There is an anti-human TV program on the History Channel called Life After People, which portrays the aftermath of the imaginary scenario where all people on Earth suddenly vanished in a rapture-like event tomorrow.
I’ve often seen it flipping channels, and it has always been my impression that it represents the ultimate utopian vision of radical environmentalists, who see people as a scourge on the planet, sort of a Fear and self loathing in Las Vegas applied to Gaia.
I get word from Dr. David Deming, Geologist at the University of Oklahoma, of an essay he has composed asking about what would happen to people if fossil fuel based energy disappeared tomorrow. Deming asks this simple question: What would happen if we gave the environmentalists what they want?
It is an eye opener for those that really don’t think much about where the energy they use daily comes from. I’ve excerpted parts of it below, and I have a few observations of my own that follow.
What If Atlas Shrugged?
by David Deming
Atlas Shrugged is the title of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel in which the world grinds to a halt after the productive segment of society goes on strike. Tired of being demonized and exploited, the world’s innovators and entrepreneurs simply walk away.
What would happen to the US today if the fossil fuel industry went on a strike of indefinite duration? What would happen if we gave the environmentalists what they want?
…
Within 24 hours there would be long lines at service stations as people sought to purchase remaining stocks of gasoline. The same people who denounce oil companies would be desperately scrounging the last drops of available fuel for their SUVs. By the third day, all the gasoline would be gone.
With no diesel fuel, the trucking industry would grind to a halt. Almost all retail goods in the US are delivered by trucks. Grocery shelves would begin to empty. Food production at the most basic levels would also stop.
…
With no trains or trucks running there would be no way to deliver either raw materials or finished products. All industrial production and manufacturing would stop. Mass layoffs would ensue. At this point, it would hardly matter. With virtually all transportation systems out, the only people who could work would be those who owned horses or were capable of walking to their places of employment.
Owners of electric cars might smirk at first, but would soon be forced to the unpleasant reality that the vehicle they thought was “emission free” runs on coal. Forty-two percent of electric power in the US is produced by burning coal.
With natural gas also out of the picture, we would lose another 25 percent. The environmentalist’s favorite power sources, wind and solar, could not fill the gap. Wind power currently generates about 3 percent of our electricity and solar power accounts for a scant 0.04 percent. The only reliable power sources left would be hydroelectric and nuclear. But together these two sources could only power the grid at 27 percent of its normal capacity. With two-thirds of the electric power gone, the grid would shut down entirely.
Read his full essay here. (note: this link does not imply endorsement of the website on which the essay resides – Anthony)
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Here are a few observations of my own about what would happen if fossil fuels disappeared tomorrow:
- After elevated tanks of municipal water systems were depleted of drinking water in a few days, there would be no more water supply. This would force people to start looking for alternate sources, and we’d be back to a time when water treatment was unknown. Disease and death would follow for many as tainted water spreads disease. People with water wells would have to tear out electric pumps and install hand pumps or windmills to get water.
- Related to the first point, toilets would be useless without water to flush them. Fecal matter disposal becomes an issue as gravity fed sewage systems eventually clog, and eventually fecal matter will end up in streams and rivers contributing to the spread of diseases much like the Great Stink in old London.
- Garbage collection becomes a thing of the past. Garbage will be piled high in the streets.
- People that have grid tied solar power systems would be no better off than their neighbors, because the DC to AC inverters require an AC power grid presence signal. Otherwise they shut off for safety. Some people with electrical skills might be able to rewire them, but then they’d only have electricity during daytime.
- People who may have working solar energy might be targeted by the have-nots. They might wish they had paid attention to the Second Amendment to protect their home based energy source. People who still have gasoline in their cars trying to escape cities might find themselves victims of mob attacks as the have-nots look for the last remaining bits of energy. Mad-Max world ensues.
- Windmill farms (that also need grid presence to operate) will stand as icons of folly, unusable, and cursed by the populace since they can’t make use of them. Eventually they’ll all look like these wind farms or fall down.
- Radical climatologists like Mike Mann and James Hansen will no longer be able to communicate their apocalyptic visions of the future to us, since there will be no Internet or radio/TV networks or newspapers printed to disseminate their views.
