tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post1201103136038055560..comments2024-03-27T16:08:30.313-05:00Comments on The Great Change: The Greater FoolAlbert Bateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17627996921976501534noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-72268347096470026282017-04-27T17:11:05.792-05:002017-04-27T17:11:05.792-05:00When you figure any of these calculations, you hav...When you figure any of these calculations, you have to figure how fast the population will decrease, because that impacts how mcuh fossil fuels are necessary and how much CO2 goes up in the atmosphere. So for instance, if half the population dies by say 2030, all the calculations on how much oil will be burned thereafter are completely wrong.<br /><br />This is a Population vs Energy question, not strictly an energy supply question. The fewer people there are, the more sustainable the system becomes. So a better question to ask might be, "How many people do we need to eliminate in order to have a sustainable system on Earth?".<br /><br />REReverse Engineerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07062239687986775433noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-10169509427841722612017-04-25T18:05:50.398-05:002017-04-25T18:05:50.398-05:00Decline of Oil???
This scholarly article describe...Decline of Oil???<br /><br />This scholarly article describes some mathematical modeling of oil production and price. Oil, of course, is the foundation for doing work in our economy, such as moving a weight from Point A to Point B. Ships, planes, trains, trucks and automobiles are the typical vehicles we think of, but machines such as Caterpillar tractors are used to move dirt and rock.<br /><br />http://econpapers.repec.org/article/sprbioerq/v_3a2_3ay_3a2017_3ai_3a1_3ad_3a10.1007_5fs41247-016-0016-6.htm<br /><br />The concluding remarks:<br />'Our analysis and empirical evidence are consistent with oil being a fundamental quantity in economic production. Our analysis indicates that once the contraction period for oil extraction begins, price dynamics will accelerate the decline in extraction rates: extraction rates decline because of a decrease in profitability of the extraction business.<br /><br />Our empirical model for prices can be used by those studying future extraction rates whose models currently do not consider price parameters.<br /><br />We believe that the contraction period in oil extraction has begun and that policy makers should be making contingency plans. Strategies for economies facing energy constraints are reviewed in Schindler and Schindler (0000).'<br /><br />The study is a counterweight to both the cornucopian viewpoint which is currently ascendent, and the 'the price may go up but there will always be oil' viewpoint. If you believe the study, then shifting to a lifestyle which doesn't depend on moving heavy weights around needs some serious thought. And if you believe Thomas Goreau, declines in oil beginning right now are too little and too late to prevent catastrophic climate effects, so something like soil sequestration of carbon using smart farming methods becomes critical.<br /><br />Don Stewart<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Don Stewarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05449201744675390686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-12450648803649696312017-04-24T15:53:00.515-05:002017-04-24T15:53:00.515-05:00Joe and Albert
If we look at the oil and food situ...Joe and Albert<br />If we look at the oil and food situation from a thermodynamic standpoint, we need to account for the energy used to produce the oil which is then worth 87,000 kcalories every day. While opinions vary, the thermodynamic model of BW Hill estimates that it now takes almost as much energy to produce energy as we get from the energy. The 'extended EROEI' figures that Professor Charles Hall uses is about 2 to 1, which would imply that it takes around 42,000 kcal of energy to produce the 87,000 kcal's.<br /><br />It makes all the ratios even more ridiculous.<br /><br />Don StewartDon Stewarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05449201744675390686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-50102458467177789192017-04-24T14:53:54.740-05:002017-04-24T14:53:54.740-05:00I will do it on a daily basis:
