Re: The Anazari experience: (was: Re: Ten trillion tonnes of methane hydrates in the oceans)

        Superb article . Once it takes more energy to get a barrel of
oil out , than there is in it , the economies of the world will
collapse.

On Mon, 1 Dec 2003 09:09:21 +1030, Meteorite Debris
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 17:29:30 +1030 the ET form known as Meteorite 
Debris<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> sent a radio 
signal across the vast expanse of deep space -._.--._.--._.--._.--._.-
-._.

> Producing shale oil is energy expensive but energy is the end product. 

Hundreds of years before Europeans discovered the North American 
continent there was a settled civilisation in the south west United 
States called the Anazari. They built towns with buildings up to 5 
stories high. Their main source of energy were the trees found in the 
region. They provided some of the building materials and fuel for 
cooking and heating.

The Anazari did not so much harvest the trees as much as mine them. 
That is, their use of timber was not long term sustainable. To fuel 
their society trees were felled from further and further away. 
Eventually timber was sourced from as far away as 70 miles. And then 
collapse. What happened? What follows is part analysis and part 
hypothetical. There are also some parallels with today.

The Anazari would have come up against that old troll on the bridge 
who always wants his toll - EROEI (energy return on energy invested). 
No one crosses the bridge to plentiful energy nirvana without paying 
this horrible little monster. Timber getting is an energy intensive 
business. Travelling, sawing, cutting up, carrying and transport. Also

a very efficient way to make widows. The timber getters are the 
machines who do the work and need fuel (food), a garage (heated 
quarters) and some maintenance (folk medicine with potions prepared in

part with heat). The energy to keep the timber getters going was 
coming from the timber they were getting. Initially this was done at a

large EROEI profit. As time passed however timber was coming from 
further and further away. Eventually the energy involved in getting 
timber from 70 miles away did not justify the product which by now was

becoming very expensive. What with having to carry enough food on 
route and timber to heat it with the journey would barely justify 
their own needs for energy, let alone provided a surplus for the 
society at large. With more effort devoted to timber getting there 
would be less time to devoted to other economic activities. If it 
takes 2 days to get timber instead of 1 day there is less time for 
tilling the soil or making tools. The economy drifts into long 
stagnation and decline.

How might have the Anazari reacted to these increasingly difficult 
times? The economic rationalist among the Anazari may have seen the 
poor economic performance and decided the "deregulation" was needed. 
The medicine men should be privatised and the rules regarding the 
safety of timber getters are clearly putting an onerous burden on the 
industry. These have to go. Allowing price of timber to rise would 
give an incentive to go further afield to get more (ignoring the fact 
that the EROEI does not change). The market will fix the problem. With

these changes the "enterprising spirit of the free market will be 
released" and the economy will grow. Don't laugh. The problem of going

further and further afield for timber is real today in Nepal and 
Ethiopia and here the IMF have given these sorts of policy 
prescriptions without recognising the obvious reality that energy 
stress (wood is the main source of energy in these countries) is 
retarding the economies. The rewards from the IMF are loans that can 
never be repaid but must always be serviced. 

The same IMF response is repeated in many countries with soil or water

stress without recognising resource stress as economically 
significant. Is it any wonder the IMF and the World Bank are so hated.

They fly to country X on Monday in an air conditioned bubble and are 
chauffeured in another a/c bubble to the 5 star hotel which is another

a/c bubble, talk to government figures in a gov building (a/c bubble) 
on Tuesday and fly out Wednesday (a/c bubble) and pride themselves as 
"experts" on country X without ever leaving some sort of a/c bubble 
let alone know anything about the history or culture of the country.

Back to the Anazari. The moralist among them may have decided that the

economy is stagnant because "young people are lax and don't want to 
work". "Back in my day...." etc. The xenophobe will point to 
foreigners who wear different clothes and speak with funny accents  
"undermining our way of life" as the reason why the economy will not 
move up. "Stop them coming in" or "kick them out" would be the catch 
cry. The engineer among the Anazari would talk of there being plenty 
of trees still out there. He would call timber getting of up to 70 
miles away "enhanced recovery". This increases the energy needed to 
get the timber and lowers the EROEI but it is hailed as a "triumph of 
human ingenuity". Density of trees is a factor too. The more dense an 
outcrop, the more worthwhile it is to go further to get it. Timber 
getting of low density trees far away is also "enhanced recovery". 
This is like geologically difficult oil fields. The REAL news about 
"enhanced recovery" of oil is not that this is some sort of 
technological break through but rather that it is actually needed. We 
need to spend more energy in recovering oil from old fields rather 
then developing less energy demanding younger large fields which will 
return more profit and this would surely be done if the world was as 
washed in plentiful oil as many spin masters tell us. Further our 
Anazari engineer claims there are lots of trees 100 miles away and all

we need is the right "market price" and this will come online as a 
supply of energy. This is what might be the equivalent "shale oil" 
recovery today. The engineer talks eagerly about building high lookout

towers in outlying areas to see at a glance any outcrop of trees 
instead of the slower, and likely to miss some, method of exploring on

foot. This would be like 3D seismic surveys today and again the real 
news is that this is needed.

The most typical response would be denial and wishful thinking. This 
is true today of Hubbert's Peak despite observed confirmations of its'

predictions at local levels - most notably in the USA and the North 
Sea. Paul May's assertion that the observed peak in US oil production 
40 years after a discovery peak is nothing to do with supply is 
typical of this. I can imagine the Anazari being confident that there 
were still plenty of trees out there - enough for 100 years or 300 
even. Having observed local Hubbert Peaks there is no reason to doubt 
the advent of a global one coming soon.

When I read Stephen Jay's Gould's book "The Missmeasure of Man" I 
learnt a new word - "rarefy" - to treat an imaginary concept or model 
as if it was reality itself, to turn an idea into reality in the same 
way as deify means to turn something or somebody into a god. Rarefy 
describes the economists' craft to a T. They even blame the subjects 
of their failed experiments instead of reexamining at their models. It

is our responsibility to live up to the expectations of economists' 
models and not theirs to model reality. This extends even to the laws 
of physics and thermodynamics which somehow MUST give way to the 
workings of the "market". 

The economist, moralist, xenophobe and the ostrich will all give their

various misleading analyses of problems of post oil peak societies. 
They will not see the wood for the trees.

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