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Peak Oil (was "petroleum geologist explains US war policy")

TrueStory said:
<snip> In an upcoming world without fossil fuels around 90% of the population will be busy to produce food and other basic necessities. <snip>
Click to expand...
Where do you get the figure of 90% from?
 
Bernie Gunther said:
Where do you get the figure of 90% from?
Click to expand...

It's a guess - a very optimistic one. I think in antiquity and in medieval age at least 90% of the population were busy producing food and basic necessities.
 
TrueStory said:
It's a guess
Click to expand...

A quick search for hunter-gatherers hours per day site:.edu produces estimates in the range 2-5 hours per day.

'Course, that may imply a lower population density than ariculture might support. But that too may be an assumption based on a specific economic/cultural juncture.
 
laptop said:
A quick search for hunter-gatherers hours per day site:.edu produces estimates in the range 2-5 hours per day.

'Course, that may imply a lower population density than ariculture might support. But that too may be an assumption based on a specific economic/cultural juncture.
Click to expand...

I've made the quick search.

There are a lot of estimates, but the first link it's a study:

Hunter-Gatherers of the New World


The tropical forests of Paraguay are believed to contain several hundred species of edible mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, but the Ache have been observed to exploit only about 50 of them. Simiiarly, the forest holds hundreds of edible fruits and insects, yet the Ache exploit only about 40 of these.

Over 98% of the total calories in the diet we observed between 1980 and 1983 were supplied by only 17 different resources.
Click to expand...

Plenty of resources, but only 17 consumed - this is a lot lower living standard than a today's average EU citizen.



Most notable, shotgun hunters spent less than 2% of their time pursuing capuchin monkeys (with a return rate of 1,215 Cal/h), whereas bow hunters spent over 13% of their time chasing capuchin monkeys on the same foraging trips.
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We have shotgun hunters as well, and using shotguns improves "productivity" more then six fold.



Our collected data-some 63 days’ worth of focal studies each on men and women and 1,055 person-days of subsistence studies-show that in the forest Ache men spend about 6.7 h/day in subsistence activities (searching, acquiring resources, and processing food) and another 0.6 h/day working on the tools used in subsistence activities. Men also spend about 4.5 h resting,
socializing, or in light activities each day (Hill et al. 985). Women spend about 1.9 h in subsistence activities, 1.9 h moving camp, and about 8 h in light work or childcare (Hurtado et al. 1985). The contrast between the genders may not be surprising in light of the finding that men provide 87% of the energy supplied in the Ache diet and close to 100% of the protein and lipid consumed.
These data contradict the simple generalization that foragers spend little time in subsistence work. The Ache spend more than twice as much time in procuring, processing, and transporting food as !Kung men and women, who take 3.1 and 1.8 h/day, respectively, for such activities (Lee 1979). We developed a model which assumes that foragers will spend time in those activities which lower the mortality rates of their chiidren and increase their own reproductive rates (Hawkes et al. 1985; Hill 1983; Hurtado 1985). This model explicitly rejects the notion, based on a concept of “limited needs” (Hawkes et al. 1985), that foragers work few hours per day because they do not need or want any more food.
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Result:

man work 6.7 + 0.6 = 7.4 h/day.
man rest 4.5 h/day

woman light work + child care = 1.9 + 1.9 + 8 = 11.8 h/day

The rest/work ratio is 20%, shotguns are used (~using of fossil fuel), the resulting living standard is much below an average EU citizen.
 
TrueStory said:
We have shotgun hunters as well, and using shotguns improves "productivity" more then six fold.
Click to expand...

The problem would then be that increased "productivity" (surely only sustainable in the short term?) would reduce stocks, so that eventually you'd either have to "farm" livestock or lose that particular dietary input (whether it be cow, deer or squirrel) to extinction. If you farm livestock for dietary input then you have to project cost (land use/degradation, man hours etc) vs benefit (dietary input) and make any decision purely on that basis.

So we're back to the issue of sustainability again.....
 
This seems like a slightly strange way to look at things to me. Let's break down where the oil inputs to agriculture go and analyse them a bit. I suggest we separate two cases.

1) The difference between agricultural efficiency using pesticides etc and by standard organic methods. Typically organic gives about 20% less yield (see e.g. this 21 year study ), but is much more efficient in its use of say nitrogen inputs. Nor does it damage the soil, which petrochemical agriculture does. Given that erosion is also a major food security issue, this is pretty important.

