who are concerned that we will be encountering Peak Oil sooner rather than later.
Math Prof, Al Bartltett, talks about exponential growth, resource consumption doubling times and Peak Oil.
MP4, should work on Apple Quick Time and Real Player, suitable for dialup.
http://news.globalfreepress.com/movs/Al_Bartlett-PeakOil.mp4Real Player High Speed Link
http://news.globalfreepress.com/movs/Al_Bartlett-PeakOil.mp4The substance of Professor Bartlett's talk is contained in his paper
Forgotten Fundamentals of the Oil CrisisDr. David Goodstein's (Physicist) presentation on global warming and Peak Oil at Caltech. Real Player Only
Dial up link
http://today.caltech.edu/theater/5602_56k.ramMedium Broadband
http://today.caltech.edu/theater/5602_bb.ramFull Broadband DSL/Cable
http://today.caltech.edu/theater/5602_cable.ramConsider also that world oil production appears to have peaked in the 1960's. We now consume approximately 4 barrels of oil for every new barrel of oil we find. The world's economies have been built over the last 100 years on growth fueled by easy access to cheap and highly energy dense fossil fuel hydrocarbons and unless significantly restructured will continue to require access to increasing supplies of energy to continue that growth (or massive improvements in energy efficiency are put in place).
Fossil hydrocarbons have to date been the cheapest and most easily available sources of energy and the sources of energy our industrialized economies have in a large part come to rely on to fuel the perpetual growth machine. However as is only natural, we have exploited the most easily available and cheapest to produce oil first, the oil that remains is increasingly expensive and hard to find. It is only natural therefore that the remaining oil becomes increasingly expensive in terms of money and energy to find, produce and refine (more high sulfur oil and less sweet oil).
WORLD PETROLEUM DISCOVERY AND PRODUCTION
Discovery peaked in 1962 when over 40 billion barrels were found. Production in 1997 was 26 billion barrels and increasing while new discovery was 6 billion barrels and decreasing, FIGURE 4. The figure for production includes a small quantity of non-conventional oil and natural gas liquids (NGL). Production has exceeded new field discoveries since 1980 (Ivanhoe 1995)
<snip>
About 75 per cent of conventional oil comes from 360 giant oil fields, less than one per cent of all fields (Ismail 1994, Campbell & Laherrere 1995, p. 1). Giants are fields which held more than 500 million barrels on discovery and sophisticated techniques are not needed to discover them. They are usually found first because they are large, produce the cheapest oil and have a long life.
The wave of exploration after the 1970's oil crises did not find any new major petroleum provinces, despite exploration reaching new heights of sophistication and efficiency. Giant discovery peaked in the early 1960's and has slumped since 1980, FIGURE 5. Few giants are left to discover (Campbell 1997, p. 28).
Most conventional oil has been and will continue to be produced from giant oil fields. Fields found more than 20 years ago produce 90% of today's oil and 70% comes from fields over 30 years old (Campbell & Laherrere 1995, p. 13). Most are ageing and many are in decline. The biggest and least depleted of the giants are in the Middle East which has nearly 60% of remaining conventional oil.http://wwwistp.murdoch.edu.au/teaching/N212/n212content/topics/topic5/04discoverandprodn.htmlWe have to expend energy to produce energy. The Energy Returned on Energy Invested is very low for most alternative energy sources and for most alternative methods of oil production such as tar sands oil.
energy return on energy invested, or EROEI
When an energy source that has an EROEI ratio of 4:1 is replaced with another, alternative, energy source which has an EROEI ratio of 2:1, twice as much gross energy has to be produced in order to reap the same net quantity of resulting usable energy.
This can be worse than it looks. Consider that I inherited one barrel of oil, and the EROEI was 4:1. I could use my one barrel and end up with four barrels. Now consider that the EROEI was 2:1, and I still wanted four barrels. Well, I can use my one barrel to extract two barrels, then I have to use those two barrels to extract the four barrels that I want. Thus with an EROEI of 2:1, it has cost me three barrels to gain four; whereas with an EROEI of 4:1, it only cost me one barrel.
This means that when a society moves to using energy sources that have lower EROEIs, the actual amount of energy available to use (for manufacturing, transport, heating etc.) inevitably will diminish.http://www.abelard.org/briefings/energy-economics.aspFor those who think there are endless streams of abiotic oil flowing up from the bowels of the earth, enough to supply our needs far into the future with no economic dislocations or disruptions, I suggest reading the following article before accepting that abiotic oil is a viable solution to our problems.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102104_no_free_pt1.shtmlhttp://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011205_no_free_pt2.shtmlhttp://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012805_no_free_pt3.shtmlFor those who are advocating the thermal depolymerization process
(
http://www.answers.com/topic/thermal-depolymerization )
as a long term solution for our energy woes, I'd just point out that as Professor Bartlett shows in his lecture, it's not the current reserves that we have available that are important, but given the way our economies have evolved, it's the ability to meet future demand based on the exponential growth factor that becomes the killer. Exponential growth leads to much larger increases in consumption than the non-mathematically aware might intuitively think possible.
Even if TDP oil is viable to some extent and produces oil at a price competitive with fossil hydrocarbon derived oil, it won't be enough for it just to replace our current oil supplies. If we are going to continue on with business as usual the TDP will have to provide increasing quantities of oil enough to meet the increasing energy demands of growing economies. That's not to say it wont be helpful and that we should not invest in research and trial TDP plants and work to make the process as efficient as possible, but I think it would be a mistake to figure that because TDP oil might be on the horizon our energy problems are over. TDP could be possibly be a partial solution, but it won't do us much good if we introduce TDP plants and don't also make massive strides in improving energy efficiency in all aspects of our economies.
If oil consumption had been growing at 5% per year from the start of the oil age, it would mean that every 14 years we would double our consumption of oil. The doubling time as Bartlett explains is derived mathematically by dividing the percentage growth increase into the number 70, (70 ÷ 5 = 14). In other words, in each 14 year period we would consume as much oil as we had consumed in all previous 14 year periods combined since the start of the oil industry around the turn of the century. at 3% growth in consumption we would stretch that out to a doubling time of 23 years, every 23 years we would double the amount of oil we used over all preceding 23 year periods combined together. Bartlett explains in his lecture that oil consumption actually grew at 7% per year (consumption doubling time 10 years) until the early 70s when demand was driven down by the OPEC price increases.
As Barlett explains in his talk, the biggest problem we humans face in understanding these types of problems is understanding the exponential factor and doubling times. When we come to understand that if we expect to continue business as usual we have to take into account not how long our current energy supplies will last at current consumption rates, but how long they will last if consumption doubles every 15 or 20 years, it throws a whole new light on the matter.
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