[ennui2]

And it didn't, anymore than Alaska back in the 80's saved us.

That depends on your definition of "save".

You could dial things back to the neolithic revolution and scoff at every technical development between then and now as simply kicking the can down the road. And as I recall, you did. Everything was shrugged off as "hubris". It's all depending on your point of view, really.

the majority predicted that only expensive oil would result in unconventional oil being developed, and that was correct.

Peakers predicted that it would NEVER be economical, due to bogus EROEI calculations.

We knew we were in the eye of the storm. Many said the storm was over. Now the winds are starting to rise once again.

You were more compelling when you were quoting Catton or Bartlett. Lapsing into abstract poetry doesn't illuminate that much. Could you have been hanging around Dark Mountain perhaps?

[MonteQuest]

Peakers predicted that it would NEVER be economical, due to bogus EROEI calculations.

Don't recall that being the main argument. Besides, EROEI isn't ROI, and that is being shown to be true, isn't it?

[MonteQuest]

I think Nicole Foss said it best: "Renewables have too low an EROEI to support the complex society necessary to produce them." Without FF, of course.

[Plantagenet]

I think Nicole Foss said it best: "Renewables have too low an EROEI to support the complex society necessary to produce them." Without FF, of course.

I agree that the EROEI of renewables is currently too low---but things are changing quickly for the better on this front.

The cost of solar has fallen very dramatically, and the technology is getting much better.

Already you can buy clothes that are embedded with solar energy collectors----you can power your own iphone from the solar collector in your hat.

It won't be long until things like paint will be embedded with solar energy collectors. Paint a house---and plug in the paint to get electricity.

Then, down the road, solar collectors may be embedded in asphalt so all the roads will be solar energy collectors.

The EROEI is not a static number---its getting better and better for renewables.

[Lore]

We're viewing the use of fossil fuels as an all or nothing proposition. The benifits should be weighted towards alternatives produced with as little fossil fuel use as possible.

[Keith_McClary]

There are no backwoods oil refineries.

Men work at a makeshift oil refinery site in Marchmarin town, southern countryside of Idlib, Syria December 16, 2015. The refinery site, owned by Yousef Ayoub, 34, has been active for 4 months. Ayoub says that he gets the crude oil from Islamic State-controlled areas in Deir al-Zor province and Iraq. The price for a barrel of crude oil varies and is controlled by the Islamic State, but it is currently at $44 dollars per barrel, he said.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-1 ... e-industry

[Keith_McClary]

I can not imagine what comes out the other end? Is that black stuff input or output? Or an ISIS atrocity lol

In the West we refer to it by the cute name"pet coke" .

[Tanada]

Straight out of Mad Max. Wouldn't put it in my Toyota.

I'd like someone to chine in and explain how that rig is able to convert crude oil into diesel or gasoline. I don't see a distillation unit. It should have coils, or a tower or something. Is the story a joke?

For simple 'pot distillation' you need a tank you can heat, crude, a thermometer and other tanks to put product in. You slowly heat the crude and as the temperature hits key values you divert the vapor coming off into different 'pots' aka tanks for the different petrochemicals. It is not nearly as efficient as a modern refinery, but people used them in the 1850-1880 period to get the Kerosene, Gasoline, Diesel and Asphalt to separate from the heavy residual oil and pet coke. The methane and ethane and most of the propane given off were either flared or used as fuel to heat the 'pot'. Not very efficient, but very simple technology.

[sjn]

Peakers predicted that it would NEVER be economical, due to bogus EROEI calculations.

Don't recall that being the main argument. Besides, EROEI isn't ROI, and that is being shown to be true, isn't it?

The Fracking Boom never had a positive cash flow, it NEVER was economical! Some Google hits:

http://wolfstreet.com/2014/07/30/how-fracking-is-blowing-up-balance-sheets-of-oil-and-gas-companies/

http://www.businessinsider.com/debt-is-destroying-fracking-revolution-2015-7?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1&IR=T#comment-55b07498eab8ea375f78616c/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/shale-fracking-is-a-ponzi-scheme-this-decades-version-of-the-dotcom-bubble/5402951

[kublikhan]

I agree that the EROEI of renewables is currently too low---but things are changing quickly for the better on this front. The EROEI is not a static number---its getting better and better for renewables.

