Things like this make me very uneasy:
BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, published yesterday, appears to show that the world still has enough “proven” reserves to provide 40 years of consumption at current rates. The assessment, based on officially reported figures, has once again pushed back the estimate of when the world will run dry.
However, scientists led by the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, say that global production of oil is set to peak in the next four years before entering a steepening decline which will have massive consequences for the world economy and the way that we live our lives.
According to “peak oil” theory our consumption of oil will catch, then outstrip our discovery of new reserves and we will begin to deplete known reserves.
Colin Campbell, the head of the depletion centre, said: “It’s quite a simple theory and one that any beer drinker understands. The glass starts full and ends empty and the faster you drink it the quicker it’s gone.”
Despite the obvious problems that will be caused when an oil-dependent world runs out of oil, the bloody wars that will no doubt spring up for control of remaining resources should also be considered.
DP
Did someone just say we are going to run out of beer??
Dreggas
But John according to Creationists we can create more oil in a few years max. Remember “Don’t Think, believe”.
Oh and speaking of beer, Abu is still on a bender with his power buzz – see my latest entry for more. Of course you can also slap me around for shameless blog pimping.
Jake
Time to watch The Road Warrior. It isn’t just a movie, it’s a survival guide.
ThymeZone
That’s why I went to college. Drank a LOT of beer there, and now I understand almost everything.
Penn
How about the bloody wars we’re in the middle of, over oil?
ThymeZone
That’s just the price we pay for having them hate us for our freedom!
Andrew
Peak oil is really quite silly.
Peak beer, on the other, could be the end of civilization.
RLaing
Exactly. The resource wars have already begun.
I was a bit slow on the uptake myself. My first thought when the war drums started to beat was “oh, this will take Enron out of the news…” Oil was only my second thought–my bad. U.S Geological Survery website gave data suggesting the last drop of petroleum would be used up in about 35 years, which made the reasons for the war crystal clear to me, at least.
RSA
From the article:
It’s about manufactured products as much as about energy, for first-world countries, I think. I don’t know what I’d do without my carpets.
Also:
Send someone to fetch a beer drinker (with apologies to Groucho).
Dreggas
I would be a liar if I said I didn’t look forward to the utter chaos this will create, in a macabre sort of way of course.
CDB
This is just like the end of every Warcraft II game. I hope you upgraded your axe throwers.
jrg
It’s in the best interest of the oil companies to be optimistic about reserves, because that will slow the adoption of alternative energy.
Additionally, Oil is a national security issue, so our tax dollars support the securing of fields.
Oil execs have the obligation to shareholders to stop alternative energy options (like hydrogen), but in the long run, this increases dependence on foreign oil.
It’s a huge conflict of interest. Why should my tax dollars support this? It’s corporate welfare.
ThymeZone
1. That’s why Jesus made beer a renewable resource.
2. See “The Beer Game,” The Fifth Discipline, P. Senge.
ThymeZone
Because Trickle-Down-Economics really works.
Where have you been for the last 27 years?
Jake
You should get rugs instead (five bucks American in Iraq). That way you’d feel optimistic.
Andrew
Praise the Lord and pass the IPA.
ed
At 55 years of age, I have seen more peak oil dates come and go than sightings of the Loch Ness monster. At some point it will happen, but the predictors’ track record is spottier than a TV weatherman’s forecasts. Methinks some politics are involved.
ThymeZone
Really? Can you cite, or otherwise describe them?
Thanks.
jrg
It already has happened in the U.S. (It happened back in the ’70’s, IIRC).
It’s not just a question of when it will run out. It’s also a question of where the remaining reserves are.
Call me cynical, but I’m not quite sure if I trust the peaceful, freedom-loving people of Saudi Arabia with the USA’s energy lifeline.
tBone
We’ll just switch to corn or soy-based plastics. Not only will your computer/phone/carpet be useful, it will also be delicious and nutritious. Win-win.
Bubblegum Tate
And salsa-based cleaning products!
Pb
Here you go–probably more than you ever wanted to know about peak oil. We may have peaked, we may peak soon, but I think we’re definitely at the plateau. However, WTF is up with this:
Yeah, because demand never increases, right? The real problem is when demand outstrips supply, who gets the oil?
josephdietrich
“40 years of consumption at current rates.”
All without a mention that consumption is not remaining at current rates, but is going up every single year not only in America but in the rest of the world as well. So even if BP’s optimistic view of “40 years at current rates” holds true, in fact we can expect it to last a shorter period of time than 40 years before it starts to decline.
