Jim Kunstler knows energy. He knows bullshit when he hears it. He declares bullshit on Obama, Kudlow, the NYT and anyone who thinks we can use green energy to escape the ravages of peak oil. Everyone of the delusional SUV drivers in the country should be forced to read this article.
Blowing Green Smoke
By James Howard Kunstler
on April 4, 2011 9:43 AM
“We also have Secretary Steven Chu, my Energy Secretary. Where is Steven? There he is over there.”
– President Obama at Georgetown U last week
Blame Steven Chu, then, because when it comes to America’s energy predicament, the president has been woefully misinformed. Mr. Obama pawned off a roster of notions and proposals already product-tested in the public meme-o-sphere. Almost everyone of these ideas is inconsistent with reality, based on faulty premises, or represents some kind of magical thinking. What they have in common is that they’re ideas the public wants to hear, whether they are truthful or not, because we don’t want to change the way we live.
The central idea in Mr. Obama’s speech is that we will reduce our oil imports by one-third in a decade. This is a gross distortion of reality. The truth is that our oil imports will be reduced automatically, whether we like it or not. The process is already underway. The nations that export oil to us are using much more of their own oil even while their supplies have passed peak production and entered depletion. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Mexico have some of the highest population growth-rates in the world. They sell gasoline to their own people for less than a dollar a gallon. At the same time China and India are driving more cars and importing a lot more of the world’s declining supply. (China has perhaps the equivalent of a four-year supply of its own oil in the ground, and India has next-to-zero oil of its own).
One meme circulating around the Web these days is that the USA has the equivalent of “three Saudi Arabias” in the shale oil fields of North Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. That is not true. A lot of this magical thinking focuses on the Bakken fields of Dakota. We’re currently producing less than 400,000 barrels a day out of Bakken and the projected maximum ten years from now is around 800,000. We use 20 million barrels a day in the US running suburbia, Wal Mart, and the US military. By the way, Bakken shale oil requires extensive rock fracturing operations – “fracking” – which means a lot of horizontal drilling, which means a lot of steel pipe. It is not just a matter of sticking a steel straw in the ground like we did in Texas in 1932.
Note: much of the shale “oil” in other western states is not actually oil. It is kerogen, an organic precursor to oil, in effect organic polymers that have not been subjected to enough heat and pressure to turn into oil. If you want to turn it into oil, you have to cook it – which takes energy! That’s after the mining operation to scoop it out of the ground. That takes energy too. Or, you can send machinery into the ground and cook it in place. That takes energy, too. We are not going to get oil out of there anytime soon – and perhaps never.
The “drill drill drill” gang is under the impression that North America has vast unexplored regions where oil is just begging to be discovered. This is not true. The New York Times reported after Obama’s speech – in a disgracefully dumb story by Clifford Krauss – that the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Coast contain 3.8 billion barrels of oil. Really? Hello! The US uses over 7 billion barrels of oil every year. Does the Arctic National Wildlife refuge contain between 4 and 11 billion barrels (US gov estimate)? Great, that averages out to about a year or so of US supply. And I’m not even against drilling there, only against the idea that it represents a meaningful “solution” to our problem.
Meanwhile, the old standby Alaskan oil fields at Prudhoe Bay are depleting so remorselessly that there may not be enough flow in a year or so to move the oil through the famous pipeline.
How about Canada’s tar sands? Well, first of all, they belong to Canada, not us, unless we want to change that – and that could be politically messy. The tar sands will never produce more than 3 million barrels a day. The operations are already too huge, costly, and damaging to the northern watershed. Canada is our number one source of imported oil, but China would also like to buy Canadian oil. Are we planning to invoke the Monroe Doctrine to prevent Canada from selling its oil to parties outside the Western Hemisphere? That could be messy, too.
Mr. Obama returned to the popular theme of bio-fuels. Our initial venture into this area was the ethanol fiasco which, predictably, took more energy to make than it produced, and had disastrous effects (still does) on corn commodity prices – in effect stealing from the food supply in order to drive to the Wal Mart. The next venture will apparently be in algae. We’ll discover (once again) that what works as a science project doesn’t scale to run millions of cars.
