Slashdot Mirror
Whistleblower Claims IEA Is Downplaying Peak Oil
Yesterday the Guardian ran a story based on two anonymous sources inside the International Energy Agency who claimed that the agency had distorted key figures on oil reserves. "The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the [IEA] who claims it has been deliberately
underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying. 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." Today the IEA released its annual energy outlook and rejected the whistleblowers'
charges. The Guardian has an editorial claiming that the economic establishment is too fearful to come clean on the reality of oil suppplies, and makes an analogy with the (marginalized, demonized) economists who warned of a coming economic collapse in 2007.
There's more light sweet crude under the Dakotas than Saudi Arabia...
More propaganda/Bullplop..
We might manage to find some more oil if we all stick our heads far enough into the sand, that is basically where it lives...
The answer my friends is blowing in the wind
... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg
Reality A: No withheld data. Data is disseminated with some initial shock that by 20xx we will have oil shortages. People get a chance to plan accordingly. Private business gets a chance to cash in on better alternatives and more efficient products marketed to the consumer. California starts to look a little less crazy. Gasoline and fuel slowly becomes more expensive over the years as production slows. People adjust.
Reality B: It's 20xx, suddenly there's no oil. Mass panic. People flip out. People die. Fuel shortages lead to water/food/heating shortages lead to war. Private industry doesn't have a chance to adjust. People aren't prepared to buy a new vehicle on the spot. Californians ride the nearest comet to Heaven's Gate. Crime increases, lawlessness arises, civilization breaks down, I'm forced into a Thunderdome with Cowboy Neal for my right to live.
If the IEA is capable of any logic at all, they are not cooking the books or withholding data. What's the motive of retaining data or fixing charts?
My work here is dung.
Peak oil could reap the oil companies BILLIONS in profits. Don't you think that if any of this were true/reliable, they'd be shouting from the highest peaks?
Error reading device 'Signature'. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.
If there is an upcoming shortage, then we WANT to trigger panic buying. That's the way it works. If the supply decreases with no change in demand, the price goes up. If we're about to run out of oil, prices NEED to start increasing, so that the "free market" will force people into the other solutions, like solar, natural gas, and wind, which suddenly aren't so comparatively expensive.
As a point of clarification, the issue is NOT when we will run out of oil. There's enough oil left in the subsurface to last a long time. The issue is how fast we can get it out of the ground. When an economical oil deposit is first discovered, there is a substantial amount of pressure on the oil (think spindletop) and it comes up to the surface of it's own accord. As the oil from the deposit is produced, the pressure drops and the oil ceases eventually coming up by itself all together. After that, you can still get it out of the ground, but you have to pump it and you never get back to the same flow rate.
World population is continually increasing, China and India are rapidly industrializing so demand for oil is going up and up, but the flow rate isn't. This is why we had $147/barrel oil a few years ago, not speculators. It's all supply and demand, but in this case the supply is limited. No amount oil shale or tar sands or deepwater deposits will do us much good because we can't achieve the same flow rate with these deposits as the traditional ones.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
an analogy with the (marginalized, demonized) economists who warned of a coming economic collapse in 2007.
Great. This argument boils down to "Someone who we were told was wrong turned out to be right. Therefore, this other person who we are told is wrong (and by extension everyone who we are told is wrong) must also be right." I have no idea whether or not these whistleblowers are correct or not, but this "argument" by analogy is worse than useless, because it encourages fuzzy thinking.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
These popular conspiracy theories about group X holding back product/information Y are all debunked by a single thought: IF these people are truly smart enough to rule the world (or an aspect of it), they know better than to try to control every single individual in it.
What does this mean? That they are smart enough to follow free markets. They are smart enough to know that they can't predict the future of the stock market, even if they can control an aspect of it. This assumes that these groups do have a level of involvement high enough to control the government, financial and religious institutions WITHOUT being exposed. You really think that a large group of people is capable of holding a secret so large for so long? A president gets a blowjob from an intern and the whole world hears about it. I doubt an army of engineers, scientists and politicians would be quiet about what really goes on in Area 51, killing people with vaccines, peak oil conspiracies or whatever bullshit is popular that day.
So give your conspiracy theories a rest and please report some real news.
Whistle Blowers have agendas too, sometimes. But it's a moot point, because the proper response is the same either way: fast track nuclear plants. There is no other reasonable solution to the inevitable energy problem. We will switch to nuclear at some point or our civilization will collapse.
Oil prices sore today putting transportation at a standstill. Analysts claim that insiders at the IEA admitted to "fudging the numbers" when it came to oil reserves; these bold whistle-blowers are causing the exact market panic that the IEA was trying to avoid in the first place.
Wall Street is getting ready for $10/gallon and bailout 2.0
I'm pretty sure OPEC allocates allowed production levels by each country's "known reserves", giving the rulers of those countries all kinds of incentive to exaggerate their reserves.
