Ok as many of you probably already heard many estimates say that the world has reached the peak of oil productions.
That means that we have pumped more than half of the total supply of oil in the world.
How does this affect the world?
It starts with prices, with less supply, and ever increasing demand the price of oil will skyrocket, and with the low elasticity of oil demand with price the demand will continue to be high until the price equilibrium reaches a state where oil can no longer be our main source of energy.

some facts:
the World currently uses 57 Billion barrles of oil a year
We have a estimated 1 Trillion barrels of oil left in the ground
If our oil consumption becomes static at 57 Billion barrels/year (not likely) we would have 37 years of oil left
The more realist prediction puts it at 15 years

What do we rely on oil for?
Energy for 98% of transportation, farming, plastics, and other production
in other words oil is the single most important energy source by far

Alternatives?
Ethanol-NO, Hydrogen-approx. 40 years away, Electric vehicles-still use fossil feuls to produce
last alternative.... chaos, war, famine, economic collapse, a majority of the world population starving


so now it doesnt seem so hard to believe that the bush administration invaded iraq just for oil, it really is that important,
but the more important question is what will we do next, what will you do?

11/9/2007 12:12:28 AM

Quote :

"Hydrogen-approx. 40 years away"

any links on that? also is that what a fuel cell is?

and what about that cellulistic(i dont think thats correct but the real soapboxers will know what i mean) ethanol? or cellulistic something or another...

11/9/2007 12:15:45 AM

watch this new documentary its really good, it just came out on dvd

http://www.archive.org/details/acrudeawakening

11/9/2007 12:16:27 AM

peak oil estimates are total horseshit simply because they dont take into account the other forms of oil.....like shale. estimates are that there is enough sand and shale oil in north America to last centuries

11/9/2007 12:17:50 AM

^haha, just watch the documentary,

the amount of energy spent to get at the oil is far more that its worth, this is not the answer and everyone knows it.

11/9/2007 12:20:07 AM

well, how do they explain that peak oil estimates have been wrong for like 30 years now.

11/9/2007 12:21:20 AM

^thats not true, the peak oil estimate for the US was right on,
there is now a concensus about these estimate at happening right now,
but what really backs it up is the actions of the oil producing companies, and countries that support the fact that they have reached their peaks and are slowing production

11/9/2007 12:23:15 AM

what about the abiotic theory, proved in a lab

.

[Edited on November 9, 2007 at 12:35 AM. Reason : .]

11/9/2007 12:26:58 AM

It'd be great if somebody could get fusion to work, and relatively soon. In the mean time, we'll simply be forced to rely more upon renewable energy sources, eg solar and wind. Nuclear would actually be our best choice, but too many people are ignorant about nuclear and are afraid of it, so good luck getting more plants built. One potential idea that springs to mind is that we might be able to harness the power of all the glaciers that are currently melting by building dams around them. I don't know how feasible this is, though.

I'm sure a lot of people in the world will go hungry without oil. Much of our agriculture is dependent upon oil products; obviously the fuel for the tractors, but also liquid lubrication for all those machine parts, petrol-based fertilizers, etc. Plus, where do you think the energy to transport all of that food comes from? Not only will our ability to grow food be affected, but we'll also have an increasingly difficult time getting that food to where it needs to go. You'll be fine if you live on a farm or if you live near any farmers that will sell to you directly, but those of us that think food comes from the grocery store will be fuck out of luck. What we'll likely see is that the cost of food will start to skyrocket. People are already complaining because of increased fuel prices, but most don't give a damn about peak oil. But they'll start caring once their stomachs are also affected.

The car is far too important to American culture for it to disappear entirely, but I'm willing to bet that we'll see a return to travel by bike and by foot. At a bare minimum I expect that SUV's will all but disappear. Mass-transit (buses, trains) will likely gain more utility, assuming that the energy for it can be scavenged. Electric cars might become popular, although I've also heard good things about flywheel-based technologies. Individual homes will start to do everything they can to collect energy while conserving it at the same time; solar panels on the roofs, perhaps a small wind mill or two around the neighborhood, LED lighting instead of incandescent bulbs, geothermal heat exchangers (can't remember the exact name, but it cycles water through a series of pipes deep into the ground to extract heat during the winter and to deposit heat during the summer), etc.

