When Peak Oil hits, what happens to Global Warming?

[GliderGuider]

One critical but largely unaddressed question is what might happen when PO and GW intersect. People are becoming more aware that there will be some interaction between the two, but as yet the shape that collision might take has been quite vague. A recent article on The Oil Drum addressed this question, and the conclusions the author drew were quite provocative. Here's an except:

Climate change scientists consider the effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and forecast the climatic results. Based on officially stated fossil fuel resources and global economic growth forecasts from national and international organisations, the emissions paint a dire picture. Activists pick up the dire predictions and advocate proactive measures to curtail our emissions.

The "depletionists", those subscribing to imminent peaks in the availability of oil and gas (some predisposed to environmental issues and some with little concern, even perhaps doubting the arguments for anthropogenic climate change mechanisms) instead point out that the officially stated fossil fuel resources are exaggerated and as a result the global economic growth forecasts and resulting emissions are also exaggerated. Activists focus on the ramifications of shortage and advocate proactive measures to curtail our reliance on a resource soon to be troublesomely scarce.

I’m squarely with the depletionists on this one. The IPCC business as usual projections are as preposterous as the CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates) oil forecasts . The science is good but the assumed inputs are off. Garbage in, garbage out. The concept of global oil/gas peaks within a decade is incompatible with the anthropogenic emission driven ~900ppm CO2, >+4°C from 1990 by 2100 IPCC forecast.

snip

The only potential to cause climate disaster is from burning all the coal – this is very hypothetical though as whilst there is enough carbon contained in the coal reserves do we have the logistical ability and economic demand (given peak oil/gas) to exploit it? I’m doubtful.

snip

I don’t think it’s possible to maintain growth by replacing depleting oil/gas with coal to liquids and electrification. That’s the only scenario that would see increased coal burn in the face of peak oil.

In short, if post-peak declines in oil and natural gas have the effect that many in the Peak Oil community think they will - i.e. a steady, continuing and permanent contraction in the global economy, there simply will not be the economic demand to expand coal use. Oil and gas use are limited by geology, coal use is limited by a permanent recession or depression.

Since I'm a "depletionist" myself, I found the author's model of declining coal use due to economic contraction quite persuasive. Frankly, it's the only mechanism I've seen that strikes me as probable. I don't think the world will voluntarily rein in its coal consumption as long as the demand is still there. The only way I think demand will be reduced in the short to medium term is by a recession or depression.

This got me wondering how a Peak Oil driven economic contraction would affect CO2 concentrations over time.

To quantify the answer to that question question I built a small Excel model based on the BP Statistical Review fossil fuel production values, and projected the oil, natural gas and coal use out to 2050 based on the following assumptions:

• Oil production peaks in 2010. Production then declines at a cumulative rate of 0.5% pa (an additional 0.5% less each year).
  
• NG peaks in 2020, then declines at a cumulative rate of 0.75% pa.
  
• The global economy begins to contract in 2015, leading to a cumulative decline in coal use of 0.25% pa.

You can argue with the assumptions, but they seem to represent one realistic possibility.

Here is the result:


It looks to me like an economic collapse driven by Peak Oil and Peak NG has the potential to keep us from blowing over 450 PPM. It's a steep price to pay, but to my mind it's better than the alternative.

The Doomers save the world. :party:

[n2doc]

1. People will do anything for their hydrocarbons

And so yes, this will mean large scale coal gassification. And that is very bad unless the CO2 is captured and sequestered. The only way coal consumption goes down like the chart predicts is if we have a massive economic crash.

[GliderGuider]

3. That's precisely the point.

Our civilization is unlikely to voluntarily undertake the retrenchments needed to avoid Global Heating. IMO the only thing that will save the planet from Global Heating is a massive economic crash. However, I also believe that Peak Oil and Peak Gas have a better than even chance of causing one within the next 10 to 15 years.

