hand:
We're going to have fossil fuels for many decades, should we want them, albeit at lower levels than today - we have time to find the cheapest and most convenient way to replace aviation FF consumption.
In the long run, 3x greater efficiency is possible, and synthetic FF-free fuel is unlikely to be more than 3x as expensive per gallon.
If you want, I can provide links and more detail.
It is important to understand that that is a reduction, not elimination.
If a society or consumer wants to deal with PO, then HEV/PHEV/EREV/EVs make sense. If they want to deal with Climate Change, then moving from coal to wind (or solar or nuclear) is the top priority.
The nice thing about EVs: they mostly charge at night, when wind & nuclear have more market share, and need to find more demand.
All-Electric Cars Need Battery Breakthrough
Of course. Pure EVs are a relatively small niche right now, and focusing on their limits is a red herring. HEV/PHEV/EREVs are the optimal point right now.
More later...
That sounds like a sober appraisal of the situation to me.
Regular readers of TOD are familiar with how US liquid fuel inventories have flirted with MOL more frequently in the last few years.
I don't accept the argument that shortages and lines cannot develop in the US- that the pricing mechanism 'over time' will allocate supplies in a smooth manner.
The oil majors are already regularly demonized in US public opinion for price gouging. Were a shortage to develop there would be an enormous counter-pressure for oil companies to hold the line on prices, particularly when their profits are already viewed as excessive.
Americans are currently so intoxicated with market theory they are not considering alternative rationing mechanisms.
That will change when the lines develop and the real choices are made clear- let the market allocate by price, adapt to long lines and waits, or a simple rationing scheme?
I lived through the gas-line era and I suspect our collective response will be an equitable ration method- odd/even fill-up days, coupons, arbitrary maximum purchases...anything would be seen to be preferable to either waiting in line (to Americans- horror!) or being vulnerable to price gouging and wild price swings.
Rationing would be a terrible idea, and I'm hopeful that the US learned it's lesson from the chaos of the late 1970s.
Here's a better plan, on the individual level:
If fuel prices double, buy a Prius (which will reduce fuel consumption by 50%). If Priuses are suddenly back-ordered (because everyone else has the same idea), put in your order and carpool with one other person (which will reduce fuel consumption by 50%) until it comes.
If they double again, put in an order for a Prius plug-in (about $5,000 more), and carpool in your Prius with one other person until it comes.
If they double again, put in an order for a Volt and carpool in your plug-in Prius with one other person until it comes. When it arrives, sell your plug-in Prius and use the profits (because fuel efficient used cars will appreciate) to buy the Volt.
If they double a fourth time(!), rinse and repeat with a Leaf.
Carpooling - the horror.
When I recall the 'chaos of the late 1970's', it is the chaos of the gas lines.
Line jumping, preferential treatment, waiting for hours and then being turned away...there were numerous reports of road-rage incidents.
Americans are over-committed, over-caffeinated, and over-armed.
A hands-off approach that tolerated the anarchy of gas lines and price gouging is fertile ground for demagogues.
The appeal to collective (or civic) virtue will be welcomed but further scolding appeals to the personal virtues of increased ride-sharing and vehicle down-sizing will be resented.
There is an important component of American demand which is inelastic and characterized by the high proportion of full-sized pick-up trucks.
These are not primarily a political class and their vehicle choice is not a lifestyle choice, they are an economic class and their existence is predicated on available, affordable fuel.
They are the (usually male) self-employed- gardeners, landscapers, loggers, agricultural workers, carpenters, electricians, sheet-rockers, contractors, people who buy and sell via auctions, ebay and Craigslist, etc etc etc.
The shattered shell of America's former middle class now struggling to pick up odd jobs. The wife drives the Prius.
The majority of miles driven in pickups...don't need pickups. Most of the remainder could be done in smaller pickups. The rest could be done in more efficient full size pickups, and eventually EREV pickups.
Telling people what to do is just as bad as rationing, Nick. If not worse.
Let the price rise, let every family figure out its own response. Some will buy a smaller vehicle, some will ride bikes, some will holiday at home (rather than spending $6,000 on a trip overseas) and just pay the higher gas price. And maybe some will buy a Prius.
That's the beauty of the market system: everyone is free to do what's best for themselves, rather than being forced into some "one size fits all" scheme.
I agree.
I just wanted to show one good solution to PO at the personal level, but you're absolutely right - there's a wide variety of effective ways to reduce fuel consumption...
That view certainly does not describe reality today.
The current system takes $101 billion/year, $327/capita from other non-transportation taxes (and borrowing against same) to subsidize cheap gasoline in the USA.
http://oilfreetransport.blogspot.com/2012/06/old-conservative-small-c-pr...
By comparison, the mortgage interest deduction only costs $90 billion and lower tax rates on capital gains & dividends (see Mitt Romney's 14% tax rate) on $71 billion.
The current system supports ONLY oil burning transportation - people are simply not given the option to take rail or safely bicycle.
