NationStates Jolt Archive

An interview with James Kunstler. (http://www.rochester-citynews.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A4314)

An out take:
City: What do you say to people who believe someone will find a technological solution to our energy problems?

Kunstler: I say that is a faith-based idea. We haven't always come up with something in the past. If anything, history tends to show that major complex civilizations tend to collapse, and they tend to collapse in the same way. As far as industrial civilization goes, this is only a 200-year experiment. We've had two or three turnovers in fuel. We've gone from wood to coal to oil to natural gas and to some degree to uranium.

There is a prevailing idea now that some mythical "they" will come up with a rescue remedy to the problem we have, which is, namely, an over-reliance on a particular finite resource. When societies meet big stress points, the delusional thinking tends to increase. All the wishing in the world is not going to alter the fact that no combination of the alternative fuels that are known about right now will enable us to run the interstate highway system, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney World, and all the other furnishings of our society the way we have been running them. We are going to have to scale down a lot.

It's the psychology of previous investment, which means you've put so much of your culture's resources and wealth into a certain way of life that you can't imagine letting go of it, or reforming it. This is the unfortunate and tragic situation that we are in with suburbia. It is a very deep set of investments we have made.

What about finding a replacement fuel?

We can say this: the amount of disinformation that is coming out of the major media is shocking and disgraceful. "60 Minutes" has run two segments this winter that are just basically false. The first one was about the Alberta tar sands, in which they said in essence that the Alberta tar sands would solve all our problems. The second one said that coal liquefaction would solve all our problems. Both of those things are completely untrue.

Here comes CBS at 7 o'clock on Sunday night telling the American people that their troubles are over. This does such an amazing disservice to our country. This supports exactly the kind of delusional thinking that we don't need. Now the American public is going to be sitting around saying, "I don't need to change my behavior. I just have to kick back and wait until someone solves this problem for me."

Who the hell is James Kunstler?

Who the hell is James Kunstler?
He's a guy who writes about urban planning and social impacts and all that.

Who the hell is James Kunstler?
Used to write for Rolling Stone, I believe. He's long been writing about our impending energy problem and he's gaining a lot of prominence now as his earlier writing are starting to look more and more prophetic.

I think Bush has a plan. It has to do with Ethanol. Forget about the fact that only American cars currently will run on 85% ethanol and gas stations aren't going to invest big bucks into installing new E85 tanks and pumps. We'll just drink the ethanol and forget our troubles.

I think Bush has a plan. It has to do with Ethanol. Forget about the fact that only American cars currently will run on 85% ethanol and gas stations aren't going to invest big bucks into installing new E85 tanks and pumps. We'll just drink the ethanol and forget our troubles.
good plan :p

1) just build a huge solar plant in the dessert (size of France to my best recollection) and the whole world will get enough power

2) waste to energy plants are now very clean and efficient combine this with bio fuel and you have a problem solver (only problem is burning/decomposing things is hardly recycling)

3) nuclear fission will always be there it may be dirty, dangerous-ish and even expensive but we can live with it should it come to it

4) nuclear fusion could solve all the worlds power requirements only problem is it kind of hasn't been invented yet

I think that's a huge overreaction. Much of the oil in the US, for example, is wasted due to inefficency in the transportation sector which consumes over 60% of our yearly oil demand.

It is entirely possible to maintain economic growth in the face of high oil prices (in 2005, US energy demand was flat but GDP grew 3.5% and unemployment fell to 4.9%) and it is possible to find alternatives to it through a combination of demand destruction and market alternatives; for example, when gas hit $3/gallon demand immediately fell by over 600,000 bpd so I think the higher it would

America could greatly reduce its consumption of petroleum products through things like biodiesel buses, natural gas busses, carpooling, stricter CAFE standards, ethanol, and so on. Cellulosic ethanol is particularly interesting in that it is extremely energy efficent compared to corn-based or sugar-based ethanol.

This says a lot:
http://www.worldoil.com/WO_MAG/May-2005/05-05_mitigating-Hirsh_fig3.gif

Transportation consumes more than everything else combined.

It seems like there is a huge amount of waste and inefficency that can be corrected, so the notion of an apocalypse seems to be total bunk barring a forced embargo of a large amount of oil products. I tend to believe oil production will eventually peak, and definitely within no more than 50 years, but it's not going to be a catastrophe because the alternatives are here.

If oil remains in the $50-$70 channel (adjusted for inflation in to the future), I think we'll be perfectly fine if not better off due to the economic gains from diversification because that price is high enough to motivate alternatives while still profitable enough to keep supply flowing.

Don't forget thin-film solar panels on houses (they are so efficent they actually feed in to the grid during peak consumption at midday), improved insulation, non-petroleum plastics, wind power, tidal power, nuclear and even coal/natural gas.

I think the spike in oil prices and the dire predictions are the greatest thing to happen to us since the first oil embargo in 1973 because we're going to solve this problem with minimal hurt barring a major political supply disruption. Our economy will benefit, the environment will benefit, and most importantly we will no longer be chained to oil.

Don't forget plug in and conventional hybrids...if gas prices soar, the premium paid will become far more attractive.

Another good one from the interview:

Do you think the urban core is going to be restored?

You can already see this in places like Baltimore. The waterfront is going to become a locus of activity again, and not just a place for trails, and parks, and recreation, and condos. It will become important again in a way that it hasn't been important in 60 or 70 years.

I think the big cities are going to contract rather severely at the same time as they densify. At the same time, we are going to have to deal with the failure of the suburbs around the cities. The small towns and the smaller cities will become viable in a way that they haven't been for 70 years. Small cities we have in New York could see their futures reversed.

