Peak oil a hoax? Prove it.

[StarmanSkye]

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou

Wow, what a great quote to remember. How spot-on!

[Nordic]

So where did all this fuel come from on a planet that doesn't have fossils?

Good question. What's amusing is that most planetary scientists don't even see the inconsistency. Such is the power of the reigning paradigm.

Uh .... no. Once again you're dead wrong. The earth has plenty of its own methane, on the bottom of the ocean, locked up in nice little globules. You might want to look into this.

I don't know where you're finding such "scientists", I think you must be making them up.

[stickdog99]

So where did all this fuel come from on a planet that doesn't have fossils?

Good question. What's amusing is that most planetary scientists don't even see the inconsistency. Such is the power of the reigning paradigm.

Uh .... no. Once again you're dead wrong. The earth has plenty of its own methane, on the bottom of the ocean, locked up in nice little globules. You might want to look into this.

Yes, our ocean bottoms are filled with frozen methane crystals, which are, IMHO, the waste products of the mantle microbes who feed off the conveyor belt of organic sustenance that is Earth's tectonic plate system.

What does this have to do with the fact that Western planetary scientists think oil on Titan is abiotic while contending that oil on Earth is a fossil fuel?

[Nordic]

the abiotic vs biotic argument as regards oil on earth is completely irrelevant.

[Rory]

[quote="wintler2"][/quote]

By the way: By 'occult', I mainly mean hidden. However, tied to the blatant usage of sigils in petrochemical, corporate logos, it can also attest to their philosophy.

I agree with a lot of what you say. I was generalizing for the most part but, unfortunately, the most affecting people are the west and they are also the ones who are most tied to petrochemicals. I haven't driven a car for years and do my best to avoid packaged food, plastics etc.. but it's pissing in the wind for the most part. With US consumption rates being 30 times higher than the non-industrial world average, it's like having a population 3 and a half the size of China and India combined. Our effective World population (for per capita consumption) is around double the number of people.

Population control would definitely be in the wrong hands and, like eugenics, however persuasive the intellectual arguments might be, is dangerous territory for political application due to the tendency of corruption.

Our species are in a cycle of locust like behavior though: Rendering down ancient jungle and rainforests (our land mass lungs) for grazing land, timber and industrial strip mines; poisoning (probably irreparably) aquifer basins and seas to extract a few cans of gas/oil; scarring the arctic circle and devastating huge swathes of tundra for the same wasteful petrolium; hovering up fish unsustainably, scraping up the bottom of the oceans through trawling and destroying the underwater ecosystems; irradiating the waters, lands and air to power a few plasma screen TVs; etc..

We have a long way to go to redress our harmony with nature.

Anbiotic oil strikes me as being akin to 'babel fish' in that it would point towards the planet being engineered/designed.

[stickdog99]

This what the oil distributors want us to think:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/97 ... vronad.jpg

This is what the oil producers think:

http://www.aramcoexpats.com/Articles/Pi ... /2775.aspx

In a speech titled “Global Oil Resources and the World’s Energy Future: A Holistic View,” Jum‘ah examined the more than 30 years of doomsday forecasts that have been put forward about the petroleum industry and that have since been proven false. He offered a statistical basis for his argument that forecasts for the ultimate recovery of conventional oil resources have actually increased over time.

"In general, we have grossly underestimated mankind’s ability to find new reserves of petroleum,” he said, “as well as our capacity to raise recovery rates and tap fields once thought inaccessible or impossible to produce. On balance, I am confident that this growth trend can continue. But confidence is no excuse for complacency, and I also believe we must take a hard look at the Earth’s total endowment of liquid fuels, and realistically assess our ability to meet future demand for energy.”

In addition to conventional oil, Jum‘ah stated his belief that non-conventional resources of liquid energy such as condensates, natural gas liquids, tar sands, bitumen, extra heavy oil, oil shales, gas-to-liquids, coal-to-liquids and bio fuels will ultimately contribute to the global supplies of petroleum that are currently meeting consumers’ needs.

“The amount of conventional oil-in-place is somewhere between six and eight trillion barrels, depending on whether you go with the Conservative or Target Scenario,” he said. “The volume of non-conventional oil-in-place is rather murkier, with a Conservative Scenario figure of seven trillion barrels and a Target Scenario number of roughly eight trillion barrels or higher. But let us also remember that we basically know where these non-conventional liquids are located and that there is little or no exploration work to be done when it comes to these resources.”

Jum’ah went on to explain that most of the non-conventional resources are located in the Western Hemisphere and that that region will play a greater role in the future of petroleum. Jum’ah noted that, taking into account both conventional and non-conventional resources, there are between 13 trillion barrels and 16 trillion barrels of total in-place liquids available worldwide. “To put those figures in perspective,” he said, “to date we have consumed only 1.1 trillion barrels of oil, or seven to nine percent of resources in place. Nearly all of that was conventional oil.”

