For as long as humankind has existed, there has always been some person or group predicting the end of the world unless "we" do X. For as long as humankind has existed, these prophets of the apocalypse have never yet been right.

 

Depends what you mean by "Armageddon". If you mean the dead rising and angels fighting in the skies, you're right, that's never happened. If you mean collapse of an economic, political, and social order, then indeed "armageddon" has happened a number of times, including a number of times because of resource depletion. See Easter Island, the Anasazi Indians, Haiti, and arguably much of Sub Saharan Africa.

 

With respect to Easter Island and the Pueblo tribes, point taken. I don't know enough about the history of Haiti to know what you're referring to, nor to what sub-Saharan African civilization you're talking about (I would, however, note that sub-Saharan Africa is still incredibly resource-rich, so I find it hard to believe that resource depletion alone collapsed any historical civilization there). However, the inapplicability of any of those as a parallel to where we are today should be immediately obvious. They were tiny (sub-Saharan Africa excepted), they were isolated, and they were economically and politically less adaptable than we are or any modern capitalist country is.

 

Haiti's problem was deforestation.  Sub Saharan Africa has alot of diamonds and gold, but that doesn't feed an exploding population.  They have very poor agricultural land- actually something all these examples have in common.  How's that impact the peak oil discussion?  Modern agriculture is extremely energy dependent, including petroleum.  We won't be able to feed 6-7 billion people without lots of it being cheaply available.  Second, most would agree that cheap abundant petroleum is so fundamental to our economy that losing it would be almost as devastating as famine. 

 

Maybe we can change the basis of our economy and agricultural production, and maybe the market can do it fast enough and easy enough that nobody will notice except for the fact that they power their cars and homes with some alternative.  I personally doubt it.

I'm a little bit more optimistic than you about market-driven alternative energy.  Tesla Motors, for example, has seen its orders stay strong even despite the collapse in gas prices (and in the portfolio values of its initial target demographic) due to the recession.  There have actually been many breakthroughs in the past two years in solar panel efficiency, capacitor density, and other building blocks of a new energy economy.  Some have been <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23108/">modest and incremental</a>, while others have been <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aJ529lsdk9HI">more futuristic than even sci-fi geeks like me can easily believe</a>.

 

However, I actually agree that the market adjustment will be somewhat painful.  I just think that any conceivable government-mandated intervention would be an order of magnitude worse.  As that Technology Review article notes, we're actually on a much better trajectory than many think right now.  This is why I call people who use peak oil as a pretext for demanding more government spending and more government power "alarmists" even though, as matter of geological inevitability, oil production will peak someday.  The issue is that it's not really that big a deal.

 

  Consider this tidbit:

 

    The United States is consuming about TWICE as much energy today as we did in 1960. 

 

    In round numbers, we have twice as many cars, twice as many refrigerators, twice as many TV's, and so on.

 

    Yet no one seems to notice the difference. You don't see widespread electrical blackouts, people starving, or anything like that. The change was absolutely dramatic, yet it was spread over so many years that no one noticed.

 

    It's like watching a tree grow. It's imperceptibly slow, but an enormous change.

 

    Well, if you believe the serious scientific projections and not the alarmists, we will be using about half the petroleum in 2030 as we are today.

 

    That is a HUGE change. Do you think anyone will notice?

 

   

When I think of "peak oil theory," however, I don't just think of some scientists engaged in a scholarly debate about supply and demand curves, the definition of "recoverable," "proven" reserves, etc.  My mind calls to mind political activists who want to use the theory as a pretext for imposing, often with heavy handed government intervention, massive (and massively unpopular) changes to our way of life--the kind that no democratic society would accept unless they were scared into silence and acquiescence.  This may be just a product of my own experience, but that has overwhelmingly been where I've encountered "peak oil" prophets.

 

Peak oil isn't a theory.  It's how all oil wells and well fields behave.  Drill them with all the best available technology that there is, and they produce on a more or less bell-shaped curve.  Production rises, peaks at a maximum production rate then either falls or plateaus for a while then falls. 

 

There's no conspiracy out there to use peak oil as "a pretext for heavy-handed government intervention".  Most experts agree that in order to have a smooth economic transition to a post-peak oil economy requires at least a 20-year lead time.  That's because there are a lot of infrastructure changes that have to occur in order to switch to other energy sources and become more efficient with energy use.  One of the things markets don't do well is provide a proactive response to something that requires such a long lead time.  That's the rub with peak oil.  It has been long predicted by the peak oil crowd that the price signals markets need to react would come too late for a smooth transition.  And, they appear to be correct.  It's now looking like we have less than 10 years. (This doesn't mean apocalypse, by the way, it just means the transition will be more difficult and more disruptive that it would have been if we had started sooner).

 

Changes are going to come as a result of peak oil whether the government does anything or not, and some of those changes are not going to be popular.  It's just reality. 

 

Like it or not, government sets some of the key conditions and rules of the marketplace by what it chooses to tax, regulate, or spend money on.  Sometimes what government does works and sometimes it doesn't, but I am tired of the market-fundamentalist theories that markets always know what's best for society.  There are things that markets do well and there are things that markets don't do well, and it's long past time that we acknowledge that. 

 

There are things that the government can do that would be helpful... like bring more balance to our transportation system, properly set the price of driving at it's true costs instead of riddling it with hidden subsidies, reduce subsidies to fossil fuels so that they are priced more closely to their true costs, etc. 

 

That's enough for now... gotta go...

 

 

 

 

 

  Consider this tidbit:

 

The United States is consuming about TWICE as much energy today as we did in 1960.  

 

In round numbers, we have twice as many cars, twice as many refrigerators, twice as many TV's, and so on.

 

Yet no one seems to notice the difference. You don't see widespread electrical blackouts, people starving, or anything like that. The change was absolutely dramatic, yet it was spread over so many years that no one noticed.

 

It's like watching a tree grow. It's imperceptibly slow, but an enormous change.

 

  Well, if you believe the serious scientific projections and not the alarmists, we will be using about half the petroleum in 2030 as we are today.

 

That is a HUGE change. Do you think anyone will notice?

 

Sure, they'll notice, the same way we can sit back now and "notice" how much the Internet has changed our lives in the past 20 years.  It's the predictions of civilization-destabilizing upheaval that I have problems believing.  Our society is always changing, and you can take almost any 20-year period from 1900 to today and find that the Americans at the end of said period would barely recognize the country of 20 years earlier.  However, like you said, the change was gradual enough that it didn't stretch people's adaptive capabilities beyond their breaking points, so one only really appreciates the celerity of these changes in hindsight.

 

I'm guessing peak oil will prompt changes in line with historical trends.  Sure, we'll be using different fuels in 20-30 years.  In fact, as pointed out in some of the links I've been posting in this thread, that transition has already begun.  Therefore, there's no real reason to rock the boat, but I get the feeling that a lot of those beating the drums (no pun intended) of peak oil want to rock the boat anyway.