What happens to the places that are over-burdened with large buildings? Places like Manhattan and Chicago are going to be in a lot of trouble, because I don't think we can run those buildings without cheap fossil fuels and in particular, natural gas. The 60-story condo building is not a typology that came along until we had cheap natural gas for heating. I don't really see that we are going to put coal furnaces in the bottom of the Sears Tower in Chicago and have shifts of 20 guys apiece to keep the building warm.

Most of our cities are where they are because they occupy important sites. They may contract and they may wither, but most of them are not going to disappear. Some of them will. I think that Phoenix and Las Vegas, these highly artificial places that have only been able to survive because of cheap fossil fuels, they will dry up and blow away. Places like Rochester and Buffalo and Boston: these places are not going to disappear, but they are not going to be the same kind of cities that we had in the 20th century.

As to all of you polyanna Solar and wind and nuclear will save us, here's a good point:
Upstate New York has been looking into wind power. Do you see these technologies playing a role in our future?

I see them playing a role, but not the role that people expect. I don't think we will do it on the mass Niagara-Mohawk basis. I think that mostly what we will see is these things being used on a household basis, or the extremely local basis, if at all.

One thing that many of the people in this discussion have not reckoned with is that we are going to have trouble manufacturing components for these things as the bottom falls out of our cheap fossil-fuel economy. It is one thing to say, "Oh yeah, we can do wind power. No problemo." It is another thing to factor in that you need exotic ores, you need very high-tech metallurgy and high-energy fabrication techniques to make these things.

With windmills in particular, you have to change out the turbines and parts now and again, so you're talking about exotic replacement parts. I am not sure if we are going to be able to make these things if we just have a wind-power or solar-power economy. We can kick back now while we are still basically immersed in the oil and gas economy, but 30 years from now it may be a lot more difficult.

When I said that no combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run our shit the way we have --- there will be provisional technologies. We are not going to run the interstate highway system on bio diesel or second-hand French-fry potato oil or switch-grass byproduct. That is all wishful thinking.

An interview with James Kunstler. (http://www.rochester-citynews.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A4314)

An out take:
back to the caves, comrades!!

As to all of you polyanna Solar and wind and nuclear will save us, here's a good point:

I think he's expecting a massive plunge in oil production, which based upon the given evidence is not going to happen. There is so much excess oil used and so little devoted comparatively to industrial use that we can see pretty large declines in oil production before industrial production and power generation is even threatened.

Oil demand in industry is highest in heavy manufacturing, so that means the two nations who would be forced to sacrifice the hardest would be Chindia.

I think he's expecting a massive plunge in oil production, which based upon the given evidence is not going to happen. There is so much excess oil used and so little devoted comparatively to industrial use that we can see pretty large declines in oil production before industrial production and power generation is even threatened.
That' absolutely not the case. We are facing a major plunge in the next couple years.

That' absolutely not the case. We are facing a major plunge in the next couple years.

I'm not seeing the evidence; gigantic discoveries in Kuwait, the possibility of 90 billion barrels of US production through CO2 regasification, the oil sands with 178 billion, the Orinoco with 1 trillion up to 4 trillion barrels, the proven reserves of OPEC not to mention the 400 billion in the Bakken under North Dakota.

There is a lot of conventional and unconventional oil left unexploited.

Not to mention the USGS survey or any other data. There is a lot of oil yet to be produced, and the reason why it hasn't is because oil has been so cheap that it was unprofitable and costly to search for new reserves.

Read this site:
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/

Read this site:
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/
I read it almost everyday. Its so flawed I don't know where to start.

That' absolutely not the case. We are facing a major plunge in the next couple years.

what makes you say that as far as I know oil price will increase steadily growing in increase as it becomes less popular on the market every now and again

I'm not seeing the evidence; gigantic discoveries in Kuwait, the possibility of 90 billion barrels of US production through CO2 regasification, the oil sands with 178 billion, the Orinoco with 1 trillion up to 4 trillion barrels, the proven reserves of OPEC not to mention the 400 billion in the Bakken under North Dakota.
All of it very difficult and ver expensive to exploit. What we are going to see are oil prices going up up up, even more than what we've seen so far. And with them all costs in industry and transportation, which means costs for everything.

The problem is not a lack of energy. There's an enormous amount of energy all around us. The problem is converting this energy into something we can use, cheaply and conveniently, and that's not going to happen anytime soon.

We'll probably see the return of smaller, more self-sufficient cities, which are much more energy efficient, but that'll mean an enormous and in some cases traumatic change.

So his solution is "give up."

Well fucking done.

Anyway, what about that nuclear thingy. Or have we just decided that it is too much effort, and aren't going to bother.

In any event, I'm a pretty good horseman, so I expect this will effect me less than the rest of you.

I'm not seeing the evidence; gigantic discoveries in Kuwait, the possibility of 90 billion barrels of US production through CO2 The US alone uses 24 million barrels/day. Your 90 billion amounts to about about 8months worth of oil for the US and that production will be spread out over decades.


regasification,Much mor energy intesive than oil and unclear wether you can afford to continue it in the face of rising oil prices since the building of the infrastructure necessary to begin and maintain it will require oil. the oil sands with 178 billion,Just over a year and a half's worth, again spread out over decades. the Orinoco with 1 trillion up to 4 trillion barrels,That's another way of saying tar. Its pretty mush asphalt. It has never been used to make liquid fuels and you need to actually mine it in order to use it. the proven reserves of OPECproven by who? not to mention the 400 billion in the Bakken under North Dakota.never heard of it which is curious because I'm so in tune with this issue. You seem to not be able to grasp the concept of Peak Oil. The point is not that oil will run out, its that daily production will go into decline as demand continues to soar. This will raise the price of pertroleum and its products.

There is a lot of conventional and unconventional oil left unexploited.

