Renowned energy strategist sees extraordinary changes ahead

[4dsc]

http://www.mywesttexas.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16628751&BRD=2288&PAG=461&dept_id=475626&rfi=6

As he prepared to discuss the future of the world's oil and natural gas business, Henry Groppe, a renowned oil and gas strategist and founder of the Groppe, Long & Littell consulting firm in Houston, urged his audience to keep two things in mind:

"One is the dominance of the oil and gas industry. It is part of everything in the world; it is vital to world economies and it has now passed agriculture as the biggest industry in the world

The world, he said, has entered an era of scarcity and rationing and "the question is, what price level is required to quash consumption and maintain demand?"

For those who believe in infinite crude supplies, "I offer a reality check," he said. If oil is in limitless supply, "why didn't we reverse the production decline in the United States? Home to a quarter of the world's production, the birthplace of much of the technology, home to the greatest collection of competitors in the industry? Yet we haven't reversed the near-50 percent decline since production peaked in the 1970s."

[sweetheart]

1. mindstates of fear

"The world .. has entered an era of scarcity" - Houston, TX

Malthusian asshole

[4dsc]

2. Or reality check??

I just have to wonder what it will take to make people change their wasteful ways in this country?? The future is staring us in the face yet we continue to act as though we a invunerable.

[sweetheart]

3. There is plenty of energy

Just not the sort he wants to sell.

[Ezlivin]

7. There is plenty of energy, but not the kind you can put to use

There is no substitute for cheap oil. None. It took the earth millions of years to convert the energy that fell upon ancient trees and vegetation into crude oil. We are in essence using stored sunlight from eons past.

Alternative fuels will prove useful only in limited circumstances. The current functioning of our society cannot be maintained with alternative fuels; it is unsustainable.

Hydrogen as a fuel? Impracticable due to EROEI (energy return on energy invested) and the fact that hydrogen is only a carrier of energy, not a source. It takes more energy to make hydrogen that the hydrogen itself produces. As a replacement for the gasoline now used, hydrogen does not scale. The smallest known element in the universe makes hydrogen very hard to store and transport; it wants to seep out of the smallest pores. We would have to build a whole new network of pipes designed specifically to transport hydrogen. And what about getting hydrogen the last "mile" to the service station? One 40-ton gasoline truck can completely refuel one mid-sized filling station. It would take 21 hydrogen trucks to deliver the same amount of energy. So hydrogen will not allow us to keep the roads filled with cars.

Ethanol seems promising only when you do not factor in the use petroleum products to make the ethanol. Currently it takes more than one (1) barrel of oil to make one (1) barrel of ethanol. And that one barrel of ethanol is not nearly as useful as one barrel of crude (because the number of products that can be made from crude).

The more you examine the claims of the alternative fuel backers, the more you realize that none of them comes close to replacing our oil-based economy.

[sweetheart]

10. Aaahh, you want to keep the cheep transport

Ok, if you're planning to accomodate airflights
and cars as the common-persons right in a future world, then
malthusian warnings arise. There has to be a radical change
in the city-planning and social engineering thta the car-culture
can end without ending community.

Solar, tidal, geothermal, wind and human innovation, combined
with a kennedy-like drive and motivation to overcome the dilemma,
could produce a new clean roadmap, a sustainable energy economy
that, when the average joe in 3rd world nation <x> goes about
their economic life, it pays for a clean future, with no slavery,
and no need to enslave others to supply your energy.

Ending energy slavery is within our grasp, and i don't accept
the physical boundaries cannot be overcome by ingenuity and goodwill.

[hatrack]

12. If you "don't accept physical boundaries", then no one can help you

There are physical boundaries, whether we like it or not, and they cannot be transcended by our ingeniuty, political outlook or personal goodness.

Let me know how ignoring physical laws and thermodynamics works out for you, OK?

[sweetheart]

13. physicalist

For hundreds of years, there's always been a crowd:

"The wood will run out!!"
"The coal will run out!!"
"The oil will run out!!"

