The NEW Oil Age Poster (Dec 2010)

This is the newly updated December 2010 edition of The Oil Age Poster. Oil forms the basis of our industrial age, powering everything we know as modern, from automobiles to airplanes to power plants to plastics. Colorful and authoritative, this poster traces the history of the Oil Age from its beginnings in the hills of western Pennsylvania to its rise as the engine of global industrial economies.


Two hundred years of the Oil Age are depicted in the poster's main chart, which features a colorful year-by-year rendering of Colin Campbell's Depletion Model. Historical annotations as well as detailed data on production, trade and reserves make this poster a versatile tool for presenting the realities and implications of global oil production and its impending peak.

The Best of The Oil Drum 2005-2010

During the past 5 years ToD have had a continuing stream of energy-related content. In the busiest of times, with a staff of over 20 volunteers, ToD were posting two articles or analyses per day. Oft times 50-60 hours of work (or more) on a post resulted in only 12 hours live on the main page.Here is a list containing, in the opinion of each author, the 'Best of The Oil Drum' from the past 5 years. The meta-list is in alphabetical order, by author last name. Much if not most of this material is still highly relevant today. If you are interested in learning about energy and society, please consider bookmarking this archive as a resource.

The End of Growth by Richard Heinberg

Excerpt from MuseLetter #222 / November 2010 by Richard Heinberg

Download printable PDF version here (PDF, 132 KB)

This is the second Museletter containing an excerpt from the upcoming book which has the working title 'The End of Growth'. The book is set for publication in July 2011.

The End of Growth

Introduction: The New Normal

The central assertion of this book is both simple and startling: Economic growth as we have known it is over and done with.

The “growth” we are talking about consists of the expansion of the overall size of the economy (with more people being served and more money changing hands) and of the quantities of energy and material goods flowing through it.

The economic crisis that began in 2007-2008 was both foreseeable and inevitable, and it marks a permanent, fundamental break from past decades—a period during which most economists adopted the unrealistic view that perpetual economic growth is necessary and also possible to achieve. There are now fundamental barriers to ongoing economic expansion, and the world is colliding with those barriers.

This is not to say the U.S. or the world as a whole will never see another quarter or year of growth relative to the previous quarter or year. However, when the bumps are averaged out, the general trend-line of the economy (measured in terms of production and consumption of real goods) will be level or downward rather than upward from now on.

Nor will it be impossible for any region, nation, or business to continue growing for a while. Some will. In the final analysis, however, this growth will have been achieved at the expense of other regions, nations, or businesses. From now on, only relative growth is possible: the global economy is playing a zero-sum game, with an ever-shrinking pot to be divided among the winners.

[via MuseLetter read full article there]

The Coming Oil Crisis & Why You Should Care

On the Financial Sense Newshour this week, Jim Puplava is pleased to have Dr. Colin Campbell on the program. Dr. Campbell, a pioneer in the field of peak oil, believes the effects of peak oil are coming sooner than expected, and the warnings from experts around the globe are largely being ignored by the politicians.

Dr. Campbell is now a Trustee of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre ("ODAC") in the United Kingdom, a charitable organisation in London that is dedicated to researching the date and impact of the peak and decline of world oil production due to resource constraints, and raising awareness of the serious consequences. He has published extensively, and his recent articles have stimulated lively debate. His views are provocative yet carry the weight of a wide international experience.

A Brief History of Fossil Fuels - THE ULTIMATE ROLLER COASTER RIDE

THE ULTIMATE ROLLER COASTER RIDE: A Brief History of Fossil Fuels
by Richard Heinberg

Fossil fuels have powered human growth and ingenuity for centuries. Now that we're reaching the end of cheap and abundant oil and coal supplies, we're in for an exciting ride. While there's a real risk that we'll fall off a cliff, there's still time to control our transition to a post-carbon future.

And now, for your viewing and sharing pleasure we bring you 300 YEARS OF FOSSIL FUELED GROWTH IN 5 MINUTES:



Written and narrated by PCI Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg.
Animated by the wonderful team at MONSTRO DESIGN.

[via postcarbon.org]

The Next Oil Shock? - Report

The Economics and Industry Team of New Zealand Parliamentary Library has published a new research paper: The Next Oil Shock?