Undoubtedly there's going to be some pandemonium, but I don't know that the apocalypse is coming either. We'll get by, we'll find the means to power our daily lives. We'll just have to scale back how we live our current lives, is all. We'll have to learn to budget, stop being wasteful, and get used to the idea that cheap energy isn't coming back for a long while (unless somebody gets fusion working).

11/9/2007 12:39:07 AM

Quote :

"One potential idea that springs to mind is that we might be able to harness the power of all the glaciers that are currently melting by building dams around them."

thats the most ironic thing, to harness the energy comming from the destruction of our planet, hhmm, that would create a conflict of interest

personally i am thinking there may be some miracle around the corner that will provide energy, but i dont think it will save the american economy

11/9/2007 1:09:58 AM

Umbrellaman pretty much said it. No doubt it's gonna suck and people will starve but its not an end of the world type scenerio either. Theres great technology around the corner. With the glacier idea, there is a lot of unused energy, gigawats possibly, in the ocean. Tidal electrical generators are a relatively new idea. I've seen those huge wave rocker type bouys on television. Theres other things too, such as underwater turbines which take advantage of swift currents. Norway I believe has an extensive dam system set up in their fjords where most of their energy comes from hydro-electricity. But its also true that systems like these are mainly area inclusive supplies of energy. Not every community has access to a geothermal hotspot or the acreage/terrain/climate to support a solar or wind farm for that matter either.

There is one idea that I haven't seen posted before that I would like to share. It's SSP or space solar power. It may be in the same situation as hydrogen but not so much fusion.. If you read these articles you'll see it has great potential and is a great incentive to the advancement into outspace.

heres what it is -> http://www.space.com/adastra/070517_adastra_solarpowersats.html

and heres some +'s http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/solar_power_sats_011017-1.html

as well as some -'s http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/solar_power_satellite_000421.html

I bet we've could have done this 5 times over with all the money we've spent in Iraq.

11/9/2007 2:03:52 AM

Also it's likely those fusion scientists could find some funky ass isotopes to play with in space. Wheres JFK when you need him.

11/9/2007 2:38:09 AM

the idea that shale is too hard to get too, was debunked not too long ago. i think it was BP... they released they have a bunch of patents on techs and methods for extracting our underground oil in podunk North dakota and such. the estimates were something to the effect if they stayed over 40 or 60 i think it was well worth doing it. and they have started. it will just take 10 years to come online. we've already shown our economy can survive at 60 and probably more. so these estimates are unfounded.

11/9/2007 9:47:20 AM

Quote :

"the amount of energy spent to get at the oil is far more that its worth, this is not the answer and everyone knows it."

But this is making a fundamental mistake: the energy used to extract oil is not generated by burning oil, but usually uses electricity from the power-grid (coal) or natural gas. Such that we are burning coal and natural gas to extract oil. If we have coal and want oil, then this is an efficient use of resources, even if the energy deficit is huge.

Quote :

"with the low elasticity of oil demand with price the demand will continue to be high until the price equilibrium reaches a state where oil can no longer be our main source of energy."

This statement is silly. Oil production is not going to hit a wall, it is going to fall less than 1% a year if at all. As such, we still will have a stupendous river of oil flowing out of the ground, and presuming we use all of it it will remain our main source of energy.

Quote :

"Not only will our ability to grow food be affected, but we'll also have an increasingly difficult time getting that food to where it needs to go."

You are making a mistake here by ignoring marginal consumers. In today's oil flush world, we burn oil for rediculously wasteful uses, such as flying TVs and electronics from factories in Asia to stores all around the world. To transport them by ship would consume 1/10,000th as much oil. But we do this because oil is cheap and consumers are happy to pay an extra $80 to have the newest TVs a month early. Meanwhile, the oil component of most food prices is only 4%. We know this because in 2003 oil prices doubled while food prices rose 4%. But whenever oil prices double the price of getting your TV a month early doubles. As such, as oil prices double again we have a race to see which set of consumers will walk away first: TV buyers paying 100% more for delivery a month early or Food buyers paying 4% and then 8% more for food. In this battle the victor is obvious, just what we would hope to see: wasteful uses decline while useful uses are unaffected.

