Down Hubbert's Peak: Last Phone Message

After the tone, please leave your message…

"Hi, Darling. I've been trying to reach you for hours. With this major rain and windstorm, I'm amazed that the cell phone works at all. But I'm not sure yours is working. I was immediately dumped to voicemail. Maybe you’re trying to reach me.

"You may have heard on the news about the big rockslide on I-5 here in the Siskiyous. The kids and I are fine! Don't worry. We arrived to a small backup about twenty minutes after the rock fell. I suppose a lot more drivers would be waiting if it weren't for the fuel shortages…

"The rain has been unbelievable! It reminded me of a Texas cloudburst, the kind that floods streets in just minutes. Couldn't see ahead at all. Yes, I pulled off until the rain let up--to a downpour, that is. A downpour seemed light in comparison to the deluge! All kinds of mudslides and rock-falls were triggered by the storm. I linked up with a few other drivers who had also stopped during the big rain, and we carefully picked our way through the debris until reaching the massive slide. It's a mess here. I-5 in both directions is buried under a mountain. Gone. I'm guessing days to clear at best.

"Nearly three hours have passed since we stopped at the slide. Apparently the fuel shortages have slowed the arrival of cleanup crews. Everyone is beginning to feel the pinch. Indeed, only two patrol cars have arrived on our side of the rockslide. Can't see what's happening on the north side.

"Right now, I'm just waiting to see what the officers say. Communications are sketchy. Apparently radio repeaters are out. And, as I mentioned, cell phones are a bit finicky out here. Though I have seen the police talking on their cells.

"The kids are currently playing in the car. They've found the slide pretty exciting. I wish I could share their sentiment. The whole ordeal has me stressed! They're getting bored, though. The video games are loosing their luster. I'll have to do something soon.

"I'm thinking about an alternate route. Perhaps west to 101. Maybe. Certainly the coast was pounded. I might have to go further inland, perhaps to 395, and then head north. At least it's too warm for snow!

"Hold it…

"One of the officers is approaching me. Hold on…"

Phhtt, phhtt… Thump, thump, thump…

"This is terrible. Apparently another slide went across the road to our south. We're stuck!

"There're injuries, maybe some fatalities. The officer asked if I had any medical training. Wish I did. Still my car might become an emergency shelter for the wounded. I'll have to go soon.

"The officer also mentioned the possibility of aerial extraction. They didn't know how soon it would come. With the gasoline shortages, and the intensity of the storm, I'm not optimistic. This has me worried.

"One of the police just left. Racing south…"

"Ah, the rain's picking up again. And the temperature has to be around seventy-five! Up here! This is amazing. More and more, the weather seems to be going haywire. Getting soaked… I'm heading back to the car.

Beep.

"Ah, cripes. The phone's battery is low, too. I'll have to get it charging.

Thump!

"I'm inside now. The rain's so loud on the roof, it feels like I'm going deaf! Hopefully you can hear me.

"Hold it, Brett. I'm on the phone! Play with your sister.

"Getting a map… Here we go… If an air rescue is unable to arrive, we might be able to get back to Dunsmuir on foot. You know, climb around any rockslides that might be in the way. Might have to stay there awhile. Who knows, they might be happy to have some business, so few people are traveling these days.

"Wow, Corvallis seems so far away now...

Beep.

"But I'll wait a little longer before acting on that idea. Maybe that air rescue will arrive. Let's hope!

"Just know that we're okay, Dear. I'm not alone out here. We'll put our heads together and figure something out, I'm sure.

"This world seems to be turning upside down quickly, doesn't it? It's hard to believe that just two years ago we took a fun little trip to Hawaii. Energy didn't once occupy my thoughts on that vacation. Now, energy is on my mind all the time. Each day seems to bring yet another crisis.

"The kids are listening. I probably should go. Give this phone a rest. You take care. Know that we're thinking of you. Love you..."

Hubbert's Peak: Is There More to Being Human?

The New Horizons probe, on gravity assist to Pluto, recently skirted past Jupiter's vast domain of moons, faint planetary rings and intense radiation belts. Beautiful images of a giant world draped in streaming cloud bands and swirling storms broader than the Earth were returned as the tiny probe hurtled through Jovian space. The robotic interplanetary explorer is traveling between worlds at a speed faster than any other space mission to date. With a 4 kilometer-per-second (km/s) boost from Jupiter's gravity well, the vehicle accelerated to 21 km/s relative to the gas giant and 23 km/s relative to the sun.

