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Page added on February 9, 2016
Peak Oil: Just A Distraction
Remember, peaking in production, by definition, means that you have plenty of oil left. It has nothing to do with running out.…[T]he only people who ever use the phrase ‘running out of oil’ are people who either don’t understand Peak Oil, or people trying to mislead an audience about Peak Oil. Because again, if you can successfully mislead an audience and frame the argument as ‘No more oil’ vs ‘We still have oil’ – you again set yourself up for an easy debate victory. [1]
The reality—difficult as acceptance of it appears to be for some—is that by whatever phraseology one prefers, readily available and affordable conventional crude oil is no longer readily available and affordable—from the production standpoint. The energy source of choice for decades is no longer as abundant and accessible as it once was [temporary “glut” duly acknowledged], and the fossil fuel industry has had no choice in recent years but to look elsewhere and at other and inferior supply sources. To the credit of industry efforts and technological prowess, recent years [at least until recent months] have seen an uptick in production from the shale formations here in the United States.
Yet that short-lived benefit highlights another failing of right-wing philosophy in the face of Peak Oil: Yes, we’ll need all of the marvels of “human ingenuity” and great technological inventions. But those factors alone are not the solution.
Conventional crude oil’s rate of production peaked a decade ago. Finite resources drawn down daily beyond that point possess no magic qualities. Continuing to draw them down means there will be less the next day and then even less the day after.
We’re not running out. There is a lot of fossil fuel left underground. But now it’s more difficult to extract. It costs more to do so. Investments supporting those more challenging efforts are no longer as plentiful, and that process likewise contains no magic qualities. Reduced production efforts means, over time, reduced supply. It’s just not that complicated.
While industry cheerleaders may be rejoicing that we have not reached the cataclysmic moment they continue to vividly imagine peak oil “supporters” have promised mankind [thus winning the Doom-and-Gloom vs No-Doom-and-Gloom prize], finite resources being drawn down under those more challenging conditions is a problem in the making. It won’t get better absent some monumental costs and efforts.
And assuming those efforts continue despite the realities of declining supply and more challenging production efforts, we’ll all in time be dealing with the consequences of that choice. Denial and its assorted, related strategies squeeze out planning and intelligent dialogue about how to transition away from fossil fuels—itself a monumental challenge.
Short-term focus rarely results in long-term benefit. Given what’s at stake not so much right now but in the years and decades ahead, creating harsher problems for all with fewer options to address them seems a monumentally ass-backwards approach to preserving the well-being of all.
We have choices. They may not be ideal, but giving them their due while we still have at least some means to develop “better” alternatives than an ever-depleting finite resource—responsible for just about every industrial and technological marvel we can name, by the way—might be worth contemplating….
9 Comments on "Peak Oil: Just A Distraction"
makati1 on Tue, 9th Feb 2016 5:31 am
“…all of the marvels of “human ingenuity” and great technological inventions…”
All of those ‘marvels’ will disappear along with oil. There are no ‘alternatives’ that will keep any amount of BAU going when the pumps stop. That will be the start of the big ‘die off’ and may be the beginning of the extinction event that removes humans from the earth. We shall see.
Davy on Tue, 9th Feb 2016 6:54 am
Talk peak oil all you like but oil is nothing without an economy. The economy more than geology matters in the short term.
The mother of all bubbles happened after 08. This involved easing, rate repression, Chinese physical expansion, commodity supper cycle, and finally global financial asset “momentum inflation”. The problem comes down to the disregard for moral hazard and the reality of price discovery. This entire blow out of malinvestment was sanctioned and participated in at all levels except of course the poor and the soon to be poor. This achieve results but like any binge it cannot last. This was and is nothing more than the last economic gold rush with all its joy and rapture. The last hurrah before death.
It is unclear what may have happened if the “powers that were” in 08 would have taken a different path. We could be in a deep dark recession or depression from a cascade of deflation currently from different action taken then. This may not have been a bad thing because it is those deep dark drastic events that expunge the bad. We just don’t know because we may have ended then. Anyone who thinks differently is an idiot of history and Nature.
It is obviously clear to many that we are in limits of growth with diminishing returns. This growth trap along with ecosystem overshoot with population and consumption. This situation will rebalanced eventually. That is the nature of Nature.
It is far from certain if anything can be salvaged from the global system as a global system. The alternative then and now is a new arrangement. That arrangement will not be a completely global and completely just-in-time as is the status quo. It could be a hybrid of some of that but not what we have today.
We will have forced localization. We will have a forced degrowth of all those unsustainable global constructs. Large urban areas will necessarily shrink and likely from death and emigration. Business and employment will change away from services and towards manual and animal food production. Local cottage industry will have to fill the gap. The global finance charade will deflate. The rich of the world will have little to show for their digital phantom wealth. Climate and ecosystem will matter with less energy and goods. I expect those areas in the most difficult places will shrink. All those dangerous complexities like NUK power will haunt us with death. All this may happen if we are lucky because a swift hard collapse is always possible with a cascade of poor decisions.
More likely in the near term we will have a continued descent of the status quo until we have cannibalized all we can until a crisis event. Momentum works like this. We will then be in uncharted waters once the inertia of descent extinguishes the momentum of growth.
Maybe this could be a long emergency of adaptation with pain. We will likely see shock events either globally and or locally that cause us to stumble down a few more flights of stairs.
The time frame for all this is uncertain but there are markers. Oils contribution to the economy is one. A contracting economic system is another. War fears must be included. Any global war will bring a quick halt to globalism if not modern man. Climate is changing abruptly which may become the primary driver in as little as a decade. There are the Rumfeldian realities too:
“we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
We are now close to a different world. How close is debatable but looking at the markers I would say 10 years tops. We are already in profound change especially now that the economic bubble since 08 has burst. Oil lives within this world and will die with it.
joe on Tue, 9th Feb 2016 7:16 am
I believe that if bankrupt countries were allowed to default and revalue their currencies, the pain would have been short and sharp. China would likely have built ten more empty cities by now as they undercut the world in a race to the bottom, and oil would be more or less the same as it was.
paulo1 on Tue, 9th Feb 2016 9:43 am
Don’t let up on your Preps and ability to adapt.
KK4NQU on Tue, 9th Feb 2016 6:44 pm
There seems to be a growing, ominous threat caused by the mutations of micro organisms spreading across the planet.
makati1 on Tue, 9th Feb 2016 8:04 pm
joe, would you prefer that China invest in wars like the Us has for the last 20 years at $500+ billion per year? Empty cities don’t kill people and destroy countries. You have no proof that those buildings will not be advantageous someday. War is a waste. Empty buildings? We shall see.
makati1 on Tue, 9th Feb 2016 8:05 pm
KK4NQU, Mother Nature always has a way around temporary ‘fixes’ that man comes up with. As temps go up, so will the incidence of disease/death all over the world.
Dubya on Tue, 9th Feb 2016 8:07 pm
Kk4, there is no evidence anything odd is happening. Use of antibiotics is the primary problem & will go away as soon as we stop their use. Unfortunately this involves returning to the pre-antibiotic era & watching an awful lot of 5 year olds die.
makati1 on Tue, 9th Feb 2016 10:12 pm
Dubya, not only 5 year olds. All ages will suffer and die when the meds no longer work or are available.