Not to mention the USGS survey or any other data. There is a lot of oil yet to be produced, and the reason why it hasn't is because oil has been so cheap that it was unprofitable and costly to search for new reserves.
You've been spending a lot of time looking for reasons to debunk Peak Oil. That's good. You should spend as much time reading about the other side of the issue. Its the only way you'll really understand it.

So his solution is "give up."

Well fucking done.

Anyway, what about that nuclear thingy. Or have we just decided that it is too much effort, and aren't going to bother.

In any event, I'm a pretty good horseman, so I expect this will effect me less than the rest of you.
No hsi solution is not to give up. Its to recognize that we have big problem coming and to prepare for it.

No hsi solution is not to give up. Its to recognize that we have big problem coming and to prepare for it.

How? He never says that. He just says we are fucked.

And truth be told, if we are going to move back to a 19th century style of living, I really expect that a large percentage of americans will be physically unable to cope and will therefore perish.

And truth be told, if we are going to move back to a 19th century style of living, I really expect that a large percentage of americans will be physically unable to cope and will therefore perish.
It won't be like that at all. We know how to make lots of stuff, we have tons and tons of minerals already mined, and we will be able to get lots and lots of energy, albeit much more expesively than up to now.

It is the increasing cost of energy that's going to hit us, not its unavailability. That will require changes in the lifestyle, to make it more energy efficient, not energy deprived.

Fusion power is the answer...

How? He never says that. He just says we are fucked.This is one interview in which he responded to the questions asked. Having said that, you're right if you don't think he has a solution that will allow us to continue the way of life we have grown accustomed to.

And truth be told, if we are going to move back to a 19th century style of living, I really expect that a large percentage of americans will be physically unable to cope and will therefore perish.
You may well be right. Kinda puts a premium on being prepared so you can make sure you're one of the winners, though. The fact is that what comes out of the other side of our impending energy crisis may be better than we have now. It will probably include a return to real communities again. People will have no choice but to develop a sense of place within their local neighborhoods because we will be relying more than ever on each other for survival. As cynical as Kunstler sounds, he ends his book "The Long Emergency" with the sentence: "We will sing again, and when we sing we will sing with our whole hearts."

The US alone uses 24 million barrels/day. Your 90 billion amounts to about about 8months worth of oil for the US and that production will be spread out over decades.

No, it's actually 21 million. Of that, 9.1 million is gasoline and 60% of it is transportation related. There's a lot of slack in the market.


Much mor energy intesive than oil and unclear wether you can afford to continue it in the face of rising oil prices since the building of the infrastructure necessary to begin and maintain it will require oilJust over a year and a half's worth, again spread out over decades. That's another way of saying tar. Its pretty mush asphalt. It has never been used to make liquid fuels and you need to actually mine it in order to use it. proven by who? never heard of it which is curious because I'm so in tune with this issue. You seem to not be able to grasp the concept of Peak Oil. The point is not that oil will run out, its that daily production will go into decline as demand continues to soar. This will raise the price of pertroleum and its products.

Oil supply at present is more than what is required to meet demand, and there are ample stockpiles. The price is high enough to make Orinoco and the oil sands perfectly feasible, and there is ample light sweet crude left on the market to meet our needs; also, there is a large amount of coal and natural gas that can be utilized. CO2 gasification will also provide new opportunities. Nevertheless, I do believe the price will increase and supply will eventually level off and will after that begin to decline. It will be manageable but expensive.

Again, I am not trying to debunk the concept of Peak Oil. However, I think the concept of a rapid decline is both unfounded and unrealistic and seems to be more of an apocalyptic ideology rather than a real argument. Oil production will peak, it will level off, and it will decline. However, that decline is prolonged enough to ensure that we will be able to make the transition with at most moderate difficulty.


You've been spending a lot of time looking for reasons to debunk Peak Oil. That's good. You should spend as much time reading about the other side of the issue. Its the only way you'll really understand it.

I will. I don't want to debunk Peak Oil, but I do want to debunk the concept of apocalyptic decline because it is irresponsible and unfounded, if not totally false which does not help the concept become a core component of energy policy. Attention needs to be attracted to the concept but not at the expense of credibility.

I believe in Peak Oil, but with a long, gradual tail that will create higher but generally manageable price increases and adequate supply to meet world industrial and transportation demand.

I'm not seeing the evidence; gigantic discoveries in Kuwait, the possibility of 90 billion barrels of US production through CO2 regasification, the oil sands with 178 billion, the Orinoco with 1 trillion up to 4 trillion barrels, the proven reserves of OPEC not to mention the 400 billion in the Bakken under North Dakota.

Problem is that while the amount of oil that becomes exploitable increases linearly, the amount used increases exponentially. In other words: even if you were to find an easily accesible and hithero undiscovered massive source of oil, capable of offering the same amount of oil as humanity has used in the past few centuries - it would only be enough for a few decades.

Fortunately there are plenty of viable alternatives. Unfortunately they will not be implemented by the free market as long as oil is so cheap - and when oil will become expensive enough to make the implementation worthwhile it will be too late. Some government intervention would be nice here in other words.

Problem is that while the amount of oil that becomes exploitable increases linearly, the amount used increases exponentially. In other words: even if you were to find an easily accesible and hithero undiscovered massive source of oil, capable of offering the same amount of oil as humanity has used in the past few centuries - it would only be enough for a few decades.

I know, and that's why I believe production will inevitably peak in a few decades. Still, those few decades will give us more than enough time to implement


The amount of progress made in three years of higher prices is really quite outstanding; the US has taken the lead in world ethanol production, is ramping up it and biodiesel production at the same time that new technology is increasing the efficency of the technology, and the US will become a world leader in both wind and solar power this year.

