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The Networking of Resource Production: Do the Networks Give us Warnings when They are About to Fail?
Posted by aeldric on September 22, 2010 - 10:40am in The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand
Lately I have been grappling with a question: I keep hearing that once "non-conventional oil" is accounted for, we have trillions of barrels of oil. Counting coal-seam methane we have gas for centuries. Based on recent claims we probably have enough coal to build a bridge to the moon and enough iron to run a 20-line railway to Mars and back.
Of course this does not consider production rates – but given these forecasts, should we really worry about production rates? Given the technologies at hand, what would cause the production rate of a resource to peak? In a world of networked resource dependencies, what would be the consequences?
All resources can be found in any required quantity if there is enough energy input available. For example:
- Most elements are present in seawater. Want gold? You can extract it by the ton from sea water.
- Oil can be synthesised from any organic compound.
So why shouldn’t production rates increase pretty much indefinitely?
This question led me into a tangled series of questions about the modes of failure of networked resource production. How does failure occur and how is imminent failure signalled?
I have three conclusions:
1. There is a theoretical limit to how long a networked resource system can continue to function.
2. This limit is reached with little warning.
3. Even after the limit is approached and the squeeze on networked resources starts, the nature of the problem is not apparent to the resource producers, who are likely to say "there is still plenty of our resource available - we just need more inputs and better price signals"
All three conclusions are surprising. Why should there be a theoretical limit? Why would the warning signs be hidden? Why would the problem be difficult to diagnose even after the first impacts are felt?
But before I get to this, I should answer the question "What is a network of produced resources?"
Networked Resources
The process of extracting resources from the ground has become more complicated. During the Iron Age the production of iron required some bog-iron ore, a hot fire, and a lot of muscle. Now the production of iron requires an immense list of reagents, catalysts, fuels, and processes. If any of these inputs is absent, production stops.
In modern times, the production of resources is an interlinked chain of mutual dependencies.
But resources aren’t just networked because of these interconnected dependencies - in some cases, when a resource is in short supply, one resource will even be used as a substitute for another. For example when oil is in short supply organically-sourced substitutions (such as alcohol) are possible.
So sometimes one resource will substitute for another.
If we assume a technical ability to synthesize, extract and substitute, is Peak Production of any given resource even a theoretical possibility? I’d like to come back to that question. For a start, we should look at what to look for when/if we start to bump into a global resource constraint. Oil is an obvious candidate for this examination.
Local Peak Vs World Peak – Different Signatures.
In many parts of the world we have seen oil fields display a peak in production. Although it is a gross simplification, I am going to say that early in the history of oil field depletion this peak appeared to take the form of a Bell Curve – a gradual ramp up of production, a peak in production, and a gradual ramp down.
Fig. 1. Bell Curve.
Phoenix observed recently that this relative symmetry was as much a product of economics as it was of geology. If low-cost oil is available from a field in the next county, there is no incentive to invest money in a declining field to squeeze out a few extra high-priced barrels of oil. It makes economic sense to simply let the field run down slowly.
More recently the shape of a depleting field has shown a distinct skew, with a sharp peak, decline, and then a "fat tail".
Why? Because if oil is in short supply, then the price of oil tends to rise. At higher prices it becomes economic to use sophisticated drilling and production techniques to push the production of a field higher, past where it would normally have peaked. This extracts more oil and gets the oil out faster, but as a consequence, when the field declines it declines suddenly. The decline is arrested (though at a lower production level) by "Enhanced Oil Recovery" (EOR) techniques. These techniques cannot push a field’s production levels back to peak levels, they simply create a fat tail.
In summary: In an open, global market, the shape of a production graph will depend on the degree of constraint of the resource. When constraint is present, the price goes up. As the price point grows higher the production peak is pushed higher and the decline is sudden, followed by a fat tail.
Technical Limits.
Given the advances of technology, is Peak Production of any given resource even a theoretical possibility? We have advances in substitution, synthesis and extraction. Do these advances have limits?
Substitution
Given that one resource can often be substituted for another – why isn’t it done more often?
Simple. We always select the most efficient usage that we know of. In general, the substitutes are less efficient. You can build an Electric Car, thus substituting Lithium and electricity for petrol. However, what you have is a car that is more expensive and doesn’t go as far on a "full tank". So substituting lithium/electricity for petrol works, but offers less utility. If it offered more utility, we would all be driving electric cars!
So substitution is less efficient. However, in a pinch we can still do it..... right? I want to come back to that question, because that is at the crux of the problem. The question is: Surely, in a pinch, we can accept the less efficient substitution? The answer turns out to be… theoretically,…. errrr….. no. I want to come back to the reason, but first let us look at other technological promises.
Improved Extraction Techniques
How about improvements in our ability to synthesize and extract? I mentioned earlier that you can get just about any element from sea water. Why don’t we? Again it comes down to efficiency.
As a rule of thumb, when the quality of the ore drops, the amount of energy required to extract the resource rises:
Fig. 2. Energy Consumed as Quality of Extractable Resource Drops
Unfortunately. All over the world Mining companies are reporting declining ore quality.
This is fine; we can go on forever - as long as we have endless energy. But to produce that energy we need more resources. And to extract the resources we need more energy – which requires more resources, which requires more..... And now we begin to see the problem.
Very similar issues exist for synthesis. As an example - In theory, oil can be synthesized from almost any organic material. So why don’t we? Because it is inefficient. Unless the starting point is relatively close to oil, the energy consumed in synthesis approaches the energy provided by the oil. The Energy Return On Energy Invested is low – or even negative.
In Summary: The key concept here is that most elements and compounds can be produced in essentially unlimited quantities if we ignore dependencies. So "peak production of X" is not dependent on remaining resources of X. The extraction rate depends on the dependencies associated with production of X. These might include energy, nitric acid, security of workers, acceptable disposal of wastes, etc. The dependencies will in turn have dependencies with limits.
Resources are dependent on other resources. When we run into a limit in the dependencies on one or more resources these will, in turn, limit one or more others, which will impact others, etc.
Signalling the end in a Networked Resource System.
When we talk about production of resources, "Easy Oil" isn't the only thing we are reaching the end of.
We are digging deeper for coal, extracting minerals from ores that have lower concentrations, creating more environmental damage for the same produced quantity, consuming more energy to achieve the same produced quantity, etc.
The inputs required are increasing for any given quantity of produced resource. Consequently there is less left over after the net gain is calculated. Ultimately, if more resources are used in production, less wealth is left over for us to share amongst ourselves.
Our standard of living depends on the margin between resources produced and resources consumed in the production process:
Fig. 3. Our Prosperity is found in the gap between the pink line and the blue line.
We live in the margin. If you think that wealth can somehow be decoupled from resource availability, consider what the stock market would do if all resource companies announced that available resources are in permanent decline. The entity that we refer to as "The Economy" is simply a way of expressing the degree of available resources. It is worth examining that concept further.
Production Land Model.
Let us assume that there is a resource "A". A is consumed at a rate that increases by 5% each year. Why? Many reasons: Because our population is increasing, because global GDP is increasing, because Chinese kids want Happy Toys with their Happy Meals. For a myriad of reasons, demand for most resources goes up each year, and so production goes up.
So let us say that this year we produce 10 units of resource A, and we consume 1 unit of other resources to produce A.
Increasing at 5% per year, production of A will double every 14 years. Will consumption of the input resources double every 14 years? On the one hand you might say "No" because we will get more efficient at producing A.
However, on the other hand, after 14 years we might find that A is harder to get. In order to double the production, we might need to go from a 3% pure ore to a 2% pure ore, thus requiring us to process 50% more material – so inputs required for production might go up by 50% per unit of produced ore or (based on Fig 2 above) even more!! Consequently, for this example, a doubling of production would lead to a three-fold increase in inputs.
Let us build a model:
For the sake of a simple model, let us say that all resources will grow at 5% per year. As a consequence of the reduced quality of the resources, inputs required to support this accelerating production rate will grow at 10% per year.
Let us assume that infinite substitution is possible - if oil becomes less available, then we will use more lithium, etc.
Here is a first-order model of "Production Land" -
Resource A is produced at 10 units per year and production consumes 1 unit of resources per year.
Resource B is produced at 20 units per year and production consumes 1 unit of resources per year.
Resource C is produced at 30 units per year and production consumes 2 units of resources per year.
Total Production is 60 units increasing at 5% per year.
Total consumption is 4 units, increasing at 10% per year.
At 5% growth, production doubles every 14 years.
After 42 years production has doubled 3 times to 480, and consumption of inputs is at 256, leaving 224 units of extracted resources for people to consume. Looking at the graph below, we can see that at 42 years things look fine. However the system will not survive the next double. For production to reach 960, consumption of inputs must reach 1,024 – more resources will be used in extraction than actually result from the extraction process. Oops.
Figure 4. "Production land" model. Resources Produced Vs Resources Consumed.
Note that for the first 42 years thing seem to be fine in this model. In the 5 years from around 43 years to 48 years the model goes through a sudden contraction – the squeeze has a sudden onset. At the 48 year point it is likely that the margin has been squeezed so far that society can no longer run in a BAU fashion going forward.
HOWEVER it gets worse. Initially, the people in Production Land may not have any visibility of the true nature of the problem. Resources don't really come in fungible "Units" - so money gets used as a proxy.
As a consequence, when we enter the squeeze phase, the people who produce each resource will be convinced that "there is still plenty of our resource available - we just need more inputs". (How often have we heard that there are trillions of barrels of oil still to be extracted from shale, etc?) From their perspective, they are right – steadily improving production techniques have allowed production to ramp up steadily. Even though the quality of the resource is declining, they see no real consequence beyond a requirement for more inputs and more planning.
However, as we approach the crunch, the inputs are becoming expensive and consequently the price of the resource goes up (as we have seen in virtually every significant resource). Since resources are typically inputs for other resources, this problem spreads quickly.
From the producer’s viewpoint, the problem is not a shortage of resources; it is expensive inputs and a failure of the market to price their resource "correctly".
Unfortunately, customers are not able to pay at the "correct" price point because the increased price of everything else - including staples such as food and energy - has depleted their cash reserves. In fact society in general is likely to show a lack of liquidity after a series of "price shocks" associated with food and energy resources.
So the problem will not present itself as a lack of resources, it will present itself as a lack of money. The Production Land Society will see that they have a lack of liquidity. The Government of Production Land will create extra liquidity. (Why does this sound familiar?) But this will not fix the problem, since money is a proxy for the problem, not the problem.
If the question is "How is the imminent collapse of a networked resource base signalled?", then I would have to say that the answer is "Ambiguously".
Conclusions
The question that I promised to answer is this: "If we assume a technical ability to synthesize, extract and substitute, is Peak Production of any given resource even a theoretical possibility?"
I think we can now see that the answer is "Yes". Because of the increasing cost of extraction of resources of a steadily reducing quality, and the reduced utility of substitution there is an absolute theoretical limit to how far these processes can be pushed.
An additional piece of information came to light: We will have few warnings as we approach that limit. And the warnings will look like .... errr .... what we are seeing right now.
Some conclusions that this argument seems to be pushing us towards:
1. Production of any given resource is supported by a network of dependencies. These dependencies are, in turn supported by a network of further dependencies. In an environment of unconstrained availability of resources, this is not a problem. However, in an environment in which multiple resources may be approaching their economic production limit, a cascading failure can be initiated. There will be few clear, unambiguous warning signs, because our tendency to use substitutable resources with networked dependencies can easily obfuscate the nature of the problem.
2. Production Peaks may be delayed by substitution and improved extraction, but the network of dependencies that result mean that peaks may come all at once - "Peak Everything".
3. World-wide constraints are a new phenomenon. The symmetric Hubbert curve was an anomaly caused by the globalization of the resource at a time when resources were relatively unconstrained. In a globalized, resource-constrained economy the production curve is not symmetrical; the curve is higher, skewed, with a sudden drop, and then levelling out into a fat tail.
The resultant decline in resource production will be driven, more than anything else, by any constraints that may occur in energy production.
What warning signs will we see?
1. We should be looking for increasing substitution of resources – where the replacement resource offers LESS utility than the resource that it is replacing. For example, we are starting to see electric cars. These cars are more expensive, but have less range and carrying capacity than the petrol-driven cars they replace.
2. Society becomes conscious of limitations, and starts initiatives such as a drive to limit pollution and conserve/reuse/recycle resources. We have seen this since the late 1970s
3. Inputs to resource extraction go up in price. This leads to the extracted resource going up in price. Since this resource is likely to be an input to other resources, we expect to see widespread inflation in the price of numerous interconnected resources. Which seems to be happening. I live in Australia, so this is good – the run-up in prices for steel and coal has led to massive windfalls for the Australian economy.
4. Remembering that society is funded by the excess - the difference between resources extracted and the resources consumed in the extraction process - Initially the impact of a decline in available resources would force an improvement in society’s efficiency. We have certainly seen many instances of that – ranging from improved energy efficiency to the introduction of computer-related efficiencies.
5. When improved efficiencies are no longer enough to cover the squeeze, the increase in resource price will flow onto an increase in commodity price. Until recently our society has succeeded in negating this by outsourcing commodity production to areas with cheap labour.
6. When cheap labour can no longer compensate for rising resource costs, the price of commodities will start to creep up. This seems to be occurring now.
Can we avoid this?
I believe that I have demonstrated that the claims of endless oil (and other resources) are not lies (as far as those making the claims are concerned), but are also not realizable. Taken in isolation we have endless quantities of any given resource - viewed as a system, we don't have what we thought we had.
If nothing changes, a squeeze is seemingly inevitable.
Obviously there are ways we can avoid this squeeze. The simplest way is to increase the amount of energy available, without increasing the resources consumed to produce it. With unlimited energy all things are possible.
I open the forum to other suggestions/criticisms/alternative theories.
The Networking of Resource Production: Do the Networks Give us Warnings when They are About to Fail?
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291 comments
The Networking of Resource Production: Do the Networks Give us Warnings when They are About to Fail?
PDF version
291 comments
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- anz at theoildrum dot com
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Well, what if we had this endless energy supply? Would we ignore it through pride or fear of ones reputation?
And here it is. LENR/CANR
Power density achieved so far= 10kW per cubic cm.
Preparata (ICCF-6 &JEAC)
PP252 of Krivit SB.
http://www.achieveradio.com/cash-flow/ has various talks about cold fusion.
And other stuff. Including 'channeling' something that tells you about making cold fusion work.
(In case you want to discredit cold fusion via association, the link works also)
Eric, cold fusion isn't invalidated just because some wackos have latched onto it.
For this theoretical atomic physicist, the empirical evidence for cold fusion is quite overwhelming.
The reason why it is scoffed at publicly by most of those qualified to judge, is because there is no
way - according to classical newtonian physics - that the Coulomb barrier could be surmounted in the absence of kinetic energy or really high temperatures.
This is potentially rather embarrassing for all those distinguished people who have put their reputations on the line.
Whether the laboratory anomaly could ever be scaled up to provide useful amounts of energy is an open question.
I suspect not. There isn't enough Pd (the catalyst of the D+D --> He fusion) in the world for one thing.
LENR /
Cold fusion: so where is the first commercial scale cold fusion power plant the produces 1000 megawatts because I'd like to go and visit it. Oh, you are telling me that one hasn't been built yet? When will it be built? When will the other 200 be built? Uh huh, right, I see: one will never be built because there is no funding available because no banker believes it works. Well nice chatting to you guys about yet another impractical form of energy that isn't available right now when we need it.
I am interested in transmutation of elements through cavatation. The experimental work done on this LENR subfield is mainly done in Russia. Radioactive elements (nuclear waste) are transmuted and stabilized in accelerated time frames using cavatation. This can be very useful in eliminating light water reactor wastes in mere months rather than in a million years.
This alchemy is amazing. I was particularly intrigued by a simple electrolysis experiment that uses only ultra pure water and carbon. DC power is arced across the carbon electrodes to produce 30 different elements including iron and lead in an hour of two.
More precisely, it shows the production of micro to milligram quantities of a long list of primarily metals starting with nothing more than ultra-pure graphite and water, providing compelling verification of similar experiments performed at Texas A&M University, Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratories and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.
The economic production of rare isotopes can be of great value to the nuclear industry if a reliable LENR manufacturing process can be developed.
The instantaneous production of nano-diamonds by a cavitation process has already been demonstrated using graphite feed stock. This process is now being commercialized
Huh?! Peer reviewed citation please.
Here's an interesting paper on Acoustic cavitation and its chemical consequences
http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/suslick/documents/philtrans99335.pdf
By Kenneth S. Suslick, Yuri Didenko, Ming M. Fang,
Taeghwan Hyeon, Kenneth J. Kolbeck,
William B. McNamara III, Millan M. Mdleleni and Mike Wong
School of Chemical Sciences, University of Illinois a
While very interesting stuff, this is a far cry from alchemy and there is no mention of any possibility for producing lead or iron or any other element from pure carbon and water.
Cold fusion has a very troubling history. From very early on, there has been great difficulty repeating any of the experimental results. The initial discovery experiment has never been replicated, and there has never been an adequate explanation as to why it has not been replicated. As originally described the initial experiment did not use any equipment or supplies that are in any sense rare or special. But both the original experimenters and many other investigators have failed to replicate. Experimental science has a long history of irreproducible results.
A tradition has developed that irreproducible results can safely be ignored without loss of useful knowledge. This is not proof that the hypothesized explanation for the irreproducible result is wrong. Maybe its true in a parallel universe, but in this universe, it is not useful.
What is true?
The best definition I know is this : something is true as long as repeated observation confirms its existence.
As soon as falsification occurs, only one occasion where something is not true, and we must investigate : 3 possibilities occur : Our something is true, but an unknown factor influenced the result - sometimes it's true, sometimes it's false - it is false and we didn't know what we were talking about.
Don't forget to account for probability. Say something happens only once, and is then never replicated, even though substantial effort has been made to try that thing.
That makes it possible, but the probability of a repeat occurrence diminishes with every failed trial.
On those principles, cold fusion looks like an unlikely contender for our saviour.
The initial discovery experiment has never been replicated
Really?
And you have this understanding of reality because?
Because the initial discovery experiment has never been replicated. If it has been show me the reference to the report of the replication in a refereed journal. All the reports that I am aware of are attempts to get at 'good' results by doing some other experiment that is supposed to be better, but also gives only irreproducible results. I can't give references because my claim is that there are none.
Because the initial discovery experiment has never been replicated.
Untrue.
http://www.lenr-canr.org/LibFrame1.html
I can't give references because my claim is that there are none.
I'm guessing you've not bothered to look. Not looking and not finding does not mean nothing exists.
There sure are a lot of links there.
Point us at ONE that gives details of a reproduction of the original Fleishman-Pons experiment and includes details sufficient to pass peer review or, better yet, was actually published in a recognized peer-reviewed journal.
I don't have time to sort through other people's garbage.
reproduction of the original Fleishman-Pons experiment
My, now you are rather specific.
And if I do that - what then from you? Will it change your mind?
I don't have time to sort through other people's garbage.
No, it seems you mind is closed.
So what's *MY* pay off for jumping thorough the hoops you have put forth?
But is that Pd catalyst consumed, (or even 'annealed', or contaminated, somehow) in the process ?
The data plots I've seen suggest excess energy in a reproducible way, but are poorly annotated over time.
The time plots show cycles of energy, but fail to say what is needed to reproduce ?
(no mention of new materials, processing, etc )
The decline trend suggests something is being consumed, or contaminated ?
Catalysts by definition aren't supposed to be used up, they just provide the substrate and an atomically structured configuration on which a specific reaction is accelerated.
So if as you say the catalyst is consumed somehow, that could be a source of some excess energy. And they are somehow not accounting for it?
BTW, I have had a run-in with that cantankerous old coot Martin Fleischmann, one of the two original cold fusion scientists. This was before their so-called discovery. Nasty guy and he is one of the reasons that I have no tolerance for scientific poseurs and frauds.
The data given here:
www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusion.pdf
shows definite time effects, and I think there are too many points for a single run, but no explanation is given, around what is done on a new run, and what exactly needs replacing - or why.
I've also not seen any thermal imaging runs, they seem to use the simplest thermocouple sensors.
Thanks for the link. Interesting that the measured power levels always show so much noise. Clearly the signals are way down in magnitude, which they obscure by not putting units on the y-axis.
Slide 15 is particularly strange. They have a "predicted" curve that shows a random noise component riding along it. No way can anyone predict fluctuations like that. Unless it was a very limited run of a Monte Carlo sim?
A more up to date summary of a recent conference is in this Sept/Oct newsletter
http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/Colloquium2010.pdf
Very much 'still in the Labs', but the results are getting more predictable, and the Modeling is also improving.
This was interesting: (p12)
As the beat frequency was varied from 0 to 30 THz, three clear peaks of excess power were found at about 8, 15 and 21 THz. The lower two peaks were predicted by Hagelstein’s phonon theory, and the 21 THz peak may be associated with an H impurity in the D.
Also the first time I've seen thermal imaging runs. (p5)
If the beat frequency is that much what is the base frequency?
The light from two red light lasers (ie thousands of THz) is shone on the surface of the Pd catalyst, and a degree of nonlinearity gives rise to the (infra-red) beat difference frequency between these two shades of red.
BTW, the palladium (in nanocrystalline form) is a catalyst in the sense that the Pd atoms can be reused in principle, after sublimation.
When I said there isn't enough, I meant that the worldwide power generation rate would be strictly limited to a few GW if you only have a few tonnes of annual production of palladium to play with.
As I said, I don't think this will ever solve the world's energy problems in the slightest degree.
It is a fascinating and very real phenomenon nevertheless.
Hagelstein's laser experiment is absolutely brilliant and represents a huge step forward in our understanding of what the heck is going on. As some posters have pointed out, the early experiments were very unreliable and the heat sporadic, basically because no one knew what were the critical parameters for a successful outcome.
I seem to remember that Bell Labs had analogous problems with bipolar transistors in the late forties. O yes, and high T superconductors are pretty hit and miss too.
Hagelstein was a Jason and invented the X-ray laser for the military back in Star War days.
He tells me that he got thrown out of the Jasons and effectively lost his Professorship and his lab at MIT solely because of his heretical views on Cold Fusion.
I meant that the worldwide power generation rate would be strictly limited to a few GW if you only have a few tonnes of annual production of palladium to play with.
Good news then. Seems Nickel and Hydrogen can work.
# Jet Technology in Massachusetts offers cold fusion kits using light water and specially-prepared nickel electrodes that produce from 300% to 700% more energy out than energy input.
# Piantelli, an Italian inventor, has patented a cold fusion device using special electromagnetic features, hydrogen gas, and special alloys to provide a high temperature thermal-energy source. His work is being funded by Fiat.
# James Patterson, of Sarasota, Florida, has patented a cold fusion device which is now being marketed in kit form. In his laboratory, Patterson is working on the development of a kilowatt unit (now operating for several months) in which excess thermal energy is produced continually.
# The Cincinnati Group has invented, developed, and are now offering their LENT-1 (Low-Energy Nuclear Transmutation) Kit with a money back guarantee that the user can produce nuclear reactions if the directions are precisely followed.
