5 ms·

German Military Study Warns of Drastic Oil Crisis

33 points by all 16y ago

elbrodeur 16y ago
Non-renewable resources running out is scary and peak oil is fascinating, but with such wildly differing estimates on how long we have it's hard not to be skeptical. That being said, we should definitely be planning for the future, and it's great to hear that the UK and Germany are taking giant strides (Germany generates the largest amount of solar energy, for instance).
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Don't rule out their wind installations either, I'm living within sight of some of the largest windmills they're currently operating, the E82 series, 2MW each, there are thousands of them now in Germany. It's very impressive to stand near them, they're absolutely huge.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    I can do math, so I will rule out wind installations. Windmills are a way to reduce overall fuel consumption but they are not adequate for base power (they are too inefficient and too unpredictable).
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      The wind energy plants in Germany produce a whole lot more energy than the solar energy plants there. The Germans can also do math, and they take in to account the number of sun hours, the acreage used and the latitude they live at. This means that during a fairly large part of the year solar power in Germany is not running at a high efficiency. On the other hand, Germany has a lot of wind, so they use it to good effect. Fully 7% (!) of Germany's energy use comes from wind power, contrasted with only 1% for solar. Best not rule out wind installations when you have a lot of wind and little solar, especially when you can do math ;)
      - InclinedPlane 16y ago
        7% is better than a poke in the eye, but is it really worth it, wind power is no panacea? The point I was making is that if some evil wizard suddenly eliminated all of the hydrocarbon reserves from Earth no country in the world would choose wind (or solar) for providing base power generation. Both have the same problem that you can't just press a button and get more power when you need it, you are dependent on circumstances. They can help ease the load on the rest of your power generation infrastructure, but at best it's only a partial solution.
        jacquesm 16y ago
        > 7% is better than a poke in the eye, but is it really worth it, wind power is no panacea? At what percentage would you consider it to be worth it? 20%? 50%? 90%? You have to start somewhere. The Germans have done an absolutely amazing job at re-engineering wind power plants on a utility scale, they've taken the old and unreliable designs and have turned them in to true engineering marvels with maintenance records and uptimes that a datacenter would be proud of. And they've done that in about 20 years time, with now over 20,000 plants installed, they're installing them as fast as they can churn them out. It's absolutely amazing to see this very quiet and concentrated energy revolution taking place, where-ever I go in Germany, if I drive at night I come across at least one, but likely more than just one transport of a new windmill to some site. They're hard to miss, the trucks are 40 meters long... 3 in each convoy with the blades and a nacelle that you could make a fairly comfortable house in. > The point I was making is that if some evil wizard suddenly eliminated all of the hydrocarbon reserves from Earth no country in the world would choose wind (or solar) for providing base power generation. Let's assume that we'd at least have enough oil for some transition to another powersource because you won't be building nuclear plants or windmills using labor alone, you need power (and some of it in the form of diesel / gasoline to power trucks and tools). If it would happen really suddenly then we'd be in a boatload of trouble, and there would be an immediate all out war for the control of the next available resource, uranium. What would power that war is anybody's guess. So, nuclear power would be the power source of choice in the short term in that case, followed by an immediate and massive roll out of renewables because once oil and coal are gone they can compete favorably with nuclear on cost, especially when you factor in cleanup and decommissioning as well as waste processing. > Both have the same problem that you can't just press a button and get more power when you need it, you are dependent on circumstances. Statistics are your friend here, you can make longer term predictions about the available energy in both solar and wind. By