- Along the same lines, thankfully, we’d never see another episode of Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo.
- Climate modelers like Kevin Trenberth would never be able to run another computer model telling us how hot our future apocalypse might be, since his NCAR computer is run by Wyoming coal. Likewise, NOAA’s Gaea supercomputer will be DOA since it can’t run on recycled vegetable oil.
- Al Gore will no longer be able to jet around the world to tell us how the world will end soon if we don’t pay attention to his new book about The Future. He’ll be reduced to holing up in one of his many properties and hoping the Mad-Maxers don’t come for his solar panels.
- Congress would be reduced to debating in hot, sweaty, non air-conditioned rooms, just like the founders of our country did at the first Continental Congress and as they did in the summer of 1988, when Dr. James Hansen and his sponsor, Senator Tim Wirth, turned off the A/C in the hearing room for effect while they sold the idea of global warming to the Senators.
- Without air conditioning, city dwellers would truly experience the Urban Heat Island effect in the summer, that is when they weren’t scrounging for food and water, and fighting off the Mad-Maxer gangs who would take anything they could from them, including their life.
- Wood burning to stay warm during the winter becomes all the rage again. Smoke pollution returns to cities, especially in winter.
- Real climate refugees start streaming south from high latitude countries as people run out of fuel. Many towns in Alaska and Siberia that survive only because of regular supplies of heating oil and gasoline would be abandoned.
- Global warming, environmentalism, politics; all would be a thing of the past, since survival trumps everything.
- Paul Ehrlich wanders the streets near Stanford, dressed in rags shouting at people “I was right! I was right!“
I could go on and on, but you get the picture.
So which is the worse future, a slightly warmer one with fossil fuels or one without them?
Ian George says:
February 7, 2013 at 3:53 pm
I’ve always wondered if some of the coal-based power stations and fuel companies decided to restrict, or even stop, their output for say a month or so, that people would begin to rebel against the ‘green movement’ and put all their silly ideas to rest. The coal/fuel companies could justify it by saying they are reducing their CO2 footprint.
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Given that three times as many coal plants are shutting down as the EPA forecast I have been wondering if that is exactly what may be happening. Around 5% of the total capacity will be shut down much of it in the mid-atlantic states area. map My town is already looking into a mini-thorium plant as a possible solution while the state is blathering on about solar and wind (eye roll) We have natural gas reserves but hydraulic fracturing, is illegal in North Carolina.
Wikipedia is not a good source of information on Peak oil. They are a propaganda site like the mainstream media…
I am amazed at how many people have not heard of the experiments at MIT on “cold fusion”, The NANOR system. Fully reproducible and almost ready for prime time…
It is poised to take over from oil, coal, nuclear, wind, hydro etc…. It is the next big energy….
Aetheric engineering is the next big science…
When the radical green folks call humans “a cancer”, do they realize that includes those maklng those statements, or are they merely referring to “everyone else”?
The Centre for Alternative Technology in North Wales has been trying to become “sustainable” for years.
http://www.cat.org.uk/
John Whitman says:
February 7, 2013 at 4:13 pm
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One method of getting a handle on how what it would be like if fossil fuel disappeared is this resource
without tractors you are back to the 1890’s
So you are looking at a major increase in the amount of labor to produce food. In 1890 Farmers made up 43% of labor force and the total US population was 62,947,714, in 2010 the US population was 308,745,538, Short term salvage yards and dumps can produce metals for fabrication.
This is also useful information
No wonder California seems to be so completely removed from reality, they are!
“If it is faked on three sides it is real” – from a friend who grew up in Hollywood
Um, I think it would be more “lumpy” than described. Take Phoenix, for example. Lots of excess nuclear power and nearby farming. To some extent it depends on “how fast”, as even they would have motor vehicle issues if the onset were “immediate”, but if the onset were more gradual, say over a year, then folks would start doing the old “Mad Max” stuff, like fermenting things to get alcohol to run engines.
