Re: International Energy Agency accepts Peak Oil (sortof)

From: Geoff T (geofft_at_mail.com)
Date: 11/18/04 

Date: 17 Nov 2004 17:43:55 -0800

frisbieinstein@yahoo.com (Patrick Powers) wrote in message news:<9511688f.0411160549.f63f3bc@posting.google.com>...

> But the industrialized nations can find substitute sources of energy.

Hopefully. The trouble is we dont have anything to match the
energy-density and ease of transport that oil gives us. (I'm ignoring
hydrogen since it's an energy carrier; we have to produce it first).

Nuclear is not really a long-term solution because it'll just mean
we'll be facing "Peak Uranium" a little further down the track.

Fusion: Yeah, that'd be great. Apparently that's another 25 years
away. Like it was 25 years ago.

Wind, solar etc: cant provide enough energy.

I think we have to face the fact that our current industrialised
civilisation is un-sustainable. Aside from nuclear and geothermal, the
only energy source our planet has is solar. We already harness this
through wind, PV cells and hydro. Even if we can substitute all our
hydrocarbon-based electrical generation capacity for solar-based
plants, we're still left looking for an energy source for
transportation if we want to maintain our economies and standard of
living.

I can see us going down one of three paths (or maybe all, depending on
local conditions)

1: Transformation of society from suburban worker to rural
self-sufficient. With greatly reduced/expensive transportation between
food production and population centres, communities will have to
become largely self-sufficient in food. This will only work if there
is enough arable land in and around the population centre to support
its citizens. Depending on the method of electricity generation, power
supply may become intermittent or prices will rise out of the range of
most people. I'm thinking that the best long-term situation will be to
go from cities+megafarms back to a village-oriented society.

2: Population adjustment through starvation. Death on an unimagined
scale due to greatly reduced levels of food production, processing and
transportation. The food that industrialised nations eat takes an
immense amount of energy to get it onto the table. I read recently
(cant remember where, could have been the recent Nat. Geo. article on
peak oil) that it takes approx 10 calories of energy to produce 1
calorie of food.

3: Population adjustment through war. Global conflict arising from
superpower competition for energy resources. Trouble is that this time
the players have nukes. This scenario goes hand-in-hand with No. 2.

Peak Oil is pretty depressing, but at least we wont have to worry too
much abotu global warming :)

- Geoff

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