Peak Oil? Bring it on!
I have a new article in Salon on perhaps the most misunderstood subject in energy — peak oil.
Here is the short version:
- We are at or near the peak of cheap conventional oil production.
- There is no realistic prospect that the conventional oil supply can keep up with current projected demand for much longer — if the industrialized countries don’t take strong action to sharply reduce consumption, and if China and India don’t take strong action to sharply reduce consumption growth.
- Many people are expecting unconventional oil — such as the tar sands and liquid coal — to make up the supply shortage. That would be a climate catastrophe, and I (optimistically) believe humanity is wise enough not to let that happen. More supply is not the answer to either our oil or climate problem.
- Nonetheless, contrary to popular belief, the peak oil problem will not “destroy suburbia” or the American way of life. Only unrestrained emissions of greenhouse gases can do that.
- We have the two primary solutions to peak oil at hand: fuel efficiency and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles run on zero-carbon electricity. The only question is whether conservatives will let progressives accelerate those solutions into the marketplace before it is too late to prevent a devastating oil shock or, for that matter, devastating climate change.
That last sentence has been a major focus of this blog. I discuss it briefly in the article, but let me elaborate on it here. For more than two decades, conservatives have put up almost every conceivable roadblock to a sane energy policy. They have essentially said to peak oil — and catastrophic global warming, for that matter — “Bring it on!”
No one should be surprised we are now mired in a tar pit of growing dependence on oil imported from unstable or undemocratic regions, oil prices over $100 a barrel, a trade deficit in oil alone approaching $500 billion a year, and, of course, the very serious threat of catastrophic climate change from burning an ever-increasing amount of fossil fuels.
Many of us have predicted for a very long time that a quarter century of ignoring or underfunding the key solutions to our addiction to oil would have consequences. For instance, an April 1996 article I coauthored warned about what the Gingrich Congress was trying to do:
Now, absent an aggressive set of government-led policies, the oil situation will only get worse, with oil and gasoline prices doubling (or worse) in the next quarter century. Crucially, we must solve our oil addiction and carbon addiction together. And soon. Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, said in November:
The problem is urgent. And the solutions are known.
Clearly we now have only two realistic strategies — indeed, we have had only two realistic strategies for decades. We must greatly increase the fuel economy of our vehicles and we must find one or more alternative fuel sources that are abundant, low carbon, and affordable. Both of these are strategies that conservatives have strongly fought for a long time.
Just to be clear, let’s just say we adopted the favorite strategy of conservatives — more supply — and we opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, and found enough to provide one million barrels a day for 30 years. That would delay the peak in oil one whole year! Catastrophe not averted. And of course, it would only make global warming harder to fight. More domestic supply is not the solution.
Significantly, both Senators Clinton and Obama have announced plans to sharply increase fuel economy standards. As for McCain, one of his top economic advisors recently said that if his cap and trade system worked well enough, he might take the new standards off the books. That shows the McCain campaign does not understand what it will take to solve either the global warming or the peak oil problem.
Let’s optimistically assume we can get fuel economy standards for cars and SUVs of 60 miles per gallon by 2030. We would still need half their fuel to be zero carbon. And that’s just the time-line for dealing with global warming. If you want a motor fuel to deal with peak oil, then you need something that can provide a substantial and rapidly growing resource starting by 2020 at the latest (optimistically assuming we have a decade before peak).
Only one alternative fuel is even remotely plausible — carbon-free electricity.
Hydrogen is a “multi-miracle” nonstarter that became stake-through-the-heart dead this month when GM and Toyota told everyone the obvious — we won’t have “hydrogen fuel cells for mass-market production in the near term” but “electric cars will prove to be a better way to reduce fuel consumption and cut tailpipe emissions on a large scale.” [Note to GM and Toyota: Duh!]
Corn ethanol is, as we’ve seen over and over again, a total loser from an energy and climate — and every other conceivable — perspective.
Biomass-based cellulosic biofuels hold a lot of promise, maybe even more promise than they held more than a decade ago when my office at DOE was pushing hard to develop them in the face of opposition from the Gingrich Congress. But we still don’t have a single commercial cellulosic biofuels plant in operation in this country. So it will require massive government support for biofuels to be a major player by 2030, let alone 2020. Moreover, electricity is not a fuel that can be used for air travel and probably not for long-distance travel, especially by big trucks. So, again optimistically, we should probably assume every last drop of cellulosic biofuels will be set aside to cut non-automotive transportation fuel sharply in the coming decades.
I have previously explained why I believe plug in hybrids and electric cars are the cars of the future, especially as a climate solution. The Salon article, “Peak oil? Consider it solved” talks about how they are the ideal peak oil solution, too.
The bottom line is that if we solve the climate problem, we will solve the peak oil problem. If we don’t solve the climate problem, peak oil will be a somewhat painful, but relatively short blip on the history of humanity compared to the extremely painful, multi-century tragedy our children and the next 50 generations after them will face.
March 27th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
While I agree with the thrust of what you’re saying, I’m a little less enthusiastic about an early and sudden arrival of peak oil. Firstly the worst effects of peak oil won’t hit everyone equally, poorer countries will be affected most immediately because of their inability to compete in the market for more expensive oil; and secondly, the last thing we want is a loss of confidence leading to a depression of the scale of the 1930’s. While such an event would sharply reduce oil consumption, it would also lead to countries adopting isolationist economic policies, which would exacerbate the economic problems, and in turn strengthen the hand of nationalistically minded politicans, as it did in the 30’s.