More solar energy falls in every sqare acre
of land to supply the energy needs well and
over... just its not converted, and that
thermodynamic task has not been tacled by our
economy because we're so busy worrying (read: subsidizing to the tune of
trillion dollars) about a fossil fuels economy.

The earth's overpopulation and breakdown in institutions
of justice is a more critical problem than the latest eschatology.
No need to let me know where it gets you. ;-)

peace,

[Ezlivin]

16. Energy sources DID run out - read your history

When wood was running out, Britain turned to coal. England was facing "Peak Wood" in the eighteenth century and had to turn to coal. Once coal became more valuable (despite its smoke and odors), it became worthwhile to dig it up. Scrapings became pits became mines.

Easter Island was stripped of all its fuel (wood) and the culture there completely collapsed.

Once oil was discovered and its superior qualities ascertained, coal was phased out. Coal was harder to get, didn't burn as clean and was not nearly as efficient.

And coal will run out. Our "250 years" of supply is good only at the current rate of consumption. So if we decide to switch back to coal, we will start consuming it at a higher and ever increasing rate. We have already mined much of the best-quality coal that is closest to the surface and easiest to get. What remains may require so much energy to mine that it would be pointless to do so.

Solar energy is great, but who is going to build the solar cells without using oil? Can you name one solar cell producing plant that supplies all of its own power?

The problem is much larger than most people realize. And most people are so enamored of our technology that they are essentially cargo-cultists.

[sweetheart]

20. that's why there is no more wood

and no more coal
and no more oil
and no more hope for humankind in his malthusiast spin. nothing at all.
Im writing this online as there is no more paper, and no more ink,
no more food and no more shelter.... i'm the last living human
and its all about scarcity, I died the last one, because of a buch of
stupid motherfuckers who destroyed everything else.. . sorry.

[Ezlivin]

25. We mourn your passing - and with it we now we are out of bullshit, too.

[Ready4Change]

27. Solar powered solar cell plant

There's one that's been operating near Frederick Maryland for years. First operated by Solarex, now BP.

http://www.eco-web.com/register/01327.html

[Ezlivin]

14. Unlike Cheney, I do believe that the American way of life is negotiable

We can have a decent standard of living and can accomplish much if we re-engineer our way of living. A move to sustainable living would be excellent. I'm changing my lifestyle to enable this transition and others can too.

However, the majority of Americans will not change their lifestyles unless forced to. Since we don't yet live in a dictatorship, no orders will issue from above. Only the results of peak oil will force Americans' hand.

The steps to a "bright, clean renewable energies future" is to replace most traffic with mass transit, to cease building suburbs and exurbs and to make telecommuting much more widespread.

Mass transit won't happen because 1) the auto lobby is too strong, and 2) we don't have the time to build the necessary infrastructure. (We need mass transit now, not 20 years in the future.)

We won't cease building suburbs/exurbs because developers hold too much sway, from local P&Z boards to state agencies.

Telecommuting has a good chance of becoming widespread, but it alone isn't enough.

I live in the DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth) area and there were 130 housing starts daily (on average) for 2005. Over 47,000 homes were built last year. How many of them utilized energy efficient features? Very few. Houses are built as if oil will always be cheap and plentiful.

[depakid]

21. Economic downturns have a way a changing behaviors

rather fast. Add to that, the wasteful American lifestyle is laughably unsustainable without cheap petroeum inputs- and those days pretty close to over.

My concern is more with electricity- natural gas is past its peak in North America- so all those gas fired plants are going to be competing with people who "need" to heat those suburban houses. Things are going to change bigtime in the next 10 years or so- and the question really amounts to whether we want to go through those changes with the lights on or off.

[Ezlivin]

5. Malthus was right

In this famous work, Malthus posited his hypothesis that (unchecked) population growth always exceeds the growth of means of subsistence. Actual (checked) population growth is kept in line with food supply growth by "positive checks" (starvation, disease and the like, elevating the death rate) and "preventive checks" (i.e. postponement of marriage, etc. that keep down the birthrate), both of which are characterized by "misery and vice". Malthus's hypothesis implied that actual population always has a tendency to push above the food supply. Because of this tendency, any attempt to ameliorate the condition of the lower classes by increasing their incomes or improving agricultural productivity would be fruitless, as the extra means of subsistence would be completely absorbed by an induced boost in population. As long as this tendency remains, Malthus argued, the "perfectibility" of society will always be out of reach.

