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DrumBeat: July 15, 2007
Posted by Leanan on July 15, 2007 - 9:13am
Topic: Alternative energy
The impending doom and gloom from the world oil peak is ominous. There has been so little preparation and yet, if I am correct, the peak is upon us. We're feeling it now. The US government tried to cushion the bad news by introducing a “core inflation rate” which excludes energy and food. Word is getting around. The July 2, 2007 cover of the New Yorker shows the Statue of Liberty holding up a torch consisting of a fluorescent light bulb. It looks as if we will go through another US presidential election with no candidate calling attention to the world oil problem, or to the North American natural gas problem. My only hope is that a candidate, who learns from private polls that he or she is behind, will drop the oil bomb into the debate.
Peak Oil Passnotes: Peak Oil Zombie Attack
As we have made clear many times in this column we hold little truck with many of the whackos who inhabit the wondrous world of ‘Peak Oil’. Yes, despite the title of the column. No sooner do people start talking about energy supply crunches, plateauing production or acreage inflection then a host of bedraggled crazies rise forth from their graves to tell us a number of scary items.Firstly, we are often told humanity is going to “die off.” What a great idea. It could almost be a book, or a series of books and a website. Oh wait. It is. Like an energy-related version of the film 28 Days Later. Every lazy person around the planet can argue how many people will be alive in 2050 or 2100 and no one can prove them wrong. Ker-ching!
North Dakota gas retailers lack answer for high prices
North Dakota gasoline prices are reported among the highest in the country, and retailers say they have no idea how long the surge will last.“We don’t have an answer,” said Perry Palm, an operator at the Magellan Pipeline Terminal in West Fargo, which is facing its second shortage of supplies in a month. “At this point, I can’t really tell anything.”
Old oil fears don't match 2007 reality
Evidence less than a quarter-century old indicates that years of warnings about the nation's troubling vulnerability to oil price shocks have turned out to be seriously overstated. Consider the most obvious fact: From 2002 through 2006, the price of oil nearly tripled. And what were the observable macroeconomic impacts? What crippling effects did this unprecedented price run-up produce?
The only thing standing between the U.S. and access to huge oil deposits far off the coast of Alaska is an unratified treaty.Russian scientists are hard at work trying to prove that a big chunk of the Arctic Ocean -- and the billions of tons of oil underneath it -- belong to them. The U.S. could counter this claim, but it doesn't have standing to do so because this nation hasn't ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Energy price gains curious following bearish inventory report
In spite of what we viewed as a bearish inventory report last week, prices bounced off their intraday lows to post gains late in the week.The price action is curious. While renewed unrest in Nigeria can prove supportive, as kidnappings go, they don't typically lead to export shut-ins.
Worse Than Gasoline: Liquid coal would produce roughly twice the global warming emissions of gasoline
Lawmakers of both parties are proposing amendments to the so-called energy independence bill that would massively subsidize the coal industry to produce liquid coal as a replacement for foreign oil.
Since the close of the cold war, we have been growing used to threats such as terrorism where the enemy has no state or territory. But soon we will have to get used to new strategic challenges, such as energy security, where fossil fuels will be used as weapons to achieve political ends. Energy security will be synonymous with national security and economic security.
Iranian economists blame president for economic woes despite huge oil revenues
Iran's state-run television said Saturday the government would soon respond in writing to scathing critics made by leading Iranian economists who blamed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the country's growing economic woes.A panel representing 57 economists made its plea for Ahmadinejad to change economic policies during a five and a half hour meeting with the hard-line president on Thursday.
Iran to sell shares of 17 energy companies
Iran plans to sell shares of 17 energy-related firms on the country's stock exchange, an Iranian official was quoted as saying yesterday, part of a long-running effort to sell off state assets.
Tehran needs to import fuel with rationing
Gasoline rationing in Iran has dampened consumption but the world’s fourth biggest crude exporter will still need to import 10-20 million litres a day at current usage rates, an Iranian oil official said yesterday.
A Guide to the Struggle Over Iraq's Oil
Your guide to the ongoing dance between Bush, the Congress, and the Iraqi government; an update on the current status of the proposed oil laws; and some steps you can take to stop the hijacking of Iraq's oil.