This is how the price system allocates resources. It is remarkably efficient as long as we allow it to work. Which is why it bothers me when Peak Oil Doomsayers call for government intervention in the price system.

The last point I need to make is that this all happened before in 1980 when Iraq invaded Iran and slashed worldwide oil production by 6%. The price rose and consumption fell. There were no gas lines, there were no shortages, and food did not become too expensive to eat, because unlike earlier oil shocks the Government did not intervene in the price system.


[Edited on November 9, 2007 at 9:59 AM. Reason : 1980]

11/9/2007 9:49:18 AM

Quote :

" But this is making a fundamental mistake: the energy used to extract oil is not generated by burning oil, but usually uses electricity from the power-grid (coal) or natural gas. Such that we are burning coal and natural gas to extract oil. If we have coal and want oil, then this is an efficient use of resources, even if the energy deficit is huge."

what are you talking about, if you have energy in coal why waste it to get less energy back from oil. that doesnt make sense at all. rather you would just use the coal to drive electricity for electric cars.

Quote :

"This statement is silly. Oil production is not going to hit a wall, it is going to fall less than 1% a year if at all. As such, we still will have a stupendous river of oil flowing out of the ground, and presuming we use all of it it will remain our main source of energy."

what are you talking about? oil production will fall less than 1% if at all? on what planet? when the US hit its oil peak production began to decrease as fast as it was increasing before the peak. The graph of production with time is a bell curve, once we hit peak extracting more oil will start to become harder, the oil producers knowing its a sellers market will increase price and decrease production to gain the most profit they can on their non-renewable supply. Remember when their oil runs dry they will have nothing to make money off of.

to make matters worst the rising oil consumption rates are going to go through the roof with the industrialization of china and idia, each w/ 1 billion plus citizens. This is all adding up to become a major oil crisis for all countries, demand will be great, and supply will become scarce.

[Edited on November 9, 2007 at 10:14 AM. Reason : .]

11/9/2007 10:13:30 AM

lafta skipped over most of my post, I would like to encourage everyone to find it above for the arguments lafta chose to ignore.

Quote :

"what are you talking about, if you have energy in coal why waste it to get less energy back from oil."

Because oil will power cars, coal will not. Oil can make plastics, coal cannot. By your logic burning 2 joules of coal to produce 1 joule of electricity is wasteful. But we have coal and want electricity because electricity can be used in many ways coal cannot, therefore this is an efficient use of resources.

Quote :

"when the US hit its oil peak production began to decrease as fast as it was increasing before the peak"

So what? It would still be declining in a slow and gradual pace, plenty of time for prices to eat away at consumption and divert resources to the production of alternative oil sources (see my discussion of marginal consumers above).

And oil producers will not withhold supply from the market because they can simply demand a higher price today and sell all they produce. A dollar of profit today is preferable to a dollar of profit next year. Not to mention the very real cyclical influences in all markets, oil included. In 1980 worldwide oil production fell 6%. But by 1986 oil production had not recovered, it was still more than 4% below peak production in 1979, yet oil prices collapsed because high prices had cut oil consumption to well below production.

It is the messy part of markets that drove oil prices in 1998 down to $10 a barrel although OPEC was cutting oil production every meeting. People are imperfect beings and prone to periods of irrational exuberance and pessimism. And because of the slow pace with which oil consumers and producers respond they routinely overshoot or undershoot each other, producing market booms like today and market crashes like 1998, regardless of whether long term production is rising or falling.

[Edited on November 9, 2007 at 10:46 AM. Reason : .,.]

11/9/2007 10:45:23 AM

In addition to drilling in ANWR and certain coastal areas, we haven't made nearly enough use of oil from sand, which can be found in North America:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2005/06/15/GR2005061500827.html

11/9/2007 12:20:31 PM

alternatives:
nuclear

11/9/2007 1:29:39 PM

^srsly, how do you omit the one viable alternative to fossil fuels?

