How Does a Climate Change Realist Turn Into an Energy Transition Fatalist?
My one-sided tiff with Art Berman, energy analyst extraordinaire
I like Art Berman’s work. I have been following him for years. He’s a highly-experienced and deeply-knowledgeable petroleum geologist and he’s the go-to guy for many people who want to understand all things oil. He is right and realistic and clear-eyed about the state of the world and the risks we face. I agree with almost everything he writes.
Yet, when I have tried to engage with him on his blog, where he generously replies to almost all comments that get thrown his way, he has dismissed me as just another member of what he calls the “clown car” of renewable energy enthusiasts. In fact, despite his willingness to print and reply to comments from the most bat-shit crazy climate deniers (see here), he has apparently chosen to block me, no longer printing or replying to any of my comments on his posts. Ouch.
Sadly, I do not respond well to such treatment, so I have decided to engage with him indirectly here. I don’t expect him to notice, but that’s never stopped me before.
First, let’s talk about the right stuff
Art’s recent post, “The Numbers Don’t Lie: Why Climate Denial Is No Longer Possible”, is one of the best things I’ve read on the topic of what causes global warming. Referencing a blockbuster recent academic article tracing the fluctuations in CO2 concentrations and global temperatures over the last 500 million years, Art observes:
The Judd study made it clear: the link between CO2 and climate change is undeniable. It’s not up for debate — CO2 drives the climate, period.
Further:
The evidence is clear: temperature records, ice core data, and satellite measurements all confirm Earth is warming. The link between rising CO2 and higher temperatures is well-documented, and there’s broad consensus that fossil fuel burning is driving this.
Art favorably quotes one of the authors of the Judd study:
“Carbon dioxide is really that master dial. That’s an important message … in terms of understanding why emissions from fossil fuels are a problem today.” (Jessica Tierney, source)
It follows, as night follows day: the only way humans can halt global warming (note: not turn the heat down, just stop turning it up) is to stop releasing billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. And the only way we can begin to do that is to decrease and eventually end the burning of fossil fuels.
Art acknowledges this will never get us back to the glory days of unlimited energy and lower temperatures. Those days are gone, now merely memories of a bygone era. But ending CO2 emissions is necessary (maybe not sufficient) to halt the trajectory we are on. We are heating the planet to levels never experienced by bipedal humans.
But Art also acknowledges that this “solution” to global warming has a high cost: it will result in the end of economic growth, which in turn will result in a precipitous end to our current global economy:
The engine behind growth and the progress narrative has always been the energy surplus provided by fossil fuels, starting about 200 years ago. Economic growth and energy consumption — especially oil — are inseparable. The link is iron-clad. When you start questioning future energy consumption, you’re not just raising a red flag; you’re threatening the entire foundation of the progress story. If the energy story falters, so does the story of endless growth.
This is the “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” dilemma that I and many others have noted many times.
We can halt global warming or we can continue growing our global civilization. But we can’t do both.
Art seems to be fully on board.
Here is where Art and I part ways
I suspect this is why I got blocked. I questioned three views Art expresses that I find wrongheaded and unsupported by reliable evidence.
- First, Art seems to believe that we will never stop burning fossil fuels. At a minimum, the US (which today produces about 14% of annual CO2 emissions) will continue pumping at least 4 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year at least through 2050. Why? Because that’s what ExxonMobil says will happen (source). Hmmm.
- Second, Art has a real bee in his bonnet about renewable energy. He thinks it’s a giant hoax, a scam, a waste of time and money. See “Electric Vehicles and Renewables: Misleading Solutions to a Deeper Climate Crisis”. See also “It’s Too Late For Renewables”. This view strikes me as odd given his acknowledgement that fossil fuels are killing us and renewables are the only alternatives available.
- Third, Art has some very specific feelings about “the energy transition” (the “the” is important). He titles one memorable post, “Let’s Stop Arguing About An Imaginary Energy Transition”. Also, “The Energy Transition is Being Led by a Clown Car”. This idea that “the energy transition” is “imaginary” is very bizarre to me. It ends up that Art has something very specific in mind when he writes about “the energy transition”. As Inigo Montoya might say, “It does not mean what you think it means.”
Let’s discuss each of these views and their implications in more detail.
We will never stop burning fossil fuels
In a reply to his article, A Renewable Energy Transition Violates The Maximum Power Principle, I asked Art if there was any way to avoid civilization collapse once fossil fuels were no longer available. He replied, in part:
“Your assumption that “fossil fuels will no longer be available” is false, Steve, and that renders the rest of your argument irrelevant.”
