Peak Oil Unlikely in the Short Term?

"Experts" have told the Energy 2030 conference held in Abu Dhabi last month that near-term peak oil is not going to happen. This flies in the face of conclusions made by a large number of analysts, which I have documented in these postings. For example, Matthew Simmons, Chairman of Simmons and Company International, said last month that global oil production may have already reached its peak in December 2005, although he mollifies this with the caveat that continued monitoring of production is necessary to be sure that the peak has indeed occurred. My understanding is that production is down from all major fields, which does not urge the view that the peak is comfortingly distant. Some geologists think that even if we include the most favourable efforts in exploration and the consequent discovery of new fields like the Gulf of Mexico, the world production of oil will peak during 2010 - 2020 at somewhere between 95 and 110 million barrels a day, and then turn smoothly into an irreversible, steady decline.
Projected world demand for petroleum liquids indicates an increase from approximately 85 million barrels per day in 2005 to 115 barrels daily, in 2030, according to ExxonMobil estimates. This can only be sustained if there is enough oil actually in the ground to be extracted and whether it can be recovered at the necessary rate. Dr Richard Vierbuchen, who is the vice-president of the Caspian/Middle East region for ExxonMobil said that supply can adequately meet the increasing demand. I guess he would say that though, wouldn't he? He stated further that "estimates of the liquids resource base have been increased over the last 50-100 years, and are likely to continue to do so." Now why is that exactly? Well, he says that "Forecasts of an imminent peak in global production appear to underestimate major sources of growth in the resource base, particularly improved recovery and resources made economic by new capabilities." I presume the latter is a veiled allusion to "unconventional oil", for example that recovered from oil sands ("Tar sands" in reality), or produced by coal liquefaction. He then went on to attack the fundamental analysis made by M. King Hubbert in 1956, stating that it is not readily applicable to forecasting global liquids production, while conceding that it did work in predicting that US Lower-48 oil production would peak in 1965-70, and it did in fact peak in 1971.
His criticism of the Hubbert method is that it cannot account for an increasing resource base, and this much is true. In effect, what Hubbert did was to estimate how much oil was in the ground, how much had been drawn off and hence how quickly the peak in production was likely to be arrived at. One consequence of his analysis was that there is a lag of about 40 years between the peak in oil discovery and the peak in oil production. Hubbert's method was based on the number of squares on a sheet of graph paper, representing the volume of oil in the reserve, which must be fitted under a curve representing the rate of extraction, and in its simplest form is "bell-shaped", so that production leading up to the peak is a symmetrical mirror-image of the production after the peak. Of course, it will never be so simple, as extracting oil beyond the peak point (when the reserve is half empty) is a more difficult matter than when the first well is sunk into eager, virgin territory.
He has a point, but the issue of peak oil is not about running out of oil; but that cheap oil will run-out, and the price thereafter increase to some imponderable level (with consequences that may be pondered only too clearly). The central and underpinning feature of any prediction is the quantity of oil there really is down there - further issues are how readily that may be extracted depends on the precise geology of particular regions, and the quality of that oil, in terms of the refining of it that is necessary before it can be used as a fuel.
According to Vierbuchen, "although annual global production has exceeded annual discoveries since the early 1980's, annual global reserve additions still exceed annual production because of reserve growth in increasing fields." I think he is referring to methods of improved oil extraction, that previously unyielding wells can be made to do so, e.g, by blasting steam into them. Such enhanced recovery methods, are believed to damage the well-geology, and it is thought that the Saudi reserve may be partly inaccessible because the damaged rock will hinder extraction of the oil . However, this is simply getting more of what is contained out, not increasing the volume of the reserve. He also refers explicitly to oil from gas, coal, very heavy oil, bitumen and shale, but as I have pointed out before, these are much harder to convert into oil, in terms of the energy that needs to be invested, potentially reducing the EROEI to an unfavourable ratio. (i.e. it takes so much energy to get the stuff out it isn't worth it for what energy is actually recovered from the final oil product).
Now, in support of this, Michael Huston, who is professor at the University of Huston (and also a managing partner of a petroleum consulting firm), reckons that peak oil will not strike for "at least the next three centuries". This is by way the most optimistic estimate I have seen, but let's see what it means in reality.

