I’ve been reading about “peak oil” being imminent since the ’70s. Oil may indeed be a finite resource but the relevant question is: How much is left? It appears there’s more than previously reckoned.
Perhaps a great deal more.
Keep in mind (and assuming for the sake of discussion, benign motives) that the “peak oil” thesis that’s constantly trotted out to justify such things as government fuel-efficiency mandates (which oddly are never applied to government vehicles, such as 4 MPG presidential limos or the military, which consumes vastly more oil than all the civilian vehicles in private hands put together) was offered up in the late 1960s/early ’70s. It was premised on the then-available technology, with estimated reserves based on what was then-known (and then-accessible).
It was – at that time – impossible to know how much oil remained in areas currently accessible with today’s technology.
Let alone what may prove accessible tomorrow.
Hence, the “peak oil” premise is as fundamentally flawed as the belief that vinyl records were the apotheosis of music storage technology – or that the sound barrier was the inviolable limit imposed by nature on manned aircraft.
How much oil is there, for example, under Antarctica? This continent – a very large piece of real estate – is largely terra incognita, as unexplored (and hence, unknown) as North America was to Europeans circa 1491.
And there are many other as-yet untapped areas. What if there is another Ghawar out there? It’s entirely possible there are several such – and enough economically- viable-to-extract oil to last 100 years or more.
This is undeniable. It is arrogant – or foolish (or both) to insist all the available oil has been found and quantified.
Yet the “peak oilers” insist we accept the estimates of tappable oil made when Richard Nixon was president – and the Village People hadn’t yet sung YMCA.
In any event, the market has all the necessary mechanisms to balance supply and demand naturally and non-coercively. This is the much more relevant point that “peak oilers” often miss.
If oil is about to run out, the market will clearly signal this. Prices will rise in accordance with reduced supply. This is an inexorable – and natural – relationship. It works the same for petroleum as it does for any other commodity. It will not be necessary to impose fuel-efficiency requirements on the car industry. The naturally rising cost of oil – of gasoline – would impose the necessary (if it is necessary) corrective.
Government “action” that pre-empts the natural market mechanism is usually destructive because it is based on error. And – not infrequently – these “errors” are deliberate.
Remember: Government is just politicians. Office-seekers and bureaucrats. People whose livelihood depends on coercion, not persuasion. People who need to justify their use of coercion. If the justification disappears, so does the legitimacy of the coercion. Ponder this.
Very often, people who seek political power are people who crave power, who enjoy exercising coercion for the sake of the pleasure it gives them. “Power,” quipped the sociopath and mass-murderer Henry Kissinger, “is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” See also Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton – and of course, The Chimp. His successor, too.
These are are not nice people. Because nice people do not reflexively rely on violence, do not insist on “helping” you at gunpoint.
“Peak oil” is at best a dated nostrum. At worst, it is another convenient excuse to “protect” us against yet another manufactured bogeyman. Like the “war” on “terror.” (Consider: Who is more likely to “terrorize” you here in the Homeland? An ululating Muslim? Or the white American cop at the “safety” checkpoint up ahead?) If the oil were about to run out – or likely to, in the foreseeable future – wouldn’t major industrial operations that depend on a steady supply of economically recoverable oil be divesting themselves of anything petro-dependent like rats fleeing a sinking ship? And yet, the car industry continues to design new cars that burn gas, the airline industry expands, new oil rigs are built and deployed… and so on. It does not pass the smell test.
Of course, they – the peak oilers – have a fallback justification. Maybe there is enough oil to go around. But we dare not use it because AGW.
Some, of course, haven’t yet updated their lexicon. It’s climate change now. The terminology had to be changed because of all the embarrassing cooling we’ve been experiencing lately. Even the idiocracy masses are hard to gull when it’s -15 outside in the south in November.
Of course, climate does change. This is the kernel of truth from which many not-so-truthful things are extrapolated, per Dr. Goebbels. Such as the daisy-chain that climate changing = man changed the climate. This relies on immense ignorance of high school earth science, which government schools excellently provide.
The climate has been changing for as long as the Earth has existed. It is not static. It is a complex, evolving system that will continue to change, whether man is around or not. The Earth was once much warmer and wetter – before homo sapiens even existed. Millions of years before the first steam engine coughed to life.
And it has gone through cycles of glaciation, too.
And will do so again… and again.
The argument that man is the critical factor in “climate change” is a political assertion, not a scientific fact.
Just like “peak oil.”
