Peak Oil is You
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Page added on January 2, 2016
Thanks to technology, we’re not going to run out of oil
If you read Stephen Moore’s column, he noted how the consensus over oil is wrong. We’re not running out of oil. In fact, many have been saying we’re going to run out since the 1930s:
These stupid predictions of the end of oil have been going on for most of the last century. Just over 100 years ago, the U.S. Bureau of Mines estimated total future production at 6 billion barrels, yet we’ve produced more than 20times that amount. In 1939 the Department of the Interior predicted U.S. oil supplies would last 13 years. I could go on.
[…]
The folks at the Institute for Energy Research recently published a study showing three data points: first, the government’s best estimate of how much oil we had in America 50 years ago. The second was how much U.S. oil has been drilled out of the ground since then. And the third is how many reserves there are now. Today we have twice as many reserves as we had in 1950. And we have already produced almost 10 times more oil than the government told us we had back then.
Moore added that technological advancements are increasing oil production. In fact, Kerry Jackson at Investors Business Daily wrote in November that these advances are going to almost triple the amount of fossil fuel resources if research and development continue. At the current rate, she wrote that 2.9 trillion barrels could expand to 4.8 trillion by 2050, which is “almost twice as much as the projected global demand.” And we also know that energy from these resources is guaranteed to keep economies running, growing, and thriving, compared to the wholly inadequate alternatives such as wind and solar that won’t be able to meet our energy needs.
Engineering and Technology Magazine reported this week that BP — the company that once wanted to be known as “Beyond Petroleum” rather than “British Petroleum” — is saying “the world is no longer at risk of running out of resources.”
“Thanks to investment into supercomputers, robotics and the use of chemicals to extract the maximum from available reservoirs, the accessible oil and gas reserves will almost double by 2050,” Engineering and Technology said.
A BP official told the magazine that “energy resources are plentiful. Concerns over running out of oil and gas have disappeared.”
Things are so good, in fact, that Engineering and Technology says “with the use of the innovative technologies, available fossil fuel resources could increase from the current 2.9 trillion barrels of oil equivalent to 4.8 trillion by 2050, which is almost twice as much as the projected global demand.” That number could even reach 7.5 trillion barrels if technology and exploration techniques advance even faster.
This information backs up the idea that Earth is actually an oil-producing machine. We call energy sources such as crude oil and natural gas fossil fuels based on the assumption that they are the products of decaying organisms, maybe even dinosaurs themselves. But the label is a misnomer. Research from the last decade found that hydrocarbons are synthesized abiotically.
81 Comments on "Thanks to technology, we’re not going to run out of oil"
JuanP on Sun, 3rd Jan 2016 7:25 pm
Davy, I will never give you a time out again, fucktard. You had your chance to let me be and you wasted, I will not give you another chance. I know you wish I left, but there is nothing you can do about it, imbecile. I will be like a rat crawling up your ass for the rest of your life in this forum, jerk. You will have to put up with me for as long as you keep coming here, goat fucker!
makati1 on Sun, 3rd Jan 2016 7:26 pm
Guys, if we all ignore Davy, he will not have an audience to play to. The 1%er indoctrination is too deep for him to ever see anything else. He is to be pitied. He has a few supporters here, but look at what they are. Uneducated, immature, inexperienced, BAUers who deny that we are up shit creak without a paddle.
Don’t stoop to his level. I realized he is a lost cause. Let him fail on his own merit. My time is more valuable than exchanging insults with him or even reading his rants about how great he and his are and how poor the rest of the world is. There are still 362 days left in 2016, use them to learn, prep, and enjoy life. He is not worth a second of it.
JuanP on Sun, 3rd Jan 2016 7:29 pm
Davy, you are the pussy, fucktard! I will not give you a moment’s rest so get used to it, you whining bitch!
Apneaman on Sun, 3rd Jan 2016 7:47 pm
Dubya, you want to ass kiss the so called elite and give special kudos to Haber and Bosch then bitch that there are 5 billion too many apes all in the same breath? You don’t see the contradiction? What do you think is one of the biggest for profit (war) inventions responsible for the population explosion? There is over 5 billion more apes since the Haber-Bosch started being used for fertilizer. Oh, and there have been plenty of cottage inventions that made the suicidal modern world possible too, like the Vulcanization of Rubber by Charles Goodyear. He died deep in debt because some well moneyed interests (established elites) ripped him off and the patent lawsuits impoverished him. The truth is, if not him, someone else. If you do your research then you’ll find out that inventions and “advances” take place in societies (which NO individual survives without) and through the cultural exchanges of ideas all building on thousands of years of knowledge and millions of contributions from many unknowns. Other than a few true geniuses, it’s most often who gets there first and the ripoffs of others ideas abound. A good primer on the crazy and complex interconnectedness of invention and discovery is James Burke’s connections series.
