Peak Oil is You
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Page added on April 4, 2014
Worried About Peak Oil and the Other Peaks?
Peak Everything! We’re Doomed. This Time for Sure.
“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill… The real enemy then is humanity itself.” – Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider, The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of The Club of Rome, 1991
Ever since Thomas Malthus wrote “An Essay on the Principle of Population” over two centuries ago, anti-human intellectuals have been sounding the alarm that humankind is spiraling towards an inevitable condition of global resource depletion and mass starvation due to the overuse of resources and man’s propensity to multiply in “geometric” proportions. Malthus wrote:
“The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.”
Malthus was dead-wrong, of course. In fact, in chapter two of his essay he projected that by 1900 (one hundred years into the future), the population of England would be 100 million people but the means of subsistence would be “only equal to the support of 35 million”. Obviously, Malthus did not understand that man’s ingenuity and propensity to invent would prevent the mass starvation he had so assuredly predicted.
Even though the evidence of the last two centuries has proven that subsistence and population increase have not become disconnected, the Malthusians of the modern age keep banging the same drum. Consider the following quote from Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb” (1968):
“If the pessimists are correct, massive famines will occur soon, possibly in the 1970s, certainly by the early 1980s. So far most of the evidence seems to be on the side of the pessimists.”
Notice how certain that Malthus and Ehrlich were of their predictions. Malthusians always claim that the evidence is on their side. (The opposite is most often the case, however.) For the past two hundred years these “peakers” have claimed that mankind is going to suffer terribly due to peak “something”, such as:
1) Peak sustainable population: Malthus thought it impossible for England to sustain a population of more than 35 million. The population of the UK is now more than 60 million.
2) Peak warmth: Leading scientists in the 1970′s warned that the earth had reached peak warmth and that global temperatures were set to plummet thus plunging mankind into a new ice age. However, “By the time the idea of global cooling reached the public press in the mid-1970s temperatures had stopped falling.”
3) Peak cooling: After the threat of peak warmth, the public press paid no attention to the fact that government-funded climate scientists did a 180 degree reversal on their views of global temperature trends. In the 1980′s, they started to claim that unless western society greatly reduced its per-capita energy usage, atmospheric temperatures would rise uncontrollably causing famines and the mass migrations of populations. A study even when so far as to link the threat of global warming to the shrinking size of polar bear genitalia. However, we now know, thanks to the works of journalists like Donna Laframboise, that politics has driven climate science and not the other way around (ref: The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert). We also know that the earth is presently exiting the Little Ice Age and that, upon closer analysis, Al Gore’s famous charts actually indicated that carbon dioxide has followed global temperatures rather than the reverse. Global warming (a.k.a. climate change a.k.a. climate disruption) is the most successful Malthusian charade to date.
4) Peak trees: In 1996 the Sierra Club predicted that “Boreal forests [in Canada] will disappear”. However, almost ten years later the Government of Canada stated, “…we can conclude that the total area of boreal forest in Canada is neither shrinking nor expanding significantly” (page 40).
5) Peak oil: Ever since M. King Hubbert proposed the idea of peak oil in 1956, scientists have been predicting the end of the oil economy. However, Hubbert didn’t count on mankind’s industrial ingenuity and the fact that the amount of proven oil reserves would keep expanding in future decades rather than contracting. As Dr. Robert P. Murphy pointed-out in his Mises Academy course “Adventures in Energy Economics”, proven oil reserves increased from 51 billion barrels in 1944 to 1,266 billion barrels in 2003. He further highlighted the fact that “At year-2000 consumption rates, the world has many thousands of years of crude oil and crude oil substitutes remaining. These figures do not even take into account other carbon-based fuels such as coal and natural gas.” Peak oil? Hardly.
6) Peak water: Modern day Malthusians warn that the globe is running out of water for drinking and agriculture. Like peak oil, the creativity that can be brought to bear on the problem is largely ignored by the peakers. Consider that 80% of the globe’s surface is covered by salt water. Some countries already use the process of industrial-scale osmosis to produce potable water from salt water for large populations. Is it not reasonable to expect that, driven by the profit motive in an environment of competition, business will bring down the costs of processing salt water thus making potable water available to more and more places at better prices?
7) Peak species: Another hot, modern-day Malthusian scare is “biodiversity collapse” which is the extinction of species on the planet. This threat is particularly rich in that the predictions rest solely on the results of computer models. (Scientists do not actually count the number of critters on the planet – a rather arduous task to say the least.) After the “epic” failure of climate modeling, it is rather difficult to take species modeling very seriously.
