PeakOil is You
Book: "Oil Panic and the Global Crisis" by Steven Gorelick
Re: New Book: "Oil Panic and the Global Crisis"
by LateGreatPlanetEarth » Mon 15 Nov 2010, 00:29:08
bottom line of book is that peak oil is a moving target: the higher bbl oil becomes, the less oil used; thus stretching out the date. Non-critical oil consumption is huge.
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Re: New Book: "Oil Panic and the Global Crisis"
by Xenophobe » Mon 15 Nov 2010, 02:15:23
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('LateGreatPlanetEarth', 'b')ottom line of book is that peak oil is a moving target: the higher bbl oil becomes, the less oil used; thus stretching out the date. Non-critical oil consumption is huge.
Having read the book, I'm not sure I agree that this was a "bottom line". Can you reference any particular chapter where you think this point came through that I might review it?
I might agree that Hirsch certainly presented the "discretionary" size of oil consumption, easily showing that it is in the millions of barrels a day in America alone. But Gorelick did not appear to focus on the non critical side...I know he had an entire chapter on efficiencies and improvements which bypass needing to use oil, but that was just a single chapter if I recall correctly.
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Re: New Book: "Oil Panic and the Global Crisis"
by LateGreatPlanetEarth » Mon 15 Nov 2010, 02:59:34
hubbert's bell shape curve myth: it was constructed on the basis of a limited resource with a demand growing exponentially. since there is demand destruction the data doesn't fit a symmetrical shaped curve.
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Re: New Book: "Oil Panic and the Global Crisis"
by Carlhole » Mon 29 Nov 2010, 20:30:42
I emailed Professor Gorelick:
Having been interested in the subject of peak oil for years now, I bought your book ("ouch!", by the way). It's excellent. But it doesn't seem to have come under any attack by the ODACs and ASPOs of the world. Have any peak oil activists criticized it?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')ear Carl,
Thanks for your kind remark. I've seen a few comments, but I am sure there are many I haven't seen. Overall, the book has been well received and got positive reviews in Science, print media, and various journals. Some of the comments appear on Amazon. Actually, the comments from the peak oil community have been more subdued and even more positive than I expected. Some of the peak oil folks defend the good science, factual content, and fair treatment of arguments from both sides. Some have taken on their fellow peak oilers in questioning their assumptions. Some of the blogs show quite a bit of reason, which is nice to see. Of course, many folks are into dogma and blind curve fitting, while others vehemently and perhaps quite reasonably believe that there is a known amount of oil that has to disappear soon according to a prescribed formula without regard to supply/demand/substitution economics. One blog called the book, the worst book ever written. I'd expect that remark from a fervent proponent of Hubbert's approach in a way that I think Hubbert himself never would have supported. Hubbert was a scientist and scholar, ultimately not a zealot. When confronted with the many incorrect predictions of global peak oil production and the systematic increase in the oil endowment estimates, I bet Hubbert would have been more curious and less defensive than those who follow him.
Wiley-Blackwell priced the book. So sorry about their high price. Hope you got it on Amazon -- at least they offer a discount. I get almost nothing, and might some day make enough to pay for the figures getting drafted for publication and my personal expenses collecting the info for the book. Even I had to buy copies to give to friends and family -- so I'm well in the red on this effort. Obviously I did not write the book for the money. I just wanted to inject a bit of multidisciplinary thought along with facts and historical perspectives into the the oil depletion debate.