So you could have some places with lots of working electricity for several months (or more) that could be ‘boot strap centers’ for rebuilding on non-fossil fuel sources or electric transport. Trains can run on biodiesel and ships too. Also there would be a rapid rediscovery of the “gasogen”.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/diy-gasoline-and-diesel-from-wood-and-trash/
During W.W.I and W.W.II some number of cars trucks and buses ran on wood or charcoal via CO/H2 generators. They can be made from things as simple as old metal barrels.
Yes, performance is sucky (about 1/2 power) but at least it moves.
So a minimal level of transport and electricity could be patched together inside a week. From that, you continue to do ’emergency conversions and rebuild’ as needed. So things like taking electric motors out of elevators and “repurposing them” as replacements for vehicles to make “emergency field expedient electric vehicles”.
For “the basics” of food, water, and such, a recoverable level could be up and running inside a week or two.
Now, that rosy picture does ignore 2 very important things.
1) It is only going to be in a few “pods” where that can be done. Places around nuclear and hydro facilities. Places away from that energy core will be busy collapsing into ruin…
2) It is only going to work if the chaos elsewhere can be held “away” long enough to get the rebuild started. That is, you need RAPID restoration of order and focus on a ‘restart’ process. That is somewhat unlikely and very hard…
there’s also a third item that’s a bit less important:
3) Key understanding and key facilities need to be preserved in time to be available for a ‘restart’. You are in a ‘race condition’ for things like repair parts for nuclear plants… So inside a couple of years, the ability to manufacture that kind of thing has to be brought back on line too. To the extent key bits are made in areas that are NOT in a nuclear powered pod, “that can be hard” 😉
IMHO, the key bit would be making enough gasogens to get enough backup generation and transport working to prevent the complete loss of core abilities. That, and getting more nuclear built before the forests run out… We’re talking living in dramatic austerity conditions for about a decade… folks cutting down trees with axes and hand saws to feed gasogens as they convert old gas engines to steam or gasogen.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/i-want-one-fire-is-your-friend/
I’d guess that about 90% of the population would die by the end of the first year, though. Places like NYC and San Francisco would largely starve and be disease holes. It is places like Oroville / Chico who could “make it” as they have lots of hydro, trees, and land nearby. So food, power, and transport could rapidly be made working enough to continue farming at about a 1/4 or less level. More than enough to feed folks in the area, but not enough to ship food to SF / LA. Similarly, folks living “in the woods” would do fine. Just plant a garden, trap game & fish, and chop wood. ( Back to the 1700s…) As the urban folks could not ‘get there’ they would be OK.
So I think humanity would recover. It would just involve an awful lot of collapse and death as the “remnant” figure out how to do a reboot on 1700s to 1800s tech sufficient to maintain the hydro / nuclear facilities.
I’m pretty sure that Al and all his friends have several little hidey-holes stashed away where they will live happily ever after, secure in the knowledge that they have saved the world.
John Whitman,
“MattS, what is your post technology Apocalypse vision / guess?”
My best guess is that it will be all out war against whoever was in charge when it happens (even if they aren’t actually responsible, it happened on their watch so they are SOL). With no fossil fuels the military is reduced to just man portable weapons. A very large chunk of their firepower advantage over an armed civilian population just went away. Absolute best case for those in charge is that the military and law enforcement agencies split down the middle. Far from surviving the longest the bureaucrats will be among the FIRST to die.
Think French revolution and “Let them eat cake.”
Or think about it this way. You are a national guardsman manning a M2 .50cal machine gun assigned to guard the state capital building. There is a mob of half starving people attempting to storm the capital building with little more than pitchforks and torches. Do you mow down nearly defenseless civilians or do you turn your M2 around and help the people who deserve it?
Many of the scenarios outlined by Anthony have already been “gamed” out in books, such as 1 Second After (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After), as pointed out by others. It is not a matter of if, but when this will occur. Be it a solar event or a foreign power, an EMP event is inevitable. The results would be the same and just as ugly.
Unfortunately, there is an obvious lack preparedness for this inevitable event. It will happen swiftly and long before any environmental agenda comes into play.
God help us all.
Regnad Kcin,
“It is not a matter of if, but when this will occur. Be it a solar event or a foreign power, an EMP event is inevitable. The results would be the same and just as ugly.”
