Is Peak Oil a Tragedy of the Commons?

Economics Economics Questions
121

Poptech wrote:

<<< I take it you never watched the video in my original post, >>>

I already watched that, and what he basically says is that - indeed - we run out of cheap oil. He does not say that either oil is 'infinite" nor that peak oil theory as such is untrue.

Yes, there are tar sands that will still last some time. But at what price?

Have you made the calculation about his claim that tar sands will fuel all the world for all the energy need for 100 years?

I’m sure he forgets about the fact that the planet’s population in a 100 years is a bit larger as today, and that the energy use per capita will also be signifianctly bigger.

122

In your opinion. Do you have the expertise to explain the White Tiger oil field and why, according to you, it’s ridiculous???

Can you explain to us why the moons on Saturn have more oil then we do? Even though there’s no evidence of there ever being carbon life?

It’s not necessary, you refuted yourself in the first sentence. You have no idea how much is out there, so there is no way you can know if we’re at a peak.

123

Oil on the moons of Saturn? Really? How do you know? Hydrocarbons maybe, but oil? Are you intending to bring it here? :wink:

People who laugh off this issue can’t be taken seriously. Throughout this thread there’s been suggestions that there’s lots of oil, that it is abiogenic, that prices will serve as motor for conservation and investment in alternatives. I think that’s all bunk based on a whole slew of highly questionable assumptions. For one thing, if it takes a barrel of oil’s worth of energy to extract a fresh barrel, it is simply never going to happen whether it is abiogenic or not.

124

Can you explain to me the difference between a hydrocarbon and oil? Thanks.

Well those assumptions aren’t as bad as believing in peak oil.

This is just a very terrible play on words, and leans towards the dishonest side of things.

125

Oil is composed of hydrocarbons - but hydrocarbons such as the methane found on Saturn’s moon Titan is naturally occuring. There is absolutely nothing to suggest the methane on Saturn is of biological origin, nor is there any reason to expect to find “oil” there. Anyway, you claimed ‘the moons of Saturn have more oil than we do’. How you know this is a mystery. In reality, you don’t know this, your claim is groundless

You also say peak-oil proponents don’t know how much oil is left, hence can’t know when we will reach peak. Did you forget that the same argument can be applied to the peak-oil sceptics’ position? In fact there are estimates to how much oil is left, but such estimates need care: not all oil will be recoverable and OPEC sets its sales quotas on the estimates provided by its constituents and hence there is a self-interest in exaggerating reserves so as to maximise quotas (a profit incentive for quick depletion, somewhat supporting the OP imo) The implications are obvious?

As for abiogenesis of oil, it’s an obscure theory with almost no support amongst chemists and geologists. Maybe it is true? Maybe. But how do you know? As a non-expert I have to take my cue from the experts, and their view is that oil is biogenic and finite. What is known has to determine policy, not imagination and hope for obscure and unsupported theories.

126

I don’t. How do you know peak oil is no mystery? What I do know is that I would be more ready to trust Nasa scientists on this specific topic over you.

Boy you guys will fight this too the bloody end won’t you. It’s not about truth any more is it?

Yea those stupid Nasa scientists! You tell em! Your intel on this matter far surpasses them.

I know that the price of oil is generally low. So it pretty much debunks the idea that we are running out. But I am not arguing that we are running out, or have alot. I am arguing neither. I am just simply pointing out the fallacy of your claim. And by the way this comment does not change the fact that you still do not know how much oil reserves earth has.

Not nearly as obscure as believing that Dinosaurs decidedly all banded together and died in the exact same spots on earth, so as to create large pools of oil in only specific area’s on earth. I suppose you think your theory is less silly? Why because they taught that to you in grade school? It doesn’t make sense that these area’s are some of the most desolate area’s on earth. Did you ever learn to think for yourself? Or were you taught in gradeschool to follow directions, and believe every academia theory you hear about? And whichever comes first wins? Which is it?

If any theory is vague it’s yours. So many just blatantly silly assumptions made. Im not saying it’s not true, I’m simply saying look at the thorn in your own eye, before pointing at mine.

What a silly argument you’ve built.

127

Over and over again. Does anyone read the thread before posting the same things? Oil does not have to be used to extract oil, natural gas and nuclear can be used.