The Conclusion of the report

The global economy is heavily dependent on affordable oil.

It may seem counter-intuitive that, when oil reserves and production capacityare higher than ever, the future of the oil market appears bleak. The problem is that production capacity is not expected to keep up with demand. That fact leads to severe economic consequences.

To replace the declining production from existing oil wells and increase production, oil companies are forced to extract oil in more difficult and expensive conditions (deep-water, oil sands, lignite to liquids) from smaller, less favourable reserves. The marginal (price-setting) barrel of oil costs around US$75-$85 a barrel to produce. This will continue to rise with higher demand and exhaustion of reserves.

Although there remain large reserves of oil which can be extracted, the world’s daily capacity to extract oil cannot keep increasing indefinitely. A point will be reached where it is not economically and physically feasible to replace the declining production from existing wells and add new production fast enough for total production capacity to increase. Projections from the IEA and other groups have this occurring, at least temporarily, as soon as 2012.

The difference between the global capacity to produce oil and global demand is the supply buffer. When the supply buffer is large, oil prices will be low. When the supply buffer shrinks - due to demand rising faster than production capacity or production capacity falling - prices will rise as markets add in the risk that supply will not be available to meet demand at any given point in time.

When a supply crunch forces oil prices beyond a certain point, the cost of oil forces consumers and businesses to cut other spending, inducing a recession. The recession destroys demand for oil, allowing prices to drop. Major international organisations are warning of another supply crunch as soon as 2012.

The world may be entering an era defined by relatively short periods of economic growth terminating in oil price spikes and recession.

New Zealand is not immune to the consequences of this situation. In fact, its dependency on bulk exports and tourism makes New Zealand very vulnerable to oil shocks.

The End of Oil as We Know It - 2010 ASPO-USA Conference

Global Energy Experts Agree: We are Facing the End of Oil as We Know It WASHINGTON (October 12, 2010): Economists, activists, technical experts and policymakers from across the political spectrum gathered here, October 7-9, to discuss the global energy crisis. After 150 years of oil extraction; most major oil exporting nations are well past their supply peaks, defined by scientists as “Peak Oil.” At the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas’ (ASPO-USA) sixth annual conference speakers offered a single, coherent picture of a world unprepared to encounter energy limits, petroleum scarcity and the inevitable—and possibly unprecedented—rise in prices. “We are on the brink of a major energy crisis,” stated Jim Baldauf, President of ASPO-USA. “The era of low-cost, easy to get oil has come to an end. Yet, our society is heavily dependent on oil and we have no contingency plan. It is our goal every year to bring together the world’s best global energy experts to grapple with solutions to this catastrophic situation and discuss the future.”

The presentation files of the 2010 World Oil Conference have been posted on the aspo-usa web site including:

• The Impending World Energy Mess Keynote Presentation by Robert L. Hirsch
• Economy & Energy by Chris Martenson
• Energy and Financial Crisis by Nicole Foss of The Automatic Earth
• The End of Investment by John Michael Greer of The Archdruid Report
• Where are we now? by André Angelantoni of postpeakliving.com
• & more
  

Can Oil Production Meet Rising Global Demand?

On October 7, 2010, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) held a briefing on challenges facing the oil industry to keep pace with rising global demand, and the potential implications for oil prices, national security, and the world economy. Numerous sources project demand for liquid fuels to rise to historically unprecedented levels once the global economy recovers from the recent recession. Global oil production, meanwhile, has leveled off since 2005, real oil prices have roughly doubled, and spare capacity has tightened, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Potential constraints on global oil production have raised concerns among industry observers, military leaders, and policymakers. This briefing examined the economic, technical, and political factors that influence the rate at which oil is extracted and processed, and how patterns of global oil production are changing.

Can Oil Production Meet Rising Global Demand?

Some Highlights from Speaker Presentations

• The challenge facing world oil production is not a problem of how much oil is in the ground (i.e. resources), but rather the rate at which oil can be economically recovered from proven reserves. That rate is constrained by a complex combination of economic, technical, geologic, and geopolitical factors.
• The International Energy Agency projects that production of conventional oil from currently developed fields will decline by 20-30 million barrels per day by 2020. Meanwhile, global demand is projected to rise from approximately 85 million barrels per day at present to nearly 100 million barrels per day by 2020.
• To date, growth in estimated world oil reserves has kept up with growth in global consumption. Most of this increase, however, has been from adjustments in the estimates of existing reserves. The rate of discovery of new oil fields has been dropping steadily since the 1960s, and is now well below the rate of global consumption.

