2 December 2005

Thesis #18: Peak Oil may lead to collapse.

Energy, like matter, cannot be created–it can only be transformed. That is the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy, which also entails that matter can be transformed into energy, making matter and energy differing states of the same thing. When you burn wood, part of the wood’s matter is converted into energy–the light and heat of fire. Fossil fuels are created out of organic matter, by applying eons of pressure deep inside the earth to the remains of dead plants and animals. The result can be coal, petroleum, or natural gas. They all can be converted into energy with great efficiency, making them the most effective fuels ever discovered. In considering the quality of a fuel, the relevant measure is not simply how much energy the matter can yield, but how much energy it yields per energy put into it, or ERoEI, energy return on energy invested. On that score, fossil fuels were once unmatched. Petroleum once had an ERoEI near 100–for the energy equivalent of 1 barrel of oil, you could extract 100 barrels of oil. But that, too, is subject to diminishing returns, and more recently, the ERoEI of fossil fuels has been dropping. “Peak Oil” is simply the law of diminishing returns applied to petroleum extraction.

A barrel of oil is a barrel of oil, and it will always have the same yield of energy as any other barrel of oil. The ERoEI changes based on how difficult and expensive that barrel of oil becomes to extract. The first oil reserves we extracted were the largest ones, those nearest the surface and/or those under pressure–often bubbling up all on its own. This oil was the lightest (meaning it had fewer impurities) and sweetest (less sulphur), which made it the easiest to refine. As these reserves were depleted, the pressure inside them dropped, and energy needed to be exerted on the reserve to move the oil up. This oil deeper in the earth tended to be heavier and more sour, which meant that not only did it take more energy to extract, it also took more energy to refine. Eventually, those reserves ceased to be economical, well before all the oil was exhausted. New reserves needed to be found, but these were obviously inferior. They were smaller, or they were deeper, or they weren’t under any natural pressure, or any combination of those three. They started off less efficient and, like the original reserves, grew less economical as extraction proceeded.

The first to notice this phenomenon was M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist who worked for Shell from 1943 to 1964. As Energy Bulletin’s “Peak Oil Primer” explains:

In the 1950s a US geologist working for Shell, M. King Hubbert, noticed that oil discoveries graphed over time, tended to follow a bell shape curve. He posited that the rate of oil production would follow a similar curve, now known as the Hubbert Curve (see figure). In 1956 Hubbert predicted that production from the US lower 48 states would peak in 1970. Shell tried to pressure Hubbert into not making his projections public, but the notoriously stubborn Hubbert went ahead and released them. In anycase, most people inside and outside the industry quickly dismissed Hubbert’s predictions. In 1970 US oil producers had never produced as much, and Hubbert’s predictions were a fading memory. But Hubbert was right, US continental oil production did peak in 1970/71, although it was not widely recognized for several years, only with the benefit of hindsight.

No oil producing region neatly fits bell shaped curve exactly because production is dependent on various geological, economic and political factors, but the Hubbert Curve remains a powerful predictive tool.

The peak of U.S. oil production in 1971 was the most significant event of the post-war era. Any economy can ultimately be understood purely in terms of energy transformations, and fossil fuels are the foundation of any industrial civilization. That transiton occurred because of a different “peak” problem–not fossil fuels, but timber. As Richard Cowen writes in the online, rough draft of Exploiting the Earth under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press, in chapter 11: “Coal”:

The situation was different in England and France. Much land had been cleared for agriculture in Roman and again in medieval times, and the population was much denser than in mountain Germany and Bohemia. Although metal mining was never on the enormous scale of the Central European strikes, many small mines exploited tin, lead, copper, and iron deposits. All these ores were smelted with charcoal, and with heavy demands on the forests for building timbers for castles, cathedrals, houses, and ships, for building mills and most machinery, for barrels for storing food and drink, and fuel for the lime-burning, glass and brewing industries and for domestic fires, the English and French found that they were approaching a major fuel crisis.

A fuel “crisis” implies a lack of supply, and the other factors involved are supply and transport. Overland costs of transport were very high except for the highest-value goods, and it was simply not economic to carry bulky material like wood for very far on a cart. So thinly populated areas in forest land had no fuel crisis at all, whereas large cities soon felt a crisis as woodlands close by were cleared.

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Nations were therefore faced with only two alternative solutions: to import timber from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, and/or to substitute coal wherever possible. Transport costs imposed severe penalties on transporting timber long distances unless it was needed for special purposes such as building construction, pit props, or ship-building, and the coal-mining and coal-processing industries grew astonishingly, beginning in Elizabethan England and extending to European regions as the timber crisis overtook them.

Every economic indicator suggests that the timber crisis was most acute in England from about 1570 to 1630. It is at this time that we see an unwilling but dramatic change to coal as the nation’s industrial fuel.

Wood was the preferred fuel for fires, as well as a primary construction material. As the population of northwestern Europe grew, so too did its appetite for wood. The forests of England were utterly destroyed. As Cowen points out, “You will search in vain today for Sherwood Forest. It exists only on road signs and movies that are filmed on sets somewhere else.”

Coal was favored only by blacksmiths. For every other purpose, the black, dirty smoke was considered a major public nuisance. Laws were passed against the burning of coal, until it became a necessity. Obviously, Europe and France did not clear-cut the whole world, or we would have no trees today. Scandinavia and eastern Europe had very healthy forests–and lumber that was being exported to France and Britain. The question was how much did it cost to transport that wood to where it was needed. Shipments of wood from Scandinavia and eastern Europe added travel cost to the wood which were not previously necessary. So, while wood remained wood, the cost of that wood increased significantly, forcing northwestern Europeans to turn to an inferior, dirty fuel: coal. Cowen describes some of the social ramifications of this change:

A fundamental change in English domestic building followed, as more brick chimneys were built to accommodate the fumes from the smoky fuel. By 1618 London had 200 chimney sweeps, who would eventually give the world its first example of an environmentally produced cancer, from contact with soot. There were law suits against coal pollution, and there were courageous judges who would rule against the nuisance.

But with coal–and even moreso later with petroleum and to a lesser extent natural gas–Europeans had stumbled not only on a fuel with outrageously high ERoEI, but a fuel that encouraged, rather than discouraged, technical innovation. As Joseph Tainter explains in his 1996 paper, “Complexity, Problem-Solving, and Sustainable Societies“:

In one of the most interesting works of economic history, Richard Wilkinson (1973) showed that in late-and post-medieval England, population growth and deforestation stimulated economic development, and were at least partly responsible for the Industrial Revolution. Major increases in population, at around 1300, 1600, and in the late 18th century, led to intensification in agriculture and industry. As forests were cut to provide agricultural land and fuel for a growing population, England’s heating, cooking, and manufacturing needs could no longer be met by burning wood. Coal came to be increasingly important, although it was adopted reluctantly. Coal was costlier to obtain and distribute than wood, and restricted in its occurrence. It required a new, costly distribution system. As coal gained importance in the economy the most accessible deposits were depleted. Mines had to be sunk ever deeper, until groundwater came to be a problem. Ultimately, the steam engine was developed and put to use pumping water from mines. With the development of a coal-based economy, a distribution system, and the steam engine, several of the most important technical elements of the Industrial Revolution were in place.

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It generated its own problems of complexity and costliness. These included railways and canals to distribute coal and manufactured goods, the development of an economy increasingly based on money and wages, and the development of new technologies. While such elements of complexity are usually thought to facilitate economic growth, in fact they can do so only when subsidized by energy. Some of the new technologies, such as the steam engine, showed diminishing returns to innovation quite early in their development (Wilkinson 1973; Giarini and Louberge 1978; Giarini 1984). What set industrialism apart from all of the previous history of our species was its reliance on abundant, concentrated, high-quality energy (Hall et al. 1992). 5 With subsidies of inexpensive fossil fuels, for a long time many consequences of industrialism effectively did not matter. Industrial societies could afford them. When energy costs are met easily and painlessly, benefit/cost ratio to social investments can be substantially ignored (as it has been in contemporary industrial agriculture). Fossil fuels made industrialism, and all that flowed from it (such as science, transportation, medicine, employment, consumerism, high-technology war, and contemporary political organization), a system of problem solving that was sustainable for several generations.

Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be. If our efforts to understand and resolve such matters as global change involve increasing political, technological, economic, and scientific complexity, as it seems they will, then the availability of energy per capita will be a constraining factor. To increase complexity on the basis of static or declining energy supplies would require lowering the standard of living throughout the world. In the absence of a clear crisis very few people would support this.

Peak Oil poses a familiar crisis, then. Peak Oil is the moment at which we have extracted half of all the oil in the world–meaning another half remains. But the first half was light, sweet crude in large reserves near the surface and under pressure; the second half is heavy, sour crude in small reserves deep inside the earth where we must apply our own pressure. It is the half that costs more to obtain, but continues to deliver the same benefit as before. When it takes a barrel of oil to obtain a barrel of oil–when petroleum’s ERoEI declines to 1–then it doesn’t matter how much oil is still left, it’s no longer economically viable. The petroleum age is over.

The implications of that are profound and far-reaching. In “The Oil We Eat,” Richard Manning elaborates the nature of agriculture in general, and the particular dependence of modern, industrialized agriculture on fossil fuels. He writes:

The common assumption these days is that we muster our weapons to secure oil, not food. There’s a little joke in this. Ever since we ran out of arable land, food is oil. Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1. And this understates the problem, because at the same time that there is more oil in our food there is less oil in our oil. A couple of generations ago we spent a lot less energy drilling, pumping, and distributing than we do now. In the 1940s we got about 100 barrels of oil back for every barrel of oil we spent getting it. Today each barrel invested in the process returns only ten, a calculation that no doubt fails to include the fuel burned by the Hummers and Blackhawks we use to maintain access to the oil in Iraq.

Industrial society itself is a product of petroleum–not because it produces energy (almost anything can do that), but because of its high ERoEI. As that continues to drop, we will find ourselves in the same position as the British and French did when they took up coal–in need of some other, inferior source of energy. The prospects for that are grim, to say the least. Most of the most promising “alternative fuels” suffer from some debilitating drawback. For instance, the energy that goes into producing a single photovoltaic cell drops its ERoEI to an estimated 1. Hydrogen cells are energy carriers, not energy sources. And Brazil’s experiment with wide-spread biodiesel yielded very ambivalent results.

The image above comes from Stuart Staniford’s 6 September 2005 entry at the Oil Drum explaining the thresholds between contraction and collapse, titled, “4%, 11%, Who the Hell Cares?” He writes:

I define the collapse threshold to be the depletion rate at which society collectively loses enough faith in the future that they are no longer willing to risk investments to preserve that future. This appears to be one of the fundamental characteristics in past societies that collapsed. The Easter Islanders gave up their intensive rock gardens, the Chaco Canyon people stopped building new Great Houses, the Mayans even stopped keeping track of their Long Calendar….

In our case, consider a potential investor in a company that is raising capital to open a lead mine to make batteries for anticipated future demand for plug-in hybrids. Let’s say it takes five years to get the thing producing, and then the initial capital will take five more years to repay before it starts to really make money. So this investor has to believe society will hold together well enough over that time for his investment to really be worth it. Otherwise he’s investing in gold instead (or vodka!).

Obviously, if our hypothetical investors do not feel enough confidence to make this investment, now society is in real trouble - the batteries needed to power the plugin hybrids are not going to be there when they are needed. And so on, across a thousand similar decisions across the economy.

Not only that, but the point at which wealthy investors are giving up hope about the future is also probably similar to the point at which the rest of society gives up hope too, and starts looking for alternative ways to survive. One of the leading effects of that is likely to be a loss of law-and-order. Things go downhill very rapidly from there as we have seen in the last week in New Orleans. We also know conflict was a major factor in the decline of Easter Island, Rome, and the Chaco Canyon Anasazi. Human beings can turn into bands of looters, and even cannibals (as at Chaco Canyon), with amazing speed once they lose faith in society.

Collapse occurs when the returns on complexity are no longer sufficient to warrant further investment–and that is precisely the problem that Peak Oil may very well pose.

There is much debate over when peak oil will occur. Many of the vested interests–including large American oil companies and Middle East monarchies–have a long record of deception with regard to their official numbers. Earlier estimates gave us another ten or more years to figure out what to do, but those estimates proved to be based on the over-reported reserves of Shell and Saudi Arabia. An increasing number of experts are suggesting that we may be at peak right now. This year’s hurricane season may have caused a sufficient “bump” in production that we are now seeing the highest numbers we ever will. Saudi Arabia, the world’s second largest supplier of oil (behind Russia), has been exporting crude oil that is increasingly heavy and more sour, to the point where they have experienced problems finding a buyer for it. Rumors persist that the Ghawar Superfield, the centerpiece of Saudi oil, has peaked. Princeton geology professor emeritus Ken Deffeyes even went so far as to predict a specific date for Hubbert’s Peak: 24 November 2005, Thanksgiving in the U.S. According to Jeff Vail, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Tom Weimer, in charge of USGS, did not think that a fall 2005 date for Hubbert’s Peak was an unreasonable estimate.

I said above that the North American Hubbert’s Peak was the most significant event of the post-war period. The complexity of any culture is a function of energy, and it’s energy that has always created the shape of history. Romans very explicitly fought for new farmland, for instance. The petroleum age has merely coalesced all of our needs into a single, needful resources. When our own supply of it began to run out in the 1970s, the famed “energy crisis” ensued, resulting in the widespread “hopelessness” and economic recession associated with that decade. The United States needed new sources of oil, and so developed the “twin pillar policy,” to rely on Iran and Saudi Arabia. When Iran moved to nationalize its oil industry, the CIA assassinated the democratically-elected Mossadeq and backed the Shah–events that ultimately led to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and a surging sentiment throughout the Mddle East that freedom from European powers and their meddling could be won through radical Islam. At the same time, the “twin pillar policy” collapsed, and the United States became dependent on Saudi Arabia.

That dependence has forced the United States to back many unsavory dictators and tyrants, or else allow economic recession. That U.S.-backed despotism led to many myriad resistance movements against our heinous allies, including the Ba’athists in Iraq and Syria, Mubarak in Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, and others. The goal of al-Qa’ida is to unite the local resistance movements into a pan-Arabic revolution with a short-term goal of destroying the countries that now dominate the region (being the legacies of arbitrary colonial divisions, and ruled by ruthless, Western-backed dictators), and a long-term goal of replacing them with a single caliphate. Al-Qa’ida focuses its ire on the United States because it is the common enemy of all of these local resistance movements, though in each case only a secondary one.

Al-Qa’ida’s “rallying cry” to the Islamic world was sounded on 11 September 2001, and immediately appreciated as carte blanche by a far-sighted, visionary but ultimately ruthless group in American politics, the so-called “neoconservatives.” Disciples of Leo Strauss, their political philosophy unites a Hobbesian worldview with avowedly Machiavellian pragmatism. With Saudi Arabia’s reserves nearing their peak, these “neocons” saw an opportunity in 9/11 to sieze the resources the United States requires before we reach crisis levels, and prepared an invasion against our erstwhile ally, Saddam Hussein. The current war in Iraq, like every war in history, is about resources–in this case, the only resource that still matters: oil. The neoconservatives should be congratulated for their far-sighted preparations, if not for their ruthless lack of morality. Such is the cost of an industrialized civilization. As such, the invasion of Iraq may be seen as the first of the “oil wars” that so many have predicted to break out in the shadow of Hubbert’s Peak.

Certainly we have seen a certain upsurge of violence to control petroleum reserves. In late September 2005, the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force held Nigeria’s oil production “hostage”, taking over 10 oil flow stations and offering to return them only upon the release of their leader, Dokubo-Aasari.

Recently, Congress held sessions to “hold oil companies accountable” for record-high oil prices during the disasters of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. With record-high oil prices came record-high profits for oil companies, and the mainstream media worked to generate outrage for the oil companies who appeared to profit so much from the suffering of Katrina. Of course, the reality of the situation was the amoral grinding of capitalism’s gears in the shadow of Hubbert’s Peak. With peak production comes peak refinement demand–choking supply at the refining level. Oil companies sell to one another freely at every level; every oil company sells to every oil companies’ refineries, including their own and their competitors’. The same occurs at the distributor and retail levels. A BP retailer is under no obligation to buy his oil from a BP distributor. The result is that oil prices are very much set by supply and demand, foiling any attempt an oil company might make to artificially raise or lower its prices. An industry insider and Oil Drum reader commented:

ExxonMobil, owning their own up and down stream divisions, could sell at a loss or reduced profit on the retail end, provided they compensated their convenience store owners for their lost gasoline revenues (these stores are franchises). But that would make whatever cut they did offer twice as financially painful—they would take the announced cut and associated reduction in profit, and then have to pay the store owners their traditional profit to keep them happy.

So you are not asking them to just fall on their own sword, but to get back up and hurl their bloodied body on it again…ouch!

So—if ExxonMobil did do this, it would be a huge gesture! But only those in the same business would understand the magnitude of what they had done. And whoever did it would shortly be replaced by the Board of Directors as the principal shareholders all called for his head on a pike! Remember, outside of the energy sector, the stock market is a total losing proposition.

While the world fights for the last few drops of good oil, though, the larger question seems to go unaddressed. Peak Oil is not such a unique problem. In fact, we have repeatedly faced the essential crisis with successive fuels throughout the history of civilization. In each previous iteration, we were saved by an alternative which, while initially considered inferior, proved to have just as high an ERoEI–or, often, higher–as the fuel it replaced. Peak Oil has a strong possibility of bringing down civilization itself as a proximate cause of collapse, but it is by no means certain. This crisis has been averted in the past, and we might avert this one, as well. But with low research budgets and little interest in alternative fuels, that hope is becoming increasingly dim. In all previous iterations, there was, at this point, already a clear alternative in play. We have no such clear alternative. The closest we have to such an alternative is nuclear power, which will give us, at most, another 50 years. Nuclear power uses very little uranium, but there is very little uranium in the world.

Peak Oil does not ensure collapse, just as the timber crisis England and France faced did not ensure their collapse. That said, we should be deeply concerned, because where they had coal, we have nothing. In all previous cases, the alternative that prevailed was already known and widely available before the situation reached crisis levels. Not only do we not have that, but very little has been put into research and development efforts to develop such alternatives. Overwhelming resources will be needed, too. Not only is our need for an alternative no guarantee that it exists, but, as we have previously seen, we have already passed the point of diminishing returns for invention. So we see once again that the immediate problems posed (in this case, Peak Oil) are not so critical in and of themselves, but because of the larger context of complexity’s diminishing returns, becomes unsolvable.

Cornucopians discount the threat Peak Oil represents by insisting that the market will adapt. Of course, they are correct, but they suffer a failure of imagination to consider what the market’s adaptations might include. Genocidal warfare is a very efficient way to reduce demand, for example. As Tainter highlighted in Collapse of Complex Societies, collapse is an economizing process.

Many civilizations of the past have collapsed for precisely this diminishing return curve that Hubbert’s Peak embodies. It was “peak wood” that ended Cahokia and the Hohokam, and brought on the Dark Ages that followed the Bronze Age. Obviously, Peak Oil has the potential to end our civilization, but it is by no means assured. Were it the only such crisis we faced, it might even be solvable. But with the peak likely already upon us, the time for coming up with a solution may already be passed. Solutions take time to implement, especially across an entire civilization, and the downside of the curve is always faster than going up. As Jared Diamond wrote in “The Ends of the World as We Know Them,” “History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse, they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise: peak power usually means peak population, peak needs, and hence peak vulnerability.”

