Prepping for Peak: How Fast Can We Change?
Posted by Robert Rapier on October 15, 2007 - 10:00am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: oil production, original, peak oil, saudi arabia [list all tags]
Reading the Tea Leaves
Whether Peak Oil is on top of us now, or we have a few more years before the downturn, I think it is a problem that we will soon face. I believe that those born in the 1990's and beyond - like my kids - will grow up in a world of declining energy resources. And because like most parents I am deeply concerned about my children's futures, I am deeply concerned about the ramifications of Peak Oil.
We know the horror stories: Billions dead as oil depletes. Chaos. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina played out on a worldwide scale. Many rational people are anticipating this scenario. (In case you are completely unfamiliar with the massive die-off arguments, spend some time at Die Off or Life after the Oil Crash).
Even though I understand the reasoning, my mind just won't accept a scenario in which billions die. And I would add that I think some people toss those scenarios around pretty casually, without really reflecting on the horror of what it would mean if a billion plus people died of starvation. Look at your family, imagine them starving, and then imagine this playing out on a horrific scale. That is the reality of a billion-plus population reduction; a reality that I honestly don't believe our brains are equipped to handle.
Not a day goes by that I am not thinking about how this is all going to play out. A lot of variables are going to come into play. How much time do we have? Will our political leaders ever pass energy legislation that truly helps to mitigate falling production? Will production plateau for a few years and then decline, or will it peak sharply and decline at 5% or more each year? Will we see a totally unanticipated technology breakthrough? But for me, I think the most important question is: How fast can we change?
Powering Down
I drive a car that gets 50 mpg, and I don't drive it that many miles a year. My family will tell you that I keep the house too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. In fact, I almost always wear a jacket in the house during the winter. I am obsessive over our programmable thermostat; I don't want energy wasted when nobody is home. My direct fossil fuel usage is maybe 25% of the average usage for the U.S., and well less than the average for the U.K. (Indirect usage - like fossil fuels to produce the food I eat - is much harder to estimate, but one way I minimize this is by minimizing the meat in my diet).
I don't behave like this because I am cheap. (Don't ask my wife about that). I try to minimize my fossil fuel usage because 1). I want to be prepared to make do with less in the near future; 2). I want to know just how low I can reasonably go if things get really bad; 3). I am aware of the negative environmental externalities of using fossil fuels; and 4). I want to set a good example. But if the stakes were high, could I cut my direct fossil fuel usage even more than I already have? Yes, I think I could still cut it in half. I have given a lot of thought to what I would do if the gas stations were out of fuel tomorrow. It wouldn't be a fun exercise. But I don't think it would be immediately life-threatening either.
So, if I have identified areas that I can still cut if I have to - and conservation is already very important to me - then I imagine the average person has a lot of consumption that they can cut. Those long commutes? If you had to cut your gasoline usage in half, you would search hard for a car pool or public transportation. In the longer term you would get the most fuel efficient car you could get. You would start cutting out unnecessary trips. At home, you would start to adjust your thermostat and be more aware of lights and TVs that are habitually left on.
Don't get me wrong. I don't expect this to be a picnic. I don't expect technology to save us, but I also don't expect this to be the end of civilization. On the other hand, I don't completely discount the worst-case scenarios. I do allow for the possibility. But I think what we are likely to see is that people will start to Power Down
Conclusion: Planning for the Worst
My personal plans do involve preparing for the possibility that I could be wrong. You don't prepare for a disaster only if you know there is going to be a disaster. You try to plan for worst case scenarios that have a reasonable probability of occurring. (I have no plan for a Texas-sized asteroid impact). So this is what I have attempted to do.
I have no debt. My savings are protected against both energy inflation and a collapsing dollar. The value of my profession should increase as energy supplies become tighter. My family has a fair amount of farmland, and I also have my eye on farmland in several locations that I think would fare well if things go sour. I have a decent amount of food in storage. But I am hopeful that I never have to put my plans into action. If we can change fast enough, I don't think I will have to.
Governments could play a huge role here by getting serious about a long-term energy strategy. But on this point, I don't hold out much hope as it would require that the public is asked to sacrifice - usually not something that will make you popular when running for reelection. It would also require that the rosy scenarios painted by the EIA are discounted for more conservative assumptions about future supplies. I think our next best hope is for Peak Oil to soon be widely recognized as a serious threat, and then we have a plateau or slow decline so that governments have some time to get their acts together. But I think this is going to require a few more price spikes ($100 oil?) before Peak Oil becomes conventional wisdom.