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There is enough gold at the core of the earth to cover the surface of the planet in 12 to 13 feet of gold. Unfortunately, it’s 1,800 miles below our feet and at many thousands of degrees.
All the gold ever mined would only stand at 80 feet on the Washington Monument base which is 55’ 1-1/2” square. So, that’s 246,050 cubic feet or 9,113 cubic yards of gold.
Structure of the Earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_of_the_Earth#Core
Most of Earth’s carbon may be hidden in the planet’s inner core, new model suggests
http://phys.org/news/2014-12-earth-carbon-hidden-planet-core.html
Bridgmanite, Earth’s most abundant mineral, is captured for the first time on a meteorite. The mineral makes up more than a third of the volume of Earth, but because it only resides in the lower mantle, scientists have been unable to study it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2857390/Bridgmanite-Earth-s-abundant-mineral-captured-time-meteorite.html
Sorry Tor,computer or keyboard malfunction
phys.org/news/2014-12-earth-carbon-hidden-planet-core
Kevin
Tor Liberal,please check this out(I couldnt paste it)
phys.org/news/2014-12-earth-carbon hidden
Kevinplanet-core
Does oil lubricate the Earths plates?
The Earth’s plates rest on the molten mantle, and move due to the flow of that mantle, heated by the core and flowing on convection currents. All oil is within the plates and plays no role in their movement.
http://sciencefocus.com/forum/does-oil-lubricate-the-earths-plates-t1332.html?mobile=on
Plate Tectonics: The Mechanism
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/tecmech.html
Actually I sorta figured that but.now they are saying most of Earths carbon resides in the outer core-Kevin
Cheap, abundant energy is a problem for the corporations and governments of the world. Can’t have the masses living easy, securely. Got to keep them working – and in debt. It’s the lubricant that powers the machine, so to speak…
Where Carbon is found, by Gigatons:
Atmosphere 720
Oceans 38,400,
Lithosphere – Sedimentary carbonates 60,000,000+
Lithosphere – Kerogens 15,000,000
Terrestrial biosphere – Living biomass 800
Terrestrial biosphere – Dead biomass 1,200
Aquatic biosphere 2
Fossil fuels – Coal 3,510
Fossil fuels – Oil 230
Fossil fuels – Gas 140
Fossil fuels – Peat&Other 250
The Carbon Cycle
— —
The Outer Core:
The Outer Core is the second to last layer of the Earth. It is a magma like liquid layer that surrounds the Inner Core and creates Earth’s magnetic field.
The Outer Core is about 4000-5000 degrees Celsius. The Inner Core is so hot it causes all the metal in the Outer Core to melt into liquid magma.
The Outer Core is composed of iron and some nickel. There are very few rocks and iron and nickel ore left in the Outer Core because of the Inner Core melting all the metal into liquid magma
The Outer Core is about 2200 km thick. It is the second largest layer and made entirely out of liquid magma.
Because the outer core moves around the inner core, Earth’s magnetism is created.
— —
The Inner Core
The Inner Core is the final layer of the Earth. It is a solid ball made of metal. The Inner Core is about 1250 km thick and is the second smallest layer of the Earth. Although it is one of the smallest, the Inner Core is also the hottest layer.
The Inner Core is a solid ball composed of an element named NiFe. Ni for Nickel and Fe for Ferrum also known as Iron.
The Inner Core is about 5000-6000 degrees Celsius. It melts all metal ores in the Outer Core causing it to turn into liquid magma.
The ave distance to the center of the earth is 6,368 km from the surface
I didnt read everything real careful,but I thought peak oil was about reaping the low hanging fruit of easily cheaply accessible oil.If I remember correctly when Saddam had the Kuwait oil wells torched.so much oil was consumed that ground pressure on the existing oil wheels was reduced somewhat. My Phd Geologist friend believes in peak oil and I do consider His a learned opinion.
Anyway let me postulate a silly Quandry-suppose the pools of oil we have been draining are actually resivors for lubricants of the continental plates(remember plate tectonics?) wouldnt that be a bitch? Any way as the Shah of Iran once said”Oil is too valuable to burn” even if way have a few centuries of petroleum availible should we be burning it like there is no tomorrow?Dont get me wrong one of my strongest disagreements with a prominent Democrat friend was about Al Gore,when I postulated my dismay about what would happen if He became President,my Friends defense was” He would surround himself with good people” indeed(I do not like hypocrites)-Kevin
Vinyl records really are the best way to listen to music, they are the pinnacle of sound quality. There is a resurgence of record collectors and the industry is once again churning out vinyl in numbers not seen since the seventies. It may be convenient to have 10,000 songs on your ipod or phone, but what you are listening to is a degraded two dimensional copy of a copy of a copy.
