Life After The Oil Crash

[OneBlueSky]

here's a website that discusses the peak oil issue and it's possible ramifications . . . pretty gloomy outlook that predicts a reduction in human population from 6 billion to about 500 million . . .

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

they even have a preparedness section that touches on everything from food to heating to transporation . . .

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/WhatToDo.html

are these guys too alarmist? . . . or are their predictions realistic? . . . inquiring minds want to know . . .

[brainshrub]

1. I pray to God he is alarmist. (nt)

[PROGRESSIVE1]

2. He is an alarmist! We need to find alternatives now, but this....

prediction is so stupid!

[brainshrub]

6. I agree the author is a bit hyperbolic

but the main points are solid.

Oil is to us is what the Buffalo were to the plains Indians. Once Peak Oil hits, we are going to have to make some major changes in the whole socio-economic structure of our society.

It's going to make the French Revolution look like the Buckingham Palace changing-of-the-guard.

Consider this scenario: Heating oil costs $200 a gallon & a major snow storm hits Chicago.

Just ponder that scenario for a moment.

[EstimatedProphet]

3. Yeah, it's pretty alarmist

However, the issues he raises are very important, and practically none of them are receiving any attention by this administration (or have for the last 30 years, for that matter). Way too easy to be concerned with immediate profits than anything else.

[rfranklin]

4. There is truth in this screed...

However, using the examples of blackouts in the USA as a sign of oil shortage is just silly. The blackouts in California we now know were caused by energy traders (like Enron) manipulating supplies and taking plants offline. The blackout in the East was caused by poor maintenance and management by a "deregulated" holding company that is raping the sytstem for huge profits and putting nothing into maintenance or staff. So, from what little I know, this guy is probably right but does not provide good arguments when he uses anecdotal evidence like that.

[Dissenting_Prole]

10. Not so silly

Yes, the blackout in the east was caused by poor maintenance. However, it is an example of what happens when you are operating at peak (in this case, peak of infastructure) and demand increases above that level for even a short period of time, or if supply decreases.

The blackout occurred around 4:30pm, which is the time of day that both residential and industrial users were online. Also, it was one of the first REALLY hot days of the summer. Suddenly there was an increase in demand beyond what is considered normal, and the energy wasn't available.

What happens when our demand for oil and natural gas starts to exceed supply? You get the same type of effect. And the results will get more severe before we slowly wake up to the fact that the supply is depleting. When you consider that most new power plants are going to be natural gas fired, and that natural gas is peaking in North America, you realize that there are going to be more blackouts to come. Some of those natural gas plants will never be built if there is nothing to power them with.

BTW, if you consider that economic growth is tied to energy useage, it becomes obvious that future economic growth is not possible. A lot of us will be looking for jobs, and we'll probably find them in local farming.

[NNadir]

5. I votre extremely alarmist.

The dismissal of alternatives is pat thinking from the 1960's and 1970's.

The chief energy cost of agriculture is fixing nitrogen. Without the Haber process, the earth would be able to support about 2 billion less people, not 5.5 billion less, assuming a return to organic (crop rotation) farming. Fixed nitrogen (ammonia) is not obtained generally from petroleum but from natural gas via the water gas reaction, using heat, pressure, hydrogen and air. Realistic provable alternatives to natural gas exist in biomass and nuclear energy (although biomass is arguably somewhat circular - you need nitrogen to grow biomass). Indeed, just about every common synthetic organic molecule is accessible from carbon monoxide (or even the dioxide) and hydrogen. We live in the golden age of chemistry.

My guess is that the author has just, as he admits, discovered peak oil and is getting hysterical. The peak oil scenario WILL involve economic dislocation and adjustment as well as some suffering (like Iraq), but it certainly will not lead to the end of civilization as we know it. If anything will assault civilization it is global warming. The sooner we are done with oil the better we will be. There are considerable solar resources and a two to three thousand year supply of thorium and uranium.

[brainshrub]

7. Polymer magic

My guess is that the author has just, as he admits, discovered peak oil and is getting hysterical.

I agree. I was somewhat hysterical when I first discovered Peak Oil and it's implications. But while I also agree that it won't be the end of civilization, it will mark one of the most significant turning-points in human history...similar to the French or Russian Revolutions.

