[StarvingLion]

My gripe with the supposed Peak Oil believers is that their analysis of the situation is so superficial that it is entirely worthless.

Mr Lion! Welcome back to our reality!!!!

But what really gets me frustrated is the wrong notion that Peak Oil is fundamentally a transportation problem.

Goodness, why would ANYONE think that!

The academic system is a propaganda system that convinces people that their entire income is NOT dependent on a never ending input flow of oil.

Well, you have to admit that when THIS is what passes for an academic system in some places, there is a reason some might be clueless about...well...anything except knowing where the munchies are!

Oil doubles as an ATM cash machine, not only a means of transportation.

Electrification of transport does not replace oil as also a means of income.

There is no "renewables" age such as below:

Wood-->Coal-->Oil-->Solar + Wind + Hydro (Renewables)...Not possible

Neither is the Uranium Age possible:

Wood-->Coal-->Oil-->Uranium...Not possible

They cannot fund their own expansion.

Natural gas may allow a heavily privatized highly automated society to exist but certainly not the welfare state. In fact I doubt its possible at all.

There is nothing to fall back on either. Coal age...gone forever. Wood age...gone forever. There is no such thing as an electricity age based on solar and wind building solar and wind.

There is no oil money to fuel this machine as it is currently configured any longer. If the good high EROEI big oil fields no longer exist, then an immediate COLLAPSE is the only possible outcome because 95% of the people will have no income.

[StarvingLion]

The phoney "Renewables" and Uranium "Industries" require a tax on using the atmosphere to exist. In other words, they are totally parasitic. The hosts (wood, coal, oil) are dead. What are they going to feed on?

Adam, why isn't there a Saudi Arabia of Solar Electricity Generation somewhere in the world? I

Why does Solar always have to get cheaper if its a cash machine?

Why does Shale now have to get always cheaper if its a cash machine?

Answer: They don't generate cash...they BURN cash.

Adam, where is the income going to come from to keep these bloated welfare states alive?

[kublikhan]

What I am struggling with is how free market cultists think. How they can attempt to say something like that quoted passage as if it is at all grounded in reality. "Yes, we have efficiency gains. Yes we do use more each year. But that doesn't mean we don't HAVE to use more to maintain BAU." ... What? Considering "lower" has never actually been the case for global consumption of hydrocarbon liquids, isn't this an unfalsifiable claim to insist it's possible?

It has happened in the past. But it took an energy crisis to do it. Global oil production hit a then high of 66 MMbpd in 1979. It did not exceed that level again until 1993. Yet global GDP kept right on tickin up, increasing nearly 50% over those years.

[kublikhan]

The point is pstarr that all of the problems you highlight did not stop BAU and global economic growth continued apace, despite lower oil consumption levels.

As for your other point that we have reached the pinnacle of fuel economy, that is not true. There is still plenty of room to squeeze out of fuel economy:

As stricter fuel standards force cars to guzzle far less fuel over the next few decades, gasoline consumption is expected to decline substantially by 2040. “One of the primary drivers of the decrease in motor gasoline consumption is more stringent fuel economy standards that … will require new light-duty vehicles to average about 49 miles per gallon in vehicle model year 2025.”

As Fuel Standards Tighten, Gas Consumption to Fall

motor gasoline consumption in the transportation sector declines as a result of a 70% increase in the average efficiency of on-road light-duty vehicles (LDVs), to 37 mpg in 2040. Total motor gasoline consumption in the transportation sector is about 3.4 quadrillion Btu (1.8 million barrels per day (bbl/d)) lower in 2040 than in 2013.

Energy consumption by primary fuel

[radon1]

But all those advances have already passed through the system. There are no more to be had.

Why? This may well be true, but how can this be proven?

[radon1]

but really, in the mind of the cornie, what is this attempting to mean?:

understand the simple fact that we can get more efficient in how we use oil AND we can use more at the same time. But those both don't have to happen together.

He is basically saying that Jevon's paradox does not have to be true, without giving much thought to the fact that he is saying that. Ordinary forum blather.

[SeaGypsy]

An often overlooked aspect of Jevons is the increment of efficiency & capacity of market to absorb gains. Only a massive & radical multiplier will break the law at outset, say something as abundant as dirt, powerful as nuclear, portable as gasoline, safe as water, yeah Jevons is broken. At the other end, system shock crashes markets as marginal efficiencies come too little too late & capacity to absorb gains vanishes. Jevons is a good shocker for newbies, but it does only give an indication rather than a cure.

