Peak Oil:
An Introduction for Further Exploration
(No Pun Intended)
The intent of this post is not to frighten or to claim the sky is falling, rather it is meant to inform you that, within our lifetime, our world will change significantly. Those who are prepared will fair better than those who are not.
I will present the problem and include some links for discussion, but it is up to us to find solutions and educate ourselves, and others. Try to find your own solutions, and please fell free to post. Remember to be courteous of others while posting.
(What flows is a culmination of information I have collected while researching the topic. The numbers are collected from various sources. You can verify by checking the links at the bottom of the page and engaging in your own fact-finding.)
Philosophical
Successful people like Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and Oprah Winfrey plan and prepare for the future. They are prepared because they study their world, follow their passions, and execute their plan. How many people in the world do the same? Do you have a long-term plan on paper, and are you executing that plan daily? Do you have your own personal mission statement? Most people don’t. This is because most of us were not taught how to plan long term. In High School and College we were taught how to be employees and follow someone else’s plan – your boss’s or your company’s plan.
Coupled with societies highly placed value on the type of vehicle one drives, the style of clothes one wears, and the size of house one lives in, it’s easy to see how people may become distracted. So as material possessions are accumulated, energy is spent paying off such items usually at the expense of other things. People often become too focused on working hard to pay off bills, and they may loose site of events around them.
What’s the point?
What I’m getting at is we may need to take some time out of the rat race to educate ourselves as to where our world is going, devise plans, and educate others. But it starts with you, the individual, and extends to others. Events such as 9-11, the Iraqi invasion, the proliferation of global violence, the recent attacks in London etc. are clear signs that things are getting shaken up and that change is on our doorsteps. Some say the global system is “adapting”, but it’s only adapting as quickly as the global influencers have decided.
Such events should serve as clues, but they seem to distract the public instead. The London bombings upstaged the record oil price of $62.10 which immediately preceded them, and they caused investors to anticipate demand destruction, which dropped the price back down. Also China is attempting to buy an American oil company called Unocal. Quite apart from the actual price, the bombings also re-imbued the world's energy issues with deeply irrational emotions of revenge and horror that might prevent civilians from reaching their own more rational conclusions as to the causes of high energy prices - and the underlying dangers posed by what more and more people recognize as Peak Oil.
As Donald Rumsfeld would say, “As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.” —Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
I think what Rummy was attempting to explain is that you can prepare for the future based on empirical evidence, however there is always the chance of an “unforeseen” event.
Here’s what we do know. Oil resources are running out, international violence is spreading, and Peak Oil theory is gaining credibility. The reason peak oil is a “theory” is that oil companies attempt to disguise facts and often inflate their numbers to solidify their stock. However, oil is being consumed faster than it can be produced, and people are catching on. It normally takes millions of years for carbon based life forms to decay and turn into oil, so we can’t rely too much on nature to bail out our decreasing supply.
Mainstream news agencies are waking up to the notion of peak oil. (You can read on and check the links later)
BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4077802.stm
NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3870191
National Geographic:
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/feature5/
News Week:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4287300/
Some Raw Numbers
Today oil supplies about 50% of the world’s energy and 96% of its transportation energy. Since the shift from coal to oil, the world has consumed over 875 billion barrels. Another 1,000 billion barrels of proved and probable reserves remain to be recovered. No other energy source comes close to oil’s convenience, power, and efficiency. From now to 2020, world oil consumption will rise by about 60%. Transportation will be the fastest growing oil-consuming sector. By 2025, the number of cars will increase to well over 1.25 billion from approximately 700 million today. Global consumption of gasoline could double.
The two countries with the highest rate of growth in oil use are China and India, whose combined populations account for a third of humanity. In the next two decades, China's oil consumption is expected to grow at a rate of 7.5% per year and India’s 5.5%. (Compare to a 1% growth for the industrialized countries). It will be strategically imperative for these countries to secure their access to oil - whoever gets to the oil first will ensure their economy can sustain growth for the short term at least.
Oil prices have recently risen by about $25 per barrel, America's annual oil-import bill rose about $75 billion per year (about $250/person). This is a classic economics 101 formula – as supply decreases, demand increases, price increases. We will never see “cheap” oil again.
The global decline of oil discoveries began around 1964. According to BP-Amoco, world oil production per capita peaked in 1979. This figure is confirmed with the International Energy Agency (IEA). So don’t expect any new, enormous oil field discoveries.
Notable Quote
In April 2001 the Council on Foreign Relations and James A. Baker, HW Bush’s former Secretary of State, published a detailed study of world energy problems. He claims:
“Strong economic growth across the globe and new global demands for more energy have meant the end of sustainable surplus capacity in hydrocarbon fuels and the beginning of capacity limitations. In fact, the world is precariously close to utilizing all of its available global oil production capacity, raising the chance of an oil supply crisis with more substantial consequences than seen in three decades.
These choices will affect other US policy objectives: US policy towards the Middle East; US policy toward the former Soviet Union and China; the fight against international terrorism.Meanwhile, across much of the developing world, energy infrastructure is being severely tested by expanding material demands of a growing middle class, especially in the high-growth, high-population economies of Asia. As demand growth collide with supply and capacity limits at the end of the last century, prices rose across the energy spectrum, at home and abroad.”
What Does the Future Hold?
Oil is the main catalyst for growth in this modern industrial era. Without it such growth is impossible. There is no other energy source (nuclear – very costly and dangerous, solar, wind, water) that even comes close to the power and efficiency oil provides.
