3 Cats Stalking

Disturbing Ratios From Turiel

I recently read a retranslation of Antonio Turiel's post in “The Oil Crash” (if you read Italian) as offered at “Cassandra's legacy” reviewing the International Energy Agency (IEA) 2012 World Energy Outlook published in November of last year. I commented back in early January on the same thought thread.

Turiel points out that IEA's optimistic projection that world energy production will increase 15% by 2035 as measured by the accumulative volume of all the oil products produced is seriously flawed, both in basic assumptions and in analysis.

In his article Turiel adjusts the IEA data with more realistic production estimates, and then converts the production volumes to energy flow equivalents and accounts for the effect of EROEI to project net equivalent energy production. He projects that the world net equivalent energy product will fall 40% by 2035.

That difference can be catastrophic.

Turiel identifies three significant problems with the IEA report:

1. the IEA projection is for volume rather than equivalent energy flows (for example, energy content of an equivalent natural gas volume is less than that of light, sweet crude).

2. the IEA is overly optimistic about the production potential for current fields and most of the newer petroleum sources (in some cases the IEA discounts current experience).

3. the IEA does not take into account the energy it costs to obtain the energy that will be delivered to the final consumers (the factor called EROEI).

It is useful to look at the various ratios used in this analysis. As the article states, one can use different numbers to understand the effects of various conditions. Back in my early years, we called this sensitivity analysis.

1. Use a ratio of 0.7 to convert volumes of non-conventional oil (all of them) to the energy equivalent of crude oil. This accounts for the relative energy density of the different products.

2. Refining improvements mean that energy from some other source like natural gas is used to extract more energy from crude. At the very best, thermodynamics would not allow any real refining improvements to show up in future energy equivalent production – in fact, the net energy available would be less than the sum of the parts being combined to make the “improvement.”

3. An EROEI of 20 for current crude oil production matches data available for our current world. This means the net energy from current crude oil is only 95% of its measured production.

4. An EROEI of 5 is a good figure for crude oil we have found but are not producing for some reason. This means the net energy available from a “field-yet-to-be-developed” will be only 80% of its measured production.

5. The cost of exploration for new oil is climbing exponentially, so an EROEI of 3 should apply to a “field-yet-to-be-found.” This means the net energy from such crude oil is only 66% of its measured production.

6. Turiel assumes an average EROEI of 2 for non-conventional petroleum, including shale oil and gas and oil shale as well as bio-fuels (some known to have EROEIs less than 1). Only 50% of the gross energy from these sources can be used as net energy.

7. The IEA report is based on an assumed production decline of 3.3% for crude oil wells currently in production. Other industry experts say this figure is nearer to 5%, and the data should be adjusted accordingly.

8. Turiel reduces IEA's estimated volume of petroleum from current wells that are not being exploited by 50%. He reduces the volume from reservoirs yet to be discovered by 25%.

9. Turiel says only one third of natural gas liquids can be used as petroleum substitues, allowing them to be used as fuel for present cars. I do not understand just how this will affect the overall picture, but the effect seems small.

10. The volumetric production from shale oil is reduced by 50%.

The IEA projected that 22 years from now, in 2035, world oil production will approach 100 Mb/d, up from their 2011 figure of 87 Mb/d.

After applying the adjustments listed above, Turiel concludes that in 2011 the world energy flow measured in “energy equivalent” barrels to customers amounted to only about 69 Mb/d, not the volumetric 87 MB/d stated in the report.

Looking into the near future, he concludes the terminal decline of net energy is already upon us. In the next 22 years, the net production of energy equivalents will fall by nearly 45% to around 40 Mb/d. This is a far different picture from the IEA's estimate of a volumetric increase of energy products of 15%.

So, where do we stand? Do we really believe the IEA that we are looking at an increasing energy supply to match the increasing population of the earth, or are we looking at the eminent decline in the availability of energy?

To me, the answer is obvious. I agree when Turiel says the world will not recognize that net energy from petroleum is falling until they see a real fall in the actual volume.

By then, it is too late.

Finally, he says, “Petroleum will continue to be available for many decades but always in lesser quantities and in the end it will become a luxury good. Our epoch of accelerated economic development based on inexpensive petroleum is already over.”