[Ready4Change]

10. Henry Ford originally wanted the Model A to run on liquified coal.

He thought it was a lot more available and inexpensive than petroleum.

When petroleum runs out, He'll get his dream, post mortem.

[IDemo]

11. That's not the way I heard it

Henry was quoted once as saying that cars should be "run on carbohydrates, not hydrocarbons".

The fuel of the future, according to both Henry Ford and Charles F. Kettering, was ethyl alcohol made from farm products and cellulosic materials.

When Henry Ford told a New York Times reporter that ethyl alcohol was "the fuel of the future" in 1925, he was expressing an opinion that was widely shared in the automotive industry. "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumac out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything," he said. "There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."

[Ready4Change]

13. I stand corrected.

After some searching I couldn't find the Ford/Liquified Diesel link I stated.

I think I may have heard of Rudolf Diesel, and mutated it in my mind, or heard a mutated version in the first place. He powered his first diesels with powdered coal, and thought that, or vegetable oils, were desireable fuels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Diesel

Thanks for setting me straight.

[IDemo]

2. The only thing I might add

is that the total effect of even lower levels of anthropogenic carbon is likely to increase greatly as the planet's carbon sinks become unable to absorb as much (or any) as previously.

I also consider myself a 'depletionist' and think that the end of the Oil Age would be great, if it weren't for all of the tragedy that humans will doubtlessly endure because of our unwillingness or inability to deal with such a problem.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Let's assume we do have fewer and fewer cars and factories and whatnot spewing CO2

Positive feedback cycles still put as at risk for increasing warming and changing. If all our carbon sinks are 'full' (And don't think that trees won't get clearcut as ppl try to find alternative ways to heat their homes in winter), the polar caps and glaciers are smalelr and repelling less heat back out toward space, and the frozen tundras of the north keep warming and spewing methane which is far more potent than CO2, we're still in for a world of hurt peak oil or not. Things might slow down without the liquid and gas fossil fuels variable, but even so the cycle of change is going to keep rolling on. :(

[GliderGuider]

5. Absolutely.

This model doesn't address any of the other known GW problems like albedo changes or methane hydrates or peat bogs melting. Likewise, it doesn't address the food supply issues that will crop up due to droughts, depeleting aquifers, soil depletion and the lack of fossil fuels for farm machinery or fertilizer in a post-peak world.

I personally think the Problematique is much too large and complex to be solved, and that the end is in sight. Doing things like this just takes my mind off that.

[Strelnikov_]

6. CO2 Through The Roof As Low EROEI Petroleum and Coal Is Used

Tar sands, heavy crude, CTL. The lower the EPR, the more carbon produced to get that one unit of net energy.

I generally agree with you, but on this one I think I have to diverge. A severe economic downturn may very well depress the use of coal as the graph suggests.

But based on the last 26+ years (from 'Morning in America' forward), I think the following is just as likely. As we enter the peak oil economic contraction, the Keyensian economic stimuli will be applied to the ramping up of CTL and heavy oil sources. The politicians will sell it as a jobs program to maintain our Way-Of-Life^TM. Environmental controls will go out the window to satisfy the gods of 'cost-effectiveness' as we collectively run faster and faster on our treadmill of extinction.

Nothing is written. But unless a majority of the populace wises up, boy howdy quick, I do not see us changing course in time. Once the crises is here, the salesman with the quickest of quick-fixes will have the day.

[GliderGuider]

7. A lot depends on how fast the contraction is

A "slow squeeze" where we stay on a gently subsiding production plateau for a dozen to twenty years would probably be the worst case. We would have the awareness of the impending crisis, and would still retain the economic capability to act. We would realize we need fuels, and would be able to massively ramp up coal usage. Say goodbye to the species.

A "fast crash" is, in the long run, much more humane. A sudden and sustained oil and gas production decline of 4%-10% pa would probably shock our socioeconomic system into collapse, thereby removing our ability to do the large-scale engineering needed to wreck the planet.

