So last week Salon ran a big story on peak oil by Katharine Mieszkowski. It was decent, though focused a bit too much on the loony fringes. I guess the temptation to do that is irresistible when trying to make a long story about the Hubbert Curve and Venezuelan oil reserves compelling.
In response, John Quiggen (at the usually excellent Crooked Timber group blog) wrote a response I can only characterize as bizarre. But the comments under the post don't treat it as bizarre. And Ezra Klein linked to it as though it proved something, and then ladled more bizarritude on top. So either these guys -- who I regard as considerably smarter than yours truly -- are missing something, or I am. Let's take a tour.
Quiggen's point, briefly, is this: Peak oilers falsely exaggerate the problem by conflating oil with fossil fuels generally, implying that running out of the former means running out of the latter. But there's actually tons and tons of coal left, and it wouldn't be too hard to do what we do with oil with coal instead. So, you know, global warming's a problem, but running out of oil isn't.
I think that's a fair summary. And I think it's nuts.
First, oil supply and demand are in notoriously tense balance, and that tension will only rise as demand skyrockets (China, etc.) and supply dwindles. Any little bump anywhere -- another hurricane, a terrorist attack on a facility in Saudi Arabia, some America-hatin' from a Venezuelan ruler -- could have a dramatic effect on the economy. It's important to remember that our efforts to transition away from oil take place in that context. As for that transition, Quiggen simply stipulates that coal can be substituted neatly for oil in cars and trucks through electric vehicles, liquefication, or gasification. He doesn't mention airplanes. He doesn't mention manufacturing (plastics, etc.). He doesn't mention agriculture. He doesn't mention big-box retail and suburban sprawl. He just waves his hands at it.
Klein summarizes: "Suffice to say, coal can power basically everything we use, and it's unimaginably plentiful." Suffice to say, I find that blithe statement rather far from obvious.
Second, say the end of cheap oil did drive us to coal. That would substantially accelerate global warming, as Quiggen acknowledges. But is something that forces you to commit suicide better than something that kills you directly? How does this diminish the significance of peak oil?
Oh, but wait, that's not a problem either. Klein says we can handle it:
... new technologies, notably gasification (which could allow it to run cars), render carbon extraction and sequestration fairly straight-forward, so that problem, at least in theory, is pretty surmountable. Don't believe me? Ask the National Resources Defense Council.
So we can just sequester the CO2, even though we don't do it now and the technology's almost entirely untested and we'd use shitloads more coal if oil dropped out of the equation. At a time when we desperately need to be slowing the rise of and eventually reducing CO2 emissions, we can transition the entire economy to coal and at the same time get sequestration going sufficient to handle all the extra CO2. Gosh, that seems awfully optimistic.
What about the global social, economic, and environmental nightmare that is coal mining? Presumably there's some silver bullet to make that clean too?
In a follow-up to the article Klein cites, NRDC director David Hawkins says this:
May I suggest we need a two-pronged approach to fighting the damage caused by today's production and use of coal. First and foremost, we need a much more rapid expansion of the role that efficiency and renewables play in meeting our energy needs. At the same time, we need effective rules to protect us wherever coal is produced and used.
Klein says, "in the end, we know what we'd turn to: coal." Hawkins doesn't sound quite as sanguine about it.
"None of this is to downplay the costs or dangers of an energy crunch," Klein avers. But yeah. It is to do exactly that. Bizarrely so.
What am I missing?
Update [2006-3-28 23:43:20 by David Roberts]: The Oil Drum crowd chews it over.
Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7
Comments
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Bart Anderson Posted 9:55 am
28 Mar 2006
They do rather airly dispense with the massive economic dislocations that would result. Peter Tertzakian ("A Thousand Barrels a Second") points out that energy systems are extremely difficult and expensive to change.
In addition, even if carbon sequestration can scale up, it will add expense. It will be tempting to burn dirty coal and to hell with the CO2. Do we anticipate that all the countries in the world would police themselves? The outlook is not good.
Nathan Lewis of Caltech takes the position that coal could replace oil, though with catastrophic side effects such as global warming. For him, the best way to avoid the problem is to develop cheap PV cells. (Lewis gives an excellent, though dense talk on energy here (halfway down the page) / more material here )
On the other hand....
John Quiggin's point is a welcome antidote to the end of the world / survivalist scenarios that crop up among Peak Oil folks. To my mind, these scenarios distract us from the real problems which will be economic, political and envrionmental.
