Francisco Teaching Dan to Farm
Originally uploaded by paynehollow.
Earlier in the month I asked the question, “What’s wrong?” I was wondering what visitors here may think were the biggest problems we, as a society or world faced.
I received answers from a rather small sampling of folk, but the responses were:
Catastrophic climate change/Peak oil ---------------------2 votes
Just Peacemaking/terrorism --------------------------------2 votes sorta
Electoral and other reforms to make our government more responsive to citizens and citizens more involved -------1 vote
Changing the global economy --------------------------------1 vote
Religion ----------------------------------------------------------1 vote
Education (lack of) ---------------------------------------------1 vote
Education (gov’t-style) --------------------------------------- 2 votes
Consumerism ---------------------------------------------------2 votes
I apologize if my summation is not exactly accurate. It was not as neat as indicated here (I’m not sure, for instance, if those arguing against gov’t education were saying it was one of the biggest problems we face or if they were just responding to the person who said lack of good education was a big problem).
In that case, would it be fair to say that they agree that a lack of good education is a problem – even if they disagree on what constitutes a good education?
I rather agree with those who suggested that consumerism might well at least touch on if not totally include some of the other problems listed. That is, we wouldn’t be having a peak oil problem if we weren’t over-consuming to the degree that we are. Would the terrorism issue be as bad if there weren’t this gulf between the obscenely wealthy and the rest of the world?
I tend towards naming consumerism as one of our major problems, with an unsustainable lifestyle we have promoted being part and parcel of that. And, as has been noted here by some, because of the way we consume, we are pretty dependent upon the system as it exists.
It is, in many ways, self-perpetuating. We need cars because things are spread out and it is not safe to get places without cars, therefore we need cars. We “can’t” grow our own food because we don’t know how, therefore we must buy food and that food can increasingly only be purchased from the big stores which are spread out as well and which require a car to get to. That sort of idea.
It will require significant lifestyle changes away from over-consumption to begin to effect change and most of us are not wont to make significant lifestyle changes in ways we believe to be uncomfortable. So, we’ll keep living in unsustainable and, some would say, violence-dependent ways and will only change if we’re forced to and we can’t imagine anything that would force us to do so.
And so, we’re stuck.
Or are we?
76 comments:
Would the terrorism issue be as bad if there weren’t this gulf between the obscenely wealthy and the rest of the world?>
I think this is a bogus claim. I grew up in the generation that went through hard times, barely enough money to get by and there was no one on welfare unless they were so old and physically unable to earn a living. Too much give away programs has taken away the incentive for people to work and make their own way. Idleness gives time for mischief and over time the mischief has gotten worse and worse. Another word for this is the sinful nature of mankind.
I should have added that terrorism is not the result of the gulf between wealth and the rest of the world, because violence does not result from being poor. It is a condition of the heart. Also, the terrorists are not from poverty stricken countries. Look at the wealth they possess from oil alone.
mom2 is partly--PARTLY--right. Poverty by itself does not lead to terrorism. And some terrorists like Osama bin Laden are actually filthy rich. Nor was home-grown terrorist Timothy McVeigh poor; nor was the Unibomber. And Mom2 is right that Islamist terrorists are from oil-rich nations--though few of the actual terrorists share in that wealth and they hate the wealthy who run those nations as much as they hate the West, seeing them as collaborators.
But what extreme poverty and desperation (along with military oppression) is create the conditions where folks look for simplistic explanations and solutions. This is especially true if one is illiterate or not very educated--not used to looking and thinking for complex answers.
Again, this does not make one a terrorist. It IS a condition of the heart (as are the evils that mom2, El-Ashley and others routinely suggest as a solution to terrorism--no difference).
But in conditions of extremity, with people looking for easy solutions, they are vulnerable to being recruited by fanatics--whether those fanatics are Nazis (Germans wanted easy answers to their suffering after WWI), KKKers (poor whites looked for someone to blame and were given African-Americans as scapegoats), anti-government survivalist-type terrorists in the Mid-West (not as big now as in the '80s), radical Islamist extremists, etc.
This does not morally excuse those who fall for this extremist propaganda--plenty of poor, desperate people resist--in all cultures at all times. But it does mean that if people address things like the obscene wealth gap, one makes fanatical recruiting harder and thus reduces terrorism. This has been proven historically.
Thanks Michael. That is the answer I would have given if I were as smart as you.
That is why I said in my essay, "Would the terrorism issue be as bad if there weren’t this gulf between the obscenely wealthy and the rest of the world?" - to indicate that our overconsumption is not THE reason for terrorism, but may indeed be exacerbating the problem.
Mom2:"I should have added that terrorism is not the result of the gulf between wealth and the rest of the world, because violence does not result from being poor."
This is two different things. 1) Being poor and 2) There being a great discrepancy between the rich and poor.
Being poor per se doesn't make one violent. By any US standards I am abysmally poor, and yet I've never done violence to anyone. But when people are poor BECAUSE other people are idle at their expense, then feelings of violence smolder ... either in fact or because people believe it is so.
In Pearl Buck's The Good Earth the protagonist has been debating whether or not to sell one of his daughters into slavery in order to have enough money to take the rest of the family back north to their farm:
"Shall I never see it (the land) again! With all this labor and begging there is never enough to do more than feed us today."
From out of the dusk there answered him a voice. A deep burly voice.
"You are not the only one. There are a hundred hundred like you in this city."
..........
"Well, and is it forever?"
"No. And not forever. When the rich are too rich, there are ways, and when the poor are too poor, there are ways."
Oh, & Dan, I do think overconsumption is a huge problem. Being part of Jeff Street Baptist has helped me consume less instead of just complain about it.
You use the terms "over-consumption" and "unsustainable" regularly. I'd like to read what exactly you mean when you use those terms, perhaps you'd have to devote an entire new post to the effort.
I ask for the following reasons. Over-consumption implies that there is a certain level of consumption that is acceptable but in your view we are over doing it. Can you define what level of consumption you would be ok with or am I mis-reading the implication?
Unsustainability is very vague. In a general sense you would be wrong since we most certainly are sustaining our way of life. But you're probably implying that at some time in the future we wont be able to. I'm guessing it has to do with your belief that at some distant time when oil runs out civilization will just collapse, is this correct or are there other aspects besides oil in your argument?
That's a fine and important question, Eben. I'll be glad to elaborate.
By over-consumption - gluttony, to refer to the Seven Deadly Sins; or Not doing unto your neighbor as you'd have them do unto you, to refer to Jesus' words - I just mean living in a way that, if everyone lived, no one could live.
If I might use an example, I'd refer to the good folk of Easter Island.
When it was settled a little over a millenia ago, there were large trees covering the island. Now, it is a desolate rock.
One reason put forth as to why that is:
The people who settled there used the trees for much of their economy. They used them to build boats on which there fishing lifestyle was dependent, they used them for their homes, they used them for fuel for fires.
And good for them! Trees are a renewable resource. If they had planted a tree for every one they'd harvested, they'd be good to go.
BUT, they harvested much faster than they were reproducing the trees.
