DrumBeat: January 20, 2007
Posted by threadbot on January 20, 2007 - 10:05am
GAO: U.S. energy R&D, policy are inadequate
It is unlikely that DOE's current level of R&D funding or the nation's current energy policies will be sufficient to deploy alternative energy sources in the next 25 years that will reverse our growing dependence on imported oil or the adverse environmental effects of using conventional fossil energy.
South Africa - Power cuts: Now it’s the generator wars
TOWNSFOLK raced against each other as an earnest battle for generators got underway yesterday when small Eastern Cape towns found themselves hardest hit by the country’s “worst ever” power cuts.East London generator dealer Milton Thesen watched in amazement as a doctor from Butterworth competed with a Peddie businessman to pay R35000 for his last generator.
“After all the newspaper reports the guys were going berserk,” said Thesen yesterday.
Pakistan: Power crisis remains a nightmare
However, it is quite obvious now that people were wrong expecting good from the government, as the government failed at all fronts in trying to tackle the energy crisis. The industries located in the northern provinces of the country have been affected badly by the shortage of gas and resultant load shedding since the beginning of this winter season in early December.
New Warnings on Climate Change
The main international scientific body assessing causes of climate change is closing in on its strongest statement yet linking emissions from burning fossil fuels to rising global temperatures, according to scientists involved in the process.
The Great Thirst: Looking ahead to a post-global warming life in California, 60 years hence
The following extrapolation presents a worst-case scenario of California's water situation in the coming decades, but not necessarily an unlikely one. It is based on a variety of sources, including interviews and conversations over the past several years with scientists and government agency staffers, such as those associated with the University of California, the California Department of Water Resources and the Bay Institute.
Vattenfall: Curbing Climate Change Would Cost 0.6% of Global GDP
A new study released by European energy company Vattenfall concludes that curbing climate change through a sustainable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is technically and financially feasible if existing technical solutions are applied consistently—and globally.
Slumbering giant awakens on global warming
On global warming, the American public is slowly rising to attention. Congress and the White House cannot be far behind.
CTL Fuel Could Help America Wean Itself of Foreign Oil Imports
The United States has the world's largest coal reserves with an estimated 268 billion recoverable tons. Converting just 5 percent of the U.S. coal reserves to Fisher-Tropsch fuels would equate to the existing U.S. crude reserves of 29 billion barrels. The U.S. could virtually double our nation's domestic motor fuel supply without drilling a single a well or building a new refinery.
Cuba: Energy revolution guarantees supply but demands savings
Savings is the key word in the Energy Revolution that, after a year of major effort, is showing results in all sectors of the country’s economy. Stability in electricity and the elimination of power cuts was attained in Cuba in mid-2006.
US grain farming disaster: a prediction for China?
As with the Great Plains, northern China is dry and farmed intensely. Already, China's farmland is turning to desert at an alarming rate.
Statoil enjoys rapid growth of biofuel sales in Sweden
Sales of Statoil's E85 biofuel grew by 270% in Sweden last year compared with 2005, the Norwegian oil giant has revealed in a statement.
Turkey: Europe’s Emerging Energy Corridor for Central Eurasian, Caucasian and Caspian Oil and Gas
Canadian Leader Pledges $1.28 Billion for Alternative Energy
The money will go toward boosting electricity generation from renewable energy sources such as wind and "small hydro," Harper told reporters in British Columbia. The measure will create 4,000 megawatts of renewable energy, equivalent to removing a million cars from Canada's roads, he said.
Straw and wood chips in line as sources of clean energy
Biotech and energy companies are racing to glean ultra-clean fuel from untapped sources like straw and wood chips, betting policies to tackle climate change and rising food prices will make it competitive with oil.
It appears that Democrats in Congress are interfering once again with the energy market. On January 18, as the grand finale to their 100-hour rampage, Pelosi and her radical comrades in the House approved $15 billion in new taxes on the oil and gas industry. These levies include an insidious “conservation fee” on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, along with “after the fact” taxes on past oil production.
Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) today announced that declining wholesale electricity and natural gas prices will reduce the amount of a pending 2007 residential electric rate increase.
Correa Says Ecuador to Review All Oil Contracts
Ecuador President Rafael Correa said Friday in Rio de Janeiro that his country plans to review all contracts for oil exploration on its territory and may cancel some deals.
Cyprus Rejects Turkey's Objection to Exploration Deal with Lebanon
Turkey has no rights over potential oil and natural gas resources in Cyprus' coastal areas.
Japan: Powering Ahead on Nuclear Technology
Rapidly growing energy needs in the world coupled with a warm winter season, attributed to global warming, have boosted Japan's nuclear power sector especially the export of nuclear technology to other countries, say experts here.
What Happened to the Oil Boom?
It is amazing how short our memories can be. Just last summer, crude oil was trading at $77 a barrel. In five short months, the price has fallen more than 30%, and it now sits near two-year lows. Being heavily invested in the oil patch, I decided it was time to dig into the market fundamentals to find out if the oil boom is really over, or if the current weakness has created some blue-light specials in the oil patch.
Gas price fluctuations need some managing - a new use for the SPR?
We need a system in place to mitigate the wild changes in gas prices that have been seen in recent years. While most commodities are directly subject to the effects of the market, gasoline is too vital a commodity to allow it to ebb and flow based on market conditions.
Energy Crisis Threatens Investment: Investors in Iraqi Kurdistan say escalating fuel costs are trying their patience.
Like other parts of the country, foreign and Iraqi investors alike are plagued by power outages. State energy plants only provide electricity for a few hours per day - even in Kudistan’s capital, Erbil - and shortages force business to buy expensive fuel-powered generators.But the problems don’t end there because fuel is itself in short supply and rising demand means that it has become prohibitively expensive.
Energy crisis forces power cuts in Albania
The public is frustrated and businesses are losing money due to the problems Albania has had in keeping up with electricity demands.
Money, Not Geopolitics, Drives Russian Energy Policy
It is clear to the Russians that they can no longer afford to subsidize their neighbors with cheap natural gas while continuing to meet Russia’s export obligations to the rest of the world.
With the 30% fall in the price of oil to US$50 a barrel comes the inevitable global ideological free for all over the causes, impacts and general significance of the decline. The scale of the decline pretty much puts peak oil theorists out of commission, especially since the real price of oil in constant dollars is now lower than it was through much of the 1980s--hardly what you would expect in a world allegedly heading into an oil supply crisis.
Alaska to get British-style temperatures
Parts of the world could heat up by over 10 degrees Celsius (18 Fahrenheit) this century with big areas becoming uninhabitable, according to a climate prediction experiment.
Markey caught in wrangling on global warming
Pelosi's views on global warming are shared by most House Democrats and some Republicans. But the creation of the new committee, which was announced yesterday, is opposed by several senior Democratic House members, who argue that it would duplicate and even complicate ongoing efforts to explore the same subjects, and curtail the power of committee chairmen who have decades of expertise in their areas.
A convenient time for Saudi Arabia to be ambivalent
What is the main driver behind Opec power Saudi Arabia's oil policy? This question is sweeping trading floors and it could be unanswerable.
Portland city report recommends oil use reduction
The city of Portland's peak oil task force released a draft report Friday on ways to reduce dependence on oil and natural gas.
Energy policy at risk of going up in smoke
The news story was certainly an attention grabber: Chevrolet had introduced a plug-in hybrid car that could get 100 miles per gallon and go as far as 40 miles on batteries alone. At long last, you say to yourself, Detroit is seizing the initiative in pioneering cars to shake off our dependency on foreign oil.Then came the cold splash of reality. General Motors acknowledged to the New York Times that the batteries needed to make the Volt run don't exist yet. The Volt is a concept car.
The crystal ball outlook for 2007
• Peak Oil is a fact and it is just a matter of when it happens. Peak oil is the point at which we can’t increase production of oil, and production rates start to fall.The United States has been increasing their infrastructure and technology to increase oil productions over the years, however:
1945 – 5.0 million barrels per day
1945 to 1970 – 10 million barrels per day
Now – 5.1 million barrels per day
House to mull alternative energy tax
An alternative energy tax program to make use of municipal bonds to counter global warming through renewable and more efficient energy will be on the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means' agenda this session, the committee's chief tax counsel said on Friday.
Price of oil plunging, but cost of gas won’t
The headlines say oil prices have fallen 15 percent this year. Gas station receipts tell a different story — the cost of filling ’er up has slipped from about $35 to $33. Big deal.
Renewable energy gains still far off, reports show
California's utilities are falling behind schedule in meeting a deadline that 20% of their electricity must come from renewable resources by 2010, newly issued reports from two energy agencies show.
Kuwait to cut dependency on oil revenues for growth
Kuwait has begun implementing ambitious programmes to diversify its sources of income and minimize dependency on oil revenues, a top official said here Thursday.
The world survived 2006 without a major economic catastrophe, despite sky-high oil prices and a Middle East spiralling out of control. But the year produced abundant lessons for the global economy, as well as warning signs concerning its future performance. Unsurprisingly, 2006 brought another resounding rejection of fundamentalist neo-liberal policies, this time by voters in Nicaragua and Ecuador.
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Some quick trivia questions. I asked this a few days ago during a discussion of Saudi, and I got no answer.
1. True or False: The Hubbert Linearization for Saudi Arabia predicts a peak in 2006.
2. Bonus question: If Texas and KSA peaked at exactly the same spot on the HL, in which year would KSA have peaked?
3. Final bonus: If the lower 48 and KSA peaked at the same spot on the HL, in which year would KSA have peaked?
The point here is to show that the HL actually predicts a peak across some range of years. Claiming that it picks a specific year is ascribing an improper degree of accuracy to the method. I don't intend to debate this today back and forth with Jeffrey, but I do want readers to be clear that past use of the HL has always allowed for a very wide range of years during which peak can occur. It is not a method that gives 1 or 2 years resolution. This is one reason that I think Deffeyes claim, for instance, of an exact month for peak is ridiculous. It's like claiming you can measure the size of a bacteria with a normal ruler.
(Crude oil production = crude + condensate, EIA Data)
Deffeyes put the world crude oil peak between 2004 and 2008, mostly likely in late 2005. Is 2006 world crude oil production lower than 2005? Yes.
I put the most likely peak for Saudi production in 2005 (in postings/articles in 1/06 and 5/06). This was based on comparing the current swing producer to the former swing producer. Is 2006 Saudi production lower than 2005? Yes.
As Robert pointed out, if Ghawar is in decline every oil field in the world that is, or was, producing one mbpd or more is in decline or crashing, and according to the Oil & Gas Journal, the only new one mbpd and larger field on the horizon won't even start producing, at best, until after 2010, and it won't exceed one mbpd, at best, until after 2020.
We have argued this to the point of producing widespread nausea among readers, but the bottom line is that the available production data are supporting Deffeyes' prediction and my prediction.
The only thing that will resolve the debate is to wait and see what the production data show.
As Robert pointed out, if Ghawar is in decline every oil field in the world that is, or was, producing one mbpd or more is in decline or crashing, and according to the Oil & Gas Journal, the only new one mbpd and larger field on the horizon won't even start producing, at best, until after 2010, and it won't exceed one mbpd, at best, until after 2020.
As I also pointed out, this was accompanied by a 20 million bpd worldwide capacity increase. Not exactly the example you want to use to bolster your argument.
We have argued this to the point of producing widespread nausea among readers, but the bottom line is that the available production data are supporting Deffeyes' prediction and my prediction.
That was a complete dodge of the issues I raised. I want to be sure the reader is clear. Which statement is accurate? A. The HL predicts a peak date; or B. The HL predicts a range of several years in which peak may occur? Isn't it true that if KSA production started going down in 2010, you could also say that it was consistent with the prediction? That is the point I want to make clear.
What you have done, in fact, is that say KSA will peak at some point between 50% and 60% of Qt, without making it clear that this can span 10 years or more. Then, when KSA production is down, claim that the HL predicted it. That is no different than me predicting that the AFC will win the Superbowl, and then as soon as they do I claim that I did predict it (even if it takes them 4 years to win it). The fact is, the HL does not give Deffeyes (or you) the resolution to make the sorts of claims that a country (or the world) will peak in a specific year.
Of course the HL method can't promise an exact day, month and year. But we can predict the most likely year.
Deffeyes predicted that 2006 was the the most likely year for a world crude production decline, and I predicted that 2006 was the most likely year for a Saudi crude oil production decline.
If you want to see what a crashing super giant field does to a region's production, take a look at Cantarell and Mexico, where David Shields is predicting about a 25% net decline rate for Mexico from 2007 to 2008.
Mexico and Saudi Arabia are two major oil exporting countries where one field, with a rapidly thinning oil column, accounts, or accounted, for more than half of each countries' production.
As I said yesterday, IMO, other than the production rates, the only real difference Pemex & Cantarell and Saudi Aramco and Ghawar is that Pemex has grudgingly admitted to the Cantarell decline/crash.
This is why I suspect that the initial Saudi decline/crash may be much more severe than what we saw in Texas.
I have previously--and repeatedly--described these two fields as two warning beacons burning brightly in the night sky, heralding the onset of Peak Oil.
I just want to mention again how instructive the exchanges between WT and RR have been for me.
Both men bring depth and breadth of understanding to the topic, terrific analytical abilities, and a great deal of civility.
My heart-felt thanks to both!
And now, back to the regularly scheduled discussions....!
Lets get some error bars once we know the confidence limits I think that a lot of the wrangling will dissipate.
In the short term accept my +/- 4mbd interval till we can narrow it.
I'm guessing but I suspect this gives a 10 year spread on world HL plots.
In any case I'd love to see someone with the numbers just show the variance in a world HL plot say using a 2% and 4% relative variance.
I'm guessing but I suspect this gives a 10 year spread on world HL plots.
And you nailed what I am getting at. I think one could scientifically defend something like an HL with a 10 year margin of error. Historically, you could show that this would have worked in the past. My criticism of Deffeyes specifically is that he has taken a tool with 10 year resolution and shouted to everyone that peak was in 2005. Such claims won't be taken seriously, and do much for fostering the "Peak Oilers are crackpots" reputation.
I understand that this doesn't matter to some. But I post here under my real name, and I have a career in the oil industry, so credibility probably has a higher priority to me than it does to the average anonymous poster.
Seems to me that this is basically saying that the precise peak of production doesn't matter but the 'precise' plateau (+- 5 yrs) matters. I believe this to be true as well. Then the question becomes, "Are we on the Peak Oil Plateau?" It looks like we are, so what if we have an upward blip in '07 or '08 that becomes the actual peak. Only thing that would matter would be a sustained increase over the next few years.
Then the question is, "When do we reach the end of the plateau?"
Bravo !
Correct and further more even the best data we have has errors far greater than the reported error ranges. The number of times its adjusted should indicate how poor we know our own oil production. My rule of thumb is we basically lose the entire production of Iran in the world totals. This sounds like a lot but its only a few percent plus or minus.
I'd love to see some of the number crunchers on the site extract a plausible error term for some of the numbers we rely on. Next I agree with Robert that these intrinsic errors cause the HL methods to themselves have a confidence range it would be nice to get a handle on what this is.
Overall it would be beneficial for everyone to understand what we know and don't know. Statistical error analysis is sorely needed.
Next looking at the size of the problem we face which was shown recently as a cube of oil measuring over a mile points out that the time of peak oil is not that important if its 30 years away all the better for us.
In hindsight we should have moved away from oil when production in the US peaked in the 70 and Europe should have done a far better job managing production from the North Sea.
Africa and the Middle East would have been far saner places if oil was viewed as a national resource to help create a real economy. The same for Russia. But as the saying goes don't cry over spilled milk. Recognize that we have had ample time to address this issue and valid and compelling reasons have existed for 30 years. Even now we can see that the failure of Jimmy Carters initiatives has resulted in a world thats not a happy place.
The possibility that we may have already peaked and the number of scenarios that point to a peak in the near future should only spur us to act on converting our economies from oil. The chance of a peak now or in the near future should not be required for us to act.
To compare to another overriding issue facing us. It looks like we may be too late on global warming lets not do the same for oil. We as a world are facing a increasing number of major worldwide problems if we continue to fail to act on some of them doomsday scenarios have a much higher probability of becoming reality. I'd be happy to see the world proactively do one thing right in my lifetime. Here is a list.
1.) Global Warming
2.) Population
3.) Water
4.) Food
5.) Other resources depletion ( oil water etc)
6.) Efficient cheap housing/transport
7.) Globalization and economic equality.
And more these are in order of relative importance notice that oil is not our biggest problem but they are not unrelated since all our other problems result in our inability to solve the Global Warming one.
WRT your comments on the degree of accuracy, i was shocked when i received some model data for the TrendLines Scenarios that was six decimal places. With their time range of 150 years, i usually round to the nearest mbd whether its Peak Rate or Exhaustion.
On RR's point on dates, some modelers are still using up to a ten year range. This commenced with Colin Campbell in 1991, but the practice is no longer the norm. Most nail a particular year.
Visitors to my site over the last know that since 2004 i have used the ASPO data to define a month and year for Peak Conventional Oil (April 2005) and Peak All Liquids (October 2012) for the half-way crossover of consumption (not supply). Each month, we analyse new data on past consumption and URR to refine these dates, but our experience has been that both dates move thru a 36-month range. Using season or Year would be more appropriate but is not as sexy.
URR Estimates are usually quoted as low as three decimal places (3.003-Tb or 1 billion barrels). This is somewhat reasonable as the scenario applications require accuracy to 25 billion barrels over the 150 year parameter.
Monthly and quarterly reporting revisions moves thru about a +/- range up to 1-mbd, hence the three decimal reporting seems ludicrous; and is more a reflection of reporting from small production nations.
Jean Laherrere has been a practioner of HL for two decades. Anyone following his work would have to agree that the above comments that it is accurate to only a +/- of five years is fair.
Form a practical standpoint any series of measurements is only as accurate as the least accurate individual measurements. That is if you have a measurement of a rectangle with one pair of sides at 10.05 and the other at 6, your answer can only be 60. If the first measurement is 6.0 your answer is 60.3, never 60.30. In the real world any thing that is being measured by inference, more than three significant figures is a opium dream.
The number of significant figures that are appropriate should depend on the margin of error of whatever the analysis is. With a very tight margin of error I could see four or five significant figures or even more. Obviously, not the situation in the crude oil production world. Might have relevance in the spectrographic analysis world or the electron microscopy world.
