[rockdoc123]

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot/all

Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times


I’m linking to this article for a couple of reasons. Firstly I think it is shows pretty clearly how there is a lunatic fringe who sees killer bears behind every tree in the woods, everything is a potential disaster, we are doomed etc. The unfortunate part of this is that the concept of Peak Oil gets grouped with the rest of the nonsense.
What this means is all of the “doomsday” worries are grouped as one when it is clear they should not be. This hits close to home for me having spent about 6 or so years on this site as someone who knows something about the subject matter.

As anyone who reads my posts would know I firmly believe in peak oil. I was introduced to the subject back numerous decades ago by two thesis supervisors, one who worked with King Hubbert for a number of years at the Shell research centre and the other who was at the AAPG meeting in the fifties when Hubbert first presented his ideas on oil depletion. I have an advanced background in two subjects dear to Hubberts thoughts, organic geochemistry and rock mechanics. I am in that place having spent 30+ years in the oil industry searching for hydrocarbons around the world that I can say the shale gas/oil story is the conclusion to the novel that was our fossil fuel consuming life. The idea of abiotic oil is stupid at best and the thought that every country in the world has shale resources like the US is naïve beyond belief. I had a group of people reporting to me at my last job whose whole focus was to look at shale resources around the world. I’m sorry to report that although there are some stellar hot spots like Algeria, Argentina and maybe Saudi Arabia everywhere else it looks like small potatoes. The fact that we are running out of fossil fuel resource should not be disputed, it is a fact based on every bit of valid science conducted in the last number of decades. As a consequence it is something that needs to be acted on in one way or the other (alternatives, adaption….who in hell knows).

What is unfortunate is that a number of folks on this site have chosen to link this with other apocalyptic beliefs such as catastrophic global warming.
This lessens the import of something that is proven and guaranteed. The whole idea of catastrophic global warming is a theory that is not only unproven but widely debated, has huge flaws and in fact seems to disagree with recent trends. It is a theory that, yes if true could be bad but I do need to point out that the narrowest gap historically that has been shown between CO2 and temperature is 800 years, no not 1 year, several hundred years, and I won’t bother to mention that that bit of recent research illustrates it as being temperature leading CO2 as one might expect.

More recently we have idiots suggesting that current weather patterns such as drought and heat waves portend catastrophic global warming even though we have had worse droughts and heat waves in the not too distant past (evidence available if needed) when it was impossible to equate this to human influence.
My issue here is that what I will unapologetically refer to as fearful and undereducated people on this site by trying to equate unsubstantiated claims about catastrophic global warming enc up demeaning the whole basis of peak oil understanding and acceptance. As long as we have people continuing to equate bad hypothetical science with what is proven science there is absolutely no way forward in getting mainstream acceptance of the the looming problem of Peak Oil.

This makes me mad. We need to get the general population to understand the limits to resources so that we can figure out what to do.

[bochen280]

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot/all

Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times


I’m linking to this article for a couple of reasons. Firstly I think it is shows pretty clearly how there is a lunatic fringe who sees killer bears behind every tree in the woods, everything is a potential disaster, we are doomed etc. The unfortunate part of this is that the concept of Peak Oil gets grouped with the rest of the nonsense.
What this means is all of the “doomsday” worries are grouped as one when it is clear they should not be. This hits close to home for me having spent about 6 or so years on this site as someone who knows something about the subject matter.

As anyone who reads my posts would know I firmly believe in peak oil. I was introduced to the subject back numerous decades ago by two thesis supervisors, one who worked with King Hubbert for a number of years at the Shell research centre and the other who was at the AAPG meeting in the fifties when Hubbert first presented his ideas on oil depletion. I have an advanced background in two subjects dear to Hubberts thoughts, organic geochemistry and rock mechanics. I am in that place having spent 30+ years in the oil industry searching for hydrocarbons around the world that I can say the shale gas/oil story is the conclusion to the novel that was our fossil fuel consuming life. The idea of abiotic oil is stupid at best and the thought that every country in the world has shale resources like the US is naïve beyond belief. I had a group of people reporting to me at my last job whose whole focus was to look at shale resources around the world. I’m sorry to report that although there are some stellar hot spots like Algeria, Argentina and maybe Saudi Arabia everywhere else it looks like small potatoes. The fact that we are running out of fossil fuel resource should not be disputed, it is a fact based on every bit of valid science conducted in the last number of decades. As a consequence it is something that needs to be acted on in one way or the other (alternatives, adaption….who in hell knows).