The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future Of Our Economy, Energy, And Environment

Chris Martenson is now dedicating his life to educating people, or giving them a "Crash Course" on the three E's: the Economy, Energy, and the Environment, so they can make better choices in the future. He wants people to understand:

• How completely dependent the 3e’s are on each other
• The unsustainable current trajectory they are on
• The changes that could have on our future (not just another housing crisis or recession, but also things like food supply shortage due to contamination, like the one we recently experienced with eggs, but on a larger scale, or the likelihood of more big natural disasters or disease outbreaks because of environmental shifts caused by global warming, etc.)
• How to recognize those changes ahead of time and prepare yourself, BEFORE it happens

Chris first introduced this Crash Course as a video series which he offers on his website for free.

The Impending World Energy Mess with Robert L. Hirsch

Apogee Prime has released a series of video interviews with Robert L. Hirsch the author of the new book: The Impending World Energy Mess.

The Impending World Energy Mess with Robert L. Hirsch Pt 01


The Impending World Energy Mess with Robert L. Hirsch Pt 02


The Impending World Energy Mess with Robert L. Hirsch Pt 04


The Impending World Energy Mess with Robert L. Hirsch Pt 09


The Impending World Energy Mess with Robert L. Hirsch Pt 15


The Impending World Energy Mess with Robert L. Hirsch Pt 20


The Impending World Energy Mess with Robert L. Hirsch Pt 21

An Interview with Chris Martenson on the Survival Podcast

Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast had interviewed Chris Martenson who is the creator of “The Crash Course”. They had a meaty exploration of the core tenets of the Three Es in light of recent developments, then delved pretty deeply into strategies for building personal resilience, which is the main focus of the regular podcasts.

The first “E” is the economy, which is the lens through which the Crash Course looks at everything, specifically exponential money, the first-ever collapse of a global credit binge, an aging population, and a national failure to save.

The second “E” is energy. The Crash Course explores what Peak Oil implies for an economic system that is based on continual expansion.

The third “E”, the environment, will be exerting its own unknowable but certainly significant economic burdens due to shrinking resources and other systemic pressures while the other two “E”s are clamoring for your money and attention.

Listen to the full inverview here.

Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression

Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression (2010-2030): A Survival Guide for Investors and Savers After Peak Oil

Peak Oil is the point of maximum global oil production. In Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression (2010-2030), the author argues that the likely peak in global oil production occurred in the period 2005-2008, due to the peaking of Saudi Arabian oil production during that time. The evidence of a peak in Saudi crude oil production in 2008 is presented and discussed in some detail. The most significant piece of evidence of a Saudi peak in production in 2008 was the inability of Saudi oil ministers to increase production in the period 2005 to 2008 despite record crude oil prices and the drilling of thousands of new wells in Saudi Arabia's seven major oil fields. Because it could not increase production in the face of rising global demand, Saudi Arabia was unable to prevent a spike in the price of oil to around $150 a barrel. A dramatic economic contraction in the developed economies ensued.

In the years ahead, it is argued, continued economic growth in the developing world including China will put upward pressure on the price of oil, which will create severe economic difficulties for the indebted developed economies such as the US which rely on imported energy. The book examines the likely policy responses of American statesmen and central bankers to the economic difficulties created by very high prices for petroleum. Oil at very high and indeed painful prices in the face of already historic levels of personal and governmental indebtedness, it is argued, will create large scale unemployment on levels not seen since the (First) Great Depression as expenditures for foreign oil dramatically reduce spending available for the domestic economy.

The author argues that the policy response to the economic difficulties will be to create a general rise in the price level to reduce the burden of the existing debt on households, businesses and governmental entities. As prices, and especially wages, rise, domestic spending will recover and unemployment will be reduced, although this process could take several decades. Very significant inflation will likely be necessary to prevent an even more severe drop in employment and output in the economy than that we are already experiencing given the magnitude of the shock to the economy created by continued declines in global oil production.

