Comments LPS has made

  • Best laid plans

    Renewable energies now contribute approximately twice what they contribued in 1850 (percentage-wise). Modern industrial civilization runs of fossil fuels, without equivocation. Those fuels are set to diminish and will not be supplanted or substituted in kind with renewables. Energy scarcity is the future. That is the future reality that we should be addressing.On Greenpeace assesses the carbon footprint of Obama's stimulus plan posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 5 Responses

  • "move beyond the era of fossil fuels" ?

    Surely Mr. Davies jests.
    On Greenpeace assesses the carbon footprint of Obama's stimulus plan posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 5 Responses

  • If you believe

    that we need to be most of the way to zero by 2020 or 2030 (or 2050 for that matter), I'd start thinking about Plan B, or somewhere on down the alphabet.
    On We need to cut emissions faster than 80 percent by 2050, but how fast? posted 10 months, 1 week ago 39 Responses

  • Yup, peak oil

    appears to me to be the most immediate threat to industrial societies.

    That's not to say that global warming may not have more dire and far-reaching consequences, but I don't think we're looking at anywhere near the same time frames. I would not dismiss the global cultural dislocations and dramatic consequences for human populations that may occur as the result of peak oil.

    Or, as George Carlin opined, this may all just be nature's way of shrugging us all off.On The energy and climate challenge for Obama posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 3 Responses

  • "Salad. It's what food eats"

    Saw that on a t-shirt a few years back.On Grist cooks lunch for America's leading food writer posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 11 Responses

  • "At current rates of consumption

    That coal may last for another 200-300 years usually is prefaced by the caveat "at current rates of consumption." If consumption rates grow at a fixed rate of even 1%, the "exponential expiration time" decreases markedly.

    The arguments advanced by EWG and David Rutledge, among others, are compelling.On U.S. coal supply may last only 10-20 years posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 8 Responses

  • I just don't know, Joe

    I don't buy into the end-of-the-world stuff. Part of me says, all right, maybe so. If we're so damned concerned about the planet, this is the best case scenario. The rest of the world would probably be better off without humans in the picture altogether.

    But I don't think humans will be out of the picture no matter what may transpire, albeit with far fewer numbers. As for CO2 anyway, I think the IPCC projections are overstated, judging by what I've read of Rutledge and the Energy Watch Group. 'Course, can't say about all the secondary feedback effects.

    I like what I've read of William Ruddiman, who posits a pulse of CO2 ending sometime in the latter part of this century or into the next century. Several hundred to several thousand years for the CO2 to largely, though not entirely, be scrubbed from the atmosphere. Ultimately, solar forcings reassert themselves and we eventually drift into the next ice age. But I also agree with Ruddiman that squandering all of our other natural resources may turn out to as great, or greater, a problem.

    Finally, many people seem to have said that the time for real action was yesterday, and I take them at their word. Making real changes now that have meaningful impacts, given the political and, frankly, the energy realities, seem like an optical delusion. I don't see that CO2 curve coming down from anything other than exhaustion of the carbon-releasing resources.

    Predicting future events certainly is a problematic task. It's hard enough to predict the past.On The Obama's climate dream team, new sea-level rise, less arctic ice volume, and more posted 11 months ago 5 Responses

  • Jon,

    You raise some interesting points, but unfortunately it is a little late for me to dwell on it all. I may have overstated, or perhaps mistated, my belief in energy as a historical prime mover. There is no doubt that fossil fuels are incidental without the technology to harness them.

    What I see are the interconnections between the inherent ability to grow populations (see the evidence/debate surrounding population dynamics among hunter-gatherers), the ability to acquire food (energy) and attendant technology, and related depletions of natural resources. Intensification of production begets increases in population in cyclical patterns that lead to inevitable resource depletions. The machinery to which you speak really accelerated in the middle ages and the cycles have become increasingly aggressive and comptetive, eventually conscripting science on its behalf, for the last 500 years. As the systems become more complex, the energy needs (including the technology for harnessing that energy) are further magnified.