Jum’ah emphasized that recovery of liquid energy resources, particularly non-conventional resources, will be impacted by a complex interaction of factors including advances in technology, recovery efficiency, demand and its growth, levels of financial investment, economics, policies pursued by both consuming and producing governments, and environmental considerations.

He said that though the world average recovery rate of conventional oil fields remains at 35 percent, “under the Target Scenario, the world as a whole could add up to a trillion barrels of additional reserves from known fields. Even under much more conservative assumptions made by some analysts in the Conservative Scenario, there will be another 200 billion barrels of conventional recoverable oil resources to be tapped from already discovered fields.”

[stickdog99]

Advance to the 19:00 minute mark for the heart of the argument or go here to see it all cued up for you.

While I don't agree with his framing or everything he says, I'm basically on Palast's side here. My friends are on Max Keiser's side, and as with Keiser, it is typically impossible to dent their simplistic viewpoint.

[wordspeak2]

As stated before the hugest waster of energy in the world is the WESTER MILITARIES. I vote that we slash the military budgets (as well as the Drug War) and use that money to fund massive green energy and Van Jones-style green jobs programs. Who's down? Or we could spend all our time hating on Joe 6-pack because he drives too much. Oh yeah, in the big picture of global fascism Joe's driving to the beach to get a vacation is really a humungous issue. Let's lose sleep over that one, instead of say, millions of people in prison, mass starvation in the third world, the destruction of the Amazon, etc.

JackRiddler, you I'm very disappointed in. Chill the F*** out. You're so adamant that the oil industry is not peddling the "Peak Oil" meme and has not interest in doing so? Did you actually read this article, by Sheasby? http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr55.html
The "Peak Oil" info comes from a small handful of sources, who are industry-connected, such as Colin Campbell and Matt Simmons. The uniform upshot of all that literature is "The oil-based lifestyle needs to end. The party's over, folks. Either a lot of people need to die (Heinberg), or everyone is going to start having to walk everywhere." You really don't see this as a very thinly veiled threat of economic warfare/NWO? Did you watch, "The End of Suburbia"? It's the end of the middle-class; that's what suburbia is a code word for. Hello, McFly.
What happened to overthrowing fascism? I was on the streets of Seattle at the WTO protests in '99, and, I'll tell you, we scared the *shit* out of the political elites. Teamsters and turtles, yo, teamsters and turtles (then came 9/11, and it ended all that, funny thing). How about we focus on that- globalize justice!- if we're going to have any hope for a green revolution? Currently the western governments are controlled by the oil industry and the other biggest industries. Let's support political revolution and end this shit.

That's what the "Peak Oil" meme is very clearly about- it's an anti-class politics meme that's been pushed by a clearly identifiable group that happens to have oil industry connections. The CIA's priority on record post World War 2 has been the creation of a non-class-politics-based ostensible opposition. There's a lot of good literature on this, including "The Cultural Cold War" by Frances Stoner Saunders. No single idea virus has moved potential revolutionaries away from anti-capitalist politics as has this thread of Armageddonism surrounding population reduction and "Peak Oil." It's built up support for eugenics and economic warfare ($5-10 gas) amongst liberals and some conservatives. What an absolutely brilliant propaganda victory.
Most importantly, it's been an achievement in the misdirection of blame. Don't look there! At the fascist military-industrial complex that killed Kenendy , executed 9/11, and is spreading it control system throughout the world! Don't look at solutions of mass-organizing and slicing the head off this octopus and saving this precious mother Earth that capitalism is raping to near-death. No, look there- at ourselves. We drive too much. We should be punished- higher gas prices; maybe soon we might have to walk miles to work. But you already work 60 hours a week at two jobs to barely provide for your two kids, and you need to drive to get there? Raise your family, blah blah blah... OH WELL, YOU ONLY HAVE YOURSELF TO BLAME FOR THIS, JANE.

The solution is to reclaim government for the forces of good, break out of the dark spell of capitalism, and start a green revolution *at a mass level.* Subsidize small farms, instead of Monsanto. etc. This vague notion of personal and community "downsizing" is not an honest solution to the terrifying political and environmental reality, and it certainly doesn't mean shit to poor people. It's the pet project of upper-class white people who want to feel good about themselves while not having to internalize the intensity of human oppression going on on the other side of the class divide. If only "reducing our carbon footprint" were the answer to our global predicament... it would all be so much easier.

[wordspeak2]

Palast is right-on on this issue. Thanks for posting that. What a sensible, progressive human being... thank the goddess he's out there; too bad he's effectively banned from U.S. media.