I dig vinyl, too.
I am happy I kept my old records – and record player!
There is something pleasantly tactile about a physical record; the hiss and scratch of the needle… my iPod may be great for a variety of reasons, but I’ll never throw my vinyl in the woods!
…look up “abiotic oil”…Oil is NOT a finite resource that was a result of decaying animal and plant material. Oil (hydrocarbons) is constantly being produced deep within the earth by yet unknown processes. Many of our old, depleted oil wells are “filling back up”. Russian oil interests have been drilling 10,000 15,000 20,000 feet down, much too far for decayed plant and animal material, and coming up with oil. Of course, there is the comparison with the diamond interests, creating an artificial scarcity, keeping prices up, but, abiotic oil is fact…”peak oil” is a discredited concept whose time has gone…
With you there Anarchyst. Some years ago I somewhat dismissed the abiotic oil theory thanks to limited evidence until we discovered lakes and rivers of methane on Titan.
I mean, subduction of the Earth’s crust might explain some of the deep oil found and, since oil wells have been under pressure for millions of years, some of the oil might have seeped into the surrounding rocks and is now seeping back out making the well appear to be refilling. I’m just throwing possibilities out there.
But the recent discoveries regarding complex carbon compounds in space and then on Titan where dinosaurs have never stepped foot changed my mind to a very large degree.
Trouble is, we still don’t know how much there is and how long it takes to form – or collect in sufficient concentration to extract. Fracking anyone? Technology gets better all the time.
One thing for sure, greenies need to change their pet term “fossil fuel” to something else that’s just as foreboding and guilt-ridden, such as “Blood of Gaia”, because they’ll never use the word “natural”.
Good point. And add some radioactive decay from the ample supply (at the time) of uranium and thorium to a whole lot of carbon and you just might end up with oil. A few billion more reactions and you might start to see complex protein strains and later DNA.
There’s still lots of thorium reacting in the Earth’s core, so no reason to believe the processes somehow stopped just because we discovered it.
One wonders, of course, just who shipped all the dinosaurs and vegetation to Titan.
http://www.space.com/24028-saturn-moon-titan-hydrocarbon-lakes.html
“Blood of Gaia” – I’ll be expecting to hear that one if/when abiotic oil becomes fact, not just theory.
PtB, I believe we’ll never have proof of abiotic oil until we run out of.. erm.. “fossil fuel”.. or maybe never. Too much of a good thing going so far by the threat of running out so they can hold us for ransom, no matter what they call it.
Still, if we could find a way to make silicon reactors, I bet the Greenpiss would be out there trying to protect desert sand 😉
I became aware of the specifics of drilling in the mid-60’s. It was then that electric rigs began to be used to drill up to 30,000 ft. West Tx. and N.M. are both full of deep gas wells(for the most part although some do produce oil as well.) Now drilling a well is a 150 ft./hr. thing opposed to the days I first went to the patch and 150ft./day was common. Now a common scenario is for a rig to drill a mile or more, then turn and drill half again that much horizontally. Every 1000′ or so they are plugged in the horizontal, perforated and fraced gaining new circulation and then continue on this way to the end of the hole. I’ve seen as many as 6 wells drilled from the same location with the same rig.
Right now you can go across west Tx. and see clusters of rigs as far as the eye can see. I’d like to see a satellite pic of it at night. I’ve been thinking of getting a smart phone just for the camera and taking pics of all this. Sometimes I’ll sit on a hill that’s higher than most and glass the area I can see with my nocs. It’s fairly astounding. The highways are sometimes parking lots that barely move with eighteen wheelers, service trucks, all sorts of specialty trucks and a huge amount of pickups. I’ve sat in line for half an hour waiting my turn at US 158 and Ranch Road 33 at Garden City.
When I got run over by a frac sand truck the Dep. Sheriff said there were 5-6 fatal wreck every week in the county similar to mine. I noticed on the N side of Garden City a big bunch of fuel and other stuff left on the highway that hadn’t been there the day before. They said a water hauler ran over a TXDOT truck and knocked it down into a pasture. These wrecks happen in broad daylight.
Drivers are pushed beyond the limits of being safe and new hires are normal, people who have never driven a big rig before going to a driving school and signing on with a desperate company. It’s fairly insane. I-20 if often a solid stream, both lanes, both directions. People in cars and esp. SUV’s do really stupid stuff right in the middle of a big pack of trucks and cause big wrecks.
