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Peak Oil is History

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Re: Peak Oil is History

#11

Post by narrator »

jacoblyles wrote: post #9
chipsy wrote: post #4

I let myself get scared a little, as I should with any good peak oil story, and then went looking for an Achilles' Heel. "Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuel…

Econtalk had an episode about carbon shortage recently. It turns out that synthetic fuels manufactured from coal become economical far before petroleum is totally gone. And there are other more expensive technologies that come into play when the coal is gone. All the while, renewable energy is getting cheaper by the year. Here's the link. It is a fascinating podcast, though it wanders a bit near the end: http://www.e…

With Thorium reactors you can generate so much electricity you can convert CO2 into hydrocarbons directly. If for whatever dumb reason thorium reactors don't happen, yeah Fischer-Tropsche Coal to Oil is the way to go. Al Gore will be upset though at all your non-carbon neutrality, for what it's worth but they'll sure as all heck do it in China. Problem is is that building an industrial scale Fischer-Tropsch plant is a big undertaking, on the scale of building a major oil refinery and you'd have NIMBYs up the wazoo anywhere you tried to build that in the U.S.

Re: Peak Oil is History

#12

Post by w00pla »

chipsy wrote: post #4

I let myself get scared a little, as I should with any good peak oil story, and then went looking for an Achilles' Heel. "Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuel…

> People will die as a result of pretty much any peak oil scenario.

Not really. South Africa was a third world country under heavy sanctions.

Yet it created industries to produce petroleum from coal (and even today these companies produce 40%+ of SA's liquid fuel requirements).

If a crappy third world country can do it with 70ies technology (most of which they weren't even allowed to import legally), why can't first world country do this?

Re: Peak Oil is History

#13

Post by patrickgzill »

I like Orlov, find his writings to be a useful and interesting perspective, however there is much that is inaccurate or that remains unconsidered in this piece.

For instance, the issue of Iraq and Iran, both very undeveloped in terms of wells drilled and the modernity of the infrastructure that runs those wells.

Iraq, for all its recent investment, remains underdeveloped, and Iran has not had access to newer oil tech since 1979.

Further, there is the question of whether we are suffering from an "oil coming out of the ground" problem or "refine the crude oil into something we can actually use" problem.

The bottleneck at this point appears (from my admittedly limited, amateur research) to actually be in total refining capacity.

Re: Peak Oil is History

#14

Post by dasil003 »

chipsy wrote: post #4

I let myself get scared a little, as I should with any good peak oil story, and then went looking for an Achilles' Heel. "Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuel…

Maybe yes, maybe no. I think it's impossible to predict what will happen and how far human resourcefulness will get us. People alive in developed countries today take technological progress as a historical given, and we all have a vested interest in the current system. To imagine every aspect of our lifestyle to be eradicated overnight is almost unfathomable, so it becomes a psychological necessity to believe we will somehow figure it out. Of course there are always those prophesizing doom, and they have so far been wrong and crazy (at least during modern times), but just because it hasn't happen yet doesn't mean it won't.

And frankly I don't put much creedence in economic theory here, because there's no historical model for such a huge and global economy. I'd be more interested in the behavioral biology perspective, because the social seams are going to start coming apart very quickly if the world economy ever hits truly insurmountable difficulties.

Re: Peak Oil is History

#15

Post by jordanb »

chipsy wrote: post #4

I let myself get scared a little, as I should with any good peak oil story, and then went looking for an Achilles' Heel. "Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuel…

I completly agree. I think there is a ton of low-hanging fruit in our economy, in terms of energy use. The fact is that energy has not been a resource worth conserving during the entire industrial expansion thus far. Energy's always been something that is cheap and getting cheaper. So there's never been any economic imperative for energy efficiency, so it's always been cheaper to burn more energy than to invest in efficiency.

I think an economy in which renewable energy sources are exploited, and in which energy is used as efficiently as possible, is one which could continue expanding for a long time after peak oil extraction is reached.

Re: Peak Oil is History

#16

Post by roel_v »

fungi wrote: post #5
narrator wrote: post #2

Choice 1: Burn lots and lots of coal + Fischer Tropsch + electric vehicles. Choice 2: Thorium reactors + electric vehicles. That's about it. BTW, The "Peak Oil Community" are 5% oil and gas industry people, and 5% energy policy wonk want-to-bes. The rest are radical environmentalists eagerly anticipating the ecological-Malthusian-doom rapture (see dieoff.org, etc) and are not interested in practical solutions and are…

> are not interested in practical solutions but it's us stinky hippies that bang on the loudest and for the longest about sustainable transport solutions, renewable energy and sustainable population. (~>_aside form nuclear energy_ edit: emphasis

No way dude, the stinky hippies only complain, they don't offer solutions. So yeah re-reading your comment, maybe you're right, but it's hardly the morally position they/you always claim it is.