The inflation thus created, as well as the other dramatic changes in the economy as a result of Peak Oil, will alter the approach that would optimally be taken by investors and those wishing to preserve savings. The issues of asset allocation and sector weighting are explored together with alternative investments in commodities and real estate. The focus is primarily on domestic equities, but a rather unusual sector weighting strategy is proposed as most likely to produce positive results during two decades that will otherwise be most disappointing for the investing public.

Peak Oil will also create opportunities for speculation which are explored in the final chapters of the book.

Listen to the related interview on FSN In Depth: Kenneth D Worth, Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression (2010-2030) by James J Puplava

The Impending World Energy Mess - Book

The Impending World Energy Mess will help educate readers about the realities of energy in general and oil in particular.

The book ranks already #6 in Business & Investing > Economics > Natural Resources

The reader will be able to cut through the smokescreens that various self interests have, and are, promulgating and understand that there are a number of credible studies that clearly demonstrate that world oil production is close to going into decline, which will create long-term world oil shortages.

The huge economic impacts associated with impending oil shortages are brought into sober, balanced perspective and readers are given tools to minimize the impending negative impacts on their personal lives.

Finally, The Impending World Energy Mess provides a balanced discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of a number of electric power production technologies, and in particular, the inherent weaknesses in solar and renewable technologies. The Impending World Energy Mess provides a practical basis for understanding and personal action.

Included in this book is a special Foreword from Dr James Schlesinger - First US Secretary of Energy, Director of Central Intelligence, Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

In the next five years, world oil production will begin to decline - which means less and less oil will be available each year. The result will be annually deepening worldwide economic damage.

There will be no quick fixes. Even crash program mitigation will take more than a decade to impact.

Societal priorities will change dramatically. Compromises will be required. Years of energy hopes and fantasy will have to yield to pragmatism.

Oil and energy issues are complicated. You need to understand the situation in order to make intelligent choices for yourself and those close to you.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. With over a hundred years of combined experience in energy and economics, the authors provide you the straight story, including realities that others have been reluctant to discuss.

Check out this exclusive interview with the author Robert Hirsch by Matthieu Auzanneau:

‘Peak Oil’ : Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Energy sounds the alarm: part 1, part 2

[via Energy Bulletin]

Beyond the Limits to Growth

An excerpt from the Post Carbon Reader Series: Foundational Concepts
Beyond the Limits to Growth by Richard Heinberg

In 1972, the now-classic book Limits to Growth explored the consequences for Earth’s ecosystems of exponential growth in population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion. That book, which still stands as the best-selling environmental title ever published, reported on the first attempts to use computers to model the likely interactions between trends in resources, consumption, and population. It summarized the first major scientific study to question the assumption that economic growth can and will continue more or less uninterrupted into the foreseeable future.



The idea was heretical at the time, and still is: During the past few decades, growth has become virtually the sole index of national economic well-being. When an economy grows, jobs appear, investments yield high returns, and everyone is happy. When the economy stops growing, financial bloodletting and general misery ensue. Predictably, a book saying that growth cannot and will not continue beyond a certain point proved profoundly upsetting in some quarters, and soon Limits to Growth was pilloried in a public relations campaign organized by pro-growth business interests. In reality, this purported “debunking” merely amounted to taking a few numbers in the book completely out of context, citing them as “predictions” (which they explicitly were not), and then claiming that these predictions had failed. The ruse was quickly exposed, but rebuttals often don’t gain nearly as much publicity as accusations, and so today millions of people mistakenly believe that the book was long ago discredited.

In any case, the underlying premise of the book is irrefutable: At some point in time, humanity’s ever-increasing resource consumption will meet the very real limits of a planet with finite natural resources.

The co-authors of The Post Carbon Reader believe that this time has come.

The Pivotal Role of energy

During the past two centuries, an explosion in population, consumption, and technological innovation has brought previously unimaginable advances in health, wealth, transport, and communications. These events were largely made possible by the release of enormous amounts of cheap energy from fossil fuels starting in the mid-nineteenth century.