US natural gas con...I will do it on a daily basis:<br /><br />US natural gas consumption is 76 billion cu ft per day which has an energy value of 252 kcal per cu ft, for a total of 19.15 trillion kcal. Divided by the population of the US (320 million) gives a per capita gas energy use of 59,850 kcal per day. Using your value of 3,770 kcal per day from food consumed by the average US resident, the ratio is 59,850/3,770 = 15.87 or a ratio of about 16:1.<br /><br />But just as not all oil is consumed in producing, transporting and processing food, most gas is used either for space heating, electricity production or process heating (cement production for example). The production of nitrogen based fertilizers consumed in the US used energy equal to only 0.5% of total US power production (http://pimlico.phys.appstate.edu/JSRESA/kelischek.1-1.pdf).<br /><br />I still claim that Newman's ratio is off by a couple orders of magnitude. But it really doesn't matter. Any ratio greater than 1:1 can only be sustained in the long run by renewable sources of energy. We have built our entire civilization on non-renewable sources that are depleting rapidly, a process that will not end well either for us humans or the environment we live in. <br /><br /> Joehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01251330546889158364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-32553081941191826932017-04-24T10:23:14.132-05:002017-04-24T10:23:14.132-05:00I wish I understood the math better to get that in...I wish I understood the math better to get that intricate of an understanding of all this. But sometimes my knuckles scrape the ground and I go with what I understand as it pertains to daily life. During the oil crisis, as some of us may remember, the speed limit in the US was lowered to 55 MPH. At that time, I was listening to a radio station that started given statistics of how many gallons of gas was saved that day, week, etc. It became real obvious that the numbers were huge and this gave someone up above enough pause that this practice stopped. Ah yes I thought. Conservation in this instance was working which flew in the face of the budding of the coming new consumerism.Those numbers worked for me.Danny Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08239701610522812113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-83571203301567799692017-04-24T10:09:24.296-05:002017-04-24T10:09:24.296-05:00Thanks Joe. I see 42:1 as a very robust number, be...Thanks Joe. I see 42:1 as a very robust number, being derived from 20 mmb/d (one-fifth of the world's daily crude production) divided by 2000 kcal/d. Unfortunately the 2000 number is a world figure. In the USA the current average is 3770 (unless its Christmas Day, when the number jumps to 7000). So by this measure we would get 23:1. <br /><br />This still assumes, first, that all of that went to food, which we know is wrong, and second that all of the USA's expropriation of world oil production passes through the USA, which is also not the case. <br /><br />The calculation also narrows the examination to crude oil, excluding other fossil energy such as coal and gas. Natural gas in particular is very important to agriculture, being the source for nitrogen in artificial fertilizer. <br /><br />In fact, lets go ahead and leave coal out of it even though it contributes to the electric supply for farms, processing plants, warehouses, grocery stores and home kitchens. Just looking at natural gas blows the calorie ratio off the chart.<br /><br />The USA consumes 27 trillion cubic feet of LNG per year, containing 6.8 million trillion (6.8E+19) kcal. Clearly not all of that goes to food but per capita that is 2.125E+11 kcal. Divided by food kcal (3770) we get 56 million to 1. Check my math, please.<br /><br />Somewhere between your number and mine lies Robert Newman's.Albert Bateshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17627996921976501534noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-9374096614963213132017-04-24T00:58:50.959-05:002017-04-24T00:58:50.959-05:00The average American uses 2.6 gallons of oil per d...The average American uses 2.6 gallons of oil per day (20 million barrels X 42 / 320 million people). Each gallon of oil contains about 33,000 kcal of energy, so people use about 87,000 kcal of oil every day. If the average American consumes 2,000 kcal of food per day, the maximum oil calorie to food calorie ratio would be 42:1, assuming all oil is used to get food into the average American's mouth. <br /><br />I saw the 2000:1 ratio in the transcript of Robert Newman's History of Oil, so I see where you got it. For this issue at least, it appears that Newman is not a very reliable source of information. Joehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01251330546889158364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-30629911056008369862017-04-24T00:14:00.206-05:002017-04-24T00:14:00.206-05:00Those of us who were around during the Vietnam era...Those of us who were around during the Vietnam era and paid attention to the subtleties of the fallout both during and after the war saw and understood there was a larger, more sinister game being played out and coupled with the oil crisis' of the 70's saw that future conflicts would require a more confusing, convoluted narrative to keep people believing that we're after the greater good. Hence, we