Why such fears for the future?

Licho · Posted: Sun May 30, 2004 8:18 pm Post subject: Why such fears for the future?

I don't understand why do so many people think that oil crisis = immediate anarchy and are planning for some self sufficiency (which is not possible and needs constant tool replacement in reality) and are preparing to defend selfs with guns..

Don't forget it will be GRADUAL 3% change at maximum. It will take some 40 years to get to consumtion levels of 60's and do you think that 60's were anarchy? Gradually rising prices will eventually force some consumtion cuts, new efficiency and saving and when oil get's more scarce, it might be rationed, but this is till not a problem.. Only if stock markets panic, prices might skyrocket, world could slip into depression and world trade almost collapse, but it will stabilize and transform into gradual change.
World can live without oil as it lived before, we have new materials, awesome new technologies and advanced infrastructure, with years we have, we will adapt.

I see it in my country.. (Czech rep.). I can give you few examples how things currently stand here, and probably in other parts of EU, this is to make you realize that things are not gonna to "crash", and that solutions will be found..:

- population: We have population of about 10million people for about 100 years, population is actually decreasing.

- farming: before 30's about 30% of people have been working in agriculture, which has been without massive fertilizers and mechanization. Since 60's it's about 3% of population, but even if we have to revert to old "manual" work with animals (unlikely) we can do it "old way"..
People here also have strange custom to grow some of their own food, it's recreational many people (esp. retired) own some land over city and travel there some weekends and care about small land with some flowers and vegetables or trees. So if things get worse with griculture you can have at least your own fresh carrot or apples Smile

- car fuels: prices of fuel are about $4 per gallon equivalent for many years (we dont see any impact of current world prices, because we have oil and natural gas traditionally from Russia and not OPEC). Many people are already using cars equipped to use LPG (liquified petroleum gasses) and there are hundreds of LPG gas stations. (Normal cars require small modification to be able to burn both LPG and normal petrol, you can switch those two during driving and LPG has no disadvantages. It's 2 times cheaper and modification costs about $800-$2000).
Because we have about 30% of free agricultural land (it has been freed after collapse of communism, since then, people care more about health and dont eat so much meat so we dont need so much plants to feed animals) and it's actually covered with rape seeds. Those are nice yellow plants that fertilize land, require no maintenance and are used to make biodiesel. Biodiesel costs about 1/2 of normal diesel at gas stations and is readilly available and used by many trucks. This is gonna give us time to gradually switch to pure electricity or hydrogen in far future.

- energy generation - some 70% is nuclear and rest is hydro + indigenous coal. We have excess capacities exported and new reactors under construction. Even if we need to use electricity for heating, we can do it by using old, currently inactive coal plants.. (People don't fear object nuclear, because years ago, they have been poisioned by fumes from coal burning plants and heavy industry, that caused emergencies in some towns - forcing school children to wear gas-masks on the way to school and acid rains that devastated now regenerating forests.)

- transportation general: most people actually use electric-driven mass transit systems. Most towns larger than 30k have trolley buses and larger cities trams or subway. It's faster, cheaper and you don't need to search place for parking in overcrowded city centre. For inter-city tranportation, even small villages have railwas, big parts of it electrified. Rails can tranport all the material needed for survival.

- international trade: most of it comes with rest of EU. While big portion comes from trucks, per tonnes transported, rails are still rulers, so trade would not stop completely.

- chemistry: even if we loose oil completely, most things can be made from local coal with some extra energy. Fertilizers are not generally produced using natural gas, because it's too expensive here.

So, as you can see, we can readilly live with far less oil than now, in fact we did it before, we can do it again. Infrastructure that kept us happy during 30's can be restored, and we have far more advanced technologies, internet everythere and more than 100 mobile phones per 100 inhabitants so you don't need to travel just to talk... All above is probably similar in many EU countries, and some of them, like Denmark are already producing more than 20% of electricity from wind turbines. So don't panic, we will adapt, you don't need huge house, 3 cars, and 1000km of traveling/month. Whether you realize it or not, those are not things that make you happy. USA has even more space so I really don't see why you fear the future.. You will loose some of your material "richness" but you won't loose your life, or happiness if you know how to live your life..

