Utah Peak Oil

Peak postponed to 2015 or 2020?

2007-09-05T12:17:00.001-07:00

I get frustrated when I try having a conversation with someone about peak oil and they just flat out deny that oil production will reach a peak. What's frustrating is that I know that these people haven't really done their homework. If they don't even know what ERoEI and URR stand for then there's not much point in arguing with them since they don't really understand the issue.

The other day I came upon this interesting website maintained by Canadian analyst Freddy Hutter. With predictions and data about production, discoveries and reserves from Colin Campbell and others concerned with peak oil, Hutter reasonably suggests that the peak may not happen for another ten years or so. I like this website because you can tell that Hutter has done his homework. He's not just another voice on the web who plays the alternative fuel card or gets nit-picky about Hubbert's failure to include Alaskan production in his 1956 prediction (in Hubbert's Peak, Ken Deffeyes actually shows a Gaussian curve that fits domestic production including Alaskan and offshore fields). Hutter's analysis is backed up with data and graphs that give him much more credibility.

So maybe Deffeyes, Campbell, Simmons and crew will be proved wrong; maybe peak won't happen before the end of this decade. If peak doesn't happen until 2020 what kind of difference does that make? Would that give us enough time to prepare for a world of permanently declining liquid hydrocarbon production? Or would we still maintain the status quo as we are now?

Check out the website (http://trendlines.ca/energy.htm) and see what you think. And comments are always welcome.

The End of Suburbia

2007-08-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

I finally watched The End of Suburbia, and for an hour-long documentary I thought it did a pretty good job of covering the essentials as the public should understand them.

If you want to watch The End of Suburbia online, you can check it out here on YouTube.

Oil QUIETLY closed at a record high today

2007-07-31T20:41:00.000-07:00

The last time oil was anywhere near this price was last August when many were justifiably concerned that Israel had lit the fuse on what could explode into World War 3 in the middle east. And now with very little attention from the media, oil has quietly surpassed this former high. I looked for a mention of this on the major news web sites just now and found hardly anything. This just stuns me when I think about the vital importance of oil to life as we know it.

Why is the media whispering about something so important? Could it have anything to do with their dependence on advertisers who would like their customers to believe everything is just fine? Any thoughts?

Davis County "Energy Recovery Facility"

2007-07-19T15:26:00.000-07:00

Whenever I see the sign on Highway 89 for the garbage burn plant by HAFB, I always have to chuckle.

ENERGY RECOVERY FACILITY - EXIT 404

They call it an energy recovery facility because the methane recovered from burning Davis County's garbage is used by HAFB for generating electricity. To be clear, I think it's good that Davis County's trash is burned instead of just thrown in a conventional landfill.

But calling it an energy recovery facility is, IMHO, almost Orwellian.

Just think about it; how much fuel does it take for all of those trucks to slowly go through neighborhoods picking up trash and then drive it up to HAFB? Even though I've never crunched the numbers, I would be willing to bet that the operation is a net energy loser when everything is taken into consideration.

In a post peak world, how will we get rid of our garbage? Or maybe the question should be, how much less garbage will we be producing once there's less stuff for us to consume? Will we use stoves to burn our cardboard boxes and used tissues? Or will it be better to bury anything organic in the backyard?

Abiotic oil? So what?

2007-07-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

If you read some of the online forums about energy issues you'll see people claiming that oil isn't a fossil fuel after all. Instead they claim that petroleum was formed by other mechanistic geologic processes within the earth. We won't get into a debate here about which theory of petroleum formation is correct, but if you want to read the arguments you can check out the Wikipedia article on the subject.

So what if petroleum is abiogenic? Oil fields and entire nations still reach a peak in production and then enter a terminal decline. And even though some [crackpots] claim that enough oil is formed continually to replentish what we extract, we've still been discovering less and less oil worldwide since 1964.

Some supporters of the abiotic theory claim that more oil lies deeper than the reserves that we've been discovering and producing. If that's the case, is it even feasible for us to extract it? Even with all of our technological advances in the past few decades, it's still virtually impossible to drill a well deeper than 10 km.

So if you're trying to persuade me that peak oil is a sham, you're going to have to try something better.

Stucco, stucco everywhere...

2007-06-08T08:01:00.001-07:00

I just returned from a short visit to Washington County. Unfortunately I had to drive because St. George isn't on a passenger rail line.

Washington County is beautiful and nauseating at the same time.

I love the red rock mesas and plateaus that form the area's backdrop, but I could never live in St. George or any of the surrounding municipalities. If you think that the Wasatch Front is bad when it comes to car-dependency, Washington County is even worse.

The tragic thing about St. George is that it could have turned out much better had people done some careful planning as little as 25 years ago. Instead of the sprawling monstrosity that it just recently became, St. George could have been developed in a more sustainable, tight-knit fashion with a focus on pedestrian-friendly development and mass transit.

While I was there it was a relief to go through the old town section of the city (which is laid out on a nice, orderly grid system) and to see the temple and other handsome historic buildings. It's ironic that a beautiful landscape was created when the people had very little, whereas millions and millions of dollars have now been used to create an unsustainable crapscape.

The seemingly endless cookie cutter subdivisions, strip malls, restaurant pads and big boxes really get to me after a couple of days. Why do people choose to live there again? Are golf courses, snow-free weather, endless shopping opportunities and outdoor recreation really worth the absence of community and any sort of sustainable lifestyle?

It will be interesting (or maybe I should say frightening) to see what happens to Washington County as peak oil realities set in. What happens when the trucks stop coming? How the hell could the area grow enough food to support its current population? How can you get out of St. George if you can't drive out? Remember, there's no rail through St. George. How enraged will the people become when they recognize that their real estate investments aren't worth very much in an energy-scarce world?

Of course the problems that face Washington County aren't unique to that area, but I think they'll be worse there than in most other places in the state.