    I have read Diamond and take a number lessons from his work. However, this "resistance" is not a conlcusion unto itself, and somehow I believe that the idea of discount rates, discussed by Nate Hagens over at TheOilDrum is somehow related. Barabara Tuchman has written about societies that apparently made decisions contrary to their own best interests.

    Diamond himself traces these destructive cycles back at least to the most impressive development in all of human cultural evolution, the domestication of plants and animals and the origin of sedentary life. Marvin Harris has developed a more comprehensive analysis of these very interactions. To my mind (and even more so Diamond's), the jury is still out on the adaptive value of the neolithic stage in human cultural evolution. It is not a coincidence that following the domestication of plants and animals, heirachical social organizations, division of labor, the subserviance of the many to the few, and the origin of states, was not far behind.

    But one of my main points of contention, taken largely from Harris, and buttressed by my own archaeological training (but now in physical sciences) is that all of the great changes in culture were not anticipated by the participants or informed by their aspirations. They were unconscious developments that could never have been predicted at the time. It was not their rational goal. My guess is that what the world will look like decades into the future will bear little resemblence to what we imagine, or what we desire.

    Anyway, it's late. Hope to continue this on some other thread.

    There are other expert analyses which I am trying to find the time to acquire and digest. First and foremost is the anthropologist Leslie White, and William Catton, cited a number of times by Heinberg.

    What we have now is a massively complex arrangement made possible almost exclusively by the drawdown of ancient sunlight, the magnitude of which is staggering.

    George Mobus has also though a lot about this, and I am serious about asking him for a contribution. You could do this perhaps. I'm a nobody.On The economy is an ecosystem, and industrial policy will help that ecosystem posted 11 months, 1 week ago 24 Responses

  • Pardon me

    for a few random obervations. First, George Mobus who comments frequently has some excellent ideas and I recommend that you visit his website and read his posts. I wish I had more time to digest them--wish I had more time for a lot of things. He should be tapped for some guest posts.

    If you follow the energy, you will learn almost everything you need to know. The global economic system has strayed far from transactions of tangible value, in part due to our ability to acquire energy subsidies. It is noteworthy that M. King Hubbert himself viewed our current debt and interest system maladaptive and argued for a economic system rooted more directly in matter/energy exchanges.

    It is also instructive to view human history (including prehistory) through the lens of energy flow and acquisition. It all makes so much more sense. As Mobus suggests, energy is the currency of life, a central point in Richard Heinberg's synthesis, and is one reason why peak oil (and coal) is such a compelling issue. It would be compelling even if, for example, global warming was "solved" tomorrow.

    I find anthropology and human ecology far more enlightening than reading about the latest new technology that will "save" us or the latest economic instrument designed to salvage a system crushed under its own weight.

    Finally, and somewhat more radonmly I suppose, there seems to me an assumption that a combination of science and technology together with "sound" economic policy will be the solution to the current human condition. If only we could act rationally. Assuming that anybody adheres to this idea, I find it to be a dubious proposition, even if we might all find examples of truly rational decision making, or believe ourselves to act more-or-less in a rational way. However, we generally do not act this way, individually or collectively, and are not even aware that we do not.On The economy is an ecosystem, and industrial policy will help that ecosystem posted 11 months, 1 week ago 24 Responses

  • The big problem is energy

    or the possibilities of great shortfalls. That may come first with drastic reductions in available oil, whether the production peak is rooted in lack of investment, in geology, or other "above-ground" factors. Such a condition might precipitate a financial crisis of epic proportion and/or desperate measures to increase unconvential resources. Like it or not, the world still runs primarily on hydrocarbons, whether liquid fuel for transportation or coal and nat gas for electricity. So here is the great race to keep civilization humming. But this race ignores the many other limits on growth rooted in massive populations with enormous appetites for food, water, and goods. Certainly the question remains whether such an enormous transformation in the human condition can take place within such a short time, keeping in mind that there is no evidence that any major change in human cultural evolution was the result of conscious aspirations of the participants. That's not to say that this time will not be an exception, but only that we are dealing with poor odds.On Kunstler's tips to prepare for a post-oil society posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 83 Responses