Plus, it’s not really like drinking beer at all. Oil is not in big tanks in the ground which we tap into and drain. It is in the rock like water in a sponge, and needs to be forced out. At first it’s easy and production grows as you add wells, but finally it starts to get harder and harder as time passes until it taps out no matter how many wells you’ve added (and even then that doesn’t mean there isn’t any more oil in the rock, it’s just that we can’t extract it).
It’s going to happen, and it’s going to affect people who are alive today.
josephdietrich
Curses, beat by two minutes!
tBone
I wish you would have told me that before I loaded up my beer helmet with 10w-40.
Zifnab
Wow, will spring up? Hey John, I don’t know if you’ve been asleep for the past 30 years, but what do you think Desert Shield/Storm and Iraq II were all about? Or the political wranglings with Iran dating back to the Shah? Or the infighting in Venezuala over political control of the oil supplies? Or China’s feeding of the Darfur crisis?
Yeah, those bloody wars? They done sprung up already. That rollercoaster jumped the track some time ago.
ThymeZone
Actually, every unit of production down to the individual producing well, has a peak, a point at which production begins to decline and continues to decline. So every unit of production, every well, every field, will peak and decline. It’s the nature of all finite resources under consumption.
The only question is when, and not if. And in the cases of all the wells and fields that have peaked and died so far, we can observe the history and thereby predict the inevetible future. And since we know how to do relatively simple math, we can also predict the effects of such things as a constantly rising rate of consumption, which has a rather profound effect on your peak date, and eventually your zero-production date. As long as consumption rates continue to rise, we are hurtling toward a world peak date at a rather exhilerating rate!
taoless
perhaps when jesus comes back, he will have learned to turn water to oil instead of wine.
oh wait, we’re running out of that, too.
Andrew
Well, gosh, then it gets more expensive. That something that the peak oilers never seem to clue into. It’s as if nothing else will happen when oil hits $200 a barrel.
As soon as oil is expensive for a few years, we will use something else. The end. 100 years from now, oil will cost $192 a gallon and only be used by rich people who drive antique Ferraris. Big deal.
The problem with our oil consumption is that we are vulnerable to a price shock, say via Iran attacking Persian Gulf shipping. Our economy doesn’t have time to adapt to a shock, and this could cause serious problems. This is a serious issue, which should be mitigated by a substantial gas tax increase.
But peak oil? Not an issue at all. Oil demand is very price elastic over a 20 year window.
ThymeZone
I think I don’t agree with you at all. Peak oil is not a smooth, worldwide effect that will manifest in a way that is congenially handled by price elasticity. And its effects are not just on supply and demand, they are also on the long term planning for production, transport, refinement and fracturing into product streams.
Already we are seeing how relatively subtle effects of policy and long term realities have caused a decline in the expansion of refining capacity long before any real big effects in crude supply hit the pipelines. These effects result in spiky price excursions, and spiky price excursions are very unlovable at the gas pump, at the voting booth, at the grocery store, at the Fed, and a lot of other places where price realities are not as far from our ivory tower as your blurb might suggest …. eh?
Relatively small shifts in gasoline prices cause major disruptions, fits and jerks all over the economic map.
All of this basically ignores the political implications of these effects. I don’t think they are trivial.
Brian
Andrew is a “technology cornucopean” who believes that there are simple solutions out there to the decline in oil. I’m not sure there is. Petroleum is almost uniquely dense in energy. Solar? Not enough energy to support an industrial economy with 400 million people. Corn-based plastics? With 8 billion people and no oil for high input industrial agriculture, where is all the corn going to come from? Nuclear? Uranium has its own “Hubbert Curve” and that’s ignroing all the nastiness associated with it-and the energy cost of mining said uranium in less stable Third World anarchistans.
Andrew
There are simple solutions out there. They are just more expensive than using oil right now.
Plug-in hybrids, natural gas, coal gasification, nuclear,etc. There are lots of options, but few are cost effective as long as gas is so cheap.
Repeat after me: gas is cheap as shit. Until that changes significantly, we will continue to consume it in large quantities.
Zifnab
I think you’re underestimating the human capacity to adapt (and win!) When price shock from oil becomes intolerable, people will find alternative means of generating energy. You’re absolutely right about small price shifts causing major disruptions. When ABC Shipping gets hit with gas bills twice as large as the year before, they’ll start converting their fleets to energy efficent trucks. When Metro Bus Company has to raise its bus rates beyond what city locals want to pay, they’ll start changing their buses into hybrids. When my AC bill reaches a record high, I’ll stop turning my living room into an ice-box in the middle of summer, and maybe invest in insulated windows. When my electric bill really goes through the roof, I’ll replace my roof with solar panels.
