by skeptic » Sun 30 Apr 2006, 08:34:49
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SoothSayer', '
')Suppose PO is really true -
Soothsayer,
you dont have to suppose . It's a matter of simple logic. All that is required is an understanding of the word 'finite'.
It means a discreet ammount which can be quantified rather then an infinite ammount.Thats step one.
Step 2 is to accept that the earth is a finite body - it has a measurable size and volume
Step 3 is to accept that oil only comes from inside the earth. As the earth has a finite volume so then must oil, as it is impossible to fit an infinite volume inside a finite one. That means that there is a finite ammount of oil which can have a quantity of so many trillion barrels attached to it.
We are also using oil at a finite rate - currently plateaued at somewhere between 84 and 85 million barrels a day.
From experience we know that oil production of any considered region (field, country, continent) when graphed follows very roughly a bellcurve. Oil is first discovered, production starts, it reaches a maximum rate - the peak of production and then declines. the total area under the curve representing the ammount of oil produced - which is never 100% of what was in the ground, a portion is always left behind. Like the last apple on the tallest thinnest branch on the tree - too difficult and dangerous to reach even with a ladder.
There is no reason to suppose the pattern observed so far in the majority of producing countries in the world - a rise of production from nothing, a peak, and a decline, will not apply also the the world as a whole. If you accept that Oil is a finite resource produced millions of years ago under unusual conditions of intense global warming, and not being produced today ( at any rate or quantity significant to energy supplies) then Peak Oil (the point of maximum rate of production) is not open to question. It's a logical inevitability.
As physically inevitable as the sun coming up tomorrow morning. The only questions are when, what shape will the peak take ( a steep post peak decline will be disasterous) and what can and should we do about it, both now and post peak.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SoothSayer', '
')Suppose PO is really true - or something equally disturbing is hiding in the cellar - then the Powers That Be really would like to keep potential activists such as us totally confused for as long as possible.
The "Powers that Be" are just a bunch of stupid rich old white men who are even more confused than you are. THERE IS NOBODY IN CONTROL. That's not the way the world works. order emerges spontaeously from a sum-over of human activity. There is no man behind the curtains pulling the strings. An American president can sleep his way through his term of office and it DOESNT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE. Reagan proved that in his second term. Everybody else just gets on with it. This is probably not a bad idea as there is less opportunity to fuck things up when you are asleep...
)
