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A Forecast Of Our Energy Future; Why Common Solutions Don't Work
Submitted by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,
In order to understand what solutions to our energy predicament will or won’t work, it is necessary to understand the true nature of our energy predicament. Most solutions fail because analysts assume that the nature of our energy problem is quite different from what it really is. Analysts assume that our problem is a slowly developing long-term problem, when in fact, it is a problem that is at our door step right now.
The point that most analysts miss is that our energy problem behaves very much like a near-term financial problem. We will discuss why this happens. This near-term financial problem is bound to work itself out in a way that leads to huge job losses and governmental changes in the near term. Our mitigation strategies need to be considered in this context. Strategies aimed simply at relieving energy shortages with high priced fuels and high-tech equipment are bound to be short lived solutions, if they are solutions at all.
OUR ENERGY PREDICAMENT
1. Our number one energy problem is a rapidly rising need for investment capital, just to maintain a fixed level of resource extraction. This investment capital is physical “stuff” like oil, coal, and metals.
We pulled out the “easy to extract” oil, gas, and coal first. As we move on to the difficult to extract resources, we find that the need for investment capital escalates rapidly. According to Mark Lewis writing in the Financial Times, “upstream capital expenditures” for oil and gas amounted to nearly $700 billion in 2012, compared to $350 billion in 2005, both in 2012 dollars. This corresponds to an inflation-adjusted annual increase of 10% per year for the seven year period.

Figure 1. The way would expect the cost of the extraction of energy supplies to rise, as finite supplies deplete.
In theory, we would expect extraction costs to rise as we approach limits of the amount to be extracted. In fact, the steep rise in oil prices in recent years is of the type we would expect, if this is happening. We were able to get around the problem in the 1970s, by adding more oil extraction, substituting other energy products for oil, and increasing efficiency. This time, our options for fixing the situation are much fewer, since the low hanging fruit have already been picked, and we are reaching financial limits now.

Figure 2. Historical oil prices in 2012 dollars, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2013 data. (2013 included as well, from EIA data.)
To make matters worse, the rapidly rising need for investment capital arises is other industries as well as fossil fuels. Metals extraction follows somewhat the same pattern. We extracted the highest grade ores, in the most accessible locations first. We can still extract more metals, but we need to move to lower grade ores. This means we need to remove more of the unwanted waste products, using more resources, including energy resources.
There is a huge increase in the amount of waste products that must be extracted and disposed of, as we move to lower grade ores (Figure 3). The increase in waste products is only 3% when we move from ore with a concentration of .200, to ore with a concentration .195. When we move from a concentration of .010 to a concentration of .005, the amount of waste product more than doubles.
When we look at the inflation adjusted cost of base metals (Figure 4 below), we see that the index was generally falling for a long period between the 1960s and the 1990s, as productivity improvements were greater than falling ore quality.
Since 2002, the index is higher, as we might expect if we are starting to reach limits with respect to some of the metals in the index.
There are many other situations where we are fighting a losing battle with nature, and as a result need to make larger resource investments. We have badly over-fished the ocean, so fishermen now need to use more resources too catch the remaining much smaller fish. Pollution (including CO2 pollution) is becoming more of a problem, so we invest resources in devices to capture mercury emissions and in wind turbines in the hope they will help our pollution problems. We also need to invest increasing amounts in roads, bridges, electricity transmission lines, and pipelines, to compensate for deferred maintenance and aging infrastructure.
Some people say that the issue is one of falling Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI), and indeed, falling EROI is part of the problem. The steepness of the curve comes from the rapid increase in energy products used for extraction and many other purposes, as we approach limits. The investment capital limit was discovered by the original modelers of Limits to Growth in 1972. I discuss this in my post Why EIA, IEA, and Randers’ 2052 Energy Forecasts are Wrong.
2. When the amount of oil extracted each year flattens out (as it has since 2004), a conflict arises: How can there be enough oil both (a) for the growing investment needed to maintain the status quo, plus (b) for new investment to promote growth?
In the previous section, we talked about the rising need for investment capital, just to maintain the status quo. At least some of this investment capital needs to be in the form of oil. Another use for oil would be to grow the economy–adding new factories, or planting more crops, or transporting more goods. While in theory there is a possibility of substituting away from oil, at any given point in time, the ability to substitute away is quite limited. Most transport options require oil, and most farming requires oil. Construction and road equipment require oil, as do diesel powered irrigation pumps.
Because of the lack of short term substitutability, the need for oil for reinvestment tends to crowd out the possibility of growth. This is at least part of the reason for slower world-wide economic growth in recent years.
3. In the crowding out of growth, the countries that are most handicapped are the ones with the highest average cost of their energy supplies.
For oil importers, oil is a very high cost product, raising the average cost of energy products. This average cost of energy is highest in countries that use the highest percentage of oil in their energy mix.
If we look at a number of oil importing countries, we see that economic growth tends to be much slower in countries that use very much oil in their energy mix. This tends to happen because high energy costs make products less affordable. For example, high oil costs make vacations to Greece unaffordable, and thus lead to cut backs in their tourist industry.
It is striking when looking at countries arrayed by the proportion of oil in their energy mix, the extent to which high oil use, and thus high cost energy use, is associated with slow economic growth (Figure 5, 6, and 7). There seems to almost be a dose response–the more oil use, the lower the economic growth. While the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) are shown as a group, each of the countries in the group shows the same pattern on high oil consumption as a percentage of its total energy production in 2004.
Globalization no doubt acted to accelerate this shift toward countries that used little oil. These countries tended to use much more coal in their energy mix–a much cheaper fuel.

Figure 5. Percent energy consumption from oil in 2004, for selected countries and country groups, based on BP 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy. (EU – PIIGS means “EU-27 minus PIIGS’)

Figure 6. Average percent growth in real GDP between 2005 and 2011, based on USDA GDP data in 2005 US$.

Figure 7. Average percentage consumption growth between 2004 and 2011, based on BP’s 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy.
4. The financial systems of countries with slowing growth are especially affected, as are the governments. Debt becomes harder to repay with interest, as economic growth slows.
With slow growth, debt becomes harder to repay with interest. Governments are tempted to add programs to aid their citizens, because employment tends to be low. Governments find that tax revenue lags because of the lagging wages of most citizens, leading to government deficits. (This is precisely the problem that Turchin and Nefedov noted, prior to collapse, when they analyzed eight historical collapses in their book Secular Cycles.)
Governments have recently attempt to fix both their own financial problems and the problems of their citizens by lowering interest rates to very low levels and by using Quantitative Easing. The latter allows governments to keep even long term interest rates low. With Quantitative Easing, governments are able to keep borrowing without having a market of ready buyers. Use of Quantitative Easing also tends to blow bubbles in prices of stocks and real estate, helping citizens to feel richer.
5. Wages of citizens of countries oil importing countries tend to remain flat, as oil prices remain high.
At least part of the wage problem relates to the slow economic growth noted above. Furthermore, citizens of the country will cut back on discretionary goods, as the price of oil rises, because their cost of commuting and of food rises (because oil is used in growing food). The cutback in discretionary spending leads to layoffs in discretionary sectors. If exported goods are high priced as well, buyers from other countries will tend to cut back as well, further leading to layoffs and low wage growth.
6. Oil producers find that oil prices don’t rise high enough, cutting back on their funds for reinvestment.
As oil extraction costs increase, it becomes difficult for the demand for oil to remain high, because wages are not increasing. This is the issue I describe in my post What’s Ahead? Lower Oil Prices, Despite Higher Extraction Costs.
We are seeing this issue today. Bloomberg reports, Oil Profits Slump as Higher Spending Fails to Raise Output. Business Week reports Shell Surprise Shows Profit Squeeze Even at $100 Oil. Statoil, the Norwegian company, is considering walking away from Greenland, to try to keep a lid on production costs.
7. We find ourselves with a long-term growth imperative relating to fossil fuel use, arising from the effects of globalization and from growing world population.
Globalization added approximately 4 billion consumers to the world market place in the 1997 to 2001 time period. These people previously had lived traditional life styles. Once they became aware of all of the goods that people in the rich countries have, they wanted to join in, buying motor bikes, cars, televisions, phones, and other goods. They would also like to eat meat more often. Population in these countries continues to grow adding to demand for goods of all kinds. These goods can only be made using fossil fuels, or by technologies that are enabled by fossil fuels (such as today’s hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, and solar PV).
8. The combination of these forces leads to a situation in which economies, one by one, will turn downward in the very near future–in a few months to a year or two. Some are already on this path (Egypt, Syria, Greece, etc.)
We have two problems that tend to converge: financial problems that countries are now hiding, and ever rising need for resources in a wide range of areas that are reaching limits (oil, metals, over-fishing, deferred maintenance on pipelines).
On the financial side, we have countries trying to hang together despite a serious mismatch between revenue and expenses, using Quantitative Easing and ultra-low interest rates. If countries unwind the Quantitative Easing, interest rates are likely to rise. Because debt is widely used, the cost of everything from oil extraction to buying a new home to buying a new car is likely to rise. The cost of repaying the government’s own debt will rise as well, putting governments in worse financial condition than they are today.
A big concern is that these problems will carry over into debt markets. Rising interest rates will lead to widespread defaults. The availability of debt, including for oil drilling, will dry up.
Even if debt does not dry up, oil companies are already being squeezed for investment funds, and are considering cutting back on drilling. A freeze on credit would make certain this happens.
Meanwhile, we know that investment costs keep rising, in many different industries simultaneously, because we are reaching the limits of a finite world. There are more resources available; they are just more expensive. A mismatch occurs, because our wages aren’t going up.
The physical amount of oil needed for all of this investment keeps rising, but oil production continues on its relatively flat plateau, or may even begins to drop. This leads to less oil available to invest in the rest of the economy. Given the squeeze, even more countries are likely to encounter slowing growth or contraction.
9. My expectation is that the situation will end with a fairly rapid drop in the production of all kinds of energy products and the governments of quite a few countries failing. The governments that remain will dramatically cut services.
With falling oil production, promised government programs will be far in excess of what governments can afford, because governments are basically funded out of the surpluses of a fossil fuel economy–the difference between the cost of extraction and the value of these fossil fuels to society. As the cost of extraction rises, the surpluses tend to dry up.

Figure 8. Cost of extraction of barrel oil, compared to value to society. Economic growth is enabled by the difference.
As these surpluses shrink, governments will need to shrink back dramatically. Government failure will be easier than contracting back to a much smaller size.
International finance and trade will be particularly challenging in this context. Trying to start over will be difficult, because many of the new countries will be much smaller than their predecessors, and will have no “track record.” Those that do have track records will have track records of debt defaults and failed promises, things that will not give lenders confidence in their ability to repay new loans.
While it is clear that oil production will drop, with all of the disruption and a lack of operating financial markets, I expect natural gas and coal production will drop as well. Spare parts for almost anything will be difficult to get, because of the need for the system of international trade to support making these parts. High tech goods such as computers and phones will be especially difficult to purchase. All of these changes will result in a loss of most of the fossil fuel economy and the high tech renewables that these fossil fuels support.
A Forecast of Future Energy Supplies and their Impact
A rough estimate of the amounts by which energy supply will drop is given in Figure 9, below.

Figure 9. Estimate of future energy production by author. Historical data based on BP adjusted to IEA groupings.
The issue we will be encountering could be much better described as “Limits to Growth” than “Peak Oil.” Massive job layoffs will occur, as fuel use declines. Governments will find that their finances are even more pressured than today, with calls for new programs at the time revenue is dropping dramatically. Debt defaults will be a huge problem. International trade will drop, especially to countries with the worst financial problems.
