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Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby Pixie » Thu 07 Feb 2008, 12:59:22

Aaron wrote:Good points all.

The real world is irreducibly complex!


"...you might as well predict it will rain beer tomorrow. "

If you can't predict when... or what the outcome will be... just how useful is your prediction?


My predictions are useful to amuse me.

By the way, if yeast cells could continue to expand and grow forever, then it would be raining beer tomorrow. And what a wonderful world it would be.

Day after tomorrow, we would all drown in beer.
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby Pixie » Thu 07 Feb 2008, 13:04:13

skyemoor wrote:PO may be best envisioned as a metaphor;

There is a village tucked under the foot of a large cliff. One day, a geologist showed up, and spent the next 2 months studying the cliff, taking samples and reviewing existing geological data from prior State surveys. At the end of that time, he presented his findings at a town hall briefing, wherein he stated, "The cliff above the town is unstable, and will cascade down over the town, flattening every building. I don't know the exact time that it will fall down, but predict with some certainty that this will happen within the next 5 years, though it could be tomorrow. A builder showed up later the same day, showing plans for a new expansion of the town, and brought in his confident, well-dressed geo-technical engineer, who dismissed the report of the geologist, claiming that the cliff would stand for generations. The builder pushed for rezoning rights to property he held, so that he could build a new subdivision within the fall area of the cliff.
(to be continued...)


You must be from Mosier OR. They are currently preparing to develop a talus slope behind town, thus doubling the population.
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby davep » Wed 14 May 2008, 06:30:28

Aaron wrote:Predicting the peak of Brent Crude is like predicting it will rain... about the same accuracy rate.

Predicting global peak oil is likely as accurate as predicting beer rain.

In other words totally unpredictable, unprecedented, and without merit.


That's silly. Predicting whether global peak oil will occur or not is unneccesary. It will occur. Whether raining beer will occur or not is a different thing. We don't know whether it will happen.

The only uncertainty for Global Peak Oil is when it will occur. Whether it happens now or ten years from now is really irrelevant, it's happening soon.

So, IMO, a moderate's approach is to prepare by showing the way for a less energy-intensive future. This could be through designing passive solar and straw baled buildings for example, as well as planting perennial crops such as nuts and fruit (and so on).

This approach will bear dividends ecologically anyway. When we are post-peak your moderate will have shown neighbours and friends a template for living in the post peak era, that doesn't seem to resolve round dribbling over guns and ammo. Hopefully if enough moderates are able to prepare well, then they will start a global template for the post-peak world that avoids a descent into barbarity.
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby mididoctors » Sat 04 Apr 2009, 07:59:55

Aaron wrote:[

Predicting the peak of Brent Crude is like predicting it will rain... about the same accuracy rate.

Predicting global peak oil is likely as accurate as predicting beer rain.

In other words totally unpredictable, unprecedented, and without merit.


b


I predict oil will peak.... 100% certainty....

you have this devil advocate thing all backwards.... the turkey farm analogue is fusion power coming on line NOT oil peaking which will definitely happen
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby Aaron » Sat 04 Apr 2009, 08:41:45

Wow...

A flash from the past...

[smilie=eusa_naughty.gif]
The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt, but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise... economics is a form of brain damage.

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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby outcast » Sat 04 Apr 2009, 09:01:29

Necrothread! W00t!
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby ralfy » Sat 04 Apr 2009, 12:54:40

But No. 1 doesn't show that PO is irrelevant. In fact, it's the opposite: the issue is so relevant that people will have to innovate. Of course, I wouldn't use that word; rather, "survive" or "cut down on various resources," which is essentially the result of PO.

No. 2 is not only self-contradictory (i.e., complexity will make the outcome better or worse) it also contradicts No. 1 (most might not "innovate").


Aaron wrote:From an earlier posting of mine...

It's what we don't know, that we don't know.

There are two basic reasons why peak oil is quite irrelevant... & here they are:

I'm a big fan of deductive reasoning... For those of you who don't know about deductive reasoning, it's that "scientific method" stuff you missed while flirting with each other during science class in school.

