Peak Oil - How will we continue agriculture? Steam Tractors.

I think we urgently need to develop a modern steam tractor/thresher and have it in production as soon as possible. Steam tractors can burn most any fuel, including agricultural waste, and are our only hope of having agriculture on a scale that can prevent mass famine.

Comments?

we may end-up with people growing their own food. That's my theory. Everyone who makes it through the turmoil will have their own plot of veggies.

I don't garden, but I'm learning how.

More on Peak Oil:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1196017&mesg_id=1196017&page=

Go read any commentary about the sanitary conditions in any major city in the 1880s.

To feed the 500 million people who live on North America, we would need probably 20 million horses. Feeding them is just the first problem.

where horses and carts/wagons/hansom-cabs were used as we now use cars/taxis, vans and trucks. Did cities transfer their horse manure to the countryside to be used as fertilizer or soil amendment at that time? Horse manure is actually good fertilizer, if composted.

Using horses almost exclusively in agriculture, does not produce unmanageable amounts of manure. My mother grew up on a farm that used draft horses during the Depression because they did not require diesel, only grass, hay and oats. The farm consisted of 110 acres tilled (grain and hay), 30 acres pasture (dairy cattle and 3 horses) and 20 acres woodlot. What manure the horses produced was returned to the soil, either raw (in those days) or as composted with cornstalks, etc., just like the cattle manure. Additionally, litter from the hen house and vegetable kitchen scraps (like potato peels) were disked into the large garden, from whence the potatoes originally came.

The farm is still there today, and my 83-year-old uncle and some local help, still raise some hay and a few beef cattle. They've never used a lot of chemical fertilizer, but they do put lime on the acidic soil every spring.

Amanda

We'll get going on hydrogen fuel cells and the machines that can make oil out of garbage. What's even more disturbing is that deregulation of propane has led to prices so high that farmers are looking to other fuel sources to run irrigation wells, and since natural gas use has sent the price of that sky high, it's usually diesel that they are turning to which puts an even greater strain on oil. What else is disturbing is that since brain damage took office, every mainstream source of energy has gotten significantly more expensive. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

you need to extract the energy from the hydrogen...ergo, it
requires ENERGY to extract the hydrogen and then to convert it
to useable energy.

Hydrogen is not the panacea that some have claimed it to be...

or at least that's what the Bush Administration has in mind. In theory, nuclear energy can be safe, abundant and clean. The alternative is either coal (unacceptable due to global warming) or solar (unfortunately still very expensive). This will be the sales pitch at any rate.

Currently, the nuclear industry is busy re-licensing existing plants, but they hope within the next few years to obtain licenses for new plants. These will be located on sites with existing plants (so as to avoid going through the process of site approval), and will be existing, standardized designs that have already been licensed. Eventually (15 years maybe) new designs such as gas pebble bed reactors will be introduced. These are said to be inherently safe from meltdown, and less expensive to construct. (Huge capital costs are the primary problem with nukes. Once they're built, they produce electricity at less than 2 cents per kilowatt hour. Coal costs 3 cents. Anyone here know how expensive solar is (solar-thermal, the least expensive technology)? I'm thinking five times more expensive, but I'm not sure.

In 50 years, the first fusion plants may come on line. We might not have 50 years to solve our energy problems, particularly transportation which relies so much on petroleum. We might have some very difficult choices. We should pray that our leaders do not continue down the path of using the military to try to solve our energy crisis.

I worked on three. It took about ten years to build a unit. No kidding. They are enormous, for one thing, and so tightly regulated-which they should be-that nothing happens very fast. Every weld, for example, has to be x-rayed for leaks. If they have a better, safer, faster-to-build design we could put on the existing sites, it might be an option.

I can't even imagine starting one of those monsters today. We have better construction technology, tools and equipment...but it would still be slow. We had 10,000 men on one job, and it still took 10 years for the first unit...though we were bringing the second along at the same time...somewhat behind. Typical units of this type are 840 megawatts apiece. That was in the 80's.

If we have to have something fast, I think it will be peakers or coal. Peakers use lng, or natural gas, but supplies of this are becoming tight as well. They are built to handle peak energy loads...not really meant for continuous duty. We have already built a lot of peakers, and are building more now. We are building import terminals for lng, too.

We can build a 1300 megawatt coal burner, with all the pollution gear, in about 4 years. It would peak at about 1000 construction workers. They are building one now, as a matter of fact. The first one in maybe 20 years...that I know of. Today, they are experimenting with pumping all the greenhouse emissions deep underground...don't know how that will turn out.

The newest coal burners we have now, were designed in the 60's and built in the 70's and 80's. I worked on some of them too. Surely there have been design improvements! The new pollution equipment is major construction in and of itself, but the power companies are committed to it. I have helped put a lot of it in.

Over half our power comes from coal now, and I don't realistically look for that to change anytime soon. I wish a larger commitment were being made to other forms of energy...but nothing much is being done...no real money being spent. The big money is being spent on coal. And I mean lots of it.

Hydrogen is not the answer if it is made with oil, which is what is being pushed.

Seems like there is a serious problem with safe disposal of huge amounts of fecal matter from pig farms, poultry farms and beef feed lots (not to mention the BS from politicians). We the People need to remind Congress they work for us and demand $$ be funneled to R&D for converting
poop to fuel. Also need to force back tax credits for alternative energy installations of solar/wind equipment.

There was the story about the chap who adapted a car to run on used cooking oil he collected from restaurants. Energy can come from the things we are having trouble disposing of if the laws favoring fo$$il fuel use were just changed.

Until the $hit hits the fan and there is a huge cry for this, the $$ from business-as-usual buying governments will send us all to energy hell.

you can continue to raise field crops using large amounts of chemical fertilizer. Even then, some progressive agricultural types believe that modern farm techniques, which do not put organic matter back into the soil as was done 30-40 years ago and before, but instead use the chemicals, destroys the natural fertility of soil and may end up decreasing the quantity and quality of crops produced on such soil.

"Poop" was used extensively as fertilizer when many more farms were less specialized. Many, many farmers raised grain, and other animal feeds such as hay, as well as kept the animals that ate the grain. Farms were smaller and there were fewer animals per farm. Or, farmers would raise feed for nearby feeding operations. In either case, "poop" was a primary fertilizer and soil conditioner.

As many on DU energy/environment/science know, the primary fertilizing elements are nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. The nitrogen component is made using natural gas as a feedstock, and frequently as source of the enormous energy needed to fix the nitrogen. Natural gas is not going to be around forever, and it will continue to get more expensive. There are apparently a few, very expensive ways to make a little of the nitrogen without natgas, but we'll see very little of it because of the energy intensity.

Phosphorous is mined in Florida and some in the general southeastern U.S. I believe that there is a little low quality stuff in the northern Rocky Mountains. Our supply is supposed to last 75-125 years at the rate that we are applying it.

There is a huge amount of the phosphorous rock in Morocco and some in Jordan, too. In the future these areas may not want to trade with us, or there will not be sufficient fuel for a lot of oceanic shipping. In other words, phosphorous is something that we may very well want to conserve. In addition, the phosphorous is treated chemically and then shipped a long way to the farms from Florida. In the future, this shipping may become extremely expensive. Organic farmers are allowed to use crushed or grown phosphoric rock on their fields, so even they are not totally immune from a lack phosphorous.

Potassium, I believe is found in Canada, and there is quite a bit of it, but it too must be shipped.

If our energy future pans out as even the mildly pessimistic expect, our food will have to be grown close to us to avoid huge shipping costs or because we simply can't ship anything very far anymore without significant energy. That will probably make shipping what chemical fertilizer is then available very expensive or altogether impossible. Indeed, shipping "poop" for fertilizer very far away from its origin will be expensive, as it is now. We may then see a breakup of these large commercial feed lots, hog plantations and chicken farms and a return to the older form of agriculture.

Bottom line, when energy supplies run low we may need that "poop" for fertilizer to keep our fields growing the food that we need to survive, and there will be little or no left over to make biofuels so that we can still drive around in cars. If there are then biofuels made from "poop", I expect that those biofuels will be burned in the engines of trucks taking food to market.

to the land and as energy becomes more "expensive" new resources will be found. The real problem is that the controlling powers in the world today are corps who work against the needs of the people to retain power. Remember these people have so much money that it no longer matters to them only power and the orchestrated deaths and horrors of the masses give them pleasure.

I've just heard lots of people say it's the next big thing, so I'm parroting a bit. I hope we don't let this problem go until we run out of oil and have nothing. That could almost be apocalyptic, but very profitable to people with the last remaining oil.

that's the problem.
Unfortunately, millions will die of starvation especially those
within the major cities and urban areas.
The problem is getting the agricultural goods to the masses or
vice versa.

If you take American cities they are, on average, more than 500 miles
from supply centers.
Again, you have to tale a "macro-concept" and take it all the
way down to the smallest "micro-concept" exploring every single nook
and cranny that oil seaps into...

Seriously, its not just about the production of anything...its
also the distribution...the spare parts, etc.
Current city/urban layouts in the US (at least) do not partake
well to a major upheaval that peak oil will bring about. IMHO,
self-sufficiency and/or communal arrangements will be the only
plausible venues.

I know it can be done. But we need to redirect our vast military budget into the task.

More horsepower, you know. lol

But seriously, I have been to steam engine shows...and I think we need something better than that!

Like electric, biodiesel, lng, fuel cells, ethanol,liquid gas from coal...lots of alternatives out there...we just need economies of scale to make them be economical.

I think we will be predominately electric before too much longer...the infrastructure is already there, reaching every home in America...and it is easier to build the large units necessary to bump up output quickly. Easier to control pollution, too.

If a crisis were to occur, we would definitely be building powerhouses...already are, in fact. Natural gas 'Peakers' are being built all over the country, and have been for some years. More import terminals for lng are being constructed as we sit here, as well.

We won't need to go back to steam tractors.

There's someone on this forum why actually advocates producing diesel fuel from nuclear energy.

Economies of scale won't help soy biodiesel much and corn ethanol not at all. They require too much land. Europe produces biodiesel using a higher-yield crop that is related to canola. New crops are being developed such as oil-producing algae for biodiesel and switchgrass for ethanol, each capable of yielding over 10,000 gallons of fuel/acre/year.

Switching to natural gas directly as a fuel probably isn't a good way to go. That would reduce the amount of NG for producing inexpensive fertilizer. It's better to make fertilizer from NG and grow energy-producing crops that store solar energy and yield much more energy than they consume by a ratio of at least 3:1. The resulting fuels can also be used in existing vehicles; LNG cannot.

