Oil is harder and harder to find every year (we already took the easy stuff, nobody finds super-giant fields anymore)
The stuff that was “the easy stuff” forty years ago and the stuff that is “the easy stuff” today are very different things. It is normal that, upon decrease in supply, research is invested into increasing the economically-effective supply. That’s how we got steam-injection and CO2-injection into oil-wells, which is why the US still supplies 2/3rds of its own oil resources (as of 2007, at least), despite Hubbards Peak pegging our peak production in the early 1970′s.
All the alternatives that were supposed to fill the gap are failing to deliver
Of course they are. Because they were all pipe-dreams. In the meantime we’ve had a viable ‘alternative’—such that at least one industrialized nation (South Africa) has been relying upon it for years: the Fischer-Tropsch process. It generates liquid hydrocarbons from coal at a rate which is economically feasible with sustained non-futures prices of oil at over ~$80/barrel, with coal at ~$20/ton. (Please note: this simply has not happened yet.)
Even oil that’s harder to get (e.g. in deep water) doesn’t help much as it is generally produced at a slow rate
Projection fallacy. As I mentioned above; the “harder to get” only stays “harder to get” until it becomes “easier to get”. The fallacy here is in thinking that this is a fixed term rather than malleable based on technical prowess. I again mention steam-injection and the fact that it revitalized the Californian oil industry from essentially total death to viability.
The average person is mystified as the price of everything seems to rise at once
This is a “and then magic happens” statement. Please don’t take past fears regarding food availability as viable indicators of the future. We already grow far more than enough food to feed the entire world… and there are plenty of techniques available to increase agricultural output that we just haven’t implemented very much yet. Everything from genetically-engineered nitrogen-fixing plants/bacteria to terra preta.
Business and whole national economies are squeezed by rising prices
Increased prices result in increased ingenuity for discovering alternative means to the same ends. Fundamentally the ‘function’ of technology can be said to be the increase in the fungibility of a given resource. Back in the day we used whale blubber for a broad array of things. When the whales started getting scarce, we switched to coal and coal-gas. Then we switched to oil because it was a better hydrocarbon and we could get at it cheaply. (Though really, we still use coal for MOST of our energy needs. And the stuff we use oil for we could substitute coal for. Or even charred woody-plants ‘torrefied lignocellulosic stocks’ grown in agriculture.)
One thing I’ve noticed a lot is reports about “Oil Sands”, “Oil Shale”, “Vast new possibilities of X barrels from biodiesel/microbes/algae/thermal depolymerization” etc. and none of these reports ever mention the rate of production that is expected (and years later they seem to have delivered nothing).
“seem” is the key term here. North Dakota is enjoying an oil-boom due to active extraction of shale-oil. Biodiesel in its various forms is not a viable hydrocarbon resource today, although there is at least one commercial plant selling to the US Military (at absurd costs.)
Civilization runs on the constant supply of power. If that power declines 5% every year we are back to the middle ages before very long, and it’s hard to develop a Friendly AI on an abacus.
the Fischer-Tropsch process. It generates liquid hydrocarbons from coal at a rate which is economically feasible with sustained non-futures prices of oil at over ~$80/barrel, with coal at ~$20/ton.
Where do you get those numbers?
Traditional plants are 10% efficient. The Chinese plant is 20% efficient. The numbers I’ve seen suggest that the operating costs aren’t much more than materials. A ton is about 6 barrels, so if coal/ton is about the same as oil/barrel, the Chinese plant is profitable. Indeed, those prices have been the same for the past ten years. However, the capital expense was about $1000 per annual ton of capacity, which is an awful lot to pay off. At the prices you mentioned, there’s $60 of annual profit. I guess this matches your claim of long-term viability, though I haven’t taken into account the years of delay in the construction.
A traditional plant would never have been profitable, even in 2007 when coal was $40/ton and oil $60/bbl. I think its capital expense is about $200 per annual ton of capacity, a much smaller risk. If prices ever did touch those you mention, you could use the highly liquid futures market to buy coal and sell oil 5 to 10 years in the future, spend 5 years building the plant and make a profit. So I think your “sustained non-futures prices” disclaimer is not necessary.
Coal liquefaction only makes sense if the price of oil/coal rises. But it hasn’t changed much in the past decade. So rising prices are not special to oil and thus do not indicate peak oil.
Previous research on the topic. I don’t know where you’re getting that 10%/20% “efficient” thing from; F-T conversion of coal into liquid hydrocarbons requires roughly 4x the amount of hydrogen that coal has. That’s the reason why CO2 output is so high for F-T process, unless you somehow include large quantities of external hydrogen to the mix, which would bring down the costs of the product significantly (assuming a sufficiently cheap source of hydrogen.)
A traditional plant would never have been profitable, even in 2007 when coal was $40/ton and oil $60/bbl.
“even” ? Sir, you just suggested a patently abysmal set of circumstances for the viability of coal to oil conversion via F-T process. With coal at $40/ton, oil would need to be almost 3x the price you listed before F-T would be economically viable.
So I think your “sustained non-futures prices” disclaimer is not necessary.
It’s entirely necessary because we’re talking about current deliverables. F-T ‘oil’ products would also have to face a futures market as well, as their output would be fungible to oil. The futures market, furthermore, is extremely volatile whereas the fixed deliverable isn’t nearly so much so.
Some of these seem like valid criticisms others less so.
Projection fallacy. As I mentioned above; the “harder to get” only stays “harder to get” until it becomes “easier to get”. The fallacy here is in thinking that this is a fixed term rather than malleable based on technical prowess. I again mention steam-injection and the fact that it revitalized the Californian oil industry from essentially total death to viability.
