Peak Oil

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Anonanon

Postby Dreams End » Wed Aug 03, 2005 12:26 pm

I think posters who post anonymously and only attack others should join a 12 step group. We'll call it: Anonanon. <br><br>Man, I ADMITTED in my last post that I, TOO, had forgotten the origins of this thread, and was being conciliatory towards the others on this thread who had done the same. In fact, it was the point of that post.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>"(quoting me) I couldn't continue this discussion from a technical standpoint"<br><br>you said it. showed it. and concluded by saying you were really just being sarcastic about it. dude recovred his technical skills. just like that<br><br>decide which one of you you want to be. then well talk.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Well, no, we won't. And I've seen no contribution from you in this thread, other than sniping at me. You've demonstrated no "technical skills" (whatever that means) at all. Your quoted comments above show the level of your typical discourse. <br><br><br>As for Starman, et al, despite all the other stuff on this thread, I accept and assume control of oil is a big part of foreign policy, especially of the unpleasant variety. And, again, I don't, or really can't, provide much original analysis about actual levels of oil left and can accept that supply could be getting tight. We'll leave it to anon's brilliant technical analysis to settle that question. <br><br>This site is often concerned with hidden agendas, and this is one I'm concerned about. It's like the immigration debate. There are reasons to be concerned about immigration and reasonable people can disagree about how it should be handled. There's also a profoundly racist line of thought about this issue. The tricky part is, the racists don't always come out and say, "I'm against immigration because I don't like Brown people" (sometimes they actually do, but not usually.) In researching this topic, I came across such individuals and groups who use "resource depletion" including elements of Peak Oil as rational for stopping immigration into the US but really have a racist ideology at the core of their beliefs. Hence the Abernathy quote. And if you look at current far right parties here and in Europe, certainly immigration is a huge issue for them. <br><br>I pick this example specifically because these folks use resource depletion to support their racist agenda. The eco-fascists, also mentioned in proldic's posts, do the same. This is why I brought up Hardin and his Pioneer Fund support. I do NOT assume, so please, no one complain about it, that simply having a belief that Peak Oil is valid makes you a racist! Only that resource depletion ("carrying capacity") can and is used by those with racist agendas. <br><br>Now, I'm not going to continue about this...I've had my say and you don't agree that Ruppert is in that camp or that this strain of thought among peak oilers is of concern. And I do, and we'll move on.<br><br>And I appreciate the way, despite your profound disagreements with me, your posts have been respectful and well reasoned, as I generally find your posts to be. <br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
Dreams End
 

Anonanon

Postby needaname » Wed Aug 03, 2005 12:57 pm

Dreams End....amen brother! It's an important issue, and judging by the fierce objections, really important. So fasinating when, and on what topics these kind of situations occur. You go dude<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
needaname
 
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2005 3:11 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: behind the consensus

Postby wolf pauli » Wed Aug 03, 2005 1:23 pm

sokolova, interesting post.<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>neither scientific 'consensus' nor 'unanimity' can rationally be used as an a priori argument in favour of anything.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>Yes, but -- leaving aside the fact that consensus has to be ascertained <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>a posteriori</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> -- I don't think anyone's saying consensus is a <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>guarantee</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> of truth. It's just that, as in so many other cases, there's a division of labor, and non-specialists would be remiss not to take seriously what specialists say. Probability is relative to the state of the evidence at a given time. Sometimes we have reasonable grounds for believing something that turns out to be false, just as sometimes we have no grounds whatsoever for believing something that turns out to be true -- which would be a very bad reason for believing something on no grounds whatsoever. Evidence is a matter of degree, and we should adjust our degree of belief accordingly.<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>does anyone know how much consensus there truly is on this issue and indeed on the related one of global warming?<br><br>Do we have figures? Or have we just been told 'there is a consensus'?</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>We have figures only where people vote. While scientists generally don't vote on their claims, they do talk shop pretty incessantly, and prevailing opinion generally isn't difficult to ascertain. With regard to both peak oil and global warming, even skeptics admit they're in the minority.<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>I think it would be fair to say that the case for serious anthropogenic climate change has yet to be made</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>It's been made, but not <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>conclusively</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->; I'm pretty sure that's your point, and you're right.<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>if both these issues are even potentially being used for social control purposes, then this must make us look behind the 'consensus' even more searchingly mustn't it?</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>Sure, but when we look behind it, let's please look at the actual evidence before addressing the potential motives.<br><br>"There's an article here ... that suggests the US presence in the mid-east has nothing to do with oil and everything to do with a political agenda to crush Russia."<br><br>The two are not mutually exclusive. It's about control. Getting the oil for domestic consumption may be less important to the US, or at least not more important, than preventing Russia (China, etc) from getting it.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
wolf pauli
 
Posts: 122
Joined: Wed May 18, 2005 8:20 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

climate change

Postby Dreams End » Wed Aug 03, 2005 2:01 pm

This topic deserves its own thread. Maybe Ellie will start one?<br><br>Here are a few questions I'd have about Ellie's perspective. <br><br>Do you think there's consensus on warming...just not about humanity's role in that warming? I sure see lots of stuff that seems convincing...ice shelf collapses, glacier retreats, etc.<br><br>I know there are some oil industry sponsored scientists out there fighting this view. Are you sure that's not what you are finding? (I assume you are, but it's worth some discussion.)<br><br>What reason would so many scientists have for putting forward human causation of global warming if it's not true? I'm still pretty convinced that there's a human role, but I could think of one possible reason, to limit industry in developing countries that are beginning to compete with the already established industrial economies. However, then I'd expect Bush and co. to ratify Kyoto, so I can't really see what the ideologies are here at work.<br><br>Anyway, as I said, maybe a new thread on this topic?<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
Dreams End
 

Control

Postby Peachtree Pam » Wed Aug 03, 2005 2:21 pm

I agree with Dreams End and Wolf: the name of the game is control and BLACKMAIL/EXTORTION. US will continue to attack, attack, attack any country with vital oil resources (for other countries) so that US can gain control of those resources and threaten a CUT-OFF to those countries to which the oil is supplied if the country threatened does not submit to US demands. That is the game.<br><br>Example of thinking ahead: the death of Sudan's Vice-President:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/">www.waynemadsenreport.com/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>I agree with Sokolova that you have to be skeptical about virtually everything that is presented as "current wisdom". One has to cultivate a jaded eye.<br><br>It is surely one aim of US to diminish Russia's power. But I would hate to be in a chess match against Putin.<br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
Peachtree Pam
 