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[…] There’s a chance we might escape Peak Oil, as I argued in my most recent thesis. It’s a slim chance, growing ever more slim all the time, but it’s the kind of miracle that’s saved us before. Banking on miracles may not sound like a solid bet to many of you, but at this point, it’s really all we have left. Might not have always been this way, but we elected Reagan instead. Now it’s morning in America again! […]

Pingback by Be afraid, Marco. Be very afraid. » The Anthropik Network — 5 December 2005 @ 3:21 PM
Peak Oil & Oppression

The morning, I listened to a radio show with Jan Lundberg of Culture Change. Lundberg spoke of peak oil, primarily, and the impending collapse as soon as 2008, adding the socioeconomic and cultural effects of the collapse as well as the environmental ones

Trackback by Anthropology.net — 11 December 2005 @ 7:36 PM
[…] The diminishing returns of complexity represent an escalating probability of disaster. As that probability approaches one, disasters continue at their normal pace. Sometimes, as we can see in our own world, our own complexity may accelerate that pace, as with our environmental problems (see thesis #17), or it may even create those problems, as with Peak Oil (see thesis #18). Even were these not the case, there is a regular, background pace of problems any society faces. Answering all of them with increased complexity–whether by pursuing technical solutions to systemic problems, inventing new technologies, or creating governmental bureaucracies in response–only aggrevates the greater, underlying crisis of complexity’s diminishing returns. Following this strategy, a routine crisis will eventually arise, but the response of greater complexity will be impossible due to its prohibitive cost. […]

Pingback by Thesis #26: Collapse is inevitable. » The Anthropik Network — 12 January 2006 @ 12:26 PM
[…] That is not the case with catabolic collapse. Catabolic collapse takes place when reductions in collapse are driven by a shortfall in energy throughput. That can be the result of desertification, sustained drought, loss of agricultural land, massive mortality from war, famine or disease, climate change, or a necessary fuel source’s production peaking. While it is true that our complexity has passed the point of diminishing returns (see thesis #15), and we are dealing with the cost of that, we have not yet shown many signs of a maintenance crisis. Rather, the perils we face–such as global warming, mass extinction (see thesis #17), and peak oil (see thesis #18)–are causes of catabolic collapse. Our shortfalls in complexity will likely be triggered by shortfalls in energy throughput. As Greer describes the process: A society that uses resources beyond replenishment rate (d(R)/r(R) > 1), when production of new capital falls short of maintenance needs, risks a depletion crisis in which key features of a maintenance crisis are amplified by the impact of depletion on production. As M(p) exceeds C(p) and capital can no longer be maintained, it is converted to waste and unavailable for use. Since depletion requires progressively greater investments of capital in production, the loss of capital affects production more seriously than in an equivalent maintenance crisis. Meanwhile further production, even at a diminished rate, requires further use of depleted resources, exacerbating the impact of depletion and the need for increased capital to maintain production. With demand for capital rising as the supply of capital falls, C(p) tends to decrease faster than M(p) and perpetuate the crisis. The result is a catabolic cycle, a self-reinforcing process in which C(p) stays below M(p) while both decline. Catabolic cycles may occur in maintenance crises if the gap between C(p) and M(p) is large enough, but tend to be self-limiting in such cases. In depletion crises, by contrast, catabolic cycles can proceed to catabolic collapse, in which C(p) approaches zero and most of a society’s capital is converted to waste. […]

Pingback by Thesis #29: It will be impossible to rebuild civilization. » The Anthropik Network — 19 January 2006 @ 11:34 AM
[…] We recently had a rousing discussion about Peak Oil and collapse, centering around John Michael Greer’s “The Long Road Down,” and the idea that the gradual extinction of fossil fuels would lead to a long collapse–”not with a bang, but a whimper.” In thesis #18, we discussed that Peak Oil may cause collapse, if its depletion rate was very high. Stuart Staniford at The Oil Drum guessed the threshold of collapse to be around 11%, and I have no reason to argue that. But, the latest news from Kuwait provides a better guess of what that depletion rate might be. […]

Pingback by Peak & Crash » The Anthropik Network — 23 January 2006 @ 12:38 PM
[…] Nuclear power has, ironically enough, become the new panacea touted by environmentalists and the Bush administration–two groups one rarely finds on the same side of any issue. We see nuclear power raised here routinely as the “solution” to Peak Oil, and a means of perpetuating our current level of complexity indefinitely. “Gunnix,” a regular commenter here, recently took us to task for our views on nuclear power, so this article is our response: why we don’t think that nuclear power will create any kind of significant solution to the problems our civilization faces in the near future. […]

Pingback by » The Nuclear Option The Anthropik Network — 20 February 2006 @ 12:35 PM
[…] In thesis #18, we discussed how Peak Oil could be a factor in collapse. Namely, if the depletion rate is too high (Stuart Staniford of the Oil Drum guessed “too high” to be anything over 11%), then there will be insufficient time for society to adapt. A massive depletion of energy is a massive depletion of complexity, and such a self-reinforcing, catabolic process continues until civilization is gone. […]

Pingback by Timeline of Collapse » The Anthropik Network — 22 February 2006 @ 12:57 PM
[…] We’ll have to wait and see if that turns out, but it’s definitely a development worth watching. It’s important to remember that in the end, collapse is always a matter of confidence. Infrastructural crises like peak oil or environmental problems may push a society to that point, but if there’s one thing complex societies are supposed to do, it’s answering exactly those kinds of challenges. That’s why we submit to complex societies: they promise to protect us from a lack of food (or other energy sources), and to manage our natural resources in a more responsible way. Once we’ve passed the point of diminishing returns, however, the ability of complex society to answer those challenges diminishes with it. There are few crises so destructive that some level of investment–however Herculean–cannot answer it. […]

Pingback by The Peak Is Now (and They’re Starting to Notice) » The Anthropik Network — 2 March 2006 @ 5:40 PM
[…] Every society faces problems, and as an adaptive system, societies develop means of answering those problems. When a society structures itself to maximize greater complexity as such a problem-solving response, to the exclusion of all other strategies (i.e., when that society becomes a civilization–see thesis #13), it locks itself into a pattern that ultimately can only end in collapse. Once its level of complexity passes the point of diminishing returns, its ability to answer problems becomes weaker and weaker. The pace and intensity of these problems do not increase; it is our ability to solve these problems that begins to decrease. The barbarian horde that swept over the Rhine and conquered an enormous swath of the Western empire in 409 CE was smaller than many of the barbarian forces that the Roman Empire had, in previous centuries, contained with relative ease. Though dealing with drought was one of the primary râison d’etre for the Maya cities, it was ultimately a prolonged drought that did them in. Though one can deterministically predict collapse within a given timeframe due simply to the marginal returns curve of complexity, predicting the specific problem that may prove to be the proverbial straw to break the camel’s back is almost impossible, as I said at the beginning of thesis #19: Predicting the proximate cause of collapse is impossible, though, as we have seen, both environmental problems and peak oil present serious threats–precisely the kind of threat that has toppled civilizations in the past. On their own, however, such proximate causes are probabilistic. Peak oil may mean the end of civilization; or, perhaps we will be able to transition to some alternative. Environmental problems may destroy the most basic necessities of civilized life, or perhaps we will solve them, instead. What makes collapse a certainty, rather than a probability, is, ironically, the very thing that defines civilization in the first place: complexity. […]

Pingback by Chicken Little Meets the Ostrich » The Anthropik Network — 9 April 2006 @ 11:47 AM
[…] Within the “peaknik” community—the people aware of and actively dealing with Peak Oil—there is a segment often called “Doomers,” who see Peak Oil as the end of our civilization. In thesis #18, I laid out how peak oil could be a proximate cause of collapse, and though avoiding “petrocollapse” seems increasingly unlikely, I can’t rule it out entirely. This has classified me as a “doomer,” and so I’ve become aware of a very widespread “doomer” concern: the return of feudalism. In the absence of any large-scale organizing feature—federal government itself being a manifestation of cheap oil—America will descend into neo-feudalism, where plowmen will be a lot more useful than IT directors. Put another way: It’ll be Amish with guns.2 […]

Pingback by The Hyperbole of St. Jerome (The Anthropik Network) — 29 August 2006 @ 10:46 AM
[…] We’ve been pulling oil from the earth for over a hundred years, and the current rate of over eighty million barrels per day is more than any period in history. Clearly the opposite of running out; but running-out isn’t the problem, at this time. It’s producing less that can be catastrophic. Remember, peak-oil refers to crude-oil max production; not tar sands or coal. In some respects, it’s even a distraction to think of the down-slope as costing more money; as in money to produce oil-energy. More importantly, it costs more energy to produce energy. ER/EI […]

Pingback by Bull! Not bull » Peak-oil, Fact or Fraud? Climbing Mt. Hubbert — 10 November 2006 @ 9:11 PM
[…] I realize I’m stepping out here and putting on a sandwich board that identifies me as a certifiable wack job, but guess what? THE END IS NEAR! And global warming is only one of the things you should be worrying about. The oil is going to run out (for all practical intents and purposes). When that happens, civilization will start grinding to a halt. […]

Pingback by The Baptist Faith and Mess « WildeRix — 14 June 2007 @ 6:45 PM
[…] problems (see thesis #17), or it may even create those problems, as with Peak Oil (see thesis #18). Even were these not the case, there is a regular, background pace of problems any society faces. […]

Pingback by Collapse in Inevitable « Walking Green — 6 November 2008 @ 11:46 PM

Comments

Of my list of the real issues of Peak Oil you touched on ERoEI, diminishing returns, the oil we eat, the date of peak/reserve politicizing, depletion rates, lack of viable alternatives, market fallibility, and our leaders’ general response to the crisis. You also briefly touched on some of the exacerbating factors like hurricanes and political instability, and made the strong case that Peak Oil is not a new phenomenon in world history. Excellent work, Jason.

If it wouldn’t make the article too long, I’d add maybe a brief paragraph touching on oil’s essential role in our economy (should be obvious to informed people, but couldn’t hurt to emphasize), why Peak Oil is often called a “liquid fuel crisis”, and the lack of redundancy in our system. Those are the only issues on my list that you “missed”, though the first one could sort of be taken for granted.

I’ve seen so many articles (particularly the more mainstream ones) missing the point that it isn’t even funny. Far too often will articles get into a debate about the origins of oil (as if it matters where it comes from when depletion rates are still 8%), or the partisan implications, or the wonders of new technological advancements (for the last time, technology doesn’t create energy), or the “adaptability of the market”. Thanks for an article that addresses the true issues with Peak Oil.

Comment by Devin — 2 December 2005 @ 6:12 PM
Great article, great website. I’ve spent the last couple of hours reading what you guys have to say and found in very educational.

You wrote that
…with low research budgets and little interest in alternative fuels, that hope is becoming increasingly dim. In all previous iterations, there was, at this point, already a clear alternative in play. We have no such clear alternative…

Are you sure about this? There’s a mini bubble in the stock market now around alternative energy stocks, particularly solar. The Sunpower IPO last month valued the company at 1.5 billion bucks, even though it only makes around $60 million a year. Capitalists and investors seem to be very interested in this alternative.

Comment by Lope — 2 December 2005 @ 7:50 PM
Obviously, Peak Oil has the potential to end our civilization, but it is by no means assured.

Collapse is now guaranteed. It is utterly unavoidable for a number of reasons.

Cheap oil energy created the conditions for the world’s population explosion, world wide extraction of minerals and resources and the necessary food production, transportation and distribution to ensure that this cyclic process would continue.

It has now reached the end of its course.

No “alternative” energy source exists to replace this. None. The consistent failure to recognize this fact, leads to the wrong assumptions and conclusions regarding Peak Oil. We have effectively reached “Peak Energy” for all practical purposes. Our civilization by extension has peaked also, now the law of entropy occurs and diminishing returns.

Except we’ve got a massive problem now. We can no longer sustain our present populations.

Die-off is going to occur on a massive scale. This too is unavoidable. For all practical purposes, peak oil = peak civilization, which is now reached its climax.

Toss into the mix the collapsing eco-systems worldwide, global warming, massive population overshoot, skyrocketing energy prices (from ANY source) and the staggering economy and many other factors - collapse is now a guaranteed certainty.

It was cheap energy which created the conditions, and human stupidity which chose them.

Comment by SurvivalAcres — 2 December 2005 @ 8:57 PM
awesome article and great points. Made my way here though IshCon and god do I feel better for it.

Comment by Seth — 2 December 2005 @ 11:39 PM
Lope-

Solar energy is not sufficent to replace even the energy that we get from oil, let alone the products we get from oil. I know some people who are very found of saying that by covering Arizona with solar panels we can generate enough power for the entire world. Here’s my issue: Arizona is a big state. It’s larger than most countries. There is also shipping issues, storage issues, and god forbid it ever rain. Also, no one really knows what ecological impact diverting that much of the sun’s output would be.

Hydrogen is a panacea for many reasons. It cannot be contained 100%, it’s not a dense fuel, and we get the vast majority of our hydrogen from fossil fuels anyway. Also, it is not an energy source, but rather an energy carrier. A very inefficent one at that. I believe the figure was 75% loss of power, and that is with high power, efficent fossil fuels. With hydrolosis it’s even worse. Besides which, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, not on Earth.

The rest have similar problems. There is no technology currently available that can replace oil.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 3 December 2005 @ 2:23 AM
some comments:

1. oil is more than just fuel. petroleum products are in our foods, and almost all of our consumer products. oil’s presence in the economy is totally pervasive.

2. the oil we have grown accustomed to is light sweet crude - the highest quality and easiest to refine product. just trying to migrate the economy to lower quality oil will have an incredible impact.

3. our entire economy infrastructure is based on fossil fuels. any replacement you might consider must be a drop-in replacement for light sweet crude if you want no hiccups. that eliminates solar, wind, nuclear, and even hydrogen…unless you have a solar car, a sail-powered truck, a nuclear friegh train, or a hydrogen car. now wait, aren’t there hydrogen car prototypes? sure, but where is the entire economic infrastructure needed to migrate the car economy to hydroogen? its not there. hydrogen as it is being sold today is not workable. to make hydrogen happen we would need a D-Day plan to build nuclear reactors in order to produce the hydrogen. then replace the entire piping infrastructure we use to ship fuel. then replace each fuelling station. just doing this might take more oil than we have left.

4. think on the last point. we need oil to create the next energy economy. do we have enough? do you have enough breath at the end of a 400 meter sprint to hurl a javelin to a gold-medal distance?

Comment by grumpY! — 3 December 2005 @ 2:40 AM
You write “When it takes a barrel of oil to obtain a barrel of oil–when petroleum’s ERoEI declines to 1–then it doesn’t matter how much oil is still left, it’s no longer economically viable. The petroleum age is over.”

That doesn’t seem correct to me. Although hydropower is cheap, you can’t use it to power a plane. Air travel (and other forms of transportation that need transportable density) will continue to get used long after the ERoEI is below one.

Didn’t Germany, in WWII, produce synthetic oil, at great cost, so that they could keep planes in the air? In any case, we’d certainly do the same if our civilization was on the line.

The point is “ERoEI

Comment by Anonymous — 3 December 2005 @ 6:08 AM
This and the previous thesis explore some of the proximate causes of collapse. The ultimate cause, as we’ve already seen, is the diminishing returns of complexity. Because of that, both of these theses deal not with deterministic consequences, but with probabilistic threats. We face a large number of such threats, any of which may or may not happen. The problem is, the only way for our civilization to survive is if they all don’t happen. Throw a dozen coins in the air–if any of them come up tails, you lose. If the increasing cost of complexity is AIDS, then these are the cat colds and innocuous infections that we might’ve shrugged off in our hale and hardy youth, but are now lethal.

Devin,

I’d add maybe a brief paragraph touching on oil’s essential role in our economy

I thought I addressed that with the quotes from Tainter and Manning….

…and the lack of redundancy in our system.

That’s the next thesis.

Lope,

Are you sure about this? There’s a mini bubble in the stock market now around alternative energy stocks, particularly solar. The Sunpower IPO last month valued the company at 1.5 billion bucks, even though it only makes around $60 million a year. Capitalists and investors seem to be very interested in this alternative.

The key word here is “mini.” I’m no expert on these matters, but I’ve heard the ERoEI of a photovoltaic cell is about 1. There’s some buzz, but it shows all the telltale signs of a hyped-up bubble. But there has been more than a few articles in the press about the low R&D budgets–check out the Oil Drum’s article from this past September, “About that savior, technology….”

Survival Acres,

Collapse is now guaranteed. It is utterly unavoidable for a number of reasons.

A number of reasons, each one solvable on its own, but as a whole, completely unsolvable. Peak Oil is one of those reasons. There’s no reason we couldn’t have another miracle, just like the miracle that saved us in the Bronze Age, and the miracle that saved us in the Renaissance. But you need a Peak Oil miracle, and a biodiversity miracle, and a climatological miracle, and, and, and. Miracles are pretty damned unlikely when it’s just one, but we’re asking for several dozen all to be delivered in a span of a few years.

No “alternative” energy source exists to replace this. None.

There might be something out there we’ve yet to try burning.

OK, I had a hard time keeping a straight face with that one, yeah, it’s pretty far-fetched we’ll find some entirely new fuel, much less find it soon enough to matter. And I’m pretty skeptical of the alternatives on the table currently, I think you can pick that up in the article. But there are some people like our good friends at Peak Oil Optimist and the Ergosphere who think we can. They’re both very smart people, and I’m willing to grant the possibility that they might be right. I think it’s a bit unlikely, but I’ll grant the possibility. The essential problem of Peak X has been solved several times in the past with precisely this approach, so it’s theoretically possible, at least. Whether or not it’s practically possible this time around is something we’ll just have to wait and see.

Grumpy,

1. oil is more than just fuel. petroleum products are in our foods, and almost all of our consumer products. oil’s presence in the economy is totally pervasive.

True, but it’s a relatively small percentage of our oil that goes into petrochemicals, so if we could find some other fuel, we could easily save the rest for petrochemicals and pump it for its value in that even when its ERoEI as a fuel drops below 1.

2. the oil we have grown accustomed to is light sweet crude - the highest quality and easiest to refine product. just trying to migrate the economy to lower quality oil will have an incredible impact.

Indeed. That’s as big a problem as the cost of pumping itself. I’d hoped I’d made that clear in the article….

That doesn’t seem correct to me. Although hydropower is cheap, you can’t use it to power a plane. Air travel (and other forms of transportation that need transportable density) will continue to get used long after the ERoEI is below one.

Actually, we’re already seeing the downfall of air travel. See my previous post, “The Spirit of St. Louis.”

You can use hydropower to power a plane if you have some way of carrying the energy–like hydrogen? So the problem isn’t unsolvable: we just need to be REALLY inventive, REALLY quick. Which is a problem exacerbated by the fact that it’s harder and harder for us to invent, because we’ve passed the point of diminishing returns for invention … getting back to the idea that this problem is not so unsolvable on its own, but the whole nest of problems taken together is utterly unsolvable.

Didn’t Germany, in WWII, produce synthetic oil, at great cost, so that they could keep planes in the air? In any case, we’d certainly do the same if our civilization was on the line.

Yes, Germany took a big hit to their ERoEI with synthetic oil, which was much lower than real oil, but still well above 1.

Just think about it for a moment. If ERoEI is 1, then you’re not gaining any more energy for all your pumping and drilling. If ERoEI drops below 1, then you’re actually losing energy with drilling. So, at 1, oil reverts to its original status as disgusting, useless thing you sometimes see oozing out of rocks.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 December 2005 @ 8:45 AM
Nitpicky points out of the way: when wood or fossil fuels are burned, none of their mass is converted to energy. This only happens in a nuclear reaction. The energy released by burning fuel is stored in the arrangement of electrons in the chemical bonds of the fuels.

Although it’s somewhat fanciful, if our energy requirements do continue to increase, eventually we’ll have to go solar, albeit with titanic orbiting solar cells that beam down energy. The sun supplies each patch of ground with 160–170 Watts per square meter on average every day; on sunlit ground with a clear sky, this may be over 1000 W/m². Of course, we’ll have to be pretty desperate to get to that.

Comment by Tyson Burghardt — 3 December 2005 @ 10:50 AM
Hey –

Nice, Jason. I do not spend time at the Peak Oil sites, largely because I find much of thier rhetoric to be just that — meanwhile, you have written a concise, well reasoned and well supported explanation of the factors involved in Peak Oil with examples of previous Peak events. This should be the type of document that they are spreading rather than the fear mongering bs that is so hot…

Although, I do see that you decided to use that hideous and illogical quote from the ‘industry insider’. Do I need to explain again how completely he misses the point?

Janene

Comment by Janene — 3 December 2005 @ 11:07 AM
Jason — Oh, I see the oil’s essential role part now. Sorry about that. And as for the lack of redundancy being the next thesis, I see that too. Which just leaves how this is a liquid fuels crisis as much as anything, and that’s a bit redundant with how useful oil is.

On the subject of ERoEI — the above person was (perhaps unintentionally) making the point that oil is such a valuable resources, that even when it does not return energy on energy investment, energy should still be invested to extract it. Pretty telling statement about just how valuable oil is, huh? By analogy, we mine gold and diamonds and many other things that have a negative ERoEI simply because they’re valuable, not for their energy input. So the main point still stands, that oil will cease to be an energy source, since its ERoEI will be less than one — but we might use it anyway, because it’s that useful.

On collapse — The likelihood of collapse is difficult to estimate, because obviously no one can see the future. As Jason says, there might be a deus ex machina the way there has been in the past. Now, the likelihood of this (I think tragic) “miracle” energy source must be judged by a number of factors… availability, scalability, quality, transportability, timeframe to implementation, and already current development (we can’t switch to an energy source we don’t know about). Even then, the other many facets of the interconnectedness of all things on Earth stand to reason that there will be a collapse anyway, and still soon. Jason has done an excellent job of covering the many aspects of this bigger picture, and looking at Peak Oil in isolation is one of the most common errors made by Peak Oilers.

Now, what I’M worried about is whether or not we personally have the time to adapt or not. I’ve long since given up on the whole of society, but that doesn’t mean that we individually will not have problems. I’ve heard Jason’s arguments for why we should be okay, but it remains to be seen how all this is going to play out. Looking at all the ways to die and the relatively thin edge of the knife of survival is perhaps not the best way to feel secure in yourself, granted. No wonder people surround themselves with visions of candy canes and sugar plum fairies.

Comment by Devin — 3 December 2005 @ 2:59 PM
Thanks for the responses Benjamin and Jason.

Adaptation can occur pretty quickly in the capitalistic system. Look how fast the internet was built - infrastructure, content, software etc. Why can’t the same happen with alternate energies and energy saving technology?

Maybe solar and other energies won’t be able to meet all of our needs, but if you complement this with changes in people’s attitudes concerning consumption and progress, then the average person’s use of energy will decline. There have got to be a lot of inefficiencies out there, small things that people can do to reduce consumption. Small things to make the world less complex rather than extreme measures. The declining birthrates we see all over the world mean the next generation will be smaller, therefore less energy will be required.

Again, great article and discussion.

Comment by Lope — 3 December 2005 @ 5:40 PM
I would be much more concerned about a “hydrocarbon peak” than an “oil peak”. Certainly there is a vast amount of coal, sand oil, etc. available throughout the world. I think that it was back in the oil crisis of the ’70s when it was said that at $6 per gallon (in 1970 dollars) for gasoline, it would be financially feasable to produce gasoline from coal. Also, remember that the first diesel engine ran on coal dust.

The biggest problem is the U.S., which has always been an oil pig. There is much that could be done right now. I would think in three years we could get big long haul trucks off of the road (and the freight onto the railroads), and in five years, we could get most of the national airlines passengers out of the planes and into high speed trains. Also a national building insulation program wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Comment by G. Anton Bosanque — 3 December 2005 @ 6:15 PM
Actually the first diesel engine ran on peanut oil, but anyway. What you’re talking about would be a severe reduction in complexity and renewed concentration on locality. The only food you could eat would be that which was locally produced, without the help of oil. The population would decrease quickly and substantially.

