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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Peak Gore,
The BBC are celebrating Gore’s last twenty-four hours on the 14th of September by simultaneously broadcasting a celebration of his life and works:
http://blog.everythingdinosaur.co.uk/blog/_archives/2011/9/2/4891510.html
Planet Dinosaur! Well worth watching – old fossils brought back to life.
How about “Pique”, as in self-serving fit of, when the AGW brigade read these comments?
Responding to Don K
The criticism isn’t about the underlying theory, but its political misuse. It’s just malthusianism in yet another disguise. Yes it’s true that the planet is finite and eventually all resources are finite. But that doesn’t mean doom and gloom are about to happen. Humanity has quit the use of many mineral resources in the past without ever encountering any “limits to growth” or economic collapse. In most cases we abandoned a given resource long before we “ran out” of it, because better technologies came along, long before any economic collapse had a chance to occur. Market mechanisms are quite good at preventing it.
Peak money, check.
anorak2 says:
September 3, 2011 at 3:11 am
>> “Humanity has quit the use of many mineral resources in the past without ever encountering any “limits to growth” or economic collapse. In most cases we abandoned a given resource long before we “ran out” of it, because better technologies came along, long before any economic collapse had a chance to occur. Market mechanisms are quite good at preventing it.”
What specifically are these mineral resources that humanity has quit using? What specific market mechanisms prevent any economic consternation when an important resource begins to become scarce? Most peak oil folks do not want doom and gloom, but they do want some foresight and alternatives to be considered when there is evidence of a decline in an important resource on the horizon.
“Peak Oil” is no more about the price of gasoline, diesel and Jet-A than “Global Warming” is really only about temperature change.
Both issues are used by those with agendas of worry and change, primarily to destroy our prosperity and our liberty. Our great-great-grandparents didn’t worry about “peak whale”, because the higher price that was caused by dwindling supply was mitigated by adaption, innovation and changes in behavior. Whale oil for illuminating homes gave way to the use of oil made from coal and later from crude oil.
With respect to “peak oil”, nobody buys oil to burn in their car or airplane, they buy a technical product that is made by breaking down and reassembling a feedstock of hydrocarbons that presently is in the form of crude oil. However, should the price of crude climb higher than the hydrocarbons found in other sources such as coal or agricultural wastes, then those sources will be used. The only issue is cost. This does not mean that there cannot be supply disruptions when oil suddenly jumps in cost, as it has recently. However, there is abundant documentation, such as the Barna report (Office of the Secretary of Defense, Clean Fuel Initiative [1]), that show we are awash in convertible hydrocarbons. The only thing stopping their use is cost and government.
The truth is that we are awash in hydrcarbons that can be converted to usable fuels. And the economic truth about crude oil is that the ONLY thing that matters is the price of the finished fuel product at the pump. That price reflects how much people are willing to pay for it. At today’s price, we can afford to convert many sources of hydrocarbons into the fuels we need. It just happens that for the time being, crude oil is the most economically efficient feedstock. The instant that some other source is better, we will start making our fuels from it.
[1] Dr. Theodore K. Barna., OSD Clean Fuel Initiative
http://www.westgov.org/wieb/meetings/boardsprg2005/briefing/ppt/congressionalbrief.pdf
US Peak Oil: http://www.mnforsustain.org/images/oil_lisbon_laherrere_us_prod_discv_fig4.jpg
UK Peak Oil: http://www.mnforsustain.org/images/oil_lisbon_laherrere_uk_prod_discv_fig17.jpg
Norway Peak Oil: http://www.mnforsustain.org/images/oil_lisbon_laherrere_norway_prod_discv_fig20.jpg
Romainian Peak Oil: http://www.mnforsustain.org/images/oil_lisbon_laherrere_romania_prod_discv_fig24.jpg
Canada Peak Oil: http://www.mnforsustain.org/images/oil_lisbon_laherrere_canada_ng_prod_discv_fig14.jpg
China Peak Oil: http://www.mnforsustain.org/images/oil_lisbon_laherrere_china_prod_discv_fig27.jpg
Suadi Peak Oil: http://www.mnforsustain.org/images/oil_lisbon_laherrere_saudi_cum_prod_fig30.jpg
Iran Peak Oil: http://www.mnforsustain.org/images/oil_lisbon_laherrere_iran_prod_discv_fig36.jpg
Remember, peak oil is not about what’s in the ground, it’s about
ANY factors (geological, technical, political) that reduces the flow rate.
