Petroleum and the future of civilization

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Doug50 said:
The problem the next generations face is that all the alternatives to oil are no where as energy efficient or practicle as oil has been. Cheap and abundent petroleum to fuel the economic growth is what made possible the disposable income of the 20th century. Without it the drivable cities and urban sprawl would not be possible. The amount of food was made possible by petroleum (oil and gas). The green revolution isn’t actually green, it was black. Pesticides and fertizers come from petroleum and natural gas. Solar, wind, or nuclear will not replace this need.
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Doug50, you are quite right. We are in for a very rough ride in the next couple of decades; the average American has no idea how rough it will be. I work on ethical issues with an energy exploration engineer (oil and uranium) who has made me a reluctant convert to nuclear power. But even here we have only a a century or two of uranium at best. The only solutions I see to saving as much as we can of the project of civilization are (1) reducing our population to the solar carrying capacity of the planet; (2) electrifying our transportation grid; (3) living locally rather than in an urban-suburban configurayion, and (4) retrofitting our agricultural base so that it is locally oriented, organic, and sustainable by the time oil and gas effectively run out.

Petrus
 
Crude - The Incredible Journey of Oil
abc.net.au/science/crude/

So why is this stuff, oil, so important? Can’t we just switch to hydrogen? Nope. This TV program and its additonal links does a really good job of explaining how oil was formed and just how important it is to the existence of modern society.

With oil being so important to food production not just in terms of transportation but as petrochemical use in pesticides and natural gas used in nitrogen fertilizers, can the world feed 6.5+ billion people?

there are researchers who believe we are at or past peak global production energywatchgroup.org/Oil-report.32+M5d637b1e38d.0.html

worldoil.com/Magazine/MAGAZINE_DETAIL.asp?ART_ID=3163&MONTH_YEAR=Apr-2007
No one knows precisely when peaking will occur, because much of the data needed for an accurate forecast is either proprietary to companies, state secrets of major oil exporting countries, or politically/economically biased. However, even large differences in estimated remaining world oil reserves would not significantly change the date of world peaking, when viewed from the perspective of mitigation. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), “[Our] results [related to oil peaking] are remarkably insensitive to the assumption of alternative resource base estimates. For example, adding 900 billion bbl (more oil than had been produced at the time the estimates were made) to the mean USGS resource estimate in the 2% growth case, only delays the estimated production peak by 10 years. Similarly, subtracting 850 billion bbl in the same scenario accelerates the estimated production peak by only 11 years.5
 
Doug50 said:
With oil being so important to food production not just in terms of transportation but as petrochemical use in pesticides and natural gas used in nitrogen fertilizers, can the world feed 6.5+ billion people?
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Doug50, I don’t know where along the spectrum you place yourself. No doubt you are somewhere between the “Great Die-off” crowd on one end (earth would be better without humans) and the Cornucopians at the other end (there will never be too many people to support).

I gave a talk at an international conference in 2006 on ethical issues at the end of oil. My group argued that if we want to avoid horrific resource wars and spasms of genocide and famine, we should aim to reduce the human population by attrition to 2-3 billion by 2100. We were followed by a team from Spain who argued that the theoretical human carrying capacity of the planet is 180 billion.

Petrus
 
drpmjhess said:
Doug50, I don’t know where along the spectrum you place yourself. No doubt you are somewhere between the “Great Die-off” crowd on one end (earth would be better without humans) and the Cornucopians at the other end (there will never be too many people to support).

I gave a talk at an international conference in 2006 on ethical issues at the end of oil. My group argued that if we want to avoid horrific resource wars and spasms of genocide and famine, we should aim to reduce the human population by attrition to 2-3 billion by 2100. We were followed by a team from Spain who argued that the theoretical human carrying capacity of the planet is 180 billion.

Petrus
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Actually, I’m a conservative born and raised in the oil business. I make my living as a producer. Surprise! I don’t know whether we’ll have a great dieoff but I have a tough time seeing how the typical suburban lifestyle can me sustained. Too much of it depends upon gas powered transportation. The two most popular countries, India and China, only use a fraction of the energy per capita that Western countries use but who wants to live that way? The peak oil optomists who believe the peaking won’t be for years and that things like tar sands will fill the gap ignor the logisticts of mining and processing that much volume of sand and the economic cost of doing so.

