One of the favorite phrases used by alarmists as a way to worry us over fossil fuels (besides the CO2 component) is to cite “peak oil”, to make us think we won’t be able to locate additional reserves soon. This graph below was prominently featured in Treehugger.
Only one problem, it is a unitless graph, no timeline, no volume. So, it then becomes not science, but propaganda art. While we were discussing the thread NIPCC, Gleick, heads, sand, water bottles, and all that commenter DirkH found yet another “peak” which seems pretty amusing:
DirkH says: September 1, 2011 at 11:38 am
[Peter] Gleick is head of the Pacific Institute; according to wikipedia, they have discovered “peak water”. While reading about it, I accidentally found a list of peak-somethings on this wikipedia page (near the end):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_water
I like especially “peak soil”. I think it’s time to declare “peak BS”; the moment the production of BS cannot conceivably go any higher and future BS production will dwindle until mankind runs out of BS.
Hey look, another unitless graph from Wikipedia:
Here’s the peakage list. Who knew?
Other resource peaks
I’ve given some extensive thought to what other peaks have been observed or are expected to happen:
Peak Gore (this has already occurred):
When a skeptic blog can kick yer butt on the Internet every day of the week and twice on Sundays, you know nobody but the faithful is listening anymore:
Peak Hansen: (May have occurred this week)
The three strikes rule is well recognized in law and in baseball, with three arrests now has the mighty Jimbo struck out at NASA?
Peak McKibben (This is far into the future)
There’s no limit on crazy pronouncements o_O especially when combined with Keith Olbermann.
Peak Public Opinion on Global Warming (Occurred in 2008, according to Gallup poll)
Peak Pikas (Cancelled, told ya so)
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And the number one peak in all humanity is… (drum roll please)
PEAK-A-BOO!!!
Peak Air will be when they finally stop hyperventilating over this.
We will never hit Peak Air.
Peter says:
September 2, 2011 at 10:09 am
“A founding member of Germany’s Green Party, paying a visit to my mother in law, happened to meet me there. After exchanging civilities, this old, listless, childless, green spinster discovered three kids playing on my in-law’s ample lawn, sneering at them from a distance.
“Who could be irresponsible enough to add three fresh polluters to our overpopulated world?” she inquired”
They’re at an evolutionary disadvantage. Germany seems to have passed Peak Green shortly after the Fukushima accident. Approval rating heading down to 10% (their natural prevalence in the population).
How about peak space junk… No… Well at least a tipping point. GK
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14757926
Unfortunately, they have just changed their point of attack, not their objectives.
PT Barnum would not agree on Peak BS.
No upper limit to that.
We probably have passed Peak Cheap Oil.
As for Peak Water, if you take more out than Mother Nature
puts in, you don’t have a peak, you just run out.
Coincidence or not, just finished reading a Dutch populair science magazine from 1981, peak oil would occur in about 9 years from the time that magazine was published.
Pragmatism over idealism? Obama overrules the EPA on air quality, cites economic reasons…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44372992/ns/us_news-environment/
That sound you hear is watermelons exploding all over the US…..
Then you have the Bubbles at Jordan Pond in Acadia National Park. They were called the Boobies, but when it became a national park, they decided to moderate the name a bit. I liked the old name.
http://img2.photographersdirect.com/img/21621/wm/pd1537746.jpg
Somehow peak methane is missing from the list. Maybe Peak Gore has all the methane…..free nose plugs for olfactory victims…. 🙂
Notwithstanding Peter Piper’s and Chicken Little’s Left Wing contribution to science, The Bear who Went Over The Mountain established the truth about all this intentionally ginned up apocalyptic hysteria about “Peaks” and “Tipping Point Events”, long ago: “seen one, seen ’em all”.
Maybe the
parasiticallegedly brilliant CO2 = CAGW scammers and their acolytes should read Freud’s, “The Future of an Illusion”, where, iirc and me taking some liberties here, he argues in part that people’s fear of Nature, and thus of LIfe, results in the production of “Religion” – perhaps such as the institutionalized quest for a ‘possession obsession’* like ‘money, love and power’* – which ultimately attempts to avoid Death?But sadly, no, my dear Secular ‘Humanist’ Materialist Communist Relativist Absolutist Narcissists, give it up, you can’t do it! So please leave the rest of us alone and try discovering your own mind and its valid wonders instead. That’s all you got anyway, and “then you won’t have to go around, baby, honey worrying other people’s minds,”* a true gift to your fellow humans to boot.
It’s your call, and a wonder in itself that you or anyone can even make it! At least if you can see the choice to begin with.
*Hall and Oates, Possession Obsession
**Jimmy Reed, “You Can Help Yourself”, baby, all you got to do is try one time.
The maximum tolerable amount of alarmism, before the ‘boy-who-cried-wolf’ effect starts to generate disbelief, resentment, and disdain, should be termed the “Peak-of-Boo”.