If we pay heed to the state-financed scientists who have been found to twist their science to support the political ambitions of their Malthusian pay masters, then we must agree that mankind is doomed in so many ways that the only way out is to reduce our population, our energy consumption and our standards of living. However, the history of the past two hundred years has proven Malthus and his followers to be dead wrong. Man’s ingenuity combined with a free market consisting of competition, price signals and the motivation of profit will ensure that the peakers remain on the wrong side of history.
21 Comments on "Worried About Peak Oil and the Other Peaks?"
J-Gav on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 12:18 pm
An ostrich with its head planted 3 feet underground couldn’t have said it better …
Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 12:24 pm
ARTICLE SAID – However, the history of the past two hundred years has proven Malthus and his followers to be dead wrong. Man’s ingenuity combined with a free market consisting of competition, price signals and the motivation of profit will ensure that the peakers remain on the wrong side of history.
– LewRockwell.com
YEE HAA, RIDEM COWBOY. Man I’m feelin good LEW. Ya pump me up man.
Here is a cherry picker looking wily nily for bad predictions. Failed predictions can be bad because smuks like this character use then to deceive, distort, and promote false promises. He offered no profound vision of his world view. All I saw was a few lines near the end with no support. I am assuming his vision is status quo BAU with a policy of ever greater expanding debt and its consequences of wealth transfer and investment distortions. All this for his chum fat cats who live large and feel good about their success with scalping. This character epitomizes the psychopathic hubris of a group and individuals bent on greed and self-interest. There is nothing good about these folks economically, socially, ethically, and environmentally. They are leading us down the path of ruin quicker through bad investment driven policies of belief in plenty through markets, technology, and knowledge. This at a time when population is in overshoot and the global system that all local systems rely on is at limits of growth in diminishing return on problem solving efforts of all kinds. This attitude is a reason why top down policies of mitigation and adaptation to all the global predicaments and problems will go nowhere. We will have to trust a grass roots bottom up effort and those efforts that coincide with the “lobby of plenty” policies that inadvertently support sound mitigation and adaptation efforts. Actually the “Lobby of Plenty” policies will hasten status quo BAU collapse. If policies of restraint and caution were followed BAU would most likely last longer. So the “Lobby of Plenty” are sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
Makati1 on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 12:36 pm
The last 200 years have been the exception because of the flood of cheap, plentiful oil. It is a once and done party that is about over forever.
Arthur on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 12:44 pm
I have great sympathy for the American libertarians in general, but when it comes to issues like resource depletion, it is difficult not to despair. In their view, markets beat geology. Libertarians believe in markets like the Taliban believes in Allah.
Their trick is to point at failed predictions in the past to draw the equally failed conclusion that their predictions are going to be right.
As Dr. Robert P. Murphy pointed-out in his Mises Academy course “Adventures in Energy Economics”, proven oil reserves increased from 51 billion barrels in 1944 to 1,266 billion barrels in 2003… At year-2000 consumption rates, the world has many thousands of years of crude oil and crude oil substitutes remaining
Right, and how much is 1.2 trillion / 80 million per day? Not many thousands of years, not even many hundreds, but in reality a few decades of declining oil production.
The Universe on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 12:49 pm
@Arthur RE “Libertarians believe in markets like the Taliban believes in Allah.”
…lol yes…
antiwarforever on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 2:06 pm
So basically the message the OP is conveying in this anti malthus rant “no prob people everything is fine in the best of worlds, be happy, stop worrying, everything will take care of itself.”.
I wish it were true. Unfortunately facts , millions of them, show that his premises are false. Good try, though.
Northwest Resident on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 2:22 pm
There are a lot of Americans and other people in the world who think along the same lines as the author of this article. I refer to them as “lemmings”.
bobinget on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 2:51 pm
See these ‘cornucopian’ articles as signs the Right is worried about carbon capture taxes. Throwing money at phony prostitutes (one actually gets value from REAL whores) to write crap as above doubling down in the face of monstrous evidence.
About Lew Rockwell: (Wikipedia)
Rockwell was closely associated with anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard until Rothbard’s death in 1995. Rockwell’s political ideology, like Rothbard’s in his later years, combines a form of anarcho-capitalism with cultural conservatism and he identifies with the Austrian School of economics. In politics, he advocates federalist concepts as a means of promoting freedom from central government and secession for the same political decentralist reasons. Rockwell has called environmentalism “[a]n ideology as pitiless and Messianic as Marxism.”[29]
meld on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 2:52 pm
Wasn’t there some research done recently into how a large majority of humans have a portion of their brains missing that deals with long term decision making. I’m pretty sure this guy is missing that portion and I’m pretty much sure most of the people who frequent this site have way too much of it packed in there, including me
superkaos on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 5:02 pm
I wonder how many people could live in England today were not for the oil that allows all the international commerce at today’s level. Would it be close to the 35 million that Malthus predicted? Carrying capacity must be one of the most difficult things to calculate, but we know for sure it is a finite number.
