8 ms·

Peak Oil is History

35 points by ph0rque 16y ago

narrator 16y ago
Choice 1: Burn lots and lots of coal + Fischer Tropsch + electric vehicles. Choice 2: Thorium reactors + electric vehicles. That's about it. BTW, The "Peak Oil Community" are 5% oil and gas industry people, and 5% energy policy wonk want-to-bes. The rest are radical environmentalists eagerly anticipating the ecological-Malthusian-doom rapture (see dieoff.org, etc) and are not interested in practical solutions and are just sitting in front of their computers waiting to be raptured up into their ecological-hand-tools-subsistence-agriculture wonderland.
- fungi 16y ago
  > are not interested in practical solutions but it's us stinky hippies that bang on the loudest and for the longest about sustainable transport solutions, renewable energy and sustainable population. (~>_aside form nuclear energy_<~) where do you draw that stereotype from? edit: emphasis
  - ramanujan 16y ago
    I have a Prius. I also support massive expansion of nuclear energy, just like Stewart Brand (of the Whole Earth catalog) and David McKay (British physicist). Caring for the environment doesn't mean forgetting physics. In addition, if we're talking TCO, many more people have been killed in oil wars than nuclear disasters...
  - w00pla 16y ago
    > but it's us stinky hippies that bang on the loudest and for the longest about sustainable transport solutions, renewable energy and sustainable population. Nope. Wasn't the "stinky hippies" the groups that consistently protested against nuclear power? Being anti-nuclear power in the 70ies and 80ies was the bandwagon for the far left (now it is global warming).
  - roel_v 16y ago
    No way dude, the stinky hippies only complain, they don't offer solutions. So yeah re-reading your comment, maybe you're right, but it's hardly the morally position they/you always claim it is.
  - jsz0 16y ago
    Environmentalists in Europe have been known to protest expansion of high speed rail. Not sure if this is a common view or not.
    - fungi 16y ago
      hm didn't know that, guess it all depends where the line runs if you are going to make a serious environmental case vs's NIMBY. fwiw the greens just got us a feasibility study for australias first high speed line (under the world 4th busiest flight corridor) but i'm sure i'll be a very old man b4 anything comes of it
blahedo 16y ago
Incredibly frustrating that all the figures were thumbnails that are illegible and don't link to a higher-resolution version---and then the text doesn't even fully explain them. Does anyone know which country he's talking about for Fig. 3?
- xanados 16y ago
  1: http://www.transitionguelph.org/images/front5.jpg http://www.transitionguelph.org/images/front5.jpg 2: http://orangejuiceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/oil-production.bmp http://orangejuiceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/oil-pr... 3: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-b-kpMH_7eM/SkPP2QB4d9I/AAAAAAAABIA/DYgyPgGWj8E/s400/russia_production.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-b-kpMH_7eM/SkPP2QB4d9I/AAAAAAAABI... The country is Russia.
  - blahedo 16y ago
    Thanks. I thought it might be, but I wasn't sure.
chipsy 16y ago
I let myself get scared a little, as I should with any good peak oil story, and then went looking for an Achilles' Heel. "Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuels -- which are used to move products and deliver services throughout the economy. In the US in particular, there is a very strong correlation between GDP and motor vehicle miles traveled. Thus, the US economy can be said to run on oil, in a rather direct and immediate way: less oil implies a smaller economy. At what point does the economy shrink so much that it can no longer meet its own maintenance requirements? In order to continue functioning, all sorts of infrastructure, plant and equipment must be maintained and replaced in a timely manner, or it stops functioning. Once that point is reached, economic activity becomes constrained not just by the availability of transportation fuels, but also by the availability of serviceable equipment. At some point the economy shrinks so much as to invalidate the financial assumptions on which it is based, making it impossible to continue importing oil on credit. Once that point is reached, the amount of transportation fuels available is no longer limited just by the availability of oil, but also constrained by the inability to finance oil imports." This is the part which attempts to convince the reader that a simple recession/stagnation cannot occur. Unfortunately, it vastly underestimates our resourcefulness and runs on the fallacy of the USA only ever being capable of transportation with petroleum, or of a collapse so swift and sudden(from full consumption to zero in a matter of months; an unlikely event, between price hikes, austerity measures, the application of strategic reserves, opening of existing private stocks, etc.) that no response can be made. If