Petroleum and the future of civilization

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And notice, Petrus, that those three links I gave was to an investment article Oil Shock! dated 1998. So who says people can’t predict the future? At the time of that article’s writting oil was $14.50 a barrel.

There’s going to be some interesting times ahead.
 
Doug50 said:
There’s going to be some interesting times ahead.
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Doug, that’ putting it mildly at best. I’m afraid that with so many people putting their heads in the sand about resource depletion and denying even the possibility of human overpopulation, we’re headed for a “trimming” of the population that will make the Black Death of 1348-50 look like a Sunday school picnic.
 
drpmjhess said:
No, distances are not much longer. A kilometer is the same length in the US as it is in Asia or Europe. It’s just that Americans have chosen to travel longer distances than Europeans or Asians have; they have chosen to settle far from their families. As travel costs increase, families will live closer together as they do elsewhere in the world, and move about less. Or else they will simply not see their extended families as much. Hopping from California to New Jersey for the Thanksgiving weekend will become a thing of the past.
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This thread is about Petroleum and the Future of Civilization.

One alternative to the use of Petroleum (and its derivative, jet fuel) for transportation is the use of electricity to propel high speed trains.

In Europe and Japan they have substantially advanced trains such as the TGV in France and the “Bullet Train” in Japan

It is true that European miles (or kilometers) are the same as ours, but in the USA, we have many more of them.

Consider a few inconvenient facts with respect to distance:

London to Paris is about 215 miles.

London to Berlin is about 600 miles

In other words, World War II in western Europe ranged from London to Berlin, a distance of 600 miles. [Remember all those B-17’s in movies? Just 600 miles each way.]

In contrast, the distance from New York to Chicago is about 720 miles.

So, all of WW2 in Western Europe would have easily fit in one small corner of the United States.

Europe is small. The distances in Europe are much less than in the United States.
The distance between New York and Miami is 1300 miles; New York and Denver: 1800 miles.

If after traveling to Chicago and you needed to go further, you would find that Los Angeles was still another 2000 miles away. Pheonix is closer to Chicago … only 1800 miles.

In other words, the United States is a big country.

You’re not going to get very far very fast with trains, regardless of how they are powered. If you could average 100 mph with a train, travel would still take a long time. And much of our trackage outside the Boston-Washington Corridor is limited to much less than 100 mph.

In the United States you need airplanes to get around. Fancy trains have been talked about for many decades and apart from the Boston-Washington Corridor (450 miles) they haven’t worked out. In fact after decades of work, we have got the train speeds back up to where they were 100 years ago … 100 miles per hour. TGV or MAGLEV would be a hundred years away.
Yes, Europe doesn’t stop at Berlin. Europe is more than just France. But the distance from London to Moscow is only 1600 miles. Yes, the USA is a big country.

Distances are, in fact, much longer in the U.S.A.
 
Experts have been forecasting the END OF OIL for decades and decades.

So far, no one has attempted to figure out where all those experts went wrong.

In 1855, people could only access whatever oil happened to seep to the surface, and an advertisement for Kier’s Rock Oil stated, “Hurry, before this wonderful product is depleted from Nature’s laboratory.”

In 1874, the state geologist of Pennsylvania, the United States’ leading oil-producing state, said that all the oil would be gone by 1878.

In 1920, the U.S. Geological Survey stated that the world only had 60 billion barrels of oil left.

In 1950, geologists estimated that the world had 600 billion barrels of oil.

Since the 1960s, major oil surveys have shown P95 EUR of close to 2,000 billion barrels.

In 1970, scientists estimated that the world had 1,500 billion barrels of oil.

In 1994, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the world had 2,400 billion barrels of oil.

In 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the world had 3,000 billion barrels of oil (P95 EUR of 2,300 billion barrels).

To paraphrase one of the “reality” shows, which forecaster will be sent home tonight?
 
Al_Masetti said:
Distances are, in fact, much longer in the U.S.A.
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(1) A kilometer is a kilometer. The fact that Americans have freely chosen to live 3,000 miles from their loved ones doesn’t change the regrettable fact that they will be seeing them less frequently as travel costs skyrocket in coming years.

(2) You don’t need to fly to get around. I get to work, visit my extended family, and go on vacations, most of which I can do with public transportation and without planes. We have simply chosen to become air-travel dependent, and that can change.

