Re: OT - Supply side solution for oil energy bound to fail.

Colin D wrote:


Alan Browne wrote:


Reducing the growth of consumption means living closer to where we work
or play. It means telecommuting. It means controlling population growth.
It means shifting to renewable energy sources.

It is not, perhaps, necessary to cut our use of oil, but it is essential
that we cut the rate of increase at which we consume it. To do otherwise
is to leave our descendants in an impoverished world.

Evar D. Nering is professor emeritus of
mathematics at Arizona State University.


I have a book written about 30 or 40 years ago about sustainability of
modern living standards, which made me sit up and take notice. His
premise was that although the exponential model was - and is - used for
forecasting the growth of things like oil consumption, electricity
demand, population increase, almost any growth system around, the
exponential model always fell short of the actual growth. Working with
retrospective data, he found that the curve that best fitted the figures
was a cosine curve. The big difference between an exponential curve and
a cosine curve is that an exponential curve continues to climb, getting
ever steeper but never quite vertical - an asymtotic curve, while a
cosine curve starts out similar to an exponential curve, but gets
steeper faster, and the kicker is it is a discontinuous curve.

That's a sine actually (cosine "starts" at 1, sine starts at 0), but I take your meaning.

After
reaching a positive peak, it instantaneously falls to an equal negative
peak, climbs rapidly towards the x-axis, slowing down as it approaches,
crosses the x-axis, and starts its climb up to the next discontinuity. He postulated that the fall corresponds to a cataclysmic happening that
will drive civilization back thousands of years, and he predicted that
this has happened to previous civilizations, and will happen again
sometime in the 21st century. Maybe the oil crisis will be the trigger
for this to happen ...

We are bound to oil, both fortunately and unfortunately. It is the most efficient, portable and (seemingly) plentiful means of energy storage that we exploit and hence is ultimately at the center of almost all portions of the world economy. Given that criticality, you would think we would manage it better than we do.

I'm not sure I agree with the point above in reasonable human terms. Unless alternates are found quickly (and we're at baby step stage for most) a sudden scarcity of oil in the world economy will have devastating effects and will result in calamities that we can only imagine in fear. This includes famine and war. This may be coupled to widespread environmental problems as a result of runaway greenhouse warming...

I may sound like a shrill, but I am very serious in the consequences that lie ahead. There would be absolutely nothing wrong with reducing oil consumption, it would have an effect on greenhouse gasses, it would have an effect on prices and allow that money tobe better distributed in the economy, it would result in less political stress (MidEast), etc. Not doing anything *might* make no diference but *all* the indications are for saving oil (environment, supply, political, ...).

It's like we're running the world on a 5 year plan.

Waste not, want not.

Cheers,
Alan.

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