[stickdog99]

http://www.ev1.org/peakoil.htm

"Peak Oil" is the name for a number of theories predicting, variously, the imminent end of oil or the decline of cheap oil as oil prices rise and oil gets more difficult to find. "Peak Oil", so far as it makes sense, is based on two facts:

1. The amount of burnable Carbon in the Earth's 6.6 sextillion tons of mass is large, but finite;

2. The output from every oil field rises sharply to a maximum and then decreases slowly, not in a Bell but in a "tailed" curve.

As oil gets more difficult to extract and becomes a scarcer commodity, oil prices will rise sharply; which is a restatement of the fact that in every oil field the cost of extraction is lower at first, and then higher as pressure injection with water and even kerosene raises cost while output falls.

But we are really confusing things if we talk only about "Peak Oil". After all, we're talking about burnable carbon, natural gas, tar sands, oil, anthracite and bituminous coal, peat moss and biofuels. All forms of burnable carbon derived from STORED SOLAR ENERGY built up over the millenia and aeons, as the process of photosynthesis uses solar energy from sunlight to free carbon from CO2 and turn it into wood and brush, plants, peat, oil sands, coal and oil, and natural gas as well as methane, etc.

So what we're really concerned with is what might be called the "Cosmic Carbon Cycle" of the Earth's ecosystem. ... What's really happening with our extraction of oil and other forms of biomass "stored solar energy" is that we're expending the work of ages, capturing all that carbon, and releasing it "artificially" at once. This is a new phenomenon, something not part of the natural Cosmic Carbon Cycle.

Far from "Peak Oil", we have hardly touched the surface of the huge quantity of burnable stored carbon. Probably all our oil, coal and other extraction has only reached far less than ONE PERCENT of the amount of burnable carbon stored from past solar radiation and plant growth. It's true most of the cheap, easily extracted oil is gone, but that only means the price will rise. And we still have huge quantities of cheap coal and cheap natural gas, which are no less an artificial interruption of the Cosmic Carbon Cycle. Hence, instead of peak of fossil energy as peak oil, we should be looking at the total of fossil energy stored in the Earth, which is an incredibly large amount, in which we have not yet made much of a dent.

The problem is NOT that we're going to run out of oil! Our problem IS that we're NOT going to run out of oil -- before suffocating in the debris of the oil economy.

The awful experiment on which we are engaged -- freeing all the stored carbon back into the air -- has the effect of releasing the CO2 from millions of volcanic eruptions in a short period of geologic time, a terrible risk to take. But the solution is simple: use up the plentiful solar energy that strikes the Earth each day, 160 trillion kW, in the form of solar panels and wind turbines. Rather than be frightened by the specter of "Peak Oil", we should be aware of the terrible danger of ANY burning of fossil fuel, whether it's oil, coal, peat moss, tar sands, natural gas or methane. We need to learn to live on the ambient sunlight energy that falls on the Earth each year, and not dig up and undo past sunlight's effects of safely storing excess CO2 from the air as "fossil carbon".

Calling for "the end of times" is famously lucrative for the predictors. You never would have heard of Malthus (1766-1834) but for his charmingly innocent belief that food supplies would increase only arithmetically (flat line up), while population increased geometrically (curved up). Poor Malthuseans, didn't take into account the fact that such puny mathematical models don't represent, exactly, REALITY. But it was great for money-making and attention; the otherwise insipid thoughts of Malthus would never have even survived the penny dreadfuls.

We're still struggling with the crackpot economic "theories" of Ricardo, predatory free trade based on Bentham's calculus of pain for the few vs. pleasure for the many. So now we are plagued with the "PEAK OIL" alarmists, authors and lecturers. Predicting the imminent end of civilization based on the "peril" that we will run out of oil. There's a whole industry of PEAK OIL, conferences, books, lectures, etc.

IF ONLY!!

Turn it around. What we NEED is a $5/gallon gas tax! And PRODUCTION of existing EVs, combined with rooftop solar systems. Instead of government hostility to solar power and EVs, we need government support of solar power and an end to support for gas-guzzling cars. If only Peak Oil were true! Our problems would be solved; the price of oil would rise, and more sustainable, cheaper, alternative fuels and sources of energy would take the place of increasingly expensive oil.

To think that the problem is oil depletion, or "the end of oil", is charmingly naive. Oil is the enemy -- as is coal, natural gas, and other forms of burning stored carbon. Those hating the plasticizing of the ocean should realize it's all due to oil -- without cheap oil, there would be no plastic-choked North Pacific Gyre, or the thousands of discarded drift nets choking sea life to death.

"Historicism," as ridiculed by Popper, is the belief that some result is inevitable: for example, communism arising out of the "internal contradictions" of capitalism. Popper's point is that if it's truly inevitable, why are you making money (and often killing people) to make it happen? Historicism arose out of the beclouded imagination of the obscurantist G.W. Hegel, and has plagued us ever since.

