[bratticus]

10 Basic Facts of Peak Oil (edits bold/underlined)
1. "Peak Oil" is the point of maximum production rates followed by terminal production rate decline.
2. Oil is a finite resource on a human time scale.
2. Discovery of new oil fields peaked 40 years ago and very large fields earlier still.
3. Easily extracted (inexpensive) oil will be depleted faster than oil with various cost-increasing production complications.
4. Unless suppressed, the population of an oil producing nation will become an oil consuming one, their consumption will impact the oil they have available for export.
Why doesn't Nigeria use up it's exports? Simple: it's suppressed.
5. Increasing oil prices can increase reserves by making once unprofitable oil profitable
Must define "reserves" here or no one will get it. "Reserves" doesn't qualify as a "basic" term.
6. Increasing oil prices decrease demand by reducing the amount consumers can purchase
7. Increasing oil prices reduce discretionary income available for other uses depressing the economy.

6 and 7 could be combined and they are horrible and offensive to me because the do not pay attention to industry.
They promulgate a myth that it's all about consumers and their cars. Pay attention to industrial use of oil as it is key:

‘Peak Demand,’ Yes, But Not the Nice Kind
By Chris Nelder
Friday, March 5th, 2010

... Most people thought the nearly 2 mbpd decline in U.S. petroleum demand from 2007 through 2009 owed to efficiency and people driving less.

In reality, only about 15% owed to reduced gasoline demand. The other 85% was lost in the commercial and industrial sector: jet fuel, distillates (including diesel), kerosene, petrochemical feedstocks, lubricants, waxes, petroleum coke, asphalt and road oil, and other miscellaneous products.

Very simply, when oil got to $120 a barrel it cut into real productivity, and forced the world’s most developed economies to shrink. At $147, it wreaked serious damage. ... the new normal will be cycles of bumping our heads against the supply ceiling, falling dazed to the floor, rising back to our knees, then finally standing, only to bump our heads against the ceiling once more. ... The true import of peak oil, therefore, may not be sustained high prices, but economic shrinkage.

8. Scaling down to fit substitutes for oil (i.e., electric cars), will take considerable time, after the need is recognized.
9. Significant amounts of national oil company data are unavailable, obscuring the true situation.
10. Increasing energy expended in finding and developing, and often in extracting and refining oil reduces the net energy produced.
10 is redundant to 3 as EROI / EROEI is a production complication

[kublikhan]

We've also neglected Mr. Jevons...
Anyone pay attention to him any more?

An interesting article...

They did a rather exhaustive study on Jevons paradox. The study largely debunked Jevons Paradox. Jevons was looking at a new disruptive technology that was just introduced. In that scenario, yes, overall energy use will increase. Examples: steam engine, electric motor, etc. However, when they studied efficiency gains in mature systems, they generally did NOT cause Jevons paradox. This is particularly true for consumers rather than producers. Examples: Insulating your house, buying a more fuel efficient car, etc. They did notice some increase in use because of increased efficiency. But not enough to overwhelm the efficiency gain. In general, they found that for every 10 units of energy saved from efficiency gain, 1 unit is lost to increased use. That is still a 90% energy savings. So basically, unless there is some new disruptive technology on the horizon, such as fusion, Jevons Paradox is not something that needs to be worried about.

Here was the paper: 'Rebound Effects' Threaten Success of UK Climate Policy

[Expatriot]

The first type understand that, given human propensity for war and aggression and resource monopolization, carnage must result from PO.

There are potential outcomes all across the spectrum.

Incorrect. You are stating your normalcy bias in oblique terms.

Barring divine intervention, there is only a single possible outcome - world chaos.

If you want to dicker about which country will invade which, well we can do that (I'd like 10 on the Germans leaving their borders before 2020).

But there will be perpetual world war over the remaining resources.

To believe something else is to believe that putting 10 starving wolves into a cage with 20 pounds of meat will not cause fighting.

[meemoe_uk]

But we're still waiting for the US to significantly deplete it's oil reserves. The US is today pulling just below 1970\1 record amounts of crude.
>Piss! I didn't read this, I thought you were being serious. Go do some homework.
Here let me hekp, I've wasted this much time.