Yeah, there will be pain in the transition. Poor people will feel the crunch worse than rich people. Rural towns will suffer more than big cities. Industrialized nations will recover faster than 3rd world countries. That’s the way its always been, and the amount of pain we feel will be directly related to the speed we react to the problem. But ultimately, life will go on.
Kirk Spencer
Andrew, in one sense I agree with you. As oil get more and more expensive, alternatives will be developed. I’m absolutely certain of that. My objection is to your apparent belief that it’ll be a smooth change-over.
Between now and the time “oil will cost $192 a gallon and only be used by rich people who drive antique Ferraris,” will be a period when oil costs a lot more but everything still relies upon it. Until the alternatives are not only developed but becomes the standard, we’re going to have a rough ride.
Basically, there will be a window in which we experience a slow-motion oil shock. It’s this shock that’ll jump us from oil to the alternative.
—rats, I was going to close, and re-read your post. I have to object to another line. “Oil demand is very price elastic over a 20 year window.” No. There appears to be two demand curves. One is very price elastic. The other is very price inelastic. There is a very large proportion of our oil demand which will exist regardless of price. This is hinted at by looking at winter heating oil demand in the northern states over the past several years. Over a short range of prices demand fluctuates, but at a certain level of demand (a resistance point) price seems to cease having any impact.
Let me snapshot it with an anecdote. I live 20 miles from where I work. A gas prices climb I cut down on recreational driving, but that 200 miles per week is an unavoidable minimum. At certain plateaus I’ll jump to alternatives (one of which is changing job or location of home), but until the plateaus are reached the price of gas is immaterial.
zzyzx
“At certain plateaus I’ll jump to alternatives (one of which is changing job or location of home)”
Or changing how you get to work. In researching electric cars, we’re pretty darn close to a practical 150-200 mile range car. The hold up now is more regulatory than engineering. I expect that they’ll be for sale in 2008-09, at which point that dynamic can start to shift.
Andrew
You don’t think 20 years is a big enough window for you to consider moving closer to work or buying a hybrid car? Either option could cut your consumption in half. Both, half again. Carpool? Half again. You could be at 1/8th of your current consumption without much hurt.
Over a 20 year window there are MANY alternatives to oil as an energy source. If heating oil is expensive for a decade, people will start heating with natural gas. Woop-de-doo.
One thing that is often overlooked is that there aren’t many alternatives to oil as the base of all plastics.
Zifnab
I would disagree very strongly. I’ve heard of people putting solar panels on their homes and actually pumping juice back down the line to the power company. Can you run a car on solar panels? No. But you can run a TV and a microwave and a dishwasher and a laundry machine. Can you run a manufactoring plant with solar energy? Probably not. But you can power the homes of every one of the plant’s employees with change to spare.
The game isn’t to decouple ourselves entirely from fossil fuels. We just need to use existing energy intelligently and create a smooth transition from non-renewable to renewable resources. But when people insist on walking backwards along the road to energy independence – buying an H1 over a hybrid and embracing 20-year-old power plants to avoid environmental standards – then yeah, we’re fucked.
Pb
Bingo. If America had listened to Carter a few decades ago, it probably would have been a smooth change-over — but it’s too late for that now.
zzyzx
“Can you run a car on solar panels? No.”
Actually yes. There’s a guy in California who loves to post on Prius forums about how he has an electric car that gets charged from his solar panels on his roof.
Tim F.
IMO the best thing we could do is slow down global oil production starting today. The price of gas will go through the roof, economies will freak out and the whole world (except the mideast and Russia) will go through some major pain. You know what they call that? Adjustment. Sensible energy alternatives and major efficiency programs will get prioritized in a hurry, our remaining oil supply will last that much longer and when the crunch comes we will be that much more ready for it.
Or, we could continue living lavishly on credit until the day when the repo man arrives.
Andrew
Plug-in hybrids are going to kick ass.
Solar hybrids + sunny weather = even more awesome.
Tim F.
I should add, what I think has to happen won’t happen because no one country will ever convince another country to go through that kind of pain voluntarily. Global geopolitics most likely ensures that we will hit the oil wall without ever lifting our foot off the gas.
ThymeZone
Life will go on with or without ANY oil. I don’t consider that a very apropos thing to say here. Life will go on with painful swings in prices, availability, economic effects, and political repercussions. Life might be going on, but unpleasant as hell.
I totally agree, and I also agree (with some others here) that a stiff gasoline tax is called for. Price is the main motivator, and a tax keeps that motivator motivating.
Do we have the political courage to do that?