Technology, conservation, and the free market will enable us to make this transition without serious difficulty.

Fortunately there are plenty of viable alternatives. Unfortunately they will not be implemented by the free market as long as oil is so cheap - and when oil will become expensive enough to make the implementation worthwhile it will be too late. Some government intervention would be nice here in other words.

We're starting to do this, both in the US and abroad. China's lifting of some fuel subsidies is an important step, and will help to mitigate demand.

LOL, the USGS study? :rolleyes:

The noobs who averaged the P5 and P95 results of Monte Carlo simulations? :p

Ooh yeah. They have sooo much credibility.

The noobs who averaged the P5 and P95 results of Monte Carlo simulations? :p
Ooh yeah. They have sooo much credibility.

Those averages were made up by Colin Campbell and appear nowhere in the USGS survey.

They made up by him as a straw man, and the USGS explicitly states that they are making no projections and no discovery forecasts.

snipp-ed


TG, I remember in one of your larger posts about energy, you pointed out a flaw in massed solar power production (like say strips on top of every house in a suburban area) which (from what I understood) to be pretty major. Could you remind me what it was - and if you can be bothered - tell me what it actually means? it was something I was thinking of in a discussion me and my friend were having about energy a few days ago.


In regards to oil running out - won't that make plastic run out? Which seems even worse, since I don't know of ANY solution to that bar the temporary massive recycling and reclamation. Which might not work.

In regards to oil running out - won't that make plastic run out? Which seems even worse, since I don't know of ANY solution to that bar the temporary massive recycling and reclamation. Which might not work.

Hemp oil can be used to make plastic.

In regards to oil running out - won't that make plastic run out? Which seems even worse, since I don't know of ANY solution to that bar the temporary massive recycling and reclamation. Which might not work.

Only 4% of world oil production is used in plastics, and there are alternatives for it that are being implemented in food packaging.

Those averages were made up by Colin Campbell and appear nowhere in the USGS survey.

They made up by him as a straw man, and the USGS explicitly states that they are making no projections and no discovery forecasts.
Rubbish. The report estimates the world total recoverable resource. If that's not a prediction, I don't know what is. They also know full well it is used as a reference document by politicians, particularly US who do not know better, and have given presentations at every energy conference they could get to, to talk up their claims. Why go to this trouble, and allow politicians to use it as an economic threat to OPEC, if they are not making predictions?

The numbers are USGS, and are not Campbell's. Others, such as Laherrere have performed their own reviews of the report's findings, and compared the report to previous USGS work. The USGS claims do not reflect reality.

The USGS has also published a new report in the last few months, backtracking on some of their claims made in 2000. Perhaps you are referring to that one.

Rubbish. The report estimates the world total recoverable resource. If that's not a prediction, I don't know what is. They also know full well it is used as a reference document by politicians, particularly US who do not know better, and have given presentations at every energy conference they could get to, to talk up their claims. Why go to this trouble, and allow politicians to use it as an economic threat to OPEC, if they are not making predictions?

Note that the geology-based Seventh Approximation does not attempt to predict volumes of conventional resources that will actually be discovered in a given assessment time frame. To do so would require full knowledge of future petroleum economics, exploration technology, and exploration effort at the assessment-unit level. Rather, the Seventh Approximation estimates volumes of conventional resources having the potential to be discovered in the stated time frame.Source


All they're doing is estimating what is possibly there. They aren't predicting whether that will be discovered or put in to production; much of the undiscovered oil according to their estimates is in Iran and Iraq, and the largest recent oil discovery in 2003 was in that region.

The numbers are USGS, and are not Campbell's. Others, such as Laherrere have performed their own reviews of the report's findings, and compared the report to previous USGS work. The USGS claims do not reflect reality.

The averaging of P5 and P95 was made up by Campbell to attempt to discredit them through a strawman. All the USGS did was draw the most and least likely curves of production, and the P95 curve corresponds to previous data and shows a decline in oil discoveries over the next few years. They aren't denying a slowdown in the statistically probable rate of discovery.

The USGS has also published a new report in the last few months, backtracking on some of their claims made in 2000. Perhaps you are referring to that one.

I'm not sure, but I do recall members of the USGS team stating in August of last year that the real data did in fact correspond with their predictions in 2000, and that the rate of natural gas discovery was in fact faster and larger than expected.

Wind power is the way forward. Definitely. Due to the winds created by large structures being close together, you could put small wind turbines down the sides of skyscrapers (or whatever) and they'd produce loads of power.

You've also got enough space to put them all over the place in the USA

Outside of the USA, offshore windfarms/windfarms high up. Or on the land, supplemented with solar in places like Africa and Asia (where it's often sunny).

Biomass energy is also pretty good, especially where there is a lot of rubbish arough. Every country in the world could use biomass :D

And I think that the key is not to make power in huge power stations, but to have smaller ones. More efficiency means more power for less effort.

And nuclear power is what the French would call "Le rubbish". Apart from that they obviously wouldn't, as 80-ish% of their power comes from nuclear. But my point stands. Meltdowns are pretty horrible, and fusion is a LONG way off. Those CERN chappies might do it for a second or two, but that's it. And so far, it takes more power to create fusion than is given out, sadly.

TG, I remember in one of your larger posts about energy, you pointed out a flaw in massed solar power production (like say strips on top of every house in a suburban area) which (from what I understood) to be pretty major. Could you remind me what it was - and if you can be bothered - tell me what it actually means? it was something I was thinking of in a discussion me and my friend were having about energy a few days ago.