No current alternative exists. Beyond that there is the problem of taking that alternative and integrating it into our infastructure, or making a new infastructure. Doing that takes a lot of time. And could only be done with our current infastructure. We’re fast running out of time. Not to mention the financial problem. The US dollar is only being held up right now because all oil transactions are done in the US dollar. No oil, no big US dollar. Many companies are already switching to the Euro, and we’re feeling it. It’s a big concern in financial sectors.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 3 December 2005 @ 8:41 PM
The energy released by burning fuel is stored in the arrangement of electrons in the chemical bonds of the fuels.

What, and electrons are not part of the atoms that make up the molecules that make up the wood? Why is my wood smaller after a fire, then? And what happened to that law of conservation of mass-energy I read so much about in grade school science class?

Although, I do see that you decided to use that hideous and illogical quote from the ‘industry insider’. Do I need to explain again how completely he misses the point?

I still think you’re taking it a little too personally. I still read it to say that high oil prices are the result of a capitalist market–no evil, price-fixing Big Oil companies, and no gouging local retailers. I don’t think gouging’s going on at any level. I think we’re starting to see the price of Hubbert’s Peak.

Adaptation can occur pretty quickly in the capitalistic system. Look how fast the internet was built - infrastructure, content, software etc. Why can’t the same happen with alternate energies and energy saving technology?

A little known fact about the internet–or, I should say, well-known to computer scientists, and completely unknown to everyone else. The reason the internet took off so much was because all of the components for it were developed with NSF grants before the infrastructure was in place. Once the wires caught up, the software and other technology was already there. CS dept’s love to include this in their grant requests, which is where I heard about it. So, there’s a key part to any “quick adaptation” the capitalist system has ever made in the past, or is likely to make in the future: all the necessary components should have been developed years before and reached a stage of relative maturity, where all you need to do is put them all together.

We’re hitting peak now, and at present, we have none of the necessary components ready, much less mature. For a “quick adaptation,” they needed to be ready by 1980. So I’d estimate we’re at a good negative twenty years on the timeline we’d need for such an adaptation. We might’ve had a good chance at it once upon a time, but we elected Reagan, instead. Now, we’re down to a snowball’s chance in hell.

It’s morning in America!

Maybe solar and other energies won’t be able to meet all of our needs, but if you complement this with changes in people’s attitudes concerning consumption and progress, then the average person’s use of energy will decline. There have got to be a lot of inefficiencies out there, small things that people can do to reduce consumption. Small things to make the world less complex rather than extreme measures. The declining birthrates we see all over the world mean the next generation will be smaller, therefore less energy will be required.

Waste. You’re sounding Marco’s note. I’m preparing a thorough refutation of that, but it will be at least tomorrow before anyone sees it. Short form: even if you could cut all the waste, it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 December 2005 @ 11:17 PM
“A BP retailer is under no obligation to buy his oil from a BP distributor.”

I don’t think that this is true. I think retailers are contractually restricted to their franchisor. Out in my neck of the woods Texaco has traditionally had very high prices. On averge it’s been 15 to 20 cents more per gallon than the station across the street. So in recent years gas station owners have been switching franchises as soon as their contracts with Texaco expired.

You should fact check this claim.

Comment by Peter — 3 December 2005 @ 11:58 PM
This paragraph needs serious reworking:

I said above that the North American Hubbert’s Peak was the most significant event of the post-war period. The complexity of any culture is a function of energy, and it’s energy that has always created the shape of history. Romans very explicitly fought for new farmland, for instance. The petroleum age has merely coalesced all of our needs into a single, needful resources. When our own supply of it began to run out in the 1970s, the famed “energy crisis” ensued, resulting in the widespread “hopelessness” and economic recession associated with that decade. The United States needed new sources of oil, and so developed the “twin pillar policy,” to rely on Iran and Saudi Arabia. When Iran moved to nationalize its oil industry, the CIA assassinated the democratically-elected Mossadeq and backed the Shah–events that ultimately led to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and a surging sentiment throughout the Mddle East that freedom from European powers and their meddling could be won through radical Islam. At the same time, the “twin pillar policy” collapsed, and the United States became dependent on Saudi Arabia.

See part in italics. It makes it sound like the Iran coup d etat and installation of the Shah took place in the 1970s and not the 1950s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi_of_Iran

Comment by Peter — 4 December 2005 @ 12:10 AM
Jason Godesky:

What, and electrons are not part of the atoms that make up the molecules that make up the wood? Why is my wood smaller after a fire, then? And what happened to that law of conservation of mass-energy I read so much about in grade school science class?

Great!!!

That tells a lot about the reliability of any of your other considerations.

IGNORANT MORONS…

I did not care to follow up on your previous reply for good reason:

“Never argue with a fool. Someone watching may not be able to tell the difference.”

Comment by Ah no nymous — 4 December 2005 @ 3:41 AM
Technically Nitpicky is currect. The phrase “mass into energy” is almost solely used to refer to radiation. The combustion process is soley chemical with no radiation. The energy release is heat.

(almost any carbon chain could replace the one I use here, but this is sufficent to demonstrate the point.)
6O2 + C6H12O6 -> 6CO2 + 6H20 + energy(heat)

That being said. His choice of rebuttles demonstrates an arragant posturing that truely defeats any purpose he might have had by pointing out a minor error. After all the error was one of terminology, not of fact. The oil is burned to generate energy and is then used up. Technically it’s the chemical bonds that are turned into energy not the mass, but for most people the difference is moot. And irrelevant, the point stands regardless of the choice of a phrase.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 4 December 2005 @ 10:47 AM
Ah no nymous,

Is your knowledge evenly spaced over all areas of expertise? You know as much about entymology as you do about linguistics? There are no spots that are poorer than others? If so, you are a most exceptional individual. Most of us have areas we are stronger in, and areas we are weaker in. I’m stronger in biology, but weaker in physics and chemistry. I’m stronger in the social sciences, than in the physical ones. You’ll see that I mostly restrict myself to the social sciences, with points about the physical sciences relegated almost exclusively to minor supporting points, as above.

Ben’s explanation makes sense, and in fact, I remember hearing it before. I’m not sure how I might have written the phrase any differently, as a more accurate rendition would be horribly unwieldy. Even the original poster admitted it was “nitpicky,” and even now I agree with Ben’s assessment that it’s mostly irrelevant.

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” I don’t think there’s any doubt left here.

Peter,

You’ve never seen a Texaco truck filling up a BP retailer? It happens all the time. Some retailers are still obligated to buy some percentage of their oil from their company’s distributor, but it’s usually pretty low. The natural selection of the market: whoever decided on that policy first could make more profits at the retail level by cutting retailers’ costs, which would force everyone else to do the same to stay competitive. Which is why you’ll now regularly see Texaco trucks filling up a BP retailer. High oil prices from one retailer to another have to do with other considerations, like demand (which can fluctuate widely based on relatively minor differences of location–a retailer on a busier intersection has a lot more demand, and can raise the price a lot more over one that’s not so busy).

Texaco’s a special case, because of their “Techron” oil, which only comes out of Texaco distributors. That means Texaco retailers are much more bound than usual, which would explain why your counter-example is Texaco. Another quote from that same Oil Drum article above:

These independents actually buy gas from whoever they get the best deal from, then sell it to their customers. If you have ever wondered why there is an Exxon tanker filling up a Fina gas station tank, it is because the distributor is an Exxon affiliate, but the Fina station owner got a better deal from Exxon than from Fina. This happens all the time. Distributors also sell grease and transmission fluid and hydraulic fluid and motor oil to industry. You can often see distributors trucks servicing construction sites or businesses operating a fleet of vehicles.
Retailers can buy whatever they want from whoever they can get the best price! These corporations are usually very divorced from the nuts and bolts of oil companies, that focus on retailing gasoline and convenience store operation. The retail chain may be a Shell-owned convenience store, supplied by a Shell affiliated distributor, but he (distributor) may buy his oil from Murphy Oil Refining. So while the buyer thinks he is getting Shell gasoline, what he is getting is gasoline from a Shell Distributor, but produced by Murphy Oil Refining.

I have loosely used Big Oil Company names here to make a point. However, many of the big guys keep a close reign on their distributors. But that does not preclude them selling whatever they want to independent retailers, like Samir’s Quicky Mart.

Thus unless a gasoline has a patented ingredient (like Techron) or other additive, it will not necessarily wind up being sold by the affiliate retailer. And we haven’t even gotten to supply contracts yet, which further complicate things.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 December 2005 @ 12:06 PM
Hey –

Peter:

“A BP retailer is under no obligation to buy his oil from a BP distributor.”

I don’t think that this is true. I think retailers are contractually restricted to their franchisor. Out in my neck of the woods Texaco has traditionally had very high prices. On averge it’s been 15 to 20 cents more per gallon than the station across the street. So in recent years gas station owners have been switching franchises as soon as their contracts with Texaco expired.

You should fact check this claim.

This is technically correct. Your Texaco Dealers do not have to buy Texaco gas… although independants in the area may not always be allowed to buy it (independants only have the option when there is a surplus). The difference in pricing is based on the large franchise fees the branded stations have to pay.

Jason:

Although, I do see that you decided to use that hideous and illogical quote from the ‘industry insider’. Do I need to explain again how completely he misses the point?

I still think you’re taking it a little too personally. I still read it to say that high oil prices are the result of a capitalist market–no evil, price-fixing Big Oil companies, and no gouging local retailers. I don’t think gouging’s going on at any level. I think we’re starting to see the price of Hubbert’s Peak.

Oh, but I’m not even talking about all THAT stuff. This particular line is simply illogical and factual wanting… here I’ll show you.

‘Insider Wrote’

ExxonMobil, owning their own up and down stream divisions, could sell at a loss or reduced profit on the retail end, provided they compensated their convenience store owners for their lost gasoline revenues (these stores are franchises). But that would make whatever cut they did offer twice as financially painful—they would take the announced cut and associated reduction in profit, and then have to pay the store owners their traditional profit to keep them happy.

So you are not asking them to just fall on their own sword, but to get back up and hurl their bloodied body on it again…ouch!

So… ExxonMobil offers thier stores a .50 per gallon ‘rebate’ to help reduce the price on the street. The stores continue to make thier normal profit, but at a higher volume, they make more profit. By doing this, they are also increasing the store volumes dramatically, which skyrockets in-store sales.

FYI, gas stations make about .10 a gallon on gas(after gas taxes). They make 20-50% on instore sales. So figure they spike thier gas sales by a couple thousand gallons per day (in a suburban setting — more in the city, less in rural areas), which earns them an extra $100 a day. Plus they increase instore sales by, say, $2000.00 — that makes them another $600 a day profit. Increased volume reduces the cost of most overhead (rent, labor) on a percentage basis, although it may also increase thier franchise fee back to Exxon — but if it is based on profit, that’s ok.

So Exxon spends $500.00 for the store to increase profits by $700.00.

What part of this has ANYTHING to do with paying twice and falling on thier swords?

And this has NOTHING to do with this particular industry… megacorps use this kind of reasoning ALL THE TIME to increase prices, layoff employees etc. Any accountant worth thier salt should be saying… wait, huh? They are using buzzwords and framing to make themselves look good, but there is no MEAT to it.

For the rest of it, yeah, you’re right, I may still be stinging a little from that experience… but this has nothing to do with that. This particular statement was the worst, most blatently and demonstrably false claim in the whole piece

Janene

Comment by Janene — 4 December 2005 @ 12:10 PM
The technology to use methane clathrate as a replacement for some of the uses of petroleum could possibly be developed in a decade. It is estimated that these deposits are equivalent to at least 10 times the known natural gas reserves.

The use of this fuel could actually hasten collapse and create a major extinction. The continued burning of fossil fuels will increase atmospheric CO2 increasing global temperatures. The extraction of methane clathrate will likely release methane. It is 10 times more effective as a greenhouse gas then CO2. The vast store of methane clathrate on the ocean floor will become unstable as the earth warms, releasing more methane causing a devastating positive feedback loop to accelerate global warming.

Comment by Bob Harrison — 4 December 2005 @ 12:13 PM
Asuming that increased volume happens, which is a gamble. Oil companies are extremely conservative–they’re still calculating ROI based on a $20/barrel estimate. They got burned in the 80’s and have been incredibly conservative ever since.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 December 2005 @ 12:25 PM
Hey –

I don’t understand what you mean?

‘Increased volume’ has nothing to do with TOTAL gasoline sales… only per store sales.

I can tell you flat out that if a store has a price .05 cheaper than the street median (that particular street), that thier individual volume will increase by 10-20% (assuming that they are cheaper than the street by MORE than they normally are. This doesn’t apply to always-discount stores.)

Look at it like a prisoner’s dilemma situation. The first company to offer rebates will suck up a HUGE chunk of profits by doing so. The only reasons I can think of that no one has done it are either: a) Its to far outside the box and no one has thought of it OR b) the oil execs have a gentleman’s agreement.

I lean towards b, myself.

Janene

Comment by Janene — 4 December 2005 @ 12:41 PM
That’s the kind of “gentleman’s agreement” that governs every industry, though. You don’t initiate price wars, because everyone in the industry loses. They teach that much to undergrads in intro to econ courses.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 December 2005 @ 1:40 PM
Hey –

Yes and no.

There certainly have been price wars and that certainly is a strategy that is sometimes employeed — usually, I suspect, when a given company believes that they can corner the market.

I mean, in principle, its the way the Walmart does business… and its the way Japanese electronics and cars first entered american markets etc…

Janene

Comment by Janene — 4 December 2005 @ 2:06 PM
When ERoEI of oil drops below 1, there will still be a lot of machines around designed to run on oil. An airplane can be flown on jet fuel but cannot be pulled by horses. So the oil producers will use other kinds of energy to get the oil out, and take a loss on energy to keep the machines going. Oil will still be a means to concentrate energy, for example to turn thousands of hours of work by human slaves into a valuable substance which can be traded for the tools to keep people enslaved.

Of course, the slaves have to eat, so you’ve still got an inefficient and doomed system. My point is just that the oil industry can keep going a while with a loss in ERoEI.

Comment by Ran — 4 December 2005 @ 9:08 PM
The issue isn’t oil as a resource but oil as an energy source. At an EROEI of 1, oil ceases to be an energy source and simply another energy-expensive product we rip from the Earth. At that point oil no longer sustains our civilization but drains it. That’s why peak oil is such a big deal.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 5 December 2005 @ 3:29 AM
Good article, great discussion. Only one true idiot in the whole thing.

There’s a certain sequence and confluence I see that’s not addressed, though.

NITPICKY POINTS
The thing about the mass/energy was nitpicky, as it didn’t make any difference to the argument, but it was like somebody hitting a sour note. E=mc^2 partly says mass is just a muc denser form of energy (notice you can algebraically solve for mass instead of the usual energy presentation and the energy gets divided by the huge speed of light squared). So, electron bonds do have some mass (and yes thus some gravity, but I think this is where Einstein got lost on his Unified Field Theory so good luck), but it’s miniscule compared to that of a neutron, proton, or even electron. Likewise the energy released by snapping an electron bond vs. annihilating a proton in a thermonuclear reaction.

Still, the energy of the electron bond can be neither created nor destroyed. So when you burn oil, you’ve transferred the energy elsewhere.

I also have to agree with the time-sequence problems for the Iranian coup, etc. Still nitpicky, but required rereading to make sure it didn’t affect the argument.

CONFLUENCE
The Peak Oil situation is, to me, best shown graphically. Put a likely Hubbert’s Peak line with a likely oil demand line and it’s pretty obvious.

The verbal part is how much of our economic/money system is dependent on oil. This could (and should) be shown graphically by replacing the oil demand line with worldwide or just “industrial” countries’ GDP growth lines, shaded to show how much uses oil inputs.

Anyway, to start to refute two of the posts that suggested we’d keep running airplanes, etc., even when oil’s ERoEI reaches 1, the graphics I suggest would show that there are ENORMOUS problems just beyond the Peak. Once ANY gap opens up between projected supply and demand, big chunks of the economy just start disappearing.

If there’s a consistent slowing of GDP GROWTH for two quarters, that’s called a recession. Those are no fun. If there’s a shrinkage of GDP (don’t know the time period, since it hasn’t happened in a while), it’s called a DEPRESSION. Ever seen one of those? Me neither.

So what’s going to happen when the best oil producers can do will only fuel 97% of the previous year’s output?

I think within the time it takes for Peak Oil to become obvious, we’ll definitely see the collapse of our housing bubble, and with it the American consumer’s ability to keep this whole show running.

Comment by Sam — 5 December 2005 @ 4:24 AM
Sam

Only one true idiot in the whole thing.

Many, many true idiots, not just one…

Jason Godesky

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Right, it would be nice if you were to follow this advice yourself.
Heavily copy-pasting and parroting other people actual research while cherry-picking what suits your primitivist prejudices does not make sound argumentation.
Jared Diamond’s dire collapse predictions: Good…
Jared Diamond’s warning about the nastiness of even primitive cultures over the environment: Baaad…
Jared Diamond’s hints at possible success in controlling civilisation weakness, Japan, Tokopia, etc… : Veeery Baaad…
In spite your self-appointment as a “social sciences” expert it is much more likely than someone as Jared Diamond who, as a professionnal, spent a lifetime on such matters has a more sensible opinion than a bunch of bloggers.
Blogging is good for disseminating information not for creatiing it.
Opposing views on peak oil are just as irrelevant as yours http://www.energybulletin.net/11444.html

Anyway the whole “tribe” is much more slanted toward navel gazing and silencing dissenting views than toward an enlightening debate.
You already have the ONE TRUE ANSWER, the only thing which remains to be done is propaganda.

This is the hallmark of a cult, Anthropik is just a cult!

Comment by Ah no nymous — 5 December 2005 @ 9:18 AM
I also have to agree with the time-sequence problems for the Iranian coup, etc. Still nitpicky, but required rereading to make sure it didn’t affect the argument.

You’re right. The sequence got confused in my own mind. Which is bizarre, because I know the dates of all these events, so you’d think I’d put two and two together….

Sam, I think your view on what the backside of the slope looks like is spot-on. Air travel is already on its way out. We’ll no doubt continue drilling oil for petrochemicals, but when it ceases to be a useful fuel, we’ll be facing a very real probability of catabolic collapse.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 December 2005 @ 10:30 AM
Everyone so looks forward to the day when sucking oil out of the ground ceases to be economically viable. Sooner the better, right? However, tar sands and oil shale are viable at 50 dollar a barrel prices which we have become used to. And there is more oil in those sands and shale than all the crude oil produced to date and future reserves.
It’s gonna be awhile… Our grandkids will have to deal with shrinking tar sand reserves, not you and I. If fossil fuels is our doom, we are sunk. Survival depends on changing the way people think of themselves as part of the whole, not independent creatures.
I have the smallest footprint of anyone in my circle of friends/family and it is still huge compared to where we need to go. Anyway, good article.

Comment by csimba — 5 December 2005 @ 10:54 AM
The only time people have ever changed their thinking on such a scale in the past is when material reality changed, and they had to change their thinking to survive. Such changes only occur in the context of catastrophe.

There’s a lot of controversy about tar sands, shale, deepwater drilling, and other high-cost extraction methods. We’ll see if any of them pan out, but that’s why I said peak oil is one way the collapse might happen. If peak oil doesn’t do it, global warming might. Or a pandemic, or this, or that. As I’ll argue in my next thesis, collapse is not in question–only which factor will be “the final blow.”

Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 December 2005 @ 11:04 AM
Yeah, I’m of the school that said “non-conventional sources” of oil are bogus. The production cost is high, and the quality of oil obtained is low. Also, most of the sources are in the desert. Which makes it unfortunate that the process is so fresh water heavy. It also uses a truely prestigeous amount of natural gas. Both of which are going to be in short supply soon, and one is already. The EROEI is only just above 1 as is. Dr. Colin Campbell believes that the combined Canadian and Venezuelan output will only be 4.6 million barrels a day by 2020. Even if he’s wrong by half, it’s not going to matter. Non-conventional sources of oil are worth an extra couple years, maybe.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 5 December 2005 @ 1:03 PM
Ah no nymous: that is called an argument from authority which is one of the first fallacies one learns about. What matters is not who said something but what arguments back it up. I find the arguments on this website fairly convincing on the whole. Of course most people here agree otherwise they wouldn’t be all on this website, doesn’t make it a cult.

Anyway, I have my own nitpicky point (and I want to encourage Jason to fix all the issues raised so far so that it doesn’t cast a taint on the rest of the piece).

“Peak Oil is the moment at which we have extracted half of all the oil in the world–meaning another half remains.”

This cannot be literally correct. There is no reason to suppose that the oil extraction curve is symmetric. The ratio of light to heavy oil is not 50/50. The peak doesn’t have to coincide to the point where most of the oil extracted becomes heavy instead of light. The only thing that distinguishes a peak is that the rate of growth turns negative, so each year afterwards less and less oil is extracted.

Thinking about it, even the peak itself need not be important. What is relevant is the opening of the gap between demand and supply and EROEI becoming negative which need not coincide with the production peak.

Comment by DigitalDjigit — 5 December 2005 @ 2:04 PM
Interesting that out of so many posters, one should get defensive about my “true idiot” comment. FWIW, I wasn’t referring to his point of view - I really couldn’t make that out - but rather his spewing, unintelligible prose style.

I do worry that Peak Oil is just the Progressive’s version of a doomsday cult.

I want to believe that it’s happening soon for several reasons:

1) Maybe it’ll stave off climate change, soil depletion, and other environmental damage soon enough that we can put some of the pieces back together

2) I truly loath the current consumer suburban car-based system. I’m happy in the country or the city but the ‘burbs make me want to jump out a window. Unfortunately, the windows of my suburban cape cod are only about five feet off the ground and surrounded by lawn. Sigh.

3) Maybe enough other people’s economic lives would be as thoroughly hosed as those of myself and almost all the people I know, that we wouldn’t be made to feel so bad.