There is a whole lot of stupid in this thread, and most of it is coming from lafta

11/9/2007 1:43:35 PM

nuclear
wind
geothermal
water turbines
etc


and the miracle energy source:
ETHANOL!!!

11/9/2007 2:12:52 PM

^ Stop making sense. It's so much easier for these people to jump on board the "drilling in Wildlife Refuges" idea.

11/9/2007 2:14:27 PM

but wind power kills birds, and clearly thats a risk we cannot take

unless you're so heartless that you put humans above birds

11/9/2007 2:20:21 PM

Quote :

"the World currently uses 57 Billion barrles of oil a year We have a estimated 1 Trillion barrels of oil left in the ground If our oil consumption becomes static at 57 Billion barrels/year (not likely) we would have 37 years of oil left The more realist prediction puts it at 15 years"

Here are some numbers from my thread:

?topic=432677

Current known Potential oil reserves will last till 2146 at current levels of consumption.

[Low end of] current known oil reserves will last till 2100 at current levels of consumption

[Low end of] current known oil reserves will last till 2070 assuming 2%/year increase in oil consumption.




And they wildly disagree with your numbers. Where are your numbers from? Click link above for source of my numbers.

11/9/2007 2:30:17 PM

Quote :

"We have a estimated 1 Trillion barrels of oil left in the ground"

Yeah, there is at least 5 times that much oil in the ground, plus trillions of tons of coal which can be liquified into fuel.

At some point the costs of extracting and distributing the oil exceeds the cost of alternative energy sources, and a market shift occurs.

11/9/2007 2:35:25 PM

I argue this ad nauseum... without getting into all the details, I hate the peak oil assholes. One big thing that is going to change in the next 5 years is the type of vehicles that are on American roads. Just a 10-15% efficiency for the motor pool fleet in general will have the market flooded with unneeded oil. The market is working. Pressures are being put on consumers to step away from the SUVs. The consumers are putting pressure on the car manufacturers to give them back some of their money in more efficient vehicles that use less gas. There are strong movements for plug in hybrids that will have many commuters off gas to get to and from work in the next 3-4 years. It may get a little rough during the transition, BUT:

The world will not end because of oil, nor bird flu, nor food shortage, nor global warming, nor floods... (the list goes on forever). Whats going to make me mad, is the peak oil guys are going to claim they saved humanity in a few years when this 'threat' is over, when all along the market was correcting the issue.

I follow oil more than anyone I know. The above reason is just one of the many many arguments against peak oil which is making the ASSUMPTION that production will decrease... There are many arguments that we are far away from peak oil. T Boone was wrong many times on his 'peak oil', and he'll continue to be wrong (the self serving asshole of the oil market)

[Edited on November 9, 2007 at 2:43 PM. Reason : .]

11/9/2007 2:40:40 PM

Quote :

"nuclear wind geothermal water turbines etc and the miracle energy source: ETHANOL!!!"

ethanol is stupid

completely nuclear grid (fission plus fusion when it is less that 50 years away, and really its always 50 years away) plus plug in vehicles is the only way that the current american culture can handle no more oil

11/9/2007 2:42:53 PM

I guess the other thing that pisses me off about peak oil assholes is that they cant really be as dumb as they seem... For example, they give no credit for the people of the U.S. to go from cars that get sub 20 MPG to 30+ MPG. If we are faced with $4-5 gas, believe me, that transtition is going to happen. In fact, buying new cars with high efficiencies will almost pay for themselves. For this complete disregard to the consumers effect on the demand factor with switching to alternative vehicles, I can only come to the conclusion that:

the starters of the peak oil theory, as many market manipulators have found, discovered that it is easier to make money by scaring people, pushing the price up, then to convince them that efficiencies will come to move the price lower (making money on the way down). So they seek to spread the paranoia simply to make as much money as possible, without the mountain of evidence that the world's largest consumer of oil, the U.S., can cutrail its demand.

I am SICK AND TIRED of the people trying to convince everyone out there that civilization is coming to an end for X reason. Kill yourself already if the future is so bleak.