We are now extracting 85 million barrels a day x 365 = 31 billion barrels a year. If this increases to the projected daily production of 115 million barrels, by 2030, in that year the world will have drawn off 42 billion barrels. Undoubtedly, some of this will be in the form of "unconventional oil" and as this is a rough estimate I shall assume that over time, on average, 100 million barrels are extracted daily, or 36.5 billion barrels each year. In "three centuries", that means 300 x 36.5 = 10,950 billion barrels... or 11 trillion barrels (roughly).
Now my understanding is that there is 1.2 trillion barrels left in the ground (equal to what has already been used, and so we are at that half-way point), which is enough for say 32 - 38 years. I posted an article called "Peak Oil - all Bunkum?" recently, which refers to another optimistic reckoning that there are 3.74 trillion barrels worth to be had, but that seems to include everything - crude oil from wells, and all manner of synthetic oil. This was based on a report entitled "Why the Peak Oil Theory Falls Down: Myths, Legends, and the Future of Oil Resources," produced by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a consulting company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is only available for $1,000, which I am not prepared to pay.
So, even 3.74 trillion barrels is only enough for 100 years (with a half-way point in 50 years, if projected production levels are met and maintained), and as I have pointed out, to produce most of that is going to involve huge efforts to provide the necessary infrastructure for coal and gas liquefaction, bitumen extraction etc. etc. and of course the energy to run it. I am feeling that we will manufacture a lot more oil, and mostly from coal, and we will burn more coal per se for direct heating and as the means to generate ever-increasing amounts of the world's electricity. I am uncomfortable about these very high estimates of what might be produced in terms of oil, simply because they give the appearance that getting it will be easy, along the lines of the kind of oil production we are familiar with, and this is deceptive, or indeed a deception. Probably these different "kinds" of oil should not all be reckoned together on the same energy balance sheet. I doubt there is any coincidence that it is those with the most to profit from acting as though the "business as usual" scenario can go on for decades or centuries, who seem to be most blatant in their denials that peak oil is imminent. Perhaps they will be living protected behind armed-defenses, when they are proved unequivocally wrong, and the majority of human civilization collapses.
Peak oil is about running out of the cheap oil we have become accustomed too, and that certainly is running out, whether or not we find access to other, more costly won, versions of its commodity, in the future. In any event, human societies will find themselves based around the facts of less, readily available oil.

Pouring Water on Chinese Coal Liquefaction.

