I’m not asking for a cite for that.
To answer my own question, I’ve found that natural gas, not oil, is the main product used in fertilizer manufacture. So oil would not be a critical re-tooling issue there.
Didn’t the USA operate a nuclear-powered merchant ship (the USS Savannah) in the 1960’s?
I seem to recall that it worked OK.
Thanks for the answers everyone…appreciated. Just to answer a couple of comments:
They talked about the strategic reserve, so that definitely didn’t disappear, but they made it seem like it would run out pretty quickly, even just using it for emergency vehicles.
They didn’t mention natural gas at all (that I recall), except a brief mention about using it in some vehicles, so presumably that wouldn’t simply disappear. It just wasn’t part of the show, which seemed to focus on bio-fuels as the only alternative to total collapse (hundreds of millions still die though, in their scenario, and just about every major US city has to be abandoned within the first few years).
Interestingly, they didn’t actually mention the fertilizer problem, instead focusing on the fact that without oil we wouldn’t be able to ship the food to the people, as well as the problems with shifting so much of our agricultural production to producing fuel instead of food. They actually didn’t even talk about the fact that most of the farm machinery runs on FF’s, but just showed a lot of food sitting around and animals dieing in droves, and hungry people with no electricity, etc etc.
It was…and it was interesting, mostly because of the glaring holes in their thinking. It said more about how their thought process works and the direction of what they think is the problem (and solution) than it really did about what would ACTUALLY happen if suddenly all the oil just disappeared. Even the premise was pretty much loaded, IMHO.
Sure…but that was a Soviet design, manned by a Soviet crew. I don’t think our Navy has had a similar accident in quite a long time, and I think that putting in small nuclear plants is certainly a viable option. Even taking into account more risk and expense, I think it would still be viable. Certainly more than trying to convert all of the current fleet to run on bio-diesel, or scrapping them for raw materials (which is what most countries seemed to have been doing in the show).
-XT
Huh? That’s the WORLD PETROLEUM ASSESSMENT **2000 **. It’s the most recent and most reliable data available. If you won;t believe the best evidence in the world because it’s 11 years old then that’s your prerogative, but I feel safe in saying that my contention is correct.
Any thought of energy conservation or is this thread only about blind consumption?
The thread isn’t really about either…though if you want to make a point about conservation in the context of the thread then feel free.
-XT
I’m guessing they didn’t mention solar film.
They did mention solar, actually, but curiously they didn’t really dwell on it (I think even they realized it wasn’t happening in their scenario). The main focus of the show was on bio-fuels and how they would eventually save us all…after a suitably grim number of horrible deaths, to be sure.
-XT
Did they explain how it became more practical to transport and process low-density energy sources like biofuel than to do the same with high-density coal? 
That makes no apparent sense. The scenario relies on an inability to transport energy sources such as coal due to our dependency on oil, but then apparently concludes that the best thing we can do to recover is to waste energy growing and transporting plant material to be made into hydrocarbon at even higher energy costs, rather than transporting actual hydrocarbon that can be used in its native state.
I’d say given the pretex of the show, ie oil vanishes, conservation is pretty much a given hence the minimal discussion on the subject. The world needs a certain amount of energy to operate, a significant proprotion of which is currently derived from oil, on a first order (S?)WAG I (and I suspect many others) don’t see the gap being entirley or significantly filled by conservation methods whereby we could simply eliminate or become efficient enough to not need the 70MMbbl of oil per day we currently consume.
Just as a poke at the program developers, failing to realistically account for the SPR etc, the natural gas reserves, plus the Gas to liquids (GTL as oppsed to CTL) possibilities, missing the fertiliiser issue (anyone want to geuss at the population currently supported by ammonia based fertilisers) I’d say they do not have a firm grasp on the worlds energy situation and/or decided on a solution then created an inept hypothetical to fit the preconceived solution. That said the ‘oil vanishes quickly what the hell can we do’ is an entertaining hypothetical anyway.
So onwards
Could Blake and Quartz clarify what they are debating, I am not sure what Quartz was asking for a cite for.
Blake in post 8 you said
" in simple terms, coal oil costs a bit less than 2 1/2 times as much as liquid crude"
I assume you mean coal oil (CTL) cost 2.5 times more than conventional crude, or am I failing to parse that sentance (wouldn’t be the first time I can’t decipher anything)
On the subject of coal, and at the risk of crossing Una, in post 17 Una hints at several limits on expansion of coal useage such as mining equipment availability, logistics limitations with respect to rail capacity I would simply like to quote the eminent philospher Lord BlackAdder II who said some time in the Elizebethen age "needs must when the devil farts in your face, dear Percy’.
I think many of the restrictions could be revaluated in light of changing economic circumstances. There may not be enough capacity hence long lead times to increase heavy plant production based on current economic circumstances, that goes out the window. Same for rail limitations - either run less continuous units across the dodgy sections or screw the longer term goal of bridge maintenace reduction and go with a ‘get energy now and fix it later’ approach.
On subject of coal transport by road, during the 1980 miners strike in the UK there were predictions of mass power outages as the railway workers union would not carry coal to the power plants. The govt implemented a huge truck logistics program which kept the lights on (or the brown outs to a minimum). Clearly this would eat into the petroleum reserves significantly and I doubt would be practical in a place as large and distributed as the US.
