[Carlhole]

Al Fin Energy

Peak oil has taken on the trappings of an apocalyptic religion recently. True believers tout "Hubbert Curves" and "Simmons Depletion Analyses" in circular jerkulars and echo choruses across the webosphere. Oil should be well over $500 a barrel by now, according to not-so-distant predictions of the peakers -- some dead and some alive. But oil is in the $80 range largely due to a combination of the weak Obama dollar, the speculative lemming's rush to a safe investment haven, and a misleading surge in demand from India, China, and Brasil.

But ignoring the doomseekers, what are the actual hydrocarbon resources which we have to deal with? Below are some rather conservative early estimates of hydrocarbon resources -- neglecting the vast terrestrial and sub-sea coal and methane clathrate resources. It may take a while to achieve "peak oil" when you consider how quickly industry is developing means of converting these unconventional hydrocarbons to conventional liquid fuels.

The outlook expressed above is remarkably rosy when viewed from a doomer's perspective. But in reality, the resource estimates are likely to be far too low in the long run.

It is all a moot point, however, because long before conventional oil is exhausted, humans in advanced countries will have begun to shift to resources which are essentially inexhaustible, such as advanced interlocking fuel cycles of nuclear fission, microbial biofuels, and perhaps nuclear fusion.

I know it hurts but it's good for you. Groupthink is bad...very, very bad.

[Keith_McClary]

There's a slight differences between "resources" and "reserves".

For example, the Great Lakes are full of fresh water resources and there are plenty of methane resources on Saturn.

PS: And there's a 2 inch layer of BP oil on the Gulf floor. That's a resource.

[eXpat]

As Phantoms of Peak Oil Fade into Dawn

Only in your dreams.

[EnergyUnlimited]

As Phantoms of Peak Oil Fade into Dawn

...and Skynet rises up...

[americandream]

I know it hurts but it's good for you. Groupthink is bad...very, very bad.

The problem with doomerism and anti-doomerism is that both sets of proponents have seldom thought through the essential core characteristic of capitalism. They haven't contemplated its causes and effects (it's fundamentals), it's resilience and adaptability, its natural tendencies and finally it's terminal contradictions as it comes to the fore at the margins of acculturated obsolescence, embedding itself in even the remotest jungles of this planet. Thses issues are dominated by emotion and need as people labour under a stupor induced by affluence generated boredom or impatiently await the dawn of an era of immortality and technological singularity.

[Outcast_Searcher]

... But oil is in the $80 range largely due to a combination of the weak Obama dollar, the speculative lemming's rush to a safe investment haven, and a misleading surge in demand from India, China, and Brasil.

Aside from the more wild-eyed of the observers, the problem isn't a lack of hydrocarbons, it's a lack of cheap-enough-to-burn hydrocarbons in the intermediate term not to CRUSH the global middle class economically.

So, increasing demand from the third world is just brushed off as "misleading"? 3 BILLION folks who want to have family cars ASAP won't add meaningful demand before enough of the promised new technologies work out great (if they in fact do)? And meanwhile our global climate will continue to ignore all the added pollution?

This sort of casual dismissiveness of serious issues is just as lacking in credibility (IMO) as the wild-eyed doomers predicting multi-hundred barrel dollar oil (real soon now) every year.

And have you noticed -- for 40 years the new technologies all set to save us will be effective AND cheap in "about a decade or so"? And yet, we're still waiting for any of them to be competive OR meaningfully scaled.

Yeah, capitalism is great! Have you noticed the masses, led by the left are actively trying to kill its incentives to succeed in most of the first world?

No wonder it's so rare to get the two sides (I sit smack in the middle) to have meaningful discussions instead of cite the other side for lack of credibility.

Overoptimism. Overpessimism. Never the twain shall find a workable compromise.

[Xenophobe]

I know it hurts but it's good for you. Groupthink is bad...very, very bad.

circular jerkulars.....hysterical

[Sixstrings]

The problem with doomerism and anti-doomerism is that both sets of proponents have seldom thought through the essential core characteristic of capitalism. They haven't contemplated its causes and effects (it's fundamentals), it's resilience and adaptability...

Well I've never doubted the power and resiliency of market forces. When I've brought it up from time to time, just even mentioning the word market caused some folks to jump on me like I'm a cornucopian.

You can't deny basic market forces, it's like denying gravity. Even if every last drop of oil runs out that doesn't mean capitalism stops -- even the ancient Greeks and Romans had basic capitalism.

Now that doesn't mean that the status quo is just fine; we don't really have a free market, we're drifting more toward a command economy. And things could be a lot more equitable -- adopting socialism wouldn't mean getting rid of capitalism.