Eventually, as the last trees were cut down, their civilization collapsed into war and they had to abandon the island. With no trees, they had no way to build their boats to fish. They had no lumber for homes nor for fire. The birds who used to live there had no place to build their homes. The soil eroded away into the ocean without trees to keep it intact.
They lived beyond their means. And they could do that for a while, as the island was providing. But they were taking faster than the island could recover. That is over-consumption and a recipe for disaster.
By "sustainable," I mean living in a way that we can all manage. If it takes four earths to produce enough for everyone to live the way I live, then I'm not living sustainably nor responsibly.
Does that help?
Anyone have a better definition?
Dan, the inhabitants didn't leave Easter Island, they couldn't. They could no longer make sea going boats. The people died of famine, war, and cannibalism.
When the trees were all gone, and so the topsoil eroded away, there was no longer any reliable source of fresh water. The people subsisted on whatever rainwater could be had from catchment basins.
What likely did in their forests was carving and erecting those huge statues. They were transported and elevated using logs. They wiped out their most valuable resource for vanity's sake .... sound familiar.
To your definition of over-consumption I would add this. One is over-consuming if one uses more than one produces. A person who lives a very modest lifestyle and yet does nothing more than shuffle papers from one side of a desk to the other is over-consuming. If every population in the world had the same percentage of its "working" force warming chairs in cubicles shuffling papers around, we'd need just as many Earths to sustain that as we would if everyone in the world drove SUV's and lived in great cavernous houses.
Thanks for the response, but your definitions are still somewhat ambiguous. Do you have any proof that the world, at it's current population level, couldn't live a lifestyle similar to the average American?
Eleutheros' definition is just ignorant and completely subjective. Um, I sit in a cubicle so that the man who grows my food can go somewhere when he gets sick to get healed so he can continue to grow my food. I'm sure when he's laying in the the MRI machine he doesn't feel I'm over-consuming.
You're sustainability definition is somewhat vague also. First you assume everyone on the planet wants to live like you do, which I highly doubt. Hell, you don't even want to live the way you do. Can you define at what level one should live? Also, you'd have to set a certain population level as a frame of reference since you're basing your definition in relation to world population.
Ambiguous? Vague?
Well, not being a supporter of totalitarianism, I'm not going to say that people have to have a 800 sq. ft. house built of strawbales and use only 5 sticks of oak (no more than 8" in diameter) for cooking and heating purposes daily. You know what I mean?
By over-consuming and living unsustainably, I mean very specifically living in a way that, if we were to all live that way, there would not be enough resources.
What does that look like? It does look like smaller homes, more locally and individually grown and made stuff, very little garbage going out that isn't compost, usually lived within a relatively small circle (~2-5...10? miles) - a walkable, bikeable circle.
Eben said:
"First you assume everyone on the planet wants to live like you do, which I highly doubt. Hell, you don't even want to live the way you do."
I have made no such assumption. Rather, I have said specifically that "most of us are not wont to make significant lifestyle changes in ways we believe to be uncomfortable."
And who says I don't want to live the way I'm advocating? Why would I advocate it if I didn't want to get closer and closer to that ideal?
Okay, I'm not sure why your blog recorded my agreement with overconsumption as a major problem as an "anonymous" comment, but that was from me. I don't believe in anonymous comments--or fake blogger names for that matter. I try to have the courage to always sign anything I write.
You know, Michael, I just noticed that and I was pretty sure that it DID have your name on it.
Blogger just "forced" me to move over to New Blogger about the time you posted that, or shortly thereafter. I'm thinking the Hand of Blog did it somehow.
Ah. Well, the new blogger has many nice improvements over the old and fewer glitches--but it ain't poifect, yet--to channel the Three Stooges.
They blogged?
Dan, Blogger has been bugging me for weeks to switch over, then when I tried they said they were unable to do so at this time! I thought it had something to do with being part of Whorled Leaves, but I guess if they let you do it, that blows that theory.
Carry on.
EF:"Um, I sit in a cubicle so that the man who grows my food can go somewhere when he gets sick to get healed so he can continue to grow my food."
Ah, a useless dunsel then. You eat every day. People who grow food in a sustainable manner need your services .... um ... pretty close to never. I am well past half a century and I've never been near an MRI machine, don't intend to either. For the most part MRI machines are for other useless, idle cubicle dwellers that the rest of the world supports on their shoulders.
EF:"Do you have any proof that the world, at it's current population level, couldn't live a lifestyle similar to the average American?"
We (in North America) have 5% of the world's population and we use 30% of the world's resources. For the other 95% to consume as we do, there would have to be 600% of the world's resources available.
A few points in this discussion as I wait for you to post on the peak oil "scandal".
1. I think Mom2 is exactly right in what she said. Way to go Mom2.
2. Anonymous was dead wrong to use the examples of Nazis, KKK members, and Mid-Western Militia guys. The Nazis supporters weren't really poor. In fact, many of them were part of the wealthy intelligensia, most notably the liberal Christians who joined the movement. KKK members were not poor Southerns. In fact, most of the most influential KKK members were wealthy white businessmen and politicians. And poverty was not a mitigating factor in the militia movement at all. It was all about hatred of the government brought on by government regulation and conspiracy theories.
3. Eben Flood is right in asking Dan to define his terms. They are vague and really do continue to be so.
4. Dan's statement, "By over-consuming and living unsustainably, I mean very specifically living in a way that, if we were to all live that way, there would not be enough resources" makes absolutely no sense because it assumes that all SHOULD and COULD live by a quantifyable measure of sustainability. That is ludicrious. Because of the diversity of cultures there is no way that we could all live under the same measure of sustainability, nor should we. Notice Mexico City - it is overcrowded, yet they do not overconsume, yet if they lived even as the a lower-class American citizen who could never be seen as an overconsumer, then they would overconsume at a rate that would hinder sustainability. Yet at their current level of consumption, sustainability is achieved, however in a sub-par manner. And consumption could double, triple, or even quadruple if only they used their resources more wisely, which is why I say the next statement -
5. Eleutheros is on to something when he says, "One is over-consuming if one uses more than one produces", but it is an incomplete thought because production must be examined through a multi-faceted lens. You see not every person could produce all the food they need to survive, but they could produce something at a level needed for themselves and others to survive. Productivity is the key here. We could sustain far into the future and consume as much as we wanted if we met high levels of productivity. Take for instance the Social Security crisis that may or may not happen in the next 20 years. What hasn't been talked about is the growth curve. Currently we are seeing double-digit economic growth year-over-year - which increases productivity and feeds the SS coffers. If the growth rate is sustained over the next 30 years, there will be NO SS crisis, as the Baby Boomers wax and wane and the median age levels off. But sustainability depends soley on productivity in this instance.
6. Finally Dan I hope your readers can stop worrying about peak oil as it is a myth. And I hope that our discussion will reveal this fact to you so that you can pass it on and reassure your readers, so they can go back to worrying about other problems on the list.
Wow, D.R. apparently lives in the same fantasy land as Glen Dean.
Mike thats not an rebuttal.
True, Rusty, but D.R. didn't really argue for most of what he said--like peak oil as a myth. So, since he gave no arguments, I didn't see much reason to mount a rebuttal. I was just blown away at how someone could live so completely out of touch.