North Korea`s reactor produced plutonium, not power
North Korea's Yongbyon reactor was ostensibly built to generate electricity but is reportedly not connected to any power lines.Instead, experts say, it has produced enough plutonium from its fuel rods for possibly up to a dozen nuclear weapons over its 20-year history.
Pakistan: More than 60,000 stove devices installed to conserve energy
Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) has so far installed more than 60,000 energy conserving stove devices under its fuel saving technology programme to conserve energy at the domestic level.
Africa: Following Oil Boom, Biofuel Eyed on Continent
While oil profits have flooded into countries such as Angola and Nigeria in recent decades, some African observers see new potential for the continent in the form of increasingly in-demand biofuels.
China booms … we pay the price
ALL OF those cheaply produced goods from China-everything from Nike running shoes to electric kettles - are coming home to roost right here in Britain. As factories multiply there to satisfy the Western world's insatiable demand for consumer goods, they use ever-increasing volumes of fuel.
UK Energy Strategy Calls For Zero Carbon in Twenty Years
The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Snowdonia, Wales has released a position paper and accompanying website titled zerocarbonbritain, which proposes and promotes a strategy to halve the UK’s energy needs and reduce its carbon dioxide output to zero within two decades via a choreographed combination of policy and technology.
For those drivers who fall in love, buying and selling Smart car is a lot of fun
The business got its license Friday. The first eight cars hit the lot Saturday. By Monday, Dick Adams Automotive had sold nine Smart Cars into a market hungry for fuel-efficient vehicles.
For Prius owners, the message is important
A riddle: Why has the Toyota Prius enjoyed such success, with sales of more than 400,000 in the United States, when most other hybrid models struggle to find buyers?One answer may be that buyers of the Prius want everyone to know they are driving a hybrid.
Sick and tired of dumping dollars into your gas tank? A bill before Congress to dramatically increase fuel economy over the next decade for fossil fuel-driven vehicles probably won't make it any cheaper - most authorities don't expect prices at the pump to drop below $3 a gallon again - but it could stabilize the cost until alternate fuel technology becomes more widely available.
BP gets break on dumping in lake
The massive BP oil refinery in Whiting, Ind., is planning to dump significantly more ammonia and industrial sludge into Lake Michigan, running counter to years of efforts to clean up the Great Lakes.Indiana regulators exempted BP from state environmental laws to clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow the company to refine heavier Canadian crude oil. They justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs.
FARMING is in the blood for Stephen Rash. His is the fourth generation to run Hall Farm in Suffolk: 970 acres growing cereals, field beans and oilseed rape in the sleepy parish of Wortham. Rash, 51, describes himself as an eternal optimist but during the last decade it has not been easy to maintain enthusiasm as grain mountains sprouted in Europe and cereal prices plunged. Despite his working sometimes 90-hour weeks, Hall Farm barely scraped a profit.Now, however, booming demand for biofuels – green fuels that make energy from crushed rape and wheat – has combined with global population growth to generate soaring demand for cereals just as droughts and storms have inhibited global crop production.
Interest in solar energy seems to be everywhere, from government to commerce to consumers, with new manufacturing and new jobs on Tucson's horizon.
Sky-high oil prices signal higher rates
Rocketing global oil prices could force the Bank of England to keep interest rates higher for longer to stamp out fears of spiralling inflation, analysts have warned.
Sustainable Living: Environmental benefits of eating local
What is the single most important thing that one person can do to curb global warming?Some people might say permanently parking your car. That would stop about a fifth of America's greenhouse gas emissions if we all did that. However, agriculture produces more greenhouse gas emissions than our automobiles. The single most important change we can make is to eat locally. That means eating in season, what is grown and produced locally, including meats and grains.
Turbine shortage knocks wind out of projects
The race to build new sources of alternative energy from the wind is running into a formidable obstacle: not enough windmills.
Energy solutions: We should prioritize nuclear power and clean coal to tackle the energy crisis
The G8 agreement sounds great in theory. But in practice how can we reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by such massive amounts, while at the same time meeting the ever-growing demand for energy, particularly from the developing world? One important response will be to limit our consumption of energy as much as possible. But it is also essential that we develop environmentally friendly sources of energy and make improvements to those sources that are already in widespread use. This special issue of Physics World examines a few of the areas in which physicists are making – or can expect to make – significant contributions to these challenges, namely by carrying out research into solar and fuel cells, nuclear power, clean-coal technology and energy storage.
