Posts on Climate Change and Peak Oil

I occasionally post comments to news or blog articles related to climate change and other environmental problems. Here I collect some of my better comments and publish them together. Newer comments are posted first. I may edit comments slightly in the light of new data or changes in my views.

On Peak Oil and college debt

posted at the16types.info, July 17, 2010

Before I studied Peak Oil and alternate energy sources, and the subject of energy in general, I was under the impression that oil would start to run out at some distant date -- say, 2030. Much to my surprise, I learned that most oil-producing nations were already past peak production, that the U.S. peaked in 1970, and that production in the Persian Gulf countries has been flattening out. The Peak Oil community now generally believes peak world oil production/consumption to have occurred in July 2008. I've looked at all the charts and read the reports and find this highly probable.

When you first learn of Peak Oil, you first imagine that the use of oil will decline just as gradually as oil output increased over the decades. This is not true. There is a key concept central to any energy discussion called "EROEI" (energy return on energy invested). If half of oil production is used to mine the oil itself, then we effectively have only half of the oil available for other uses. Since the dawn of the oil age the EROEI of oil and other fossil fuels has been steadily dropping. At first you could basically just poke the ground, and oil spouted out. Early wells had an EROEI of 100:1. Today's oilfields are less accessible and take more technology to develop. EROEI is around 20:1, and this ratio will drop as we switch to progressively more difficult-to-reach sources.

At what point is oil extraction too costly to be worth it? Some analysts suggest 10:1 as a minimum EROEI for the maintenance of industrial civilization as we know it.

The fact is, there will not be a gradual decline in oil usage, but a rather abrupt drop-off as both oil production and EROEI go down. Furthermore, an economy crippled by a lack of energy leads to monetary crisis, which further decreases economic output, and so on.

Ultraconservatives will tell you that the U.S. has "vast oil shale reserves," as if oil supply were nothing to worry about. The fact is, oil shale is a terrible source with an EROEI of between 1.5:1 and 4:1, and requires vast amounts of water to extract. And wouldn't you know, the U.S. oil shale deposits are right in the mild of an arid zone with very little water (Utah, Wyoming, Colorado). No one in his right mind would develop those deposits. It is just used as a conservative talking point to downplay Peak Oil and related concerns.

The Athabaska tar sands are also a terrible oil source with a low EROEI of between 5:1 and 6:1. Yet now that's where the U.S. is getting a large portion of its oil. The conservative mantra is that the free market will take care of our energy issues, and that new technologies will be developed as oil prices rise. That's true to some extent, but just how fast can the free market act? Can a man be put on the moon 6 months after the market demands it? Try completely rebuilding national energy and transportation infrastructure in a matter of months or years, and by letting the free market run its course with no political guidance.

It turns out that, of all available energy sources, fossil fuels have by far the highest EROEI and the largest total supplies. Coal is still at about 50:1, oil near 20:1, and natural gas 10:1. Hydropower is very efficient but comes with environmental costs, and most potential has been developed already. Nuclear is roughly between 5:1 and 8:1. Wind is among the best, at near 18:1. Solar is surprisingly low at 3.75:1 to 10:1. Ethanol and biofuels are usually pathetic, sometimes below 1:1.

The truth is, many lauded alternative energy source really aren't good for more than small-scale local needs. To maintain current energy usage in an era of diminishing oil supplies would require huge immediate investment in a wide range of alternative energy infrastructure. As the EROEI of fossil fuels is still higher than the alternatives, it isn't happening on its own without government subsidies. Yet if you wait too long to develop things that take years to set up, then the energy might not be ready when the EROEI of oil and/or coal suddenly drops below a threshold level.

As the EROEI of oil and coal drops, the more pollution is produced (BP spill is a case in point). At some point the ill effects outweigh any benefits gained.

Finally, to run transportation, you need an extremely dense energy source such as oil. Airplanes cannot realistically run on electricity because no batteries have anything close to the amount of energy storage per unit weight needed to keep a plane in the air for long. When we switch to electric cars (if ever -- I am very skeptical anyone will have the money to buy them), we'll be reliant on elements such as lithium which are going to run out in the not-too-distant future, too. Basically, most current forms of transportation are unsustainable in the long run. The global economy as we know it is reliant upon cheap transportation fuel. Take that away, and 90% of international trade goes "poof."

To understand more about energy and what options are actually available to us, read Richard Heinberg's report "Searching for a Miracle." All his numbers are from industry sources and experts. If you're getting your info from conservative talk show hosts, get ready to hear a ton of B.S.

So what does this have to do with college debt?

Basically, any debt is a gamble that in the future you will be able to produce more than you are currently producing. National debt is a gamble on increasing GDP. To increase, GDP requires additional resource inputs or more efficient use of existing inputs. Our economy runs on fossil fuels, which will soon begin to run out, no matter whether we have a Libertarian in office or a Socialist. Our national debt is rising quickly. Hundreds of billions of dollars were thrown at the banking system to keep it alive, and yet economic recovery has not resulted, unemployment is at 10%, and home foreclosures continue. Oil prices plummeted, and that didn't even help.