Asphalt

2007-05-29T12:56:00.001-07:00

In a world of diminishing oil and natural gas production, it's safe to assume that we will need all of the land we have to produce food using non-industrialized farming methods. It might sound ridiculous now, but we'll probably need to rip out parking lots to do this (it's not like we'll be able to drive our cars on them anyway).

But here's what I'm wondering: what the heck are we going to do with all of that asphalt? And will we have enough machine power to remove it?

It's something to think about.

Peak Oil - Films to Wake the Sleeping

2007-05-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

Valuesystem at livejournal has compiled a nice list of films and other media for those of you who want to know what peak oil is all about.

Netflix has "End of Suburbia" in their catalog. If you have Netflix, I recommend you put it on your list.

Right...."Hidden"

2007-05-12T12:51:00.000-07:00

If you drive (or take bus 55) along Highway 89 in Fruit Heights you can see the recently built subdivision on the east side near the city's southern border named "Hidden Springs." Of course there's nothing hidden about this subdivision; it's clearly visible from the highway. And you can't miss the ugly tan stucco siding or the awkward roof lines. If you live in this new subdivision, the only public places you can walk to are Fruit Heights City Hall and the churches there on Mountain Road. If you live here, your kids can't walk to school or to the grocery store. It's another suburban noplace where the people are bound to their automobiles if they want to get anywhere or do anything.

So Hidden Springs is just one of the newest pieces of the unsustainable crapscape we've created here along the Wasatch Front.

Damn those text messages...

2007-05-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

So the other day I received one of those chain text messages on my cell phone telling everyone not to buy gas on the 15th of this month.

Why are there still enough people delusional enough to believe that some sort of boycott will lower prices? Anybody who avoids buying gas that day will surely purchase it within a few days before or after. The oil companies have the half of a brain it takes to understand this.

If you really want to avoid forking over too much dough for gas, let's review some things you can do that really will make a difference.

1. Start walking to church. Yes, for some people church is too far for walking. However, I know way too many people who really do live just a block and a half away from church and drive regularly, even though they are perfectly healthy enough to walk and have hardly anything to carry. You know who you are.

2. If you live 15 miles away (or more) from work and commute by car five days a week, something has to give. Move closer to where you work, get a job closer to where you live, figure out how you can use mass transit, carpool, or work out some combination of the above. And if you live less than three miles from work, walk or ride a bicycle. No need for an expensive gym membership, and less money spent on gas. And less wear-and-tear on the car. It's a win-win-win solution.

3. Be aware when you drive. Are you accelerating to the speed limit so you can brake to a stop at the red light you can see from two blocks away? If so, please stop. Are your tires properly inflated? Are you letting the car idle while you chit chat with your neighbor who you're dropping off? Stop doing that too. And while you're at it, stop going on drives with friends just for fun. And if you have the chance to coast down a hill, even if it means going five under the limit, take your foot off the gas and let gravity do the work.

If anybody has any other suggestions, please leave them in the comments section.

Mitt Romney seeks Peak Oil expert's advice

2007-04-30T05:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to utah peaknik for letting me post on the Utah Peak Oil blog.

I thought this would be interesting to Utahns:

Mitt Romney meets Peak Oil Expert

Simmons responded by expressing his concern that this issue was being ignored. One of the few candidates who have approached Simmons is former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, whom Simmons personally met with to discuss the issue. Simmons also mentioned that the former mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson have also expressed concern over the issue.

Matthew Simmons grew up in Kaysville and graduated from the U before earning his MBA at Harvard.

Here we go again...

2007-04-24T07:22:00.000-07:00

Gas prices have been steadily rising over the past month, and the blame game is back.

"Those darn oil companies are price gouging!"

"There's plenty of oil but those darn environmentalists won't let us get it out of the ground!"

"We should be able to run our cars on something else but it's not in the politicians' best interest to have alternative energy sources."

Nope.

It's simpler than that. Aggregate global oil production is climaxing and the growth in supply is being outpaced by the growth in demand.

If you think it's ugly now, just wait a few years and you'll be longing for the days when you could buy gasoline at $2.75 a gallon.

In Technology We Trust

2007-04-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

I heard of a survey recently conducted which found that 87% of Americans believe in God or in some higher power.

It's a pretty high percentage, but I'm willing to bet that something like 95% of Americans believe that we'll find a way to run our millions of automobiles forever.

Maybe on ethanol, or hydrogen, or pond scum, or restaurant grease, or water, or processed garbage, or sawdust, or cow pies...

Or maybe we can run all of our cars on the hype over so-called alternative energy sources that the American public believes will rescue us from any fossil fuel shortages.

Here we are...

2007-04-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

I'll admit, I've been feeling a lot of anxiety lately.

It's only April and the lowest grade of gasoline is already in the $2.60ish range. Just think how much higher it could get come Labor Day.

Maybe I'm viewing things too simplistically, but think of it this way:

As the price of oil rises (because the growth in demand is outpacing any growth in production), the price of everything rises, including transportation fuel, food, and countless petroleum-based products. As things become more expensive, people have less money to save and invest. This hurts U.S. companies who also have to pay more for supplies just like everyone else. More companies struggle to survive and more fail. This means higher unemployment, so there are fewer people who can afford to pay the higher prices for everything.

And it goes on and on...

How sad

2007-04-04T08:08:00.000-07:00

In the historic neighborhood of one Davis County city stood a little white house. The property was about a third of an acre, and a garden took up a great deal of the southern part of the lot. Mature sycamore trees stood in front of the home.

But recently the trees were cut down and the house was razed. Now a significantly larger home is being built on the lot. I'm betting that it will be as ugly as most of the vinyl siding/pink brick/stucco monstrosities that are today's standard. And it will probably require more natural gas for heating and electricity for lighting and appliances.

