[IP] more on The Long Emergency
Begin forwarded message:
From: Tom Sobczynski <tsobczynski@xxxxxxx>
Date: July 17, 2005 11:12:41 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] more on The Long Emergency
I'm glad you acknowledge that there is some kind of problem, but even
"bleak" is actually putting it very mildly. Your faith in technology
is what James Howard Kunstler calls "Jiminy Cricket Syndrome":
"These days, even people in our culture who ought to know better are
wishing ardently that a smooth, seamless transition from fossil fuels
to their putative replacements--hydrogen, solar power, whatever--lies
just a few years ahead. I will try to demonstrate that this is a
dangerous fantasy."
It is highly doubtful that we will be able to feed >6 billion people
by mid-century, much less whisk them about the country on a sleek new
rail network along with oodles of consumer products from 12,000 miles
away.
Your statement about Suburbia does not go nearly far enough. Again,
from the man himself:
"America finds itself nearing the end of the cheap-oil age having
invested its national wealth in a living arrangement--suburban
sprawl--that has no future."
...
"I do not believe that the general ignorance about the coming
catastrophic end of the cheap-oil era is the product of a conspiracy,
either on the part of business or government or news media. Mostly
it is a matter of cultural inertia, aggravated by collective
delusion, nursed in the growth medium of comfort and complacency.
Author Erik Davis has referred to this as the 'consensus trance.' "
...
"During the Clinton presidency, baby-boomer hippies had matured into
yuppies who enjoyed the benefits of cheap oil so much (and were so
spoiled by it) that they fell easily into a consensus trance
regarding America's energy future: party on. The Alaskan and North
Sea oil bonanzas had erased their memories of the brief 1970s oil
crises. During most of the 1980s and 1990s, gas prices at the pump
were lower in constant dollars than at any other time in history. It
was the former-hippie boomer yuppies, after all, who started the SUV
craze and bought the McMansions way off in the outermost suburbs. At
the same time, stunning advances in computer development (boomer-
led), and the rapid growth of the huge new industry that went with
it, had induced among the boomer cultural elite a mentality of
extreme techno-hubris, leading many to the conviction that our
fantastic innovative skills guaranteed a smooth transition into the
alternative fuels future--which, of course, squared with the wishful
views of conventional economists. It all amounted to an unfortunate
self-reinforcing feedback loop of delusion."
Within decades, there will scarcely be enough oil and natural gas
available to power modern agriculture. The distribution system that
brings that food to your local big-box supermarket will be falling
apart by then, and also requires huge amounts of fuel. With no
fossil fuel left over for you at any price, how do you plan to bring
food home, refrigerate it and cook it? This is of course a contrived
example with one facet of the problem taken to its mid-century extreme.
All of the mystical "technology" that people tout as the means we
will keep our world running requires energy input. All of the
proposed alternative sources of energy don't add up to a hill of beans.
"Based on everything we know right now, no combination of so-called
alternative fuels or energy procedures will allow us to maintain
daily life in the United States the way we have been accustomed to
running it under the regime of oil. No combination of alternative
fuels will even permit us to operate a substantial fraction of the
systems we currently run--in everything from food production and
manufacturing to electric power generation, to skyscraper cities, to
the ordinary business of running a household by making multiple car
trips per day, to the operation of giant centralized schools with
their fleets of yellow buses. We are in trouble."
Kunstler goes on to enumerate the proposed alternatives to oil and
shoot them all down in detail. This is the thumbnail sketch:
Natural Gas - The North American continent is in decline. The U.S.
is declining by a few percent per year despite manic drilling, and
that depletion curve is about to get a lot more steep. Canada is
reaching the limits of its ability to bridge the gap. For a number
of reasons, importing liquefied natural gas from overseas is not a
workable solution.
Hydrogen - This is not a source of energy, just a decent (but not
great) storage medium.
Coal - We'll undoubtedly be using more of this awful stuff soon, but
"it isn't going to be cheap, the quality might not be so good, it
isn't going to last that long, and it's not going to work nearly as
well as gas and oil did."