I've already done my homework. It says
" POers and doomers ignore data from official international energy agencies when it's contrary to their fantasies, instead they prefer to refer to graphs cooked up out of doomer dreams sited on doomer blogs and websites "

I get my data to say the US is near it's peak output from both the EnergyInfomationAgency and the InternationalEnergyAgency.
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/I ... d=53&aid=1
http://omrpublic.iea.org/omrarchive/12apr11full.pdf
EIA : US supply : 10,037.290 Kbpd for Dec 2010 ( amongst many high supply numbers )

Myself and OilFinder have been spamming this site with links to the EIA and IEA reports of the current record breaking oil output, but looks like you, as with all doomers make a point of ignoring the links.
Your doom-dream graph of US production is wrong.

The feeling I get when I see a doomer fall for this old self inflicted trick for the 1000th time is more like a mix of

Also, you know how I said

" taking just a modest outlook of oilfinders recent discovery list suggests that oil discovery is setting new records right now, in this new golden age of oil discovery that we're living in, that all doomers ignore because it's inconvienient to their ideals. [/i]"

In your case, and this threads case, I was right.

[kublikhan]

I was (years ago) supporting evidence, an Alternate Techtopian who believed in the Healing Powers of Permaculture. But I am still not a Doomer because I suspect folks will be fed, housed, and cared for post-peak.

I'ma have to go with pstarr on this one. I think you are a bit pessimistic there expatriot. See my post in the Urban vs Rural thread about Cuba's Special Period. It's about as close to a real world example of peak oil as we currently have. Yes there was much belt tightening and falls in the standard of living, but by and large people were still fed, housed, and clothed.

[Expatriot]

Cuba's . . . It's about as close to a real world example of peak oil as we currently have. Yes there was much belt tightening and falls in the standard of living, but by and large people were still fed, housed, and clothed.

People who were suppressed by the Batistas, who had almost nothing to begin with, and then went through some period of more stress on an island nation 50 or so miles from the tip of the Empire is not instructive at all with regard to the Western world. Sorry. It's a nice cornucopian fantasy that we can look at a minute sampling and have it trump 10 thousand years of human behavior, but it's jut a fantasy. You want to use islands, go to Rapa Nui, which this board knows well.

The history of humans is a history of beating each other down. The Brits starve the Irish, beat the Indians, attempt to enslave the colonists, the colonists beat the other Indians, enslave the blacks, and kill the Mexicans.

Every where, in every time, there has been mass murder, aggression, and constant war for resources.

It is cornucopian fantasy to believe that now, when things are about to go from the best they've ever been back to the stone age, that somehow this time things will be different.

[Expatriot]

I suspect folks will be fed, housed, and cared for post-peak. Why?
--because raping the planet for the last resources cost too much of those resources. It takes a lot of fuel to get into timber/coal/mineral country and to get the last high-hanging fruit out.

Not sure how this is even remotely relevant to the conversation. All that matters is how people treat each other. Whether the planet is "raped" (LOL) or not is immaterial. People will kill each other to get the remaining oil.

--the wealthy do not want you to get restive.

They don't act in unison, and not once in history have the "wealthy" ever been able to prevent revolution and social chaos for any length of time when all the non-wealthy got to the point of not-much-to-lose.

-poor folks move into the cities

Again, not sure how this relates.

--there will be enough fuel/land to grow your sugars/pastas--the Opium of the Consumer

This is immaterial. The Western world, and many other nations with some prosperity, are about to go from exponential growth phase to exponential decline phase. Even if everybody can be fed because of a coordinated effort by the govt, the rest that will be lost by the sheeple will cause the chaos.

It is yet another POer cornucopian dream to believe that by simply feeding people you will keep chaos outside the gates.

[kublikhan]

I get my data to say the US is near it's peak output from both the EnergyInfomationAgency and the InternationalEnergyAgency.

Meemoe did you get a change to look at my post? You are mixing and matching numbers from 2 completely different categories and arriving at an erroneous conclusion as a result of this mistake.