... but I get the feeling that a lot of those beating the drums (no pun intended) of peak oil want to rock the boat anyway.

 

I don't think that most vocal activists are attempting to rock the boat just for frivolous or self-serving reasons. Rather, I see them reacting to what they (and I) perceive as a widespread unawareness, even denial in some cases, that the U.S. needs to be moving proactively toward changes in our lifestyles and infrastructure in order to adapt as smoothly as possible to the inevitable changes in our energy sources and availability.

 

I agree with gildone that the necessary changes are best not left to markets. The behavior of markets reflects the behavior of the country's demographic, and like the great majority of Americans, our markets aren't accustomed to adapting proactively to long-term projections.

... but I get the feeling that a lot of those beating the drums (no pun intended) of peak oil want to rock the boat anyway.

 

I don't think that most vocal activists are attempting to rock the boat just for frivolous or self-serving reasons. Rather, I see them reacting to what they (and I) perceive as a widespread unawareness, even denial in some cases, that the U.S. needs to be moving proactively toward changes in our lifestyles and infrastructure in order to adapt as smoothly as possible to the inevitable changes in our energy sources and availability.

 

I agree with gildone that the necessary changes are best not left to markets. The behavior of markets reflects the behavior of the country's demographic, and like the great majority of Americans, our markets aren't accustomed to adapting proactively to long-term projections.

 

Well, then, this is exactly what I'm talking about.  The market is already forcing adjustments; politics would take forever to do it, because almost all of politics is ultimately about making massive numbers of people do things they don't want to do.  I've posted numerous links in this thread showing the first wisps of the storm of change that the market is already poised to bring.  Once proven in concept, like a building that seems to rise quickly after sitting for a long time as an empty lot, the changes will happen with startling alacrity, if they follow historical trends.

 

There is no need or call to be skeptical of the market, and no need for "proactive" (if by this you mean "government-mandated" changes in our lifestyle).  The market is the product of millions of individual decision makers responding to relative scarcity by voting with their dollars.  Of course this means it reflects "the behavior of the country's demographic," but then again, doesn't our politics as well?  The difference is that the market doesn't involve 51% (or less, if a minority interest can capture a regulatory agency on a single issue that that special interest cares about) of the population ramming something down the throats of of the rest of the country.

 

As to our markets not being "accustomed" to adapting to long-term changes, can you give me a single example?  It's short-term changes that markets have trouble with: Hurricane Katrina collapsed long-established logistics infrastructure and made delivering goods and services to a demanding market challenging.

 

I simply cannot understand how someone could believe that adapting "as smoothly as possible" would be best accomplished by the artificial and coercive power of government intervention rather than the natural invisible hand of the free market.  I try to keep an open mind and understand where other people are coming from with their views, but I simply cannot wrap my mind around this.  If we're talking about reducing existing government intervention (i.e., fewer highway dollars), that's one thing.  If we're talking about affirmatively punishing producers and consumers of fossil fuels (carbon tax, cap-and-trade), restricting the growth of cities by edict (urban growth boundaries), etc., I just can't understand that.  The gradual price increases of 20+ years of increasingly expensive energy will gradually shift patterns of land use and energy use through natural market processes.  Government attempting to be "proactive" means deliberately making the adaption not "as smooth as possible;" it means, to many here, unless I'm wildly misreading the Zeitgeist of this board, making the changes as sudden and dramatic as possible, and dismissing the protests of anyone hurt by such sudden changes as nothing but entrenched ignorance.  That's going to be a lesson in frustration for all sides: for one thing, in the political realm, you're heavily outnumbered, which means the most likely outcome is that you perennially lose every battle you wage on this fight until the market has already had time to work--politics can then change to catch up to reality, as is usually the case.  In the meantime, you'll be jaded by defeat and vast numbers of people will be turned off by the intrusiveness and sanctimoniousness of advocates of the urban lifestyle.  Moreover, if by some skilled political legerdemain you get to push through the kind of restrictions on land and energy use often advocated by peak oil alarmists, you're going to hurt a lot of people and make even more enemies, all unnecessarily, because the market would have made the changes for you, and better than you, if you'd just been patient enough to let it work.

 

Solar is approaching grid parity and will likely reach it by the middle of the next decade--the end of the next decade at the latest.  At the same time, capacitor technology is maturing and electric cars in production now (at the high end) can go more than 200 miles on a charge and charge in four hours.  The market has only just begun to scratch the beginnings of long-term improvement trends in energy density and power-to-weight ratios.  Silicon, not oil, will become the new limiting energy resource, and we're a long way from peak silicon.  The next 20 years will see dramatic changes in our land and energy use patterns even if urbanist proselytizers do nothing.

 

The key difference is that one very plausible scenario that free people might choose is to stay in the suburbs, just with homes largely powered by solar panels and cars charging in their garages overnight rather than filling at the gas station.  Depending on how you restrict land use, you might foreclose an avenue of technological and societal development that would have been beneficial.  We simply do not have the wisdom as a society to make these kinds of decisions for our descendants in advance.  It is the height of hubris to assume that we actually know the future that well.  The difference is that free market advocates admit this; peak oil advocates are the ones in denial.

IIRC the refining capacity (to gasoline) was/is the bottleneck in that

 

I don't think so.

 

That article is current, I was mainly referring to the gas price spikes around Katrina (summer of 05); which was the post I responded to.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN1641107120090716

 

    "Peak oil advocates are the ones in denial."

 

    What is a peak oil advocate?

 

    Peak oil is a model that describes the production and consumption of petroleum over time. Peak oil does not have an agenda.

 

    A streetcar advocate, high speed rail advocate, health care reform advocate, environmental advocate, etc, is someone who has an agenda.

 

    Nice post, by the way.

 

 

Well, then, this is exactly what I'm talking about.  The market is already forcing adjustments; politics would take forever to do it, because almost all of politics is ultimately about making massive numbers of people do things they don't want to do.

 

Oh really?  People don't want Social Security?  People don’t want public schools and parks and public roads? People don't want consumer protection laws?  People don't want any regulation at all of the environment so we can go back to the days when we were like China is now?  (Just to name a few things...)

 

I've posted numerous links in this thread showing the first wisps of the storm of change that the market is already poised to bring.  Once proven in concept, like a building that seems to rise quickly after sitting for a long time as an empty lot, the changes will happen with startling alacrity, if they follow historical trends.

 

I didn't say the market wasn't going to bring any changes.  I said in the instance of peak oil, most experts (who have devoted considerable time and effort studying the problem, including some that tend to be pro market) are saying the market won't bring the changes fast enough.  As I explained, those who have studied this in detail agree that a smooth transition requires a minimum of 20 years.  We’re at 10 or less.  6 according to some oil companies.  I don’t think you appreciate the scale of infrastructure changes that are required to adapt to an energy system that doesn’t revolve around oil.  It will take decades to change.

