RE: Life after the oil crash

In his response to Mervin Bitikofer, Glenn wrote, "I will tell you, unless
we solve the energy problem and by that I mean the liquid energy problem, we
will all be using bicycles, so in that sense it is a vehicle of last resort.
But before we get there we will go through several phases, smaller cars,
then motorcycles, then motor bicycles, then bicycles."

Just hope we leave enough energy resources to build these bicycles. In fact,
we need to make sure, when considering any alternative energy conversion
process (wind power, solar, etc) that we have the resources to build
whatever equipment is needed. Otherwise, we'll be in the same pickle as the
person who runs out of gas at the bottom of the hill, with a flat battery.

Does anybody have information on the energy balance for alternative energy
converters (e.g., how much energy is needed to build a windmill and maintain
it for its expected life span and how much energy will it produce)?

Chuck

  _____

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Mervin Bitikofer
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2005 10:41 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: Life after the oil crash

glennmorton@entouch.net wrote:

>Glenn, please educate me on what the phrase "move peak oil back ...."
means.

Any non-renewable resource with politically unencumbered production, the
production curve will approximate a bell curve. The top of the bell is peak
production. That peak can be pushed off by 1 week if the world either finds
1 billion bbl of oil or conserves one billion barrels of oil. Spend a
billion barrels of additional energy and the peak gets closer by 1 week.
Given that we are finding only 3-5 billion bbl per year, each year we move
the peak back by 3-5 weeks in time but we are then another year down the
road, meaning that each year the peak is about 48 weeks closer, whenever
that peak occurs. If we didn't find any new resources, the peak would be a
full year closer to us. Hope this helps.

This was utterly confusing to me at first, but after supplementing your
explanation with some Googling I should have done days ago, I now find a
world of information opening up I hadn't been looking at before (e.g. at
www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net) -- that had not been a common phrase to me
before (& in our subject line, no less!). It's got my attention now.
Thanks for the education.

--merv

I will tell you, unless we solve the energy problem and by that I mean the
liquid energy problem, we will all be using bicycles, so in that sense it is
a vehicle of last resort. But before we get there we will go through several
phases, smaller cars, then motorcycles, then motor bicycles, then bicycles.

Let's look at the UK as an example, a microcosm for the world. Here are the
annual production figures for the UK continental shelf from 1993 to 1999.
Everything looks great, increasing production, all the government officials
smiling, Oil industry execs are also smiling. Figures in 000 tonnes /year

1993 100,189

1994 126,542

1995 129,894

1996 129,742

1997 128,234

1998 132,633

1999 137,099

But then decline set in

2000 126,029

2001 116,678

2002 115,944

2003 106,058

2004 95,443

2005 88,000 est

In merely 5 years production dropped by 31%. Do you have any idea what that
would do to the world economy if the same kind of decline began on a world
wide basis? There would be zero time to react.

Between 2007 and 2010 the UK production will flatten out because one field
was found in 2001, and it will come on line in 2006. It is a big field,
Buzzard, but it is the biggest field found in 20 years and all it will be
able to do is flatten production, not increase it significantly. This field
contains 400 million bbls. That is approximately a 5 day world supply of
oil. Think about the scale of our energy use.

Also note that it took about 5 years to get Buzzard online. Any solution we
come to when oil begins to decline will take even longer. And when one is
hungry one needs to eat today, not 4 months from now. When the world gets
hungry for energy, it will need it today, not in 10 years.

 
Received on Sun Oct 30 14:55:21 2005