That was GG's proposal, not mine. I've been very specific in the past and I see no reason to keep going aroound this particular mulberry bush. This has been going on for quite a while and it is exactly the same as arguing with someone that believes in biblical inerrancy. The logical and factual contradiction of the belief can be pointed out any number of times and the true believer employs a wide variety of strategies to avoid acknowledging the validity of the obvious.
There are prosaic economic disincentives to increased production. There are prosaic economic incentives to allowing the production to be at the point where it is. The raw resource is there; it is a known and acknowledged fact by everyone except this group of conspiracy theorists. Just like evolution is acknowledged by everyone except those motivated by the personal emotional investment in bibilcal inerrancy so to are the facts related to "peak oil".
In the face of all the prevailing evidence it is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I've taken more time than it's worth to review a great deal of material put forth by GG and it is, by all academic standards, nothing but rubbish. Tonight we've seen the admission that using production figures to predict this 'event' isn't possible; yet, none the less, that is the complete basis of all predictions. And not only is this invalid analytic tool used, it is used in isolation from any explanation of the accepted why the accepted theories of the behavior of the oil producers is wrong.
Here is where this started, with my review of GG's projection:
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/WEAP2/WEAP2.htmlThis is a document crafted in a manner that totally fails to achieve it's stated goal of being an accurate assessment of energy resources that will be available to us in 2050. It does nothing but paint a nightmare scenario that forms the basis for arguments supporting the claim that nuclear energy looks to be the only viable solution to otherwise inevitable catastrophe.
I will point out a couple of major errors and omissions then drop the matter.
First is the failure to address the effect of price on demand. To provide a single example: while demand curves in the transportation sector are slow to respond to pricing signals, they eventually respond when the price increase is sustained over the period of normal passenger fleet rotation, which is approximately 85% every six years. You erroneously claim that the time required to repopulate this fleet of vehicles is so long as to prohibit a shift to electric drive in a time period that can have a meaningful effect on the outcome your projections.
That error is a fundamental one as the internal combustion engine in our automobiles is only about 12% efficient; meaning that 88% of the gasoline pumped into the tank of your auto is lost to friction and heat, with only 12% going for actual propulsion. The same comparison for battery electric drive gives us better than 95" efficiency, with a full life cycle evaluation yielding various (but all extremely significant) degrees of improvement when compared to IC and fossil fuels.
In the tech sector we have seen the development of Lithium Ion batteries that are incredibly lighter and better performing than lead acid or NICad. For an appreciation of the how significant the relative weight differences are, just look those elements up on the periodic chart. LIon also offers the near term possiblity of both long range and rapid recharge (on an order comparable to refueling with gasoline). These consumer considerations are the primary obstacles to public acceptance of the technology.
Kempton has quantified the total power of the US auto fleet as triple the US electrical generation capacity and 8X the load. The vehicle to grid (V2G) concept is a realistic means of drastically reducing infrastructure costs associated with the transition to wind and an electric vehicle passenger fleet. Since the average car is in use for only a small fraction of the day the storage capacity available with virtually no large scale infrastucture investment is stunning. I'll leave it to you to research the details of the system.
This means that in the relative near term, not only the US but the entire world can realistically expect to reap the huge increase in efficiency associated with the transition to an all electric passenger fleet. It also means that there is a realistic storage mechanism to maximize the energy generated by wind and solar through load matching.
Another area of gross miscalculation is the maximum potential of wind energy to meet world energy demand. We know there is enough acessable wind in high capacity locations (archer et al 2005,2007) to meet present and projected future energy demands many times over. The basis for your chart on wind fails to take into account the cubed increase in the power of wind as larger scale turbines come on line. The effect of this on the replacement of outdated technology on terrestrial sites, as well as the move offshore where the winds are significantly better are not predicted by extrapolation from a generalized charting of installed capacity over the past 30 years. Looking backwards isn't a bad thing, but when you try to drive forward through your rear view mirror you cannot expect anything approaching optimum results.
If you had incorporated pricing into your analysis you'd have seen a direct correlation between the relative cost of wind and solar to coal and the rate of increase in installed capacity. You make no accounting of other events in the past ten years that are unarguably going to exert profound effects on the path to disaster you are so seemingly eagerly to predict.
First of course, are the initiatives to account for carbon costs. This will drive the costs of coal to a sufficiently steeper slope relative to renewables; so much so, in fact, that your projections of world coal consumption are simply not tenable. In place of dealing realistically (that is your goal, right) with the various policy instruments that are being implemented to capture the costs of carbon, you made one mention of improbable efforts at carbon sequestration for coal and then totally ignore the most relevant facet of world efforts to move away from fossil fuels of all types.