So what to do, what to do?

sam

End of Growth

Several excellent blog articles in recent weeks have danced around a subject that I have long thought could be the real problem facing our world.

Upcoming changes in our physical world will happen so quickly, important parts of our society will be unable to conform to the new environment, and parts of the structure of civilization will simply crumble. Our opportunity to prepare and adapt is rapidly fading into the past.

First, let me give credit to the articles the helped me along in my thoughts. I offer these as recommended reading.

Crash_Watcher began a multi-part series of blogs starting last September on “Predicting Global and Regional Petroleum Consumption Trends.” As his series developed, he gave a clear picture of the results of Jeff Brown's Export Land Model in real-life. Timelines for when regions would run out of petroleum they could afford are becoming tighter and tighter.

Gail Tverberg has two articles at ourfiniteworld.com that are recommended: “Ten Reasons Why High Oil Prices are a Problem” and “How High Oil Prices Lead to Recession.” Her analyses indicate why the rising trend in oil prices point to an inevitable lack of other resources in the future.

The economist.com blog offers a summary of a report from Tullett Predon that indicates that declining EROEI in new fossil fuel developments “could bomb societies back into a pre-industrial age.”

Today's world of humankind is like a large ant nest with an interlocking system of interaction between its various parts. While civilization is very versatile and adaptive, some of its larger societal structures are based upon long-term consistent trends in the physical world.

For instance, people in the USA depends upon the automobile to transport them to wherever they want to go. They also have a long-standing habit of debt-based consumerism – take what they want when they want it and simply charge it to the card.

In the past, whenever some significant change came along, civilization adapted, and most of the adaptions we think about were to “someone's good.” The Renaissance was an adaption to a new flood of knowledge into Europe. The Industrial Age was an adaption to learning how to control and use mechanical power from coal. The Automobile Age was an adaption to plentiful supplies of liquid fossil fuels.

Adaptations over the past 200 years have mostly resulted in growth of our society, and now our economy is based upon an adaption to Growth as a continuing trend. The promise of America has been that we will always grow to something bigger and better and bigger and better and ...

Today, too many indicators point to a situation where a new trend is developing: the availability of cheap fossil fuel will become less and less in the near future, maybe within the next two or five years. Fuel will be available, but at an ever higher price that continues to climb. The alternative is a great depression where the price of fuel is still too high, no matter how low it might be, because money is worthless. Either way, our way of life is toast.

The articles I referenced are not from economists. They are from people whose rational analysis I respect, and they are consistent in their warning that the new downward trend we are seeing in the cost of liquid fuels will result in an end to the growth that has fueled our economy throughout my lifetime and that of all my peers. We have ridden the roller-coaster to the top of the track. Now we will all put our hands into the air and ride it down, but we do not know what we will find at the bottom.

So why do I bother telling this story. (TPTB) The Powers That Be do not want this story told. (MSM) Main Stream Media does not want to talk about it. (.gov) Our government (both parties) does not want to admit that there is a problem. And even my sons tell me I must be wrong, though my daughter is working at learning sustainability.

I believe there will be some parts of civilization that will survive and learn to live in the world that follows ours. I just want those people to begin training now. It will not be an easy ride.

 

sam

Another Cat Stalking, The Termination of Computing

Any story about a cat that represents the end of an era fits my view of the future. Here's to Eliott.

The Energy Bulletin referenced a post by Damien Perrotin in his blog The view from Brittany entitled The Eliott Effect. Damien describes his experience of suddenly losing his computer facility to the vagaries of his cat Eliott, and jumps from there to the question of what happens to our society if it loses its computer and internet facilities to the vagaries of "an era of widespread energy and raw material shortages." As he points out, many assume this cannot happen because ..., well just because we don't want it to happen.

His discussions of the earliest days of computing are very informative, and one quickly realizes that the very act using computers now-adays, for instance, my typing this blog post and then sending it out onto the web, is far, far beyond the scope of 18th century computing devices.

Damien further postulates (quite correctly in my opinion) that as electrical power and the rare earth commodities used to create and sustain our presentday computing devices decrease, the abilities to use computers as we use them today will be lost, and they cannot be replaced. I suggest in my book Was a Time When that this loss of computing and communications technology will be a key part of the collapse of civilization during this century.

