The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: August 13, 2006

180 comments on DrumBeat: August 13, 2006

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Show without comments | PDF version

odograph on August 13, 2006 - 10:02am

For me, that's a good argument for moving to Costa Rica ;-). Ethiopia has better coffee but ...

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Eskribage on August 13, 2006 - 12:27pm

I really don't understand thinking like this -- that there won't be coffee and tea available? Come on. That's really silly.

Even Kunstler falls into this ad absurdum line of thinking sometimes: plastics come from hydrocarbons and we're "running out" of oil therefore there won't be plastics for medical devices in the future. He says that the US won't be able to maintain it's nuclear arsenal because there won't be enough energy. Which is just stupid for about twenty reasons.

Stuff like this turns the whole argument into a cartoon. There are still at least a trillion barrels of oil available. Coffee and tea might get more expensive like all goods (as inputs and trasport get more costly), but the idea that two of the most-cultivated crops in the world will not be available in the United States, except in a James Lovelock-type "last few breeding couples picking through radioactive waste heap" type of future. (Which is a runaway warming scenario anyway -- one I personally think is much more dangerous than peak oil.) Energy of transport for a pound of tea is a negligable cost and would only slightly less negligable with $150 oil. Thinking like this is rightfully parodied about peak oilers: "A future without tea."

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on August 13, 2006 - 1:00pm

I'm joking, just "going with" the doomer idea for a minute. My "backstory" is that I'm a moderate, who while not locking into any one future, sees the "cornucopian" and "doomer" positions as equally extreme.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

TrueKaiser on August 13, 2006 - 1:11pm

I really don't understand thinking like this -- that there won't be coffee and tea available? Come on. That's really silly.

no it's not that silly. Simply put will they use what little farmland they have left after loosing fossil fuel inputs to grow this stuff rather then food to feed their larger population? They can't rely on trade to get the food either since everyone around them is in the same position.

Even Kunstler falls into this ad absurdum line of thinking sometimes: plastics come from hydrocarbons and we're "running out" of oil therefore there won't be plastics for medical devices in the future. He says that the US won't be able to maintain it's nuclear arsenal because there won't be enough energy. Which is just stupid for about twenty reasons.

plastics are very much dependent on hydrocarbons. either we use them as the feedstock for the chemicals to make the plastics or we use them to power the farm equipment, natural gas to make the fertilizer to make the plants grow that we would make the plastics out of because doing it without these would not yield enough.

Stuff like this turns the whole argument into a cartoon. There are still at least a trillion barrels of oil available.

no one who know about this would argue that we are running out of oil even kunstler in his book makes this point. but what they do and you do not is account for the fact that we are running out of the high quality oil and the only oil that is left is the less useful lower quality's not only that this lower quality oil is also harder to extract and process. we will reach a point where oil is just not worth the cost of getting it before we ever run out of the stuff, long before.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

slaphappy on August 13, 2006 - 2:17pm

This whole thing is extremely foolish.

It makes no sense whatsoever to produce fertilizer from natural gas, none. We don't neeed methane to produce fertilizer, we need hydrogen, and it just turns out that its cheaper to produce hydrogen from natural gas than from the thermal (or electrical) decomposition of water. That won't always be the case.

Farm equipment can actually run off of electricity easier than cars can. It isn't traveling long distances, and is generally so large that amassive battery pack wouldn't be a big deal.

why all the doom and gloom? We use oil for this process because it's cheap, not because its needed.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

TrueKaiser on August 13, 2006 - 6:53pm

your mistaking money with energy. they are not the same.
you also need to look up something called the 'law of diminishing returns'
also just because it's possible to make fertilizer without natural gas, it is NOT possible to produce it as fast, as cheaply, or in such large amounts needed to continue to feed 6.5 billion people now and the 9 billion that will be alive by 2012. especially since the process is more complex to make it out of other thing then natural gas, this is why the old fashioned way of composting to make fertilizer can't do it in a fast enough fashion to beat our current way of doing it.

