James Kunstler - Love Or Hate Him, Still The Last Angry Man Of Peak Oil

[hatrack]

EDIT

The upside of Kunstler's anger is that he's getting people to sit up and take notice. "You could write about this in a very academic way, but then nobody would listen," says David Ehrenfeld, the founding editor of Conservation Biology and a professor in the Rutgers University Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources. "If there's a problem with Kunstler," Ehrenfeld adds, "it's that his breezy style belies the fact that there's a very solid underpinning to his book and his ideas. But it's a successful style."

It's an odd style, too. Kunstler doesn't offer many solutions or think that anything will ultimately save us. He believes his mission is to sound the alarm bells, period: America's love of magical fixes makes his skin crawl. "I call it the Jiminy Cricket syndrome," he says. "It's the idea that when you wish upon a star, your dreams can come true. It's delusional." And yet the buzz about him and the speaking offers just won't quit. Since the Lovins spat and the publication of The Long Emergency, there have been interviews on the BBC and NPR, appearances at tech-investor conferences and peak-oil gatherings, and speaking offers from universities nationwide.

In the December 2005 issue of Fortune, billionaire investor Richard Rainwater professed to being a fan and said he handed out copies of The Long Emergency in bulk to friends and colleagues. Rainwater told Fortune that Kunstler's predictions probably weren't totally right, but he was worried they weren't totally wrong, either. Even Google execs invited Kunstler to lecture last year at their Silicon Valley company headquarters, which Kunstler likens to a giant kindergarten. "They have these great snack stations deployed at 30-foot intervals so you can never be without a pineapple or malted milk ball," he says. Worse, no one wanted to believe his prophecies. "One Googler after another," he adds, "said, 'Dude, but we've got technology!' "

Techno-wizards aside, Kunstler appears to have tapped into something of a national anxiety complex about the American way of life. Drive-through-window living and endless commutes from the 'burbs aren't exactly what a lot of us aim for. The country is at war with an elusive enemy in a faraway part of the globe. A hurricane practically wiped New Orleans off the map and sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing. Recent rebel attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria and a thwarted terrorist assault on a Saudi oil plant had the same effect—for a time, at least. For those and lots of other reasons, some people aren't in the mood to insist that the future looks bright. And if there's any doubt, Kunstler is there to reassure you: Your way of life is kaput.

EDIT

http://outside.away.com/outside/features/200605/james-howard-kunstler-oil-2.html

[brokensymmetry]

1. Good article, well worth reading.

Thanks for posting it, Hatrack.

[dapper]

2. What If....

I've been meaning to write (maybe rant) something in regards to the oil prices, gas prices and I'd like to take a stab at peak oil.... not neccesarily a response to the article posted.

Peak oil has been mentioned more and more in the past few years, it seems more so with the Bush administration. It's kind of amazing how this is such a crisis right now, especially with the Oil Man Bush in office. When Bush was first running for office, I mentioned to a few Bush-Fanatics how Bush was an oil man and I had a feeling we would see Oil prices rise. I was practically labeled a communist. Then When Bush was seeking re-election, those same people, still loving Bush told me that Bush would protect us... yada yada yada... Where are those people now? Do they still believe it?

Who knows if we are at Peak Oil now? If we are beyond Peak Oil or have yet to reach it? There are some articles that state oil may be somewhat of a renewable resource deep in the earth's crust, continuing to be created. Who knows?! I do know, I feel that the word "Peak Oil" is being used as a scare tactic, just like Iraq, just like Iran, just like terrorist alerts. While we may be at peak oil, instead of using it as a scare tactic to drive up the price of oil, let's get to business and find alternatives!

I do believe it is a wake up call. There should be alternative energy sources, there should be competing products, there should be no "Monopoly" on the petroleum market. Monopoly is not the exact word but... it seems to me the price of oil can be manipulated to no end. Hurricanes, Wars, Terrorism, being a commodity, People in the Oil industry inside politics... the list is endless.

Some people tend to blame the people who drive SUV's and their 15 MPG, arguments can be made that even the most economical car that gets 30+ mpg are still to blame. An SUV driver may only drive short distances meanwhile that economy car is driven longer distances.

I've been filling my tank with E85. Although my money is still going to the petro industry- it is also going towards an alternative fuel. Although this is not taking us off our need for Oil, it is an alternate fuel and I believe it is, at the very least, a step in the right direction. (Hoping that 20 years from now it is not discovered that the Ethenol screwed the environment)

I love our country, I support our troops but I have total distain for our corrupt Government.