I started in the computing industry in 1957 and have been a part of the fantastic development of hardware and software that has put us very far away from the roots of computing. I have seen several of the early technologies simply disappear for lack of resources to keep them going. It has been a fun trip, but computing and the internet have become so big and complicated that nothing can save them when the critical supplies run out.

IMHO, comments by several readers of the post at Energy Bulletin show remarkable faith in the ability of microelectronics technology to survive even as the underpinnings are lost. Unfortunately, those people will be sadly mistaken.

sam

More on Michael Mann's Hockey Sticks and Climate Wars

I finished reading Michael Mann's book "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars." I found the book to be both engrossing and distressful.

I was engrossed by the descriptions of the science to understand climate change that filled my curious mind with a wealth of ideas and questions. I was distressed by the record of the attempts by the deniers to discredit both the science and the scientists. This tale left me feeling betrayed by the political foundations of our society, and ultimately by the Powers That Be in today's world.

I now understand much more fully just how the climate scientists have gone about extracting from a wide variety of proxies estimates for the temperature and climatic conditions of the past, and how they are projecting the trends seen to suggest climate conditions in the future. I feel they have adequately established that there are significant dangers facing the people of today. I am convinced more than ever that the world is well on its way to a state where our current civilization cannot survive. Things must change, and it will be a harsh change -- one I hope to avoid by dying of old age before things get too bad.

I also better understand the minds and actions of those who doubt the climate dangers of the future. People in general want to feel optimistic, and they often avoid recognizing obvious risk because it is pessimistic to think about it. The risk has not been reduced, but their attention to that risk has.

And I better recognize those charlatans who are leading and funding the efforts to mislead humanity for the sake of profit and power. They are taking advantage of people's natural tendency toward optimism by sowing confusion and doubt, and in the process are making the risk even more costly. In my opinion, TPTB are endangering the very existence of humankind.

Mann's book supports many conclusions in my book “Was a Time When” which offers a scenario of the possible future over the next 85 years of the West Coast of the USA. I do not expect all the details and timing to match, but the urgency to do something about the problem is even more apparent.

sam

Food for the new world

A few years ago (not sure just when) Alice and I read "Protein Power" by the Drs Eades and adopted a low-carb, high-protein diet as our way of life. They also had a good discussion of the kinds of supplements we should be taking. I remember daughter Deb concurred in what we were doing and offered some good advice.

Though we have had our health problems, and we still fight weight issues, I believe our quality of life is far better for what we have done by adopting the low-carb approach. Fat is not the problem; sugar and refined starch is. We have essentially eliminated sugars from our diet, and we are avoiding flour when given the opportunity.

Over the years I have become concerned about the diet of the whole human race and how there has been a strong push to highly refined grains as the staples for the human race in the coming years. The health of the USA population with its tendency to obeisity is a good example of how it does not work.

I have also given considerable thought to just what kind of food can support 7B people in the future as our fuel and soil and water resources are depleted. That is one of the issues I talked about in my book, Was a Time When. It is an ongoing discussion.

There is a recent post by Tom Murphy of the "Do the Math" blog where he looks at the relative EROIE for various food types. His post was reposted to TheOilDrum, and it, with the comments that follow, are a treasure-trove of ideas, comments, and generally good information about the world's food situation. Take a look at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9145#more to read up on this post. This is one of the best discussions of the whole issue I have seen in a long time.

My Conundrum About How Collapse Could Happen

When I built the scenario that formed the basis for my book Was a Time When, I found there were a number of trends that would force the human society to collapse much faster than most other researchers expected, with or without the physical events I included in my story.

The biggest driver seemed to be the loss of cheap fuel and the inability of our civilization to produce enough food to feed the 7 billion plus inhabitants of the globe. My analysis indicated this trend would accelerate as the feedback loop of failing systems of farming and transport further reduced the supplies.

I postulated that the structure of society would crumble under the load, further adding to the misery. I calculated that wars, pestulance, pandemics, and starvation would wipe out most of the people on earth within the lifetime of the main character of my book. This conclusion matched with those of some of the other doomers of this age.

