The Second Dark Age
Look around you and most of what you see will be created either from or using crude oil. Oil is used as a fuel in production, as a base component of plastics, in transportation of good and raw materials. There is no aspect of the western world that is not directly impacted by oil.
It's not difficult to see why. One barrel of oil is the equivalent to 46 gallons of gasoline, with an energy of 6 billion Jules of heat. That's the equivalent of five labourers working 12 hours a day, every day, for a year.
That black stuff is truly a wonderful thing and without it there would not have been the rapid growth of prosperity that powered the 20th century. But, even ignoring the problems of greenhouse gases there is a big problem with oil.
It's running out.
Currently mankind is using about 87 million barrels of oil a day, which is about 10 billion litres and, while there is quite a lot of oil left in the world, we are very close to the limit of the rate at which we can extract it. This peak rate, called 'peak oil', indicates the point at which we can no longer increase supply to meet demand and at which production will actually start to drop. Current estimates for this indicate it will be around 2010.
Think about that. Historically, as the population has grown, and we have found new and wonderful things to do with oil, we have simply pumped more of it out of the ground. More people = more demand = more oil = more prosperity. What happens when we can't pump more oil?
This is not something the world has had to face before. In the past, as demand increased, pressure was applied to the oil producers and they increased 'production' to satisfy the demand and keep the prices down. But when we reach the peak oil level there is no more slack in the system. Every litre pumped is used. Any disruption is immediate.
As it currently stands any disruption to oil production could well have a severe impact on the way that we in the developed world live, eat, heat our homes, and travel to work. Terrorism is a serious threat. Hurricanes are a serious threat. Accidents are a serious threat. Is it any surprise that Ras Tanura on the Persian Gulf, the largest oil terminal in the world, is defended like a high security military base.
But what of future growth?
Its expected that by 2050 the world will contain nearly 9 billion people. But there will be no extra fuel produced! I would expect that by then fuel will be rationed. But between now and then we are going to see supply drag behind demand by an ever growing margin. Given that 70% of current oil production is used in transport is easy to see that transport and heating fuel prices will simply rise uncontrollably until transport demand falls to a manageable level.
It looks pretty bleak. Most of the western world is based upon rapid road transport of goods, as the fuel prices continue to grow it will cause transport costs to rocket and the price of the good transported to rise in step. As the fuel supply becomes limited the general transport infrastructure used during the growth of the last 50 years will grind to a halt. Commuting to work will simply stop as pay will not be able to keep up with escalating transport costs.
What can be done to solve the problem?
With the main use of oil being in transport, this should be the primary focus of any attempted solution. Several alternatives have been suggested over recent years including bio-fuels, hydrogen and electricity. However, each of these has its problems. Bio-fuels currently use food stocks which results in food shortages and high food prices, Hydrogen from renewable sources has problems with storage and transport, and electricity is usually generated from fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas and has major greenhouse gas implications.
What is needed is for the governments of the developed world to get off their collective asses and begin to fund some serious development of technology and infrastructure to resolve the problems. Market forces are not enough to solve this problem. Only a concerted multi-government action will do this. It will require a concerted effort to rapidly create a new fuel source and make it available globally in a very short timescale. The world's oil infrastructure has been growing since the end of the 19th century; I don't think we can wait another hundred years for market forces to do the job for us.
The time for governments to act is now. Failure to do so may well result in the whole world falling into a new dark age.
Images are of Ifat.
It's not difficult to see why. One barrel of oil is the equivalent to 46 gallons of gasoline, with an energy of 6 billion Jules of heat. That's the equivalent of five labourers working 12 hours a day, every day, for a year.
That black stuff is truly a wonderful thing and without it there would not have been the rapid growth of prosperity that powered the 20th century. But, even ignoring the problems of greenhouse gases there is a big problem with oil.
It's running out.
Currently mankind is using about 87 million barrels of oil a day, which is about 10 billion litres and, while there is quite a lot of oil left in the world, we are very close to the limit of the rate at which we can extract it. This peak rate, called 'peak oil', indicates the point at which we can no longer increase supply to meet demand and at which production will actually start to drop. Current estimates for this indicate it will be around 2010.
Think about that. Historically, as the population has grown, and we have found new and wonderful things to do with oil, we have simply pumped more of it out of the ground. More people = more demand = more oil = more prosperity. What happens when we can't pump more oil?
This is not something the world has had to face before. In the past, as demand increased, pressure was applied to the oil producers and they increased 'production' to satisfy the demand and keep the prices down. But when we reach the peak oil level there is no more slack in the system. Every litre pumped is used. Any disruption is immediate.
As it currently stands any disruption to oil production could well have a severe impact on the way that we in the developed world live, eat, heat our homes, and travel to work. Terrorism is a serious threat. Hurricanes are a serious threat. Accidents are a serious threat. Is it any surprise that Ras Tanura on the Persian Gulf, the largest oil terminal in the world, is defended like a high security military base.
