Post by Joann on Dec 4, 2005 13:49:41 GMT -5
This got rather long so I am giving it its own thread.
Are we running out of oil? In the opinion of many experienced oil company analysts and oil geologists, we are indeed. Hubbert’s Peak, discussed by Tom, is a model developed by M. King Hubbert, which showed that world oil discovery peaked in the 1960’s and predicted that peak production would follow about 30 years later. Quoting here from James Howard Kunstler writing in The Long Emergency, “Subsequent tweaking of Hubbert’s model by Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton, Colin J. Campbell, retired chief of research for Shell Oil, Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado and others following Hubbert’s 1989 death put the peak somewhere between 2000 and 2010.” That means that by, say, 2005, half of the world’s estimated original store of two trillion barrels has been used up, the largest part of it just in the last fifty years. After the peak, the individual oil fields and the countries where they exist are said to be in oil depletion. Some countries, including Saudi Arabia, have been coy about the status of their fields, not wishing to forfeit the political strength provided by large reserves, but much evidence points to their being in depletion. Only Iraq is believed not to have reached peak. Taken as a whole, the Earth is at or near peak.
It took a little over 100 years to use half of the oil that ever existed. Much of the remaining oil is in places where they hate us. Irrespective of location, most remaining oil is in sand or shale or, as is known to be occurring in Saudi Arabia, must be forced out by pumping in water. Oil demand is increasing sharply as China and India modernize. We in the US are doing pathetically little to slow consumption. Whether one accepts the optimists’ prediction that we can party on for another 75 years, or the pessimist’s view that we have at most 25 years at current levels of usage, sensible people are setting a sustainable course.
Sensible nations will also be setting a sustainable course. Although only recently have I become aware of the facts about oil depletion, it is evident that the last several administrations have been well briefed on the topic by oil company experts and geologists. None has chosen to draw attention to this scary issue which is inevitably all about shrinking expectations and strict conservation, whether self-imposed or coerced by authority.
In his small, densely packed book The End of Fossil Energy, John G. Howe proposes a plan for reducing energy use by 5% a year. It should be understood that while most discussion has been about oil, all fossil energy is running out including coal and natural gas. Howe, a retired electrical engineer in Maine who has devoted himself to this issue, makes many practical suggestions which might well appeal to readers of this board. He has built and uses a prototype solar powered tractor along with many other innovations which enable his household to live off the grid. Howe has no desire to harness up or feed draft animals. His book is available for a donation of $10 from John G. Howe, Howe Engineering Company , 289 McIntire Road, Waterford, Maine 04088 or through the website, www.mcintirepublishing.com See also www.peakoil.net.
I found The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler to be something of a page turner. It gives a detailed picture of oil status with extensive quotes from people who have spent their careers as oil company executives or as oil geologists. He also offers vivid conjectures on the manner in which lack of oil will impact the lives of people in cities and in various regions of the country in case global warming or pestilence don’t get us first.
In many respects we live in a house of cards. We heard yesterday on NPR’s Marketplace that three quarters of the US economy is based on consumer spending and that savings are less than zero. This does not sound good to me. Our national debt is now too big to wrap my mind around. Our payments to other countries depend heavily on agricultural products. These products of course cannot be produced without fossil fuel most of which we now import. All of the personal adjustments including use of the reel mower as Ed suggests, and my pet project, getting mothers back to cloth diapers ought to be considered, as should personal and government sponsored applications of wind, solar and water power.
In the view of Kunstler, nothing is going to alter certain inevitabilities such as the collapse of our over extended food production and distribution system. Kunstler’s voice joins with many in urging an immediate commitment to local food production.
A point not addressed by Kunstler nor by anybody else I have so far encountered (Readers, please advise) is the key importance of personal and community-based food animals. One reason this thinking has not gone anywhere is due to a disinformation campaign against the cow. This is where studies such as Claire’s become extremely important. Claire wrote:
I just did my sophomore biology seminar on cows and greenhouse gases. They contribute about 15% of the GHG in the United States. But, a cow on pasture vastly increases the soil's carbon content via carbon sequestration (which pulls CO2 out of the air and puts carbon in the soil and O2 in the air). With so many cows in confinement we don't have enough of them grazing to help with any major mitigation.
