Peak oil

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Peak oil

Postby NewKid » Fri Mar 24, 2006 11:51 am

Liberal bloggers are just now picking up on the "Peak Oil's here, we're all gonna die" arguments from Heinberg, Matt Simmons et al. It seems a 3 month old article on Richard Rainwater's obsession with Peak Oil has caught their eye. <br><br><br><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2006/03/worse_than_a_fo.php" target="top">jameswolcott.com/archives/2006/03/worse_than_a_fo.php</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/03/23/drowning-in-peak-oil/" target="top">www.firedoglake.com/2006/03/23/drowning-in-peak-oil/</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><br>Now what is it we were saying about liberal bloggers being naive again? <br> <p></p><i></i>
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Naivete

Postby professorpan » Fri Mar 24, 2006 3:55 pm

Naivete is in the eye of he beholder. <br><br>We're on a doomsday course if we don't transition from a petro economy to something more sustainable, regardless of the particulars of peak oil squabbles. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Naivete

Postby NewKid » Fri Mar 24, 2006 3:59 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Naivete is in the eye of he beholder. <br><br>We're on a doomsday course if we don't transition from a petro economy to something more sustainable, regardless of the particulars of peak oil squabbles. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <br><br>Perhaps, but that wasn't really my point at all. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Peak oil