Trouble is, when looking up data, this information is almost never reported with the data, so we are left to guess, and guessing on the fuzzy side is usually the best policy.
Finally somebody said it. At times I hesitate to recommend TOD to family and friends because of the sophomoric jousting that occurs between intelligent people here at TOD. I don't care who picks the exact date, time, location. At this point, from what I've learned here, it's irrelevant. It's happening now, unfolding all around us. That said, keep up the good work - there are many of us who appreciate the time and effort you all are taking to inform and educate. Onward and Upward!
I'm inclined to agree. Either the reader was clear weeks ago, or they're skipping RR's and WT's posts anyway.
Right, boys...it's time to move on from this diatribe.
People will either prepare or they won't. We will keep on living, till we don't. We will keep on driving around in gas combustion vehicles until we don't. The internet will keep working until a Chinese rocket knocks our satellites out of the sky.
I disagree entirely. Dragonfly41, aren't you the one who spent months tracking aircraft carriers in the Persian gulf? ;) And Leannan has hijacked entire threads to try to debunk organized religion. I've posted a few things that don't make sense too. At least these guys are on topic, and I find that there discussion isn't just a re-run, it progresses day by day with the updated information we receive.
That's cool for you, SAT. Never said I wasn't wasting bandwidth on this site. As you may have noticed, I don't post as much as I had before. I have just grown tired of the pointless arguement of when PO occurs. As Robert has said, the ability to predict exactness on the scale we are looking at is outside the degrees of error. WT is merely saying based on what we are seeing, it COULD be happening now. Both are valid points. Both will be resolved in the future. Both won't matter in the future. So what is the point of it? Bragging rights?
As Robert has said, the ability to predict exactness on the scale we are looking at is outside the degrees of error.
Which is a point about the HL, that to my knowledge, has never been discussed in any detail at all. Therefore, it is a worthy subject for discussion, IMO.
WT is merely saying based on what we are seeing, it COULD be happening now.
I will leave WT out of this for now, and focus on Deffeyes. Did Deffeyes say it COULD be happening now? No, he said it has happened and we are on our way back to the Stone Age. Just what we need for improving credibility.
The point that many still fail to understand is 1). They want to warn the world about peak oil; 2). The world won't listen; 3). The world won't listen BECAUSE folks like Campbell and Deffeyes have applied less than scientific rigor to this process of predicting a peak. The quackery label will stick so long as we, within our own community, allow such claims to be made unchallenged.
He was joking, and he made it clear that he was joking once he realized people were taking him seriously.
He was joking, and he made it clear that he was joking once he realized people were taking him seriously.
So, was he joking about the date?
Yes, I think he was. Remember, he originally said it would be Thanksgiving Day. Obviously, he didn't actually mean we'd be hitting peak oil at the very moment Dallas kicked off in Texas Stadium, for sure absolutely guaranteed.
He knows there's a margin of error. He even said that peak oil might have actually happened before he published his book (which would have made it years off his projected date). Given that, do you really believe he thinks HL can nail down peak oil to the day?
He is clearly joking about the exact date. Now, I think he does believe that peak oil happened ca. December 2005, but he doesn't really believe it was exactly December 16, and he won't be shocked if C+C goes up instead of down this year.
Given that, do you really believe he thinks HL can nail down peak oil to the day?
Well, I would hope not. My point is that based on the historical data he can't even nail it down to the resolution of a year (maybe 10 years) yet he is confidently claiming that he can. It won't ultimately matter to the rest of the world if he is correct, because he won't convince too many people that he is able to predict an exact year given a resolution of 10 years.
Like I wrote earlier, I think you could build a very sound case for PO with a 10 year margin of error. Given that even 10 years puts us under tremendous pressure to search for solutions, we would have both a defensible case and a call to action that might be taken seriously.
Here lies your naivete, Robert.
There will be NO "call to action". That is what makes me think most of what we are doing here is pointless. DO YOU THINK, the nations of the world will band together when someone DEFINITELY says PO will be within 10 years? If the ENTIRE world does not work on this issue, then it will not be a pretty resolution for someone out there. I do not see any movement to suggest this (global cooperation) is going to happen soon.
Best thing you can hope for is to make yourself comfortable in your community and let the chips fall where they may.
Defeatist thinking?...perhaps. Realistic thinking?...I believe so.
There will be NO "call to action".
Yet Global Warming is getting a call to action. The call is not being heeded in most places, but I think most people have come to grips that we have a serious problem on our hands. Why? Because Global Warming has been demonstrated with a scientific rigor that PO has lacked. It has passed peer review and been published in Science, where other scientists read the data, conclude that we have a problem, and then pass that message on. Eventually it reaches critical mass.
None of this assures that we will do anything to prepare for PO. In fact, I am pretty certain that the U.S. will do next to nothing until it is too late. But that doesn't mean I will be content to watch that happen.
All indications are that the action will be too late and to little to mitigate GW. Their is increasing evidence that Mother Nature has taken control of the climate from us and we have initiated a now natural warming trend that will take thousands of years to play out. From here on out we are simply adding more fuel to the fire its way to late to put it out.
From a scientific standpoint proving global warming has been a success but it did not result in action in time to stop it. Scientist may be warm :) and happy with having won the argument but its not going to save our asses.
So in my opinion the handling of GW is a disastrous failure and peak oil/NG will be one more notch on the road to self destruction. At best as GW unfolds and people realized they waited too long to act we might have a chance to convince people to act before peak oil/NG turns into a crisis.
I doubt it.
Amen!
This excerpt from a comment by Dimitri Orlov to an article by Jan Lundberg says it all. It applies to all this arguing about the importance of puplic perception of the reality of Peak oil as well. Fiddling, fiddling. IMHO of course.
"My feeling is that climate change cannot be stopped. Even if extractive industries, manufacturing, transportation, and industrial agriculture were completely shut down tomorrow, climate change would continue for centuries. Most of the change we have seen so far has resulted from carbon emissions which occurred decades ago. The positive feedbacks that have been unleashed may overwhelm the effect of anthropogenic emissions. Scientific efforts to characterize these effects and political efforts express them in policy are the modern-day example of fiddling while Rome burns."
Robert,
I'm not too convinced that being absolutely accurate on peak oil is going to make one scrap of difference. The fact that the USA peaked 30 years ago and declines every year has not succeeded in causing any serious concern from TPTB despite the negative consequences the US peak caused for the USA.
I always get a little bit amused about the idea that peak oil is a theory. It's a very well demonstrated fact.
Why do you think all of the national peaks have had so little impact upon how the problem is viewed or addressed?
Lindsay
I'm not too convinced that being absolutely accurate on peak oil is going to make one scrap of difference.
I am not trying to be absolutely accurate. In fact, I am not even debating the timing of peak. I am debating the quality of the data used. I am saying that to be taken more seriously, we need to be more careful making unsubstantiated claims.
Why do you think all of the national peaks have had so little impact upon how the problem is viewed or addressed?
I think because governments trust Saudi's claims that they have this endless supply of oil that they will keep delivering as far as we can see into the future, and by the time they can't we will all be whizzing around in our hydrogen hovercars anyway. Remember, the USGS is a government agency concerned with this issue, and their message is "There's plenty of oil."
"Why? Because Global Warming has been demonstrated with a scientific rigor that PO has lacked."
No, it's because we've had some warm and freakish weather. Without that, it didn't matter one iota how the science worked out.
And when gas was US$3.00/gallon, there were some rumblings of interest in re: things petroleum. Now that we're headed back down towards $2.00, it's "see, no problem!". Hummer sales on the upswing.
When gas is $5.00 a gallon, and doesn't go down, that will be the call to action, as it were, and just as with GW, it will be too late for any kind of soft landing. Market signals are all anyone cares about, and they are incapable of enough advance warning.
My own feeling, having watched prices up to $3.40/gal here and traffic hardly slowing down a bit, is that it will take actual shortages to wake people up. It is one thing to wince at paying $5/gal for gas and quite another to have no gasoline available.
The world should have attacked global warming at least ten years ago. Now that it is too late they are waking up to the problem. They will do the same for peak oil. Given a ten year margin, they will do nothing.
He knows there's a margin of error.
Well, I just looked it up on his website:
http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html
His margin of error?
So, his margin of error is plus or minus a month. Brilliant. Of course before that he was 99% confident peak was in 2004. Of course there is also the book sales angle to deal with:
As you know, Hubbert predicted that the Lower 48 peak, inclusive of Texas, would be between 1966 and 1971, and it peaked in 1970.
Khebab showed that the post-1970 cumulative Lower 48 production was 99% of what the HL model predicted it would be, using only production data up through 1970 to construct the model.
Deffeyes has always stated that his mathematical model, using methods outlined by Hubbert, showed that the peak of world crude oil production would be between 2004 and 2008, most likely in 2005. If memory serves, he said that, in his opinion, it could not be later than 2008.
As Deffeyes predicted (picking 2006 as the most likely year for a world crude oil production decline), world crude oil production in 2006 is down.
Robert,
Why do you feel compelled to describe all of the above as "quackery?" IMO, you are coming periously close to the same level as Freddy, who described Deffeyes and Simmons as "scumbags." Why is this topic so threatening to you that you have now resorted to personal insults?
Why do you feel compelled to describe all of the above as "quackery?"
Why do you feel the need to misrepresent my statements? I said that's what the media and a lot of people think. Do you deny that? Do you deny that the PO viewpoint is often reported with derision, as if it's astrology or something?
IMO, you are coming periously close to the same level as Freddy...
I regret that you have decided that smears are now called for. That's the second or third time you have done that now. You have attempted to associate my point of view with those of Freddy and Hothgar. I think the implication is obvious. Do you think attempted character assassination bolsters your position?
Why is this topic so threatening to you that you have now resorted to personal insults?
Wow, a loaded question that is also a straw man. Impressive. Loaded, because you presume the topic is threatening. It is not. A straw man, because I am not accusing anyone of quackery. The media has done that. I am pointing out why, and what it will take to shake that label. The sensationalism of Deffeyes is not going to accomplish that.
The "sensationalism" of Deffeyes is probably the only reason peak oil has gotten as much media attention as it has.
The media has a short attention span and doesn't understand science or statistics. No matter what we do, they're going to make us out to be quacks...until gas prices spike again.
The "sensationalism" of Deffeyes is probably the only reason peak oil has gotten as much media attention as it has.
I would put Matt Simmons' contribution as much larger. And Simmons did build a defensible case, IMO.
The media has a short attention span and doesn't understand science or statistics.
Yet they seem to get Global Warming. Why? Because they get a consistent, near unanimous voice from the scientific community and the politicians on this issue.
Strongly disagree on this, for the reasons given elsewhere in this thread.
Moreover, it's too little, too late. Are we really doing anything about global warming, except talking about it? Is there anything we can do, at this point?
With global warming, it didn't get acceptance until the effects were evident to ordinary people. It will be the same with peak oil.
Strongly disagree on this, for the reasons given elsewhere in this thread.
You disagree that the media "gets" Global Warming? Global Warming is certainly not reported in the same was as Peak Oil. As I wrote earlier, we aren't doing much to address Global Warming, but thanks to those who built a sound scientific case, at least the situation is generally reported accurately. We have a problem. The media realizes it. Most politicians realize it. Even the public for the most part gets it. It is just that too many political leaders consider the costs of addressing the issue as too high.
No, I disagree about the reasons for it. It wasn't science that convinced them.
So what do you think did? Without the science, we have just had several unusual years of weather. That's how the media would view this had the scientific case not been made, peer-reviewed, and widely accepted in the scientific community.
As I said elsewhere, I think it was politics and a couple of weather flukes. If the weather goes back to normal next year, all that science and peer review won't matter.
In any case, the science on peak oil is settled. Far more so than with global warming. There are still legitimate scientists who doubt anthropogenic climate change. No legitimate scientists believe that oil is a limitless resource.
The only thing that matters is, "Is peak oil happening now?" Because if it's not, no one's interested, as Tom Whipple has pointed out.
Yes. Now that Daffodils are blooming in January in Washington D.C., the MSM and even most people are beginning to get it. And yet I recall that Hansen was sounding the warning on the warming in the 1980s. There wasn't even much talk about it during the last presidential election with a little more talk about it during the recent mid term elections. Like the Titanic, by the time you actually see the iceberg with your own eyes, it is too late to avoid the collision. It is now obvious to all but the most insane deniers; therefore, it is too late.
Now that we are on our way to really frying the planet with all that entails, peak oil doesn't really make a whole lot of difference. Our response to peak oil? Ethanol, coal fire electric plants, coal to liquids. Yes, we are responding, but in a way that will either do nothing with respect to GW or make it worse.
Correct.
Anthropogenic GW did not really get anywhere in the West until Katrina.
When I was at Uni, C02 was 330 ppm.
It now stands at 380 ppm.
At the start of the indsustrial revolution it was 280 ppm
So , in the blink of (someone elses) Gods Eye we have made a significant contribution.
But now the planet builds on this:
Ice loss = lower Albedo
The Amazon (and other rain forests) go to drought and emit carbon.
Permafrost melts = More Carbon in the atmosphere.
It is actually a no-brainer.
The Planet is warming up after the last Glaciation.
Along comes mankind and we add a small difference to the Carbon balance.
But We tip the scales.
GW has already gone beyond our ability to change it.
Dont sweat it.
We have got the world we've got.
We cannot make this go away.
The problem started before the concept of Greenhouse Gas was understood.
About 120 years ago.
Best thing you can do with your money is to spend it on ways to protect your infrastruture.
Same goes for the English and Dutch.
I feel sorry for the Bangladeshis. They will have a really tough time.
Actually some of Simmons key points have shown over time to be questionable at best. Water cut in Ghawar for example. But it seems that KSA cured this by using methods that will lead to bigger drops later.
The point is that no one willing to stand up and argue for peak oil now or soon really have enough data to prove their case beyond a shadow of a doubt and never will.
Being inside the Peak Oil blogosphere, and feeling impatient to spread the word, I think that we may have a distorted view of public opinion.
I see the peak oil meme throughout the Internet, on the sites of left-wing bloggers, but also discussed by investment analysts and (retired) government officials. Think of the documentaries and movies ("Syriana") that have peak oil as a subject. Consider that CERA and some of the oil companies have gone to a great deal of trouble to argue against peak oil. Or that Duncan Clarke, the author of new book rebutting peak oil wrote: "... Peak Oil [has captured the] public relations high-ground in global debate."
Did you know that we've captured the PR high-ground? Pretty good for a raggle-taggle bunch of engineers, scientists and citizen activists.
Social change takes time. After all, the implications of peak oil strike at the heart of industrial civilizations. Is it any wonder that people don't take it up immediately?
You may have a point. We may be too close to the trees to see the forest.
But my feeling is that the peak oil awareness was not driven by bloggers or scientists or the media. It was driven by high oil prices, and the shock of Katrina (where, remember, gas stations ran dry, and people were waiting in line for hours for gas, paying as much as $6 a gallon, and filling up coffee cups with gasoline once their tanks were full).
Now that prices have gone back down, many see peak oil as being "discredited."
It is not clear to me that peak oil has been in the public awareness or the media long enough to be discretited.
Global Warming has been public sphere for a long time without the public understanding what it means. The media was always very careful when reporting on it to present a balanced view, that is one poor media illiterate scientist out of hundreds who ascribed to global warming, against one lone media savvy pseudo-scientist. The scientist usually gets killed in such exchanges.
After some the recent shocks, such as Katrina, a few years of unusual weather that people can see, the media begins to present a one sided picture, and then turns to many scientists to educate us on what global warming means. It is only once people begin to understand why they should be concerned by global warming that action can then begin to be discussed.
Peak oil isn't there yet. Media savvy Yergin can kill any peak oil scientist in the press.
It will be interesting to see just how President Bush presents his biofuels strategy on the 20th. In Canada biofuels are being presented by the politicians as a "clean air," or global warming issue. If Bush stresses biofuels as an energy security issue, the media will begin to look for scientists, or recognized spokesmen like Simmons (as media savvy Gore did for GW) to present the peak oil view without worrying about "balance."
Depending on just how much discussion of energy security continues this year, regardless of prices, the message of the consequences of a lack of energy security will begin to creap into public awareness. But energy security isn't peak oil. At this point in time energy security simply means securing the sources of (abundant) supply. It will likely take a "shock" to really get the media running for the scientists (and economists) to explain what it all means.
Scientists come after the tipping point of awareness, not prior, IMHO.
Yes, I'm inclined to that view as well.
I'll also add that IME most scientists are ill-suited to the kind of debate that the public tends to watch. They don't have the people skills.
I'm sure it's an affront to many of the more academic types here, but I honestly think Matt Savinar is more likely to sway people than Westexas, Robert Rapier, Simmons, Deffeyes, etc. He's a lawyer. He knows how to argue.
I gather he was on Coast to Coast AM on Thursday night. I didn't listen to it myself, but there's some discussion over at PO.com. They seem to think the AMPOD did well. I gather he kicked Corsi's butt. Though Corsi has previously thrashed Ruppert and other peak oilers.
I honestly think Matt Savinar is more likely to sway people than Westexas, Robert Rapier, Simmons, Deffeyes, etc. He's a lawyer. He knows how to argue.
Leanan, swaying people is a large part of what engineers do for a living. I have to argue my position on a daily basis. My company didn't send me to the capital to testify against a bill because I lack the ability to sway people. And not only is this what I do for a living, it's also what I do for fun. :)
Well, I am an engineer, and I do not see persuading people as part of my job. Not at all. I'm not good at it, and I'm not interested in it. My job is to come up with options, and let the brass pick. And take the heat if it all goes to heck.
I think that the awareness difference (for the masses) betweeen GW and PO will come down to "the money in my poket today". I think it is a knee jerk reaction even for many intelligent people. If you want to drive a big SUV then read the CERA report and feel justified. Most people are rationalizing not rational.
Canadians are welcoming GW. Milder winters. Inviting waters for swimming. Warmer evenings for BBQ's. etc etc. But except for the awesome sunsets created in Vancouver, most Canadians hate smog and the thought that they are breathing that stuff. We saw it in the Election campaign Stephen Harper won and his first attempt at the Clean Air Act. The Conservatives are addressing "pollution" not GHG 'cuz they know from polling that this is the concern of most canadians. Rightly or wrongly.