So the present experiments always reload with fresh palladium ?
When you say sublimation, do you mean to remove what is in the palladium, or of the Metal itself ? - this sounds like an expensive step.
Wiki says this :
This growth continued during 2005, with estimated worldwide jewelry demand for palladium of about 1.4 million ounces, or almost 21% of net palladium supply, again with most of the demand centered in China. The popularity of palladium jewelry is expected to grow in 2008 as the world's biggest producers embark on a joint marketing effort to promote palladium jewelry worldwide.
Seems if the jewelry (!) use is expanding, they do not forsee a constrained supply ?
Don't be too hasty. Sure it is still in the labs, but as you say, they are still nailing down the critical parameters, and the models.
Production engineering has not even been started.
Eric, cold fusion isn't invalidated just because some wackos have latched onto it.
I'm not one to take such a position. In fact, elsewhere I pointed that out in the sep 22nd drumbeat and it was moderated out of existence.
The 30 minutes of bank hate show is a strong believer in "if you say it/think it it becomes real" By talking about cold fusion they are somehow hoping to make it a reality.
distinguished people who have put their reputations on the line.
Isn't there video of Pons crying when he was told "it works"?
laboratory anomaly could ever be scaled ... I suspect not.
But unless "we" try "we" will never know.
There isn't enough Pd (the catalyst of the D+D --> He fusion) in the world for one thing.
That is what makes sonofusion interesting no?
and topical to this, we have
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8004086/china-stops-rare-earths-exports...
where there seems to be some jockeying around China's rare earth's exports.
China supplies at least 95 per cent of the world's rare earths. It had previously placed restrictions on exports of the minerals, sending market prices soaring and sparking concern among foreign governments and companies
...
China has denied a report that it had blocked exports of rare earths to Japan amid a row between the regional heavyweights over a Chinese boat captain detained in disputed waters.
and they are also having an escalating dispute over energy
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/09/22/china.japan.island.dispute/in...
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6982#more
Seems China likes to remind others, not to annoy it...
Well, what if we had this endless energy supply?
We would use it to continue to extract more resources until we hit the peak of something else crucial. In other words, there is no free lunch, regardless of what cornucopians attempt to say otherwise.
One thing that inevitably limits the use of endless energy is the limited solid angle around a collection of energy users. Supposing they all are on Earth's surface, they cannot get rid of used energy -- aka waste heat -- at any rate greater than a few percent of the thermal power of sunlight absorption by the planet.
However, this enforces a one-sided plateau, not a peak.
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?
With endless free energy it's theoretically possible to run all kinds of low-impact processes like thermal depolymerization and extracting elements from seawater, but are we as a species wise enough to do that? I have a feeling it will just give us the power to strip the Earth even more bare than we are today.
Cold fusion, or Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), as it has become known, seems both interesting and far from useful at the moment. Interesting in that there are many credible labs reporting nuclear reactions that are inexplicable under classical nuclear theory, but far from useful in that they are still research results: very, very far from practical utility in being able to run our civilization.
We don't yet have this endless energy supply. We're not yet sure if it's there. If it is there, we don't yet know if we can deploy it in a useful way. An allocation of resources to find out if there's something there makes sense. If yes, then put more resources to figuring out how to make it available. Meanwhile, avoid self-delusionary thinking and living in the WishWorld. We have alternatives to peak (your favorite nonrenewable energy source here), and we need to continue putting those in the field.
The self delusion lies in BAU lite.
Like yeast in a bottle of sugar water we have used fossil fuel to grow our population to 6.7Billion.
BAU lite is the idea that we can substitute 1 cubic mile equivalent oil per year with solar, wind and other alternatives.
What dos it mean to fail?
100 million excess deaths per year for 100 years.
But what does this mean?
Take a true story from Stalin's Pogrom in the Ukraine which killed 25 million.
A matruska told her story.
Her mother had 4 children, three girls and a little boy.
The boy slept under the stove to keep warm.
The mother had 1 turnip to divide between her children.
The boy was crying.
The mother said" I cannot keep the mad alive" and cut the turnip into three for the daughters.
The Matruska said "I can still see the tears on his cheeks as big as peas, as he crawled back under the stove."
In the morning the wagon came to collect the dead from the houses.
The threw the carcass of the boy on the back of the wagon.
"Any more dead?" Asked the man.
"Only our mother who is nearly dead."
"Well throw her on the cart as well. It will save me a trip back tomorrow."
This will become commonplace.
We need cold fusion.
Now.
We need many things we aren't going to get.
We need another Saudi Arabia soon, or maybe two. We need another Nile in Africa, and another Yellow River in China, and another Colorado River in the US, and another Murray-Darling Basin so we'll be ok for food and water with the projected population increases. We could use another ocean or two, as the ones we have are running short on fish and acidifying. We could probably use another atmosphere before our own is too fubar'd. Actually, a whole new planet would be good, as this one has run out of a lot of stuff (a little elbow room for other animals being one thing in short supply)...but then simply another earth probably take too long to run through either.
Another new earth every 50-100 years might do the trick - then we could just keep on with how we live and not have to change anything. Our Magic Sky Daddy wants that for us, doesn't he?
"With unlimited energy all things are possible" - really? This is an attitude born of profound hubris.There is an inevitable outcome of hubris.I will leave you to figure that out for yourself.
"Unlimited"? No such thing on planet Earth.Maybe you plan to move.
"Energy" is only one part of the problem.Population,climate change,environmental degradation etc are not likely to be solved by the application of your "energy".In fact,what is necessary is a power down,preferably in a sensible and managed way.
I don't see much chance of that given the disconnect from reality in so many.
Population,climate change,environmental degradation etc are not likely to be solved by the application of your "energy"
'unlimited energy' could 'solve' all of those things.
Vertical farming, reprocessing wastes (waste is typically a complex high energy item that has some of its 'energy robbed' and results in a reduced energy waste status. If you can supply enough energy - the waste can become non waste) and with enough energy one should be able to block out the sun from the Earth and just use grow bulbs!
The disconnect is the idea of 'unlimited'. Man's rather good and using up all of 'unlimited'.
True. I said that unlimited energy without any associated increase in resources was a "simple" solution. I didn't mean to imply that this was realizable given current technology.
It is not possible using any technology that I am aware of. I live in hope, but plan for a range of future possibilities, including the possibility that "unlimited" energy is not realized.
STOP!
Just for one moment imagine what the future equivalent of "Paris Hilton" would be like in a world with limitless energy...
Scientists: PLEASE DON'T INFLICT IT ON US !!!
Nick.
I had the 'unlimited energy' theme for a role playing game character.
Once he understood how to create unlimited energy - he became a hunted man. Groups wanted the energy, others wanted the idea to never surface. He was a cheap to build character. Provided the GM with lots of story lines.... And *IF* there becomes a way to make a 'Mr. Fusion' like in back to the future - to convert such into a bomb seems quite possible and not something you'd want given man's history of inhumanity to man.
Unlimited energy via ripping apart the bonds of matter will result in trapping heat energy inside the envelope of the Earth and we'll cook the planet.
About the only way to use such knowledge is to traverse space or to run space based refining operations. Imagine all the benefits of extractive industries (mining) with none of the waste issues in the biosphere - fodder for sci-fi novelists.
Climate change can ONLY be solved by a change in energy sources. And it certainly takes energy to clean-up the environment.
If nuclear fusion could be made to work with seawater (a massive IF), then I would say that is as close to Unlimited as we really need to worry about. One estimate said that if all the world's energy were supplied using seawater-based nuclear fusion for a thousand years, this would only reduce the ocean level by one millimeter. If you're worried about that rate of depletion, then you just like to worry.
Actually, I think that Thorium/U233-based nuclear fission energy is a much more realistic possibility at present than fusion, which is still very long term, if at all.
If nuclear fusion could be made to work with seawater (a massive IF), then I would say that is as close to Unlimited as we really need to worry about.
Some are claiming Nickel and Hydrogen.
People claim unlimited energy out of a magnetic coupling driven by a hidden coil plugged into a wall outlet.
The standard of proof is a bit higher than that.
Interesting observation about the runup in coal and iron ore prices. The big end of town sees it as confirmation that Australia will always be able to import what it needs, like oil for example. They don't seem to have the slightest misgiving it could actually be a sign of looming instability.
I also agree that adjustment speed is key to any transition. We should have started seriously investing for Peak Fossil Fuel a generation ago. Again the men in suits assured us there was no problem because prices were low. When/if the right price signals emerge it will already be 20 years too late.
Yes,Boof,"looming instability"is a fair description of the current trajectory.I haven't been entirely asleep over the past 40 or so years and I can't remember a time when there was such blase complacency as the present.And with even less reason for it than at any time in the past.
But never fear,techno-utopia is in store for us,powered by infinite supplies of cold fusion energy.
Anyway,it is all good for a laugh.When such techno warriors as the Indians can't build a functioning Commonwealth Games village in 4 years at least I'm sure we are in competent hands.
Thanks, aeldric. This is a scary post. We do live in the gap between what is produced, and the amount it costs to produce those things.
We know that oil production has been flat for five years, and the real cost of production has been going up, so at least for that part of the equation, we are already being squeezed like in Figure 3.
We have also seen in late 2008 how this squeeze can come back through the financial system. There was a period when the price of everything dropped very low, as credit became less available. Then almost everyone--even those producing uranium--cut back on plans to produce more.-- It is possible we may hit another bump in the road like that one.
Gail, I think you are right. This is exactly what was seen in the USSR where oil production fell -> economy fell -> coal production fell.
The issue is that resource companies power the general economy. And the general economy purchases resources. So if the supply of energy to the general economy falls, the general economy contracts and it is less able to buy resources, and then resource demand falls. It is really about net energy supplied to the general economy and how efficiently that economy uses the energy.
So instead of the smooth lines that are drawn in Fig 3 & 4 above, what can be expected to happen is a pattern of oscillations. As the cost of the resource comes up - it contracts the economy - the demand for resource falls - and the resource production falls. The economy takes time to shift to being able to pay higher prices for the resource. Then the cycle begins again. Because each contraction hits the marginal resource suppliers hardest, I think we can expect to see a peak and decline of natural resource production, rather than an undulating plateau that so many have predicted. Instead, during every down turn, the economy will try to fall back on the best (lowest cost to extract) resources and investments in high cost resources will bankrupt. OPEC saved the oil sands & deep water oil this last price collapse. If OPEC had not cut supply, the US oil companies would have been decimated.
I would agree--it may be oscillations we see.
It seems like Liebig's Law of the minimum will ultimately decide what happens. If some big piece starts failing (international financial system, for example), then there will be huge repercussions around the world.
While we may see oscillations in the short term once the market "learns" about these oscillations then they will dampen themselves out. Imagine I run a facility for storing oil, if the oil price oscillates wildly up and down in a quasi predictable fashion I could make a killing in terms of buying when its low, waiting a few years and then selling when the price is high, I could then reinvest my profits into building more storage capacity for oil as would others in my business and then time oil purchases and oil sales accordingly. If enough people did this then oscillations in the price of oil would smooth themselves out (at least to the point where the profit from price volatility is less than the storage costs)
Thanks aeldric. It is good to know that the original calculations in the early 1970s of the Limits to Growth report are relatively easy to reproduce, and that the conclusions that are drawn from those calculations are the same as those from the Limits to Growth report. Good to know, but not easy to understand or apply.
It might be a good idea to revisit Dr. Albert Bartlett's Arithmetic, Population and Energy
Thanks FM! While you were posting that, I was looking to see which of Professor Bartlett quotes to cite. You found a good one. I don't consider myself innumerate, but many of us with training fail to think in terms of the consequences of exponents -- just like the professor told us.
this article is an interesting illustration of the consequences of humans not understanding the exponential function as it applies to growth and consumption of resources. i do not think it explores any new ground
Agree, a whole lot of rehashing going on, including in the comments. Cold fusion? Been there, done that (it doesn't work, BTW). These alt.energy schemes get trotted out as we "group wish" while approaching the energy cliff. Basic primate psychology. Now, let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya!
True story regarding (a) Peak Everything and (b) Unlimited Energy: many moons ago, like circa 1970, my UCR geochemistry professor, Dr. Robert Rex, made this statement: "With unlimited energy, we could produce anything! Why, we could mine granite rock for the trace phosphorous in its accessory apatite minerals." I recall absorbing that statement at that time, and wondering what kind of world it would be to live in where we were mining mountains of granite for its content of trace phosphorous.
Mountain-top removal coal, Canada's tar sand mines, why, we're practically there, already.
Equating the oil sands production system (EROEI very near typical of worldwide average EROEI for finished fuels production) to extraction of phosphorous fertilizer from granite simply proves your complete lack of knowledge and perspective.
I wish I knew how to post an arial photograph or two of the Alberta tar sands mining operations. They are huge, as are the formerly-fresh water drying lakes, not ponds, where they pour the polluted waters afterward. IIRC, the tar sands EROEI is less than 10. If other finished fuels production is now at that level, which I'm sure it is fast approaching, then it is just another bellweather or signpost we pass on our way towards the end of industrial civilization.
You miss my point entirely. Oh, I'm sure we'll leave a few giant stone moi in the quarry, just like the Easter Islanders did, but thankfully, we'll run out of the cheap energy to completely revamp the planet trying mightily to maintain our precious standard of living.
Well, the lifestyle I live and know how to live will do fine. Perhaps you should re-evaluate your choice of "civilization", eg. less foreign vacation flying etc. etc.?
I really like this post. I think it deserves to become known as the 'Production Land Model', and be given as much publicity as WT's Export Land Model. It does not say anything particularly new, after all it is basically a cut down version of the limits to growth model, but it's very simplicity highlights the key problems we are facing today, and how the problems will manifest themselves.
We need to get this model into the minds of economists, because it may just be simple and clear enough to cut through the fog of all their neo-classical theories. Or at least that is the only hope industrial civilisation has.
We are facing power down. We will use much less of all resources except human labour in the future. Mankind needs to prepare.
In our ASPO presentation, Sam and I are showing production versus price data around the Texas and North Sea production peaks (1972 and 1999 respectively). What the data show are steady post-peak production declines, despite huge increases in oil prices over the initial decline periods in both cases. These two regions accounted for about 9% of global cumulative crude oil production through 2005, and they were of course developed by private companies, using the best available technology, with virtually no restrictions on drilling. Once conventional production peaks, I would argue that the case histories show that rising oil prices generally have a negligible impact on production.
Texas (blue) & North Sea (black) Production Peaks:
Regarding unconventional production to the rescue, it's interesting to look at combined net exports from Canada + Venezuela. Their combined net exports fell from 3.8 mbpd in 1998 to 2.8 mbpd in 2009 (BP). In other words, slowly rising net oil exports from Canada have not even been able offset the ongoing decline in net exports from Venezuela.
Will you present updated graphs at the next ASPO conference?
Sam is going to show how the additional data points for the (2005) top five net exporters fall in regard to his circa 2007 projections (based on production data through 2006), and we are making a simplistic attempt to model total global net oil exports.
WT - in both cases I will draw attention to the "plateau" which lasted 5-6 years. the world is now entering its 7th year in a plateau.
The key point is that global crude oil production (EIA, C+C) has, so far at least, not exceeded the 2005 annual rate for four years and for 2010 to date. Over this time frame, annual US oil prices have been in excess of the $57 that we saw in 2005, with only 2009 so far showing a year over year decline in oil prices (down to $62).
Of course, one difference between current global crude production and previous conventional peaks, e.g. US Lower 48 and the North Sea, is that there is a slowly rising unconventional component in global crude production.
But in any case, despite a strong price signal, we have seen an ongoing cumulative shortfall in global crude oil production--between what we would have produced at the 2005 rate and what we actually produced.
Also, low prices stifle production.
Industrial/commercial output must show a profit on its oil use, when returns on that use shrink production suffers.
Wouldn't that be nice. :-) Unfortunately, it would require that they recognize that infinite growth is not actually possible, so it will not happen in mainstream economics. Growth is required. BUT growth is limited by the minimum resource constraint (see Liebig). BUT substitution allows us to get around Liebig and continue growth. Growth is required. Therefore ALL things MUST be substitutable. This is the circular logic of mainstream economics... start with the result and work your way backward into a loop.
If mainstream economists were willing to recognize the fundamental flaw in the core assumption (that infinite growth on a finite planet is possible), then there would be no need to show them this model... they would already be there. I'm afraid that outside of ecological/biophysical (etc) economists and a small handful of semi-traditional economists (Steve Keen comes to mind) there just isn't the will to do the hard thing that would be required by the "science" that modern economics pretends to be.... that is, recognize a failed experiment and move on to the next best theory.
Modern economics is not a science, it's politics. And politics is perception. Mainstream economics is all about maintaining the perception that they know what they're doing so they can stay tight with the folks with the money and power.
All that said, I like the model's idea. I think it would be interesting to try and flesh it out with real world data. Could it be used to explain collapses in previous civilizations that were resource-net constrained (Mayans, Romans, etc.)? Is there a pattern of resource-net constraint that correlates with economic and/or societal collapse? Could it be modeled using data available for the industrial world? Could it be argued that it already has and that it was published under the title "The Limits to Growth"?
Overall, an interesting post.
Brian
Consider a spherical economist of radius R in a vacuum...
You do realize what exactly this fundamental shift implies, right ? Today, we have 2 ways to "make money" (for the "capitalism is evil"-types I'm perfectly willing to say "make value")
1) grow the pie, take a piece (enterprise)
2) take from others (stealing, or taxing, depending on who does it)
If we do what you say and "become aware of this", it basically means criminalizing option 1. It may, of course, be that nature itself makes option 1 impossible, but "adapting beforehand" means that "we" prevent it now ("we", meaing ... the government ? there won't be any recognizable government a few years after this starts. Right now 99% of taxes are basically taxing growing the pie and very few taxes do anything else. VAT, income tax, profit taxes, transaction taxes, ... all will provide near-zero income in a subsistence world)
There are 2 jobs for 99.99% of the people alive in an economy where resources are up against the wall
a) subsistence farmer
b) thief (whether "soldier" in a plundering army or worse)
Just a thought. There is a reason most serious people won't go there. A very, very good reason.
Oelewapperke,
You hit the nail on the head. If you cannot provide in your own subsistence, stealing becomes inevitable.
verdomd goed gezien.
lukitas
1) grow the pie, take a piece (enterprise)
2) take from others (stealing, or taxing, depending on who does it)
and
There are 2 jobs for 99.99% of the people alive in an economy where resources are up against the wall
a) subsistence farmer
b) thief (whether "soldier" in a plundering army or worse)
There is a third option - enterprise can increase efficiency without growing the pie eg sell business software, or design more efficient machines.
A person can be employed in roles that facilitate others - the weatherman that tells the farmer to expect a frost.
Increasing efficiency has nearly the same effect on the economy as growth.
Aren't all resources a theft from the planet?
And, nationally, we are relying on the public lie of the sustainability of option 1, while using military, diplomatic, and economic means to try and "win" the zero sum game that represents reality (that is, option 2). Same game, different day. ;-)
I think this oversimplifies just a tad (at least in the medium term ;-). I would suspect that over time you move to a situation where about 90% of the population is employed in either the production of food or energy. The remaining 10% of the population provide those "services" that are critical to keeping these people working. And, yes, some percentage of the whole will be people trying to take advantage of others by stealing, cheating, lying, etc. It has always been so...it was before industrialism, and it will be long after industrialism is a distant historical footnote. These people exist. Societies deal with them each in their own way. Future societies will do the same.
The implications of even the total SWAGs above are scary. I think that agriculture employs about 2% and accounts for less than 1% of GDP, and energy industries employ about 1% and account for about 9% GDP. [Note: Anybody with better current numbers please feel free to correct these. I didn't have time to research it thoroughly and just worked from a quick search and memory.] Even padding those out and saying that together they account for 5% employment and 15% GDP, then that means that these industries are essentially supporting 95% of the people and 85% of the economy running in its current form.
Pretend for the sake of discussion that the above SWAG is theoretically possible. Assume that 90% of the people had to be involved in these two sectors in order to provide comparable levels of food and energy to what we are currently using. If so, then that would remove 89% (85/90) of those people who are currently doing other things. That represents a reduction of non-farm, non-energy economic activity of something like 90%. Put it this way, currently, maybe 15 cents on the dollar of economic activity is tied up in these activities, leaving 85 cents to spend on government and all the other fun stuff we love. If 90% of all economic activity were tied up in these activities, we would have only 10 cents on the dollar to spend on everything else we want or need.
You are talking about a much smaller economy and a much smaller, less complex society.
Long term, absent new sources of energy, energy production is limited by the natural energy flows. Whatever level of human activity those flows will allow is where you end up population-wise, complexity-wise, standard-of-living-wise, and quality-of-life-wise. How long it is from now to then, and what path we take from here to there, these are the questions.
Brian
Resource Development planning is biased by the use of the standard "economics" metrics, of which discounted present value and the rate or return (call it the "interest rate" the investment earns), are given a lot of weight by management. Companies have a tendency to use too high a discount rate, and the rate of return is not the most useful parameter, there is a better alternative. But tradition, inertia, poor training in the bean counter schools, got us mired using the same dumb parameters. And these tell us to develop the fields to higher peak rates - rates so high they are outright impractical.
Some oil companies have a tradition built into their system, what one may call their DNA, to rape the reservoir and get the oil as fast as possible. I won't name the culprits, but all you have to do to identify them is check their R/P ratios, or check the decline rates for the fields they have developed in the last 10 years.
Pointers to it? Or are you just going to leave us all hanging?
It seems to me the most useful parameter is maximization of URR.
I have developed a list of 40 questions banks must answer before investing even 1 dollar in new toll-ways
21/9/2010
RTA fails to present business case for M2 widening (part 1)
http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/?p=1886
also:
20/9/2010
IEA corrects oil statistics containing bio fuels
http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/?p=1876
Brilliant post. This post is the single greatest argument for developing breeder reactors.
While the EROI of wind energy is currently 20 or so, the big question is as the materials used to build wind turbines are progressively extracted from poorer and poorer quality metal ores, the EROI of wind power can be predicted to go further and further downward.
While the EROI of the full nuclear cycle seems to be less than wind (~5) alot of that goes into Uranium processing and enrichment which have plenty of room for further technological improvements (less frictional losses for centrifuges etc.). The material intensity (i.e. steel, concrete etc.) for a given level GW production for nuclear energy is 5 times less intensive than wind.
The arguments in the above post also point to the fuel available for breeder reactor being 1,000 to 10,000 more plentiful than that for normal fission reactors rather than the more naive factor of 100 than people use, due to the fact that because you can use 100% of the Uranium in Breeders rather than 1% a given energy input to extract uranium from ore will yield 100 times more energy output when compared to the case where it was burnt in a normal reactor, this means that it will be possible to extract uranium from ores of 100 lower grade for fast breeder while still achieving positive EROI compared with conventional reactor, and if you can go down a factor of 100 in purity you generally go up by a factor of 10-100 in quantity, multiply that by the fact that you get 100 times more energy from each kilogramme of Uranium mined and breeder reactor can supply the world for 1000 -10,000 times as long as conventional nuclear power stations and that's not including thorium.