But electricity from nuclear reactors can power chemical plants that can fix CO2 into simple carbon chains like ethane, methane, ethanol, methanol, etc. These can be used as fuels in modified combustion engines.

I have noted in the (much ignored) thread on the EU study of energy costs, that nuclear energy has, according to the EU, the lowest external (pollution and health) cost of any form of energy in Europe other than hydroelectric power and wind power. On overall fully loaded cost, price + external cost, it is cleaner and safer than any of its scalable alternatives, including biomass. (Except in Norway.)

I have also noted that DME, potentially made from nuclear energy, solar energy or geothermal energy, is cleaner than biodiesel when it burns and can be produced from broad sources via intermediates that have high flexibility for use (basically you can make ANYTHING from "synthesis gas," which is why its called "synthesis gas.".

In the 21st century however, data has a way of losing to wishful thinking.

Countries that depend on wishful thinking will decline and fall. The future will belong to those who think.

"If a crisis were to occur, we would definitely be building powerhouses...already are, in fact. Natural gas 'Peakers' are being built all over the country, and have been for some years. More import terminals for lng are being constructed as we sit here, as well."

One problem is that domestic natural gas is likely to run out before the oil gets beyond 100 a barrel. LNG is about the least desirable fuel to send places in ships. They are floating bombs.

...and wood is a renewable energy source. It takes a lot of wood to generate enough steam to do the work of a hundred horses for one day (typical 100hp tractor would use 50 gallons of gasoline in a day about $90, while a 100hp steam engine might use 10 cords of wood, about $100). Oh and then there's all that smoke from burning wood, lots of pollution. But, we have communities here in the U.S. that we could turn to to learn how to do this, the Amish and the Mennonites, two fundamentalist conservative religious groups who I don't think are that political. They might show how how to grow things again the natural way. The only genetic engineering they do is the way the birds and the bees taught them. I'm willing to give it a shot. I loved watching those old steam engines out in the fields at harvest time. Steam cars, that's another possibility, especially if we used ethanol as the fuel, again another renewable energy source. Man, just put our thinking caps on and get rid of those greedy oils execs and corrupt politicians, I think we could find acceptable solutions to these problems. Steam stealth bombers? That would be a lot tricker, but if would could get one to get off the ground I would put all the generals and admirals in them take them up to about 100,000 feet and then let them free fall. That would pretty much eliminate the need for $650 billion defense budgets. :hippie:

http://www.auri.org/news/ainjul01/05page.htm

Princeton, Minn. — For a time last winter, Dennis Haubenschild’s dairy cows were earning him 40 cents a day from their milk and 30 cents a day from their electricity.

Electricity from cows? That’s right.

Haubenschild Farms is the first Minnesota farm to produce “cow power.” The 760-cow family farm uses anaerobic manure digestion to produce methane for electricity. The waste digester supplies enough power to run the entire farm, plus 78 average homes.

The issue here is that cows need to be fed. Unless you allow them
to roam freely and graze on the open range, you still have the
energy intensive infrastructure to pick up the cow manure...unless
you do all this by hand.
The other thing is: cows in the US are fed grains, which in of itself
is also energy intensive given the farming techniques.

The "solution(s)" are not that simplistic.
I'm not saying that this idea is bad, quite the contrary. I think
that within small communities "cow power" would be another viable
alternative energy source, coupled with solar and wind, etc.

in mad max beyond thunderdome. only, they used pigs.

:P

use alternative engery. First the shit: it can be put in a large sealed container and will produce a lot of methane. Cars can be run on it. It's very explosive, but can't have everything. Over the years, this magazine has shown how to do this. They're also big on wind power, solar, and every other wierd idea people come up with.

Second - there are some intersting web sites out there that claim there is enough oil in hemp to make it feasible to use as an alternative to oil. At one time, hemp did everything- clothing, ropes, ship masts, food for animals. The reason it is not being looked into is another name for hemp is majariuana. Funny how that was outlawed about the time oil was getting big.

And for agriculture - has anyone noticed what exactly in food in America now a days? Take a lok at the list of ingredients in the food most of us buy. Mostly chemicals and sugar. Whey use to be a by-rpoduct of the cheese industry and fed to hogs because it was unfit for human consumption. The humans ate brains, spleem, stomach, etc. Now we through out all those and eat whey. We can get rid of the cows and sheep and grow grain. It takes 10 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of beef. Think how long you could live on 10 pounds of grains.

That's the most intelligent thing anyone has said in this thread so far.

Meat-based diets are environmentally destructive because they're so inefficient. Just reducing the amount of meat in your diet by 2/3 and replacing some of it with legumes and other veg proteins will in fact make a huge difference; you are switching to a far less wasteful way of growing food.

Poop-power is nice to use if you have to raise animals; it makes the energy loss associated with meat/dairy a little less drastic. In most cases though, we don't /need/ to be raising these animals.

Farm equipment already makes heavy use of ethanol and biodiesel, so I don't see the 'food apocalypse' that some other DUers see. Scarcity is not as much of a problem as the root problem of environmental destruction.

according to John Robbins in The Food Revolution. Switching to a more plant based diet has only positive consequences for the environment and energy consumption.

It doesn't require 2500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef -- that's what factory ranching uses. Far from being anargument against vegetarianism, it's an argument against using factory methods to produce any kind of food.

In a more natural environment, the drain on resources is far less. Raising animals for food used to be much easier, produced much better-quality meat, and the animals themselves are a part of the local ecology. Such animals didn't live lives of unending torture, and sanitation was much better overall.

Modern agriculture is also highly wasteful of resources. Most of the Green Revolution's advances are based on cultivating crops that can use simplified fertilizer, e.g., petroleum-derived nitrates.

There's no reason why we couldn't return to small-farm or small-ranch food production, except that agribiz saves a few pennies on the dollar doing it in an automated way.

However, we in North America can afford that. In other parts of the world, loss of Green Revolution technologies would result in famine. Local farming is still deprecated, and small-scale, low-tech hydroponics is not a big enough money-maker.

So what it comes down to is money. In North America, when the crunch comes, it's going to be mighty unpleasant, but in much of the lesser-developed world, there will be mass death.

--bkl

We've been experimenting with an organic garden (using strictly heirloom or non-hybrid seeds) and have found that with even a small plot of tilled ground you can grow an amazing variety of foods. (We are using the raised bed system in our in-town home.)

Peas, including snow peas, can be grown over a long period of months, and beans are remarkably prolific and resilient. We have grown several kinds that are great for dry storage and plan on doubling our bean crop this year. Pintos, black beans and navy beans, along with peas, can be easily stored for year-round use. Covert even a small part of a basement into a food pantry or cold storage and you're making a good start. A food dehydrator is another good investment, and there are solar dehydrators easily available.

In addition, there are a number of crops that be harvested year-round. We were able to harvest giant parsnips and carrots (planted in what was once an old stone well) and brussels sprouts even in the dead of winter, and we live in West Virginia! Time to retrain your palate for veggies such as turnips and parsnips, (which are hardy, cold-resistant and make great stews!) as well as old-fashioned greens like Kale which are not only loaded with vitamins but can be harvested after frost. BTW, we do our own composting (not too successfully so far) and use composted cow manure for fertilizer and companion plantings to repel pests.

Last spring we planted dwarf apple trees and grapes and it looks like they will be doing well this year!

Folks, the time to start implementing your plans is NOW. Having some control over your food source is a good place to start. Cold framing, raised beds, dwarf fruit trees, learning how to store, preserve and dry foods... these are all things you can do NOW even with a minimal plot of land.

Someone else here mentioned "Mother Earth News" as a good resource. I would HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend this magazine and consider it one of the best investments my partner and I ever made.

My apologies for rambling on, but I just got off the phone with the city engineer regarding the installation of some solar panels and my brain is still whirling. Whew! Try getting info on solar in rural WV!

OK, here's another one. Microwave power satelites. Send up a few square kilometers of solar cells into geosynch orbit, beam the power down to a few square kilometers of receiver array out in the middle of the desert. Basically free energy after the initial construction costs are taken care of.

But then, I guess Bush would want to turn it into a death ray to zap Osama or something like that. "Take that, evildoers!"


:crazy:

Later,

The early Model Ts could run on ethanol or gasoline.

Ford and Diesel understood that motor fuels could come from agricultural products.

The Germans ran their V-2 rockets on ethanol made from potatoes.

http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html
Yield of dreams
“In the hard, shallow soil of southern Alabama, Dave Bransby is turning cotton fields into swatches of grassland. Some Alabama farmers joke that there's no soil in Alabama to farm—two centuries of King Cotton and steady erosion haven't left much behind. Yet Bransby, a forage scientist at Auburn University, has found a crop that thrives there: Among the 19 research sites in the Eastern and Central United States raising switchgrass for the BFDP studies, Bransby's site holds the one-year record at 15 tons per acre. Those are dry tons weighed after all the moisture's been baked out. Convert that into ethanol, an alcohol that can fuel vehicles, and it equals about 1,500 gallons per acre. Bransby's 6-year average, 11.5 tons a year, translates into about 11,500 gallons of ethanol per acre. An added bonus is the electricity that can be produced from the leftover portions of the crop that won't convert to ethanol.”

so no replacement there. a 3% efficient steam tractor still means that huge quantities of crap must be burned for the same level of output.

It will not matter. As noted at Halfpasthuman las week, the UN and DOD have both arrived at the idea of farm land level collapse within one generation of humans. So now it requires 31 thousand square feet per person per year to feed a western diet, but as of this next generation of humans, the available land for farms/food production falls to less than 12,000 per person globally, so people will starve en masse this next generation...if they live long enough to starve.

Now the kicker is that biointensive agriculture practiced at local personal community levels only requires 4,000 sq feet per person for excellent healthy vegan diet with 7000 left over for fuel/fibre production. But, will humans reallocate resources ? doubt it.

Plus, the peak oil is arriving at the point of threshold development of climatic change impacts on humans (die off due to rapid climate change) so peak oil is but one floater in our nasty stew of human drama on changing earth.

Forget steam, unless you can cross the 40% mark in efficiency it is a waste of calories to consider it. MUCH more immediate problems loom.

climate change hazards page
http://www.halfpasthuman.com/HPHUE_HAZARDS.htm

...and there is decades more supply of NG than there is oil.

My farmer friends in Iowa are paying a huge increase for fertilizers now that natgas is so high. Plus, the cost of nat gas is so high now that ammonia plants are no longer using it.
Future costs are soaring. NO new sources have been found. Also most NAT gas is outside USofA. AND USofA has no LNG ports to speak of....

so the idea of relying on nat gas is naive at best.
Check the costs. Nat gas is going up up up and not coming down.
Plus it takes huge amounts of oil to get nat gas. WIthout oil, no steel, no transport, no pipelines, et cetera....