[kublikhan]

I don't thinks so Kub. The recent incremental post-peak run up in efficiency has itself peaked.

That is car buyers favoring larger vehicles because of low fuel prices. Gas guzzlers went from a low of 43% of vehicle sales to 60%. Which BTW is the opposite of what you said would happen(people downsizing). Seems car buyers preferences change with fuel prices:

From China to the U.S., drivers are buying bigger vehicles, while sales of fuel-efficient hybrids struggle. The average car sold in April achieved a fuel economy of 25.2 miles per gallon, down from a peak of 25.8 set in August 2014, just before oil prices crashed. “The gains completely stopped right at the same time that oil prices started to decline.”

Today in the U.S., light trucks, vans and SUVs account for 60 percent of total vehicle sales -- a level only reached briefly in 2005, when Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, averaged $55 a barrel. It’s now around $50. The International Energy Agency said in May that less-efficient vehicles, including four-wheel drives, “remain very much in vogue, a consequence of persistently lower retail pump prices.”

Gas Guzzlers
In 2008, when oil prices averaged $100 a barrel, the share of gas guzzlers in U.S. total vehicles sales dropped at one point to just 43 percent.

OPEC’s Cheap Oil Strategy Lures Drivers Back Into Gas Guzzlers

You have to be a real techtopian dreamer if you think aerodynamics or ICE engine design will improve more than a tiny bit.

Either that or you are dealing with facts:

The auto industry is making significant strides toward increasing fuel efficiency and is ahead of schedule in meeting strict federal fuel economy goals. Already, 10% of the new passenger cars and trucks on the market today meet their federal targets for 2020 and the industry still has much room to apply state-of-the-art fuel efficiency technology to the remaining fleet. “The efficiency and emissions standards are working — all you have to do is look at cars and trucks that are on the road. Automakers are meeting the challenge of making cleaner cars, and Americans are buying those cars.”

Most of the improvements are coming in normal vehicles and don’t rely on advanced technology such as battery electric drive trains or hydrogen fuel cells. About 70% of sales of vehicles that meet or exceed 2020 standards run on conventional gasoline- and diesel-powered engines. “Everyone is looking for the internal combustion engine to be the main driver of these efficiency improvements over the next 10 years.” Manufacturers on average are about 1 mpg, or one year, ahead of the targets. They calculated that the average fuel economy – based on auto window stickers – of the cars, pickup trucks, vans and SUVs purchased in April was 25.2 mpg. That’s a 14% increase from April 2010.

Automakers ahead of schedule for 2020 fuel economy targets

After today, improvements will not come from efficiency improvements, but rather downsizing. Tiny cars

Downsizing might be part of it but it is not the only route being taken to improving fuel economy:

many efficiency opportunities are available and that more efficiency innovations will continue to emerge in the marketplace.

Each automaker is subject to varying standards based on its sales-weighted average vehicle size (or “footprint”) and its mix of cars versus light trucks (like sport utility vehicles and pickups). This leads to an important point about the structure of the standards: by design, all the vehicle types are pushed to achieve about the same percentage efficiency improvement. In practice, this means that manufacturers making larger vehicles, like US-based General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, will get less stringent absolute standards. As a consequence, the new rules push all automakers to install new technologies but they do not push for vehicles to be smaller. These provisions were necessary to achieve industry buy-in.

Makers of compact cars, crossovers, and full-size trucks will utilize an array of rather dramatic technological improvements. However, the regulation is a performance standard that allows automakers to develop their own diverse technology strategies to comply. The new standards also allow the mix of future vehicles (i.e., how many compacts, crossovers, and pickups) and their resulting mpg to fluctuate somewhat depending on market forces (e.g., the price of fuel) yet remain compliant from a regulatory perspective.

How will automakers achieve the new standards? Better fuel economy is, at its heart, a matter of physics, engineering, and economics. Vehicles lose over 70 percent of fuel’s chemical energy to the thermodynamic, friction, and pumping losses that take place during the internal combustion process. The good news is that there are numerous technical solutions to combat those losses. Automotive engineers have developed far more sophisticated valvetrains to optimize the precise timing of fuel and air intake and exhaust. Turbocharging with gasoline direct injection is the get-more-with-less approach that can provide more power and make gasoline engines operate like fuel-efficient diesels. Transmissions with more gears and optimized controls ensure that the engine’s torque and speed are consistently near their highest-efficiency “sweet spot.” In fact, new dual-clutch transmissions, which eliminate the torque converter and minimize power losses between the engine and wheels, are now giving automatics better efficiency than manuals. Vehicle design improvements—sleeker aerodynamics; advanced, stronger and lighter materials; and lower-rolling-resistance tires—all mean that automakers can drastically reduce the vehicle powertrain energy requirements without degrading vehicle size, safety, acceleration, or utility.

