4 ms·

I think this characterization should be accompanied by three thoughts: - In the scale of human history, we haven't used oil at industrial scales that long; rou

by aylmao 4y ago

I think this characterization should be accompanied by three thoughts: - In the scale of human history, we haven't used oil at industrial scales that long; roughly 170 years our of, say ~12000 years since the Neolithic Revolution [1]. In those 12000 years, there's times we have have "made it" past resource shortage, but there's also times it has all come burning down. We don't always find ways past problems. - It's a rather romanticized characterization to call "human ingenuity" what saved us from "peak oil". Yes, there was a lot of ingenuity and tech involved, but there were also some nasty politics, disastrous wars and terrible environmental impact from new extraction sites/techniques. Economic pressure doesn't only make us smarter, it also makes us more ruthless. - Overall, is this what we want? Perhaps the peak oil predictions of the 80s would've been a better outcome; we'd live in a world with less "stuff", yeah, but also perhaps fewer problems? Thinking about the current transition to EVs: do we want to replace all gas cars with them, or is the better outcome that cars be expensive, and we opt for more efficient modes of transportation like public transit or walking? Our economic system means human ingenuity and ruthlessness finds a way to scale production, since profit incentives align with that. Perhaps though the better ingenuity would be not to find "more", but use what we've got in a better way. [1] I chose the Neolithic Revolution since that's arguably when our mindset shifted from "following resources" and adapting to what we find, to settling down and producing what we need instead. Thus I'd assume this is where the concern of how we manage our resources became more akin what we find ourselves in now. We weren't going anywhere— we had to figure out how to keep the land from decertifying, our water from running out, etc.