If it burns a renewable fuel, like agricultural waste, rather than petroleum that costs 25.00 a gallon, then a steam tractor is going to be a bargain.

A modern steam tractor is likely to be rather more than 3% efficient, too.

There are a number of other ways to utilize agricultural waste as fuel, and they're all way more efficient than steam:

* gassification (mainly methanol)

* thermaldepolymerization (biodiesel)

* methane from digestion

* transesterification (biodiesel)

* fermentation (ethanol)

And no doubt some that I missed.

and steamships from China delivering our Walmart goods. ;)

as most internal combustion AG machinery is powered by Diesel fuel. Since BioDiesel is refined from agricultural products it can be produced within farming regions using many small to medium scale facilities that could supply local AG communities with fuel while reducing the transportation requirements. Of course, the production of BioDiesel consumes energy and this must be addressed. In most agricultural regions the relatively flat topography is conducive to generating electricity using wind power, and with the addition of solar and BioMass techniques, adequate supply's of electricity can be available for BioDiesel production. This could be an interim solution while new engine and fuel technologies are pursued.

"Of course, the production of BioDiesel consumes energy and this must be addressed."

Perhaps you are thinking of ethanol from corn.

Also, oil must be extracted from raw grains. The amount of energy required for both processes would be relatively small and easily provided by alternative sources. In my original posting, I was assuming grid electricity would be prohibitively expensive or unavailable in some regions.

I'm reasonably certain ethanol derived from corn is an energy loser. More energy needed to produce one gallon of ethanol than is provided by that same gallon in return.

violence would then become necessary.
Which would mean more energy needed to complete
the process.

No one has been able to explain how declining petroleum production equates to hungry people, except by assuming that natural gas will be used up as quickly as oil (and I don't see that happening).

And there is more than enough biofuel already to keep farm production equipment running. Biodiesel production today in the U.S. is a by-product of the food industry.

1. Farm to Plate Transportation

Biodiesel today uses much waste cooking oil. It's great to recycle, but there really isn't enough of it to run all farm equipment and all transportation equipment used in getting food from the farm to the consumer.

Please check out the Land Institute, at http://www.landinstitute.org. They are running a 150-acre farm in Kansas as an experiment to see if farms could provide sufficient excess energy to help fuel other parts of the economy. Their experiment focuses significantly on biodiesel extracted from soybeans grown on the farm without chemical fertilizer. So far, they seem to be able to run a tractor on biodiesel, but don't have much left over to sell for other purposes. In fact, the horses seem to be a better deal, since they reproduce themselves without using electricity or fossil fuel, and can fuel themselves by eating a much wider variety of plants than can tractors run on biodiesel.

I saw a website recently, that I can't seem to pick up now, that studied the miles that food traveled to get to the Mid-Atlantic states. I recall that food generally traveled 1,000 to 1,300 miles, on average, to get to the Safeways in D.C. & burbs. Most of it comes in very fuel-inefficient semi-trailers. Of course, if the food came by rail, it would take about one-third to one-quarter the fuel, but trains in the U.S. still need a lot of diesel. Of course, we could start a crash program to electrify significant sections of our railroad grid, but where would the electricity come from? I personally have serious doubts about whether renewables can supply sufficient electricity to all areas of the country on a constant basis while also powering our rail system. But perhaps you disagree.

So, it will make a lot more sense to grow things locally. That may work out in some parts of the country, particularly small towns in agricultural areas. Or maybe we will be able to do some railway electrification or run some trains on synthetic crude made from coal or natural gas, in which case some of the larger farm-belt cities may do okay. But many parts of the country now have lots of people and little farmland left nearby, like the BosWash corridor, where a lot of good farmland was turned into burbs, not that there was a lot to begin with. Also, many southern soils are in poor condition after a couple of centuries of being planted with cotton.


2. Fertilizer, Pesticides and Transportation

The green revolution that has doubled or tripled food supplies relies not only on improved seeds, but also on large amounts of chemical fertilizer consisting primarily of nitrogen (N), phosphorous(P) and potassium (K) elements. The new seeds can use large amounts of NPK to produce very large yields. Without the large amounts of NPK, the new seeds won't produce much more than older varieties used in the 1900-1960 period.

The amount of NPK needed is huge by tonnage, and it must be hauled from its point of origin to the farm, generally by truck or rail running on petroleum. See my post #32 for details. The nitrogen fertilizer is produced using natural gas as a feedstock, and that will be expensive in the future because there is not that much left in N. America, and transporting the natgas by ship is very expensive. If we start using natural gas for transportation, as is or converted to synthetic gasoline and diesel, it will deplete much more quickly.

In addition, many northern and northeastern U.S. soils are too acidic to be very productive without the addition of lime, lots of it, and that has to be transported, too.

The green revolution also depends on large quantities of pesticides, many of which are made with petroleum. Of course, smaller, more expensive amounts may be made with other hydrocarbons, but all of this requires a lot of energy for process heat, etc.

The green revolution also meant that land that was previously left fallow one third of the time in order to regain fertility was put into production full time. Fallowing often took as much as one-third of all cultivated fields.

The green revolution seeds are also transported each year to the farms from the maker. I'm not even sure if all of them are self-pollinating, but something financial might be able to be worked out here if lots of pressure were brought to bear on Monsanto, Cargill, etc.

Thus, without chemical fertilizer and pesticides, we wouldn't be able to produce the amount of food we do today.

In the olden days before the green revolution, pre-1965 or so, farmers used animal manure, crop rotation and fallow, along with a relatively small amount of fertilizer, etc. to produce food.

There is quite a bit of historical information on agricultural production over the 20the century available on the web from the Census Bureau and the Department of Agriculture. You might want to spend a little free time googling to get a sense of yields before the green revolution

Biointensive and organic agriculture, I think, will help keep yields up for vegetables, including tubers like potatoes, particularly if a large percentage of lawn ends up in cultivation. However, the biointensive method is quite labor intensive, and thus will require lots of farm workers if it is to be done even on small truck farms of 20-40 acres.

Large-scale grain production, I think, will pose more serious problems for biointensive/organic. Of course, we can eat less meat, particularly corn-fed beef, which will reduce the load on farmland--corn being a particularly N and water dependent crop. We can raise beef and dairy cattle primarily on pasture and hay, so that we have dairy products and some beef to eat. However, we will need to remove some grain production to make way for pasture. And we can go back to using animal manures for fertilizer so long as the manure does not need to be transported very far. Now, it doesn't pay to haul the stuff more than 20 miles by truck because of its weight. Without lots of diesel, it will not be possible to haul the manure very far at all.

What remains after methane is extracted from manure can still be used for fertilizer. However, if we go back to using manure for fertilizer, then there will be less available to turn into other biofuels.

The end result of a petroleum-less farm may be less grain for people to consume than there is today.


3. Irrigation

Much farmland in the plains and the west is irrigated. That takes pumps, some of which are run on electricity and some on petroleum products, like propane. Some of the propane pumps may be converted to solar/wind, but there is no guarantee that pumps using intermittent energy sources will be able to deliver water when and where it is needed. Without irrigation, many crops in the plains and the west will fail completely.

The Ogalalla aquifer in the plains is becoming depleted by over- pumping, particularly in the southern plains. When that gives out, we will lose grain production, some of it wheat for human consumption, as well as cotton and corn.


4. Population

The U.S. population grows each year, some from natural increase, but quite a bit from immigration, both legal and illegal. More people means less food per capita if yields remain stagnant, and real problems if yields decrease.

In addition, more people means more housing, frequently by turning farm fields into housing and commercial development. We will use less land if the sustainable development advocates manage somehow to pack people into denser housing, more if we let people and developers do what they want.

Many suburbs today occupy what was once very high quality farmland prior to WWII. The suburbs really took off once that war was over. If we could now jam all those suburbanites into much denser housing in the cities and inner ring suburbs, we'd still have to turn suburbia back into farm fields. That would be an enormous undertaking which may or may not turn those lawns and filled-in basements into fruit, vegetable and grain farms.


Well, I've about exhausted myself. I hope that I've mentioned some things that strike a chord with you. We may find a way out of this, but we really have some tough problems to solve in transportation and farm practices if we are to have sufficient food for everyone as oil becomes more and more scarce.

Amanda

The population must be brought inline
to the new energy realities.

6.5 billion. We increase 90 million annually.
This 90 million increase must stop immediately.

I can't imagine what taking 90 million people
away annually will look like. And this is just the
asymptotic starting point.

Thank you!

During WWII the German Army had free aces to fuel till it invaded the USSR in June 1941. The Germans had six months to take Russia, if the Germans did not they had no additional fuel to continue the fight (Prior to June 1941 Almost all of the Oil being used by Germany came from Russia).

With the failure to conquer Russia in 1941 the German Army had to keep on Fighting. The infantry units had to use 90% LESS oil than than had used in Peacetime (This was to save fuel for the Armor Units and the German Air Force).

Do to this oil shortage the German army adopted three polices to help it continue the fight. First it restructured its supply lines to emphasis Rail Transport over truck transport (Saving oil for its Trains were still steam powered i.e. coal powered, at that time).

Second, it expanded the use of the horse. The horse being grain powered not oil powered (The increase use of the Horse was also caused by the terrible conditions of the Russian Freeze and thaw. Horse drawn wagons could go in such conditions but trucks could not.).

Third, in each Infantry Division one battalion (generally 10 battalions to a Division) were given bicycles. These were to be used as rapid reinforcements to any other battalion that needed re-enforcements (This had previously been done by truck, but with no oil, no trucks).

I see we doing the same, with three additions:

1. Increase use of Wind, including sail. People forget that sail survived till WWII (When its incompatibly with the modern Convoy system ended their days). With computer assisted sails (and modern textiles) sail could supplant a lot (But not all) existing sea transport. Sail is NOT used today for Oil is cheaper than using Sail.

2. Improved energy efficiency. LCD lights use less energy than th bulbs of WWII. Modern Computers hooked up to the net is a better way to spread energy than books (With the costs of transporting books by truck compared to the use of electricity to connect to the net. If you look at the whole system, computers and the net uses less energy than books being transported by truck all over the world).

3. Return of the Flatboat. Prior to the 1920s Flatboats (un-powered rafts) where used to transport items down rivers. Oil was cheaper than the man power to guide the un-powered flatboats (If you have an engine you EU the engine to guide the barge, without an engine you have to use manpower, oil made engine power cheaper than manpower). Most grain in the US was shipped downriver by Flatboat not barge prior to 1920. I see a return to flatboats in any energy staved future.

