A Personal “Peak Oil” Discovery Process

John Rawlins has a B.S. in physics and a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. He retired in 1995 from the Westinghouse Hanford Co. at the Hanford site in Eastern Washington. Currently, he teaches physics and astronomy at Whatcom Community College.

Part 1

Editor’s Note: This is the introduction to a series about the impending peak oil crisis and how we in Whatcom County can prepare for the drastic changes to our lifestyles.

I recall reading a Scientific American article (“The End of Cheap Oil,” March 1998) about the global oil supply. In the article, Colin Campbell and Jean Leherrere predicted that the world oil extraction rate would increase until around 2005-2010, then peak and quickly enter decline, with decline rates of a few percent per year. That seemed interesting but not all that worrying to a 58-year-old semi-retired nuclear physicist teaching astronomy and physics at Whatcom Community College. I posted their graphs on my office door and occasionally discussed the topic with students. But I didn’t really get it.

Just having less gasoline for transportation is the least of our worries. So I basically did nothing to begin getting ready for the inevitable event until more recently. Now, in mid-2006, world oil extraction seems to be peaking, gasoline prices remain stubbornly high, the next hurricane season is underway, geopolitical nightmares are developing in many oil-producing regions, and my wife and I feel unprepared for the gradual societal/economic collapse.

During my previous 19-year career with Westinghouse Hanford Company in Eastern Washington, I spent a few very frustrating years in the early 1990s working on U.S. energy policy issues. In the end I was convinced that our democratic form of government is totally unable to formulate a wise, technically coherent, long-lasting national energy policy.

Fifteen years later, my worst fears are being realized, and my faith in any government “solution” is at absolute zero for this country. We consume far too much (5-10 times too much) energy, and two-thirds of what we consume depends on fossil fuels that are no longer reliable: oil and natural gas. Of these, oil is the most fundamental — almost everything that moves uses an oil derivative for fuel. However, focusing entirely on oil would be a mistake; no matter where we live, we need to understand the world and national overall energy mix before contemplating how Whatcom County residents might cope with near-term oil and natural gas shortages.

In the fall of 2003 our investment advisor noted that our portfolio was heavy in big oil stocks and she suggested we review our situation and think about changing our investment profile. I visited a local bookstore and browsed for recent books on oil and just happened to buy Richard Heinberg’s book “The Party’s Over” (New Society Publishers, 2005).What a surprise reading that was during the December 2003 holiday break! His thesis: the world oil extraction rate (expressed in millions of barrels per day, or mbpd) would soon peak, and everything in our life would change because everything depends to some extent on oil; the economy would disintegrate, and chaos would likely envelop the world of all who depend on oil. Furthermore, he claimed that alternatives to oil would prove insufficient by a large margin. In a state of semi-shock I began reading everything I could find on the subject.

First I looked for predictions about oil supply from retired, independent oil geologists and read a book by Ken Deffeyes, who worked with M.K. Hubbert. Dr. Hubbert developed a method for predicting future oil extraction rate time profiles, given a few decades of extraction and discovery experience in an oil-producing region or country. I then read similar treatments by other retired oil geologists and found that to first order they were in agreement with the original predictions I’d seen from Campbell and Leherrere in 1998 concerning world oil peaking.

My next major discovery was the food connection, which I suspected could be a problem. The academic dean at Whatcom Community College, Richard Fulton, sent me an article by Richard Manning called “The Oil We Eat” (Harper’s Magazine, February 2004: http://faculty.whatcom.ctc.edu/jrawlins/phys109/weatoil.htm.)

Manning argued that our food production since the green revolution has become at least 90 percent correlated with and dependent on oil and natural gas. A more detailed analysis by Dale Allen Pfeiffer confirmed this conclusion (“Eating Fossil Fuels,” http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html.) So now I had to find out about the natural gas situation, another unhappy story. Soon I found a book by Julian Darley called “High Noon for Natural Gas” (Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004), which warned that gas extraction in North America was about to peak (it did), and that prices would rise and decline could be rapid (they did, and it is).