Here's how it works...

All pregnancies end. You are pregnant. Therefore: Your pregnancy will end. I don't need to know about your specific pregnancy, to know yours will end.

One of my favorite examples of this comes from William of Occam, many years ago. Willy said: "All things being equal, the simplest explanation, tends to be the right one."

Sounds reasonable... So...

Reason #1 - The GrandPa Factor

My grandfather was born in 1902 in Indian Territory, Oklahoma. He taught me many things during our time together... how to fish the lake with a cane pole... how to bet the inside straight... & how to live a fulfilling life.

But he taught me something even more important than the tiny treasures of a 6 year old boy... without even knowing he did it.

Through listening to his stories, & seeing his long life in a complete arch, one thing seems obvious... That for all our faults... people can be clever little buggers. Imagine watching your world go from horse, to steam, to cars... to the moon! Who could have predicted, back in ole '02, that men would play golf on the moon one day... the very idea would get you laughed right out the door back then.

And yet that is exactly what happened...

In fact, if I look back on our collective human history, I can see the same pattern... over & over again.

What seemed fantasy at the time, eventually came to pass. So let's go back & see what our friend Willy might say about this.

What seems more reasonable?

1) Humanity will hit a brick wall called peak oil, and suffer terrible, if not permanent destruction, because there isn't any viable energy alternative?

or

2) Humanity will repeat the same pattern it has for countless generations. Innovating in the face of crisis beyond the imagination of current thinking.

My own grandfather's life demonstrates this concept nicely.

While I can't tell you specifically what will replace oil... logic says I don't need to.

I only need to understand that if humanity fails to innovate our way out from under oil depletion, it would be the first such human failure in our history!

It's more reasonable to project that unforeseen developments, spurred by the pressure of rising energy prices, will meet our energy challenge in unpredictable ways... solved!

#2 - The M. Lynch Equation

The more complex any issue has become, the more difficult it is to predict the outcome. It's because the initial conditions are all but impossible to quantify accurately, and these specifics vastly affect the outcome. A tiny difference in beginning conditions, will radically alter the equation and how things play out.

This makes efforts at predicting peak oil, an exercise in futility. Given the vastly complex nature of the energy issue, efforts in prediction are of little use... the crystal ball has a crack in it.

So you can live in peak oil fantasy-land as long as you like, but given my two observations, you will be waiting a very long time indeed. In fact you may need to pass on your myopic belief to your descendants to carry on the charade.

The facts speak for themselves. Peak Oil simply cannot be predicted with any accuracy. So you might as well predict it will rain beer tomorrow.

And my grandfather's wisdom shows that all things being equal... we will innovate and prosper...

Always have...

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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby mididoctors » Sat 04 Apr 2009, 19:08:07

Aaron wrote:Wow...

A flash from the past...

[smilie=eusa_naughty.gif]


your position in time relative to the peak date is the irrelevant as far as arguing the predictability of peak or not.

the relevence of peak oil has nothing to do with its predictability in the Lynchian (there's a word) sense....

peak oil may 2005 is fine by me even if we don't recognize it for 10 years...

now whether PO was important or not is a different argument.. the only connection with the predictive nature of the "event" is psycho-social feedback .... "OMFG were running out of oil" headless chicken stuff


which is why revisiting the thread now is perhaps the best time to actually think about this devils advocate
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby yesplease » Fri 08 May 2009, 17:32:58

skyemoor wrote:I likely fall into no one camp as I see the potential outcome as a series of probabilities, i.e.,

No change = 1%
Mild recession, back to normal = 4%
Severe recession, resource contention, stabilizing at slightly lower 'standard of living' = 25%
Mild depression, some resource wars, moderately lower standard of living'= 25%
Severe depression, many resource wars, significantly lower standard of living= 25%
Long term crisis where civilization struggles to continue = 10%
Global collapse, back to subsistence for majority of population 10%
Shouldn't that be from negative to positive, since we're in the moderate forum, as opposed to negative to no change for the doomcopians and no change to positive for the cornucopians? ;)
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 22 Aug 2009, 17:53:44

I was thinking about this at work today and a question occurred to me. Everyone who has studied recent history of Oil in the USA knows that we peaked about 40 years ago, with a little wiggle room. From the amount of oil produced by the USA in 1970 and 2005 we get roughly a halving of production in 35 years, basic rule of 70 math tells us the average decline rate is therefore 2%. While this has been occurring large areas of the Continental Shelf have been held off limits from exploration and development, and still we managed to hold decline down to 2%.