[4dsc]

4. E85 is worthless

E85 is a hoax. Its not worth it. It takes more energy to produce it then you get out of it.. You not doing anyone(exept large ag corporations) any favors by buying E85.

[hatrack]

9. I don't know about the net energy return on ethanol, but there's more

You wouldnt believe how heavily GM is hyping E85 on every website and broadcast spectrum in the land.

One fundamental problem beyond energy returns, however, is infrastructure. There are about 180,000 gas stations in America, and about 600 of them have at least one E85 pump. Nearly all of those 600-odd statoins are located deep in the Farm Belt, where most Americans do not live.

Above and beyond everything else, until this gets addressed, GM can flex their fuel all they want and it won't make much of a difference.

[dapper]

20. Hatrack

I noticed that most of the stations are in the midwest. I'm planning to travel to the East Coast and the only ones in New York/PA are at DOT (Department of Transportation) locations. I'm sure they won't let me pull up to the pump there. There is one station nearby to where I am staying that is slated to get an E85 pump but as of January, it still had not been setup.

Dap

[Coastie for Truth]

12. I give as much credibility to Pimentel and Patzek

as I give to my old friend and neighbor Lester Lave (who says that if you drive a hybrid instead of a gas guzzler you will actually use more gas because you get so much better mileage).

I downloaded the Pimentel and Patzek paper ($30.00 from Springer on line). Sheesh.

1. Faulty Assumption 1-You have to thermally distill the EtOH-H2O? Why - why not a phoretic or dialytic process? Why not just inject 78% EtOH-8% EtOH-H2O - balance hydrocarbon and use some of that 1700X expansion of the EtOH-H2O?

2. Faulty Assumption 2 - why assume all phase separation has to be distillation?

3. Faulty Assumption 3 - in thermodynamics the definition of system boundaries is the key (I had Prof. Larry Canjar for Chem E Thermo and Prof. Gilbert "Gibbie" Maines for Phys. Chem- Thermo, and was a Thermodynamics and Chem E Econ teaching assistant) - and Pimentel and Patzek are inconsistent as hades as to their choices of system boundaries.

4. Faulty Assumption 4 - Pimentel and Patzek have tried to force a fermentation process (27 degrees C, atmospheric pressure, slow kinetics) into a petroleum refinery centric, short residence time, elevated temperature and pressure "petroleum refinery" type of process - instead of a saccharomyces cerevisiae catalyzed, biological process.

5. Faulty Assumption 5 - which ties into Faulty Assumption 4 - they should have picked up a good, elementary text on enzyme catalyzed reactions - I favor Shuler & Kargi's "Bioprocess Engineering: Basic Concepts" because that's what they use/have used at Stanford, Berkeley, Davis, and San Jose.

6. Faulty Assumption 6 - Always look to see who paid. The work was funded by Shell Oil (like Lave's, referred to above, was funded by GM and ExxonMobil).

[dapper]

19. re: Not worth it

Are you kidding me? There are actually people buying distillers to make their own (ethenol). If they are making their own, then the money doesn't get into the greedy oil companies hands. After making up for the cost of the distiller, it is definately a cost saver over gasoline.

Based on my calculations so far, Price per MPG is not a great deal of savings but over a year or two that savings adds up.

It's a hoax? What kind of statement is that?

Dap

[brokensymmetry]

6. Actually, Jimmy Carter....

was the first. M. King Hubbert presented the idea back in 1956 - he
made a prediction that North America would peak in 1970. It turns
out that North American crude peaked in 1971. So it isn't like we
haven't been warned time and time again.

As NNadir points out below, the problem is that lots of people
are trying to adopt an energy abundant American lifestyle. The
globe doesn't have the capacity. Something will, ultimately, give.
I suspect that "give" will involve a die-off.

[Dead_Parrot]

3. Last?

First of billions, methinks.

[NNadir]

5. I recently read Kunstler's book, "The Long Emergency."

I think as a wake up call, it's useful. Sometimes he oversteps into political (and scientific) fiction. He has a kind of survivalist mentality, deep down.

However I think he overstates the case that oil is irreplacable.

Oil is very replaceable, probably relatively cheaply, but it will take concerted effort and clear thinking to do it. Kunstler's vision might come to pass only because it is the willingness to make a concerted effort and a lack of clear thinking, not oil, that are in short supply.

We will also, of necessity, need to reduce the human population. The odds against that happening ethically and rationally are longer and longer. It could, in theory, be done, but again only with clear thinking and concerted effort, again, the very things that have "peaked."

