Black and viscous, bound to cure blue lethargy

March 25, 2006 9:58 PM

US Army acknowledges "Peak Oil"- Jay Hanson has been beating the Peak Oil drum for years now. Well, "dieoff" scenarios aside, the US Army has now joined in : “The days of inexpensive, convenient, abundant energy sources are quickly drawing to a close". Indeed. "Mexico's giant Cantarell oilfield, which has financed government spending and held down U.S. gasoline prices for 20 years, is facing a production decline, a prospect that could heighten U.S. dependence on Middle East oil.". There's even a community discussion site on "Peak Oil"

Well, HELLO reality.
posted by troutfishing (76 comments total)

Keep in mind the motivations:
1. The military needs to be pessimistic about oil supplies because it is safer for them to assume there is less of a commodity they depend on than more of it.

2. The oil companies benefit from consumers worrying about peak oil because it justifies higher prices for retail oil products.

It is a good idea to look for alternatives, but it is not impossible that the oil industry is systematically understating their reserves, that estimate methods are inaccurate (both up and down) or that new extraction technology will allow us to gain access to oil that was previously too expensive to extract.

Finally, given a choice between domestic oil and foreign oil, you always want to consume someone else's oil before you consume your own - that way you end up as the last one with oil (whoever "you" happen to be).

Finally, biodiesel is a very interesting alternative to oil.
posted by b1tr0t at 10:12 PM on March 25, 2006

Also, I did a post on Peak Oil in October 2002 : If you had been reading Metafilter this might have been on your radar screen even back then.

b1tr0t :

The Peak Oil theory is time-tested. It predicted the decline of US oil production with a rather high level of accuracy.....

Decades ago.
posted by troutfishing at 10:16 PM on March 25, 2006

b1tr0t :

Or, are you saying the US Army is incompetent ? If so, why ?
posted by troutfishing at 10:22 PM on March 25, 2006

The Peak Oil theory is time-tested. It predicted the decline of US oil production with a rather high level of accuracy.....

Sure, but is it a natural law, independent of human intervention, or an industrial law like Moore's Law? That is, did owners of US oil production turn down their domestic production according to the Peak Oil curves and move to international production in order to win the last man standing game, or did they actually run dry? Given the amount of collusion in other natural resource industries, like diamonds, I find it had to believe that we are dealing with an unfettered market here.
posted by b1tr0t at 10:27 PM on March 25, 2006

Or, are you saying the US Army is incompetent ? If so, why ?

No, I'm saying that if the predictions for the future of oil production has a high variance, it is in the US military's interest to plan against a low number rather than a high number. If the military has less oil than it needs, it stops dead in its tracks, as Germany and Japan found in the second world war. If there is more oil out there and it is cheaper than the military expects, then they just have more money for B2s and M16s.

I'm only taking issue with the *certainty* some people seem to have about peak oil. It is interesting to look at the variance as well as the average predictions.
posted by b1tr0t at 10:30 PM on March 25, 2006

Unless oil is infinitely abundant, peak oil is a *certainty*.
posted by billysumday at 10:47 PM on March 25, 2006

I'm only taking issue with the *certainty* some people seem to have about peak oil.

If you are willing to bet against it, will you go quietly and not lash out at those of us who have decided it is a real concern and it turns out we are right?
posted by rough ashlar at 10:55 PM on March 25, 2006

PEAK MOTHERFUCKIN' SNAKES ON A MOTHERFUCKIN' PLANE

*packs camping gear, bicycles off into the sunset*
posted by loquacious at 11:01 PM on March 25, 2006

Ah he's not being rude or anything, and we need one crazed government conspiracy post per 10 bush bashing posts to be Really Leftist. He's not lashing out, let him have his say.
posted by SomeOneElse at 11:03 PM on March 25, 2006

Unless oil is infinitely abundant, peak oil is a *certainty*.

Peak petroleum is a certainty, unless you are working on a geologic time scale.

Modern oil refineries are advanced enough that they can "crack" and reassemble carbon chains to get different ratios than were present in the origional heavy crude. Practically, that has meant that oil companies can produce as much high-octane gas as the market neeeds.

Speculatively, it is worth considering whether similar cracking techniques could be applied to biodiesel. If so, then we might actually have an unlimited supply of petroleum equivelants. As it is, biodiesel can be substituted directly for ordinary diesel in many applications.
posted by b1tr0t at 11:03 PM on March 25, 2006

International politics is a zero-sum game. The amount of a nation's military and economic power is relative. America's economy is very dependent on cheap energy, i.e. oil. Access to cheap energy is therefore a national security issue. If we monopolize oil access and production, then we become relatively more powerful relative to competing nations. This appears to be the theory behind foriegn policy "hawks". As oil prices skyrocket due to demand outstripping dwindling supply, and if the US gains control of remaining middle east oil fields through military means, then there exists the possibility that US corporations retain access to cheap oil relative to their international competitors.

Thermal depolymerization becomes economically viable when oil prices exceed $80 a barrel. If the US government would have invested the estimated $500 billion to $2 trillion cost of the war in Iraq into getting this infrastructure in place, it's possible that we could have seemlessly shifted to biofuels. But this means loss of profits for Haliburton and other oil companies tied to the current administration.
posted by Nquire at 11:07 PM on March 25, 2006

“The days of inexpensive, convenient, abundant energy sources are quickly drawing to a close"

I forget. What's the problem with breeder reactors again?
posted by kafziel at 11:22 PM on March 25, 2006

If so, then we might actually have an unlimited supply of petroleum equivelants.