Learning to live with fossil fuels
As much as we welcome this rising tide of global-warming awareness, it is drowning out a disturbing reality: our world's likely dependence on coal, oil and gas for the next 50 years. What's more, our discussions with well-informed people show that most are unreasonably optimistic about the role alternative energy sources will play in the near term.
US Southern utilities, lawmakers resist call for renewable power
Six of the United States' 10 largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions are coal-fired power plants in the South, but year after year Southern lawmakers balk at pushing utilities toward cleaner renewable energy.
Climate Change Debate Hinges On Economics - Lawmakers Doubt Voters Would Fund Big Carbon Cuts
Because of the enormous cost of addressing global warming, the energy legislation considered by Congress so far will make barely a dent in the problem, while farther-reaching climate proposals stand a remote chance of passage.
US, China to get unique climate change chance at summit
The world's two biggest polluters, the US and China, will have an unprecedented chance to thrash out action on climate change at an upcoming summit in Australia, Prime Minister John Howard said Sunday.
Any average hump with a decent computer, internet access, a modicum of curiosity, and a willingness to avoid averting their eyes upon reading bad news could have told you years ago that we, the people of the United States, needed to start preparing for a post-petroleum lifestyle, but even amongst those who fancied ourselves as aware, well, at least some of us kinda hoped the worst of it might lie a few years off in the future, sometime later on, maybe after we got the kids through high school and college.
A Little-Known Group Claims a Victory on Immigration
The organization wants to reduce immigration — as Mr. Beck says in the subtitle of his book — for “moral, economic, social and environmental reasons.”He contends that immigrants and their children are driving population growth, which he says is gobbling up open space, causing urban sprawl and creating more traffic congestion.
How Long Before Net Exports Decline by 50% in Selected Countries?
I have suggested that we will see Phase One and Phase Two Net Export declines in exporting countries. Phase One would be characterized by stable to increasing cash flow, even as net exports decline, because of increasing oil prices. Phase Two would be characterized by declining cash flow, as increasing oil prices can’t offset the declines in net exports.
Probably a good dividing line between Phase One and Phase Two will be when the country’s net exports decline by 50%
Note that the Export Land Model (ELM) suggests an initial net export decline rate of 15% per year, to the halfway point, and then about 45% thereafter, with an overall decline rate of about 30% per year, for my hypothetical country.
If we assume a 5% production decline rate for Saudi Arabia, and a 5% rate of increase in consumption, their initial net export decline rate would be 8% per year, declining by half in 9 years.
If we assume a 10% production decline rate for Russia (roughly based on the HL model) and a 5% rate of increase in consumption, their initial net export decline rate would be 40% per year, declining by half in about two years.
If we assume a 10% production decline rate for Norway and a 5% rate of increase in consumption (both consistent with 2005 to 2006 data), their initial net export decline rate would be 12% per year, declining by half in about six years.
Note that the EIA showed, from 2005 to 2006, declining net exports for all three of these countries, which accounted for 40% of world net exports in 2006.
When an exporter stops exporting and starts importing, ie the UK, it seems this will compound the ELM numbers
or
where is mexico going to import oil from when the time comes? Or seeing this, why will they continue to export oil?
Ed
Off Grid, Off Mainland, current profession:Beach Bum
The US and the overall world industrial economy are both based on an assumption of an infinite exponential increase in exported crude oil and petroleum products, when the new reality, IMO, is an exponential decline in world net oil export capacity. And I anticipate that the net export decline rate will accelerate with time.
All I can do is to suggest ELP as a response to the ELM, and suggest, when people finally realize what is going on, that we implement Alan Drake's plans. I strongly advise that people start thinking about trying to lock in access to food supplies.
... when people finally realize what is going on...
Are not exporters smart enough to ANTICIPATE and minimize exports asap for their own survival, if not also to mitigate global consequences? [excepting only exporters prevented from doing so by their foreign handlers].
"where is mexico going to import oil from when the time comes? Or seeing this, why will they continue to export oil?"
..as in ANTICIPATE and so withhold exports?
I have a problem with the ELM as is. It is too simplified. It is good from a theoretical / formal point of view, but lack of predictive power, because it don't take in account the other real life conditions.