What does this mean? “Nonrenewable” and “never-ending” are two concepts that usually don’t belong in the same sentence. I suppose Art is saying this will never happen in any timeframe relevant to the current challenges facing human civilization. But at the same time, he seems more than aware of two things: (1) energy and economic growth are inseparable (see above), and (2) if oil is not profitable to produce, it won’t be produced. As he wrote last month:
“Right now, oil markets are flashing a clear message: the era of growth is over — not just for oil but for the global economy.” (from The End of Growth: Why Oil Prices are Falling)
Art is very perceptive about the sensitivity of the economy to fluctuations in the price of oil. He notes:
“… even 1 million barrels a day of deficit in supply is enough to drive oil prices up to $120 a barrel. … We use so much oil to keep the world running, to keep our factories and machines and houses, and I mean everything we do relies on oil. And so if we’re down 1%, we’re screwed.” — from Shale Oil and the Slurping Sound, Nate Hagens and Art Berman in Conversation
Driving this point home with an analogy:
“Think about if a person’s oxygen saturation dropped 5%, what would happen? I mean, it’s only 5%, right? But I mean, very likely you might collapse. You would certainly have to sit down. You couldn’t function with a couple of percent less oxygen saturation in your blood. And that would be the effect of losing just a couple of percent of oil supply for the world’s metabolism.” (emphasis added)
So the price of oil is not only an input and output of economic performance, it is also a signal and measure, an extremely sensitive measure, of the state of the global economy. As is often said, if oil production has the sniffles, the whole world catches a cold.
What about Art’s contention, following an ExxonMobil report, that the US will continue pumping at least 4 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year at least through 2050? And beyond? There is nothing special about 2050. Certainly if that is the level of production in 2050, it is not going to drop to zero in 2051. If we assume Exxon’s projection is accurate, and assume further that US emissions will remain at roughly 14% of global emissions (where they are today), this would mean that ExxonMobil (and Art) believe the world will still be dumping nearly 30 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year between now and 2050. Adding to the 425 parts-per-million concentration of CO2 already in the atmosphere today, that would get us to about 530 ppm by 2050. Converting CO2 concentration into temperature rise, that should yield global average temperatures of at least +2.5°C by 2050.
Extending Art’s “fossil fuels will never end” scenario to 2100, we can expect average temps to be about 4.6°C above preindustrial by the end of the century, and that’s not counting any additional CO2 and methane emissions from pesky little side-crises like burning down the Canadian Boreal forests (source), turning the Amazon into a CO2-emitting savannah (source), and melting the Siberian permafrost (source). Nor does it take into account the possibility that these projections may be seriously underestimating the actual temperature impacts of doubling CO2 concentrations to above 500 ppm (see e.g. Hansen, also source) In other words, if we embrace ExxonMobil’s wet dream of never-ending oil, humanity is very likely to no longer be around in 2100. So there’s that.
The question of when (not if) fossil fuels will no longer be available is indeed a challenging one, and there are no certain answers today. However, there is a lot of evidence indicating that we will no longer be pulling fossil fuels from the ground in 2050, if not sooner. A recent article in the well-respected Journal of Petroleum Technology makes the case:
Energy necessary for the production of oil liquids is growing at an exponential rate, representing 15.5% of the energy production of oil liquids today and projected to reach a proportion equivalent to half of the gross energy output by 2050 (Delannoy et al. 2021).
The gross energy production from oil liquids is likely to peak in the next 10 to 15 years, and the contribution of unconventional liquids will increase to about half of conventional oil at its peak. The energy required for oil liquids production is expected to increase exponentially, and the weighted average EROI of oil liquids is expected to reach a low plateau of 6.7. (source, emphasis added)
The article concludes with a warning to both producers and consumers: we are entering an age of “energy cannibalism”.
We need to be aware of the sharply declining EROI of oil over time.
Given the plummeting energy return on investment of oil, the global energy transition must occur quickly to avoid energy shortages, environmental threats, and economic depression. In the foreseeable future, the energy needed to produce oil liquids could approach unsustainable levels, a phenomenon called “energy cannibalism.”
The concept of energy cannibalism is becoming increasingly relevant, as mounting energy use in oil production means the very resources needed for the transition to renewable energy may be constrained, particularly when viewed from a net-energy perspective and in terms of economic growth. (emphasis added, see also source)
Art is aware of these arguments. He writes that the Delannoy et al. studies (presented in 2021 and 2023 papers, with four and 22 authors respectively) are “flawed”. Interestingly, he does not question their energy cannibalism claims directly. Rather, he believes they are flawed because their authors are blinded by ideology!