Biodiesel (as well as other bio-fuels like ethanol) are made from plants.

Plants require space, and production is limited by solar input (as well as nutrients, and rainfall).

Solar input is known- we can measure that and work out the theoretical maximum productivity.

But biofuel will be limited by:

(a) The amount of arable land
(b) Capable of producing species useful for conversion into fuel
(c) That is not being used for other food production or agricultural purposes and
(d) That is not being used for human habitation.

The more people, the more space we'll take up for housing and food production, the less space we'll have left to grow sugar cane. And yes, biodiesel can be produced from wastes of some food production, but it wouldn't be enough to replace current fuel usage. Suggesting biodiesel will be unlimited is as stupid as saying oil will be unlimited. Biodiesel may be renewable, but that's a completely different thing than limitless.
posted by Jimbob at 11:22 PM on March 25, 2006

(Sorry, I might have confused biodiesel with ethanol with your "petroleum substitutes" there, but the fact remains. It all relies on a fixed amount of solar energy, and the biological capacity to turn it into something we can burn.)
posted by Jimbob at 11:24 PM on March 25, 2006

I had no idea that thermal depolymerization could become so economically viable at such a low cost, although it's a little strange to think that soylent green could end up applying more to the energy that we consume than the food we eat.
posted by bshort at 11:26 PM on March 25, 2006

So, a theory:
American oil companies, and the Bush administration, realize oil is finite. They want to control as much of it as possible, because the real price will only go up; demand will not stop, and supply will go down.
They make trillions, and pump it into alternative energy research; meanwhile, countries cut off from cheap oil realize they need an alternative and develop whatever non-petroleum based economies they can. (I think I heard the other day that 90% of Brazil's cars can run on biodiesel now.)
The alternative energy research pays off, there's a new world market for The Next Big Thing, and the unimaginably enriched old companies move into that sector.
Energy makes the world go 'round, everything's all the same, and life goes on.

Of course, there are problems; If Brazil can become energy-autonomous indefinitely, for example, they're removing themselves from any potential future monopolized markets.

There's also the minor problem that we don't, ultimately, have a good alternative yet. Fusion, maybe.

(And Jimbob: don't forget that petroleum-derived fertilizers drive the world's agriculture.)

Anyway, this is all idle speculation. But there really is only so much oil. We'll see how it goes. PEAK OIL!
posted by blacklite at 11:29 PM on March 25, 2006

No one, not even the conservative US Geological Survey, denies Peak Oil. The only question is when. The most conservative estimates are around 2040, but many are saying it's already happened (Thanksgiving 2005 is a current favorite).
posted by stbalbach at 11:31 PM on March 25, 2006

Jimbob:

Biodiesel can be produced from soy, rapeseed, and other ordinary agricultural products, but that is relatively inefficient. An estimate of the amount of land required for far more efficient aglae-based biodiesel production are listed here.

Your points on land user are valid - which is why I found it so bizarre, in a previous thread, that people actually advocate using high density urban land for agricultural production. If anything, people should be moving out of the suburbs into cities, and converting the suburbs back to productive famland.
posted by b1tr0t at 11:32 PM on March 25, 2006

Nquire: Discover has followed that article up a couple of times. Here's the latest one.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:33 PM on March 25, 2006

(And Jimbob: don't forget that petroleum-derived fertilizers drive the world's agriculture.)

Very true, blacklight.

Our survival, ultimately, depends on whether the activities of humans, and the functioning of the ecosystems that support them, can continue based on the finite solar input. Nuclear energy is the only other option - the only real escape route from this equation. And I've got no problem with that, as soon as we can find a smarter way of using the power of the atom than using the heat of fission to boil water.
posted by Jimbob at 11:36 PM on March 25, 2006

There might as well be snakes on the plane, since the plane ain't goin' nowhere without fuel.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:42 PM on March 25, 2006

I wonder if thermal depoly would work well on algae? I can't think of anything easier to grow, just dump nitrogen and/or phosphorus into any sizable body of water (preferably one without an ecosystem to trash.) Should provide tons of biomass that's fairly easily harvested.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:45 PM on March 25, 2006

I just saw a documentary on this at SXSW. Nuclear power is not an alternative unfortunately. If we switched over to Nuclear power, we would run out of uranium in about 20-30years and we do not have enough plants to do it anyway. Coal is the same - if we relied on it completley our reserves would be gone in 20years. The biggest problem is nothing is as efficient and as cheap as oil and we rely on it for everything. When the prices start to rise our entire transportation system will be crippled and there will be a huge economic depression. Fusion is an option but it is still 50 years away by most estimates. A guy on Real Time with Bill Maher said that if we went from nothing to the atom bomb in 3 years under the manhattan project why can't we dedicate everything to solving this issue and just do it. I don't know. There is just so much infrastructure that has to be thrown away and rebuilt.
posted by lemurbiscuits at 11:56 PM on March 25, 2006

Your points on land user are valid - which is why I found it so bizarre, in a previous thread, that people actually advocate using high density urban land for agricultural production. If anything, people should be moving out of the suburbs into cities, and converting the suburbs back to productive famland.