One big issue will be the need to reorganize governments in a new, much less expensive way. In some cases, countries will break up into smaller units, as the Former Soviet Union did in 1991. In some cases, the situation will go back to local tribes with tribal leaders. The next challenge will be to try to get the governments to act in a somewhat co-ordinated way. There may need to be more than one set of governmental changes, as the global energy supplies decline.
We will also need to begin manufacturing goods locally, at a time when debt financing no longer works very well, and governments are no longer maintaining roads. We will have to figure out new approaches, without the benefit of high tech goods like computers. With all of the disruption, the electric grid will not last very long either. The question will become: what can we do with local materials, to get some sort of economy going again?
NON-SOLUTIONS and PARTIAL SOLUTIONS TO OUR PROBLEM
There are a lot of proposed solutions to our problem. Most will not work well because the nature of the problem is different from what most people have expected.
1. Substitution. We don’t have time. Furthermore, whatever substitutions we make need to be with cheap local materials, if we expect them to be long-lasting. They also must not over-use resources such as wood, which is in limited supply.
Electricity is likely to decline in availability almost as quickly as oil because of inability to keep up the electrical grid and other disruptions (such as failing governments, lack of oil to lubricate machinery, lack of replacement parts, bankruptcy of companies involved with the production of electricity) so is not really a long-term solution to oil limits.
2. Efficiency. Again, we don’t have time to do much. Higher mileage cars tend to be more expensive, replacing one problem with another. A big problem in the future will be lack of road maintenance. Theoretical gains in efficiency may not hold in the real world. Also, as governments reduce services and often fail, lenders will be unwilling to lend funds for new projects which would in theory improve efficiency.
In some cases, simple devices may provide efficiency. For example, solar thermal can often be a good choice for heating hot water. These devices should be long-lasting.
3. Wind turbines. Current industrial type wind turbines will be hard to maintain, so are unlikely to be long-lasting. The need for investment capital for wind turbines will compete with other needs for investment capital. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels will drop dramatically, with or without wind turbines.
On the other hand, simple wind mills made with local materials may work for the long term. They are likely to be most useful for mechanical energy, such as pumping water or powering looms for cloth.
4. Solar Panels. Promised incentive plans to help homeowners pay for solar panels can be expected to mostly fall through. Inverters and batteries will need replacement, but probably will not be available. Handy homeowners who can rewire the solar panels for use apart from the grid may find them useful for devices that can run on direct current. As part of the electric grid, solar panels will not add to its lifetime. It probably will not be possible to make solar panels for very many years, as the fossil fuel economy reaches limits.
5. Shale Oil. Shale oil is an example of a product with very high investment costs, and returns which are doubtful at best. Big companies who have tried to extract shale oil have decided the rewards really aren’t there. Smaller companies have somehow been able to put together financial statements claiming profits, based on hoped for future production and very low interest rates.
Costs for extracting shale oil outside the US for shale oil are likely to be even higher than in the US. This happens because the US has laws that enable production (landowner gets a share of profits) and other beneficial situations such as pipelines in place, plentiful water supplies, and low population in areas where fracking is done. If countries decide to ramp up shale oil production, they are likely to run into similarly hugely negative cash flow situations. It is hard to see that these operations will save the world from its financial (and energy) problems.
6. Taxes. Taxes need to be very carefully structured, to have any carbon deterrent benefit. If part of taxes consumers would normally pay to the government are levied on fuel for vehicles, the practice can encourage more the use of more efficient vehicles.
On the other hand, if carbon taxes are levied on businesses, the taxes tend to encourage businesses to move their production to other, lower-cost countries. The shift in production leads to the use of more coal for electricity, rather than less. In theory, carbon taxes could be paired with a very high tax on imported goods made with coal, but this has not been done. Without such a pairing, carbon taxes seem likely to raise world CO2 emissions.
7. Steady State Economy. Herman Daly was the editor of a book in 1973 called Toward a Steady State Economy, proposing that the world work toward a Steady State economy, instead of growth. Back in 1973, when resources were still fairly plentiful, such an approach would have acted to hold off Limits to Growth for quite a few years, especially if zero population growth were included in the approach.
Today, it is far too late for such an approach to work. We are already in a situation with very depleted resources. We can’t keep up current production levels if we want to–to do so would require greatly ramping up energy production because of the rising need for energy investment to maintain current production, discussed in Item (1) of Our Energy Predicament. Collapse will probably be impossible to avoid. We can’t even hope for an outcome as good as a Steady State Economy.
7. Basing Choice of Additional Energy Generation on EROI Calculations. In my view, basing new energy investment on EROI calculations is an iffy prospect at best. EROI calculations measure a theoretical piece of the whole system–”energy at the well-head.” Thus, they miss important parts of the system, which affect both EROI and cost. They also overlook timing, so can indicate that an investment is good, even if it digs a huge financial hole for organizations making the investment. EROI calculations also don’t consider repairability issues which may shorten real-world lifetimes.
Regardless of EROI indications, it is important to consider the likely financial outcome as well. If products are to be competitive in the world marketplace, electricity needs to be inexpensive, regardless of what the EROI calculations seem to say. Our real problem is lack of investment capital–something that is gobbled up at prodigious rates by energy generation devices whose costs occur primarily at the beginning of their lives. We need to be careful to use our investment capital wisely, not for fads that are expensive and won’t hold up for the long run.
8. Demand Reduction. This really needs to be the major way we move away from fossil fuels. Even if we don’t have other options, fossil fuels will move away from us. Encouraging couples to have smaller families would seem to be a good choice.
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Irrelevant. No matter how oil forms, if it does not regenerate at a rate of at least 10 percent as fast as we are consuming it now, there will be serious shortages. Also, no matter what, exponential growth in oil consumption cannot continue.
You are 100% correct; I still think it is an interesting theory. If the earth is actually producing oil, it would create a lot of new scientific studies!
There is enough real things to study that serious scientists don't worry about unicorns....
Run a very simple model and simulation and you find out that if the earth was producing oil for as long as conditions existed under which it was possible to produce, we would literally be drowning in it...
Funny thing about nature is that whatever is possible, is not only probable, it is also guaranteed to proceed....
Run a very simple model and simulation ... may I suggest to use "World3" as a model and "Vensim PLE" as simulation software. One can get "Vensim-PLE" for free, here: http://vensim.com/download/
It already contains world3 in the folder "your install location"\Vensim\models\sample\WRLD3-03\
MEOR has significant production impacts in old and new oil fields. Abiotic oil is a reality.
Yes, technologies do change and evolve, but there is a limit to that, at least on our current trajectory. It takes an ever increasing share of the pie, so to speak, to drive that technological progress, and at some point, the share will get to be so large that it becomes unsustainable.
I have heard that argument now for 40+ years, yet here we are, still alive and kicking.
If anyone here was over the age of 22, they would look at the raft of charts, graphs and predictions in this article and know immediately they are the same theories that were proven wrong 20 and 30 years ago when we far surpassed the timelines when catastrophe was to occur.
Quit making shit up...
The LtG studies were bang on... And those were the only serious ones...
Hey, Great use of facts in your counter augument there...
Geology and Science weren't good to you were they.
At least the depletion and lowering of ore grade in mineral deposits has a bright side.
That is. The minerals have already been dug it up when the oil was cheapest, and much of it can be more easily obtained from existing items and repurposed if needed in a lower energy world.
This is already happening and heavy junk will become worth more and more $$$.
Ah, the 4Rs that kids learn in school: Reduce, Re-use, Re-purpose, Recycle.
As opposed to the 4Ds for Dummies: "Drill, Drive, Dump, Deplete." (which I just made up)
Gee, I wonder whose lifestyle, tech and industrial strategies will win?
Thorium Bitchez! Thorium
# Uranium-Fueled Light-Water Reactor
--------------------------------------------------
# Fuel Uranium fuel rods
# Fuel input per gigawatt output 250 tons raw uranium
# Annual fuel cost for 1-GW reactor $50-60 million
# Coolant Water
# Proliferation potential Medium
# Footprint 200,000-300,000 square feet, surrounded by a low-density population zone
# Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
-----------------------------------------------
# Fuel Thorium and uranium fluoride solution
# Fuel input per gigawatt output 1 ton raw thorium
# Annual fuel cost for 1-GW reactor $10,000 (estimated)
# Coolant Self-regulating
# Proliferation potential None
# Footprint 2,000-3,000 square feet, with no need for a buffer zone
# Spent Uranium can be re-burned and rendered inert in a Thorium reactor.
‘
‘
‘
‘
Thorium: Cheap, safe, clean power, forever. We’d be self-sufficient, ending our dependence on not only other’s oil but ours as well as virtually zero impact on the environment, stopping global warming, et cetera.
Read to go, right now. The Chinese and Indians are way ahead of us.
Read up on it, and write yer congressman.
http://thorium1.com/thorium101/10-commandments.html
http://thorium1.com/thorium101/fuel-characteristics.html
http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/04/liquid-fluoride-thorium-power-pros-c...
http://energyfromthorium.com/2012/12/30/energy-from-thorium-top-10-attri...
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/
http://energyfromthorium.com/
•J•
V-V
If thorium is such a great business, why nobody does it?
Answer is simple: Economically not viable and no dual use for governments (will not be subsidized by taxpayer).
Thorium is too economically viable. (if you get my drift?)
Even if it was the case, it won't solve problems but create more.
Winner... Winner.. Chicken Dinner!
So what is your rational argument? None!
You{my Friend} responded to my suggestion. If I were your/self< I'd ask myself that same question.
Do you want to discuss clean energy? I'm all ears!
Clean energy is an oxymoron in the context of economic growth. Just take some basic lessons in math and physics
It's been a while since I've really looked at thorium, but IIRC, it worked great in smaller reactors, but there were some engineering hurtles to overcome when it came to scaling up. I have not kept up with the current research being conducted by the Chinese and Indians, and, as I said, it's been a while, so I could be off base there. I do know that some of the research conducted several decades ago in this country showed promise. One of the things that I find very appealing about thorium is that there is no need to enrich the fuel like there is with Uranium. The claims that it can be used to burn up a lot of existing nuclear waste also merit attention.
Nevada calling...I believe we have your thorium...
There are reactors under development. But... It'll be 20-30 years before you see them produce electricity commercially. That's just how long it takes to go from prototype to something useful.
Only because of regulations. If people could just build their own home nuclear plants with complete exemption from all laws, regulations, and have immunity from lawsuits due to negative externalities, we could probably get them much sooner.
4th generation thorium reactors are 30 years out at best.
That's BS..http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/12/20/breakout-thorium-idINL4N0FE21U2...
In 30 years what humans remain will be rubbing sticks to make fire.
hmmm, socialism or space exploration via free from gov capital?
Socialism.
We could already be mining the asteroid belt, but LBJ had to have socialism...
The socialists would never support an off world colony, unless the first things built were a central bank and printing press.
Can't have the debt slaves getting a sniff of freedom!
It's much easier and more cost effective (for the miners) to mine the SS Trust Fund.
When the dollar dies socialism goes with it. When you are spending real money you don't buy votes with it.
Margaret Thatcher was right.
Also when governments go broke they have difficulty paying stooges...and tend to behave better in nations where the people are armed.
The problem with Thatcherism is that you eventually run out of North Sea Oil....
Pitiful inside the box thinking. There is no energy problem. It is an energy storage problem. On top of that the money maggots will fight to keep oil/nukes/natty/coal the top commodities. If there were a free energy storage means the bankers would kill us all before they would let us have it. I guess we're lucky there isn't one.
If alternate energy was cental banking, the sheep would be running off cliffs buzz.
FWIW, I love hunting.fishing, scuba diving, and eating meat!
If we had a real market economy it would solve a lot of problems. The maggots at the top are the world's #1 enemy.
The word is "terrorists."
Hey buzz. You might like this link. http://www.artofmanliness.com/2008/04/29/9-ways-to-start-a-fire-without-...