On the American front and possibly Russian and elsewhere, the GW camp did not have early momentum 'cuz they had little science. Rather, the science at the time and some developed in the last six years has pointed to a solar effect in play. And it is true. There are about six solar or astronomic cycles (and a decadal ocean current cycle) in play lasting eleven years to 175,000 years. The harmonics of layering those cycles led to an amazing historic culmination that peaked in Y2K.
Unfortunately, the 1998 El Nino, the hottest year in history, augmented the solar effect. Hence no Gov't wanted to spend tax dollares on a problem that seemed overwhelming and a force of nature. You can't fight Mother Nature was the rally call. The IPCC cost estimates to break the trend were upwards of a trillion dollars ... and there was no guarantee that after that effort we would not still have continuing sea level increases, horrific events and temp increases and so on.
In the last three years, it has become evident from new science that the solar trend indeed peaked in Y2k and that there are no harmonics in play that will bring about a new wave of heat in the next five thousand years at least. The science also confirms that GHG is a forcing agent as in the hockey stick temp debate, altho not as extreme as Mann et al proposed ... and he's been moved to the penalty box (but only for two minutes).
In summary, "it was not prudent" for govt's to proceed with Kyoto Protocol measures based on the science of the time. Also, a disturbing element of Kyoto was its lack of defined penalties and that seemed as targeting the USA financially in particular. It has still not been resolved and was in part the death knell of Kyoto as a vehicle for change albeit the concept is adhered to.
WRT Peak Oil, false prophets as the (1976) prediction by Hubbert of Peak in 1995 and the (1991) Campbell forecast of decline in 1998 have not been helpful. Altho their efforts drew renewed attention to the PO issue, the "crying wolf" by Simmons and Deffeyes is what folks will moreso remember as time wanes. False prophets that have already been dismissed with the continuing monthly, quarterly and annual extraction records announced by IEA since their alarmist book tours.
Peakists have two choices. They can marry themselves to these false prophets and go down in flames with their loss of credibility and failure to acknowleldge a wrong call; or they can go with the current crop of science based modelers that crunch the numbers and have debatable data ... not anecdotes. It should be an easy decision, but the Peakists have become so cultlike, that, as we see here at TOD, most of the vocal ones would rather tie their credibility to an incompetent neophyte modeler like Bakhtiari-WOCAP-2 than the 13 recognized Outlooks that when averaged predict a Peak Rate of 95-mbd in 2020.
The latter does not fit their agenda albeit the concensus includes Campbell, Laherrere, Koppelaar & Skrebowski. It seems these gentlemen have been disowned for putting integrity of data ahead of THE MESSAGE.
Via the WWWeb, it relatively easy for those interested, whether on a personal level or in the course of relevant employment, to practise some due diligence on the topic of GW (Climate Change) or Peak Oil.
At present, the PO sites are over-saturated with the vocabulary of die-off, economic and fiat money collapse, survivalists and matter-of-fact but wrongful statements that Oil has "already" Peaked.
In the USA, the rhetoric has the added layer of partisanship where Anti George Bush seniment inundates. From my pvt email, i know there are many that still hold respect for the Office of the President "or" are Republican and are offended and uncomfortable by that side of the debate. TOD is typical in that regards. The last two Elections were virtual 50/50's and hence there are alotta depressed Democrats that continue to use forums etc as a soapbox vehicle for their frustration and failure to accept those losses.
All in all, the PO fraternity has much maturing to do before the avg person will find their msg pallatable. Just way too much baggage and noise for most at the moment in their present form.
I am surprised you didn't ref Heidi Cullen and the one degree blog from the weather channel. Now there IMO is a cross section of American opinion on GW. RealClimate and TOD do not come close to a cross section of popular opinion.
http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11592.html
Christ on a cracker. How depressing.
God, I hope most of those comments are trolls.
Depressing but no surprise. Accepting global warming implies that God is not in His Heaven and all is not right with the world. Just an impossible sell.
The only evidence the mass mind wants to see in favor of GW is extreme widespread prolonged and repeated heatwaves. They haven't happened yet. When they do alternative explanations - the wrath of God, overlapping cycles, foreseen by Nostradamus - will all compete quite well with science. In America science is only accepted by a small faction of an elite.
One interesting sideshow to come will be watching what scientifically aware elites and technocrats attempt to do as the need to deal with GW and downstream effects of GW becomes overwhelming. So far teeth gnashing and handwringing is all that's happened
Oldhippie,
You appear to see two oppossing camps, if I follow your text.
Scientific vs Joe SixPack.
I see another scenario. That of returning to a more sustainable lifestyle which means that most will not be able to accommodate to and will slowly perish. Those that have the initiative,skills and desires will return to using the earth in a more reasonable fashion.
I observed in my childhood a reasonable lifestyle. One where a married couple could raise 14 children on 100 acres and live a meaningful life. I do not propose 14 children but the one child that most have today is likely leading us but to another Olduvai Gorge. You can't sustain nor grow if you don't raise replacement children(after WTSHTF of course).
Its possible. It can be done. It can be meaningful. Modern man considered it slavish labor and undesirable. Its wasn't nor didn't have to be. Just how ugly is life now with all our advances and science? Pretty ugly IMO.
Today I live fairly close to that lifestyle and I know some who are quite a bit closer to it as well.
You won't find it in the burbs nor cities. It can't happen there.
Just an alternative lifestyle that most simply don't wish to consider and therefore will not. So much for that.
airdale
Well, it isn't quite a matter of 'accepting' it. And I still believe a major error was made in the U.S. by accepting 'global warming' instead of 'climate change' as the preferred media term - sure, it comes from the greenhouse effect direction, is fairly accurate in a basic way, but allows for profoundly simplistic diversion from the true issue at hand - as will happen if this winter develops into a monster, as it has in many parts of the U.S. already, such as the lovely citrus groves of California, and the now well iced areas of Texas which normally only see ice in a chilled drink.
Of course, global warming is accurate enough, but to reduce that to the idea of always hotter just doesn't fit into our experience of the weather.
Climate change also details the true problem much more - wetness or dryness has more immediate impact on food production, for example, than a couple of degrees (any scale, either direction) temperature shift.
Climate change is more accurate, I believe. The downside to accepting climate change instead of GW is the ability to plan for it.
Changes can happen anywhere, anytime. If the world just grew hotter over time in some predictable manner, we would have a greater chance to adapt (at least short term).
Predictable manner?
Let's see. The 12 warmest years on record have all occurred in the past 13 years.
What will we be able to say 13 years from now? Will we be able once again to say the warmest 12 happened in the past 13? And that the current top twelve have all bee eclipsed?
Why is this so complicated?
Answer: Because we like to deny it.
Personally, I would certainly bet on global warming due to CO2 increase - but then, a massive volcanic eruption could change all the assumptions for a few decades.
I think, in part, the problem is that the record is so tiny compared to even the time span humans have existed. And in part, because the record is so extremely local.
And because anyone attempting to point out the limits to human knowledge, much less the limits to our being able to know the future, no longer sounds like someone educated in the Enlightenment tradition, but a mindless shill for big business sponsored idiocy.
There's an easy to recognize pattern. There's a well accepted explanation for the pattern. Every indication is that the pattern will continue on its own steam and that nothing will break the pattern.
Your volcano is a deus ex machina and you know it.
It's less telling the future than it is making an observation.
First time ever I've been even indirectly accused of shilling for big business. You're reaching.
I know all about the Enlightenment and about limits to knowledge. I also know about denial.
There's an easy to recognize pattern. There's a well accepted explanation for the pattern. Every indication is that the pattern will continue on its own steam and that nothing will break the pattern.
Your volcano is a deus ex machina and you know it.
It's less telling the future than it is making an observation.
First time ever I've been even indirectly accused of shilling for big business. You're reaching.
I know all about the Enlightenment and about limits to knowledge. I also know about denial.
Actually, peak oil awareness is the result of both factors - activism and economics.
After all, there are alternative explanations for high oil prices.
Conservatives like to point the finger at environmentalists who prevent drilling.
Liberals prefer oil companies as the villains.
And everybody loves to scapegoat OPEC.
It's incredible to me that the peak oil idea has become widespread (1,490,000 Google hits from "peak oil") in only a few years, with only a handful of researchers and bloggers pushing it. Please, don't denigrate what you have accomplished!
The reason that progress seems glacial is that social change proceeds in its own characteristic way. Perhaps PG or another social scientist could describe the current understanding.
Good point.
Look at the Environmentalism /Green Gaia movement.
It wasn't that long ago when anyone who was environmentally consciencous was labeled a crazy treehugger.
Now even the likes of Thomas Freidman (NYT editor) is proclaiming that "Green is the new Red White and Blue".
As the Virginia cancer Slims ad went: You've come a long way baby.
Like the musical says, "Politics is the Art of the Possible". In the big city near me, light rail is in the construction phase and the governer has requested the DOT to do scoping studies on commuter rail between Phoenix and Tucson. The second would have been a non-starter if the first hadn't convinced enough people that maybe there might be something to it that would benefit the community.
I believe any thinking person can see the future with a vastly reduced petroleum supply, but the economic and political morass that it entails must be worked through in a matter that doesn't involve throwing tantrums. Presistance is needed to reach those people in government with information and gentle presuasion. If you can convince one city council man to just think about what P. O. will mean to his consitutiants you have taken a big step. Lets not get lost in internicean arguements about the number of angels than can dance on the head of a pin.
Lets reverse the issue.
Consider that we say nothing until we have complete evidence that peak oil will happen. Better wait till after it is obvious then we can state with certainty that the world has peak and we need to take action. What have you accomplished ?
I don't know how to say this maybe this way.
Name me one general that won a war waiting till he know the exact position of his enemy. Sometimes you have to guess and either your right or wrong but in the case of the General inaction and incorrect action result in failure.
For peak oil the problem is the same inaction and waiting till you have a solid case to act have the same outcome failure.
Potentially early mitigation efforts will not hurt us. If I felt that we could move quickly on the peak oil issue and solve the problems in a few years then I'd agree with you. I think it might take 15 years minimum to make a significant dent in our oil usage with aggressive action and this is being optimistic.
You have to weight the knowledge we have about peak oil against reasonable estimates of the amount of time effort and energy it will take to reduce oil usage vs the effects of waiting until its a crisis.
Considering that the action most nations will take is to peruse war to secure resources once we reach crisis I'll take the chance of being called the boy that cried wolf any day.
I just think your not looking at the big picture problem or at least right now your just responding to "attacks". Step back and think about it I have and I'd rather take the chance on being shot down on peak oil and try now than wait for another GW to come to power and handle the problem.
If we convince people to mitigate early we can save millions of lives if we wait then the chance of war being part of the peak oil solution is almost 100%. If you really win your argument and convince people to wait till we have credible proof I just want you to realize the risk your taking.
You do and have had a big impact on peak oil inside and outside the community so please consider everything that is involved.
I don't disagree with what your saying I just think that as Iraq has shown we can't afford to wait.
Consider that we say nothing until we have complete evidence that peak oil will happen.
Nobody is suggesting that we do that. I think we needed to start preparing several years ago. I am frustrated that we haven't. But the reason we haven't is that the case is not compelling enough to convince people that we must immediately act. And the case may never be compelling enough. We may only look back in hindsight and wonder collectively why we didn't prepare for this peak oil thing people kept talking about.
Name me one general that won a war waiting till he know the exact position of his enemy.
I can name you some that lost wars because they didn't have a defensible position. I can name some that lost wars because they thought they knew where the enemy was and didn't.
I just think your not looking at the big picture problem or at least right now your just responding to "attacks".
Given your comments, you don't understand my position either. I am not saying "Wait until we are 100% sure." Not at all. I am addressing the issue of making confident proclamations based on evidence that doesn't warrant them. That is a good way to lose a war. I am suggesting that most people don't even realize that there is a war going on, and a better strategy is required.
Fair enough. I think that if anyone will build a strong case its you.
If we can get action with what we have now all the better. People will attack regardless and if any damage has been done its done.
Sorry Robert.
Unpopular opinions are often defamed in attempt to discredit the merits of their arguments.
I would have to agree with Mr. Rapier. The things Leanan and Westexas are saying might make some sense if they weren't so devoid of connections to the history of Deffeyes' predictions.
An example. The following is from a revised preface to Hubbert's Peak. Similar statements appear in all editions of both his books.
Actual production
1999 65,848
2000 68,369
2001 67,984
2002 66,967
2003 69,235
2004 72,224
2005 73,653
2006 73,468
His latest comment regarding Thanksgiving 2005 is just the latest prediction - whether or not it is a joke. If it is a joke are his string of peak-predictions dated back at least six years all jokes. He sure has an interesting sense of humor. Being wrong every time he opens his mouth.
Look how much production has grown since his first(or at least the first that I have found) prediction regarding the year 2000. Both in terms of millions of barrels per day and as a percentage. Can we assume he used Hubbert Linnearization to come up with all he answers?
Deffeyes actually writes less about Hubbert Theory and Linnearization than he probably should in his books since that is purportedly what both books are about. Yet he is probably best known for the theory's use and claims to have simplified the mathematical derivation. Regardless, if HL is responsible for going-on 7 years of failed predictions and unexplained increased production, what does that say about the utility of the method?
To me it says Deffeyes better be right real soon or he should go back to being an intelligent geology professor and give up the prophet thing. More people might start using the term "quack."
His latest comment regarding Thanksgiving 2005 is just the latest prediction - whether or not it is a joke.
I am bookmarking your post for the next time someone says "Deffeyes isn't wrong yet."
But Deffeyes is wrong now. The latest data has the C+C peak a few months before Dec. 2005. So he's wrong...the cock-eyed optimist.
You might want to look up the definition of a prediction versus an observation. As noted below, Deffeyes himself observed, based on the production data through 2002, that his prediction (for a 2004-2008 peak) appeared to be wrong.
But he never backed away from his mathematical model that put the peak in the 2004-2008 time frame.
Speaking of repetitive posts. Here I go again.
Deffeyes never backed away from his mathematical model that showed that the world peak was between 2004 and 2008.
He observed that the world probably peaked in 2000. You will note that he refers to his "failure to predict the year 2000 peak."
But an observation is not a prediction.
A prediction is what he made when he stated that the most likely start of the world crude oil decline would be in 2006.
A prediction is when I stated that the most likely start of the Saudi crude oil decline would be in 2006.
I would also add that, as I predicted, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Norway are all showing lower oil exports year over year.
I find it pretty strange that as the available production data support these predictions, we see an almost hysterical across the board attack on virtually every aspect of the mathematical modeling techniques.
My list of Ten "Coincidences"
Please. I referred to the exact same passage elsewhere in this thread. What you saw as a failed prediction, I saw as an acknowledgement by Deffeyes that there's some slop in the model. He put that rather flip comment in the book, but stood by his Thanksgiving Day 2005 prediction (later modified to Dec. 2005).
He put that rather flip comment in the book, but stood by his Thanksgiving Day 2005 prediction (later modified to Dec. 2005).
So, he stood by it, then modified it? ;)
The fact is, Deffeyes did once say that he thought 2000 was the year of peak. He stated at another time "I am 99 per cent confident that 2004 will be the top of the mathematically smoothed curve of oil production." What these statements show is that his confidence in calling the peak is misplaced. His 99% confidence level isn't very good. If HL worked as well as he claims, then no way should he have ever thought 2000 was the peak. Unless in fact, as I maintain, HL only works in hindsight after peak has already occurred.
What Deffeyes is seeing is exactly what you would have seen with Texas starting from about 1960. A person would have kept calling the peak prematurely. Eventually, if you call it enough times you will be right, and I guess if you are eventually right people will forget about all those times you were wrong. But all that talk about 99% confidence, only to see dates come and go, are not very helpful for furthering this debate IMO.
Robert,
Again, Deffeyes never predicted a 2000 peak. Including your quote (source?), he always put the peak between 2004 and 2008.
And again, the analogue for the world peak is not Texas. It is the Lower 48.
And again, Hubbert accurately predicted the Lower 48 peak time frame, inclusive of Texas.
And again, world crude oil production and Saudi crude oil production are declining in the years that Deffeyes and I picked as the most likely years for declines to start.
So, how have we helped matters by once again arguing these same points over and over and over again?
Is it going to change the crude oil numbers to support your prediction for rising world and Saudi crude oil production? No.
Will it magically give us two years of future data to support my prediction for continued declines in world and Saudi crude oil production? No.
So what's the point?
The point is for you to show, once again that Robert is not interested in the best estimate for peak, he is waiting to see peak in the rear view mirror. That's fine but I for one am not betting on the likelihood
of those 10 coincidences are all mistaken, as they are compelling.
Robert is not interested in the best estimate for peak, he is waiting to see peak in the rear view mirror.
Wrong answer, but thanks for playing.
Predicting the moment of PO to six sigma precision is not the name of the game.
First we have to win the "minds and hearts" of the populace irrespective of when PO will, or did, happen.
There is no victory in saying: "See I told you so".
Robert, you say you have bunch of "talking points".
The two statements are not contradictory. In fact, what he was saying was that it was possible that the peak year would be 2000, while the mathematical peak would be 2004.
He argues that something like that happened with the U.S. peak. The peak year was 1970, but the peak of the mathematically smoothed curve was 1974.
In fact, what he was saying was that it was possible that the peak year would be 2000...
But he didn't say it was "possible." He said it was "very likely." I see a pattern of misplaced confidence from Dr. Deffeyes.
And I am also supposed to overlook his statement because it "wasn't a prediction." Give me a break, folks. He has mathematical tools at his disposal for this and he claims his margin of error is plus or minus a month. Despite this he said 2000 was very likely the year of maximum production.
He argues that something like that happened with the U.S. peak. The peak year was 1970, but the peak of the mathematically smoothed curve was 1974.
So then we have a demonstrated multi-year margin of error, yet he claims precision of plus or minus 4 weeks. That's my whole point.
Robert, I agree with WT that you are confusing observations with predictions. Random House defines a prediction: "to tell in advance, usually on the basis of fact." My understanding is that Deffeyes' prediction was that peak would occur between 2004 and 2008 as he made that statement in advance of the dates predicted. I also understand that the "observation" that peak may have been 2000 was made after the year 2000 and hence it cannot be characterized as a prediction. The same can be said with the 12/05 observation. Therefore, I really do not see that you and WT really disagree. You, Robert, just need to get your terms straight.
I also understand that the "observation" that peak may have been 2000 was made after the year 2000 and hence it cannot be characterized as a prediction.
Yet he had the mathematical tools at his disposal - tools that he claims have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 weeks - and he still made this observation. Shouldn't his model have told him the observation was incorrect?