Meld on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 6:07 pm
Of course Malthus will be proven somewhat correct eventually, it’s just common sense. He couldn’t have predicted oil usage, and so the argument goes from the cournicopians that we can’t possibly predict the next energy source we are going to use to reach the stars, mine asteroids and generally have a jolly good time. What the chap in this article is basically saying is “I refuse to think about the future” and he’ll get a lot of pats on the back for that, when the time comes he’ll blame it on corrupt governments or some other visible problem (as everyone does) and be the first one being shot in the food riots.
Nony on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 7:06 pm
It’s a trite story, but has a good point about the Malthusians and the lack of intellectual honesty or lack of perspective on the history of their claims. There’s a reason why TOD is dead and it sure ain’t because they were so right about a 2008 liquids peak followed by yearly 2% decline or the watering out of Saudi Arabian oil or a US natural gas “cliff”.
dolanbaker on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 7:33 pm
@superkaos World war II proved that the UK could not sustain itself without food imports, had the U boat campaign not been defeated, Britain would have starved.
Stilgar Wilcox on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 8:17 pm
Wasn’t sure where to post this, but the stock market tanked today. Nasdaq off by 110 points! Dow off 150 something but most of that late in the day and usually if the nasdaq is down that much the Dow would be down something like 250-300. So Tech is leading the charge lower these past few days.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/04/us-markets-stocks-idUSBREA2J0UC20140404
kervennic on Fri, 4th Apr 2014 11:56 pm
Reading idiots is a waste of time.
alokin on Sat, 5th Apr 2014 5:33 am
Rockwell writes BS. And cornucopia existed only in some privileged countries, everywhere else misery is persisting and the limits of growth apply.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 5th Apr 2014 11:41 am
NOO SAID – It’s a trite story, but has a good point about the Malthusians and the lack of intellectual honesty or lack of perspective on the history of their claims. There’s a reason why TOD is dead and it sure ain’t because they were so right about a 2008 liquids peak followed by yearly 2% decline or the watering out of Saudi Arabian oil or a US natural gas “cliff”.
Damn Noo, you read the above article then subconsciously followed his reasoning and style with your comment. You must be on to something.
DMyers on Sat, 5th Apr 2014 4:57 pm
I find myself in the position of defending Libertarianism.
“…combines a form of anarcho-capitalism with cultural conservatism” [from bobinget comment above, from Wikipedia] That statement is false and misleading. Anarcho-capitalism (A-C) is diametrically opposed to “social conservatism”. A-C advocates complete human freedom, which includes the freedom to be “socially conservative”, but social conservatism believes in a central power controlling others’ lives (in complete agreement with modern Liberalism). Libertarianism permits social conservatism but advocates mostly opposite viewpoints. The Libertarians are the only formal political faction which does and has advocated an end to drug prohibition. How does that position dovetail with social conservatism?
Lew Rockwell posts various viewpoints, in the same manner as PO.com. He cannot be held personally to be the proponent of everything he re-publishes on his site, nor can these independently generated articles be deemed to have been written to reflect the views of Lew Rockwell. His selections are meant to be thought provoking IMHO.
The article presents a viewpoint worthy of consideration. Data are given in support of the arguments. Ehrlich and Club of Rome are fair game for having missed the mark in the near term. The strange thing is, what seems to have prolonged human and systemic expansion is not a free market but rather a rigged, top down control over everything, including the information which informs beliefs on either side.
Although Libertarians advocate for a free market, and perhaps to an extreme, as Arthur insinuated, they do not believe that is what we have now. Libertarians protest that our market is rigged and corrupt. They are advocating for a true free market.
I agree with Arthur (aka Arturo de Holanda), in that there is a bit of a disconnect between me and the Libertarians on resource depletion. The factor which the Libertarians are missing is that increasing the extraction of resources does not increase the underlying resources themselves. However, they are correct in asserting that a central authority cannot decide and mandate how resources should be allocated in the most effective and equitable manner. A central authority serves its own interests and its own special interest constituencies, to the detriment of the people.
The Libertarian belief is, “somehow we’ll find a way, if not restricted in our pursuits.” We’ll find new sources of energy through our own efforts and creativity. Limits to growth are not to be found in scholarly treatises, computer simulations, or in doomsday, Kool-Aid drinking congregations of the damned. Limits to growth are where we discover and experience them, so until we actually confront them somewhere in the material realm, they do not exist.