It's FUBAR, because we don't follow the Natural Order, where Maggots are a part of the ecosystem, not running it.
Which brings us back to THE most Fundamental question: WHO let that happen? Or shall we deflect from those responsible, and just blame the Maggots?
Limitless energy storage would be a game changer alright.
Solar radiation could provide all the power you could ever use.
If you could carry around a couple of MWh in u thumb drive, you could plug it into a socket on your car dash and off you go.
What makes most of science fiction possible is this one assumption.
Shame my offshore LLC hasn't quite finished developing it yet, I just need millions more taxpayer funds and a new G5 to continue this important research...
Solar radiation could provide all the power you could ever use.
Your statenment is valid now only, because you ignore the long term consequences of exponential growth.
In one year, the solar energy reaching the earth is more than twice as much as all the energy that will ever be obtained from fossil fuels. That's from one year of solar radiation. It is correct that solar radiation "could provide" all the power you could ever use.
Yes now, but not ever. If Krugman is right, it can never be sufficient.
The math of exponential growth is inexorable. The earth recieves 100,000 TW from the Sun. If we need to use anything close to that value, it will be necessary to leave the Earth and colonize Space.
It's closer to 175,000 TW, but we are at that point in about 220 years at a mere 4% growth of primary energy production. Space colonization must happen long before that, but I doubt it will be accomplished, otherwise we would already see a lot of competition out there.
Pitiful inside the box thinking. There is no energy problem. It is no energy storage problem.It is simply a growth problem and government causes it.
Hey Gail Tverberg:
We live on a carbon based planet with carbon based life. There is no end to oil nor any other fossil fuel - carbon based compounds.
Nice pretty charts with hockey stick curves - smells like global warming, no wait, climate change, no wait, man's impact on the planet that affects climate.
Did I get that right Gail? Get a life!!!!! FAWK!!!!!!
Well, carbon is the fifteenth most abundant element on earth by mass and the twelfth by mole. So no, we do not live on a "carbon based planet". One might say we actually live on a "rust based planet" because oxygen and iron are the most abundant elements on earth. By weight, silicon is third. So there's a clue as to our energy future.
Instead of worrying about 'carbon' lets command the sun continue with it minimal maximum.
If the author is really serious about the grim future she sees how can any though about 'carbon' be entertained? If energy production is going to fall why even think about CO2?
I don't know why you got junked twice (at this time) for that. It's a very valid point. If we are going to stop using fossil fuels because we can no longer extract any more, whether or not CO2 emmissions are harmful becomes moot, because we will stop with the CO2 emmissions.
There is more than enough fossil fuels to fry us...
Short of major war that returns us to the neolithic era, we ain't gonna stop burning them...
There is nothing GRIM about the future, the future is BRIGHT.
THE USA ends, and the world moves on 'sustainable', and all the world is taught about the wasteful fucking locusts called the 'USA culture'e .
The USA has created a nation of parasites, and they will NOT accept their reduction in 'cargo', there will be riots and mayhem, and out of the ashes none will survive, and the WORLD WILL FUCKING REJOICE.
Silicon in the desert bitchez!
I would submit that 12+ years of war on the opposite side of the world in multiple countries had a lot to do with the oil shortage. Think man! The longest logistics line in the history of the world, with soldiers and equipment rotated all the way home every 6 months. Our leadership is either really stupid or controlled by the Aliens!!!!!? Hell a small C-130 burns 5,000 lbs of fuel an hour and would take about 30 hours of flight time one way.
The U.S. military is the largest single consumer of petroleum products on the planet.
That's why America needs Obamacare and Higher minimum wages in order to distract people from the ACTUAL PROBLEM at hand.
The MIC. must survive at all costs, as it and the imaginary gold reserves, are the only things keeping the USD as número uno!
The problem is circular, the Petrodollar is all about oil, but to support it, we must unproductively burn a huge amount of the oil?
Thus Uncle Sugar has a teeny weeny slight problem.
The military could (in theory) be closed down and the "savings" given back to Americans, but even this is no longer possible because the value of the future money has been used already. The American people would find that the "savings" are now worthless as the $$$ value collapsed along with the MICs global power.
In one word Awkward...
P: Nothing has ever stopped Man from increasing his use of energy.
C: Therefore, nothing ever will.
QED
If God had ever meant for Man to face energy limits, He wouldn't have invented F350s.
There are no insurmountable technical problems associated with obtaining large amounts of environmentally sustainable energy. Only political problems.
As far as encouraging couples to have smaller families goes...well watch Idiocracy again.
- Jérôme à Paris is at European Tribune
- phil hart is at Phil Hart
- Luís de Sousa is at At The Edge Of Time
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Posted by Euan Mearns on September 22, 2013 - 9:34am
Topic: Site news
Tags: heading out, professor goose, the oil drum [list all tags]
The Oil Drum (TOD) was an internet energy phenomenon that ran for over eight years from April 2005 to September 2013. The site was founded by Prof. Goose (also known as Professor Kyle Saunders of Colorado State University) and Heading Out (also known as Professor Dave Summers formerly of the Missouri University of Science and Technology).
The site took off with the advent of Hurricane Rita in September 2005 and resulted in the first 200+ comment event, indicating that there was demand for a site where concerned citizens could gather round a camp fire to discuss events impacting their energy supplies and ultimately, their well being. In eight years, >960,000 comments have been posted. Two other energy linked disasters, the Deepwater Horizon blowout and the Fukushima Daiichi reactor melt downs would see readership soar to >75,000 unique visits per day.
These pages have hosted over 7,500 articles covering every aspect of the global energy system. It was not unusual for a post to attract over 600 comments, many of which were well informed and contained charts and links to other internet sources. The site would become known for a uniquely high level of discourse where armchair analysts of all stripes added their knowledge to threads in a courteous, and ultimately pro-social way that energy experts at hedge funds, corporations or universities might not have the freedom to do. It is this emergent property of smart people sharing knowledge on a critical topic to humanity's future that will be missed.
The site was built on twin backbones that would often pull the readership in opposite directions. Drumbeats, edited by Leanan (who remains anonymous to this day) provided daily energy news digest and a forum for debate. And articles, written by a legion of volunteer writers, that strove to provide a more quantitative analysis of global energy supplies and the political, social and economic events that lay behind them. All the content would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of Super G, our site engineer, who maintained and updated software and hardware as the site grew and evolved for over eight years on a voluntary basis.
In the course of 2013, a decision was made to archive The Oil Drum and the main purpose of this Last Post is to provide some direction to new and future readers of the vast content it contains. The main contributors are listed below along with links to where their writings can be now be found. If you are looking for content there are two main options. The first is to look for author specific content where clicking on the live hyper linked name of the contributor will take you to a page giving access to all the content produced by that author. The second option is to use the Advanced Search facility at the top left of this page. Simply enter a few key words and this will return a page of the most relevant articles.
Editorial boardArthur Berman (aeberman) Arthur E. Berman is a petroleum geologist with 35 years of oil and gas industry experience. He worked 20 years for Amoco (now BP) and 15 years as consulting geologist. He gives keynote addresses for energy conferences, boards of directors and professional societies. He has been interviewed about oil and gas topics on CBS, CNBC, CNN, Platt’s Energy Week, BNN, Bloomberg, Platt’s, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone and The New York Times.
He was a managing editor and frequent contributor of theoildrum.com, and an associate editor of the AAPG Bulletin. He is a Director of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, and has served on the boards of directors of The Houston Geological Society and The Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists. He has published more than 100 articles on petroleum geology. He has done expert witness and research work on several oil and gas trial and utility commission hearings.
He has an M.S. (Geology) from the Colorado School of Mines and a B.A. (History) from Amherst College.
Nate Hagens is a well-known speaker on the big picture related to the global macroeconomy. Nate's presentations address opportunities and constraints we face in the transition away from growth based economies as fossil fuels become more costly. On the supply side, Nate focuses on biophysical economics (net energy) and the interrelationship between money and natural resources. On the demand side, Nate addresses the behavioral underpinnings to conspicuous consumption and offers suggestions on how individuals and society might better adapt to the end of growth. He will be writing at themonkeytrap.us.
Nate has appeared on PBS, BBC, ABC, NPR, and has lectured around the world. He holds a Masters Degree in Finance from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont. Previously Nate was President of Sanctuary Asset Management and a Vice President at the investment firms Salomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers. Nate is the former President of the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future (non-profit publisher of The Oil Drum), is current US Director of the Institute for Integrated Economic Research, and serves on the Board of the Post Carbon Institute. Nate also served as the lead editor of the Oil Drum for several years.
Rembrandt Koppelaar has since 2010 been a Research Associate at the Swiss Institute for Integrated Economic Research (IIER), where he works on modelling of costs of resource and energy flows. Since June 2012 he combines this with a PhD research position at Imperial College London, to contribute to a spatial simulation of the resource flows of an economy at a micro-level using agent-based approaches. He joined the Oil Drum in 2006 first as a contributor and later as an editor, triggering by his concern in oil depletion. An interest that also led him to establish and become President of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas Netherlands from 2006 to 2010. He is author of the book “De Permanente Oliecrisis” discussing the end of cheap oil and its consequences (Dutch language, Nieuw Amsterdam publishers, 2008). Rembrandt holds a BSc and MSc in economics from Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
Brian Maschhoff (JoulesBurn) earned a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of New Mexico and a Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Arizona. He has worked at several academic institutions and government laboratories, and currently engages in a wide variety of scientific and technical pursuits including web-based education, data visualization, and research on salmon recovery. His research on the oil fields of Saudi Arabia is also posted at Satellite o'er the Desert. He also blogs at Picojoule, and he might eventually be found @joulesburn on Twitter.
Euan Mearns has B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from The University of Aberdeen. Following an academic career in Norway and a business career in Scotland I took time off work in 2005 to help care for two sons and two dogs and to allow my wife's career to blossom. In 2006, wondering why the oil price and the value of my oil stocks kept going up I stumbled upon the The Oil Drum that provided unique insight, at that time, into The Earth energy system. Feeling the need to put something back I submitted a couple of articles and have since written roughly 100 posts and hosted many guest posts from worthy authors.
In 2009 I was appointed as Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Aberdeen and teach occasional courses there. For the last 7 years, writing and editing articles for The Oil Drum has consumed a fair portion of my time, but I have in return learned a huge amount. I also continue to work as a consultant for the oil industry. The focus of my interest is the importance of energy to society, society's response to the infrastructure and secondary impacts of energy provision and the political response. I plan to continue writing about Energy, Environment and Policy at Energy Matters.
New post, 8th October: UK North Sea Oil Production Decline
New post 18th November: Marcellus shale gas Bradford Co Pennsylvania: production history and declines
New post, 28th November: What is the real cost of shale gas?
New post, 9th December: OPEC oil production update July 2013
New post, 18th December: OECD oil production update July 2013
New post, 3rd January: Global Oil Supply Update July 2013
New post, 6th January: The Primary Energy Tale of Two Continents
Paul Sears was born in the UK, and did a Ph.D. in chemistry at Cambridge. Since first coming to Canada on a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Western Ontario in 1973, he has worked at the University of Toronto and in the Canadian Federal Government in Ottawa. Most of his work since the mid 1970s has been on the supply and use of energy in one form or another. His interest in the limitations to oil supply dates back to about 1962, when he was at school watching a promotional film from an oil company. The subject of the film was oil exploration, and this caused him to wonder about the dependence of our society on oil and the limits to supply. Other interests are canoeing, kayaking, skiing, hiking, camping, keeping planted aquaria and learning Mandarin Chinese. Sadly, Paul Sears passed away on September 13, 2012. You can read an obituary here.