spreading the generation capacity over large enough land masses and by playing nice with your neighbours you can mitigate some of this. But I'll bet at that price-point electricity driven AC is going to be replaced by AWCO(*) pretty soon and the same would go for electric heating in the winter. Conservation efforts would have to be stepped up and there would likely be serious social changes. No more driving to the mall, likely local shops would see a revival and it would get a lot harder to live in rural areas. > They can help ease the load on the rest of your power generation infrastructure, but at best it's only a partial solution. You could make it work if you had a large enough lake to dump your excess in to use as a reserve in times of scarcity. The sun outputs roughly 1KW per square meter of surface area at ground level, if you don't convert it to electricity using solar panels it goes towards heating up the atmosphere causing air currents. That's a very large amount of power, it is available almost every day and it would not take all that much of the earth's surface to give us all the energy we need at present day consumption levels. It's raining soup, we only have forks. But the forks are getting better at catching the soup every year.
- acqq 16y ago
  Estimate errors are not important -- the certainty that the peak comes however is! Try to think about it, you know how exponents of 2 work: 1 2 (...) 1024 2048 Now note that to move from point n to the point n + 1 you need to use as much as in all points from 1 to n - 1: when you're at point of 1024, to move to the point of 2048 (double) you'll need 1+2+4+8+...+512 + 1 of something. According to http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/colombia/oila.html http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/colombia/oila.html the doubling time of world oil consumption is 30 years (just as little as 2.3% usage growth per year makes that!) That means that during the next 30 years the world needs as much oil as the total oil used from the beginning of the oil use to the 1980(!) Think again about that simple fact! Now if you know that all oil in the Earth formed from the preserved remains of prehistoric zooplankton and algae, which had settled to a sea or lake bottom in large quantities under anoxic conditions, you can imagine that the supply is really limited.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Coal can be converted to oil. At present prices this is not economical. But when the oil price goes up above the point where it is economical suddenly the 'reserves' will have to include all the coal reserves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process That would (iirc, can't find a quick and reasonably reliable source) double the total available oil for the next 50 years or so, and then there are currently uneconomical sources such as tar sands. So, in short, yes, it will run out and fairly soon but not as soon as you might think based on just the oil reserves.
    - acqq 16y ago
      Note that even the doubling the estimated world reserves that you suggest gives the humanity only a few decades more. Where do you get 50 years when the current estimated doubling time of consumption is 30 years? Approximately 40% of the world electricity production uses coal as we speak. It's not that the coal is just waiting to be used instead of oil. Your kids (if you have them) will experience oil problems anyway! Not to mention the effects of all that CO2 in the atmosphere.
zeteo 16y ago
What is the competency of the military for assessing 1. world petroleum reserves and consumption 2. the economic consequences of an oil shortage?! I think it's far more likely that Spiegel is misrepresenting the context of the study. The German military, in particular, has a reputation for making contingency plans for everything. It seems to me far more credible that the purpose of the study is rather "in the unlikely event that 'peak oil' is reached soon AND this leads to 'total collapse of the markets', the German Army should respond with actions A, B and C". Discovering such a plan would then have no more significance than finding out, say, about a study of the defensive measures required if Germany is invaded by the Czech Republic.
- edge17 16y ago