Increased consumption of fossil fuels has produced both economic growth and population growth. However, a bigger population and a growing economy lead to more energy demand. We are thus enmeshed in a classic self-reinforcing (“positive”) feedback loop. Crucially, the planet on which all of this growth is occurring happens to be limited in size, with fixed stores of fossil fuels and mineral ores, and with constrained capacities to regenerate forests, fish, topsoil, and freshwater. Indeed, it appears that we are now pushing up against these very physical limits:

• The world is at, nearing, or past the points of peak production of a number of critical nonrenewable resources—including oil, natural gas, and coal, as well as many economically important minerals ranging from antimony to zinc.
• The global climate is being destabilized by greenhouse gases emitted from the burning of fossil fuels, leading to more severe weather (including droughts) as well as melting glaciers and rising sea levels.
• Freshwater scarcity is a real or impending problem in nearly all of the world’s nations due to climate change, pollution, and overuse of groundwater for agriculture and industrial processes.
• World food production per capita is declining and the maintenance of existing total harvests is threatened by climate change, soil erosion, water scarcity, and high fuel costs.
• Earth’s plant and animal species are being driven to extinction by human activities at a rate unequaled in the last 60 million years.

[via the Post Carbon Institute]

Fossil Fuel Production with Supply and Demand Interactions

Steve Mohr has published his Thesis at the University of Newcastle, Australia:
Projection of world fossil fuel production with supply and demand interactions

Abstract

Historically, fossil fuels have been vital for our global energy needs. However climate change is prompting renewed interest in the role of fossil fuel production for our energy needs. In order to appropriately plan for our future energy needs, a new detailed model of fossil fuel supply is required. It is critical to know if fossil fuels will still be able to supply most of our energy requirements and meet the ever increasing energy demand in the future. Answering these questions is critical in order to identify potential periods of energy shortages; so that alternative energy resources can be utilised in a timely way. The aim of this study was to develop a model to predict fossil fuel production for the long term based on historical production data, projected demand, and assumed ultimately recoverable reserves for coal, gas and oil. Climate change is an important issue confronting society, and it is hoped that the work contained in this thesis will aid climate change modeling by focusing attention to realistic fossil fuel production projections. Fossil fuels are currently an essential component in the global economy and the growth of the human population. The fossil fuel production projections from this study suggest that many of the IPCC fossil fuel projections appear overly optimistic. Based on the assumed URR values, it is predicted that global fossil fuel production will peak before 2030. For this reason, it is imperative that appropriate action be taken as early as possible to mitigate the effects of fossil fuel decline, to avoid energy shortages in the near future.

Conclusions (excerpt)

The combined supply and demand model includes the capability that demand and production could be influenced by each other, i.e. if production could not meet demand then future demand for that energy source was reduced. In this study, three options were considered. Firstly, the STATIC option resulted in demand and production acting independently of each other at all times. Secondly, the DYNAMIC option allowed both total demand and total production to change from the STATIC situation when there was a difference between the two. Finally, the INDEPENDENTLY DYNAMIC option was an extension to the DYNAMIC situation, but treated each fuel source individually when applying the supply and demand interaction, with both demand and production being able to vary.

The model requires estimates of Ultimately Recoverable Resources (URR) for coal, gas and oil. Following a critical review of the literature, included in this study, three cases were adopted. CASE 1 and CASE 3 being lowest and highest recent estimates, respectively, and CASE 2 being author’s best guess based on the information available. The URR values for CASE 2 were, total (60,800 EJ), coal (19,350 EJ), gas (17,680 EJ) and oil (23,780 EJ).

Oil: For CASE 2, peak production year remained almost constant at 2011-12 for STATIC, DYNAMIC and INDEPENDENTLY DYNAMIC options, with peak production varying only marginally between 179–188 EJ/y. Similarly, for CASE 1, peak production year was the same at 2005 for all three supply and demand interaction options. For CASE 3, peak production year varied only slightly at 2019, 2011 and 2016 for STATIC, DYNAMIC and INDEPENDENTLY DYNAMIC options, respectively. The important outcome was that for all scenarios the maximum peak year was 2019.

