Preparing for Peak Oil

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Seriously, the number of miracle cures being touted here to try and save car culture is pathetic.

Does everyone realize what that 10% of our current fuel which could be produced by algae would be going for?

It would be running vital elements of our industry and transportation infrastructure while we retooled to survive the lack of oil.

Your Mazda is gone, okay? Start making plans for living life with absolutely no automobile usage now.

[Alferd Packer]

Hey, all I'm saying is that the retooling is already underway. Personally, I'm already not using a car at all and functioning just fine, and I'm doing it from within those oft-reviled American suburbs! I'm sure I will miss having a car for its convenience initially, but I'll be healthier for all the walking and biking. Though, it's gonna be a bitch and a half come this winter to walk 2.5 miles to the train station.

Since gas is supposed to hit around $4/gal this year stateside, would $5/gal be reasonable to expect for next year, or would it be something closer to $6?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Hey, all I'm saying is that the retooling is already underway. Personally, I'm already not using a car at all and functioning just fine, and I'm doing it from within those oft-reviled American suburbs! I'm sure I will miss having a car for its convenience initially, but I'll be healthier for all the walking and biking. Though, it's gonna be a bitch and a half come this winter to walk 2.5 miles to the train station.

Since gas is supposed to hit around $4/gal this year stateside, would $5/gal be reasonable to expect for next year, or would it be something closer to $6?

That principally depends on how much damage this years' crop of hurricanes does to our offshore oil production, the outlook of next year's hurricane season, and how much longer we have on the top of the production plateau. Though, with the KSA stating that they're not going to increase production any further into the foreseeable future, we're at that point where the last couple of percentage points of global reserve capacity will be eaten by growing demand, and we'll start seeing an effective drop in effective oil production, due to demand further overshooting supply.

So, optimistically, if we catch a few breaks this season, and next season's hurricane season isn't as dramatic and the drop off the edge of the plateau doesn't occur next year, then prices will approach $4/gallon again, given shrinkages in refinery capacity. If we don't catch any breaks, but the edge of the plateau still remains in the future, then sure, we may be facing new record highs next year of gas going above $4/gallon and approaching $5/gallon. If the all the bad shit that could happen happens, and we see the end of the plateau, then yes, acceleration to $6/gallon and beyond won't be out of the question.

My estimates, however, are exceedingly optimistic and inherently conservative.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I think the best thing to do would be to simply introduce international oil consumption quotas which freeze all consumption by each country at current levels--except in countries like the USA where they should be cut by half and supported by the likes of an advertising campaign such as "You ride alone, you ride with HITLER!" back in WW2, except we'll substitute SATAN in the deep south..


(and massive rationing, of course).

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Good news for our transportation future. I've been doing some research into the matter and apparently third-rail systems are quite capable of electrical power generation for long distance trains. The main problem is that the voltage must be kept low to avoid arcing (1,000 volts being a good maximum, and DC current as a matter of course), and to reliably get power pickup from the shoe on the third rail, your maximum speed is going to be about 100 miles per hour. That is, however, plenty enough for freight and long distance trains, which will only exceed 90mph on limited sections of track as it stands now for the future.

The advantage here is that as long as the rail is in the correct shape for the pickup shoe to run along it, you can make it out of almost any conductive metal. Steel works fine, so does aluminum, and so does copper, obviously, and probably others I'm not thinking of. What this means is that we can create a seamless system on the North American continent of electric third-rail railroads using any material at hand. I suggest making the third rail identical in shape to the main rails (that is easily possible) as then we can use scrap rail and other things for emergency electrification, and simplify the production of new rail, of which we shall need quite a lot.

Aluminum mostly goes into things we no longer will be able to afford or need these days, anyway, so that production can be shifted to aluminum third rails easily enough. Copper should be, where preferable, reserved for overhead cantenary in areas where speeds of 110mph + may be achieved on the network with it, and the standardized engine designs can be very easily built to seamlessly transition from third rail to overhead power as many locomotives have been before. 660 volts DC operations on the Pennsylvania and New Haven railroads via third rail included locomotives in the range of 2,000 h.p. per unit, whereas modern locomotives usually produce around 4,000 h.p. So it won't be much additional in terms of locomotives. Since we have remote control for them, we can space the locomotives at different points inside the very long trains to distribute the load capacity around as much as possible. With a train more than a mile long you distribute the load capacity around pretty thoroughly by spacing locomotives throughout long unit trains.

Finally, third rails don't have to be on the outside, but can be placed between the existing rails, meaning no problems with the existing loading gauge of the railroads or with tunnels and bridges.

This means that emergency conversion to electrical power for railroads will be very easy and feasable when the oil crash comes, which will definitely help reduce the impacts of peak oil and global warming.

[SirNitram]

Perhaps I'm odd, but the loss of car culture and cheap air travel doesn't worry me as much as some other factors. I have little doubt that these things will return in time, althought it could be quite a very, very long time, and thus I might not see it.

