by Canuck » Mon 23 Aug 2004, 15:56:57
I think this is an excellent question on most issues but is not particularly important in this case. I don't think there really are any axes to grind on this one. A guy like Deffeyes has little to gain with his book. Campbell has very little to gain. Simmons is also writing a book, but there isn't much money in these kinds of books.
The environmentalists like Darley and Kunstler and Ehrlich and the anti-corporate types like Moore and Nader are surely motivated somewhat by schadenfreud. They may be as miserable as everyone else in a post peak world, but at least they are going to enjoy being able to say, "We told you so, we told you so. Nyah, nyah we told you so."
There really is no disputing the issue. It is when, not if. What struck me about Campbell when I first read him was that the case he lays out is common sense. That does not make him right - it was once common sense that the world was flat - but still it makes for a very compelling argument. "You can't produce oil until it is discovered" and "Look at what we are doing to get oil today in the tar sands and with deep ocean drilling. If there was easier oil, wouldn't we be pumping it?"
Nobody disputes the geology or the physics of depletion. Everyone knows a finite resource will be gone one day. That automatically leads us to ask the wrong question "Well, how much is left?" and find a reassuring answer "There is lots and lots left."
Getting past that is the hardest part to grasp about Peak Oil but even that is merely common sense. "How far can a man run into the woods?" was a riddle I remember from my youth. The correct answer is "Half way. After that he is running out of the woods." The correct question with Peak Oil is "When do we start running out of oil?"
All of the arguments are really about the implications of Peak Oil, not the fact of it. None of the name proponents focus too much on this, probably because that focus raises very uncomfortable issues. So most of them leave it where Simmons leaves it, "We're in a lot of trouble and there is no Plan B. We should find out how much trouble we are in, and develop a Plan B."
The economists, on the other hand, dismiss the implications. Yardeni was on CNBC this morning and he declared that the problem came with its own solution. "The price goes up, we use less and the oil companies find more and alternatives become more viable." In other words, the real problems won't start until we actually run out. Starting to run out is a problem that comes with its own solution.
When we look closely at the debunkers and their arguments we discover:
1) They definitely have an agenda, one far more obvious than Peak Oil proponents.
2) The solution on the demand side seriously underestimates our dependence. We will only use significantly less if the economy tanks and the objective is to avoid that.
3) Their solutions on the supply side defy the geology of oil and the physics of energy.