Peak Oil Matters

[First in a series]

So much misinformation and delusion, one hardly knows where to begin! If only crude oil supplies were as self-replenishing as the Peak Oil denial movement’s continuing assault on (and inability to understand) those … uh … whatchamacallits … FACTS!

Someday, likely within the next decade, the US and the rest of world’s governments will have to acknowledge there is a problem here, and unless alternative sources of energy can be developed and brought into general use quickly, major changes in economic activities and lifestyles are going to take place. [1]

It will take bold leadership to cope with the peak and then decline of world oil production. But first, we need to start at home. We need a President who will explain to the American people simply and clearly that our oil production is in a long decline, and that there’s no easy solution. [2]

Harsh. Unpleasant. Pessimistic. All too true. That is the reality, and some of the salient, well-established facts supporting it are discussed below. Not today, or next week, or next year, but the road we’re on will lead us there soon enough. If we do no planning, preparation, or adaptation well in advance (years), the end of that journey is going to be one hellaciously awful destination for all of us. Deniers, too. We still have choices. They do, too.

What we don’t have is more time to allow the media and industry/political leaders to keep telling the uninformed that all is well in the fossil fuel arena. Offering half-truths, context-free statements, and outright misinformation may serve personal financial or professional interests, but hundreds of millions of people who do not have the time or means to learn the truths for themselves are being poorly served, to their eventual great harm. Sadly, this is not an isolated strategy, employed only when discussing fossil fuel supplies.

Why?

‘Peak oil’ refers to the maximum rate of production of regular crude oil. Period. It’s a number.
It is not a theory.
It does not mean ‘running out of oil.
It is not the moral equivalent of Malthusianism.
It is not a political movement, or a religion.
It’s not a dessert topping. It is not a floor wax.
It is not about oil reserves (oil that has been proved to exist and to be producible at a profit), or resources (oil that may exist in the ground, irrespective of its potential to be produced profitably). Those quantities do play a role in estimating the peak, but do not determine it in any way….‘Unconventional’ liquids such as biofuels, natural gas liquids, synthetic oil made from bitumen in tar sands or from kerogen in shales, and liquids made from coal or natural gas are not regular crude oil, nor are they equivalent to crude on several important counts. When you’re talking about unconventional liquids, you are not talking about oil, and lumping them in with oil does not increase the volume of oil. That’s why it’s called ‘peak oil’ and not ‘peak liquid fuels.’ [3]

Last week, an especially egregious but all-too-typical article found its way into the blogosphere, echoing the same tired, fact-free nonsense which now serves as the biblical foundation for denying the reality of what’s happening to a finite (as in NOT infinite) resource used each and every day for more than a century by billions of people, industries, and governments. It’s a simple mathematical premise which continues to confound too many with prominent public voices. Their efforts cannot go unchallenged.

Because it does so fine a job outlining many of the standard misrepresentations employed by those denying the truth about peak oil production, I’ll devote the first two posts in this series to a discussion of Mr. Cantu’s Why We Shouldn’t be Worrying About Peak Oil article [NOTE: all quotes following are taken from there unless noted otherwise]. I’ll conclude this latest series on Peak Oil Denial by discussing issues related to the themes developed from this referenced article.

The truth is fossil fuels will continue to dominate international energy supplies for the long-term simply because they are the least expensive and most pervasive fuel resources the world currently possesses.

Which means what, exactly? Absent context, the statement seems fairly benign. The truth is that this is NOT a good thing! Not for any of us. Fossil fuels are finite resources. Production peaked more than five years ago. (As Chris Nelder noted in the quote above, unconventionals are not the same thing as conventional crude and they do not give the same energy-efficiency bang for the buck.) Butane and propane may count by some as part of ‘fossil fuel production’, thus skewing the totals to the many who do not understand the difference, but I’m pretty damn certain that pouring butane into my gas tank won’t get me very far.

‘One of the methods EIA Washington and IEA Paris have increasingly relied on in recent years to obscure the very serious and now very real problem of oil depletion is to include biofuels and natural gas liquids in the accounting of global oil production. The technique that both agencies use to conduct this obfuscation is a familiar one, in which the key information is aggregated (buried) into a much larger barrage of data and presentations….
‘In order to rebut this Secrecy by Complexity it’s the obligation of responsible energy analysts to explain the falsehood of adding biofuels and natural gas liquids to measures of oil production. The reason is simple: natural gas liquids are not oil, and they contain only 65% of the BTU of oil. Worse, biofuels are barely an energy source themselves and are the product of a conversion process of other energy inputs. Accordingly, the world is not producing 84, or 85, or 86 million barrels of oil per day. Nor will the depletion of oil be solved by the production of biofuels in the future.
‘When the EIA in Washington falsely composes such forecasts, aggregating future natural gas liquids and ethanol into a supply picture for ‘oil’ as they do each year in The Annual Energy Outlook, this disables the public’s ability to accurately understand the true outlook for global oil supply.’ [4]

These are finite resources. Shouldn’t need much more of an explanation….Because they are finite resources, and we’ve already reached the peak of their production [see this, for example], we’re now going to be producing less. And waving the magic wand of touted increases in reserves will get you just as far as the butane in my gas tank. Until/unless they are produced and refined economically, timely, and efficiently, we could assert there are a bazillion barrels of reserves in the ground and they will be just as illusory. Rate of production is what counts, and the rate of production for these unconventional alternatives isn’t that great … not at all, actually.

(Fifty years of producing shale oil in the famous/infamous Bakken formation now being hailed as some sort of Great Energy Savior resulted in a bit more than 110 million barrels of oil. The planet uses approximately 85 million barrels of oil each and every day. The U.S. uses somewhere around 18 million of that total—every day. That 110 million figure is not a per day, per week, per month, or even per year total. Bakken produced 110 million barrels in the entire fifty year period up to 2008. Total. The half million or so barrels now being produced daily is better than a stick in the eye, but it took more than a half-century to get to this point. Expectations that within the decade we may be getting three or four million barrels per day is also better than a stick in the eye, but the solution to our fossil fuel woes? Seriously?)

So saying that “fossil fuels will continue to dominate international energy supplies for the long-term” without some serious planning for (and implementation of) alternative strategies long before declining supplies really start screwing us isn’t, shall we say, especially wise. Or advantageous. Or useful. It’s a statement, not a solution.

Mr. Cantu then offers this, (with my commentary bracketed [  ] and in italics):

Consider the sheer amount of petroleum and natural gas found in the one month of September in 2009: BP discovered three billion barrels of oil [which is about 6 weeks worth of oil usage] in the Gulf of Mexico; Spanish energy firm Repsol tapped into the largest natural gas find in Venezuela’s history [which means what, exactly? Context! Facts!]; Anadarko Petroleum announced the likely presence of hydrocarbon fuels for 700 miles along the west African coastline [“likely presence”?! How much is a “likely presence”?]; and Petrobras of Brazil found even more hydrocarbon fuels in the Santos Basin (which several years prior was said to contain enough energy to make Brazil a global energy power). [Problems solved! “Even more” has been found, which, as we all know, is exactly uh … um … how many barrels in an “even more”, and is it more or less than “likely presence”? How much must one produce to make a nation a “global energy power”? Sure sounds good!]* Simply put, peak oil alarmists and hydrocarbon declinists conveniently ignore the immense power of new technology to harness deeper, untapped sources of fossil fuels. [Actually, we don’t; we merely point out that it’s not Magic—much less assured in any manner; it won’t ride to the rescue next week; it’s more expensive and time-consuming, etc, and the very fact that we’re now resorting to exploration miles below the ocean bottoms is itself a powerful statement about the facts of our energy resources, which the deniers can’t quite fathom. They also seem constitutionally incapable of informing their readers that while all of this inordinate effort to find, extract, refine, and bring to market these inferior resources, existing crude oil resources are depleting daily—anywhere from approximately 4% to 8% per year**. So the one plus million barrels of tar sands and shale oil aren’t quite matching the few million barrels per day in depletion, unless the laws of math are now being repealed as well. The industry is working that much harder just to try and keep pace, and that’s not a good formula for long-term success or our well-being.]

I’ll wrap up this first post of the series with a couple of added observations:

* the “facts” are much like this recent offering—another in a line of context-free assertions making similar claims presumably intended to reassure uninformed readers:

Add in some significant new finds, including Petrobras’s huge field off Brazil’s coast, a large discovery off French Guyana, and Statoil’s potential 1.5 billion-barrel oil field in the North Sea. Then there’s the oil boom in North Dakota, which now produces more oil than OPEC member Ecuador. [5]

Conveniently omitted from this cheery bit of news is some context … facts and explanations would have been nice. A “potential 1.5 billion-barrel oil field”? Potential? If true, that’ll last us less than three weeks. As for the North Dakota is better than Ecuador contest: On the list of OPEC oil-producing nations, Ecuador ranks last. So the umbrella protection which this author presumably intended by mentioning OPEC and North Dakota in the same sentence loses a bit of its luster. In 2010, Ecuador supplied the United States with less than two per cent of our nation’s imports. Also better than a stick in the eye, but seriously … Ecuador? The high art of cherry-picking.

** Conventional oil fields typically see a drop in output of about a 5 percent to 8 percent rate per year. But, as some companies working in the Bakken field in North Dakota are now discovering, shale oil can dwindle far more rapidly than that. One oil executive tells Foreign Policy’s Steve LeVine that oil wells in the Bakken field can decline by more than 90 percent in the first year, leveling off at 8 percent per year thereafter. Once a well dries up, the company has to move over to a nearby spot in the field. That’s a lot of new drilling. And all that drilling is pricey. [6]

More to come….