What happens when you have a practice of government funding its programs and operations through debt, and the economy stops growing for a long period of time? Default, hyperinflation, or deflation. Each in turn causes a substantial drop in GDP. What goes for nations goes for individual debtors, too. While the Bush and Obama bailout plans shored up the banking system for now, it's still screwed unless GDP growth returns. GDP growth is associated with increased energy consumption. If there is too little energy available, energy prices rise rapidly in response to any sort of economic recovery, and recession resumes. If this happens 2, 3, or 4 times, people and businesses will get the picture and radically change their activities and habits. I wonder what the stock market will look like after that.

Now look at education. For decades colleges and universities have been adding more and more bells and whistles, more and more infrastructure, and have been raising the cost of education in relative as well as absolute terms. You used to be able to go into just a little debt to attend college. Now it's tens of thousands of dollars. Who's benifiting? Of course, the colleges. There is a vast PR and conventional wisdom machine telling you to go to college and not fear taking on student debt, and for a long time it worked, but as soon as growth ends, people with debts are screwed, unless government steps in and declares a general debt amnesty. I wouldn't count on it.

Think about where your tuition money is actually going. What percentage goes to pay your professors? Do people realize they're paying for air conditioning, building construction and maintenance, landscape architecture, administrative staff, cultural events, and a million other things? All the while you are told, "college debt is good debt. It is an investment in your future. It's worth a million dollars." (actually, more like $500,000, for past graduates).

Basically, college students are going to wake up one day and realize they are up to their eyeballs in debt in a failing economy with no job prospects because all the things they studied to become are currently not in demand because they are all linked to the fossil-fuel based economy, which will be abandoned or at least vastly downgraded.

If you ask what would I do, I would take a serious look at your situation and make every possible effort to avoid taking on debt. I would develop skills and contacts and assets that would put me in a better position to weather a long-term economic downturn with all of its new opportunities as well as mass disillusionment. I would not place my bets on an economic recovery. We had cheap fossil fuels (free energy) to pull us out of the Great Depression. Before that we essentially lived in a traditional, low-energy society. Now we have built up an incredibly energy-intensive society and will soon have no more cheap energy left.

On Climate Change and Peak Oil at a conservative blog

posted at biggovernment.com, Mar. 2, 2010

Superb op-ed. The author is accurate in his assessment of the science and the causes for opposition to climate change mitigation. The only problem is the name of the author, "Al Gore," which elicits nausea from half of the U.S. population. So, like always, his article will be supported by half the U.S. population that is already aware of the problem and spurned by the other half that is unaware or highly skeptical of the problem and traditionally distrustful of anything coming out of a Democrat's mouth.

Unfortunately, such is the climate data coming in from around the world that even if Al Gore were publicly hanged and all prominent climate scientists put in jail, it would make absolutely no difference. Ice mass is shrinking and sea levels are rising. Temperatures have risen and continue to rise, particularly in Arctic regions. The oceans are acidifying from CO2 uptake. These are in addition to a host of large-scale ecological problems such as topsoil loss, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, etc., each of which pose dire threats to modern civilization.

In addition to all that, Peak Oil is here. Worldwide oil extraction will soon go into permanent decline. Our economy and our lives will be changing dramatically in the next 10-15 years, regardless of our political persuasions. The cost of maintaining our current energy-intensive lifestyles will rise whether we like it or not, regardless of which party is "running the show."

So, even if you read and listen to conservative media and are skeptical about climate change, you should be worried about the looming inevitability of oil decline and its implications for society. Unless alternatives are developed very quickly, there will be a rocky (euphamism) transition to a post-oil world.

For those who are opposed to big government, Peak Oil may be a positive event. Big government depends on a highly centralized concentration of resources, and in a post-oil world this will be impossible. Alternative energy sources (except nuclear) are generally much more local and decentralized than oil and coal. Without oil, agribusiness will become unsustainable, and agriculture will switch to local, smaller-scale production. Other changes will take place that reverse the direction of capital accumulation from "periphery to center" to "center to periphery."

In any event, things cannot continue as they are because our entire modern economy is dependent upon the use of finite nonrenewable resources that are gradually running out. If we can start changing now because of climate threats, all the better. If we wait because of powerful corporate interests and societal momentum, the transition will be more abrupt and rockier. In the end it will all be the same, because our current economic model is unsustainable (which means, "cannot continue indefinitely").

p.s. I am not a democrat

Who will take action on climate change?

posted at climateprogress.org, Mar. 2, 2010

Jeff, great comments about the need for extensive popular protests. As the other posters demonstrate, such a movement is unlikely to come from people who are already well entrenched in a fossil-fuel dependent lifestyle, even if they understand the risks associated with climate change and our current economic course. At some point, I believe, the university students of the U.S. will wake up and realize that society has given them no future. Part of this may come from climate change, part from the crisis of social security and healthcare. Sadly, I think this will happen too late because people seem to respond only to imminent threats (i.e. the next few years), whereas climate change is a creeping threat with changes too incremental to register as an imminent catastrophe in people's minds. These student protests may well come in 10-15 years, not today when we need them.