[kublikhan]

All that matters is how people treat each other. People will kill each other to get the remaining oil. Every where, in every time, there has been mass murder, aggression, and constant war for resources.

It is cornucopian fantasy to believe that now, when things are about to go from the best they've ever been back to the stone age, that somehow this time things will be different.

So lets say you are right that we kill each other for the remaining oil. It is certainly possible, even probable, that resource wars will become more common in the future. But that still doesn't mean we are going back to the stone age. Some 30% of the electricity in this country comes from non-fossil fuel sources. Even were we to loose all 70% of that fossil fueled sources we still have a great deal of energy available to us. Certainly not enough for business as usual, but a hell of a far cry from the stone age. That's not even mentioning all of the other infrastructure the world has built up over the centuries.

[kublikhan]

Consensus measures production, not supply. (Whatever that is? And who cares anyway?)

Supply = Crude + refinery processing gain + other(liquids from gas, liquids from coal, and alcohols, ethers, petroleum product stock withdrawals, domestic sources of blending components, other hydrocarbons, and natural gas converted to liquid fuel.) Meemoe is looking at a source that tabulates all of this, and than comparing it to the crude only numbers from 1970 and going "AH HA! We hit a new peak!!" TheDude explained his error to him weeks ago, I did yesterday, yet he seems unable or unwilling to understand his error. Probably because the source he is using for the Total Supply numbers doesn't go as far back as 1970, and most other sources that do include 1970 don't list the Total supply numbers, they usually list crude only. But TheDude and I both gave him sources with Total Supply that included data for 1970:
The Petroleum Gap

Stop comparing all liquids to crude only Meemoe! When using numbers use EITHER all liquids or crude only, don't mix and match.

[Pops]

Feel free to start another thread if you'd rather talk about predictions but lets stay on topic here.

[Pops]

However, when they studied efficiency gains in mature systems, they generally did NOT cause Jevons paradox. This is particularly true for consumers rather than producers. Examples: Insulating your house, buying a more fuel efficient car, etc. They did notice some increase in use because of increased efficiency. But not enough to overwhelm the efficiency gain. In general, they found that for every 10 units of energy saved from efficiency gain, 1 unit is lost to increased use.

Thanks for that Kub.

[Pops]

Supply = Crude + refinery processing gain + other(liquids from gas, liquids from coal, and alcohols, ethers...

ummmm, etherrrr.

Funny, it was the very same "partisan" misinfo posted by misterno in another thread that caused me to say that the US peak is one of the 10 things everyone on this board should grasp and prompted me to start this thread!

Simply because every facts doesn't prove your belief doesn't mean you should make up your own or hedge the truth to make other people believe. Trying to figure out what is fact and what isn't is hard enough.


Anyway what about substitutes?
8. Scaling up substitutes for oil (i.e., electric cars), will take considerable time, after the need is recognized.

I'm having a hard time because obviously substitution does/will occur, even if it is walking instead of motoring. Right now we're are probably substituting some number of jobs lost for a lack of cheap oil.

Maybe we can't yet say anything - for a fact - about substitution simply because we've not done any substituting? The Primary Energy/capita chart I posted above shows a slight decline in oil for a couple of years now but it also shows a big drop in "Other"... the only thing rising is coal and gas.

[kublikhan]

Maybe we can't yet say anything - for a fact - about substitution simply because we've not done any substituting?

Well, there are examples of substitution due to artificial shortages. France switched their electrical generation from oil to nuclear power in less than 2 decades. Cuba retooled much of their economy to use much less oil in about a decade. Hirsch Report says we will need at least a decade. I am leaning towards leaving the rule in but don't have strong feelings either way.

As a direct result of the 1973 oil crisis, on March 6, 1974 Prime Minister Pierre Messmer unexpectedly announced what became known as the 'Messmer Plan', a huge nuclear power program aimed at generating all of France's electricity from nuclear power.[11] At the time of the oil crisis most of France's electricity came from foreign oil, and while it was strong in heavy engineering capabilities, France had few indigenous energy resources. Work on the first three plants, at Tricastin, Gravelines, and Dampierre started the same year and France installed 56 reactors over the next 15 years.