Like the accounting system used in the '60's and 70's,
it worked then and might be working now if we
hadn't abandoned it. The people who knew the
system are gone and the transition back would be deadly
to a great number of the entities using the latest
accounting system (which will happen -BTW).

The tolerances are much lower for disruption now.

But given the 100 years we have to make the adjustments (and the constant reminders that will occur during that 100 years i.e. the increases in price of oil), such adjustments are doable provided we have leadership. The Leadership will NOT emerged will the crisis is under way, right now the leadership is going with the flow and will continue to do so till the crisis is in full swing. Once the crisis of peak oil hits than we will change our leadership and accept what has to be done. This is how people have always operated, waiting till a crisis before changing the leadership to one that can make the needed changes.

Change hurts someone, and whoever is hurt will fight any change. During "good times" it is easier to give into people who are fighting change that is needed. Only when the need for change is to great that the leadership will fight the groups opposing the change. For example in the 1920s no change occurred in the US even through change was needed. In the 1930s all types of Changes occurred (i.e. the New Deal, expansion of the US Military, and even a change in attitude of the US Supreme Court as to the limits of Federal and State power).

These changes were needed as early as the 1890s but took the crisis of the Great Depression to overcome the opposition to such changes. The same with changes needed to adjust to peak oil, no change till the crisis caused by peak oil and than I expect a lot of changes to adjust to peak oil (Even including a substantial price in gasoline taxes to discourage the use of the Automobile and encourage other means of transport).

Yes, Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

As everyone can see, Sustainability is an abstract
notion implying a global point of view.   Unfortunately,
actors that interact in any environment always have
only a local point of view and behave accordingly.   The
switch from a local point of view to a global one is far
from being plain and self evident, especially when local
rational interests collide with supposed global ones.  
But global points of view always have to be consistent
with local ones to translate into actions.   This is precisely
the problem of the Common Good definition.   History
shows that agreement has never been reached on
that subject.

http://www.geocities.com/athens/3020/rtf/SUSTGV0.RTF.

We only disagree on the # of years available for
adjustments, Happyslug.

James

but I cannot imagine what would happen if our corps had to use a conservative accounting system run by professional, as opposed to business-generating, accountants. Yikes! Do you really think that this will happen?

Derivatives are based on "Free Energy" for the next 100 years.
Not steam powered tractors, not 50 acre farms, not bikes.
But on increasing efficiencies of Wealth creating engines of today.

Corps cannot go back to "old" accounting anymore than we can
build a Saturn V rocket(the blueprints have been lost).

The system is an upside down pyramid. And there's a reason upside down pyramids aren't built. Stability.

Oil is measured as 2% of our GDP, but it's "wealth effect" is much larger.
And agriculture plays a much larger role than it's measured
by our GDP.

When the limits of oil (happyslug's or Simmon's, I don't care)
can be seen by minimum wage people, they'll be seen by all.

The bondholders will be screaming for protection and not just
protection of %. They'll be wanting principle.

Returning principle will be like taking building blocks out of the
bottom of the inverted pyramid.

It cannot be allowed to happen.

They were recieving inputs from outside the
territory they controlled.

And lack of these input increases eventually ground
their military to a halt

We will have 100 years (Till oil runs out). During that 100 years oil prices will go up but we will still have access to oil (Unlike the Germans whose access was limited from 1942 till 1945). This SLOW increase will force adjustments.

Secondary, during WWII the Soviets and the Western Allies has complete access to oil while the Germans had little access. This permitted greater use of Trucks and tanks by the allies as opposed to the Germans (Permitting greater maneuverability and ability to supply allied troops compared to what the German's could do.

The oil situation also affected the use of airplanes and even the design of airplanes. For example regarding piston engine fighters. For the allies the greater access to oil permitted the use of engines designed for high octanes (130 Octane) as opposed to the German's fighter have to use 87 octane gasoline. These engines (designed for the higher octane gasoline) permitted greater performance but at the cost of engine life AND the fact that the planes had to use these higher octane gasolines. The Allies, because their had access to oil, could accept these "costs" while the Germans had to design their fighters to use 87 octane gasoline (This lack of access to oil was one of the reasons the Germans made an early comment to the Jet, Gas turbines can produce greater performance even with low octane fuel).

My point here is that the WHOLE world will be suffering from oil withdraw NOT just the US. During WWII the Axis powers were the ones operating under an oil shortage, the allies may have some problems getting fuel to the troops, but never had a problem with limited access to ANY fuel.

Whenever Peak production occurs EVERYONE will be suffering from oil withdraw so the disparity of access to oil between the Germans and the Allies during WWII will NOT occur once Peak has hit (With the exception of some limited situation when one side has access and the other does not do to control of the shipping lanes and/or access to the oil fields).

I use the German situation to show HOW the Germans handled their oil shortage to help show how the upcoming shortage can be handled. WWII also illustrate another aspect of the upcoming Oil Shortage, it was the United States embargo on oil to Japan that forced Japan to go to war (The alternative, Japanese withdraw from China and Indo-china was NOT acceptable to the Japanese leadership). Japan could withstand any other type of embargo but not an oil embargo.

With the Oil Embargo Japan would have had to withdraw from China. Which Japan should have done. Japan was already overextended, which is why the US thought the oil embargo would work. Japan could use the embargo as an excuse to withdraw, and if Japan did not Japan's ability to do offensive operations would have so restricted by the oil embargo that the Chinese could drive the Japanese out of China sooner or later.

The Japanese leadership knew the above and decided to steal the oil in the Dutch East Indies (Now Indonesia). To do that theft Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to eliminate the only threat to its plan of theft. Thus the oil embargo lead to war.

Oil shortage will also lead to war as countries decide to save themselves by robbing other countries of their oil (Which is the reason we are in Iraq today, i.e. to steal the Iraqi oil). Like Japan in China in the 1930s such wars can only be won with very brutal tactics. Are we prepared to use such tactics? Remember all the tactics will do is extend the time till we must make the adjustment, not solve the problem of peak oil.

The better solution would be to start adjusting today, but like the Japanese leadership during WWII, our leadership do NOT want to take the heat for such adjustments. War is easier. Thus until it is shown that WAR will NOT solve the problem of Peak oil, wars will be fought. Once it is shown that the wars can only delay the effects of Peak oil AND such wars will require extensive use of oil (i.e. increae armor and this fuel usage for the occupaying army, as is happening in Iraq today), than the world will settle down and accept peak oil.

I fear for the short term, Bush and company will have to be replaced, but the people who put Bush in power beleive he is needed to secure their access to oil. It is only once we accept that access to oil will NOT solve the oil shortage (and the cost of such "access" to high in terms of human lives) will we replace Bush with leadership that accepts the needs to adjust to the use of less oil. That will tkae time. Kerry is the First step but even Kerry will NOT lead us to a post-oil world.

Unlike Bush, Kerry can lead us to a post-oil world, but only after the full affect of peak hits the US. I do not expect much in a Kerry Presidency unless oil prices goes through the roof.

What we (seem) to disagree on are time constraints
and bifurcations/steady state.

Example, if the US sees peakoil coming, why
would India, Brazil, China, and Indonesia
not see the same thing. And make a rush for the exits,
if you will.

Gradual weaning/adjusting, or sudden transformation to a new
steady state seem to be our difference.

http://www.geocities.com/athens/3020/rtf/SUSTGV0.RTF.

I see a series of "jumps" not a steady decline or a rapid decline. For example, whenever the price of Gasoline approaches the US Minimum wage, I see a drop in price right afterwords. Now that does not seem to make sense, a price increase than a price decrease, but if you understand what will happen it makes perfect sense.

First as the price approaches US Minimum wage, people earning the minimum wage will no longer be able to buy gasoline. Since they can no longer able to buy gasoline they will be unable to get to work. They will lose their jobs. With the lost of jobs the demand for gasoline will DROP and with that drop in demand the price will drop. The people who lost their jobs will NOT be able to get their jobs back, at least for a while thus keeping the pressure off prices (See what happen in Indonesia after the 1997 increase and than drop in oil prices). Now after awhile the people who lost their jobs will get new jobs and the demand for oil will increase, but whenever the price approaches minimum wage the cycle will re-start.

This cycle will re-occur till the PERMANENT demand for oil exceeds minimum wage. At that point the price will go up and down as more and more groups find out they can no longer afford to buy gasoline. Over time this up and down prices will become less common (as more and more people cease to be able EVER to buy gasoline). This will last over a hundred years until we are no longer using oil and as a society fully adjusted to a post-oil economy.

Now why do I pick Minimum wage as the first step? Look at what what a minimum wage earner can do with his money. First you must understand that given a 40 hour week there are 2080 work hours in a year. With minimum wage at $5.15 per hour that comes to just over $10,000 a year in income (Exact figure $10,712, we will use $10,000 for ease of calculation). Lets look at how a minimum wage earner has to spend that money:

1. Taxes, the poor pay social security taxes and local Income taxes. that is 7% Social Security. In my home state you can add a 2 % local taxes and a 2.65% state income tax (Total 11.65%, we will assume 10% or $1000).

2. Housing - If he is in public housing 30% of the $10,000 must be spent on housing i.e. $3000 a year ($250 a month). He will paying a higher figure in non-public housing but that just accelerates the problem of the minimum wage earning running out of money to buy gasoline.

3. FOOD - Their are 365 days in the year, you have to eat each day. it is traditional to eat Three meals a day thus the average person will have $1095 meals a year. If we assume Two dollars a meal, that comes to over $2100 a year.

The above gives us a total of $6000 out of the total income of $10,000 leaving just $4000 for the price of a car and fuel.

The Typical car gets 20 mpg, with the insurance industry saying a person drives 15,000 miles per year. That means the average driver uses 750 gallons of gasoline a year.

At $2.00 a gallon that comes to $1500 a year. At $3.00 a gallon $2250, at $4 a gallon $3000 a year. At $5 a gallon $4000 a year.

With the Minimum wage earner only having $4000 to buy fuel something has to give. He can save some money by straving himself, he can save some money by not paying his rent (and run the risk of being evicted). Taxes are collected right out of his pay so he can NOT save money by not paying his taxes.

Thus at $5 a gallon a person on minimum wage can NOT buy the gasoline he needs to get to work. He will have to quit his job (And not being able to get to work is NOT just cause to quit so he will NOT be able to get unemployment).

Given that the worker can NOT buy gasoline, for he no longer has a job, the demand for gasoline will drop once.

