The Iron Yuppie

As a bit of a follow up to the last oil post...

Turning the Tide: Peak Oil Theory

This is always one of the "theories" that works extremely well as a thought exercise, but terribly in practice. Like "Communism". Or "Geometry". Seriously though... this again seems like something that is pretty straight forward:

1. Limited amount of oil in the world
2. At some point 1, the amount we can get at easily will begin to decrease
3. At some point 2, the amount we can get at with some work will begin to decrease
4. At some point 3, the amount we can get at when we recycle french fries and clean off of pimply-kid's foreheads will begin to decrease

• Out of oil

Far be it from me to have a different opinion than someone who has actually researched, well, everything, but I definitely do not feel like it’s a binary thing. At some point (we may have already reached this), we’ll move from 2 to 3 and new technology for getting oil and/or other ways of powering life will begin to emerge. At the time when a gallon of gas is cheaper than a gallon of bottled water (I believe it still is in most places), those other options were simply not cost effective. Soon, they will be, and we’ll begin to move over. I don’t think it’s the end of the world since it will be such a gradual change for the economy, it’ll just seem natural, like horses to cars or kerosene to electricity.

An interesting point Chomsky brings up, however, is the thought of what it will do to the environment with all those hydrocarbons expelled and floating around. Let’s have some fun with math and let’s see if I can remember my old chemistry:

• The world oil reserves are 1 trillion barrels, which is generally reported as half of what are actually discovered, so call it 2 trillion barrels.
• A barrel is 42 gallons, so you’ve got 3.18 × 10^14 liters of oil.
• 3.18 x 10^14 liters of oil * 873 kg / liter (assuming all the oil comes from TX) * 85% carbon gives you 2.35E+13 metric tons (tonnes?) of carbon.
• Assuming 100% of the carbon is converted into carbon dioxide that gives you 2.35 * 10^13 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which given the density of carbon dioxide (1.977 g/L), gives us 1.2 * 10^20 L or 1.2 * 10^17 m^3 of CO2.

Ok, that’s a big number. How big? If a very rough approximation of the US is 6000 KM wide and 2000 KM (and apparently looked a lot like a rectangular Jello mold), this would make a cube reaching ~100 KM into space. Ok, that’s not good. How about the world? The surface of the earth is about 10^15 m^2, so it’d cover the entire earth to a depth of about 11 m. Wow, that still sounds like a lot.

Now let’s compare. Assume that we have significant and constant atmosphere to about 200 KM (which is a bit of a stretch, to be sure). Take that same surface of the earth and multiply it times the height and the amount of CO^2 in the air (0.03%) and you get a depth of about 60 m of CO2 around the entire earth.

So the net is you’d increase the amount of CO2 in the air by about 15%, and increase the percentage of CO2 in the air to about 0.04%. How big a deal that is, I could not tell you. Please do not hesitate to jump on in and tell me where I’m wrong… it’s probably in all that conversion crap.

posted by Iron Yuppie  # 10/08/2004 10:07:00 AM