Every major city and large urban center shares a common problem, traffic congestion, particularly during rush hours. And in virtually every instance a major, if not the dominant, contributor to that congestion is commercial delivery traffic. Primary traffic corridors and the primary concentration of retail and commercial businesses to which deliveries are being made are on the same routes, the same streets.
In an era of dwindling fossil fuel reserves, resulting in punishing increases in fuel costs, and stressed budgets at all levels of government resulting in curtailment of funds for infrastructure development and maintenance, some serious thinking outside the box is needed to deal with this combined problem.
I believe there is a simple, efficient, and cost effective solution available in most large cities.
The other thing large cities share in common is that they have a major investment in a public transit infrastructure. In most large cities this includes subways, streetcars and trolleys. These are all powered by electricity, not fossil fuels, though the electricity they use may, today, be generated using fossil fuels. But that is a situation that will undergo dramatic changes over the next couple of decades as existing power generation plants age and are pulled offline.
That electricity driven public transit system and infrastructure can serve as the foundation for solving both urban fossil fuel dependence and urban traffic congestion. All three system infrastructures (subway, streetcar and trolley) can double as effective and efficient urban freight distribution networks. The chassis on which these three vehicles are built can be used as the chassis for freight vehicles that will run on the same infrastructure as the current passenger vehicles.
Subway cars are ideally suited as urban freight carriers. They have four sets of extra-wide, double entry/loading doors, car to car connection, driver compartment built in, and the ability to be run individually or linked together as a train. Use the same chassis, strip out the seating and hand-holds, eliminate the climate control system, eliminate the windows, build in the necessary racks/shelves and partitions and you have an ideal urban freight carrier. They use an existing track infrastructure that also carries people. They can be run 24-hours a day, in any weather because the infrastructure is underground. With retail and commercial concentrated along the same corridors served by the subways it is the most efficient system for delivery to those businesses or strategically located depots. Freight sidings could be relatively easily added where needed so as not to impede passenger traffic while loading/unloading. And it could be undertaken now to great advantage for the city in easing the traffic congestion of delivery trucks on city streets.
A simple, effective dispatch control system could easily be developed, probably using some form of bar-code system. The whole freight system could be privatized, bringing revenue to the city and eliminating the bureaucracy needed from city payroll and expense.
In the same way, streetcar infrastructure could be used for surface freight cars, freight vehicles built on a streetcar chassis. Sidings could be easily added where needed, running down alleys for example. These could serve secondary commercial concentrations not on the subway lines.
Freight trolleys, likewise, could be built on the same chassis as passenger trolleys, use the same power line infrastructure and routes, have additional sidings built so as not to impede passenger traffic on the same lines. These would service those secondary commercial concentrations similar to but not served by streetcars.
All of this is akin to the way in which freight planes have become so ubiquitous at our airports. Freight has piggybacked on an infrastructure that was already in place for passenger traffic, with the addition of extra terminals at airports to divert freight away from passenger terminals. The air traffic control, runways, route management and tracking systems, and route protocols were all already in place.
The decline in reserves of all fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal) is a certainty over the next couple of decades and well beyond. They are not replenishable, at least not in human time-scales. One way or another all facets of our society dependent on these fossil fuels are going to have to find ways to adapt as reserves diminish.
Although electricity has its own problems, such as aging infrastructure and a reliance on massive power generation facilities and long-distance transmission lines, one certainty is that electricity generation has many renewable options such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, tidal, and more. We are not forever tied to fossil fuels for electricity generation. And there is the clear additional benefit that these options can be at a smaller scale and distributed. Any city, for example, has within it's boundaries sufficient rooftop space that, with solar power, most of it's electricity for the transportation and freight infrastructure could be generated within city boundaries. Add wind power to that and possible other options like power generated from burning trash, and much of the power needs can be readily satisfied internally. Local options can reduce, or eliminate, the dependence on long distance power grids. With privatization of the urban freight system, the city could also expect those companies using that infrastructure to share in the cost of building and maintaining the local power generation facilities.
Those corporations that currently supply the passenger vehicles for the public transit system could be commissioned to use their chassis and develop the freight options on that chassis. Similarly, however, third party corporations could be allowed, on a competitive bid basis, to develop the freight vehicles, in the same way that third party companies produce specialized truck bodies for truck freight.
Any city that prides itself on being forward looking cannot afford to ignore the elephant in the room of dwindling fossil fuel supplies over the coming decades. Any city willing to take such an innovative, pro-active approach to pre-avoiding the problems that fossil fuel depletion will inflict on them will have a clear leg up on the fossil fuel downslope.
Showing posts with label peak energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peak energy. Show all posts
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Peak Oil: Is There Any Longer a Valid Debate?
It has been some time since I sat down to analyze what is happening with peak oil. It has been difficult to see that there is any meaningful response from government, business and the media. They are still very busy characterizing minor new discoveries of oil as the saviors of society, as though there is a pervasive fear of admitting the truth to the public. The pieces of the puzzle that one has to fit together are very fragmented and misrepresented in the media.
* There is a renewed effort in the US to paint the tar sands as an ethical source of oil. I still believe Chris Skrebowski is right in his projection that the tar sands will peak in 2015. I covered this in the article, Will the tar sands peak in 2015?, on my blog. The essential limiting factors on tar sands are flow rate (the amount that can be extracted at one time from all mines) and the density of hydrocarbons in the formation which tends to decrease toward the periphery of the formation. The latter is the basis for Skrebowski's 2015 peak projection.
* The US was putting a great deal of stock in shale gas as the future of energy for the US. With all of the environmental problems from fracking, the public is, even now, split on the validity of that as an energy source. In addition the IEA and USGS(EIA) have now downgraded the estimates for the Murcheson Shale formation in eastern US from over 400 trillion cubic feet to something less than 50 trillion cubic feet. There is also serious doubts about the validity of the estimates for the Bakken shale formation in north central US and southern prairie provinces of Canada. This is a tremendous blow to US energy plans. It is also very likely that estimates on recoverable energy from other shale formations, both in the US and abroad, have been dramatically overstated. At the same time the true cost of extraction and site restoration have probably been dramatically understated.
* It is strongly believed, in the peak oil community, and recently being tacitly admitted in the mainstream press and political circles, that the OPEC reserve estimates for Saudi Arabia, and potentially other OPEC members, are vastly overstated and that even Saudi Arabia has reached or surpassed its production peak. The Saudis are only managing to keep up their production with the injection of tremendous volumes of sea water to keep up the wellhead pressure. But they are now experiencing water cut up to as high as 90% on some wells. In the process they are also destroying their critical fresh water aquifers by contaminating them with salt water. In addition OPEC nations are increasingly consuming their own oil resources meaning as their standard of living rises and the disparity between production and exports is growing each year. From a global perspective it is not production that matters but rather exports.
* Emerging nations such as China and India are still experiencing exponential growth in their energy consumption every year. Both use a tremendous amount of coal as well (China has vast coal reserves but they are also a net coal importer), but coal reserves are significantly declining, with production rates now also on the decline. Energy consumption tends to follow economic growth and decline and there is still a tremendous amount of economic growth possible in these two large population giants. As is always the case, the more the economy grows the greater are the population's expectations for standard of living and consumption. This is certainly proving to be the case in these two nations.
* Deep water oil is not the panacea that western nations had painted it to be. The recovery of deep water oil is very technically challenging, expensive and risky, both in terms of safety and environmental well being. BP's Deepwater Horizon loss was the first major deepwater oil disaster, but it definitely will not be the last. There will always be a high risk of methane explosions and the resulting leak is extremely damaging to the environment. It is also very likely that the optimistic estimates of how much undiscovered deep water oil exists have been dramatically overstated. Deep water wells also tend to peak much more rapidly than land-based wells - vis-a-vis the North Sea and Mexico's Cantarell - so their benefit is short-lived. Considering the cost of exploration and discovery, the long lead time needed to put safe extraction technology in place, and the limits on the number of recovery wells that can be sunk into a single reserve, deep water oil is very unlikely to keep up with the declines in land-based production. It is very possible that deep water oil may quickly become non viable economically and have to be abandoned.
* Methane hydrates (as well as coal bed methane and bio-mass methane) are seen as a strong potential as the next great energy source. Certainly with the decline in viability of shale gas this will renew the expectations for methane hydrates. I have covered this extensively in my blog. The estimates for recoverability of Methane Hydrates are all over the map, as are the reserves that have a potential for economic recovery if the technology can be sorted out. In general, however, the recoverability estimates, I believe, are badly overstated. In addition it would take a whole new energy infrastructure to take full advantage of these resources, an energy infrastructure that I believe we are already past the point of possibility of developing.
* There is an ever growing disparity between WTI crude prices and the other, more realistic prices of oil such as Brent. The WTI, NYMEX-traded, American price is being kept artificially low as the US, the world's largest oil importer, attempts to impose prices on the rest of the world in order to keep it's ever increasing energy costs in check, particularly as it tries to recover from the 2008 global economic recession, which it still has not managed to do. Increasingly global oil producers will not trade their oil contracts on NYMEX because they are able to get much better prices on other global oil commodity exchanges which more accurately reflect the state of global oil reserves. With the US credit rating having recently been downgraded by S&P there is an increasing possibility that the US dollar will be overthrown as the global reserve currency. This will make the US/NYMEX oil pricing increasingly irrelevant and drive the cost the US must pay for oil up to realistic levels equivalent to what the rest of the world pays.
* Over the past several years there is a clear, but unprovable pattern, of the US waging war after war against oil-rich countries in the hands of rulers, usually dictators, not friendly to the U.S. First there was Iraq and Afghanistan (the gateway to the Caspian Sea oil province), then the suspected involvement in the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt, the invasion of Libya, the suspected involvement in the division of Sudan, the continued saber rattling at Iran and Venezuela, and the increasing rhetoric, now that Libya is more or less settled, over Syria. After the invasion of Afghanistan a former executive of Conoco Phillips, Ahmid Karzai, was installed as ruler and plans immediately began for a pipeline to bring Caspian oil to a Pacific port via Afghanistan. After the invasion of Irag western oil companies immediately began negotiating for their share of the Iraqi oil pie. The same is about to happen in Libya. And when Sudan was partitioned the US took aim at the oil reserves in the newly separated south Sudan. The saber rattling over Iran, Syria and others has as much to do with their oil reserves as politics. And in all, the US has more military presence in the Arabian Gulf than anywhere else in the world except the US itself.
* Despite several years of teeth gnashing and negative press in the US over Canada's tar sands oil being dirty oil (complete with bans against it in several states including California), the US government has a measure on the table for building a high volume pipeline, the Keystone Pipeline, from Alberta to the major US oil refineries in Texas and elsewhere along the Gulf coast. It is obvious they only consider tar sands oil dirty when they can get adequate supply from elsewhere in the world. With the reality of declining OPEC, Mexican and other sources of oil staring them in the face, they desperately want to tie up that Canadian tar sands oil, particularly since China is making increasing investment in the tar sands also in an attempt to ensure future oil availability. Venezuela has vast oil sands, in the Orinoco region, that probably equal those in Canada, but Venezuela is not friendly to US interests.
* The US is quietly but increasingly reducing its investment in automobile infrastructure (highways, tunnels, bridges, etc) including new construction and maintenance of existing infrastructure. This is obviously partly due to the long recession that has gripped the country but it is a clear indicator that when budgets are tight they are no longer prepared to give top priority to automobile infrastructure.
* Most developed nations such as the US and European nations are placing increased emphasis on electric cars as the centerpiece of the future of the automobile. That, however, ignores the simple and glaringly obvious reality that electrical generation and transmission infrastructure is rapidly deteriorating and will require massive billions of dollars of investment in order to support an electric car culture. In addition, any sort of serious government push to accelerate the conversion to electric cars will dramatically increase the drawdown of increasingly rare resources, particularly for the production of the batteries needed to run those electric cars. It is clearly doubtful if the hundreds of millions of cars in the US and Europe will ever be replaced wholesale by electric vehicles.
* Increasingly over the past decade, published oil production and reserve figures have been broadened to include more and more questionable commodities such as synthetic oil from tar sands, liquid fuels created from coal and natural gas condensates, liquid fuels produced from shale formations, ethanol, bio-fuels and more. The simple reality already is that traditional crude oil is no longer satisfying the demand but is increasingly reliant on these other non-traditional sources to make up the shortfall. But even the figures reported by the EIA, of crude plus condensates, are already on the decline.
Peak oil is not an event wherein all of a sudden one day governments, business and the media will announce that peak oil has arrived and we all need to adjust the way we live on this planet. It won't be sudden. It won't be clear. And in the initial stages of the decline following peak there is plenty of wiggle room to disguise the fact that we are in decline, and room to perpetuate the state of denial in which we have existed for the past couple of decades. As has often been said, peak oil ultimately will only be recognized in the rearview mirror.
I believe peak oil has already arrived. I believe, in fact, based on the data available, peak oil arrived in 2005. In the several years since then enormous effort has been put into disguising that reality and turning to other energy sources and classifying them as oil to allow that facade to be maintained. I do not believe we are adjusting to the reality of peak oil. I belief we are firmly entrenched in trying to deny that reality and scrambling ever harder to find some viable energy alternative that will allow us to carry on business as usual to keep us from ever having to deal with that reality. The chances are very slim, however, of finding any energy source that will allow us the massive amounts of cheap energy that we derive from crude oil. Peak oil will probably mean peak net energy and be followed by an accelerating decline in all forms of energy.
The news, however, is not all bad. Peak oil and peak net energy will also mean peak CO2 emissions. That will allow the planet a chance to begin recovering from the damage our high energy human lifestyle has inflicted on the planet. That at least improves the prospect of the long term survivability of our species and that of other species with whom we reluctantly share this planet.
* There is a renewed effort in the US to paint the tar sands as an ethical source of oil. I still believe Chris Skrebowski is right in his projection that the tar sands will peak in 2015. I covered this in the article, Will the tar sands peak in 2015?, on my blog. The essential limiting factors on tar sands are flow rate (the amount that can be extracted at one time from all mines) and the density of hydrocarbons in the formation which tends to decrease toward the periphery of the formation. The latter is the basis for Skrebowski's 2015 peak projection.
* The US was putting a great deal of stock in shale gas as the future of energy for the US. With all of the environmental problems from fracking, the public is, even now, split on the validity of that as an energy source. In addition the IEA and USGS(EIA) have now downgraded the estimates for the Murcheson Shale formation in eastern US from over 400 trillion cubic feet to something less than 50 trillion cubic feet. There is also serious doubts about the validity of the estimates for the Bakken shale formation in north central US and southern prairie provinces of Canada. This is a tremendous blow to US energy plans. It is also very likely that estimates on recoverable energy from other shale formations, both in the US and abroad, have been dramatically overstated. At the same time the true cost of extraction and site restoration have probably been dramatically understated.
* It is strongly believed, in the peak oil community, and recently being tacitly admitted in the mainstream press and political circles, that the OPEC reserve estimates for Saudi Arabia, and potentially other OPEC members, are vastly overstated and that even Saudi Arabia has reached or surpassed its production peak. The Saudis are only managing to keep up their production with the injection of tremendous volumes of sea water to keep up the wellhead pressure. But they are now experiencing water cut up to as high as 90% on some wells. In the process they are also destroying their critical fresh water aquifers by contaminating them with salt water. In addition OPEC nations are increasingly consuming their own oil resources meaning as their standard of living rises and the disparity between production and exports is growing each year. From a global perspective it is not production that matters but rather exports.
* Emerging nations such as China and India are still experiencing exponential growth in their energy consumption every year. Both use a tremendous amount of coal as well (China has vast coal reserves but they are also a net coal importer), but coal reserves are significantly declining, with production rates now also on the decline. Energy consumption tends to follow economic growth and decline and there is still a tremendous amount of economic growth possible in these two large population giants. As is always the case, the more the economy grows the greater are the population's expectations for standard of living and consumption. This is certainly proving to be the case in these two nations.
* Deep water oil is not the panacea that western nations had painted it to be. The recovery of deep water oil is very technically challenging, expensive and risky, both in terms of safety and environmental well being. BP's Deepwater Horizon loss was the first major deepwater oil disaster, but it definitely will not be the last. There will always be a high risk of methane explosions and the resulting leak is extremely damaging to the environment. It is also very likely that the optimistic estimates of how much undiscovered deep water oil exists have been dramatically overstated. Deep water wells also tend to peak much more rapidly than land-based wells - vis-a-vis the North Sea and Mexico's Cantarell - so their benefit is short-lived. Considering the cost of exploration and discovery, the long lead time needed to put safe extraction technology in place, and the limits on the number of recovery wells that can be sunk into a single reserve, deep water oil is very unlikely to keep up with the declines in land-based production. It is very possible that deep water oil may quickly become non viable economically and have to be abandoned.
