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Discussions about Energy and Our Future
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I have been kicking around the idea of writing an essay on the coal-to-liquids (CTL) dream of Montana governor Brian Schweitzer. However, a story just appeared in the Billings Gazette that emphasizes many of the points I would cover in an essay:
Making oil from coal is bad for Montana
The essay argues that we shouldn't do it, mainly due to global warming and pollution concerns. I agree that we shouldn't do it, but I think we will do it as we become more desperate for energy. However, the cost of a CTL plant is double the cost of a conventional refinery. This means that CTL is still not an economic option, even though the process is viable from a technical standpoint.
The article above claims $6 billion to build one 80,000 bbl/day plant. This is consistent with estimates I have seen, which are even higher than estimates for GTL plants. So, before we turn to CTL, I think we will have to further deplete our conventional oil resources, and then start building GTL plants. At some point prices will be high enough to justify building CTL plants. Of course we may be growing bananas in Greenland by then.
Oh, and if you want to see some opinions that will make you shudder, read some of the comments following the article above. Some of those comments reflect an incredible ignorance of the issues we face. One of the posters is confident that God won't allow us to destroy ourselves. Someone else argued that if we cut back on CO2, plants will start to die. We have a real uphill battle trying to get people to face up to the challenges before us.
As Robert knows, what the energy industry is beginning to experience is that the cost of obtaining new liquid transportation fuels (LTF's) from fossil fuels is growing far faster than the price of LTF's is increasing. In other words, you haven't seen anything yet (price wise).
While commuting is the most obvious thing, those fuel prices as we all know will "trickle down" into climbing FOOD prices among other things. Water will sooner or later start to have its price climb becuse of fuel to pump it. Coal in powerplants that feed electric-engine driven pumping stations will get more expensive as coal is diverted toward liquid fuel to commute with.
Commuting is about the most energy-intensive economic activity I can think of, in terms of value of payload (the pilot) compared to energy used. People take notice when a quarter of their take-home pay goes to that gas pump to get a load of fuel in their car. Already I saw one coworker quit due to gas prices, and another take up car pooling. Both cases are cases of long-range commuters. Sooner or later we all will have to disembark from our cars. Time to consider less energy-intensive methods now for that day that'll come for each of us. The writing is on the wall.
This heat can't be good for "the economy", although I went to Trader Joe's for some meat, leaves, and high end beer, and noticed one guy had a cart stuffed with enough stuff to feed an army for a week. Guess I should have walked around and noted if people are "shopping different" but I just wanted to get my stuff and get it home before it parboiled in the bag.
--much hotter than what MSM will admit to
That said, a lot of people can cut back on gas usage a lot just by adopting better driving habits (if they realize that their habits are causing part of their excess fuel use) and getting smaller cars. There's no reason we can't have very fuel efficient small cars that are pretty cheap (don't even need any hybrid technology, look at the gas mileage the Geo/Cheverolet Metro got), so there's hope there too as people start to wake up.
It's certain that lots of drivers can modify their shopping trips to match their commuting missions. But the problem is that this method of conservation is limited. I have always kept this in mind, but most people so far don't. That's becuse I have always walked before driving and doing so as to minimise Calorie use in terms of general purpose instinct. I merely carried it over to car use.
Some time down the road, I will have to use a bus as a "booster" to get closer to work and use a bicycle as the second stage of the mission to work - if the job remains that is. I hate thinking about it, but that day is liable to come.
He expects oil to hit $100 in the near future, by November as i recall.
I especially like the astrophysicist -- it would appear that nothing that people do really makes any difference. Here is a perfect synchrony of religion and science. Just shut up and drive your SUV. God will take care of everything, and science will explain it to you.
And the wierd thing is that Montana hardly has any population, so it puts the lie to the notion that all our problems would be solved by simply reducing the Earth's human population.
That's like saying that the crowded conditions in Tokyo, Mexico City, NYC, etc. for decades puts the lie to the notion that we can't populate the entire world that densely.
I usually ask them about their background, their education, and what they do for a living. Most of the time I already know, but by having them say that they have an education/work experience in sales/marketing/managment/customer service/interior design/accounting or what ever non-scientific/technical background they basically admit they don't have the ability to argue the information. Then I tell them my background - degree in chemical engineering, work in thermodynamics, worked on the solar race car team, work in computer systems - and they start to understand that I can backup what I am telling them.
They usually try to end the discussion with some wild statement - that somebody/thing will save us - that they will find more oil - that I am just missing something. "It won't really get that bad."
Then I realize that they don't want to know.