I'll stop there. I am sorry to be so blunt in my criticisms on a public forum, but you have put this out there as an authoritative source to support extremely dubious claims related to the future. In that context it simply had to be addressed.
My conclusion is that much of your basic data is fatally flawed because it rests on totally unrealistic or outright false assumptions regarding the state of affairs in the energy field. Your conclusions look to be preselected and the data crafted to match the desired outcome. I don't speak to your motives for this. It is a difficult task and it requires specialized training in analysis with both reasonably deep knowledge over a broad range of issues to properly address the matter.
I strongly urge you to discontinue the use of this as a basis for predicting our future energy use, needs or supply. It is nothing more than scaremongering.
GG's response: Thanks for your comments. Let's take a look at some of them.We'll start with this one:
"...totally fails to achieve it's stated goal of being an accurate assessment of energy resources that will be available to us in 2050.
In fact the article never claims to be an "accurate" assessment of future energy supplies. Such a goal would be impossible, since no projection can make such a claim -- remember Yogi Berra's dictum, "Predictions are hard, especially about the future." In the opening disclaimer it spells out the fact that this is a scenario. The furthest I go is to claim it describes "the likely outcome if we don't take collective action but rather just continue business as usual". I make no claims for the scenario's accuracy or predictive capability, or for whether we will take collective action.
I likewise never make "the claim that nuclear energy looks to be the only viable solution to otherwise inevitable catastrophe". In fact I explicitly say that nuclear power is unlikely to offer any real hope, due to a peak and decline of nuclear capacity in the 2020 timeframe from "new construction not keeping pace with the decommissioning of old reactors." Any imputation of such hopes for nuclear power is solely your own, as I don't believe for a moment that nuclear power will be a solution. In the article I make it clear that cost constraints, public opposition and a looming bottleneck in uranium supplies will probably act to choke off nuclear development. You are putting words in my mouth.
The biggest mistake you make, though, is in your insistence that the model must reflect supply/demand pricing. Under the primary assumption of the model (Peak Oil) such an analysis is a fool's errand. Peak Oil amounts to an inflection point in the trajectory of civilization. This creates what is in effect a singularity, beyond which derived values like oil prices become literally impossible to predict. As long as the supply does not inflect, tools like the measurement of own-price elasticity of demand can be used to determine demand changes in the presence of gradually changing supply.
Such attempts are futile in the event of Peak Oil, however. Oil is the master resource of our civilization. As a result demand is very inelastic over the short run, and minor disruptions (like the 5% decline in 1973) can create massive price shocks. These price shocks will have severe ripple effects through the global economy as we try to absorb them. Different nations will respond according to their abilities and circumstances. Some will be able to reorganize their economies and absorb the costs, others will stop buying oil, and some may bankrupt themselves out of necessity. We cannot predict the price that affluent nations might be willing to pay for oil under such circumstances, so we really have no way of predicting the degree of demand destruction that would result. I've been reading Peak Oil analyses diligently for three years, and have never seen one that attempts to do this. The reasons for that are abundantly clear. Making an attempt to incorporate pricing effects would introduce more sources of error than it could possibly address. In fact the added uncertainties would render the analysis useless.
About batteries: you're right, I don't include advances in battery technology. The paper assesses the probable trajectory of existing energy supplies. It makes no claims as to how the energy may be used. Certainly electric transportation will assume a larger role in some forms in some places. That's not what this analysis is about, however. It looks purely at energy supplies.
I'm also aware of the massive potential of wind power. However, the analysis is not interested in the ultimate potential of energy sources so much as the ability we are showing to harness them. That's why I used the projections I did for increases in wind capacity - I'm looking at the demonstrated build-out, not the potential resource. I apply precisely the same logic to the assessment of nuclear power.
Your critique rests on a faulty understanding of the purpose of the analysis. You seem to want it to be the one you would have written instead, and are upset that it's not. This is clear to me from your emotional reaction to its main conclusion -- that a decline in global energy supplies implies a decline in industrial capacity and the activity levels of our civilization. Your use of terms like "nightmare scenario" and "scaremongering" make it clear that your objections are not so much procedural as philosophical.
I stand by this analysis, and will assuredly continue to use it as the basis for future investigations unless and until events prove it to be in error.
And my reply: Your stated goals are clear "I hope to be able to provide a realistic assessment of the evolution of the global energy supply picture, and to estimate how much of the various types of energy we will have available to us in the coming decades."