codeflo 4y ago
> In those 12000 years, there's times we have have "made it" past resource shortage, but there's also times it has all come burning down. We don't always find ways past problems. Peak tin is a conspiracy theory, and everyone who worries about the Sea Peoples is a warmongering racist.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > everyone who worries about the Sea Peoples is a warmongering racist If the climate and seismic disasters which appear to have displaced the Sea Peoples hadn’t happened, isn’t it plausible that peak tin wouldn’t have happened? There was plenty of tin on Iberia and the British Isles.
  - aylmao 4y ago
    They did happen though. I don't think the cause of the issue (running out, displacement, war, etc) matters. The point that we sometimes just don't manage to figure things out and keep things from crashing down.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > sometimes just don't manage to figure things out and keep things from crashing down Scarcity of tin didn’t cause the Bronze Age collapse. Take a household spending frivolously, and then buried in an earthquake. It would be odd to use their example when arguing for responsible fiscal practise: that wasn’t the cause of their demise. Peak tin didn’t happen because a separate factor did in civilisation before it became a problem.
      - aylmao 4y ago
        Yes and no. The decline in the supply of tin is thought to be an important part of the "domino effect" that led to the collapse. These were great civilizations that are thought could've managed issues related of mass immigration and/or invasion, but with weakened economies this wasn't so much the case. > Ironically, the interconnectedness that had strengthened these Bronze Age kingdoms may have hastened their downfall. Once trade routes for tin and copper were disrupted and cities began to fall, Cline says it had a domino effect that resulted in a widespread “system collapse.” [1] But you're right, scarcity of tin alone couldn't have caused such widespread system failure, and it itself was caused by other factors. Overall though, the wider point I was trying to make is that things can go wrong, and we can't always figure out how to solve them. [1]: https://www.history.com/news/bronze-age-collapse-causes https://www.history.com/news/bronze-age-collapse-causes
esperent 4y ago
> In those 12000 years, there's times we have have "made it" past resource shortage, but there's also times it has all come burning down. We don't always find ways past problems. This seems like a good counterargument, however on thinking it over I don't think it's valid. For most of those 12,000 years we didn't have any way to share knowledge except verbal and basic stick figure paintings. The amount of time that we've had the scientific method is even shorter, and the amount of time since the industrial revolution tinier again. Based on that chain of thought, I don't think it's valid to draw historical comparisons beyond the last 500 years or so. Perhaps not even the last 100 years. Faced with a truly civilization threatening resource shortage in the next decade or century, we could literally move asteroids to solve it. With that in mind, can you really claim it's valid to compare ourselves to neolithic hunter gatherers and say we face the same kind of existential risks over resources?
- aylmao 4y ago
  > This seems like a good counterargument, however on thinking it over I don't think it's valid. I'm not really presenting it as a counterargument, just a thought, because at the end of the day we're talking about predicting wether we can find future solutions to future problems. > Based on that chain of thought, I don't think it's valid to draw historical comparisons beyond the last 500 years or so. Perhaps not even the last 100 years. If I were presenting this as a rigorous counterargument, I'd go beyond what you allude; it's not 500, or 100 years of history that we can draw on to predict what will happen in the future. It's 0. We haven't had problems like the ones that will come, we don't know what the theoretical solutions could be, and we don't know wether we'd be able to implement any of those theoretical solutions. We could get lucky and metaphorically "draw heads" from now until eternity, and pointing out that in the past we've sometimes "drawn tails" can't disprove it, you're right. All I'm saying is we've failed plenty in the past, so it's worth considering that perhaps we could fail in the future too. We are more capable, though the problems are bigger. We could get lucky, but we could also get unlucky. We don't know. > Faced with a truly civilization threatening resource shortage in the next decade or century, we could literally move asteroids to solve it. With that in mind, can you really claim it's valid to compare ourselves to neolithic hunter gatherers and say we face the same kind of existential risks over resources? Here I need to point out two things: - Until it's done, having the capacity to mine asteroids will only be theoretical. - Yes— even if we manage to move asteroids. I think it'll be valid comparison for as long as we exist. We are living beings in an environment. We can use energy in clever ways to gain the resources we need to survive and perhaps grow in that environment. The demand for resources and the supply we can access might grow as our population, complexity, and capabilities grow, but we'll forever be grappling this core mechanic of survival: we need to make sure we don't run out of X, else we risk all this we've built to come crashing down. One thing I brought fourth on my third point in that original comment is that perhaps the solution to this timeless question isn't always in the supply of resources. Perhaps we shouldn't always figure out how to get more of X, and instead figure out how we can need less of it. But I'm going now beyond what you just asked me in your comment, sorry.
roenxi 4y ago
Weren't the predictions in the 80s largely accurate? As I recall the only big miss was shale oil [0] and if it follows a bell curve then the sharp initial spike up is a bad sign for its longevity. I recall that the cost of producing shale oil gave the fields questionable economics too. We could easily be looking at a huge amount of war and suffering in the near future as global peak oil hits and there are no new horizons being developed. Fringe quacks, like the US Energy Information Administration or Shell [1], have models that say in the worst case we could be hitting the peak right as early as this year if we are unlucky. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OilProductionTightTotalHubbert-dec2021.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OilProductionTightTotalHu... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Predictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Predictions
- ben_w 4y ago
  I think how accurate it is depends on what exactly you want to know about. On a small scale, each well to each region, it seems to be quite accurate. On a global scale however, it doesn’t seem to account for the changes in technology or the geopolitical pressures caused by oil shortages. So, I used to be worried about it, but now I’m not. The main reason for my optimism here is that solar power seems to be following the best possible curve for replacing oil in energy production, while Elon Musk‘s personal fantasy about going to Mars happens to have a pre-requisite of the development of industrial scale CO2-to-methane conversion, and methane can be converted into longer chains for the other stuff oil is useful for e.g. plastics. However, there will still be global and national political concerns as the transition to renewables radically changes the economies of the world – Russia OPEC, all the oil rig workers (and coal miners because it isn’t just oil), and so on.
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    The commenter above has been very vague about what they meant about these predictions. To take a more specific example, cited in the international energy report as "the pessimistic take" in 1998, the "end of cheap oil" and the start of the decline in production of conventional oil before 2010 has been correctly predicted by peak oil theorists (at that point the price of oil was $15/barrel and still going down) : https://www.resilience.org/stories/1998-02-28/end-cheap-oil/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/1998-02-28/end-cheap-oil/ They might have underestimated the possibility of tight oil providing a temporary relief valve though, not even mentioning it in their discussion of unconventional oil (tar sands and kerogen). (They do mention technical evolution, though maybe not revolution ?) But then, even though the tight oil industry has produced oil, it seems to be more of a kind of fraud, a bubble bolstered by easy Wall Street money, now starting to pop (?), even though collectively supposedly it is still deep in the red, with only a few quarters in the green during more than a decade. And this despite the fact that it has been selling its oil when the global price was much higher than $15/barrel ! And so, one might wonder whether it has not been a net waste of oil too, as building and operating all that machinery is certainly not energy free. (Not to mention the costs of environmental cleanup.) Has the US failed badly at capitalism here ?!?
Kamq 4y ago
> Perhaps the peak oil predictions of the 80s would've been a better outcome; we'd live in a world with less "stuff", yeah, but also perhaps fewer problems? I don't think this follows, especially with your previous statement that: > Economic pressure doesn't only make us smarter, it also makes us more ruthless. It seems like the increased economic pressure of competing for less stuff would force people to be vastly more ruthless than they were in the 80s, which presumably would result in more problems.