Haven't we been waiting sense the 1950s?
Yes but the level of investment was not proportionate to the overwhelming necessity of developing this technology.
Some breeder reactor have been deployed such as the Super Phoenix in France, but political forces continue to inhibit their development because of proliferation worries.
But if I had to choose between a bit of nuclear proliferation and the end of civilisation as we know it with a massive die-off of billions of people, I'd choose nuclear proliferation any day.
A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon might kill millions (personally I think are level of security it high enough for the chances of this occurring to be pretty low) the collapse of advanced civilisation would kill billions.
the level of investment was not proportionate to the overwhelming necessity of developing this technology.
What has the level of investment been, then, and why was that not sufficient?
Don't forget that a meltdown will take out a huge area from being habitable for countless generations. Bounce that number up to a dozen or two meltdowns, and then we're really talking "mass death" and prohibitively expansive uninhabitable areas.
Its worth mentioning the other three reactors of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power plant kept running after the chernobyl disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant
"The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Ukrainian: Державне спецiалiзоване пiдприємство "Чорнобильська АЕС", Russian: Чернобыльская АЭС) is a decommissioned nuclear power station near the city of Prypiat, Ukraine, 18 km northwest of the city of Chernobyl, 16 km from the Ukraine-Belarus border, and about 110 km north of Kiev. It was the site of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, but due to high power demand, continued to operate until December 2000."
About 50 people died immediately from the direct results of radiation sickness. Thyroid cancers increased somewhat (although thyroid is one of the more survivable fors of cancer) the figure of 500,000 people dying is derived assuming that the degree to which your life expectancy is shortened is proportional to the nuclear dose you receive, most of the nuclear dose from Chernobyl was spread over a population of 500 million, so 500,000 people didn't "drop dead" from Chernobyl 500 million people's lives were shortened by about a month. (The revenge of Gaia)
Chernobyl was a tragedy but certainly not the end of the world it was also an exceptionally dangerous reactor run in an exceptionally dangerous manner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Its also worth mentioning Cherobyll's "dead zone" is now a popular tourist destination filled with wildlife. Its not that people there would just drop dead or anything, they'd just suffer a slightly higher risk of cancer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/international/europe/15chernobyl.html?...
I don't want to completely trivialize the chernobyl disaster it was indeed a disaster and we need to take precautions to ensure such things rarely happen again if ever. But I don't agree with this attitude of "nuclear exceptionalism" in reference to the chernobyl disaster. It was comparable to a large hydro electric dam breaking or a bad earthquake it wasn't "the end of the world" and even if there were a dozen chernobyls over the next 10 years or so (and I very much doubt there will be as safety standards have massively improved since then) life would go on.
It depends what you mean by "mass death" if you mean a couple of 100,000 people dying every year from nuclear disaster related incidents .... maybe but not likely. (That would be comparable to the number dying from coal mining, asthma and the like)
If by mass death you mean tens of millions dying ... in the absence of nuclear war ....no.
Many of those deaths were needless and were a result of fighting the fire. Different methods could have avoided many of those deaths. Much of the radiation exposure in the area was due to the cover up mentality. If prompt action had been taken dosages could have been slashed. Given the whole history of the accident it is a very poor example to use as a stick to beat the rest of the nuclear industry and nuclear expansion.
NAOM
Much of the radiation exposure in the area was due to the cover up mentality. ..... whole history of the accident it is a very poor example to use as a stick to beat the rest of the nuclear industry and nuclear expansion.
But you hit on 'and that is why we can't have nice things' - Man's "cover up" mentality.
Man's actions show Man is not mature enough to handle the technology.
You say that like we have a choice without the risk that people will hide bigger risks.
Every option carries risks, how one feels about a particular option depends upon how one weights those risks.
how one weights those risks.
The people who 'weigh risks' for a living - insurance firms - won't insure fission plants to the extent that Price-Anderson exists as law.
The failure modes of fission power is so big that the only backstop is the Government.
But if I had to choose between a bit of nuclear proliferation and the end of civilisation as we know it with a massive die-off of billions of people,
Errr, doesn't 'nukes in everyones hands' lead to the end of civilization?
A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon might kill millions
The direct death from attack with radiological systems isn't the issue.
The rendering of parts of the biosphere into toxic no-go places is the issue.
Chernobyl is an example of what can happen when a fission plant suffers a failure mode. What makes you think there would not be more terror attacks VS reactors when there are more reactors?
the collapse of advanced civilisation would kill billions.
Many many thousands have been killed in Iraq/Afghanistan. Same with AIDS in Africa.
Is it just the lack of scale that makes those things OK?
What about the sea life that is no more due to the BP Gulf spill? OK cuz its just fish?
And what's your endpoint - given it seems Man "needs" "more and more" to keep advanced civilization going - at what point does the production of more stop? Your "solution" - more nukes!...fine. How does that address the "more" problems of, say arable land?
"Errr, doesn't 'nukes in everyones hands' lead to the end of civilization? "
Probably not, dictators may not have any sense of morality but most of them have a keen sense of self preservation. Look at all the crazies who already have developed nuclear weapons, Mao, Stalin, Kim Jong il, yet noone has ever launched a nuclear attack on another country except the USA and even the USA only dared to launch a nuclear attack when it was *the only country in the world* with nuclear weapons and there was zero probability for a nuclear reprisal.
Also nuclear weapons programmes are very expensive and yield not economic benefit, so even if a bunch of countries did decide to build their own nuclear detterent they'd probably only keep about 10 warheads each with countries that feel their security less threatened being happy to ally with other nuclear powers, like japan and south Korea rather than developing theses weapons themselves.
Also about half the world's population already lives in a nuclear weapons state
USA: 307 million
India: 1.14 billion
China: 1.32 billion
Israel: 7 million
Russia: 141 million
Pakistan: 166 million
North Korea: 23 million
France: 62 million
UK: 61 million
Total:3.227 billion
World Population 6.697 billion
If everyone had nuclear weapons it would only mean twice as many have them as do today. And most small countries wouldn't bother developing them as their too expensive. Also worth mentioning an even higher fraction of the world's population already live in a state with nuclear power.
"What makes you think there would not be more terror attacks VS reactors when there are more reactors?"
Terrorist have limited resources ergo they can only attack one reactor at a time, hence provided the number of nuclear reactors in the world is greater than zero (it is, infact they number 400 ) the chances of a terrorist attacking a nuclear reactor don't really increase. Infact a thriving well funded nuclear industry will have more resources to defend their nuclear reactors so its possible that the chances of a terrorist assisted meltdown would actually go down in the case of a larger nuclear industry.
If you ask me the whole terrorist threat while present is manageable, nuclear power plants have been around for almost 50 years not and there hasn't been a single successful terrorist attack on them to date, meanwhile surveillance and security technology is just getting better and better and better.
"Many many thousands have been killed in Iraq/Afghanistan. Same with AIDS in Africa.
Is it just the lack of scale that makes those things OK?
What about the sea life that is no more due to the BP Gulf spill? OK cuz its just fish?"
Is a question of balancing grossly understated benefit of electricity against the grossly exagerrated cost and probability of a nuclear meltdown.
Iraq/Afghanistan have nothing to do with nuclear power so I don't know what your point is with those, while the electricity from nuclear power stations could power hospitals to *save and help* people suffering from aids and displacing with nuclear power/elecrtric cars makes another BP oil spill less likely.
"And what's your endpoint - given it seems Man "needs" "more and more" to keep advanced civilization going - at what point does the production of more stop? Your "solution" - more nukes!...fine. How does that address the "more" problems of, say arable land?"
Nuclear power takes up less land then renewables so with nuclear power civilisation would less land from nature at a given level of wealth.
Nuclear fuel has sufficient energy densities to allow single stage spaceflight to the moon, mars and beyond. The U-235 on Earth would be able to provide for the world energy needs for ~5 years using breeder reactors I think I've made a reasonable argument we could supply our energy needs for 5000-50,000 years, include thorium and we can supply the world with energy for atleast 20,000-200,000 years. And these are the fertile reserves and resources on Earth. If we expand out into space then we don't need to worry about the Earth's available reserves and resources, but rather those of the solar system which would like be 100 times larger again. Not to mention the time that Uranium would buy our civilisation would give us an oportunity to commercialize nuclear fusion and once D-D fusion is mastered our energy supply would become practically limitless.
Exponential growth is impossible on a finite planet, but when you consider how small the earth is compared with our solar system, our galaxy and our universe, if we became space faring I'm sure we could squeeze a couple of more million years of exponential growth yet.
In terms of arable land in the short term the waste heat from nuclear power plants could be used to desalinate seawater and make the deserts bloom.
Viewing things on a longer term, we only live on the surface of our planet, if you took the bulk mass of a planet such as mars and took a giant rolling pin to it until it was a surface with a depth of say one kilometre the the resulting habitable surface area would be thousands of times that of the Earth. You could make it into a ring (like in the Ian Banks novels) and use centrifugal force to hold in the atmosphere and provide gravity for its inhabitants. All this would be very energy intensive, but if nuclear fission and fusion could be fully utilized it could probably be done.
"Errr, doesn't 'nukes in everyones hands' lead to the end of civilization? "
Probably not,
Probably not? That's the best - 'probably not'? I look forward to your spirited defense of Iran if their reactors get attacked.
Terrorist have limited resources ergo they can only attack one reactor at a time,
Right. Sure. Say, how many targets were attacked on Sept 11th, 2001?
Is a question of balancing grossly understated benefit of electricity against the grossly exagerrated cost and probability of a nuclear meltdown.
Right. grossly exaggerated effects of nuclear meltdown.
Chernobyl’s 20 km exclusion zone and the pictures of mutations of locals is just a "gross exaggeration".
Infact a thriving well funded nuclear industry will have more resources to defend their nuclear reactors
This would be the same nuclear industry that has sleeping security guards, right?
Iraq/Afghanistan have nothing to do with nuclear power
You brought up the tragedy of a bunch of dead. If the dead matter *SO* much, why no demonstrated outrage over some now dead/dying VS "future Millions" that can only be prevented with nuclear power?
Nuclear power takes up less land then renewables so with nuclear power civilisation would less land from nature at a given level of wealth.
Interesting claim. Yet how much land is taken up by the no-go place caused by Chernobyl’s expression of nuclear power?
Nuclear fuel has sufficient energy densities to allow single stage spaceflight to the moon, mars and beyond.
And again, if you take the post-food-processed material from my lunch and extract the nuclear energy, it also has the power to fing spaceships about.
using breeder reactors I think I've made a reasonable argument we could supply our energy needs for 5000-50,000 years, include thorium and we can supply the world with energy for atleast 20,000-200,000 years.
And that somehow will address the other material shortages? Oh wait. Other material issues arn't a problem because you have
"centrifugal force provid(ing) gravity" in a rolled flat Mars.
"Probably not? That's the best - 'probably not'? I look forward to your spirited defense of Iran if their reactors get attacked."
Well nuclear war could happen in principle, what do you want me to say everything is definitely going to be fine?
My main point was that like it or lump it the cat's out of the bag, the majority of the worlds most dangerous powers already have nuclear weapons: i.e. the US, Russia, China, North Korea, Israel, Pakistan.
We just don't call most of them dangerous because we're afraid that if we do they'll invade us. Iran's small potatos compared with the nutjobs who already have them, do you know back in the 50's general Kurtis Le May wanted to carpet bomb Russia with nuclear weapons to prevent the Russians from getting them?
The people who already have nuclear weapons are *never* going to give them up, and the ones that do are likely to be the least crazy of the lot, which will leave the crazier ones that cling onto their nukes the tightest, less deterred from using them.
When you look at it from the point of view that nuclear war is already possible, we may aswell reap the benefits of nuclear power.
And a nuclear war is far more likely in a scenario of dwindling resources and scarcity.
"Terrorist have limited resources ergo they can only attack one reactor at a time,"
"Right. Sure. Say, how many targets were attacked on Sept 11th, 2001?"
Okay, my mistake there were 3 target successfully attacked during September the 11th ergo it doesn't matter whether you have 3 nuclear power plants or 3000, if you have one or two nuclear powerplants you can mitigate against the effect of a terrorist attack on the scale of the largest terrorist attack ever pulled off in history.
BTW during september the 11th, why do you think the hijackers didn't fly into a nuclear power plant instead?
Could it be because they would have been shot down? Could it be because they thought that if they hit it at the wrong angle they wouldn't have left a scratch? Could it be because unlike the trade centres nuclear powerplants, especially the dangerous reactor sections are much smaller targets that are harder to hit?
"Right. grossly exaggerated effects of nuclear meltdown.
Chernobyl’s 20 km exclusion zone and the pictures of mutations of locals is just a "gross exaggeration"."
As I mentioned in previous posts tourists go on tours of the exclusion zone today, animals do just fine their, wild boars, wolves. Probably people could live there if there were prepared to put up with an increased risk of cancer. In the big picture 20km is not a large fraction of the Earth's Surface and the chances of a dozen chernobyls occurring when one considers modern safety standards of the nuclear industry and the fact there's never been an accident on that scale since are grossly exaggerated.
"You brought up the tragedy of a bunch of dead. If the dead matter *SO* much, why no demonstrated outrage over some now dead/dying VS "future Millions" that can only be prevented with nuclear power?"
Still don't get your point.
People dying is bad... more people dying is worse... if civilisation collapsed alot of people would die. That would very bad. Does that make sense?
"Interesting claim. Yet how much land is taken up by the no-go place caused by Chernobyl’s expression of nuclear power?"
That no go place in chernobyl *gives* a lot of land to nature. Go to my link read about it, there are wild boars, wolves and lots of endangered species living there. Although I'm not advocating going around the place causing meltdowns everywhere. But the truth is nature is better off because of it.
"And that somehow will address the other material shortages? Oh wait. Other material issues arn't a problem because you have
"centrifugal force provid(ing) gravity" in a rolled flat Mars."
I mentioned desalination and this entire post pointed out that given unlimited energy there are no material shortages as you can mine lower and lower grade ores (or higher grade ores on meteorites and the like)
jmc1 is entirely correct in his assesment of nuclear power, the threat from radiation (LNT is a ridiculously excessive estimate of the scientifically unproven and certainly unmeasurable "real" dangers of low-level increases eg. less than 10% increases over typical background, radiation risks); and his assesment of potential fuel availablility.
1) IF fuel enrichment were a significant cost for nuclear power production THEN the CANDU reactor design from Canada, which simply uses unenriched natural uranium or plutonium and other actinides from spent LWR fuel, would have a serious market advantage in worldwide sales. It doesn't have that advantage.
2) IF fission fuel availablility were a problem, THEN the CANDU reactor which can burn significant fuel load percentages of chemically separated isotopes from spent LWR fuel now (See Quinshan CANDU 6 reactor tests now under way in China) would have a serious market advantage worldwide. It does not.
3) Spent fuel is NOT "waste" to be buried inaccessably for centuries, and everyone with any useful scientific advisors knows it. That's why that one in western US will never be built, the fuel is too valuable. Its also why most anti's want it built, because their scientific advisers are usless.
jmc1 is entirely correct in his assesment of nuclear power
Says the guy who made up statistics about the safety of fission power about the poster who's solution to the resource consumption is to flatten out Mars to a ring and confuses gravity with other effects.
reactor design from Canada
These would be the same group who designed a medical reactor that turns out to not operate as designed and had to be scrapped?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24672101/
So you, dear TOD reader can choose to believe the 'make Mars into a ring round the sun' about how fission is low cost and Lengould about safety after he was shown to have made up safety statistics OR you can believe actual operators of plants - like the Canadians.
If ya don't trust the Canadians - how about the US of A's own NRC
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "Delayed Access to Safety-Related Areas and Equipment During Plant Emergencies" (Information Notice No. 86-55). 10 July 1986
You're so far off its not worth responding. I will simply note that if your point is that Canadians don't posses the technical knowhow to build power reactors, I can point to a quite long and respected history of indiginous development of unique designs which goes back to the beginning of the nuclear industry, including significant participation in the Manhattan project.
You're so far off its not worth responding
Lets see - I post links and you post just what lengould thinks in his truthyness gut.
I'll let readers decide who's got the better grasp.
And re. the "failure" of that medical isotope reactor, it's a much longer story than you make out. Under-financed by the company shareholder(s), and eventually determined to be not needed. Still, the other operating isotope reactor makes Canada the owner of one more such than the US has. I'd also note that the US has built, what, 100 reactors? Well with 1/10th the population, Canada has built about 1/3 that number, so i'd guess the balance of technical ability goes to AECL.
And re. the "failure" of that medical isotope reactor, it's a much longer story than you make out. Under-financed by the company shareholder(s), and eventually determined to be not needed.
Once again TOD readers - you can opt to believe what I've provided a link to, or lengould's "truthyness".
As for 'more to the story' - that is true. I didn't include the bit about the test it failed were DESIGN SAFETY tests.
http://cyberwanderer.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/the-end-of-aecl/
Yup - the reactor did not work the way the science says it should have.
As for CANDU designs:
http://www.ccnr.org/turkey_syndrome.html
So, once again TOD - you can choose to believe facts or the hand waving of the pro-nukers.
Even the conclusion of
so i'd guess the balance of technical ability goes to AECL.
is shown to be wrong once you understand they can't get the math right and the safety issues.
That's a long list of typical crap scraped up by somebody with too much time to waste. eg.
Is that "expert" (ha ha) you quote proposing that ONLY in AECL CANDU's will the fuel "explode" (wrong terminology) if contacting water? (BTW, it wouldn't be a genuine explosion or detonation af an explosive defined as a uniform mixture of oxidizer and oxidant, simply a rapid conversion of water into steam.)
I know you will continue to post garbage as long as I'm willing to refute it, so will simply leave you to your games and do some productive work.
BTW, it wouldn't be a genuine explosion or detonation af an explosive defined as a uniform mixture of oxidizer and oxidant, simply a rapid conversion of water into steam.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/explosion
Google claims bout 313,000 results (0.42 seconds) for boiler explosion.
And has images for exploded boilers.
Even wikipedia is in on the act with "Boiler explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A boiler explosion is a catastrophic failure of a boiler."
Caught in MORE of your lies you slink away, chastened.
(and you don't refute with citations - you just spew. Because the facts are not on your side.)
Ah you're good at twisting things aren't you? Any chance you're a lawyer (ha ha)?
Well I do know for a fact that here in Ontario we have you and your ilk to thank for wasting about 1.5 billion of electrical ratepayers money purchasing electricity from coal-fired generators in the US while your lawyers spent about three years in court delaying a minor fix for Pickering "A" Unit 4 reactor which the operator had scheduled for a 4 month shutdown and $450 million of work. By the time you "environmentalists" and your lawyers had gotten finished exhausting every possible legal path, you'd extended the shutdown by at least two years, closer to three, with among other things a demand for a full environmental assesment (for work entirely within the containment of a reactor which had operated for decades already - environmental changes? The work was so minor that OPG hadn't even planned to remove the reactor fuel during the shutdown! DUH). The delay caused a) the cost of the work contracts to expand from $450 million to $1.1 billion b) the need to purchase an unplanned additional $1.3 billion worth of replacement electricity from the US. c) ABSOLUTELY NO IMPROVEMENTS OR CHANGES TO SYSTEMS OR OPERATIONS IN THE REACTOR!
Since you like references, here's a bit of reading. Skip the bull-crap text and study the facts. Report of the Pickering "A" review panel
And now all we hear from you twits is how much cost overruns are on reactor re-fits. Thanks a lot, from ontario ratepayers, jerks.
Ah you're good at twisting things aren't you?
Interesting. "Twisting things"
You make a claim about the definition of a word - explosion. It is shown your position was wrong, and rather than say "mea Culpa" - you start off with the claim that showing how a word is defined is 'twisting things'.
"So, once again TOD - you can choose to believe facts or the hand waving of the pro-nukers."
The facts are that nuclear power like many heavy industries has serious potential environmental hazards associated with it and should be well-regulated and carefully run.
Its good that envirnmentalists bring these flaws and accidents to light as a method for forcing the industry to get its act together, but that's not an argument for a blanket ban on nuclear power.(Though possibly it is an argument for phasing out CANDU reactors)
I wisk the anti-nuke crowd would be a bit more discriminating and would provide table for the best and worst reactor designs and the best and worst reactor companies. If they lobbied governments to build well-designed reactors from companies with good past safety records they would probably be more effective in promoting nuclear safety.
What the heck are you basing that on? Please note, the medical isotope research reactors fuzzily referred to above are NOT CANDU power reactors. CANDU reactors have a long history of safe and reliable operation, including recently setting the world record for continuous power production of a power reactor.
Don't get sucked in by the guys who'll say anything to further their agenda, and definitely do your own research and reach your own conclusions. I'm a business software engineer, started in honours math, physics and chemistry at U of T (incomplete) with absolutely no percentage in the nuclear industry either way, but i'm getting very fed up with the arts and legal department know-nothings claiming they should be making all our technical decisions at every level of detail. If they want to make the final yea or nay decision on choosing nuclear over coal etc., fine with me (with proper explanations please), that's democracy. But trying to weasel their way inside the containment building? No way, keep the heck off and bring in the physics grads. I simply don't trust the honesty of those anti's. Greenpeace (i used to be a member for a short time) for example teaches its activists "If you're in an interview and don't know the answer to a technical question, just make something damaging up. The reporter probably won't cross-check, and by the time anyone technical can refute you publicly the issue will be decided."
Guys, this is starting to get too personal. The topic is valid, but I find the tone a bit heated. I will be forced to hide the whole thread - which would be a pity - if we can't take the heat out.
like many heavy industries has serious potential environmental hazards associated with it and should be well-regulated and carefully run.
Mining has contaminated and made life shorter for plenty over wide geographic areas.
If one opts to exclude mining - most industrial accidents don't take out 20kilometer areas. Love Canal was 19-20 blocks. Bohpal - I don't believe there is a no-go zone around the plant at this time.
But the demonstrated failure mode of Chernobyl is a demonstrated 20 Km circle where animal diversity is dropping and other nation-states won't let you eat wildlife because of the demonstrated failure mode of fission power.
As for the 'carefully run' - I have yet to see how allowing security guards to be asleep at Fission power plants is a demonstration of the 'promoting nuclear safety'.
the majority of the worlds most dangerous powers already have nuclear weapons: i.e. the US, Russia, China, North Korea, Israel, Pakistan.
We just don't call most of them dangerous because we're afraid that if we do they'll invade us.
An odd place your world must be where the US of A is worried about a North Korean invasion.
The people who already have nuclear weapons are *never* going to give them up
Again, you and facts seem to be like oil, water and no corexit.
South Africa dismantled its nuclear weapons' program in 1989. They had at their peak 6 bombs.
BTW during september the 11th, why do you think the hijackers didn't fly into a nuclear power plant instead?
Could it be because they would have been shot down? Could it be because they thought that if they hit it at the wrong angle they wouldn't have left a scratch? Could it be because unlike the trade centres nuclear powerplants, especially the dangerous reactor sections are much smaller targets that are harder to hit?
I'm going with you have demonstrated an ability to just make up statements and your 'could it be's' are nothing more than a false creation,
proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.