  • Maybe part buffoon, part prophet

    I think Kunstler gets in the craw of the techno-fix crowd. Kunstler believes that all of this new technology will just not be scaled up in any way shape or form before the time serious oil depletions kick in, and there is nobody on earth that can prove that this will not be the case. And while that doesn't make it true, it does make it plausible. People just hate that. He is often offensive and snide, and people just hate that too. I'm not offended.

    My own point of view is informed more by Richard Heinberg's attempts to understand the human trajectory of population/energy/resource interactions, which lead, however, to many of the same conclusions.On Kunstler's tips to prepare for a post-oil society posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 83 Responses

  • Please explain

    where the magical thinking is? I paint a nearly textbook scenario for a higher CO2 atmosphere together with William Ruddiman's forecasts for resulting long-term trends.On Fossil CO2 impacts will outlast Stonehenge and nuclear waste posted 12 months ago 5 Responses

  • Sounds about right

    and probably what is going to happen. My best guess is that the great bulk of the carbon will be combusted this century and the only real reduction will occur as the coal begins to deplete. Despite what people claim "can happen" to subtantially alter this scenario, I believe it is doubtful that anything "will happen" of any consequence. The reality of energy scacity and the needs of the present will render long-range efforts ineffective and inadequate. They were always long-shots anyway.

    So what we will have is a relatively short, but high amplitute pulse of CO2 that will begin to be scrubbed from the atmosphere in some kind of asymptotic fashion. Large reductions in the first 1,000-2,000 years, and a long tail lasting for several more millenia. Eventually, the net effect of positive forcings will be moderated and the 100,000-year solar forcing cycle will reassert itself, possibly resulting in a delayed return to the Pleistocene ice ages, which themselves are superimposed on a long-term cooling trend that began some 55 million years ago or so.

    That's what I think will happen. I'm sure many will disagree.

    I often wonder the following (only tangentially related to the issue): Suppose we were on the cusp of a natural cooling trend--a new glaciation--that would result in a continental ice sheet stretching across North America as far south as St. Louis. Would we try to stop it?

    And I often wonder about the following: Suppose global warming were solved tomorrow. That would not solve the fundamental problem of the human condition.On Fossil CO2 impacts will outlast Stonehenge and nuclear waste posted 12 months ago 5 Responses

  • Assuming peak oil between by 2015

    or earlier, I have yet to see a compelling case that some combination of conservation and alternative energy will see us through the ever accelerating shortfalls. I think we are talking a major challenge to the financial system that may make the current credit crisis appear to be only the overture to the symphony. Not to mention increasingly aggressive global conflict and social upheaval. On Climate change and peak oil point us toward the same policies posted 1 year ago 5 Responses

  • The Oil Addiction

    SongOn It's time to break the American addiction to oil posted 1 year, 2 months ago 12 Responses

  • It's odd

    that republicans seem to have won this game. Most folks, I suspect, do not understand the ins and outs of oil supply, oil reserves, USGS projections and probabilities, net exports, peak oil, and so on. All they probably know is that republicans support increasing our domestic supply by drilling and that democrats apparently do not.

    Say no more. Game over.On Excerpt from acceptance speech released posted 1 year, 2 months ago 12 Responses

  • Sounds

    about right.On Last flight out posted 1 year, 6 months ago 7 Responses

  • I couldn't decide

    if it was crass or genius, so I had to watch it again. I still can't decide...On How to get people to pay attention to peak oil posted 1 year, 6 months ago 45 Responses

  • Not just Rutledge

    but see also work done by the Energy Watch Group. At-length discussions have occurred on TheOilDrum.com.On IPCC likely too optimistic about recoverable coal posted 1 year, 6 months ago 20 Responses

  • Very good summation,

    bigTom.

