Is our civilization doomed?

[Q]

Just lately I've been studying and getting depressed by this:

[link=http://www.dieoff.com/page224.htm]The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge[/link]

This idea is new to me, so pardon me if it's old news.

It's brilliantly worked out, the work that's gone into it is most impressive.  It's also shocking and unsettling, perhaps more so than anything I've heard for a very long time.

Anyway I offer it to you as shared information, do think and reflect on it (if you can bear to :-/).  I'd be most interested to hear discussion, and if anyone can shoot holes in this theory, I for one wouldn't be ungrateful.

The Olduvai theory, to review, states that the life expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than or equal to one hundred years, as measured by the world average energy production person per year: ê = E/(Pop). Industrial Civilization, defined herein, began in 1930 and is predicted to end on or before the year 2030. Our main goals for this section are threefold: (1) to discuss the Olduvai theory from 1930 to 2030, (2) to identify the important energy events during this time, and (3) to stress that Industrial Civilization = Electrical Civilization = the 'modern way of life.' Figure 4 depicts the Olduvai theory.



Figure 4. The Olduvai Theory: 1930-2030
Notes:
(1) 1930 => Industrial Civilization began when (ê) reached 30% of its peak value.
(2) 1979 => ê reached its peak value of 11.15 boe/c.
(3) 1999 => The end of cheap oil.
(4) 2000 => Start of the "Jerusalem Jihad".
(5) 2006 => Predicted peak of world oil production (Figure 1, this paper).
(6) 2008 => The OPEC crossover event (Figure 1).
(7) 2012 => Permanent blackouts occur worldwide.
(8 ) 2030 => Industrial Civilization ends when ê falls to its 1930 value.
(9) Observe that there are three intervals of decline in the Olduvai schema: slope, slide and cliff - each steeper than the previous.
(10) The small cartoons stress that electricity is the essential end-use energy for Industrial Civilization.

Figure 4 shows the complete Olduvai curve from 1930 to 2030. Historic data appears from 1930 to 1999 and hypothetical values from 2000 to 2030. These 100 years are labeled "Industrial Civilization." The curve and the events together constitute the "Olduvai schema." Observe that the overall curve has a pulse-like waveform - namely overshoot and collapse. Eight key energy events define the Olduvai schema.

Eight Events:

The 1st event in 1930 (see Note 1, Figure 4) marks the beginning of Industrial Civilization when ê reached 3.32 boe/c. This is the "leading 30% point", a standard way to define the duration of a pulse.

The 2nd event in 1979 (Note 2) marks the all-time peak of world energy production per capita when ê reached 11.15 boe/c.

The 3rd event in 1999 (Note 3) marks the end of cheap oil.

The 4th event on September 28, 2000 (Note 4) marks the eruption of violence in the Middle East - i.e. the "Jerusalem Jihad". Moreover, the "JJ" marks the end of the Olduvai "slope" wherein ê declined at 0.33%/year from 1979 to 1999.

Next in Figure 4 we come the future intervals in the Olduvai schema. The Olduvai "slide", the first of the future intervals, begins in 2000 with the escalating warfare in the Middle East.

The 5th event in 2006 (Note 5) marks the all-time peak of world oil production (Figure 1, this paper).

The 6th event in 2008 (Note 6) marks the OPEC crossover event when the 11 OPEC nations produce 51% of the world's oil and control nearly 100% of the world's oil exports. The year 2011 marks the end of the Olduvai slide, wherein ê declines at 0.67%/year from 2000 to 2011.

The "cliff" is the final interval in the Olduvai schema. It begins with the 7th event in 2012 (Note 7) when an epidemic of permanent blackouts spreads worldwide, i.e. first there are waves of brownouts and temporary blackouts, then finally the electric power networks themselves expire.

The 8th event in 2030 (Note marks the fall of world energy production (use) per capita to the 1930 level (Figure 4). This is the lagging 30% point when Industrial Civilization has become history. The average rate of decline of ê is 5.44%/year from 2012 to 2030.

"The hand writes, then moves on." Decreasing electric reliability is now.