The economic collapse and the religious backlash worry me far more. We're literally talking about a period where large sections of land that rose to economic prosperity in the last fify or so years will crash down to nothing, and it seems they're all rather more religious than other places. That strikes me as a very bad sign(To say nothing of what happens when apocalypse-fearing sects of Christianity see the Middle East basically erupt into one last war).

[Alferd Packer]

This means that emergency conversion to electrical power for railroads will be very easy and feasable when the oil crash comes, which will definitely help reduce the impacts of peak oil and global warming.

I certainly wouldn't mind that. As it stands, the train line I take runs all diesel because they leased the tracks before the freight company could be bothered to electrify them. And because Manhattan allows no diesel trains below 95th Street, I'm stuck making the changeover in Newark to take an electrified train the rest of the way into the city.

Happily, too, my line is in the minority. Most of the other lines are at least partially electrified, so stringing up overhead wire for the remaining stretches will be no problemo.

Another interesting tidbit: the freight companies are totally banking on this car kaboom; About a mile south of my train station is another freight track currently in use. Right now they're in the process of laying a second track, which will only bode well for them (and us!) in the long term.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Perhaps I'm odd, but the loss of car culture and cheap air travel doesn't worry me as much as some other factors. I have little doubt that these things will return in time, althought it could be quite a very, very long time, and thus I might not see it.

The economic collapse and the religious backlash worry me far more. We're literally talking about a period where large sections of land that rose to economic prosperity in the last fify or so years will crash down to nothing, and it seems they're all rather more religious than other places. That strikes me as a very bad sign(To say nothing of what happens when apocalypse-fearing sects of Christianity see the Middle East basically erupt into one last war).

It's not all bad news. How are they going to move, en-masse, against 'the infidel' if none of them have functioning cars? Yeah, we'll have large tracts of religious hellholes, much like today only worse. But by necessity, they'll be pretty much confined to those areas. My only real concern in that department is the poor folk who don't agree with the majority there are probably going to have to haul-ass out of there before they get lynched.

[Adrian Laguna]

Your Mazda is gone, okay? Start making plans for living life with absolutely no automobile usage now.

Seems a picked a good time to develop an aversion to car travel. I've started to, for no apparent reason, get headaches when I travel by car.

[Wanderer]

Seriously, the number of miracle cures being touted here to try and save car culture is pathetic.

Does everyone realize what that 10% of our current fuel which could be produced by algae would be going for?

It would be running vital elements of our industry and transportation infrastructure while we retooled to survive the lack of oil.

Your Mazda is gone, okay? Start making plans for living life with absolutely no automobile usage now.

Well I bought four donkeys today for heavy work, I have four horses, a Pony, 40 sheep, six dogs, nine cats, and a horse drawn wagon. Practically everyone in my area is riding horses or wagons to the nearby towns to save gas.

We are also practicing Horse Archery and Shooting for recreation purposes only...

Okay, I admit, just in case...

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

You know, a lot of people talk about how they'll live off the land and hunt when this hypothetical peak oil doomsday scenario comes around, but you have to realize that sort of lifestyle can only support a very small population density. When hordes of people start hunting to survive, the wildlife populations won't last long, and it's hard to effectively patrol rural areas.

[Eulogy]

You know, a lot of people talk about how they'll live off the land and hunt when this hypothetical peak oil doomsday scenario comes around, but you have to realize that sort of lifestyle can only support a very small population density. When hordes of people start hunting to survive, the wildlife populations won't last long, and it's hard to effectively patrol rural areas.

Indeed. There's a reason humans invented agriculture.

Anyway, how are we (as in the denizens of SD.net) going to survive this disaster? There have been pages detailing why PO will hit us hard, so why not start now on how to get through this?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The answer to this one is simple. The auto industries took back all their EV's when the leases expired and crushed them down in the middle of the night as soon as it looked like California's Zero Emission Mandate would get shot down. It had nothing whatsoever to do with any flaws of electric vehicles.

I never said it had anything to do with flaws, I was implying it was everything to do with politics, as you just proved for me.

So you think that political attitudes will remain unchanged despite economic collapse?

The "easy" uranium will last a century with modern breeder reactors, more than long enough for any kinks with the seawater method to sort itself out, and unlike shale oil, it actually is still economical to get uranium that way.

Breeders are also not in widespread use, are not the most fantastic of economic success stories and help in proliferation again (no one is going to invest in thorium until uranium disappears, which won't be anytime soon). You've got the political problem of allowing nuclear breeder reactors to prosper. There are also no large scale extraction sites for seawater uranium and until it is proven on such a scale assuming the price or uranium goes up past the '70s highs, then there's no reason to factor it in to short term solutions.

Since the reactors we're talking about haven't been built yet, the number of current reactors that use the latest technology is irrelevant. I agree about the political issue of letting certain nations have reactors that can be used to produce enriched uranium, but the U.S. won't be in a position to do a whole lot about it when it's more than just one nation.

The seawater uranium issue was covered by Sikon better than I could, so I won't parrot what he's said.

Large public works projects are a staple of depressions. It does, of course, depend on how steep the back side of the slope is, like I said.