Last Thursday I was grossing over 80,000 lbs and got in one of those packs, caused by some rigs that are speed limited way too far below the 75mph PSL. We were about to pass over Highway 70 when a guy in a new VW SUV makes this move through for an exit and cuts in front of several trucks. The truck that nearly ran over him almost lost it since he had to swerve into the other lane. I never had time to do much except lift and stab my brakes at the same time. Of course this was affecting trucks well behind me as well as all those around me. There were some comments on the radio afterward, after everybody cleaned their drawers and got things going straight again. Too bad that guy didn’t lose it and roll that SUV up and never be able to do that again. I’d rather he suffer than everybody else. I’ve been the victim, still am. Everyday people do really stupid stuff and I see them not even looking at the road, just their phone. They often seem to be totally unaware of the wrecks they’ve nearly caused. And then there’s the show traffic that will speed up and run as fast as your rig will go. For what reason, they probably couldn’t tell you. More insanity. People are not becoming better drivers.
BTW, this is war. It’s been declared on Russia, the mid-east and many S.A. countries who don’t toe the US policy line, esp. Venezuela that holds the largest known oil reserves in the world and won’t let any companies drill in their sphere. They are a state owned entity, thus the enemy of corporations everywhere who drill for oil. All this money, I finally figured out, is being supplied by TPTB, via international banksters if you will, to make the price of oil so cheap nobody can sell their foreign oil here. It’s working too, with oil prices now at a point where drilling became unprofitable 7-8 years ago. Now it’s $2.65 gas and $3.35 diesel, something we haven’t seen in a nearly a decade. This year will be the first year ever the patch hasn’t shut down in Nov. through Feb. I just wish everybody could see what I do every day. I suspect it’s keeping the economy from tanking for awhile. Some say the “boom” will never end. I doubt that but it’s certainly a record right now.
Rereading my comment, I’d like to amend the wishing everybody could see what I do to what I see. I just meant I’d like everyone to see the things I do every day. You really don’t want to see what I “do”. LOL or maybe the voyeur in some really would like to see what I do every day. There are certainly parts that would be entertaining for others and most likely embarrassing for me. I suspect with a camera on me all day, everybody would be glad they aren’t me. How does an old man work 15-18 hrs every day? It ain’t pretty. But my 4th day off and I’m losing my mind. We needed the rain but damn, just so much of the house I can take at one time. OTOH, I’d rather shoot myself than be a got-dam waterhauler. I never know what I’ll be hauling, keeps me on my toes.
8SM – “BTW, this is war. It’s been declared on Russia, the mid-east and many S.A. countries who don’t toe the US policy line, esp. Venezuela.”
I would say that, right now, it is particularly on Russia, because they are interfering with the wishes of TPTB in Ukraine.
I totally agree anarchyst, most people have never heard of Thomas Gold. The idea that petroleum is decayed animals and plant matter deep inside the earth is pure hogwash. I understand that the term “fossil fuel” was first put out by a journalist who really knew nothing about such things. The term caught on with everyone and has stuck ever since. No science behind it at all. Also, when the first oil well was drilled during the 1800’s they started saying it would run out soon. It really is a renewable resource and probably won’t ever run out although it will be more difficult to get at the deeper oil.
Sounds interesting, 8. But I’m too busy admiring Kim Kardashian to be bothered by such stories.
for some guys, rap music and ELF bass seem beneficial
German kids playing with Deutschmarks in 1922 during Peak Inflation
The Kardashian thing baffles me. She’s a very ordinary – and (to my eye) trashy – looking girl. One could find a dozen such at any mall in any city in America. Why is she the apotheosis of “hot”? I think it is solely because the machine (the confector/manufacturer of famousness) so decrees. It could just as easily be anyone else.
It is quite something. Testimony to the effectiveness of advertising/relentless media pushing. They can take anyone and turn them into a star – just like that. No special talents or anything else required. Just the juggernaut of money and exposure that force-feeds the image and the name into the dulled noggins of the idiot masses.
Huxley was far more prophetically astute than Orwell.
That is easy Eric. “Do anything to entertain me, Just don’t make me think!” The more ‘prurient interest’ the better to sell you my dear.
I credit the father of marketing to the masses Edward Bernays. He was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as “the father of public relations”. Wikipedia
You got it Gary,
“Only from the active energy of the intelligent few can the public at large become aware and act upon new ideas”.-Edward Bernays, “Propaganda”
He referred to propaganda as “engineering consent”. That answers Erics question as to why Kardashian is the apotheosis of hot. It was engineered to be that way…….and the the dipshits bought it.