Well, it wasn't quite using "high-density urban land" but using unoccupied land in urban areas. But, nonetheless, I agree actually that moving the suburban population into the cities and converting the suburbs into farmland would be far preferable. The suburban sprawl, especially out here in California, is a planning disaster for all kinds of reasons. But good luck getting the suburbanites around here to give up their three-car garages and spacious lawns to move into central LA.
posted by bcveen at 11:56 PM on March 25, 2006

From Changing World Technologies: "Agricultural wastes alone make up approximately 50% of the total yearly waste generation (6 billion tons) in the U.S. With the TCP, the 6 billion tons of agricultural waste could be effectively converted into 4 billion barrels of oil." The USA currently uses approx. 7 billion barrels of oil annually. In addition, 9.5 million acres of algae farms, compared to the 950 million acres used for grazing and crops could produce enough biofuel to meet current demand - at an estimated price of approx. $46 billion a year, compared to the $100-150 billion spent annually importing foreign oil.

On preview: Thanks for the link Mitrovarr. Between algae farms and organic waste recycling, there seem to be plenty of economically viable sources of biofuel.
posted by Nquire at 11:56 PM on March 25, 2006

Snakes just don't fly onto planes by themselves.
posted by shnoz-gobblin at 12:01 AM on March 26, 2006

The algae biodiesel sounds promising. The water requirements for traditional biodiesel crops seem potentially scary - I suppose recapturing even a small portion of what we currently waste would go a long way, but still. Peak water?

b1tr0t - some of lurk quite a bit, that thread you mentioned... on preview, bcveen beat me to it.
posted by lazymonster at 12:10 AM on March 26, 2006

Whoops. I linked to the same page as b1r0t. Still, I wanna buy a crap load of stock in the first algae farming corporation that goes public.
posted by Nquire at 12:17 AM on March 26, 2006

Just domestically, aquifers that lower at current rates rule out the viability of any biofeuls based off of vascular plants.




I would suspect.
posted by sourwookie at 12:19 AM on March 26, 2006

The main thing that confuses me about the peak oil argument is that if demand really is about to start outstripping supply, you would expect oil producers to start stockpiling oil, in anticipation of the higher prices that are inevitable. I can understand how corporate interests wouldn't do this, since none of the people involved really have any interest in what happens 50 years from now, but oil producing nations seemingly do. The peak oil argument suggests that those nations have the potential to earn more money than god by squirreling away the stuff now, yet I've heard nothing about this happening.
posted by gsteff at 12:30 AM on March 26, 2006

US Strategic Petroleum Reserve

in recent years several other countries have created their own SPR, see global strategic petroleum reserves

Good call though, gsteff..
posted by Chuckles at 1:56 AM on March 26, 2006

As for fresh water concerns, there is always the GRAND canal..
posted by Chuckles at 2:10 AM on March 26, 2006

Which brings us to the real question - what do we want society to look like?

You could argue that we shouldn't worry about global warming because peek oil will take care of the problem.. I mean, maybe we can grow enough fuel for the economy, right? Sure, we would have to fully develop every square inch of north america in the process..

Even if the earth becomes drastically less habitable than it is today, the rich are most likely to weather the change and stay rich, so why interrupt the pursuit of maximum profits?

The point being, we have choices.
posted by Chuckles at 2:18 AM on March 26, 2006

I wanna buy a crap load of stock in the first algae farming corporation that goes public.

If history is any guide, buying the stock of the first corporation to go public with a key new technology is a sucker's bet. What you really want is the prescience to identify that industry or technology's equivalent of Andrew Carnegie or Bill Gates. Buy *that* company's stock.
posted by enrevanche at 2:23 AM on March 26, 2006

The only question is when. The most conservative estimates are around 2040, but many are saying it's already happened

I wouldn't call 2040 a "conservative" estimate. More of a wild guess based largely on wishful thinking. Saying that it's already here is also rather bold, though it appears considerably more likely than 2040. Depends on the situation at Ghawar, which is a bit of an unknown. My personal idea of a very safe estimate would be sometime between last year and ten years from now.

Why peak oil is probably about now.
posted by sfenders at 4:42 AM on March 26, 2006

The military needs to be pessimistic about oil supplies because it is safer for them to assume there is less of a commodity they depend on than more of it.

Isn't that true for the rest of us, as well?
posted by Drexen at 4:46 AM on March 26, 2006

but it is not impossible that the oil industry is systematically understating their reserves

This is highly, highly unlikely. In fact, there is reason to believe that oil reserves are overstated:

Note that OPEC production quotas are in part dependent on proved reserves - giving these countries an incentive to exaggerate. The huge jumps in reserves were not associated with the discovery of any particular large new fields. These time series are extremely implausible on their face and suggest mendacity. The truth may be starting to come out. Recently, Petroleum Intelligence Weekly got hold of internal Kuwaiti documents indicating their true reserves were less than half the claimed value. [link in original] This is a key point. 2/3 of the world's claimed remaining reserves are in OPEC countries, and all scenarios that assume peak oil is more than ten years away assume that OPEC can substantially increase production from present levels.

posted by moonbiter at 4:57 AM on March 26, 2006

You really need to see the chart in the linked article that goes with the above quote to see what he's talking about. You got all these estimates of proven reserves, then suddenly around the mid-80s about half of these OPEC nations say "Gosh, we actually have twice as much oil as we thought we did!"

The chart illustrates how laughable these claims are, especially in light that there was no technical breakthrough at the time that would account for this.
posted by moonbiter at 5:02 AM on March 26, 2006

b1tr0t:

> 2. The oil companies benefit from consumers worrying about peak oil because it
> justifies higher prices for retail oil products.

Troutfishing:

> The Peak Oil theory is time-tested. It predicted the decline of US oil production
> with a rather high level of accuracy.....

billysumday:

> Unless oil is infinitely abundant, peak oil is a *certainty*.


