Back to the Olduvai Gorge

[Dogmudgeon]

Richard C. Duncan has mapped out what might be the Road to the Human Abyss. He calls it the Olduvai Theory. In his words:

The Olduvai theory is defined by the ratio of world energy production and population. It states that the life expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than or equal to 100 years: 1930-2030. After more than a century of strong growth — energy production per capita peaked in 1979. The Olduvai theory explains the 1979 peak and the subsequent decline. Moreover, it says that energy production per capita will fall to its 1930 value by 2030, thus giving Industrial Civilization a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years. This analysis predicts that the collapse will be strongly correlated with an 'epidemic' of permanent blackouts of high-voltage electric power networks — worldwide.

According to Duncan, human civilization peaked (in terms of oil consumption per capita) around 1978, and has been riding on a steadily-declining plateau since that time. The "slide" started around 2000; sometime around 2012, he expects civilization to hit the "cliff".

The 'cliff' is the third and final interval in the Olduvai schema. It begins (in) 2012 when an epidemic of permanent blackouts spreads worldwide, i.e. first there are waves of brownouts and temporary blackouts, then finally the electric power networks themselves expire. This is the so-named Olduvai "trigger event" when all the vital C3 (command, communication and control --bkl) functions die. ... 2030 marks the fall of world energy production (use) per capita to the 1930 level. This is the lagging 30% point at which time Industrial Civilization has become history. The average rate of decline of (per capita energy use) is 5.44 %/year during the 18 'cliff' years from 2012 to 2030.

Duncan has written several papers on the Olduvai theory, and many are available on-line. Some of them are nearly identical to others, but incorporate the results of more recent research he has done.

http://www.dieoff.org/page125.htm
http://www.dieoff.org/page224.htm
http://greatchange.org/ov-duncan,road_to_olduvai_gorge.html (the material quoted above is drawn from this source)

--bkl

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. This only deals with oil

Non-oil energy sources will take up slack, and there are plenty of them, even if they become mainly natural gas and reforming coal and getting oil out of the tar sands and shale oils, once the price goes high enough.

A lot depends on the amount of energy efficiency involved in the model. There could be massive shifts to high volume high speed rail traffic with electric and hybrid vehicles for short haul.

[el_gato]

2. Sadly you are mistaken Bernardo

Natural gas is in short supply especially in North America and
coal has a low caloric content relative to the energy required
to obtain it so that's a bust.

Now as far as tar sands and shale oils they have been a bust as well.
The shale oil that people talk about in Canada would take a waste
pond the size of the Great Lakes to extract the usable energy content.

The problem with using economics to explain away these problems,
since your citing price factors, is that modern economic theory is based
on the assumption of ever expanding markets which have never taken
into account physical constraints. In other words, economic theory
exists outside of the world of physics and does not reflect our reality.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Some valid points, but ...

The oil shales are in the western US.
The tar sands are in northern Canada. Northern Canada has lots of room for mounds of waste.

The economics do operate because his model may not account for the unexpectedly rapid industrialization of China and India. That will increase demand, which will raise prices, which will make conservation, efficiency, and alternative extraction and production more desirable.

There are no easy answers so ultimately there will be a combination of methods used. The alternative of total blackout except for a few centers is just handwringing. However, transitions can be wrenching.

Truly, the industrial era is in its late phases as China and India advance. I expect the next phase will not be dark ages, but will be post-industrial, characterized by much tele-commuting, organic farming practices, smart efficient devices, less jet travel for face-to-face, etc.

[hatrack]

4. Tar sands barely break even thermodynamically - shales never will

From Walter Youngquist's "Geodestinies", Chapter 27

Myth:

There are billions of barrels of oil which can be readily recovered from oil shale in the U.S.

As the United States has the world's largest and richest deposits of oil shale, the optimistic statements which sometimes arise from that fact are among the more commonly heard in regard to the U.S. energy future. An enthusiastic article about oil shale in the prestigious Fortune magazine is titled: "Shale Oil is Braced for Big Role." It concludes, "Shale oil is not the whole answer to the energy problem but it's one of the few pieces that is already within the nation's grasp."(l9) The article was written in 1979. As of 1997 no oil from oil shale is being produced in the U.S.... or anywhere else.

