[Dybbuk]

Although I think widely divergent outcomes are possible vis-a-vis energy production/scarcity, with both the corny and doomer scenarios as plausible, I can't help but find myself sympathetic to the peak oil crowd, simply because of how the topic is misreported in the press. Here's how it almost always plays out...

Peak Oil Advocate [quietly, in an obscure publication or forum]: We're not running out of oil. But we may soon reach the point where the current production rate of oil will start to decline, despite our best efforts. This doesn't mean "the end of the world", necessarily, but it could have serious consequences for the way of life we've become accustomed to.
Anti-Peak Oil Pundit [loudly, in a mainstream venue]: Peak Oilers say that we're running out of oil, and it's end of the world!!!!!!
PO: But....
Anti-PO: But here, look! Here are some statistics that show we're not running out of oil! Hahaha! The peak-oilers are a bunch of kooks!! Don't listen to them! Don't worry, be happy!!
PO: But....
Newscaster: There you have it, folks! Peak oil may not have a leg to stand on! Tune in next week...

[SeaGypsy]

Yep. Never mind we have not gone enough above 2008 peak to call it anything besides an extension or plateau, despite as you say; 'our best efforts'. Peak oil is the fundamental cause of the ongoing global economic disaster 'long emergency'. Our only solace as 'peakers': knowing we know.

[ROCKMAN]

SeaGypsy – I’ll fall back on one of my favorite philosophies: Why I don’t try to teach pigs to roller skate: It only frustrates me and pisses the pigs off.

Lots of examples but I’ll offer just one. Back when folks began to panic over shale frac’ng in the NE I posted to a number of local MSM sites and offered my unasked for advice: stop focusing just on the frac’ng process itself and pay more attention to the frac fluid disposal process. Told them about the few bandit disposal companies we still have in Texas. We call them “midnight haulers”: they haul in the early morning hours and dump that crap on the ground when no one was looking. Told them about how tight both Texas and especially La. regulated AND enforced proper disposal. Of course, now we're seeing a lot of stories about the prime source of contamination is from illegal dumping and not directly from the frac'ing operation. Would have been nice if they had focused there several years ago.

I didn’t get one single response. Often my posts never showed up. Maybe because I posted as a Texas petroleum geologist and thus anything I said had to be a lie. Not the first time I’ve run into that. The Sierra Club long ago rejected my help on another disposal issue. Don’t know if I would have made a difference but they lost the battle. And I was told their biggest weakness was on technical matters…stuff I could have helped them with. I did have a few productive chats with individuals in the region that saw me on the Oil Drum. They appreciated my insights and also wondered why they never heard such specific warnings from their local media. Recently got a nice note from one of those mineral owners I gave some help to putting the screws to a company that wanted to lease from him. Very satisfying for me. Yes: we will eat our own if the right opportunity presents itself.

So I stopped wasting my time contacting the MSM. If the pigs don’t want to roller skate just leave them alone. LOL.

[ennui2]

There has been MSM reportage of peak-oil. Remember Earth 2100? Remember "The Incredible Journey of Oil"? It's just that these things wax and wane. Interest in peak-oil cratered in the fall of 2008 when the oil price tanked with the economy. It also didn't help that people like Matt Simmons seemed to go totally insane after the Macondo leak. Blaming the MSM is really somewhat of a convenient excuse on the part of peakers. The fact of the matter is that people in general just don't care. They are more interested in whether they have a job, and most agree (including me) that the credit crisis caused the recession and current oil prices are not the primary driver keeping the economy from recovering, but rather the lingering effects of quantitative-easing (ala the Great Depression).

[SeaGypsy]

For sure the US RE bubble burst was the trigger for 08, but if that's all it was, why the need for ever more QE? Fact is the economy has become all about bubbles, rather than substance. The key substance for all economic activity is oil. Cheap oil kept the US RE bubble going until it wasn't cheap anymore. How long the bubble would have expanded without oil price explosion is anyone's guess; arguing that there is a disconnect is disingenuous.

[ennui2]

"why the need for ever more QE?"