Having said that, I still can’t find credible holes in the logic that we’re right around Peak. The shape of the idea (as opposed to the timing) seems unquestionable. The motives for OPEC countries’ having inflated their reserves during the eighties seem obvious. I don’t know how another few Ghawars could still be hiding from a whole generation or two of petroleum engineers. The idea that refineries haven’t been built because of NIMBY problems is obviously silly. The only argument for attacking Iraq that bears any scrutiny is to set up a police station in the Middle East. Even some conservative commentators copped to that in the early days, although its purpose was supposed to be to influence the area toward Democracy.

The precarious position of the American economy is where I see the biggest fault line for even a small, beginning slowdown in oil production. On balance, we provide three productive activities to the world:

1) We manufacture dollars and manipulate markets and even other economies enough to keep dollars as the preferred medium of exchange and a “safe haven” investment.

2) We provide a huge well of consumer “demand” that will suck up any piece of crap somebody bothers to manufacture.

3) We prop up the ruling elites of a whole lot of countries, yes even China, and of course show them what they should want to consume with their ill-gotten gains.

As an economy, we’re racking up debt at absolutely incredible rates. Every year, consumer debt, plus corporate debt, plus balance of trade deficit, plus government deficit (never mind that the numbers are cooked way low) is around total GDP. Last month’s job creation numbers were considered good at over 200,000. Anybody remember that it takes well over 300,000 jobs just to keep up with new workers entering the market? How about the quality of the jobs being created?

Of course, we don’t have much inflation. Well, not price inflation anyway, since that would devalue all this consumer debt. What we have is content deflation. Anybody notice that the pork, chicken and beef you get at major supermarkets all tastes the same, and pretty much like raw tofu at that? Have you noticed that the clothes you buy your kids are of a quality that you would have disdained when you were a kid?

This site - http://www.gillespieresearch.com/cgi-bin/bgn - shows just the obvious ways the economic numbers have been cooked.

So, again, after a couple of years of oil being in short supply, how long before it takes so many dollars to buy a barrel that dollars aren’t a very good medium? Think the housing bubble will have time to deflate and come back to average by then? What happens if the Chinese reduce our position in (or even kick us out of) the basket of currencies they’re now following? Short of that, how poor can they make their own factory workers in the effort to keep our consumers able to buy?

Oh and I didn’t read any of this in my navel.

Comment by Sam — 5 December 2005 @ 2:09 PM
This cannot be literally correct. There is no reason to suppose that the oil extraction curve is symmetric. The ratio of light to heavy oil is not 50/50. The peak doesn’t have to coincide to the point where most of the oil extracted becomes heavy instead of light. The only thing that distinguishes a peak is that the rate of growth turns negative, so each year afterwards less and less oil is extracted.

Sure it can. Crude oil is lighter or heavier; they’re not binary. So if one barrel of oil is 41.4% impurities, and the next barrel is 41.41% impurities, the second is heavier than the first. No, passing Peak Oil does not mean everything suddenly turns to sludge. But the first half is the lighter half; the second half is the heavy half. All the lightest stuff is at the top of the first half; all the heaviest stuff is at the bottom of the second half. It’s not binary, but if you cut a gradient like that in half, you’re going to have a light half, and a heavy half.

When you’re talking about extraction, that yields a curve. So Hubbert’s Peak is the highest point on that curve, which is going to be the same moment that you’ve extracted half of all the oil. Note, that’s something that’s really only appreciable in hindsight.

Thinking about it, even the peak itself need not be important. What is relevant is the opening of the gap between demand and supply and EROEI becoming negative which need not coincide with the production peak.

Now you’re gettin’ it.

I do worry that Peak Oil is just the Progressive’s version of a doomsday cult.

See, “The Eschatology of the Left.”

Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 December 2005 @ 2:21 PM
Jason said: As I’ll argue in my next thesis, collapse is not in question–only which factor will be “the final blow.”

Don’t overlook the entry of 1.5 billion Chinese into the great game of capitalism. According to Friedman in The World is Flat 30,000 new cars are purchased in each month in Shanghai alone. China will greatly accelerate the depletion of any remaining fossil fuel.

Comment by Peter — 5 December 2005 @ 2:25 PM
I agree with DigitalDigit’s comment above. Peak Oil need not imply a particular volume gone — wells with better extraction technology can peak with 70% extracted, which just means that the backside of the curve is much more steep. For a long while, I’d thought that Peak Oil implied that half the volume was gone, since I was looking at it like a symmetrical bell curve. This is what happens in theory, if production intensities remain the same throughout — but in practice, production intensities don’t necessarily remain the same throughout.

This is kind of what I was getting at over at IshCon, in my post on Collapse Timeframe: “[From the above, it looks like] the speed of a catabolic collapse is based on 1. how central the resource(s) is (are) in the depletion crisis, 2. how fast it is depleting (looking at the replenishment rate and the depletion rate), 3. how much the society will attempt to continue its anabolic cycle at all costs (and how successful it will be), and 4. the cultural and political factors that make catabolic collapse difficult to contemplate, avoid, and mitigate.” The one I want to look at in particular is #3, which highlights the attempt to prolong the anabolic cycle as long as possible. To me, this looks like the global oil peak will be well past the halfway point, as extraction rates will increase in order to make up the supply-demand shortfall in a stopgap way. As Greer points out, this approach is often counterproductive in the long run, in this case making the backside of the oil depletion curve much steeper.

As for the cult allegations, those are pretty laughable. But actually, no, we really are a cult — we have our rituals like posting comments on a blog, discussing threads in a forum, and contributing articles to a wiki. Not to mention our charismatic and manipulative leader, Jason, who demands that we all make sacrifices and… pay for his already free webhosting? Sigh. ahnonymous, you need to get out more.

Comment by Devin — 5 December 2005 @ 2:29 PM
If I were charismatic, I’d be Tyler Durden.

Good thing for you all I’ve got all the charisma of four-month old cous-cous.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 December 2005 @ 2:35 PM
I know little of oil, but I do understand how electricity is made - using either fossil fuels, hydro or nuclear power (the three main sources in the western world). Nuclear is of course the most controversial. While I’m a longtime nuclear energy worker myself, I can’t say that I’m sure what our energy future should be (really). But I am sure we will make better decisions if we understand how our energy is made now.

I’ve come to realize that electric power production, and nuclear power in particular, is unknown to the general public, which has had far more access to the workings of the Starship Enterprise than to the nuke plant down the street. So, to help matters, I’ve written an insider’s account of the American nuclear power industry, called “Rad Decision�?. The book is available, at no cost to readers, at RadDecision.blogspot.com.

Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand has endorsed the book, stating: “I’d like to see RAD DECISION widely read.�?

Designed for the lay reader, this unique peek beyond the security fence is in the form of a techno-thriller novel. Rad Decision covers nuclear plant operation, events such as Chernobyl and TMI, and ends with how an accident might be handled today. It also includes, for the first time, an insider perspective on the politics and human relations that greatly impact how nuclear units in the U.S. are operated.

At RadDecision.blogspot.com the book is presented as a series of Episodes (15 minutes reading time each) and also provided as a PDF file. This is an independent, non-profit project with no advertising. All sides of the nuclear power debate will find items to like, and dislike, within Rad Decision.

I hope you’ll take the opportunity to take a look at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com

James Aach

Comment by James Aach — 5 December 2005 @ 10:36 PM
There are a few things missing from this discussion.

ERoEI getting to 1 or less isn’t really the scary point. That’s actually a long way off, way down the backside of the curve. With present and realistically-available technology, production is just going to decrease no matter the price. The upper limit to how fast oil can be forced out of the ground is near or here. Additional money thrown at it won’t have any productive place to go. Additional money will be thrown at it, but just as a way of allocating the finite resource.

The scary point is when the financial markets, the general public, and CNBC realize that the GROWTH in GDP we REQUIRE is going to be impossible the next year because there just isn’t going to be enough fuel to produce it.

Economic activity is something like 90% dependent on hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas). Our money-economy depends on not just stasis, but GROWTH.

The whole system of money is just a confidence game.

BTW, I’m not a gold bug. I think fiat money is simply a little less confidence-inspiring. Gold standard money depends on the confidence that you can exchange money for gold, while fiat money depends on the confidence that somebody else will exchange goods or service for your currency.

Either way, the whole thing depends on growth. You’re not going to mortgage your house to 100% or more if you don’t think it’ll be worth more next year. The equity increase from amortization pales compared to value appreciation. Likewise, businesses won’t go out and get capital (borrow) if they don’t think they’ll make more money next year. The stock market (and your 401(k)) won’t appreciate the way you need them to if there’s no growth in the coming years. Almost all money comes into being by borrowing, thus carries interest, thus depends on somebody’s having more money every year.

So, the most proximate scary thing is the money system realizing that there’s just not going to be any growth, and probably some contraction in the coming year. Sure the more powerful nations will manage to take a bit more oil for themselves and thus keep some growth going for a while at the expense of the less-powerful. It’s also possible that this lag may have already started with the Iraq invasion and/or the devastation in places like Zimbabwe and Somalia. So it could be that the turning point in confidence pops up at any moment.

In retrospect we’ll see that the big guys started making sure the allocation of dwindling resources went their way in year X. In the present maybe it’s “The War on Terror.”

Another point is that our “civilization” is just the money economy. There’s about a 99.99% (made up, but plausible number) chance that you reading this work at something that at most directly supports only one aspect of anyone’s survival, and probably not much of your own survival. Everything else you need to live is exchanged for money. You don’t build your own house, grow all your own food, make all your own clothes, and entirely entertain yourself. Even if you do one of those, the rest are probably secured in the money economy. This is what you think of as civilization.

Furthermore, this is what’s going to collapse soon. I think it’s already well on its way, but zillions of messages in our culture prevent our seeing it. We think we’re supposed to live like the people on “Desparate Housewives,” or whatever. The American Protestant Ethic makes us believe we’re inadequate (really, sinful) if whatever job we’ve been reduced to won’t allow us to swing that lifestyle.

The good news is that up until relatively recently people really did live a lot of their lives rather nicely outside the strictly money part of the economy. They did grow a lot of their own food, even in backyard gardens in the city. They did entertain themselves and each other. They did make a lot of their own clothes.

Of course we in the US have no time for such things, working the highest average number of hours per week of any “industrialized” nation. So we’re just that much more part of the money economy.

The implication of the good news part is that we aren’t really looking at being hunter-gatherers next Spring. Generally speaking, money will be less and less a factor in people’s lives. They’ll do more for themselves.

The fact that their job has disappeared will allow them a little time to take care of their own kids, or make their own clothes, or grow a little garden, or put together a biodiesel still. None of these pulls in much if any money, but they’re all certainly useful and productive.

Eventually we may get to a point where none of the trappings of current civilization survive, but the big near adjustment will be living outside the money economy.

Comment by Sam — 6 December 2005 @ 3:45 AM
Sam:

Oh and I didn’t read any of this in my navel.

Neither did I, though I hold more or less the same views.
I did not made it clear enough that I am as much and even more pessimistic than the crowd here.
It is very likely that we are doomed as a specie.
May be there is an escape, may be not.
What I find silly is pretending to have found a simple solution:
If things get sour we just turn back primitives!
This is only another form of denial:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/11/19/225526/32

If there is a way out of this disaster it will require LOTS more thinking and creativeness.
What I currently deem most plausible as a solution is some kind of “soft landing” as painfull and damaging as it is likely to be (soft to “civilisation”, hard and harsh to most people).
The point being to maintain and stabilise some forms of culture, science and technology, close to what we have now (or better, why not?).
Not to get back to square one where the same troubles will rise again.
Futhermore, not only the proposed solution have to be sustainable but it has to survive thru the initial “shockwave” of collapse/landing.

As for why we should care see :
“What normative duties do we owe to future generations?”
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/pubs/seto-intergenerational.pdf
From Theodore P. Seto http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/seto.html

Also, I still maintain that Anthropik has some cult like characteristics but have solace that there is much, much worse:
http://www.foundationwebsite.org/CANAMoptions.htm

Mad men, islamists or other fundamentalists/millenarists, are yet another negative factor to care about, sigh…

Comment by Ah no nymous — 6 December 2005 @ 5:00 AM
Heavy Weight Division Bout

Mike Ruppert vs Jerome “Swiftboat” Corsi on radio
Wednesday at 10 am Pacific time

ON WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7th 2005 — MIKE RUPPERT WILL DEBATE JEROME CORSI, Ph.D.

ON THE TOPIC OF “PEAK OIL” vs “ABIOTIC OIL”

The TWO HOUR debate will be moderated by Michael Corbin, host of the KHNC Denver radio show “A CLOSER LOOK.”

Denver area listeners tune to AM 1360 at 11a.m. mountain time. — West Coast listeners click http://www.4acloserlook.com at 10 a.m. Pacific time.

Who is Jerome Corsi, co-author of “Swift Boat Vets” attack book?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200408060010

Comment by Peter — 6 December 2005 @ 6:42 AM
ERoEI getting to 1 or less isn’t really the scary point. That’s actually a long way off, way down the backside of the curve.

Not so long off at all; we’re already getting to ERoEI in the single digits. That’s when petroleum becomes useless. The point you’re describing, Sam, is precisely the point of collapse itself.

What I find silly is pretending to have found a simple solution

Why not? The complexity of the world is the result of many simple things. Trying to fight that as we usually do accustoms us to very complex solutions, but complex solutions are the worst kind. Going with the flow is the very essence of rewilding, and that means living your life simply, in accordance with all those simple things that make up the world’s complexity.

I still maintain that Anthropik has some cult like characteristics

Then you should do more research into cults. I can’t say a cotton-pickin’ thing without getting a barrage of criticisms, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but how many cults do you know where opposition to “leadership” (such as posting volume forces upon us) is not only commonplace, but encouraged?

Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 December 2005 @ 10:50 AM
A note on Anthropik and cults.
Group fission has been proposed on this site as a general remedy to irreconsilable conflict within the group. I’d like anyone to come up with an example of a cult that would promote splintering as a general policy for the dissidents.
More interesting would be to compare communities that we understand to be cults with a communities that we understand to be tribes. I think a cult and a tribe have some things in common.

Comment by _Gi — 6 December 2005 @ 11:56 AM
Hey –

Well I, too, find the idea of Anthropik as cult laughable, I’m not sure that group fissioning is a good basis for disputing that… If you look at the Seventh Day Adventists, you would find that they have repeatedly fissioned — that’s where Koresch came from. O’ course, I also question the idea that the Branch Davidians WERE a cult… but they certainly share more traits in common with cults than we do

Janene

Comment by Janene — 6 December 2005 @ 12:23 PM
The latest from the Oil Drum is Staniford’s “Hubbert Theory says Peak is Slow Squeeze,” where he argues that it looks like we’ll be in that green part of the graph above–i.e., “adaptation and economic growth.”

That suggests peak oil won’t be the proximate cause of collapse. That’s unfortunate; it was among the more “merciful” options on the table. Instead, the proximate cause will be something much more unpleasant, like environmental catastrophe.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 December 2005 @ 4:13 PM
If oiis replenishable resource and not a fossil fuel then it is possible that the people who control the oil supply are able to maniplulate markets and minds to the exent that a die off seems inevitable. It is interesting that the Rusaians are aable to extract oil from bedrock. Further, I have not seen any referencne in terms of energy use in USA as compared to Europe where appliances are far more efficent.
I also find it fascinating that a great deal of wasted energy in warfare is occuring when one would expect this to be saved for when those fighter jets are really needed-i.e. at the time of the Peak Oil crash. I do think we need to adopt better conservation techniques and promote better strategies of living but I find it curious again that the media and those who have the most to lose from a consumer crash are not trumpteting alternatives. Politically speaking, it would be quite a useful tool for Bush if he could cheerlead us like FDR did in World War 2.

Comment by Bruce — 6 December 2005 @ 4:18 PM
Oh Jesus, not this tripe again….

Oil is a fossil fuel. See, “Abiotic Snake Oil.” That said, fossil fuels are renewable–over a long enough timeline. Things die, and some of them become fossil fuels. It just takes a very long time. With the passage of a few geological epochs, our petroleum reserves will all refill themselves.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 December 2005 @ 4:24 PM
Hey, Jason –

Mike and I spent a couple solid hours looking at that post last night, and generally concluded that the model is entirely theoretical and doesn’t account for the real world, so to speak. The math is correct, but circular, and it doesn’t necessarily signify anything. Apparently, the Hubbert curve has received some pretty harsh criticism, as mobjectivist writes here: Logistically Impossible. Not to mention the precarity of the markets at such a high level of complexity.

So really, all Stuart demonstrated is that by using one method, depletion rates will perhaps not be so steep as originally thought. This does not account for growing demand or the necessity of the perpetual growth of the economy or diminishing returns or the fragility of complexity or geopolitical factors or a possibly inelastic market. It might be helpful in one very specific regard — examining one theoretical model of depletion — but you have to look at the whole picture. We’ll see what happens. For the moment, I’m not sure which way to hold my breath.

-Devin

Comment by Devin — 6 December 2005 @ 4:45 PM
p.s. Mobjectivist has added another post on this quibble recently here.

Comment by Devin — 6 December 2005 @ 4:47 PM
Which all merely goes to underline that my choice of the word “may” was well-chosen for this thesis.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 December 2005 @ 4:55 PM
Ok, I guess I’m missing something here. All of these guys linked here regarding a change in Peak Oil….Didn’t they all just shift what equations were being used and came up with the same answer? Oil Peaks soon, perhaps has already, and then we’re screwed?

As for it being slower than some people thought before…does that really matter? The economy must continue to grow, without even sufficent oil to maintain that economy? Any depletion is sufficent to catalyze a collapse, the rate is less important. Especially when you add on the sociology of the situation coupled with water shortages, climate change, and radical political shifts trying to keep up with sociology of the situation. People won’t stand for recession. There will be war. And funny thing is, they’ll probably burn the oil. Not to mention how oil-expensive modern warfare is. Political realities effect the curve as well. I think that ultimately the curve will still be relatively steep, if only due to humans.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 6 December 2005 @ 6:16 PM
Bad news, fight fans.

Corsi pulled out of tomorrow’s bout.

I guess he realized that there’s nothing out there to support abiotic oil.

Comment by Peter — 6 December 2005 @ 9:28 PM
Ok, I guess I’m missing something here. All of these guys linked here regarding a change in Peak Oil….Didn’t they all just shift what equations were being used and came up with the same answer? Oil Peaks soon, perhaps has already, and then we’re screwed?

Well, in effect, yes. But if you look at the depletion curve in the UK then you see the flaws in necessarily estimating Peak Oil without complete data on discovery. There are other factors that the Hubbert curve ignores as well — and depletion rates make all the difference between an adjustment by the economy or a much more harsh adjustment (collapse) by the economy.

Any depletion is sufficent to catalyze a collapse, the rate is less important.

This is actually wrong. The rate is crucial — the market might be able to adjust to a depletion rate of 1% but most certainly will not be able to adjust to a depletion rate of 8%.

Oil isn’t the only resource that industrial civilization has in its repertoire, clearly. Enough alternatives to oil (such as coal, nuclear, etc.) exist that the economy might be able to continue to grow even when oil has peaked.

Of course, this does not address the other problems that industrial civilization is facing, such as ecological destruction and massive climate change and topsoil loss and diminishing returns on complexity and many other things. It’s still collapsing, but it may or may not be Peak Oil as the proximate cause. It remains to be seen. depending on depletion rates, I still think it’s likely that Peak Oil will do us in in the long run, but it might be light and fluffy enough that some other cause will end up doing it first. Probably population growth more than anything, as that appears to be the root cause of all of these proximate causes in the first place.

-Devin

Comment by Devin — 7 December 2005 @ 1:52 AM
For clarification, the answer to this question — “Oil Peaks soon, perhaps has already, and then we’re screwed?” was not a full yes. All the models agree with the basic principles of oil depletion and that we’re in the vicinity of a peak around now, or sooner rather than later. But whether “we’re screwed” or not depends on the depletion rates — and that varies depending on which model you’re using.

Comment by Devin — 7 December 2005 @ 1:56 AM
But wouldn’t it actually depend on the difference between oil availability and oil need? The rate of change only moving the date of ultimate collapse closer or further (perhaps, there might be other proximate causes more determinate than peak oil). Even the more optimistic models seem to put the end within 30 years. That wouldn’t be enough time to fix it anyway, even if we were at full capacity and weren’t running out of water, breathable air, and predicatable weather patterns. Isn’t this debate more about the schedule?

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 8 December 2005 @ 11:31 AM
What are we talking about with the word “collapse?” Just as soon as it’s apparent supply is never again going to keep up with desires (”demand” doesn’t theoretically ever outstrip supply, just pushes prices up), the whole money economy is going to fall apart. That sounds pretty collapse-like to me.

Also, the decline of ERoEI is somewhat governed by extraction technology. You could throw infinite money/energy at extraction and there’s still only so much oil you’re going to be able to extract with current technology. Over time, maybe technology will advance enough that there will be someplace to aim additional extraction-energy inputs.

Given these two factors, I firmly believe the actual flip of ERoEI will be a minor footnote, if in fact there are any media left at that point that have footnotes.

Comment by Sam — 8 December 2005 @ 1:49 PM
Pretty much. Our entire civilization took out a rather large loan to build out of control. Now it’s due in full and we don’t have the funds. Time to pay our tab.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 8 December 2005 @ 2:09 PM
Hey, um, Ben… I’ve only got a fiver on me. Could you cover the rest of the tab? Please?

(couldn’t resist a moment of humor in an otherwise serious topic)

Best

Bill Maxwell

Comment by Bill Maxwell — 8 December 2005 @ 2:50 PM
Isn’t this debate more about the schedule?

Uh, of course?! Haha. At this point, that’s the only thing I think is worth discussing. It remains to be seen whether Peak Oil will be the proximate cause or not. And if it is, that is a bit more hopeful than an ecological collapse, in my opinion.

Depletion rates are essentially the difference between an adjustment and an adjustment-collapse. Coal-to-liquids and other alternatives to oil exist, and might be able to be put into practice should depletion rates be what the Hubbert linearization model denotes. I was disputing the accuracy of that mdoel, saying that the depletion rates will likely be greater than that. (Less than 1% a year for the first decade.)