Note
I posted this essay first on my blog, and several commented that it was uncharacteristically dark for me. It certainly wasn't intended to be. Rather, I am trying to share the constant internal debate that I go through regarding Peak Oil. Where I am at is that I am optimistic, because we do have great capacity for change. On the other hand, I am an optimist by nature, and I recognize this. So I am able to step into the role of pessimist and take the worst-case scenarios seriously enough to have contingency plans.
Coming Soon
As I wrote in the March 4, 2007 Drumbeat:
So, count me among those who still don't think Saudi has peaked. If fact, I think you will see their decline stop by summer, and if demand picks up you will see their production head back up. If that happens, I suspect a lot of people around here are suddenly going to develop amnesia regarding all the predictions that have been made.
I took a lot of flack (to put it mildly) earlier in the year regarding my arguments on Saudi, but it is about time to revisit those involuntary decline scenarios that were so popular in early 2007 - when I was predicting the decline would soon stop. Those who favored the involuntary decline hypothesis may want to go back and look at where Saudi production was predicted to be in late 2007 based on assumptions of no spare production and an involuntary production decline. Even if we discount Saudi's recent announcements that they will raise production, steady production is inconsistent with involuntary decline and no spare capacity.
While this doesn't settle the question of whether Saudi has peaked, their steady production is in the process of falsifying those declining trendlines that were predicting 8 million bpd or lower by year end. Earlier this year I allowed myself to get dragged into endless debates over this issue, when it clearly would not be illuminated until later in the year. Well, later in the year is here, and Saudi production has been constant since February.
At the latest, I will take a look back in a year-end post in which I will also discuss the results - win or lose - of the $1000 bet on oil prices; a bet that I made because of my confidence that Saudi was voluntarily reducing production to keep prices high, and that they were sitting on some spare capacity. The collapsing dollar has made this interesting, but I still think we will end up closer to my predicted year end of $73.50 than $100.
Unrelated Footnote: If any of you have direct connections to any Brazilian sugarcane ethanol plants that use bagasse to supply the plant energy, please contact me: tenaciousdna AT gmail DOT com. The kind of connections I need are the kind that can get me inside the plant to talk to their engineers. I can't explain right now, but hopefully I can soon enough. Maybe after I get back from Brazil. :-)
http://science.reddit.com/info/5ybuc/comments/
submitted at 10:45 EDT...so it's fresh! Thanks for your support.
Robert, your lifestyle and mine are scarily similar (with my wife having the same comments, no doubt).
Yes, the loss of billions of lives is horrible to think about, and I would also prefer to think that such a situation will not unfold. I'm not optimistic about it, however, given the decline in natural gas and phosphorous in North America (further reducing grain exports, likely to zero). China is artificially supported by a robust economy; a recession would have serious impacts on their ability to support their population. Other Asia populations are in a similar situation. Africa is already struggling and the combination of peak oil and climate change is extremely concerning.
your lifestyle and mine are scarily similar (with my wife having the same comments, no doubt).
Count me in the same boat. Not all people can shower in 6L of water and tolerate or like cooler water or live the relatively low energy life we live.
But I question being able to cut my own consumption in half. In the winter my high-eff furnace is responsible for something like 50% of our electricity use. Yes lowering the home temperature (family members already complain about wearing an undershirt, shirt, sweater and being cold at 21C - what can I say a side effect of a vegetarian diet is that you loose a lot of body fat!) is possible; but not by 1/2 and have the home liveable. Although I do know people who keep their house around 60F (what 16C) in the daytime and cooler at night I could not tolerate it unless I was working (and I don't mean typing at a keyboard)!
Our electric water heater is about 1.5kWh/day - 1/5 of our total electricity use and we don't wash in hot but it would not be easy going down to 1/2 of our energy use.
Having embraced Voluntary Simplicity our TV is already relegated to the basement and the stereo system is gone.
The car is pretty well only necessary for convience and hauling the kids around (playing the game of racing between work and preschool to pick them up on time ..) - but it is 1/3 of our total personal carbon emisssions so it's something we could easily give up.