There are many who would say that QE never solves these sorts of problems, only kicking the can down the road to eventual currency collapse. In fact, I'd say a great many americans agree with this sentiment, the tea party crowd that support Ron Paul who would like us to abolish the fed and go back on the gold standard. I'm sure many here would also agree with that sentiment, but they blend in the peak-oil sauce into their narrative as it suits them.

What I said back in 2008 and I agree with now is that speculators were a big factor in the runup to $147/bbl oil. I have posted on numerous occasions the 60-minutes piece that blew the lid on the speculative bubble on oil. So even when you look at the oil spike and only the oil spike, there was more going on than a geologically-induced supply-crunch.

As for the economic link between oil and the economy, yes, but even that is simplistic. It's not just "oil" that drives the economy, but fossil-fuel as a whole. When you broaden your perspective to look at the entire fossil fuel landscape, there is still a whole lot of fossil fuel with enough EROEI to keep BAU going for a while yet. Unconventional oil, fracked gas, coal, and maybe even methane hydrates. I don't like the fact that so much fossil fuel is around, as it is cooking the planet, but after researching this issue for so many years, I can't deny that fossil fuels are still plentiful. Are they as plentiful as they were, let's say 50 years ago? No. But when you factor in the advanced technology that has been brought online, in combination with efficiency improvements and the move to an information-based economy in the first-world, then THAT is what nets you this prolonged plateau where the system as we know it is kind of muddling through.

This moderate narrative is nowhere near as dramatic as Olduvai blackouts and the like, which is why I doubt many here will agree with it. However, having a very simplistic 1:1 correlation between the economy and oil prices is a bankrupt way of thinking. Coal and gas are largely responsible for keeping the lights on, and there's already a lot of movement to switch long-haul trucks to gas. Gas is the main input to nitrogen fertilizer, not oil. The actual amount of oil used to, let's say, ship crap from China to the US, or to power one of those combines in the plains, represents a small portion of the final price of the food or product. And a monthly payment on a car and insurance is usually going to be worse than what you pay for gas, even at $4-5 a gallon, such that lifestyle changes such as simply driving a fairly efficient car that is owned free-and-clear is enough to buffet one from high-priced gas, let alone brown-bagging it for lunch, etc...

Do you see where I'm going with this? It's simply NOT THAT BAD yet. I remember the pre-911 roaring 1990s. We will never get back to that again. But the fact is, we still have our shopping malls, or multiplexes, our 3D TVs, and our smart-phones. Plus enough cheap food to die of obesity even if you're poor. It's NOT...THAT...BAD...YET.

[Plantagenet]

It's not just "oil" that drives the economy, but fossil-fuel as a whole. When you broaden your perspective to look at the entire fossil fuel landscape, there is still a whole lot of fossil fuel with enough EROEI to keep BAU going for a while yet. Unconventional oil, fracked gas, coal, and maybe even methane hydrates. I don't like the fact that so much fossil fuel is around, as it is cooking the planet, but after researching this issue for so many years, I can't deny that fossil fuels are still plentiful. Are they as plentiful as they were, let's say 50 years ago? No. But when you factor in the advanced technology that has been brought online, in combination with efficiency improvements and the move to an information-based economy in the first-world, then THAT is what nets you this prolonged plateau where the system as we know it is kind of muddling through.

This moderate narrative is nowhere near as dramatic as Olduvai blackouts and the like, which is why I doubt many here will agree with it.

I agree 100%.

Not only are there are a lot of fossil fuels still available, but as oil becomes more expensive at least part of the transportation system can be shifted to electricity and natural gas.

But I wouldn't get too optimistic just yet....we are still on the "undulating plateau" part of the peak oil trajectory. Things will get much more difficult a few years out when global oil production actually starts to decline---.

[Dybbuk]

There has been MSM reportage of peak-oil. Remember Earth 2100? Remember "The Incredible Journey of Oil"? It's just that these things wax and wane.

