German military analysis of peak oil now available

16 Comments on "German military analysis of peak oil now available"

BillT on Fri, 23rd Nov 2012 3:17 pm 



The Us Military already said it peaked years ago … Germany is slipping!^_^

Bor on Fri, 23rd Nov 2012 5:51 pm 



After Peak picture will not be cute by any means. It will represent process of a rapid decaying of Western civilization. Contemporary militaries will die out rather soon after the Peak. The very first victim will be air force . The next will go aircraft carriers. Without aircraft these vessels will be extremely vulnerable to attacks and completely useless. The same vulnerability will kill other huge ships. Contemporary fleets will evaporate all together swiftly. And without fleets the capability to reach out will not be there anymore. Our world will be much smaller. The rocketry will go next and then tanks and other vehicles of the kind. No amount of fuel made out of coal and gas will replace oil.

The militaries will be extremely small. Horses will be used again. And since advertisement will not be affordable and not necessary, Internet will not be free anymore and eventually will die out. Telegraph will be used for a while, however…

actioncjackson on Fri, 23rd Nov 2012 6:06 pm 



With all the fracking opportunities and energy independence talks shouldn’t the US be a darker shade of blue?

Arthur on Fri, 23rd Nov 2012 6:52 pm 



Here is the video:

http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/german-army/

Summary: collapse in ten years.

Ken Nohe on Sat, 24th Nov 2012 2:43 am 



Quite a long and interesting report covering a wide range of subjects related to oil. There is almost everything you need to know to understand the issue but who will read that between 2 twits? Our ability as a society to focus beyond the short term is slipping away and the pace is accelerating. People who still have a job are under tremendous and growing pressure to perform obliging them to cut corners. There is less and less room to prepare for the future. Soon, we won’t have any!

Cloud9 on Sat, 24th Nov 2012 2:00 pm 



Some of us have read it. For the rest, there are the FEMA camps and that billion rounds of jacketed hollow points purchased by Homeland Security. I’ll bet the defensive ring around D.C. will be three hundred miles deep.

shortonoil on Sat, 24th Nov 2012 6:55 pm 



BillT said:
“The Us Military already said it peaked years ago … Germany is slipping!”

Conventional crude peaked in early 2000; that is what the Iraq War was all about. They were expecting terrible things to happen after Peak. The only terrible thing that happened was G. Bush slaughtering half a million people. They didn’t understand what Peak meant then, and they still don’t. But don’t worry about the military running out of oil; you’ll be walking long before that happens. There is an advantage to being the one who has all the guns!

Cloud9 on Sat, 24th Nov 2012 8:06 pm 



Think you are right, but the military does not have all the guns here in the U.S.

Arthur on Sat, 24th Nov 2012 8:45 pm 



http://tinyurl.com/bo3pcoq

Fascinating map from the Bundeswehr study, depicting the “strategic ellipse”, the relatively compact region with 74% of the planets oil and dito 70% gas. Expect Germany and France soon to geostrategically turn 180 degrees… eastwards.

Rick Munroe on Sat, 24th Nov 2012 11:19 pm 



I’m puzzled by several things:
First, why was this posted now? The article refers to “last week” when in fact the English translation has been available for two years.
I’m pleased to see the Bundeswehr report get some much-deserved attention, but we should not mislead people into thinking that this is news.

Second, Bill states, “The US military already said it peaked years ago.”
This is not true: I presume that Bill is referring to the 2010 JOE, which did not say anything about peaking being past tense, etc, only warning:
“A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity” (p. 28).
To add to the urgency, it restates its 2008 warning, “By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD” (p. 29).

Third, Shorty says, “Conventional crude peaked in early 2000.” Most analysts say that it peaked in 2005. The IEA said it occurred in 2006. There are data which indicate late 2004.
What is clear is that we have been stuck at the ongoing plateau (around 74 mbpd) for at least 7 years.
But conventional crude production was below 69 mbpd in 2000, at least 5 mbpd below the ongoing ‘peak’/plateau.

Ken Nohe on Sun, 25th Nov 2012 6:13 am 



When exactly oil peaks is of no importance whatsoever. In any case, we will only know long after the fact.

What is important is that we are not doing the necessary investments to insure that we have new sources of energy available “after”. When you know that you need more than 10 years to roll out a new technology assuming that it is ready to be rolled out, it means that nothing will be available before 2025. Who believes that we will produce the more than 100m-barrels/day necessary at that time to maintain the current lifestyle?

And if we don’t what happens? Well exactly what is going on now! Stagnating then declining lifestyles, permanent recessions, tensions then wars in the Middle East and a mad scramble to get the last affordable drops.

Of course, we will walk long before the army stops flying supersonic jets, some of us already do! As the economy stagnate more will join them. That’s it. Even if thing gets very, very bad, well in 3 years New Jersey will be like Greece at worst. Not Armageddon, but not fun either.

Arthur on Sun, 25th Nov 2012 7:44 am 



Ken, wind and solar are ready to be rolled out. It is a matter of investment decision, not R&D. The US government wants to invest 235 billion for the renewal of the nuclear arsenal. That’s 235 GW renewable plus a few talks with Russians and Chinese.

Ken Nohe on Sun, 25th Nov 2012 3:32 pm 



Arthur, unfortunately, contrary to what people believe, wind and solar will be of little help… in the current context. The technology is fine, this is true. But in Japan, for example, the electric companies are actively discouraging people to add more wind turbines: They destabilize their networks! An electric network can only be built upon a regular and permanent energy source, called “base load”. Neither wind nor solar are “that”. They therefore can help but only marginally. They are not “THE” solution.

Arthur on Sun, 25th Nov 2012 5:05 pm 



That’s where hydro storage comes in. The western half of the US as well as Canada have more than enough mountain valleys to build water bassins to even out intermittent supply.

This Summer I was on holiday in Switserland in Saas Fee near the Mattmark dam/reservoir:

Half hour video of construction
http://vimeo.com/12262550

(german, french and english subs)

I obviously visited the power station, very interesting. Total capacity reservoir 255 GWh (or 26 million euro worth of electricity delivered by mother nature for free). Total efficiency charging and decharging: 80%.

There is no other long term solution.

Ken Nohe on Mon, 26th Nov 2012 12:30 am 



Saas Fee is better known for its superb hiking than its dams 🙂 But you are right that in some places, few in fact, but Switzerland, Japan and the Cascades are among them, dams can help. I used to visit dams; my father was building them! But that was a long time ago, when only the engineering prowess was taken into consideration. Nowadays, only China can proceed with such monstrous schemes as the 3 gorges dam. What is important to understand is that every energy source has it pluses and minuses and none will power endless growth. The solution to our energy crisis is to grow differently, not a mad scramble for every last drop of whatever but I do not think we are ready to contemplate such a drastic change, at least not voluntarily.

Arthur on Mon, 26th Nov 2012 11:18 am 



I should have said Saas-Almagell. I took your post as an occasion to collect all my 2012 holiday pictures from my visit to the Saas-Almagell hydro power station and put them in a post:

http://tinyurl.com/d57wpkn

Endless growth is over for good, but dams can still be handy to serve our next objective, namely merely survive as a civilization. In fact uninhabited mountainous Norwegian Spitsbergen is considered to be Europe’s ‘battery pack’, where dams are going to be integrated in Europe’s supergrid.