Postby StarmanSkye » Sat Mar 25, 2006 12:17 am

I can't speak to what was being said about liberal bloggers being naive -- I didn't see this claim, and don't think it's even true of a blog that is really and truly 'liberal' -- that is, certainly not naive as with the MSM or conservative sites.<br><br>As far as peak oil and the 'we're all gonna die' misstatement or error -- it's been claimed on this forum that Peak Oil is a contrived 'emergency', as evident because its become de rigor, the accepted common-wisdom across the land, ie. the public has been duped in a scheme by politicos and the oiligarchy to wildly inflate oil prices by creating artificial scarcity (tho how foreign state-owned oil corporations could be talked into going along with this, or why, isn't readily explained). In addition, as the anti-peak argument goes, since all the evidence supporting Peak Oil is in the hands of oil-industry officials and petro-chemical experts -- the very ones who presumably have the most to gain from an artificial scarcity 'explained' by Peak Oil -- there's no way to conclusively DIS-prove it, they just cannot be trusted. This is, of course, a convenient circular-argument imposing an impossible-to-meet standard of proof -- the assumption being that since all information is specialized and highly-technical, it's tainted and can't be accepted.<br><br>This 'latest' development with its apparant implication, ie. that even liberal blogdom has jumped onto the Peak Oil bandwagon -- is inconsistent with and contradicts that claim ref. above -- Peak Oil could hardly have been the accepted, conventional wisdom if only NOW liberal blogs are waking up to it and promoting it.<br><br>I've always argued the geological, socioeconomic and political facts of Peak Oil are much too complex to be reduced to simplistic or reductionist arguments. Above all, I note the evident failure of society and our political institutions to adequately address and prepare for the many very serious implications of Peak Oil as constituting one of the plainest signs that Peak Oil has NOT become the accepted standard. We would have embarked on massive energy-consevation, new source development and diversification programs on the scale of another Manhatten Project if Peak Oil WAS universally accepted.<br><br>But a related criticism of the claim re: widespread acceptance of Peak Oil is that our political institutions have failed to even start on the most modest alternative-energy and conservation measures -- and its militant Middle East position is actually very harmful to the US and world's energy-needs issues, serving to antagonize and alienate potential partners and allies as it shows the reckless and dangerous side of a self-absorbed superpower so full of its own sense of power and interests that it sacrifices International Law and diplomacy.<br><br>If there were even a SMALL chance that Peak Oil was certain, with lack of certainty about whether Peak Oil's predicted declines have begun or won't be appreciated for another 5, 10 or 15 years, then one would expect an effective, competant government to take it seriously and begin planning to meet the many challenges ahead, not only to one's own nation but to take into consideration other nation's security and economic/development interests related to declining petroleum sources.<br><br>But that's the nub -- Under the last several administrations but most dramatically under Bush jr., our policy seems to be one of head-in-sand denial and outright appropriation of foreign oil reserves, by use of force or fraud.<br><br>But the weight of evidence signalling production declines of the world's largest fields which account for over half of the world's daily supply are clear wake-up calls that, even beyond a synthetic shortage of adequate refinery capacity, a critical lack of oil supplies is a very real, growing problem -- which we ignore or deny to our own (and the world's) peril.<br><br>Starman<br>******<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.raisethehammer.org/index.asp?id=269">www.raisethehammer.org/index.asp?id=269</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br><br>Peak Oil is Now Official <br>Suburban Bureau <br> Mexico's supergiant Cantarell oilfield is now in decline. Can the rest of the world make up the shortfall? <br>By Trevor Shaw <br>Mar. 18, 2006 <br><br><br>A recent Kight Ridder article by Kevin Hall points out that world's number two oilfield, Mexico's supergiant Cantarell, has peaked. <br><br>Cantarell is second only to Saudia Arabia's Ghawar oilfield and has been pumping millions of barrels of light crude a day since 1976. According to Carlos Morales, production manager for Mexico's state owned oil company, Pemex, Cantarell's projected output will be 6 percent lower this year at 1.9 million barrels per day and down to 1.43 million barrels by 2008, the level of production in 2000. <br><br>A leaked internal memo from inside Pemex said water and gas were seeping into the massive offshore oil field. Cantarell is showing the signs of peaking. <br><br> Canterell's Output Levels Year Output <br> 1994 1.0 mb/d <br> 2000 1.5 mb/d <br> 2004 2.13 mb/d (Peak) <br> 2005 2.0 mb/d <br> 2006 1.9 mb/d (projected) <br> 2008 1.43 mb/d (projected) <br>To make up the decline of Cantarell, Pemex is spending billions to develop new fields such as Chicontepec. This will prove difficult for a company that lost $3.75 billion in 2005, during a time of record high crude prices. <br><br>The crude that is first produced from any field is light and sweet, it flows well, and is easy to refine. Not so the later output, and Pemex is faced with spending billions to reconfigure its refineries so they can handle heavier crude. <br><br>Pemex's Galindo, like many outside experts, thinks the era of easy, cheaply produced oil in Mexico appears to be over. The remaining crude left in Cantarell or in existing fields will most certainly be heavier and costlier. <br><br>The Cantarell field accounts for 60 percent of Mexico's total production. To make up for the anticipated decline of 500,000 bpd will be difficult to achieve and definitely more expensive if even possible. Mexico is the second-largest supplier of oil to the U.S. market. The decline will intensify America's dependence on Middle East oil. <br><br>Many experts - Matthew Simmons, Richard Heinberg, Colin Campbell, Bilaal Abdullah and members of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil - have said that when Ghawar Peaks so does the world. <br><br>Rumours and experts outside Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state controlled oil company, believe Ghawar has already peaked or is currently peaking. It is definitely showing symptoms. Some reports have stated that the water cut level is nearing 50 percent of the total liquids being pumped out by its more than 300 wellheads. <br><br>Combined with the news in January, 2006 from the Kuwait Oil Company that their super giant Burgan oil field has peaked, this strongly suggests we are in Peak Oil. <br><br>Do we need anymore convincing that Peak Oil is imminent? The world cannot sit idle waiting for a technological fix. If there was a solution or an immediate alternative do you think America would be spending billions to occupy Iraq? Our denial won't make the problem disappear. As Bilaal Abdulah's book notes, we need a global paradigm shift or we're all in big trouble. <br>*****<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://energybulletin.net/14102.html">energybulletin.net/14102.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>--excerpt--<br>Explicit warnings of Peak Oil have started to turn up in official U.S. government literature. For example, a paper prepared for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers titled “Energy Trends and Implications for U.S. Army Installations” (Sept., 2005) includes the following tidbit: <br><br>The supply of oil will remain fairly stable in the very near term, but oil prices will steadily increase as world production approaches its peak. The doubling of oil prices in the past couple of years is not an anomaly, but a picture of the future. Peak oil is at hand. . . .13 <br><br>Then there is the following from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Petroleum Reserves, Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves, dated March 2004: <br><br>The disparity between increasing production and declining reserves can have only one outcome: a practical supply limit will be reached and future supply to meet conventional oil demand will not be available. The question is when peak production will occur and what will be its ramifications. <br>Whether the peak occurs sooner or later is a matter of relative urgency. . . . In spite of projections for growth of non-OPEC supply, it appears that non-OPEC and non-Former Soviet Union countries have peaked and are currently declining. The production cycle of countries . . . and the cumulative quantities produced reasonably follow Hubbert’s model. . . . The Nation must start now to respond to peaking global oil production to offset adverse economic and national security impacts.14 <br><br>And then there is the 2005 Report, “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management,” commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, about which we will have more to say below.15 <br><br>If none of this is specific enough (in fairness, we cannot expect George W. Bush to spend his evenings poring over obscure Army Corps of Engineers studies), we have the fact that Representative Roscoe Bartlett, Republican from Maryland’s sixth district—who has made many speeches about Peak Oil on the floor of Congress—has spent thirty minutes in private conversation with the president explaining the science of Peak Oil and seeking to convey the enormity of the problem.16 <br><br>But what if Bush wasn’t able to understand what Bartlett was telling him? After all, Bartlett has a Ph.D. in physics; perhaps he was using words that were too big, or concepts too abstruse for our president to grasp. <br><br>Even if that were the case, we have evidence that Bush’s second-in-command, vice president Cheney, understands Peak Oil; given time, Cheney could surely make the concept comprehensible to his superior. In a speech in 1999 (while he was still CEO of Halliburton Corporation, the giant oil services company) to the Petroleum Institute in London, Cheney pointed out that:<br><br>"By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day."17 <br><br>This is a fair statement of the depletion dilemma: 50 million barrels per day is almost five times the current output of Saudi Arabia. <br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Peak oil