and while equipment can be made to run off electricity, it will end up costing more in the less obvious infrastructure to keep the electricity flowing which is NOT a trivial task.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Nagorak on August 13, 2006 - 8:40pm

At the risk of sounding callous, the amount of people alive worldwide is irrelevant. Areas that can't support themselves will end up having die-offs. We're not going to change all our production over to food and stop growing coffee and tea. Even as people are starving, we won't make that change. The reason is because we're not just one homogenous country with a central worldwide government. For this reason I think it's pointless to focus on whether there is enough crop land to feed everybody.

As for farming, many of the best farming areas in the U.S. are also ideal locations either for wind or solar. Now, there may be some question of how to store that power, whether with batteries or pumped storage, or maybe just having a long power cord trailing along behind the electric tractor? In any case, with more decentralized power production in farming areas, we might be able to save on infrastructure upgrades and end up saving overall on the transition cost. Not to mention, there's also biodiesel and everyone's favorite ethanol which might be able to find some use in farming.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Agric on August 14, 2006 - 12:05am

Artificial fertilisers double globally, likely to be more in USA, the available nitrogen to our food crops. If the USA had no artificial nitrogenous fertiliser crop yields would be at least 25% diminished until massive changes to agricultural methods could be implemented.

At the risk of being contentious, are you a recruiter for al Qaeda ;)

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

eric blair on August 14, 2006 - 4:49am

As for farming, many of the best farming areas in the U.S. are also ideal locations either for wind or solar.

Farming IS capturing solar energy.
wind and solar are not an either-or kind of thing. Farming can go on under wind turbines. PV solar and farming are hard to combine, unless you could get strips of PV panels to make a lattice over Ginsing.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

slaphappy on August 17, 2006 - 9:02am

Be careful, notice what I said.

Current process is this...

Dig up natural gas, pipe it around, and get it scrubbed down to something ready for use.
Natural gas, convert to hydrogen.
Catalyze hydrogen and nitrogen to produce ammonia.

It could just as easily work like this...

Use electricity to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Catalyze hydrogen and nitrogen to produce ammonia.

Which process do you really think is simpler?

We don't need natural gas to produce fertilizer, we need energy, of just about any form. Electricity will do just fine. The end of natural gas isn't the end of fertilzer. This is a red herring.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

alistairC on August 14, 2006 - 5:40am

Aaaahhhh...

Makes a lot of sense! Indeed, tractor tyres are generally half-filled with water to improve traction... massive low-slung battery packs are not a problem!

And as a rural dweller, I won't necessarily miss the noise and diesel fumes very much...

Thanks for the policy idea! In France, agricultural diesel is tax-free i.e. less than half price. Replace that subsidy with an electric-tractor grant, a switch could happen very quickly.

Anyone know why it isn't happening already?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

FossilFool on August 13, 2006 - 3:54pm

What about when EROEI goes negative on oil drilling?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

TrueKaiser on August 13, 2006 - 7:07pm

then the rules of the game change. those foolish enough to continue to invest in it as a energy source will crash and burn.
as for raw materials the price will skyrocket, if we continue on our current path oil might be worth more then gold.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

kjmclark on August 13, 2006 - 8:50pm

Check Mainer's post again. S/He didn't say coffee and tea won't be available. Look at it this way, if I have $10 a month available for coffee and tea, but enough to make a morning cup has now gone up to $15 a month, that chicory growing on the side of the road might start to look attractive (roasted chicory root is often cited as a coffee substitute.)

IMHO, this is one of the fundamental misunderstandings about oil peaking. I don't see any reason to believe that oil production will collapse tomorrow, but if you're staring down the barrel of a 50 mile commute with a gas guzzler and maxed out debt, it may not make a difference to you if gas costs $3/gallon or $6/gallon. It isn't affordable either way. Now the price of everything else is rising too, and your boss just frowns when you broach the topic of a pay raise. And coffee? It might as well grow on the moon for your ability to pay for it.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

fallout on August 14, 2006 - 7:33am

Coffee and tea were once considered "luxury goods", due to the fairly limited areas they would grow in naturally and inherent cost of transporting them from source to destination.