Even at a velocity that would take New Horizons from Los Angeles to New York in about three minutes, the probe would not reach distant Pluto until 2015. Eight years traveling through the cold, dark emptiness of the outer Solar System.

All the while, a growing energy crisis will continue to unfold back on the spacecraft's homeworld, the Earth. For industrial civilization, the energy shortfall marks a critical inflection point, like New Horizon's gravity assist via Jupiter, one triggered by the relentless decline in oil production world-wide, the so-called Hubbert's Peak in oil production. Oil, the lifeblood of industrial civilization. Oil is the "master domino" according to Dr. A. M. Samsam Bakhtiari, an Iranian energy expert. When the oil production domino is healthy, all the other dominos of civilization--important structures such as food production, health care, education and economies--thrive. When oil falls, the rest follow. Likely, space programs, with their delicate budgets, would crumble early. Save maybe for those programs that had military application.

Would anyone listen to New Horizons' signals in 2015?

What might happen to civilization world-wide over the course of the next eight years? By the middle of the next decade, world oil production will likely be dropping quickly. By 2020, it could be back to 1970-levels, with a resource-consuming human population well over twice what it was when people visited the Moon. And this projection assumes that above-ground factors such as war won't accelerate the process of oil production decline.

Oil wars began in the 20th century. The Iraq invasion of 2003 appears to be one of several, and this one appears to have been among the first that is a direct response to Hubbert's peak. How many more conflicts will unfold over the next eight years? How many lives will be lost to the body-rending violence of supersonic bullets and crushing bomb blasts? With the rapid ticking-away of kilometers as New Horizons travels between Jupiter and Pluto, people will fall. Little dominoes that helped prop up the vast business of civilization.

Potential nuclear conflict loomed. Such an eventuality could take away many humans, and much of the infrastructure of industrial civilization. The facilities to support space missions, such as NASA-Ames, the Kennedy Space Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, might be a shattered ruin. There, indeed, may be no electronic ears waiting to receive New Horizons' distant signals from Pluto.

No more space discovery. The collection of Mars rovers would sit silent and collect a coat of ruddy dust over the decades and centuries, never to be visited by future human explorers on a grand mission to colonize space--a mission that seemed so inevitable during the heyday of Apollo. The artificial satellites that surrounded the Earth would die, become increasingly pockmarked with micrometeoroid impacts and eventually plunge back to Earth as their orbits decayed. The Hubble telescope would heat to plasma temperatures as it scraped the atmosphere on its way down, a brilliant flare that would just as quickly fade, like the very era of discovery that helped put the sensitive eye into orbit. No more extrasolar planet detection. No more soul-stirring images of stellar explosions, nebulae and the process of star-formation.

The age of peering deep into the past, of uncovering the processes that led to the creation of the Earth, life, and human beings, would be over. It seemed possible that, as future centuries unfolded, much of the information gleaned by science could become lost. Forgotten during an age of conflict. A vast edifice of knowledge, crumbling away like the World Trade Center in 2001.

What did that say of humanity? In the 20th century, our species appeared to have a purpose. People were supposedly the eyes of the Universe, probing everywhere, learning how everything functioned. Like a child peering closely at her hand, humanity, an integral part of the Universe, was in the process of learning about itself every time it explored the huge, intricate and ancient environment from which the tool-using ape emerged. With technological progress exploding exponentially during the Age of Oil, humanity's eventual expansion into space seemed like destiny. Earth's precious, beautiful and amazing life would make that next leap—occupying other worlds, reaching for the stars.

Due to an almost magical nature, oil provided the fuel for god-like thinking even despite the obviously wobbly and uncertain foundation that should be expected from a structure made out of a liquid. An oil crutch. A slick and easily-obtained support that temporarily masked many of the challenges of living.

Now, as the Earth's store of oil became increasingly depleted, godhood seemed like a false promise. A dream. The energy crunch seemed to force humanity back to reality. Homo sapiens' self-proclaimed greatness appeared to be nothing more than a group hallucination brought about by an overwhelming addiction to a special, black hydrocarbon that formed over geologic timescales.