Nuclear power in France

Cubans were accustomed to cars as a convenient mode of transportation. It was a difficult shift during the Special Period to adjust to a new way of managing the transportation of thousands of people to school, to work and to other daily activities. With the realization that food was the key to survival, transportation became a secondary worry and walking, hitch-hiking, and carpooling became the norm.

Before the crisis, Cuba used more pesticides than the U.S.. Much of their land was so damaged (de-mineralized and almost sand-like) that it took three to five years of intensely "healing" the soil with amendments, compost, "green manure", and practices such as crop rotation and inter-planting (mixed crops grown in same plot) to return it to a healthy state. Bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides have replaced most chemicals. Today, 80% of Cuba's produce is organically grown. Another reason Cuba survived this crisis is the shift in their thinking from machine to manual labour.Abandoning their previous industrialized agricultural methods, tractors and other machinery were replaced with human and animal labor. Older farmers familiar with raising and training oxen trained others to increase those involved in food production. Chemical fertilizers were replaced with organic farming techniques which require more labor but less fossil fuels.Initially, this was a very difficult situation for Cubans to accept; many came home from studying abroad to find that there were no jobs in their fields. It was pure survival that motivated them to continue and contribute to survive through this crisis. The documentary states that today, farmers make more money than most other occupations.

Due to a poor economy, there were many crumbling buildings that could not be repaired. These were torn down and the empty lots lay idle for years until the food shortages forced Cuban citizens to make use of every piece of land. Initially, this was an ad-hoc process where ordinary Cubans took the initiative to grow their own food in whatever piece of land was available. The government encouraged this practice and later assisted in promoting it. Urban gardens sprung up throughout the capital of Havana and other urban centers on roof-tops, patios, and unused parking lots in raised beds as well as "squatting" on empty lots. These efforts were furthered by Australian agriculturalists that came to the island in 1993 to teach permaculture, a sustainable agricultural system, and to "train the trainers".The Cuban government then sent these teams throughout the country to train others

Special Period

[Expatriot]

Some 30% of the electricity in this country comes from non-fossil fuel sources.

ZERO % of the electricity in this country (or the world) comes from non-fossil fuel sources.

[Expatriot]

Some 30% of the electricity in this country comes from non-fossil fuel sources.

ZERO % of the electricity in this country (or the world) comes from non-fossil fuel sources.

Theoretically yes, but practically no. While Hoover Dam was built (and maintained today) with diesel-powered equipment, the payback is proportionally huge as to make the energy cost inconsequential.

There is no theory involved. Use of the word "theoretically" implies "not actually."

Actually, yes, even the Hoover Dam uses fossil fuels to produce electricity. You may dicker and claim that only a fraction of the HD electricity is actually converted FFs, and you'd be correct, but you may not claim that some of the electricity coming out of the HD depends on FF use. For example, I'm fairly certain that the HD has electric lines coming out of it and I'm fairly certain they need tending. I'm further certain that diesel powered equipment tends them. The guys coming to work there drive cars burning gasoline. The turbines require maintenance that is done using FFs. And on and on and on.

Point is, while the HD may have an extremely low FF input, it, like all other electrical production, has a FF input.

Windfarms and PV stations are so FF dependent so as to be laughable "nonFF" sources of electricity.

I hear tell that some wind farms actually burn electricity keeping the turbines spinning in low wind situations because the shafts will deform if they come to rest.

POer cornucopian fantasy includes cherry picking one of the few installations with a relatively small FF input.

Go figure out how much oil you need to burn to dig, purify, burn, and store U. Then let me know what % of nuclear is indirect oil. Same for PV.

[kublikhan]

Pops, sorry to hijack your thread. Feel free to split this discussion into a separate thread.

Point is, while the HD may have an extremely low FF input, it, like all other electrical production, has a FF input.

Windfarms and PV stations are so FF dependent so as to be laughable "nonFF" sources of electricity.

I hear tell that some wind farms actually burn electricity keeping the turbines spinning in low wind situations because the shafts will deform if they come to rest.