Delannoy and his co-authors do not mean to be misleading. They think they are telling the truth and that’s the problem. True believers are willing to go to any length to convince us of their truth. They believe it so strongly that they cannot be objective. (source)
Resorting to ad hominem arguments is never a good sign. One wonders why Art sees no such “objectivity” problems in the ExxonMobil report he cites without question.
So, how does all this relate to Art’s contention that fossil fuels will be available “forever”? First, let’s accept the claim that 50% of energy output will be devoted to energy production by 2050 and therefore unavailable for other uses (industry, transportation, pharmaceuticals, etc.). Second, let’s agree that oil production overall is now declining and will continue to decline as oil reserves get harder and more expensive to extract from less and less accessible locations (Art Berman: “it is unlikely that either oil supply or demand will ever return to 2018 levels on a sustained basis.”). Third, let’s combine those two points with Art’s observation that, should oil production drop a mere 1%, “we’re screwed”.
What all this implies is a highly likely economic contraction in our near-term future, a global recession if not depression, that can be expected to result in a significant drop in energy demand and therefore a significant drop in the price of oil. A feedback loop is created. Where energy needs can be met more cheaply by building renewable vs. nonrenewable energy sources (e.g., solar farms and battery storage instead of coal plants), demand for fossil fuels will decline further. Once it costs more to produce a barrel of oil than that barrel can be sold for, it becomes unprofitable to produce it. Capitalists do not invest in unprofitable businesses, so the oil industry will starve and eventually be shut down, one way or another. In other words, the business of oil will end long before the oil itself is “gone”. What were once profitable assets will quickly become useless stranded assets.
Art’s views on the end of oil appear to have evolved a bit since he told me oil will always be available. In a post out just today (mid-October 2024) titled “This Is How Oil Ends”, Art offers this assessment:
I don’t claim to know exactly how the oil age will end. My guess is it’ll go out with a whimper, not a bang. But in the end, that won’t really matter because the world will be poorer for it. I’m okay with that, but I doubt most renewable enthusiasts fully grasp what they’ve signed up for.
Now we need to explore the question of why Art has such disdain for “renewable enthusiasts”.
It’s too late for renewables
Art’s argument against investing in renewables appears to revolve around one key point: renewables will never be able to reproduce the energy density of the fossil fuels that power our civilization today. This is of course true.
Modern economic growth has always depended on cheap, abundant fossil fuels. This high energy yield has driven expansion, allowing credit and debt markets to flourish. Cut back on oil, and if we can’t replace it with equally productive energy sources, overall productivity takes a hit, and with it, economic growth. — from This Is How Oil Ends
For Art, this situation creates a binary choice for humanity:
“We cannot run this civilization on renewable energy, and I think that’s important to understand. Because we either then have to say, well, we’re going to have to continue with fossil fuels, or we’re going to have to change the kind of civilization that we live in, one or the other.” — from Shale Oil and the Slurping Sound, Nate Hagens and Art Berman in Conversation
The problem with this assessment is not Art’s assertion that renewable sources have lower energy density than fossil fuels (which is well known), it’s the conclusion he draws from it. Given the choice between “continuing with fossil fuels” or “changing the kind of civilization we live in”, Art believes the latter option is simply impossible. Since changing our civilization is impossible, he is left with no choice. We will continue with fossil fuels until either they end or we do, whichever comes first.
Meanwhile, Art asserts that “renewable enthusiasts” are completely incapable of accepting the fact that a renewably-powered world will necessarily produce less energy than our current fossil fuel-powered world. But that is a strawman: degrowth, not unending growth, is seen by most renewable advocates as unavoidable in any energy transition away from fossil fuels. Only one group, the Green Growth Optimists, imagine a painless transition to renewables which will allow economic growth to continue. Their position depends on a key assumption — that economic growth can be “decoupled” from CO2 emissions. Unfortunately, that assumption enjoys little empirical support today (see Haberl et al., 2020; Parrique, 2023; Ketchum, 2023). Art chooses to focus on (and ridicule) Green Growth Optimists, falsely assuming they represent the totality of “renewable enthusiasts” (see, e.g., Tom Steyer’s Impossible Dream of a Renewable Future). They do not.
Because Art doesn’t look beyond this binary choice, I believe he fails to consider a third, and indeed far more likely, path into the future. What if dwindling fossil fuel supplies (which he acknowledges, sort of) intersect with extreme heat and weather incidents (which he acknowledges are happening right now) to produce an involuntary descent from the heights of our modern civilization? I agree with Art that voluntarily ending growth to save the planet from further CO2 emissions is unlikely, at least not anytime soon. There is simply too many well-funded, powerful, and highly organized resistors out there to allow that to happen.