Hydroelectric - We're already using most of the good sites for hydro
generation for 10% of our power. The dams are silting up rapidly. It
is doubtful that we can operate hydro plants without a base of cheap
fossil fuels and even more unlikely that we will maintain our
incredibly decrepit power distribution grid without them.
Solar and Wind - "It takes a lot of energy, many barrels of oil, to
manufacture deep-cycle batteries and solar panels, and it takes a
platform of advanced systems--everything from metallurgy to plastics
manufacturing--to mass-produce all the components and standardize
their performance. I'm not convinced that active solar power may be
anything but an interim stopgap in the Long Emergency that will
follow the end of the fossil fuel age. ... There is a set of
erroneous popular notions to the effect that renewable energy systems
such as solar power, wind power and the like are available as
freestanding replacements for our fossil-fuel-based system, that they
are pollution-free and problem free... The batteries, the panels,
the electronics, the wires and the plastics all require mining
operations and factories using fossil fuels." Kunstler describes his
personal experiences with his own solar electric system to illustrate
the points he makes.
Synthetic Oil - You can make it from filthy coal, but it doesn't
scale. The declining energy profit ratio of coal won't support this
for long.
Thermal Depolymerization - Thermodynamics make this recycling program
an energy sink, not a source.
Biomass - "Forget biomass. It's only a cruder variation of thermal
depolymerization."
Methane Hydrates - Another net energy sink, not a source.
Zero-Point Energy - If something sounds too good to be true, it
probably is. Development of such a thing probably couldn't proceed
without an underlying fossil fuel technology platform.
Nuclear - Good for generating electricity for now, but only about a
quarter of the fossil fuels we use go toward electric generation. A
lot of the other uses, such as agriculture, cannot be replaced by
electricity. Furthermore, Uranium has its own Hubbert curve of
production whose peak is within sight.
Now add in population growth and environmental degradation. We have
seriously overshot our resource base and the foreclosure of suburbia
is really a foregone conclusion. At best, we must downscale and
localize life very quickly. At worst, billions will die of some
combination of starvation, war and disease.
Remember that the oil price has exceeded $60/bbl at a time when we
are collectively pumping more oil per year than at any time in
history. The production decline hasn't even started!
--Tom Sobczynski
On Jul 16, 2005, at 6:50 PM, David Farber wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger@xxxxxxx>
Date: July 16, 2005 5:31:14 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>, Dewayne Hendricks
<dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Udhay Shankar N <udhay@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] The Long Emergency
The article is interesting and does bring up many good points. I
agree that its pretty darn sure that we are going to hit lots of
problems due to increasing costs of Oil and Natural Gas.
But I don't think its quite as bleak as he says (unless the Un-
reality based Neocons stay in power).
For instance, Trains could make a major comeback to handle the
transportation load at dramatically lower energy costs than todays
air and truck transport. We aren't going to run out of energy
overnight and rebuilding a train network wouldn't be all that hard
if we don't wait too long.
Then there could also be other technologies that can do major
transportation of goods at much lower costs such as airships. These
could be built at very low cost (comparatively) and could take
advantage of hydrogen production as a lift gas. (I know every one
will instantly think of the Hindenburg, but the German Zeppelins
were not designed for using hydrogen. There are ways of doing this
pretty safely).
A lot of what needs to happen to make our lives more energy
efficient will happen through market forces as the price of gas
goes up. This could even include the eventual devolution of Suburbia.
The worse thing we could do is to artificially hold back the price
of oil. The most that should happen is to try to smooth out spikes,
but let it be known far and wide that Oil and its related products
will just keep getting more expensive.
We need to make is so that ex-Oil executives (particularly
incompetent and previously unsuccessful oil executives) are not
running the country.
Rob
On Jul 16, 2005, at 5:00 AM, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
From: Udhay Shankar N <udhay@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 16, 2005 4:51:56 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: The Long Emergency
Dave,
A long and thought-provoking article in the Rolling Stone on the
"long emergency" - based on the thesis that world oil production
has peaked, and what the consequences will be.
Sure to generate lots of debate. ;-)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633
Udhay
---
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
PGP Key: http://www.ibd.com/html/rbergerPublic.gpgkey
http://www.ibd.com
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as tcs@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-
people/
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/