The above does not work as well for higher incomes. The main reason is the price for food tends to stay steady while rent increases as income increases (Thus providing more money for gasoline, but sooner or later you get to a point where the price of gasoline gets beyond most people's ability to pay).

And the above is for the short term, not the long term. In the long term a shift to mopeds and bicycles kicks in and reduces how much fuel a person uses to get to work (also adjustments to where you live in relations to where you work can also reduce the demand for gasoline). The problem is these are LONG TERM adjustments that will take years to implement. Short term i.e. less than one year, these generally can NOT be done. The best short term solution is NOT to drive and that is what will happen.

Happyslug, that's not a slam at you. The media have been misrepresenting the problem. They have been telling us that fossil fuel is like gasoline in a can, but it isn't.

We have a lot less than a century of fossil fuel left because we CAN'T extract all of what is available. At least half of the liquid crude oil lies too deep to be efficiently extracted; it would take a major technological advance to get to more than 5 or 10% of high-viscocity shale, sand, and matrix-embedded oils.

It isn't a matter of finding a technological magic bullet. A certain amount of energy is needed to resist gravity to bring liquid oil up; a certain amount of energy is needed to separate it from the rocky "matrix" in which shale oil is embedded.

In reality, we have less than 20 years of oil we can exploit for energy. The rest will remain for our use in plastics or lubricant manufacture, but not for energy, since it is a net energy sink.

There's also the aspect of linking economic growth to increasing energy use. It's currently increasing at 2.5-3.0% per year. If we don't de-couple wealth from energy, we'll have a double crash. And godforbid we ever do discover "free energy" -- within a hundred years, we'll be using so much that the Earth itself will melt!

What we need to concentrate on is developing technologies to increase the "energy density" from energy derived from solar, wind, tidal, hydroelectric or other sources. Hydrogen has some promise, but I think most of the problem is in implementation. Better solar cells, better batteries and mass-produced battery charging and regulation technology would be a big help. We already know how to produce high-efficiency appliances, electronic gadgets, and vehicles for personal transportation. Over that same 20-year period, we could develop these needs into new, robust industries.

We are not necessarily up the creek without a paddle; we simply have to rearrange the way we do things pronto.

--bkl

The problem is each year we will be pumping less oil. Oil is NOT a gas but a liquid and has to "seep" to the wellhead and than gets pumped out. There are wells in Pennsylvania still producing oil 100 years after their first produced oil. The problem is today such wells produce about 1 barrel a month.

The wells going peak production today will follow the same bell shape production curve. A lot at peak, but each year afterwords less and less till even todays high producers are only producing a barrel a month. A hundred years from today I can see a horse drawn wagon going to one o these pumps. The horse being used to operate the pump and a barrel of oil comes out of the well. The oil will be placed in a wagon and the horse will be used to haul it to market (Oil would be to valuable by than to waste as a fuel).

To understand HOW we will go, you must understand how we arrived at peak production. Production of oil stared in 1859 (145 years ago) and the production curve started. The curve was maintained till today. The down side slope will mimic the upside slope of the production curve. Thus in 20 years, world wide, production will be the same as it was in 1984, 20 years ago.

Now given DEMAND today that will be a crisis but it was NOT a crisis in 1984. Oil was being used primary as a motor fuel. To get back to a period when Oil was NOT primary as a motor fuel we have to turn back to about 1914 when Automobile use overcame the declining oil market for kerosene lanterns.

Prior to 1900 the primary use of Oil (if not the only use given the primitive automobiles and gasoline engines of the time period) was for Lighting i.e. Kerosene lights. Natural gas and electric lighting was replacing Kerosene in urban areas by 1900 (While some Rural areas would be electrified at that same time, most of Rural America would not get Electric lights till the Rural electrification projects of the 1930s).

Now I do not see fuel use for oil surviving 90 years i.e. till 2094 (the reverse slope of 1914-2004) but 20 years is to soon for oil to become so expensive that it will no longer be used as a transport fuel. I do see increase use of Bicycles in rural and urban areas, and Horses in Rural areas, within 20 years of peak oil production but I also see oil being used as a transport fuel for decades afterwords.

One of the way oil will be extended as a transport fuel is increase use of Mopeds (Which get great fuel economy, through slow) and the use of other high fuel efficient vehicles. I do not see what we have known as high speed automobiles surviving 20 years after peak (more do to increases in the price of oil do to the increasing shortage of oil than the actual growing shortage of oil).

On the other hand, bio-mass will be able to supplement oil production enough to ease the adjustment to a post oil world, but not enough to keep fuel prices low.

While the Majority of Americans were using cars by 1954, the rest of the world were decades behind the US in Automobile ownership (Most areas NEVER getting around to owning a Automobile). Thus a good rule of thumb would be more like 50 years to echo of the change from 1954 till today.

Side note: Most economist believe sometime in the early 1950s the Automobile entered into the Mature phase of its life cycle. Prior to 1950 you had more and more people buying cars who never owned a car before. This is characteristic of the "Growth" phase of a business life cycle. After 1950 most car buyers where replacing or supplementing an already existing automobile, which is characteristics of a "mature" phase of a business life cycle. Similarly in the 1980s you had a "growth" phase of the home computer with most people having a computer by 1992. Sometime in the early 1990s Computers entered into the "mature" phase as people who purchased computers where replacing old computers NOT buying a computer for the first time. The net followed, with most people being connected in the mid 1990s (the Net's Growth phase) and the net entered its "mature" phase sometime in the late 1990s. Most people today are going to old reliable web sites Not discovering the World wide web for the first time. A sign of a "Mature" market.

I went into the mature market analysis for automobiles because with the price of oil going through the roof, automobiles will be entering the decline phase of its business cycle. As less and less people use automobiles, the market for Autos will decline. One of the charateristics of a declining business cycle is that you end up with one large company in the market. Right now that looks like Toyota or Volkswagen, i.e. no GM, no Chrysler, No Daimler, NO Ford etc. Just one large company that sells cars knowing if it charges to much no one will buy (like how US Steel dominates the US Steel industry today).

With the decline in the Automobile you will reach a point where oil is no longer used as a fuel and reserved as feed source for chemicals (With some reserved for use to launch satellites so we can communicate).

Thus between using oil as a Chemical Source AND the need to reserve it for use to launch satellites, sometime around 50 years after peak you will get to a point where the demand for oil will get so high no one will be able to afford to use it as a motor fuel.

During this 50 year period I see growing use of Horses in the farm belts replacing tractors. I see increasing use of Bicycles in urban areas. Both will be supplemented by changes in how people live and work to reflect increase cost of fuel (i.e. you will love closer to your job than you do today).

Our main point of disagreement seems to be how long economic stability will last. I think 20 years is optimistic, but I've been wrong before. Anyway, I'll list some of the arguments I have:

1. Oil seepage from matrix to drillhead is how the process works in the first part of the oil's path, but gravity exacts a price in energy once it enters the pipe. Whether a mechanical pump or a horse is used, the equation becomes: Net Energy = Oil Energy - Energy Used to exploit it ... right now, the equation makes pumping in the old Pennsylvania oil fields profitable, although it's not a very big profit center overall. As less oil is available at the drillhead, supply goes down, price goes up, and it pays to put more energy into extraction. But there's point where it just becomes too expensive to pump it out and I think it will be reached sooner than later.

2. While the oil use curve is likely to be symmetrical, economic stability is likely to be erratic. The entire world economy depends on using ever-increasing amounts of oil, and the usage (demand) growth rate is about 2.8% per annum (I think this is from Campbell's work). We can sustain a flat, or falling, usage rate for a few years. We did it from 1973-1983, but we got a recession; and that fall-off was about 5%. Assuming a 40% fall-off in usage rate between now and 2015, that portends some major economic trouble.

3. The use of petroleum products for transport is actually secondary to the use of it for industrial processes and electrical generation. Your illustrations of transportation modes changing are good, but the price to goods producers -- not consumers -- will determine the economic climate. Without an aggressive program to meet these crises, I believe it will suck like nothing has sucked before.

4. Biomass: I have no statistics on it, but I'd wager that the energy density is too low to ease anything other than domestic energy shortages. The same thing applies to horses -- they are not nearly as efficient as tractors, and can really only be used for family and small-community farming. I think coal is a better candidate for the industrial transition, but it's horrendously dirty with current technology.

5. I don't think that the oil itself is used for fertilizer -- it's the nitrate "salts" that are left after refining. We won't have to reserve oil for fertilizer, but we will have a lot less fertilizer to use, and it will be more expensive.

As always, correct me if I'm wrong about any of this! :)

Now, to the positive remarks:

1. The entire social fabric is going to change. For each five-year period we fail to achieve net energy gain, the number of people migrating back to the cities will double. The suburbs will very likely become deserted and plowed under to make room for farmland -- or just left deserted. As for work, I don't think people will live closer to work so much as work on-line. We absolutely can't afford to regress in our technical and intellectual pursuits. Many more people may be doing more "menial" work, but I think a large percentage of people will still be doing office-type work. Just not "at the office."

2. The product maturity cycle you discussed is a very strong factor, and you're the first person I've encountered who has talked about it in any detail. New forms of personal transport will probably be a transition or a supplanting technology. I recall seeing a gasoline-powered superlight car in 1979 or so. It was made from plastic, fiberglas, and lightweight composite structural members. Its engine was puny, but it could carry 500 pounds of passengers and cargo and got something like 250 miles per gallon. Such a car would be "economical" to drive with gas prices at $30/gallon.

3. Passenger air transport will be DOA with the first price shock. But several firms have been developing dirigibles that use far less fuel than jet aircraft, and hydrogen is again a viable choice as a lifting gas now that technologies exist to reduce the risk of explosion to extremely low levels. Upside: Very large amounts of cargo can be carried at potentially rock-bottom cost. Downside: They are pretty slow, under 100 MPH.

4. Along the same lines, engineers have developed super-low-power appliances and gadgets and other household tools. Even ovens have been designed to use much less energy and cook food much more efficiently. Microwave ovens will still be energy hogs, but since they are not used for more than a minute or two at a time, they won't be retired too soon. Acoustic cooling will allow refrigerators that use 1/20th of the power of the current models. TV tubes are on the way out, anyway, and incandescent bulbs could be replaced by LEDs (with customizable light spectrums) within a few years. Such bulbs would be expensive to produce in a limited-energy economy, but they use MUCH less electricity than incandescents AND they never burn out.

5. If the pinch is really bad, why not develop a washing machine powered by a stationary bike? And who the hell needs dryers, anyway?

6. If we keep up our technical expertise, we could move heavy industry into space in about 50 years, where sunlight could be used as the power source.