Posts: 950
Joined: Sat Jul 02, 2005 9:46 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Control

Postby wolf pauli » Wed Aug 03, 2005 2:42 pm

<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>I would hate to be in a chess match against Putin.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>Yes, they do play chess (and piano) beautifully.<br><br>While I don't agree with all points in this article by Mark Almond<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/200412060023.htm">www.newstatesman.com/200412060023.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>he does put the energy/control issue in an interesting, broad perspective. <br><br> <p></p><i></i>
wolf pauli
 
Posts: 122
Joined: Wed May 18, 2005 8:20 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

latest point of view from Michael C. Ruppert

Postby manxkat » Wed Aug 03, 2005 4:35 pm

I read his website From The Wilderness daily, and I've read much of his book Crossing The Rubicon. From my viewpoint so far, he's been way better at connecting the dots than people like Tom Flocco. The question about Peak Oil is not IF but WHEN, and even if Ruppert is premature in his predictions (which I do not believe he is), the world is already ACTING as if Peak Oil is here.... and perception equals reality, as we all know too well. So, don't shoot the messenger (Ruppert) -- he didn't create the perception OR the reality. Learn from his expertise. And, for those of you who think he's making massive profits by selling books and subscriptions, take a look at his website and realize that the vast majority of it is absolutely free.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/080305_world_stories.shtml">www.fromthewilderness.com...ries.shtml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Ruppert's comments preceding the above article:<br><br><em>[There sure is a lot of noise lately. Anything to keep people from thinking about Peak - which is looking more and more certain to arrive this fall and winter. There is also desperation in the bogus stories we're seeing because even the slightest attempt at verification leads to instant discredit (e.g., Bush-Cheney secretly indicted; Iran's nuclear program must be stopped now, while at the same time DoD intelligence discloses that Iran is 10 (not five) years away from the bomb; more fog out of London than the analytical eye can penetrate... et cetera). <br><br>Keep your eye on the ball. <br><br>The fact that Norwegian production is plummeting is extremely important. Norway has been the third largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia for many years. Global decline is not just apparent, it's starting to scream. The fact that the US government is doing nothing to prepare its people for these shocks is despicable. The author here says it best, "I'd like to be able to tell you that the U.S. government is doing everything it can to prepare for the coming energy emergency...but I can't. In fact, when I think about how little prepared this country is for the changes that are about to hit us, my hands automatically clench into fists." <br><br>Mine too. - MCR]</em> <p></p><i></i>
manxkat
 
Posts: 235
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:20 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Kyoto

Postby Qutb » Wed Aug 03, 2005 4:55 pm

Dreams End:<br><br>"I could think of one possible reason, to limit industry in developing countries that are beginning to compete with the already established industrial economies. However, then I'd expect Bush and co. to ratify Kyoto, so I can't really see what the ideologies are here at work."<br><br>The thing is that the Kyoto agreement does <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>not</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> oblige development countries to reduce their emissions. None of them are parties to it, not even China, who is emerging as a major polluter. <br><br>You're right, as far as I understand there is a consensus that the earth is getting warmer, but not about the extent of the warming, and not about the causes. After all, the world was significantly warmer in the middle ages (up until the 14th century) than it has been in the centuries that followed. Greenland was so named because it was green, and today it is covered in ice. Perhaps the world would be getting warmer even if no factory had ever emitted carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Prooving</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> that the warming is anthropogenic is of course a hell of a lot more difficult than proving that it occurs. <p></p><i></i>
Qutb
 
Posts: 1203
Joined: Tue May 10, 2005 2:28 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