Heh. Is the moon made of green cheese?
zzyzx
Here’s the site of the EV fanatic: http://evnut.com/
ThymeZone
Right, because as we all know, the energy that comes out of the plug comes from the Ampere Fairy.
I don’t see how plug-in-anything is a big help here. We can do a lot more, and cheaper, with responsible limits on the size and fuel economy of non-hybrid vehicles. With really efficient diesels. With lots of things that dont require expensive, heavy, dangerous and inefficient batteries, as all hybrids do. With public transportation and better urbna planning. Etc.
RSA
I think this is true, and that there’s enormous institutional/infrastructural inertia that stands in the way of reasonable measures to ameliorate future problems. I wonder if much-maligned venture capitalists might play an important role in this? My guess is that energy research is expensive, that it will take enormous resources to do it well, and that deep-pocketed energy companies are only going to make token gestures toward doing it (until it’s really obvious that it’s needed–and in the meantime they’ll be trying to shut down alternative energy sources as their competition). Government funding should be important, but I’m not sure that it can overcome politics. This is just some uninformed speculation on my part, for what it’s worth.
Andrew
Here’s a little primer:
Peak electricity consumption is during the day time, especially during the summer. Generation capacity is basically created to deal with something like peak consumption. At the other times, especially a night, we have excess capacity. It’s hard and inefficient to significantly throttle back many kinds of power plant, so we’re basically wasting energy. Energy is much cheaper at night for the same reasons (though not always metered so).
So, we have cheap and excess energy at night.
Now, plug in hybrids would mostly be plugged in at night, because that’s when commuters are at home watching porn.
Et voila, plug in hybrids use cheap, excess energy to charge.
If you can drive 10-20 miles on a charge, the price equivalent comes out to be something like 100mpg for typical commuters.
And that’s why they will kick ass.
zzyzx
In the context of a peak oil discussion, finding ways to enable cars to run that don’t use oil is important.
Andrew
And there’s no reason why we can’t have a diesel plug-in hybrid either (besides up front cost).
Andrew
That, and it’s even cleaner to run on electric power from coal fired plants than it is to run on gasoline. Potentially something like half of the CO2.
ThymeZone
Hybrid is all about efficiency in the short haul, and efficiency with acceleration. If you want to go down the road efficiently, hybrid just means hauling a heavy battery with you that is doing you just about no good.
My money is on efficient diesel. Right now not even $5 gas would move me to buy a hybrid. In fact on a spreadsheet I can’t even make it break even unless you are going to give me free battery replacements. And that doesnt even factor in the costs of maintenance on a technology that hasnt reached the point at which we really know what it will cost to keep older hybrids on the road.
Color me not sold on hybrid, at all. To me, hybrid is a bastardized way to keep the status quo transportation model in place and give politicians and movie stars something to drive and feel superior about.
Andrew
Not quite. Diesels are great for efficient highway cruising.
But very small gas engines are good too, since you don’t need more than about 20hp to move a car 65mph. The only practical way to use an engine this small is in a hybrid system.
But most Americans don’t just cruise on the highway. Most commuting is in stop and go traffic.
zzyzx
Toyota does indeed do that for 8 years or 100,000 miles on both the batteries and the hybrid system. That shows confidence that they’ll last. As for maintenance, a lot of wear and tear parts on a normal car (belts, alternators) don’t exist on mine and the brake life will be extended due to using regenerative braking to slow down. I don’t know what the Prius will be like with 200,000 miles on it, but I doubt I’ll still be driving it then anyway.
HyperIon
i agree. and plastics continue to play a large role in cars manufacturing. daily we grow more dependent on plastics (although i hope that the cheapo bags at the grocery store are soon outlawed).
it will take a long time and cost a lot to covert the military over to electric tanks and fighters.
Zifnab
Could you crank down the cynicism just a tad, please? Yeah, it would be better if we ran on the European model of buses and trains that go practically everywhere. But we don’t have even a shadow of that sort of infrastructure in place. Millions of miles of highways and byways go where train tracks just don’t. Cities aren’t planned around bus stops and municipal transport, they’re planned around parking lots and driveways. If we see public transport even begin to resemble the mass transit models of the Old World, I’ll will you my left testicle. It’s just not going to happen that way. And for a society that just five years ago was buying Yukons like gas was raining from the sky, hybrids are a great leap forward.
ThymeZone
Sorry, is that an attempt to be spoofalicious like ZSC, or are you (incredibly, amazingly) being serious?
Just checking it out, I really don’t care.
