[JohnDenver]

Hubbert didn't like the idea that there is "no free lunch". He felt it was a pernicious fallacy which is at the root of many of our problems:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')In the distribution to the public of the products of industry, the failure of the present system is the direct result of the faulty premise upon which it is based. This is: that somehow a man is able by his personal services to render to society the equivalent of what he receives, from which it follows that the distribution to each shall be in accordance with the services rendered and that those who do not work must not eat. This is what our propagandists call 'the impossibility of getting something for nothing.' Aside from the fact that only by means of the sophistries of lawyers and economists can it be explained how, on this basis, those who do nothing at all frequently receive the largest shares of the national income, the simple fact is that it is impossible for any man to contribute to the social system the physical equivalent of what it costs the system to maintain him form birth till death--and the higher the physical standard of living the greater is this discrepancy.

[JohnDenver]

This is deep stuff, folks. Please read Hubbert's words carefully, and ruminate on it for a while. I had to think about it for a long time (months! ) before it became clear.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')nder these circumstances we recognize that we all are getting something for nothing, and the simplest way of effecting distribution is on a basis of equality, especially so when it is considered that production can be set equal to the limit of our capacity to consume, commensurate with adequate conservation of our physical resources.

[UIUCstudent01]

He also advocated/created technocracy. My brother and I talked about something like that in passing when we were younger.. It makes sense.

Of course, one could call it communism. Scientific communism. Sounds fun.

[Colorado-Valley]

Isn't the whole capitalist theory based on creating scarcity?

Apparently in the energy business, it's called "bottlenecks."

[linlithgowoil]

i thought the idea of capitalism was that a few people get very rich by inventing stuff/owning means of production. they pay the workers just enough to stop them being unhappy and being non-productive, and are protected from the odd rebellious worker by the police and the courts, who are also made up of the very same workers. divide and conquer?

essentially, though, its about power - not really money. its just like the feudal system that used to exist in europe. a guy at the top, with a few generals below, a few sargeants below that and so on until you get to the majority who are landless peasants.

even those who own their own homes, but have a mortgage over them, are actually landless in my opinion. you do not truly own your own home/land until you own it without debt, and i believe that very few people will ever get to this point in future. they'll either die in debt or be re-possessed, and we'll be back to just a few people (or corporations) owning land, and renting it to the general masses.

[Don_Quichote]

Does it apply ?

[Carlhole]

yes

[TheTurtle]

UK has peaked.

[tdrive]

The Oil & Gas Journal will have a two-part editorial analysis on Dr. M. K. Hubbert's work on peak oil production. The first part will be in the upcoming 06-Jun-05 release (Issue 21), the second in the subsequent 22-nd Issue.

Here is an advance peak from the Issue 21 article (Introduction):

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t is well known that M. K. Hubbert successfully predicted the timing of peak US oil production. Since then, Hubbert’s model has been used extensively to predict peak oil production elsewhere, and the derived bell-shaped curve to describe production has appeared in many publications. However, forecasts of world and regional peak oil and natural gas production using this methodology have usually failed, leading to the implicit belief that such predictions will always fail and that we need not worry about finite resources.

The questions that must be asked are why the model succeeded for the US and what this can teach us about petroleum production modeling. A careful examination of Hubbert’s approach indicates that the most important reasons for his success in the US were stable markets, the high growth rate of demand, ready availability of low-cost imports, and a reasonable estimate of easily extractable reserves. This analysis also shows that his model cannot predict ultimate oil reserves and that it should be considered an econometric model.

Building on Hubbert’s vital insight, that cheap fossil fuel reserves are knowable and finite, one can state that for peak world oil production, political constraints should be much more important than resource constraints.

[Antimatter]

OGJ did a fair few articles on peak oil in 2004 and 2003. There was some chatter about the issue on the OGJ forums here: link
Editor Bob Williams appears to think PO is not imminent.

[ubercrap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Antimatter', 'O')GJ did a fair few articles on peak oil in 2004 and 2003. There was some chatter about the issue on the OGJ forums here: link
Editor Bob Williams appears to think PO is not imminent.

[holmes]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ubercrap', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Antimatter', 'O')GJ did a fair few articles on peak oil in 2004 and 2003. There was some chatter about the issue on the OGJ forums here: link
Editor Bob Williams appears to think PO is not imminent.

[ubercrap]

Heck, I was just reading about some of this in another post, and I had momentarily forgotten the huge amounts of natural gas needed for processing of the tar sands. Since it looks like natural gas is facing the same problems as oil, at least in North America, this is yet another factor... Strategically, it seems like a wiser allocation if we start importing natural gas from other continents on a huge scale, that it would be better used directly for whatever seems to be the most urgent need at the time (powering vehicles, heating homes?) than the energy intensive processing of the tar sands. Then there is the factor of water needed for processing...

As for the difficulty of the heavy oil extraction, I'll have to look into it...

I'm not sure I can even read the rest OGJ editor's posts referred to above- even mentioning the tar sands as a possible mitigator of peak oil seems to be wishful thinking, maybe even bordering on delusional from where I'm sitting. I wonder what the articles will be like?

[cammo2004]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ubercrap', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Antimatter', 'O')GJ did a fair few articles on peak oil in 2004 and 2003. There was some chatter about the issue on the OGJ forums here: link
Editor Bob Williams appears to think PO is not imminent.

[FatherOfTwo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ubercrap', 'H')eck, I was just reading about some of this in another post, and I had momentarily forgotten the huge amounts of natural gas needed for processing of the tar sands.

[Pops]

Really the only similarities one needs to see between Hubert’s prediction for the US and a possible global peak is this:

US oil discoveries peaked in the 30’s and 40’s regardless of every effort and approximately 40 years later production peaked.

And

World discoveries peaked in the 60’s and 70’s regardless of every effort and now it’s about 40 years later.


I’m no expert but it seems fairly obvious even to my little mind that you can’t pump what you can’t find.

[ubercrap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FatherOfTwo', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ubercrap', 'H')eck, I was just reading about some of this in another post, and I had momentarily forgotten the huge amounts of natural gas needed for processing of the tar sands.

[rowante]

I'm busy preparing a talk on peak oil for a cross-bencher state parliament briefing here in Oz and I need to locate a paper I once read on the M. K. Hubbert story.

I just searched thru all the obvious sites on google! doh! I can't remember if it was a PDF or a site page but it had Hubbert's original graphs... I remember it going into detail about how much oil one square on the grid represented etc.

The article had a very detailed description of Hubbert's actual presentation, the reaction of the industry at the time... it had great graphs comparing the varying estimates of URR showing the vast optimism of the USGS.

Any ideas, anybody?

[Antimatter]

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/

Some papers by Hubbert are archived there.

Reading again though it sounds like you're not looking for a paper by Hubbert. Perhaps Bartlett?

[aldente]

To present Peak Oil theory in the late 50's and 60's must have been an insane endeavour. Think of the mindset of that time. Look at the architecture and the general outlook onto the world. To throw in such a downer as the underlaying message of PO implicates- WOW!
This fellow was way ahead of his time.