* Methane hydrates (as well as coal bed methane and bio-mass methane) are seen as a strong potential as the next great energy source. Certainly with the decline in viability of shale gas this will renew the expectations for methane hydrates. I have covered this extensively in my blog. The estimates for recoverability of Methane Hydrates are all over the map, as are the reserves that have a potential for economic recovery if the technology can be sorted out. In general, however, the recoverability estimates, I believe, are badly overstated. In addition it would take a whole new energy infrastructure to take full advantage of these resources, an energy infrastructure that I believe we are already past the point of possibility of developing.
* There is an ever growing disparity between WTI crude prices and the other, more realistic prices of oil such as Brent. The WTI, NYMEX-traded, American price is being kept artificially low as the US, the world's largest oil importer, attempts to impose prices on the rest of the world in order to keep it's ever increasing energy costs in check, particularly as it tries to recover from the 2008 global economic recession, which it still has not managed to do. Increasingly global oil producers will not trade their oil contracts on NYMEX because they are able to get much better prices on other global oil commodity exchanges which more accurately reflect the state of global oil reserves. With the US credit rating having recently been downgraded by S&P there is an increasing possibility that the US dollar will be overthrown as the global reserve currency. This will make the US/NYMEX oil pricing increasingly irrelevant and drive the cost the US must pay for oil up to realistic levels equivalent to what the rest of the world pays.
* Over the past several years there is a clear, but unprovable pattern, of the US waging war after war against oil-rich countries in the hands of rulers, usually dictators, not friendly to the U.S. First there was Iraq and Afghanistan (the gateway to the Caspian Sea oil province), then the suspected involvement in the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt, the invasion of Libya, the suspected involvement in the division of Sudan, the continued saber rattling at Iran and Venezuela, and the increasing rhetoric, now that Libya is more or less settled, over Syria. After the invasion of Afghanistan a former executive of Conoco Phillips, Ahmid Karzai, was installed as ruler and plans immediately began for a pipeline to bring Caspian oil to a Pacific port via Afghanistan. After the invasion of Irag western oil companies immediately began negotiating for their share of the Iraqi oil pie. The same is about to happen in Libya. And when Sudan was partitioned the US took aim at the oil reserves in the newly separated south Sudan. The saber rattling over Iran, Syria and others has as much to do with their oil reserves as politics. And in all, the US has more military presence in the Arabian Gulf than anywhere else in the world except the US itself.
* Despite several years of teeth gnashing and negative press in the US over Canada's tar sands oil being dirty oil (complete with bans against it in several states including California), the US government has a measure on the table for building a high volume pipeline, the Keystone Pipeline, from Alberta to the major US oil refineries in Texas and elsewhere along the Gulf coast. It is obvious they only consider tar sands oil dirty when they can get adequate supply from elsewhere in the world. With the reality of declining OPEC, Mexican and other sources of oil staring them in the face, they desperately want to tie up that Canadian tar sands oil, particularly since China is making increasing investment in the tar sands also in an attempt to ensure future oil availability. Venezuela has vast oil sands, in the Orinoco region, that probably equal those in Canada, but Venezuela is not friendly to US interests.
* The US is quietly but increasingly reducing its investment in automobile infrastructure (highways, tunnels, bridges, etc) including new construction and maintenance of existing infrastructure. This is obviously partly due to the long recession that has gripped the country but it is a clear indicator that when budgets are tight they are no longer prepared to give top priority to automobile infrastructure.
* Most developed nations such as the US and European nations are placing increased emphasis on electric cars as the centerpiece of the future of the automobile. That, however, ignores the simple and glaringly obvious reality that electrical generation and transmission infrastructure is rapidly deteriorating and will require massive billions of dollars of investment in order to support an electric car culture. In addition, any sort of serious government push to accelerate the conversion to electric cars will dramatically increase the drawdown of increasingly rare resources, particularly for the production of the batteries needed to run those electric cars. It is clearly doubtful if the hundreds of millions of cars in the US and Europe will ever be replaced wholesale by electric vehicles.
* Increasingly over the past decade, published oil production and reserve figures have been broadened to include more and more questionable commodities such as synthetic oil from tar sands, liquid fuels created from coal and natural gas condensates, liquid fuels produced from shale formations, ethanol, bio-fuels and more. The simple reality already is that traditional crude oil is no longer satisfying the demand but is increasingly reliant on these other non-traditional sources to make up the shortfall. But even the figures reported by the EIA, of crude plus condensates, are already on the decline.
Peak oil is not an event wherein all of a sudden one day governments, business and the media will announce that peak oil has arrived and we all need to adjust the way we live on this planet. It won't be sudden. It won't be clear. And in the initial stages of the decline following peak there is plenty of wiggle room to disguise the fact that we are in decline, and room to perpetuate the state of denial in which we have existed for the past couple of decades. As has often been said, peak oil ultimately will only be recognized in the rearview mirror.
I believe peak oil has already arrived. I believe, in fact, based on the data available, peak oil arrived in 2005. In the several years since then enormous effort has been put into disguising that reality and turning to other energy sources and classifying them as oil to allow that facade to be maintained. I do not believe we are adjusting to the reality of peak oil. I belief we are firmly entrenched in trying to deny that reality and scrambling ever harder to find some viable energy alternative that will allow us to carry on business as usual to keep us from ever having to deal with that reality. The chances are very slim, however, of finding any energy source that will allow us the massive amounts of cheap energy that we derive from crude oil. Peak oil will probably mean peak net energy and be followed by an accelerating decline in all forms of energy.
The news, however, is not all bad. Peak oil and peak net energy will also mean peak CO2 emissions. That will allow the planet a chance to begin recovering from the damage our high energy human lifestyle has inflicted on the planet. That at least improves the prospect of the long term survivability of our species and that of other species with whom we reluctantly share this planet.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Can we survive our successes?
As advanced technological societies like ours fall apart with the accelerating decline in resource availability, I believe survivability is going to have to be accomplished at the community level, not as a scattering of rugged individualists living on their backwoods homesteads. We are still going to need some separation and specialization of skills and responsibilities and the optimum economies of scale that are afforded by the community that cannot be achieved by one individual. And, of course, from a natural selection point of view, we are going to need a broad, varied and healthy gene pool to avoid the problems of long term interbreeding.
Most importantly, however, if any significant portion of the current level of human population is to survive into the future, we are going to have to rely on agriculture. There simply are not enough resources, or wilderness left for those resources, to support any more than a very small human population well below one billion, probably closer to 100-200 million globally. Without the massive fossil fuel inputs on which modern agriculture critically relies, however, the new labor-intensive agriculture of the future is going to have to be community dependent and community supporting. It is going to have to become a key, even dominant part of the community's way of life.
I believe the appropriate size of community in a post-carbon world will be relatively small, with more than a few hundred but no more than perhaps ten thousand in total. That size allows for a diverse collection of specialized skills, helping to ensure the community's self-sufficiency and self-reliance. But I still see trade between neighboring communities for specialized goods and services (e.g. high education) that there is no justification or benefit in replicating in every community. That size is also still small enough to have and maintain a truly homogeneous sense of community and community spirit, a pulling together for the benefit of all. And yet large enough to allow, even encourage, friendly competition both within and between communities.
The first key to the community's self-sufficiency must be agriculture. The community has to be able to produce all of the food needed to sustain its whole population. This is one of the areas where the efficiencies of scale and specialization must come strongly into play.
Everybody needs potatoes, but not everyone is good at growing potatoes, and not everyone's soil is good for growing potatoes. But somewhere in the broader community is a patch of the ideal soil for growing potatoes and someone who grows potatoes better than anyone else. True community efficiency is achieved by bringing those two elements together, not just for the benefit of the best potato grower but for the benefit of the whole community. Each crop, be it potatoes, corn, pole beans, tomatoes or whatever, has its own specialists who produce enough for the whole community.
The same thing applies to animal husbandry. Someone in the community is probably best at raising chickens and getting optimum egg production and growing the best eating birds. Someone else is good at managing a dairy herd. Someone else is exceptional at raising rabbits, someone else sheep or goats. And someone is best at breeding and raising the all important horses, or even oxen, on which, over time, the community will become so dependent. With specialization optimum community efficiency will result.
That specialization would, of course, carry over into trades. Someone is excellent at making and repairing furniture. Another is an excellent potter. Someone else is a good sheet-metal worker, another a blacksmith, yet another is the best house-builder, or chimney builder, or barn builder or saddle and harness maker. Someone is best at making pants, or shirts, or sweaters, or mitts, or hats, or toques, or shoes, or underwear, or coats.
The key to all of this, however, is how to value the effort that everyone contributes to the welfare of the community. What is someone's time worth? Is the cabinet maker's time more valuable than the farmhand who milks the cows in the dairy? Is the dressmaker more valuable than the milliner? The blacksmith more valuable than the potter? In the truest sense of community the answer on all is; no. Everyone's contribution is of equal value. Were it otherwise then people naturally will want to specialize in those skills that are considered more valuable and the tasks considered to be of less value will always be short-staffed. And it is that artificial valuation of skills, based on their ability to make money for other people, that has been the underpinning of eco-destructive, resource-consuming, profit-driven capitalism. It is what has turned us all into wage slaves.
By now, of course, you are saying to yourself that this all sounds like communism and you will see it as good or bad depending on your gut reaction and view of communism. But that is just a word. We don't look at a herd of elephants and label them communists. Nor a herd of cows, a pack of wolves, a flock of geese, a pride of lions. If I had to put a label on it I would define it as tribalism.
The tribe appears to be the evolutionary ideal structure of human collective. Even within the larger social structures and communities of modern civilization, tribalism still prevails as a homogeneous unit within those larger communities. But too often the traditional tribe is plagued by the problems inherent in inbreeding in a small gene pool. Neo-tribalism would attempt to capitalize, through knowledge we have gained over milennia, on the benefits of the tribal model and community size without the downsides.
Tribalism, essentially, implies broad blood relationships. It is generally focused on the multiple generations of the extended family, strengthened and broadened by marriage between members of separate tribal units. And that blood relationship within the group is the commonality across a wide variety of animal species. It is common not only to humans but to all herding and group-based species, like elephants, lions, wolves, geese, buffalo, gnus, gazelles, lemurs, ants, bees, and many, many more. And it is the basis of a group dynamic that has remained remarkably and unshakably consistent through all of evolutionary history.
We are, after all, gene machines, each and every one of us. Our intellect cannot overcome that. And why would we want to? If it ain't broke, why fix it? Every other method of artificial social organization that we have tried to use as a motivational force to hold a group together has had a beginning, middle and end to its period in human history. Through all of those competing structures the one consistency has always been the tribal unit of the extended family. And as each of those social structures have fails it is the tribal extended family that becomes the glue that holds society together while we search for the next artificial, human-created social unit. When times get tough, it is the extended family that endures and sustains. When a community disintegrates it is not the community which moves out to start over again. It is the extended family.
Our modern societies have allowed, even encouraged us to pursue individualism, to move away from the nuclear family and seek our own individual destiny within the larger social unit of city or nation. And yet when those pursuits fail it is the welcoming bossom of the extended family that we return to. Very often those larger social units see the tribalism of the extended family as a threat, a competitor. They feel they must break up that blood-based unit in order for their own artificial unit to succeed. That has almost become human nature over these past several centuries. We believe that all things natural are to be overcome, defeated, rather than worked within. As a species we are so intent on proving that we are somehow separate and apart from and superior to the natural world that we leave ourselves no choice but to do battle with it.
This has been a very long way of saying that community in the post-carbon world, I believe, is going to have to be tribal in nature, based on the blood relationships of the extended family. It is the only truly enduring form of human collective that will see us through the extremely difficult adjustments that are going to be thrust upon us as the planet's varied energy resources are driven into terminal decline by our species-centric overuse of them. I say species-centric rather than human-centric because it is not just the human population that has exploded with our overuse of fossil fuels. There have been parallel explosions in cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, dogs, cats, a very narrow selection of plants, and selective others at the incredible expense of the other tens of thousands of species with whom we are supposed to be sharing this planet. We have chauvinistically embraced the belief that if it's of no apparent use to humans it has no place in the world and can be eliminated.
Forget the debate. Forget what economists keep saying. Forget the pandering of politicians and the ludicrous reassurances of professional, paid deniers. Take this to the bank. Things are going to get very tough in the balance of your lifetime! And no one will be immune. Not the rich, nor the powerful. Not those with the biggest armies or the fattest bank accounts. They are all critically dependent on the fossil fuel economy we have created over these past couple of centuries. Those fat bank accounts will be meaningless when all of our debt-based, fiat money becomes worthless in a sea of noncollectable debt. Those armies will go nowhere when their fossil-fuel driven machines run out of fuel for the last time. And the food and goods to sustain even the rich will no longer arrive when the heavily fossil-fuel dependent global food and goods distribution industry grinds to a halt for lack of fuel.
This won't happen tomorrow. It may not even be rapid, but if we continue to plan our future in an intentionally entrenched state of denial it may very well be. More likely it will unfold over the course of decades, perhaps even a century or longer. More important, however, is the fact that it has already begun. The stresses created by the early declines in availability of the preferred light, sweet crude oil are already taking their toll globally.
America, fifty years ago, was the prime exporter of oil to the world. It now relies on foreign imports for over seventy percent of its oil, much of it from very politically unstable parts of the world. And an endless stream of wars are being fought in an attempt to ensure continued access to those ever-shrinking reserves. The Gulf of Mexico has been turned into a cesspool by offshore drilling with greater risks being taken daily with drilling in methane-prone deep-water areas. Northern Alberta has been turned into a lifeless and life-threatening moonscape, clearly visible from space, by the tar sands industry. In our quest for feedstock for biofuels we have pushed food prices to the breaking point for over a billion of the planet's poor and starving, while destroying a full quarter of equatorial rain forests to replace them with oil palm plantations. Our pursuit of alternatives, in the form of nuclear energy, have turned vast tracts into radio-active wastelands from Chernobyl to Fukushima to Three Mile Island. And, after over half a century, no one has yet figured out a workable method for the safe long term storage of deadly, highly-radioactive nuclear waste. Saner heads are finally beginning to prevail with nation after nation deciding to decommission its nuclear power plants. Entire mountains in many areas have been scraped away strip mining for coal with several underground coal seam fires have been burning unchecked for decades. Every major river has been dammed up to provide hydro-electricity to offset our diminishing fossil-fuel resources, destroying the habitat for hundreds of unique species. Vast tracts of prime agricultural land and critical fresh water aquifers are being destroyed by fracking in pursuit of natural gas as our oil resources diminish. And there is nowhere left on this planet that has not already been touched and despoiled by our refuse.
Put simply, we are destroying this planet and its life-support capability in the pursuit of the energy resources critically needed to maintain our institutionally-imposed, highly-unsustainable human lifestyle. I believe strongly that the greatest contributor to that unsustainability and eco-destruction is the city, the mega-community that has become so prevalent over the past two centuries. Cities, at least as they exist today, are totally artificial constructs that cannot be readily made self-supporting and self-reliant. They are totally dependent on resources attainable only beyond their limits. To even become self-reliant and self-supporting in terms of food would require a massive restructuring of the urban environment.
The primary justification for the manic growth of cities, particularly in this past century, has been the achievement of economies of scale in the mass production of industrial, commercial and consumer goods. Small workshops and cottage industry simply could not achieve those types of economies. But the goods manufactured in those massive, mechano-efficient factories have not been for the satisfaction of basic needs, not life-supporting. They are targeted at wants, artificial needs often having to be created and maintained with massive advertising campaigns. The purpose is selling product. And the focus is on the producers and their products, not the customers and their needs. We have completely turned the law of supply and demand on its head. The producer needs to sell product and lots of it and we have all been turned into consumers, not users, not purchasers, not customers, but consumers with an assumed and accepted duty and responsibility to continue to be good consumers buying products we do not need. And that is exactly what we are doing, consuming, consuming the planets critical, finite, non-renewable resources for the sake of amassing profits for the producers and their shareholders.
Those cities, especially western cities as they have evolved over the past half century plus, with increasingly separated industrial, business, retail and residential zones, have become totally dependent on the automobile. Take it away and they simply cannot function. And possibly the first real casualty of the decline in oil availability will be the automobile, or at least the private, family automobile. No great loss from a planetary survival perspective. That one item has been responsible for the greatest consumption and misuse of this planet's resources in human history.
The small, agrarian community is the only realistic model for a post carbon society capable of supporting a reasonable percentage of our current, global population. But the vast majority of that population has no life experience of the small community, especially one devoid of the technology on which we have become so fixated and dependent. And the transition to that lifestyle will, for most, be very difficult. But consider the alternatives.
Whether you like it or not, believe it or not, accept it or not, the world, especially the highly urbanized world of cities, is not run by politicians and governments. It is run by global corporations and banks, each with more power than the government of any single nation within whose borders they operate. Probably the greatest social mistake made since the onset of the industrial revolution has been granting these soulless organizations the status of artificial people. Corporations have been granted all of the rights of an individual under the law, without the limitations that make life for real individuals a struggle. And the single most important difference between the corporation and you or I is longevity. We live an average of seventy years or so. A corporation, as they exist today, can go on, in theory, for hundreds or even thousands of years.
