An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Chris Martenson
It bears repeating: Not just energy is important here, but net energy. It's the energy left over after we find and produce energy that is available for society to do all of its complicated and clever things.
Not only is the world struggling right now to increase global oil production, but all of the new and unconventional finds offer us dramatically less net energy to use as we wish….
One narrative that is being heavily marketed right now is that the shale plays are true game-changers and there's really nothing to worry about for the foreseeable future. Heck, the story says that the U.S. will soon exceed Saudi Arabia in oil production and become energy independent, that it has so much natural gas that it might as well build export terminals, and that there's 100 years of natural gas just waiting to be used.
Unfortunately, none of this is really true.
Damn! Right up until that last sentence, I thought we were all set: no more energy supply worries. If not for that whole “truth” thing [the one that uses facts], we would be so energy independent….
Like many of the critically important but genuinely inconvenient details about fossil fuel production carefully excised from the stories told, “net energy” is another of those terms which will almost never be found in any discussion or writing by fossil fuel industry cheerleaders claiming that Peak Oil is a myth/nonsense/doom and gloom frivolity or any variation thereof. But most of us [all, actually] are obliged to deal with reality no matter how much Happy Talk industry spokespeople try to cram down our throats.
The legitimate technological advances which are enabling oil production to increase in the past few years come at a price—several, actually. One of the neglected costs which actually matters a great deal to all of us who rely on fossil fuels for … everything is that the energy/effort needed to locate/extract/produce/deliver/supply the massively vast whatevers now represents a larger share of the total energy supply available to all of us.
It’s not that difficult to understand: if we can expect a certain amount of usable energy for our needs from a given supply, but we now must first draw down even more of that supply just to get that needed energy, first-grade math tells us that we now have less “left over” for all our needs.
Need more, have less. Pretty basic … and a problem that will not get any better. Information is a good thing, and when plans have to be made, dealing with the facts tends to make the end result a bit more useful. Not as pleasant, to be sure, but if we are counting on nothing but “pleasant” solutions to our energy supply challenges, we will be waiting a long time.
Adapted from a blog post of mine
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