[Ayoob]

I believe that I have had an original thought on the subject of peak oil. Here it is.

Take your depletion rate, divide that number into 70, and you come up with a halving time. 8% depletion into 70 gives you about a nine-year halving time. 10% depletion rate is 7 years, 2% depletion rate is a 35 year halving time.

Whatever that time period ultimately turns out to be, one thing is pretty much irrefutable. Once you have made the journey down the curve to the first halving, you have removed more oil from the daily flow than you ever will again. The majority of the loss we experience happens in the first halving. The second halving only costs us half of what the first one cost us.

We go from 80 million to 40 million in the first halving. 40MBD gone. The second halving only costs us 20MBD. By comparison... that's really not so bad. The third one is a mere 10MBD. It's the first one that's really going to be the monster.

Consider the magnitude of the first halving compared to the third halving. The first one is 40MBD, the third is only a quarter of the size of the loss. It should be relatively easy to adjust to the third halving. It's all about the first one.

It almost brings to mind the reindeer thing on St Matthews Island off the coast of Canada. The population of reindeer on that island plummetted by over 97% in two months. Two months! It was the first time they ran out of food that was the most important. After the first dieoff, it was pretty cushy on St Matthews for the remaining five reindeer. No big deal.

What do you think? I'm thinking that it's the first ten years or so that the shit really hits the fan and that most of the madness will be compressed into that time frame.

Discuss.

[Neuromancer]

Hmm. I don't think it will be so EASY. The situation is much more complex. Reindeers did not have to kill each other to get their food... If TSHTF for real I expect to see heavy casualities, especially in ME and Asia. I mean numbers like 1 billion or something. And then, the demand will go down. A new ballance will be born.
The world will never be the same again. With demand distruction things are going to be different.

It will be ugly, but if there is a big population drop (1-2 billions) then the preasure will drop, new rules will be born and applied. However, the real BIG consumer is US. Do we see a big population drop in US? Hmmm.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob', 'W')e go from 80 million to 40 million in the first halving. 40MBD gone. The second halving only costs us 20MBD. By comparison, that's really not so bad. The third one is a mere 10MBD. It's the first one that's really going to be the monster.
Consider the magnitude of the first halving compared to the third halving. The first one is 40MBD, the third is only a quarter of the size of the loss. It should be relatively easy to adjust to the third halving. It's all about the first one.

[Neuromancer]

Bingo. You pointed out the most probable course of events.
Thanks. I was thinking at something similar on the long term, but you put it perfectly into words.

[rogerhb]

To paraphrase Marvin the paranoid android from HHGTTG;

The first 50% loss in oil flow will be the most disastrous, the next 50% loss in oil flow, that will be the most disastrous as well.

[MacG]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob', 'I') believe that I have had an original thought on the subject of peak oil.

[Pops]

Most forecasts like this are too complex for my little brain but let me throw another wrench into the cogs.

At what point will exporting countries discontinue exports? Don’t forget SA just imported its first tanker of oil, sure it may have been gunk way cheaper than they could produce but I think it is an important marker. How long has it been since the US, once the largest exporter shipped out more than it shipped in? (this isn’t rhetorical – I really don’t know)

For that matter how long before all countries nationalize their reserves? They certainly are a strategic resource and it seems building nukes looks out of the question. Bare numbers overlook political realities I think.

[gego]

Ayoob, Good post. Your framework for looking at the decline is powerful.

Of course, things will playout with varying rates of decline so the halving peiord will need to be averaged out. Surely, when the decline starts people will react with conservation to a limited extent. After everything is done to "cope" further conservation can only come with dieoff, which again will alter the decline rate (fewer people to use oil).

The decline rate may start out slowly, then arternatively accelerate and decelerate in some sort of cyclical pattern. An overall rate of somwhere from 4% to 8% would not surprise me.

[gego]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gideon', 'W')e can't know what the downward slide of the curve will look like.

[AirlinePilot]

I would not equate what we are going to see with regards to decline as anything which resembles US decline. I think you are forgetting that the US peak was far less influenced by modern extraction technologies. The curves for modern day fields are likely going to have much more precipitous decline sides due to enhanced extraction techniques and field management. Production seems to be kept up higher for longer meaning the downsides are more clifflike than gentle slopes.

I think the decline will initially be manageable or appear that it will be. Shortly after that it will become rapidly obvious that the decline side is going to be much steeper than anyone is ready for.

