The Silver Bullet

You will often hear someone say, ‘New technology will compensate for peak oil.’ Or, ‘There will be a new energy source from a scientific advance.’ First, technologies can help, but we already have those technologies in the mileage you can achieve by conservatively driving a civic and combined cycle plants for the grid. Crash projects of light rail and bussing in all the major metropolitans would have an effect. But this would be a matter of just exploiting existing technologies to make a difference. Even though teleconferencing has matured over the last twenty five years, the demand for jet fuel has doubled. Technology will have no effect if we don't apply it. At that, it takes time for technology to have an effect. At the rate we are currently applying technologies; it will have a nil effect on the growing demand of China and India. Much less, just compensating for declines in older production.

Science is a well established institution. The principles of the scientific method and the observations that have been made over the last two hundred years make it very clear that there will be no ‘new’ energy source. Every force observed in the universe is conservative. That means there are no other sources of energy other than we know of. If there had been a homogeneous expansion of the universe, meaning hydrogen had not condensed into stars, there would be no available energy. Entropy would be maxed out. But we did get a universe that was well ordered. Hydrogen condensed into relatively small spheres in space that went thermonuclear. Our sun is a small dot in space at 10,000 degrees. The rest of space is very cold, close to absolute zero. As heat energy moves into and out of our bio-system, energy is utilized to create life as we know it. So, we already have a virtually limitless source of energy. The influx of energy for earth is 89,000 Terawatts. Our total demand for energy is 15 Terawatts. The only catch is the cost of utilizing solar energy. The best I’ve seen to date is the planed Southern California Edison solar project with an estimated cost of $2.00 a watt.

But, one Gigawatt is only .06% of 15 Terawatts. It would take a boat load of these projects to start making a dent.

Thank, Dan.

Demand for Jet Fuel
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mkjupus1m.htm

The Hirsch Report
http://lakeweb.com/money/Hirsch.pdf

Solar energy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy

SCE - SES
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=36224

Chicken Little

When someone comes along and says we have a problem, it can soon escalate into a ‘Chicken Little’ phenomena. A pundit blowback. But what the pundits don’t address are the numbers. They only offer a touchy feely retort. That we have had plenty of oil in the past, therefore, we will have plenty of oil into the future. A logical fallacy. Such logic would imply that if I throw a ball into the air, it will escape the gravity of earth.

A problem with these pundits is that their message is the one that most folks want to hear. The average person doesn’t want to know that his or her life is about to dramatically change. That mentality is well born out by the repetitive bubbles in markets. An attitude that the party will never end. This industrial revolution is a grand bubble the likes that have never been seen. It is entirely driven by cheap and limitless energy. The trouble is that energy, the likes that we consume, is anything but limitless.

Now that the price of oil is starting to impinge on the awareness of folks, the veil of denial is starting to get pulled back. But that seems to mean an era of confusion about our future. The indoctrinated start hearing about alternatives for oil and think this will fix itself. They don’t look at the numbers and make a rational assessment of our condition, they continue to deny the chirping of the little chickens and listen to the pretty stories.

I’m not sure that even those that have taken a deeper look at our condition really understand the immensity of the numbers. Here is an example as clearly as I can make. The United States produces about one third of a quad of ethanol from corn per year. Don’t worry about what a quad is for now. According to the Farrell Report, (a composite of research papers.), we produce 1.3 units of ethanol from 1 unit of input energy. This is known as ,’Energy Returned on Energy Invested’, ERoEI. It means we actually produce one tenth of one quad per year of ethanol. The world demands 175 quads per year in liquid fuels. Brazil’s total ethanol production, (no ERoEI), is just ten percent of Brazil’s demand for liquids. They are energy independent because they produce some 2 million barrels a day of oil, not because they produce ethanol. The entire world produces less than a half a quad per year of ethanol, net, from crop fuels.

Again, the world demands 175 quads a year in just liquid fuels. This is a huge amount of energy and there are no alternatives that can replace it in any meaningful way. There should be little doubt, by looking at the numbers, that we are about to see the end of growth where liquid energy production is concerned. Yet most folks don’t know this, much less the real implications of ‘peak oil’.

What has also come to light very recently is that the world is facing economic troubles. But that is another story. But it is a big one, the likes that have not been seen in eighty years. To put off an economic reckoning will require new growth. New growth requires more energy. But if we don’t have that ‘new energy’ it puts us in a pickle.

This is where I could start presenting a pile of ‘chicken little’ warnings. And the more I warn, the more folks that will stop reading. Denial is a comfortable place for humans. Why worry about something that you scarcely know about, something that looks to be off in an unlikely and depressing future. This is where I can not stress hard enough that you start to research our condition and understand that we face a challenge far greater than any in all our history. Understand that this challenge is eminent and real. Just because you have not heard about it in a mainstream discussion does not mean an epoch event for mankind is not upon us.

Thanks, Dan.

Peak oil: Why is it so difficult to explain/understand?http://www.energybulletin.net/39308.html

Reply to Cobb's article on net energy
http://www.energybulletin.net/14849.html

Revisiting Limits to Growth: Could the Club of Rome Been Correct
http://www.greatchange.org/ov-simmons,club_of_rome_revisted.pdf

One quad is equivalent to 300 million healthy people peddling exercise bikes 24/7 for a year.

Introduction

I'm an older guy, in my fifties. My wife and I have a small home based business vending software that I author. We live in the White Mountains of Arizona at 7000 feet. I am a student of economics and peak oil and have been for years.

Those reading this blog will likely know something about peak oil. Many will have an opinion on the subject. And much of these opinions are based on the opinions of others. I have found there are a lot of misunderstandings about the condition of our civilization and our future.

It is easy being born into this modern world to assume it will exist as it always has, into the future. If a broader look is taken of this industrial revolution, as it fits into the history of man, it can be seen as a rather abrupt event. The population of the planet has grown by almost four times in the last one hundred years. Our apatite for energy has exploded in the last fifty years.

(http://www.env.go.jp/en/wpaper/1994/eae230000000000.html)

Resources are limited. There is no getting around that. And foundation of the resource pyramid is energy. As we exhaust the 'easy to exploit' resources it takes more energy per unit to exploit into the future. So, if world economies are to grow, the required energy grows at an even faster rate. I will later address the, "But the technological revolution will enable us to use less energy", in future posts. But, to wit, it has fixed little to date where our need for energy is concerned.

The first threat to energy peaking is oil, the foundation of our transportation systems. To properly assess our condition reliable data is necessary. Here we have a problem. The IEA has been publishing numbers that may have little meaning. I have some of there old documents that reflect the graph below on an old hard drive. If I can't find another copy in the future, I'll see about retrieving them.

(Source)

There seems to be plenty of evidence now that there is, and will not be, the capcity to produce more than what is being produced now. There is also evidence that a lot of the larger fields in the world are, and will soon be going into decline. There strong evidence that there will never be the kind of discoveries needed to offset these declines, much less provide for new demand. In other words, the world is now very likely facing peak oil.

And if it is not, it is just around the corner. Can we fix this? It would require a lot of sacrifice by the West and the rest of the world. It would require that the whole world acknowledge the challenge and start fixing it with a vengeance. It would require the world as a whole to understand that growth, like we have had in the past, is not possible into the future. I'm not one that sees the world holding hands and singing, Kumbaya. So, what is in our future?

Thanks, Dan.