Reality:

The supposedly great prospects for the production of oil from oil shale in the United States has been one of the most widely promoted and heard energy myths for many years. Statements even made by government agencies can be quite misleading. These arise perhaps because it is good government policy to take as optimistic view as possible toward any national problem. The statements also are due to a less than careful examination of the facts, and perhaps a bit of promotion for the agency involved. The statement is made by a U.S. government organization that "...using demonstrated methods of extraction, recovery of about 80 billion barrels of oil from accessible high-grade deposits of the Green River Formation is possible at costs competitive with petroleum of comparable quality."(l2) This is a clear misstatement of the facts. At the time it was written (1981) there had been no demonstrated methods of oil recovery at costs competitive with oil of comparable quality, nor have there been any such methods demonstrated to this date. A variety of processes have been tried. All have failed. Unocal, Exxon, Occidental Petroleum, and other companies and the U.S. Bureau of Mines have made substantial efforts but with no commercial results. A state government agency issued a pamphlet on oil shale stating, "The deposits are estimated to contain 562 billion barrels of recoverable oil. This is more than 64 percent of the world's total proven crude oil reserves."(29) The implication here is that the oil which could be "recoverable" could be produced at a net energy profit as if it were barrels of oil from a conventional well.

The average citizen seeing this statement in a government publication is led to believe that the United States really has no oil supply problem when oil shales hold "recoverable oil" equal to "more than 64 percent of the world's total proven crude oil reserves." Presumably the United States could tap into this great oil reserve at any time. This is not true at all. All attempts to get this "oil" out of shale have failed economically. Furthermore, the "oil" (and, it is not oil as is crude oil, but this is not stated) may be recoverable but the net energy recovered may not equal the energy used to recover it. If oil is "recovered" but at a net energy loss, the operation is a failure. Also, the environmental impacts of developing shale oil, especially related to the available water supply (the headwaters of the already over used Colorado river), and the disposal of wastes, do not seem manageable, at least a the present time, and perhaps not all.

The clear implication of both of these government statements is that oil shale is a huge readily available source. Because of the enormous amount of "oil" which has been claimed that could be recovered, this gives a large sense of energy security which does not exist. For this reason it is a particularly dangerous myth.

Myth:

Canada's oilsands with 1.7 trillion barrels of oil will be a major world oil supply

It appears to be true that in the Athabasca oilsands and nearby related heavy oil and bitumen deposits of northern Alberta there is more oil than in all of the Persian Gulf deposits put together.

Reality:

The impressive figure of 1.7 trillion barrels of oil is deceiving. It is likely that only a relatively small amount of that total can be economically recovered. The oil is true crude oil but it cannot be recovered by conventional well drilling. Almost all of it is now recovered by strip mining. The overburden is removed and the oilsand is dug up and hauled to a processing plant. There the oil is removed by a water floatation process. The waste sand has to be disposed of.

Much of the oilsand is too deep to be reached by strip mining. Other methods are being tried to recover this deeper oil, but the economics are marginal. With the strip mining and refining process now in use, it takes the energy equivalent of two barrels of oil to produce one barrel. To expand the strip mining operation to the extent which could, for example, produce the 18 million barrels of oft used each day in the United States would involve the world's biggest mining operation, on a scale which is simply not possible in the foreseeable future, if ever. Canada will probably gradually increase the oil production from these deposits, but until the conventional oil of the world is largely depleted these Canadian deposits are likely to represent only a very small fraction of world production. The production will always be insignificant relative to potential demand. Oilsands are now and will be important to Canada as a long-term source of energy and income. But they will not be a source of oil as are the world's oil wells today.

EDIT

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/youngquist_geodestinies2.html

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Good points, but some assumptions are explicit and some are hidden.