it ever becomes too costly to run petroleum-based freighters, we can still revive coal and sail technology. That alone will ensure the survival of ocean-bound transportation(and hence a lot of import-export dependencies). Overland, goods in the USA are transported through the most cost-effective freight system in the world; trucks are "last mile" haulers in most situations. Our existing rail and electric systems can revert to coal for some time to come, although nobody likes the ecological costs involved in coal. And this even leaves open the possibility of refrigerated transit, just not necessarily at present-day schedules. So the remaining energy problems, as I see them, are in petro-agriculture dependency and infrastructure(primarily in housing stock). Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No. People will die as a result of pretty much any peak oil scenario. A full collapse, though, requires both an overnight cratering of production, and an awful lot of faith in people to do exactly the wrong things.
pandakar 16y ago
stendahl peak oil romanticism at its best
patrickgzill 16y ago
I like Orlov, find his writings to be a useful and interesting perspective, however there is much that is inaccurate or that remains unconsidered in this piece. For instance, the issue of Iraq and Iran, both very undeveloped in terms of wells drilled and the modernity of the infrastructure that runs those wells. Iraq, for all its recent investment, remains underdeveloped, and Iran has not had access to newer oil tech since 1979. Further, there is the question of whether we are suffering from an "oil coming out of the ground" problem or "refine the crude oil into something we can actually use" problem. The bottleneck at this point appears (from my admittedly limited, amateur research) to actually be in total refining capacity.
lzw 16y ago
I find it amazing that so much of the peak oil arguments come from looking at production in the USA, and also from seemingly looking only at production of light sweet crude. Production in the USA is much harder now because of environmental regulations. These drive up costs and naturally would result in companies going offshore to produce... Yet I bet if you looked at proven reserves in e USA you might see a different figure. Especially if you include forms other than light sweet crude. This easy oil is cheapest to refine but it is just one grade of oil, with many heavy grades going all the eay in to oil shale and coal tar and oil sands..... And the reserves of these types of oil are massive in the USA and staggering in Canada. Further exploration is very difficult and banned for the Americas richest locations, such as ANWR. Before it was cut off from exploration, I believe many geologists believed that north of prudhoe bay there was more oil than was found in Saudi Arabia, and at the time they were keeping it under wraps as strategic reserve..... Now we pretend like it doesn't exist. Finally peak oil is based on the theory that depleted fields never produce again, while I understand there are many fields that were previously depleted that refilled while lying fallow for several decades. It is possible that oil is actually a natural product of geological forces, not ancient plant matter, and that most fields will refill over time.
erikstarck 16y ago
I'm looking forward to a world not running on oil. Finally, for the first time, there's global pressure to develop alternatives. The result of this can already be seen in hybrid cars and cheaper solar power. Getting rid of oil is a Good Thing for so many reasons. We should salute it, not fear it.
wazoox 16y ago
Interesting, but he wants a bit too much collapse to be inevitable. The current crisis is probably related to the 2006-2007 oil prices hike (the first actual effects of Peak Oil), and the situation will remain so for a decade or two : oil prices climb, demand is killed off, crisis ensue, prices drop, partial recovery comes, and we start the cycle again. That means that instead of a brutal collapse, we'll live a state of depression, recession and incomplete recovery for the next decades, with at some point an inflexion from less growth to more depression. That's what we have to get prepared to. Related papers : * Rubin and Buchanan crisis analysis: http://www.manicore.com/fichiers/Rubin_Buchanan_CIBC.pdf http://www.manicore.com/fichiers/Rubin_Buchanan_CIBC.pdf * Lloyds 360° risk insight : http://www.manicore.com/fichiers/LLoyds_Chatam_House_froggatt_lahn.pdf http://www.manicore.com/fichiers/LLoyds_Chatam_House_froggat...
Confusion 16y ago
As the price of oil goes up, alternatives for the various uses of oil will appear. There are plenty of those already, they are just not economically viable. At the same time, everything is still getting cheaper and we are faring better and better. I don't see why the net result couldn't be a switch away from oil that takes a few decades, without our (increasing) wellbeing being jeopardized.
ck2 16y ago
For what it's worth, this is pure politics IMHO and not HN worthy.

