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Our rate of oil discovery has reached its peak and will never be exceeded; rather, it is certain to decline - perhaps rapidly - forever forward. Meanwhile, in the 20th century we have developed lifestyles firmly rooted in the promise of an endless, cheap supply. David Goodstein explains the underlying scientific principles of the inevitable fossil fuel shortage we face and our most urgent environmental policy decisions. He outlines the drastic effects a fossil fuel shortage will bring down on us and shows us that there is an important silver lining to the need to switch to other sources of energy, for when we have burned up all the available oil, the earth's climate will have moved toward a truly life-threatening state.
- Sales Rank: #1671515 in Books
- Published on: 2004-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .69" h x 5.82" w x 8.48" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 140 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Everyone agrees we will run out of fossil fuels someday-Goodstein, a Caltech professor, argues it will be sooner rather than later based on the petrochemical data available. In this alarming little book, portions of which were originally published in a bioethics journal, Goodstein explains with limited jargon that we will completely exhaust oil supplies within 10 years. He warns that we have reached, or even surpassed Hubbert's Peak, the moment when we have consumed half of all oil known to exist and will likely use the rest up even faster, due to ever-increasing demand and decreasing discoveries. What will we do when all the oil is gone? Goodstein outlines two scenarios, both chilling. In the worst case, we might run out of oil so fast that the only affordable alternative is coal. In this throwback future, Goodstein writes, "the greenhouse effect that results eventually tips Earth's climate into a new state hostile to life." The best case scenario involves a methane-based fuel economy that would bridge the gap until we could build up nuclear and solar power sources to meet our long-term needs. Goodstein admits that some geologists disagree that we will deplete all oil sources within this decade, but even conservative calculations predict the price of oil will increase beyond the reach of most people within the foreseeable future. "No matter what else happens," Goodstein states, "this is the century in which we must learn to live without fossil fuels." He maintains a cautious optimism about alternative energy sources, but readers may find little comfort imagining nuclear fission energy as the next best thing.
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In this pithy primer on what might replace oil as civilization's fuel, a Caltech professor explains the fundamentals of energy, engines, and entropy for a mass audience. Goodstein opens with a quote from a geologist who predicted in the 1950s, to derision, that U.S. oil reserves would inevitably be depleted. Applying this reasoning to global reserves, Goodstein warns not only that the last drop will be pumped by 2100 at the latest, but also that peak production, estimated to occur in the current decade, marks the beginning of a global shortage. So, start planning postpetroleum technology now, exhorts the author. With exceptional conciseness, he presents the constraints nature will impose on any fuel-technology combination, beginning with explanations of exploitable sources of energy, continuing with how chemical and nuclear bonds hold and release energy, and arriving at how any engine, in principle, converts energy to work. Looking at fuels such as methane or hydrogen, Goodstein sees not panaceas but, rather, life support until a future arrives that lives on sunlight and nuclear fusion. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"What will we do then, when oil and gas are no longer enough? David Goodstein lays out the clear truth of the problem in this book. It should be read and reread by anyone who expects to live past 2010."
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Dr Ian Lavering (Southern Hemisphere)
By Dr. Ian H. Lavering
Out of Gas, The End of the Age of Oil by David Goodstein, Norton and Company, ISBN 0-393-05857-3 (hardcover), 140 p.
What I like about David Goldstein book is that he starts with the future, rather than having to go through the entire book to find out; what's going to happen; he tells it right up front. The very first sentence is "the world will soon start to run out of conventionally produced, cheap oil". If we do not find a ready alternative from either coal or oil shale, he sees a radical rather than a slight or gradual change being the enduring feature of world history in the early 21st century. While some economists see such changes as an opportunity for market forces to operate and generate alternatives, there is considerable argument that such changes are too fundamental for markets to seamlessly generate alternative options due to growth in energy demand.
Much of the petrochemicals and materials evident in our age are derived from liquid petroleum feedstock, making the development of alternative sources and processes an expensive and a complex process. While Goldstein sees the opportunity for other energy sources, e.g. nuclear and coal, to fill much of the gap left by oil, there are a number of critical social and economic questions that the changes we are about to experience are going to generate.
Not only does the author challenge the reader with what's likely to happen in the near future with regards to oil and all associated oil-based products, he goes into the details of why and how in a manner somewhat more convincing than other authors. But all is not good in what follows after this first chapter; after the good beginning I was left disappointed by the possibly unrelated discussion of energy `myths' and the history of energy. What I would have liked would have been something that built upon the good beginning rather than just abandoning it.
What follows is an explanation of some of the basics of energy physics. While they may be of interest to some readers, I am still not quite sure why the need arises when the topic of discussion supposed to be `running out of gas'. Maybe I have been spoilt by all the other interesting books on the `how and why and when' issues of future energy transitions etc and thus I came to expect something similar in this book.
So while it is interesting in terms of the material covered, I didn't find the line of discussion too compelling and while I maybe expecting too much on energy issues when the title refers to such, perhaps I need to be more tolerant of the freedom of an author to choose their own material, no matter what the title suggests to me. A good a succinct discussion of the information chosen but not a line of discussion where I see any compelling need for the information provided under such a title. Good physics perhaps but not very useful so far as the running `out of gas' title goes. Use it as a reference book but not one that will keep the interest of energy futurists.
