Planning for the mitigation of maximum world oil production

I wonder what fuel source we'll be mitigating too??? Have they discovered it yet??

http://energybulletin.net/34559.html

by Robert L. Hirsch

A framework is needed for planning the mitigation of oil shortages created by world oil production reaching a maximum and going into decline. Some argue that normal market evolution will be adequate to avoid shortages. We assume that will not be the case.


Three scenarios for mitigation planning resulted from the analysis:

1)A Best Case, where maximum world oil production is followed by a multi-year plateau before the onset of a monotonic decline rate of 2-5% per year;

2)A Middling Case, where world oil production abruptly reaches a maximum, after which it drops into a long-term, 2-5% monotonic annual decline; and finally

3)A Worst Case, where the sharp peak of the Middling Case is degraded by oil exporter withholding, leading to world oil shortages growing more rapidly than 2-5% per year, creating the most dire world economic impacts.

As in, "We're going to supply our own people first"?

Yeah, even Hirsch is reduced to whistling past the graveyard. Anybody who thinks we'll do anything except fight like dogs over a dead gopher till all the oil is gone, all the gas is gone, all the coal is gone, and then say "Shit, we shoulda done something," is smoking the good stuff.

He may be overestimating the linear relationship between energy and GDP. Independent models by Reiner Kummel and Robert Ayres that I reference in this article estimate a 1:0.7 relationship: for ever 1% of energy growth you get a 0.7% increase in energy. that implies that on the downside a 1% loss of energy only results in a 0.7% loss of GDP. The problem is that this is a linear extrapolation in a brittle, chaotic system. It belies his own comment that the loss of a few percent of oil would have massive economic and social costs.

It will be interesting to read the whole paper when it comes out.

Weren't you just here telling us how anti-nuclear you are, because nuclear is too dangerous?

In the next breath your telling that having no oil is too dangerous.

Presumably renewables are too dangerous.

Everything is too dangerous, except for being wiped out because we can't do anything about oil.

Why do you even care? Nothing, according to you, will work, nothing should be attempted, we should all sit around shitting ourselves about the end of oil?

Am I right or am I right or am I right?

Oil has always been too dangerous to use. It is not necessary. It is not water. It is not air. It is not land. In fact it <em>destroys</em> water, air, and land.

Good riddance.

Everytime I read this crap I feel like listening to junkies talk about how their lives will be over if they can't get a fix.

OIL. IS. NOT. LIFE.

Confusing oil with life accounts in toto in my view for the reason that people kill other people for oil.

I'll bet in peak oil land there is not one person who has ever stopped to contemplate whether life could go on using that super high tech woopety doopety invention called the <em>bicycle</em>.

Jesus Christ...

OK, how about food. Is food life?

How do you get enough food to fed 6.6 billion people when the soil fertility worldwide has been degraded 30% since WWII? The only way to do it is with nitrogen fertilizers, which are only cheap enough for poor countries to use if you make them from natural gas. You need water to irrigate those crops too. Oh, it's 1000 feet down? Bring out the diesel pumps.

Even if nuclear power isn't "too dangerous", the people have the world have decided it is. That game is over, no matter how much you rant and insult everyone who doesn't share your obsession. Even if they were to decide it was OK, nuclear power currently contributes only 6% of the global primary energy mix. Many of the same issues of scale that draw your withering scorn onto renewables apply to it as well. Can we ramp nuclear power up 500% worldwide in 10 years? I don't think so, just as I don't think we can ramp wind power up by 2000% in the same time.

That leaves us with this:


And this:


You want us to accept reality and stop the magical thinking? Well, here you go. This is fucking reality - you accept a bit of it for a change.

Which comes first, the reduction in food supply, or the reduction in population?

If the latter could be incentivized somehow, the stark horrors of competition for scarce food could be escaped by more. However, history doesn't suggest that the extraneous gray matter surrounding our inner brains (sometimes called the bird or lizard brain) does us much overall good. We seem to have the same sense en-masse about procreation as an insect. Therefore it's reasonable to conclude that first will come the food supply reduction, and then the mass starvation will follow.

Peak oil is a liquid fuel problem and no amount of nuclear energy is going to change the ramifications of decreased oil production!!

I wouldn't argue that we may have waited too long to build the infrastructure, but there isn't anything we do with oil that we can't do by other means, with an available supply of energy. It could even be renewable energy, although nuclear energy has some advantages.

If a civilization slides back down the net energy curve and has to devote more resources just to the production of energy, that means there is less energy left over to do fun stuff.

Key factors for liquid fuel substitutes:

1. Net energy
2. Production rate
3. Feedstock competition
4. Externalities like pollution and excess CO2 production.

There are liquid fuels that can technically do the same job as oil, but I haven't seen a substitute that comes close to oil on any combination of these, especially the first three.

that will enable us to keep pissing it away on crap like a 2-hour commute and drive-thru burger joints. The question is whether we can produce enough, within available resources and a sane price, to keep the important stuff going (Farm machinery, public transport et al) without all hell breaking loose. For instance, gas in Amsterdam, at the current exchange rate, is a shade over US$7.80/gal - just about enough for 1 hour's labour @ US minimum wage, plus ~80KWh of juice at US busbar costs. You'd "only" need a 50% efficient pull-oil-out-of-thin-air process to make it viable: Take the labour out and you've got ~300KWh to play with (~15% eff.).

Yes, it would be a shock. Detroit would have to pull their thumbs out of their arses and do something about efficiency, and they'll be no more coast-to-coast road-trips. But life seems to go on in the Netherlands...

... don't you know that the only important part of the world ends
at the US coastline?

I would laugh my f*cking head off if US stations charged US$7.80/gal for
fuel - even if only for a month - as the kick up the arse that this would
deliver would change so many of those smug "I've got mine, f*ck you"
attitudes typified by Hummers, McMansions and the rest of the trappings.

:rofl:

The only sad thing about this would be the harm it would cause to my friends
there who actually care about the environment as I would fear for their
safety when the veneer of "civilisation" wears through on the great unwashed ...
:cry:

...that when the price of fuel goes up in the US, it's important to bite your tongue while the wailing and clothes-rending goes on. Just because you pay for a litre what they pay for a gallon (damn near, anyway) apparently doesn't mean that it's not the end of life as we know it.

Mind you, I should talk. It's only 60p/l down here. 40 for diesel.:P

And a lot less other stuff we're used to.

This is something that doesn't get a lot of play- but seems to me a critical factor for countries that rely heavily on imports- and for countries that derive most of their hard cash from exports.

A recent article on the Oil Drum gives one pause.

An Extension of the World Import/Export Land Model

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2798

"How do you get enough food to fed 6.6 billion people when the soil fertility worldwide has been degraded 30% since WWII? The only way to do it is with nitrogen fertilizers ... "

The overuse of nitrogen fertilizers like amonium nitrate has directly caused the "30% drop in soil fertility" as well as increased dependence on fossil fuels, desertification, etc. There are heaps of books, articles and so on that conclusively show a simple fact: low input, labor-intensive farming not only meets current production levels but in many cases, shatters these levels after a few years as the soil regains health. There are people doing it here and abroad.

edit - me no spel so gud