The medieval Saudi despots and thugs like Hugo Chavez want to grab all the money they can while THEY'RE alive.
That would create an artificial abundance of oil, artificially depressing prices for no other reason to hide the terrible secret of PEAK OIL.
Never let it be said that paranoid loons are confined to the right. The religious left has just as many.
And I can find an editorial in The Guardian that argues Stalinism is better than capitalism. So an editorial in the Guardian aint worth much.
More specifically, speak cheap and easy energy is important.
Right now we have easy access to oil, coal, natural gas, and in some places, hydro- and other power sources.
On the horizon are not-so-cheap but getting-cheaper-and-easier-every-decade sources such as new drilling technologies to recover fossil fuels that were previously infeasible to recover, solar power, wind power, wave power, and other sources.
As long as energy prices rise slowly enough so there isn't a panic, yet fast enough to spur investment in higher-than-current-oil-price-per-gigajoule fuel sources, we should be fine.
Yes, there is a finite supply of non-renewable energy. However, if you are willing to pay the equivalent of $150/barrel for that energy, it's a lot less finite than if you are only willing to pay $75. When it comes to most forms of renewable energy including wind, wave, and solar, there may be a limit on the wattage and transport of that energy, but there is virtually no limit on the number of years we can use it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why don't I listen to Peak Oilers or read their articles?
Because everything they say is either fantastically basic and self-explanatory, based on armchair assessments of the situation, or purely based on speculation.
Of sayings that fall in the first category, we find "The world will run out of oil" - "some time in the next 10/20/30/60 years we will reach a plateau in the amount of hydrocarbons produced" - "we cannot extract hydrocarbons infinitely" - "people think they can substitute gas, but do we have infinite gas? No we don't" - all of these things I was aware of at the age of 10. There is nothing interesting in it whatsoever, for values of 'interesting' that also include 'new'.
Of sayings in the second category, we find "the world will descend into chaos" - "it will be the war to end all wars" - etc. This is pure speculation. And the reason this is speculation is enshrined in the third point I would like to make:
Nobody knows what will happen. Once we have reached the "peak", how long will it take to actually "run out"? In the meantime, how high will the prices go, and how much will supply be extended as a result of the fall in demand resulting from increasing prices? How will people adapt to a situation where there is limited and rationed hydrocarbons? How will society be reshaped? Will Joe Bloggs pull out a gun and start shooting as soon as he is told? Or will he just get on the bus, along with his children who will never see personal vehicles like today? What will be the cost in living standard of this? How much of the cost can be balanced by what spending on research in renewable energy, what theoretical limits does renewable energy has, and most importantly, in the time to (peak oil plus the duration of the decline), how far can technology come? Furthermore, what attention should we devote to Peak Oil as a threat, as opposed to other possible threats, including global warming, Western aging, migration, raw materials, the state of the global economy over the next year?
If Peak Oilers actually had anything interesting what-so-ever to say on these things, I might actually start listening to them. Because I read with great interest articles on Slashdot about fission and fusion, about energy efficiency, solar cells, etc. So do pretty much everyone with an above average interest in the world, I would say. But very few of them actually bother to buy the books of Peak Oilers or read their articles. This is simply because all Peak Oilers say is "We will reach a point called a 'peak' and it's game over from there and it is the death of everything you know, hurr durr durr [beard scratching, knowing-and-condescending-smirk]". No numbers, no reliable forecasts, no credible and very well-researched and plausible answers to any of the previous questions. Just armchair philosophy and speculation. If Peak Oiler is a job that you can survive on with a good income, then hell - I WANT THAT JOB MORE THAN ANYTHING,
If you're a Peak Oiler who feel a lack of respect, try spending your entire life saying something else than what billions of people already know. Just a hint.
I have no reason to trust to anonymous sources, so why should I?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Judging by Brazil's exploits, by actually spending, as Brazil does, some 40 dollars per barrel in operational costs(deep sea exploration), I think peak oil might still be 100 years away. Hopefully big oil's addiction to their own criminal profiteering will lead them to cleaner(more profitable by a factor of 100) alternatives, unless they figure they are rich enough already, and decide to take a "moral" stand to us mere mortals.
Lets just examine this for a moment-
whistleblower alleges that profit oriented entities (oil companys) are engaged in a conspiracy to withold data (hiding current and future shortages of oil) in regard to the future trending of oil markets which would have an effect on todays supply and hence price from now until forever, effectively passing on the profit making panic that would ensue right here and right now and never mind the gouging of 2008 where billions were reaped despite not apparent shortages of supply
if anything, 2008 shows the lengths these entities will go to promote and oil panic where there is none and with wall streets full complicity, what you thought financial derivaties were the only dildo we shoved up the ass of the american taxpayer let alone the suckers in international markets
this is about as sound as obamanomics and of course emanates from the green idiots who cannot seem to understand we dont want to freeze in winter, we dont want to starve in general and we dont want to die in the OR while getting our triple bypass and we dont want any of this for our families, friends, country, city, town etc.
what i look forward to is the massive die off of the greenies when they eschew modern life and retreat to the woods barefoot and naked
If you know a famine is coming, clearly the first thing you should do is slaughter your own herds, plow through your fields with salt and drain your wells. Why wait or, you know, stock up? Krazy talk.