(Okay, it's entirely possible that the old house was poorly insulated and had old, energy inefficient appliances and light bulbs, but all of those things could have been changed to make the house consume much less energy than the new one will)

In it's previous state, the property had an aesthetically pleasing, somewhat rural charm about it. And someone with the know-how could have practiced some self-sufficiency by growing his or her own food in the large garden.

But it's gone now, and the trashing of our landscape continues.

Global Warming and Peak Oil

2007-02-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

I would bet that for every person who is aware of peak oil, there are maybe 50 who are aware of global warming.

This bothers me.

Please don't get me wrong; I think that global warming is a serious problem that merits concern. We know that global warming has been and is happening. Even if we're not sure to what extent it's caused by human activity, it's still something to worry about. We should all be sobered by the fact that the earth's climate has gone through some dramatic changes over its history.

But I think that peak oil is much more serious.

And why do I say that?

With global warming, we're really not sure how things are going to play out in the future. Yes, a runaway greenhouse effect could happen, but it's not a certainty. As Kunstler points out in The Long Emergency, there's also a real possibility that the earth's climate could reverse and average annual temperatures could start falling. There are a lot of factors that come into play, like the earth's ocean currents, etc.

But worldwide oil production will peak. It's not a matter of if, but it's a matter of when. We don't know how sharp the peak will be, or if oil production will have an extended "bumpy plateau phase," but sooner or later global oil production will go into a terminal decline. Right now we can't be sure of how severe its consequences will be, but considering that virtually everything in our world depends on oil in one way or another, it's safe to say that things are going to get very ugly. Maybe some technological advances and a few other energy sources will soften the "crash." But considering how much oil we need for our energy and chemical products, it's doubtful that we'll be able to keep the world going the way we have for the last several decades. In other words, GDP will stop rising, exponential population growth will stop, and suburban "growth" will come grinding to a halt.

Admittingly, I don't know nearly as much about global warming as I do about peak oil. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe global warming will take a greater toll on our world than peak oil will.

But it still disturbs me that the overwhelming majority of Americans are still in the dark about peak oil.

How do we change that?

Musings

2007-01-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

I apologize for going so long without posting here.

Lately I've been thinking of what I should do to prepare for living in a post-peak world. Should I leave my life right now and move to a rural area? Where? What skills should I learn? How should I use what little resources that I have to prepare myself?

Most days I feel that there's really nothing that I can do, and that I just have to be at peace with myself and enjoy life while I still can.

I also feel angry. Why didn't we address this decades ago? Surely when the first oil fields ever went into depletion, somebody had to have thought to themselves, "Hmmm, this stuff doesn't keep coming out of the ground forever. What will happen when there's no more left?"

And still the overwhelming majority of Americans are in ignorance or denial. And it doesn't help that the subject isn't addressed by the mainstream media or the government. It doesn't help that we've built ourselves into an unsustainable lifestyle that most Americans have come to view as God-given normalcy.

And the crap could hit the fan at any time...

Explaining

2006-12-12T20:14:00.000-08:00

How do you make people aware of peak oil?

It's not easy.

Peak oil isn't a terribly difficult concept to understand; it doesn't take a rocket scientist. But it does take critical thinking skills and the elimination of so many commonly held misconceptions about the nature of our world.

But as for resources that explain peak oil, which one is best?

I like The Long Emergency for its eloquence and for the way it encompasses peak oil and its implications, but I don't like its lack of an index and a bibliography. The book isn't set up in the most logical sequence either and I think that Kunstler makes a few questionable assertions.

I like www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net for its links, data and thoroughness. But it's so long for a website that a lot of people simply won't take the time to read the whole thing, which means that they won't get the entire concept and grasp its seriousness. And just the fact that there are so many crazy websites out there makes people less likely to believe that this one is actually credible.

And both of the examples listed above come across as being too alarmist for some people.

On the other hand, there are resources like Deffeyes' book Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak, which are good in that they get into the nitty-gritty science, but they really don't shed enough light on the societal implications of peak oil.

If anyone has any suggestions for the best source to recommend to people, let me know.

Open questions

2006-12-06T21:08:00.000-08:00

What percentage of Americans (or Utahns) have an adequate understanding of peak oil and its consequences? What's the percentage of people who've heard about peak oil but don't really grasp its seriousness? How many people are absolutely clueless?

Oh LaVarr, if only you understood...

2006-10-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

I meant to write a post about this a long time ago, but I never got around to it.

Back on May 24 of this year, LaVarr Webb wrote something in a short piece on Utah Policy Daily about global warming:

"We've seen plenty of hysterical hand-wringing by environmentalists in the past (remember "Silent Spring?") Scaremongers have tried to frighten everyone about the population time bomb and depletion of natural resources, issues that have turned out to be just plain silly."

No LaVarr, those issues have not turned out to be "just plain silly." We're just extremely lucky that they haven't really been a problem for us...yet.

Whenever I try to explain peak oil to other people, one of the most common responses is for people to say "Well, we've always had enough energy in the past, so we'll be fine in the future." Or likewise, "Overpopulation and resource depletion haven't happened in the past like some people predicted, so things will be okay."

Of course they're committing a logical fallacy. Just because a certain condition has existed in the past, it doesn't guarantee that it will exist in the future. Another illustration of this logical fallacy would be for me to say "I've never had a serious illness before, so it's just plain silly to believe that I'll ever have one."

LaVarr, step back for a minute. Remember that the earth is endowed with a finite amount of metals which have important functions in our world. After being mined and refined and used for the first time, some metal ends up being recycled, and some metal ends up in pieces so small, in landfills, or rusted at the bottom of the sea that it can never be used again. They are essentially removed from the world's finite supply. If we continue the pattern of discarding metals, then the world's supply gradually shrinks (unless we start harvesting old metal from landfills, if that's even feasible). Eventually there comes a point when our supply of recoverable metals (whether it be from mining or from recycling) isn't sufficient to cover our needs, and then we have problems. We haven't had any problems yet, but we could in a couple of decades. Evidently some people are already talking about "peak copper."

