# Oil: Doom, Doom, Doom.....Plenty.....Doom?



## woodgeek (Mar 31, 2013)

For those who are curious about Peak Oil, but have not followed it obsessively for years, a recent history...

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/?p=10895#.UVitAhk1H8A

The comments are lively too.

While I'm stirring the pot...I think AGW will mean that we need to leave oil in the ground or at least pull down the extraction rate well below the technological limit.


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## jharkin (Mar 31, 2013)

The article makes the usual oversimplification that peak oil has to equal mad max collapse. There are lots of scenarios where the 'peak' is flattened by high prices and resulting economic stagnation (sound familiar?) Resulting in a long slow decline that will only really be clear in hindsight.

If you want good discussion on peak oil without the doom and gloom I suggest avoiding the prepper sites and reading oil drum.

Bottom line is that any non infinite resource must peak and decline, its a mathematical certainty.


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## woodgeek (Mar 31, 2013)

I've been reading Oil Drum since 2005. And they were the poster boys and girls for immediate collapse of civilization back then, IIRC. They are a lot more circumspect now. Years before there were preppers there were 'doomers' and 'cornucopians' and they went at it at TOD.

The classic PO story was that oil would very soon be so expensive that basically noone could use it for anything, $1000/barrel was a number thrown around back then. No more airplanes. No more cars. No more Plastics or Drugs or Fertilizer or moderm agriculture.

I don't think any of that is in the cards. At $100-150/bbl there is a LOT more oil to be had than at $30.

Will the usage of oil and the economy bounce back and forth along supply and demand curves, new technologies get rolled out, and price shocks induce recessions as it did throughout the 20th century, perhaps for decades more? Of course. That is business as usual. Is it 'Peak Oil'? Not as imagined in 2005.

Don't forget there was also Peak Gas, and Peak Phosphate and Peak Lithium, and Peak Rare Earth Metals.....on and on and on.


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## midwestcoast (Mar 31, 2013)

My personal opinion is that peak oil doesn't matter. The fossil fuel industry has enough proven reserves to cook us off this planet if we burn them all in business as usual style.  If I'm remembering Bill McKibbon's numbers right they already have 5 times as much in proven reserves as we can burn without virtually ensuring catastrophic climate disruption.


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## Seasoned Oak (Mar 31, 2013)

I think Shale gas put a major dent in peak oil.THey are finding it EVERYWHERE on the planet. Its time to start converting transportation to NG .


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## jharkin (Apr 1, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> I've been reading Oil Drum since 2005. And they were the poster boys and girls for immediate collapse of civilization back then, IIRC. They are a lot more circumspect now. Years before there were preppers there were 'doomers' and 'cornucopians' and they went at it at TOD..


 
fair enough... Ive only read TOD the last 5 years or so, and these days it is a lot more balanced discussion than nutcases like John Howard Kunstler or sites like peakoil.com.  Granted it has its crazies as well, like the posters who claimed during deepwater horizon that the sea floor was going to open up and swallow the entire rig.

But on the other hand, it is awfully coincidental that the big run up to $4 gas and crash happened exactly at the same time the financial crash happened, and that ever since as we bounce between $2 and $4 the long term unemployment issue wont resolve. There are theories that the gas price run up acted as the catalyst to trigger the bubble pop that was waiting to happen (people living on the edge with bad loans suddenly had to choose between gas to drive to work or making the house payment on time triggering the default wave). Seems at least plausible to me.

And I don't think anyone would disagree that oil supply is still the biggest potential single point of failure in the system right now.


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 1, 2013)

I get your point Jeremy, if nothing is done about more billions of folks on an ongoing basis, as well as the increasing rate of industrialization globally. Well then at some point it simply wont matter how much oil we have/can find. We simply wont be able to stay ahead of the population/consumption.

Not sure of the accuracy of the statement however I believe it was something like we need 4.5 - 5 planets similiar to earth if the entire population is to consume like we do. Not at all sure how that looks when there are 8 or 9 billion of us.

Not sure at what point the current system breaks down in totality, it should be clear to everyone that we cannot continue with the current model for too much longer though.


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## woodgeek (Apr 1, 2013)

jharkin said:


> fair enough... Ive only read TOD the last 5 years or so, and these days it is a lot more balanced discussion than nutcases like John Howard Kunstler or sites like peakoil.com. Granted it has its crazies as well, like the posters who claimed during deepwater horizon that the sea floor was going to open up and swallow the entire rig.


 
Yeah, but their blogroll still includes peakoil.com, the Kunstler blog and 'Die Off'. 



jharkin said:


> But on the other hand, it is awfully coincidental that the big run up to $4 gas and crash happened exactly at the same time the financial crash happened, and that ever since as we bounce between $2 and $4 the long term unemployment issue wont resolve. There are theories that the gas price run up acted as the catalyst to trigger the bubble pop that was waiting to happen (people living on the edge with bad loans suddenly had to choose between gas to drive to work or making the house payment on time triggering the default wave). Seems at least plausible to me.
> 
> And I don't think anyone would disagree that oil supply is still the biggest potential single point of failure in the system right now.


 
There were oil price shocks in the 20th century, and most of those triggered recessions also. The inflation corrected price spike in 2008 was about the same as the 70s shocks, and IMO def triggered the great recession. Most folks would say the problem and severity were due to debt/housing, with 2008 oil prices just being a trigger. And the new higher price regime is definitely a headwind, but IMO not as big a one as US demographics, now smoothing out with Millennial household formation.

And I agree that an oil price spike (due to strait of hormuz, etc) would throw the US into a recession.

Just don't think we are going back to a world 'made by hand', where we all work on a farm, pulling plows and picking crops, and we pull our useless SUVs around with horses. My bugaboo was with a species of doomer that rejected the premise that any technology could alleviate or amend the problem, because 'collapse' was inevitable. Everyone had to go build a doomstead to avoid the 'dieoff' induced by PO. They seem to be scurrying out of the daylight now.


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## woodgeek (Apr 1, 2013)

Seasoned Oak said:


> I think Shale gas put a major dent in peak oil.THey are finding it EVERYWHERE on the planet. Its time to start converting transportation to NG .


 
Certainly took the wind out of the sails of the 'Peak Gas' crowd.  I'm not sure whether CNG is the right solution for transportation, or if we should make a push to EVs (as well as more efficient gasoline ICEs). 

I AM for electrifying cargo rail.  It would free up a lot of diesel from long-haul trucking and diesel locomotives.  I'd love to see a new 'golden spike' ceremony for the first electric rail cargo corridor across the lower 48.  There is not one now.


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## Circus (Apr 1, 2013)

Simple ways to conserve will never happen. To profitable. Ask the 15 mpg behemoth driver. Why use the gas gussler to get a six pack? It's needed to tow a boat four times a year. Insuring and licensing a second smaller vehicle cost more than the wasted fuel. Companies and governments don't assume anymore risk but get twice the money from people who try to conserve. Save gas just to give the savings to the insurance company??


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## btuser (Apr 1, 2013)

The economy of scale necessary to extract sufficient amounts of shale/heavy oil will force us into other resources.  

Gimmie NUKES, lots a NUKES.


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## woodgeek (Apr 2, 2013)

Nukes are ok, so long as you use a standard (read cheap/safe/engineered) design, and stick it a couple hundred miles from people, bodies of water, earthquake faults, volcanoes, etc.  And then use them to run my electric freight trains.  Mmmmm, nuclear freight trains.


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## btuser (Apr 2, 2013)

.





woodgeek said:


> Mmmmm, nuclear freight trains.


That would be awesome. 

Like the sandworms of Dune.


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## Ehouse (Apr 2, 2013)

I'll break out my 'stil suit.


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## Chain (Apr 3, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> Nukes are ok, so long as you use a standard (read cheap/safe/engineered) design, and stick it a couple hundred miles from people, bodies of water, earthquake faults, volcanoes, etc. And then use them to run my electric freight trains. Mmmmm, nuclear freight trains.


 
Indeed, I suggest we build Thorium powered nuke plants that address many of the safety concerns you mention.  We'd probably already have done so except, from what I understand, we chose not to build these safer nuclear plants back in the 50's because they don't produce weapons grade by products like uranium powered plants do.  Given it was at the end of WWII and soon to be the beginning of the Cold War, we wanted a process that could also produce weapons of mass destruction.  Something the Thorium fueled process can't do.

By the way, totally agree with your idea of electrical powered freight train fleets on a mass scale.


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## woodgeek (Apr 4, 2013)

And a recent counterpoint....

http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2013/04/the_death_of_pe.html

which does not really refute the OP.  We have (apparently) seen the end of cheap, conventional oil, unless we redefine the meanings of cheap and conventional.


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## 4acrefarm (Apr 6, 2013)

"I AM for electrifying cargo rail. It would free up a lot of diesel from long-haul trucking and diesel locomotives. I'd love to see a new 'golden spike' ceremony for the first electric rail cargo corridor across the lower 48. There is not one now  "  

That will never happen. The infrastructure is prohibitively expensive. It would be more beneficial to put the money into expanding the current rail system and making long hall trucking a thing of the past.Compared to trucks trains are already very efficient.  compared to any other transport. I work for a major freight railroad and I swear we burn more fuel in our trucks maintaining the rail then we burn in locos.


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## Ehouse (Apr 6, 2013)

4acrefarm said:


> "I AM for electrifying cargo rail. It would free up a lot of diesel from long-haul trucking and diesel locomotives. I'd love to see a new 'golden spike' ceremony for the first electric rail cargo corridor across the lower 48. There is not one now "
> 
> That will never happen. The infrastructure is prohibitively expensive. It would be more beneficial to put the money into expanding the current rail system and making long hall trucking a thing of the past.Compared to trucks trains are already very efficient. compared to any other transport. I work for a major freight railroad and I swear we burn more fuel in our trucks maintaining the rail then we burn in locos.


 

Most locomotives are now diesel/electric running AC traction motors.  There are other options such as diesel/hydro, diesel/pneumatic, Fuel cell prime mover,etc..  Interestingly,  plug in diesel/electric hybrid with regenerative braking was used in locomotives as early as 1911.  Wiki gives a good overview. 

Track dog?  B@M?


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## 4acrefarm (Apr 7, 2013)

Ehouse said:


> Track dog? B@M?


 
Track dog-welder @ CSX. I wonder if they could put a carload of batteries on and use regenerative braking instead of dynamic?


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## Ehouse (Apr 7, 2013)

Retired track and bridge foreman, CP (old D@H).  A Salud!

There's work being done on super capacitors to suppliment batteries for start up and fast charging.  There's an interesting short read at evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1965.


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## woodgeek (Apr 7, 2013)

I hear ya. Trains are way more eff than semis for long-haul cargo, and expanding diesel cargo freight would reduce overall FF consumption in the US. I can also understand the companies not seeing an $$ incentive for electrification. But I'm not so sure about 'never'. Cargo rail in many other countries is being rapidly electrified, usually on the govt dime. At a certain price point for diesel, it might make sense to a govt to reduce oil imports. I haven't pushed those numbers.  There is also the concern that an oil shortage might impact interstate commerce.  Electrified freight rail might be 'cheap insurance' from the govt POV.

On a related note, I have always been skeptical of my fellow greens' obsession with 'local' and 'food miles', etc. Different modes of transport have radically different energy/CO2 costs per ton/mile. Shipping that item from a neighboring state on a semi might have a bigger C footprint than than the same item from China if it came over on the proverbial slow boat. 'Everyone' seems to understand the 'local' concept, and it looms large in the mind of the PO doomers, but at the end of the day freight uses a lot less oil than we all pretend it does....compared to our own personal transportation uses, that too often go unexamined.


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## 4acrefarm (Apr 7, 2013)

Woodgeek I totally agree with you if local does not mean in your town or surrounding areas then slow boat is a smaller footprint.


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## woodgeek (Apr 7, 2013)

Yeah, of course I support my local businesses (when they sell what I want)....

Its just on one side I have the PO doomers telling me that all international commerce will become impossible w/o oil (despite existing for centuries before oil), and on the other side I have uber-greens telling me that I shouldn't buy anything that wasn't made entirely from materials sourced within a 10 mile radius, or we will all go to AGW hell.

I predict there will be international commerce in 2100.


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## 4acrefarm (Apr 7, 2013)

to quote Ricky Nelson " You can't please everybody so you got to please yourself".