[Moby Grape]

14. Coal, excellent EROEI

coal is often easy to mine,just shovel it up.

the energy invested is very low, resulting in a huge EROSI

at leest compared to the petroleum sources coming online.
the easy crude oil is gone.

with coal-to-liquids,half the energy is not present
in the final product, unless the heat gets used in someway,
such as steam heat for buildings.

on the other hand, coal has a huge starting advantage
over petroleum

if EROSI is your measurement of choice, choose coal.

........................
the 'EROSI argument' needs to be dumped

[Strelnikov_]

15. Poor quality brown coal which makes up the majority of remaining

reserves has a marginal EROEI when comparing to past fossil sources. In other words, better than nothing. Yes, you can just shovel it up, after the mountain sitting on top of it has been removed.

And "The EROSI (sic) argument needs to be dumped"? So there is no significant difference in the afford ability and environmental impact of an energy source with an EROEI of 3 versus one with an EROEI of 20. Guess they are just lying when they say oil has to be $40/bbl to make tar sands viable. And hell, looks like we have all the energy we need in the western oil shale. No more looming liquid fuels crises!

rfkrfk, is that you?

[Moby Grape]

16. brown coal

I suppose it is possible that most of the remaining
reserves of coal are brown coal,
but the reserves of the better stuff
will still last many lifetimes.

something like this
anth, bituminous ... 1000 years
brown coal.......... 10000 years
peat................ 100000 years
landfill mountains.. 1000000 years

..................
what I don't like is that EROSI seems
to be selectively applied to fuel ethanol,
but not electricity
..................

>So there is no significant difference in the afford ability and environmental impact of an energy source with an EROEI of 3 versus<
...................

well, everything is connected to everthing, so it
means something,I guess.,but a profitable operation at
'3', is not going to be closed, just because another
business has '20'

[GliderGuider]

17. Not so fast there, bucko.

A quick skip over to our old friend Wikipedia reveals the following:

The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal reserves in the region of 1,081,279 million short tons, which is about 4,786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) <28>. The amount of coal burned during 2001 was calculated as 2.337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil equivalent), which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day <29>. Were consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285 years. As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil equivalent), and oil 76 million barrels, per day during 2001.

So much for your Thousand Year Reich of Coal.

However, the picture is even worse than that. According to the BP Statistical Review, coal consumption for 2005 was 2.928 Gtoe, up 23% in four years. At that rate, the reserves would last a mere 220 years (assuming China and India just stop growing, right?)

Unfortunately, that 285 year reserve is as misleading as the 34 year reserve figure so often attributed to crude oil. There is both good news and bad news. The good news is that increasing difficulties in extracting both oil and coal will lower the rate of use over time resulting in a longer time to use up the reserves. The bad news is that increasing difficulties in extracting both oil and coal will lower the rate of use over time resulting in less energy being available to run our civilization.

There are EROEI numbers out there for different modes of electricity generation, but they seem to be much more influenced by assumptions and agenda than those for heat fuels.

[Strelnikov_]

20. Cool. Petrocollapse Cancelled Due To Plentiful CTL. EnviroGeddon On With A Bullet

due to plentiful CTL.

I wonder what Yossarian would call this?

[GliderGuider]

21. I knew there was a Catch to it...

[IDemo]

19. Not that anyone outside West Virginia or Wyoming cares

But the other reason (besides CO2) that the inevitable increase in coal usage is a terrible idea is that coal extraction and its brother, coalbed methane extraction, are environmental catastrophes. Mountain top coal removal has destroyed landscapes and poisoned water tables, along with destroying the quality of life of those in nearby communities with noise pollution. Those same three factors apply to coalbed methane.

Clean coal? Hardly.

[NNadir]

8. Oil is not as essential as people think it is.

It can readily, and regrettably, be replaced by coal, and will be replaced by coal if the "oil is essential to life" fetish holds up. Human civilization existed for many thousands of years without the use of oil, and without the use of natural gas.

