Peak Oil and Gas--Again
I am always struck by the quality of most of the articles on the oildrum. It's a site with which I do not always agree, but involves engineers, scientists, and policymakers in real discussion, without green hysteria and without total domination by the class of resource-aware individuals who have, since the first oil shocks of the 1970s, been known as 'doomers'.
Noting that fossil fuels are expendable and non-renewable is not a counterfactual statement. To listen to some, it would seem that way. What is true is that we seem to be in a period of resource volatility and, until recently, that we had reached a plateau of energy production as a society. Depression may have delayed our understanding of descent.
It may well be that there is plenty more oil and gas. Surveys suggest that, at much higher pressures, requiring hardier, more expensive and more sophisticated technology, we as a society could extract more. We would, as a society, have therefore to pay far more for energy and plastic. These costs would push up others and radically affect the quality of life in the urban areas of most developed and developing countries.
So a simple concentration on the oil price is inadequate to explain what is going on. I note that most of the experts who have been right in the past are already suggesting, if a recovery from what seems inevitable and basically worldwide depression happens, that it will take place in three or four years' time.
I wonder if there are not people in the white house who grasp what the combination of a global uplift, an inflation and therefore depreciation of the dollar as the extra dollars in the system due to stimulus were worked out, and a renewed rush for oil would mean--in an election year. I think that it would mean a massive inflation and oil price rise, and a new stagflation, within eighteen months of global recovery. If the US government is not expanding stored oil reserves now, it should do so. It has already expanded them massively over the past few years.
Politics and lies are inseparable. I think President Obama, in some high-minded fashion, gets this. He is a Chicago politician after all. He doesn't seem silly enough to really believe in man-made global warming caused by carbon; the world isn't warming after all, carbon can't do it, the models are fiddled and the statistics are faulty. But does he grasp that the issue offers the opportunity to focus people on the need to conserve or reduce their energy requirements?
We can't turn down the sun or turn off the pacific decadal oscillation, or cap volcanoes, but we may be able to make the peak oil landing softer in under a decade's time. When, in the first oil crisis, Jimmy Carter tried ham-fistedly but honestly to confront people withe the truth, they revolted. Perhaps a sideways approach is the better way, aided by the nationalisation of the auto industry which has taken place in America.
I don't like political lies, but the opportunity presented might appeal to him. The alternative, that he believes the global warming nonsense, is actually quite chilling. Go and have a look at Anthony Watt's excellent, award winning blog here if you want to explore the science of global weather, and a critique of the warming cult.
There were today two other things which I found fascinating on the oil drum, and I am reproducing them here. One is the chart below, which seeks to explain how oil prices and the financial crash, as detailed on this blog over the past two years, may have been related. It comes from an article by Matt Mushalik, which I have linked to above, who is from Australia. Click on the chart to make it expand.
The chart links the economy and oil, but needs to be put in the context of just how desperate a falling oil price makes psychotic regimes like those of Iran, or volatile governments in Venezuela, Central Asia, and Russia. A depression could put them into either large-scale civil unrest as their treasuries dry up, or hard-line mode. A recovery could then strengthen whoever makes it into power. The prospect is not good.
The second thing which I note is this quote from the comments page of the oil drum, from Nate Hagens; I thought it very apt, and some of the smartest rich people I know, whom I met in Park Lane last week, I think would agree.
I agree too. Every man for himself results in nothing for anyone. Hobbes, amongst others, was right.
I am always struck by the quality of most of the articles on the oildrum. It's a site with which I do not always agree, but involves engineers, scientists, and policymakers in real discussion, without green hysteria and without total domination by the class of resource-aware individuals who have, since the first oil shocks of the 1970s, been known as 'doomers'.
Noting that fossil fuels are expendable and non-renewable is not a counterfactual statement. To listen to some, it would seem that way. What is true is that we seem to be in a period of resource volatility and, until recently, that we had reached a plateau of energy production as a society. Depression may have delayed our understanding of descent.
It may well be that there is plenty more oil and gas. Surveys suggest that, at much higher pressures, requiring hardier, more expensive and more sophisticated technology, we as a society could extract more. We would, as a society, have therefore to pay far more for energy and plastic. These costs would push up others and radically affect the quality of life in the urban areas of most developed and developing countries.
So a simple concentration on the oil price is inadequate to explain what is going on. I note that most of the experts who have been right in the past are already suggesting, if a recovery from what seems inevitable and basically worldwide depression happens, that it will take place in three or four years' time.
I wonder if there are not people in the white house who grasp what the combination of a global uplift, an inflation and therefore depreciation of the dollar as the extra dollars in the system due to stimulus were worked out, and a renewed rush for oil would mean--in an election year. I think that it would mean a massive inflation and oil price rise, and a new stagflation, within eighteen months of global recovery. If the US government is not expanding stored oil reserves now, it should do so. It has already expanded them massively over the past few years.
Politics and lies are inseparable. I think President Obama, in some high-minded fashion, gets this. He is a Chicago politician after all. He doesn't seem silly enough to really believe in man-made global warming caused by carbon; the world isn't warming after all, carbon can't do it, the models are fiddled and the statistics are faulty. But does he grasp that the issue offers the opportunity to focus people on the need to conserve or reduce their energy requirements?
We can't turn down the sun or turn off the pacific decadal oscillation, or cap volcanoes, but we may be able to make the peak oil landing softer in under a decade's time. When, in the first oil crisis, Jimmy Carter tried ham-fistedly but honestly to confront people withe the truth, they revolted. Perhaps a sideways approach is the better way, aided by the nationalisation of the auto industry which has taken place in America.
I don't like political lies, but the opportunity presented might appeal to him. The alternative, that he believes the global warming nonsense, is actually quite chilling. Go and have a look at Anthony Watt's excellent, award winning blog here if you want to explore the science of global weather, and a critique of the warming cult.
There were today two other things which I found fascinating on the oil drum, and I am reproducing them here. One is the chart below, which seeks to explain how oil prices and the financial crash, as detailed on this blog over the past two years, may have been related. It comes from an article by Matt Mushalik, which I have linked to above, who is from Australia. Click on the chart to make it expand.
The chart links the economy and oil, but needs to be put in the context of just how desperate a falling oil price makes psychotic regimes like those of Iran, or volatile governments in Venezuela, Central Asia, and Russia. A depression could put them into either large-scale civil unrest as their treasuries dry up, or hard-line mode. A recovery could then strengthen whoever makes it into power. The prospect is not good.
The second thing which I note is this quote from the comments page of the oil drum, from Nate Hagens; I thought it very apt, and some of the smartest rich people I know, whom I met in Park Lane last week, I think would agree.
If rich people were smart (or rather, could optimize on other than dollars), they would realize that unless some large scale distribution and allocation changes are made, they won't be able to enjoy either their wealth nor their superior social ranking for much longer. Lower resource affordability per capita is going to stretch social democratic principles to their breaking point, (and beyond, in my opinion)
I agree too. Every man for himself results in nothing for anyone. Hobbes, amongst others, was right.
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