have this hyper nationalism which really promotes a belief that "Global technoculture" can and will solve all our current problems.Danny Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08239701610522812113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-49470976938223144402017-04-23T19:06:10.347-05:002017-04-23T19:06:10.347-05:00Thank you Ian for that push to read Michael Klare&...Thank you Ian for that push to read Michael Klare's excellent essay. I have always found small flaws in Klare's read of current events (in this case that Russia hacked the US election and presumedly the French one as well, or that Assad was responsible for the gassing of his own citizens that drew the Trump missile attack) but in general he hits the nail on the head (e.g.: that missile attacks against Ukraine or Syria have bigger blowback against the US than their actual damage to our perceived enemies). <br /><br />You will note that Ted Trainer's YouTube quote as well as the Nicole Foss quote cited here were both outtakes from the Simplicity documentary, which I also recommend. I am someone who lives in one of those idyllic utopian experiments where it would be quite easy to forget about working for money altogether were it not that, as Thoreau said, “What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?” (Familiar Letters, 1865).<br /><br />As for Joe's point about calories, yes I also found that 2000:1 number startling because 10:1 is conventional wisdom. The number comes from Robert Newman's History of Oil (2006). At the same time, it rang truer to me than 10:1 because I think one needs to factor in other externalities, like the military cost of resource wars, the untallied costs to suppress rebellions of victim populations of Venezuela, Nigeria, and the Middle East, and the hidden calories of producing revenues adequate to provide tax subsidies to agriculture, the very long defense procurement pipeline (extending into space) and fossil fuel production (propping up an otherwise bankrupt industry). Ignoring the dark economy, those known subsidies can be calculated in trillions of dollars and some Btu coefficient. Calorically Newman's 2000 seems closer to the mark to me than Heinberg's 10.<br /><br />I agree lifestyle change is an uphill slog. Carrots could succeed where sticks fail, although plenty more sticks are coming. This is the subject of future installments as I wrap up this series.Albert Bateshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17627996921976501534noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-64247632859524830162017-04-23T16:26:19.183-05:002017-04-23T16:26:19.183-05:00food security for most depends on securing 2000 ca...<i>food security for most depends on securing 2000 calories of oil to produce 1 calorie of grain</i><br /><br />I have seen ratios in the 10:1 or 15:1 range, but never 2000:1. One dollar buys about 25,000 kcal of petroleum and about 3,000 kcal of rice, which is a rough indication of relative value, though not necessarily the amount of oil used in rice production, distribution and processing.<br /><br />To your larger point, I agree with Ian Graham that it will be difficult to get many people to go the Thoreau route. The fact that Tolstoy, Gandhi and Thoreau are famous for their simple lives shows how rare that choice is. They are the exceptions that prove the materialistic rule.Joehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01251330546889158364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-61067731103149009822017-04-23T11:07:08.590-05:002017-04-23T11:07:08.590-05:00yes we ARE condemned to a consumerist armageddon, ...yes we ARE condemned to a consumerist armageddon, we being the overdeveloped countries and the privileged everywhere: consumerism is being ruled obsolete by Nature (who always bats last). Ted Trainer and Co in Australia have a long documentary out on Simplicity, and if you watch it, I wager 1 in a 100 will willingly go along with the prospect of living that way. Except maybe Haitians and others who are already living below that level of meeting basic needs. <br /><br />The future does not look bright.Ian Grahamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02975374352244687491noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-29216473824243907062017-04-23T11:01:32.115-05:002017-04-23T11:01:32.115-05:00Michael T Klare's recent essay positing that t...Michael T Klare's recent essay positing that the 20 million people being starved to death in Nigeria, Somalia and Southern Sudan, not including Syria and Yemen, starved by global overconsumption and indifference among the wealthy, is just a foretaste of what will come to pass as Albert's scenario unfolds. See "Climate Change as Genocide" at Tomsdispatch and relience.org.Ian Grahamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02975374352244687491noreply@blogger.com