more on The Long Emergency

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tom Sobczynski <tsobczynski () mac com>
Date: July 17, 2005 11:12:41 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
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 () ibd com>
> Date: July 16, 2005 5:31:14 PM EDT
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, Dewayne Hendricks  
> <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Cc: Udhay Shankar N <udhay () pobox com>
> 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 () pobox com>
> > Date: July 16, 2005 4:51:56 AM EDT
> > To: dave () farber net
> > 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
>
>
>
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