What "market system" ?
Alan
gregvp, I agree with you, let the price rise till supply and demand balance.
We should increase the Federal gas tax now so that we are not taking tax dollars out of the general fund to pay for road improvements.
State and local roads & streets should also be funded by fuel taxes, tolls and license tag fees - and not other taxes.
Alan
You'll be buying the Leaf by the second doubling. If we are around $3.70/gallon now, that would mean $14.8 by the second doubling. If you drive 12K miles a year in a 30MPG car (much higher than today's fleet average), that is ~$6000/year is gasoline costs alone.
I think that one thing that EVs & PHEVs have finally managed to do is put some fear into oil producers. There is a ceiling to how far gas prices can go before people switch to something else. It is already happening. VMT is down in both the USA and Europe. That is not just recession. People are switching to public transportation, moving closer to work, buying more fuel efficient vehicles, traveling less, and yes . . . even buying PHEVs & EVs (though that latter one is just a token amount right now).
The Prius is the #1 selling car in California right now. It is just a matter of time before the rest of the nation follows.
You'll be buying the Leaf by the second doubling.
Yeah, my upgrade path is more intended to illustrate how many different ways we have to reduce fuel consumption.
LOL! Nick, you're really good, but I think it's time to out you! I'm calling 'Poe' on you!
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law
Please, please, tell me that you are indeed a 'Poe', I would sleep so much better at night!
Disclaimer: Before anyone jumps all over me and interprets this post as an Ad Hominem attack against Nick, it isn't!
I just honestly can't parse that anyone can believe that what Nick suggests, is even remotely possible for the average person currently living on this planet. If I'm wrong, then I will happily eat crow!
tell me that you are indeed a 'Poe'
Well, of course there's some exaggeration in my little narrative - no one would make that many switches.
The point: it's easy to reduce fuel consumption as much as we want.
can't parse that anyone can believe that what Nick suggests, is even remotely possible for the average person currently living on this planet.
The average new light vehicle sells for more than $30k, and the Prius C sells for $19k, the Prius starts about $22.4k, the plug-in Prius is about $28k, and the Volt is about $34k after credit.
All wil cost much less than the average vehicle to own and operate.
So, yes this is very, very possible. Much cheaper than ICE vehicles...
I am curious whether Mr. Hofmeister expanded on this idea:
"But in the meantime I think this decade is going to be a struggle, and countries like the United States are going to be the greatest countries at risk from suffering the effects of not only high prices, but insufficient supplies.”
What does he mean by "countries like the US?" The things that spring to mind for me are 1)countries that are over-dependent on automobiles 2) countries getting relatively poor return on their energy dollar due to wasteful energy choices, and 3)countries deep in debt, and unable to outbid our creditor nations.
What does he mean by "countries like the US?"
I think he is referring specifically to countries whose economic prosperity is currently dependent on oil imports, and whose per capita consumption is high.
I listened to a speech my Mr. Hofmeister on his farewell tour as President of Shell Oil Company (a division of Royal Dutch Shell). In the Q & A, I pointed out that he was overlooking part of the answer that was quite literally underneath our feet.
I pointed out that the Riverfront Streetcar did quite literally roll underneath. The 20+ story building was built over the tracks and we were in a room on the top floor over the tracks :-)
And then there is increased bicycling.
In the response to my Q & A he did mention how miserable it was to bicycle in the rain to work at Royal Dutch HQ, because the Dutch had limited the parking spaces at one of the world's largest oil companies [tone - The Horror, The Injustice !] and it was bike, walk or take the tram to work there. He confidentially stated that this would never happen in Houston :-)
{I wish I had counterpointed - "But it is also happening in the Oil Capital of Canada, Calgary"}.
I did point out that, if the same effort that is devoted to boiling more tar out of more sand was devoted to electrifying rail lines, we could electrify 36,000 miles in 7 years or less. The British have ordered a work train from Germany that can electrify 1.6 km (1 mile) per shift. Get 25 of those working 10 to 21 shifts/week plus special crews for tunnels, bridges, etc.
Since then, I have developed other points.
The larger metropolitan area of Bourdeaux (pop. 1 million) built an entire oil free system from nothing in just a decade (2000 to 2009)
http://oilfreetransport.blogspot.com/2012/07/trams-of-bourdeaux.html
Montpelier France built four tram lines with three to five years from proposal to opening. Quite good ridership as well.
http://oilfreetransport.blogspot.com/2012/07/trams-of-montpelier-france....
It took just two years from contract signing to ribbon cutting for Line A in Orleans France.
http://oilfreetransport.blogspot.com/2012/07/trams-of-orleans-france.html
Likewise, the first tram line of Brest opened on June 23rd, 2012. Construction started in March 2010, after a contract award on September 15, 2009.
Overall, almost every French town of 100,000 and more is getting one or more new tram lines - and Aubagne (population 45,000) is getting two "small tram" lines. Overall, 1,500 km of new tram lines this decade.