ELF can work in a model where the exporter(s) have an economic advantage to keep the oil extracted for internal consumption instead to sell it and buy goods with the revenues.
This is true for USA, Canada, EU, Japan; but is it true for Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria and others?
The differences are that the firsts are rich countries able to pay more the oil than other and developed countries able to turn more value out of the same oil.
The first thing to remember is that exporter (all of them, whatever goods they export) do it with the aim to import something in exchange like drugs, cars, airplanes, weapons, food, cloths and so on.
Saudi Arabia and Iran governments export oil to be able to pay their polices, armed forces, clerics and keep them happy. So they will have a strong incentive to keep up the exports of oil and try to reduce the internal use of oil.
With the revenues from oil they can continue to hire their gunmen to crack down against the opposition (or they can try). If even they try to keep the oil for internal use, they will need to combat against smuggling (they do it just now in Iran).
Many big exporters like Saudi Arabia and Iran are big food net importer from the West. So they will need to sell oil to buy food. Linking oil prices and corn (food) prices is good from a geopolitical point of view, because put Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and others between a rock and an hard place. Rising prices of oil will force rising prices of food. And what they will gain from higher oil prices they lose twice from higher food prices. This will force the political collapse of these nations, because they lack the internal trust and the economic productivity needed to sustain the strain.
I am suggesting that most net exporters' cash flows from export sales will increase (at least in Phase One), even as their exports decline, because of rapid increases in oil prices.
For example, let's assume that Matt Simmons is right and oil prices in 2010 are at $200 per barrel, in constant 2005 dollars, and let's take a look at Saudi Arabia.
Let's assume $60/BOE in 2005, and ignore operating and other costs. Saudi Arabia exported 9.1 mbpd in 2005. So, let's call it about $200 billion in total liquids sales. ( BOE = Barrel of Oil Equivalent)
Let's assume $200/BOE in 2010, again ignoring costs, and let's assume an 8% annual decline rate in net exports. Saudi Arabia would export 6.1 mbpd in 2010, and let's call it $450 billion in total liquids sales (constant 2005 dollars).
So, a 33% decline in net exports would, with rising oil prices, yield a 125% increase in total liquids sales (again, constant 2005 dollars). I wonder what effect this would have on internal Saudi consumption?
In any case, the aggregate increase in total liquids consumption by the top five net exporters (half of net exports in 2006) was 5.5% from 2005 to 2006.
If you were in charge of the Saudi oil industry, would you confess that you can't increase production--and thereby encourage emergency conservation measures and efforts like Electrification Of Transportation--or would you constantly claim massive productive capacity, and thereby encourage energy consumption and discourage conservation and discourage alternative transport and energy options?
Edited to correct some numbers.
One bright spot in Zimbabwe:
Financial troubles lead to less HIV
Confound the doomers. Let’s hear it for life after oil.
This post is in response to an earlier post by Cherenkov who accused me of “Engineer Tunnel Vision”, or ETV for showing dangerous signs of techo-optimism. I know he loves to dismiss the engineers view about future energy with a TLA but at least the engineers are trying to come up with solutions for peak oil. The alternative is to throw your hands in the air and say we are all going to die (true but so what?).
I totally agree with him that the gap between what can be done physically and what is likely to be done may be unbridgeable. Public life is innumerate. Most politicians are lawyers and want proof which can only come post peak. Most voters haven’t a clue about the size or scale of things. Both groups see the world in terms of human interactions rather than the physical interactions with nature that make life possible. Both groups will look for someone to blame and grab what they can for themselves rather than engage in a common effort to overcome difficulties.
Delusions aside, the engineers’ case for life after oil is based on four things - sufficient alterative energy supply, greatly increased energy efficiency, the realisation that everything must change, and the need for much reduced CO2 emissions. The following points give a taste as to why one engineer at least thinks there are solutions with sufficient scale to allow us to leave the oil age in an orderly fashion. All numbers are approximate but it’s the scale I’m trying to convey.
