
Jeff Rubin: Oil and the End of Globalization - pif
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7095
======
mdasen
I think one of the issues with the thesis that oil prices will lead to a drop
in globalization is that it's actually quite fuel-efficient to ship goods.
Grabbing fast stats from Wikipedia
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation)),
we see that it takes 246kJ to transport 1 tonne (2,204.6 pounds) 1km by
freight rail in the United States. By contrast, a car carrying a single person
takes 3,594kJ to transport that person 1km. Also, I think ocean-borne freight
is even more favorable than rail, but I would assume that we would also have
the option of creating nuclear-powered ocean-borne freight transportation
given that we do this today for military vessels.

Freight has the advantage that it often doesn't care if it arrives 6 hours
late or has to wait around a bunch. That means that we can hit maximal loads
nicely. Businesses also tend to pre-plan (at least the ones that do well) so
that they can take advantages of the efficiencies offered by going slower.

Passenger transportation just isn't as efficient and would seem to be under a
greater squeeze. Even if you go by Amtrak's rail service, to transport a tonne
of humans (assuming the average North American body weight of 80.7kg) would
use 80x as much fuel as transporting a tonne of freight.

Getting back to freight, a lot of the world's goods are transported by freight
truck over land. Freight trucks use 2,426kJ per tonne-kilometer. So, something
coming from China over water to the Western US would use considerably less
fuel than something from New York trying to get to the Western US. It's under
8,000mi from China to SF and (as the crow flys) 2,500mi from New York to SF.
If water-borne transit is 10x more efficient, goods from China still have a
fuel advantage over freight truck.

If anything, we'd see the end of freight trucks before we saw the end of
globalization. Something coming from China to the Western US and then onto New
York by rail would likely use less fuel than something coming from the Western
US to New York by fright truck.

I guess I just see freight trucking and passenger trips ending considerably
sooner than the water-borne and rail transit that would enable globalization
to continue.

~~~
grammaton
"I think one of the issues with the thesis that oil prices will lead to a drop
in globalization is that it's actually quite fuel-efficient to ship goods."

Manufacturing them, on the other hand....

~~~
mindslight
Taking your idea further, we'd expect mass shipping to continue as
manufacturing will be much cheaper in countries that aren't so hamstrung about
nuclear energy.

------
anovikov
Energy density per unit of weight of natural gas is in fact about 15% higher
than the gasoline. The problem is compression, but not a big problem really,
just about any car can be switched to use natural gas aftermarket, with some
loss of engine power, but improvement in engine life span btw.

Overally, i feel these concerns of 'peakers' are nonsense, the free market
will help switching for other sources of energy, and science and technology
already brought us to the point where it is possible, it's all about scaling
now.

~~~
chimi
Are the physical capacities of space and time capable of getting us to scale
in these technologies? Only so much energy comes from the sun per square foot.
Batteries can only store so much of that. There are only so many tons of
required metals on the planet to create all the infrastructure, solar panels
and electric motors we will need?

I don't know yet for sure if it's possible to maintain our current quality of
life given the resources we have at our earthly disposal.

~~~
Retric
The long term solution to electric cars is electrified highways not better
battery's.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Irisbus_Cristalis_ETB18_C1...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Irisbus_Cristalis_ETB18_C1_Lyon_TCL_PDVM_Ibou.JPG)
Also, we use ~474 exajoules of energy per year, the sun provides ~3,850,000
exajules. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy> Collecting 1% of that
energy could easily support a western style lifestyle for 10 billion people.

~~~
pif
> Collecting 1% of that energy could easily support a western style lifestyle
> for 10 billion people.

Yes, but how can we collect that 1%? Even considering 100% efficiency for
solar panels, we'd need to cover 1% of the global Earth surface (land _and_
oceans). Even more, we'd need at least to double it in order to have a 1%
covered 24h/24. I'm afraid we don't have all the required material.

~~~
Retric
Wind and Hydro collect far more solar power than a solar panel as far a
surface area is concerned and requires little in the way of rare materials.
Also, we cover more than 1% of the earth with plants, but they don't tend to
be all that efficient bump them into the 15+% range by say genetically
engineering something to collect wavelengths that Chlorophyll skips over and
the numbers get intense. We also farm the oceans but focus way to high on the
food chain to get much in the way of efficiency.