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 7, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> Yeah, of course I support my local businesses (when they sell what I want)....
> 
> Its just on one side I have the PO doomers telling me that all international commerce will become impossible w/o oil (despite existing for centuries before oil), and on the other side I have uber-greens telling me that I shouldn't buy anything that wasn't made entirely from materials sourced within a 10 mile radius, or we will all go to AGW hell.
> 
> I predict there will be international commerce in 2100.


 

I think the going to AGW hell has better odds.

I wonder at times when I am in the patch & can see the mess first hand, if half the planet was doing without food & water due to the pollution, would we even so much as slow down. Honest answer would be no, as long as we were not that half of the planet. Sucks but that's it at the moment.


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## woodgeek (Apr 7, 2013)

Frozen Canuck said:


> I think the going to AGW hell has better odds.
> 
> I wonder at times when I am in the patch & can see the mess first hand, if half the planet was doing without food & water due to the pollution, would we even so much as slow down. Honest answer would be no, as long as we were not that half of the planet. Sucks but that's it at the moment.


 
AGW is a problem, but folks that are only driving their recycling to the station and buying some veggies at a farmers market are not going to solve it.

Re your observation on human nature, I def see your point, but on a good day I think that over time (a decade, a generation?) such as system would not prevail.  If AGW models are correct, then CO2 pollution induced drought might cause us to try your thought experiment.


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 7, 2013)

For sure WG.

I just think our backs will need to be against the proverbial wall before we move in any way but sideways. Then there is the whole headed toward 9 billion & everyone wanting a north american middle class lifestyle or better thing to deal with, Asia wont be satisfied to be the poor cousin forever.

Just dont know how we can sustain this, seems that no matter how much we pump the is a demand for more to be pumped & we are nowhere close to being a global leader in production/known reserves.

Whole thing is just mind boggling at times. Scale & scope just cant be sustained IMO. Need a heck of a leap in tech to get us out of this ditch we dug ourselves into. Before we run face first into the wall hopefully.


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## BrotherBart (Apr 7, 2013)

Frozen Canuck said:


> & we are nowhere close to being a global leader in production/known reserves.


 
Number three in proven reserves my friend.


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 7, 2013)

Yes but a very long time to get it out of the ground using current tech of course, just cant see how we can keep up.

Really thick goo. Esp. pre distilate. Of course if Exxon decides to move on it in a big way that's a game changer right there for sure. Right now they have a surprisingly small presence. That of course could change.


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## woodgeek (Apr 8, 2013)

The folks I have met from Exxon over the years have clearly been drooling over Athabasca since the 70s.  But they like a profit...prob they are just waiting for the right time.


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## jebatty (Apr 8, 2013)

Why hasn't a govt or big energy company "claimed" the sun as its property, as 100% of all fossil fuel energy had a solar origin, and all of other light and daily warmth, energy, food, and probably everything else comes from the sun, and then license use of the sun? That's where the real exploitation capitalists can make the big money as the rest of us live in squalor. Why argue over the pennies earned from oil when real money comes from the sun?


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## BrotherBart (Apr 8, 2013)

jebatty said:


> Why hasn't a govt or big energy company "claimed" the sun as its property, as 100% of all fossil fuel energy had a solar origin, and all of other light and daily warmth, energy, food, and probably everything else comes from the sun, and then license use of the sun? That's where the real exploitation capitalists can make the big money as the rest of us live in squalor. Why argue over the pennies earned from oil when real money comes from the sun?


 
Lots of people working on the meter.


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## pdf27 (Apr 8, 2013)

Personally I think we've been at peak oil since about 2008 or so - that's when the oil price stopped dropping when supply increased. Net result? Things made from oil are a bit more expensive and people are paying more attention to energy efficiency. No doom and gloom, but then things are rarely as bad as they are cracked up to be...


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## Seasoned Oak (Apr 8, 2013)

Its like a roller coaster,price goes up world economy slows ,makes price go down,price goes down,economy picks up .price goes back up. Over and over.


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 8, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> The folks I have met from Exxon over the years have clearly been drooling over Athabasca since the 70s. But they like a profit...prob they are just waiting for the right time.


 

Yes, extraction prices are high for sure.  One good thing, the days of the open pit method are coming to an end thanks to new tech. They can get flow by drilling a hole & putting in a downhole pump (essentially a very long corkscrew). Drill enough small holes & viola production approaching an open pit operation with far less input & hopefully a far smaller footprint on the environment. Time will tell.


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## begreen (Apr 8, 2013)

We're not out of oil yet, but the extraction fees are getting much higher and the process harder and riskier. This is what Brazil is up against now. Sooner or later we need to face the music and kick the habit. Save the oil for higher value products and lubrication.


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 8, 2013)

No disagreement from me BG, I just think our backs will need to be against the proverbial wall before we move in any sustantive way. Just the way we are in north america. Too bad we could have chosen to follow some of the Euro's & tax our oil/fuel to discourage unnecessary consumption while at the same pursuing alternatives. As long as it is relatively cheap little incentive to change. Being real late on the later part could really suck.


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## StihlHead (Apr 8, 2013)

Cannot just kick the habit with 7 billion people to feed. And running _out_ of oil/FF is not the issue, its peaking at the production mid-point, at which point we cannot expand production any more. Once oil becomes spendy, as it is doing now, we go into decline. All civilizations past and present are based on expansion. When they peak, that's pretty much it. Party over. Look around the world and it is rather obvious that things are not so grand. People are starving or killing each other off in droves. We are insulated from the effects here in the land of _the have_, but our capital markets are coming under great pressure. In North America we are cranking out more fuel, burning and exporting it, but at what cost? Chinese pollution is so bad its... well, its unfathomable. Freak storms and extremes in weather are becoming commonplace.

For those that think we can go on forever, simply look at the decline of the Roman and Greek empires. Oil, coal and NG are just a few of many limiting factors. Boron, phosphates, seafood, fresh water, fissile material, arable land, rare earth elements and a lot of other critical resources are all finite. Never mind 'standard' types of pollution, we have released so much carbon and entropy (unusable heat energy) into the atmosphere that we have started a polar melt cycle and likely prolonged the current interglacial period for at least 10,000 years. The entropy is showing up as greater extremes in weather. Say or believe what you want about global warming, it is here and we have basically burned our way into extinction, or in the least, an end to modern civilization. It may not come today, or in 10 years, or even 50 years. That is of course, if we can somehow prevent ourselves from killing ourselves off in a global thermal nuclear war. Its only a matter of time before more rogue states and extremists gain access to the big bombs.

We are but so much bacteria in a petri dish. We will reproduce until we cannot reproduce any more and then go into decline. Conservation? Forget it. Evolve? Too slow a process. Reach for the stars? We do not have anywhere near the energy needed for that. We are trapped and it is too late to really do anything about anything. This thing will run its course. Maybe... just maybe we decline and survive as a species, only to expand and bounce off of some limit again, and decline again. There is simply no way to expand forever, as much as we would want to think that we can. We cannot sustain ourselves at some leveling off point either. We either expand, or we contract. And in the end? Himalayan erosion will sequester the increased carbon from the atmosphere, and in 15-30,000 years the ice will expand again and the Earth will go into another glacier cycle.


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## Seasoned Oak (Apr 8, 2013)

Like i said before Shale gas will buy us another 10 perhaps 20 years of energy,and this time were not importing it.


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## woodgeek (Apr 8, 2013)

StihlHead said:


> Cannot just kick the habit with 7 billion people to feed. And running _out_ of oil/FF is not the issue, its peaking at the production mid-point, at which point we cannot expand production any more. Once oil becomes spendy, as it is doing now, we go into decline. All civilizations past and present are based on expansion. When they peak, that's pretty much it. Party over. Look around the world and it is rather obvious that things are not so grand. People are starving or killing each other off in droves. We are insulated from the effects here in the land of _the have_, but our capital markets are coming under great pressure. In North America we are cranking out more fuel, burning and exporting it, but at what cost? Chinese pollution is so bad its... well, its unfathomable. Freak storms and extremes in weather are becoming commonplace.


 
While individual fields with a fixed technology show a nice bell curve of production, the same cannot be said for global production. If there are a bunch of large, but currently uneconomic resources, then as soon as the price rises, after a brief shock/spike, the prices fall back to the cost of the new (previously unprofitable) resources. There have been several rounds of 'peak oil', since as early as the 19th century, and each time the price spiked, folks figured out how to tap some new reserves, and in most cases after a little learning, figure out how to extract them cheaper than previously imagined. And then those 'unconventional' reserves became 'conventional' a generation later. Oil and hydrocarbons are def finite, and well in excess to that required to destroy the biosphere (and us) with AGW. But production only peaks and declines at a fixed price. As the price creeps up, and a replacement non-FF source becomes more economic, then oil usage will decline.



StihlHead said:


> For those that think we can go on forever, simply look at the decline of the Roman and Greek empires. Oil, coal and NG are just a few of many limiting factors. Boron, phosphates, seafood, fresh water, fissile material, arable land, rare earth elements and a lot of other critical resources are all finite. Never mind 'standard' types of pollution, we have released so much carbon and entropy (unusable heat energy) into the atmosphere that we have started a polar melt cycle and likely prolonged the current interglacial period for at least 10,000 years. The entropy is showing up as greater extremes in weather. Say or believe what you want about global warming, it is here and we have basically burned our way into extinction, or in the least, an end to modern civilization. It may not come today, or in 10 years, or even 50 years. That is of course, if we can somehow prevent ourselves from killing ourselves off in a global thermal nuclear war. Its only a matter of time before more rogue states and extremists gain access to the big bombs.


 
Yeah, we rely on fossil phosphate and fossil water. Fissile material is surprisingly scant as currently used. We are not making new soil. Agriculture is a very fragile and resource intensive activity, and not very sustainable in its current form. Personally, I think we will start making food by non-agricultural means. Solves a lot of sustainablility issues around land water and phosphate use, climate adaptation, etc. Entropy? Haven't heard that one.



StihlHead said:


> We are but so much bacteria in a petri dish. We will reproduce until we cannot reproduce any more and then go into decline. Conservation? Forget it. Evolve? Too slow a process. Reach for the stars? We do not have anywhere near the energy needed for that. We are trapped and it is too late to really do anything about anything. This thing will run its course. Maybe... just maybe we decline and survive as a species, only to expand and bounce off of some limit again, and decline again. There is simply no way to expand forever, as much as we would want to think that we can. We cannot sustain ourselves at some leveling off point either. We either expand, or we contract. And in the end? Himalayan erosion will sequester the increased carbon from the atmosphere, and in 15-30,000 years the ice will expand again and the Earth will go into another glacier cycle.


 
I am a bit of a fan of the 'Limits to Growth' folks. They pose all this as a mathematical problem. And they still manage to find solutions that have an ok outcome. When they throw in the towel, I might start to worry.


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## StihlHead (Apr 8, 2013)

Seasoned Oak said:


> Like i said before Shale gas will buy us another 10 perhaps 20 years of energy,and this time were not importing it.


 
We also have 100+ years of coal in the west slope of the Rockies, and NG is popping up all over the place with fracking, and there is the Bakken Formation oil reserves in the Dakotas. North America has become the Saudi Arabia of coal, NG and oil. But these are all finite resources. We should be using them for high value utilization and not burn it all up in Winnebagos and Nascar races. We will just squander these new reserves though, like we did oil in TX and PA and coal in WV. Its not just about energy though. The human population continues to expand and other finite resources will reach their limits. We cannot just conjure up more phosphorous and boron.


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## woodgeek (Apr 8, 2013)

Boron?


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## StihlHead (Apr 8, 2013)

Yes, boron. With a b.


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## Seasoned Oak (Apr 8, 2013)

Only long term solution is population stabilization. Dont see that happening soon. Not when our Govt is right now planning to annex/amnestize  20 million illegal foreign nationals to solve the boomer imbalance.


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## woodgeek (Apr 8, 2013)

Help me out. What critical applications to modern society does boron have?


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## woodgeek (Apr 8, 2013)

Seasoned Oak said:


> Only long term solution is population stabilization. Dont see that happening soon. Not when our Govt is right now planning to annex/amnestize 20 million illegal foreign nationals to solve the boomer imbalance.


 
Hadn't heard that.  I thought the boomer's kids (milennials) were taking care of that.  God knows there's not enough X-ers to amount to a hill of beans worth of economic activity.


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## woodgeek (Apr 8, 2013)

Frozen Canuck said:


> Yes, extraction prices are high for sure. One good thing, the days of the open pit method are coming to an end thanks to new tech. They can get flow by drilling a hole & putting in a downhole pump (essentially a very long corkscrew). Drill enough small holes & viola production approaching an open pit operation with far less input & hopefully a far smaller footprint on the environment. Time will tell.


