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Peak Oil Controversies (8 posts)

1. truthmod
   Administrator

   Peak Oil Controversies

   We posted a NYT article several days ago entitled, "Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells." It has come to my attention that Peak Oil researchers question the accuracy and impressions in this article. I would tend to agree that the report sounded overly optimistic, like an industry PR piece: "don't worry, technology will save us, everything is fine, there's plenty of oil."

   http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F3...

   See Peak Oil responses here:

   http://www.energybulletin.net/27028.html

   Responses to the NY Times article on peak oil

   On March 5, the New York Times broke their near silence on peak oil by publishing an article by energy correspondent Jad Mouawad, entitled Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells. (Also posted at EB and Mobjectivist.)

   We've collected here a number of responses to the article from members of the peak oil community, and have reprinted them here.

   For readers who don't want to go into the technical details, Jeffrey J. Brown, an independent petroleum geologist gives a quick summary of our response:

   Can we find more oil? Yes.
   Can we increase the recovery factor? Yes.
   Can we increase our nonconventional oil production? Yes.
   Will it make a material difference? In my opinion, No.

   -B

   Posted 17 years ago #
2. Dem Bruce Lee Styles
   Member

   Oh no, technology won’t save us, better start wiping everyone out already!

   “Truthmod” what do you think about the Austrian William Stanton who had a paper published in the ASPO's (The Association for the Study of Peak Oil) newsletter calling for the world population reduction of 90%? Considering there's so much disagreement over "Peak Oil" don't you think that might be a little bit rash?

   http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2005/07/oil-and-peo...

   Posted 17 years ago #
3. Dem Bruce Lee Styles
   Member

   Wouldn’t it be so nice for the “elite” to have a small global population that they can fully technologically dominate, or “mould” as David Rockefeller would say.

   Posted 17 years ago #
4. truthmod
   Administrator

   Libertarianism, overpopulation + more on Peak Oil

   Yeah, I would say that we do need to reduce population. Does that mean that I am promoting extermination of 90% of the human race. No, that's not how logic works. It means we, the worldwide human community, should face the facts of our irrational, unsustainable growth, greed, and resource depletion and we should consciously and voluntarily aim to reduce new births.

   Why does the overpopulation issue instantly elicit such accusations as above? People with a Libertarian philosophy often see the idea of restrictions and limits (in reproduction or resource use, etc) as a sinister and inherently evil suggestion. Well, what if we come to the conclusion that it's the best thing to do for our survival? Should this information be rationally spread/presented to humanity and should we work together, by free will to combat these problems?

   There seems to be a fundamental selfishness and disregard in the minds of many libertarians---when anyone wants to tell them or ask them to stop doing something (having 10 babies, driving an SUV, wasting energy), they see it as an attack on their "personal freedom." Well, tough shit guys, you don't live on planet earth alone; there are 6 billion people here; you do not live in a bubble. You're damn right I'm saying that you are not "free" to use and waste and disregard as much as you want to. And if you refuse to see the rational logic in that, yes, your "free will" should be imposed on by the people around you.

   ---

   SHOULD WE TRUST THESE SOURCES, I DON'T THINK SO.....

   http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=446

   Al Gore is a darling of the oil companies. They also really love peak-oil Cassandras and are enamored with energy alternatives like biofuels, wind, and solar. The myths du jour, preposterous and transparently idiotic as they may be, are not opposed by the presumed bogeymen in the oil industry, the supposed culprits of the situation. In fact, it is in the oil companies’ interest to promote the myths and even prolong them

   http://energy.seekingalpha.com/article/31884

   Over the past few years, more and more apocalyptic stories have been popping up about a supposed phenomenon known as "peak oil." The theory is that we're running out of oil, the big powers are keeping it quiet, and as supplies dwindle, world-wide economic chaos will ensue.

   This is hardly a new theory. According to the Chicken Littles of the world, we've been "about to run out of oil" for over thirty years. Obviously it hasn't happened yet. With the recent upswing in strife in the Middle East, however, the notion has gained in popularity.

   The thing is, this theory is utterly false, and can be laid to rest with a single well-established fact: there is more oil in the Colorado shale fields than the entire Middle East had at its peak. The only reason we're still importing oil is that, at present, it is cheaper to do so than to extract it from shale. Until recently, getting oil out of shale has been a nasty and expensive business

   Posted 17 years ago #
5. truthmod
   Administrator

   who do you trust?

   http://www.gnn.tv/articles/2295/No_Peaking_The_Hub...

   Palast seems to misunderstand the nature of the argument. Hubbert didn’t predict that oil supplies would run out. The “peak” in peak oil is the point at which the energy expended in extracting the oil exceeds the energy obtained.

   Another sublimely clueless aspect to this piece is the fact that OPEC has never ceased shutting up about how much oil they have on hand, and how there’s no reason for prices to be as high as they are. US oil companies similarly make claims about how there’s no reason at all to promote energy efficiency.

   Why is the editor of Harper’s considered sufficient sourcing on this article? Just because Lapham’s ancestors founded Exxon doesn’t grant him intimate knowledge of geology. Would we also take this man’s word at face value if he was denying global warming?

   Oh well, if nothing else this will guarantee Palast another appearance on Alex Jones.
   Shogo @ 05/23/06 11:18:40

   “Oh well, if nothing else this will guarantee Palast another appearance on Alex Jones.”

   lol @ shogo!
   mikemayberry @ 05/23/06 11:26:18

   What a surprisingly ill-informed and poorly reasoned article by Greg Palast. This article amounts to disinformation—and easily exposed disinformation at that.

   I’m not a Peak Oil doomer, but I’m familiar with the arguments, and Palast significantly misrepresents some key points here.