You guys don't think you're contradicting each other, do you? Because there's nothing keeping all these statements from being true at the same time. Of course peak oil is a certainty someday. There's also increasing evidence that someday is pretty soon. Also-yet-again, this is not a doom'n'gloom message that the economic powers have any motive to contradict--quite the contrary, it's in their interest to emphasize it (or even over-emphasize it, like the fifteen-minute climate change in The Day After Tomorrow) to keep panic high and prices up.

I frankly don't understand why the sort of folks one typically finds on mefi (this includes me on this issue, as I am both a conservative and a conservationist) would get upset about peak oil. Haven't we been yelling MAKE-DO-WITH-LESS-MAKE-DO-WITH-LESS-MAKE-DO-WITH-LESS for lo these many years? And now we're going to make do with less, just like we wanted. What's the issue? Is it just that any sort of large-scale change pushes the old something-must-be-done button? Foo. Go say your mantram and make do with less.
posted by jfuller at 6:37 AM on March 26, 2006

But biofuel will be limited by:

(a) The amount of arable land
(b) Capable of producing species useful for conversion into fuel
(c) That is not being used for other food production or agricultural purposes and
(d) That is not being used for human habitation.

(e) That with global warming, replacing an energy source based on combustion and carbon release with another energy source based on combustion and carbon release isn't really a viable answer.

There's more than one problem with energy consumption today. Biodiesel is going to be important as a polymer feedstock -- life without gas sucks, but life without gas and plastic is even worse.
posted by eriko at 6:56 AM on March 26, 2006

The Army acknowledged Peak Oil a long, long time ago. Ten years ago there was talk of relying more on missiles and less on machines and men. It's somewhat interesting for them to be so public about it. Still, this is hardly doctrine or official public policy. It seems cost is driving this but the military doesn't really worry about costs. This report frames peak oil as an operational threat and not an opportunity. Unfortunately, the army only knows two ways of dealing with threats.
posted by nixerman at 7:10 AM on March 26, 2006

b1tr0t said: If anything, people should be moving out of the suburbs into cities, and converting the suburbs back to productive farmland.


I couldn't agree with you more. Right now it's a 176km trip for my farmer to come deliver food to our neighbourhood (200 baskets of vegetables, weekly). The burbs are only 15km away. If the suburbanites sold their plots for farms (a provincial buyback program?) or at least stopped converting the local farms into more burbs we could easily cut down on transportation costs while doing a better job at sustaining ourselves.
posted by furtive at 7:11 AM on March 26, 2006

Heh. For every suburbanite million-dollar starter castle you buy back and demolish, you get back about an eighth of an acre. It isn't farmland, either, because the topsoil has been bulldozed off it. It's won't-grow-weeds subsoil.

I have a more likely idea: let's all flap our arms and fly to the moon.
posted by jfuller at 7:44 AM on March 26, 2006

Jimbob writes "Plants require space, and production is limited by solar input (as well as nutrients, and rainfall)."

Yes, that's the big problem. Fertilizer used in modern farming is made from oil, and farming equipment runs on petroleum. I'm not a physicist, but from what I understand, biodiesel made from plants just transfers the energy, and it's not a producer. IOW, you put as much energy in as you get out.
posted by krinklyfig at 7:46 AM on March 26, 2006

it's in their interest to emphasize it to keep panic high and prices up.

Saudi Arabia doesn't behave as if they want to keep prices high. They continually try to convince us that they have an unending supply of the stuff. OPEC tried to talk down the price of oil when it went above $50. Oil producers generally do not want the price to go so high that we start using less of it.

Exxon Mobil does not want people to think oil is going to be in short supply. They ran an ad in the New York Times the other week to tell people that peak oil is far away in the distant future. They don't want us to start trying to conserve energy, using less of their products, imposing taxes on fuel. They don't want to believe that their own production will continue to fail to meet their projections.

The political leaders of the world don't want to keep prices high. Certainly not those with some kind of democratic process. High prices make people unhappy, and slow down economic growth.

Many people are heavily invested in the idea that we can keep the growth going. Population growth, economic growth, resource exploitation growth, they all amount to the same thing for now. Not that there isn't still room for optimism, but simple cornucopian idealism, not only as it relates to energy, is increasingly untenable.

Personally, I would rather not "make do with less". I always wanted more, for everyone. Conservation seemed like a mistake. By nature and by habit, I am inclined to take what's available without hesitation, and expect it to always be more than enough. I wanted to belive that we could work towards everyone being able to do that. My reasoning was that there is so much wasted effort in the world, from waging war to manufacturing and marketing cheap disposable crap, that if we started behaving sensibly, there'd be more than enough to go around. Unfortunately, it looks like maybe I was wrong.