He further warned that world extraction rates would peak soon after world oil peaked. In the U.S. we use natural gas for space heating, cooking, industrial applications (including fertilizer production!) and electricity production. Prior to the winter of 2005-06, there were warnings that a cold winter for the North American continent would likely mean shortages of natural gas. If you want to see a volatile energy price chart, just go to the following Web site and notice how the market responded to worries about natural gas shortages last winter: http://www.oilnergy.com/1gnymex.htm#year.

I currently instruct an introductory physics/energy course at Whatcom Community College (WCC), and the course focuses on the peak oil problem and potential adaptations. During this teaching process, I became convinced that Heinberg and others are absolutely correct in asserting that no combination of alternatives to oil could come anywhere close to replacing oil at present use levels. That includes coal to liquids, natural gas, oil shale, methane hydrates, hydrogen, ethanol, bio-diesel and nuclear/wind/solar-based electric (including compressed air) cars comparable in size with today’s subcompacts. The required adaptation time (two to three decades) is quite simply not available.

We live 10 miles northeast of Bellingham near Everson. Our 10-acre plot is about half forested and half open field with grass that a local farmer cuts for his cows. Our home is all-electric, including the furnace. I began intensively cutting dead and down trees for heating and found that our home heats well enough with an air-tight wood stove to get by during most winter weather, with wood I collect on our own property—one problem solved (using a gasoline powered chain saw, however).

The Pacific Northwest is lucky to have most of its electric power produced by hydropower, so peak oil and gas would impact our electric supply relatively little compared with the rest of the U.S. We also generate very little electricity with coal burning, and if the world decides to reduce coal combustion to limit greenhouse gas emissions we again would be relatively immune. Because we have a relatively decent outlook for our electric supply, I decided to experiment with electric propulsion for transport.

It made little sense to use a heavy electric car to move my weight back and forth to work, so I bought an electric motor kit for my recumbent bicycle from a guy in Toronto who purchased the parts from China. I also shopped around online and purchased an electric scooter (top speed 30 mph) from a guy in Florida who owns a business that imports from China and distributes from Chicago. Thanks to China, a couple of North American entrepreneurs and cheap oil (shipping from China!) I now have two electric transport options that are really cheap, albeit unprotected from wet weather.

As soon as we understood the food/oil linkage, we began planting fruit and nut trees and berry bushes in our open field areas. Soon after that I discovered the concept of “permaculture” — which originated in Australia — and “edible forest gardens” (one of the permaculture ideas). We are still in the process of planting food-producing trees, bushes and groundcover as rapidly as two aging people can, while still trying to enjoy our hobbies and dealing with an intensively-managed vegetable garden. Here’s a good online reference for an introduction to permaculture: http://www.permaculture.net.

One of the more bizarre aspects of this entire discovery process is the reactions we experience from others when we try to share our knowledge. Most people seem to dismiss the warnings and ignore them completely! Some appear to take us seriously, but make no changes in their lifestyle. A tiny minority starts reading and making serious changes. These reactions prompted us to change our retirement plans — we will stay right where we are rather than move into the city of Bellingham where obtaining enough food, staying warm in the winter and security could be real problems a few years from now. Cities that do not plan and immediately begin preparations for this future could soon become unpleasant places to live.

Dean Fulton persuaded me to make one more attempt to inform our college and community before retiring completely. WCC has adopted as its “Issue of the Year” for 2006-07 the combined topics of peak oil, climate change and permaculture (some folks think of the latter as sustainability, but it’s more closely related to the decades-long process of approaching sustainability). I outlined some pretty aggressive possible outcomes, including lifestyle changes among college students, faculty and staff — and also involving the greater Whatcom County community.

Future articles will discuss what we might take on for college activities in the 2006-07 school year, what other cities are doing in the world of energy descent planning, what permaculture is about, and where to find information for the numerous lifestyle changes most of us will have to engage in during the next couple of decades. Meanwhile, if you want to read books and/or online articles related to peak oil/natural gas, climate change and permaculture, my public college Web site lists many references: http://faculty.whatcom.ctc.edu/jrawlins/phys109/artlist.htm (scroll down to the resouce list). §

Next Month: Fossil Fuels at Peak — Predictions and Current Status