Same thing goes with population. Sure, the world can support 6.5 billion people right now, but how will we support that same amount as our industrial agricultural capacity shrinks? Even if agricultural output could keep expanding, the earth still has only a finite amount of land and water. Population expansion has to stop sooner or later.

LaVarr, don't you remember learning about carrying capacity in biology class?

Preparing

2006-10-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

I've just found a new site, www.peakoilblues.com. From a psychological perspective, it gives good tips for coping with the anxiety, depression, fear, panic, etc. that can come with learning about peak oil.

There's one part of the website that discusses the importance of being close to other people in your community. I'll admit, I still have a lot to do when it comes to proactively networking and getting to know everybody.

For me it's hard not to get depressed about peak oil. So I try to think that maybe some good will come out of it. Maybe most of us will become better people as we get to know and rely on our neighbors more. Maybe we'll become more grateful for what we do have. Maybe we'll have a deeper understanding of the world.

Only time will tell.

Oh so nice

2006-10-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

Instead of going on another one of my cynical rants, I thought I'd write a post about something positive for a change.

I love lower 25th Street in Ogden. Out of the entire Wasatch Front north of SLC, 25th Street best fits Jane Jacobs' description of a successful urban neighborhood. It's built on a human scale and has a pretty good mix of uses. And at the bottom of the street Union Station serves as a nice focal point (Kunstler talks more about the importance of street-terminating focal points in The Geography of Nowhere).

Of course historically, 25th Street has a bad reputation of being an unsafe place with many bars and bordellos. But today that's not the case. As a matter of fact, compared to other streets nearby, I would dare say that lower 25th Street is the safest place in downtown Ogden. Why? Because the mix of uses creates a pretty constant flow of foot traffic that keeps eyes on the sidewalks. This is what Jane Jacobs describes as a self-policing street. People are on the sidewalk from seven in the morning when employees are going into the municipal building until 1 in the morning when people are leaving the clubs. I would rather be on 25th Street and Grant at night then on Adams and 21st. I dare guess that anyone familiar with Ogden would agree with me on that one.

If only the rest of our communities were set up as nicely as 25th Street.

Another way to look at gas prices

2006-10-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

Ah yes, Doug Wright is still blathering on about how high Utah's gas prices are.

Here Doug, think of it this way:

You own a company that sells widgets. If you charge two dollars a widget, you sell a total of 500 widgets each month. But if you raise the price to three dollars a widget, you still sell 500 widgets each month. That being the case, wouldn't you raise the price from two dollars a widget to three dollars a widget if you knew that just as many people were still going to buy widgets from you?

It's the same thing with gas prices. Sure, retailers could sell a gallon of fuel for less, but they know that you'll still buy as much at a higher cost. The know you'll sit there and whine about it, but not actually change your personal habits, such as (gasp!) driving less.

Don't you believe in a free market economy Doug? In a free market economy, gas stations can charge however much they want, and consumers are free to decide how much gas they want to purchase. So if you really don't like high gas prices, then walk to church, carpool or take mass transit to work, and make sure that all of your local officials know just how harmful poorly planned, sprawled "development" is.

Oh my hell...

2006-09-27T19:19:00.002-07:00

Everyone needs to read the following Wikipedia article:

General Motors streetcar conspiracy

I won't summarize it here, but it hits home that National City Lines (which was sponsored by GM, Firestone and Standard Oil of California) bought out streetcar systems here in Utah.

Man, what an awful injustice that was done to our society.

Where has all the science gone?

2006-09-21T09:56:00.000-07:00

Oh, that's right, most people have never understood the hard facts behind the energy we use. I was really tempted to call in Doug Wright's show yesterday when he and Francine Giani were talking about the high gas prices here in Utah.

Doug made the comment that with all of the oil shale in Utah, we shouldn't have to pay so much for gasoline. He also said that sometimes he feels like a six-year old when he tries to understand why gas prices are so high.

Well Doug, if you want to understand why we don't produce oil from shale and tar sands, I have one acronym for you: ERoEI (energy returned on energy invested). It's not very profitable when it takes a company two barrels' worth of energy to produce three barrels of oil. Maybe a six year old can't understand that, but a sixth grader probably could.

And as for the price of oil (or gasoline) in general, it also doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand. The world has been endowed with a finite amount of oil. Its production follows a rough bell curve, and it appears that we could be near the very top, or in the "bumpy plateau" region at the top of the curve. If demand for oil-based products keeps going up, and the worldwide supply goes into terminal decline, then the price skyrockets. It's basic economics - supply curve shifts to the left, demand curve shifts to the right, and the equilibrium price goes up.

Wouldn't it be interesting to know how many of Utah's leaders - whether they be local, state, etc. - are aware about worldwide peak oil production?

If they're not, they should be.

Overextended

2006-09-12T20:45:00.000-07:00

It seems that pretty much everything in our society is overextended.

Human population, whether it be worldwide or here on the Wasatch Front, is overextended.

People have overextended families with too many kids, and some of those families can't afford to support all those kids.

Our connectivity to the rest of the world is overextended, which in turn helps viruses, both computer and biological, travel from one part of the globe to another with amazing speed.

Financially too many people are overextended with excessive credit card and other debt.

The amount of food we eat is overextended. Never have there been as many morbidly obese people as there are today.

Our communities are overextended. They sprawl out to the point that they're not livable and self-sufficient anymore.

Yes, it seems that overextension is one of America's biggest problems. If only there was a painless, easy way out.

Reducing traffic congestion?

2006-09-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

I'm no economist, but it seems to me that the government often levies taxes in order to influence people's behavior. For instance, we put a high tax on cigarettes as to discourage people from smoking.

Would it be possible to give people some sort of tax credit for living within a mile's distance of their place of employment? There was a story in the Salt Lake Tribune back in February about people who actually commute from Salt Lake County into Davis County each day for work. According to the story, about 9,200 workers commuted daily from SLCo to Davis Co. in 2004.