Oil underpins the cost of everything (how do I emphasis that more to other readers?) EVERYTHING!!! If the price of oil increases then the (name removed by moderator)ut cost to mine and extract tar from sands will also increase.
 
Doug50 said:
Actually, I’m a conservative born and raised in the oil business. I make my living as a producer.

Oil underpins the cost of everything (how do I emphasis that more to other readers?) EVERYTHING!!! If the price of oil increases then the (name removed by moderator)ut cost to mine and extract tar from sands will also increase.
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You’re right that this is not an issue specific to conservatives or liberals. That we will run out of oil is a fact. How we react to that may depend in part on our outlook on life. I spoke with an economist today who took a very pessimistic view: he anticipates a general and devastating economic crash in the next five years, when gasoline goes to $5.00 or $8.00 or $15.00 per gallon, and becomes practically speaking unaffordable.

Petrus
 
gilliam said:
Brazil announces huge new oil find
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Just like Jack II in the Gulf…
To repeat:
worldoil.com/Magazine/MAGAZINE_DETAIL.asp?ART_ID=3163&MONTH_YEAR=Apr-2007
No one knows precisely when peaking will occur, because much of the data needed for an accurate forecast is either proprietary to companies, state secrets of major oil exporting countries, or politically/economically biased. However, even large differences in estimated remaining world oil reserves would not significantly change the date of world peaking, when viewed from the perspective of mitigation. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), “[Our] results [related to oil peaking] **are remarkably insensitive **to the assumption of alternative resource base estimates. **For example, adding 900 billion bbl (more oil than had been produced at the time the estimates were made) to the mean USGS resource estimate in the 2% growth case, only delays the estimated production peak by 10 years. **Similarly, subtracting 850 billion bbl in the same scenario accelerates the estimated production peak by only 11 years.5
 
In the late 1800’s there was a crisis. It was horsesh**. Literally. Cities were filled with the stuff, but still sprawled on outwards. I would guess some thoughtful folks wondered how we could go on, with monster piles of feces building up polluting the water, air and land. Perhaps they even suggested that we curb city growth. limit population, etc.

But oil and the internal combustion engine came along and eliminated the problem. Will oil also eventually run out? Of course. And just like automobiles cost more than horses, the solution will be a challenge and an adjustment. I am a suburbanite, and I’m not panicked. Eventually, it IS going to get pretty costly to commute to work. Then I’ll buy a Chevy Volt or one of its (by then) competitors. The battery will take my 90% of the way to work, it will recharge while I’m at my desk and I’ll repeat the process on the way home. The first gen Volt will probably require me to run the engine for about 10-15 miles of my commute. Even then, I can probably afford 1/2 gallon of gas a day.

When the peak arrives, I highly doubt it will be a sharp as the doomsayers predict. Instead, there will be a gradual increase in price that will lead to gradual changes in behavior and development. Small stores will crop up in every neighborhood for fresh foods and regular needs items. Trips to Costco might only happen monthly. We’ll start eating more veggies and less meat (meat will get pricey due to feed cost). Like every age, it will be different from the one before, but not necessarily worse.

How will I recharge my car? Nukes. Breeder reactors that will generate more fuel than they use by irradiating otherwise inert/spent elements and making Plutonium. Waste will be cast into glass marbles and lost in DEEP holes in the Nevada desert. Nothing to leak, no worries.

The peak will most likely be gentle enough for gradually increasing prices to force market and social changes, not chaos.

Wanna worry about oil? Worry about what all the oil profits are doing to radical Islam!
 
I’m not worried about oil. I’m just worried that the U.S. is not building nearly enough nuclear reactors. People cry “no nuclear plants!” and “no coal plants!” even as they complain about higher electricity costs from oil fired plants.
 
JimG said:
I’m not worried about oil. I’m just worried that the U.S. is not building nearly enough nuclear reactors. People cry “no nuclear plants!” and “no coal plants!” even as they complain about higher electricity costs from oil fired plants.
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Stop thinking of oil as only energy. Only 3% of oil is used in the direct production electricity in the US. Indirectly oil is used to dig and transport coal. 20%, however, of electricity (1 in every 5th home) is produced from nuclear.