March 27th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Good article. Only quibble:
“Of course, that assumes people don’t drive greater distances, even though they will be wealthier, and a nation’s per capita wealth has historically correlated with vehicle miles traveled.”
I really need convincing that people will be truly wealthier, given:
Hall, et al:
http://www.ker.co.nz/pdf/Need_to_reintegrate.pdf
Ayres and Warr
http://www.iea.org/ Textbase/ work/ 2004/ eewp/ Ayres-paper1.pdf
Put another way, if wealth ~ work = efficiency * energy-used, as in Ayres & Warr, as they say (last paragraph):
“From a long-term sustainability viewpoint, this conclusion carries a powerful implication. If economic growth is to continue without proportional increases in fossil fuel consumption, it is vitally important to exploit new ways of generating value added without doing more work. But it is also essential to develop ways of reducing fossil fuel exergy inputs per unit of physical work output (i.e., increasing conversion efficiency). In other words, energy (exergy) conservation is probably the main key to long term environmental sustainability.”
I’d speculate that Joe would concur with that
But, in Charlie Hall’s Ballon Graph, http://scitizen.com/ screens/ blogPage/ viewBlog/ sw_viewBlog.php?idTheme=14&idContribution=1305
it is clear that we have a *long* way to go in 50 years to build enough solar, wind and (nuclear?)) to match the downdraft in oil & gas.
Put starkly, I think we have a serious race to:
- increase efficiency fast enough to compensate for less oil+gas
- keep coal, tar sands, shale under control
I haven’t yet been able to find economics studies of climate change that assume anything by GDP growth rates akin to what we’ve seen in the last 50-100 years, i.e., during a period of:
- increasing efficiency
- increasing total Exajoules from fossil fuels
As the latter starts to wind down, I just don’t understand how:
- we maintain the world GDP growth rates
- and especially, the GDP/person growth rates
especially given the “steep” part of Hubbert-style depletion curves.
I would be happy to find some economic studies of climate change that incorporated the Hall or Ayres/Warr worldview, which actually makes sense to me. Not being an economist, I just do not understand happy assumptions of decades and decades of growth continued at the same old rates, even given the efficiency actions that we can and must do. [I mean, I work with companies that do that, and there are certainly lots of things to do, but I think, when we start to get to the steep part of the downcurve, we’re going to be going all-out building just to stay even.]
Finally, of course correlation is not causation, and I speculate that both wealth & VMT are derived from cheap energy.
cheap energy ==> more work ==> more wealth
cheap energy ==> more work ==> more VMT
As Michael Tobis pointed out over in http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/ 2008/ 03/ energy-is-unbelievably-cheap.html, energy is still incredibly cheap, and one can (now) truck tomatoes from California to Maine at very low cost, so why not?
The fairly weird thing is that with PHEV & BEV, local transport should be fine, includiing delivery trucks & such, but even the work truck vendors are doing to make Class 8 trucks (big ones) into real hybrids doesn’t make big diesel tanks go away, although recapturing braking energy and eliminating city idling are well worth it.
Finally: any opinion on Range Fuels’ first (cellulosic) plant? I.e., have you heard anything about the actual status?
March 28th, 2008 at 12:00 am
“The only question is whether conservatives will let progressives accelerate those solutions”
I think it is a mistake to make this a left vs right issue. There are plenty of conservatives who fully accept the realities of climate change and know that we need to act in order to solve. In fact in Canada it was Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney who first realized the threat of climate change. That was in the 80s.
While todays conservatives have become anti-environment, I think the best way to get the ball rolling is to show conservatives that they don’t have to sacrifice their values in order to care about the environment.
March 28th, 2008 at 1:09 am
To add to my last post, I found a nice presentation by Robert Ayres:
http://www.bren.ucsb.edu/ news/ documents/ robert_ayres.PPT
There are plenty of good charts. The last page shows projections of US GDP, 2000-2050AD depending on various assumptions of *efficiency*, and it;’s not pretty.
and a a related earlier paper:
http://www.cge.uevora.pt/ aspo2005/ abscom/ ASPO2005_Ayres.pdf
Google: ayres warr meet-rexs
gets a few hits I haven’t had a chance to look at.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:33 am
As a UK citizen I have long predicted the US will be in deep trouble as oil gets scarce and expensive. You import 13mbopd which, at $100 a barrel, accounts for your entire trade deficit, and is directly linked to most of the other economic problems that are hitting the US today.
We haven’t even reached peak yet (recent production figures show global production is still rising). If the current price trend continues oil will be $150 by Q4 2009 and the whole thing about oil being traded in (worthless) dollars will fall apart big time.