The entire power-structure is predicated on cheap, reliable oil. Furthermore, oil isn't just go-juice...it's medicine, food and heat. Even if we find another source of electricity, making polymers is going to be a lot more expensive.

[NNadir]

9. Somewhat more expensive.

Some polymers, like rayon and cellophane are only semi-synthetic; their starting material, cellulose, is available from wood and other plants.

Ethylene and propylene are both accessible from carbon monoxide and hydrogen and their polymers, polyethylene and polypropylene will be available, albeit at a slightly higher price. Carbon monoxide and hydrogen are a key intermediates of water gas reactions which can use garbage, biomass and other organic materials as starting materials. It is imaginable that we will have a second pass at some of the oil materials we have used if we dig up certain landfills. It is also true that the water involved need not be of especially high quality. Undried sewage sludge is acceptable under the right conditions.

Remember too, that these polymers are emminently recyclable. The chief impediment today to vastly expanded recycling is that polymers are currently too cheap. The real problem today is that carbon based materials are highly subsidized and underpriced. The flooded market could be corrected by a wise taxation policy, but that is highly unlikely to come from a myopic bunch of looters like the Bushies.

Ethylene is also obtainable from ethanol. Personally I would love to see ethanol based polyethylene. This is an excellent way of sequestering carbon dioxide and removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

For the long term though, we are going to seriously examine the carrying capacity of earth, which is clearly now exceeded. Experience has shown that the best way of reducing population is the creation of wealth and the elimination of poverty. This is the challenge for the twenty-first century.

[pscot]

11. When animal populations die back

they don't just die back to the level of sustainability. They collapse. His suggestion of 500,000 is probabably not too far out of line with models established by the study of dieback in other species such as lemmings, rabbits and deer. I don't know that one can draw exact parallels, but still...

[NNadir]

13. Well this might be true in the case where oil was irreplacable.

It is not. I would expect that the species that will suffer most from the use of oil and the effects of oil's ultimate depletion will not be human.

It is true that humans are just one of the great apes, and thus are animals. However I think the case can be easily made that human population dynamics are not sucessfully modeled by reference to other species.

[jmcgowanjm]

17. OK, NNadir, what is oil replacable with n/t

[NNadir]

21. There are almost no compounds in oil that are not available by

Fischer-Tropsch and many related chemistries. The carbon sources are available widely. My own preference is for biomass and garbage. (Historically coal has been the carbon source so used.) What one needs to effect these syntheses is heat. Heat is readily accessible via a number of high temperature nuclear reactors of the types being developed in the Civilized world. It has been known since the 1940's how to make these compounds: In fact the German war machine subsisted for several years on exactly these processes during World War II. The process itself was discovered in the 1920's. I would note that the direct hydrogenation of carbon dioxide is probably industrially feasible, although considerable investment and research would probably be necessary, especially as a side product would be water.

The chief impediment for doing this, of course, is cost, because oil, subsidized by war and a lack of accounting of it's environmental and health costs, is artificially "cheap." However in the case where the entire world economy was going to collapse because of the depletion of this "cheap" oil, I think these processes would put a very quick brake on the proposed post peak oil human extinction scenarios. It may be that we are forced to conserve because of higher costs, but given the environmental impact of our current habit of behaving like energy drunks, this would not be a bad thing.

Much of the energy provided by fossil fuels right now can of course be replaced directly by nuclear energy as electricity.

If you have a specific question about a specific compound made from crude oil that cannot be made by an alternate source, I suggest you post it here, and I will try to inform you of ways that it can be made or replaced without appealing to a petroleum starting material.

The last President to have recognized this fact was the much maligned Jimmy Carter. The world would have been a much better place if we had made plans and built infrastructure for gasoline at $3.00/gallon back in 1978. By now we wouldn't even notice it; indeed, the prices of syn fuels probably would have fallen and we wouldn't be bleeding in Iraq.

As the risk of sounding like the national moral, economic and scientific embarrassment my own feeling about peak oil is "Bring it on!"

[jmcgowanjm]

24. Well, yes, I like your confidence. On synfuels, your raw materiel

would be...what?