This was not always the case. When corporations were first created they were incorporated or set up to bring together the large amounts of capital needed to achieve a specific objective (e.g. the building of bridge, construction of a railway, the digging of a canal, establishment of a plantation in a far-flung corner of the world). They were chartered with a sunset clause, a time and a specific event that would initiate their unwinding. And they were limited to activities consistent with the satisfaction of the terms of their charter. Somehow, that simple, controllable, purpose-driven organization has been allowed to evolve into a cancerous blight that grows out of control destroying or devouring everything around it.
Was it ever possible to imbue the corporation with a soul, a conscience? Perhaps, perhaps not, but it is probably too late now. But, if we do not strip corporations of their unchecked power to gobble up this planets resources in the single-minded pursuit of profits they will collectively complete their assumed job of converting everything available into money, into profits. They will go on as long as there are resources available. They will ultimately destroy the planet, with no compunction, in that pursuit and leave the whole damned thing a barren wasteland just like any of the thousands of other abandoned, toxic factory and industrial sites they have already left behind.
I know I'm being melodramatic, totally impractical, polemic. But nothing else we try to do to save this planet as our home has any chance of working as long as corporations continue to be allowed the rights and powers they now enjoy and so vigorously abuse. We may as well stand before the factory doors, bend over and kiss our collective asses goodbye.
Embleton out!
Most importantly, however, if any significant portion of the current level of human population is to survive into the future, we are going to have to rely on agriculture. There simply are not enough resources, or wilderness left for those resources, to support any more than a very small human population well below one billion, probably closer to 100-200 million globally. Without the massive fossil fuel inputs on which modern agriculture critically relies, however, the new labor-intensive agriculture of the future is going to have to be community dependent and community supporting. It is going to have to become a key, even dominant part of the community's way of life.
I believe the appropriate size of community in a post-carbon world will be relatively small, with more than a few hundred but no more than perhaps ten thousand in total. That size allows for a diverse collection of specialized skills, helping to ensure the community's self-sufficiency and self-reliance. But I still see trade between neighboring communities for specialized goods and services (e.g. high education) that there is no justification or benefit in replicating in every community. That size is also still small enough to have and maintain a truly homogeneous sense of community and community spirit, a pulling together for the benefit of all. And yet large enough to allow, even encourage, friendly competition both within and between communities.
The first key to the community's self-sufficiency must be agriculture. The community has to be able to produce all of the food needed to sustain its whole population. This is one of the areas where the efficiencies of scale and specialization must come strongly into play.
Everybody needs potatoes, but not everyone is good at growing potatoes, and not everyone's soil is good for growing potatoes. But somewhere in the broader community is a patch of the ideal soil for growing potatoes and someone who grows potatoes better than anyone else. True community efficiency is achieved by bringing those two elements together, not just for the benefit of the best potato grower but for the benefit of the whole community. Each crop, be it potatoes, corn, pole beans, tomatoes or whatever, has its own specialists who produce enough for the whole community.
The same thing applies to animal husbandry. Someone in the community is probably best at raising chickens and getting optimum egg production and growing the best eating birds. Someone else is good at managing a dairy herd. Someone else is exceptional at raising rabbits, someone else sheep or goats. And someone is best at breeding and raising the all important horses, or even oxen, on which, over time, the community will become so dependent. With specialization optimum community efficiency will result.
That specialization would, of course, carry over into trades. Someone is excellent at making and repairing furniture. Another is an excellent potter. Someone else is a good sheet-metal worker, another a blacksmith, yet another is the best house-builder, or chimney builder, or barn builder or saddle and harness maker. Someone is best at making pants, or shirts, or sweaters, or mitts, or hats, or toques, or shoes, or underwear, or coats.
The key to all of this, however, is how to value the effort that everyone contributes to the welfare of the community. What is someone's time worth? Is the cabinet maker's time more valuable than the farmhand who milks the cows in the dairy? Is the dressmaker more valuable than the milliner? The blacksmith more valuable than the potter? In the truest sense of community the answer on all is; no. Everyone's contribution is of equal value. Were it otherwise then people naturally will want to specialize in those skills that are considered more valuable and the tasks considered to be of less value will always be short-staffed. And it is that artificial valuation of skills, based on their ability to make money for other people, that has been the underpinning of eco-destructive, resource-consuming, profit-driven capitalism. It is what has turned us all into wage slaves.
By now, of course, you are saying to yourself that this all sounds like communism and you will see it as good or bad depending on your gut reaction and view of communism. But that is just a word. We don't look at a herd of elephants and label them communists. Nor a herd of cows, a pack of wolves, a flock of geese, a pride of lions. If I had to put a label on it I would define it as tribalism.
The tribe appears to be the evolutionary ideal structure of human collective. Even within the larger social structures and communities of modern civilization, tribalism still prevails as a homogeneous unit within those larger communities. But too often the traditional tribe is plagued by the problems inherent in inbreeding in a small gene pool. Neo-tribalism would attempt to capitalize, through knowledge we have gained over milennia, on the benefits of the tribal model and community size without the downsides.
Tribalism, essentially, implies broad blood relationships. It is generally focused on the multiple generations of the extended family, strengthened and broadened by marriage between members of separate tribal units. And that blood relationship within the group is the commonality across a wide variety of animal species. It is common not only to humans but to all herding and group-based species, like elephants, lions, wolves, geese, buffalo, gnus, gazelles, lemurs, ants, bees, and many, many more. And it is the basis of a group dynamic that has remained remarkably and unshakably consistent through all of evolutionary history.
We are, after all, gene machines, each and every one of us. Our intellect cannot overcome that. And why would we want to? If it ain't broke, why fix it? Every other method of artificial social organization that we have tried to use as a motivational force to hold a group together has had a beginning, middle and end to its period in human history. Through all of those competing structures the one consistency has always been the tribal unit of the extended family. And as each of those social structures have fails it is the tribal extended family that becomes the glue that holds society together while we search for the next artificial, human-created social unit. When times get tough, it is the extended family that endures and sustains. When a community disintegrates it is not the community which moves out to start over again. It is the extended family.
Our modern societies have allowed, even encouraged us to pursue individualism, to move away from the nuclear family and seek our own individual destiny within the larger social unit of city or nation. And yet when those pursuits fail it is the welcoming bossom of the extended family that we return to. Very often those larger social units see the tribalism of the extended family as a threat, a competitor. They feel they must break up that blood-based unit in order for their own artificial unit to succeed. That has almost become human nature over these past several centuries. We believe that all things natural are to be overcome, defeated, rather than worked within. As a species we are so intent on proving that we are somehow separate and apart from and superior to the natural world that we leave ourselves no choice but to do battle with it.
This has been a very long way of saying that community in the post-carbon world, I believe, is going to have to be tribal in nature, based on the blood relationships of the extended family. It is the only truly enduring form of human collective that will see us through the extremely difficult adjustments that are going to be thrust upon us as the planet's varied energy resources are driven into terminal decline by our species-centric overuse of them. I say species-centric rather than human-centric because it is not just the human population that has exploded with our overuse of fossil fuels. There have been parallel explosions in cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, dogs, cats, a very narrow selection of plants, and selective others at the incredible expense of the other tens of thousands of species with whom we are supposed to be sharing this planet. We have chauvinistically embraced the belief that if it's of no apparent use to humans it has no place in the world and can be eliminated.
Forget the debate. Forget what economists keep saying. Forget the pandering of politicians and the ludicrous reassurances of professional, paid deniers. Take this to the bank. Things are going to get very tough in the balance of your lifetime! And no one will be immune. Not the rich, nor the powerful. Not those with the biggest armies or the fattest bank accounts. They are all critically dependent on the fossil fuel economy we have created over these past couple of centuries. Those fat bank accounts will be meaningless when all of our debt-based, fiat money becomes worthless in a sea of noncollectable debt. Those armies will go nowhere when their fossil-fuel driven machines run out of fuel for the last time. And the food and goods to sustain even the rich will no longer arrive when the heavily fossil-fuel dependent global food and goods distribution industry grinds to a halt for lack of fuel.
This won't happen tomorrow. It may not even be rapid, but if we continue to plan our future in an intentionally entrenched state of denial it may very well be. More likely it will unfold over the course of decades, perhaps even a century or longer. More important, however, is the fact that it has already begun. The stresses created by the early declines in availability of the preferred light, sweet crude oil are already taking their toll globally.
America, fifty years ago, was the prime exporter of oil to the world. It now relies on foreign imports for over seventy percent of its oil, much of it from very politically unstable parts of the world. And an endless stream of wars are being fought in an attempt to ensure continued access to those ever-shrinking reserves. The Gulf of Mexico has been turned into a cesspool by offshore drilling with greater risks being taken daily with drilling in methane-prone deep-water areas. Northern Alberta has been turned into a lifeless and life-threatening moonscape, clearly visible from space, by the tar sands industry. In our quest for feedstock for biofuels we have pushed food prices to the breaking point for over a billion of the planet's poor and starving, while destroying a full quarter of equatorial rain forests to replace them with oil palm plantations. Our pursuit of alternatives, in the form of nuclear energy, have turned vast tracts into radio-active wastelands from Chernobyl to Fukushima to Three Mile Island. And, after over half a century, no one has yet figured out a workable method for the safe long term storage of deadly, highly-radioactive nuclear waste. Saner heads are finally beginning to prevail with nation after nation deciding to decommission its nuclear power plants. Entire mountains in many areas have been scraped away strip mining for coal with several underground coal seam fires have been burning unchecked for decades. Every major river has been dammed up to provide hydro-electricity to offset our diminishing fossil-fuel resources, destroying the habitat for hundreds of unique species. Vast tracts of prime agricultural land and critical fresh water aquifers are being destroyed by fracking in pursuit of natural gas as our oil resources diminish. And there is nowhere left on this planet that has not already been touched and despoiled by our refuse.
Put simply, we are destroying this planet and its life-support capability in the pursuit of the energy resources critically needed to maintain our institutionally-imposed, highly-unsustainable human lifestyle. I believe strongly that the greatest contributor to that unsustainability and eco-destruction is the city, the mega-community that has become so prevalent over the past two centuries. Cities, at least as they exist today, are totally artificial constructs that cannot be readily made self-supporting and self-reliant. They are totally dependent on resources attainable only beyond their limits. To even become self-reliant and self-supporting in terms of food would require a massive restructuring of the urban environment.
The primary justification for the manic growth of cities, particularly in this past century, has been the achievement of economies of scale in the mass production of industrial, commercial and consumer goods. Small workshops and cottage industry simply could not achieve those types of economies. But the goods manufactured in those massive, mechano-efficient factories have not been for the satisfaction of basic needs, not life-supporting. They are targeted at wants, artificial needs often having to be created and maintained with massive advertising campaigns. The purpose is selling product. And the focus is on the producers and their products, not the customers and their needs. We have completely turned the law of supply and demand on its head. The producer needs to sell product and lots of it and we have all been turned into consumers, not users, not purchasers, not customers, but consumers with an assumed and accepted duty and responsibility to continue to be good consumers buying products we do not need. And that is exactly what we are doing, consuming, consuming the planets critical, finite, non-renewable resources for the sake of amassing profits for the producers and their shareholders.
Those cities, especially western cities as they have evolved over the past half century plus, with increasingly separated industrial, business, retail and residential zones, have become totally dependent on the automobile. Take it away and they simply cannot function. And possibly the first real casualty of the decline in oil availability will be the automobile, or at least the private, family automobile. No great loss from a planetary survival perspective. That one item has been responsible for the greatest consumption and misuse of this planet's resources in human history.
The small, agrarian community is the only realistic model for a post carbon society capable of supporting a reasonable percentage of our current, global population. But the vast majority of that population has no life experience of the small community, especially one devoid of the technology on which we have become so fixated and dependent. And the transition to that lifestyle will, for most, be very difficult. But consider the alternatives.
Whether you like it or not, believe it or not, accept it or not, the world, especially the highly urbanized world of cities, is not run by politicians and governments. It is run by global corporations and banks, each with more power than the government of any single nation within whose borders they operate. Probably the greatest social mistake made since the onset of the industrial revolution has been granting these soulless organizations the status of artificial people. Corporations have been granted all of the rights of an individual under the law, without the limitations that make life for real individuals a struggle. And the single most important difference between the corporation and you or I is longevity. We live an average of seventy years or so. A corporation, as they exist today, can go on, in theory, for hundreds or even thousands of years.
This was not always the case. When corporations were first created they were incorporated or set up to bring together the large amounts of capital needed to achieve a specific objective (e.g. the building of bridge, construction of a railway, the digging of a canal, establishment of a plantation in a far-flung corner of the world). They were chartered with a sunset clause, a time and a specific event that would initiate their unwinding. And they were limited to activities consistent with the satisfaction of the terms of their charter. Somehow, that simple, controllable, purpose-driven organization has been allowed to evolve into a cancerous blight that grows out of control destroying or devouring everything around it.
Was it ever possible to imbue the corporation with a soul, a conscience? Perhaps, perhaps not, but it is probably too late now. But, if we do not strip corporations of their unchecked power to gobble up this planets resources in the single-minded pursuit of profits they will collectively complete their assumed job of converting everything available into money, into profits. They will go on as long as there are resources available. They will ultimately destroy the planet, with no compunction, in that pursuit and leave the whole damned thing a barren wasteland just like any of the thousands of other abandoned, toxic factory and industrial sites they have already left behind.
I know I'm being melodramatic, totally impractical, polemic. But nothing else we try to do to save this planet as our home has any chance of working as long as corporations continue to be allowed the rights and powers they now enjoy and so vigorously abuse. We may as well stand before the factory doors, bend over and kiss our collective asses goodbye.
Embleton out!
Thursday, April 14, 2011
I Haven't Abandoned Peak Oil!
Several readers have recently asked me why I stopped writing about peak oil? I could simply say that I turned my writing energy loose on novel writing; already having finished one and now half way through another. But I am accustomed to balancing multiple different writing projects, especially when they are in totally different genres.
What really happened is that I got tired of banging my head against the wall. Nobody is listening, and certainly not the people who need to; politicians and industry leaders, business executives and media pundits. The primary objective of all of them is perpetuation of business as usual. And that business as usual is the problem, not the solution.
I doubted whether my voice was needed any longer. There are, after all, many other voices out there still talking peak oil, most much stronger voices than myself. They seem content to carry on the fight even in the face of endless losses, all in the belief that no matter how many battles they lose they will eventually win the war. I can't do that. I'm much too pragmatic. I see no redeeming value in continuing to fight a battle which I know I will lose in the end. It is better, in my mind, to walk away and live to fight another day.
I have not abandoned peak oil. I can't. It is, in fact, the primary backdrop to the first novel I mentioned above. It is also the defining issue of our time for humanity, even if humanity thus far refuses to see that. But when you are faced with overwhelming opposition, the only way to carry on the fight is to go underground. And that is what I have done.
I have done a lot of thinking about why people refuse to face the reality of peak oil, all in an attempt to figure out how to force them to face it and deal with it. On the surface it appears that the answer is simple. People are afraid of what peak oil will do to their lives and, therefore, hope that it is not true and hope that by not accepting it, it will simply go away so they don't have to deal with it. It's an odd form of denial.
On the other hand, however, it is possible that the majority of people simply do not know about peak oil, are not aware that there is a very serious crisis ahead, do not yet understand that their lives are going to be turned upside down and they will be faced with a battle just to survive. That would be understandable.
Government, business, industry, and the mainstream media are all declaring that there is no problem, that we have more than enough oil and other energy to keep the lights on for millennia to come. Every new oil discovery, no matter how small and inconsequential, is touted as undeniable proof that there is an endless supply of oil and that all we have to do is find it and extract it. Who cares if we destroy ANWR as well as the Gulf and virtually all of Northern Alberta and wherever else we pursue a major oil play. From time to time they still trot out that old, totally discredited chestnut of the Russian abiotic oil theory that claims oil is being constantly generated in the earth's mantle from inorganic material and will never run out.
It leaves one to wonder, therefore, not why people are in denial or ignorant of the issue but, rather, why is so much effort being made by government and industry to keep people in denial, to keep them ignorant of the looming disaster? It's like not going public with the news that a one-hundred-mile-wide asteroid is headed directly for the earth. Better to let the masses enjoy their final days in ignorance. But as long as that much effort is being lavished on denial, a critical mass of people who understand and accept peak oil will never be achieved. And that is the real tragedy here, that that ignorance robs people of the option to prepare for what is coming.
Why, you may ask, should it matter? So people are kept ignorant of the looming crisis. So what? One very simple reason.... Peak oil is survivable, with knowledge and proper preparation. Even more importantly, however, is this reality. The worst impact of peak oil on global society could be prevented if we acted now with a radical change in direction in the way human society operates.
Preventable! If we change course!