 
More info? Sounds like it could move peanut butter.  Subsidence?


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## StihlHead (Apr 8, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> While individual fields with a fixed technology show a nice bell curve of production, the same cannot be said for global production. If there are a bunch of large, but currently uneconomic resources, then as soon as the price rises, after a brief shock/spike, the prices fall back to the cost of the new (previously unprofitable) resources. There have been several rounds of 'peak oil', since as early as the 19th century, and each time the price spiked, folks figured out how to tap some new reserves, and in most cases after a little learning, figure out how to extract them cheaper than previously imagined. And then those 'unconventional' reserves became 'conventional' a generation later. Oil and hydrocarbons are def finite, and well in excess to that required to destroy the biosphere (and us) with AGW. But production only peaks and declines at a fixed price. As the price creeps up, and a replacement non-FF source becomes more economic, then oil usage will decline.
> 
> Entropy? Haven't heard that one.


 
While one could view that there is a seemingly endless supply of oil in regard to the timescale of our lifetimes, the problem is that something like 90% of the oil supply on the earth is not attainable for extraction. Most of it is too deep or too difficult to extract and use. At some point the costs become to high to get and use it. Also populations and demands are expanding faster than supply. I still believe that even with the newer US supplies, we are at or just past peak oil. That being the point at which we can pump, refine and supply oil at the current global demand. If we were not there yet, the cost of oil would not be as high as it is now. If as you want to define this point using economics, oil is now pretty much permanently increasing in price, not declining. NG is the opposite, and likely the only thing that is keeping us from collapsing now. And there is no real energy source that is an alternative to fossil fuel; something like a mere 5% of current energy supply is non-fossil fuel. We cannot sustain the current population of 7 billion plus people w/o it.  

GW is another aspect that we have yet to fully determine or appreciate, but it is biting us hard and fast lately. The FF companies have done a great job at convincing the population that human caused global warming is a myth, but it is in fact true and the poles are in fact melting as global temperatures rise. We have to deal with the consequences of dumping massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and trapping more heat in it. And speaking of heat and entropy... entropy is a scientific term used in energy conversion. The laws of thermodynamics state that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Energy and matter can only be converted from one form to another. What we call 'energy' is really just the converting of potential energy into work and heat, at which point it become unusable. But just because the energy cannot be used does not means that it has gone away. Overly simplified, that remaining residual unusable energy is called entropy. It goes out the exhaust of your car and warms up the atmosphere, and up the flue from the wood stoves and is radiated out of our houses. At some point it radiates out to space, but in the meantime it is trapped and adds to the CO2 effect of trapped energy in the atmosphere.


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## StihlHead (Apr 8, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> I am a bit of a fan of the 'Limits to Growth' folks. They pose all this as a mathematical problem. And they still manage to find solutions that have an ok outcome. When they throw in the towel, I might start to worry.


 
And may the circle be unbroken... or some such. _Limits to Growth_ was written by the Club of Rome back when it had more integrity. They have also written several follow on books, but the original premises of growth in the first book are all coming out pretty much as predicted. I was once a member of the Club of Rome (I am a degreed electrical engineer), and at one time we did in fact throw in the towel. The club drifted. Now it has been picked up by some synthetically positive types and they are claiming that all of these problems can be solved. Most of us have long since given up. There was a secret convention by the world's richest and most powerful people a few year ago and they came to the conclusion that global population was the main problem facing humans in the future, and that there was nothing that anyone can effectively do about it.

Jeremy Grantham was interviewed by Charlie Rose just a few weeks back and he spelled it all out rather well. He stated rather well that no one wants to hear the bad news about the bad future regarding humans and the way things are going. He also pointed out that the current population is unsustainable. He figures it has to fall to 4 billion. I figure it is more like 2 billion. That being the amount of people that can be sustained without fossil fuel. He also points out that many resources are limited, phosphate in his view is the most critical. All of these limits can be seen on a site called www.dieoff.com. I know the guy that created that site (Jay Hanson) and I have been discussing these issues with him on Energyresources on Yahoo and on several other forums for well over a decade now. I found dieoff after doing several years of research on fissile material reserves. I had figured out that without oil we cannot support this civilization as it is now (or was then) and I was aware of Hubbert's theories on peak oil. However what I stumbled into was that peak nuclear energy is just a few decades coming after peak oil.

As for peak oil, I believe we are already past that peak at the top of the bell curve. Oil is still going up in price, and production is not meeting demand. While I do not believe that we have reached resource limits, it is being limited by production and delivery capacity, as well as wars and embargos, limits in refining capacity, and market manipulation, etc. Call it what you want, we are there now. If the price goes up more, more may come on line, but fewer will be able to afford and use it. So at this point we go into decline. We cannot stop the process. But energy is only one limit. We are also limited to phosphate availability, no matter how we grow food. All life forms on earth need phosphate to grow. They also need nitrogen and that requires energy to produce. Potassium is also a limiting factor, but most soils are abundant in potassium. Phosphate is the most limiting and critical factor in fertilizer and global food production.


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## woodgeek (Apr 8, 2013)

Didn't realize there was a schism in the club of rome. Read LTG (as a kid) in 1983. Fascinating.

I read all that dieoff stuff back in 2005. Haven't seen a good answer for phosphate. My own amateur opinion is that all terrestrial phosphate seems to come from the sea.....plankton must be getting their phosphate from the sea itself. Us apes are just mining guano and fossil phosphate originally captured from the sea.

But as for oil, my counter hypothesis is that the current situation is a price/supply 'shock', and that it will be resolved the way the earlier ones have....with new tech tapping new reserves at a higher price. Those shocks all ended with the prices slowly falling again as the new tech matured and developed. I can't say that will happen here....my OP was just that the 'dieoff' has not happened yet, does not appear likely to occur in the near future, and the folks predicting the imminent doom of civilization back in 2005 now look pretty silly.

So, some questions, which I mean in a respectful way....not that that is clear in pixels.

1) Civil aviation becomes costly enough to be restrictive IMO ~$400/barrel, and almost hopeless around $1000. How many years do we have left in your opinion before we hit a $400 price? How about $1000?

2) Coal to liquids (CTL, Fischer-Tropsch) seems according to most authorities to cost <$200/barrel equivalent, or (if you amortize the equipment fully) not too much more expensive than the current price. Why wouldn't folks implement CTL when the prices hit $200? Would $200 mean the collapse of civilization?

3) In a post-collapse society, after the die-off, the survivors would still have access to pre-1850 technology and biomass energy density, at least in a restricted area of the AGW world that still supports biomass production. Will any post-1850 technology still be in use? Insulation? Vaccines? Antibiotics? PV? Electricity?


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 8, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> More info? Sounds like it could move peanut butter. Subsidence?


 

Hopefully the link works (sorry computer dummy here) if not most of what I am seeing lately is the Europump in the Wabasca fields. Euromax to be specific. Tiny footprint compared to a pit operation & respectable production numbers as well as a decent maximum depth recovery. To be clear this is fairly old tech that has been under constant refinement. This latest gen approaches it from the perspective of lets stop throwing massive horsepower at it & consider how the material wants to move then build pumps that do that. Essentially it takes advantage of the surface tension of the material to move the material. That's why you see so many variations on the pump (corkscrew) when the material changes just get a different corkscrew & continue pumping. IIRC the max depth is +/- 6000 ft.


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## woodgeek (Apr 8, 2013)

Stupid question....do these things pump sand with the oil, or does the oil 'flow'?


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 8, 2013)

W.G.  Sand with the oil, currently +/- 40% sand content. Wabasca fields.


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## StihlHead (Apr 9, 2013)

Not really a schism in the Club of Rome. It basically became dormant. When I investigated why the sudden flip in outlook some years ago after some people revitalized it, I was told that there was a political shift by some specific club people and they were espousing what people want to hear (a good news futurecast) seemingly to get funded. It is hard to get people excited about a gloomy future.

The phosphate cycle is complex. African fires put minerals like phosphate into the atmosphere that drifts to South America where they precipitate out into the rain forests (fertilizing them). The forests decay and river runoff into the oceans then feed diatoms with the minerals, and they bloom and die in a rather rapid cycle and settle on the sea floor. There are several different global cycles like that. That is a primary source of oxygen in the atmosphere as well as minerals stored in sea bed sediments. We mine the ancient sea floor deposits. Peak phosphorus is estimated to be coming in 30 years.

Dieoff predicts an overshoot in population (just after the peak in oil) before a decline in civilization, so I would counter-counter that we are indeed seeing the effects today in places like north Africa, where the Arab Spring revolts were started specifically in Tunisia as a result of a dramatic spike in the cost of food (as a result of the spike in oil). We do not see the effects here where we are insulated from higher food costs, but have you been to the grocery store lately? Food prices are significantly higher. The poorer populations are coming under strain from current food prices.

At $400 a barrel? If that happens at a fast rate forget the world as we know it. I will not estimate such future costs, as there are just too many variables. Wars, technology, fuel efficiency, global demand, the emerging markets in Chain and India, new finds, etc. all factor in. Its like predicting the weather. I bought NG futures and they have all gone down with fracking. But at $400 a barrel food would be driven up in cost by 4x from today's prices and most poor people would starve. Africa will no longer be able to afford food. As shown above at the $100 a barrel for oil price point, they are already coming under great pressure. Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria are all in or have been in revolt and the governments have been overthrown, or in the process of being overthrown. At $400 a barrel, the price of gas would be $15 a gallon. I do not think that price is supportable. At $1000 a barrel no one would use gas or oil any more. It takes roughly a barrel of oil to make one tire. Car tires would cost $1000 each.

Unless inflation keeps pace with oil, incomes could never keep pace with that price level. As it is now, gas was 40 cents a gallon when I learned to drive. Say for comparative purposes it is 10x now what it was then ($4 a gallon). My car was a Chevy Malibu and it got 12 miles per gallon. I made 1.65 an hour (the minimum wage then). My low wages got roughly 4 gallons of gas per hour. Now? Minimum wages are a about $8 or so. You can only buy 2 gallons of gas per hour of work (not counting taxes). Cars are more efficient now, and average 24.6 MPG. So the formula is actually keeping pace with inflation and improved technology, and the net cost is about the same then vs. now regarding how far you can go in a car on a minimum wage. But hike up the cost beyond that range, and you will get a reduction in oil use as it becomes unaffordable. Then the pressure is on the price to decline. At some point auto efficiency falls off as well.  

Big competition to oil comes in at about $150 a barrel, as seen in the price peaks a few years ago and the resulting influx into alternative energy. Coal fuel may become attractive at $200 for oil with today's price of coal, but the price of coal would also climb with the price of oil, so it is hard to predict where the benefits of coal gas would actually kick in. Hitler tried running his war machine on coal fuel and that failed competing with the US oil war machine. Its not as efficient.

And finally there is no instant 'collapse of civilization' predicted by dieoff (unless we are dumb enough to nuke ourselves, which NK seems to be bent on doing). It is a slow decline before things fall apart. Like the end of the Roman Empire there were times of expansion and contraction, but over time the contraction overcame the expansion. At some point our civilization and capacity to feed, clothe, govern, dispense medicine, higher education, run transport, etc. falls apart. Debt is already putting a huge strain on many large scale systems. At various stages new systems will emerge, new paradigms will form. But... the wild card here is global warming. We cannot undo what we have done overnight. The effects are yet to be determined and the impact may be far worse than disclosed to date. More droughts like the one in the US in 2012 would put HUGE pressure on global food prices.


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## StihlHead (Apr 9, 2013)

To answer some of #3 above: Vaccines and antibiotics are already becoming less and less effective. They are overused and diseases are already becoming resistant. There are completely antibiotic resistant types of TB and Gonorrhea out there now. H7N9 (the latest bird flu) is trying to break out of China right now. So far it is being contained. But it is only a matter of time before another pandemic strikes. My grandmother survived the Spanish flu, but that one killed many many millions globally. Medicine is already becoming too expensive to afford here in the US, never mind in poor places. Higher education and knowledge will decline and become rarer, and like medicine, it is becoming too expensive. My degree cost me 1/5 of what it does today. Technology is anyone's guess. New things will come along, like PV getting cheaper, and at some point it (and other alternatives) can compete with oil. However, its the price of oil that will drive things. Insulation and better energy efficiency is our best defense against an oil-driven decline. However, if populations overshoot too much (as they seem to be doing) they negate the net benefits of reduced energy per person. I believe that electricity as we know it will be a thing of the past. it will likely be reduced to a regional thing depending on resources of particular areas. This area could easily run on hydro, as that is the main source of electricity here now. But on a global scale, that is not sustainable. The Amish live without it though. They are a model of what people could live like in the future, but they require a much larger area per person than there is area per person in the current population of the globe.