Traditional high tax on fuel in Europe and the UK is suddenly starting to look like it was a really good idea, even if no-one understood why a few decades ago. From a free trade point of view the US could argue that it is unfair - a form of free-market distorting import tariff - but it has really helped Europe to use fuel efficiently.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:36 am
This log-lin graph of oil prices over the last 10 years illustrates the trend. The straight line indicated constant oil price inflation of over 30%. If it continues unchecked for another 2 or 3 years how will the US cope?
http://www.freecharts.com/ Commodities.aspx?page=chart&sym=CLY0&data=G&date=032708&den=MED&evnt=ADV&grid=Y&jav=ADV&size=B&sky=N&sly=L&vol=Y&late=Y&ch1=011&arga=&argb=&argc=&ov1=&argd=&arge=&argf=&ch2=&argg=&argh=&argi=&ov2=&argj=&argk=&argl=&code=IC&org=stk
March 28th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Roads are made from oil. Not only the raw material, asphalt, but the heavy machinery required to quarry the aggregate and lay the tarmac must run on oil. Without a steady flow of cheap oil, roads are prohibitively expensive to build and maintain. This is beginning to happen now. The car (electric or not) dies and suburbia dies with it when peak oil hits hard. Cars wont be a solution to anything except maybe a source of scrap iron.
It need not be doomsday, a contracted society with most transport by foot or cycling will be happier and healthier.
March 28th, 2008 at 11:34 am
And don’t forget Peak Coal to follow.
March 28th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
“Estimates of Bio-energy Potential around the World”
http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=2815
Since it is possible to make biodiesel via hydrothermal liquidification and biocoal via hydrothermal carbonization, I suppose it is also possible to make bio-asphalt for road work…
March 28th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
My only quarrel with your Salon article, Joe, is with your premise:
“Clearly we now have only two realistic strategies: increase our vehicle fuel economy and develop affordable alternative fuel sources that are low in carbon.”
This appears to presume that non-motorized transportation — i.e. bicycling and walking — is not a major part of the solution.
The 2001 National Household Travel Survey by USDOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows that 50% of all urban trips of 3 miles or less are by car; and over 63% of all urban trips of 5 miles or less are by car. And in urban areas Americans use their cars for 66% of trips of up to a mile and 89% of trips of between one and two miles.
The vast majority of us could replace most of these trips by bicycling and/or walking if our communities were made bike/ped friendly.
Thus, I would contend that there is a third realistic strategy, one already employed in a number of European and Asian countries and in a few “Bicycle Friendly Communities” here in the U.S.: get young and old to make a substantial percentage of their trips by bicycling and walking.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
At 670 Dollars a ton Fossil oil can and will be replaced on a scale never seen before in peace-time, CTL plants will be the gold rush of the next decade. Even 5.00$/bushel corn can be distilled profitably into ethanol without subsidies @ 2.60$ gallon fossil gasoline prices. Recall that fossil oil is just old plant matter with a little heat+pressure+time, More heat & pressure= less time. Synthetic crude isn’t rocket science.
The ride a bike cranks place no value on the bike rider’s time- thus all their analyses are defective. What kind of idiot wants or will permit a future with ever rising energy costs?
At some time in the past a few doom and gloomers(proto-Malthus/Club of Rome) sat around the burning carbon and told the tribe they were running out of nickel iron meteorites(Peak oil) for spear points and the tribe would have to revert to stone points and starve all the old people and kill half the kid’s.(And give the last spear points to the Cassandra Club). Then some wise ass invented mining/smelting(technology)and the welfare state(taxes).
Remember Joe when I asked you for one commodity that actually ‘ran’ out?- Here is a partial list, Whale Oil ~1850, wild animals for food~4,000 BCE, wild animals for clothing~3000BCE, Firewood ~1700s in G Britain, about 200BCE in Israel, caves for houses~15000BCE, toilet paper in the USSR,1917 They’ve all been replaced with superior products through innovation not taxes. Your world view is suffering cognitive dissonance-come back to the light of human progress, If needed we’ll fix our environment if required.
March 28th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
“we’ll fix our environment if required.”
We are “fixing” our environment right now. Unfortunately, it wasn’t broken….
Yes, we’ll pull a Jurassic Park on the extinct species; we’ll do cloud seeding to save the Southwest permanent drought; and we’ll all live in houseboats.
Oops. I meant future generations will do that.
March 28th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I agree with Joe’s article above.
I’m not sure I understand to what end I’m quoted in a comment above. I do maintain that energy is cheap enough that the disruption in moving to a sustainable source at even triple the price is grossly overstated. I think Joe agrees on this point.
My main point in writing is to suggest that we can solve the trucking problem by reinventing rail. I’m surprised to see so little discussion of this option. We can leap a whole century in rail technology!
Our problems are technically solvable. If we have the disaster we seem to be heading for, we will have only laziness and fear to blame.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Economistsz would surely say we have not established the right price signals.
Fossil carbon tax anyone?
March 28th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Peter Foley - Population and economic growth cannot grow indefinitely on a finite planet. Just because we have found substitute products in the past does not mean we will in the future. There is no clear substitute for fossil fuel and it is very hard to see how our society can continue without it.
Malthus/Club of Rome will be correct just once. Not yet I admit, but almost certainly at some point this century.
p.s. where the hell can I buy $5/bushell corn. Lst week on the news they said it had risen from $77 to $180 in the last 2 years, due to (a) use as biofuel and (b) droughts.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Funny you should mention an “oil shock.”