2) All the other stuff. This includes fuels for farm equipment, which is mostly replaceable by work animals given sufficient land for pasture. It's mostly a matter of fuel for food distribution and packaging and waste disposal though.

The solutions to the latter case would appear to me to be localisation of food production so that you don't need to use lots of oil for fuel, packaging etc.

So we need to look at the localisation model to see how much extra labour would be required. If a vast amount of extra labour is required, that's presumably where it comes from, as we can get fairly comparable yields from conventional organic vs chemical farms without the need to greatly increase the labour inputs.

The furthest extreme is everybody just grows their own. Even on that basis, organic smallholders who seek self-sufficiency (rather than those farming commercially) generally seem to manage to produce their food with a fairly reasonable *average* day, although this means pretty heavy labour at some times of year, with relatively light labour the rest of the time. You can get a pretty good feel for what's involved from Borsodi

It makes more sense to share the labour over a locality though. With an eco-village of 400 people, the figure I've seen quoted is 20% of working time spent on growing food, which I believe is based on Swedish eco-village results (I'll check this)

Now to be sure, the resultant way of life is not at all that promoted by the corporate 'lifestyle' industry, but it's about as comfortable as that of village life circa 1910, plus a few low energy impact forms of modern technology.

I personally don't think the difference is worth instituting slavery for :)
 
Heads up - Tomorrow (Thursday 6th May) night, BBC Radio 4 at 8.30pm - or 9.30pm Sunday - 'In Business':

RUNNING TOWARDS EMPTY

The world is still powered by oil, and even though discoveries peaked decades ago, nobody knows how much is left buried in the earth.

Peter Day asks some basic questions about the supply and demand of the energy that makes the world work.


Guests

Chris Skrebowski - Editor, Petroleum Review at the Energy Institute

Daniel Yergin - Chairman, Cambridge Energy Research Associates

Colin Campbell - Association of the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

Erling Overland - Acting Chief Executive, Stat Oil

Eric Mathiesen and Per Blystad - Senior Analysts, Norwegian Petroleum Directorate

Richard Webb - Raw Capital

Professor Peter Davies - Chief Economist, BP
Click to expand...

Listen online at the page linked above sometime next week (if you're lucky).

-

World oil prices soar, near 40 dollars a barrel in New York

NEW YORK (AFP) - World oil prices soared to fresh 1990 closing highs, nearing 40 dollars a barrel in New York, as traders sweated over the risk of a terrorist attack on Saudi oil installations.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040505/ts_afp/oil_price_040505211523

-

The BBC WS just had a Californian named Justin Court (?) explaining that high pump prices in the US were the result of the OilCo's cutting back on refining capacity, adding that OPEC has 'offered assistance' to the US to build more refineries... :confused:
 
Bernie Gunther said:
2) All the other stuff. This includes fuels for farm equipment, which is mostly replaceable by work animals given sufficient land for pasture.
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The biggest problem with animals: you can't park a horse in the garage when you don't need it.

If you replace a 50 hp tractor with 5 horses, than you will have 10 fold power reduction, you will need land for pasture and you will have to stock hay for wintertime, you will have to clean the dung, you will have to give them fresh water 3 times a day - of course you wont have a tap in the stable, since we have no more fossil fuels - so you will get the water from a well. A rough estimate: you will spend at least half an hour daily with your horses even when you wont gain any energy from their work - better estimate is 2 hours daily for 5 horses - if we count the time needed stockpiling feed for wintertime.


Bernie Gunther said:
I personally don't think the difference is worth instituting slavery for :)
Click to expand...

For some people even today worth instituting slavery - even in the US...

Modern Day Slavery Around The World
 
TrueStory said:
The biggest problem with animals: you can't park a horse in the garage when you don't need it.<snip>
Click to expand...
I'm imagining a particular kind of sustainability model here, and I think you're picturing something different. I don't think trying to untangle our differing assumptions about horses is necessarily interesting. Perhaps we should step back a bit.

I would argue that if we keep using unsustainable methods to provide food and energy, no matter how cleverly we do it, we just defer the problems. I think that unsustainable energy sources will probably be needed to enable a sane transition to sustainability, given any believeable projections of global population, food and energy supply vs demand etc over the next century.