My problem isn't so much with the number of news stories; it's that when there are stories, they are filled with distortions and straw men. The two most common straw man tactics used in anti-peak oil opinion pieces are:

1. The writer claims that the peak oil argument can be summed up as "WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF OIL!!!". The writer then shows some data to demonstrate that we're not running out of oil (yet), and concludes that peak oil people are kooks and shouldn't be listened to. The article will probably have little or no mention of production rates, which is what peak oil is really all about.
2. The "Power of Now" philosophy: the writer shows some data which indicates that oil production probably hasn't peaked yet. His conclusion is therefore that there is no problem whatsoever, and anyone who even tries to discuss the topic is a silly alarmist. The implied claim is that the peak oil argument is that "THE PEAK HAS ALREADY HAPPENED" (when that is not true), and concludes that peak oil people are kooks and shouldn't be listened to. Not only does this distort the peak oil position, it also makes an implied value judgement that the future doesn't matter, all that matters is right now (and maybe the next few years).

To make an analogy...it would be like publishing an article by a climate change skeptic, whose argument is:
1. Climate change alarmists say that ocean levels have risen five feet because of global warming.
2. Here's some data to show that ocean levels have risen only 7 inches (so far).
3. Therefore, climate change alarmists are obviously kooks. So logically there must be no climate change problem. Forget about this issue and move on to something else.

...ignoring the fact that no climate change alarmists, to my knowledge, claim that ocean levels have risen five feet (yet).

[Keith_McClary]

Anti-PO: But here, look! Here are some statistics that show we're not running out of oil! Hahaha!

Usually not statistics, just "huge", "enormous", etc. One article on PO.com news recently added "staggering" to the list.

Another PO.com Corny news article raved about the huge industrial areas servicing Brazilian deepwater projects. Didn't take the message that the hugely expensive effort was driven by high prices, in turn driven by lack of easy oil.

[ennui2]

Peakers also have problems with the details.

At what price-point will BAU truly collapse? And don't say we already collapsed, because I'm talking about REAL collapse, the mad max stuff, not a deep extended recession, the zombie biker main-event when this site is gone and all the arch-doomers have to stand vigilant to protect their 'preps'?

It was actually Matt Simmons who said that oil was incredibly cheap for what it does, and in that respect, he was right. What people complain about as far as high gas prices is one thing, but what actually causes TEOTWAWKI is quite different.

No doomers have been able to truly fill in that variable. Years ago when I first joined this site, most agreed that steady oil around $100/bbl would be zombie-biker-land. They were wrong. The world CAN in fact function pretty much in a recognizably BAU-way with oil hovering around $100/bbl. And at that pricepoint, all the unconventional sh*t starts to be economical, which is why the fracking and the tar-sands are going gangbusters. And despite the worse EROEI and the higher emissions, there's enough of this unconventional stuff to stay on this plateau for some time yet. How long, I don't know, but probably some years at least, if not the decades predicted by Yergin (as much as I dislike the guy).

Now "collapse" can be driven by a combination of factors. Once you push things forward by a few decades, climate change becomes that much more severe and global population that much higher, stressing carrying capacity. All the limits on limits to growth kind of come to a crescendo, and you can get that whole death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts. But it's certainly more than JUST the peak oil part.

Now if oil depletion really played out the way sites like The Oil Drum were warning us about back in 2005-2006 when they were calling peak, we'd have had to triage peak-oil pretty much in isolation, separate from the worst of global warming and population growth. But I don't see it leading the pack anymore. I just see it blending in.

[Keith_McClary]

oil around $100/bbl would be zombie-biker-land. They were wrong.

Turns out, it's zombie-bankster-land.

[Beery1]

Years ago when I first joined this site, most agreed that steady oil around $100/bbl would be zombie-biker-land.

That's quite a sweeping accusation. You must have a myriad of examples to support your point. Cite your numerous examples of 'most' here claiming any such thing, or admit it just ain't true.

I've been here for a few years (most of them under my lost 'Beery' account) and I have never seen 'most' people here agree on anything at all. As for zombie biker land, there has always been a small minority arguing for it - probably about the same number as are always arguing for a bright shiny land of plenty. But 'most'? I call bullshit.