re: Latest Point of View from Michael Ruppert

Postby Starman » Wed Aug 03, 2005 5:47 pm

Manxcat posted, in part:<br><br>(From Ruppert)<br><br>"The fact that Norwegian production is plummeting is extremely important. Norway has been the third largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia for many years. Global decline is not just apparent, it's starting to scream. The fact that the US government is doing nothing to prepare its people for these shocks is despicable. The author here says it best, "I'd like to be able to tell you that the U.S. government is doing everything it can to prepare for the coming energy emergency...but I can't. In fact, when I think about how little prepared this country is for the changes that are about to hit us, my hands automatically clench into fists." <br><br>Heyia Manxcat;<br>I agree, my fists bunch-up too (matephorically, ennyway!)<br><br>A coupla hopefully-succint observations:<br><br>Despite what seems like overwhelming attention Peak Oil has been getting in the MSM, the fact IS: Our 'leaders' are not acknowledging there is a problem, that it's a serious problem, and that Steps Need To Be Taken.<br>Instead, they have continued the tax write-off on heavy-duty over 6000 pound luxury SUVs and pickups, so that a buyer can get an immediate tax-credit of up to $100,000 on their fuel-hogs -- essentially subsidizing the sale/ownership/production of these big and mostly inefficient vehicles -- INSTEAD of providing a tax-credit incentive for fuel-efficient vehicles and hybrid cars/trucks -- which would have the double-whammy effect of stimulating a domestic industry for innovation and fuel-efficient vehicles. The same COULD be done with providing tax-credits for alternative energy-systems, like the novel solar-panel heat-transfer/generating system posted on another thread re: Electric Cars (sorry, I *forgot* who posted it!) -- which would stimulate the industry AND help lower coal-gas-fired energy-use, and contribute to greater energy independence.<br><br>With a near-complete lack of initiative in promoting conservation and instead promoting energy indulgence and engaging in energy-wasteful projects and global-security threatening conflicts and interventions and arms-proliferation (selling more weapons esp. to unstable, despotic regimes) it seems our 'leaders' in Washington are helping to rush-us into catastrophe, as IF to condition the public into approving the US's aggressive foreign policy in manhandling foreign oil supply control through our increasingly militant and belligerant postures. What's the attitude going to be when small oil-supply interruptions exacerbate into wide systems failures affecting home heating oil, food-transport, rolling brown-outs and $6 gallon gasoline? Remember the 73 gas lines and even-odd license 'rationing' system, 55 mph mandatory speed limits, gasline fistfights and setting the thermometer to 68 degrees, and the resulting changes in industry and laws that resulted -- from what was really a very mild and probably mostly-contrived 'crisis' -- I had friends tell me oil-tankers were crowding the Gulf of Mexico offshore Lousianna and Galveston, prohibited from entering the unloading terminals, while the 'fuel shortage' was ongoing.<br><br>From: Petrocollapse: <br>Can you live without indoor running water?<br>by Jan Lundberg <br>Culture Change Letter #101 <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&">culturechange.org/cms/ind...iew&id=14&</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>Itemid=2.html#cont<br><br>--quote--<br>As to the potential for large disruption to supply from a relatively small shortfall of petroleum, a recent simulated energy crisis found "It was striking that by taking such small amounts off the market, you could have such dramatic impact" on world oil prices, said Robbie Diamond, the president of Securing America's Future Energy. He participated in the mock crisis on June 23, 2005 in Washington, DC with two former CIA directors and several other former top policy-makers. Drawing from my work at Lundberg Survey where we predicted the Second Oil Shock in 1979, I have been saying for years that the next energy crisis will be triggered by a relatively small shortfall of petroleum. <br>--end quote--<br><br>I dunno, but it seems Americans are blind to the US's gambit of using military force and the cover of our 'Wars' on Drugs and Terrrrrror to shift military and mercenary-security-Intl resources around the globe, in the Balkans and Caucasia, African and South America and Eurasia as well as the Middle East, to take control of oil supplies and protect US oil company investments and oil supply routes, effectively diverting a lot of oil to our own shores or to channel them to 'our' allies, essentially trying to prevent the 'bad guys' and our potential or actual enemies (China and Russia, North Korea, Syria, Lebanon, elsewhere) from having free-access or financial investment opportunities. Of course, this blockading bodes portentious for China esp. who is poised to explode with energy demand and likely to take US actions as a threat to their national interests. What COULD our 'leaders' be thinking? Or rather, are they just reacting and trying to change the game's rules in mid-stream, to keep us off-balance and distracted from their criminal behind-the-scenes plots and scams and crimes?<br><br>I don't doubt that some domestic oil capacity has been capped and taken offline, held as a strategic reserve to give us breathing room in the event of eventual calamity, natural or contrived. But the abiotic oilpremise of abundant accesable reserves doesn't play too well in explaining WHY there is somuch posturing and aggression going on -- Why would the US be taking enormous risks and spending national treasure so lavishly if Russia and China and India et al. only had to drill deeper wells to tap into an abundant deep-mantle stream of liquid gold?<br><br>I just can't believe the data on production and 'known' reserves could be so convincingly falsified that experts would be misled into thinking there is a serious problems, even as most oil companies and politicians won't act like there is a need to take dramatic action to implement alternative strategies. The implications for food-production and distribution which uses enormous amounts of petro-and natural-gas supplies are enormous -- but again, not being addressed. Perhaps, that's ONE reason why people who look at this issue are alarmed and making urgent noises, to compell action and that the public arise from their infotainment torpor and demand their officials respond to avert global disaster.<br><br>It's unlikely that Y2K would have faded into obscurity as the Threat that wasn't if sufficient public attention hadn't mobilized action and hundreds of millions of dollars to 'fix' the ticking-clock problem before it crashed western civilization. As I recall, until the very eve of the New Year, insurance companies would not sell a policy insuring against computer malfunction-caused interruption of services, because they simply couldn't manage the risk -- nobody really KNEW if the system was sufficiently fixed or if the dawn of 2000 would see the sun rise on a cold, trembling shut-down broken western society. So the Y2K wake-up call to arms DiD have an effect, and likely saved our collective asses.<br><br>It's just -- The Peak Oil hypothesis 'fits' the available evidence better than any alternative I've seen -- It's possible it's way wrong, but from what I've seen, that's very unlikely. Same with Global Warming. It seems, One almost has to go way out of the logical-imperative loop to create an alternative explanation, which needs a thousand-and-one qualifications and conditions, and it STILL doesn't fit or cover all observations of what is reasonably-thoroughly known about Peak Oil and Global Warming.<br><br>There are all sorts of theories about why our leaders are loathe to acknowledge to act on serious problems that will cause great dislocations and changes to people's lifestyle and expectations and ways of doing things -- possibly because people have been so badly-served by leaders who lied and manipulated them and distorted truth so they are suspicious of motives. But our system is highly configured and based on popularity and maintaining the status quo -- so politicans have no incentive to be the bearer of bad news, or to make necessary but inconvenient changes to the way things are 'done'.<br><br>I'd have to say -- To a significant extent, the public is complicit in the mood of compacency that refuses to acknowledge that there are major problems in the way we do things -- Look how many appalling things the USGOv. is doing around the world and even here at home, which we've been conditioned to simply accept as things we can't change. It's like we're passengers on the impending train wreck, and few know enough to even want to get off, let alone stop the goddamn train.<br><br>Seems, we're captive fools who have learned to enjoy the ride thru the golden countryside, resenting the babbling fools yelling something about 'bridge OUT!' who are spoiling the scenery and making us miss our siesta.<br>Pity us?<br>Ha!<br>We'll be shaken out of seats soon enough, meanwhile, enjoy the show.<br>--cynical sarcasm fiter on--<br><br>Starman<br><!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :eek --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/eek.gif ALT=":eek"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>
Starman
 
Posts: 410
Joined: Sun May 15, 2005 3:57 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

excellent post, Starman

Postby manxkat » Wed Aug 03, 2005 10:22 pm

You covered a lot of familiar territory there, and I appreciated your point of view.... because I agree completely. ;-) <br><br>The arrival of Peak Oil in the imminent future must be real, simply because of the way the large nation states are behaving around the world -- especially the U.S. which is so utterly dependent on the stuff. Abiotic oil makes no sense -- otherwise, why the resource wars and the jockying for position? Hydrogen economy? Hydrogen is just a storage medium that takes energy to create. On and on. <br><br>The point is, we've known this problem was on the horizon since the 70s when Jimmy Carter had solar panels on the White House roof -- promptly removed by Ronald Reagan for the "me generation." From then until now, our political leaders have done zilch in preparation. Unfortunately, it's too late for technology to catch up with the supply/demand problem of cheap and abundant energy. <br><br>So, the politicians seem to think the best approach is to bully their way into more vulnerable countries for the crude stuff. Rude, crude, and disgusting. From 9/11 to Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States itself leads the world in terrorism (but of course we earned that leadership 'award' with the unforgiveable nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). No wonder Venezuela is arming itself to protect its oil from U.S. hawks. It's going to be a nasty and bumpy ride, and the best we can do now is 'arm' ourselves with knowledge and some counter-strategies for personal and local survival in a post-Peak world.<br><br>Visit <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://energybulletin.net">energybulletin.net</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> to keep up with the latest news and developments.<br> <p></p><i></i>
manxkat
 
Posts: 235
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:20 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Letter from the future

