The End of The End: How the Peak Oil Movement Failed

[Xenophobe]

Yeah, after the average American pays $25G's for that average new car, he/she then can't afford to cough up $100/month for the fuel to drive it 1000 miles a month

"Average Americans"?
3% of Americans buy a new vehicle each year.

Then only 3% of Americans currently have the opportunity to solve their own personal peak oil problem. But given time, the EV's will make their way into the used market, and then every American who buys both new or used cars will have the opportunity.

[AirlinePilot]

I'm sorry but was there ever any conclusion to the thread title statement? Has anyone else around here seen any evidence of a supposed "movement"? Surely I could not have missed it after all these years?

I'm trying to figure out the purpose of such a thread on a peak oil discussion group, other than the obvious pot stirring and trolling of one of our more narcissistic posters.

[peripato]

The author of this article, Mike Bendzela, posted for a long time here at peakoil.com as a hardcore doomer named "killJOY".
member/killJOY/

He still is a hardcore doomer. Read his response to the article on The Oil Drum (same goes for those flips, antidoomer and Xenophobe). His lament is that the likes of Yergin, CERA et al have won the public debate over Peak OIl because they ran a slicker PR campaign (not because their claims held any substance) and that the future is ultimately unknowable. Duh!

[Xenophobe]

I'm sorry but was there ever any conclusion to the thread title statement? Has anyone else around here seen any evidence of a supposed "movement"? Surely I could not have missed it after all these years?

The evidence is all around. It's all here except the pews.

I'm trying to figure out the purpose of such a thread on a peak oil discussion group, other than the obvious pot stirring and trolling of one of our more narcissistic posters.

Purpose? It's in the title. The peak oil movement has failed. Some nice, eco-friendly gentleman who was misled by the bad information, hysterical claims and manipulated data woke up one morning, and realized it's a sham. Peak had happened a long time ago, and yet there was still plenty to go around, we didn't need to always produce more, and if you have been watching the newspapers within the past month, the solutions to peak oil issues were rolling off the showroom floors at Chevy dealerships around the country. Stick a fork in it.

[vtsnowedin]

I know this is off the original topic and no amount of information will sway your mind Xenophobe but consider this:
From the paper you quoted on PV cost.

For example, the typical annual output of a flat-mounted 1 kW system in San Diego,
California, is about 1,310 kilowatt hours (kWh), while the same system in Seattle,
Washington, would produce about 850 kWh.1 As a result, the LCOE of the Seattle system is about 1.5 times greater than the San Diego System, ignoring any differences in
financing and incentives.

Lets take a round figure average from that quote and say that the average US location could yield 1000 kwh/ year from a 1000 watt roof top system. Now how big would your system have to be to charge your Volt and how much would it cost?
As we have figured out above to run a Volt 15,000 miles at 12.9 kwh/charge takes 6450kwh per year. It happens I have a catalog here that has solar panels in it on sale. Each 5.2X 2.7 foot panel is rated at 180 watts and is on sale for $700. 6450/180=35.8 so
36*700=$25,200 We will skip the shipping and installation costs and assume you have 500 square feet of south facing roof. There is of course a tax credit available and I'm sure you will want to claim the 30% credit which will drop your cost to $17,640. We will also assume that you can use smart grid technology to pump power into and back out of the grid at will without any losses or cost. This saves you the cost of another battery as big and expensive as the one in the Volt ( $8000)to store sunshine that falls on your roof while you and your car are at work. Now lets assume that the car and the panels both last ten years but have zero salvage value. You will argue that of course but lets assume it balances the shipping,and installation cost, increased insurance costs etc. we have ignored.
So in ten years the panels will produce 64,500kwh of electricity at a cost of 27 cents per kwh and your car will have a (Fuel/electricity) cost for 150000 miles of 11.78 cents per mile. And with an initial cost after tax credits of $32,500 You start with a base of over 33 cents per mile before you add in registrations, state taxes ,insurance, maintenance and repairs which might be considerable if you have to change out a battery.
Now compare to a $17,000 Toyota Corolla getting 34 mpg hwy. 30 combined. Gas would have to be over $6.62 a gallon average over the life of the car before the Volt has a chance to break even with it.
If you want to get started on your PV panel installation I,ll give you the Email address where you can order those 180 watt panels.