Hybrids are not going to save us from our fuel addiction. And who is talking about a “european model?” Oh, you are, in yet another lameass strawman lob here. God they are so fucking tiresome.
Sure. Be sure to include the magnifying glass I will need in order to examine it and add it to my collection of left nuts.
Duane
Nothing to worry about, John. We are on the cusp of a giant breakthrough with dilithium crystals.
Worrying and being afraid about everything is a conservative trait you haven’t quite overcompensated for yet.
ThymeZone
I’ll keep an eye out for it.
PAULQX
Running out of oil would be a blessing in disguise. It should take about ten years to totally switch to alternative sourses but if we do it now voluntaraly we wont have to do it in the near future at the barrel of a gun.
Zifnab
I mean, I suppose we could all just walk. But, to date, I’ve seen only two widescale models of mass transit. There’s the European Train/Bus model, which works very well from what I’ve experienced but requires a significant degree of infrastructure. And there’s the American Personal Car model, which also requires a great deal of infrastructure, but in the form of extensive and equally distributed open roads rather than circuits with centers of traffic.
I guess there’s also the Middle Eastern model of “Ride a Camel” or the Venican model of “Live on the water and take a boat”, but if you want to have mass transit in a practical way, there are two big existing systems. That’s not a strawman, that’s simply an observation.
The hybrid adapts best to our highway model. And from hybrids its a shorter jump to fully-electric cars.
Bruce Moomaw
“Despite the obvious problems that will be caused when an oil-dependent world runs out of oil, the bloody wars that will no doubt spring up for control of remaining resources should also be considered.”
Oh, yes. That, after all, is why Japan jumped the US in 1941. Dean Ing, back in 1981, wrote an SF novel called “Systemic Shock” that was stylistically clumsy, but alarmingly convincing in its portrayal of how just such a struggle over the world’s diminishing oil supply set off a nuclear/bioweapon world war pitting the world’s two biggest developing countries (China and India) on one side, against the US, Europa and Russia on the other.
We’re going to have enough trouble with irrationally motivated wars in the coming decades, without adding rationally motivated ones that nevertheless quickly mushroom up into apocalypse, World War I-style.
Tulkinghorn
Sheep. Cotton. Bronze age technology using solar energy. The leftovers can be used as food, too.
Skyler
Peak oil is a really stupid idea and has been for a long time. Frankly, as demand grows we will find more oil deposits (as we have been doing over the last 20 years which has invalidated past peak oil dates), develop more efficient methods to extract oil, and begin drilling in current areas which are off limits now due to high costs (both environmental and financial). We will also (extremely slowly) substitute in other alternative energy sources as increasing oil price makes them competitive. Its just economics.
And its happened before in similar industries, like gold. People in the 1800’s continuously predicted the end of gold mining, the “peak gold time”, but miraculously they kept finding more gold and figuring out new ways to extract and refine it more efficiently. In the end we all switched off the gold standard.
Limited oil resources is something to be concerned about of course, but its not about to mark the end of civilization for a long, long, long time and probably never.
jake
See? There is an advantage to melting the ice caps!
RSA
Unfortunately, there’s good possibility Venice won’t be around for much longer as a living model of boat-based transportation.
On American transportation infrastructure: We’ve spent decades building up local transportation to and from suburbs and exurbs. One obvious problem we’ll face in taking lessons from, say, European countries is that the U.S. is huge, and for a good part of the population there haven’t been really strong incentives to live near workplaces and stores and such.
I spent several years living in a little German town outside Munich. I carpooled to work in the neighboring town, but lots of my colleagues rode their bicycles to the train station and took the train. Shopping involved walking a few blocks to a store. I’ve lived in a few other towns of comparable size in the U.S. in which there’s no way to get or do anything without driving.
Andrew
I will not fight Dennis Hopper on the Exxon Valdez.
Zifnab
It’ll only cost you $100 million and your life-long reputation as a decent performer.
LITBMueller
The peak oil scenario will not be a cakewalk. Sure, we can plug in our cars, but what about the other forms of transportation that really drive our economy? Is “solar shipping” on the horizon? Hybrid planes? I think not. And to think that some sort of new technology that can quickly replace the engines that drive our big cargo ships, big diesel trains, and jets, as soon as oil gets too expensive is simply a fantasy.
In fact, petroleum-based products lierally carry everything that you find in your home: through the use of fuel, in plastic containers, on rubber tires, etc. Plus, most of what we find in our home is made out of a petroleum-based product – plastics!
The price of absolutely everything goes up in a peak oil scenario. The shock to our economy would then constrain any ability to develop expensive new replacement technologies.
