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From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
>>Chris, at some point we must ask basic questions, such as, do the toilets
>>flush, and do the lights come on? We are not, I believe, speaking here about
>>Bruno's UDA, versus Tegmark's MUH, but how well our civilizations flourish or
>>fail? If we have the clean tech to replace the dirty tech, and can afford it,
>>and it can produce the megawatts, then there is no argument here. My only
>>question to the Greens is: Does it do all of the above, and can you provide
>>evidence?
To the earth and the real world we inhabit, it actually matters not at all, how
much we debate whether or not the toilets will flush or the lights will come
on. The physical limits of our planet have been reached, or will soon be
reached. Some things to consider: the extinction rate is already 10,000 times
the average background rate; ocean food webs are collapsing all over the world
in a drastic manner; the rates of desertification, deforestation, loss of top
soil, loss of soil fertility, loss of aquifers are all proceeding at rates that
should alarm anyone who actually looks at these trends. Vital resources -- such
as oil for example -- have already peaked (the world will never produce as much
oil as it did in the 2005-2010 period... those days are over and super giant
mega fields are all in decline (including the biggest of them all: Ghawar,
according to Simmons (with whom I corresponded over the years with until he
died a few years ago) -- the Saudis
jealously guard their production/reserve stats on the level of a state secret,
but it is telling that in spite of the various price spikes that have happened
and will continue to occur they have been unable to up their output in order to
promote their stated goal of price stability. -- instead we must live under the
distorting effect of wild price swings, because there is no swing supplier
anymore.... i.e. oil has peaked )
All fossil energy supplies are at or are nearing peak production and because of
tertiary and other advanced techniques employed to squeeze as much out as
possible as fast as possible, once fields go into decline their rates of
decline are very rapid. Take for example the Cantarell super giant field off
the coast of the Yucatan and one of the worlds biggest fields ever discovered.
Production peaked at 2.1 million barrels per day in 2003; falling to 408,000
barrels per day by 2012, which is less than 20% of what it had been producing
at peak in under ten years after decline set in.
There are no more super giant fields remaining to be discovered (except perhaps
in the Arctic Ocean basin or in Antarctica and in extreme deep water deposits
(such as the one discovered in Brazil) but in such cases there exist extreme
challenges in getting the oil out -- just ask Shell Oil (Deep Water Horizon
disaster). Brazil in fact has not been able to develop its super giant at
nearly the level it had hoped to as another example.
In all cases the EROI (or energy returned on energy invested) of extracting
this hard to get oil -- or for mining tar sands, or fracking shale deposits as
well is rapidly falling leaving ever smaller margins of surplus energy -- for
all other needs. The EROI of oil extraction has fallen into the single digits
from 100:1 in the early days of the Texas and Saudi mega fields; if it falls
much further it will not be able to generate enough surplus energy to maintain
technological industrial civilization.
Does it matter what you desire? Or what John Clark thinks? Not really, not to
the earth and to the hard facts of Limits to Growth. Do yeast in a barrel
wonder when they have reached peak sugar whether they should perhaps slow down
-- only to be shouted down by the various John Clark yeast analogues that there
is plenty of sugar and to keep on consuming sugar as fast as they can. Does
believing there is plenty of sugar change the outcome for those yeast in that
barrel when the supply of sugar begins to run out? We are like yeast and the
earth is our barrel.
You can argue with me till you run out of breath, but the facts remain the
facts. Oil has peaked and many other energy and other resources are close on
its heels. The cornucopean world view is a form of self delusion. If we want to
have a hope in hell of avoiding the worst collapse our species has ever
experienced since the time of the Toba super volcano that erupted some 70,000
years ago and is thought to be linked to the genetic bottleneck event written
into our mtDNA, then we had better get our collective shit together pronto.
We won't, of course because loud voices will keep shouting that there is
nothing to worry about and that all of this is just the ranting of "greens" --
yeah drill baby drill and what has that got us?
P.S. If you want to argue the stats of the shale gas and oil (kerogen) plays I
have the facts that prove that this is all a huge bubble that cannot be
sustained -- and that in fact is beginning to go bust as capital expenditures
are finally reaching the upper limit of what is possible. If you want to argue
future reserve availability then please do so presenting actual verifiable
statistics, as I will. I am not interested in books about supply written a
hundred and fifty years ago or that Malthus got it wrong... many of the facts
and figures are in the public domain. All one has to do is look.
Chris
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