Charger: "What is going to replace all that oil."

Actually Charger, in the short term probably LPG, and in the slightly longer term coal and natural gas shoved through the Fischer-Tropsch process. But they will run out by the end of the century.

When they we appear to have 4 choices:

1. Invent cheap way to storage large amounts of energy (say the nations consumption for a week) - via batteries, dams, or whatever.

2. Get some sort of sustainable nuclear process to work - be it Uranium from the sea, breeder reactors, nuclear fusion, thorium reactors.

3. Get a workable biofuel solution that doesn't chew huge amounts of arable land, water and fertiliser. Maybe algae.

4. Die like flies.

I didn't put energy production in that list because it looks like a solved problem. As Michael graph shows we have lots of ways of collecting energy - solar, wind and others coming along, we just can't store it until it is needed.

An optimist will probably think we can scrape through with energy. Solving energy won't be enough to prevent us from dying like flies though. If we continue like we are we will run out of phosphorus this century, and that will have the same effect. Food production drops by a factor of 10 without phosphorus. Maybe we can recycle our sewage to get out of that one.

But even if we solve all those problems, we are on track to him 100 million in Australia by 2100. That might be sustainable. We produce 4 times the amount of food we consume right now - enough for 80 million. If we stop trading food for cars, TV's and stuff we might survive. But it will get getting crowded around here. At current rates the Philippines will hit 0.5 billion, Indonesia 0.6 billion, China 2.3 billion, India 4.3 billion, none of which is sustainable. They will all start dying like flies long before 2100.

The 21st century sure is going to be a wild ride.

An excellent article, and here is an addition to Lardelli' article.

Most renewable energies yield electric energy, which is not practical in powering tractors, combines, long distance trucks, airplanes, ships, and most freight trains. The development of these renewables uses much liquid fuel and yields electric energy, which in not useful. And why develop more electric energy as factories, commercial center, and offices close and require less electric power?

Renewable energy is an elusive butterfly, as it is manufactured, transported, and maintained on fossil energy, which will soon become prohibitively expensive. When the power grid goes out, electric energy will not be available, except locally, until spare parts for the system are not available.

By chasing elusive butterflies, we don't see that we are running off a cliff.

We are in the quicksand period of the oil age.

We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from “outside,” and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, irrigation, water supply and waste water treatment, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.

It is time to face the music, and prepare for Peak Oil impacts.

Best regards,

Cliff Wirth

Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D.
http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/
http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html

Sorry fellas but you are still short of an energy crisis. I was told only 30 years or oil left, 30 years ago (yes, I'm that old). The current reserves quoted by other commentators - as in we'll run out at the present rate of consumption in 30 years - have nothing to do with total exploitable reserves. That often-quoted published reserve figure varies according to price, but with a lag. Trying to tie down a definite period when the major reservoirs with easy-lift (cheap) oil will seriously start to run dry is tough enough - and no, it hasn't happened yet, although some commentators have claimed otherwise. Trying to predict when, say, the recently unlocked Canadian oil sands reserves may start to run out is impossible. Then there is LNG, shale oil and even coal, which can be converted to oil if needs be (although, admittedly, the price has to be right) - and coal is plentiful indeed (again, forget the published reserve figure it has nothing to do with total exploitable reserves). If you are waiting for the end of petroleum and the rise of electric cars you are in for a long wait. The author's thesis is best ignored.

Human beings are thermodynamic machines subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

That means if you reduce their use of energy, you reduce their internal order and they tend faster to thermodynamic equilibrium or death.

There are only two ways to prevent this:

* Invest in GEOTHERMAL Hot Dry Rock technologies

* Stabilise global population numbers to 6 billion and quit the childishness of the eternal economic (ie population) growth on a finite planet mantra.

Using less energy so rich folk can take up the energy slack to grow THEIR economies is a FOOLS game. In very short order Chaos will engulf not only the dopey energy conserving Do-Gooders but the Golden-parachuting, Congress-lobbying, Neo-American-Aristocracy as well.

Rich people telling average Australians to conserve Energy is like Marie Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake".

Assuming the second law of thermodynamics only applies to non-living systems is at best wishful thinking and at worst it is dead ignorance.

Excellent article.
Perhaps by repeating this argument, and going slowly for the ones used to thinking "economics" they will eventually get it.
curmudgeonathome: It is not that oil will run out, it is just that it will become more expensive to extract and utilise. Go back and look at the cliff graph. Sure there will be oil, but you will have the US bombing people for it, the bankers making "profits" financing it, the Halibertons of the world corrupting politics to get it...etc.
Just like the banking parasites, these oil parasites will bring the system to the point where the "host" economy (people actually using oil for human needs) cannot bear the strain. Please read the "crash course" by Chris Martinson.
cjwirth: You will be somewhat surprised what can happen when investment is targeted and feasable technologies are funded.
Lithium battery, thermal storage, even Aluminium...there are *lots* of ways that are actually *technically* feasable to store and transport renewables.
Fact is, renewables are more likely to lead to distributed energy systems, which means that households will not be subsidising big business as they do now. *That* is the main reason for the anti-renewable FUD in newspapers, blogs, etc. Not to mention the OBP factor...There are too many "orange bellied parrots" being thrown up at the moment for distributed renewable tech to reach economy of scale, but they are not unfeasable when the world wants to get them.
Renewables are *not* "elusive butterflies".
Checkout the economics of desert hot salt solar thermal as compared to Coal...make sure you include government subsidies to coal, transport, mining, coal related illness, co2...

Rstuart, I think the die like flies option is on the cards -- at least for some of us.

Curmudgeonathome, Just because we haven't had the energy crisis yet doesn't mean its on is way. America's oil production peaked in 191 (or 72) about a year or so after Hubbert predicted it would. World supply may be harder to predict (e.g the Saudi's aren't telling anyone how much they think is left)but a peak in 2005 seems to have happened. Supply and demand changes with extend or decrease the length of time we have left to do something.

I think your right, we're not going to see a mass of electric cars anytime soon (or at all) but this does not disprove the author's thesis. Ultimately we exchange energy, money is just the medium of transfer. When our energy supply contracts then our money supply will also (unless you want to print more but we all know where that leads to) and ditto our economies in their present form.