From 2013 to 2025, Paris will be doubling the size of their Metro, 200 km of new track, 2 million more daily riders. Six tunnel boring machines on order. Plus a half dozen new tram lines on the surface.
The larger metropolitan area of Bourdeaux (pop. 1 million) built an entire oil free system from nothing in just a decade (2000 to 2009)
http://oilfreetransport.blogspot.com/2012/07/trams-of-bourdeaux.html
All of the French effort above is BAU, with short work weeks, occasional strikes and the month of August off.
One of the original designers of Washington DC Metro (evaluating proposed lines from 1962 to 1964) and I are well along with a Phase II for that metropolitan area. A mix of Metro, commuter rail, Light Rail and streetcars. Our plans should almost triple oil free rail ridership. Less investment than Paris but comparable ridership gains.
http://oilfreedc.blogspot.com
And bicycling can be made safer and cheaper even faster.
Liquid fuels and private cars are NOT the only viable solution !
Best Hopes for Better Solutions,
Alan
"In the response to my Q & A he did mention how miserable it was to bicycle in the rain to work at Royal Dutch HQ..."
I had the same experience for the 2 years I was in Arnhem. The rain was bad, but the worst was when there was heavy snow blowing in my face. That was a miserable bike ride; limited visibility, cold, and wet.
There will be major changes in transport and transportation, as oil becomes more scarce. But there will be other things becoming scarce because of the oil shortage. The existing technology of sectors of the economy will be shifting and the old way shutting down. How can this be done smoothly? A market economy has served us well during the run-up to peak, but will the hidden hand be at all useful in engineering a smooth shutdown of the old ways. What will happen when the last factory making some critical item shuts down a little too soon? During growth, bad timing makes the growth sub-optimal, but during shutdown a very little failure to do things on schedule can lead to a very major sub-optimal situation. I liken it to the rear guard action of a retreating army. But for this situation the enemy is nature and nature is not known to show the same restraint that is usually shown by a pursuing victorious army in which everyone wants more to get home safely than to be the last one to fall in a glorious victory. It will be much worse than happy talk lets you believe, but I can't say exactly in what particulars. And effecting a smooth shutdown is the kind of thing logistics engineers do in assembly line factories, not what economists do in the economy. Its called planning. I can't see Americans accepting planning, but I can't see smooth decline happening without it. And no, I have no confidence that I could plan such. Maybe Mitt can, but I doubt it.
Planning isn't that hard. The problem right now is that we're following the Koch brothers plan of squeezing every last ounce of profit out of fossil fuels.
Out of 167 comments on this post, 62 have been made by one person. I find it incredible that any one person can have the time to do this over a couple of days, especially as many answers require some study to come up with the links. I can only assume that such a person must be professional in the field of cornucopian promotion. I wonder what the agenda really is and who pays.
I agree Hide away. And when that one person says in one of his 62 posts:
Geeze, and I would bet that there are people on this list that actually agree with such nonsense. It is a testament to the intellectual level of some folks.
Ron P.
Darwinian,
You gotta start thinking outside the oil industry box.
I have argued with Nick in the past over things I think we agreed on. So it goes.
Otherwise, the attitude that Nick takes is very positive. I would bet that on a AGW skeptic site, showing such optimism would make many a head explode. I think the real doomers are the anti-alternative-energy types. I have taken to calling them neo-Luddites, neo-Cornucopians, and even (gasp) neo-Malthusians, because their own version of optimism is so off-kilter. It is "neo" because it is a new version for rationalizing old agendas.
The neo-Luddite by definition says green or alternative technology will never work. And if it does work, then it will kill too many birds or cause insomnia or some other excuse.
The neo-Cornucopian believes that unfettered free markets and no regulation will generate all the energy that the world will ever need, and sees Peak Oil as both real and a myth depending on the audience. See Mitt Romney's book as evidence for this wishy-washiness.
The neo-Malthusian is the parallel to the neo-Con and has an agenda to drive out people who are not like them. Malthusianism takes on connotations of excessive pessimism and inhumanity, which is translated to every man for himself while any cooperation and working together is frowned upon.
The reason that I call them neo-Malthusians is because they will project that slur (or worse) against you whenever you try to discuss alternative energy schemes. That is the way the dialog has been framed, Green=Malthus, and they claim ownership as the only anti-Malthus advocates out there. Yet, as with any ideology, taken too far it will loop back on itself, and thus they become neo-Malthusians themselves.
Two of our definitions make no sense Web. The Luddites were people who believed new technology would take their jobs. They knew it would work. They started with the invention of the flying shuttle where one weaver could do the work of many. They were right it was just that new technology saved energy, created more wealth and, in the long run, more jobs.
So it makes no sense to call such people neo-Luddites. However most doomers, like myself, know alternative technology will work but never on a scale large enough and cheap enough to save civilization. It is all explained here: Too Smart for our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind
That one is total nonsense. There are Malthusians, like myself, but we are not neo-Malthusians. We believe Malthus was right but that he did not anticipate the industrial revolution, the green revolution or the medical revolution, all brought about by the energy from fossil fuel.