[IrateCitizen]

7. Problems with replacing oil...

NNadir, I agree with much of your assessment, but I think that replacing oil presents some significant problems. First off, oil is one of the most "compact" sources of energy out there -- just think of it in terms of how one gallon of oil can be used to move a ton 30 miles. What other energy sources have that kind of comparable return?

Secondly, the big advantage the oil presents is its portability. While I think that other energy sources combined with redesigning our living arrangements can help alleviate many problems, the fact remains that we don't really have an energy source on the horizon that is as concentrated AND portable as oil is.

[NNadir]

8. All that is required to replace oil is to make a compact fluid with

high energy density.

All of the technology to do this is known. Much of it has already been performed on an industrial scale.

The most compact energy source on earth (barring development of fusion energy - still a pipe dream) is uranium and thorium. It is well known how to convert this energy to fluid fuels that are safe and have a high (enough) energy density. These fuels will not be energy sources per se, but instead will represent energy storage and transport media.

My particular dead horse that I beat frequently (and loudly) is dimethyl ether, DME. It is superior to oil, in just about every way that counts. Seen in this way, the critical choice before humanity is not whether we can make DME, but how we do it. The reason I beat this drum, is because I believe that the more people are aware of this fabulous material, the more quickly it will be done.

Seen in this way, oil depletion can be a good thing, especially if DME is manufactured by reduction of carbon dioxide. As we've been discussing lately here, a chemistry Nobel Laureate, George Olah, is leading the way to this happy opportunity. All we have to do is listen, act, and then work.

I note that there is a third route, one which is too horrible to contemplate. This is Fischer-Tropsch chemistry in which coal is used to make liquid fuels that are petroleum equivalent. This humanity cannot afford. To some extent I think Kunstler type panic makes such an outcome more likely. It is the contention that we cannot live without oil. To the extent this unfortunate nonsense is believed expands the danger we face.

The larger question of course is not limited to our energy resources and energy choices. The larger issue is to address the consequences of the biological carrying capacity of the earth for human beings. We have already reduced this carrying capacity long term. The extent to which we further reduce the carrying capacity is a fair measure of the scale of the tragedy we will experience in the near decades. This involves not only energy, but water, including our oceans, our land, our minerals and other resources.

[4dsc]

21. Not nuclear please...

I have read that DME can be made from natural gas, coal or biomass. But if you suggesting we make it with nuclear power, then you arguement is lost on me. And as all should know, natural gas production has peaked in the US. That would again, that it would have to be made overseas where natural gas is plentiful. Coal is another finite resouces too..

[NNadir]

22. It is true 100% of the time, that people who oppose nuclear favor coal.

This is ass backwards and reflects how poorly prepared we to deal with the emergency, which is not that we will run out of fossil fuels - the sooner we ban them from use, the better. The emergency is that we will run out of atmosphere.

Nuclear is incredibly safer than any fossil fuel.

http://www.externe.info/results.html

It is, in fact, safer than many renewable fuels, especially solar PV and biomass burning.

To be anti-nuclear, one must know next to nothing about energy and risk.

Here, for the zillionth time is detailed figures doing the comparison of safety in risk, measured in terms of costs generated through health and environmental degradation, including loss of life and global climate change (probably underestimated):

http://www.externe.info/expoltec.pdf

On page 35 of the file in figure 9, it shows the matter simply and graphically.

Of non-hydro renewable technologies, only wind power is safer than nuclear power, but wind doesn't compete on technical grounds with nuclear. Being intermittant, wind mostly competes with natural gas. You have to have a screw loose to be against wind power, of course, but this has no bearing on the nuclear question whatsoever. The only thing that competes with nuclear is coal but anyone who prefers coal probably also has a screw loose, a lot of screws loose in fact.

I note the sooner we get rid of the fucking oil, the better off we'll be. It's important that oil and coal be banned as soon as is reasonably possible.


Anyone who can't understand what this graph means, is indeed lost, horribly so. They are impeding any chance we have of survival and not helping in any way.

[Coastie for Truth]

13. I'm a bumpkin from the coal fields

(where the Monongahela River crosses the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border, my Dad was a UMWA lawyer) - and I went to a "College of Engineering and MINES" for grad school.

And I worked in "Fischer-Tropsch" before I got into nuke power.

I see nothing wrong with "Fischer-Tropsch" coal to liquid fuels. At today's crude price it's 25%-30% cheaper then crude. And, we got the coal.