[Revi]

We just plug our car into the grid and Central Maine Power's hydro dam does the renewable energy. We end up paying about 2 cents a mile for the fuel cost of driving our little Gem car around town. We only drive it in the 35 mph zone of town, but it is far cheaper to drive than a full sized car. I think that will be the kind of car that the average person will be driving once we drop off the plateau around 2014. As gas prices rise people will figure out other ways around the transportation problem. There will be a lot more scooters, bicycles and walkers.

As I said before, car culture is dying. Maybe it isn't dead yet, but the days of every American driving around in a full sized car are numbered.

[vtsnowedin]

Ayup old hydro power is a lot cheaper then new photovoltaic panel power but as you have seen in Maine they are into taking out old hydro-dams not building new ones. The 150,000 or so plug ins they will sell this year won't make a noticeable difference but eventually you will get to the point where they want to turn off Grandmas TV so that junior can charge his car. Then you have to decide what your going to build to provide the needed new electricity. A new hydro dam of any size anywhere in the US is highly unlikely when you consider all the enviropolitics involved. New nuclear plants to even replace the old ones we have seem a long shot as the Clam shell alliance is still in full cry. State of the art coal is possible but CO2 capture and sequestration may use as much as 30 percent of the energy produced by the raw coal so cheap it will not be. At least nowhere near as cheap as what we are paying now. As you can see from the example above PV roof panels are a loser but solar to steam in the dessert might pay off. And switching to more natural gas will just use up that resource more rapidly.That leaves wind and tide each with it's limits and promises. I don't see why anyone would see the problem as solved.
Another thing that chaps my keister is these tax rebates. They are borrowing the money to grant them so you and I will get to pay them all back plus interest in future taxes or benefit cuts. So You and I are subsidising every fool that buys a Volt this year even though I can see that it isn't helping with the problem but in fact making it worse. All so a guy with taxable income over 60k can pay no taxes and drive around in a 40K status symbol and feel superior to the knuckle draggers(in his opinion) around him that the government has forced into paying his bills. Why we might as well pay farmers to use a hundred gallons of diesel fuel to grow enough corn to make ninety five gallons of ethanol to mix with gas so it can destroy the engines in our chainsaws lawn mowers and motor boats.

[mos6507]

You and I are subsidising every fool that buys a Volt

You are aware of how we subsidize gasoline in this country. Do you support that? I bet if you add up all the money that has ever been spent to subsidize gas that we could just buy every household a Volt.

It just seems in this thread that you are just going down the line and illustrating all the downsides of alternatives, only to reach the unstated conclusion that BAU must hold. Well, it's not going to and you know it. So we have to decide which set of drawbacks we're willing to deal with since no panacea exists.

[thuja]

John Denver? When was the last time you posted...you're my favorite cornie!!!

[Ludi]

You are aware of how we subsidize gasoline in this country. Do you support that? I bet if you add up all the money that has ever been spent to subsidize gas that we could just buy every household a Volt.

Boy howdy!

http://costofwar.com/en/

[Carlhole]

It's not that proponents of peak oil catastrophism have fumbled the delivery of the message; the message has been everywhere for the past several years! PO concepts are easy to understand and higher oil prices have naturally made people curious about them. The broader public know something about PO ideas. But generally, they don't put much stock oil supply doom.

I just read Stephen Gorelick's 2010 book "Oil Panic and the Global Collapse: Predictions & Myths". The author, a Stanford University Professor of Earth Science, places the familiar Hubbertian peak oil argument side-by-side the anti-PO argument (I call it anti-PO because it's not exactly cornie). Conclusions are left for the reader.

The first section, which covers everything Hubbert, leaves the reader wondering, "Gosh, how is Pauline going to get out of THIS jam?" But there actually IS a very good counter-argument. This counter-argument is the REAL reason why the PO message has failed to catch-on - it is MORE convincing than the doomer argument!

You can torrent this book for free. Just google around for it. I found a copy here

It's only 256 pages. You already pretty much know the first half of it. Download and enjoy!

[thuja]

Can you summarize Gorelick's argument for us Carlhole?

[Carlhole]

Can you summarize Gorelick's argument for us Carlhole?

Go to the thread Oil Panic and the Global Crisis: Predictions & Myths and page down to the review at OnlineLibrary on the first page. I posted the Table of Contents and other reviews there as well. It's an excellent book; the best I've ever read on PO, and I've been interested in this subject for a decade now.

It's best to read the whole damn thing so that you get all the context right. I can't do justice to the book in thread posts.

You guys are complaining that the public does not admit unpleasantness into its collective mind. Yet, no one here seems very eager themselves to read a short, timely book on our favorite subject, a book which contradicts what many here think they know for certain - TEOTWAWKI. Come on, it's only 256 pages and it's free!

Most of the material has been covered here at PeakOil.com before. But when you've got it all in one place, organized and presented by a talented, credentialed researcher like Gorelick, using the best, most up-to-date sources, it's a must read. It pretty much tears Hubbert's methodology to pieces without any disrespect to M. King Hubbert himself, who by all lights was a conscientious scientist.

And I really like the way both arguments are given fair treatment. If you are knowledgeable about the PO argument, you can judge for yourself how well Gorelick delivers it. But then, of course, you would have to concede that he is equally skillful in explaining the counter-argument - which is convincing as hell.

None of this is intended to poo-poo oil supply concerns or global energy needs in general. It's an important topic and Gorelick does it justice by leaving nothing out.

[eXpat]

Yeah, after the average American pays $25G's for that average new car, he/she then can't afford to cough up $100/month for the fuel to drive it 1000 miles a month

"Average Americans"?
3% of Americans buy a new vehicle each year.

Then only 3% of Americans currently have the opportunity to solve their own personal peak oil problem. But given time, the EV's will make their way into the used market, and then every American who buys both new or used cars will have the opportunity.

I thought PO would be a non event according to you, made up your mind. You don´t even keep your own script.

[thuja]

I myself am baffled by Xeno's internal battle...

[Xenophobe]

Now compare to a $17,000 Toyota Corolla getting 34 mpg hwy. 30 combined. Gas would have to be over $6.62 a gallon average over the life of the car before the Volt has a chance to break even with it.
If you want to get started on your PV panel installation I,ll give you the Email address where you can order those 180 watt panels.

You make a good case for buying a inexpensive, ICE powered car instead of a Volt. But the path of least resistance (in this case economic resistance) is rarely the best one, in the long run.

If you choose not to solve your dependence on crude based fuels, that is your choice. But peak oil is no longer a solutionless issue, you have just demonstrated that it is now just simple economics. I choose to pay the extra, and participate in a peak oil solution.

[TheDude]

Deutsch Bank pointed out in a study last month that global petroleum demand growth for 2010 was the strongest in 30 years. They conclude that spare capacity will very likely be eroded in a few years. Their forecast for the decade is a plateau tempered by demand, with a very gradual decline starting mid-decade.

[Revi]

I think it's important to get off the fossil fuel teat. I commend your action Xeno. The cheapest choice is not the best in this instance. We spent some money and learned a lot about electric transportation. The best part is that we have had a great time doing it.

I saw that report by Deutsche Bank. I also saw the one by Gregor.us and he thinks we're going to fall off the plateau in 2014 pretty steeply. Like 5% per year from then on in. That's really not too far away. It may be time to do something.

[bratticus]

Has anyone told Janaia that the movement's failed?

[vtsnowedin]

You and I are subsidising every fool that buys a Volt

You are aware of how we subsidize gasoline in this country. Do you support that? I bet if you add up all the money that has ever been spent to subsidize gas that we could just buy every household a Volt.

[="vtsnowedin"]Other then that my daughter spent a year in one of the worlds hottest scorpion and camel spider infested sand boxes insuring the flow of oil to world markets I'm not sure what you mean. A good topic for another day perhaps.

It just seems in this thread that you are just going down the line and illustrating all the downsides of alternatives, only to reach the unstated conclusion that BAU must hold. Well, it's not going to and you know it. So we have to decide which set of drawbacks we're willing to deal with since no panacea exists.

On the contrary I am not in favor of BAU and doubt it can be carried on much longer in any case. I am not in favor of a few elites buying a few gimmick electric cars and declaring the problem solved. I am in favor of building enough new nuclear, solar to steam, wind and tidal power plants to actually meet the countries needs including a rapidly rising number of electric cars and more importantly electric trains to take up the slack as oil becomes too precious to move fat people to and from their exercise classes and spa treatments.
In short I am against eyewash and am for positive real action.