See also this about the prices of oil on the economy: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8273
English version of a German military report on peak oil: http://www.energybulletin.net/sites/default/files/Peak%20Oil_Study%20EN.pdf
“At today’s price, we can afford to convert many sources of hydrocarbons into the fuels we need. It just happens that for the time being, crude oil is the most economically efficient feedstock. The instant that some other source is better, we will start making our fuels from it.”
Except for price, we could use solar energy to extract CO2 from the air and water from the oceans and turn this into gasoline and oxygen. Our cars could then turn this back into CO2 and H2O in a completely re-useable process. The obstacle is price. Thus, by adding a carbon tax, we artificially increase the price of oil and coal, making solar energy more competitive.
16CO2 + 18H2O + solar energy ==> 2C8H18 + 20O2 + carbon credit
2C8H18 + 20O2 ==> 16CO2 + 18H2O + car energy + carbon tax
What is left out of the equation is this:
carbon tax – carbon credit = skim
This skim is used to finance friends of government, with a percentage returned to politicians through contributions, perks, appointments, honorariums, lawyers trusts, etc, etc, etc.
Increase the tax high enough and it will be cheaper to convert plants (read solar) into gasoline, very effectively starving the poor people of the earth to death. The rich (Al Gore and company) will then inherit the earth, which is the underlying purpose of the IPCC. To save the earth by getting rid of the poor.
Not by making them wealthy as is happening in India and China. But by following the UN model which we see repeated throughout Africa. “Aid” from rich countries to poor counties being used to destroy the local economies in the name of saving the starving millions, leading to permanent refugee camps and dependency of the local population on the UN for their existence, generation to generation. It might be said that: UN AID. Has killed more Africans than AIDS.
Don’t forget about APO – Anthropogenic Peak Oil. This is when man deliberately puts obstacles to extraction, such that production peaks, without man subsequently reducing demand. Scarcity is the necessary literary ingredient to a Orwellian system. GK
IMHO: the antropogenic-global-warming theory was developed to wean us from fossil fuels.
The Inconvenient climate-porno from Al Gore should drive us to a modest lifestyle, using less fossil fuel and more renewable energy.
Depletion of oil and coal reserves is the achilles-heel of the IPCC-projections. There may not be enough recoverable oil and coal to double the CO2-concentration in the atmosphere.
Don K ‘s hyperventilating about his peakoil knowledge is rather silly since he doesn’t even quote correctley what Hubbert said! Hubbert never assumed anything about the shape of his curve on the depletion side since he recognized there are too many factors. In short, he only claimed he knows how we get oil, not how we spend it, a rather reasonnable premise even if his simplistic theory based only on reserves and production (and nothing else !!!) is BS.
We are living in the scarcity of the resources that may be available in peak quantity in 2100. Now that could be solar energy collected in space, or something else. So the question isn’t whether the peak oil prediction will bear out, but whether we’re innovating. There’s two kinds of Malthusian: those who believe the world will end if we don’t stop, and those who believe the world will end if we don’t keep moving forward. I think the latter are correct. “Sustainability” as often described (live within EXISTING limits) is not for real — that is stagnation and death. That’s exactly what we want to avoid.
The point about the bacteria in the petri dish who multiply until they run out of nutrient, isn’t that their population crashes — and that therefore we humans should try to limit our numbers before we crash — the point of that should be more obvious; the bacteria needed to find a way to leap outside the petri dish. But they didn’t adapt, and so then they crashed.
It really doesn’t matter much if they crash, because they’re only going back to an earlier step. If we ran out of oil and went back to pre-industrial life, well that’s what we were doing for a long time anyway, and many generations had lives and wrote poetry and suffered and died. Not really a lot of difference, except that there was a lot of slavery. Saying “stop industrialising” is confining much of the world to that kind of living anyway, today. Die of AIDS and lack of sanitation and gang warfare and corruption — you can already do that now. Much of the world is not industrialised, educated, or safe.
There is no “balance”, “sustainability”, “harmony” unless you are a middle class Westerner who can afford a nice house in the countryside — and then they get upset when someone wants to ruin their view with a windfarm. Apparently they make too much noise. Ruins the peace.
We need innovation, adaption, creativity, ingenuity. The rise of India, China, Malaysia, etc. is good because it raises the chances of someone somewhere making a breakthrough. Seven billion people isn’t just mouths to feed, it is also brains. Mmmm, brains.
The real scary graph would be one of rates of innovation. If we’ve peaked innovating and are running out of ideas, that would be cause for alarm. If we have peaked oil production the only way that argument matters in a productive way is in terms of how we innovate.
RE: cassandraclub: (September 3, 2011 at 9:09 am)
“IMHO: the antropogenic-global-warming theory was developed to wean us from fossil fuels.”