Also, the idea that $100/bbl oil might prove catastrophic might yet be proven right. The world of $100/bbl oil is hardly a place where everything is just hunky-dory. We have a lot of problems and many countries are having trouble with food shortages, malnutrition, rioting and an inability to grow the economy. All of this can be linked to the price of oil. The whole world is on an economic knife edge right now, and whether we can even get out of the situation is in question. Clearly the old methods of dealing with these issues aren't working right now. If they continue to be used and if they continue not to work, then we face increased problems that could indeed lead to a serious unraveling of the current system.

[Pops]

Well folks, fact is, when it comes to peak oil WE are the MSM.

So if you want to improve peak oil journalism, write an article and send it to me and I'll put it on the front page.

--

Everyone fits PO and every other "Dot" (remember Dots?) into their readymade world view. If you expect Zombies, Zombies are around every corner, if zombies are your strawman of choice there is one to skewer at every turn. When I first came here in '04 I said I didn't think there would be an oil crash anytime soon, that my WAG was that peak wouldn't happen until [about now] and it would be shrouded in so many other crises that even then [now] it wouldn't be clear. Before that, as far back as '01/'02 when the dot.com bubble popped but RE prices in the SF Bay continued to rise I personally was more worried RE & credit bubbles. In fact the spare capacity squeeze in '08 was quite a surprise and scared me because I was beginning to think peak had already happened really without much warning. It seems pretty obvious we're just about there but it won't be an overnight event and Matt was right about one thing, we'll only know it in hindsight.

I'm completely happy to have made it through that with my small net worth still worth something. I figure I'm way ahead of where I'd have been if I'd done nothing since most "middle class" folks are still way behind and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to hang on to everything.

e2 asks what price will cause "collapse" a la Zombies, etc. Personally I don't really expect MZBs, at least not like some Rawles-esque armageddon scenario. Oil prices are more elastic than the most doomerish Peakers thought, especially in the medium term. Short term artificial shortages like in the '70s would drive prices very high just like they did then but that isn't the PO scenario. Someday $1k/bbl will probably be cheap but there is a lot of waste to be wrung out before that day. $1,000 oil simply can't be supported by anything resembling this economy for any period so of course demand would fall through the floor and the price would come down for a while.

For that reason I think it is a mistake to believe that oil at $100 is immaterial, 2 years at the highest average prices ever is pretty material in the overall scheme of things. It pretty obviously has reduced miles driven 7 or 8 percent and I'm sure it would certainly have fallen more if not for the nat. gas bubble in our landlocked market, decline of the workforce and government's borrowing. Fracing is a great diversion for MSM journalists like Diane Sawyer who said we are about to be the worlds larges exporter of oil but I'm more interested in Iraq and the sub-salt and whether Russia has peaked.

So I guess it depends on what a person was expecting, I'd have been as surprised as the most obtuse corny if I was scrawling this message on a scrap of human parchment instead of still posting it online but I'd be almost as surprised if I were still paying 97¢ a gallon.

You can complain that the worst didn't happen but I'm rather pleased.

[ralfy]

If collapse means the lack of one or more basic needs, then for the global population it has always been collapse.

In which case, what we are looking at is continuous economic growth needed to keep the middle class afloat, which in turn means selling more goods and services to a growing global middle class plus most of the world's population that want one or more needs fulfilled. According to the IEA, to ensure that, we will need the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every seven years.

Finally, if we look biocapacity needed to meet basic needs, then we are likely above the threshold:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _footprint

[ROCKMAN]

Pops - Excellent post IMHO. Everyone has their own image of the “bad times” and typically it differs how they see it for themselves and others. I live in very bimodal world. I work for a billionaire whose companies make 100’s of $millions per year of which he donates a huge chunk to charities in addition to paying my obscene salary as well as that of hundreds of others. He and his family will never be affected by a zombie world. Worse case they can cruise away on his 118’ sail boat…no diesel required. LOL. OTOH last night I dropped by some folks who were preparing for garage sale today. Part of the motivation was to help cover the husband and wife’s share of the car pool fuel they use to get to work. Three families share one car. They don’t live in zombie land…kids were playing and laughing, adults talking about marathon bombers and fertilizer plants blowing up. Nobody was starving…they really like my jambalaya. LOL.

