The Alternet peak oil article by Matthew Simmons I cited in the last post got some comments that peak oil theory is basically baloney. It turns out there is an active community that believes Simmons is a fraud, a stooge for Bush, and a lackey for the oil industry helping to driving up oil prices by allowing them to keep prices high. Remember the Enron scam in California? Who doesn't (don't worry, it'll probably happen all over again once we've forgotten). All created by a huge artificial shortage.
Most of the arguments say that there are vast new discoveries of new reserves being made all the time - specifically 54 billion barrels under the Gulf of Mexico - and that there are vast largely untapped (but expensive to extract) reserves in Venzuela and Canada. As prices get higher its a sure thing that even more of those reserves will come on line. In fact I've recently seen the evidence of the oil boom in Calgary first hand - its started already.
For some counter-spin and counter-counter-spin on the peak oil theory read: Does "Peak Oil" Spell Death for the Suburbs? by Randal O'Toole (himself a member of the Cato Institute), "The Myth of Peak Oil", Free Market News Network editorial, "Oil Is NOT A Fossil Fuel - It Is Abiotic, Is 'Peak Oil' A Put On?", "Abiotic Oil: Science or Politics?"and almost anything that shows up when you Google Peak Oil Scam.
If anyone can sort it all out let me know - or just add your own comments below.
11/09/2005 10:50:00 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Many of the rhetorical debaters on both sides of the issue: i.e. Does "Peak Oil" Spell Death for the Suburbs? simply string together sets of nonsense words and stuff them into the mouths of their opponents.
This example comes at the start of the above article: "[T]he peak-oil theory holds that we are running out of oil and that apocalyptically high energy prices will totally disrupt the American way of life."
Upon close inspection you will discover that there is no clear definition of what "oil" means or what "we" means or what "running out" means. These are strawman concepts strung out to dry for the mere sake of playing word games.
At the end of the day, the volume of planet Earth is finite and it cannot forever support an exponentially growing human population or even a fixed population with exponentially growing consumption demands. Even if the oil never runs out, we may burn away due to Global warming caused by CO2 emissions from the supposedly infinite supplies of oil.
Good points - I especially like your "volune of the earth is finite" argument. But of course some people will just tell you that the universe is inifinite and that Neptune has a core of diamond, meteorites are loaded with metal, and all we need is a big long pipeline to suck methane from Saturn or Jupiter etc. etc.
I've noticed a lot of anti-peak comments tend to focus on oil companies and gasoline refining capacity as evidence that they are colluding to keep oil prices high - the two are unrelated issues.
And you touch on the other important issue that I didn't make too much of - even if oil scarcity doesn't happen as soon as we think, as happened in the 70's, its no excuse to party like CO2 emissions were having no effect. When global warming causes the gulf stream to go away and the East Coast freezes over we're going to need shit-loads of oil to keep warm!
"When global warming causes the gulf stream to go away and the East Coast freezes over we're going to need shit-loads of oil to keep warm!"
But, hey, who cares, since oil's INFINITE :D
It's the environmental equivalent of "why does god let all the bad things happen ?" "to test your faith, fuxor !", so let's all close our eyes, plug our ears, shut our mouths, and have faith in the oil industry. You can't know if paradise exists until you die, and we can't know if oil is finite until we've burned it all... Or, can we ? :D
Love it - oil as a religion, it explains a lot. As you know we have a president who believes in faith based government - now its clear he believes in a faith based energy policy!
From the comments it doesn't sound like many people actually read "The Myth of Peak Oil". He makes an excellent case for why the "Peak Oil" theory doesn't hold together.
Under the alternatives to oil section I would like to see more focus on biodiesel (which is cheap and compatible with today's technology) rather than so much talk about ethanol and fuel cells that are still under development.
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