Comment by Devin — 8 December 2005 @ 7:29 PM
Ok, then. I’d say it’s not as big a deal as we like to think. Any power input less than what we need to sustain and expand will be catastrophic. The fact that one is catastrophic faster is not relevant because the one that is less catastrophic will still cause a major recession and, quickly there after, depression. It’s hard to mobilize major technological development and implementation when people are worried about the source of their next meal and PhDs are selling apples on the street corner. FDR managed to reverse our fortune by morgaging our economy and declaring war on half the world. We could do the same thing again, I suppose. But somehow I’m unconvinced that it would be enough. The Great Depression was a slow down of the economy, not a reversal. And again, we cannot forget the concurrent climate shift, holocene extinction, water wars, and revolutions. Civilization might have a chance in hell of surviving one, but not all at once.

Sometimes I feel like the gods are shooting us in the head to make sure the poison worked.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 8 December 2005 @ 9:04 PM
Ben, you’re saying this like you think I’m unaware of what other problems there may or may not be. I know there are other aspects, but at the moment, we’re looking at whether or not Peak Oil will be the proximate cause or not.

Any power input less than what we need to sustain and expand will be catastrophic.

Yeah. Great. But oil isn’t our only power input. And if oil is only depleting at 1% or less for an entire decade, adjustments can and will occur.

Come on, Ben, think. Don’t react like I’m arguing with your big picture vision and contradicting everything you hold dear. This is a very specific thing we’re talking about here, and none of your statements address what I’m talking about.

Comment by Devin — 8 December 2005 @ 9:53 PM
Ok. I think they were, but I might have missed what you were talking about. Anyway, second stab:

Peak Oil is a potential proximate cause of collapse. The only question is will it occur slowly enough to allow for adjustments, correct? Then baring a miricle of biblical proportions (and I mean Old Testament miricles, none of this wussy water to wine stuff but rain of fire miricles), Peak Oil will only not cause a collapse if it’s beaten to the punch. If the grain crop fails before Peak Oil revs up sufficently, then Peak Oil didn’t do us in, but only due to timing. I think that Jason and I still made a good estimate, and one that new data about the possible date of Peak Oil has only made stronger. I also don’t think that the possibility of this Peak being a slower tempering off rather than a full-fledged crunch is going to move the approximate tipping point that far. It will still feed a massive depression that will peak at around the same time, although, perhaps, a couple years later. I might be miss-interpreting things, but I’m still estimating a collapse between 2012 and 2020.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 8 December 2005 @ 10:38 PM
Devin,

Strictly speaking, oil isn’t our only power input, but it is for almost all intents and purposes. Nothing else comes close for sheer energy density, portability, and flexibility.

Benjamin,

Ideally, I think it comes down to when the supply/demand gap gets so big it can’t be hidden. Realistically, I think what happens is that the media will continue to report rosy statistics that describe fewer and fewer and fewer people’s experiences.

Supposedly, for years we have had inflation around 3-5%, unemployment moving not far from 5% (exactly the number my economics courses termed “full employment,” just having enough unemployment cushion to avoid inflationary wage pressures), GDP growth around 2-4% per year.

None of these remotely describes the economy as I or almost any of the people I know are experiencing it. Unfortunately, those few who have decent retirements or decent incomes believe the statistics and wonder when the rest of us are going to get our “shit together” and get worthwhile jobs.

My point here is just that a lot can be hidden, and that we could be experiencing the “collapse” already. In any case, I think your estimates are way too long. We’re just about to run out of all those Strategic Reserves everybody was nice enough to send us to deal with the devestation of the oil and gas industries around New Orleans. We’re pretty firmly into a pretty darn chilly winter. The Christmas retail season is looking badly lopsided, with big box and very high-end the only ones getting any business.

Look for very nice statistics through December and about halfway through January, as all the Christmas retail stats come out, since the markets are extremely interested in those.

Then hold on for a pretty assertive preview of collapse as the retailers who aren’t WalMart or Cartier vaporize. Meanwhile, our residential natural gas for heat and electric was locked-in in November at around $11, so industry’s going to take the hit as natural gas prices explode (they’re at $15.4 on NYMEX right this second. Gasoline prices should give us a nice head-kick about then. Oh, and that’s the time of the next Fed OMC meeting, when Bernanke supposed to start to take over from Greenspan. What the hell’s he gonna do?

From there, I think it depends on what the Republicans want to happen in the mid-terms. If they want to hold on to their seats, the rosy statistics will regenerate in the Spring. It’s entirely possible that they might decide to hand over the reins and let the Dems try to deal with all the problems. The Dems hardly pose any real threat to the true powers, and have proven themselves perfectly willing to make whatever cuts necessary to get the budget back in line.

In this second scenario, the whole house of cards will come down.

Comment by Sam — 9 December 2005 @ 3:51 AM
Oil has one very significant advantage over every other fossil fuel, and that’s its liquid form. This gives it its transportability and versatility. But saying that it’s practically our only energy source is flat wrong. Other energy sources have similar ERoEI — fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. But currently we have oil power plants — we’re burning the stuff for electricity. That’s really just not necessary. If there truly is less than a 1% depletion rate worldwide, don’t expect the world to fall apart at the seams. If it does, it’ll come from elsewhere at oil depletion less than 1%. I can’t prove this, of course, but it just seems likely to me that with oil depletion at less than 1%, the people who are saying that the market will adjust are generally correct.

But oil depletion isn’t going to be less than 1%. If you read what I wrote above, you’ll know that I dispute the Hubbert curve model, and think that it’s generally theoretical and wrong, just like all models. Oil production doesn’t necessarily peak at 50% of all extracted… there are lots of other factors involved. A much more useful model to me seems to be the oil shock model that mobjectivist has done some good work on.

And I still think that Peak Oil will be the proximate cause of collapse. The only way it wouldn’t be is if something else causes collapse first. As I said, Ben, you’re not getting what I’m saying at all. There is nothing I’ve said that disagrees with that premise, because then I would be disagreeing with myself. I was looking at one specific model of oil depletion that put it at less than 1% for a decade and saying “gee, that looks pretty wrong.” If the economy is still around in any recognizable form in 2012, I will be surprised. Very surprised. More like astonished.

In other words, nevermind. This is a silly conversation and doesn’t change anything.

Comment by Devin — 9 December 2005 @ 4:49 AM
Devin,

Cool.

-Ben

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 11 December 2005 @ 11:17 PM
Devin said:

But currently we have oil power plants — we’re burning the stuff for electricity.

TOTAL U/S. energy use(all sectors/modalities): ~100 Quadrillion btu/yr
RE TOTAL US electrical generation: ~3,800 billion kilowatthours
Other 1% (wind, solar, geothermal, biomass)
Petroleum 3%.
Hydro 7%
Natural gas 15%
Nuke 21%
Coal 53%

2/3 of all oil goes to transportation (as use as liquid fuels)
A very distant second use is heating oil.

Comment by JCamasto — 12 December 2005 @ 12:47 AM
What, and electrons are not part of the atoms that make up the molecules that make up the wood? Why is my wood smaller after a fire, then? And what happened to that law of conservation of mass-energy I read so much about in grade school science class?

1) No mass-energy conversion, It is smaller because you are turning it from solid carbon celluose compounds to oxidized carbon gas or CO2. The energy released is stored solar.

2) Bioengineered crops can be designed to produce natrual pesticides and fix its own nitrogen, eliminating the need for much petrochemical products.

3) Shell Oil has recently made a huge breakthru in economical in-situ Oil Shale Kerogen extraction.

4) We have far more than 50 years worh of minable Uranium and new reactor designs exist that can burn far more abundant still thorium. More than enough to bridge us over to the Fusion age.

Not to mention that Breeder reactors can extend our uranium supply several hundred million years at current prices.

Cheap energy allows you to synthesize long chain hydrocarbons from atmospheeric CO2 and Water using the Fischer-Tropsch process.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 25 December 2005 @ 12:45 AM
several hundred million years at current prices.

Make that current rates of consumption.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 25 December 2005 @ 3:44 PM
Mike Puckett-

How quickly can we build nuclear power plants?

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 26 December 2005 @ 12:57 AM
One thing anyone can and should do who is concerned about this is to look into the new intensive gardening methods. Books by John Jeavons, Eliot Coleman, Leandre Poisson, and others cover these. If we don’t eat it is hard to do other things. Personally, I’ve cut house heating costs by 75%, (no direct petroleum dependence); grow most of our vegetables in our back yard with hand tools, and am continuing to work on other improvements. The key question is whether we can adapt faster than the changes. And starting early improves the odds. Look at the self-heating building techniques.
Up the peasantry!

Comment by Douglas Hvistendahl — 26 December 2005 @ 11:13 AM
How quickly can we build nuclear power plants?

It depends on how hamstrung we would be by environemntal regulations.

Remember, if the President declares a national emergency, he can suspend the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species act and other environmental rules and regs with a penstroke as they all contain this proviso.

The reason powerplants take so long to build are twofold.

1) Environmnetal permitting hurdles must be overcome.

That takes most of the time. See my above comment.

2) The custom nature of most existing first generation powerplant designs. There are fourth generation powerplant designs that are modular, sealed, and mass producable like lego blocks. Most of our current reactors are 50’s and 60’s era 1st generation designs, I.E. Model T’s. 4th generation designs are 57 Chevy’s in comparison.

The solution would be to approve a general permit for each class of powerplant and build them mass production like we built liberty ships in WWII.

You could easily go form 10 years to 6 months if the political will was behing it.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 2 January 2006 @ 3:56 PM
So greater complexity necessitates increasing costs…….

You realize you typed that on a computer. Ever hear of Moore’s Law?

Comment by Mike Puckett — 14 January 2006 @ 10:25 PM
I have a BS in computer science, and I’m employed as a software engineer, so … yes, I’ve heard of Moore’s Law, to put it mildly. That’s why I addressed it specifically in thesis #16, where I wrote:

The problem with this scenario is that it only looks at a small part of the graph. If we see it in its whole, we see that technological invention is not following a graph of exponential growth at all–but a curve of diminishing marginal returns. We saw this in thesis #14, and in the previous thesis, we saw that we have passed the point of diminishing returns. Facile excitement about “the Singularity” is engendered by such ideas as “Moore’s Law” (”computer chip performance doubles roughly every 18 months”), which remains “true” only because computer technology is younger than most other forms, and so is one of the very few areas of technological innovaton still seeing significant activity–because computer technology, unlike technology in general, has not yet reached the point of diminishing returns.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 January 2006 @ 12:35 AM
Mike-

You can’t forget the rest of the picture. We’re often very fond of thinking about what we can do if we had the will. Now let’s talk about the will.

The President is a gloified lobbiest with the ability to irradiate the Earth. But he’s at the will of the people, the people have to want it to happen, or it won’t. The will we’re talking about is not political, it’s popular. And people have been very clear with what they want, and what they’re willing to put up with. They want clean air, and Hummers. They want nuclear plants and clean energy, but don’t want wind tubines, damns, or nuclear plants anywhere near them. They want animal to be treated nicely, and cheap steak at the market. The funny thing is, what they want most is to feel safe and not be inconvienced. Such a program to replace our petrolium dependancy forcably over a very short time is inconvient, and will not be popular. Remember, many people refused to leave the Titantic, it felt safer and warmer than the lifeboats. By the time it was obvious where was really safe, most of the boats where gone.

Yes, we could…perhaps…do what you suggest. But no one wants to. We cannot ignore human psychology in our quest for the off chance.

Speaking of which, I think we greatly over estimate our industrial capacity. We managed to scale up dramatically for WW2, this is very true. One of the Allies’ greatest advantages is the Germany severely underestimated America’s mostly untapped industrial capacity. But now, we’re tapped out. Most plants in America have closed and moved overseas in the interest of cheap labor. The vast majority of Americans have no intrest in being laborers in a factory. They want to be pop stars. People overseas have no problem in factories. Ok then, we send the jobs overseas. What countries have the capacity we’re talking about that we’d trust with Uranium? Name two, because we’d need more. Then what do we ship the parts with? When we’re running low on oil and spending it all in this last ditch effort at switching over to a nuclear society. What drives the ships? For that matter, what drives the trucks? The cars? How do we grow and ship food while all of our resources are trying to reshape civilization in months? Who runs it? More complexity means less efficency, more chances of errors, etc. Who splits the bill? No, this is no answer. Nuclear energy doesn’t give us fertilizers, it doesn’t run our cars, it doesn’t make our streets. Only oil does all that. All nuclear energy gives us is eletricity.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 15 January 2006 @ 12:58 AM
Electricity…
and tons of the most toxic, concentrated, lethal waste ever conceived - “hot” for 1000s of years…

Comment by JCamasto — 15 January 2006 @ 1:22 AM
Oh, yeah. Forgot about the deadly poisons. Thanks!

Oh, interesting sidenote:

People are so scared about radiation that it’s use in space is forbidden. The shuttle has to use chemical propellents. The funny thing is that with the shuttle vaporized on the pad the radiation increase would barely increase above background. Eating bread has a greater increase of cancer risk than the amount of radiation we’d be talking about. But the chemicals involved are instantly deadly if you focus your left eye on them for longer than 5 seconds. People are not rationally motivated. But their fear is sufficent to motivate policy.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 15 January 2006 @ 1:51 AM
Hell, we have people thinking that terrorism poses a greater threat to the U.S. than a gnat does to an elephant–how’s that for irrational fears motivating policy?

Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 January 2006 @ 1:56 AM
JCamasto: Look into breeder reactors. Their primary advantage is that they extract much more of the energy from the nuclear fuel. A secondary advantage is that, because of this, the half-life of the “waste” is significantly shorter–on the order of hundreds of years instead of thousands or tens of thousands of years, if I remember my SciAm article correctly. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

Comment by Loraan — 30 January 2006 @ 11:20 PM
Loraan, I believe their are only a handful of breeder reactors existing worldwide, mostly one-offs and prototypes, and most of those have already been shut down or decommissioned for a variety of reasons. They may offer less waste - but more potential for proliferation of nuclear arms - which if used as such, would be considerably more dangerous than the wastes of conventional reactors.

If the “peak-energy” folks are anywhere near correct - it’s too late to attempt to shift a large enough percentage of our energy demands to any kind of new reactors. Not to mention nuclear power is already the least cost effective energy source available, cradle to grave. Or that only national governments can/will insure them…

The only nuclear reactors I advocate are located at least 93 million miles away - like that awesome fusion reactor in the sky we call “sun”.

Hence - 3.3Kw of photovoltaics are going on my roof this spring, joining an existing thermal system that heats water and supplements space heating.

Comment by JCamasto — 31 January 2006 @ 3:30 AM
“Benjamin Shender says:

But now, we’re tapped out. Most plants in America have closed and moved overseas in the interest of cheap labor. The vast majority of Americans have no intrest in being laborers in a factory.”

Myth, myth, myth.

Industrial output is at an historic high in the US.
Sure, people are being laid off and being replaced by CNC machinery.

Big factories are being replaced by dozens of smaller specialized ones. You hear when a large factory closes but you never hear when a small one opens.

One person can produce far more today than 50 years ago

Hell, check this out:

“Economic Profile and Trends
Value of Shipments | Annual Production | Labor Productivity

Huge investments in new process and product technologies, facilities, employee training, and product development have reduced the number of man-hours required to produce a ton of steel from 10 to less than 4 – a 60% drop – in just 15 years. Today’s production processes are technologically sophisticated, requiring more highly developed skills and workers with better training and education. To help meet this need, unskilled workers are being trained to develop new skills. The average hourly earnings in the steel industry was $24.87 in 2000; with benefits, the total employment cost per hour was $36.33. “[AISI 2000]

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mecs/iab98/steel/images/charts/labor.jpg

We produce more steel today from 20 furnaces than we did during the peak of WWII with 400. You are only getting half the story.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 11 February 2006 @ 3:55 PM
“The President is a gloified lobbiest with the ability to irradiate the Earth. But he’s at the will of the people, the people have to want it to happen, or it won’t. The will we’re talking about is not political, it’s popular. And people have been very clear with what they want, and what they’re willing to put up with. They want clean air, and Hummers. They want nuclear plants and clean energy, but don’t want wind tubines, damns, or nuclear plants anywhere near them. They want animal to be treated nicely, and cheap steak at the market. The funny thing is, what they want most is to feel safe and not be inconvienced. Such a program to replace our petrolium dependancy forcably over a very short time is inconvient, and will not be popular. Remember, many people refused to leave the Titantic, it felt safer and warmer than the lifeboats. By the time it was obvious where was really safe, most of the boats where gone.

Yes, we could…perhaps…do what you suggest. But no one wants to. We cannot ignore human psychology in our quest for the off chance.”

Popular will is malleable to circumstance.

Like WWII and the great depression.

People didn’t want to be drafted and be sent overseas to fight and die and yet they were.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 11 February 2006 @ 3:58 PM
“The closest we have to such an alternative is nuclear power, which will give us, at most, another 50 years. Nuclear power uses very little uranium, but there is very little uranium in the world.”

Wrong

http://bionuclearbunny.blogspot.com/2005/10/how-much-uranium-part-5.html

I might also add my above example of 20 steel mills producing more steel than 400 50 years ago deflates this argument you are trying to make:

“# Jason Godesky says:
January 15th, 2006 at 12:35 am

I have a BS in computer science, and I’m employed as a software engineer, so … yes, I’ve heard of Moore’s Law, to put it mildly. That’s why I addressed it specifically in thesis #16, where I wrote:

The problem with this scenario is that it only looks at a small part of the graph. If we see it in its whole, we see that technological invention is not following a graph of exponential growth at all–but a curve of diminishing marginal returns. We saw this in thesis #14, and in the previous thesis, we saw that we have passed the point of diminishing returns. Facile excitement about “the Singularity” is engendered by such ideas as “Moore’s Law” (”computer chip performance doubles roughly every 18 months”), which remains “true” only because computer technology is younger than most other forms, and so is one of the very few areas of technological innovaton still seeing significant activity–because computer technology, unlike technology in general, has not yet reached the point of diminishing returns.”

Steel is a mature industry is it not? Yet is has gotten orders of magnitude more efficient.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 11 February 2006 @ 4:14 PM
Mike,

I notice that your comments, while very, well, let’s be kind and call them passionate, are also grounded in what seems to be a lack of understanding of the claims you’re trying to respond to. Take, for example, your first comment, where you quote Ben’s claim that Americans have no interest in working in industry. You call this a “Myth, myth, myth,” because, “Industrial output is at an historic high in the US.” As you yourself claim, efficiency is much higher. Which means that both you and Ben are correct; it is not a “myth, myth, myth,” because higher efficiency means both higher output as you pointed out, and fewer Americans involved in industry, as Ben pointed out. You admit in the very next sentence that Ben’s “myth, myth, myth” was correct by stating, “Sure, people are being laid off and being replaced by CNC machinery.” The interest of robots in manufacturing does not translate to “the vast majority of Americans,” because “the vast majority of Americans” are not robots.

The first article you link to further underscores that Ben was correct–if the man-hours required per ton of steel has been reduced from 10 to 4, then that means that 60% of the workforce once employed is no longer needed. If you would like to see the ramifications of such efficiency on human welfare, I’d be welcome to give you a tour of my home city of Pittsburgh, which was economically devastated by the closing of the steel mills as a result of the efficiency you’re lauding, or you could visit anywhere else in the rust belt and see the widespread misery and depression that such efficiency has yielded.

As Daniel Quinn put it, our society is very good for products–but not terribly good for people. If we judge this trend in terms of products shipped to market, or the return for shareholders, then it’s every bit the glorious victory you highlight. If we are more interested in human welfare, then, the effects are far less “glorious.”

In your second comment, you highlight the crux of the Peak Oil problem. The market moves towards whatever it is the people want. As I highlighted in the original article, Peak Oil will be a threat of collapse if the depletion rate is too high. If we only begin to shift in response to market pressure, well, market pressure will only be brought to bear once we start to feel the pinch. If the depletion rate is too high (say, above 10%?), then there won’t be enough time from when the market starts to bear pressure, until we start to see a catabolic collapse. To swap out the entire infrastructure of our economy would take a Herculean effort, and something on the order of 30 years. With a 10% depletion rate, we would see half as much oil in just 10 years. To further complicate the problem, research and development–precisely what is required to develop an alternative–also requires energy. Finally, as pointed out in theses #14-16, we are past the point of diminishing returns for technology and research, which means that any more research or technology–such as we would need here–will continue to cost more and more, for increasingly modest results.

Many of the sources of nuclear power cited in the link you provide in your third comment are dubious at best. For instance, I see the link puts a good deal of stock into thorium, which we’ve discussed here before. My conclusion on thorium, as stated before, was neatly summed up by the Wikipedia article on the subject:

Problems include the high cost of fuel fabrication due partly to the high radioactivity of U-233 which is always contaminated with traces of U-232; the similar problems in recycling thorium due to highly radioactive Th-228; some weapons proliferation risk of U-233; and the technical problems (not yet satisfactorily solved) in reprocessing. Much development work is still required before the thorium fuel cycle can be commercialised, and the effort required seems unlikely while (or where) abundant uranium is available.

So, the evidence to debunk my claim of 50 years is all speculative at best, junk science at worst.

To raise steel as a counter-argument to diminishing returns, once again, shows that you’re terribly unfamiliar with the argument being made here. Efficiency gains can still be made, even far beyond the point of diminishing returns. They just cost you more. Eventually, it takes more energy to develop a new efficiency measure than the measure itself saves you–net loss. But efficiency can still be gained–at some price. We discussed the diminishing returns of research and technology in theses #14-16. You should read them to understand the argument being made here.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 11 February 2006 @ 10:21 PM
Most importantly, all the advances you’ve cited–high efficiency, etc.–are precisely what one would expect of peak energy. Peak energy means peak efficiency, peak automation, and peak power. The problem is, if these advances rest on unsustainable foundations (and in this case, they do), then it is a peak, not a plateau, and you face a rapid downfall.

