Peak Oil: More Facts Ruining Happy Talk

29 Comments on "Peak Oil: More Facts Ruining Happy Talk"

GregT on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 4:27 pm 



“Population is a sensitive subject, but it is noteworthy that by 2050, oil supply will have fallen to a level able to support less than half the current population in its present way of life.”

It is even more noteworthy, that if we continue to burn oil until 2050, the Earth itself will no longer be able to support any of us. Oil does not support life, the Earth does. Oil is destroying life on Earth, not supporting it.

rollin on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 4:59 pm 



Good diagnosis GregT.
Oil will not be at half production in 2050, 10 percent at most, if anyone is keeping track at that point.

Assuming that extreme measures are taken to change society away form oil before 2030, there still may be enough civilization left to care about global matters. That gives us 15 years to make global changes, while at the same time global changes are being initiated upon us outside our control. Bad planning but worse if we do nothing.

Northwest Resident on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 5:09 pm 



GregT — that 2050 estimate is based on current and past trends, no doubt, and does not take into consideration the high probability that our current version of human civilization will never make it to 2050, or more likely not even to 2020 for that matter. I think you and I share the same POV, that being, the best chance that the human race has for long term survival on planet earth is for a complete and abrupt STOP of BAU in the very near future, along with the massive die-off and incomprehensible upheaval that goes along with it.

“Reaching peak oil is not some deliberate attempt on the part of capitalist society to screw us all up; it’s simply the end result of our great ingenuity and progress maximizing the use of a finite resource.”

That is so true. When humans first started using coal and oil, and building their wonderful and exciting economies on the back of fossil fuels, little did they realize that in the far distant future there would actually be an abrupt end to that wild ride. In the world of the 1800’s it must have been nearly impossible to contemplate the concept of finite resources because the world was too large, the resources so vast. Now, here we are, trapped on a very small planet with very few resources left to pillage. The economic machine that was born at the beginning of the fossil fuel industrial age has grown into a monster that is out of control. It must be stopped in its tracks if humanity is to have any future at all. Those of us alive today did not give birth to that monster, and we were not significant contributors to its rapid growth into the beast that it has become. But it is we, those of us who are alive today, who must now kill that monster before it destroys us all, even knowing that by destroying it we might very well destroy ourselves in the process. Just like Galadriel said to Frodo in The Lord Of The Rings: “This task was appointed to you, and if you do not find a way, no one will.”

shortonoil on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 5:44 pm 



“Population is a sensitive subject, but it is noteworthy that by 2050, oil supply will have fallen to a level able to support less than half the current population in its present way of life.”

The author is, for the most part, right on; except for the 2050 date. When you have sat down and crunched all the numbers (like we have been doing for the last four and half years) that projection turns out to be a bit “rosy”. In actuality the date will be between 2030-2035. By 2050 the US will be operating on about 2.25 mb/d. That will be production primarily from the 500,000 weepers producing their 2 to 10 barrels per day. Shale oil, Canadian bitumen, and ultra deep production will be things only found in history books. Their cost of production will have outstripped their value to the economy long before then.

What we are talking about is the petroleum depletion event. Depletion is not about the quantity of crude produced, it is about the value of the crude produced. The quality of petroleum is going down, and we are now on the tail end of a very steep curve. Manipulating our way through this once in a millennium event is going to require a herculean sized effort. If you expect an easy ride through – you will be disappointed!

http://www.thehillsgroup.org/

Northwest Resident on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 6:04 pm 



shortonoil — If indeed we do end up depleting all the petroleum as you mention, and we somehow manage to creep and crawl our way to 2030 before the final economically viable drop of energy gets sucked out of planet earth, then we will probably have guaranteed the extinction of human life on planet earth due to all the CO2 pumped into the atmosphere and associated climate change. Equally bad, we will have burned all the energy up just to maintain “our” wasteful unsustainable “way of life”. If that happens, I suppose the Gods will curse us for our cowardice and foolishness our “leaders” will burn in hell and deservedly so, and we’ll all die like a bunch of squirming maggots who have eaten the last piece of flesh off of the rotting corpse of planet earth and are left to starve to death. I cannot believe that TPTB will allow this to happen. It must not happen.

Pardon the dramatic effect.

J-Gav on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 6:28 pm 



For sure, 2050’s a long way off but, trends being what they are, thangs ain’t lookin’ good …

Northwest,If there was only one dragon to slay, before it sinks its teeth into our collective neck, it would make the task a little easier. As luck would have it, we’ve got several breathing fire up our backsides so, I think you and some others here would agree, the chances of a smooth, soft-landing type transition to the coming ‘new reality’ are rather slim.

