Peak oil a hoax? Prove it.

[Nordic]

I don't think they're perpetuating peak oil, rather oil scarcity in general, so as to raise prices. Although, on the Peak Oil front, since the fuck they hired Hubbert to invent the whole fucking idea of Peak Oil would probably be the when-ness of it.

I know I said I was checking out but oh my god ...

That's about the STUPIDEST FUCKING THING I'VE EVER READ.

I've known about Peak Oil since 1979 for God's sake. Hell, everybody's known about it for fucking EVER. It ain't gonna last, nobody with half a brain expected it to!

Funnily enough the fact that you've been banging on about the end of the world as we know it for over thirty years, coincidentally since an oil embargo specifically engineered to artificially reduce supply, doesn't convince me of the imminent collapse of civilisation. You're like Harold Camping. "Okay, wrong date, it's the end of the world this time next year."

Also, 79 is, of course, long after Hubbert was active.

Not hardly, you ignorant ass, in 1979 it was quite apparent that oil production had not peaked yet but was going to, probably in about 40 years.

Weird, I used to think you were a fairly intelligent chap, but unless someone is currently using your computer, maybe a house guest or something, I was apparently completely wrong.

Like I said, you must think that the old gold and silver mines in our western united states are still just chock full of the stuff, they were abandoned as part of a CONSPIRACY to keep the prices high. I'm so glad I just figured that out, I'm on my way to the hills with a shovel and a pick!! I'm gonna be RICH!!!

[Stephen Morgan]

I don't believe Peak Oil is a hoax. The million year old deposits that we are mining and using is pretty easy to graph and the usage is hard to refute.

Total resources still unknown.

My question is very naive and may not even belong on this thread, so please use the minimal amount of derision when responding.

It's alright, looks like everyone else is leaving the thread anyway.

What other component besides decomposing plant/animal matter is necessary in creating these fossil fuel deposits?

Energy, generally in the form of heat and pressure.

I am trying to save myself a one hundred dollar textbook purchase because ten pages of googling isn't providing anything other than peak oil debates.

I am seriously asking why we aren't creating deposits continuously from decomposing plant/animal matter. Was it the sheer number of dinosaurs decomposing all at once at that time? (again, save the heckling, I truly can't find the answer) was it the plant/animal matter combined with intense heat or just amount plus age plus compression under millions of tons of geologic layers? What made those deposits so unique?

We might be producing it constantly, difficult to say, but it's being used much faster than it's being created. We are using hundreds of millions of years of accumulated hydro-carbons. Like cutting down a forest, then having to wait for more trees to grow. Longer scale.

We are decomposing all the time and are continuously (albeit slowly) creating fossils...why those abundant deposits and apparently nothing since?

Don't get me started on fossils.

I guess I am not understanding that we have used it all up in the last hundred years and haven't figured out a way to speed the decomposition of carbon matter up with added heat/compression, whatever created it in the first place?

Can't really add significantly to the heat and compression of the deep subterranean realm, would take too much energy. Would also require an input of biological matter, and quite a lot.

Any help would be appreciated, I am not at all trying to add political or denying naysaying to this thread...

[Stephen Morgan]

I don't think they're perpetuating peak oil, rather oil scarcity in general, so as to raise prices. Although, on the Peak Oil front, since the fuck they hired Hubbert to invent the whole fucking idea of Peak Oil would probably be the when-ness of it.

I know I said I was checking out but oh my god ...

That's about the STUPIDEST FUCKING THING I'VE EVER READ.

I've known about Peak Oil since 1979 for God's sake. Hell, everybody's known about it for fucking EVER. It ain't gonna last, nobody with half a brain expected it to!

Funnily enough the fact that you've been banging on about the end of the world as we know it for over thirty years, coincidentally since an oil embargo specifically engineered to artificially reduce supply, doesn't convince me of the imminent collapse of civilisation. You're like Harold Camping. "Okay, wrong date, it's the end of the world this time next year."

Also, 79 is, of course, long after Hubbert was active.