The corollary to that, of course, is that if we do not change course and persist with business as usual, the entire human population will face the most extreme consequences of peak oil when it arrives. Guaranteed!
That is why, to me, it has always been a no-brainer. If we change course, we can prevent the worst impact. If we don't, we'll face the worst head on. Duhhhh! Let me think. Do I want to stare death in the face, with a one in ten chance of survival, and see if I can survive it or do I want to change direction and avoid it?
That's right! I said a one in ten chance of survival.
The human carrying capacity of the earth following the depletion of the planet's fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) is generally estimated at between .5 and 1.5 billion people. We currently have a global population approaching 7 billion and if the population trend continues for the next 40-50 years it will top 10 billion. Even if the carrying capacity is twice the estimate, which is very unlikely (it has been estimated that in the 2-3 decades immediately following depletion of the fossil fuels the population could drop to under 500 million) that would still mean that 3-4 out of every 5 humans alive at that time will not survive. Are you willing to gamble that you will be one of the survivors with no advance preparation?
In case you haven't heard, or have heard and still refuse to believe, peak oil is not, as some professional denialists would have you believe, some radical, fringe theory put out by a bunch of wacko conspiracy theorists. And it is not, as some of those conspiracy theorists suggest, a con job by the oil, coal and natural gas industries to keep the price of their products high. It is, in fact, in my opinion, not a theory at all. It is an inescapable reality that is unfolding even now.
The peak oil philosophy is supported by, taught about, lectured on, and written about by college professors, former energy industry executives no longer beholden to an industry paycheck and free to speak openly, some current and former national leaders, several major entertainers, a plethora of writers, a variety of reputable energy industry analysts, many leading economists, some brave, outspoken serving politicians, and a few brave mainstream journalists.
So why aren't people hearing the message? Noise! There are simply far more promoters of denial, pushers of business as usual, salesmen of the American dream, peddlers of happiness, all hawking their wares at maximum volume for any note of reality to possibly squeeze into the public consciousness. Who wants to hear about some threat to the good life when they can buy a car that parks itself? Who wants to hear about a looming disaster when American Idol is there on our high-definition, dolby stereo, flat-screen 64" plasma TV to entertain us? You mean The Osbornes and Survivor aren't really reality? You mean we aren't in Iraq to bring them democracy and freedom? And yes, Virginia, there really is no frickin' red-suited Santa Claus!
Wake up people! Before it's too damned late! You've got some changes to make! Turn off the TV. Park the Hummer in the garage. Turn off the damned air conditioner and open the windows. Boycott MacDonalds and WalMart and everybody else who's pushing the American dream of cheap and fast. Walk to the damned convenience store next time you need a quart of milk. Trade in those damned gucchi loafers for a pair of cheap sneakers. Sell all that expensive jewelery and buy a year's supply of rice and dried beans. Turn that 1/2 acre of grass in front of your house into a garden that produces stuff you can actually eat. And get the hell out of that 5000 square foot Mcmansion that you can't afford to heat and into something practical.
I don't know what to tell you, and I don't think it's my job. You have to educate yourself and decide what is the best way for you and your family and friends and community to survive. Every case is different. All I know is, if you are an average American, you're going to have to change a lot. And there's no time like the present. So don't wait. Get on with it. And if there are hurdles in the way, like zoning laws, work on changing and eliminating them now rather than later. Once we have passed peak oil, which I honestly believe has already happened but has been disguised by the prolonged economic downturn, it will become increasingly difficult to get your preparations done in time. You have to be prepared before things reach the critical stage.
I don't believe we will ever recover from the current global economic downturn. But we will, unfortunately, try very hard to recover. And those attempts at recovery will likely push us ever faster toward that post-carbon world and leave us wholly unprepared to deal with it.
I am glad that my age any deteriorating health make it unlikely that I will have to deal with that. It's not going to be pretty. But if you are younger, especially if you are still in or have recently left school, for God's sake do yourself a favour and stop listening to CNN and Fox and reading the mainstream daily for your news. They aren't going to tell you what's really happening until its too late. Don't let them keep you in the dark. You've got to get ahead of the game because it's all going to come apart in your lifetime.
What really happened is that I got tired of banging my head against the wall. Nobody is listening, and certainly not the people who need to; politicians and industry leaders, business executives and media pundits. The primary objective of all of them is perpetuation of business as usual. And that business as usual is the problem, not the solution.
I doubted whether my voice was needed any longer. There are, after all, many other voices out there still talking peak oil, most much stronger voices than myself. They seem content to carry on the fight even in the face of endless losses, all in the belief that no matter how many battles they lose they will eventually win the war. I can't do that. I'm much too pragmatic. I see no redeeming value in continuing to fight a battle which I know I will lose in the end. It is better, in my mind, to walk away and live to fight another day.
I have not abandoned peak oil. I can't. It is, in fact, the primary backdrop to the first novel I mentioned above. It is also the defining issue of our time for humanity, even if humanity thus far refuses to see that. But when you are faced with overwhelming opposition, the only way to carry on the fight is to go underground. And that is what I have done.
I have done a lot of thinking about why people refuse to face the reality of peak oil, all in an attempt to figure out how to force them to face it and deal with it. On the surface it appears that the answer is simple. People are afraid of what peak oil will do to their lives and, therefore, hope that it is not true and hope that by not accepting it, it will simply go away so they don't have to deal with it. It's an odd form of denial.
On the other hand, however, it is possible that the majority of people simply do not know about peak oil, are not aware that there is a very serious crisis ahead, do not yet understand that their lives are going to be turned upside down and they will be faced with a battle just to survive. That would be understandable.
Government, business, industry, and the mainstream media are all declaring that there is no problem, that we have more than enough oil and other energy to keep the lights on for millennia to come. Every new oil discovery, no matter how small and inconsequential, is touted as undeniable proof that there is an endless supply of oil and that all we have to do is find it and extract it. Who cares if we destroy ANWR as well as the Gulf and virtually all of Northern Alberta and wherever else we pursue a major oil play. From time to time they still trot out that old, totally discredited chestnut of the Russian abiotic oil theory that claims oil is being constantly generated in the earth's mantle from inorganic material and will never run out.
It leaves one to wonder, therefore, not why people are in denial or ignorant of the issue but, rather, why is so much effort being made by government and industry to keep people in denial, to keep them ignorant of the looming disaster? It's like not going public with the news that a one-hundred-mile-wide asteroid is headed directly for the earth. Better to let the masses enjoy their final days in ignorance. But as long as that much effort is being lavished on denial, a critical mass of people who understand and accept peak oil will never be achieved. And that is the real tragedy here, that that ignorance robs people of the option to prepare for what is coming.
Why, you may ask, should it matter? So people are kept ignorant of the looming crisis. So what? One very simple reason.... Peak oil is survivable, with knowledge and proper preparation. Even more importantly, however, is this reality. The worst impact of peak oil on global society could be prevented if we acted now with a radical change in direction in the way human society operates.
Preventable! If we change course!
The corollary to that, of course, is that if we do not change course and persist with business as usual, the entire human population will face the most extreme consequences of peak oil when it arrives. Guaranteed!
That is why, to me, it has always been a no-brainer. If we change course, we can prevent the worst impact. If we don't, we'll face the worst head on. Duhhhh! Let me think. Do I want to stare death in the face, with a one in ten chance of survival, and see if I can survive it or do I want to change direction and avoid it?
That's right! I said a one in ten chance of survival.
The human carrying capacity of the earth following the depletion of the planet's fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) is generally estimated at between .5 and 1.5 billion people. We currently have a global population approaching 7 billion and if the population trend continues for the next 40-50 years it will top 10 billion. Even if the carrying capacity is twice the estimate, which is very unlikely (it has been estimated that in the 2-3 decades immediately following depletion of the fossil fuels the population could drop to under 500 million) that would still mean that 3-4 out of every 5 humans alive at that time will not survive. Are you willing to gamble that you will be one of the survivors with no advance preparation?
In case you haven't heard, or have heard and still refuse to believe, peak oil is not, as some professional denialists would have you believe, some radical, fringe theory put out by a bunch of wacko conspiracy theorists. And it is not, as some of those conspiracy theorists suggest, a con job by the oil, coal and natural gas industries to keep the price of their products high. It is, in fact, in my opinion, not a theory at all. It is an inescapable reality that is unfolding even now.
The peak oil philosophy is supported by, taught about, lectured on, and written about by college professors, former energy industry executives no longer beholden to an industry paycheck and free to speak openly, some current and former national leaders, several major entertainers, a plethora of writers, a variety of reputable energy industry analysts, many leading economists, some brave, outspoken serving politicians, and a few brave mainstream journalists.
So why aren't people hearing the message? Noise! There are simply far more promoters of denial, pushers of business as usual, salesmen of the American dream, peddlers of happiness, all hawking their wares at maximum volume for any note of reality to possibly squeeze into the public consciousness. Who wants to hear about some threat to the good life when they can buy a car that parks itself? Who wants to hear about a looming disaster when American Idol is there on our high-definition, dolby stereo, flat-screen 64" plasma TV to entertain us? You mean The Osbornes and Survivor aren't really reality? You mean we aren't in Iraq to bring them democracy and freedom? And yes, Virginia, there really is no frickin' red-suited Santa Claus!
Wake up people! Before it's too damned late! You've got some changes to make! Turn off the TV. Park the Hummer in the garage. Turn off the damned air conditioner and open the windows. Boycott MacDonalds and WalMart and everybody else who's pushing the American dream of cheap and fast. Walk to the damned convenience store next time you need a quart of milk. Trade in those damned gucchi loafers for a pair of cheap sneakers. Sell all that expensive jewelery and buy a year's supply of rice and dried beans. Turn that 1/2 acre of grass in front of your house into a garden that produces stuff you can actually eat. And get the hell out of that 5000 square foot Mcmansion that you can't afford to heat and into something practical.
I don't know what to tell you, and I don't think it's my job. You have to educate yourself and decide what is the best way for you and your family and friends and community to survive. Every case is different. All I know is, if you are an average American, you're going to have to change a lot. And there's no time like the present. So don't wait. Get on with it. And if there are hurdles in the way, like zoning laws, work on changing and eliminating them now rather than later. Once we have passed peak oil, which I honestly believe has already happened but has been disguised by the prolonged economic downturn, it will become increasingly difficult to get your preparations done in time. You have to be prepared before things reach the critical stage.
I don't believe we will ever recover from the current global economic downturn. But we will, unfortunately, try very hard to recover. And those attempts at recovery will likely push us ever faster toward that post-carbon world and leave us wholly unprepared to deal with it.
I am glad that my age any deteriorating health make it unlikely that I will have to deal with that. It's not going to be pretty. But if you are younger, especially if you are still in or have recently left school, for God's sake do yourself a favour and stop listening to CNN and Fox and reading the mainstream daily for your news. They aren't going to tell you what's really happening until its too late. Don't let them keep you in the dark. You've got to get ahead of the game because it's all going to come apart in your lifetime.
Friday, April 02, 2010
A Balanced (hopefully) look at Methane Hydrates
When it comes to the issue of exploiting permafrost/undersea Methane Hydrates I definitely have a strong bias. I am against it. Nonetheless there are strong and, from some perspectives, valid opinions to the contrary. In this article I will attempt to present a balance of both sides of the argument, while taking certain editorial license consistent with my bias.
If you study the methane hydrate literature, as I have for the past several years - the newspaper and magazine articles, the web sites and blogs, the scientific papers - the one thing that is clear is that there are a lot of different and conflicting opinions in play. That is understandable. It is only in these past thirty years that the role of methane as an important carbon sink and a serious greenhouse gas, and the potential of methane hydrates as a fossil-fuel-replacing energy source have come to the forefront. Significant study of methane hydrates is really only in its infancy, and it is being driven, sponsored and financed by two different, opposing objectives. In fairness, however, I must point out that at this stage there are nearly as many concerns expressed and warnings issued from the energy industry as there are from the scientific community. The difference is that one side downplays the concerns and warnings and the other side pushes them to the forefront.
It is, nonetheless, those two different aspects of methane hydrates - as a source of the serious greenhouse gas more than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide and as a potential energy source - that are at the heart of the divergence of opinion. Those, like myself, focused on methane as a greenhouse gas see the potentially serious environmental risks and dangers involved in attempting to exploit methane hydrates, especially in view of our energy exploitation track record. Those focused on methane hydrates as a major potential energy source tend to downplay the risks and dangers in the name of "need", progress and national energy security.
But haven't we been here before? The orchestrated debate over cigarettes and tobacco? The debate constantly swirling around the burning of fossil fuels? The debate over biofuels contributing to escalating global hunger? The furious global warming debate? Even the rancorous terminology hurled from either side of the debate is the same.
I have listed nearly thirty online sources at the end of this article that show, as clearly and in as balanced a manner as I can manage, the clear divergence of literature fostered by the two different camps. If you are uncertain how you feel about the exploitation of methane hydrates, or if you are looking to build your knowledge about them I urge you to visit as many of these sites as possible. Alternatively, google searches will give you literally hundreds of thousands of references and sites to investigate. If you are looking for an overview, with a bias toward a concern for the risks and dangers, I invite you to read the several other articles I have written in my blog on the subject.