Here's a tinfoil-hat theory for ya: Leaders know Peak Oil is coming, but they don't want everybody to freak out about it, so instead they make a huge push to address another crisis, maybe one that can appear more urgent: Anthropogenic Climate Change. Environmental treaties are already in place, and there's a proven path to change direction on a global scale out of concern for the environment. Not so out of anticipated future economic issues. And oh, what a nice coincidence, things we do to address Climate Change also leave us in better shape for dealing with Peak Oil. How about that!
There is nothing wrong with breaking the idiotic Godwin's Law.
I quote:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/muslims-feel-like-jews-of-europe-859978.html
Actually I don't quote, I just paste the text in the URL. People draw comparisons with nazism and Hitler and the "final solution" pretty much every day. Invoking Hitler is OK.
that's funny?
Maybe I'm the exception, but gas is a very small part of my recurring bills. If gas prices double or triple, maybe I'll skip a new video game or dinner out every month. Whoop-de-do. And the price of shipping goods will increase. So I'll pay $0.79 instead of $0.59 for a potato. I'm just not quaking in my boots. The biggest overlooked fact of peak oil is that it will be a gradual decline as more oil recovery methods become economically feasible. So over the rest of my life, I suspect there will eventually be a cheaper mode of transportation than gas-powered cars. But for now, I'll stick with the convenience of 400 miles/fill-up, gas stations everywhere, and transportation costs (including car payment) below 15% of my income.
Where did you get that figure? I keep track of this daily:
http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/
We've been flirting with $80/bbl for quite some time.
In the future every entity will have an associated conspiracy theory, for 15 minutes.
Proverbs 21:19
Reality A: No withheld data. Data is disseminated with some initial shock that by 20xx we will have oil shortages. People get a chance to plan accordingly. Private business gets a chance to cash in on better alternatives and more efficient products marketed to the consumer. California starts to look a little less crazy..."
Er, what? A "little less crazy"?!? Fat chance in hell there. Sorry if I don't go jumping on any ideas that CA has cooked up. Their financial mess is second only to the Federal Government...Yeah, speaking of Fascinatingly Bizarre Logic, with the bailout clusterfuck, an oil shortage will be damn near the least of my worries for the next couple of generations...
Besides, we're talking about oil here, which the very subject bleeds of greed and corruption, and usually has jack shit to do with tree hugging hippies. The end will likely be much like the beginning with the insanely rich floating away on a Platinum-lined parachute.
And if we knew how to "plan accordingly", we probably wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.
By the time that happens we won't have any money left to exploit them with and it will be the Saudi's pumping oil out of the Midwest.....
That's actually a good thing. The Midwest is closer than Iraq, so it will be easy to invade. The locals might even welcome us as liberators!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
It is amazing how the Guardian manages to scoop everybody else. I've read investigative articles in that paper that no other news source will even comment on, never mind publish.
What would Rush Limbaugh do?
What's great about something like this is that it's the perfect conspiracy theory. If you *believe* in Peak Oil, absolutely nothing the industry shows you--charts, graphs, sonic measurements, etc.--will convince you that "they" aren't lying and trying to conceal the truth. If you *don't* believe in Peak Oil, the folks who do are still whack-jobs no matter what their latest line is. Bonus points if you credit a *reverse* conspiracy on the part of greenies/socialists/oneworlders/etc. to use a fake crisis to sway public opinion. Sigh.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
The reality is that we will NEVER run out of oil! Many people lie, and the rest are too stupid to realise the folly of their words. Still others just want to push their own agenda — but the reality is that we will never run out of oil.
Imagine you're in a big room full of peanuts. And you open the shell, eat the nut, and throw the shell aside. Eventually, it will be harder and harder to find a peanut, because you'll be finding increasingly more peanut shells with no peanut inside.
The same story is with oil. It will just be harder and harder to find the oil, and the price will rise to reflect the increased costs of getting it. But there will always be some oil, somewhere, to be drilled. We will NEVER RUN OUT OF OIL!!!
It's interesting that many people tend to implicitly accept as true whatever is alledged; provided that it's alledged by a "whistleblower".
I'll have to try this sometime... I'll be the whistleblower who says I deserve a raise and then see if my boss gives me one. Sweet!
