I buy the idea of decreasing supply in near future. What I don't buy, however, is the way it's sometimes marketed, as a doomsday scenario: "One day, people notice on their way to work that all the gas stations are out of gas. Then they die on cold and starvation, in the middle of motorway littered with now-useless SUVs."that's pretty much my argument - although teemu says it much better than i could have. clinton-era prices were below $20/barrel - so unless things have changed substantially since then, then we don't have a real problem (yes, i acknowledge that there have been some revisions re oil fields).
I've yet to see (I haven't looked for one, really) an analysis where increasing demand drives the prices up gradually, over a period of years and decades. That allows adaptation, unlike "suddendly the gas price could jump into $100 a gallon".
(FYI: Due to gas tax, the cost here in scandinavia is about $8/gallon, no doubt a nightmare for many americans, but it's nothing really once you get used to it.)
ftr, bowser prices here are in the order of $usd 1.2 per litre
again, this isnt an issue that i've focussed on (and thnx again to john for questioning my assumptions) - but the marketing *stinks* of propaganda - and if there's one thing i know, it's how to sniff out propaganda (given how much of it i've documented these past years)
again, i dont know anything about this issue - so i shouldnt really try to comment on it - but my *sense* is that its a load of codswallop (i think thats a real word - but maybe i'm just making stuff up at this point)
and as i've said before - i *wish* it were true - there's almost *nothing* that would make me happier than the reversal of global warming and the dependence on fossil fuels.
5 comments:
The Ruskies are paying Tom Delay. He must have something on them...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big exponent of Peak Oil (I'm not an expert). It's probably like Teemu says, prices just move up over time.
But I am mindful of the social and economic subtext of these things. The UK only ever has 11 days of gas on tap. So, if you had some war in central Asia that really disrupted supply then you could have serious trouble for the elderly in a cold winter - same thing if the Ukraine pipeline to Europe was disrupted.
Now, an incident like this would certainly not see the end of society as we know it.
But oil is not just in vehicles or factories, it's in everything, especially in agriculture and economic growth. Big resource companies have 10-20 year plans on projects, so why should China, Russia or the US be any different? Their plans may involve staking out energy resources by military means. They may feel forced to.
One interesting argument I heard is that you don't need total contraction in the oil supply to induce chaos, that a 10% reduction would do it because of global oil dependancy. I think that's a good argument.
I am also reminded of that study where they keep putting more rats in a cage. They're well behaved until a 'critical mass' is reached and then they all attack each other.
All this Peak Oil stuff hangs on the actual global oil reserves present and the rate of access. It looks, on the face of it though, that 20-30 years from now should see a major crunch on the whole global economic growth mechanism. (Because our world pop. of 6.5B will grow to 9.5B by 2050. That's a 50% increase in 40 years!).
My guess is that a major crunch is coming. Yes, prices could slide up gradually over 20-30 years. But at some stage, now or later, there will likely be some massive economic 'saddle point' where all the rats go at each other.
I am not convinced that the global political and economic mechanisms have the capacity to smoothly adjust to the increasing energy demands. Peak Oil may sound like spruiking now, but the economic forces are massive and nobody seems to be finding any oil.
anon - when the russian mafia bribe you, it means that they've got something on you
ew - that shows how much i know. i dont even know what a 'Post-peak oil field' is.
i figured that there was just oilfields - discovered fields (perhaps of uncertain magnitude) and undiscovered fields.
Emptywheel is spot on here, Lukery. My comments allowed for a best case scenario, but omitted to explicitly state what emptywheel refers to and which appears to be supported by Peak Oil literature: you have available oil supplies moving in one direction (down) and huge economic demands moving in the other direction (up). It's like two tectonic plates moving against each other. They may buckle slowly or spectacularly. But as emptywheel points out, the only possible outcome - if the statistics on available oil reserves are to be believed - is massive global economic breakdown.
It's coming. The only question is when.
I might also add that stories about how we can switch to alternative energy (ethanol, nuclear, solar etc) just don't stand up. The world will be forced to reduce its overall energy usage.
Post a Comment