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Page added on February 11, 2014
Peak Oil Denial: Nonsense Keeps Rolling Along # 8
At the risk of starting a cat fight where truth may too quickly become a casualty, why don’t we more forcefully challenge those who deny peak oil (and global warming) and who do so for reasons that generally ignore reality in favor of narrowly-defined interests? Those motivations will ultimately do nothing but promote more eventual harm by denying the truths to those who clearly need them the most….
Of course, we run the risk of getting bogged down in he said/she-said arguments that quickly devolve into the lowest forms of ‘debate’, but why let those types of offerings go unchallenged? They feed on themselves, and it is tiresome and time-consuming to have to rebut all the nonsense. But if we don’t, uninformed readers and listeners have no reason to at least consider the possibility that there may indeed be other facts out there that should at least be examined in order to make informed assessments, rather than accepting the words of the few. More information is rarely a bad thing, and giving everyone the opportunity to examine the facts and engage in rational discourse as a means of seeking common ground makes for a healthier and more productive society.
That’s from a post I wrote three years ago, and my attitude hasn’t wavered. The constant flow of articles and opinions give me yet more opportunities to bat down the nonsense passing as advice and learned observations about the world of energy supply.
In the two most recent posts of this series [here and here], I offered a sampler of some of the more common phrases and notions offered by those who prefer skirting the realities and facts about peak oil. I’ll continue dissembling some of them in this post.
THE MAGIC OF POTENTIALLY POSSIBLE RESERVES
The implications [of future production possibilities] are vast. [1]
All the more so if just reciting numbers is the objective. Disregarding ongoing depletion of conventional crude oil fields which peaked nearly a decade ago while also ignoring the rapid depletion rates, inferior quality, and high costs of unconventional oil via fracking shale formations, does make it easier to lay claim that we have no supply issues to worry about for close to forever.
It’s one thing to hype reserve totals, as Happy Talkers uniformly do. But picking that number as the topic without also mentioning all of the factors noted above—and other related production issues—turns an impressive-sounding talking point into more fact-free nonsense. They wouldn’t continue to make those “abundant reserves” claims if facts were tacked on, so the obvious choice is … not share facts. Quite the tactic! [See this].
There are 89 billion barrels of oil still trapped inside America’s oil wells. That’s because the average oil well in America only gives up 30% of its black gold. This is oil that’s vital to fueling our economy and it’s just sitting down there.
To put this into perspective, if the U.S. could recover all its oil, our nation would rival Iraq and Iran as a top five holder of oil reserves in the world. [2]
PUTTING IT INTO A DIFFERENT “PERSPECTIVE”
A couple of problems with this statement. Are morons running oil production companies? Did they just make collective decisions to abandon some two-thirds of readily accessible and inexpensive-to-extract oil fields because they … didn’t feel like it? Were too tired that day? Bored? Or might the truth be that [accepting the 89 billion figure as is, because I’m such a nice guy] the rest of that oil isn’t exactly “just sitting down there?”
Why might that be? Not exactly all in one place? Not exactly in a hundred different places in very small amounts? Much too expensive to extract? Much to expensive to even identify? Too much of a time commitment for potential returns? No present technology? That’s just off the top of my head.
What kind of perspective is: “if the U.S. could recover all its oil?” Facts do suck, and all the more so when they ruin the narrative of a fact-free, all-is-well story.
That same writer was then nice enough to point this out:
One of the keys to unlocking all of the oil still trapped is to find the right technique to unlock it. [3]
Oh! Is that all? What the heck are they doing instead of finding that “right technique to unlock it?” You don’t suppose there might be an issue or two before that happens?
The technologies employed to boost recent production totals are legitimately impressive, and in some cases, awe-inspiring. But none of that comes about quickly, easily, or inexpensively … at a minimum. It all comes about only if prices at the pump are high enough to generate investment funds sufficient to envision, design, test, re-test, pay for, and determine results first. Not a long-weekend project. And sometimes, for all the ingenuity and skill and commitment demonstrated, in the end for any number of reasons, it’s not worth pursuing.
It certainly won’t be if prices fall because we consumers aren’t able to willing to keep paying those high prices to begin with. That’s a fact industry cheerleaders cheerfully overlook.