In light of that - would you expect a mass migration to population centers where food distribution and access to power is likely to be better than out in a widely dispersed community and extended suburbs where fuel would be pretty much essential just for basic
needs.
I still think Coal to liquids would be the way along with gas to liquids simply because the liquid form is significantly more portable and energy dense than coal and requires less change to existing infrastructure and equipment.
If we could build up the processing GTL and CTL capability required to keep things ticking over before the oil reserves ran out is questionable.
Not that I noticed, no. The main crux with bio-fuels that they repeated was about how our use of land for growing it would cut into the land needed for growing food…and based on the show, presumably we decided to grow bio-fuel instead of food, since that’s what they focused on, mainly.
Yes…it’s one of the many weird aspects and inconsistencies in the show. They brought up Brazil several times, saying that they would be the new worlds superpower (well, them and, IIRC, Bolivia, due to it’s large deposits of lithium). Eventually the US would move, according to the show, to algae based bio-fuels, and with our simpler (and cleaner) lifestyle (the cities become gardens, etc etc) we’d rebuild something like civilization…eventually.
-XT
Why did Brazil end up as superpower, due to biofuel production?
One minor fly in that ointment is Brazillian agriculture such a sugar cane production is very heavily dependent on potash imports, (Potasium chloride) which is the worlds other big fertiliser product, Brazil is a huge importer of potash and at the moment does not produce a huge ammount themsleves. There are some possibly significant potash plays, however they are in areas where shaft mining is not realistic (below transition zone and marine sediments) and would require solution mining techniques which in turn requires wacking great oodles of energy to deal with the evaporation back to granular potash, not to mention the buckets of fresh water required for solution mining, something not readily available in marine and transistion environments.
No idea why I am obsessed with fertiliser right now, I blame it on our on going regular financial audit.
There’s also Thermal Depolymerization, which can create light crude from biomass. Sadly, the company itself seems to have gone under, but as far as I know, the technology is sound. And I imagine it would immediately be much more profitable if Gaia magiced all the oil away.
I think it might only be slightly trollish to note that the usual environmentalist concerns about human overpopulation and the crisis’ fuel shortages preventing food shipments from going through would dovetail nicely with getting feedstock for this process. 
XT - if my posts sound like I am attacking you for presenting the poorly thought out premise of the program, I am not and admit I havn’t seen the program and so am pulling objections out of my arse.
Nope, didn’t take it that way at all. Appreciate the comments. I tend to pick apart shows like this as I’m watching them, and then wonder if what I’m thinking is really valid, or if the show knows something I don’t. This is a perfect place to ask, since there are a lot of folks here who are knowledgeable on any number of subjects AND, like me, love to pick stuff apart. 
-XT
And btw and FWIW, I think your point about the fertilizer is spot on…it’s another thing they completely missed.
-XT
My main thinking there was that it would probably be quicker to put in the wires than to design and build a new generation of coal-powered locomotives. As another option, what about building coal liquification facilities right at the mines? That way, you don’t have to ship the coal to the liquification plants, and the diesel engines can refuel there before hauling their loads of coal to the power plants.
And I wouldn’t worry too much about fertilizer. First of all, that’s a problem that shows up on a timescale of at least a year, which is long enough that we can worry about the immediate problems first, and still have some time to figure it out. Second, with liquid fuel being at a premium, I imagine a lot of farmers would revert to older farming practices, which tend to produce fertilizer as a by-product.
Rail restrictions we have right now are not just economic, they’re safety-related and traffic-jam related. There are minimum gaps between trains on critical sections of the lines, maximum numbers of ton-cars of train which can cross certain bridges, only certain bridges which can take coal trains across the Mississippi, etc. These can all be fixed, but it would take time and lots and lots of money. You break the bridge, not only do you lose a train and kill people, but you break the bridge.
The UK is not the US with respect to coal power in so many ways I can’t even list them. Just take one part of it - consider how many trucks it takes to replace a train - a 130-car unit train made up of 110 ton cars has 14,300 tons of coal. A truck hauls from 25 to 35 tons of coal safely - say 35. So it takes 409 trucks to replace a single train, and I know of single coal plants which can burn a train load in just over a day. Now consider that these trucks may have to drive a 2,000±mile round trip if, say, they’re taking PRB coal to Texas, or even worse, PRB coal to Georgia. Now consider the logistics of unloading 409 trucks in a day at a power plant. Now consider the staging of the trucks, as it’s going to take days to get from the PRB to most of the US - there might need to be 1,600 trucks on the road, coming or going, for a typical plant - maybe 2,400 for a large one.
Now consider how many coal plants there are in the US…sure, some are close to the mines, and some already take coal by truck solely. But the vast majority of generation is fueled by rail, barge, ship, or a combination of the three.
Really, I can’t go into this any more, my head hurts the more I think about it. Coal locomotives are a much better idea for long-haul oil-less transport, trust me. Shoot, we could convert the interior barge network to coal as well, and ocean ships too.
Older methods which produce not as effective fertiliser which would not support current world food demands by about 1/3. Also with the huge expanse in double cropping with winter/frost resistant crops (China doubled its grain havest between 77 and 88) , efficency gains to allow double/triple crouping in warmer zones and improved logistics to allow a balance between southern /northern hemisphere growing sesons has led to food production being much more constant through out the year , almost just in time delivery if you will. Hence interuptions to a fertiliser production will probably result in a more rapid food stock depletion than we would if food was havested once a year and stockpiled.