First a nitpick. That’s not generally what the term projection fallacy means although your meaning is clear. But there’s a fundamental problem with this: even as the technology does get more expensive, the total amount of oil does go down, and the harder to extract oil does cost more than the nice easy oil. Moreover, the argument that you are making that this is an overly naive projection of what will happen doesn’t seem to be accurate. If one looks at a graph of world oil production one can see the general rough pattern. Since the last 40 years have included technological improvements that projection allows us to make guess about what technology will do. We have no reason to expect that the technology will suddenly become much better. Similarly, inflation adjusted price of oil has gone up over time.
Your point about the long-term use of coal substitutes seems to be a valid one which should for some time help deal with some but not all of the energy problems. Coal does have its own problems. (deaths from mining, environmental damage from mining and release of obnoxious radioactives are all issues). Moreover, coal prices have also been going up faster than inflation.
First a nitpick. That’s not generally what the term projection fallacy means although your meaning is clear.
How not? I’m stating that he’s assuming that the people of tomorrow/yesterday shared his same beliefs as to what “easily accessible” or “hard to reach” meant in the arena of oil production. In other words; he was saying that “hard to access” is a fixed point rather than simply being his current belief.
But there’s a fundamental problem with this: even as the technology does get more expensive, the total amount of oil does go down,
No, that’s not a fundamental problem. I wasn’t pretending that my statement somehow abrogated the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. When people talk about “Peak Oil” what they’re talking about is a catastrophic scenario where the production of oil-related energy reaches a crescendo and declines at exactly or analogously similar rate to which it ramped up. THAT, and nothing else, is “Peak Oil”.
Similarly, inflation adjusted price of oil has gone up over time.
Certainly, but that’s just not a criticism of my position.
Coal does have its own problems.
Certainly. But those aren’t problems, mainly, related to existential risks to civilization related to energy supply, so much as they are to moral quandaries related to specific choices of energy production.
Moreover, coal prices have also been going up faster than inflation.
I’m sure. Coal has stayed extremely cheap comparatively speaking. But it’s also in a similar—if far longer-term—situation as oil; there’s a fixed amount of it and we’re getting better at harvesting it, so the supply will inevitably dwindle. That’s why, furthermore, I mentioned torrefied lignocellulosics. With just a bit of tweaking and expertise, switchgrass can be grown at (potentially) as little as $15/ton. That, after torrefaction, makes it ball-parkish to coal.
Another viable criticism, by the way, of the F-T process is its environmental impact due to CO2 offgassing. (F-T has a large CO2 footprint).
I’m stating that he’s assuming that the people of tomorrow/yesterday shared his same beliefs as to what “easily accessible” or “hard to reach” meant in the arena of oil production. In other words; he was saying that “hard to access” is a fixed point rather than simply being his current belief.
Oh. I see I misinterpreted what you meant since I interpreted what he was saying differently. It seemed like you were talking about projection growth and difficulty into the future, and it seemed to me that he was talking about the difficulty of obtaining oil comparatively (that is some oil is more difficult to extract than other oil and even with research that will still be true, it is just then less difficult.)
When people talk about “Peak Oil” what they’re talking about is a catastrophic scenario where the production of oil-related energy reaches a crescendo and declines at exactly or analogously similar rate to which it ramped up. THAT, and nothing else, is “Peak Oil”.
Arguing over definitions is not useful. Maybe distinguish between two distinct notions of Peak Oil, Peak Oil(1), in which there will be a peak and then a rapid decline and Peak Oil(2) which makes no strong claim about the decline rate? Note that from an economic growth standpoint definition 2 might still be a cause for worry even if one doesn’t think that there will be a definition 1 type of issue
But those aren’t problems, mainly, related to existential risks to civilization related to energy supply, so much as they are to moral quandaries related to specific choices of energy production.
I would see them more as economic rather than moral concerns but I agree that they don’t substantially impact existential risk.
Another viable criticism, by the way, of the F-T process is its environmental impact due to CO2 offgassing. (F-T has a large CO2 footprint)
Yes, but my impression is that it should allow for comparatively easy carbon sequestration although not much direct research has been done on this matter. So I’m not sure that this is too much of a concern.
Arguing over definitions is foundationally necessary to discourse. If we cannot agree on what terms mean, communication is impossible.
Maybe distinguish between two distinct notions of Peak Oil,
When you capitalize Peak Oil you are invoking the body of rhetoric, lore, and history associated with the term. That term has a specific meaning, which invokes a catastrophic economic failure scenario derived from discussions of Hubbard’s Peak.
Note that from an economic growth standpoint definition 2 might still be a cause for worry even if one doesn’t think that there will be a definition 1 type of issue
Hardly. Economic growth under sufficiently stable conditions is inevitable. Furthermore; that oil production will decline over time is inevitable. The only question is whether it will do so sharply and in a vacuum of other solutions, or if it will do so as a part of a pattern of transition to other avenues of energy production once it ceases to be the most viable source of energy production (which, honestly, it isn’t even that; coal is. Which is why we burn coal for electricity and not oil, but I digress.) The answer to that question is unequivocably that there won’t be a catastrophe.
So “Peak Oil” is nonsense. That oil will peak and production will fall is insufficient to proclaiming “Peak Oil”.
No definition is intrinsically correct. When in doubt (either from vagueness of a definition, connotation v. denotation issues, or others) it is helpful to use either multiple numbered definitions or to simply taboo the term wholesale. Arguing over definitions is not helpful.
… those items you’re talking about ARE the process of arguing over definitions. Or, at least, one variation of the process. It’s not even the most productive. You cannot get out of the point that arguing over definitions is foundationally necessary to discourse simply by proclaiming “arguing over definitions is not helpful”—no matter how many times you iterate it, it just isn’t truthful.
Especially since definitions themselves do not progress over time without such argumentation.
What is the most rational view of Peak Oil and its near term consequences?
That it’s fear-mongering, being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas in order to exploit the ‘risability’ of the common person to fear in order to achieve their various goals through persuading the population.