I think this is more important than their lack of technical expertise. I'm not an oil geologist or chemical engineer and have a background in the 'soft' social sciences -- but peak oil seem credible to me.
the ultimate of this style of thinking is that pennies are $60/gallon and quarters are $800/gallon. A $10,000 surgery job is 4 barrels of pennies! When thinking about large amounts of money, you can easally imagine a warehouse with drums full of pennies. A million bucks is 400 drums of pennies, 20 to a side in that warehouse. Imagine standing on a mezzanine looking down on the floor with those drums of pennies. There is a website about extreme numbers of pennies. (megapenny.com?)
More so than time, energy is money. What a businessperson calls "time is money" ends up being time * energy = money.
http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/default.asp
a very interesting visualisation, well worth a look.
One of the more interesting tragic-comedies I've witnessed is a group of marketing guys working for a large corporation.
They came up with an idea for new product. Common sense said that building it should be a no-brainer. They went off on their own; raised millions ... spent the $$$ mostly on marketing ... got orders ... then found out there was this ... err ... engineering problem that had not been solved by anyone ever before.
They lost their homes ... lost everything.
Technology did not come to the rescue.
A small high-tech firm I worked for was founded (funded) in 1988 on the certainty that we could couple 1.7 Gbps of digital data onto standard coax for a distance of 30 feet or so. After the equity R&D investment was all spent on "R" with no results, we admited that the low signal to noise ratio had killed us, and there would never be any "D".
Interestingly though, the need to recover from that failure led us to develop the world's first 100 Mbps Ethernet-packet LAN on fiber-optics, several years before the early 100 Mbps standards were developed. That, in turn, led to one of the world's first, and possibly the world's very first, pure-hardware Ethernet switch.
Ultimately marketing problems, competition from the industry's big dogs, and a severe case of management recto-cranial inversion sank the company. But the point is that even failed attempts to push the envelope can have subsequent benefits.
The message for those trying everything they can think of to mitigate a post-Peak Oil energy decline without making other problems worse is obvious. Keep trying, civilization depends on us finding as many alternatives as possible.
I think there is a state of mind that is essential for making that last leap. I think you have to be capable of, and comfortable with, drawing dark inferences from the available data. In other words, you need to be a bit of a pessimist at heart. Scientists can be just as prone to unreasonable optimism as anyone :-/
But I have never seen myself as a pessimist. And I have been tracking the path towards both PO & GW for my adult life. And for both I am trying to do "something".
I don't think that I could idlely sit back and just observe, satisified with my greater knowledge of coming doom.
Better to forward some information, write an eMail to some politicans, write a letter to the editor, and all the other "small" measures.
In Australia we have lots of coal and gas but not much Oil. However the investments to turn coal and gas into Oil have not happened because the bankers keep getting told "Oil prices will soon decrease" and so won't fund projects that make a profit at $60 a barrel.
I wonder how long the forecasters will keep up the Oil will get cheap Real Soon Now? They're holding up the investments we need.
I'll admit to a bias against bidness majors, but I would give them more credit than assuming they are all in the GW, no nothing category.
Also, don't lump economists into the same bag, either. There is such a field as environmental economics ala Herman Daily which is much more sensitive to resource constraints, environmental impacts, and externalities than your typical economist.
The key, I think is having the inclination to expand one's knowledge beyond one's chosen specialization.
When I hear that line I say "I've a master's from MIT. I know technology. Technology won't save us." Sometimes it works.
Good luck saving the world, Robert. I hope you don't get an ulcer (or worse) doing it.
Those responses, as well as my experience in L.A., were pretty depressing. You can just see how this is going to play out. It will be denial until the end, and when the panic comes it is going to carry us all along in the wave. If I could figure out a good way to insulate myself from the societal effects, I would be a bit more optimistic. But, if society is not prepared, I don't think I can do much to prepare.
Cheers,
RR
A perusal of the TxRRC site turned up this chart:
, where, as you can see, things are looking up. <grin>
Or maybe it's that UT department — I looked back at the google page and, sure enough, it's this guy:
I'd say this is the kind of guy who'll tell you whatever you want to hear.
Responding to your comment with a reply not directed at you.
The angst of your trip report to LA combined with the Montana populace responses supports the reason for so-called "Doomers" being so pessimistic.
In other words, if it will be denial to the bitter end, why bother wasting one's precious energy, resources, and time to change minds. All you get in the end is tired, broke, and old. Best to spend one's time protecting oneself from the faceless hordes who wouldn't listen in the first place.
I would not put myself in the Doomer category, but I think I understand where they are coming from. I think you may understand where they are coming from just a bit better now as well.
People are starting to realise that the gas prices are not coming down even though they are not PO-aware. They all know that "somthing's up" but can't yet put their finger on it.