As we reduce consumer greed at home, let's make sure that impoverished nations that provide those consumer goods (e.g. Indonesian shoe factories) are ready to shift their economies.
Consumerism can be a problem, but I think that a great one is the lack of consumerism. By that I mean that the greater problem is that Americans have so much stuff, but that other, poorer nations, have so little. I've never seen anyone who lives in a house with a dirt floor complain about consumerism. These are people who need consumer goods, so consumerism is not bad in and of itself.
The problem is not so much that Indonesians are producing shoes by the billions; the problem is that they are sending them to America for people who have plenty of shoes, instead of consuming the shoes themselves. So our focus should not be on impoverishing Americans by reducing consumer good consumption, but increasing consumerism within poor nations.
Okay, I'm trying to post something and I can't find my #&%@! blog! What's going on?
Anybody have a similar problems with this new blogger crap?!
It's letting me log in to my google account that I guess I've set up, but there are no blogs to manage there (and I've more than one that I manage).
Help!?
In the meantime:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html
Official energy statistics from the US gov’t
November 2006
US Oil production: 5,178,000 barrels/day
US Oil consumption: 20,800,000 b/d
Share of US oil=transportation: 69%
Total world supply: 4,411,000 b/d
Total world consumption: 83,990,000 b/d
And, according to the US gov't, production is pretty much maxed out globally - counting Alaska and Mexico and Canada. Production has ceased to increase.
And, according to the USGS, demand is expected to increase from 84 million barrels a day to ~130 million b/d by 2025.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/oil/supply_demand.html
Chew on them numbers a while.
If you're one who doesn't think oil is running out anytime soon, but recognize that it's a limited supply, two questions:
1. At what point WILL oil begin to become too expensive to continue to access? and
2. Whose information are you basing that upon?
Dan:"If you're one who doesn't think oil is running out anytime soon,"
Cheap oil anyway. Since the fist significant use of petroleum in the mid 1800's, world oil production has gone up steadily every year, pretty much every month .... until December 2005. That was the month of the highest production of crude oil in the world and it has never been that high again.
You will see figures quoted for total liquid fuel, but these include biodiesel and ethanol and all manner of other things. Crude oil production is on the wane. And moreover, the light "sweet" crude oil from which gasoline is easily distilled is waning the fastest. Most of what is reported as the world's reserve of unrecovered oil is heavy sulfury stuff that requires a lot of energy to distill and creates a lot of pollution.
John:"So our focus should not be on impoverishing Americans by reducing consumer good consumption, but increasing consumerism within poor nations."
Consumerism has no formal definition, I suppose, but as I and it seems Dan and others use the term, it doesn't mean just "using" things, consuming things. It means a philosophy that the more you consume the better or more worthy you are. Long beyond the necessity of having shoes on your feet, if you buy more and more and more until you don't have any idea how many you have and most of them gather dust in a closet and never get worn by anyone, then that's consumerism (by the way I'd use the word). But having a pair of shoes where you had none before isn't consumerism.
But you are right, those people should be keeping most of what they make for their own use.
Michael,
Either you hadn't yet read what I wrote on Big Daddy Weave's blog or your ignoring it, but as I noted over there, peak oik theory is based on faulty reasoning. Here are the things it doesn't consider:
1. Newly discovered oil fields outside of the Middle East (especially the one discovered off the coast of New Orleans that could contain 15b barrels of oil and the one found recently in Mexico could could be larger than the 2nd largest oil field in the world - also in Mexico).
2. The oil sands of Calgary and their impact on the global oil supply.
3. Co-Dependence on any other source for energy than oil.
4. Advancement in hybrid/battery/fuel cell technology.
It focuses entirely on oil as a future source of energy, even though market share for wind, solar, geothermal, hydrogen, and turbine energy are growing daily. It requires that demand outpace production ability, even though production has steadily decrease over the past year due to a drop in demand. And it centers around Middle Eastern oil sources and current oil reserves.
As for the numbers Dan posted, he got one of them completely wrong:
He noted:
Total world supply: 4,411,000 b/d
But if you go to the site it says,
84,411,000 barrels/day, which is a supply of 550,000 barrels/day.
Also the U.S. strategic reserve is at 685 million barrels with a jump to 1.5 billion coming soon.
One thing he left off was that there were 21 billion proved barrels of untapped U.S. oil alone, which does not count the recent find off the coast of New Orleans, which may add as much as 15 billion to that total.
Now let me quote from the article that Dan linked:
[Dr. M. King] Hubbert's [the man who first proposed peak oil theory] old employer – the U.S. Geological Survey – says the peak is 50 years or more away. And it's pointing to Canada as one of the top reasons for its optimism.
The USGS periodically releases its estimates of how much oil is still in the ground around the world. Saudi Arabia consistently tops that list. But two years ago, Canada moved from number 20, with about five billion barrels of recoverable oil, to second place – with an astonishing 180 billion barrels.
The USGS says Alberta's tar sands is the reason. It argues it's now economically viable to get at the vast reserves of oil there. The tar sands currently account for 26 per cent of Canada's oil production, but by 2025 that figure could grow to 70 per cent.
Fifty years is enough time to reduce oil usage through the technological advances mentioned above. So, again, while some might think I am "out of touch" I have studied the subject a lot more extensively than they have given me credit for. Dismissing one as being "out of touch" is just a poor way to ignore evidence and avoid having to defend your presuppositions. It's also a polite way of saying "you're an idiot, so I can ignore your arguemnts." So in the future let's refrain from ad hominems and actually deal with the evidence each of us presents.
Thanks, DR, for correcting the typo. Indeed, 84 million b/d - not 4 million - is how much we're able to produce.
But as Eleutheros noted (and as the gov't reports note) production has peaked. Production has ceased to go up. Demand hasn't.
As I noted and asked, it's not a matter of IF affordable oil is going away, it's a matter of WHEN. And you're in agreement then, DR, that affordable oil is going away then - probably within 50 years?
And, DR, every report that I've read (or nearly) notes the oil in the tar sands, and in the gulf and in Alaska. But what they then go on to point out that, where it costs a few dollars to get usable oil out of the "easy oil" we're getting now, it'll cost several times more to extract the oil out of the sand (I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but could look it up given time). Similarly for the oil in the gulf and anatartic. AND those are limited supplies, as well.
But, let's be optimistic, DR. We've got 50 years to find a replacement for oil. What'll it be that can supply 100 million b/d worth of energy? Or 130-150 million b/d, as may be likely 50 years hence?
As to DR's 4 points, these are commonly proffered as contraindicating peak oil. They are, alas, largely misunderstood and not very deeply scrutinized.
1. The site off New Orleans that could contain 15gb of oil is the Jack 2 well. Most geologists have concluded that the well likely contains 300kb of oil max. It will not come into production for several years and even then the oil is four miles deep and in a location where it isn't feasible to construct pipelines. The oil would have to be off loaded onto barges at very great costs. The notion of 15gb comes the wishful thinking that IF this well proves to be productive and IF there are a lot more like it in the area and IF a way can be devised to economically locate and drill them and extract the oil and IF there's a way to transport it to the mainland, then who knows, there might be up to, if we are real lucky and blessed, up to 15gb. By the bye, more than 30 other wells have been drilled on this ridge and most of them are bone dry. And by the by the bye, this is not a recent discovery. The well was drilled in 1999 but the announcement was tauted just before the election when people were getting nervous about gas prices. Convenient that.