  The cost of energy is important to a country because it is one of many throttling point for how aggressively a country can grow. If it becomes unaffordable, and as a result difficult to grow, it can lead to a lot of things (like unemployment and civil unrest). As far as questioning their competency, I don't even understand what you mean. They have engineers, information, and resources... i'm sure the competent enough to put things together and draw possible conclusions. The oil/commidity trade is very very tied to governments, military embargoes, etc. For a small idea of how politically charged oil is, one example is the pipeline between Iran and Israel - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Israel_pipeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Israel_pipeline Oil and the price of it is incredibly important to governments.
  - zeteo 16y ago
    The army does not extract and market oil. Just because they depend on it doesn't mean they can predict worldwide reserves, rates of consumption, and economic effects of fluctuations in the oil supply. Heck, the oil companies themselves are hard pressed to do a small subset of all of these tasks.
    - blantonl 16y ago
      this is analogous to saying that a food corporation has no ability to predict worldwide reserves, consumption, and the economic effects of the wheat that they consume. Or that an airline doesn't employ economists that closely monitor oil consumption and supply. Army's spend an incredible amount of time looking at the long term effects of the oil supply chain.
what 16y ago
Reminded me of this from a while back: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1382456 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1382456 Talks about peak oil in part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU
ojbyrne 16y ago
Not to commit either way, but today we have this: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-coming-oil-glut-2010-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-coming-oil-glut-2010-9
d2viant 16y ago
Peak oil seems like a complete non-issue to me. As a resource, it is in such high demand that when we run out someone will step in with a replacement. There's simply too many capitalists and entrepreneurs in this world to let that void go unfilled. The primary reason alternative fuels haven't caught on yet is because they're not cost effective. As oil becomes a rarer commodity and it's price goes up, a replacement for the fuel supply will gradually emerge as being cost effective.
- Devilboy 16y ago
  The problem is not running out of oil, the problem is that the price increases will increase the cost of living because so much depends on cheap oil.
SoftwareMaven 16y ago
Personally, I'd love to see the difference between this "draft" version that says things like "Germany may have to sacrifice Israel" or "We are going to have to screw Poland in favor of Russia", and the "final" version that has gone through the political correctness police. I think that would be a fascinating insight into the political process of a nation.
afterburner 16y ago
Hmm, the German military are perhaps even more sensitive to the possibility of an oil shortage thanks to its experience being starved for oil in WWII. But really, every (good) military worries about this, and has researched the possibility. Hence the US military's research into battery powered humvees.
eande 16y ago
The leaked military information was published in German about a week ago and when reading it you find multiple references to US studies. One of them is from the City of San Francisco who had a task force installed to look into the Peak Oil&Gas www.sfenvironment.org/downloads/library/peakoil_final_report.pdf It is pretty dark report when you read through the paper. One of the statements “events will unfold so badly that unemployment, hunger, and crime are prevalent, and the basic structure of society is unable to function”. But there are some interesting and specific recommendations like "City government could push much harder to promote small businesses” or "develop southeast waterfront" and rail projects. Although I am not sure if anything will happen. But it seems some politician and planers are looking at these scenarios.
mkramlich 16y ago
Keep in mind: 1. many militaries do studies like this. contingency planning. they consider it part of their overall mission of defending their country and interests 2. as the supply of cheaper oil shrinks relative to demand, price increases and then more expensive-to-deliver oil becomes marketable (like from shale/sands, or synthetics). and alternate energies become more attractive and economically feasible (solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, nuclear, etc.) and people increasingly try to use less oil. all of this adds up. 3. nobody can predict the future with certainty, and the accuracy and reliability tends to go down the farther into the future one tries to evaluate