Downvoted as I disagree that this answer is the most rational view, Logos, nor does this kind of response encourage rational discussion. This is irrespective of whether I agree or disagree with your argument that peak oil hasn’t occurred. Your first response sought to refute the specific statements the article made, and in general you did a fairly good job of putting up a rational argument (once again irrespective of whether the refutations are correct or incorrect). When your arguments are factual, they can be verified or refuted.
On the other hand, when your arguments contain no specific information that can be verified or refuted, and instead contain words designed to maximize for emotional effect rather than informational value, they cannot be called rational. Please see below for the words here that I feel especially stand out in this regard(emphasis mine):
That it’s fear-mongering, being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas in order to exploit the ‘risability’ of the common person to fear in order to achieve their various goals through persuading the population.
I reject and abjure the notion that topics of emotion are somehow irrational simply because the topic itself is emotional. If a person stands before me, raising his voice, using harsh language, displaying aggressive body language and conducting himself hostilely, it is rational to say, “This man is angry.” The mere use of emotionally-charged terminology does not inherently relegate a statement irrational. Their context does that. I posted my ‘answer’ to the question not as a top-post but as a ‘response’ to my own as an indicator that it was contingent upon my top-level post.
I stand by my assertion that my statement regarding the use of ‘catastrophic’ Peak Oil is nothing more than fear-mongering, is itself a factual statement.
Had I made that statement ‘ex nihilo’—that is, as a top-level post and not as what amounts to a “too long; didn’t read” version—I would be more than happy to concede your position. As it stands, the statement that my arguments “contain no specific information that can be verified or refuted, and instead contain words designed to maximize for emotional effect rather than informational value”, is one I cannot accept as valid. Please do not mistake the statement that something is an attempt to produce emotionally-charged irrational behavior for that statement itself being an attempt to produce emotionally-charged irrational behavior.
“Peak Oil” is fear-mongering. It is being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas (and frankly your accusation of the term “agenda” of being emotionally charged I find to be without merit, by the way). And those various disparate and non-colluding groups are attempting to exploit the ‘risability’ of the so-called ‘common person’ to fear (i.e.; fear-mongering) in order to achieve their goals.
Fear-mongering and fear-driven politics is so common I find it rather surprising that it should be taken as a non-ordinary claim. Based on my top-level comment, which itself was in response to a question of a fearful nature regarding the topic, I can’t see how it’s even viable to call it ‘unverified’.
At worst I could see a position calling my ‘sub-comment’ disrespectful, insulting, or condescending. It wasn’t meant that way, but I could see that accusation being made and I would have to consider it seriously.
I do not believe emotional comments are inherently irrational. As all of us experience emotion, almost any comment we make is emotional, in that it elicits certain emotions from both ourselves and others. However, not all emotional comments are rational. I still do not believe that your last comment on what to think of peak oil was rational ( I also disagree that the term agenda used in that context is not emotionally charged, but this topic may be more subjective than the other and is less central to my point, so I won’t discuss it further here).
Your last comment about peak oil being fear-mongering is not supported by your previous statements. Your previous statements support peak oil not being true. Your last statement has nothing to do with this, as far as I’m concerned, and is considerably more complex to work out the truth or falsehood of. The idea of a political or social institution saying that peak oil is true because they wish to exploit common people for their own disparate agendas has nothing to do with whether or not peak oil is true. Consider:
Peak oil is true and political and social institutions say that it is true, because they a.) believe it is true, b.) want to exploit other people, or c.) both.
Peak oil is false and political and social institutions say that it is true, because they a.) believe it is true, b.) want to exploit other people, or c.) both.
I assume you are asserting 2b with your statement about fear-mongering, whereas your previous post put forth arguments that only support the statement in 2 that ‘Peak oil is false’. I also feel that the connotation for fear-mongering used in such contexts is likely to produce either rapid agreement or disagreement.
My question is—which is more important to you, proving that peak oil is false, or proving what the motivations of various unrelated politicians and social organizations are? Do not mistake my criticism of your statement for a belief that fear is never used in politics. I just don’t see how it at all helps your attempt to prove that peak oil is not true. See statements 1 and 2 above for my reasoning of why the first does not necessarily follow from the second. I think a more rational statement made after giving supporting arguments that peak oil is false would be something along the lines of ‘don’t worry about it and show others it is not true so they can devote their resources to solving things that are actually problems’.
EDIT: changed some erratic capitalizations and one ‘denotation for fear-mongering’ to ‘connotation for fear-mongering’ to more correctly express my meaning in that part.
Your last comment about Peak Oil being fear-mongering is not supported by your previous statements.
How not? I demonstrated that it isn’t, in my view, a legitimate concern; that there exists at least one viable solution already being practically implemented. How can the topic—which is expressed as a ‘serious problem’—remaining a concern for discussion possibly exist except through the agency of various groups attempting to drive up fear levels amongst the public in order to achieve their specific goals? (“specific goals” being synonymous with “agendas”. You really need to get over that emotionally-charged thing for the word “agenda”.)
I assume you are asserting 2b with your statement about fear-mongering,
Unfortunately that is an inacurrate assumption. I made no differentiation between whether the agencies’ agendas were true or genuinely believed. Your view of the term “agenda” being emotionally charged necessarily resulted, I feel, in this being your stance though so I find myself too limited to the task of explaining my position to you.
I just don’t see how it at all helps your attempt to prove that peak oil is not true.
It’s not meant to. It was a conclusion/summary statement, not an argument towards a conclusion. Conclusions should never be used as arguments to support themselves.
My question is—which is more important to you, proving that peak oil is false, or proving what the motivations of various unrelated politicians and social organizations are?
I have no horse in the latter race. I have never implied I do. Why then do you insist I do?
Thank you for explaining your intent in more detail. However, the fact that I see a logical problem with your argument still exists. I will try to clarify the issue.
How can the topic—which is expressed as a ‘serious problem’—remaining a concern for discussion possibly exist except through the agency of various groups attempting to drive up fear levels amongst the public in order to achieve their specific goals?