There is enough energy
This was Euan’s point when he stepped us through the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces of nature. Incoming solar energy to the flat deserts and the rooftops of the world is orders of magnitude greater than total human energy usage. Add wind and tidal power to that. STAR reactors* (Sub-Critical Thorium Accelerated Reactors) haven’t been developed yet but the basic physics works. They are inherently safe and can burn off the radioactive waste with high energy neutrons. There is 500 times more energy to be had from thorium than from uranium. Alternative energy can meet all future energy demand and is not the limitation on human population or the size of the economy. Other factors such as water supply and food production come into play earlier.
Alternative energy is affordable
The most versatile energy isn’t oil. It’s electricity which is what alternative energy is best at. What’s more, alternative energy capacity is additive to future supply unlike burning oil which subtracts from future supply. Ten years ago wind power was hopelessly uneconomic. Now it’s fully competitive and is attracting growing billions of dollars of investment every year. Wind and wave power are just second order solar energy. Solar electric (and solar thermal) is the really big one and is more reliable than wind. Efficiency is 15-20% which is plenty. It’s still currently uneconomic but that is artificial due to scarcity pricing - the supply chain has fallen behind demand. People need to see and touch a 5GW solar farm in order to understand. How about TOD composing a letter to the Gates Foundation stating the case for funding? It would change the world more than Windows ever could.
I see solar panels as being like computers. When computers cost $1m, a thousand a year were sold. When they cost $100,000, a million a year were sold. Now they cost $1000 and 100 million a year are sold (all very round numbers but the scale is the thing).
There is plenty of materials
Solar cells are less than ¼ mm thick so you get about 2000 square meters per ton of silicon. It takes only 4000 tons of silicon to make a 1GW solar farm. The rest is glass (silicon, sodium, calcium and oxygen mainly) and aluminium. Silicon is the most common metal in the earth’s crust and there are plenty of the other elements. There is no shortage of materials.
Solar energy uses the land that nobody wants
There is plenty of flat desert in the world for solar farms. The drier the better. Incoming solar radiation (insolation) is up to 1GW per km2. That can be converted in 150MW of peak electricity per km2 at 15% efficiency. You need about 7km2 of panels to produce 1GW of electricity. If you double the area for spacing between panels there is still plenty of desert. At 15km2 per GW, a terawatt (1000GW) needs about 75x75 miles of desert.
Electricity can be distributed on a planetary scale
Electricity grids can now transmit at 825kv DC. Losses are quoted as about 3% per 1000 km. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC. There is talk of such an undersea cable from Iceland to the UK to supply geothermal electricity. This allows electricity to be transmitted from the equator to the poles. The sun is always shining somewhere. Renewable electricity supply can be smoothed by dispersing geographically as is already being done with wind power in Scandinavia.
Some temporal shift of electricity use will be needed – like charging your battery vehicle at work during the day and not at night. But electricity can also be stored indirectly by pumping water up hill. This has been in use for 100 years so there is nothing new. Two global power nets will be needed, one for the Americas and the other for the Europe/Asia/Africa/Australia.
Manufacturing is huge
This is an issue that doesn’t get much coverage in TOD. Obviously replacing the energy infrastructure with solar will require a major manufacturing supply chain. But manufacturing is huge. I’m using automobile manufacturing as an example. There are about 60 million automobiles made each year weighing about 100 million tons. Solar farms weigh between 100,000 and 250,000 tons per GW – much less for thin film. A terawatt of solar farms would require 100 to 200 million tons of metals and glass which is what the car industry gets through in a year or two. Solar farms are much simpler to manufacture than engines, gearboxes and all the other stuff that goes into a car so the cost of the manufacturing base should be less.
Investment is huge
Is there enough money to replace the energy infrastructure over 20 years? Well, global GDP is about $45 trillion and investment is about 10% of that. So $1 trillion a year spent on a great build out of renewable energy is perfectly feasible. Remember money is a proxy for resources. If unemployment rises post peak (most likely) then costs come down.
Current energy efficiency sucks
Current energy efficiency is nearly an order of magnitude worse than best practise. The current automobile is a creation of the oil industry as it is. As more oil became available cars got faster and bigger. But we don’t need 200hp moving 2 tons of steel for transport. The Fiat 500 was 12hp and that was enough to get Italy motoring. We’ll all miss 0-60 in 8 seconds but it’s not the end of the world if every car journey becomes a cost/benefit trade-off and fuel price becomes the number 1 priority in choosing a car. I reckon you need 2hp per person for transport – slow but safe.