I don't think we have any acceptable choice besides making such a transition, but I think that the political influence of capitalists, religious fanatics and other nuisances will make that transition more difficult than it needs to be and may even succeed in making it disastrous for billions of us.

What needs to be done is pretty clear to me though, global population has to be reduced over time (ideally by family planning rather than by the Four Horsemen), unsustainable energy use needs to be phased out, while we still have sufficient of it to boot-strap the transition to sustainable energy use.

Our way of life has to change to make this happen. It won't be business as usual, but it needn't be some hellish dystopia either. It depends how we do it. The problem I forsee is that we'll wait too long to take the necessity seriously and end up trying to make the transition to a lower energy society after the demand for energy has overtaken the supply permanently, with predictably dire economic results. At that point everything gets much harder.

If we mess it up badly enough, instead of reducing energy demand through appropriate technology, improving food security through sustainable forms of agriculture and reducing demand for both food and energy by managing global population down over the course of a few generations; we all just pretend that there isn't any problem until those Four Horsemen arrive to solve these problems for us the hard way. This appears to be the solution favoured by certain factions within those countries most able to do something about it.
 
TrueStory said:
The biggest problem with animals: you can't park a horse in the garage when you don't need it.

If you replace a 50 hp tractor with 5 horses, than you will have 10 fold power reduction, you will need land for pasture and you will have to stock hay for wintertime, you will have to clean the dung, you will have to give them fresh water 3 times a day - of course you wont have a tap in the stable, since we have no more fossil fuels - so you will get the water from a well. A rough estimate: you will spend at least half an hour daily with your horses even when you wont gain any energy from their work - better estimate is 2 hours daily for 5 horses - if we count the time needed stockpiling feed for wintertime.




For some people even today worth instituting slavery - even in the US...

Modern Day Slavery Around The World
Click to expand...

Nice link on slavery, most peopel don't know that its worse today, than it ever was in the old days.

The U.S. government estimates that 800,000 to 900,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders every year, including 18,000 to 20,000 into the United States. Some estimate total worldwide slavery to be in the millions.
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And its nice to see bush is pushing for action on this.

That grim reality motivated President Bush this fall to become the first world leader to raise the slavery issue at the U.N. General Assembly. He called for new international efforts to fight the slave trade and pledged to almost double U.S. resources devoted to this cause.
 
Bernie Gunther said:
What needs to be done is pretty clear to me though, global population has to be reduced over time (ideally by family planning rather than by the Four Horsemen), unsustainable energy use needs to be phased out, while we still have sufficient of it to boot-strap the transition to sustainable energy use.
Click to expand...

I think we agree completely what should be done, there are some disagreements in what will be done.


Bernie Gunther said:
If we mess it up badly enough, instead of reducing energy demand through appropriate technology, improving food security through sustainable forms of agriculture and reducing demand for both food and energy by managing global population down over the course of a few generations; we all just pretend that there isn't any problem until those Four Horsemen arrive to solve these problems for us the hard way. This appears to be the solution favored by certain factions within those countries most able to do something about it.
Click to expand...

I have some ideas what could be done.

I think the first step is a monetary reform.

The money has been introduced in antiquity and it was based on the weight of precious metals like brass, silver or gold (this is why pound is both unit of currency and unit of weight).
However gold is just symbol, a yellow metal - gold doesn't make people happy. More exactly if gold is used as exchange symbol in a society, then possessing lot of gold by a person can make happy this person, but the sum of happiness of all individuals in this closed society will be the same.

(This law is similar to the second law of thermodynamics :))

Caesar proved the first time in history this theory. After returning from a campaign with a lot of gold he thought that citizens of the Roman empire will be very satisfied with this new wealth. However - since that time the Roman empire was very big, included almost the whole known world (we can neglect the transactions on the borders) - therefore we can consider the antique Roman empire a closed society. This means that in their closed society they had the same amount of goods, but the amount of their exchange symbol - the gold - has been doubled. The result: inflation - and the result of inflation: people were not more satisfied than before the campaign.

So what should we do?
Well, it's simple: we should change the base of our money. The money should be based on Energy. Energy does make you happy (or satisfied). If in our previous experiment Caesar would be returned from the campaign with a lot of slaves, this could increase the quantity of goods in the empire and people could be more satisfied.