Only because of petroleum-based inputs (ie, fertilizers and pesticides) has agriculture been able to produce enough food to feed our burgeoning population. Like bacteria in a petri dish, we will expand and consume all available food until there is the inevitable die-back.

Since oil is a finite resource and is essential to increasing crop yields, it stands to reason that any reduction in petroleum inputs would result in a reduction in food production with a concomitant decrease in the number of people fed.

Don't mistake cautionary warnings as fear mongering.

[Chimichurri]

4. We have the means to use an alternative to fossil fuels all we need

now is the will to do so.

Shit if we are that incapable of developing the technology ourselves, then lets liscence Brazil's blue prints. This oil-is-the-only-way towards-salvation talk is ridiculous and always propegated by pro-oil think tanks and pacs looking to keep their greasy profits sky high by the constant spread of misguided fear. Does anyone truly believe that the government would allow for a day to come where there would be no fuel to power our businesses? or our giant automobiles? or our beloved private jets? Heh - I highly doubt it. These scare tactics are tant amount to telling a youngster that masterbating causes blindness. The problem with their myth, is kids are sent off to die defending their greed.

[rfkrfk]

6. there is always shale oil, for the US

at some price, it would work.

other countries have heavy crude.

[Ezlivin]

8. Shale oil (or tar sands) require too much energy inputs

You can get oil from these rocks or sand, but the rate of production is far too low to be useful other than in limited circumstances. The total output of Alberta's oil sands is about one million barrels per day, about one-twentieth of the total US requirements for crude.

To make oil from the tar sands requires a natural gas (petroleum based) input. For each barrel of oil extracted, 500-700 cubic feet of natural gas is used to "cook" the bitumen. So as long as we have cheap and plentiful oil (in the form of natural gas) we'll be able to "make" oil from the tar sands.

[rfkrfk]

9. coal, nuke, or fuel corn for heat

to heat the oil-bearing shale

[Ezlivin]

15. EROEI - Energy return on energy invested

So you are still willing to pour energy into something that will yield less than the inputs?

If it takes more energy to make fuel than the fuel produces, it is madness to continue.

[hatrack]

11. Shale oil/tar sands = converting cheap gas to expensive synthetic oil

And when the cheap in situ gas runs out?

[ramapo]

17. and chew up large swaths of the environment?

It's difficult to imagine a more destructive energy source, not to mention the inefficiency factor.

[rfkrfk]

18. everything has a EROEI of less than one, if you include the feedstock

everything looses

[Odin2005]

19. The Kunsterist prophets of doom here are getting annoying.

[Dogmudgeon]

22. Kunstler has his ... uses

Unless people are made aware of the potential disasters we face for our inaction and stupidity, we're likely to keep doing the same things that get us into trouble in the first place. And then, we will be facing the abyss as we fall in.

I am fond of making the comparison that a die-off will lead to the equivalent of 1000 Holocausts in a period of a generation. It's true, but it's the worst-case scenario, and would require a massive breakdown in leadership, nearly continuous world war, and an utter lack of interest in public health, improved agriculture, etc. It is not likely to happen, but nobody is planning for these things, either. The reigning managerial style is just-in-time management-by-crisis. As well as that may work for grocery store chains and software companies, when it's applied to countries, it is a painful and destructive method of governance.

Many may claim that these challenges are simply games the Mighty play to keep our shoulders to the wheel, and a huge number of our fellow DUers think the Bird Flu is just a hoax to take the heat off of Bush. Many of them think that Peak Oil is likewise a ruse to permit unbridled profiteering by the oil companies before they're socialized, and the Saudi royal family before they are deposed by militant Islamists. I have no doubt that the plutocrats will bilk us all the way down to Hell and then steal the jewelry from our fingers at our wake, but the grave is still big enough to acommadate six billion -- or more.