   1. Hubbert predicted we’d run out of oil by 2006. False. Even the graphic that Palast links to refutes this (check it out—it goes on until 2200!). Hubbert knew there would be future discovery, and that was obviously factored into his projections.

   2. Hubbert’s prediction of U.S. peak missed the mark. False. Hubbert was dead-on in his projecton of U.S. production peak. Palast seems not to understand the difference between discovery and production. (Does Palast think U.S. Peak Oil hasn’t happened yet? It seems possible—and, if so, quite embarrassing.)

   3. Hubbert’s projected global peak missed the mark. Technically true, substantially false. If you factor in the decline in production due to the 1970s oil shocks, Hubbert was dead-on if we are peaking now. And Saudi Arabia’s behavior indicates it is indeed at peak right now. (Why does Palast attack the straw man of internet nutcases instead of expert Matthew R. Simmons’ book “Twilight in the Desert”?)

   4. Known reserves represent the most important data point. This is such a basic mistake it’s embarrassing. What matters is how many barrels of oil can be pumped daily, and how much energy it takes to pump them. There’s oil we know about that will take twice as much energy to obtain it as it would provide for us. This oil is useless.

   What’s telling in this article is that Palast does not address the tough questions. One of them would be:

   -<>What does Palast believe the highest barrels per day global production level will be? That is Peak Oil, and if you can’t name a rough figure here, you aren’t ready to criticize those who do. So, Palast-name a figure

   Posted 17 years ago #
6. truthmod
   Administrator

   http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/171

   An Open Letter to Greg Palast on Peak Oil

   Dear Greg,

   Congratulations on your new book, Armed Madhouse. As with your previous work, I admire your dedication in exposing the machinations of government and corporate miscreants.

   However, this time around you’ve also taken a potshot at a target that I happen to know a good deal about and have been closely involved with for a few years—the efforts by a growing number of analysts to forecast the arrival, and prepare the world for the consequences, of Peak Oil. In this instance I think your negative comments about Peak Oil and those of us who study it are not well informed. Ordinarily I wouldn’t respond to an ill-considered statement by an otherwise admirable author; but unfortunately you go on for several pages on this theme, and I’ve started receiving e-mails from folks who are troubled by what you said. In my many years of fighting to protect our planet from environmental destruction, I have learned how important it is to make sure that our supporters have the most accurate information possible. Time and again, I have seen our opponents seize on internal disagreements as wedges in their drive to weaken and damage the credibility of the environmental movement. I feel the responsibility to help sort out the factual issues in this instance particularly strongly because you have worked so hard to earn your reputation as a truth-teller in these perilous times.>

   Posted 17 years ago #
7. Dem Bruce Lee Styles
   Member

   "Yeah, I would say that we do need to reduce population. Does that mean that I am promoting extermination of 90% of the human race. No, that's not how logic works. It means we, the worldwide human community, should face the facts of our irrational, unsustainable growth, greed, and resource depletion and we should consciously and voluntarily aim to reduce new births."

   You don't understand how moronic that is. Developed nations are in population DECLINE. It's only in the undeveloped nations where population is increasing notably, and it's increasing because of the low living standards and high infant mortality forcing people to instinctively have many children. The way to correct the over population issue is to help develop the undeveloped nations, thus increasing the living standards and nullifying the desperate survival situations that people are cursed with.

   But the elite HAVE A BOOT on the undeveloped countries, they don't allow them to develop with trade and debt scams etc. So these people don't give a shit about the population being too large for anything other than it's too big for them to dominate in the way they want. Why do you buy into all their bs?

   What do you make of the Occultic "Georgia Guidestones" stating that the global population should be reduced to "500 million"?

   
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidesto

   This is about fucked up elites will a lot of money, who've consolidated a lot of power and are using think tanks to come up with shit like "Global Warming" and "Peak Oil" and "Over Population" as excuses for a Malthusian genocidal holocaust, to reduce the planet’s population to a size that they can control and "mould". And I know that sounds hysterical, I thought it was nuts but why is that shit etched into that stone? Why is this all the "elite" and their pseudo academic shill “scientists” who build fraud "consensuses", talk about?

   You and others pushing their frauds think that people who disagree with them are, aside from other things, "burying their heads in the sand because the reality is so frightening". I wish that were true, but it's not for me at least. I'm very concerned that there are Nazi psychos who have done shit like kick start the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and the rest of the world. I'm very concerned that this "elite" are in to eugenics and don't have a single moral fibre in their bodies. You are pushing the shit that they have paid for, and I know it's no way intentional but please understand that the "environmental issues” are being used to add false justification to something incredibly frightening and insane.

   Posted 17 years ago #
8. truthmod
   Administrator

   A nice summary of Peak Oil perspectives...

   After peak oil: Will America survive? http://www.newstarget.com/021942.html

   What's the most promising alternative energy technology? Few people know about this one, but based on my research, it's the most promising: Concentrated Solar Power, which requires no solar panels at all. It works by concentrating sunlight onto a small pipe using cheap parabolic reflectors. The pipe contains a liquid that's heated to very high temperatures by the sun and drives a steam boiler that rotates a turbine to generate electricity (much like nuclear power plants, but without the nuclear waste). It's cheap, low-tech, and far more affordable than solar power. Plus, it can be built in practically any desert, so it doesn't take up valuable land. As another bonus, when CSP operations are built near the ocean, they can desalinate ocean water as a side effect, providing fresh water for irrigation to grow food. This is the only renewable energy technology I know of that can produce cheap energy, fresh water and crop irrigation all at the same time. Plus, it has no emissions, no toxic chemicals, no nuclear waste and very little environmental impact.

   Posted 17 years ago #

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