128

“For one thing, if it takes a barrel of oil’s worth of energy to extract a fresh barrel, it is simply never going to happen whether it is abiogenic or not.” - the_last_name_left

It actually always takes more than one unit of energy to get one unit of energy out of the ground, however those units are defined. It’s called thermodynamics and it’s pretty well settled physics. And yet, people still do it. I wonder why…

“Not nearly as obscure as believing that Dinosaurs decidedly all banded together and died in the exact same spots on earth, so as to create large pools of oil in only specific area’s on earth. I suppose you think your theory is less silly?” - filc

That’s a little disingenuous to the position. Dinosaurs may not have all done a mass suicide in one area, but biology also includes plants and other organisms that aren’t so mobile. Forrests and bounded habitats like inland seas and lakes, and their plankton and fish and other organisms which can’t leave the area, are what generally form oil.

129

But you get my point right? He’s claiming that the abiogenic theory is bunk, has holes, and is just down right “rediculous”. Meanwhile the existing oil creation theory’s aren’t any better. Furthermore he’s passing judgement from a place of ignorance. Something that particularly bothers me. =p

130

But you get my point right? He’s claiming that the abiogenic theory is bunk, has holes, and is just down right “rediculous”. Meanwhile the existing oil creation theory’s aren’t any better." - filc

They are better. That’s not to say abiogenic theory isn’t correct, but even the White Tiger fields were conceivably ‘filled up’ from a source where biological oil was likely or possible. But the fact still remains that abiogenic hydrocarbons already exist, as you pointed out on Titan and here on Earth in the form of thermal depolymerization. Seems to work fairly well too, despite the fact that it isn’t sucking down subsidies too which is nice. I see no reason why both processes can’t be at work, biogenic and abiogenic.

“Furthermore he’s passing judgement from a place of ignorance. Something that particularly bothers me. =p”

You just described The Internet.

131

Crude oil production peaked in 2005 and has been flat ever since. The deniers of peak oil are blatantly denying objective reality, not unlike flat earth advocates or other similar groups

132

80% of the worldwide oil supply is controlled by governments. Production statistics are therefore not proof of peak oil, but of the whims of some central planner.

133

If we take this example of known cheap oil reserves and do a calculation with today’s consumption levels. That would mean we have 40 years of oil left and that is not accounting for exponential growth. If you think oil shale is going to replace cheap oil then sure you are correct there is no oil crisis because based on those findings there are billions of barrels of oil shale that could last us 250 years by your amount of 7 trillion barrels. But unfortunately oil shale requires a lot of water and energy to produce and is only viable when people can pay a lot of money for it. Don’t know how well that would work in some of the uses of cheap oil that play a large part in our economy. A lot of critics of peak oil make the argument that we can just move to another form of energy but there is no other type of energy that can replace oil at this time. You can turn coal in to plastic containers and Chinese tooth brushes. I always tell people that peak oil is not just running out of oil, it is when oil becomes so expensive that it is not economic viable to import those socks you are wearing from china. Then we have peak oil.

1.3 trillion barrels divide
85,085,664 bbl/day source x 365

40 years worth of cheap oil.

134

Peak oil was a wacky theory from the 50’s that turned out to be wrong. Yet these days it is repeated as if it is a law of thermodynamics. Peak oil is based on very simple equivocation fallacy: It confuses known extractable reserves with the overall amount of oil on the planet. Both are called “oil”, but known reserves can’t peak because they aren’t a finite quantity. That’s where the whole theory of peak oil breaks down. We can talk about oil shortages, or oil running out, but peak oil is wrong.

Here’s a little timeline for you: 1882: 95 million barrels remaining, 1950: 100 billion barrels remaining, 1980: 648 billion barrels remaining, 1993: 999 billion barrels remaining, 2000: 1016 billion barrels remaining, 2008: 1238 billion barrels remaining. (source) And above EIA link says it was 1342 billion barrels in 2009. That means that we actually added more to our reserves than we burned up. Despite unprecedented alarmism about oil running out, reserves have always been growing! Even in recent years. Now if something is supposed to run out, wouldn’t you at least expect it to decline?

The simple fact is that oil reserves grow. They just go up, up and up. And if we extrapolate that trend, we will have more oil in 40 years than we have now. All that talk in the media is just pretty numerology. The numbers are true, but the implications are completely wrong. The fact is that predictions of this or that running out have been around since Malthus, and they have always been wrong. That is because these models don’t take into account that reserves are renewed because a resource is scarce. Environmentalist predictions are like religious predictions of the apocalypse; the date is always a few years ahead yet it somehow never comes up. It’s just perpetually postponed. And that’s how it’s going to continue to be. Like the food in your fridge, resources will always be about to run out, yet never actually run out.

135

“The fact is that predictions of this or that running out have been around since Malthus, and they have always been wrong.”

To expand on this point, the USGS has been predicting the imminent depletion of oil since we started burning it for fuel.

