Preparing for Peak Oil

[Enforcer Talen]

Time for the 30 year game of dnd, methinks.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I just thought I'd add, most all of the major car companies have shown a decline in sales this past month, yet interestingly, sales of aircraft have gone up, in the US at least. Because aerospace doesn't have the costs of automotives and is typically well subsidised, it would seem many are increasing their fleets from private small time services to multinational airlines.

This doesn't bode well for climate change either.

The Antwerp refinery has also started lowering output in anticipation of the Christian trade worker union downing tools this month over pay disputes. So shortages of fuel in Belgium, at least, may be coming soon. The UK has also seen the gap between petrol and diesel close lately, price-wise. This likely means someone still believes in that "special relationship" and is shipping refined oil products to the US to help out.

[Enforcer Talen]

We'll see what happens when the subsidization ends.

[Arrow]

I'd like to thank Admiral Valdemar for ruthlessly crushing any optimism I might have had about peak oil not being too bad. Now I'm really fucking depressed...

[aerius]

I'm more worried about the publishing industry. I could survive without the Internet but if I can't even get a good book to pass the time with then life is going to be very boring. I seriously have no idea what I'd do without books and the Internet to pass the time. Sleep a lot most likely.

There's this thing called a public library, which will have countless thousands of books in it. The big ones in my city have millions of books, a shortage of reading material ain't gonna be an issue.

Besides, you'll probably be too busy running around doing all kinds of chores and trying to scrape out a living to have much free time.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Well, then air travel becomes the domain of the super-rich. Fantasies like O'Leary's dream of flying people via Ryanair aeroplanes from the UK to the US for £7 are one thing; to cut all non-essential air travel is quite another. Get used to ships again.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'd like to thank Admiral Valdemar for ruthlessly crushing any optimism I might have had about peak oil not being too bad. Now I'm really fucking depressed...

Thankfully, not having so much optimism already means it's not as much an issue for me now. I almost don't bother watch the news or read papers anymore the world just depresses or pisses me off too much. Unfortunately, myself and my family cannot live separate from the world.

It's not all bad, but I wouldn't get used to the life you're living now and go into denial. The problem with humans is they have a very poor grasp of how things can change so quickly, and as human existence is a blip in geological time, so is the oil age within the confines of the human civilisation timescale.

[Enforcer Talen]

I went into shock when I heard from global warming that we will prolly lose a billion humans and half the animal kingdom.

Losing cars and planes was the 2nd shock.

But I shall perservere!

[Crazy_Vasey]

There's this thing called a public library, which will have countless thousands of books in it. The big ones in my city have millions of books, a shortage of reading material ain't gonna be an issue.

Besides, you'll probably be too busy running around doing all kinds of chores and trying to scrape out a living to have much free time.

In *cities*. If peak oil hits then I'll most likely end up being forced to return to the family home just to avoid sleeping on the streets (software engineering types are gonna be shit out of luck come peak oil, I expect) and that's in a town with a completely suck-ass library. Such is life. I expect I'll have bigger things to worry about, like not starving in a country with a rather lop-sided people/arable land ratio.

[Arrow]

It's not all bad, but I wouldn't get used to the life you're living now and go into denial. The problem with humans is they have a very poor grasp of how things can change so quickly, and as human existence is a blip in geological time, so is the oil age within the confines of the human civilisation timescale.

Moving to DC/Alexandra and going to work for the Federal government is looking better and better (they'll need software engineers for a little while yet, and I can also move to another position later).

The thing that scares me the most is not having some form of air conditioning and modern medicine. I suffer from some nasty allergies, mild asthma and psoriasis (so I don't tolerate heat very well at all), so not having those is going to make my life very, very hard.

[Seggybop]

I have nothing invested in the current world order, and I'll actually be glad to see many components of it fall apart, car culture above all. My main hope in all of this is that the suburban idiots who've so ignorantly wasted so many resources receive the greatest degree of pain, as it seems will be the case.

[Bug-Eyed Earl]

My question is: I'm 27. If this hits 2010 at the earliest, what are the chances of alternate energy sources becoming viable(I have read R & D could take 20-30 years)? I think the big tragedy of all of this would be the isolation of humanity- if you're not wealthy, you're pretty much stuck in your pocket of the world/country. If there's one good thing the Information
Age has wrought, its the world being brought together.

I can survive. But will we see something close to the return of the linked world, of law and order, in my lifetime?