And you need an awful lot of oil to make a nuke plant. This isn't like building a small dam or anything and it's not like Joe Bloggs out of work from GM is going to suddenly start helping to build your several hundred or so AP1000 plants. Expertise is a limiting factor too, and that's in short supply also.

Sikon covered the oil involved. Expertise is a problem, but can be mitigated by using standardized designs. Also, as far as I know, most engineers can be trained to work in a nuclear plant just like any other job training. After all, Mike worked at the CANDU plant, and I don't believe his degree was in nuclear engineering specifically, so it should happen that engineers working in other fields can switch over without years of training.

It happens if it's made to happen. If it's not made to happen, then it doesn't happen. There's no magic law of economics that says an industry can't grow 30, 300, or 3 thousand % per year if there's a desperate need for it.

No, the laws going against us are purely physics related. If there's not enough energy to make these solar fields, then they won't get made. To even contemplate renewable making up any decent proportion of US electrical output, you should have started decades ago.

The post-peak dropoff would have to be way beyond even the most pessimistic projections for there to literally not be enough energy to build the panels. Besides, even if it were true, and you can only build half of them, that half can produce the energy you need to build the rest. Anyway, solar is not cheap enough to compete with nulcear, but the logic goes for nuclear plants to. You get back whatever you spend building the plants, plus extra.

All the mechanization is not going to disappear, it will just be cut back as oil gets more expensive. It will dip during the crunch time and come back as nuclear replaces oil. Global warming in conjuction with peak oil will be a bitch, but it doesn't look like the worst of peak oil is set to coincide with the worst of global warming. Instead, it seems they'll hit about 10-20 years apart from each other.

How will nuclear replace oil? This is a liquid fuels crisis and nuclear is not oil. Nuclear could make hydrogen or DME, but only by wasting the majority of the energy you're getting. And mechanisation getting cut back is the issue, not it vanishing altogether. You're going to need to fuel your agriculture side of things as well as building several hundred brand new nuclear plants. That means your economy just died.

Never implied there wouldn't be an economic crisis. Anyway, nuclear is clearly not a drop-in solution to replace all oil today, but as the power generation goes nuclear, the vehicles, tools, and other power consumers will change in design to match. So I don't really see a "liquid fuel crisis" as anything separate from a general energy crisis. As one alleviates, so will the other.

In any case, it is likely that millions will die as a direct result of peak oil, perhaps tens of millions, and many more will be hungry and malnourished. But agriculture will not be hit so hard as to cause a loss of large fractions of the globe's population. All the oil would have to practically vanish overnight for that to happen, and no respected expert predicts the backside of the slope will be that steep.

You're missing the exponential function here. Humans aren't going to to stop breeding overnight either and the modest drop-offs in oil with the modest increase in population is going to get bigger and bigger every year.

Actually, they will. Not literally overnight, of course, but there's a generous lag between a drop in the death rate caused by modern technology and society and a drop in the birth rate, after which the birth rate suddenly drops precipitously. We've seen it happen in the first world, and we'll see it in the third world. The only reason we haven't is because they didn't benefit from modernity until much later and so their death rate dropped much more recently.

The first world agriculture industries could lose half their production rate and still be able to feed the world. As food prices go up, production increases to match. The idea that first world nations would need to hoard the food or there wouldn't be enough to go around is simply ridiculous.

And what of your transport? The UK nearly ran out of fuel after a week or two of blockades that cleaned the supermarkets out of food. No distribution system is as good as no food, just go to Africa and let them know that we have bountiful yields of the stuff, they'll not listen. The world is based around a precarious just-in-time delivery method. And if the food cannot make it to the people, then it is useless. The fact that MI5 even have planning scenarios based on this from terrorist attacks, to say nothing of a global energy crisis, is telling.

You keep assuming that we'll all wake up one day and find all the oil gone or 10 times as expensive as the day before, but the reality is that costs will simply go up. But food in the first world is so ridiculously cheap that costs could go up quite a lot and the countries would still be net exporters.

The primary reason why nuclear never took off is because of the shennanigans of the Department of Energy, and also because old nuclear technology was nowhere near as safe or as good as what we have today.

And this is all going to change for the near future is it? We've seen plenty of private firms screw over the people for a buck. The last thing you want is the likes of another Enron running a major project like this.

There will probably be many boondoggles and shameful episodes. There will probably be harmful environmental effects from plants that were rushed and corners that were cut. There will probably be several more plants like the "Whoops" plant in Washington. And yes, money-hungry corporations with proven track records of screwing people over for a buck will probably be given the keys to the city and use their power to line their pockets at the expense of everyone else. That's just the nature of our society. But none of that has anything to do with the prediction that nuclear can't fully replace oil as a source of cheap power.

There is no shortage to the number of areas that would be cut back before projects to restore energy production would be cut. Same goes for food production, for that matter.

But no one is investing in such plants because of the risk. When the insurance firms collapse, no one will want to risk anything. That leaves the gov't trying to fund all of these nuclear plants, and since the US is wasting its time with ethanol and coal, I don't see how it's remotely plausible to get them to replace fossil fuel output with nuclear in any reasonable timeframe when factoring real-world problems, not just technical ones. The US is already seeing limits to their nuclear renaissance as is, which will only be exacerbated by future ramping up of construction for such sites from elsewhere.