If you want to quibble about realistic vs. accurate, feel free. My logic requires accuracy for realism. Perhaps you don't share that pespective.
While it's true that no projection should be expected to achieve perfect accuracy, it is also true that we are not relieved of the obligation to at least try to make the assessment as accurate as possiblle. Franky, I'll concede that you probably did exactly that. What I'm saying is that the effort is so far off the mark in terms of accuracy that is more harmful than helpful. Dramatically more harmful than helpful.
You object to my remarks about your paper and discussion over use of nuclear energy. What I find puzzling is why you would cut my statement in half in order to set up an obvious straw man? What I wrote in full is this "It does nothing but paint a nightmare scenario that forms the basis for arguments supporting the claim that nuclear energy looks to be the only viable solution to otherwise inevitable catastrophe."
It's true you do not push nuclear directly. What you do instead is argue that the problem most significant to nuclear is public opposition (the fuel problem is easy to addresss with breeder reactors). With that you mask the very real external COSTS of waste storage and nuclear proliferation. You also go to the trouble of examining the technologies that may improve nuclear power generation in the near term future. I know a sales pitch when I hear one, it is about providing information that leads to a conclusion; a process that is often framed as besst choice among bad options. Again, I'm not addressing your motives; it is reasonable to conclude that this is what you believe, so that belief shaped your papaer.
Your discussion of the economics involved (especially the claim that it is useless to include) show some basic misunderstanding and faulty premises. First, peak oil is not possible to predict in advance. The stated objective of your paper is to estimate how much energy will be available in 2050. We agree that the raw resources of wind and solar are sufficient to replace petroleum, but that it is a matter of efficient extraction of the resources, right?
The behavior of society is going to be the key to that, agreed?
The way you track the behavior of society when you have a finite declining resource and alternative replacement resources is via economic analysis. By limiting yourself to an analysis founded on past quantities of production for each resource being considered, you totally fail to examine the behavior of society. As the finite resource declines in abundance relative to use, there will be price signals generated that are reacted to by society - we will ramp up production of the alternatives.
Think about this for a minute, instead of examining the behavior of the abundance of the untapped alternative resources relative to predicted future pricing signals, you make a prediction where the solar and wind components are based on a review of the past 30 years worth of response to pricing signals sent by petroleum and coal. The you use the data those pricing signals have generated to extrapolate 42 years into the future.
Back of the envelope analysis: price of oil over that term between what 12-100 a barrel? With the spike occurring only recently? So let's say that for 22 of the thirty past years the price of oil has been around 29 a barrel. Then it starts spiking and an average of the last 8 years is close to 65 a barrel.
If we add in the slow response to petroleum price signals because it is is in the basic infrastructure area, then it is probably safe to say that only 3% - 6% (1-2 years) of the data you used for your forward projections regarding renewables is valid. Are you comfortable with that?
The same type of problem is created by your failing to include policies to capture the COSTS of carbon. I'm going to shout this part: THESE POLICIES ARE CRAFTED SPECIFICALLY TO ALTER THE DEMAND CURVE FOR FOSSIL FUELS. THAT IN TURN ALTERS YOUR CONSUMPTION CURVE WHICH WILL, IN TURN, ALTER THE SLOPE OF THE PRODUCTION CURVE AS IT APPROACHES THE X AXIS.
Here's what I think. You've read some things that scared the beejezuz out of you. Using what you read, you confirmed the analysis that shocked you by essentially duplicating it. Does that mean the original analysis is correct?
Unless you think the owners of oil are going to deliberately suppress the price of oil as supplies dwindle, there is no reason to NOT employ these extremely valuable tools to recalibrate your production curves.
Do you think they are going to artificially depress the price of oil or even coal?
I'll let it go there, but I want to repeat what I said: your "analysis" is nothing but scaremongering and you should discontinue it's use until you learn enough about what natural resource economics can tell us about the ENTIRE energy landscape going into the future.
Append to the end of this section:
ALTER THE SLOPE OF THE PRODUCTION CURVE AS IT APPROACHES THE X AXIS.
In most cases, we never run out of the finite resources being analyzed. Before the point of resource extinction, alternatives/ substitutes are found and made viable by increasing costs.
At this point, what we KNOW about total oil reserves is largely speculative. But we do KNOW concretely that just maintaining levels of production against increasing demand is driving costs up. When the actual level of production begins to decline, then we can expect even more aggressive pricing signals and an even more intense response via efforts to exploit alternatives.
What I'm saying is that IF declining production is part of petroleum resource depletion (a reasonable expectation, no?) then the curve for renewables will become even steeper and substitution will occur even faster.
END
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