Whenever I talk to people about how good it is to live close to work, they always say "But we can't all live in downtown SLC." And they have a point. But if you work in Layton, or Bountiful, or Farmington, wouldn't it be nice to live there too?

Think about how many fewer traffic jams there would be each year, and how much less money would be spent on fuel if everybody made a serious effort to either live close to work or to work close to home. I've been in a situation where I've worked within a mile of my house, and it was so beautiful. I saved so much money on gas, and got some exercise by walking to work.

Of course, if people had a serious tax advantage to live in areas close to employment, it might hurt the real estate values in cities like South Weber, Fruit Heights, West Point, Herriman, etc., while helping the real estate values in Ogden, Clearfield, etc.

We live like kings

2006-08-31T11:59:00.000-07:00

We really do.

This past week I had the chance to visit the home of someone who lives somewhere on the Wasatch Back where the real estate prices are steadily climbing. His house would have been considered a mansion by the standards of pretty much any other time in history. The man has his energy consuming house, and fuel consuming automobiles and recreational vehicles that go along with living in a sprawled out recreational area.

A hundred years ago, someone living in the same location would have had to grow their food there, and travel would have been much more limited. People wouldn't have had the luxury of spending so much time waterskiing in the nearby reservoir, or driving into the city on the other side of the mountains.

What we (including myself) forget is that for most of human history, life was hard. Diseases wiped out entire villages, people labored from sunrise to sunset, and rarely did you leave the place in which you lived and worked. People didn't watch Oprah, or spend time reading self-help books on how to be happier. People didn't have the time for such luxuries; they believed that they would get their reward in the next life.

Who knows what the future holds in store. Maybe our condition will drastically return to something like what I've described, or maybe not.

It does give one pause...

Preventing peak

2006-08-28T15:24:00.000-07:00

What could we have done to prevent ourselves from the corner we've backed into?

I wonder how different our lives would be if the very first people to extract petroleum commercially in the 1800s had said "Hmmm, the Earth only has so much of this stuff, we need to be careful how we use it." Instead, we've carelessly wasted so much of a precious resource. It gives you a sick feeling in your stomach when you think of all of the petroleum wasted because of traffic jams, people going on recreational drives, tanker spills, carelessly planned communities, and our buy-cheap-plastic-junk-and-throw-it-away-six-months-later society.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that even as late as the 70s, we could have saved ourselves from the s*&#storm that may be on the horizon. It would have required us to radically alter our lifestyle that we had been enjoying after WWII, but it probably would have been better than the dilemma we now find ourselves in. But no, after Carter left office everybody pretty much fell asleep as far as energy issues go. So we partied on for another 25 years, and now we're going to have to pay for it.

I just wish I could have been born 20 years earlier so that I could have had more time to enjoy the party.

I hate to burst your bubble, Senator Hatch...

2006-08-24T09:11:00.000-07:00

Ah yes, another story in the paper about energy that doesn't touch on the nitty-gritty scientific realities of energy.

There was a story in this morning's Standard-Examiner about Orrin Hatch wanting to "wean the U.S. from dependency on foreign oil" by producing oil from Utah's shale and tar sands.

So why hasn't this already happened? It's simple economics.

I quote from Wikipedia:

"A critical measure of the viability of oil shale is the ratio of energy used to produce the oil, compared to the energy returned (Energy Returned on Energy Invested - EROEI). Oil shale typically has a very low EROEI: Royal Dutch Shell reported a figure of about 3:1. That is, energy equivalent to one barrel of oil was used for every three gained, on its recent in-situ development (which uses electric heating of the shale up to 500 degrees fahrenheit while it is still in the ground, while also creating a frost shield around the mining site), Mahogany Research Project. This compares to a figure of typically 5:1 for conventional oil extraction."

On LATOC, Matt Savinar also explains why tar sands and oil shale being the energy savior is mostly a pipe dream. According to Savinar, we currently need about 83.5 million barrels of oil per day, but "the most optimistic reports anticipate 4 million barrels per day of oil coming from the tar sands by 2020."

This is all like the insane belief that if we just drilled in ANWR, all of our energy problems would be solved and we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

If only our leaders would stop with the hype about alternative energy and admit the unpleasant realities.

Legacy Highway

2006-08-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

A lot of Legacy supporters also believe that the population of the Wasatch Front will just keep getting bigger and bigger, with no end in sight. They say that we need the new highway (or parkway, if you want to get picky with terminology) to accommodate our current needs, and because we're only going to "grow" (i.e. sprawl) even more.

So then, my question is this - if we really are just going to keep growing indefinitely, then what are we going to do when we have regular traffic jams on both I-15 and Legacy? Where are we going to build a new highway? On Antelope Island? Through the Great Salt Lake? Will we have to condemn a mile long corridor of buildings through Davis County for a new highway? Maybe have a tunnel highway under Legacy or I-15?

But the reality is that Legacy might be one of the greatest wastes of taxpayer money in the history of the state of Utah. Five years from now or sooner, the price of a gallon of gasoline could skyrocket to something that would make $3 a gallon look really cheap. At that point, people really would be forced to move closer to their jobs, get new employment closer to home, take mass transit to work, or form car pools. And since population growth indirectly depends on oil production increasing, it's possible that Utah's population will stagnate or even decline, since a decline in worldwide oil production will also mean a decline in food production and the fuel needed to transport the food.

With the number and duration of car trips being reduced dramatically, we would probably be just fine with one major route through Davis County. I know that's hard to believe, but if gas cost you $8 a gallon by the summer of 2009, you probably wouldn't be driving from your house in east Layton to your office in downtown SLC five times a week anymore.

It's not a pleasant thought, but it could happen.

This world we live in...