Of course, that can also be a very good thing, if you happen to care more about people than products. It all depends on where your priorities lie.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 11 February 2006 @ 10:25 PM
Scroll down to the paragraph with the heading, “effects from added cost presures”, as it has good points in relation to higher costs and diminishing resources of mining:

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Willie/feb072006.html#top

Comment by Rick Larson — 11 February 2006 @ 11:17 PM
“So, the evidence to debunk my claim of 50 years is all speculative at best, junk science at worst.”

Read the entire series in the link provided, not just part 5 but parts 1-4 and 6. I think it easily demolishes your 50 years argument throughly whthout even including the Thorium supply.

Sea water has considerable Uranium, Granite has considerable Uranium. Uranium is abundant in the Earth’s crust and even at far higher extraction costs, it is still a cheap fuel because the cost of extraction is a minor part of the cost of the fuel. It is processing it into a useable fuel that is the overwhelming bulk of the cost. I am sorry, but for you to authoratatively state that we are anywhere the limits of the Earths economically extractible Uranium reserves is simply to me laughable. I will put a little more stock in my knowledge of minerals and Geology minor, thank you.

If you don’t approve of my first source, perhaps you will find this one to your liking. There is simply a plethora of reputable sources on the web which utterly demolish your flippantly dismissive assertion of 50 years and no more.

http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/default/tech_papers/17th_congress/3_2_12.asp

The Uranium Institute has investigated the reserve base of current and prospective mining projects using its own classification system [2] and has concluded that there are now 1.32 million tonnes of the best-proven category recoverable worldwide at a marginal cost of US$40 per kilogram or less. This is slightly above the current spot price for uranium, but much in line with longer term contract prices. Given that the current consumption of uranium by reactors is around 64,000 tonnes per annum, these low cost proven reserves may last just over 20 years. It might therefore appear that a sound long term raw material base for nuclear power does not exist.

This is, however, a misreading of the situation and for several reasons. Firstly, the ultimate resource base is substantially greater than so far indicated. The Red Book [1] assesses the current uranium resource base at 11 million tonnes, if less well-proven, speculative and higher-cost resources are included. There is undoubtedly substantially more than this. Uranium exploration in recent years has been at a very low level. The market price has been depressed and mining companies have largely decided to spend their exploration dollars elsewhere. Those committed to uranium have a portfolio of reserves which they regard as satisfactory for their medium term needs. In addition, there are a number of well-proven reserves which could be exploited by other companies when market conditions allow.

Take, for example, your first comment, where you quote Ben’s claim that Americans have no interest in working in industry. You call this a “Myth, myth, myth,” because, “Industrial output is at an historic high in the US.” As you yourself claim, efficiency is much higher. Which means that both you and Ben are correct; it is not a “myth, myth, myth,” because higher efficiency means both higher output as you pointed out, and fewer Americans involved in industry, as Ben pointed out. You admit in the very next sentence that Ben’s “myth, myth, myth” was correct by stating, “Sure, people are being laid off and being replaced by CNC machinery.” The interest of robots in manufacturing does not translate to “the vast majority of Americans,” because “the vast majority of Americans” are not robots.

I fully understand the point he was attempting to make, you are simply trying to obfuscate mye point.

The point he was making was we dont have the industrial capacity to retool our energy infrastructure becase we have ‘de-industrialized’

Simply put, we have not by any objective measure ‘de-industrialized’.

Whether our Nuclear Plant steam turbines are machined by humans or robots has no bearing on whether the part is produced. The production capacity is there and I don’t see where unemployment by automation is an impediment to said production or germaine to its realization.

I notice that your comments, while very, well, let’s be kind and call them passionate, are also grounded in what seems to be a lack of understanding of the claims you’re trying to respond to.

And I will be equally kind and not outright dismiss your basic credibility to tackle energy related topics, as I quite justifiably could, due to your gross misconception of fundamental concepts such as the chemical combustion of hydrocarbons (wood) and conversion of cellulose to CO2 versues the matter to energy conversion. Conversion such as expressed first by Albert Eienstien as E=MC^2 and the conversion of matter into pure energy.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 12 February 2006 @ 1:49 AM
Damn,

Standard quote tags don’t work here.

Sorry for the formatting mess.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 12 February 2006 @ 1:57 AM
Jason made most of the points I would have and some I wouldn’t have thought of, so I won’t waste room my rehashing. I’ll simply add the following:

The phrase “highest in history” or “historic high” or any such phrase has become meaningless to me. Civilization is in a state of constant expansion. Of course we have more than we did before. And next year we will have more still. And this will continue until we collapse. The point is that this capacity is being used. The question isn’t “if you ignore reality does the math say it’s possible” the question is “considering reality, is it possible?” If we stopped everything else to do reshape our infastructure, we might just pull it off. Excepting of course that doing so would cause an immediate collapse due to lack of materials and energy. Our ability to expand is peaking, which leaves us with very few options.

I’ve said this before in another place, but I’ll say it again. The fact that there is enough hydrogen in Jupiter to power fusion reactors sufficent to provide energy for all of civilization for centuries is irrelevant if we don’t have fusion reactors or access to Jupiter. We only have what we have. We have the technology we have and we have the materials we have and we have the time we have. It’s too late for new technologies to make up the difference. There is little room left to expand our resources and most of what there is is already required just to maintain what we have. Innovation takes energy. Implementing those innovations takes more energy. Unfortunately energy is just what we’re running out of. The universe has plenty, this is true. It’s a shame we can’t access any of it.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 12 February 2006 @ 2:18 AM
It is too late to build sufficient nuclear plants?

It is too late to exploit oil shale?

We don’t need the Helium three from Jupiter until we use up all the deuterium in the ocear and all the H3 on the moon.

Sucessful fusion only needs a few more decades. Fission can more than cover that gap on electric and oil shale and oil sands can cover the rest.

Which is why NAZI germany collapsed while its industrial based was being bombed into oblivion and having to make its liquid fuels exclusivley from coal….Oh wait, it didn’t collapes, we had to go in.

You greatly understimate human resiliance and greatly overestimate or capacity to effect great change in a short timeframe. The system has much more surge capacity than you are crediting it with.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 12 February 2006 @ 2:44 AM
Hey –

Mike wrote:

It is too late to build sufficient nuclear plants?

Previously Mike wrote:

It depends on how hamstrung we would be by environemntal regulations.

Remember, if the President declares a national emergency, he can suspend the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species act and other environmental rules and regs with a penstroke as they all contain this proviso.

The reason powerplants take so long to build are twofold.

1) Environmnetal permitting hurdles must be overcome.

That takes most of the time. See my above comment.

2) The custom nature of most existing first generation powerplant designs. There are fourth generation powerplant designs that are modular, sealed, and mass producable like lego blocks. Most of our current reactors are 50’s and 60’s era 1st generation designs, I.E. Model T’s. 4th generation designs are 57 Chevy’s in comparison.

The solution would be to approve a general permit for each class of powerplant and build them mass production like we built liberty ships in WWII.

You could easily go form 10 years to 6 months if the political will was behing it.

Six months is DEFINATELY stretching it, but you could make a case for significantly decreasing the build time through modular design… of course, then we would also need to build fabrication plants to build the modules, with any design research necessary to accomplish that.

And all of this depends upon totally stripping away all of the current environmental protections. So, assuming that the political will could be brought to bear to do this, and assuming that environmental damage caused by doing this did NOT create a crisis of its own, and assuming that they had no technical problems in designing and building the fabrication plants, and assuming that there was no issue in producing all of the neccessary materials… perhaps we could have the first ten beta sites up ten years from now.

That’s still a long time, with a HUGE investment in infrastructure and it wouldn’t yet even BEGIN to produce the kind of energy necessary to replace oil. Not to mention that those nuclear plants are not providing an energy source that is transportable — so it does nothing to replace our primary energy requirement. What is it? Transportation accounts for what? 30% of our oil use? Something on that order.

We have 100 current Nuclear facilties that provide only 8% of our energy needs. Assuming that we find a way to use nuclear for transportation, and that we somehow hold demand static, we would need to build somewhere on the order of 1000 new nuclear facilities. Somehow, it seems quite unlikely that this could be completed in time.

Oh, and BTW, tar sands? Here is what we have in store if we want to rely on tar sands.

Janene

Comment by Janene — 12 February 2006 @ 10:53 AM
Yeah, Tar sands are a nice idea, but no one in the industry really things it’s a replacement.

As for nuclear, yeah, transportation is big deal. But also expansion. We’re not talking about one huge push. We’re talking about a huge push that we have to continue forever. Civilization requires constantly increasing energy needs, and nuclear plants can’t simply step up their production capacity. With oil this is relatively easy.

Fusion will come too late.

Fission doesn’t put food on the table. A large amount of the oil we use doesn’t go to chemical or electrical energy at all. It does to food energy (I know that food is chemical enegy, I’m drawing a distinction between food and gas/diesel/etc). Our farmland is desert. We finished it off decades ago. It’s oil, and only oil, that’s keeping artificaly fertile. Nuclear energy won’t make mutant plants that grow using the power of human anguish. That kind of stuff is comic book-style nonsense. But you know that, your posts make it clear that you aren’t stupid. Probably why we’re all trying to convince you. Smart people make for a good debate.

Any solution must have two features: it must be scientifically possible. (i.e. it can’t rely on technology we don’t have) and two, it must be logistically feasible. (It must not require so many resources as to become a cause of collapse itself. It must not require the laws of thermodynamics to be modified. It must be simple enough to be accomplished in our time frame, which is very small, years at best. And it must be a project that the people as a whole will support. And this support must come from people who don’t, can’t, or won’t accept why as well those who do.) All of this is why I remain secure in my opinion that nothing will or can be done.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 12 February 2006 @ 11:26 AM
Mike,

My education lies in anthropology, and computers. An eclectic mix, I know, but geology isn’t anywhere in the mix. I only know the basics, and I refer to more authoritative experts to fill me in on these matters, like the folks at the Oil Drum. Now, I freely admit to not knowing a whole lot about nuclear power, but “50 years” is what I’m told by a whole bunch of people who do know about it.

Your source cited thorium. That’s one I’ve dug into, and found out it was more snake oil. You’ve now mentioned oil shales, which I know is snake oil. If you go to “abiotic oil” next, we’ll have the hat trick. The rest, like I said, my background isn’t in energy or geology, so I can’t really evaluate them point-by-point. But, since everything you’ve so far mentioned that I do know about it so much hogwash, your credibility has become very, very low, so my guess would be that all the others are probably hogwash, too.

I wasn’t trying to obfuscate your point that the United States has a significant industrial capacity. But you have mischaracterized Ben’s point in order to “score points.” That is what I highlighted, and why both your point and his are required if you want to talk about “efficiency.” Congratulations, you won against a straw man. Would you now like to try addressing Ben’s actual point?

It is too late to build sufficient nuclear plants? As Janene pointed out, probably, yeah. It is too late to exploit oil shale? It was always too late to exploit oil shale–the EROEI is too low. Oil shale or pumping out of the deepest, dankest, heaviest crude is all the same–the EROEI approaches 1, where it’s no longer a viable fuel. That means retraction. That means collapse.

As for the Nazis, anything is sustainable over a sufficiently short period of time. Burning your house down to stay warm will work–for a few minutes. But I would hardly compare the fate of Nazi Germany to a process of catabolic collapse. That was an entirely different thing altogether. There is a world of difference between a society that falls to superior military power, and one that collapses under its own weight. The processes are entirely different.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 February 2006 @ 11:57 AM
Janene,

Seriously, we built far more than ten from scratch hand built custom plants in far less than the first ten years of the atomic age. Hell, we went from Alan Shepard and ’spam in a can’ in a 15 minute flight to ‘The Eagle has landed’ in eight years. We went from nothing to the first atomic test at Trinity, New Mexico in 40 months. When we place all or part of our economy on a war time footinhg and concentrate our resources, things get done ten times faster. We may not be able to build new cars or new washing machines for several years to do this but we can go from 6 months to 3 weeks to build a cargo ship.

I am confident we could build hundreds of nuclear reactors in the next ten years if the officals in charge felt the need was really that pressing.

Simply put, your scenario does not pass the smell test.

As far as political will, if you tell the America voter he will lose his job, become impoverished and eat mud, he will give the Administration a blank check to move heaven and earth. The modern environemntal movent as a political force will simply cease to exist.

BTW Cheap nuclear electricity will free up coal for gasification and enable us to make F-T fuels. THE SUBSTUTION EFFECT

“Oh, and BTW, tar sands?

How about Oil Shale?

“It is too late to exploit oil shale? It was always too late to exploit oil shale–the EROEI is too low.”

Is 10-1 good enough for you?

Simply incorrect, you are basing your assumptions on a year ago, there has been a major breakthru in in-situ extraction.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_4051709,00.html

“They don’t need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it’s a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.”

It also appears this process is a closed cycle type set-up so water can be largely reused.

This link is even more detailed:

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/rpt/OilShale.html

Comment by Mike Puckett — 12 February 2006 @ 1:21 PM
Make that 3.5 to 1 Still net positive and then some.

“You’ve now mentioned oil shales, which I know is snake oil. If you go to “abiotic oil” next, we’ll have the hat trick. ”

You are still stuck on ‘retort’. Retort is not in the running, it is obselete. Now who is beating up a strawman?

“Now, I freely admit to not knowing a whole lot about nuclear power, but “50 years” is what I’m told by a whole bunch of people who do know about it.”

Assuming we do not prospect so much as one more rock or use anoy other mineral as ore, the 50 is what we currently have.

Now, are the above realistic assumptions. Will we cease prospecting? Will we limit ourselves only to pitchblende?

There are literally hundreds of resources on the web that contradict your hard 50 years and thats all folks position.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 12 February 2006 @ 1:40 PM
Seriously, we built far more than ten from scratch hand built custom plants in far less than the first ten years of the atomic age. Hell, we went from Alan Shepard and ’spam in a can’ in a 15 minute flight to ‘The Eagle has landed’ in eight years.

Despite its proverbial significance, getting from orbit to the moon is actually a pretty simple achievement. But, if we date the atomic age as beginning in 1945 (that’s being generous, seeing as how it cuts out the most significant part of the process, namely, development), then from the first atomic bombs to the lunar landing is 24 years. With the sort of depletion rates we’re talking about, we’d need to get something more like 10. The biggest problems are problems of scale–building one rocket to the moon is easy. Swapping out the entire energy infrastructure of our society is an entirely different kind of problem.

We went from nothing to the first atomic test at Trinity, New Mexico in 40 months.

The Trinity test (which took place at the White Sands Missile Range near Alamogordo, New Mexico, not “Trinity, New Mexico”–Trinity was the codename, not the location) took place on 16 July 1945. While U.S. research only dated back to 1939 (six years, or 72 months, already more than twice the 40 months you cite), it was itself built on German research, and German scientists who either fled, defected from, or were smuggled out of Nazi Germany, going back all the way to the late 1920s and early 1930s.

When we place all or part of our economy on a war time footinhg and concentrate our resources, things get done ten times faster.

In World War II, the United States achieved the impossible–a 120% production rate. My home town of Pittsburgh produced more steel than all of Germany. This has everything to do with marginal returns. It was possible in 1945. We’re at a different place on the marginal return curve today. That is no longer possible.

I am confident we could build hundreds of nuclear reactors in the next ten years if the officals in charge felt the need was really that pressing.

Perhaps. I don’t share your confidence, but I can allow for the possibility. The problem is that the kind of will necessary will only appear once depletion is in full force. Such a mobilization requires energy–which is precisely what we’ll have trouble providing. Diverting already insufficient energy from necessary things like “food” to nuclear development won’t be an easy sell, but even if we do, will there be ten years between the time that such political will materializes, and when we no longer have enough energy to do it? With a high depletion rate, the answer is no–and it’s looking more and more like we’ll see a very high depletion rate.

Simply put, your scenario does not pass the smell test.

Funny, I was about to say the same of yours.

As far as political will, if you tell the America voter he will lose his job, become impoverished and eat mud, he will give the Administration a blank check to move heaven and earth. The modern environemntal movent as a political force will simply cease to exist.

True. But we’re talking about a moment in time where there’s insufficient energy to provide for the average American’s food. Now you’re telling him even the little he does have should be moved to developing some speculative sources of energy. If you can’t get Americans to sign off on it today, when all that’s at stake is their high oil prices, how much harder will it be when you ask them to lay down their lives in starvation for the sake of the few survivors?

Is 10-1 good enough for you?

We currently get EROEI from oil in the teens. Ten would represent a significant contraction in our energy throughput, and thus a drastic reduction in complexity. That sets off a self-reinforcing process of catabolic collapse. So, if we get to the point where oil shales and tar sands are our best alternative, our civilization is already in collapse.

Simply incorrect, you are basing your assumptions on a year ago, there has been a major breakthru in in-situ extraction.

If I’ve read of one such breakthrough, I’ve read them all. They all end up failing in terms of scale, or in economic cost, or some other criteria that makes them useless–at least useless as a global solution. Problems of scale are a lot harder than just getting something to work in the first place. Anybody can do that. Can you make it work on a global scale? There’s the question. So far, nothing has.

…it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production…

An EREOEI of 3.5? Are you kidding me? That’s a guarantee of collapse! You need something in the teens, at least.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 February 2006 @ 1:49 PM
There are literally hundreds of resources on the web that contradict your hard 50 years and thats all folks position.

There’s also literally hundreds of resources on the web that promote abiotic oil, Bigfoot and alien abductions.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 February 2006 @ 1:51 PM
“But, if we date the atomic age as beginning in 1945 (that’s being generous, seeing as how it cuts out the most significant part of the process, namely, development), then from the first atomic bombs to the lunar landing is 24 years. With the sort of depletion rates we’re talking about, we’d need to get something more like 10. The biggest problems are problems of scale–building one rocket to the moon is easy. Swapping out the entire energy infrastructure of our society is an entirely different kind of problem.”

1) Alan Shepard did not orbit the earth.

“Despite its proverbial significance, getting from orbit to the moon is actually a pretty simple achievement.”

So simple the Russians could do it….wait, their lunar program failed and their Saturn V equivilant N-1 booster blew up several times..

Going from earth orbit to the lunar surface to the earths surface is not a trivial affair.

“If I’ve read of one such breakthrough, I’ve read them all. They all end up failing in terms of scale, or in economic cost, or some other criteria that makes them useless–at least useless as a global solution. Problems of scale are a lot harder than just getting something to work in the first place. Anybody can do that. Can you make it work on a global scale? There’s the question. So far, nothing has.”

Yes, just wave your ahnd and dismiss it away without doing any real background research.

…it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production…

An EREOEI of 3.5? Are you kidding me? That’s a guarantee of collapse! You need something in the teens, at least. ”

” Simply put, your scenario does not pass the smell test.

Funny, I was about to say the same of yours.”

I actually wasn’t referring to your scenario but yours fails the smell test too. You like to use a kind of strawman. Lets call him the ‘all or nothing’ strawman.

Shale oil at 3.5 to 1 only has to replace PART of what oil now covers, not all. We are not saddling our entire economy at that 3.5 to 1 rate. Remember, 80% of our enegery is some form of electricity. Pray tell what is the EREOEI on nuclear? 10,000 to 1?

The problem with you and others in this thread is that if an offered solution such as Nuclear cannot fuel everything from donkey carts to Indy racers, it is a failure and we are doomed. Nuclear just needs to take up some of the slack, Coal needs to cover some, Hybrid cars and increased effiency some more, renewables more, ehtanol/methanol some more. Solar/ Wind even more.

These need to replace the oil that has peaked COLLECTIVELY and one can free the other thru substution. Like I said, nuclear can free Coal for F-T fuels for example. Energy is a lot more fungible than you make it out to be.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 12 February 2006 @ 2:13 PM
” There are literally hundreds of resources on the web that contradict your hard 50 years and thats all folks position.

There’s also literally hundreds of resources on the web that promote abiotic oil, Bigfoot and alien abductions. ”

And crackpot peak oil hypothesis.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 12 February 2006 @ 2:14 PM
And let me add methane hydrates to that list as well. The point is we need bridge technologies to get us to practical fusion and while fusion is takine more time than we would like, it is slowly yielding to research and getting closer each year. Break-Even has already benn achieved. Now the challenge is to turn it into a practical power plant design.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 12 February 2006 @ 2:25 PM
Hey –

Nuclear just needs to take up some of the slack, Coal needs to cover some, Hybrid cars and increased effiency some more, renewables more, ehtanol/methanol some more. Solar/ Wind even more.

This has been my argument against Peak Oil as well… but if you are lumping us into that group of people that don’t understand that there are multiple levels of issues going on then i think you are mistaken.

The point here is not that ‘when oil peaks we’re all gonna die’ that you sometimes hear on Peak Oil sites. The point is that peak oil is one of many crises on the horizon which could create a catabolic collapse because of ‘peak complexity.’

Can we use a combined approach of increased efficiency, and diversity of energy sources — sure. But many of the required technical aspects of doing this may well LEAD to a complexity break that will make energy potential irrelevant to the whole picture. Specifically because implementing those various options could cause the very instability that they are trying to overcome.

Janene

Comment by Janene — 12 February 2006 @ 3:54 PM
Just to reiterate:
2/3 of all oil goes to transportation (as use as liquid fuels)

Comment by JCamasto — 12 February 2006 @ 4:41 PM
Puckett, you really should read all of the thirty thesis.

I also did believe that new technology was the answer, but the real problem is capitalizing the infrastructure of such, at the same time, the whole world is experiencing dimishing resources.

If capital had continued to be invested on renewable resources (nuclear is not renewable) after the Carter term, we would be in the position of lasting a bit longer, but in the end, the Earth’s resources would still be used up and at some point would not be able to carry the population.