If people are concerned about something untrue, then this may very well be because various groups are attempting to drive up fear levels. It may also be because the various individuals involved looked at the incomplete and often ambiguous data available to them and came to the conclusion that it is true, regardless of whether or not that was the conclusion some group wanted them to come to, and regardless of whether or not any groups involved wanted to drive up fear levels, or create a sense of fatalism, or thought this news would somehow cheer people up. I think there really is a lot one could say about how humans act on their beliefs and why.
But that was not what your main arguments were discussing. Let me try to summarize what you have said so far:
Giving various arguments supporting the idea that peak oil is false.
Concluding with the idea that some people say peak oil is true for various specific motivations that you have clarified are irrelevant to you, but one of their motivations for saying it is true is to drive up fear levels.
It doesn’t make sense to me to discuss people and their motivations (which you’ve said you don’t care about) at the very end of talking about whether a certain state of the world is true. It would make sense to end with a conclusion distilling the essence of what you argued (eg. ‘technology is already advanced enough to prevent this from being a problem’ or ‘we won’t be running out of oil anytime soon’). It might also make sense to summarize the various points you argued. However, since you didn’t talk about how peak oil being false causes people to say it is true, I think there is something missing here. Perhaps you want to discuss something about human nature as well, as it pertains to what people say or do, or what people believe. That is where I think the ending you gave might belong, not as a conclusion to arguments discussing whether or not peak oil is true.
If there is something you think I am missing here, I hope you will elaborate.
It may also be because the various individuals involved looked at the incomplete and often ambiguous data available to them and came to the conclusion that it is true,
The trouble with this position is that the falsification of the issue has been available since before it became an issue. A more-than-cursory examination reveals this—as I have done. This means that there needs to be active suppression of this information to preserve the levels of fear we now see.
It doesn’t make sense to me to discuss people and their motivations (which you’ve said you don’t care about)
Ahh… no, I never said that. I said I didn’t make any presumptions about what their motivations in specific were. That’s not the same as saying that I “don’t care” about them.
However, since you didn’t talk about how peak oil being false causes people to say it is true, I think there is something missing here.
Someone has been raising the issue. I haven’t made any presumptions about who or why—only that it has been happening. I then described the act of raising a false fear as ‘fearmongering’. They might not know they’re doing it. They might honestly believe it.
That they honestly believe a false fear to be valid doesn’t change the fact that they are promoting a false fear.
There are several things I would like to address, taking into account the additional information you have now supplied.
The trouble with this position is that the falsification of the issue has been available since before it became an issue. A more-than-cursory examination reveals this
I disagree with this statement,since I think determining the truth or falsehood of most statements tends to be rather more complicated than it might intuitively seem, but this is the type of statement that would be relevant to supporting your original conclusion.
there needs to be active suppression...
As opposed to something like confirmation bias? What specific kinds of actions does active suppression entail? Are you saying that this is the only possibility because you have evidence to dismiss all others, or because you intend this statement to refer to a large number of types of behavior that encompass all or most possible types of reactions?
It doesn’t make sense to me to discuss people and their motivations (which you’ve said you don’t care about)
Ahh… no, I never said that. I said I didn’t make any presumptions about what their motivations in specific were. That’s not the same as saying that I “don’t care” about them.
Okay, after considering them some more, I agree that your statements don’t indicate that you don’t care about the motivations (apologies for the double negative).
In regards to presumptions of specific motivations, I have examined the statement in question:
That it’s fear-mongering, being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas in order to exploit the ‘risability’ of the common person to fear in order to achieve their various goals through persuading the population.
I observe that I interpret all of the ‘in order to’s here as ‘with the intent of’. If you intended them to perhaps mean something more along the lines of merely ‘with the effect of’, then I will not interpret ‘exploiting the risibility of the common person’ as a statement about their specific motivations. Otherwise, even if this motivation is not a terminal motivation, it still seems to be a specific one.
However, since you didn’t talk about how peak oil being false causes people to say it is true, I think there is something missing here.
Someone has been raising the issue. I haven’t made any presumptions about who or why—only that it has been happening. I then described the act of raising a false fear as ‘fearmongering’. They might not know they’re doing it. They might honestly believe it.
That they honestly believe a false fear to be valid doesn’t change the fact that they are promoting a false fear.
This clarification of your original statement increases my estimate of it’s probability of being true, but only by making it more generalized than I originally thought it was. Do you agree that the more possible outcomes a statement applies to, the fewer things its truthfulness can be used to predict? If I have three types of card in a shuffled deck: red, green, and blue, and I say the card on the top is red and I am right, is that more or less predictive than if I say the card on top is red or blue and I am right?
Even with the more general meaning you have applied to your statement, I still don’t think after presenting evidence that X is false, One can conclude that people act in way Y whenever they state that X is true. The only conclusion that follows from giving evidence that X is false is that X is false. If you want to convince others that people act in way Y when they say that X is true, it is not directly relevant evidence to simply say that X is false (though this might be used to support a sub-argument if X being true corresponds to different behavior). Instead, discussion of the causes of people’s mental states, and how their mental states affect their behavior, is necessary. Your conclusion does not directly follow from your original argument. This was, and still is, my largest objection to the conclusion you supplied.
Can you cite any evidence that is clearer than the geological evidence that oil is being exhausted just enough for production rates to begin declining?
Can you cite any evidence that is clearer than the geological evidence that oil is being exhausted just enough for production rates to begin declining?
Evidence for what, exactly? And exactly what is it you are claiming this geological evidence to be evidence of?
Upvoted since you put forth a pretty good argument for your case here, although I would prefer more citations. I still disagree that this post supports your other post or vice versa.
I’m not really in favor of citations (unless it is a direct quote) in blog comments—a clear, well-reasoned argument is better and most peoples attention and interest is limited and therefore so is the length of post they are likely to read in the first place. If a comment piques your interest, or simply your curiosity, Google Scholar can provide support (or disproof) readily and to a much greater, and especially more broad ranging, extent than is possible in a comment.