Unintended consequences
Various sites listed deal with unintended consequences. We can destabilize a reserve of methane hydrates accidentally when we aren't even attempting to exploit it. Methane Hydrate: A surprising compound, has this, ".....ocean-based oil-drilling operations sometimes encounter methane hydrate deposits. As a drill spins through the hydrate, the process can cause it to dissociate. The freed gas may explode, causing the drilling crew to lose control of the well. Another concern is that unstable hydrate layers could give way beneath oil platforms or, on a larger scale, even cause tsunamis."[2] Gas Hydrates: Natural gas hydrate studies in Canada, adds, "Shallow gas in the Mackenzie Delta, that may be attributable to hydrate, resulted in the loss of life of two drillers during early exploration." and includes this warning, "Present atmospheric methane is increasing at such a rate that if it continues, methane will be the dominant greenhouse gas in the second half of the century."[4] And methane, I remind you, is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
What unintended consequences might occur when we are intentionally interfering with methane hydrate reserves, with whatever extraction technology we might use? Methane hydrates: Energy's most dangerous game, addresses this issue directly. "The paradox is that while gas can be extracted from methane hydrates, doing so poses potentially catastrophic risks. ..... A substantial amount of evidence suggests that weakening the lattice-like structure of gas hydrates has triggered underwater landslides on the continental margin. In other words, the extraction process, if done improperly, could cause sudden disruptions on the ocean floor, reducing ocean pressure rates and releasing methane gas from hydrates."[6] This is addressed further in Realizing the Energy Potential of Methane Hydrate for the United States, in this statement. "The production of methane from methane hydrate also involves potential drilling and production safety issues and environmental consequences. Production safety issues are sometimes called “geohazards” because they refer to adverse geologic and environmental consequences that may result from human disturbance of the methane hydrate and surrounding sedimentary layers."[12] However a strong counter argument is presented in, Methane and Methane Hydrates, Section 2, "Nonetheless, the hydrates in the sediments of the seafloor do remain frozen: after all, they are icy lattices. In addition, they remain frozen even well above the normal melting point of ice (0°C; 32°F), and at temperatures up to about 15°C (59°F). They manage this feat because of the enormous pressure that exists at these depths."[15]
Political Pressures to use Methane as an Energy Source
The use of methane as a fuel and energy source is not some distant pipe dream. Significant quantities of methane (produced with digesters from animal manure) are already in use in some countries such as Denmark. But there appears to be serious political pressure and a genuine rush on to get at and use permafrost and undersea methane hydrates as a game-changing energy source, as outlined in Methane hydrates: Energy's most dangerous game. "Major government research initiatives have been launched in China, India, Germany, Norway, Russia, Taiwan and several other countries." the article says. "The Japanese government has estimated that producing gas from methane hydrates is commercially viable when oil prices rise above $54 a barrel. ..... To date, Japan has made the biggest bet on methane hydrates and appears to be the closest to commercial production."[6]
The underpinning of the political pressures to exploit methane hydrates can clearly be seen in this statement from Methane Hydrate - The Gas Resource of the Future. "According to EIA, total U.S. natural gas consumption is expected to increase from about 22 trillion cubic feet today to 26 trillion cubic feet in 2030- a projected jump of more than 18 percent [ed note: If natural gas to liquid is pursued as a serious alternative source of transportation fuel this estimate is far too low.]. ..... Production of domestic conventional and unconventional natural gas cannot keep pace with demand growth. The development of new, cost-effective resources such as methane hydrate can play a major role in moderating price increases and ensuring adequate future supplies of natural gas for American consumers."[11]
Optimistic Time Frames
That same site gives us a glimpse into the optimistic time frames being suggested and pursued. "We think that the future may be sooner than some of us are considering," Robert Hunter, president of ASRC Energy Services, which led the first major field study in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay with BP Alaska Exploration and the Department of Energy, told Petroleum News. "In parts of the world such as the North Slope, with unique motivation, hydrates may become a very stable source of natural gas within the next five to 10 years."[6] One wonders what he means with that phrase, "....with unique motivation....". Another view of the time frames is presented in Methane Hydrate Could Augment Natural Gas Supplies. "DOE's program and programs in the national and international research community provide increasing confidence from a technical standpoint that some commercial production of methane from methane hydrate could be achieved in the United States before 2025," said Charles Paull .... senior scientist, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California."[9]
Risks and Dangers
Another view of the risks and dangers involved, with or without human involvement and exploitation, is addressed in Gas (Methane) Hydrates -- A New Frontier, "Seafloor slopes of 5 degrees and less should be stable on the Atlantic continental margin, yet many landslide scars are present. The depth of the top of these scars is near the top of the hydrate zone, and seismic profiles indicate less hydrate in the sediment beneath slide scars. Evidence available suggests a link between hydrate instability and occurrence of landslides on the continental margin."[7]
A variety of extraction techniques are being looked at to overcome the inherent difficulties in exploiting methane hydrates, as detailed in A Breakthrough in Fuel Supplying From Methane Hydrates. "Getting methane hydrate gas to flow consistently and predictably, however, has been the problem. Using heat to release the gas works, but requires too much energy to be useful. Researchers have also been trying to release the methane by reducing the pressure on it. Then last month, the Mallik team became the first to use reduced pressure to get a steady, consistent flow."[13] Both of these techniques, however, and others, run the risk that once they successfully destabilize and disassociate the methane hydrates in any part of the reserve it could lead to a catastrophic runaway destabilization of the entire reserve, a warning repeated often through the literature listed at the end of this article. In the paper, Could Methane Trigger a Climate Doomsday Within a Human Lifespan? the concern over this potential is rooted in the geological past. "The new paper suggests that exactly this type of cascading release of methane reserves rapidly warmed the Earth 635 million years ago, replacing an Ice Age with a period of tropical heat. The study’s lead author suggests it could happen again, and fast - not over thousands or millions of years, but possibly within a century. ..... "This is a major concern because it’s possible that only a little warming can unleash this trapped methane," Martin Kennedy, a professor at UC Riverside, said in a release. "Unzippering the methane reservoir could potentially warm the Earth tens of degrees, and the mechanism could be geologically very rapid."."[23] The paper goes on to state that these concerns have caused a new focus in the scientific community. "Jim Kennett, a professor of geology and paleobiology at UC Santa Barbara, said that finding climate triggers and tipping points had become the most important scientific problem of our time."[23] These views, however, are not universal in the scientific community. "David Archer, a University of Chicago geosciences professor, argued in a paper last year that methane release appears likely to be "chronic rather than catastrophic" and only on the scale of human fossil-fuel combustion."[23] The concerns, however, are reiterated in Runaway Methane Global Warming. "From these records it appears that there have been short periods of only a few hundred years in the geological past when rapid increases of the Earth's temperature have occurred superimposed on top of the rise and fall of average temperatures over the longer term. For these short periods temperature rises of up to 8 degrees centigrade appear to have occurred on top of existing long term rises of 5 to 7 degrees to give temperatures up to 15 degrees centigrade warmer than today. Temperatures then fell back to the long term trend, the whole rise and fall only lasting a few hundred years. The most likely cause of this rapid global warming over such a short period is the release of methane into the atmosphere."[25]
In Methane Hydrates: A Carbon Management Challenge, the serious questions about the risks and dangers are asked but with no pretense of supplying answers or solutions. "What are the risks of recovering methane from ocean hydrates? Could the release of methane make the sediments unstable enough to cause the collapse of seafloor foundations for conventional oil and gas drilling rigs? Could the melting, or dissociation, of methane hydrate ice lead to releases of large volumes of methane to the atmosphere, raising greenhouse gas levels and exacerbating global warming?"[20] The depth and breadth of these issues are honestly explored in the U.S. Department of Energy paper, Methane Hydrates. "However, the issues surrounding methane hydrates go well beyond its energy resource potential. As field and laboratory studies supported by the Methane Hydrates Program continue to document hydrate’s integral and active role in the global environment, important new questions are raised about the influence of hydrates on the global carbon cycle, deep sea life, sea-floor stability, and other phenomena."[21] That verbiage, however, may just serve as a preamble to this, "Therefore, the National Methane Hydrate R&D Program is driven by the need to better understand the nature of hydrates, hydrate-bearing sediments, and the interaction between the global methane hydrate reservoir and the world’s oceans and atmosphere as a compliment to the ultimate realization of hydrate’s energy potential."[21]
If our global industrial society is to be kept rolling along at anything near its current vigorous pace, there is no question that global peaks in oil, natural gas and/or coal are going to require the exploitation of new energy sources such as methane hydrates, coal-bed methane, shale gas, shale oil, and the re-embracing of nuclear energy as a primary source of electrical energy. Plans for the exploitation of methane hydrates, however, in the name of energy security and in pursuit of the dream of national energy independence are not likely to materialize as governments and politicians hope and intend, It is very likely that methane will be drawn under the umbrella of natural gas and subject to global market trading and pricing. It is even more likely that the reserves of methane hydrates will end up in the hands of energy companies who are already lining up to buy leases in areas where significant methane hydrate reserves are suspected. Additionally the research and development on technologies for the extraction of methane hydrates is being driven and financed by these same energy companies. The likelihood of them willingly giving over control of those leases and that extraction to government energy departments is very slim. They will, after all, be moving heavily into these alternatives because their current cash cows are drying up. They need them for their future financial stability and continued growth.
I am quite sure that nothing bloggers such as myself or scientists have to say will ultimately have any bearing on what governments and the energy industry will do with methane hydrates. The best we can hope is to keep them honest.
Reference material
The following links were important sources of material for this article and are here for your reference.
1) Arctic Methane on the Move?
2) Methane Hydrate: A surprising compound
3) Methane hydrates
4) Gas Hydrates: Natural gas hydrate studies in Canada
5) Methane hydrates and global warming
6) Methane hydrates: Energy's most dangerous game
7) Gas (Methane) Hydrates -- A New Frontier
8) Japan eyes methane hydrate as energy savior
9) Methane Hydrate Could Augment Natural Gas Supplies
10) Japan Mines `Flammable Ice,' Flirts With Environmental Disaster
11) Methane Hydrate - The Gas Resource of the Future
12) Realizing the Energy Potential of Methane Hydrate for the United States
13) A Breakthrough in Fuel Supplying From Methane Hydrates
14) Permafrost Melting and Stability of Offshore Methane Hydrates Subject to Global Warming
15) METHANE AND METHANE HYDRATES, SECTION 2
16) Methane Hydrate Extraction To Become Viable?
17) Gas Hydrates: Entrance to a Methane Age or Climate Threat?
18) Ocean methane hydrates as a slow tipping point in the global carbon cycle
19) More evidence of climate change: Arctic methane hydrates evaporating
20) Methane Hydrates: A Carbon Management Challenge
21) METHANE HYDRATES
22) Methane Hydrates: An Abundance of Clean Energy?
23) Could Methane Trigger a Climate Doomsday Within a Human Lifespan?
24) Methane Hydrates: What are they thinking?
25) Runaway Methane Global Warming
26) Melting of permafrost could trigger rapid global warming warns UN
27) METHANE HYDRATE ICE: A Possible Mechanism For Ice Age And Global Warming Cycles
28) Ice Sculptures for Science: Chain Saws, Pickaxes, Methane Hydrates and Climate Change
29) Global Warming: Methane Could Be Far Worse Than Carbon Dioxide
If you study the methane hydrate literature, as I have for the past several years - the newspaper and magazine articles, the web sites and blogs, the scientific papers - the one thing that is clear is that there are a lot of different and conflicting opinions in play. That is understandable. It is only in these past thirty years that the role of methane as an important carbon sink and a serious greenhouse gas, and the potential of methane hydrates as a fossil-fuel-replacing energy source have come to the forefront. Significant study of methane hydrates is really only in its infancy, and it is being driven, sponsored and financed by two different, opposing objectives. In fairness, however, I must point out that at this stage there are nearly as many concerns expressed and warnings issued from the energy industry as there are from the scientific community. The difference is that one side downplays the concerns and warnings and the other side pushes them to the forefront.
It is, nonetheless, those two different aspects of methane hydrates - as a source of the serious greenhouse gas more than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide and as a potential energy source - that are at the heart of the divergence of opinion. Those, like myself, focused on methane as a greenhouse gas see the potentially serious environmental risks and dangers involved in attempting to exploit methane hydrates, especially in view of our energy exploitation track record. Those focused on methane hydrates as a major potential energy source tend to downplay the risks and dangers in the name of "need", progress and national energy security.
But haven't we been here before? The orchestrated debate over cigarettes and tobacco? The debate constantly swirling around the burning of fossil fuels? The debate over biofuels contributing to escalating global hunger? The furious global warming debate? Even the rancorous terminology hurled from either side of the debate is the same.
I have listed nearly thirty online sources at the end of this article that show, as clearly and in as balanced a manner as I can manage, the clear divergence of literature fostered by the two different camps. If you are uncertain how you feel about the exploitation of methane hydrates, or if you are looking to build your knowledge about them I urge you to visit as many of these sites as possible. Alternatively, google searches will give you literally hundreds of thousands of references and sites to investigate. If you are looking for an overview, with a bias toward a concern for the risks and dangers, I invite you to read the several other articles I have written in my blog on the subject.
Unintended consequences
Various sites listed deal with unintended consequences. We can destabilize a reserve of methane hydrates accidentally when we aren't even attempting to exploit it. Methane Hydrate: A surprising compound, has this, ".....ocean-based oil-drilling operations sometimes encounter methane hydrate deposits. As a drill spins through the hydrate, the process can cause it to dissociate. The freed gas may explode, causing the drilling crew to lose control of the well. Another concern is that unstable hydrate layers could give way beneath oil platforms or, on a larger scale, even cause tsunamis."[2] Gas Hydrates: Natural gas hydrate studies in Canada, adds, "Shallow gas in the Mackenzie Delta, that may be attributable to hydrate, resulted in the loss of life of two drillers during early exploration." and includes this warning, "Present atmospheric methane is increasing at such a rate that if it continues, methane will be the dominant greenhouse gas in the second half of the century."[4] And methane, I remind you, is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
What unintended consequences might occur when we are intentionally interfering with methane hydrate reserves, with whatever extraction technology we might use? Methane hydrates: Energy's most dangerous game, addresses this issue directly. "The paradox is that while gas can be extracted from methane hydrates, doing so poses potentially catastrophic risks. ..... A substantial amount of evidence suggests that weakening the lattice-like structure of gas hydrates has triggered underwater landslides on the continental margin. In other words, the extraction process, if done improperly, could cause sudden disruptions on the ocean floor, reducing ocean pressure rates and releasing methane gas from hydrates."[6] This is addressed further in Realizing the Energy Potential of Methane Hydrate for the United States, in this statement. "The production of methane from methane hydrate also involves potential drilling and production safety issues and environmental consequences. Production safety issues are sometimes called “geohazards” because they refer to adverse geologic and environmental consequences that may result from human disturbance of the methane hydrate and surrounding sedimentary layers."[12] However a strong counter argument is presented in, Methane and Methane Hydrates, Section 2, "Nonetheless, the hydrates in the sediments of the seafloor do remain frozen: after all, they are icy lattices. In addition, they remain frozen even well above the normal melting point of ice (0°C; 32°F), and at temperatures up to about 15°C (59°F). They manage this feat because of the enormous pressure that exists at these depths."[15]
Political Pressures to use Methane as an Energy Source
The use of methane as a fuel and energy source is not some distant pipe dream. Significant quantities of methane (produced with digesters from animal manure) are already in use in some countries such as Denmark. But there appears to be serious political pressure and a genuine rush on to get at and use permafrost and undersea methane hydrates as a game-changing energy source, as outlined in Methane hydrates: Energy's most dangerous game. "Major government research initiatives have been launched in China, India, Germany, Norway, Russia, Taiwan and several other countries." the article says. "The Japanese government has estimated that producing gas from methane hydrates is commercially viable when oil prices rise above $54 a barrel. ..... To date, Japan has made the biggest bet on methane hydrates and appears to be the closest to commercial production."[6]
The underpinning of the political pressures to exploit methane hydrates can clearly be seen in this statement from Methane Hydrate - The Gas Resource of the Future. "According to EIA, total U.S. natural gas consumption is expected to increase from about 22 trillion cubic feet today to 26 trillion cubic feet in 2030- a projected jump of more than 18 percent [ed note: If natural gas to liquid is pursued as a serious alternative source of transportation fuel this estimate is far too low.]. ..... Production of domestic conventional and unconventional natural gas cannot keep pace with demand growth. The development of new, cost-effective resources such as methane hydrate can play a major role in moderating price increases and ensuring adequate future supplies of natural gas for American consumers."[11]
Optimistic Time Frames
That same site gives us a glimpse into the optimistic time frames being suggested and pursued. "We think that the future may be sooner than some of us are considering," Robert Hunter, president of ASRC Energy Services, which led the first major field study in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay with BP Alaska Exploration and the Department of Energy, told Petroleum News. "In parts of the world such as the North Slope, with unique motivation, hydrates may become a very stable source of natural gas within the next five to 10 years."[6] One wonders what he means with that phrase, "....with unique motivation....". Another view of the time frames is presented in Methane Hydrate Could Augment Natural Gas Supplies. "DOE's program and programs in the national and international research community provide increasing confidence from a technical standpoint that some commercial production of methane from methane hydrate could be achieved in the United States before 2025," said Charles Paull .... senior scientist, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California."[9]
Risks and Dangers
Another view of the risks and dangers involved, with or without human involvement and exploitation, is addressed in Gas (Methane) Hydrates -- A New Frontier, "Seafloor slopes of 5 degrees and less should be stable on the Atlantic continental margin, yet many landslide scars are present. The depth of the top of these scars is near the top of the hydrate zone, and seismic profiles indicate less hydrate in the sediment beneath slide scars. Evidence available suggests a link between hydrate instability and occurrence of landslides on the continental margin."[7]
A variety of extraction techniques are being looked at to overcome the inherent difficulties in exploiting methane hydrates, as detailed in A Breakthrough in Fuel Supplying From Methane Hydrates. "Getting methane hydrate gas to flow consistently and predictably, however, has been the problem. Using heat to release the gas works, but requires too much energy to be useful. Researchers have also been trying to release the methane by reducing the pressure on it. Then last month, the Mallik team became the first to use reduced pressure to get a steady, consistent flow."[13] Both of these techniques, however, and others, run the risk that once they successfully destabilize and disassociate the methane hydrates in any part of the reserve it could lead to a catastrophic runaway destabilization of the entire reserve, a warning repeated often through the literature listed at the end of this article. In the paper, Could Methane Trigger a Climate Doomsday Within a Human Lifespan? the concern over this potential is rooted in the geological past. "The new paper suggests that exactly this type of cascading release of methane reserves rapidly warmed the Earth 635 million years ago, replacing an Ice Age with a period of tropical heat. The study’s lead author suggests it could happen again, and fast - not over thousands or millions of years, but possibly within a century. ..... "This is a major concern because it’s possible that only a little warming can unleash this trapped methane," Martin Kennedy, a professor at UC Riverside, said in a release. "Unzippering the methane reservoir could potentially warm the Earth tens of degrees, and the mechanism could be geologically very rapid."."[23] The paper goes on to state that these concerns have caused a new focus in the scientific community. "Jim Kennett, a professor of geology and paleobiology at UC Santa Barbara, said that finding climate triggers and tipping points had become the most important scientific problem of our time."[23] These views, however, are not universal in the scientific community. "David Archer, a University of Chicago geosciences professor, argued in a paper last year that methane release appears likely to be "chronic rather than catastrophic" and only on the scale of human fossil-fuel combustion."[23] The concerns, however, are reiterated in Runaway Methane Global Warming. "From these records it appears that there have been short periods of only a few hundred years in the geological past when rapid increases of the Earth's temperature have occurred superimposed on top of the rise and fall of average temperatures over the longer term. For these short periods temperature rises of up to 8 degrees centigrade appear to have occurred on top of existing long term rises of 5 to 7 degrees to give temperatures up to 15 degrees centigrade warmer than today. Temperatures then fell back to the long term trend, the whole rise and fall only lasting a few hundred years. The most likely cause of this rapid global warming over such a short period is the release of methane into the atmosphere."[25]
In Methane Hydrates: A Carbon Management Challenge, the serious questions about the risks and dangers are asked but with no pretense of supplying answers or solutions. "What are the risks of recovering methane from ocean hydrates? Could the release of methane make the sediments unstable enough to cause the collapse of seafloor foundations for conventional oil and gas drilling rigs? Could the melting, or dissociation, of methane hydrate ice lead to releases of large volumes of methane to the atmosphere, raising greenhouse gas levels and exacerbating global warming?"[20] The depth and breadth of these issues are honestly explored in the U.S. Department of Energy paper, Methane Hydrates. "However, the issues surrounding methane hydrates go well beyond its energy resource potential. As field and laboratory studies supported by the Methane Hydrates Program continue to document hydrate’s integral and active role in the global environment, important new questions are raised about the influence of hydrates on the global carbon cycle, deep sea life, sea-floor stability, and other phenomena."[21] That verbiage, however, may just serve as a preamble to this, "Therefore, the National Methane Hydrate R&D Program is driven by the need to better understand the nature of hydrates, hydrate-bearing sediments, and the interaction between the global methane hydrate reservoir and the world’s oceans and atmosphere as a compliment to the ultimate realization of hydrate’s energy potential."[21]
If our global industrial society is to be kept rolling along at anything near its current vigorous pace, there is no question that global peaks in oil, natural gas and/or coal are going to require the exploitation of new energy sources such as methane hydrates, coal-bed methane, shale gas, shale oil, and the re-embracing of nuclear energy as a primary source of electrical energy. Plans for the exploitation of methane hydrates, however, in the name of energy security and in pursuit of the dream of national energy independence are not likely to materialize as governments and politicians hope and intend, It is very likely that methane will be drawn under the umbrella of natural gas and subject to global market trading and pricing. It is even more likely that the reserves of methane hydrates will end up in the hands of energy companies who are already lining up to buy leases in areas where significant methane hydrate reserves are suspected. Additionally the research and development on technologies for the extraction of methane hydrates is being driven and financed by these same energy companies. The likelihood of them willingly giving over control of those leases and that extraction to government energy departments is very slim. They will, after all, be moving heavily into these alternatives because their current cash cows are drying up. They need them for their future financial stability and continued growth.