I've always thought it the other way around: the energy content of one litre of gasoline is absolutely astonishing. One litre, or roughly two pints of liquid can easily transport a ton of junk for ten miles, and it takes only a few minutes. Try hauling the same amount of matter for the same distance using only your muscle power, e.g. with a bicycle. It takes the whole day and you have to eat and drink a lot more than one litre to compensate for the work done.
However, you do make an interesting point. If you do everything by bike, you do eat more than you'd eat otherwise. Or, for the average American, you eat about the same but you actually use that excess 1000 kcal or so a day, and (horrors!) lose weight. You do get more of a hunger for decent food, instead of an appitite for junk food. You find yourself hungry for a balance - a meal with meat, starch, and veggies, not just a salad, or a box of donuts, or meat and nothing else. You learn again that water is really good and tasty. And salt is no longer the enemy it was, in fact you need to make sure you get enough of it - hint: a can of V-8 is great for this.
You do find yourself thinking about superfluous weight. 100+ lbs of junk in/out of my car in a day is a nonissue, but if I'm hauling it in a bike trailer, it's more of a job.
You get the idea EXACTLY as I wanted to say it. A gallon of gas has like 30,000 Calories' worth of energy. At 100 Calories a mile, a person running a Marathon gets about 300mpg's worth out of the food eaten before the race. No wonder why people whose jobs are such that they are on their feet all day don't lose weight. Most of the Calories you burn up go toward metabolic heating. When you sweat that sweat represents wasted energy.
"I'm not saying he should have killed her...but I understand"
Prole is correct. And I think the longer you do what you're doing, the more you will find it to be he case.
I think there exists within our minds a certian meme, maybe you could even call it a pre-programmed genetic alogrithim for the role of "hero/savior/he who forewarned the tribe of coming danger." It seems to be a pretty common archetype. It's usually a male but every once in a while a female. The first example to spring to my mind from our culture's version of myths/stories is the Sarah Connor character from the Terminator series. Just take out the word "machines" and insert "high energy prices."
I suspect that many of the men (myself included) got into this issue out of a subconscious desire to fulfill this archetypal role. After all, look at the rewards previous males who fulfilled this role often got. Winston Churchill, as a prominent example, warned the world of Hitler while everybody else had their heads up their ass. Today we revere him for doing so.
The problem here is that THIS problem is not like any other problem. You see, most things we consider "problems" are obstacles towards increasing the amount of energy available to use.
Hitler, as an example, wanted to control resources, trade routes, land, etc. That was a problem because had he succeeded it would have diminshed the resources, trade routes, and land under control of the U.S. and U.K. So the point of eliminating Hitler was because he threatened the ability of the U.S./U.K. to get more energy. (FDR knew about the Holocaust but didn't really give two shits)
Civil rights movement is similar. What was the REAL problem? Well black people weren't being given the opportunity to get their fair share of the country's resouces. MLK sought to change that. And today we revere him for having done so. (And he got LOTS and LOTS of attention from women at the time.)
But Peak Oil is different as there is no way to get more because there simply isn't going to be any more to be gotten. So anybody who is honest with people about this situation is never going to do more than preach to the choir. At best you might get people who were already members of the "modern society/capitalism is f--ked" choir to be a bit more motivated or vocal. Then you'll get some people who will accept oil is peaking but figure some solar panels and double A batteries we'll be fine. But the average person just wants gas at $1.00 and Big Macs at $2.00. so preaching to them is next-to-pointless.
A while back someone, I think on here, somewhere, likened the Civil Rights era to a time when people who had enough to eat wanted to make sure everyone (in the US anyway) got their fair share in the Big Cafeteria. When people have enough, the sharing instinct takes over, and this is what we saw - middle-class and even wealthy types going out of their way, in fact some even died, for the cause of making sure everyone got a full lunch plate. It was noble and beautiful and gives one hope for mankind. However, by about 1975, affluence for the vast majority of US'ians leveled off and then started decreasing. It's been decreasing since. The person said things may be very different when seats at the cafe are not sure for most people.
The great Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s was probably an example of a "gift economy". Gift economies were mostly known and studied among pre-civilized groups until the internet came along, then sociologists found them blooming online. This site is a good example of one - we spent time "gifting" our ideas, insights, etc. to the group because frankly it feels good.
It feels good because in the original hunter-gatherer groups, the gift economy was the norm. The greatest joy in having a talent or skill was sharing it with the group. Gift economies arise spontaneously among groups of people that are at least fairly small and feel some kinship with each other.
Hmm....
This is interesting, gift economies are anti-profitable for the corporations. Why buy a new fridge when your neighbor will give you theirs, or your pal at work will fix yours? Why buy your own car if you have a good carpooling setup because you know 5 people who fit your commuting schedule? Corporations have got to hate this.