A major problem is that they cannot be exploited before
the oil shocks cripple attempts to bring them on line,
and the rate of extraction is far too slow to meet the
huge global energy demand.

Nuclear waste disposal is still the major, unresolved
problem, especially breeder reactors producing
plutonium - a nuclear weapon/terrorist raw material,
half-life contamination is 24,000 years

Shareholders want to know where Shell's reserves went
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1125410,00.html

[NNadir]

25. Again, one can directly hydrogenate carbon dioxide.

Plants produce billions upon billions of tons of fixed carbon dioxide, essentially by this process. Thus biomass or direct processing of the atmosphere with an energy input is feasible. What is in short supply is not the element carbon (or its compounds), but energy itself.

Nuclear waste disposal is NOT a major unresolved problem, especially when compared to the waste of its alternatives. (I only wish that people were as concerned with coal ash which actually kills people and despoils ecosystems while nuclear wastes have done NONE of these things.) There are 75,000 metric tons of commercial nuclear waste in the United States for the entire history of nuclear power, a quantity that could easily fit in a small industrial building. As I have pointed out repeated on this (and other sites) this material is potentially useful and extremely valuable material. The few fractions that are potentially not useful are subject to transmutation in which radioactive elements are rendered into ordinary elements. A typical coal plant can release 75,000 metric tons of waste in a day. What's more this waste is uncontrolled. The Bush administration has recently suspended regulations that prevented from being dumped directly into rivers. It is, in fact, physically impossible to prevent the ravages of coal ash. By contrast it is very easy to isolate and immobilize nuclear "wastes", if you have a "waste" as opposed to "feedstock" frame of mind.

I point out that most people who understand anything about nuclear energy are aware that under an advanced actinide recycling scheme, the total radioactivity of the earth will actually be reduced in about 1000 years time. This precludes the use of rather stupid and uninspired practice that currently is used: The creation of dumps.

I understand nuclear weapons and plutonium very well thank you. You need not inform me of plutonium's half-life. (There is however no such thing as "half-life contamination," although I guess I know what you meant.) I am in favor of fissioning the plutonium stocks on earth, and switching to a Thorium based, more proliferation resistant, fuel cycle in the process. The French are developing an excellent molten salt Thorium breeder reactor (Generation IV) for exactly this process. I point out that 1200 metric tons of plutonium exist on the earth right now, 200 to 300 metric tons of which is weapons grade. Burying this material will of course make it available to people good and bad for basically an eternity (especially as plutonium-239 decays to give nearly pure weapons grade Uranium-235.) You seem to believe that you can make the nuclear weapons threat go away. How exactly do you suppose you will do that without the use of nuclear fission reactors? Fissioning the Plutonium, in effect destroying it, and recovering energy in the process is the only RESPONSIBLE thing to do.

I would think, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that if nuclear weapons were easy to build by terrorists and others, they would have been built and used. I note that even a country with the oil wealth of Libya and Iraq never even got really close. The terrorist claim about plutonium is really, like most anti-nuclear claims, hyperbole. It doesn't stand up to even casual scrutiny.

[jmcgowanjm]

26. What is in short supply is not the element carbon , but

energy itself.

Let's say you win the debate on nuclear.

I need a cost to transfer the energy from "carbon" to
the following.We will need this energy in the next
5 years.

Automobiles, globally: 722 million
* Automobiles, USA: 132 million
* Trucks (all types) in USA: 1.5 million(all types) in USA:
* Buses: (all types) in USA:: more than 654,000
* Locomotives: USA: 26,000
* World aircraft fleet: 11,000 aircraft of more than 100 passengers. All 11,000 designed for oil-based fuel.
* World shipping: 85,000 ships in world.
* Decked fishing boats in the world: 1.2 million

[NNadir]

27. Really? You need it tomorrow?

The oil is not going to disappear next Tuesday. It will in fact disappear over the next decade(s).

As shortages increase there will be several immediate effects, most of them good in my view:

1) Increased conservation. This is exactly what happened when Cheney and Ken Lay tried to rape California on electricity. When gas hits 5 bucks a gallon, all of a sudden they'll be a run on Priuses. I lived through the 1970's, when the Toyota Corolla went from being a much maligned "lawn-mover" to a car with high demand. (As I recall Detroit complained endlessly about "unfair competition" a complaint that will resurrect even though they thought hybrid technology was only useful for SUV's.)