Comment by Rick Larson — 12 February 2006 @ 10:28 PM
Hey, Mike? You never did address my concern. Say we did through all our resources into this endevour. What do we eat? Sorry if this seems silly, but if people aren’t being fed they’ll burn and kill and cannabalize before they’ll back research into new sources of energy. Our food comes from oil. Agriculture leaves us with a huge loss of energy, 10 to 1 last I heard. What do you got to make up the difference? And remember, electricity doesn’t grow plants. We’re talking fertilizers, pesticides, and packaging as well as fuel for transportation. Don’t forget road maintance and refridgeration. Etc. Etc. Etc. And all of it 100% oil dependant. Nuclear power could potentially help with the refridgeration, but that’s the least of it.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 13 February 2006 @ 2:18 AM
But a more efficient “agriculture” is possible. I’m sure you know it but natural farming (fukuoka) or permaculture is much more efficient then modern agriculture (which is the least efficient agriculture ever…). But when a land is switched from modern agriculture to for example natural farming it will take some years to get a good result because the land has to recover from the many years of destruction. So that would mean farmers have to switch gradually (not all at once) to prevent famine. I’m sure it would be a theoretical possibility to prevent many people dying of hunger (in an ideal world…), but I guess we all agree that this probably won’t happen on a large scale. It would need the change of the whole culture.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that I don’t believe there comes more food from the land because there is oil being used on it (machines, pesticides, …). Because the way it is used is just so inefficient, and maybe does even more harm then good.

Comment by gunnix — 13 February 2006 @ 6:54 AM
Even if it did happen on a large scale. It produces more food, which doesn’t mean gets us more food for less energy. Efficency has to include more factors than just food per acre. For instance, permaculture gardens cannot be harvested by big harvesting machines. You have to get in there and pick and choose because everything grows together. Harvesters really only work if you’re monocroping. Permaculture at a large enough scale to produce sufficent food to prevent a catabolic collapse would require so much more work that it could potentially cause a catabolic collapse. At the very minimum, a slave class would become re-institutionalized.

The extra oil, etc does not really increase the yield per acre significantly, no. Actual yield increases come from selective breeding and genetic manipulation mostly. Oil maintains those yields. Otherwise the land would be desert. Of course, the whole process simply makes it worse, and maintaining it beyond the natural end point is like shooting a horse that jumped off a cliff. So, yeah, more harm than good. But the point isn’t “good,” the point is “food.”

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 13 February 2006 @ 11:39 AM
Not to mention, more food = more people. Which is exactly the problem we have going now.

Comment by JCamasto — 13 February 2006 @ 1:09 PM
Hey, all…

It’s the points that are made in this argument by both sides that leads me to suspect a “quick crash, slow collapse” downfall.

We’ll go from high level of complexity to a lower level of complexity in a matter of years, but I think there will be decades of struggling against diminshing returns and crappy ERoEIs before there is a complete crash. When the final collapse does occur, most people (who are still alive) will barely notice it.

- Chuck

Comment by Chuck — 13 February 2006 @ 2:36 PM
It seems to me that there is another very large logistical hurdle to overcome which have not been yet directly mentioned, if sufficient number of nuclear power plants is to be built in time. I mean workforce training. It takes quite a bit more training to operate nuclear power plant safely than the training enough to run a Liberty transport. And the consequences of poor training and safety procedure violations that will inevitably follow any “crash” program of building nuclear power plants will be very severe. Do we have enough nuclear engineers to run a 100 more nuclear power plants? If not, will we be able to produce them in the time?
Will we have political will to sustain nuclear power plant production, if an industial accident which irradiates large area occurs? The probability of such accident grows with every new nuclear power plant.

Comment by _Gi — 13 February 2006 @ 8:54 PM
It takes quite a bit more training to operate nuclear power plant safely than the training enough to run a Liberty transport. And the consequences of poor training and safety procedure violations that will inevitably follow any “crash” program of building nuclear power plants will be very severe. Do we have enough nuclear engineers to run a 100 more nuclear power plants? If not, will we be able to produce them in the time?

I just wanted to say that this is an awesome point!

I know, for example, that the Navy’s nuclear sub reactor training school for enlisted guys is two years long, with 8-hour classes every day followed by 4 hours of study, at a bare minimum. This is for guys that are just tending the reactor, not the sub’s reactor officer, who has to make major decisions regarding its operation. On top of a four-year physics degree, he has to go to a three and a half year school.

When it comes to increasing the amount of nuclear reactors in America by several orders of magnitude in a rapid manner, I see two options: hiring a massively underqualified group of people to run incredibly dangerous reactors, or canking the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet nuke specialists. Neither seems likely.

- Chuck

Comment by Chuck — 13 February 2006 @ 9:15 PM
We’re not talking about 100 more plants. We’re talking about 100s of more plants. 532 more by the end of decade, but that number was based on old estimates.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 13 February 2006 @ 9:18 PM
All of these things have been discussed ad nauseum on the peakoil.com forums and on The Oil Drum website. If you want to debate in detail, go there. This is merely an introduction to one of the issues that civilization is facing, those who have not heard of Peak Oil yet.

We could talk about the ecology of the situation, Mike, not just energy. Overshoot and resource drawdown are some pretty interesting concepts. Scope enlargement and reduction, too.

Or we could talk geopolitics. Or pandemics. Or climate instability. Or peak energy. Or diminishing returns on complexity. Or maintenance crises.

In my opinion, the ecological argument for collapse is the strongest of all, coupled with Tainter’s model of diminishing returns and Greer’s theory of catabolic collapse. Peak Oil is one of the weakest, because invariably people are familiar with alternatives and the discussion gets bogged down there.

Regardless. There is no intellectual argument against the collapse of civilization. None. There are arguments that can be made that any of these things individually can be fixed, but invariably they leave something out of the picture. And most of the arguments I’ve seen of this type don’t deny that things will collapse if civilization continues the way it has been going. Banking on a hypothetical transition in the future is really, really, (really) weak. Desperate, even.

- Devin

Comment by Devin — 13 February 2006 @ 9:41 PM
Even if it did happen on a large scale. It produces more food, which doesn’t mean gets us more food for less energy. Efficency has to include more factors than just food per acre. For instance, permaculture gardens cannot be harvested by big harvesting machines. You have to get in there and pick and choose because everything grows together. Harvesters really only work if you’re monocroping. Permaculture at a large enough scale to produce sufficent food to prevent a catabolic collapse would require so much more work that it could potentially cause a catabolic collapse. At the very minimum, a slave class would become re-institutionalized.

The extra oil, etc does not really increase the yield per acre significantly, no. Actual yield increases come from selective breeding and genetic manipulation mostly. Oil maintains those yields. Otherwise the land would be desert. Of course, the whole process simply makes it worse, and maintaining it beyond the natural end point is like shooting a horse that jumped off a cliff. So, yeah, more harm than good. But the point isn’t “good,” the point is “food.”

Did you read Masanobu Fukuoka’s books? He, more then in permaculture, does a type of farming with very little work. Only harvesting takes a lot of work for a few days a year. The results of his farming are that the land gets better and better with the years (no deserts..) because of the almost natural way he farms. The principles of natural farming are: no weeding, no fertilizer, no pesticides and no cultivation.
http://larryhaftl.com/ffo/

Fukuoka says 1 man only needs 300 square metres of land (without oil or whatever).

And look at this family for example, who get almost all their food from their quite small garden: http://larryhaftl.com/ffo/fgdervaes.html

Comment by Anonymous — 14 February 2006 @ 9:07 AM
Fukoka’s doing a kind of permaculture. Yes, one person may only need 300 square meters, but not just any 300 square meters will do. You need the right conditions. So you can’t just multiply it to the entire earth’s surface. Permaculture just doesn’t scale like that.

Please see our most recent discussion of permaculture, and why the idea that permaculture could be scaled up to a global solution is simply bunk.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 14 February 2006 @ 9:57 AM
Oh, and don’t forget about this one, where we actually had a pleasant exchange with permaculture “guru” Toby Hemenway, author of such volumes as Gaia’s Garden.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 14 February 2006 @ 9:59 AM
We’re not talking about 100 more plants. We’re talking about 100s of more plants. 532 more by the end of decade, but that number was based on old estimates.

My mistake, blame it on fault memory. It’s not 532 more plants my the end of the decade. It was 520 more plants every year starting in 2004, just to meet our projected needs in 2030. How many plants did we make last year? Another thing to keep in mind is that over the past fifty years we’ve only setup about 450 plants. Thats well over fifty years of work every year, constantly increasing after 2030, forever. Yeah, this doesn’t work. So unless you have some information I don’t about an actual success regarding fusion….

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 14 February 2006 @ 11:14 AM
Oil production for January is down…

http://finanzen.net/news/news_detail.asp?NewsNr=372964

Comment by Rick Larson — 14 February 2006 @ 10:49 PM
Mind power is also in short supply:

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=72745&version=1&template_id=48&parent_id=28

Comment by Rick Larson — 14 February 2006 @ 10:50 PM
“Hey –

Nuclear just needs to take up some of the slack, Coal needs to cover some, Hybrid cars and increased effiency some more, renewables more, ehtanol/methanol some more. Solar/ Wind even more.

This has been my argument against Peak Oil as well… but if you are lumping us into that group of people that don’t understand that there are multiple levels of issues going on then i think you are mistaken.

The point here is not that ‘when oil peaks we’re all gonna die’ that you sometimes hear on Peak Oil sites. The point is that peak oil is one of many crises on the horizon which could create a catabolic collapse because of ‘peak complexity.’

Can we use a combined approach of increased efficiency, and diversity of energy sources — sure. But many of the required technical aspects of doing this may well LEAD to a complexity break that will make energy potential irrelevant to the whole picture. Specifically because implementing those various options could cause the very instability that they are trying to overcome.

Janene ”

And then again the Singularity could solve everything with exponential complexity.

“Gi says:
February 13th, 2006 at 8:54 pm

It seems to me that there is another very large logistical hurdle to overcome which have not been yet directly mentioned, if sufficient number of nuclear power plants is to be built in time. I mean workforce training. It takes quite a bit more training to operate nuclear power plant safely than the training enough to run a Liberty transport. And the consequences of poor training and safety procedure violations that will inevitably follow any “crash” program of building nuclear power plants will be very severe. Do we have enough nuclear engineers to run a 100 more nuclear power plants? If not, will we be able to produce them in the time?
Will we have political will to sustain nuclear power plant production, if an industial accident which irradiates large area occurs? The probability of such accident grows with every new nuclear power plant. ”

We are not going to be building 1st generation 60’s designs, you argument is a strawman. Computer control and pebble bed designs that are failsafe could make safety far more forgiving and operation far less man power intensive. We are up to the 4th generatio in fission reactor designs. The ones operating now in teh US are almost exclusively 1st generation.

“# Benjamin Shender says:
February 14th, 2006 at 11:14 am

We’re not talking about 100 more plants. We’re talking about 100s of more plants. 532 more by the end of decade, but that number was based on old estimates.

My mistake, blame it on fault memory. It’s not 532 more plants my the end of the decade. It was 520 more plants every year starting in 2004, just to meet our projected needs in 2030. How many plants did we make last year? Another thing to keep in mind is that over the past fifty years we’ve only setup about 450 plants. Thats well over fifty years of work every year, constantly increasing after 2030, forever. Yeah, this doesn’t work. So unless you have some information I don’t about an actual success regarding fusion….”

Your numbers dont add up.

450 plants provide 20 percent of our current electricity consumption. 450 plants per year would replace all our current electric generation with nuclear in 4 years, hell 5 allowing for 20% growth.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 18 February 2006 @ 12:46 AM
20% of whose electrical consumption? What about our cars? They are not included in your numbers, they are in mine. And remember, hydrogen powered cars are grossly inefficient. Electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity leaves you with 75% less energy then you started with. Plus, ships, planes, etc. And other countries. Your numbers suggest that oil is used only for electricity and only in the United States. This is not factually accurate.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 18 February 2006 @ 12:32 PM
Who said we use hydrogen? Strawman.

Plug in hybrids work for me. Add another year to my numbers then.

Comment by Mike Puckett — 18 February 2006 @ 1:27 PM
Plug in hybrids work for me. Add another year to my numbers then.

Sorry to jump into this argument, but I hear this one a lot. Although I don’t have a good link, I have it on good faith from a physics student friend of mine that an automobile running at 40 mph consumes 10 to the 4th more energy for every minute of operation than a one-hundred watt light bulb. Even a 20% jump in electric use couldn’t make a dent in the use of cars, even in America. I don’t think you realize exactly how much energy a car uses. (Not to mention that vehicles that service and repair the roads, and the machines that make the bitumens and asphalts the roads are paved with, or the tire factories, etc. etc.)

Not to mention the retrofits to the cars (world-wide) that would be necessitated, not to mention the retrofits to every car factory in the world that would be necessitated. And all of these retrofits would require a massive amount of electricity. I realize that you have never specifically said that all automobiles and automobile plants would have to be replaced in a five year period, so don’t take this as attacking an invented weak point in your argument. However, if the human ingenuity of civilization is to “beat” Peak Oil, there has to be a world-wide semi-clean continuation of the line, so to speak.

I poked around on the web to find out how many watts were in a gallon of gas or oil or natural gas (even though I know the things don’t translate directly) so I could show up with figures. I found a mathematical and jargon maze that I couldn’t even begin to decipher, and I wonder if that’s done on purpose.

- Chuck

Comment by Chuck — 18 February 2006 @ 2:09 PM
The Singularity, Mike? Are you kidding?

You didn’t address what I said, either. You can focus on one area and continually distract from the plethora of other reasons why civilization is going to collapse, but that doesn’t really do much. Clearly this is not the only post on this blog, and yet you act like this is the be all end all of everything Anthropik has to offer. Even if you somehow solve Peak Oil (good luck, buddy) you have a whole heap of crises left.

- Devin

Comment by Devin — 18 February 2006 @ 3:31 PM
Mike,
How much does a 4th generation nuclear power plant cost to build? If we don’t have any in operation, where is the data on their safety comes from? Why weren’t any 4th generation power plants built here?
Is it because they are too expensive?

Comment by Anonymous — 18 February 2006 @ 4:07 PM
You say Singularity as though everybody is familiar with what it is. I looked it up, still I don’t understand how we can get from where we are now to that glorious thereafter, where we are irrelevant and presumably well cared for like some kind of curious bacteria.

What exactly is the system that will be able to deal with exponentially increasing complexity? At this point in time, human brains connected by internet is still the most complex thinking machine. We are still decades away from reaching even the hardware requirements for human-like complexity which can presumably be mass-produced and improved in real time. The current paradigm that drives the Moor’s law is almost exhausted and will not be able to drive it for more than a few years. There is nothing to replace silicon chips in the immediate future just like there is nothing to replace oil. The time is running short on any new advances that will be able to maintain exponential gains in hardware.
Nanotechnology picked off the low-hanging fruit and is in desperate need for better faster molecular dynamic simulation tools to continue advancing. Unfortunately, what nanotechnology we now possess has not been very helpful in developing a workable paradigm to drive the Moor’s law beyond the silicon wall. Technologically, we are reaching the top of the S-curve, and we will need to discover a whole new layer of technologies to restart exponential growth in short order.
The main assumtion of those who wait for Singularity to solve their problems is that exponential or better growth of everything will continue for as long as needed to get there. This is exactly the problem we are facing and will continue to be facing alone without a mass-produced super-intelligence to help us out.

Comment by _Gi — 18 February 2006 @ 4:42 PM
Mike? Hybrids use oil. I was talking about actually divorcing ourselves from oil. If you still want to rely on oil, that’s fine with me. Arguement over, Peak Oil ends civilization.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 18 February 2006 @ 9:43 PM
I’m not impressed at all with the argument that there’s only 50 years of fuel for nuclear reactors. Could you who claim this please post a clear overview of the possibilities for nuclear energy (breader reactors, thorium, etc) and why they are no valid options. And from what source do you have this 50 years number. Please give more information because I have not found any good arguments on anthropik about this.

I do believe that nuclear energy is not going to save us from collapse, and it will probably not even postpone it much. But still I don’t have strong enough arguments why… They don’t stand in a discussion..

Comment by gunnix — 20 February 2006 @ 5:17 AM
Mike — Yes, we’re “all or nothing,” because if there’s any shortfall, that will lead to catabolic collapse. Not only is there no one alternative that can make up for our petroleum usage; there is no combination of alternatives that can make up for it, either. As far as the Singularity, that’s an even more laughable fantasy than the Rapture. Sure, you can’t even find the Rapture in the Bible, but I can’t mathematically prove its impossibility, the way I already proved the impossibility of the Singularity in thesis #16. Our capacity for innovation is diminishing, not accelerating.

Gunnix — Responding to your concerns is going to take an entire article. It’s been bumped up to the top of my priority queue.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 February 2006 @ 10:24 AM
Gunnix — As promised, “The Nuclear Option.”

Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 February 2006 @ 12:34 PM
Finally, in Thesis #18 I figure out what ERoEI means. I don’t know whether it was not spelled out in earlier theses or whether I was so overwhelmed by all the other information that I missed it. Anyway, thanks for spelling it out here.

Comment by ChandraShakti — 24 February 2006 @ 12:44 AM
Dont we still have a fair ammount of coal? Its just that oil is currently cheaper, so we dont mine it.
Coal cant run a car, but it can run a powerstation - possibly to produce hydrogen.
Obviously it will run out just like oil, but it might give use another 20-30 years. Enough time to get AI running?

Comment by Slothboy — 4 March 2006 @ 8:20 AM
That depends.
How much cheaper is oil compared to coal?
How much will the infrasructure overhaul cost?
How much energy will it take? How much time and effort? Will we have the time, energy and money to develop pie in the sky projects, when rising energy costs and diminishung agricultural yields break us?

Comment by _Gi — 4 March 2006 @ 1:24 PM
Dont we still have a fair ammount of coal? Its just that oil is currently cheaper, so we dont mine it.

We do mine it. But it’s all so deep that we need oil to power all the machines it takes to get down to it. That’s why coal’s not even on the list of “possible alternatives,” because it takes oil to get coal.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 March 2006 @ 11:18 PM
I have two comments on this thesis, the first of which deals with the general discussion.

Mike, initially quoting Jason:

“If I’ve read of one such breakthrough, I’ve read them all. They all end up failing in terms of scale, or in economic cost, or some other criteria that makes them useless–at least useless as a global solution. Problems of scale are a lot harder than just getting something to work in the first place. Anybody can do that. Can you make it work on a global scale? There’s the question. So far, nothing has.”

Yes, just wave your ahnd and dismiss it away without doing any real background research.

…

The problem with you and others in this thread is that if an offered solution such as Nuclear cannot fuel everything from donkey carts to Indy racers, it is a failure and we are doomed. … Energy is a lot more fungible than you make it out to be.

Furthermore, to save civilization, it is not necessary to save it for everyone — if a small technological minority still has tools, they constitute civilization, even if most people are starving to death.

Benjamin Shender:

Any solution must have two features: it must be scientifically possible. (i.e. it can’t rely on technology we don’t have) and two, it must be logistically feasible. (It must not require so many resources as to become a cause of collapse itself. It must not require the laws of thermodynamics to be modified. It must be simple enough to be accomplished in our time frame, which is very small, years at best. And it must be a project that the people as a whole will support. And this support must come from people who don’t, can’t, or won’t accept why as well those who do.)

Solutions don’t have to be supported by “the people as a whole.” Solutions just have to work. Depleted uranium munitions aren’t supported by “the people as a whole” but they still kill, burn, and cause mutations.

Janene writes:

but if you are lumping us into that group of people that don’t understand that there are multiple levels of issues going on then i think you are mistaken.

The point here is not that ‘when oil peaks we’re all gonna die’ that you sometimes hear on Peak Oil sites. The point is that peak oil is one of many crises on the horizon which could create a catabolic collapse because of ‘peak complexity.’

Can we use a combined approach of increased efficiency, and diversity of energy sources — sure. But many of the required technical aspects of doing this may well LEAD to a complexity break that will make energy potential irrelevant to the whole picture. Specifically because implementing those various options could cause the very instability that they are trying to overcome.

My objection is that the tribe of Anthropik seems to assume that there is only one possible “complexity break” and that single possibility will be dealt with by the new hunter-gatherer lifestyle for the elite few and mass starvation for the many. Certainly that’s possible. I would give it less than a 50% chance of happening. The tribe seems to be assigning it 99.9999% probability.

Suppose the international peer polity of laws and trades collapses but the U.S. military continues to mobilize troops, steal oil, kill people, etc.

In one sense, complexity has collapsed. But it is *not* a collapse to a state where hunter-gatherers can try to live more freely. It is collapse to a state where totalitarianism and scarcity reign and humans are still miserable and “civilized.”

Comment by Rick — 2 April 2006 @ 11:38 PM
My second comment on this thesis deals with what seems to be the official position of the tribe — that the science involved is so simple as to be beyond dispute. I really must protest that oversimplification of science seems rampant on every side, from animal homosexuality to the mechanism of catabolic collapse to the ecological survivability of a radioactive Ice Age.

Jason Godesky wrote:
[about coal]
We do mine it. But it’s all so deep that we need oil to power all the machines it takes to get down to it. That’s why coal’s not even on the list of “possible alternatives,” because it takes oil to get coal.

It doesn’t take *oil* specifically: if I had a gigantic solar plant supplying enough energy to operate a mine, the mine would still function. Even if non-synthetic liquid fuels are required, sustainable solar energy can be converted into ethanol, methanol, and biodiesel. (Global dimming and carbon dioxide emissions are still big issues, of course.)

Jason further writes:

Yes, we’re “all or nothing,” because if there’s any shortfall, that will lead to catabolic collapse. Not only is there no one alternative that can make up for our petroleum usage; there is no combination of alternatives that can make up for it, either.

This is a very extreme claim. The modern state of affairs, grim as it may be, has various subsystems with considerable redundancy. If Americans can no longer afford to import Pocky from japan, the U.S. military will still be able to tap oil reserves and ferry troops about.