 

There is no need or call to be skeptical of the market, and no need for "proactive" (if by this you mean "government-mandated" changes in our lifestyle).  The market is the product of millions of individual decision makers responding to relative scarcity by voting with their dollars.  Of course this means it reflects "the behavior of the country's demographic," but then again, doesn't our politics as well?  The difference is that the market doesn't involve 51% (or less, if a minority interest can capture a regulatory agency on a single issue that that special interest cares about) of the population ramming something down the throats of of the rest of the country.

 

As to our markets not being "accustomed" to adapting to long-term changes, can you give me a single example?  It's short-term changes that markets have trouble with: Hurricane Katrina collapsed long-established logistics infrastructure and made delivering goods and services to a demanding market challenging.

 

We’re already on a short lead time with peak oil, the market didn’t perceive it when it should have.  The market is bringing a few technologies forward, but it is not preparing us for a smooth transition.  Another example would be that many fisheries around the globe have begun to crash.  This is a problem that has been known for nearly 20 years, but that didn’t stopped “the market” from deploying bottom trawlers to “increase” the catch.  Bottom trawlers are hastening this long known problem with fisheries, but “the market” hasn’t stopped using them.  There is no perception in “the market” that fisheries are a finite resource.  Timber production is dropping in timberlands that have harvested multiple generations of trees.  This is what happens when timberlands aren’t managed properly.  The way “the market” has managed timberland is to maximize profits now, not maximize the productivity of timberlands for the long haul, because that means smaller profits now.  The Oglalla Aquifer under the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas has been dropping for decades.  The solution of “the market” hasn’t been to manage the aquifer sustainably but rather to just drill deeper wells and mine the groundwater that much faster. There is no perception that the aquifer is finite.  The solution “the market” wants for looming water problems west of the Mississippi isn’t market based at all... it’s is to spend public money to divert water from the Great Lakes.

 

I simply cannot understand how someone could believe that adapting "as smoothly as possible" would be best accomplished by the artificial and coercive power of government intervention rather than the natural invisible hand of the free market.  I try to keep an open mind and understand where other people are coming from with their views, but I simply cannot wrap my mind around this. 

 

You’re obviously a market fundamentalist.  That’s fine.  You’re welcome to your opinion. But, the facts bear out that while there are things that markets do well, there are also things they don’t do well.  I’ve given some examples above, and there are more in the remainder of my post.

 

If we're talking about affirmatively punishing producers and consumers of fossil fuels (carbon tax, cap-and-trade)

 

Again, there is a market failure here.  “The market” has not taken into account the cost of screwing up the Earth’s natural carbon cycle– which is exactly what we have done. 

 

Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade are ways to make fossil fuels bear their true cost because the market has failed to do it, and we are getting climate change as a result (Incidentally, cap-and-trade, championed by the administration of George H.W. Bush, was very successfully used to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions in the 1990s, and it worked).

 

“The market” has also failed to recognize a host of energy efficiency measures (amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars of savings annually) that could have been profitably implemented years ago.  Yet “the market” falsely assumed that if there were any profitable energy efficiency measures out there, they would have been implemented by now.  Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has written extensively about this over the years.  There are lots of papers at RMI’s website (www.rmi.org) and lots of interviews with Lovins can be found on the web (both written and video) I suggest you do some research in this area, if you want to learn more. 

 

One of the things the market is notorious for is externalizing as many costs as possible and foisting as many of those costs as possible on the public and the public sector.  “The market” has wrongly assumed that the environment has no economic value other than for the extraction of resources, and in various and sometimes subtle ways has wrongly assumed resources are infinite.  It assigns no value to vibrant communities and healthy families, which require, among other things, that people earn living wages.  “The market”instead exploits people and pushes hard to drive down wages.  “The market” assigns no value to clean air and clean water, and if it wasn’t for government involvement in these areas, the Cuyahoga River would still be catching fire.

 

“The market” assigns dollar values to things, but not all things are properly quantified by dollars.  For example, good teachers and qualified paramedics, firefighters, and policeman provide more intrinsic value to society than professional athletes and movie stars.  Yet, “the market” assigns far higher dollar values to athletes and movie stars.

 

The gradual price increases of 20+ years of increasingly expensive energy will gradually shift patterns of land use and energy use through natural market processes.

But, as the experts in the peak oil crowd predicted, as the peak is approached, we would not  see gradual price increases, but price spikes followed by economic downturns and temporary drops in price followed by spikes again.  So far, it looks like they are right. 

 

because the market would have made the changes for you, and better than you, if you'd just been patient enough to let it work.

 

What you have been saying and how you  are saying it amounts to “the market will work because I say it will”.

 

The next 20 years will see dramatic changes in our land and energy use patterns even if urbanist proselytizers do nothing.

 

Only if the government acts by changing its current policies toward land use, energy, and transportation.

 

The key difference is that one very plausible scenario that free people might choose is to stay in the suburbs, just with homes largely powered by solar panels and cars charging in their garages overnight rather than filling at the gas station. 

 

Very few people are saying the suburbs should go away.  You’re also assuming that we will be able to do a one-for-one switch from oil to other forms of energy to keep all the cars running as they are now.  That’s not likely.  Not only is oil is unique in its concentration of energy for use as a transportation fuel, but all the other technologies are in some way oil dependent whether it’s petrochemicals or oil-intensive resource extraction techniques necessary to mine at all of the metals and minerals and the energy intensive methods necessary to process them.  Serious researchers of peak oil continue to look at the energy returned on energy invested for non-conventional oil and alternative energies and technologies.  The numbers keep showing that we are going to have to learn to get by on less energy than we are used to.  That’s going to translate in to changes in how we inhabit the landscape and how we remain mobile that are different than what we are used to. 

 

Depending on how you restrict land use, you might foreclose an avenue of technological and societal development that would have been beneficial. 

 

I have news for you... land use is already restricted by zoning codes that have been replicated across the vast majority of the country that make anything but automobile-centric sprawl illegal. So, what you are in effect saying is that you oppose loosening of those restrictions to make other forms of land use legal.

 

We simply do not have the wisdom as a society to make these kinds of decisions for our descendants in advance.  It is the height of hubris to assume that we actually know the future that well.  The difference is that free market advocates admit this; peak oil advocates are the ones in denial.