I don't see any reason the Earth as a whole should behave wildly different than the USA has after it hits peak production, countries world wide will start working to develop all those lesser field's and area's that have been only lightly exploited before peak.

So IMO world decline is likely to be a lot closer to 2% per year than 8% or 10% as many on PO.com presume it will be. Governments more than anything else want to stay in power, if that means drilling for oil in the middle of Disneyland then the Disney people might have a big problem to deal with.

Now if declines can be held to 2% how long before serious trouble ensues? Well, that is one of those knotty problems, because mitigation will be used in a whole host of different forms at different success rates. Higher efficiency and substitution will take care of the first decade IMO, after that it all depends on how things developed during that first decade.
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby BigTex » Sat 22 Aug 2009, 19:25:01

What would the U.S. decline rate be if you backed out Alaska?

That seems more realistic if we are going to extrapolate U.S. production decline globally.

It would surprise me if we saw a global decline rate anywhere near 2%.

I think one of many factors that will aggravate decline will be tight credit markets in general going forward, which will pinch exploration, which will delay or prevent marginal projects which might serve to dampen decline rates years or decades from now.
:)
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby TheDude » Sat 22 Aug 2009, 19:46:13

No. The US experience is vastly different than that of other nations owing to the ability of citizenry to own mineral rights, which has created a whole class of minor scale operators who have no analogue in any other producing nation. Look at the EIA page for Distribution and Production of Oil and Gas Wells by State. 355,537 operating oil wells, 125,933 of which produce 0-1 boe/d. This is not a situation that obtains elsewhere. I've asked people with experience in the industry such as R Rapier or ROCKMAN if they thought NOCs could replicate this level of attention by opening up drilling rights to citizenry, and the answer was "damn unlikely," followed by "likely wouldn't make much difference."

The HL method seems to suggest overall world decline will be fairly gentle anyway, however. But we have a lot of very steep declines making their way into the equation, owing to the prevalence of deepwater in the last quarter of the 20th century, which could hasten the decline somewhat. More pressing than that is how nations will react when peak oil registers as a fait accompli, which of course is wholly unmeasurable.

Where you measure the decline rate is of import as well:

Image

Biggest Losers for 2008 from Stat Review:

Code: Select all
Yemen   -11.59%
Chad   -11.50%
Italy   -10.88%
Brunei   -10.00%
Mexico   -9.05%
Tunisia   -8.89%
Other Africa   -8.33%
Nigeria   -7.89%
Denmark   -7.72%
European Union #   -6.24%
Vietnam   -5.98%
United Kingdom   -5.76%
Other Europe & Eurasia   -5.18%
Other Middle East   -4.98%
Syria   -4.10%


Biggest Winners:

Code: Select all
Other Asia Pacific   3.23%
Brazil   3.48%
Indonesia   3.48%
Saudi Arabia   3.66%
Turkmenistan   3.66%
Oman   3.70%
Total Middle East   3.94%
Kazakhstan   4.54%
Thailand   4.81%
Azerbaijan   4.95%
Peru   5.13%
Kuwait   5.32%
Angola   8.27%
Colombia   9.21%
Rep. of Congo (Brazzaville)   10.92%
Iraq   11.52%
Qatar   13.17%


Would be interesting to compare decline rate to overall production.

Tex - US Production minus Alaska:

Image

Looks like a neolithic spear head. That piddling little uptick in the 80s is what the greatest drilling campaign in history produced.
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby BigTex » Sat 22 Aug 2009, 20:04:45

Many thanks Dude.

Outstanding, as usual.