So money should be related to energy, and all the goods price should be based on the amount of energy needed to produce them. This is the only way which could led us to form a sustainable way of living. All our unsustainable habits will represent a deficit, therefore even politicians and executive directors could take right decisions :)
 
Great site :) Many thanks.
I knew it's a straightforward idea, so I can't be the only one who realised this is the path which should be followed :)

From Energy Economics I've arrived to another great site - a book:

Natural Capitalism

Looks very promising, it will keep me busy for coming days :)
 
Just a quick note to say that oil is at a 13 year high. Last time it was at these levels was the first gulf war.
 
Will Hutton comment today on the China aspect of this:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1212672,00.html

It is truely an extraordinary process going on at the moment and if it manages to stay on the knife edge will create some brand new dynamics.

If fundamentalism of the left has been discarded, so, Ramo argues, has fundamentalism of the right - the so-called Washington consensus. The developing world is now looking to China as an exemplar of a new 'Beijing consensus', deploying capitalism not as an end in its own right - but as a means to an end. It is because privatisation works that you do it; it is because financial deregulation does not that you have to proceed with caution. Above all invest in education.

China, in short, is a world event - a continent on the move with a distinct approach to capitalism. Its achievement is already remarkable, and its impact on a hitherto sluggish world economy entirely welcome. But the Chinese did not reckon on Messrs Bush and Blair and what now looks like the worst post-Second World War foreign policy error.

Torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners captured the headlines last week, but another and associated drama was playing itself out in the world's oil markets. Iraq has to be internationalised and normalised fast - and oil prices must be managed downwards. The stakes get higher by the week. China could step in; but will it?
Click to expand...

Fascinating stuff.
 
China would be in big trouble in a world with increasingly scarce/expensive oil.

They have far less viable land (I'll check this figure but I think it's something crazy like 0.08ha/cap) than they need to feed themselves with. Some of what they've been doing makes very little sense to me in the light of this.
 
CBS Marketwatch

Hubbert's Peak goes global

This, as Goldstein points out. is the essence of the bell-shaped curve hypothesis. There is a growing consensus that the crucial turning point in output will probably occur in the second half of this decade, in or around 2007.

The crucial remaining question is: how fast will the gap then grow between supply and demand? All other things being equal, the decline side of the curve will be a mirror image of the initial increase. But of course there will be mitigating factors, such as energy conservation measures or the development of substitutes to oil as a primary energy source, ranging from hydrogen to nuclear to solar.

But the odds seem overwhelming that none of this will happen in time to head off an energy crisis that will dwarf anything we have ever experienced.
Click to expand...

This from a man who has 'equity positions in three major international oil companies: ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil.'

Which leads me to ask myself - what's in it for people like him? Higher oil prices, of course. Could they be taking advantage of the supply issues we're starting to see?

And another thought that occurred to me is: if countries start to accept extrapolation of the Hubbert Peak to worldwide supply, might they start stockpiling oil en masse, driving prices yet higher?
 
Business - Reuters
Oil at 21-Year High on Supply Strains

1 hour, 1 minute ago

By Andrew Mitchell

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices vaulted to a 21-year high on Friday on fears that supplies, already stretched by world economic expansion, could be hit by an attack on Middle East oil facilities.

U.S. light crude settled up 30 cents at $41.38 a barrel after peaking at $41.56 to set an all-time high in the 21-year history of the New York Mercantile Exchange contract.

London Brent stood 31 cents higher at $38.80 a barrel.

Warnings from a senior Russian official that deliveries from the world's second biggest oil exporter have hit a ceiling after many years of growth underlined the strain on global supply.

"Realistically, the capacity of suppliers does not today meet growing demand in places such as China or India. And you have to take into account the state of affairs in Iraq (news - web sites)," Semyon Vainshtok, head of Russia's oil pipeline monopoly, told Reuters.

Economic expansion in China, bolstered by renewed U.S. growth, has placed world supplies under increasing strain, leaving OPEC (news - web sites), except for its top producer Saudi Arabia, pumping almost flat out to meet demand.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040514/bs_nm/markets_oil_dc_41
Click to expand...

Reuters Business wincing their way through with talk of 'ceilings' and 'strain on global supply'... any day now they'll use the word 'depletion'.
 
