Peak Head?

Good article from September, 2006. An excerpt:

Cambridge Energy Research Associates predicts world oil and natural gas liquids capacity could increase as much as 25% by 2015 (wt: 106 mbpd, total liquids). Says Robert W. Esser, a director of CERA: "Peak Oil theory is garbage as far as we're concerned."

If we use ExxonMobil's upper end estimate of 6% per year from existing wells, we only need about 70 mbpd of new total liquids production in 2015, that we didn't have in 2005, to be producing 106 mbpd. No problemo, 'cause we are certainly enjoying the $38 oil prices that Yergin & CERA promised us we would have.

Maybe ... maybe not:

Japan military may run out of gas money this year

I guarantee you right this second Pentagon planners are having waking nightmares about this. No military establishment in the history of the world is as energy- dependent as the US's. Our world- wide archipelago of bases requires resupply and personnel to be shipped by air. Our operational doctrine requires air superiority which means fuel- guzzling high performance aircraft both for combat duties as well as for force deployment, resupply, refueling, communications and air traffic control. The Navy, while smaller in total ship numbers than during the Reagan era, requires supertanker amounts of fuel, even the nuclear ships -carriers and submarines - require petroleum. Aircraft carriers are nothing more than floating tank farms for the dozens of fighter and reconnaisence aircraft they carry ... as well as to support their enormous crews in comfort.

Most of the legacy military equipment the US relies upon inhales fuel; the M1A series main battle tank 'gets' a green five gallons per mile; this vehicle needs 11 gallons of fuel to start the engine. During Desert Storm, the armor had to tow small trailers of fuel behind. The smallest and most economical vehicle in daily use by the military is the Hummer. The real one, not the smaller H2 civilian Hummer that green people 'whine' about.

Every part of the US military requires vast quantities of fuel.

- F/A 18 (combat fighter/bomber equiv. F16, F22, F15 JSF) 6,000 gallons for a combat mission radius of 500 miles.
- M1A2 Abrams main battle tank (equiv. Russian T80, both with turbine engines) 5 gal/ mile.
- Airlift command aircraft; C141, C17 have fuel consumption equiv. to comparable wide- bodied commercial aircraft.

Modern naval ships tend to much larger - and less economical to operate - than their equivalents from the WWII era. Of course, all the support, ammunition, lubricants, navigation and communication devices have to be manufactured, tested, shipped to the user and made use off and replaced ... all this requires petroleum. No navy or other service uses wind, coal, wood or any 'alternative' fuel for operations.

The biofuel experiment and the biofuel relationship to food has been attempted before. At the end of the Second World War, Germany distilled 'white gas' or ethanol from its potato crop. This amount of biofuel produced was insufficient to Germany's operational needs; Germany had numerous heavy tanks, tank destroyers and jet aircraft and more than adequate manpower ... but could not operate these items because of the lack of fuel. Because the potato crop had been diverted to fuel manufacture, the survivors in Germany in 1945-46 endured a serious famine that was only relieved by intensive efforts of the US and USSR.

The Air Force has been working on a program to develop a 'biofuel' for its aircraft:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/02/us_air_force_pl.html

While this may address training issues and whatnot within this country, such fuels - as well as solar panels (the Pentagon itself has one) and fuel cells cannot support overseas operations.

Fuel constraints will become far more noticeable five years from now. This illuminates certain aspects of US policy, such as our stance in Iraq. It is becoming more clear that having a long- term military presence in Iraq is central to ensuring that fuel is available for 'vital functions' which would certainly include military operations. It is also certain that this insurance will be maintained ... either with or without the cooperation of a 'compliant' Iraqi government. This explains candidate Obama's recalibration of his proposal to withdraw from Iraq "Responsibly". This responsible withdrawal could take as long as a hundred years ... or as long as there is oil available in Iraq ... and Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Whether China has or has not 'contracts' with the Iraqi government is irrelevant. They don't have a military presence in the Middle East ... and can't. They don't have sufficient fuel.

The same fuel 'metric' is applicable to all major powers' military establishments both in China, India, Russia and NATO. The cumulative investment of trillions and trillions in military infrastructure is a wasting asset. In five years no military will have sufficient fuel available to function as they can currently. Some militaries may not be able to function at all; NATO, China, Pakistan, India; Russia will be fractionally effective and countries with fuel reserves; Brazil and Nigeria do not have military infrastructures.

Looke at this way, it appears better to turn this military investment to use now, when there is both fuel to use the materiel and some fuel availability as an outcome of military action.