Personally, I think Deffeyes' apologists (not pointed at you personally) are grasping at straws by complaining that this wasn't a "prediction" and therefore shouldn't count against him. No matter what it was, if his model was accurate he wouldn't have suggested 2000 was probably the peak. His model should have told him that it wasn't.
You do have a good point and perhaps, to a certain degree, the 2000 observation should be counted against him. As far as the 2004 - 2008 prediction, perhaps we'll have a better grasp on that come 2010.
argh...
Thanks, Robert and Jeffrey,
A Q of clarification -
Robert writes: "Unless in fact, as I maintain, HL only works in hindsight after peak has already occurred."
--Could you possibly expand upon this a little, please?
--So, then, we have here both a theoretical problem *and* a problem with applying the theory?
--So, then, it is not only a question of what the data actually is (i.e., what data is known or not known), it is a question of accepting HL as a basis from which to proceed?
--Another Q. So, Robert: If you do not accept HL as "theory" - (or, as a theory having any predictive value, which I guess means it really doesn't qualify "as theory")... then what criteria do you posit, if any, for
1) predicting peak (within any range of error)?
2) announcing "peak has passed"?
-- Another way to ask the first few Qs:
1) Would completely transparent data resolve *any* question or questions?
2) If so, what questions, exactly?
3) And, what exactly, is the specific description of the data that would have to be transparent? (What is presently missing, in other words?)
1) Would completely transparent data resolve *any* question or questions?
Absolutely. If the data were transparent, there wouldn't be nearly as much guesswork involved in figuring out Qt. But even in Texas, where there was probably good data transparency, if you started plotting the data up to 1960 it is going to start suggesting a peak. What we would need to know is the actual Qt is. The model is predicting it, and a number of cases (including Saudi) show an increasing Qt. That causes the peak date to move.
What happens is what someone pointed out below. The model converges in most cases post-peak. That was certainly the case in Texas. Not only that, but there isn't a well-defined fraction of Qt at which one can say "Peak has occurred." WT once said that Saudi could get to 60% of Qt before peak. On the other hand, it could peak just beyond 50% of Qt. That spans a lot of years. So what this does is give someone many years of wiggle room in which to predict a peak. Yet the wiggle room is not being acknowledged, and an impossible level of precision is being ascribed to the model. Saudi in fact will see the % of Qt go down when 2006 data is added. I have plotted it already. So, that gives us another couple of years in which to accommodate the peak. And I think accommodate is the right word, because it isn't really a prediction of any precision.
Hi Robert,
Thanks for this answer above. Could you possibly take a look at my question previous to the one you replied to? Namely,
"...what criteria do you posit, if any, for
1) predicting peak (within any range of error)?
2) announcing "peak has passed"?"
So, are you saying, for example, that you accept HL as a good predictive model and ascribe to it an error range of ...X?
Do you have any other criteria, and if so, could you list them? For me, this would help clarify your views. Do you think any of Jeffrey's "coincidences" are relevant? Do they count as criteria?
In other words, "...it really isn't a prediction of any precision."
When you say "...there wouldn't be nearly as much guesswork involved in figure out Qt." So, there'd still be some? How much? Would anything help with this?
thanks.
Unfortunately I don't have time to pursue this now, but I thought both Stuart and Khebab have done some good mathematical analysis exactly on the stability and error range of the HL predictions for the world and I believe also the middle east and SA. Deffayes has also provided discussion on error range, and gave his dates as the middle of his predicted range for peak. This would be worth a review post.
Also, to recap the history on this subject, the Linearization on Lower 48, USA, Texas, East Texas & Global was developed by Jean Laherrere of France, formerly with Total. Almost annually for two decades he has assisted the discussion of Peak Oil with these linearized analysis. His Outlook within our Scenarios is the only one we have allowed to date that is mathematically based, in respect of his knowledge.
I am troubled that jeffrey seems to be attempting to hijack ownership of Laherrere's long standing studies that are still regularly updated for ASPO and other PO Conferences.
Deffeyes, Jeffrey/WT and/or khebab discovered dick all. They are using Laherrere's current work.
WRT the Conventional oil peak date, there is a similar hijacking of credit being attempted. Colin Campbell called the y2K Peak in March y2k. Because of the usa mini-recession, stats seemed to be indicating that the Y2k 64-mbd Peak Rate was not being breached in 2001, 2002 and 2003. And he stuck to his guns that Y2k was the Conventional Oil Peak. In the while, his All Liquids Peak remained firm at 2010. Finally, in Feb/2004, he published that the y2k Peak Rate had been breached and he moved his Peak Date to 2003 and 2012 for All Liquids.
This is why Deffeyes was not sure if Y2k was indeed the Peak in retrospect in 2003. Is Peak the Peak Month or the Peak Year became the timely question.
Campbell is both the keeper of the database and the primary "predictor". Others would seem to be usurpers when in reality they are only revoicing Campbell's findings w/o giving him credit.
I do and always have. And his current data suggests April 2005 was the Peak for Conventional Oil.
There are many pretenders out there that have no data.
Also, to recap the history on this subject, the Linearization on Lower 48, USA, Texas, East Texas & Global was developed by Jean Laherrere of France, formerly with Total. Almost annually for two decades he has assisted the discussion of Peak Oil with these linearized analysis. His Outlook within our Scenarios is the only one we have allowed to date that is mathematically based, in respect of his knowledge.
I am troubled that jeffrey seems to be attempting to hijack ownership of Laherrere's long standing studies that are still regularly updated for ASPO and other PO Conferences.
Deffeyes, Jeffrey/WT and/or khebab discovered dick all. They are using Laherrere's current work.
WRT the Conventional oil peak date, there is a similar hijacking of credit being attempted. Colin Campbell called the y2K Peak in March y2k. Because of the usa mini-recession, stats seemed to be indicating that the Y2k 64-mbd Peak Rate was not being breached in 2001, 2002 and 2003. And he stuck to his guns that Y2k was the Conventional Oil Peak. In the while, his All Liquids Peak remained firm at 2010. Finally, in Feb/2004, he published that the y2k Peak Rate had been breached and he moved his Peak Date to 2003 and 2012 for All Liquids.
This is why Deffeyes was not sure if Y2k was indeed the Peak in retrospect in 2003. Is Peak the Peak Month or the Peak Year became the timely question.
Campbell is both the keeper of the database and the primary "predictor". Others would seem to be usurpers when in reality they are only revoicing Campbell's findings w/o giving him credit.
I do and always have. And his current data suggests April 2005 was the Peak for Conventional Oil.
There are many pretenders out there that have no independent data.
The discussion of Peak Date is also complicated by changing URR estimates. Past Consumption figures are continually revised. And both Conventional Oil URR and All Liquids URR includes future discoveries estimates.
Conventional Oil includes estimated future discoveries of 146-Gb. As that figure changes with each season, the Peak Date changes in tandem. And hence we have a methodology that cannot help but be subject to forward and backward revisions. It doesn't make it bad or wrong. It's just nature of the beast.
Finally, i will say that imho the Date doesn't matter. By the time Campbell acknowledged the Y2k Peak was breached as described above, the MSM and most interested had given up. All Liquids, as Campbell later admitted, was the new boy in town. Conv Oil was becoming a smaller component. By the Feb/2004 announcement that 65-mbd had been attained, All Liquids was already up over those four years to an incredible 77-mbd.
The "who cares' chant had begun.
RR says"
When I read the interview with Deffeyes in which he stated Thanksgiving Day 2005, I remember that later in that interview, he was asked why he was doing this, and he said specifically 'to get attention'.
IMO saying PO will occur sometime or other as RR and others do helps not at all; whereas being melodramtic garners attention. And basically, the people that the PO'ers need to reach have so many events and predictions to which to pay attention that they need statements that stand out.
So RR you're wrong because as far I can determine, the informed already know the problem, and the uninformed will always ignore it until it bites them. Perhaps all PO'ers can do is make sure that the latter realize what is the problem rather than lauching missiles in all directions when the bite comes.
I have often wondered about how much of a bombshell the Rainwater article in Fortune was.
People with serious money, tens of millions plus, generally don't make it, or keep it, by being stupid, and people with net worths of tens of million plus are keenly aware of Rainwater's track record.
It's all anecdotal, but I have heard lots of stories about smaller towns, away from major population centers, doing very well economically. I have often wondered if a "stealth migration" is going on--where wealthy people are quietly moving out of major population centers. Kind of reminds you of "Atlas Shrugged" doesn't it?
Rainwater's words and actions are very interesting. I think that he felt an obligation to speak out once, and he is now seeking less publicity--not more. He is quietly going about getting ready, as best he can, for Peak Oil. Perhaps not a bad model for all of us to follow.
I doubt this is happening and if it was it would seem that we would see some new conservation proposals being generated in unlikely places. I would suspect the wealthy are operating on the premise of "see what happens" while keeping the jet fueled and maintaining the same type of life boat that some of the rest of us have contemplated. A life with the following motto - When TSHTF be prepared to go where the winds blow and make the best of the situation as it presents itself.
Pardon me for daring to lengthen THE DEBATE but I would like to state how I see it.
WT has taken a stand. He has placed a stob (kentuckyspeak for stick) in the ground or more like drawn a line in the sand. The man is putting it on the line. Great. He believes in what he observes.
RR on the other hand argues that its not that easy and take a far wider stance and does not plant the stob(stick,line,whatever). He thinks it requires a far greater degree of input data before he can agree to PO having already occurred as WT thinks that it has.
So its clear then that IF production ever climbs above what it was on 05/2006 (or the date WT calls as PO) and its for Crude+Condenstate , as I think is appropiate then ....then WT will be wrong and we have not passed PO.
So the idea is to watch closely the future production numbers.
I note that WT also has been charting or crunching the data on Exports and Imports and also makes some statements on those as they relate to PO and the future.
WT puts his rep on the line. RR prevaricates.
Time will tell and I would like to see how this plays out.
As long as both sides have a stance it is of little value to keep stating them over and over(the two sides). Its far better now to just observe the reporting of data and see who is correct.Watch it very very closely. Watch for incorrect data. Afer some point it will be obvious I assume.
RR does seem to support a fuzzy 2010 date as I seem to have read.
Myself I would prefer to speak to the future and what mitigations would be successful as well as keep sounding the Hue and Cry in regards to our upcoming energy crisis.
To wit: Its appears to be indisputable that we will have a loss of a major energy component. Petrochemical or at least the price of it being too high to sustain our present economy.
If thats true then we need to concern ourselves primarily with one extremely important topic, and that being WHAT WILL WE EAT and HOW WILL WE OBTAIN IT IF ITS THERE.
Sorry for the uppercase. I think I could quote it and have it backgrounded or in varying colors yet haven't delved into that as yet.
So what do we eat? We can survive outdoors with no power and no heat or cooling. We can survive without transportation. We "cannot" survive without food for body energy.
We can dig holes in the ground and drink rainwater but what do we consume? You can forage just so much. We will have to rely on the soil and the growing seasons else all will perish.
I am not sure that all the other mitigations will or can be sucessful so I regard food as the most essential.
We can get back to Dr. Phil and Oprah after we solve the food problem.
airdale--back to the debate and pass the cheese doodles
RR prevaricates.
Since that implies that I am being deliberately misleading or equivocating, your reading of my position is very seriously flawed. I will repeat for the umpteenth time: I am not debating the date of peak. We are probably right now within the leading edge of the bell curve that you would get from probable dates of peak. I think the most likely date is a few years out, but one can't put fine precision on something with such large error margins.
Myself I would prefer to speak to the future and what mitigations would be successful as well as keep sounding the Hue and Cry in regards to our upcoming energy crisis.
Well, good luck getting that message out. When you understand why you aren't getting that message out, you will have a much better handle on my position.
Perhaps equivocates would have been a better choice. Meaning "to not make an explicit statement". That statement in regards to PO having occurred.
I thought though that I did make your position clear.
I also note Robert that you did bring the subject back up again(first post on Drumbeat) and since you admit that its getting to the point of being repetitious and annoying I then wonder why you did bring it back up.
You stated plenty times that you didn't take any of this personal as well yet it seems to be drifting in that direction.
Getting the message out? That is what I hope TOD is doing and my posting as well.I also spend time informing others. Do I wish to inform the media? I would rather drink paint thinner. That is a totally worthless venue. I believe your point is that predictions must be bullet-proof or else the media will shoot it down. IMO Life on this planet is far more important than the role the media might or might not play. In fact I judge them to be puppets and not much else.
All I have to offer is personal observations and that mostly on agriculture. Thats the reason I speak of the food supply.
Next year? 2005? The clock is ticking no matter what.
airdale
I also note Robert that you did bring the subject back up again(first post on Drumbeat) and since you admit that its getting to the point of being repetitious and annoying I then wonder why you did bring it back up.
I don't recall saying it was getting "repetitious and annoying." For me, personally, it is getting more interesting the more I analyze the historical track record of the HL method. My initial post was more about that, and less about my long-standing debate with Jeffrey about his export model.
You stated plenty times that you didn't take any of this personal as well yet it seems to be drifting in that direction.
I am not taking any of this personally. This is what I do for relaxation. :)
I believe your point is that predictions must be bullet-proof or else the media will shoot it down.
No, it is about having a model that has demonstrated consistency and some level of accuracy such that it will be taken seriously. If we take a model with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 years, and then call peak within plus or minus a month, we are begging not to be taken seriously.
Hi Airdale and Robert,
Airdale, thanks for choosing a different word ("equivocates" fits your meaning a little better, it seems).
Ok...Airdale writes: (about Robert)
"He thinks it requires a far greater degree of input data before he can agree to PO having already occurred as WT thinks that it has."
Is this what Robert thinks? I kind of like my list of questions to Robert, above, in the sense that ...I'm not sure whether it is a matter of data (either quality of data or quantity) or whether Robert has a question with the HL model/theory itself. Or, perhaps both?
Robert, if you could, I hope you'll take time to answer. I probably won't be able to check back until tomorrow, but am looking forward.
One can parse sentences and debate about what occurs on the head of a pin forever.
As some point in time its fish or cut bait.
Looking at PO in the rearview mirror after the fact and when its far too late you might be seeing nothing but chaos and death on a large scale IF you have a rearview mirror on that automobile you are trying to escape in.
I saw in 1973 chaos in suburbia. I saw a gas station owner standby and watch as drivers stole his gas. He said "take it just don't hurt me"..or words to that effect. I saw lines and lines of backed up traffic on I -70 leading out of St. Louis to Florissant Rd which was my getoff spot. I was driving a 1971 VW beetle and it took me 3 hours to drive to my suburban home is north county town of Florissant. The VW was wrecked. Next morning I didn't have enough steering control to back it out of the drive. I had tried to bypass some of the traffic and hit culverts doing so and taking out the steering worm gear.
It was madness. And it was the same evening that the boycott was announced. People went bonkers. They became surly and unreasonable and this was back in 1973!!!!
I saw plenty in my rearview mirror that I would hope to never see again.
We have all seen violence,burning and looting. We have watched as blocks of cities have been torched. We have seen the results of gang rapes on innocent women who strolled in Central Park in NYC.
We have watched as black gangs tried to stove in the head of a truck driver laying supine on the ground with a concrete block. It was grotesque. It was madness.
Do we wish to think about this as our future or close our eyes to what could happen?
Push the data endlessly then. Just remember history as you do so.
I was there and I experienced it. It can happen again only this time it will be far far worse.
One time I was advised by a law enforcement officer that to visit my mother in South St. Louis that I had better be carrying my 12 guage shotgun with me. I remember how in East St. Louis that guys I knew who worked the 2nd and 3rd shifts would sniped at from the bridge overpasses. How one took a shotgun blast to the side of his car as he drove to an account to take a service call. This was during a time when racail tension was very high.When people were killing other people.
We have all seen it. Its out there. It can come again. Those who preach and call others 'crazies' might have not seen or experienced this.
I say when it comes it will be nothing like we have ever seen before. It will be far far worse.
So hide your eyes and repeat the mantra,,"we need more data"..
the folly of this is being proved as we type via Global Warming. The polar bears, for crying out loud, are dying. We see it in our famous 'Rear View Mirrors' but oohhhhh so late. The data was there. Many shied away. Many prevaricated and equivocated and just pretended it didn't exist.
Good luck with your data. Remember reality though is what happens after all. I see reality right now in the weather extremes that are starting to pound the hell out of this country. Freak events. Harbingers on the wing.
airdale--call me crazy
For all of your handwringing, you still miss the most basic point. How are you going to convince anyone that there is a problem if the data aren't sound? You say that data are there. Where? What data are you going to use that you can defend? Exports down? Please. The HL? You want to use the HL to prove peak is upon us? The whole point here is that it has generally only worked in hindsight, and has a very large degree of wiggle-room. So you fall into the category of wanting to warn people, but using pretty shaky data to do so. Which leads you open to challenges and second-guessing, which will instill enough doubt in people that they will do nothing. So guess what? Nobody acted on your warnings.
So, what does that leave? I don't know. I want to convince people. I had a very long peak oil conversation last night with a neighbor, and he "got it." He may forget about it next week. But what he won't do is dismiss it after hearing counter-arguments, because the arguments I made are difficult to counter. HL? Didn't mention it. Most people wouldn't understand it in the first place. I took a qualitative approach, and I pointed out both sides of the argument, while being quite clear which side I come down on.
Now that would be a good topic for an essay...I'd like to know how you phrased your arguments, in what order, etc. That's one thing all of us could use some more ideas on, IMO.
Robert, You have made a New Years resolution to speak to others about PO. I have been doing that ever since I first read Kunstler on the subject.A long time back. Maybe two years or so. I have been speaking on Global Dimming since it was first recognized. I have been speaking about the effects of weather. This is something you see more vividly in the outback.
I have spoken to many. Just two days ago I spoke the three farmers at one time. I have spoken to anyone who will listen. Enough that now I have saturated most of my friends and colleagues with it. So now I play it a bit more muted.
What do I say or do?
The other day I used a whiteboard on the wall to draw the graph from "Olduvai Gorge" . I drew the X and Y axis representing the population growth and the other representing the time line. I put the big uptick on and labeled the point of when we went to the moon. I put a neanderthal man walking in and another walking out of the peak.
I gave no further details because this is when the eyes tend to glaze over.
Most who I talk to know me and respect my viewpoints but they are NOT going to buy it until the MSM shot it in a panic over the networks. Until they actually SEE it before them.