Not hardly, you ignorant ass, in 1979 it was quite apparent that oil production had not peaked yet but was going to, probably in about 40 years.

As there was insufficient evidence at the time to predict the peak of well discoveries that would be meaningless, assuming you aren't projecting back into the past. Just another bit of embargo-fed oil paranoia.

Weird, I used to think you were a fairly intelligent chap, but unless someone is currently using your computer, maybe a house guest or something, I was apparently completely wrong.

Just goes to show your fanaticism. No-one can possibly dissagree with you unless they are stupid or dishonest. The battle-cry of the crackpot.

Like I said, you must think that the old gold and silver mines in our western united states are still just chock full of the stuff, they were abandoned as part of a CONSPIRACY to keep the prices high.

There was no long campaign to reduce production there, was there? No, there is no evidence for that position. The idea of peak oil, the predictions for the date of peak oil, the statistics for amount of oil remaining, all come from the oil companies. The efforts to restrict production, especially in Iraq which has some of the greatest potential production and certainly the biggest gap between potential and actual production, were pushed by the oil companies. The benefit accrues to the oil companies. We have means motive and opportunity, and evidence of their activities. No such evidence exists in the case of Californian gold mines.

I'm so glad I just figured that out, I'm on my way to the hills with a shovel and a pick!! I'm gonna be RICH!!!

You see, that is a straw man.

[Saurian Tail]

^^^this is a real jet. It determines the shape of the oil market.

It is fiendishly clever of the genocidal bastards if you think about it. If low EROEI sources like deep sea and tar sands are the long term future, you would want to create this kind of short term artificial scarcity in order to make your long term prospects viable during the transition. This kind of artificial manipulation would definitely extend the bumpy plateau as well as ease the backside of the curve ... and make your remaining high EROEI sources extremely profitable. I'm going to chew on that a while.

On edit: Iraq is the ultimate strategic reserve.

[lupercal]

I don't think they're perpetuating peak oil, rather oil scarcity in general, so as to raise prices. Although, on the Peak Oil front, since the fuck they hired Hubbert to invent the whole fucking idea of Peak Oil would probably be the when-ness of it.

I know I said I was checking out but oh my god ...

That's about the STUPIDEST FUCKING THING I'VE EVER READ.

Nordic ya big lovable ding dong, Hubbert delivered his "Hubbert's peak" paper to the American Petro Institute in 1956, which is what makes SM's comment so frikkin hilarious and yours almost as much: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory

I predict in a day or two your psychic eye will come unstuck, to use eyeno's great term, and when it does you gotta come back and read over these last pages because they're about the funniest thing I've read on RI ever. Seriously, SM is on a roll.

Meanwhile why not Google a little, that's what it's there for ya know? You'll come around. Maybe this will help, from another thread:

Yes is the answer, and you know that for sure,

Yes is surrender, you got to let it, you got to let it go. . .

[stickdog99]

seems I have upset the cool kids who realize that our precious way of life is completely dependent on cheap oil and that no other energy source in the heavens or on earth can possibly save us

shame on me

The title of the article says "Solar PV could replace fossil fuels in 10 years - I.E.E.E".

But what the article actually says is that Solar PV could be competitive with fossil fuels in 10 years ... assuming certain increases in efficiency yet to be realized.

So here is the bottom line of the article: In the most optimistic scenario that assumes current growth rates (40% per year) and achieving the maximum hoped for improvements in efficiency --- Solar PV will deliver a whopping 11% of current (2011) global electricity production by 2050. That is 39 years down the road. Again, this is the most optimistic view that assumes everything goes according to the rosy picture.

Saying "could replace" in the headline when the article really says "could be competitive" has the effect of communicating to the unaware ... close your eyes ... go back to sleep ... everything will be OK. That is the oldest trick in the book, right?