The power shortages in California and elsewhere are the product of the nation's long economic boom, the increasing use of energy-guzzling computer devices, population growth and a slowdown in new power-plant construction amid the deregulation of the utility market. As the shortages threaten to spread eastward over the next few years, more Americans may face a tradeoff they would rather not make in the long-running conflict between energy and the environment: whether to build more power plants or to contend with the economic headaches and inconveniences of inadequate power supplies. (Carlton, 2000)

The electricity business has also run out of almost all-existing generating capacity, whether this capacity is a coal-fired plant, a nuclear plant or a dam. The electricity business has already responded to this shortage. Orders for a massive number of natural gas-fired plants have already been placed. But these new gas plants require an unbelievable amount of natural gas. This immediate need for so much incremental supply is simply not there. (Simmons, 2000)

As we have emphasized, Industrial Civilization is beholden to electricity. Namely: In 1999, electricity supplied 42% (and counting) of the world's end-use energy versus 39% for oil (the leading fossil fuel). Yet the small difference of 3% obscures the real magnitude of the problem because it omits the quality of the different forms of end-use energy. With apologies to George Orwell and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics - "All joules (J) of energy are equal. But some joules are more equal than others." Thus, if you just want to heat your coffee, then 1 J of oil energy works just as well as 1 J of electrical energy. However, if you want to power up your computer, then 1 J of electricity is worth 3 J of oil. Therefore, the ratio of the importance of electricity versus oil to Industrial Civilization is not 42:39, but more like 99:1. Similar ratios apply to electricity versus gas and electricity versus coal.

Au Courant King Kilowatt!

Question: Where will the Olduvai die-off occur?

Response: Everywhere. But large cities, of course, will be the most dangerous places to reside when the electric grids die. There you have millions of people densely packed in high-rise buildings, surrounded by acres-and-acres of blacktop and concrete: no electricity, no work, and no food. Thus the urban areas will rapidly depopulate when the electric grids die.

In fact we have already mapped out the danger zones. (e.g. See Living Earth, 1996.) Specifically: The big cities stand out brightly as yellow-orange dots on NASA's satellite mosaics (i.e. pictures) of the earth at night. These planetary lights blare out "Beware", "Warning", and "Danger". The likes of Los Angeles and New York, London and Paris, Bombay and Hong Kong are all unsustainable hot spots.

[spacecat27]

These types of doom forecasts are nothing new--

I must confess I was one of those 'radical' college kids in 1970 who believed every word of Paul Erlich's THE POPULATION BOMB and joined others who warned humanity would be dead in 25 - 30 years in demonstrations surrounding the first Earth Day.

Predictions of the world's oil running out have periodically surfaced ever since we have been dependent on the stuff- and always new reserves have been discovered; and today's artificial market controls such as OPEC tend to 'hide' many reserves to drive prices up.  Of course this cannot go on forever- we WILL run out eventually- but probably NOT as soon as 2025.

The optimistic view of course has us making a gradual shift to alternative energies while oil use gradually declines such that we cease to burn up our hydrocarbon resources and dedicate their use to plastics and special lubricants rather than fuel...........
But it is human nature to not do anything until it becomes a crises.  Undoubtedly, there will be economic and political catastrophes (e.g. wars) when oil gets to be a scarce commodity.

But the good thing about 'doom predictions' like this- just like the first Earth Day- is that they do initiate some changes for the better.  For example, we routinely recycle containers and paper now and that was just a pipedream in 1970- and that first Earth Day did lead to a host of anti-pollution laws and regulations that (in the US anyway) have improved the state of the environment over what it might have been otherwise.

[vishniac]

===================================
Iron Maiden - Die With Your Boots On
===================================

(Smith/Dickinson/Harris)

Another Prophet of Disaster
Who says the ship is lost,
Another Prophet of Disaster
Leaving you to count the cost.
Taunting us with Visions,
Afflicting us with fear,
Predicting War for millions,
In the hope that one appears.

No point asking when it is,
No point asking who's to go,
No point asking what's the game,
No point asking who's to blame.
'cos if you're gonna die, if you're gonna die,
'cos if you're gonna die, if you're gonna die,

If you're gonna die, die with your boots on.
If you're gonna try, just stick around,
Gonna cry, just move along,
If you're gonna die, you're gonna die.

In 13 the Beast is rising,
The Frenchman did surmise,
Through earthquakes and starvation,
The warlord will arise.
Terror, Death, Destruction,
Pour from the Eastern Sands,
But the truth of all predictions,
Is always in your hands.

If you're gonna die, die with your boots on,
If you're gonna try, just stick around,
Gonna cry, just move along,
If you're gonna die, you're gonna die.