Yeah, but we aren't allowed to exploit domestic energy supplies. The NIMBY crowd and enviro-nazi's will see to that, aided by the current political overlords in Washington. Apparently it's better that we keep sending hundreds of billions of dollars overseas than it would be to exploit our own resources and keep some of that money within our borders.
Don't worry though, I'm sure our overlords in the Federal Government will come up with a solution. All we need is more energy conservation and investment in key primary states^W^W^Wethanol to save the day.
The NIMBY crowd and enviro-nazi's will see to that....
People complain about the NIMBYs until someone wants to put something in their neighborhood.
"enviro-nazi's"?? Where did you get that name from??
Every environmentalist group that I know of has a goal of basically improving human environments. Clean air, clean water, balanced ecosystem, etc....
Whatever we do to the environment always comes back to us one way or another. It's real easy to be Laissez-Faire when you live in a rich country but it'll only insulate us for so long - that' s assuming we stay rich.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
(This is why I pay attention to the folks at The Oil Drum ( http://theoildrum.com/ ) and Energy Bulletin ( http://energybulletin.net/ ), they're well-intentioned academics/educators who are trying to get the world to live more smartly and sustainably...and the faster we do that, the better off we are going to be.)
And we know the whistleblowers don't have large investments in oil futures? Wow this creates a situation where you can't believe either side.
It all starts at 0
You can't tell me all of that soot is a good thing
Yes. It may kill you, but the reflective soot in the air does counteract the CO2, methane, etc... by "cleaning" the air, we inadvertently made the global warming problem worse. No more soot to seed clouds or stop those solar rays from warming the Earths surface
But as a selfish SOB, I'm still fine with the decision. I like the idea of beach front property, and don't like breathing in soot.
with an agenda might be willing to say anything to further a cause. I'm not suggesting these anon sources are liberals... if anything, I'm suggesting just the opposite. Nothing like peak oil scares to drive up the cost of oil.
I'm pretty sure OPEC allocates allowed production levels by each country's "known reserves", giving the rulers of those countries all kinds of incentive to exaggerate their reserves. This is true. It is also interesting to note that a) The OPEC countries one by one rapidly increased their known reserves when OPEC first got this rule, which is natural since your country would get to produce less when another country claims higher oil reserves if your country don't do the same and b) OPEC oil reserves have remained at those levels since. Think about it, you to from saying you have X to Y reserves in the ground when they decide that allowed production is a factor of known reserves and then pump oil up year after year after year and still have Y, NOT Y-$amount_produced, left in the ground - year after year after year.. does this add up?
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Let's grade our (USA) government on:
* Transparency on real unemployment rates
* Transparency on getting into the Iraq war
* Transparency on getting into the Vietnam war
* Transparency on (not) publishing the M3 figures
I could go on, but I'll subjectively assign a grade of "D-"
It may be a cliche, but people are good and governments are usually mediocre at best.
Speculation had a major impact on the last fast oil price rise last year. Your points on energy in to get energy out are correct of course, but you need to research on the other topics of the economic costs.
As to published figures, they are *highly* suspect, from anyplace, the saudis for example always seem to have near the same amount in alleged reserves... for the last few decades. And shell got busted over estimating their reserves in order to keep their stock market valuation high.
Spend a few evenings perusing a lot of the back posts at some place like the oildrum, plenty of good info out there on this subject. The consensus is more "we don't really know" about reserves because all the majors lie about it for various reasons, and that is also the point of the article and the leak.
In addition, now we will be contending with the scam/skim carbon market, as various governments will start insisting on additional stealth taxes on carbon emissions to further enrich the too big to fail boys, etc,(the real reason for cap and trade) so we really don't know yet what the costs will be in the future, other than "much higher than now".
America, with 5% of the world's population, consumes about 25% of its resources. Reason? Single Use Zoning. The silly settlement pattern that puts housing neatly in one area, shopping in another, office space in another, and industry in another, and then forces people to drive between all these areas throughout the course of the day. Okay, it makes sense to zone off industry in certain cases where noise and pollution is an issue. But making it illegal to open a corner store in a residential area? No wonder so many journeys are made by car in the USA, bus journeys in that kind of sprawl take forever and mass transit gets a bad reputation (deservedly so). Induced traffic is another symptom of this problem - roads get wider, developers develop farther out to allow people to take advantage of the faster commute and lower property prices, roads get filled with cars belonging to these new commuters, and we're back to square one again with people demanding that the road gets widened even more!
As long as American settlement patterns are so screwed up, the problem will exist even if we aren't in a state of world peak oil. The problem is a hopeless addiction to petroleum that no magic wand nuclear power solution (mentioned by someone above) will be able to fix.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Yikes! I forgot to add:
* Transparency on the amount of oil that it is economically feasible to produce
Oh wait, that's free market economics,
See, here is where you are missing something. The 'Free market' isn't the magic bullet that you want to think it is. Oh sure, it will find an equilibrium between supply and demand. Nobody argues that. However, people might die and there might might be economic collapse while its happening, but gosh darn it, letting things take care of themselves gust makes sense!
