The New York Times
published an op-ed about the Peak Oil cranks:
Like many Malthusian beliefs, peak oil theory has been promoted by a motivated group of scientists and laymen who base their conclusions on poor analyses of data and misinterpretations of technical material.
A careful examination of the facts shows that most arguments about peak oil are based on anecdotal information, vague references and ignorance of how the oil industry goes about finding fields and extracting petroleum. And this has been demonstrated over and over again: the founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil first claimed in 1989 that the peak had already been reached, and Mr. Schlesinger argued a decade earlier that production was unlikely to ever go much higher.
I like the top paragraph.
Like many Malthusian beliefs, peak oil theory has been promoted by a motivated group of scientists and laymen who base their conclusions on poor analyses of data and misinterpretations of technical material.
If I strike and replace just two words it's also valid.
Like many Malthusian beliefs, peak oil global warming theory has been promoted by a motivated group of scientists and laymen who base their conclusions on poor analyses of data and misinterpretations of technical material.
Malthusians have given us so much. We're all gonna starve to death, we're all gonna roast to death, we're gonna live in a Mad Max world and fight to death over a tank of gas. It's disaster porn and it always fails to take into account mankind's ingenuity.
6 comments:
What I love about peak oil believers is that they always assume people can't change their behavior.
But we saw vehicle miles drop considerably when retail gasoline prices doubled.
Most oil is used for transportation, and to be blunt most of that use is discretionary.
Even those who have to go to work can bike, ride a moped, carpool, take the bus, etc.
And over the next decade we will see a rapid electrification of vehicles.
Yes, it will be worth paying the hefty premium for batteries because the operating costs are so much lower (about 2 cents/mile for electricity versus 10 cents/mile for gasoline at current prices)
ok. i am a peak oiler. and i have worked in the oilfield 18 years. to me it is simple. each field production increases as wells are drilled and completed, then production declines as pressure decreases. you can do secondary production by using pumps or injecting water to increase the pressure to a point, then production declines. then you can inject steam or co2 to increase the lubricity and pressure, then production declines. if you plot production over the entire life of a field, it has a characteristic curve, it peaks and declines. if you sum up this decline curve for all fields then all fields will peak, then decline. that is peak oil.
to not have peak oil, we have to either find more fields, or the fields have to start making more oil. the first isnt happening as often as it used to. (yeah, shale oil etc) the 2nd only happens if you think oil is coming from another source.
prices, supply and demand have all gone up and down for 140 years. each cycle ending with a crash. that has nothing to do with the total amount of oil in the ground.
to me the peak might be now, or in 50 years, but the idea we can just keep doing what we are doing and hope this isnt the peak is stupid, not to mention we might not have hit peak oil, but we are far past peak oil in north america.
Joe, thanks for commenting. It's nice to hear from a peak oiler who actually has industry knowledge.
With that said, considering that much (most?) of the reservoirs lie in countries that aren't exactly open and democratic, why should we rely upon their reporting? It seems to me that it's in their own interest to claim that reserves are down. If the speculators perceive a shortfall, the price per barrel goes up. So what if we're awash in crude right now?
you are right, we could be awash in oil, but i think most oil exporting countries are overestimating reserves. I would act the same either way if i were in charge, get most of our energy domestically.
i could have the same attitude i have toward global warming, who the hell knows, its the weather, but one big difference is that hubbell predicted peak oil production in the usa before it happened, and the same methodology can be used to predict world peak oil.
when global warmists make a prediction that actually comes true i will be more worried.
Maximizing oil production is not a high priority for most national oil companies, who now control nearly all world oil reserves.
Venezuela's oil production declined sharply when Chavez replaced employees with his cronies, who knew nothing about oil production.
And the biggest reason we peaked here in the U.S. was that by 1970 it was cheaper to pump oil out of Saudi oilfields and move it halfway around the world than it was to pump it out of West Texas.
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