“Unfortunately, there is an obvious lack preparedness for this inevitable event. It will happen swiftly and long before any environmental agenda comes into play.”
That it is inevitable does not by any means ensure that it will happen before an environmental agenda comes into play or current civilization collapses from some other cause entirely.
I would further suggest that at a national and even at a personal level there is NO SUCH THING as being prepared for an event of that magnitude. The simple fact is that you can’t feed our current population without modern energy infrastructure.
While carbon fuels aren’t going to disappear, it is easy to imagine a scenario nearly as brutal as that portrayed in this thread, namely the widespread general failure of “the grid”, through EMP, or electronic warfare means. The chaos wouldn’t be as deep or long- lived as a no- fossil- fuel tomorrow, but would still be very costly in lives.
A similar disaster would occur if civil rebellion broke out and the Federales cut off all utilities/commerce to the afflicted area to quell the dispute.
President Obama declared openly that he wanted a civilian military style force to equal the military in power and it looks as if he is quietly fulfilling his dream. The Dept. of Homeland Security has purchased enough ammo within the past 10 months to sustain a level of battle/ammo expenditure as seen at the height of conflict in Iraq; i.e. 5.5million rounds/month used by the military and DHS has purchased at least 1.625 BILLION rds. There are many who are speculating about the deeper purpose of those now in power and why they need such an armed force within our borders.
Some would say, with the revelations today and recently concerning the tragic Benghazi fiasco, that no one’s minding the store- that the players at the top are merely interested in electioneering, and nobody’s home.
Isn’t conspiracy theory a lot of fun? We just love to tell ourselves scary stories. Maybe we’re all wired up that way.
The reality is that the Amish would be just fine. So would all farmers, although they’d scale down their operations hugely. Those owning big farms would probably acquire a number of tenants, taking a tithe of 10% or whatever.
People would have to revert to what the rural Chinese did with regard to fecal and organic waste: recycle it to the land. Trenches would be dug for crapping into and people would piss onto compost. The soil would be replenished with waste organics, mixed in with cut grass (scythed?)
What would disappear would be CITIES. Cities don’t work without electricity or energy. Farms can. Not as well as with it, but they can work.
Cities don’t generate their own food or water, so they are not self-sustaining.
It’s an interesting concept for all the city dwellers who claim they are the most ‘productive’ parts of the economy.
One final thing: if the ‘entrepreneurs and innovators’ are really that, they won’t be bugging computers world wide to steal ideas, will they.
Ever asked Gates, Wozniak, Schmidt et al whether they engaged in that?
Not very American that, is it?
Only the CIA’s supposed to do that. To flush out terrorists.
Unfortunately, it’s precisely what American corporations do, which says that they are far from being the people who innovate, they are the parasites.
Not really MSM wholesome American propaganda that, is it??
The truth never is, I”m afraid.
And the response to it is never ‘fair cop, you got me’. It’s ostracism.
I wonder why that would be, apart from the most likely possibility that organised criminality and ‘innovation’ are joined at the hip??
If it weren’t for the greenies constantly attacking the energy industries over the last 50 years, energy costs might well be much lower and cleaner too. Eventually, new sources of energy WILL be discovered. Thinking back, Man burned all manner of materials for thousands of years before coal was discovered.
Eventually, the Sun will become our biggest enemy, probably in the next 500M years since it grows some 6-10% hotter every billion.
Before then, our best chance is to create a “Matrix-like” framework where everyone can upload their consciousness, leave their pathetic flesh and blood life forms behind and live forever on a computer chip where you can program your life as you please without bothering anyone, unless they want to be bothered, travelling the Universe until THAT comes to an end – if at all.
Al Gore and Co, including the greenies, can be left behind to inherit their ball of mud, rapidly being melted by the Sun. What a fitting end.
I hope the operating system will NOT be of a Microsoft design!
That’s the same impression I got from watching a couple of them. HC certainly has a lot of garbage (Ice Road Morons, Axe Morons, Swamp Morons, Ancient Alien Morons, Nostradumbass, ad nauseum), but I don’t remember them saying anything on the “Life After People” shows which blamed humans for anything.
