ozzy43

Nobody Cares How the Energy Crisis Gets Solved

Allen, I agree that your extrapolation is *plausible* - I simply think mine is moreso. But I am no prophet - I am not asserting this all WILL happen. I simply assert that, based upon the available evidence as I interpret it and upon my personal experience and upon what seem to me to be be the abundantly evident lessons of history, I think it the most plausible outcome.

I have no doubt that demand destruction will have an impact, and that particular game may be played over and over several times in the coming months and years - as oil inexorably continues its long term upward trend, absent some quasi-miraculous change in the fundamentals. But every time it does, a vast sigh of relief, a back-pedaling of pressure for *real* change will accompany it. This 'refusal to accept reality' which you and I both see so clearly, will thus perpetuate itself. I can see it happening already. What evidence is there that at some point, people will in fact wake up? Perhaps you see some - I do not. In point of fact, large elements of our socio-political system - educational, corporate, political - are designed to indoctrinate us into being willing believers of political and historical and economic mythologies - we are unknowingly cloaked by our illusions, here. Our refusal to accept reality is no accident - it is a natural and entirely intended by product of the cultural conditioning to which we are subjected from the moment we are born. I don't see this changing any time soon.

Further, it's not peak oil that should concern us - in the end, that won't matter - it's peak *exports*.

www.energyandcapital.c...

If we'd hit this patch 15 or 20 years ago (back before I gave up on the hopelessly corrupt political process), I would probably not have been as gloomy. But the past few years have demonstrated - I think conclusively - that enough of the American populace has been so thoroughly conditioned, that when depression comes, our response will be - predictably - wrongheaded, jingoistic, confused, inarticulate (much like many of the posts we see here on SA about energy) and - in the end - violent. We've already seen a foretaste of the scapegoating and saber-rattling impulses that accompany such events, after all. Just a pale shadow of things to come.

The Carter Doctrine remains in effect - it is difficult to imagine that our politicians - knaves and rascals that they are - would *not* use the military to go get 'our' oil once severe dislocations begin to occur (thus threatening their hold on power, or offering the political opportunists among them a shot at power via this path) - the public will *demand* it. And the politicians will respond as they always do. We'll go after the 'evildoers' who are conspiring against and imperiling American national security interests. Man, won't that be righteous?

I'm certain this sounds outlandish to most, but in my view, it's entirely within the realm of plausibility. So history assures us. And we are no more creatures free of the lessons of history than we are creatures free of the limits of nature.

So will there be oil? Absolutely - but will we have access to it? I am not so sure.

I think the Saudis have been playing a careful game of recent years, and this is the transition time for them - even the most dense observers will soon realize that Saudi production has been flat since '05 - despite repeated assurances that 'more's-a comin' - we promise!' The time when they need to begin to - carefully - distance themselves from their former best-bud/best-customer... supplier, the US, and move away from the commodity driven pricing regime to bilateral agreements which will drastically alter the game. Where we will be just one of several bidders, and *they* will have the leverage. More on this here:

www.clingendael.nl/pub...

IMO, Iraq was intended to serve notice as a demonstration of American power, which could be leveraged to secure favorable status for such agreements. That is, this was our opening gambit in the resource wars to come, intended to secure a prime position for us going forward. Instead, it turned into a demonstration of the *limits* of American power - and in turn has considerably diminished our leverage. We thought we had -and led with - the Ace of trumps - we did not realize the rules of the game had changed. So sad. We forgot to learn from history (and not for the first time).

Maybe you are right. Perhaps not. I hope you are. I don't want to be right this time. Time will tell.

Nobody Cares How the Energy Crisis Gets Solved

The only way we will be able to come to terms with this new reality is if we, by which I mean a large majority of Americans, (to borrow Allen's excellent phraseology) prove willing and able to understand there is no such thing as "our God-given right to do whatever the &*# we please" with the energy dense, finite resources available to us. And we must accomplish this in weeks or months, not years or decades. Even in such a case, we'll need to be incredibly fortunate and disciplined and wise. Starting yesterday.