Claire’s paper addresses the oft repeated and seldom challenged complaint that cows contribute dangerously to global warming by producing methane. To add perspective, it is known that the number of buffalo which once roamed the plains greatly exceeded the number of cattle now living in the US. Buffalo are ruminants and belched just as much methane as cows; the ozone layer was not thereby impoverished. Feedlot cattle may emit proportionately more than range cattle, but it is the fact that they and their lagoons of manure are bunched in one place creating a heat plume that makes them noxious. Add to this the fact that in every news story about methane, cows are described as passing gas, thus creating a crudely memorable image in the minds of both writers and readers. I have tried to have arguments about this with certain persons possessing a Y chromosome. They were so enamored of the notion of posterior emissions that they laughed me to scorn.
We, or course, know they are belching rumen gas out the front end, and long may they keep it up. The rumen is performing its ancient task of translating the world’s biggest crop, grass, into foods of the highest nutritive value. That brings me to the other huge piece of disinformation about cows, that they are inefficient converters of feed into food for humans. We have all seen those statistics declaring that it takes 70 calories of grain to produce a calorie of beef but only 16 calories to produce a calorie of grain. Numbers vary but all of them are absurd. It does not require any calories of grain to produce beef (or milk). Grass is cows’ natural diet and rumen magic turns it into food of unassailable quality.
I believe we need to stand ready to defend the important role of cows in local food production. We need to correct faulty notions about cows before some over zealous urbanized social planners of the future, oblivious to their true value, declare that cows are consuming local resources uselessly and imperiling the environment. Don’t suppose this could not happen. It happened twenty years ago in Palo Alto, CA. Green belt planners decided that cattle were unnatural to the surrounding hills and mountains and banned them. Local food production did not enter their thinking at the time, but the result has been that those grass covered hills which once supported many cattle have now grown up to oily chaparral which is a constant fire hazard.
The contributions of the cow are going to be key to family and community survival in the relatively near future. In answer to the original question, “What are you doing to prepare for a future with less oil?”, I am trying to be an ambassador for family cows.
Are we running out of oil? In the opinion of many experienced oil company analysts and oil geologists, we are indeed. Hubbert’s Peak, discussed by Tom, is a model developed by M. King Hubbert, which showed that world oil discovery peaked in the 1960’s and predicted that peak production would follow about 30 years later. Quoting here from James Howard Kunstler writing in The Long Emergency, “Subsequent tweaking of Hubbert’s model by Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton, Colin J. Campbell, retired chief of research for Shell Oil, Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado and others following Hubbert’s 1989 death put the peak somewhere between 2000 and 2010.” That means that by, say, 2005, half of the world’s estimated original store of two trillion barrels has been used up, the largest part of it just in the last fifty years. After the peak, the individual oil fields and the countries where they exist are said to be in oil depletion. Some countries, including Saudi Arabia, have been coy about the status of their fields, not wishing to forfeit the political strength provided by large reserves, but much evidence points to their being in depletion. Only Iraq is believed not to have reached peak. Taken as a whole, the Earth is at or near peak.
It took a little over 100 years to use half of the oil that ever existed. Much of the remaining oil is in places where they hate us. Irrespective of location, most remaining oil is in sand or shale or, as is known to be occurring in Saudi Arabia, must be forced out by pumping in water. Oil demand is increasing sharply as China and India modernize. We in the US are doing pathetically little to slow consumption. Whether one accepts the optimists’ prediction that we can party on for another 75 years, or the pessimist’s view that we have at most 25 years at current levels of usage, sensible people are setting a sustainable course.
Sensible nations will also be setting a sustainable course. Although only recently have I become aware of the facts about oil depletion, it is evident that the last several administrations have been well briefed on the topic by oil company experts and geologists. None has chosen to draw attention to this scary issue which is inevitably all about shrinking expectations and strict conservation, whether self-imposed or coerced by authority.