I am quite sure that nothing bloggers such as myself or scientists have to say will ultimately have any bearing on what governments and the energy industry will do with methane hydrates. The best we can hope is to keep them honest.
Reference material
The following links were important sources of material for this article and are here for your reference.
1) Arctic Methane on the Move?
2) Methane Hydrate: A surprising compound
3) Methane hydrates
4) Gas Hydrates: Natural gas hydrate studies in Canada
5) Methane hydrates and global warming
6) Methane hydrates: Energy's most dangerous game
7) Gas (Methane) Hydrates -- A New Frontier
8) Japan eyes methane hydrate as energy savior
9) Methane Hydrate Could Augment Natural Gas Supplies
10) Japan Mines `Flammable Ice,' Flirts With Environmental Disaster
11) Methane Hydrate - The Gas Resource of the Future
12) Realizing the Energy Potential of Methane Hydrate for the United States
13) A Breakthrough in Fuel Supplying From Methane Hydrates
14) Permafrost Melting and Stability of Offshore Methane Hydrates Subject to Global Warming
15) METHANE AND METHANE HYDRATES, SECTION 2
16) Methane Hydrate Extraction To Become Viable?
17) Gas Hydrates: Entrance to a Methane Age or Climate Threat?
18) Ocean methane hydrates as a slow tipping point in the global carbon cycle
19) More evidence of climate change: Arctic methane hydrates evaporating
20) Methane Hydrates: A Carbon Management Challenge
21) METHANE HYDRATES
22) Methane Hydrates: An Abundance of Clean Energy?
23) Could Methane Trigger a Climate Doomsday Within a Human Lifespan?
24) Methane Hydrates: What are they thinking?
25) Runaway Methane Global Warming
26) Melting of permafrost could trigger rapid global warming warns UN
27) METHANE HYDRATE ICE: A Possible Mechanism For Ice Age And Global Warming Cycles
28) Ice Sculptures for Science: Chain Saws, Pickaxes, Methane Hydrates and Climate Change
29) Global Warming: Methane Could Be Far Worse Than Carbon Dioxide
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Unrefined
If and when the average person thinks about peak oil, their attention and concern are focused on the gasoline and diesel fuels that run the family car, the heating oil that warms the family home, and the jet fuel that runs the plane that takes the family on vacation. And that is reasonable. By far the biggest single use of crude oil is for the production of those various fuels. Our society literally runs on oil. But remember that there are over 300,000 other products, other than those fuels, in every day use around the world that are derived from oil.
The road between the undiscovered crude oil in the ground and the gasoline in your car's fuel tank - or any other usage - is a very long and expensive one. It must be discovered, analysed, wells drilled and extracted. From there it has to be gotten to a refinery for processing to produce gasoline, diesel, heating oil, jet fuel, lubricating oil and other lubricants. That resulting gasoline has to be distributed to a service station near you so you can drive your car in and fill up your tank.
In case you hadn't noticed, there is a shortage of oil refining capacity in the United States. From 324 oil refineries in operation in 1980-81 (when the U.S. was still a major exporter of refined products) closures over the past thirty years have reduced that number to less than 140.[13] In that same thirty years no new oil refineries have been built in the United States [16], and more refineries close each year. And increasingly tough and demanding environmental legislation, coupled with a general, overall reduction in the quality of available crude oil that is more difficult, expensive, and polluting to refine, lessens the probability that any will be constructed in the foreseeable future.
Despite the fact that more than 20 million barrels of oil are consumed in America every day, the total remaining refining capacity in the country is down to 17,734,900. And 1.6 million barrels or more of refined product are still exported to other countries every day, up 33% since 2007[15]. That is 9% of a total refinery output that is already insufficient to meet demand. This means that the capacity for refined product for American consumption of more than 20 million barrels a day is 16.225 million barrels a day, and dropping.
There is no spare capacity in the system, no refining buffer. Any refinery closure, whether temporary due to storms, strikes or other problems, or whether permanent, the shortfall cannot be made up from spare capacity. The favorite mantra of economists, of course, is that supply will always rise to meet demand. An average of 2-3 million barrels of refined product is being imported every day, largely from Europe, to make up for the current shortfall. And still there are no new refineries under construction to meet the unfulfilled demand. With an average capacity of 125,000 barrels a day, the equivalent of the output from over 15 unbuilt refineries is being imported every day. That could hardly be interpreted as supply rising to fill demand.
Margins in the refining industry are quite low, with costs continuously rising. In the early days of the oil industry when the majors could sell their oil for 20 times or more what it cost to produce it, the oil companies largely ran their own refineries and were prepared to live with the low margins in the refining end of the business which were more than offset from the huge profits in the oil production end of the business. But independently owned refineries are the order of the day with major after major selling off their refinery operations to independent refiners. And today, rather than new refining capacity coming online to satisfy the increasing demand for finished product as economic theory suggests, the refining industry is, in fact, looking to reduce overall capacity to drive margins up. The question is not whether but where and when capacity will be reduced further. The trend to date is to close capacity in states where state government has an anti-pollution agenda while holding on to capacity in those states that are refinery and oil industry friendly and likely to remain so.
And where refining capacity is being shut down is a recipe for future fuel shortage problems. The two latest refinery shut downs have been in the high population upper east coast market (Valero Energy Corp. shuttered permanently its 182,200 barrel-a-day Delaware City, Delaware, refinery last month because of “very poor economic conditions.” Sunoco Inc. shut indefinitely its 145,000 barrel-a-day Eagle Point plant in New Jersey in November) [8] taking nearly 300,000bpd capacity out of the system in the highest demand market area in the country.
Domestic gasoline supply on the east coast is now served almost exclusively by pipeline. But just like refining capacity, no new pipeline capacity is being built to satisfy increasing pipeline subscription from, for example, the gulf region to the east coast. In fact the primary pipeline serving the east coast has been badly oversubscribed because of these two refinery shutdowns for over six months now, even before the peak demand summer driving season, and supply is being pro-rated[7]. Pro-ration means nobody gets what they need but the pain is distributed equally.
There is not an overall shortage of refinery capacity globally. New refineries continue to be built in, for example, the middle east and Asia and some parts of Europe, in regions with more relaxed environmental standards where development in high profit industries like oil is encouraged. So, at least for now, refining capacity shortages in the United States can be made up from imports of refined product from overseas. [13] Increasing refiners are responding to domestic environmental legislation by shutting down domestic capacity and pushing it offshore. But the more the country builds a reliance on refined imports as well as crude imports the more vulnerable it becomes to shifts in global geopolitics. And the greater the growth of bottlenecks in the supply chain in the United States for refined product.
When peak oil critics and deniers claim that there is plenty of oil, that there is no oil shortage, they are right. What there is is a growing shortage of light sweet crude. There is plenty of tar sands oil, plenty of very high-sulfur heavy crude, plenty of high-sulfur oil sands crude, plenty of oil shale, and plenty of very expensive to extract deep sea oil, most of which is also high in sulfur. But these are almost all much more expensive and much more polluting to refine. The sulfur extracted from the heavy sour crude of a single 100,000 barrel-per-day refinery would be equivalent to 5% of the total national sulfur market and a shift to high-sulfur heavy crudes would totally flood that market.[9] Introduction of ever stricter environmental legislation makes the likelihood of such a shift happening very slight.
So we may or may not yet be at a global peak in crude oil production, depending on how you define it and what type of oil you include in your crude oil definition. Sooner or later, and more likely sooner, we will get there. Regardless the shift in type of oil available for refining means that we have reached a peak - whether temporary or permanent is unclear - in serviceable refinery capacity and refined product distribution systems. In light of this reality peak oil hardly seems to matter anymore.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Reference Material:
1) What is the chemical composition of gasoline?
2) What is Gasoline?
3) Petroleum
4) European oil refinery closures get serious
5) Recession leads to more refinery closures
6) Refinery closures - how many and how fast?
7) Refinery Closures Push Gasoline Infrastructure To The Breaking Point
8) Refinery Closures Drive Profit Margins Higher: Chart of Day
9) Processing of heavy high-sulfur crude oil
10) Tesoro CEO says expects more refinery closures
11) Some Refineries Likely to Close as Demand Ebbs
12) Report: Cap and Trade Bill Bringing Refinery Closures
13) No political will to keep oil refineries in America
14) SURGE IN US GASOLINE AND DIESEL EXPORTS
15) U.S. gasoline, diesel exports soar
16) US: No New Refineries in 29 Years
The road between the undiscovered crude oil in the ground and the gasoline in your car's fuel tank - or any other usage - is a very long and expensive one. It must be discovered, analysed, wells drilled and extracted. From there it has to be gotten to a refinery for processing to produce gasoline, diesel, heating oil, jet fuel, lubricating oil and other lubricants. That resulting gasoline has to be distributed to a service station near you so you can drive your car in and fill up your tank.
In case you hadn't noticed, there is a shortage of oil refining capacity in the United States. From 324 oil refineries in operation in 1980-81 (when the U.S. was still a major exporter of refined products) closures over the past thirty years have reduced that number to less than 140.[13] In that same thirty years no new oil refineries have been built in the United States [16], and more refineries close each year. And increasingly tough and demanding environmental legislation, coupled with a general, overall reduction in the quality of available crude oil that is more difficult, expensive, and polluting to refine, lessens the probability that any will be constructed in the foreseeable future.
Despite the fact that more than 20 million barrels of oil are consumed in America every day, the total remaining refining capacity in the country is down to 17,734,900. And 1.6 million barrels or more of refined product are still exported to other countries every day, up 33% since 2007[15]. That is 9% of a total refinery output that is already insufficient to meet demand. This means that the capacity for refined product for American consumption of more than 20 million barrels a day is 16.225 million barrels a day, and dropping.
There is no spare capacity in the system, no refining buffer. Any refinery closure, whether temporary due to storms, strikes or other problems, or whether permanent, the shortfall cannot be made up from spare capacity. The favorite mantra of economists, of course, is that supply will always rise to meet demand. An average of 2-3 million barrels of refined product is being imported every day, largely from Europe, to make up for the current shortfall. And still there are no new refineries under construction to meet the unfulfilled demand. With an average capacity of 125,000 barrels a day, the equivalent of the output from over 15 unbuilt refineries is being imported every day. That could hardly be interpreted as supply rising to fill demand.
Margins in the refining industry are quite low, with costs continuously rising. In the early days of the oil industry when the majors could sell their oil for 20 times or more what it cost to produce it, the oil companies largely ran their own refineries and were prepared to live with the low margins in the refining end of the business which were more than offset from the huge profits in the oil production end of the business. But independently owned refineries are the order of the day with major after major selling off their refinery operations to independent refiners. And today, rather than new refining capacity coming online to satisfy the increasing demand for finished product as economic theory suggests, the refining industry is, in fact, looking to reduce overall capacity to drive margins up. The question is not whether but where and when capacity will be reduced further. The trend to date is to close capacity in states where state government has an anti-pollution agenda while holding on to capacity in those states that are refinery and oil industry friendly and likely to remain so.
And where refining capacity is being shut down is a recipe for future fuel shortage problems. The two latest refinery shut downs have been in the high population upper east coast market (Valero Energy Corp. shuttered permanently its 182,200 barrel-a-day Delaware City, Delaware, refinery last month because of “very poor economic conditions.” Sunoco Inc. shut indefinitely its 145,000 barrel-a-day Eagle Point plant in New Jersey in November) [8] taking nearly 300,000bpd capacity out of the system in the highest demand market area in the country.
Domestic gasoline supply on the east coast is now served almost exclusively by pipeline. But just like refining capacity, no new pipeline capacity is being built to satisfy increasing pipeline subscription from, for example, the gulf region to the east coast. In fact the primary pipeline serving the east coast has been badly oversubscribed because of these two refinery shutdowns for over six months now, even before the peak demand summer driving season, and supply is being pro-rated[7]. Pro-ration means nobody gets what they need but the pain is distributed equally.
There is not an overall shortage of refinery capacity globally. New refineries continue to be built in, for example, the middle east and Asia and some parts of Europe, in regions with more relaxed environmental standards where development in high profit industries like oil is encouraged. So, at least for now, refining capacity shortages in the United States can be made up from imports of refined product from overseas. [13] Increasing refiners are responding to domestic environmental legislation by shutting down domestic capacity and pushing it offshore. But the more the country builds a reliance on refined imports as well as crude imports the more vulnerable it becomes to shifts in global geopolitics. And the greater the growth of bottlenecks in the supply chain in the United States for refined product.
When peak oil critics and deniers claim that there is plenty of oil, that there is no oil shortage, they are right. What there is is a growing shortage of light sweet crude. There is plenty of tar sands oil, plenty of very high-sulfur heavy crude, plenty of high-sulfur oil sands crude, plenty of oil shale, and plenty of very expensive to extract deep sea oil, most of which is also high in sulfur. But these are almost all much more expensive and much more polluting to refine. The sulfur extracted from the heavy sour crude of a single 100,000 barrel-per-day refinery would be equivalent to 5% of the total national sulfur market and a shift to high-sulfur heavy crudes would totally flood that market.[9] Introduction of ever stricter environmental legislation makes the likelihood of such a shift happening very slight.
So we may or may not yet be at a global peak in crude oil production, depending on how you define it and what type of oil you include in your crude oil definition. Sooner or later, and more likely sooner, we will get there. Regardless the shift in type of oil available for refining means that we have reached a peak - whether temporary or permanent is unclear - in serviceable refinery capacity and refined product distribution systems. In light of this reality peak oil hardly seems to matter anymore.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Reference Material:
1) What is the chemical composition of gasoline?
2) What is Gasoline?
3) Petroleum
4) European oil refinery closures get serious
5) Recession leads to more refinery closures
6) Refinery closures - how many and how fast?
7) Refinery Closures Push Gasoline Infrastructure To The Breaking Point
8) Refinery Closures Drive Profit Margins Higher: Chart of Day
9) Processing of heavy high-sulfur crude oil
10) Tesoro CEO says expects more refinery closures
11) Some Refineries Likely to Close as Demand Ebbs
12) Report: Cap and Trade Bill Bringing Refinery Closures
13) No political will to keep oil refineries in America
14) SURGE IN US GASOLINE AND DIESEL EXPORTS
15) U.S. gasoline, diesel exports soar
16) US: No New Refineries in 29 Years
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Infrastructure
What is infrastructure? Infrastructure is the essential, physical organizing framework meant to facilitate the smooth, day-to-day operation of society. It includes transit, waterworks, sewers and waste disposal, communications, the physical layout of the community and more. It is both a facilitator in helping the society function but also, often unintentionally, serves to limit and misdirect the manner of that operation and, most importantly, development and growth. The defensive walls constructed around the cities of Europe proved very valuable in protecting those cities from attack by enemies wielding swords and spears but they have also imposed frustrating limitations on the growth and development of those cities in modern times.
The American automobile industry, in order to improve its sales and profitability, bought up and shut down long-established and efficient public transit systems across the nation. They succeeded in having the interstate highway systems implemented, setting the nation on the road to being dominated by suburbs, of course devoid of public transit. They killed the city centre and left it to rot as retail rushed out to the suburbs where the customers now lived.