My personal hope is that Peak Oil and the subsequent decline and rising cost of oil production will wreak enough economic havoc that the vectors of economic incentives will finally change from "we (corporations) need to get people to consume as much as possible" to "we have to downsize, localize, deconcentrate production, and recycle." This will be the most efficient climate change solution.

Today many of us are justifiably trying to push the ideas of hybrid and electric cars, alternative energy, home heating efficiency, etc. Such innovations would allow us to hold on to our current societal model while making modest improvements in energy efficiency leading to a gradual tapering off and slow decline of CO2 emissions.

However, what Peak Oil may well bring is a USSR-style collapse with a subsequent 50% or more drop in GDP, making the current modest efforts a moot point. I believe strong "climate change action" will only come about as a side effect of economic collapse and restructuring. I think it will come when personal debt reaches a tipping point and large numbers of people begin to go bankrupt. Debt will accumulate not for reasons directly traceable to climate change or Peak Oil, but for immediate reasons such as medical bills, joblessness, house payments, and utilities. Waves of personal and corporate bankrupcies will shock the banking system and lead to a general financial crisis. At some point, no further government "stimulus" will be possible, the country will default, and economic collapse will be unavoidable.

It seems likely that relatively few people will recognize that exploitation of finite fossil fuels is the ultimate cause of the economic crash. They will blame the Republicans or the Democrats rather than the disappearance of cheap energy. Only in hindsight, from the perspective of a post-oil economy, will the true causes become apparent.

One can only hope that the cheap energy begins to disappear soon enough to provide real climate mitigation when it is still possible to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

What is sustainable?

posted at Yale 360, Nov. 13, 2009

Let's try to tie together all the environmental problems and look at what a successful, sustainable worldwide society will look like now, and 100, 200, 1000 years down the road.

In the long run, you cannot have populations that exceed the carrying capacity of their specific locale. We can get away with it now because cheap fossil fuels allow us to transport food across the globe. This will have to end. The era of "food largely obtained from sources 1000 miles away" is just a flash in the pan, totally unsustainable in the long run. In the long-term, food will be obtained from within a relatively small radius from one's home. That's how it's always been done.

The same goes for water and all other crucial resources necessary to sustain life. Some things, like special tools and certain materials or goods, might well be transported greater distances like they have been historically. Food -- no. Water -- no. Building materials -- no.

That means no more Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, or vast LA megalopolis. No more overpopulated Somalia and other poverty-stricken 3rd world countries that have become dependent on international aid.

The sooner we revert to local self-sustenance with a reasonable amount of international trade, the more death and suffering we will be able to avert. Populations must be capped at levels sustainable for the LOCAL ecosystem. Any effective measures -- no matter how politically incorrect and repugnant to our moral senses -- are better than no measures, allowing the population to continue to grow unchecked and thus endangering the entire civilization.

We should be funding vast population reduction programs in overpopulated countries, distributing contraceptives, pamphlets, etc. and making all foreign aid contingent upon the government fulfilling an obligation to cap population at a level such that the country can support itself sustainably within a few years.

I'm sorry, but repeatedly coming in from the outside to feed starving people in an overpopulated location and allow them to continue reproducing is immoral. With food aid should come forced sterilization or its quantitative equivalent.

Within the U.S., energy and water prices need to be raised either by taxing consumers or by taxing producers. Money raised needs to be directed towards developing the infrastructure to replace our current wasteful infrastructure based on unsustainable individual consumption and automobile usage. People need to go back to sustainable living models -- that is, either living very compactly in dense towns (e.g. the center of any old European town) or living in a rural setting where one's resources come from the land one lives on.

We can easily consume 90% fewer resources without suffering a real loss of quality of life. Quantity of "stuff" -- yes. But research shows that happiness is largely independent of consumption levels.

Our current societal model is "economo-centric." It has seemed like a great model because it has raised our standard of living and life expectancy, until recent decades. Now we clearly see its weaknesses. The U.S. is technically "the land of the free," but in actuality free only in a certain way, while enjoying less of other types of freedom. To test the limits of freedom in the U.S., just try to obtain a small parcel of land within walking distance of your job, build a little shack with a garden in back, and work just enough to cover basic expenses for food, clothes, tools, and the occasional book or beer. Ludicrous! We are roped into an economical system that requires us to constantly consume and produce. This must change, and will change, once cheap fossil fuel energy becomes scare.

Our _government_ may not be authoritarian, but our society is run by corporations, which govern us in more subtle ways. The whole rules of the economic 'game' need to change. No more focus on GDP!! Rather, "Gross Happiness Index" or something like that (as is practiced in Bhutan). Just think what we could achieve if happiness, not economic growth, were the focus of administrative policy.

There is no way of escaping the reality that things cannot continue as they are now. The changes required go very deep -- even to the heart of our paradigms about what a good society should be like.