New Automobile Regulations: Double the Fuel Economy, Half the CO2 Emissions, and Even Automakers Like It

[ralfy]

This is a recap of what was pointed out in an earlier thread:

One article points out that the countries that are developed are now moving towards post-industrialization. That means they are now moving to service industries, financing, etc. The argument is that there will be BAU because all countries can do the same.

The problem is that most countries are developing. That means they have not reached full industrialization, let alone post-industrialization. For that to happen, several earths will be needed.

[AdamB]

He said SUPPOSED Peak Oil believers. 'SUPPOSED' as in 'FAKE', i.e. 'pretending to be peak oil believers'.

Correct. Not all peak oil believers are peak oil believers. Some just use it as part of their entertainment while playing in the fantasy doom league.

[AdamB]

I understand this. I guess what you're saying is that the kind of person I'm debating with on that site is delusional, and addicted to hopium.

Not quite. The person you are debating with on that site has a firm grasp on reality, and repeating peak oil dogma circa 2005 doesn't mark him...but you.

Cool. Please explain how using less oil will be possible while also maintaining BAU for a linked global economy.

You mean, like the world did between 1979 and about 1992?

Having lived through that entire time period, it didn't look all that difficult. You are aware that in the late 1970's we were told that by the late 1980's we would be RUNNING OUT, right? Not peaking, but running out? So when global peak oil hit in about 1979, it was all quite terrifying for awhile. The internet wasn't around for the 12 true believers to get together and slap each other on the back about how cool it would be, that came with Peak Oil 2.0. Or is it 3.0 now? In any case, I suppose the answer to your question is we'll do the same thing now, that we did back then. 7 years after global peak in 1979, the price crashed in 1986 (sound familiar...peak oil in 2008 or so according to TOD, 7 years later....??? GLUT!) and we had lower prices for nearly a decade and a half.

Talk about a nice history to repeat, right? Certainly the draft and $200 oil and all the hysterical scenarios claimed for peak oil aren't occurring now any more than they did back then. We really should all learn from history I think.

[AdamB]

Oil doubles as an ATM cash machine, not only a means of transportation.

I've never dipped my hands into a bucket of oil, and handed that to anyone, for anything, like I would the cash from an ATM.

Electrification of transport does not replace oil as also a means of income.

My wife's electrification of transport replaced the need to put gasoline in her fuel tank, for at least 6 months at a time. Saves me money, and has nothing to do with her means of income.

There is no "renewables" age such as below:
Wood-->Coal-->Oil-->Solar + Wind + Hydro (Renewables)...Not possible
Neither is the Uranium Age possible:
Wood-->Coal-->Oil-->Uranium...Not possible
They cannot fund their own expansion.

You might be slipping back into that other world Mr StarvingLion, coming up with weird conditionals that have nothing to do with peak oil, nor the development of alternate forms of power generation.

Natural gas may allow a heavily privatized highly automated society to exist but certainly not the welfare state. In fact I doubt its possible at all.

All sorts of things are possible, such as peak oil not happening as claimed in the recent past, peak oil turning into glut and low prices, which is what happened instead of deprivation and destruction, considering that we haven't used even 20% of our available resources?

There is nothing to fall back on either. Coal age...gone forever. Wood age...gone forever. There is no such thing as an electricity age based on solar and wind building solar and wind.

Good thing we have so much oil resources to keep transitioning over the rest of this century.

There is no oil money to fuel this machine as it is currently configured any longer.

Well, considering that oil isn't really money, who cares?

If the good high EROEI big oil fields no longer exist, then an immediate COLLAPSE is the only possible outcome because 95% of the people will have no income.

The good high EROEI fields were petering out by 1910, and the immediate collapse after that happened didn't stop the entire suburban lifestyle from being built out half a century later. Unlikely that as the 4th harder oils peter out, anything different will happen with 5th and 6th and 7th harder oils waiting in the wings.

[AdamB]

Adam, where is the income going to come from to keep these bloated welfare states alive?

Where does the income come from to keep any welfare recipient alive? Wealth redistribution of the productive is the usual mechanism.