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jdeely Posted 2:00 pm
28 Mar 2006
We need a very large carbon tax so that people will switch off coal and oil faster than they will by so-called peak oil. CO2 and global warming is the real problem. Peak oil is a joke.
As oil prices rise, more oil will be found and produced, more shale oil will come online and substitutes will be found. This is simple economics.
Two small examples of substitution caused by oil prices rising... from what will be 1000's of examples over the next thirty years.
Corn based Plastics
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20060301/priority-costs.html
Coal Based Jet-Fuel
http://www.physorg.com/news12146.html
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odograph Posted 2:08 pm
28 Mar 2006
People are building a few coal-to-oil plants, but I find it astounding that they think a ramp-up to continue the current trend in oil consumption is possible.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:06 pm
28 Mar 2006
Will they back nuclear power next? It wouldn't be a surprise given this endorsement of coal.
My guess is they were coopted by DC lobbyists. No environmental organization should hire DC insiders, the place is filthy with crooking.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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sunflower Posted 6:16 am
29 Mar 2006
You will all be on your own for survival sans money. That means heat from burning anything at hand, most likely lumps of coal in the home for heat, hot water, and cooking.
Add to this problem 20 feet sea rise from Greenland and 250 feet from Antarctica. I do not think blogs and "what we should do" will make a wit of difference.
The situation is grim but not hopeless. Solar energy, if developed in time, can create a billion jobs around the globe. Solar energy is cheaper than coal.
Henry Ford made good paying jobs so his employees can buy his cars. The same can be done with district heating plus seasonal-heat-storage powered by solar collectors.
The first step is leadership.
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DaveKimble Posted 9:31 am
29 Mar 2006
they look carefully at the amount of time it takes to set up a manufacturing capability in various different unconventional transport fuel processes.
The coal-to-liquid Sasol process set up in South Africa is a good example. Having completed a new plant, and before all the technical staff drifted away to other things, the government decided to build a duplicate facility on the same site, using exactly the same plans.
They thus had everything going for them - environmental impact assessments done, planning permission granted, designs all worked out and the wrinkles already overcome, experienced staff and workers, external supplies and support infrastructure already in place.
And the time to build the second plant to the point of commissioning ? 3 years.
So one could easily expect that without all these favourable factors, the project would take six years, or even ten years if there is a strong NIMBY protest movement in the locality.
More than enough time for oil depletion to have brought on astronomical oil prices, recession, labour unrest, housing bubble collapse, US Dollar/banking crash, wildly uncertain future for energy prices.
Hardly the environment to be undertaking a massively energy-intensive long-term energy project.
We are now not just at Peak Oil, we are at Peak Energy and Peak Population.
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OregonJim Posted 12:59 pm
29 Mar 2006
But more fundamental is the arithmetic issue. A great physicist at U. Colorado, Albert Bartlett, made a film that explains it clearly. The important thing is Exponential Growth. Our use of oil in the last 15 years has grown at about 3.5% per year. Using the Rule of 70, you can divide 70 by 3.5 and find that we will double our usage of oil in 15 years - using up in the next 15 years as much as we used since the discovery of oil in 1859. The same holds true for coal. Economists tell us that "at present rates of consumption" we have enough for hundreds of years. But we increase our use of coal by a certain percentage annually, and now we would add the requirements of replacing the oil we have been using, which has amounted to some 40% of our total energy use. So we add 40% to our present consumptions, even if we could build the infrastructure in time, and then increase that by a steady percentage of 3-4%, and we would run out of coal in a couple of decades. So that is not the answer I want. It seems to me that hoping for coal or gas or nucs or whatever is more of a way of avoiding the issue than a potential answer. I don't know the answer, I hasten to add, but at least I am not escaping into denial. Acknowledging the truth is the first step. Ask any drunk.
Oregon Jim
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odograph Posted 11:29 pm
29 Mar 2006
But it strikes me that one plausable future is that the US government understands that there is a looming oil shortfall, but is trapped in their policy response. Or feels trapped.
So I think what they think is that they'll sit tight and let prices change American priorities. Maybe they expect a return to the 70's, with a scramble for efficient cars, carpooling, mopeds, etc.
I'd like something more proactive than that, but I can understand (given the basic limits of modern representative democracy) why they can't do more without immediately killing GM through efficiency mandates, and sending economic shockwaves.
(And there isn't currently backing for a taxpayer funded remake of GM into a fuel efficiency company.)
GM may die anyway, but it won't be their "fault" at election time. They can all pretend ethanol will work short-term, until short-term prices disprove it.
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