But there are tons of fuzzies. Sure we're got enough saved to last around 15 years without having to work; but what's going to happen to our savings? Hyperinflation? What's going to happen to our taxes (home taxes are about 1/6 of our total living expenses) and how much will it cost to repair the roof / furnace over such a time frame?
Mr Rapier is EXACTLY right. The key word is how fast. There are lots of ways possible, probable and practical, most of which can or will come forward, but Mr Rapiers's question will then get precisely on point - fast = change.
There is a long list of things that may be the changes to look at here: http://newenergyandfuel.com/
The operator just called on one of my prospects in West Central Texas. We have a new field discovery. With luck we could have a few million barrels of recoverable reserves. So, I continue to do my part to flatten the Lower 48 HL curve. As a result of new field discoveries, workovers, secondary and tertiary recovery efforts, etc., Texas and the Lower 48 have shown periods of stable, and sometimes increasing post-peak production. What they have not done is to exceed their 1970 and 1972 respective production levels.
That Saudi Arabia can and will add new production is not in dispute. It never has been. What is in dispute is whether they will be able to exceed, for a given calendar year, their 2005 crude + condensate production rate of 9.6 mbpd.
The problem we had in Texas, and that in my opinion the Saudis are having now, is offsetting the decline from the old, large oil fields.
Saudi fourth quarter production will determine how sharp their 2007 rate of decline will be. In 2006, they declined at -4.2%/year. At 8.6 bmpd through three quarters, extrapolated through the fourth quarter, their production decline rate would be -6.7%/year. If they average 9.0 mbpd for the fourth quarter, their average annual production would be 8.7 mbpd, an annual decline rate of -5.6%/year.
Meanwhile, at the 2005 to 2006 rate of increase in consumption, just the top five net exporters in 2007 will consume an additional 420,000 bpd of liquids, which is probably on the conservative side, given the natural gas shortfall in Saudi Arabia. I expect the actual number to be north of 500,000 bpd. Note that this is the one year increase in consumption by the top five. In five year or so, it will take all of current Saudi liquids production, just to meet the domestic consumption by the top five net exporters.
Having said all of this, as I said some time ago, I think that we were just debating how fast the ship is sinking.
Great news --- congrats --- can't wait to learn more specific location since I reside in central Texas. Thanks for sharing your info and perspective.
I appreciate Kunstler's definition from The Long Emergency;
"Fossil Fuels are a unique endowment of geologic history that allow human beings to artificially and temporarily extend the carrying capacity of our habitat on planet earth."
Recently heard Dr. Wes Jackson of the Land Institute speak. He seemed deeply concerned and shwowed that o so familiar graph of oil production and population rising in tandem.
IMHO, Die Off seems inevitable
Dieoff amongst other species is already occurring, of course. When we enter human dieoff, will it be too late to save non human species? We should be more concerned about the millions of canaries in the coal mine. And, btw, we should be closing the coal mines.
Most of us probably abhor the idea of mandatory birth control. And yet, we also abhor dieoff. Those countries, like France, which are experiencing low birth rates, are trying to incentivise population growth, a largely chauvinistic exercise.
Not to worry, magazines like the Economist are concerned we have too few people. So, I guess, dieoff, obviously is not a concern remotely within range of the radar screen.
Yes, Virgina, there will be dieoff. I see no evidence that we have the prudence to take the necessary actions to cause a different result.
I see the difference between dieoff and preventable deaths, but that is a difference in input/ouput numbers. Morally there is no difference between the millions starving now and the millions starving in ten/twenty/whatever years. We are allowing so many preventable deaths now I don't see that we will move decisively to prevent mass dieoffs. In spite of this, I think the dieoffs will happen more slowly than is generally predicted on this blog. We probably will pass the point of dieoff without noticing, it will be a series of "bad years" that no-one will see as the peak until after the fact. This paragraph makes me sound very pessimistic but I do feel a sense of optimism. The fact that we are doing such a terrible job now (in an age of plenty) implies that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit we can pick to soften the transition.
My best hope is that people and small communities see that it is in their best interest to have fewer children. Birth rate declines in Europe, Japan and liberal US states strongly suggest that the fertility rate of human beings would be well below replacement rate if the question was left to individuals (particularly women). Birth rates correlate much more strongly to access to birth control than to cultural factors, although they do have an effect. For example, Catholics often vocally support the anti-abortion stance of the church, but actual abortions among self-identified catholics is actually higher than the general population average where it is available.