One of the things that is really striking about the "peak oil" game is how little chemistry the advocates understand.

There is no essential compound in oil that cannot be obtained by other means.. That's a fact. I challenge anyone who doubts me on this point to produce such a compound.

For the record, nitrogen fixation, was not invented for the exploitation of natural gas, but for coal. There are several nations that replaced readily their demand for oil by demand for coal, including the nation where nitrogen fixation was first industrialized, Germany. If Jimmy Carter had remained President, it might have happened here.

Germany is still playing coal games - while singing the renewables song to distract the stupid - and it has to be stopped, there, here, everywhere.

Let's be clear though, it is not a good idea to replace oil with coal. All fossil fuels, including oil, should be banned by positive action. All fossil fuels are environmentally unacceptable.

The idea that climate change will simply go away because of peak oil is frankly absurd and ridiculous.

[GliderGuider]

9. Don't forget to factor in EROEI

While it's technically true that any product made from oil can be made from another feedstock, the one gotcha in the game is Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI). A barrel of oil pumped from a conventional well has an EROEI ratio of 20:1. An equivalent barrel of syncrude mined and cracked from tar sands has a ratio of 2:1 - in energy terms it's ten times as expensive. The products made from it will of course reflect that energy ratio.

We can make synthetic crude from coal using the Fischer-Tropsch process. The numbers I've seen for that process indicate that its EROEI is 1:1 or less. This means that its main value is in converting the form of the energy carrier from solid to liquid (which of course has significant non-energy value when you are converting coal into gasoline).

Ethanol is getting a very bad rap these days because people are finding out its dirty little secret - like CTL its EROEI is 1:1 or less.

The point is that the further we go in replacing conventional oil with hydrocarbons from other sources, the further down the energy return hill we slide. For instance, to get the 80 million barrels of conventional crude we use each day, it costs us about 4 million barrels. That's our energy overhead. Assume we replace all our oil with syncrude from tar sands. That same 80 million barrels now costs us 40 million barrels. While we will wind up somewhere between those two extremes, it gets harder and harder to run a civilization like ours as energy gets more and more expensive.

The other problem virtually all liquid oil substitutes have is an insufficient production rate. Peak Oil is, at its heart, a rate problem. Reserves don't matter - all that counts is how fast you can get the stuff into gas tanks (and that's where over 70% of all oil ends up). The CTL production capacity of the world is minuscule - the EIA says the total world production is 150,000 bpd out of a total oil production of 80 million bpd. They predict a global production of 500,000 bpd by 2030. That's right down there with PV when it comes to the total energy supply. Canada is producing 1 mbpd of tar sands crude, and we're destroying Alberta to do it. The USA wants us to make 5 million, but it won't happen. The financial, energy, and environmental costs are just too great.

Of course both these arguments - low EROEI and severe rate limits - apply to biofuels, but with the added wrinkle that they displace food to do it.

Peak Oil will not make GW go away - that wasn't the intent of my model. Even under the assumptions I gave we still wind up at 450 PPM CO2, which we now suspect may be past the runaway tipping point. And that's postulating an economic crash of the first magnitude to push our coal consumption off a cliff. The model was intended to show what might happen to CO2 levels under one particular set of assumptions about oil supply and economic response. As I said, you may disagree with those assumptions, but they are what they are.

[NNadir]

12. I don't go too far into that EROEI game. It's over played,

There really are ways around it, cogeneration maybe and other ways.

Carbon fired Fischer-Tropsch reactors will waste some of the potential coal energy heating the coal and making steam, but it will work, more or less in situ, and some transport energy will be saved by piping the fuel rather than hauling it.

I think EROEI is a buzzword. If you'er standing next to a coal field, you really don't care. If you're injecting nuclear steam in to tar sands you don't care.

Mind you all of these approaches are environmental disasters. We cannot afford to liquify coal or to crack coal tars.