But anyway, in a post that mentions Cantarell, might as well also mention the other news from Mexico.
posted by sfenders at 7:53 AM on March 26, 2006

> that if we started behaving sensibly,

There's your fundamental mistake right there. Intelligent behavior by individuals and even by (very) small groups is within the realm of possibility. Coordinated, intelligent behavior by the millions (let alone the billions) is not within the realm of possibility, it's hive-mind science fiction stuff, and hoping for it to happen is just about like hoping to be saved by benevolent aliens. Events are driven by short-term economic rewards because short-term economic rewards are the only data available to most of those billions. People are short-sighted because your sight extends only as far as your data does.
posted by jfuller at 8:06 AM on March 26, 2006

And now we're going to make do with less, just like we wanted. What's the issue?

the issue is that many of us seem to be unprepared for it ... to the point where they don't even believe the situation exists

there's a difference between anticipating and planning to make do with less ... and waking up some morning to suddenly discover you don't have what you thought you had ... the former circumstance wouldn't be disturbing ... the latter will be ... and right now, we're headed towards the latter

i've seen letters to the local paper ... and had recent conversations with people ... where they have suggested that all we need to do is to quit importing foreign oil and the price will go down and everything will be fine

how do you think these woefully unrealistic people will react when oil starts getting really tight? ... that, not our passing peak oil, is what worries me
posted by pyramid termite at 8:15 AM on March 26, 2006

Thanks for this, troutfishing. I've been following peak oil since one of your posts a couple years ago. I've read a lot more on the subject since then and I pretty much agree with the U.S. Army report. Especially that the USGS is woefully optimistic.

I'm not sure the worst-case scenario will happen though. According to a book by the improbably named Amory Lovins, it should be possible to increase vehicle efficiency fairly cheaply, in time to develop alternate energy sources. Which in a way is sad, because it defeats Jim Kunstler's hopes of seeing suburbia dying off.

We just need a good kick in the ass to start making these changes. Oil at $120?
posted by A dead Quaker at 8:40 AM on March 26, 2006

($120 a barrel, I mean.)
posted by A dead Quaker at 8:41 AM on March 26, 2006

about oil companies stockpiling oil the reason it wouldnt work is a similar reason opec wouldnt work. the minute companies pull oil off the market the price goes up and your competitors make more money. their profits and stock price goes up and yours goes down and then you can get taken over. if all the worlds oil supplies were controlled by 1 company maybe it would work

oh and global warming would go down with peak oil except for coal, which is very high carbon.. "clean" coal that bush keeps talking about would be a solution but regular coal if they started burning more of it (the infrastructure is in place) would increase global warming.

and yeah there is solar, wind, algae in the desert, switchgrass on non-arable land, thermal depolymerization, tar sands, biodiesel from agricultural waste etc..

the world burns a LOT of oil though, if you think about it it really staggers the mind simply how many gallons of oil get burned per person per day. its hard for me to comprehend it. you would need a serious investment of money and time to make up current energy usage from other sources.
posted by tranceformer at 8:45 AM on March 26, 2006

> the issue is that many of us seem to be unprepared for it

Can you think of a previous large-scale change like this that didn't catch almost everyone unprepared? I can't. The forward-looking people are in the microscopic minority--and there are so many possible threats that even the majority of the forward-lookers are preparing for the wrong threat, and get blindsided by something unanticipated.

Just off the top of my head, here's some of the major 18-wheelers bearing down on our mid-road picnic: large-asteroid impacts - AIDS and population collapse in Africa, Russia, South and East Asia - mega-poor mega-cities and the worldwide urbanization of poverty - global warming - oceanic methane release catastrophe - peak oil - continuing bioweapons research, crazy-bad thing escapes from lab or gets released on purpose - mad cow disease in our food supply - nuclear proliferation - the coming pandemic (avian flu, SARS, whatever) and lack of preparedness for same - America's current-account deficit, consequent global imbalances and potential world economy crash - and the new strain of wheat rust. Now then, O forward-looking people, of these which one should we drop everything and prepare for first? When it's all past, which will turn out to have led to the greatest disaster, which ones actually led only to moderate problems, and which ones flew by without impacting? Your crystal ball or mine?

posted by jfuller at 8:47 AM on March 26, 2006

Now then, O forward-looking people, of these which one should we drop everything and prepare for first?

none of the above ... we'll just retreat into hedonistic, or stoic, or pious despair and keep the cable bill paid so we can watch it on television

i see no use for defeatism and hand wringing
posted by pyramid termite at 9:33 AM on March 26, 2006

The problem I have with peak oil is -
(and, I should add, I work with people, not machines or technology or computers)
is, what I call - the "Ok, what now?" problem.

This is something I try to explain to our IT personnel on a near-weekly basis - something that they still fail to wrap their heads around. I will provide you with a brief but illustrative anecdote and hopefully one of you guys will read it and can provide me with some answers.

Our Regional President approaches me and says - "Mr. Balrog, when I turned my computer on this morning the Wall Street Journal website didn't pop right up as I have grown accustomed to. Could you please look into -"
and at just that moment, Mr. IT Guy runs into the office, waving his hands above his head.
IT Guy says, "Holy smokes! We have a massive gobbledegookcomputerspeakmassivefuckup in our server, and our network is offline, and we're all fucked!"
President looks at me, and I can see the wheels turning in his head. He is thinking, "Why, yes. This is a big problem. We're going to lose out if we don't find a solution." He turns to IT Guy and says, "OK, what now?"
This is the crux of the dilemma.
IT Guy says, "We need to increase our firewall protection from its factory settings and improve our security network interfaceblahdidyblah blarghlegloop!"
Wrong answer.
The President knows and accepts that there is a problem.
But he doesn't know shit about network security, that's not his job. He needs a processed, parsed solution that relates to his everyday job. He needs it now, he needs to know -
1. What will this cost?
2. What do I have to do?
3. Where do I sign?
IT Guy goes back to the closet and proceeds to complain about 'this company will never take digital security seriously, blah blah' instead of producing a lean, effective plan that the President can understand and sign off on.