Ah, but I'm rambling right now. If you can add/criticize/amplify on any of this, feel free to take a crack at it.

--bkl

for your excellent analysis. I was completely ignorant of the specific problems that the Nazi's had on the Eastern front, and how they solved them, although I was aware that they had very little oil.

It might be interesting to point out here that the Nazi's attempted to solve their problems by forcing an "alliance" with Romania to gain control of the Ploesti fields in that country, an attempt to swing through Ukraine and southern Russia in a grab for the Caucasus wells (ending in Stalingrad), and devising a method for turning coal into oil. Shades of our current *Bush administration?

Thanks for the info on the Flatboat. I didn't know that they survived so late. That would be a good reason to keep our inland waterways intact--particularly the Mississippi and its branches system.

I agree with your conclusions concerning sail, horses and flatboats, and the Nazi's horses, rail and bicycles, but I have a few comments.

1. Horses -- We better get to breeding them and learning how to use them soon. I have read that training a draft team and driver for agriculture takes years. Perhaps the Amish will set up schools to teach the rest of us how to do it. In the Southwest, donkeys/burros may also be helpful for light transport.

2. Sail -- I read somewhere that for a few years after WWII, the Australians were still sending wool to Britain in large sailing ships. In the same article, the author said that the big, slow "wind-jammer" sailing cargo ships used in the Caribbean were used in South American coastal trade into the 1950s.

In an article that I saw on the 'net some time ago, it was reported that the Danes (go Vikings!) had developed plans for a large metal cargo sailing ship.

The trick will be to keep enough energy to make steel, etc., transport it to shipyards (of which the U.S. has few, of course), and have gas for welding and energy for riveting, for starters. And we may not have enough petrochemicals for high-tech fabric sails and and nylon ropes--back to cotton canvas and hemp at some point, I suppose.

If we go back to wood, I'd suggest a complete moratorium on cutting white pine, except for necessary thinning, which was an important wood for ships.

3. Rail v. Trucks-- the U.S. Energy Information Administration has some interesting data on our use of petroleum products. According to them, on-road transportation (which I assume is mostly large trucks) uses 60% of the diesel/distillates burned in the U.S., rail, about 5%. Http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/fuel_oil_and_kerosene_sales/current/pdf/table1.pdf
If rail is as reported 4-10 times more efficient than trucking, reducing shipping in general (more locally and regionally produced goods) and switching away from trucks unless absolutely necessary, would bring true savings and buy a little time.

4. Bicycles -- not always so hot with very little cartilage in one knee! (skiing accident). How about rechargeable battery assisted models? Less hard pumping is easier on the knees.

My father used horse on various farms in Maryland in the late 1930s. He knew how to use horses in farming. He knew how to operate them as a team. His knowledge of Horses had him transferred from the 29th Infantry Division to the 5th US Calvary Division in 1942. The US Army could find a lot or soldiers who could RIDE a horse but few who knew how to use them as a team. Thus my father was ORDERED to report to the 5th Calvary do to his knowledge of horses. The transferred was canceled when it was decided to de-horse the 5th and not use any horse mounted units in WWII (Which meant that only the 26th Calvary Regiment, Philippine scouts, which was based in the Philippines in 1941 would see action as a US horse mounted unit during WWII).

His attitude to the Amish as farmers was their were wasteful. They were better ways to farm even with horses. Whole books had been written on how to farm with horses (and many still exist, just out of print).

In my opinion, based on what my father saw of the Amish and knew of farming, using those books would be better than learning from the Amish.

Do not worry I want to buy a farm some day and have my older sister show me how to make a proper haystack. She had to help my father make a proper haystack once in the late 1950s when my father's hay bailer broke down. A haystack is NOT just stacking hay together, their is a science to making a haystack. The stack has to "breath" or the hay will rot OR set itself of fire (Do to the heat as the hay composts). My Father lost his farm in 1964 so I never learn how to make a Hay stack, but my older sister did learn and someday I like to build one.

But let me get back on point, they are books written by people who knew how to farm with horses and that will be a better source of Knowledge than the Amish.

Actutally a destroyed civilization, using electric vehicles for getting groceries, but raising horses to produce food provide the most efficient mix of... romanticism.

All the more so if Amish are involved. Case closed. :)

If you definition of American Civilization is Suburbia, you are correct, Suburbia will be destroyed. If you definition of American Civilization goes beyond Suburbia than it will survive.

We will see an increase in electric usage, but mostly direct lines (Very efficient compared to batteries) much like the old time Electric Street cars (Which I see coming back). These will connect various urban centers in a region (For example today's malls with each other and the old downtown of the inner city). In between people will live. Those that can not bike will probably live next to the street car line.

I foresee apartments building being built over today's mall's parking lots. At first these Apartments will be for store workers who no longer can afford to drive to work, than later senior citizens and other disabled people. Those that can bike will try to stay in their individual homes. Homes will become smaller on smaller lots.

As population density increase around the malls the Streetcar line will become more and more profitable. Roughly we will turn to an expanded version of 1900 America. Not a utopia but not a "romantic view" of what Will happen either.

With oil and natural gas depleted, Electricity will be produced by coal and nuclear power. Solar, Wind, Hydroelectric, and other sources will supplement Coal and Nuclear, but the prime form of electric power will be coal and nuclear. They are some concern with each as to how many years we have of Coal and Nuclear material but we have at least 50 years of each even at increased rate of usage.

If coal and Nuclear power fails to provide the needed power, bio-mass can cover some of the shortage. A shortage of Coal and Nuclear material means even more people producing bio-mass and a compete abandonment of what is now suburbia (Converting most of it to farmland to produce bio-mass material). I do not see a hostage of Coal and/or nuclear material for at least 50 years. People will always try to live as much like they have in the past and with the above changes it can be done. You may see a two step conversion, Step one Coal/Nuclear based 50 year post oil society, than a post-coal post nuclear material age. In the first the Malls will survive but with higher population densities, in the later the malls are abandoned to return to farmland.

We have to face the future, and it is one of increase population density around urban centers, increase RURAL population density (as today's large farms revert to smaller farms) and the disappearance of Suburbia. All will be the result of upcoming peak production and decline in production of Oil. Society has to adjust and it will. Some people will have to be dragged yelling and screaming to a post-oil society but that is the future.

Although my semi-farming uncle lives in an area being settled by the Amish, I hadn't heard this. Perhaps they practice agriculture as it was done in the 17th century and have picked up on improvements developed by their "English" neighbors.

My idea was more about how to actually handle horses, rather than farming techniques themselves, but perhaps they are intertwined. If the Amish aren't able to teach just that skill, I guess that we will have to rely on those non-Amish farmers or hobbyists who still work with a team of draft horses. Do you have any idea how many of them still exist? Maybe we can get George Soros or Warren Buffett interested in "peak oil." They'd have enough money to start some large draft horse breeding and training operations. Perhaps they could use such farms as tax write-offs! Just kidding.

Below is a paper I have been working on, off and on, for a couple of months about how Suburbia became Suburia. While NOT exactly on topic (we are discussing food production) it shows how suburbia expanded. Suburbia did not expand in one single long expansion, but a series of overlapping expansion tied in with the Automobile. I also beleive Suburbia will decline with the decline of the Automobile so this paper can be a guide to how the decline will occur.

A Short history of Suburbs and Transportation.

Part One
Background on the growth of Suburbs.

To understand today’s Suburbs you have to understand how Suburbs came about. Suburbs did not appear full form like the Goddess Athena, but started out small and expanded to the point where 1/3 of Americans now live in “Suburbs” (1/3 of Americans also live in Urban and the final third live in Rural areas. Please note some writers use One Half in Suburbs, 1/4 in Inner Cities and 1/4 in Rural America. The term “Suburb” is a relative term as you can see in part two of this paper. Some people consider some of the earliest suburbs inner City, and some of more distant suburbs rural America. This paper is NOT to define what is Suburbia BUT to set forth a short history of HOW Suburbia came to be).

Each expansion of Suburbia lead to a new situation that produced more Suburbs, but also different Suburbs. Some of these Suburbs are as different from each other as they are from the Inner City they sprang from. Three factors influenced the growth of Suburbs, first was the raise and decline of the Electric Railway systems (“Electric Railway” is a more accurate term than “Streetcar” “Trolley” or “Light Rail Vehicle”, but all four terms are often used interchangeably). Second was the Automobile. And Third was the 1964 Supreme Court Rule adopting the “one man, one vote rule”.

I. The Raise of the Electric Railway Systems.
For more details see: http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/railway/trolley.htm

Suburbs are a product of increase mobility of people. Cities in the 1800s were very compact for Steam Locomotives (Or ships) could only make stops once every couple of miles. Cities grew to exploit these stops by providing the maximum concentration of population, services and Products for such stops. Now the first suburbs (as we would use that term today) were also the product of Steam Locomotive, but given the distance a Steam Locomotive had to stop, these early suburbs tend to be VERY far apart and generally independent towns who were just 1-2 stops from the nearest big city. It was the City that made trains very profitable, and in turn the Trains made the Cities very Profitable.

With the increase profits of the Cities, the Cities started to expand. First the Cities tried horse draw wagons but found that if you put the wagon on steel tracks and give the wagon steel wheels, one horse could pull the weight of what four horses could pull with wooden wheels on dirt or pavement. Thus the first horse draw “Streetcars” where installed into the cities. These were replaced by Electric Streetcars and with the Electric Streetcar we have the start of today’s suburbs.

On the other end of the Urban/Rural Divide, the US Post Office in the said it would provide Rural Free Delivery (RFD) to any areas with “improved” Roads (Urban Areas had such deliveries starting in the Civil War). This was do to lobbying by Bicyclist who wanted paved roads to ride on (Prior to 1920 most Americans lived in Rural areas not Urban/Suburban Areas). Prior to that date Rural roads were all dirt (with some exceptions, not many but some, for example US 30 was only paved coast to coast in 1925, being the first paved coast to coast).

I a. The raise of Competitors to Electric Railway Systems:

Bicyclists were the major push for improved roads till 1900, when Automobiles owners joined in (and replaced the Bicyclists) to push for improved roads. About 1905 several States imposed the Gasoline Tax to pay for such improved roads (this type of “user” tax was popular around 1900, for example Hunters had agreed to a 15% tax on Guns and Ammunition so that the Federal Government could have some money to pay for conservation. Both taxes were pushed by the people who were paying the tax, thus Congressmen agreed to pass them).