Quoting from http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=465941

Solar power - ha. Semiconductor plants don't grow on trees, and anything which can be made cheaply enough to print by the square kilometer, will have efficiencies of a couple of percent. You would need to tile every roof in the country with the stuff, and then feed it into switched-mode power supplies. These are great sources of harmonics. For those not familiar with power systems engineering, these are not nice things to have. You could probably fill bookshelves with the British, European and international standards which say that phenomena which cause power system equipment to melt, are not good. There are numerous regulations limiting harmonic sources on the network. Believe it or not, every time you plug in a phone charger or laptop, a power systems engineer cries. Every roof in the country covered with PV - just say no.

By the way, this is another reason why mains-charged battery electric cars are not going to happen. The moment they become numerous enough to cause power quality issues, they get banned.

What the above refers to, is kinda tricky to explain, because it is not easily visualised. You will already be aware that your household electricity is AC with a frequency of 50Hz or 60Hz, depending on your country. That's the fundamental frequency. Harmonics are higher frequency components at frequencies which are integer multiples of the fundamental. Generally the harmonic components decrease in magnitude with increasing harmonic number. They can also be divided into positive, negative and zero sequence depending on whether the magnetic fields and currents they produce rotate in the same direction as the fundamental. You don't want to go there. :eek:

Non-linear loads produce harmonics. A simple resistive load, such as a light bulb, does not. An industrial motor or switched-mode power supply such as a battery charger, does, because it places a reactive power demand on the system. The 3rd, 5th and 7th are particularly nasty. There are imperfect ways of minimising harmonics, but if they are not eliminated, transformers overheat, capacitor banks can get pushed into resonance, and you're screwed.

You could not realistically expect to be able to recharge electrical cars from the grid. It would melt after rush hour, probably with or without harmonics if we were talking about the same numbers as we use today. Even hospitals have increasingly had trouble with harmonics just from all their new high-tech equipment.

Putting solar panels onto every building is subject to similar limitations. So long as the power was only used within the building, that would actually be fine. Feeding it back into the grid, after converting it into harmonic-free synthetic AC through pulse width modulation or similar, that's an expensive solution which works only so long as it's the occasional enthusiast doing it. The way distribution networks are designed, it's a one-way street like water flowing down a hill. Every building feeding energy back into it, that's not a good idea. Protection systems for example, would be in a world of confusion.

To sum up, non-linear loads are bad news if not properly managed, recharging electrical cars is one hell of a problem to manage, and if everyone is going to use solar panels, it's going against the network architecture sending the power back up the hill.

In regards to oil running out - won't that make plastic run out? Which seems even worse, since I don't know of ANY solution to that bar the temporary massive recycling and reclamation. Which might not work.
Not "run out", but get increasingly more scarce and expensive until plastics industries go bust, yes. Oil and natural gas are involved in just about every chemical process. The impact of this certainly is not limited to transport and electricity.

I'm not sure, but I do recall members of the USGS team stating in August of last year that the real data did in fact correspond with their predictions in 2000, and that the rate of natural gas discovery was in fact faster and larger than expected.
No way man. If there was an extra trillion barrels of oil out there (and I mean real oil, not stuff you have to strip-mine), we would have found it by now. There isn't more than 150bn barrels left to find out there globally.

What matters to the world economy is production rate, not reserves on paper. If you have $1bn in the bank, but it limits you to $40k of withdrawals per year for life, you are no better off than a guy earning $40k, who doesn't have $1bn in the bank. The $1bn doesn't matter. You can forget it.

A trillion barrels of asphalt under hundreds of metres of rock, is not meaningful oil. You can convert it into oil barrels on paper, but you will never fuel the world on it. You will still be scooping it out of the ground centuries later, putting most of it back into the process, to power all the machinery you need.

No way man. If there was an extra trillion barrels of oil out there (and I mean real oil, not stuff you have to strip-mine), we would have found it by now. There isn't more than 150bn barrels left to find out there globally.

Iran and Iraq are mostly unexplored and there is possibility from CO2 regasification in exhausted fields; the largest oil discoveries ever are made in these regions and the drilling density is extremely small and almost no money is spent exploring the Middle East. We really don't know how much there is in the Middle East because a lot of it hasn't been explored.

What matters to the world economy is production rate, not reserves on paper. If you have $1bn in the bank, but it limits you to $40k of withdrawals per year for life, you are no better off than a guy earning $40k, who doesn't have $1bn in the bank. The $1bn doesn't matter. You can forget it.

World oil production has not yet peaked, and we don't know exactly how much spare capacity we can extract or what discoveries will be made.

A trillion barrels of asphalt under hundreds of metres of rock, is not meaningful oil. You can convert it into oil barrels on paper, but you will never fuel the world on it. You will still be scooping it out of the ground centuries later, putting most of it back into the process, to power all the machinery you need.

It will slow the decline in conventional production and will help provide for our industrial, agricultural and freight needs. Some 54% of oil consumption is used for transportation (that excludes shipping of goods), so there appears to be considerable slack on the demand side. Plus, we don't know what alternatives there are for fueling and powering the production facilities.

We will not run out of oil in the near future; there is no proof of immediate peaking demand, although in a few decades it is inevitable at current demand rates. Nevertheless, demand slack is large enough that even sudden declines can be met with corresponding reduction in demand.

Looking at the data, it appears that a significant amount of oil consumption could be reduced immediately.

Iran and Iraq are mostly unexplored and there is possibility from CO2 regasification in exhausted fields; the largest oil discoveries ever are made in these regions and the drilling density is extremely small and almost no money is spent exploring the Middle East. We really don't know how much there is in the Middle East because a lot of it hasn't been explored.That's kinda like saying that once you have used all teh water in your swimming pool you can still find more water because the rest of your backyard hasn't been explored. The fact is that areas that have not been explored yet haven't been because they are unlikely to hold significant reserves because the geology isn't right.