‘a presidential candidate may be “drafted” in response to “overwhelming popular demand”, but it is well know that his name may be decided upon by a half dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room’. E. B.
You want social service, Obama? Just use Edward’s text book for “propaganda in social services”. Chapter 9
Everyone should read “Propaganda”. It is only about 160, small pages. It is the text book, used by all who desire to further their agenda on the masses.
The society which we are fortunate enough to live in has all the best features of both Huxley and Orwell.
I’m not saying Kim K is dog meat. But I find her sisters to be more attractive, and the younger 1/2 sisters (surname Jenner) even more so.
But they have not been in Playboy, at least not yet, nor had sex tapes released on the Interweb.
I remember reading old issues of the “Readers Digest” with hyperbolic articles talking about how the world would run out of oil by 1990, and how the evil Soviets were a hair’s breadth away from controlling the Middle east and choking off the west’s supply. Now of course it is Global warming – No, Climate change! The parasitic elite is of course exempt from conservation mandates, as evidenced by Big Al flying around the world in his private jet and driven around in a limo to his lectures, when he is not relaxing in his 10,000 sqft mansion with $1400 monthly electricity bills.
By the way, I hear he made a ton of money by strategically investing in “green energy” and carbon credits with David Blood, the husband of Dianne Feinstein (Gore & Blood!!).
It’s a real shame about most scientists. Are they really that naive when it comes to accepting funding and resources from murderous agents of the psychopathic state? Take the money, but don’t lie to yourself and everyone else about it. Is there an emerging metascience that’s looking into the sociopathic ambivalence of science itself?
Robert Zubrin seems to have actually written a lot of good things and has painstakingly developed highly complex and well integrated ideas when they don’t include state coercion. When it comes to street smarts and common sense, though. It appears he is utterly retarded.
Robert Zubrin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zubrin
He was awarded his first patent at age 20 in 1972 for Three Player Chess. His inventions also include the nuclear salt-water rocket and co-inventor of the magnetic sail.
Books. The Case for Mars. Islands in the Sky. Bold New Ideas for Colonizing Space. Entering Space. Creating a Spacefaring Civilization. Mars On Earth. The Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic. First Landing. The Holy Land. Benedict Arnold: A Drama of the American Revolution in Five Acts. How to Live on Mars. Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.
Achieving Energy Victory R. Zubrin
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/TNA18-Zubrin.pdf
synopsis. the govt thugs of Brazil have achieved energy independence. That is the seen. Never mind the unseen. That’s not my area. Why not further destroy the vestiges of the American Free Market by using the same coercion and destruction Brazil used to strongarm and stranglehold its fragmented emerging market economy. Americans’ll just do the same thing here on the vastly larger and better functioning American market. What could go wrong? Science Bitches!
Robert Zubrin quotes
“If the human mind can understand the universe, it means the human mind is fundamentally of the same order as the divine mind. If the human mind is of the same order as the divine mind, then everything that appeared rational to God as he constructed the universe, it’s “geometry,” can also be made to appear rational to the human understanding, and so if we search and think hard enough, we can find a rational explanation and underpinning for everything. This is the fundamental proposition of science.”
― Robert Zubrin, The Case For Mars
“Contrary to your Earth experience and its derived cynicism, on Mars, such things are possible. Yes, fully possible, even for you, a person who obviously was a complete social failure on Earth–otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
― Robert Zubrin, How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet
“Currently we see around us an ever more apparent loss of vigor of our society: increasing fixity of the power structure and bureaucratization of all levels of life; impotence of political institutions to carry off great projects; the proliferation of regulations affecting all aspects of public, private, and commercial life; the spread of irrationalism; the banalization of popular culture; the loss of willingness by individuals to take risks, to fend for themselves or think for themselves; economic stagnation and decline, the deacceleration of the rate of technological innovation…Everywhere you look, the writing is on the wall.”
– Well there’s the problem. Zubrin’s bogged down trying to integrate the two-faced lying psychopathy of Christian Murderers that kill with one hand and heal with the other hand with science. Egads.
Scientists are not angels, they have families to feed and career aspirations as well. They simply play the game that is established for them by TPTB.
To put a label to it:
Moral relativism has steadily been accepted as the primary moral philosophy of modern society, a culture that was previously governed by a “Judeo-Christian” view of morality. While these “Judeo-Christian” standards continue to be the foundation for civil law, most people hold to the concept that right or wrong are not absolutes, but can be determined by each individual. Morals and ethics can be altered from one situation, person, or circumstance to the next. Essentially, moral relativism says that anything goes, because life is ultimately without meaning. Words like “ought” and “should” are rendered meaningless. In this way, moral relativism makes the claim that it is morally neutral.