by aylmao 4y ago

codeflo 4y ago

> In those 12000 years, there's times we have have "made it" past resource shortage, but there's also times it has all come burning down. We don't always find ways past problems. Peak tin is a conspiracy theory, and everyone who worries about the Sea Peoples is a warmongering racist.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> everyone who worries about the Sea Peoples is a warmongering racist If the climate and seismic disasters which appear to have displaced the Sea Peoples hadn’t happened, isn’t it plausible that peak tin wouldn’t have happened? There was plenty of tin on Iberia and the British Isles.
- aylmao 4y ago
  They did happen though. I don't think the cause of the issue (running out, displacement, war, etc) matters. The point that we sometimes just don't manage to figure things out and keep things from crashing down.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > sometimes just don't manage to figure things out and keep things from crashing down Scarcity of tin didn’t cause the Bronze Age collapse. Take a household spending frivolously, and then buried in an earthquake. It would be odd to use their example when arguing for responsible fiscal practise: that wasn’t the cause of their demise. Peak tin didn’t happen because a separate factor did in civilisation before it became a problem.
    - aylmao 4y ago
      Yes and no. The decline in the supply of tin is thought to be an important part of the "domino effect" that led to the collapse. These were great civilizations that are thought could've managed issues related of mass immigration and/or invasion, but with weakened economies this wasn't so much the case. > Ironically, the interconnectedness that had strengthened these Bronze Age kingdoms may have hastened their downfall. Once trade routes for tin and copper were disrupted and cities began to fall, Cline says it had a domino effect that resulted in a widespread “system collapse.” [1] But you're right, scarcity of tin alone couldn't have caused such widespread system failure, and it itself was caused by other factors. Overall though, the wider point I was trying to make is that things can go wrong, and we can't always figure out how to solve them. [1]: https://www.history.com/news/bronze-age-collapse-causes https://www.history.com/news/bronze-age-collapse-causes

esperent 4y ago

> In those 12000 years, there's times we have have "made it" past resource shortage, but there's also times it has all come burning down. We don't always find ways past problems. This seems like a good counterargument, however on thinking it over I don't think it's valid. For most of those 12,000 years we didn't have any way to share knowledge except verbal and basic stick figure paintings. The amount of time that we've had the scientific method is even shorter, and the amount of time since the industrial revolution tinier again. Based on that chain of thought, I don't think it's valid to draw historical comparisons beyond the last 500 years or so. Perhaps not even the last 100 years. Faced with a truly civilization threatening resource shortage in the next decade or century, we could literally move asteroids to solve it. With that in mind, can you really claim it's valid to compare ourselves to neolithic hunter gatherers and say we face the same kind of existential risks over resources?

