 | Oilwatch Monthly - April 2008 | The Oil Drum | The Energy Return of Nuclear Power (EROI on the Web-Part 4) |  |
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The Wall Street Journal firmly enters doomer territory today, with two front page articles about peak oil:
First, the admission that the easy oil is over in Saudi Arabia, and that we can't count on them to grow any further:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120881050953632313.html?mod=todays_us_pa...
The article quotes Simmons, Skrewbowski, Saleri, and Hussieni. Finally, recognition on the front page that Saudi Arabia is "dipping into its last big basins of oil."
Then, right below it, is the article on suburban agriculture:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120882472974233235.html?mod=todays_us_pa...
A bus driver in Boulder, Colorado is turning front lawns into vegetable gardens, and is effectively farming on shares: the owners of the yard get a portion of what he grows, in exchange for the land and some gardening services.
I think we all know how these relate.
From the WSJ article:
The second quote especially seems to contradict some of the assumptions of those who are expecting endless increases in production from the middle east.
And what does it tell you when their only two potential one mbpd range fields are problem plagued fields that the Saudis have barely bothered to produce in the past? BTW, waterfloods, especially in a lower permeability reservoir, are never sure things.
It tells me that oil has been rising at about 20 cents a day for the past six months or so, and that there is no end in sight. It tells me that Shell is sending their people out to NPR, trying to let everyone know that we have two choices: cooperation in powering down, or a "scramble" for resources involving young men in kevlar, tanks, and helicopters. Shell isn't saying that last part out loud, of course, but what else does a scramble between nations mean?
There seems to be an emerging pr campaign: Shell says cooperate as oil production floats downward, Saudi says we are saving some unknown, hidden fields for our grandchildren. Just different ways of saying the peak was probably in 2005, and hang on for the ride.
Good to point out Shell's recent PR/educational moves.
My colleague comments on the Shell scramble/blueprint scenarios here:
http://www.commoncurrent.com/notes/2008/04/shell-oil-scenario-oil-supply...
Since he and I work more on the "blueprint" side of government policy and programs, the blog discusses our efforts there.
Cheers.
Ken
That's great news that some people are pulling their heads out of the sand. Now if only the same could be said for the IMF's Lipsky:
"While oil demand has remained robust, the supply side response to rising prices has been disappointing."
Is it just me, or is that like saying "Bad Dog!" to the dingo that just ate your baby?
Their heads were actually in their own tookus' and apparently that is where Lipsky's (and Yergin's et. al.) still is (are). Perhaps if their heads were in the sand they could have seen that there was less oil there than they had been positing.
Kuntsler and some others are always talking about "the death of suburbia". I have heard high rises referred to as "green". Try growing crops on your high rise balcony - assuming you have one.
I think rural towns are going to be the hardest hit by peak oil, not suburbia. There was an article recently on small towns in Northern California. If you didn't work in the town you were in, it could be a very long drive to get to your job in some other small town. And the jobs were not high paying, so any large increase in gas prices would seem to force a move, as there is no public transportation - unlike suburbia which usually has some mass transit, even if not at the same level as a city.
I disagree. I think that the less densely populated the region, the better. People living in really remote areas will fare better than those living in agricultural deserts, rural people will fare better than those in the suburbs, and suburbans will fare better than city dwellers. The more land, better topsoil & more water one has available the better, altho when mass starvation impends defending a crop from hungry marauders won't be easy.
I think it depends on how long electricity continues to be available most of the time. Once we get to serious electrical problems, the less dense areas will fare best, especially if people can get sufficient water and grow their own food. Areas with a very deep water table will have problems, especially if they don't get a lot of rain.
I don't believe in the kind of apocalyptic collapse that many here do, but I would like to point out that a small farm is very difficult to defend against a fair sized number of armed men (say, 20). If one genuinely expects a collapse then it would make sense to get in a position where you're the guy in charge of the raging mob, wealthy and powerful enough to offer protection from the raging mob or a member of the clergy who often end up either in charge or acting in lieu of a justice system. At least that's the way it played out when Rome collapsed.
How did these 20 armed men get to the farm? On camels? You see, if things get that bad, transport will be back to animal/bicycle. I think that the more likely scenario in that case is that no one ever shows up.
A well-organized group of people determined to rob and steal to survive, or even prosper at the expense of others during a period of lawlessness, will move from household to household, and from homestead to homestead, stealing supplies as they go. It is not improbable that they can hopscotch through the countryside this way.
People will not sit still and starve, and even some of those who would never have dreamt of harming a neighbor during good times, will rationalize "temporarily" setting aside their morality in order to feed their families. Rabble-rousers will demonize the "haves" as being either: 1) the rich who "got us into this mess," 2) "profiteeers" who have benefitted from chaos at the "average person's" expense, or 3) "hoarders" who are responsible for a scarcity of supplies and who are "holding out" on "the rest of us".
Protection will come as it always does, through an organized militia that is better coordinated and has better arms and communication than the roving bands of thieves. Justice will be dispensed locally. If a larger force comes one's way (an army), you'll give them what they want and profess loyalty to their cause, or flee and become a refugee.