Dave Summers who writes under the pen name, "Heading Out", comes from a family that for at least nine generations has been coal miners, and he started his working life, as an Indentured Apprentice, in 1961 shoveling coal on one of the last hand-won coal faces in the UK at Seghill, after a few weeks supplying that face with the help of a pit pony. With bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Leeds University in the UK he moved to Rolla, Missouri and Missouri University of Science and Technology (then UMR) in 1968. He was named Curators’ Professor of Mining Engineering in 1980 and for many years directed the Rock Mechanics and Explosives Research Center at MS&T. His main work has been in the developing use of high-pressure water for cutting, cleaning and demilitarization. As one of the quiet revolutions that has crept into industry during his career, his research group worked in nuclear cleanup, rocket motors, and surgical applications as well as developing tools to cut, drill and mine more mundane rock, coal and metals. The team carved the half-scale Stonehenge out of Georgia granite, using only water, and later cut Edwina Sandy’s Millennium Arch from Missouri granite, both of which are on the MS&T campus. They also used the technique in a demonstration excavation that resulted in creating the OmniMax theater under the Gateway Arch in St Louis.
He retired from the University, and was named Emeritus in 2010, and lives quietly with his wife Barbara, with occasional commutes to visit their children, located on the two coasts very far from rural America.
In 2004 he began to write a blog, and in 2005 teamed with Kyle Saunders to jointly found The Oil Drum, a site for “discussions on energy and our future.” He now writes on energy, the applications of waterjets, a little on the use of the 3D modeling program Poser, and occasionally on climate matters. His blog, where the Tech Talks continue, can be found at Bit Tooth Energy. He again thanks all those who have contributed to The Oil Drum over the years and wishes them joy and prosperity in their futures!
Dr. David Archibold Summers has written numerous articles, a textbook, Waterjetting Technology, and jointly holds several patents, the last two of which have been licensed and deal a) with the use of waterjets to remove skin cancer and b) for high speed drilling of small holes through the earth.
Gail Tverberg (Gail the Actuary) became interested in resource limits and how these affect insurance companies and the economy more generally in 2005. She began writing about this issue while working as a property-casualty actuarial consultant at Towers Watson. In 2007, she took early retirement to work specifically on the issue of oil limits.
Between 2007 and its suspension in 2013, Gail worked as a contributor and editor at TheOilDrum.com. She also started her own blog, OurFiniteWorld.com, where she continues to write on a regular basis. Her writings include Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis, published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy in January 2012. She has spoken at at many conferences on subjects related to oil limits, including both academic and actuarial conferences. She now plans to write a book, tentatively called "Discontinuity Ahead: How Oil Limits Affect the Economy."
Gail worked for CNA Insurance prior to joining Tillinghast (which eventually became part of Towers Watson) in 1981. She has a BA in Mathematics from St. Olaf College and an MS in Mathematics from the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is a fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries.
Her Twitter feed is @gailtheactuary.
Chris Vernon originally graduated with a masters degree in computational physics before working for ten years in the field of mobile telecoms specialising in radio network architecture and off-grid power systems in emerging markets. He subsequently returned to university to take an MSc in Earth system science and a PhD in glaciology focusing on the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet. Chris is a trustee at the Centre for Sustainable Energy, works for the UK Met Office and maintains a personal web page.
Selected contributorsBig Gav studied Engineering at the University of Western Australia in Perth. Since then he has travelled widely and worked in the oil and gas, power generation, defence, technology and banking industries. He has been blogging about peak oil for almost 3 years at Peak Energy (Australia) and is probably the most prolific example of a techno-optimist in the peak oil world. He may be alone in thinking that peak oil represents a great opportunity to switch to a clean energy based world economy, rather than the trigger for the end of industrial civilisation.
Jason Bradford is currently a Farm Manager in Corvallis, OR and a Managing Partner for a sustainable farmland fund, Farmland LP. Most of his writing for The Oil Drum occurred while he lived in Willits, CA, where he was instrumental in the founding of Willits Economic Localization, hosted a radio program called "The Reality Report," and was a board member of the local Renewable Energy Development Institute. He also founded and ran a small farm at a local elementary school with a lot of community support and the backing of The Post Carbon Institute, where he is currently a board member. His brief but enjoyable academic career began at Washington University in St. Louis and the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG), where he taught courses in Ecology and from which he received a doctorate in Evolution and Population Biology in 2000. After graduation he was hired by the Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development at MBG, and between 2001 and 2004 secured grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society for multi-disciplinary research on issues related to species extinction and ecosystem function. His "aha moment" came during this research period where the connections between environmental decline, resource consumption, economic growth, belief systems and institutional inertia led to a dramatic change in the course of his life's work.
He continues to blog at Farmland LP.
David Murphy is an Assistant Professor in the Geography Department and an Associate of the Institute for the Study of the Environment, Sustainability, and Energy, both at Northern Illinois University. He serves also as an Environmental Policy Analyst for the Environmental Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Murphy’s research focuses on the intersection of energy, economics, and the environment. Recently, his work has focused on estimating how the extraction of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale has impacted the provision of ecosystem services from the local environment. In addition, he researches how the energy return on investment from oil is related to oil price and economic growth. Dr. Murphy's work for Argonne National Laboratory addresses the environmental impacts associated with energy development.
He tweets: @djmurphy04
Robert Rapier works in the energy industry and writes and speaks about issues involving energy and the environment. He is Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President at Merica International, a forestry and renewable energy company involved in a variety of projects around the world. Robert has 20 years of international engineering experience in the chemicals, oil and gas, and renewable energy industries, and holds several patents related to his work. He has worked in the areas of oil refining, natural gas production, synthetic fuels, ethanol production, butanol production, and various biomass to energy projects. Robert is the author of Power Plays: Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil. He is also the author of the R-Squared Energy Column at Energy Trends Insider. His articles on energy and sustainability have appeared in numerous media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, and Forbes.
Jeff Vail (jeffvail) is an energy intelligence analyst and former US Air Force intelligence officer. He has a B.S. in engineering and history from the US Air Force Academy and a Juris Doctor from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. His interests are in global energy geopolitics and the the "rhizome" theory of social and economic organization. He is the author of the political anthropology book A Theory of Power and maintains a blog at http://www.jeffvail.net.
Jérôme à Paris is an investment banker in Paris, specialised in structured finance for energy projects, in particular in the wind power sector. After graduating from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, he wrote his Ph.D. in economics in 1995 on the independence of Ukraine, with a strong focus on the gas relationship between Ukraine and Russia, and he worked on financings for the Russian oil & gas industry for several years after that. He is the editor of the European Tribune, a community website on European politics and energy issues. He has written extensively about energy issues, usually from an economic or geopolitical angle for the European Tribune and for DailyKos where he led a collective effort to draft an energy policy for the USA, Energize America.
Rune Likvern After Rune's first time seeing The Oil Drum (TOD and Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future; ISEOF), in 2005 he created an account as nrgyman2000 and later got an invitation to become part of the staff of volunteer writers at what was then TOD Europe. In 2008 he started to post under his real name.
He is a Norwegian presently living in Norway and holding a masters degree from what is now the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. For more than two decades he was employed in various positions by major international oil companies, primarily Statoil, working with operations, field/area developments (in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea) and implementation (primarily logistics) of Troll Gas Sales Agreement (TGSA) which is about natural gas deliveries to European customers. This was followed by a period as an independent energy (oil/gas fields assessments, cash flow analysis, portfolio analysis etc.) consultant and as VP for an energy hedge fund in New York. In recent years he had a sabbatical to do more in depth research, reading and participating in discussions about energy, biology (what makes human {brains} what they are and why), and not least financial and economic subjects in several global forums as well as some advisory work.
Presently he is looking for gainful employment/engagements.
He also posts on his blog Fractional Flow
(primarily in Norwegian, but some future posts are planned for in English).
Phil Hart studied Materials Engineering at Monash University in Melbourne before spending five years with Shell UK Exploration and Production, based in Aberdeen, Scotland. He worked on two new North Sea oil and gas field development projects followed by a stint with the Brent field maintenance team as a corrosion engineer. In late 2006, Phil returned to Melbourne and was for a while an active member of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil. He provided many briefings to government, business and community audiences and is still available for presentations around Melbourne and Victoria. Phil now works primarily in the water industry but consults as required for The Institute for Sensible Transport as well. He is also a keen astronomer and night sky photographer: www.philhart.com.
Luís Alexandre Duque Moreira de Sousa (Luís de Sousa) is a researcher at the Public Research Institute Henri Tudor in Luxembourg and a Ph.D. student in Informatics Engineering at the Technical University of Lisbon. Luís created the first Portuguese language website dedicated to Peak Oil in 2005 (PicoDoPetroleo.net); in 2006 he would be one of the founders of ASPO-Portugal and later that year integrated the team that started the European branch of The Oil Drum. Since then he has continuously written about Energy and its interplay with Politics and Economics, both in English and Portuguese. Luís is a regular presence at the collective blog European Tribune and writes on the broader issues of life on his personal blog AtTheEdgeOfTime.
Comments (0) | Share | Permalink | Without comments | PDF versionThe House That Randy Built
Posted by Euan Mearns on September 21, 2013 - 5:34pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: passive house, randy udall, sustainable living [list all tags]
One of the nice aspects of the 7+ years I have been involved with The Oil Drum has been attending conferences and meeting with some of my cyber friends, who by and large figure among the nicest bunch of folks I ever met. In 2007 I attended the ASPO meeting in Houston and it was then that I met Randy Udall for the first time. Well you know what some Americans are like - you meet, you chat a while, discover you get along, down a couple of beers and before you know it you are invited to go visit. And so it was with Randy Udall....
The house that Randy built, sunk low in the Colorado terrain, provides shelter from winter storms and from exposure to summer sun. Photovoltaics, solar hot water (on the roof) and a single wood burner (chimney) provides all the energy needs. There's more… (774 words) | Comments (109) | Share | Permalink | Without comments | PDF version
Twenty (Important) Concepts I Wasn't Taught in Business School - Part I
Posted by nate hagens on September 20, 2013 - 12:27am
Topic: Economics/Finance
Twenty-one years ago I received an MBA with Honors from the University of Chicago. The world became my oyster. Or so it seemed. For many years I achieved status in the metrics popular in our day ~ large paychecks, nice cars, travel to exotic places, girlfriend(s), novelty, and perhaps most importantly, respect for being a 'successful' member of society. But it turns out my financial career, shortlived as it was, occurred at the tail end of an era ~ where financial markers would increasingly decouple from the reality they were created to represent. My skill of being able to create more digits out of some digits, (or at least being able to sell that likelihood), allowed me to succeed in a "turbo" financial system that would moonshot over the next 20 years. For a short time I was in the 1% (and still am relative to 'all humans who have ever lived'). Being in the 1% afforded me an opportunity to dig a little deeper in what was really going on (because I quit, and had time to read and think about things for 10 years). It turns out the logic underpinning the financial system, and therefore my career, was based on some core flawed assumptions that had 'worked' in the short run but have since become outdated, putting societies at significant risks.
Around 30% of matriculating undergraduate college students today choose a business major, yet 'doing business' without knowledge of biology, ecology, and physics entirely circumvents first principles of how our world really works ~ my too long but also too short summary of the important things I wasn't taught in business school is below.
There's more… (6445 words) | Comments (284) | Share | Permalink | Without comments | PDF versionSo, What Are You Doing?
Posted by nate hagens on September 19, 2013 - 12:17am
Topic: Site news
It's September and we still have 7 more 'final' posts in the queue (myself, Joules, Jerome, Jason, Art, Dave Murphy, and Euan...) and will run them every 2 days until finished. Leanan will post a final Drumbeat later this week where people can leave website links contact details, etc.
For 8 years we read about what people think about energy related themes. I thought it would be a good idea to use this thread to highlight what people are actually doing in their lives given the knowledge they've gleaned from studying this topic, which really is more of a study of the future of society.
