Book: "Oil Panic and the Global Crisis" by Steven Gorelick

[pstarr]

Oh well, there goes another $50 off to Amazon.com. Sure is expensive being smarter than everyone else.

I wonder how much cash these guys make off the books.

Squat. And it is this guy, singular. No one else is stupid enough to pen such a ridiculous work. Haven't you heard? Abiotic is dead.

[LateGreatPlanetEarth]

bottom line of book is that peak oil is a moving target: the higher bbl oil becomes, the less oil used; thus stretching out the date. Non-critical oil consumption is huge.

[pstarr]

bottom line of book is that peak oil is a moving target: the higher bbl oil becomes, the less oil used; thus stretching out the date. Non-critical oil consumption is huge.

Only if you believe that oil consumption is elastic. From the perspective of a consumer ie. the white (somewhat) middle-class that populates this board, yes, oil consumption is not critical.

However probably unbeknownst to you, your very life depends on critical oil demands: food and product delivery, mining, refining, lumbering, freight, industry, imports, service and infrastructure maintenance. These things are not discretionary.

Is your life discretionary?

[Xenophobe]

bottom line of book is that peak oil is a moving target: the higher bbl oil becomes, the less oil used; thus stretching out the date. Non-critical oil consumption is huge.

Having read the book, I'm not sure I agree that this was a "bottom line". Can you reference any particular chapter where you think this point came through that I might review it?

I might agree that Hirsch certainly presented the "discretionary" size of oil consumption, easily showing that it is in the millions of barrels a day in America alone. But Gorelick did not appear to focus on the non critical side...I know he had an entire chapter on efficiencies and improvements which bypass needing to use oil, but that was just a single chapter if I recall correctly.

[LateGreatPlanetEarth]

hubbert's bell shape curve myth: it was constructed on the basis of a limited resource with a demand growing exponentially. since there is demand destruction the data doesn't fit a symmetrical shaped curve.

[Carlhole]

I emailed Professor Gorelick:

Having been interested in the subject of peak oil for years now, I bought your book ("ouch!", by the way). It's excellent. But it doesn't seem to have come under any attack by the ODACs and ASPOs of the world. Have any peak oil activists criticized it?

Dear Carl,

Thanks for your kind remark. I've seen a few comments, but I am sure there are many I haven't seen. Overall, the book has been well received and got positive reviews in Science, print media, and various journals. Some of the comments appear on Amazon. Actually, the comments from the peak oil community have been more subdued and even more positive than I expected. Some of the peak oil folks defend the good science, factual content, and fair treatment of arguments from both sides. Some have taken on their fellow peak oilers in questioning their assumptions. Some of the blogs show quite a bit of reason, which is nice to see. Of course, many folks are into dogma and blind curve fitting, while others vehemently and perhaps quite reasonably believe that there is a known amount of oil that has to disappear soon according to a prescribed formula without regard to supply/demand/substitution economics. One blog called the book, the worst book ever written. I'd expect that remark from a fervent proponent of Hubbert's approach in a way that I think Hubbert himself never would have supported. Hubbert was a scientist and scholar, ultimately not a zealot. When confronted with the many incorrect predictions of global peak oil production and the systematic increase in the oil endowment estimates, I bet Hubbert would have been more curious and less defensive than those who follow him.

Wiley-Blackwell priced the book. So sorry about their high price. Hope you got it on Amazon -- at least they offer a discount. I get almost nothing, and might some day make enough to pay for the figures getting drafted for publication and my personal expenses collecting the info for the book. Even I had to buy copies to give to friends and family -- so I'm well in the red on this effort. Obviously I did not write the book for the money. I just wanted to inject a bit of multidisciplinary thought along with facts and historical perspectives into the the oil depletion debate.

Best,

Steve Gorelick
Professor

The binding, paper and print in this book are all very high quality (if merely black and white). I wonder why Wiley-Blackwell chose to do this? It's only 256 pages. Why not just make it a paperback and sell it for $12?

At any rate, the section covering Hubbert's bell-curve method for predicting peak and decline of petroleum production is just taken completely apart by facts alone. Hubbert was dead wrong most of the time and had to continually enlarge his estimates of the total oil endowment to keep alive his assumption that the ultimate oil endowment can be a known quantity.