In hindsight, you drive oil to $147 barrel and lo and behold, five years hence the world is swimming in oil. It really is that simple. [4]
Not exactly. We consumers aren’t nearly as enamored by high prices as are industry personnel and their media lackeys. The marvels of the free market then step in to have their say, and suddenly prices aren’t so high. Guess what happens next?
Facts still suck!
~ My Photo: sunset at Halibut Point in Rockport, MA – 06.25.05
Light posting schedule between Feb 13-25 [travel]; this Denial series resumes on March 3
13 Comments on "Peak Oil Denial: Nonsense Keeps Rolling Along # 8"
Northwest Resident on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 1:54 am
I think it is fair to say that there are a lot of people who simply aren’t psychologically capable of accepting the concept of peak oil and its implications. Living in denial is the only way to characterize these individuals. When a person is in denial, there really aren’t any facts or rational arguments that can be made to open that person’s mind to the truth. It takes a major shock to tear away those thick impenetrable walls of denial and let the light in. Well, that major shock is coming — a year, a few years, give or take — not too far out in the future. And its going to be a doozy when it hits. And even then, with gas prices potentially soaring, long lines at the gas station, cars abandoned by the roadside, systems breaking down, you can bet that a lot of the peak oil deniers will still be denying, blaming the government or the greedy oil companies or anything or anybody but themselves for just — not — getting it.
“The human mind isn’t a terribly logical or consistent place. Most people, given the choice to face a hideous or terrifying truth or to conveniently avoid it, choose the convenience and peace of normality. That doesn’t make them strong or weak people, or good or bad people. It just makes them people.” ― Jim Butcher, Turn Coat
“And that is how we are. By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall.” ― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
“I’m convinced that most men don’t know what they believe, rather, they only know what they wish to believe. ― Criss Jami
poaecdotcom on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 2:26 am
Nice Job NW
Makati1 on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 2:46 am
I agree NW.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 3:34 am
N/R, you covered two states of mind that are important to understand with PO and collapse. One is denial and having the capacity of understanding the other is lacking the capacity of understanding to begin with. When these two group are taken out of the equation we have few left. Who is left? Who are some of us here? For me it is an issue of what the truth is or what is closer to the truth. It is a passion. The study of these issues are fascinating. The issue of collapse covers all of the above in our lives. Maybe it is the very heart of the issue of our survival that makes the subject fascinating. The danger of this passion for the truth is we can ourselves be in denial and or incapable of understanding. So, what is it? Who is right? I feel strongly these ideas we pursue and defend are based on years of study, example, and facts. This is a foundation but we still have much to build upon and much is still unknown.
Nony on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 4:12 am
The peak oil movement did not preach $75/bbl oil in 2020, back in 2005. But that is where the futures market is. Yeah, it is not a cornie 30/barrel. But it sure isn’t some Simmmons cliff of 2005-2008 peak, with 3%/year decline and severl hundred per barrel oil.
If what you wanted to say was that we’d have an undulating plateau with very slow growth and ~100/barrel oil for extended period and call that peak oil, fine. But that was really more of a conventional forecast and certainly was not the peaker mid-2000s TOD/Econobrowser prediction of higher prices than the futures market.
Northwest Resident on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 4:12 am
Thanks for the compliments, poaecdotcom and Makati1. I guess posting here and shooting my 40lb recurve bow at 100 feet are the same in one way — every few hundred shots I hit the bulls eye!
I think it is also a matter of perceptiveness and ability to decipher fact from fiction. Face it, the vast majority of people are clueless — they may have heard the term “peak oil”, but they are not high-information types, or very inquisitive, and they tend to live within their own little bubbles. This group is not in denial — they are clueless. But then we have the group who has looked into peak oil, read a few articles — they have become aware — but they either have failed to get all the pertinent information, or they have all the information before them but their intelligence level or capacity for understanding doesn’t allow them to come to the correct conclusions. I wouldn’t put those people in the “denier” category — maybe the “not quite bright enough to get it” category. And then there are those who look at all the information, they clearly see peak oil and the terrible consequences associated with it, and their mind instantly begins to build up defenses against the concept that they briefly understood but cannot come to grips with. Those are the true deniers, the way I see it. I think that’s what you’re talking about, Davy, when you write “One is denial and having the capacity of understanding the other is lacking the capacity of understanding to begin with.” I frankly was my category one (clueless) for quite a while, up until about eight months ago in fact — just too busy with other aspects of life and TBH totally involved in the political wars of the last presidential election — consumed by other thoughts. But I picked up on a post about the financial situation in one of the forums I frequented, I dwelled on it, did some reading, and followed the bread crumb trail to the oil drum. From there, the reality of peak oil opened up to me and I — unlike many others — was able to comprehend AND to firmly grasp (and deal with) the reality. There are probably a lot of people out there just like I was, and like I am, they just need a clue. I hope they get the clue soon, and I do my part to put the bread crumbs out there for them to follow.