U.S. military thinkers “wargame” numerous possibilities for collapse all the time. A recent publication in that general vein reads:

Resource conflict, however, is likely to be confined within particular regions. The economic effects of an oil shortage would be global. With less energy at their disposal, societies and governments everywhere will have more difficulty coping with problems likely to be of a more severe character—burgeoning populations, climate change, and shortages of such critical resources as water and arable land. The problem of the salinated and damaged farmland on which a third of the world’s crops is presently grown is a case in point. Aside from expensive repair, costly methods like drip-irrigation will be needed to keep such lands arable, necessitating more, not less energy.19
Another likely ramification of such an energy shock is a new wave of debt crises and state failures. As in the 1970s, those most vulnerable would be developing nations short on hard currency and dependent on oil imports, which might see their development progress strangled by a spike in prices. If the prospect of 2050s America resembling a Mad Max movie is far-fetched
106/07
and extreme, it is not so for less fortunate regions where such regressions have already happened, as in Somalia.20 Lacking appropriate or adequate capital, institutions, and technical knowledge, their situations will much more readily degenerate to the point of collapse.21 And, as events in recent years have demonstrated, advanced nations will not easily insulate themselves from these problems, given the refuge for criminal activity and terrorism such areas will provide, as well as the waves of refugees they may generate. It may even be possible for practitioners of a radical ideology to seize power in a major state. Even without that happening, we could see an inward turn on the part of major powers seeking to establish self-contained economic empires, as happened during the Great Depression.
…
Moreover, it must be noted that the pain of a shock will not be felt evenly. Efficient energy users will suffer less, and vice-versa. At present, that would be to the disadvantage of the United States relative to other developed nations like Germany.
…

One advantage is the potential that renewable sources offer for distributed power.39 Given the prospect that US forces will increasingly be based in less-developed regions like the Middle East, Central Asia, and even sub-Saharan Africa, not being dependent on local power grids can be an advantage. For example, at present the self-sustaining Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has a wind turbine installation which produces 5 to 12 percent of its energy during the spring, and up to 25 percent during the windy period of the fall months, reducing diesel imports by 650,000 gallons annually.
…
[Technological details follow.]
…
All of the above hold the promise of reducing electricity and fossil fuel consumption to a fraction of present levels without sacrificing modern conveniences.
…

The program proposed here no doubt appears exceedingly ambitious, and it certainly is, but this is a different matter from saying that it is impossible, undesirable, or unnecessary. One might also protest that despite the unease surrounding oil prices of $70 a barrel, there is no “emergency�? yet. The point, however, is to prevent the situation from ever becoming one.

Source:
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/parameters/06spring/elhefnaw.htm

So the U.S. military has its own plans to continue functioning regardless of whether the global economy has crashed.

Side note: I suspect the dominant role of oil in plastics production is challenged by bioplastics.

Bioplastics are a form of plastics derived from plant sources such as soy bean oil and corn starch rather than traditional plastics which are derived from petroleum. This is regarded as a much more sustainable activity, as it relies considerably less on fossil fuel imports and produces less greenhouse emissions, producing between 0.8 and 3.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide less per tonne of bioplastics vs. the same weight in petroleum based plastics. In addition, bioplastics are truly Biodegradable, as opposed to what is traditionally referred to as “biodegradable plastic”, which is derived from petroleum and is mixed with heavy metals which will cause polyethylene to break down.
In many areas, the technology is still relatively new and currently not as cost competitive with petroleum based plastics, although that is quickly changing, given the current price of oil. It is already seeing some widespread use in Europe where it accounts for 60% of the biodegradable materials market, where it is found in products such as packaging materials. Japan has also been a pioneer in bioplastics, incorporating them into electronics and automobiles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic
http://www.biopolymer.net/

Comment by Rick — 2 April 2006 @ 11:40 PM
Hey Rick –

Furthermore, to save civilization, it is not necessary to save it for everyone — if a small technological minority still has tools, they constitute civilization, even if most people are starving to death.

This is simply a question of emphasis. Jason has talked about small pockets of civilization surviving for short periods of time. But he is focusing on what happens to the majority.

Solutions don’t have to be supported by “the people as a whole.” Solutions just have to work. Depleted uranium munitions aren’t supported by “the people as a whole” but they still kill, burn, and cause mutations.

But the military expenditures of the US Government ARE tacitly supported by the people. If they were not, we would refuse to support politicians that wanted to spend money on weapon development. But the fact is that people DO support politicians that pursue these strategies. What happens if that stops?

More importantly, so long as the US Government is refusing to support AE R&D to any significant level, it will only be by the actions of individual persons that ANY gains will be made.

My objection is that the tribe of Anthropik seems to assume that there is only one possible “complexity break” and that single possibility will be dealt with by the new hunter-gatherer lifestyle for the elite few and mass starvation for the many. Certainly that’s possible. I would give it less than a 50% chance of happening. The tribe seems to be assigning it 99.9999% probability.

You are describing the argument as if it was unilinear. But in reality it is systemic, with an understanding that there are many many possible scenarios, but by looking at the fundamental property of underlying complexity we can compare widely varied issues.

You also may want to note that not everyone discussing here is a member of the tribe…

Suppose the international peer polity of laws and trades collapses but the U.S. military continues to mobilize troops, steal oil, kill people, etc.

And the US Military is deriving support from where? What happens to the US military if the government discontinues GI benefits? Or what if China calls our debt? Hell, what if China simply decides to STOP CARRYING our debt? All of these diverse issues play into the total functionality of the system.

It doesn’t take *oil* specifically: if I had a gigantic solar plant supplying enough energy to operate a mine, the mine would still function. Even if non-synthetic liquid fuels are required, sustainable solar energy can be converted into ethanol, methanol, and biodiesel. (Global dimming and carbon dioxide emissions are still big issues, of course.)

Well sure.

If you have a solar array of that magnitude, what incentive would you have to use it to mine coal? Wouldn’t it be much more feasible to sell the energy directly? Show me a business model that would prefer investing that energy to access some lesser amount of coal energy…

[Jason:]Yes, we’re “all or nothing,” because if there’s any shortfall, that will lead to catabolic collapse. Not only is there no one alternative that can make up for our petroleum usage; there is no combination of alternatives that can make up for it, either.[/i]

This is a very extreme claim. The modern state of affairs, grim as it may be, has various subsystems with considerable redundancy. If Americans can no longer afford to import Pocky from japan, the U.S. military will still be able to tap oil reserves and ferry troops about.

That is exactly what we do NOT have — considerable redundancy. We have SOME, but everyday that redundancy gets smaller. Each additional investment in complexity creates a correlative reduction in redundant systems. Again, it is basic economics. If you have resources (cash, equipment, energy) X, and the choice of investing those resources in duplicating past efforts (redundancy) OR the choice of investing those resources in revenue creating increased throughput, what are you going to do? When all that matters is the bottom line, there is a strong pull towards the later.

From the Article cited:

The economic effects of an oil shortage would be global. With less energy at their disposal, societies and governments everywhere will have more difficulty coping with problems likely to be of a more severe character—burgeoning populations, climate change, and shortages of such critical resources as water and arable land. Aside from expensive repair, costly methods like drip-irrigation will be needed to keep such lands arable, necessitating more, not less energy.

This sounds EXACTLY like what has been claimed here on Anthropik. Less Energy = Less ability to cope with critical issues.

If the prospect of 2050s America resembling a Mad Max movie is far-fetched 106/07 and extreme, it is not so for less fortunate regions where such regressions have already happened, as in Somalia.20 Lacking appropriate or adequate capital, institutions, and technical knowledge, their situations will much more readily degenerate to the point of collapse.21 And, as events in recent years have demonstrated, advanced nations will not easily insulate themselves from these problems, given the refuge for criminal activity and terrorism such areas will provide, as well as the waves of refugees they may generate. It may even be possible for practitioners of a radical ideology to seize power in a major state.

All of this is true… and yet a huge piece of the puzzle is missing. What happens to the US economy when the third world begins to collapse? We only maintain our standard of living by externalizing our costs onto third world nations. What would happen if we could no longer get cheap clothing from southeast asia, coffee and chocolate from child and slave labor in Africa, etc etc?

So collapse in the third world not only leaves us susceptible to terrorists and refugees, it ALSO drives us into the Greatest Depression we have ever seen. And that’s just the first stage…

Skimming through your link, I failed to find any actual proposed solution. Rather, it was merely a call to design a plan and implement it. But I did find this:

>blockquote>Whatever its precise size, this program ideally should be aimed not only at making the United States a world leader in the field of renewable energy sources, but at reducing America’s fossil fuel consumption below present levels in absolute terms before 2020 and eliminating fossil fuel dependence no later than 2040 and preferably earlier. To that end, the United States should pursue a broad range of approaches, not only hydrogen (the production of which should be delinked from fossil fuels and rare minerals to the extent possible), but also photovoltaics, wind, ethanol, biomass, and, while they are more dependent on geography, tidal and geothermal.

So without having any actual proposal about how to proceed, they are STILL talking about a twenty to forty year time frame. Problem is, if some of the recent revalations RE: over reporting of oil reserves, we may be looking at critical failure well within the next decade. That’s a problem.

Side note: I suspect the dominant role of oil in plastics production is challenged by bioplastics.

Plastics are the LEAST of our concerns. IF they find a way to deal with energy, AND find a way to maintain agriculture without petro-fertilizers and insecticides/herbicides, AND they address the issues of ‘peak water’ and global warming and so on and so forth… then I’ll concern myself with plastic.

Janene

Comment by Janene — 3 April 2006 @ 9:08 AM
Furthermore, to save civilization, it is not necessary to save it for everyone — if a small technological minority still has tools, they constitute civilization, even if most people are starving to death.

While that is, in itself, true, it’s also quite irrelevant. We’re not talking about a sudden end to energy availability in some areas, while everything goes on hunky-dory in others. The problem of Peak Oil is the problem of what happens when we’re no longer able to grow. Even stability cannot be tolerated, because civilization must always grow. From a high level, we discussed this with “We All Fall Down” (see sidebar, under “Essentials”). Collapse is an all-or-nothing thing; it spreads, almost like water. Scaling this down to something like, say, the electrical grid, we’re not talking about blackouts throughout North America except for Los Angeles and New York. That’s completely unrealistic–the whole system is interconnected, meaning it’s all or nothing. Just look at the 2003 blackout. No, what we’re talking about is first recession and depression (where growth slows down), then stagnancy where there’s no growth at all, and finally, actually having less energy than we used to. It’s at this point that things turn really nasty, as our entire culture has to switch gears. Who would invest in anything, when your expected value becomes negative? Without investment, where does the necessary infrastructure come from? In this way, collapse accelerates as it progresses. We’re not talking about a scenario where some citites go on just hunky-dory. Any shortfall is catastrophic, because we don’t just need to make up for everything we use now–we need to have more of it, and a continually increasing supply. The moment those conditions are no longer met, everything reverses itself, and we begin to collapse with accelerating velocity.

Solutions don’t have to be supported by “the people as a whole.” Solutions just have to work. Depleted uranium munitions aren’t supported by “the people as a whole” but they still kill, burn, and cause mutations.

But they’re not used as a primary energy supply–which is what we’re talking about here. Exceptions are sometimes important, but not when you’re talking about the energy basis of your society. Then, problems of scale are your biggest obstacles, and then, popular perceptions become important. Nuclear power plants may work, but if they’re not popularly accepted, you’ll never be able to build enough of them to make them economically significant.

Suppose the international peer polity of laws and trades collapses but the U.S. military continues to mobilize troops, steal oil, kill people, etc.

Militaries require resources to survive–resources like large populations to recruit from, oil to power their weapons, etc. Militaries, too, are facets of complexity, and thus, functions of energy. You can invest more or less of your energy into this or that facet of complexity, but as we’ve already discussed, all the various facets of complexity are ultimately interlinked. One facet cannot be terribly ahead of any of the others, because of the co-dependencies between them. Reduced complexity also must mean a reduced military. These are not seperate systems you’re talking about. You can’t have a military surviving without nation-states; neither can you have nation-states without agriculture. The distinctions you make are artificial and meaningless–it’s like worrying what will happen if the penthouse remains aloft after you knock out the foundations. It won’t–it depends on the foundations. That’s what we’re talking about here: a disruption to the most basic, fundamental foundation of any society. In such a state, the epiphenomenon of civilization can no more survive without the civilization, than you can exist without a food chain.

It doesn’t take *oil* specifically: if I had a gigantic solar plant supplying enough energy to operate a mine, the mine would still function. Even if non-synthetic liquid fuels are required, sustainable solar energy can be converted into ethanol, methanol, and biodiesel. (Global dimming and carbon dioxide emissions are still big issues, of course.)

OK, every method to mine coal that actually exists requires oil. You’re right, there are possibilities for oil-less coal mining. None exist at the moment. My statement was addressing the real, not the possible.

This is a very extreme claim. The modern state of affairs, grim as it may be, has various subsystems with considerable redundancy. If Americans can no longer afford to import Pocky from japan, the U.S. military will still be able to tap oil reserves and ferry troops about.

There’s actually very LITTLE redundancy–and that’s one of our key vulnerabilities. See thesis #19. But it’s not extreme at all; in fact, it’s common sense. See above.

So the U.S. military has its own plans to continue functioning regardless of whether the global economy has crashed.

I’m well aware, but such plans–if feasible at all–are only short-term, to whether a minor abberation. The military can no more survive without a civilization beneath it than your head can exist without its body.

Side note: I suspect the dominant role of oil in plastics production is challenged by bioplastics.

Then you don’t understand bioplastics. We’re typically talking about corn, which is very intensive with the fossil fuel fertilizers. Bioplastics as they’re currently made require more fossil fuels than just using petrochemicals.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 April 2006 @ 11:23 AM
Janene wrote:

You are describing the argument as if it was unilinear. But in reality it is systemic, with an understanding that there are many many possible scenarios, but by looking at the fundamental property of underlying complexity we can compare widely varied issues.

Yes, I suspect my nitpicking would work better in a more narrow, specialized forum.

But the fact is that people DO support politicians that pursue these strategies. What happens if that stops?

If it stops as thoroughly as the collapse of Rome, then the politicians flee and taxation stops. That sort of civil disobedience is pretty rare, but entirely possible.

If you have a solar array of that magnitude, what incentive would you have to use it to mine coal? Wouldn’t it be much more feasible to sell the energy directly? Show me a business model that would prefer investing that energy to access some lesser amount of coal energy…

Well, (as far as I can tell) in American thinking, the military has a huge incentive to be disconnected from the outside world. Each U.S. military base is intended to survive disrupted supply lines for some amount of time. The massive “continuity of government” installations are intended for nuclear showdowns.

I think assuming economic “rationality” gives incorrect predictions about human behavior much of the time. The physical world really is interconnected. The mental and cultural worlds seem to be disconnected.

That is exactly what we do NOT have — considerable redundancy. We have SOME, but everyday that redundancy gets smaller. Each additional investment in complexity creates a correlative reduction in redundant systems.

It seems to be very hard to measure redundancy. It comes down to estimates and guesstimates. How much redundancy makes the difference between a survivable contraction with a command economy, versus an unsurvivable collapse with no economy?

Jason wrote:

We’re not talking about a sudden end to energy availability in some areas, while everything goes on hunky-dory in others. The problem of Peak Oil is the problem of what happens when we’re no longer able to grow. Even stability cannot be tolerated, because civilization must always grow. From a high level, we discussed this with “We All Fall Down” (see sidebar, under “Essentials”). Collapse is an all-or-nothing thing; it spreads, almost like water. Scaling this down to something like, say, the electrical grid, we’re not talking about blackouts throughout North America except for Los Angeles and New York. That’s completely unrealistic–the whole system is interconnected, meaning it’s all or nothing.

Well, all of the Roman Empire was interconnected. Perhaps the emperor sitting in Rome thought Byzantium would immediately fall if Rome fell. But as it turned out, the Byzantine subsystem had enough redundancy to persist. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire was all-or-nothing, in the West. It didn’t get to Byzantium.

I don’t think there’s any scientific proof one way or the other. I think everyone is speculating: my speculation is that it’s *possible* that a modern-day Byzantium could survive contraction and/or collapse; your speculation is that no modern-day analogue to Byzantium could possible survive collapse.

No, what we’re talking about is first recession and depression (where growth slows down), then stagnancy where there’s no growth at all, and finally, actually having less energy than we used to. It’s at this point that things turn really nasty, as our entire culture has to switch gears.

Right now, in Asia, I’m using less energy than I used in Europe, with a higher standard of living. If I went to live on a farm, sowing seedballs, I’d have an even higher standard of living with even lower energy throughput. I’d even have time to practice self-defense all day and contribute to neighborhood watch programs.

Militaries, too, are facets of complexity, and thus, functions of energy. You can invest more or less of your energy into this or that facet of complexity, but as we’ve already discussed, all the various facets of complexity are ultimately interlinked. One facet cannot be terribly ahead of any of the others, because of the co-dependencies between them. Reduced complexity also must mean a reduced military. These are not seperate systems you’re talking about. You can’t have a military surviving without nation-states; neither can you have nation-states without agriculture.

Quite a few military thinkers can’t shut up about the fall of the nation-state. I suppose you’re familiar with Martin Van Creveld and his American exponent, Lind. In the past, when armies were no longer employed by kings, they remained armies but practiced banditry openly. So military culture definitely can survive the loss of political legitimacy.

So there is still a crucial difference in our guesstimates: I guesstimate that militaries will be inventive enough to improvise alternative energy for long enough to make a difference, and you guesstimate they won’t.

Note: the money “wasted” on the military often takes the form of redundancy. So when the military spends a huge sum on some incomprehensible boondoggle — a nuclear reactor, for example — responsible citizens might write it off to sheer waste. As I mentioned to Janene above, an economist might believe that the military could never buy an extra reactor, because there would be no rational economic justification for it. In the event of collapse, that “waste” purchase is useful.

Comment by Rick — 4 April 2006 @ 7:43 PM
Rick, where does the military get its FOOD when agriculture collapses? It seems to me that the whole energy arguement is irrelevant in that case.

Comment by ChandraShakti — 4 April 2006 @ 9:43 PM
Each U.S. military base is intended to survive disrupted supply lines for some amount of time. The massive “continuity of government” installations are intended for nuclear showdowns.

To be clear, the amount of time in question is on the order of months, not years, much less decades.

Well, all of the Roman Empire was interconnected. Perhaps the emperor sitting in Rome thought Byzantium would immediately fall if Rome fell. But as it turned out, the Byzantine subsystem had enough redundancy to persist. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire was all-or-nothing, in the West. It didn’t get to Byzantium.

Very true … because the Roman Empire had more redundancy than we do now. Specifically, it had subgraphs that could be broken apart. Britannia didn’t really need Italy, the way that the modern United States needs the Nikkei to open trading tomorrow as scheduled. Less energy meant less trade, and that meant less inter-dependence. The world has become connected, as they say, and that’s a major liability.

I don’t think there’s any scientific proof one way or the other. I think everyone is speculating: my speculation is that it’s *possible* that a modern-day Byzantium could survive contraction and/or collapse; your speculation is that no modern-day analogue to Byzantium could possible survive collapse.

My speculation is the no modern-day analogue to Byzantium exists. Byzantium persisted because it had become very much a distinct system. It had taken a few centuries to disentangle itself, but culturally, sociologically and economically, by the time that Odoacer declared himself Rex Italiae, there were very much different (though allied) systems. More importantly, Rome never really “collapsed,” so much as it declined. That may seem like a fine line, but it makes all the difference: Byzantium had time to adjust gradually. There wasn’t all that much difference between Odoacer and Theodoric, versus the emperors that preceded them. Rome didn’t collapse, nearly so much as it faded away.

Right now, in Asia, I’m using less energy than I used in Europe, with a higher standard of living. If I went to live on a farm, sowing seedballs, I’d have an even higher standard of living with even lower energy throughput. I’d even have time to practice self-defense all day and contribute to neighborhood watch programs.

Yes, but your quality of life is increasing because you’re lowering your level of complexity. In short, you’re a little, walking collapse. On the personal scale, it means improved quality of life. On the global scale, it means massive die-off.

Quite a few military thinkers can’t shut up about the fall of the nation-state. I suppose you’re familiar with Martin Van Creveld and his American exponent, Lind. In the past, when armies were no longer employed by kings, they remained armies but practiced banditry openly. So military culture definitely can survive the loss of political legitimacy.

Quite right; but without a state, they cease to be militaries, and instead become mere thugs. As Augustine pointed out, legitimacy is what seperates emperors and pirates.

But I see your point. That said, raiders and bandits can only operate by preying on settled, agricultural populations. They can be attacked easily because they’re sedentary, and they have a form of wealth that can be taken. Foragers suffer from neither disadvantage. Where foragers have been slaughtered, it has always been to sieze their land for some economic purpose, like farming, or hunting them to extinction for ideological reasons. They’ve never been good prey to bandits.

So there is still a crucial difference in our guesstimates: I guesstimate that militaries will be inventive enough to improvise alternative energy for long enough to make a difference, and you guesstimate they won’t.

I think Jeff Vail agrees with me–and of the three of us, he’s the only one with military experience, having been an intelligence officer in the USAF and involved in planning several battles during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Note: the money “wasted” on the military often takes the form of redundancy. So when the military spends a huge sum on some incomprehensible boondoggle — a nuclear reactor, for example — responsible citizens might write it off to sheer waste. As I mentioned to Janene above, an economist might believe that the military could never buy an extra reactor, because there would be no rational economic justification for it. In the event of collapse, that “waste” purchase is useful.

The military, being generally protected from market competition and much more concerned with safety, takes a very different view of the balance of redundancy vs. efficiency than the society as a whole. You’re right, though, militaries have a good deal more redundancy than your average power company.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 April 2006 @ 9:48 PM
Did the USSR collapse because of Peak Oil?

Comment by Jason Godesky — 27 April 2006 @ 2:35 PM