Postby NewKid » Sat Mar 25, 2006 12:37 am

The liberal blogger problem is that they assume people like Rainwater a) know what they're doing and aren't being conned themselves b) aren't trying to get other people involved in peak oil mania for their own purposes. The point is much more epistemological than metaphysical and the liberals seem painfully unaware of the various actors and agendas floating around the concept of peak oil. Especially Simmons and Heinberg. <br><br>While a lot of people talk about peak oil and all that, they all tend to jump to the conclusion that if oil production is slowly peaking, then the apocalypse will occur within a few nanoseconds afterwards. The assumption that instant chaos and collapse of economic and social systems is the only possible result from a peak in oil production is the part I think needs to be considered more carefully. Even if you assume that the peak oil proponents are entirely correct, the outcome for world standards of living is not preordained. The question is how long the peak in oil takes to occur and how well the price mechanisms and technological development can provoke people to come up with other ways of doing things that don't use as much oil as we do now. Rainwater was big in buying things that are depressed in price (e.g. Houston real estate, oil in the mid-90s, etc) and betting they will recover (i.e., cyclical bets) which is one thing, it's something else to make an investment plan out of something like peak oil, that has never happened and may not ever happen, and if it does you don't know what will happen after it. Plus, even if he's wrong about all of that stuff in the article, he'll most likely still be very rich and not suffer too much.<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Peak oil

Postby Dreams End » Sat Mar 25, 2006 1:08 am

<!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4189/1379/1600/WinterStocks.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>Anyone not see a pattern here. The history of bad conspiracy theory is littered with apocalyptic predictions that never materialize. In fact, weren't we supposed to be facing imminent disaster this very week according to a thread that has dropped off the front page of this board? <br><br>we have LOTS of past discussions on peak oil in the archives...I just thought I'd point this little pattern out as well.<br><br><br>Long article on this here, specifically, Matt Simmons' exercises in hyperbole charitably called "projections" concerning oil...it's a blog so you have to scroll down to:<br><br> 264. SIMMONS' PREDICTIONS FLOP... PATHETICALLY<br><br>http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/<br>I don't know anyone who argues that Peak Oil is the dominant mainstream view...but the Peak Oilers argue it's some kinda big secret, so then we often point to big mainstream articles about it to show it's not such a well kept secret after all. <br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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opinions - yawn