At least here in California all our asphalt roadways are deteriorating fast and there is limited money to repair them as the real-estate bubble collapsed our tax base. You can tell how rich the county you’re in my the state of the road as you cross the county line. Poor countys have poor roads.
We can feel that oil shock in the seat of our pants. Should it get bad enough “the wheels will come off” your car as well as the economy. It will also get much harder to get all of that meat, milk and produce to market.
Of coarse this problem is entirely solvable but like all the other problems connected to peak oil and climate change the solution involves major restructuring of local, state and national economies.
The contracters with yards full of asphalt laying equipment are not going to take lightly the suggestion that we put them largely out of business and instead engage on a crash program of building (rebuilding actually) a network of rural light rail that serves outlying communities. They’re going to bribe the pants off the officials in charge until the bitter end.
The problem with technofixes is that the existing technology owns the existing politicians and isnt’ going to let them look for new brides in the form of unfunded high-speed rail or local light rail.
We might as well wish for a monorail for christmas because we aren’t going to get it.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Michael:
I quoted you because:
1) And the the particular point was that if energy is cheap, people use it, and VMTs go up, and the tomato thing was a fine example.
2) I commonly try to quote blogs I like that I think deserve more traffic.
Rail has been discussed lots of places, and I strongly believe more rail and more electrified rail, is really important … but it takes a while, especially to get it electrified, and there are certainly plenty of places where reinserting trains will be very expensive due the amount of dense infrastructure that would have to be replaced.
On the other extreme, it is hard to run a railroad near every farm, especially electrified railroad, which is why a lot of shortlines get abandoned in favor of class 8 grain trucks. They just don’t get enough usage.
Here’s Kansas:
http://www.ksdot.org/ BurTransPlan/ maps/ SpecialInterestStateMaps/ rrmap120706.pdf
grain gets to the elevators, and from there via rail, but it gets to them via grain trucks. I have no idea of the distribution of ton-miles of grain trucks.
Right now, as your own analysis showed:
a) It is relatively cheap to ship things via Class 8 trucks.
b) The energy cost is ~linear in the distance.
===
c) At some point, trains are cheaper than trucks. They aren’t at short distances, since you have to transport to/from the train.
So, we’re heading into a period when:
a) Class 8 trucks still need lots of fuel, which will be expensive.
b) But smaller local trucks can actually be BEV or PHEV, i.e., for a given amount of cargo, there will a battery range, and then after that, it gets expensive, so it’s no longer linear.
c) The tradeoff between trains and trucks will increasingly favor trains in more places, but given the time and especially expense of building infrastructure, trucks will have to be around for a while.
I haven’t looked at the relative economics in any detail, but even in Europe, there’s still a lot of trucking, because they go where you want to. Also, one must be careful to understand the traffic limits of any given railroad. Finally, all this is affected by the geography of distribution centers, which may well have to change a bit under the new constraints.
Here’s a GE hybrid locomotive (not just diesel-electric).
http://ge.ecomagination.com/site/products/hybr.html
Also, for some places, it may well be that you use light fuel-based locomotives for spur lines, and electrify the mainline, or maybe you have an electrified locomotive that can go modest distances on batteries or with a small fuel supply.
March 28th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Maybe you just need to think about living closer together…
March 28th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
John, I really mean to skip a century on the railroad thing.
Think packet switching, but with actual packets with real mass as contents…
March 29th, 2008 at 1:28 am
“We have the two primary solutions to peak oil at hand: fuel efficiency and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles run on zero-carbon electricity.”
No offense, but this is the first statement of delusion I have read from this website.
There are a number of problems with this solution: manufacturing the cars, and the implied solar and wind materials with “zero-carbon” is just not feasible. I might agree if you specified these vehicles are only for public transit…but it’s still only a very temporary solution on the scale of decades, not centuries.
The only convincing solution I have seen is a drastic reduction in population, a much more agrarian lifestyle (considering our food to fossil fuel ratio is 1:45), and a reduction in complexity, i.e. technology.
Unlike what we are being told, our solution is not more research and technology, but embracing our Saithood/Buddhahood, making sacrifices, a change in culture (probably involving veganism), significantly reduced consumption, and a reconnection with our local community.
The pendulum is about to take a hard swing from Empire to Local, and it’s hard for me to imagine cars playing a large part in our society more than 100 years from now.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:47 am
Joe, nearly anyone can make sausage, but who can make a pig from sausage? Entropy increases, get over it. Oil prices have over quadrupled in the last fifteen years without the wheels falling off-another doubling over 25 years doesn’t even keep up with GNP growth. Just what is bad? high oil prices or the running out of fossil oil? Your post butters both sides of the logic toast. If there is actual significant human caused CO2 forced AGW why not just continue with the present carbon based economy and abate the CO2 with what worked previously geologically–coral reefs to limestone and peat ponds to coal/oil? One heck of lot cheaper then shooting ourselves in the gonads of Western civilization, carbon based transportation/power. I am I going to have to pay a carbon tax when the leaves fall off of my trees?
Robert, I can see the Earth easily supporting 4x the present pop with current level of US technology, Are you going to start taxing energy production or something equally stupid to damage the worlds future?
