But, those methods sound very experimental, and I'm not sure how much time we have to get them commercially/industrially viable.
Here is one point where we are seeing the problem completely differently. I think that these new forms of electrical power will become commercially viable when they are the cheaper alternatives to oil, even if they are more expensive than what we are using now. To me, more expensive oil will guarantee it; the only question is how long it will take. But for you, and at the risk of putting words in your mouth, the question of time is a question of how long before industrial-scale manufacturing world-wide hits an imminent brick wall of having zero oil available to anyone. Am I misunderstanding how you think this will play out?
I don't see Peak Oil as "no oil left", but rather as a situation with more customers clamoring for oil, and extractors not being able to draw more oil up to satisfy all of them. The result is price increases, which not everyone can afford. Where people can, they will change personal and business behaviors. Where they can't they will have to do without.
I think by 2011, we'll see a defined crash of the united states economy.
Okay, that gets us away from the original post. That might damage a lot of the Internet. But you'll have to back up your reasons for that initial assumtion. And even if you did, you should remember that recessions (not to say anything about depressions) ease demand for oil. And then you'd have to remember the "
inter" part of "Internet". It's an international network of networks, so it would still work somewhere. Remember why it was built in the first place.
By 2012, oil will have peaked to the point where there's not enough for the car culture left. By 2013, empty freeways.
Again, here is that key point where we seem to be thinking about this problem completely differently.
Peak oil refers to the point at which the largest amount of oil is extracted in a single year, with smaller quantities in every year after that, due to limitations in the available supply within the ground. It does not mean that all of the wells stop producing all at once. You probably know this already, but your comments seem to demonstrate a confusion of these two scenarios as well as their different consequences.
If I could permanently stop all oil extraction today, sure, we probably would see a collapse of industrial society around the world. Except maybe for
Iceland. But this is not in the cards.
Instead, each year will see a little bit less oil produced than in the previous year. As a result, the price increases. Those who can afford the more-expensive and slightly-smaller quantities of oil will continue to buy it. Whose who can't will conserve or do without, just as we already have since 1973, 1979, and 2003. Eventually, the logic of substitution will affect even the rich.
Price increases
do change behavior when the increases are seen as permanent. From 2003, oil prices dramatically increased and gasoline doubled over four years. Yet we still have cars. At the same time, the "car culture" of mindless resource-guzzling took a hit when people stopped buying light trucks for routine driving, it took another hit when their used trucks stopped selling, another hit when they
increased their cycling and their use of public transit, and another hit when they stopped driving so fast. For more details see
the aforementioned PDF and
here. But the freeways still have cars on them.
The recession has also
suppressed demand even with lower gasoline prices, and kept us (in the U.S.) from returning to the more-profligate ways. Highly-expensive oil may mean more recession. I'd be more confident forecasting a couple of dismal decades like the 1970's, than forecasting a brick wall for civilization. But that would also delay the day the oilwells run dry.
As prices stay high, or rise, year after year we will use less oil for transport. I suspect that electric vehicles will expand, de-emphasizing oil use for transport. The smaller petroleum pie will be weighted more toward heating, where it's harder to replace equipment with non-oil infrastructure.
By 2018 industrial civilization around the world collapses, violence in the big cities ensures, die off emerges, and a hand full of Monticello style communities are the only ones left thriving.
But (ignoring what I wrote above) where would this happen first? Rising oil prices make this scenario more likely to happen in the Global South than in the North, and more likely to happen in the South first. You and I will probably face fewer difficulties in this transition than the people there will because we can afford more-expensive fuel. But, of course, they don't use oil as much as we do, so maybe it will be a wash.
And maybe some of them will get lucky and leapfrog over car culture to go directly to a smarter all-electric infrastructure.
But do we have that time? I think you're being way too optimistic on how much time we have left.
And vice versa. Tell me, have you seen anyone forecasting the annual decline in oil production after peak AND the annual increase in oil price? A realistic forecast would make it easier for us to explore reactions and other consequences.
