Assuming we do nothing to prepare for the coming Fossil Fuel Depletion Crisis, we can expect very hard times ahead. Much harder than most of us can imagine. This morning’s writer gives us a preview of coming attractions. Reposted from the Energy Resources Yahoo Group.
Perry Arnett
Most everyone thinking carefully about the energy future seems to agree with the following assumptions: That—
1) oil is a finite resource
2) as oil is extracted from the earth there is less of it remaining
3) the earth’s crust can only contain so much oil
4) the geology of how oil is formed and where it is trapped suggests that most of the oil in the earth’s crust has already been found
5) oil began to be exploited generally, in about 1860
6) taking all the best guesses since that time, about half of the assumed oil in the earth has been used, leaving about half the oil in the earth yet to be extracted
7) The problem with #6 is that world oil-consuming population is increasing so fast (e.g. China and it’s associated auto industry…) that the half remaining will be used in 1/5th? to 1/8th? the time it took to use the first half! [the slope going up was difficult, but gentle; the slope going down will be steep and torturous…]
8) there are folks all around the world who glean every report from every oil company and government and wildcatters and rough necks trying to put one more decimal place to the numbers, so while it can be stated fairly accurately that no one knows how much oil there was, or is, or remains, the best informed estimates – because they are so diverse – are probably not too far from reality.
9) if you then throw in factors like Iraq, where no one knows how much oil was extracted during the past 15 years or so, and no one really knows how much oil there was to begin with there, it makes the suppositions of some begin to ring true that there may have been far LESS oil under Iraq than most originally thought, and that more of it may have already been exploited than most originally thought; so you may find (in the future), that Iraqi oil was not worth the war to get it!
10) the extraction/production of most natural resources can be generally plotted by imagining a standard parabolic curve where initial extraction begins at zero on the left, gently rises over time to the right until reaching a ‘peak’, then gently falling over time until reaching zero again. This is called the “Hubbert Curve” or Hubbert Peak after the geologist who discovered it. If it looked as I have described it, it would be symmetrical. But in the real world it is not symmetrical but is rather, up and down as extraction activities rise and fall.
11) thus, one definition of the ‘peak of oil’ production is that time when about half the oil that there is has been extracted, leaving about half the oil remaining to be extracted.
Why is this such an important thing to discuss?
While new discoveries and increasing production were possible, growth was possible. When energy resource discoveries peter out and production tops out and begins to decline, EVERYTHING else in life dependent upon energy has to decline with it. So ‘peak oil’ is a point that takes on an importance barely understood by most, but that’s why its placement in time is so eagerly sought after.
For what its worth, I personally think we passed ‘peak’ by 1999/2000; some say 2000, others say 2003, others say 2007, the USGS says 2030(!), etc. [even the most optimistic estimates are dire, so the least optimistic estimates are perceived as being cataclysmic!] Take your pick. But when I see what I see on the international economic scene I am left with no sense other than that the peak of world oil production has probably already passed. I seem to be in pretty good company since Deffeyes and Heinberg and Goldstein and Duncan and Simmons and Bahktiari all seem to have the same view.
12) but the point of peak oil is not so much WHEN it occurs, but rather the effects on our lives AFTER it occurs!
As an example, let us consider my granddaughter who is one year old. She would normally graduate from high school in, say, 2020 (16 years from now).
The natural gas ‘cliff’ will hit 2007-2010; (because natural gas production is largely self-pressurized in the well, when a NG well quits it is usually sudden and without any previous signals, unlike an oil well where there are signs in advance of its depletion that it is beginning to “go dry”; thus the ‘end’ of NG is described as being not a peak, but rather as a ‘cliff’). As the NG cliff is reached, electricity generation will be the first to be effected and with that, will go primary industries like mining, smelting, metal fabrication and the like. [witness the shutting down ALREADY of aluminum smelters in the Pacific NW, and fertilizer and ammonia production facilities all over the world – due to electricity costs/availability ]
The first major effects of oil peak will have occurred by ~2012? – this coming just a few years after the NG cliff!; the availability of electricity in the US will soon be on a par with electricity availability in say, China or Ukraine now; spotty, rationed, rolling blackouts, and less and less of it each month, until –
Some day soon, ~2010-15? the Net will go down – and never come back up; some time after that ~2015-2020? the US electrical grid will go down, – and never come back up.
As soon as those two events occur, life “as we know it” will have been changed forever.
All chemical processing, petroleum refining, mining, agriculture, auto manufacturing, all telcom-driven international credit, finance and banking will cease; (by ‘all’, I mean such a large percentage of the existing activity as to call it ‘all’ for our purpose here). Auto manufacturing will have ceased by ~2012-2015? (there being either or both no gasoline with which to drive them and little electricity with which to make them); used SUV’s may be selling for a loaf of bread or a pound of sugar by ~2015; by ~2015 there will probably be no air travel except for very high mucky-mucks in government – which will be so rare people will step outside and point up in the sky again….;
Most schools and universities will have closed by ~2017-2020? – no heat, no lights, no money for teachers, no internet, no need…; roads and freeways will have been so unmaintained that by ~2013-2016? they will be effectively useless.
Elevators in most buildings will have stopped running by ~2012-2015?, making commerce, insurance, banking, pensions, annuities, bond, commodity and equity markets dysfunctional.
I’ve left out the obvious “resource wars” (oil, NG, water, chrome, molybdenum, etc….) currently, and soon to be “in a theater near you”…
Is this another Y2K false alarm?
Y2K was the perfect reverse analog to the future. Why? because all the stuff that might have happened didn’t, which is the reverse of what lies ahead. Why is that? Y2K didn’t happen, largely, because things were fixed, or remediated. But there is no remediation for a dry oil well. There is no remediation for a dry natural gas well. There is no remediation for the loss of the cheap, readily available, high content energy sources the world has been living off for the past 150 years. When they are gone, they’re gone. And most of our lifestyles with them.
So – what should my daughter be teaching her daughter as skills necessary for survival, and a high quality of life, for life after 2020?
Read more about the Fossil Fuel Depletion Crisis. Here are Duncan’s 1996 paper on the Olduvai Theory, and his followup paper of November 2000. I also recommend two papers by Jay Hanson, Energy Synopsis and A Means of Control . For those who like their Truth unvarnished, the whole story can be found at Jay Hanson’s excellent website. Also see:
Colin J. Campbell’s address to Parliament
Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherr‘re in Scientific American, March 1998
L.F. Ivanhoe, Get Ready For Another Oil Shock
Matthew Simmons is one of the leading energy advisors to President George Bush and the United States Congress.