The whole section on reserve growth will be familiar to everyone here but it is expressed very well and backed up, as always, with the best references available. An enlightening (for me) section describing the peak and decline of the lower 48. It describes the peak as having at least as much to do with supertankers and the availability of cheaper foreign sources than any supply-driven peak.

The absence of Scarcity Rent in the history of petroleum production also,I admit, was a new observation for me, but an important one.

[Xenophobe]

The whole section on reserve growth will be familiar to everyone here but it is expressed very well and backed up, as always, with the best references available. An enlightening (for me) section describing the peak and decline of the lower 48. It describes the peak as having at least as much to do with supertankers and the availability of cheaper foreign sources than any supply-driven peak.

It was a pretty good read, wasn't it? I thought it was excellent just for some of the references alone.

For the Believers in the group, references are those thingies at the end of a chapter or end of an article which allows you to reach back into the material used by the author to verify that they did say what he/she claims. Generally they are not related to the dogma, superstitious tales, campfire stories, parables or hallucinated "facts" that peakers are forced to memorize in peak oil Sunday school.

[Carlhole]

It was a pretty good read, wasn't it?

It's the best total treatment of the peak oil debate that I have seen so far. Very well written.

If I were a staunch Hubbertian, I would not have been displeased with the author's treatment of Hubbert's methods and that scientist's approach to peak oil theory. It was all there in all its forboding glory.

The main value of this book is that it expresses both sides of the peak oil debate completely and concisely, something no one else has done. I'm surprised that no one has written a review of it at ASPO or ODAC. I suppose they will have trouble criticizing it because the author allows the facts and data to do the persuading. However, as the reader discovers (or re-discovers) more facts and data in the second section, it becomes clear that the issue of future fossil fuel supply is being won by the optimists.

If this books were broadly read, peak oil doomers probably would have to switch over permanently to the issues of population and limits to growth. But good luck with those as well. So far, Malthus isn't batting all that high.

[pstarr]

I'm back.

Has any entity, either a reputable peer-reviewed journal, a consumer news organization, or even Publisher's Clearinghouse, bothered to review this Remainders Rack weight? No?

Wait! I found a review. This, is part, from M O B J E C T I V I S T

To give a taste of how little original research that Gorelick has actually performed and how much he relies on other cornucopians, consider the passage wherein he references geology professor Larry Cathless. On page 128, Gorelick quotes Cathles as saying that we may find as much as "1 trillion barrels of oil and gas in just a portion of the gulf oil sediments".

Okay. 1 trillion barrels. Yuck Yuck Yuck. And how many of those scillion barrels have come out of Thunderhorse et al?

[Xenophobe]

The main value of this book is that it expresses both sides of the peak oil debate completely and concisely, something no one else has done. I'm surprised that no one has written a review of it at ASPO or ODAC

What are the odds that once someone is raised with the Bible as the basis for their life, they ever pick up a Koran? Not many I'm betting.

If this books were broadly read, peak oil doomers probably would have to switch over permanently to the issues of population and limits to growth. But good luck with those as well. So far, Malthus isn't batting all that high.

Couple a centuries and still missing by a mile.

[pstarr]

It's nice to see your two Creationists bonding.

Have either of you found the Abiotic Motherlode?

No comment Short?

[LateGreatPlanetEarth]

Who cares about both sides? Not interested in someone explaining the arguments. The conclusion is what counts here, not some intellectual exercise about fair treatment of the data. So, what does the summary data say?

[Xenophobe]

Who cares about both sides?

Here here! Whats the point of objectivity you ask? Well, in peakerland, NONE! Pick your favorite personal Rapture scenario, line up only the "evidence" ( I use that term loosely, in Peakerville ) which supports your side and get up on that soapbox!

Not interested in someone explaining the arguments. The conclusion is what counts here, not some intellectual exercise about fair treatment of the data. So, what does the summary data say?