33 points by all 16y ago

Non-renewable resources running out is scary and peak oil is fascinating, but with such wildly differing estimates on how long we have it's hard not to be skeptical. That being said, we should definitely be planning for the future, and it's great to hear that the UK and Germany are taking giant strides (Germany generates the largest amount of solar energy, for instance).

jacquesm 16y ago
Don't rule out their wind installations either, I'm living within sight of some of the largest windmills they're currently operating, the E82 series, 2MW each, there are thousands of them now in Germany. It's very impressive to stand near them, they're absolutely huge.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  I can do math, so I will rule out wind installations. Windmills are a way to reduce overall fuel consumption but they are not adequate for base power (they are too inefficient and too unpredictable).
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    The wind energy plants in Germany produce a whole lot more energy than the solar energy plants there. The Germans can also do math, and they take in to account the number of sun hours, the acreage used and the latitude they live at. This means that during a fairly large part of the year solar power in Germany is not running at a high efficiency. On the other hand, Germany has a lot of wind, so they use it to good effect. Fully 7% (!) of Germany's energy use comes from wind power, contrasted with only 1% for solar. Best not rule out wind installations when you have a lot of wind and little solar, especially when you can do math ;)
    - InclinedPlane 16y ago
      7% is better than a poke in the eye, but is it really worth it, wind power is no panacea? The point I was making is that if some evil wizard suddenly eliminated all of the hydrocarbon reserves from Earth no country in the world would choose wind (or solar) for providing base power generation. Both have the same problem that you can't just press a button and get more power when you need it, you are dependent on circumstances. They can help ease the load on the rest of your power generation infrastructure, but at best it's only a partial solution.
      - jacquesm 16y ago
        > 7% is better than a poke in the eye, but is it really worth it, wind power is no panacea? At what percentage would you consider it to be worth it? 20%? 50%? 90%? You have to start somewhere. The Germans have done an absolutely amazing job at re-engineering wind power plants on a utility scale, they've taken the old and unreliable designs and have turned them in to true engineering marvels with maintenance records and uptimes that a datacenter would be proud of. And they've done that in about 20 years time, with now over 20,000 plants installed, they're installing them as fast as they can churn them out. It's absolutely amazing to see this very quiet and concentrated energy revolution taking place, where-ever I go in Germany, if I drive at night I come across at least one, but likely more than just one transport of a new windmill to some site. They're hard to miss, the trucks are 40 meters long... 3 in each convoy with the blades and a nacelle that you could make a fairly comfortable house in. > The point I was making is that if some evil wizard suddenly eliminated all of the hydrocarbon reserves from Earth no country in the world would choose wind (or solar) for providing base power generation. Let's assume that we'd at least have enough oil for some transition to another powersource because you won't be building nuclear plants or windmills using labor alone, you need power (and some of it in the form of diesel / gasoline to power trucks and tools). If it would happen really suddenly then we'd be in a boatload of trouble, and there would be an immediate all out war for the control of the next available resource, uranium. What would power that war is anybody's guess. So, nuclear power would be the power source of choice in the short term in that case, followed by an immediate and massive roll out of renewables because once oil and coal are gone they can compete favorably with nuclear on cost, especially when you factor in cleanup and decommissioning as well as waste processing. > Both have the same problem that you can't just press a button and get more power when you need it, you are dependent on circumstances. Statistics are your friend here, you can make longer term predictions about the available energy in both solar and wind. By spreading the generation capacity over large enough land masses and by playing nice with your neighbours you can mitigate some of this. But I'll bet at that price-point electricity driven AC is going to be replaced by AWCO(*) pretty soon and the same would go for electric heating in the winter. Conservation efforts would have to be stepped up and there would likely be serious social changes. No more driving to the mall, likely local shops would see a revival and it would get a lot harder to live in rural areas. > They can help ease the load on the rest of your power generation infrastructure, but at best it's only a partial solution. You could make it work if you had a large enough lake to dump your excess in to use as a reserve in times of scarcity. The sun outputs roughly 1KW per square meter of surface area at ground level, if you don't convert it to electricity using solar panels it goes towards heating up the atmosphere causing air currents. That's a very large amount of power, it is available almost every day and it would not take all that much of the earth's surface to give us all the energy we need at present day consumption levels. It's raining soup, we only have forks. But the forks are getting better at catching the soup every year.
acqq 16y ago
Estimate errors are not important -- the certainty that the peak comes however is! Try to think about it, you know how exponents of 2 work: 1 2 (...) 1024 2048 Now note that to move from point n to the point n + 1 you need to use as much as in all points from 1 to n - 1: when you're at point of 1024, to move to the point of 2048 (double) you'll need 1+2+4+8+...+512 + 1 of something. According to http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/colombia/oila.html http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/colombia/oila.html the doubling time of world oil consumption is 30 years (just as little as 2.3% usage growth per year makes that!) That means that during the next 30 years the world needs as much oil as the total oil used from the beginning of the oil use to the 1980(!) Think again about that simple fact! Now if you know that all oil in the Earth formed from the preserved remains of prehistoric zooplankton and algae, which had settled to a sea or lake bottom in large quantities under anoxic conditions, you can imagine that the supply is really limited.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Coal can be converted to oil. At present prices this is not economical. But when the oil price goes up above the point where it is economical suddenly the 'reserves' will have to include all the coal reserves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process That would (iirc, can't find a quick and reasonably reliable source) double the total available oil for the next 50 years or so, and then there are currently uneconomical sources such as tar sands. So, in short, yes, it will run out and fairly soon but not as soon as you might think based on just the oil reserves.
  - acqq 16y ago
    Note that even the doubling the estimated world reserves that you suggest gives the humanity only a few decades more. Where do you get 50 years when the current estimated doubling time of consumption is 30 years? Approximately 40% of the world electricity production uses coal as we speak. It's not that the coal is just waiting to be used instead of oil. Your kids (if you have them) will experience oil problems anyway! Not to mention the effects of all that CO2 in the atmosphere.

