OT: Diy while you can - more on Peak Oil

[The Natural Philosopher]

A link has no implication of direction or causality of and by itself.

Can't criticise him for your own inability to understand our native language.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its a very simple equation. With manual labour you can generate a certain amount of food per unit area to feed a certain population: With industrialisation (a) first of all, 90% of them can piss off to the cities to watch Jeremy Kyle, instead of hand picking potatoes. (b) You can grow enough food for 10 times as many.

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[Nightjar]

Peak oil was developed by an oilman. As I said, it was a good theory for its day. However, the test of a theory is whether it can accurately predict the future. Peak oil has had one success, when the oil industry was little changed from the 1950s. Since the economics of the industry started to change it has had multiple failures. However, as pointed out by green activists in the film What the Green Movement Got Wrong, shown on C4 the other night, too many greens rely on dogma and ignore the science.

Colin Bignell

[Nightjar]

That is one theory, although I don't think it a very probable one myself. It is far too useful as a portable source of energy.

Nor did I suggest it had anything to do with running out. That does not stop it being based upon a false premise. We have had several predictions of the peak arriving and only one, US oil in the early

1970s, has ever been right. A theory that fails to provide accurate predictions should long ago have been dropped.

We can make oil in the lab. The only problem is that, at laboratory quantities, it costs $800 a barrel. With the sort of investment that now goes into exploration, it should be possible to bring that down to competitive levels.

Colin Bignell

[Andy Champ]

Never heard of Malthus?

[Huge]

[funkyoldcortina]

Victorians worried about horse manure. Peak dung anyone?

[RobertL]

This appears to say that we are discovering more than we are burning - it tha twhat you meant?

I thought that P90 reserves were rising at about 0.16 times the current rate of use. and that last time they matched was in the 1980s.

Robert

[The Natural Philosopher]

That is my understanding as well.

Most reserves are well known, few are being discovered,. Oil shales and the like become economic at $80-90 a barrel.

[Nightjar]

It means that we are discovering oil faster than we are increasing its use, not faster than we are using it.

Colin Bignell

[Tabby]

Some issues are being missed.

One first is energy efficiency. Energy costs, so we're busy making our lives more efficient in various ways, eg.

- insulation of houses

- reduction in energy use of appliances, lighting etc

- investment in energy capture

- ongoing R&D leading to greater energy efficiency in numerous areas

Efficieny gain means we get more result for less energy as time goes by.

A 2nd issue is that there are alternate sources, an example is sewage for fertiliser. We dont use it because oil derived fertilisers dont pong or carry an infection risk, but if necessary we will use it again.

A 3rd issue is increasing recovery. We now have TDP that recovers materials and enegry from garbage, and increasing economically efficient recycling (ignoring the pointless recycling here) and so on

4th we have ongoing material efficiency improvements. Eg we have moved from solid block to lightweight block for building, and now papercrete is becoming increasingly developed as a building option, etc.

5th pellet boilers are using all sorts of streams that weren't used before, eg leaves, building material waste, spoiled straw, slash, domestic garbage, etc etc

The above are examples of numerous ways in which society progressively needs less oil to maintain a given standard of life. (I'm certainly not saying those items alone would replace oil.)

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

No combination of efficiency measures can solve the underlying problem, which is that the land area we have cannot support the population we have without a massive excess of energy over what the sunlight provides in collectable form

[RobertL]

I'd add to that since the 1960s we have discovered less oil every year than we did the year before.

Robert

[Tabby]

We're only using a tiny percentage of the land productively. Imagine if this threat were for real (and seen to be). There would be a wave of people going into the forests to plant them up with food bearing trees, gardens would get replanted, roadside trees would be replanted or grafted, the plumbing would be laid to use sewage as fertiliser and so on. Even marginal lands would slowly come into service. We could take a huge hit on tonnes per acre and still be fine.

Fishing would revert to wind power, and yields would fall.

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

Thats because only a tiny percentage is suitable for production of anything worth while.

Imagine

I have to laugh..

gardens would get replanted, roadside trees would be replanted

actually, no, we couldn't.

Populations would fall.

You need about 1 acres of PRODUCTIVE land per person. To live like a peasant.

To live like we do now, you would need about 1000 acres per person.

BUT you couldn't manage that much without mechanised help...easier to become a hunter gatherer and shoot a deer every week for food.

catch 22.

[Tabby]

Really not true. Forest land can be converted to large scale nut production, plus some fruit, probably apples. Masses of underused land can be converted to cereals, beans and various other crops.

it would be economically necessary, hence either land owners or governent intervention would happen. Its foolish to suggest that in Britain everyone would sit around idly & starve.

figures are welcome if you want to back it up.

We have that in UK

Seems to me your model assumes that farming wouldnt change. It would have to.

NT

[Tim Streater]

This is the crux of the matter which people appear to have trouble grasping.

[Tim Streater]

Who is "we" in this context? And which land are you talking about? UK or worldwide?

And which forests? We have none to speak of in this country.

[Tim Streater]

Only just. And that includes *all* land area in the UK, including mountains, cities, roads, the whole lot.

And when NP means "to live like a peasant" that's just what he means. You any idea what life would be like? To scratch a living on an acre

*with no outside inputs* would be quite hard. 12 hrs a day 7 days a week.

Can you imagine how 99% of the UK population would react if you said "We can save the planet, but here's how you'd have to live." Their response would be short, pithy, and Anglo-Saxon.

We have a (probably) two-acre field behind us. It takes the bloke on the tractor maybe two hours (guess, but not far off) to plough it. You think you'd like to dig that over by hand? And using what tools?

I think you need to get out more.

[Tabby]