DR correctly points out that the second largest oil field in the world, Cantrell, is in Mexico. But it is in a rapid state of decline. The supposed recent discovery is the Noxal-1 well. It was announced that the well had the potential of 10gb of high grade crude oil, announced by Vincente Fox just before the Mexican election. Pemex, the state owned oil company, drilled to 4000 meters and found (drum roll) only gas. And only a modest 245 bcf of gas at that. No oil. As the Pemex guys said, Nada.
2. As to the tar sands of Calgary, the thick bitumen is cracked down into components for gasoline using steam with the result that the Athabasca river is nearly dead from the runoff. It takes enough natural gas to heat two homes for a year (in Canada no less) to distill one barrel of gasoline from tar sands. There is very close to a negative energy return.
3. Other sources? Like ethanol? It takes 93,000 BTU of natural gas to distill one gallon of ethanol and when you are done, that gallon of ethanol contains only 67% of the energy of a gallon of gasoline. The combined potential for wind and solar are a tiny, tiny fraction of the energy we are now extracting from petroleum. If we lived now as if all we had was that modest output from renewable sources, we'd have no oil crisis to begin with.
4. Even if you managed to become almost God-like in your technology and make a battery and car that was 100% efficient, you STILL have to have electricity to power it (a hydrogen fuel cell is just another type of battery). There isn't enough electricity now to power all the cars on the road (if they were electric) and a very large per cent of that power is generated from oil and natural gas. Where is all that extra electricity coming from.
News tidbits get tossed out like the Jack 2 well and the Noxal-1 well with fantastically optimistic reserves like 10 and 15 billion barrels, but when the real news comes out, it never seems to supplant the old. The notion the we are 50 years from serious energy crisis is utter fantasy.
Thanks, Eleutheros, for the info.
You see, DR - and anyone else out there that agrees that we ought to Not Worry, Be Happy - it's like my previous analogy to the lottery family. The family who got $100,000 in easy money who promptly quit work, bought a car and home on credit and lived off the $100,000.
That'll work fine for a few years (or months, depending on how high they're living on the hog), but if they continue down that road - hoping to hit the lottery or an inheritance a second time - well, it's just not that wise nor responsible.
The peak oil pooh-poohers are saying "I'm willing to bet that we can continue to get enough cheap oil to keep our economy (on which it is wholly dependent) for another 50 years (although many scientists suggest that's not likely and no one is entirely sure since it is underground).
"I'm further willing to bet on the future of my children that when that energy supply is gone (in 5 months or 50 years), SOMEWHERE we'll find a suitable replacement. I'm willing to do so even though such a replacement does not exist in the world as we know it."
Many folk are saying that we don't think that wise, moral nor responsible. We say we must cut back and consume less, live in more responsible, smaller circles and will not bet the future of our children on your "hopes."
You want to change our minds? You'll have to provide something more substantial than "maybe it'll last 50 years," and then, "maybe, when it's gone, we'll have something else...Hey! Maybe magic carpets will have been discovered by then!"
No, thanks.
Dunsel, hehe, name calling FTW!
I like your logic, you don't use an MRI so therefore only losers do! Can't compete with that kind of thinking so I'll just bow out of that debate.
"maybe, when it's gone, we'll have something else...Hey! Maybe magic carpets will have been discovered by then!"
Dan, we already have something else, battery powered cars. Sure, no one uses them because they're inconvenient and expensive but there will be a day when they, or something like them, becomes more convenient and less expensive then the gas powered car and we'll migrate over. It's not magic and it's not wishful thinking, it's called progress and we've been doing it for centuries.
Battery-powered cars that run on...electricity? And whence the electricity?
Again, show me right now how to substitute all the energy we are currently using with something besides fossil fuels and we can begin a conversation.
Tell me that we'll just replace 100 million b/d worth of oil with "electricity" and you haven't really told me anything.
I'll agree with you that Eleutheros' name-calling is not helpful. While I'm closer to agreeing with E on the topic of sustainability and jobs, I'm not sure that he's made his argument.
BUT, I think I'd like to know what he thinks. Which jobs ARE "worthwhile"? Which jobs do contribute something meaningful and which ones are leeches (in your opinion) and why?
Is computer-making something that exists in your ideal world, E? Folk who work at the electric plant to power the computers? Folk who dig the ditches to plant the lines for electricity? People who map the lines (disclaimer: That's my job, of sorts)?
Are doctors in the mix? Nurses? Office managers for the doctors?
I'm extremely supportive of farming and those who do it, and would like to continue to make my connections thereto more explicit and direct and personal. But I'm not convinced that all other jobs are part of the problem - and I'm not sure that's what Eleuteros is saying, but it sounds something close to it.
Do you, E, have an existing post where you expound on the topic or would you care to here?
As a follow up challenge: Since basic math tells us that a limited supply will run out and common reality shows that our economy is wholly dependent upon petroleum, I'd suggest that the burden of proof falls on those who want to keep using oil at current rates (or even close to it) to demonstrate that the practice is a sound one.
Failing that, I'd suggest it is mere common sense and basic morality to plan otherwise.
Yes,I engage in a bit of characterization, usually on the heels of some non sequitur like "Eleutheros' definition is just ignorant ..." It may well be the I am ignorant (meaning one doesn't know something), although that remains to find its way in evidence, but it isn't possible for a definition to be ignorant.
As to it not being useful, people are so entrenched in a way of thinking they cannot possibly see anything amiss with it. Sometimes it takes such to shake the thinking just enough for a little light to creep in. To wit:
But as to you question, Dan, I've got several posts on the subject but not tied together under the current topic of overconsumption and its affect on the economic status of the rest of the world.
Take any culture or civilization that supported (or supports) the wealthy by means of masses of poor and you will see this thinking. I was recently talking with someone about how this had worked in the Mayan civilization. The Mayan aristocracy occupied themselves with writing poems, doing flower arrangements, and such things. They looked upon what they did as essential. After all, no flower arranging meant no civilization as they knew it. Under them were a class of people who did other "essential" jobs such as making elaborate ceremonial garments out of feathers of brightly colored birds. They no doubt viewed their job as essential as well. But supporting all those people were the farmers, weavers, and craftspersons who actually did all the work and made all the goods that everyone used every day.
When climate, fertility, and the farming methods they used allowed for a surplus, that is, the farmer could produce more than just his minimum subsistence, if "freed" others up to do other "work". Eventually these freed up people became priests, courtiers, and the warrior class (as opposed to the citizen militia of former times).
But times changed. As the land was worn out around the temple-cities and the climate changed, farmsteads located farther and farther from the centers of civilization until, what appears happened, is that the farmers said, "To Xibalba with this!" They went off into the jungle and established far flung farmsteads and stopped feeding the dunsels. The civilization disappeared.