In his small, densely packed book The End of Fossil Energy, John G. Howe proposes a plan for reducing energy use by 5% a year. It should be understood that while most discussion has been about oil, all fossil energy is running out including coal and natural gas. Howe, a retired electrical engineer in Maine who has devoted himself to this issue, makes many practical suggestions which might well appeal to readers of this board. He has built and uses a prototype solar powered tractor along with many other innovations which enable his household to live off the grid. Howe has no desire to harness up or feed draft animals. His book is available for a donation of $10 from John G. Howe, Howe Engineering Company , 289 McIntire Road, Waterford, Maine 04088 or through the website, www.mcintirepublishing.com See also www.peakoil.net.
I found The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler to be something of a page turner. It gives a detailed picture of oil status with extensive quotes from people who have spent their careers as oil company executives or as oil geologists. He also offers vivid conjectures on the manner in which lack of oil will impact the lives of people in cities and in various regions of the country in case global warming or pestilence don’t get us first.
In many respects we live in a house of cards. We heard yesterday on NPR’s Marketplace that three quarters of the US economy is based on consumer spending and that savings are less than zero. This does not sound good to me. Our national debt is now too big to wrap my mind around. Our payments to other countries depend heavily on agricultural products. These products of course cannot be produced without fossil fuel most of which we now import. All of the personal adjustments including use of the reel mower as Ed suggests, and my pet project, getting mothers back to cloth diapers ought to be considered, as should personal and government sponsored applications of wind, solar and water power.
In the view of Kunstler, nothing is going to alter certain inevitabilities such as the collapse of our over extended food production and distribution system. Kunstler’s voice joins with many in urging an immediate commitment to local food production.
A point not addressed by Kunstler nor by anybody else I have so far encountered (Readers, please advise) is the key importance of personal and community-based food animals. One reason this thinking has not gone anywhere is due to a disinformation campaign against the cow. This is where studies such as Claire’s become extremely important. Claire wrote:
I just did my sophomore biology seminar on cows and greenhouse gases. They contribute about 15% of the GHG in the United States. But, a cow on pasture vastly increases the soil's carbon content via carbon sequestration (which pulls CO2 out of the air and puts carbon in the soil and O2 in the air). With so many cows in confinement we don't have enough of them grazing to help with any major mitigation.
Claire’s paper addresses the oft repeated and seldom challenged complaint that cows contribute dangerously to global warming by producing methane. To add perspective, it is known that the number of buffalo which once roamed the plains greatly exceeded the number of cattle now living in the US. Buffalo are ruminants and belched just as much methane as cows; the ozone layer was not thereby impoverished. Feedlot cattle may emit proportionately more than range cattle, but it is the fact that they and their lagoons of manure are bunched in one place creating a heat plume that makes them noxious. Add to this the fact that in every news story about methane, cows are described as passing gas, thus creating a crudely memorable image in the minds of both writers and readers. I have tried to have arguments about this with certain persons possessing a Y chromosome. They were so enamored of the notion of posterior emissions that they laughed me to scorn.
We, or course, know they are belching rumen gas out the front end, and long may they keep it up. The rumen is performing its ancient task of translating the world’s biggest crop, grass, into foods of the highest nutritive value. That brings me to the other huge piece of disinformation about cows, that they are inefficient converters of feed into food for humans. We have all seen those statistics declaring that it takes 70 calories of grain to produce a calorie of beef but only 16 calories to produce a calorie of grain. Numbers vary but all of them are absurd. It does not require any calories of grain to produce beef (or milk). Grass is cows’ natural diet and rumen magic turns it into food of unassailable quality.
I believe we need to stand ready to defend the important role of cows in local food production. We need to correct faulty notions about cows before some over zealous urbanized social planners of the future, oblivious to their true value, declare that cows are consuming local resources uselessly and imperiling the environment. Don’t suppose this could not happen. It happened twenty years ago in Palo Alto, CA. Green belt planners decided that cattle were unnatural to the surrounding hills and mountains and banned them. Local food production did not enter their thinking at the time, but the result has been that those grass covered hills which once supported many cattle have now grown up to oily chaparral which is a constant fire hazard.
The contributions of the cow are going to be key to family and community survival in the relatively near future. In answer to the original question, “What are you doing to prepare for a future with less oil?”, I am trying to be an ambassador for family cows.