    Jon,
    I have two close friends who are petroleum geologists (small, independent exploration co.). One is quite into peak oil and an avid reader of TheOilDrum, the other is aware but doesn't give it that much thought. A mutual friend of all of us, and the director of "Crude Impact," was how I learned of peak oil several years ago. He was making a documentary version of "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," and interviewed Hartmann extensively. When Hartmann says 30-50 years, I still have to believe he is talking about the last of the oil, not the peak. But you never know, maybe you correctly interpret his thoughts on the matter from his program. I haven't heard it.

    I teach a seminar to high school seniors on the subject of peak oil. I have a top geophysicist from Shell coming in to tell us that peak oil is now. His son, one of my students, puts it more bluntly: "My dad says that anybody who doesn't believe that peak oil is now is a retard."On Are low gas prices an inalienable right? posted 1 year, 7 months ago 34 Responses

  • I'm a little surprised

    that Hartmann would completely agree with Sanders, considering he is the author of a book largely about peak oil and judging by his statements in the peak oil documentary, "Crude Impact."  On Are low gas prices an inalienable right? posted 1 year, 7 months ago 34 Responses

  • How soon $200 oil?

    I don't think it is a stretch to believe that oil will hit $200/barrel long before 2012. If so, gas prices are likely to go far above $4/gallon. Not simply higher prices, but the possibility of shortages may also become a reality. This would be a serious condition. By some estimates, the price of gas is the number one issue in the nation. By 2012, the price energy (along with the price of everything else), and even the availability of energy may be the only issue anybody will care about.On Bush, Big Oil offer more of the same posted 1 year, 7 months ago 6 Responses

  • It's all about

    oil.On Are you spending more money on food? posted 1 year, 7 months ago 8 Responses

  • Why censor?

    The Wiki criticism is not entirely damning, nor does it suggest that the ideas contained therein are entirely without merit. However, I do not disagree that the criticism should be ignored.

    So, rather than stifling critical thought, I would suggest reading the original thesis, reading the critique, then read:

    Olduvai Revisited
    On Wow posted 1 year, 8 months ago 19 Responses

  • Have you read?

    The Olduvai TheoryOn Wow posted 1 year, 8 months ago 19 Responses

  • Neither rational nor irrational

    People are neither rational nor irrational--they are rationalizing.

    For example, you appear to be rational, but are poorly informed (even though you think you are). Does that make your opinions or behavior irrational?
    On What behavioral economics has to offer posted 1 year, 8 months ago 8 Responses

  • Airlines are signing contracts because

    they believe Daniel Yergin, CERA, and the EIA. A growing number of experts believe otherwise.On Reducing your carbon footprint from travel posted 1 year, 8 months ago 41 Responses

  • Is that the right attitude?

    tico89,

    Yes.On Reducing your carbon footprint from travel posted 1 year, 8 months ago 41 Responses

  • On vacation

    I know I am going to travel by air all I can before fares become too high or jet fuel becomes scarce.On Reducing your carbon footprint from travel posted 1 year, 8 months ago 41 Responses

  • LPS

    We have taken out a loan, virtually free energy, from the earth in the form of ancient sunlight. It has enabled a level of growth unparalled in the history of the species. The bank account is running dry and the interest--climate change--is the gift that keeps on giving. Now the margin calls are in. Is the best course to pump "liquidity" into the system, only to deepen the crisis with unforseeable, unintended consequences?

    I say, let the system collapse naturally. It will be a different world, with fewer species and perhaps without humans at all. But there will be a new, more sustainable currency in place for the survivors.On Messing with nature more won't fix the messes we've already made posted 1 year, 8 months ago 4 Responses

  • To bigTom and Jon

    BigTom and Jon,
    I think both of you put that quite nicely and bigTom you answered my questions directly. I have to admit that I vascilate between despair and activism and do not think they are mutually exclusive. But I also believe that there are a great many who do not understand the nature of our our energy predicament, so I was probing. I teach a seminar to high school seniors on the subjects of global warming and peak oil and thus walk a fine line between alarmism and hope. It is very easy to lose one's perspective or to wonder what perspectives are realistic. Or whether I will have a job in a few short years.On A post-petroleum American dream posted 1 year, 8 months ago 17 Responses

  • Oil availability?

