PoStorm - Peak Oil category

The Human population explosion may turn out not to be that bad.

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:10:00 GMT

    The Human population explosion may turn out not to be that bad. The experts predict that the population will level out at about 9 billion around 2050. We will be saved by the dynamic that wealthy people have less children, and so as the poorest people of the world get more wealthy the birth rate declines to the point that it matches the death rate, and the population stops increasing.
    Global warming? – don't worry about it. Human technological ingenuity will fix that. If we can put a man on the moon, we can put mirrors in space to reflect the sun's rays. If we can Air Condition a Shopping Mall, we can Air Condition the Air – suck all that CO2 back out and put it back into the ground.
    Our booming economy will drive the pace of technology development as well as the growth in wealth of everyone including the poorest people.
    “Peak-Oil” – and the exhaustion of fossil fuels supplies – may not be that much of a problem either, as long as that human ingenuity delivers. May be we wont be reflecting the sun's rays away with mirrors in space, but focusing them down to earth as an energy source. Of course that would exacerbate global warming, but then we could really Air Condition the atmosphere, with heat pumps to push the excess heat out into space. There's nothing technologically wrong with that – all it needs is power to run the heat pumps, which just means collecting more solar rays.
    We've got it made. A beautiful positive feedback mechanism in which wealth makes things better for everyone, even the poorest, and generates yet more wealth through an economic boom, which fuels technological advances that not only generate yet more wealth, but also provides the solutions to the problems we are creating. We can find more energy, not only to power the wealth boom, but to power the solutions to the problems created by using more energy. .... to infinity and beyond!

    But the dark side of feedback mechanisms is that they work both ways.

What happens if we stumble? Let's suppose the unthinkable happens and the economic boom falters and, for inconceivable reason, the world economy falls into a 1930's like depression. Let's suppose it happens right now – just as we seem to have passed the world's “Peak Oil” production. The silver lining is that the the depression takes the pressure of oil demand. It also takes the eyes off global warming – and starts to eliminate the means to fix it – technologists are going to get laid off too; businesses aren't going to invest – particularly not it the most speculative areas. The beautiful positive feedback mechanisms start to look less beautiful when they work in the other direction.

But may be we will glide to a nice soft landing – like a plane guiding into the Hudson after it loses both engines.

The problem is that there's some feedback mechanisms that aren't going to go into reverse for a long time. The CO2 we have already dumped into the atmosphere is going to cause the temperature to rise for hundreds of years even if we stopped adding more right now. The babies who might have not be born if their parents were wealthier have already been born. We chose not to fix global warming or oil exhaustion problems when the economy was booming, and we might not be able to afford it in a depression. We chose not to fixed problems when they were foreseeable and fixable.

At least we fixed one problem. When the economy was booming we made sure that plenty of the new wealth ended up in the hands of the poorest people, and that those same people saw the benefits of modern medicine and received the best education, so that they would see a future that needed less children to be born. -- Oh no, we didn't do that either. We've had a boom in concentrating wealth into the hands of the richest and most powerful people.

So when there was plenty, the rich hoarded it for themselves. In a depression, the rich are going to use their power to protect their wealth – they are going to be even less likely to allow wealth to go to the poorest people. So there's goes the dream of a stabilized human population.

But never mind, all of these problems will get fixed. People will die. The universe has no use for humans. It will survive without them.

Peak Oil Theory and the Limits of Growth

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:49:00 GMT

I was surfing through blogs on Peak Oil and saw old thread (that, maddeningly, I can’t find again), started by someone asking for a refutation of Peak Oil theory, and his responders were happy to oblige.

I found it to be a curious phrasing of a question. It’s a bit like saying “I am about to step off the edge a cliff, so will someone provide a refutation of the Theory of Gravity.” And his responders might have pointed out that Einstein showed that Newton’s Law of Gravity to be wrong. And so it’s safe to step of the edge of a cliff. Right?