What is unfortunate is that a number of folks on this site have chosen to link this with other apocalyptic beliefs such as catastrophic global warming.
This lessens the import of something that is proven and guaranteed. The whole idea of catastrophic global warming is a theory that is not only unproven but widely debated, has huge flaws and in fact seems to disagree with recent trends. It is a theory that, yes if true could be bad but I do need to point out that the narrowest gap historically that has been shown between CO2 and temperature is 800 years, no not 1 year, several hundred years, and I won’t bother to mention that that bit of recent research illustrates it as being temperature leading CO2 as one might expect.

More recently we have idiots suggesting that current weather patterns such as drought and heat waves portend catastrophic global warming even though we have had worse droughts and heat waves in the not too distant past (evidence available if needed) when it was impossible to equate this to human influence.
My issue here is that what I will unapologetically refer to as fearful and undereducated people on this site by trying to equate unsubstantiated claims about catastrophic global warming enc up demeaning the whole basis of peak oil understanding and acceptance. As long as we have people continuing to equate bad hypothetical science with what is proven science there is absolutely no way forward in getting mainstream acceptance of the the looming problem of Peak Oil.

This makes me mad. We need to get the general population to understand the limits to resources so that we can figure out what to do.

Don't worry. Be happy.

[ColossalContrarian]

Hi rockdoc, I really appreciate the posts you’ve made in regards to peak oil and climate change. I’ve always been a skeptic and appreciate your knowledge. A lot of what I read between you and dorlormin and other posters is over my head but I feel like I’m learning a little.

I purposefully avoid commenting on the climate change and just lurk but I’ve started to judge the subject by what I see with my own eyes. I’m sure you’re cringing…. but hear me out for this one simple observation I see a lot more smog where I live and it just looks dirty and awful. I don’t know the details of how smog could affect the environment or climate but the how and why doesn’t matter when I’m looking at something so ugly. Overly simplistic and similar to saying landfills cause earthquakes. It’s not the earthquakes *if it could possibly happen* that bother me as much as how ugly the landfill looks. Born and raised in the Denver area, I’ve always lived along the Front Range, growing up with my mom half the time and the other half with my dad. I’ve learned to appreciate what I see because both my parents have incredible views from their back yards. My mom’s backyard and patio faces east toward Denver and my dad is about 15 miles to the north, his patio and deck facing west overlooking Boulder. When I was little I remember the brown cloud over Denver being small and skinny but noticeable. There was no brown cloud at all over Boulder when I was a kid. Growth is what happens and b!tching about it gets old but what’s so depressing is how thick the smog is now, over Denver AND Boulder. All you can hope for is that the wind blows it away… but I hope you can understand how people with simple minds might look to the sky and say “that aint good!” So maybe you’re right that there’s too much emphasis on manmade global warming but I think it’s worth at least having a general conversation of “if this doesn’t change the weather, could it possibly have a negative effect on anything else in existence?”

I think it might actually be kinda comforting to know that the only negative effect of burning fossil fuels is that they make the sky ugly (and deplete…)

Maybe I'll take some pictures for everyone to see how ugly it can be. The climate has always changed. I don't think humans should try to prevent the climate from changing however I do think there are things we can do to make the sky not look so ugly some days. The smog is human induced most of the time and that's enough of a reason to be proactive about how we use energy.

[Rod_Cloutier]

Looking forward to going to heaven myself.

Here's a youtube testimony of a professed atheist who had a divine experience: (Worth watching all ten parts):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgF_iwUNqFU

You get to leave all the bad stuff behind; sounds pleasant.

[sparky]

.
Rocdoc , I'm pretty much with you
I firmly believe peak oil is coming from now to a couple of decades

On the subjects of porn doomsters
there have always been people who walk around with placard around their neck
" the end is night , repent you sinners "

beside craving attention , being obnoxious and ill mannered
they relish the sinner bit , everybody else is at fault and mush be shown the error of their way
since they cannot send everybody in re-education camp ( as is their prime instinct)
they wave their arm a lot .
the natural reaction of the crowds is to ignore anything they said on general principle

Of course , the doom merchants could well be right , in some way
there is the story of a public servant in the British Foreign office retiring after a lifetime in Whitehall ,
" everyday some bright chap came telling us world war was imminent , I always told them nothing much would happen and in forty years , I was wrong only twice"

[seahorse3]

RD and Sparky, if you all truly believenoil depletion is the issue to be focused on and have the oils industry experience tonbacknupnthat opinion, you both shouldndo more to set the record straight with posters here who say oil depletionnis not an issue and that things like oil shales etc will save us. The direct attacks on PO as a concept do more to detract from the PO concern than climate change posts. RD I see you arguing against climate change all the time but ignoring the arguments against Po on this site. Doesn't make sense if you are truly worried about PO and want people to be focused on that concern

[dinopello]

What's with the all-out war on doom ?