Dr Ian Lavering
Adjunct Professor
MBT program UNSW
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Outstanding: Goodstein�s words ring loud and clear
By A Customer
The first impression I had when I bought the book and had it in my hand was that it is so thin and light. I have been reading a fairly large number of books on both sides of the aisle of the future in energy debate, the optimists "no problem at all") and pessimists (experts like Campbell et al), and I am used to thick books and long discussions. When I started to read Goodstein's book though I realized that his book is the most important scientific book I have been reading in a long time.
Goodstein's words are clear and convey his considerable knowledge in sharp and always precise ways - his words ring like a bell. He makes difficult issues clear and easy to grasp. The first paragraph of the introduction alone is worth every penny of the entire book.
The message that Goodstein brings is sobering. He indicates that we have to change our understanding of energy and we ought to change our way of using natural resources or face demise. There is urgency in his writing but not panic. Though it is hard to look up from his book without being depressed about the inevitable consequences, his book has given me reason to be hopeful, since with people of his stature attacking the problem there surely should be hope for all of us.
Goodstein dedicates the book to our children and grand-children, "who will not inherit the riches that we inherited". What a beautiful way to remind us that we have a significant responsibility to the generations who come after us.
I thank Goodstein for his contribution and I would like to encourage everybody to read the book and share it with a friend. If we could award more than five starts I would give it a 10.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Succinct, focused, readable
By Dennis Littrell
For those of you who are just getting interested in the subject, David Goodstein's Out of Gas is the book you want to read first. I have read several books on the impending energy crisis, including:
Deffeyes, Kenneth S. Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak (2005)
Heinberg, Richard. The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2nd Ed., 2005)
Huber, Peter W. and Mark P. Mills. The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy (2005)
Leeb, Stephen and Donna Leeb. The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself--and Profit--from the Coming Energy Crisis (2005)
Simmons, Matthew R. Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (2005)
and I can say that Professor Goodstein's modest, short and very much to the point book is as good as, if not better than, any of those five. He introduces the subject in a clear and no nonsense way and includes a lot of background information essential to understanding how energy works and why we are about to face a crisis. For readers who are expert on the physics and technology of heat engines and entropy, this book will be a little too basic in part. But even for such experts, Goodstein is essential reading because not only does he understand the science of the energy crisis, he understands the politics. Especially edifying is the material in the Postscript. Let me reference a few ideas:
OPEC (a cartel, as Goodstein explains, patterned after the Texas Railroad Commission which was the cartel that controlled oil production in the US before our supply peaked) likes to maintain prices within a range, "partly in order not to discourage demand for oil, but also to prevent investment in alternative fuels." This we know, of course. But Goodstein adds, "The implied threat is, if you invest money to develop a competitor to oil, we will flood the market with cheap oil and wipe out your investment." (pp. 126-127)
This explains in part why we have been so slow to develop alternative sources. Investors are afraid. However, as Goodstein explains, if OPEC no longer has "excess pumping capacity" to flood the market, theirs becomes an empty threat. Notice another point here: not only are OPEC countries tempted to overstate capacity so that by OPEC rules they are allowed to pump more oil, they are induced to lie about their reserves to scare potential investors away from alternative energy sources. In fact the entire oil industry itself "has a very strong incentive to deny any looming shortage of oil." In other words, to overstate their reserves. Another reason they overstate their reserves "is to keep down the price of oil properties they would like to acquire." (p. 127)
Goodstein also explains why "reserves to production" (R/P) numbers have stayed about the same for many decades and why many experts say we still have forty years of oil left, same as we have had for most of the twentieth century. Quite simply "proven" reserves are reported as "whatever fits the current needs" of the company. (p. 128) It used to be the case that under-reporting was good since it kept the price of oil from plummeting. Now the real danger is to acknowledge that a company doesn't have much oil left. This will cause their stock price to plunge, which is what happened to the Royal Dutch Shell Group "when it was forced by outside auditors to reduce its claims of proven reserves..." (p. 129)
Goodstein's take on the various alternatives to oil, including coal, shale oil, nuclear energy, renewables, etc. is very much in concert with the opinions of other experts. We will be using more coal, dirty as it is, and more nuclear energy, and natural gas. These are the three main alternatives. Not long after we run out of oil we will run out of natural gas and then coal and then even nuclear power plants will grow cold for lack of uranium, which if used to supply energy at the current rate of consumption will be depleted in five to twenty-five years. (p. 106)
Goodstein explores wind and solar and makes it clear that in the long run--if we and civilization are going to make it to the long run--we will have to develop the technology to exploit these renewable sources. This will require a huge investment. We will need the political leadership and will to make the kind of commitment that President Kennedy made in putting a man on the moon. Goodstein believes that solving the energy problem will require the same sort of formidable and creative technology as did the space program. He adds that "Unfortunately, our present national and international leadership is reluctant even to acknowledge that there is a problem." (p. 123)
It is essential that we make the commitment to develop alternatives fuels and we make that commitment NOW because (1) we will need the oil we have left to make the thousands of petrochemical products we will continue to use; (2) we need to free ourselves from dependence on the oil producing countries; and (3) there is an outside danger that the continued burning of fossils fuels will trigger a runaway greenhouse catastrophe that could lead to sterilizing the earth as has happened on Venus. Note well this horrific downside--far worse than any "nuclear winter"--and note too we could go past the point of no return without even realizing it, and be left with no way to stop the meltdown.
Bottom line: "The challenge is enormous but the stakes are even larger. If future generations are to thrive, we who have consumed Earth's legacy of cheap oil must now provide for a world without it." (p. 131)
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