China has put the brakes on, so to speak, its coal-liquefaction projects. The main fear is that there could be an over-run in the coal-chemicals industry. To curtail development of the process, the Chinese government has legislated not to approve coal liquefaction plants with a processing capacity of under 3 million tonnes of coal. Since such a plant would require an outlay of 30 billion yuan (about $4 billion), very few enterprises could enter this particular market. China is the world's largest coal producer and generates 75% of its energy from burning coal. Like the rest of the world, China is looking more closely at synthetic oil, in view of hikes in the price of imported oil. The plan is that China will rely mainly on its own oil production, in the region of 180 - 200 million tonnes per year, and imported oil (95.8 million tonnes in the first eight months of this year), with increasing future provision of synthetic oil from coal. It is reported that 30 projects are under detailed planning or are at the feasibility study stage, yielding a total production capacity of 16 million tonnes, at an investment in excess of 120 billion yuan ($15 billion). Insiders predict that by 2020, China will produce 50 million tonnes of oil from coal.
Shell Gas and Power Developments BV and the Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry company (Shenhua-Ningmei) signed a joint agreement to study coal-liquefaction and the technical and commercial feasibility of launching a direct coal liquefaction plant with a daily output of 70,000 barrels (about 10,000 tonnes) of oil products and chemical feedstocks. South African based Sasoil has also joined as a collaborator with the Shenhau group, to build two coal-to-liquids plants using Fischer-Tropsch technology developed by and unique to Sasoil, which is the world leader in producing fuel from coal. The Fischer-Tropsch process was developed in Germany and kept the country in fuel during the oil-blockades of WWII; it has also fuelled South Africa during spates of political sanctions, and remains the principal source of oil in this country. One may conclude that the technology has a clear future in breaking the dependency of individual countries on imported oil, mainly from the Middle East... so long as there is enough coal available as a feedstock.
Coal liquefaction consumes massive quantities of water. Although part of the restriction to only "big" plants is intended to spread coal-to-oil production across the country, many regions of China, especially in the north and northwest, are already extremely short of water. Significant environmental discharges of effluent gases, waste (i.e. contaminated) water and industrial effluent are also attendant to coal liquefaction processes. The profitability of producing oil from coal depends on the prevailing price of crude oil on the world markets, and since this varies year on year, and it takes up to five years to build a coal liquefaction plant, there is an element of risk as to whether the plant will immediately return money or not. However, once we hit the Peak Oil production point, crude oil will become increasingly expensive. It is reckoned (in China at least) that the technology is viable so long as the world price is about $25 a barrel. Personally I doubt it will ever fall to anywhere near that again - it was three times that some time back, and not much less now. Hence, coal liquefaction will be attractive anywhere on economic grounds, even if the environmental picture is less so.
Water as a resource is under pressure in many parts of the world. It is therefore a central issue to estimate whether the water reserve of a region can support any new production processes, without detriment to the environment and to the people (and animals) who live there. It appears as a twist of nature that many regions that are potentially well provided with means for "unconventional" oil production are relatively short of water. So, there is plenty of coal in parts of Australia, Africa, China, India and North America, where supplies of freshwater are limited. As noted, coal liquefaction is intensive of water, in part to provide the hydrogen atoms to convert coal (mainly carbon) into hydrocarbons, and also to run cooling systems for the plants themselves. We hear much too, about producing oil from the Alberta Oil Sands (the name "tar sands" is more accurate), by cracking the bitumen they contain into oil for use as a fuel. The latter process relies heavily on gas to "crack" the bitumen into liquid hydrocarbons, but it also uses a lot of water. Indeed, water allocations made by Alberta to oil sands projects amount to 359 million cubic metres per year, which is twice the quantity of water used by the city of Calgary. The whole enterprise threatens the water supply (in terms of quantity and quality) to Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories through the Mackenzie River system.
Most of the oil sands operations draw their water from the Athabasca River, which is a tributary of the Mackenzie, most of which is not returned to the river. Strip mining of the oil sands uses between 2 and 4.5 cubic metres of water to extract one cubic metre of synthetic crude oil. The water becomes heavily polluted and only 10% goes back into the river, with the remainder being stored in enormous holding ponds, among the biggest structures ever constructed by humans on Earth. The oil sands yielded over one million barrels per day in 2005, but it is believed that they may be exhausted by 2050. The story here is similar to conventional crude oil production, in the sense that initially the resource is relatively easy to extract from close to the surface, but the process becomes increasingly demanding as deeper levels are accessed. This is true of coal production too. The Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) for producing oil from oil sands is currently about 3, which is just about viable so long as there is sufficient gas available for the purpose. The point must come, and long before the resource is exhausted, when the investment of gas, water, environmental clean-up, etc. etc. no longer justifies the return.
It is a case of making hay while the Sun shines, and finally it may be water that proves itself as the limiting energy resource.

Washing Machine Spins Nanoparticle Regulations

I have just read Michael Crichton's novel "Prey", which "warns" or at least paints a grisly picture of nano-technology going very badly wrong. Accordingly, I was struck by an article in "Chemistry World" on 24 November 2006, relating to a less catastrophic matter, but which concerns silver nanoparticles and their use in washing machines since they show bactericidal activity. Nanoparticles are particles of nanometer dimensions (one nanometer (nm) is 10*-9 meters, i.e. 1/1,000,000,000 or one billionth of a meter, or 10 Angstrom Units (A)), and as a working definition are considered to be of a size range 1- 10 nm. Particles of this size might be expected to show biological activity, since they are dimensionally comparable to proteins in biological agents, e.g viruses, and there is evidence that they may have a bright future in drug-delivery systems etc. I will not elaborate further here, but there is a corresponding environmental safety issue attended to the potential release of nanoparticles. While it is probably unlikely that nanoparticles would self-assemble into a "swarm" which attacks humans, kills and copies them and so on (nobody can write action better than Crichton, even if he does have his critics!), they could prove toxic in some less offensive way.
Accordingly, the US' Environmental Protection Agency is under pressure to regulate commercial products containing silver nanoparticles. But it is not yet clear how precisely this 'knee jerk reaction', as it has been described, will be enforced.

