298 comments on Prepping for Peak: How Fast Can We Change?
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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.
No, your post claimed "73,000 square miles of PV", which would only be necessary for the electric fraction. Hardly the same thing, and your insistence that it is speaks poorly of your intellectual honesty.
In the real world:
I like this counter-argument. Even though its everywhere we wont be able to use it, just because.
I didn't think I'd have to explain this but just because there is a proportion of an element in the earth's crust, there is no reason to suppose that all of this can be economically extracted or without harming the environment to a degree that affects us. When ever I've seen such statistics used as an argument, a corresponding figure for economical extraction is never shown. For example, a recent article here showed the fallacy of expecting sea water to provide enough uranium for nuclear power stations, if that is chosen as a supposed solution for our energy woes.
You must have missed my story from just a week ago. Either that, or you have a really short memory.
There's a cursory energy-payback analysis in the comments.
I didn't read that story but have now scanned it and it seems that the only factor you appear to have used, for how much PV can be manufactured, is silicon. Are no other resources used in manufacturing the panels, in installing them, in providing the infrastructure to use them and in maintaining them?
I added a multiplier of TEN for the other elements of the system.
Look, if you're not going to actually read something, stop pretending to be commenting on it instead of just repeating your own prejudices.
Simply adding a multiplier is hardly a robust thesis.
I fell back to that because I had nothing better; I searched for price data for glass, etc. but couldn't find anything useful. If you have something to offer, let's have it and refine the figures.
I willingly admit that I don't have anything to offer on that. What I have been trying to say is that rarely do we see the whole picture on any proposed "solution". In my opinion, it is not sufficient to use partial calculations about what is possible because we are facing a real crisis, or series of crises. I don't think we can, any longer, rely on wishes and hopes to engineer our future society; we're at the point when we need to fully research any long term plans on resource use in terms of practicality, economics, energy return, environmental impacts and anything else one can think of that might affect the feasibility of any solution and its affect on our futures and our children's futures. We live on a finite planet and have unsustainable lifestyles, so we need to change what we're doing.
I applaud anyone who goes into a lot of detail about possible alternatives for energy, or any other our our resource uses. I don't have the abilities to do this sort of research myself, so rely on others to do so. But that doesn't mean that I can't see holes, that I can't see where a full analysis hasn't been done.
I think, for sustainability, we need to power down, not just switch energy sources (if that is even possible).
I think the 500 lb guy is a great illustration, though I don't think it proves your point. If you stop feeding a 500 lb guy, he will die of starvation as quickly, if not quicker, than a 200 lb guy. He's necessarily more unhealthy, he's got incredible stress on his heart, lungs, etc, he's probably got some cholestorol and blood pressure issues, he won't be able to run around looking for food as efficiently, and on top of all the of the phsyical constraints he has, he'll feel twice as desperately hungry as the 200 lb guy next to him, cause he's used to eating twice as much. So he'll be in worse psychological distress than the other guy.
Sure, we use way, way more oil in this country than the average guy in, say, Guinea-Bissau. We could survive on a lot less. But all of our life-support systems and our national psychology are built on high levels of energy consumption. We'd have to get on a treadmill and cut out the Baskin Robbins BEFORE the energy was taken away. And we're not showing any sign of doing that.