Interesting. Hadnt heard about Abiotic Coal. Thats really cool and seemingly impossible. Im sure there is some perfectly great off the wall explaination about how that happens… Yet somehow not scientifically explained at all.
For oil, I would look for the expected Soviet decline in Oil Production, and then see that they are past peak as well. We will see how that plays out over time. There are many producers that appear to be turning the corner on production, so we shouldnt have to wait much longer for real impacts and statistics to bolster the peak oil cases.
I would also point out that the Majors ( Exxon, etc) only control around 7-10 percent of the oil brought to market. They are not in control of the price as your link suggests.
Have Fun with your NWO Conspiracy driven view of the world, we all have to choose the set of beliefs that make our predicament make sense, I am comfortable with the side of the fence that I have chosen. It seems more Data driven and less innuendo based then your path.
Scout, if I joined an oncological chat room and a couple of days later wanted to start posting about there being no such thing as cancer, I would anticipate having those beliefs challenged. Further, I would not suggest that all the oncologists needed to send me papers on cancer before I needed to actually cite my sources. If 9 out of 10 people believe something, it is pretty much on the 1 in 10 guy to put up or shut up, as they say. Many, of not most, of the people here are contrarian thinkers or they would be getting their news from MSNBC. But you are ranging over the tiredest of tired, exploded theories and you are providing nothing but the traditional “the Russians have it all figured out” defense to that theory. At least you aren’t over on the Oil Drum with this stuff, God help you.
Scout,
The article on this gentleman may help with your search for facts. M. King Hubbert - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I consider M. King Hubbert much more compelling and credible than Jerry Mazza. But that is just me.
I don’t think anyone here is saying that oil is scarce, especially Dr. Martenson. The issue really has to do with net energy which is how much is left after you have expended energy to recover, process and make energy available to use.
There is data in the Essential Articles section of the site and the Crash Course covers net energy thoroughly if you are interested.I also suggest you check out Admiral Hyman Rickovers speech to the AMA in 1957 to get a feel for just how long this subject has been known about.
As far as the points you outlined in your earlier post, I don’t see them as facts necessarily but they do qualify as beliefs and opinions.
Coop
I very much doubt we’ll see oil above $200, in today’s dollars. The world economy just couldn’t take that and will more likely slip into another recession, thus crimping demand and reducing the price.
It’s still not a pretty picture but I just can’t see $200 oil for very long and $300, $400 oil is simply out of the question except, maybe on the black market after collapse.
[quote=phillipsd]Thanks for your response. I was not familiar with that term. I can see the problem now.
But is it worse than what we have in the US considering how well Canada weathered the financial crisis. They had a balanced budget for many years before the crisis, they have been paying down their relatively low national debt, and they have emerged from the crisis with the world’s most stable banking system.
[/quote]
But see here that is exactly the problem. How did we balance our budget? How did we keep our banking system stable? We financed them by selling oil of course! What does that cause? A currency whose value keeps going up and up… and well, when you have a currency that can buy anything in the world, you stop making anything for yourself. Have you heard of anything “Made in Canada” recently? I certainly haven’t… I can think of Bombardier, but what else? Not much of anything else of consequence AFAIK
See, that’s the problem with the Dutch disease. In the end, after the crash and other countries stop buying our oil, everyone still loses their jobs
Samuel
[quote=Scout]
Some things that are facts from my perspective:
- No one has been able to really explain accurately how much oil resources are available in the earth’s crust.
We know there is LOADS of oil in the earths crust and IF it all gushed out the ground we would have centuries of oil at our present levels of consumption… but it doesnt gush out of the ground anymore and more useful questions to ask are:
-How fast can we extract it from the ground and get it into our fuel tanks (flow rate)
-What are the financial and energy costs to extract it from the ground and get it into our fuel tanks (energy returned over energy invested)
Any informed discussion of peak oil must include these questions
2) We know they are not “fossil fuels” and did not come from decayed animal/plant life - which actually made no sense to me when I first heard it ages ago, but I swallowed the pill anyway (among several others)
This is another irrelevant academic question. Even if oil is abiotic it might still take thousands of years to produce what we burn in a day.