2006-07-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

It's amazing to think of how many billions of dollars are spent on road and highway construction in America, but most people don't give it a second thought. Wouldn't it make more sense to spend a fraction of that on planning communities that are built on a human, walkable scale?

Too many people here on the Wasatch Front are density-phobic. When some people hear the term high density, they immediately think of slummy apartment buildings or ugly condos. Density can be bad and it can be good. A well-designed, walkable and aesthetically pleasing neighborhood with shops that have one or two stories of living space above them can be very, very nice neighborhoods. "High density" doesn't have to be apartment buildings either. Consider dense neighborhoods with Victorian-style houses. Think of homes with nice porches that front onto tree-lined brick sidewalks.

Oh wait, what I just described existed in America once upon a time. It was a time before we decided that we were going to build our entire lives and landscape around the automobile.

Sometimes I wonder what was going through the minds of developers and local government officials back in the 1950s. Ever noticed how a lot of subdivisions from 40 or 50 years ago don't even have sidewalks? Did they believe that walking was just a thing of the past? I guess it's easy to be mesmerized by the ability to drive everywhere when gasoline costs only $0.21 a gallon.

On page 68 of The Long Emergency, Kunstler so aptly states:

"The denial about global peak in the United States is already fierce, as investments in car-dependent, oil-addicted infrastructure are greater here than in any other nation and Americans consider their way of life a God-given entitlement."

And on page 65, he also writes:

"For many Americans, who have never known a way of life without cheap oil, there is a simple inability to imagine life without it. Some say that just because more oil hasn't been discovered doesn't mean that it isn't there. They are unimpressed by data showing that discovery peaked world-wide forty years ago and has been declining steadily ever since."

Amen Kunstler.

Have we hit the peak?

2006-07-15T23:16:00.000-07:00

This is from Wikipedia's peak oil article:

World oil production has been essentially flat since the beginning of 2005. Colin Campbell of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO) has calculated that the global production of conventional oil peaked in the spring of 2004 albeit at a rate of 23-GB/yr, not Hubbert's 13-GB/yr. Another peak oil proponent Kenneth S. Deffeyes predicted in his book Beyond Oil - The View From Hubbert's Peak that global oil production would hit a peak on Thanksgiving Day 2005 (Deffeyes has since revised his claim, and now argues that world oil production peaked on December 16 2005).

Of the three largest oil fields in the world, two have peaked. Mexico announced that its giant Cantarell Field entered depletion in March, 2006, as did the huge Burgan field in Kuwait in November, 2005. In April, 2006, a Saudi Aramco spokesman admitted that its mature fields are now declining at a rate of 8% per year, and its composite decline rate of producing fields is about 2%, thus implying that Ghawar, the largest oil field in the world may have peaked. New drilling in Saudi Arabia may be able to replace a portion of that country's production decline.

Traditional natural gas supplies are also under the constraints of production peaks, which especially affect specific geographic regions because of the difficulty of transporting the resource over long distances. Natural gas production may have peaked on the North American continent in 2003, with the possible exception of Alaskan gas supplies which cannot be developed until a pipeline is constructed. Natural gas production in the North Sea has also peaked. UK production was at its highest point in 2000, and declining production and increased prices are now a sensitive political issue there. Even if new extraction techniques yield additional sources of natural gas, like coalbed methane, the energy returned on energy invested will be much lower than traditional gas sources, which inevitably leads to higher costs to consumers of natural gas.

There are some countries that have already passed their oil production peak.

100 North and 100 East in Centerville

2006-06-28T21:09:00.000-07:00

(click on the image for a clearer version)

I'll let the satellite image explain itself. But another nice thing about this location is that it's right between 400 East, where bus 55 runs, and Main Street, on which bus 70 runs. And it's also a historic neighborhood with some very lovely homes and mature trees. And lastly, this neighborhood has some undeveloped infill, which would come in handy for local food production.

The truth hurts

2006-06-26T18:37:00.000-07:00

People don't want to accept the realities of the world that go against their preconceived ideas.

This is exactly why so many people here in Utah are quick to dismiss evolution. Because the theory of evolution doesn't fall in line with the idea that the world and all of its creatures were created 6,000 years ago, some people believe that it must be an "evil doctrine" put forth by those "atheist scientists." Personally, I think that the "conflict" between science and religion is a self-fulfilling prophecy more than anything else; it only exists to the extent that people create it. Religion is about the perfection of the soul, and science is about measuring and observing the natural world. And I could go on, but this blog is about energy, not evolution.

Likewise, a lot of people don't want to believe the reality of peak oil production. Peak oil implies that the world could change very quickly and for the worse, and that's not easy to swallow. It also implies that our current lifestyles are problematic, seeing as how our culture of consumption contributes to the problem. So a lot of people are in denial. Instead of accepting that our entire world is built on cheap oil and that we need to do everything possible to change that, they cling desperately to the idea that we'd have plenty of oil indefinitely if it weren't for the environmentalists/OPEC/"Big Oil"/Democrats/Republicans/teamsters/Martians/[fill in the blank with whatever group you want to scapegoat].

Maybe Google_Peak_Oil and others will share some of their peak oil denial stories in the comments section.

200 West and State Street in Farmington

2006-06-19T19:30:00.000-07:00

(click on the image for a clearer version)

This location couldn't be better as far as mass transit goes. If you walk two blocks east, you can get on the 55 and the 70. These are the two most essential bus routes in Davis County that will get you many places. If one route doesn't work well for when and where you need to go, then the other one probably will. For instance, it's faster to take the 55 to Ogden, but if you need to go to Clearfield, you take the 70. The 55 will take you to Fruit Heights, east Layton, South Weber, South Ogden, WSU, the U of U, and anywhere along 4th East/Orchard Drive in Centerville, Bountiful and North Salt Lake. The 70 will take you through the downtowns of SLC, Bountiful, Centerville, Kaysville, Clearfield, Sunset, Riverton and Ogden, but the 70 is much, much slower than the 55.