If I go to my little sister, god bless her heart, and say, "Hey, look at these charts! LOOK! We're. Fucked. Peak oil is going to bury us!" There is no doubt in my mind that she will believe me. But she doesn't know anything about global oil markets or OPEC or anything like that, because, frankly, it's not her job.
She will look at me and say, "OK, what now?"
She needs a stream-lined solution that isn't filled with a lot of hand-waving and hyperventilating. She needs to know,
"If I do (A) I will be helping the world work to prepare for peak oil. If I do (B) I will not be helping the world work to prepare for peak oil."
But right now, all she gets is a lecture about the why and the how, instead of a pragmatic list of actions to take.

And that's my problem with this whole thing, and nobody's probably going to come up with solutions that will make sense to the milling mobs, and that's why I'm learning how to garden and preparing for the fucking worst.

And, once again, the IT dept. is responsible for complicating the situation.
I keed. I keed.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 9:36 AM on March 26, 2006

But right now, all she gets is a lecture about the why and the how, instead of a pragmatic list of actions to take.

1 live closer to work, etc

2 buy a smaller car that uses less gas
posted by pyramid termite at 9:42 AM on March 26, 2006

> pragmatic list of actions to take.

1. blow up China
2. blow up India
3. park the air conditioned SUV and switch to the air-conditioned Prius.
posted by jfuller at 9:54 AM on March 26, 2006

1 work where you live, via telecommunications.
2 buy a motorcycle.

That's the extent of my plan so far.
posted by sfenders at 9:58 AM on March 26, 2006

1. drive the speed limit, not 20 miles over it
2. turn lights off if they're not being used
3. put your money where your mouth is and dedicate a little financial support to alternative energy efforts going on right now
4. talk (not evangelize) to people about why it's in their own best interests to give a damn. Not that 90% of them will care, but it might lay the groundwork for some later conversation or newspaper article to get through.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 10:46 AM on March 26, 2006

If so, then we might actually have an unlimited supply of petroleum equivelants. As it is, biodiesel can be substituted directly for ordinary diesel in many applications.
posted by b1tr0t at 11:03 PM PST on March 25 [!]

Alcohol can make rubber, and plant oils can make plastics and polyureathane foam.

But 'unlimited'? Ha! The surface of the globe is limited. Ergo, not 'unlimited'.

Corn -> ethyl alcohol can yield feed for animals and a nice herbicide.
Sugar beets -> ethyl Alcohol can yield animal feed and human feed by-products.
Soy beans -> oil can yield protien for animals and man.

But to practice industrrial agriculture requires alot of oil inputs. On a caloric basis, many say 10:1 fossil oil for one calorie of food.

So, how do you get to 'unlimited' biofuels from such a ratio and STILL feed man?
posted by rough ashlar at 11:39 AM on March 26, 2006

I forget. What's the problem with breeder reactors again?
posted by kafziel at 11:22 PM PST on March 25 [!]

It must be the radioactive waste pile in your back yard that makes you forget why reactors are a bad plan.
posted by rough ashlar at 11:40 AM on March 26, 2006

Well, the main difficulty is that it's currently difficult to run your tractor on the power from a nuclear reactor. Not an insurmountable problem, to be sure, but not one with an immediate or easy solution, either. That's where hydrogen is supposed to come in, but we may be waiting a long time before anything like that is attempted.
posted by sfenders at 12:25 PM on March 26, 2006

Baby_Balrog: - the "Ok, what now?" problem.

A dead Quaker: According to a book by the improbably named Amory Lovins...

'A dead Quaker' likely knows more about this than I do, but after having read parts of Winning the Oil Endgame (entire $40 book free as a .pdf), things appear much more optimistic. The authors make a comparison between the upcoming oil crisis and the end of the whale oil economy in the 1800s. Industries will shift to alternative energy sources, because they have to. The authors cite Brazil as an example of a country that is already more dependent on biofuels than fossil fuels, and claim that Europe is currently leading the world in alternative energy advances.

It's like that scene in "Other People's Money" where Danny Devito gives a speech to shareholders explaining why he's selling the company. When Ford came along and started building Model-Ts, people didn't try to make a better buggy-whip, they got out of the buggy-whip business. Alternative energies (biofuels) may not be as profitable as fossil fuels right now, but they will be very shortly. And it's the only option for energy right now that doesn't lead to a global economic depression. And of course biofuels don't offer an unlimited supply of energy, but they allow an alternative to fossil fuels that can hopefully sustain us for awhile, maybe until fusion becomes a reality.
posted by Nquire at 5:17 PM on March 26, 2006

Heh.

Alas, I had to skip out on the discussion - I no longer have endless free time for Metafilter.

That's necessary but sad in a way : Metafilter is still, in my opinion, the most well informed read on the net ( in English anyway ) - and the commentary is an integral part of that.

b1tr0t - I just had to set the tone. I'm fairly confident you're not a big petroleum / hydrocarbon industry shill. If you are then you're probably quite expensive.

No, one never knows anything for sure - for that matter the world outside my house door could wink out of existence the moment I walk into my little domestic kingdom.

I get the sense that oil supplies were assumed to be pretty much limitless back in the mid 60's when M. Hubbert King predicted to within a year the peak oil production of the US. Back in that era I don't think the concept of limits - in raw resources, the Earth's biological carrying capacity - or whatever - were much on the minds of all but a few anomalous thinkers such as King, or biologists, maybe strategists at the CIA and the RAND corporation.