'The free market' isn't omniscient. It can be blindsided by sudden changes. Those changes can be very bad in the short term. I might point out how the 'fee market' responded to banking deregulation over the last twenty years to illustrate my point. 'The market' has nobody's best interest at heart.
I am not advocating socialism or anything like that. The best system is probably a mixture of elements of a free market and a controlled economy.
I know someone in the industry and they had this to say when I was talking to them off the record.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Afghanistan: 444 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
Yours In Novy Urengoy,
K. Trout
Once we have reached the "peak", how long will it take to actually "run out"?
Forever.
We don't "run out." What happens is that the production decreases, and the price increases, so production heads asymptotically toward (but never reaching) zero production rate. As the price rises it becomes economically feasible to extract harder and harder to recover oil, and production never stops.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You can find some good background reading here: What You Need to Know about Peak Oil.
There seems to be a lot of dispute over when world-wide peak oil will occur (or if it has already). On the other hand, there is consensus that US peak oil has already happened (and that's accounting for shale, Alaska, etc).
Pretty much everything else I could say on topic has already been posted.
"The world is ending!!1"
"No it isn't!"
"Yes it is!"
While everyone concerned is too preoccupied with their petty PR flame wars and protecting their bottom line, the world actually is getting fucked up beyond repair because of them.
I haven't seen many articles citing the high fuel prices in 2007 as a factor in the economic collapse. Surely the diversion of $$$ from typical consumer spending towards oil was a factor. It *had* to be a factor. So why isn't anyone talking about it?
We've gotten half of that stinky, dirty, polluting oil out of the ground! The planet is much cleaner now.
What about the (marginalized, demonized) economists who forecast an economic collapse every year from 1980 to 2000? Even Jeanne Dixon got a few right.
Sorry don't have moderation points. Peak Oil is a situation made worse by human nature. And the reasons for those decisions are completely logical.
Bitter and proud of it.
If prices rise too high the economy will collapse anyway. The oil doesn't have to completely disappear just become too expensive. You could have bazillions of tonnes of shale oil but if it is too expensive the economy won't function anyway. Endgame.
Bitter and proud of it.
Geologists have 2 questions for the pollyanas who say Gee, there is still a lot of oil like stuff out there:
1) What are the flow rates for new sources? (compare to the 80 million bbl. per day needed currently)
2) When could those flow rates be realized, best case?
That is all. Just get data to answer those 2 questions, and you'll understand the magnitude of the Peak Oil problem.
Some of us do not want the companies to do whatever they want with their own money
To put it bluntly, you prefer feeling good to cheaper oil. Obviously the flaw in your argument is that the price *does* matter. The higher the price goes, the more people will prefer feeling warm to feeling "religious" (because frankly, that's what environmentalism is about, feeling good because you adhere to some "higher morality", not caring about the consequences for other people (like biofuels causing starvation). You know, like Osama bin laden)
current majority of our population does NOT WANT more CO2 producing fossil fuel extracted, while creating a non-trivial mess in the process.
*ahem* the current majority is so rich it prefers the good feeling over cheaper prices. That will change if prices rise. If no alternative energy source is found, environmentalism is doomed. While people prefer nice looking "land", they prefer being alive a LOT more. At some point rising prices will make that choice a very direct one.
Of course, one sometimes gets the impression a certain more-nutty-than-average class withing the greens knows that's exactly what's going to happen and is trying to make sure that if that happens, those people die.
The free market is a means to an end, and that end is a good life with personal liberty etc. The free market itself is not the end.
Unfortunately, that's not the case. Economics do not vanish because you legislate them out of existence. That doesn't work. Only the "free" part of "free market" is a means to an end. "market" is just cold, hard reality, like the sky or the ground under your feet.
"Personal liberty", by contrast, *is* a means to an end. It (for the moment) seems to be the best way to stimulate the economy, making free markets possible. However, don't kid yourself, if what the Chinese are doing, or what the muslims terrorize themselves to do turns out to produce richer economies, personal liberty is doomed. Or if anyone else finds something better (like all the "singularity" folks seem to think we'll find), it will be over.
If there is a better economical system than personal liberty, which does not currently seem to be the case, that will be the end of liberty. That might actually be a good thing, if the alternative truly is better.
Economics and the economy (the "value", not the "money") are eternal, they are as real and definitive as gravity, and they are much, much more powerful than any pseudo-morality and feel-good pseudoscience ever will be, because they are *real*. Please stop arguing otherwise ...
That dinner, how do you think its ingredients are harvested, and possible, with what it is cooked?