Now the wealthy aristocrats of feudal Japan, feudal Europe, Czarist Russia, the antebellum South, the Mayans, and many, many others, KNEW that their wealth derived from the activities of masses of poor who were forced to do with much less than the full productivity of their labor so that others could live in idleness and wealth. In our civilization our wealthy lifestyle comes from irreversibly exploiting the environment and living off the labor of the world's poorest people whom we do not see and for the most part are not aware of.
Yet we are no different from any plutarchs of the past. Essentially almost all our cubicle dwellers are arranging flowers, writing poems, or else weaving garments from bird feathers. If it weren't for our clothes, fuel, food, and housing being made by environmental rape and the stoop labor of the rest of the world, we would utterly collapse.
And yet ... and yet, we, like the Mayans, imagine that what we do is some essential function that justifies our bellying up to the world's dinner table and clothes closet and helping ourselves to whatever we want.
That's long enough for a comment, but that would be the preface to a more complete answer to your question, Dan.
Just a follow up on a couple of assertions I made about oil from Mexico.
The Cantarell site, the world's second largest oil deposit, is in serious decline:
http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=40538
The oil field pointed to as an indication of things to come, Mexico's Noxal field, has yielded no oil whatever:
http://www.energybulletin.net/17967.html
We could also deal with such factoids that if we distilled every single grain of corn in the US into ethanol, it would replace 3% of the gasoline we are now using. All of it. Yet the small amount of ethanol we are now distilling is already tightening the belts of the world's hungriest people as we North American drivers outbid the world's poorest people for corn.
Thanks again.
We anxiously await to hear the response to "What electricity?"
As a follow up challenge: Since basic math tells us that a limited supply will run out and common reality shows that our economy is wholly dependent upon petroleum, I'd suggest that the burden of proof falls on those who want to keep using oil at current rates (or even close to it) to demonstrate that the practice is a sound one.
I'm not so sure. It was environmentalists who told us that we would run out of oil by 1980. And then 1990. And then 2000.
The last few decades are filled with the false prophecies of ecological doomsayers, none of which have come true. And because these same environmentalists are still making predictions today, I find it hard to believe their most recent howls. Other people are more than willing to let the false prophecies be forgotten and replaced with the newer prophecies.
It's sort of like how some people go on believing Pat Robertson, even though his prophecies have always been wrong. He just revises them outward in time, and people fall for his charade again and again.
Then you suspect that oil will keep coming out of the ground cheaply forever, John?
The optimistic scientists are predicting that we'll run out of cheap oil in this century sometime. The pessimistic (or perhaps realistic?) scientists are saying that we'll peak this decade.
Are you suggesting that both groups are wrong? Based upon what?
John:"The last few decades are filled with the false prophecies of ecological doomsayers, none of which have come true."
Oh? In 1954 King Hubert posited an analysis of the depletion of a finite fossil resource. He said that the oil production in the lower 48 sates would peak in 1970 and steadily decline after that. At the time he was pooed with the very same general 'there have always been doomsayers and they have always been wrong.'
Oil production in the lower 48 peaked exactly in 1970 and has steadily declined ever since. This peak and decline was behind the "oil shocks" of the early 70's.
Looking at world production Hubert predicted that based on two scenarios of oil consumption, the world peak would be in the year 2000 or 2005. Not some range between those, but those two years. World oil was at its maximum output in December of 2005 and since then has not been above that.
Tell me again about the doomsayers and how they are always wrong.
Or better still, let me tell you about the optimists and let you show how they were right. In the 1940's (before my time) and 1950's one heard about how technology was going to do all the work for humans and we'd no longer have to work except maybe a couple half days a week. It was going to be utopia of leisure. Comes the 21st century and both parents of households work such long hours that the family scarcely see one another. What happened to that promise of peace and plenty?
One of the best examples of this was the song by Steely Dan in 1982, I.G.Y. which stands for International Geophysical Year. That year was 1957! Some of the blather that came out of the optimism of that year's international goings on was the vision that by the bicentennial the world would have solved most of its problems through technology and we'd have a utopian existence.
I apologize in advance, Dan, for copying such a long amount of text, but I think it warranted. Here's Steely Dan's interpretation of that vision that we were supposed to be enjoying by '76:
Standing tough under stars and stripes
We can tell
This dream's in sight
You've got to admit it
At this point in time that it's clear
The future looks bright
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well by seventy-six we'll be A.O.K.
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
Get your ticket to that wheel in space
While there's time
The fix is in
You'll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky
You know we've got to win
Here at home we'll play in the city
Powered by the sun
Perfect weather for a streamlined world
There'll be spandex jackets one for everyone
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
(More leisure for artists everywhere)
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
Thanks again, E, for providing more data for the fire. I was going to look up the Hubert "doomsday" predictions but you saved me the time.
We'll allow some time to give folk who think of peak oil as a "scam" to look up some resources to show where - whether in 5 months of 50 years - we'll get the energy to replace 100 million barrels a day worth of affordable oil.
And how we'll feed a population that's 2 billion souls larger in 25 years with these increasingly pricey resources.
It will doubtless take some time to come up with some solution that doesn't involve a massive economic crash, so we'll wait...
We're talking past each other. I say there will be a replacement, you say there wont be unless we look harder for one, not much of a difference there.
And that guy's prediction about the 48 states producing less oil is worthless. We're producing less oil because we can get it cheaper over seas, not because we've run out. Same with his other prediction. World production may have not have gotten any higher since 2005 but that doesn't mean it cannot. Most oil producers are not operating at 100% capacity due to economic reasons, not lack of supply.
And E didn't really answer your question, just more generalizations. Maybe he could make a list of the jobs he deems as worthy of working?
I don't think we're talking past each other.
"I say there will be a replacement, you say there wont be unless we look harder for one"
You say there will be a replacement, I ask you what that replacement is. Specifically, from what source will we get 100 million barrels a day worth of energy?
Further, I'm not saying that there will be one if we look harder, I'm saying there can't be a replacement and therefore we need to consume less.
I'm saying there can't be a replacement and therefore we need to consume less.
So let me get this right. You believe that the nothing will ever, ever, be invented that will replace oil in sufficient quantities to satisfy our current and future energy needs?
You really believe that? That energy innovation has reached it's end? That oil combustion is the pinnacle of human achievement for energy production?
I'm saying there is currently no evidence to that effect, yes. Feel free to enlighten me otherwise.
Are you saying that you don't know of any replacement but you're willing to bet that we will find one sometime before our economy collapses?
Although, I wouldn't call "oil combustion is the pinnacle of human achievement for energy production."
Yes, I'm willing to bet that. Why? Well, we're close on many fronts, it wont take but a couple major breakthroughs to push us over the edge, as d.r. points out. Like I said, it's called progress and it's inevitable.
EF:"We're producing less oil because we can get it cheaper over seas, not because we've run out."
This head-in-the-sand dealing with the problem, which is by far the most widespread, is precisely why I am not optimistic about our chances.
