[Graeme]

Are peakers barking up the wrong tree? What do people here think of this?

The church of Peak Oil

This paper's main editorial page carried a piece last week by Peak-Oil promoter Richard Heinberg of the California-based Post Carbon Institute. It noted that Mr. Heinberg was due to speak in Toronto on Monday night. Call me a masochist, but I decided to attend. To say that I did so with an open mind would be untrue. But then I don't approach astrology or Fidel Castro with an open mind either.

The problem with Peak Oil the theory isn't that it's wrong in noting that industry depletes resources, and that oil may, sooner or later, reach a production plateau, it's that it sees those facts through a moralistically-charged and economically-challenged lens. It also embodies extraordinary faith in Big Government and grass roots activism.


PO Theorists fail -- or more precisely refuse -- to grasp that the best method of dealing with any form of commercial scarcity is market-based ingenuity, not some weird combination of Big Brother and Hippie co-ops.

financialpost

[emersonbiggins]

I think I see a Deux ex Machina adherent who sees peak oil as a huge threat to a technotopian future, and the "civilized" way of life (of 20th century vintage, anyways) in general - firmly entrenched in the first stage of grief, with pangs of the second appearing amidst the rest of the blather.

[Ludi]

Market based ingenuity! The God of the Market will save us!

The Church of The Market!

[Loki]

The piece is boilerplate right-wing spew, chock full of half truths and faith-based delusion. Really not worth parsing.

[Graeme]

Well, how dare he challenge the mindset of Peakers! The indignation of it all.

I think he is partly correct in that the market is adjusting to peak oil by shifting to gas, investing in renewables, etc. What he fails to recognise is that peak oil is a symptom of a wider problem. That is increasing global population depleting finite resources in the name of the market! The "solution" is to stabilize our growing population and use a sustainable market system which is not readily available yet.

[Ludi]

Well, how dare he challenge the mindset of Peakers! The indignation of it all.

How dare we challenge the mindset of the Market! The indignation of it all!

All hail the Market!

[shortonsense]

You have to admit that it hasn't done all that bad so far for continuously kicking the can down the road...again...and again...and again....

[Graeme]

How dare we challenge the mindset of the Market! The indignation of it all! All hail the Market!

What would you advocate instead?

[mos6507]

The piece is boilerplate right-wing spew, chock full of half truths and faith-based delusion. Really not worth parsing.

And yet I suspect it was well received by the masses, as was Michael Lynch's WSJ piece.

[mos6507]

You have to admit that it hasn't done all that bad so far for continuously kicking the can down the road...again...and again...and again....

That's what anybody with a debt problem feels until they hit their credit limit. We've just about used up our ecological credit limit, so to speak.

[americandream]

Nothing new here. Sounds like another sermon from a high priest of the Quantitatively Eased "Free Market"

Move along.

Well, how dare he challenge the mindset of Peakers! The indignation of it all.

I think he is partly correct in that the market is adjusting to peak oil by shifting to gas, investing in renewables, etc. What he fails to recognise is that peak oil is a symptom of a wider problem. That is increasing global population depleting finite resources in the name of the market! The "solution" is to stabilize our growing population and use a sustainable market system which is not readily available yet.

[americandream]

Less windbagging from a failed ideology.

What would you advocate instead?

[eastbay]

The piece is boilerplate right-wing spew, chock full of half truths and faith-based delusion. Really not worth parsing.

My sentiments precisely. As usual.

[mos6507]

Less windbagging from a failed ideology.

There is more to having an ideology than merely being against something, unless you're an anarchistic nihilist or something (many doomers are).

[americandream]

Who says so?

The Free Market is an idealised system whose supporters presume to let forth on the opinions of those who would either prefer to reign it in or destroy it for a variety of reasons (including its rapacious appetite with resourcing) and who have a tendency to pontificate on these matters in the midst of it's very public and costly rescue. That in my book is "windbagging".

And you know what my politcal views are. I've aired them frequently enough.

Less windbagging from a failed ideology.

There is more to having an ideology than merely being against something, unless you're an anarchistic nihilist or something (many doomers are).

[Plantagenet]

When it comes to energy, the free market is an efficient means of calculating EROI.

As the need to replace oil grows, the free market will tend to select and invest in those kinds of alternative energies that have the highest EROI, because these will also yield the highest profits for a given investment.

Advocates of various kinds of alternative energy technologies that are now being heavily subsidized by the government tend not to like the free market because some alternative energies have very low or even negative EROIs, and Mr. Market won't give the answers they want or expect for their favorite kind of subsidized energy.

Even two years ago, who imagined that shale gas would turn out to be so widespread and abundant? Now, for some period of years, all the planned investment and blue sky research from the DOE and all the federal subsidies for corn ethanol, geothermal, solar and wind can't make those energy supplies economically competitive with what seems to be a temporary surplus of cheap and abundant shale gas.

The free market----its just so.........inconvenient....... when we are planning for the future.

[americandream]

If it's as efficient as you make out, why have we had to and are still having to cover its ass with a huge injection of public funds. Frankly, the sums involved would have funded a planet sized USSR and still left us cash and resources to spare a few lifetimes. The USSR went down bankrupted trying to bring modernity to the Islamic world, global capitalism's overspend was on what...caviare and call-girls, of a Madoff magnitude. If this is efficiency, give me inefficiency any day.

When it comes to energy, the free market is an efficient means of calculating EROI.

As the need to replace oil grows, the free market will tend to select and invest in those kinds of alternative energies that have the highest EROI, because these will also yield the highest profits for a given investment.

Advocates of various kinds of alternative energy technologies that are now being heavily subsidized by the government tend not to like the free market because some alternative energies have very low or even negative EROIs, and Mr. Market won't give the answers they want or expect for their favorite kind of subsidized energy.

Even two years ago, who imagined that shale gas would turn out to be so widespread and abundant? Now, for some period of years, all the planned investment and blue sky research from the DOE and all the federal subsidies for corn ethanol, geothermal, solar and wind can't make those energy supplies economically competitive with what seems to be a temporary surplus of cheap and abundant shale gas.

The free market----its just so.........inconvenient....... when we are planning for the future.

[mos6507]

And you know what my politcal views are. I've aired them frequently enough.

No, I don't recall what you support. All I hear is what you're against.

[mos6507]

When it comes to energy, the free market is an efficient means of calculating EROI.

The giant hole is that EXTERNALIZED costs are not factored in.

If we had a punitive carbon tax that factored in the lifecycle damage of the pollution then alternatives would start to look a lot better even now.