GregT on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 6:37 pm 



“I cannot believe that TPTB will allow this to happen. It must not happen.”

NWR,

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind, that TPTB are completely aware of our predicament. It isn’t rocket science, and they have plenty of rocket scientists at their beckoning. As mentioned before, I have my suspicions as to any plans that ‘they’ may have in effect. One thing for certain, those plans won’t be including the rest of us.

Northwest Resident on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 6:50 pm 



GregT — “Those plans won’t be including the rest of us.” No doubt that is one hundred percent correct. But for those that are perceptive, intelligent and capable of smelling which way the wind is blowing and who make adequate preparations, there is a substantially increased chance that they will make it to “the other side.” Darwin’s Law is going to be swinging a heavy hammer in the near future. Those of us who are smart enough and lucky enough to persevere might end up playing a very important role in the new world. That is me, being optimistic.

GregT on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 6:58 pm 



NWR,

I completely agree.

Northwest Resident on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 7:06 pm 



J-Gav — I agree, there will be no smooth, soft-landing. Not that I can see. Hoping for a smooth soft-landing is as much out there in la-la land as is the concept that we have enough oil to last us at current consumption rates up to 2050. It’s time to tighten the seat belt and get ready for a crash landing, because that is certain. The only question is, will we survive or not, and if we do survive will it be as a mangled disabled shadow of our former self, or as a viable civilization still capable of rebuilding a new world.

shortonoil on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 7:42 pm 



“Darwin’s Law is going to be swinging a heavy hammer in the near future.”

Great prose!

Which way it is going to go; I don’t know. Some days it seems like all is lost. Others, perhaps there is hope.

ronpatterson on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 9:05 pm 



Northwest wrote: “I cannot believe that TPTB will allow this to happen. It must not happen.”

GregT replied: “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind, that TPTB are completely aware of our predicament.”

GregT, I think you are mistaken. The powers that be, whomever they are, haven’t a clue. I assume you are talking about politicians, the President, his cabinet, and congress are just average people who have great knowledge about politics and how to get elected but don’t know squat about much else.

While there are two or three in congress, and perhaps even the Secretary of Energy, who believes we will reach peak oil soon, they likely believe that the free market will step in and fix everything. They believe “renewables” will step in and fix the problem.

And, even if these “aware few” did step forward, as Congressman Roscoe Bartlett did, no one would pay any attention to him.

And even if they did pay attention to them there is not a damn thing they could do. They would have to convince the rest of the nation to take action. The rest of the nation would, of course, pay no attention to them whatsoever.

Northwest Resident on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 9:40 pm 



ronpatterson — What makes me think that TPTB are highly aware of the impending consequences of our rapidly declining oil situation? Two things:

1) I personally believe that 9/11, the resulting war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq were all planned and executed by TPTB. Reason: To secure and lock down the major ME oil production sites. They succeeded. That to me proves a high level of planning, determination and awareness.

2) The U.S. Military is keenly aware of the dangers of climate change and of oil resource depletion. If you haven’t read it yet, search for “J.O.E. 2010” — you’ll see that military strategists even back in 2010 were predicting significant energy shortfalls as soon as 2015 with dire security implications both abroad and at home, and it looks like they are very accurate predictions. You can be sure that if the top military brass is highly aware and concerned about potential threats to national security, that the entire top political and intelligence echelons are also highly aware, whether they admit to it or not.

People like to characterize TPTB as a bunch of greedy, selfish old geezers who are clueless about what is happening in the world and couldn’t give a damn about what happens after they die anyway. That kind of thinking is probably the result of your own bias and projections, and not based on much deep thinking. Just my opinion.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 9:58 pm 



Great words Shortonoil about the depletion event. N/R and J-Gav, I enjoyed the dragon slaying contest. GregT, well TPTB I am not sure what the exactly know. There are many dragons like N/R and J-Gav mentioned so they are up to the armpits in alligators. TPTB tend to look short term. Since they are generally politician types they look for optimism and live it because that is what makes them money or gets them re-elected. Some of them are so far out there with fundamentalist religious fervor who friggin knows where their heads are!!

Shortonoil, I agree with your analysis of crude at this point and going forward. I also see a volatile curve ahead. The curve down will be full of chaos, dysfunction, and irrationality. The curve up is generally orderly, rational, and a function of market making. With the widely varying types of liquid fuels coming on to market we will sure have some quality issues.

