Reality? What's That?

Reality? We Don't Need No Stinking Reality

Think back to all of the stories you've heard in the last several years about natural gas. We have vast reserves right here in the US, right? It can be a great substitute fuel for oil, which many people, including government and government-supported agency officials now acknowledge is reaching its peak of extraction rate (this is a major step since a year ago most of these same officials were denying peak oil). America is saved from having to face a bleak energy declining future.

There is just one little hitch. How true is any of it? Gas extraction companies have been playing up the amount of the resource and their wonder technology for extraction. The gas is mostly tied up in shale rock deposits. This requires a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, also used to extract oils bound up in shales. The promise, and the basis for promoting this to investors, is that we will soon have more natural gas than we could have ever imagined. And we'll have it at a profit to the companies while still affordable to the users.

When I was visiting Charlie Hall's group in the Autumn, 2009 quarter, I heard a talk from a post doctoral fellow about the performance and costs of wells drilled and ‘fracked’. His data suggested that the claims made on returns from these wells were being much overstated and that their long-term potentials were no where near as rosy as the financial types were predicting.

Now comes this article in today's New York Times (Sunday, 6/26), “Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush”. The title says it all. But I do recommend you read it.

For example:

The data show that while there are some very active wells, they are often surrounded by vast zones of less-productive wells that in some cases cost more to drill and operate than the gas they produce is worth. Also, the amount of gas produced by many of the successful wells is falling much faster than initially predicted by energy companies, making it more difficult for them to turn a profit over the long run.

If the industry does not live up to expectations, the impact will be felt widely. Federal and state lawmakers are considering drastically increasing subsidies for the natural gas business in the hope that it will provide low-cost energy for decades to come.

This is just one more example of the human propensity to not be able to deal with energy reality. The expectation that energy comes for free that has built up during the couple of centuries when we started with extremely high EROI (energy return on energy invested) fuels — the easy to find and extract fossil fuels — is something the vast majority of people simply can't let go. Even energy company executives (maybe especially those very people) who you would think were smart enough to figure it all out are completely tied to this kind of thinking.

The above article is the first sign that maybe, just maybe, reality is starting to be grasped by a few people. As this situation develops further, perhaps more people will stop their premature collective sigh of relief that the threat of peak oil has been circumvented and start facing the total reality of our energy future.

That reality is profoundly disturbing. There is a very simple equation that has to be faced. ~7 billion people are supported by roughly 450 exajoules (450 x 10¹⁸ joules) of energy per year (consumed net energy, not gross energy in 2008), 80% of which comes from fossil fuels. This is net non-food energy. A substantial amount of this non-food energy goes into producing food and transporting it. The food energy needed to support 7 billion people at OECD standards works out to about 32.1 exajoules per year. The standard of living for most of those 7 billion is not really very great but they all aspire to a higher standard of living, certainly. Now even if you consider removing (somehow) all of the waste, over consumption, and find new efficiencies, you might get that number down to 350-360 exajoules of exosomatic energy (roughly 20% reduction in consumption). If the above gas situation proves out, then we will not be able to merely substitute one fuel for another, but the total energy production will decline year-over-year, starting with oil and extending to coal and gas. Even if we add back in energy from renewables (and here I use the term as loosely as so many alternative energy advocates do) we might be able to reduce the rate of decline a bit. How much? There are giant questions about the scalability and rate of adoption for things like solar and wind energy. Meanwhile what happens to those 7 billion people?

Decline rate estimates for oil, post-peak, vary depending on your assumptions regarding the shape of Hubbert's curve. Somewhat optimistic (in my view) are the symmetrical decline (reverse of the logistic increase) with estimates of exponential decay of 2% per year. The total amount of slack in the system will have been eaten up within three years if this rate were the case.

My own model suggests something a great deal more drastic. It factors in the effects of EROI to see what the situation with net energy will be (that is the only energy that counts as far as the economy is concerned). I've seen net declines of 30% within eighty to one hundred years. So, within three to four years of the peak of net energy flow we will be down a level of available energy needed to keep 7 billion people alive (or put another way, some significant proportion from starving) if and only if we have removed the waste. Then we continue down the decline at an increasing rate (not the 2% per year). Within something like 150 years from now we may be producing only about half of the exosomatic energy we have today and that assumes there have been no breakdowns in the economic infrastructure that keeps us drilling, pumping, and digging. In the best-case scenario the majority of that energy will be going to food production to keep our marginal farmlands producing something.

I have already offered my opinion about what is more likely to happen. If my model is closer to reality then neither scenario is really very pretty. Even the best-case scenario depicts tremendous losses of material wealth. The likelihood that the haves will share equitably with the have-nots is vanishingly small so there will be a great deal of suffering and pain in vulnerable parts of the world even if we did manage to do no worse than the model decline rate.