Now, don't see this as me dismissing nuclear out of hand. Because I'm not. It most certainly is going to be bigger in the future and only a fool would deny that even with the lacklustre investment in it for the time being. What I'm saying is that to replace all fossil fuels with nuclear before major troubles hit, as they are doing in the developing world now, is simply not possible. No report out there sees that happening without prior capital investment and construction well underway by now. The sheer number of reactors needed would be in the thousands. That runs into problems with storage of waste, locations for reactors to be properly utilised and the fact that you'll be building one and decommissioning one every day for the rest of our expansion into nuclear, even with reactors living 60 years or so (most only have 40 year lifespans today which can be extended somewhat). If you can foresee that many reactors appearing in a couple of decades, then I applaud your optimism. Me, I don't see that happening when it's obvious more are trying to consume every last drop of oil, cubic metre of gas and tonne of coal whilst maybe funding the odd solar or bio-fuel project.

I never said that nuclear would replace oil before major problems hit. I said that nuclear would fully replace oil as a cheap source of power before we see any mass transformation of our society. Many people think that we're going to be riding bikes and taking trains, but I think it will just be 5-20 years of hardship where people don't really know what to do, and then going right back to the fat, lazy couch potato lifestyle as soon as cheap energy is available again.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

You know, a lot of people talk about how they'll live off the land and hunt when this hypothetical peak oil doomsday scenario comes around, but you have to realize that sort of lifestyle can only support a very small population density. When hordes of people start hunting to survive, the wildlife populations won't last long, and it's hard to effectively patrol rural areas.

Indeed. There's a reason humans invented agriculture.

Anyway, how are we (as in the denizens of SD.net) going to survive this disaster? There have been pages detailing why PO will hit us hard, so why not start now on how to get through this?

A lot of people are advocating Mad Max lifestyles as if America is going to turn into Afghanistan, but the real answer is just to try and position your career in such a way that you won't get laid off. In other words, don't work in sectors that are being shipped to other countries, don't work in middle management, and don't work for a company that isn't in a good financial position.

Also, living in a suburb or rural area is probably not a good idea. Better to live in a city where you don't need a car to get around, like San Francisco or New York. Rents may be much higher, but total cost of living will be a lot lower when gas is ten bucks a gallon.

[Eulogy]

Also, living in a suburb or rural area is probably not a good idea. Better to live in a city where you don't need a car to get around, like San Francisco or New York. Rents may be much higher, but total cost of living will be a lot lower when gas is ten bucks a gallon.

Speaking of getting around, would it be wise to invest in a vélomobile (basically a sheltered quadcycle) or a Smartcar?

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Also, living in a suburb or rural area is probably not a good idea. Better to live in a city where you don't need a car to get around, like San Francisco or New York. Rents may be much higher, but total cost of living will be a lot lower when gas is ten bucks a gallon.

Speaking of getting around, would it be wise to invest in a vélomobile (basically a sheltered quadcycle) or a Smartcar?

I'll restate it because it deserves restating: A bicycle is by far your best bet.

[Lisa]

What's PO going to do to healthcare? I know it will be in shambles but exactly...

[K. A. Pital]

What's PO going to do to healthcare?

It depends on the type of government you have. Even the poorest government with a universal healthcare system can make for decent life protection. Even the richest government can totally blow it's healthcare system if it doesn't give a shit about it.

Oh, and if you mean U.S. healthcare - that's going down the shitter. It's in the shitter anyway, but it will go further down because the last shreds of motivation to actually have a healthcare system will evaporate.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I actually hold out some hope for post-PO healthcare. It's possible that as gas prices (and prices in general) get pushed past the breaking point to where people actually have to significantly lower their standard of living en masse, voters will demand price caps or similar restrictions on gas companies. Once that happens, they might wake up to how the medical system gouges them just as badly. Or they might not, of course, but hard times tend to shake people out of complacence.

There's nothing intrinsic about PO or a depression, to my knowledge, that would tend to reduce health care, except perhaps that fewer employers will be willing to provide it, which could actually speed acceptance of single-payer insurance for everyone.

[Admiral Valdemar]

So you think that political attitudes will remain unchanged despite economic collapse?

Have they changed much today? No? Then there's your answer. Whether they change after collapse or not is totally irrelevent. Economic collapse means everything grinds to a halt. People do not work for free and globalisation has meant most nations now rely on one another for a variety of different products. The US, for instance, needs Chinese manufacturing capacity today to be economical. You can't just reverse decades of outsourcing at the flick of a switch, so that manufacturing base needs to appear at a time when economic growth is extinct.

All the plans for mitigation demand at least two decades prior work. You are simply not going to stop the collapse from growth economy to depression now, no matter what you do.

Since the reactors we're talking about haven't been built yet, the number of current reactors that use the latest technology is irrelevant. I agree about the political issue of letting certain nations have reactors that can be used to produce enriched uranium, but the U.S. won't be in a position to do a whole lot about it when it's more than just one nation.