I see little to no evidence of this happening on a sufficient scale, and plenty of evidence - e.g. some of these comments and innumerable others in various SA articles - that there is a powerful resistance to accepting this reality, and that this resistance persists at all levels of our society, including among the ludicrously worthless and venal political classes. Denial, illogic and magical thinking (the miracle of human ingenuity can solve ANY problem! Wheee!) continue to reign supreme here in America. Thus, while I agree with Allen wholeheartedly in his assessment of the 'problem', I am considerably less optimistic about the outcome of the "solutions".

Many have proven willing to switch to a Prius - few are willing or even able to switch to a bicycle, and that's the level of change - not change, but *convulsive* change [ref: Kunstler] - that needs to be undertaken to avoid a probable outright collapse.

Every non-renewable - oil, gas, uranium, coal - faces near term depletion, especially if we make the huge moves to them that wouild be needed, while attempting to sustain anything close to current usage patterns. Regarding the '200 year' supply of coal - how can so few understand the implicit clause here: "at present rates of consumption"?? Also, the underlying fossil fuel platform is necessary to locate, mine, extract, process and distribute all of these. And environmental consequences, en masse, for many of these 'cures' - like coal-to-liquids, or synfuels - could easily be worse than the disease.

What I'd like to understand is: what part of NON-RENEWABLE, what part of FINITE, do the folks who think we can drill or mine or build our way out NOT understand?

Biofuels also are hugely problematic in terms of ERoEI, scarce land (you wanna eat or drive? or, which nation shal we starve so we can keep driving?) and the fact that fossil fuels supply the feedstocks for Industrial agriculture as it is practiced today.

Solar, wind, geothermal, by all means (I'm not only invested in these monetarily, I am preparing to BUILD them in real life). The primary problem with these is 1) the time they will require to scale (decades), and 2) the cheap fossil fuel platform upon which these, like all 'alternatives', depend utterly to manufacture and deploy.

All these options, combined together *intelligently* (I guess these days it doesn't go without saying), may - *may* - be able to *soften* the blow that is coming, at least in some areas, but at this late date they most assuredly cannot be ramped in time to *replace* - and that fact leads to an ineluctable discontinuity which will manifest itself in the collapse of at least *some* of the systems currently totally reliant upon cheap oil to function (e.g. suburbs, transport, big box retail, agricultural/grocery, computer, pharmaceutical systems, for starters - and did I mention the military?). Once you begin to grasp the degree to which these systems that, to a large degree, comprise that which we call 'society', are interconnected (read: interdependent), you will grasp the fact that collapse of one, or two, or several, means the likely collapse of others, then others, etc - the domino effect, at the least creating a powerfully destabilizing affect across society, with attendant severe political, economic and social dislocations. The same thing that makes networking - interconnectedness - so powerful is the thing that makes it so vulnerable. More on this notion and how it ties into the energy debate here:

anz.theoildrum.com/nod...

You see, what is not clearly understood in the discussion of 'alternatives' to oil is inherent in this misleading nomenclature itself. These technologies are not so much *alternatives* to, as they are *derivatives* of, oil. Try making a PV panel without oil - or a wind turbine. Or cooking oil out of kerogen without vast fossil fuel inputs.

It is difficult to imagine that we could have devised - in full knowledge - a tighter trap than the one in which we find ourselves.

Now add one final straw to this energy camel's back:

To accomplish these things which can soften the blow - to ramp renewables, migrate oil/gas to nuclear/coal/etc as part of a sensible, coordinated transition - and to do it in a way such that the pieces function together and support each other along the way (thus creating new and more sustainable interdependencies): this will cost a truly stupendous amount of money (IEA says $45T to halve CO2 by 2050 - how much more to radically restructure, replacing wholesale the fossil fuel platform which undergirds and interconnects every aspect of our society?).