Another question- if we don't get wiped out by a meteor, is the Energy Age just a blip in a mostly agrarian human history?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

My question is: I'm 27. If this hits 2010 at the earliest, what are the chances of alternate energy sources becoming viable(I have read R & D could take 20-30 years)? I think the big tragedy of all of this would be the isolation of humanity- if you're not wealthy, you're pretty much stuck in your pocket of the world/country. If there's one good thing the Information
Age has wrought, its the world being brought together.

Essentially zero. The time to have developed and implemented petroleum alternatives on a wide scale was over 30 years ago, when we got a taste of what happens when a petroleum-hungry First World nation has to make do with much less petroleum than it's used to. As it is we're guaranteed tailspinning markets and a global depression an increasingly diminishing number of people have experienced firsthand. Except even during the Great Depression, petroleum was absurdly cheap, and people got through the hardest times by getting in their cars and driving cross-country to chase work. During the Peak Oil Depression, that's not really going to be an option. As it is, there's nothing that can do more than cushion the body-blow and lessen the depths to which things will sink. And while declining oil supply will curb demand and spur increased research in alternatives, they will take much longer to come to market than they would've in better times, since the global economy will be in full contraction.

I can survive. But will we see something close to the return of the linked world, of law and order, in my lifetime?

The short answer is likely "no." Get used to the thought of someday having to take the train to get across country and sailing by boat if you want to get over the ocean. Get used to the notion of a personal automobile and cross-country drives being affordable by the average Joe being a tale to shock your grandchildren with. Get used to hearing about a lot more global strife, as the rush to fuck over the Third World will take decades to properly play out.

With that being said, there'll probably be plenty of law and order in the First World. It'll just be the in-your-face kind that drags you out of your home in the dead of night and beats you if you're overheard complaining about how much everything sucks.

Worse still, there's no combination of energy alternatives with sufficiently short R&D and deployment timelines that will support more than a modest fraction of the current global economy and aggregate standard of living. You need to go out really far on the limb to find technologies that would support the energy-extravagant lifestyles we've all gotten so accustomed to.

Another question- if we don't get wiped out by a meteor, is the Energy Age just a blip in a mostly agrarian human history?

There's always that risk. Really, it depends on how we handle the coming decades, and just how much envronmental damage global warming will ultimately do. Especially given that when oil starts to skyrocket in price, the first reaction of quite a few nations is going to be to start burning a lot more coal. And recall that we have knowledge about science and technology that nobody before the Energy Age had. What could happen is one of a number of possible scenarios:

A) The output of civilization rises sharply, peaks at where we are now, and then permanently crashes. This is incredibly unlikely, given what we know, and how much industrial infrastructure can be built without having to rely on bountiful fossil fuels.

B) The output of civilization rises sharply, peaks, crashes, varies for a bit, starts to climb slowly again, and then rises sharply to another unsustainable peak and then crashes again to repeat the whole process all over again. This scenario is much more likely than A, because humans are hard-wired to consider only immediate consequences. If things are going good, people will tend to reach for more than they can really handle.

C) The output of civilization rises sharply, peaks, crashes, and oscillates around some average level dictated by what energy you can extract from purely renewable sources. This is also a likely outcome. To become a space-faring civilization, you need to be able to spend enormous quantities of effort and energy to build up a useful presence in orbit. If we get alternatives in place and budget our energy carefully, then we'll bank enough reserve capacity to climb out of the walls of this crib/prison we call Earth. If not, then civilization retreats to Early Industrial Age, and will oscillate around that level of sophistication until the next major extinction event.

D) The output of civilization rises sharply, peaks, falls sharply, but doesn't crash, and then slowly climbs back up to the original level and surpasses it. This is the most optimistic of the potential scenarios. Bringing it about will require a concerted global effort and a lot of forethought and planning. It could happen, but it's going to be quite the long shot.

[AniThyng]

I suddenly have this vision of pockets of 1st world high-tech cities and vast areas of barely industrial villages ala C&C, only without the tiberium...

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I don't see why Scenario D is such a long shot. Nuclear power can easily produce more energy than we use today while being sustainable for millions of years. Investing in rail lines for waste disposal that avoid populated areas makes it even better. It's almost a given that energy consumption will eventually come back up and then vastly exceed where we are now and people will go right back to living their extravagant lifestyles, only without all the negative consequences. This is the silver lining that doom and gloomers are missing. After the huge depression and misery that follows the end of cheap oil, the picture gets pretty rosy compared to where we are today, especially since net gain fusion power can't be more than 50-100 years away at the rate technology develops. Even without it, modern nuclear facilities and well chosen waste disposal sites means practically unlimited amounts of energy with almost no negative environmental or health effects at all.