Beyond that though, your assertion - that there exist large untapped US petroleum reserves considerably exceeding current estimates and beyond, also, the national reserve established by Jimmy Carter - assumes a rather extensive conspiracy that has been ongoing for decades now . There are numerous oil extraction businesses in the US - at least hundreds if not thousands or more. Given the financial incentives of oil extraction - and especially now that crude has become almost inconceivably ( by past thinking ) expensive - what mechanisms do you propose by which these alleged US petroleum reserves are kept secret ?

Now, history is chock full of successful conspiracies ( these are the bread and butter of historians insofar as they tend to out in time, eventually, usually when they've safely become politically irrelevant ) but for a conspiracy - to hide large remaining US oil reserves - to be succesfully kept regardless of the profit motivation which would tend to cause at least some of the hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of US commercial concerns involved in domestic petroleum extraction to break ranks and pump more of your hypothetical reserves, for short term profit ........ well, that stretches my credulity.

But, carry on.
posted by troutfishing at 6:20 PM on March 26, 2006

I live in iowa. Trust me, there is plenty of farmland. To me the idea of demolishing suburban areas for farmland seems utterly insane.

Ya'll* need to get out of the city more.

*_{we do not say ya'll in Iowa}
posted by delmoi at 8:13 PM on March 26, 2006

I'm a little less pessimistic about this than a lot of people. Lots of people have made good points relating to other fuel sources, improving diesel technology, etc., but here is another one: There are vast parts of Saudi Arabia--much of the empty quarter, which is damned empty and about a quarter of the country--that the Saudis have just started exploring, with very sophisticated equipment.

I have seen it.

They also have ferocious technology to look for oil in other parts of the country.
posted by ambient2 at 8:13 PM on March 26, 2006

By the way, the United States is the worlds second largest oil producer, after Saudi Arabia. Every inch of this nation has been combed for oil, and most of it extracted.
posted by delmoi at 8:22 PM on March 26, 2006

But right now, all she gets is a lecture about the why and the how, instead of a pragmatic list of actions to take.

1 live closer to work, etc

2 buy a smaller car that uses less gas

3 Try walking somewhere

Seriously.
posted by flug at 8:33 PM on March 26, 2006

ambient2 - humans are messing with parameters of our life support system - the atmosphere - along several fronts and it just so happens that worst instance of this may involve CO2 release.

So what can we do ? Well - first of all - is it "pessimistic" to acknowledge the problem ? Or, is that acknowledgement the basis of any ( optimistic ) solution ?
posted by troutfishing at 10:11 PM on March 26, 2006

kafzeil

I forget. What's the problem with breeder reactors again?

The extension cord gets pulled out of the wall before you've driven the cargo even halfway down the block from the factory. :-)

Reactors currently can't power any of things that we need oil for. Cars, Trucks, Trains, Planes, Tractors, Harvesters, Mining gear, you name it, powerplants can't power it without an extension cord.

Yeah, hopefully the peak oil crunch will eventually result in hydogen or something else bridging the gap between powerplants and the oil-based economy, but it's not going to happen without pain - the rising price of gas will make the development and conversion more costly while at the same time leaving less wealth available to make that change. Double barrel shot to the economy.

Even so, breeders aren't the answer - don't let the amazing energy density of the fuel compared to oil blind you to there being a lot less of that fuel than there is oil.
posted by -harlequin- at 10:32 PM on March 26, 2006

troutfishing:
Given the financial incentives of oil extraction - and especially now that crude has become almost inconceivably ( by past thinking ) expensive - what mechanisms do you propose by which these alleged US petroleum reserves are kept secret ?

When adjusted for Inflation, our current oil prices are high but well below the inflation-adjusted prices seen in the lare '70s. The simplest explanation is that a combination of Peak Oil groupthink (oil is getting harder to extract, and smart people say we shouldn't expect to get much more, so lets not try very hard) and relatively cheap foreign oil has made it look very attractive for holders of US mineral rights to favor low volume extraction.

If we really have hit the peak domestically then such a buy and hold strategy on the part of mineral rights holders would tend to either push the peak forward into the future for consumers, or somewhat soften the downhill slope.

As I'm sure you are aware, Kuwait recently restated their reserves down. It isn't clear if they were fudging their numbers up, and are now giving a more reasonable number, if the new number is fudged below their "real" internal estimate, or if the best reserve estimation methods just have a really high variance. If there is no conspiracy, and the variance is high industry-wide (which is what one would expect, given the small number of multinational service providers) then we should expect uncertainty both up and down. That is, there could be a lot less petroleum left than even peak oil suggests, or there could be more. Clearly, global reserve data depends on the quality of estimates made, and the degree of disclosure from those in a position to know.
posted by b1tr0t at 10:34 PM on March 26, 2006

I understand solar energy isn't *really* free- the cost of producing solar cells with a limited lifespan and effectiveness and how that effects the overall economic viability of using it, for example- but I've read a couple promising stories:

Hydrogen from Solar Power
From the intro: A reliable source of hydrogen is one of the ‘holy grails’ of energy production – hydrogen releases lots of energy when it burns and the only by-product is water.

Solar cells are going to be much more efficient and cheap
This patented technology has caused great excitement across a broad front of stakeholders, since it promises to bring the practical cost of applying solar photovoltaic systems for electricity production down to a level comparable to coal-fired or nuclear technologies.

I'm guessing that has been one of the great stumbling blocks to attracting real R&D funds. No really broad scale patentable solar technologies.
posted by Mr. Crowley at 11:13 PM on March 26, 2006

b1tr0t - "If we really have hit the peak domestically" - By your logic, the oil price shocks of the early 70's should have shook loose this alleged extra domestic productive capacity. That did not happen.