With oil depletion, it appeared increasingly obvious that human beings were just a mere animal. Of course, deep down, most people knew this. The power of oil addiction simply kept many people from considering the reality very deeply. Humans were prone to the same strengths and failings as other species. Humans are instinctual creatures, and carry within their brains a powerful program to exploit a given bounty with as much efficiency as can be mustered. This trait is critical for survival in the energy-limited environment provided by Earthly ecosystems. Generally hidden deep underground, oil's vast bounty of energy didn't play much of a role in surface-based evolutionary processes. Now, humans have stumbled across an amazing treasure. Like ants swarming a pile of sugar, people exploited this vast and accessible energy resource--oil--and used it up as quickly as possible lest someone else take the good stuff away. And, as the oil ran out, humanity now faced the challenging prospect of continuing without such a powerful form of energy to prop-up the species.

Without the support, space colonization seemed a distant dream. A fantasy. Like the fantasy of utopia offered by the creation of suburbia. It seemed people were so strongly attached to the planet that gave birth to them that they would not be leaving anytime soon, if ever.

Humanity's purpose, it seems, is something other than space colonies, or the discovery of all the secrets of the Universe. The purpose of H. sap, if there is one, is probably much more humble than such grandiose notions. Indeed, Hubbert's peak appears to be screaming to humanity that there is no purpose at all, save perhaps one: That age-old task of living in the harsh and challenging realm that envelops the Earth. Nothing more. Nothing less.

In 2015, as Pluto is scanned by distant New Horizons, symbol of an animal that has a wonderful but nevertheless bounded technological ingenuity, and follows its program to send signals back to Earth, the new information may go undetected. At that time, human minds may be focused on the much more immediate task of staying alive in an environment thrown into chaos by an oil-starved industrial revolution. The probe will sail away into the vast depths of space, soon to be forgotten. And human beings will continue the struggle of survival among the complex depths offered by Earth's living shell.

The Age of Oil closes. Reality returns.

Toward Yesteryear

Dear Anna,

How long has it been since I actually wrote you a letter by hand? Years, for sure. Remember those little notes that I would send you? The ones where I would draw wildflowers and butterflies in the margins? And include uplifting thoughts to help you through your busy workday? So long ago! Before either of us had discovered e-mail. I certainly enjoyed writing those letters. As I penned those messages, I always imagined your soft face, framed by your fine brown hair, and your lively hazel eyes.

Well, Anna, it seems that life demonstrates again that it tends to flow in circles, or more accurately a long and irregular spiral. I recall all those discussions we used to have about life philosophies. Life, of course, acts. We can believe all we want that it will move forward in a certain direction, and then something comes along to remind us that it can, without advance notice, change at any moment.

Just as I hung my hands over the computer keyboard to type out a note to you, the electrical service failed. Now, I sit in the dark with two little candles flickering on my old dining table, and can't help this stark feeling that, perhaps, we're seeing the beginning of the end of the "new" way of doing things. We're entering a new era, I suspect, and we'll have to adapt to yet another "new way." And this new way looks like it may be similar to the "old way" that, currently, seems like a distant memory.

Oh, I'm sure the power will return to California at some point, Anna. We've all been through blackouts throughout our lives. And, in this case, the grid doesn't appear to be damaged. Stars fill the sky. There has been no storm to crack power poles, no earthquake to shake lines to the ground. No, Anna, this appears to be classic load-shedding. An all-too-familiar rolling blackout. I wish I knew more, but my usual source of information is, of course, down—the internet. I should try to find that emergency radio. Maybe when I'm done penning this letter.

"Load shedding?" you ask. I can still hear your voice so clearly. That sweet, soft tone that enthralled my young ears. Yes, Anna, even in the vast, powerful United States, we aren't immune from the consequences of a strained energy supply. Here in little Ukiah, I'm probably the victim of the demand from the masses who live just to the south, in the dynamic and energy-hungry San Francisco Bay Area. Perhaps this is due to an increase in heating demand from a recent cold spell. Summer has forgotten to arrive, that's for sure! I suspect that we might have a frost here, under that clear, cold sky. And with natural gas in short supply due to ever-diminishing production despite an ever-increasing number of new well-heads, the price sure has escalated. Those natural gas outages in So Cal weren't just quirks. I'm sure much of the remaining supply is being allocated to emergency services first, and other customers second. As a result, I can only guess that many people have switched to portable electric heaters. Which might have put an enormous strain on the electricity supply. Now many of us sit in the dark, and become increasingly cold.