The same could be said of fresh fruits (like bananas) and sugar until early in the 20th century (many fruits will not keep in a fresh state for more than a couple of weeks without refrigeration....peaches come immediately to mind, as it was refrigerated boxcars that made the growing of peaches a viable agricultural product). Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today.

The spice trade (and routes, and cultural interaction that stemmed from it) of ancient times was based on a similar premise.
While coffee and tea will still be produced, once you factor in the cost of a 3000+ mile transportation network to get it to you, the end consumer, you might easily end up paying 10x what it costs today for the same amount.
As a coffee drinker, I can tell you that Coffee has already doubled in cost in just the last 5 years.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on August 14, 2006 - 11:37am

If we go back to that 1898 Klondike goods list, it was 10 pounds of coffee and 10 pounds of tea. Other lists go as high as 20 or 30 pounds of one or the other. Pound per pound of course tea goes a lot further than coffee.

http://www.nps.gov/klgo/tonofstuff.htm

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

kjmclark on August 14, 2006 - 1:59pm

So, a railroad transportation company recommended that every Klondike miner travel (by rail) with 1500lbs of goods, much of it already shipped (by rail?) from long distances. Who made the other lists, with amounts as high as 20 or 30 pounds of coffee and tea, coffee roasters and tea plantations? How many miners actually took that advice? It's an interesting list, but I'm not sure what it demonstrates.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on August 14, 2006 - 3:33pm

"The Royal Canadian Mounted Police required each person entering the Yukon to possses one year's worth of food and other goods before they could pass into the interior."

And so of course lists sprang up to satisfy that need. I think they are interesting on a couple levels. Partly because it shows that there's nothing new under the sun, and people were figuring these lists 100 years ago. Partly because I think people in 1890 had a better grip on the basics than we do. Partly because I could probably still pick up that list at the local markets.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

kjmclark on August 14, 2006 - 11:30pm

Looks like this is a source for that quote. I would like to see the list the Mounties were using. I'd buy that. In particular, since that's what we're talking about, that the Mounties' list required ten pounds each of coffee and tea.

The other point is that the Canadians were apparently attempting to require 1) a sufficient amount of provisions in the province for the people coming in, 2) a certain level of stamina in the people coming in, and most importantly, 3) that the people entering were people of means. No riffraff that can't afford a significant up-front outlay need apply. I agree with you that the list is good and that 100 years ago they understood provisioning better than many people today. It's a nifty, and maybe even valuable, artifact.

I don't really see what that has to do with the affordability of coffee and tea at the time, however. A better example would be evidence that the per-capita consumption of coffee and tea among low income people during the Great Depression was about as high as during the Roaring Twenties. Or even that overall consumption of coffee and tea was as high during the Depression as during the Twenties.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on August 15, 2006 - 9:08am

Trying to beat me on the pedantic scale? People were talking about coffee not being used by the common folk, and I pointed out that (relatively small) amounts of it were on the old Klondike lists. That that for what it's worth.

If you find the Mountie list (I think they required a year and left it at that) feel free to post it.

... and (pedantically) "affordability" is a different argument than distribution of use.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

kjmclark on August 14, 2006 - 11:40pm

In a quick internet search, both of the sources I found on coffee consumption in the Great Depression, here and here, say that coffee consumption plunged during the Depression. I wouldn't call those definitive sources, but they suggest that coffee became too expensive for many people.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

fallout on August 15, 2006 - 9:40am

Kjmclark is right on point, coffee (and for that matter, tea) consumption plunged during the Great Depression. Multiple sources for this information exist.