We have always faced challenges and crisis, but the ones we face now have been known for close to half a century. This year is the 50th anniversary of Hubbert's Curve. We had a foretaste of things in the 1970s, but after a mere half-decade of intelligent action, we reversed course.

So gasoline is three-bucks-two-bits now. We can't go back, but our ability to go forward has been crippled. So let's apply some of that good ol' American can-do spirit to the problem! Except that our country no longer has the can-do spirit; we've turned into a bunch of sybaritic cynics. Jim Kunstler, too, could be considered as a sybarite, and a cynic -- he's an art critic. QED. But he's at least trying to scare people into understanding that it's time to deal with the problem. Imperfectly, sure. But the act of putting words together in the hope of making sense is an inherently imperfect pursuit.

He's doing the same kind of thing Whitley Strieber and Art Bell did in the late 90s when they wrote The Coming Global Superstorm. There was virtually no discussion of climate change, so they wrote a white-knuckle thriller. CSICOP moaned; millions of Internet science geeks shook their fingers in rebuke; Bjorn Lomborg pitched a fit. But the word got out, and millions of people who were otherwise more interested in UFOs and mysticism than climatology got a little science dropped on 'em from a most unlikely pair of sources.

And it was Good.

Not everybody responds to the sang froid demeanor of scientific journals. They are a form of deliberately "elitist" literature, but most of what they contain demands public dissemination. It takes the popularizers and even the bench-jumpers to bring it to the popular attention.

That's why I'm not opposed to the Jim Kunstlers. I like to spin a little G-and-D myself. We've all been talking these problems up for three, four, or more years. And what have we accomplished? The Prius. Less nuke paranoia. More support for Kyoto, which will soon be a fait tué (not a done deal, but a dead deal). ONE politician seems to know his ass from his elbow about these issues, the guy we all mocked as being "wooden". So I strongly hope that we're just at the start of a curve that will soon hit its inflection point and then turn asymptotic. We don't have much time; we've let the problems get a good, long, head start.

But on the other hand, we're the apes with the big-assed brains.

Among we intelligent, learned, scientifically literate savants, conversation can proceed without having to resort to telling frightening stories. But for most people, the Cautionary Tale has great power, wisdom, and entertainment value. That doesn't annoy me at all. I can't speak for Kunstler, but I would like nothing more than to have my fears proven wrong in the future; a limitless, boundless, eternally optimistic future, where my grandchildren will be freed from the limitations that hobble me and my contemporaries.

In our transit to the future, we could blow it. Damn if I'll let that happen without shaking a few sleepwalkers along the way. I've only just gotten started -- but isn't that the way it always is with Tomorrow?

--p!

[Nihil]

23. Well said!

> Unless people are made aware of the potential disasters we face for
> our inaction and stupidity, we're likely to keep doing the same
> things that get us into trouble in the first place. And then,
> we will be facing the abyss as we fall in.

> Among we intelligent, learned, scientifically literate savants,
> conversation can proceed without having to resort to telling
> frightening stories. But for most people, the Cautionary Tale has
> great power, wisdom, and entertainment value. That doesn't annoy me
> at all. I can't speak for Kunstler, but I would like nothing more
> than to have my fears proven wrong in the future; a limitless,
> boundless, eternally optimistic future, where my grandchildren
> will be freed from the limitations that hobble me and my
> contemporaries.

Two excellent points (amongst many).
:applause:

[Kolesar]

24. It's a message board, people are supposed to post what they think

:hi:

[Strelnikov_]

26. The Sophomoric Jingoism And Pedantism Are Also Getting Annoying

Kunstler's future is just one possibility. Being a possibility, it would be a mistake to dismiss it out of hand. It's called risk management. Isn't the political grandstanding of the last few weeks just as he speculated?

And just because you do not have a Masters or PHd in Chemistry, etc., does not mean you cannot discuss or develop an informed energy policy.