No, we're not "out" of oil. Never will be. Never can be. That's not the question. The question is whether we (in the US) are past our peak. Hubert analyzed the production of rate of oil wells and oil fields and came up with a composite formula showing that once half the recoverable oil is pumped out of the ground, the output of the oilfield (or sum of oil fields) goes into a predictable decline. Pump until you are blue in the face and you still can't get the oil out of the ground any faster.
What Eben's posit suggests is that we have plenty of oil and if we needed to, we could just turn the spigot wide open and have all we want. The only reason we don't is that it's cheaper to buy it overseas.
Not so.
The US uses 20 million barrels of oil a day, about 1/4th of the total world daily production. The US produces about 5.5 million barrels a day (you will find figures of 6 to 7 mbd but these are the composite oil + condensates and not the raw figure of how much oil comes out of the ground). If we pumped oil out of every well there is in the US including Alaska, we could not produce 20 million barrels a day because there isn't enough oil there to get it out of the ground at that rate.
If this topic is to be discussed rationally, one has to deal with numbers. "I betcha we've got plenty of oil and we're just buying it from overseas because it's cheaper" is just idle speculation and is the very type of thing that insures that we will be unprepared to deal with the energy reality that is upon us.
For example, we've already heard the fantasy 15 billion barrels of oil that are supposed to come out of the Jack 1 well. Even if it were true, which it is not, we use 20 million barrels a day and that number is rising each year. That means that even if the Jack 1 well were a reality and we had every drop of the 15 billion barrels of oil out of it, it is only two years supply of oil at our present rate of consumption.
But part of the problem with Hubbert's proposal was that it was based on existing wells and he gave little room for finding any more. Part of peak oil is based on the assumption that if there were more oil out there, we would have already found it. But that simply is not the case and on top of that, since 1956 we have improved our methods of taking oil out of the ground. We've hardly tapped Alaska, there is oil in the Jack 1 field, there's a lot of oil in the sands and below it (if we can find a way to obtain it), we have no clue how much oil is in the Caspian Sea area (which just recently began producing through one pipeline with another to be built soon by McDermott, an American company), and we have hardly even tapped the vast underbelly of the world's oceans.
There is plenty of reason to think that there is more out there. That's not idle speculation and more than "there's no more out there" is. And while U.S. production may have peaked in those wells already established, there may be more that U.S. firms can obtain. On top of that we are not dependent entirely on U.S. oil (or the Jack 1 well), but rather we have an entire world of other oil wells, which have not peaked, despite your insistence they have.
Your notation about a peak in oil production in December 2005 was an assumption that no more oil COULD be produced, but that does not match the reality of the situation. The reason why production peaked in December 2005 and then slid rapidly downward before leveling off is because of what happened from Hurricane Katrina until the end of the year. As you know gas prices hit their high in September 2005 (here is a chart that shows gas prices during this time). It slid down a bit, then moved back up. Then notice a huge slide from $2.91 to $2.08. That $2.08 occurred just as production was at its top and yet all the refineries in the U.S. had not opened back up. At that point several OPEC countries slowed production and since then they have CUT production numerous times, including today. Why? Because they want to keep gas prices up, not because they hit a peak in production and nothing else is coming out, but rather because they finally got the principles of supply and demand - if they produce less, there is more demand and their margin goes up. There is no evidence that production has hit a peak in ability, only that those who control the oil do not want to produce more than people use (though there is a 550,000 barrel a day supply currently, which will be cut because of today's decision by OPEC) to keep their margins high and more profits in their pockets.
DR:"Part of peak oil is based on the assumption that if there were more oil out there, we would have already found it."
It's not nearly as foggy a situation as it sounds. The popular myth is that any time now we might stumble across another Cantarell or Ghawar giant oil field. Oil occurs at a certain range of depths in formations from a certain period of time. If oil makes its way much lower than that, it is converted to other compounds (mainly gaseous) and is not available for use. The popular myth is that, who knows, you yourself might be sitting on top of the next giant oil discovery.
The fact is there are very few places where oil coudl occur that haven't been rather thoroughly explored.
Know why the well is called Jack 2? It's because a short distance away the original Jack well proved to be dry. Know why it was called Jack to begin with? Wishful thinking. Great giant oil fields such as Ghawar are called Kings. Smaller oil fields are called Queens. Smaller still oil fields are Jacks. Petroleum geologists are well aware, although the public is not, that there are no more Kings and Queens. There simply isn't any place where oil could occur that hasn't been explored at least well enough to have detected an oil field as vast as those on the Arabian Peninsula.
It was called Jack because the geologist knew that was the best that could be hoped for.
All the giant oil fields in the world are in decline. Even with the application of advanced technology of bottle brush drilling, soda straw drilling, CO2 injection, water injection, etc. they are still declining.
World oil production has been maintained by drilling more and more smaller and smaller wells.
DR:"Your notation about a peak in oil production in December 2005 was an assumption that no more oil COULD be produced"
And that it was just in response to market pressures is also pure assumption. But 'no evidence' is NOT the situation. When the world market was becoming jittery that maybe OPEC didn't have any reserve capacity, OPEC put several million more barrels a day on the market to cool such talk. As it turns out after the fact, it didn't come from oilfield production, but rather from oil stored at their facility in Holland. Why? The simple answer that has been suggested by many with their finger on the pulse of such things better than you or I say it is because OPEC IS at peak capacity now.
"There is plenty of reason to think that there is more out there. That's not idle speculation and more than "there's no more out there" is."
And Eben is "willing to bet" the future that more oil is probably out there. Based upon...hope?
I'll remind you yet again of the parable of the family that quit their jobs and went in debt because they had a $100,000 windfall.
YOU may choose to join them in hoping against hope that they'll win the lottery or receive an inheritance. But do you understand how it is not a responsible position to take?
If you're betting the future on a hunch that's not proven, on the confidence of our ingenuity but not much else...do you understand why some of us are NOT willing to bet OUR future on that unproven hope? Do you understand why we think it irresponsible and reckless and immoral?
DR:"What makes Dan's statement ... so silly is that 100 million barrels of oil produce 1.7 terrawatts of energy, yet the sun produces 600 terrawatts of available energy"
I am astounded that you would call Dan's statement silly and then follow it with something sillier by far. To say that the sun produces 600 thousand billion watts is like saying that we've no need to worry about getting new farmland because we can use the desert. Too dry? No problem, there's many thousand billion gallons of water in the polar ice caps. Yes indeed, and how are we to get it to the desert?
Same with the electricity potential of sunlight. Just how are we to get it into our computers and light bulbs not to mention in our car batteries? When you look into the logistics of doing so, you will see that replacing all the oil we use with sunlight is like trying to carry snowballs to the desert so we can farm it.
Speaking of those car batteries:
DR:"as well as to make batteries themselves capable of lasting longer and needing less energy to charge using nanotechnology."
Let's not slip from science to alchemy. No battery delivers more power than is used to charge it. A battery needing less energy to charge holds less energy to be used. But let's say, for the sake of discussion, you develop a battery with 100% efficiency. There still isn't enough electricity available from all sources for people to drive the speeds and distances they do now.
DR:"As for the tar sands, everything I have read indicates that the cost of refining is offset by the ease of gathering."