You forgot about the fertiliser used to grow it itself- probably made from oil derivatives as well.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Anytime you encounter one of these conspiracy theories, you have to ask yourself, "Why would they do this?" In this case, what incentive would the US Government have to try and suppress oil prices? That flies in the face of the current government economic philosophy, which is to reflate all assets at any cost. Everything the government has tried to do in the last year has been an attempt to raise prices, not lower them. I think the thought is that if they can manage to report a positive CPI number, they can get people and institutions to start releveraging.
I'm all for not sending money to the oil cartels but I'm not sure that this is actually correct. Sure, the electric car may seem cheap when you are only looking at the cost to fill it up nightly with electricity. Most of the costs are sunk into the purchase price. I don't think the math is going to add up. (especially since the govt subsidies should be included in the calculations.) I think T Boon's idea about natural gas vehicles is much better.
(mostly posting this because my mouse slipped and I modded parent down - me sorry)
That said, I am still not too hopeful that reasoned argument is going to keep anyone from clinging to the beliefs that allow them to attribute their misfortunes to some evil cabal
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
a conspiracy of one?
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
You make it sound like nobody ever died in the US from nuclear accidents. Some have. Nuclear energy is expensive. Thank goodness for old Soviet warheads. It still has a role. Wind and solar will be a big part of our energy future. Spain exceeded the 50% wind power threshold the other day. You don't have to be an environmentalist to use solar and wind if they are cheaper.
Funds acquired by borrowing from those who cannot hope to force the repayment of it is what we used to call being paid "tribute"
We all know that economics is a guessing game. Calculated guesses but still guesses. So let's say a gov agency has like 20 of these come up with estimates, everyone guessing a different number. so after avging the numbers, the avg case and worst case is far apart. So 2 of these who can't accept that their predictions are so far off everybody else's, started to take their talents to the media. Big deal
yeah fusion... the perpetual power of tomorrow. Wake me up when it's tomorrow.
um somewhere around 10%of what is burned in cars in the U.S. each day comes from Tar Sands in Alberta. This is incredibly toxic stuff, I've heard numbers like 80litres of burned fuel to each litre that gets sold. But methinks there are some comments here that are very 1970 in their total denial of global warming and belief that oil is the only answer out there.
How about option D: People slowly transition to renewable energy. Oil becomes unimportant. The rich free themselves from it first, at too much expense, but then the middle class finds ways to power houses and cars for free and once free of skyrocketing prices the technology soars.
No seriously. The IEA and USGS (US Geological Survey) were both formed after the 1970's oil shock to provide us with reliable data about future oil supplies. They idea was to provide us with plenty of time to prepare ourselves for future oil shocks. And they did just that - delivering solid if boring data for 30 years.
The suddenly in 2000 everything changed. Sources hereto though uneconomic were included, assumptions like magic improvements in extraction efficiency were added. And the projections altered accordingly.
Seems Bush put about as much store in solid reliable oil data as he did in solid reliable Iraqi intelligence, or scientific advice on global warming for that matter. He was nothing if not consistent.
http://www.peakoil.net/uhdsg/weo2004/TheUppsalaCode.html.
You mean the polluted land with oil pipes transporting oil across Alaska that caused caribou population to increase because they all huddled up next to the oil pipes for warmth and fewer died from the cold?
> makes an analogy with the (marginalized, demonized) economists who warned of a coming economic collapse in 2007.
Hrm... like Paul Krugman, the economic who warned of collapse and yet received a Nobel prize?
All opinions expressed herein are not my own; I haven't had free will since last year when aliens ate my brain.
Yea, the people who died, died in the 1950's in an experimental army reactor back when it was still in the "can we even make this work" phase.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
Come on, that's a great recruiting slogan. You're just jealous that your secret cabal didn't think of it first.
Even a moderate understanding of economics begins with this: wealth is made in the margins of what people don't know.
To claim that the problem is a lack of good information is to basically claim that markets desire efficiency. That's not even close to true. A good market is inefficient to a certain degree. If it isn't, it will eventually run out of profit because everything will be priced accurately.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
And global cooling. And killer bees.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
1. A good portion of our congress is owned by the oil companies
2. These oil companies want to continue to sell as much oil as possible, ergo...
3. These oil companies oppose anything that might reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, so...
4. Any information that might result in an increased sense of urgency to develop alternative energy sources is suppressed, or at least massaged.
Don't believe me? Hey, they did the same for global warming
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I remember this from the 1960s, then the 1970s when they showed a boy about 8 years old saying there would be no oil for him when he was 16 and old enough to drive. His son is driving and perhaps his son is driving by now. Another scare in 1983, 1987, 1991, 1999-2000, 2004 and a big one in 2007/2008 just in time for the election which I personally believe was very much intentional. If they keep "predicting" it, it will eventually happen I'm sure. They also stopped making new oil refineries in the US in the 1970s. So it is possible that we will hit peak oil because they won't be able to refine any more due to the environmentalists. More of the same. Nothing to see, move along.