In fact, I just donned another blanket. That beautiful cover that you made for me during our long honeymoon. The one decorated with carefully-cut fabric leaves in all shades of autumn warm--red, orange, yellow. The lively cloth foliage is hard to see in the dim light. But even with diminished presence, the promise of a toasty reprieve from the chill is reassuring. Ah, yes, Anna, I can see your wry smile. Indeed I should have bought some wood for my little fireplace, the one that has been unused for perhaps a half-decade. I recall how you loved fires. They so fit with your idea of romance. Feel free to laugh at me now, for I'm now wishing I shared your romantic sense—I should have been more sympathetic to the simple joys you found in life. I'd at least have more warmth! And from more than one source.

What an amazing, and frightening time we live in, Anna. Peak oil and peak natural gas, as they go through their uncompromising arc of depletion, have now bumped us down the comfort scale. Load shedding used to be a problem for the poor, or so-called "developing" nations, only occasionally showing up in the developed world due to very--how should I put it?--interesting circumstances. The local news agencies have been failing us over recent years, only rarely reporting the ever-increasing occurrences of power interruption in developing nations. And even more rarely portraying the situation within its broader geopolitical framework despite a strong interdependence between nations. Thus failing to show us how the problem has been spreading like a stealthy disease: South Africa, the Philippines, Pakistan, India, Colombia, to name just a few places that have been suffering increasing hardship. As the price of fossil fuels escalated since the early part of this decade, many of the poorer nations have been struggling to keep power plants in operation, and maintaining vulnerable distribution grids. Now it looks like the load-shedding problem has migrated up the international ladder of affluence and is hitting the "first world."

I had to smile after writing the above paragraph. Yes, Anna, I certainly haven't lost my enthusiasm for the subject of energy production. I recall you reminding me more than once that I often got carried away with that topic. In front of your carefully-made romantic fires, or at dinner parties, or even on evening strolls through the park, where a simple lamp alongside a path would bring to my mind thoughts of electron flow and hydroelectric dams. Sometimes you just wanted to talk about more personal things. Concrete, down-to-earth things. Like plans for our next vacation. Or events in our friends' lives. Or our recent adventures in the workplace. Vividly, I recall how the little stories I told about my childhood would keep you deeply enthralled. I was a bit of a wild-child. I now understand how my adventures would interest you, sweet Anna, the girl who always wanted to please her parents. I should have accommodated you more often, and listened to your own stories with as much care as I put into my work on energy. You always had a thoughtful approach to life. And we certainly had the ability to talk about many things when we were young. What happened? I guess we changed. Just like the world is changing before our very eyes. Or, perhaps more so, we were too busy with our extremely active progress-driven lives to pause, and explore the very things that had brought us together in the first place.

How I wish I could sit next to you now, Anna, and tell you more of those stories from my boyhood. To simply sit close to you, and feel your warmth under the pretty blanket of dancing autumn leaves. To simply hold your hand--hopefully it would be one of those times when your fingers were actually warm! How such small digits ever retained heat still amazes me to this day. Yes, Anna, with someone near, someone whom I could talk to, the dark would be much less intimidating.

As it is, I don't even have a cat! It's just me, and my tiny, old house. And your lovely blanket. I guess writing to you helps. I hope you're okay down there in Monterey. Maybe you still have electricity. I'm not sure--without a doubt the greater Bay Area's in the dark, or there wouldn't so many crisp, clear stars in the sky. In any event, I suspect the power will be up and running again sometime after sunrise. We will then resume our normal lives. Until the next hiccup. And, I'm sure, power interruptions will increase in frequency and duration over the years. At some point, what passes for normal will look quite different from what we've experienced up to the present. I hope social unrest during this critical transition doesn't cause serious problems. How people will react to fear--fear about the gigantic unknown that the energy downturn poses--is my biggest concern as we enter this uncertain time.

Feel free to send me your thoughts. I wish you well, Anna. Know that I'm thinking about you, and if you ever need assistance at this important juncture in history, I will be there for you. As you can easily tell, I've never really stopped loving you. Maybe, as the world changes, and the pace of our lives slows to a more sane level, we will discover some of that magic spark that so captured us decades ago. The end of the industrial age could very well have its perks.

May the US Postal Service continue to run for a long time.

Take care, Anna,

Your good friend, Anthony