Please bring us numbers.
That may be true that I would have used less oil in 1980s...
It's possible. Driving habits were different, people commuted shorter distances than today, they were dealing with the second oil shock, and more compact smaller cars were available (a growing market after the first shock in 1973).
Also, world-wide oil production in 1980 was less than today. In fact, in 1980 the world produced about about 14 million barrels per day less than it did in 2005, the year with the highest daily production (as estimated by the U.S. Department of Energy). Actually, it's been bouncing up and down in the last six years, more of a plateau than a peak (if this really is the peak, mind you). Look at this chart:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/txt/ptb1105.html
...but we're heading towards a point where we won't even have about 10% of the energy we need for even a light industrial "advanced" society. Right?
Sort of. We are approaching a point where we won't have 10% of the oil we currently need for light industry. However, (1) oil is not the only source of energy, (2) we need to pass through the 95%, 90%, 80%, and 70% points first, (3) we will find that we don't need that much oil for such work, and (4) we will find that we're better off doing that work and so much more by
not using fossil fuels.
Let me ask you this: What reasons are there for not expecting the decline in production to follow a similar curve down as it followed up?
If Hubbert's curve is symmetrical, the world will have as much
daily production in 2035
(twenty-five years after the end of my hypothetical plateau) as it had in funky fresh 1980
(twenty-five years before the beginning of my hypothetical plateau). There was plenty of industrial activity then, including an Internet, disco, and work on the new Space Shuttle
Columbia. Looking further out, there would be as much oil produced circa 2045 as the world had when Armstrong walked on the moon, and as much in 2055 as it had when Yuri Gagarin became the first human being in space.
Even if production declined at double speed, we would still have 1960 levels in 2033, which is more than a quarter of what we use and produce today. With such a rate of decline, there would be a lot of hardship and conservation. But people would be jumping to non-oil alternatives out of sheer necessity. Someone, the slowest adopters and the hardest-to-change activities, will still be using that oil, until their more-efficient competitors undermine them.
Maybe for a while, but that suggests humans are adaptable to crisis scenarios.
But we
are adaptable. Gas prices doubled between 2003 and 2007, and Americans (of all people!) adjusted. Reasons for change
may be complex, but it really does happen.
Maybe he's said that, but he does believe our best chance is a 1800s agrarian civilization powered by Green Wizardy.
I can see such a society as well, as a subculture or as a network of experimental communities from which the rest of us non-participants might (maybe) learn a thing or two. I don't think it's for everybody, and fortunately for everybody it probably won't be the only option.
Even more fortunately (and part of the reason for this conclusion), the global civilization of next century will
by necessity be more sustainable than today's, especially regarding energy. Ecotechnic tools and methods will come from more places than the green wizards' backyards. The rest of us have our own ways which work just fine, and possibly more-reliably.
But Petroleum is needed to make the computers themselves, along with transportation. Have to factor those in as well.
Sure, but you also need to factor in substitutions. How do you think computer manufacturers will make their machines differently after sustained increases in the price of oil? Would they use non-petroleum-based plastic for parts? Would the UPS and FedEx shipping fleet have switched to non-petroleum fuels?
If you could find the Sci American about that, please forward it my way.
The big cover story was the January 2008 issue, focusing specifically on solar energy. The web version begins here:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan More articles follow off of that page.
I'm surprised you don't like nuclear, most people of your ilk seem to.
What do you consider this ilk to which I allegedly belong? I'm not one of the conservative engineers on this board. I'm probably more like you than you realize. There are more perspectives than the "doomer" and the "cornucopian".
What do you think of TheOilDrum and EnergyBulletin?
I don't read the Oil Drum, except maybe Jerome a Paris if I happen to see an interesting citation elsewhere. I occasionally look at Energy Bulletin. You already know that I prefer Big Gav's blog, and
WorldChanging.
What do you think of "
Peak Oil Debunked"? That blogger accepts peak oil (despite the blog's name), but he no longer accepts the doomsday case. You might find it interesting.