Sources:

[1] http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/11048-the-peak-oil-crisis-election-2012.html; The Peak Oil Crisis: Election 2012 by Tom Whipple – 02.01.12
[2] http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-01-25/obama-falsely-claimed-us-oil-production-all-time-high; Obama falsely claimed U.S. oil production at an all-time high by Mason Inman – 01.25.12 [Original article: http://failinggracefully.com/?p=3072]
[3] http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/energy-futurist/the-politics-of-peak-oil/326; The politics of peak oil by Chris Nelder – 02.01.12
[4] http://gregor.us/oil/happy-new-year-from-the-north-sea-or-secrecy-by-complexity/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Gregorus+%28Gregor.us%29; Happy New Year from The North Sea. Or, Secrecy By Complexity by Gregor MacDonald – 01.01.11
[5] http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new-economy/2012/0206/Oil-prices-will-rise-as-supplies-tighten-Hardly; Oil prices will rise as supplies tighten? Hardly by A. Gary Shilling – 02.06.12
[6] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/has-the-united-states-beaten-peak-oil-not-so-fast/2012/02/17/gIQAhFbAKR_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein; Has the United States beaten peak oil? Not so fast by Brad Plumer – 02.17.12

A few more of those annoying facts to keep in mind as we (don’t) prepare for looming energy challenges, courtesy of three recent and excellent articles/interviews well worth the time to review in full [see Sources below for the links]:

Nothing can replace oil as the lifeblood of our culture and there is no domestic supply source which will eliminate or even reduce our dependence upon the 10 million barrels per day we import from foreign countries. There are some hard truths that are purposefully ignored by those who want to mislead the public about the grim consequences of peak cheap oil:
* The earth is finite. The amount of oil within the crust of the earth is finite. As we drain 32 billion barrels of oil from the earth every year, there is less remaining within the earth. We have drained the cheapest and easiest to reach 1.4 trillion barrels from the earth since the mid 1800s. The remaining recoverable 1.4 trillion barrels will be expensive and hard to reach. [1]

While it is critical we invest our current resources to finding solutions to the approaching energy gap, it’s also essential we approach the situation realistically and with as little magical thinking as possible. Currently, the US is consuming 10 million barrels per day more than it produces domestically….The short of it is there is going to be no single fuel source that replaces oil, and the transition to a post-Peak Oil future is going to involve a period of “less energy” for society for an undetermined period of time. [2]

We tend to have self-confidence in our ability to solve any problem. But we have no historical analog to the peak of fossil fuels, without a clear (and superior) replacement on the horizon. As a result of our fossil fuel binge, we have unprecedented problems in population, water, agriculture, fisheries, pollution, climate change, and so on. Our moment in history is rather special. It is dangerous to assume that we’ll gracefully handle problems at this scale, because such assumptions amount to dismissals and concomitant inaction. Unacceptable.
It bothers me that we don’t have a plan. It scares me that we (collectively) don’t think we even need a plan. Faith in the market to solve the problem represents a high-stakes gamble. We can and should do better. [3]

Another in the body of recurring themes of Peak Oil Matters is that we do ourselves no favors by denial and delusion. The psychological purposes they serve are no match for the potential harm we’ll cause ourselves over a much longer period of time by ignoring, hoping, or wishing. Strategies available to us, of course, but their usefulness—such as it may be—is completely useless at this point.

The authors above each discuss similar themes raised in prior posts of mine and by any number of others doing their best to put us all on notice that we need to start thinking about the energy issues at hand, and then thinking differently about how to address the challenges. More importantly, planning should be among our top priorities starting about ten years ago. We’re a wee bit behind.

Echoing proposals I offered several months ago (as have others), Jim Quinn boils it down succinctly:

If our society acted in a far sighted manner, we would be creating communities that could sustain themselves with local produce, local merchants, bike paths, walkable destinations, local light rail commuting, and local energy sources.

And Tom Murphy bolsters that theme, citing the much-discussed and highly-respected The Hirsch Report (a subject I’ve covered in a number of prior posts; see the Category in the sidebar):

The bottom line was that initiating all such crash programs in parallel 20 years ahead of the peak (or more to the point, 20 years before the start of decline) may be sufficient to avoid major hardships. Waiting until 10 years before the decline would result in major disruptions as the efforts struggled to establish a large enough foothold in time for the decline. Initiating the crash program at the moment the decline starts was characterized as having catastrophic repercussions. Not treated was the more politically realistic scenario of waiting until 5 years after the start of decline while we bicker about the fundamental cause of our woes and strategies for mitigation….
Because we will more likely wait until the pain of decline has made itself clear, we may find ourselves handicapped by recession and debt, hampering our ability to act boldly….
… [S]tarting a crash program toward replacement of finite fossil fuels too early has great up-sides and marginal downsides (opportunity cost); but failure to act has enormous downside for marginal upside.

What exactly are we waiting for? For all the happy talk about the “potential possible if only we do X and Y might work” options discussed by others [as I’ve cited ad nauseum in the many “Denial” posts], too many of us have been lulled into a false sense of security that the problems—if any—are being handled.

Jim Quinn wasn’t as “kind” in his assessment (but he’s right) while pointing out a serious consequence of this pattern of deceptions and half-truths offered up by not only politicians but also by many in the oil industry who know better (and, as I’ve also emphasized repeatedly, by our own failure so far to learn more):

American presidents have propagated the Big Lie of energy independence for the last three decades. The Democrats have lied about green energy solutions and the Republicans have lied about domestic sources saving the day. These deceitful politicians put the country at risk as they misinform and mislead the non-thinking American public….
The propaganda blared at the impressionable willfully ignorant American public has worked wonders. The vast majority of Americans have no clue they have entered a world of energy scarcity.

For all the talk about the magic of Technology riding to the rescue, almost all of the research, planning, testing, marketing, etc., etc., etc required before establishing various Plan Bs as solutions require fossil fuels to make the processes happen from A to Z. What gets prioritized in a future with fewer of those resources available to begin with? Just how quickly will these various, successfully-tested and fully-implemented Plan Bs be showing up on our doorsteps?

Does anyone have a full appreciation for just how much and how many (processes, productions, transportation plans, products, etc., etc.) will have to be effectively and efficiently converted/prepared/tested for successful utilization of these Magic Technology Saviors (while fossil fuel reserves continue their steady march down the Depletion Slope)?

As Tom Murphy so nicely summed up: “Even though energy may represent something like 10% of GDP, it’s what makes the other 90% possible.”

Is anyone paying attention to the energy “quality” of all the alternatives being considered/hoped for? There’s not a single unconventional (tar sands, shale) or alternative (wind, solar, etc) energy resource that comes close to matching the energy density and efficiency of the hundreds of billions of barrels of crude oil we’ve consumed in the last century and a half. Hello! One need not be schooled in quantum physics, advanced algebra, or geology to appreciate that replacements which are for starters less efficient and more costly are not going to actually “replace” crude oil’s extensive benefits. They’re at best poor substitutes, and how might the consequences of that fact play themselves out for the billions of people with their trillions of products and demands and needs currently supplied by crude oil? Hello again!

With almost all of the major oil fields now on the downslope of their own production peaks, how much stock should any of us be putting in the still-rosy assessments of ramped-up production from those same fields over the next few decades? How does that math work? (We’re of course blindly assuming that these primary oil exporters will of course continue to serve the needs of Americans before … their own citizens? Seriously? Who gets to deliver that message? Safe to assume there might be a complaint or two?)

The most optimistic, arguably-realistic assessments about production potentials of the various unconventional and alternative resources will barely match current depletion rates. It’s now been several decades since we were finding more oil than was being consumed. Given that these crude oil wannabes aren’t as efficient, what kind of math is     being passed around to make this all seem acceptable and not worth a moment’s worth of concern?

As Tom Murphy again summed up for us:

The geological upshot is that oil is not a lake into which we thrust a straw, slurping as fast as we wish. Rather, oil is a viscous fluid in porous, permeable rock that resists rapid recovery. It’s not a spigot or valve that we can turn at will. Nature has a say in how fast we can claim the oil….
The lesson is that we don’t have full control over oil production. If previous discoveries are in decline, and we are not adding new fields at a replacement rate, we should expect aggregate decline.

Each of the three referenced authors do us all a great service by discussing these and other relevant considerations (economic and geopolitical, for example) which put a bit of a crimp in the blind happy talk which gets far too much airplay … at our expense.

I think I can safely speak for each of them, and almost every other proponent of Peak Oil, when I say that I would LOVE to be wrong about all of this! But the harsher truth is that there are just too many warning signs in too many aspects of fossil fuel exploration, discovery, production, cost, quality, and supply to ignore it all and expect that hope, wishes, good thoughts, and crossed fingers are all we need.

The potential exists, therefore, for major disruption to our accustomed ways of life. We will become viscerally aware of how fundamentally important oil is to all that we do.. It’s not just another commodity like sneakers or widgets. Curtail transportation and watch the grocery store shelves struggle to stay full. See food prices escalate and cause immediate hardships around the world. Find out how far-flung about the globe the material resources are that comprise a cell phone. [Tom Murphy]

So, assuming the Peak Oil camp is on to something, what’s the likelihood for a disruption-free transition to another energy source that can replace the energy output we currently enjoy from oil? … How realistic are these hopes?
Not very. [Martenson and Rapier]

Shouldn’t we at least be having broader and more meaningful discussions starting right about now?

Sources:

[1] http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article31542.html; U.S. Energy Independence – The Big Lie by James Quinn – 11.15.11
[2] http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/robert-rapier-scientific-challenges-replacing-oil-renewables/65387; Robert Rapier: The Scientific Challenges To Replacing Oil with Renewables [interview with Robert Rapier by Chris Martenson, posted by Adam] – 11.26.11
[3] http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/peak-oil-perspective/; Using physics and estimation to assess energy, growth, options by Tom Murphy – 11.01.11

Although it is likely that the President and his Secretary of Energy understand that a decline in world oil production is not far away, it is simply not a topic to be raised prior to an election as the political risk is simply too great. Someday, likely within the next decade, the US and the rest of world’s governments will have to acknowledge there is a problem here, and unless alternative sources of energy can be developed and brought     into general use quickly, major changes in economic activities and lifestyles are going to take place. [1]

So that’s sufficient reason to be allowing moronic decisions to serve as current policy instead? Do any of our “leaders” in Congress understand the concept of “long-term planning”? Foresight? How about just plain ‘ol basic “planning” … the kind that runs beyond Election Day? Are they all clueless … and self-serving beyond all bounds of basic decency?

The latest demonstration of short-sighted, narrow-minded “leadership” comes courtesy of the House Ways and Means Committee. Last week, the Committee’s majority, in their infinite wisdom, proposed a much-needed transportation bill which managed to all but eliminate currently-legislated funding for public transit, among other egregious, ignorant and decidedly ideological proposals having very little to do with national best interests.

This awesome display of brazen hypocrisy (and a giant “screw you” to millions of not-wealthy citizens who use and/or rely on public transit) calls for that funding to now take a number and wait in line for crumbs from the general fund—the same general fund which supplies the needed revenue for all other government spending. Now, the billions collected from the (wildly insufficient) gas tax will be directed exclusively to road programs, rather than allocating a percentage of those revenues to transit as has been customary and routine for decades.

But the good news is that the House wants $40 billion in spending cuts to offset this “transfer” of funding to the general fund. Another giant “screw the future” message….

