Monday, Dec 15, 2008
The Ostriches Have Left The Building
The Guardian: When Will The Oil Run Out?
Every newspaper report you've ever read denying the impending Peak Oil crisis, has had its roots, somewhere, in the forecasts of the IEA. Guess what? They were working without data. They were making it up.Just like the Saudis have been doing with their oil reserve figures, until Matt Simmons went through the books and discovered the alarming discrepancies. Better still, Monbiot here reminds us of the US government's own Hirsch Report, with all the grim prognoses Monbiot mentions here. By the way, forget 2020. The real crunch is in about 4-5 years time, when the implications of what's coming filter right through business, investment and on down to the public.
Posted by lierbag @ 08:58 AM (741 views) Add Comment
16 Comments
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1. phdinbubbles said...
Our government will do the same as they did with north sea gas - despite being warned for decades they will completely ignore all reasoning and then act surprised when it starts to run out and mumble something about market forces providing the solution (whilst blaming speculators for the price rising). We have a very sophisticated form of idiotocracy now that is too well entrenched to be disturbed. It'll be be more fun to see what happens without contingency planning anyway. I'm planning to make my own contigency - to try and buy a house near a train station. As for oil peaking in 2020 - isn't that a little optimistic compared to a lot of predictions?
2. phdinbubbles said...
Sorry for posting again, but
"In the foreword to a book it published in 2005, its executive director, Claude Mandil, dismissed those who warned of this event as "doomsayers". "
Now, where have I heard that kind of thing before?
3. sold 2 rent 1 said...
Engineered "Peak oil" scare and USD collapse will propel the price through $400 by April 2010.
That's a 10-fold increase from todays price.
Elliottt wave theory had a 5 wave pattern that was a 13-fold increase from 1998-2008 ($11 to $147)
We are having a major retracement that will set up the final Elliott wave series that we eventually see the transition into free energy in late 2010 and early 2011.
Remember change will be 20 times faster in 2010 than in the 1970s so an oil bubble that completed in a decade in 1970s will complete in less than 6 months now. The main prices rises wil occur between October 2009 and April 2010
4. Longterminvestor said...
Is this the same "Guardian" that ran the headline "The Student Becomes The Master" for an article about how the Japanese had mastered western economics and were now better at it than the west itself... just a year or so before the Japanese economy crashed due to the fact that the new "masters" economy was actually one huge asset bubble waiting to burst?
I think we should be told.
5. lierbag said...
s2r1 said: 'we eventually see the transition into free energy in late 2010 and early 2011'.
There can be no such thing as 'free energy' (in whatever form in your imagination that may be) purely because it would be of absolutely no use within a global economy based on the artificially applied constraints of supply and demand, which confer value and profit.
6. goweresque said...
Hmmm. This article would have nothing to do with monbiot's AGW beliefs at all would it? I smell hidden agendas.
7. montesquieu said...
Agreed with goweresque. Monbiot is a long way from a straight reporter in these matters - he's a player with a very particular agenda.
8. sold 2 rent 1 said...
lierbag,
"There can be no such thing as 'free energy' (in whatever form in your imagination that may be) purely because it would be of absolutely no use within a global economy based on the artificially applied constraints of supply and demand, which confer value and profit."
You have hit the nail on the head.
What you are saying is that everything must change with the mainstream acceptance of "free energy".
The old world will be replaced by a new world.
The World of Free Energy
http://www.free-energy.ws/lindemann-1.html
9. lierbag said...
Montesquieu and Goweresque - of course Monbiot has 'an agenda'; it's to warn people of the perils of uncontrollable climate change, and the effects of the imminent approach of Peak Oil. Whereas 'the agenda' of the oil companies, industry and government, is to persuade you that everything is fine, to go back to the High Street, and carry on spending as if all were rosy. The difference now, is that the formerly staunch opponents of Peak-Oil' doomsayers' (their phrase), the IEA, have now come on board and admitted their forecasts were complete doggie-doos. If anything, Monbiot is vindicated. But what's the point of illustrating this? If the guy pushed you out of the way of a runaway bus, you'd think it was part of some greater anti-capitalist plan.