Postby Oilwars » Wed Aug 03, 2005 11:00 pm

<br><br>From <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.museletter.com/archive/110.html">www.museletter.com/archive/110.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>A LETTER FROM THE FUTURE<br>Richard Heinberg<br><br><br><br> Greetings to you, people of the year 2001! You are living in the year of my birth; I am one hundred years old now, writing to you from the year 2101. I am using the last remnants of the advanced physics that scientists developed during your era, in order to send this electronic message back in time to one of your computer networks. I hope that you receive it, and that it will give you reason to pause and reflect on your world and what actions to take with regard to it.<br><br> Of myself I shall say only what it is necessary to say: I am a survivor. I have been extremely fortunate on many occasions and in many ways, and I regard it as something of a miracle that I am here to compose this message. I have spent much of my life attempting to pursue the career of historian, but circumstances have compelled me also to learn and practice the skills of farmer, forager, guerrilla fighter, engineer - and now physicist. My life has been long and eventful . . . but that is not what I have gone to so much trouble to convey to you. It is what I have witnessed during this past century that I feel compelled to tell you by these extraordinary means.<br><br> You are living at the end of an era. Perhaps you cannot understand that. I hope that, by the time you have finished reading this letter, you will.<br><br> I want to tell you what is important for you to know, but you may find some of this information hard to absorb. Please have patience with me. I am an old man and I don't have much time for niceties. If what I say seems unbelievable, think of it as science fiction. But please pay attention. The communication device I am using is quite unstable and there's no telling how much of my story will actually get through to you. Please pass it along to others. It will probably be the only such message you will ever receive.<br><br> Since I don't know how much information I will actually be able to convey, I'll start with the most important items, ones that will be of greatest help in your understanding of where your world is headed. Energy has been the central organizing - or should I say, disorganizing? - principle of this century. Actually, in historical retrospect, I would have to say that energy was the central organizing principle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well. People discovered new energy sources - coal, then petroleum - in the nineteenth century, and then invented all sorts of new technologies to make use of this freshly released energy. Transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, lighting, heating - all were revolutionized, and the results reached deep into the lives of everyone in the industrialized world. Everybody became utterly dependent on the new gadgets; on imported, chemically fertilized food; on chemically synthesized and fossil-fuel-delivered therapeutic drugs; on the very idea of perpetual growth (after all, it would always be possible to produce more energy to fuel more transportation and manufacturing - wouldn't it?). Well, if the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were the upside of the growth curve, this past century has been the downside - the cliff. It should have been perfectly obvious to everyone that the energy sources on which they were coming to rely were exhaustible. Somehow the thought never sank in very deep. I suppose that's because people generally tend to get used to a certain way of life, and from then on they don't think about it very much. That's true today, too. The young people now have never known anything different; they take for granted our way of life - scavenging among the remains of industrial civilization for whatever can be put to immediate use - as though this is how people have always lived, as if this is how we were meant to live. That's why I've always been attracted to history, so that I could get some perspective on human societies as they change through time. But I'm digressing. Where was I?<br><br> Yes - the energy crisis. Well, it all started around the time I was born. Folks then thought it would be brief, that it was just a political or technical problem, that soon everything would get back to normal. They didn't stop to think that "normal," in the longer-term historical sense, meant living on the energy budget of incoming sunlight and of the vegetative growth of the biosphere. Perversely, they thought "normal" meant using fossil energy like there was no tomorrow. And, I guess, there almost wasn't. That was a classic self-confirming expectation - nearly.<br><br> At first, most people thought the shortages could be solved with "technology." However, in retrospect that's quite ludicrous. After all, their modern gadgetry had been invented to use a temporary abundance of energy. It didn't produce energy. Yes, there were the nuclear reactors (heavens, those things turned out to be nightmares!), but they cost so much energy to build and decommission that the power they produced during their lifetimes barely paid for them in energy terms. The same with photovoltaic panels: it seems that nobody ever sat down and calculated how much energy it actually took to manufacture them, starting with the silicon wafers produced as byproducts of the computer industry, and including the construction of the manufacturing plant itself. It turned out that the making of the panels ate up nearly as much power as the panels themselves generated duing their lifetime. Nevertheless, quite a few of them were built - I wish that more had been! - and many are still operating (that's what's powering the device that allows me to transmit this signal to you from the future). Solar power was a good idea; its main drawback was simply that it was incapable of satisfying people's energy-guzzling habits. With the exhaustion of fossil fuels, no technology could have maintained the way of life that people had gotten used to. But it took quite a while for many to realize that. Their pathetic faith in technology turned out to be almost religious in character, as though their gadgets were votive objects connecting them with an invisible but omnipotent god capable of overturning the laws of thermodynamics.<br><br> Naturally, some of the first effects of the energy shortages showed up as economic recessions, followed by an endless depression. The economists had been operating on the basis of their own religion - an absolute, unshakable faith in the Market-as-God; in supply-and-demand. They figured that if oil started to run out, the price would rise, offering incentives for research into alternatives. But the economists never bothered to think this through. If they had, they would have realized that the revamping of society's entire energy infrastructure would take decades, while the price signal from resource shortages might come only weeks or months before some hypothetical replacement would be needed. Moreover, they should have realized that there was no substitute for basic energy resources.<br><br> The economists could think only in terms of money; basic necessities like water and energy only showed up in their calculations in terms of dollar cost, which made them functionally interchangeable with everything else that was priceable - oranges, airliners, diamonds, baseball cards, whatever. But, in the last analysis, basic resources weren't interchangeable with other economic goods at all: you couldn't drink baseball cards, no matter how big or valuable your collection, once the water ran out. Nor could you eat dollars, if nobody had food to sell. And so, after a certain point, people started to lose faith in their money. And as they did so, they realized that faith had been the only thing that made money worth anything in the first place. Currencies just collapsed - first in one country, then in another. There was inflation, deflation, barter, and thievery on every imaginable scale as matters sorted themselves out.<br><br> In the era when I was born, commentators used to liken the global economy to a casino. A few folks were making trillions of dollars, euros, and yen trading in currencies, companies, and commodity futures. None of these people were actually doing anything useful; they were just laying down their bets and, in many cases, raking in colossal winnings. If you followed the economic chain, you'd see that all of that money was coming out of ordinary people's pockets . . . but that's another story. Anyway: all of that economic activity depended on energy, on global transportation and communication, and on faith in the currencies. Early in the twenty-first century, the global casino went bankrupt. Gradually, a new metaphor became operational. We went from global casino to village flea market.