Mr. Obama told the nation that we have a 100 year supply of natural gas. (The moronic Larry Kudlow of CNBC told his audience it was 300 years). Neither of them knows what he is talking about (and evidently Energy Secretary Chu doesn’t either). So far, proven reserves of shale gas amount to about a 4 to 6 year US supply at current rates, and total natural gas reserves – including conventional gas, the kind that doesn’t require fracking – amounts to about a 12 year supply. The idea that we are going to ramp up an entire natural gas fueling system for America’s tractor-trailer trucks is an absurdity.
Ditto the notion that we are going to electrify the US auto fleet.
Here’s something to chew on: we run about 250 million cars in the USA. Let’s say we ramped up an electric vehicle fleet of 10 million cars – which, by the way, is a purely hypothetical and wildly optimistic number. Do you think it might be a political problem if 10 million lucky Americans get to drive electric cars while everybody else either pays through the nose for gasoline, or can’t even afford to own a car anymore?
There are a few things you can state categorically about the US energy predicament and the national conversation we’re having about it – including the leaders of that conversation in government, business, and the media. One is that we are blowing a lot of green smoke up our collective ass. None of these schemes is going to work as advertised. The disappointment over them will be massive and probably lead to awful political consequences.
Another is that we are ignoring the most obvious intelligent responses to this predicament, namely, shifting our focus to walkable communities and public transit, especially rebuilding the American passenger railroad system – without which, I assure you, we will be most regrettably screwed ten years from now. Mr. Obama had one throwaway line in his speech about public transit and nothing whatever about walkable neighborhoods.
The reason for this obvious idiocy is that it’s all about the cars. That’s all we care about in the USA, the cars. We can’t get over the cars. We can’t talk about anything except how we’ll find magical new ways to run all the cars. This is a very tragic sort of stupidity and if we don’t change our thinking about it, from the highest level on down, history is going to treat us very cruelly.
A special shout-out here to The New York Times, whose abysmal reporting on these issues, once again, is due to their reliance on a single source: the IHS-CERA group, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the paid public relations auxiliary of the oil industry, led by that mendacious sack of shit Daniel Yergin, whore-in-chief.
Iowan says:
I read this and realize we are incredibly screwed for the following reasons:
1) The TBTF financing system can’t/won’t make money available in loans to do the work that Kunstler suggests we do. It would require significant building and capital investment. The returns are too long, way beyond the next quarterly report, and significantly beyond even the 2 to 5 year picture. Who in the TBTF financial world would invest in his railroad and walkable/livable cities scheme?
1A) In a free market, the Austrian sez, the market would provide this service. Perhaps, but under the car delusion that Americans have, I don’t see the driving force for such a change. At least so long as everyone keeps drinking the cool-aid that they have been for the last 5-10 years.
2) Thus the erudite central planners in the White House and CONgress and the bastions of whatever-the-fuck alphabet soup agencies that actually make real decisions would have to step in and get serious about making changes.
2A) There won’t be any Hope or Change come from on high. No no no. The Tea Partiers (et cetera) will fight tooth and nail for any government decree to make realistic changes. Probably rightly so, because the central planners have consistently made bad decisions for years anyways. And they would rightly be right in questioning and saying, “The market doesn’t see the need for these new forms of transportation and new ways of planning. Wouldn’t it be making the necessary changes if there was a demand? Americans like their SUVS and their suburbs. They have spoken, thus so it should be.”
3) The only recourse we have is to try and wean ourselves out of the busted ass system as much as possible.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
4th April 2011 at 2:37 pm
StuckInNJ says:
Obama promised the fed gov will be purchasing only alternative fuel cars for it’s entire fleet by 2015.
You should already know the total failure/joke that the Checy Volt is.
I was thinking the Japs would probably kick our asses with the Leaf. Au’ contraire’ !! It’s as big a piece of Fanatsyland Shit as the Volt.
Hey Obama … Fuck Green. Go Brown … cars CAN run on shit.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/7929191/Bio-Bug-Car-run-on-human-waste-is-launched.html
========================================================
Future? No, a fig Leaf
Obama’s energy policy can’t rely on useless electric cars
The new all-electric Leaf, which (in theory) is powered by plugging it into an ordinary outlet, is going to make Ryan Leaf look like a success story.
Nissan’s Leaf isn’t as flawed and ridiculous as the Edsel. It’s far worse.