The bottom line really becomes, "Are people willing to reduce their population willingly?" So far the answer has been a resounding NO. Religion, culture, governments, society, etc. are all geared toward having kids, and lots of them. As a result, it does not really matter what the resources are, or how much of anything we have at what price level, population levels will eventually hit the wall and fail. Then populations will dramatically fall, and where they level off is anyone's guess. Diseases and famines will be rampant and accelerate the process. Loss of resource access and technology will then accelerate the decline further. People will lose the current knowledge and be forced to become more rudimentary and self-sustaining. Tribes will form. Nations may well reform, as seen after the decline of the Mayas. However, we have used up all the easy to get to energy resources, and the next round of expansion will be limited to things like wood and mining garbage heaps of current cities and such. They too will likely expand until they cannot any more, and then go into decline. Jeremy Grantham postulated an interesting point that we would have hit the wall around about 1850 running out of trees for fuel if we had not found coal and oil and NG to run the industrial revolution. Having deforested the Earth we would be in a great decline now. Global warming would not have happened though, and our populations would have been far smaller and this more resilliant to rebounding.

In the end? The sun will go out eventually. Far sooner than that the moon will move far enough out in its orbit for the Earth to become less stable and wobble more. Long before that the Earth's core will solidify and we will lose the radiation shielding from the Sun that the magnetic field gives us allowing us to survive. The Earth will become like Mars is now. Before that the Earth will reverse its magnetic poles many times over, the net effect of which is completely unknown. At some point a caldera like that under Yellowstone may go off or another asteroid or comet will hit us hard. But waaaaaaay before these things are likely to happen (or maybe concurrent with a pole reversal)  the glaciers will return, and reduce our little species to some very small number, if we are still around (in 20-30k years or so). Anthropology shows that 99% of all species on Earth have become extinct. That is the way of evolution.


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## woodgeek (Apr 9, 2013)

Thanks for the clarification. You've clearly given this a lot of thought. I like that you are not predicting an imminent demise that none of us can escape, but rather a creeping decay of FF infrastructure and the geopolitical systems that depend on it, due to increasing oil price. And we agree that AGW is a wild-card for which there will be no easy fix, on top of PO.

I guess we disagree on the speed at which oil prices will rise, due to new extraction technology and resources being developed, and how fast demand will increase, due to a new price regime and associated eff gains (like the US doubling our fleet mpg, if we can pull that off). I think this is what energy transitions look like. And why they take so long.

I am also not getting your numbers. The cost of FF is not 100% of the cost of food, so I don't see why 4X the cost of oil would quadruple the price of food. It is only ~50% of the cost of civil aviation, so the cost of flights would double. Tires I don't know, but they already last 50k miles, so $1600 for a set of 4@$400/bbl, adds $0.03/mile.

And more to the point, I think coal-to-liquids would kick in around $200/bbl sustained price. And while I am concerned about AGW, CTL would only be for the marginal production and wouldn't boost the average footprint of an oil barrel significantly.

As for population, it is well established that the developed world has been at or below pop replacement levels for some times. Does that count? The US is an outlier, but our pop growth is mostly from immigrants and their children born here. China has huge demographic problems, but they do not suggest a surge in population over the next few decades. India bears watching.

The cost of food is clearly a major limit/issue. But it bears noting that staple crop prices have been falling over the long term:
http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/03/long-term-crop-prices.html
When LTG came out in the 70s, the cost of staple crops were ~2X _higher_ than they are today. During the 40s and 50s they were 3X higher than today. Of course, my parents reminded me that lots of people were starving back then, so I should clear my plate. But doubling the current staple crop price? Tripling it? Even if it happened, most people would adapt (to mid 20th century prices) and in some parts the developing world, more people would starve, maybe.

I should look more into the new 'cheerier' Club of Rome guys. The little I have read from them sounds pretty grim compared to 'conventional economics', a significant reduction in standard of living, energy services, industrial output per (world) capita by 2050, with AGW starting to bite. And that is their BEST case scenario, not the business as usual approach which is super-grim. From my POV, those pathways sound a lot like the ones you describe, not collapse in 2015 and stone age in 2020, but a choice of grim and grimmer decades ahead based upon the wisdom of our collective decisions/war/etc.

The upnote is of course, in a world where per capita 'stuff' and energy is half what it is today, it is possible, esp for folks that still have money, to put together satisfying and happy lives. Unlike the worst predictions of 2005 PO, we will not all spend our days wandering around grubbing tubers out of the ground and sleeping is dead SUVs. As for the world beyond 2050 (or 2100), sure there are deep sustainability challenges, but our imagination is limited IMO. Do you worry about AIs?

And I think offering a 'more positive' message is a very good idea. The old CoR message was 'you can't escape collapse'. The new one is 'if you do xyz, then our children can put together decent lives that they can enjoy' and most of 'xyz' sounds like sensible AGW prevention, increase eff, soil preservation, etc. Reasonable stuff. I think it will sell a LOT better to the millennials than the old message did to the boomers.


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## jebatty (Apr 9, 2013)

I used to fret and ruminate about peak oil, climate change, gloom and doom, etc. more in the past than I do now. The reason for the change was my own psychic well being, not any real change in the forces affecting peak oil, climate change, or gloom and doom. I changed my outlook from macro, which I can do little about, to micro, about which I can do a lot. My micro actions will not change the world, will probably free up energy resources for others to wastefully consume, but also these micro actions will save me $ which I can use or pass on to afford the higher prices resulting from ever rising energy costs and better cope with the changes that are coming.

I also have a much broader strategy which I am implementing, and which I discussed in a 2006 letter and follow-up discussion with one of my sons. The edited letter follows:

"A couple of weeks ago I attended a conference on "green" design sponsored by two Minnesota quasi-governmental agencies. I was particularly challenged by the topic presented by luncheon speaker, James Howard Kunstler, who presented a petroleum-depletion paradigm (along with other issues) which is not only plausible but also probable, in my opinion. I also ordered and now have read one of his books, "The Long Emergency." I will be very brief on the paradigm laid out by Mr. Kuntsler. I find his paradigm to be more probable than not, at least sufficient to begin now to develop a plan to "hedge" the future. Everything that follows is greatly simplified. I encourage you to read the book if this intrigues you.

His chief thesis is that the world now is or very soon will be at the "petroleum peak," defined as the point at which one-half of world oil reserves will have been depleted. While one-half yet remains, the key fact is that the first one-half represented the cheap, easy to extract, and high quality petroleum and natural gas, while the second one-half is just the opposite on a cascading scale of rising extraction cost and diminishing quality. He then argues that the world has no viable, economical energy replacement. Nuclear power represents the best option, but the United States is woefully behind in development of this option, and nuclear/electric power will not meet every energy need. Other energy options, such as hydrogen, solar, and biomass, are either petroleum dependent for their production, technologically illusory and extremely costly, and/or cannot provide sufficient energy to replace petroleum. Coal is a viable option for some energy needs, but the environmental cost will be great, available supplies may be exaggerated, and distribution limitations will not make coal a viable option at all locations.

While the play-out of the oil depletion paradigm is complex, suffice it to say that the results will include 1) the substantial end of automobile transportation (due to lack of fuel),  2) great down-sizing of nearly all industries (with consequent loss of employment) due to their oil dependence, 3) collapse of suburban and sprawled development, which depend upon the auto for their existence, 4) collapse of large cities because little productive work can be maintained in these cities without a petroleum based economy, 5) collapse of the financial markets (which may be the first to occur as the prospect of wealth loss appears likely), and 6) great social upheaval. 

He argues that future life (future beginning now and probably fully realized within about 15 years) will need to be based upon small, largely self-sufficient and sustainable communities with these attributes: 1) located on or very near to current or potential hydroelectric waterways (a source of power), 2) located on or very near to rail and/or barge/ship waterway infrastructure (source of needed supplies and using petroleum/coal efficiently), 3) located near productive agricultural lands (source of food), and 4) currently vital with small businesses able to meet essential needs and provide community support (and not likely to be sites of big box development such as xxx, yyy, zzz, etc.). Essentially, this is the picture of America before the mid-1950's.

Things I have tentatively concluded and would encourage you to think about and act on, at least as a hedge of the future:
1) Gain productive skills, trades, crafts which can provide a livelihood and assist in providing for your families in an oil-depleted future. In this regard, recreation and entertainment based industries may not have much of a future; medicine seems likely to have a future, but the drug and medical technology industries are very petroleum intensive, so "family practice" or nursing type medicine skills may have the best future; and most education-intensive and service-type professions do not have much of a future. Employment which will have a future will be that which truly is productive (converting a resource into a usable and needed product or maintaining a needed product).
2) Locate or plan now for living arrangements compatible with the preferred community description above. There is a high probability of suburbia collapse, collapse of large portions of the housing market, and consequent loss of value of suburban homes. We may be seeing the start of this now. When maintaining a suburban existence, renting would be better than owning, and keeping a high mortgage balance would be better than accelerating payments to build an equity which may disappear (use available funds to finance the hedge). A rented home may be easily left, and a high mortgage/leveraged home may be abandoned to foreclosure with minimal loss.
3) Move investment possibilities away from stocks, bonds, and probably even bank accounts (social upheaval may mimic the financial collapse of 1929 and loss of bank deposit assets). Consider agriculturally productive land or possibly forest productive land; a small, economical home in a small community of the type described above (rent out now and move in when needed); a small production business of a highly needed, basic product and which has good possibility of nearby available resources to maintain production in the face of supply disruption; other resource-based, hard assets (coal, lignite, peat, as energy sources, and essential minerals).

Things I would encourage you to avoid or resist include: Any further suburbanization of your lifestyle. Risk of loss is high and probability of risk realization is high.

Final word: in a worst case, that is, if none of these predictions is realized and rosy economic growth and development continues as in the recent past, a family life based on the tentative conclusions actually is quite good and even may be highly attractive. In essence, it is the "simple life" to which many people aspire. It also may be a much more meaningful life because this type of life connects us closely with our environment and develops community. Lastly, it also may permit us to better cope with some of the other major issues and challenges of our time: climate change, epidemic disease, water shortage, environmental destruction, and world politics."


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## woodgeek (Apr 9, 2013)

jebatty said:


> I used to fret and ruminate about peak oil, climate change, gloom and doom, etc. more in the past than I do now. The reason for the change was my own psychic well being, not any real change in the forces affecting peak oil, climate change, or gloom and doom. I changed my outlook from macro, which I can do little about, to micro, about which I can do a lot. My micro actions will not change the world, will probably free up energy resources for others to wastefully consume, but also these micro actions will save me $ which I can use or pass on to afford the higher prices resulting from ever rising energy costs and better cope with the changes that are coming.
> 
> I also have a much broader strategy which I am implementing, and which I discussed in a 2006 letter and follow-up discussion with one of my sons.


 
I understand/agree:
--needing to take steps to protect ones emotional well being.
--that conserving energy/resources is a rewarding, worthwhile hobby that is its own reward.
--Kunstler is a compelling guy.

A lot to respond to....but the big question is...how have your expectations evolved since 2006?

I was in a similar place back then, and our reactions were similar, but my kids were very small. I now think that Kunstler is an entertainer, if he believes what he says. If he doesn't believe, then he is a terrorist. Glenn Beck stole his act, and def doesn't believe his own act.


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## jebatty (Apr 9, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> ....but the big question is...how have your expectations evolved since 2006?


 
My last paragraph "Final word" shows the direction I considered and was evolving in 2006 and I continue in that path today. Conservation in the environmental sense also is conservative/conservation in the economic, financial and lifestyle senses. And for my wife and myself it is complemented by living, acting, and giving with a sense of justice and fairness for everyone throughout the world. Limited resources I consume are not available to others and also raise the price of those limited resources for others, most of whom can ill afford the cost. This is not the same as the political conservatism of today, which I think is about something totally different, and about which I will not comment.

As to expectations, I expect that I only can change myself, I can influence to a greater or lesser degree some others, but I must leave it to those others to make the choices to change themselves. In other words, I don't expect others or the systems to change, but I do expect me to change and I continue to make progress in that change, and whatever impact my actions have on others and ultimately in the systems, so be it.