Somewhere, perhaps in the Climategate Emails, I seem to recall a statement to the effect that even if they were wrong about the impending climate catastrophe, ‘going green’ would still be a good idea because we are about to run out of petroleum anyway. In this case, intentionally falsifying the science would destroy public trust at a time when it would be most needed. I think the term ‘noble-cause corruption’ best describes what has happened.
Even if we were at peak oil now, I think it would probably be another twenty or thirty years before that fact became obvious. There are alternative non-solar based energy sources, some temporary, some potentially unlimited.
Peak oil occurred in 1973. I have a copy of Limits of Growth by the Club of Rome that proves with computer models
Titan is a moon of Saturn. It appears to have large amounts of liquid methane. It would appear that not all fossil fuels need to come from fossils. I would think that the ingenuity of engineers would allow us to one day mine Titan, and produce a steady supply of energy for Earth. We just need the will to do it.
Janice,
That has always interested me: click
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.”
This is an interesting strawmant. Notice several specific phrases/words:
“given region”
“Light”
“serious”
I can’t verify the above qualifications and they are never mentioned when peak is claimed as a serious problem, but if true, the peak oil claims are totally phoney and useless since the above qualifications have no bearing on whethe the world is running out of OIL. Who cares if the oil is in another region or it is not light. There has been lots of heavy oil found numerous other places so the claim is meaningless when the anti oil group claim we need to push the useless and costly renewables.
Also what is so serious if we need to go to another region or use heavier oil or tan sands.
Even the peak oil claim for the US is very deceptive since the government enviro’s have placed huge constraints on exploration and production. The peak is forced upon us by government action in the US, especially with the present administration that placed an illegal moritorium on Gulf drilling, places obstacles on exloration and production almost every day, confiscates huge finds in the Gulf, fabricates issues (enviromental impact statement did not properly include workboats) to stop offshore Alaska, and other Alaska production, makes up phoney concerns about fracking, instead of working to solve issues, adding regulations, etc., etc.
Looks to me like some folks are creating and propagating a phoney strawman and other constraints in or to make people belive we have reached peak oil !!
@catcracking
it is about flow rate, those “other” sources of oil cannot be extracted with the same ease and flow rate of light crude the world has been running on for a century
Having to resort to other sources such as tar sands and the orinco tar belt are actually symptoms of peak oil and part of peak oil theory. The low hanging easy to pick fruit is used first, the lower quality more energy intensive stuff comes later and that is important because as you progress into these lower quality oils the energy return drops and so does the production rate. Mostly it is just basic physics. Viscous thick oil doesn’t respond to field pressure like the lighter crudes nor can it flow at high rates thru a porous substrate it is trapped in and most of these deposits are found very very deep making the fight against gravity even greater. It is a case of diminishing returns and most mined resources exhibit the same basic characteristics. Typically peak oil theory has been applied to “crude plus condensates” as tracked by the IEA or any of the other various agencies in order to be consistent. Total net energy output wise the tar sands for example are closer to low grade coal mining than crude oil production, it isn’t even close to a one to one match with actual crude oil. The US has done the same with the coal industry, we used up most of the anthracite first followed by the lower grades and from a total energy content perspective despite increased production we have been barely breaking even since around 1999. The lower grades have less energy per ton so you need far more volume to get the same result.
Peak Oil should not be an issue of pushing or not pushing. The laws of supply and demand pricing should apply. If the supply becomes constricted, the price will go up. If that were an artificial constriction, the constrictors risk forcing a premature switch to a lower cost alternative fuel or otherwise being negatively impacted.
I do expect to see more offshore drilling allowed with the establishment of a quick response force that is fully trained and provisioned to shut off deep-water runaway blowouts and simple oil leaks.
Elbatrop,
Don’t believe all the inaccurate information you get from the far left and oil haters.
I worked on one of the early tar sands plants in the late 70’s and the plant was capable of producing over 200,000 bbd. Today it’s capacity has been significantly expanded and many more plants added. I know what it takes to produce synthetic oil from tar sands and all that stuff you read is BS.These plants hydrofine the heavy oil and provide an excellent crude for a refinery.There are no constraints on capacity as you suggest since there are numerous sites an multiple plants. It’s not like growing corn or chopping down trees for “renewables”. And they use less water per gallon of fuel than it takes to manufacture ethanol from corn.
Also there seems to be some confusion from others about heavy crude, we have been using it for years and technology to produce and refine it is widespread in the industry. Yes the oil from Venzuela is even heavier, but they have been producing it for years and we have been importing it.