TheDude wrote:The US experience is vastly different than that of other nations owing to the ability of citizenry to own mineral rights, which has created a whole class of minor scale operators who have no analogue in any other producing nation.


I grew up in west Texas and knew countless people like this who made a little money on the side through their mineral rights:

Image

I agree that this model probably wouldn't translate to a place like Nigeria...

Image
:)
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby Pops » Sun 23 Aug 2009, 07:35:45

The events in Export Land seems the big thing to me.
How fast those little Exporters procreate and how soon they make the choice between oil and revenue.
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby BigTex » Sun 23 Aug 2009, 10:37:41

Pops wrote:The events in Export Land seems the big thing to me.
How fast those little Exporters procreate and how soon they make the choice between oil and revenue.


Pops, I wish it was a choice.

It's just going to happen.

I don't see a one child policy being imposed in Saudi Arabia.
:)
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby Pops » Sun 23 Aug 2009, 10:55:23

Sorry, I meant the choice between consuming their oil and exporting it for revenue.
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby dorlomin » Mon 24 Aug 2009, 06:03:59

Kurdistan, offshore US and the Arctic sea all seem pretty promising areas to me. I really think their may be one last big province yet to be uncovered. Perhaps enough to be what Alaska was to America to the world.

On the downside, the Texas Railroad Comissions shuttering in of oil production probibly went along way to preserving fields in terms of not damaging the geology and its old slow extraction technologies were augmented by the faster more modern stuff in the 80s and 90s while many provinces have started off with that meaning they peak and decline faster.
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 24 Aug 2009, 07:01:44

dorlomin wrote:Kurdistan, offshore US and the Arctic sea all seem pretty promising areas to me. I really think their may be one last big province yet to be uncovered. Perhaps enough to be what Alaska was to America to the world.

On the downside, the Texas Railroad Comissions shuttering in of oil production probibly went along way to preserving fields in terms of not damaging the geology and its old slow extraction technologies were augmented by the faster more modern stuff in the 80s and 90s while many provinces have started off with that meaning they peak and decline faster.


That is a valid point, thanx for bringing it up.

My original stance however remains the same, so long as the powers that be want to remain the powers that be it is in their interests to make sure they have as much oil produced as physically possible after the peak, to get as close to meeting demand as they can. If this means drilling thousands of wells that only produce a single bbl per day then that is what they will do, if it mean invading the country next door they will do that too. People in power get to be in power by having a whatever it takes attitude.
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To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby socrates1fan » Mon 31 Aug 2009, 18:00:12

You make some excellent points; however, I just wish to say a few things.
1) History has shown us humans move one step forward and two steps back.
We slowly advance but we have continuous setbacks, to us, the idea of the destruction of society as we know it seems major, but in reality it would just be another setback in the history books.
2) The Roman Empire advanced at a fast rate, they created a vast empire and were flourishing in education, trade, and engineering and they lasted a pretty decent time, long enough to assume nothing would change.
You could say that Romans were ahead for their time and that many people did not live like them, but not everyone in the world is well off, just look at South America, Asia, and Africa.
We could easily be the next Roman Empire, we had a long golden age, but if we did collapse, we wouldn’t go back to the Dark Ages, but society would be setback.
3) I also have hope in green energy, but that is where companies and governments become a problem, a lot of government officials aren’t horribly green friendly (and neither are the populations) and a lot of companies have this nation by the throat when it comes to energy, and the only way to kill that beast is to destroy its food (us).
4) Even when you put into place all of the new technology, we will still have to work our asses off(which no one likes to do) to maintain a decent state in the world as population in the world continues to grow, even though it is dangerous, and our resource usage is insane.
My opinion is that society will continue, but change dramatically.
Corporations in my opinion could lose a lot of power, simply because the cost to grow, purchase, and ship goods won’t be worth the profit.
People HAVE to localize, our system of 100% capitalism just doesn’t work, companies continue to grow until they become corporate power, and then they ravage the world of its resources and outsource until the country they originally developed in it is merely a shell.
Many Romans believed things would go on as normal, the people in plains before the dustbowl thought things would go on as normal, people before the depression thought there was little to worry about.
It is EXTREMELY dangerous to assume things will be business as usual in the face of problems.
Too many people have felt that instead of fixing the problems and look where we are!
Countries and companies continue to ignore environmental pleas, they continue to drain the world of its resources, and history has shown as that when you do that, the world has a way of bitch slapping you for it.
The change of energy use in the late 19th century was not a matter of resources, as it is today
In the late 19th century a lot of people thought the world could continue to just grow on forever.
Unlike Doomers, I still have hope in people and the world, and it is my job as a member of society to try and prepare the world for such problems, or at the very least, my town, and neighbors.
There will be problems, just look at last year, if your wealthy it doesn’t seem that bad, but it was HELL for the poor, groceries were getting expensive, gas was just too expensive, and it seemed pretty bad for awhile, but even with the ‘recession’ it is still getting worse, people have been stealing FOOD from stores to the point where our local Pay Less has security guards about the store.
Once gas prices go back up, things will just get worse, we can’t just let history do the work, we have to get in the face of PO and resource depletion and get real about it, and unfortunately I don’t think the government or companies ever will, especially if gas companies have so much control.
We have the opportunity to fix this, but will we take it?
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Re: Why Peak Oil may prove irrelevant (REDUX)