But making up things is typical of the pro nukers.
Go to my link read about it, there are wild boars, wolves and lots of endangered species living there. Although I'm not advocating going around the place causing meltdowns everywhere. But the truth is nature is better off because of it.
Let me clear up your ignorance as you seem to need an education.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20014108-503543.html
Germany has a whole COUNTRY in between itself and Chernobyl.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10819027
You are welcome.
So you're saying you're a lot more satisfied with all the mammal life thriving in the spent coalfields of the Appalacians? Your preferred alternative I presume?
I believe my preferences are already well documented on this website.
Sorry, I've somehow managed to miss experiencing the pleasure of memorizing your preferences in past posts. No loss anyway I'm sure.
I was referring to the USA being dangerous and they certainly could invade other countries I'd also say when it comes down to it the USA are probably among the more trigger happy nuclear powers while worrying about other "wacko" countries developing them. Under bush there was a major push to develop mini-nukes for tactical use in war against deep underground bunkers. In otherwords to use nuclear weapons to wage offensive war if that's not trigger happy I don't know what is....
Nice post. Key points for me...
Resource shortages guarantee war (if you believe history predicts the future). Adequate (I'm not arguing for abundant) resources maximize the probability of peace. There's nothing we can do about declining liquid fuels, but nuclear does offer a "least of evils" means of maintaining base load electricity without catastrophic climate change and thus some semblance of civilization as we know it. We really need to get building more nuclear while we have some surplus wealth available. If we wait much longer we won't be able to afford nuclear or any other meaningful mitigation.
At least in the US, and for some value of "waiting", yes. Carter made a decision, later reinforced by Congress, that the US would pursue a single path for commercial power reactors: light water, once-through fuel cycle, no processing of wastes. Reagan did his best to reduce DoE work to weapons-only, not wholly successfully. Three Mile Island (which demonstrated that layered containment works) and Chernobyl (which demonstrated why layered containment is necessary, particularly if you're stupid enough to use reactor designs known to be really bad) swung public opinion to the view that nuclear was "too dangerous".
For at least 30 years, the largest economy in the world basically shut down its reactor research program. Oh, there have been a variety of paper designs, and simulations, but prototypes that would uncover the inevitable engineering problems were not built. The private companies involved are now owned by foreign concerns, for the most part. It seems to me that it's not possible to say what tech might be available today if even a modest building program had been continued. Breed-and-burn? Real breeders? Reprocessing tech that would make waste storage enormously simpler? Maybe nothing, but we just don't know.
I am amused, in some odd fashion, that given the array of energy choices available, so many developing countries are picking nuclear -- and since the vast majority of them have no interest in building weapons, it's an implicit statement that they think neither fossil fuels nor renewables are capable of providing the stable long-term supply of electricity that they need. I'd like to figure out why/how they see the situation differently than the developed world does.
In terms of the "array of choices" available I would advise you to search "Fake Fire Brigade" on the oil drum.
The way the electricity grid works is that supply must match demand all the time. This makes wind and solar impractical for supplying anything more than 20% of our electricity supply in aggregate.
In the case of geothermal and hydro sites are limited
there isn't enough wave and tidal energy on the entire planet to match our energy needs (although maybe for some localities that is the case)
The only alternatives for generation sufficient reliable baseload energy to meet our needs without producing much net CO2 would be
1) Using concentrated solar power to generate hydrogen efficiently, store that and use it as needed in municipal fuel cells that supply electricity to local districts
and
2) Biomass
and
3) Nuclear power
Those 3 choices are all that's left of the "array" once you consider the problem of matching demand with supply and actually think about supplying the majority of our electricity rather than 10 or 20% in a CO2 free manner.
Of those three methods nuclear is the cheapest.
In the developed world we have become so use to receiving energy 24/7 that we started to view it as a luxury. In the developing world where energy is already unreliable government know how important it is to have a reliable grid supply.
Plus the developing world doesn't have anything like as powerful an anti-nuclear lobby as the developed world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement
Funny story, I work on nuclear fusion and support nuclear power but I was sharing a house with people who thought that wind was the answer (one worked for Oxfam). One day we had a power cut and the lights went out, I was actually quite stoic about it but you wouldn't believe the amount of cursing and swearing my wind-power supporting housemates made at the "useless" electricity providers!!!
Any relatively dependable renewable source of electricity can supply base load if you put a large enough buffer in-between the intermittent production and the relentless consumption. The fact that our political and economic systems have not yet recognised the urgency of the situation does not mean that 100% renewables are not technically and economically feasible.
Studies and blueprints for 100% renewables for the USA, UK and Australia are already floating around, many of them in past posts here. I wrote about this with links to these blueprints in 100% Renewables? on baobab2050.org
The only alternatives for generation sufficient reliable baseload energy to meet our needs without producing much net CO2 would be
.....
Of those three methods nuclear is the cheapest.
So you are so well informed to know:
1) there are ONLY 3 choices.
2) that nuclear is the cheapest.
Yet, plenty of other choices exist and the history of cost overruns and actual operation of fission plants shows nuclear is not the cheapest.
Could you be cherry picking your conditions to make your point?
"Yet, plenty of other choices exist and the history of cost overruns and actual operation of fission plants shows nuclear is not the cheapes"t
Read the "fake fire brigade" (I admit for the sake of being conservative I didn't include nuclear fusion) and yes I admit that for some countries Hydro and Geothermal can do it.
But for countries without hydro and geothermal resources, enlighten me, what are the "plenty of other choices" these countries have for providing reliable baseload electricity generation.
Everthing I've read posted on the oil drum suggests that joule for joule nuclear power is at about parity with wind. And nuclear power is reliably on all the time without randomly cutting off and on. So I would still say for a poor country without extensive geothermal and hydro electric resources, nuclear power is the cheapest carbon free energy option for providing baseload electricity.
Everthing I've read posted on the oil drum suggests that joule for joule nuclear power is at about parity with wind.
And yet you claim the ERORI for wind is 20 and the EROEI for nukes is ~5.
(I admit for the sake of being conservative I didn't include nuclear fusion)
Considering the only fusion that works for Man is 92900000 miles away.....
EROI is not the same as cost in terms of money. And I think alot of the energy
put into nuclear power plants is energy enriching Uranium and the like.
Wind power certainly takes 5 times as much steel as nuclear power. And it doesn't provide reliable baseload energy as my original point was. A further point worth noting is that the lifetime of a nuclear reactor is ~60 years while the lifetime of a wind turbine is 15 years due to the oscillating stresses on its blades.
So what are the CO2 free alternatives for providing baseload energy for a country which doesn't have geothermal of hydro resources?
Wind power certainly takes 5 times as much steel as nuclear power
That's your metric? At the end of a wind turbine's life you can take the steel and remelt.
Fission reactors make some of the steel into un-reuseable radioactive waste.
Come on back when you've life cycled the ability for wind to reuse the steel VS turning into un-useable waste that is a rusting symbol of hubris.
Here is some data from the eia website (US data):
Powergeneration has tripled since 3 mile island and the number of reactors is up by 30ish percent. Doesn't make for a good story though.
Power Generation / reactors
1970: 21 / 20
1975: 172 / 57
1980:251 /71
1985: 383 /101
1990: 576 /112
1995: 673 /109
2000:753 /104
2005:781 /104
2009: 798 /104
Rgds
WeekendPeak
Mcain,I think part of the reason that many countries,developing and developed,have opted for significant nuclear power is that their bleeding heart minorities,if they exist at all,have not been Caldicotted.
In other words,a significant part of their population are realists and have managed to carry the day. There is very promising technology in the breeder reactor field and a lot of the ground work was done in US until Clinton pulled the plug.Other nations have picked it up and it is well beyond time for the West to follow and eventually lead.
I am amused, in some odd fashion, that given the array of energy choices available, so many developing countries are picking nuclear -- and since the vast majority of them have no interest in building weapons
So how do you know, beyond your ability to be amused, that the 'vast majority of developing countries have no interest in building weapons'?
You propose some possibilities, lets discuss your proposed as individual cases.
A chunk of nuclear fuel, about the size of a marble, could produce enough power to preserve the lifestyle of the average American throughout his entire lifetime.
The energy density of nuclear fuel is large. When compared to coal it is about 3,000,000 to 1 and for oil, it is about 2,000,000 to 1.
The energy density of nuclear fuel is large.
And if one takes the raw material of my colon-based waste stream and extract the energy from its atomic bonds via breaking it down into its raw atomic parts, you get a large energy density also.
The issue is not the math of breaking atomic bonds, the issue is the flawed nature of man.
Man can not build machines that do not fail - and many of the failure modes of fission power are quite bad.
Man has not conquered his inhumanity to his fellow man - so if you have the fission machines 'everywhere' there will be men trying to create failure modes in the fission machines to unleash geographic based inhumanity on his fellow man.
Man can't seem to figure out when to say 'enough' - so today man only needs X of these fission machines to 'keep things going' but once X is reached, man will claim more is needed. The reasons will vary, but none of the 'we need fission' pushers have ever shown an endpoint.
When compared to coal it is about 3,000,000 to 1 and for oil, it is about 2,000,000 to 1.
Funny thing. With sunshine and biology I can make oil in less than a year. Sunflowers, soy, poppies - plenty of oilseed choices. I can take the organic material left over, put it in a no O2 environment and make (char)coal.
I know of no human based way of making Uranium from lighter elements - but that may be my lack of imagination.
You are advocating using something that takes far longer to make and relies on humans 'just finding it lying about'. Not sure how that is good long term planing.
I haven't done it myself, but I understand that by exposing Thorium-232 to fissioning neutrons from a seed amount of Uranium or Plutonium, it is possible to convert relatively large quantities of Thorium-232 into Uranium-233. And the amount of fissile Uranium-233 created can be far in excess of the amount of starter Uranium used. This is well established.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html
I was thinking more of taking common Hydrogen and making Uranium.
{deleted}
"I know of no human based way of making Uranium from lighter elements - but that may be my lack of imagination."
So what? If you include fertile fuels (Thorium U-238) there's so much energy that can be extracted that there's no need.
So what
You listed energy sources. I point out how humans in human timeframes and basic levels of technology can re-generate all but one of your stored energies and your non-response is "so what?"
I have no other theory to present, merely a suggestion that we start using the scientific method in our discussions.
According to Wikipedia, the scientific method includes Characterizations, Hypotheses, Predictions and [most importantly] Experiments.
Call me a data junkie, but I think steps 4, 5 and 6 are really important. Obviously we can't perform experiments in the normal sense but different societies are performing them for us and lots folks are collecting and publishing data.
Coming of age in the "Show Me" state of Missouri I have a healthy of skepticism of theories that only use anecdotal evidence or make claims that seem obvious but are not followed up with hard data. The following is an example:
Sounds good but how often is it true? Does it vary by economic system?, by resource?, by level of environmental concern?
I think Hamlet had it right:
There are more things in heavn and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
At Mazama Science we are trying to make it easy to bring evidence to the discussion with databrowsers covering Energy Export, Population, Minerals and more.
Let's bring a little more rigor to this discussion as data based evidence will always have the last word.
Regards,
Jon
Jon,
The data on Mazama Science is amazing! I've just added a bookmark and will be perusing the data for a long time to come. Thanks for your work and thanks for sharing it.
Ray
Thanks Jon,
I admit there are places where I gloss over things a bit, and the thing I like about The Oil Drum is that you will get called on that.
My excuse is this: The exact shape of the curve is actually unimportant to the argument. The only criteria that is critical to the argument is that, at some point, the production curve must peak and decline. I'm aware that this doesn't invalidate your argument.
aeldric
aeldric,
I agree that your argument is generally sound and I accept your broad brush conclusions.
The only problem is that I am always looking for much more specific, locally actionable information that requires knowing not what the general progression of things will be but how differences from the general trends will manifest themselves with different minerals and in different regions, economies and cultures.
I am of the opinion that a careful review of existing data can help elucidate these differences and I would love to see the thinkers at TOD delve into the devilish details a little more.
My 2¢
Regards,
Jon
What you are describing is a 'bottleneck'.
Bottlenecks have the effects of slowing 'traffic' down.
People find ways around bottle necks substituting trains for highway congestion or the internet for paper.
What about an energy bottleneck?
The OPEC oil crises of the 1970s looks to me like an energy bottleneck with people looking for oil in Alaska and the North Sea, renewables and a huge switch from oil to coal and gas.
Consecutive peaks does beg the question of the wisdom of switching from one source to another.
Evidence for an ongoing gas or coal peak has been weak, except maybe in Europe. It's debatable uncertain whether the last oil spike in 2008 was a financial bubble or resource peak.
I certainly believe we will see Peak Hydrocarbons in the next few decades based on resource data of the USGS with more switching to coal, unconventional oil, and unconventional gas.
Also it is true that the quality of hydrocarbons/uranium is falling though at a slow rate. US coal is losing its heating value by 1/2% per year but efficiency improvements could offset that.
Population pressure and demand for a higher living standards which translates to rising per capita energy use, is pushing on the bottleneck.
The world will become much poorer, dependent on however many hours a day of energy renewables can provide. A lot of the material benefits of the industrial revolution will shrink.
People will recycle, reuse, restore.
Great post. I've been lurking here on TOD for years, and just today, finally decided to sign up so I can make comments. I hope you'll pardon my layperson's approach to grappling with your post.
Part of what I think we're seeing (at least here in the US) is that as long as most people can reasonably afford a middle class lifestyle, it's as if this problem doesn't exist... if I can still get my happy meal toy, there is no shortage in my mind, right?
I think that is right elle.
But the bewildered herd knows something is wrong, they are just trying to get a story about it that makes them comfortable.
Good point - As long as people are comfortable, there is no reason to look for problems.
This is not helped by the fact that the problem is hidden by complexity. The people who say "We have plent of resource X" are not just saying this to inflate the share price - they truly believe it. From their perspective, it is true.
The reason that low-quality reserves of resource X will never be extracted is only obvious when you look at the overall system.
Unfortunately, each entity only looks at their own area, the overall matrix in which we operate is treated as a "black box" that supplies our needs just as long as we continue to play our part. This faith in the system has worked thus far, but it is misplaced - we need to look at the overall system.
The following is cogent and persuasive:
Simply put: Energy is now inflationary; cheap labor is deflationary. Globalization, as practiced--with its outsourcing to developing countries that have abundant cheap labor--will ultimately fail, and fail precisily because production of resources, especially production of energy, will become increasingly expensive and increasingly difficult.
Additionally, we have another consideration: The rising cost of environmental pollution, setting aside other dimensions of global warming. This cost, as well as the energy costs, will put additional burdens on production networks.
The next ten years will be very interesting.
If inflation is defined as when your wages buy you less and less, then cheap labour is deflationary for the rich and inflationary for the labourers themselves.
So cheap labour doesn't really get rid of inflation it just redistributes it to different people.
But don't worry, there's potentially an endless supply of cheap labour, all you have to do it define more and more countries as "developing" and less and less countries as "developed" with an ever narrowing circle of elite, the only catch is.... the next cheap labourer working in that sweatshop could be YOU.
I once heard this story of a woman that was cursed to always tell the truth but never to be believed. Cassandra I think was her name. It is an old concept. I guess the traditional answer is that is human nature. We always have the answers and the data buried somewhere. We just have the worst time figuring out the right questions to ask.
If Aeldric were possessed of a university chair in economics he might eventually be recognized as a great thinker and a new building or even a college named after him.
This article is the clearest, simplest, and most compelling explaination of the problem of resource limits I have yet seen which actually explains with graphs and numbers why substitution cannot work beyond a certain point.
Yes, I agree. I read the data and actually understood most of it. The problem is my neighbor will never understand or care to understand it until he has to walk to work.
By which time he probably won't have to.
I just never understand the point of including oil shale as a nonconventional oil resource. How much oil shale is made into oil these days? Pretty much zero because it is not cost competitive. And by the time it becomes cost competitive due to rising oil prices, electric vehicles will also become cost competitive. So it is a complete red herring as far as analyzing the oil situation with regards to light-duty transport . . . which is pretty much the biggest use of oil on the planet.
So anytime I see a study which includes oil shale in the numbers, I know the study is completely useless.
I think that it is safe to say that the time to exhaustion is about 2 or 3 minutes before 12:00 for oil, gas and coal from any source. I am using minutes to denote doubling times as Professor A. Bartlett has explained in one of his many examples. We will need all of the available carbon-based fuels until the carbon-based fuel production line flattens out permanently. Whether or not we use them now or save them for other uses is a good question that needs some thought.
There are no easy answers, but shale will almost certainly be important at some point within the next 30 to 50 years.
No source of energy is useless, especially where electric vehicles will require fuel for generating the electricity for the foreseeable future.
We'll see. Among the things that will have to happen is that the same majorities that currently claim it's essential for the federal government to hold very large portions of the land in the western states so that it can be preserved in its pristine state will have to come around to the view that they are willing to destroy large amounts of same.
The oil shale itself is relatively localized, with the major deposits all falling in the Green River basin where Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming come together. But the amount of water required to produce, say, 3-5 million bbl/day of liquid fuel -- no matter which tech you use to extract liquid fuel from the shale -- will almost certainly require so much of the flow that currently goes into the Colorado River that the ill effects will be much more widespread.
There are similar problems if you're going to use it to generate electricity instead. Think of it as really crappy coal to get some idea of the difficulty.
Real crappy coal is not a good analogy. I have seen the refined product, and I have seen analyses that show that it is of high quality once the problems of recovery you mention are solved.
My point goes more to the mentality of dismissing alternatives based on prices and costs that are wholly derived from the current market. The market will change. That is guaranteed. I think that it will change to favor shale -- and that that change will occur not too long from now.
What we have here is a failure of communication -- There is a real shortage of energy just down the road.
Not to leave the subject too early, let's not dismiss crappy coal just because it is really low in BTU content and hard to get. We will be using it - hopefully after some cleaning - before too long.
On the contrary, it is a very good analogy. You should be comparing the cost of your 'refined product' with what comes out of a Sasol coal to liquids plant in South Africa. If it costs 3 times as much (I do not have the data to make any comparison) then it is a waste of time.
I would say that it is perjorative to equate it to coal and then add insult by the modifier "real crappy'.
Data is important. I am looking at a 2005 Rand report http://www.theoildrum.com/comment/reply/6974/723937 that addresses many of the issues of concern. It's not a report full of experimental data, but it does treat the issue factually.
With all of the faults of shale oil, they conclude that "it does not make sense that oil shale is missing from the Department of Energy’s R&D portfolio". I agree.
They are talking about estimated production costs of under $100 bbl. They note it is "unlikely to be profitable unless real crude oil prices are at least $70 to $95 per barrel (2005 dollars)". This is reasonable for even the near term as something to look at.
On the subject of water, they note "it appears highly unlikely that water quality risk is a 'show-stopper'".
My bet is on the fall in the advantage of imported oil over shale oil within the foreseeable future.
There isn't enough data to assure that I am making the better bet than the opposite conclusion, but there is certainly no more data to support the conclusion that it is a waste of time.
In my opinion and experience, there are few things that have ever been proven to be unworkable. Every time I have had the chance to find out what was at the base of this, I find that it was a failed experiment and a view that if one experiment failed, they all will.
I think it is always best to follow the whole development process, including steps 4, 5 and 6, noted in a posting above.
I think we have beaten this horse enough for today.
There is a real shortage of energy just down the road.
No, there is a real shortage of energy based on the low-cost economic model we humans have been using.
The low cost model has brought us, say the road system we now enjoy. Electric cars won't address the energy needed to keep the roads intact.
The water problem could be overcome by shipping the shale to where the water is such as the Pacific northwest. We now ship coal over a thousand miles from Wyoming in order to generate electricity where the water is.
For powering the electric vehicles, I think we'll be using natural gas, coal, nuclear, and renewables. Not oil shale. When we start using oil from oil shale it will be for applications that absolutely require high-energy-density liquid fuel like aviation and heavy-transport.
Of course, I can proven completely wrong if someone comes up with a nice efficient system for getting that Kerogen out of the oil shale but I kinda doubt that will happen.
I understand your point well lawyer. I don't have a problem with folks throwing out any numbers for any magic bullet they would like to offer. But as I said many times the recoverable reserve number is meaningless unless it includes the cost factors as well as the secondary issues. Oil shales might offer ten's of billions of bbls of future oil production. But that projection has to include the full economic basis to justify that number. And in the case of oil shales not only does the economic analysis need to justify the number but also the demand on other resources, such a water, to meet that expectation.
ROCKMAN,
The USA is totally schizoid on energy, a babbling idiot.
You have to look at other countries because 'made in america' is functionally an oxymoron.
China has a system where the government just decides to do what makes sense.
They know about Peak Oil and are taking action.
They are already producing 1 billion gallons of methanol(from coal not ethanol) to burn in their cars(why?) and are going into oil shale in Manchuria.
BEIJING, Sep. 14, 2010 (Xinhua News Agency) -- An oil shale research center has been established in Northeast China's Jilin province to research on the industrial development over the abundant oil shale resources in the province.
The center is jointly supported by the Ministry of Land Resources, Jilin Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, Jilin University and China Petroleum University (Beijing).
Oil shale is regarded as one of the unconventional energy resources with reliable exploration and development prospects in China. Jilin province has been proven with some 100 billion metric tons of shale oil reserves, mostly located in the southeastern part of Songliao Basin.
Sinopec Group, China's leading oil refiner and parent of Sinopec (NYSE:SNP) Corp. (SNP.NYSE; 600028.SH; 0386.HK), is running a demonstration project on shale oil exploration and development with foreign partner in Jilin, but the industrial production has yet been started. (Edited by Qiu Jun, Qiujun@xinhua.org)
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/4496601
I don't know about conversion to liquid oil. But the nation of Estonia has been getting about 90% of their electrical production from burning oil shale in power plants for many years. I believe they also export quite a bit. China also burns oil shale for power.
In Estonia there is an especially high quality variety of oil shale deposits called Kukersite.
I think this post is spot-on, a very nice angle illustrating systemic limits.
I increasingly wonder, though, whether general human delusionality approaching the Great Bottleneck may not be a bulwark the earth's life systems need.
Wiping out tropical diseases seems an unallayed good; yet it becomes key to the slash & burn of rainforests. The innovations of the "green revolution" added billions of humans to overshoot. It could be that the good of the planet - and the long-term good of our own species - is best-served by our running into the wall full-tilt, rather than "seeing the light" and methodically using up everything that's left.
Just a thought.
Well, here we can see the human dilemma—everything we regard as good makes the population problem worse, everything we regard as bad helps solve the problem. There is a dilemma if ever there was one.
- Dr. Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and Energy
The post shows (once again) that Business As Usual is will not continue indefinitely. It is a well done job, and if I needed any more convincing, it might push me over the edge.
Now. however, I'm much more interested in what to do. Aeldric mentioned Efficiency (= doing the same old thngs but with fewer resources).
However he did not mention Conservation (= adopting patterns that by their very nature do not require the same amount of resource).
Example: Fresh fruit and vegetables are now shipped from Africa to the UK. Efficiency tells us how to re-design the aircraft to use less fuel. Conservation suggests eating locally grown food, produced in season.
