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"As an engineer, I like to deal with equations.... (three pages later)... The economy is closely linked with the physical resources that underly it. Looking at the economic system as an engineer would, the natural resources are inputs to the system, and the outputs are jobs, food, services, finished goods, and a growing population... Please consider that if alternatives or renewable do not scale up quickly enough to replace any lost oil resources, then any attempt to convert to manual labor to replace the loss of oil energy may result in less products being available, even though in theory there could be full employment. At approximately 23,000 man-hours of equivalent work being producible from one barrel of oil, just the loss of roughly one percent of world oil production (roughly 900,000 barrels per day) would result in the loss of (900,000 X 23,000) around 20 million man-hours of equivalent work per day. With an 8 hour work day, it would take around 2.5 billion people to do an equivalent amount of work [per day] ... if production decreases by 2 percent a year, then in just 2 or 3 years, the amount of work potential missing from the decrease in oil production would overtake the amount of potentially gained if if everyone alive today (including the old and the young) were able to contribute an extra 8 hours of labor each and every day.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
approximately 23,000 man-hours of equivalent work being producible from one barrel of oil.

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Originally posted by ElvisChrist:


I think the flaw in your logic here is that you're assuming that less oil = less work. The equivalent work can still be done via other means. If I drive an electric car to work and use zero gallons of oil to do so (imagine for this example that my electricity is generated by solar, wind, and nuclear as opposed to oil- or gas-fired generation stations), it doesn't mean I didn't get to work. The work was done, only it was done by means other than burning oil to do it.


A society less dependent upon oil and fossil fuels doesn't mean it has to be a primitive agrarian or hunter-gatherer society.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
approximately 23,000 man-hours of equivalent work being producible from one barrel of oil.

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23,000? Really?

We could make a bicyclist turn an electric generator to see how many kilowatt-hours she produces at a steady pace: 100 Watts for 10 hours of work to produce 1 kilowatt-hour. http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/bicyclepower.html

Then compare that to the kilowatt-hours from a portable electric generator running on a barrel of gasoline, where 1 Barrel US, Oil = 42 gallons.

I'll pick a 10 kilowatt generator to make the calculation easier.
www.amazon.com/DuroMax-XP10000E-Portable-Generator-Electric/dp/B0018C6
BDE/
You'll get up to 10 hours of runtime (at 50 percent) from a 8.3-gallon tank of fuel. That's 50 kilowatt-hours for 8.3-gallons. Or 253 kilowatt-hours from a barrel of gasoline. Gasoline is not crude oil, but close enough for an estimate.

Do a division and I get that it takes 2530 hours for that bicyclist to produce 253 kilowatt-hours or a barrel of gasoline.

So, it is NOT preposterous to take 23,000 man-hours of equivalent work from one barrel of oil. But it's probably closer to 2,300 man-hours.

Now if a bicyclist could drink gasoline rather than eat PowerBars, think of the possibilities. It would be revolutionary! It would be the end of agriculture. Get rich with Exxon-Mobil stock.

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