Many communities, trying to overcome the domination of the automobile, are finding that the needed added investment in effective public transit, and the infrastructure to support it, is generally greater than the public coffers can handle, definitely greater than the car-culture taxpayers are willing to support, that they are stuck with the private automobile being the driving force behind infrastructure choices. In my youth a saw the implementation of public water and sewer systems in my hometown, an expensive proposition that required years of special tax levies to pay and disrupted traffic and commerce in the town for years. The benefits were great enough - did you ever have to use an outhouse during a cold snap in the middle of February? - that the taxpayers were willing to absorb the special tax levies.
Man is not the only species that builds communal infrastructure. Among the others which do are; ants, termites, bees, beavers, groundhogs, prairie dogs, rabbits, and corral. Other species, however, do so instinctively. Man does so by intellectual choice. If anything, our instincts which were formed as early primates would mitigate against our creation of infrastructure. In fact, man is the only primate that does create infrastructure. This suggests that our tendency to create infrastructure was not a slow, evolutionary development but grew out of our developed methods of seeking security in numbers, of banding together and forming tribes.
Infrastructure and organized society have gone hand in hand from the beginning. It is critical in both modern and less developed societies. The infrastructure involved may be very, very different but equally critical. Infrastructure was critical to Greek society, the Romans (the Romans had a consistent town plan that they used in the development of most of their communities), the Aztecs and Mayans, and all other organized societies through history.
The one very important factor they all have in common is without constant maintenance the infrastructure soon begins to break down. And the society begins to break down with it. As it deteriorates the infrastructure that was critical in building the society becomes a dangerous liability. The critical dependence of society on its infrastructure was strongly highlighted in a report "Cumbria flooding exposes UK’s vulnerability to infrastructure failure". The report claims, "We are often only hours away from social collapse if our critical infrastructure were to fail totally.... The failure of a single piece of infrastructure, such as a bridge, not only causes difficulties in reaching basic commodities and services, but also leads to the failure of other connected infrastructure networks such as electricity, gas, telephone lines, waste and water supply."
All components of our infrastructure have a designed life span, either implied or explicit. Bridges and dams, for example, are generally designed for a life span of fifty years. Many commercial buildings may have a designed lifespan of thirty years or less. To achieve the designed life span, of course, the designer and builder of the infrastructure assume it will be properly maintained according to the instructions supplied. A large petrochemical plant I was involved in as a systems analyst, for example, had a large "chart room" where the thousands of drawings, blueprints and maintenance manuals and logs for the plant and all of its components were kept, maintained and constantly referenced by maintenance staff and engineers.
Designed life span is all too often viewed, by those assuming responsibility for it, to be somewhat like many view the "best before" label on the food they buy, a guideline, a ploy to sell more product. They will take their chances and keep their fingers crossed. Many dams and bridges with a designed life span of fifty years are still heavily in use a hundred years and more after construction, many without appropriate and needed levels of maintenance. Many bridges built for an anticipated traffic load of "x" are still in operation after twice their designed life span with traffic loads of 3-4 or even 10 times more than the design criteria. Many large dams still operating more than a hundred years after construction have lost over half of their reservoir capacity from silting and are in constant danger of over-topping during a heavy rainfall or from erosion-induced land and mud slides. Many community water and sewer systems are well over a hundred years old, some more than two hundred years old, with an annual burden of water main breaks running into the hundreds, some in the thousands (Toronto has an estimated 11,000 water main breaks a year). In most of these communities the extensive suburban development around those communities is being connected to the same antiquated water and sewer systems placing tremendous added load pressures on those systems every year and burdening those suburbs with a water and sewer system already past its designed life span when they connect to it.
Infrastructure maintenance requires, of course, an army of specially-trained maintenance staff and an abundance of specialized equipment and facilities. In most cases, however, maintenance is short-changed, most often due to politically-imposed budget constraints. According to the report "Infrastructure Failure in America", "America's infrastructure is aging.... Now, with ever rising costs and reduced funding/taxes for public projects, compromises and trade-offs are made and only the things in worst shape are attended to. Evidence of this is all over the place - power grid problems and blackouts, the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the steam pipe explosion in New York, the levee breach in New Orleans. Unfortunately the blame falls on the agency responsible for infrastructure upkeep. Very rarely are the fingers pointed in the direction of politicians or government officials who make the money decisions and choose what gets funded." This is further highlighted in the report "Metropolitan Infrastructure Sustainability Study". This study found that "Funding emerged as the number one issue facing cities today. When asked to name their most serious infrastructure challenge, without prompting, three in five cities (59%*) said obtaining infrastructure funding was a key challenge. Some 42 percent* said funding gaps were creating challenges for maintaining or improving aging infrastructure. Cities are more likely to name funding for maintenance or retro-fitting of existing infrastructure, rather than funding for new infrastructure, as a critical challenge." Another report, "Infrastructure Investment Deficit" points out that "Recent research from various associations in Canada shows that there is a growing infrastructure investment deficit occurring in many sectors. This results in deteriorating infrastructure and escalating costs since the longer roads and buildings remain in a state of disrepair, the higher the costs to refurbish or replace."
This tendency to defer infrastructure maintenance is done under the assumption that the deficit can be made up later, and the hope that there will not be a disastrous infrastructure failure before then. But with peak oil fast approaching - or already here depending on which model you adhere to - this assumption that deferred maintenance can be caught up is very likely to result in a string of those disastrous failures that infrastructure and maintenance managers have for years been hoping against.
And yet even today massive investments continue to be made in new and upgraded infrastructure designed for operation in and dependent on a high-energy, high-tech world. A quick check of Google for "infrastructure investment" will net you literally millions of articles on projects for new and upgraded infrastructure.
But what if those choices were no longer available? What if the cost of maintenance and replacement mushrooms to 10-20 or more times current levels? What if the materials and parts needed to undertake that maintenance are no longer available? What if the specialized equipment and the transport to get equipment and maintenance personnel to the problem are no longer available? What if the heavy equipment to dig, build, move is no longer available? What if all of the fuel and energy to power all of that equipment is no longer available? This will be increasingly the case as we move deeper into the post peak era.
These are the true costs of peak oil. It's not about the cost of gasoline for the family car, not being to afford that driving vacation to Florida, the rising costs of food and other goods because of increasing transportation fuel costs. Those will be, or already are, the first warning signs that peak oil is upon us. But increasing costs will soon give way to scarcity and the depth of that scarcity will increase a little more each year. At first many poor nations will be priced out of the hydrocarbon fuel market. Soon, however, any level of government without the right to print money, even in rich countries, will start to wrestle with a growing disparity between income, which is primarily from taxation, and costs. Many of the American states, in fact, and many more communities, are already struggling hopelessly to balance their budgets. They soldier on, like the funding-deprived infrastructure maintenance staffs, in the belief that the deficit will be made up "when things return to normal." They fail to recognize the current situation as the new normal, the only slightly painful edge to a new reality that will not be corrected..... ever.
The American automobile industry, in order to improve its sales and profitability, bought up and shut down long-established and efficient public transit systems across the nation. They succeeded in having the interstate highway systems implemented, setting the nation on the road to being dominated by suburbs, of course devoid of public transit. They killed the city centre and left it to rot as retail rushed out to the suburbs where the customers now lived.
Many communities, trying to overcome the domination of the automobile, are finding that the needed added investment in effective public transit, and the infrastructure to support it, is generally greater than the public coffers can handle, definitely greater than the car-culture taxpayers are willing to support, that they are stuck with the private automobile being the driving force behind infrastructure choices. In my youth a saw the implementation of public water and sewer systems in my hometown, an expensive proposition that required years of special tax levies to pay and disrupted traffic and commerce in the town for years. The benefits were great enough - did you ever have to use an outhouse during a cold snap in the middle of February? - that the taxpayers were willing to absorb the special tax levies.
Man is not the only species that builds communal infrastructure. Among the others which do are; ants, termites, bees, beavers, groundhogs, prairie dogs, rabbits, and corral. Other species, however, do so instinctively. Man does so by intellectual choice. If anything, our instincts which were formed as early primates would mitigate against our creation of infrastructure. In fact, man is the only primate that does create infrastructure. This suggests that our tendency to create infrastructure was not a slow, evolutionary development but grew out of our developed methods of seeking security in numbers, of banding together and forming tribes.
Infrastructure and organized society have gone hand in hand from the beginning. It is critical in both modern and less developed societies. The infrastructure involved may be very, very different but equally critical. Infrastructure was critical to Greek society, the Romans (the Romans had a consistent town plan that they used in the development of most of their communities), the Aztecs and Mayans, and all other organized societies through history.
The one very important factor they all have in common is without constant maintenance the infrastructure soon begins to break down. And the society begins to break down with it. As it deteriorates the infrastructure that was critical in building the society becomes a dangerous liability. The critical dependence of society on its infrastructure was strongly highlighted in a report "Cumbria flooding exposes UK’s vulnerability to infrastructure failure". The report claims, "We are often only hours away from social collapse if our critical infrastructure were to fail totally.... The failure of a single piece of infrastructure, such as a bridge, not only causes difficulties in reaching basic commodities and services, but also leads to the failure of other connected infrastructure networks such as electricity, gas, telephone lines, waste and water supply."
All components of our infrastructure have a designed life span, either implied or explicit. Bridges and dams, for example, are generally designed for a life span of fifty years. Many commercial buildings may have a designed lifespan of thirty years or less. To achieve the designed life span, of course, the designer and builder of the infrastructure assume it will be properly maintained according to the instructions supplied. A large petrochemical plant I was involved in as a systems analyst, for example, had a large "chart room" where the thousands of drawings, blueprints and maintenance manuals and logs for the plant and all of its components were kept, maintained and constantly referenced by maintenance staff and engineers.
Designed life span is all too often viewed, by those assuming responsibility for it, to be somewhat like many view the "best before" label on the food they buy, a guideline, a ploy to sell more product. They will take their chances and keep their fingers crossed. Many dams and bridges with a designed life span of fifty years are still heavily in use a hundred years and more after construction, many without appropriate and needed levels of maintenance. Many bridges built for an anticipated traffic load of "x" are still in operation after twice their designed life span with traffic loads of 3-4 or even 10 times more than the design criteria. Many large dams still operating more than a hundred years after construction have lost over half of their reservoir capacity from silting and are in constant danger of over-topping during a heavy rainfall or from erosion-induced land and mud slides. Many community water and sewer systems are well over a hundred years old, some more than two hundred years old, with an annual burden of water main breaks running into the hundreds, some in the thousands (Toronto has an estimated 11,000 water main breaks a year). In most of these communities the extensive suburban development around those communities is being connected to the same antiquated water and sewer systems placing tremendous added load pressures on those systems every year and burdening those suburbs with a water and sewer system already past its designed life span when they connect to it.
Infrastructure maintenance requires, of course, an army of specially-trained maintenance staff and an abundance of specialized equipment and facilities. In most cases, however, maintenance is short-changed, most often due to politically-imposed budget constraints. According to the report "Infrastructure Failure in America", "America's infrastructure is aging.... Now, with ever rising costs and reduced funding/taxes for public projects, compromises and trade-offs are made and only the things in worst shape are attended to. Evidence of this is all over the place - power grid problems and blackouts, the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the steam pipe explosion in New York, the levee breach in New Orleans. Unfortunately the blame falls on the agency responsible for infrastructure upkeep. Very rarely are the fingers pointed in the direction of politicians or government officials who make the money decisions and choose what gets funded." This is further highlighted in the report "Metropolitan Infrastructure Sustainability Study". This study found that "Funding emerged as the number one issue facing cities today. When asked to name their most serious infrastructure challenge, without prompting, three in five cities (59%*) said obtaining infrastructure funding was a key challenge. Some 42 percent* said funding gaps were creating challenges for maintaining or improving aging infrastructure. Cities are more likely to name funding for maintenance or retro-fitting of existing infrastructure, rather than funding for new infrastructure, as a critical challenge." Another report, "Infrastructure Investment Deficit" points out that "Recent research from various associations in Canada shows that there is a growing infrastructure investment deficit occurring in many sectors. This results in deteriorating infrastructure and escalating costs since the longer roads and buildings remain in a state of disrepair, the higher the costs to refurbish or replace."
This tendency to defer infrastructure maintenance is done under the assumption that the deficit can be made up later, and the hope that there will not be a disastrous infrastructure failure before then. But with peak oil fast approaching - or already here depending on which model you adhere to - this assumption that deferred maintenance can be caught up is very likely to result in a string of those disastrous failures that infrastructure and maintenance managers have for years been hoping against.
And yet even today massive investments continue to be made in new and upgraded infrastructure designed for operation in and dependent on a high-energy, high-tech world. A quick check of Google for "infrastructure investment" will net you literally millions of articles on projects for new and upgraded infrastructure.
But what if those choices were no longer available? What if the cost of maintenance and replacement mushrooms to 10-20 or more times current levels? What if the materials and parts needed to undertake that maintenance are no longer available? What if the specialized equipment and the transport to get equipment and maintenance personnel to the problem are no longer available? What if the heavy equipment to dig, build, move is no longer available? What if all of the fuel and energy to power all of that equipment is no longer available? This will be increasingly the case as we move deeper into the post peak era.
These are the true costs of peak oil. It's not about the cost of gasoline for the family car, not being to afford that driving vacation to Florida, the rising costs of food and other goods because of increasing transportation fuel costs. Those will be, or already are, the first warning signs that peak oil is upon us. But increasing costs will soon give way to scarcity and the depth of that scarcity will increase a little more each year. At first many poor nations will be priced out of the hydrocarbon fuel market. Soon, however, any level of government without the right to print money, even in rich countries, will start to wrestle with a growing disparity between income, which is primarily from taxation, and costs. Many of the American states, in fact, and many more communities, are already struggling hopelessly to balance their budgets. They soldier on, like the funding-deprived infrastructure maintenance staffs, in the belief that the deficit will be made up "when things return to normal." They fail to recognize the current situation as the new normal, the only slightly painful edge to a new reality that will not be corrected..... ever.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
How Much is that Energy Really Worth?
We have long-passed the point where we can continue to value energy in terms of dollars or any other currency. We lost that luxury when the total global production of energy peaked and began to decline, more specifically when the net energy per person went into decline globally.
As in the case of any commodity, when the availability of supply can no longer keep pace with demand then the availability, from that point onward, dictates the price of the commodity. It is no longer a buyer's market.
Global energy consumption per capita peaked sometime during the 1990s. Since that point the global population increase has been greater than the total global increase in energy production and energy consumption.
Although the rate of growth of per capita energy consumption in the US - which today uses roughly 25% of all energy used globally - has decreased from 2.5% in the early 1990s to less than 1.5% in 2008, it is still on the increase. Obviously, with a total global energy supply on the decline and U.S. per capita consumption still on the rise, the percent of total global energy use by the U.S. is on the increase while much of the rest of the world, particularly the third world, are being priced out of the energy market and are already having to cope with ever-decreasing energy availability.
Energy, unlike almost every other commodity, requires the consumption of some of itself - energy - in the production of itself. The more energy we produce the more energy consume in producing it. That is called EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested). It can be difficult to equate one form of energy to another, especially since the pricing of different forms of energy is not consistent when it comes to the value of the energy produced. You will often see the acronym BOE used in regards to energy. This stands for Barrels of Oil Equivalent. And that is very important when trying to understand EROEI.
Let us take that to the extreme for simplicity's sake. Let us suppose the only form of energy available on this planet is oil, rather than the more complex Barrels of Oil Equivalent. The EROEI, therefore, shows how much energy, in the form of oil, is used in order to produce that oil. Obviously you want to use as little oil as possible to produce that oil because it is only the oil produced in excess of the oil used that is available for other uses than producing the oil in the first place.
At the beginning of the oil age it is estimated that the amount of energy used to produce the readily available, high quality oil with which the oil industry began was about one barrel used for every 100 barrels produced. Ninety-nine out of every 100 barrels of oil produced was available to be used for other than producing oil.
In the time since then, of course, the energy cost per barrel of oil produced has steadily risen. On average, when considering all forms of oil like tar sands and deep water, we get a little more than ten barrels of oil for every barrel of oil invested. In fact, when it gets to tar sands and ultra-deep-water oil and bio-fuels produced from corn ethanol, the EROEI ratio gets very close to 1:1. It takes almost the energy equivalent of a barrel of oil to produce a barrel of oil. If we ever pursue producing oil from the various shale deposits like Bakken it could take more energy to produce every barrel than what we get out of it.
The peak oil theory, contrary to what certain denialists continue to claim, does not suggest we are running out of oil. In fact most knowledgeable peak oil pundits will quickly point out that we will probably never run out of oil completely. What the peak oil theory does say is that we will reach a point where the flow, the rate of production, can no longer be increased, that demand will thereafter be greater than production and that that gap will widen year by year.
Once you pass that peak, as well, the energy gas of the energy produced will increase inexorably, pushing the world ever faster toward depletion. From the peak onward the cheap, easily-accessible, high quality oil has all been consumed. There is still oil left but it is much more expensive, in terms of energy consumption, to produce it. From peak onward, therefore, the amount of oil produced in excess of the amount of oil consumed in its production declines faster than the overall decline in the rate of production.