<br><br> With less energy available each year, and with unstable currencies plaguing transactions, manufacturing and transportation shrank in scale. It didn't matter how little Nike paid its workers in Indonesia: once shipping became prohibitively expensive, profits from the globalization of its operations vanished. But Nike couldn't just start up factories back in the States again; all of those factories had been closed two decades earlier. The same with all the other clothing manufacturers, electronics manufacturers, and so on. All of that local manufacturing infrastructure had been destroyed to make way for globalization, for cheaper goods, for bigger corporate profits. And now, to recreate that infrastructure would require a huge financial and energy investment - just when money and energy were in ever shorter supply.<br><br> Stores were empty. People were out of work. How were they to survive? The only way they could do so was by endlessly recycling all the used stuff that had been manufactured before the energy crisis. At first, after the initial economic shock waves, people were selling their stuff on internet auctions - when there was electricity. Then, when it became clear that lack of reliable transportation made delivery of the goods problematic, people started selling stuff on street corners so they could pay their rents and mortgages and buy food. But, after the currency collapse, that didn't make sense either, so people began just trading stuff, refurbishing it, using it however they could in order to get by. The cruel irony was that most of their stuff consisted of cars and electronic gadgets that nobody could afford to operate anymore. Worthless! Anybody who had human-powered hand tools and knew how to use them was wealthy indeed. And still is.<br><br> Industrial civilization sure produced a hell of a lot of junk during its brief existence. Over the past fifty or sixty years, folks have dug up just about every landfill there ever was, looking for anything at all that could be useful. What a god-awful mess! With all due respect, I have always had a hard time understanding why - and even how - you people could take billions of tons of invaluable, ancient, basic resources and turn them into mountains of stinking garbage, with apparently almost no measurable period of practical use in between! Couldn't you at least have made durable, well-designed stuff? I must say that the quality of the tools, furniture, houses, and so on that we have inherited from you - and are forced to use, given that few of us are capable of replacing them - is pretty dismal.<br><br> Well, I apologize for those last remarks. I don't mean to be nasty or rude. Actually some of the hand tools left behind are quite good. But you have to understand: the industrial way of life to which you have become accustomed will have horrific consequences for your children and grandchildren. I can vaguely remember seeing - when I was very young, maybe five or six - some old television shows from the 1950s: Ozzie and Harriet . . . Father Knows Best . . . Lassie. They portrayed an innocent world, one in which children grew up in small communities surrounded by friends and family. All problems were easily dealt with by adults who were mostly kind and wise. It all seemed so stable and benign.<br><br> When I was born, that world, if it had ever really existed, was long gone. By the time I was old enough to know much about what was happening on the bigger scene, society was beginning to come apart at the seams. It started with electricity blackouts - just a few hours at a time at first. Then the natural gas shortages clicked in. Not only were we cold most of the winter, but the blackouts got dramatically worse because so much electricity was being produced using natural gas. And then the oil and gasoline shortages hit. At this point - I guess I was a young teenager then - the economy was in tatters and there was political chaos.<br><br> By the time I was an older teenager, a certain identifiable attitude was developing among the young people. It was a feeling of utter contempt for anyone over a certain age - maybe thirty or forty. The adults had consumed so many resources, and now there were none left for their own children. Of course, when those adults were younger they had just been doing what everybody else was doing. They figured it was normal to cut down ancient forests for wood pulp for their phone books, pump every last gallon of oil to power their SUVs, or flick on the air conditioner if they were a little warm. For the kids of my generation, all of that was just a dim memory. What we knew was very different. We were living in darkness, with shortages of food and water, with riots in the streets, with people begging on street corners, with unpredictable weather, with pollution and garbage that could no longer be carted away and hidden from sight. For us, the adults were the enemy.<br><br> In some places, the age wars remained just a matter of simmering resentment. In others, there were random attacks on older people. In still others, there were systematic purges. I'm ashamed to say that, while I didn't actually physically attack any older people, I did participate in the shaming and name-calling. Those poor old folks - some of them still quite young, by my present perspective! - were just as confused and betrayed as we kids were. I can imagine myself in their shoes. Try to do the same: try to remember the last time you went to a store to buy something and the store didn't have it. (This little thought exercise is a real stretch for me, since I haven't been in a "store" that actually had much of anything for several decades, but I'm trying to put this in terms that you will understand.) Did you feel frustrated? Did you get angry, thinking, "I drove all the way here for this thing, and now I'm going to have to drive all the way across town to another store to get it"? Well, multiply that frustration and anger by a thousand, ten thousand. This is what people were going through every day, with regard to just about every consumer item, service, or bureaucratic necessity they had grown accustomed to. Moreover, those adults had lost most of what they had in the economic crash. And now gangs of kids were stealing whatever was left and heaping scorn on them as they did so. That must have been devastating for them. Unbearable.<br><br> Now that I'm so ancient myself, I have a little more tolerance for people. We're all just trying to get by, doing the best we can.<br><br> I suppose you're curious to know more about what has happened during this past century - the politics, wars, revolutions. Well, I'll tell you what I know, but there's a lot that I don't. For the last sixty years or so we haven't had anything like the global communications networks that used to exist. There are large parts of the world about which I know almost nothing. But I'll share what I can.<br><br> As you can imagine, when the energy resource shortages hit the United States and the economy started to go into a tailspin (it's interesting that I still use that word: only the oldest among us, such as myself, have ever seen an airplane tailspin, nose-dive, or even fly), people became angry and started looking around for someone to blame. Of course, the government didn't want to be the culprit, so those bastards in power (sorry, I still don't have much sympathy for them) did what political leaders have always done - they created a foreign enemy. They sent warships, bombers, missiles, and tanks off across the oceans for heaven knows what grisly purpose. People were told that this was being done to protect their "American Way of Life." Well, there was nothing on Earth that could have accomplished that. It was the American Way of Life that was the problem!<br><br> The generals managed to kill a few million people. Actually, it could have been tens or hundreds of millions for all I know; the news media were never very clear on that, since they were censored by the military. There were antiwar protests in the streets, and persecutions of the antiwar protesters - some of whom were rounded up and put in concentration camps. The government became utterly fascistic in its methods toward the end. There were local uprisings and brutal crackdowns. But it was all for nothing. The wars only depleted what few resources were still available, and after five horrible years the central government just collapsed. Ran out of gas.