 

It is the height of hubris to assume we are too dumb to plan for the future.  It is precisely our failure to make decisions for our descendants in advance that we are up to our eyeballs in both public and private debt and expecting them to pay it back.  It is the height of hubris to, even at this late hour, fail to recognize that fossil fuels are finite resource and that they should have been treated with more respect long ago.  It is the height of hubris to steal from our descendants by spending the Earth’s natural capital faster than it can be replenished.  It is the height of hubris to knowingly continue to screw up the very environment that sustains our lives and from which we have, in one way or another, derived all of our economic wealth.

 

"Peak oil advocates are the ones in denial."

 

What is a peak oil advocate?

 

I think it's safe to say gildone is a peak oil advocate.  A peak oil advocate is one who says that (a) it's not merely an empirically observable trend, it's a looming crisis; (b) the market is incapable of addressing said crisis; and © government intervention now rather than later is imperative to address said crisis.  In other words, it's someone who exaggerates the economic future to demand power in the political present: repent ye sinners, or tomorrow ye shall suffer.

 

gildone: I'm not a market fundamentalist, though I'm more economically libertarian than statist.  I used to have visceral debates with the objectivists club at Ohio State--real market fundamentalists--that make us seem nearly allies by comparison.  I just don't see sufficient evidence to justify the conclusion that (a) we're going to have to use less energy, and (b) since it's going to happen anyway, government might as well ram it down our throats now.  The great promise of alternative energy isn't that we can consume less energy, it's that we can consume more.  The amount of sunlight hitting this planet and the amount of energy contained in earth's winds and core are absolutely prodigious.  Given that the natural inclination of peak oil advocates is to (a) reject market economics almost entirely, and (b) advocate forcing people to use less energy when real progress would be enabling them to use more, I oppose peak oil advocates and frequently invoke economic theory to do it.  However, a true market fundamentalist wouldn't need examples to support his theory, just like a true religious fundamentalist doesn't need examples of the supernatural to support his faith.  Throughout this thread, I've been posting links to MIT's Technology Review, to the technology sections of mainstream media outlets, etc. to support what I've been saying: the market is already acting, whereas your political agenda is barely moving even with those most hostile to the free market utterly dominating the federal legislature as well as that of many states.  The latter is true because there are people like me out there who find the notion of being forced into an economic straitjacket at the urging of peak oil alarmists abhorrent, whereas we not only accept but celebrate the technological advances that are going to actually drive America forward (literally and figuratively) in the 21st century.

 

I think it's safe to say gildone is a peak oil advocate.  A peak oil advocate is one who says that (a) it's not merely an empirically observable trend, it's a looming crisis; (b) the market is incapable of addressing said crisis; and © government intervention now rather than later is imperative to address said crisis.  In other words, it's someone who exaggerates the economic future to demand power in the political present: repent ye sinners, or tomorrow ye shall suffer.

 

Just because I acknowledge that peak oil is an occurring trend and that I acknowledge that, given the time frame we are working under, that problems with the transition are going to result, doesn't translate into me saying it's some sort of world-ending crisis,  "repent ye sinner"  blah blah

 

gildone: I'm not a market fundamentalist, though I'm more economically libertarian than statist.  I used to have visceral debates with the objectivists club at Ohio State--real market fundamentalists--that make us seem nearly allies by comparison. 

 

The manner in which you have been carrying out this discussion is one of a market fundamentalist because your responses continue to consist primarily of hyperbole and repetition of ideology.  I've been providing a point by point response to you that includes a mixture of facts and rational analysis.  However, you just ignore and/or dismiss everything I say without any sort of thoughtful, reasoned response.

 

I just don't see sufficient evidence to justify the conclusion that (a) we're going to have to use less energy,

 

How about being more specific here?  Otherwise you're just saying "because I said so". 

 

(b) since it's going to happen anyway, government might as well ram it down our throats now. 

 

You keep equating any sort of government action with "ramming it down our throats".  That's the voice of an ideologue. 

 

The great promise of alternative energy isn't that we can consume less energy, it's that we can consume more.  The amount of sunlight hitting this planet and the amount of energy contained in earth's winds and core are absolutely prodigious.

 

I tried to explain to you that there is a cadre of people out there who are studying the energy returned on energy invested for all the various alt.energy and technologies and what their conclusions are.  You just ignored it with no specifics of your own.  What was it that you said below about fundamentalists not needing to provide specifics? 

 

Given that the natural inclination of peak oil advocates is to (a) reject market economics almost entirely, (b) advocate forcing people to use less energy when real progress would be enabling them to use more, I oppose peak oil advocates and frequently invoke economic theory to do it.  However, a true market fundamentalist wouldn't need examples to support his theory, just like a true religious fundamentalist doesn't need examples of the supernatural to support his faith.

 

You obviously haven't read what I've been saying very closely because I don't reject market economics entirely.  I provided you with specific examples where market failures have occurred and are occurring, including with energy, but what has your response been?  Nothing.  Nothing except saying the equivalent of "you're wrong because markets always work and markets always work because I say they always work".  You asked for specifics, I provided some, and you ignored them.  Therefore, while you may not be a market fundamentalist, and I'll accept that, you have been responding like one in our discussion. 

 

Throughout this thread, I've been posting links to MIT's Technology Review, to the technology sections of mainstream media outlets, etc. to support what I've been saying: the market is already acting,

 

I have acknowledged that there is some market reaction occurring, but somehow you keep ignoring this too.  All your examples prove is that there is a level of market participation.  It does not prove that the level of market participation is occurring fast enough to enable a smooth transition, which is the problem that those who have been and continue to spend considerable time studying the peak oil problem are saying. 

 

I hate to say it, but you also appear to be ignorant of the fact that a lot of your so-called "market reaction" that is occurring in no small part due to government action:  subsidies to solar, and wind, tax credits for energy efficiency upgrades to buildings, states changing the regulatory structure of electricity to mandate things like net metering and requiring utilities to pay a fair price for the electricity being generated from rooftop solar panels, R&D money and tax incentives from the federal government and the states (such as the Third Frontier program in Ohio).  I think you need to go here:  http://www.dsireusa.org/ and look over the extensive list of federal and state incentives that are pushing the market. 

 

whereas your political agenda is barely moving even with those most hostile to the free market utterly dominating the federal legislature as well as that of many states.

 

It's moving faster at the municipal level in many cities (including Cleveland) and the state level in several states.  The fact aside that there has been federal action that has been pushing the "market reaction" along as I stated above, the problems at the federal level with getting anything done are more complex than just "the government can't do anything".  There are some key reasons for this, as I see it, but this isn't the thread for that discussion. 

 

Suffice it to say, when you can come up with some specific, factual and rational counter arguments, rather than virtually ignoring my specific points and repeating your ideology, I'll be happy to continue the discussion.  Otherwise, I can see that I've done is waste my time trying to have a reasonable discussion with you.