I believe that mandatory birth-control will be ultimately counter-productive. Reproduction is an incredibly emotional issue and the existence of mandatory birth control has been used consistently to undermine and demonize legitimate reproductive rights activities. One of the excuses for reinstituting the global gag rule in 2001 was that money might go to forced abortions, an accusation completely contrary to the facts. The reality that a forced pregnancy is also traumatic and infinitely more common doesn't seem to bother these people.
Any solution to peak oil, global warming and poverty will depend on wide or universal access to contraception.
Morally there is a difference between deaths now and speculative deaths later. We are bound to prevent the deaths now because now is when action is required. Speculating that the deaths are only postponed does not let you off the hook of trying to do what you can now. If you save a child from drowning today, you are not saving the child from all future mishaps, only today's. But, failing to save the child means failing to give the child the same opportunity you have to do some saving. That child may grow to save a child who then figures out the solution to the future problem that you would weigh equally with today's problem. The moral compass is not a mathematical model. It has immediate imperatives.
Chris
WT,
That's wonderful news about your discovery, congratulations!
Considering the time you donate to peak oil awareness, you must be incredibly busy!
I'm really looking forward to your presentation with Khebab at the ASPO World Oil Conference in Houston this week and look forward to shaking your hand.
Bob Ebersole
I used to think that I was smart (after an early string of shallow oil discoveries about 20 years ago). I then realized that I was lucky. I now simply characterize myself as persistent.
This test well was the fourth well on a photogeologically mapped surface structure, following three prior dry holes. We weren't able to run a DST because of a lost circulation zone up the hole, so we had to make a casing point election off the logs. Once we saw the logs, there was no question about running pipe.
But fundamentally the discovery was due to the persistence of my principal joint venture partner, who is determined to test my ideas (along with several other key joint venture participants). I am now in the "interesting" position of having two drilling rigs dedicated almost solely to my prospects.
I have actually been turning down Peak Oil speaking requests, but I wanted to do the ASPO-USA gig, and perversely enough, after not doing any speaking gigs since last year, I was asked to debate Michael Economides at Texas A&M (where I got a BS and where Robert got a Master's degree), so I couldn't turn them down. I'm at A&M on Wednesday, and then in Houston on Thursday.
My son's an Aggie at the Galveston campus as his interests are marine science. Persistent always seemed a nice way to describe the Aggie personality, the less pretty ways are obstinate and hard-headed. Its a great school, I'm really proud of my son, he's hard-working and a great guy, but, like all you Aggies, obstinate and hard-headed .
I've always been fascinated by surface geology as an exploration method. For some reason its been out of fashion for the last 60 years or so, but it found more oil fields than any other technique other than seismic. And, its still useful today I suspect if people would just pay attention. I can show you four good wildcat locations in the city of Houston, which are easy to see on the surface.
There's been 15-20 feet of subsidence because of ground water withdrawel for city water, and the town is full of active faults. The Coastal Subsidence District has them mapped, and they show highs by looking at the typography. Most of the water withdrawn was from fairly deep Miocene sands, so they exist at depth. Since Harris County is truly great producing country in really great trends, they'd all make decent prospects, but just as big a pain in the posterior as the Barnett Shale in Tarrant and Dallas counties to produce. They are all in areas that were too urbanised in 1930 to be worth wildcatting,
Bob Ebersole
I've seen these kinds of generalizations (one could even call them prejudices) about post-secondary schools before, but don't share them. After working with people from different schools, departments within schools, and research work-groups, I've come to the conclusion that these sorts of generalizations don't apply. Perhaps certain schools select for a particular personality-type, but I've never had the opportunity to work at one... Of course, I don't have the right personality-type to work at these institutions.
Don’t forget, Oil Consumption has also peaked....
Looking at many of the analyses on TOD, there is a lot of data which indicates that total liquids peaked a year or so ago. Much of the discussion on TOD is about the extent to which this indicates that oil production capacity (ignoring the ability to temporarily overproduce a field) also peaked, circa June 2006. Assuming these Peak Production analyses are correct, by definition in June 2006 the world has also experienced a ‘Peak Consumption’ point.
In terms of the economic an social impact, the crunch is not at the point of 'Peak Oil' , but at the point of 'Oil Shortage', being the point at which ‘inherent’ demand clearly exceeds available supply.