From the Washington Post today

George Will: Why doom has not materialized

MIT’s models foresaw the collapse of civilization because of “nonrenewable resource depletion” and population growth. “In an age more innocent of and reverential toward computers,” Lomborg writes, “the reams of cool printouts gave the book’s argument an air of scientific authority and inevitability” that “seemed to banish any possibility of disagreement.” Then — as now, regarding climate change — respect for science was said to require reverential suspension of skepticism about scientific hypotheses.

The modelers missed something — human ingenuity in discovering, extracting and innovating. Which did not just appear after 1972.

We don't need to listen to nature, Nature needs to listen to us.

[Cloud9]

When everyone you know is a millionaire, not much has changed. Mr. Will cannot see the forest for the trees. Tax bases are eroding. City and state governments are going bankrupt. Pension funds are going bankrupt. Millions are unemployed. Millions more are under employed. Our heavy industry has been hollowed out and sold for scrap. Oil as defined as light sweet crude has declined or remained flat in production. The only growth industries are the money changers and government. Our society is defined by the service industry and consumers. The economy is floated by magic mouse clicks from the Fed. Meanwhile, Middle America is trying to sustain itself by mowing each other’s lawns. Looks like the end of growth to me.

[Pops]

Good thread.

Personally I agree with doc that unbounded "frying in our skin" doomerism doesn't do any more for changing/preparing for GW than "oil will be $1,000.bbl tomorrow and we'll all starve in 3 days" does for PO.

On the other hand, I personally believe the otherwise uninterested and self-deluding will stay uninterested and deluded until they are frying in their skin and starving. LOL

Nonetheless, the stated purpose of po.com is right up there in that red bar and the extent of our dependence on FFs makes it hard to limit the discussion, it touches everything. Granted we've gone off on wacko tangents in the past but the rule is the staff doesn't manage the discussion; the membership does. Honestly, I'm glad we don't talk about the grand conspiracies and fringe stuff as much as we did once upon a time, it used to make me crazy!

As for AGW or just GW being an unproven doomer fantasy, imminent PO was essentially the same in '04 for the general population - still is actually.

In a media seemingly designed for narrowcasting, where eliminating dissenting viewpoints is only a click away, we try, with varying success, to keep the debate open. And as I see it, the consensus here has always been way ahead of the sites that actively manage their message.

So I appreciate the skeptics as well as the Monster Shouters and encourage you to keep it up. Odds are you aren't going to convert the people you are debating but you do educate the people who are reading and that is the whole point.

[Lore]

My bet is we will all be here come New Years Day 2013, with the exception of a personal tragedy. Articles like this pop up all the time in opposition to the swing side of the extreme doom and gloomers. You only have to see who wrote it to appreciate where this side of the ideology is coming from and to those who admire the soothing pablum of a future filled with puppies and flowers to know why they gobble it up.

Authors of these fulminations always profess that somehow there is a techno-fix just out of our reach that will save us. That because the conflation of threats haven’t yet fully materialized, they most likely never will. This in itself is just more nieve, cockeyed optimism to carry on with BAU. However, history often says different and the cemeteries are filled with the dead that were waiting for their miracle to happen and the threat to magically disappear. A half a century is a very short time and the this last half has been filled with little to upset the cart of humankind. As I've said elsewhere we are living the exception in human history not the norm.

[Newfie]

I don't knows guys.

Sure there are people who will exaggerate any issue. One must listen with a calibrated ear to judge any one argument.

OTOH.......
There are so many different potentialities, many of which are interrelated.

It is not just Peak Oil.

The big one is ove population, and I see no escape from that. IMHO all of our problems flow down from that. It just becomes a matter of predicting the methodology of our downfall.

Cheers!

[dolanbaker]

Overpopulation doesn’t become a major issue until migrants start to cause food shortages in western countries, until then they're a source of cheap labour and a conduit for financial aid to the third world in the form of money sent back by workers to their families.

[evilgenius]

Personally, I think it is hard to come to a consensus about the timeline of shale gas dominance. Lacking this one doesn't know if one is going to be caught out ranting about the truth of fossil fuel depletion while all around others are getting rich. I can see myself looking just like I did during the run up to the housing crash, wailing about how it was built on nothing and how unethical the behavior of everyone around me seemed. A trend only has to go on for so many years, no matter how doomed, before the mass mind forgets itself and anyone in opposition is a kook.