ADDED: Thinking about this comment, I realized I could be taken as arguing against citations in general which wasn’t what I intended. I just don’t think requests for citations by replying commenters is worthwhile.
Fair enough. However, your preferences may simply be different than mine. I highly appreciate it when a person takes the effort to provide links to some of their sources for various facts, which don’t necessarily have to be from Google Scholar (although that can be a plus). Obviously there is a limited amount of evidence than can be included in a comment, and most comments are not going to be able to provide enough evidence to exhaustively prove their claim. But to me some is better than none (where applicable—some responses don’t lend themselves to citations, but I felt the one I replied to did). Also, I feel the link is the most important part of the citation, although it’s sometimes better if the post takes the time to give it sufficient context so I know what parts of, say, a 30 page document are being used to support an argument.
The purpose of my comment wasn’t only or primarily to request citations, but primarily to give my impressions of what I thought was good and what could be improved. Admittedly it is a bit short, and could probably convey the info about what I liked in greater specifics.
I can see that I’m not convincing you, but I find your counterpoints very unconvincing. Where is any plant in the world today (or even in the near future) turning out significant amounts of energy from an “alternate” source? It’s just not happening in significant amounts.
Starvation rates in the third world rose significantly following food price rises in 2007-2008. It’s not something that won’t happen; it’s already happening.
Of course not. People do not typically engage in business practices that would be economically ruinous to attempt. That being said—a single F-T plant operated by the South African company Sasol currently has a production capacity of 150,000 barrels per day. If that’s not a “significant amount” for an otherwise non-economically-competitive energy production process… I just don’t know what is.
Starvation rates in the third world rose significantly following food price rises in 2007-2008. It’s not something that won’t happen; it’s already happening.
Ironically those actually came about from the corn-ethanol push. Dropping that ended the food riots in most of the world. Furthermore, global hunger is really more of a political problem than a supply one. Which is part of at least one Kenyan economist has become internationally famous for saying of foreign aid to Africa, “for God’s sake, just stop.”
I can see that I’m not convincing you, but I find your counterpoints very unconvincing.
I can only suggest that one or the other of us is currently suffering from a problem of allowing his convictions to bias him against the reception of new facts that contradict our current position.
The stuff that was “the easy stuff” forty years ago and the stuff that is “the easy stuff” today are very different things. It is normal that, upon decrease in supply, research is invested into increasing the economically-effective supply. That’s how we got steam-injection and CO2-injection into oil-wells, which is why the US still supplies 2/3rds of its own oil resources (as of 2007, at least), despite Hubbards Peak pegging our peak production in the early 1970′s.
Of course they are. Because they were all pipe-dreams. In the meantime we’ve had a viable ‘alternative’—such that at least one industrialized nation (South Africa) has been relying upon it for years: the Fischer-Tropsch process. It generates liquid hydrocarbons from coal at a rate which is economically feasible with sustained non-futures prices of oil at over ~$80/barrel, with coal at ~$20/ton. (Please note: this simply has not happened yet.)
Projection fallacy. As I mentioned above; the “harder to get” only stays “harder to get” until it becomes “easier to get”. The fallacy here is in thinking that this is a fixed term rather than malleable based on technical prowess. I again mention steam-injection and the fact that it revitalized the Californian oil industry from essentially total death to viability.
This is a “and then magic happens” statement. Please don’t take past fears regarding food availability as viable indicators of the future. We already grow far more than enough food to feed the entire world… and there are plenty of techniques available to increase agricultural output that we just haven’t implemented very much yet. Everything from genetically-engineered nitrogen-fixing plants/bacteria to terra preta.
Increased prices result in increased ingenuity for discovering alternative means to the same ends. Fundamentally the ‘function’ of technology can be said to be the increase in the fungibility of a given resource. Back in the day we used whale blubber for a broad array of things. When the whales started getting scarce, we switched to coal and coal-gas. Then we switched to oil because it was a better hydrocarbon and we could get at it cheaply. (Though really, we still use coal for MOST of our energy needs. And the stuff we use oil for we could substitute coal for. Or even charred woody-plants ‘torrefied lignocellulosic stocks’ grown in agriculture.)
“seem” is the key term here. North Dakota is enjoying an oil-boom due to active extraction of shale-oil. Biodiesel in its various forms is not a viable hydrocarbon resource today, although there is at least one commercial plant selling to the US Military (at absurd costs.)
If, sure. But it’s just not going to happen.
Where do you get those numbers?
Traditional plants are 10% efficient. The Chinese plant is 20% efficient. The numbers I’ve seen suggest that the operating costs aren’t much more than materials. A ton is about 6 barrels, so if coal/ton is about the same as oil/barrel, the Chinese plant is profitable. Indeed, those prices have been the same for the past ten years. However, the capital expense was about $1000 per annual ton of capacity, which is an awful lot to pay off. At the prices you mentioned, there’s $60 of annual profit. I guess this matches your claim of long-term viability, though I haven’t taken into account the years of delay in the construction.
A traditional plant would never have been profitable, even in 2007 when coal was $40/ton and oil $60/bbl. I think its capital expense is about $200 per annual ton of capacity, a much smaller risk. If prices ever did touch those you mention, you could use the highly liquid futures market to buy coal and sell oil 5 to 10 years in the future, spend 5 years building the plant and make a profit. So I think your “sustained non-futures prices” disclaimer is not necessary.
Coal liquefaction only makes sense if the price of oil/coal rises. But it hasn’t changed much in the past decade. So rising prices are not special to oil and thus do not indicate peak oil.
Previous research on the topic. I don’t know where you’re getting that 10%/20% “efficient” thing from; F-T conversion of coal into liquid hydrocarbons requires roughly 4x the amount of hydrogen that coal has. That’s the reason why CO2 output is so high for F-T process, unless you somehow include large quantities of external hydrogen to the mix, which would bring down the costs of the product significantly (assuming a sufficiently cheap source of hydrogen.)