    BigTom,
    What makes you believe that we will have oil availability for several decades? What makes you think the decline will be gradual? But if you wish it, maybe it will come true!On A post-petroleum American dream posted 1 year, 8 months ago 17 Responses

  • The final spiral?

    "What is largely ignored in all the discussion of economic recovery is that world oil production is likely to start its final decline somewhere in the next 36 to 48 months. Once this becomes evident, prices will start moving much, much higher and shortages will develop. In an environment such as this, recovery from a recession will be far more difficult and is likely to be measured in decades rather than months."

    "The final spiral will not be difficult to recognize when it comes. Equity markets will drop precipitously. Nearly all economic indicators will turn negative. Oil and other commodities will continue to climb. While this phenomenon will start, or has already started, from the U.S. housing situation, it will spread to other OECD countries, and Asia. For a while, perhaps decades, the oil producing and exporting states will fare much better than those dependent on large imports."

    "There is much heated debate over whether and how soon there will be a "techno-fix" for the decline of oil - wind, wave, and solar power, electric transport and much lower energy consumption. The factors bearing on how the various techno-fixes will play out are so numerous and interdependent that it is impossible to make much of a judgment about when or whether they will come in sufficient quantities to continue with anything resembling current civilization."

    "The decline in the availability of affordable oil is likely to come in a relatively quick spiral while widely implemented replacements for oil are likely to be measured in decades."

    --Tom Whipple, Fall Church News, 13 March 2008On A post-petroleum American dream posted 1 year, 8 months ago 17 Responses

  • No alarmism, do your homework

    There is not going to be a great new supply of oil and Colin Wright is basically correct regarding the Brazilian discovery. It doesn't take a whole lot of resourcefulness to come to this conclusion and Jason appears to be astonishingly uninformed.

    Trock forwards an valid argument, which has long been the message of Prof. Albert Bartlett. And the work of Laherrere, Rutledge, and the Energy Watch Group recently have tended to support the notion that coal reserves are overestimated. Part of the problem lies with the distinction between reserves and resources, but also with what is believed to be "economically" recoverable. More compelling are Rutledge's trend lines, which are astounding in their relentless linearity. Peak Coal? 2025-2030.

    Rynn and Wright hit the nail on the head. You can go to school on these guys.On Rising cost of oil pushes value of the dollar down posted 1 year, 8 months ago 27 Responses

  • Also, a question for Onward through the Fog

    Why do many environmentalists concerned with climate change cast a blind eye on peak oil and the real elephant in the room, population growth? Why are they so naive? By the way, Onward through the Fog, I really enjoy your posts. Are you referencing, by any chance, the Power Hitter?On What drives climate change denial? posted 1 year, 8 months ago 34 Responses

  • I want, I want

    What you and I want makes little difference. I simply believe that all of these technologies combined will not be scaled up in any time frame that is meaningful.On A cascade of news shows that coal is on the ropes posted 1 year, 9 months ago 12 Responses

  • Coal ain't going away

    Switching to natural gas for electrical generation is absurd. You're just using up a precious resource even faster. Natural gas is poised to fall of a cliff. When renewables can't be ramped up and the cost of electricity "skyrockets," nobody is going to give a damn. Peak coal = 2025.On A cascade of news shows that coal is on the ropes posted 1 year, 9 months ago 12 Responses

  • oil is not the problem

    Oil is not the problem. The culprit is coal. Anyway, we're going to burn through all of the petroleum, period. And it's my guess that we're going to burn through all of the coal. The IPCC, by the way, overestimates the amount of CO2 emissions due to oil and coal combustion, but that's not much consolation.On A new climate science paper calls for dramatic action posted 1 year, 9 months ago 26 Responses

  • Ain't gunna happen

    In the end, I suspect that no real (measurable) change will occur in carbon emissions no matter what plan is bandied about. I agree with Robert Rapier's new post over on The Oil Drum. This is all whistling Dixie.