But most importantly, this location is close to a proposed FrontRunner station, which will get you to downtown Ogden and SLC faster than any bus will.

If you have children in school, this is a good location, because the junior high and the elementary school are just two blocks away. Evidently, the Davis County School District has a site for a Farmington high school by the fairgrounds, but I don't know exactly where. If it really is right by the fairgrounds (kitty corner maybe?), then that's within pretty reasonable walking distance too. Even if you don't have kids, it's nice to live near schools because many events are held at them.

As far as proximity to government/civic buildings go, this location is excellent. From here, you can walk to the library, the courthouse, city hall, the school district's office buildings, the post office, the City's public works building, the County's health and human services building and the firehouse (the latter three aren't shown on the above image).

If you're LDS, you can walk to church. It's a little farther away, but you could also walk to the fairgrounds (how often do you have to go to the fairgrounds anyway?). If you bank at Wells Fargo, you can walk there too.

If aesthetics are important to you, then this is also a good place. The immediate neighborhood has plenty of historic homes, and mature sycamore trees line the streets.

And just a couple blocks away are Farmington's swimming pool and arts center, and it's just a little farther to Woodland Park. You could also walk to Lagoon (although I don't think it's worth paying $33.95 for a day pass).

But there's one big downside.

There are no shopping places within reasonable walking distance, except for a floral shop, a pizza place, a sandwich shop, and that's about it. And most dissapointing, there's no grocery store now that Bowman's is gone.

On the bright side, there will be commercial development adjacent to the new FrontRunner station. But there might not be a grocery store there. We'll see.

So this location gets an "A" for aesthetics, mass transit, and proximity to public places. But it gets an "F" for proximity to commercial establishments.

Strategic places to live

2006-06-18T21:12:00.000-07:00

The three rules of real estate: location, location, location.

When I'm ready to buy a house, I'm going to look for one that is within walking distance of important places.

My dream house would be six blocks (or less) away from as many of the following as possible:

Bank

City hall

Church

Library

Grocery store

Commuter rail and/or light rail station

At least one bus route

Two or three schools

Post office

A park and/or some other kind of nice open space (mountainside, cemetery, nature preserve etc.)

Other various shopping places

And lastly, it would be wonderful to live within walking distance of where I work, or at least within walking distance of a mode of mass transit that can take me to where I work.

You might be thinking that the above is too much to ask. But if you study an area carefully, you can determine what locations are within walking distance of most of the above. And if you stay vigilant, you might find a good house for sale in one of those locations.

I'm going to start a series of posts that will highlight good locations in Davis County for buying a house, based on the above criteria.

I just think it would be nice to live in a place where you didn't have to get in your car to go everywhere.

Utah peak oil connection

2006-06-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

For those of you who still think that the principle of peak oil production is just some doomsday prophecy of left-wing, environmentalist nut-jobs; you're wrong.

Wilf Sommerkorn works as Community Development Director for Davis County and runs a local blog dedicated to urban planning in Utah. Wilf Sommerkorn lives in Kaysville, and he isn't convinced that peak oil is a serious problem.

Kaysville is also where Matthew Simmons grew up. Who is Matthew Simmons? He's the chairman and CEO of Simmons & Company International, which is a private investment bank that specializes in energy research, trading, and capital structuring. According to Matt Savinar, Simmons' bank is considered to be the "most reputable and reliable energy investment bank in the world." Simmons wrote Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, which explores the peak of Saudi oil production and its implications for the entire globe. Simmons has also worked as an energy advisor for the Bush administration.

So even some of the world's best investment bankers are concerned about an impending peak in worldwide oil production. I'm just trying to drive home that peak oil is real, and not some idea that was just made up by some granola-crunching lefties.

There's only so much of the stuff...

2006-06-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

Here's some informative reading that can be found on page 49 of James Kunstler's The Long Emergency:

"By the 1980s, the world had been geologically mapped to the extent that elephant oil fields on the scale of East Texas or the Ghawar field of Saudi Arabia were unlikely to have evaded discovery. The Russians, unhampered by conventional business constraints, had been especially avid in exploring their vast Siberian territories. World oil reserves were pretty much all accounted for. Hubbert lived a long time, and by the 1980s, the "rearview mirror effect" showed that world discovery had indeed peaked in the 1960s. Most importantly, the decreasing rate of discoveries comprised only small fields of minor consequence, which played out quickly. Hubbert's previous estimate about America's peak had been based on his theory, proved correct, that peak discovery preceded peak production by roughly thirty years. Hubbert initially estimated that the world peak would occur between 1990 and 2000. He was a little off, but not by much. Some experts think that the world had, in fact, entered the "bumpy plateau" of the global production peak in the early 2000s, but it was a little too early to get a clear view via the rearview mirror effect."

I was talking with someone who claimed that OPEC nations charge enough for a barrel of oil in order to get rich, but that they try to keep the price low enough so that there isn't as much motivation to discover new oil reserves. I told him that worldwide oil discoveries peaked in the 1960s anyway.

Many don't seem to understand that there's only so much oil that can be discovered. Yet some hold on to the belief that we can keep discovering new oil reserves forever, and that if it weren't for those darn environmentalists, OPEC, or [fill in the blank with whatever group you think is bad], we could be discovering and drilling in new oil fields and thus solve our energy problems.

If only it were that simple.

It's worth repeating that oil production does in fact peak. Domestic oil production peaked in 1970 and has been in decline ever since, even with some new offshore drilling operations and the Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska. Some contend that maybe peak oil only applies to fields and nations, and not to the world as a whole. But, keep in mind that oil production in the non-OPEC, non-FSU(former Soviet Union) portion of the world already peaked in the late 1990s (you can see an illustration here).

Why would oil production peak in North America, but keep going up indefinitely in the Middle East and Russia? That doesn't make any sense. Even if the oil fields in the Middle East are much larger, surely the same geologic realities apply.