Some advantages of conservation:
- these measures are much more within reach of ordinary people;
- they can be implemented very quickly
- the possibilities for energy reduction are much greater.
I would suggest that the omission of conservation is a significant flaw in this analysis.
Similarly omitted are consideration of systems that are not part of globalized production/consumption.
Thus many positive responses are ignored, and one sinks further into gloom and passivity.
I cannot but agree on the matter of conservation being at least as valid as efficiency; a pity it was not included in the essay, which would be better for the inclusion. However, the essay is still one of the best I have read on the subject.
Analogously, I read an interesting article on Latin America in THE ECONOMIST. Many matters I consider very significant were excluded (e.g. the article gave major coverage to a truly admirable Mexican breadmaker (Bimbo) but excluded one of the world's leading architectural-engineering-construction firms (Ingenieros Civiles Asociados - ICA), an enterprise which illustrates most excellently several points made in the article. And the article was dead wrong about the controversial ouster of former President "Mel" Zelaya. Nevertheless, the article is to be highly recommended.
The subject TOD essay is far superior to the above article in THE ECONOMIST.
The general overshoot problem is defined by the large/ growing population and high/rising per capita consumption.
We would probably have plenty of time to develop renewables on a scale suitable to supporting a billion people comfortably if there were only billion of us now.Let us pretend for a moment that we might actually do so, under such circumstances.
This thought brings me to my real point:
I believe that in the more developed countries the historical custom of parents having lots of kids in order to assure thier own welfare in thier old age has for all practical purposes ceased to exist.
Such a custom will not be quickly reestablished , in my estimation.
The groundwork has been laid for serious work on lowering birth rates.
Let us suppose for purposes of running a thought experiment that some uber rich person were to leave his fortune to be spent for the sole purpose of paying women to refrain from having kids, or more than one kid.Some of the payment would be in the form of birth control devices or drugs or surgery of course;more could be in the form of an annual grant of cash, or paid tuition at a local school.
Of course not enough money could likely ever be found for a world wide program of this nature, and in some countries it could not be established for political or religious reasons.
But for some relatively small country teetering on the edge of environmental and economic collapse,such a program might work wonders.
I'm sure that this idea has been explored before now by people with relevant expertise.
Any links to sites where they have posted thier conclusions will be greatly appreciated.
I recall there was once a program in India where men were paid to have vasectomies. Don't know if it was beneficial considering India's population has nearly doubled since that time. Vasectomies are probably the most cost effective form of contraceptive but since it is men who set policies it is not adequately incentivized.
Bart, I am all for conservation or re thinking the way we do things but I think we can soemtimes shake our heads at the apparent absurdity of BAU without taking the time to fully understand why it is more economical to ship food from Africa than it is to grow it in the UK. Ther eare many other countless examples of other goods that fall into the same category from Chinese made underpants, to New Zealand lamb. Conservation is going to be very much about giving those things up and that will not happen unitl people are forced by circumstances. I don't spend too much time worrying about anyone else these days. I know that I cannot convince people to give up toadys pleasures for tomorrows security, so I just do the best I can to prepare myself. Curously, my son just made his first pair of boxer shorts in a high school technics class, which gave me some hope of not having to give up underwear!
Excellent post right along my own reasoning.
I'd like to add what I came up with as the warning signal of collapse of a complex system in particular ours.
You have outline the overt signals but whats missing is what the system itself does to counteract the situation.
Indeed to the point that it obfuscates its real state.
What I believe starts to happen is the system plays whats basically a grand game of musical chairs. Its no longer capable of any real growth yet its forced to fake it.
A simple example is every job in Mexico or China results in the loss of a job in the US with a dramatic reduction in costs. No new job is created yet profit margins go up. For this to work obviously demand has to remain robust for the product of the job. Rising debt loads allow this to take place. In a real expanding economy wages would have risen rapidly in Mexico and China as they demanded they purchased the goods they where making. The wage arbitrage would have dissipated rapidly.
The same of course works for resources as well as labor the economy shifts to increase profit margins as constraints arise. Its a complex system thus a tremendous amount of shifting around is possible.
It becomes difficult to discern that its really just running around in circles and nothing is happening indeed only the explosion of debt really shows the underlying system has peaked.
As you note eventually everything becomes correlated with money and thus the final signal is in the financial arena. And its pretty simple its debt.
Next its worse than that really by the time the debt load grows to horrendous levels the system is well past its peak. This is because a lot of the debt was issued based on equity valuations supported by the previous debt expansion. Ever cheaper debt aka credit serves to support previous valuation rounds making new debt safe to issue.
So given that eventually everything gets correlated with money the signal that the system is now unstable is easy to see its debt. To understand how the system can pull off such a situation you need to look into this game of musical chairs or circular economics which eventually results in trading partners allowing debt to balloon.
Everyone has to reap real benefits even as the debt bubble expands. If now it won't expand.
This is done by allowing gains to be made on each individual transaction. Eventually of course it ends with central banks forced to carry tremendous amounts of debt in one form or another. The profits are of course skimmed off and the debt load is socialized.
On can actually construct a small variant of this. Consider a village where everyone works to build houses for each other. As each villager gets his house built by the village he owes the village for the house. Assume that resources are constrained and each house costs more than the last all paid for via credit back to the village which acts as the bank. Eventually the last house is built and its ten times the cost of the first house and the village owes itself immense sums of money as notational credit. Indeed many of the villagers that had their house built first are notational multimillionaires. Then what ?
Now that simple example highlights a few things probably the most interesting is that given the correlation between money and resources its trivial to pick off when resources actually peaked.
The peak for resources happens when both resource prices and debt levels are rising. Thats it nothing more is needed peak resources are very clearly seen in a society that allows expansion of debt beyond ability to pay.
In general your post is describing the circular games a society that allows debt expansion to play to hide the peak if you will. All kinds of substitutions specializations etc against and ever rising debt level serves simply to allow circular economics with expanding debt to disguise itself as continued growth but its just the economy in overshoot.
Of course the problem with this result is it puts us well past peak resources and almost certainly peak oil.
Hi Memmel,
I always enjoy your comments, but I think you try to pack too much in. This leads to you occassionaly skipping through logical steps that you probably regard as obvious.
Speaking for myself, I am a "bear of very simple brain". I sometimes have to think pretty hard to put myself into the "frame of mind" that you were in when you made the cognitive leap.
Once I'm there, I can usually see how the jump happened, but it takes work.
As an example, could you elaborate on this comment:
Thanks,
aeldric
Sure no problem.
Consider the various cases.
Case 1.
1.) Wealth is expanding
2.) Resources are expanding.
3.) Money supply is expanding as needed.
4.) Debt levels remain constant.
This is what most would agree is a healthy society and some low inflation is probably needed however
on the same hand things should also get cheaper.
Case 2:
1.) Wealth is expanding
2.) Resources expanding however getting more expensive to extract.
3.) Money supply expanding as needed.
4.) Debt levels slightly higher as overall costs are higher but resources still expanding so not a huge issue.
5.) Low hanging fruit efficiency gains make a big difference.
All that happens in case two is that it takes a bit longer to pay off debt than in the past because society is allocating more money to basic resource extraction. For oil this can be ascribed to say 1980-1995 or so time period. You see a noticeable bump in debt its clear we moved from the first scenario to the second.
Not even close to a problem just retiring debt and gaining real wealth is harder.
Low monetary inflation helps tremendously as it discounts old debt.
Case 3:
1.) Wealth stops expanding
2.) Resources contract.
3.) Money supply expanding as needed.
4.) Debt levels start exponentially increasing
5.) Efficiency gains no longer make huge differences.
6.) Radical changes needed to infrastructure however debt levels based on the valuation of existing infrastructure.
7.) Concentration of wealth becomes and issue as the top gets more and more of a static to shrinking pie.
8.) Circular economic games begin.
This is where I'm claiming you know for a fact that a critical resource peaked. In our case oil.
Obviously its the one that then went on to increase in price. Debt levels increase exponentially or you contract the money supply and force a deflationary depression to stabilize vs wealth. Multiple defaults eventually result in everything being paid for. Eventually the price of everything with and outstanding debt against it is either paid off or defaulted on and sold for its cash price.
I mention this because once wealth expansion stops the correct solution is to clear all debts asap.
Case 4:
Is what you presented. Debt is going exponential. Money fails to work as it becomes decoupled from the declining resource base. Fictional asset bubbles "tulip mania's" replace and real wealth creation. And you get what I call circular economics debt is leveraged to create various unsustainable arbitrage plays. US/China trade is and obvious one.
My point is this is post resource peak not pre peak. If the resource base was still expanding then wealth would be expanding and you would not indeed cannot get the debt explosion. Its only possible after your resource base and associated wealth creation peaks. Its like trying to create a housing bubble in Wichita Kansas because they are not making any more land :)
Intrinsically investment in real expansion and real wealth creation is far more lucrative then rentier games.
Thus if its still viable it would happen and expand wealth and thus reduce debt. Owning a profitable company thats expanding has returns that blow the doors off any other form of investment.
Sure the stock market is having a small rally now but it should be obvious to most that the last real period of wealth creation was back in the late 1990's to 2000 or so. Equities will steadily fall back to this no matter what.
Eventually of course you have no choice but to clear debt.
Hopefully the obvious point is clear exponential debt expansion happens only after investment in creation of tangible assets is no longer profitable. If a critical resource is increasing in price then this is because this resource is in decline period. Otherwise expansion would quickly cap in price and the debt load stabilize and we are scenario 2 payback times lengthened again but stable.
Indeed I'd argue right now our policy makers are attempting to "fake" scenario 2 but its just that fake we are way past 2 we are scenario 4.
Thanks Memmel.
I see what you are saying. I wish I didn't - it is not good news.
aeldric
As usual you just can't answer the original question, and just muck things up further.
Please answer aeldric's question, and clean up what you wrote:
This does not make any sense because you can have a peak in resource consumption in a society that outlaws usury. They could easily go through a resource peak without having any debt in the populace. The resource price question is inane and at best a tautology.
Just clear up the question by admitting that what you wrote is pointless.
Then you would go right into deflation which is the correct response. I even mentioned it.
Then peak oil or peak resources would not be a problem like they are for us now.
They are still a big problem but the economy would price it in immediately once the ability to create wealth declined. To be clear the is Austrian or monetary deflation obviously you would have that coupled almost certainly with some price inflation. At least for goods and services linked in with oil the combination of monetary deflation and price inflation for oil based products would provide the incentive to move towards alternatives.
Such a society would also obviously be working not off of debt but saved capitol thus alternatives to oil from infrastructure up would be viable. Oil based infrastructure would be devaluing rapidly as it should purchasing power for alternative would be increasing thus you would transition.
Obviously this means such and economy would basically use its most scarce critical resource as its monetary unit. As the energy problem was solved they would look at other issues water perhaps might make sense etc. Gold worked this way in a lot of ways as it measured the excess capacity that could be wasted looking for gold. Gold itself has little real value but the mining of gold is generally and expensive proposition thus its undertaken when you generally have too much wealth and not enough money. Otherwise you would invest in the same resources in more basic industries.
We have debt instead of gold and my point was that if the resources existed we could create wealth no one would be interested in creating debt why ? You make far more money creating tangible assets. A gold based society is different in that they periodically have to balance the money supply by wasting time and money looking for gold but it serves to allow the economy to sort of cool off and slow its expansion rate and stabalize. Debt based societies are unbounded however the limit is detected when creation of debt itself becomes the preferred investment method that happens when your resource constrained in some fundamental resource.
Consider what happens when labor is the constraint wages then expand and real purchasing power expands. Sure eventually price inflation probably almost always follows but maybe not if productivity increases. Indeed a smart society keeps labor expensive and makes investment in productivity gains and efficiency very profitable. Of course this kills concentration of wealth but hey thats the point. You force the rich to reinvest smartly to stay rich.
You are making up stuff. Since you write like crap, you can take any combination of words and maintain that was what you originally meant. You said that "The peak for resources happens when both resource prices and debt levels are rising.". That is a logical construct with a logical AND sandwiched in there. Mr. professional software developer should know what an AND means. You can't start talking about deflation when you said that it was dependent on debt levels rising.
Just admit that you write yourself into knots, and that spewing out 10 more paragraphs on something tangentially related to the topic won't unravel your logic.
Hey Webby -
Why the hostility?
"You are making up stuff"
Bullshit. memmel's original post was about an economy where debt can pile up. His prediction in that case was that debt will only pile up after the most profitable resource extraction has taken place. I don't know if I agree 100% but the logic is thought provoking. Granted memmel does not write very well but his thinking may be correct.
Then you asked what would happen in a society that didn't allow accumulation of debt. That's when he replied about deflation.
So you changed the question and then accused him of making up stuff. I'd say you shot yourself in the ass there pal. Perhaps you should read and think a bit more before shooting off your mouth like that.
No. Why don't you quote what he said? This is all about what Memmel says and our collective inability of making sense of anything that he writes. He said this "The peak for resources happens when both resource prices and debt levels are rising.". On the other hand, you said: "debt will only pile up after the most profitable resource extraction has taken place". Memmel said peak resource extraction which is a "quantity" of resource per day, while you say something related to "profitability" which is something completely different. Of course what you say may be true because you are talking about money.
Let me give you an example. Take some very scarce precious metal resource that has previously been pretty much discovered and extracted. It has clearly reached a peak. It is a very valuable commodity now. Now say someone finds a lode of it somewhere. That extraction may be the most profitable in terms of value per quantity ever. Yet it doesn't qualify as peak resource either, because that happened long ago. And all the strap-hangars that borrowed money to invest in exploratory equipment for this short boom-bust cycle will find themselves in debt after the lode plays out.
So what are the independent and dependent variables in all this?
Memmel hasn't a clue because he just spews out stuff stream-of-consciousness, and we are left with picking through his words.
The problem is that Memmel plays loose with the language all the time, and he develops this martyr complex where he uses his inability to express himself as a defense. For some reason, I am the only one that will call him on it.
Hey pally, I think Memmel can fend for himself.
OK, let's zoom out just a bit and take the whole quote:
"Now that simple example highlights a few things probably the most interesting is that given the correlation between money and resources its trivial to pick off when resources actually peaked.
The peak for resources happens when both resource prices and debt levels are rising. Thats it nothing more is needed peak resources are very clearly seen in a society that allows expansion of debt beyond ability to pay."
In other words, the market signals of peak resource extraction will be rising prices combined with increasing debt levels. Money. Once again I don't know that I fully agree, but it's certainly reasonable on the face of it.
You have latched onto one sentence and are taking it out of context. I don't have the history with this guy that you seem to, but from here it looks like you are letting that get in the way of just reading what is written. And yes, I agree that memmel needs to seriously fill in the details of his logic if he is going to get any agreement.
Personally, I find your behavior toward Mike really ugly.
I request that you bring some generosity to your conversation.
Ditto. Such venom does more damage to the emitter than the target.
I think Memmel has a brilliant insight here.
Debt is a claim on future wealth that must be created to pay for today's consumption.
Rate of change of debt and price of key resource are very good signals.
I must agree-WHT is apparently getting a little crabby in his old age.
Memmel is I also admit hard to read, but his profile says he knows that, he is dyslexic, and that if you email him ,he will clarify.
Personally I can't always follow his reasoning(or maybe my problem is with his train of consciousness conversational writing style) but when I do figure out what it is precisely that he is getting at, the light bulb in the cartoon balloon in my head often goes on and I find myself thinking,admiringly, "Why didn't that occur to ME?"
He does cover too much ground too fast-unless you are already tuned in to some considerable extent to his theory of the way the economy works,you might as well forget it because he does tend to skip over a heck of a lot of steps in his chain of reasoning that are NOT necessarily obvious to THIS reader at least.
I suppose this comes from trying to write as fast as you can talk; getting feedback directly from the listener in terms of raised eyebrow or bewildered expression cues the speaker to stop and explain a given point in as much detail as needed.Memmel is not getting that kind of feedback, and the written word fails to convey a lot of nuance that would be readily apparent in a face to face conversation.
I often allow an oppportunity to make a (to me) simple comment I consider relevant to pass without posting because explaining the reasoning behind my thoughts would require writing a tightly composed essay for the edification of this particular audience.
A lot of us have probably seem the classic cartoon depicting the math professor remarking that a problem which only fills three chalkboards and which he be solved in an hour was a "trivial" problem.Such is day to day reality -to a math professor.
A couple of days ago somebody got upset because somebody referred to a "democrat" president, and unloaded on the poster's "nice partisan swipe".To really say what I thought would require pages, but those acquainted with the history of communism may remember that the Bolshevicks named themselves as such for a cynical reason-the word translates as "majority".
Referrinng to OBama as a "president" as opposed to as referring to him as a "democrat" conveys overtones suggesting that a president of the opposite party would not be "democratic" in terms of the larger meaning of the word.
Abortion rights advocates want to disguise and camoflauge thier position by controlling the debate as one being solely about "choice"and using dry detached medical terminology rather than discussing what is really going on in every day language clearly comprehensible to the lay public.
Of course right wingers are equally guilty of similarly obfuscations on a daily basis.
Incidentally I support abortion as a right-but it is not good that a man is generally liable (child support) to be held responsible for the results of the woman's decision without being allowed any input into that decision.
I know at least one man personally who would have been very glad to have raised a baby without the help from the mother, other than bearing it to term.
He will go to his grave believing HIS CHILD was murdered.
Just for the fun of it, I once or twice have steered several rather liberal friends into a discussion of the murder or accidental death of a pregnant woman mentioned in the current news and heard them say, under the influence of a few drinks, that if the woman had been thier wife or girlfriend, the sob at fault would pay for the life of thier wife AND child.
I suppose they meant that they would sue him for damages to thier mental health. ;)
Of course being the diplomatic sort that I am, I never remind these good people of what they sometimes say under the influence.They need me as the token conservative when they have a social gathering, and I enjoy the excellent food and drink and a lot of the conversation.
Of course that sort of stuff is mostly a thing of the past now-I live too far away to get to thier gatherings except at long intervals.
This is not cast in stone, and the REAL risk exposure to the holy grail many claim for Expanding Wealth, are Ponzi Schemes.
Ponzi schemes critically depend on added wealth, to continue their illusion.
Take those away, and you can survive with essentially static wealth.
Japan has been close to stagnant for ~30 years, so it can be done.
Notice also, that the main area of collapses in Japan, are those most Ponzi-like,
and in the recent Oil Spike, the Ponzi paper shuffling was the first to go poof.
Aye.
I especially like the case of Japan. It is the perfect setting for looking at how a society may continue to operate in the face of change. I follow the econophysics research out of Kyoto University and they have some incredible data on worker productivity levels.
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/04/extracting-learning-curve-in-la...
The workers in an economy in some ways statistically perform like the particles in a physics experiment, and you can use much of the same math to understand exactly what is going on. I believe the stability seen in Japan in the face of their liquidity crisis and ensuing stagnation, has to do with the statistical equilibrium established in their workforce. As a society, nothing fazes them and they will continue to adapt. I think we have a lot to learn from how they operate.
Yeah, I wouldn`t call it a "conspiracy" but the people who have the most at stake---because they have money and power, are also the people by and large in cities. They have the higher educational levels, work for governments, universities, etc. So they will collectively obfuscate the situation.As I have read "Life is a complex thermodynamic system, not a paragon of virtue".
I guess for a while a few years ago they were holding on to their power by doling out credit---to pretty much anyone with a pulse. Well that blew up in their faces. So now they are holding on to their power by doling out food stamps (you can be sure of getting food with these) and other kinds of assistance, maybe QE, stimukus jobs, etc. "Look how much we are doing for you!"
Each time, the things that they can give out in return for loyal compliance are one step less abstract---from credit, to money, and (soon?one day?) it will be real food that they are exchanging in return for cooperation, I guess that is when rationing, etc., comes into play. The people with the power have NO incentive to speed up the collapse process---rather they have incentive to make sure that it happens systemically, broadly and deeply and slowly but surely and completely so that dependence on them will be total. No one will be prepared, in other words. Except they will have all sorts of powers to declare this or that emergency to make sure that food and energy flows go through them (where they can skim offf what they need before they pass off the rest). Once again it will be "Look how much we are doing for you!"
And everyone will actually believe them, and no one will think, "But 5 years ago, why didn`t you say, buy land, get a cow, plant wheat? Why didn`t you warn us?" People will say instead, "Oh, of course, the plans you had to 'get the economy going again' DIDNT work out, well, you SINCERELY tried, so we forgive you !"
Basically the people with power, money, education are planning to get first into line. And everyone else is going to step aside willingly.
Since you brought up anecdotal evidence, let me try a hand at it.
Memmel relying on a dyslexic defence is like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg suddenly donating $100,000,000.00 to a grade school in New Jersey on the eve of a movie opening critical about his methods. The fact that he hides behind a good samaritan cloak doesn't hide the fact that he is a phoney.
So Memmel can't write because he is a dyslexic. Have you ever thought to consider that he can't read for the smae reason? Everytime I challenge him to explain something or other, like the shape of his shark fin (there are many possible shapes, BTW), he goes and changes the subject. If he is severely dyslexic, that would explain him not being able to read our questions. He just looks for catch phrases, and starts spewing on something related to that topic. I grow weary of this act and particularly people picking up on something he says and treating it like gospel. Go ahead and try to find the basis for this shark fin peak and you won't find anything but some stream-of-consciousness rant. No wonder why people like Reservegrowthrulz and Roderick Beck think TOD is all loons.
"Oh, that theory? I think it was Memmel's. Never mind that, he's a dyslexic."
That's not why they think TOD is "all loons." They think we are loons because they are operating inside completely different world views than ours. Ideas that are outside the container that is their world view occur as absurd when viewed from within the world view. This is true whether one is looking as an atheist into the religious world view or a republican or democrat looking into the other's world view.
If you have problems with Mike's logic, of course continue to call him on it. But if what you say is true (that his logic is slippery), it's not like he alone is guilty of that on the planet or on this site.
I have a friend with a brain injury caused by a head-on car collision (the car swerved into his lane). In conversations with him he describes how difficult it is to operate in the world because, unlike physical injuries that are often visible, his isn't visible and thus people don't understand why he has trouble with comprehension. They get frustrated and then don't believe him when he explains that, despite the fact that he looks completely normal, his capacities are not the same as they once were.
I'm not saying Mike is unable to think logically or anything of the sort. I always find something worthwhile in what he writes.
However, Mike has explained to us and the other day to you why he writes the way he writes. That's why I am requesting that you bring some generosity to your conversation.
You are, of course, completely free to ignore or decline my request but I hope that you do neither.
Do you accept my request?
I try to ignore him becuase I think he is a troll. But too many people start spouting the same random "insights" he auto-generates , and all it does is poison the intellectual level of this site. I go for months trying to resist feeding the troll (there is but one, Reservegrowthrulz is no troll) and then I blow up based on someone preeching the word of Memmel as gospel. In this case, it was the bizarre CO2 "theory" of his, whereby he thinks he can predict current oil production based on current CO2 levels at Mauna Loa. It would all be so funny if it wasn't so sad.
BTW, my comment reply wasn't to PI , it was to OldFarmerMac. Sorry about that PI.