From all that I have read, it would seem that we have still a way to go until we see the majority of the impact on consumption of the large increases in oil price which started about three years ago. At that point, according to Henry Groppe’s analysis (ASPO 2005 Denver), about 50% of the world’s oil consumption was for non-transportation use (mainly in the developing world).
Listening again to Hugh Groppe’s talk (www.evworld.com/evworld_audio/aspo_usa05_hgroppe.mp3 ) it seems to me that the price profile that we have experienced since 2004, should substantially moderate total world demand, mainly by a shift to much cheaper sources of energy for non-transport use in the developing world. The Consumption Peak we saw in June 2006, and the reduction since then are presumably part of this response, and there should be a lot more displacement of consumption still to come over the next few years. The net result should be that the point in time of 'Oil Shortage' may be delayed by a few years, even if oil produciton has peaked or reached a plateau. On this logic, the tightenss of supply which we are seeing now, and which may get much worse in Q4, migth then be followed by a couple of years of much more relaxed supply/demand balance, as consumption reduction projects already in the pipeline come to fruition.
The possibility of such a situation must be on the minds of countries such as Saudi Arabia, and if so should make them very reluctant to make transparent, or reveal by sustained shipment, any reserves of sustainable capacity that they might have acieved or might have in their project pipeline.
Net Oil Exports and the “Iron Triangle” (July, 2007)
http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/2007/07/net-oil-exports-and-iron-triangl...
Declining Net Oil Exports Versus “Near Record High” Crude Oil Inventories: What's going on? (September, 2007)
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2975
I agree that the Export Land Model represents the greatest threat to us at present. This will provide for an exponentially decreasing amount of oil available on world markets. This is a substantially different scenario to a declining tail of production that we normally associate with Hubberts famous bell curve. It is already impacting oil prices.
I understand this, but where I get lost is in among all the other variables:
1. How much will conservation help? Even if the availability of export oil declines sharply many countries (eg US, UK and Australia) have domestic oil industries that will continue to provide (declining) volumes of oil that will cushion the worst impacts. Even so how will these countries respond? Will they use their remaining reserves of oil in the military to ensure access to oil in other countries? What of countries like France and Germany with no oil? What will they do? How will they respond?
2. The world is highly interconnected. We live in a right now/just in time world where resilience has been eschewed in favour of efficiency. We have an incredibly efficient economy where the capital markets and financial systems ensure that money is available when needed provided credit is adequate. This last point is often only a perception, even if related back to supposedly "hard" assets. What happens if this system substantially breaks down? Will otherwise high quality productive units (farms, factories etc) go out of business? What will have the bigger impact: bankruptcy, or a lack of key inputs because they are no longer available? If so, how quickly will this happen?
3. How will our medical, educational, police, firemen, and social services cope? What will the impact be as these services degrade?
4. What happens to our capital infrastructure? Roads, rail, water, power, bridges, tunnels, waterways, sewers, waste treatment etc etc. Will this gradually break down or will there be catastrophic key point breakdowns that paralyse large parts of the system? Eg a bridge (Minneapolis?), or sewer pump station? We saw how a single relay brought the grid down over the entire NE US, plus parts of Canada a few years ago.
5. How will governments respond to large numbers of unemployed destitute people? Will they be kicked out of their houses? Why? If so, where will they live? How will they be fed?
These are the sorts of questions that perplex me. I suppose we must look to history to try and understand. Britains war time mentality, the recent history in Zimbabwe, Burma etc. We can look at trends and laws. The Patriot Act (or what ever it is called) in the US. I guess the key question is this: Will governments act to mitigate the worst impacts; or are we so stuck in our free market paradigm that any action government takes will make things worse?
I tend to be a bit gloomy on these things. My wife Sue on the other hand thinks that humans are adaptable and that we can muddle through. I hope she is right.
One correction. An exponential decline, or increase, is a fixed amount per year, e.g., -5%/year. What the ELM and some case histories show is that net export decline rates tend to accelerate with time, because we are seeing the difference between an exponential production decline and a (generally) exponential increase in production.
What the ELM, UK and Indonesia showed are the following three characteristics: (1) Net Exports declined at a much higher rate than the production decline rate; (2) The Net Export decline rate accelerated with time; (3) Only a small percentage of post-peak production was exported (10% in the case of the ELM). By the time that the UK peaked, about 80% of its total cumulative net export capacity had already been exported.
