How I think it will play out

[eric_tse]

Contrary to many opinions that the sky is falling, I think the future will not be so bleak. The rising gas prices are actually strengthening my opinion, because they already force people to change their lifestyles despite the fact that gas is still pretty cheap here. So here it goes:

1. As the prices rise, the public transportation will start to

Comments

Electric Cars

[evilref]

I think it's important to understand the amount of energy that would be needed to switch over to electric cars.
A really good petrol engine is about 20% efficient, which means that assuming the electric car replacement is 100% efficient (they are rarely better than 90% in practice) then the 30MJ = 8 1/3 kWh in a litre of petrol would need to be replaced with 1.6kWh of electricity.
The USA consumes 140,000,000,000 gallons of petrol (gasoline) annually. Put that into our 1.6kWh per litre and you get a figure of 851,200,000,000kWh of consumption annually.
Unfortunately, the current USA annual generation of electricity is 3,883,000,000,000kWh annually, so any plan needs to start by adding another 1/4 extra capacity to the grid

Re: Electric Cars

[eric_tse]

You are assuming the energy consumption will stay the same. But it will not - it will definitely decline, one way or the other. My point is that much of that energy consumption is really discretionary anyway.

Re: Electric Cars

[albionwood]

That argument is predicated on the assumption that the future must look pretty much like the present, only with more electricity. The OP's argument is that the future will look different, and that the shift is already under way. Commuting, for example: patterns are already changing, so why assume there will always be rush hour?

The US could, IMO, easily provide 25% more electrical capacity simply by conserving. We waste an unbelievable amount of juice. All that is required is incentive and will... (Even the UK wastes a lot of electricity. I was astonished to see every High Street shop blasting electric heat out through the open front door in January!)

Re: Electric Cars

[evilref]

I think the point I was trying to make is that since the future cannot "look pretty much like the present but with more electricity

Re: Electric Cars

[albionwood]

OK, we're back in agreement, then. No future scenario I can imagine preserves the current individual transport paradigm. We need a radical change in the way we think about mobility. Such change probably cannot be accomplished quickly without systemic shock (with widespread rage as a potentially catastrophic side effect), so I hope it can happen gradually as a result of steadily increasing prices.

If such a change can be effected, then retooling the electric grid doesn't seem impossible to me. Sure, it's a big job, but so was building it in the first place. America historically has accomplished this kind of rebuilding several times; only our self-absorption keeps us from doing it again.

[albionwood]

I'd put it slightly differently: The future does not have to be so bleak, if we respond wisely. That's a pretty big IF, contained either explicitly or implicitly in many of your points. Nevertheless I agree in general - the doomer scenarios have a lower probability, in my estimation, than the future you outline. The fact that certain key changes are already under way, even though fuel supply is still robust, is encouraging.

[buckfush530]

This list shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem of peak oil. Reducing consumption is down at number 11, buried at the very end, while coal, tar sands, and uranium are above it. Not to mention wind and several other similar pieces spread in the upper portion.

You seem to believe that this is about where our energy is directly derived from, not the true issue of whether there is an infinitely large amount of it. That's the core of the problem: Malthus. Our economy, our ideologies, and even our species is designed for limitless expansion.

But there are limits to the earth, to the supply of oil, to the amount of land that we can tap for wind or solar or hydroelectric.

On the one hand, you have offered us a picture of how we can get out of peak oil, but not out of the peaks period. We simply create a new peak with uranium, a temporary one with tar sands and coal, or with materials regarding solar panel production. It's addressing one flavor of the problem, and plugging our ears and humming to ignore the next.

[incendiary_dan]

Our economy, our ideologies, and even our species is designed for limitless expansion.

I'm gonna have to argue with that last point, since for most of our species' history we did just fine without expanding to stupid levels. It's only been in the past 10-12 thousand years that a few of us started living in unsustainable and ever-expanding ways. Now that these people (us) cover most of the earth, it's easy to disregard those other cultures.

[buckfush530]

I agree partially. Personally, I see it as a recent piece of cultural evolution, that isn't going to be reversible until the only option left to humans is hunter-gathering. By which point, the earth will be a barren wasteland.

Yahoo.

[eric_tse]

I wasn't putting these points in any particular order. And I did mentioned that ultimately all our energy must come from the sun, unless we crack the fusion. Regarding Maltus - I think the population growth was precisely due to availability to cheap energy, fertilizers, etc. When these things become hard to come by, population growth will slow and then reverse.

[sirveri]

The big problem with nuclear is getting it off the ground. Construction takes both time and money. It also takes what are generally oil fired vehicles. So all told the plants become more expensive to build in the long run, and they also require materials made from oil for their upkeep.

That said, as a baseline power resource uranium is our next best bet, unless you want coal everywhere, and knowing most people they would likely not care about the pollution those things tend to spew. Nor the ammount of energy needed to haul the hundreds of tonnes of coal they would burn EVERY day.