Yet they are now most certainly buying into GW. Very much so.
And they understand very much about the ethanol issue and realize that our imports may drop astoundingly. They dont' care about that. They simply just don't care about 3rd world countries and sending them our grain. They care about the market. They care about their land and farming. They do care plenty about diesel fuel.
Yet they do NOT want to acknowledge that trouble could be on the way because they just do not wish to entertain apocalypse theories if the evidence is not right before them.
Evidence like many ethanol plants springing up. The cost of diesel rising. The cost of fertilizer rising.
What can they do anyway about it? They are sitting about as well as anyone can be. They have the firearms, the land and the ability to survive on that. They are not locked down into a beehive surburbia or city. They can hunt. They are in the catbird seat IMO. They are on the point of the spear.
Thats what I do anyway.
airdale
>For all of your handwringing, you still miss the most basic point. How are you going to convince anyone that there is a problem if the data aren't sound?
>I want to convince people.
Robert, We can't even convince the majority of the US population that the world is older tha 6000 years. The data won't make a bit a difference, since the majority will simply ignore it. The addiction to the american lifestyle is more powerful than a cocktail of opioids. I don't see how it would be possible to convince the population to ardently reduce their lifestyles. Plus, virtually no politicians is going to commit political suicide by enacting real measures that addressing declining energy resources.
> I had a very long peak oil conversation last night with a neighbor, and he "got it."
Now try convincing a Creationist that the earth is billions of years old. Your neighbor may have "gotten it", but I doubt the rest of your neighborhood would be as easily convinced.
In the end lots of people are going to die. As many others have discussed there is no way to feed, cloth, and entertain 6.5+ Billion people sustainably.
How about a "Pay to post Rule?" After one posts 1,000 messages on the same topic, you have to pay $10 for each additional post past 1,000. Of course, at that rate I might have been paying for 100% of TOD's servers.
I would just add that I have repeatedly suggesed to Hothgor, Freddy and Robert that we just wait and see what future production numbers show.
This argument can look boring, I agree. The reasons for it though are interesting. Looking at it very much in the abstract, very general way, it appears that the uncertainty (which leads to the argument and maybe cherry picking etc.) is due to:
a) messy data; not enough data; hoped for data that is in the pike but not available yet; and various specific pesky ‘unknown unknowns’, some of which may be known by some parties but kept secret (this last is enough to drive any number cruncher bananas), and even manipulated data. Right. So much for the data.
b) data that tracks some of the results of a dynamic process (bpd for ex) and some of the causes that contribute to the result (no of functioning rigs, for ex.) but actually not very many of the latter, or not in a terribly consistent way (no of workers, for ex.) The upshot is that the result of interest can’t really be related to its cause(s) in a rigorous, clear, fashion. The causal factors are so multiple and various they swim in and out of sight and can’t be grasped (by factor analysis for ex) and then there is turbulence, disturbance (Iraq war for ex) - unusual events that require special treatment, but what treatment?
c) Analysis. The only way to handle the ‘mess’ is to cut out the beginning state (oil in the ground, for ex.) and reduce or wash out variance by summing or averaging (or other that comes to the same thing), thereby also setting aside process, which is, as I understand it, what HL does. In this way, it is possible to hypothesize about the future, by extrapolating from a curve (various types, brands), and to return to a real-life beginning state (the oil in the ground) through an analysis of curves or slopes or bumps or what not created by the process as they occurred in the past. That procedure makes the assumption of a (sort of?) steady-state system, not affected by wild runs or what is sometimes called ‘tipping points’ (for ex a dire positive feedback loop that kicks in) or by 'external' events (for ex WW3.)
Very good but unsatisfactory as well, as the smoothing renders plotting on the time axis very iffy. Washing away the variance leaves too many questions hanging (coupled with the shoddy data of course) and normalises the process - the normal curve looms large. The normal curve is a probability curve, it does model some natural (real-life) processes, but it has its limits.
My intuition is that more could be done, easy to say without a proposal. More could be said. There might be some avenues to explore.
To sum up, therefore the arguments. One goes with ones guts, and that is good. What else.
Noisette,
You are absolutely right to go with guts rather than left side of the brain. I am an old man who would have been dead long ago if
1. As a pilot I had believed my instruments. Instruments lie.
2. As a sailor I believed weather forecasts. They lie.
3. As a pilot I had believed controllers: They lose airplanes.
Facts are good. They are no substitute for judgment.
Facts are good. They are no substitute for judgment.
Don,
Wise words. I couldn't have said it better myself!
This is why I encourage all to have multiple contingency plans.
One near term, one medium term and one long term. One should
plan accordingly using what we know and do our utmost to plan
for what we don't know (as far as PO is concerned).
BTW, I'm looking forward to reading your new book when available.
regards,
rude
Then I see no reason for you to continue talking about KSA, Lower 48 and the North Sea. Lets all wait and see and talk about something else more pressing at the moment :)
I'm inclined to agree. Either the reader was clear weeks ago, or they're skipping RR's and WT's posts anyway.
Actually, my point this morning is a bit different, and I am considering writing an essay on it. It is not really about WT's prediction. It is about the limitations of the HL method as a true predictive tool. Having gone back and done some "backcasting", I have come to see that the error bars on the HL can cover more than 10 years (in Texas' case, almost 20). Yet it has been used to say "Country X will peak in year X." Historically, that is not a supportable claim.
I can show mathematically the the HL method would have started predicting an imminent peak in Texas as early as 1960, and you couldn't have made a confident call on the peak until several years after the fact. The model has a tremendous amount of wiggle-room, such that in my opinion the "predictions" are for the most part "postdictions" that are only possible as additional data come in. In no case to my knowledge has an HL actually predicted a peak in real time. Even going back to my original questions, if you were plotting the HL for Saudi in real time, you would have started predicting a peak several years ago. The only reason we aren't calling a Saudi peak several years ago is based on the hindsight we currently have.
In my mind, this is not an issue of "sophomoric jousting" at all. It is a matter of whether the HL is a truly useful predictive tool, and whether people like Deffeyes are overstating their case. It is a matter of making sure the tools we use are actually capable of doing what we claim they can.
Regardless of the error range its still a useful tool since it shows peak oil. Understanding the error just removes irrelevant argument about differences that are withing the error range.
HL does not include external factors which generally tend to lower overall production pushing the top side of the error down. I.e the best case scenario is generally far less likely than the worst case. Since most external factors result in lower oil production.
Next considering the time intervals required to do anything useful about altering our oil based economy which are on the order of 10-50 years the error in HL does not have a huge effect on the long term mitigation strategies. The vaunted market with maybe a bit of good taxation can handle the short term.
We need to adopt both national and international renewable energy/resource management policy using the fact we don't actually know how much carbon based energy we can extract and use does not change the issue.
Humanity needs to get out of the natures carbon cycle.
I might add that doing simple things like allowing insurance to cover a large family car and a small commuter car for one driver will spur the adoption of small fuel efficient cars for people that like to own a care that can carry their entire family.
I'd rather see the mini vans and SUV's only on weekends and small 1/2 passenger cars through the week.
The next step would obviously be to share the big car or rent it. Again making transport pools attractive would go a long way to reducing the amount of fuel wasted hauling metal around.
Next flex work hours to reduce traffic jams will help. Tax rebates for companies that adopt flex hours and working from home would really help.
The same could be done for homes and condo's. Taxes based on the sqft of a residence and its location/style would go a looong way to curing us of our our suburban disease. Consider a tax break for renting/owing within 10 miles of a workplace. For the majority of people renting makes a lot more sense if they can't ensure that their job is stable enough to warrant purchasing a house. The underlying reason for the long commutes in America is the house ties you to a urban region but generally not near your current job. Actually buying a home with todays mobile work force makes no sense for most people.
A social side effect is that by making renting a nice place a viable alternative to buying people can choose to have a parent stay home during their children's formative years. This will go a long way to helping our western societies. It will also help reverse the trend in America of most of the large homes owned by retired boomers with families squashed into small apartments unable to afford housing. Let them rent the big houses from the boomers and everyone is a winner.
The list of actions that can be taken to make efficient living attractive is almost endless.
Yes. Wait and see. We will know in the next year or so. Meanwhile, PO is coming.
Frankly, Im sick of it.
The fact that "experts" are arguing over the exact year of peak when peak is imminent, coupled with the fact that NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE ON A MAJOR SCALE TO PREPARE FOR IT, the argument is over.
Professor Hatfield was right. We have lost and all we can do is wait for the effects which, because we havent been paying attention, are unknown.
The fact that "experts" are arguing over the exact year of peak
That's not my argument. Memmel above understood it better than anyone so far. It is about analyzing a key peak oil tool for intrinsic errors. To my knowledge this has not been done.
Besides that, I am not trying to win a popularity contest. Whether you are sick of it or not, I think it is an important question to address. I understand that there are a number of Doomers here who just want to chant "The end is near, prepare to die", but I am interested in some actual analysis of the issues. The chanters are not the ones who are going to make much contribution toward getting us out of this mess. On the other hand those who study, analyze, and understand the issues involved might. I intend to count myself among the latter group.
"a number of Doomers here who just want to chant "The end is near, prepare to die"
Where did I say this? This is not my point of view.
You just lost a reader.
Where did I say this? This is not my point of view.
I didn't say that YOU did. But it is a popular point of view here, and people with that point of view are those quickest to dismiss this as a debate over an exact peak date, or to say it is a pointless debate.
As I said already, and have said many times before, my disagreement is not over pinning down an exact peak date. Yet that is precisely what you wrote above, indicating that even though you are sick of it, you still don't get it.
Robert,
I really wish you wouldn't generalize about people's points of view. Although I fall into the doomer camp, I certainly don't dismiss these discussions and I do understand the issues.
Todd; a Realist
:)
I'm a doomer myself and I find WT arguments compelling. Enough to cause grave concern on my part. But that does not mean you don't do scientific analysis. Science does not give a rats ass about peoples points of view.
Just like mathematics and art do not care about physics :)
Or to put it another way the leaning tower of Pisa does not respect the abilities of the architect that designed it.
I think this is what Robert is trying to say. Hopefully I've put it in a better perspective. Viewpoints and theories are important but facts are facts. I assure you many a scientist has made the mistake of considering viewpoints and theories as facts. In fact its probably the prime failure of even the best people that practice science.
One more thing I think WT is right in his conclusions and I think time will show this just as it did for Texas HL. But I recognize that it takes a fair amount of inspiration or subjective reasoning to understand peak is probably now or soon. Reducing the need to develop a gut feeling about peak oil helps everyone. WT's work along with other factors such as rising asphalt prices and stochastic market conditions like peak whale oil along with demand destruction examples imply we are at peak they don't prove it.
Often on this forum I see that people don't put all the lines of evidence together in one place WT work is just part of the equation. A host of other factors effect overall world oil production and just as important demand.
In the US we probably could win a civil case on peak oil but not a criminal one :)
I'm not sure we ever will collect enough evidence for a criminal conviction till its too late but that does not mean we should not continue to build a better case for peak oil.
As a aside fact that HL does correctly show total production even if post peak numbers are needed for accuracy shows the method has intrinsic merit.
The loss or more correctly spread of its predictive power is simply a factor of noise in the data.
Or at least thats my opinion :)
Although I fall into the doomer camp...
But I didn't think you were a Doomer. I thought you were a realist. I consider myself a realist as well.
Robert...you think we can have some power to persuade people if we have a sound arguement and sound data concerning PO.
I'm afraid you are NOT a Realist.
It will take more than that.
Robert...you think we can have some power to persuade people if we have a sound arguement and sound data concerning PO.
I think our odds are better. Don't you?
I'm afraid you are NOT a Realist. It will take more than that.
Believe me, I recognize that we probably won't do anything about it. After all, we aren't addressing Global Warming. But I haven't given up. We will have no chance of success without sound arguments and defensible data.
"After all, we aren't addressing Global Warming. But I haven't given up."
Who's we? Did you just visit a guy with a solar house?
I know you are the big realist Robert, but this is where I am getting to be oh so over Peak Oil. It separates itself from the mainstream by selectively ignoring actions in the mainstream ... and in the sub-culture, the obscure value-network, thus formed, that selection becomes "realist."
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/16496776.htm
Come on now, all together ... "We aren't doing anything about peak oil!"
Never mind news that "more than 90 percent of the 949 Delaware residents responding to the survey supported an offshore wind option"
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/16496776.htm
... so inconvenient.
Who's we? Did you just visit a guy with a solar house?
The collective we. The country. Some individuals are preparing. But if society doesn't prepare, those individuals will overrun with hungry people who didn't prepare.
Never mind news that "more than 90 percent of the 949 Delaware residents responding to the survey supported an offshore wind option"
There is a difference between supporting something and doing something about it. I bet you would also find a high level of support for solar panels on every house, an end to Middle East oil purchases, and a manned mission to Mars. That is until reality intrudes.
Sometimes this board makes me feel like I have dueling personalities. I seem to have to defend both sides of the argument.
Funny after my lobotomy I did not have a problem with this :)
I think the biggest problem is you feel that the only route that will convince people of peak oil is to have a rigorous case for it.
I disagree. I agree we should work to have a rigorous case both by determining the error term for HL through the WHOLE curve and accounting for the quality of data based on decades of production.
If you just go back to the 70 and show the error your not correct in your error anaylsis since production numbers from mature fields are of higher value than the earlier results. From what I've seen if you have numbers post peak HL seems to be very accurate in predicting URR.
Which is what it actually does not peak production.
Knowing that HL has a varience of say +/- 10 years at 30% URR is important
and but you need to show how it seems to get almost a perfect score in predicting URR post peak.
Since we can estimate URR other ways we can actually take the URR and pre peak estimates from HL and narrow down the likely date of peak.
Basically even though we have noisy data sets if we can perform independent analysis of these data sets that calculate the same number i.e URR we can actually have a error term less than those in each data set.
This trick is common.
What tools do we have.
1.) Geology based reserve estimates ( real field analysis)
2.) Historical regional production rates ( HL )
3.) Field by field production estimates ( counting wells/flow rates)
Maybe more ?
All of these can be be used to independently calculate URR I believe.
Although I think 1and 3 have to be used together to get a URR.
Thus HL despite its variance is a valuable method esp when used in conjunction with other approaches. I think its critical myself.
Robert
Also consider that the price of Asphalt has skyrocketed why ?
We are pumping more oil now than ever we should be up to our ears in asphalt. They should be giving it away.
Consider this consider HL consider the old giant field issue consider the sour heavy issue WT export land model etc etc. Put it all together then present a argument for peak oil. In isolation you can argue against one but together the sum of the arguments are pretty convincing.
HL is a important piece warts and all I've never seen anyone put together the entire case for peak oil being basically now. Of course other factors will indeed cause a smeared peak at the global level but unless something happens once you look at all the factors we are now working not on the date of peak oil but on what the decline rate post peak will look like.
So far undulating plateau seems to be the case but how long will this last ? The data seems to indicate at least 2010 maybe 2015 but I'd like to know what the error ranges are going forward. Assuming peaks at various years.
The reason is that once we are really say 4mbd below reasonable demand we can assume that political crisis is very possible.
Knowing the probability of when the post peak decline will finally "bite"
is useful at the individual level. I don't want to be driving through Compton when gas hits 6 bucks a gallon. On the same hand I see no reason to run off into the woods anytime soon not that thats the approach I would take. I'm just mentioning that trying to present a rigours case is valuable for anyone that wants to consider peak oil as they make decisions in their life.
Put it this way if WT says peak oil is now I agree with him and begin to prepare for it based on the indicators.
When you call peak I'll be packing my car and heading for my hideout :)
The California law doesn't count as "society" responding or preparing? And that move being picked up by national politicians is not, exaclty, "society" responding yet again?
I think a 90% survey is again, exactly, a measure of "society" responding.
I get that. And I think it's because the board has developed this very specific sub-culture, in which "we" are apart (and clued in) while "they" in "society" are still back there in "denial." Nevermind that vast majorities of them support wind, or states of them pass laws ...
The California law doesn't count as "society" responding or preparing?
I have written before that I think the California law was a step in the right direction. But before claiming victory there, let's wait and see if the voters continue to support it when their energy prices start to climb.
And I think it's because the board has developed this very specific sub-culture, in which "we" are apart (and clued in) while "they" in "society" are still back there in "denial." Nevermind that vast majorities of them support wind, or states of them pass laws ...
Again, voters will "support" a lot of things, until they figure out how it is going to affect their pocket book. Why did Prop 87 fail in California? Because they weren't sure how high their gas prices were going to go. They voted according to their pocket book.
And I do think that in general we on this board do "get it" and the general public does not. Look at the support for ethanol. But this is a reason to educate the public, which is my goal. Where we go wrong is when we think we are better or superior to everyone else.
Well I might not be superior to a lot of people but I am fatter that should count for something right ?
It may be redundant, but I'll try one more time. When we say things that are factually false ("After all, we aren't addressing Global Warming.") then we are not demonstrating our understanding. We are demonstrating out ability to pick and choose from the facts around us, our ability to fool ourselves.
Shifting from "we" to a bizarre meaning of "society" which does not include society's own laws and beliefs is a simple demonstration of that. Moving even further afield, to criticize "voters" and "the general public" again demonstrates how important it is to set yourself apart from "them."
Never mind that mainstream articles in Car and Driver or Consumer Reports have drawn similar conclusions.
Human societies mobilize with messy and imperfect responses, but that is their nature. We are not an ant colony. And while TOD is part of that mess, and aids that response, it does not stand apart. It should be real enough (and rational enough) to see the responses, the parallel responses going on around it.
When we say things that are factually false ("After all, we aren't addressing Global Warming.") then we are not demonstrating our understanding. We are demonstrating out ability to pick and choose from the facts around us, our ability to fool ourselves.
Show me where anything that we have actually done has either slowed or reversed the CO2 buildup. That would be addressing Global Warming. We are taking baby steps, but not the kinds of steps we need to be taking. The impact so far, and for as far as I can see at this point, will not be measurable with respect to atmospheric CO2.
Never mind that mainstream articles in Car and Driver or Consumer Reports have drawn similar conclusions.
The exception is not the rule. How many policy makers are stating these conclusions? Has Car and Driver affected any policy changes? Do you know why? Because as I said, the public (Note: Public does not mean every single person) doesn't get it. They think it's a good idea, so their representatives pander to them.