I am still trying to figure out Martenson’s true angle because the feel and person type I sense here is different than most preparedness / self reliance sites. Pardon me for expressing a generalization or opinion that this seems like the 'preppy, urban, cafe latte version of prepper sites… To oversimplify, but maybe accurately - The country type/woods loving (mostly conservative or liberatrian) folks have been after these issues for decades (literally) and this site seems to be filled with many left leaning folks who are finally waking up and are rightly worried - but about the wrong causes of things - IMO anyway.
Even if we disagree on the source of the issue, we can hopefully agree that there WILL VERY LIKELY BE issues and we all need to get our houses in order.
[/quote]
Glad we agree on something. I think your caffe latte urban prepper site comment is very fair. Alot of people think being preppared for a dispruption to the norm is the preserve of crackpot conspiracy theorists (and those living in areas prone to natural disasters). Chris is trying to teach ordinary people of all political colours to prepare for resource depletion and shocks to a very fragile world economy.
To change the timbre of this conversation, is now the time to top off our farm tanks? Will the coming rout lower oil prices temporarily? Are the current prices as low as they’re gonna be for a while? We’ve 6mos diesel on the farm with capacity for 1.5yrs. ie. I need 1500 gallons to top off storage.
Thanks guys,Robie(husband,father,farmer,optometrist)
Well,
I never thought I would be “taking sides” against peak oil. OK, actually I am not. What I want to do, is ask the folks here to be the contrarian that they say they want to be.
We have been told to question, everything. So, why do we accept with open arms the theory of “peak oil”?
Is there overwhelming evidence or just a tell-tale sign?
I look around and see that there is not a single thing in my live that isn’t touched by oil. Even the idea of the internet is being made possible by oil. From the food I eat to the water I drink is delivered by oil. “Our way of life” just cannot exist without oil - and lots of it. I mean lots of it! With what would we replace this liquid genie that grants our every wish?
Perhaps, that is why this discussion is so visceral. I could hardly catch my breath when I really thought hard about what it would mean if the supply of oil dropped by say, 20%. How about even 10%?
What does it really mean that the Saudis have never produced more than 9mbpd? Can they produce 12.5mbpd? I don’t know. I do know that the Texas fields are now nothing more than a mere shadow of their former self. Hey, I did not know that Pennsylvania was the birthplace of commercial oil production until I began to educate myself on “Peak Oil”. What is Pennsylvania’s oil production these days?
When I traveled abroad a few years ago I was able to turn and look back at the U.S. I was humbled What I saw was a bunch of spoiled little brats. You know, the type of kids, they have everything they ever wanted, gained off the sweat and hard work of their parents, only to ask and demand more. Now some kids of course, act like they know better and play nice, share their toys and even share some with the “poor kids”. But when their motives are challenged, they act to their true form and the brat comes out.
Perhaps, we haven’t reached “Peak oil,” perhaps we have reached “Peak consumption.” The children in the US. want more-more-more. But, now there are more children in the sandbox to play.
Said another way, there are 100 persons that are trapped in an air-tight room. It has just enough air to last long enough for 80 people to live long enough to be rescued. If all 100 continue to live, all will perish before help arrives. They all know help is coming. What do they do?
What do we do? Lets not stop those who question. Lets invite it so that we can, just perhaps, locate a small crack in that air-tight room that will allow us all to survive.
How in the world did we get into this discussion on whether there is Peak Oil?
I consider that the level of interest/posts etc. regarding PO demonstrates how much a true predicament which has the potential to alter the course of civilization can stir our emotions. Certainly the full range of the Kubler-Ross scale is evident here. That in large part is why IMHO Chris established this site … increase awareness through discussion.
Unfortunately, as RNCarl pointed out in his post above where he likened the predicament to being trapped in a mine, our situation does only have outcomes and our actions or our inability to act will largely determine what that is.
In answer to Rncarl what immediately comes to mind is as follows:
- Know you have a real predicament on your hands. (acceptance)
- Lower the heartrate and prevent panic. (action - via conservation)
- Use our minds to look for the cracks - (spiritual)
- Work together to achieve the best outcome. (community)
- Know that our best answers will come from a well informed group since each one of us can occasionally have an error in judgement. (humility)
That’s my $.02 cents worth. Have a great memorial Day.