<br><br> Speaking of political events, it's worth noting that, in the early years of the shortages, the existing political philosophies had very little to offer that was helpful. The right-wingers were completely devoted to shielding the wealthy from blame and shifting all of the pain onto poor people and overseas scapegoats - the Arabs, North Koreans, and so on. Meanwhile, the Left was so habituated to fighting corporate meanies that it couldn't grasp the fact that the problems now facing society couldn't be solved by economic redistribution. Personally, as a historian, I tend to be much more sympathetic to the Left because I think that the accumulation of wealth that was occurring was just obscene. I suspect that a hell of a lot of suffering could have been averted if all of that wealth had been spread around early on, when the money was worth something. But to hear some of the leftist leaders talk, you'd think that once all the corporations had been reined in, once the billionaire plutocrats had been relieved of their riches, everything would be fine. Well, everything wasn't going to be fine, no way.<br><br> So here were these two political factions fighting to the death, blaming each other, while everybody around them was starving or going crazy. What the people really needed was just some basic common-sense information and advice, somebody to tell them the truth - that their way of life was coming to an end - and to offer them some sensible collective survival strategies.<br><br> Much of what has happened during the past century was what you have every reason to expect on the basis of your scientists' forecasts: we have seen dramatic climate shifts, species extinctions, and horrible epidemics, just as the ecologists at the turn of the last century warned there would be. I don't think that's a matter of much satisfaction to those ecologists descendants. Getting to say "I told you so" is paltry comfort in this situation. Tigers and whales are gone, and probably tens of thousands of other species; but our lack of reliable global communications makes it difficult for anyone to know just which species and where. For me, songbirds are a fond but distant memory. I suppose my counterparts in China or Africa have long lists. Climate change has been a real problem for growing food, and for just getting by. You never know from one year to the next what swarms of unfamiliar insects will show up. For a year or two or three, all we get is rain. Then there's drought for the next five or six. It's much worse than a nuisance; it's life-threatening. That's just one of the factors that has led to the dramatic reduction in human population during this past century.<br><br> Many people call it "The Die-off." Others call it "The Pruning," "The Purification," or "The Cleansing." Some terms are more palatable than others, but there really are no nice ways to describe the actual events - the wars, epidemics, and famines.<br><br> Food and water have been big factors in all of this. Fresh, clean water has been scarce for decades now. One way to make young people mad at me is to tell them stories about how folks in the old days used to pour millions upon millions of gallons of water on their lawns. When I describe to them how flush toilets worked, they just can't bear it. Some of them 'm making this stuff up! These days water is serious business. If you waste it, somebody's likely to die.<br><br> Starting many decades ago, people began - by necessity - to learn how to grow their own food. Not everyone was successful, and there was a lot of hunger. One of the frustrating things was the lack of good seeds. Very few people knew anything about saving seeds from one season to the next, so existing seed stocks were depleted very quickly. There was also a big problem with all the modern hybrid varieties: few of the garden vegetables that were planted would produce good seeds for the next year. The genetically engineering plants were even worse, causing all sorts of ecological problems that we're still dealing with, particularly the killing off of bees and other beneficial insects. The seeds of good open-pollinated food plants are like gold to us.<br><br> I did some traveling by foot and on horseback when I was younger, in my fifties and sixties, and we do get some reports from the outside world. From what I've seen and heard, it seems that people in different places have coped in different ways and with widely varying degrees of success. Ironically, perhaps, the indigenous people who were most persecuted by civilization are probably doing the best. They still retained a lot of knowledge of how to live simply on the land. In some places, people are dwelling together in makeshift rural communes; other folks are trying to survive in what's left of the great urban centers, ripping up concrete and growing what they can as they recycle and trade all the old junk that was left behind when people fled the cities in the 'twenties. As a historian, one of my biggest frustrations is the rapid disappearance of knowledge. You people had a mania for putting most of your important information on electronic storage media and acid-laden paper - which are disintegrating very quickly. For the most part, all we have are fading photographs, random books, and crumbling magazines.<br><br> A few of our young people look at the old magazine ads and wonder what it must have been like to live in a world with jet airplanes, electricity, and sports cars. It must have been utopia, paradise! Others among us are not so sanguine about the past. I suppose that's part of my job as a historian: to remind everyone that the advertising images were only one side of a story; it was the other side of that story - the rampant exploitation of nature and people, the blindness to consequences - that led to the horrors of the past century.<br><br> You're probably wondering if I have any good news, anything encouraging to say about the future of your world. Well, as with most things, it depends on your perspective. Many of the survivors learned valuable lessons. They learned what's important in life and what isn't. They learned to treasure good soil, viable seeds, clean water, unpolluted air, and friends you can count on. They learned how to take charge of their own lives, rather than expecting to be taken care of by some government or corporation. There are no "jobs" now, so people's time is all their own. They think for themselves more. Partly as a result of that, the old religions have largely fallen by the wayside, and folks have rediscovered spirituality in nature and in their local communities. The kids today are eager to learn and to create their own culture. The traumas of industrial civilization's collapse are in the past; that's history now. It's a new day.<br><br> Can you change the future? I don't know. There are all sorts of logical contradictions inherent in that question. I can barely understand the principles of physics that are allowing me to transmit this signal to you. Possibly, as a result of reading this letter, you might do something that would change my world. Maybe you could save a forest or a species, or preserve some heirloom seeds, or help prepare yourselves and the rest of the population for the coming energy shortages. My life might be altered as a result. Then, I suppose this letter would change, as would your experience of reading it. And as a result of that, you'd take different actions. We would have set up some kind of cosmic feedback loop between past and future. It's pretty interesting to think about.<br><br> Speaking of physics, maybe I should mention that I've come to accept a view of history based on what I've read about chaos theory. According to the theory, in chaotic systems small changes in initial conditions can lead to big changes in outcomes. Well, human society and history are chaotic systems. Even though most of what people do is determined by material circumstances, they still have some wiggle room, and what they do with that can make a significant difference down the line. In retrospect, it appears that human survival in the twenty-first century hinged on many small and seemingly insignificant efforts by marginalized individuals and groups in the twentieth century. The anti-nuclear movement, the conservation movement, the anti-biotech movement, the organic food and gardening movements, indigenous peoples' resistance movements, the tiny organizations devoted to seed saving - all had a profound and positive impact on later events.<br><br> I suppose that, logically speaking, if you were to alter the web of causation leading up to my present existence, it is possible that events might transpire that would preclude my being here. In that case, this letter would constitute history's most bizarre suicide note! But that is a risk I am willing to take. Do what you can. Change history! And while you're at it, be kind to one another. Don't take anything or anyone for granted.<br><br><br> If you wish to republish any of these essays or post them on a web site, please contact rheinberg@museletter.com for permission.<br><br><br>Home Page I Recent Issues I Back Issues I Books I Subscribe I Current Projects I Richard Heinberg I Links<br><br>Click here to go to JN Web Design site<br>Site Meter<br> <p></p><i></i>
Oilwars
 