FiniteQuantity, you need to look around the corner. The problems you describe of small town workers losing their jobs and having to move long distances for another job is an issue for 2008. By 2009 people everywhere will be losing their jobs and by then a rural location will be a much better survival choice. This is not going to play out as "a rough patch in the economic road" but as a collapse of the economic system as we know it.
If society collapses you had better be very rural and very well armed and very skilled at all the things one needs to do to survive. A collapse of society would be so bad that a large bottle of sleeping pills might be the best item to horde.
Sharecropping + prolongued strife over land = feudalism.
Not if. When.
The 3 scenarios outlined in the Hirsch report assume a "crash program rate of implementation." In the most dire scenario, mitigation is not undertaken until global oil production peaks. This will leave the world with a "significant liquid fuels deficit for more than two decades" that "will almost certainly cause major economic upheaval".
Thus far, mitigation efforts in the U.S. have been (at best) non-existent. At worst, counterproductive. Biofuels are an unmitigated disaster.
Optimists say "we" can turn this sorry state of affairs around once people start to feel the effects of a deteriorating food and energy environment. This is rubbish. As one poster puts it, "we" will do nothing (one has to define we). As an example, consider the idea that the the market, technology, and human innovation will save "us". Naomi Klein writes that "far from saving us from catastrophe, the market is developing fortresses to shield the haves from the victims of the future":
Serious mitigation won't be undertaken until well after the peak, if ever. Some posters still seem to think non-collapse is still in the cards. However, if the Hirsch report was updated, so as to include the latest information on Saudi, Russia, & net exports, I believe this assertion could be put to rest once and for all.
One thing is clear. As civilization rolls off a cliff, there will be no shortage of bickering and blaming. The pro-nuclear camp will insist that it is the anti-nuclear crowd that is standing in the way of viable technological "progress". On the other side, the blame will be put on the shoulders of the technophiles, who refuse to accept realistic limits to growth.
This will merely confirm what some here have said all along: ours is a people problem, not a technical one.
I think that is exactly right, the question before us then isn't what to do about then energy problem. It's what to do about the people problem, also known as the collective action problem, the prisoner's dilemma, and the tragedy of the commons. All of which are manifestations of the human proclivity to engage in zero sum games. Until we solve this problem Rome will fall again and again and again.
Peak oil and global warming are not the problem, they are the consequences. the problem is a collective action problem and an inability to make good long term plans.
-Tim
Rural towns will be hard hit, of course, and poverty will be rampant.
However, rural poverty will be quite tolerable compared with urban squalor. For a while, anyway, people will imagine that their chances are better in the city, and the rural poor will continue to sell their sons and daughters into urban slavery, but cannibalism is self-limiting. Cities are not the wave of the future.
It just occurred to me that the safest place to live might be the Washington DC metro area. With the world's most powerful military and all our politicians headquartered there, it is likely that they will do everything in their power to keep that place running.
I don't know. One might have said the same thing about Baghdad and the Green Zone.
The Green Zone is starting to remind me of the Alamo.
Re: Getting to a job....There is an underlying assumption that business as usual (BAU) continues in some form and that people have jobs to get to. I have long argued that BAU based upon an economy that relies on consumer spending for 60%+ of GDP is a dead end.
Aside from population overshoot exceeding our resources bases, one has to consider all of the turmoil in the financial markets and the vast, essentially unpayable, debt of individuals, corporations and governments. In my view, a collapse of some kind is inevitable. Whether it follows the five stages of collapse outlined by Orlov - http://www.energybulletin.net/print.php?id=40919 - or not is unimportant to me.
What is important is the degree to which people can provide for their own needs. In this, I agree with dd above that it is more likely that people in less densely populated areas will probably have a better chance.
One decided advantage of living in the boondocks as I do is that one has to have a large skill set to survive. We have immediate knowledge of what it takes to get by because that's the way we live now. We are also used to living low on the hog and making do. We are used to co-operating on projects and helping each other.
Here's a real life example of what I mean: We get snowed in for 1-3 weeks every winter and often more than once. The power may or may not be on. It gets old after a while but it's hardly the end of the world. My question would be, "How many urban or suburban people would take this as the natural course of life?" But, isn't this closer to what the future may hold than BAU?
Todd
I agree, Finite.
I agree because I live in Exurbia, in the outer asteroid belt, and people ARE losing their jobs, scraping by on what few benefits they can get (and out here in Reddest Red America, getting a gov't check even if just for Food Stamps is a badge of honor) and the percentage of homeless is the highest you'll find outside of San Francisco's Tenderloin.
And hi-rises if they are surrounded by ponds and fields, classic say Vietnamese style intensive farming, are very green. As green as Viet or Indian type shacks? No, but far more green than the 2-3 acres and a horse and 100+ miles commute daily that's the norm here. Or the gov't check for people not growing anything (you can't here) and living on Kraft mac and cheese.
high rises above about 5 stories are pretty hard to negotiate without elevators. Not so green, I think
Looks like it's now out from behind the paywall.
Saudis Face Hurdle In New Oil Drilling