Not that many of the things encountered in domestic daily U.S. life are made in China. Perhaps you just better remember the ones that are.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
...you know times they are a' changin' (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Boone_Pickens). Personally, I'm lucky enough to have a petroleum geologist for a brother who can debunk all this stuff for me. Only, he actually pointed out the reality of peak oil to me about two years ago. I don't buy into the typical doomer analysis that society will come crumbling down around our ears. I *do*, however, think that cheap oil is behind us. And for the folks who just shrug their shoulders and say "meh, I don't drive, who cares", you really don't appreciate how energy-dependant (and thus oil-dependant) the world economy is. For a realistic analysis, check out Jeff Rubin's book "Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller".
Then you have the big players of OPEC demanding that oil must be payed in USA Dollars. This made the dollar the new GOLD in a sense; but in another sense it made OIL into the new GOLD. The USA can get away with crazy shit because its currency is in a position that never existed before. It also means that Saudi Arabia has more than just 6% of the USA economy it also holds the currency a float. Iraq went to the Euro. bad move. Iran was next on the list and if it were not for the CIA leaked report Cheney might have got his way... (anybody remember how the media was ramping up in the same way with some of the same lines just a few years ago? I often wondered how far it would have gone without the CIA leak...)
As the world moves off oil and is forced to move from oil and the dollar gets weaker-- or even if it gets stronger-- it is already undermined and exploited so that it is quite overvalued. This is going to be a bumpy transition that was likely never contemplated when we were screwed into dumping the gold standard for sort term (generational) gains. War doesn't leave any side unharmed, the economic war the USA has conducted for generations does not come without costs and we are experiencing some now and will much more later on. I don't think most the experts know how to deal with this mess; other than the ones who know how to profit from a predictable downfall and could be contributing to a solution (but they don't get to be successful for doing the right thing do they?) I suppose the USA could become an even bigger casino for mega investors and that could keep things going a little longer?
My bet is China takes the lead. They've positioned themselves quite well so far, they even have been economically invading nations like we used to do-- (see Minegolia, watch Guana become unstable in the next decade...) China's money is strong. The EU is better.. I suppose, but its not china...
As far as the next GOLD, I'd aim for WATER since OIL is on its way out. (I totally think Pickens wanted water rights more than wind power.) Water pollution continues; I expect poor management to be encouraged as well.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
next hundred years.
No matter what anyone does.
Chilling, isn't it? Especially because it will include you, and me.
"If there really isn't much oil left, then oil will slowly become more and more expensive as the remaining oil becomes harder and harder to extract."
Once the Energy Return On Energy Invested becomes too small a ratio, that is when people truly start to feel the pain of bad things are happening or have already happened.
***
"The running average EROI for the finding and production of US domestic oil has dropped from greater than 100 kilojoule returned per kilojoule invested in the 1930s to about 30 to 1 in the 1970s to between 11 and 18 to 1 today. This is a consequence of decreasing energy returns as oil reservoirs are depleted and as energy costs increase as exploration and development are shifted deeper and offshore (Cleveland et al. 1984, Hall et al. 1986, Cleveland 2004)." quoted from http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/4678
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
I'm terribly worried about peak sun. I mean Sol burns through 4 billion kilograms of mass per second. At this prodigious rate we are doomed to a mere 6 to 7 billion years of energy from this yellow dwarf. What we need to do is focus on finding a planet near a red dwarf (they burn for billions of years at a much slower rate). I think we all need to quit being so short sighted about oil.
There's general agreement in the industry that we're near peak oil. The peak may have happened already, in 2006-2008. The most optimistic view is that the peak will be around 2020. That's not far away.
Prices aren't that good an indicator of availability. Because supply and demand are both relatively inelastic and change slowly. So small variations in supply or demand produce big changes in price. The worldwide recession has cut demand a bit, which brought the price way down. Supply did not increase.
All the easy places have already been drilled. US oil production peaked in 1970. Look at this list of countries where production has peaked.
Then there's France. Back in the 1970s, France decided to go nuclear. France has 59 nuclear power plants and exports electricity. It's good to plan ahead.
price increases. economic recession. Price collapses
economy starts recovering. Oil price increases again
repeat
it's already happening.... Oil peaked in 2005.
Disclosure: long oil. Nuclear. Renewables. Gas. Coal.
Deleted
No, it's OK, he takes out Carbon from the atmosphere by removing the plants and eating them.
Hope you weren't worried.
The Thinking World.
The US strategic reserve (i.e. the not yet pumped reserves on US soil) will probably last longer, as it will be reserved to power the military and a (very) few couple of vital industries. Don't expect the civilian population and industry to be able to access it.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
There is no such thing as 'peak oil'. This is the same extrapolationist nonsense that's been spouted in the same breath as 'we're running out of landfills', 'we're running out of fresh water', and 'we're running out of food'. FUD BOLLOCKS.