Note also that even during worst years of the Civil War, confederate troops still had coffee, albeit now made from boiled roots. People try to hang on to what they love and know, no matter the circumstances. It is natural human behavior.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on August 15, 2006 - 10:07am

Your original comment was:

"Coffee and tea were once considered "luxury goods", due to the fairly limited areas they would grow in naturally and inherent cost of transporting them from source to destination."

If we are going to be pedantic, I think the fact that gold miners put a limited amount of coffee on their lists sort of supports that. kinda. 10 pounds per year is maybe a luxury, but one within reach of the common man. 10 pounds of tea on the other hand, looks almost like a staple.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Don Sailorman on August 15, 2006 - 12:49pm

Mountain climbers and polar explorers usually pack tea. There are several reasons for this preferance over coffee, but one of them is that it is much lighter to pack than coffee. Another reason is that tea is marvelous to warm you up in cold weather; indeed it is diaphoretic.

(I yield to nobody in pedanticism.)

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

odograph on August 15, 2006 - 2:23pm

diaphoretic is a new word for me ;-)

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

fallout on August 16, 2006 - 8:29am

Oh, indeed. I never made the connection between 'luxury goods' and unavailability to anyone but the wealthy. However, as with all luxury goods throughout history, only small amounts might be affordable for the common man. There was a time when an after-dinner cup of coffee or tea was considered as "luxurious" as an after-dinner fine cigar or shot of quality liquor. All four were luxury goods.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Francois on August 13, 2006 - 4:07pm

I will stick to beer - so much more than just a breakfast drink....

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

SelfAggrandizedTrader on August 13, 2006 - 5:59pm

This will be the best place to live, post peak:

http://www.burjdubai.com/content/downtownDubai.asp

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

SelfAggrandizedTrader on August 13, 2006 - 6:13pm

If peak doesn't arrive in the immediate future, this might also do nicely:

http://www.kingabdullahcity.com/en/

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

SelfAggrandizedTrader on August 13, 2006 - 6:54pm

A couple of interesting articles which illustrate the extent to which the SA stock market and SA economic activity in general have become examples of openness and society-wide involvement (for those who like to claim that SA is owned in its entirety by a handful of Princes, or that the oil they claim to have is really camel dung, insert other racist stereotypes here, etc.).

http://www.emaar.com/MediaCenter/PressReleases/2006August6.asp

http://www.emaar.com/MediaCenter/PressReleases/2006August1a.asp

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Agric on August 14, 2006 - 12:15am

No doubt it will have car parks and an airport or two. But will it be futuristic enough to have places to tie up one's camel, I wonder?

Been following the SA stock exchange lately? Last time I looked it, and some other arabian bourses, were down a bit in 2006. I presume you're acquainted with the concepts 'greed' and 'excess liquidity'?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

canbrit on August 13, 2006 - 7:06pm

Would you care to offer some explanation? Seems a little simplistic to me..

IMO, Dubai??... post-peak possibly... since they have recently "nationalised" (sequestered?) their oil industry... but post-oil then what...

Yes, the Gulf states are perfectly located for mass PV generation... lots of sun & local empty desert... but will that feed & water them them? And what exactly will they be "exporting" in exchange for all goods & services currently imported??

And as for Dubai's current diversification as a "tourism dream"... well, that will fall flat on it's face at some time post-peak when aviation becomes prohibitively expensive.

And besides I believe Dubai ALREADY has huge problems with water supply...

As for your following idea of living in KSA... have you ever lived there? Some pretty big lifestyle compromises needed... unless of course it is the 54th?? state by then!!

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Nagorak on August 13, 2006 - 8:53pm

Actually is there any reason PV couldn't feed and provide water for them? PV to desalinate and pump the water, as well as power farm equipment. Maybe the desert there is still not conducive to agriculture, so in that case they could generate electricity and sell it through some sort of medium for transportation (hydrogen?).

If we move to energy sources beyond oil then there's no reason that international trade will fall apart. So, things might continue on much as they are now.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.