World oil production has not yet peaked, and we don't know exactly how much spare capacity we can extract or what discoveries will be made.Well, we know two of the largest in the world have peaked, Canteral and the big one in Kuwait, I forgot the name, and if Simmons is right, and there is growing evidence that he is, then the crown jewel in our oil chest, Gwahar in Saudi Arabia, may have as well.



It will slow the decline in conventional production and will help provide for our industrial, agricultural and freight needs. Some 54% of oil consumption is used for transportation (that excludes shipping of goods), so there appears to be considerable slack on the demand side. Plus, we don't know what alternatives there are for fueling and powering the production facilities.Slack where? What do you expect to happen? Do you think that somehow we are going to replace the 700,000,000 cars and light trucks in the world with hybrids in the next five years? It will take decades to replace all those engines and even at a modest 2% decline rate that is not nearly fast enough.

We will not run out of oil in the near future; there is no proof of immediate peaking demand,You're right there. Demand only appears to be growing. although in a few decades it is inevitable at current demand rates. Nevertheless, demand slack is large enough that even sudden declines can be met with corresponding reduction in demand.How can that happen without dramatically altering the way we live? What happens to industry when oil prices jump to $150/barrel?

Looking at the data, it appears that a significant amount of oil consumption could be reduced immediately.
How without significant hardship?

You seem to have a fascination with the overall supply of hydrocarbons and don't understand that all hydrocarbons are not created equally. Relying on asphalt and tar to sate our oil demand is like feeding a starving man a sandwhich piece by piece over 30 years.

No one has considered this, as yet: There is no solution. When cheap energy runs out, it just does. Need to go back to expensive energy.

In regards to oil running out - won't that make plastic run out? Which seems even worse, since I don't know of ANY solution to that bar the temporary massive recycling and reclamation. Which might not work.
Plastic is so cheap because it's made from oil, which is cheap.

There were even plans to mass-produce homes from plastic. Enter the oil crisis of the 70's. A total of 60 Futuro plastic houses were produced.

But you can make some plastics from biomaterials, it's just not as cheap. Remember that plastics aren't just one material.

No one has considered this, as yet: There is no solution. When cheap energy runs out, it just does. Need to go back to expensive energy.
I have. And yeah.

There are no substitutes for the stuff we have now. You can do partial substitutes - a bit of nuclear power here, a bit of wind power there, building a few more refineries to squeeze every last possible drop of kerosene fractions out of oil with the consistency of asphalt. But ultimately you will have "demand destruction", which is to say, not every car, not every ship, not every plane, not every factory, will have fuel, not every house will have electricity all of the time.

When the oil column in Ghawar thins just a little bit more and the rising seawater hits the branching horizontal wells, the shutoff valves kick in and that's it. 1979 all over again as up to 10% of world capacity has to be redrilled, but cannot be fully re-established.

When the annual decline rates of the Texas gas fields surpass the current 30% and the state can no longer extract gas at the same rate at which it burns it, and discovers its lack of interconnection, that's also a big crunch.

When Canada realises that under NAFTA it is obliged to cut its domestic gas consumption to zero and export its full production to the US as depletion lowers the ceiling, that's a geopolitical nightmare and another 17% under threat.

When the British government realises that maybe the increase in North Sea depletion from 7% annually to 10% annually, is "technological improvements" sucking the resource dry ever faster, and the pipeline to Russia faces delays, the winter blackouts might just persuade them that they screwed up when they ceased to involve themselves in strategic planning.

Vetalia seems to think we have decades. You will see resource-driven blackouts in the US and UK by the end of this decade. The 2000 fuel price protests in the UK are the shape of things to come for transport. It's not particularly radical. I'm sorry, but clocking up a 10% decline rate is pretty fucking steep.

Vetalia seems to think we have decades.

So how long do you think we have? And what happens when Peak Oil hits? Another great depression or people going back to living in huts and burning candles for light?

So how long do you think we have? And what happens when Peak Oil hits? Another great depression or people going back to living in huts and burning candles for light?
It's already starting to happen. We're at peak now, because OPEC have no spare capacity remaining. By 2010 we will see scattered physical shortages all over the world, in the oil, gas and electrical energy systems. By around 2015 the global economy will perform a slightly slower version of the USSR '91 collapse. We will not have to wait until 2020 for that.

No, we won't be living in huts. But we will need to resort to candles fairly regularly, in those countries where a significant share of electrical power is generated by gas turbines.

Post-communist Russia is probably the best model for standard of living in the West afterwards.

That's kinda like saying that once you have used all teh water in your swimming pool you can still find more water because the rest of your backyard hasn't been explored. The fact is that areas that have not been explored yet haven't been because they are unlikely to hold significant reserves because the geology isn't right.

I don't know, the biggest Iranian fields in 30 years, Azadegan and Busheher were discovered in the previously unexplored regions of Iran and Iraq with 64Gb of production. The USGS estimated 74 Gb total, and the Iranians alone found 64Gb in two years with little effort. There's a lot of underutilized potential remaining.


Well, we know two of the largest in the world have peaked, Canteral and the big one in Kuwait, I forgot the name, and if Simmons is right, and there is growing evidence that he is, then the crown jewel in our oil chest, Gwahar in Saudi Arabia, may have as well.

I think Gwahar may have peaked, but there are problems with the estimates Simmons used; the cumulative production is greater than the amount of oil estimated in 1975 which he used. Nevertheless, I think we should move to reduce demand to prevent the proven depletion that would occur if SA pumped at full capacity.

However, both SA and Kuwait have a number of totally untapped reserves. Barring huge hikes in output, they're fine for now.

Slack where? What do you expect to happen? Do you think that somehow we are going to replace the 700,000,000 cars and light trucks in the world with hybrids in the next five years? It will take decades to replace all those engines and even at a modest 2% decline rate that is not nearly fast enough.