The 1958 Edsel, ugly and mediocre as it was, with its vertical slash like a gaping wound symbolizing all the red ink that gushed onto Ford’s balance sheet, became a laughingstock not because it was so far out of the ordinary, but because the public had been whipped into expecting the extraordinary.
But at least only Ford lost money on the Edsel. We’re all losing money on the Nissan Leaf, thanks to the taxpayer subsidies that willed it into the marketplace. Each time you see one of these glorified golf carts flit by, you should be thinking: There goes $7,500 of my money.
The Leaf’s range is a joke — early reviewers have been startled to notice the gauge of a fully charged car warning that it expects to go only about 65 miles, a bit shy of Nissan’s claims last year of a 138-mile range.
One owner complained that the real range is only 50 miles.
Moreover, the gauge isn’t reliable. Here I take pleasure at introducing a delightful new usage: “to turtle.”
Drivers have been saying on online forums that when the gauge tells them they’ve still got five or 10 or 15 miles of juice left, the vehicle instead goes dead.
But first comes a really cute warning sign of an orange turtle icon to symbolize the battery’s tragically slow-moving death crawl. You thought you were in a car, but suddenly you’re driving a turtle. A few minutes after that, you’re not driving at all. You’re sitting in a paperweight.
Leaf lovers have been boasting that the car goes zero to 60 quite nicely. Unfortunately it goes 60 to zero with even more breathtaking alacrity.
Feel pretty secure about taking this baby out on the highway? Like I said: golf cart.
But don’t worry: Nissan has promised to cover your towing fees if the car turtles out on you. They won’t be compensating you for the pain and suffering of enduring the wrecker crew snickering at you and your precious little wind-up automobile. (One Leaf driver who turtled was asked by a mechanic why he couldn’t just get a jump start.)
At 300 W. 57th St., Popular Mechanics has installed what seems to be the first Leaf-charging station in the city. The cost? Over $2,000. But PM’s home is a major commercial building. Your house probably isn’t, so it won’t be able to handle that kind of an outlet without a costly upgrade of the electrical system. You’ll also need a special permit and inspection.
Hey, wait — the Leaf is supposed to run on ordinary household current, right? That means it’s useless for most apartment dwellers (go ahead, ask your landlord if you can run an extension cord to the building’s power supply) but fine for suburbanites. Only those suburbanites who have a lot of time on their hands, though: a PM test driver said it took 34 hours to recharge his Leaf using ordinary 120-volt household power. “For most people,” the gearhead magazine sheepishly noted, “the time constraint might preclude using the Leaf for everyday commuting.”
Ya think? A vehicle that takes a day and a half to charge can’t be used every day? Wasn’t the whole purpose of the Leaf supposed to be short everyday commuting? What good is it if you can only use it Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays? The Leaf’s failures recall an old joke people used to tell about the Jaguar in the ’70s: If you want a Jag, you need three of them — one in the shop, one for parts, one to drive.
The Leaf, the clean, green vehicle, which even with the subsidy costs over $25,000, isn’t powered by that nasty carbon-packed fossil fuel gasoline. Nope — it’s most likely powered by coal, which is what supplies about half of the power stations where households get electricity.
President Obama is not in the habit of admitting to being wrong about anything, and in his Wednesday energy speech he solemnly reaffirmed his utter devotion to wishful thinking and naivety, promising the federal government would buy only alternative-fuel automobiles by 2015.
The US has about as much chance of becoming “energy-independent” this century as the earth has of becoming independent of the sun. And the Honda Civic-sized smugmobile the Nissan Leaf — powered by coal, corporate welfare and a regressive taxation scheme that takes from everyone but benefits only those who can afford to drop over $25,000 on a toy slash personality statement — is to 21st century economics what the Edsel was to 1950s aesthetics.
ttp://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/future_no_fig_leaf_PYfsazY1abuHBZlqOGNtYL#ixzz1Iah5B7zB
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
5 
0
4th April 2011 at 4:13 pm
Mike Endres says:
For those of TBPs’ illustrious readers who are searching for the straight skinny about power, et al, do yourself and Admin a favor.
Click the Amazon button to the right side of the page and search “Power Hungry” by Robert Brice (ISBN#:978-1-58648-789-8). Then buy it (used if possible) and read it.
Then you’ll know what you need to know in order to assume the position for atomic attack because there ain’t no way out the way we are going.