With a House like this, what advances can American transportation policy make?
Actions by members of the U.S. House over the past week suggest that Republican opposition to the funding of alternative transportation has developed into an all-out ideological battle. Though their efforts are unlikely to advance much past the doors of their chamber, the policy recklessness they have displayed speaks truly poorly of the future of the nation’s mobility systems. [2]

Wouldn’t it be easier for them to just announce that they genuinely don’t give a shit about 99% of Americans? Think of how much time and energy they’d save by making it obvious to even the densest of right-wing, (non-wealthy only, of course) supporters that what’s in their best interests really does not matter any more than it does for those who support the Democrats.

Dan Smith of USPIRG put it like this:
The House Ways and Means Bill stops just short of defunding America’s public transit system. Instead it says that the real money with a funding source will all go to highways, while the tooth fairy will pay for transit. For Big Oil and the highway lobby, this is a dream, but it’s a nightmare for America’s transportation future. [3]

Here in Eastern Massachusetts, the state’s Department of Transportation recently rolled out a grim set of proposals designed to counter severe budget shortfalls. All indications are that an increase in the state’s gas tax as a viable source for funding is a dead issue before it’s even raised in the legislature, so cutbacks in Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority [MBTA] services—  coupled with fare hikes affecting commuter rail, bus, ferry, and subway riders—are Plan B. Parking fees at various transit stations would also be raised.

Under one scenario, fares overall would increase by 43 percent, while under the other, they would increase by 35 percent.
Under both scenarios, MBTA ferries would be eliminated, commuter rail weekend service would be eliminated and nighttime service would end at 10 p.m., and weekend service on [specified transit lines] would be eliminated.
But in the second scenario, a larger number of bus routes would be cut, generating savings that would enable the smaller fare increase. [4]

The MBTA also provides commuter rail service to the Massachusetts North Shore community where our summer home is located. We try to spend as many weekends there as we can during the late spring through mid-autumn period. But under what I labeled as the MBTA’s Plan B as noted above, elimination of weekend rail service there is also on the table.

… [O]fficials said there is no way to quantify exactly how many weekend visitors who come by commuter rail would stay away if they had to drive instead.
But during the summer, Rockport and Manchester fill with out-of-towners, many of whom take the commuter rail in order to save money or to avoid the difficultly of finding parking space. [5]

(That same article also notes this distressing fact: “According to the MBTA, 12 percent of commuter rail passengers would be affected by the cuts, and 6.7 million fewer people would ride the commuter rail each year than do currently.” That’s not an insignificant number of people obliged to now use autos instead….)

I’ll admit that to date this is not an issue affecting me personally. We drive to our summer home, as I’ve noted in other posts such as this one. I did, however, make use of public transportation on one notable occasion back in 2010, as I recounted (here):

As I noted way back when in my introduction to this blog, we are very fortunate. We own an exquisite (at least to us), spacious summer home a hundred yards or so from the Atlantic Ocean. We vacation here and enjoy every blessed minute of it! In normal driving conditions, it takes us fifty minutes or so to go door-to-door from our suburban Boston home to the ‘beach house’, which is where I am as I write this. What a treat for us!
Summer vacation usually means grabbing as much time as we can here—work and young adult schedules permitting. That means frequent travel along the Route 128/Interstate 95 corridor … most times with more than one vehicle; most times more than once or twice a week.
As a strong proponent of Peak Oil, I have decidedly mixed feelings about this, as I have mentioned before….I love this lifestyle, and I approach my task of disseminating information about our soon-to-be-curtailed availability of fossil fuel supply with more than my fair share of selfish trepidation. We do not yet own hybrid vehicles, and so we spend more than our fair share of time filling the gas tanks of my wife’s German import and my Japanese SUV in order to make many trips to and from our summer home from Memorial Day through mid-October. I balance that guilt with the acknowledgment (rationalization?) that I work from home, and that my wife’s office is about 6000 feet from our home, so we actually spend no more on gas than most other families.
Once gas prices begin their inevitable climb up, whether that’s later this year, next year, or a couple more years down the road, and with a simultaneous curtailment in how much fossil fuel will remain available to us to meet all of demands and expectations and needs, my rationalizations may not matter much.
With that in mind yesterday, for the first time in the 6 summers that we’ve owned this home, I used public transportation to make most of the journey from home to here at the beach house. My daughter drove me a couple of miles to a commuter rail stop which took me into Boston’s North Station, where I then—some fifteen minutes after my
arrival—boarded a different rail line to take me to the North Shore. I then hailed a cab to take me the three miles or so from the train station to our summer place. (I’ve already informed my wife that I will soon take public transportation door to door, just to see what that’s like. That will add two bus trips and a decent amount of walking at the beginning and end of my trip, along with two separate subway rides. I’m expecting at     least an additional hour of travel each way, but no more than a few more dollars in fares.)
The one way trip yesterday cost me about $20.00, and took me two hours and ten minutes door to door. Compare that to less than $10.00 of gas and less than 60 minutes of travel time when I drive. More expensive certainly, and clearly more time-consuming, but all in all it was a pleasant enough experience, and surprisingly scenic in several places along the way. It was nice to be able to read and engage in some computer work while traveling … not an option when I’m barreling along at 65 miles per hour on Route 128.

So when we all begin experiencing first-hand and on a regular basis the myriad consequences of reduced availability of the fossil fuel resources we’ve long taken for granted, how quickly can our local communities, regional administrations, states, and federal authorities reinstate and create new transportations modes? Has that thought occurred to any of our brilliant Congressional officials who now feel emboldened to all but eliminate these options right now because they are intellectually incapable of thinking beyond November, and morally opposed to anything that might smack of decency and national interest (except, of course, the national interests on the wealthy)?

How much money, time, effort, and resources can we be expected to waste by devoting all of those assets to highways and roadways used by gasoline-chugging vehicles … highways and roadways and vehicles whose usage and very existence will be challenged in decades to come when the availability of affordable, efficient, and plentiful fossil fuels is no longer routinely assured to the masses?

… A]s the consumer of a quarter of the world’s oil supply, we can have a significant effect on the world oil market by making sure that our economy can adjust quickly and easily to changes in the oil price….
Increased investment in alternative modes of transport, such as mass transit (both buses and rail), bike lanes, bike and car sharing, and walking improvements to allow many more workers the option of getting to their jobs without the use of a personal car.
Improvements in our nation’s rail system to allow more freight to be shifted from truck to rail.
Encouraging the electrification of transport (including the alternative transport options mentioned above) to provide transport options which are not dependent on oil.
In short, we need to make the market for transportation services more efficient by encouraging new entrants (mass transit, bikes, trains) and competition with the incumbent car/internal combustion engine infrastructure. [6]

Wouldn’t it be nice to have voted into office leaders who think about these fact-based possibilities on our behalf (even if these contrary-to-their-ideology issues are not 100%, absolutely guaranteed to occur in every moment and circumstance?)

Why should this be wishful thinking?

Sources:

[1] http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/11048-the-peak-oil-crisis-election-2012.html; The Peak Oil Crisis: Election 2012 by Tom Whipple – 02.01.12
[2] http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2012/02/06/time-to-fight/; Time to Fight by Yonah Freemark – 02.06.12
[3] http://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/02/02/house-gop-takes-transit-funding-hostage/; House GOP Moves to Decimate Dedicated Transit Funding by Ben Goldman – 02.02.12

[4] http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2012/01/state-unveils-two-mbta-fare-increase-service-cut-scenarios/DoUG26YM6frTKPtULQkOUK/index.html; MBTA fares could rise as much as 43 percent; ferry, bus, commuter rail cuts also eyed by Martin Finucane – 01.03.12

[5] http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x1666061106/MBTA-service-cuts-seen-hurting-Cape-Ann; MBTA service cuts seen hurting Cape Ann by Stephanie Bergman – 01.05.12

[6] http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomkonrad/2012/01/26/the-end-of-elastic-oil/; The End of Elastic Oil by Tom Konrad – 01.26.12

Claiming there is an oil limit on the economy and why peak oil is inevitable is usually talked down by saying its an unsure theory at best, and controversial, fear mongering or defeatist at worst. The totally simple numbers which prove it are however not
Einstein-type mathematics and are not impossible to understand – - only by the badly intentioned or plain stupid. [1]

Not my words, but for anyone who has spent enough time considering the facts about crude oil production/Peak Oil, it is difficult to come to grips with not only the level of denial exhibited by too many, but to understand what benefits to society at large might they think exist by the false claims, misrepresentations, and fact-free statements repeated ad nauseum, despite the clearly incorrect nature of their offerings? (Upcoming posts and a series devoted to the topic will explore the issue in more detail.)

I understand that those profiting from maintaining a status quo in fossil fuel production will do their damnedest to make sure we’re not devoting resources and efforts to alternatives. The fear and agitation they use as primary props suggests their good intentions and beneficent character could use some fine-tuning.

But the repetition of the same nonsense day after day is almost comical at this point, and would be just that and no more if it weren’t for the harm misinformation and half-truths leave scattered in their wake. If citizens who, through no fault of their own, are not being supplied with the truth, how can they expect policies and measures to effectively address their needs and concerns?

But like clockwork, the same sets of misleading statements and disingenuous arguments continue apace.

James Delingpole’s Commentary review offers plenty of criticism of Daniel Yergin’s 800-page book, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. But Delingpole praises Yergin’s chapter on peak oil as the one ‘that performs the greatest public service.’
It matters because so much dangerous political nonsense — especially in the environmental movement — depends on it. If you believe, as peak-oil theorists do, that global oil reserves are about to run out, then clearly it makes more sense to go down the road many greens have long been urging us to take: Rein in energy consumption; tax fossil fuels; encourage renewables; ration air-conditioning and hot showers; deindustrialize. [2]

Rationing showers? Seriously? As I discussed in a series (first of five posts here) this past November and December, an immediate red flag goes up as soon as a purported debunking of the “myth” of peak oil (wouldn’t it be nice if facts continued to be treated as facts? What a concept!) suggests that Peak Oil proponents believe or advocate that we’re “running out of oil/reserves.” (I—among others—addressed that specific point here and here.) It’s a numbingly idiotic statement to make in light of our continuing assertions and facts to the contrary, but when you have no rational or legitimate argument to make, then I guess that making stuff up is your best Plan B. Certainly sounds plausible to the undiscerning uninformed….

The same blogger then praises Yergin’s Commentary reviewer for pointing out what must surely be the piece de resistance: “Yergin runs the figures, and they are amazing: In 2009, for example, after a year’s worth of oil production at around 90 million barrels per day, the world’s proved oil reserves were greater at the end of the year (1.5 trillion barrels) than they were at the beginning.” Holy Misdirection, Batman!

Chris Nelder said it best:

Peak oil deniers always talk about reserves, not production rates, for the same reason a squid squirts ink when it is threatened. Either they haven’t the foggiest idea what ‘peak oil’ means, nor a grip on production data (let alone the key production/reserves ratios). . . or clouding the issue, and painting peak oil analysts as Chicken Littles, is their explicit intent. After a decade of observing this behavior, particularly in publications which should know better, I’m now inclined toward the latter view. [3]

To what end?