Are you declining my request to be generous to your fellow man, including Mike?
We have a choice here and now to create the world we want to live in. I say that here at TOD we show how it's done by bringing compassion, patience and generosity to our interactions.
I'm really asking you to create a world worth living in. If something or someone "rubs you the wrong way," use this as an opportunity to practice letting things go. After all, we are all going to need to get good at this skill in the future coming at us.
I also think this sentiment is a good one.
There are some posters on TOD I never read. But I would never complain about them. (I am sure there are people who don`t read my posts). I think everyone brings their own individual outlook here. Isn`t that what makes it interesting?
Actually my impression is that many people really enjoy memmel`s analysis, and I am one of them. Memmel`s posts I always read. I think his outlook is unique and visionary, offering the big picture.....lots of interesting theories. Are they all correct? But are anyone`s?
The world needs diversity. Memmel is not a troll, certainly. Probably the problem here is a personality clash, and partly a style issue. It could be solved by letting go of the perceived need to exercise control over others in a space where it is unnecessary to do so.
Personality clash is part of it. I would never work with somebody clearly lacking analytical skills. Peer review is all about exercising control as you are declaring that someone is either right or wrong on a hypothesis, thus encouraging or denying them the chance to pursue their work. I would suggest that Memmel again try to present his work as a top-level post to TOD. Apparently it got rejected the last time he tried it. It looks like the editors of TOD are maintaining at least some level of control.
I am not going to kowtow. If ever I go off the deep end and start spouting nonsense, I sincerely hope somebody will come after me and point out all the errors I have made. That is one reason I post here, to attract some serious critiques. I don't know what is so hard to understand about that.
Too bad. I was hoping to enlist you into being a man of compassion and kindness and have failed. Instead, you have chosen to be mean spirited and completely unsympathetic to another man's situation in life. I hope you are shown greater generosity by others when you don't measure up to someone else's standards than what you have shown here.
And people wonder why some of us don't think this is going to end well...
I am one guy out of how many currently living on Earth?
I am one guy that has decided to analyze and model oil depletion out of how many people living on earth?
We are but a few thousand of those who read TOD out of how many people living on Earth?
I decide to go after one guy who I think is doing no one any favors, and you can reach that kind of conclusion? Now I am getting imaginary chills thinking it all rests on my shoulders.
BTW, I don't need any generosity.
On one hand, you and are nothing.
On the other, we are everything, because what is possible for all of man lies within us.
That it is indeed poetic and if it helps encourage someone, I would say go for it.
Bravo WHT !
It proves you are human like all the rest of us.
Even a highly mathematical mind contains the intertwined fingers of the limbic and reptile brain sections poking their irrationality into the neo-cortical and causing each of us to flame out once in a while.
It's who and what we really are.
Accept it.
Denial doesn't make it not-so.
__________________________
I recently watched a DVD movie called "My Name is Kahn".
Very interesting.
It's all about not making snap judgments about other people and about giving everybody some modicum of respect and dignity.
Hmmm. I went and read memmel's blog and I see what you are on about. The basis of that whole analysis is an assumed linear relationship between burning of fossil fuels and atmospheric CO2. That linear relationship was presented in one sentence with no supporting evidence, and may or may not be valid. The planet is not a steel reaction chamber. But then there are a bunch of charts to make the conclusions look nice and scientific.
So I understand the problem. But I am not convinced that tantrums are the best way to deal with it.
Correct I assume a linear relationship I'm glad you actually read it.
WHT seems to have ignored this critical assumption.
However given the scale of the reaction chamber consider what a non-linear relationship would mean.
And I do back it up because any non-linear assumption would lead to snowball earth or greenhouse earth.
Thats not to say non-linear behavior is impossible just I don't see how it could occur without rapid climate change.
The advent of oxygen in the atmosphere is a perfect example of non-linear feedback. Given the growing evidence of relatively fast onsets and endings of ice ages they also represent times when linear assumptions are probably false.
What I'm not aware of is anything in the historical record that indicates non-linear changes over a short period on the scale of the global atmosphere that also resulted in a fairly stable climate.
Finally the sudden creation of a carbon sink that persists for decades and matches up perfectly with excess emissions from the rapid expansion of coal burning in china. Perhaps it happened just the chain of reasoning required to support this unknown carbon sink is interesting.
I'd suggest linear is a better guess. But yes its simply and assertion or guess or whatever you want to call it.
If you assume liner than my results follow. If you don't assume its linear then explain to me the physical process at work and its sudden appearance its not el nino or any other atmospheric phenomena since all of them went through several cycles over the 20 or so years in question.
Thus linear is not the flimsy assumption your making it out to be and yes I do discuss this in my paper.
Perhaps I should expand on it but hey thats starting to look like a real and honest critique of my paper.
We can't actually have that happen. I am glad that someone finally actually writes about the fundamental assumption as everything else in the paper is simply the application of this simple assumption.
And last but not least you do have scaling laws at play any smaller closed system thats saturated i.e showing higher levels of the gas fraction would be linear with the input. So to get and understanding of the process any attempt to scale up from well defined closed systems results in a linear relationship.
Obviously I think that disproving a linear relationship is needed not proving a linear relationship. Its the most sensible assumption based on all kinds of known basic chemistry at smaller scales and scaling laws are fundamental to physics. Heck for chemical plants the issues are the different scale factors for volume and area not the reaction itself.
Anyway I better stop :)
My first real review ! And you nailed the critical assumption the rest simply follows you don't even need to do the math you can read the result right off the raw data.
See what I mean?
First, the production equivalent of coal today compared to oil today is about 80%, the same as it was in about 1985. Dreaming up some complicated scenario suggesting that oil and coal are going in different directions violates Occam's razor. CO2 is just steadily rising as she can be.
Second, because of lengthy CO2 residence times, you do not see all the responses immediately, whether or not they are linear. The very obvious point is that we can drop fossil fuel usage to zero tomorrow and the CO2 curve will continue to creep up. Memmel would then see the curve creeping up and suggest that some hidden source of CO2 is coming from Atlantis.
Memmel wants to overlook all of the prevailing evidence so he can somehow crowbar his model to demonstrate something that he won't let go of -- which I understand is a quest to show that oil production numbers are completely wrong, due to some massive global conspiracy.
And some people on TOD believe in what Memmel says! That is what drives me to the brink.
Hmm you burn C02 it enters the atmosphere C02 mixing time for the nothern hemisphere trade winds are measured in days.
To take the apposing side if you will mixing between the northern and southern hemisphere is slow.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/24/study-hemispheric-co2-timing-sugge...
Attempts to use global measurments to refute using Mt Loa data as a measure of local C02 variations is senseless the signal if it exists at all is lost.
As far as sensitivity of the measurement goes its instructive to read this.
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~pkoch/EART_206/09-0312/Keeling%20et%2076%20Tellu...
They are able to successfully measure and correct for a number of local perturbations in the data. I argue the sensitivity is not the issue.
Some data on pollution transport.
http://geology.com/nasa/monitoring-pollution-by-satellite.shtml
Note carbon monooxide might be a better traces but it probably depends on the source. I'd guess the C02/C0 ratio is probably related to coal vs other sources.
Another article.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1996/95JD01543.shtml
We can certinaly detect Chinese pollution on the west cost of the US its trivial for particulate emissions.
Transport times for particulate are proportional to the wind speed. I did not find all the articles on C14 and radio nucleotide transport from atomic blasts. They are excellent tracers. Regardless if the particulate emisions are making it then the associated C02 would also be present. Obviously you can't tag a C02 molecule so you need tracers to get the transport rates.
In reading the early paper on Mt Loa I have to wonder if they are not also capable of detecting the daily pulse of human C02 emissions they may be attributing to much to local sources I suspect that some of their pulsing is coming from distant sources aka China which has regular predictable day/night pulses in production. I don't think the mixing rate is fast enough to eliminate this. Transport rate is related to wind speeds.
http://www.physorg.com/news201865443.html
So this gives a lag of two weeks between emission and detection outside of the main trade winds.
Another more recent article.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=43182
I don't think that the measurement itself is in question.
More stuff I'd like to have this article in full looks interesting.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0889.2004.00111.x/abst...
Linear vs quadratic fit.
http://zipcodezoo.com/Trends/Trends%20in%20Atmospheric%20Carbon%20Dioxid...
If you want to get serious about it perhaps my results are simply a result of using a linear fit.
However one reason why the quadratic fit works is because of the early data. Both anthropogenic emission data
and the earlies C02 measurements are in my opinion suspect. Basically no one was really paying attention till after the 70's oil crisis. But if your going to attack me this is a real weak point in my approach that I'm very aware of however other fits tend to weight the early data to much IMHO.
Let's say the fast part of the CO2 residence time is like 5 years, which is close to 2000 days. The low-pass suppression of one-day cycles will therefore be 1/2000 = 0.0005. This is on top of a steadily accumulating CO2 baseline largely caused by the long-term time constant of on the order of 100 years. And then you have the spatial dispersion and lags that you seem to rationalize by invoking wind. No, delay latencies also act as low-pass filters as well, further obscuring rapid delta changes. Nothing will be able to detect this fractional change, and at best they can see only a wiggle based on seasonal changes.
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/04/fat-tail-in-co2-persistence.html
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-shock-model-analysis-relate...
I really don't understand why you can't put the most rudimentary sanity checks to your musings. The CO2 response is a convolution of the forcing function with the CO2 impulse response function. Many electrical and mechanical engineers read TOD and they know this is the basic analysis that you need to do when you characterize a first-order dynamic system. You always put a scientific sheen to your assertions but you never back them up with any references or calculations.
Why don't you include the dynamic response? For once, please respond to this question without trying to go off on some tangent.
I urge everyone to study both the world "out there" and also the thing that perceives it.
Books that have influenced me are
The Master and his Emissary,
Left in the Dark,
The Madness of Adam and Eve,
Mad in America
Conclusion: This left hand brain that is writing this is suspected to be
A. Malnourished
B. Almost insane
C. Dancing along the edge of Chaos.
E. Arrogantly dominates the Master, choking off traffic through the corpus callusum.
You might wish to watch this TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor
Hi WHT,
There are many people on this site that go to great effort to put forth ideas with varying degrees of data to back them up. You are a prime example, and TOD is a better place for it. Some of the early posts on specific field depletion being excellent examples of attempts to convey some very difficult concepts to a wider audience.
Memmel certainly suffers from varying degrees of "brain dump" with his posts, and I agree that they are not always the easiest to follow. They do however have have a theme that he's trying to get across - with varying degrees of success.
As for his "bizarre" theory of CO2, I admit that I am not qualified to vouch for it one way or the other. BUT, I can see a basis for the theory. CO2 levels are tracked at Mauna Loa, differing concentrations of isotopes of carbon (C12, C13, C14) show that a large percentage of the increase is coming from fossil fuels. The problem I have with it is that I don't believe that there is quite the linear relationship to the usage of oil, coal and gas that his model assumes - for example do the changes in co2 from a gas fired load following power station cancel out a few thousand fewer miles driven? What I do find interesting is the attempt to use some of the science of AGW to shed more light on the hidden world of oil production.
That's my take on it all anyway.
John.
I think the issue is determining whether this "hidden world of oil production" is a conspiracy theory.
Memmel wants to use his model as a proxy to prove that this hidden world exists. He doesn't seem to understand that plenty of other proxies exist, such as miles driven, refinery utilization, and untold others that can show some self-consistency.
The problem is that to use CO2 as a proxy for today's data, you have to essentially deconvolve ongoing CO2 production from years back, since CO2 has this huge residence time in the atmosphere. That is the problem with CO2 as a greenhouse gas in the first place, and has got people spooked more than anything else about our situation. We can stop CO2 production tomorrow and it probably will not stop the climb and thus possible climate disruption.
This whole coal discussion started when long ago I mentioned to Memmel that he would have to consider coal as a component of the CO2 concentration. I thought that would shut him up, but since that time his fantasy world has expanded to the point that coal is doing a magical tap dance routine to make up for some imagined massive shortfall in oil production. I now know it doesn't matter what you say, he will just add another weird exception to his twisty world full of mazes.
Some fraction of the people that read Memmel believe what he says. I don't think that this is how any kind of scientific analysis is done. So I am just doing what commenters are doing on the GOM Macondo thread every day -- shooting down weird conspiracy theories by the same old commenters. Unfortunately, the DrumBeat audience is a bit more sensitive than the Macondo crowd, and it looks like I am getting too edgy for their tastes.
By hidden world of oil production I was refering to the lack of transparency of the figures from the Middle East as well as other state-run oil companies. If these figures weren't 'massaged' why do we spend so much time on TOD trying to identify the 'true' picture of oil production/depletion/reserves etc?
Is the audience on DrumBeat a bit more sensitive or just less judgemental?
You seem to have a very binary view of the how people perceive the information presented. Just with any other post, I take the information presented and weigh it against what I already know or can easily assertain. This applies as much to your work as Memmels, and I assume that is the default for TOD readers.
Surely the best way to deal with a theory like this is to kick it about a bit and see how well it stands up.
Yes CO2 will continue to rise for several reasosn - but the C12/C13/C14 ratio will change as only fossil fuels will contribute certain isotopes. So we certainly know how much fossil fuel is being burned. Changes in oil based usage will 'probably' be far quicker than gas or coal and therefore should have the largest contribution to the changes in the FF part of the CO2 rise. Coal and gas usage are far less discretionary than oil. The hole that I see in the argument is how to apportion the usage for coal, gas and oil. I'm willing to be swayed by some statistical argument to say you can/can't get somewhere close based on well recognised mathematical techniques. That is beyond my level of the discussion. At this point I have to put Memmels work into the "interesting theory - awaiting further proof" file.
Given other discussions about space based solar power, cold fusion or mining helium 3 from the moon, I think Memmel shows a commendable level of sanity.
John.
We spend time on TOD trying to use techniques that have some possibility of payoff. There are a million other possibilities for proxy measurements that you can just dismiss out of hand so that you don't waste time over it. For example, I can postulate that we measure the concentration of Nitric Oxide (NO) in the air. This has a much shorter residence time than CO2, so it should be much, much more sensitive to changes in combustion of fossil fuels levels than CO2. Yet we don't do that because there are better ways to infer production levels ... like looking at the production data!
Although this production data can always be better, the critical aspect of analysis is the modeling part and developing a good model to predict and project fossil fuel use in the future. Evaluating proxy measurements are not a model in this sense and do no good in projecting anything. In this case they are actually counterproductive because they tell you more about the data from several years ago, because of the long residence time and the impulse response that any analyst would need to deconvolve from the actual signal.
Yet Memmel tries to "prove" his assertions in his own modeling and analysis on his own blog. I suppose you don't realize that Memmel tried to contribute this entire CO2 analysis to TOD as a top-level post, yet it got REJECTED! I had nothing to do with this, and only spend time refuting what he says to relieve some of the work of the editors of TOD.
There is another angle that I haven't even brought up yet. We all know that Memmel can barely write coherent sentences. Well, his data analysis skills are no better. All we have to do is look at the graphs that he tried to construct and you notice that they lack certain important features ... perhaps labeling the axes with dimensions could be of some value? Actually they are next to worthless because the real data sits in a bed of noise and random fluctuations that Memmel does a sloppy job of trying to hide. And of course, he does not do the signal deconvolution that any sane climate researcher (ask James Hanson, et al) would recommend you do.
So he comes up with these ideas that I can easily refute through some very obvious math that engineers understand, i.e. impulse response convolution, but that most people are mystified over. Memmel doesn't know about this like he doesn't understand commas. He doesn't know how to make a graph, like he doesn't understand how to craft a coherent paragraph. Why should anyone be surprised that his analysis is very poor?
But no one goes on and on about building a fantasy world where they talk about "their model" and suggesting that the data agrees with the results they have computed. Memmel does this almost every time he posts, even when talking about economics issues, as if he has some real econometric model that he is brewing up. I challenge him on showing his model regularly. I think I have demonstrated that his work is just delusional nonsense. If I should ever go down this path, and begin to spew the same nonsense that Memmel produces, please someone take me aside and just shoot me.
Aeldric, this is excellent. There have been too few analyses of energy that approach it from a whole systems standpoint, and notice the feedback looks that make growth self-limiting in the real world (as opposed to the hallucinatory world inhabited by most contemporary economists).
This essay makes a very useful counterpoint to the catabolic collapse model I've been developing, and I'll include references to it in the next version of the paper -- properly footnoted, of course.
Thank you John,
I have (of course) followed your work with interest. If you need any further input, my email address is in my profile.
aeldric.
Hi.
I'm not sure I agree with the 2nd part of this primarily because we are constantly informed that a barrel of oil is equivalent to 200 odd men working 24/7. What I would suggest is that for those commodities that find themselves in the lucky position of being used extensively in 'substitutes' or directly for primary energy gain will do very well as they cannot be easily reduced in consumption.
A couple spring to mind: REEs (Rare Earths -used in a host of 'renewable substitute technologies) and Uraniun. For those investors out there I think we may also see major 'bull' markets in other replacement commodities (CIGS&Silver, Moly(remember all those rusting pipes?).
And of course as additional liquidy is injected into the system and fiat currencies devalue Gold and PMs should continue to soar...
Regards, Nick.
[ http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/6121#comment-581178 : link to my January 2010 suggestions for some possible investments if your interested ]
The process of extracting resources from the ground has become more complicated. During the Iron Age the production of iron required some bog-iron ore, a hot fire, and a lot of muscle. Now the production of iron requires an immense list of reagents, catalysts, fuels, and processes. If any of these inputs is absent, production stops.
This appears either over-simplified, or exaggerated. Certainly production might be stopped for a day or two, or even months, if a key reagents or catalyst were missing. OTOH, there are a lot of different ways of making steel, and a lot of variation in processes within broad categories. I'd say this argument needs a lot more detail to be convincing.
Nick, he said iron, not steel. There is, at modern scales, basically one way of smelting iron: using coking coal. The land-abundant Brazilians used to use charcoal, but they could not scale up their volumes enough.
My understanding: iron oxide can be reduced with hydrogen from any source - coal may be a bit cheaper (if you don't count the external costs of mining, pollution, occupational health, etc., which you of course should), but it isn't necessary.
Most of the steel used in the USA is reclaimed from scrap (and when industries mature, essentially all of their steel can be recycled) ; all it takes is an electric furnace to re-melt it, and the electricity can come from anything.
In summary: In an open, global market, the shape of a production graph will depend on the degree of constraint of the resource. When constraint is present, the price goes up. As the price point grows higher the production peak is pushed higher and the decline is sudden, followed by a fat tail.
This applies to oil. Does it apply to other resources which aren't liquid, and therefore don't have a fairly sharp "edge"? For instance, iron ore, or aluminum ores?
It certainly doesn't apply to energy from wind, solar or nuclear, whose outermost limits are very far from human consumption levels. It doesn't apply any time soon to burnable fossil fuels like coal or "shale oil" (not for liquid fuel, but just for burning) either, whose resource levels are very large.
I think this argument may generalize too much from the single case of oil.
You are right, this needs careful modelling and examination. The point of Aeldric's post, though, is that "outermost limits" are irrelevant. The problem is one of variation in quality, and diminishing marginal returns.
Early uses of a resource such as wind show great returns, because the best sites are used first. Then the next best, then the next, and so on. The present-value return on investment must decline secularly as more investments are made. Eventually, as you move farther and farther offshore in the search for usable wind resources, the capital costs exceed the level where investors think they can make an adequate present-value return. Investment stops, although there are many, many sites where wind generators could be built and produce a positive EROEI.
Similarly with solar. Its problem is the opportunity cost of the land that it uses. That must rise secularly. (Please don't talk about space based solar. I'd like to go on thinking that you are one of the more hard-headed people here.)
So from a growth perspective, wind and solar really aren't different to fossil fuels. If growth stops, though: then they're a lot better. You don't crash back down to nothing. Not without active disruption, anyway.
Nuclear... nuclear is the great, shining (with a purple aura of ionizing radiation) hope for lifting three (or is it five?) billion people into a lifestyle of electric light, indoor running water, education, and healthcare. Its scalability is likely to be at least thousands of times better than the next best thing. Provided the global population stabilizes under about 20 to 30 billion (and provided that it turns out that we really don't need those pesky polar bears, elephants, frogs, bees, and earthworms--and their ecosystems--after all), nuclear is the single exception to Aeldric's argument. But.
But: the thing that Aeldric didn't mention is that increasing resource scarcity (cost, same thing) puts us in a race. We are in a race between tightening resources and deployment of this "get out of jail" technology. Will the market win? Probably not, because politicians don't believe, deep down, that it works; and they don't care about anyone outside their own group.
The point of Aeldric's post, though, is that "outermost limits" are irrelevant. The problem is one of variation in quality, and diminishing marginal returns.
But, I don't think most things behave like oil in terms of quality and diminishing returns.
Early uses of a resource such as wind show great returns, because the best sites are used first. Then the next best, then the next, and so on. The present-value return on investment must decline secularly as more investments are made.
Not really. New sites show falling costs in the US. There's plenty of on-shore wind power in Europe. It only appears so now because we haven't gotten serious yet, and overriden NIMBY concerns that are in part hidden resistance from FF industries.
Similarly with solar. Its problem is the opportunity cost of the land that it uses. That must rise secularly.
There's more than enough roof space for as much solar as we're likely to want. There's plenty of Industrial/Commercial roof space that is essentially free. In many places, like the SW US, and Africa, appropriate land is very, very cheap. Solar costs continue to fall quickly, and there's no sign of letup in the pace of decline.
Finally, coal does not show a very steep marginal cost curve, and there is a lot of it. We should discontinue coal ASAP to deal with climate change, but no country is going to let the lights go out in order to reduce CO2 emissions.
-------------------------------------------------
The bottom line: we have plenty of affordable energy, and will for the long-term. What we're facing right now are liquid fuel problems, and climate change. But, not Peak Affordable Energy.
Simple. We always select the most efficient usage that we know of. In general, the substitutes are less efficient. You can build an Electric Car, thus substituting Lithium and electricity for petrol. However, what you have is a car that is more expensive and doesn’t go as far on a "full tank". So substituting lithium/electricity for petrol works, but offers less utility. If it offered more utility, we would all be driving electric cars!
This is a bad example. EVs are not a perfect substitute for oil right now, but they are gradually improving, and falling in cost. For instance, a Prius eliminates 60% of fuel consumption with no compromises, and at lower life-cycle cost than comparable ICE vehicles. A Nissan Leaf is cheaper than the average new US car, and will also have a lower life-cycle cost than comparable ICE vehicles. A EREVs like the Chevy Volt will eliminate range problems, reduce fuel consumption by another 80% (for a multiplicative total of about 90%) for a small price premium.
Things change, especially because of technological improvement. Wind power wasn't a good substitute for coal 100 years ago, but it is now.
EVs and Hybrid cars have been around since the dawn of the automobile. They've always been about as competitive as they are now. (ie life cycle costs etc). For example Porche had a EV/ICE hybrid at the turn of the century over 100 years ago.
You need to make a really compelling argument that they are now all of a sudden becoming competitive enough to replace the ICE.