In making my own changes I also will support those persons, groups and interests that more or less align with my own course of change. It only takes a small change in direction to alter course in a substantial way given time, just as a slight change in the rudder of the biggest oil tanker will result in a 180 degree turn, given sufficient time. I hope though that such an oil tanker does not strike an iceberg shed off the arctic ice shelf before that turn is complete, because the consequences of failure to change may be catastrophic, while the consequences of conservation are a better life and world for all of us.


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## woodgeek (Apr 9, 2013)

I'm glad that you were able to have a clearly positive response for you and yours from the Kunstler talk. I made a series of small changes to my life that have, overall, moved me in a positive direction. Your 'final word' is a more eloquent version of my 'upnote' ending....there is still plenty of room for optimism and constructing a rewarding and just life.

I worry that a more common response is 'capitulation', where people end up in a more negative emotional state, or paralyzed from making constructive and rewarding changes. This is why I was never a fan of 'unavoidable collapse' messages and fear-mongering. While I think such PO doomerism is on the wane (despite ongoing evolution of the oil market) AGW remains to scare our pants off. But progress on that challenge is also hindered (IMO) by scare mongering and capitulation.

I would add to the options of 'changing oneself' and 'setting a positive example' outreach, education and advocacy.


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## Circus (Apr 9, 2013)

jebatty said:


> petroleum-depletion paradigm​


 
It's all Mickey Mouse's fault.
Scarcity is artificial so predators can exploit us. Knowledge, college and medical degrees could be free if Mickey Mouse didn't keep extending the copy right laws. Virtual reality can eliminate commuting, vacations (four days of kids fighting and barfing in a car) and over population (Lucy Lu, Futurama). Solar can eliminate heat and electric bills. Composting instead of glorified cesspools saves potable water (Civil engineers prevent disease not doctors). As for glaciers or super volcanoes , our cinder of a galactic group will suck together in a barren void.


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 9, 2013)

Circus said:


> It's all Mickey Mouse's fault.
> Scarcity is artificial so predators can exploit us. Knowledge, college and medical degrees could be free if Mickey Mouse didn't keep extending the copy right laws. Virtual reality can eliminate commuting, vacations (four days of kids fighting and barfing in a car) and over population (Lucy Lu, Futurama). Solar can eliminate heat and electric bills. Composting instead of glorified cesspools saves potable water (Civil engineers prevent disease not doctors). As for glaciers or super volcanoes , our cinder of a galactic group will suck together in a barren void.


 

Lol. Thanks for the chuckle. Welcome indeed. It helps to keep it all in perspective.

I think it was George Carlin that said while taking several shots at the save the planet movement....dont worry the planet will be fine, just fine... it isn't moving on (toward extinction)....we are. The planet will recycle us like so much bad gas & move on to another species, it's experiment with humans will be over......Or words to that effect.


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## StihlHead (Apr 10, 2013)

Hmmmm, well a rosey outlook is nice, as that is what people want to hear and it will make you popular. However, that is not what is coming down the pipe, and in the case of the Club of Rome smacks in the face of the predictions offered in_ Limits to Growth_. Also if you tell people that things are going to be just fine, they will not change their habits and just keep wasting resources and energy. For example, what happened after Jimmy Carter left office and the gas crises of the 70s were left behind, Ronald Regan removed the solar water heating system from the White House, deregulated gasoline prices, and people began a long era of driving huge SUV gas guzzlers. Deja vu all over again. Also if you know what is coming but cannot deal with the potential outcome, I guess you can bury your head in the sand. I choose not to though. I use as much renewable energy as possible (I heat my house exclusively with wood) and I got myself snipped and I do not have children. My 'gift' to future generations, however few I believe that there will be.

The reason I assign the rise in food costs as the same as fuel costs is that in the new order of things, food is fuel. E10/E15 etc. blended gasoline requires ethanol, and that is made from corn. That has also resulted in a rise in corn prices of about 300% since 2002 (oil has gone up 400% in that same time, so it is not quite 1:1, but pretty close). Also diesel engines were originally designed to run on veggie oil, and hence biodiesel is fuel as well as food. In Brazil they grind sugar cane into ethanol. So I believe that from here on out, food is fuel and fuel is food. The old food paradigm is out, and the new one is in. This is a huge reason that food prices have gone up so fast in recent years and why the global uproar has resulted in poor places like Mexico and North Africa.

As for global population, Jeremy Grantham was positive about the possible reduction of population and the increase in alternative energy. While North America, Europe, Australia and Japan are showing a smaller increase in population, Africa, Asia and South America are all expected to increase. The global population is still expected to reach a peak of 10 billion by the latest revised UN figures. Some show that figure as high as 12 or even 15 billion. That time will hopefully be well past my era on this earth. With the onset of NG fracking, total peak energy production has been pushed out farther now. Maybe 10 or even 20 more years? Oil production has pretty much leveled off, for all intents and purposes. It is up or down a tad in the last 5 or 6 years, but definitely leveling off. Supply and demand will continue to push prices higher. The emerging middle classes in India and China are certain to push demand higher for most resources.

While it will be possible for many of us to sustain or attain a high standard of living, that will continue to be at the cost of living standards for most of the global population. China is two worlds; the one you see in the special economic zones, and the much larger impoverished one that you do not see in the outlaying areas. Never mind the killing smog that they have there. India is a mish-mash, and always will be. They still have the cast system there (legal or not), and every single engineer that I worked with from India was a Brahma. I have also travelled through a lot of Central America, and seen the well below poverty level bags of bones begging for pennies. I supported the Indios in Chiapas when NAFTA was enacted that wiped out many maize farmers in southern Mexico. Iowa corn is sold there now. Then there is the two-tiered system we have here in the US. The haves, and the imported cheap labor from Latin America. Its all there if you choose to see it.


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## pdf27 (Apr 10, 2013)

I think you're overplaying the interchangeability between food and fuel. There is another link too, which operates differently - as populations get richer, they want to drive more but also want to eat more meat. Given that grazing is fairly heavily utilised, that means using grains to feed the animals - and pushes up the price of those grains, which are staple foods for the poor. That will have a stronger effect than the Ethanol or Biodiesel usage (although I have no time at all for biofuels made from edible foods - if I were king I'd ban them).
One other effect - as food prices go up, the use of technology to increase production and utilisation will go up and become more economical. Roughly half of the food in the third world is wasted, mostly rotting before it reaches stores. That isn't a problem in the first world, so given the money it will be soluble - and with high food prices may well solve itself. There is a smaller problem in the west, mostly of picky eaters discarding food in the home. Again, higher food prices will hopefully discourage this. Put the two together, and even without changing eating habits there is a solution for a population of maybe 15 billion, assuming modest advances in agriculture.


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## StihlHead (Apr 10, 2013)

Interesting, but as we write, the US congress is debating making E15 gasoline with even more ethanol, and here in the states at least, Ethanol is in almost all gasoline now. More and more food here is being dumped into fuel, by law. Brazil is also running pretty much exclusively on sugar. Maybe its more of a western hemisphere thing, but that is the way it is here. Also of late the price of meat is sky high (due to US drought and the price of hay as a result of the price of fertilizers), and fewer people can afford to eat it. I eat less now, and I do not even look at the steaks in the counter any more at the store.

As for improving the third world food situation, I would ask you, have you ever been to a third world country? I think the prospect that "they" will improve their infrastructure and transport systems just to move food is basically, 'that just ain't ever gonna happen'. Who is going to give them the money to do that, anyway?The busted Eurozone? The over their heads in debt US or Japan? Have you peeked at the global debt situation lately?  They barely get the money for the food in those places, inefficient as it is.

True story... when I was young I went to Mexico a lot. I was in a small Indian village on the south west coast there and they were in the second year of a drought. This was before NAFTA, and they grew maize locally. At any rate, it started raining again just when CARE showed up with tons and tons of corn to distribute. Suddenly the local demand and price for corn went to zero and no one planted any, even though it was raining again. No one really wanted to eat the corn, as what they really wanted was to eat chicken. So they decided pretty much overnight to become poultry farmers and raised chickens and fed it all the CARE corn. That is what happens in the third world from my experience. You do not get the results that you expect, no matter how it is intended or administered.


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## jebatty (Apr 10, 2013)

If this already has been stated, forgive me. As to the fuel-food identity, most modern agricultural industrial food is produced with heavy use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and my understanding is that all of these are heavily petroleum based/dependent. We eat oil.


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## woodgeek (Apr 10, 2013)

Stihlhead, I think we agree one the current (impoverished) state of the world. I have traveled a little outside the first world, taken the bus across the Yucatan, a couple short trips to India. I have seen enough to agree with you. But there is a thing called development. Japan in the 50s, Brazil in the 70s, the Asian tigers in the 80s, now China...the ability of a country to transition toward a first world standard is a well demonstrated and understood process. And they are absolutely not doing it with CARE packages and humanitarian aid.

But you can't have it both ways. If China were not developing, and those earlier countries had not developed, then we would still have a cheap oil era and plenty of food (for us, and malnourished starving people overseas). The stresses on the oil/food system are because we are making significant progress on a world 'per capita food and industrial production' basis called development. If those poor people in the Chinese countryside had fewer opportunities in 2013 than they did in 2000 because oil got expensive, then that would be a PO story. Instead, oil got more expensive because those poor people now have more opportunity (e.g. a kid can test well and get sent to a modern Chinese university). That is PO on in its head!....FF (mostly coal) is still cheap and available enough to allow the most populous country on earth to 'develop'. The system is groaning under the strain, there are various price shocks for oil and resources, but the system has not 'collapsed'.

I am big believer in things not being as simple as they appear. I like your corn and chicken story. Sometimes when things get more expensive, people will use more of them. Sometimes when they get richer, they will use less of stuff. The devil is in the details. That is why predicting the future is hard, even with the CoR computer model, let alone an armchair and a laptop. But not all the stuff we can't predict is 'downside', there are also unexpected 'upsides' out there.

Renewable Energy in the 70s didn't croak, and people did not start driving SUVs b/c of Reagan and the critics of Limits to Growth. That happened because the PO story-tellers back then were wrong...and the price of oil collapsed for two decades. RE tech was primitive enough that there was no way of rolling it out commercially with those oil prices. Could politicians have had a steep gas tax and CAFE standards and the world would now be better, more eff, less CO2? Sure.

We def disagree about human psychology. People respond more constructively and in a more sustained way to positive messages and herd following than to purely negative messages. If you tell people that there is no way out, 80% of people will just tune you out and convince themselves your msg is BS. And a lot of the rest will not be mobilized to act, but just depressed. If AGW were just a technical problem, it would be straightforward, the engineers know what we need to build. But it is the psychology and political spheres that make the solution so hard.

I don't consider the current CoR msg to be 'rosy' at all. Maybe a billion people will die from AGW effects, maybe the world will collapse to a rather lower standard of living in the 21st century. And the resource base knowledge and GW science are much better than 40 years ago, and the predicted collapse much closer....a much more compelling and reliable prediction IMO, and one more likely to contribute to action. And their predictions for the last 30 years are pretty spot on.

IIRC, the CoR had alternative futures where some of the crises were caused by running out of FF (small FF reserves) and others limited by 'pollution' (large FF reserves). At the time I thought pollution was 'smog'. Now I know it is CO2. In 1980s, if I read LTG, I thought...well, we have cheap oil, so we must be the large FF reserve case, and we have 'pollution controls' like catalytic converters and coal plant scrubbers....so 'pollution' doesn't (to my eyes) seem like a civilization threatening issue (maybe those will get better and better and avoid a crisis). In 2013, I can go 'aha', we ARE the large FF reserve case (despite PO doomers assertion to the contrary), and the 'pollution curve' on the chart is actually **CO2**, which is persistent and has the capacity (at some level) to eventually render swaths of the earth uninhabitable and/or unfit for agriculture. In the 1980s, the CoR charts simply didn't make sense. In 2013, it is almost 'duh', this is a picture of (30 years more imminent) AGW-doom under different scenarios.


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## woodgeek (Apr 10, 2013)

jebatty said:


> If this already has been stated, forgive me. As to the fuel-food identity, most modern agricultural industrial food is produced with heavy use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and my understanding is that all of these are heavily petroleum based/dependent. We eat oil.