No doubt. But one thing I've learned when looking into the energy situation is that money isn't always a good measure of what's afoot. Tar sands are a good example. The cost in money no doubt is offset, but not the cost in energy.
Because money is the goal, the Albertans find themselves with so much natural gas that if they sold too much of it to the US, the price would drop. So they use the gas to process tar sands into gasoline and no matter how much of that they dump on the market, it isn't going to affect the price much (because it isn't all that much gasoline anyway). The process then basically converting the energy in natural gas into energy in gasoline with no net gain to the world's energy supply from the tar sands.
Moneywise it's a good arrangement. Energywise it's a bad step in the wrong direction.
It's much like our habit of burning coal to generate electricity. We burn three BTU's of coal to create one BTU of electricity because obviously you can't power your computer with coal directly. It is possible to power house heating, water heating, and even air conditioning and refrigeration with coal directly. But we don't and so as far as convenience and money go, it's a good arrangement. For net energy usage, it isn't.
And Eben is "willing to bet" the future that more oil is probably out there. Based upon...hope?
I never said anything like that.
I said a replacement for oil is out there, and it's not based upon hope, it's based upon the history of humanity.
You guys look at the future and because you can't see anything on the horizon to replace oil you believe it wont ever exist. I bet there were folks that said the same thing about wood, or coal.
Eben, do you understand that we don't want to bet our future on something that is not tangible and provable?
If someone were standing at a poker table and they told you they had won three straight hands in a row and that they wanted to borrow $10,000 from you because he couldn't lose! "After all," he might say, "I just won three straight hands in a row!"
Will you give him the money?
You are asking us to bet the world on non-existent technology and resources. Just think about it - is that wise? Prudent? Conservative?
Do you understand how ridiculous I feel even having to ask that question?
That's not the issue, you stated that it's impossible, I say that it's not only possible but highly likely. Your poker analogy is wrong. There are technologies that are highly promising on the horizon so it's not a bet on the luck of the draw, it's a bet on building upon foundations that have already been laid.
Weening ourselves off oil would be a fantastic thing, but to believe that if we don't do so rapidly and soon would bring about the collapse of our society isn't realistic.
Except for his "I wish it, therefore they must be out there" desires for more oil discovery, none of the rest of D.R.'s arguments are against peak oil. Alternative energy sources like wind, solar, cellulose-based ethanol, etc., while greatly desirable, are NOT evidence against the looming deadline of peak oil--they are methods of coping with it (as well partial answers to global warming, etc.).
D.R. says that none of the peak oil claims he has seen have dealt with his "new discoveries." I leave it to others to dispute this or not. What I say is that his "refutation" doesn't adequately take into account the enormous new demand for oil by China and India--together they now surpass U.S. demand. That places a huge strain on an already overtaxed system.
It means, quite simply, the end of suburbia.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Well, in fact, very few if any of the reports - including the gov't reports and the US military reports - that I've read have left off the Canada sand, Mexico and Alaska.
These same reports, as noted, say that demand is increasing, with 8 billion people wanting more oil globally in 25 more years, up to a demand of 130 million b/d.
It is a demand that we can not currently meet and for which we have no assurances that we will be able to meet 25 years from now. Just a hope. A guess. A hunch. It's "likely" to be okay.
So don't worry, buy a Hummer. We gots oil to burn.
EF:"I said a replacement for oil is out there, and it's not based upon hope, it's based upon the history of humanity."
That would be a reasonable expectation if it weren't for the fact that looking at the history of humanity, one sees, says I, just the opposite.
Remove one single item from our history, just the one, and our lifestyle goes immediately back to what it was more than 100 years ago.
That, of course, is oil.
The analogy often proffered is that we used wood, and then replaced it with coal, and replaced that with oil. So, the reasoning goes, we will replace that with something else. But this is not the case. More wood is being used as fuel today than ever before in history. We didn't replace wood with coal, we applied coal in addition to wood and expanded our industrialism. Likewise there is more coal being burned today than ever before in history, both in absolute quantity and on a per person basis. Oil did not replace coal, it simply augmented it and took mechanization and industrialization to a new level.
Would it surprise you to find that there are more draft animals used in agriculture now than ever before in history. Even though we have microwaves, more food is cooked over fires now than ever before. Even though we have automatic clothes washers, more clothes are washed by hand in the world than ever before. And so on and so on.
So the view of history that one brilliant innovation replaces another is not true, it simply supplants it and generally swells the population as a result.
For history to follow suit what would happen is not coming up with another energy source that replaces oil, but oil would have to continue unabated with the new source augmenting it.
We (humankind) weren't out of wood when we started using coal, we only wanted to forge metal and weave cloth faster. We weren't out of coal when we started using gasoline engines. We simply wanted to move around more and faster.
So the happenstance where we DO deplete an essential resource is unique to human history (at least on the scale we are about to witness). We've never done it before.
So coal and wood are used more now than ever, yet there are no 'peak coal' or 'peak wood' scares, why? Like you said, it's been supplanted by oil. And when a technology comes that supplants oil the peak oil scares will similarly fall to the way-side. It's not a unique event.
But the point is, there is no current such technology nor resource to supplant oil in the amounts that we use it. And we think it unwise to base our future on something that doesn't exist in the real world.
Eben, there are no peak wood nor peak coal scares because in the case of wood, it's renewable and in the case of coal, we've go so much of it we are no where near having used half of the recoverable reserves.
Not so with oil.
Coal seems to carry with it it's own deterrent to overuse, that is, pollution. In England during Dickensonian times the air became so foul with soot and coal dust that further expansion was impossible. We are presently using far less coal than is available cheaply because it is so polluting, we can only endure using so much.
You might be interested to know, though, that there are peak natural gas and peak uranium "scares". We are no where near peak uranium (where half the recoverable uranium has been mined) but if we tried to replace petroleum energy with nuclear, we'd soon get there.
Yet your comment gives me pause that I didn't explain the point very well. The optimistic cornucopian says that as oil is depleted, we will find a new energy source to replace it just as we have always done in the past. My point is that we've never done that in the past, that is, come up with a new source of energy to replace one we've depleted. We've always continued and expanded the use of present energy sources and added others to it.
Oil is depleting. We can't continue and expand consuming oil and add another (as yet just imagined) energy source to it. At our present rate of consumption we will deplete oil a fraction of its current rate of production within a few years. That has never happened before in human history, so looking to the past for a paradigm to solve our present situation is pointless.
Well, you're missing my point. It wont be depleted, at least anytime soon. It's not like one day it will be cheap and the next you can't get it. As I stated before, as it becomes more scarce over a period of time it will become more expensive and inconvenient. As it does so, it will be replaced by an alternative. The alternative will be used by the majority of folks and those few who still use oil will have a long lasting supply of it. By the time it does run out it's impact in the world economy will be irrelevant.
Your belief that the entire world will cling unfailingly to an increasingly scarce supply isn't realistic.
"As it does so, it will be replaced by an alternative."
And what IS that alternative?! It doesn't exist in the real world at the levels of energy that we have with oil. This is our point, or at least mine.
If you can't show me what we'll replace oil with other than "something will come along," don't expect us to buy into blind hope.