At the time it was written (1981) there had been no demonstrated methods of oil recovery at costs competitive with oil of comparable quality, nor have there been any such methods demonstrated to this date. (1997)

Canada will probably gradually increase the oil production from these deposits, but until the conventional oil of the world is largely depleted these Canadian deposits are likely to represent only a very small fraction of world production

Your quoted reports have much information. But we are explicitly talking about the time when declining production raises prices which makes oil recovery economic. A time when "conventional oil of the world is largely depleted". That is the point!

The energy assumption of two barrels input to get one out depends on the current state or recent state of technology. Large photovoltaic arrays can take advantage of the nearly 24 hour sunlight in summer there. Robotic and nanomachinery may very well change that energy equation too. I'm sure some learned persons, perhaps even you, can easily poke gaping holes in my ideas. Shades of the professor who proved bumblebees can't fly. I don't know. But I do know that handwringing, giving up, and turning out the lights are the last options to consider or choose. We shall see.

[hatrack]

6. Recognizing thermodynamic reality is not "handwringing"

Let's say you discover a billion-barrel oil field. Unfortunately for you as a wildcatter, the field is separated into 10 million discrete fields of one hundred barrels each. Gas or water flooding will not work to consolidate these small deposits, given the curious nature of the rock formation you've been so unlucky as to discover.

Since just driving a rig truck out to the sites will burn up the equivalent of a substantial chunk of each deposit's contents, let alone drilling, you may as well not bother, and it doesn't matter what the price of oil goes to as far as exploiting this deposit goes. It makes no sense to invest more energy in a field than that field will eventually yield when exploited. Better by far to use what you have on hand already.

This, of course, is a wild hypothetical. But look at what has happened in recent years with the energy sources mentioned in this thread. While Canadian tar sands operations are expanding and have finally, after years of production, begun to break even financially, new constraints on production are already arising.

This water-intensive process has resulted in huge river diversions, and the projects will need even more water if expansion is to continue. More pressing is the need for enormous quantities of natural gas for the refining process. On-site natural gas resources are tailing off, and plans for more pipelines are in the works, but given falling North American natural gas production, plus competing demands from residential and other industrial users, this may prove both difficult and expensive. Nuclear power is now being seriously considered as a power source for the tar sands process. There's no reason you couldn't power the process with nuclear energy, but it is likely to add huge cost burdens to an already hugely capital-intensive process. And given Canadian winters and limited hours of daylight in Alberta in January, I don't think large-scale photovoltaic arrays as you mention above would be terribly useful.

Oil shales are even more problematic. To fully exploit the Colorado and Utah kerogen deposits would require the flow of several Colorado Rivers, and that water is already spoken for. Groundwater exploitation is possible, but like potential Colorado Basin diversions would entail monstrous legal battles, high expenses and tremendous environmental damage. There's also the problem of kerogen waste, which expands in size after oil extraction (I think by 300-400%, though I need to check those figures) and is also toxic. So if you extract 1 billion cubic meters of oil shale, you end up with 3 or 4 billion cubic meters of toxic waste, which has to go somewhere, adding to the enviromental burden (again, I need to check the expansion factor).

Again, this isn't handwringing or despair. It's just a recognition that while economic forces can indeed move human society quickly in new directions, they can't override physics.

[Dogmudgeon]

7. It's about total wealth, not its distribution

Chances are, we won't ever be "out of oil"; and economic dynamics will regulate the price and distribution of that oil.

But the engine of our entire civilization depends on oil. When the price of oil increases, it changes the economic picture. Since the energy from oil is a first-order factor in almost any economic analysis, small changes in oil price can make large changes in economic activity. And large changes ... ?

Wealth is dependent on energy. When that energy is harder to get, wealth is harder to create; instead of costing $1 to make $10, it could conceivably cost $9 to make that $10. Distributing wealth is no great problem under either market or command/control systems. Creating wealth comes from human ingenuity and physical energy. And the physical energy we have come to rely on is the physical energy from breaking the bonds of petrochemicals.

You probably know this; but many people do not, including many readers of DU, so I hope you'll forgive the rehash of fundamental economic theory.