About 40% of the barrel is used in the petrochemicals you rely upon every day. Your carpet is made from oil. Your insulation in your home relies upon it. Drugs are made from it. Your car is made using plastic, etc.

media.globalpublicmedia.com/RAM/2004/10/soniashah.20041001.ram
 
manualman said:
When the peak arrives, I highly doubt it will be a sharp as the doomsayers predict. Instead, there will be a gradual increase in price that will lead to gradual changes in behavior and development. Small stores will crop up in every neighborhood for fresh foods and regular needs items. Trips to Costco might only happen monthly. We’ll start eating more veggies and less meat (meat will get pricey due to feed cost). Like every age, it will be different from the one before, but not necessarily worse.

How will I recharge my car? Nukes. Breeder reactors that will generate more fuel than they use by irradiating otherwise inert/spent elements and making Plutonium. Waste will be cast into glass marbles and lost in DEEP holes in the Nevada desert. Nothing to leak, no worries.

The peak will most likely be gentle enough for gradually increasing prices to force market and social changes, not chaos.

Wanna worry about oil? Worry about what all the oil profits are doing to radical Islam!
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spoken like a true economist. We went from wood to coal to oil as an energy source. each one more efficient then the last. the only new source of energy to come along in the last 150 years has been nuclear.

pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/caltechnews/articles/v38/oil.html
“In recent years, the debate over nuclear power has revived, with proponents maintaining that we can find environmentally sound and politically acceptable ways to deal with the waste and security hazards. But even assuming that to be true, the potential is limited. To produce enough nuclear power to equal the power we currently get from fossil fuels, you would have to build 10,000 of the largest possible nuclear power plants. That’s a huge, probably nonviable initiative, and at that burn rate, our known reserves of uranium would last only for 10 or 20 years.”

At present, there is no substitute for petroleum in all the ways we use the stuff.
 
bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=awc_jMlx5COo&refer=energy

"Nov. 9, 2007 (Bloomberg) – Exports of Brent crude, the North Sea’s benchmark grade, may decline 17 percent next year, cutting U.K. petroleum revenue as exploration companies turn to more promising regions to boost oil supply.

Brent shipments from the Sullom Voe terminal in Scotland will fall to 108 cargoes of 600,000 barrels next year from 130 in 2007, according to a report prepared for a meeting of the Shetland Islands Council yesterday. Brent’s decline is an indicator of U.K. oil output, which has dropped 44 percent since its 1999 peak. "
I’ve seen individual wells/lease fall off faster than this.

Hirsch Report for the DOE
Concluding Remarks
“Over the past century, world economic development has been fundamentally shaped by the availability of abundant, low-cost oil. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal, coal to oil, etc.) were gradual and evolutionary; **oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.**The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation at least a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and long lasting. Oil peaking represents a liquid fuels problem, not an “energy crisis” in the sense that term has been used. Accordingly, mitigation of declining world oil production must be narrowly focused, at least in the near-term. A number of technologies are currently available for immediate implementation once there is the requisite determination to act. Governments worldwide will have to take the initiative on a timely basis, and it may already be too late to avoid considerable discomfort or worse. Countries that dawdle will suffer from lost opportunities, because in every crisis, there are always opportunities for those that act decisively.”
 
So let’s get to the nitty gritty: should I be selling BP and Mobil stock?
 
Their is plenty of energy around. The transition may not be easy but it can and will happen.
 
Gaurdian said:
Their is plenty of energy around. The transition may not be easy but it can and will happen.
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The crisis is not one of energy per se, but of liquid fuels. These have been deposited over hundreds of millions of years, and we are using them u in 150 years. We won’t necessarily all starve to death (although tens of millions regrettably will), but we will largely be staying put. We won’t have the liquid fuels to push around our Yukons and Hummers and ten-ton RVs. Commuting will become a thing of the past, unless communities install light rail, or people start bicycling a lot more, which would have the added benefit of reducing obesity and diabetes.
 
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