MrPC

Rasmus2 · Tar Sands Joined: May 31, 2004 Posts: 50

Licho, Good Post, and I agree with you... there are far too much unrealistic doomsdays talk, when the talk is about peek oil.

There are lots of options beside oil to run a future sociaty... some new, others are old, however if we combine these options, then loosing oil is no doomsday problem.

Ex. Denmark is already producing 20% of its energy from wind turbines, and the surplus energy from the wind turbines will also be used to make hydrogen... in 2008 30% of the energy will be from wind turbines.
Also another interesting area in development is pumping hotwater from the underground to be used in heating houses via already established local grids.

MattSavinar · Elite Joined: May 09, 2004 Posts: 2000

Rasmus,

Here is what people miss when they say, "Oh it won't be so bad. . . ."
We have an economy that requires GROWTH. Growth requires an EXCESS of energy.

A 3% decline in production will cause a very severe recession - as it did when Iran cut it's production in 79.

Get it? A paltry 3% reduction = Severe recession in the very first year.

Compound that after 5, 15, 20 years and you what do you think is going to happen?

Pesticides, plastics, petrochemicals, everything in the modern world comes from oil! You can't just replace that with Wind! You've got to be delusional if you're not seeing this.

You can't use wind to power cars, boats, airplanes, etc. . . !

Anybody who doesn't think the aftermath of declining oil production isn't going to be the most cataclysmic event in the history of the world, has not looked at the facts.

What will make our situation worse, much, much worse is that so many people think this is going to be just a repeat of the Great Depression and hence brush it off.

Speaking of which, what got us out of the Great Depression (here in the states)?

All that industrial production that we undertook for the war is what ended the G.D. All of which was supplied by extremely cheap, domestically dervied oil.

No cheap U.S oil during WWII = we'd all be speaking German right now.

America's 3 greatest achievements are:

1. Defeating Hitler
2. Going to the Moon
3. Buidling the modern highway system

What do you think all 3 have in common?

Cheap oil.

Of which there is none left.

Matt
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net

Kaare_Mai · Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 2:04 am Post subject:

Rasmus, i guess you might be a Dane as i am Smile

It is not entirely true what you are saying. Yes, Denmark gets 18 % of its electric energy from wind and other alternative methods, but the 30% at 2008 was a goal set by the social party when they ruled. After the liberalist got to power this goal was abandoned or put to a stand still...

As a reference i suggest this speak from you former environment minister Svend Auken:

http://gdp.videoarkiv.net/ida/oilconference_12_10_2003/show.asp?node=103

Besides, as many people seem to forget; oil is not only used for electric generation. Oil is much more than just energy.

k_semler · Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 2:46 am Post subject:

Barbara · Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 4:04 am Post subject: Europe and peak oil

I lurked here for a bit, I'm European and this is my first post.
Hi Licho,
I've read your post and found that what you say is more or less what happens in the whole Europe. But there's something you forgot: big cities. I'm ready to live an "old times life", I think that while we grew attached to this oil-dependant way of life any of us has heard tons of family stories about WWII, starvation, famine and so on. More or less, we can learn how to cope and kiss good-bye to all our technologies.
But big cities? During WWII in the cities there was a lot of starvation. And remember that in those times farmlands were a lot more developed than now: you could always go out of the city (avoiding bullets!) and find a farmer who sold you some food in exchange of your skills or "modern" gadgets. My grandpa did. Today in Europe we have 3 millions, 5 millions cities: how to feed all that people? With retired elders gardening?
What I fear most is the panic that will hit the people in the cities: no food in supermarkets, no transports to go to find farms, people will get crazy in order to feed the family.
And think that there will be MILLIONS of jobless, with no money to pay for anything, and no money to fuel the car and run away.