Not to mention, properly functioning global capital markets, which at the moment seem to somewhere off beyond the horizon.

But we have no money. We are no longer the affluent society we used to be. Has nobody awakened to this fact? America today is like one of the dotcom companies that promised huge profits way off in the future but is flat broke and leveraged up to its eyeballs today and for the foreseeable future. To say that we are broke is not going far enough - we have also bankrupted our children and their children after them in our quest to perpetuate the New American Dream (read: our unsustainable lifestyles). And the very same agency which is primarily responsible for our vast pauperism thanks to nearly a century of reckless disregard - the wildly out of fiscal control, drunken sailor on shore leave federal government [coupled with its best friend the counterfeiting, inflation-generating, purchasing-power-annih... Fed] - is the agency to which so many now wish to turn for succor, the agency with which many plead: 'do something!!'! It has done something. It has, with our willing and often eager participation, effectively destroyed us. That's what happens when you feed the hand that bites you. So to speak.

Nobody Cares How the Energy Crisis Gets Solved

Correction: PL was not the first to bring up global warming. Apologies to him/her for asserting that he/she did. I stand by the rest of my post.

Nobody Cares How the Energy Crisis Gets Solved

I have no idea how climate change made it's way in here - looks like pretzel logic is going for the straw man win. Kudos on the misdirection.

I also did not cite conservation as the "real" solution - two straw men in one post, goin' for the record I guess.

But to take conservation off the table - which seems to be the general argument, near as I can tell - in a time of at least *apparent* supply issues going forward (well, if you listen to those dangfool petroleum geologists - but then what do they know compared to us smart investors??), is, to put it mildly, foolhardy.

Whatever happened to the notion that adapting to changing conditions was a wise thing to do, even one of the things that made humans 'masters' of the planet?

I do know this - regarding this astonishing assertion:

"Oil as a natural resource is plentiful in our country -- remove the government/environment... blockades and our increased production of oil will drive prices down for a long time to come."

That's not supported by fact, evidence or data (nor is any provided to back it up). The amount of oil left in this country is either 1) too small to make much of a diff, or 2) too difficult to get to for it to be economically feasible (i.e. ERoEI too low). Lots and lots of info at theoildrum.com and other similar sites.

If you wish to disagree with the majority of petroleum geologists (the ones NOT currently consulting to the international oil companies), then listen to what Matt Simmons, Chairman and CEO of the biggest energy investment bank out there, says. This guy is no 'government scientist' nor 'wacko environmentalist'. Read his 'Twilight in the Desert' for a full treatment. In the meantime, here's a brief item in 'The Economist':

www.economist.com/peop...

Magical thinking is the opposite of critical thinking. Stick to the latter for planning, the former for hoping.

Nobody Cares How the Energy Crisis Gets Solved

An absurd list that is completely out of touch with all fact and reality. Most of these would make zero difference, or could not be effectuated either economically or technologically. The 'energy crisis' is not a problem to be solved, it is a new condition to which we will per force adapt. Or not.

Suggest the author stop reading political polemics and begin reading petroleum geologists reports. Should also acquaint himself with the 'law of receding horizons', and other salient aspects of REALITY rather than focusing on the fantasies listed above, to wit: oil shale/tar sands, big oil companies and their profits (the nationalized oil companies now control the market), ERoEI, OCS/ANWR facts, oil rig technology (esp. deepwater) and current availability, etc.

I have to say, this list epitomizes precisely why "we" will not "solve" the "energy crisis" - it's a perfect example of how deeply Americans are in denial, and how lacking in critical thinking skills is our legacy from public schools. To demand simple solutions to incredibly complex problems is not productive.

Note that there is not a SINGLE measure on the list which proposes any sort of conservation, or readjustment to a lower level of per capita energy usage. Astonishingly myopic and utterly fantasy-driven.