[s0cks]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', 'C')an these things be done quickly in the event that there is another ME cutoff or similar oil shock which we might not make it back from?

[Oil-Finder]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', 'T')he flaw in Oil Finder's logic is the expectation that something (growth) almost entirely, but not quite, dependent upon a single input (cheap oil) can go on in the face of that input dwindling.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', 'T')he flaw in Oil Finder's logic is the expectation that something (growth) almost entirely, but not quite, dependent upon a single input (cheap oil) can go on in the face of that input dwindling.

[roccman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', 'T')he flaw in Oil Finder's logic is the expectation that something (growth) almost entirely, but not quite, dependent upon a single input (cheap oil) can go on in the face of that input dwindling.

[Oil-Finder]

Plantagenet, the biggest ones in that list are onshore. The Bakken - in North Dakota, Montana and Saskatchewan - is potentially the biggest, with one estimate going up to 500 billion barrels. The next biggest one is Iraq, which is all onshore. Even a lot of the Iranian stuff is onshore.

I've also been reading stuff about extremely promising finds onshore Libya and elsewhere in North Africa, but it's pretty early to report anything notable from there.

Yes, a lot of this is offshore and even in deep water. But their increasing commonality will help to offset the relative difficulty and expense of extracting oil from them. In other words, you might only be able to get a smaller amount of daily production from a deepwater field as you could from an onshore field of the same size, but since there are more and more of these offshore fields being developed, the increasing numbers of them offsets the smaller per-field production.

And to be honest I'm not so sure the claim about daily production difficulties from offshore fields is strictly true, but for the sake of argument I'll agree it is.

[Oil-Finder]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', '
')The real issue is EROEI...

Those last remaining trillion will be much harder to suck out of the ground, refine, etc.

In 1869 EROEI was 100:1

today it is 8:1

Vast amounts of oil will be left in the ground because it is not worth the return.

[DantesPeak]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', 'T')he flaw in Oil Finder's logic is the expectation that something (growth) almost entirely, but not quite, dependent upon a single input (cheap oil) can go on in the face of that input dwindling.

[roccman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', '
')The real issue is EROEI...

Those last remaining trillion will be much harder to suck out of the ground, refine, etc.

In 1869 EROEI was 100:1

today it is 8:1

Vast amounts of oil will be left in the ground because it is not worth the return.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'P')lantagenet, the biggest ones in that list are onshore. The Bakken - in North Dakota, Montana and Saskatchewan - is potentially the biggest, with one estimate going up to 500 billion barrels.

[Oil-Finder]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'P')lantagenet, the biggest ones in that list are onshore. The Bakken - in North Dakota, Montana and Saskatchewan - is potentially the biggest, with one estimate going up to 500 billion barrels.

[Plantagenet]

Thats very interesting.

If the uptick in ND oil production continues, they might even get to 150,000 barrels per day and hit a level above the "peak" in ND oil production back in 1985.

As exciting as that is for the good people of North Dakota, its pretty small potatoes in the oil biz. Thats why only middle size companies like marathon or Hess and micro "mom and pop" oil companies are there.....the majors can't be bothered with such small scale oil fields.

[Oil-Finder]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DantesPeak', '
')It doesn't do us much good if hundreds of billions of barrels are under the ocean if it will cost more to get than the value of oil produced.

[BigTex]

Okay, I will play MQ's squire.

Question 1: Does continued economic and population growth require non-renewable resources we extract from the earth?

Queston 2: If the answer to Q1 is "yes", does it also follow that any projected growth based upon utilization of these non-renewable resources must also be finite?

Queston 3: If the answer to Q2 leads us to the conclusion that economic/population growth is necessarily finite, the only issue then is the point at which the finite nature of both inputs and outputs will lead the population into a state of overshoot as needs continue but the ability to meet them ends when the finite resources are depleted, or, to be more precise, the "least abundant necessity" is depleted.

If we are necessarily headed for a state of overshoot, and the only question is when, why would we want to continue travelling the path we are on? Why not change course now? Why not aim exclusively for an existence as a species that is within the sustainable carrying capacity of the earth?

I'll break it down a little more below.

***

Why overshoot?

Because populations don't just bump into the sustainable carrying capacity limit, especially the clever ones. The populations that are able to extend far into overshoot are those that are able to manipulate their environment for the purpose of converting sustainable carrying capacity to phantom carrying capacity. How do you know you are in phantom carrying capacity? Look at the inputs on which you rely. If they are non-renewable, that is strongly suggestive that you are in overshoot. That's where we have been for 150 years or so.

But what about our technology?

Technology aggravates overshoot in most cases, because enhancements in technology are only necessary when a population is bumping into the limits of its sustainable carrying capacity. Technology at the bottom of the development curve may enhance sustainable carrying capacity, but when the technology exists mostly to extract more efficiency from non-renewable resources, then the technology takes the population farther and farther into overshoot.

But what about Malthus?

Malthus was not wrong, he just didn't appreciate the effect that phantom carrying capacity has on the point at which the effects of overshoot are felt. To Malthus, the point at which sustainable carrying capacity was exceeded SHOULD have been the point at which the effects of overshoot began to be felt. However, like living off of a credit card creates the illusion of adequate income, so too did the discovery of non-renewable resources that could be used to create phantom carrying capacity.