When the tar sands plant was built in Alberta the price of crude was about $12/bbl and the project was close to being cancelled, so don’t believe it can’t be produced with a profit at $75/bbl. The older plants up there are gold mines today. New plants were recently cancelled because the demand fell off, they will return unless the enviro’s have their way, and the Chinese are waiting for the US to refuse to use oil from the tar sands (thank you Nancy Pelosi). Could anyone be that stupid?
We have not been running on light crude for a century. Over the years refineries have been processing heaver and heaver crudes
I also worked on units to process heavy crudes in the late 60’s and virtually every refinery has been converted to process heavy crudes in the US. The technology of exploration, production, and refining has advanced considerably and all the concerns you raise has long been adressed and overcome years ago..
The far left will talk about and raise concerns about peak oil while taking every action to implement it via government actions/regulations.
Is there anyone in the Administration that understands how crude is produced and refined?
I guess the academics and enviro’s don’t have a clue while they themselves fly around and use limo’s at the drop of a hat.. BTW the heaver crudes have more BTU/bbl than a light crude. Just note the higher efficiency of diesel over gasoline because it has more carbon and less Hydrogen as well as a higher compression ratio.
@ur momisugly catcracking
you are missing the point which is entirely predictable by your language
flow rate vs energy used to achieve that flow rate vs energy out from the product
The tar sands deposits are huge yet they only produce around a million barrels per day of sub quality oil, bitumen is at the bottom of the hydrocarbon food chain. Had this been a good quality light crude oil reservoir they’d be at 2-4 times that already and be spending far less energy doing so and getting far better product out. This is part of what peak oil theory involves and you ironically confirmed it with your post. So flow rates vs energy used to achieve them are declining worldwide as is the quality of the product being extracted from the ground, peak oil. The first half of just about any mined resource exhibits the same traits, oil is no different.
I peaked at my peeking oh a few years ago, mid 40’s, now that I am 55 peeking-about have seen it all- is on the downhill side.
Elbatrop
If the tar sands are so difficult to produce, why are the far left and the enviro’s so afraid that it might add so much CO2 to the atmosphere. Al Gore and Hansen are making outrageous comments regarding the impact of the tar sands from Alberta. Gore claims it will threaten our survival, while Hansen gets locked up while demonstrating against the pipeline that will bring the oil to the US.
What do they know about the potential of the tar sands that seems to be beyond your grasp?
Maybe you should tell Gore and Hansen they are wasting their time?
See below:
http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/environment/article/729836–oil-sands-threaten-our-survival-al-gore-warns
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/prominent-nasa-%E2%80%98climate-change%E2%80%99-scientist-arrested-at-d-c-protest/
Also since I have been involved in developing technology to process heavy feeds for over 40 years I can’t buy the claims from the far left since the facts speak for themselves. In case you don’t believe me, listen to the CEO of Chevron who is serving it’s stockholders quite well:
“Watson said ever-increasing development of liquefied natural gas, high-sulfur heavy crudes and natural gas liquids requires refining expertise and plants that can process them.”
“It helps to be able to run those in your own refinery,” he said. “There’s never been a time when I have felt it was more important to be an integrated company.”
http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFN1E77U1RS20110831
Don’t believe those “economists” from the WH that never got out of the university until they got a job in Washington.
The comment below reveals a total lack of how the industry turns oil from tar sands into the fuel that allows our Washington folks to fly around and bad mouth the industry and drive their big Limo’s:
“The tar sands deposits are huge yet they only produce around a million barrels per day of sub quality oil, bitumen is at the bottom of the hydrocarbon food chain”.
Who cares, it runs the machinery!
Finally don’t underestimate the capabilities of the US energy business to produce and process fossil fuels and to develop technology to find and process from the more challenging sites. All this without a stimulus. They stepped up to the plate during WW II to produce high octane fuels that was critical to keep our air force flying, using the best engineers in the US. The technology has advanced beyond anyone’s thoughts when someone invented “peak OIL”
theBuckWheat says:
September 3, 2011 at 6:27 am
“Peak Oil” is no more about the price of gasoline, diesel and Jet-A than “Global Warming” is really only about temperature change.
The Chinese are currently consuming about 3.5X the amount of coal being consumed in the US.
If the Chinese were to consume 3.5X the amount of petroleum used in the US that would amount to 63 million barrels a day. Chinese automobile sales are currently running about 1.5X US automobile sales.
Natural Gas vehicles are currently selling like hotcakes in India because natural gas is much cheaper on a per BTU basis then oil.
‘Peak Oil’ doesn’t occur because we run out of oil, peak oil occurs because the cost of the substitute good ends up being cheaper.
If humanity is good at anything…’Save My Wallet’ is one of them.
If I could buy a dual fuel – gasoline/natural gas vehicle and I had a corner filling station I would.