The article dazzles with the "energy is all around you" argument ... going from 1 million gigawatts of diffuse energy hitting the earth to 15,000 gigawatts of concentrated energy needed to power the civilization to 920 kilowatts on demand per month per home should be easy, right? Go to sleep, it's a piece of cake. But it's not. And the article says so if you can actually fight your way through the hyperbole. 39 years to get 11% with the most promising renewable resource available under the most ideal projections.

By the way, after reading the article, I was not surprised to find that Ecoseed is a renewable industry rag. They are paid to produce these kinds of articles to promote their sponsors.

http://www.ecoseed.org/about-ecoseed

-ST

Working on nothing but a pinch of federal grant, university tenure and VC money, solar technology is breaking new records and making new discoveries everyday. Do you really think naysaying solar energy's potential while lionizing the amazing wonders of oil is helpful?

Intelligent people, given a problem and a real chance to earn a windfall solving this problem, will surpass the "most ideal projections" of people invested in the old ways of doing things 99 times out of 100.

The real question is, can we force them to allow all of our problem solvers solve this problem a decentralized manner that they cannot fully co-opt?

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industrie ... nels_n.htm
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/augu ... 80210.html
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/sola ... -0425.html
http://thefutureofthings.com/news/10436 ... cells.html
http://www.crazyengineers.com/final-tor ... -cell-546/
http://www.gizmag.com/inkjet-printing-c ... lls/19057/
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea ... e-infrared
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gslo-a ... 2011-05-19
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/sol ... ncy-record
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/20 ... p-in-costs
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/20 ... olar-cells
http://gizmodo.com/5666674/a-solar-powe ... per-soaker
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/ ... 7907.shtml
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/37882/
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/37994/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/1 ... 33483.html
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?sectio ... id=8216439
http://www.environment.co.za/clean-tech ... ecord.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 101355.htm
http://www.electronicsnews.com.au/news/ ... lar-cell-e
http://www.sustainablefuture.cornell.ed ... ganicGrass
http://greenanswers.com/news/246919/goo ... ean-energy
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science_tec ... d=29182862
http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives ... ilm_1.html
http://www.eco-business.com/news/melbou ... nnovation/
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea ... e-infrared
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/01/20/sel ... akthrough/
http://www.plastemart.com/Plastic-Techn ... ufacturing
http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en ... pid=287226
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 125110.htm
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/techno ... 1h2kg.html
http://www.solarfeeds.com/ecofriend/166 ... eakthrough
http://www.ecofriend.com/entry/10-break ... y-in-2010/
http://blogs.forbes.com/amywestervelt/2 ... lm-panels/
http://blog.secretscience.org/wp-conten ... 992778.pdf
http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-06-25/b ... olar-power
http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=72973
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_cultu ... _17209.asp
http://www.gizmag.com/breakthrough-sola ... ght/17377/
http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.p ... le_id=1148
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2011/05/Energ ... s-in-half/
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-02-25 ... eakthrough
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors ... n-anything

[Hammer of Los]

I'll leave the ad hominems, and the veiled and not-so-veiled accusations of posting in bad faith and sock puppeting and so on, to those who have the weakest arguments, and the least of interest to say on this subject. If you can't abide folk who display even the semblance of disagreeing with you, perhaps you would be happier on a forum that hosts a smaller number of independent thinkers (or even better, perhaps none at all). I might do a post later listing the grievous sins of some posters on the above counts later, if I have the time. Maybe send it to the mods.

Anyway, perhaps one of the reasons they engineer the scarcity is in order to prolong the longevity of the oil fields. It's about more than profit, it's about control of energy. They don't want people to shift to more democratically and universally accessible forms of energy production. They want to control the world through access to key resources. They do want oil to remain a key resource for as long as possible, I would guess. The engineered scarcity would help with that.

So when is the crisis going to hit? I thought peak oil was the moment when oil extraction reaches a peak before undergoing a decline. This could be applied to a field, a set of fields, a nation, or indeed the planet. Maybe even the Solar system and beyond one day, who knows? But you never know when it will be without the benefit of hindsight, do you?