If you’re serious about ZPG get sterilized now, I’ll loan you the money for the surgery. My grandkids will read about you and the Shakers. You might have to move closer together to stay warm in a carbon free world with climate change like they had in Hong Kong last winter.
I still love to play with toy trains, but passenger rail, heavy and light are money pits for low density areas. Amtrak has 35 years of failure to prove it. The only new rails that cash flow in North America are the one that ship global freight containers and the ones that haul coal from Rockey Mountain states to the power plants that supply our economy.
Rail fuel costs published in a WSJ ad, ~400 ton miles / gallon of Diesel, A fully loaded class 8 Semi-articulated truck is ~140 ton miles / gallon of sulfur free diesel. A fully loaded coal train hauls over 120 X 100ton coal cars = 2.4 million lbs of product. How many things need to be shipped in increments of Mega pounds? Look at maps of WWII US towns and see how much real estate the rail roads consumed– if rails were actually cheaper we’d still use them. The cheapest solution is also the one that impacts the environment the least.
Run an Einsteinian thought experiment about the infrastructure costs of just the bridges required for replacing the just the interstate component portion of the trucking. Just one local main line bridge to replace the 109 year old one took 4,000,000 lbs of steel.
Are you willing to give up fresh produce and the UPS man to keep the average temps a 1/4 degree lower?
Locally we have public bid lettings for highways, you ought to try it in California Pangolin.
Michael Tobias, call the Union Pacific RR with your idea, I sure they’ll get right on it. Go watch a local truck freight hub for a couple hours then compare and contrast with a railyard. Think topology of the rail lines compared to the degrees of freedom a truck has in a warehouse parking lot.
March 29th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Peter Foley - why waste all the time explaining that we should just continue with business as usual? BAU is taking us down an unsustainable path. The further we go down it the more painful the consequences at the end.
I love the references to “US technology” and “Western civilization”. Haven’t you noticed that the US, with its 13mbopd import habit and 1/2 trillion $ trade deficit is rapidly disappearing down the pan, while India and China (population 2.4 billion) is in double digit growth and eating your lunch?
4x population is 27 billion. The world can hardly feed itself with 6.8 billion. Your post is a joke.
March 29th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Robert, BAU, isn’t business as usual it is the constant improvement in the economy driven by innovation and use of tech. Just as we have as a culture since the Middle Ages. You’re welcome to go Amish, but not to force all others down that “NO OUTLET’ road.
We, the USA can run a deficit forever as long as we create wealth faster than we spend it/ if we weren’t we’d been broke decades ago. BTW, a large fraction of the ‘trade’ deficit is bookkeeping encouraged/forced by the double taxation of US onshore corporate income. If you are truly worried, allow drilling any where in the US and the wealth created that stayed in the US = an extra dollar a day for every citizen forever. Some of it could even be ‘wasted’ on tree-hugging, poor people poop on the pavement, wealth is needed to have a ‘clean’ world.
Every ’shortage’ of X is an opportunity for growth and new tech.
Your meme that we have run out of stuff is in the long run species suicide–It will always end in “Game Over” with no quarters in your pocket. Its similar in effect to Liberals in the US wanting to steer the future of the society but are so self centered they won’t have children–Plan B take over public schools and ‘make’ liberals out of the rational parents offspring.
Chinda isn’t eating our lunch, we’re swapping extra sandwiches for a desert–both parties have a greater GNP after trade. The PRC is trying to game currency exchange rates–But I’d put my poker money on the currency traders with 500 years of experience over the product of the cultural revolution.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Peter Foley — It is possible to do all that and still reduce CO2 to 350 ppm in about 70 years: bury biocoal. The cost to do so might come from a world-wide VAT of 1%. (Any means to generate around $670 billion per year.)
THere may be less expensive means to accomplish the same goal. THe point is it is not expensive. Just needs the will to do so.
March 29th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Joe,
It’s a major strategic error you make again and again:
Making the issue progressives vs. conservatives.
There are now conservatives like Woolsey who are recognizing some of the issues. Maybe its denialists vs. everybody else.
I think you are making more enemies than you need to to get the job done.
March 29th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I consider the attempt to simplify an N-dimensional space into 1 dimension to be rather silly. Politics is N-dimensional. The fictional “political spectrum”, right to left, is a single dimension. The purpose of the simplification attempt is to aggrandize power. The idea is to make people believe there are only a few legitimate combinations of opinions, so if you agree with me on X, you should agree on Y, Z, W, etc.
Even worse: in the U.S. there is an attempt to simplify the “political spectrum” into just two points: Republican and Democrat.
Even worse still: the political term “conservative” is no longer aligned with the English definition, which David Benson conveniently has already posted under “The adaptation trap”. The Republicans today are the radical party of the U.S. (that is they seek to venture into uncharted territory, e.g. in climate, economics, religion, etc.) and the Democrats are the conservative party (that is, they primarily seek to maintain the changes of the 1930s to the 1960s). The entrenched nature of the two-party system in the U.S. is such that most people have never even noticed this reversal in conservative vs. radical.
March 31st, 2008 at 1:16 am
Elbarto appears to be one of the few that gets it. More efficient or zero emissions vehicles are definitely not the answer. Its not just about pollution, but about how we live our lives, design our cities and relate to each other. Mass tranport, pedestrian and cycling movement are all critical.