But this core recognition of market forces, the idea that necessity is the mother of ivention and that the market drives solutions to problems as they arise, is what keeps me from ever being an uber doomer.

[TommyJefferson]

When I arrived anyone predicted $147/barrel oil would have been laughed off this site. Called a "doomer."

Bull****. The P.O.com consensus was that society would not last past 2009.

[Xenophobe]

There's a slight differences between "resources" and "reserves".

Yes, and very few people, nearly none of them Peakers, understand that. Never figured out why.

[Keith_McClary]

The article copies data from:
The Myth of Peak Oil and Why Peak Oil is Overrated
which doesn't give a source.

[Serial_Worrier]

* JIT delivery to supermarkets and big-box retailers is still humming
* Chain restaurants are still packed
* highways are packed
* gas is still $3/gallon nationwide average

keep it up doomers, PURE entertainment

[Fiddlerdave]

* JIT delivery to supermarkets and big-box retailers is still humming
* Chain restaurants are still packed
* highways are packed
* gas is still $3/gallon nationwide average

keep it up doomers, PURE entertainment

And 20% of the population that was working is now permanently unemployed. They have been spending their savings into nonexistence. Two I know are selling ther relatively new cars to buy junkers and have another part of a year living expenses before homelessness. Most of the currently working middle class are experiencing larger and larger wage and benefit losses while inflation revs up. Others are frantically trying to find ways to help seriously physically and mentally disabled people find ways to live as their support programs are cut off because of government budget cuts.

It is entertaining to you only because you seem to have no ability to understand what the statistics mean to the people in the world outside your own door. And you pay no attention to those weak and helpless on the edge who are the first to go out of the lifeboats.

[Golgo13]

When I arrived anyone predicted $147/barrel oil would have been laughed off this site. Called a "doomer."

Bullshit. The P.O.com consensus was that society would not last past 2009.

That is quite a challenge. I don't think you know what you are talking about. I dare you to submit evidence this "consensus."

I am one of the oldest members here and I never predicted the "end of society."

I've been around here a while and I don't remember people claiming it was the EOTWAWKI before the turn of the decade.

[Keith_McClary]

I seem to remember Cornies presenting graphs showing the real price of oil (and other commodities) declining over decades. They would confidently predict this to continue for the foreseeable future, until oil is replaced by something cheaper, better and more abundant.

I haven't seen that one lately.

We should get up an archeological expedition to dig down into those 2004 threads.

[Ibon]

As we descend into the consequences of overshoot there is no demarcation of before and after where everyone one day was ignorant and the next day cognizant of peak oil and related symptoms of overshoot. Like the hour hand of a clock the unwinding happens as people continue to go about their lives.

For this reason we see many posters here claiming that peak oil still hasn't happened or hasn't caused any major disruption on one hand and others who bring forth evidence that it does.

Both sides of this polarity are actually mistaken.

The doomer who sees collapse doesn't quite understand that the whole descent into the die-off will happen with folks still seeing their day to day life as normative and still be caught up in the dramas of survival. There will remain a percentage of the population defending a weakening status quo while a greater percentage increasing become disenfranchised. This descent does not bring with it any real revolution or civil war or even any real enlightenment about the ultimate cause which is indeed overshoot. In fact the disenfranchised very quickly find their new situation as a new "status quo" So doomers can wait in vain until their position is validated. It wont ever happen.

On the other hand those anti-doomers will continue to point to a normative status quo still functioning way down the slope of descent and continue to defend a BAU position. They will always look upon doomers as loser pessimists who are stuck in a fatalism.

You see the whole argument is rather pointless.

Every day is just another normal defined as normal by whatever the current conditions of the time. We will still be calling it a normal day even when we are down to 1 billion humans on the planet.

Jared Diamond does discuss this phenomenon with the last tree standing on the chapter about the Easter Islanders. It is worth a review of that to understand why the polemic exists regarding the doomer vs anti doomer.

Have a nice day

[Xenophobe]

And 20% of the population that was working is now permanently unemployed.

Reference please. Its bad enough that people confuse, and add in, underemployment with unemployment, but when that isn't scary enough now they must start using the word PERMANENT as though all of those people will never find work, versus these mortgage brokers finding work MAKING AS MUCH MONEY AS THEY USED TO IN A BUBBLE ECONOMY.

Which certainly ain't the same thing. Bummer for mortgage brokers, but stop trying to make it sound worse than it is.

And you pay no attention to those weak and helpless on the edge who are the first to go out of the lifeboats.

My recommendation would be a career change, my shop just hired another half dozen...of course..none of them have experience with being mortgage brokers or real estate agents. They are actually required to have a degree of value and some math training and experience.

More math degrees! Fewer real estate agent certifications!