I had a coach in high school, who used to say: “you’re never defeated until you quit.” I think that is a question we face. Do we ward off defeat of industrial civilization by refusing to quit trying to make it work, or do we rely on reason to justify quitting, on the basis there is no longer any possibility we can win?
As one who ascribes to the Theory of a Finite Earth, I urge Libertarians to explore more thoroughly the finitude factor as an obstacle which must be taken into account in shaping human ambitions on this planet.
MKohnen on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 4:35 am
Nony (and all the other cornucopians) is like one of those dolls where you pull the string and they keep saying the same phrases over and over. He seems to think that inaccurate (and maybe only in timing) predictions by a few people, or current pumping rates will somehow make a “non-renewable” resource last forever.
Or maybe Nony doesn’t think oil *is* a “non-renewable” resource.
I would like to see Nony explain how Malthus was wrong if the use of FF’s had not been introduced into the picture. Or does Nony think humans “invented” oil, because if it’s only another resource that we are exploiting and depleting, it really doesn’t change anything in the long run.
And it’s this “long run” that makes cornucopians irrelevant. If they are only interested in making sure that the party can keep going until they’re gone, they should not be given any say in anything that requires planning for the future of our children, grand-children, et al. Does Nony seriously think that ITER or solar is going to somehow provide the fertilizer and power the agricultural equipment needed to stave off Malthusian collapse? We knew of FF’s and electrical forces for thousands of years before we found a way to fully exploit them. So what do we know of *now* that will replace FF’s well enough to power agriculture and provide food for the current 7 billion. If you can answer these questions, you’re relevant. If not, you’re not, and you should leave it to the adults to do the long term planning.
Arthur on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 10:49 am
I find myself in the position of defending Libertarianism.
Why am I not surprised. 😉
When I wake up in the morning, I position myself in my Churchillian king size armchair, a liberal would not want to be found dead in, overlooking what was once my backyard lawn, but now has morphed into a thirties style prepper vegetable garden, much to the amusement of my neighbours, albeit with no vegetables in sight. It is beginning April after all. The next 90 minutes are dedicated to 2 mugs of coffee and the fixed internet trail of Dutch MSM, German Spiegel.de, Peakoil.com, Geenstijl.nl (the Dutch Infowars, but unlike Infowars, Geenstijl is utterly mainstream and the largest forum in Holland and has decisive impact on the cultural climate here, moving the country to the right), Vrijspreker.nl (‘freespeaker’, Dutch libertarian site), Canadian smart left GlobalResearch.ca, USAWatchDog, Antiwar.com. The only reason why there are so many American sites on my list is to avoid being called ‘anti-American’ by Davy.lol But I always start the day with LewRockwell.com, although I’m not really a libertarian (instead a greenish, anti-imperial yet capitalist Euro-centric conservative fortress-Europe neo-Gaullist), just a sympathizer. I admire in them their determined resistance against imperial Washington, defense of civil liberties (not to be confused with commie ‘human rights’), Constitutionalism and historic revisionism (admittedly light, but becoming heavier with every passing day). Their vision on environment and resources is Neanderthalish at best, as painfully displayed in the article above. And they are too ideological about government-is-source-all-evil, paper money and gold (nothing wrong with paper money if combined with independent central bank, like the Bundesbank of former fame) and worst of all they are (or pretend to be) totally colorblind and refuse to acknowledge that mass immigration will lead to the death of the US as we knew it and will turn the country into yet another Brasil with corresponding geopolitical and cultural clout (as in: little). Although there are signs lately (notably with my favorite columnist Fred Reed) that that attitude could change.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 6th Apr 2014 12:27 pm
Art, I find your morning much like mine but I am in the middle of a rural area. I must say a nice morning you have in a nice place. A nice mind’s eye of you for me too. Well, art, I am always in defense of America from cheap shots like Maki makes or political propagandist ideologue statements from DC. I tend to be anti-American in my tone for the political industrial revolving door of the scalpers and pirates of the east coast establishment that have hijacked this great country and are slowly sterilizing it into a dumb and obese land. The reason I defend America is because there is still a majority of a still great people. I admit this majority is shrinking by the day. For the most part I greatly enjoy your comments Art. They touch on areas I don’t research. Being part European by way of a birth child living there and a 1st gen Italian girlfriend I enjoy talking about the old continent. I am 3rd gen Prussian and Czech émigrés myself. So Art keep up the good work and now I can picture you in your huge chair with a mind’s eye.