But what of future growth?
Its expected that by 2050 the world will contain nearly 9 billion people. But there will be no extra fuel produced! I would expect that by then fuel will be rationed. But between now and then we are going to see supply drag behind demand by an ever growing margin. Given that 70% of current oil production is used in transport is easy to see that transport and heating fuel prices will simply rise uncontrollably until transport demand falls to a manageable level.
It looks pretty bleak. Most of the western world is based upon rapid road transport of goods, as the fuel prices continue to grow it will cause transport costs to rocket and the price of the good transported to rise in step. As the fuel supply becomes limited the general transport infrastructure used during the growth of the last 50 years will grind to a halt. Commuting to work will simply stop as pay will not be able to keep up with escalating transport costs.
What can be done to solve the problem?
With the main use of oil being in transport, this should be the primary focus of any attempted solution. Several alternatives have been suggested over recent years including bio-fuels, hydrogen and electricity. However, each of these has its problems. Bio-fuels currently use food stocks which results in food shortages and high food prices, Hydrogen from renewable sources has problems with storage and transport, and electricity is usually generated from fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas and has major greenhouse gas implications.
What is needed is for the governments of the developed world to get off their collective asses and begin to fund some serious development of technology and infrastructure to resolve the problems. Market forces are not enough to solve this problem. Only a concerted multi-government action will do this. It will require a concerted effort to rapidly create a new fuel source and make it available globally in a very short timescale. The world's oil infrastructure has been growing since the end of the 19th century; I don't think we can wait another hundred years for market forces to do the job for us.
The time for governments to act is now. Failure to do so may well result in the whole world falling into a new dark age.
Images are of Ifat.
posted by Richard at 12:46 PM
4 Comments:
Good idea, depending on government. We all know they're here to he'p us.
-D
It's worse than that Rich. The German government formed a group of scientists and asked them to come up with politically neutral information about world energy stocks to help inform government decisions. This is the Energy Watch Group. According to them, peak oil is here right now. Every non-opec country in the world has already passed this point, and the opec countries are almost certainly close to it. Better still, we can't switch to coal either. The official global stocks of coal are based on countries' offical stated reserves, which in many case have not been updated since the 1960s. Given that the Chinese are building a coal fired power station every week right now, Energy Watch predict that Peak Coal is only a mere 17 years ahead.
See http://www.energywatchgroup.org/ for more detail.
You've hit the nail on the head that mass transport of manufactured goods and the effect on the world economy is the heart of the issue.
Nuclear won't solve the problem. A study from MIT in 2003 said that there is only enough usable Uranium available in a form that can be mined to power 1000 reactors for 40 years.
And a few days ago there was a leaked report from the World Bank that biofuels are responsible for 75% of the world food price hikes of recent months.
It seems to me that the only way we're going to get through this is through massive energy reduction and really really fast, saving enough energy to power the economy while we come up with alternative methods for transport. The current model is about to shut down.
Lady T and I did our carbon footprint (which is pretty much the same as an energy use calculation). By moving closer to work so that I can go to work on a bicycle, going down to one car, replacing our heating system with a brand new one and properly insulating our house, we will have slashed our carbon footprint (and thus energy use) by 2/3 by the end of this year.
Now, not everyone can do things like giving up cars - much harder for those who live in the country. But the 2/3 of us who live in cities need to get off our backsides and make personal decisions to change how we live. If Lady T and I can do it so easily, I can't believe that others can't too.
My big hope for the future of this planet is that this oil crisis will push people enough to save energy that we might just get creative enough to find replacements. The threat of climate change doesn't seem to be doing it. There's great work being done on creating GM bacteria which can be grown in vats of water to spit out biofuels at 200 times the rate of making it from plants. And there's going to be a revolution in solar power over the next 5 years with nanotech solar inks that can be screen printed onto surfaces to produce cheap solar energy. NanoSolar, a Californian company is already making this stuff for power stations and expects to produce energy at the same cost as from coal - this year.
I wonder though, even though it's going to be darned painful, do we NEED this oil crisis to protect ourselves from ourselves? To give us the kick up the rear we need protect the climate from our behaviour?
My views on this are so bleak that I try not to blog about them.
Suffice to say that governments have never changed their behaviour by having carrots dangled in front of them. They need a very big stick.
The oil crisis will eventually reshape the world. Such is the nature of evolution. Animals evolve by learning from their (usually fatal) mistakes. Humans can and will adapt, but not without paying a very high price in human lives.
From Terminator 2: Judgment Day:
John: We're not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.
The Terminator: It is in your nature to destroy yourselves.
John: Yeah. Major drag, huh?
Love this:
"The Terminator: It is in your nature to destroy yourselves."
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