The seawater uranium issue was covered by Sikon better than I could, so I won't parrot what he's said.

The new reactors are also far more expensive, far more complex and so far not shown any real promise at a commercial level. Methinks it's a bit late in the day to start a crash programme in a technology no one is really backing yet when you need at least a reactor per week for decades to mean anything.

With the seawater, when it happens, I'll believe it. Until it does, it's about as useful as bio-diesel from algae. It's not happening now (and I believe uranium has now passed the point where it would be economical for seawater production, so we shall soon see who takes note).

Sikon covered the oil involved. Expertise is a problem, but can be mitigated by using standardized designs. Also, as far as I know, most engineers can be trained to work in a nuclear plant just like any other job training. After all, Mike worked at the CANDU plant, and I don't believe his degree was in nuclear engineering specifically, so it should happen that engineers working in other fields can switch over without years of training.

Not just oil, all resources are going up in price. Again, you're proposing nuclear reactors when far less technically challenging projects such as refineries are being cancelled due to ballooning costs. No one is going to build nuclear if the plants cost too much today and they won't see a pay off on the investment within a short time-frame. A lot of previous nuclear projects were money sinks that got shutdown in the '80s not because of nuclear scaremongering, but because they simply weren't making a profit. We've been promised the electricity too cheap to meter thing since the '50s. Why hasn't it happened?

The post-peak dropoff would have to be way beyond even the most pessimistic projections for there to literally not be enough energy to build the panels. Besides, even if it were true, and you can only build half of them, that half can produce the energy you need to build the rest. Anyway, solar is not cheap enough to compete with nulcear, but the logic goes for nuclear plants to. You get back whatever you spend building the plants, plus extra.

No, it doesn't. It just has to be enough to destroy the modern way of life in the US, for one, and then you get crash programmes for alternatives that will likely be mishandled like most gov't projects are and over budget too as well a delayed. All the while, your energy income is going down. It doesn't take a lot to cut in half how much the world produces in well under a decade and we can't properly fund such massive infrastructure investment today with a stable, growing economy. It's all very well saying we'll get a clue and our gov't's leadership and expertise will negate the economic collapse, but I didn't see that happen in Russia when the USSR collapsed, nor any other nation when their economies died.

Never implied there wouldn't be an economic crisis. Anyway, nuclear is clearly not a drop-in solution to replace all oil today, but as the power generation goes nuclear, the vehicles, tools, and other power consumers will change in design to match. So I don't really see a "liquid fuel crisis" as anything separate from a general energy crisis. As one alleviates, so will the other.

It's not a solution to replace ANY oil today. To replace oil, you'd need to use that nuclear to make either hydrogen use EV vehicles. Those things are not popping up quickly when you're trying to use what constrained resources you have in a chaotic environment to replace ICE powered vehicles. I already pointed out you need a lot of oil for agriculture and the distribution system needed for it. You'll need that going among other areas of industry while your energy diminishes. Look at the problems today with the US gasoline situation and imagine not only EROEI going down, but supply at the same time. These effects are not unprecedented and yet we still are running into them. Is anyone building anymore refinery capacity to rectify this problem? No. It's not economical.

Actually, they will. Not literally overnight, of course, but there's a generous lag between a drop in the death rate caused by modern technology and society and a drop in the birth rate, after which the birth rate suddenly drops precipitously. We've seen it happen in the first world, and we'll see it in the third world. The only reason we haven't is because they didn't benefit from modernity until much later and so their death rate dropped much more recently.

Mexico will negate this for the US and Eastern Europe for the EU along with Africa. Mass refugee migrations already account for increased energy usage in First World nations and the spread of diseases and strain on public social security schemes etc. It will only get worse with PO and AGW.

Additionally, low-fertility rates are not sustainable long term for any nation without severe effects on the economy. You'll have more people having to work longer to cover the dwindling numbers of workers compared to yesteryear along with the problem in pulling yourself out of low birth rates too which has been shown to be quite difficult to overcome.

You keep assuming that we'll all wake up one day and find all the oil gone or 10 times as expensive as the day before, but the reality is that costs will simply go up. But food in the first world is so ridiculously cheap that costs could go up quite a lot and the countries would still be net exporters.

Food is being produced at lower and lower levels every year, food prices are going up to the point of causing starvation in less well off nations that once could afford it. Yields are being affected by climate change and aquifers are dangerously low. It doesn't matter if people can still afford it if the physical supply is diminishing. Yes, the West eats more than their fair share of Calories daily, but overtime this is going to get trimmed and it isn't the reduction of the benefits of the green revolution purely behind it. It also doesn't matter if you cannot transport the food en masse to everyone, which is an important part of modern food production since, for starters, cities cannot produce their food within their limits.