[Edited on November 9, 2007 at 3:00 PM. Reason : /.]

11/9/2007 2:50:51 PM

Quote :

" so now it doesnt seem so hard to believe that the bush administration invaded iraq just for oil, it really is that important, but the more important question is what will we do next, what will you do?"

Shit you are crazy. According to you we should get shotguns, bomb shelters, and canned food. Seriously man do you think the stock market is gonna crash? And everyone is out to get you? Nuclear is a great source of energy. And I don't care what you say, it's safer than fossil fuels

Considering that over 5000 people a year die mining coal, but no one has died from a nuclear reactor.

11/9/2007 3:04:21 PM

Quote :

"You are making a mistake here by ignoring marginal consumers. In today's oil flush world, we burn oil for rediculously wasteful uses, such as flying TVs and electronics from factories in Asia to stores all around the world. To transport them by ship would consume 1/10,000th as much oil."

That's all well and good....as long as you live near the ocean or on a river bank. But what about all of our land-locked cities? Or people living out in the middle of the suburbs and the country sides? Traveling and shipping by boat is a very efficient means of travel, but only in so much as there is water for the boat to travel over.

11/9/2007 6:34:23 PM

OH My Gosh, i really hope you people are joking, are you really this stupid. where do i start?

Quote :

" and the miracle energy source: ETHANOL!!! "

hahahah, yeah you're kidding right, seriously stop wasting my time. but the other fuels are legitimate except those only can supply a small fraction of what we currently use and what we will need in the future.

Quote :

" Saudi: Just 18 Pct. of World Oil Tapped By WILLIAM J. KOLE Associated Press Writer © 2006 The Associated Press VIENNA, Austria — The world has tapped only 18 percent of the total global supply of crude, a leading Saudi oil executive said Wednesday, challenging the notion that supplies are petering out. "

Yeah you're right, the many scientists are wrong the the saudi oil exective is right

Try an unbiased viewpoint

Quote :

" John Vidal, environment editor Tuesday April 26, 2005 The Guardian One of the world's leading energy analysts yesterday called for an independent assessment of global oil reserves because he believed that Middle Eastern countries may have far less than officially stated and that oil prices could double to more than $100 a barrel within three years, triggering economic collapse. Matthew Simmons, an adviser to President George Bush and chairman of the Wall Street energy investment company Simmons, said that "peak oil" - when global oil production rises to its highest point before declining irreversibly - was rapidly approaching even as demand was increasing. Article continues "This is a new era," Mr Simmons told a conference of oil industry analysts, government officials and academics in Edinburgh. "There is a big chance that Saudi Arabia actually peaked production in 1981. We have no reliable data. Our data collection system for oil is rubbish. I suspect that if we had, we would find that we are over-producing in most of our major fields and that we should be throttling back. We may have passed that point." "

and guess what, he was spot on.

Quote :

" According to the International Energy Agency, which collates data from all oil producing countries, peak oil will arrive "sometime between 2013 and 2037", with production thereafter expected to decline by about 3% a year."

so the question is not if, it is what do we do next, im not say the world is going to end, im saying it WILL END if we dont find a good solution, I think it is possible but we would have to be ready for a major change, and if we wait for when its too late our economy can suffer greatly

11/9/2007 9:11:56 PM

Quote :

"Yeah you're right, the many scientists are wrong the the saudi oil exective is right "

Leave the rolly eyes out, and explain (which you failed to) where you got this from:

Quote :

"We have a estimated 1 Trillion barrels of oil left in the ground"

Again, from my thread (article by AP):

Quote :

"Many experts estimate that the planet's recoverable oil resource is at least 3 trillion barrels and potentially more than 4 trillion barrels."

11/9/2007 9:49:54 PM

Quote :

"That's all well and good....as long as you live near the ocean or on a river bank. But what about all of our land-locked cities? Or people living out in the middle of the suburbs and the country sides? Traveling and shipping by boat is a very efficient means of travel, but only in so much as there is water for the boat to travel over."

The uses you describe will not be abandoned until there is insufficient oil to supply them, which will be a LONG way off, since over half of the world's oil consumption is for non-transportation related uses such as electricity production, which could easily be shifted to other fuel sources such coal, natural gas, nuclear, etc.