[NNadir]

16. Well Coastie, I'm going to have to disagree seriously on this.

I don't often disagree with you on anything, but in this case I'm going to have to do so.

It is not the internal cost of Fischer-Tropsch chemistry that I am worrying about at all. It has been used several times industrially to replace oil in shortage situations, and I have no doubt that it could do so again and at reasonable cost. Still, if coal could be used in Fischer-Tropsch chemistry to produce gasoline for $0.50/gallon, I would still be against it.

Coal has the highest external cost of any fuel. It is simply and clearly the worst environmental impact fuel. If you included the external cost of coal (as I believe we should) coal's price would easily double or triple.

The last thing we need is to use this chemistry - which is carbon dioxide intensive - to address the price of gasoline.

The rosy part of the picture of high gasoline prices is that people are inspired to use less of it. Given the nature of the catastrophe before us, this can only be a good thing.

I do recognize that the price of gasoline effects the poor disproportionately and that there is considerable pain involved short term. However this pain pales before what is happening (and what is likely to happen) with global climate change.

I think there is something very wrong with Fischer-Tropsch chemistry, particularly to make petroleum-like fuels.

[Coastie for Truth]

17. I absolutely agree with you that

Coal has the highest external cost of any fuel. It is simply and clearly the worst environmental impact fuel. If you included the external cost of coal (as I believe we should) coal's price would easily double or triple.

As I prefaced my append - I grew up in the soft coal corner of South Western Pennsylvania - Dad was a lawyer for the United Mine Workers and we lived in a little house above the mine (no right of subjacent support in Pennsylvania - our garage collapsed into a coal mine sink hole -- scared the daylights out of our dog). And every block had a mine injury victim with the obvious handle of "Stumpy."

The environmental health costs were terrible - it was only dumb luck that the Donora Mine Smog was SO3 - that kind of stuff happened locally all acoss coal and steel country - too frequently.

is built on top of mine spoils and open hearth furnace slag - click on the Map Quest link in the web page -- that's where we lived after WW2.

Greater Pittsburgh Airport - built on mine spoils - runway 27R takes you right over mine spoils.

The environmental costs are awful. But - compare them to the depression that Kunstler predicts. With the GOP in power -- a Depression like Kunstler predicts could become as bad as the world of Margaret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale"

[NNadir]

18. Well, I think we can do better.

I worry about backing, through fear, into coal based Fischer-Tropsch chemistry.

(I have no problem with biomass based Fischer-Tropsch chemistry, at least up to the syn gas part.)

This is my criticism of Kunstler. He is way too dire. I think it sells books to stir up some adrenaline and terror, and he is selling books. (Terror, as we know, also sells things like trashing the constitution, of course.)

But as liberals we should not operate through the motivations of fear. We can do better. There is going to be hell to pay for the past, that much is sure. Maybe the case is well made that we do indeed have something to fear. But if we convert the fear into panic (and coal based Fischer-Tropsch "solutions" are nothing but panic) we are only slightly, very slightly, delaying the hour of our demise.

We should aim high. Aiming high in this case is renewables, conservation, and nuclear. It will be difficult, to be sure, and our odds of success may not be all that high, but it is the best shot we have.

[Strelnikov_]

11. I Agree. I See The Opportunities If We Will Only Undertake

the conservation, societal transformation and development of alternative energy sources available to us.

Given the leadership and moral vacuum that now exists, a Kunstlerian future is a possibility, particularly when considering that poor leadership has doomed past societies when faced with resource depletion.

It is a warning, not a prophecy. There are other paths.

[Strelnikov_]

10. "This Is One Heroic Motherfucker Of An Interchange"

He is entertaining, if nothing else.

In the meantime, the problem with getting Kunstler to the New Urbanism sites is that you have to use the freeway to reach them. Brown has segued off the tollway and is now on I-75 heading toward the just-completed five-tier, $261 million highway interchange between U.S. 75 and I-635.

"This is one heroic motherfucker of an interchange," says Kunstler, in the mock Texas twang he's been using since his plane touched down a couple of hours ago.

[phantom power]

14. Wasn't he the *first* angry man of peak oil?

[Odin2005]

15. He's too survivalist and anti-techno-fix for my tastes.

I do think that people naively put to much faith in technology over changing our wasteful lifestyles, but the attitude among the Doomers that nothing will save us is rediculous, we are not going back to the middle ages.