But where you are mostly wrong is in saying we have an agenda. Any fool knows that people are not alike and just where would we, if we could, drive them? Now that is a real poser. There is no "out" to drive anyone to. If they are not Malthusians, and believe that there is no limit to human population levels, they are already about as "out" as they can get.
I think you are also using the word "ideology" wrong here. An ideology is "the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group."
People who believe there are limits to the human population, i.e. Malthusians, have no doctrine and we are not any kind organized group or mass movement. We are just a few common folk with common sense.
Ron P.
We are just a few common folk with common sense.
"We" always are "just folks" using our "common sense".
"They" have an ideology.
What's my point? That common sense is a very bad guide - you have to think hard, look at new information, and use complex ideas, not the old, simple guides that you thought would work forever.
We believe Malthus was right but that he did not anticipate the industrial revolution
Malthus believed that population growth would continue forever because he believed that contraception was morally wrong, not that it couldn't work.
Further, some argue that Malthus’s argument was principally a class one, designed to rationalize why the poor must remain poor, and why the class relations in nineteenth-century Britain should remain as they were.
His greatest fear was that due to excessive population growth combined with egalitarian notions “the middle classes of society would . . . be blended with the poor.” Indeed, as Malthus acknowledged in An Essay on Population, “The principal argument of this Essay only goes to prove the necessity of a class of proprietors, and a class of labourers.” The workers and the poor through their excessive consumption, abetted by sheer numbers, would eat away the house and home (and the sumptuous dinner tables) of the middle and upper classes. He made it clear that the real issue was who was to be allowed to join the banquet at the top of society.
Why does this matter? Because it illustrates how confused and anachronistic Malthus' ideas are. Again, Malthus believed that population growth would continue forever because he believed that contraception was morally wrong, not that it couldn't work.
The most important refutation of Malthus is on the population side: world population as a whole has clearly stopped growing exponentially (or geometrically, if you like), due to the demographic transition (it's roughly arithmetic at the moment). This is a key point: in many ways, growth is generally self-limited, and follows a logistic (or sigmoid curve), generally referred to as an S-curve. For instance, US car sales peaked about 35 years ago, and the US has a clear over-supply of vehicles, due to increasing vehicle longevity.
In fact, in most of the world population growth is on a long-term negative path, due to fertility rates well below replacement, including Western Europe, Russia, China, and the US (excluding immigration). Japan and Italy are the poster children for this - both are starting to show absolute declines in population. This is detailed at the UN site below, where we see that the growth rate was as high as 2.19% back in 1963. The total population peak is currently expected to be at about 9 billion around 2075 and population is expected to drop after that.
See especially Figure 3, page 6: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300fin...
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300fin...
That's why I call refer to them as "neo".
It puts a spin on the old definition. The old definition no longer works so we put a new label on it.
Neo-cons are called neo-cons because many of them happen to be liberals in other areas. A neo-lib and neo-con can refer to the same group.
Well, I like Robert's ideas, so it seems worthwhile to try to dialogue with him about the viability of fuel replacements.
As others have noted, many of these ideas were developed over time - I copy them in, and revise them when someone gives me new info.
The idea that oil can and will be replaced is not cornucopian.
My agenda is that unrealistic pessimism only aids the Kochs and Foxes of this world in keeping us addicted to fossil fuels.
If you're looking for conspiracies, ask: who does pessimism help??
Please stay on topic. All are welcome, but do make an effort to not dominate a thread. And no personal attacks, please.
Hhmm, perhaps I've gotten overenthusiastic on this Post.
I'll confine myself to answering questions that people raise on my existing comments.
Your enthusiasm is appreciated!
Nick,
What on earth is cornucopian then?
From Wiki "A cornucopian is a futurist who believes that continued progress and provision of material items for mankind can be met by similarly continued advances in technology. Fundamentally they believe that there is enough matter and energy on the Earth to provide for the ever-rising population of the world."
This pretty much sums up my interpretation of your postings about not needing oil.
Then there was also this..."cor·nu·co·pi·a .... Greek Mythology The horn of the goat that suckled Zeus, which broke off and became filled with fruit. In folklore, it became full of whatever its owner desired."
It is unbridled optimism that has us in the mess we are currently in and what has doomed us to collapse in the future. If we had listened to the pesimists 40+ years ago, ie the original Limits to Growth proponents, then with lower population and energy use, plus massive efforts into the alternatives you envisage over that period to now, then our children may have had a better future.
Unbridled optimism is what gets many companies and individuals into financial difficulties and go bust, why do you think that society as a whole is any different?
What on earth is cornucopian then?
Here's my sense: On TOD, cornucopian means someone who is unrealistic about oil supplies, like CERA. It has a distinctly pejorative tone.