In a "guilty-'til-proven-innocent" regulation by the EPA, any company marketing a product as containing silver nanoparticles to kill bacteria must provide scientific evidence that the particles pose no environmental health risk. A tricky one indeed. How can that really be "proved"? Methods for determining "nanotoxicology" are in only very early stages of development, mainly as it is difficult to know exactly what to look for. For example, there has been a study of carbon nanotubes (like short little straws made of carbon, a bit like a piece of graphite-sheet rolled back on itself) aimed to prove that they can generate free radicals. Accepting the Free Radical Theory of Disease (an extension of the Free Radical Theory of Ageing), if they were found to have produced radicals, that might be some evidence that we should fear them. However, there was no such evidence found, and moreover, it was concluded that the presence of carbon nanotubes actually diminished the yield of reactive oxygen radicals when present in systems known to generate them. However, we are quite some way from any conclusion than nanoparticles are actually good for you... although they may ultimately be so proven. Who knows? The jury is not so much as "out" as not yet elected.

The decision is the result of legal enmeshings concerning the 'Silver Wash' washing machine, marketed by Samsung as containing silver nanoparticles in order to kill bacteria in clothes. Some US water authorities are afraid that discharged nanosilver particles might concentrate in wastewater treatment plants, killing bacteria which were meant to detoxify the wastewater. That's a good point, in the sense that a broad-spectrum antibiotic can kill both the nasties and the good bugs in the digestive tract, with well known consequences, also ending up at a water treatment plant somewhere nearby. In this particular context, nanosilver could be listed among other environmental pesticides, and would accordingly need to be tested under the Federal insecticide, fungicide and rodenticide act (Fifra). So long as the silver nanoparticles were contained within the washing machine, it could be classified as a 'device', and this exempted it from Fifra. However, in taking the view that some of the particles could actually "escape", EPA have now reconsidered this decision. As EPA spokesperson Jennifer Wood put it: 'The release of silver ions in the washing machines is a pesticide, because it is a substance released into the laundry for the purpose of killing pests.' So there!

Although this particular washing machine uses silver ions, which may not constitute nanoparticles, silver nanoparticles are used to kill germs in such products as air-fresheners, shoe liners, socks and food-storage containers. In all probability, these products will all now have to be tested under the regulations. Silver nanoparticles are also added to bandages to speed healing; but these and other medical applications are regulated by the US' Food and Drug Administration, not the EPA. A legal loophole remains for companies who drop anti-microbial claims from their nanosilver products, since it is only products marketed as 'anti-microbial' that will have to be regulated.

Undoubtedly, the new regulation will justify more research into the toxic effects of nanoparticles, but who will pay for it? Will it be government funded e.g. through the Research Councils, or will the manufacturers and suppliers of these new technologies bear the burden? I think it most likely that industry will put some money into university labs., say by supporting a few Ph.D projects, which is a far cheaper option than doing in all in-house themselves at full-costs, and the universities are mostly (in the U.K. at least) sufficiently desperate for cash they will take whatever crumbs might thereby drop their way.

Peak Oil - All Bunkum?