…..And Peter Foley - Just another individual deluded by our own propaganda that we have progressed?! Numbers, roads, bridges - engineering fantasies, urban delusions. Build more, move more, consume more - a never ending vacuum
March 31st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Paul, zero GHG emission vehicles can solve the problem. So can zero emission mass transport and cycling. The question is what fraction of each will be viable with the public. Obviously in a catastrophe 100% walking and cycling will be acceptable, but we’re trying to change our ways without suffering a catastrophe. California’s regulatory agencies are looking for ways to reduce vehicle miles traveled with “smart growth” initiatives. How much this helps is anyone’s guess.
And by the way, mass transit needs to be electrified to be viable. It is already less GHG emissions to drive solo in my RAV4-EV (110-150g/mi) from Silicon Valley to Sacramento to testify at CARB hearings than it is to take Amtrack (180g/mi). Even two people in a Prius (242g/vehicle-mile, so 121g/passenger-mile) is better than Amtrack. Unlike Europe, our mass transit is too GHG intensive. Basically if it isn’t electric, it isn’t good enough. Even BART, which is electric (at 136 passenger miles electrical energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline), is better than two people in a Prius, but not better than two people in an EV (the 2002 RAV4-EV gets 112 MPG, so two people is 224). (At rush hour BART’s efficiency increases to 250 MPG.)
March 31st, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Paul, I’d ask who ever indoctrinated you for a refund. You’re proof that it is possible to have negative knowledge. How are my 80 and 90 year-old neighbors going to bike into town for groceries this week? I am supposed to ride a bike 60 miles to a new neighborhood to work on the as yet unbuilt infrastructure? The last clean sheet town that I know about in the USA was D.C. that was designed so the artillery could blow the rioters away before they got to the Capitol building. Mass transport doesn’t equal efficient movement of people from thousands of differing homes to hundreds of differing workplaces that change every five years. Just how many jobs that you can earn a living at are within walking distance of your house? Actual freedom of movement is one the pillars of the earning power of working class Americans, One of the few example of mass transit that served the residents of Watts, that when withdrawn trapped the older workers who were unable to drive/purchase a car and partially caused through the induced poverty the riots latter that decade.
Speak for yourself, even if I am a self centered creature of Madison avenue, I think not, you have NO right to destroy the culture that creates the wealth that feeds the useless fringe lunatics that want to devolve into some sort of low tech communism. If killing a few million members of a tribe is unspeakably evil–we’ll have invent several orders of magnitude greater terms to describe the numbers of dead caused by the return to eighteen century tech base you postulate if the survivors can still read and write.
I think Ted Kaczynski’s cabin in the woods is for sale, don’t forget to bring a plastic bucket for a commode.
As part of your plan to save us, when do you plan to quit using the Internet– it surely isn’t affordable in the post modern low tech scheme envisioned. I intend to use as much material and energy as needed to provided for me and mine, and I won’t permit some quarter-wits to destroy their future–The greens are a much greater threat to the Western culture then a few Muslim terrorists.
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Most of what is said in Joe’s article is already said in Richard Heinberg’s books, The Party’s Over and ‘Powerdown’. Except for a regrettable political tirade in one of the middle chapters, his books have enough good information to point us in the right direction. No need to read books by other people unless you enjoy reading bad news. Reading more such ‘Peak Oil’ books or listening to lectures by speakers of a similar mind won’t get us anywhere at all.
One last comment is that electric cars require electricity (surprise), roughly 80% of which is generated by fossil fuels. The real solution to this quandary is to simply not drive a car 50 miles a day. The folks in Europe have a standard of living equal or better than ours, and use about half the energy as us.
April 6th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Paul Foley,
2 things i don’t see you addressing: the only way we’ve been able to keep at our current rates of growth to present are through mining the earth of it’s resources. once we’ve mined them, they’re gone and then what do we use? we’ve gotten to the point where we’re so good at mining them that we’re depleting them at faster and faster rates pushing us over the edge even sooner. as an example, check out worldwide fisheries. most are depleted to the point where the reality is, we’re not going to be able to find many fish to eat soon. this in turn detroys that portion of the economy. what are the fisherman supposed to do at that point? same with oil, timber, etc. not to mention those that rely on fishing to feed themselves and their families. what’ve you got to say to them “so sorry, but personally i’m happy with the way things are and see no need to change them since it’s not affecting me in a dramatic way.”?
second, if you look at any of the reputable polling organizations’ research lately you’ll see that the majority of people in the U.S. and the world are not happy with the way things are heading under the current operating models, and want new, creative, socially equitable, environmentally responsible solutions to the current mess we’re in. all the info is out there about the increasing instability in our world and the decreasing health of most of the components of the earth system we’re a part of. it has been for decades and with more human focus and research and dramatic impacts being seen, most people are waking up to reality. i know i can’t change you’re views on this stuff, and that you’ll choose to resist change and deny the obvious, but at least have the courtesy to get out of the way of those of us who are up to the challenge of trying to create new models and ways of thinking in order to pull us out of this rut of environmental abuse and selfishness.
personally, i don’t think we need to completely revert to an agrarian lifestyle. i think some elements of that are necessary e.g. more people growing some of their own vegetables. technology can help us too, and i’m all for tech solutions when they make sense.