Here’s a happy clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKELMR6wACw
JuanP on Sun, 3rd Jan 2016 7:52 pm
Mak, you are right of course, but I will not let Davy ruin this forum. The moderators will have to block me or block Davy. I am done being civilized with that fucktard. I apologize to everyone for this, but I will no longer allow Davy to keep bullying and insulting everyone that disagrees with him. I intend to bully him three times for every single time he bullies someone else. Sorry!
dubya on Sun, 3rd Jan 2016 9:08 pm
Apneaman, you and I both are 40% comprised of industrial shit from a bottle. Deal with that in whatever way you need to.
Davy on Sun, 3rd Jan 2016 9:24 pm
I agree With the above on the personal attacks but I reserve the right to attack when attacked. I have clearly been attack by multiple individuals over many weeks.
I am no longer doing my famous “Mak attacks” despite Mak’s continued blanket anti-American attacks. I have adapted per the wishes of my peers on this board. This has not deterred Mak from now attacking me now that he has a group of likeminded friends to support him.
Most here are turned off by the childish behavior we degenerate into with personal attacks. Generally personal attacks are examples of a failed message and point to agenda’s and extremism.
I appreciate those who spoke above and hope we can get back to idea battles and not personality battles. Personality battles become monotonous after the initial entertainment for the audience. They are counterproductive to a vital message this board provides.
JuanP on Sun, 3rd Jan 2016 9:56 pm
Davy, the delusional American exceptionalist board bully is back and he wants a break. It’s too late, fucktard. You will be getting a daily dose of your own medicine from me from now on, fucktard.
makati1 on Sun, 3rd Jan 2016 10:52 pm
JuanP, go for it. I’m on your side and will just hang back and enjoy your rebuttals. I stopped reading anything from the Ozark Hillbilly wannabee and a few others here as my New Years resolution.
theedrich on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 2:19 am
¿Abiotic hydrocarbons? I didn’t realize that the oil and gas industry had it all wrong for the past century and a half.
That said, Davy, you’ll just have to ignore Juan the Pee & Co., given that they contribute nothing to the discussion. They learned ad hominem fallacies from the MSM when they were in diapers, and to this day it remains their only way of counter-arguing against anything.
But to the point: as Rockman and others have pointed out ad nauseam, the oil and gas industry is suffering increasingly from diminishing returns. It makes no difference whether the oil was deposited by unicorns, space aliens, or anything else (like algae from hot, ancient seas). It is simply increasingly expensive to extract and process it. Added to that is the maniacal complexity added by politics and a maniacal religion to boot. Humpty Dumpty is cracking up due to many factors, and imaginary abiotic oil is not going to bring economic “growth” back to the globe’s exploding population any time soon. Per the Club of Rome, we are at our limits now.
noobtube on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 2:58 am
Never seen this board so on edge.
The happy talk of “all is well” is not entertaining ironically anymore.
The United States is living on borrowed time and the insanity that is American culture is breaking the very cohesion of the country.
To paraphrase Georgie W, “I think this sucker is going to blow” in 2016.
JuanP on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 6:14 am
Mak, I congratulate you on your resolution. I hope you can keep it up. You will be a better man for it. Like I said before, I know you are right and I am wrong on this one.
Davy has a really nice group of schoolyard buddies. It seems that every ignorant, illiterate, innumerate fool on this board is on his side. 😉 It does say a lot about him, doesn’t it? Birds of a feather flock together. All the deranged members of the board are Davy’s groupies now! LOL!
JuanP on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 6:20 am
Theedouche, Davy can’t ignore me, his multiple mental illnesses make that impossible for him. That is what makes it so much fun for me. He is exactly like Pavlov’s dog, every time anyone rings the bell, he comes for more punishing. Exactly what you would expect from a completely brainwashed fool. You, on the other hand, are a completely different animal, you appear to be a complete lunatic. At least Davy makes sense when he is not bullying others. Your comments are nothing but trailer park white trash racist rants, though. You are 100% pathetic! LOL!