A new report concludes that the Peak Oil theory is wrong. I would love to believe this, but unfortunately the report is only available at a cost of $1,000, which I am not prepared to pay for the privilege of reading it. For those more urgently inclined, or with better lined pockets, it is entitled "Why the Peak Oil Theory Falls Down: Myths, Legends, and the Future of Oil Resources," and is produced by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a consulting company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts (not in that tranquil eastern corner of England). However, the following is based on what I have managed to glean from an elementary search of the web. The report seems to say that while petroleum is a finite resource, the midpoint in the genealogy of oil production will follow a protracted, undulating plateau rather than a bell-shaped curve (according to the Hubbert Peak analysis). It arrives at a figure for world oil reserves of 3.74 trillion barrels, which is three times as much as the 1.2 trillion barrel reserve estimated by Peak Oil enthusiasts. However, as far as I can determine, this is the total of conventional and unconventional oil, which might prove misleadingly optimistic.
What I mean is that this is the entire reserve of oil in the ground - not only the "sweet" light crude, which is relatively easy to refine into fuel, but the heavier fractions that are more difficult to extract in the first place, and need to be separated from sulphur and other compounds that would prove extremely noxious in the final fuel component - and whatever oil is considered to be potentially extractable from tar-sands, shales and bitumenous rocks (even coal?). True, it is the fifth time it has been said that we are running out of oil, but Peak Oil is not a claim of that, but that the cheap, easily got hydrocarbon resource which has underpinned the growth of the industrial world (including its population of 6.5 billion people, up from 2 billion in around 1900) will decline beyond a production maximum, with an inevitable and inexorable price hike on what is left. So, the $1,000 dollar barrel may be the marketplace norm one day, by which time the number of gasoline fuelled cars in use will have plummeted worldwide, along with most of the manufacturing industry that depends on oil as a fuel or a chemical feedstock, which in some extent is just about everything. The EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) is uncertain for these unconventional sources - meaning that they may take so much energy to extract oil from it is not worth the trouble.
In Jeremy Leggett's book "Half Gone", he refers to "late toppers" and "early toppers", meaning there are some who think the peak will come sooner (around now and certainly by 2010... only 3 years away), while others (mostly in the oil industry - or that's what they say, whether they believe it is another matter) think it will not arrive for another 30 years. Since we burn just over 30 billion barrels a year as a human species, one trillion barrels is about 33 years worth. So the late toppers are banking on there being another "trillion" down there. The truth is nobody really knows for sure, but the EROEI has fallen from a favourable ratio of around 100 in the early days of oil extraction (the "gushers" of "black gold") to a present value of around 8. I discussed this in a much earlier posting "You Need Energy to Get Energy - Time is Running Out". A value of 3 is probably the lower limit below which the energy costs are simply too high to render a particular resource viable, and I'm pretty certain that many of the unconventional sources (tar-sands, for example, come in at around 1.5, when all energy costs, mainly gas and conventional oil that are used in oil production - and water too, since the process is an enormously "thirsty" one, and that's before we get around to cleaning up all the consequent pollution too, as it is also pretty "dirty"!) will fall short of this.
To judge the true reserve of oil we need a full energy costing on each type of resource and method of recovery of oil from it. There are plenty of arguments that Hubbert's original analysis (in 1956) is too simplistic, and a simple bell-shaped curve cannot model the complex business of oil production and demand faithfully. I don't doubt it, but Hubbert's essential premise was a simple one. He made an estimate of how much oil there was probably in the ground (within limits, and took the most optimistic upper value), and how much had been used, hence how much there was likely to be left. When he predicted the arrival of the U.S. production peak (about twenty five years later in 1970) he was spot on. The best estimates I have seen for conventional oil is that we have used about half of it, and so there is the other half, about another trillion barrels left. Extracting that will prove more difficult however, and unconventional sources yet more so.
So, when I get to read the report - if it is released more economically into the public domain - more will become clear. However, I have yet to be reassured that the idea of Peak Oil is a mistake. I am not one who rubs their hands with glee at the prospect either, which frankly terrifies me, in some messianic "we are bad people, and due for our comeuppance" ecstasy. I like my little life just as it is, but I am fairly certain that the world cannot continue wasting its resources as though there is no tomorrow - that day will come eventually, and when it does we should be prepared for it. As I have noted before, we need to begin applying the brakes on the runaway train of fossil fuel consumption, while there is still time to put something else in its place. "You Need Energy to Get Energy - Time is Running Out".

"Global Warming" Caused by Natural 1,500 Year Cycle?