But I still had a conundrum: why could I not find a way for our civilization to realize the dangers soon enough to do something about the dangers of the future? Surely, something could be done to minimize the effects and save more of our culture. In the end, I decided it would take a thousand years for civilization to recover enough to regain some of the culture and knowledge we take for granted.

The recent post at ClubOrlov, Trained for Success, Bred to be Eaten, is an excellent discussion of why the human race as it is now trained stands little chance to preserve its society and culture. Dimtri Orlov quotes other authors who indicate the futility of expecting humans to be anything but what they are. He has introduced another way the earth's population will be reduced, cannabilism, and he points out that humans will not plan well when they feel they are in the immediate danger of being eaten. Keep track of his blogs, he says some more ideas along these lines.

So my conundrum about how the collapse could happen is still on my mind, but it seems to me to be more definite than ever. There are more who are warning of the dangers, but I am coming to the mind that not only is it too late, but given human nature, it may not be possible to prevent it. Yes, there will be some who survive, but it will be hard to determine in advance who those might be.

 

 

 

 

 

Preppers

A friend sent me a URL to an article about the "Preppers" who are preparing for the end of the Mayan calendar this next December. It was interesting, but I wrote back to disagree with the basis for the article. My comments were the following:

I looked the article over. The part about the Mayan calendar I discount for several reasons, mostly my training in physics tells me the fantasies of how this might happen just don't fit.

However, I do agree that some number of black swans in the near future will tip the world into a sharp decline. Actually, my book, Was a Time When, takes about 85 years for that to happen, but that is still a sharp decline compared to what the majority of our society expects.

As far as the tips for what to have on hand, I think they are a bit off. The preppers have some quantity of supplies, maybe enough to last them for a year or so in the extreme cases. That will simply not be long enough. They need to identify and learn a lifestyle that will allow survival after the dust has settled.

I read of people collecting guns, and indeed there may be a period when guns will be of use, but the manufacture of gun powder will cease, and then the guns become heavy clubs at best. A good bow with arrows makes more sense, plus the knowledge of how to make more arrows.

One of the most drastic losses will be the medicines. Even the more common ones, like aspirin, will become very rare or even non-existent. Hint: grow a willow tree and learn to chew the bark. All the prescriptions that I take will first become terribly expensive as the companies who make them go out of business, and then they will simply disappear. All the medical procedures I have been going through recently will no longer be possible -- it takes lots of electricity and supplies to run a hospital. Of course, this is a quick solution to part of the population problem. People like me will die off.

The good thing about an RV at this time is that as conditions change, you have the opportunity to move your base of operations -- provided you can find and pay for the fuel. Also, at this time the RV is one of the least expensive lifestyles, at least if you don't require Prevost style living.

Thanks for the feed. It is interesting that there is indeed more and more articles of this type beginning to appear. To me it means there are more people out there who are thinking about the possibilities. Of course, people still do not know what to do, except to deny that there really is a problem and/or they can't do anything about it anyway.

Regards,
Sam Penny
the Prudent RVer

New Good Things to Read

Not only did I recently publish my new novel, Was a Time When, but there have been several exceptional blog posts on the Internet you should all check out.

Crash_Watcher has a link to a really great YouTube video (34 minutes but it is worth it) in his blog entry titled Peak Fossil Fuels and Limits to Growth in 34 Minutes. As he warns, even the knowledgable set might need to watch it several times to get the whole idea.

Alice Friedemann writes in the CounterCurrents.org blog about Why Do Political And Economic Leaders Deny Peak Oil And Climate Change? This is one of the more complete reviews I have seen about why our society wants to keep denying there is a problem, and how this reflects back into our political system. Unfortunately, the wall that keeps us from taking rational action on the problems we face is pretty high.

Tom Murphy's article The Way is Shut in his Do The Math blog is a great summary of his search for some way to solve the energy problem of the future and talks about his plans for taking action in the future. You might also look at his past posts that study the various possibilities for alternate energy. On thing is for sure, liquid fuels are going to become a real problem since there is nothing that comes close to what we can get from petroleum.

In my novel I approach our situation as a given and build a scenario on what the world will be like if we essentially do nothing to solve our problems. Tom apologizes for using fear as a tool to get people to pay attention, but I conclude that unless people have some real idea about what life could become, they will simply say it cannot happen.

