This is the second post in a series examining “urban legends” about energy that comfort Americans. These comforting myths about unconventional and alternative energy sources provide excuses for avoidign the hard work of gathering information, analysis, planning, and executing programs necessary to prepare for the multi-decade transition through peak oil to the next era (whatever that will be). {The opening was re-written to better show the structure of the series}

These five myths are:

I. Our massive reserves of unconventional oil.

II. We’ll run crash programs to solve peak oil, just as we mobilized for WWII.

III. Demand creates supply, by raising prices.

IV. Oil is Oil, even if it is not oil

V. Demand creates supply, from new technology.

Unfortunately, we can rely on none of these. Certainly they are not substitutes for intense research and planning, which is how they are used today. As I have described at length in previous posts, we know astonishingly little about our available energy resources, consumption patterns, and alternatives. Nor has the available information been collected, analyzed, and used for models and simulations — the foundation of good planning. News reports said that the recent satellite interception by the USAF cost $125 million; one-tenth of that could fund a multi-disciplinary project that would help plan a sound future for America’s energy supply. Instead we rely on inspired guessing.

Side note: what is our source of information about the monthly volume of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports? Please place your answers in the comments.

Chapter II — We’ll run successful crash programs to beat Peak Oil just as we mobilized for WWII

The massive mobilzation during WWII has important differences from crash programs to prepare America for face Peak Oil. Crash programs are probably necessary, but are no panacea.

The economics differ; today’s mobilization might make things worse — unlike WWII. There may less potential innovation available. The causes of innovation are mysterious, and cannot be relied upon.

To sum this up, we turn to one of great rules of history: past performance is no guarantee of future success.

1. It is not 1940 — few idle resources

We rapidly and easily mobilized for WWII because WWII followed the Great Depression. Very roughly, a quarter of our resources – people and manufacturing capacity – were idle. The adaptation to WWII stimulated the US economy (esp. as the bombs produced landed elsewhere).

Crash programs to prepare for Peak Oil will operate in a fully functioning economy (at least, I hope so). Allocating resources means diverting people and funding from something else. Either consumption — consumer spending and government services — or investment (construction, R&D, etc). This will prove more disruptive to the economy than employing idle workers and re-starting empty factories during WWII. That is, large-scale crash programs — however necessary — will make things worse in the short-term (until they produce results).

2. It is not 1940 — no decade of massive underinvestment in everything

Also, WWII followed a decade of underinvestment during the Great Depression. Unlike today, there were no venture capitalists beating the bushes for good ideas to fund. So there had been an accumulation of “idle” technology, as a field long left fallow produces a good harvest when planted.

3. What do we know about innovation?

There is a large literature about this subject, one of such vital importance to our society. And it, unlike so many other subjects, has a wealth of hard data on which to work. Here is a nice summary of what we know, from “The structure of invention“, W. Brian Arthur, Research Policy, March 2007 — Excerpt:

A significant difficulty that all theories face is that modern research shows that the actual process of invention varies greatly from historical case to historical case, so that universalities appear not to exist. Some novel technologies issue from an individual working alone, others from several groups working with independent ideas. Some derive from huge programmatic investment, others from private shoestring effort. Some emerge from years of trial and are marked by a sequence of intermediate versions that do not quite fulfill the goal, others appear whole cloth as if from nothing. “Attempts thus far to present a general interpretation of all technology change have foundered on the great diversity and complexity of that change,” says Constant (1980). As a result, in modern times the idea of “invention” has assumed a status like that of “consciousness” or “mind,” something we can speak of but not quite articulate. Textbooks hurry past it without explaining what it is.

About the conditions that foster inventive activity we are much better informed. We know that novel technologies are shaped by social needs; that they respond to economic opportunities, perceived risk, and factor price changes; that they cumulate with the accretion of cultural and scientific knowledge; and that they can be catalyzed by the exchange of information within networks of colleagues.

Sometimes massed effort can overcome all obstacles. But not all problems can be solved by a Manhattan Project. Software development illustrates this, where resource inputs often have little to do with time until completion. The relationship is certainly not a linear relationship; sometimes an inverse one. Some inventions must await the right time in history, irrespective of when we need it.

Conclusion

How fitting that this mysterious process has become an object of near-religious faith in our culture. Much as primitive peoples prayed to the Gods for rain, we put our faith in the upsurge of inventions, hoping for machines to appear to meet our current needs. Just in time.

Afterword

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Some posts about unconventional and alternative energy sources