End of the world as we know it...Follow

Hmm... Interesting. However, the guy is basically stringing together some very real facts about future oil prospects with some very "guessed upon" ideas about what might happen as a result.

Certainly, the peak oil issue is factual. He's accurate when he quotes folks about that. Certainly also, the results as oil becomes more scarce is also accurate. The problem is how he ties the two together.

He is very careful to stress that he's talking about peak oil when impressing upon the reader the immediacy of the problem, and how little time we have before it happens. However, when he's talking about what exactly will happen, he's describing the result of extreme "real" oil scarcity, not just peak oil.

He dismisses the "invisible hand" idea because peak oil will happen too quickly for the market to respond, and the cost to deal with it before hand is too high. However, the immediate result of peak oil is pretty obvious: Oil prices will rise. Profits on oil will decrease. The viability of oil as an energy producer will decrease. If the range between when we hit peak oil, and when we physically can't drill enough oil out of the ground to maintain our infrastructure was only a few years, then his projections would be accurate. However, they are nowhere close to eachother.

The peak oil point will begin a gradual decline in oil's relative usefulness as a fuel source. It will not immediately send industry into a tailspin. Many of the alternative sources of energy that he dismisses are dismissed, not because they *can't* provide enough engergy to maintain our industry, but purely becuase they are not as "cheap" as oil.

But peak oil, by definition, makes oil less "cheap" to use as a fuel source. Clearly then, we will hit a point at which those other sources are more profitable and "cheap" to use then oil is. At that point, energy companies *will* switch to them for their source of revenue. Remember, he said himself that the job of the corporation is to keep the business alive. What he glosses over is that the businness of these companies is not to drill for oil and sell it, but to provide energy sources to those who need it. If it becomes more profitable to build and sell solar plants to provide that energy, they will build and sell solar plants.


He also glosses over a couple other issues:

Yes. Uranium for nuclear plants is also a limited resource. However, he grossly underestimates how much material we have *right now* that could be very quickly and easily used to provide all the electrical power we could need. Nuclear power is also "cheaper" then oil in the long run. It's also (on average) cleaner to use then oil. The only reason we don't use it is the fear of the public about nuclear power, largly the result of lobbyists who've associated "nuclear" power with "nuclear" weapons.

He's right that nuclear power plants are expensive to build and maintain. However, once running, a nuclear power plants return of energy in comparison to the cost of materials is ridiculously high in relation to oil. It simply costs less to refine and use a pound of uranium then it does to refine and use a million barrels of oil.


He assumes that vehicles must use oil to run. That's not true. We can build fuel cells (and other "electic" power sources) to run those vehicles and other machines of industry. The reason we don't right now is becuase right now, it's more expensive to build a fuel cell, fill it with electricity (which currently requires oil anyway since that's where we get our power today), and use it, then it would to simply use the oil directly. However, as oil prices go higher, and oil becomes more scarce, it will become cost effective to use alternative fuels for power plants (like nuclear as an obvious example), then use that power to run factories to build fuel cells, and put those fuel cells in our cars and other vehicles.

His entire argument about oil being required to make the things we'd need to go without oil is circular. We use oil to generate electricity becuase that's the cheapest way to do it. Once it's not, we'll use other methods and his entire arguement goes away.


I'm not saying that this isn't a problem. Certainly, we'll take a hit as oil reserves start dwindling. We wont be able to do as much "stuff" for the same amount of effort, but to assume that all industry will collapse *is* alarmist. Certainly, I'm not going to head up to the hills to ride the collapse out.


He's also assuming we wont make any major energy discoveries in the next couple decades. We've made amazing leaps in the field of physics. There is potential energy around us that makes the use of nuclear power look like a candle. We just don't know how to tap into it yet.


It does mean one thing though. If we assume that we *don't* make new discoveries, then we are sitting on a ticking clock. We may have a very short window in which to develop certain technologies that we need to develop to ensure our survival long term. One example is space exploration. Without exploring (and eventually colonizing) space and other planets, it's an absolute 100% certainty that our species will eventually die out (from falling rocks if nothing else). It may be that in 20 or 50 years, we simply can't afford to do anything in space due to the scarcity of fuel sources. Launching rockets costs a huge amount of energy. However, once we get permanent colonization off planet, we don't have to keep launching rockets to keep things going. This is one of those fields where the earlier we start doing things, the better we are off in the long run.


Not sure if I'm happy with the whole "manned mission to mars" thing though. Yeah. I'm hijacking a bit, but that's my main concern when I think about potential energy scarcity in the future. Man can survive as a species, even if we collapse as he suggests. But we can't survive if we don't get some of us off this planet eventually. If we collapse, and eat up all our "cheap" fuels (like oil) in the process, odds are we'll never be able to match the industrial level we had before the crash. Of course that's assuming no break throughs and "super tech" in the future. But if we're going to be stark realists, that's what concerns me far more in the long run then whether or not 90% of the population will die off due to a lack of oil...

Now, I don't know much about the subject of oil myself, but I do know power. There is a very real power source out there that we are extremely close to harnessing. Fusion. Everything that I have read and heard about from the site in Japan says that Fusion power could be harnessed as soon as 2013. That's not even a decade folks.


Ok, now feel free to shred me.

bLaHaHaHaHaHa!!
That's what he wants you to think!

Edited, Mon Feb 16 02:54:55 2004 by TwiztidSamurai