“Reserves” do not equal available supply; not by a long shot. Quintuple the proved reserves figures if it floats your boat, but what might arguably be buried beneath the Earth’s surface offers exactly zero assurance it will in fact be produced economically, practically, or efficiently. (A more thorough fact-based discussion of Mr. Yergin’s assertion—with additional links and commentary—can be found here.) And let’s not forget amid all of this great news the fact that we have been using for decades is being drawn down each and every day, and so much of what will be produced going forward will first have to match depletion rates before we marvel at their substitute potential … while billions around the world strive to improve their conditions … using more of the energy resources still available.

The writer then offers this:

But such is the sophistication of the energy industry. Today it is worth $65 trillion, and in two decades it will be worth $130 trillion — more than enough incentive for entrepreneurs, scientists, and big business to develop increasingly imaginative ways of locating and exploiting the world’s resources. In the case of oil, this means learning how to drill in more hostile terrain, such as the deep-ocean sites off the coast of Brazil and in the Gulf of Mexico.

What does the estimated worth of an industry two decades from now have to do with the fossil fuels available to us on demand at reasonable prices now and in the intervening years? “Incentive” is all fine and well, but while conventional oil fields continue their daily depletion, how much “incentive” will fill your gas tank? How many products can be transported by the freight industry—or manufactured by industries dependent on crude oil to provide supplies or power their own processes—using “increasingly imaginative ways”? And I’m not all that comforted by “learning how to drill in more hostile terrain.” What does that suggest about the quality and availability fossil fuel supplies? Not cheap, either.

It’s possible that if you search through enough sofa cushions you’ll find enough spare change to retire on, but that’s not really much of a financial strategy, is it? Oil exploration is getting too close for comfort to the sofa cushions stage.

We’re better than that, and we need to demonstrate it. It will take our best if we’re to have any reasonable possibility of successfully adapting to a future with different quantities and quality of energy sources to power us all. These dopey comments aren’t demonstrating much in the way of “better.”

Citing an “excellent” article by economist and professor of energy policy Dieter Helm, another recent entry into the curious world of peak oil opponents offered this:

Helm rightly asserts, ‘The Earth’s crust is riddled with fossil fuels’ adding ‘there is enough oil and gas (and coal too) to fry the planet several times over.’ And his words echo Huber and Mills‘ definitive quote on the subject, ‘Energy supplies – for all practical purposes – are infinite’. The issue is not (and never has been) too much or too little of a given resource. It has always been whether prices are too low or too high to make extraction viable. Today, the shale gas and oil “miracle” – or rather man’s ingenuity in finding new ways to tap previously unrecoverable resources – has yet again blown a gaping hole in the peak-ist argument; as the end of year figures make only too plain. [4]

Where does “fry the planet” fit on the Right’s quantity scale: Is it more than “massive” but less than “vast”? How many barrels of conventional crude oil in “riddled”? And as for “infinite” supplies of energy (the “definitive quote” no less!) … I guess that depends on one’s definition of “for all practical purposes.”

If it’s the fact-based one used here on Planet Earth, our energy supply’s availability is not quite so infinite. But in a fact-free world … sure, why not? But if our energy supply is so infinite, why are we even having discussions about Peak Oil? Shouldn’t it be obvious that oil companies should just be going around and sticking giant straws in the ground so they can pull out some of those infinite supplies and keep oil priced at … oh, how about five cents per gallon? Sound good? Why are we going after shale oil and tar sands and deep water resources instead? What does that basic fact suggest to all but the most delusional?

In another discussion of this same “excellent” article, the author discusses several supply and demand arguments presumably serving as the foundation for Peak Oil proponents. Others more qualified than me have discussed oil reserve calculations and enhanced recovery methods, so I’ll take a pass.

But two other frequently raised topics (flaws in proponents’ arguments) are put forth. (And let’s not forget the all-encompassing magic of “Technological advances could potentially extend depletion rates of existing wells and new reserves.” Ah yes, the could potentially perhaps might if only meme):

Oil is not fungible: This is among the most serious flaws in the argument. History is replete with examples of fuels being replaced by other fuels. Power is now generated using gas and renewable energy in Europe, which has diminished the importance of coal and oil. Electric trains have largely replaced steam and diesel. Seen in this light, replacing oil with other fuels could mitigate spikes in oil prices.

Insatiable demand from China and India: Helm argues that peak oilers see China and India’s growth as exogenous to global economic performance. In reality, China’s growth depends largely on U.S. and European consumption, fueled by their prosperity. Turn the switch off, and the slower economic growth could ease any supply pressure on oil. [5]

One omission in the assertion contained in the first paragraph (aside from the “could mitigate” comment): Facts. Remember them? “Replacing oil with other fuels” … which fuels? How? How quickly? How much? How effective? How soon? By whom? And those are just off the top of my head. Great sound bite, but it leaves much to be desired if meaningful, factual content is your thing.

These other products are useful, but they are not as energy-rich, versatile or easily transported as oil. Our current infrastructure is heavily dependent on oil inputs with no real substitutes available in the quantities required….
The hard-to-get oil resources are large, but they take a long time to develop and require strenuous, expensive and energy-intensive methods to extract. All this, when combined with the relentless depletion of existing fields, spells little or no growth in the worldwide rate of oil production in the coming years. [6]

As for the China-related comment in the second paragraph above: “Turn the switch off, and the slower economic growth….:” So, if China stops buying our goods, then American businesses lose revenue, which means that they aren’t making as much money, which means they can’t purchase from their suppliers, and of course they can’t maintain the staffing levels they have when they are selling to China, which means workers lose jobs, which means they don’t have enough money to buy from other businesses, which means.…

Stop me when this turns into good news.

Sources:

[1] http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article32402.html; There Will Be Oil – Versus – Peak Oil Now by Andrew McKillop – 01.01.12
[2] http://lockerroom.johnlocke.org/2012/01/03/another-blast-against-the-peak-oil-myth/; Another blast against the ‘peak oil’ myth by Mitch Kokai – 01.03.12
[3] http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/energy-futurist/the-politics-of-peak-oil/326; The politics of peak oil by Chris Nelder – 02.01.12
[4] http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/9497/A-Shale-Fuelled-Economic-Miracle-for-2012; A Shale-Fuelled Economic Miracle for 2012 by Peter C. Glover – 01.05.12
[5] https://www.gplus.com/oil/insight/helms-critique-on-peak-oil-why-post-oil; Helm’s critique on peak oil: Why post oil prosperity is feasible – Analysis of Peak Oil and energy policy – a critique by Ricardo Barcelona [Managing Director, Barcino Capitas Limited] – 01.05.12
[6] http://www.aspousa.org/index.php/2012/01/fossil-fuels-vs-renewables/; Fossil Fuels vs. Renewables: The Key Argument That Environmentalists are Missing by Kurt Cobb – 01.23.12

Ten months ago, I offered this observation:

This is the reality: we’re NOT running out of oil, and we won’t for several more decades. But that is not the point and never is when discussing peak oil. Peak oil is about the rate of production, the quality of oil, the ease of access, refinement, availability, and affordability. Each of these production elements are now more challenging to meet, and is now happening when worldwide demand is ratcheting up. Finding fewer and smaller fields that consistently fail to keep up with depletion rates, producing less oil, often inferior in quality, more slowly, at greater expense, with much more effort required to satisfy increasing demand (just for starters) is not a recipe for success, profitability, and availability. And it’s not going to get any better. The steady march down the back slope of oil production is soon upon us, and very little that we produce, use, or depend on will remain unaffected by that truth.

Reality can be incredibly inconvenient, but we do ourselves no favors now, short-term, and especially long-term by either falling for the fact-free, feel-good nonsense offered by too many; deluding ourselves into thinking “someone else” is working on this and so we need not be concerned; or perhaps worst of all: simply refusing to educate ourselves about what we’ll soon enough be facing.

With that in mind, I thought it might be best to offer up some inconvenient truths about our fossil fuel supplies we would all do well to keep in mind. How we respond to the realities at hand is absolutely critical to the different future we’ll find ourselves in before too long. Preparation is a good thing; knowledge even better.

A little more than a year ago, Jeffrey Rubin offered commentary on the International Energy Agency’s then-current World Energy Outlook. His sobering take:

Output from currently producing fields is projected to fall precipitously, looking ironically like the steeply declining trajectory of peak oil’s Hubbert curve. (I say ironically because the IEA has historically denied the existence of peak oil.) According to the report, by 2035 three quarters of currently operating oil fields won’t be producing anymore. In fact, current fields are only expected to account for less than one fifth of that     year’s production.
That leaves over 80 per cent of the IEA’s 2035 production projection coming from new oil fields, ones that either haven’t yet been developed or haven’t even been discovered. And the contribution from that undiscovered category alone is still far greater than the one from currently producing fields. That’s a tall order for new field discovery. especially since almost none of it is cheap or easy….

Take that in for a moment. Those projections offer comfort about the future availability of high-quality crude oil only if Major Denial is your standard MO and/or happy, fact-free optimism is your preferred glide path through life.

With all indicators suggesting that we reached Peak Oil production rates more than five years ago (see this as just one observation on the issue), how we pull ourselves out of these difficult economic conditions and restore ourselves onto the path of continuing growth (along with those same expectations from several billion other inhabitants on the planet) demands some consideration from all of us.

If that didn’t get your attention, how about this:

In the 2011 World Energy Outlook by the IEA the Production of Crude Oil from the oil fields that produce oil in 2010 in expected to drop by over Two-Thirds by 2035. Quote: ‘We project that crude oil production from fields that were producing in 2010 will drop from 69mb/to 22mb/d by 2025 – a fall of over two-thirds’. But the IEA still expects the crude world production to remain at 67,9 mb/d per day 2035 from Crude Oil Yet to be found and Yet to be developed (WEO 2011: 122-123)….
The World’s Largest Oil Fields play a very important part for supplying the world’s energy demand. The Top Ten Fields produced 14,26 mb/d; around 20% of the World’s Total Oil Production. If the next ten fields were added the figure was around 25%. In total there was around 70.000 Oil Fields producing oil in 2007 and 20 of these fields produced a fifth of all the oil (WEO 2008: 225-226).
Another fact also stands out very clear; none of these fields has been discovered recently; the ones that was discovered the latest was discovered in 1982 and 1985. Only two of these fields hadn’t reached their Peak in production in 2007; the rest where on decline. During the summer of 2011 there were big headlines concerning an unusually big oil find outside the coast of Norway that is expected being able to produce up to 500-1200 million barrels of oil. Ghawar with its production of 5 million barrels of oil per day produces this amount of oil in 100-210 days. The trends of smaller and smaller findings are something often stressed by researchers within the Peak Oil movement; smaller and smaller fields of oil are being discovered even though the technological tool available to search for new fields constantly develops. [1]

This author’s conclusion states an obvious and painful truth: “[W]e will either have to be very lucky in our explorations or find an enormous amount of small fields.”