aylmao 4y ago
> This seems like a good counterargument, however on thinking it over I don't think it's valid. I'm not really presenting it as a counterargument, just a thought, because at the end of the day we're talking about predicting wether we can find future solutions to future problems. > Based on that chain of thought, I don't think it's valid to draw historical comparisons beyond the last 500 years or so. Perhaps not even the last 100 years. If I were presenting this as a rigorous counterargument, I'd go beyond what you allude; it's not 500, or 100 years of history that we can draw on to predict what will happen in the future. It's 0. We haven't had problems like the ones that will come, we don't know what the theoretical solutions could be, and we don't know wether we'd be able to implement any of those theoretical solutions. We could get lucky and metaphorically "draw heads" from now until eternity, and pointing out that in the past we've sometimes "drawn tails" can't disprove it, you're right. All I'm saying is we've failed plenty in the past, so it's worth considering that perhaps we could fail in the future too. We are more capable, though the problems are bigger. We could get lucky, but we could also get unlucky. We don't know. > Faced with a truly civilization threatening resource shortage in the next decade or century, we could literally move asteroids to solve it. With that in mind, can you really claim it's valid to compare ourselves to neolithic hunter gatherers and say we face the same kind of existential risks over resources? Here I need to point out two things: - Until it's done, having the capacity to mine asteroids will only be theoretical. - Yes— even if we manage to move asteroids. I think it'll be valid comparison for as long as we exist. We are living beings in an environment. We can use energy in clever ways to gain the resources we need to survive and perhaps grow in that environment. The demand for resources and the supply we can access might grow as our population, complexity, and capabilities grow, but we'll forever be grappling this core mechanic of survival: we need to make sure we don't run out of X, else we risk all this we've built to come crashing down. One thing I brought fourth on my third point in that original comment is that perhaps the solution to this timeless question isn't always in the supply of resources. Perhaps we shouldn't always figure out how to get more of X, and instead figure out how we can need less of it. But I'm going now beyond what you just asked me in your comment, sorry.

roenxi 4y ago

Weren't the predictions in the 80s largely accurate? As I recall the only big miss was shale oil [0] and if it follows a bell curve then the sharp initial spike up is a bad sign for its longevity. I recall that the cost of producing shale oil gave the fields questionable economics too. We could easily be looking at a huge amount of war and suffering in the near future as global peak oil hits and there are no new horizons being developed. Fringe quacks, like the US Energy Information Administration or Shell [1], have models that say in the worst case we could be hitting the peak right as early as this year if we are unlucky. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OilProductionTightTotalHubbert-dec2021.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OilProductionTightTotalHu... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Predictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Predictions

ben_w 4y ago
I think how accurate it is depends on what exactly you want to know about. On a small scale, each well to each region, it seems to be quite accurate. On a global scale however, it doesn’t seem to account for the changes in technology or the geopolitical pressures caused by oil shortages. So, I used to be worried about it, but now I’m not. The main reason for my optimism here is that solar power seems to be following the best possible curve for replacing oil in energy production, while Elon Musk‘s personal fantasy about going to Mars happens to have a pre-requisite of the development of industrial scale CO2-to-methane conversion, and methane can be converted into longer chains for the other stuff oil is useful for e.g. plastics. However, there will still be global and national political concerns as the transition to renewables radically changes the economies of the world – Russia OPEC, all the oil rig workers (and coal miners because it isn’t just oil), and so on.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  The commenter above has been very vague about what they meant about these predictions. To take a more specific example, cited in the international energy report as "the pessimistic take" in 1998, the "end of cheap oil" and the start of the decline in production of conventional oil before 2010 has been correctly predicted by peak oil theorists (at that point the price of oil was $15/barrel and still going down) : https://www.resilience.org/stories/1998-02-28/end-cheap-oil/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/1998-02-28/end-cheap-oil/ They might have underestimated the possibility of tight oil providing a temporary relief valve though, not even mentioning it in their discussion of unconventional oil (tar sands and kerogen). (They do mention technical evolution, though maybe not revolution ?) But then, even though the tight oil industry has produced oil, it seems to be more of a kind of fraud, a bubble bolstered by easy Wall Street money, now starting to pop (?), even though collectively supposedly it is still deep in the red, with only a few quarters in the green during more than a decade. And this despite the fact that it has been selling its oil when the global price was much higher than $15/barrel ! And so, one might wonder whether it has not been a net waste of oil too, as building and operating all that machinery is certainly not energy free. (Not to mention the costs of environmental cleanup.) Has the US failed badly at capitalism here ?!?

Kamq 4y ago

> Perhaps the peak oil predictions of the 80s would've been a better outcome; we'd live in a world with less "stuff", yeah, but also perhaps fewer problems? I don't think this follows, especially with your previous statement that: > Economic pressure doesn't only make us smarter, it also makes us more ruthless. It seems like the increased economic pressure of competing for less stuff would force people to be vastly more ruthless than they were in the 80s, which presumably would result in more problems.