Unread postby Tanada » Tue 20 Feb 2018, 23:26:47

Tanada wrote:Aaron there is a severe problem with Occam's Razor, which is very often ignored.

While it is nice to believe the simplest answer is the most likely Occam was working towards the goal of irreducibility. IOW look at it from the viewpoint of physics and it goes like this, as the example I was taught way back when in college. Imagine you walk up to a pool table and find 10 balls in the pockets, nine numbered balls plus the cue ball. Can Occam's razor explain how the ten balls got in the pockets? Sure, someone came along, grabbed the balls and rolled or dropped them into the pockets. Irreducible simple, isn't it? Except if you have ever played nine ball you know that in most cases the simplest explanation is dead wrong, in most cases what happened was someone took a cue stick, used it to hit the cue ball and over the course of several minutes to many minutes ricocheted the numbered balls off the cue ball and into the pockets. In most circumstance more than one person was involved and all sorts of wild angles and unexpected collisions resulted over the course of time needed until all ten balls were in the pockets.

While in theory simple Newtonian physics would allow you to predict the results of every shot in advance random variables intrude and make a quantum mess of everything.

The real world is irreducibly complex! Occam lived in a time when everything in the universe was viewed with a mechanistic world view, a viewpoint which is still very common today among economists, reporters and politicians. A mechanistic world view leads to statements such as "the economy is heating up", or "The economy is slowing down" or "The population explosion will inevitably lead to a die-off".

The real world is not a machine where we humans can pull a lever or turn a valve to make it heat up, slow down, or crash/die-off. The real world is irreducibly more complex than our three pounds of brain augmented by all the computers we can build can grasp as a Gestalt where we know which input does what in a reliably consistent reproducible manner. Think back to that nine ball game, what are the odds you could play the game with exactly the same results repetition after repetition? If you manage two identical games in a row can you manage three, or ten, or a million? Now ask yourself how much simpler is a game of nine ball than the world economy? Hell I can't even make my own household budget repeat itself three months in a row, there are ALWAYS unforeseen factors intruding!

I am a moderate because I believe we will muddle on through as we always do. I fear we will soon be a fascist society and the ecosystem and humanitarian consequences will be depressing as all get out, but I also think humans as such will survive and go on with their lives for untold generations into the future. I believe the only way we will get the 3-5 Billion human die off so many seem to crave is through nuclear and/or biological warfare on a world wide scale. Unfortunately I don't know what specifically I could do to stop it, but moving to the back woods looks more attractive every day. The world is a dangerous place, always has been and so long as their are humans and other predators in it, it always will remain so. Once we beat the animal challenges nature put in our way we had to supply our own, I think Global Warming will challenge us quite a bit. I could be wrong. We could wise up and shift totally away from fossil fuel combustion, using our fossil fuels only as chemical feed stock. But I doubt it ;)
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Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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