 
Absolutely, there are many FF calories expended for every food calorie produced. And that works because FF calories are a lot cheaper than food calories. But the fraction of FF going to food production is not large (and fertilizer is made from NG, not oil) And that usage is critical/inelastic enough that as long as there is any FF left, we will send it to the farm if it is needed there.


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## StihlHead (Apr 10, 2013)

The engineers? I find this to be the most amusing in my debates with people about the future. Along with 'science will save us, because it always has'. "Someone will always come up with a solution" does not always happen. Being an engineer I see how things are developed and marketed. I see marketing and/or management come to us and demands that we defy the laws of physics, over and over again. I have seen many many attempts at new technological systems fail for a variety of reasons. Most breakthroughs are the result of pure dumb luck. I do not see humans worming their way out of Peak Energy and Peak Critical Resources. They will happen, sooner or later. You can slash at the models all you want and find fault and say, "See, it has not happened as predicted!" We are just extending the inevitable, pushing population overshot father with more energy sources coming online, and living in borrowed time. We live in a finite system, not an endlessly open one. Looking at anthropological, archeological and geological evidence of the past, I conclude that we cannot escape our fate of doom. But as always, few want to listen to that. They want the candy coated version with the promise of forever.

GW is another aspect to the mess we are in. I was on board with GW long ago looking at stuff that was coming out of Scripps and Woods Hole. At least the debate has changed on that front. I spent years debating with people that still refuse to believe it exists. I was hoping that PO would come sooner so that the effects would dampen GW. But that has not happened. Well, in the case of the US it has (with NG), but in the case of world consumption, it has not. We export a massive amount of coal. Also pollution is not just Co2. Methanol and other gasses are in the greenhouse mix. Also pollution still includes a lot of smog. Just look at China's many larger cities on any given day. They say when it rains in China it rains dirt. We get China polluted rainfall here in Oregon now, and that is where a large part of the mercury in our rivers comes from. Japan was hit with several huge clouds of China smog this winter as well. It is an issue on a massive scale as a result of the massive industrialization of China. Also other types of pollution exist, like fallout from Fukashima (and coal burning), the dumping of coal ash, and NG fracking which has the potential to do great damage to the fresh water supply. In the case of CO2? This thing will run its course. We should have started doing something about it 30 years ago. But the candy coated happy jingle of 'everything is fine' was dumped on the populations by the politicians, FF and auto industry, and here we are today. If anything, the GW models lag far behind the actual accelerated pace of GW, and entropy is unleashing its... energy on us.


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## woodgeek (Apr 10, 2013)

We're talking past each other....I am saying that I think the CoR models DO describe the future, I am not slashing them or discounting them. I think both PO doom, AGW doom and various other dooms were included in the original scenarios. I think we are still driving as fast as we can towards AGW doom, and that so far, things are shaping up pretty much as that scenario predicted in 1975. I also agree that some who were aware of AGW hoped a little PO might help AGW, by reducing usage. While transportation might be getting more efficient, other FF sectors are still booming, no bueno. And I know there are other pollutants, both GW and not, just that I didn't appreciate the pollution as a limit to growth issue via AGW in 1985. Now I 'get it'.

At the same time, I think we can/should all try to adapt to the coming new reality as best we can, and try to advocate/vote for/buy/invent things that might mitigate future issues. That is not escapism, its the Standard Operating Procedure of humans and living things. Yes the warning should have been heeded in 1975, but I think that failure has more to do with human psychology (which still contributes to almost 50% disbelief in AGW models) than policy leaders.

As for engineering.....there are a lot of ideas/designs/solutions that were never fielded b/c the front office said they wouldn't be profitable. When the financial situation changes, voila, new tech appears as if from nowhere. One example is fracking....known and used for decades, and as soon as the price point favored it, boom, out it comes. There are a lot of other technologies out there in the wings, coal-to-liquid, biomass feedstock techniques, single cell protein, that will 'boom' get rolled out if/when they can make a buck, little to no R&D required.


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## Seasoned Oak (Apr 11, 2013)

I like the aqua culture food process were fish provide fertilized water for the plants and the plants clean the water for the fish and you can harvest both plants and fish. Some models are set up in abandoned buildings close to or in the cities .So far seems to be working well and is sustainable.


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## jharkin (Apr 11, 2013)

I just got around to catching up on the last week of this thread.  This has now gone far beyond my level of research on the topics so I cant add much - but I do want to say that it has been a very interesting and informative read. Thanks to everyone, especially woodgeek and stillhead  and jebatty for the detailed and thoughtful responses. Ive learned a lot today.

I'm glad that we got past the "PO means mad max tomorrow, run run" and "mad max didn't happen so PO is bunk, party on dude!"  positions and actually are digging into it.


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## Seasoned Oak (Apr 11, 2013)

jebatty said:


> He argues that future life (future beginning now and probably fully realized within about 15 years) will need to be based upon small, largely self-sufficient and sustainable communities with these attributes: 1) located on or very near to current or potential hydroelectric waterways (a source of power), 2) located on or very near to rail and/or barge/ship waterway infrastructure (source of needed supplies and using petroleum/coal efficiently), 3) located near productive agricultural lands (source of food), and 4) currently vital with small businesses able to meet essential needs and provide community support (and not likely to be sites of big box development such as xxx, yyy, zzz, etc.). Essentially, this is the picture of America before the mid-1950's.
> ."


Always said a Farm is the most valuable thing you can own,even a pile of gold wont feed you and keep you warm in winter if no one will trade those things for it.. the amish are the closest thing to living like what you describe. Live off the land, commonly DONT have even electricity. For sure dont have ipods,cell phones,Flat screen TVs, .Not petroleum dependent at all,horse transportation, im pretty sure they are all organic as far as farming.  
I may try this on a limited basis in my cabin in the woods. I will have electric but try to develop systems that dont need it,like water delivery ect.


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## woodgeek (Apr 11, 2013)

In my understanding the Amish are a little more complex than you describe.  The ones that trade goods in Philly DO have cell phones w/voicemail.  IIRC, every new technology is evaluated for its pros/cons by a council, and some new tech can be allowed if it decided that the pros outweigh the cons.  With cell phones, I think they have a rule that they are only for customer contact, and can't be used in the house.  IOW, they use them the way they previously used payphones, before payphones went away.

I have also heard a lot about the amish using power tools in woodworking/construction.  Since elec is out, they exclusively use pneumatic tools, and have various kinds of ways of making compressed air.  Apparently, they have quite modern looking woodworking shops, where the only odd thing is the air hoses and the funky (steam?) compressor out back.  Anyone know better?


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## Delta-T (Apr 11, 2013)

thats a pretty accurate description of some of the modern Amish....but there are still many peoples throughout the world who live without technology, and they seem to get along just fine. I'm sure they'd be happy to have access to medicine, and the occasional use of the ICE to help them transport their wares about. Highly doubt their societies will fall to nothingness if/when PO kicks the rest of us in the shin.


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 11, 2013)

Their biggest problem Delta will be us (the have's) will we invade them for their food water & other resources when ours get scarce? Enslave them & force them to produce for us? History says yes in a heartbeat, that the have's will take by force from the have nots.

I don't see PO happening with the new tech being rolled out to get at more oil, I do see us using or fouling most/all of our fresh water in the quest for oil & then having to invade to survive/continue to thrive. After all without fresh water we wont grow much in North America, no longer the bread basket. Think of us in the future as being saharan Africa now, just with the ability to invade at will for what we don't have but want/need.


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## Seasoned Oak (Apr 11, 2013)

I bought an outbuilding from an amish craftsman who DID take credit cards but since he had no electric in his office had to (old style) swipe the card on one of those ink transfer CC forms. No plug in electronic reader.


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## Delta-T (Apr 11, 2013)

you may be very correct FC. History does show that when there is enough "want" then there's usually a way to extract from others to satisfy it. Saw an interesting piece on microcellulose this AM. Technology to the rescue? There's a lot of things happening in a very wide range of disciplines that have to potential to catapult us out of the traditional FF game. I dont know that we'll ever really master fusion in an economical way, but a few jumps in materials science (room temp super conductor, 100% organic plastic substitute, ginsu knife that cuts through cans and then a tomato...we are really close on this one) and we change the time tables a bit, and when you add a few of these sorta things together, we give ourselves a real chance of getting past the doom part and well into the hopeful part....hopefully.


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 11, 2013)

Sure hope so Delta.

Maybe I just have a different perspective/view on the rate of change. For me it's the same hours in a plane to go to the far north as to go to Disneyland.

Everytime I go north I am amazed at the rate of change, it's happening much faster up there.

We can easily absorb the population above the 60th, just not sure where all the rest of us go should that rate of change make it here & force us to move as well.

I hope you are right & the new tech is able to undo the past 200 years in time. That would only leave us with the population thingy to deal with.

In a way despite my constant curiosity I am glad that if I live my expected # of years I will be ashes before this plays out. Umm.....maybe.


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## StihlHead (Apr 11, 2013)

I find that most non-technical people have the most faith in technology saving us from ourselves in the future. Its always just over the horizon and will bail us out of the FF dilemma. Remember also that technology is what put us into this FF mess to begin with. At best they can extend the rosey era that we are in today, but I do not see alternative energy replacing the mountains of cheap FF energy that we have used during the industrial revolution to get us where we are today. Clean coal, clean(er) oil, solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, NG, better efficiency, etc. are good prospects. However, many of them still have the CO2 emissions issue somewhere in the process or development cycle, are limited, or actually depend on FF somewhere in production like ethanol, which in my view is a waste of oil in the long run, but politicians are demanding that we use more of it anyway. I believe that burning food is a bad idea, but burn it we will. That is leading to a new paradigm where energy = food & food = energy, as I have said above. Nuclear is the only real 'solution' longer term in my view, but it is very dangerous and proven unsafe in the cases of Fukushima, Chernobyl, and to a lesser degree at Three Mile Island. There is also the issue of peak fissile material; raw material to refine into fuel, and of course the issue of nuclear weapons that exist among the nations that have stockpiles, and that NK and Iran are developing.

I would not hang my hat on fusion, breeder/thorium reactors, or some other large scale process that has been touted for a long time. I have looked long and hard at both and they just do not pan out for a lot of reasons. I used to support Lawrence Livermore Lab as an applications engineer and discussed this stuff over many drinks with those guys. You can read many blogs on them by the IEEE, a professional group of electrical engineers that publish a lot of data and research. Perpetual motion does not work either, but I see a lot of ads for them on the internet. "What the electric company does not want you to know about" and that type of thing. Also as I have said before, its not just about peak energy. Its peak everything. There are limits to growth even with an unlimited amount of energy. We have been growing at an exponential rate as it is, which is the mathematical limit. I believe it is the nature of nature, and that we cannot help it. Like any organism given favorable conditions, we have outcompeted our competition and predators, overcome disease and famine, and bred like rabbits to reproduce like crazy. Now the issue is how to put the brakes on this process, or let nature take its path if we decide not to. We do have some brakes: war, poverty, genocide, murder, birth control, WMDs, etc. Add to that nature's brakes of disease, famine, and environmental/geological/cosmic disasters. In the end its a numbers game no matter what we do. So the equation becomes energy and resources and environment vs. human population and demand and ingenuity.

Everything in our civilization is based on growth. Growth growth growth. We do not do well in contractual periods. Systems fall apart and fail, civilizations collapse. Which is the premise of the PO concept. Its either grow, or face peril and demise. Its like Carnegie's statement on economics: you either grow or you contract; there is no leveling off. So rather than try to find technological solutions to feed the perpetual growth machine which simply has to fail at some point, or extend the process of growth by some synthetic means, I think it is more prudent to figure out how to dissolve our growth based capitalist systems and evolve a social process that allows for maintain a level, Earth carrying capacity population and work in harmony with the world that we have evolved on, rather than constantly **** it to death. Or at least try to. I seriously doubt that this will happen though, and it is a pipe dream of mine. I believe that we will simply peak and collapse, however fast or slow. I have been deeply involved in advanced technology development and energy systems as a professional engineer for over 25 years. I have invented and developed many systems for computers, military weapons platforms, and communications systems. I simply do not see a solution for endless human expansion that does not create more problems than it solves. We simply cannot expand forever. We either change and curb our rampantly growing population, resource appetite and environmental damage, or we eventually collapse as a civilization, and perhaps become extinct.


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## jharkin (Apr 11, 2013)

StihlHead said:


> I find that most non-technical people have the most faith in technology saving us from ourselves in the future. Its always just over the horizon and will bail us out of the FF dilemma.