I posted before that annual oil use per capita in the US and Canada is 25 bbl compared with 12.8 bbl in Western Europe. If US/CA had the same oil use as Western Europe then the US and Canada would still be net exporters of oil. Europe did it partly by higher taxes on fuel but mainly through regulation of fuel efficiency standards – CAFE. What a price the US is paying for not updating CAFE!
Heating and cooling efficiency is even worse. Simple technology like better insulation, reverse flow heat exchangers and efficient heat pumps allow big reductions in energy use. Ship transport can go back to sail for most of its energy. We use 8% of electricity keeping mobile phone chargers and cable boxes warm for heavens sake. OLED panels 10 times more efficient than LCD. Vacuum insulated fridges 8 times more efficient. Why aren’t we using vacuum ‘filled’ honeycomb panels to insulate houses? The list goes on and on.
Will it happen?
Can this brave new world happen and could all the birds sing happily in their stable CO2 world? YES. Will it happen in time? Well, I think we call the obstacles ‘above ground factors’ in TOD. Some countries will make it but it doesn’t look promising for most. But at least the engineers are trying to come up with solutions, which is more than you can say for the doomers. Which brings me to my last point:
Everything will change
As stated in a previous post, the nature of predicting any variable forces you to keep all other variables constant. Peak oilers can’t model the responses to declining oil supply. Economists tend to think the global economy will double in the next 40 years without any regard to resource limits and so on. They also tend to think that 4% compound growth is a steady state condition but that’s another story.
Personally, I believe that peak oil and other resource limits will change everything. I just hope that the response to it will be new supply and ‘good’ demand reduction rather than ‘bad’ demand destruction via economic contraction. Either way, there are engineering solutions of sufficient scale for us to exit the oil age.
Regards and keep posting TODers,
Alan
* You won’t find ‘STAR reactor’ on the web. It’s my invented name for accelerator driven systems. Great marketing name though!
Alan,
Great post! Our world crisis is a failure of imagination and leadership, and its by all the political entities. Now if you'll put a bowl of crawfish etoufe on every table as a plank, I'll support you for President
!Bob Ebersole
Thanks Bob. I agree totally with you about the failure of imagination and leadership. If you had European CAFE levels then US/CA would still be a net exporter. What a different world that would be.
We've been mislead by bad data on oil and gas and it may be too late in spite of my optimism above.
Thanks. That was great.
WR
Alan: Great post.
Wow. Thanks, Alan.
I guess we're saved. No need to worry about food, water, the oceans, shortages of materials, pollution, disease, and overpopulation as long as we have engineers!!
That we can do the things you advocate is quite frankly tediously obvious. I have never said we could not trip the techno-fantastic given an infinite planet. I've always pointed out the inherent physical problems with techno-fetishist's grow-at-any-cost scenario.
Why are you trying to save the technology? That's my question. It seems weird that engineers are more concerned with keeping the technology than working out truly sustainable systems. Why don't you try to work out engineering solutions that work with nature rather than against nature? Here is a test of each engineering solution: All of its components must be one hundred percent renewable. All effluvia that is poisonous, or does not occur in nature, must be used in some other process until the only effluvia created is completely pure. In effect, pure water or air. All energy used must come from the sun (not fossil sunlight), yet must not negatively affect the environment. For example: tidal energy will change many organisms' environments. Will this negatively affect the environment? All tech must be locally produced. Each micro climate must be assessed to determine optimum human population, the more tech, the less people.
I realize that many technophiles love to point out that anything created by man is "technology," and I agree. But there are qualitative and moral differences between technologies that destroy the environment and those which are part and parcel of the environment. (It is here that many "scientists" and "engineers" love to quibble over definitions.) To these people I say, go ahead, play your games. Meanwhile, the adults will be over here talking about serious things.
Clearly any man-made chemical that leads toward the destruction of an exquisitely complex life-support system is bad. Chlorofluorocarbons are a good example. Carbon in the atmosphere is another. Some people will say, as a few have, that the earth is warming due to natural factors, believing that that gives them leave to produce more CO2. But the logic here falls down. If nature is causing warming, dangerous warming, why in the world would we want to increase that warming by introducing even more carbon into the atmosphere?