I think the Wiki label is a little too simple & broad for me to adopt it. Don't forget that Wikipedia can be edited by whoever - I don't know that it's authoritative. I certainly think that there is enough matter and energy on the Earth for most things, but I don't think that humanity can be careless about it's use of resources, nor that a path of prosperity is assured.
I would say that just about any label is an invitation to stop thinking. "Oh, he's just an XYZ". I suggest that we all attempt to stop thinking of ourselves as having a simple identity: Doomer, Cornucopian, Lefty, Rightwing, etc, etc. Our thinking needs to be nuanced and complex, and using tribal identities only hurts that.
It is unbridled optimism that has us in the mess we are currently in
No, it's really not. That's way too simplistic. People who hide behind optimism ("We don't need to do anything, the invisible hand will take care of it") are really apologists for owners (and to some extent employees) of industries that wish to avoid proper regulation. That's a gross misuse of "optimism", or "libertarianism", or other things that in the abstract are very good things.
If we had listened to the pesimists 40+ years ago, ie the original Limits to Growth proponents, then with lower population and energy use, plus massive efforts into the alternatives you envisage over that period to now, then our children may have had a better future.
LTG was way too simplistic. Zero growth would not have helped prevent Climate Change - only a targeted recognition of the problem and a willingness to address it specifically would have helped. Specifically, we needed policies to reduce pollution (especially CO2). Massive investments into the alternatives that I envisage aren't really in the spirit of zero growth.
Unbridled optimism is what gets many companies and individuals into financial difficulties and go bust
hhmmm. I suppose that depends on your definition of "unbridled". I would say it's more a lack of critical thinking, and going with the herd that causes difficulties and busts. And, very often corruption by a small group of insiders to get rich off the boom while everyone else gets fleeced. If a lack of critical thinking and proper regulation is "unbridled", then I could agree with that.
Still, I think it's a libel on the good name of optimism, and a red herring from our real problems with misinformation and corruption.
Hide away - I give Nick credit for being tenacious (In geology tenacity = resistant to breaking and hardness = resistance to scratching) if nothing else. You notice Nick and I don't chat much. We have in the past and didn't find too much we agreed about. More important we realized neither was going to change the other's mind about much either. We've both said what we needed to say and left it behind.
You may notice that like Nick I offer a lot of opinions. But you may also notice I don't tend to argue much with folks who think my opinions are crap either. Doesn't bother me at all. Being a petroleum geologist for 37 years I've gotten very comfortable with folks rejecting my ideas. LOL. I see nothing wrong with disagreeing with each other but at one point trying to get the other person to agree with your position seems to hit that wall of diminishing returns rather quickly. Sorta like my old joke about why you shouldn't try to teach a pig to roller skate: it frustrates you and pisses the pig off. LOL.
Of course, that leaves the question of who is the teacher and who is the pig? But I ain't going to touch that one. LOL. TOD would be a less interesting place without folks like Nick around. But I'll still stick with small doses.
RM,
I'm one of those people who pretty much does not believe in anything until after I see evidence. If the evidence I find backs up the assertions of the person, then that person is always more believable. You definately fit into this category and I thank you for your insights into the oil industry.
In regard to Nick, I too appreciate his tenacity, and he is one of the main reasons why I have done as much research into various cornucopian topics and come to the doomer conclusions I have. My comments up above were one of those late at night in a moment of frustration type comments.
I agree with with the pigs and rollerskates analogy, though I do fall into the trap of trying to teach pigs sometimes. As a person who likes numbers and evidence, I just cannot understand people who prefer opinion to fact, yet the world seems to be dominated by them (looking at the US election circus from afar, seems to reinforce this).
Hide-away - Yep...we all get sucked into a head banging argument from time to time. You know you're not changing opinions but just can't stop the rant sometimes. Lately I find expressing my argument to my little Schnauzer works well: she pays attention as if she really cares and at the end will still wag her tail and lick my hand. It gives me that false satisfaction of winning the debate. And, in the end, isn't that all we really want?
Note to self: Go out and buy a Schnauzer! Or at least go to the pound and rescue a nice mutt! >;-)
Rocky,
I actually find that I often come to an eventual agreement with people who stick with the argument long enough. Some people are willing to listen to new information and the discussion evolves on both sides. Some people just don't absorb new information very quickly, so the discussion tends to end up in both sides just repeating themselves.
Even when the discussion stagnates it's still worthwhile: for each person writing here there are many more lurkers, reading and learning.
Hundreds of comments ... half about cars ... half about other kinds of cars. It's sad ... all of the cars are going ... it's not just the driving of the car (which doesn't earn any money which is why the world is broke) but the making of the car ... the making of the car factories, the making of the millions of miles of roads, of the destinations placed arbitrarily in order to facilitate the use of cars, the fuel supply infrastructure, the militaries, the finance, insurance and real estate industries, the massive, intrusive governments, the stupendous debts.