10. Si said...
s2r1, I trust you're not a physicist.
There's no such thing, trust me.
But if it makes you feel better believing these crackpot websites, then go for it.
11. p. doff said...
It's only monday and 'free energy' tosh has already reared it's silly head.
I'm beginning to wonder why I bother with this website.
12. letthemfall said...
Hi sr21
I thought I'd have a look at this "free energy" link as you've posted it a few times. It's interesting, if only for the number of illusions and misunderstandings it proffers. All the "free energy" machines it describes contradict the laws of thermodynamics and/or conservation of energy. They're just versions of the perpetual motion machine really. Unfortunately there is no such thing as free energy (or free anything come to that) and there never will be. Still, as I've said before, I have no objection to your posting this stuff.
13. jamonit said...
Wave energy is 'free' energy. It's continually derivable from self replanishing sources that never deplete....There's still a cost in building the generators and distributing the power, which is why it's free energy that will be priceable within a market. Ditto gound source heat pumps...the cost is in the intallation and many people are making a living from it right now. Wind power is free energy for the same reasons.
So I have no problem with the term 'free'. I do have with contraptions that counter the laws of pghysics however. There is one potential apparent caveat to this though, just to keep the door ajar on some sort of new, revolutionery development...and that is the concept of dark enegy, which it's now widely accepted exists. Who knows, perhaps there's a way of tapping this phenomenon that we know so little about so far.
But perpetual motion machines? No.
As for water powered cars, they are indeed a possiblity, in fact a reality. But it's a semantic debate...the water is used in a fuel cell to create hydrogen which is burnt to generate electricity to power a motor. But you still need electricity to power the fuel cell in the first place...the hydrogen is simply acting as an effective power storage device, in the absence of more efficient battery technology.
14. letthemfall said...
Well, the sun is "free" in that respect; but it still costs. What we want is cheap energy, though whether we will ever get such a thing is open to question. Perhaps nuclear fusion (the hot sort) will work out in the end, but I suspect that will not turn out to be cheap either. As for dark energy, for now that lies in the realm of travels through wormholes in space.
15. sold 2 rent 1 said...
jamonit,
"and that is the concept of dark enegy, which it's now widely accepted exists."
This has always been my point.
Maybe all these so-called "perpetual motion machines" use dark energy and it only appears to be free because we can't detect it.
So the laws of thermodynamics are safe but we just need to included dark energy into the equation.
Look for some big breakthrough in dark energy/dark matter in spring 2009
16. Chilli said...
Whatever solution comes to pass to solve the shortage of oil, it is not going to be some weird 'wave effect' or 'dark energy' crap.
I know this because if it was that easy to produce, we would all be building it in our garages and we would be using it. We aren't; so whatever solutions present themselves; it won't be cheap.
The 'solution' may be cheaper than oil however. I imagine that our scientific and engineering knowledge has grown an order of magnitude greater than what it was in the 1920s.
The reason we don't know about the 'solution' yet is because of the VIs.
And I'm not talking about the MIBs or the black helicopters, or even the oil sultans.
To illustrate my point:
Why don't we drive cars around that only have one seat? A car with one seat should be a fourth the size of a normal car and consume 1/4 the energy right?
We don't because, the car manufacturers want you to pay for a full car. That's why we spend 5 years paying it off, when a car produced thirty years ago essentially covers the basics for what is expected of a car; it gets you there. If they don't make their money, they lay off staff. And we are lead to believe that there will be reduced innovation in car development as well, which I don't believe.
Its not just the car manufacturers. Why don't we all not have cars, but drive public cars instead? It would put the taxi drivers out of business for a start. We wouldn't need the tube any-more. It would reduce the need for parking space. There may be more actual congestion on the roads though.
My point, in summary, is this; The solution just may be about using less oil. We have it in ourselves to produce an wondrous economy where we solve these problems, but we don't because VIs, both big and small, don't let us change, and they won't until they are forced to.