35 points by ph0rque 16y ago

Choice 1: Burn lots and lots of coal + Fischer Tropsch + electric vehicles. Choice 2: Thorium reactors + electric vehicles. That's about it. BTW, The "Peak Oil Community" are 5% oil and gas industry people, and 5% energy policy wonk want-to-bes. The rest are radical environmentalists eagerly anticipating the ecological-Malthusian-doom rapture (see dieoff.org, etc) and are not interested in practical solutions and are just sitting in front of their computers waiting to be raptured up into their ecological-hand-tools-subsistence-agriculture wonderland.

fungi 16y ago
> are not interested in practical solutions but it's us stinky hippies that bang on the loudest and for the longest about sustainable transport solutions, renewable energy and sustainable population. (~>_aside form nuclear energy_<~) where do you draw that stereotype from? edit: emphasis
- ramanujan 16y ago
  I have a Prius. I also support massive expansion of nuclear energy, just like Stewart Brand (of the Whole Earth catalog) and David McKay (British physicist). Caring for the environment doesn't mean forgetting physics. In addition, if we're talking TCO, many more people have been killed in oil wars than nuclear disasters...
- w00pla 16y ago
  > but it's us stinky hippies that bang on the loudest and for the longest about sustainable transport solutions, renewable energy and sustainable population. Nope. Wasn't the "stinky hippies" the groups that consistently protested against nuclear power? Being anti-nuclear power in the 70ies and 80ies was the bandwagon for the far left (now it is global warming).
- roel_v 16y ago
  No way dude, the stinky hippies only complain, they don't offer solutions. So yeah re-reading your comment, maybe you're right, but it's hardly the morally position they/you always claim it is.
- jsz0 16y ago
  Environmentalists in Europe have been known to protest expansion of high speed rail. Not sure if this is a common view or not.
  - fungi 16y ago
    hm didn't know that, guess it all depends where the line runs if you are going to make a serious environmental case vs's NIMBY. fwiw the greens just got us a feasibility study for australias first high speed line (under the world 4th busiest flight corridor) but i'm sure i'll be a very old man b4 anything comes of it

blahedo 16y ago

Incredibly frustrating that all the figures were thumbnails that are illegible and don't link to a higher-resolution version---and then the text doesn't even fully explain them. Does anyone know which country he's talking about for Fig. 3?

xanados 16y ago
1: http://www.transitionguelph.org/images/front5.jpg http://www.transitionguelph.org/images/front5.jpg 2: http://orangejuiceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/oil-production.bmp http://orangejuiceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/oil-pr... 3: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-b-kpMH_7eM/SkPP2QB4d9I/AAAAAAAABIA/DYgyPgGWj8E/s400/russia_production.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-b-kpMH_7eM/SkPP2QB4d9I/AAAAAAAABI... The country is Russia.
- blahedo 16y ago
  Thanks. I thought it might be, but I wasn't sure.

chipsy 16y ago

I let myself get scared a little, as I should with any good peak oil story, and then went looking for an Achilles' Heel. "Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuels -- which are used to move products and deliver services throughout the economy. In the US in particular, there is a very strong correlation between GDP and motor vehicle miles traveled. Thus, the US economy can be said to run on oil, in a rather direct and immediate way: less oil implies a smaller economy. At what point does the economy shrink so much that it can no longer meet its own maintenance requirements? In order to continue functioning, all sorts of infrastructure, plant and equipment must be maintained and replaced in a timely manner, or it stops functioning. Once that point is reached, economic activity becomes constrained not just by the availability of transportation fuels, but also by the availability of serviceable equipment. At some point the economy shrinks so much as to invalidate the financial assumptions on which it is based, making it impossible to continue importing oil on credit. Once that point is reached, the amount of transportation fuels available is no longer limited just by the availability of oil, but also constrained by the inability to finance oil imports." This is the part which attempts to convince the reader that a simple recession/stagnation cannot occur. Unfortunately, it vastly underestimates our resourcefulness and runs on the fallacy of the USA only ever being capable of transportation with petroleum, or of a collapse so swift and sudden(from full consumption to zero in a matter of months; an unlikely event, between price hikes, austerity measures, the application of strategic reserves, opening of existing private stocks, etc.) that no response can be made. If it ever becomes too costly to run petroleum-based freighters, we can still revive coal and sail technology. That alone will ensure the survival of ocean-bound transportation(and hence a lot of import-export dependencies). Overland, goods in the USA are transported through the most cost-effective freight system in the world; trucks are "last mile" haulers in most situations. Our existing rail and electric systems can revert to coal for some time to come, although nobody likes the ecological costs involved in coal. And this even leaves open the possibility of refrigerated transit, just not necessarily at present-day schedules. So the remaining energy problems, as I see them, are in petro-agriculture dependency and infrastructure(primarily in housing stock). Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No. People will die as a result of pretty much any peak oil scenario. A full collapse, though, requires both an overnight cratering of production, and an awful lot of faith in people to do exactly the wrong things.