Despite putting their best foot forward, those in denial about Peak Oil, who laud the potentials of the tar sands and shale oil (and even those advocating the very necessary focus on alternative sources of non-fossil fuel resources) are unable to come up with any scenarios where production of these unconventional and alternative reserves make up what will be lost over these next few decades from the conventional oil fields we’ve long depended upon.

Denial remains an option, but its utility diminishes by the day. We need to be better.

If subtlety is not your thing, Henry Blodget offers us a more direct assessment:

Oil is at $100 not because of some world war or supply shock or other Black Swan, but because the world’s emerging economies are demanding more oil while the world’s oil producers are producing pretty much the same amount of it….
We’re highly dependent on a finite fuel source controlled by crazy people who hate us
We’ve done next to nothing about this problem for four decades
In some places, this inaction on our part would be referred to as insanity. Or at least gross stupidity.
In other places, it would just be called denial. [2]

And in a recent post by Brad Plumer, more sobering assessments were offered for those still struggling with facts and reality:

Most of the older, easier-to-drill oil fields appear to be running near full capacity, while newer supplies often prove costly and difficult to drill….
But here’s another way to look at it. As a chart from ExxonMobil’s new 2012 Outlook for Energy (via Gregor McDonald) shows, the vast bulk of our oil comes from those older, easier-to-drill fields, with more recently discovered supplies playing a smaller and smaller role:
As ExxonMobil details in its report more than 95 percent of today’s oil comes from fields discovered before 2000. About 75 percent comes from pre-1980 discoveries. While many massive, older fields can keep gushing for decades — Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field, first tapped in 1951, still hums along at 5 million barrels per day — they seem to be dwindling overall. As Exxon’s chart shows, reserves discovered in the 1960s and before maxed out around 1980 (even as oil companies are trying to recover additional oil from older wells with better technology). What’s more, it seems to be getting tougher to squeeze oil out of newer finds. [3]

This is what confronts us: do we choose to spin it so it sounds better, or do we accept it and then work collectively to meet the challenge?

Simple choice … monumental ramifications.

Sources:

[1] http://www.americanpreppersnetwork.com/2011/12/peak-oil-and-our-mental-models.html; Peak Oil and Our Mental Models – The WikiLeaks Cable and The Worlds Largest Oil Fields, from  http://sibitotique.blogspot.com – 12.15.11
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/middle-eastern-oil-addiction-2011-12; It’s 2012–It’s Just Absurd That We’re Still Addicted To Middle-Eastern Oil by Henry Blodget, 12.28.11
[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/most-of-the-worlds-oil-comes-from-aging-fields/2011/12/13/gIQAaM6CsO_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein; Oil’s getting harder and harder to come by – Brad Plumer, 12.13.11

What would the New Year be if we didn’t have an offering of more half-truth, delusional nonsense about our fossil fuel status?

Amy Myers Jaffe (nice takedown here) wrote an article for Foreign Policy a while back, serving up another example from the playbook of denial nonsense. As I suggested in a series of posts at the end of 2011 [first one here], it’s high time we start recognizing the strategies of half-truths employed by those whose primary vested interest appears to be their own wallets much more so than the well-being of our nation. But this is a free country, and if nonsense is what you choose to spout, there are forums everywhere.

Just a sampling from that article of what continues to pass for the valuable exchange of information, with my commentary in the [ ] following:

Geologists have long known that the Americas are home to plentiful hydrocarbons trapped in hard-to-reach offshore deposits, on-land shale rock, oil sands, and heavy oil formations….The problem was always how to unlock them economically.
But since the early 2000s, the energy industry has largely solved that problem. With the help of horizontal drilling and other innovations, shale gas production in the United States has skyrocketed from virtually nothing to 15 to 20 percent of the U.S. natural gas supply in less than a decade. By 2040, it could account for more than half of it.

[Facts—damn them!—suggest that the energy industry hasn’t exactly “solved” the problem, and “could account” is not the assurance we should be counting on. Chris Nelder—damn him—took this proposition apart in a very nice post. Nelder had the audacity to use facts, calculations, statistics, reports and assorted other so-called evidence to rebut this now-familiar claim about our natural gas potential, when he could have played by the same rules and tossed in a few “might possibly’s” and “if only’s” … but no, he had to use actual information. I hate that!]

… analysts are predicting production of as much as 1.5 million barrels a day in the next few years from resources beneath the Great Plains and Texas alone — the equivalent of 8 percent of current U.S. oil consumption. The development raises the question of what else the U.S. energy industry might accomplish if prices remain high and technology continues to advance. Rising recovery rates from old wells, for example, could also stem previous declines. On top of all this, analysts expect an additional 1 to 2 million barrels a day from the Gulf of Mexico now that drilling is resuming. Peak oil? Not anytime soon.

[A couple of questions come to mind: Which analysts? Using what evidence? “predicting … as much as” means what, exactly? As for “what else the U.S. energy industry might accomplish if prices remain high and technology continues to advance”: I believe that “if prices remain high” is good for oil company executives and … that’s about it. So that’s not necessarily a good thing for most of us, but if “technology continues to advance”, why then, we might perhaps possibly have some potential good news in the future. Fantastic!]

The picture elsewhere in the Americas is similarly promising. Brazil is believed to have the capacity to pump 2 million barrels a day from “pre-salt” deepwater resources, deposits of crude found more than a mile below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean that until the last couple of years were technologically inaccessible. Similar gains are to be had in Canadian oil sands, where petroleum is extracted from tarry sediment in open     pits. And production of perhaps 3 million to 7 million barrels a day more is possible if U.S. in situ heavy oil, or kerogen, can be produced commercially, a process that involves heating rock to allow the oil contained within it to be pumped out in a liquid form. There is no question that such developments face environmental hurdles. But industry is starting to see that it must find ways to get over them, investing in nontoxic drilling fluids, less-invasive hydraulic-fracturing techniques, and new water-recycling processes, among other technologies, in hopes of shrinking the environmental impact of drilling. And like the U.S. oil industry, oil-thirsty China has also recognized the energy potential of the Americas, investing billions in Canada, the United States, and Latin America.

[Where in our planning for the future should we put “similarly promising”? As regards the second sentence about Brazil, who is doing this “believing” about that nation’s capacity? When might this happen? I didn’t note anything about the actual costs or process of extracting this crude “more than a mile below the surface” of the ocean … I’m assuming some facts might be available to instruct us as to what’s involved and what we     can expect? This nonsense—emphasis mine—speaks for itself: “And production of perhaps 3 million to 7 million barrels a day more is possible if U.S. in situ heavy oil, or kerogen, can be produced commercially, a process that involves heating rock to allow the oil contained within it to be pumped out in a liquid form.” Perhaps it’s possible if? This is the basis for the happy-talk about our fossil fuels? Seriously? I didn’t happen to catch any details about what’s involved in “heating rock.”     The facts would spoil all that optimism, and God forbid we be obliged to deal with reality….And that kerogen deal: they’ve been trying for a few decades now….]

And then there’s this bit of almost-factual opinion from Robert Bradley, touting his very own Institute for Energy Research’s report on our energy “inventory.”

The first red flag is right there in the title of his Forbes piece: “America’s Massive Energy Potential Awaits, Mr. President”

As I noted in that above-referenced November 15 post of mine, “massive” and “vast” are straight from Page One of the right-wing handbook on misdirection and half-truths: use impressive (but unquantifiable) terms to bolster your claim … and hope readers aren’t curious enough to ask how much?

The real problem is that much of our resources are not being developed because of antiquated, heavy-handed government regulations. As a consequence, the American economy is being deprived of significant job creation and new investments….
The blame rests largely on unnecessary and onerous government regulations. Many offshore reserves are still blocked by outdated moratoriums no one is taking the time to reform. New permit applications are almost always subject to massive bureaucratic delays. Existing energy operations have to navigate labyrinthine — and costly — regulations. And regulators themselves are largely free to impose new controls on energy development with little to no congressional check.

This tiresome rant from the Right just isn’t adding much to the discussion any more. It’s a great red-meat sound bite, but devoid of any factual content, its benefits to our well-being are, well, non-existent. (But if you use “liberal”, “taxes,” and “regulations” in a sentence, you earn bonus points!)

Why are these regulations “unnecessary”? What “massive bureaucratic delays” (unique to this issue) and “labyrinthine [sure sounds awful!] — and costly — regulations” are involved? What might happen absent these socialist-liberal-Martian-tax-crazed regulations? “[R]egulators themselves are largely free to impose new controls on energy development with little to no congressional check.” Sounds awful! How about a “for instance” unique to this situation (with context, of course, which I realize violates a basic rule of the playbook)?

Seriously? “Regulations” are all that stand in the way of a limitless bonanza of energy resources for us? These johnny-one-note offerings suggest nothing more than a failure of both imagination and willingness to engage in meaningful and honest conversations.

I remain at a loss to understand why so many insist on tactics like these which have almost no relevance to legitimate, long-term solutions. Sure would be nice to toss some integrity into the mix now and then.

The author then offers this impressive-sounding collection of statements:

Total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels, which is more oil than the entire world has used over the last 150 years. And that amount alone could meet the energy needs of the United States for the next 250 years.
An estimated 1.4 trillion of those barrels are buried under American soil. For some perspective: the total proven reserves in Saudi Arabia is just about 260 billion barrels.
And even that 1.4 trillion figure might be an underestimation. Future technological innovation may well lead to improved detection techniques, helping us locate oil deposits currently uncovered. Or innovation could improve extraction techniques, enabling us to tap into reserves previously thought unreachable.

I can’t help myself [my emphasis]: “Future technological innovation may well lead to improved detection techniques, helping us locate oil deposits currently uncovered. Or innovation could improve extraction techniques….” Really? More Page One happy talk about all of the “could possibly perhaps” and “just might if” justifications (I use that term loosely). When do we declare a winner in the Happy Talk v. Facts competition?

I don’t recall seeing much in the way of an explanation or facts about all of these magical totals. Costs? Quality? Environmental concerns? Time factor? Return on energy investment? How about depletion from existing fields as a factor?