That being said, what sort of timeline do people here see for shale gas? Will it rise to such a point within the energy supply scheme that we actually see CNG stations, even if only for long haul trucking? Will it serve mostly electric power plants, leaving travel to gasoline? Are there any commensurate technological advances, such as electrical transmission line advances, on the horizon which could combine with shale gas ascendency that might re-write the future as we see it?

[dissident]

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8914

This TOD piece is the most credible analysis I have seen on this subject. There will not be decades of gas production bonanza in the USA and the people that claim this are selling snake oil. The rapid decline of shale gas wells just reflects that fact that the gas volume in shale is small. The scammers would have you believe that all gas deposits are the same.

Note the exhibit 4 figure in the TOD piece. It assesses the shale gas supply at 23 years at current consumption levels. The big plans for gas transport would reduce this period to less than 10 years.

[dinopello]

The rapid decline of shale gas wells just reflects that fact that the gas volume in shale is small.

I wouldn't necessarily draw that conclusion. It could just mean that the pace and extent of frakking must increase as demand does. The overall volume could be quite large as there is a lot of acerage out there. The plan seems to be to increase electricity production from Nat Gas as well as consumption by vehicles starting with heavy vehicles. As that structural demand grows, the pressure to frak more rapidly and more extensively will also increase at a very rapid pace. We all must hope that the folks that are completely certin that there is not any possibility of environmental damage from frakking are correct, because there is going to be a whole lot more of it once prices rise from the demand being put in place. But I guess that is the gist of this thread. Don't worry about it.

[dissident]

It all has to do with rock pore size and elasticity. There is simply no comparison between shale and sandstone when it comes to the volume of gas that can be stored in the rock. Frakking does not create gas it just makes the amount already there more accessible. By definition the amount of gas in a cubic meter of shale is much less than in sandstone. Shales are more elastic compared to sandstone and the pore fraction falls off faster with depth due to compression. Shales are also composed of more silt scale grains compared to sandstone. So I will take 23 years as the only legitimate estimate out there until somebody supplies something else that conforms to physical reality and not wishes.

[Loki]

Not sure what the point of the OP is, aside from yet another anti-climate change screed from Rockdoc (what is this, # 2748?). Rockdoc, if you're so certain about climate change science, why don't you have any peer-reviewed articles on the subject? Surely you'll win the Nobel Prize by proving once and for all how wrong every other scientist is on the subject.

And I second the opinion above about how you go on and on and on (and on and on and on) about climate change but almost never try to correct the cornies about peak oil. I thought this site was about peak oil? I'd much rather you share your expertise on peak oil than hear yet another rant about climate change.

As for the Wired article, rote techno-utopian claptrap, with a nice dose of historical revisionism and rabid anti-environmentalism for good measure. You'd think they could at least come up with a more original title.

[rockdoc123]

It all has to do with rock pore size and elasticity. There is simply no comparison between shale and sandstone when it comes to the volume of gas that can be stored in the rock. Frakking does not create gas it just makes the amount already there more accessible. By definition the amount of gas in a cubic meter of shale is much less than in sandstone. Shales are more elastic compared to sandstone and the pore fraction falls off faster with depth due to compression. Shales are also composed of more silt scale grains compared to sandstone. So I will take 23 years as the only legitimate estimate out there until somebody supplies something else that conforms to physical reality and not wishes.

not exactly. Porosity in shale can be as high or higher than most conventional sandstone reservoirs. At issue is effective porosity which has to do with connectivity. Sandstones that are largely uncemented have high pore connectivity and hence high permeability. Shales do not with permeability being often measured in nanodarcies rather than millidarcies hence the need to frac. It is not true either to say that the amount of gas in a cubic meter of shale is much less than in sandstone. Shale gas is in two forms, free gas in pore spaces and adsorbed gas in organic materials. The amount of adsorbed gas can be as high as 20% or total gas content of the shales at lower pressures. The formula for reserve calculation involves gas saturation, thickness, area, porosity, gas expansion factor pressure and temperature. All other things being equal it comes down to porosity which I've said already can be as high in shales as it is in sandstones. When you add in the gas that is adsorbed in shales then all things else being equal you have higher gas content.

