zeke wrote:To me, the concept of resource peaking and depletion is a simple as a lesson learned at age 3 with a bag of jelly beans: sooner or later you say, "all gone!"
However, many friends who flame me for talking about peak oil have the following as foundations for their counter-argument:
1. "there's plenty down there"
and
2. "Oil companies want you to think the oil's running out to boost their profits."
To me, these are non-arguments because they either betray a lack of understanding of what "peak" oil means, are fatuous and self-delusional wishes for what could be, or they base an understanding of reality on the behavior of a for-profit industry.(ie, "high pump prices = plenty of supply.") which is antithetical to any man-on-the-street understanding of how for-profit companies work, with respect to finite commodities.
I talk about peak oil because I hope that people — even 1 person will snap out of it and realize that we need to change our behavior to get thru the coming decades better rather than worse.
Anyone care to share their techniques for debating/discussing this with people who are convinced that there's an inexhaustible supply of oil "down there" or at least how to attack the angle that rising prices mean ONLY that oil companies want more profits; not that supply is waning?
thanks!
gphaze
"If the public does think briefly about future oil supplies, the question usually asked is, "How long will oil last?" This is the wrong question. Oil will be extracted in some insignificant quantity perhaps 200 years from now. The critical question is: When does the peak of world oil production occur?" ~ Richard C. Duncan
It may all be true that what we have been told about peak oil is a hoax. Same as the skeptics that claim global warming is a hoax. It may all be a conspiracy, just a cruel trick on the consumer to line the pockets of industry with more money...only time will settle this debate
http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/peak_oil/index.htm
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel ... entid=2097
http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2007 ... -peak-oil/
http://www.energybulletin.net/4466.html
I always tell the proponents saying peak oil is a conspiracy and think that we have an unlimited amount of oil, natural gas, coal, uranium...actions speak louder than words.
We can look at Hubbert's prediction of the USA's peak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
He was exactly right.
We can look at global oil production and see what the general trend is.
We can look at the trend in drilling to see how deep we have to go to find oil.
We can look at the quality of crude being produced. Is it light sweet crude or high sulfur, heavy, hard to refine crude? The light sweet is just that 'light' and is on the surface of the oil pool. Whereas the less desirable heavy sulfated crude is on the bottom of the pool. Does the phrase hitting the bottom the barrel mean anything to you?
Lately we have been putting much of our hope in the tar sands of Canada. When we have to get the oil out of the sand and shale it sounds like we are hitting the bottom of the barrel again. Even talk about getting our gas from refining bitumen coal.
Now, some people say we are saving the light sweet crude for national defense and usining the foreign oil and tar sands first. I don't know, I have no inside information about that claim.
We get about 15% of our natural gas from Canada. That 15% amounts to 50% of the natural gas Canada produces. The US sucks down more energy than any other country...no one can come close to us.
Our demands for natural gas are on the rise, just as our demands are for all fossil fuels. Once demand outstrips production we are headed over Hubert's peak in any number of areas besides crude. We can see peak production issues in natural gas, uranium, food or water, just as we will see with crude oil.
It is an easy task to see how much oil is produced in the world. But finding the 'exact peak date' for world oil production is hard to pinpoint. (see peak oil section)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil
For one thing, some countries production are erratic and they are not transparent with their real production and discovery data.
Also oil production is not an exact science and still requires a little luck. We may find a lucky hit down the road that brings in a gusher to distort some of the figures.
No one knows the exact peak date for world oil production, but we do know that time will come in the not so distant future. But finding the peak is not hard problem once we can look back on it by a few years....but we need some time to do it...again, only time will settle this debate.
Check out:
Twilight in the Desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy
by Simmons, Matthew R.
It is a well written book examining 12 of the key Saudi oil fields and the exaggerated claims of remaining crude reserves of Saudi Arabia.
Also see:
http://www.worldoil.com/INFOCENTER/STAT ... production
http://hubbert.mines.edu/
http://www.mnforsustain.org/duncan_and_ ... The%20Peak
Take care,
V (Male)
Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher
Futurist
Urban Homesteader