There will probably be many boondoggles and shameful episodes. There will probably be harmful environmental effects from plants that were rushed and corners that were cut. There will probably be several more plants like the "Whoops" plant in Washington. And yes, money-hungry corporations with proven track records of screwing people over for a buck will probably be given the keys to the city and use their power to line their pockets at the expense of everyone else. That's just the nature of our society. But none of that has anything to do with the prediction that nuclear can't fully replace oil as a source of cheap power.

It can replace lost electrical production given enough time (which we don't have). Not oil.

I never said that nuclear would replace oil before major problems hit. I said that nuclear would fully replace oil as a cheap source of power before we see any mass transformation of our society. Many people think that we're going to be riding bikes and taking trains, but I think it will just be 5-20 years of hardship where people don't really know what to do, and then going right back to the fat, lazy couch potato lifestyle as soon as cheap energy is available again.

I wish I could be that optimistic. If you think that will happen, do you also think AGW and the other factors associated with our population size will go away? Overshoot started when industry go going, the only reason we're living this way is by borrowing time from the glut of fossil fuel energy that is nice and cheap and abundant (or was). Renewable is not sustainable, and even if nuclear and EV cars and trucks appeared in a fraction of the time to deliver results, there's no way six billion people consuming as they are now will carry on. No way at all, and we're looking at 9 billion in another couple decades.

I actually hold out some hope for post-PO healthcare. It's possible that as gas prices (and prices in general) get pushed past the breaking point to where people actually have to significantly lower their standard of living en masse, voters will demand price caps or similar restrictions on gas companies. Once that happens, they might wake up to how the medical system gouges them just as badly. Or they might not, of course, but hard times tend to shake people out of complacence.

There's nothing intrinsic about PO or a depression, to my knowledge, that would tend to reduce health care, except perhaps that fewer employers will be willing to provide it, which could actually speed acceptance of single-payer insurance for everyone.

Insurance? Where are you going to get insurance in a zero growth economy? No one insures anything when they aren't going to get a return on investment. The end of insurance means the end of business without some communist style gov't stepping in to take the reigns: good luck getting that in the US. And if you think Americans will suddenly get an NHS, I'd have to see something drastically change their minds to such a socialist idea (which, by the way, is under heavy strain in nations like the UK because of increasing numbers of diseases affecting larger, longer living populations).

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I'll try to trim the discussion down. Point out anything you feel I've glossed over and I'll respond to it.

Sikon covered the oil involved. Expertise is a problem, but can be mitigated by using standardized designs. Also, as far as I know, most engineers can be trained to work in a nuclear plant just like any other job training. After all, Mike worked at the CANDU plant, and I don't believe his degree was in nuclear engineering specifically, so it should happen that engineers working in other fields can switch over without years of training.

Not just oil, all resources are going up in price. Again, you're proposing nuclear reactors when far less technically challenging projects such as refineries are being cancelled due to ballooning costs. No one is going to build nuclear if the plants cost too much today and they won't see a pay off on the investment within a short time-frame. A lot of previous nuclear projects were money sinks that got shutdown in the '80s not because of nuclear scaremongering, but because they simply weren't making a profit. We've been promised the electricity too cheap to meter thing since the '50s. Why hasn't it happened?

Unless expenses are truly absurd, any form of power is better than no power at all. Since you conceeded earlier that power would shift toward nuclear, I'm not really sure what you're arguing, here. Besides, nuclear may not be as cheap as oil given the necessary oversight involved, but it's still a pretty damn cheap form of energy.

The post-peak dropoff would have to be way beyond even the most pessimistic projections for there to literally not be enough energy to build the panels. Besides, even if it were true, and you can only build half of them, that half can produce the energy you need to build the rest. Anyway, solar is not cheap enough to compete with nulcear, but the logic goes for nuclear plants to. You get back whatever you spend building the plants, plus extra.

No, it doesn't. It just has to be enough to destroy the modern way of life in the US, for one, and then you get crash programmes for alternatives that will likely be mishandled like most gov't projects are and over budget too as well a delayed. All the while, your energy income is going down. It doesn't take a lot to cut in half how much the world produces in well under a decade and we can't properly fund such massive infrastructure investment today with a stable, growing economy. It's all very well saying we'll get a clue and our gov't's leadership and expertise will negate the economic collapse, but I didn't see that happen in Russia when the USSR collapsed, nor any other nation when their economies died.

I don't think you understand how large a modern first world economy truly is. The reason these infrastructure developments aren't happening today is because they're not a priority. They're not a priority because oil is still so cheap and plentiful.

Never implied there wouldn't be an economic crisis. Anyway, nuclear is clearly not a drop-in solution to replace all oil today, but as the power generation goes nuclear, the vehicles, tools, and other power consumers will change in design to match. So I don't really see a "liquid fuel crisis" as anything separate from a general energy crisis. As one alleviates, so will the other.

It's not a solution to replace ANY oil today. To replace oil, you'd need to use that nuclear to make either hydrogen use EV vehicles. Those things are not popping up quickly when you're trying to use what constrained resources you have in a chaotic environment to replace ICE powered vehicles. I already pointed out you need a lot of oil for agriculture and the distribution system needed for it. You'll need that going among other areas of industry while your energy diminishes. Look at the problems today with the US gasoline situation and imagine not only EROEI going down, but supply at the same time. These effects are not unprecedented and yet we still are running into them. Is anyone building anymore refinery capacity to rectify this problem? No. It's not economical.