 
Not just non-tech folks. I've met the same techno-utopia thinking in non-physical technical fields like software/IT/etc.. Ive had discussions like this at work and all the software developers seem to be of this type. "there's an app for that!"



> *Clean coal, clean(er) oil*, solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, NG, better efficiency, etc. are good prospects. However, many of them still have the CO2 emissions issue somewhere in the process or development cycle, are limited, or actually depend on FF somewhere in production like ethanol,


 
The other problem is many of these processes for cleaner fossil fuels have dismal net energy returns. From my limited reading adding carbon sequestration uses what is it? about half of the energy you get from burning coal? And replacing oil with CTL, we should look at the process efficiencies of Fischer-Tropp. There is a reason the Nazis adopted it only as a last ditch option when they were unable to take the Caucasus oil fields.

Adopting either (clean coal/CTL) on a global scale is only going to vastly accelerate depletion of reserves and bring the peak date closer, not push it back.


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## Ehouse (Apr 11, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> In my understanding the Amish are a little more complex than you describe. The ones that trade goods in Philly DO have cell phones w/voicemail. IIRC, every new technology is evaluated for its pros/cons by a council, and some new tech can be allowed if it decided that the pros outweigh the cons. With cell phones, I think they have a rule that they are only for customer contact, and can't be used in the house. IOW, they use them the way they previously used payphones, before payphones went away.
> 
> I have also heard a lot about the amish using power tools in woodworking/construction. Since elec is out, they exclusively use pneumatic tools, and have various kinds of ways of making compressed air. Apparently, they have quite modern looking woodworking shops, where the only odd thing is the air hoses and the funky (steam?) compressor out back. Anyone know better?


 

My Amish friend has a full size woodworking shop.  All Powermatic equipment, all electric.  He says there's no rule against it,  just a mater of choice.


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## woodgeek (Apr 11, 2013)

Agree that perpetual growth is impossible on a finite sphere. Also agree that we have not yet developed economic and political systems that are stable with no growth. At some point human population will peak. But will it peak when we run out of oil, phosphate, arable land, fresh water, oxygen, space, all of the above, none of the above? Will the population peak because the majority of the world has 'developed', or because of war and famine and plague? My take away is that the whole thing is complex enough to be hard to predict, it needs some nice computer models. We need some Nate Silver-type brainiacs to try to crunch this prediction.

The Great Doom Roundup....

As modelers, I have decided that the PO gurus are all full of chit. They have a lot of scary stories (Kunstler) and stats (a new Saudi Arabia every three years!!), etc, but the only 'models' are extraction models, estimates of reserves and logistic extrapolation. And all of those have been proven unreliable again and again through history.

In contrast, the models for AGW are great, and getting better all the time, multiple independent researchers coming to similar conclusions, a reliable set of results (as such things go). And they say that business as usual FF consumption, (assuming supplies hold out) results in a **destroyed biosphere** by ~2100±30 years. In my read, the 'baked in' warming from past emissions is not a civilization killer (I haven't seen any compelling tipping point stuff). So the models are kinda useless for predicting the future, because they don't know what we will emit. So....

The models for the whole system (the intersection of PO and AGW and overpopulation), from the Club of Rome, starting 40 years ago, have stood the test of time. Those authors admitted their uncertainties back in the 70s, and predicted a lot of different futures. And the future we got by 2013 looks like a subset of those scenarios, nice job. And they say projecting those sub models forward shows a tough road ahead where population and industrial output and GDP per capita peak and (at best) fall 50% and then (almost) flatten out. The worse models are a lot worse. What makes the difference? Public policy. The ultimate wildcard.


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## jebatty (Apr 12, 2013)

I think the biggest obstacle to reducing energy usage is behavioral change in a culture that is an energy hog with because of relatively cheap energy. In short, our culture of convenience trumps very real things we could do to reduce energy usage.

So, 2 weeks into an effort to reduce electric usage, save the world, and what are the required behavioral changes? Surprisingly, very little, and the impact is 100% reduction in line power electric usage relating to the changes. Granted, not a big reduction in overall line power usage, but the change has been quite easy.

Focus has been mostly on lighting and desktop computer, and a few other things.

The desktop is "on" now only pretty much early morning when I do most of my computer time (about 3 hours/day), then shut off along with the power strip off for everything, including the UPS, printer, etc. -- 0 usage when off. Before the desktop would have been left "on" mostly all the time. Additional computer time during the day and evening is my notebook, which takes about 1/10 the power of the desktop. Wife now uses only her Kindle Fire.

Impact on behavior: transition has worked very well, have modified my computer habits to adapt pretty well to the change, occasionally turn the desktop on again if a need for something the notebook can't handle.

Lighting - we already are all CFL with some LED's, but I have switched to 5 Nokero LED solar rechargeables for all early morning lighting and some evening lighting. Put them outside in the daytime to recharge, and a few backup Eneloops if a charge runs out and still need light. The extra Eneloops themselves get charged from a 12v gel cell battery with a Nitecore charger that runs on either line power or 12vdc, and the Nitecore charges NiMH and Li-ion batteries. The 12v gel cell gets recharged from a 30w solar panel/charge controller.

Impact on behavior: I'm surprised at how easy it was to make this switch. The Nokero's are not room bright lights, but are very good for "good enough" lighting. A recharge provides about 3-6 hours of light, depending on the extent of the charge based on sun/cloud conditions on the recharge. My wife has really tolerated this change well. She knows I'm a crazy experimenter anyway, so she goes with the flow. This switch represents a 100% reduction in electric usage over lights previously used.

Other things: cell phones, Kindle and other USB chargeable devices are now charged from a 5200mah Li-ion USB battery pack (RavPower) as needed, not from the wall chargers, and the battery pack itself is recharged from the 12v gel cell with a 12v-USB charge adapter. This works very well and so far has not requiring much behavioral change at all. Just keep the battery pack and 12v gel cell charged. I still need to get a charge adapter for the notebook, which requires 19vdc based on the wall charger label.

Heating and A/C: we heat with a wood stove, only electric backup heat; no A/C.

Power suckers: all electric house, so electric dryer (wife not likely to want to change to a clothesline), electric cooktop/oven (change difficult, but will experiment with a solar cooker this summer), microwave oven (really convenient and efficient as compared to using oven or electric cooktop), electric dhw (off-peak rate is really low, no economy in trying to go solar on this now), refrigerator, freezer and dishwasher (not good options here, except could not use the dishwasher IF I washed all the dishes in the sink).

Big energy sucker: two cars and gasoline, about 20,000 miles/year on each car. Ugh!


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## Bigg_Redd (Apr 12, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> For those who are curious about Peak Oil, but have not followed it obsessively for years, a recent history...
> 
> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/?p=10895#.UVitAhk1H8A
> 
> ...


 
Orrrrrrrr. . .

We could focus on adapting to a warmer planet, eh?


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## Circus (Apr 12, 2013)

This comment is going to be hated.  People change out of malice.  Tax oil enough to make renewables and economy cars cheap by comparison. Five years ago I went solar air and water only to spite those greedy LP suppliers.  Designed and built it myself to spite those greedy solar contractors.    Lets hate the tax man!


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## Seasoned Oak (Apr 12, 2013)

Circus said:


> This comment is going to be hated. People change out of malice. Tax oil enough to make renewables and economy cars cheap by comparison. Five years ago I went solar air and water only to spite those greedy LP suppliers. Designed and built it myself to spite those greedy solar contractors. Lets hate the tax man!


The tax on gas should at least be as much as the oil companies subsidies. Id go for a tax on gas to fund electric conversions of the current fleet. That would have an immediate impact and level out fuel prices for many years to come.


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## woodgeek (Apr 12, 2013)

Bigg_Redd said:


> Orrrrrrrr. . .
> 
> We could focus on adapting to a warmer planet, eh?


 
More like leave oil in the ground AND adapt to a warmer planet.

The AGW models do not predict warmer and wetter, which might seem ok, or to have some upside. They predict hotter and drier. Sort of like the dustbowl or last year's drought being a 'typical' or 'wetter than average' year, rather than a once in a decade or century drought. Shall we shift agriculture to Canada to adapt? What if those formerly muskeg or tundra areas don't have topsoil suitable for agriculture? Shall we haul the topsoil from Iowa up to Hudson Bay?

a primer: http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2010/10/future-of-drought-series.html


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 12, 2013)

Bigg_Redd said:


> Orrrrrrrr. . .
> 
> We could focus on adapting to a warmer planet, eh?


 
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on how this is to happen.

Perhaps where X = temp rise. Y = native species (flora & fauna) made extinct by X. Z = changes we have to make relative to X & Y to survive. As well as any other data that you think would be relevant in such an equation. Very long & complex set of equations indeed.


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## Delta-T (Apr 13, 2013)

soil is soooo 20th century. hydroponics is the way to go. if you look at the valleys of Califonia, they've been pretty much teraformed to be productive for agriculture....no reason that same process couldn't be put to use in other places. I'm a fan of some of the very ambitious engineering ideas...like the Atlantropa concept of the early 20th Century. Big problems need big solutions. Invest heavily in the Speedo Co. for economic security in the much warmer near future.


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## woodgeek (Apr 13, 2013)

Delta-T said:


> soil is soooo 20th century. hydroponics is the way to go. if you look at the valleys of Califonia, they've been pretty much teraformed to be productive for agriculture....no reason that same process couldn't be put to use in other places. I'm a fan of some of the very ambitious engineering ideas...like the Atlantropa concept of the early 20th Century. Big problems need big solutions. Invest heavily in the Speedo Co. for economic security in the much warmer near future.


 
I'll see your hydroponics and raise....not only does agriculture have a huge eco footprint, green plants only convert sunlight to food calories at <<1% efficiency. Chemoautotrophs can live and grow off the energy in simple chemical feedstocks (like NH4 and H2) and covert them to biomass and protein calories at closer to 30% efficiency. An acre of solar panels feeding a chemical plant an a fermenter could generate >30X more edible single cell biomass than an acre of the most productive food crops.

I'm sure we'll get used to the taste.


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## Delta-T (Apr 13, 2013)

almost anything is palatable with enough hot sauce/bbq sauce/crushed red peppercorns.


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## Seasoned Oak (Apr 13, 2013)

Delta-T said:


> soil is soooo 20th century. hydroponics is the way to go. if you look at the valleys of Califonia, they've been pretty much teraformed to be productive for agriculture....no reason that same process couldn't be put to use in other places. I'm a fan of some of the very ambitious engineering ideas...like the Atlantropa concept of the early 20th Century. Big problems need big solutions. Invest heavily in the Speedo Co. for economic security in the much warmer near future.


Should work good in the desert,not many cloudy days.


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## Bigg_Redd (Apr 13, 2013)

Frozen Canuck said:


> I would be interested to hear your thoughts on how this is to happen.
> 
> Perhaps where X = temp rise. Y = native species (flora & fauna) made extinct by X. Z = changes we have to make relative to X & Y to survive. As well as any other data that you think would be relevant in such an equation. Very long & complex set of equations indeed.


 
I see you're in Alberta.  Assuming not all worst case scenarios of the pious and panic stricken GW alarmists are true, would it possibly mean a longer growing season for the farms of your fellow countrymen? 

(this is just one example - long, complex equations with made up variables are not my forte)


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## Bigg_Redd (Apr 13, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> More like leave oil in the ground AND adapt to a warmer planet.
> 
> The AGW models do not predict warmer and wetter, which might seem ok, or to have some upside. They predict hotter and drier. Sort of like the dustbowl or last year's drought being a 'typical' or 'wetter than average' year, rather than a once in a decade or century drought. Shall we shift agriculture to Canada to adapt? What if those formerly muskeg or tundra areas don't have topsoil suitable for agriculture? Shall we haul the topsoil from Iowa up to Hudson Bay?
> 
> a primer: http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2010/10/future-of-drought-series.html


 
I'm sure it will be wetter some places and drier in others.  One can't very well raise global temperatures without a commensurate rise in ocean water evaporation (unless you are aware of some anti-axiomatic weather phenomena that is hidden from the rest of us). 

To answer your question about Canada - yes.  Canada has millions of acres for productive farmland.