It will be burned like petroleum and it will exacerabate climate change.

What we need to do to give us some time to reduce the world's population is to switch to nuclear and renewably generated DME - a cleaner and safer fuel in any case.

We must fight Fischer-Tropsch. I'm afraid the "we need oil to live" equation doesn't make it easier to do this, since it is largely hysterical.

[4dsc]

18. You're forgetting one important aspect

You claim "
There is no essential compound in oil that cannot be obtained by other means" but do not explain if these compounds can be obtained in the QUANITIES needed to REPLACE the oil to run the world's economies!! But let me answer that for you, of course not!!

And for all those coal estimates, they are based upon current consuption rates and thus are subject to the same exponential depletion as we use in oil. Increase the use of coal will lower the amounts you have in future years.. A 250 year supply become a 50 year supply and so on..

Coal gasification will never replace the quanities we get from oil. Why?? Because it will be too expensive to build once oil becomes scarcer.. If fact, everything will become more expansive to build including nuclear power plants.. That is why do to a lack of planning for the future we will fail to plan for it.. The time for building energy plants(nuclear and coal gasification) are when oil is cheap..Those days are quickly becoming a thing of the past...

[NickB79]

22. I look at it as a scale of economics

For example, we have the technology to convert carbon into synthetic diamond. That doesn't mean I'm sitting here drinking out of an unbreakable diamond coffee mug I bought at Walmart for $19.99.

Just because it is technologically feasible, the actual implementation of a project could bankrupt a nation or nations. As we've seen in the 3rd-World nations, particularly in Africa, demand destruction at $60/barrel has drastically cut oil importation and sent their economies into a tailspin (hence the recent drop in oil prices for the rest of the world, more supply left to gobble up). If we can't manufacture synthetic oil at a low enough price and in sufficient quantity, the economy still enters a depression.

[NNadir]

26. The economics of FT chemistry are well understood.

There are large scale FT plants operating around the world right now. I find this fact regrettable, but it is nonetheless true.

In spite of being bombed almost continuously, Germany did quite well with F/T chemistry during the Second World War. South Africa also needed to import little oil because of F/T chemistry. They still operate some F/T plants there.

The F/T plant that is operating as I write in Kingsport, TN has run for quite a number of years economically. It is not subsidized at all. It works because it's right next to sources of coal. In this particular region, coal is cheaper than oil, even when used in inefficient F/T cases.

Oil is way over estimated as an essential . It is not more important than oxygen, no matter what Jimmy Kunstler writes about the matter, or how many books he sells. Oil should be banned, but not because we can't have it, but because it is unacceptably dangerous as a fuel.

The main reason that F/T chemistry is not more widely used is that it is still slightly cheaper to use oil. People who might invest in F/T plants however are concerned that the price of oil has not consistently been high enough to escape the differential. F/T plants, after all, require investment. If the price of oil drops, that investment may not give good returns.

Of course, if external costs were included in price and economics - as they should be - neither oil nor coal would make the cut.

[Moby Grape]

28. about costs of F/T

the big cost of F/T, is initial capital,
or, recurring operating cost?

the reason I ask,-->I don't understand why...
F/T is not used in poor countries.

wages are next to nothing, by US standards.
at least some of the construction, could be
done by locals, all that money stays local.

the payoff is, you get a product, that either
displaces imported petroleum, or could be exported.

the price difference, between
coal and petroleum, needs some numbers.

crude oil barrel, $55, 5,800,000 btu.
105,000 btu per $1.

Illinois coal ton,$33, 23,600,000 btu
715,000 btu per $1, seven times as much

people should discuss $RO$I, not EROEI,

[GliderGuider]

30. Net Energy

Try reading this link for a deeper understanding of the issue: A Net Energy Parable: Why is EROEI Important?