There are about 250,000,000 cars in North America alone, with Western Europe having another 140,000,000, and 50,000,000 in Japan. That's 440,000,000 cars in these handful of nations with the realisticepossibility of immediately reducing demand and government-sponsored increases of efficency.

In the US, there are 748 cars per 1000 people. Increasing the number of people per car to 2 would decrease the number of cars on the road by 49.6% and would considerably reduce gasoline demand. There's a lot of waste in the US in particular. Not only are the vehicles inefficent, but there are a lot of cars on the road per capita. If we carpooled, the US could reduce a good amount of its non-freight transportation fuel consumption.

Of the world's oil use, 56% is used in non-shipping/non-freight transportation, and the bulk of gasoline is used in the OECD, so we can reduce consumption considerably by simply focusing on the US and the OECD.

Also, people could simply drive less and more efficently, and there is progress being made in hybrid technology. Biodiesel/natural gas/ethanol busses could also work, as could methanol technology. Furthermore, the fuel systems on heavy vehicles are going to become a good deal more efficent due to new technology just developed by Parker-Hannifin.


You're right there. Demand only appears to be growing. How can that happen without dramatically altering the way we live? What happens to industry when oil prices jump to $150/barrel?

Well, the good news is that the US and OECD are increasingly energy efficent and have decreased their share of oil consumption by industry considerably over the past few years and decades. They already built the infrastructure and have the technology; if you look, oil demand grew at 6% per year during the buildup following WWII and has levelled off and slowed considerably after the 1970's even though real GDP has increased healthily.

The burden will be felt in the developing world because oil demand is strongest when the infrastructure is being built up and they lack the ability to really rein in demand since so much is not discretionary as is the case in the West; this means the oil crunch will result in the poor nations getting poorer while the rich nations get richer, and the geopolitical outcome of that is really the danger.

How without significant hardship?

People could simply drive less; after the hurricanes, people immediately reduced their gasoline consumption by around 600,000 bpd at $3 gas, which leads me to believe oil demand in the US is much more flexible. That could provide an invaluable

One of the benefits of productivity growth has been the massive drop in energy required to produce GDP. Last year, energy demand fell year over year yet GDP grew 3.5%. While that may be an anomaly, it shows growth is possible without significant energy demand because there is so much excess consumption beyond that required for actual economic growth.

Goods production could remain at its current levels, since so little oil is used compared to nonshipping/producing transportation in their production.


You seem to have a fascination with the overall supply of hydrocarbons and don't understand that all hydrocarbons are not created equally. Relying on asphalt and tar to sate our oil demand is like feeding a starving man a sandwhich piece by piece over 30 years.

Roughly 44% of world oil demand is needed for producing/shipping goods or about 14 billion barrels per year. The oil sands and Orinoco could easily meet that demand along with other alternative fuels as long as some of the world's light crude production remains. The transportation sector is where the bulk of demand destruction could come from, and where demand is most flexible.

Coal deposits are still plentiful and there are alternative sources; the UK recently released a report that up to 20% of their energy needs could be met with wind with only 1% power grid instability with current technology. We also can't discount geothermal power or any other alternatives since they are also advancing technologically.

Worst comes to worst, however, there are the draconian measures from government.

Vetalia, you're talking about dramatic social and economic changes. Halving the size of the transportation sector in the US and EU is not something a government just does with a flick of a pen, when the time is right. It is not something the Market does without flinging half the population into poverty.

Yes, Mr and Mrs Suburbia will have to stop using their car. But transport is not isolated from the rest of the economy. The price increases and physical shortages which force them to stop using their car, will probably cause their employers to go bankrupt or commence mass redundancies.

Vetalia seems to think we have decades. You will see resource-driven blackouts in the US and UK by the end of this decade. The 2000 fuel price protests in the UK are the shape of things to come for transport. It's not particularly radical. I'm sorry, but clocking up a 10% decline rate is pretty fucking steep.

I think 10% is too steep given world proven reserves and the elasticity of demand. My guess is a peak around 2015 with a 1-2% decline in production after that. Given the waste in the US and OECD, that's manageable especially with new technology coming online each year.

The US gets most of its power from coal, which we have plenty of, and most of our natural gas is used in homes. There is a lot of demand destruction on the home heating side, and there are possibilities for more efficency. Natural gas supply will be enough to meet power demand in the US at least.

Near Vegas, there's a $115 Million USD solar plant projected to provide energy to 36,000 homes, but then we turn around and blast huge amounts of energy into the night sky 'cause it looks pretty.

I'm a big believer in energy research, but I think the alternatives will only be able to provide a small fraction of energy return on energy invested when compared to oil.

Most of the people that work at that plant probably commute 20 miles or more to get there, and leave their televisions on for their dogs.

I think we should attack the problem from both sides. Develop and refine solar, wave, wind, and other methods, but also change our personal and industrial logistics. We should live close to work/school, even if it requires changes in how home equity works. We should learn to adapt to a narrower variety of foods, and so on. I honestly believe it would help.

Vetalia, you're talking about dramatic social and economic changes. Halving the size of the transportation sector in the US and EU is not something a government just does with a flick of a pen, when the time is right. It is not something the Market does without flinging half the population into poverty.

748 cars per 1000 people is a huge amount of redundancy and inefficency. Also, the weak CAFE standards are another weakness; following the 1979 embargo average automobile efficency doubled by 1985. That's possible now, if only the government would stop listening to the damn US auto-industry lobbyists in Washington.

Also, there are a lot of wasted opportunities for mass transit in cities as well as suburbs. We have a lot of opportunities that have been silenced by cheap oil but prices over $60 will keep them in the spotlight.