IMO, we need to start planning on a drastic--and accelerating--decline in the availability of liquid transportation fuels, which is why we are finishing our Net Export paper with a plug for Alan Drake's presentation on Electrification of Transportation.
One thing the doomers don't seem to get is that one can reduce direct consumption dramatically. I don't think it will come to that, but North America could live on its own crude oil production and adapt as that continues to decline. There is just so much frivolous waste in the system now. Famine is not really the issue any more than it is for a guy who weighs 500 lbs.
What do you suppose would be the effect on the economy and society of the huge reduction in consumption that you claim is possible?
The question is, is the American social system now built on frivolous waste? If we have so altered our values over several generations that salesmanship has overwritten any form of community loyalty, genuine conscience-based faith, etc, then we don't know how to stop promoting salesmen over leaders. Nor can we stop the largest concentrations of wealth from buying politicians. Most of all, our financial institutions may not be able to adapt to a subsistence economy, yet some kind of financial system must exist to pool capital for certain critical projects like electrified rail.
For instance, if you could even talk enough Americans into cutting back consumption, that itself could trigger a 1929-type crash or worse. But we came damn close to both leftist rebellions and an actual right-wing coup in the early '30s. Huey Long was running Louisiana basically like Venezuela is now. If Upton Sinclair wasn't necessarily stabbed in the back by FDR in the '34 California gubernatorial campaign, right-wingers in other parts of the states might have moved into a state of rebellion.
Imagine how much destructive the panic would be if you have to tell the public that, no, this time there must not be an economic recovery. No New New Deal. No 3rd chance for industrial capitalism. No hope. Stop that. 1932 forever.
Yes, this is so true. Why so many people can't make these connections is, in part, because they've had their ability to think critically fragmented by their time in the American educational system which fragments everything into distinct topics.
Robert's a good example. Knows more about geology than 99.999% of the population. But can't the connections between geology (oil) and finance, politics, human behavior etc.
Humans can be quite adaptable. Check out this video of a train making its way through a Bangkok market if you have any doubts. Think of all the places we could squeeze this in!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aZFetrUEo0
Connecting several different systems, their feedbacks and response curves is very difficult.
It is next to impossible to do it inside one's head only, regardless of how much education one has had. Simulations and multiple hypotheses are required.
Of course, it is always possible to select one outcome (usually from a pre-existing narrative via abduction), but this only makes one susceptible to heavy bias, when looking at the systemic picture. One usually only sees evidence that tends to reinforce one's own position/argument/belief. This is even more so, if this position is an emotionally charged ideological position.
However, bias filtering does NOT make the outcome more likely, in fact, the more specific the outcome and more components it interconnects into it's narrative explanation, the LESS likely it is to happen as imagined. This is basic probability (almost regardless of distribution).
It is very difficult to analyze and assess systemic risk. We humans tend to make intuitive judgments about probabilities that are completely false. Therefor, we should not trust those intuitions, but analyze the probabilities in question, when we can AND accept the very larger margin of error always present. Ask anybody who's been in the forecasting or future studies field for more than 10 years.
Also, bias applies as well to 'not seeing the systemic risk when it is right in front of our nose' as well as 'seeing only one or few specific outcomes out of the seemingly evident risk situation'. The biases and human thought patterns are the same in both cases. Biases do not select people based on whether they are techno-fix utopians or ultra-gloom-doomers (or something in between). We all fail the acid test, unless we use formal systems to help our own thinking.
Ref: Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks
As such, we should NOT prepare ourselves for a few specific risks only. We should prepare for unforeseen consequences as well.
At this point it becomes an exercise in resource allocation: time, money, brainpower, resources should be allocated. But how? How can we prepare for everything, even for things we cannot yet foresee?
That is a very good question and at least I do not have an answer, although I have a feeling that it is going to be more of a philosophical one than really a practical answer.
I think resilience literature is starting to look at this issue.
One can also look at how old hats in the modeling/simulation/forecasting/risk management field are going about it.
What they are NOT doing is banking on a few very specific scenarios, regardless of how BAU, how doom & gloom or how optimistic.
I think a community of people who are serious about the possible variety of responses from peak oil should consider the same.
Ref: Shaping
The Next 100 years
PS Please note that this doesn't mean that one shouldn't do what you & Robert have done, but to do that _only and exclusively_ may not be very wise. Again, not to say you have, but as a reminder to the rest of us that we perhaps shouldn't either.