Read all these articles and my book. Then you decide where we are and where we can go. We really have few options, and they are fast disappearing.

And Tom's points about asymetric risk should be carefully considered. If you think we "doomers" are all wrong, and it turns out we are, you have not lost too much -- you will have spent less money and will be living a more conservative life. But if we are right and you are in danger, doing something about it now might make a big difference and you could lose a lot.

Think about the future and have a good day.

Sam Penny, the Prudent RVer

 

"Was a Time When" Published on Kindle, Dec 27, 2011

It's done, or at least the Kindle part is done. I published my new book last night as a Kindle book. It is available at Amazon for $3.98 and ready for immediate download.

The paper copy book will be available around mid-January.

I am very interested in getting some professional reviews of the book. If you have a blog where you discuss books or the fate of the world in the next 75 years, let me know your background and how to reach you and I will send you a review copy, either a .pdf or a paper copy (when available), free of charge.

For your information, here is my product description.

This tale began in 2006 as the autobiography of my fictional great-grandson, Sam, yet-to-be-born in 2015.

Sam would live through the greatest cultural transition ever experienced by the human race. I encased his memoirs in a short story telling of an expedition of Neu-human archeologists from a thousand years in the future, 3100 A.D., who return to the Pacific Coast searching for their roots. They find Sam's recorded life story and hear a first-hand account of the “Great Collapse” of human society as they had come to call it.

Sam Hardy's life begins at the peak of the tremendous spurt of technology and social advance in the second decade of the 21st century, powered by what many still thought at the time would be an infinite supply of energy and a stable world of commerce and trade. Sam writes the history of humanity's course through the transitions that result from expected natural disasters, resource depletion, climate change, over-population, and economic and cultural failure as his family and tribe struggle to learn to live in a new world of limited resources and crashing dreams.

There are many possible worlds our progeny could face, but in my mind the world described here unfortunately seems to be one of the more probable. My goal is to tell of some of the changes that can be expected as our society searches for its future, and as those technologies and resources on which our civilization depend fall away.

This is a tale of retrospection, as seen through the eyes of someone who lives through it and remembers that there Was a Time When things were so different. And yet, in Sam's final words, there is still hope:

“So this is goodbye. Maybe I have been wrong in my pessimism and damnation of humanity, and there really is a future for mankind on this planet. At least I have joined a group that is beginning the steps to future recovery. God willing, I will have the chance to watch that future blossom. I pray this band I join will build the roots of a better civilization than what my peers built for the last one.”

I will be discussing the book and offering ideas on other options and how to cope with the future at www.WasATimeWhen.com. Come by for a visit.

"Was a Time When" Scheduled for Release by End of Year

Lifting that last little bit of hype, and cleaning up that last little piece of mal-adjusted grammar, just takes so much effort. This is my third, and according to some my "best," novel over the time-space of thirteen years, and I easily forget how much effort must go into that final stretch. But, I am still on schedule to have the book into POD print on Amazon and downloadable for Kindle and other ebooks by the end of the year.

If I miss and slip into January, so be it, but I will do my best to meet my schedule.

I do have a website up and running, but with few resources and links. It is called www.WasATimeWhen.com and you can go see it now.

My daughter and I had an interesting bone of contention about the title. She said it should read "Was a Time When" and the article "a" should not be capitalized. I thought it was okay to make it "A" and have pushed back on her. I am compromising: the cover will be "a" and the website domain will be "A."

So I have been providing copies of the pre-final-edit version for reviews and comments. I have been very pleased with the response and the suggestions for improving the book. In fact, I plan to make some modifications to the final copy to cover those suggestions. I am also making use of the professional editors at createspace.com (formerly booksurge.com) to create a really clean and professional looking book.

It is all looking good, and with a little bit of luck, I will have released the book on Amazon before 1/1/2012.

Just a note, for those who are into history, December 16, 2011, is the 200th anniversary of the first of the five great earthquakes to strike the New Madrid fault back in 1811. My new book has a repeat taking place in the 2030s, but that is for literary convenience and part of my story line. It could happen at anytime.

sam