I'm sure you are bright enough to notice for yourself each time [you] move the goalposts.
Let me explain why I think the original statement is the important one. When someone says "After all, we aren't addressing Global Warming" it is left for the reader (at least anyone with passing knowledge of current affairs) to guess what they really mean. Obviously it is not factually true that no one knows, no one has a plan, no one has taken action ... so what does that leave?
I propose that if your original intent was to say something like "We aren't addressing global warming with the alacrity I believe necessary" then you should have done so. If you don't do that, I worry that you are trying to blur the image, that you are trying to take the reader's eye off what is in fact a succession of logical steps.
That's a different argument Robert, and probably not one I would have risen to ... other than perhaps to note that you make a familiar, but strange, argument that we must run before we walk.
federal law trumps state law.
i do expect that the feds once the news is obvious will pass laws to take from those who have prepared(and obvious about it) so they can please whose who did not.
I don't think "sound data" will make any difference. Yergin and CERA and the like will just make up their own data, and the media will report it as fact.
I'm inclined to agree. Science is not the way to persuade either the media or the public. At least in the U.S. We're idiots when it comes to science.
I don't think it was science or data that led to the growing acceptance of global warming. It was mostly political factors, and a large dollop of luck.
Namely, Bush screwing up so bad that his views on everything became suspect. Al Gore's movie (which got more respect than it may have otherwise because of Bush backlash). Jim Hanson (who has been far more "sensationalist" than Deffeyes) speaking out (again, made possible and given credence by anti-Bush sentiment). Hurricane Katrina. And the bizarre weather this winter.
Similarly, peak oil got a lot of respect when prices were spiking. Now that prices are dropping, peak oilers are wacky.
If we have a cold winter next year, a lot people will probably be jumping back on the "global warming is a hoax" bandwagon.
I think you are right as far as that goes. But also the consequences of PO are more significant and immediate than GW. The world seems to be in collective denial about it because it implies such a radical change in our lives. The producing countries, the oil companies, the MSM, the business as usual people are telling people that we have nothing to worry about and most people are fine with that.
Mitigation before the crisis is undisputable just puts off really coming to grips with it. Until the prices go up again we are not going to regain traction. The crisis will hit hard soon enough.
I think people also think Peak Oilers are wacky because of the prevalence of the doomers. We have a liquid fuels crisis but we do not have to have a problem with electricity. There is a lot of fission fuel (not to mention coal) and once people realize that the majority of people are not going to stand by and let civilization slip away.
As if there is a difference!
Yes, I am also a realist. As I said earlier, I have been thrashing this straw (environmental egradation, overpopulation, etc.) for over forty years and this is what makes me a doomer. I have examined every facet of the argument and have come to the conclusion that there is just no way humanity can avoid a catastrophic collapse in this half of the twenty-first century. I always thought that the collapse would be gradual. That is, it would take perhaps 30 or 40 years to play out. But with the advent of peak oil I now believe it will only take 10 to 20 years to go from 6.6 to 7 billion people down to less than 2 billion people.
The difference between a realistic doomer and a non-realistic believer that technology, or god, or something else will save us is...is...well hell, I really don't know but I suppose it would have something to do with being able to see the big picture.
But I do think that I am a realist. Only a non-realists would believe we could continue this massive destruction of our environment for more than another half century.
Ron Patterson
You know...I think we are ALL Realists...we just all have different senses of Reality.
I cannot agree that everyone is a realist.
Two people, a realist and a non-realist look at a 10,000 year graph of the earth's human population. They see that as the graph nears the right hand edge, it turns and goes almost straight up.
Now both the realist and the non-realist know that this cannot continue forever. But the realist realizes that nature will correct the problem herself. The non-realist believes that just as we figured out a way to prolong lives with modern medicine, and figured out how to produce more food with the aid of massive amounts of fossil fuel and the green revolution, we will figure out a painless way to slow and eventually stop this upward spiraling population boom. And that once it is stopped and leveled out at about 10 billion or so, we will figure out a way to end hunger, cure all major diseases and find world peace.
Well, perhaps I am exaggerating a bit there with world peace, but you get the idea. The point is, the realist lives in the real world, the non-realist lives in a make believe world.
Now please do not tell me that there are no people who live in this make believe world. We are not all realists!
Ron Patterson
It was a bit of a joke...we all build our own realities in which we deal with the world. Your "non-realist" above...he might think himself a "realist" while others do not.
It is a matter of PERSPECTIVE.
Ron, after watching your posts thru 2003, 2004 and 2006 i can safely say that i don't know anyone that can find statistics as fast and good as yourself. But OTOH, u have an uncanny ability of cherry picking your data and getting the future wrong.
If memory serves we well, u were wrong on your call of a major stock market crash befalling us around 2003. You were wrong about Peak Oil being upon us in 2003. You were wrong about the ability of gas and oil prices to come back down after the 21-day Iraq2 war was over. And u are wrong about population.
You talk about the right hand side of the pop'n graph going up endlessly. But pop'n experts are all projecting a peak in 2050 ... and not becuz of Peak Oil, Energy prod'n per capita or any of the other silly stuff u read at die-off sites. Fertility rates are adapting to natural realities and societal maturation ... not cuz our genes know "the end is nigh".
Your leap-of-faith that a 2 billion global population is inevitable by 2025 is ridiculous and baseless. As i have described over the last few days, your and Duncan's assuptions of per capita energy production are flawed. While it was supposed to be down 7% by Y2k as per Duncan's Olduvai theory, it has in fact increased and is poised for continual increase with the new population peak in 2050.
Your hunch on this dieoff topic does not give merit to the renewed movement to nuclear power generation as i see it. The movement to an agrarian society and the limtitations that imposes is likewise not well thought out.
A realist sees the future objectively and is not biased by preconditioned values. The fact that this future is not pleasant should not enter into the scenario building, objective being the key. In your case, the scenario building is far too accelerated (but typical of amateur futurists) and gives far too much credit to societies' inability to adapt and substitute. Look at your previous predictions and reflect on why your forecasts go awry. It will help u use your excellent research techniques towards a better end.
Freddy, you are a chronic and habitual liar. I never made any such prediction about a stock market crash and I never predicted Peak Oil would be upon us in 2003.
I haven’t a clue as to what the hell you are talking about. I don’t ever remember tying oil prices to any 21 day war. Hell, I did not even know there was a 21 day war. What war was that?
There is no such thing as a pop’n expert! How on earth could anyone know, over 40 years in advance, that the population would peak in 2050? That is totally absurd.
And you are a stupid ass. Of course my 2 billion guess is only a guess. I have stated over and over that I have no idea how far the population will fall, I only know that it will fall. It may be 500 million or it may be 3 billion. But the idea that the earth can support its current population of 6.5 billion for more than two more decades is absurd. You Freddy, simply haven’t a clue as to what is happening in this world. Listen to Lester Brown and get a clue:
http://big-picture.tv/index.php?id=62&cat=&a=147
You should talk. No one has more biased and subjective ideas concerning the future as you.
I have made no such predictions as you say. You are a goddamn liar and everyone on this list knows that.
Ron Patterson
Even my pet snail knows that!
oh great, just what TOD soapbox needed, another asshole with an agenda.
FH: If memory serves we well, u were wrong on your call of a major stock market crash befalling us around 2003. You were wrong about Peak Oil being upon us in 2003.
RP: Freddy, you are a chronic and habitual liar. I never made any such prediction about a stock market crash and I never predicted Peak Oil would be upon us in 2003.
Sorry Ron, but the WWWeb's search engines say otherwise. I don't know why u couldn't address my comments w/o being obnoxious. What is it that causes u to reply to everyone's posts with your typical outbursts? Perhaps to prevent them from questioning u in fear of being the recipient of one of your infamous tirades?
Anyway, your attack and ad homimens force me to defend my preamble, so let's get on with it. I feel it is unethical to take comments from another forum to use against someone, but the tone of your parsed response requires it in this instance. You could have made a general denial but chose to be vindictive instead.
From the Yahoo EnergyResources forum. Here goes:
Feb 26 2003: In other words, our economy will go in the trash bin, not when the lack of fuel puts it there, but when the word of the impending fuel crisis gets out. The stock market crash and the
loss of capital and capitalization will cause a severe depression far worse than the depression of the 1930s.
June 11 2003: It has nothing to do with your data but I hate the Continental term “bourse”. What’s wrong with the good old American term “Stock Market”? Bourse is a French word meaning “purse” and somehow the connection just does not seem appropriate. Anyway, I agree with you that we are due for a stock market crash, perhaps as early as this month. But I would not be so bold as to predict it that soon. I would guess it would happen before next summer however, likely sooner than that.
Feb 5 2004: Peak oil will arrive in less than a decade. The effects of that will be devastating. The world will be facing an ever shrinking economy instead of an ever growing one. The effects of this will be unpredictable but we do know people buy stocks expecting growth. Therefore this will, among other things, bring on the mother of all stock market crashes.
Well, Spring 2004 came and went. No global stock market crash, eh Ron!
And on Peak Oil:
Aug 23 2003: I firmly believe however that peak extraction can come no later than 2005 and think it likely that 2004 will be the date. All that depends on the stability of extraction in Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria and the biggest source of all, Saudi Arabia.
I have great memories of that one. Every month u called a peak. Every next month i gave u the new IEA higher figures. Eat your heart out, eh!
Back to the search engines...
.
FH: You were wrong about the ability of gas and oil prices to come back down after the 21-day Iraq2 war was over. And u are wrong about population.
RP: I haven’t a clue as to what the hell you are talking about. I don’t ever remember tying oil prices to any 21 day war. Hell, I did not even know there was a 21 day war. What war was that?
Ron Patterson at YahooEnergyResources:
March 4 2003: No, prices will not be back to “norms” in May. Crude prices will drop back to $30 or somewhere around there but gas prices are likely to stay above $5.00 all summer. But I find it strange that you believe this entire price jump is due to politics, war and withholding of production by larger players.
Well ron, oil and gas prices did collapse. On Day 21. Final day of the war.
Back to those search engines...
Bring me up to date. Was there a war in Africa or someplace off the beaten track in 2003 that was over in 21 days? I was so distracted by the beginning of the multiyear war in Iraq that I must have missed the 21 day war.
Speaking of assholes with agendas, Freddy, I am more convinced than ever that your presence on this forum is only intended to hook hits on your web-site, for which I suspect you collect a remittance. FYI I did take a look at your site, saw nothing of value, and will not return.
RP: I have made no such predictions as you say. You are a goddamn liar and everyone on this list knows that.
Ron Patterson
For this one, i'll throw in a bonus quote. I remember being angry at YER posters and their "glee" that SARS was gaining momentum in many countries. For days there were posts guessing at how many would perish in this start of the long awaited DIEOFF. 1 million, 2 million, 5 million 10 million...
And each new day was considered "good news".
About three of us said u guyz were idiots. We said less than 10,000 would die 'cuz WHO was on top of it. We were swore at and ridiculed. But we were vindicated...
Yes Ron, u were one of the ringleaders in those glory days of SARS.
I remember this one at YahooEnergyResources:
April 30 2003: Freddy, studying the situation in China is ALREADY out of control. (snip) And today 13 people in China were arrested for spreading rumors on the internet. They were trying to get the word out that they are at least 10,000 cases of SARS in China. A very conservative estimate in my opinion. It seems that the authorities in China are still working very hard to suppress the truth. In my opinion China has already gone past the point of no return. That is SARS is already too widespread throughout the country to stop. It will simply have to run its course, first throughout China then though the world.
Ron Patterson, North Alabama
This one says it all, ron...
To the others on the forum, i apologize sincerely for using non-TOD archives to make a point. It makes me sick to do it. But ron has used foul language and cast question on my character, honesty and integrity in almost every post.
He has made other rude comments above, we probabley all agree that enuf is enuf already. Point has been made...
You stupid ass. I predicted that there would (will) be a stock market crash when the world realizes that we art truly at or past the peak point. And I stand by that prediction. And so far 2005 is the peak. No one believes that however. But we are at the peak! Call me on that one in five years you goon.
And there was no 21 day war anywhere in the world anytime! Good you are such an idiot!
You are a blooming idiot on top of being a liar.
Ron Patterson
Ron Patterson, June 11 2003: What’s wrong with the good old American term “Stock Market”? Anyway, I agree with you that we are due for a stock market crash, perhaps as early as this month. But I would not be so bold as to predict it that soon. I would guess it would happen before next summer however, likely sooner than that.
Could you post the links to the Yahoo forum pls?
>Well, perhaps I am exaggerating a bit there with world peace, but you get the idea. The point is, the realist lives in the real world, the non-realist lives in a make believe world.
The Realist in me believes that world peace is by far much easier to achive then overshoot. Although overshoot will prevent world peace from ever occuring.
>But the realist realizes that nature will correct the problem herself.
The lastest odds from Las Vegas are in favor of Nature. The payout on humanity solving its problems before nature solves them for us is mere 2.2 Trillion to one. Yet many see this a good bet.
b3NDZ3La -- see my post below.
We can discuss preparations all we want.
You are free to skip or skim posts all you want to.
You are especially free to bring up topics on an open thread like this.
My preparations do not consist of posting online quite so much -- although there is certainly a place for contributions made by posting online.
Read what you need to, and post what you need to, friend!
I'm very glad that RR, WT and others are pondering technical questions about peak oil. A more precise awareness of the dates and characteractistics of depletion is very important for planners in government and industry. There should be whole legions of scientists and researchers at work on the task.
However, for me and the public at large, this level of detail is irrelevant. The general energy picture is available. Our job is to come to terms with it, politically, culturally, personally.
Besides there is the intrinsic uncertainty surrounding predictions - the lack of good data and the random events that would swamp the geology for a while (e.g. war in Iran).
So for the general public, why be obsessed with a difficult question when there is so much else to do that is obvious, undisputed and rewarding?
Nonetheless, hooray for the wonks! I hope you will soon get the recognition you deserve.
Hi Robert,
"Memmel above understood it better than anyone so far."
Just to say...I sincerely, 100% would like to gain clarity of your position (previous and current). I've asked the questions above previously, not directly to you and WT, though. I like the ones I posted above, and hope you both will respond.
Your point is well made and well taken.
However, I find it easy to select what posts I will read and ponder, and then to skim the rest.
And as this is an open thread, I find it hard to criticise folks for posting careful discussion about topics perticularly relevant to peak oil.
Some folks might find the RR -- WT discussion to just touch on the very questions they've been mulling over. Others may prefer to skim or skip some posts because they've had enough of that for now.
But finally, I do think we need more emphasis on making change. However, for me "making change" and "making preparations" has meant getting involved in some grassroots local action where I live.
I am doing some very, very specific things in terms of lifestyle, helping to create awareness of the problem and preparations needed, and working on specific projects in my city and county to make those changes happen.
It is terribly frustrating to see so many people muddling along without awareness of PO or GW.
Sometimes the discussion of HL and Saudi reserves is tiresome. But you know what? I need to realise that every post is not for me, but the discussion involved may be just what someone else needed at that place and time.
Want more discussions of preparations? Ask speciic questions and list specific actions you are taking, or make suggestions. Keep at it. Sooner or later the discussion on preparations will take off and be more a regular part of the TOD exchanges.
I see the differences between RR and WT as illustrating the differences between the ways a company professional and an entrepreneur succeed. The professional’s main coin is credibility and the entrepreneur’s is astute decisions—this is similar to the differences in priorities between middle and senior management. Since Peak Oil will occur in my lifetime, I value entrepreneurial astuteness more than what others think of me today. I particularly admire the way WT helps me keep my eye on critical issues. If his predictions are premature, it means I have more time to plan for the transition. I read RR for information; WT for planning.
Ric Williams
Good observations, Ric!
I read both WT and RR for info and analysis as I am able to do so.
Interesting point about how our life experiences, expertise, particular training and work influence our way of evaluating PO.
Myself, I figure we are all just beggars trying to tell each other where we found bread or water so that we can all better prepare for where ever our future journeys take us.
I am aware of our absolute vulnerability. Amidst all of our superb information-gathering, analysis, and preparation we can be struck down or stymied by the darndest unexpected twist of fate.
This is no argument against careful planning and preparation. Failure to plan and prepare for the future will almost certainly result in hardship -- in most cases.
But ultimately, we are huddling around the campfire swapping information and stories and the like.
OPEC nations often act in concert to maintain the price of oil. They as a group have a larger role as the swing producer than Saudia Arabia could acting alone.
Here is a Hubbert Linearization of OPEC producers using data up to 2005
It shows OPEC's estimated URR at ~930 Gbb with OPEC at ~46 % of URR at the end of 2005. Based on this it would appear that OPEC's role as a swing producer is about to end.
Now if we did this a few years ago to 2002, before OPEC ramped up production, using data only the data available at that time we would find a lower URR of ~760 Gbb, with OPEC at ~50%.
Surely this indicates OPEC was about to go into a permanent decline. Instead production increased, creating a 'dogleg up' which some believe are only outliers.
Before 2002 there were a number of years of economic turmoil: the recessions in some asian countries caused by currency crisis, the dot-com crash and following recession. If we go back before these years to 1997 and redo the HL using only the data available then we get the following.
This time the URR is ~1170 with OPEC at ~29%. (currently about 35%) In this case the data from 2004-2005 fit the line and the years where production was cut in an attempt to maintain prices appear to be the outliers.
Notice the differnce between the estimated URR's from 1997 and 2002 of over 400 Gbb. This is more than half of the 2002 estimate and enough to last over 12 years at current world rates of consumption. Or more relevent to the typical discussions at TOD enough to push world peak oil back 6 years.
As OPEC currently produces ~40% of the worlds oil it would take roughly 30 years at current rates of production for OPEC to produce the equivalent of the noise in the URR estimate from Hubbert Linearization. The noise could shift OPECs's peak by 10 - 15 years.
This is just another example of how unreliable Hubbert Linearization can be at estimating the URR of oil exporting countries when their production is more often affected by outside events than by geology.
There are articles in the archive at TOD by Stuart Staniford that point out the uncertainties of various curve fitting approaches -- including Hubbert's.
And your post is more of the same vein.
I can't see anywhere that Westexas has answered those concerns. I can't see anywhere that his mathematical sophistication has improved in the last few months.
Westexas may be right that peak has past. But neither he nor Deffeyes have given the scientific community anything like the rigorous analysis necessary to bring an informed audience onside.