There was a post on TOD previously that pointed out that EVs had a range of about 100 miles 100 years ago and still have a range of about 100 miles today. Seems like one of those constants like fusion being 40 years in the future. It'll always be 40 years in the future.
EVs and Hybrid cars have been around since the dawn of the automobile. They've always been about as competitive as they are now.
That's not true at all. EVs were better than ICEs to start with, then ICEs got better, and moved past EVs in range and cost. Now, EVs are moving past ICEs because the cost of ICEs is rising, and the cost of EVs is falling.
Porche had a EV/ICE hybrid at the turn of the century over 100 years ago.
That was never mass produced. It just wasn't needed.
There was a post on TOD previously that pointed out that EVs had a range of about 100 miles 100 years ago and still have a range of about 100 miles today.
If you were to put modern batteries in a 1909 Baker Electric, it would have a range of 400 miles easily.
How in the world did you draw that conclusion?
First, the cost of batteries falls predictably by 7-10% per year, and li-ion is falling faster.
2nd, the cost of power electronics is falling.
3rd, the cost of computing, needed especially for the control of EREVs, is plummeting.
----------------------------------------------------
Do you agree that the out-of-pocket cost of oil has risen, and that external costs (war, security, direct pollution, CO2, etc) have also risen? I'd estimate that $6-7 dollars per barrel is a fair accounting of all the costs of oil. Would you agree?
And still prohibitively expensive.
So. A tiny fraction of the overall cost.
Huh? This was never an issue. Do you have any idea about ASIC design and modern control systems?
Ok, Sure. But so what? They are all *external* costs.
This is an extremely weak argument. Its almost silly. You normally have excellent message control. Did you post that drunk?
And still prohibitively expensive.
No, the Leaf battery costs about $10k, and the Volt battery costs about $8k. Given that they'll save $15-36K over 10 years, those are mighty cost effective even now.
Huh? This was never an issue. Do you have any idea about ASIC design and modern control systems?
I believe you asked what has changed since 1910, when EVs started to be eclipsed by ICEs, and also mentioned Ferdinand Porsche's 1904 EREV. My point: things have changed since then. They've also changed since the 1970's when there was a wave of interest in EVs and EREVs.
Ok, Sure. But so what? They are all *external* costs.
But what do you mean by that? You agree that they are real and important, right?
We can just talk about prices, rather than underlying cost, if you like. Then we're back to the Leaf, which costs $25K net, and saves about $18,000 over 10 years at $3/gallon, for a net-net price of about $7k, or the Volt at $33k with savings of about $15,000, for a final price of $18k. Pretty affordable, I'd say.
excellent message control
That has a corporate ring. Are you thinking that I'm opposing change and supporting BAU?
Let me reassure you: I think we should move away from oil & FF ASAP. I try to correct articles like these because they support BAU by suggesting that without oil that our economy will collapse. The message: drill, baby, drill, because without it we're going to hell in a handbasket. Corporate interests aren't afraid of people making apocalytic predictions about PO - they know they're unrealistic, and that in the long run we're going to move to effective substitutes. But, they're terrified of those substitutes, and they're delighted to have people out there discouraging any move away from FF as long as possible.
Let me say it again: articles that suggest that PO will cause collapse are supporting FF BAU.
Who are you trying to convince? Yourself?
No, I'm replying to your questions. If I've answered them, that's great. If not, just say so, and why specifically.
You are not replying to my questions because I'm not really questioning what you say. Its far to ridiculous to really give a serious rebuttal.
That's why I'm curious as to whom you are trying to convince.
I thought "the cost of computing" argument was rather thin myself. That's what happens when the booster goes to the talking points well.
Rethin asked what had changed since 1904.
The computerization of cars makes a big difference: it's much easier to build an EREV now than in 1904.
If those are the ground rules, well the same can be said for fuel-driven cars.
Sure.
The question: how easy would it have been to build a nicely functioning EREV in 1904? I think an EREV was possible, but it would have been hard to make it work satisfactorily without computer control
OTOH, it's possible that you're right, and that ICEs and EVs have been equally supported by advances in computing. In that case, we're back to increases in oil costs and improvements in battery tech/manufacturing to explain why EV/EREVs are now competitive.
Except the price of gas has historically been about $3
http://www.fintrend.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Gasoline_inflation_c...
Except the Leaf only get a nominal 100 miles to the charge. The same as EVs have done for the past 100 years.
Your argument is really weak Nick. EVs are not surpassing ICEs. They remain about as competitive as they historically have been.
the price of gas has historically been about $3
I'd note that the price of gas was lower from WWII to the 1970's, and mid-80's to mid 2000's.
Nevertheless, I agree: if there were no concerns about peak oil; if we weren't spending $500B on oil wars; if there were no concerns about security of supply; if there were no concerns about oil shocks; if there were no concerns about trade deficits; if there were no concerns about pollution (especially CO2); then the price of oil could be considered historically not unreasonable, and there would be no need for EVs.
Unfortunately, we're now beginning to recognize that the true cost of oil is much higher than we thought.
the Leaf only get a nominal 100 miles to the charge.
That's a choice - it could be designed with more, and still have a lower lifetime cost than ICE vehicles. Still, that was considered to be an optimal point, especially for areas planning to install battery changing stations, like Israel and Denmark. For some people, who don't need more range, 100 miles will be perfect.
Probably most people will want more range, and an EREV like the Volt will be what they'll want. An EREV has no limit on range.
All external costs. Same as ever. Next.
Could be, but isn't. The problem is upfront costs. Same as 100 years ago. Next.
Again, nothing new. A hundred+ year old idea. Not competitive then, not competitive now. Got anything new?
All external costs. Same as ever
What the heck does that mean? You don't think those things are important??
The problem is upfront costs. Same as 100 years ago.
You don't think saving $18k in fuel costs is important?
You really don't understand the difference between external cots of an ICE and the actual price? Sure you do. But I guess it just makes you feel better to keep confusing the two.
And if a plug in hybrid was really all that competitive in the market we'd have been driving them for the past 100 years. And you have yet to come up with any real explanation as to why they are all of a sudden competitive now.
External costs are real, and important. Do you agree?
you have yet to come up with any real explanation as to why they are all of a sudden competitive now.
Batteries have gotten better: in 1909 lead-acid batteries were heavy, and short-lived. Li-ion is much lighter, and much cheaper per charge/discharge cycle.
They are real and important to only a tiny fraction of the market. Unless you can invent a mechanism to internalize these costs its a completely moot point. Really now, how hard is that to understand?
There are dozens and dozens of battery techs since 1909. You want me to believe that only just now Li-ion is the battery holy grail to enable EVs? Even though we still only get 100 miles per charge out of them. Just about the same performance we've been getting from all those dozens and dozens of battery techs for the last 100 years.
Face it. Battery tech has barely kept up with the weight and complexity of cars over time. The Leaf give no better performance than the EV1 or Rav4 ev and no better performance that any EV in the past 100 years. EVs are no more competitive in the market place then any other time they've been re introduced and subsequently failed to be anything other than a curious niche vehicle.
Its pretty simple. The Leaf, with the latest and greatest LI-ion batteries, costs $30k+ and only give you a 100 mile range. If Li-ion batteries were as great as you seem to believe then why can't I buy a EV for a reasonable price with a reasonable range?
And for god's sake don't bring up the Volt's range. Its a $40k+ car! If I can afford that I don't care about the price of gas.
They are real and important to only a tiny fraction of the market.
Let's put aside the market for a moment. Are they real and important to you??
There are dozens and dozens of battery techs since 1909. You want me to believe that only just now Li-ion is the battery holy grail to enable EVs? Even though we still only get 100 miles per charge out of them. Just about the same performance we've been getting from all those dozens and dozens of battery techs for the last 100 years.
Tell me, what's the number of watt-hours per kilo for lead-acid, vs li-ion? What's the expected number of discharges before the battery falls below 80% of initial capacity, for lead-acid, vs li-ion?
The Leaf, with the latest and greatest LI-ion batteries, costs $30k+
No, it doesn't. It costs $25K. That's the market price that people pay right now*.
*Again, if you want to talk about underlying "cost", then we have to get into external costs. You have to decide: are we talking about current market prices, in which case we include the rebate, or are we talking about underlying costs, in which case we include external costs. I suppose there's a 3rd alternative - we could talk about future market prices, but that's favorable for EVs as well, given economies of scale, temporary R&D amortization, CO2 taxes, rising oil prices, etc.
Honestly? No. I'll not pay that premium. I can't afford it. The farm just isn't bringing in that sort of revenue just yet (if ever...)
In just one country and just for now. That rebate is just a temporary thing in just one country. After this next round of election in the US even that will be a memory. But even $25k for a 100 mile vehicle is a market no starter. Its been done before. Try again.
Li-ion are just as unaffordable now as lead acid was in 1904. As was every other battery tech that came in between now and 1904. Sorry, that's just market realities.
I'll not pay that premium. I can't afford it. The farm just isn't bringing in that sort of revenue just yet (if ever...)
But that's the point: you are paying it now, just indirectly. You're paying for the current oil wars in your taxes; you or your neighbors paid when their children went to fight in an oil war; you'll be paying for climate change when drought hurts your farm; you paid when oil trade deficits raised interest rates; you paid when an oil shock deepened the recent recession; etc, etc.
That rebate is just a temporary thing in just one country.
Not at all: other countries are doing similar things. Many countries are pushing EVs quite hard.
even $25k for a 100 mile vehicle is a market no starter
It's selling extremely well. Why wouldn't it, when it saves the owner $18k over 10 years?
Li-ion are just as unaffordable now as lead acid was in 1904.
No, they're not. Li-ion costs $350/kWh, and lasts 5,000 cycles. That means each cycle costs 7 cents. At 4 miles per kWh, that's less than 2 cents per mile. Add in the cost of electricity at 1-2 cents per mile, and that's 3-4 cents per mile. The average US car gets 22MPG, so $3 gas costs 14 cents per mile, or 4x as much!
Who are you trying to convince? The point is I don't have to budget any of that every month.
Huh? The Leaf isn't selling at all. All other recent EVs, Zen etc, have been dismal failures in the market. I sometime wonder what fantasy land you live in.
If its so cheap why can I only get a car with 100 mile range with it?
Who are you trying to convince?
You, I suppose. I suspect not many people are still reading this.
The point is I don't have to budget any of that every month.
True. But, don't you think it's important? Doesn't it make you want EVs to succeed?
The Leaf isn't selling at all.
The Leaf is selling out, far in advance. So is the Volt, by the way.
All other recent EVs, Zen etc, have been dismal failures in the market.
There haven't been any other recent mass production EVs. The Tesla is the closest, and it was a success.
If its so cheap why can I only get a car with 100 mile range with it?
Part of the answer is that the battery is that cheap only if it gets used a lot. If you use a much larger battery, the extra capacity won't be used that often. That's part of the reason the Volt is such a good idea: it uses a smaller battery that will capture 80% of miles driven, and then throws in a small, cheap generator to cover the other 20% (which can run extremely efficiently, because it only runs part of the time, at an optimum speed).
Also, Nissan wants the car to succeed, so it's selling it with what it thinks is the combination of features and price that will sell best. Basically, they don't think that many people care a lot about more range than that. Later, there will be more choices.
In other words its just not economical.
Thanks for making my point.
No, not at all. It's very economical, but the price rises with added batteries, and people don't get that much extra value (diminishing marginal returns).
Why are you feeling so negative about EVs?
Nick we've had 100 mile EVs for a hundred years. You told me Li-ion batteries are so much better now that EVs are now competitive with ICEs. But then you just admitted it costs too much money to make an EV with more than 100 mile range.
So the end result is nothing has changed in 100 years. You still can't stuff enough batteries in an EV to give more than a 100 mile range. And no EV has ever been successful in the market place with such a short range.
In order for EVs to be competitive something major has to change. You need to drastically increase the range and at the same time drastically lower the cost. You also need to find some mechanism to internalize all those external costs.
Until you accomplish that EVs will be no more competitive then they've ever been.
Is this really so difficult a concept to grasp?
Rethin:
How about this as a change: The country or other locale you live in out-laws Fossil-Fuel burning private vehicles.
What does that "change" do to your immutable laws of economics?
That would do the trick. Sure.
you just admitted it costs too much money to make an EV with more than 100 mile range.
No, I didn't. I said that's not the optimum point: the point at which sales would be maximized.
The Nissan Leaf is selling extremely well, as is the Volt.
You still can't stuff enough batteries in an EV to give more than a 100 mile range.
Sure you can. Just like you can easily put a 30 gallon gas tank in a conventional car, but people don't.
And no EV has ever been successful in the market place with such a short range.
No one has really tried for about 90 years.
In order for EVs to be competitive something major has to change.
Well, I do agree that the major market is going to be EREVs. They're competitive too, though I do agree that the pace of change (the pace at which EREVs displace ICEs) will be slow until we decide to internalize costs.
It's true that most people over-weight up front costs, so EVs and EREVs won't sell as fast as they ought to.
OTOH, we are internalizing costs in part by raising CAFE levels sharply: it will be tough for car makers to meet the CAFE regs without hybrids and EREVs.
------------------------------
Bottom line EVs and EREVs are a really good idea for the larger society. Also they're cost competitive right now:
EV: $350 per month lease price minus $150 per month gasoline savings = $200 per month cost!
High performance, near luxury EREV: $350 per month lease price minus $125 per month gasoline savings = $225 per month cost!
That's competitive!
Is this really so difficult a concept to grasp?
I don't know where to begin. It seems you are almost completely self delusional.
There is nothing fundamentally different about the performance of EVs now than there have been in the past 100 years. Your statement that no one has tried in 90 years is so factually wrong I'm flabbergasted.
Rethin,
100 years ago there were no micro-computers for intelligently controlling operations of Electric Vehicle components
What is true is that over the last 100 years, no new electro-chemistry has been discovered that will give us some amazingly new kind of secondary battery.
However, in terms of performance and maintenance, there have been a few improvements along the way. When was the last time you had to check the fluid levels and concentrations in the lead-acid battery that turns your engine starter of your ICE? People used to have to regularly do that about 20-30 years ago. They don't anymore.
no new electro-chemistry has been discovered that will give us some amazingly new kind of secondary battery.
Lead acid has a deep-discharge life of perhaps 400 cycles. Li-ion (depending on the chemistry) can do 5,000.
Li-ion has an energy density that is 3-5x as great as lead-acid.
li-ion cost per discharge is 1/3 that of lead-acid.
------------------------------------
Have you looked at Firefly Energy? They demonstrated that lead-acid could be dramatically improved. Sadly, They've gone bankrupt now, as they couldn't compete with li-ion.
It seems you are almost completely self delusional.
Yes, I'm baffled by what you say, too. You keep saying the same general things, and not addressing the specific things I provide. For instance, how can a vehicle that leases for $350/month, and saves $125-150 per month, not be price-competitive?? When was the last time you saw a civic or corolla lease for significantly less than $200 per month?
There is nothing fundamentally different about the performance of EVs now than there have been in the past 100 years.
1) our perception of oil has changed: we no longer see it as cheap, plentiful and having no problems. Do you?
2) We now have EREVs. Porsche's EREV was different, and it was never mass produced.
Your statement that no one has tried in 90 years is so factually wrong I'm flabbergasted.
Just who do you have in mind??
I don't know what to say.
Again, Consumer Reports says that a Prius is cheaper than a comparable ICE vehicle. A Prius reduces fuel consumption by 60%.
A Nissan Leaf is the same price as a Prius ($3k cheaper than the average new US car), and will save $18k in gas prices.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Except, his point is correct in that a Nissan Leaf, for example, does not have the performance of even the cheapest sub-compact ICE out there, regardless of how clean it may be. The crux of the issue is that today there are NO replacements for ICE cars that rival the cost, range and performance of those on the market available now (one can argue that it has always been this case, given EVs were used in London, but soon retired for ICEs despite supposed superior technology in the 1890s). That may change in the future, but this just further makes aeldric's point.
Except, his point is correct in that a Nissan Leaf, for example, does not have the performance of even the cheapest sub-compact ICE out there, regardless of how clean it may be.
It has much better performance: acceleration and handling. Yes, it doesn't have the range. It will only be a good substitute for a small % of the market, until battery size rises. OTOH, a small % of the world market is very important: small countries like Israel are planning massive deployments of EVs.
The crux of the issue is that today there are NO replacements for ICE cars that rival the cost, range and performance of those on the market available now
The Tesla is superior to price equivalent ICEs. More importantly, the Chevy Volt has no compromises, and it's very competitive. It's very price-competitive with a $33K net purchase price and out-of-pocket gasoline savings to comparable cars, and it's cost-competitive with a $40k gross purchase price and gasoline savings that include external costs.
Part of the problem: we now recognize that oil has external costs (security, pollution, etc) which make it much more expensive than we thought historically.
Define "much better". My Ford Fiesta does the Leaf's 0-60 (10 seconds). And it handles well enough for it to be used as a rally car. Also, it cost me £2400, gets me over 50 MPG and can do more than a trip to the shop and back. It even has room for a doggy.
Aside from the fact that there are cars in the UK today that easily get and even surpass the Prius' economy (there are BMW 3-series that manage this, nay, M3s even), I fail to see why I should fork out extra for them when cheaper ICE cars exist in the here and now. The operating cost issue doesn't seem to be weighing too heavily on people when they can afford the advantages of an ICE, especially the diesels I've driven here. I'm sure in the US the Leaf and Volt will be seen as a whole new paradigm. Over here, not so much. Literally the only place I see Prius' and those godawful G-Whizzs is London or Manchester. And that's to get out of paying the dreaded congestion charge.
It's not even like these cars are saving the planet, as the likes of Nissan would have you believe they are. Apparently electricity for EVs comes from Tinkerbell, and lithium cells are delivered by Father Christmas at now cost to Mother Nature.
My £500 1992 Pug 205 diesel has averaged 74 MPG over the last 10,000 miles. I'm not sure how an EV will ever compete against value like that. It's all very well to say that a shiny new car could do hundreds of MPG equivilent, but I'll never be able/willing to spend EV money on a car. The vast amjority of car sales are for previously owned vehicles. When it costs many thousands to replace the battery half way trough its life, the cost of ownership becomes too high.
Ev take up will never make a big enough dent in the car market for that reason - I don't see lithium being a problem, the Chinese are hanging on to all the rare earths that are used to make the magnets for the motors. Without permemant magnet DC motors, EV's will be sunk. AC motors are powerful and controllable, but with limited battery life, the last thing you want to use the power for is to excite the windings.
The Japanese are working on a new ferrite material to replace REMs.
NAOM
How does your 1992 Pug 205 diesel compare with a Prius, using some comparable published standard (e.g., US EPA MPG)?
Without permemant magnet DC motors, EV's will be sunk.
The Chevy Volt doesn't use PM motors.
3 phase AC motors are very nice for vehicles if you can make an inverter for them that doesn't give all the weight savings back.
Permanent magnet DC does have its own advantages, though.
My Ford Fiesta does the Leaf's 0-60 (10 seconds).
How does your Ford Fiesta compare with a Prius, using some comparable published standard (e.g., US EPA MPG)?
there are cars in the UK today that easily get and even surpass the Prius' economy (there are BMW 3-series that manage this, nay, M3s even)
That doesn't sound right to me. Could you give me more info? Again, using some comparable published standard (e.g., US EPA MPG)?
Apparently electricity for EVs comes from Tinkerbell, and lithium cells are delivered by Father Christmas at now cost to Mother Nature.
Wind power matches up nicely with EV demand.
Nick, having moved from the UK to Mexico I have experienced European and USAnian cars. There is a HUGE difference. If the USA simply switched to European and Japanese vehicles they would experience a massive fuel saving. My old UK car used far less fuel(maybe 1/2 or less) than my current USA built car and had better performance. It had a smaller engine but around the same overall weight.
NAOM
My old UK car used far less fuel(maybe 1/2 or less) than my current USA built car and had better performance. It had a smaller engine but around the same overall weight.
I'm curious why that is.
Improved ICE efficiency is a good idea, and it doesn't really conflict with a transition to EVs.
I've not managed to find EPA figures, their website seems convoluted, but the official mileage for a Mk. IV like mine is between 7.4-4.6 L/100 km, which is around 32-52 of your American MPGs (though I get better than that with my driving habits and the fuel I use, unlike that watered down piss they call "gas" in the States).
As for the Prius vs. M3: http://goo.gl/St8y
And for the EVs powersource, please. Let me know when a Prius is guaranteed to be entirely fueled and more importantly made by purely green power. Until then, the automakers are sucking you in with the usual PR hype.
One last thing. The new Fiestas are far better than any hybrid out there or EV (http://goo.gl/utB9) and unlike the US, the majority of people I know drive cars with engines well below 2 litres, and many are more like Yarises with 1 litre capacity. There is simply no economical sense in forking out far more for a brand new hybrid or EV which offers nothing more and, in fact, may have more drawbacks in terms of longevity, maintenance and environmental harm.
When 10% of the global market is hybrid or EV, then I'll listen. It's nowhere near even that paltry figure, and that isn't changing any time soon in this economic clime.
I'm not quite sure what you're arguing, but I have the sense that you want the transportation option that is absolutely the cheapest, lowest environmental footprint.
Your best bet is an electric bike - $600 for non-highway legal, and $6,000 for highway legal with 100 mile range.
China's selling 25M per year - 2x as many as cars/SUVs.
I had considered an e-scooter, but right now I don't have the cash for a new one and there are no resellers for any used ones, if they even exist yet. In an ideal world, I'd have one and a PHEV for the shopping and other duties I require a boot/trunk for, alas, I can have only one right now given the economics currently. A bicycle with a little electric motor would be better than nothing in the summer, mind. I just don't trust the other road goers around here, even on a put put, so my tiny Fiesta appeals more in terms of safety.
I am, however, fortunate in being able to drive economically and not get irate about going slower and my workplace is under 15km from my home.
Only true in city stop/start driving which is a crazy mode of transport in a built area to begin with. There are other ICE cars that can beat the Prius for fuel economy on a highway cycle, and cost half the price. making a general statement like the one above is pure spin.
A Prius costs less than the average new US car ($28,400), and uses 40% as much fuel (50MPG vs 22MPG). Yes, that's not an apples to apples comparison, but surely it makes it clear that overall 60% fuel savings are possible, yes?
Further, Consumer Reports says that a Prius is cheaper over it's lifecycle vs comparable cars.
AFAIK, there are no US cars that can beat a Prius on the highway driven comparably. And, there are no $12k cars that are comparable in terms of fit, finish, features handling, etc.
Rolls Royce, Range Rover, Masserati are all in there to drive up YOUR average price.
How about comparing the Prius to the price of the average vehicle sold, including discounts and compare the Prius to the total of vehicles sold which are cheaper than it.
For instance a quick bit of Googling found this, there is much more info to be found at will.
Your price data is old. Note that the average list price in 2004 was 33k, and the average net price was $24.8K. That's consistent with 2009 net prices of $28.4K.
Aeldric,
Excellent expose on the tipping points for cross-coupled complex networks.
I was trying to find a graphic that might explain it under the adage of one picture and the 1000 plus 1 words.
OK
So what the heck are we looking at?
