Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 10:39 pm Post subject: Re: Peak Oil: The Big Fizzle
We see the problem with a declining amount of cheap oil more here in Maine. We have a lot of people who have low or moderate incomes that are having a very hard time this winter paying for heating oil. LIHEAP is only covering about one month's worth of oil this year for people who make less than $11,000. It's going to cost some people around a thousand a month just to heat their houses. Where are they going to get it?
Oil has already gone beyond the ability of a lot of people to pay for it around here. I guess that's demand destruction in action. Somebody in some other state can now use that energy to heat up their jacuzzi. Peak oil is just getting started. I always thought that 2007-08 was going to be the winter of our discontent.
Peak oil is right on schedule, in my opinion. _________________ Deep in the mud and slime of things, even there, something sings.
Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 11:21 pm Post subject: Re: Peak Oil: The Big Fizzle
I don't know what kind of crap JD is trying to pull. You fight empty rhetoric with empty rhetoric. By his logic we shouldn't even be talking about anything because it was all preordained almost 50 years ago.
Joined: Sep 25, 2004 Posts: 4542 Location: Boston, MA
Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 11:35 pm Post subject: Re: Peak Oil: The Big Fizzle
WebHubbleTelescope wrote:
I don't know what kind of crap JD is trying to pull. You fight empty rhetoric with empty rhetoric. By his logic we shouldn't even be talking about anything because it was all preordained almost 50 years ago.
Hmm?
He's saying that oil peaked 2 years ago and yet the global economy is still growing briskly.
Peak Oil is a non-event, in his opinion.
It's not empty rhetoric. He's giving charts which indicate that oil production has in fact peaked but that it is not causing nearly as many problems because non-oil energy production is picking up the slack.
As an earlier poster mentioned, heating oil prices are causing hardship for some people and demand destruction is occurring.
This was known to the "readership" of PO.com for a while now.
While I do not necessarily agree that Peak Oil is a non-event (I think it signals the beginning of a societal revolution), I agree that in terms of global civilizational collapse...Peak Oil will not be the deciding factor.
If you read some of the earlier work posted on this forum, Peak Oil and its related consequences were often cited as future events that would cause global collapse. Peak Oil was seen as the point at which the world would stop growing and start falling apart.
Now the discussion has shifted away from Peak Oil and into conspiracies, geopolitics, peak phosphorus, and the rest. _________________ "www.peakoil.com is the Myspace of the Apocalypse."
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1988 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 11:49 pm Post subject: Re: Peak Oil: The Big Fizzle
Dezakin wrote:
When you have reserves in the hundreds of billions of barrels accessible by surface mining, and resources in the trillions of barrrels potentially accessible with advanced in-situ techniques, you can set the flow rate as high as capital allows.
With surface mining its simply a matter of building more trucks. With In situ techniques its often a matter of simply building more infrastructure.
Would that it were that simple. I wonder why it's taken so long to "ramp up" to even a million barrels per day. No matter how vast the resource, it becomes more and more difficult to ramp up, as the quality goes down. Even if the quality is uniform (which you are claiming, though haven't supported) it will get harder and harder because there are bottlenecks in manpower, transport routes, infrastructure and other resources. You seem to live in a world where limits are only the ones that you acknowledge.
Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 12:28 am Post subject: Re: Peak Oil: The Big Fizzle
Revi wrote:
We see the problem with a declining amount of cheap oil more here in Maine. We have a lot of people who have low or moderate incomes that are having a very hard time this winter paying for heating oil. LIHEAP is only covering about one month's worth of oil this year for people who make less than $11,000. It's going to cost some people around a thousand a month just to heat their houses. Where are they going to get it?
Hopefully, they won't get it. Do you realize what a preposterous thing you are saying? Why in the world could it ever, possibly, cost $1000/month to heat a person/family? The human body is a relatively small object which only takes up about 0.2m^3 of volume.
$1000/month is off-the-charts insane. Here's some simple tips:
1) Dress warm in the house. Wear a hat, down jacket, long underwear, thermal pants, a couple of pairs of heavy duty socks etc. Remember, people walk around in sub-zero temperatures without heaters all the time. It's called insulating yourself. If you're poor, improvise. The homeless guys around here wrap themselves in cardboard and newspapers.
2) Don't heat "the house". Heat the people in the house. Designate a small room to be the living room. Seal off and insulate that space, put the TV/internet and all the people in there, and heat it with a $25 space heater.
You can have two 1000watt space heaters blasting in there all day long, every day for $100/month at current Maine electricity prices. Use electric blankets.
3) Turn off the heat when you sleep and leave the house.
4) Spend your days at the public library, senior center or some other heated facility.
5) If you can't handle the above, then move. To a warmer climate.
People don't need a $1000/month handout to waste a depleting precious resource. They need more like a few hundred dollars to go buy a new in-house wardrobe, and attend mandatory energy conservation classes. _________________ A periscope up every ass!
Last edited by JohnDenver on Wed Dec 12, 2007 12:44 am; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 12:42 am Post subject: Re: Peak Oil: The Big Fizzle
Revi wrote:
It's going to cost some people around a thousand a month just to heat their houses. Where are they going to get it?
Geez, Iver I just ran another calculation on this. Apparently kerosene prices in the Northeast (NY) are roughly $3.50/gallon. Doing the math, you are saying that it takes roughly 10 gallons of kerosene to keep a person warm for one day. 10 gallons of kerosene actually takes up more volume than the average person. Do you really need a person's volume in oil to keep that person warm for one day? I don't think so. _________________ A periscope up every ass!
