5 ms·

> You can say that eventually we'll run out of [resource] but as we do the price goes up making alternatives more attractive We're not running out of oil, that

> You can say that eventually we'll run out of [resource] but as we do the price goes up making alternatives more attractive We're not running out of oil, that's why the market forces you refer to aren't raising the price. This is why almost all mainstream economists call for a carbon price.

Yoric 2y ago
Well, we have reached peak oil, so we're slowly edging towards the threshold at which extracting oil will consume more oil than it produces. Economists are calling for a carbon price because by the time we reach this threshold, it will be way too late for both climate and oil.
- dgoldstein0 2y ago
  This. The problem with fossil fuels right now is not that they are bounded, but that extracting them is polluting the atmosphere and driving climate change. While we've certainly exhausted some of the more easily accessible oil, coal, and natural gas deposits, we've gotten really good at finding more. Production is only scaling down because investment is, not because we've run out of oil to drill for.
- creer 2y ago
  > we have reached peak oil, so we're slowly edging towards the threshold at which extracting oil will consume more oil than it produces. How does that follow?
  - rfrey 2y ago
    Because as oil reserves are depleted, oil is extracted from more and more difficult places. Deeper wells, less porous rock, etc. these new sources require more energy to extract the same amount of oil.
    - creer 2y ago
      More ENERGY needed. Which doesn't have to be oil. Oil is extracted by businesses which pay attention to their bottom line - and so would not, could not, will not use significant amounts of oil to extract comparable oil. Even as you consider current truck mounted prospecting, gas or generator powered drilling, crew vehicles, refineries, all the way to supertankers - these exist BECAUSE the ratio of usage to production is extremely favorable - and not through some fatality. Causality goes the other way: a worsening ratio necessarily causes a switch to other methods.
      - Yoric 2y ago
        > More ENERGY needed. Which doesn't have to be oil. Fair enough, I was using oil as the unit of energy.
  - Yoric 2y ago
    Because, if my memory serves, that's the definition of peak oil. Peak oil is the peak of the curve `energy extracted/energy expended to extract it`. Since 2017, this has been decreasing. *edit* I realize that the definition of peak oil I've been using (which I believe I've found in the writings of Jancovici) is apparently not the standard definition. My bad.
    - creer 2y ago
      I feel one thing that few bother to understand is that it would be extremely hard to arrive at "no more oil", even if humanity somehow made a good faith effort to get there. There is oil all over the place on earth. It's not necessarily oil that's economical to extract, even by today's XXX (pick your term) corporations. There is also energy all over the place (again that might not be economical or politically correct to extract right now.) The result of this is that if NNN years in the future you need oil for some worthy reason (say, you need more Legos :-), you can collect and spend the energy and get the oil. That's not an issue.
- quotemstr 2y ago
  > we have reached peak oil That's just not true. If it were, oil production would decrease every year from the current year onward. It's actually been increasing, and given recent discoveries of large unconventional reserves in the US and elsewhere, we can keep on increasing oil production every year for a long time. See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-production-by-country?country=QAT~OMN~SAU~NOR~IRQ~USA~ARE~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-production-by-country... > extracting oil will consume more oil than it produces. Huh? 1) EROEI is still strongly positive in fossil fuel extraction, and 2) even if it weren't, we'd still extract fossil fuels. Given the utility of petroleum as a chemical feedstock and energy-dense fuel for aviation, we're going to keep extracting the stuff long after it becomes EROEI-negative. It makes perfect sense to spend 1.2 units of nuclear/solar/etc. energy to extract 1.0 units of oil energy if that oil energy meets a need that nuclear/solar/etc. can't satisfy. You can't make legos out of uranium.
kelnos 2y ago
Isn't it already more expensive to extract oil than it was, say, 30 years ago? Obviously this is not a perfect proxy, but I remember in the late 90s, gas at this specific gas station near my high school was 92¢/gal. Inflation should bring that up to under $2/gal today, but the average gas price in the US is considerably higher. (I guess back then the US wasn't exporting oil as we are now, which could account for the difference.)

Yoric 2y ago

Well, we have reached peak oil, so we're slowly edging towards the threshold at which extracting oil will consume more oil than it produces. Economists are calling for a carbon price because by the time we reach this threshold, it will be way too late for both climate and oil.

dgoldstein0 2y ago
This. The problem with fossil fuels right now is not that they are bounded, but that extracting them is polluting the atmosphere and driving climate change. While we've certainly exhausted some of the more easily accessible oil, coal, and natural gas deposits, we've gotten really good at finding more. Production is only scaling down because investment is, not because we've run out of oil to drill for.
creer 2y ago
> we have reached peak oil, so we're slowly edging towards the threshold at which extracting oil will consume more oil than it produces. How does that follow?
- rfrey 2y ago
  Because as oil reserves are depleted, oil is extracted from more and more difficult places. Deeper wells, less porous rock, etc. these new sources require more energy to extract the same amount of oil.
  - creer 2y ago
    More ENERGY needed. Which doesn't have to be oil. Oil is extracted by businesses which pay attention to their bottom line - and so would not, could not, will not use significant amounts of oil to extract comparable oil. Even as you consider current truck mounted prospecting, gas or generator powered drilling, crew vehicles, refineries, all the way to supertankers - these exist BECAUSE the ratio of usage to production is extremely favorable - and not through some fatality. Causality goes the other way: a worsening ratio necessarily causes a switch to other methods.
    - Yoric 2y ago
      > More ENERGY needed. Which doesn't have to be oil. Fair enough, I was using oil as the unit of energy.
- Yoric 2y ago
  Because, if my memory serves, that's the definition of peak oil. Peak oil is the peak of the curve `energy extracted/energy expended to extract it`. Since 2017, this has been decreasing. *edit* I realize that the definition of peak oil I've been using (which I believe I've found in the writings of Jancovici) is apparently not the standard definition. My bad.
  - creer 2y ago
    I feel one thing that few bother to understand is that it would be extremely hard to arrive at "no more oil", even if humanity somehow made a good faith effort to get there. There is oil all over the place on earth. It's not necessarily oil that's economical to extract, even by today's XXX (pick your term) corporations. There is also energy all over the place (again that might not be economical or politically correct to extract right now.) The result of this is that if NNN years in the future you need oil for some worthy reason (say, you need more Legos :-), you can collect and spend the energy and get the oil. That's not an issue.
quotemstr 2y ago
> we have reached peak oil That's just not true. If it were, oil production would decrease every year from the current year onward. It's actually been increasing, and given recent discoveries of large unconventional reserves in the US and elsewhere, we can keep on increasing oil production every year for a long time. See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-production-by-country?country=QAT~OMN~SAU~NOR~IRQ~USA~ARE~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-production-by-country... > extracting oil will consume more oil than it produces. Huh? 1) EROEI is still strongly positive in fossil fuel extraction, and 2) even if it weren't, we'd still extract fossil fuels. Given the utility of petroleum as a chemical feedstock and energy-dense fuel for aviation, we're going to keep extracting the stuff long after it becomes EROEI-negative. It makes perfect sense to spend 1.2 units of nuclear/solar/etc. energy to extract 1.0 units of oil energy if that oil energy meets a need that nuclear/solar/etc. can't satisfy. You can't make legos out of uranium.

kelnos 2y ago

Isn't it already more expensive to extract oil than it was, say, 30 years ago? Obviously this is not a perfect proxy, but I remember in the late 90s, gas at this specific gas station near my high school was 92¢/gal. Inflation should bring that up to under $2/gal today, but the average gas price in the US is considerably higher. (I guess back then the US wasn't exporting oil as we are now, which could account for the difference.)