When the energy consumed in producing a barrel of oil passes the total energy contained in a barrel of oil, it doesn't matter what form of energy is used to produce that oil or what price that energy form is set at. At that point it takes more energy to produce energy than the energy produced. There is no energy surplus, over and above production energy cost, available to do anything other than produce oil.
So how much is our energy really worth, when calculated in terms of energy used in its production? Are we prepared to continue to produce oil and other forms of energy even when it takes more energy to produce it that what we get out of it? It is a question we will soon have to answer if our approach to peak oil continues to be; use as much as we can as long as we can and then figure out what to do for an encore. We don't yet see the net reduction in global energy production, the global energy consumption per capita. That price is being paid by the third world. But reality will soon come home to roost. Soon either the whole rest of the world will have to give up all claims to energy to support North America's energy habit or we will all be in the same rapid race to the bottom, ourselves included. Or we can all fight for what is left.
As in the case of any commodity, when the availability of supply can no longer keep pace with demand then the availability, from that point onward, dictates the price of the commodity. It is no longer a buyer's market.
Global energy consumption per capita peaked sometime during the 1990s. Since that point the global population increase has been greater than the total global increase in energy production and energy consumption.
Although the rate of growth of per capita energy consumption in the US - which today uses roughly 25% of all energy used globally - has decreased from 2.5% in the early 1990s to less than 1.5% in 2008, it is still on the increase. Obviously, with a total global energy supply on the decline and U.S. per capita consumption still on the rise, the percent of total global energy use by the U.S. is on the increase while much of the rest of the world, particularly the third world, are being priced out of the energy market and are already having to cope with ever-decreasing energy availability.
Energy, unlike almost every other commodity, requires the consumption of some of itself - energy - in the production of itself. The more energy we produce the more energy consume in producing it. That is called EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested). It can be difficult to equate one form of energy to another, especially since the pricing of different forms of energy is not consistent when it comes to the value of the energy produced. You will often see the acronym BOE used in regards to energy. This stands for Barrels of Oil Equivalent. And that is very important when trying to understand EROEI.
Let us take that to the extreme for simplicity's sake. Let us suppose the only form of energy available on this planet is oil, rather than the more complex Barrels of Oil Equivalent. The EROEI, therefore, shows how much energy, in the form of oil, is used in order to produce that oil. Obviously you want to use as little oil as possible to produce that oil because it is only the oil produced in excess of the oil used that is available for other uses than producing the oil in the first place.
At the beginning of the oil age it is estimated that the amount of energy used to produce the readily available, high quality oil with which the oil industry began was about one barrel used for every 100 barrels produced. Ninety-nine out of every 100 barrels of oil produced was available to be used for other than producing oil.
In the time since then, of course, the energy cost per barrel of oil produced has steadily risen. On average, when considering all forms of oil like tar sands and deep water, we get a little more than ten barrels of oil for every barrel of oil invested. In fact, when it gets to tar sands and ultra-deep-water oil and bio-fuels produced from corn ethanol, the EROEI ratio gets very close to 1:1. It takes almost the energy equivalent of a barrel of oil to produce a barrel of oil. If we ever pursue producing oil from the various shale deposits like Bakken it could take more energy to produce every barrel than what we get out of it.
The peak oil theory, contrary to what certain denialists continue to claim, does not suggest we are running out of oil. In fact most knowledgeable peak oil pundits will quickly point out that we will probably never run out of oil completely. What the peak oil theory does say is that we will reach a point where the flow, the rate of production, can no longer be increased, that demand will thereafter be greater than production and that that gap will widen year by year.
Once you pass that peak, as well, the energy gas of the energy produced will increase inexorably, pushing the world ever faster toward depletion. From the peak onward the cheap, easily-accessible, high quality oil has all been consumed. There is still oil left but it is much more expensive, in terms of energy consumption, to produce it. From peak onward, therefore, the amount of oil produced in excess of the amount of oil consumed in its production declines faster than the overall decline in the rate of production.
When the energy consumed in producing a barrel of oil passes the total energy contained in a barrel of oil, it doesn't matter what form of energy is used to produce that oil or what price that energy form is set at. At that point it takes more energy to produce energy than the energy produced. There is no energy surplus, over and above production energy cost, available to do anything other than produce oil.
So how much is our energy really worth, when calculated in terms of energy used in its production? Are we prepared to continue to produce oil and other forms of energy even when it takes more energy to produce it that what we get out of it? It is a question we will soon have to answer if our approach to peak oil continues to be; use as much as we can as long as we can and then figure out what to do for an encore. We don't yet see the net reduction in global energy production, the global energy consumption per capita. That price is being paid by the third world. But reality will soon come home to roost. Soon either the whole rest of the world will have to give up all claims to energy to support North America's energy habit or we will all be in the same rapid race to the bottom, ourselves included. Or we can all fight for what is left.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Defining the Continuum from here to Post-Carbon Sustainability
To define a continuum or path of transition from today to life in the post-carbon world it is necessary to start with a reasonably clear vision of that post carbon world. Largely this vision has to be local, or at least regional, centered on the area in which you live or will live at that time.
It is always awkward forecasting the future. There are so many variables. But it is easier, in my mind, to predict what life will be like in that post-carbon world than at any point during the transition. If you can start with a clear vision of the destination you are in a better position to define your own transition path.
What will the post-carbon world look like? Here are just fifteen examples of the changes you will see in society as we slide down the energy-decline slope.
* The focus of life will be very much local, not the global focus of today. Sustainability will mean local self-sufficiency and self-reliance, either individually or as a community.
* Consumerism will be dead, dead, dead. The keyword will have become need, not want. Gone with consumerism will be the vast advertising industry that fuels consumerism today.
* Society will clearly not be dominated by the automobile. Electric cars may hang on for a while, as might cars running on locally-produced bio-diesel. The ultimate demise of the automobile will be, however, not a lack of fuel to run them but the inability to maintain the automobile manufacturing industry, an industry today based on planned obsolescence. Yes, it would be possible to make durable, rugged cars that would last decades, perhaps a century or more. But that would entail a complete overhaul of the industry mindset.
* Globalization will have died well before we enter the post-carbon world. In fact it is very much in the process of unwinding now. The massive fuel demands of large-scale trans-oceanic transport and the tremendous raw material demands of the ship-building industry simply are not going to be feasible in a world of net declining resources.
* Communities will produce all, or almost all, of their own food. If they trade it will likely be with other nearby communities but this will likely be limited to crisis times such as after crop failures.
* Travel will not be what it is today. Airlines will be a thing of the past, unless they convert to blimps and hot air balloons. Before that the industry will likely survive for a while as a luxury for the monied elite. Trans-oceanic shipping will be extremely limited, unless it reverts to sail but even then would be limited. Possibly, and hopefully, the once expansive railway system and services will be rebuilt in time but that is going to require a government commitment which, at the moment, seems very unlikely. The concept of travelling for vacation will probably disappear over time. The current highway systems will initially fall into disrepair and ultimately be abandoned to be reclaimed by nature. Some of the routes they followed may still be used, on horseback and on foot, since many of the early highways followed routes that were already well in use before that. People in cold climates will not travel south to escape winter but will, in fact, be very travel restricted by that winter weather.
* The manufacturing industry, if it survives, will be seriously downsized and refocused on society's needs, not the competitive and advertising-stimulated wants of today.
* Manufacturing processes will likely be reverse engineered so that production can be dispersed to regional areas where they will serve a discrete regional market.
* Housing will change dramatically, downsizing from the ubiquitous McMansions of today to the small, energy-efficient, cozy cottages and bungalows that were prevalent in our parents' time.
* Classical, perpetual-growth economics will have died a painful death. It is, indeed, in the process of dying now, real growth having already died years ago with the appearance of growth being propped up by a myriad of smoke-and-mirrors financial instruments. The wheels fell off in 2008 with the $147 dollar price for oil. Economists, if money is to continue as the lifeblood of human society, will have to find ways for that society to survive within a no-growth economy.
* The face of retail will change dramatically. Malls will be dead. A tremendous shake-out of the retail sector will have major casualties. What retail survives will mostly move into residential areas, close to the customer, and be run out of the home, not separate rental or owned space.
* The village or neighbourhood open-air market will become the primary source of commerce. Much of the commercial business will be for repair, maintenance, refit, mend, fix as the throw-away society dies.
* Many people assume the very useful internet will survive the decline in oil. It won't. The internet is cheap-energy- and technology-intensive. Cheap energy is even now disappearing as costs go up and available resources decline. And to think the computer manufacturing industry will survive the end of cheap energy is wishful thinking in the extreme. So the internet will not survive the end of cheap energy. Your ability to have and use a computer in any form in a post-carbon world will depend on your personal ability to fix, maintain and program it yourself, and your ability to personally or communally produce the energy to run it.
* Large cities with their multi-million populations and their rings of suburbs will not survive the end of cheap energy in their present form. They cannot be made food self-sufficient and do not have the internal resources to become self-reliant. They are critically dependent on massive infrastructure that is now expensive to maintain and, in the future, impossible to maintain. Cities in pre-industrial times generally did not exceed a million population (and those were rare), were surrounded by rich farmland (now covered by suburbs), depended on a large slave population (currently replaced by energy slaves), and generally had good water access for moving trade and commodities by sail and barge (now replaced by energy-intensive rail, trucking, ship and air).
* Medicine will become far less ubiquitous and far less technology intensive. That technology requires a thriving manufacturing industry that exists only because of cheap energy. And both the manufacture and use of that equipment consumes a great deal of energy. Every advance in technology has, in my opinion, reduced the ability and willingness of doctors to make a patient diagnosis with medical skills alone. This has been largely necessitated by our litigation-prone society.
How will you chart your course to sustainability through that minefield? It won't be easy because it depends so much on timing. The first thing that you must do, if you are to be successful, is keep a close eye on the news. The signs will be there but you have to develop a very active and effective bullshit filter. You will have to be able to read between the lines. You have to use something other than the corporate dominated and controlled mainstream media to get at the truth behind what that mainstream media is telling you. Use sources like the internet, alternative newspapers, independent TV and radio.
If you wait for the mainstream media to present a clear and honest picture, like those who were surprised at the financial downturn, it will be too late. And, most importantly, you have to follow the news regularly, even keep notes, in order to spot the trends that are developing. The mainstream media are not going to suddenly one day run a headline that says we've run out of cheap oil - all that's left is shale and tar sands. What they will do instead is probably barrage you with stories about the marvellous new technologies that allow us to extract oil from shale and how that technology will extend the oil age by hundreds of years.
Fair warning will be available but you will have to search for it, dig for it, find sources that you trust and rely on them. Seeing, recognizing and accepting those warnings should, in most cases, give you enough chance to avoid the worst. It is, in my opinion, a terrible waste of your energy trying to convince others what is coming. Those who rely exclusively on the mainstream media will laugh at you and call you a doomer until the shit hits the fan. Then they will simply avoid you.
Good luck and enjoy the trip!
It is always awkward forecasting the future. There are so many variables. But it is easier, in my mind, to predict what life will be like in that post-carbon world than at any point during the transition. If you can start with a clear vision of the destination you are in a better position to define your own transition path.
What will the post-carbon world look like? Here are just fifteen examples of the changes you will see in society as we slide down the energy-decline slope.
* The focus of life will be very much local, not the global focus of today. Sustainability will mean local self-sufficiency and self-reliance, either individually or as a community.
* Consumerism will be dead, dead, dead. The keyword will have become need, not want. Gone with consumerism will be the vast advertising industry that fuels consumerism today.
* Society will clearly not be dominated by the automobile. Electric cars may hang on for a while, as might cars running on locally-produced bio-diesel. The ultimate demise of the automobile will be, however, not a lack of fuel to run them but the inability to maintain the automobile manufacturing industry, an industry today based on planned obsolescence. Yes, it would be possible to make durable, rugged cars that would last decades, perhaps a century or more. But that would entail a complete overhaul of the industry mindset.
* Globalization will have died well before we enter the post-carbon world. In fact it is very much in the process of unwinding now. The massive fuel demands of large-scale trans-oceanic transport and the tremendous raw material demands of the ship-building industry simply are not going to be feasible in a world of net declining resources.
* Communities will produce all, or almost all, of their own food. If they trade it will likely be with other nearby communities but this will likely be limited to crisis times such as after crop failures.
* Travel will not be what it is today. Airlines will be a thing of the past, unless they convert to blimps and hot air balloons. Before that the industry will likely survive for a while as a luxury for the monied elite. Trans-oceanic shipping will be extremely limited, unless it reverts to sail but even then would be limited. Possibly, and hopefully, the once expansive railway system and services will be rebuilt in time but that is going to require a government commitment which, at the moment, seems very unlikely. The concept of travelling for vacation will probably disappear over time. The current highway systems will initially fall into disrepair and ultimately be abandoned to be reclaimed by nature. Some of the routes they followed may still be used, on horseback and on foot, since many of the early highways followed routes that were already well in use before that. People in cold climates will not travel south to escape winter but will, in fact, be very travel restricted by that winter weather.
* The manufacturing industry, if it survives, will be seriously downsized and refocused on society's needs, not the competitive and advertising-stimulated wants of today.
* Manufacturing processes will likely be reverse engineered so that production can be dispersed to regional areas where they will serve a discrete regional market.
* Housing will change dramatically, downsizing from the ubiquitous McMansions of today to the small, energy-efficient, cozy cottages and bungalows that were prevalent in our parents' time.
* Classical, perpetual-growth economics will have died a painful death. It is, indeed, in the process of dying now, real growth having already died years ago with the appearance of growth being propped up by a myriad of smoke-and-mirrors financial instruments. The wheels fell off in 2008 with the $147 dollar price for oil. Economists, if money is to continue as the lifeblood of human society, will have to find ways for that society to survive within a no-growth economy.
* The face of retail will change dramatically. Malls will be dead. A tremendous shake-out of the retail sector will have major casualties. What retail survives will mostly move into residential areas, close to the customer, and be run out of the home, not separate rental or owned space.
* The village or neighbourhood open-air market will become the primary source of commerce. Much of the commercial business will be for repair, maintenance, refit, mend, fix as the throw-away society dies.
* Many people assume the very useful internet will survive the decline in oil. It won't. The internet is cheap-energy- and technology-intensive. Cheap energy is even now disappearing as costs go up and available resources decline. And to think the computer manufacturing industry will survive the end of cheap energy is wishful thinking in the extreme. So the internet will not survive the end of cheap energy. Your ability to have and use a computer in any form in a post-carbon world will depend on your personal ability to fix, maintain and program it yourself, and your ability to personally or communally produce the energy to run it.
* Large cities with their multi-million populations and their rings of suburbs will not survive the end of cheap energy in their present form. They cannot be made food self-sufficient and do not have the internal resources to become self-reliant. They are critically dependent on massive infrastructure that is now expensive to maintain and, in the future, impossible to maintain. Cities in pre-industrial times generally did not exceed a million population (and those were rare), were surrounded by rich farmland (now covered by suburbs), depended on a large slave population (currently replaced by energy slaves), and generally had good water access for moving trade and commodities by sail and barge (now replaced by energy-intensive rail, trucking, ship and air).
* Medicine will become far less ubiquitous and far less technology intensive. That technology requires a thriving manufacturing industry that exists only because of cheap energy. And both the manufacture and use of that equipment consumes a great deal of energy. Every advance in technology has, in my opinion, reduced the ability and willingness of doctors to make a patient diagnosis with medical skills alone. This has been largely necessitated by our litigation-prone society.
How will you chart your course to sustainability through that minefield? It won't be easy because it depends so much on timing. The first thing that you must do, if you are to be successful, is keep a close eye on the news. The signs will be there but you have to develop a very active and effective bullshit filter. You will have to be able to read between the lines. You have to use something other than the corporate dominated and controlled mainstream media to get at the truth behind what that mainstream media is telling you. Use sources like the internet, alternative newspapers, independent TV and radio.
If you wait for the mainstream media to present a clear and honest picture, like those who were surprised at the financial downturn, it will be too late. And, most importantly, you have to follow the news regularly, even keep notes, in order to spot the trends that are developing. The mainstream media are not going to suddenly one day run a headline that says we've run out of cheap oil - all that's left is shale and tar sands. What they will do instead is probably barrage you with stories about the marvellous new technologies that allow us to extract oil from shale and how that technology will extend the oil age by hundreds of years.
Fair warning will be available but you will have to search for it, dig for it, find sources that you trust and rely on them. Seeing, recognizing and accepting those warnings should, in most cases, give you enough chance to avoid the worst. It is, in my opinion, a terrible waste of your energy trying to convince others what is coming. Those who rely exclusively on the mainstream media will laugh at you and call you a doomer until the shit hits the fan. Then they will simply avoid you.
Good luck and enjoy the trip!
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