imo, one of the biggest problems we face is letting the idea that everything has to make good economic sense based on the current economic framework, or else it’s a non-starter. tell that to the solar companies who are currently making money hand over fist in all areas of the business, while the price of solar electricity is still not quite as low as that produced from fossil fuels. people see the change that’s necessary and are hard at work steering us in the right direction.
luckily we don’t need everyone to agree in order to do this. social movements in the past (and a social movement is really what is needed here to correct our models) have made huge changes and improvements throughout the world with a concerned committed 5-10% of the population in question. hopefully we can move forward in the same way now.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I’m hoping that $120 oil will make more people think about working remotely. I don’t understand this obsession with driving/flying vast distances to work on a PC / meet people etc. when most of it could be done without ever leaving home.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:27 pm
“One last comment is that electric cars require electricity (surprise), roughly 80% of which is generated by fossil fuels. The real solution to this quandary is to simply not drive a car 50 miles a day. ”
I am sorry but if the choice is saving the polar bears by walking to work and screwing them by driving, too many will say - screw it, I’m driving.
Yet … plug-in hybrids fueled by electricity from nuclear power plants could cut fossil fuel use by 2/3rds. biofuels can get you another 1/2.
bingo. 85% reduction and we are still driving.
That’s the answer, not sackcloth-and-ashes economic policy. (Sorry for for labelling it such, I know you mean well, but people will take it that way.)
… “imo, one of the biggest problems we face is letting the idea that everything has to make good economic sense based on the current economic framework, or else it’s a non-starter.”
… yeah, its a constraint called - REALITY.
“i think some elements of that are necessary e.g. more people growing some of their own vegetables.” a waste of time. If someone is providing it for you, why do you have to do it?
“second, if you look at any of the reputable polling organizations’ research lately you’ll see that the majority of people in the U.S. and the world are not happy with the way things are heading under the current operating models, and want new, creative, socially equitable, environmentally responsible solutions to the current mess we’re in.” one word for that - capitalism. Everyone wants the shiny toy, but how to pay for it. only capitalism / free market can allocate things appropriately.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
“While todays conservatives have become anti-environment,”
Strawman/ false dischotomy. This seems to be a zone with a lot of conservative-bashing, but conservatives going back to Teddy Roosevelt were the original conservationists.
” I think the best way to get the ball rolling is to show conservatives that they don’t have to sacrifice their values in order to care about the environment.”
That’s right. Conservatives have gone ‘awol’ over environmentalist law that attacks property rights; against regulations that are part of attacks on business and free enterprise; and are against an ‘orthodoxy’ about global warming (it didnt help that Al Gore become a front man for it and preaches it like old timey religion - not v. credible). Nobody really is against helping the environment, its what has to get sacrificed to do it.
A way to solve the AGW without regulating people to death, taking their property or massively raising their taxes will win conservatives. This is why Bush talks about technology, because it doesnt undermine our freedom and taxes us like the regulation-minded want. It’s a ‘freebie’ way to solve the problem.
Is that enough? If not, you’ve got a fight on your hands. On the other hand, if you have technology and not tax/regulation-based ideas, you can get environmentally-minded conservatives to sign up quickly.
McCain is as much in the camp of “AGW is real and we have to do something” so there is a middle ground that will get staked out should he win the White House. In the end, conservatives are not against the environment, they are simply against the issue trumping their concerns for property rights and low taxes.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
“The only convincing solution I have seen is a drastic reduction in population,”
Er, well, … you go first.
April 24th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Joe,
The gods must be smiling or smirking at your Peak Oil analysis as they did when Al Gore delivered one of his ‘global warming’ doom and gloom lectures on a record breaking cold day in New York city. The death of oil and coal, accompanied by a childlike representation of a distribution curve, came just as Brazil’s Petrobras announced a new major oil field discovery and Saudi Aramco started production in their Khursaniyah field. The United States has billions of barrels of oil reserves, untappped due to legislation or inaction by scientifically challenged lawyers in Congress. While the rest of the world explores, drills and produces oil, the US energy industry sits idle and the masses complains about high priced oil. At today’s prices every million barrel per day increase in our production is worth approximately $110,000,000 per day savings in imported crude oil. Multiply that by 365 days and you are talking about real money. Exploration for and production of US oil is a revenue enhancer for the government and costs the taxpayers nothing as energy companies do not need subsidies.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Patrick — ANWR, if it were a big success, would delay the peak one year. I’m afraid you miss the whole point of my analysis — the supply side options solve nothing, and barely pushed off the day of reckoning (or, more accurately, the decades of reckoning).
April 24th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Joe,
Thank you for responding, however, obviously it is you who missed the point as ANWR is only one of the many no exploration/drilling areas mandated by Congress, there is no drilling offshore, no drilling on government owned lands even though there will come a time when China, Russia or others begin drilling in waters only 90 miles from our coastal areas perhaps even off ANWR. With the drilling techniques available today our reserves will be drained and then our own oil will be sold to us. The sheer stupidity and incoherence of this no action policy is absurd.
Further your simple little distribution curve with no coordinates neglects the new oil fields and reserves that are being or will be brought into service now or discovered in the future.