    "How I learned to stop worrying and love global warming." --Stanley Kubrik On The major differences between carbon pricing plans are political posted 1 year, 9 months ago 16 Responses

  • toast

    I guess we all make our interpretations. Mine is: as oil depletion begins to accelerate, we're toast.On A picture worth many thousands of words posted 1 year, 10 months ago 3 Responses

  • Clusterblog

    GreyFlcn,
    Well, this may just be a case of a clusterblog. I do not support in the least attempting to drill or gasify our way out of oil dependency, because I do not think that it is possible. On the other hand, I think it will be attempted.

    Au contraire, I am very concerned that the coming energy crisis (and by that I do not mean necessarily climate crisis) could be extremely bad news. I think it is coming before there is a chance for any alternative energy to scale-up in time to compensate for depletion rates and overwhelm any attempts at conservation. This is particularly relevant with regard to liquid fuel for transportation, at least if one places credence in many of the analyses posted on The Oil Drum or published elsewhere in article or book form. What I am saying is that sometime very soon, the expense and/or availability of liquid fuel for transportation, together the run-up in cost of just about everything else, and including as a result difficulty in maintaining a workforce, jobs themselves, health care, etc., and the maintenance of all infrastructure may become the predominant reality and the foremost concern in the public mind.

    Furthermore, I look at the energy crisis (and as far as this comment is concerned--separately and distinct from climate considerations) in a more comprehensive way. As part of a series of cycles of intensification of production, population growth, and resource depletion that may even pre-date the origins of agriculture. But now the potential for devastating effects across the globe, including the availability fresh water and the depletion of topsoil and minerals other than petroleum, may be of equal concern to climate change, despite all the "ink" devoted to discussing the latter.

    On the other hand, I could be wrong. I don't presume to know, but as you see I have my thoughts on the matter. I was curious as to how David viewed the situation.
    On Nukes don't replace oil posted 1 year, 10 months ago 39 Responses

  • Interesting question

    GreyFlcn,
    I think you pose an interesting question and I don't presume to know the answer. I have my opinions, but I'm not particularly interested in broadcasting them. I was simply asking David his thoughts on the matter of peak oil, not asking for a value judgment. I'm not exactly clear why you juxtapose a focus on increasing or on decreasing the use of fossil fuels.
    On Nukes don't replace oil posted 1 year, 10 months ago 39 Responses

  • Speaking of oil

    David,
    Tangentially, I'm curious about your take on peak oil. I'm sure you are familiar with the serious work being done at TheOilDrum by the likes of Stuart Staniford and Jeffrey J. Brown that paint a potential dire picture. Not only may we face far more expensive oil in the next few years, but the real possibility of shortages, with profound implications for the economy. If oil begins to become scarce, won't this trump about every other energy-related issue? Will not the rising cost and availability of liquid fuel make the expected costs for all energy-related projects far greater? I don't have the expertise to evaluate these analyses.

    Just curious.  On Nukes don't replace oil posted 1 year, 10 months ago 39 Responses

  • 2+2=?

    46,000 square miles is still 46,000 square miles. Make yourself any kind of mental image you wish. Ain't gunna happen. Not in a million years. And that's quite a long time. Well, sort of.

    No matter, it's all talk anyway. As soon as they start, whenever that is, I'll start adding up the square...footage.On A roadmap to getting 70 percent of U.S. electricity from solar by 2050 posted 1 year, 10 months ago 42 Responses

  • Better get cracking

    46,000 square miles, huh? That's, uh, let's see, the area of Pennsylvania.
    On A roadmap to getting 70 percent of U.S. electricity from solar by 2050 posted 1 year, 10 months ago 42 Responses