 

 

 

...And just as I get frustrated with everyone thinking more mass transit is the only answer (yes, this really is KJP). The greatest factor impacting oil consumption is land use, although transportation and land use go hand in hand. If all of your basic needs are within a 5- to 15-minute walk or bike ride, with other needs/destinations farther away accessible by train, trolley, bus, taxi or flexcar, then I would think our nation's per-capita oil consumption rate would be more similar to that of Europe. If that were the case, U.S. oil consumption would drop by more than half.....

 

Consider this chart:

 

                      2006 Est.      Oil Consumed      Per-Capita

                    Population          in 2004        Consumption

 

Germany        82.4 million          2.6mbpd            0.032

France          60.9 million          2.0mbpd            0.033

UK                60.6 million          1.9mbpd            0.031

Italy              58.1 million          1.9mbpd            0.033

Spain            40.4 million          1.6mbpd            0.040

Europe Avg    302.4 million        10.0mbpd            0.033

USA            298.4 million        20.7mbpd          0.069

 

Also, note that the U.S. is still the world's third-largest oil producer (we were largest as recently as the mid-1990s), as we produce between 8-9 million barrels of oil per day. Imagine being able to once again run your entire nation's transportation system on your own oil! If U.S. cities and transportation systems were designed like those in Europe, the U.S. would consume less than 10 million barrels of oil per day. We would still have to import a little bit (and increasingly again, since U.S. oil production is declining), but where would you rather get your oil -- from Canada and Mexico, or Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Nigeria and Venezuala?

 

Problem is, it would probably take 50 years or so to completely redesign our cities and transportation systems. And we don't have anywhere close to that much time.....

FYI......

 

http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/19/markets/eia_oil/oil_guzzling_restyled.gif

 

http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/19/markets/eia_oil/oil_production_10.gif

MONDAY, AUGUST 31, 2009

FEATURE 

 

Drip, Dripping Away

By KOPIN TAN 

 

America's thirst for gasoline might never return to its 2007 peak. That could be bad news for oil refiners focused on the U.S., such as Tesoro.

 

http://online.barrons.com/article_email/SB125150832505768603-lMyQjAxMDI5NTMxMDUzMDA4Wj.html?page=sp#

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/SuperModels/CouldOilPlungeTo65ABarrel.aspx

 

$65 OIL IS COMING (MAYBE)

 

A top analyst expects crude prices to start plummeting. If you don't believe it, you're not the only one, and a few stocks look good if you're in the skeptics' camp.

 

By Jon Markman

 

If you're frustrated over the high cost of gasoline at the pump, don't trade in your Hummer for a Vespa just yet: A leading energy analyst is telling clients these days to prepare for crude oil to retreat back below $65 per barrel over the next three years.

...

I saw that article, considered posting it here, but read it first and then decided against it. 'Nuff said.

Why oil won't fall below $100

With a surge in the price of global commodities, it's costing more to produce a barrel of oil than ever before.

By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer

Last Updated: August 21, 2008: 3:43 PM EDT

 

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Last week, falling oil prices looked unstoppable. The last few days have seen a halt in that slide. Still with prices well below the record set in July and a shaky world economy threatening demand, the question remains: How low can oil go?

 

Many analysts say oil is unlikely to go much lower than $100 a barrel, and it has to do with the rising cost of production.

 

Find this article at:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/21/news/economy/oil_price_floor/index.htm?cnn=yes

 

Any follow-up from this author?

No, but there were plenty of articles last winter when oil fell into the 30s that the crisis was over. Other prognosticators said prices would fall even further, down to as low as $10 per barrel. Short blips in the overall price trend are almost impossible to predict, but they sure make for fun reading!

Over a lot of the last year the price of oil and the price of the dollar has moved roughly in concert - the lower the dollar the higher the price of oil - because it is priced in dollars at this point. The pain could really come if it starts being in Renminbi and U.S. devalues the dollar to deal with the massive debt we've got coming.

 

Oil Spin

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/09/04/oil_spin?page=full

Matthew Simmons, Foreign Policy

Last week, four of the world's most outspoken oil aficionados waded into the controversy of peak oil, publishing articles packed with myth and distortion. This "Gang of Four" all claimed the issue was silly, moot, or simply a myth. The four pieces were Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin's seven-page article in Foreign Policy, energy analyst Michael Lynch's three column op-ed in the New York Times, analyst Edward Morse's essay in Foreign Affairs, and scholar Amy Jaffe's paper published by the Baker Institute at Rice University.

 

Here is a quick synopsis of the views expressed by all four writers:

I call this thread "Temporary" until the original gets cleaned to conform to the new article posting standards, then the two can be merged...

 

gildone, you are under the assumption that everyone wants to live in a city and wants to take public transit.

 

Uh, I neither said or implied any such thing.  I'm just saying that it looks like no matter how much people want to believe otherwise, it's looking like circumstances are going to force a certain amount of change.  How large a scale of change that's going to be, I can't say, but so far it looks to end up being bigger than most want to admit. 

 

In actuality, everyone doesn't. How do you think we will be getting our food to the tables if we just dump the auto?  Haul produce via mass transit? Load it all on trains? What about the people living in the small towns? How do you think they will get from town to town, or from town to their neighbors house miles away? Horse and buggy? 

 

 

I never said or implied that the auto should be "dumped".  The problem is whether or not there will be enough energy available and produced in a sustainable way to keep things running as they are now.  It doesn't look like today's level of auto dependence will be able to be supported without the abundant, cheap oil we are so accustomed to. 

 

I'm not for sure what you are suggesting here. Peak Oil is something that will eventually happen, given that oil is not an infinite resource. No one is debating that. But the scare tactics -- yes, it is a scare tactic -- include stating that oil will run out in 5, 10 or 15 years.

 

Tell me where I have EVER said that "oil would run out"?  I'm really tired of repeating here and in other threads that peak oil is not and never has been about running out!  It's about how much and how fast you can get it out of the ground relative to demand and what our current infrastructure set-up requires and at what price. 

 

The same thing was said during the oil embargo of the 1970s, only to die down when peak oil didn't occur. And it started up again during the mass speculation of the 2000s, only to die down when peak oil didn't occur. And it didn't occur on both occasions because oil wasn't running out. It was artificially increased in the 1970s due to OPEC. It was artificially increased in the 2000s due to rampant speculation on the futures. Not because of peak oil.

 

We're not talking about the 70s or any other time.  I repeat again:  LOTS of people have been spending a lot of time over the past decade pouring through field production data, discovery rates, decline rates and doing the same for coal natural gas, and renewables.  They've been studying the EROI (energy returned on energy invested) issues and more.  They've been providing lots of specific information and reams of data.  The optimists never provide any specifics as I said in my previous post. 

 

A new technology will eventually be mass produced so that it phases in a replacement for the gasoline engine. To believe this will not happen is to abandon all faith in free and fast movement.