The same sort of thinking prevails regarding "technology." The immature "scientists" and "engineers" who would pooh-pooh those who wish to limit technology lay claim to the same absurd argument: to wit, if any human creation is technology, then if we ban the technology we want, we have to ban ALL technology. Again, I have always admitted that my suggestions for sustainability necessarily include technology. The difference is that, in my thinking, technology must be considered within the totality of its purview. A dam built at one end of a river system affects the entire system. That affected river system will affect the entire watershed. That affected watershed will affect neighboring watersheds. And, ultimately, it will affect the entire world. Luckily, for us, the world is a large place and if we were to only build one dam, the averaging effect of this one variable introduced into a sea of variables, would seem to have little consequence. But, we are no longer a planetary population of one billion. We are 6.5-6.8 times that and rising on an exponential curve. Without the mechanical leverage of fossil fuel/sunlight, we will fall back within normal population levels. The only question is will we destroy the earth as our population declines? We have already decimated the seas. Desertification proceeds apace. Water woes are ahead.
Will we continue to work against the flow of nature and by doing so destroy it, or will we embrace our nature, embrace all nature, and in doing so enrich it and ourselves?
While the issue of technology is not a black and white issue, destroying the environment is.
Remember, no environment means no people, let alone tech.
There. I have offered solutions.
I think that my suggestions may help to prevent an engineered apocalypse. (Though I think it may be too late.)
Cherenkov: If you insist on writing nonsense try to keep it brief.
I understood what he wrote. If you don't, just refrain from posting a response at all. Your post has much less value per linear inch than his.
Well, at least Brian lives up to his own credo, and keeps it brief. And Cherenkov was so civil compared to his usually more hard hitting style.
What engineers, and I know that is a gross generalization, are emblematic of is the belief that man is smart. And that belief may need some inspection.
It's based on the fact that we are capable of making things, machines, gadgets, medicines, chemicals, the vast majority of which are pretty blindly assumed to be positive additions to our lives. Whether that is always true remains to be seen, and moreover, the questions regarding their influence on our biosphere stay too far in the background.
Symbolic is that Alan writes:
Now, the response to the first question, instead of YES, of course should be: "maybe that ones that remain". Just saying yes is not very useful, since many bird species are already dead or on the brink of extinction, and many more will go, simply from what lingers of what we have added to their living environments in the past. Their song is over or fading past. And since there is no sign of this coming to a halt, it's safe to assume many more will die off, at an exponential rate.
Relating birds happily singing to stricter CAFE standards is the worst of the engineering view. Looking around me, I can no longer keep up the faith that man is smart; if he were, he'd keep his house in order. But this house I see is in terrible shape. We should really tear it down and build a new one, but we don't have engineers smart enough to do that second part.
The second question, "will it happen in time"?, is linked by Alan to "above-ground" factors, once more a sign of the belief that we can solve this. But you run into the quintessential problem for engineers: they cannot create life, and they cannot bring back the life that's been destroyed, nor the ecosystem it lived in.
The faith-based reasoning (which, ironically, is what the engineers' view boils down to) that we could reverse the wildlife die-off process by fumbling around with solar panels and automobile efficiency standards does not bode well for that wildlife. And not for man either.
Another thing Alan writes:
That is a man-centered view if ever I saw one. And it is this view that has gotten us into the mess we're in, the idea that we're somehow alone here. We need desperately to leave it behind, or we'll engineer ourselves into huge unmarked mass graves. Yes, above ground.
HeIs: Look, mankind is screwing up the planet, has been doing this for a long time and will continue doing this until the planet is pretty well wrecked. I don't disagree with this sentiment and I would be surprised if Alan or anyone else does. Having said this, Alan was talking about possible real life outcomes arising out of global oil depletion. He was discussing the world as it is, not as it should be. If you want endless discussions of how the world "should" be, where does it end? Everybody wants the whole planet to be one big happy Garden of Eden, but what we want has nothing to do with what is coming down the road.
Brian, with all due respect, I think what it comes down to is that Alan proposes a response to the wrecked planet based on trying to solve problems by us continuing to be the same "smart" creatures that caused them in the first place.
I think it's high time to stop that religion, to recognize our limits, to quit thinking we're so d*mned smart, and to realize we're not fit to be the masters of the house. That humility is the best and only hope we have.