Davy on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 6:36 am
I personally feel we can discount oil and its many peak oil dynamics as the trigger for a coming crisis of unknown degree and duration. It is the ticking time bomb in the background. It is the “buck stops here” for the mess we created by growing population so large on an unsustainable finite resource known as oil.
In the near term it appears more likely it will be our economic system itself that decays so fast that we will see dropping economic activity sustainable through excess supply and cannibalization. Economics in the short term as we see now is the driver. There is plenty of oil supplies available for a demand decay of globalism we see today.
We had a bubble in the commodity sector that brought to market significant amounts of many resources. We have low hanging fruit to pluck of forced changed attitudes and lifestyles. Consumerism can be reduced significantly in the short term. Whole populations are going to be dropped out of the global system in a hypothermic reaction of macro survival efforts. These efforts are many times going to be self-organizing with random events and irrational results. Dysfunction and decay are unpredictable. There are no equations for turbulence but it is well understood.
Oil is vital to discuss because it should be a point the cornucopians acknowledge is their end game. There is no substitution that will maintain the status quo. The status quo has too many people with a global ecosystem in decline and localized failure. It is the economy that brings oil to markets and it is the economy in decay that will free up enough supply to maybe allow an economic crisis avoid immediate collapse. Eventually the law of minimums in multiple areas kicks in to breach globalism’s minimum operating level of growth to support a debt based economic system.
Our complex system has some life left but not much. How that decays is anyone’s guess but we should acknowledge oil is an end game of the status quo. No green future or permaculture transition will save us from pain and suffering. The best we can do is adapt in crisis and hope for the best. The majority of what is ahead is beyond anyone’s control. We can make it worse and we can make some good decisions now that will pay off handsomely in some instances. Our window is now for proactive effort but the window is closed for the status quo. There is no future for what we have right here right now.
We are in denial on multiple fronts. We think we are still growing but clearly bad debt is not positive growth. We see excess oil supplies but this is killing the industry. We are in the purgatory of the surreal where reality is opaque and denial is our whiskey. I suspect 2016 will be the year of a hangover. Yet, I think globalism will limp along further. Your guess is as good as mine how long.
makati1 on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 6:39 am
JuanP, you too noticed that he cannot ignore anyone who pushes his buttons. I used to push them just to get his blood pressure up. But it became boring. Too easy.
As I told him many times, I was harassed in O.C.S., face to face, by professionals that had authority over me and they were not able to break me. He is an amateur. But that too gets boring eventually. I enjoy the comments here, but will avoid the mentally ill.
JuanP on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 6:45 am
Noob, Nothing is well in the USA. Talk is just talk. This country has obviously been getting worse since before it was created. The fact that the USA was formed from genocide, slavery, theft, and wars is probably the cause and left its mark in American culture. There are many good Americans, just like there are good and bad people everywhere, but the USA as a country has always been a bully with imperial ambitions except for a few isolationist moments here and there. They have been fucking Latin America since the 1820’s. The USA has always been Latin American’s worst enemy and now they are also the most hated country in the whole world. It is people like Davy, the delusional American exceptionalist and Theedouche, the trailer park white supremacist racist prick that are responsible for this. Not even his own daughter loves Davy and his twins will despise him, too, when they grow up. People like him are completely despicable and the reason why the world is so fucked up.
JuanP on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 6:48 am
Davy accusing others of being in denial is a classic example of what psychologists call projection and a symptom of Narcissism.
Davy on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 7:00 am
Juan, I welcome your attacks and also welcome you ignoring me. Your attacks just make you look ridiculous. Your attacks give me exposure that gives my message legitimacy. Ignoring me lets me sing my song that is pleasant to my ears. You are just drawing more attention to me the more mentally violent you get. You are heading for a metal breakdown like 2 weeks ago. You are also diminishing your gang’s message.
In my case people will want to know my message out of curiosity. In your case the silent majority will see obscenities and personal attacks in a routine and redundant puke as distasteful. People get tired of puke and this is all too apparent with what we see across the board with the mainstream media and politics.
Folks I am a happy person with a good life. Juan will lie and distort whatever he can. I am not going to try to clean up the puke. This will just feeds his extremism. This is not only out of him but it is from others in his gang. For me this is an achievement. As the bellow quote attests if they can’t beat you on ideas they attack you personally.
