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.