“even” ? Sir, you just suggested a patently abysmal set of circumstances for the viability of coal to oil conversion via F-T process. With coal at $40/ton, oil would need to be almost 3x the price you listed before F-T would be economically viable.
It’s entirely necessary because we’re talking about current deliverables. F-T ‘oil’ products would also have to face a futures market as well, as their output would be fungible to oil. The futures market, furthermore, is extremely volatile whereas the fixed deliverable isn’t nearly so much so.
Some of these seem like valid criticisms others less so.
First a nitpick. That’s not generally what the term projection fallacy means although your meaning is clear. But there’s a fundamental problem with this: even as the technology does get more expensive, the total amount of oil does go down, and the harder to extract oil does cost more than the nice easy oil. Moreover, the argument that you are making that this is an overly naive projection of what will happen doesn’t seem to be accurate. If one looks at a graph of world oil production one can see the general rough pattern. Since the last 40 years have included technological improvements that projection allows us to make guess about what technology will do. We have no reason to expect that the technology will suddenly become much better. Similarly, inflation adjusted price of oil has gone up over time.
Your point about the long-term use of coal substitutes seems to be a valid one which should for some time help deal with some but not all of the energy problems. Coal does have its own problems. (deaths from mining, environmental damage from mining and release of obnoxious radioactives are all issues). Moreover, coal prices have also been going up faster than inflation.
How not? I’m stating that he’s assuming that the people of tomorrow/yesterday shared his same beliefs as to what “easily accessible” or “hard to reach” meant in the arena of oil production. In other words; he was saying that “hard to access” is a fixed point rather than simply being his current belief.
No, that’s not a fundamental problem. I wasn’t pretending that my statement somehow abrogated the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. When people talk about “Peak Oil” what they’re talking about is a catastrophic scenario where the production of oil-related energy reaches a crescendo and declines at exactly or analogously similar rate to which it ramped up. THAT, and nothing else, is “Peak Oil”.
Certainly, but that’s just not a criticism of my position.
Certainly. But those aren’t problems, mainly, related to existential risks to civilization related to energy supply, so much as they are to moral quandaries related to specific choices of energy production.
I’m sure. Coal has stayed extremely cheap comparatively speaking. But it’s also in a similar—if far longer-term—situation as oil; there’s a fixed amount of it and we’re getting better at harvesting it, so the supply will inevitably dwindle. That’s why, furthermore, I mentioned torrefied lignocellulosics. With just a bit of tweaking and expertise, switchgrass can be grown at (potentially) as little as $15/ton. That, after torrefaction, makes it ball-parkish to coal.
Another viable criticism, by the way, of the F-T process is its environmental impact due to CO2 offgassing. (F-T has a large CO2 footprint).
Oh. I see I misinterpreted what you meant since I interpreted what he was saying differently. It seemed like you were talking about projection growth and difficulty into the future, and it seemed to me that he was talking about the difficulty of obtaining oil comparatively (that is some oil is more difficult to extract than other oil and even with research that will still be true, it is just then less difficult.)
Arguing over definitions is not useful. Maybe distinguish between two distinct notions of Peak Oil, Peak Oil(1), in which there will be a peak and then a rapid decline and Peak Oil(2) which makes no strong claim about the decline rate? Note that from an economic growth standpoint definition 2 might still be a cause for worry even if one doesn’t think that there will be a definition 1 type of issue
I would see them more as economic rather than moral concerns but I agree that they don’t substantially impact existential risk.
Yes, but my impression is that it should allow for comparatively easy carbon sequestration although not much direct research has been done on this matter. So I’m not sure that this is too much of a concern.
Arguing over definitions is foundationally necessary to discourse. If we cannot agree on what terms mean, communication is impossible.
When you capitalize Peak Oil you are invoking the body of rhetoric, lore, and history associated with the term. That term has a specific meaning, which invokes a catastrophic economic failure scenario derived from discussions of Hubbard’s Peak.
Hardly. Economic growth under sufficiently stable conditions is inevitable. Furthermore; that oil production will decline over time is inevitable. The only question is whether it will do so sharply and in a vacuum of other solutions, or if it will do so as a part of a pattern of transition to other avenues of energy production once it ceases to be the most viable source of energy production (which, honestly, it isn’t even that; coal is. Which is why we burn coal for electricity and not oil, but I digress.) The answer to that question is unequivocably that there won’t be a catastrophe.
So “Peak Oil” is nonsense. That oil will peak and production will fall is insufficient to proclaiming “Peak Oil”.
Agreeing on definitions is foundationally necessary. Arguing over them is almost always avoidable.
It is impossible to reach agreement on definitions without first arguing on them.
No definition is intrinsically correct. When in doubt (either from vagueness of a definition, connotation v. denotation issues, or others) it is helpful to use either multiple numbered definitions or to simply taboo the term wholesale. Arguing over definitions is not helpful.
… those items you’re talking about ARE the process of arguing over definitions. Or, at least, one variation of the process. It’s not even the most productive. You cannot get out of the point that arguing over definitions is foundationally necessary to discourse simply by proclaiming “arguing over definitions is not helpful”—no matter how many times you iterate it, it just isn’t truthful.
Especially since definitions themselves do not progress over time without such argumentation.
It seems that this is an argument about the definition of “argument”, and hence it is unnecessary ;).
It saddens me that it took someone other than JoshuaZ to point out what I was doing.
Posted as a sub-comment for brevity-of-discourse:
That it’s fear-mongering, being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas in order to exploit the ‘risability’ of the common person to fear in order to achieve their various goals through persuading the population.