More importantly it comes down to area. In conventional reservoirs gas accumulates in structural or stratigraphic traps. Generally this are over restricted areas. The Alberta oil sands would sit in the 1 percentile of total distribution of sizes for stratigraphic traps and Ghawar would likely fit in the 1 percentile for
structural traps. Shales on the other hand have their own trapping mechanism through the very low permeability. As a consequence the effective area for shales is governed more by burial depth and temperature (i.e. needs to be in the maturity window) and that means the shale reservoir area is invariably very, very large.

As one poster mentioned it really comes down to how many wells you are prepared to drill and the economics. A given horizontal well drilled from a pad might see 2 - 4 BCF on average and sweep no more than and area of about 200 m away from the well bore (the length of the fracs). Generally you would drill 6 wells or more from a pad so the pad recovery is actually pretty reasonable in comparison to conventional reservoirs, it justs costs more and there is the rub. The low gas prices have meant that producers have stopped drilling for dry gas and hence the flattening of the gas production curve in many areas.

Shale gas and shale oil merely serve to prolong the peak as they too are non renewable.

And I second the opinion above about how you go on and on and on (and on and on and on) about climate change but almost never try to correct the cornies about peak oil. I thought this site was about peak oil? I'd much rather you share your expertise on peak oil than hear yet another rant about climate change.

completely false claim as a number of years ago I spent an inordinate amount of time correcting views on abiotic oil, the misinterpretations of peak imminent disaster in SA as a consequence of Twilight in the Desert and what was one of the largest threads here (until some moderator removed it) which dealt with the actual data, publications and implications in regards to SA production and reserves. There has been little need to point out misinterpretations as there just aren't many. The people who you infer to as being cornucopians are simply pointing out some realities with regards to production from shales, I haven't seen any of them yet suggest such production could go on and on indefinitely. On the other hand the number of incorrect assumptions with regard to climate change on this website are immense. When people make claims that are not backed up by the data available to anyone who wants to seek it out I feel compelled to correct them and point to that data or publications that substantiate that viewpoint.

[SeaGypsy]

I agree with Pops; the openness of debate here on the array of topics key to our generation makes the site stand alone. Highly studied folks on all sides of AGW, peak economics, energy future, global geo-economical-political reality and projection; go at it hammer and tongs here. The mods only keep the tone relatively free of abusive language. Compare to just about everywhere else (everywhere I have found), the site's owner's monologue is perpetually reinforced.

This site is what the MSM news should be and pretends itself to be; an open dialogue on the events of our times/ end or not quite.

Personally I have always been more concerned about the ramifications of systemic failure under the forces of combined- weight of numbers- downslope resource extraction capacity- globalised flattening of markets- currency & trade system failure/ than even such awfulness as can definitely be proven in a list of our species environmental crimes.

I suspect that human nature is often estimated much more benign than reality will show once the system is no longer in place to maintain the film of civil society. What worries me most in my lifetime and my children's; the world is very likely to become a much more dangerous place. Much more pained and suffering people means more events driven by the worst and most basic human traits. Where I have grown up in a world where it was just a decade and a bit ago, I could ride a bicycle around the world and make it without being: kidnapped, murdered, assumed to be a spy and locked up, tortured; being subject to extreme risk of violent robbery. On this side of life, the gritty end of global street life, is the beginning of the end of life as we know it.
The massive street protests going on in Europe, hardly rating a mention outside, are the thin edge of the wedge of a movement not of fringe society but of it's main contingent/ the ex middle ex working class.

I am with the slow crash scenario, long emergency, new age of sail end of the spectrum of peakers. I am also on the side of immeasurable sadness at the state of my species and what we are doing to the planet. Yet I can't see any way out of the trajectory we are on; social breakdown followed by environmental breakdown. It's not doom as some brick wall we hit at speed, but a shrivelling thing; like a rotting flower.

[Plantagenet]

I am with the slow crash scenario, long emergency, new age of sail end of the spectrum of peakers. I am also on the side of immeasurable sadness at the state of my species and what we are doing to the planet. Yet I can't see any way out of the trajectory we are on; social breakdown followed by environmental breakdown. It's not doom as some brick wall we hit at speed, but a shrivelling thing; like a rotting flower.

+1

I agree on the slow crash, long emergency prediction, but I see it intermittently punctuated by small wars, famines, and local collapses around the world as various cities, countries and whole regions stumble and go bankrupt. The problem will not be due to the disappearance of oil and gas---the problem will be that the oil and gas available will keep going up in price, helping drive increasingly high energy costs for all that will progressively cut into business activity and impoverish people and bankrupt government institutions.

The future will be just like now, only more so.