For example, think of shipping by train: after we’ve spent billions building new nuclear power plants, we then have to spend millions on laying thousands of miles of electic lines so we can the spend more millions on replacing diesel trains with electric ones.
Oh, and before we can start going electric, we have to spend billions to fix our decaying electricity infrasture, which can barely carry the current load in summer.
Get the picture? What kind of car you drive (or plug in) would the be the absolute least of your worries. Its the big cargo-carrying forms of transportation that we should be replacing with new technology right now, before it becomes too late. Which, according to BP, would be about 40 years of from now.
But, hey, us Westerners are great at pushing off a problem on the next generation, aren’t we?
Andrew
Well, actually, no it’s not.
Once upon a time (also, now) trains ran on electricity from the grid. There’s no reason why couldn’t electrify the longer stretches of American rail. We built the first transcontinental railroad in 8 year in the 1860’s and they ran on coal or wood and it worked. You don’t think we could electrify long stretches or use other fuels?
Composites and engine technology are bringing a 10-20% improvement in airplane efficiency (see 787). If fuel is so expensive that air travel must only be for long distance, we can build mag levs to run 200-1000 mile trips with no fossil fuel use.
Nuclear powered cargo ships have been around since the 1960’s. Companies are testing kites (yes, kites) with massive tankers that cut fuel use by 15%.
This is why peak oil is so silly. It makes people completely irrational. As soon as oil gets more expensive than these other options, we will use the other options. Every single one of your paranoid fears is already being directly addressed.
Zifnab
I wouldn’t go that far. Changes in infrastructure are always painful and slow. And the rich always get the first, biggest cut of the benefits while the poor are forced to wait for cheaper technologies to trickle down. Shipping in the US won’t come to a grinding halt, but alot of small-time shippers will be run out of business while big conglomerates continue to conglomerize the competition.
If alternatives had been fully developed back in the 80s and 90s, rather than put on the drawing board in ’03 and ’04, we’d be in better shape and we wouldn’t be looking at a massive recession as our economy works the kinks out of an oil-less future.
Andrew
Well, I agree. But this notion is completely different from the peak oilers’ “we all gonna live like mad max or die!”
I completely support a much higher gas tax and basically tens of billions in research funding/prizes/etc for better energy solutions for the short and long term.
All we need to do is smooth the transition between energy sources, but we certainly don’t need to stop using oil. It’s cheap, plentiful, and efficient. And it won’t EVER run out. It will just get expensive.
Zifnab
I watched the first two-thirds of the McHammer behind-the-music video and if there’s one thing it taught me, its that money never runs out.
Andrew
Well, see, it just goes away for a while. If you had watched the last third of the show, you’d learn that it comes back when you start doing VH1 behind-the-music shows. MC Hammer is very meta.
ThymeZone
“Peak oil” is nothing more than a rational description of the production curve for a finite resource under consumption. It’s mathematically predictable and there is plenty of history to validate it.
“Peak oilers” are strawmen worthy of Darrell’s bullshit. Of course, any set of facts … and they are facts … are going to be co-opted and manipulated and abused by fuckheads and bloggers out to make political hay, or make themselves look smarter than the rest of the fuckheads. And those people exist, some of them, right here in this forum.
But the reason why “peak oil” is relevant is because it describes the future of supply, and in a supply and demand system, where the availability of the resource is absolutely critical to almost every aspect of world, national, regional and even local economies, knowing what the supply is likely to do is essential to planning and understanding.
But we live here, where the mob rules and a group of big mouths can declare that hybrid vehicles are “the best energy solution evah” and then pimp that into a hundred articles of useless fucking churn. That notion, of course, is crap, just as the foolish dismissal of the importance of peak oil, and supply prediction, is crap.
The entire oil industry, from the palaces of the Saudi Royal Family, down to the little guy who trades delivery futures for avgas and kerosene, is a purely supply and demand marketplace. Even a scintilla of knowledge about the future of supply and demand greater than your competitor’s knowledge, can be the difference between success, and failure, in that business. And it behooves laymen to get smarter, fast, on the subject asap too.
I encourage all who aren’t sure to do a bunch of relevant reading on the subject and draw their own conclusions. Your chance of getting any more useful information here is just about zero.
I offer the link not to pimp it as any sort of gospel, or even to suggest that’s it’s any good at all … just as an example of a place to start. The world is your information oyster. Explore it.
Andrew
Peak oil is two things: a simple resource utilization description and a cult of obsessive paranoia.
Let’s put it this way: It’s like global warming x100 in the hype department, but without the scientific evidence or seriousness. Really, it’s the Cindy Sheehan of resource consumption.