zeteo 16y ago

What is the competency of the military for assessing 1. world petroleum reserves and consumption 2. the economic consequences of an oil shortage?! I think it's far more likely that Spiegel is misrepresenting the context of the study. The German military, in particular, has a reputation for making contingency plans for everything. It seems to me far more credible that the purpose of the study is rather "in the unlikely event that 'peak oil' is reached soon AND this leads to 'total collapse of the markets', the German Army should respond with actions A, B and C". Discovering such a plan would then have no more significance than finding out, say, about a study of the defensive measures required if Germany is invaded by the Czech Republic.

edge17 16y ago
The cost of energy is important to a country because it is one of many throttling point for how aggressively a country can grow. If it becomes unaffordable, and as a result difficult to grow, it can lead to a lot of things (like unemployment and civil unrest). As far as questioning their competency, I don't even understand what you mean. They have engineers, information, and resources... i'm sure the competent enough to put things together and draw possible conclusions. The oil/commidity trade is very very tied to governments, military embargoes, etc. For a small idea of how politically charged oil is, one example is the pipeline between Iran and Israel - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Israel_pipeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Israel_pipeline Oil and the price of it is incredibly important to governments.
- zeteo 16y ago
  The army does not extract and market oil. Just because they depend on it doesn't mean they can predict worldwide reserves, rates of consumption, and economic effects of fluctuations in the oil supply. Heck, the oil companies themselves are hard pressed to do a small subset of all of these tasks.
  - blantonl 16y ago
    this is analogous to saying that a food corporation has no ability to predict worldwide reserves, consumption, and the economic effects of the wheat that they consume. Or that an airline doesn't employ economists that closely monitor oil consumption and supply. Army's spend an incredible amount of time looking at the long term effects of the oil supply chain.

what 16y ago

Reminded me of this from a while back: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1382456 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1382456 Talks about peak oil in part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU

ojbyrne 16y ago

Not to commit either way, but today we have this: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-coming-oil-glut-2010-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-coming-oil-glut-2010-9

d2viant 16y ago

Peak oil seems like a complete non-issue to me. As a resource, it is in such high demand that when we run out someone will step in with a replacement. There's simply too many capitalists and entrepreneurs in this world to let that void go unfilled. The primary reason alternative fuels haven't caught on yet is because they're not cost effective. As oil becomes a rarer commodity and it's price goes up, a replacement for the fuel supply will gradually emerge as being cost effective.

Devilboy 16y ago
The problem is not running out of oil, the problem is that the price increases will increase the cost of living because so much depends on cheap oil.

SoftwareMaven 16y ago

Personally, I'd love to see the difference between this "draft" version that says things like "Germany may have to sacrifice Israel" or "We are going to have to screw Poland in favor of Russia", and the "final" version that has gone through the political correctness police. I think that would be a fascinating insight into the political process of a nation.

afterburner 16y ago

Hmm, the German military are perhaps even more sensitive to the possibility of an oil shortage thanks to its experience being starved for oil in WWII. But really, every (good) military worries about this, and has researched the possibility. Hence the US military's research into battery powered humvees.

eande 16y ago

The leaked military information was published in German about a week ago and when reading it you find multiple references to US studies. One of them is from the City of San Francisco who had a task force installed to look into the Peak Oil&Gas www.sfenvironment.org/downloads/library/peakoil_final_report.pdf It is pretty dark report when you read through the paper. One of the statements “events will unfold so badly that unemployment, hunger, and crime are prevalent, and the basic structure of society is unable to function”. But there are some interesting and specific recommendations like "City government could push much harder to promote small businesses” or "develop southeast waterfront" and rail projects. Although I am not sure if anything will happen. But it seems some politician and planers are looking at these scenarios.

mkramlich 16y ago

Keep in mind: 1. many militaries do studies like this. contingency planning. they consider it part of their overall mission of defending their country and interests 2. as the supply of cheaper oil shrinks relative to demand, price increases and then more expensive-to-deliver oil becomes marketable (like from shale/sands, or synthetics). and alternate energies become more attractive and economically feasible (solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, nuclear, etc.) and people increasingly try to use less oil. all of this adds up. 3. nobody can predict the future with certainty, and the accuracy and reliability tends to go down the farther into the future one tries to evaluate