[Q]

Whoa dude, rock'n'roll!
They sure don't write them like that any more!  

Thanks for your responses and for your words spacecat. Basically I agree with you that such things while being innately scary, can do good by getting us to think about how we live and what we do, and perhaps can initiate the vital process of change so that 'prophecies of doom' never come to pass.

One of the things that does continue to worry me however is what all this means for the human future in space. (If the Olduvai Theory is even partially correct, then it looks to me very much like we're never going to have one, and that this in the very long term will doom humanity to extinction, just like 99% of all other life forms that have lived and died on the Earth.)

I have just finished reading [link=http://www.nnbtv.dircon.co.uk/Books/2002/Time.html]Time Travel in Einstein's Universe[/link] by J. Richard Gott, a truly excellent book which I recommend.  The final chapter is basically all about how he has applied the 'Copernican principle' to make predictions about the future, including how long the human race might last.  He also reflects on the space program, and how ultimately colonising other worlds will be the only thing which can assure us of a long-term future.

S&S: If you had one hour to travel in time, in either direction, what would you do and where would you go?

JRG: I’d go forward about 200,000 years to see if we’d survived that long and, if so, what people were up to. Of course, I might have some trouble communicating with humans in the future, because I wouldn’t expect to find anyone speaking English.



S&S: Why 200,000 years?

JRG: Because that’s how long homo sapiens have been around. I’ve done some thinking about time not just in terms of travel or physics, but in relation to how long things last—things like the Berlin Wall or Broadway plays or the human species. In 1993, I published a paper in Nature that applied one of the most famous postulates in science, the Copernican principle, to time.

The Copernican principle is simply the idea that your location in the universe is not special. Most likely your last name falls somewhere in the middle ninety-five percent of the phone book, not right at the beginning or the end, which would be special. And most likely you’re living sometime in the middle ninety-five percent of the length of the human species. Otherwise you’d be in a special position and that’s just less likely.

Using some simple math, I predicted with ninety-five percent confidence that the human race would last at least another 5,100 years, but less than 7.8 million years. Now, that’s a wide range, but an important one. The fate of our own species is supremely important to us. Some people predict we’ll die out in the next hundred years if we aren’t careful; others think we’ll just last indefinitely. Neither is likely. In any case, we’d better not be complacent. The Earth is littered with the bones of extinct species.



S&S: The question would be, is our intelligence special and can it help us last longer? If we’re mammals like all the other mammals, then we don’t have any special chance. But maybe our intelligence is novel and puts us in a different category.

JRG: My estimates of the future longevity of the human species are based entirely on our past longevity as an intelligent species—the only one we know—and make no assumptions that our fate will be similar to that for other species. However, my estimates give us a total longevity (past plus future) quite comparable to that observed for other mammal species, whose average longevity is 2 million years.

Why the coincidence? Well, if we remain confined to Earth, we are subject to the things that routinely cause other mammal species to go extinct. That’s why I am so concerned about the space program. So far, the space program is very brief, and the Copernican principle predicts it will probably go out of business sooner rather than later. And clearly we would increase our chances of surviving if we colonize space.



S&S: In other words, now that we understand that in terms of longevity we’re not special, we had better do something special, and soon.

JRG: Yes. In the short period we’ve been around, we’ve done some remarkable things. We’ve figured out a great deal about the laws of physics and the universe. But the ability to ask questions doesn’t seem to give us any more time. Don’t waste your time, humanity; you have just a little. That is the report from the future.

(taken from http://www.science-spirit.org/articles/printerfriendly.cfm?article_id=270)

Even if you choose not to believe Duncan's theory (I, btw, do not regard it as 'gospel'.  It is entirely possible that new developments in technology and new discoveries of oil will render the theory invalid,) surely the theory serves as a warning, especially to those of us who believe that space exploration is not just for *fun*, that it should rightly be seen as vital to the long term future of our species.

[yale]

The theory has it exactly backwards.

The LESS energy a modern technological society uses per capita or per unit of GDP is a sign of its advancement and health.

That article thinks that we live in the Victorian Industrial Revolution of the 1800's.


yale

[Q]

An interesting response

Are you saying the data the theory is based on are wrong, or that the theory interprets the data wrongly?

In any case I would certainly like to know your views on the subject of the forecast peak of world oil production, (whenever it will be ) and its implications for our civilisation.