With the Gasoline Tax, the States had money to pave roads. The States started to pave, but only rural roads, with most “State” highways ending at the edge of any major city. Each city had to pave its own streets. Most cities had started to pave their own streets after the Civil War, but with the advent of the Electric Railway, most cities had the Electric Railway Companies pave the streets the Electric Railway ran on. This requirement that the Electric Railway Companies maintain the paved road the Electric Railway ran on, was one of the reasons Electric Railways were later replaced by Buses.

I b - Decline of Rural Electric Railways:

In 1890, when most urban areas (and many rural areas) first started to have Electric Railways, such Electric Railway service was very profitable, but by the 1920s profit margins had dropped so much that the Electric Railway companies in rural areas could NOT replace their tracks AND still stay in business. Thus from the 1920s till the 1960s whenever a major rebuild of tracks were needed, the rural Electric Railway lines were abandoned. Some of the old Electric Railway Companies converted themselves to buses, other went bankrupt and replaced by a new company running buses. Most of these bus companies survived only 10-20 more years and than closed down. Replaced by nothing (If you did not have a car you were out of luck for transportation).

Please note I am discussing Rural Electric Railways NOT Inner City Electric Railways. . Rural Electric Railways peaked in 1918 and than declined rapidly in the 1920s. Urban Electric Railways peaked in 1927 and declined slowly in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s with some surviving till today (The drop after 1927 is tied in with the coming great depression more than the raise of the Automobile. The Automobile’s full effect would not hit the urban Electric Railways till after WWII). Rural Electric lines went out of business decades before their urban cousins but the cycle of decline was the same for both urban and rural lines except that urban lines lasted a good bit longer than the rural lines.

II. The Automobile and the Decline of Urban Electric Streetcar Systems:

While the above was going on as to Electric Railways, the Automobile was moving on. While 1920 was the first Census of the US where more people lived in Urban Areas than Rural Areas, the effect of the Automobile on Rural Transportation seem to be quicker and greater. While paved roads would come late to such Rural Areas (Most would not have paved roads till the 1930s) the Automobile driven on Dirt Roads during dry weather could move faster than a horse draw wagon. The Automobile’s biggest competitor, the rural Electric Inter-urban Electric Railway, had to maintain its own right of way and collect its fees. With the competition of the Automobile and the movement of people from the Country to the City such Rural Electric Railways quickly went into a death spiral. What happen is as less people used the Electric Railway, to maintain profitability the Street-cars ran less often, with the Street cars running less often people said “Why should I wait for the Rural Electric Railways? I just take my Automobile”. People thought this way, people went out and bought an automobile, and the Rural Electric Railways had less and less customers. Most rural Electric Railway lines failed in the 1920s, with a few lasting till the 1950s (I am speaking of Electric “Electric Railways” in “rural” areas NOT in urban or suburban sittings).

Now as the Country side lost population, the City gained populations (With inner city Electric Railway use peaking in 1927). Just like the rural area, urbanites wanted to be able to use Automobiles also. Most cities had paved roads so the Automobiles operated on these roads, and starting in the 1920s you had city planners started to retrofit roads designed for the Automobile into the inner city. These retrofits tended to put more Automobiles on the same streets the Electric Railways were on, slowing the Electric railway in addition to other automobiles (and you had a situation similar to the Rural areas 10-15 years earlier). Urban Planners than decided to make expressways for Automobiles and these worked for a time, until the growing number of automobiles exceeded the capacities of these expressways (For more details see Part III Below)

III. The US Supreme Court’s 1964 “One Man, One Vote” rule:

In 1964 the US Supreme Court ruled that every American had the right to vote AND that every person’s vote had to be viewed as Equal. This outlawed the practice in most states of providing more representation in their Legislature for Rural Areas than Urban Areas. Prior to 1964 (Which is the era we are discussing in this paper) Rural areas had more representation and thus more power in most state’s legislature than Urban Areas, even as more people lived in urban areas. This had several affect, first rural roads were given priority over urban Roads, second such Rural legislators could be easily convinced that certain rural areas near urban areas should have priority over other rural areas (Thus provided more funds for the development of Suburbia). A third side affect is a total opposition to mass transit (Since you could not have mass transit in rural areas, the rural legislators saw no reason to vote for mass transit in urban areas).

Now, the Supreme Court Decision reduced the power of the Rural areas of this country, but did it at a very bad point in the history of what is now called the “inner City” i.e. Non-suburbia. Do to the expansion of Suburbia prior to 1964, the power switch caused by the 1964 Supreme Court Decision was NOT from Rural to Urban, but Rural to Suburban. By 1964 approximately 1/3 of the US population lived in Rural Areas, with 2/3 in Urban Areas, the problem was the inner city was losing its population and suburbia was increasing its, thus by about 1980 it was Rural 1/3, inner-city 1/3 and Suburbia 1/3. With most rural areas voting Republican after 1964, and most inner City voting Democratic after 1964, the fight for control of both the state and Federal Government was fought by the two political parties in Suburbia. Thus neither party has a very good reason to fight the growth of Suburbia, for it would be cutting itself off from the votes it needs to win.


Part Two
History of Suburbia.1890-2000
(All dates used herein are to establish a guideline to go with this paper. None of these dates are fixed in stone. The dates are being used to set forth HOW suburbia developed NOT the exact dates of any one development in that history.)

A. The Trolley Suburbs 1890-1920.

With the perfection of the Electric Railway, people could have a quick clean and reliable way to get from Home to Work WITHOUT having to live near a Stream Locomotive line. This helped developed the first true Suburbs (Suburbs had existed before but on the Stream Locomotive right of way and as such restricted in area). These areas are now mostly in inner-cities but people who moved into these areas intended to take the Electric Railway to and from work instead of the earlier means of walking (Contrary to the Movies NO one took a horse to work, if you did you had to keep it in a stable and had to feed it. If you went by Carriage, the preferred way, you had to keep the carriage stored away from the horse, horse manure is hard on wood and metal. Horse manure is also hard on Saddles, thus no one rode a horse to work). Once these tracks were in the people would move out into these Trolley Suburbs as they were called. Stores would move out to be along the track for that was were the people who had money were.

In my home town of Pittsburgh, the Oakland area of Pittsburgh was a “Trolley Suburb”, The University of Pittsburgh moved out from Downtown Pittsburgh to the Oakland section of Pittsburgh during this time period for it could build a bigger building (the Cathedral of Learning) on a bigger plot of land than you could in Downtown Pittsburgh. Other Business followed.

B. First Automobile Suburbs, 1920-1945.

These differ from the earlier Trolley Suburbs is that people who moved into these suburbs expected to used their Automobile either to commute to the old inner city or to the Electric Railway line and take the Electric Railway line to work. People still tended to view the Electric Railway as backup if something should go wrong with their car. The homes were still within a distant, but reasonable walk from the street car line. One of the Characteristics of this time period is the movement of Branch Stores of the Major Downtown Department Stores to the end of the Street Car lines. These branch stores were on the Street car lines so their workers could get to them without the need for a car, but people in the new Automotive suburbs could drive they car to these same stores.

C. Post-WWII Suburban Boom 1945-1964.

This is an expansion of the First Automotive Suburbs to areas to far to walk to the Street car (or bus lines as the Electric Railways are replaced by Buses), but people can still be dropped off at the Electric Railway stop if their spouse needed the car for the day. This people saw the expansion of strip malls and discount stores in such strip malls. K-Mart type stores come into domination, stores not only relying on customers driving to work, BUT ALSO THEIR EMPLOYEES.

D. The Mall Age 1964-1990.

This is an expansion of the Post-WWII suburbs to even further from the inner-city AND a switch to employment in SUBURBIA and that only the poor would be using public transportation. Four things distinguish this period from the prior period, First is the Switch to the Mall being the main shopping Mecca, Second (and related), the death of most inner-city department stores (Only the biggest ones tend to survive), Third, most Public Transportation switch to both buses AND Government ownership of Public Transportation (With Public Transportation being seen only as a means to provide transportation for the poor as opposed to a serious transit alternative for the automobile) and Fourth, the first branch stores of the old inner-city department stores slowly close down and are moved to the mall. Many Survive the conversion from Electric Railways to Buses, but some do not, for the call of the Mall is to great. Unlike earlier eras, if you do not have a car your employment opportunities are VERY limited.

Now the First oil Crisis occurred in this ear, but looks like it was more of a minor hindrance to the furthering of Mall America (a mere hiccup for America was still producing 90% of the oil it was using, not till the 1980s did that number start to drop till today’s 50% production).

E. The modern Era, 1990-2004.

This area saw two conflicting movements, first the re-turn of Public Transportation as a serious means of transport for the non-poor, Second the growth of the Super K-mart (i.e. Wal-mart) in areas even further out from the inner-city. While the Mall age saw Public Transportation almost die, the further growth of Suburbia show increase traffic tie-ups between suburban areas. The earlier solution of building bigger and bigger highways was increasingly showing to be a dead-end, but the attempts at improving mass transit feeble do to the feeling that it is only for the poor. People were looking at Mass Transit but since most states restricted Gasoline Tax money to highway use, mass transit had NO stable funding source. With Gasoline the Cheapest (in real terms) it has ever been, no push to increase funding for mass transit is made. Furthermore with more jobs in the Suburbs than in the inner city the old method of all transit going to the urban core is not time efficient for most workers. Why go to the Urban Core by one bus to catch another bus to where you work, when you can drive directly to the suburban work location?

We are in some sort of transition, people have been talking of the need for Public Transportation for 30 years (since the advent of Mall America) but these have all failed for failing to come up with a funding source for such mass transit. Buses have failed for the same reason the earlier Electric Railway failed in the cities, as the roads have more and more cars, the bus service that uses the same roads goes down hill. The only solution has been known for over 50 years (as shown by many of the surviving Street car lines), mass transit to work has to come frequently, reliably and as fast as using a car. The only way to do that is to have the transit on its own right of way, but that is expensive, buses running on the same roads as Automobiles are cheaper to buy.
Part Three
The Future of Suburbs and Public Transportation.