Sure, it will happen one day. Why does it have to be a crisis? If oil prices go up after the peak, then it will provide market incentive to find alternative solutions, hopefully more sustainable, less polluting ones.

Hubbert Curve? All that says is that after you hit a peak, you start to go down. That seems to me a tautology. I'm not sure what that tells us.

I'm just thinking aloud.

I commend Stephen for his clear thinking and polite forms of expression.

I think the peak oil meme is not targeted at anti war, anti capitalist and green liberals you know. I think its targeted at people like my father in law, who thinks that wars are justified if we absolutely need someone else's oil in order to sustain "our way of life." He told me so. So to him, Peak Oil would frighten him enough into thinking yes, we need control of that oil right now, and we need to manage it's exploitation and ultimate decline in the interests of my culture, my people, my nation, and my own material well-being.

That is why the BBC and the Broadsheets like to do a bit of Peak Oil scaremongering every now and again.

The older I get the more I distrust scaremongering.

The real question is if Peak Oil is an imminent catastrophe, what should we be doing about it? We all agree we need to move to less polluting and more sustainable sources, like yesterday.

A great many of us agree on a great many more matters than on which we disagree. Can we be less acrimonious in our forms of expression? More peace and less conflict in the world is good, isn't it?

[stickdog99]

.The main hoax on this thread is the uninformed and baseless insistence by several of you that the oil companies are the ones claiming a current or imminent decline in the annual maximum output of conventionally extracted hydrocarbon energy stores, and thus an inability to meet growing demand and a significant decline in hydrocarbon EROEI (a set of concepts that are commonly given in abbreviated form as “peak oil”).

...

We have been sitting on a shitload of cheaper than dirt oil in Iraq for over 100 years now. Would you care to comment on this?

This idea you have that the total available supply of oil and relative extraction costs of oil drilled for have anything to do with which oil production ventures are financed intrigues me. Hasn't it ALWAYS been simply the cost of extraction vs. the current price of oil that drives these investment decisions? The control of the oil market has ALWAYS been on the distribution side. And the history of oil distribution has ALWAYS been one of manufactured shortages and price rigging. Plenty of oil was obviously there to be had in every previous decade in which prices spiked because of supposed "shortages." What I can't understand is why you are so certain that oil is really about to run out now?

I mean, I'd like to believe you. I'd like oil to run out within the next 50 years. I'd like to see a war machine that has to plug in to an outlet and/or wait for sunshine. I'd love to see our oil lords forced to embrace decentralized and distributed renewable power because they lack an alternative.

Like it or not, JR, your take (while slightly more enlightened and cynical) basically represents the conventional wisdom of most moderate US leftists on this issue. But I just don't buy it. The big problem is not that oil is going to run out and nothing can replace it. The big problems are:

1) oil "shortages" make for highly convenient crises,

2) our current ruling elite plans to exploit a number of these "crises" in our near future, and

3) our current ruling elite will do everything in its power to delay conversion to any renewable energy sources that it cannot co-opt and control in the same manner it has co-opted and controlled the distribution of oil for well over 100 years.

I just don't see how it is helpful to presage these coming "crises" as simply the result of an inevitable and unavoidable process of resource depletion. Please explain why you feel I am mistaken about this.

[stickdog99]

I've known about Peak Oil since 1979 for God's sake.

And 32 years later, still nothing has changed, and still nobody has so much as touched the massive Iraq oil fields.

I knew the world was going to end at the year 2000 back in the 1970s. Do I get any credit for that?

[wintler2]

..Working on nothing but a pinch of federal grant, university tenure and VC money, solar technology ..

Also..