Short answer is he hasn't. Long answer is unless we get reliable data we will never know. You will never get the data until KSA and other oil producers open up. So if your planning on proving peak oil to get them to open up you have a problem.
Before that we have problems all over on data reporting even in the US.
I don't know where this misguided concept that we had to rigorously prove peak oil before we do something came from at best we might have better numbers only after a concerted effort is made to force the national oil companies to produce them.
Doing our best on verifying peak oil is good science but if your waiting for it to be solid then I guess we will end up in the same spot we are in with global warming. By the time governments really respond to GW it will be way too late to stop it. Same for peak oil.
I'm as interested as anyone in better numbers but requiring them before you act is a waste. It won't happen. Only two things are possible we convince people that peak oil is real and has a chance of being now with the data we have today and they force the issue and we get real data.
Or it becomes blatantly obvious.
The chance of getting good data to prove peak then convincing people is zero unless we want to fund a private espionage trip to KSA.
I'm not just trying to make a joke here. Right now the only thing that would change the situation is if someone walked out of KSA with a mountain of credible information that exposed the current status of their oil industry. I don't think Simmons will be invited back.
( thats a real joke :)
It is obvious that there are inherent errors in any mathematical modeling technique. However, as I noted, the technique was basically 100% accurate in predicting the cumulative post-peak production for the Lower 48 and Russia.
I have also pointed out that the case histories that I have used account for about 40% of all oil produced to date.
As I said the other day, if you can provide us with case histories of oil production on other planets, perhaps we can expand our data base.
I have ten articles on the Energy Bulletin addressing virtually every aspect of the Peak Oil debate. I asked you a question the other day. Can you provide me with a list of countries showing rising production when their top ten oil fields are all declining? If you can't, or if you are too damn lazy to do some research on your own, I suggest that you shut up.
You know why we are doomed? I have laid out case history after case history. The three principal predictions that Deffeyes and I made are--so far--supported by the production data. And we see this almost hysterical response, with constant escalating attacks.
This is a peak oil website. Imagine the denial in the population as whole. I don't have to imagine. The Texas State Geologist, arguing against the HL method, asserted that with better technology we can substantially increase Texas oil production, or perhaps even equal our peak production. This is after 34 years of almost constant decline (we went up one year).
If there's one lesson I've learned, it is that most people are just not big-picture thinkers.
"Denial" is an interesting word.
But I'm not sure anymore that this is an appropriate way to view the underlying mechanisms.
It's more like their brains are not programmed to receive the message. The message contradicts all the established and "proven" models in their head about how the world works.
One model says:
Another model says:
Yet a third model correctly says:
Now you (we) come along and say all those rock solid models are wrong. So the listener has to make a choice. Accept your (our) message and watch all the facades of civilization come crumbling down in his/her head or reject your message? Live in bliss and label you (us) as a Chicken Little lunatic from planet Doomer or start crying?
Often the more gratifying choice is to ignore the message.
It's not "denial", but more so a case of inadmissible evidence. The jury does not even get to hear it.
Strike that and let me rephrase.
The argument that Westexas and RR are having is not so much about what the final verdict is but rather about the admissibility of certain kinds of evidence.
--Is anecdotal evidence probative of the idea that we are at or Past Peak, or must the evidence be of a much more rigorous and unassailable nature?
Another place where we as a society argue about when certain kinds of evidence is admissible is in a trial by jury.
LAwyers are not allowed to present anything they want to the jury.
They are only allowed to present "admissible" evidence (for example, not "hearsay evidence").
Even when someone is on trial for murder (on trial for their life), we as a society are much more lax than those here who demand "rigorous" analysis and evidence that is beyond the shadow of doubt.
... from http://www.answers.com/topic/probative
There is no one true way to present a case to a jury.
A little detail here.
Another piece of coincidental detail there.
And after a dozen or so details are presented, a picture begins to emerge. No one piece of evidence is rock solid by itself. But when you add them up you find you have a wall of evidence to back up your case.
Even in a murder trial, the burden of proof is that which crosses just beyond "reasonable" doubt, not that which crosses beyond uber-rigorous critique.
In the case of Peak Oil no one is yet on trial for murder.
I think Westexas presents admissible evidence.
Some here demand that each piece of evidence by itself should be one that can withstand all manner of cross examination.
The real problem though is that most of your jury persons are asleep. They are not able in that state to receive any message, let alone weigh it for probative value.
"Where does my gasoline come from? Who cares? It comes. Did you see the latest about Oil CEO and Paris Hilton? They say HE was wearing lipstick and ..." --->
Hi Jeffrey,
Thanks for being here. You write:
"And we see this almost hysterical response, with constant escalating attacks."
I'm attempting to gain some clarity on what Robert's criteria is for predicting peak, announcing peak, and how to describe the role of "missing data" (does it matter, if so, how?), along with "Do we have a "theory problem" or only a "missing data" problem?", etc.
If you could possibly look at the list of questions I posted for Robert, above, and add any comments or expansions (and/or answers of your own), I'd appreciate it.
"I have laid out case history after case history. The three principal predictions that Deffeyes and I made are--so far--supported by the production data."
I'd really like to come up with a way to figure out if there's a gap, somehow...if there's something that would bridge the gap between case histories and an argument that says "Okay, we know X." Is there another way to answer the example you give below (Texas state geologist) ? (Just trying to put something out...)
I hesitate to bring this up, but is anyone beginning to wonder where Robert is really coming from?
Ah yes, the old wolf in sheep's clothing angle. I get that a lot, generally from people who just don't have an answer to the points I raise. So they question the motives. I used to get that even when I was arguing against Creationists, and I would tell a fellow evolutionist that a particular argument was not very sound. They immediately get suspicious and question motives, because it is not so easy to take a step back from preconceived notions and evaluate your bases.
Thank You !!
But I don't agree with your conclusion.
It shows that the HL method is correct simply that it has a error range.
Also this range narrows over time as more oil is produced. You need to do the above with Texas post peak showing the HL method stabilizing on the real URR. I happend to agree that its predictive power in isolation has a large error range but it final value lies within its error range.
Its just the way HL works in the real world. I'd love to see HL error analysis across a number of regions that have peaked to get a understanding of how the error changes over time. I guess I did not stress the need for following the error analysis through on a region well past peak. The point is I think we can easily predict the change in confidence intervals for HL regardless of the region being studied. Also the time scale cannot be dismissed since decades of production numbers are better than shorter time scales since this makes the production rate less sensitive to the 2-10 year scale that physical extraction works under.
The fact that several decades of production have passed since 1970 bolsters HL over simple numerical error analysis.
That may be garbled but the point is their is a physical rate at which we can drill wells on the order of several years to a decade underlying the geologic factors and they are within the same order of magnitude.
Thus you need say 20-30 years of numbers but once you have them the confidence is higher than the error from earlier estimates would suggest.
Its not linear :)
Political events although they effect the analysis are 1/f or spike noise.
Fourier analysis or band pass filters can be used to remove 1/f stuff.
In any case you need to squash the political effect to a average before doing HL. Russia's dual peak is a perfect example you need to smooth then apply HL.
Next of course you need to include more variables in the analysis to account for external effects. The North Sea for example was basically pumped flat out so its a "pure" HL region.
Finally of course the giant field effect cannot be discounted and its not weighted correctly in regional HL analysis.
Your right to point out the variance and its in the data but on the same hand its easy to add other factors to bolster the argument. WT always mentions HL plus the Giant field effect in his posts never HL alone.
In fact its difficult to find a WT post without the word Ghawar in it :)
So yes we need to get these errors done but don't jump to conclusions.
In this case I believe you made a mistake.
Kudo's Memmel.
It seems obvious to me as a non-techie that pointing out (potential) errors in a mathematical method or model, without simultaneously providing its error range, can lead to strange and faulty conclusions. From what I understand, it's very clear to those that use HL that these effects are inherent in the model.
It would be good to let Khebab, the specialist, shine his light on this.
One correction. The only real OPEC swing producer of consequence was Saudi Arabia.
As you implied, the more data we have, the more accurate the HL projection is, so I think that your 2005 plot looks reasonable, and as you noted, OPEC production has been trending down of late.
Thanks again for your support.
Of course your going to see it that way. As Robert's been pointing out you see everything as supporting your case, any other data or possible interpretations are ignored.
Thanks again for your support.
Your welcome.
What do you expect me to say when I make some predictions and the production data are supporting my predictions?
I was wrong?
It's a mistake?
The Lower 48 and Texas have not declined, as Hubbert predicted, for more than three decades?
The North Sea is not declining as predicted by the HL model?
Mexico is not declining as predicted by the HL model?
All 14 of the fields that are, or were, producing one mbpd or more are not in decline or crashing?
The Lower 48 and Russian post-peak cumulative production numbers were not essentially exactly what the HL model predicted, using only data up to the 50% point to construct the models?
Saudi crude production is not declining as I predicted?
World crude oil production is not declining as Deffeyes predicted?
Exports by the top three net exporters are not declining as I predicted?
Exactly what do you expect me to do and say that would ease your pain--that I was wrong, and we can have an infinite growth rate against a finite resource base?
Um...WT...quit banging your head on the wall...I can hear you all they way down here in snow-covered KC, MO.
so that's what was causing the thumping noise..
Your not wrong but HL has a nasty error term pre peak basically it start with a large error and only converges POST PEAK. Sorry for the caps their not for you but to emphasize that HL predicts total URR and does a fine job of it once a region passes peak. Before peak you have smaller and smaller errors but you do have a error range.
Nothing wrong with that all analysis have error ranges some from the data some from the factors included in the model. The largest is of course caused by factors not included in the model. HL is a great tool and useful even with its error ranges which I hope we will have in detail soon since they are useful in and of themselves.
You have combined HL and Gaint Field Effect and Export Land in your model and its pretty good.
I've added Asphalt prices under the assumption that at continued production if their is plenty of oil asphalt prices would be low.
Instead for a host for reasons they have increased dramatically lately.
The naive assumption that since we are producing the most oil we have ever produced we should have the largest asphalt supply ever therefore the lowest prices for asphalt since its market does not increase dramatically.
This is not the case something has happened in the last few years that has caused a dramatic rise in asphalt prices.
My answer is that we have moved to more sophisticated processes in refineries resulting in lower yields of asphalt per barrel than in the past. This is going into increased gasoline and fuel production.
This is why we don't have 200 bl oil now.
Anyway we have to look at all factors its the total that matters.
>It shows OPEC's estimated URR at ~930 Gbb with OPEC at ~46 % of URR at the end of 2005. Based on this it would appear that OPEC's role as a swing producer is about to end.
FWIW: One issue is that OPEC production has largely been maintaned using water injection along with advance recovery techiques that will likely distort past and forward production. Its likely that in the future production will fall much steeper since flow rates can be sustained far above a natural extraction curve. Your model should reflect extraction of a water injected field. Perhaps some one has data from water injection and adv. recovery wells showing how production diverges from a bell curve.
trivial indeed !
The headlines say oil prices have fallen 15 percent this year. Gas station receipts tell a different story — the cost of filling ’er up has slipped from about $35 to $33. Big deal.
While the article does not explicitly say it, margins for oil companies have slid substantially (oil companies have been recently giving earnings warnings). The reason gas prices haven't fallen much is because the jobbers and retailers have been very slow to bring them down (admittedly, the oil companies would have kept them high if they could; the market giveth, and the market taketh away). The article primarily discusses the retailer, but doesn't mention the jobber, who is also enjoying fat profit margins right now.
Whats a jobber ?
I assume its companies that actually do the drilling but I think this is the first time the term has been used on the site.
A jobber is a middle man who buys gas and diesel from the terminals, and then sells it to various customers. For example, if the rack price in my town is $0.30/gal cheaper than the price 500 miles away (which does happen), the jobber will fill up his tanker and take fuel there, profiting the difference.
A lot of retailers have direct contracts with oil companies, but a lot don't. The jobbers can sell to those who don't. He is a bit like a mercenary.
Actually, as I recall it watching the prices every day, gasoline prices fell too much in September and October compared to crude oil. The media told us to expect a 10-cent drop due to a switch to winter mix, and it went down 80 cents around Houston, about 30%. Now that the election's over, it's time for Bush's disappointed puppeteers to take back what they temporarily gave away. Ask Goldman Sachs, colonizer of the Treasury Department, about manipulation.
If that's outlandish, consider how far down the list it comes from all the war crimes and impeachable offenses here and in Britain. It tells me a lot about people's values that they jump all over you if you accuse their masters of rigging oil prices or inflation figures or global warming studies, but they just stare at you blankly when you bring up mass surveillance or torture or the civilian death toll in Vietnam, Iraq, or Indonesia (we backed multiple slaughters in that OPEC state and no one even mentions that). Why should tyrants and mass murderers - and the corporations that bankrolled them - stop at fraud?
Some interesting stuff...anyone have any experience with it?
http://www.icynene.com/
I'm not saying this will happen to Kuwait or any other oil exporter, but sometimes the post-depletion investment income doesn't cut it. In the case of Nauru
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru
the resource was phosphate; see under the Economy heading. I'd say countries that grew rich on primary exports also grew their populations and failed to create secondary industries to keep them employed. This is a yet to be written chapter of the Peak Oil saga.
Here is a link to a very good audio lecture on global warming and mitigation by David King who is chief scientific adviser to the UK government and head of the Office of Science and Technology. He is a professor of chemistry at University of Cambridge.
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/835
The first part is a very good overview of the science behind global warming and where we are at. The middle part is UK specific. He finishes off with an update on the discussions going on between governments. If you want to know what policy initiatives are coming your way from your government then take a listen. By the sound of it there is a lot going on.
IMHO he puts too much emphasis on flooding and none on the effects on food production. Also no recognition of PO. Just 2000ppm of CO2 from burning all known hydrocarbons.
There is a lot of discussion about when oil production will peak on TOD, but much less disussion about natural gas.
How much is North American natural gas expected to decline in 2007; 2008; 2009? How much natural gas is expected to be available to the US, net of Canadian usage in those years? How much is demand growing for natural gas, considering all of the new ethanol production facilities?
I have not seen anything to indicate that LNG is going to ramp up nearly soon enough - or that there will be enough overseas production to supply everyone's needs.
What are people's guesses as to when we will start seeing some real shortages - when it gets hot this summer? Summer 2008?
Regarding North American natural gas , I should add that the ASPO December 2006 Newsletter shows a graph on page 5 with an estimate of future production. This graph seems to suggest that production will drop by 75% by 2020. Is this reasonable?
Virtually all of Canada's current NG production comes from the WCSB. Presently, it is producing about 17 Bcf/d. Wells producing prior to January 1, 2006 are estimated to produce only 9 Bcf/d by December 31, 2008. While the National Energy Board reports a nominal annual decline rate of 17%, the longer term rate is closer to 20%. That's a pretty steep decline rate.
Additionally, well peak production has fallen from 0.6 MMcf/d in 1998 to 0.27 MMcf/d in 2006 with cummulative production dropping from just over 500 MMcf/d to just over 100 MMcf/d for wells starting production in 2006.
In order to maintain production, the WCSB must replace 3.6 Bcf/d each year. Given the steep downward trend in new well productivity, this requires an exponential growth in new well development which is currently being hampered by lack of equipment, investment, and human resources as well as uncertainty in NG prices.
While the numbers are of course different in the US, the mechanics are similar.
Source: National Energy Board of Canada
And don't forget the tar sands...
I made an error. Production is dropping from 500 MMcf to just over 100 MMcf, not 100 MMcf/d. Sorry for the confusion.
A lot of people think we should be a lot more worried about natural gas than about oil. Natural gas is harder to ship, so we can't just outbid everyone else for it if we run short.
They are trying to build new LNG terminals, but even if they succeed, it's hard to see how they can import enough to meet demand.
I think we are already seeing shortages. There has been a lot of "demand destruction." Prices tripled practically overnight, which forced a lot of industrial users to shut their doors or move overseas.
But there have still been shortages. Last winter, there were rolling blackouts in the Denver area due a cold snap and not enough natural gas. In the northeast a couple of years ago, they reportedly came within a week or so of running out toward the end of winter. We've been lucky; the weather has been mild since the natural gas crunch began (around 2000).
At least in the northeast, if there's a shortage, it will probably be in winter (barring hurricane disruptions). They store natural gas in the summer for use in the winter. If we run short, they can declare a power emergency, and commercial users will shut down. (They do this in exchange for lower rates. It's happened a lot during the summer, but so far, not during the winter.)
Prices tripled practically overnight, which forced a lot of industrial users to shut their doors or move overseas.
Yes. Job loss; and not related to Chinese or other 'slave' labor.
I'm one of those people who think the precarious North American natural gas supply situation will be the first energy domino to fall.
Based on weekly storage data, which can pack a lot of statistical noise, I estimate the current NG market to be about 5-7 mcf per day tighter than it was a year ago. The most recent three-week period reported, covering 12/23/06 through 1/12/07, has been extraordinarily warm, yet the withdrawal volume comes in considerably higher than the comparable period in 2005-2006, a decidedly unwintry stretch as well.
2006 2007
+01 -47
-20 -49
-46 -89
---- ---
-65 -185
Given the similar weather, a 120 bcf differential over an 18-day period tells us that the market has tightened. When you stop to consider that some Gulf of Mexico output has been restored since January 2006, the apparent tightness becomes even more remarkable. I think we're seeing a combination of output decline and higher industrial usage. Tar sands extraction activity may be claiming a higher volume of NG these days. In the U.S., ethanol production is definitely having an impact, as is electricity generation.
How much longer will shrinking residential heating demand conceal the output declines? Assuming normal temperatures in North America, we could burn through the temporary surplus in its entirety by June.
And yet, the price is relatively low.
Seeking Alpha had something about natural gas a few days ago.
Before the usa nat'l gas decline comes, we are in a secondary peak that started in 2002 and will peak in 2014. My forecast for the Spring working gas trough is 1600Bcf and will be one of the highest troughs in memory. Summer shortage? Ain't gonna happen.
We have lived with these scare stories since 2003 and they have never come thru cuz they have bad data and often forget to layer in seasonal weather predictions and/or LNG imports. There is also the issue of substitution; many power plants (pvt and public) have the ability to fuel switch).
Having said that, Peak Gas in the usa is much more likely and dangerous an issue than Peak Oil. The inability to secure terminal approvals scares me and is accelerating the supply shortfalls in general. Again there will be demand destruction and reverse fuel switching but it will come with the price spikes that we have seen recently.