@ur momisuglyJohn Whitman:
The problem with your “scenario” is the complete lack of fossil fuels. You are likely correct in any real world event, but the postulate here was NO fossil fuels. So just how does your force of armed folks get to where the Commissars are located? How does food get to them? The entire modern force structure is built around fossil fueled logistics. By Definition, that does not exist in this scenario. Further, all those guys families are going to be hung out to dry. Not nicely protected in an advantaged enclave…
And that is why the Powers That Be would not have a nice security force defending them. No trucks. No armored cars. No food tents. No water purification trucks. No mobile hospital. No field kitchen. No…
Now, in a realistic “aw shit” you are likely correct, as they can commandeer the needed supplies from whatever is left. But in a zero case, they collapse at the same time as everyone else.
@ur momisugly Joel Upchurch
Step away from the koolaid bowl…
Sorry, but just SOOoooo wrong.
First off, Wiki is horridly compromised on any such topic. It’s all garbage.
Now, we have some odd TRILLIONS of barrels of technically recoverable oil and bitumen (tar and oil shales). That’s the resource. You will find all the panic mongers talk about the reserves. The problem with this is that reserves are price dependent. Raise the price a bit, more resource becomes reserves.
For coal, about 1/4 of the USA sits on top of coal deposits. That is one heck of a lot of coal. It it all reserves? Nope. The cheapest deposits are so cheap that the slightly more expensive ones are not reserves but they are still resources when the day comes that we need them.
For Oil, there are somewhere between 3 and 4 TRILLION barrels of oil in resource that can be harvested whenever we really need it.
Now, the next problem:
Hubberts Peak is not where you run out. It is the point of maximum production rate. The production quantity is more or less symmetrical about that point. As it was 150 years ago that Drake drilled his first well, we have 150 years to go even if we are at peak today and we are not at peak.
Finally, the EROEI canard:
The form of energy is just as important as the net energy gain. (That is WHY we refine crude oil to gasoline and Diesel at the cost of energy loss…)
So we can simply use nuclear powered electric pumps to raise the oil as we want oil and liquid fuels. We do this in California today, were along Hwy 101 you can see oil wells with electric motors pumping oil. Powered by a mix of hydroelectric, nuclear, and whatever else is on the grid. So even long after oil is a net energy sink, we will continue to pump and use it as long as the form of oil is desirable.
BTW, we have unlimited nuclear power available. At only a bit more price than for land based uranium, we can harvest enough to power every power need on the planet from the ocean using established technologies. (that whole resource vs reserves thing again). So electricity at about 6 cents / kW-hr is the ‘energy cost’ of lifting that oil, if we want that form more than electricity.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/ulum-ultra-large-uranium-miner-ship/
Since more U erodes into the ocean each year than is needed to power the entire planet, we run out of energy when rocks cease to erode (i.e. when we run out of planet…) At that time we will need to convert to Thorium. There’s about 3 times as much Thorium as U….
BTW, map of coal in the USA is in this posting:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/coal-liquids-and-costs/
We can turn coal into gasoline and Diesel for about $2 / gallon. There is a whole lot of coal in places like China, Russia, Australia, … so not going to run out in my lifetime nor in the lifetime of my kids, nor in their kids lifetime…
And, just to put too find a point on it 😉
The company Rentech has a “trash to liquids” plant that turns trash into Diesel for the ‘renewable’ mandate at LAX airport (ground vehicles). Don’t think we run out of trash any time soon….
So hopefully you can see why you just don’t need to worry, at all, about “peak oil” or “peak coal” (and certainly not about “peak uranium”…) The are just scare stories to frighten the children…
(Just in case you are still worried and want to point at Saudi… they were running out of ‘excess supply’ with ‘only’ 2 Million bbl/day a few years back. A few drill rigs went over, and ‘presto’ they had 4 Million bbl/day of ‘excess supply’. Much fuss was made about their major field slowing down. Little attention was paid to the fact that they chose to not drill for decades. They have lots of extra places to drill and some ‘heavy sour’ fields that are available, but not enough demand, so don’t pump much. So they have an unknown, but large, amount of capacity whenever they get around to wanting to produce it.)