[Darth Wong]

Cars could still become far more inconvenient and expensive to operate even if nuclear power and other non-carbon sources of energy became more plentiful. The fact is that batteries suck, fuel cells suck, everything we currently use to store loads of electrical energy sucks. They all require nasty chemicals, cost too much, store too little, wear out too fast.

[Admiral Valdemar]

As some say, this is a liquid fuels crisis, not so much a "Peak Energy" crisis. If we had an alternative to oil that didn't have the problems ethanol and liquid coal have, then we'd have only a few issues that could be ironed out and no major global problem. Right now, there is nothing remotely like oil out there for us to run our cars on, so you either pay the money (until the energy costs are the overriding factor) or you learn to love public transport. Simple as.

What you're missing, Arthur_Tuxedo, is that nothing you propose exists. The fastest you're going to get reactors up for nuclear is going to be painfully slow when we need thousands, not hundreds (there exist only 400 reactors in the whole world). Uranium will peak production long before then, which means price rises and fighting over it. Nuclear is very often overhyped. Yes, it is a viable energy source. No, it is not going to change anything in the meantime. Nuclear also doesn't replace the various other things oil makes, which isn't just your car move.

And like I've stated before, even if the energy issue wasn't there, if you think we're going to not only return to present levels, but then exceed them, you're obviously not well versed in thermodynamics. There's simply no way the whole world's populace is going to keep on growing indefinitely.

[His Divine Shadow]

About the question of electricity storage, could the invention of room temperature superconductors help there? I was thinking you'd have electricity run around in a superconducting ring and it wouldn't loose energy to resistance that way, then you could tap that energy somehow.

[Admiral Valdemar]

If it is technically doable for home use and economical, sure. It'd help to have such circuits in everything, but from what I know, such technology is still the confines of R&D or expensive science and industry.

[Colonel Olrik]

There's simply no way the whole world's populace is going to keep on growing indefinitely.

We don't need to grow, our populations are either stable or decreasing, or would be if not for immigration. In a way, it's not our fault that countries like India and China have billions of people and still behave as if they're entitled to everything a Canadian can have.

If at some point we make the jump to space, then energy consumption can increase indefinitely.

[His Divine Shadow]

But these populations will also fall, either they starve or die off in horrible ways due to peak oil or self-inflicted enviromental damages and possibly global warming. Or they just stop growing so much as living standards improve.

[Admiral Valdemar]

We don't need to grow, our populations are either stable or decreasing, or would be if not for immigration. In a way, it's not our fault that countries like India and China have billions of people and still behave as if they're entitled to everything a Canadian can have.

If at some point we make the jump to space, then energy consumption can increase indefinitely.

This would mean bringing in population control, which much as I advocate, is right up there with eugenics in the public eye. That will have to change.

Even keeping present levels of population, the per capita usage of energy in Chindia is causing a great strain which is likely why the peak is now and not thirty years in the future. Someone is going to have to tell that two billion people that they can't have our lifestyles.

[K. A. Pital]

There's enough industrial resources to support 12 million if they were used in a socialized manner right now. When the industrial production starts rapidly declining in a heavy economic crisis which will lead to deaths of millions if not billions of people, it's only inevitable that the government will have to take industrial production of energy and possibly mechanized agriculture under it's complete control to prevent a yet greater disaster in those spheres by conserving at least some capital there.

Technically the main problem lies in the fact that you have to maintain mechanization to keep the food produce at a level where it can supply over 6 million, and with the decline in mechanization, food supply will also be cut (not to mention the already-existing inequities which contribute to the hunger of ~1/8th of world population).

And the rise of government-controlled nuclear super-grids is only a matter of time and technology. If those who control the technology have also the will and the resources to start mass nuclear production, the situation can be softened.

But not salvaged. As Admiral Valdemar already pointed out, nuclear (uranium-based fusion) is a finite resource too which also has a peak of production and is only viable for the next hundred years post the oil peak, or so.

[Hillary]

As some say, this is a liquid fuels crisis, not so much a "Peak Energy" crisis.

So is the major issue transportation, at least in the long term?

[Colonel Olrik]

Even keeping present levels of population, the per capita usage of energy in Chindia is causing a great strain which is likely why the peak is now and not thirty years in the future. Someone is going to have to tell that two billion people that they can't have our lifestyles.

But can they afford it? Our Countries are strong enough and rich enough to buy oil now and at higher prices (I think that having the EU is and will be of great importance in this crisis). Can people in Chinindia afford to buy gas for private use, even now, when Europeans and Americans have ten times as much money?