Even the terrorism/fear car ala Friedman doesn't seem to be having much of an effect. But then, he's behind a pay wall.
All we can do, really, is wait. Wait for the high prices. Make the necessary investments on a personal level to mitigate the pain. Take some pleasure in having made the right investments so that the effect of high prices and shortages will be minimized.
Forget the hero/savior approach. It ain't gonna happen and you are not going to have any followers.
Other than for purely selfish reasons, what is the point of doing the "right" thing? As you are driving down the street in your Prius or riding down the street in your bicycle and you are being run down by the usual herd of SUVs and trucks, what is the point? What is the programming, genetic or otherwise, that causes some to soldier on, regardless.
Perhaps, as Gore says, there is a moral imperative operating here, or should be. Doing the moral thing is not contingent or everyone else or even most other people, doing the right thing.
On the bright side, if all this is real, taking actions based upon a conviction that there will be serious shortages of oil, will likely make your future a better one.
So, maybe in part you appeal to people's self interest, their selfishness. People owe it to themselves and their family to prepare. If you don't care about your family, then keep driving.
Must the American Dream be to drive around in a car and use up as much energy as possible?
My interpretation of the American Dream is to be free to do what you want with your life to find your own way to happiness. But that is perhaps an old non productified model.
There will be limitless need for work wich should translate into jobs although not highly paid ones. The money should be ok if the rest of society gets more efficient and rationalizes away high paying symbol handling jobs for more manual ones. Could be tough shit for someone like me who is better at thinking then manual labor but it is far from hopeless.
And isent sex something that humans do togeather? Sex should not disappear with lower income levels but you might have to tolerate to overhear other people having sex thru the apartment wall. The horror, they are having fun and I am bored! :-)
I think the outcome depends on basic freedoms still working, the economy being agile enough to create new (low income) jobs, rule by law working and it probably helps a lot if there is some state system for general basic health care and emergency aid so that people dont die from some bad luck or bad times before getting something new going in their lives.
Besides, look at all the junk people own. Look at how overweight most Americans are. The truth is, people in this country can afford to spend 50% of their income on energy and they'll still lead a much better life than the vast majority of the world's population. Now, what that will do to our consumer-oriented economy is another (dire) subject.
The major issue facing us is how quickly the transition will have to be. If we peak and slowly decline, then it will be a hard transition but a managable one (consider that Chinese and other developing countries will keep consuming more even as we decline, so it will be worse than just the decline). If we peak and decline at extremely fast rates then we're in big trouble. We need at least a decade or two to restructure ourselves, and sadly it's just not going to start happening until the shit has already hit the fan.
Long run you're correct, we're all dead. Probably many of us in post-apocalypitc Mad Max style shootouts for a few drops of "the juice."
Short to medium run, however, you are incorrect. As an example, I just read an article about a guy who is going from being a geologist teacher making $40,000 to being a geologist in the field making $80,000. (Numbers not exact but you get the point) That guy will be much better off in the short-to-medium run if he puts that extra money towards preparing or positioining himself in a more advantagous fashion.
I started a small solar outlet to attempt to do something similar.
RR,
If I remember correctly, you're in the oil biz correct? Maybe you can position yourself to be like the geologist in the above described cartoon?
Should take the edge of the depression at the very least.
Concerns about Peak Oil were a major factor in my move from the chemical industry into the oil industry. I figured that oil companies would reap big profits as oil supplies depleted, and this seemed like a profitable place to be. I am using my job to position myself and my family for the short term. My job also provides me with some valuable information on what's happening in the oil industry, which may give me another advantage. In the longer term, if it comes to "Mad Max style shootouts", I am a pretty good shot.
Cheers,
RR
Maybe, maybe. Depends on how things unfold. Sudden-onset global thermo-nuking could put a serious damper on short-term plans. Also, biowarfare, which may even be more likely than irradiating the planet with a dazzling green glow, could also pile up the corpses, and crack the thin film of civilized behavior rather quickly. Panic and opportunism can be profound forces.
These are somewhat extreme scenarios, but aren't out of the question. I suspect that there's the possibility that civilization could unfold very rapidly WTSHTF. Maybe even before the SHTF (depending on how one defines WTSHTF), as things get very dicey and uncertain. Many of us watched on TV the sudden breakdown of law and order in New Orleans post-Katrina. And that hurricane did not directly hammer the entire country. There were plenty of resources available in surrounding areas to help out. Petrocollapse does not offer such a "cushion".
-best (especially considering the dark topic!)
I believe Dieoff is inevitable due to t