What do TOD members plan to do in the future? Herding goats, fixing potholes, creating web sites, switching careers, etc? I'll go first. Feel free to use my template or just inform others what you're doing. This might be interesting thread to check back on in a few/many years.....(Please no posting of energy charts etc. and let's not respond to others in this thread, just a long list of what people are doing w/ their time).
Ere we scatter to the ether, please share, anonymously or otherwise : what are people doing?
Comments (154) | Share | Permalink | Without comments | PDF versionThe Exponential Legacy of Al Bartlett
Posted by JoulesBurn on September 12, 2013 - 2:32pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: albert bartlett, limits to growth [list all tags]
Dr. Albert Allen Bartlett, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Colorado, died September 7, 2013 at the age of 90. It is coincidental that, in the year that he "officially" retired from teaching (1988), I first heard his famous lecture Arithmetic, Population, and Energy (although I don't recall if that was the title at the time). I was in my last year in graduate school, and his talk was one of the keynote presentations (or perhaps during dinner) for a scientific conference. It was seemingly out of place given that the subject of the meeting was surface chemistry and physics, but it most certainly became stuck somewhere in my mind for reasons other than its novelty.
Most scientists are transfixed on interesting scientific details, some with relevance to technological problems, and perhaps buzz-worthy enough to attract funding. There has never been much money in solving problems with no real technological solution. I became reacquainted with this talk in 2006, probably via a link on The Oil Drum. TOD was by its nature dealing with limits to growth (of oil, if nothing else), and over the last few years, we have discussed the various ways in which we could perhaps keep the oil flowing or replace it with something else. Perhaps the implications of exponential growth was kept in the back room somewhere, like an embarrassing relative, while the latest "game changing" solution was bandied about. But we need to continually remind ourselves that, while important, finding the next energy source or improving efficiencies the keep the economy growing are not long-term solutions for a finite planet.
Below are some more reflections on Prof. Bartlett's legacy, from ASPO-USA (where he had long been on the advisory board) and from the University of Colorado.
There's more… (393 words) | Comments (18) | Share | Permalink | Without comments | PDF versionOf Milk Cows and Saudi Arabia
Posted by JoulesBurn on September 10, 2013 - 9:59am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: aramco, ghawar, saudi arabia [list all tags]
Under the desert in eastern Saudi Arabia lies Ghawar, the largest oil field in the world. It has been famously productive, with a per-well flow rate of thousands of barrels per day, owing to a combination of efficient water injection, good rock permeability, and other factors. At its best, it set the standard for easy oil. The first wells were drilled with rather rudimentary equipment hauled across the desert sands, and the oil would flow out at ten thousand barrels per day. It was, in a sense, a giant udder. And the world milked it hard for awhile.
However, this article isn't just about a metaphor; it is also about cows, the Holsteins of Haradh. But in the end, I will circle back to the present and future of Saudi oil production.
There's more… (2401 words) | Comments (44) | Share | Permalink | Without comments | PDF versionIEA Sankey Diagrams
Posted by JoulesBurn on September 7, 2013 - 11:05pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: iea [list all tags]
The International Energy Agency has taken its share of abuse from The Oil Drum over the years for its rather optimistic forecasts. But it deserves a hearty shout-out for an invaluable resource it has on its web site: Interactive Sankey Diagrams for the World.
Sankey Diagram showing world energy flows (Click for larger view)
There's more… (110 words) | Comments (14) | Share | Permalink | Without comments | PDF versionMy Last Campfire Post
Posted by Jason Bradford on September 7, 2013 - 12:13am
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: agriculture energy use, sustainable agriculture [list all tags]
I checked my user profile for this site and discovered that as of today I have been a member for 7 years and 37 weeks. Wow! So much has happened to me and my family over those years and a lot of it was shared on The Oil Drum. For reasons I’ll explain, I haven’t been around much lately. My most recent article was over three years ago.
My first writings for The Oil Drum were over six years ago as guest posts through Nate Hagens, and then as a staff contributor for the “Campfire” section of the site. I am not an energy expert so my role wasn’t about modeling depletion or providing context to the energy news of the week. What I did was consider the broader relationships between energy, resources and society, and explore the implications of more expensive and less energy to our consumer-oriented economy and culture. The most complete and succinct example of this role is probably my “Beware the Hungry Ghosts” piece, which includes this passage:
What many of us found at The Oil Drum was a place to share our anxieties with those who share our anxieties. I am not being dismissive of this at all! Many here have points of view that place us outside of conventional wisdom, and this can be socially difficult. Where else can we go to have conversations that may be impolite, misunderstood and dismissed by the hungry ghosts we live among?
A fine example of thinking profoundly differently is in Kurt Cobb’s essay “Upside Down Economics” in which he gives a visual representation of U.S. GDP from the perspective of an Ecological Economist:
Figure 1 There's more… (716 words) | Comments (56) | Share | Permalink | Without comments | PDF version
The Economic and Political Consequences of the Last 10 Years of Renewable Energy Development
Posted by Jerome a Paris on September 5, 2013 - 9:22am
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: energiewende, germany, natural gas, power, renewable energy, wind [list all tags]
I've been privileged to be an editor of TOD over the past several years, and am glad to have been invited to do a final post as the site moves to an archive status.
When I started writing about energy on the blogs in 2003/2004, I was writing mostly about Russia, gas pipelines and gas geopolitics. There were so many conspiracy theories abounding on topics like the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline or (a bit later) Russia vs Ukraine pipeline conflicts that I felt the need to put out a different version, given that I knew the inside story on many of these issues - and that got me invited to contribute these to TOD as well. In the meantime, my job (which was, and - full disclosure - remains, to finance energy projects) slowed moved from oil&gas work to power sector transactions and, increasingly, to renewable sector deals, and I started writing about the wind business, in my mind from the perspective of a banker wanting to make sure that these projects could be paid back over periods of 15 or 20 years.
While my work is now almost exclusively focused on offshore wind in Northern Europe, I still do not consider myself a 'wind shill'... but it does give me a different perspective on the debates currently going on about energy policy in various places, and on the changes to the power sector caused (among others, by renewables) that are underpinning such debates, and I thought it would be a useful complement, together with Big Gav's overview of the clean energy sector, to the other articles more traditionally focused on the oil&gas side of things.
I'll focus on Germany, where the transformation has been most advanced (and even has brought a new word to us: the Energiewende), and where the consequences of high renewable penetration are most
^^ Thanks, TOD was awesome. Remember the Deepwater Horizon threads?
Anyone who thinks we will find an alternative to EXPENSIVE oil is dreamined - we need it NOW --- and there is absolutely nothing remotely on the horizon
Suggest you read the other outstanding articles on Gail's blog. Also suggest you read the comments section below each - some very balanced and thoughtful discussions
http://ourfiniteworld.com/
Also have a look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFyTSiCXWEE
The Industrial Revolution is about to END.
When Beranke said 'people despise him but when they realize what he has done was in their interests they may change their mind' what he meant is that these seemingly insance policies were enacted to squeeze out as many more years as possible out of the current system --- and that what is coming next is mass starvation --- chaos -- anarchy.
I used to despise Bernanke but after reading Tverg I find myself cheering him on --- print more --- bail out any entity that threatens to set off contagion -do ANYTHING YOU HAVE TO - if it keeps the hamster running a few days or weeks or months longer. Because when the hamster stops - I am almost certainly a dead man
When the global economy crashes there will be NO RESET. There can be no reset. Life as we know (for the few that survive) is finished.
Notarocketscientist, relax. It will be bad but life goes on until you die and a lot can happen in between.
For some perspective, you might want to go to YouTube and play the awesome Chinese film Back in 1942, set during a great starvation event in Hanaan Province during the war with Japan.
Then perhaps you could find a suitable place to post your thoughts about mass starvation and how we - including those of us living check to check - might organize to survive it if we know it's coming.
Notarocketscientist, telling the bigger story in a fuller way, results in that being both worse, and better, than you present.
The industrial revolution started with two matching basic things, one was the steam engine, and the other was the debt engine. The first was hardware technology, depending on iron and coal, the second was software social system, depending on organized lies and violence.
The industrial revolution continued to be matching developments of BOTH. More material engines, directed by more monetary engines. The real control of the industrial revolution was achieved by layers of organized crime, in the form of force backed frauds, done by governments having their sovereign powers effectively privatized.
One important symbol of how the industrial revolution actually played through was how the cotton industry was able to make the cannabis industry become criminalized, so that it would be put out of business, and so, not able to compete with the cotton industry. Despite the fact that in every objective way cannabis is superior to cotton, nevertheless, in the realm of the funding of the political processes, which enabled the triumph of organized crime to make and maintain governments that served special interests and monopolies, by wiping out their competitors, the real history of the industrial revolution can not be understood without considering how the historical facts were that it was the Egyptian cotton industry that started the avalanche in the international institutions, which finally resulted in the complete criminalization of cannabis throughout almost the whole world, for many decades. A similar history can be found regarding alcohol prohibition, and almost everywhere else that one examines, whereby the best organized gangs of criminals were able to dominate the funding of the political processes, in order to direct the actual ways that the industrial revolution developed, which constantly reinforced the powers of monopolies to wipe out their potential competition. The industrial revolution was never abstractly rational in any overall way. It was always directed by the actual triumphs of organized crime controlling governments.
The tragedy behind the industrial revolution is that it actually went down its own path of least resistance, which was a path of least morality. The real path of least action enables frauds, backed by force, to dominate everything that civilization actually does. The deeper problem behind the industrial revolution is that the actual use of science and technology was controlled through the established social pyramid systems, from the history of Neolithic Civilization, which enabled successful warfare, based on deceits, to become successful finance, based on frauds.
THE THEORY OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OUGHT TO HAVE EMBRACED THE IMPERATIVE NEED TO DEVELOP AN INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY. ALTHOUGH THAT WAS ALWAYS THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE, FROM A POLITICAL POINT OF VIEW THAT WAS PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE, BECAUSE THE CENTRAL FACTS WERE THAT HUMAN ECOLOGY WAS CONTROLLED BY THE HUMAN DEATH CONTROLS, I.E., THE MURDER SYSTEMS, WHOSE HISTORICAL SUCCESSES WERE BASED UPON DECEITS, AND UPON THAT BASIS WAS BUILT THE FINANCIAL SYSTEMS, WHOSE SUCCESSES WERE BASED ON FRAUDS.
It was always plainly obvious that turning natural resources into garbage and pollution as fast as possible would run into real limits as fast as possible. THEORETICALLY, it should have always been imperative to build an industrial ecology system, from the beginning, that was designed to enable that industrial ecology to become sustainable. It is still abstractly possible to have a sustainable industrial ecology. However, the central problem is the death controls.
I REPEAT, from the beginning, the steam engine was directed by the debt engine. The material technology was directed to be developed by the social technology. However, the social technology of the debt engine arose as triumphant financial frauds, as the development of privatized central banks, which were allowed to engage in factional reserve banking, which amounted to runaway legalized counterfeiting of the public "money" supply by private banks. That was the REAL way that the industrial revolution developed, as that was directed by the operation of the combined money/murder systems, where the REAL human ecology, and political economy, were directed by those flowing through their own paths of least resistance, or least morality, so that deceits backed by destruction were the primary controls over human ecology, and frauds backed by force were the primary controls over the political economy, which political economy was the actual way that the industrial revolution was directed.
Those are central problems that continue to beset the potential of the industrial revolution. That revolution continues to have almost infinite creative potential, whose magnitudes continue to be much greater than anything which has yet been approached. There ARE plenty of creative alternatives, which could be integrated into alternative systems, in the sense of building integrated systems of human ecologies, industrial ecologies, and natural ecologies. HOWEVER, none of that can actually be done without the death controls, and then the debt controls, being the central core to those processes. Those combined death/debt controls must necessarily be the keystone to any system of integrated alternatives, because those combined money/murder systems must be the lynch pins that hold together all the rest of the possible components.
