Peak Oil

One of the blogs I regularly cruise, the amusing and quixotic Dilbert Blog by Scott Adams (language warning, so I'm not linking), featured an entry today about Global Warming. Reading the comments, I ran across a couple of interesting links that made me think a lot, and maybe change part of my world view.

Now that I've scared off the easily bored, the first thing I saw was a new word: memegasm. A "meme" is a self-perpetuating idea that spreads virally (or something like that... see this Wikipedia reference for more info). So a "memegasm" is a meme that spreads a lot and in a rather joyous fashion, one would imagine. The next time you get five nearly-identical PMs or emails from friends with the latest list of cool survey questions (like "My top 10 favorite movie scenes - list yours and pass it on!"), that's a memegasm. (DeviantArt is unusually susceptible to memegasms, I've noticed. At least the people I watch there are susceptible. Either-or.)

The next thing I read about was far more sobering, and I'm still processing it. This involves the complex discussion of world oil reserves, and when we'll reach "Peak Oil" - the point in time where worldwide oil production begins decreasing, rather than increasing. Now I've heard, for most of my life, that we have another century of oil available, so there's no short-term emergency in finding alternatives. But that century supply includes increasingly hard-to-get-to reserves and conversion of shale into oil, and so on. According to some of the doom-n-gloom crowd, the end of society as we know it is much, much closer.

On the order of 2-15 years from now.

Again, I'm not sure how much credence to give all of "the end is nigh" handwringers. The arguments are compelling, enough that I broke into a cold sweat while going over the evidence. But from a perspective of two hours later, it's difficult to maintain the necessary paranoia.

Anyway, the scenario goes like this: oil is being pumped out of the ground much faster than new sources are discovered. Each year, we yank out hundreds of millions of barrels of the stuff, process it, make plastics with it, pump it into our vehicles, and turn the sky ever-more heavy with carbon byproducts. I'm down with this so far... it's a nagging worry at the back of my brain every time I click a seatbelt in place. But here's where it gets apocalyptic: the oil companies and oil-producing countries, in order to keep prices at a level acceptable to them and not panic the worldwide markets, have allegedly overstated the oil reserves in the ground. By a lot. They're putting off the time of Peak Oil.

What's the big deal, you might say. There comes a day when the world has less rather than more oil. Deal with it.

The big deal, apparently, is the nature of the world economy. Banks extend loans based on projected economic growth. Growth is predicated on having resources, especially transportation services. Once it's apparent that our economy (any economy) can't grow at an infinite rate, the entire method of commerce will change, and quickly. Loans will be called in. Businesses will fail. Millions will lose their jobs.

Great, so we get an economic depression. OK, now add to that another prediction: once we've reached the point of Peak Oil, there'll be less and less to go around. Gas will sell for $8 or $10 a gallon, and then more. Governments will begin rationing its use. Energy-heavy production will cease. Food production, which heavily relies on petroleum products, will be unable to meet demand, creating massive food shortages. Right now, you might get your lettuce from a thousand miles away. That takes a refrigerated truck to haul it to you. Bye-bye long-haul produce. Oranges in Canada? Fuggedaboutit. And airplanes use an enormous amount of fuel, so no more vacationing in Disney World, unless you live within walking distance. Not that there'd be a Disney World after a while.

As if that's not bad enough, there’s more. Can you imagine gas riots? Power demonstrations to get electricity back into the grid for your neighborhood? Poorhouses-slash-detention camps for the newly indigent across the world? And the best of all - reports that the US government ("this land is your land, this land is my land...") has an actual plan to invade other countries to forcibly take resources to continue SOP. That one thrills me no end... mostly because it seems you can already see it happening in Iraq. I used to think the treehuggers crying "no blood for oil!" were fringe nutjobs, but it could be they're on to something. (I have trouble actually believing this wholeheartedly, because it would indicate a completely unexpected Machiavellian cunning - or any cunning - within the White House.)

And all this is supposed to start happening right after we reach the peak of oil production, and the world starts panicking. Some predictions put Peak Oil occurring somewhere between 2008 and 2015. Or it could’ve happened already.

What about alternative fuels, you say? I thought that too. Well, oil is used so much because it's so darn powerful. One gallon of gasoline (a petroleum derivative) can push a 2-ton SUV ten miles in ten minutes. How long would it take you to push a 2-ton SUV? That's a lot of stored energy there. And not a lot of other power sources come close. Biodiesel is pretty much the next best thing, but it's like 20x less powerful than gasoline. Wind and water and solar are just not feasible for transportation, and account for a miniscule amount of power generated around the world.

Here's where my worldview shifts. With less gas available, our economy slows and social unrest seeps in. When all is said and done, we're back to an agrarian, short-range society like we had 150 years ago. The last century of massive economic and technical growth would be just a blip in the history of humanity. I've always grown up reading sci-fi books about how much better tomorrow will be from today; I've always had the mindset that progress continues: we'll reach the stars, and make life better for our descendents, and so on. But this shatters that dream. No more space flight - heck, no more flight flight period, except maybe dirigibles.

Of course, all this presupposes there are no technological miracles in the next half-century to offset the depletion of our best energy source. There very well may be advances we can't predict. In fact, I'm fairly certain that adversity and risk of imminent social systems collapse will focus many bright young minds (maybe one of you) enough to find a way around the dilemma.

So in the end, while the science and predictions of all this doom-n-gloom look fairly solid, I'm not prepared to accept our way of life’s armageddon quite yet. I think there’s a way out of it, even if I don’t know what it is. And I’m not going to retire and buy a farm and start to live off the land, either. For one, I hate horse plop. For another, my wife would never let me.

I guess we’ll just enjoy this bounty of plenitude while it lasts. In the meantime, this is at least a good setting for a novel or screenplay…