2) There will be an immediate demand for research into alternative energy. The old Carter era syn-fuels lab notebooks will be dusted off. As the cost of post peak oil rises, its alternatives become more competitive. The chief impediment to using these techniques has always been cost. Synfuels can fuel make aircraft fuel and diesel fuel. It has been well known for sometime, for instance, that methyl ether runs diesel engines very well and very cleanly. Methyl ether is readily available from syn gas (hydrogen and CO mixtures). There is of course a slight infrastructure cost: Changing some engine seals, fuel tanks, and fueling stations, but I don't imagine that it will be particularly more painful than it was to switch from leaded to unleaded - about which there was a great hem and haw at the time.) It is probably unfortunate for the short run, but the immediate source for synfuels will probably be coal gassification. The alternatives will certainly become available in short order however, lead by nations like Japan.

3) I am hoping that the world shipping fleet will ultimately go nuclear in the long run. The technology is well established. Over the short run, synfuels will prevail.

4) As electricity shoots up, solar installations will increase, particularly in areas amenable to them, paid for by the consumer who simply wants to reduce high fossil fuel related costs.

5) I think the timelines for these things are actually much shorter than general panic wants to present in threads like this one. Germany went from imported oil to a syn-fuels program in a few short years during World War II. What's more, compared to them, we live in the golden age of chemistry. We have better catalysts and better plant materials and better systems of control and automation. Not much true R&D will be required.

6) Civilized nations such as France, and Japan have been exploring high tech nuclear plant designs for some time, as have the Indians. They will be building advanced power plants with cheap redundant passive safety systems, high fuel burn-up (reducing "waste") and heat exchange systems readily adaptable to multiple use: including reforming. (We in the United States will be jerking off.) The physics of nuclear power plants are understood intrinically, especially after thousands of "reactor-years" of experience. They are fairly ready to begin building, and will once the "public perception" issue - an issue of ignorance rather than technical realities - is ameliorated by the presence of the "wolf at the door."

7) I would imagine the institution of these infrastructure changes will make lots of jobs in countries that adapt them, high tech industrial jobs at that. The living standards in such places might actually rise under these circumstances.

8) There will be however, considerable local economic disruptions as these events take place. Unfortunately that disruption is likely to be most severe in the United States which has had its head up its ass, right and left, on the issue of energy ever since Jimmy Carter left office. We have yet, for instance, to convince the majority of Americans that hydrogen is NOT a form of energy. Maybe though, just maybe, we'll wake up and smell the exhaust before then.

[jmcgowanjm]

28. we are on the same page NNadir

There will be however, considerable local economic disruptions

Yes, there will be.

We are too late to stop the disruption.

We are in the middle of an extinction rate not seen
since a previous comet upheaval.

Our lifestyle demands perfection. Lower energy prices as we grow, a cosmic dissonance that has no parallel.

Tomorrow?, I said 5 years. I saw people freak and buy
$2.50 gas during 911. You did too. It'll be $5 in 5 years.
People can't afford $5 gas or $10 natural gas.

This country can't stand a week w/out electricity, in any city
over 350k, w/o the system coming apart.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. The majority of people can afford $5 gas

most of Europe pays that much for gas already. If it happened quickly, it would be a shock to people. But we're only half-way through the world's supply of oil; there are still plenty of sources available for it, just at a higher extraction price. There is more than 5 years available for NNadir's scenario to come to pass.

[jmcgowanjm]

31. the value added pass thru effect

And once you pass the 1/2 way mark
a different dynamic takes hold. The easy
stuff is found first.

Farmers need gas made fertilizer, diesel,
pesticide,herbicide, farm to market oil.

And that's before thruputs from merchants of grain
for their food processing.

And you think that the genuine good ol boys/girls
can afford (5 times 20 gal) $100 fillups? Every 2
weeks? In cash, no credit.

We are at record consumer debt levels now.
Record bankruptcies, one paycheck away
family disasters.

And utility bills... on and on.

And most of Europe has good mass transit.
And what will Europe be paying when the Empire
is paying $5/gal.?

