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Peak plastic

warrenellis.com

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Re: Peak plastic

#31

Post by jdietrich »

Peak oil doesn't mean we run out of oil, it just means that the cost rises to the point that it's no longer affordable for most uses. Production is unlikely to decline for many decades, it's just that demand for energy is growing rapidly while production is static.

At $20 or $30 a gallon, oil is completely unaffordable as a fuel but still perfectly viable as a raw material. Obviously we'll substitute out other materials for the least important use-cases, but we won't have to radically rethink the manufactured world. According to the DoE, plastic production accounted for just 4.6% of petroleum consumption and 1.5% of natural gas consumption in the US.

The costs of all raw materials are rising, many of them much faster than the price of oil. Many metals have doubled or tripled in price over the past few years. Commodity foodstuffs have surged in price. Quality hardwood is increasingly scarce. We fetishise oil, but we have a generalised resource problem due to the rapid improvements of living standards in the developing world. There are only three plausible scenarios - people getting used to consuming much less, the development of nuclear fusion, or a third world war.

Re: Peak plastic

#32

Post by lmm »

brudgers wrote: post #29
jws wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are premium roofing shingles and tiles made from plastic. If you see an unusual color of slate roof with regular shaped tiles or a repeating pattern of a couple feet, you may be looking at one. Cost wise, they fall between asphalt shingles and clay tiles or slate (that's a big spread). They can last better than asphalt and should need fewer repairs if you live in a hail or extreme wind area. Here is a project t…

Slate roofs are made from slate, not plastic.

But people don't always see what's really there

Re: Peak plastic

#33

Post by acqq »

jdietrich wrote: post #31

Peak oil doesn't mean we run out of oil, it just means that the cost rises to the point that it's no longer affordable for most uses. Production is unlikely to decline for many decades, it's just that demand for energy is growing rapidly while production is static. At $20 or $30 a gallon, oil is completely unaffordable as a fuel but still perfectly viable as a raw material. Obviously we'll substitute out other materi…

> There are only three plausible scenarios - people getting used to consuming much less, the development of nuclear fusion, or a third world war.

And from three scenarios, the second is at the moment impossible because of physics and the first because of current state-of-art of economy and politics.

Note that those that claim there's "enough energy" for at least 100 years always calculate "at current consumption rates" which means "no growth" whereas economists and politicians both assume steady growth. As soon as you include the "measly" (from the politicians view) growth of only 3% per year you have to expect double consumption in only 25 years, four time that in 50 years, eight times in 75 and sixteen times in a 100.

Re: Peak plastic

#34

Post by jberryman »

redwood wrote: post #7

The thing is, of the oil taken out of the earth, what percent has been used for plastic? I'm not sure but a very small portion. Now even if we're at peak oil now which is certainly not necessarily true, the Hubbert Curve (where the definition of peak oil comes from) shows that peak occurs when 50% of the oil has been extracted. Thus we can assume we have at least half the oil available to humanity not yet extracted (…

> The thing is, of the oil taken out of the earth, what percent has been used for plastic? I'm not sure but a very small portion.

RTFA: "Even though plastics are made on a massive industrial scale, they still account for less than 10% of the world’s oil consumption."

Re: Peak plastic

#35

Post by sliverstorm »

acqq wrote: post #33
jdietrich wrote: post #31

Peak oil doesn't mean we run out of oil, it just means that the cost rises to the point that it's no longer affordable for most uses. Production is unlikely to decline for many decades, it's just that demand for energy is growing rapidly while production is static. At $20 or $30 a gallon, oil is completely unaffordable as a fuel but still perfectly viable as a raw material. Obviously we'll substitute out other materi…

> There are only three plausible scenarios - people getting used to consuming much less, the development of nuclear fusion, or a third world war. And from three scenarios, the second is at the moment impossible because of physics and the first because of current state-of-art of economy and politics. Note that those that claim there's "enough energy" for at least 100 years always calculate "at current consumption rate…

And from three scenarios, the second is at the moment impossible because of physics

Even if it was possible, who knows if we could even get them built. I half suspect we (as a country) will pick WWIII over nuclear reactors, we're so afraid of them.

Re: Peak plastic

#36

Post by sliverstorm »

redwood wrote: post #10
kijin wrote: post #6

Well, we'll probably find out a way to synthesize plastic out of other materials rich in hydrocarbons, like algae. It's going to be pretty expensive at first, but I can see biofuels occupying their own niche even in an economy that is dominated by hydrogen or some other "clean" resource.

Considering plastic doesn't have the CO2 emissions that oil-for-fuel does, there's no reason to use non-oil-based plastic any time soon. We can move off oil for fuel and keep using it for plastic!

Well, the biodegradability of oil-based plastic is poor, and we might find bio-based plastics with other such compelling properties.

Re: Peak plastic

#38

Post by crpatino »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #27
Roboprog wrote: post #15

Wow. Sounds like a slightly less dire discussion of the sort of things that James Kunstler is always discussing on his site. http://www.kunstler.com/index.php I think Kunstler's site is a bit over the top, but it's an interesting "ha ha, only serious" view of peak oil. Things like this peak plastic article remind me that we better get to work on crazy stuff like fusion or orbiting solar powered microwave transmitters…

Fission power is good enough to avoid any decline. We just need to start building more of it...

Except we would hit peak uranium pretty soon, and be left with a bunch of new reactors that never got close to pay back the investment it took to deploy them. Not to mention the poisonous, radioactive debris to deal with for a long long time afterwards.

I would be much happier if we committed those resources to maintain the nuclear infrastructure we already have in place, to keep it going safely for as long as possible.

Re: Peak plastic

#39

Post by Roboprog »

crpatino wrote: post #38
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fission power is good enough to avoid any decline. We just need to start building more of it...

Except we would hit peak uranium pretty soon, and be left with a bunch of new reactors that never got close to pay back the investment it took to deploy them. Not to mention the poisonous, radioactive debris to deal with for a long long time afterwards. I would be much happier if we committed those resources to maintain the nuclear infrastructure we already have in place, to keep it going safely for as long as possib…

I think fission is probably a lesser evil than burning mountains of coal, but yeah, it's a stop-gap at best until we get fusion working, or make much better use of that big fusion reactor nearby that's already been running for 4 or 5 billion years :-)

Re: Peak plastic

#40

Post by Tuna-Fish »

crpatino wrote: post #38
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fission power is good enough to avoid any decline. We just need to start building more of it...

Except we would hit peak uranium pretty soon, and be left with a bunch of new reactors that never got close to pay back the investment it took to deploy them. Not to mention the poisonous, radioactive debris to deal with for a long long time afterwards. I would be much happier if we committed those resources to maintain the nuclear infrastructure we already have in place, to keep it going safely for as long as possib…

> Except we would hit peak uranium pretty soon

We will never hit peak uranium. The "exploitable uranium resources" numbers floating about are for deposits that would be commercially exploitable roughly at present prices. The thing is, the cost of the raw uranium is a very small proportion (less than 0.05%) of the cost of running a fission plant. In other words, you could multiply the market price of uranium by 1000 times, and it would only increase the cost of running the plant by 50%.

But, well before that, it becomes cost-effective to separate uranium from seawater. Where we have enough for tens of milennia. If that runs out, it then becomes cost-effective to mine and refine nuclear fuel in space and return it to earth. At present-day launch costs. Peak Uranium will never happen.

And if it somehow did, thorium is roughly a thousand times more plentiful than U-235.

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