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 13, 2013)

Bigg_Redd said:


> I see you're in Alberta. Assuming not all worst case scenarios of the pious and panic stricken GW alarmists are true, would it possibly mean a longer growing season for the farms of your fellow countrymen?
> 
> (this is just one example - long, complex equations with made up variables are not my forte)


 

It is possible for a longer warm period as well as many other possibilities, increased storms, tornado's becoming the norm etc. I don't think that the tilt of the earth is going to change radically giving us a longer growing season ie. more sunlight hours. Add to that the fact that roughly a third of the province is being used for enegy production-oil & gas & we probably have our maximum arable acres right now or very close to it. Still going to be a one crop growing season here & in most of the northern hemisphere until the tilt or the tech changes. Most 2 season growing relies upon irrigation.


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 13, 2013)

Not that I am against doing a larger portion of the planets growing here but if that is to happen we are going to have to adopt some big picture long term thinking rather than our capitalist model so there is more soil left should it be needed. Presently urban growth is consuming our best farmland.


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## woodgeek (Apr 13, 2013)

Bigg_Redd said:


> I'm sure it will be wetter some places and drier in others. One can't very well raise global temperatures without a commensurate rise in ocean water evaporation (unless you are aware of some anti-axiomatic weather phenomena that is hidden from the rest of us).
> 
> To answer your question about Canada - yes. Canada has millions of acres for productive farmland.


 
Indeed, warmer climate in the past has been wetter. But the models are saying that fast warming is different from slow warming. Basically, the temperature of the ocean lags the temperature of the land, by a few centuries. During that period, evaporation over the ocean doesn't increase significantly, while condensation over the warm land decreases, less rain, and evaporation over the land increases, drying the soil. IOW, AGW inducing widespread drought IS axiomatic weather science.

Not widely known, that's why I gave you links.


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## BoilerMan (Apr 13, 2013)

A few questions for my small mind. I've followed this thread from its inception, and to say the least it's quite interesting. Some questions about GW, how long have we been able to accurately measure the temperature of air, water, or soil? How about the various gasses in the air, ice cores, etc? I'm certainly a science buff, and there seems to be little said about some of the assumptions of the past that we base out future predictions on. Seems like most of the data we have collected is less than 100 YO. 
Transportation (personal) seems to be one of the biggest consumers for we _the haves. _Stihlhead, as an electrical engineer, I'm sure your aware of out electrical consumption has been rising above population growth for several decades, why do you think that is? Converting more things (rail) to electric is very inefficient just as resistance electric heat as _over _half of the kW are generally wasted in transmission. Electricity is only good if it's locally generated, the farther it's "transported" even with new DC tech it's still hugely wastes the prime mover's HP, which may not matter if hydro is the PM, but NG or other fossil fuels, now linked to transportation is even more wasteful of finite recourses. 
I'm not arguing against such things, just wondering about some of the data these are based on.
TS


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## woodgeek (Apr 14, 2013)

I'm not a climate scientist, but I read the papers.

Ice core data is complex, since the top layers of the ice are still porous and open to the air...the result is that the ice you see (and can date by counting annual layers) is 4000-6000 years older than the gas bubbles trapped within. But with current methods, it is believed that we have direct samples of atmospheric composition (CO2 and CH4 and isotopes) going back ~500,000 years (!!). The data over that period show a number of semi-regular wild swings in CO2 composition that correspond in time to the multiple ice ages that occurred during that period. The analysis of various isotopes from the ice and the gas inside, or other locations like lake or ocean sediment cores shows variations that are correlated with each other around the world. Since water with different isotopic composition condenses at different rates, snowing out a lot of the water in the atmosphere should sequester O-isotopes, so those are commonly used to assess the total amount of global ice. The periods when the ice ages occur are driven by the tilt of the earth axis, which wobbles in a predictable way over that period. Those wobbles and positive feedback effects from ice drive the climate fluctuations.

Paleotemperature is trickier. You can try to 'calibrate' different isotopes in the atmosphere with global average temperature if you have other data....i.e. growth rings in old trees or coral reefs. A lot of plants only grow at certain temps, so their pollen (in sediment) can be used to infer temperature. Similar thermometers can be built for plankton, fossil leaf shape for different (living) species, etc. At the end of the day. all these thermometers are reasonably consistent with each other...and the paleotemperature record shows large swings over the last 500,000 years, tracking the ice ages.

There was a kerfuffle for a while when it appeared that the CO2 record and temp record were out of whack....it looked like the temp shot up at the end of ice ages, and CO2 shot up only several thousand years later. It is now clear that that is due to the above effect with the surface ice 'breathing' for a few thousand years before it gets buried deep enough...this is confirmed by finding things like freon in the gas down to core depth of 4-6000 years. Since this 'breathing period' varies with how fast the ice is laid down (and thus the climate), it means that most gas samples have an age uncertainty ±1000 years, while the ice itself is dated much more accurately.

What does this have to do with climate models??? Not as much as you might think. Climate models are built using known physics and chemistry with other known inputs like the solar spectrum, shape of the continents, etc. There are plenty of unknowns that need to be 'fit', related to the mixing depth of the ocean, nucleation rates for cloud formation, how the biosphere produces CH4, etc. So, the last 500,000 years of atmospheric composition and temperature are used to test the climate models....can they reproduce the data, using the wobbling axis induced sunlight changes as input? The answer is yes they can. Of course there are still uncertainties...not all 'unknowns' are specified by this fitting process. And of course the old (read 20-30 yo) models were pretty crappy and primitive.

Running the models forward, those uncertainties between models leave a factor of two uncertainty in the predicted warming. A factor of two is a lot, but none of the models say the future will be peachy or something that anyone can trivially adapt to. If we stopped emitting carbon tomorrow (impossible) the world would continue to warm for a while, but we would (IMO) all be able to adapt. If we continue to emit CO2 at the current accelerating rate, the models predict gross changes to the climate, consistent with a collapse of current agricultural methods through temperature changes and drought in most currently productive locations, and nearly all current natural habitats shifting (e.g. from tundra to forest, forest to grassland, grassland to desert), which would result in a mass extinctions and 'biosphere collapse' (my fancy term for 'all forests dying'). The factor of two uncertainty leads to uncertainty for when this badness will occur, ranging from 40-100 years from now (assuming current CO2 emission trends continue).

The magnitude of the problem is tied (in my conservative opinion) to future emissions. I think humans will cut carbon emissions. Outside the US, a lot of people are taking AGW seriously...we americans are frankly bringing up the rear on the issue. While many blame others, such as the Chinese, for making the problem intractable, their CO2 per capita is still well below that in the US, and they have long term energy policies in place to reduce coal consumption, roll out RE, and keep their per capita emissions near current levels, and to reduce them longer term. We do not have any such policy in place, as we cheerfully persist in having 2X the per capita CO2 footprint of any other country (except Canada, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait).

We need to get our own house in order.

Personally, I am an optimist.  I think the next gen of americans takes AGW seriously.  I think we will reduce global emissions. And if we don't cut carbon emissions fast enough (or if the 40 year predictions turn out to be correct), I believe we will roll out geoengineering methods to mitigate the worst effects of AGW.


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## Ehouse (Apr 14, 2013)

As far as rail transport goes,  we're surprisingly close to an efficient system, IMHO.  In high population areas with frequent stops, 3'd rail or catenary (overhead) delivery of juice is working fairly well.  Great improvements can be made at the substation interface for quick charging of capacitor/battery banks, making for a seamless interface with current "over the road" plug in hybrid, AC, diesel/electric with regenerative braking motive systems, eliminating the costly catenary aspect entirely.  As tech. improvements stretch out the required distance between charging stops, less and less on board fuel is used until old #9 is going 100 miles before needing a fix.

Surprisingly, nearly all of the above tech. is ancient, going back to the beginning of the 20'th century. 

Here's what we need:

Improved electricity storage.  Why can't we crack this nut?

Localized electricity production.  It makes less and less sense to move juice from Canadian Hydro or windmills upstate to the NY metro area.  We should be working on reactor and/or fuel cell tech that is safe enough to put in abandoned athletic stadiums which are myriad in the metro area.  If it's safe enough to put in my back yard then it's safe enough to put in yours.

Re-mapping, re-vamping of rail corridors with the separation of freight and passenger/light rail in mind. I like the idea of running passenger rail concurrent with the major highway system. 

Add more opportunities for bikes everywhere, especially in metro areas.  I like BG's elevated tubes!


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## Bigg_Redd (Apr 14, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> Indeed, warmer climate in the past has been wetter. But the models are saying that fast warming is different from slow warming. Basically, the temperature of the ocean lags the temperature of the land, by a few centuries. During that period, evaporation over the ocean doesn't increase significantly, while condensation over the warm land decreases, less rain, and evaporation over the land increases, drying the soil. IOW, AGW inducing widespread drought IS axiomatic weather science.
> 
> Not widely known, that's why I gave you links.


 
The models also predicted warming over the last ten years. . .

How does a model that predicts warming predict that warming only for the 20% of the planet not covered by water pass the laugh test?


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## Seasoned Oak (Apr 14, 2013)

Solar efficientcy is already dangerously close to making big power plants obsolete,any substantial gains there will really shake up the industry. Solar companies are already leasing solar electric generating equipment to the consumer for Zero investment on the consumers part paid for by the savings in electric bills. ID be selling my stock in PP&L if i had any.


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## woodgeek (Apr 14, 2013)

Bigg_Redd said:


> The models also predicted warming over the last ten years. . .
> 
> How does a model that predicts warming predict that warming only for the 20% of the planet not covered by water pass the laugh test?


 
Global atmosphere temp fluctuations on decade time scales (noise) are comparable to the current AGW warming temperature (signal). Ocean warming away from the surface is still quite small.

We don't believe in AGW because of observed warming.  We believe AGW because it is basic physics.  The model warming predictions for the CO2 released to date are modest, and comparable to the modest warming signal observed.

Who's laughing?


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## Delta-T (Apr 16, 2013)

GW aside, at the very least, we can agree that there is acid rain, dirty air, and no real "up side" to deforestation/open pit mining in regards to good stewardship of the planet. I still prefer the smell of the woods to the smell of diesel and asphalt. If we happen to save the planet and ourselves?...well, that's not such a bad thing...or is it?


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## Frozen Canuck (Apr 17, 2013)

Some very interesting ideas & discussion in this thread.

WG has a point; plenty of tech that has been mothballed could be rolled out on relatively short notice to hopefully ease the worst of it.

One thing I cannot get around though is what will the 9 billion?? of us do about fresh water?

This is likely the first resource we consume/foul. I am aware of some small scale things like fog harvesting etc that would help in certain areas (topography) but I have no clue how we get fresh water to the 9 billion?

Very energy intensive to desalinate sea water on a municipal scale, never mind distribution. Some areas will have enough fresh water, plenty of variance though even within the borders of a nation.

At some point folks without fresh water will have to move, likely causing further issues in areas with enough water.

Or am I just missing the bigger picture & there is no real solution only band-aids until we deal with population issues?


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## Doug MacIVER (Apr 23, 2013)

think we need smokey's input here, forest fire danger?


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## woodgeek (Jun 26, 2013)

Sorry about the necroposting....

but if you liked this thread, you might want to check out this (6 mo old) blog post I just came across....and its comments...

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/11/05/mmm-interviews-ere-on-peak-oil/

This blogger, MMM, is a fun read, a semi-retired former software engineer in his late 30s. Most of his thinking resonates with mine, but I am mostly amazed that his lengthy comment sections somehow don't degenerate into flame-wars. Maybe he has an Ash Can I don't know about.


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## Jags (Jun 26, 2013)

Necroposting?  Now that there is funny - I don't care who you are.


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## woodgeek (Jun 26, 2013)

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=necropost


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## woodgeek (Jul 4, 2013)

And now, the Oil Drum is closing down....

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/10059

RIP, and thanks for all the scary memories.  (and linking me into Hearth.com back in 2007)


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## Circus (Jul 4, 2013)

Global warming warms in spurts, not linearly. When thresholds are reached there's no going back. Example: The rotting of 10,000 years of permafrost emitting methane.


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## BrotherBart (Jul 4, 2013)

woodgeek said:


> And now, the Oil Drum is closing down....
> 
> http://www.theoildrum.com/node/10059
> 
> RIP, and thanks for all the scary memories. (and linking me into Hearth.com back in 2007)


 

Yep. Looks like The Oil Drum "peaked".


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## Seasoned Oak (Jul 4, 2013)

At least now we have some alternatives if supply weakens. Although for heavy trucks CNG might be the only alternative to diesel.


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## Doug MacIVER (Jul 4, 2013)

Seasoned Oak said:


> At least now we have some alternatives if supply weakens. Although for heavy trucks CNG might be the only alternative to diesel.


 
burn more food?


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