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2005 11:00 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Second Great Depression

Postby Starman » Wed Aug 03, 2005 11:50 pm

Manxcat:<br><br>Quite a coincidence -- You suggested the Energy Bulletin just as the site was one of a half-dozen windows I had open with the article below onnit -- I've found the site to be an invaluable resource on progressive, forward-thinking ideas about energy use and the implications of Peak Oil.<br><br>I appreciate the solidarity of your sensibilities -- You said quite clearly what I had a hard time trying to articulate not even half-as-well -- "The arrival of Peak Oil in the imminent future must be real, simply because of the way the large nation states are behaving around the world -- especially the U.S. which is so utterly dependent on the stuff." That is as compelling evidence that Peak Oil is a very real danger as anything elese I've seen.<br><br>Also: I had been thinking about that very thing you mentioned, while Carter acknowledged the reality of oil as a precious limited resource that we needed to conserve, introducing solar panels on the White House roof and taken to wearing sweaters for his public fireside chats -- one of the first things Reagan did (probably to appease his oil and gas energy-company buddies) was take the solar panels off the WH, part of his elaborate 'Trust Daddy' uber-paternalistic cowboy-with-a-white-hat image he sold to a largely naive-and-gullible public.<br><br>Raygun Ronnie's program, of course, involved hyping the Great Bear Threat so as to subsidize a massive Star Wars R&D boondoggle and great military-arms buildup by saddling future generations with a massive debt to International Banks, while positioning US troops around the world and provoking resource-war conflicts and guerrilla resistance movements that became opportunities for further military incursions linking drug and arms smuggling with overthrowing Marxist, reformist, progressive governments and installing and supporting a large number of brutal right-wing regimes who too became the beneficiaries of military-arms, aid and training largesse. I believe it was under Reagan, and then continued by Bush 41, that the US began to massively move into securing control over foreign oil reserve properties developed by the major western oil companies. Recall, this was the era when Saddam was curried as the US's man in the Mideast, given special exemptions and agricultural grant-loans to buy a whole laundry-list of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapon materials which it was presumably hoped that Saddam would 'threaten' Middle East stability thus facilitating the US becoming indispensible to our gracious buddies the Saudi Royal Family/House of Saud, who would open their oil-spigots to us out of gratitude for saving their asses.<br>Recall too, Skolnick has provided evidence of a massive multi-billion dollar slush-fund set up between Bush, Thatcher and Saddam thru Couts Bank (IIRC). Lotta fraud and schemes to go around.<br><br>Anyway, this article offers some insights on what the Peak Oil 2nd depression might look like, pushed-along by the massive flow of institutional investors trying to stay one step ahead of illiquidity.<br>Starman<br><br>*****<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/5944.html">www.energybulletin.net/5944.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>Published on 3 May 2005 by ASPO. Archived on 5 May 2005.<br><br>The Second Great Depression : Causes & Responses<br>by Colin J. Campbell <br><br>Financial Consequences of Peak Oil<br><br>It is becoming evident that the financial and investment community begins to accept the reality of Peak Oil, which ends the First Half of the Age of Oil. They accept that banks created capital during this epoch by lending more than they had on deposit, being confident that Tomorrow’s Expansion, fuelled by cheap oil-based energy, was adequate collateral for Today’s Debt. The decline of oil, the principal driver of economic growth, undermines the validity of that collateral which in turn erodes the valuation of most entities quoted on Stock Exchanges. The investment community however faces a dilemma. It desires to protect its own fortunes and those of its privileged clients while at the same time is reluctant to take action that might itself trigger the meltdown. It is a closely knit community so that it is hard for one to move without the others becoming aware of his actions. <br><br>In this situation, interest shifts to commodities and to short term trading to benefit from daily or hourly fluctuations in price, implying that there are few valid genuine long-term investments left. <br><br>The scene is set for the Second Great Depression, but the conservatism and outdated mindset of institutional investors, together with the momentum of the massive flows of institutional money they are required to place, may help to diminish the sense of panic that a vision of reality might impose. On the other hand, the very momentum of the flow may cause a greater deluge when the foundations of the dam finally crumble. It is a situation without precedent. <br><br><br>The following is the summary of a presentation to the Edinburgh Conference by C.J.Campbell, which extreme as it may sound, seems consistent the new posture adopted by the International Energy Agency. <br><br>The Second Great Depression : Causes & Responses<br><br>SUMMARY<br><br>Oil was formed but rarely in time and place in the geological past, which tells us that it is subject to depletion. It also has to be found before it can be produced. Finding oil is primarily a matter of geology, notwithstanding the technical, political and economic factors. So, an understanding of petroleum geology forms the bedrock for forecasting future production. <br><br>Depletion itself is easy to grasp as every beer drinker knows: the faster he downs his draught, the sooner it is gone. However, the issue is not about finally running out of oil, which will not happen for many years. What does concern us – and most gravely– is the long downward slope that opens on the other side of peak production. Oil and Gas dominate our lives, and their decline will surely change the World in radical and unpredictable ways. <br><br>How has this self-evident reality been so successfully confused and denied? In short, oil companies under-reported discovery to comply with strict Stock Exchange rules, and revised reserves upwards over time, delivering a comforting but misleading image. But those days are over, forcing the major companies to find reserves by merger rather than in the ground. Some OPEC countries, for their part, started reporting original, not remaining reserves, as they vied with each other for quota, explaining why their reported reserves have barely changed for 20 years. Furthermore, definitions of the several categories of oil and gas are confused. Public data are grossly unreliable.<br><br>Production has to mirror discovery after a time lapse, as amply demonstrated in one country after another. The peak of production comes broadly when half the total has been consumed. Deciphering the conflicting evidence as well as possible indicates that approximately 944 Gb (billion barrels) of Regular Conventional oil have been produced; 764 Gb remain in known fields (Reserves); and 142 Gb are Yet-to-Find. If so, the midpoint of depletion was passed in 2003, meaning that peak production is imminent. On present estimates, the overall peak of all categories of oil arrives in 2006, with that of oil and gas combined coming about two years later.<br><br>A widely held myth proclaims that technology will deliver more, when its main impact has been to hold production higher for longer, accelerating depletion. The observed growth in reserves has been an artefact of reporting, not technology, save in special cases.<br><br>The First Half of the Age of Oil now closes. It lasted 150 years and saw the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade, agriculture and financial capital, allowing the population to expand six-fold. The financial capital was created by banks with confidence that Tomorrow’s Expansion, fuelled by oil-based energy, was adequate collateral for To-day’s Debt. <br><br>The Second Half of the Age of Oil now dawns, and will be marked by the decline of oil and all that depends on it, including financial capital. It heralds the collapse of the present Financial System, and related political structures, speaking of a Second Great Depression.<br><br>But there are survival strategies. Governments may be persuaded to sign the Depletion Protocol whereby imports are cut to match world depletion rate, such that world prices fall into reasonable relationship with cost, and profiteering from shortage avoided; the current monumental waste of energy may be reduced; renewable energies from wave, tide, wind, solar, hydro and geothermal sources may be brought in; and the nuclear option re-evaluated.<br><br>The survivors, whose numbers may not greatly exceed those of the pre-oil age, may find silver linings as they rediscover rural living, regionalism, diversity and local markets, coming to live in better harmony with themselves, each other, and the environment in which Nature has ordained them to live. But the transition will be a time of great tension, including international tension as consumers vie for access to dwindling supplies, and as city life becomes unsustainable.<br><br>~ Editorial Notes <br>This article is a combination of two items from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO) Newsletter #53 available here:<br>www.peakoil.net<br><br>Past ASPO newsletters are archived here:<br>www.asponews.org<br><br>Related News:<br>OPEC, Oil and a Paradox... <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/5988.html">www.energybulletin.net/5988.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Oil, Jihad and Destiny: Will declining oil production plunge our planet into a Depression?... <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/6169.html">www.energybulletin.net/6169.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Peak Oil - Peak Economics... <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/6244.html">www.energybulletin.net/6244.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Top oil groups fail to recoup exploration costs... <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/2470.html">www.energybulletin.net/2470.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>The End of The Oil Standard... <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/4281.html">www.energybulletin.net/4281.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
Starman
 