The funny thing is that Thymezone is obsessing over peak oil, as they all do, but then making fun of hybrids. (Come on, HYPE-brids!) Well, guess what, hybrids are on the market now, they cut fuel use in half or a third. They’re real, and they can make a difference.
If we don’t attack economic problems at the margins, and wait for a magic cure that will radically change the entire industry, nothing is never going to happen.
As we “Wake up!!! to the power of Solar” with cute little diagrams, real scientists are working on real solutions.
Until the peak oilers produce something of value, I’ll stick with the Toyota engineers.
ThymeZone
Wall Street Journal, Wednesday.
ThymeZone
There ya go! If you want a stable, energy-responsible world, just stick with the people at giant automobile companies. They have always been your friends.
And when it comes to good nutrition, I trust McDonalds.
I shoulda known all along, you’d turn out to have the right idea.
LITBMueller
I believe I addressed the difficulties of electrifying the railroad system above: exhorbitant cost, a shitty national network, etc. It was easier for commuter trains to be electrified, because they do not carry extreme loads. A mile long freight train, however, requires a shitload more power to move it along the tracks. Changing that AIN’T gonna be easy. Plus, guess who gets to bear the burden of the costs? Ultimately, the consumer.
Your realize, of course, that composites rely on plastics, which is itself a petroluem-based product, right? Might be a problem…
Yeah, and they were about as successful as tits on a bull. They were so expensive to operate, just about every single one of them has been decommissioned. Plus, think of the danger of having floating potential nuclear bombs entering and exiting every port in the world. You thought the Exxon Valdez was a mess? Try cleaning up after a nuclear ship that had an accident in Port Elizabeth, NJ.
But, they’re not! Serious alternatives are not receiving nearly enough funding and research. The real risk is that, by the time they do, it will be too late.
Hell, even Hybrid cars are a joke:
2007 Honda Civic Hybrid: 49 mpg city / 51 mpg highway
1984 Honda CRX: 51mpg city / 60mpg highway
ThymeZone
And that’s a seriously inflated set of numbers. See my WSJ blurb above.
But hell, they’ve almost recreated the efficiency of the 1979 Tercel. And at only several times the price.
Andrew
This is exactly my point: alternative are simply more expensive than oil, so we use oil. The alternatives are technologically feasible. So why do we have to go insane about running out of oil?
And I love the nuclear, terror, and enviro paranoia in a single sentence. OMG, a reactor that magically becomes a bomb! A nuclear reactor that sank to the bottom of a harbor would be significantly easier to clean up than an oil spill.
This just means you’re a damn fool.
A 50mpg car sounds good to me. A 50mpg car that is 1000x as safe as a 1980’s econobox, with luxury features, power everything, A/C, kick ass stereo, etc., and superior performance sounds even better. I’ve spent time in a CRX HF; I’ll take the new civic.
Hybrids are the single most promising method to cut consumer fuel use, period, so I’m shocked that you peak oil fanatics are so disparaging of them.
Andrew
Again, this is shockingly stupid.
If you don’t want any modern safety features or low emissions, feel free to buy a ’79 tercel.
ThymeZone
What a joke. Better engines, diesel, reduced weight, sensible driving habits, tighter mileage standards especially for large vehicles, a horsepower tax, improved tires …. any number of changes to the entire transportation model …. all more promising.
Hybrid is the Big Auto idea of prolonging their status quo in terms of design and marketing in order to give themselves the appearance of trying to be green, and trying to improve their fleet mileage numbers, while making huge profits still selling trucks and SUVs that are way too big and way to heavy and way too powerful. Toyota, your pimped company, is spending your annual income every 12 hours on tv advertising the new grotesque, wasteful Tundra all the time. Your green company is out to take away the 12-14 mpg market from Ford and Chevy.
I love that they pimp 20 mpg for that 5.7l V8 monster on the highway. I’d love to hear from somebody that is actually getting that or anywhere near it.
Jake
Not completely OT (?)
From today’s Washington Post: Ethanol demand = Rise in price of corn = Rise in price of everything else.
zzyzx
Yeah those hybrid numbers are completely fake. Just because I regularly get 56-58 mpg in the summer and 52 mpg over the life of my Prius so far doesn’t mean that I’m saving gas. Moreover I’m doing so in a car that’s far safer and roomier than my old Geo Metro, not to mention that it produces fewer emissions.
Is it perfect? No. It’s a move in the right direction though. My next step is to try to do a plug in conversion to double or triple my current mileage.