One commenter pointed to a chart in a paper written by M. King Hubbert, the originator of Peak Oil Theory. The chart shows world oil peaking in 1995. The commenter points out that world oil didn’t peak in 1995, therefore Hubbert was wrong and so it is indeed ok to step off the cliff.

It would appear that no one in the heated debate bothered to read Hubbert’s paper. (After all mankind used to seek knowledge; now all you need is a web link to knowledge.). They might have noted that the paper was not about Peak Oil and the one chart with the peak at 1995 was almost incidental.

Hubbert’s paper was entitled “Exponential Growth as a Transient Phenomenon in Human History”. The last two paragraphs are reproduced below:

“It appears therefore that one of the foremost problems confronting humanity today is how to make the transition from the precarious state that we are in now in to this optimum future state by a least catastrophic progression. Our principal constraints at present are neither lack of energy nor of material resources [emphasis not in the original] nor of essential physical and biological knowledge. Our principal constraints are cultural. During the last two centuries we have known nothing but exponential growth and in parallel we have evolved what amounts to an exponential-growth culture, a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential for its stability that it is incapable with reckoning with nongrowth.

Since the problems confronting us are not intrinsically insoluble, it behooves as, while there is yet time, to begin serious examination of the nature of our culture constraints and of the cultural adjustments necessary to permit us to deal effectively with the problems rapidly arising. Provided this can be done before unmanageable crises arise, there is promise that we could be n the threshold of achieving one of the greatest intellectual and cultural advances in human history.”

M. King Hubbert. 1976
see http://www.hubbertpeak.com/Hubbert/wwf1976/

Those whose need to “refute Peak oil” is greater than their need to think rationally may take the words I have emphasized out of context and show to the world the King of Peak Oil says there is nothing to worry about.

Unfortunately King Hubbert was worrying about something a great deal worse: arithmetic; specifically the arithmetic of exponential growth. He lists statistics of growth rates over the last two centuries: production (and consumption) rate of oil doubling every ten years, for example.

He hasn’t much hope of convincing the general population (many of whom are baffled by the ‘miracle’ of compound interest) but the arithmetic of exponential growth inexorable. Arguing about the precision of the numbers is irrelevant. Doubling in ten years is not sustainable. Doubling is not sustainable. Ultimately, growth is not sustainable. The question is not whether we will run until insoluble problems but when.

There seems to be a large and noisy population that acts as if not problem is important unless it is their face right now. At least if it’s a societal problem.

We have learnt that some problems are worth dealing with before they get severe. We attempt to diagnose cancer as early as possible because it’s a lot more likely to be treatable. It takes just 46 cell generations for a single cancer cell to become a tumor that’s bigger than your body. How big do we like it to get before we treat it?

Do we want our Societal Doctor to shake his head ominously with the words “If only you had come me sooner”? “While there is yet still time” as Hubbard said, 30 years ago. 30 years in which humanity has done something about the problem: it was made it exponentially worse.

Peak Oil

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:28:00 GMT

'Peak Oil Theory' seems to generate an awful lot of hot air. If you google 'debunk peak oil' and read some of the blogs you will see (as most blogs!) an incredible level of arrogance .. the people who are so confident they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Here's a clip from http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/3/6/95348/53066

Read it, bearing in mind that it was written just 15 months ago, and that today oil is at about $130 ... double what he is asserting wont happen in 5 years.

Like all good economists....

I propose a bet with any of the Peak Oilers- you name your scenario and let's put down some wagers on it. I'll start:

I think in real terms the price of oil (measured by average price over the year) will not be greater than $65 a barrel during any year over the next 5 years (unless there is another major war in the Middle East).

Takers?

By the way, saying that oil prices are going to rise or that oil exploration is going to get more expensive over time is like saying the sun rises in the East- so what? The economy can and will handle that. What Peak Oil predicts is catastrophe- rapid increases in prices- and I will put my money on the fact that that is wrong.

J.S.

I teach environmental economics and blog at www.voicesofreason.info.

by Jason D Scorse at 7:59 AM on 07 Mar 2007