PS If you all are interested, I can make a post about WWII and how people coped with starvation, no oil, etc.

Licho · Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 5:23 am Post subject:

I will try to comment some points you made:

crisis in USA caused by 5% drop:
still this drop was sudden + psychological impact of embargo, now it's 3% over year. Millions didn't die during this time, after short term panic new measures were in place about efficiency standards and so on..
Shortage - yes, but oil could be rationed to keep infrastructure in place and allow gradual transition. Do you really need so much oil? Reduce of any kind of consumption is going to reduce oil usage..

stock market crash + great depression:
if stock values crash, decline is only "virtual" because real value still exists. Economy don't need to stop completely, even with 1000% inflation, and people can always use "gray" economy. Also even during great depression some countries did well. For example Germany prospered during depression with Hitler and his projects of public works (like building highways that were not needed at that time Smile

So stock market crash will hit world economy hard, but with some govermental management it can be softened and turned into something usefull. For example unemployment - if unemployed people are given govermental jobs in agriculture or general construction, it can soften crisis. If you need somextra people to make food or construct things, they might be easy to find during such depression..

LPG cars:
yes LPG is one of by-products of refineries, but it's also naturally in oil patches underground and propane is also in natural gas. It's usually wasted so using it will help. LPG engine can be modified to run CNG too, (propane to methane switch), and natural gas reserves are still huge in world. Later cars might use biodiesel or even hydrogen if we manage to get excess energy.

you cannot mine uranium/coal without oil:
I used to live in area of huge black coal mines and I see exactly how it works. Mine is using electricity produced by coal power plant nearby, miners have electrical tools, and all coal is transported up using electricity and loaded onto electrical trains. Nearby steel mills are using the same electricity to make materials.
Regarding uranium, i believe it works in same way. Ore is processed using cheapest avail energy (here it's always electricity and not direct oil) and mined in same way. (In fact, during 50's communists regime was sending political prisoners to uranium mines to manually mine uranium ore, they were doing it without oil too.)

you cannot make material X without oil:
well currently u are making all these things from oil, because it's cheapest. If you have enough energy, you can substitute oil with almost anything that contains carbon, like coal or live matter (bio-waste). Before 50-60's most of these materials were derived from coal, and during WW2 germany invented many things to replace oil badly needed for airplanes and tanks.

eating fossil fuels:
Fertilizers - only reason why "fossils" are used to make fertilizers is cheap production of nitrogen. But with some extra energy you can easilly get nitrogen back from enviroment or even directly from air. This is the way it is here, so oil shortage does not meen fertilizers shortage.
Pesticides - again, you can produce many kinds of them without oil. Currently cheapest solution is in place - solution with oil. GM crops can further reduce need for them.
Fuel for machinery - it can be readilly replaced/boosted using bio-diesel made from rape seeds. Rape seeds DO NOT need fertilizers and actually fertilizes land. They are grown here to fertilize, because it doesnt need anything from farmers and only small part of it is currently used in biodiesel generation.

energy generation:
While conventional nuclear/hydro/coal can provide even more energy, it's true that nuclear and coal will eventually decline. But meanwhile we can construct renewables where possible and invest into new technologies:
Advanced renewables - like orbital solar plants. Japan is planning to build multi thousand megawatt orbital powerplant in next decades. There are still reserves and room for improvement of solar pannels, and across europe, windmills are being erected.
Hot fusion - currently ITER - international fussion reactor is planned, it will be built either in EU, Japan or USA and will provide excess 500MW of energy. This will be prototype for future fusion plants.
Cold fusion - do a search, currently many ways to cause low energy hydrogen fusion exists and are being improved. Some of them are already very easy to reproduce - like ultrasonic cavity fusion. When crisis starts, there will be flow of capital into such research and development.