ThymeZone
Oh, you are definitely right. It’s mandatory to stuff $5k worth of batteries, electric motors, electronics and software into that Tercel to make the new car almost as efficient, since we packed it up with all those airbags and stuff. And once the new non-inflated mileage figures are out in a year or so, the hybrids will be lucky to be getting comparable mileage with similar sized cars of 30 years ago.
And remember, that hybrid mileage boost is mostly city driving. Meanwhile real-world mileage reports, according to orgs such as Consumer Reports, Edmunds and others, are running in the 60-75% range of “offical” mileage estimates for the hybrid cars. Once the new mileage methods are in place, the fantasy numbers will go down.
What’s really interesting is that driving habits have a huge effect on hybrid mileage …. but also on the mileage of regular cars. I think it was MSN that recently put up an article about getting 50 mpg from your ordinary car by changing a few things about the way you drive and maintain the car.
The key to big fuel savings is size, horsepower, driving habits, maintenance, car pooling, public transportation, and things like gas and horsepower taxes and smarter policy.
Not technical gimmicks like hybrids.
grumpy realist
As substitute for planes, we could go back to zeppelins…if we avoid painting them with the equivalent of rocket fuel and stuffing them with hydrogen they should’nt have problems.
Slow, yeah, but who cares?
The other alternative is bio-jet-fuel. Also possible.
LITBMueller
There’s a big difference between feasible and practical. Or even economically viable. Have you any idea how much it costs to build and operate a nuclear powered vessel? Let’s put it this way: if it wasn’t so bad, then they’d still be in commercial use.
So, now, your lovely Hybrid Civic (I loved the CRX!), which gets shipped over from Japan on a nuke cargo ship, costs you the price of today’s BMW’s.
We better start learning how to ride horses!
Um…cuz we will eventually run out of oil, and then we won’t be able to lay down asphalt to drive our cool Honda Hybrids on.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. An oil spill is in the water. A nuclear accident on a surface ship means the spreading of radiation on the prevailing winds. If that were to happen in a port, it could mean thousands of people could be irradiated.
Rome Again
Gosh, perhaps I shouldn’t get the Yaris after all?
Zifnab
Actually, you shouldn’t get the Yaris because its a freak’n golf cart. Seriously, though, I’m not sure what TZ’s point is other than that Toyota likes money and Americans are dumb enough to buy tanks shaped like pick-up trucks when gas is at $3/gal and rising.
If you want something clean and good looking that you can look at without shame the next morning, Toyota provides the best choice on the market. But some people insist on the 6000 lb Hummer. There’s no accounting for taste, even if it may leave a bad flavor in your mouth. Just learn to swallow the fact that capitalism isn’t always pretty.
HyperIon
my aprehension is focused more on the shipment of goods all over this county. like food. promoting the consumption local food is gaining popularity these days but some people live in places that cannot support food production…like Phoenix.
to those “free market fundies” who respond “no problem, the cost of goods and services will increase to reflect the greater transportation costs and folks will adjust accordingly”, i say “eating is not optional”.
as to what to do now…
why not just make every major road a toll road? then the unemployed can participate in the building of the toll booths and also staff them.
so i guess i’m agreeing with TZ here.
grumpy realist
Several places in the blogosphere pointing out all the wee problems with those rosy number in the BP report….
….such as taking the numbers provided by Amoco etc. at face value, ahem. Isn’t there some indication that the biggest oil field in Saudi Arabia starting to decline?
We’re probably closer to Peak Oil than we want to believe.
And it doesn’t do us that much good that there is tonsandtons somewhere in Iraq if people keep blowing up your pipelines and refineries.
Oh well, the US will have to learn the hard way that we can’t run on a cheap energy economy any more. Will probably have some periods of hysteria, price shocks, and whopping hyperinflation, but hey, that ‘s what happens when you’ve been morons about developing new technology, distribution channels, and efficiency measures.
In 50 years from now, I predict we will all look back and say: Carter Was Right.
And Bush and the Repubs will be reviled for the money that was pissed away in our Excellent Iraq Adventure and not used elsewhere.
Opportunity costs, suckers, opportunity costs. Too bad Bush was sleeping through his classes in his Hahvahd MBA program.
demimondian
Actually, LITBMueller, you might want to study how surface reactors are managed before you spout off on them — the amount of actual contamination is quite small.
How do we know? The Arctic Ocean, where quite a few nuclear-powered surface vessels have been scuttled — with reactors intact.
We could build nuclear container ships tomorrow. They’d be faster, cleaner, and easier to maintain than any of the current generation of container ships. As things stand, they aren’t built — but that’s because the price of fuel oil for boilers is artificially low not because there’s any technological barrier to their construction.