Meanwhile in our political/economics/media information system the surprises keep rearing their ugly heads. Who could have predicted the depth and duration of the recession (BTW: the real recession never ended!)? None of them, apparently. Who knew that fossil fuels were finite and that we really did need to prepare for a future that would see them go the way of the Dodo bird? In spite of the exhortations of 8 presidents regarding energy security (for the US), we expanded our dependence on fossil fuels over the same time period (for the whole world).

As Stephen Colbert famously told the audience, including then president G. W. Bush, at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, “Reality has a well known liberal bias.” It was funny at the time given Bush and his administration's penchant for politicizing science and ignoring results. But Colbert wasn't even right on this count. There is no political bias in reality. Of course he meant that liberals were more biased toward reality, e.g. their greater tendency to accept global warming evidence. But it turns out that even liberals and progressives are largely blind to a larger reality. The right believe there is plenty more oil and gas in the ground if only we would “drill baby, drill”. But the left believe that all we need to do is turn to alternative energies and go right on with a growing economy. The progressives see a growth economy being fairly shared with all as being the route out of poverty.

Both sides of the political spectrum are deluded about economics and the possible future. They are both dead wrong in their assumptions and their visions for what to do in the near term. Maybe this situation with the blown promise of abundant natural gas (at an economic price) will act as the two-by-four up side of the head that so-called leaders on both sides need to wake them up to reality. But somehow I can't help but wonder. There is already sufficient evidence available about the situation with fossil fuel depletion and the paucity of alternative energy capacity. Even with all the evidence that already exists people construct their own fantasy worlds. I suspect even as this gas fiasco plays out there will be little to change this propensity. After all, people are just human, right?

Comments

[Alexander Carpenter]

Well folks, I just invented a new word. It's a portmanteau word, and perhaps some other clever fellow has invented it before. It is, however, a word for our times, a word that exemplifies what we get when the cultural norm is that we lie to others and we live in comforting blindness (i.e., systematically lie to ourselves): preality. Preality is what you get before reality kicks in.

Preality is what happens while we are maneuvering to "extend and pretend" the bizarre complexities and contradictions of our financial and political edifices. Reality happens when that crumbles.

Preality is what we get when we suspend the rules of accounting and the rule of law (and let's ignore the laws of physics, too) in the realm of finance and government. Reality happens when that falls apart and the system of illusion, corruption, and deception collapses.

Preality is the home of those who are stubbornly ignorant about the facts of life on a finite planet that is bursting at the seams with more and more people. Reality is what happens when the more desperate and ruthless of those people start eating our lunch and playing games with our daughters.

Preality is the orbit of those (most of us) who are burning fossil fuels without (or even with) regard for the future. Reality sets in when the rate of production decline exceeds the rate of demand decline.

Preality is the universe of those who believe Obama is a "progressive." Reality takes over when they see who he really serves, and why.

Preality is where we live when we are operating within our conditioning, within the box of conventional, standard beliefs and officially approved behaviors. Reality rolls up on us when we experience how insane our conditioning has made us.

Preality is the native terrain of fundamentalist ideologues of all stripes and colors. Reality gets a foot in the door as the old true-believers die off. Reality advances one funeral at a time (to paraphrase Max Planck).

In the world of preality, its only antidote may be discomfort of intensity in direct proportion to the white-knuckle death-grip we use to cling to the comforting lies and avoidance of increasingly obvious truths. Urgency de-reifies those abstractions and their ideologies, and many people can then see fairly straight, often for the very first time.

Indeed, preality may be the word for our times; our times being the end of an era of plentiful cheap energy and other resources, the end of an era of blind faith in such ideologies as "economics" and "democracy," and the beginning of a transition to more reality-defined physical limitations and realpolitic-defined social routines.

Without doubt, every one of us can find more examples...

[C_Scott]

It is amazing how many pundits there are who think that more growth will solve all our problems. Have you seen this article about the limits of wind power?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028063.300-wind-and-wave-farms-could-affect-earths-energy-balance.html?full=true&print=true

[Ann]

On a similar note, T Boone Pickens will be on 60 Minutes to discuss the future uses of natural gas, it should be an interesting and controversial discussion to say the least.

[Phil Henshaw]

The key question is how to break through, and let "the voice of reality" be heard. I don't think scientists should try to convert their insights into political speech. I think we should find simple starting points for the general public, to do true scientific thinking.

One irony for me is that on natural systems subjects, I myself am now in year #30+ in a struggle to get professional scientists to think scientifically too. So I'm not saying it's gong to be easy. We're all struggling with much the same symptom, though, having found ways to make the counter-intuitive evidence of how our world actually works crystal clear, and having it fail to raise a discussion.

Take my finding that the estimates of energy use impacts of businesses are nominally 80% below the world average energy use per dollar. The simple reason is that the standard method counts only in-house energy uses and out-sourced energy services are the missing 80%.