 

Your statement bring up the exact problem that I've been talking about:  The optimist never base their arguments on anything specific.  It's always about some new, unnamed technology is going to emerge and "faith".  As I've said, there is a lot of hard data on the side you disagree with.  If you want to make a compelling argument... find some hard data to support your case and tell me where I can find it. I'm perfectly willing to listen.  But I won't listen to just  "belief" and "faith".  It's not satisfactory, and it's not a wise thing on which to plan for the future. 

 

 

Ram23

  You're completely ignoring the amount of embodied energy invested in our infrastructure in your assumptions.  The hard data is every suburb and small town in America.  Tackling the food vs fuel debate, maximizing efficiency, and solving problems with the development of renewables are all much easier than moving a majority of the population into new locations that can utilize mass transit.

 

No I'm not.  All I'm saying is that it looks like it will be difficult to keep our current automobile based system running at levels we are accustomed to, irrespective of whether or not we build or are able to build enough alternative infrastructure.  You appear to be assuming that we can easily start plugging in renewables and have everything run the same as it is now.    We're going to use biofuels and renwables (I never said we wouldn't).  But, the problem is that it's not looking like they will support the raw energy use levels we have now with fossil fuels.  They only way they will work is if we become A LOT more energy efficient in every aspect of our economy.  That's the only way renewables can work. That's going to require change, whether we like it or not.  I'm not saying the world is going to end and everything is going to fall apart like a few people seem to think.  Some changes will be easy, some not so easy, and some down right difficult, but it will occur as a matter of necessity.

 

There are plenty of other reasons to start making changes to our infrastructure and plan for the future.  We don't need peak oil as an excuse, but that doesn't make it any less real.  And, it's not a bunch of crackpots cooking this stuff up.  The US Defense Department acknowledges and is aware of the problem.  So do at least 3 oil companies, the Energy Information Administration (which very recently changed its stance over the past year from one with very optimistic production forecasts to one that is much more in the ball park of the peak oil crowd.  The International Energy Agency has even revised its production forecasts downward.  These are hardly crackpots. The rosiest forecasts are now 2030 when not much more than a year ago they were 2040.  Most are in the 2015-2020 range with price spikes occurring by 2012 or sooner, unless the economy really crashes.  Will it mean apocalypse and the end of the world? I don't think so, but will it mean that we will have to make changes?  Yes.  It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

 

Edit by Sherman Cahal: Removed "temporary" from title. No use in bringing a non-UrbanOhio core topic back.

Lots more cleaning left to do. In the meantime, the graphs and graphics at the following story are worth seeing....

 

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5821

 

Peak oil before 2020 a 'significant risk', say experts

David Strahan, The Ecologist

A new report highlights how woefully unprepared the Government is for a looming peak in oil production

 

There is a 'significant risk' that conventional oil production will peak before 2020, and forecasts that delay the event beyond 2030 are based on assumptions that are 'at best optimistic and at worst implausible'.

 

So says a major new report that puts the excitement over recent ‘giant’ oil discoveries into perspective and directly contradicts the British government’s position. It also warns that failure to recognise the threat of peak oil could undermine efforts to combat climate change.

 

The report, entitled 'Global Oil Depletion: An assessment of the evidence for a near-term peak in global oil production', comes from the UK Energy Research Centre, an independent group funded by the Research Councils, whose mission is to resolve contentious technical issues and deliver clear guidance for policymakers.

 

This report is significant because it is the first dispassionate academic attempt to reconcile the highly polarised debate over whether and when oil supplies will start to decline, yet its conclusions chime with a growing number of recent forecasts that warn of an early peak in production...

 

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/333587/peak_oil_before_2020_a_significant_risk_say_experts.html

 

 

Era of cheap, easy oil is over, warns study

Louise Gray, The Telegraph

The exact date of "peak oil" - when the amount of oil being pumped out of the ground every day reaches its highest point before beginning an inexorable decline - has been hotly debated for decades. Environmentalists have tended to warn oil could run out at any moment, while oil companies insist there are plently more oil fields yet to be discovered.

 

The most recent estimation from the International Energy Agency, that advises Governments around the world, said conventional oil would not peak until after 2030.

 

However an authoriative new study from the Government-funded UK Energy Research Council called this prediction "at best optimistic and at worst implausible". The peer-reviewed research looked at 500 studies from around the world and took into account the difficulty of accessing new oil fields as well as growing demand. It predicted oil will begin running out before 2030 and there is a "significant risk" peak oil will be reached before 2020...

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6269455/Era-of-cheap-easy-oil-is-over-warns-study.html

Published Nov 12 2009 by ASPO-USA, Archived Nov 12 2009

The Oil Situation Is Really Bad

by Dave Cohen

 

On the eve of the International Energy Agency’s release of its annual World Energy Outlook (WEO), a whistleblower at the IEA claims the agency “has been deliberately underplaying a looming [oil] shortage for fear of triggering panic buying” in the world markets. As the young fan said to “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, who was wrongly convicted of helping to throw the 1919 World Series, but knew the fix was in, say it ain’t so, Joe.

 

Ah, but apparently it is so. Another dose of disillusionment for the naive. A second Guardian informant went so far as to say the situation is really bad—

 

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

 

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organization’s latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies…

 

A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organization was that it was “imperative not to anger the Americans” but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. “We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad,” he added.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50688

 

READ IEA'S WEO REPORT AT:

http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/

 

READ THE GUARDIAN ARTICLE AT:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/peak-oil-international-energy-agency#history-byline

 

Please note the area in pink. That is called Hope (the whistleblowers say it's worse than that!). And as military tacticians emphasize, "Hope is not a plan"........

 

 

Here’s another, more dramatic view of the same data from IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka’s presentation to the press on November 10, 2009. Wow....

Here is a letter to the editor of the Guardian from peak oil expert Colin Campbell with a few paragraphs from that article quoted below.....

 

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5970#more

 

Briefly, Regular Conventional Oil peaked in 2005. The shortfall was made good by expensive oil mainly from deepwater fields and Canadian tarsands, which led to rising prices. This trend was spotted by shrewd traders who started buying contracts on the Futures Market, while the industry maintained high levels of storage, watching it appreciate in value at no cost or effort. The rising prices also delivered a flood of petrodollars to the Middle East where it still costs on average about $10 to produce a barrel. The surplus was in turn partly returned to Western financial institutions, contributing to their instability. The surge in price reached extreme levels in mid 2008, approaching $150 a barrel, which prompted the shrewd traders to start selling short on the Futures Market and for the industry to start draining their tanks before they lost value. The high prices in parallel triggered an economic recession which dampened demand causing prices to fall back to 2005 levels before edging up to around $75 today.