The inconvenient problem for extremist like Juan and the gang is that on a digital board without a moderator there are limits to the effectiveness of personal attacks. Idea attacks are a different story and prove healthy. Personal attacks suffer the same diminishing returns like everything else in life. Even love can be overdone.
Juan thinks I have not heard these personal attacks before. You, silent majority, judge for yourself and let the chips fall where they may. I am not going anywhere until someone turns my lights out. I like it here and I thrive on the abuse because it shows my message has meaning.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mahatma_gandhi.html#CBMS3eJRLl1DwO7H.99
JuanP on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 7:02 am
Mak, Being mean and selfish is too easy and I know I will get bored of it eventually. Anyone can be a bully, it is not hard at all, there is no challenge there. Being nice, understanding, patient, and generous, on the other hand, requires a real effort in this world full of delusional and racist selfish pricks, as you well know.
JuanP on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 7:04 am
Davy responds once more to the bell just like the well trained bitch she is. Why does your daughter hate you, Davy? Am I responsible for that, too?
JuanP on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 7:11 am
Davy, I am not going anywhere either. You better prep for a very long fight. I will be like a rat crawling up your ass every single day and night. I expect that at some point the other members will complain enough about us that either you, me or both of us will get blocked, but if they don’t this will last for as long as this forum exists. I can go back to just reading the comments like I did for over a decade and wouldn’t mind, but I know you would hate and resent being blocked immensely. You are the one that needs an audience, not me. I just started posting comments here to balance your biased, delusional, bullying rants and that is what I am going to keep on doing. I did it nicely for two years, now you’re meeting my other side, goat fucker!
JuanP on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 7:17 am
I know you hope I will leave, break down, or somehow let you go back to bullying others with impunity, but those days are over fool. I will not give you the pleasure. Only people who are not really happy boast about how happy they are, IMO. But we all know you are not just a bully, but also a cowardly, lying, delusional American exceptionalist hillbilly white trash redneck.
JuanP on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 7:36 am
Davy, ring, ring!
MSN Fanboy on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 9:12 am
Go play in the traffic JuanP, slit your wrists.
JuanP on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 11:37 am
MSN, I will never give you the pleasure. I will be here every day and every night to make the lives of assholes like you, the delusional American exceptionalist, and Thedouchebag a living hell.
noobtube on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 11:59 am
It looks like lines have been re-drawn on PeakOil.
It used to be Cornies and Doomers.
Now, it is Exceptionalists vs Realists.
Mak & JuanP… the facts don’t lie and it feels like America is cursed with nothing but violence and collapse in its future.
theedrich on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 5:27 pm
All that Juan the Pee contributes here is the pinko twaddle to be expected from a parasitic Latino escapee from a Uruguayan prison. Turning to the different issue of access to oil, the newest provocation by KSA could have serious consequences which would devastate the energy-thirsty global GDP, and abiotic hydrocarbons, even if they existed, could not possibly save us.
Apneaman on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 5:36 pm
Theedouch, what’s that avatar? The Silver Surfer? How indicative of your cartoon worldview.
BC on Mon, 4th Jan 2016 7:58 pm
Wow! You gents are in rare surly form to start the new year! 😀 It didn’t take long in the new year for the gloves to drop off, the fangs to be bared, and the ape fur to fly. 😀
Let’s get it on!!! 😀
Dubya on Tue, 5th Jan 2016 12:32 am
BC, I think we have accidentally stumbled upon the day this whole group thinks that ranting on the ‘peak oil’ site has some correlation with realty.
Now, if I could just figure out how to compost this page…
makati1 on Tue, 5th Jan 2016 1:36 am
Dubya, if you haven’t noticed, ranting is now the norm in the FAS. Oregon with guns, Chicago with thugs, ‘political correctness’ everywhere. And it is only going to get worse. Divide and Conquer is working.
As for on this site. there is one who thinks his shit doesn’t stink and has goaded the verbal discharge to the current point of knives and threats. Ignore him. He has mental problems.
The site editors throw in a few articles not related to Peak Oil, to keep it going, it seems. The ongoing exchange attracts more comments like shit attracts flies. If you don’t like the words used, don’t bother to read the comments, just the articles.
You are seeing the real world in the exchanges here. All types from all corners of the world. If you want to only read comments that agree with you, this place is not it. But be warned, the world is getting uglier day by day and if you want to live in it, adjust.