Bandits on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 6:02 am
NR
From my days at TOD I came to understand that there is a type of individual and/or groups that are an insidious type and are very dangerous.
Their actions and writings are deliberate and calculating and the reason the human race has no meaningful chance to prevent the coming calamity….why we will burn it all and probably ourselves.
These people constantly write that electric vehicles, solar panels, wind mills, “technology”, thorium, hydro, electric trains will prevent any significant decline in prosperity.
But just about to a person, they deny to your face that there is a problem with the economy and the end of growth, that there is a problem with peak oil, declining EROEI, unemployment, over population, environmental degradation, AGW, resource depletion, soil degradation, ocean acidification, fisheries depletion, deforestation and species extinction.
Why is it that their reasons for BAU are more of what got us into this mess, as in building more…..build more wind mills, electric cars, train lines, solar panels. Engineering was what we did with the abundance of cheap liquid energy, now they want more engineering with less and more expensive energy, I can’t get my head around it.
I’ve accepted our predicament many years ago and I can accept the ignorance and even the eternal optimists but the deliberate obstructionists and apologists, that for me is a never ending source of frustration and bewilderment.
J-Gav on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 9:49 am
Bandits –
I shared your bewilderment for a number of years and kept on slugging it out trying to convince people that, yes, Houston, we do have a problem … or rather several interlocking problems = a predicament.
Now I’ve come to accept the idea that logic, even where it’s a question of survival, rarely wins hearts and minds or changes opinions. Maybe a lot of people don’t really believe what they pretend to believe but go on with the pretense anyway because ‘dis’believing deeply held notions is simply beyond their comfort zone.
In any case, it now seems to me that those who do ‘get it’ have better things to do, in terms of ‘prepping,’ than to spend time trying to make converts.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 2:41 pm
N/R, bandit, great summary of the predicament of human understanding.
I read somewhere if you take the entire population and break it down by potential for understanding of higher level issues it is low. Kick out sick, young, very old, and those who just are not intelligent enough. Further kick out those who for psychological reason have no interest. These people may be possessed only by personal gain or mental illness. Those who are blindly following religion or politics and will not deviate from doctrine. Then after that you have the further division of a resulting very low percent who have the capacity but choose not to understand or confront the issues. You are left with us! I am not acting like we are the select few to save the world although many here have accepted the truth and desire to promote it. I am also not saying we have a lock on the truth but we attempt to get closer to it and generally there is no profit motive, no recognition motive, or ideological motive. I am also not saying because we think we are so smart we are better than our clueless and low intelligence cousins. We may be the unfortunate ones because ignorance is bliss. Yet, I, find the pursuit of truth as ultimately the highest of our human nature. To attempt to get closer to the truth is an act in the spirit of this highest human nature.
How does this relate to PO well if you fully understand peak oil you have must deal with the next level. It is kinda like a video game you are moving up the ladder. Here there is no winning but there is the pursuit of awakening people at a time of criticality. This awakening we hope will help people adjust, mitigate, and peruse alternative attitudes. The end may come swift but there is no guarantees of this. We just don’t know and there is no way to know the outcome. We have defined the problem and variables and that allows good speculation!