Practicing what they preach?

2006-05-30T17:07:00.000-07:00

It always amuses me to hear public officials praise mass transit and walkable communities. Of course those are good things, but honestly, when was the last time you saw your city's mayor waiting at a bus stop? Do your city council members walk or use mass transit to get to the store/work/church/city hall on at least a semi-regular basis? Probably not.

But then again, that would make our local leaders about the same as everyone else, so it's not fair to hold them to a higher standard.

Did I read somewhere that Utah County might not get commuter rail until 2030, and that during upcoming construction on I-15, they're going to have temporary passenger train service to get Utah County commuters into SLC? I'm so glad I don't live in that poorly planned, sprawling monstrosity, otherwise known as northern Utah County. I don't see why anyone in their right mind would want to live in American Fork and work in downtown SLC. I know some people really like the city they grew up in, or their dream house they built (even if it's poorly designed with pinkish bricks, grey stucco and a few other mismatched architectural features arranged asymmetrically), but I just don't think that it's worth spending two hours sitting in my car each day.

And no, I'm not an architecture snob. I just don't understand why people will spend $350,000 to build a new house and not build it with a more timeless design.

Good design:

Not-so-good design:

Let's play the blame game!

2006-05-19T10:58:00.000-07:00

Americans are good at pointing fingers. For example, consider the current high gas prices.

We hear all of the following:

"It must be those evil oil companies."

"If only those damned environmentalists would let us drill in ANWR, this wouldn't be happening."

"Those environmentalists won't let us build more refineries!"

"The Republicans are in bed with 'Big Oil.'"

Heaven forbid that we actually take responsibility for our current energy predicament, and admit that our lifestyles have been built around cheap fossil fuels in a living arrangement that can't be maintained as oil and natural gas go into depletion. Sadly, as things start going to pot, many Americans will be in a state of denial, and will desperately cling to an obsolete way of life.

Just a couple of points to be made here:

As Matt Savinar points out, ANWR only contains about 10 billion barrels of oil, or about the amount that the U.S. consumes in a little over a year. I always laugh when I hear people say that if we drilled in ANWR, we wouldn't have to import Saudi oil anymore. Yeah, keep dreaming.

And as for refineries, think about it this way. Why the hell would a company build an oil refinery when they know that worldwide oil production is going to go into decline? Talk about a bad investment.

When will it snap?

2006-05-12T15:19:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, I was driving on I-15 through Farmington and Kaysville, and I was taken back by how many new subdivisions there were on the west side of the freeway. I can still remember when it seemed like there were no houses west of the freeway in that area, and I thought about Legacy, and how it will be when Davis County will be built out.

But then it hit me - I had one of those cold slaps on the face, if you will. I realized that this thing that many happily tout as "growth" and "progress" can't go on forever. What happens when Davis County is built out? Will Morgan County look like the Davis County of today? What about west Weber County? How far will the sprawl march? Could we handle a drought in 30 years if our population was double what it is now? How much farmland can be gobbled up, even though the populations of both Utah and the world keep growing exponentially? If the Wasatch Front could no longer import its food, could we feed ourselves with the population and amount of farmland that we have now?

There's only a fixed amount of water in the world (and a small percentage of that is clean, fresh water), a finite amount of steel, and a finite amount of other metals. The world only has so much land, and gets only so much sunlight. Logistically, the world can only support a certain amount of people, and it doesn't look like we'll have the means to colonize Mars or the moon anytime soon.

And when will it all snap? What will finally send gas prices spiraling upward, never to come back down? Will it be some sort of terrorist attack or other problem in Saudi Arabia? Will it be when both the government and the corporate media openly report that world oil production is peaking? Will it be something else that will make people panic? Would our society be able to survive in a world with dwindling energy?

Disclaimer

2006-05-09T22:11:00.000-07:00

There's something that I need to say before I continue to make posts on this blog.

I don't claim to know exactly what the future will be like. Maybe cold fusion will be figured out and all of our energy needs will be met. Or maybe there will be enough technological innovation that will let us survive the onset of declining fossil fuels.

But realizing just how much our lives depend on fossil fuels, and realizing that it would be one helluva feat to transition the goods we consume, our modes of transportation, our lifestyles, the economy, etc., away from fossil fuels, and also realizing that worldwide oil production is quite likely to peak in the next five to ten years (oil production already peaked in the U.S. in 1970), it's reasonable to say that we're in for some hard times ahead. Wow, that was a doozy of a run-on sentence.

Actually, I would prefer that nothing bad happens in the future. I'll admit, I enjoy cruising along a dead street late at night. I enjoy getting in my car and going out to eat. I enjoy having air-conditioning and a natural gas stove. I use a lot of products that were made with petroleum.

But I'm also sobered by the implications of peak oil production, and that's why I've started this blog.

It's about food, not cars

2006-05-09T13:36:00.000-07:00

When people think of the world's fossil fuels running out, they immediately think of their cars and gas prices. But being able to drive your SUV should be the last of your worries as far as oil depletion goes.

Let me explain.

The world has about 6.5 billion people. 6.5 billion people are able to live on the earth because of increased food production. Increased food production has been made possible by the green revolution in agriculture. And the green revolution has been made possible by enormous inputs of fossil fuel energy. Think about all of the fuel it takes to run the tractors, to process the food, ship the food, for you to drive to the store and buy the food, and for you to cook the food. And perhaps most important, so much fertilizer used in industrial agriculture is made from natural gas. I once read a quote that said something to the effect of "modern agriculture is the use of land to convert fossil fuels to food."

So in short, the energy from fossil fuels, which has been built up over thousands if not millions of years, has allowed us to have more food, which has allowed us to have more people on the planet. But when oil and natural gas start going into depletion, we're all screwed. And it's doubtful that we'll stumble upon some magical alternative source of energy that will let us keep industrial agriculture going the way it has been in recent decades.