The PROBLEM is that we do have a human ecology which was primarily created by the history of warfare, where success was based upon deceits. Therefore, the ways that we discuss the death controls are buried under the maximum possible deceits. Our REAL human ecology operates through the greatest possible professional liars and immaculate hypocrites running the established systems through the well-developed language of the biggest bullies' bullshit about what they are doing. Both the rulers and those they rule over, are matching bookends that operate within that frame of reference, where the REAL human ecology was directed by death controls, which were the more successful, to the degree that they were more deceitful.
The same thing happened as information became more important than physical power, i.e., as the steam engines and its descendents were matched by the debt engines and its descendents. The murder systems that were central to REAL human ecology morphed into the money systems that were central to REAL political economy. Therefore, the REAL industrial ecology was developed on the basis of being directed by the maximum possible frauds, which were expressed primarily by attempts by governments to have their monopolization of the powers to rob, and to kill to back up that robbery, being extended through systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, to enforce cascading systems of legalized monopolies, which wiped out most of the best possible competition. By those means, those who were the best at applying the methods of organized crimes, through the political processes, were able to advance their agenda.
As I mentioned, the single simplest symbol, and most extreme particular example of that process was the way that cannabis was criminalized. However, the same pattern of social facts is found everywhere else that one examines. The industrial revolutions may NOT be about to end, but they are on the verge of psychotic breakdowns.
The REAL future of the industrial revolution depends upon developing industrial ecologies. However, those industrial ecologies still, so far, have as their necessary central feature being the human ecologies, which means that the core concern which is necessarily central to the issues regarding whether we could develop better industrial ecologies is necessarily the issue of whether we could develop better murder systems, exercising the death controls upon the human population. Those death controls are what the systems of debt controls actually depend upon, because "money" is actually measurement backed by murder.
The world SHOULD develop integrated systems of human ecologies, industrial ecologies and natural ecologies. All of those things are theoretically possible, but practically impossible in the current political context, because our current politics operates through death controls based on the maximum possible deceits, and debt controls based on the maximum possible frauds. Therefore, it is practically impossible to discuss the overall industrial revolution, and the emerging industrial ecology, in any form of sane public debate, because the REAL human ecology is actually operated through murder systems based on the maximum possible deceits, and that murder system backs up the money system based on the maximum possible frauds. Therefore, since we are controlled by huge lies, backed up by lots of violence, but that violence can never make those lies become true, our civilization constantly behaves in more insane ways, at an exponentially accelerating rate ... which makes the future of the industrial revolutions currently look like it has extremely dismal prospects during the rest of the 21st Century, since we have high-graded ourselves to hell, by basing everything we did on being able to consume more natural resources, faster, while working our way systematically through all of the best of those resources, without any concern for the longer term future of doing that. I agree with the perspectives upon that process that reveal that high-grading ourselves to hell will get worse, faster, at an exponentially accelerating rate.
However, I do not believe that there will be a complete crash, to the point where all of the knowledge about inanimate energy sources is annihilated, (although that is one possible extreme scenario.) Rather, I believe that we will go through a process of developing evolutionary ecologies that cope with the inanimate energy sources becoming animated, which will enable industrial ecologies to develop further. However, first of all, that means that the current systems based on the maximum possible deceits and frauds about themselves must drive themselves madly through their own psychotic breakdowns ... with some residual hope that on the other side of that, we could reconstitute a saner civilization.
There is no doubt that the current kinds of manifestations of the industrial revolutions, which are able to operate with extremely evil deliberate ignorance towards themselves, because they are actually directed by combined money/murder systems which depend upon themselves being able to operate through frauds and deceits, that are socially successful to the degree that they get to act like the most basic laws of nature do not exist, as least as far as the social stories about themselves are concerned, must come to an ugly end.
Anyway, the steam engine was originally developed intuitively. After that became successful, that drove people to try harder to develop better theories to explain how heat engines generally worked. That created the theory of thermodynamics. It is IMPORTANT to recognize that when thermodynamics was developed, an ARBITRARY minus sign was inserted into the entropy equations, so that power would end up having a positive value, rather than the mathematics which described power ending up generating negative numbers. That was an extremely significant way that the biggest bullies' bullshit world view dominated the philosophy of science, and continued to create a Bizarro Mirror World, where everything was being perceived backwards, but almost nobody looking at that Mirror understood that they were seeing everything backwards.
When thermodynamics was extrapolated into information theory, the same thing happened, that the equations of entropy kept having a minus sign arbitrarily inserted into them, so that information was given positive values, while actually the mathematics itself was saying that all information had negative values. Thus, while it was true that information is power, throughout those domains, everything was perceived backwards, since the mathematics itself was saying that power and information always has relative negative values, but the social world inverted that, so that power and information were given positive values, which was bullshit!
The source of all that bullshit was the history of warfare, where the success of the biggest bullies was based upon their ability to back up deceits with destruction. Those War Kings created the sovereign states, which attempted to monopolize the power to rob (tax) and the power to kill (enforce their rule of law.) After those sovereign states were created in the crucible of conflicts, through warfare, selecting for which systems of organized lies, operating organized robberies, survived and were triumphant, gradually the powers of those War Kings were covertly taken over by the Fraud Kings, (primarily the central banks.) Therefore, the REAL history of the industrial revolution started with the history of the steam engine and the debt engine, and continued to develop that potential for Centuries more of exponential progress in science and technology. However, since the crucial human ecology was directed by successful deceits, that then enabled the surrounding political economy to be directed by successful frauds.
Those are the deeper dilemmas with respect to the issue of the industrial revolution necessarily developing better systems of industrial ecologies, in order for it to possibly survive and continue to develop its inherent potential, which continues to be many, many orders of magnitude greater than it has so far achieved. HOWEVER, all of that returns to the central core issue, of the human murder systems, or death controls, that necessarily back up the money systems, or debt controls.
We should STOP thinking using false fundamental dichotomies about these topic, and therefore, STOP returning to impossible ideals as the source of any solutions to the problems about how to develop better, integrated, systems of human ecologies, industrial ecologies, along with natural ecologies. It is NOT a black vs. white, either/or situation, regarding the future development of the human death controls. Right now, the Fraud Kings ARE directing the future towards their primary apparent resolutions for these real resource problems, which are to mass murder the majority of the human population during the 21st Century. Right now, we operate through fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems, which get to deliberately ignore the laws of nature, since "money" is apparently being made out of nothing, and destroyed back to nothing, because that "money" is actually triumphantly fraudulent, because it is backed up by the powers of government to rob, and to kill those who try to resist being robbed. Therefore, we ARE headed towards overwhelmingly overshooting what may have been sustainable, with the result being a massive die off, or culling of the human population.
But nevertheless, those systems of organized lies, operating organized robberies, through legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, are STILL operating ACTUALLY as energy systems. Of course, we are taught to understand those energy systems backwards, because the biggest bullies' bullshit stories dominate everything that happens within the social pyramid systems operated through the Neolithic style of civilization. Since those systems are general energy systems, despite those being described by human beings in extremely deceitful and fraudulent ways, there are still some hidden truths to the laws of nature there. The laws of man are extremely entangled with the laws of nature, since the laws of man are based upon the power of the laws of nature being used to enforce frauds. But nevertheless, there still are laws of nature.
That is HOW and WHY the development of industrial ecologies will amount to developing Translithic Civilizations, which may emerge after the psychotic breakdowns of the current Neolithic Civilizations. That kind of Translithic Civilization, assuming it survives, will also have new kingdoms of life, as computer machine entities develop to equal, and perhaps surpass, previous biological entities. The process of making the tools to make the tools could extend much further, until computers are designing and building new computers, while, at the same time, biological beings that understand their own DNA code could also be redesigning themselves, as natural selection gets internalized as intelligence, in more and deeper ways. Clearly, those kinds of powers and capabilities will not fit within social pyramid systems that rely upon ruling classes that rely upon their dishonesty, backed violence, to control everyone else that is thereby kept ignorant and afraid. Neolithic Civilization is killing itself, however, their remains some theoretical chance that it could change into some Translithic Civilization.
All of the basic problems we face on a finite planet, when our whole economic system is based on fraudulent finance, that turns natural capital into garbage and pollution, on a one-way express trip to hell, could only be rectified by developing better industrial ecologies, which were consistent with the ways that natural ecologies originally evolved. However, there are no theoretical ways to avoid the central problem within that context, which was, is, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future (as long as computers do not actually become more functionally intelligent, and more generally integrative than human beings), the human death controls, or the human murder systems, which back up the monetary systems, which therefore, are the core to controlling everything else that civilization decides to do.
The deepest problem, therefore, with respect to the potential future of the industrial revolution is the same old problem that militarism has always coped with, which was that successful murder systems depended upon them being deceitful about themselves. That is what makes developing better human ecologies so extremely difficult and dangerous, and that is why developing saner industrial ecologies seem so problematic, to the degree that it now looks to be practically impossible.
Those deeper and deeper problems, travel through fractal tunnels of deceit, because that is how the real death controls actually work. Civilization is actually a form of organized crime, because warfare was organized crime, which created civilization. Governments are the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. That was the REAL history that started the industrial revolution, and which directed in which particular directions it developed.
The industrial revolution was primarily about human beings understanding and harnessing inanimate energy source, and thereby effectively animating them. That process continued through sequences of profound paradigm shifts in basic science, which enabled greater and greater technologies. However, that whole process was achieved through systems which operated on the basis of the maximum possible deceits and frauds, in the ways that their actual combined murder/money systems operated themselves. Therefore, what we theoretically need is profound intellectual revolutions in the philosophy of science, which could be applied to politics, and especially to militarism, because we are certainly headed towards drastic changes of state in our current kind of industrial revolution, towards radically different industrial ecologies, in one way or another, and probably sooner, rather than later!
ABSOLUTELY FOR SURE, NONE OF THE "COMMON SOLUTIONS" TO OUR "ENERGY PROBLEMS" COULD WORK! The ability to strip-mine the planet in order to feed exponential growth of human activities is coming to an end, in an abrupt fashion. As that happens, one way or another, and sooner rather than later, different death controls, or human murder systems, are going to erupt, since they were the actual foundation upon which the debt controls and money systems were built. The central issue is whether or not, or to what degree, might there be a greater use of information, and higher consciousness, that is able to catalyze the transformations from the social pyramid systems of Neolithic Civilizations, into toroidal vortex systems of Transnational Civilizations? That is, to what degree are enough human beings going to be able to go through enough radical paradigm shifts in their political ideas to enable the emergence of better, integrated, evolutionary ecologies, for humans, industry and nature?
Right now, that is very hard to fathom, since the established systems are based on runaway triumphant financial frauds, backed by extremely deceitful death controls. The current versions of the best organized crimes on this planet have become criminally insane, which is why the REAL path we are on now is headed towards its most probable resolutions taking the form of the mass murder of the majority of human beings during the 21st Century. However, any genuine alternative solutions ought to be based upon radically different understanding of general energy systems as a whole, which could provide alternative death controls, to support alternative debt controls, within radically different systems of human and industrial ecologies, which were then able to be reconciled with the general energy systems of the surrounding natural ecologies.
Given that the real world is currently controlled by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, who are drowning themselves and everyone else under their bullshit, I admit it seems very far fetched to imagine how we could ever develop better industrial ecologies. However, those are the only sufficient, albeit extremely uncommon, solutions to our real energy problems. That is, more than anything we need to understand human civilization itself as one form of general energy systems, and that requires that we understand how and why human energy systems ended up being controlled by their murder systems, which became based on their maximum possible deceits, so that then the industrial revolution took place as directed by a monetary system based on the maximum possible frauds.