When I try to express this to people they act like I’m some kind of kook. They don’t understand we have a clerisy class that exists to find reasons to support what government wants to do to us. It’s been that way since the first high priest demanded ‘sacrifices’ to appease the gods so the spring rains would come. Just because we call it “science” doesn’t make the truthfulness any greater or the process any different. It’s some expert who knows things we can never know* who tells us to obey authority or else. Except instead of cops beating us over the head the ‘or else’ is the weather, disease, famine, etc.
*ever argue with a statist of the science cult on a scientific subject you’ve taught to yourself? It’s all about having the degrees and the club memberships.
I think I know approximately what you mean by “angels.”
But how are we to proceed anywhere with such terms.
Scientists are also not Santa Clauses nor Easter Bunnies. What are we to make about such declarations.
I’ll assume you mean scientists should be expected and encouraged to act in their own rational self-interests as they perceive them. They’re just people, not some special class of martyrs or heroes.
They’re no more introspective or self-aware than anyone else. They focus on some field of knowledge or maybe two or three. And that’s it.
Perhaps my values and expectations are skewed and not the scientists. I should assuming scientists don’t feel trapped and deeply screwed over. They aren’t deeply dissatisfied with major aspects of their lives and curious as to why that is. Why would they think deeply about things, if they feel things are ok?
Whatever philosophy they hold is functioning. Why tamper with something that is getting the job done.
Why should they care that the foundations of their colleges and institutions are built on the democided corpses of millions of people who never wanted to contribute to “higher education” but were forced to anyway. The world is a violent place controlled by people with bad motives. You can’t waste your precious time worrying about it.
I’d like to think we can be our own “thought vanguard”
That we can perform the metascience of deciding what methods can be devised to guide our behavior and beliefs, that will help us further our goals of individual freedom.
Maybe too much deep introspection isn’t necessary. What if we all just ask our wives, children, employers, and community for more freedom.
Give us highly motivated and productive people more freedom, and you’ll be richly rewarded. Let us show you what we are capable of without all the restrictions and stumbling blocks.
What if its just that easy?
Another important aspect of alleged “peak oil” not mentioned in the article is that proven reserves are the amount of oil that companies have found it economical to discover but not yet extract. It is obvious, if you think about it, that it makes no sense to spend money discovering 1,000 or 10,000 years worth of proven reserves, because exploration costs money that at some point is better spent EXTRACTING oil.
Thus, the number of years of proven reserves hovers more or less continuously around a half century worth, because if you had, say, just five years left, and it took ten years to get an oil field up and running after you first discovered it, you’d have an obvious supply problem. Whereas if you have 100 years of reserves and keep spending money trying to ramp that number up higher, your costs per gallon of gas will be higher than your competitors and you’ll be forced out of business.
JH – excellent point. Even I (genius that I am) had not thought of that aspect.
A simple rule of thumb for me, without looking into anything very deeply, is this: If the government is worried about, promoting, showing concern, carrying on about something, it really isn’t a big deal–usually pure bullshit.
Later, when I have the time, I can always find the scholarship and information to confirm my judgement and explain to others exactly how/why the government is full of shit.
ancap51 – it’s kind of like “Don’t believe anything until the gunvermin denies it. Then it’s probably true.”
All free disinformation is a con. The free press con. Everything you read in a major newspaper is an attempted confidence trick. A con. There’s barely a kernel of truth to be found. If that.
Every article is a peon to some power group with an angle and an agenda. Every “story” is an attempt to see who can crap out and lay the biggest turd in some other guys punchbowl.
Here is an amateur description of a factual real estate development costing around $61 billion so far in Mecca adjacent to the Kaaba. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraj_Al_Bait
“Destruction” of early Islamic heritage sites. Because, everywhere has to be a living Scooby Doo graveyard of crumbling ruins like Europe, it seems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_early_Islamic_heritage_sites_in_Saudi_Arabia
Here is the Associated Press con version of these same facts.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/3126195a16a3470da23198048f392b2b/saudi-overhaul-reshapes-islams-holiest-city-mecca
Now of course, you can read Saudi Arabia news for all kinds of infidel scandals going on in America and in the Western World. Because that’s all there is these days. A free market in cons. A race to say who can make the biggest lies and fabrications stick the longest, at least until the next Eternal McWorld McWar franchising opportunity opens up somewhere.