Combined fossil fuels: For CASE 2, peak production year remained almost constant at 2016–18 for STATIC, DYNAMIC and INDEPENDENTLY DYNAMIC options, with peak production varying only marginally between 509–525 EJ/y. Similarly, for CASE 1, peak production year was essentially same at 2012–13 for all three supply and demand interaction options. For CASE 3, peak production year varied from 2021 to 2029 across the three supply and demand options. In all scenarios it was found that natural gas offers the biggest future potential, and not coal.

[via Energy Bulletin]

Ocean Energy Institute and Energy Systems

The Ocean Energy Institute, founded in 2007 by Matthew R. Simmons, is a think-tank and venture capital fund addressing the challenges of U.S. offshore renewable energy. OEI approaches energy R&D and investment from a systems point of view; not just generation, but usage, storage and transmission all together as an interdependent set of opportunities and the next driving force of the international economy.

Grand Opening - Ocean Energy Institute Offices

Rockland, Maine (July 20) -- The Ocean Energy Institute will be hosting a VIP celebration today for the grand opening of its new office headquarters.

Energy as a Complete System

OEI's "GUST" model (generation, usage, storage and transmission) proposes how the offshore wind resource can be efficiently tapped into and used, and the electricity intelligently stored and transmitted.

This model addresses two of the biggest challenges to the reliability of wind power: seasonality (the wind blows strongest in the winter, when energy demand is historically lower) - and intermittency (the wind blows less strongly during the daytime, when energy demand is highest).

The System Solution

1. Use the energy in a way that the seasonal match is great (e.g., winter heating)
2. Use the energy for the 90% of the family energy budget that is NOT "electricity"
3. Use the energy in applications where energy storage is easy
4. Construct a North American Supergrid to balance out intermittency
5. Develop NH3 (ammonia) fuel as a way to seasonally shift energy generation vs. use
6. Exploit Smart Grids to dynamically balance generation and demand
7. Stop handcuffing ourselves to a 20 percent renewable "penetration" limit

The "Pickens Plan Plus" a.k.a the Simmons Plan

The Ocean Energy Institute has published an updated version of the original Pickens Plan. The Simmons Plan is outlined in a pdf presentation here.

Book: The Post Carbon Reader

The Post Carbon Reader
Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises

Edited by Richard Heinberg and Daniel Lerch
In the 20th century, cheap and abundant energy brought previously unimaginable advances in health, wealth, and technology, and fed an explosion in population and consumption. But this growth came at an incredible cost. Climate change, peak oil, freshwater depletion, species extinction, and a host of economic and social problems now challenge us as never before. The Post Carbon Reader features articles by some of the world’s most provocative thinkers on the key drivers shaping this new century, from renewable energy and urban agriculture to social justice and systems resilience. This unprecedented collection takes a hard-nosed look at the interconnected threats of our global sustainability quandary—as well as the most promising responses. The Post Carbon Reader is a valuable resource for policymakers, college classrooms, and concerned citizens.

Table of Contents

Preface Richard Heinberg and Daniel Lerch, Editors
Foreword Asher Miller

Part I - Introduction
1. Foundation Concepts

• Richard Heinberg: "Beyond the Limits to Growth"
• Richard Heinberg: "What is Sustainability?"
• Bill Rees, "Thinking 'Resilience'"

Part II - Planet
2. Climate

• Bill McKibben, selection from Eaarth
• Richard Douthwaite, "The international response to climate change "
• Mark Sandler, SIDEBAR: "Cap and Dividend in the U.S."
• David Orr, selection from Down to the Wire

3. Water

• Sandra Postel, "Water: Adapting to a new normal"

4. Biodiversity

• Stephanie Mills, "Peak Nature?"

Part III - Civilization
5. Food

• Michael Bomford, "Energy and the food system"
• Wes Jackson, transcript from 1/25/10 presentation at Univ. of California - Berkeley
• Erika Allen, transcript from 1/24/10 conversation: "Growing community food systems"

6. Population

• Bill Ryerson, "Population: The Multiplier of Everything Else"

7. Culture & behavior

• Peter Whybrow, "Dangerously Addictive"
• Gloria Flora, "Remapping Relationships: Humans in nature"
• Bill Rees, "The Human Nature of Unsustainability"

Part IV - Modern Society
8. Energy

• Daniel Lerch, selection from Post Carbon Cities
• David Hughes, "Hydrocarbons in North America"
• David Fridley, "Nine Challenges of Alternative Energy"
• Tom Whipple, "Peak Oil and the Economy"