Coop
Scout,
Jack Kenney is one of the foremost promoters of the cornucopian version of abiotic oil theory in the Western world today. But does he have any scientific credibility? Here’s a cautionary tale by another scientist, Werner Aeschbach-Hertig, who encountered Kenney in one of his research projects:
Kenney told me about his ideas on the origin of oil. According to him, oil was not derived from biological matter, it was abiogenically formed in the deep Earth at high pressures and temperatures. I did not know very much about oil at that time (and I still am no expert), but I knew that this abiogenic theory of petroleum origin, made popular by Thomas Gold, was highly controversial. I wasn’t convinced, but I couldn’t really be sure. Only a bit later, when I had the samples analyzed and reported the results, I got a better idea of what kind of person this Jack Kenney was. But first, a crash course in helium geochemistry (of which I am an expert) is needed. Helium in the air has a certain 3He/4He ratio (about 1 to a million). Compared to that standard, the isotope ratio in helium from the Earth’s mantle is about 10 times higher, whereas that in helium coming from the Earth’s crust is nearly 100 times lower. Thus, deep mantle helium and shallow crustal helium are easily and very clearly distinguished. Because Kenney thinks hydrocarbons come from very deep layers, he reckons that helium isotopes could help pinpoint oil reservoirs. In Flanders, he was looking for the high 3He/4He isotope ratios that are indicative of fluids derived from the Earth’s mantle. He wanted to sell the local government the idea to drill for oil there. I understood that Kenney had hoped to find mantle helium. What we had measured, however, where very low 3He/4He ratios, perfectly typical for crustal fluids. There was not the slightest indication of mantle gases. This was what I wrote to him. But he did not accept that. He did not doubt the data, but he argued that even the slightest little bit of 3He that was present in the samples would be an indication of deep origin, and hence would justify to look for deep hydrocarbon sources in the area. We sent mails back and forth, but he wouldn’t give in. Well, we got paid and it was none of my business, after all, what he did with the data. I hope he couldn’t convince anyone to waste money on a multiply flawed and fake theory: First of all, there is probably no deep abiogenic oil, and secondly, even if it existed, the data did not give the slightest hint that it was to be found at that particular place. So, I got my first taste of rather questionable theories paired with a willingness to commit outright fraud by an exponent of the petroleum business.
Well, your all wrong. 
, Ok…kidding, but seriously, the gloom and doom as well as the “wheres the evidence” is both misguided.
Clearly, oil and gas will not last forever. That is just a basic principle of physics. Do I think we are at peak? …personally…yes.
Having said that, do I think all these articles about planting food, buying guns and building forts are over the top…check yes on that one as well.
Lets look at some simple facts (happy to have anyone challenge my data)
The developed economies use oil much more intensively than the developing economies, and Canada and the United States stand almost alone in their consumption of oil per capita (see graph). For instance, oil consumption in the United States and Canada equals almost 3 gallons per day per capita. (The difference is these countries’ transportation sectors, with their dependence on private vehicles to travel relatively long distances.) Oil consumption in the rest of the OECD equals 1.4 gallons per day per capita. Outside of the OECD, oil consumption equals 0.2 gallons per day per capita.
Lets extrapolate the data. There are just under 2 billion people that make up the OECD. The US and Canada is a rounding number in that figure. So 95% of the worlds population lives on just 1/2 the amount of oil the US lives on PER DAY. the other 2/3 of the entires world population lives on roughly 1/15 of what the average american lives on per day…that’s 4 billion people folks.
Continuing…2/3 of oil production is used for gas. Lets just say for example a 1970’s crisis where people are forced to only buy gas on alternating days (Americans are very REACTIVE). That would likely initiate a dramatic shift where the little honda CVCC (or something like it) makes a MaJor comeback, doubling fuel efficiency almost overnight, or, said another way, dropping oil demand dramatically overnight.
I could go on and on…but it’s likely that changes are coming, changes that will effect quality of life here in the US more so than most any other country on earth. But will it come to guns and foreging for a meal? That’s a wee bit dramatic. I have a bridge that’s for sale at a great price if anyone is interested.
On a side note, 13 million US children will experience hunger at some point this year. Maybe we need to focus what’s already right in front of us.
On another side note, I think where this site really looses the major concept is everyones fixation with peak oil. What keeps me up at night is peak everything else!