Everyone seems to agree that the finding is technically correct. It does not have a familiar framework of discussion to fit into though, and... (perhaps more importantly), is not culturally affirming. Because it is not culturally affirming people also don't have a positive emotional response to it. That the scale of the error is so large may make it even harder to find a way to talk about.

Another more familiar example is that of Jeavons' finding, that using efficiency to make resource use more profitable, multiplies resource use. Why our popular culture finds that counter-intuitive is quite puzzling. I think it's possibly a direct transference from the positive reinforcement for being efficient we get everywhere else. It wins us approval from our bosses, spouses, children and friends. It's then a small step to sincerely believe that for being efficient in using her resources and creatively removing costly impacts, nature will also shower us with approval too. The opposite is happening, clearly, but you can't tell people.

I'd love to have suggestions of culturally affirming ways to present either of these or any of the others. Human culture does indeed seem more and more to be clinically mad, in having all these very threatening detachments from reality we can count.

[George Mobus]

Alexander,

Excellent. Hope you got a copyright!

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C_Scott,

Thanks for the link. I will check it out.

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Ann,

Thanks for the heads up. I don't watch TV so will miss 60 min. But I'm sure there will be some chatter on the oil drum about it.

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Phil,

I continue to applaud your desire and efforts to get more people to understand the issues as they really are. As you may have understood my motivations, I am less inclined to worry about the public, as in getting them to do things that will 'save' us. I am content with an understanding that the whole edifice is destined to fall down and must do so if there is to be any future evolution of the genus. Besides, after years of trying to proselytize the benefits of everyone grasping that energy is the basis of life and the economy, and getting nowhere, I've concluded that for me the effort is futile.

I'll just stick with the science. Post here if anyone cares to read it, and live out my life in whatever comes. I'd suggest you read William Catton's remarks at the end of his last book, Collapse. He went through the very same personal evolution.

George

[Phil Henshaw]

I guess my reason for aiming at finding "common language" is to first speak to the wide spectrum of experts who all have different languages are become blinded by their theories.

Most experts use equations to represent complex systems composed of creatively learning and adapting parts, for example. As a result they come to understand the natural system only as theory.

That prevents them from considering changes in what the parts are learning, and how that alters the form or behavior of the real system. If they could ask that sort of question it would let them see the need for a new model at appropriate times.

In that case, then, it's sticking with "the science" (the "trusted abstraction" that no longer applies) that is the worst mistake of all...

[George Mobus]

Phil,

Well this is exactly why I am toiling over an introductory text on systems science, a language that should be common to all sciences (and humanities). If you are interested I can send you a draft to review later in the fall.

George

[Phil Henshaw]

Sure, I'd be happy to see notes or anything else you'd like response to.

You know I've been taking on that same task using an empirical method, rather than a theoretical one. I lay out the foundations for a systems science everyone can use taking the common grammar and syntax directly from the physical system objects of nature people can directly observe in their own environment. That's what my papers and research findings have been on since I started writing on systems science methods for SGSR back in 85.

Yesterday I got a nice email, announcing that one of my key papers was awarded the ASME prize for best paper on Energy Sustainability of 2010. That's the one that first established the nominal 500% adjustment in what needs to be counted to estimate the real energy impact of business products and decisions. (using my empirical systems science method)

Henshaw, King paper awarded prize (link to announcement with citation) http://www.synapse9.com/signals/2011/07/11/henshaw-king-paper-awarded-prize/

[George Mobus]

Phil,

Congrats on the paper.

I will be in touch e-mail-wise when I get further along.

George

[James Olson]

George, your assertion that the left believes that we can continue on as before using renewables in place of fossil fuels does not square with my own experience.Virtually all on the left that I am personally aware of accept that the party is over with or without renewables. In fact most myself included have known this for at least forty years and have altered our consumption patterns to reflect that knowledge. I had a vasectomy in 1969 the same year we hit peak oil and landed on the moon.During the televised moon landing I told my nephews and nieces that they were witnessing the high point of American civilization and it was all downhill from there.

[George Mobus]

James,

The 'left' that I refer to is represented by the Paul Krugmans, Robert Reiches, Robert Sheers, etc. These are progressivists who firmly believe that growth is the answer. And they tend to have the most heard voices. People like you and I, who work in the trenches and observe the ground truth (and are able to hear the Paul Ehrlichs and Donella Meadows), have to grapple with reality. Naturally we try to do what is best.

George

[מדבירים]

The data suggested that the claims of the return of these wells were very overrated, and that their long term potential was not nearly as rosy as predicted financial types.

[הקמת בריכות שחיה]

This requires a process called hydraulic fracturing drilling, is also used to extract shale oil related.

[Moderator edit: removed commercial URL]