But it now looks like we are fully capable of crashing this civilization involuntarily, whether we believe we are doing so or not. This is the multi-wave collapse scenario that many (source, source, including me) have laid out in some detail: a likely descent through environmental collapse and economic collapse to political collapse and, in a final wave powered by runaway climate catastrophes and tipping points, population collapse. There will be nothing orderly or deliberate about it, precisely because we will not be the instigators of change (except inadvertently), we will be its victims.
Why does Art believe it is “too late” for renewables? For the most part, he relies on the arguments of energy transition “impossibilists” like Vaclav Smil, who claims that four pillars of civilization — steel, concrete, fertilizer, and plastics — are impossible to produce without fossil fuels. This view has been echoed for years by transition pessimists, even though significant progress has been made in overcoming every one of these “impossible” obstacles, along with other supposedly insurmountable barriers standing in the way of a survivable post-carbon future. For example:
- Much of the world’s steel is already produced without fossil fuels (e.g., source).
- Decarbonization of cement and alternatives to concrete are both technologically feasible and in production today (source).
- Currently-available solutions can reduce emissions from fertilizer production by 95% (source).
- Biodegradable alternatives to many plastic products are available and able to significantly reduce that industry’s dependence on fossil fuels (source).
Other obstacles often cited by transition pessimists are also proving somewhat less than impossible to address. For example, the intermittency of wind and solar power production is being overcome with innovative energy storage solutions and HVDC electric grid upgrades; high-temperature industrial heat can in fact be produced without fossil fuels, and the minerals needed for the energy transition may be more abundant than some often-cited analysts have estimated.
This is not to say these challenges have been solved. Far from it. But there is work being done around the world right now that directly contradicts the “impossible” claims of energy pessimists in each of these areas. These innovations need to be considered and evaluated as potential solutions, even if partial and limited, rather than ignored and belittled based on unquestioned and out-of-date assumptions.
The energy transition is “imaginary”
Finally, we come to Art’s strange assertion that the energy transition is not just hard, or even impossible. It’s imaginary, that is, a fantasy concocted by deluded minds.
“There is no energy transition, no paradigm shift or green revolution. Acknowledging this stark reality sooner rather than later will allow us to focus on devising strategies for managing the consequences of climate change, and the deteriorating state of earth’s biosphere.” — from It’s Too Late For Renewables
What could this possibly mean? Well, it obviously doesn’t mean what it says, because there definitely is some kind of energy transition going on right now, with nations investing billions to upgrade their energy infrastructures and build out their renewable energy capabilities. China is probably the global leader this transition at the current moment. Progress to date may be far from complete and far from adequate to save us from climate catastrophe, but it is also far from imaginary.
So no, I don’t believe Art means what he is saying. He is playing games with words. He doesn’t mean the actual energy transition is imaginary, he means the advocates of a renewable energy transition (the “clown car”, in his words) are imagining a future that Art believes is unattainable. Their sin is not just that they are fantasists, but that they are self-deluded propagandists as well:
“Renewable energy advocates routinely highlight a narrow and selective set of information to create the illusion that an energy transition is moving forward with shocking speed and effectiveness.” — from Let’s Stop Arguing About An Imaginary Energy Transition
With this kind of dismissive attitude, it is not surprising that Art sees little of value in this version of the energy transition, which he seems to imagine is shared by all renewable energy advocates, and is based on the unforgivable sin of believing we can transition this civilization away from fossil fuels without sacrificing economic growth. As noted above, most advocates of renewable energy do not disagree with Art on this important point, despite his insistence that they must.
An energy descent appears to be baked into our current predicament — how should we respond?
Art Berman is a serious energy analyst. He seems well aware that fossil fuels, CO2 emissions, economic growth, and global warming are all tightly interconnected. He has shown how they have risen together in lockstep. We now need to begin considering how they will fall together, also in lockstep. Art seems reluctant to pursue this question, preferring instead to embrace a stance of “radical acceptance”:
We are well beyond a soft landing for the planet. There are no moderate pathways ahead. The only move we have left is radical acceptance of our situation, of the human predicament. — from Radical Acceptance of the Human Predicament
I disagree. This civilization, the one we’ve built atop 200 years of fossil fuel indulgence, is coming to an end. This is actually something we can all agree on (at least all of us here on Earth One). It’s a starting point. When, where, and how this descent might occur, and how humanity might survive on a livable planet, remain open questions. They are not questions our political and economic elites seem ready to talk about today. But they are questions humanity will soon need to answer. Resistance and denial are everywhere. This is both unfortunate and dangerous. Maybe name-calling, ad hominem attacks, and “radical acceptance” are not the best path forward.
