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Peak Oil Perspective

physics.ucsd.edu

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Re: Peak Oil Perspective

#61

Post by fleitz »

dasil003 wrote: post #49
fleitz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, which is why we should all believe in God, since although the possibility that he exists is slim to none, the risk of him actually existing is quite great to non-believers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

Of course that's a bad analogy because we can define God any way we want; we could easily define him to be angry at people who do believe. Whereas a fire escape or even peak oil is at least somewhat quantifiable risk.

Which is why the problem is being solved by a mix of pricing and development of alternatives by the free market.

The problem is some people don't think what the market is doing is enough and demand intervention from government based on a line of reasoning similar to Pascal's Wager.

Apparently, oil companies developing resources, and Tesla and others developing alternatives is 'doing nothing'.

Re: Peak Oil Perspective

#62

Post by nitroscott »

consultant23522 wrote: post #39
rybosome wrote: post #18

> The risk is asymmetric: starting a crash program toward replacement of finite fossil fuels too early has great up-sides and marginal downsides (opportunity cost); but failure to act has enormous downside for marginal upside. - See more at: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/peak-oil-perspec... This is a more intelligent way of stating something I've been saying for years. I always explain my position on pe…

I feel the exact same way about global warming.

And zombies.

Re: Peak Oil Perspective

#63

Post by joe_the_user »

sergiosgc wrote: post #56
joe_the_user wrote: post #38

There is one thing I always like to mention with the usual peak oil math (and resultant fear/glee concerning "the end of civilization" and such). The traditional "Hubbert curve" shows exponential growth and decline in a any particular region of oil production. Peak oil theorists generally extend this to a world exponential peak/decline (the article doesn't directly say but it take the "we have to plan for the peak" p…

Large evolutionary jumps in mankind's history have always been associated with use of more energy per capita. The stabilization of oil consumption, visible since 2000, means one of two things: a) Humanity has plateaued in its energy usage; or b) Some other energy source is increasing. Any of these means oil has hit a peak (there'll be no cliff, though, as you explained). The alternatives are not acceptable (evolution…

Large evolutionary jumps in mankind's history have always been associated with use of more energy per capita.

This is typical of the hand-wavy peak oil arguments.

An increased richness of culture or an increased scientific knowledge clearly don't require ever-increasing energy consumption.

Oppositely, the reason previous evolutionary jumps involved more energy per capita has been that ... cheaper energy has always previously available (ie, this a correlation, not a causation).

Edit: A modern laptop uses less energy than a desktop machine of twenty years ago, yet the laptop's user certainly experiences a somewhat higher level of "civilization" or whatever one would call it. Just a simple counter-example to "evolution always requires more energy per capita" claim.

Re: Peak Oil Perspective

#64

Post by UweSchmidt »

fleitz wrote: post #35
UweSchmidt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There could however be a state where things just are not as convenient as they are now. There is no law of nature that says things have to stay as fun as they are now after we have depleted this unique resource that nature had to digest dinosaur bones for a few millions of years for. Tesla's looking good though, so there's hope.

There's also the self-driving car which drastically reduces the number of cars required to replace the existing fleet.

How is that?

Re: Peak Oil Perspective

#65

Post by nitroscott »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #64
fleitz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the self-driving car which drastically reduces the number of cars required to replace the existing fleet.

How is that?

Imagine running trucks 24 hours a day. With no sleep constraints, you can move almost twice as much stuff with the same # of cars. Increase utilization and speed which would have great impacts on efficiency.

Re: Peak Oil Perspective

#66

Post by fleitz »

jarito wrote: post #52
fleitz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oil backed electrical grid? Where do you live exactly? No one uses oil to generate any significant amount of electricity, most gas turbines are powered by natural gas, since it's cheap and plentiful. Gas turbines are only used to peak load not base load since coal is even cheaper than natural gas. Most people spend more in fuel getting their groceries home than transporting them to the store. Food miles should be cal…

Not entirely true. Hawaii, for example, uses oil as the basis for most of their electric generation. They regret this now and are trying to move to renewables / natgas, but right now, they use oil.

Good point, I'm not sure if the US has enough money to take on the herculean task of providing non-oil fired generation for 1.5 million people.

Re: Peak Oil Perspective

#67

Post by fleitz »

gshubert17 wrote: post #58
fleitz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fertilizer does not come from oil. This is a myth. Natural gas is not an oil-based input. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Inorganic_commercial...

Right. Hydrocarbons, then. Natural gas and petroleum have similar geologic and economic characteristics.

I hate to break it to you but pretty much everything is a hydrocarbon.

Natural gas and petroleum are about as similar as the hydrocarbons of corn and cherries.

Re: Peak Oil Perspective

#68

Post by Tcepsa »

Symmetry wrote: post #31
jofer wrote: post #4

As a geologist in the oil industry, this is one of the few articles I've seen on peak oil that absolutely nails the salient points. (And even gets the geology correct.) To quote: "Most simply, peak oil is about rates, not amounts." Yes, there are a lot of unconventional resources. They're just a lot harder, more expensive, and most importantly in this context, slower to produce. On the upshot for me, and the downshot…

It's not an unmixed blessing, considering global warming. And there's nothing preventing people from synthesizing gasoline from other energy sources and atmospheric gases, it's just rather expensive.

I've actually looked into this in the past (synthesizing, for example, methane from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) but I haven't found anything that seemed achieveable from a DIY perspective. Do you know anywhere that I can get more information? It seems like this might be a good, carbon-neutral way to solve the problem of wind/solar fluctuation and (probably) would not require massive infrastructure changes (since you'd be synthesizing the stuff that cars and trucks are already designed to run on).

Re: Peak Oil Perspective

#69

Post by r00fus »

lukifer wrote: post #50
rybosome wrote: post #18

> The risk is asymmetric: starting a crash program toward replacement of finite fossil fuels too early has great up-sides and marginal downsides (opportunity cost); but failure to act has enormous downside for marginal upside. - See more at: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/peak-oil-perspec... This is a more intelligent way of stating something I've been saying for years. I always explain my position on pe…

The same logic applies to asteroid strikes, climate change and potential ecology collapses as well. Whatever the odds are, they are decidedly non-astronomic, and therefore should be taken seriously.

And the US had budget for things like asteroid strikes (at least until the sequester).

But it can only be taken seriously if the actors with sufficient power actually care about said future and not, for example, present profits to the exclusion of all else.

Re: Peak Oil Perspective

#70

Post by rybosome »

fleitz wrote: post #61
dasil003 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course that's a bad analogy because we can define God any way we want; we could easily define him to be angry at people who do believe. Whereas a fire escape or even peak oil is at least somewhat quantifiable risk.

Which is why the problem is being solved by a mix of pricing and development of alternatives by the free market. The problem is some people don't think what the market is doing is enough and demand intervention from government based on a line of reasoning similar to Pascal's Wager. Apparently, oil companies developing resources, and Tesla and others developing alternatives is 'doing nothing'.

You are correct that some private firms are beginning to hedge their bets (or in Tesla's case, directly offer a competing product), but I was referring to government...as you guessed.

We've seen numerous examples of abuse of the free market - I don't think that a few companies pushing us past the point of comfort with respect to oil production is a far-fetched scenario. Personally speaking, I would like some level of government intervention.

The identification of my argument as being analogous to Pascal's Wager is interesting (that was a great read, thank you for linking), but is not compelling enough to dissuade me. If I'm reading the tone of your posts correctly, you do not agree that peak oil is something to be concerned about; what is your counter-argument?

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