Peak Oil is You
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Page added on November 11, 2012
Peak Oil, Global Warming and Business
So hurricane Sandy was a wakeup call for many people and their attitudes toward global warming. But I have been trying to make the point for many years that global warming or climate change or whatever euphemism you decide on, is really just one side of the coin. The other side is the availability of fossil fuels to begin with.
In simple terms, the earth is a finite hunk of water, rock and living matter and the term finite is well chosen. Resources like fossil fuels maybe quite large but they are not infinite and that has to mean that at some point the resource can be depleted. Peak oil is all about depletion. It’s the point beyond which production will not increase and all that is left is limited supply and increasing demand. When that happens prices rise.
Now, you might say that we aren’t there yet and that there is plenty more oil to be found under the oceans. To that I say, great! The cost of drilling a well in the Gulf of Mexico is about $100 million. Even if there’s no oil in the hole you drill, you still pay to play. Someone has to pay for that dry hole at the bottom of the ocean and that’s the consumer in the form of higher pump prices. So peak oil or sub-ocean oil, it amounts to the same thing — higher prices. And of course nothing changes regarding pollution — the stuff you find in unconventional places still pollutes and causes global warming.
Now let’s add a third component. The chart supplied here shows that a whopping 94% of the world’s oil is owned and controlled by national oil companies (NOCs). NOCs like NIDC in Iran play by a different set of rules. Some NOCs are not about profits and would prefer to keep their oil for domestic consumption. They don’t care much about the world market or the oil companies and by controlling their output they can control their prices and profits.
So a lot of data is coming together that says oil prices aren’t coming down and a prudent strategy for controlling our destiny and trying to save the planet for our kids is to find another way to propel our cars. It’s not easy but it’s not impossible either. We need to quit blowing off the need for change because it’s not convenient or too hard to contemplate.
I believe there’s a lot we can do to avoid travel and carbon use in business and I saw some great examples last week at Microsoft with applications embedded with Skype. Imagine Skyping from your CRM system to a customer rather than getting in a car. That wouldn’t radically change your life but it might do much good for other reasons.
5 Comments on "Peak Oil, Global Warming and Business"
BillT on Sun, 11th Nov 2012 3:19 am
“… a prudent strategy for controlling our destiny and trying to save the planet for our kids is to find another way to propel our cars…”
Why not find a way to dispose of our cars? That seems like the best possible answer to both high gas prices and global warming. Again, the idea that cars come before a livable world is stupid. But ignorance is rife these days in the Empire and it’s minions.
Techies, you are NOT going to save the world you want to live in, but will live in the one that Mother Nature provides for you. Adjust.
Arthur on Sun, 11th Nov 2012 2:02 pm
Cars in the end effect were a desaster for the planet, says I, who drove more than 500K miles in his life, to customers all over Europe, and for fun to the Norwegian Northcape, Gibraltar, Scotland, Sicily, Moscow and the Crimea/Ukraine. Cars (and mass aviation) are going to be the first victims of the coming carbon downturn.
“Imagine Skyping from your CRM system to a customer rather than getting in a car.”
I have been working for large clients lately that fully function with virtual workgroups. Meetings are all online, with headsets and special software. 50% of the group is not in the building and some not even in the country.
60% or so in a modern economy spend their professional lives behind a monitor for the better part of the day, meaning that they do not need to be in the office at all. Skype like apps + cloud should suffice. These people could stay home and bring their cars to the scrap heap, so that at least a windturbine can be made of it.
BillT on Sun, 11th Nov 2012 3:47 pm
Yes, Arthur, until the internet goes down. How does an enemy of the West win in one blow? Taking out the internet is like cutting off the Western head. In minutes, the financial system would collapse. Famine would set in in 3 days or less. The military would be crippled all over the world. Ships would steam around in circles without GPS. Planes, ditto. Think about it. The internet is a huge weak link becoming more and more vulnerable.
Others on Mon, 12th Nov 2012 2:57 am
A Category 1 Hurricane hitting Southern Jersey has cost %50 billion and 120 lives in loss. Imagine a more powerful hurricane hitting near New York City.
But business will continue to spread false news. Be careful, it will be insurance companies who will start by raising the insurance premiums for people living near coast.
Arthur on Mon, 12th Nov 2012 11:37 am
“How does an enemy of the West win in one blow? Taking out the internet is like cutting off the Western head.”
Forget it. The internet is based on the tcp/ip protocol invented by… the US military!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite
It was designed precisely to *NOT* being able to take out in one blow. If NYC is annihilated by a nuke, data from Kansas can be transported to Brussels via Mexico, or Brasil, or Alaska or whatever!!! TCP/IP means radical decentralization and cannot be controlled from a center.
GPS signals are taken directly from satellites by ships. The only way to take out GPS is by taking down these satellites… all of them! 4-5 are enough to keep the service going. Galileo now has, I believe, 4 satellites in orbit, the rest of the 30 or so will be in orbit by 2014. That is a lot of targets for the Chinese military (the only ones who could do it) to take all these western satellites out.