9. Economy

• Josh Farley, "Ecological Economics"
• Richard Douthwaite, SIDEBAR: "Money and Energy"
• Michael Shuman, "The Competitiveness of Local Living Economies"

10. Cities, towns, and suburbs

• Warren Karlenzig, "The Death of Sprawl"
• Deborah Popper and Frank Popper, "Smart Decline in Post-Carbon Cities"
• Hillary Brown, "Buildings"
• John Kaufmann "Local Government in a time of Peak Oil and Climate Change"

11. Transportation

• Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl, "Post-carbon mobility"

12. Waste

• Bill Sheehan and Helen Spiegelman, "Climate Change, Peak Oil and the End of Waste"

13. Health

• Cindy Parker and Brian Schwartz, "Human Health and Well-Being in an Era of Energy Scarcity and Climate Change"

14. Education

• Zenobia Barlow and Michael Stone, "Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability"
• Nancy Lee Wood, "Community Colleges"

Part V - Next Steps
15. Building resilience

• Chris Martenson, "Personal preparation"
• Rob Hopkins "Transitioning community"

16. Vision for a post-carbon century

• Asher Miller, "What Now? The Path Forward Begins with One Step"

World3 in Modelica: System Dynamics Models

World3 in Modelica: Creating System Dynamics Models in the Modelica Framework

This paper and presentation by F. E. Cellier introduces a new release of the System-Dynamics library of Modelica and shows how it is being used by discussing a fairly large application code: Meadows’ World3 model.

Meadows’ only talked in Limits to Growth about the results obtained with the model. The model itself, originally coded in Dynamo, was described in a separate book.

Meadows’ World3 model has seen two major upgrades since its original inception, one in 1992, i.e. after 20 years, and the second in 2002, i.e., after 30 years. The World3 application code contained in SystemDynamics 2.0 implements the 2002 version of the World3 model. In the code, we offer not only the basic model, but also all 10 scenarios that Meadows and co-workers are talking about in Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update.

Future Research

What future additions are in the works? In today’s world of dwindling fossil fuel reserves, it becomes important to track how much energy we are actually using. Whereas classical System Dynamics is designed to track material flows, it does not track energy flows. This is a major drawback of the methodology.

For this reason, a second version of the System Dynamics library has also been released as a sublibrary of BondLib, our bond graph library. In that version, all material flows are represented internally by bond graphs. A bond graph naturally tracks energy flows. Each energy flow, in that version of the library, is represented as the product of a specific enthalpy and a mass flow. Hence we can track material flows and energy flows simultaneously.

When I drive my car from home to work, I am not only spending energy in the form of the gas that my car consumes. Some energy was also spent in producing the car, and more energy will be spent in discarding it at the end of its lifecycle and in recovering those materials from it that can be recycled.

The accumulated energy that accounts for all of those indirect uses of energy is called emergy. The specific enthalpy can be used to encode in the model the specific emergy, i.e., the emergy per unit of mass.

I plan on porting examples of emergy modeling, as described in the publications by Howard Odum, over to the bond graph implementation of the System Dynamics library, but this work has not yet been completed.


Check out the full paper and presentation by Prof. Dr. François E. Cellier here.

Making Sense of the Financial Crisis in the Era of Peak Oil

Nicole Foss of the Automatic Earth has delivered a very interesting presentation at the Transition Network Conference 2010 in the UK.

Peak Oil and the collapse of global Ponzi finance are a “perfect storm” of converging phenomena that threaten to sink our age of prosperity through wealth destruction, social discontent, and global conflict. Nicole will describe how our current financial system is an unsustainable credit bubble grounded in “Ponzi dynamics,” or the logic of the pyramid scheme. She warns that most people are woefully unprepared to face the consequences of the devastating deflation that is now unfolding.

Check out the following comments about Making Sense of the Financial Crisis in the Era of Peak Oil

• My Conference – Shaun Chamberlin on Stoneleigh’s peak oil/finance talk
• Nicole Foss: A Century of Challenges

President Obama on the Oil Spill and Alternative Fuel Sources

Watch the full video or read the full transcript of Remarks by the President to the Nation on the BP Oil Spill.