[TVC15]

Are you even reading this? It's a critique of oil supply prediction models, yes, but it's hardly making the case you seem to think, that the oil is therefore more plentiful. All it concludes in the end is what I've been saying: the easily accessed hydrocarbon wealth is done. He's claiming it's not "peak oil" because there are oil sands, coal-based liquid fuels, i.e., lower EROEI alternatives that can still be squeezed for a while, also given the assumption of technological miracles. But the easily accessed stuff has peaked.

Oh look, the IEA says the same thing:



Can you read what it says? The dark blue part is "peak oil," meaning: a decline in the easy light sweet crude that bubbleth forth when you poke at it. The new colors above that, which allow levels of oil consumption to stay where they are, are the unconventional (super dirty, lower EROEI sources). Why is this happening? Do you really think the cartel is so powerful and unified that they're faking the bottom part so that they can get at the dirty stuff while keeping the cheap stuff in reserve?

That chart does not mean what you seem to think it does.

This chart shows projections based upon one of the IEA's "Scenarios", specifically, the New Policies Scenario, which is indeed the graph's title.

As champion of the New Policies Scenario, you must know that under said Scenario, the "decline in the easy light sweet crude that bubbleth forth when you poke at it" results from the agreements and conditions set forth in the Scenario, one of which is, and I'm paraphrasing here, to stop producing so much fucking oil. I'm sure you know the rest.

Not too surprising then, that a graphic representation of an agreement to reduce production would show a downward trend.

Of course the IEA Scenarios are designed to save us from AGW, so you may be certain they have our best interests at heart.

[wintler2]

conventional oil production has peaked, but may reach a higher peak if production was to be stepped up by, for example, increased production from Iraq.

And you believe that is possible because the US-installed govt of Iraq says so (not like they've got anything to gain).

it's not the end of the world, which is what you can't stand.

Strawman.

I'm pretty sure you don't actually read anything people post here, you just roll a dice, if it comes up one or two you accuse someone of being a troll,

If it looks, walks and quacks like a duck..

if it comes up three or four you say their post is irrelevant or off topic,

Sure i've gone overboard, but its only now you're even trying to engage. And only one 'pro-apocalypse' strawman in this post, my how you're coming along.

if it comes up five or six you claim they're using a straw man ..

For the record: i don't think peak oil is the end of the world or The issue of the day, i don't look forward to it, and i get no kick from dieoff fantasies. Yet you and others have alleged i do in literally dozens of posts in this thread, including this one.

You stop doing it, i'll stop naming it.

[wintler2]

..Funny how these "smart people" and you have in this decade of confronting the problem so far come up only with oil and ethanol-based solutions that burn carbon and require the vast distribution networks that Big Oil currently monopolizes, ennit?

You base that slur on what evidence?

That "slur" was merely a commentary on what you wrote:

Substitution is happening, where it can, thats why Big Oil has created the worlds biggest environmental crime, athabasca tar sands. But its expensive. Deep oil - another substitution - but its expensive & risky. Ethanol - expensive & big opportunity costs.

You talk like you just invented this problem, whereas as many people much smarter than you have been publicly grappling with this for a decade.

[/quote]

I was referring specifically to conventional oil substitutes, not the full range of possible responses to fact of peak oil. Yet you saw fit to misrepresent my point to support an allegation that i was in cahoots with oil industry. If i was emotionally invested in this i'd be angry, but i'm happy just to notice it and let the reader decide.

**********************************************************************************************

Don't fight wars ..

[wintler2]

Being obnoxious means i have nothing to lose on that front, which is very liberating.

That is one thing, obviously.
Another is that some people of good will may refuse to engage, because their time and attention is too important to them to spend around someone obnoxious, regardless of that person's intelligence, vision or beliefs. Sometimes people may need to be persuaded - and a 'little bit of sugar' can make unpleasent medicine go down, as the song says.

I'm all sugar, right up until someone shows continuous bad faith, eg. by repeatedly misrepresenting me. Once twice three times even i can take as accidental, but this has gone w-a-y beyond that. And i know from long hard experience, those are not the sort of people who understand anything except the crudest terms and public naming and shaming. Its a shame that those interested in a real discussion get drowned out and have to read the conflict, but i'm doing this because i think the crazies need to be challenged, not because i think RI is where the net energy problem will be solved.

[eyeno]

stickdog you nailed it to the wall with this video. In my last post I tried to say exactly what Palast said in this video.

My respect for Keiser just took a HUGE DUMP. I didn't know Keiser was pushing the Peak Oil meme.

Greg Palast just nailed it to the wall in expert form. Basically he is saying what I said which is in a nutshell...

F16 fighter jets determine the price of oil and mother nature has little to do with it at this point in history.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqNEKD7WgEk&t=19m6s