According to a new book "Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1500 Years", human activities are not responsible for the currently observed warming of the Earth, but a natural cycle linked to the output of the Sun, which operates over a period of 1,500 (plus or minus 500) years. We can expect the current warming trend to last for around another 200 years of the present cycle. The book by climate physicist Fred Singer and Hudson Institute economist Dennis Avery, is bound to prove controversial. I note that Fred Singer is "emeritus", which is academic speak for "retired", otherwise he might have too much to lose by voicing such heretical views in the current climate of Kyoto and targets of essential cuts in CO2 emissions that must be met (a staggering 80% by 2030) in order to "save the planet". In their "consensus" he could expect the scientific "community", on whose evidence Kyoto is based, to turn on him in fury, and that would be the end of his "peer reviewed" research funding... for good! Such things do happen in science... believe it or not. Along with other global warming "deniers" the present authors are emphatic in pointing out that reversing current trends in CO2 emissions will cost a fortune, and if there is no necessity to so act, humankind will be dealt a considerable economic dis-service by implementing wholesale nuclear power, "burying" CO2 in aquifers, in used oil-wells and at the bottom of the sea etc., along with other potentially catastrophic schemes of "geoengineering", when the money could be spent on strategies of sustainability, which, global warming or not, we must find in order to survive, certainly in those years beyond the imminent peak in world oil production. Although he didn't refer to peak oil, but voiced essentially the same argument on a cost-for-cost basis, that it may prove more expedient in terms of resources to plan for global warming, e.g. by shoring-up sea defenses, rather than making wholesale life-infrastructure changes to eliminate CO2 emissions as far as possible, in his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World", there were calls (a petition I believe) that Bjorn Lomberg should be ousted from his academic post. One is reminded of poor Galileo, who by relenting his opinions managed to preserve himself from a sentence of death, to serve a commuted life-term of house-arrest, so long as he kept quiet that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, but the Sun. Being "fired" was a more permanent affair for non-believers in the middle ages, as tied to a wooden stake. Anger has relented against Lomberg, and his book is now regarded as an acceptable work of scholarship in political science, not an anti-global warming manifesto!
Accordingly, Singer and Avery would need to garner meticulous evidence to support their claim for a 1,500 year "natural" cooling-warming cycle, and indeed it would seem they have done so. Their supporting documentation encompasses records from ancient Rome, Egypt and China; paintings housed in museums painted 12,000 years ago; tooth enamel from Viking cemeteries; analyses using the most modern technology made of ice-cores, seafloor sediments, tree rings, fossilised pollen and cave stalagmites (the ones that grow "up"!).
Singer points out that the first clue to the 1,500 year cycle came only recently, when the first cores were sampled from the Greenland ice-sheet in 1983. The cycle was too long to have been picked-up by earlier peoples without access to accurate thermometers and precise, written records. The Greenland ice-core samples show the 1,500 year cycle undulating back through a period of 250,000 years, which raises temperatures at the latitude of New York and Paris by 1 - 2 degrees C for centuries at a time, and even more at the North and South Poles, with a global average of around 0.5 degrees C. In 1987, analysis of the first Antarctic ice-core samples confirmed that the cycle extended further back, and to at least 400,000 years, spanning four ice-ages and that the effect was indeed a global phenomenon. Evidence from the undersea sediments from all six oceans, in tree ring samples taken from the northern hemisphere, in the advance and retreat of glaciers both north and south, from Greenland to New Zealand, and in stalagmites taken from every continent, including southern Africa. Pollen samples show a complete reorganisation of North America's trees and other plants over the past 14,000 years, which works out to one such change every 1,650 years. The deepest seabed sediment cores show that the cycle has been operating for at least the past million years.
So, what exactly is the cause? Observations of sunspots made over the last 400 years, along with more recent analyses of carbon and beryllium isotopes, seem to connect the cycle to variations in the Sun's radiant output (energy), as recently detected by satellite measurements. Antarctic ice samples show that there is a close correlation between temperatures and CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years, which is usually taken to imply that increased CO2 levels cause global warming. However, on closer inspection, the studies show that there is actually a lag of around 800 years between the increase in temperature and that in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. So, the heating comes first, and then the CO2 levels rise. This, say Singer and Avery, makes sense because as the oceans warm, they will release some of the CO2 which is dissolved in them into the surrounding air.
The notion of natural cycles runs counter to majority currently perceived beliefs about global warming, i.e. those that place the burden of blame squarely on the shoulders of (selfish, greedy, careless!) humankind. If the warming does indeed come first to release more CO2, we may still be in for a shock, as the greenhouse-legacy of this blanketing gas subsequently heats the Earth further still, and compounds any effects of a natural warming trend. No one knows for sure. However, such natural cycles of heating and cooling must surely be taken into account in any serious models of what the world's climate is likely to be in 50, 100 or more years hence; the predictions from which are now being used to determine or justify government policies about the future of the human race.