I'd be outraged if anyone said it, because it's not true.
Annual energy consumption of the USA is about 98000 kWh of primary energy per capita. A square meter in the middle of Kansas receives about 1550 kWh of solar energy per year, so an American's consumption represents about 63 square meters of Kansas. 300 million Americans would need about 7300 square miles out of the 81,815 square miles of the state. Even if you reduced efficiency to 10%, you wouldn't need the entire state. We probably have enough area under roofs and roads to do the job already, no further development required.
We have PV made of silicon (27% of Earth's crust) and PV made of organics (representing carbon, possibly reclaimed from the atmosphere) on the way. Carbon nanowires are already better conductors than copper. Technology inevitably pushes to the limits of science (just compare the 14-inch Winchester disk drives of 3 decades ago to the one in the iPod). The science we have today is enough to supply an American level of comfort to billions, albeit using renewables rather than fossil fuels.
Hell you don't know the half of it.
The American government has 600 million solar panels already made, they are stockpiled and ready for distribution when needed.
There are also a million 50,000 meg windmills stockpiled.
We have the science to extract clean water from the air, and power vehicles with unlimited free hydrogen.
Everything will be free because there is no cost when we use renewables.
Transport is covered too, we have only being using oil to trick the rest of the world into thinking we are as stupid as they are.
We won't need food because science has invented a pill which can feed us for a month.
Wars will be obsolete, no need for them when we don't need to fight over energy.
Coal and nuclear power stations will be immediately decommissioned.
The armed forces will be used to help everyone build their McMansion.
The oil companies will be extremely happy too because their stockholders won't need money.
Life will be grand.
Not only that. The U.S. even has another big plus: they invented the cool-aid. LOL.
How many different SSRIs are you on? Seriously, the level of denial you're in is only possible with massive pharmaceutical assistance.
Oh, that's a REAL devastating refutation of the conclusion I drew from the facts above. What's your next act? Are you going to get the Inquisition to force me to recant, or will you be satisfied with having your friends point at me and laugh? (FYI, the answer is "zero". I do take blood-pressure reducers, in part due to the stress of dealing with antagonistic assholes. I bought a 6-month supply a little while ago for about $25; perhaps you'd like to kick in a few bucks?)
The proportion of the Earth's crust is irrelevant. More relevant is how much can be economically extracted without damaging the environment or our ability to house and feed the population. The same applies to all the other elements that may be needed to build this 73,000 square miles of PV (at 10% overall conversion efficiency).
Your strong belief in technology is admirable.
Actually, "extracting" the silicon is easy. The entire Sahara desert is made out of it (sand is essentially silicon dioxide, SiO2) ... and its extraction won't bother anyone except maybe a few camels.
How much energy it takes to make the PV panels is an entirely different issue; how much energy it takes to build the factories in which these panels are made is yet another issue; and finally, how much time and money it takes to build these factories is a third issue.
Yet, engineering-poet is right in his comment that we should invest our energy (both spiritual and physical) into creating alternate sources of energy at a time when we are still capable of doing it.
In my view, a law should be passed by Congress regulating that building permits for either new houses or upgrades of already existing houses are only granted if the builder can show that he either produces at least 25% of the energy needs of his new/modified structure locally, or that he invests at least 10% of the money required for the building into a local energy structure, whichever number is smaller.
Such a law is entirely defensible economically; it would provide incentives for new production plants for alternate energy technology; it would create new jobs; and it would get us on a way to at least mitigating the worst side effects of our dwindling fossil fuel resources.
I was not just referring to extraction but to economical extraction without harming the environment or our ability to feed ourselves. I don't really know what the effect of extracting enough sand to make 73,000 square miles of PV panels would be but it seems to me that the techno-optimists fail to look at the whole picture. I was also highlighting the often touted statistic of "x% in the earth's crust" as being meaningless. Nuclear supporters usually use this kind of raw statistic to "demonstrate" that nuclear power can be fuelled for hundreds of years to come.
We wouldn't need 73,000 square miles of PV panels, because only a fraction of energy consumption is electric. A great deal of that collection area could just grab plain old heat.
It was you who used the 7,300 square miles figure and mentioned a 10% efficiency rate. Whether it is PV panels or solar thermal, my post still stands.