Not a world many of us would care to share even with no zombies roaming around. How many more folks are going to be pushed towards this edge as we continue to stumble down the PO path? It ain’t zombie land but not a pretty picture either. Easy to minimize such when it’s not regularly visible. There’s already a lot of collapse in the US IMHO.

Being in Texas I’m not worried about zombies anyway…too much fire power here. LOL.

[Buddy_J]

In which case, what we are looking at is continuous economic growth needed to keep the middle class afloat, which in turn means selling more goods and services to a growing global middle class plus most of the world's population that want one or more needs fulfilled. According to the IEA, to ensure that, we will need the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every seven years.

As we have currently have found one in just the past 3 years, it does beg the question, can their future projections for economic activity hold true as long as this size of finding rate continues?

[Buddy_J]

Being in Texas I’m not worried about zombies anyway…too much fire power here. LOL.

It also doesn't hurt that when large amounts of economic activity are driven by energy exploration, development and distribution, it comes in handy to live somewhere that all those things are going on.

Rock, what do you think about peak oil "journalism", regardless of perspective. Certainly both sides seem to have valid points, and some 8 years on a plateau would seem to confirm both the hopes/fears of either side, but as of late there appear to be quite a few more "peak oil as hokum" articles than support for the duck and cover end of the spectrum.

[ennui2]

I'm not invoking the MZB meme as a strawman. I'm saying it like it is, folks. When I was last active on this site, there were threads about how to protect your preps. Boobytraps, the works. I have a mental block, but the guy who used to post diagrams of his small permaculture plot had a lively discussion with me about how he intended to go to some remote uninhabited island on the east coast and defend it from intruders (assuming he would be the first one to plant his flag). Then there are all the threads about whether city or country would be safer when TSHTF. I mean, seriously, do I have to go through and link to every single hard-crash doomer thread? OR maybe shall I dredge up LATOC and all of the even more extreme stuff they used to post? Do you really think all of these nightmare scenarios were in the context of some vague far-off date decades hence or instead were they predicated on us falling off the oil plateau at any time, and since "we eat oil" there would be food shortages and riots in the streets?

This is the main source of peakoil anxiety. Not necessarily an overnight crash, but a swift one nonetheless, and it's looking more and more to me like we will have what I call a "Medium Descent". It will feel Greer-like, but not take the 200+ years that Greer thinks it will. And the bread and butter peak oil posters believe (or believed) in hard crashes where we'd be planted firmly in survival mode in a matter of months or a few years tops.

I took a look through the archives from 2004 or so, before I showed up, and there was shaking in the knees over sustained $60 oil, even. So the idea of what the world would look like with high oil prices was totally out of step with what we've actually experienced. BAU, as it were, simply does not collapse even with oil at $100. There are all sorts of chronic problems, and yeah, we're post peak-affluence, but this is not TEOTWAWKI and none of us are forced to subsist on picked kale and spuds from the front-yard.

It doesn't mean that day won't come, but it DOES say that the predictive track-record of "peak oil journalism" from doomer sources hasn't been that accurate.

[Plantagenet]

e2 is right. There used to a sizable contingent of doomers posting here who thought collapse was imminent and were prepping various bunkers, cabins, boats, vans, etc. for their bugout holes.

The MSM will naturally seek out and feature the peak oil doomer kooks who hold such extreme viewpoints because they are a heck of lot more entertaining to the average TV viewer than some grey-haired professor who studies peak oil and wants to talk about his collection of well-documented spreadsheets showing oil depletion rates----


doomer kooks are very entertaining for the TV audience

[ralfy]

As we have currently have found one in just the past 3 years, it does beg the question, can their future projections for economic activity hold true as long as this size of finding rate continues?

From what I gathered, the IEA is referring to conventional production. With non-conventional production, the best-case scenario is a 9-pct increase in energy from all oil and gas sources worldwide during the next two decades, and that's assuming that conventional production doesn't drop. Demand has to increase by up to 2 pct per annum to maintain economic growth of around 4 pct, probably even more if we consider a growing global middle class.