The short answer is that the $$ represent the value society has placed on the energy relative to all other goods. That valuation hides a fundamental quality of energy that EROEI exposes. For me, the essential understanding conferred by EROEI is the idea that as civilization uses less and less efficient (i.e. lower EROEI) energy sources there is less net energy available - either civilization has less and less energy to use as time passes or it must continually increase its inputs to get the same amount.

In isolated cases like F-T or ethanol this may make sense if the overall value of the final energy product is higher than the overall value of input energy (liquid fuel is more useful/valuable than coal, for instance). But when you analyze the energy flows through a whole civilization it becomes obvious very fast that net energy is a crucial concept.

[Dogmudgeon]

23. Remember that old cartoon?

Where the character who was the schlimazel (e.g., Jerry the Cat, Mr. Jinx, or the Looney Tunes bulldog) found himself in a dark place, struck a match, saw that he was next to a keg of TNT, then -- BOOM!

Well, we're tat schlimazel. All 6.5 billion of us.

(In Yiddish theater, the schlemiel was the guy who tripped on the banana peel. The schlimazel was the guy the schlemiel landed on.)

--p!

[IDemo]

24. Here's a rather sobering perspective on alternatives to oil

based upon a new unit of measure, the CMO (cubic mile of oil)

Joules, BTUs, Quads—Let's Call the Whole Thing Off
By Harry Goldstein and William Sweet

The fact that energy sources and uses are stated in so many different kinds of terms is increasingly seen as not merely an annoyance but as a serious impediment to public understanding of critical choices. In an effort to get matters onto a more intuitive, citizen-friendly basis, a number of experts have hit on the convenient fact that the world at present consumes about 1 cubic mile of oil (CMO) per year. Among these experts are Ed Kinderman and Hewitt Crane at SRI International, in Menlo Park, Calif., who are preparing a book for Oxford University Press that will be built around the idea of normalizing all energy units to 1 CMO (4.17 cubic kilometers).

One dramatic way of portraying their results is to ask how many alternative energy sources—say coal-fired plants or solar panels— it would take to produce the equivalent of one CMO.

Amplifying on the rationale for CMO, Ripudaman Malhotra—an SRI chemist and a colleague of Kinderman and Crane—puts it like this: “When talking about energy and its different sources, we run into two main problems that impede meaningful discussion. If you ask the question—How much energy does the world use in a ­second?—you get answers that combine many different units: 150 tons of coal, 37 000 gallons of oil, 3.2 million cubic feet of gas, and so on.”

“The second problem,” Malhotra says, “is that these units themselves represent fairly small amounts of energy, and one needs modifiers such as millions, billions, and trillions in front of them. It is difficult to keep these numbers straight, and there are examples in the press when million was used when the intent was to use a billion.”

“Remember also that billion means 10^12 in the UK and not 10^9 as per the U.S. usage,” Malhotra adds.

Some results of the exercise are displayed here. Prepare for your mind to be wonderfully sobered. To obtain in one year the amount of energy contained in one cubic mile of oil, each year for 50 years we would need to have produced the numbers of dams, nuclear power plants, coal plants, windmills, or solar panels shown here.

[GliderGuider]

25. It's an effective image, but...

My only objection to it is that we use that CMO in one year, but it's being compared to 50 years' output from the other sources.

So using 1 CMO in a year is the same energy produced in a year by:

• 200 Three Gorges Dams, or
  
• 2600 nuclear power plants, or
  
• 5200 coal-fired power plants, or
  
• 1,642,500 wind turbines,
  or
  
• 4,562,500,000 solar panels.

Yikes.

[nopaniers]

27. Why not just use SI units?

Why not just use SI units? They're simple to deal with, have an operational interpretation and are standard across the world.

[GliderGuider]

29. It's hard torepresent a megajoule visually.

CMO has a graphic advantage.

[IDemo]

31. I think this was meant as a snapshot of the problem we face

more than as a literal replacement for engineering units.