– are you ‘I’m Loving It’ yet? Bump bump bump bump ba. You deserve a break today.
To emphasize and reiterate what Eric said, the ‘available’ supply of oil is based on calculations involving: 1) the price for which the extracted oil can be sold; 2) the current KNOWN reserves; 3) the current technology for retrieving said crude.
In the early 80’s, when the price of crude dropped to under $12/bbl., reserves decreased, simply because there was a lot of known oil that was not practical to retrieve and sell at that price.
Further, Russia, with at least some preliminary success, is attempting to prove the “abiotic” theory of crude oil, i.e., that either there are large supplies of crude somewhere under the earth’s crust that are seeping through somewhere, or that crude oil is being constantly created somewhere deep underground, that it is NOT the product of ancient animal remains.
Now there are several problems with the AGW theory. First of course, as Eric mentioned, the earth has NOT been warming since about 1997.
2nd, when it was warming, it was not necessarily the result of greenhouse gases – more likely solar activity.
3rd – even if it was the result of greenhouse gases, it was not necessarily CO2 – H20 is a much more efficient greenhouse gas, and is more abundant in the atmosphere than CO2.
4th – even if it was CO2, the sea water, volcanic activity, and other natural processes are much greater producers of CO2 than human activity. If we reduced manmade CO2 emissions to 0, it would barely make a difference in atmospheric CO2.
5th – studies of glacial ice cores indicate that there is a correlation between CO2 and temperature and temperature, but CO2 is a ‘trailing indicator’ – i.e., higher CO2 levels are not the cause of higher temperatures. If there is a causative relationship, it is the other way around, with higher temperature LEADING to higher CO2 levels.
Then of course there is the question of whether Global Warming would be the horrible disaster that the watermelons are trying to ‘terrorize’ us with. More people die and have other extreme difficulties with cold than with heat.
During the ‘Middle Ages Warming’ at the end of the ‘Little Ice Age,’ Greenland really was green. There was a thriving wine industry in northern England. On the continent of Europe, crop yields were high enough that they could afford the money and man hours it took to build the great cathedrals. (Not that that was necessarily a good investment of that capital, but it was available.)
Algore is a politician, NOT a scientist.
Also emphasizing and rephrasing what Eric said, in a free market, “Peak Oil” would be a non-problem. Prices would gradually rise, supply would also. When (and if, considering abiotic theory may be true) available supplies cease to expand, something will change. Either IC engines will be replaced, or other uses of crude will be switched to other fuel sources to reserve the remaining supplies for said engines.
I remember back in the early ’60s, the Chrysler turbine that would run on ‘anything combustible.’ Now that would have been a proper use of ethanol as a fuel. They demonstrated it using whiskey and perfume, not that those would be been practical, but in an emergency, anything goes.
Check out The Report from Iron Mountain if you haven’t yet. Although I don’t usually subscribe to conspiracy theories, this one is pretty convincing.
The oil has been running out since 1890 or before. I like reading old stuff from time to time and the oil was supposed to run out over a 100 years ago. Reserves these days are higher in terms of years at present consumption than they have ever been last I checked.
Many years ago I read big oil company annual reports. Occasionally now I’ll search for the highlights, their claimed reserves and changes in that number. There is always lots of oil available on these reports, absolutely no threat of peak oil and quite the opposite. So to shut up peak-oil people I tell them to put the big oil CEOs in prison. If the peak-oilers are right the annual reports of these corporations are fraudulent. If an annual report is fraudulent that is a felony as I recall, it is certainly something that can result in prison/jail time. Peak oilers will not do this. Will not attempt it. Most shut up when I challenge them to do so.
Oil companies make money like DeBeers. They control the supply. People think the wars in the middle east are about oil. That they are fought to for low oil prices. No. They fought to keep oil prices high. To keep oil off the market and under the control of the status quo. If the desire was cheap oil there is no need for war. Just sell the pre-existing governments the technology and send the experts over there and then there will be cheap oil. Everyone will be happy. Everyone wins. That’s how capitalism in its pure free market form works. Customers get low prices, oil drilling equipment people make a fortune, foreign peoples make money, oil companies make money. Everyone wins.
But that’s the problem with that solution, everyone wins. This is a game about only having the right people win and everyone else lose.
And to think that the first crude oil (other than small amounts from seepages) was discovered as a contaminant in brine wells.
“fundamentally flawed as the belief that vinyl records were the apotheosis of music storage technology…”
Be careful. If the audiophiles see that you be labeled a heretic.
Yes, and your amp should have tubes, not transistors.