 

It is more difficult to evaluate the Non-Conventional oils, comprising tarsands and heavy oils, deepwater oil, Polar oil and Natural Gas Liquids, but the above graph suggests that the peak of all categories was passed in 2008. A debate rages as to the precise date of overall peak but rather misses the point when what matters is the vision of long decline on the other side of it.

 

Given the central role of oil in the modern economy, the peak of production promises to be a turning point of historical magnitude. It seems that banks have been lending more than they had on deposit, confident that Tomorrow’s Economic Growth was collateral for Today’s Debt, without recognising that the expansion was fuelled by cheap oil-based energy. The Governments are now printing yet more money under Keynesian principles in the hope of restoring past prosperity, which may meet with a brief success. But if it does, it would stimulate the demand for oil that would again soon breach the supply limits, leading to another price shock and an even worse consequent economic depression. In fact, today 28 billion barrels a year support a world population on 6.7 billion people, but by 2050 the supply will have fallen to a level able to support less than half that number in their present way of life.

 

  ^---- That's a well-written letter.

 

 

Peak Oil Reality: Industry Experts Offer Growing Drumbeat of Supply Warnings (press release)

by ASPO-USA

 

Newly-released videotaped remarks reinforce statements by senior petroleum industry officials about looming world oil supply constraints

 

DENVER, Nov. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Groups and individuals speaking out about forthcoming world oil supply challenges are frequently stereotyped as a fringe element with little knowledge about the oil industry. But their warnings are increasingly supported by some surprising allies: senior petroleum industry officials, consultants and analysts. Call these serious-minded critics the Harsh Realists.

 

Most prominent are CEO's from several large oil companies. Christophe de Margerie, CEO of France's Total SA, said earlier this year, "world oil production may plateau below 90 million barrels a day (mb/day)" -- marginally more supply than today's 85 mb/day rate. Last month, CEO's James Mulva (ConocoPhillips) and John Hess (Hess Corp.), sounded similar warnings, though with less specificity about the numbers, at the Oil & Money Conference in London. At ASPO-USA's October conference in Denver, Ray Leonard, CEO of Hyperdynamics Corp., said, "world oil was nearing peak oil at 90 mb/day, and that isn't changed by recent events."...

 

... "There is not enough new capacity coming on line, within say the next five to six years, to make up for global declines. And that's assuming a very moderate level of declines." For groups that remain in fundamental denial about upcoming world oil supply constraints, Husseini said, " these centers of information or knowledge that try to pacify people -- telling them there is no challenge, with good intentions -- are probably compromising the solutions. They're not helping."

 

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50826

You can post the whole thing here if you want. PRNewswire and USNewswire are press release distribution services. They want us to post these.

And you thought Americans were enthusiastic in supporting the war effort....

 

Dec. 1, 1942: Mandatory Gas Rationing, Lots of Whining

By Tony Long  November 30, 2009 

 

 

....Mandatory gasoline rationing had been in effect in the eastern United States since May 1942, but a voluntary program in other parts of the country had proven unsuccessful.

 

The Baruch Rubber Report, presented to President Franklin Roosevelt on Sept. 1, 1942, concluded that the United States was “a have-not nation” when it came to rubber. Meeting the military’s enormous needs would be nearly impossible if the civilians at home didn’t cut out nonessential driving to conserve on tire wear.

 

The best way to achieve that was to make it more difficult for people to use their cars. And the best way to do that was to limit the amount of gasoline an individual could purchase.

 

Proving it could remain obstinate even in the face of a national crisis, Congress balked at imposing nationwide gas rationing. Forcing Americans to curtail their driving would be bad for business, many legislators argued. They evidently feared voter backlash more than they did Hitler or Hirohito.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/11/1201world-war-2-gasoline-rationing

Whether the oil supply constraint is geological, geopolitical or both, we must reduce our dependence on the stuff QUICKLY......

 

Mexico Oil Output to Decline Sharply, Barclays Says

 

(Bloomberg) -- Mexicos oil output may decline sharply next year as state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos enters a sixth year of falling production, Barclays Capital said.

 

Output may drop 8.9 percent in 2010 from this year, Helima Croft and other analysts said in a note to clients today. Mexico, which pumped 2.607 million barrels a day of oil through October, may see Pemexs output fall to 2.374 million barrels, according to Bloomberg calculations using Barclays estimate.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=aEvyqrFff1os

 

 

 

Iran threatens to halt oil exports

From correspondents at The Wall Street Journal From: NewsCore December 02, 2009 5:56AM

 

IRAN'S oil minister today warned world powers Iran may stop exporting crude oil if economic sanctions continue to be enforced on the Islamic republic.

 

"Iran is one of the world's major oil producers and any cut in Iran's supply of crude will, undoubtedly, cause prices to surge," the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Masoud Mirkazemi as saying.

 

Fears of supply disruptions tied to international tensions with Iran, the second largest oil exporter in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), have long sent jitters in oil markets. Last year, crude prices rocketed to a record $US147 a barrel after reported threats by Israel to bomb Iran.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/iran-threatens-to-halt-oil-exports/story-e6freuyi-1225805977089

Abiotic oil-

 

"A group of Swedish researchers have managed to prove that fossils from animals and plants are not necessary for the creation of crude oil and natural gas.

Energy expert Vladimir Kutcherov says, "There is no doubt that our research proves that crude oil and natural gas are generated without the involvement of fossils. All types of bedrock can serve as reservoirs of oil." He has simulated the process involving pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner layers of the earth, the process that generates hydrocarbon, the primary component in oil and natural gas. "

 

Is this a short enough quotation that I don't need to post a link?

 

 

Abiotic oil, oil from algae, shale oil etc. etc. could be great stuff -- if it can be produced at the same or better scale, speed and energy returned on energy invested (EROEI), and burned much more cleanly than conventional oil.

 

Right now, it cannot. But research is worth continuing. Consider that conventional oil had an EROEI of 100:1 to 50:1 more than 50 years ago for the sweet, easy-to-access stuff near the surface and 10:1 to 5:1 for sour oil deep below the ocean that we're increasingly relying on.

 

To show how desperate we are, the oil sands have an EROEI of just 1.5:1 -- thus costing 3-20 times more to generate the same net energy as conventional sources.

 

No oil is worth burning, however.

Abiotic oil-

 

"A group of Swedish researchers have managed to prove that fossils from animals and plants are not necessary for the creation of crude oil and natural gas.

Energy expert Vladimir Kutcherov says, "There is no doubt that our research proves that crude oil and natural gas are generated without the involvement of fossils. All types of bedrock can serve as reservoirs of oil." He has simulated the process involving pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner layers of the earth, the process that generates hydrocarbon, the primary component in oil and natural gas. "

 

Is this a short enough quotation that I don't need to post a link?