In one graphic, they have shown that to replace the energy in one cubic mile (about ten months worth, globally, if I did the math right*), it would take a very aggressive and ongoing expansion of other sources. Probably more so than humanity will be capable of in much less than fifty years.

* One cubic mile = 1.10111714x10¹² gallons
Divided by 42 (gallons per barrel) = 26.2 billion barrels
Current yearly oil usage = ~30.125 billion barrels
One CMO = 308.4 days of global oil demand (currently)

[rman]

32. how many oil fueled power plants are needed

to consume 1 cubic mile of oil in one year?

Or the same questions asked differently: how many oil fueled power plants are there in the world?

For comparison, to produce that much energy in one year would require 52 * 50 = 2600 nuclear power plants, or 200 Gorges Dams, or ~5 billion solar panels - which seems a lot, but it's only about one per inhabitant of this planet or on average about 4 per house-hold (i'm not sure about average family size).

[rman]

33. So 1 solar panel per person would replace all energy from oil

I already stated this in my previous post bu it seems important enough to post it separately.

~100,000,000 solar panels produce as much energy in 50 years as 1 cubic mile of oil yields in 1 year.

So 50 * 100,000,000 = 5 Billion solar panels produce that much energy in one year.

There are about 6 Billion people on this planet.

Close enough to say that 1 solar panel per person would replace all energy from oil. That seems doable. Although it does means that wasteful societies like ours would have significantly less energy to spend than we do now. After all by far most people on the planet don't have a car, no airco, no refrigerator etc. On the other hand, i'm optimistic that much can be gained from increased efficiency of energy use.

[Dogmudgeon]

34. Cars, refrigerators, air conditioners and wasteful societies

A lot of energy goes into keeping the economic system running. Although most of us have major criticisms of that system, having it crash would be a disaster unparalleled in human history.

A lot of energy also goes into agriculture. Solar-generated electricity is a fairly inefficient way of producing nitrogen for crops, but it's still quite feasible. However, I think it would require a major increase in our energy use.

Most people who propose changes in our energy regime think the problem is all "wasteful Americans and SUVs". Actually, even if the wasteful Americans suddenly reduced their (our) energy usage to 5% of what it is now, we'd only gain a few more years before major problems started happening. And keep in mind that the land of unfashionably obese people and SUVs is also the world's primary food producer.

Not having a car or air conditioning will be a trivial problem when there is a whole lot less food to eat.

--p!

[GliderGuider]

35. Remember the use this CMO of energy is being put to

70% of all oil is burned as transportation fuel. A solar panel per person simply can't fill that role. Remember that this in addition to the electricity that already runs the lights, fridges, air conditioners etc.

[NNadir]

36. To me, this image is almost meaningless.

First of all, oil is not used in the same way as solar cells, wind turbines or nuclear power plants. Neither is there any description of efficiency here, nor any description of human population.

The fixation with oil is silly. It need not be the central source of energy in the world. The notion that it must be is conservative and assumes that the past is a perfect description of the future.

There are many ways to displace oil, including many ways that are cleaner and safer than oil.

[GliderGuider]

37. 70% goes to transportation fuel.

How do you displace that in 20 years? Realistically?

Electricity is the largest end-use energy, but it doesn't do transportation the way our civilization needs.

[NNadir]

38. I argue that we should displace transportation fuels with dimethyl ether.

This will certainly be feasible.

In 2005 most of the world's energy companies got together to discuss a 500 million metric ton supply of dimethyl ether. It is available from a multitude of sources and it is far superior to oil.

Note that dimethyl ether can run diesel engines perfectly well. Thus it really doesn't mean all new infrastructure.

[GliderGuider]

39. My favourite alternative fuel is butanol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butanol_fuel

It can be made from biomass by fermentation and has similar properties to gasoline, including a much higher energy density than ethanol. It has the advantage of not being water-miscible, which makes pipeline transportation more practical than for ethanol. It's a drop-in replacement for gasoline. Technically it looks very attractive.