permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

Sean Maley wrote:
> Yes, there is still an amazing amount of fossil energy still in the ground.  However, this 
> totally misses the point of "peak oil" or even "peak energy".

   quoting Nicholas

> > Martin, peal oil actually wont be a problem. Synthetic fuel can be
> > made from natural gas *600 years worth* and coal *2000 years worth*..

I, too, was pretty surprised to see a statement like that. There's an 
excellent article at The Oil Drum, consistently named the most most 
scientific and reasoned of the Peak Oil sites, showing compellingly that 
by roughly 2022, it will take one barrel of oil to extract one barrel of 
oil (we've dropped from 100:1 to about 7:1 yield today), and that's all 
she wrote for fossil fuels.  It's a little technical, but has great 
graphics that make it clear.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2367

As for "we've got X years of coal", or whatever, left: Those numbers 
always assume 100% recovery at no cost of extraction, and at current 
levels of consumption. The numbers I've seen recently tout "500 years of 
coal left at current rates of use." Turns out that only half of that is 
recoverable at a better than 1:1 return on energy invested, so now we're 
at 250 years left. Then, if we do start making liquid fuel from coal to 
power all our cars, consumption of coal will go up roughly 10-fold (it's 
already quadrupled in China in the last decade), so now we're down to 25 
years of coal. And if you've ever been to West Virginia or any strip 
mine, you would never advocate something as monstrously destructive as 
coal mining.

The Albert Bartlett link that Sean posted shows how simple and 
inexorable the arithmetic for this is; it's a great video.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4364780292633368976


And like Sean, I'm not saying "we're all gonna die," but claims that 
we've got lots of fossil fuels left are entirely missing the point. It's 
like telling a thirsty person, "there's plenty of water 200 feet down, 
and here's a shovel, so what's your problem?"

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com