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I see it's time to bring out this old chestnut again. Here's the slight of hand: > known natural gas reserves, we have about 52.8 years worth of natural gas re

I see it's time to bring out this old chestnut again. Here's the slight of hand: > known natural gas reserves, we have about 52.8 years worth of natural gas reserves left. The key is "known ... reserves". The article blithely assumes we won't ever find any more fossil fuels and then gloomily concludes that we have 52 years of gas left - totally absurd and obviously wrong. The fact that this comes out of Stanford is pathetic. I've been listening to this exact line of garbage for over 30 years. Starting in the 90's we were going to run out of fossil fuels in a matter of decades based off known reserves and current consumption.

jodrellblank 5y ago
See this video from about 1999 - Arithmetic, Population and Energy by Dr Albert Bartlett, about this timestamp[1] for one example. It's mostly about oil, but he cites the work of M Hubbert which was from ~1956 and predicting peak oil production in the USA around 1980 and running out maybe in 2100. Not the "running out soon" that you claim. He also suggests the drops in production which delay the Hubbert peak correspond to OPEC oil price rises. Then see his updated talk from 2011 link[2] which includes "what we're taking out each year is something like three times what we're discovering each year". Wikipedia critiques the Hubbert curve[4] saying "new extraction methods began reversing this trend beginning in the mid-2000s decade, with production reaching 10.07 million b/d in November 2017 – the highest monthly level of crude oil production in U.S. history". The US Energy Information Authority (EIA) explains[3] "much of the increase in 2009 was associated with deepwater developments in the Federal Gulf of Mexico" and "Operators drilling at the Bakken and other shale formations are combining horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing". That is, turning to resources which are harder and more expensive to extract, resources which return fewer barrels of usble oil per barrel of oil of energy put in to extract them than easier to access resources. In the first talk he says "We have very good ways now of estimating how much oil remains undiscovered. Now every so often someone reminds me that a hundred years ago someone did a calculation and predicted that we'd be out of oil in twenty five years. We obviously are not, the calculation must have been wrong therefore, of course, all calculations are wrong. [...] we're not asking today how long will the discovered oil last, we're talking about all the oil". Pumping faster from a limited resource will deplete it sooner. Even if there is twice as much undiscovered oil as geologists estimate, the time remaining won't double as long as production increases, population increases, demand increases. The biggest oil field finds in decades each add only a few months of US usage to the known reserves. > "I've been listening to this exact line of garbage for over 30 years" And in that time, you've likely lived through peak oil production. In his 1999 video Dr Bartlett estimates 75% of total US oil reserves used, 25% remaining. In his 2011 video he updates with new production figures showing closer to 85% used and 15% remaining (including estimates of future discoveries of extractable oil). [1] https://youtu.be/sI1C9DyIi_8?t=2529 https://youtu.be/sI1C9DyIi_8?t=2529 [2] https://youtu.be/o0ghHia-M54?t=2420 https://youtu.be/o0ghHia-M54?t=2420 [3] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=1130 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=1130 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_curve#Critique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_curve#Critique
- infamia 5y ago
  > Not the "running out soon" that you claim. At the time, the mantra was that most of the oil would become so expensive that it wouldn't be economically feasible to extract it. There would be oil in the ground, but in every practical sense we would be "out" since we wouldn't be able to use it. "We have very good ways now of estimating how much oil remains undiscovered. Now every so often someone reminds me that a hundred years ago someone did a calculation and predicted that we'd be out of oil in twenty five years. We obviously are not, the calculation must have been wrong therefore, of course, all calculations are wrong. [...] we're not asking today how long will the discovered oil last, we're talking about all the oil". Mr. Bartlett's predictions and analysis are horrendous and far from "very good". From the second video you linked to, here are his predictions concerning US Oil Production, during which he derides others who were predicting a rise in Oil Production. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0ghHia-M54&t=2420s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0ghHia-M54&t=2420s Now, let's see what actually happened (i.e. production roughly doubled): https://www.macrotrends.net/2562/us-crude-oil-production-historical-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/2562/us-crude-oil-production-his... > The biggest oil field finds in decades each add only a few months of US usage to the known reserves. “…just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot continue.” -- Jimmy Carter 1977 If we were to take Carter's warnings to heart back then and make policy decisions, it would have been a multi-trillion dollar mistake and people would have been much worse off. Obviously, there are limits to all things. My point is that calling the timing on these things is impossible and is almost always catastrophically wrong like Bartlett's predictions). Neils Bohr famously quipped, "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." This is so true, and especially so when you move the horizon out decades while trying to predict complicated and chaotic systems.