One last word on this guy’s premise. I don’t believe we can do managed degrowth. We have a self-regulating global economic system running into the realities of diminishing returns. Centralized control by the central banks, TBTF banks, and the associated corrupt politicians is a fools game creating unintended consequences. Predicaments are developing in multiple areas. These multiple predicaments are not mutually exclusive but interrelated. They are all game changers to our de-localized local support system. We must also remember if TPTB start really getting the word out and the public connects the dots you are talking a loss of confidence. In our financial world confidence is liquidity. You are talking panic and a collapsed market. This market collapse will happen eventually. It is subject to human nature. It is a bubble or Ponzi scheme based at this point primarily on debt. The core values and market mechanisms have been hollowed out. The house of cards is being weakened by a unprecedented wealth transfer to the 1% to 5%. I see a brick wall for the markets if they are able to keep the racket going, when the energy situation becomes untenable to support the economy. I am estimating this to be 6 years or less or if we are lucky a gentle 9 years!

cusano on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 11:46 pm 



Interesting discussion..if you haven’t done so, I suggest you acquaint yourselves with the Hirsch Report. It says it all.

Northwest Resident on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 1:11 am 



Davy — Just curious. What is a “de-localized local support system”? Forgive my ignorance…:-)

JB on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 1:23 am 



rollin, 10% production by 2050? (you mean 90% gone?) If you refer to Laherrier’s and Hubbert’s graphs, as well as many others you will see that by 2050 the world will be down to about the 50% point from the peak, on a volume basis. Of course the quality of the oil will be down as well. Also, that will be the point of the maximum decline rate. But I think we can consider ourselves “collapsed” well before 2050.

GregT on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 1:27 am 



guys,

I do not consider our politicians to be TPTB. They are nothing more than puppets for the real power brokers. That should be plain for all to see. Our political systems have been hijacked for a very long time, and our monetary systems as well. Follow the money, and you will find the powers that be.

Davy,

“Centralized control by the central banks”

Like I said, follow the money.

“The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it’s profits or so dependant on it’s favors, that there will be no opposition from that class.” — Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes it’s laws” — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

“We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it”. — Congressman Louis T. McFadden in 1932 (Rep. Pa)

“The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen.
There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this nation is run by the
International bankers — Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Rep. Pa)

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and
commerce.” — James A. Garfield, President of the United States

“A great industrial nation is controlled by it’s system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world–no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.” — President Woodrow Wilson

Now ask yourselves, who has the power to bring countries to their knees, and who has the power to collapse economies? These are the TPTB, and when they decide that enough is enough, I suspect that is exactly what they will do, once again.

Northwest Resident on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 2:50 am 



GregT — Can’t agree more. Politicians are temporary help. They do what they are supposed to do or they get replaced, or they never get elected in the first place. Money controls everything in politics. In office, politicians do have a wide degree of latitude on which policies they will support and which ones they will fight against, giving them the illusion of independence, and giving “the people” the illusion of democracy. But in truth, unwritten rules limit what they can say and what they can do.

Here is a fairly interesting assessment of the relatively small group that exerts so much influence on world events from New Scientist, a scientific study — “Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world”

“The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.”

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed–the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html#.Uv1_UmeYaUk

Remember, he who controls the purse strings controls everything.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 3:26 am 



N/R said Davy — Just curious. What is a “de-localized local support system”? Forgive my ignorance…:-)

N/R ignorance is blissful and or pre-Alzheimers. De-localized local is the situation most of us are in today. It revolves around our local support system of survival relying on the global system for our basic survival needs. Food, fuel, consumer items, cloths, machines, parts, et al. If we have a global economic disruption and our system of trade and money fails our ability to secure basic needs is compromised. We live in a just in time complex global system with long distribution systems that lead back to our local. A local where we may only produce a small part of the basics for our survival. Wheat could rot in Kansas. A part critical to the water system of a city is not available. We no longer have a system that is resilient, diversified, and complete. We are just a part in the big puzzle. Up until WWII we more or less had a system that could survive without the global. In just a few short years we very nearly eliminated the physical and intellectual infrastructure of pre-global man. It disappeared so fast because of the markets drive for efficiency, convenience, and competition. The competition is from the hostile neighbor that will invade and conquer if not modern and strong. I think you get the picture.

Northwest Resident on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 3:44 am 



Thanks Davy — Yeah, I get all that. Just that “de-localized local” struck me as an odd label. I had read where you used that term several times, and I wasn’t sure what you meant by it. Had to ask. Now I know!

Dave Thompson on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 4:21 am 



The 400 plus nuclear reactors around the world will most likely do us in first. Once the fossil fuel inputs are diminished,who will be around and paid to decommission the reactors over the 20-60 years that it takes without BAU?

Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 11:48 am 



Dave, it is funny, I used to think the nuke plants were safe you know if not blown up, a jet flown into the containment vessel, or stupidity like Chernobyl. The FuKushima and the spent fuel rods came into the picture. I knew the spent fuel was nasty but I thought the smart people had a better handle on the storage. I thought..OK..you put them in some concrete and stuff them away deep underground. Maybe in a 100,000 years a geologic event occurs to disturb them..bummer but we are dead so who cares. Now, we see that this has been the real deception and crime in the Nuke industry. They have been generating power for years with no plan B for the fuel. The typical human nature that knowledge and technology will solve the problem in the future was the thinking. Well, we are in the future and still no plan B for the spent fuel ponds brimming with rods packed together at much high density then ever design for. It is again about greed. No money in it so why get excited about it is these slim ball’s thinking.

Northwest Resident on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 3:00 pm 



Davy — anybody — Question, and a dumb one no doubt. Why can’t we just encase all those spent rods in concrete and then sink them into the Marianas Trench at the deepest location where, as time passes, they will eventually be recycled back into the earth’s crust? There HAS to be a good reason why that is a really stupid idea, I just don’t know what it is. Help?

Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 3:21 pm 



@N/R or blast the spent fuel into space with our fingers crossed….uuummm. Well, I think any disposal has the usual potential unintended consequences of spewing out elsewhere later. But, yea, go down as deep as possible in the ocean in a stable spot. Dig deeper bellow the ocean with a Manhattan style program to bury the waste in the earth. The two game enders are Nuk WMD and Nuk spent fuel in a collapsed BAU. I most worry about the Nuk twins in a crash because it could be like what Dan Truman said in movie Armageddon when they were discussing the asteroid “Dan Truman – Half of the Earth’s population will be incinerated by the heat blast, the rest will freeze to death in a nuclear winter. Basically the worst parts of the Bible”

The problem is it is not a problem now and there is no $ in it. You know like AGW, PO, and et al.

Northwest Resident on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 3:47 pm 



Davy, your answer was illuminating this time, but not as deeply satisfying as I would have liked. So, I Googled for an answer and found this:

“Answer: Deep-sea trenches are where one plate dives beneath another (the process of subduction) to be swallowed up by the Earth’s hot mantle. The descending plates go down hundreds of kilometers, where they are not the least bit of a threat. It isn’t completely clear whether they disappear by being thoroughly mixed with mantle rocks—maybe they persist there and are recycled through the plate-tectonic mill, but that wouldn’t happen for many millions of years. The concept is sound: just put your barrels of waste in a trench—we’ll dig a hole first, just to be tidy about it—and down they inexorably go, never to bring harm to humanity again.
A geologist might point out that subduction is not really secure because at relatively shallow levels, subducting plates start to be chemically altered, releasing a slurry of serpentine minerals to erupt in large mud volcanoes on the seafloor. Imagine those spewing plutonium into the sea! Fortunately by that time the plutonium would be long since decayed away.

But waste disposal by subduction won’t work. Let’s look a little closer.”

http://geology.about.com/od/platetectonics/f/seadisposal.htm

And the answer(s) provided here don’t really satisfy me either. I’m not talking about dropping barrels of waste, I’m talking about dropping barrels of waste encased in concrete down a mile or two. The argument that future generations or pirates or whatever might try to dig them up just doesn’t compute. There has to be a better answer somewhere.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 5:21 pm 



Good googling N/R, ImHO this subject I am talking out my butt on. It worries me more than any other currently. I see some kind of contraction or collapse. The degree and duration is unpredictable. But I can say this if the power gets cut off at even a fraction of the 400 plus spent fuel ponds the snowball effect would be devastating. This should be an Armageddon movie situation where all hands are on deck to solve this problem. TPTB think status quo, you know, stable power, technology will solve this over time, no rush, this idea won’t get me elected, and spent fuel “what problem?” “OR” General public spent fuel is that the stuff that comes out the tail pipe or the $ you spend on fuel spent???

Peter Strachan on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 4:06 am 



A good heads-up on the topic.
What is clear from what we know is that adapting to the rapidly coming change in energy availability is not made any easier by continuing to fill the plant with an additional 80 million people each year. Secondly, while there are plenty of smart renewable technologies that can assist, there is no magic technology fix. People have been bringing the best technology available to the table since Adam was a boy and that process has led to where we are today. How will continuing to do that lead to a different outcome than the one we are facing today? Most technology enables us to consume more nonrenewable resources more cheaply.
The paradigm change we need is to reduce population to a more resilient number and we have the technology to achieve that humanely over a couple of decades. The alternative is not going to be humane.

Kenz300 on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 5:12 pm 



Too many people and too few resources…….

Adding 80 million more people to the planet every year is not sustainable…………….