It's not blind hope, it's basic economics and the examples of it are legion.
!!!!
Will I be repeating myself if I calmly ask you to show me, then, whence the replacement?
Or will we have completed that circle a dozen times by now?
Dan is demanding a non sequitur -- that something will happen in the future. Dan, prove to me that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Unless you can present emprical evidence that it will rise in the morning, you have no basis for concluding that it will.
Eleuthoros wrote:
Oh? In 1954 King Hubert posited an analysis of the depletion of a finite fossil resource. He said that the oil production in the lower 48 sates would peak in 1970 and steadily decline after that. At the time he was pooed with the very same general 'there have always been doomsayers and they have always been wrong.'
Oil production in the lower 48 peaked exactly in 1970 and has steadily declined ever since. This peak and decline was behind the "oil shocks" of the early 70's.
Looking at world production Hubert predicted that based on two scenarios of oil consumption, the world peak would be in the year 2000 or 2005. Not some range between those, but those two years. World oil was at its maximum output in December of 2005 and since then has not been above that.
Tell me again about the doomsayers and how they are always wrong.
Sure. The US Geological Survey prediced in 1919 that oil production would peak in nine years. In 1943 Standard Oil concluded that the world could only produce 600 billion barrels of oil (over 1 trillion pumped thus far). In 1972, the Club of Rome thinktank stated that the world would be empty of oil in 31 years.
And historically, these are not the only phony predictions about the depletion of material resources. In 1865, British scientists breathlessly published that Britain's economy would soon be in shambles because the island would run out of coal. In 1939, the US Department of the Interior said that the nation only had enough oil to last 13 years. It made the same 13 year prediction in 1951. In 1974, the Carter Administration declared that the US would run out of natural gas in ten years.
And last, but not least: Paul Erlich. Even though in 1968 he predicted that the 70s and 80s would be filled with mass, world-wide starvation due to overpopulation.
None of these events has taken place. Why? Because we will never run out of oil (or in Erlich's case, food). Sound crazy? It's not. It's basic economics. Oil is not as descete a commodity as Dan is depicting it. The Earth does not have a steel-lined oil tank that eventually reaches "E". Instead, as easily-pumped oil in shallow locations on the ground becomes more scarce, people use more advanced technology to find oil elsewhere. For example, although we could not pump oil offshore in 1919, we can do it now. This is expensive, of course. But the advance of technology lowers the cost significantly. As underground pools of liquid oil deplete, people extract oil from shale and sand. This is expensive, so the price of oil goes up. As the search for and extraction of oil increases cost, so will demand drop (Law of Supply and Demand, you know), until eventually oil becomes a precious commodity like gems. We are gradually weaned off oil for other forms of energy. What could they be? Maybe fusion. Who knows? Could 19th Century Britian have predicted that oil and other forms of energy could have replaced coal? Or, for that matter, there is more coal extractable in 21st Century technology than in 19th? It's a good bet that the resources will be there.
John:"Sure. The US Geological Survey prediced in 1919 that oil production would peak in nine years."
The difference between all the predictions you cite, John, and Hubert's prediction is that Hubert was right. In 1956 he said the continental US would produce it's maximum amount of oil and it would decline steadily thereafter.
It HAS done just that. More than 50 years after his prediction and 37 years after his projected peak, it turns out he was right.
John:"As underground pools of liquid oil deplete, people extract oil from shale and sand. This is expensive, so the price of oil goes up."
It's not that simple. First you are only dealing with money when you are speaking of costs. The problem with shale oil and tar sands isn't money, it's that Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI) is practically non-existent. It doesn't matter how much it "costs" or doesn't cost in money, it it takes more energy to extract the product that the product contains, you have no resource.
The other thing is that price is what we are talking about. No one is saying that oil will suddenly disappear, as you say, as if it were in a big steel drum in the ground. It only gets more expensive. Our entire modern world is based on cheap oil. Our economies, food delivery systems, industries etc. depend on cheap oil.
Sure, you will always be able to drill into small, isolated pools deep in the ocean and distill gasoline from the bitumen in tar sands, but you can't run the modern world of six billion people doing so.
With Eleutheros having addressed your other points (including the pernicious "We're not going to run out of oil" - which we've repeatedly pointed out that we're talking about running out of CHEAP oil), let me address John's little attempt to say I'm foolish for asking the still unanswered question: What will we replace cheap oil with?
John said:
"prove to me that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Unless you can present emprical evidence that it will rise in the morning, you have no basis for concluding that it will."
I'm no scientist, but I believe it would be a relatively simple task to show empirically that the earth rotates and that the Sun is out there and when we rotate far enough, the sun will indeed rise in the morning.
Again I'll ask, even if you don't care to try to answer the question (there being no answer and all), do you not realize that we are only being prudent when we say
1. Our economy is dependent upon cheap oil
2. Cheap oil is going away
3. Therefore, we ought to begin to wean ourselves off of oil and get used to using less energy
UNLESS you can show us empirically that there is a certifiable cheap replacement for cheap oil in the amounts we're using it?
Eleuthenos wrote:
The difference between all the predictions you cite, John, and Hubert's prediction is that Hubert was right.
One of many environmentalists' prophecies -- that US domestic production of oil would peak -- has proven so far true (thanks to restrictions on offshore drilling and drilling in Alaska's North Slope). One among many prophecies has born out. But, as they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The overall history of environmental doomsaying has proven massively false.
It's not that simple. First you are only dealing with money when you are speaking of costs. The problem with shale oil and tar sands isn't money, it's that Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI) is practically non-existent. It doesn't matter how much it "costs" or doesn't cost in money, it it takes more energy to extract the product that the product contains, you have no resource.
Energy for extraction is just another cost. And improved mining and refining technologies lower those costs. Anyway, when diminishing returns set in, the cost of oil will gradually rise and we will move to other sources, just as 19th Century Britain eventually abandoned coal dependency.
The other thing is that price is what we are talking about. No one is saying that oil will suddenly disappear, as you say, as if it were in a big steel drum in the ground. It only gets more expensive. Our entire modern world is based on cheap oil. Our economies, food delivery systems, industries etc. depend on cheap oil.
The West used to be dependent upon coal. It isn't anymore. We moved to other sources. And when oil gets too expensive to acquire, we will move to still others. What's the problem?
Dan wrote:
I'm no scientist, but I believe it would be a relatively simple task to show empirically that the earth rotates and that the Sun is out there and when we rotate far enough, the sun will indeed rise in the morning.
Then do so. Prove the future empirically.
"And when oil gets too expensive to acquire, we will move to still others. What's the problem?"
You can't show us what resource will replace oil at a price low enough and at an amount sufficient to replace oil.
Once again, If you can't demonstrate what the replacement will be, it would be asinine in the extreme to bet the future of civilization on a hunch.
I'm not willing to do so.
And you can't prove that the sun will rise tomorrow. Why can't we prove these things? Because we can't prove the future.
Name a few societies in human history that have run out of energy. If your fear is reasonable, then you should be able to do so.
"...bet the future of civilization on a hunch."
Human inflicted climate change.
A.K.A. "War on Weather"
Post a Comment