That if Peakers haven't been right in the past, aren't right now, can't be expected to reasonably predict the future, then obviously there are more important things to get excited about! After reading the book, I would recommend too tight underwear causing a low semen count, contagious dry skin, and conjunctivitis!

[Carlhole]

Who cares about both sides? Not interested in someone explaining the arguments. The conclusion is what counts here, not some intellectual exercise about fair treatment of the data. So, what does the summary data say?

Nothing has been excluded from the hubbertian peak/decline argument (first section) but the more convincing argument belongs to the second section, that of fossil fuel optimism. There is nothing pollyanna or shallow about the depth of analysis or the sources used. Gorelick did a fine job.

I'd post some selections but I don't have the software installed to do that right now and I'm a little busy with other stuff at the moment. I'll get around to it soon, I guess.

[notill]

Well, I haven't read the book, but as for availability of oil and pertaining to the US, the glaring fact that we import 2/3rds of the oil we use trumps all others. And we get it on credit.

[Carlhole]

Well, I haven't read the book, but as for availability of oil and pertaining to the US, the glaring fact that we import 2/3rds of the oil we use trumps all others. And we get it on credit.

As Edward Porter, Research Manager of the American Petroleum Institute in 1995, wrote in his marvelous analysis of US and global oil depletion:

The decline in US supply after 1970 did not indicate that the US was "running out" of oil, but rather that the costs associated with much of remaining Lower 48 resources was no longer competitive with imports from lower cost sources worldwide. Consequently, the decline in US supply after 1970 represented not a signal of growing global resource scarcity, but rather a signal of growing resource abundance.

Porter shows that the incremental cost of oil production in 1994 was 25 to 30 times higher in the US than in Saudi Arabia, and presumably an analogous differential existed in 1970.

In the years from 1965 to 1971, worldwide tanker capacity grew by 76% and the total tonnage of tankers "on order" increased by 118 percent (432 supertankers in 1970) Perhaps not coincidentally, this is when peak oil occurred and US production declined...

Of course, Hubbert's model attributes ANY decline to supply limits. It's just another inaccuracy in the Hubbert model.

Gorelick goes on to talk about the historical price of oil. He uses a chart that shows average annual oil price relative to unskilled worker wages and global oil production over time from 1860 - 2010. The price had been generally trending downward since 1900 until it turns up a little around 2005. It's currently about as expensive as it was in 1980.

I could go on and on; there is too much good stuff to post in this book (really!). But I don't have the time to do it right now and I don't have a scanner handy.

I've been reading about peak oil since Deffeyes "Hubbert's Peak" came out. That was 1999. Let me tell you, this is the most comprehensive treatment of this subject that I have seen. Every question (such as the one you suggested) is addressed very well by the author using impeccable sources.

Be assured, if you only absorb information according to the Hubbert model, you are getting a very distorted picture. There is a whole other side to the peak oil debate which is not represented very well here on peakoil.com. And the set of facts and data supporting the other side is a lot more convincing that than the Hubbert-style depletion argument.

[Perfecto]

Have I got this all wrong, then? Is everything all right after all?

[Carlhole]

Have I got this all wrong, then? Is everything all right after all?

There won't be any collapse of civilization due to fossil fuel depletion.

Someone is eventually going to have to create and post a PDF file of this book for the benefit of anyone looking at this very interesting subject. Of course, that person won't be me because I'm far to ethical for that as everyone knows.

[Xenophobe]

Have I got this all wrong, then? Is everything all right after all?

Depends on what you mean by "all right".

Car sales coming back, years after post peak.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40453300/ns/business-autos/

Electric transport starting to roll off the assembly lines so we don't need to buy that expensive(?) gas anymore.

http://www.tinygreenbubble.com/eco/envi ... f-the-year

http://www.assemblymag.com/Articles/Web ... 0000946097

You see the market today?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40456440/ns ... d_economy/

Private sector jobs?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40449679/ns ... d_economy/

Good God man! Years after peak and we've had what, 16 months of increasing factory output?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40451681/ns ... d_economy/

Where have you been, a cave?

[pstarr]

Have I got this all wrong, then? Is everything all right after all?

No you did not get it wrong.

Yes. The excerpt on Lower 48 is complete hooey.