Have you noticed that gas prices started falling once the Fed stopped its “quantitative easing, aka QE,” program? Also, did you notice that they started rising after the “Great Recession” when QE started?
It also happened when Bush Jr. tried to print money to finance the Iraq/Afghanistan wars without raising taxes or cutting other spending, and when Nixon eliminated the last vestiges of the gold standard in the early 70s while printing money to pay for Vietnam and the Great Society programs.
Gas prices went down/stayed the same when the Fed raised interest rates to double-digit levels in the early 80s.
Notice a pattern here? In other words, there’s no shortage of oil, just a surplus of money.
Exactly!
It’s surprising, isn’t it, that so few notice this correlation?
I have also heard some hypothesize that BarryO and co. are driving the price of oil down to punish ISIL and Russia.
Sorry, meant hurt, not punish. Although it’s not hard to figure out why they want to hurt them.
Barry is just following the script given to him by the 1997 Project for the New American Century (PNAC). We have accurately followed that war monger doctrine country by country since it was written.
Putin has become a pain in their ass so he must be crushed. Cheap (below cost of production) oil & gasoline is the current ‘in thing’ with the planners to punish the Russian people and try to force him out of power.
As Gary North says, elections are about CFR Team A vs. CFR Team B.
In 2004 it was even more obvious – Skull & Bones A vs. Skull & Bones B.
It’s often been a dollar problem at the consumer level. I calculate the price of gasoline in 90% silver US coin. A 90% silver quarter is currently worth $2.908. I last bought gasoline for $2.949. Gasoline is getting expensive, about 26 cents a gallon. When silver and gasoline where higher it was about 18 cents a gallon.
A surplus of money indeed. I must get a dash cam to show the world what’s really going on in the SW, esp Tx. I get to participate in 5 mile long traffic jams on I-20, not because of ongoing construction but simply signs saying construction so the traffic will be slowed and make federal daddy feel better. The traffic is fairly much unreal, never been anything like it and it’s oilfield all the way. I kept wondering where all the money was coming from and it’s evidently coming from the international bankers in an effort to bring other countries with large oil reserves under control. Venezuela being one, the largest known reserves in the world and a group hostile to the US. This applies to our “enemies” all over the world. Saddam did the worst thing possible. He started getting other Arab countries to trade oil in dinars and that just won’t do. That was the entire impetus behind the middle-eastern war(s)…..ongoing since BO recently sent more troops to be “boots on the ground” all over that part of the world where we’re loved so much.
I see new companies every day, sometimes think they’re running out of names and some even have .com in their name. Cat, John Deere and it’s Japanese subsidiary Komatsu, Bobcat, etc. as well as other big equipment makers are going non-stop to keep up with demand.
Not an old pickup or truck of any kind out there. It’s all brand new stuff. Pat Buchanan put it all together when he pointed out the international bankers who control the world are using oil as a weapon against any country not on the “friendly’ list. It makes sense too. Seriously, you’d just have to see it to believe it. And now I have to go put in my 15 hours and hope it doesn’t turn into 18. I leave in the early dark and come home in the late dark and have to decide which way to go every day. Go a couple hundred miles and get this piece of equipment on that trailer, drop it somewhere a couple hundred miles from there, go where there’s a belly dump, drop that lowboy and haul loads of caliche, wash rock, fill dirt, etc. till you fall over and then go way out west and get under another trailer and ……..later folks.
Hi Eight,
Be safe out there….
I have off and on given thought to OTR work. But the Cloverific rigmarole necessary to do it is really off-putting. How do you cope with it?
eric, that’s the part that would be embarrassing if anyone saw me. I’m human and so I react differently according to my mood, mostly determined by a plethora of things but surroundings always play a part as do worries about many things, often about the rig, the load, the g…dam DOT, etc. You probably wouldn’t want to see me when somebody does something that nearly costs a life or many. Sometimes I have to collect myself when something like that happens, other times I can just chill when it’s not a close call. There are times, and I’m not proud of it, I have chased somebody down and been nearly on top of them. I think they get the message. Too bad CB’s aren’t the common thing they once were. Lots of those people would get an earful and become better drivers. But clover isn’t interested in any of that.
Now I’m laughing at myself. I’m driving a fuckin Volvo right now and the thing frustrates me. The damned air horn would suck hind teat to a 98’s or a 225’s. I could wake people up in every other rig I ever drove but this thing is like stepping on CJ’s squeak toy(ok, CJ never had a squeak toy except for maybe a brief moment).
I’d best stop before I indict myself.