J-Gave, profound words. Yes, I am turning my efforts more and more to prepping. I am also in in acceptance as opposed to in denial on the ability to change minds. If we look back in history this is the case in most every past great crisis. Yet, we also see some amazing awakenings once the great crisis had maximum impact. Let us hope we have time to mitigate, adjust, and change for the new paradigm just around the corner
Northwest Resident on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 3:54 pm
Davy, I agree with you — it is only a very small percent of the American population that are perceptive enough and psychologically capable of understanding and embracing peak oil with all its brutal implications. It is very heavy sh*t, more than most people can handle. But I think there might be one more very important element that separates “us” from the huge majority — our intuition — we can intuitively feel and sense that mega-dose of trouble heading our way. Maybe, in the end, it will be primarily the most perceptive, the most intelligent and the most intuitive of the human race that manage to crawl through that bottleneck and into the future of humanity. If so — and I’m thinking long term as in thousands and millions of years from now — the coming collapse might end up being the best thing that ever happened to the human race. Still trying to be an optimist…
rockman on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 4:36 pm
All very good words for sure. As most know I’ve preached long and hard both here and at TOD about removing the “PO date” from the discussion. Besides being fairly irrelevant to our lives it allows the cornies to say PO isn’t important because we didn’t hit PO in 20XX as someone has predicted.
As someone pointed out the more significant prediction would have been the future price of oil. But that also leads to another incorrect perception in many: why are oil prices so high? Especially in light of the recent increase in global oil production to record levels. Unfortunately many, including a lot of politicians, like to blame it on those invisible speculators. Or Big Oil/NOC’s gaming the situation.
This still leaves many to believe we don’t really have a pending supply problem. After all, the global producers are supplying more oil than ever and the US is producing as much as we were a couple of decades ago. What oil supply problem? Thus it’s easy for J6P to keep his head in the sand and pretend better days are ahead. By focusing on dates, oil rates and predictions of lower volumes many PO advocates did shoot themselves in the foot. So yes: we have to struggle to get society to focus on the reality of the situation. And some days it seems an almost impossible task because it may actually be impossible. And if we do have a short term supply deficit anytime soon many anti-PO advocates already have their straw men lined up to blame.
Northwest Resident on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 5:06 pm
Bandits and rockman — It was The Oil Drum that opened my eyes to the reality of Peak Oil. By the time I found that website, it had already been closed for several months I think, but the articles and the comments were all still there. I remember reading through those comments, feeling a rising tide of anxiety and then fear as the real problems of peak oil came into focus for me. I truly appreciate the work that you guys and others did over on TOD — it made a huge difference to me, and no doubt to many others.
I totally get what Bandit is writing about when he states, “From my days at TOD I came to understand that there is a type of individual and/or groups that are an insidious type and are very dangerous.” I know from previous experiences that there must be a “type of person” out there who LIVES to deny peak oil — he studies and memorizes the best denials, he is johnny-on-the-spot to jump in and ridicule anybody who advocates peak oil concepts, and he has his “bag of tricks” ready at all times to poke holes in any peak oil concept presented. Those people get their kicks and their sense of self-esteem from denying peak oil and destroying peak oil advocates. To have braved all those nit-wits at TOD and to have kept it going for so long was a major accomplishment, and a testament I think to the noble intentions of those trying to “get the word out” about peak oil and its implications.
rockman — I’m glad to have found you hanging out here at peakoil — you’ve taught me a lot already. Bandit — if you’re lurking out there somewhere, don’t be a stranger, please jump in with your comments from time to time.
Nony on Tue, 11th Feb 2014 7:15 pm
The reason why the price remains high, while supply is at a record is because demand growth has exceeded supply growth. The supply is at a record, but kind of an anemic record (low CAGR). Demand (even with a recession) has inched up a bit faster than supply. Add in the nature of inelastic demand and wa-la!
It ain’t 30 (cornie wet dream) and it ain’t 500 (doomer porn). It’s this squishy 100/bbl level. POD (I think that is like a weak man’s PO). It is what it is…
Tight oil has really made a difference though. Marginal production sets prices and 2 million bpd is nothing to sneeze at (imagine a disruption that removed that). Continued efforts to find and exploit more plays like this (and to develop the sands) will help keep the doomer porn super high price away. (Actually some people say…beware and don’t invest there since price may crash! But you can’t simultaneously be a shale/sands skeptic based on price crashing AND think we are running out of oil faster than the market thinks).
All this implies you don’t care about CO2. If you do…then don’t rely on peak oil. There is plenty of fossil fuels available to take us to 600 ppm. If you really, REALLY believe in PO, then Kyoto is irrelevant since we will run out of stuff faster than quotas would restrain it (and melt down into a survivalist movie).