Downvoted as I disagree that this answer is the most rational view, Logos, nor does this kind of response encourage rational discussion. This is irrespective of whether I agree or disagree with your argument that peak oil hasn’t occurred. Your first response sought to refute the specific statements the article made, and in general you did a fairly good job of putting up a rational argument (once again irrespective of whether the refutations are correct or incorrect). When your arguments are factual, they can be verified or refuted.
On the other hand, when your arguments contain no specific information that can be verified or refuted, and instead contain words designed to maximize for emotional effect rather than informational value, they cannot be called rational. Please see below for the words here that I feel especially stand out in this regard(emphasis mine):
I reject and abjure the notion that topics of emotion are somehow irrational simply because the topic itself is emotional. If a person stands before me, raising his voice, using harsh language, displaying aggressive body language and conducting himself hostilely, it is rational to say, “This man is angry.” The mere use of emotionally-charged terminology does not inherently relegate a statement irrational. Their context does that. I posted my ‘answer’ to the question not as a top-post but as a ‘response’ to my own as an indicator that it was contingent upon my top-level post.
I stand by my assertion that my statement regarding the use of ‘catastrophic’ Peak Oil is nothing more than fear-mongering, is itself a factual statement.
Had I made that statement ‘ex nihilo’—that is, as a top-level post and not as what amounts to a “too long; didn’t read” version—I would be more than happy to concede your position. As it stands, the statement that my arguments “contain no specific information that can be verified or refuted, and instead contain words designed to maximize for emotional effect rather than informational value”, is one I cannot accept as valid. Please do not mistake the statement that something is an attempt to produce emotionally-charged irrational behavior for that statement itself being an attempt to produce emotionally-charged irrational behavior.
“Peak Oil” is fear-mongering. It is being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas (and frankly your accusation of the term “agenda” of being emotionally charged I find to be without merit, by the way). And those various disparate and non-colluding groups are attempting to exploit the ‘risability’ of the so-called ‘common person’ to fear (i.e.; fear-mongering) in order to achieve their goals.
Fear-mongering and fear-driven politics is so common I find it rather surprising that it should be taken as a non-ordinary claim. Based on my top-level comment, which itself was in response to a question of a fearful nature regarding the topic, I can’t see how it’s even viable to call it ‘unverified’.
At worst I could see a position calling my ‘sub-comment’ disrespectful, insulting, or condescending. It wasn’t meant that way, but I could see that accusation being made and I would have to consider it seriously.
I do not believe emotional comments are inherently irrational. As all of us experience emotion, almost any comment we make is emotional, in that it elicits certain emotions from both ourselves and others. However, not all emotional comments are rational. I still do not believe that your last comment on what to think of peak oil was rational ( I also disagree that the term agenda used in that context is not emotionally charged, but this topic may be more subjective than the other and is less central to my point, so I won’t discuss it further here).
Your last comment about peak oil being fear-mongering is not supported by your previous statements. Your previous statements support peak oil not being true. Your last statement has nothing to do with this, as far as I’m concerned, and is considerably more complex to work out the truth or falsehood of. The idea of a political or social institution saying that peak oil is true because they wish to exploit common people for their own disparate agendas has nothing to do with whether or not peak oil is true. Consider:
Peak oil is true and political and social institutions say that it is true, because they a.) believe it is true, b.) want to exploit other people, or c.) both.
Peak oil is false and political and social institutions say that it is true, because they a.) believe it is true, b.) want to exploit other people, or c.) both.
I assume you are asserting 2b with your statement about fear-mongering, whereas your previous post put forth arguments that only support the statement in 2 that ‘Peak oil is false’. I also feel that the connotation for fear-mongering used in such contexts is likely to produce either rapid agreement or disagreement.
My question is—which is more important to you, proving that peak oil is false, or proving what the motivations of various unrelated politicians and social organizations are? Do not mistake my criticism of your statement for a belief that fear is never used in politics. I just don’t see how it at all helps your attempt to prove that peak oil is not true. See statements 1 and 2 above for my reasoning of why the first does not necessarily follow from the second. I think a more rational statement made after giving supporting arguments that peak oil is false would be something along the lines of ‘don’t worry about it and show others it is not true so they can devote their resources to solving things that are actually problems’.
EDIT: changed some erratic capitalizations and one ‘denotation for fear-mongering’ to ‘connotation for fear-mongering’ to more correctly express my meaning in that part.
This comment is fantastic.
How not? I demonstrated that it isn’t, in my view, a legitimate concern; that there exists at least one viable solution already being practically implemented. How can the topic—which is expressed as a ‘serious problem’—remaining a concern for discussion possibly exist except through the agency of various groups attempting to drive up fear levels amongst the public in order to achieve their specific goals? (“specific goals” being synonymous with “agendas”. You really need to get over that emotionally-charged thing for the word “agenda”.)
Unfortunately that is an inacurrate assumption. I made no differentiation between whether the agencies’ agendas were true or genuinely believed. Your view of the term “agenda” being emotionally charged necessarily resulted, I feel, in this being your stance though so I find myself too limited to the task of explaining my position to you.
It’s not meant to. It was a conclusion/summary statement, not an argument towards a conclusion. Conclusions should never be used as arguments to support themselves.
I have no horse in the latter race. I have never implied I do. Why then do you insist I do?
Thank you for explaining your intent in more detail. However, the fact that I see a logical problem with your argument still exists. I will try to clarify the issue.
If people are concerned about something untrue, then this may very well be because various groups are attempting to drive up fear levels. It may also be because the various individuals involved looked at the incomplete and often ambiguous data available to them and came to the conclusion that it is true, regardless of whether or not that was the conclusion some group wanted them to come to, and regardless of whether or not any groups involved wanted to drive up fear levels, or create a sense of fatalism, or thought this news would somehow cheer people up. I think there really is a lot one could say about how humans act on their beliefs and why.
But that was not what your main arguments were discussing. Let me try to summarize what you have said so far:
Giving various arguments supporting the idea that peak oil is false.