John Peter says:
September 2, 2011 at 9:53 am
Is there not something about “peak population” because large numbers of the Globe’s 6.5 billion people do not have access to clean water and sufficiently nourishing food? If the projections are right (by some solar physicists) that global temperatures may fall over the next 20 years or so and the human population may reach 9 billion by 2050, would that not potentially cause more misery to more people? Food production may fall and population increase by up to 50%. I must admit to being concerned about such scenarios.
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John, world population will level out as soon as developing nations develop, many think world population will indeed level off at about 9 billion.
As to food, yields have significantly increased throughout the years and there is no reason to believe the increasing will stop anytime soon.
Clean water supply is simply something Malthusians use to hyperventilate about. Water doesn’t get used, it simply moves. It gets cleaned and refined daily by nature. If populations grow where supply is limited, mankind has developed a myriad of solutions more than sufficient to supply the world with potable water. From proper water management in terms of canals and damns to de-salinization plants, world water supply should be the least of anyone’s concern. The easiest part, of course, would be to ensure populations don’t move to or grow in places where water is scarce. (Like the pinheads that move to the desert, water their lawns and then whine because water levels are low.)
The Peak Oil theory is to model a given physical resource in a given region with a given technology.
The serious issue is that US lower 48 states light oil production peaked in 1971 as Hubbert predicted. By 2007, US 48 states production had fallen from 3.5 billion bbl/year to 1.5 billion bbl/year.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Hubbert_US_high.svg/512px-Hubbert_US_high.svg.png
Expect to see a rollercoaster in fuel availability as we try to transition to alternatives.
See the Bundeswehr English version (112 pgs) of their extraordinary analysis of peak oil.
Robert Hirsch provides a popular discussion of the likely consequences. See
The Impending World Energy Mess. that was presented at the 9th ASPO conference 2011.
David L. Hagen says @ur momisugly 12:10 pm:
And more than that, it’s the economic competition from other oilfields. When world oil prices go up, production in the U.S. (with it’s higer production costs) goes up to match. Or so my “big oil” royalty checks indicate.
“…- and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise –
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”
On another planet, soccer, Holland beat San Marino 11-0, talk about peak goals \o/
Just wait… the next meme coming down the track, bigger and better and steamier than before, must surely be… Twin Peaks!
Are we approaching or have we passed Peak Aliens?
Not clear at this point.
David L. Hagen says:
September 2, 2011 at 12:10 pm
“Expect to see a rollercoaster in fuel availability as we try to transition to alternatives.
See the Bundeswehr English version (112 pgs) of their extraordinary analysis of peak oil.”
I’m not impressed. AGW consensus alarmism hook, line, and sinker… rich bounty, here’s only one excerpt: “If technologies for a climate-friendly coal power generation (carbon capture and storage
(CCS) etc.) are not used globally to the necessary extent in the period under review, the CO2
concentration in the atmosphere will increase considerably and accelerate climate change
with all relevant consequences, also in the field of security policy.”
They refer to all kinds of UN reports of the same gist, like this one
http://www.un.org/en/events/environmentconflictday/pdf/08.05.2008%20WGLL%20Background%20Note.pdf
They even use WWF material. Something about biomass, German:
http://www.wwf.de/fileadmin/fm-wwf/pdf_neu/nachhaltige_biomasse.pdf
That Bundeswehr report is a kind of “Greatest Hits Of Environmentalism 2000-2010” compilation.
If you want a German report from people who actually know something, try this one.
http://www.bgr.bund.de/cln_160/nn_331084/DE/Themen/Energie/Produkte/energiekurzstudie__2009.html
Bundesanstalt fuer Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe
David L. Hagen says:
September 2, 2011 at 12:10 pm
The Peak Oil theory is to model a given physical resource in a given region with a given technology.
The serious issue is that US lower 48 states light oil production peaked in 1971 as Hubbert predicted. By 2007, US 48 states production had fallen from 3.5 billion bbl/year to 1.5 billion bbl/year.
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Oh my…… restriction of access and regulatory suffocation wouldn’t have anything to do with your statistic, would it? Costs? Economics of oil? …..naw…..
You should take a closer look…..Texas, for instance, has increased oil production. We recently found billions of barrels in the north plains of the U.S.
And then there is the “peak high” that comes from the first hit of heroine or cocaine, condemning the addict to a life of chasing that virginal, first time high, that can never be repeated. Now there is a nightmare fit for a modern hedonistic Malthus.
What about peak wood? It is probably already past in many countries and it was not that bad.
From some civil engineering work I was involved with in the 1980’s. There exists a seam of LIGNITE approximately 50 to 70 feet high, about 70 feet below the Missouri river valley floor.
The M.V. floor is roughly 15 to 30 miles wide, all the way from N.D. to St. Louis.
At 9000 BTU per lbm, and approximately 60 lbm per cubic foot, and at the current consumption of all fossil fuels in the USA, how many years would THAT RESERVE ALONE SUPPLY OUR ENERGY NEEDS?
Answer: Around 500 to 600 years.
Peak OIL indeed!