Yes, Mr and Mrs Suburbia will have to stop using their car. But transport is not isolated from the rest of the economy. The price increases and physical shortages which force them to stop using their car, will probably cause their employers to go bankrupt or commence mass redundancies.

Price increases will be mitigated if demand is destroyed and the technology is available to reduce oil consumption. Our economy is much more able to weather price shocks than it has been, and we can grow without growing demand in certain cases.

Also, the government can cause recessions to reduce demand for oil products for several years under normal conditions. The 2001 recession was the mildest ever and it flattened oil demand for 4 years. In a world of falling supply that would be an invaluable weapon when necessary.

I think 10% is too steep given world proven reserves and the elasticity of demand. My guess is a peak around 2015 with a 1-2% decline in production after that. Given the waste in the US and OECD, that's manageable especially with new technology coming online each year.

The US gets most of its power from coal, which we have plenty of, and most of our natural gas is used in homes. There is a lot of demand destruction on the home heating side, and there are possibilities for more efficency. Natural gas supply will be enough to meet power demand in the US at least.
It's 10% in individual countries. And there is no world market in natural gas. If you've got a 10% decline rate in that sector, you're stuck with it.

World oil depletion rate is more like 3.5% actually, and there is no way in hell the plateau is going to extend to 2015. I doubt it will extend all the way to 2010.

What new technology? The US is standing still in terms of energy efficiency. The motor vehicle fleet has made no improvement in mpg in 25 years. It has actually fallen in the last decade. Europe gets double already.

The US electrical energy grid is not interconnected very well at all. Texas gets 40% of its power from natural gas and has 30% annual decline rates in fields it drills today. There is little interconnection. I think you can imagine where that's heading. Also the demand keeps rising, but little work has been done on the capacity of the transmission circuits for 20-30 years. You didn't have air conditioning loads back then. These days the system runs on the brink of collapse every summer.

Natural gas will not meet US electrical energy demand, LOL. Read up on it. It's actually a worse situation than oil for you guys, which is ironic how oil is the only side of the energy picture in which the US shows any interest. Even Greenspan had a panic realisation about it a couple of years ago.

I offer a solution!

Solar Towers combined with a Hydrogen market.

Extract energy from the sun in a very simple way and CLEAN way for about $800 million for 200 MW each and it lasts at least 50 years under current models. They can be build anywhere where its hot and dry or a variation in other climates.

Oil can be produced from TDP plants as needed, and through recycling. Though I bet we will be drilling our land fills for materials soon.

Oh come on! I couldn't have killed the thread! SOMEONE DISAGREE!

There will always be a segment of the population that will find something to run around screaming in panic about. Tinfoil hats abound. No matter what you say they will find some reason or another to predict the end of the world. There is no point in attempting to discuss it, for they will find some wildly distorted writing by some biased author that has just as big of a tinfoil hat.

The reality of the world is that there will be no sudden stoppage. The world will keep spinning. I doubt there is a single rational person in the world who is saying that there is an infinite amount of oil, but it will not suddenly stop. I am not saying that we have necessarily hit peak yet, but even if we have – did the world explode? Of course not. It will be a very slow decline, not a sudden disappearance of oil. Our society uses so much oil because it is cheap and we do not use much in the way of alternatives because, even today, oil is still dirt cheap.

If there were sufficient force of will to conserve among the populous, the US consumption of oil could drop drastically through some very simple methods without having much of an effect on the economy. Doing something as simple as keeping your tires properly inflated will improve fuel efficiency. Not running the AC full blast while you have windows open will reduce oil consumption (and you would be surprised by the number of people that do this sort of thing). Carpool, take a bus, don’t do a lot of recreational driving, don’t leave your TV on when you're not watching it; there are many things that could be done to reduce energy consumption.

One pet peeve of mine is the local elementary school which has so many lights around the parking lot and building that everywhere on school grounds is lit up like daylight 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Look around you and you will find many examples where we could reduce power consumption.

When energy costs go up high enough, we will start to conserve more. Companies will sell more energy efficient products, people will begin more conservative personal habits, we will implement slight adjustments that will not cause much of a change in our standard of living but will reduce our energy consumption.

To those that keep saying that every aspect of life will be destroyed due to a lack of oil, there are alternatives. They are viable, and they can be implemented without much trouble if there is a will to do it.

Plastics can be made from just about anything – vegetable oil, milk solids, and clay comes to mind – petroleum is used because it is very cheap and plentiful even today.

Electricity can be made from coal, solar, nuclear or many other sources. Oh and by the way, power plants are not all like Chernobyl – that was a bad design that even the soviets knew was a bad idea. Three Mile Island was the worst disaster in the US where everything that could go wrong did go wrong and still it did minimal damage. More recent designs are even safer and more efficient – pebble bed reactors cannot even have a meltdown. Waste can be reprocessed substantially to reduce and recover it, but it isn’t done so because it is cheaper to just dig a deep hole to drop it down.

As technology advances our use of electricity declines – the reason why demand keeps increasing is because we are very wasteful, but if need be we could adjust. When oil becomes scarce, we will adjust. When power becomes prohibitively expensive, we will adapt. Humans have great ingenuity in the face of need. But of course you won’t take off your tinfoil hat to listen, because if you did that I could activate my mind control device to brainwash you into becoming a sheep.

True. Though I already have taken off the hat....in fact YOU ARE WEARING A HAT!

I bring solutions people! I BRING ALL THE ANSWERS! :P

Obviously we must begin a wide-scale collection of Energon.

Ya, sure Megatron.

How about a few Solar Towers or nuclear reactors on a pykrete carrier doing electrolysis?

Ya, sure Megatron.

How about a few Solar Towers or nuclear reactors on a pykrete carrier doing electrolysis?

As long as they involve glowing cubes to store the power in.