Posts: 410
Joined: Sun May 15, 2005 3:57 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Abiotic oil

Postby wolf pauli » Thu Aug 04, 2005 12:35 am

manxkat wrote:<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Abiotic oil makes no sense -- otherwise, why the resource wars and the jockying for position?</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>Basically yes, though it's worth noting that there <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>might</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> be something to what petro-chemist Ugo Bardi calls the "weak" abiotic oil theory.<br><br>According to the "weak" theory, "oil is abiotically formed, but at rates not higher than those that petroleum geologists assume for oil formation according to the conventional theory." Like the conventional theory, the "weak" theory is fully consistent with peak oil.<br><br>According to the "strong" abiotic oil theory, on the other hand, "oil is formed at a speed sufficient to replace the oil reservoirs as we deplete them, that is at a rate of something like 10,000 times faster than known in petroleum geology." Unlike the conventional and "weak" theories, the "strong" theory is inconsistent with peak oil. But as Bardi says, "the serious proponents of the abiotic theory all go for the "weak" version; that's because the "strong" version entails that "Over billions of years of seepage in the amounts considered, we would be swimming in oil, drowned in oil. Just no way." (That's the short account; Bardi has more to say on the matter.)<br><br>The idea that abiotic oil represents a serious scientific challenge to peak oil results from conflating the "weak" theory, which is not entirely implausible but has no bearing on the issue, with the "strong" theory, which bears on the issue but is entirely implausible.<br><br><br>Quotations are from Ugo Bardi, 'Abiotic Oil: Politics or Science?'<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.aspoitalia.net/aspoenglish/documents/bardi/abioticoil1oct04.html">www.aspoitalia.net/aspoen...oct04.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
wolf pauli
 
Posts: 122
Joined: Wed May 18, 2005 8:20 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Imagine

Postby robertdreed » Thu Aug 04, 2005 12:59 am

Imagine that diamonds are able to be geologically formed by natural processes in 5 years, instead of thousands...<br><br>Well, you can <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>imagine</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> it, but that doesn't mean that it's happening. <p></p><i></i>
robertdreed
 
Posts: 1560
Joined: Wed May 18, 2005 11:14 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

re: Abiotic Oil

Postby Starman » Thu Aug 04, 2005 2:09 am

Wolf --<br><br>Ah yes; Thanks for making the distinction between weak and strong variants of abiotic oil, and pointing out the weak abiotic qualification to the Peak Oil thesis; I overlooked making the distinction and missed speaking to Manxcat's reference. Quite right-- as you point out, the Strong Abiotic principle would have resulted in oceans of crude oil and geysoring fountains of natural gas totally affecting the surface of the planet and killing-off species and ecosystems.<br><br>From what I've read, I think the 'weak' abiotic theory of oil and gas formation (and perhaps coal and tar-sand and oil-shale deposits too) fits the facts of how and where oil is found, and where and how it is made better than the conventional (western) explanation. But I haven't found compelling examples of significant oil-deposit replenishment, let alone never-deplenishing wells, which would be necessary if the strong theory of Abiotic oil were to invalidate the predictions of Peak Oil.<br><br>It MAY be that deep-well technology and improved deep-earth mapping may access yet-unfound oil reserves -- but the project will be incredibly expensive and is as-yet far from being technically feasable. Apparently, Russia has drilled wells to an incredible depth of some 45,000 feet -- But it's to be be noted that for all the expertise Russia has developed for deep-drilling and the abiotic theory of oil formation, it still has a keen interest in developing proven reserves in the Balkans, Caucasia, The Middle East and Eurasia. So even the world's leading developer of reserves based on abiotic oil theories isn't finding those wells sufficient to meet actual and anticipated oil demands.<br><br>The weak abiotic theory of oil formation wouldn't really change the potential availability of oil reserves, so wouldn't affect projections of declining production unable to meet demand, quite possibly occurring within the next several years if not sooner.<br><br>It seems to me that expecting new technology and/or the 'finding' of huge deep-reserves of abiotic oil being created at greater or close-to-depletion-rates is unrealistic to the extreme, and even criminally reckless. Based on what we can know with a high degree of confidence, not acting to take account of Peak Oil projections is the height of folly. Added to the risks of global warming from the unlimited use of hydrocarbons, the present inaction by major world governments is just too incredible for words.<br>Starman <p></p><i></i>
Starman
 
Posts: 410
Joined: Sun May 15, 2005 3:57 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

PreviousNext

Return to Energy Issues

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest