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Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Sat 23 Jun 2007, 01:47:28
by Omnitir
MonteQuest wrote:
Omnitir wrote: Why do I think we will be okay in the long-term? Obviously I’m very pro-technology, but unlike many doomers, I think a serious case can be made for the continuing progress of science and technology, even in a declining energy environment. The historic example of this is the Great Depression and WWII, which both saw smooth sailing for science and technology.


The Great Depression and WWII were times of a declining energy environment?

You are kidding, right?

We were literally awash in energy; from Hoover and Grand Coulee Dams for generating electricity to make aluminum (which many cite as principal players in why we won the war) to the peak in oil discovery in 1930, a year before the Great Depression set in.

Besides, this is not about whether or not technology can advance, it 's about whether or not any technological advance is even a viable solution.

We are beyond the limits. We are in overshoot.

What sense is there to try and find a way to stay beyond the limits?

Rather selfish and short-sighted thinking, I would posit.

I was referring to Nazi occupied Europe towards to end of WWII. Oil supplies were cut, the economy was destroyed, yet tech progress continued.

So now you are basically arguing that it doesn't matter if we can solve the energy crisis or not, all that matters is that we die-off?

Of course it's about technology advancing. How else is PV going to capture the energy we need? You still seem to think that the exponential solar theory involves blanketing the Earth in low-tech PV. Technology advancing is critical in this theory, as only a low cost, easily producible technology will be scalable enough.

But how can anyone argue with you when you fall back to "don't matter anyway 'cause we all need to die. It's selfish to try an stop the dieoff". This discussion is not about dieoff, it's about the energy crisis. Constantly bringing up dieoff when we are trying to talk about the potential for solar power to make a difference is a cop out. It's as bad as me just saying "nah, your argument is irrelevant because Star Trek replicators and other techno-wizardry will extend the limits". Both arguments are besides the point of the potential for solar to meet our energy needs.

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Sat 23 Jun 2007, 02:05:19
by MonteQuest
Omnitir wrote: But how can anyone argue with you when you fall back to "don't matter anyway 'cause we all need to die. It's selfish to try an stop the dieoff". This discussion is not about dieoff, it's about the energy crisis. Constantly bringing up dieoff when we are trying to talk about the potential for solar power to make a difference is a cop out.


No, it is not. It's about living within the carrying capacity of the earth.

The energy crisis is merely a symptom of a greater problem.

You just flat insist we must live beyond our means?

There are no limits?

We must stay beyond the carrying capacity?

You do know that you are in the minority in this view?

You aren't arguing with me; you are arguing with reality and Mother Nature.

And she bats last....

There is no techno-fix for overshoot.

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Sat 23 Jun 2007, 02:10:19
by MonteQuest
Omnitir wrote: Of course it's about technology advancing. How else is PV going to capture the energy we need?


Easy.

Powerdown and restrict per capita consumption. We would be suddenly awash in energy. Take fossil fuels off-line as renewables come on line. Put people back to work and retire our energy slaves.

But we won't do it.

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Sat 23 Jun 2007, 02:20:21
by EnergyUnlimited
MonteQuest wrote:There is no techno-fix for overshoot.

Yes, there is,
Image

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Sat 23 Jun 2007, 02:30:51
by PraiseDoom
MonteQuest wrote:
I invite you to read my blog over the next few months and see for yourself.

You wish to bash me, I suggest you do so in the HOF.


I had no intention on bashing. I apologize if I got carried away in the moment and my making light of the situation we are involved in was interpreteted that way. I simply find it amusing that we use language to hide what we are talking about, which is 50%? 75? 90% of the people we know, our neighbors and friends and family all getting killed in the coming dieoff/meltdown/powerdown/resource wars, whatever.

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Sat 10 Feb 2018, 10:20:25
by Tanada
wahoodoggydoo wrote:You doom-and-gloomers need to get a life! Yes, peak oil will happen; there is no doubt about it. But peak oil will NOT cause a cataclysmic crash of global society. People act like the lights will go out when the oil wells dry up. Give me a break!

We are on the cusp of a revolutionary advance, not decline. Economics will force the wasteful to conserve, albeit the wasteful will go kicking and screaming. Our powerful talents for technology and innovation will result in a renewable energy revolution and remarkable increases in energy efficiency.

The Oil Age has pushed global population beyond what can be supported without oil UNDER OUR CURRENT SYSTEM. Humans aren't going to starve by the billions when the oil runs out. Humans will change the system. Humans will adapt to change, that's what we do!

When the Oil Age ends, we don't end. And we don't go back to horse-and-buggy either. We advance into the Solar Age. Look at the innovations that have been developed in the last century. Yes, our CO2 emissions grow exponentially, but our technology grows exponentially as well. We can overcome.

And I don't want to hear about how solar can replace only a fraction of our energy use. That's true in our current system, but not for the future. Besides, most of our energy consumption today is just waste anyway.

Someday human population will exceed what the Earth can support, but it will NOT happen because of peak oil. We are nearing a societal transition, not an end to society.

You doom-and-gloomers do play a useful role however. Somebody needs to give society a good wake-up call. A good dose of fear mongering just might get the job done...

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Sat 10 Feb 2018, 19:05:40
by onlooker
The problem is peak oil is just one issue within the entire discussion of limits to growth. It doesn't exist within a vacuum. That is why the Limits to Growth study back in the early 70's should have served as a wake up call for our species. It was NOT fear mongering. It was projecting how much we could tax our socio-economic-environmental systems until they gave way. It was about assuming different scenarios in our ways of acting and living.
So I can retort and say perhaps PO will not usher in an Apocalyspe but that could then serve as the catalyst for an even greater Crash scenario as humans continue populating the world ever more and thus exacting ever more harm to the fabric of life. Of course it also pertains to climate change and how it is worserning ever day the load of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can try and circumvent consequences to our ways of living and population numbers but ultimately we are just inviting ever greater and devastating consequences because of the strains our numbers and ways of living put on the Earth and its resources and stable interrelated functioning. So in summary, I personally believe that we MUST recognize that we should try as much as possible to limit growth in various ways and live in a sustainable manner. That we must work with Nature and not try and dominate it. Energy is just one facet of this complex mosaic of factors and activities that should concern our species.

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Sat 10 Feb 2018, 22:08:12
by AdamB
onlooker wrote:The problem is peak oil is just one issue within the entire discussion of limits to growth.


Until folks understand why they screwed the pooch related to a single commodity, it doesn't seem reasonable to apply the same bad idea to all the others.

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Sat 10 Feb 2018, 23:09:17
by Plantagenet
AdamB wrote:Until folks understand why they screwed the pooch related to a single commodity.....


Why is this all so hard for you to understand?

Leave that poor pooch alone and take a look at the numbers.

US TOS production has grown rapidly since ca. 2006, making up for declining US oil production from other sources.

Image
Get it now?

Cheers!

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Sun 11 Feb 2018, 13:54:13
by ROCKMAN
P - Exactly. And nothing new: look on your chart how Alaska pulled the US (for a short time) out of the early 80's slump. No reason not to see eventually see a similar profile for the shales.

Fixation on timing of peak oil is ‘misguided’

Unread postPosted: Mon 19 Feb 2018, 16:34:20
by AdamB
The electric car revolution and stricter global rules on emissions have focused debate in the energy sector on when decades of growth in oil demand will eventually peak. But Spencer Dale, chief economist at energy major BP and former Bank of England policymaker, has challenged the industry to come up with a better question. In a co-authored report with Bassam Fattouh at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, which reignited discussion in the oil industry this week, they argue the sector’s fixation about the timing of peak demand is “misguided”. Rather, they argue that the wider ramifications of any peak are really what the industry needs to grapple with. For example, how big oil producer countries reconfigure their economies and energy policies to cope with an industry in structural decline, even if oil consumption remains robust for years to come.


Fixation on timing of peak oil is ‘misguided’

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Tue 20 Feb 2018, 00:19:56
by ralfy
A short time is right.

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Tue 20 Feb 2018, 12:42:12
by asg70
onlooker wrote:I personally believe that we MUST recognize that we should try as much as possible to limit growth in various ways and live in a sustainable manner. That we must work with Nature and not try and dominate it. Energy is just one facet of this complex mosaic of factors and activities that should concern our species.


This above is a sign that you have not worked through all your stages of grief. You are still stuck in a prescriptive mindset while you languish in a site with probably less than a dozen active posters.

The data is in and yet we have chosen not to be green or ecological. We elected a King Canute sort of president promising to hold back the tides through sheer force of will. The best we can hope for is green consumerism ala Tesla, and even then only when the short-term economic math works out for the consumer.

As long as you see yourself starting sentences with "we must" you are locked into the role of the impotent activist who has no audience willing to listen other than a few other oddballs on a site like this.

This is why most doomers swirl down the drain of ever more and more bitterness and misanthropy like PStarr did, never missing an opportunity to demonstrate his contempt for anyone and everyone. Kunstler is on much the same perma-cynic schtick.

Once you accept human nature for what it is then you can let go of that need to write out useless prescriptions or shake your fist or keep writing monologues about "coulda shoulda woulda" for humanity.

It is what it is.

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Tue 20 Feb 2018, 20:28:52
by AdamB
onlooker wrote:The problem is peak oil is just one issue within the entire discussion of limits to growth. It doesn't exist within a vacuum.


It never did. But that wasn't how it was played by the Happy McPeaksters. Peak oil had KICK to it, none of this half century waiting around for Rapture envisioned by the LTG authors. KICK...one day oil peak...the next day...DOOM!! Only after it became obvious that folks who are oil-ignorant really...were...did a return to more old school doom then make a comeback in popularity.

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Tue 20 Feb 2018, 20:43:41
by Plantagenet
AdamB wrote:one day oil peak...the next day...DOOM!!


What strange ideas you have.

When the earth finally reaches peak oil production, oil production is not going to stop the next day and bring about "DOOM!!" as you suggest. Instead, there will probably be a long, slow but irregular decrease in oil production lasting many decades. And there's no reason that declines in global oil production lasting decades have to lead to doom, since with any luck we can replace oil with NG or nuclear power or perhaps even electricity from renewables---a nascent process that is beginning now all around us.

Riddle me this----how much oil does a Tesla use?

Cheers!

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Wed 21 Feb 2018, 12:22:58
by charmcitysking
oil production is not going to stop the next day and bring about "DOOM!!" as you suggest


I don't think he was suggesting that, Planty. He was mocking those who have/are suggesting it.

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Wed 21 Feb 2018, 13:09:21
by AdamB
Plantagenet wrote:
AdamB wrote:one day oil peak...the next day...DOOM!!


What strange ideas you have.


The quote you cherry picked this time (I assume in the usual attempt to pretend I said something else) was based on Jan Lundberg's Here Comes The Nutcracker. Any peak oiler worth than oil-ignorance thought this was a great one, back in 2005.

So I agree with you, he was pretty stupid about the topic, but that was pretty run of the mill tripe for the time.

Plantagenet wrote:Riddle me this----how much oil does a Tesla use?

Cheers!


Darned if I know. I know how much the wife's EV uses, about 200 mL per 3000 miles, which isn't bad for a broken in ICE, although it is a Ford, all my imports use none.

Re: Peak Oil Apocalypse is a bunch of phooey!

Unread postPosted: Wed 21 Feb 2018, 13:13:20
by AdamB
charmcitysking wrote:
oil production is not going to stop the next day and bring about "DOOM!!" as you suggest


I don't think he was suggesting that, Planty. He was mocking those who have/are suggesting it.


Planty has been trolling lately, and the MO is to take a phrase, nearly any phrase, almost always out of context, claim it says something it didn't, and use it to start a conversation on that other topic. Plants been doing it for awhile now, this format is the tell. Won't say why the trolling is needed, most likely it is just for entertainment purposes. Things have been a bit slow in peak oil doomer land as of late.

You however are exactly correct, the author's name was Jan Lundberg, and the title of the article was "Here comes the nutcracker: Peak oil in a nutshell".