pandakar 16y ago

stendahl peak oil romanticism at its best

patrickgzill 16y ago

I like Orlov, find his writings to be a useful and interesting perspective, however there is much that is inaccurate or that remains unconsidered in this piece. For instance, the issue of Iraq and Iran, both very undeveloped in terms of wells drilled and the modernity of the infrastructure that runs those wells. Iraq, for all its recent investment, remains underdeveloped, and Iran has not had access to newer oil tech since 1979. Further, there is the question of whether we are suffering from an "oil coming out of the ground" problem or "refine the crude oil into something we can actually use" problem. The bottleneck at this point appears (from my admittedly limited, amateur research) to actually be in total refining capacity.

lzw 16y ago

I find it amazing that so much of the peak oil arguments come from looking at production in the USA, and also from seemingly looking only at production of light sweet crude. Production in the USA is much harder now because of environmental regulations. These drive up costs and naturally would result in companies going offshore to produce... Yet I bet if you looked at proven reserves in e USA you might see a different figure. Especially if you include forms other than light sweet crude. This easy oil is cheapest to refine but it is just one grade of oil, with many heavy grades going all the eay in to oil shale and coal tar and oil sands..... And the reserves of these types of oil are massive in the USA and staggering in Canada. Further exploration is very difficult and banned for the Americas richest locations, such as ANWR. Before it was cut off from exploration, I believe many geologists believed that north of prudhoe bay there was more oil than was found in Saudi Arabia, and at the time they were keeping it under wraps as strategic reserve..... Now we pretend like it doesn't exist. Finally peak oil is based on the theory that depleted fields never produce again, while I understand there are many fields that were previously depleted that refilled while lying fallow for several decades. It is possible that oil is actually a natural product of geological forces, not ancient plant matter, and that most fields will refill over time.

erikstarck 16y ago

I'm looking forward to a world not running on oil. Finally, for the first time, there's global pressure to develop alternatives. The result of this can already be seen in hybrid cars and cheaper solar power. Getting rid of oil is a Good Thing for so many reasons. We should salute it, not fear it.

wazoox 16y ago

Interesting, but he wants a bit too much collapse to be inevitable. The current crisis is probably related to the 2006-2007 oil prices hike (the first actual effects of Peak Oil), and the situation will remain so for a decade or two : oil prices climb, demand is killed off, crisis ensue, prices drop, partial recovery comes, and we start the cycle again. That means that instead of a brutal collapse, we'll live a state of depression, recession and incomplete recovery for the next decades, with at some point an inflexion from less growth to more depression. That's what we have to get prepared to. Related papers : * Rubin and Buchanan crisis analysis: http://www.manicore.com/fichiers/Rubin_Buchanan_CIBC.pdf http://www.manicore.com/fichiers/Rubin_Buchanan_CIBC.pdf * Lloyds 360° risk insight : http://www.manicore.com/fichiers/LLoyds_Chatam_House_froggatt_lahn.pdf http://www.manicore.com/fichiers/LLoyds_Chatam_House_froggat...

Confusion 16y ago

As the price of oil goes up, alternatives for the various uses of oil will appear. There are plenty of those already, they are just not economically viable. At the same time, everything is still getting cheaper and we are faring better and better. I don't see why the net result couldn't be a switch away from oil that takes a few decades, without our (increasing) wellbeing being jeopardized.

ck2 16y ago

For what it's worth, this is pure politics IMHO and not HN worthy.