And we won’t even start on Methane Clathrate… Trillions more… And Japan has just started the first production from them…
There is definitely an anti-human element to portions of the climate alarmist camp. These people openly speculate about depopulating the planet and dramatically reducing the human population. There is another word for their thought process….genocide.
“Imagine Gas at $30 or $40 per liter or electricity produced by fossil fuels to be taxed at a rate to produce Electric prices at dollars per KWH instead of pennies. It wouldn’t take much in the way of taxation to cause Fossil Fuels to become effectively unuseable”
That wouldn’t last long. The riots would force the government to recind the tax or be thrust into utter anarchy.
After our recent near cyclone & flood we had 72 hours flooded in to our undamaged & dry country home. Power was out for 90 hours,
I have a small 1KVA gen set, & had enough fuel for about 40 hours. This drove our small fridge, TV, battery & phone charger, but not much else. It would not start a freezer. I also have a bar b que, on which the hose from the gas bottle to the burners developed a leak the second day, which I could not fix with anything at hand.
Food was rapidly running out. Nothing hot from the middle of the second day.
We did have water from our largest tank trickling at the kitchen cold tap, taking about 12 seconds to fill a cup. The weather was hot, so a cold sponge from a bucket was OK.
I lived for years on a yacht, with 12V lights, & gas fridge & cooking. It is fine when set up properly, & necessities are replaceable. Being caught unprepared was hell. I wish a few dozen greenies could have shared with us.
[snip – useless snark -mod]
If it happened, the outlined scenarios are optimistic. It would be difficult to describe what would really happen and no one would have the stomach to read it.
Fortunately, it cannot happen. Even if all fossil fuel producers were taken up in the rapture, other humans would quickly figure out how to make the energy flow again. As long as it is there and we haven’t figured out something cheaper and better, we will continue to use fossil fuels. And it will be there for a very long time to come.
If this ever came to pass in the west we might want to learn how to speak Chinese or Russian…
The ultra greens believe we should have no impact on the surface of the earth. Agriculture and dams are unsustainable practices.Without agriculture, we go back to Neolithic times when the earth supported between 1 and 10 million. Only 1 in a thousand could be supported. I do not like my chances. As we have all lost our natural instincts and living off the land skills, it is quite likely the human race becomes extinct. The ultra greens would of course say you cannot eat animals and no fires-don’t you know this causes global warming, positive feedback-we will all fry! So we can then only forage for roots, fruits and berries. Even less could be supported.
Getting back to the chaos in the wake of not using fossil fuel- no food deliveries, no hospitals, no modern medicine, pumping water-find yourself a clean stream-along with thousands of others(wish you luck.) Total anarchy, billions dead(many eaten) within months. I hope those tofu and pine nut salad fed trendies taste good. Being such gullible fools, it would be easy to lure them in to a trap and ……Time to devise some recipes .I dare say the anger of people will find those green trendies being hunted down early and “tenderised” before consumption.
We do live in such a fine edged society. It would not take that big a shock to get the total anarchy scenario.
It will not be pretty.
Over thirty years ago I could see that living in a big citiy would make my family vulnerable to any disruption of food / energy so we moved to 15 acres in the country where we have fruit and nut trees (though the bloody parrots get more than their fair share); a great veggie garden; and keep a few animals as a walking larder – currently two steers, two goats, a few chooks and ducks that never stop breeding (Gawd, drakes are randy buggers). We also have a 35,000 gallon underground tank, a septic system, and solar power that is still connected to the grid so it wouldn’t help us if the power failed.
But we’d survive. The trouble is that Australia has draconian gun laws so we wouldn’t be able to protect what we have. But I’m still glad we made the move. We could still eat very well though we’d have to bone up on making some sort of grog for our quality of life.
Fred Jensen says:
February 7, 2013 at 6:36 pm
I’m pretty sure that Al and all his friends have several little hidey-holes stashed away where they will live happily ever after, secure in the knowledge that they have saved the world.
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That is betting on the loyalty of the guys with the guns surrounding you. Al Gore peed in his porridge with the sale of Current TV and the guys with the guns are not necessarily democrats/socialists/progressives.
BACK TO WOOD FIRED STEAM POWER! We are an adaptable species you know!