I will refer you back to the "marginal consumer theory". As the price rises "wasteful" uses, like producing electricity, will stop. It takes time for power companies to build new plants and shutdown old ones, hence why oil demand is called inelastic. But this works the other way too: once the oil burning plants are shut down and sold for scrap, replaced with alternative sources, it is unlikely that they will ever start back up again.

As such, once high oil prices squelch demand it stays squelched, even when the price of oil falls back to low levels. As such, even in a world where oil production is falling fast we will still experience prolonged periods of moderate to low oil prices as we wait for production to decline enough to make another round of demand squelching necessary.

Demand squelching: Oil consumption in the U.S. fell by 1.3% in 2006 and world-wide demand grew only 0.60%.

[Edited on November 10, 2007 at 10:28 AM. Reason : statistics]

11/10/2007 10:22:24 AM

I read an article on bloomberg last week that said it dropped an amazing 10% this past year. Most of the peak oil nuts dont realize just how well we are going to transition to more efficient use of our oil.

11/10/2007 3:47:55 PM

^you think peak oil is just for nuts, no every government and major financial institutions devote their brightest researchers to this,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/22/eaoil122.xml

11/23/2007 10:52:45 PM

Yep, you believe that because you are a nut.

You should have noticed this fact when you linked to the friggin' London Telegraph.

11/24/2007 1:07:21 AM

^excellent point, because whats important is not the facts but the newspaper that reports it

11/24/2007 2:09:09 AM

Well

The National Enquirer has for years warned about Aliens invading souther California.

I mean really.

11/24/2007 3:21:36 AM

I also read while standing in line at a local CVS in the National Inquirer that Condalisa Rice is in-fact gay. (no homo)

and in other news the squibbler reports that "he who must not be named" is back.

11/24/2007 7:55:58 AM

If we nuke the entire middle east, take it over with robots who pump our oil for us, and shoot down anyone who tries to invade via satellite, we could secure the rest of the worlds oil and just keep it for ourselves. THEN, china will actually need us for something, and would be required to stop their economic valuation schemes that are unfair.

Just a thought.

11/24/2007 8:59:25 AM

but since the robots will probably be made IN china, I'm guessing its the US that will need the chinese to drill for oil.

11/24/2007 9:07:14 AM

what does nat enquirer have anything to do with the telegraph?

11/24/2007 11:11:05 AM

Quote :

"Ethanol-NO, Hydrogen-approx. 40 years away, "

remember when kenedy said we'd be on the moon in under a decade and we did it?

those things are years away if we'd simply allocate funding and resources and expertise to those areas

11/24/2007 2:38:57 PM

Or, you know, we could do nothing and get there at the same time.

11/24/2007 4:36:03 PM

Quote :

"remember when kenedy said we'd be on the moon in under a decade and we did it? those things are years away if we'd simply allocate funding and resources and expertise to those areas"

Oh, don't even get me started on that hoax...

11/24/2007 6:47:00 PM

^ don't get me started on you nutbags

and for that matter, pulling off a stunt like that would be more impressive than going to the moon, anyway.

11/25/2007 5:41:29 AM

i think people that think the US landing on the moon is a hoax should literally be executed

11/25/2007 8:31:16 AM

Quote :

"and for that matter, pulling off a stunt like that would be more impressive than going to the moon, anyway."

I'm not sure I'd go that far.

Quote :

"i think people that think the US landing on the moon is a hoax should literally be executed"

See above.

11/25/2007 11:09:24 AM

Haha. You guys are easier than Paris Hilton in a rohypnol factory.

11/25/2007 11:33:45 AM

Quote :

"and in other news the squibbler reports that "he who must not be named" is back."

haha

Seriously though, why aren't there more nuclear reactors?

11/25/2007 1:38:20 PM

public perception, huge initial investment ($billions bucks for one plant), previous regulations (however, those have been changed to make it easier), etc

three mile island set the industry back 30 years, we are just now beginning to see a resurgence in the nuclear power industry

11/25/2007 1:59:35 PM