1839:
Nineteen-year-old Edmund Becquerel, a French experimental physicist, discovered the photovoltaic effect while experimenting with an electrolytic cell made up of two metal electrodes. 1873: Willoughby Smith discovered the photoconductivity of selenium.
1876:
Adams and Day observed the photovoltaic effect in solid selenium.
1883:
Charles Fritts, an American inventor, described the first solar cells made from selenium wafers.
1887:
Heinrich Hertz discovered that ultraviolet light altered the lowest voltage capable of causing a spark to jump between two metal electrodes.
1904:
Hallwachs discovered that a combination of copper and cuprous oxide was photosensitive. Einstein published his paper on the photoelectric effect.
1914:
The existence of a barrier layer in PV devices was reported.
1916:
Millikan provided experimental proof of the photoelectric effect.
1918:
Polish scientist Czochralski developed a way to grow single-crystal silicon.
1923:
Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize for his theories explaining the photoelectric effect.
1951:
A grown p-n junction enabled the production of a single-crystal cell of germanium.
1954:
The PV effect in Cd was reported; primary work was performed by Rappaport, Loferski and Jenny at RCA. Bell Labs researchers Pearson, Chapin, and Fuller reported their discovery of 4.5% efficient silicon solar cells; this was raised to 6% only a few months later (by a work team including Mort Prince). Chapin, Fuller, Pearson (AT&T) submitted their results to the Journal of Applied Physics. AT&T demonstrated solar cells in Murray Hill, New Jersey, then at the National Academy of Science Meeting in Washington, DC.
1955:
Western Electric began to sell commercial licenses for silicon PV technologies; early successful products included PV-powered dollar bill changers and devices that decoded computer punch cards and tape. Bell System's demonstration of the type P rural carrier system began in Americus, Georgia. Hoffman Electronics's Semiconductor Division announced a commercial PV product at 2% efficiency; priced at $25/cell and at 14 mW each, the cost of energy was $1500/W.
1956:
Bell System's demonstration of the type P rural carrier system was terminated after five months.
1957:
Hoffman Electronics achieved 8% efficient cells. "Solar Energy Converting Apparatus," patent #2,780,765, was issued to Chapin, Fuller, and Pearson, AT&T.
1958:
Hoffman Electronics achieved 9% efficient PV cells. Vanguard I, the first PV-powered satellite, was launched in cooperation with the U.S. Signal Corp. The satellite power system operated for 8 years.
1959:
Hoffman Electronics achieved 10% efficient, commercially available PV cells and demonstrated the use of a grid contact to significantly reduce series resistance. Explorer-6 was launched with a PV array of 9600 cells, each only 1 cm x 2 cm.
1960:
Hoffman Electronics achieved 14% efficient PV cells.
..

http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines ... ltaics.htm

[stickdog99]

Mind you, I think micro-hydro is a better idea. It's been calculated that just reactivating those mill-lades used during the industrial revolution could provice 40% of Britain's current electricity supplies, and that would means excluding some of the most promising areas of the country.

Very interesting. Would any of our oilpocalypse experts care to debunk this claim?

[stickdog99]

..Working on nothing but a pinch of federal grant, university tenure and VC money, solar technology ..

Care to explain your point?

[stickdog99]

I don't believe Peak Oil is a hoax. The million year old deposits that we are mining and using is pretty easy to graph and the usage is hard to refute.

My question is very naive and may not even belong on this thread, so please use the minimal amount of derision when responding.

What other component besides decomposing plant/animal matter is necessary in creating these fossil fuel deposits? I am trying to save myself a one hundred dollar textbook purchase because ten pages of googling isn't providing anything other than peak oil debates.

I am seriously asking why we aren't creating deposits continuously from decomposing plant/animal matter. Was it the sheer number of dinosaurs decomposing all at once at that time? (again, save the heckling, I truly can't find the answer) was it the plant/animal matter combined with intense heat or just amount plus age plus compression under millions of tons of geologic layers? What made those deposits so unique?

We are decomposing all the time and are continuously (albeit slowly) creating fossils...why those abundant deposits and apparently nothing since?

I guess I am not understanding that we have used it all up in the last hundred years and haven't figured out a way to speed the decomposition of carbon matter up with added heat/compression, whatever created it in the first place?

Any help would be appreciated, I am not at all trying to add political or denying naysaying to this thread...