I go through the above to show you how we became what we are. To eliminate the Automobile would mean to reverse most of the above. Public Transportation has not been viewed as a serious transportation option for most commuters since about 1964 (and I am being generous, I believe we have to go back to the 1920s to see HOW our society has to be structured when we abandoned the automobile). 1964 is the start of the Mall Age of America AND the rule by Suburbia. While the Inner-city would adjust to an oil-less age rapidly (everything tends to be in walking distance and with oil scare most stores will return to the urban core) how can Suburbia switch? I have less concern about Rural America than Suburbia for Rural America can always go back to horses and a life style of going to “Town” once a month (more often when the crop is in). Even Rural industry can adjust by just having the workers move back to the Company towns that still surround most such existing rural industry (Or moving the industry to the inner-city). Most “Rural Industry” tend to be on rail lines anyway so not much a problem for them. Rail tend to be more fuel efficient than Tractor-Trailer AND can more easily convert to electricity as a source of power)

Thus Suburbia is the problem. Bicycle are NOT much help (Please Note I am referring to bicycles in SUBURBIA, I see them as very valuable help in the urban cores AND even rural America). Now Bicycle are quicker than walking, most suburbs have separated work areas from where people live by distances that are to far to bike EVERY DAY. Furthermore most of these work sites are NOT on a rail line so truck transportation is their lifeline (i.e. if oil becomes so scarce that Tractor-Trailer owners can no afford to buy oil, these suburban work shops will die, even if the workers can bike to work).

One last note, when I mention Trains using electricity as a power source, I know you still need some sort of energy to produce the electricity, but that can be Natural Gas(which like oil is in decline), coal, Solar, wind, Hydro and even Nuclear. Thus you have more option than just oil.

In the final review the best solution will be an adjustment to a clearer Urban-Rural divide with what we call Suburbia slowly dying. People will have to move closer to their jobs and those jobs will move closer to the cheapest transportation that will exist at that time (probably rail, but can be barge or ship and even bicycle or horse).

Suburbia will retreat to the old inner cities. Some Suburbs retreating to the new urban cores that exist around some of the malls that exists today. These will survive only if connected to the inner city by a LRV system (Or other rail connection), but once that is up and running you will see people moving closer and closer to these urban cores. For example I see the malls all building apartment complexes for their workers over the existing parking lots. This will permit people who can no longer afford to operate a car to move closer to their work. As more and more people abandoned the Automobile, do to the increase in oil prices, these people will fill in the areas around the old malls developing what the old downtown of 1900 had, shops and workers. After a while the mall will cover all of their parking lots with such apartments as people other than workers decide to live next to the mall. Just like today’s growth of Suburbia is lubricated by cheap oil, the existence of expensive oil will lubricate a retreat from Suburbia.

In Rural Areas I see the return of the horse and increase rural population. Modern Farming techniques require huge tractors. With fuel expensive, the horse can be competitive but only if the present large farms are broken up into the smaller farms such farms were only a couple of generations ago. Today, a Horse can compete with tractors on farms of less than 50 acres (but you can not survive as a farmer on such a small farms, most farmers who are full time farmers are farming 500+ acres, and to do that you need a huge tractor AND oil to run that tractor). Once oil is to expensive, the economics of farming will change and that will lead to a slow return to smaller farms.

One area where overlap will occur is some of the Mall Age and post Mall age Suburbs. I see the Post-Mall Age Suburbs (and the Mall Age Suburbs not close to a LRV Line) being abandoned and return to farm land. With decrease yields do to reduce use of Natural Gas derived fertilizers we will have to do so to just to feed our present population. Thus as you travel from the rural farm land to the urban core. you will see acres and acres of small farms than move right into urban areas with small yards. Than as you near the urban core you will enter an area of Apartment buildings (no more than six stories high) around a central shopping district (a old mall or an old inner city center). The Cities will be dispersed but compacted, connected by electric rail service (on both LRV system and the old locomotive systems that will convert to Electricity).

In review you see we have only been living in a Automotive dominated society since about 1925, which means it has taken us 75 years to get to where we are. Once we start to convert to non-automotive society it will take us just as long and will require a slow increase in the price of oil (which is expected). Thus whenever oil production peak occurs, that is when we will start the long and “interesting” switch to a post-automotive society.

the human population growth curve almost exactly mirrors
the parabolic curve of oil production.

Do you agree with the above, cprise?

Amanda's points are mostly valid except #1. Hardly any biodiesel is produced from waste oil (yet). It is coming from the 300 mil. gal. /year excess of virgin soybean oil produced by the processing of soybeans into protein-rich food. Biodiesel in the U.S. will have to triple before it overtakes that supply. Beyond that there is an estimated 3 billion gal. of waste of oil which can be used. Also biodiesel production yields at least 3.2 units of energy for each unit put in, whereas converting NG to tranportation fuel only wastes energy (with an energy balance of <1.0). I predict that NG for transportation will continue to stagnate while biodiesel will continue it exponential growth for some time. To turn one's back on a process that yields food as a primary product plus a tripling of available energy would be foolhardy under an oil shortage; It's not going to happen.

For #1 to be valid as a point at all, NG supply would have to become very scarce on the heels of an oil shortage. No one has yet explained how this additional NG shortage will occur. Perhaps oil-heat customers will massively convert to NG, but is this such a big market? Will it even make sense to do so when solar heat is so cost effective?

#2 It's good to hear that organic farming is both highly productive AND more labor intensive. I'm sure a better balance between organic and industrial farming will be struck as times goes on.

IMO pesticide and herbicide are the show-stoppers if any. GM crops will be hit the hardest by an oil shortage. There has been research into mustardseed crops to produce organic pesticide and biodiesel as a byproduct. I would like to hear more about what is being done in this area.

#3 Solar hybrid pumps work quite well. I don't see a real problem here.

#4 I don't have anything to add here.


Clearly the biggest variable is comsumer habbits. Renewable energy will not help without changes here. If this country does not muster the political will to start taxing energy consumption according to set priorities, then we will see a lot of overreaction, bad choices, even hoarding. In the mid-term, we will need to advocate birth control and find alternatives to oil-derrived pesticide. Finding a new source of fertilizers still seems like more of a long-term goal.

I've always thought that would be an interesting combination...

You could make the pellets from some fast growing crop, and use the stirling engine in a hybrid-electric combination similar to the Toyota Prius.

What is a stirling engine? Take a look here:

http://www.stirlingengine.com/

It would be sort of cool having a car or a tractor powered by wood pellets, don't you think?

It's not a fantasy. Non-nuclear stirling engine powered submarines that can travel thousands of kilometers underwater without coming up for air are patrolling the oceans today.

…only linear motion.

www.sunpower.com

The micro-gen uses linear Stirling engines made by Sun-power.

http://www.microgen.com/main2.swf

The sterling engine is one of those great inventions that never quite takes off but than never quite dies either. That has been the history of the Sterling since its invention in the 1700s.

The Sterling is more efficient than the Watts Steam Engine and like a Watt Steam engine can use any form of heat (Both are External combustion engines unlike the Gasoline and Diesel engines which are "internal" Combustion engines).

The problem with the Sterling is that it is less efficient than a steam turbine but more expensive to make than a Watts Steam Engine. Thus the Sterling was "squeezed" by these two engines. The Watts for it was first and cheaper to make (Given that parts for it was already in production by 1750) and the Steam Turbine which requires more costs to produce is more efficient (Most electric power plants use Steam Turbines, Steam turbines were the preferred engines for ship prior to the wide spread adoption of diesels after WWII).

The Sterling has filled a niche between these two engines, but a very narrow niche and given the advantages of the Steam Turbine a niche I do not see it breaking out of.

300 year old technologies "save us" every day.

Yes, I agree my wood pellet stirling engine tractor is a fanciful machine, but it's not at all unreasonable.

Of course it might be more efficient to have a farm tractor drag a long extension cord behind it, sort of like I do with my electric lawn mower, or like a giant shovel in big strip mine.

(By the way, I LOVE my electric lawn mower, it's best tool I ever bought, and I've only run over the cord once, and that was after I'd had a few beers... good thing I didn't run over my toes! The fumes from my gas mower always made me sick.)

Seventy years ago small turbines were commonly used on railroad steam engines to power the train's electrical system. They were not very efficient, but it didn't matter because they used only a small fraction of the total steam produced by the boiler. This sort of turbine is not suitable as a primary power source for applications such as cars, small farm tractors, or small electricity generators. You are better off using pistons.

This is where the modern stirling engine might fit in. Modern free cylinder stirling engines integrated with sophisticated electronic power conversion systems are more efficient than small steam turbines.

There's about 100 kilowatt hours of thermal energy in a high quality 40 pound bag of wood pellets (please do correct me if I remember this incorrectly) That's about ten dollars worth of electricity at ten cents per Kwh.

If your stirling engine is 15% efficient, a figure that is not at all unreasonable, you can start to see how a would pellet powered tractor might be useful.

On the other hand (those damned scientists have too many hands!) you might be better off turning the biomass you make your wood pellets out of into some synthetic liquid fuel or electricity in a very large centralized, very efficient industrial process.

As is the Sterling (With the Turbine beating out the Sterling for efficiency).

The main problem with all steam engines (the Watts, the Sterling and the Turbine) is the production of the energy to run the engine. This is where you hear 3-15% efficiency rates. Steam Turbines because of their large size can maximize the energy used to produce the steam and thus used to produce electricity.

The Sterling's main advantage is its ability to use any type of fuel (Even pine cones, if it can burn the sterling can use it). Once the energy is produced than the efficiency of the Sterling kicks in.

The main problem with the Sterling is what is going to be used to power the engine? The same with the Steam Turbine, the real issue is WHAT will propel the engine, not the engine itself.

That is as good as the internal combustion motor.

www.sunpower.com

A steam turbine has an efficiency of about 40%

At least not anything that you would want the average Joe Farmer to mess with. A 40% efficient supercritical steam system, especially one that uses a very high speed turbine, turns into a bomb if any part fails.

The impetus for the development of the original stirling engine was that so many people were being killed and maimed in boiler explosions and other kinds of steam accidents.

Even with modern technology this problem does not go away. Poorly maintained steam engines can fail suddenly in very dangerous ways. Stirling engines do not have this problem.

Some are 52%

...for the record. B-)


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x5914

I don't see 52% thermal efficiency

For what its worth...some of the world's premier research in ethanol production is done in Colo at the Nat'l Renewable Energy Lab. They are taking it in the shorts, though, with a Texas oilman in the White House and laying off scientists left and right.

I know...I was laid off from there in 1996 with Gingrich and company. It worked out for the better for me, though, I love teaching.

Of course there are ways to survive without oil through time-tested technologies of the past...but only if you revert to the population levels of that past time as well.

The problem is that our current population numbers are sustained by an unprecedented level of agribusiness production AND distribution, all of which is based on the availability of cheap and plentiful oil. Since oil is a non-renewable resource, and one which we're using at ever increasing rates, we're relying on a pyramid scheme for our very survival.

Eventually all pyramid schemes collapse, as will our system of food production and distribution when oil rises in price and availability is limited. Some people will be able to develop viable alternatives, but not nearly as many people as will need them to stop from starving to death.

Add a global warming/impending ice age pressures to the ecosystem and the equation becomes even more unstable.