The basis for your position on tar sands and coal “That would be a climate catastrophe,” must be a quasi-religious belief in the demonization of CO2 as described by Professor Lindzen and other noted scientists. Without CO2 the earth would not exist as it is today and any effects of higher CO2 levels are based on questionable IPCC reviews, interpretations and doom and gloom filled summaries of computer generated models by a majority of nonscientific government appointed bureaucrats.
The IPCC’s computer simulation apparently do not include atmospheric H2O content as clouds are too difficult to model, or solar activity(sunspots) or the earth’s tilt and distance from the sun. All of these factors have a much greater effect on the earth’s climate than the rather insignificant but necessary CO2 content, 0.030 to 0.035 percent.
Government intervention into and interference in business and economic matters are often based on ‘listening to the loudest, ‘finger in the wind’ or polling results and there have been more failures than success. In the energy field in addition to the exploration, drilling and production restrictions there were, MTBE, mandated gasoline formulations and now ethanol all of which illustrate the ‘law of unintended consequences”.
It is said that President Reagan once said the most frightening words are “I am from the government and I am here to help you.” The industrial might of the United States did not result from government leadership but from the government getting out of the way of inventors and entrepreneurs. The industrial might of the United States is slowly but surely being tied down by ill-conceived and unnecessary rules, regulations and mandates as surely as Gulliver was tied-up by the Lilliputins.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Joe,
One point that appears to dominate is the almost total concern with replacing gasoline as a transportation fuel with something else, ethanol from any source, hydrogen and now “carbon-free electricity”. This is supposed to insure energy independence from importing ‘foreign’ crude oil. Since less than 50% of a barrel of crude oil is turned into gasoline,44 to 48 percent, the remaining 50+percent provides refinery gas, propane, butane,aviation gasoline, jet fuel, kerosene, diesel fuel, home heating oil, lubricating oils /greases for both transportation and industrial applications, feed stocks for petrochemical, plastics and rubber industries, fuels for marine shipping, asphalts and last but not least military specification petroleum products. A carbon based petroleum free world appears bleak indeed as humanity imay be forced to learn new skills, such as, starting fires with two sticks and hunting whales from sailing ships for sperm oil to light the reading lamps.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Global cooling you idiots!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ earth/ main.jhtml?xml=/ earth/ 2008/ 04/ 30/ eaclimate130.xml
May 30th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Peter Folage, your a knob mate.
June 7th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Peak Oil solves global warming. At this point we have burned about half of the fossil fuels and the other half will go pretty quick. Either there are alternative fuels developed for transportation NOW (note: CNG works and we pay ourselves) or the economic impact will change everything about our consumption society. When threatened in WWII, we came up with the “Manhattan Project” and rapidly discovered how to make great bombs. We need to put EVERYTHING into this (new energy sources) , come up with the solution and lead the world again, otherwise . . . not good.
We should all by now know that Cheap oil is over, the Earth has peaked. Listen, learn, adapt, solve, prosper. We are way behind, lets get to work.
June 20th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
This is all hog wash. Wind, Geothermal, Hydro Thermal are all viable sources of energy especially at the current prices of oil. However this is all about exaggeration, and fraud. Global warming is not being caused by cars, or trucks. Volcanoes spew out more carbon dioxide that all the cars in the world combined. The sun is in a solar cycle, and is heating up. All the planets in the solar system have increases in temperature. The surface is heating not the atmosphere. This is all about money. How can we fool the people into accepting a new tax, and governance. The IEA (i.e. UN is pushing Global Warming along with a number of environmental groups on “computer models” that model whatever data you put in. This data is highly subjective - meaning you have to guess what you think the number should be, not what they actually are.
What science does this article refer to? Is the science UN report of non-scientist? Is it the report of a “scientist with a skewed objective - i.e. funding. I am sorry, but “scientist” are not necessarily the smartest group of people. They are supposed to be concentrated in a specific field, but offered suffer the same corruption of their work as in any industry. The mighty dollar skews result of many reports. If you remember scientist used to be railing about sea level rise. Funny it has not happened yet. I guess that theory waned after a number of geologists (real scientist – what is a climate scientist – who gives that degree away?) reported that tectonic plate movement was the cause of sea level rise not polar melt.
This discussion on Global Warming is crazy. It seems that you are offering “scientific data”, but in reality it is not accurate. The Earth is always changing there have been cycles of warmth, and cold throughout this planets history. Everything is not centered on the earth. The biggest generator of heat is the sun. The oceans if you can believe compromise 75% of the earth’s surface. It takes a significant amount of energy to raise, or lower the temperature of the earth’s oceans. Can you imagine heating water at a depth of 4000 feet or greater. This all has an impact on the atmosphere. The current “global warming movement” is really a political movement to control people. Look at the price of gas, food, and energy. For years the powers that be have been trying to convince people to move closer to the cities, and develop public transportation. Humm - looks like the mew tactic is working. The theme seems to center it self around live in an agrarian society, but let me keep my 30,000 sq ft mansion with all the amenities.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Check out this article: 12 Steps to better fuel economy I followed its advice and am not getting over 40 MPG!
June 24th, 2008 at 12:13 am
GOG, Thanks, I must be headed in the right direction if it upsets you.