[brokensymmetry]

23. Really? Are you sure about that?

Lots of people who have studied the issue in considerable
depth are on the other side. Is there a basis for your
assertions, or are you simply expressing a hope?

[NNadir]

24. Maybe the onus is on your side.

Humanity existed for tens of thousands of years without oil. With this bit of history in mind, I think the onus that the world will fall apart completely without oil demands proof; as it is an extraordinary claim, it requires extraordinary proof.

Who are the "lots of people" and what specifically constitutes "considerable depth?"

I frequently report journal articles from scientific journal Energy and Fuels here, of which I am a regular reader. I certainly don't believe that "lots of people," energy scientists, who publish there believe that oil is irreplacable. In fact many of these journal articles in the introductory sections offer a statement saying that oil needs to be replaced, and examines methods of just such proposed replacement.

I am asking peak oilers to tell me about a fraction of petroleum that cannot be replaced within the same thirty year window in which oil displaced coal. Name something irreplacable from oil and I will suggest a means by which it can be either made directly or replaced by a better alternative.

Oil is becoming a fetish, talismanic in its power. I suspect that this kind of attitude is why we are in Iraq committing murder and theft. I don't see Kunstler as being particularly enlightened. He makes some good points for discussion, but I don't think he really understands the problem - which is not about oil reserves at all.

[Odin2005]

25. Exactly, British society didn't collapse when it ran out of wood.

they just went to coal. During the late Bronze Age a proto-state in Portugal fell to an invasion of proto-celts, this distrupted the vital Mediterranean tin trade (tin is needed to make bronze), the result was the rapid uptake of irom working technology from Anatolia. History, in it's most basic form, is about how socities respond to challanges from the natural and human enviroment. Peak oil is just another challange.

[brokensymmetry]

27. Very good.

I suggest you party on.

:party:

[brokensymmetry]

26. Then I suppose you've seen the Hirsch report?

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf

You'll be glad to know that the report uses a twenty year
window instead of your thirty year window. But I suppose
that if everything is resolved by 2036, we need not concern
ourselves with the interim.

:party:

[NNadir]

28. No I haven't seen this report until now, but I find its contents

unsurprising, now that you've linked it. So what?

The transition from coal to oil was not punctuated by "reports," and predictions of academics or academic types or governmental agencies. Neither was the shift from animal power to hydropower, nor the shift from human power to animal power.

One thing that is notable about energy productions is how very, very, very few of them - viewed in retrospect - have had much connection with the reality ultimately obtained:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=39929

A brief scan of the report you've linked has no earth shaking information or insights that I can see.

I, of course, am happy about peak oil. I view it as an opportunity to abandon a very dangerous fuel with an unacceptable environmental (as well as moral) cost to better fuels with a lower environmental impact that are far more sustainable. Fossil fuels should have never been as "cheap" as they were (historically) in the first place. What was obtained was the arbitrary decision to make our biosphere the dump for the external cost. If we'd required restoration of the damaged space to near pristine conditions - the requirement that has (again arbitrarily) attached to the nuclear industry, there would have never been a fossil industry. Put another way, fossil fuels had been priced to include their external costs, very few people would have ever laid eyes on a Hummer or for that matter, coal fired ships like the Titanic.

Personally I don't care about "oil crises." We live in the golden age of chemistry: Basically, given energy, we convert anything we want into anything else we want. In the chemical world we have achieved something like what Archimedes once boasted in another context, "Give me a place to stand..."

The question in my mind is whether we get rid of oil rationally and irrationally. For the last several decades, the human race has gone with "irrationally," which implies vast disruption and tremendous pain and suffering, much of which is now inevitable but almost none of which was ever necessary. Still I insist that there is (and was) a rational path that could be chosen and the sooner we choose that path the better. Whining about the oil, in my estimation, doesn't encourage the kind of clear thinking we need. It is the common space that is under assault, our seas, our air, our fresh water. Many people act, for some very odd reason, that the thing we need to worry about is the oil fields.

For me, I don't think we should wait 30 years to demand that oil fields be shut down, be they empty or full. It is in the power of the human race - as least from a technological standpoint based on what is already known, to shut those fields sooner. To my mind the human should cut the bullshit and place all their efforts in this direction. It would represent a grand effort at building a more permanent infrastructure. It would create useful and exciting work for humanity, work based on achievement and not destruction. This is a challenge that can be met.

But I am convinced more and more that such a thing will not happen, because, the golden age of chemistry aside, we also live in the age of the triumph of the irrational. The question is not technical at all, it is political, civic, and moral.