Iran oil output 'may drop drastically by 2015'
G'Day, Just to add a cherry on this CM blog:Whenever the #2 in OPEC starts to whinge, ya ought to listen.
Click on the above link.
Regards,
Woomera
Oh really? And where/when did you come across such a convention?
Classic…
Mike
That’s all very well, but what if you are a family with two SUV’s? AND you owe money on both vehicles, AND you can’t sell them, certainly not for the remainf value of the debt…? What if you can’t get your SUV to work to pay for a new small car?
[quote=noodlydoo]
On another side note, I think where this site really looses the major concept is everyones fixation with peak oil. What keeps me up at night is peak everything else![/quote]
Nothing much keeps me awake at night… By the time I get to bed I’m too exhausted to stay awake!
I don’t think this site is obsessive with PO as much as it is with wealth, gold, and silver personally!!
CMdotcom is about the three Es… done the Crash Course yey?
Mike
Noodlydoo, it’s not possible to double efficiency overnight. It takes 12-15 years (probably more now) to turn over the fleet. It would take years to see significant gains in efficiency. If the populace is reactive, instead of pro-active (and all indications are that it is), then you should be prepared for far worse impacts than you are. And remember that it will be al almost continual decline, once it starts, so doubling efficiency won’t be enough, it will have to continue until virtually no oil is consumed. I know it’s easier to believe that the change will be slow and relatively painless. If you want to continue believing that, then good luck to you, because you’ll likely need it.
Jack, I’m taking steps now to leave the country, for good if need be. I don’t think Canada is going to be in much better shape than the US when this thing goes down.
Thanks again for your insight. Do you think that I would be better off staying the the US? I plan to move to the Victoria area and will most likely work in an educational field.
Please tell me why you don’t think Canada will do well with Peak Oil downturn. I am getting ready to move there next year. Am I better off staying in the US?
See…exactly what I was refering to. Exactly at what moment in time are we going to be “out of oil”, or “short of oil”. So I guess I might wake up this wednesday and suddenly…were out of oil? There is trillions of barrells of oil left. Is it probable that the economies of the world will start to feel the pinch between increasing demand and limiting supply…of course, its called price increases. As price increases, demand will decrease. Don’t believe me, look no further than 3 years ago. As price increases, people will respond by driving less, buying fuel efficient cars, changing eating and consumption habits. Not because they want to, but because they have to.Should people take prudent steps such as buying commodities and foregoing Hummer3’s…I think it would be prudent. But this gloom and doom, as if the end of the world is nigh. Where exactly is the world going to go?
Someone wrote about SUV owners not able to sell their cars and buy fuel efficient ones. Yes, that’s true, the resale value of something that gets 14mpg is likely to suffer as we move forward, and ding dongs that made those poor economic decisions will suffer, but the earth will not stop rotating as a result.
I concede there will be changes as resources become more scarce, but I can’t recall ever seeing a single (Positive) article on this website about substitution, enhancement or new technologies altergether that will soften the impact of these resources. And although we may not have the answer yet…the answer will likely lie in several technologies, like the solar mirror reactors. Easy to build, very efficient. Will it offset oil…no, but it will make up for some, as will other technologies. This is not an all or none scenario.
The reason the world is slow to change is that there is to much money still to be made in oil. As that changes, and profit centers change, we will start to see changes in innovation and adoption. We are already seeing it now. Smart car in Europe gets close to 80mpg using a mercedes turbo diesel. Because of silly politics, the same smart car in the US has a mitsubishi gas engine that gets 30 something mpg.
These changes won’t happen by waking up some morning…there may be some supply shocks, but supply shocks usually bring a fairly rapid change in habits and consumption. Its just that we havn’t had supply shocks here in the US in a long while. Other countries tend to adapt fairly quickly to such shocks. Why would be any different?
Much more likely is to see increases in living costs, gas, food etc, which will be experienced over time…like right now. But rarely does anything in economics or economies move in a straight line. There will be increases and pullbacks. People will have to adapt, but I doubt, HIGHLY, I am going to wake up sometime this week and find the world has changed overnight.
PS. CM predicted oil prices would rise again. Hey…me too…that why I bought call options on oil. Wow…I must be a wizard.