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> (As I understand it, we _kinda_ ran out of conventional oil, but were able to replace it with shale oil et al... so it's unclear [1]) That doesn't really cha
by roenxi 2y ago
> (As I understand it, we _kinda_ ran out of conventional oil, but were able to replace it with shale oil et al... so it's unclear [1])
That doesn't really change the math. It is a finite resource, the amount consumed keeps going up. There has to be a peak. Growth tends to be to a logarithmic or exponential curve, so adding a huge amount of extra resource doesn't change the date all that much on long timeframes.
- ttoinou 2y agoResources are infinite (Julian Simon). And exponential doesnt mean the peak will be in 20 years. It could be 500 years.
- roenxi 2y agoReal resources humanity can access are not infinite (scientists & engineers) and economists can get their assumptions wrong (everyone, including economists). And there is no way our current trend of oil use can be sustained for 500 years. By then our oil use will be negligible compared to what it is today unless something truly bizarre and unforseeable happens.
- jvanderbot 2y agoIf we make oil from nuclear or solar power using fuel synthesis, we can carry forward indefinitely.
- roenxi 2y agoYeah but we wouldn't do that. It doesn't make sense to pay the energy conversion costs; it is already more efficient to store power in non-oil batteries.
- Earw0rm 2y agoNot true for aviation, where weight and volume are both constraints.
- jvanderbot 2y agoFor me, scarcity arguments based on "preferences" don't make a ton of sense, but I see your point. I'd give even odds there will always be use cases for burnable fuels, and almost all vehicles use burnable fuels currently. Sure seems a shorter path to just pull CO2 out of the air and keep moving along as we always have, vs electrifying everything.
- baq 2y agoGrow our civilization’s energy consumption by ~2% yoy and you’ll boil the oceans in 400 years. Or course, the planet will be uninhabitable much, much earlier, so it doesn’t matter too much.
- psychoslave 2y agoMaybe we can go with a bit more of nuances here. Uninhabitable is probably an "overstatement", as in, if all human civilizations collapse globally consequently to its collective hubris, chances are good that other species will thrive in this very different world. We can even suppose continuation of some humans but with different life modalities.
- baq 2y agoI’m not sure which part of ‘boil the oceans’ you think we can sort of exist in. In this scenario we become Venus except with thinner atmosphere, so no balloons to save us.
- throwway120385 2y agoThey're not saying we can exist. They're saying that it's not uninhabitable to something, therefore making the value judgement that it would be uninhabitable is simply not true. Which is another kind of value judgement about how important your own values are.
- psychoslave 2y agoWhile such a scenario is certainly possible, it's not something that can be achieved by humanity by solely leverage on its current capacities to transform earth environment. See for example https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/47070/20231113/earth-s-oceans-boil-away-what-factors-make-planet-lose.htm https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/47070/20231113/earth-s... So, to answer your question, in the part where humanity can certainly change the world to its own detrimental, but is currently not able to really put it in a state where absolutely no life form is conceivable anymore, and that even putting it a state where some hunters gatherers would not be able to survive is not a 100% garantie outcome of current trends. though I would rather consider the current trend rather awful if you ask.
- Iridescent_ 2y agoConventional has already peaked, and it is possible that even producers will decide to stop extracting nonconventional oil because it is too expensive and the price of a barrel fluctuates too much (IEA 2020)
- spacebanana7 2y agoLiquid fuel isn’t a finite resource, or is at least only finite to the extent the universe is finite. Whether we use conventional oil, shale or synthetics is really just an implementation issue. The basic idea of solar energy + hydrogen + carbon is pretty much common.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoWait what are you arguing exactly?
- spacebanana7 2y agoThe supply of oil is effectively infinite because it can be derived from things that exist in extreme abundance. This doesn’t necessitate oil being cheap, just that we’ll never realistically be at a point where we’ve used up all oil.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoBut wouldn’t deriving oil from other things be drastically less energy efficient than current day oils, and isn’t that the problem with current day forms running out?
- spacebanana7 2y agoIt's more difficult than current day oil forms, but not necessarily less energy efficient. The same amount of solar energy would be required, but it'd be gathered through solar panels rather than prehistoric plantation. Humans have made pretty steady progress in getting in ever more difficult forms of oil. Originally we found naturally near surface reservoirs, then started drilling, then deep sea drilling, and then fracking. Each phase was more technologically difficult. To be clear I think a lot of technological progress is required for synthetical oil to be economical, but in a discission of resource limits across decades, centuries or millennia it's an important escape path.
- psychoslave 2y agoGrowth itself is very ambiguous. To start with, there will always be a growing number of events that (relatively to our species evolution, until its disappearance) will be in the past. Not necessarily more events with artifacts to which we can have access to though. It’s not like "consumption" is an act of annihilation of anything, this is all transformations. At least as far as energy-mass equilibrium goes. In a sense, we can literally lose information, as it will never be possible to access it again, be it a star (the stellar body) existence that is out of observable, a species which disappeared million years ago that has let no trace of its passage on earth, or our beloved ones whose loving memory won’t last much centuries.
- anovikov 2y agoCurrent theory is that there will be peak demand instead. Which is same as "peak", but happens with prices falling rather than increasing.
- polotics 2y agoInteresting! Can you point to a good model that shows demand constrains first and ahead of availability crunch? I never saw anything approaching that result, liquid fuels are hard to replace, no?
- datadrivenangel 2y agoWe've reached 'peak carbon'. The world is increasingly acknowledging that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increase the overall temperature of the planet, which changes planetary weather patterns, and that this changing climate is expensive to adapt to. As such, we're emitting a more than economically optimal amount of carbon dioxide, and demand overall should drop. Hence, peak demand. More energy consumption can give us more good things, so the energy consumption itself isn't bad, but we've reached a point where the side effects of the energy consumption are eating into the benefits we get, probably past the point of marginal benefit overall.
- polotics 2y agommh sure. I think your take is extremely optimistic, you mention The World as if there were a collective direction, but from where I stand CO2 emissions look like the ultimate example of the tragedy of the commons. Also the side effects of benefits have large delays, so economics are very dependent on the rate of discount you use for your net-present-value calculation...
- cryptonector 2y agoYes, you are totally correct, and yet the Malthusians can be wrong when applying this argument because we humans respond to price signals.
- orwin 2y agoPrice signal are only relevant is you have a price elasticity of demand, which oil and gas obviously don't have, as they are the building bricks of modern trade and production. Also if logic isn't enough, you just have to look at oil price/consumption to see how inelastic oil prices are.
- cryptonector 2y ago> price elasticity of demand, which oil and gas obviously don't have Not remotely clear. First, we have enormous amounts of coal and uranium, so we can make electricity for thousands of years, and EVs mean that if we have to give up on oil, we can. Second, the U.S. has something like 1,200 years' worth of proven shale natural gas reserves(!), so again, we can make all the electricity we need. And many countries have vehicle fleets that run on natural gas, so again we could give up on oil if we had to. Manufacturing natgas-powered vehicles is way less resource intensive, and way more sustainable than manufacturing EVs. And if we have that much in the way of shale natgas reserves then running out of oil won't be as big a problem as you paint it. The development of natgas-powered vehicles and EVs happened in spite or because of the demand inelasticity of oil.
- pyuser583 2y agoI’m a bit confused because you said two contradictory things: “the amount consumed keeps going up” and “there has to be a peak.” Resource consumption goes up until it reaches a peak, then goes down. Generally, there are plenty of second peaks.