But we're people. Doesn't overshoot just happen to dumb reindeer?

My opinion is that the smarter the species, the worse the overshoot problem will be. Here's why: There are several ways to aggravate overshoot. We talk here about fossil fuels and what their scarcity will do to the supportability of our species, but we also create phantom carrying capacity by the "takeover" method where we displace another species and use their resources for ourselves. We can also take renewable resources that are part of our underlying sustainable carrying capacity and convert them to phantom carrying capacity. Overfishing, deforestation, and soil depletion are examples. Additionally, there are cascading ecological failures that start with a "black swan" event like the bee die-off we are seeing that impact us directly, though the cause may be hard to trace.

Why isn't anyone talking about this?

Cognitive dissonance, double bind, plain old denial, no money to be made selling this truth. Take you pick.

If we're in overshoot, how come there seems to be plenty of everything?

If I make $50,000 per year and come into a one time lump sum of $1,000,000, I can do several things. I could calculate the income that $1,000,000 would generate on a sustainable basis. Assuming it is 6%, the lump sum would provide me with a sustainable stream of income of $60,000 per year, in addition to my $50,000 in wage income. Under this scenario, my sustainable carrying capacity would rise as a result of my windfall from $50,000 per year to $110,000 per year.

However, if I chose to spend my million dollars more aggressively so that it would not provide a sustainable stream of income, I would actually appear to be living better during the period in which I was spending the money. That's where we're at right now.

Isn't the world population starting to stabilize?

Population stabilization doesn't matter if the population is in overshoot. A stable population over a period of less than one generation doesn't mean that the population is living within its sustainable carrying capacity.

Is sustainable carrying capacity a fixed level?

No. The extent to which a population overshoots its sustainable carrying capacity through phantom carrying capacity typically reduces the underlying sustainable carrying capacity because of the ecological degradation as a result of the overshoot.

But wait a second, doesn't that mean that the more non-renewable resources that we discover, that will only take us farther into overshoot?

Yes. That's why it's so hard to wrap your mind around, even if you want to.

But aren't we just acting according to our nature? We have just subdued our environment to have a more comfortable place to live. What's wrong with that?

Each species emerges as part of an ecosystem. The ecosystem is in balance and the species emerges based upon existing within a sustainable carrying capacity. However, when the species attempts to take itself out of the ecosystem by systematically eliminating its predators and displacing other species to create more room for its own expansion and increase in per capita consumption, it should be obvious that overshoot is going to be the result, in part because there is no longer any check on population growth. We are designed to seek comfort, but by eliminating our predators (including the microscopic ones), this quest for comfort can't lead us anywhere but overshoot.

My own opinion about this phenomenon of our nature working against us once we eliminated our predators is that it may ultimately be the reason for our extinction. High intelligence was only of survival value until it began to cause us to make unconsciously poor survival decisions as a species. Once the effect of high intelligence becomes a deeper and deeper foray into overshoot, high intelligence becomes an impediment to survival, not an aid. This is a very disturbing idea (i.e., that our nature may have wired us to become extinct once we were able to create a large scale overshoot situation). But one must remember that Mother Nature is at least as clever as us.

So what do we do? Should we still build the nuclear power plants and the wind and solar farms and all the other gizmos we're working on?

Sure, short term it will ease the pain of fossil fuel scarcity. The only wise use of this technology in the long term, though, is to serve as a sort of Methadone clinic for us to manage the withdrawals from our fossil fuel addiction. Imagining that it is a gateway to an even more high technology world of expanding population and economic growth is a fantasy.

***

Most of the information above comes from Catton's "Overshoot." As MQ has repeatedly said, if you want to participate in this discussion you really ought to read Catton first. It doesn't make much sense until you read the entire analysis.

[Oil-Finder]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'T')hats very interesting.

If the uptick in ND oil production continues, they might even get to 150,000 barrels per day and hit a level above the "peak" in ND oil production back in 1985.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'A')s exciting as that is for the good people of North Dakota, its pretty small potatoes in the oil biz. Thats why only middle size companies like marathon or Hess and micro "mom and pop" oil companies are there.....the majors can't be bothered with such small scale oil fields.

[TonyPrep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'A')nd as I said above, the larger quantities of low-EROEI oil offsets the increased difficulty and expense of drilling it. It might be 3 times harder and more expensive to drill oil in low-EROEI areas than it is in high-EROEI areas, but since there is 3 times (or more) the amount of low-EROEI oil than there is high-EROEI oil, it balances it out.

[DantesPeak]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DantesPeak', '
')It doesn't do us much good if hundreds of billions of barrels are under the ocean if it will cost more to get than the value of oil produced.

[TonyPrep]

So, this discussion was started with the hope that Oil-Finder might post some well argued points and MonteQuest would reply (and vice-versa). Oil-Finder opened with an unsubstantiated opinion plus an unrelated point about some grain production which didn't prove what he tried to show.

Surely we must all be on the edge of our seats with anticipation?

[Oil-Finder]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', 'Q')uestion 1: Does continued economic and population growth require non-renewable resources we extract from the earth?

[Oil-Finder]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DantesPeak', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DantesPeak', '
')It doesn't do us much good if hundreds of billions of barrels are under the ocean if it will cost more to get than the value of oil produced.