Some would say the reason they're not building new refineries is because they know we're at or near peak oil, and there's no reason to build new refineries when you know damn well you're going to be refining less oil in the future rather than more.

Actually, they will. Not literally overnight, of course, but there's a generous lag between a drop in the death rate caused by modern technology and society and a drop in the birth rate, after which the birth rate suddenly drops precipitously. We've seen it happen in the first world, and we'll see it in the third world. The only reason we haven't is because they didn't benefit from modernity until much later and so their death rate dropped much more recently.

Mexico will negate this for the US and Eastern Europe for the EU along with Africa. Mass refugee migrations already account for increased energy usage in First World nations and the spread of diseases and strain on public social security schemes etc. It will only get worse with PO and AGW.

Whether migrant workers hinder or help the economy is debatable, and some might say that we'll actually need those people more as it becomes cheaper to use more manpower and less machine power in agriculture.

Additionally, low-fertility rates are not sustainable long term for any nation without severe effects on the economy. You'll have more people having to work longer to cover the dwindling numbers of workers compared to yesteryear along with the problem in pulling yourself out of low birth rates too which has been shown to be quite difficult to overcome.

That's true, but it doesn't mean that it won't happen. The hows and whys of a sudden drop in birth rate will probably be explained some day by memetic theory, but it's definitely not a rational, conscious decision made on an individual basis.

I never said that nuclear would replace oil before major problems hit. I said that nuclear would fully replace oil as a cheap source of power before we see any mass transformation of our society. Many people think that we're going to be riding bikes and taking trains, but I think it will just be 5-20 years of hardship where people don't really know what to do, and then going right back to the fat, lazy couch potato lifestyle as soon as cheap energy is available again.

I wish I could be that optimistic. If you think that will happen, do you also think AGW and the other factors associated with our population size will go away? Overshoot started when industry go going, the only reason we're living this way is by borrowing time from the glut of fossil fuel energy that is nice and cheap and abundant (or was). Renewable is not sustainable, and even if nuclear and EV cars and trucks appeared in a fraction of the time to deliver results, there's no way six billion people consuming as they are now will carry on. No way at all, and we're looking at 9 billion in another couple decades.

Don't get me wrong. I agree that we're heading for some very hard times, as a shit load of problems are all converging on the same few decades. Peak oil, global warming, aging first world population, overpopulation, excessive deficit spending, and economies that seem to be based on wishes and farts all seem to be ready to pounce. Yet we're lucky enough to be at a point where there are real technological alternatives that avoid these problems, and after we suffer through some really hard times for many years, we'll be able to regain and even exceed our current place. Maybe it will be 30 years before we're back where we are now, maybe it will be 50, but it will happen. Nuclear and solar power can produce all of the energy we enjoy today and more, and can do it relatively cheaply. Global warming will be a bitch, but genetic manipulation is starting to yield results and should be able to give us crops that can thrive even in post-GW climates. Will they be ready in time? I have no idea, but I'm sure that they'll be ready eventually, even if there's a period of hardship.

I actually hold out some hope for post-PO healthcare. It's possible that as gas prices (and prices in general) get pushed past the breaking point to where people actually have to significantly lower their standard of living en masse, voters will demand price caps or similar restrictions on gas companies. Once that happens, they might wake up to how the medical system gouges them just as badly. Or they might not, of course, but hard times tend to shake people out of complacence.

There's nothing intrinsic about PO or a depression, to my knowledge, that would tend to reduce health care, except perhaps that fewer employers will be willing to provide it, which could actually speed acceptance of single-payer insurance for everyone.

Insurance? Where are you going to get insurance in a zero growth economy? No one insures anything when they aren't going to get a return on investment. The end of insurance means the end of business without some communist style gov't stepping in to take the reigns: good luck getting that in the US. And if you think Americans will suddenly get an NHS, I'd have to see something drastically change their minds to such a socialist idea (which, by the way, is under heavy strain in nations like the UK because of increasing numbers of diseases affecting larger, longer living populations).

Right, which is why all of the insurance companies shut their doors and businesses ceased to exist during the Great Depression. In reality, the Great Depression put politicians under enough pressure that the government had to actually try and do something for the people. It was in that time that the New Deal came about, as well as many large public works projects, highway construction in particular.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'll try to trim the discussion down. Point out anything you feel I've glossed over and I'll respond to it.

Righto.

Unless expenses are truly absurd, any form of power is better than no power at all. Since you conceeded earlier that power would shift toward nuclear, I'm not really sure what you're arguing, here. Besides, nuclear may not be as cheap as oil given the necessary oversight involved, but it's still a pretty damn cheap form of energy.

Actually, I'd say coal would be preferred after NG is finally shown to be severely lacking (issues regarding investment mean Peak Gas will occur earlier before it geologically hits a barrier) with nuclear still taking orders, but not as many due to the inherent red tape needed and the longer lead times, plus coal is already firmly established.