Even if heavy oils (e.g., shale oil, asphalt-like heavy crude, etc) can be profitably exploited for fuel oil, there will be a period where the price of energy in general will become extremely high due to the price increases in oil. In fact, this would happen if any promising new source of energy is found. It need not be an exotic or require a future technology -- one DUer who posts on this topic is NNadir, who is convinced that a well-planned program of radionucleide recycling could give us centuries of inexpensive energy. But it will take "a few years" to get it going. At least! This transitional period from oil to Energy Source X, even with optimistic projections, is looking to be at least 20 years. It would take that long to replace energy infrastructure and retool industry to use the new energy sources.

And the more expertise the analyst has, the worse the picture looks. Most of the savants from the petrochemical business think that civilization itself is doomed. It's the polyannish laity like me that thinks we can do something effective about it.

So, we're facing a protracted period where a much larger amount of the world's aggregate wealth is spent buying and/or producing energy. Keep in mind, the modern economy demands a 2.5-3% annual growth rate in energy, capital, employment, etc., just to avoid depression.

Think about that ... 20 years or more of unremitting shortfall in economic growth. Maybe 35 years. Maybe 60 years. This is what the horrifying cliche "Peak Oil" is all about. It's not about denying the processes of market economics. It's a recognition that the process of creating wealth is about to become much more expensive. It's the forewarning of a dramatic discontinuity in world history.

We have never before faced a large-scale threat to our ability to create wealth.

I, too, think that emerging technologies will eventually restore our ability to support an affluent, growing world; especially the use of space-based resources. The immediate task is figuring out how to muddle through the next few decades, reducing the downside, improving what we have, maintaining as much wealth as we can, and facing the future realistically. Reducing the down-time of that transition to zero is to be devoutly wished for, but we can't depend on it. Success could lead us to an age of incredible wealth and happiness; failure would lead us to a die-off of some 6 billion people and a drastic, permanent return to a pre-industrial lifestyle. Dealing with a critical resource gives us little more than the succeed/fail choice, and I would prefer that we succeed.

And that's going to take a realistic appraisal of the dangers, a little planning, and a lot of work.

--bkl

[Boomer]

9. You're still only talking energy

>>Success could lead us to an age of incredible wealth and happiness; failure would lead us to a die-off of some 6 billion people and a drastic, permanent return to a pre-industrial lifestyle.<<

As I note elsewhere in this thread, perhaps the greatest blow will come from the loss of petroleum-based fertilizers that have sustained the Green Revolution. We simply won't be able to sustain our current level of population once oil is depleted or scarce.

[Dogmudgeon]

11. Yes, that's true

It's mainly from my sloppiness that I didn't include it in the discussion. Food is, in fact, a source of energy, and when people start missing out on meals, that becomes impossible to avoid!

I've read that without Green Revolution food from specially hybridized seeds and petrochemical-source fertilizer, crop yields fall to about 20%, which might sustain two billion people, maybe.

And I've ranted about this very thing, too. However, even assuming a pampered population survives the die-offs, and can produce enough food to survive in a modicum of comfort, they will still have the wealth-creation problems to deal with. Almost every aspect of our civilization depends on petroleum.

--bkl

[TransitJohn]

16. Well

I work wellsite geology throughout the intermountain west (home base is in Wyoming) and from my vantage point there is no shortage of natural gas. Why do you think the BFEE is fast tracking leases on public land out here in the west? Because they couldn't get their grubbies on it before. Think Clinton and Grand Staircase/Escalante.

Link to where we're drilling now: http://www.uppergreen.org

[Dogmudgeon]

17. That's interesting

According to most industry figures, we're due to "fall off the cliff" in terms of natural gas supplies this winter, or maybe winter 2005-6 if this one is mild.

This is the first I've heard about it. The story going around now is that the Last Big Deposit of natural gas is off the coast of Florida.

Do you have any idea how much natural gas they think there is?

I suspect it's not a very large amount, but even if it's marginally profitable, they won't let anything as trivial as the environment stand in the way.