Robert Rapier offered a damning rebuttal to this author’s propositions, starting with a big hint in the title of his piece: Why Some Republican are Delusional About Oil and Energy Policy. (To be fair, he also offers criticisms of some of the positions offered by Democrats, and commends each party as well for certain other approaches.)

Like Mr. Nelder above, Mr. Rapier wasn’t content to just toss out a fact-free statement and end the discussion there. No, he had to go and conduct an investigation, and then analyze the facts offered above. Damn him! (Another hint Rapier offers comes from a sub-heading discussing the very same report prepared and cited by Robert Bradley: “Misleading Study Obfuscates Recoverable Reserves.”)

Rapier begins his analysis with this: “I find these sorts of reports highly misleading, for the following reason” and then quickly dismantles Mr. Bradley’s contentions in the next few paragraphs.

He then concludes:

The truth is that it will always take too much energy to produce some of those oil resources, placing some of them forever out of reach. But, the magical thinking from many Republicans here is that the oil is there if the political will is there for taking it. The danger in this kind of thinking is exactly the same as the danger in thinking we can smoothly transition to renewables: It diminishes the urgency of our energy predicament. After all, if people believe that renewables will save us, or that more drilling will save us — we are going to put off making the tough decisions that could really save us in the long run.

All of us—conservatives, liberals, whatevers—would do well to heed his advice.

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I realize that this is surely too much to ask of Santa this holiday season, but there’s never any harm in asking. Sometimes, when you least expect it, good things do happen…..

As we approach 2012, dealing as we are with a struggling economy; highly-partisan politics which get almost nothing done (in no small part because some of those responsible are blessed with or beholden to an ideology where facts don’t always matter); signs everywhere (at least for those who place some value on evidence and facts) that our Earth is warming and fossil fuel resources are declining, I’m hoping that the vital, mandatory dialogues we engage in in the days and months to come are guided by an integrity and honesty too often lacking.

No one (myself included) wants to deal with problems of fossil fuel decline and what that means for all of us (even the delusional, fact-free inhabitants of this planet), or warming climates whose consequences are now coming into sharper view.

None of that is pleasant by anyone’s definition. Filled as we are with enough of life’s challenges and burdens, adding to a full plate issues whose impact on every aspect of our lives will overwhelm almost every other matter we each and all contend with is on no one’s wish list.

But I’d like to think that our collective future matters to all of us just as much as our individual prospects do to each of us. And for us to give ourselves the best chance of a satisfying future, we need to deal with some problems and challenges and realities. And we cannot do so effectively or successfully if we continue to allow too much nonsense, half-truths, lies, and misrepresentations to serve as guideposts for the conversations we need to start having about ten years ago. Serious discussions need to replace the too-many specious ones.

With that said, here’s a few simple wishes I’d like to see fulfilled, to be fleshed out in the weeks to come:

Stop putting morons in office or as candidates for office who have no clue what they’re talking about!

If we were serious, we would open up enough oil fields in the next year that the price of  oil worldwide would collapse. Now, that’s what we would do if we were a serious country. If we were serious… – Newt Gingrinch [1]

Clueless … but sure does sound good, doesn’t it? Perhaps Newt might want to break away from his pontifications long enough to read this and this before he spouts that same nonsense next time.

By the way, this: “Current prices of over $100 a barrel make even complex efforts at recovery enormously profitable” [2] isn’t really a good thing unless you are an oil company. That “over $100 a barrel” price is kind of a problem for most of us, unless you have some inside knowledge that the oil companies are from now on going to explore and produce cost-free to the public. Might want to think about pointing out the other side of that argument, since I’m not holding my breath on that oil industry alternative….

While you’re at it, when telling us that peak oil has been “discredited”, tell us by whom. (No, I don’t mean oil industry shills whose livelihood depends on their mouthing the company line regardless of its veracity. Offer up a few well-respected experts not beholden to the God of Fossil Fuels. Tough task, I’m sure, but give it a go and see who turns up.)

This inane type of commentary doesn’t help your cause much, either:

The peaksters claimed that the world was on the point of reaching an oil production tipping point. After that, the laws of the market — which these individuals never understood in the first place — would cease to function and the Four Horseman would gallop abroad. The solution was much tighter control by governments, and draconian restrictions on personal freedom.

“Draconian restrictions”? Sounds awful! Wonder what that might refer to? If only the author hadn’t run out of space before he could explain….(I am almost 100% certain that none of my peers has ever been concerned about the Four Horseman galloping abroad, which then begs the question: Which “abroad” are we talking about: Canadian right-wing crazy or American right-wing crazy?)

If you are going to argue that we are not facing fossil fuel/energy supply issues, then do us a favor (yourself included) by giving us reasons (the kinds based on facts) why you are right and I and others of like mind are wrong.

Start by tossing out that idiotic one-page media guide you all seem to worship … the one that tells us that we have “vast” or “massive” supplies at the ready; or that Field X might possibly produce a sufficient amount of needed supply that could perhaps satisfy many of our needs well into the future.

Put some numbers in those appeasing, empty statements you all toss around. If you are so sure about your position, then just give us the facts! (You do remember what those things are, right?) Discuss the counter-arguments and explain why they are incorrect with more of those annoying facts (the real ones). Explain what’s involved in producing these magic resources you tout.

Just how much is “vast” in the world we live in? What exactly does “could possibly” mean? We brain-damaged liberals can’t relate to “maybe we could possibly have massive reserves.” Help us out!

And if you decide you are going to have just enough integrity to address the issues honestly, put some context in your statements, also.

One of your Peak Oil-denying peers recently offered the blog and financial world these tidbits of profound energy analysis, and for the many who probably couldn’t be bothered for any of a dozen reasons to ask a few follow-up questions, I’m sure this sparkling assessment was all they needed to hear (I could have selected similar comments from a dozen recent articles):

The Canadian oil sands, a combination of sand, water and oil found mostly in the Canadian province of Alberta, are believed to contain 1 trillion barrels of oil while another 1 trillion barrels are believed to be trapped in rocks located in the states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. All told, the US is estimated to have around 1.5 to 2.6 trillion barrels of oil reserves. However and according to Peter Huber, the co-author of ‘The Bottomless Well,’ just the oil sands of nearby Alberta alone may contain enough hydrocarbon to fuel the entire planet for over 100 years.

In 2009, Occidental Petroleum Corporation’s (NYSE: OXY) announced the discovery of between 150 million and 250 million gross barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) reserves within an outlined area in Kern County, California. Approximately two-thirds of Occidental Petroleum’s discovery is believed to be natural gas while the entire discovery may be the largest new oil and gas discovery made in California in more than 35 years. Moreover, Occidental Petroleum California proved reserves already stood at 708 million BOE at the end of 2008 and represented approximately 24% of the company’s worldwide reserves.

Let’s take a look at each of these paragraphs, and allow me to ask a few questions.

Can you explain to the uninformed what’s involved in extracting and producing tar sands in contrast to conventional oil fields? How much more expensive is the process? (We’ll get all of it out of the ground, right?)

How does the quality of the end product measure up? (Sorry, but “in some cases it could possibly compare favorably” isn’t an answer.) How long does it take to get from Point A to gas in my tank? What kind of resources (water, natural gas, etc.) might be involved in the tar sands process? Where do those resources come from? At whose expense?

Any environmental issues we might need to ponder? (Humor us; we like to pretend there are environmental impacts … that whole global warming thing.) How easy is it going to be to just extract the oil “trapped in rocks”? (it is oil, right … the liquid kind most of us think of when you say “oil”? Perhaps it might possibly not be? Oops!)  Any contrasts in refining this unconventional resource versus conventional crude? Extra costs, perhaps? More effort? More time? Quality concerns?

How does the decline in supply among the existing conventional oil fields around the world factor in to these massive reserves which could possibly produce as much as several million barrels per day in another decade or two? Should we be concerned that existing exporters of conventional oil may not have as much to share in the years to come? Are we going to stay ahead of future demand by producing these vastly massive/massively vast reserves (inexpensively, easily, and quickly, of course)?

That’s just off the top of my head. Gimme a few more minutes and I’ll have a few more technical questions for you….

And as for the second paragraph, here’s where “context” would be oh-so-useful! I won’t quibble with the author’s math, I’ll use his high numbers, and I’ll even round-off the totals for ease.

So it appears that a couple of years ago Occidental “discovered 150 million and 250 million gross barrels of oil equivalent.” Wow! “Gross barrels of oil equivalent”! How cool is that? (Um … so is that, like, you know, regular oil?)

Let’s be generous and use the 250 million figure, and we’ll just call it oil, okay? The “two-thirds … is believed to be natural gas” part has me wondering. Two-thirds of 250 million in natural gas means one-third of 250 million in oil, so we’re talking about 85 million barrels or so of oil, right? Can’t put any of that natural gas in my car, but hey!

If we have approximately 85 million barrels of (“equivalent”) oil available (at a cost of what … a few bucks? Coupla weeks of drilling, maybe?), then (here’s where “context” would really, really help the uninformed), that’s about a whole day’s worth of world-wide supply. Fan-freakin’-tastic!

A word of unsolicited advice: if this kind of “logic” and substantive “analysis” is your best shot, consider coming over to the dark side with us. Let go of the fear-driven, paranoia-laden short-term thinking which prevents you from understanding that actions taken and not taken today are going to matter ten, fifteen, thirty, fifty years from now …. a hell of a lot more than any of us realize, given what’s at stake.

Today, when powerful men sit down and make decisions, they generally make those decisions as if the future didn’t exist, as if the consequences of their actions were beyond anticipation, as if they bore no responsibility for foresight. The future’s not welcome in the room. [3]

Perhaps you and we should do something about that? See if you can’t put some of your talents to better use helping … well, everyone.

Happy holidays to all!

Sources:

[1] http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2011/12/12/why-some-republican-are-delusional-about-oil-and-energy-policy/; Why Some Republican are Delusional About Oil and Energy Policy, by Robert Rapier December 12, 2011. See also: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8646#more; A Reality Check on Oil Supply for Newt Gingrich by aeberman, November 28, 2011
[2] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/12/08/oil-rich_america_112318.html; Oil-Rich America? by Victor Davis Hanson
[3] http://www.alexsteffen.com/2011/12/putting-the-future-back-in-the-room/; Putting the Future Back in the Room by Alex Steffan, December 11, 2011

I wasn’t certain if I was going to write another post at this time on the phenomenon of the fact-free efforts to deny the reality of Peak Oil, but there is simply too much good crazy available to pass up the opportunity. There’s always the risk of getting into an endless battle over the nonsense Peak Oil deniers routinely offer, but I remain convinced that the greater harm is in letting that nonsense go unchallenged.