(And here's a tip: nobody believes you because you've been spewing this same alarmist crap since the late 60's.)
As many people said above, there are trillions of bbls of reserve crude.
As others cogently pointed out, much of this is energetically nonsensical to retrieve.
However, oil is NOT our only source of energy.
As a hypothetical exercise, one could build a nuclear reactor - along with a nearby fast breeder for reprocessing plutonium wastes - and essentially have infinite energy at that site. If electrical energy was not in the format we need (ie until the electric car becomes practical), then that energy can be used to retrieve more oil.
It's very very simple: as supplies for oil become more prohibitive to retrieve, the incentive to develop replacements for it increases. Eventually, oil will probably not be needed at all for energy, only for its use as a source for other raw materials.
For now, all those plastic shopping bags fluttering in the trees down in the street put the lie to any nonsensical fears about 'peak oil'.
-Styopa
Virtually everything in a modern home, a modern hospital, a modern medicine cabinet, our modern lives are made from petroleum. The Peak Oil proponents rarely mention that most of the stuff they intend to have us use to "Go Green" is made from Oil. Their fancy CFL bulbs depend on Oil for the components. Most "Green" solutions rely on Oil-derived materials to be manufactured. The very bicycles they want us to peddle, the stroller they push, the mosquito repellant they use to keep their hippy kids free of West Nile, are all petroleum based at one component level or another.
I can't wait for the day the PETA-loving Peak Oil blabbering tree huggers realize the only oil-free option for a new bicycle seat is leather. May as well leave the fur on.
Over 600 comments in and no one has mentioned LS9? These folks have found the solution to peak oil: make more of the stuff. Hopefully they can get up to speed quickly; if they can keep costs reasonable, we could have true energy independence...and a fresh source of tariffs on exported petroleum.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Your statement
"If the peak oil doom-mongers are right, in a few years we'll be paying a thousand dollars a barrel."
is incorrect. The price of a barrel of oil will never reach thousands of dollars. What it will happen is this: Spikes in the price of 100% in a short period of time. This will happen when demand outstrips supply. In the post peak-oil world supply won't be increased so a process of "demand destruction" will take place and the price will drop.
This demand destruction will manifest itself in 1st world economies with general empoverishment: Luxuries that were afordable in past years will become unafordable. Basic necesities will eat a bigger proportion of your income. In 3rd world and development countries it will manifest with riots of people who are having hunger because they can cover their families food needs with their incomes.
The spike of July 2008 is the first. There will be more ... Soon.
Ignore "Peakoil" at your peril.
Take a moment to think what will happen to you when/if the oil runs out.
No reason to panic, aside from the obvious losing your car, you'll start riding your bike and also go back to a mode of existence that most of our ancestors took for granted and which is much more in tune with nature, hopefully, due to lessons learned in retrospect. You'll have to make do without your plasma TV, go back to using cotton and rubber insulated cords, everything on store shelves will start appearing without the insane packaging and in glass jars instead of plastic. It'll be locally made stuff or local and organically grown. Hey, most advertising billboards will disappear, nice! It will no longer make any sense to live in the suburbs, so cities become towns and everyone moves back to the towns or countryside. The best jobs will be in the trades - carpentry, masonry, etc. In general, it'll be back to the simpler and less wasteful life, which I'd argue was better anyway.
OH, no laptops, no PC's, thus no slashdot either. OH GOD, kill yourself now!!!
As an environmentalist I WELCOME the day we run out of oil. And I'm ready, already most of the way to reducing my dependence on oil. Regardless of the oil question, I choose not to continue the wasteful inefficient lifestyle.
20 years ago peak oil was put at 2001
50 years ago peak oil was put at 1970
At the start of last centurary it was estimated that there was 10 years left
The key is that for each well we only recover max 40% of the oil using current technology. Predictions on peak oil usually forget about technological advances hence the innacurate asertions.
Furthermore most wells are in the US, we have very few wells in other sedimentary basins.
While oil is dirty it is still plentifiul of we are willing to pollutr and pay for it.
As it has happened in the past, someone is plotting a rising demand curve against a presumed insufficient supply, and screams "we're doomed!". This kind of thinking ignores new oil finds, and new recovery techniques which extract more oil from existing finds.
Also ignored are two known Saudi Arabia-sized oil sources -- the tar sands of Alberta and oil shale in the US. At current prices, using these sources isn't economically feasible, but if the price of oil moves up and stays up, we'll see these sources come on line.
Can you name one thing the world has run out of? New technologies, close substitution, and ingenuity driven by economic need have always bolstered and increased the supply of a needed commodity.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Spain exceeded the 50% wind power threshold the other day?
The U.S. still produces the most wind power in the world..... it's not enough.