Everything besides operating the electric car needs- or is made from petroleum. A 10 lane freeway cannot be made with electricity, it needs asphalt and concrete.
Remember at all times that nothing is paid for by driving of the cars ... it's all paid for with debt.
What is the time-frame, what is the problem? The issue is that driving the car does not pay for the fuel ... so prices are supported with debt instead of organic returns. As the world becomes insolvent there is less debt regardless of demand. The result is that support for the crude price drops. Meanwhile, there is the need for higher price to support the cost of drilling replacement crude oil: this is a matter of declining energy return from more difficult fuel reservoirs. There are then two prices, one relative to the other: the increasing price needed by drillers and the declining price that the broke customers can afford:
Crude oil futures price (Brent continuous TFC Charts - click on for big). At some point the two prices will converge from that point on the ability to pay will fall below what is necessary to bring fuel to market. At that point there will be severe shortages and vanishing money (no more credit). This scenario exists only where there are perfectly applied policies to support the current forms of business. Policy errors will cause credit to collapse -- as has happened in Greece and is taking place in Spain -- crude prices will fall that much faster, shutting in more supply.
Some might say that the price will rise due to (constrained) supply relative to demand. It is hard to see how less fuel will generate more credit when more fuel fails to do so now. The fuel wasting process by itself cannot generate credit any more than it can provide organic returns. The fuel price declines but it is still unaffordable because credit declines faster.
Credit collapse will mean that most will have no money at all, the biggest challenge for people will not be getting gas for their SUVs but finding a way to feed themselves.
Keep in mind, any shortages that occur because customers cannot afford fuel will be permanent ... If we cannot afford to gain fuel now with some credit, how will we afford to do so when there is no credit, no industries and no industrial economies?
Steve, Brilliant little comment.
The growth/price curve looks like a classic critically damped harmonic system, where the production constraint feedback is closing down tight.
Or perhaps a birth-death model where we are starting to bounce around the carrying capacity of an energy-constrained debt system.
It's your usual interesting POV that really gets us thinking, thanks.
It's an interesting graph but there is a question of time frame.
First of all, what if you draw lines on a graph with a different time span, say 50 years, or 50 days.
Secondly, there seems to be an implicit assumption that both lines reflect supply responses from suppliers and demand responses from users. Given that this graph is reflecting the prices of future contracts that is highly unlikely. The vast majority of futures contracts a) does not lead to physical exchanges of oil b) all futures contracts net out to zero.
To think there can be a significant enough supply response over a short timeframe (aside from selling from inventory, speeding up ships etc) seems unlikely. Demand however is likely to respond relatively quickly to higher prices. Once you start production on a platform in GOM you don't reduce production because prices a lower than either when you developed the platform, started production or even your price projection. You simply produce as fast as you can because it increases your NPV except for some extreme cases.
Rgds
WP
The issue is that driving the car does not pay for the fuel ... so prices are supported with debt instead of organic returns
Well yes in the same way as walking to the fields to plant and harvest your crops does not pay for the fuel that you are using as you walk to the field. You are incurring an energy debt that will be paid when you eat the crop. But if you didn't walk to the field to plant you wouldn't have a crop and if you didn't walk to the field to harvest it would rot. You certainly would be no better off for not having incurred the energy debt. Driving a car to work is no different in principle than walking to the field--its merely requires a system that is a tad more complex and interdependent.
Now of course if you are growing crops likely you are trading with others who are growing other crops or maybe weaving sacks or forging tools you use to plant and harvest your crop. You will be incurring an energy debt when haul your crop to the market and when you haul whatever you trade for back. As long as your total energy output is no greater than your intake you will get by. Too many thin harvests and you won't be walking to the field anymore as you will have starved or at the very least given up farming and tried something else. Of course if too many peoples crops are failing the something elses--hunting and gatherering/begging/stealing/strong arming--will be crowded fields and most won't do very well in them for very long.
It is all about what return you get on the energy you put out, makes no difference if your a worm wriggling in the soil or a human driving a car down the interstate or flying over the ocean in a jet. The calculations are just a bit harder when you are working it out for the human travelling in the car or jet--there are few more moving parts involved in the system they are tapping.
Two years out you say, seems you have been saying that for at least three years now...
Seems like I haven't. Maybe you can provide examples?
The correct analogy to auto use is the farmer who plows his field ... and plows the same field the next day ... and plows again the following day ... and again and again, over and over, continually plowing the same field but never planting a crop. He puts fuel in the tractor by borrowing against the presumed worth of plowing ... it's something to do! He also needs periodic tractor replacement ... and he has to pay for the field ... the farmer borrows for all that, too.
Enter the 'paradox of thrift': when one farmer plows constantly like a madman no harm is done (except to the farmer's reputation). When all the farmers everywhere are doing the same thing the outcome is a breakdown of the farming enterprise! The farmers run out of credit ... then everyone runs out of food.
2 years out is a pretty safe prediction as there are already official denials:
Right ...