Erik Curren’s recent “request” for proactive responses to the flurry of not-coincidental efforts to once again misinform readers about the realities of our energy future made it almost mandatory that I add at least one more post. [A must-read for the week is Chris Nelder’s recent post discussing “Why energy journalism is so bad.”]

Before jumping into the pool of right-wing half-truths, a terrific piece by David Jenkins at [the conservative and almost-always reasonable and well-considered writings of the] FrumForum offered this bit of wisdom, which sadly seems glaringly absent from far too many of Mr. Jenkins’ peers on the right:

Conservatism requires decisions to be made on the basis of a clear-eyed and unbiased analysis of fact, and an adherence to values that have stood the test of time, not emotions stemming from a rigid political dogma.

As Mr. Jenkins rightfully laments, “clear-eyed and unbiased analysis of fact” is increasingly absent from most right-wing discussions about the state of energy resources and climate change. Most of the time, facts themselves are missing, at least when they are not cherry-picked, glossed over, trivialized, or misrepresented. When reality intrudes on a well-rehearsed ideological rant, it is easier to just dispense with it … saves so much time and effort.

A fact tossed about in recent weeks without explanation or context (amazing how much those attributes can restore reality to an otherwise irrational bit of nonsense!) is how much U.S. oil production has increased in just a few short years. That’s so wonderful … at least up to the point where those statistics are then contrasted with the actual, fact-based peak production more than four decades ago.

That annoying little detail, pointed out by, among other, James Hamilton [PDF here], tells us that the current “oil renaissance” [1] is only a renaissance if a 43% disparity between the current level of production and the 1970 peak production totals is your idea of a renaissance.

Not to be too picky, but this cited article, touting the possibility of “an all-time high” in North American production by 2016 conveniently omits one teeny, tiny little bit of information. While labeling this as “crude” oil production, the author doesn’t point out that the primary source of this magical increase is not actually crude oil as the term is commonly used. The Canadian tar sands and various shale oil deposits in the United States which he refers to are considered unconventional oil resources.

All the growth in supply since [2004] was not crude but unconventional liquids, including natural gas liquids, biofuels, refinery gains, synthetic oil from tar sands, and other marginal resources. These liquids are by no means equivalent to crude [and] hide the fundamental issue of the depletion of mature fields. They also hide the declining energy density, higher cost, and lower flow rates of these new resources.

As Shell, Chevron, Total, the IEA, and a host of other serious observers have openly declared since 2005, the age of cheap and easy oil has ended. The ‘oil’ that’s left is progressively expensive, difficult, risky, marginal, and fraught with secondary effects like increasing carbon emissions, demand for water, and competition with food. [2]

And on a related theme, yet another ideal example of the fact-free assertions offered by those unable or unwilling to genuinely explain the facts, we have this gem [my emphasis added]:

… [S]ignificant technology advances have unlocked abundant natural gas and oil resources. These greatly expanded resources have already benefited our country economically. Increased supplies of natural gas have resulted in lower prices and helped revitalize many U.S. industries.

The study * announced several conclusions:

First, the potential supply of North American natural gas is far bigger than previously thought. It is now understood that the natural gas resource base is enormous and that its development … is potentially transformative for the American economy….

Second — and surprising to many — North America’s oil resources are also much larger than previously thought. These oil resources offer substantial supply for decades and could help the United States reduce, though not eliminate, its reliance on imported oil.

These conclusions are rocking the establishment’s reliance on such now-disproven myths as ‘peak oil’ and the necessity to ‘go green’ in order to reduce reliance on liquid hydrocarbons. [3]

There’s not a single highlighted (and context-free) term or phrase in those few paragraphs that lends itself to being quantified, so it’s a bit challenging to agree that those “conclusions” are “rocking the establishment.” I’ve yet to read anything by any Peak Oil peer who’s reeling from being so rocked. Wishful thinking won’t make it so. (And “now-disproven” by whom?)

As I discussed here, these kinds of vacuous positions are what pass for substantiation by those unwilling or unable to accept the fact that unquestioned reliance on energy supply business-as-usual is what’s going to be “rocked.”

At what point will they realize that their short-sighted, narrow-minded inability to accept simple truths will afford them absolutely no protection from the consequences of the irreversible depletion of the finite resources which made life as we know it possible? Having accessible resources today offers few assurances that business-as-usual will remain our birthright.

If only some of their wasted efforts to try and deny reality might be used instead to help persuade others that planning for a lengthy and inevitable transition to industry, business, and daily living dependent on something other than increasingly-harder-to-find-and-extract reserves might be a worthy pursuit for all of us….

To quote Mr. Jenkins once more:

When you listen to the policy focus coming from the right, such as a gluttony-driven energy policy that eschews conservation and renewable energy but favors aggressive fossil fuel production, it sounds a lot like 1960s liberalism’s credo: ‘if it feels good, do it.’

Any restraint on material appetites, even efficiency measures that make a dollar go further, is the enemy of a political ideology that places a premium on material gain and immediate gratification. This is not conservatism. There is nothing conservative about waste and gluttony.

More to come….

* The National Petroleum Council’s September 15 report: Prudent Development – Realizing the Potential of North America’s Abundant Natural Gas and Oil Resources, found at www.npc.org

Sources:

[1] http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/N-American-oil-output-could-top-40-year-old-peak-2193837.php; N. American oil output could top 40-year-old peak by Tom Fowler, Houston Chronicle
[2] http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/there_will_be_oil_but_can_you.html; There Will Be Oil, But At What Price? October 4, 2011 by Chris Nelder and Gregor Macdonald
[3] http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary-mainmenu-43/9636-north-american-oil-development-is-reducing-demand-for-foreign-oil; North American Oil Development Is Reducing Demand for Foreign Oil by Bob Adelmann

As I mentioned in my last two posts, there are some common threads running through the mostly nonsensical camps arguing against the reality that oil is a finite resource which is now on the downside of its maximum production rates. We fact-based lunatics call that Peak Oil.

I outlined (only partially tongue-in-cheek) some of the initial red flags readers should be alert to when combing through material discussing the pros and cons of Peak Oil. So far I’ve established five separate “criteria” for making a quick determination whether an article discussing Peak Oil deserves more careful attention. Those two prior posts (my most recent efforts on the subject; see here for more) provided examples of what to look for.

Today’s discussion is about something which I’m not entirely convinced is an actual criteria for my modest little test.

Where on the list does one put outright nonsense?

Several weeks ago, Tim Worstall posted an essay at Forbes which left me speechless. I’m sure Mr. Worstall is a very pleasant man who does a great many good and helpful things for others. That being said, his claim that Peak Oil is just so much nonsense, based on the arguments he put forth, has to be among the most bizarre attempts at refuting something I’ve ever read. (It was not his first article attempting to debunk Peak Oil, either. That is a different topic.)

Any article on the topic of energy supply claiming, as does Mr. Worstall, that “[W]e’re discovering entire new planets to explore for the stuff” probably deserves at least a “Say what?” before plunging in.

What’s most noteworthy is that his is not an isolated example, sad to say.

His post is actually a fairly brief piece, and it might be worthwhile for purposes of this one to read it first, so you have your own sense about the points he was trying to make.

Mr. Worstall disputes and denigrates the concept of EROEI. In a must-read article on the subject of energy, peak oil, production, and our future, Jim Quinn describes EROEI as follows (while duly noting that “The concept of energy returned on energy invested [EROEI] is beyond the grasp of politicians and drill, drill, drill pundits.”):

EROEI is the ratio of the amount of usable energy acquired from a particular energy resource to the amount of energy expended to obtain that energy resource. When the EROEI of a resource is less than or equal to one, that energy source becomes an ‘energy sink’, and can no longer be used as a primary source of energy. Once it requires 1.1 barrels of oil to obtain a barrel of oil, the gig is up.

To help us understand what Mr. Worstall attempted to explain, let’s use another example from the world of finance.

You have $100.00 to invest, and decide to do so with Trusty Financial Advisor (TFA). After a reasonable period of time during which TFA uses its expertise to provide you with the best (and honest) return possible, you not only get back your $100.00, you get you another $100.00 in addition, while TFA earns a nice commission in the process. Most people, I’m quite certain, would be happy with a return of 100%. As TFA’s specific “basket” of investments becomes more popular, that 100% return will eventually become more difficult to sustain, but over more reasonable periods of time, TFA is still returning at first $50.00, then $30.00, and now $20.00 for every $100.00 you invest. Not as spectacular as that first investment, but who kicks at 20% returns in this economy? TFA’s commissions decline as well: more effort for less of a return, but so far so good nonetheless.

In energy production terms, EROEI is a lot like the principle behind this example.

If oil exploration and production results in finding more marketable oil than is “invested” (the energy quantity of all of the machinery and technology and staffing and transportation and what-have-you) , that’s a good investment. Early on, as others have noted, using the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil in exploration and production netted oil pioneers as many as 100 barrels of oil in return. Now that’s a damned good investment, and dwarfs my little $100.00 return on $100.00 invested example above.

Pretty straightforward, agreed?

What if your $100.00 investment with TFA is now giving back only $3.50? You are still making more than if the $100.00 stayed in a coffee can, but 3.5% is not all that exciting after a run of great returns in the past. TFA is now expending a lot of time and energy just to get you that return and a much smaller commission as well. It’s still on the plus side of the ledger, and a lot of people in this economy might not bitch too much.

But what if we’re down to just a few pennies in return? Incentives to invest become more difficult to justify, and once we get close to you give TFA $100.00 and TFA gives you back $100.15 and that’s it, time to play elsewhere. TFA won’t get rich that way, and long before then TFA will stop expending so much time and effort and expense if that’s the best it can do. And no one is going to play the game if investing $100.00 gets you only $90.00 of that $100.00 back. That game is over long before that’s a likelihood.

We’re not at the “few pennies” stage of oil exploration and production yet, and probably won’t be for quite some time to come, but we’re getting there. Slowly, steadily, surely, the “easy” oil isn’t being found because it just isn’t there any more. That investment has maxed-out, and now we’re investing elsewhere: deep water, tar sands, shale, perhaps the Arctic … not like the those early stick-a-straw-in-the-ground-and-out-it-comes oil finds.

More effort; more costs; more time; more difficulties in general; less inclination for countries to give up all they have left; increasing demand; less supply day-by-day simply because we’re taking out something that isn’t being replenished … all those factors add up to investing more to get less. That’s not good math.

This is all a long preface to get to the complete nonsense the good Mr. Worstall offered readers in attempting to rebut the reality of what I’ve just described.