It's a simple cross-coupled electronic oscillator.
The system keeps "humming" along (oscillating per intended design) only as long as every tiny component always does what it is supposed to do; mostly trying to tip the other side (left or right) of the circuit over a threshold and into a turned on state. Then the flipped other side returns the favor. Hence we get oscillation.
But if one little part stalls, the whole system stalls.
It's kind of hard to see that when everything is humming along just fine.
Here's two cool animations to go with that. It's especially interesting to start and stop the first one.
http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/Flash/EM/LightWa...
http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/PVB/Harrison/Flash/EM/EMWave/EMWave.html
The focus was on cross-coupled networks.
Let's try a different analogy.
Suppose you have a coal mine whose drills, carts, etc. are powered by electricity.
Suppose the electricity comes from a local coal fired plant.
Suppose the union goes on strike and coal to the coal-fired electric generator plant runs out.
Now the feedback-dependent system is stalled.
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I realize this is a bad hypothetical because the answer is get coal from someplace else to restart the system. But what if we no longer can get coal from someplace else? Maybe someone can dream up a better analogy for collapse of a cross-coupled network?
Yeah, I got that. I guess I was a just bit mesmerized by the way the waves, especially in the first animation that looks like a spider, just die out when the energy is cut off. No energy input no feedback, everything just comes to a halt. Of course you could get the same end result from a component malfunction in the cross-coupled network but as long as you replaced or repaired the component and you'd be back in business. However if you disconnect the circuits from your power source your beautiful well designed system becomes completely useless.
All over the world Mining companies are reporting declining ore quality.
This is fine; we can go on forever - as long as we have endless energy. But to produce that energy we need more resources. And to extract the resources we need more energy – which requires more resources, which requires more..... And now we begin to see the problem.
Not really. Wind turbines have a very high E-ROI. We have no looming limits for steel or concrete to build them.
Very similar issues exist for synthesis. As an example - In theory, oil can be synthesized from almost any organic material. So why don’t we? Because it is inefficient.
And because we haven't needed to.
Unless the starting point is relatively close to oil, the energy consumed in synthesis approaches the energy provided by the oil. The Energy Return On Energy Invested is low – or even negative.
Sure, but if the energy input is cheap and abundant, it doesn't matter so much.
Resources are dependent on other resources. When we run into a limit in the dependencies on one or more resources these will, in turn, limit one or more others, which will impact others, etc.
This needs further explanation to show that there is truly a problem.
Are you sure? I seem to have read about 'peak wind' around here.
Nick,
Rather than respond to each of your comments individually, I will try to address all of your comments here.
You make the point that I have grossly simplified the system and not offered detailed supporting evidence. This is true. When presenting an idea you have to start with a simplified view.
Filling out every detail would probably fill many posts.
By all means call me on these simplifications - but please recognise that I have explicitly stated that I am presenting nothing more than a first order approximation of a model.
In other comments you make the case for wind and solar (which I support, I am currently getting quotes on both for my property), however you make a couple of bold statements that I am going to call you on. Essentially you state that both wind and solar have a high EROEI and that the inputs to wind and solar are unconstrained:
Working with Phoenix, I looked at resource constraints on wind and solar in a series of posts, including:
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/5458
I think, in fact, that we provided ample evidence that the required build-out is resource-constrained.
Others have addressed the EROEI question in a variety of articles.
I submit to you that you probably need to support these assertions, as others have provided support for the counter-arguments.
aeldric.
Working with Phoenix, I looked at resource constraints on wind and solar in a series of posts, including: http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/5458 I think, in fact, that we provided ample evidence that the required build-out is resource-constrained.
Look at my comments on that article. You'll see that the calculations were flawed, and that they don't support the idea that there isn't sufficient time to replace FFs.
Here's an analysis of building enough wind capacity to replace US coal:
The US generates about 50% of electricity from coal, which amounts to an average of 220 gigawatts. Wind, on average, produces power at 30% of it's nameplate rating, so we'd need about 733GW of wind. Wind costs about $2/W, so that would cost about $1,466 billion. Transmission might raise that about 10%, to about $1,613 billion.
Now, roughly 50% of coal plants need to be replaced in the next 20 years, so about 50% of the $1.6T coal replacement investment is needed anyway; new coal plants are just as expensive per KWH as wind, so that half, or $800B of the investment can be eliminated from our considerations.
Coal plants cost about $.035/KWH to fuel and operate, which is about 50% of the cost of wind. That's an expense that we'll have either way, so we can eliminate 50% of the remainder, which is about $400B: all told, we can discount the wind investment by 75%!
So, that gives us a cost of roughly $400B, or $40B per year for 10 years. That's a small % of US manufacturing, and a very small % of GDP.
A bargain.
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Others have addressed the EROEI question in a variety of articles.
Yes, and the general result has been that wind E-ROI is more than high enough.
Let's look at Cutler Cleveland's summary of the literature:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_investment_(EROI)_for_wind_energy
which showed that wind's E-ROI was around 19. If you study his sources, you'll see that that most of the studies are quite old. If you look at the turbines used in those studies, you'll see that the turbines studied were much smaller than those in use today - look at Figure 2, and read the discussion. If you study that chart, you'll see a very clear correlation between turbine size and E-ROI. It's perfectly clear that Vesta's claim for a current E-ROI of around 50 is perfectly credible.
Furthermore, an E-ROI of 19 is more than enough. There isn't an important difference between an E-ROI of 20 and an E-ROI of 50. It's like miles per gallon: we're confused by the fact that we're dividing output into input, when we should be doing the reverse, and thinking in terms of net energy. An E-ROI of 20 means a net energy of 95%, while an E-ROI of 50 means a net energy of 98%: there really isn't a significant difference.
I agree there is plenty of wind and sun and other renewable energy sources out there to meet our current demand, and much more, in theory. We have the technology to extract that energy and bolt it on to the current infrastructure at reasonably high EROEI. However, we do not have enough spare energy to build enough turbines and PV panels and EVs and the beefed up electric grid infrastructure to replace all the oil energy we use now, or the declining EROEI of coal, or to sustain the existing global infrastructure of modern society built with cheap fossil energy as it suffers inevitable entropic decay, or continue to feed the ever growing human population....
We are already in the danger zone. We do not have time to rebuild the global energy systems to renewable sources. Even if we did, the declining quality of ores would catch up with us eventually, but not before we had destroyed the global ecosystem that sustains our species. This post only looks at inputs. It does not mention the outputs. The CO2 emissions, the destroyed habitats, the ecological costs that are destroying the natural capital of our environment which will lead to collapse long before we run out of low grade ores.
we do not have enough spare energy to build enough turbines and PV panels and EVs and the beefed up electric grid infrastructure to replace all the oil energy we use now, or the declining EROEI of coal, or to sustain the existing global infrastructure of modern society built with cheap fossil energy as it suffers inevitable entropic decay, or continue to feed the ever growing human population....
We have enormous surplus energy right now. For instance, freight delivery could be done with 3/4 the fuel, if it was just done at somewhat lower speeds, and that could be reduced to 50% with some low-cost, short-term modifications.
Similarly, personal transportation fuel consumption could be reduced by 50% in the US pretty straightforwardly, just by raising the average number of people per vehicle from 1.15. Would that be easy or convenient? No, but it's perfectly doable, and we will do it before we starve key industries of fuel. Similarly, more than 50% of Vehicle Miles travelled is discretionary, so that's a separate area ripe for savings.
When we talk about production of resources, "Easy Oil" isn't the only thing we are reaching the end of...The inputs required are increasing for any given quantity of produced resource.
This needs evidence. The cost of wind and solar power, for instance, is declining quickly.
For the sake of a simple model, let us say that all resources will grow at 5% per year.
This model is flawed in several ways. First, resource consumption eventually levels off. Markets mature and saturate. For instance, car production in the US peaked in the early 70's. Appliance sales volumes have been stable in the US for decades. The same is true in other OECD countries.
In fact, the reverse tends to happen after maturation: natural efficiency gains reduce consumption. For instance, US residential energy consumption has been falling by 1% per square foot for decades, even with relatively low energy prices.
And if price signals reflect increasing scarcity, efficiency can accelerate. For instance, the US uses as much oil now as it did in 1979, despite a GDP that is 2.5x higher, and manufacturing output that is 1.5x higher.
As a consequence of the reduced quality of the resources, inputs required to support this accelerating production rate will grow at 10% per year.
I'd like to see evidence of this. For instance, some mining uses lower quality resources now, but still is cheaper due to different processes.
There are fundamental limits to efficiency also. You can argue that once we start mining only lignite coal, for instance, that the lower energy density could be offset by greater efficiency in the end user area, but that only takes you so far. This is by no means a fix, and we've all done to death Jevons' here. The bottom line is, you cannot keep getting infinitely more efficient. No matter how you cut it, ICE cars today are probably about as efficient as thermodynamics is going to allow, leaving gains in aerodynamics and materials to shave off any excess energy expenditure.
Likewise, this same appeal to efficiency riding in on a white stallion to save the day smacks of wishful thinking on the order of "the markets will find a substitute". We cannot just expect that, because we've done it in the past, we can continue to get increasingly more efficient, especially when there are costs to making society as a whole more efficient as it stands today i.e. the vast consumer culture that relies on such wastage for a paycheque. Eventually, you will hit a limit. And then you need to rethink your model. Protip: it's to do with consumption & procreation.
There are fundamental limits to efficiency also.
There are enormous gains available from efficiency. OTOH, efficiency is only factor: I really meant "reductions in oil consumption" rather than efficiency: the sensible thing ultimately is to go to substitutes. The US did so for electrical consumption and home heating, adnd will do so for personal transportation with EVs.
ICE cars today are probably about as efficient as thermodynamics is going to allow, leaving gains in aerodynamics and materials to shave off any excess energy expenditure.
The best ICE engines are pretty good, but that's only a small contributor to the overall efficiency. I'm talking about the whole car, which includes aerodynamics and materials, as well as tire and suspension losses.
The average US vehicle gets .045 gallons per mile! We can cut that by 60% very easily.
First, resource consumption eventually levels off.
The key word is eventually. When talking about the world, that means "after the three to five billion in the developing world have adequate housing, education, and healthcare." In other words, after we consume two to four times as much resource as we have done so far (allowing for efficiency gains).
Please don't compare open systems like the United States to the closed system of the whole world. Open systems have different dynamics.
I question the relevance of your "1 percent per square foot". That can be more than explained by declining intensity of occupation: average household size (number of people per house) has declined, while house size (floor area) has gone up. A square foot of floor doesn't use energy; people do.
Aeldric has addressed the other points: this is a sketch of a model. Please feel free to flesh it out. But remember to work at the global scale, not by selecting some part of the globe.
When talking about the world, that means "after the three to five billion in the developing world have adequate housing, education, and healthcare." In other words, after we consume two to four times as much resource as we have done so far (allowing for efficiency gains).
1st, that's still a limited period of growth. The Original Post assumes that growth would continue until it hit resource limits.
2nd, they don't have to grow the same way. For instance, China is moving to EVs (20-25M e-bikes per year right now).
Please don't compare open systems like the United States to the closed system of the whole world. Open systems have different dynamics.
Could you expand on that?
I question the relevance of your "1 percent per square foot". That can be more than explained by declining intensity of occupation: average household size (number of people per house) has declined, while house size (floor area) has gone up. A square foot of floor doesn't use energy; people do.
We're mostly talking HVAC, and currently that's proportional to SF (at least in the US).
Jim Rogers used to teach a course at Columbia. the students called it "bulls and bears"
one of the questions Jim would ask is - at key turning points in a commodity or a market: if you were there - living in that time - is there any way you could have seen this coming
so what is a bubble, and what is a true transition, and how can you tell the difference - in advance
how many angels can dance...
Sure, when my neighbor knocks or calls to setup a carpool opportunity, then we have reached a tipping point. My parents used to do it all the time when I was growing up in Korea, but it was really more of a taxi service for mom's Korean friends. They still did not all have cars, but it was Seoul. You usually did not need a car except to leave the city. Even then the rail was fairly good. It was cultural however, to think carpool and bike.
aeldric's article seems to add a fourth factor of production to the traditional three: land, labor, and capital. The fourth might be named with a German word, Ersatz (substitute). Any amount of Ersatz adds to the cost of production. If this were not true, it would be counted as one of the primary three, and whatever is now counted as a primary factor would instead be the more costly Ersatz.
As with all factors, Ersatz has a supply curve that is concave. More Ersatz costs more at the margin.
This is, I think, more general than an argument based on trying to track the energy used in making use of Ersatz.
Overall pretty good take.
Fields have usually had either an exponential decline or what they call a hyperbolic decline. Exponential decline is very easy to understand, as it means that the rate is always proportional to how much you have left. Many physical phenomena follow this law.
Hyperbolic decline, which is "fat-tail", usually comes about from an uncertainty in the rate of decline. It could be caused by the uncertainty that the prospector has in the amount of oil left in the field, so proportionately draws down less initially and more later on as they have more knowledge of the amount available. This is one of the origins of reserve growth, just garden variety human uncertainty. It also could happen from migration of oil through the porous rock at different rates; this dispersion is obvious, but apparently not well known as a mathematical reality (except by me apparently). Either of these sources of hyperbolic decline is fat-tail and a sign of reserve growth -- which is reserves that were not estimated correctly initially, but which grew over time. You have added the variation that looks like an accelerated growth, which is momentarily fat-tail for an underlying exponential draw-down. For something that is already fat-tail, it will also momentarily make it fatter. It's fun to experiment with these behaviors.
Concerning the Land Model as stated, it also looks like you cannot differentiate that model from a model of gradually declining EROEI over time. I assert that you will get the same result, given that you can map and calibrate the one model into the other.
5 stars
For what it's worth. This is evidently not online yet, but I read it in a library.
It's from Nature 461, 53-59 (3 September 2009).
Early-warning signals for critical transitions
Marten Scheffer1, Jordi Bascompte2, William A. Brock3, Victor Brovkin5, Stephen R. Carpenter4, Vasilis Dakos1, Hermann Held6, Egbert H. van Nes1, Max Rietkerk7 & George Sugihara8
Abstract
Complex dynamical systems, ranging from ecosystems to financial markets and the climate, can have tipping points at which a sudden shift to a contrasting dynamical regime may occur. Although predicting such critical points before they are reached is extremely difficult, work in different scientific fields is now suggesting the existence of generic early-warning signals that may indicate for a wide class of systems if a critical threshold is approaching.
The Nature article is behind a pay wall but here is a link to a PDF of the article.
http://deepeco.ucsd.edu/~george/publications/09_critical_transitions.pdf
Enjoy!
That was an interesting article. The best part (I thought) was at the end when the authors wondered if a system could recognize when itself was about to enter some critical phase. Part of the problem is that a system can`t "see" itself.
A much simpler article in Bloomberg today entitled "Investors are deaf to the screams of gold, cotton: Mark Gilbert" essentially says the same thing. People cannot think about the long term issues relating to sovereign debt, etc. because there are no solutions, they have no idea what to do---so they just don`t go there. In a sense, that is the system failing to recognize its own demise. It is not an acceptable conclusion, so it is swept under the rug of the mind.
It's a pretty bad article. Let's take one especially bad example:
"How on Earth is society going to pay pensions to this growing army of old people? If granddad does what investment theory says he should and socks his nest egg (assuming he even has one) into the ultra safety of Treasuries, earning a record- low yield of less than 0.45 percent on two-year securities, how will he afford his medications? Many countries and companies are probably bankrupt once you account properly for their future obligations; some problems, though, are too big and too intractable and too downright scary for polite conversation.
This is hooey. Bankruptcy involves contractual obligations - Social Security, and similar plans, are simply "benefits", which can be revoked. Obviously, at some point people will have to work longer and live a shorter time in retirement.
I remember reading that journal article long ago. It is mainly assertions on how various phenomenon occur because of critical phase transitions. I doubt very many of these are explained by criticality. Most fat-tail effects are just disorder, yet people get excited because power-laws might be indicative of a strange phase transition, which of course if you could show this would lead to admiration from fellow scientists.
I simply think that there are deceptive flaws in the article. I grant alderic that they are unintentional, and artifacts of the desired simplifications necessary to the forum / space available, but no less misleading for that.
The key problem is in the assumption of 5% growth (in the consumption of the commodity under consideration) worldwide per year, continuous and ongoing forever (or until supply can no longer serve). It makes for a pretty graph, and may even be useful to explain some 101 level concepts to the uninitiated, but projecting that 5% endlessly, eg. the 42 years discussed above, is a flawed view of reality.
My problem is with people who sieze upon the crossing of the graph lines a "proof" of something they believe already without any further thought. Its similar to saying something like "if you try to build a tower ever higher by simply extending a single 2x4 ever further and further upward, eventually it will collapse". Ok, yes, we all knew that, but what's the relevance to the discipline of real world engineering?
And for those predicting a collapse of the US economy if the gasoline price goes to $4.50 / gallon pernamently or even considerably more, I say "Prove it". My advance refutation includes the fact that Canadian gasoline prices are already at $4.50 / gallon and the typical Canadian uses more on average than the typical US citizen. There is no doubt much space for efficiency improvements there, but economically do-able. The auto fleet is not noticably more economical IMHO. I think the who significance is overstated by some.
I have heard that the US consumer is clapped out and that paying the costs the rest of civilisation has to for petrol would decimate them. So I hear. In the UK, we're happily motoring on at £1.19/l for the ancient sunlight. It's hard to believe that barely ten years ago, we had mass protests over 80p petrol, protests that brought the country to its knees and showed me first hand what an oil shock would look like. But with the high taxes here and less commute distance on average, along with fairly decent public transport, high fuel costs, at least for now, are somewhat acceptable.
Sure, people grumble about filling up or when they notice an extra penny tacked on at the pump as fuel duty. In the end though, they pay it, and can afford to given the numbers of people who still drive Range Rovers, Evo VIIIs and 5-series beamers.
I believe the term oused over here is "tapped out" but you are right ;paying European prices for motor fuel would finish off our economy, as our infrastructure is dependent on doing so much driving.
I personally know many people who are at or ust above poverty level who necesarily buy ten to fifteen or even twenty or thirty gallons of gasoline per week in order to get back and forth to work;so long as the gas stays affordable they can continue to live in the much cheaper outlying areas far from thier jobs.where many of them have space for extensive gardening, a little market farming, gathering firewood,indulging in very low cost outside recreation locally such as hunting and fishing, and so forth.
Such people are able to economize in many ways not available to the city dewller;we for instanceare alittle better off in terms of income tham poverty level, but we pursue several economizing strategies not available to our orban friends.I never throw anything away that will come in useful later, because out in the countery, you usually have plenty of storage space.
We can buy such non perishable things as soap and toilet paper when a store runs a once in a year super low price sale;we have storage foe our own produce such as apples ands potatos, and we can buy bitems such as pecans in a hunded pound bag once a year.
I even have an automobile "parts supply store" in the form of a couple of water tight drums filled with salvaged small parts such as starter motors and alternators which will work on our vehicles.I recently retrieved apart no bigger tan a baseball from one of them that cost almost four hundred dollars;being an electrical component with no moving parts, it will probably last indefinitely, or at least longer than a cheaply made after market replacement.
But of course the real deal maker/breaker is that it is cheaper to own a car and drive a long way to work than it is to live close to work here in thew states.
We have allowed the panty wearing element of our society to take control of so much of our governing appartus thru fearmongering that we can't even buy the much more fuel efficient cars built by our own car companies for your consumers.
So now we are stuck playing an extremely dangerous game that kills many thousands of people every year in extraordinarily expensive war partly because we are afraid for a few dozen more to die in automobile accidents in slightly less safe cars.
I personally know many people who are at or ust above poverty level who necesarily buy ten to fifteen or even twenty or thirty gallons of gasoline per week in order to get back and forth to work
Wow. Someone who buys 20 gallons per week is spending about $3,000 per year. How efficient is their vehicle? If they traded from a pickup getting 25MPG highway to a Civic getting 40MPG they could save $1,000 per year: that would pay for trading to a Civic of the same vintage mighty fast.
Or, they could trade to a used Honda Insight, and save $2,000 per year.
Have they tried carpooling? Yes, I know it's difficult in low-density rural areas, but there are new websites that make matching people up much easier. Have they actually tried it?
Two thoughts in response:
1. 5% growth is not necessary for the lines to cross (in fact once the lines get close it won't happen). If (after growth slows) you continue extracting, and as a consequence the quality declines, you might be able to push it close. But (of course) the lines won't cross - at least not for long!
2. I don't recall saying anything about the price of petrol. In fact, I live in Australia where we pay just over $4.50/gal.
5% growth is not necessary for the lines to cross
But the model does assume exponential growth continues until it hits limits of growth, right? So the fact that many forms of resource consumption stop growing completely long before they hit any kind of limit suggests that this model may have limited applicability, right?
As far as I can tell, this model is attempting to the same thing as the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth: model the dynamics of growth assuming fairly hard limits exist. If those limits are far above the ceiling of actual consumption then the model doesn't apply.
That's true, but usually the chemical transformation goes the other way.
What's more significant for the long-term supply of oil is that it can be synthesised from inorganic substances: hydrogen and carbon dioxide. There are two ways whose steps have all been demonstrated.
In one of them the Lurgi process, in which one CO2 and three dihydrogens exothermically become one methanol and one water, is followed by methanol-to-gasoline conversion. The oxygen that was in the methanol ends up in more water.
The other is electrolytic conversion of CO2 to carbon monoxide and oxygen, followed by SASOL-style conversion of the CO and hydrogen to gasoline, although I believe this gasoline can be somewhat short of aromatics.
(How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?)
Do you have info on input:output ratios, and costs for these two processes?
Could we expect a 25% loss going from electricity to hydrogen (I've seen a figure of 50kWh to produce a kilo of hydrogen), another 25% loss from hydrogen to methanol, and another 25% loss from methanol-to-gasoline?
What about capital costs for the equipment?
Those sound like reasonable losses. Maybe a little more for electricity-to-hydrogen.
The hydrogen might be produced thermally. Our new Oshawa university was in the news the last day or two for doing some lab work with a low-efficiency, low-temperature copper-chlorine process.
(How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?)
They don't, actually.
At year 42, price - defined as units consumed by production per unit delivered to society - has been rising sharply for years already. If you graph it, the price curve starts bending noticably upwards sometime around year 30-35.
High prices, of course, dampen demand, blunting the effect of the eventual supply crunch. Moreover, high prices are an early signal of an impending problem, spurring efforts to reduce dependency (via increased efficiency, reduced consumption, or substitution).
That's not to say "the market will save us", or anything of the sort. It's simply an observation that the window of opportunity between seeing a problem and the problem occurring is much longer than one might initially think, at least in this model.
Arguably:
Speculators like T. Boone Pickens et al anticipated PO and associated high oil prices;
they bid up prices, bringing that price peak forward to 2006-08; so
the 2008 oil price peak was the result of speculators looking forward to PO.
Mitigation of PO will be much easier because preparation was started earlier (e.g., the current wave of EVs coming to market in 2010-12: this vehicle development started in 2006-8 as a result of the oil price buildup.
Sometimes speculators provide a useful function.