Yes Mr Phox I watched Rob Newman’ "A History of Oil" very interesting and entertaining it was. I searched around on the internet for a while afterwards, for one of the books that the program was based on.
THE PARTY'S OVER Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies by Richard Heinberg
I will hopefully get hold of a copy of this book over the weekend, what I have read so far has really opended my eyes. I was a bit more optimistic about the future before I came across this, believing that technology and renewables would save us all.
The following has been taken from the above link
Oil has been the cheapest and most convenient energy resource ever discovered by humans. During the past two centuries, people in industrial nations accustomed themselves to a regime in which more fossil-fuel energy was available each year, and the global population grew quickly to take advantage of this energy windfall. Industrial nations also came to rely on an economic system built on the assumption that growth is normal and necessary, and that it can go on forever.
When oil production peaks, those assumptions will come crashing down.
Try the following thought experiment. Go to the center of a city and find a comfortable place to sit. Look around and ask yourself: Where and how is energy being used? What forms of energy are being consumed, and what work is that energy doing? Notice the details of buildings, cars, buses, streetlights, and so on; notice also the activities of the people around you. What kinds of occupations do these people have, and how do they use energy in their work? Try to follow some of the strands of the web of relationships between energy, jobs, water, food, heating, construction, goods distribution, transportation, and maintenance that together keep the city thriving.
After you have spent at least 20 minutes appreciating energy's role in the life of this city, imagine what the scene you are viewing would look like if there were 10 percent less energy available. What substitutions would be necessary? What choices would people make? What work would not get done? Now imagine the scene with 25 percent less energy available; with 50 percent less; with 75 percent less.
Clearly, we will need to find substitutes for oil. But an analysis of the current energy alternatives is not reassuring. Solar and wind are renewable, but we now get less than one percent of our national energy budget from them; rapid growth will be necessary if they are to replace even a significant fraction of the energy shortfall from post-peak oil. Nuclear power is dogged by the unsolved problem of radioactive waste disposal.
I like your optimism Celene but I do not believe that there is any real alternatives to fossil fuels to supply the energy at the rate that we are using it. We need to completely and radically change the way the world works.
Hydrogen is not an energy source at all, but an energy carrier: it takes more energy to produce a given quantity of hydrogen than the hydrogen itself will yield. Moreover, nearly all commercially produced hydrogen now comes from natural gas - whose production will peak only a few years after oil begins its historic decline.
The likely economic consequences of the energy downturn are enormous. All human activities require energy - which physicists define as "the capacity to do work." With less energy available, less work can be done - unless the efficiency of the process of converting energy to work is raised at the same rate as energy availability declines. It will therefore be essential, over the next few decades, for all economic processes to be made more energy-efficient. However, efforts to improve efficiency are subject to diminishing returns, and so eventually a point will be reached where reduced energy availability will translate to reduced economic activity. Given the fact that our national economy is based on the assumption that economic activity must grow perpetually, the result is likely to be a recession with no bottom and no end.
The consequences for global food production will be no less dire. Throughout the twentieth century, food production expanded dramatically in country after country, with virtually all of this growth attributable to energy inputs. Without fuel-fed tractors and petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, it is doubtful that crop yields can be maintained at current levels.
The oil peak will also impact international relations. Resource conflicts are nothing new: pre-state societies often fought over agricultural land, fishing or hunting grounds, horses, cattle, waterways, and other resources. Most of the wars of the twentieth century were also fought over resources - in many cases, oil. But those wars took place during a period of expanding resource extraction; the coming decades of heightened competition for fading energy resources will likely see even more frequent and deadly conflicts. The US - as the world's largest energy consumer, the center of global industrial empire, and the holder of the most powerful store of weaponry in world history - will play a pivotal role in shaping the geopolitics of the new century. To many observers, it appears that oil interests are already at the heart of the present administration's geopolitical strategy.
Back on topic Richard Heinberg has a new book POWERDOWN Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World
I have found a recent audio interview with Richard Heinberg about the new book and the future of the worlds energy needs
If the US continues with its current policies, the next decades will be marked by war, economic collapse, and environmental catastrophe. Resource depletion and population pressures are about to catch up with us, and no one is prepared. The political elites, especially in the US, are incapable of dealing with the situation and have in mind a punishing game of "Last One Standing."
The alternative is "Powerdown," a strategy that will require tremendous effort and economic sacrifice in order to reduce per-capita resource usage in wealthy countries, develop alternative energy sources, distribute resources more equitably, and reduce the human population humanely but systematically over time. While civil society organizations push for a mild version of this, the vast majority of the world's people are in the dark, not understanding the challenges ahead, nor the options realistically available.
Finally, the book explores how three important groups within global society-the power elites, the opposition to the elites (the antiwar and antiglobalization movements, et al: the "Other Superpower"), and ordinary people-are likely to respond to these fouroptions. Timely, accessible and eloquent, Powerdown is crucial reading for our times.
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