"Clearly, global reserve data depends on the quality of estimates made, and the degree of disclosure from those in a position to know." -OK, I can accept that.
posted by troutfishing at 12:11 AM on March 27, 2006

> 1 live closer to work, etc
> 2 buy a smaller car that uses less gas
> 3 Try walking somewhere

I did that twenty years ago. I live five minutes from my job (by car) and fifteen (on foot.) I walk most days that it isn't actually sleeting and hailing (in Georgia that's damned seldom.) If band-aids like that can save us, why aren't we saved?

Oh, it hasn't worked yet not enough consumers are converted to the life of low-energy-footprint virtue? Sounds to me exactly like the faith healer who says "You didn't have enough faith" to the guy who didn't get cured.

Face it, you're on this roller coaster and the train is rolling. Some lucky individuals may be able to jump off and live (move to the country, plant beans) but there's no stopping the train--it's headed for the place where the tracks end. The self-annointed "reality-based community" had better start thinking about ways to deal with the aftermath because fixing your hopes on maintaining the oil economy by everybody riding Vespas is strictly faith healing.
posted by jfuller at 3:52 AM on March 27, 2006

I thought it was just a way to improve your odds of being one of those lucky individuals who do well, as many will. I think it's great that selfish action and social good are somewhat in alignment here. Looking to save the whole world all at once is too ambitious a project for me.
posted by sfenders at 4:53 AM on March 27, 2006

Can't we run our economy on the energy derived from mindless hate and xenophobia ? Those are very energetic emotions.
posted by troutfishing at 10:55 AM on March 27, 2006

As I'm sure you are aware, Kuwait recently restated their reserves down. It isn't clear if they were fudging their numbers up, and are now giving a more reasonable number, if the new number is fudged below their "real" internal estimate, or if the best reserve estimation methods just have a really high variance.

Hardly. It's pretty clear what they did. Here's a bit from the August 2004 Petroleum Review on the issue:

In the late 1980s there were huge and abrupt increases in the announced proven reserves for several Opec countries. Between 1982 and 1988 proven reserves jumped suddenly from 467.39bn barrels to 760.50bn barrels. These sudden reserves additions coincided with Opec's decision -- informally in 1982 and then formally in 1983 -- to adopt a production quota system in defence of the oil price, which was coming under heavy pressure. Members suddenly added huge amounts of reserves in order to secure for themselves a bigger production share.[...]

Earlier, each Opec nation was assigned a share of production based on its own annual production capacity. However, the organisation changed the rule in the early 1980s to also consider the oil reserves of every member country. As a result, most Opec member countries promptly increased their reserve estimates. [...] All in all, Opec added 293.11bn barrels of reserves during the period 1982-1988.

Several explanations have been suggested for the sudden jump in Opec reserves between 1982 and 1988, none too satisfactory. One explanation is that these reserve additions were clearly not the result of new discoveries made during the years in question and are regarded by many as 'political reserves', i.e. reserves that were 'proven' either to support each country's demands for higher output allocation within the Opec quota system, or as a result of excessive upward revisions of earlier estimates.

Another explanation may be that the assessment of Opec reserves was originally based on a recovery rate of 20% of oil-in-place and was later re-evaluated at a recovery rate of 50% -- far above the current global rate of 29% and, therefore, unjustifiable. However, the abrupt increase in announced Opec reserves in the late 1980s was probably a mixture of upward revision of old underestimates and some wishful thinking.

posted by moonbiter at 12:06 PM on March 27, 2006

Signs of a near-term peak in conventional oil and gas include the facts that:

• global rates of oil discovery have been falling since the early 1960’s - this decade, we've discovered 10 billion barrels per year (declining) and consumed 30 billion barrels per year (increasing); This is despite strongly increased oil prices and improved technology. Exxon concede there is no empirical correlation between oil price and discovery rates
• in the last 20 years, 88% of the increases in reserves of conventional oil have been based on increased estimates of recovery from existing fields, and only 12% on discovery of new fields (like the difference between discovering a forgotten tin of soup in your cupboard, and going to WalMart). The reserves base is declining at 11 billion barrels per year. The BP Statistical Review of World Energy reports this as a 22 billion barrel per year increase due to the differences between financial and geological reporting methods
• 90% of known reserves are in production, and as much as 70% of the world’s producing oil fields are now in decline, with decline rates averaging between four and six percent per year - Exxon estimate the industry will have to replace 80% of all production by 2015 just to maintain today's rates - that's 10 regions the size of the North Sea - at a cost of over $1 trillion. Instead, oil companies are returning money to shareholders due to the lack of investment opportunities.
• non-conventional sources of oil and alternative energy sources cannot be brought on-stream fast enough, or deliver sufficient energy after meeting their own manufacturing energy requirements, to mitigate the decline in conventional oil supply. At planned full production of 2 million barrels a day, Canada's tar sand production facilities would consume one quarter of Canada's total domestic gas supply to heat 16 million tonnes per day of water to produce 20 million tonnes a day of slurry, for which it has no disposal facility. By then, Canada will be unable to meet domestic gas demand even with its full gas production capacity, and Canada's aquifers can't supply sufficient water to meet current conventional oil production demands. BP Statistical Review of World Energy already incroporates Canada tar sand reserves in estimates of world reserves. It requires 2 acres of land to produce enough biofuel to power one UK family car for one year. To run the entire UK fleet will require 5 times more land than the surface area of the UK.

Happy to supply the references.
posted by RichLyon at 1:08 PM on March 27, 2006