POer cornucopian fantasy includes cherry picking one of the few installations with a relatively small FF input.

Go figure out how much oil you need to burn to dig, purify, burn, and store U. Then let me know what % of nuclear is indirect oil. Same for PV.

What is laughable is the assertion that humanity cannot harness/generate energy without the use of fossil fuels. That fact that we don't today points more towards the incredible bounty of energy fossil fuels provide rather than some kind of technological impossibility. Windmills and water wheels have been used for thousands of years. Are you trying to say that once fossil fuels are completely gone, humanity will no longer be able to harness/generate energy? Our primitive ancestors licked that problem thousands of years ago. And humanity has learned a thing or 2 since then.

[Keith_McClary]

I hate to confuse you further on this issue, but total supply can be misleading because it includes things like ethanol.

Which is not petroleum.

[Keith_McClary]

A fact I found most striking is that a significant increase the URR only moves the peak of the production curve a few years into the future.

I can't remember a good exposition of this.

[meemoe_uk]

Hi All, after looking at your links and posts in relation to US crude oil production, I've decided your right, so I'll have to retract this statement.

>Ok. But we're still waiting for the US to significantly deplete it's oil reserves. The US is today pulling just below 1970\1 record amounts of crude.

I assumed the EIA was crude, but it was all liquids. Must have been skimming over the detail and made this mistake.

Now, can you find fault with my critic of the other 9 entries in the top 10 PO list?

1. "Peak Oil" is the point of maximum production followed by long term decline.
Ok
2. Oil is a finite resource on a human time scale.
ok
2. Discovery of new oil fields peaked 40 years ago and very large fields earlier still (?)
No, discovery is too ambiguous to be sure of the numbers. 1st, Most middle east supergiants discovered before 1970, the ones that make up the peak of discovery in doomer charts, would have run dry long ago if it wasn't for later much more oil being 'discovered' in those same reserviors. 2nd taking just a modest outlook of oilfinders recent discovery list suggests that oil discovery is setting new records right now, in this new golden age of oil discovery that we're living in, that all doomers ignore because it's inconvienient to their ideals.
And don't forget, if you chuck in tar-sands and shale, it sends the reserves waaaay off the top of the chart.

3. Easily extracted (inexpensive) oil will be depleted faster than difficult and expensive oil.
Ok
4. As oil exporting nations deplete reserves and consume more oil internally, their exports fall.
Ok. But we're still waiting for the US to significantly deplete it's oil reserves. The US is today pulling just below 1970\1 record amounts of crude.
5. Increasing oil prices can increase reserves by making once unprofitable oil profitable
Ok.
6. Increasing oil prices decrease demand by reducing the amount consumers can purchase
Ok
7. Increasing oil prices reduce discretionary income available for other uses depressing the economy.
No necessarily. It just means you stop working for some frivilous consumer\media\luxury company, and get a job with an energy company. So it's just the useless economy that takes a hit, no bad thing!

8. Scaling up substitutes will take considerable time, after the need is recognized.
Not significantly. Not on the time-scale of loss of energy due to PO. 5 years max if tommorrow the leaders got on TV and told everyone they were at war against PO, and we have to drop everything to go out and set up alternatve energy supplies. Alternate energy is currently massively suppressed by the oil cartel.

9. Oil production data is proprietary making long range planning by governments difficult.
No

10.The amount of energy used to produce oil steadily increases reducing energy available for useful economic work.
Yes, but the ERORI is so very high for oil, that ERORI concerns don't become significant till at least next century. Or alternatively when the real costs of obtaining a barrel of oil are around $10000 in todays money. Your own PeakOil leader Matt Simmons always used to propound this, and he was right.
For all intents and purposes, ERORI isn't a concern today. It's the MROMI ( money returned on money invested ). Money is spose to represent potential energy, but it's been heavily defiled from this ideal. To think that the direct link between money and energy still holds true, means you don't understand monetary history or current affairs. Of course, peakers love to insist this link is perfectly intact wrt ascribing the huge world debt due to supposed perilously low oil ERORI.