--bkl

[Boomer]

8. You can't eat coal

We take cheap oil so much for granted that most people don't have a clue just how pervasive it has become in our daily lives. Unfortunately, many of the niches it fills can't be replaced by other means.

One of the most essential uses of petroleum is as fertizer to force high crop yields from depleted soil. Even if you could find alternative sources of energy for all communications, transportation and electrical needs, this effort would not avert a decline in food production (which is already being stressed by climate change).

And then there's our dependency on plastics, which has allowed the production of an enormous range of products that simply can't be produced with other materials.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. It's natural gas that forms the basis for most fertilizers

and that's because it's used to produce hydrogen. So in fact it can be replaced by the electrolysis of water, given a source for electrical power.

[Dogmudgeon]

12. I had heard otherwise

Ammonium Nitrate and similar compounds are also recovered in oil fields, and at one time were considered to be waste products. It's nitrogen that's the prized element.

Then, too, electrolyzing water requires energy that won't necessarily be around.

My utopian hope is that we can breed bacteria that can better fix atmospheric nitrogen and make it available for plants. But I know we can't depend on those breakthroughs.

--bkl

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Mineral Information Institute

http://www.mii.org/Minerals/photonitro.html

Some minerals containing nitrogen can occur in deposits large enough to be mined for their nitrogen content. Sodium and potassium nitrate mineral deposits are mined in the Atacama Desert of Chile. This, however, is a minor source of nitrogen.

Nearly all nitrogen is taken from the atmosphere. In a chemical reaction, air is made to react with hydrogen (which itself is retrieved from natural gas deposits) to make ammonia gas (NH3). The ammonia is then combined with other molecules to create a number of end products.

[fedsron2us]

14. Does the evidence of history really support Duncan's thesis ?

Pre-industrial civilisations rose and fell at regular intervals. These events did cause major dislocations and at times certain capabilities were lost (e.g. the manufacture of concrete after the decline of ancient Rome). However, nearly all the evidence indicates that once a society has gained key skills, such as the ability to fashion metal tools or literacy, then it is very unlikely to lose them completely. This holds true even if a population suffers a demographic collapse similar to the type that Duncan postulates. Perhaps the best documented die-off in history was caused by the Black Death in the mid 14th century. It is estimated to have killed between 30-50% of the population in Europe. Yet despite this huge mortality rate the structure of medieval society survived. For example in England circa 1400, half a century after the pestilence had swept through the country, the major institutions of church and state still existed. Most of the viable agricultural land in the kingdom was tilled. No major English urban areas were abandoned and trade continued with continental Europe. Even where the plague did have a major impact, such as increasing the scarcity of labor, encouraging the growth of a wage economy and undermining feudal ties, the process took centuries to unfold. I agree with Duncan that the world is facing a major energy crisis which might well cause the collapse of fossil fuel based industrial civilisation. I am even prepared to accept the possibility that war, famine and pestilence could lead to a major die-off among the human population. But these facts alone do not make the rest of his theory viable. There is nothing to indicate that a post oil crash society would in any way resemble the pre-industrial world. Despite Duncan's graphs and liberal use of statistics his work is futurology not science. I suspect that he can no more predict what is to come than the soothsayers of the middle ages.

[hatrack]

15. Hard to say

Social collapse is certainly nothing new in history. What Campbell may be driving at is simply how much farther to fall we have this time around.

Industrial society is now so complex, and the degree of specialization so intense, and sheer human numbers so daunting that if it all does go smash, it would be substantially more difficult to pick up the pieces and go on. The potential population loss alone in some catastrophic scenario would be on a scale we've never seen. And, as someone (I can't remember who) pointed out, you only need to lose one generation of anything - computer programmers, French speakers, luthiers - for that knowledge to be, to all intents and purposes lost.

However, Graham Greene pointed out in The Quiet American something to the effect that when the streets of New York were filled with weeds and the Louvre was a heap of ruins, somewhere in Vietnam a peasant would be hitching up his oxen and planting rice just as he had always done. Somewhere, someone will likely keep struggling on.