[Kolesar]

33. Ironic: Asphalt is from petroleum

We won't be able to pave our highways as we get to the moment when we will not be able to gas our cars.

[NNadir]

34. This is true. Refiners try to minimize Asphalt production.

Asphalt is a byproduct and not a very appealing one at that, since it is difficult to handle. One technique for breaking up asphalt into gasoline/diesel components is called Fluidized Catalytic Cracking. Many older refineries do not have equipment for this process and simply sell the asphalt, a residual from the distillation/cracking process used for fuel production.

I imagine that if desired (in the case we simply don't replace asphalt with concrete or an alternate synthetic material) the heavy carbon chain fractions of which asphalt is composed will be available, probably still as a byproduct. Really though, we don't really need more roads for more suburbs. Suburbanization may be a casualty of the demise of oil. I would prefer a world in which we went back to the old iron rails for many of our transportation needs.

[blindpig]

32. where?

Buckhead? Here in upstate SC that might incite an armed revolt, the way people drive. Don't you know it's their right to burn all of the oil in the world? Whoever's watch this event comes to pass in is going to get badly burnt. But its gonna happen.

[treepig]

35. it's really quite obvious that many people could afford $5 gas

just by considering that they buy 17 mpg (or less) suv's when they could buy (for quite a bit less money, btw) a 50+ mpg hybrid.

do the math - a $5 gallon (@ 50 mpg) will take you as far as a $1.70 gallon will at (@17 mpg) for the same "x" amount of money. therefore, if people *really* couldn't afford to spend "x" amount of money of gas, they wouldn't be buying suv's!! (it all seems fairly simple to me, but perhaps i'm missing something obvious . . . )

[NNadir]

36. With the added happy benefit of reducing greenhouse emissions!

It should also make it considerably easier to pull out a parking space if you have the habit, as I do, of driving a Honda Civic!

Now again, what were the downsides of running out of cheap oil? :-)

[Solon]

44. Not Me!

I can barely afford gas in my car which gets 32-36 mpg. I don't even drive much anymore, its that expensive, carpool.

[Spider Jerusalem]

37. You neglect a few extremely important facts.

Such as: there's not enough radioactive material to make up the shortfall from loss of petroleum as an energy source, and making the switch would merely make the supply of enrichable radium, uranium, thorium, etc. run out all, the faster.

Or that the carbon synthesis process you place such confidence in is a net energy sink. (More energy goes into the process of synthesising oils and fuels from coal, biomass, etc. than is extracted from those fuels.)

And, in the case of thermal depolymerisation, the source material is for the most part ALREADY petroleum-sourced, and there's a net energy loss from the process, to say nothing of the energy required for the process in the first place.

Your views strike me as entirely too simplistic, not to mention ignorant of the thermodynamic principles involved and the resource base available.

[NNadir]

38. This is purely absurd.

I'm not sure about who is ignorant of Thermodynamics. I suspect it is not me.

First, it is obvious from the first law of thermodyamics that the formation of carbon synthesis products is an energy consuming process. I have not claimed otherwise. I propose to obtain that energy from nuclear, solar and geothermal processes. No problem with that. I HAVE NOT CLAIMED that it is possible to extract more energy from biomass than it contains. You have completely misunderstood what I've said.. In fact for most of recorded time, the human race subsisted on biomass as a form of energy, chiefly wood and animal feed. The situation is not obtainable in the present simply because the population is too high. However I am not proposing to use biomass as a sole source of energy. I am simply proposing to use it as an energy carrier, much as people propose to use hydrogen as an energy carrier, although they often confuse, as you do, a carrier and a source of energy. It is certainly true however that reduced carbon in any form, coal or biomass or oil, is an intrinsic source of energy in an oxidizing atmosphere. The synfuels scheme I propose therefore will not require nuclear energy as the source of 100% of the energy. It will get a "reduced carbon" kick. The purpose of a syn fuel strategy is however not merely recover the energy, but to provide it as a liquid fuel with reasonably high energy density.

It is a matter of trivial importance where the carbon comes from. Thermal depolymerization is merely a form of recycling, but new carbon inputs are available from either biomass, atmospheric carbon dioxide recovery, or in the worst case, coal. Just for reference, it is not true that all plastics available for thermal depolymerization schemes is oil based. In fact cellosic materials are the sources of some polymers, including cellophane and rayon. Paper is also a source of depolymerization feedstock. These last three are biomass materials.

