The following dialogue is a preliminary attempt to summarize the current conclusions of members of the Energy Resources YahooGroup. It is subject to revision. Comments, criticisms and suggestions are welcome.
All scenarios and configurations of the Hubbert Peak of global petroleum production are projected to occur in the period 2006-2020. Thereafter global civilization’s marginal returns will begin declining, and it will collapse.
Demand side:
1. The demand for energy/power is inelastic, given our high living standard and swelling population.
The demand will reduce as industries and nation collapse. Each collapse will lessen demand.
2. Oil prices will begin climbing an infinite upslope, worldwide, after the Hubbert Peak.
No, oil prices will experience spikes, but will stay relatively level forever.
Instead of sustaining high prices, demand will drop. Demand will drop as industries go bankrupt, economies collapse, people go jobless and nations slip into anarchy. Each nation that collapses will mean more oil for the rest of the nations.
I believe this to be true, because the world’s total energy supply will diminish as oil extraction rates diminish. With diminishing energy supplies, less industry will be possible. With industry output diminishing, industry will not be able to pay high prices for fuels. Those exposed to high debt or without the ability to accumulate additional debt, will disappear.
Economists believe that higher fuel prices will mean that the oil flow will not diminish. As a corollary, this means that they believe that industry can be maintained in the face of ever higher costs, low to negative earnings and ever rising debts. Industries will have to be able to operate at negative profit levels for long periods of time, to stay active in the face of ever rising fuel costs. Clearly, this can’t happen.
Instead oil extraction will slow and the world’s economy will contract in proportion. Nation’s that wish to maintain a healthy economy during this contraction, will have to insure that other nations become bankrupt, otherwise, they themselves will fall. Once bankrupt, little oil need flow into the bankrupt nation.
Possible short-term (10-20 years) supply side responses (vary by region):
1. Serious conservation by individuals, commerce, industry and government, the closure of firms manufacturing luxury goods (SUV’s, junk mail, etc.) and the thus unemployed doing something useful like planting trees – perhaps olive trees for biodiesel fuel, in the appropriate climates. Conservation includes terminating immigration from the Third World.
Olive trees grow in zones 9-10 and do not like scorching hot summers. They can not be grown in most of the US.
No need to conserve if you can force other nations out of the oil market instead.
2. Return of coal to the extent that it remains viable to mine it. (Coal is currently being used for 50% of electricity generation in the US at the moment. – Heiko)
Yes, this will be the partial turnaround solution. Slave wage workers will be walking into coal mines again, with picks and shovels. Mules will power pumps to save money. Unfortunately, most mines are now too deep to mine in this manner.
3. Replacement of long-haul trucking by (coal or wood-burning) trains (Today, coal powers trains via electricity from overhead lines [as they commonly do in Europe at the moment]. It’s much more efficient and also a lot easier to remove pollutants in this fashion.). (According to Heiko, trucks powered by wood burning gasifiers as in WW II England, incidentally, won’t work. Downdraft gasifiers for vehicles are just terrible, it would be much more convenient (and again easier to remove pollutants) to go via gasification in a medium sized plant producing methanol.)
Don’t forget, we’ll need to convert oil into creosote, to preserve the wooden ties. How many trains can we power using trees?
4. Some – but very few – nuclear plants
With a dwindling technology base, these won’t be maintainable.
5. Cessation of 90-95% of all road building.
Actually, these can still be built using human labor and mules. they’ll make excellent public works projects to keep young men too tired to cause trouble.
6. Where possible without serious environmental damage: hydro power, geothermal (perhaps often using small-diameter “slimhole” [4″-6″ diameter] technology) and similar energy sources. (19% of the world’s electricity is currently produced from hydropower. – Heiko) Perhaps: emission-free electricity from ocean currents and tides at prices competitive with the cheapest conventional sources of energy today, via the Davis Hydro Turbine.
With a dwindling energy and technology base, this will diminish in size and scope.
7. Supplemental sources (eventually to satisfy most of substantially reduced need), e.g., biomass, solar, wind. These sources may be exploited much more efficiently and profitably in the next few decades, and may become major energy resources (e.g., H2 from hydrolysis, etc.).
After the depression is over and the world’s population has adapted. Sure, but forget H2.