Postby wintler » Sat Mar 25, 2006 8:48 am

<br>Newkid: "While a lot of people talk about peak oil and all that, they all tend to jump to the conclusion that if oil production is slowly peaking, then the apocalypse will occur within a few nanoseconds afterwards." <br><br>Can you link to the names you mention, Simmons or Heinberg, concluding this? Given that Deffeyes (provost of Princeton) and Bakhtiari (ex-Iranian Nat. Oil Co.) think we've already peaked, and they haven't retired to their bunkers, then perhaps peak oilers aren't as Newkid says they are. This is just more misrepresentation by exageration, as i've seen many times before, and not just on oil.<br><br>The JD that writes peak oil debunked is a classic for that, he makes a habit out of setting up straw men and knocking them over. Of course he only became a blogger after he got laughed off peakoil.com as "johndenver", cos he a) couldn't add up, b) was convinced space mirrors would save us, & c) couldn't see any sustainability problem at all with the status quo. <br><br>As Dreams End has highlighted before, its certain that there are some pushing the peaking meme purely for their own purposes, but that doesn't mean oil is infinite, no more than GWBs enthusiasm for "peace and democracy" make those false. <br>The opinions of american liberal bloggers i wouldn't bother to read, unless of course they can and do do sums, like the folk on www.theoildrum.com . <p></p><i></i>
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Re: opinions - yawn

Postby NewKid » Sat Mar 25, 2006 12:46 pm

Huh??? <br><br>Life after the crash, the return to oldivae gorge, Die off, the end of surbubia, the return to prehydrocarbon man. Any of these terms sound familiar? Mass resource wars, 4 billion people being wiped off the planet, growing vegetable gardens, etc. <br><br>I'd say that stuff is fairly apocolyptic. Check around the internet, there are a bunch of people making preparations for some pretty big changes.<br><br>And Jeff has a good post on Heinberg. <br><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/11/peak-fascism.html" target="top">rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/11/peak-fascism.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: opinions - yawn

Postby Dreams End » Sat Mar 25, 2006 4:42 pm

Newkid,<br><br>You should know that in an attempt to reduce personal attacks I posted for awhile on this board under a "pseudopseudonym": "veritas". So those are my posts. The cryptic language was to discourage the sorts of personal attacks that kept distracting from the issue. It worked pretty well but I felt kinds sneaky so I "killed off" veritas in another thread. <br><br>Lots of stuff on Peak Oil in the archives. <p></p><i></i>
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Dumbing down

Postby wintler » Sat Mar 25, 2006 9:41 pm

Ah, more evidence-less opinionating. Whatever. <br><br>Oil is infinite Newkid, and we'll all drive cadillacs to the moon by 2010. Just keep voting Bush.<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Dumbing down

Postby NewKid » Sat Mar 25, 2006 9:44 pm

Dude, you're not getting my point at all. <p></p><i></i>
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do you have a point worth making?

Postby wintler » Sat Mar 25, 2006 11:43 pm

What IS your point new kid? It took three posts for you to get past five lines, and apart from rehashing DE's points and ref'ing Jeff i see nothing there but misrepresentation.<br><br>That american liberal bloggers should consider the motives of e.g. Rainwater before they worry about oil? <br><br>Talk about mistaking the wood for the trees! We have a global energy problem that is getting worse at a rapid pace, and you call bloggers naive for thinking about that and not about the agenda's you can't explain of some of the alarm-callers. <br><br>An analogy might be the captain of the Titanic dismissing the watchman who warns of iceberg collision because he thinks he's just bucking for promotion.<br><br>Rainwater is only a very recent arrival, as are Heinberg and Simmons, at a debate more than forty years running on a centuries accumulation of physical evidence. You can defame Rainwater/Heinberg/Simmons all you like, i couldn't give a, but using those same smears to dismiss the oil peak problem is flat out dishonest, and i will call you on it each and every time. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: do you have a point worth making?

Postby NewKid » Sun Mar 26, 2006 1:12 am

Wintler, what are you talking about? Are you some sort of Ruppertian provocateur? What is the matter with you?<br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: do you have a point worth making?

Postby Dreams End » Sun Mar 26, 2006 2:39 am

I must confess, Newkid. I'm always on the other side of this issue from wintler, but I'm also not sure what your point is.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: do you have a point worth making?

Postby NewKid » Sun Mar 26, 2006 3:01 am

My original point was Wolcott and Reddhead are gullible fools if they believe we are gonna die based on Rainwater and Simmons. At best, peak oil is wild speculation. Much more likely it's sensational disinformation fed to gullible idiots like Wintler who probably moved out into the wilderness suckered by Y2K end of the world scams. Get your From the Wilderness subscription refunded, Wintler, you're wasting your money. Ruppert is a mentally unstable crackpot. <br><br>Rainwater is a financial vampire and Simmons is a charlatan. <br><br><br>Get a clue. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=newkid@rigorousintuition>NewKid</A> at: 3/26/06 12:11 am<br></i>
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