You also obviously haven't a clue about the size of nuclear resources when you say there isn't enough "radioactive material." According to the World Energy Assessment, available on line at http://www.undp.org/seed/eap/activities/wea/ world Thorium resources are estimated at 2.354 million metric tons. It is easy to show using a value of roughly 200 MeV per fission that the total energy content of Thorium alone, excluding for the moment Uranium, is 2.0 X 10^24 Joules or roughly 2 million exajoules. Proven petroleum reserves are given as roughly 6 thousand exajoules. Thorium energy reserves outstrip oil by a factor of over 320. If world energy demand stablizes at 1000 exajoules/year by 2050 from all sources, a reasonable estimate, there is thus over 2000 years reserves of Thorium alone. Uranium adds even more to this total. The wise use of solar, geothermal and other resources can extend Thorium and Uranium resources even further. I'm sure that the next 4 millenia will see the development of even more options.

By the way, there are 4 billion tons of Uranium dissolved in seawater. (Japan was looking into recovering this, until Uranium became too cheap.) http://www.cnfc.or.jp/plutonium/pl4/cycle.e.html

You better do your homework if you want to claim an understanding of what is and is not simplistic.


Edited to correct errors in transcription of calculations.

[Spider Jerusalem]

39. All right, BUT:

Thorium is not fissile material. It requires reaction with an isotope of uranium, such as U-235, in a breeder reactor to be converted to fissile U-233. Viable sources of reactor-grade uranium, those highest in ease of extraction and thus economic feasibility, such as high-grade pitchblendes, are, as I said, limited. And the extraction of thorium is itself problematic, given the element's high reactivity. The technology simply isn't there yet. It may be, in the not-too-distant future, but whether it will be soon enough to ease the crunch of a transition from oil remains to be seen.


Given the current pace of technological development and the apparent near-term recommitment to the space program, it seems that R&D on the feasibility of placement of solar collection arrays in the orbit of Venus or Mercury coupled with microwave transmission of the collected energy might be a more ultimately viable long-term energy strategy than reliance on fissile materials.

Either way, things aren't as bleak as some paint them. All that's lacking for a shift to long-term sustainable energy utilisation is the technological expertise to make use of potential sources, and that's probably going to be in place within the next century or so.

[hunter]

40. I have no doubt that nuclear power could work.

There is no shortage of fissile materials we could utilize in a sophisticated breeder reactor program.

The only real shortage we face is of people who have the competence, intelligence, ethics, and training to run such a system safely.

Look at our space program. The United States can't make space shuttles that don't explode. Look at our petroleum industry. We can't make cat-crackers that don't explode.

Do we really want the very same corrupt and perpetual fuckups who currently "lead" us playing with plutonium?

I'd follow a great man like Jimmy Carter through the gates of hell. But I wouldn't let that little turd of a man George W. Bush borrow my 1987 Mitsubishi pickup truck for five minutes.

Sadly, the first reality we humans must consider is not thermodynamics, but politics. If you have at least half a brain your fellow man (your society) might kill you long before Mother Nature (God Herself) does.

[NNadir]

41. I am sorry but you still are incorrect.

Thorium is not highly reactive. One of the chief current uses for Thorium oxide is as a refractory material, owing to its unusually high melting point, 3300 C. Until recently, almost everyone who bought a Coleman gas lantern had mantles containing substantial fractions of Thorium Oxide. Indeed, one of the strong points for using Thorium (and most nuclear fuels are oxides) is its high thermal and mechanical stability. The metal itself can be pyrophoric when finely divided, but in bulk it is not particularly reactive, especially when compared with Plutonium metal.

Most of the Thorium mined today is discarded as tailings from the isolation of lanthanide ores. Thorium is easily recovered, and the technology for doing so has been available for many decades.

Thorium is indeed a fertile as opposed to a fissile nucleus, which is yet another variable that suggests its superiority to Uranium as fuel for reactors. This is because of the Th-232(n,2n)Th-231 Th-231 ->Pa-231 beta decay reaction, Pa-231(n, gamma)Pa-232 and finally Pa-232->U-232, a reaction sequence that takes place in all Thorium breeding conditions. The resulting gamma output of U-232 greatly minimizes non-proliferation risks of U-233 because of the inherent detectability and hazard of the difficult to remove U-232 fraction.

You are incorrect when you indicate that it is necessary to "react" Thorium with a Uranium isotope to breed fissile Uranium-233. The Radowsky configuration of PWR has been designed to fission both weapons grade and reactor grade plutonium to obtain U-233 from Th-232. It is also well known that fissioning Plutonium (or Uranium) in the presence of Thorium under thermal conditions leads to the accumulation of U-233 which is itself a fuel suitable for breeding under thermal conditions. This means that such reactors can achieve high burn-ups, in excess of 100,000 MWD/ton. Reactors of the CANDU type and of certain molten salt types can provide breeding ratios higher than 1 in U-233, removing the necessity for LMBR (liquid metal breeder reactors.) It is actually technically very easy to recover the entire energy content of Thorium. In fact, it is actually easier than it is to recover the energy potential of Thorium than it is to recover the energy content of depleted Uranium, since the mechanical and chemical properties of Plutonium make it a more problematic fuel. (Plutonium metal has too many solid allotropes, requiring the use of alloying agents that complicate reactor physics.) The main reason Thorium exploitation has not occurred owes to the fact that nuclear energy has not been exploited to any appreciable fraction of its potential, largely because of public ignorance.

I would suggest that space based systems for the collection and transmission of solar energy to earth are far more speculative than are Thorium reactors. The MSRE at Oak Ridge ran on Thorium almost 30 years ago. Fort St. Vrain and Shippingport (the very first commercial nuclear power plant) demonstrated the potential of Thorium fueled reactors even earlier. Indian nuclear researchers are working full bore on Thorium based systems now, as is the late Radowsky's company in cooperation with the Russians. On the other hand, large solar collectors have yet to be developed and launched. There is almost no experience with the use and maintenance and economics of such systems. While they sound very good on paper, I can imagine profound environmental objections as well. I, for one, would question the wisdom of changing the solar energy flux at a time of an on going and rapidly exacerbating Greenhouse gas crisis. It would be wiser, IMO, to utilize ground based solar resources, the costs of which are improving all the time.

[izzie]

8. We have known it will run out

Had husband that was a sup. at Pump 1 in Alaska for years and years. People all know this, they just will not face it.I say things and have a small car and my whole family laughs at me. They build bigger and bigger homes and no one wants to hear this. You point out that the fish are almost gone from the Gulf of Maine from over fishing and no one cares. It will just have to happen I guess. We need statesmen in DC not these half baked greedy men.The earth and oceans are not endless and need some care to keep the good things going. I can not even talk about the wild animals that are almost no more.So our God blessed land is being used up by the so called Christians, who claim they love it so.

[pscot]

12. Agreed

If god ever comes back to see what we've made of the place I fear we will have a lot to answer for.

[Dogmudgeon]

14. No, it really could be that bad

It won't be too difficult to use alternative supplies of energy for domestic use, but most of our energy use goes into automobiles and industry.

We can live without private cars, but without cheap oil, industry will collapse, and it would take years to convert to lower-energy renewable sources of fuel. Which means that once the price of oil starts increasing quickly, we face the worldwide Mother of All Depressions.

Now couple that with climate change -- say, several years of extreme warm weather, followed by a climate state-change into an ice age (little or major).

Food will become expensive due to loss of petrochemical nitrogen fertilizers as well as climate change. But at least, in North America, starvation won't be much of a problem. On the other hand, South Asia is likely to become depopulated. Yes, we really are that dependent on petro-fertilizers, and recycled garbage and composted poop won't meet the shortfall.

And just because domestic fuel will be easier doesn't mean we're off the hook. Landlords and banks will be only too happy to throw millions of people into the street as unemployment skyrockets and bills go unpaid. This will prompt a call for governmental intervention, but the business community will be there first, cap in hand.

And you know what happens to Capitalism during hard times, don't you? It's called "Fascism."

Survivalism doesn't seem all that wacky now, does it?