MA
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
4th April 2011 at 5:27 pm
The Watchdog says:
@Stuck
Thanks for posting the Leaf article. Looks like they “shipped the beta” on this and I’ll have to go for a Civic instead. I’m glad my office is only 8 miles from the house and I can (will) bike it if (when) it comes to that…
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
4th April 2011 at 6:45 pm
Buggy says:
All this talk of natural gas and hundreds of years of it left. I have yet to see anybody explain if that is the amount of natural gas left if we continue to use it at today’s rate, or if we are running an entire country’s transportation on it????
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
4th April 2011 at 6:51 pm
Dave says:
This time it’s different? As I sat in gas lines for a couple of hours every other day to get my 10 gallons of gas back in the 70′s, I heard about the oil shortage and how all the best places for oil had already been discovered and we would be out of oil by the 90′s.
Like or Dislike:
2 
1
4th April 2011 at 7:32 pm
Welshman says:
Kunstler is an elitist blowhard, but a good read. This article is right on, except I believe he is short changing the energy level, as our standard of living starts to decline, we will use less energy. Think gold as insurance and nat gas as a bridge fuel. Sadly enough, it is a bridge to nowhere, as the ” politicans blow green smoke up our collective asses”. Gotta love that. LOL
The Hope and Change for 2012 started today, and god it is making me edgy. Can you imagine four more years of Obama, or maybe a Newt Guntwrench. Ron Paul has the right game book, but sadly nobody wants to be in his game, as it is painful for the FSA.. So we rot from the inside out.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
7 
0
4th April 2011 at 7:48 pm
Opinionated Bloviator says:
Of course our oil consumption will reduce over time, the federal reserve’s mandate to “print our way out of our debts” is rendering the US dollar increasingly worthless.
Wait until the US dollar loses it’s “reserve currency” status and gasoline goes to ~ $10+ a gallon, how many people will be driving to work then?
For those who say – OB take off the tin foil hat, it’s rotting your brain. I ask you this -
Will Congress stop spending?, Will Wall Street stop looting?, Are further financial crisis inevitable? after all we bailed out all the bad actors last time and they are all now Too Bigger To Fail. What happens if the US suffers a bond crisis like the PIIGS? Will we default?
Questions,questions… All I know is, there is BIG money to be made for those who put the pieces together correctly.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
4th April 2011 at 8:38 pm
Yojimbo says:
Opinionator Bloviator
There may be big money to be made for those who put the pieces together correctly, but, unfortunately, there was bigger money made by those who took the pieces apart….and then cut the pieces up…
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
4th April 2011 at 10:06 pm
Apollo says:
Much of Europe have shifted their transportation infrastructure to mass transit and small cars. They are working things out with Russia, who has very long term supply of oil & gas. So they are in the right direction.
Brazil, SA biggest country, has shifted to a corn-based oil production that is sustainable for decades into the future. They have the land, the sunshine, the technology and the will. So they are OK.
China is of no delusion about its energy. It is doing whatever it takes, rationally, prudently, but with an iron fist.
Japan is in a awful shape and they know it. They are dependent on exports to earn oil money, and dependent on the US on supply security. The days of imperial conquest are over. There is no alternative. Well there are: open up their country and do free trade deals. Very painful to the Japanese.
USA is the only country in the world consuming oil like no tomorrow, refuses to change, and determined to damn the tomorrow and keep the car. It simply cannot fully supply its own energy in any form. Americans escape to non-stop entertainment until energy crisis becomes another game show where desperate people takes to the streets and riot. Americans feel there is really nothing to worry – because there is Canada up there with a hundred year supply of oil & gas. Just print more greenbacks to buy the stuff.
Well, Canada does have such a supply and the technology to produce it. The oil/gas fields are bigger and production is cheaper then Russia’s. Canada has enough carbon energy to supply its own needs for a few hundred years. But there is one piece of sensitive politics – Canadian provinces, not the federal government nor any private company, own all natural resources and decides on their uses. Mess up the Canadian relationship and America should not be surprised to see energy get shipped to China or Japan. China is already buying more and more of Canada resources and Japan just proposed a special trade relationship with Canada for fear of being left with nothing after China. Meanwhile US government is moving forward in splendid big power delusion.
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
4th April 2011 at 1:17 am