[AdamB]

yes kub, that is true. But those gains in efficiency must be seen in light of the geopolitics, culture and technologic (both in automobile and oilfield productivity) advances of the time. 1979 was the last of the great oil shocks (after US peak in 1971, the Arab oil embargo in 1973) It was not until 2005 (and the global peak) that we saw anything as nasty and prolonged.

What global peak in 2005?

Figure 3 would seem to indicate that a month in 2015 was the peak.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurberma ... 8c625ed2bc

May I recommend data, rather than fabrication?

But all those advances have already passed through the system. There are no more to be had.

Fortunate then that the last faux peak oil gave us something to do our random first world transport with besides oil then!

Nothing like a peak oil to seed its own demise, encouraging not only the construction of new fuel generation but the means to utilize it, as we transition to our cleaner and anti-crude transport!

[AdamB]

AdamB, I haven't heard from you in a while.

Feeling shy?

As an avid environmentalist, yes, I can be a bit shy around those whom (as just one example) celebrate in the death of the beautiful animals in our world. I find it distressing, so I tend to just be quiet, and that comes across as shy.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =3&theater

[efarmer]

The Ford Model T did about 21 MPG and was a very Spartan vehicle but
started the American mass adoption of ICE vehicles.
By 1935 creature comforts and associated mass and resultant
engine enlargement dropped the MPG to around 14, in 1973
when the Arab embargo hit, MPG was around 12 average.
In 2009 the average was about 25MPG. We can dicker on the
exact numbers depending on source information but let's not
and just look at the trend.

A very basic engine on a Model T did 21 MPG. Modern cars with
reams of features and creature comforts, and engines and drive
trains controlled by several powerful synchronized computers and
fitted with dozens of electronic sensors to optimize every parameter
possible, and with 6 speed computer controlled transmissions are
in the 40 MPG range for small vehicles such as a Ford Focus. This means
that the process of computerizing and sensor festooning that has been
implemented and perfected, constantly and globally since the 1980's
(36 years) has about wrung all the efficiency practical out of the ICE.
The magic of digital control and extensive sensoring and optimizing
has taken place for the most part at this point in time in my personal
opinion. A majority of people having personal vehicles has always been
grossly inefficient if a joyous part of a lifestyle for many of us.
The ICE is thoroughly perfected, our strategy as a society that
got to where we are on a huge and illogical but lucrative energy
exploit is obviously not perfected. We do wish that a breakthrough
motor rather than a collective solution would insure Easy Motoring
BAU.

[Tanada]

The Ford Model T did about 21 MPG and was a very Spartan vehicle but
started the American mass adoption of ICE vehicles.
By 1935 creature comforts and associated mass and resultant
engine enlargement dropped the MPG to around 14, in 1973
when the Arab embargo hit, MPG was around 12 average.
In 2009 the average was about 25MPG. We can dicker on the
exact numbers depending on source information but let's not
and just look at the trend.

A very basic engine on a Model T did 21 MPG. Modern cars with
reams of features and creature comforts, and engines and drive
trains controlled by several powerful synchronized computers and
fitted with dozens of electronic sensors to optimize every parameter
possible, and with 6 speed computer controlled transmissions are
in the 40 MPG range for small vehicles such as a Ford Focus. This means
that the process of computerizing and sensor festooning that has been
implemented and perfected, constantly and globally since the 1980's
(36 years) has about wrung all the efficiency practical out of the ICE.
The magic of digital control and extensive sensoring and optimizing
has taken place for the most part at this point in time in my personal
opinion. A majority of people having personal vehicles has always been
grossly inefficient if a joyous part of a lifestyle for many of us.
The ICE is thoroughly perfected, our strategy as a society that
got to where we are on a huge and illogical but lucrative energy
exploit is obviously not perfected. We do wish that a breakthrough
motor rather than a collective solution would insure Easy Motoring
BAU.

It seems self evident that if a heavy modern car can average 40 mpg you could use that exact technology to create an ultra car, a modern version of the Model T with zero creature comforts, and get at least 60 mpg, probably more. Eliminate the A/C, Stereo, power windows and locks and those changes alone cut the weight by over a hundred pounds. Hand crank windows and pull/push/key locks are not a hardship unless you are so spoiled you consider them a necessity. Same for A/C. Heat to a limited extent is necessary to prevent window fogging and/or frosting over, but it doesn't need to be strong enough to roast hot dogs in your car in mid winter. Reducing all these ancillary comfort systems also makes it possible to use a smaller electric charging system and thus the horsepower demands for the engine itself.