(3) Bush and Co. frequently brag about how we are the greatest country in the world, and yet we are decades behind other civilized countries that have high speed rail. I’ve been using it in France for twenty years.

Petrus
 
  1. Not everyone who flies 3000 miles does so to visit Grandma. One or two of those travellers do it for business.
But so what? What difference does it make? The United States was founded on the basis of maximizing personal freedom and minimizing the power of a dictatorial central government.

If, in fact, travel gets “too expensive”, then people will make voluntary decisions to limit their travel.
  1. Well, instead of taking an hour to fly from Washington to Atlanta, you can spend 12 hours in a car, bus, van or train. Free choice.
  2. High speed rail works just fine over relatively short distances where there are high densities of populations and travellers between specific city-pairs. The economics of high speed rail falls apart when the population and travel densities are low. Apart from a few corridors [e.g., “BOS-WASH”], the United States is a low density country. There have been political initiatives to “induce” people to leave rural areas [by confiscating their land] and forcing them into cities … that just happen to be run by one particular political party.
One prominent politician forced AMTRAK to provide passenger rail service to West Virginia, but ridership never amounted to anything.

France is a strange example to select an model for the United States. For one thing, they get 80% of their electricity from nuclear power. For another, they make more jet airliners than any other country (and we want do abolish jet airline travel). For another, they have their own nuclear weapons industry. For another, they sell high tech military hardware to a variety of third world countries (and we want to minimize that).

I won’t say anything about their taking August off from work. A few years ago, they abandoned all their old folks at home whilst there was a heat wave; thousands of their elders died while being unattended.

I can’t feature Americans in any great numbers eating snails.
drpmjhess said:
(1) A kilometer is a kilometer. The fact that Americans have freely chosen to live 3,000 miles from their loved ones doesn’t change the regrettable fact that they will be seeing them less frequently as travel costs skyrocket in coming years.

(2) You don’t need to fly to get around. I get to work, visit my extended family, and go on vacations, most of which I can do with public transportation and without planes. We have simply chosen to become air-travel dependent, and that can change.

(3) Bush and Co. frequently brag about how we are the greatest country in the world, and yet we are decades behind other civilized countries that have high speed rail. I’ve been using it in France for twenty years.

Petrus
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Al_Masetti said:
France is a strange example to select an model for the United States.
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France is an excellent example of what we should be doing:

(1) getting 80% of our electrical power from nuclear plants; breeder reactors to extend fuel life longer than a century

(2) building a grid of high speed rail. There are many more corridors than you cite: Vancouver-Seattle-Portland-Eugene; San Francisco - LA - San Diego; Milwaukee-Chicago-St. Louis; Dallas-San Antonio-Houston=New orleans, etc.

(3) Eating snails – escargot are so delicious sauteed in garlic and butter, washed down with Armagnac!

Petrus
 
real audios
Matt Savinar. He does a good job of explaining just how everything in the economy is dependent upon fossil fuels and the petrodollar. Discusses Bush’s solar powered home in Craford. 2004
netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2004-1023-2.ram

“The Future of Global Oil Production” discusses areas that have already peaked globally 2007
netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2007-0203-2.ram
financialsense.com/Experts/2007/Blanchard.html

John Ghazvinian, Ph.D.
Author, Freelance Writer & Journalist
Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil 2007
netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2007-0512-2.ram
financialsense.com/Experts/2007/Ghazvinian.html

John Rennie
Editor in Chief, Scientific American
Oil and the Future of Energy 2007
netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2007-0908-2.ram
financialsense.com/Experts/2007/Rennie.html

A Crude Awakening
The Oil Crash 2007
netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2007-0714-2.ram

a bit more optomistic…sorta.
Future Energy
How the New Oil Industry Will Change People, Politics and Portfolios 2007
netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2007-0623-2.ram
 
The technology is already in place to move to alternate energies. It is just being suppressed by big oil who want us to remain dependent on them until the wells run dry. As alternate energies are being incorporated into mainstream society, their price is decreasing. We have everything from electric and hybrid cars, biodeisel cars running on fast food fry oil, and a car that runs on compressed air all already out there.

The government is quietly increasing the number of nuclear reactors, but they have bad PR and people don’t want them in their neighborhoods, so things move quietly behind the scenes. The length of time it takes to build one means a number are in the works right now and will go online within a decade, when the public will be more amenable to alternate forms of energy. The more the price of gasoline goes up, the more people are wanting to decrease their oil consumption and look at alternate energies. Wind energy is being used in the national power grid. Numerous cities, states, and utility regions are offering grants and incentives for private residents to install solar and other forms of alternate energy.