The imperatively necessary paradigm shifts in understanding energy systems mostly require understanding the degree to which the biggest bullies' bullshit stories dominated almost everything, and turned everything into becoming a Bizarro Mirror World, where the legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, mostly became diametrically opposite to the radical truth in every possible way. That goes from the basic philosophy of science, in the mathematics of thermodynamics and information theory, all the way through every aspect of militarism and monetary systems, which the political processes presided over, through their feedback loops.
The only ways we could develop better industrial ecologies is to go through a profound series of intellectual scientific revolutions in the ways that we comprehend general energy systems, so that we could apply that understanding to politics ... As we hit the wall of the real limits of a finite planet, we are going to be forced to go through that processes, more and more, faster and faster. There are NO "common solutions" to our "energy problems" that can be found within the old paradigms. Instead, those old paradigms are the worst aspects of our problems! Right now, it looks like we will hit the wall of limits running into those as fast as we could go, and then bounce off a cliff whose bottom can not be seen. (Which is what you more or less said in your comment, Notarocketscientist.)
Without radical paradigm shifts in the ways that we perceive general energy systems, then the industrial revolution is going to dead end, in a terminally tragic way. However, there are plenty of creative ways that we could develop sustainable industrial ecologies. Although those appear extremely improbable, if not practically impossible today, the same could be said about the evolution of biological life. For instance, when photosynthesis was first developed, who would have predicted the integrated systems of plants and animals which would result billions of years later?
The human experiment is sitting on the cusp of events which are far greater in their potential than photosynthesis was! Therefore, it is not necessary that the industrial revolution is going to dead end itself, despite the apparent ways that that is where it is being directed to go now. Rather, there are theoretically possible ways which could transform the current systems, utterly outside of their own current frames of reference, which would enable some survival, and flourishing in the future.
TL;DR
<100 word summary?
it's all simple
Ride a bike
WALK,
live near where your work sleep and fuck
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any thing else is non-sustainable
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The USA has wasted MORE resources than any other culture in all of human history.
Misallocated rather than wasted.
The misallocation has occurred due to the distorting of market signals caused by fractional reserve banking and fiat currency.
If you lived Under a gold standard, you would not get to consume nearly as much plastic crap, unless you were able to generate sufficient cash flow yourself through production of something valuable. That is to say there would not exist a welfare, warfare state, allowing vast amounts of unproductive consumption.
You would not be travelling around whimsically on a vast array of discount airlines, that have no potential to be profitable, except via way of cheap credit, and creative leaseback arrangements.
In other words you would consume a lot less and actually live "within your means".
Grogman....
So who imposes such a gold standard?? Why would a country willingly give up its hegemony because an inablity to pay for its oil in gold?
Do you guys really think about what has actually happened in history?
Why would any country shackle itself to the limitations of a gold standard unless it was forced to or had a large surplus of a commodity to export?
Or is this a secret advertisement for a one world government that was capable of balancing out the flows of gold?
A Gold standard does not need to be imposed.
Instead it must be actively resisted, if one is to prevent it occurring naturally.
(How does "legal tender" laws sound)
Unless another powerful (anti gold) hedgemon emerges after the petrodollar inevitably fails, gold will become money again, wether the PTB like it or not.
This is what history clearly shows.
Great link on peak mining. Thanks...
People can fall in love with good models of reality, good theories.
That's ok. A good model can be a wonderful thing, and may be useful, even very useful. In science though it is not enough for a model to be plausible, logical or beautiful. It must also be testable and it will only counted as good if it can generate good predictions within some definable range of conditions.
And so it should be even in Economics.
I don't have time to dig into and analyze Gail Tverberg's model, but let me give a few quick reasons why I think it will fail this test.
First, the increasing deand for and cost of production of energy, of oil in particular, and of other minerals has been going on for a while. Why would it result in a sudden and cumulative collapse of demand that just happened to coincide with the onset of a major recession/depression, one with other clearly discernable causes?
Second, how could the sudden dropoff in the demand for coal could be due to a sudden increase in the cost of oil at precisely the time when the dropoff in oil demand kicked? And why now? Has it ever happened before? And what else was going on in the world?
Third, economies have been experiencing panics, recessions and depressions for hundreds of years. It might be useful to look at whether GT's model could explain the special features of this one, especially features that seem to defy other explanations. Why would we jump to the conclusion that this one has a new and different cause?
Fourth, why would we attribute a series of economic effects to this cause without at least acknowledging that we are in a special set of circumstances with other possible causes?
These could be honest mistake on GT's part. Many academics and scientists, especially those with industry contracts, are isolated from what is going on in the real world. (This is one of the reasons we should all shout Bullshit whenever they come out with those unemployment statistics for example.)
On the other hand GT might be wise to ask into some folks might be pushing money to her theory because they don't want to have to look at what the banksters and corporate hucksters have done to us. I would count on her honesty to cause her to pull back before allowing herself to be used like that.
Going back to GT's model; these are all things which an engineer would be paying attention to, and we all should also. We need to be thinking about the cumulative energy going into investment in energy solutions, and the energy costs of energy production - along with the energy going into every process and activity. It's an interesting and important question whether or when energy production will start to get pinched off the rising energy cost of exploration and extraction.
I would suggest we all take a deep breath and not panic just yet. And thank GT for causing us to think about the real world for a bit.
I'm being too nice to GT. The model fails the logic test too.
How for example could a rise in the cost of finding and extracting oil cause a decline in the demand for oil, apart from the resulting increase in the cost of the oil? Why would the ups and downs in the previously so inelastic demand for oil with changes in price have so suddenly started to become apparent now?
And how could the decline in demand for all these forms of energy be synchronized like this anyway, when cost structures and development cycles differ dramatically between sources?
The entire demand for OIL was artificial that's how, ... if all the FASCIST bullshit ended, the oil demand would plummet.
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Case in point, in LA in the 1930's the OIL industry destroying the electric train transit system,
In all cases the MOVEMENT of humans to the AUTO in the USA post 1920's was ENGINEERED.
A slight re-engineering and the DEMAND ceases to exist and the PTB are stuck with billions of gallons of oil.
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The DEMAND for OIL is TENOUS at best, ... only a clever NAZI FASCIST GUBMINT could keep the PONZI running this long.
Once FUEL costs exceed say 50% of income,... people would choose another means of mobility, the entire USA fraud post 1920's is based on CHEAP OIL, take that away, and the entire FUCKING FANTASY WORLD EVAPORATES.
Hmmm... looking at a 'Nissan Leaf' (100% Electric) vehicle the other day? Wow! 126(est) MPGe... isn't bad for a ride around the town all week without charging!
home 240v charging dock --- 80% fully charged in 30min.--- +/+ 20k fill stations expected by 2015 --- pennies per gal/ fuel conversion in $$$ saved
$7,500 income tax credit / no more oil checks and/or smog & pollution (zero emissions) environmental issues
best*:: comes with a limited 8-yr/ 100k-miles, whichever comes first
Advantage to all-electric v. hybrid (fuel consumption) is cold weather which dramatically lowers fuel efficiencies in a Prius, etc., etel
jmo
Why don't you just use a coal powered steam engine in your car instead, and shave off the losses from converting to electricty, transmission, and battery storage, along with all the embedded energy involved in mining the rare earths and making the batteries?
Electricity is not an energy source. Hydrogen is not an energy source. They are both means of storing and using energy that came from another source - like a natural gas or coal fired power plant.
Before you start to argue about hydropower, many places are already having water shortages, I doubt many have the surplus to power electric cars ontop of their existing demand for household, commercial and industrial use.
Maybe solar and wind will one day make up a large enough portion of the energy mix to make a difference, but right now, not so much.
It's obvious that unlimited population growth coupled with increased standards of living for all will exhaust our resources based on current energy consumption models. The solution is less people on the planet and less moar.
any 'soylent green', biscuit company factory's in your neck or whereabouts, so ya can donate your's truly...
?i bet your bland?
Shit is collected and can be sun sterilized and re-eaten. Folks have been working on this for 50+ years, its available now, basically the shit becomes green algae, which then can be edible and nutritious.
Not many cultures consume human flesh, ... in all human history, well in the UK, up to 1000AD they sold human-flesh on the market, ...but mostly to unsuspecting poor. The eating of human flesh, will make you sick and go nuts,... the Borneo learned this long ago.
Soylent Green, while a great movie,...
I think a better use of of HUMANS would be just to farm them by the millions in building's like 'blood cows', and then their blood or fluids could be sold, sort of like the vampire movies.
But in general, rotting human flesh, ... is really not very useful,
Sorry just saying,
I mean it was a great movie, and the idea of taking an old corpse and making an OREO-COOKIE, ... sure but the reality is not
Shit in most cultures is called fertilizer. I think they call it toxic waste in ours.
Did you know that all of NYC's SHIT is barged to TEXAS, where it is dried, and becomes 'fish fertilizer' and then resold to the the world, ... think shrimp farms and fish farms,.
Thus most farm-fish you eat, is really chemical waste from NYC.
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No good shit goes to waste in the USA.
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I remember when I first came to CHINA back in the 1980's (EARLY), around 6pm every night we had to go with buckets to all the village toilets drop the buckets into the outhouses and collect the 'shit&piss', they don't use toilet paper, so its clean shit,
Then we would carry the fresh shit out to the fields and deposit near the veggies, ... this went on daily, and has been so for +15,000 years.
I will be tithing in lead myself.
Truth be known, we probably already have cracked the challenge of "zero point energy" and indeed if Gary MacKinnon's probing of the DOD's servers is true, the "Breakaway Civilization" may be using such in starcraft. He found officer transfers to ships not listed in the fleet, and evidence of photo tampering to cover up UFO's. And now the former Sec of Defense in Canada has come forward to admit the government knows all about EBE's.
Point is though, Oil is the biggest business on Earth. Those invested in it want you to think it's scarce, thus deriving their profit. What do you think would be the result of such a revelation to the big oil companies and their industry?
Truth be known, we probably already have cracked the challenge of "zero point energy"
bullsh*t
The problem is that that liquid fuel, has the highest BTU density of anything ever found by man.
Ergo there is NO replacement,
Good news is there is 250 years of liquid fuel, and 500 years of coal, ... and by then they'll have figured out FUSION ( getting hyrdrogen from water ) on the cheap .
All this energy talk, is just AL-GORE bullshit scam, ... to fuck you in the arse.
Yep, sure thing...
Tell us how you generate electricity from a D-T fusion reaction...
C'mon suprise us with your knowledge...
BTW, those oil and coal numbers were pulled out of your ass...
250 years of oil at what level of consumption? Current consumption? A quarter of current consumption? A tenth?
Are you using any numbers, or do you just make this stuff up on the fly?
Of course, I personally advocate living in a remote village riding a bicycle, and walking, well essentially this is for health reasons.
Let's be honest, sitting in a car or a bus, will make you fat and lazy.
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Nobody ever said that FUEL was 'cheap', ... sure as shit it will get very expensive, but it will always be there, for a long time in the future.
'Sustainable' is the correct model, IMHO those far from the USA that practice sustainable LIFESTYLE, ... will survive, those who don't will perish.
But all those in the USA will perish.
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THis article might as well be written by the CAPTAIN of the TITANIC, on saving passengers or the SHIP, but the fact is the USA and its way of life is going down and hard, ... and NOTHING, no about of BULLSHIT talk or POST's will change this fact.