Re: Peak Oil is History

#17

Post by jsz0 »

w00pla wrote: post #12
chipsy wrote: post #4

I let myself get scared a little, as I should with any good peak oil story, and then went looking for an Achilles' Heel. "Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuel…

> People will die as a result of pretty much any peak oil scenario. Not really. South Africa was a third world country under heavy sanctions. Yet it created industries to produce petroleum from coal (and even today these companies produce 40%+ of SA's liquid fuel requirements). If a crappy third world country can do it with 70ies technology (most of which they weren't even allowed to import legally), why can't first…

We'll probably be too busy fighting each other every step of the way. I don't know much about SA's situation but I'm going to take a guess that it was the pro-apartheid government that made it happen. Maybe they weren't so consumed about fighting with each other since they had a common enemy to focus on. I'm somewhat convinced we're at the point in the US where the opposition party (either one) would sabotage the plan for short term political gain.

Re: Peak Oil is History

#18

Post by jsz0 »

fungi wrote: post #5
narrator wrote: post #2

Choice 1: Burn lots and lots of coal + Fischer Tropsch + electric vehicles. Choice 2: Thorium reactors + electric vehicles. That's about it. BTW, The "Peak Oil Community" are 5% oil and gas industry people, and 5% energy policy wonk want-to-bes. The rest are radical environmentalists eagerly anticipating the ecological-Malthusian-doom rapture (see dieoff.org, etc) and are not interested in practical solutions and are…

> are not interested in practical solutions but it's us stinky hippies that bang on the loudest and for the longest about sustainable transport solutions, renewable energy and sustainable population. (~>_aside form nuclear energy_ edit: emphasis

Environmentalists in Europe have been known to protest expansion of high speed rail. Not sure if this is a common view or not.

Re: Peak Oil is History

#19

Post by w00pla »

jsz0 wrote: post #17
w00pla wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People will die as a result of pretty much any peak oil scenario. Not really. South Africa was a third world country under heavy sanctions. Yet it created industries to produce petroleum from coal (and even today these companies produce 40%+ of SA's liquid fuel requirements). If a crappy third world country can do it with 70ies technology (most of which they weren't even allowed to import legally), why can't first…

We'll probably be too busy fighting each other every step of the way. I don't know much about SA's situation but I'm going to take a guess that it was the pro-apartheid government that made it happen. Maybe they weren't so consumed about fighting with each other since they had a common enemy to focus on. I'm somewhat convinced we're at the point in the US where the opposition party (either one) would sabotage the pla…

> Maybe they weren't so consumed about fighting with each other since they had a common enemy to focus on.

And who would this “common enemy” be? The Spiel that white people considered black people their enemies during Apartheid is a bit incorrect (yet a popular sentiment in the west).

It is ironic that statistically, the plight of the majority of black people is now far worse in SA than during Apartheid (life expectancy, income inequality, unemployment, infancy mortality, matric pass rate, TIMSS score, etc…). Apartheid (i.e. separate development and rule for all ethnic and cultural groups) as an ideology is failed (mostly due to industrial development which caused South Africa to become a scrambled egg of people). Yet the ideology of full democracy (i.e. tyranny of the majority) is also spectacularly failing. Yet no one would acknowledge the latter failings.

> I'm somewhat convinced we're at the point in the US where the opposition party (either one) would sabotage the plan for short term political gain.

But in any case, I digress. You are right about this part. Everyone is NIMBY. The problem is also that using coal to make fuel would release CO2. And this is counter to the ideology of the far left (which only wants non-practical solutions to be implemented).

The USA landed people on the moon in less than a decade. I am sure that if they put their minds to it, they can expand nuclear power generation significantly (to reduce CO2) and start to make a significant part of their liquid fuel requirement from coal.

Re: Peak Oil is History

#20

Post by retube »

jacoblyles wrote: post #9
chipsy wrote: post #4

I let myself get scared a little, as I should with any good peak oil story, and then went looking for an Achilles' Heel. "Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuel…

Econtalk had an episode about carbon shortage recently. It turns out that synthetic fuels manufactured from coal become economical far before petroleum is totally gone. And there are other more expensive technologies that come into play when the coal is gone. All the while, renewable energy is getting cheaper by the year. Here's the link. It is a fascinating podcast, though it wanders a bit near the end: http://www.e…

And don't forget that at ~$200 / barrel oil from tar sands becomes viable. The oil will be flowing for some time yet.
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