Some things to watch:

- Russian interest in the central Asian republics that have oil reserves and were once part of the USSR.

- America will use a pretext to invade Venezuela.

- A ressonable likelihood that Al Qaeda is on the US payroll ... similar to the 'Awakening Groups' in Iraq. These are also labeled 'Al Qaede in Mesopotamia' by both the US government and the media when it is convenient to manipulate how issues arising in Iraq and elsewhere are presented to the public. It is noticable that the US does not attack Al Qaeda assets and that organization does not attach US/European targets. Osama's organization would be useful to turn against the Saudis. Keep in mind, 'insurgent activities' are used ss provocations for various US military activities. A successful Al Qaeda attack on the Saudi royal family would be a reason for US troops to 'reposition' themselves inside Saudi Arabia.

- Look for a dramatic increase of military activities between Pakistan and India both in and outside of Kashmir. Pakistan's fuel situation is even more dire than the Germans at the end of WWII. It's 'use it or lose it' in Kashmir.

- Look for an increase in Taliban activities in Iran! Iran is a closed society, but a large enough attack would be published in the Western press. The Taliban is an instrument of the (Sunni) Pakistani ISI intelligence service.

- Look for the Taliban to keep up the pressure in Afghanistan ... but not any 'go for broke' offensives. Time is on the Taliban's side. NATO is being pulled by events in Eastern Europe and will have to make choices .. all of them stupid choices but momentum is building for a Euro-Russian confrontation. The Taliban will wait for NATO to go home and then put more pressure on the Americans ... who will have to choose between supporting the effort in Afghanistan (no oil) and supporting the effort in Iraq (the rest of the oil).

- Look for NATO to lose its collective mind over Russia. NATO planners are looking at the gas guage while losing sleep over an imminent Russian invasion of eastern Germany! Reasonably, NATO will rather fight WWIII in Ukraine rather than in Poland so look for a fast track for Ukraine NATO membership ... exactly a useless move. Russia won't attack Europe. Europe is Russia's best customer.

- Look for Russian bellicosity to increase. Russia knows that 'threats' cause the price of oil to increase. They will make threats. Russia is looking at the gas guage, too. If they threat too hard, they could force a confrontation that makes the gas guage head to zero a lot faster than they would like ... and would at the same time unmask the threats as empty bluster.

We live in interesting times ...

Good one Hard hat.
Elites have a way of making people believe they belong to the higher class. People don't rebel against their 'own' class.
Elites use religion and civic ethics to make us believe what they want us to believe. They have blatantly taken control of the media, from top to bottom (journalists used to start as high school graduates, now they need a degree...).
They are telling us to be like them: we must pursue lust, gluttony, greed, envy, pride, wrath and sloth if we want to be happy. Sex, food, money, having more than your neighbor, war and leisure & 'labour-saving devices', are the things we need and want and are willing to pay good money for.
Spend some time watching ads and (recent)movies, if you didn't know this already. The elites are teaching us to be sinful: if everybody is sinful, they make more money.
There is paradox here: they want us to have religion, whereas an atheist git like me can clearly see the dearth of morals in the story(ies) they are telling us.
Being happy is not what you have, it is what you do.
Sorry for digressing.

Of course if the worryworts had been warning you about the fish mass/ water volume and it turned out to be a farilure in your aerator pump, not a lack of food, the worryworts would have gotten it completely wrong. Just remember, just because someone yells that the sky is falling doesn't mean you should immediately invest your life savings in a sky proof bomb shelter. You could end up with a very expensive hole in the ground.

I guess it gets into your definition of "collapse" and "society", neither of which I want to do right now. I don't personally buy the notion that there will be a fast crash return to the stone age either. All I'm saying is that to argue that the world can't change a lot in 10 years is not consistent with the historical record, even if it hasn't happened in the last 50 years.

The Black Death took off in Europe immediately after the 'Year without a summer', a famine year that was probably the result of a massive volcanic detonation in the Indonesian archpelago which blasted huge amounts of dust into the atmosphere and cooled the planet. The immune system is very sensitive to starvation, antibodies are proteins. It could be argued that the critical mass required for take off of the epidemic was acheived as a result of the weakened state of the population. It is another example of how one catastrophe might turbocharge another. World wide food shortages are looming, this has to be a a cause for concern with bird flu and multidrug resistant TB just waiting for an opening to wreak their mayhem.