The halving concept is interesting but I dont believe its going to matter really. Once it starts it's all going to be bad. I think your just going to be arguing degrees of really ugly. Kind of pointless really.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', ' ')This is base on my assumption, that about half of oil is simply wasted to provide people with lavish life style.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AirlinePilot', 'I') would not equate what we are going to see with regards to decline as anything which resembles US decline. I think you are forgetting that the US peak was far less influenced by modern extraction technologies. The curves for modern day fields are likely going to have much more precipitous decline sides due to enhanced extraction techniques and field management.

[Ayoob]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AirlinePilot', 'T')he halving concept is interesting but I dont believe its going to matter really. Once it starts it's all going to be bad. I think your just going to be arguing degrees of really ugly. Kind of pointless really.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'N')ame a non-essential activity that is not a part of GDP and that doesn't employ anyone. Economic implosion and high unemployment.

[gego]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AirlinePilot', 'T')he halving concept is interesting but I dont believe its going to matter really. Once it starts it's all going to be bad. I think your just going to be arguing degrees of really ugly. Kind of pointless really.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', ' ') We will still be having babies in excess of of deaths, and it will take some time for the other factors to bring enough pressure for the corpses to pileup.

[gego]

I just wanted to say that I think the value in Ayoob's idea is that it points out just how quickly we could get into deep crisis with any of the depletion rates that have been tossed around. Certainly the halfway point is in the range of not much more than one generation (20 years) or less.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gego', ' ')Economic collapse I think will vary; at first the shock of less oil may slow down economic activity but there will be cycles of slower and then faster economic decline, the net of which I cannot guess.

[gg3]

Good stuff, Ayoob, and Gego.

While I don't think we can make "Newtonian" predictions (i.e. with clockwork certainty & accuracy) based on an abstract theory, I do think Ayoob is on to something very significant here: the application of doubling time in reverse as a measure of resource depletion.

At the most fundamental level, time is a scalar rather than a vector: equations in QM work equally well if you represent time as running in reverse. When you become accustomed to this type of thinking of time as "reversible," you can apply that paradigm to all manner of macro phenomena as, if nothing else, a thought-experiment. And this can yield some interesting and potentially useful results. If nothing else it yields wild ideas that can be adapted to various conditions and tested. Which is what we have here.

What I think will happen:

The economy is a chaotic system, sensitive to perturbations, and prone to large shifts between stable equilibria. Thus, fairly early we will get a sharp recession heading toward a chronic depression.

Most of the waste will be wrung out during the first halving. However we are in for some added difficulties. During the upside of the curve, it was as cheap to run the tools and machinery to build a house or a road, as it was to run the amusement rides at a carnival. Thus the carnival was cheap, but so was the building of houses. During the downside of the curve, both will be expensive. The fact that carnivals will be expensive (i.e. all forms of using energy for amusement or entertainment), and the fact that their costliness will tend to price them out of the mainstream of the market, will not make it any easier to build houses (i.e. necessities). So this wringing-out of waste will not make it any easier to provide necessities; the necessities will get squeezed hard as well.

We must also account for dieoffs due to other primary causes. For example, overpopulation produces conditions that lead to the emergence of new diseases that easily go epidemic/pandemic, regardless of resource depletion issues. A new flu pancdemic can cross the ocean on an airplane in a day, or on an ocean liner in a month, but either way leads to the same result, and the difference between one week to go global or six months to go global, is meaningless in the scale of ordinary recent historic time (e.g. even fifty years from now the distinction won't matter). And of course, resource shortages lead to wars, which can escalate to WMDs particularly among hotheaded regimes such as found in Israel, Iran, and Pakistan. To these pictures, add the climate emergency, and thus, pestilences and famines.

If we lose one or two billion humans due to plagues and wars, that by itself will alter the depletion rates for various resources, and the interplay of these factors can't be predicted with anything like reasonable assurance.

However, we can plot the population increase curves and the resource depletion curves on the same graph, and make intuitive inferences about the timing of various impacts, to get a sense of what kinds of synergistic outcomes are possible.

Bottom line is, it would appear that the mid 20th century is going to be hell no matter what. Happy retirement, y'all...

[gego]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', ' ')

At the most fundamental level, time is a scalar rather than a vector: equations in QM work equally well if you represent time as running in reverse. When you become accustomed to this type of thinking of time as "reversible," you can apply that paradigm to all manner of macro phenomena as, if nothing else, a thought-experiment. And this can yield some interesting and potentially useful results. If nothing else it yields wild ideas that can be adapted to various conditions and tested. Which is what we have here.