Several sources are claiming that an oil crash should occur around the year 2012, which coincides with economic analysts report that we will hit a major recession starting around 2009-2010. Whether the two are linked I am not sure, but the information is compelling.
(See chart below, for illustration purposes, sorry it's fuzy...the dip hits 2012 - blackouts)
So how will that impact us aside from higher costs at the pump? Not only is oil valuable for gasoline and motor oil, but also oil is the critical ingredient to most of the items sold and consumed by modern society. To gain an added perception to the importance of oil: Over 500,000 products including electricity, fertilizers, medicines, lubricants, plastics (computers, phones, shower curtains, disposables, toys, etc.), asphalt (roads and roofs), insulation, glues/paints/caulking, (modern synthetic rubber) tires and boots, asphalt, carpets, synthetic fabrics/clothing, stockings, insect repellent are made from oil.
If the price of oil goes up, every downstream use is affected.
The younger generations of India, China and South East Asia are more educated, desire consumer goods, and vehicles. Demand is increasing globally and more oil resources are needed to meet that demand.
Food
Oil is extremely critical to our food supply. Modern food production consumes ten calories of energy for every calorie contained in the food. When the farmer goes out to plant seeds, she drives a vehicle powered by oil. After planting she sprays the crops with fertilizers made from ammonia, which comes from natural gas (natural gas reserves are also finite). Then she sprays crops several times with pesticides made from oil using another piece of machinery that consumes oil. She irrigates the crops with water that most likely has also been pumped by electricity generated by coal, oil, or gas. Oil powers the harvest, transportation to processing plant, processing refrigeration, and transport to the grocery store (to which you, the consumer, drive an oil-powered vehicle). You may pay for the food with your credit card made from oil. The credit card terminal where you swipe your card and the cash register where your receipt is printed – yes, made from oil. Also the cutting down of a tree provided you with the receipt, the bleaching of the paper, were made possible by oil. Then you take your food home, cook it by means of either electricity or natural gas, and eat it on a plate that may have been made from oil, after which you wash the plate with a synthetic sponge that is also made of oil.
What will oil shortages do to our food supply?
The countries that are unable to have access to oil will be devastated by famine. Put it this way. If the fertilizers, partial irrigation, and pesticides were withdrawn, corn yields for example, would drop from about 130 bushels per acre to about 30 bushels. The same applies in varying degrees to any crop: alfalfa, lettuce, celery, onions, tomatoes; anything that commercial agriculture produces.
Beef products will be affected as well. Cattle, pigs, and chicken feed on grain and corn, so the price of beef will be affected and fast food restaurants will be forced to raise their prices.
Customer - “I’ll take a number 2, super sized please.”
Attendant – “Thank you, your total is $35, please pull up to the first window”
Conclusions
From what I have read some assess that a severe economic crash and global famine will destroy modern society as we know it. Martial law will take place, people will arm themselves, and those who argue this notion point to the Patriot Act and declining civil liberties as a taste of what’s to come – a police state. Let’s ID everyone, even illegal aliens… The earth cannot sustain the numbers of humans and natural order will force down populations once humans have exceeded resource limitations. Humans will be forced to revert back to simpler living.
Others have said that we can avoid such a catastrophe by creating a plan as soon as possible. Some people are already growing their own food in their back yards. http://www.pathtofreedom.com/aboutus.shtml. It’s possible we may see local/community farming make a comeback.
My personal assessment, and this is as rosy as I can get, is that the United States will have consolidated enough Middle Eastern oil to give the country a few extra years of cheaper oil, so alternative innovation can take hold. The trick will be to hold on to that oil when hungry people come knocking. Global populations will decrease. We’ll have economic convulsions as we attempt to kick the oil habit, like a drug addict kicking his/her dependency, ushering in a severe recession (Some fear the recession will be similar to that of the Great Depression) – they come in cycles and we are over due. The industrial areas will be hit hard.
America’s free enterprise system, the employed segment of it, shuold be able to adapt as alternative fuel sources arise, and society may have to implement solar, wind and other forms of energy all at once. George Bush recently advanced the notion of building additional nuclear plants, and some environmentalists are actually on board with that idea, but the risks are high and it takes decades before a nuclear plant pays for itself. “Not since 1973 has an order been placed for a new reactor. Two events helped end, for a time, any U.S. interest in reactors beyond those already under construction: the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine.” http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-06-22-bush_x.htm?csp=34
To say that there is “no reason to fear” or “someone will take care of us” or “the government will think of something” or “the media will shake things up” would be naïve. We cannot rely on others to dictate our destinies. But like John F. Kennedy’s over used, yet effective quote states, “The only thing to fear is fear itself”. Before we can act upon an issue, we need to recognize the problem. We need to educate ourselves, and others to the realities of Peak Oil.
Please forward this to others.
What do you think? Comments are below.
If you find good articles or web sites on your own, please email me the link momagic72@hotmail.com
Check out the links on the upper left to get you started:
You can also Google “Peak Oil” “Oil Crash” etc. Don’t rely on the mainstream media.
HIGHLY RECOMMEND
The food portion of this article was composed using information from:
“Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil” by Michael Ruppert. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
(Check out the maps at the bottom of this link) http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012505_ftw_maps.shtml
Richard Heinberg, The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Inudstrial Societies; Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, and
A special thanks to all those people who have done the research and who have posted these very informative sites.
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