jodrellblank 5y ago

See this video from about 1999 - Arithmetic, Population and Energy by Dr Albert Bartlett, about this timestamp[1] for one example. It's mostly about oil, but he cites the work of M Hubbert which was from ~1956 and predicting peak oil production in the USA around 1980 and running out maybe in 2100. Not the "running out soon" that you claim. He also suggests the drops in production which delay the Hubbert peak correspond to OPEC oil price rises. Then see his updated talk from 2011 link[2] which includes "what we're taking out each year is something like three times what we're discovering each year". Wikipedia critiques the Hubbert curve[4] saying "new extraction methods began reversing this trend beginning in the mid-2000s decade, with production reaching 10.07 million b/d in November 2017 – the highest monthly level of crude oil production in U.S. history". The US Energy Information Authority (EIA) explains[3] "much of the increase in 2009 was associated with deepwater developments in the Federal Gulf of Mexico" and "Operators drilling at the Bakken and other shale formations are combining horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing". That is, turning to resources which are harder and more expensive to extract, resources which return fewer barrels of usble oil per barrel of oil of energy put in to extract them than easier to access resources. In the first talk he says "We have very good ways now of estimating how much oil remains undiscovered. Now every so often someone reminds me that a hundred years ago someone did a calculation and predicted that we'd be out of oil in twenty five years. We obviously are not, the calculation must have been wrong therefore, of course, all calculations are wrong. [...] we're not asking today how long will the discovered oil last, we're talking about all the oil". Pumping faster from a limited resource will deplete it sooner. Even if there is twice as much undiscovered oil as geologists estimate, the time remaining won't double as long as production increases, population increases, demand increases. The biggest oil field finds in decades each add only a few months of US usage to the known reserves. > "I've been listening to this exact line of garbage for over 30 years" And in that time, you've likely lived through peak oil production. In his 1999 video Dr Bartlett estimates 75% of total US oil reserves used, 25% remaining. In his 2011 video he updates with new production figures showing closer to 85% used and 15% remaining (including estimates of future discoveries of extractable oil). [1] https://youtu.be/sI1C9DyIi_8?t=2529 https://youtu.be/sI1C9DyIi_8?t=2529 [2] https://youtu.be/o0ghHia-M54?t=2420 https://youtu.be/o0ghHia-M54?t=2420 [3] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=1130 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=1130 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_curve#Critique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_curve#Critique

infamia 5y ago
> Not the "running out soon" that you claim. At the time, the mantra was that most of the oil would become so expensive that it wouldn't be economically feasible to extract it. There would be oil in the ground, but in every practical sense we would be "out" since we wouldn't be able to use it. "We have very good ways now of estimating how much oil remains undiscovered. Now every so often someone reminds me that a hundred years ago someone did a calculation and predicted that we'd be out of oil in twenty five years. We obviously are not, the calculation must have been wrong therefore, of course, all calculations are wrong. [...] we're not asking today how long will the discovered oil last, we're talking about all the oil". Mr. Bartlett's predictions and analysis are horrendous and far from "very good". From the second video you linked to, here are his predictions concerning US Oil Production, during which he derides others who were predicting a rise in Oil Production. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0ghHia-M54&t=2420s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0ghHia-M54&t=2420s Now, let's see what actually happened (i.e. production roughly doubled): https://www.macrotrends.net/2562/us-crude-oil-production-historical-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/2562/us-crude-oil-production-his... > The biggest oil field finds in decades each add only a few months of US usage to the known reserves. “…just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot continue.” -- Jimmy Carter 1977 If we were to take Carter's warnings to heart back then and make policy decisions, it would have been a multi-trillion dollar mistake and people would have been much worse off. Obviously, there are limits to all things. My point is that calling the timing on these things is impossible and is almost always catastrophically wrong like Bartlett's predictions). Neils Bohr famously quipped, "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." This is so true, and especially so when you move the horizon out decades while trying to predict complicated and chaotic systems.