"That is the one I think about. Declining oil supplies hits food hard too. In the developed world 20% of oil is for agriculture. Without natural gas and oil corn goes from 220 bushels an acre to something under 135 bushels an acre."

Uh, actually, it goes a whole lot lower than that. The cropland that has been farmed with chemicals is essentially dead and poisoned so they it will grow almost nothing without those chemical inputs. And it takes years for it to recover. Ask all those farmers in India who got suckered into the "Green Revolution" and now no longer can afford to buy the fossil-fuel fertilizers -- they have been committing suicide at the rate of about 10,000 a year for the last few years at least.

1939-1945

One thing about our collapse. Wouldn't the last of of the easter islander's simply left? They didn't all have to die, maybe they just said "screw it" and hopped in a boat to South America or back across the pacific? And the fall of the roman empire had little to do with resources than a collapse of a cohesive political hierarchy, where rival nations became more powerful than them. I'm not saying we'll be able to become more populous in this resource constrained environment, nor am I saying that war and strife aren't in our future, but why is there an assumption that 100% die-off of the human species is in any shape probable? Alot of doom and gloom from people who know no more than the rest of us. Oh well.

Leanan,
If we're all in the same boat, so to speak, arn't we all in the middle of nowhere?

try significant losses for small time gardeners leaving corn/beans/etc. to dry in the fields due to raccoons/deer/etc.

got to grow some for those others.

I find the reasoning of most to be lacking for the reasons mentioned above.

But...there's really little point in talking about it in those terms. If it's truly unprecedented, then we have no basis for debate.

Yes, we have technology and interconnectedness the world has never seen. Does it mean the collapse will be faster...or much, much slower?

I tend to think slower, simply because that's the trend. Easter Island at 50 years was about the fastest collapse we know of, and also the smallest. Rome was quite large, and took four centuries.

But if what we're facing is truly unprecedented, and not related to what has happened before, there's no point in speculating, really.

I tend to look to history as a guide, because that seems to be the most accurate thing to do. (The best way to avoid your own biases...though people often manage to fool themselves even when they should know better from personal experience.) It could very well be that it would be misleading this time, but what's the alternative? Consult the Magic 8-Ball?

Marco wrote:

The entire arctic sea ice melt is not enough to disrupt the thermohaline circulation....you need something bigger...like Greenland, which given the current unstable regime is feasibly possible. Climate modelers put the possible melt for Greenland at 1000+ years gradually but of course their models don't take into account catastrophic events that could adversely affect melt/disintegration rate. Previous thermohaline shutdown in the paleo-climatic records have been attributed to more transient events, say huge ice-dams breaking in what is now Canada.

What I'm thinking of is not the same situation as that which caused the Younger-Dryas cold period, which may have been triggered by a bolide impact but which lasted more than 1,000 years.

What you are missing is that the Nordic Seas are rather isolated from the rest of the North Atlantic. Water (and sea-ice) which flows thru the Fram Strait into the Nordic Seas tends to stay there thru re-circulation around the Sub-Polar Gyre. That's seen in the continuing freshening of the surface water of the Nordic Sea. Also, The East Greenland Current transports some of the low-salinity water from the Fram Strait into the Labrador Sea and there's further transport from the Arctic thru the Canadian Archipelago/Baffin Bay/Davis Strait route. There was an event called The Great Salinity Anomaly which was first detected in the Labrador Sea and then traversed the Sub-Polar Gyre beginning late in the 1960's. Another such event would have more fresh water available as the Arctic sea-ice melts and would enter the already freshened Sub-Polar Gyre and Nordic Seas. And, each year, it's likely that continued low sea-ice extent would add more fresh surface water to the mix.

Ref:
WHO Commentary about findings reported below.

Curry, R. and C. Mauritzen, 2005. Dilution of the Northern Atlantic Ocean in recent decades, Science, 308, 1772-1774.

E. Swanson

For (b) he said "jet stream," not thermohaline circulation. IIRC at least one study so far suggests that greatly increased (in both time and size) open water in the Arctic may disrupt or change Northern Hemisphere air current flows, leading to significant changes in storm tracks and thus changes the waterfall patterns.

Excuse me if I cynically believe this is a worthless GOP stunt to try and get some votes from the green brigade.

Notice that they will not be so quick to tell US public HOW they are going to use less oil. I suspect they might wait until after the election!!

Marco

Gawd!! Next they'll acknowledge evolution and the Sun being the center of the solar system and all.

This might sound callous, but there hasn't been enough catastroph yet! Call it rearview if the population starts decreasing.