It is all there. We just need the American people to accept it. They’ll do so following the normal flow of supply and demand.

From Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins
Ultralight hybrid autos could be more durable, and could potentially cost less, than traditional cars. Blending today’s best technologies can yield a family sedan, sport-utility, or pickup truck that combines Lexus comfort and refinement, Mercedes stiffness, Volvo safety, BMW acceleration, Taurus price, four-to eightfold improved fuel economy (that is, 80-200 miles per gallon), a 600-800 mile range between fuelings, and zero emissions. Such integration may require one or two decades to be achieved fully, but all the needed technologies exist today.
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Woodstock said:
The technology is already in place to move to alternate energies.
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True, the technology is there. It’s the liquid fuel energy that’s not there for supporting our fast-paced lifestyle in a world of seven billion globe-trotting humans. Windmills and solar panels are great and should be used, but they can’t push airplanes through the air; neither can nuclear reactors.
 
drpmjhess said:
True, the technology is there. It’s the liquid fuel energy that’s not there for supporting our fast-paced lifestyle in a world of seven billion globe-trotting humans. Windmills and solar panels are great and should be used, but they can’t push airplanes through the air; neither can nuclear reactors.
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and the problem is futher complicated by the fact that all these alternative energy means are still dependent upon liquid fuel transportation not only for construction but for maintanence.

Clifford J. Wirth’s paper does a good job of putting this problem into perspective.
 
Woodstock said:
The technology is already in place to move to alternate energies. It is just being suppressed by big oil who want us to remain dependent on them until the wells run dry. As alternate energies are being incorporated into mainstream society, their price is decreasing. We have everything from electric and hybrid cars, biodeisel cars running on fast food fry oil, and a car that runs on compressed air all already out there.

From Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins
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I like looking at older article to see how they 20/20 track into today. This one is from 2002. You’ll have to go to the link to see the graphs.
carfree.com/cft/i023.html
On the World Peak Oil Production
By Seppo Korpela
The world has just completed a remarkable century of economic growth. It was achieved by the availability of inexpensive energy sources of oil and natural gas. The preceding century in turn was powered by abundant coal and experienced an unparalleled expansion in science and technology. This has continued unabated to present day. Advances in medicine and food production made possible an increase in world population from one billion in 1800 to just over six billion today. This exponential growth is unprecedented in human history, but is likely soon to come to an end, not by a natural demographic transition as countries industrialize, but by a looming scarcity of oil.
Owing to readily exploitable oil reserves, advances in aviation during the century just past shortened travel times and distances. And a personal automobile gave a freedom to go to places, guided only by whims of the traveler. Train travel fell out of favor, particularly in North America, where Hollywood glamorized the automobile and thereby helped bring the demise of trolley service in cities. Many European cities were saved from this destruction and anyone who has lived in places, such as Zurich or Helsinki, has experienced the convenience and lightness of travel by streetcars. In these and similar places the main railroad station is at the heart of the city and trolleys, running at the street level, provide further convenience to the commuter. Daily use of subways in London, Paris, and New York is much more fatiguing, as long walks in underground tunnels and steep stairs depress the traveler’s soul.

The exploding world populations of people and automobiles have put severe demands on oil production. Continued expectations for better life will be only thwarted, when it becomes eminently clear that the rate at which oil can be produced in the world has passed. This event will take place before the end of this decade, perhaps only five years from now. Although it will be an historic event, the slowdown in economies that is taking place today may mask it, as reduced consumption for a few years can still be met without Herculean efforts. And if the economic slowdown will resemble the prolonged recession of Japan, a concerted response to scarcity will be delayed, as leaders will vainly hope for a pick up in economies. It will finally become evident to everyone that humanity is faced with a permanent supply shortfall in oil.