you cannot use electricity from windmills in cars:
well you can.. You can use this energy to make any kind of fuel ranging from hydrogen back to some coal or wood based fuels. If you need to use your old car, you can still make propane that can be used by most engines.
(Early cars were using gases from burning wood or coal produced synthetic fuels in areas without crude oil). These changes will be slow but solutions exists that do not need crude oil.

suburbia in USA:
I'm not expert on this, I'v never been in USA, but if those areas are within 10km from city workplace, you can use bike. If it's further away buses can be introduced there to gather people and reduce oil consumtion to 1/3 or even less. Don't forget you still have plenty of own declining oil, with such measures like carpooling or buses you can reduce consumption to fit into resouce base.
Later, with little resouces, this can be transformed into more concentrated cities with central air/water heating and local shops/entertainment. This is actually how it is in around cities in former eastern bloc. Many people hate it, and are escaping it to build own house (I do so too), but it's very practical if you need to reduce consumption. Around historical cities are areas of 9-12 story pannel houses with parks/shops/schools/services in middle of them and central heating system (often running on waste). So you can walk 5 minute and be where-ever you need to be. Pannel houses, while ugly, are also cheap (energy-wise) to construct.

big cities anywere:
yes in ultra-huge cities it's probably gonna be hard, it's impossible to predict what everything will happen, but I guess our cities will be first priority in supplying with food and energy, if it gets scarce during transition. Cities contains most people and vital industry. I would not escape from medium sized cities to country..

So overally I believe it will be hard, many changes will come, our living standards will change, but eventually we will end up in world that does not endangers planet by burning fossil fuels and where energy is readilly availiable without huge enviromental costs. It could be world with smaller, more local communities, fewer traveling but advanced electronic communication and infrastructure.

Rasmus2 · Tar Sands Joined: May 31, 2004 Posts: 50

Kaare_Mai, Yes, I´m danish Smile

- Thanks for sharing the video - found it interesting.

The 30% is made because the goverment is to invest in 2 new large ocean wind turbine parks, which are build before 2008 - They are costing 4.5 Billion DKK (700 Million USD).

You can read more about in this publication from April 2004, where the goverment explains its energy plan - http://www.oem.dk/Diverse/EnergipolitiskRedeg.pdf (only in danish)

Licho · Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 5:57 am Post subject:

Barbara, post about WW2 crisis handling would be very interesting I think. To show people that crisis doesnt mean "grab your gun, hide in bunker and shoot everyone who comes around". It rather causes more close man-to-man cooperation and searching for new solutions.
We in Europe all have or had raltives who lived through WW2 and post-war years. For example my Jewish grandma is only lucky survivor of her family, they were all killed in nazi concentration camps, but she survived all the hardship and actually became part of new family. After many years of war and post-war hardship and decades of communism she nows feels these times as wonderfull free heaven, travels around world and enjoys happy life. But she is not thinking that times before were hell.. You can find your own personal happiness in any time. I'v read some UN statistics on who is the happiest nation in the world, winner was some poor African nation Smile

Regarding your fear about big cities - I believe there will be enough food to survive, even if it's not the best quality/variety. Rails or trucks running on rationed oil diesel or biodiesel can supply cities, and people can use local shops or mass transit to get to supermarkets. (Many supermarkets are paying for buses that transport people to markets and back free of charge, it's for very young or older people who don't use cars.) And you can always use bike, it's good for health too, and not slower than cars in heavy traffic Smile

MrPC · Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 6:19 am Post subject:

Barbara · Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 7:00 am Post subject:

Licho,
I find all your observations very wise. But the point, to me, is that in order to do all you're saying, everything must be planned in advance. You can't build, say, electric public buses overnight, or solar panels, or crop fueled cars or whatever.
Our govts are paying NO attention at all to this problem. The recession and the depression will hit us far before the oil depletion: and when the moment will come, we'll be all defenseless, without money, jobs and resources to fix the problem.