Again we will have the same idiots forecasting $20, $30 and $40 sustained nat'l gas prices, but they will be wrong for all the same reasons that they were wrong in 2003, 2004 and 2005. Gas prices can be recessionary as much as oil. The correction that we are currently seeing in contract oil prices will happen after the first spikes in gas as the marketplace adjusts.
To Freddy: If the market is about 5-7 bcf/day tighter now than a year before (which you did not dispute), storage inventories should fall to a floor somewhere between 1550 and 1600 bcf by the end of the heating season, assuming no substantial divergence in termperature from the year-earlier period. So we are in rough agreement there. No alarms will go off if withdrawals bottom out within that range. But carry the same tightness another 10 weeks and by mid-June, storage will be back at 2005 levels, close to the 5-year historic average. That's what I meant by burning through the temporary surplus.
To Leanan: Current NG prices are low because the market can't really "see" the tightness. At this time of the year, residential NG use is the principal influence on the market, and it has been substantially lower than normal. I expect NG prices to stay where they are for a while. After the heating season ends, the market will start to "see" the combination of higher industrial demand and output declines. If we continue to have last year's weather, prices should start climbing this summer, with or without hurricanes menacing the Gulf of Mexico energy complex. It should be noted that a price of $7.00/MMBtu is not enough to motivate heroic levels of drilling, according to David Hughes of the Geological Survey of Canada. This year's drilling activity will not prevent Noth American output this year from coming in under 2006 result, notwithstanding Freddy's tales of a secondary peak.--BP--
One of the recurring patterns with oil prices has been this:
1. Prices rise
2. New technologies or techniques are established to profit off the higher prices. In general these options weren't used before the price rise because they weren't cost effective at the lower price.
3. Prices fall
4. Many of the new technologies fail and/or additional investment dries up.
5. Rinse and repeat
Currently the sucker game is biofuels. The cost of distilling the ethanol from feedstock like corn is only cost effective because of the government subsidies. Other technologies that are in the wings like "clean coal" and tar sands will go back into mothballs if oil prices stay down.
We rely on the market to drive alternatives but then we throw in a few solution specific subsidies in for good measure. We need to keep the cost of fossil fuel energy high or at least the supply low with taxes, rationing, whatever.
Conservatives complain that we are hurting the oil industry with some of the recent tax measures coming out of the house. The problem is we are not hurting the oil and other fossil fuel industries enough. Slap an import tax on oil immediately that will drive it up to at least $100 a barrel on a permanent. Also, slap a tax on the use of co2 emissions that is high enough to curtail the use of coal in power plants or make sequestration mandatory. Let's keep that money at home for alternatives and conservation, especially conservation. We need to massively focus on conservation first as that is where the biggest returns are. Besides, much of our expenditures on alternatives have devolved into ill considered subsidies of the corn/ethanol/farm state lobby.
Last year Bush announced we were addicted to oil like that was a big news flash. Part of his solution? Build more refineries and drill in the Gulf and Alaska. We are not just addicted to oil; we are addicted to nonsolutions exacerbated by our love affair with the market.
I fear Shell may be correct, at least on this point:
Not to mention distribute and consume it.
I think most people overlook the cost of infrastructure...and how oil-dependent that cost is.
Necessity is the mother of all replacement. We got a tiny taste when oil went to near $80. Stick around and watch what happens if it goes to $100. Anything above that and people will be putting solar panels on beach umbrellas.
I can see an economist in a discussion about peak oil starting out by saying, "Assume an infrastructure..."
The Netherlands is preparing for rising sea levels and global warming. How?
Floating cities! (PDF)
Re: What Happened to the Oil Boom? by Robert Aronen of Motley Fool
Apparently, attempts to impute rationality to the oil price are more important than acknowledging the irrationality of the short term price trend. To wit:
No kidding! 15 or 20 days of stocks do not indicate abundance, a glut. But, rightly or wrongly, they have short term effects on price based on perceptions of abundance. What planet are you living on, Robert?
This passage is so uninformed that it requires no further comment.
Inventories — these don't matter, remember — are up. Spare capacity and production are up. How does Aronen know this? Because the Saudis and ExxonMobil said so. He mentions Jack #2. 15 billion barrels. His conclusions are not substantiated in any way. He's making all this up as he goes along, just fabricating stuff out of thin air.
God help us, fools like this can't.
Re: Oil Prices:
IMO the market price is always right and it is always wrong. The function of the market is to match a buyer and a seller at some price. In this nanosecond of time the price is right. One nanosecond later and a different buyer and seller need a different price to make a transaction, so the price changes. The "market" knows nothing except buyers and sellers must trade. It does not know or care about PO, inventories, reserves, or whatever. In the instant of the transaction the price is right. It is obvious to me that the price is wrong if the "market" price rises or falls a nanosecond later or several months or a year later. Somebody lost money and somebody gained. It is a zero sum game in commodities. Add in emotion, delusion, manipulation, ignorance and you get volatility. It means nothing to geology and should mean nothing to followers of Peak Oil. When you add the fact that what is being traded are paper barrels of oil as represented by contracts, the whole thing becomes totally ludicrous. And yet the physical product price is set by this system. Go figure. The corn market at the moment is undergoing what crude oil did in 2005 and 2006. The players are moving to where the action is in the grains mostly corn and soybeans. They are dumping the oil to go where the action is. The bins are full of corn. There is no shortage. Yet the price jumps around like it's a crisis. Those clever enough will make a killing and those less clever will lose a lot. So it has always been since the invention of the futures market.
Except that increased volatility in prices is the market signature of peak oil. This is caused by changes in the number of buyers at various price points. On the supply side you see mini-gluts and shortages as the number of buyers and producers change. Market prices of course move erratically as the absolute numbers of buyers and producers changes.
In short the recent drop as just as much a signature of peak oil as the rise. And if we are at peak we will see this again and again with the floor price slowly rising. Your better off looking at the valley price each year not the peak. The time interval seems less than a year so expect to know if the market signature ( large swings ) is valid by the end of next year.
Its looking like two or three spikes a year with a rising floor so far.
Geopolitical tension seems to put as much margin on prices as actual uncertaimty about supply.Case in point in 1987 the Iranians sink the supertanker Bridgeton in the straits of Hormuz and oil shoots up from $15 to $25 in one whole day!
And recently China's chess move like demonstration of missle prowess in shooting down a satellite.Although no oil price spike has happened over this event yet ,the ramifications are more ominous than the sinking of the Bridgeton in "87.The Middle East military theater
is daily becoming more complex and dangerous for the U.S.The large players in the game are shrouded in veils,making it difficult for the common man to see the possibilities clearly.Combinations of trading partners ,such as Russia/Iran and China/Iran,give us evidence of who our true enemies will be when and if we ( or Israel) attack Iran.
Independent thinkers in Washington have spoken up recently and loudly against the "surge" ideology.There is also much chatter about the true intentions of sending an additional carrier battle group to the Gulf.TPTB have willed this additional confrontation ,and we know again the true nature of it's origin.
This might be interesting, except that no such thing ever happened. The Iranians never sank a supertanker in the Straits. On July 24th, 1987, the Bridgeton hit a mine and was damaged, but continued on to Kuwait. That was a Friday. Oil was about $20.50. That day and the following Monday, the price of oil actually dropped. At no point in 1987 did the price of oil move more than $1.45 in a day.
The sinking may well not have happened as I was not near constant network followups on the story.The Iranians were blamed for the act of war.
As for the oil price rise I will stand by my numbers.Here in the oil patch of North Texas oil prices were depressed about this time in history following the oil bust in 1986.I had an oil driller friend that one day was lamenting about the low prices he was receiving for his crude.I just commented to him "not to worry ,that oil can jump $10 in one day".Just a few weeks later it happened,and I boasted to him about the event.The oil patch was invigorated for a short time,time enough for people to again start planning more oil exploration.
Gday. Been lurking silently for a while due to moving from Aberdeen to Perth... but now am set up with a new house and am thinking of energy / environmental improvements I can make to it. I've listed a few at my blog but I'd appreciate any suggestions from you guys.
Cheers,
Mike
http://energyfutura.blogspot.com/
G'day, Mike A,
My local newspaper just ran a story on the Australian drought. The article says it may be the worst drought in a thousand years and that about 4 farmers are committing suicide a day due to bankruptcies and such. This is a sad state of affairs for a noble profession.
Hope things improve for the lot of ya.
Hi Mike,
I know you OZZies are big tinkerers so here's one for you.
I'm building my own too!! Hope you still have some wind over there.
There's plenty here just now (In Scotland)
www.otherpower.com
All about builing your own turbines.
I've got the Magnets, and Coil wire and Hugh's How To book.
Hope to start soon on this one my self.
what is amazing if you frequent www.OtherPower.com or www.fieldlines.com is how much stuff is going on in 3rd world countries. On every list of DIY power setups(solar/wind/Microhydro) ingenious people are doing some incredible things with Low Tech implementations of high tech energy production. Home Made alternator from Permanent Mags, tied into a battery bank, and inverter/charge controllers.
Powering whole villiages etc.
Great stuff happening.
Peace
John
Hi there,
I also have Hugh's book and some magnets! I'm trying to scavenge a hub right now.
Marco. I post as 'Marco' over at otherpower.
Hello TODers,
http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?mode=4&N_ID=65829
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HARARE, ZIMBABWE — The Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) will start bottling and selling water to raise revenues to pay for chemicals to purify its water supply and help relieve debt, according to a January 18 story in The Herald.
The bottled water, Kumakomo Springs, will join a list of 20 other brands being sold in the country, many of which are uncertified, according to the story.
The sales will help ZINWA pay for the 286,600 pounds of aluminum sulphate needed per day to treat its public water. The authority is currently heavily indebted to the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority and Zimphos, a chemical supplier, the article said.
In an earlier WaterTech Online® story, it was reported that any Zimbabwe bottled water dealers selling water below the required standards and those operating without licenses would face prosecution and the "full wrath of the law," according to the nation's Health and Child Welfare Minister. The law was enforced after tests revealed that tap water was better than some bottled waters being sold in stores.
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My guess is [and I hope I am very wrong], is that over time: Mugabe and his cronys will drive the other bottlers out of business, thereby securing a highly profitable monopoly throughout Zimbabwe. Now if you can afford this potable water, it will vastly help protect your family from water-borne diseases. If your family cannot afford this source of safe, clean water-- you will be welcome to help yourself to any sewage-tainted, non-purified, mosquito infested water you can find.
Unless massive foreign aid is forthcoming [not likely until Mugabe and his henchmen are overthrown], to rebuild and refurbish the numerous infrastructure spiderwebs--these water, sewage, and electrical systems will only further decline and shrink into obsolescence except for those enclave areas of the Zimbabwe elites.
Recall from my earlier postings that Mexico is the #2 consumer of bottled water worldwide because most Mexicans don't trust their local water sources. Gee, does that ring a bell?
As Pemex goes postPeak broke, and their spiderwebs start badly fraying, combined with their underground acquifers going empty, plus high deforestation and erosion rates, I sure hope the average Mexican can collect the rainwater during the climate-change induced superhurricanes. But those mosquitos and other parasites are always a problem without pesticides and medicines.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Zim is such a mess, it's just tragic. I was there a few years ago, a very beautiful country and very great people. Just goes to show, humanity doesn't need physical shortages or reasons to go insane, it can just go completely irrational. Maybe that means on the other side, there's an ability to facing a real physical crunch, that a rational and productive solution can be produced.
Bottled water is a huge source of income, a scam really. If you bottle tap water the mark up is more than a 1000 %. That is not illegal, though you have to be careful with labelling. Not surprised Mugabe would try it.
Switzerland and France, for ex, ship bottled water to Saudi, and send purified lake/river/recycled water thru the taps. No one will stop this - we have poor people here living off that income.
Bottled water is also a sneaky way of privatizing water. People may riot for a while when the taps go dry or they have to pay too much - but then you sell them the same stuff, in a bottle with a fancy label, for cash, it becomes a ‘fancy’ consumer good.
The companies that sell it have also managed to instill the idea that ‘cool’ people sip water all day, that it is necessary to drink X amount of ‘pure’ water, that walking around with a water bottle brands you as a mover and shaker, a health conscious person, or a sporty person, someone as pure as the water they ostensibly drink, paid for, hold, put on a desk, etc. They just produce another liquid at the other end....
one article, nothing new:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0205-01.htm
Next:
Pay-Per-Breath!
Whats really sad a lot of technology exists to purify water on a small scale. This tech is not reaching Africa at a price point they can afford.
To me it highlights the need to move to cheap distributed processes in the future centralization does not work in the long run. It is more expensive short term but Africa would be a better place if we had instead invested in personal water purifiers.
Since I like to reply to myself :)
An example of this is moonshine. The moonshiners converted corn grown in remote valleys and wood from the hills for distillation into a EROI postive product moonshine. It was the combination of cheap wood and expensive transport that made it profitable. If modern farmers combined two natural resources to produce ethanol a renewable heat source and renewable growing of the corn then the EROI is positive for ethanol. The central fermentation and distillation approach is what makes it negative or zero if fossil fuel costs and transportation are added.
You actually don't even need cellulose ethanol since the cellulose can be used for distillation for the same total energy budget. One reason I don't think cellulose based ethanol solutions really work since you can readily use it to process starch based ethanol sources once you add in the distillation requirement. At best you can produce cellulose for both ethanol and distillation on marginal land but the benefit is not clear.
I think its better to find a plant that produces a decent amount of starch or oil for the same property. The extra cellulose can be used to upgrade the soil. Simple syngas methods are probably better in the cases that a large region does not have a climate suitable for some sort of starch producing plant but I can't see us not finding or creating a plant that will work in almost all climates.
Thats not to say using food crops or even grasslands for inefficient fuel use is a great idea in the first place. But assuming that at some point in the future we will stabilize at a population that allows a certain amount of land to be set aside for critical or important fuel production it can be done with a positive EROI just as it was 100 years ago.
So conversion of natural resources to high value/energy products locally before transporting them wins in the long run. Thats why for thousands of years long distance trade was mainly in luxury or high value items balanced against transportation costs. Long term I expect us to return living along navigable waterways and in seaports where transport costs are low. Electric rail will of course extend this region but the trend will return to historical demographics.
So yet one more time we see that Africa should move towards local food and fuel production and potable water production. We need to get the tech to them to do this since we will need it ourselves soon.
Am I the only one that finds
a bit ironic?
Seeing how much more destructive coal mining is than oil drilling, and how much more industrially intensive a process CTL is than oil refining.
I was once a computer systems analyst, long, long ago. I had charge of a relatively complex business system, for which I developed about 1,000 pages of documentation prior to sign-off on development.
I presented what I considered to be a very high level overview of the system to the Director of the business unit.
When I was done he went up to the black board and drawing an arrow to the right he said, "As I understand the system, we have some input." Then drawing a spiral next to the arrow, he said, "And then we have some processing." Then drawing another arrow, he said, "And we have some output."
He was happy to know that there was 1,000 pages of documentation and analysis and he happily put a copy on his bookshelf, but I-P-O was all he really wanted to know.
Years later, my CFO would generate reams of financial numbers, and I was happy he did that. But all I wanted to see were the financial statements, and some graphs of key projections. I trusted that he got the details right.
Ethanol, CTL, and a other alternatives initiatives are a bit like this. People are happy with fuzzy statements that give them the feeling the problem will be solved. They assume there is a lot of science and analysis behind the statement, but they don't want to know. All that detailed documentation is for the engineers who build, and the lawyers who litigate (or the politicians who point fingers) when the project doesn't work out according to plan.
Several initiatives will be launched with great fanfare and fuzzy statements assuring us of a solution to vaguely understood problems, more often than not framed in doublespeak. Over time, as some initiatives disappoint resources will be rapidly withdrawn and reallocated to those showing more promise. It will remain to be seen whether there is greater celebration or finger pointing as we move along.
Squalish:
"Could double our domestic oil supplies without drilling a single well or building a single refinery"
Is not a false statement. You may find it ironic, but it ain't no lie. It says could, not will. We know, of course, that it won't, but that doesn't address the statement. Which makes no claim that it will. Semantics, what a fun game it is. All media play it, all day long, all politicians do too. And all of us.
Language is a tool devised to fool people, not to explain things to them.
And that statement is as clear as the Cretan who said all Cretans are liars.
John,
Over time, as some initiatives disappoint resources will be rapidly withdrawn and reallocated to those showing more promi
We are fast approaching a time where there will be no resources left to reallocate. Therein lies our predicament.
It wasn't so much the oil supply versus possibility, it's that this isn't the implied benefit.
The implied benefit is that 'we won't have to drill more oil wells and build more refineries, which we would have to do if we wanted to double our oil supplies using conventional methods.' We'll save our landscape from the horrible plight of ugly, environmentally risky wells and refineries... by switching to a fuel which will involve orders of magnitude larger amounts of ugly, and not only much bigger environmental and HUMAN risk, but much bigger assured environmental and human damages.
Coal mining kills. It kills miners directly. It kills via health problems of miners. It kills the environment through much increased toxic emissions. It kills the groundwater. It kills mountains, communities, forests, cancer victims, mercury-sensitive fetuses, limestone monuments...
Oil refineries do very little of this. Oil wells still less.
Doubling our domestic oil supply, especially using low efficiency CTL, involves vastly increasing the size of the coal mining industry, and inventing a new one - CTL plants - that is guarenteed to be more environmentally destructive than refineries.
See, China sacrifices thousands of men in coal mining accidents every year, but they just keep hammering away because the marketplace tells them that their lives are worth less than a brown high-sulphur lump. That's why I want to see the Chinese win the bidding for the oil fields in Iraq - if the Americans win, as I suspect has already been rigged, then they'll just sit on the damn fields and count them towards their proven reserves. But the Chinese need that oil now - they'll sacrifice men to keep it pumping like they sacrificed men at the Chosin Reservoir. The world will be forced to watch the spectacle of how low humanity is willing to plunge to get energy. Imagine the Do Long Bridge scene in Apocalypse Now with rigs pumping. Workers bringing the oil out on drums strapped to Ho Chi Minh Trail bikes. Digging trenches all the way to Iran. I ain't the one telling them to cap their greenhouse emissions, man.
Ha Ha. Those stupid Business Director persons.
Americans would rather watch the NFL playoffs than prepare for PO and GW.
Yep, we would rather hear "Are you ready for some fooball?
than "Are you ready for peak oil?"