In various regions of the world, oil production follows roughly a bell-shaped curve. At first it rises exponentially, moderates as it reaches a peak, and then moves down as depletion of the fields takes hold. This is already clear for the United States, where peak oil production took place in 1970. US oil production now diminishes every year, and for the entire world the decline will begin soon. That this is so is obvious when the production history is compared to the rate at which new oil is found. In the United States peak discovery took place in 1934 and the world the peak came thirty years later in 1964. Since one must find oil before one can produce it, the production will follow the discovery by about four decades. The rate at which oil is found has ground to a halt since the discovery peak 37 years ago. Only one barrel of oil is found today for every four used.

cont
 
Most of the oil reserves are in thirty huge and aging reservoirs, all of which were discovered before 1970, and many of them happen to be in the Middle East. Secondary recovery techniques slow the depletion for a few years, but there is nothing to replace these large reservoirs. The Caspian region will provide some relief, but is unlikely to replace the depletion that is taking place in the rest of the world. Another potential oil province is the South China Sea, but any drilling there is delayed by China’s claim to the entire region. A graph of the annual oil production in the USA is shown below.

US oil production, 1930-2020
To construct the solid curve it has been assumed that the oil endowment, put in place by geological processes that took over 500 million years, is 225 billion barrels. As years pass this estimate becomes better. It was already roughly clear to M. King Hubbert, who in 1956 predicted that the US production would peak in the early 70’s. The actual data follows the theoretical curve closely and shows the peak in oil production to have taken place in 1970. A secondary peak appeared in 1987 when the Prudhoe Bay in Alaska reached its maximum production. This super-giant field, with 11 billion barrels of oil, was discovered in 1967. It ranks as the fifteenth largest in the world, but only managed to move the theoretical peak production year to 1975.

The ultimate oil endowment for the world is estimated to be 2000 billion barrels. With annual production of roughly 25 billion barrel, every four years 100 billion barrels is consumed. Optimists put the ultimate oil endowment to 2200 billion barrels, which moves the peak production year only four years to the future. The graph below shows that the world oil production will peak in 2005 and by optimistic reckoning this is delayed toward the end of the decade. There is the further uncertainty whether Saudi Arabia will invest in new production, for it and Iraq have the largest reserves. Today’s political climate there does not bode well for increasing oil production for the near term, and for longer term modest increases in Middle East production will just make the depletion curve somewhat milder.

World oil production, 1920-2070
Such are the brutal facts humanity must face. To be sure, there is oil still to be extracted from tar sands, but as this is a mining operation, expenditure in energy to carry this off is substantial and the environmental effects unpleasant. Massive coal mining to produce, not only electricity to power the new hybrid cars, but also for conversion of coal to liquid fuel is equally fraught with difficulties. World’s natural gas supplies are still substantial, but the largest fields are in Russia and natural gas at best will carry the world over another twenty years after the peak in oil production is past.

What is clearly needed is a massive effort to reduce the consumption of oil. To do so requires a re-examination of our modes of life and commerce. Transport of goods by trains easily wins over air cargo and long-haul trucking in energy efficiency. Public transportation needs to be improved and cities rebuilt so that people can live close to their places of work. Bicycle paths and sidewalks should be built to give people a choice, which by and large is lacking today. Policies that favor public transportation would also reverse the urban sprawl that plagues industrial nations.

These are matters well known to the readers of these pages, but it is hard to see a timely response to the difficulties ahead. The warning signals of the 1970s were to no avail, as the past thirty years clearly show. Those prone to technological optimism believe that engineers will deliver solutions right on time as needs arise. Economists hold promise that the principle of substitution will work, but they lack the understanding imposed by thermodynamic constraints. Government officials and bureaucrats of international organizations coin new words, such as sustainable growth, to make old agendas seem fresh. And most of the people just shrug off the idea of a looming calamity with the thought that it will not arrive in their lifetime. Since humans so far have been incapable of controlling their population, it is difficult to see how they would be capable of mustering the will and the wisdom to act now. Therefore the children born today will need to get by in 2050 with the same oil production as was available to us in 1960, but for each of them there might be four others vying for the same oil. Life will be difficult for the next generation, for nature again will exert her brutal will and cleanse man from the hubris of recent times.

Seppo Korpela is
Professor of Mechanical Engineering at
Ohio State University
 
Doug50 said:
What is clearly needed is a massive effort to reduce the consumption of oil. To do so requires a re-examination of our modes of life and commerce. Transport of goods by trains easily wins over air cargo and long-haul trucking in energy efficiency. Public transportation needs to be improved and cities rebuilt so that people can live close to their places of work. Bicycle paths and sidewalks should be built to give people a choice, which by and large is lacking today. Policies that favor public transportation would also reverse the urban sprawl that plagues industrial nations.

