JugSouthgate wrote:I think you've read the doomsday books but not understood the math nor the engineering issues.

Actually, I don't believe you have done the math on the engineering and especially the relevant entropy (2nd law of thermodynamics) issues. Let's do this in detail.

First let me clarify that 1Q = 10^15 BTU, so with about 5667 Q of cola left, and consuming it (especially now in cola-fired power plants) at the rate of 50-60Q/yr. it will barely last 100 years, if that.

Next the factors of oil consumption and population growth on existing stores of oil - which btw, is the most energy dense fuel sustaining our jet planes, cargo chips, glass factories, etc. ..not to mention the manufacture of them.

First off, we use EROEI or 'energy return on energy invested', - based on the actual chemical-energy of fuels- that none even remotely approach that for oil!

Oil used to have an EROEI as high as 30. It only took one barrel of oil to extract 30 barrels of oil. This was such a fantastic ratio that oil was practically free energy. Some oil wells had EROEI ratios close to 100. Now, it has fallen to around 18 is still falling - a sure sign we are fast approaching peak. (See also the info at: www.dieoff.org)

The world currently consumes about 82.5 million barrels of oil per day. The US consumes about 20 million of these, of which approximately 12.5 million are used for transportation.

More critical, is the food component of oil - that's hardly mentioned except by the inner circle cognoscenti. To be blunt, oil = food, given that it provides the primary bulk of fertilizer to support the "green" revolution - or what's left of it. Take away the oil fertilizers, and famine follows. On a mass, global multi -billions level scale.

In his 'Thoughts on Long-Term Energy Supplies: Scientists and the Silent Lie', in Physics Today, July, 2004, Albert Bartlett (p. 53) pinpoints the failure to name human population growth as a major cause of our energy and resource problems.

Bartlett avers that:

“their (scientists’) general reticence stems from the fact that it is politically incorrect or unpopular to argue for stabilization of population – at least in the U.S. Or perhaps scientists are uncomfortable stepping outside their specialized areas of expertise”.

To put the numbers in terms of fixing ideas, Bartlett - in a follow-up article in Physics Today, November, 2004, p. 18, noted that in the 1970s there were about 2.2 liters per person per day of oil. Of this, nearly 1.3 liters went to food production, processing, preparation or distribution. And that was in a world with nearly 2.7 billion FEWER people!

Today, we are down to a production level of barely 1.6 liters per person per day while the consumption level approaches 4 liters per person per day. After Peak Oil, the latter will continue to increase, while the former will diminish by about 2-3% per year.

human population!

Indeed, one can break it down to a basic differential equation embodying a related rate- in this case the rate of decrease of available cheap energy needed as the population continually increases. According to current stats (Physics Today, Weisz, p. 47, July 2004), the global oil demand is expected to grow 2-3% per year, and the population by 1.5% per year.

In this case:

-dQ/ dt ~ {rate of demand on Q per year + rate of population growth translated into a yearly demand on Q)

where the LHS represents the depletion rate of available oil resources, and the RHS gives the “sinks” that deplete them. Note the 1st term assumes only the pure economic, e.g. GDP-“growth” demands for increase, not population)

In concrete terms, if 500 billion barrels (dQ) of relatively cheap oil remain after next year, and (as of 2003), 28 billion barrels of year are consumed per year, and the combined term on the RHS increases this by 4.5% per year – what do you get?

Here is where it sits in most basic terms:

The planet was endowed with ~ 3,000 billion barrels of oil – of which we’ve consumed 1,000 billion barrels. 500 billion barrels of relatively cheap oil remains, after which 1000 billion barrels of “break-even” oil remains (costs as much to access as it delivers), after which 500 billion barrels of very expensive oil remains (costs much more to reach it than it deliver in energy).

At the heart of these considerations is the net energy eqn. (cf. Physics Today, Weisz, July 2004, p. 51)

Q (net) = Q (PR) – [Q (op) + E/T]

In effect, for break-even oil one would find Q(net) = 0

Thus, there is no net gain in energy given the quantity that must be used to obtain it.

For the last 700 billion barrels,

Q(net) = negative quantity = -Q

since the rate of energy production (Q (PR) must be debited by the energy consumed for its operation Q(op), and the energy E invested during its “lifetime” T

Thus its Q(PR) will be small in relation to the bracketed quantity.

Thus, the problem in a nutshell is not “running out of oil’ but running out of CHEAP oil.

Bottom line, we need not run out of the stuff before the world economy runs into problems of untold, unspeakable proportions!

“Peak Oil’ is somewhat misleading a term, since it suggests a specific date of peak production. In the real world, the top part of the oil production curve is nearly flat (cf. Bartlett, Physics Today, op. cit. p. 54)

In more practical terms – what it means is that if 2000 was the year of peak oil production then the worldwide oil production in 2020 will be the SAME as in 1980, demanding that Q(net) > 0.

Also, it means that 2040 will be the same as 1960, and 2060 will be the same as 1940, and 2080 will be the same as 1920! All this while the population is expected to reach 9 billion or more in the SAME PERIOD! (cf. Bartlett, ibid.) In other words, as time goes on the available accessible oil constantly diminishes even as population constantly rises with the same demands.

More to come!