A Perfect Storm Cometh: Lucy! We're hooooome!

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Lucy! We're hooooome!

The image is at once unnerving, surreal and calming: coming home to a place you no longer know, and that no longer recognizes you. Walking the dusty ground and the ancient rock of Olduvai must be an awe-inspiring experience for those from a more modern world. The sort of experience a typical American might get visiting some of the very old or ancient sites of Europe, our sense of the age of human kind being so poorly developed by TV, video games, shopping malls and the like. Having seen Roman columns in Sevilla Spain, ancient forests in Costa Rica, stone temples in Korea, and more, I can imagine just a little the awe that might come over one at Olduvai speaking a silent "I'm home" to Lucy.

Going home again tends to be either joyful or traumatizing - or at least stressful. How and why we go home matters. Home for the holidays to a warm and loving family, who wouldn't look forward to that? Home for an extended period after the collapse of a marriage, hitting hard financial times, to care for a sick and/or dying parent... who would look forward to that? The one is full of happy moments (perhaps punctuated with the old bickering that families all do), the other is full of self-doubt, uncomfortable explanations, broken expectations and the sheer difficulty of living differently in a place that is no longer yours. These may be the choices we face as we race towards the end of cheap energy (at least, unless or until we harness solar energy on a grand scale).

In Olduvai Revisited 2008, an update to the Olduvai Gorge Theory proposed by Richard Duncan, Luís de Sousa and Euan Mearns of TheOilDrum:Europe present to us the choices we may face in how we go back to Olduvai Gorge. In a series of scenarios for the end of the Fossil Fuel age, the data suggests we may yet have a choice as to how we go home. We can go home beggers, paupers, broken and beaten, or we can go home with good news of grand new ways of doing things, and maybe a better life for all. They conclude:

According to our analysis, conventional fossil fuels are set to peak in a decade or so and following that, decline will open an ever widening gap from today's per capita energy use. Based on finite FF resources, energy per capita is indeed headed towards a cliff, and this may lead Mankind back to the Olduvai Gorge if action is not taken to address this problem. Many of those who have studied this problem in the past have concluded that the journey back to Olduvai is unavoidable.

The analysis presented here suggests that it is within the capacity of human endeavor to build new energy gathering infrastructure to substitute for the decline in conventional fossil fuels. By combining energy efficiency measures with the simultaneous expansion of solar, wind and nuclear energy Mankind may secure a civilised existence for the XXI century. A tremendous opportunity exists to build a more sustainable energy future and building this future will provide vast opportunity for economic growth and prosperity...

The next two to three decades are crucial, where the fastest build of alternative infrastructure is needed, and when the efficiency wedge will have the slowest effect. But the numbers contemplated here are not insurmountable, and should be tackled with the right commitment and timely action.

Click here for a video presentation of the above.

We have a choice. Do we go home to Lucy for a visit to our ancient ancestral home full of hope, vigor and new ideas for the Old Mother to squint at and whisper small wonders at, or do we go home out of desperation to share what little resources remain, struggling to survive as long as we can before the dust covers our bones and we are dug from the rock in some far future? Are we to be wondered at by beings puzzling at how we could have traveled so far just to end up back where, and how, we began?

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Where We Stand

Economic Crisis

Peak Oil
* Peak production appears to have occurred in 2005 or 2008. Certainly, production has been on a plateau since 2004-5. The recession and the high prices from last year caused falling demand. This is brought on lower prices. That caused new production projects to be slowed, delayed or stopped. Because starting up projects takes much longer than shutting them down, this will likely lead to oil shortages if the economy and demand rebound, certainly by 2012 or so.

UPDATE Nov. '09: The new IEA World Energy Outlook revised **downward** to 105 million barrels a day it's projections for future oil production. What they are saying is, over the next 20 years, we won't be finding much oil. Whistle blowers, one still employed, one not, say even this is wishful thinking. We agree. We have thought so for two or three years. They also say the decline rate is higher than admitted - and it was already 4.2%!!! This means we are looking at, what? Six percent? Eight? At six percent we lose the equivalent of Saudi Arabia every two years. Of course, we aren't finding that much new, recoverable oil each year and haven't for decades. Where's the extra coming from?

** Peak occurred from 2005 to 2008. It is slightly possible we could exceed past production in the next two years *if* there is economic growth as there is some spare capacity and some new spare capacity came on this year. There appears to be just enough new oil coming online - or there would have been if projects hadn't been shut in due to the economic crash - the next two years to barely stay even. After that, decline will have eaten away two Saudi Arabias and it will be impossible to reach a new high.

* Production surpasses new oil discoveries by a margin of 3 :1 or 4:1. This is unsustainable.

*The global economic downturn may decrease these numbers, which would help slow the fall down the back slope of the decline curve.

* The "Export Land" Model (.pdf) shows increased consumption in oil exporting nations leads to decreasing exports. Exports dropped by 3% in 2006. For oil importing nations, this means oil availability falls 2x to 3x the global decline rate.

* Current prices make some alternative energy projects economically infeasible. While oil is depleting and declining, the low prices and economic crash are impacting our ability to ramp up renewables to replace fossil fuel-based energy.

* OPEC has announced (1/2/08) future production is in peril. Many believe OPEC cannot raise their current production by more than 3 million barrels a day. Ever. Or can do so only at the cost of future production. I.e., they must choose between their own citizens and the rest of the world.

* A nice, but older, overview (.pdf). Its age, 2005, makes the time lines a little longer than seems probable. Still, excellent forecasting.

People & Power - Peaked - 06 Jan 08 - Part 1.
(Part 2 can be found on youtube.)
An excellent overview of Peak Oil right now.

Climate Change
* James Hansen, et al., published some very important papers (article) this year. Conclusions are thus:

1. The world is at @ 392 ppm CO2, but irreversible climate change happens at just 350, which we passed decades ago. This is why time is shorter than it seems.

2. The goal now is to stop warming at only 2 degrees C. This will still mean seas rising a meter or more and climate change globally, but we may be able to stabilize there. It also means reducing carbon emissions by 90% by 2100. That's creating an entirely new energy system in less than a century. We did that already, but that was when there was virtually no infrastructure in place.

3. Action must be taken in a very short time period. Waiting ten years is almost certainly too long. The silver lining that comes with Peak Oil? It may give us no choice but to act sooner rather than later. The solutions for Peak Oil and Climate Change are the same (except for bio-fuels.) This situation is unprecedented in human history.

* The Arctic melted to an extraordinary degree in 2007 and nearly as much in 2008 - despite perfect conditions for 2008. This is THE canary in the coal mine. Back in February, when the first of three IPCC (Those rock-n-rollers of recent Nobel fame.) reports came out and didn't include ice melt in their projections, I was stunned. Various scientists, also. I knew viscerally that change was coming faster than they stated. Much faster. The summer melt validated that view. Hold on to your hats. f you know anything of Chaos, bifurcations, tipping points and non-linear systems, you're probably as scared as I am.

* New findings of methane being released from the Arctic permafrost and sea floor, along with increased atmospheric methane are ominous signs we may be well past key tipping points. There have been massive, abrupt climate changes in the past due to the release of methan clathrates from the sea floor.

The Big Melt - Arctic ice melt accelerates by 20+%.

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Thursday, February 28, 2008

Lucy! We're hooooome!

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