Therefore the children born today will need to get by in 2050 with the same oil production as was available to us in 1960, but for each of them there might be four others vying for the same oil. Life will be difficult for the next generation, for nature again will exert her brutal will and cleanse man from the hubris of recent times.
Seppo Korpela./QUOTE]

The surging human population will be trimmed either by humans voluntarily limiting their fertility, or by famine and resource wars. I would certainly choose the former as the morally preferable option. And yet we still hear calls for large families: findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_24_122/ai_n15966649
Click to expand...
 
drpmjhess said:
The surging human population will be trimmed either by humans voluntarily limiting their fertility, or by famine and resource wars. I would certainly choose the former as the morally preferable option. And yet we still hear calls for large families: findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_24_122/ai_n15966649
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I’m not 100% sold on that article you presented Petrus. Appears to me it could be media hype! It states:
Pope Benedict XVI has called on Italian lawmakers to provide incentives to encourage large families as Europe continues to struggle with sagging fertility rates Christian Century, Nov 29, 2005
*Pope Benedict XVI has called on Italian lawmakers to provide incentives to encourage large families as Europe continues to struggle with sagging fertility rates. “It is my hope that further adequate social and legislative measures be promoted to protect and support more numerous families, which constitute a richness and a hope for the entire nation,” the pope said November 2 to pilgrims at the Vatican. *
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_24_122/ai_n15966649
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_24_122/ai_n15966649

The article implies Pope Benedict XVI had a audience on November 2, 2005. Ok. I’m going to the Pope’s page on the Vatican to verify the statement he supposedly made by looking under audiences on that date and year. (1)
  1. vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/index.htm
    http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/index.htm
Well, I couldn’t find anything. If the Pope did state what is written in the article then it would be found in the Vatican website. Someone else could check through his audiences, homilies, messages, speeches, Apostolic Exhortations, encyclicals, letters, Montu Proprio, travels, and apostolic letters. . 🙂 I could have missed something but if we don’t find it in the Vatican then he didn’t make any comments that were in the article. 🙂
 
wildleafblower said:
Well, I couldn’t find anything. If the Pope did state what is written in the article then it would be found in the Vatican website. Someone else could check through his audiences, homilies, messages, speeches, Apostolic Exhortations, encyclicals, letters, Montu Proprio, travels, and apostolic letters. . 🙂 I could have missed something but if we don’t find it in the Vatican then he didn’t make any comments that were in the article. 🙂
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catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=5312
 
And which dictatorship or committee of technocrats is going to be in charge of pushing all of this stuff through?

And will it all be done in weeks? Or months? Or years? Or decades?

And why do you think that ordinary transportation economics folks won’t be able to figure out which modal option works best at any given time?

And why are the OPEC countries of the Middle East buying vast fleets of new jet freighters and passenger planes, if we’re going to run out of oil before those planes get pushed out of the Boeing and Airbus factories? [Production of new planes is sold out for YEARS.]
drpmjhess said:
Doug50;3050712:
What is clearly needed is a massive effort to reduce the consumption of oil. To do so requires a re-examination of our modes of life and commerce. Transport of goods by trains easily wins over air cargo and long-haul trucking in energy efficiency. Public transportation needs to be improved and cities rebuilt so that people can live close to their places of work. Bicycle paths and sidewalks should be built to give people a choice, which by and large is lacking today. Policies that favor public transportation would also reverse the urban sprawl that plagues industrial nations.

Therefore the children born today will need to get by in 2050 with the same oil production as was available to us in 1960, but for each of them there might be four others vying for the same oil. Life will be difficult for the next generation, for nature again will exert her brutal will and cleanse man from the hubris of recent times.
Seppo Korpela./QUOTE]

The surging human population will be trimmed either by humans voluntarily limiting their fertility, or by famine and resource wars. I would certainly choose the former as the morally preferable option. And yet we still hear calls for large families: findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_24_122/ai_n15966649
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Al_Masetti said:
And why are the OPEC countries of the Middle East buying vast fleets of new jet freighters and passenger planes, if we’re going to run out of oil before those planes get pushed out of the Boeing and Airbus factories? [Production of new planes is sold out for YEARS.]
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I wonder that too. I wonder why even environmentalists believe that jet travel will increase by 60% by 2025. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0212/p13s02-litr.html. The pain of realizing how close we are to the dashing of all our dreams of continued cheap and easy travel, as well as inexpensive food and health care, is overwhelming. Denial is a powerful analgesic, widely practiced.
 
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