Best,
Steve Gorelick
Professor
Having been interested in the subject of peak oil for years now, I bought your book ("ouch!", by the way). It's excellent. But it doesn't seem to have come under any attack by the ODACs and ASPOs of the world. Have any peak oil activists criticized it?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')ear Carl,
Thanks for your kind remark. I've seen a few comments, but I am sure there are many I haven't seen. Overall, the book has been well received and got positive reviews in Science, print media, and various journals. Some of the comments appear on Amazon. Actually, the comments from the peak oil community have been more subdued and even more positive than I expected. Some of the peak oil folks defend the good science, factual content, and fair treatment of arguments from both sides. Some have taken on their fellow peak oilers in questioning their assumptions. Some of the blogs show quite a bit of reason, which is nice to see. Of course, many folks are into dogma and blind curve fitting, while others vehemently and perhaps quite reasonably believe that there is a known amount of oil that has to disappear soon according to a prescribed formula without regard to supply/demand/substitution economics. One blog called the book, the worst book ever written. I'd expect that remark from a fervent proponent of Hubbert's approach in a way that I think Hubbert himself never would have supported. Hubbert was a scientist and scholar, ultimately not a zealot. When confronted with the many incorrect predictions of global peak oil production and the systematic increase in the oil endowment estimates, I bet Hubbert would have been more curious and less defensive than those who follow him.
Wiley-Blackwell priced the book. So sorry about their high price. Hope you got it on Amazon -- at least they offer a discount. I get almost nothing, and might some day make enough to pay for the figures getting drafted for publication and my personal expenses collecting the info for the book. Even I had to buy copies to give to friends and family -- so I'm well in the red on this effort. Obviously I did not write the book for the money. I just wanted to inject a bit of multidisciplinary thought along with facts and historical perspectives into the the oil depletion debate.
Best,
Steve Gorelick
Professor
The binding, paper and print in this book are all very high quality (if merely black and white). I wonder why Wiley-Blackwell chose to do this? It's only 256 pages. Why not just make it a paperback and sell it for $12?
At any rate, the section covering Hubbert's bell-curve method for predicting peak and decline of petroleum production is just taken completely apart by facts alone. Hubbert was dead wrong most of the time and had to continually enlarge his estimates of the total oil endowment to keep alive his assumption that the ultimate oil endowment can be a known quantity.
The whole section on reserve growth will be familiar to everyone here but it is expressed very well and backed up, as always, with the best references available. An enlightening (for me) section describing the peak and decline of the lower 48. It describes the peak as having at least as much to do with supertankers and the availability of cheaper foreign sources than any supply-driven peak.
The absence of Scarcity Rent in the history of petroleum production also,I admit, was a new observation for me, but an important one.
- Carlhole
Re: New Book: "Oil Panic and the Global Crisis"
by Xenophobe » Mon 29 Nov 2010, 20:58:53
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'T')he whole section on reserve growth will be familiar to everyone here but it is expressed very well and backed up, as always, with the best references available. An enlightening (for me) section describing the peak and decline of the lower 48. It describes the peak as having at least as much to do with supertankers and the availability of cheaper foreign sources than any supply-driven peak.
It was a pretty good read, wasn't it? I thought it was excellent just for some of the references alone.
For the Believers in the group, references are those thingies at the end of a chapter or end of an article which allows you to reach back into the material used by the author to verify that they did say what he/she claims. Generally they are not related to the dogma, superstitious tales, campfire stories, parables or hallucinated "facts" that peakers are forced to memorize in peak oil Sunday school.
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Re: New Book: "Oil Panic and the Global Crisis"
by Carlhole » Mon 29 Nov 2010, 21:37:18
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', 'I')t was a pretty good read, wasn't it?
It's the best total treatment of the peak oil debate that I have seen so far. Very well written.
If I were a staunch Hubbertian, I would not have been displeased with the author's treatment of Hubbert's methods and that scientist's approach to peak oil theory. It was all there in all its forboding glory.
The main value of this book is that it expresses both sides of the peak oil debate completely and concisely, something no one else has done. I'm surprised that no one has written a review of it at ASPO or ODAC. I suppose they will have trouble criticizing it because the author allows the facts and data to do the persuading. However, as the reader discovers (or re-discovers) more facts and data in the second section, it becomes clear that the issue of future fossil fuel supply is being won by the optimists.
If this books were broadly read, peak oil doomers probably would have to switch over permanently to the issues of population and limits to growth. But good luck with those as well. So far, Malthus isn't batting all that high.
- Carlhole