PS: There are also plenty of raw materials to cover the earth in solar panels
but that's hardly unnecessary. But as far as the raw numbers go, covering 10%
of the worlds oceans with floating solar collectors is vary doable and has a
lower impact. (At the cost of significant climate change.)

------
tocomment
Isn't his argument contradicted by cheap natural gas? I would think energy is
energy, why is the oil form of energy so important?

I do wonder why we're not switching from oil to natural gas a lot faster
though.

~~~
blindhippo
Trouble with natural gas... people are almost as terrified of frac'ing, and
shale gas as they are of the evil "tar sands". That said, the rest of the
world is investing heavily in Canadian natural gas - it's one of the primary
motivators behind the current national debate (in Canada) over pipelines out
of Alberta.

Can a large cargo ship be run using only liquid natural gas? Can we power
generators using just natural gas?

I'm very curious about the limits of natural gas as a power source.

~~~
debacle
The only real limit is compression. Many public service vehicles locally are
switching over to natural gas.

~~~
calgaryeng
Not just compression. NG also has a much lower energy density than
oil/gasoline. Not as compact

~~~
blindhippo
Does a natural gas engine work similar to a gasoline engine?

~~~
maxerickson
The internals are essentially identical.

The fuel system needs to be adapted to handle the natural gas though. Looking
around, it appears that there are vehicles on the road that can switch at
pretty much the push of a button.

~~~
noblethrasher
Yep. Where I work we have a fleet of cars that do just that.

------
euroclydon
I don't know about his assertion that suburban sprawl will revert to farm
land. That would be quite the undertaking. I've had a garden in my front yard
since 2008. I've learned a lot over four years about how to grow vegetables. I
would hope that we could take the common areas in these sprawling suburban
neighborhoods and convert much of it into community run gardens, chicken coops
and pig farms. That would make much more sense to me.

Also,

>What is peak oil going to do to population carrying capacity?

>I've heard mass food production is very dependent on synthetic fertilizers
made from natural gas. How long before peak natural gas affects food
production capacity?

>How big of a mess will the grid become when we have a bunch of electric cars
on the roads?

>Without a substitute for oil-powered automobiles, just how much higher will
the unemployment rate go, and how much civil unrest will that cause?

~~~
maxerickson
Given that agricultural land use in the U.S. is ~50% and urban areas are
around 3% or 4%, some big disruption would probably result in far more
abandonment than it would conversion.

------
Roboprog
Wow, it feels like I stumbled on James Kunstler's site today:
<http://www.kunstler.com/index.php>

The way I see it, we really only have two choices: nuclear (fusion) power; or
"A World Made by Hand".

Solar doesn't provide much energy density. (unless you can build a Dyson
sphere or a "Ringworld" and convert huge amounts of solar radiation for
transport)

Methane has more energy per KG than oil, but much less per cubic meter. (in
addition to low density, you need a strong/heavy tank to put it in). And it's
a fairly finite fossil fuel.

Uranium and the like are also a somewhat finite fossil fuels (even if from
extinct supernovas, rather than ferns and dinosaurs).

Hydrogen (fusion) on the other hand, pretty much defines the useful lifetime
of the universe. That's how I define "sustainability".

~~~
pif
> Hydrogen (fusion) on the other hand, pretty much defines the useful lifetime
> of the universe. That's how I define "sustainability".

That's true! That's true and funny! Hydrogen fusion does define the "useful"
lifetime of the universe (ie: the interval before the entire universe becomes
mainly full of cold heavy metals), but the stars are going to be burning for a
few more billion years because fusion is an "unlikely" process. Yes! The solar
system is still as we know it, with the planets well separated from the Sun
and not yet conglomerated into a big red giant, for the same reason for which
we are struggling to get fusion in our labs: because that's difficult! You
need enormous temperatures to convince hydrogen atoms to come together and mix
their nuclei, and so you get a lot of problems in controlling the overall
process.

Sure, we can try with cold fusion, but unfortunately we have not yet got a
useful result. But we can insist. Actually, I think we must insist! I can't
imagine a better source of energy than cold fusion, _if_ we ever get there.
Yes, we must definitely insist!