+1
Also renewables, like FF, have many different EROEI values depending on the specific renewable or FF you are talking about. Hydro, the largest renewable with the best EROEI of renewables, has an EROEI better than the best EROEI FF: coal. Wind, the 2nd largest renewable, has an EROEI better than the oil and gas currently have. While solar's EROEI has been getting better at an exponential rate. Some of these renewables have a better EROEI than the fossil fuels used to make them.

If current rates of improvement hold, solar power will be incredibly cheap by the time it’s a substantial fraction of the world’s electricity supply. Electricity cost is from now coupled to the ever-decreasing price of technology. That is profoundly deflationary and disruptive. It’s now fairly common knowledge that the cost of solar modules is dropping exponentially. I helped publicize that fact in a 2011 Scientific American blog post asking “Does Moore’s Law Apply to Solar Cells?” The answer is that something like Moore’s law, an exponential learning curve (albeit slower than in computing) applies.

The IEA (International Energy Agency), in one of its scenarios, projects 4 cent per kwh solar by mid century. Fraunhofer ISE, the German research institute, goes farther, predicting solar as cheap as 2 euro cents per kwh in the sunniest parts of Europe by 2050. If this holds, solar will cost less than half what new coal or natural gas electricity cost, even without factoring in the cost of air pollution and carbon pollution emitted by fossil fuel power plants.

How cheap can solar get? Very cheap indeed

Also, consider this point:

If the Input energy is fossil fuel based the EROEI analysis will tell you how efficient the energy extraction process is with respect to energy use, and therefore how much energy ultimately can be extracted. If, however, the input energy is renewable even if the energy conversion process is seemingly inefficient in at the end of the process one has in total more energy than one started, which is quite the opposite from when the input was fossil fuel based.

Once you move from an entropic system (where energy flows from a highly concentrated state to a less concentrated state) to a negative entropy system (where you capture some form of diffuse solar energy and concentrate it) everything changes. Instead of running down finite energy sources you are now adding to the quantity of energy available. There will be other limits, but not energy per se. In a system relying on non-renewable energy, no matter what your EROEI is eventually you'll run out of fuel. In an open system therefore EROEI is interesting as a conversion efficiency measure, but irrelevant with respect to sustainability of the energy input of energy production.

If humanity wants to continue to exist in a form recognizable to us making the switch from an entropic energy supply to a negative entropy energy supply is unavoidable. Without making that switch the game will be over at some point. We are starting to feel the first hints of limits to growth along a number of vectors, both on the input side as well as the output side of economic activity. Specifically, what you're seeing now is that there is a tension between a financial system which requires growth to exist and a natural system (resources) which naturally deplete and which have an extraction rate which at some point can no longer be increased. Switching to a negative entropy energy system would be an important step towards dealing with this problem.

On EROEI

[MonteQuest]

Peakers predicted that it would NEVER be economical, due to bogus EROEI calculations.

Don't recall that being the main argument. Besides, EROEI isn't ROI, and that is being shown to be true, isn't it?

The Fracking Boom never had a positive cash flow, it NEVER was economical!

In case I wasn't clear, that was my point; the ROI wasn't there.

[ennui2]

You could say that the middle east going flat out right now doesn't make much money either, considering that their margins are slim. If something doesn't make money, the market eventually corrects. Time will tell, but I'm not going to pay any attention to a Global Research link, that's for sure.

[ralfy]

RE has to do much more than just "get better." And that won't happen given limits to growth.

[onlooker]

Yep too late to cushion the blow with RE. Their never was any viable substitute for Fossil fuels. What their was for awhile was a chance to powerdown and divest from the paradigm of growth. To impose on ourselves limits to growth in many ways. Alas, we did not and now Nature will do it for us.

[Tanada]

Yep too late to cushion the blow with RE. Their never was any viable substitute for Fossil fuels. What their was for awhile was a chance to powerdown and divest from the paradigm of growth. To impose on ourselves limits to growth in many ways. Alas, we did not and now Nature will do it for us.

I agree with your first sentence, but there are viable regional RE substitutes like hydro both large scale and small scale. I also firmly believe we had a window of opportunity to build a Fission based infrastructure that could have weaned us away from fossil fuels. That opportunity has been mostly wasted because the big fossil energy companies had a huge advantage in price during the early fission power development phase and they have kept that advantage despite the environmental cost of fossil fuels.