Joined: May 07, 2007 Posts: 434 Location: Adelaide, South Australia
Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 12:51 am Post subject: Re: Peak Oil: The Big Fizzle
JohnDenver wrote:
Concerned wrote:
We are still waiting for your techno fixes, space elevators and unlimited nano solar, cold fusion <insert favorite energy delusion>
Long term, they'll be there. That's not the solution to PO, though. The solution to peak oil is... the moped, and the teeny-tiny EV:
Quote:
What were oil prices 4 years ago? 2 years ago? Last year? Whats your guess for next year at this time?
Who cares? I don't drive.
Take a look at the rules for the latest X Prize competition (autmotive) (http://auto.xprize.org/), for a vehicle capable of 100MPG efficiency or higher). People don't want teeny tiny EV's, they want something close to the standard mid-size passenger sedan, with the aforementioned efficiency while still doing 0-60MPH in < 10 seconds. Have you ever rode a motorbike or scooter in bad winter weather, when it's snowing or raining. It's no fun and down-right dangerous. _________________ "That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top, well I say, <censored by peakoil.com> floats"
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1988 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 1:48 am Post subject: Re: Peak Oil: The Big Fizzle
JohnDenver wrote:
So how is it that the world economy is growing with declining oil production, and flat liquids production?
Perhaps you'd like to try an explanation, JD?
For me, oil consumption has continued to grow slowly, in the rich nations, that have the least energy intensive economies, and that can afford the high prices (pricing those in poorer countries out of the market). But economic growth has slowed, with many analysts worried about a recession, just around the corner.
All liquids production has held up, if a little bumpy, and the IEA reported a large increase in October (though later downward revisions are common). So the rich economies have managed to hold on.
It's far too early to say if oil has peaked or if we've seen the worst effects, if it already has peaked. Oil is so ingrained in everything we do and use that it is hard to see how a decline in such a dense form of energy, especially liquid energy for transport (98% of transport energy is oil) could not have a detrimental effect to economies and societies.
Though some expect, or would not be surprised by, a rapid economic decline, this doesn't mean all peak oilers (as you put it) expect that. But to take a year and a half of plateau (depending on the data you use) and pronounce peak a damp squib is extremely premature.
Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:21 am Post subject: Re: Peak Oil: The Big Fizzle
TonyPrep wrote:
Dezakin wrote:
When you have reserves in the hundreds of billions of barrels accessible by surface mining, and resources in the trillions of barrrels potentially accessible with advanced in-situ techniques, you can set the flow rate as high as capital allows.
With surface mining its simply a matter of building more trucks. With In situ techniques its often a matter of simply building more infrastructure.
Would that it were that simple. I wonder why it's taken so long to "ramp up" to even a million barrels per day. No matter how vast the resource, it becomes more and more difficult to ramp up, as the quality goes down. Even if the quality is uniform (which you are claiming, though haven't supported) it will get harder and harder because there are bottlenecks in manpower, transport routes, infrastructure and other resources. You seem to live in a world where limits are only the ones that you acknowledge.
What a lovely strawman. I never said there weren't bottlenecks.
The biggest obsticle to tar sands production is capital and labor being locked away in other, more productive ventures. If conventional oil goes into terminal decline overnight, where do you think the capital and labor will flow?
I'm betting capital and labor wont go into terminal decline nearly as soon as the continual predictions here.
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1988 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:26 am Post subject: Re: Peak Oil: The Big Fizzle
Dezakin wrote:
The biggest obsticle to tar sands production is capital and labor being locked away in other, more productive ventures. If conventional oil goes into terminal decline overnight, where do you think the capital and labor will flow?
I'm betting capital and labor wont go into terminal decline nearly as soon as the continual predictions here.
Do you think it will take the same amounts of capital and labour to produce as much net energy from tar sands as from conventional crude?
For heating oil customers, a bad situation got even worse. Those who heat with heating oil are expected to pay a record $1,841 on average from October through March, up 25.6% from last year and $56 more than originally forecast. Heating oil bills are expected to be more than double those seen four years ago.
EIA has heating oil price history. Was about a buck a gallon in the late 90s.
Quote:
4) Spend your days at the public library, senior center or some other heated facility.
4.5) Quit job. Put children up for adoption. Take elders to distant cities and leave them there.
_________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
I will not abide another toe.
Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 3:14 am Post subject: Re: Peak Oil: The Big Fizzle
TonyPrep wrote:
Dezakin wrote:
The biggest obsticle to tar sands production is capital and labor being locked away in other, more productive ventures. If conventional oil goes into terminal decline overnight, where do you think the capital and labor will flow?
I'm betting capital and labor wont go into terminal decline nearly as soon as the continual predictions here.
Do you think it will take the same amounts of capital and labour to produce as much net energy from tar sands as from conventional crude?
Of course not. But when oil prices started to rise after the early 90's and oil companies were left hanging with the asian financial crisis, they dont want to be left hanging ever again when the price falls. And second, there is more demand for capital than oil production. You can put your money in conventional crude with high profit margins and potentially low growth rates, unconventional crude with low profit margins and potentially high growth rates, or plough it into software or consumer goods or some other thing that as an investor you might think is more likely to make you money.
If conventional crude drys up, eventually unconvential oil supply (tar sands, coal liquefaction, orinco extra heavy, whatever) will suck up all the investment capital from conventional crude and then some. This sucks up some of the potential productive capacity of other parts of the economy and is slightly inflationary in itself...
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