 

 

 

If it's a quote, you must post a link.  You can hit "modify" at the top right of the post to edit the post to include the link.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/03/news/economy/cheap_oil/index.htm?cnn=yes

 

Why cheap oil is here to stay

By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer

With oil supplies rising and the economy becoming ever more efficient, a super-spike in prices is looking increasingly unlikely....

Boggles the mind, and violates all science.

Thanks for the quotation etiquette.  I will have to figure out how to embed a link.  Someone missed the point.  The abiotic oil people believe that petroleum is being constantly, naturally produced by catalyzation of methane gas in the subduction zones beneath the earth's crust and thus oil is a renewable resource.  Some one here responeded to this idea in a detailed post saying it was unlikely. 

 

  It doesn't matter where it comes from. Scientists have generated a model that shows how they think the oil got there. This model helps them predict where they might find oil. It takes a lot of money to drill for oil, and oil companies want to improve their chances. They are much more likely to find oil, for example, in the Gulf of Mexico than they are in the Himalayas.

 

  In the end, the drilling either results in oil, or it doesn't. Better knowledge of how oil is formed may help us find more of it, but will NOT generate more oil.

 

    Historic trends show that the number of discoveries peaked long ago.

 

    Even if oil WAS a renewable resource, you still can't exploit it indefinitely. You have to work within the limits of the resource.

Thanks for the quotation etiquette. I will have to figure out how to embed a link. Someone missed the point. The abiotic oil people believe that petroleum is being constantly, naturally produced by catalyzation of methane gas in the subduction zones beneath the earth's crust and thus oil is a renewable resource. Some one here responeded to this idea in a detailed post saying it was unlikely.

 

All you have to do is cut and paste from the URL bar at the top of your browser into your post.

 

Even if oil WAS a renewable resource, you still can't exploit it indefinitely. You have to work within the limits of the resource.

 

Oil IS a renewable resource. It just takes a million years to pressure-cook its ingredients into usable oil.

 

And consider that we're burning six barrels of oil (ie: the stuff that's been cooking for millions of years)for every one barrel of oil we discover. That's up from a 4-to-1 ratio just a decade ago. Lastly, we're burning 85 MILLION barrels of oil per day. That's such an immense number it's hard to put into perspective.

 

Yes, there is a lot of oil. But we are consuming it, dare I say, like there's no tomorrow.

That's why a better way to power personal vehicles is the best way out of this mess.

Every so often I like to look into the possible future of oil prices by visiting NYMEX's website. So do hedgers think the price of oil will be higher or lower in the future?

 

Higher... The December 2018 contract is selling for as much as $112.09 per barrel. The current contract is selling for $78. In 2002, it sold for $20 per barrel.

 

Large consumers of fuel and long-term investors are betting that the price of oil is only going up. Would you take that bet?

Published: December 28, 2009 11:40 pm

CONFER: Developing answers to the oil shortage

Niagara Gazette

 

For the past month, this column has focused on the limited supplies of and unlimited demand for oil. The future looks bleak with an oil shortage that we as a nation seem ill prepared to handle. But, given that our public and private sectors can gain a sense of urgency and take a more dedicated approach than we have in the development of new technologies and new energy sources, we can overcome what could be a significant obstacle to the betterment of our standard of living for years to come.

 

To put this complex issue into simple terms, here are four ways in which we can guarantee a brighter future for America by limiting the impact that oil has on our personal, corporate and national finances while ensuring that we have access to transportation, something that is instrumental to the pursuits of a free people…

 

Develop young minds: In America we do a very poor job of rewarding our brightest students who in turn have the potential to reward our society. Instead, we invest as much time and money in the most under-performing schools and students as we do in the cream of the crop. The next great scientist is more often than not lost in the shuffle as we teach him or her at the same level and with the same techniques as the lost causes who are in the same classroom. We need to do as other nations – both developed and developing — do and devote a greater amount of our resources to the gifted students. Investing in their minds is an investment in our tomorrow. The oil shortage is just one of many problems that need to be addressed in the coming decades and the best way to handle them is by making sure we have the keenest scientific minds prepared to work their magic.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.niagara-gazette.com/opinion/local_story_362234109.html

 

  ^----"Limited supplies and unlimited demand for oil..."

 

  This technically is not correct. Supplies of oil are certainly limited. Demand for oil is limited as well.

 

  Demand is not the same as want. Demand implies the ability to pay a fair price.

 

  People demand oil because they enjoy the utility of oil. Take automobiles for example. Oil is one of the ingredients that makes automobiles possible. However, automobiles are only useful as long as they are affordable. If gasoline costs $20 a gallon, other things being equal, a lot of people will stop driving. It will cost more to drive to work than a person can earn at work! At some price point, which is different for everyone based on distance, wage, gas mileage, etc., it will not be cost effective to drive to work.

 

    When gasoline prices reached $3.00, $3.50, and $4.00 a gallon, economists wondered how far it would go. Well, it does seem that we reached the limit. The higher the price went, the fewer miles people drove. Vast numbers of people who didn't take the customary summer trip, who cut back on extra driving, or who combined trips to save money cut down on the demand for oil, and prices stabilized again. At the same time, demand for airline travel dropped substantially, and business travel of all kinds declined.

 

    Peak oil is NOT about price! Price is related, but the peak price and peak volume of oil consumed are two different things.

   

All true. But people only care about issues like peak oil based on how it affects them. Ultimately we're all selfish and we don't like change. And if price is one of the many symptoms of peak oil -- which it is -- then people want to know how high the price might go. Like the future, it's impossible to predict, but people still want to know what the price might be while still trying to maintain their current lifestyles.

^----"Then people want to know how high the price might go..."

 

    It could also go lower.

^----"Then people want to know how high the price might go..."

 

It could also go lower.

 

Explain.

 

  If the money supply contracts faster than the oil supply, then the price of oil could decline.

 

  I'm not saying that this is what is going to happen, but that this is one of the possibilities that COULD happen. There seems to be an underlying assumption that oil prices will increase, which is not necessarily true. Sometimes prices rise, and sometimes they fall.

But I think the economic decline would further reduce the value of the dollar. And as long as petroleum is traded in dollars, it will support higher prices of oil.

But that certainly wasn't the case during past recession..oil prices plummeted

 

    Even if oil WAS a renewable resource, you still can't exploit it indefinitely. You have to work within the limits of the resource.

 

 

 

Oil IS a renewable resource. It just takes a million years to pressure-cook its ingredients into usable oil.

 

And consider that we're burning six barrels of oil (ie: the stuff that's been cooking for millions of years)for every one barrel of oil we discover. That's up from a 4-to-1 ratio just a decade ago. Lastly, we're burning 85 MILLION barrels of oil per day. That's such an immense number it's hard to put into perspective.

 

Yes, there is a lot of oil. But we are consuming it, dare I say, like there's no tomorrow.

 

Not necessarily-abiotic oil theory