'Nothing solves high prices like high prices'
Until that LAW is repealed, I will bet on it before I bet on the million of chicken littles screaming that it is different this time
Yep, oil companys want to SELL oil, not sit on it, once they price themselves out of reach, then their no longer in the oil biz, there in the storage biz,
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Expensive fuel, would solve a lot of traffic problems in the USA, that said the USA wasteful system,... WALMART would end, corporate power would wane,
Probably the biggest bane would be that Expensive energy is bad for wall street, but good for main street.
Once energy is expensive, then once again lard asses will walk to mainstreet and shop, rather than drive to the fucking corporate mall.
Did you notice that when oil hit $150 solutions started pouring out of the woodwork? That got the price down quickly didn't it?
Why do you think expensive oil would hurt Wal-Mart? Do you realize they have the most efficient storage and distribution system, which is why they were able to annihilate their competition? They might have to make some changes, but unless there is mass de-urbanization, I doubt Wal-Mart is going anywhere.
WALMART is always in the SUBURBS, requires an AUTO, when fuel is $10/gal, or $50/gal, then nobody can afford to go to WALMART, or any MALL SHOPPING CENTER in mongolia.
High fuel kills the FASCIST model ( big biz shopping ), on the other hand, in elite communitys that have wealth when fuel is high, main-street will prosper.
Ergo, its FASCIST CORPORATE ameriKKKa that wants cheap OIL, which is why most of us that HATE the CORPORATE SUIT, wish for expensive fucking FUEL.
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Efficient transportation my ASS, when DIESEL is $20/gal, them fucking trucks aren't moving.
Optimization of transportation ONLY works when the RETURN path, involves a pickup, so that in all directions there is money being made, when a truck returns empty, somebody is losing money.
When FUEL sky-rockets ALL optimization of transportation is lost, as all trucks in all directions will be empty.
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Mass de-urbanization started in the 1950's, and now re-urbanization is only for the ELITE ( who have money ).
Problem today for the corporation is all their assets are in the suburbs,...
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On the issue of URBANIZATION allow me to say "WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO LIVE IN AN AMERICAN CITY?"
I could live anywhere I want in the USA, and I choose NONE OF THE ABOVE, .. NOTHING could get me to live in the USA.
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Most of my rich friends HATE walmart, because it destroyed MAIN-STREET, and most of the rich, came from main street. Today of course there is only PONZI-STREET, aka Wall-St, aka ZH avenue.
In summary: Commuting, disposable goods, planned obsolescence, and the Consumer Society is approaching its end! If you do not possess an item that will last for decades, you will learn to do without it. Just WHO paid for the Georgia Guidestones?
Most Excellent Grasshopper
Commuting, disposable goods, planned obsolescence, and the Consumer Society is approaching its end!
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I would go farther, "IMPERIAL ARMYS", like locust robbing the worlds fuel, and paying only with dead infants is on its way out too.
A society of parasites that ignores how or where its 'cargo' comes from is on its way out too.
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Long ago a tool would last a generation or more, ... I still see it everyday where I live, a HOE, or an AXE, or a spade may last a generation or more, ... sharpen, and when the wood handle wears you carve a new one from a tree.
In an economy without money, people use their ingenuity, long ago ameriKKKan's were world famous for their ability to 'fix anything', all now has been lost, when something breaks now you toss it and buy new at walmart, costco, or home-pro; the result is MA&PA HW store are gone, eventually ALL corporate mall stores become dead-zones of maggots an rotting flesh.
Will ma&pa HW shop return, probably not, people will beg or barter, or more like 'improvise' an abandoned motorcycle fender tied to a stick, makes HOE and life moves on.
+1
Ignores fracking, so frack this article.
ps - I still have some good hopes for thorium, if somewhere on this planet there are a couple of competent engineers and a couple of intelligent politicians who can put the effort together.
You really have no idea into what makes a technology viable do you?
If you visit Gail's blog she addresses fracking http://ourfiniteworld.com/
As will I below:
THE FRACKING PONZI SCHEME
Robert Ayres, a scientist and professor at the Paris-based INSEAD business school, wrote recently that a "mini-bubble" is being inflated by shale gas enthusiasts. “Drilling for oil in the U.S. in 2012 was at the rate of 25,000 new wells per year, just to keep output at the same level as it was in the year 2000, when only 5,000 wells were drilled." http://www.forbes.com/sites/insead/2013/05/08/shale-oil-and-gas-the-contrarian-view/
Why America's Shale Oil Boom Could End Sooner Than You Think
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2013/06/13/why-americas-shale-oil-boom-could-end-sooner-than-you-think/
Scientists Wary of Shale Oil and Gas as U.S. Energy Salvation
Hughes sums up: "Tight oil is an important contributor to the U.S. energy supply, but its long-term sustainability is questionable. It should be not be viewed as a panacea for business as usual in future U.S. energy security planning."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131028141516.htm
U.S. Shale-Oil Boom May Not Last as Fracking Wells Lack Staying Power
“I look at shale as more of a retirement party than a revolution,” says Art Berman, a petroleum geologist who spent 20 years with what was then Amoco and now runs his own firm, Labyrinth Consulting Services, in Sugar Land, Tex. “It’s the last gasp.”
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/u-dot-s-dot-shale-oil-boom-may-not-last-as-fracking-wells-lack-staying-power
Kool-Aid commercial - disco?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYS7aQY1iZI
looney tunes theme
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC5XCX6Cgz8
All these story's such as these on ZH, perpetuate the BIG MYTH, to enumerate how can "GOLDMAN-SACHS", and AIPAC perpetuate the PONZI culture that they have created.
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They can't, and no enumeration, no talk of solar panels, and no amount of vote buying or vote rigging can save the CULTURE of cargo-cult parasites they have enabled by their FREE FIAT.
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Reminds me of old beginning lines of MAD-MAX-2 "They talked and they talked, ... and their machines came to a HALT".
there aint no rest for the wicked with stupid cat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJLZU1ZKboI
For over a hundred years the easy oil has been nearly used up and this sort of analysis shows doom just around the corner. For over a century it has been wrong for one reason or another.
Maybe it's right this time. Don't think I'd bet my money on it. There will be various tells in foreign policy and corporate actions when the oil is actually running out.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah ... charts prove we have to kill off most people, YOU FIRST.
How about this:
Get paid to dump toxic waste down gas wells, get paid for the temporary increase in output, get paid for predictable price increases by manipulating the weather using HAARP and Chem trails, that is, being in the loop. Form you investments, knowing what will happen, Sandy, Cattle freezing, wheat, corn: GET PAID!
The FED is a cash machine. Weather is a cash machine. Mandated Healthcare is a cash machine. Get on the right side and laugh, ha, ha, ha Stupid People!!!
Oh Dear!
7. Steady State Economy. Herman Daly was the editor of a book in 1973 called Toward a Steady State Economy, proposing that the world work toward a Steady State economy, instead of growth. Back in 1973, when resources were still fairly plentiful, such an approach would have acted to hold off Limits to Growth for quite a few years, especially if zero population growth were included in the approach.
Today, it is far too late for such an approach to work. We are already in a situation with very depleted resources. We can’t keep up current production levels if we want to–to do so would require greatly ramping up energy production because of the rising need for energy investment to maintain current production, discussed in Item (1) of Our Energy Predicament. Collapse will probably be impossible to avoid. We can’t even hope for an outcome as good as a Steady State Economy.
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Oh, no. Dont tell that 'americans' have been working hard to reach a point of no return. That would be unbelievable. Why would people so enamoured with freedom work toward a point of no return? This is beyond ken and very un-american to imply so.
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Made me laugh, as this phenomenum was accomplished in 1977 Kansas.
Depletionary resourcism indicates that leftoverture is followed by dust in the wind.
Ah, ah, Ken Hensley is londonish, but uriah heeped up into america in early 1970s.
Tibetan villagers who were for thousands of years peacefully maintaining a lifestyle of almost zero energy usage, would appreciate all this Ananonymouse talk. As they now trudge through the polluted gloom to factories producing low quality plastic crap, and enriching the People,s democratic glorious leaders overseas wealth fund.
Free Tibet !
seem likely to raise world CO2 emissions...
CO2 emissions are NOT a problem. FACT: there are approximately 186 billion tons of CO2 put in the atmosphere annually. FACT: man made emissions are a mere 6 billion of this total. FACT: 180 billion tons of that total come from the oceans, land, and volcanic activity. FACT: CO2 is a nutrient required of EVERY plant on land and in the ocean.
While i agree with the author in most respects, the CO2 component of his arguement is NOT valid...
Do you think people are complete utter fools? Only a fool or a liar would make the above specious argument.
For example, did you take into account how much is absorbed by natural processes? You also make the error assuming 100% turnover of C02 annually, but that merely amplifies your mendacity...
And riddle me this. please write a simple equation showing that it is possible for the increase in atmospheric C02 to be less than the known human emissions given that we know rate of C02 change before burning fossil fuels was deminimus, i.e. the rates of natural emission and absorption were basically in equilibrium...
Hell, I won't even throw in the Suess effect (isotopic ratios) and the clear anti-correlation between C02 and 02 levels...
Gail thinks 2015 is our Wile e. Coyote off the cliff moment?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq_bjaI0NTo
I suppose 2005 was the "off the cliff" with the peak in conventional oil and 2015 or so could be the "fall"?
Not sure if it's going to be 2015 but if you extrapolate individual oil field decline curves globally then there is an assumption that there will inevitably be a steep decline at some point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw
http://energyfromthorium.com/
Eventually it reaches a point of essential alienation, where it can no longer pretend to represent the governed. The American government is now the most powerful human organization that has ever existed. It has made a stupid habit of exercising power arbitrarily, uninhibited by moral or constitutional principle. It is not a conspiracy masterminded by some cunning genius at the center; it is a system of power which large numbers of greedy and ambitious people have learned to use. It has ceased to be a problem for Americans only; it has become a problem for a large part of the human race. Joseph Sobran
nothing will stop the easter island model ingrained in the human dna. we are all doomed except for the few hundred million people the world can sustainably sustain(most of whom now live far from modern resource gluttons) who will then have to live in a resource free world experienced by original man as hunter gatherers, the ultimate reset.
most of this is bs. raise the price of petro to 300 dollars/barrel and substitutes will be rain like a hurricane. most of these doomsday energy scenarios suffer the inability to see the future(lol) as a function of the ingenuity of man. this analysis, like almost all the others, depend upon the ridiculous idea that technology is static.
the only permanent solution is a permanent reduction in the number of humans on the planet starting with a cap on lifespans.
as an aside, fleshing out a hypothesis, japan may be offering the natural solution to resource gluttony. as the need for humans has diminished because of productivity gains, ironically in food, a population of people that does not add more people to the population from outside sources will naturally cull the human population to a level commensurate with productivity gains that reduce the need for human labor rducing the need for resource inputs to support humans.
Go ahead make it $300 a barrel in current dollars and you will be very disappointed by the lack of scalable substitutes that emerge... All you will do is basically destroy consumption and the economy, not to mention raise the price of food to beyonds the means of billions....
BTW, eliminate the most common killers of children as we pretty much have and it boils down to fertility rates and not lifespan....
you make the mistake i mention of thinking in terms of static technology. you need incentive t invent. crisis sharpens the pencil. no one knows what will come but it won't happen until oil economics permits it.
a person who lives to 80 is using the resources of 2 40 year olds. fertility issues are simply solved(abortion, birth control). telling someone their useful time will end on a certain date is much more difficult but just as important as fertility issues. think logan's run which i was hoping someone would catch.
How old are you? Seriously...
Do you think Logan's Run was particularly deep? It really wasn't...
Have you ever taken a science course of any kind at at least the college junior level?
BTW, the libertarians here are just gonna love you...
so you can tell the future? all you know is what is known now. is this the end of innovation? that is a ridiculous assumption made only by the ignorant.
No, but I understand what limits "liquid and high energy density" entail....
I don't think that you even grasp the problem...