I'm not going to search the archives but I recall that you and Gail were pretty lock step back in 2009 about full financial melt down in a couple years. Here you are talking financial meltdown in the two year time frame, not the exhausting of physical resources we use to sustain ourselves. If you weren't predicting financial meltdown in a couple years three and four years ago my apologies--that has no bearing on the rest of my comment one way or the other anyway.
I have no idea how long this convoluted modern finance can keep up on what appears to look more and more like an accelerating treadmill and that was not my point.
Yes the person fueling his car is doing it with banked solar energy and that account is certainly not inexhaustible (for this discussion's purposes I will consider the solar energy falling on the earth every moment as inexhaustible). So what. That does not mean he isn't harvesting or making tools to harvest some of that energy when working and that therefore his driving to work is just building up debt. He will repay this debt with the product of his efforts at work. Just as the person walking to the field is building up a debt that will be repaid with the product of the efforts he makes in the field. Debt is debt. The only distinction here is in the scale and complexity of the calculations that determine whether or not there was repayment.
(Yes I see where your objection to this is coming from--you did initially ask 'what time frame' I'll get to that--but first)
I was not addressing what energy inputs where required for each activity or how sustainable those input were for either case. I was just showing that debt is incurred by both activities. I added in the market hauling as that piece is critical to understanding how those efforts are equalized by the groups in play. The market, both super complex and ultra simple, relies on perceived value by the traders and their ability to exchange unlike commodities with one another using their sets of perceived values. Things get quite a bit more dicey when you introduce any type of currency into the trading system--then trust of all traders involved becomes the linchpin of the system.
All discussions about imploding financial systems are really about loss of trust in the medium of exchange. All modern market issues are complicated and huge and likely harder for us get our little noodles around than it is for me to actually comprehend the true scale of the sun I see shining out my window (from my seat the sun is a little smaller the fingernail on my pinkie finger, the more I zoom in on it the more incomprehensible it gets). In my opinion all efforts to predict how this incredibly complex system will fare into the future are exercises in soothsaying.
Back to the debt--debt repayment does introduce time frame. Your point seems to be that given a long enough time frame there will not be enough stored solar energy to tap into for the person driving to work to use to repay his debt. It's not that he is plowing his field over and over without ever sowing a crop but rather that most of his effort has been to mine what is under the field and that the stores being mined will run out.
Like you said it is all about time frames. The argument between the constant growth/imminent collapse groups is about how much constant sunshine flow we can utilize how fast, how critical the exhaustible materials we are mining are to that effort and of course about how well our markets will function combining all our individual efforts (that is really all markets do). I haven't weighed in on that definitively--but I certainly have been sure to keep some of the darker sides of human behavior to the forefront--no doubt those will have their fair share of influence on our path going forward.
The myth is that any and all 'debts' will be repaid elsewhere by someone else, without reckoning that these debts are impossible to repay. Debts are retired by more debts taken on elsewhere. The debts accumulate to the point when taking on more debt is either counterproductive or impossible (as every bit of borrowing capacity is needed to simply service existing debts and not retire any of it).
The world is burdened by hundreds of trillion$ of debts right now, there is debt system collapse right now! Where did these debts come from? If industries were productive, why are there debts? Wouldn't industrial productivity -- efforts at work -- obviate the need for debt in the first place?
There is the even more fabulous myth that industry is productive and that the entire industrial enterprise can create some 'good' that exceeds the sum of its (massive) inputs.
The point of this chart is that the means to price the consumption side of the fuel-waste process is the same means used to price the supply side. Even with all the various monetary/fiscal tricks there is declining support for the production side which must become more costly over time, if only due to depletion.
Even in the Euro-zone, where fuel prices are higher than in 2008, the cost of new fuels in euros is converging. This isn't too surprising, see 'C. H. Douglas' (relationship between costs and returns).
IMO, debts can be reduced by reducing consumption.
Also, every monetary debt is also an asset to someone else.
Alan
That is a statement not made by an economist... obviously!
Reducing consumption and paying off your credit cards would reduce private debt, but it would dramatically increase public debt. That is debt by corporations and the government. Reduced consumption would reduce GDP. It would reduce profit by corporations who depend on consumption for a profit.
Reduced consumption would mean people buy less stuff. People who make that stuff would be out of a job. They, in turn would buy less stuff and depend on the government for food stamps and such.
There is no easy way out of this mess. Every solution creates new problems. People who see easy ways out, like "just reduce consumption" seem to never see the consequences that their "solutions" would create.
Ron P.
It would create a new paradigm, but a potentially viable one.
reduced debt = reduced assets (borrower = lender)
Shift consumption into investment in long lived energy efficient, energy saving or energy producing assets.
More assets without more debt.
Say, replace windows in house vs. vacation in Vegas or ... . Different set of economic activity, but no net loss.
Use reduced utility bills to reduce debt, which reduces someone else's assets.
However, house has greater value as an asset.