136

Yes. I saw a list once that showed them predicting the end of oil like every 20 years since the 1860’s. The inherent flaw of material-technical forecasts (when we say “this is how much we have, and this is how fast we burn it up, thus we have this long before it runs out”) is that they do not take the cyclical replenishment of resources into account. Scarcity causes creation of resources. Like my fridge; it’s replenished because it’s getting empty. If it’s full already I have no reason to buy new food. Why bother? It’s like every week I tell my wife “we’re gonna run out of food by next week”. And then oddly enough we buy more food. But a few days later I again proclaim that our food will run out immanently. So I just repeatedly proclaim we’re going to run out because I extrapolate current consumption without taking the part of the process into accout that replenishes the resource. And technically I would be right. The food in my fridge is at any point in time always “running out”. The problem is that that doesn’t capture the whole process. It extrapolates a part of the the process as if it were the whole process.

Opponents sometimes respond with some reference to resources being finite. You know, the earth is spherical. All the resources we will ever have are alredy there. So we couldn’t create resources. It’s physics! And that is,as I mentioned, simply an equivocation between known reserves an the overall amount of a resource. Reserves are not finite, we create them because we need them. They do not have to ever run out (they may though), and they can not peak.

I have found though that environmentalists aren’t impressed by empirical data. The fact that our theoretical models are repeatedly backed up by reality somehow just makes our theory less pure, while the fact that their theory was shown to be repeatedly wrong elevates it into a higher level of theoretical purity. Facts that make their predictions wrong are never taken as a sign that their theoretical models may be flawed. No, these are just random incdents that happen to come about. In fact these unexpected events explain why their predictions happened to be wrong, vindicating the theory. When someone finds a giant new oil field, that doesn’t mean the theory that predicted oil to run out was wrong. Their theory is inherently pure and true and reality just happened to not conform to it in that instance.

137

Well, assuming oil isn’t a rapidly renewable resource (abiotic origin or whatever), reserves are finite, they do have to run out, and they will peak. The problem is just that the doom and gloom crowd is assuming our current reserves are the actual resource total and so they can calculate approximately when any of these events will happen, which isn’t the case.

Of course, they mostly know this and just want to use it as an excuse to reinvent the world they way they think it ought to be.

138

“I take this opportunity to express my opinion in the strongest terms, that the amazing exhibition of oil which has characterized the last twenty, and will probably characterize the next ten or twenty years, is nevertheless, not only geologically but historically, a temporary and vanishing phenomenon – one which young men will live to see come to its natural end” (1886, J.P. Lesley, state geologist of Pennsylvania).

“There is little or no chance for more oil in California” (1886, U.S. Geological Survey).

“There is little or no chance for more oil in Kansas and Texas” (1891, U.S. Geological Survey).

“Total future production limit of 5.7 billion barrels of oil, perhaps a ten-year supply” (1914, U.S. Bureau of Mines).

“Reserves to last only thirteen years” (1939, Department of the Interior).

“Reserves to last thirteen years” (1951, Department of the Interior, Oil and Gas Division).

“We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade” (President Jimmy Carter speaking in 1978 to the entire world).

“At the present rate of use, it is estimated that coal reserves will last 200 more years. Petroleum may run out in 20 to 30 years, and natural gas may last only another 70 years” (Ralph M. Feather, Merrill textbook Science Connections Annotated Teacher’s Version, 1990, p. 493).

“At the current rate of consumption, some scientists estimate that the world’s known supplies of oil … will be used up within your lifetime” (1993, The United States and its People).

“The supply of fossil fuels is being used up at an alarming rate. Governments must help save our fossil fuel supply by passing laws limiting their use” (Merrill/Glenco textbook, Biology, An Everyday Experience, 1992).

(Give particular heed to that last sentence.)

140

So what are you saying then? That we are still going to discover more oil, billions of barrels of oil have just been missed by the advanced oil finding technology?

I do not think that there is a large amount of oil to still be found. They are already drilling 15000feet under the sea floor in search of oil. Why would they be going to such lengths if they could easily just drill for oil or use the 7 trillion barrels of oil shale?

While i am against governments exploiting peakoil and messing with the market and I do foresee the peakoil idea being used to artificially increase prices. That does not change my mind on the fact that it is a finite resource that takes 1000s if not 100000s of years to develop.

There is also no other type of resource that could replace oil for its many uses. Maybe a combination of resources, but even then, nothing as cheap as oil and nothing as versatile.

Sure if they find another oil well with 100s of billion barrels of oil then that changes the amount of time we have left. Which is what has happened in the past. A combination of exploiting the peakoil myth to increase prices as well as working with the information at the time.