--bkl

[Dissenting_Prole]

15. Now we know the real reason for the Patriot Act

n/t

[jmcgowanjm]

16. China Diverts Dollars To Buy Oil

http://www.peakoil.net/Newsletter/NL37/Newsletter37.html

Alright, here we go. Example.

Shell just dropped its proven reserves by 20%.
That means that the world's proven reserves just
dropped by more than Conoco's entire reserves.
Shell will have to find a Conoco's worth of hydrocarbons
to refill its reserves.

The majority of that drop came from West AustraliaConsortium
which Shell is parterned with.

Those Co.s, like XOM have yet to adjust.
Hell, the OilMinister is still using the old figures
when he talks of selling LNG to US!

We just got screwed by Khazakstan/Russia on supplying
filler for the BTC pipe. The oil will go thru Russia.

[jmcgowanjm]

18. The world has been thoroughly explored for oil.

The peak of oil exploration was about four decades ago. The debate among petroleum geologists is whether the peak of extraction is now or in a couple years.

The Caspian Sea basin is turning out to have much less oil than originally envisioned.


A 2000 United Nations report on the Kirkuk field said "the possibility of irreversible damage to the reservoir of this supergiant field is now imminent."

http://www.tleaves.com/main/archive/000109.html

[jmcgowanjm]

19. more...

Oil experts working for the United Nations found
that some reservoirs in the southern part of Iraq
"may only have ultimate recoveries of between 15
percent and 25 percent of the total oil" in the field,
as compared to an industry norm of 35 percent to 60 percent.

Pumping oil too quickly can upset the balance, leading
to more gas and water migrating into the wells and
ultimately making extraction of oil uneconomical.

[jmcgowanjm]

20. The Energy Infrastructure Planning Group

set up by senior administration officials in September
2002 to plan for the oil industry in the event of war,
learned that Iraq was reinjecting crude oil to maintain
pressure in the Kirkuk field.
"Iraqis acknowledged it was a poor practice," said one
administration expert involved with the group, and as the
main war wound down the Iraqis " were unequivocal that that
practice had to stop and right away."
But it did not. The amount of oil being reinjected is now
150,000 to 250,000 barrels a day, down from as much as 400,000 barrels a day last summer, said Mr. McKee, but he added that
he had never encountered such a practice in his lengthy
career in the oil industry.
The reinjection of oil was a clear sign of trouble in the
underground reservoirs, but the energy planning task force
decided not to address them, partly for political reasons,
according to participants in the process.

[fedsron2us]

22. Resource wars are the main threat

Peak oil would be difficult enough in a peaceful world but humanity probably would learn to cope.

Unfortunately, history suggests that when resources run short people and countries will use force to try to control them. As many of the powers that depend on oil have nuclear weapons (e.g USA, Europe, Russia, China and India) an estimate of a surviving human population of 500 million people might be somewhat optimistic. No amount of preparedness is likely to get you through that scenario.

[jmcgowanjm]

23. Yea, living is tough, but consider the alternatives

How about a giant game of Survivor?

[Dissenting_Prole]

30. Anyone notice?

In his State of the Union speech, Bush uses the word "energy" only once.

THERE IS NO PLAN B.

[NickB79]

42. I recall reading scifi stories where the landfills of today

Became the goldmines of tomorrow. I thought that was very odd when I was 15; today it smacks of genius.

Maybe I should look into buying land that has old landfills buried underneath it.

[Solon]

43. Compost if you got it.

Hell I'd be buying as much topsoil, mulch, and natural fertilizer as I can afford right now.

[jmcgowanjm]

45. Theory:USSR collapsed w/ peakoil production

Overall decline comes once the decline of production in fields in decline (post-peak) exceeds the production gains of fields with expansion potential (pre-peak). It is really that simple.

Russia’s inability to maintain production growth after 1988 denied the economy cheap fuel.

The economy knows exactly when peak production
takes place.

1971 in the US. We went off gold standard.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/ess_nixongold.html

The 1971 peak in U.S. oil production.

http://www.ems.org/oil_depletion/information.html

Did US pass a production threshold in March 2000?
In 1975, the US Lower-48 produced 7 million b/d of crude. By 2000, production had fallen to just under 3.5 million b/d.