I think the problem here is that you damn the entire human race for the failures of some. The alternative is a view where some are capable of making sensible and reasoned decisions WHILST believing that development is a prerequisite for our continued survival as a species. It doesn't view the human race as one undifferentiated mass, just with the misguided in control.
I agree with that view.
Ecology and sustainability as a science defines the consequences of actions and the need to develop sensibly (and get off this planet to continue to grow).
Ecology and sustainability as a religion defines we should go backward towards some arable idyll that never really existed.
Both can generate a situation where we live in balance with our environment, but to me only one is a tenable path to take. Unfortunately we are tending to swerve off the paths entirely - unless we are very lucky.
Agreed.
At PeakOil.com, my sig is a quote from Einstein:
"The problems of today will not be solved by the same thinking that produced the problems in the first place."
Snap! :)
Although I notice the wording is slightly diffrent - but I have seen many versions of it...
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
wording I've seen:
"Everything has changed, except our way of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
Please feel free to post an actual rebuttal of what was 'nonsense'.
Cherenkov's post made perfect sense to me. And he's no more verbose than Alan was.
Ah yes, the arbitrary definition of what is and what is not technology. All tools are technology - some technologies may be more dangerous than others, but that is not the issue. Humans need very little in the way of technology to destroy an environment. It is not the technology that is the problem, it is very simply just us. Too many of us is the problem. There is a finite (and I believe quite small) density of population that is "sustainable" (which just means that the damage a population does is not bad enough to matter).
You seem to think that if we abandon tools defined as "technology" by you (and therefore "bad"), then we can all do fine. This is nonsense, as we can destroy entire ecosystems with some wood, leather, skins, and bits of sharpened stones - we've done it before. Appropriate technologies will play a key role in making the transition to a smaller population tolerable, while poor ones will make it worse. The key difference between the two is a societal one, not the technology itself.
That's a point I've wanted to make for quite a while.
All the apparently "anti-technology" folks here seem to think that we could even exist at all without technology. Yet, as you say, even stone flint arrowheads are technology. Human beings are always going to invent, refine and use technology.
The trick is making sure we remain in control of it for as long as we can (which, as I've said elsewhere, will not be indefinitely, but no species lasts indefinitely anyway).
Agreed.
However, the whole idea of working towards having real sustainability (and technology that works in greater harmony with nature rather than against it) also implies a change in us, in our attitudes.
It is always the inner world that must change before the outer world changes though, so in essence we do need to concentrate on changing us first. The rest will follow naturally.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
No disagreement there, but there's little evidence community attitudes are likely to change except in the event of a direct, immediately visible threat to our way of existence. And Peak Oil and GW are just not that direct or immediately visible yet.
CRASH OF WORLD MODELS
Two posters.
Both believe in Peak Oil.
Yet they have very different models of how the world works.
The Engineer (thisisalan) sees all the world as an engineering nail and his engineering skills as the hammer.
The socialist (cherenkov) sees all the world as filled with ignorant humans (including engineers) who cannot see the planet is finite.
This is what we're dealing with folk.
Each one of us has an internal model of how we think the world is put together. Each of us is 101% sure his (or her) model is the correct one. (Me? I'm 102% sure mine is correct.)
Anyway, the grand challenge is to move the models into convergence.
Not only into convergence, but also into one that properly aligns with the laws of nature and the limits of human nature.
When you approach a non-believer (one who does not know of, or believe in Peak Oil) realize that his/her world model is so foreign to your own that the other's model makes thisisalan and cherenkov look like identical twins.
I see people who use the obvious fact that the world is indeed finite to bash engineers who are attempting to try to push to make things better, which might actually work and be implemented---imperfectly---in the real world.
The "more sustainable than thou" coalition appears eager to drown any principally technology and engineering-oriented improvement from generally sympathetic quarters in pettifoggery and hectoring nihilistic criticism. Anybody sufficiently motivated and misanthropic can find an environmental critique for everything except stone age hunter gatherers plus mass cremation for the rest---integrated combined gas cycle of course.
In the actual, real world, this means that the "I love the smell of carbon burning in the morning" crowd wins.
It's good to be honest, thoughtful and careful. That's what good engineers and scientists do. Let's not turn it into "how dare you want to use technology for anything!"