Short answer = nobody really knows where oil comes from. Anglo textbooks say oil comes from pre-historic plant matter, but the evidence for this is not compelling. Russian scientists think oil is abiotic because it must come from depths that are under far too much heat and pressure for life to exist and that are far too deep for any dead organic matter to have ever been buried under. I think that both American and Russian scientists vastly underestimate the diversity and heartiness of microbes, and that oil and natural gas are the processed remains of mantle microbes whose activity drives the microbe food conveyor belt that is plate tectonics. IMHO, my guess is as good as anyone's.

[wintler2]

^^^this is a real jet. It determines the shape of the oil market.

It is fiendishly clever of the genocidal bastards if you think about it. If low EROEI sources like deep sea and tar sands are the long term future, you would want to create this kind of short term artificial scarcity in order to make your long term prospects viable during the transition. This kind of artificial manipulation would definitely extend the bumpy plateau as well as ease the backside of the curve ... and make your remaining high EROEI sources extremely profitable. I'm going to chew on that a while.

On edit: Iraq is the ultimate strategic reserve.

Iraq is the volcanic-co2 of peak oil denial.

Sure Iraqs exports have been lower than if Saddam hadn't suffered war with Iran, Kuwait/US&allies, UN sanctions, and again US&allies. But its exports haven't been nothing,

and how much oil is there supposed to be there?

113bil. according to BPs 2009 statistical review. (theres a good summary of OPECs 1980s reserve revisions controversy at that link too, one among many reasons to think oil exporting nations and corporations over-estimate their reserves).

Okay, but 113bil.barrels, big number. How many days global supply is that, at 85million barrels a day consumption? 3.6 years. Whoop de do.

Okay, lets follow their pipedream. Assume there is some vast lake of secret oil under Iraq, enough to make up for declines in production from North Sea, Vietnam, Australia, Indonesia, US, Columbia, Nigeria, etc and stop the peak being now.

1. does that mean oil will never peak?

2. what mysterious breed of businessman has appeared that it can put off its greed far into the future? Never before have i seen its like, the rule i observe is 'get it now, get it cheap, leave nothing'. Yet for the Iraq=strategic reserve theory to stand up, the responsible elites must be deferring reward decades into the future at the cost of political capital, blod and gold that if nothing else has an opportunity cost. For a reward decades in the future? I know of no precedent.

[wintler2]

..I am seriously asking why we aren't creating deposits continuously from decomposing plant/animal matter.

There probably are some being created now, but it takes (usually) hundreds of millions of years.

Was it the sheer number of dinosaurs decomposing all at once at that time? was it the plant/animal matter combined with intense heat or just amount plus age plus compression under millions of tons of geologic layers?

Plankton & diatoms ~ plants & animals, who lived & died in sea and accumulated in deposits on seafloor. where those deposits were rendered anoxic/lacking in oxygen (stopping decomposition; usually via eroded sediment falling onto organic matter layers), the deposits didn't break down, and in those situations where pressure (sediment deposits, tectonics) and heat was applied within certain bounds (not too hot, not too tight..), oil forms.

What made those deposits so unique?

'they made it' , in other words there are plenty of other sorts of deposits of similar material that didn't have ideal circumstances and so either formed & drained away, sorta formed but suck (tar sands), or are just of insufficient energy content to be of interest (yet!) eg. 'shale oil' = kerogen = undercooked oil = v.low energy content.

We are decomposing all the time and are continuously (albeit slowly) creating fossils...why those abundant deposits and apparently nothing since?

High planton productivity and soil erosion rates of that era?

I guess I am not understanding that we have used it all up in the last hundred years and haven't figured out a way to speed the decomposition of carbon matter up with added heat/compression, whatever created it in the first place?

We don't have the energy to spare, the planet does but it doesn't work by puny human timescales. Oil is fabulous in form, but it is its energy content that we really want - thats why we burn it.

Any help would be appreciated, I am not at all trying to add political or denying naysaying to this thread...

No, thanks for changing the vibe!