Alan
The sooner that countries default on the debt, and accept the new reality, probably the better off they are, e.g., Iceland.
Debtors (countries and private entities) have been defaulting forever - it's not that big of a deal.
Greece has defaulted on it's debts regularly - about once every 25 years for the last 200 years!
The world is burdened by hundreds of trillion$ of debts right now, there is debt system collapse right now! Where did these debts come from? If industries were productive, why are there debts? Wouldn't industrial productivity -- efforts at work -- obviate the need for debt in the first place?
No.
Lets look at the debt a Pacific salmon fry is born with and must repay. All the materials that make it up and its supply of nutrients have been lent to it by its progenitors. They are dead, and can do no more for the species. The fry must consume the supply of lent nutrients before it is enough of a going concern to obtain new supplies for itself. Most of these embryonic business concerns will not make a go of it and will be consumed by other more established going concerns (predators) but some will take the venture capital they were given to start out with and become going concerns themselves, eventually depositing a bunch of seed capital in their home waters thus continuing the cycle.
The new concern always starts out with debt, which of course has been supplied by someone else's savings, and if conditions are right the going concerns will repay that debt with interest--the population will increase up to carrying capacity of the system. All species' populations begin as a small number and expand until conditions no longer allow them to (sudden population crashes do often happen at that tipping point). Debt repaid with interest is an organic process that underpins the life process itself. We are merely discussing where our species is in the consuming available nutrient while expanding process (up page Nick is postulating that we might have some built in mechanism--you really can't call it anything else--that will keep us back from the brink, plenty of others here have postulated that we are well beyond that point already, again I'm not picking sides on that one). You of course are rather hung up on $ valued debt but like I said up-thread
that is simply a matter of trust
which of course is not simple to quantify/dissect or most importantly for which it is not simple to define/predict the limit.
Long ago you and I crossed swords on a topic related to the above--I contended and still contend that life is limited by a shortage of supply of nutrients/habitat. This seems obvious to me as it does appear in our universe existence is a zero some game. If our universe was of a different nature and could expand its mass/energy infinitely and instantly no species could possibly over reproduce--just got to step out of the box to see that. But of course we cannot truly step out of time/space/mass/energy box so discussions at this level are really only about the nature of our language based comprehension system. Of course that sort of discussion has been going on in the western world for some time (most are familiar with Descartes venture into this realm in his Meditations On The First Philosophy)
If you like me were raised with a Judeo/Christian underpinning you should recognize the idea of a 'universe' expanding its mass/energy infinitely and instantly and doing/being infinitely more--'that' was what Descartes was trying to prove the existence of in his First Philosophies and 'what' the Hebrew high priest named in the temple only once a year. So my throwing the idea out here is hardly way off the wall--it seems to be something we finite language users have been drawn toward (for one reason or another) for a long, long time...and I'm certainly not presumptuous enough to claim to know why that is.
getting back to the thread at hand:
I of course never claimed that all debts will be repaid (though in the big picture, if my very coarse understanding of our mathematical model is correct, all debts are repaid by the time the final 'state of entropy' is 'achieved'--pardon begged of those who actually can do the math, hope I'm not too far off the mark, I have very limited knowledge of that language though likely even our most accomplished have no clear view of whether or not mathematics, at least mathematics as it is processed by the modern human brain, has limited descriptive ability in and of itself).
I just said
The only distinction here is in the scale and complexity of the calculations that determine whether or not there was repayment
I think Darwin set out the framework life uses to make that calculation very nicely by the way.
Nick is postulating that we might have some built in mechanism--you really can't call it anything else--that will keep us back from the brink
I'd just call it intelligence. Humans certainly have built-in mechanisms, like a drive to have sex, and a slightly different drive to procreate. I can't say that deciding that one has had enough children could be described as instinctive - it has more to do with realizing that its not really in one's best interest to have more.
Isn't having children (and more so, lots of children) often not really in the parents' best interest?
I think educated, affluent parents have 1-3 kids, and say - "It's nice to have kids, but that's enough".
Humans have the intelligence to decide, in a lot of areas: "That's enough."
plenty of others here have postulated that we are well beyond that point already
I am slightly pessimistic about humanity's ability to decide to prevent Climate Change, but I know that it wouldn't be that hard to do, on a technical and economic level. And, I know that things can change quickly (as we see in Chaos theory, even large complex systems can change on a dime) so I persist...
Gee I thought what you are refering to as intelligence or at least the ability to achieve what you are calling intelligence was built into our makeup genetically or as I called it first time through "some built in mechanism". You might have noticed that my line of argument here has held to us being part of not separate from the flora/fauna world that has "infected" this lovely chunk of rock and water.?-)
...as to climate change...well you and I had best lighten up for a bit...life truly is short...
...or more to this blog's theme...
:]
one more to go with my salmon fry debt illustration
hope the management doesn't mind (I promise I won't do it again for a long time...I did start this run with a link to Tadeusz so this ending has been therapeutic)