8. For a decade or so more: the most fuel-economical diesel-driven vehicles (e.g., Lupo), and measurement of fuel emissions as quantity of pollutants emitted per mile rather than per gallon.
Nope, use up the oil. The last nation with oil wins. any nation without oil sinks into anarchy or must invade others. It will be a matter of national security to keep a tight reign on energy supplies. Energy is a weapon. It provides wealth and its absence produces death in massive numbers.
9. Fuel rationing.
Military and agricultural uses, will be the only uses, for oil after 50% of the world’s civilization has fallen.
10. The continuation of oil politics by “other means”: resource wars.
Naw, cut off the oil, and you win. No nation can survive a full cut in energy.
11. A return to pre-fossil fuel survival systems in those areas which fail to develop supplemental sources.
Once 90% of the population in an area is gone. This will be a given.
12. Any (current yet to be developed) synthetic/Fisher-Tropsch-produced (e.g., GTL [gas-to-liquid]) or other fuels which prove cost-effective.
None will, except for military uses.
13. Telecommuting.
No electricity for the masses.
14. Energy-efficient buildings and construction built according to proper energy codes.
But you said we’d burn all the trees to power trains. You can’t have both.
15. Re-localizing the economy and forgetting about “globalization” of the economy or anything else. (And Liebig’s law will dominate everything.)
See above notes on the importance of making sure that nations go bankrupt in a prescribed manner.
16. For some individuals, where possible: life on a farm like it was in the nineteenth century.
Yep.
None of these elements is by itself a panacea. But they are components of a survival strategy for a fraction of the world’s current population. It goes without saying that they can be effective only if used intelligently and not squandered. That means not wasting them to “altruistically” support those billions who are sinking our lifeboat. It also means accepting the fact that the developed nations cannot use stopgap “humanitarian” (actually anti-human-species) measures any longer to prevent nature from taking its lethal course. (Think of the cultural shock this will mean in countries whose populations are too timid to let even mass murderers die.) Those who claim that “we are all in the same boat” do not realize that this vessel is a lifeboat.
Thanks for your input and pointing out some of my inconsistencies, Jack. I’ll do my best to incorporate your and others’ comments into the list and re-post the revision in another month. –Theedrich Yeat
What cultural shock? What countries are too timid to let even mass murderers die? –Peaceloving
All of western Europe abolished the death penalty, for one example. To take another, very mild, example: if the USA were to stop being a Camp of the Saints and halt illegal immigration, there would be a hue and cry of biblical proportions over how monstrous and cruel we were. And of course, the big businesses that depend on slaves from the Third World would step up their bribery of our politicians and quickly get any such policies reversed. —Theedrich Yeat
We’ve already been told how things will unfold. Bush said 2002 will be “a year of war.” Rumsfeld said “What is victory? I say that victory is persuading the American people and the rest of the world that this is not a quick matter that’s going to be over in a month, a year, or even five years. It is something that we need to do, so that we can continue to live in a world with powerful weapons and with people who are willing to use those powerful weapons. And we can do that as a country; and that would be a victory in my view.”
If energy supplies will be declining at 5% per year, there will have to be a slightly greater rate of decline in population in order for the core of the global corporate economy to have the energy to keep expanding. There will have to be reductions in excess industrial capacity for the same reason. Wars are great for reducing population *and* industrial capacity. Wars have the further advantage of creating large profits for weapons manufacturers and associated industries. And of course they provide a perfect rationale for increasing the domestic power of the police and military, and reducing civil liberties. — Karl Davies
“The U.S. and the world consist mainly of poorly educated people whose concern is limited to themselves and their immediate circle alone.” The more educated and intelligent, on average, tend to have wider horizons of concern. I know the typical caricature according to which engineers and scientists are supposed to be all a bunch of Dr. Strangeloves (while the symbol-manipulators are all nicey-nice), but this is simply untrue. The thing that most clearly differentiates man from the animals is above all his intelligence. Accordingly, the more intelligence, the more human. And yes, I know intelligence is a double-edged sword. That is, however, the risk that Nature took in creating the learning tool which we call man. We are, as it were, the most advanced sense organ of the earth. If we regress to lower IQ levels as many people want, we will CERTAINLY destroy all hopes for higher evolution. We cannot go back again. It is either forward or die. –Theedrich Yeat