And there's this, which looks pretty grim.

Fears of big rises were enhanced last night by a report circulating in the City of London from Barclays Capital bank. "If prices are still above $40 in a month, we would not be surprised to see them stay above that level for the rest of the year. Indeed, if $40 sticks, then $50 becomes threatened," said Barclays oil analyst Paul Horsnell.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1212672,00.html
Click to expand...
 
Brent Crude price graph...

31+XBNT+bbc-big_thick-line+one_month.png
 
Hmm smell the capitalism!

ACTION OF SPECULATORS
The combination of low stocks and Opec action to keep them low leaves the market exposed to the prospect of sudden price rises if supplies are threatened. This has not gone unnoticed by professional market speculators.

Hedge funds and other speculators betting on the possibility of higher prices have themselves exacerbated price pressure in the market.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3708951.stm
Click to expand...

If you follow that link the BBC has a little section with articles on and about oil and how its fall in quantity will effect us.
 
If those speculaters get a whiff of a possible correction in the price of oil (such as America releasing oil out of the strategic petroleum preserve, or higher output from the Saudis) they will help to drive the price down by selling their long positions or shorting oil futures. Speculation in any security or commodity is a two way street.

Really, if Americans are angry about the price they pay at the pump they have no one to blame but themselves. The influx of SUV's and trucks on American streets is rediculous. Americans should have learned from the real oil crisis of the 70's, many sadly have not.

Lets remember however that in inflation adjusted dollars the price of oil is no where near the price during the OPEC oil embargo in the 1970's.

"If gas prices were as high today as they were in the late 1970s, we would now be paying about $6 a gallon for gas. Today's price at the pump is higher than it was as recently as 1985."
http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-13-04.html

This is also an interesting slice of info.
oil is slightly cheaper today than it was 20, 30, and 50 years ago, and five-times cheaper than 100 years ago. How can gas and oil be cheaper since we've used so much of it over time? Well, thanks to human innovation, we are always finding new sources of oil, while at the same time technology makes it cheaper to drill for it.
http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-13-04.html
 
mears said:
This is also an interesting slice of info.
oil is slightly cheaper today than it was 20, 30, and 50 years ago, and five-times cheaper than 100 years ago. How can gas and oil be cheaper since we've used so much of it over time? Well, thanks to human innovation, we are always finding new sources of oil, while at the same time technology makes it cheaper to drill for it.
http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-13-04.html
Click to expand...

This comment has totally destroyed any faith I might have had that you have any kind of understanding of basic economics.

Adam
 
A very good homepage about the comming Ecological Crisis:

A HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
ON THE WORLD ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

or download in pdf format:

http://www9.ocn.ne.jp/~aslan/hcp/97hcpwec.pdf


Introduction

The population of the world is growing, food production is stagnating, oil is running out, and we are destroying the resource base we depend on for life. These are all related in interlocking ways that are sure to result in a global crisis (already begun) in the easily foreseeable future; the compound crisis of population, food, oil, soil, and water. Politics and business have joined hands to tell us that poverty and famine can be eliminated by economic growth, but economic growth appears to be the engine behind the compound crisis, rather than the panacea that it is being made out to be. This paper shows how conventional economic thought has been mistaken and harmful, how very basic and unquestioned assumptions have led humanity into an ecological impasse, and suggests a method for attempting to avoid the oncoming disaster.

This paper does not mention, or makes only very brief mention of, the 'pollution-type' problems (global warming, ozone layer destruction, acid rain, toxification of the environment by radiation or synthetic chemicals), as these are considered to be a subset of the human-induced ecological crisis described below. It is not intended to deny or lessen the importance of these issues, any one of which could have a serious bearing on the ability of humanity to live harmoniously with the Earth. On the other hand, progress in alleviating the effects of the ecological crisis will almost certainly result in positive trends concerning these problems, as should be clear from the argument.
Click to expand...


the most interesting info for me:


Also recall that the only time in history when consumption of grain exceeded
production in the U.S.A. was in the drought year of 1988. Exporting a ton of wheat
is equivalent to exporting 1000 tons of water, but with the world more dependent
on the U.S.A. for grain (nearly half of all exports)than it is on Saudi Arabia for oil,
then we had better hope that U.S. agriculture gets its house in order as regards the
use of water.
Click to expand...
 
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