I don't think you understand how large a modern first world economy truly is. The reason these infrastructure developments aren't happening today is because they're not a priority. They're not a priority because oil is still so cheap and plentiful.

They are a priority though. We need more refineries and ones adapted to heavy, sour crude to keep the status quo. Without that investment, you've just exacerbated the problem which is already obvious globally as light, sweet peaked a couple of years ago. That is why gasoline is now so expensive and going up (of course, as a resource, it should be worth far, far more for what it gives us. People don't see how valuable the black gold is).

As with natural gas infrastructure too, they need many more billions annually otherwise Europe may hit a major problem with regards to supply, even if there is still years of NG left in the ground. Market forces dictate how the world moves and market forces stipulate we must continue on this trend of eating the planet to death. Nothing short of a total economic shake-up will change this.

Some would say the reason they're not building new refineries is because they know we're at or near peak oil, and there's no reason to build new refineries when you know damn well you're going to be refining less oil in the future rather than more.

That's exactly it. They won't get a return on investment and so they aren't investing in them, instead, though, they rather idiotically go for deep-water and oil sands projects instead which just squander the money they just saved.

If there's no money in the project, no one will do it. If you can show me a model that works without economics, I'll gladly embrace it. Preparing for PO would cost trillions people would miss from their booming industry today in already established areas. We can't have Big Oil being usurped by renewable energy companies, some would say (the irony in Big Oil now desperately trying to get renewable energy on the agenda is apparent now).

Whether migrant workers hinder or help the economy is debatable, and some might say that we'll actually need those people more as it becomes cheaper to use more manpower and less machine power in agriculture.

On the other hand, you've got more mouths to feed and your agrictultural base isn't getting any larger. Those hands will have to be used for agriculture and there's a problem with the acreage of organic farming when compared to mechanised, even with lots more workers.

That's true, but it doesn't mean that it won't happen. The hows and whys of a sudden drop in birth rate will probably be explained some day by memetic theory, but it's definitely not a rational, conscious decision made on an individual basis.

Either way, die-off is going to happen. The average sustainable land area per person globally is 1.8 hectares. We're all using 2.2 on average now, with only those bastions of civilisation Nigeria and Ethiopia being below this area. If you're wondering about Cuba, they're around the absolute limit possible. This doesn't take into account other species, which we kind've need.

Don't get me wrong. I agree that we're heading for some very hard times, as a shit load of problems are all converging on the same few decades. Peak oil, global warming, aging first world population, overpopulation, excessive deficit spending, and economies that seem to be based on wishes and farts all seem to be ready to pounce. Yet we're lucky enough to be at a point where there are real technological alternatives that avoid these problems, and after we suffer through some really hard times for many years, we'll be able to regain and even exceed our current place. Maybe it will be 30 years before we're back where we are now, maybe it will be 50, but it will happen. Nuclear and solar power can produce all of the energy we enjoy today and more, and can do it relatively cheaply. Global warming will be a bitch, but genetic manipulation is starting to yield results and should be able to give us crops that can thrive even in post-GW climates. Will they be ready in time? I have no idea, but I'm sure that they'll be ready eventually, even if there's a period of hardship.

PO and AGW are predicted to kill off likely 80% of the population, possibly more. Those that survive would be living in a radically different world, likely one I'd not want to be around for the birth of.

Energy is just one issue. Our lives today are simply unsustainable, so getting back to where we are, even with rather austere lifestyles compared to today, will likely not happen.

Right, which is why all of the insurance companies shut their doors and businesses ceased to exist during the Great Depression. In reality, the Great Depression put politicians under enough pressure that the government had to actually try and do something for the people. It was in that time that the New Deal came about, as well as many large public works projects, highway construction in particular.

+

Depression = permanent zero growth + shrinking world energy(!)

[K. A. Pital]

Basic problem is the rapid fall of fuel-based machine power.

If that is inevitable, the rest of the catastrophy just spins out from here.

Nuclear powerplants can't feed tractors, the green revolution is fucking meaningless without mechanization, and mechanization is meaningless without the fuel to power it.

[TithonusSyndrome]

And you need an awful lot of oil to make a nuke plant. This isn't like building a small dam or anything and it's not like Joe Bloggs out of work from GM is going to suddenly start helping to build your several hundred or so AP1000 plants. Expertise is a limiting factor too, and that's in short supply also.

Sikon covered the oil involved. Expertise is a problem, but can be mitigated by using standardized designs. Also, as far as I know, most engineers can be trained to work in a nuclear plant just like any other job training. After all, Mike worked at the CANDU plant, and I don't believe his degree was in nuclear engineering specifically, so it should happen that engineers working in other fields can switch over without years of training.

What kind of training exactly does one need to work in a nuclear power plant? The prospect of Peak Oil has made me very interested in it personally.

[Kuja]

Your Mazda is gone, okay? Start making plans for living life with absolutely no automobile usage now.

Sometimes people ask me why I'm reluctant to trade in my Mustang.


I enjoy life sometimes.