In his own words as he first addresses EROEI (“That is, as far as I understand it, the argument.”) we get this [my commentary added]:

Basically, what is being said is that as oil gets deeper, more difficult to pump up, perhaps with tar sands we’ve got to use more energy to purify the stuff, then at some point we hit a boundary, a system boundary [Not the terms I’d use, but okay so far]. We’ll be using more energy to get the oil out than we’ll get energy from the oil we get out. [By Jove, I think he’s got it!] Which, self-evidently, is nonsense, [perhaps I spoke too soon] that’s like the internet companies losing money on every transaction and they’ll make it up in volume. [Huh?! Someone took a sharp right turn off of the I-get-it highway]

In the very next paragraph, there’s hope that this last comment was just a brief detour. Got lost, back on the right road: “… it does work in certain special situations. It would indeed be self-evidently absurd to use 10 barrels of oil at one site to pump up one barrel of oil. [Yes! He’s got it!] Better, obviously, to use one of the 10 you have and have 9 left over.” [Damn. So close! That is, as far as I understand it, the argument: if you keep using up what little you have left because you can’t get more, and are no longer trying, then … uh … uh, at some point, you kinda get to the point where nothing is left. Perhaps that’s not the wisest course of action? Just saying….]

What follows after he makes this statement: “But let’s really go wild here and think about something very different indeed,” is a interesting journey to say the least; more an indication that we have now officially lost contact with reality, and a search party is in order.

If you haven’t read what Mr. Worstall discusses next, he decides to use the growing and producing of wheat (for bread: “the staff of life”) as his way of refuting EROEI. He sets aside other energy components required in growing the wheat (fertilizer, transportation, etc.—all perfectly reasonable to do for these purposes) and claims—I assume accurately—that we expend far more energy in creating a loaf of bread than the energy we get from it. I’ll give him that, and since he is obviously far more skilled mathematically than I am, I won’t dispute his computations as to how much energy is expended and “wasted.”

He decided to focus on just one of the essential elements required in growing wheat: fresh water. His premise is that 1000 tons of water are required to grow a ton of wheat. I’ll buy that, no questions asked. (Keep in mind that for his purposes we’re setting aside all of the other energy components needed.) Mr. Worstall concludes that the solar energy required to evaporate the ocean water which must then fall back to earth as fresh water works out to 35 times the amount of energy (calories) we get back from a ton of wheat.

I’ll go along with that, but immediately after we come to a fork in the road. I’ll go left, and Mr. Worstall apparently beams himself directly to Planet Rational Thinking Not Necessary:

And we’re quite happy with this. We don’t think it odd at all. And we most certainly don’t say that it’s unsustainable because it doesn’t pass the ERoEI calculation.

The reason we’re not worried about it is because we’ve got vast amounts of energy coming to us as sunlight. Huge, massive, great big gobs of it. And we’re entirely happy to use it copiously, waste huge amounts of it, because there is so much. We want that energy in a form that can be used by our bodies and we’re just delighted to waste 97% of the energy in order to get a bit in the form we can use….

And the reason that ERoEI doesn’t mean very much is that we’re not, an any kind of human scale, limited by the availbility [sic] of energy. The Sun simply pumps in so much energy that total energy availability simply isn’t a binding constraint upon us. What we’re interested in is usable energy and we’re quite happy to waste total energy in order to get usable.

So there you have it. We have lots of energy from the sun (no doubts there); we waste a lot of it to grow wheat (okay, I’ll buy that); and since we’re happy eating the bread and wasting the sunlight, EROEI as it relates to finite amounts of oil in the ground is “still nonsense.”

(There’s very little rational comparison between quantities and characteristics of these two vastly different energy sources, but why interject reason into the conversation now?)

Fairly certain that I don’t need to say one more word except … WOW! (and point out this was in Forbes online, not Mr. Wacko’s Wild World Of Online Crazy magazine … WOW! Again.)

As I mentioned in my last post, there are some common threads running through the mostly nonsensical camps arguing against the reality that oil is a finite resource which is now on the downside of its maximum production rates … Peak Oil.

[NOTE: If you have not yet read this terrific article by James Quinn and you have even the remotest interest in the realities of our energy future, take a few minutes to do so.]

I outlined some of the initial red flags readers should be alert to when combing through material discussing Peak Oil. If an article contains some or all of the following buzzwords, it’s a good chance that the argument offered against Peak Oil is likely going to be an at-best disingenuous collection of partial truths with all the damning facts contradicting the assertions neatly omitted; or the “facts” within are not exactly the type of facts used by people here in reality.

(1) Peak Oil proponents/doomers are constantly spreading falsehoods that we will soon be “running out of oil.” [The deniers keep saying we are making those claims, when in fact only they are! We know that is not true, but it’s also not the issue!]

(2) We still have “vast” resources [or “giant”; “immense”; “entire new planets of”, etc. ... the kind of “facts” you can’t assign numbers to.]

(3) Failure to put genuine facts in any kind of truthful context. [As cited in my last post, mentioning a find of 250 million barrels of oil as yet another sign that we Peak Oil nutcases are full of it conveniently fails to point out that a find like that one will meet three days’ worth of oil demand, and thus loses a fair amount of its impressive-sounding luster.] *

(4) The newest talking point: “The now-discredited theory of Peak Oil.” [Each time that assertion is offered, any credible authority substantiating that claim never gets mentioned, curiously enough. So the “now-discredited” part is actually the writer’s own fact-free assessment. Does save research time!]

* A glaring recent example of this comes from David Holt, President of the Consumer Energy Alliance, arguing in favor of more drilling in the Arctic [my emphasis added]:

Energy exploration in Alaska’s OCS, in both the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, is expected to produce 25 billion barrels of oil over the next 40 years. This is the equivalent of 2010 imports from Iraq and Russia combined. That production will also spur nearly $200 billion in government revenue from royalties and taxes, and 55,000 new jobs per year for generations.

Two comments on this disingenuous-at-best effort to inject meaningful facts into the dialogue:

(1) Take your handy calculator and do the math to discover just how many barrels per year Mr. Holt’s assertions will add to our energy supply (assuming full production at some distant point on the time horizon, while keeping in mind what might be involved in Arctic oil production; and the inconvenient fact that we use approximately 85 million barrels of oil per day);

(2) In reading the jobs claims Peak Oil deniers tout repeatedly, it would appear that only fossil fuel production and exploration produces tax revenue and creates jobs … go figure! (The comparison to imports from Russia and Iraq is important for apparently secret reasons.)

One of the “best” examples of Test Criteria # 5 comes from the same Clifford Krauss (New York Times) I mentioned in last week’s post (and more thoroughly here). In his most recent Peak Oil-related work, Mr. Krauss offered this gem of certainty [emphasis is mine]:

The United States may now have the means to reduce its half century of dependence on the Middle East. China and India may have the means to fuel the development of their growing middle classes. Japan and much of Europe may have the chance to reduce dependence on nuclear power. And, at least theoretically, poor African countries might be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

I may have a winning lottery ticket in my shirt pocket and thus may have the means to purchase my own private island and accordingly may have the chance to reduce my dependence on anyone else to provide anything for me at all; and at least theoretically, I might be the richest man on Earth (and while we’re at it: at least theoretically, pigs might start flying tomorrow).

The tap dance required by these advocates (of an apparently limitless supply of worry-free fossil fuel resources) to make claims with such certainty about complete uncertainties is exhausting to behold. If they weren’t doing so much harm to so many who do not and cannot be expected to have knowledge on this subject, the effort would be Monty Python-esque hilarious!

This kind of physics-defying contortions to make bold claims about nothing is not limited to Mr. Krauss (who, to be fair, has also written many fine pieces for the Times).  In one of several prior posts of mine, I highlighted this CNNMoney-Fortune Hall of Fame effort [emphasis added is mine]:

“There are many oil reserves around the globe that remain untapped, and explorers continue to discover new fields deep beneath the earth’s surface. Depending on how the controversy surrounding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge turns out, the U.S. could exploit oil reserves in the area, despite potentially grave environmental consequences.”

I then noted that: “‘Depending’; ‘could’ … along with ‘might potentially’, ‘if’, ‘could be possible’, and an array of similar, carefully-worded utterly-lacking-in-certainty phrases are the apparent stock in trade for those denying those annoying facts about declining world oil production.’” (Glossing over “potentially grave environmental consequences” is in a category all by itself.) And perhaps an explanation as to what’s involved in getting to “new fields deep beneath the earth’s surface” might be a good idea?

That article is the poster child for denier nonsense, as I took pains to detail in that February 10, 2011 post. I can only assume that the purpose or intent is to offer semi-plausible assertions to those whom the authors fully expect to accept their claims unquestioningly, thus protecting whatever their ideological, financial, or business interests might be, and all with only the most minimal of efforts at sharing the truth.

Even if they were right and we do have at least several more decades of plentiful, easily-obtained, relatively inexpensive supplies of fossil fuels (which we don’t!), by what perverse notion of long-term thinking are they content to do absolutely nothing to begin the beyond-description complex transition away from fossil fuel dependency?

Anyone looking out their window and/or taking a quick peek at all the gizmos and gadgets inside would have to be completely delusional in failing to realize that almost everything we have, own, use, depend on is in some measure large or small a product of fossil fuel.

Just how much effort, time, money, planning, trial-and-erroring, marketing, producing, implementing, and transitioning to something other than fossil fuel dependency do these deniers think might be involved in swapping out this way of living for a non-fossil fuel existence? Full-blown denial and misrepresentation is their idea of contributing to our collective well-being (and their own)? Seriously?

The Hirsch Report (see this and also my series beginning here) is among the most influential energy studies undertaken in the past decade. A major conclusion reached by the authors left little doubt as to the depth and breadth of challenges we will face (deniers included).

The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.
Mitigation will require an intense effort over decades. This inescapable conclusion is based on the time required to replace vast numbers of liquid fuel consuming vehicles and the time required to build a substantial number of substitute fuel production facilities.  Our scenarios analysis shows:

• Waiting until world oil production peaks before taking crash program action would leave the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for more than two decades.

• Initiating a mitigation crash program 10 years before world oil peaking helps considerably but still leaves a liquid fuels shortfall roughly a decade after the time that oil would have peaked.

• Initiating a mitigation crash program 20 years before peaking appears to offer the possibility of avoiding a world liquid fuels shortfall for the forecast period.

The obvious conclusion from this analysis is that with adequate, timely mitigation, the economic costs to the world can be minimized. If mitigation were to be too little, too late, world supply/demand balance will be achieved through massive demand destruction (shortages), which would translate to significant economic hardship.

There will be no quick fixes. Even crash programs will require more than a decade to yield substantial relief.

Is it really in anyone’s best interests to instead rely upon a host of head-in-the-sand “mights” and “possiblys” and “may haves” and “coulds”?

Worth pondering?

More to come….

Happy Thanksgiving!