Concluding with the idea that some people say peak oil is true for various specific motivations that you have clarified are irrelevant to you, but one of their motivations for saying it is true is to drive up fear levels.
It doesn’t make sense to me to discuss people and their motivations (which you’ve said you don’t care about) at the very end of talking about whether a certain state of the world is true. It would make sense to end with a conclusion distilling the essence of what you argued (eg. ‘technology is already advanced enough to prevent this from being a problem’ or ‘we won’t be running out of oil anytime soon’). It might also make sense to summarize the various points you argued. However, since you didn’t talk about how peak oil being false causes people to say it is true, I think there is something missing here. Perhaps you want to discuss something about human nature as well, as it pertains to what people say or do, or what people believe. That is where I think the ending you gave might belong, not as a conclusion to arguments discussing whether or not peak oil is true.
If there is something you think I am missing here, I hope you will elaborate.
The trouble with this position is that the falsification of the issue has been available since before it became an issue. A more-than-cursory examination reveals this—as I have done. This means that there needs to be active suppression of this information to preserve the levels of fear we now see.
Ahh… no, I never said that. I said I didn’t make any presumptions about what their motivations in specific were. That’s not the same as saying that I “don’t care” about them.
Someone has been raising the issue. I haven’t made any presumptions about who or why—only that it has been happening. I then described the act of raising a false fear as ‘fearmongering’. They might not know they’re doing it. They might honestly believe it.
That they honestly believe a false fear to be valid doesn’t change the fact that they are promoting a false fear.
There are several things I would like to address, taking into account the additional information you have now supplied.
As opposed to something like confirmation bias? What specific kinds of actions does active suppression entail? Are you saying that this is the only possibility because you have evidence to dismiss all others, or because you intend this statement to refer to a large number of types of behavior that encompass all or most possible types of reactions?
Okay, after considering them some more, I agree that your statements don’t indicate that you don’t care about the motivations (apologies for the double negative).
In regards to presumptions of specific motivations, I have examined the statement in question:
I observe that I interpret all of the ‘in order to’s here as ‘with the intent of’. If you intended them to perhaps mean something more along the lines of merely ‘with the effect of’, then I will not interpret ‘exploiting the risibility of the common person’ as a statement about their specific motivations. Otherwise, even if this motivation is not a terminal motivation, it still seems to be a specific one.
This clarification of your original statement increases my estimate of it’s probability of being true, but only by making it more generalized than I originally thought it was. Do you agree that the more possible outcomes a statement applies to, the fewer things its truthfulness can be used to predict? If I have three types of card in a shuffled deck: red, green, and blue, and I say the card on the top is red and I am right, is that more or less predictive than if I say the card on top is red or blue and I am right?
Even with the more general meaning you have applied to your statement, I still don’t think after presenting evidence that X is false, One can conclude that people act in way Y whenever they state that X is true. The only conclusion that follows from giving evidence that X is false is that X is false. If you want to convince others that people act in way Y when they say that X is true, it is not directly relevant evidence to simply say that X is false (though this might be used to support a sub-argument if X being true corresponds to different behavior). Instead, discussion of the causes of people’s mental states, and how their mental states affect their behavior, is necessary. Your conclusion does not directly follow from your original argument. This was, and still is, my largest objection to the conclusion you supplied.
Can you cite any evidence that is clearer than the geological evidence that oil is being exhausted just enough for production rates to begin declining?
Evidence for what, exactly? And exactly what is it you are claiming this geological evidence to be evidence of?
Upvoted since you put forth a pretty good argument for your case here, although I would prefer more citations. I still disagree that this post supports your other post or vice versa.
I’m not really in favor of citations (unless it is a direct quote) in blog comments—a clear, well-reasoned argument is better and most peoples attention and interest is limited and therefore so is the length of post they are likely to read in the first place. If a comment piques your interest, or simply your curiosity, Google Scholar can provide support (or disproof) readily and to a much greater, and especially more broad ranging, extent than is possible in a comment.
ADDED: Thinking about this comment, I realized I could be taken as arguing against citations in general which wasn’t what I intended. I just don’t think requests for citations by replying commenters is worthwhile.
Fair enough. However, your preferences may simply be different than mine. I highly appreciate it when a person takes the effort to provide links to some of their sources for various facts, which don’t necessarily have to be from Google Scholar (although that can be a plus). Obviously there is a limited amount of evidence than can be included in a comment, and most comments are not going to be able to provide enough evidence to exhaustively prove their claim. But to me some is better than none (where applicable—some responses don’t lend themselves to citations, but I felt the one I replied to did). Also, I feel the link is the most important part of the citation, although it’s sometimes better if the post takes the time to give it sufficient context so I know what parts of, say, a 30 page document are being used to support an argument.
The purpose of my comment wasn’t only or primarily to request citations, but primarily to give my impressions of what I thought was good and what could be improved. Admittedly it is a bit short, and could probably convey the info about what I liked in greater specifics.
I can see that I’m not convincing you, but I find your counterpoints very unconvincing. Where is any plant in the world today (or even in the near future) turning out significant amounts of energy from an “alternate” source? It’s just not happening in significant amounts.
Starvation rates in the third world rose significantly following food price rises in 2007-2008. It’s not something that won’t happen; it’s already happening.
Of course not. People do not typically engage in business practices that would be economically ruinous to attempt. That being said—a single F-T plant operated by the South African company Sasol currently has a production capacity of 150,000 barrels per day. If that’s not a “significant amount” for an otherwise non-economically-competitive energy production process… I just don’t know what is.
Ironically those actually came about from the corn-ethanol push. Dropping that ended the food riots in most of the world. Furthermore, global hunger is really more of a political problem than a supply one. Which is part of at least one Kenyan economist has become internationally famous for saying of foreign aid to Africa, “for God’s sake, just stop.”
I can only suggest that one or the other of us is currently suffering from a problem of allowing his convictions to bias him against the reception of new facts that contradict our current position.