Heard Of "Peak Oil"?
Simply put, it's when the oil wells start running dry:
Peak Oil is the point in time when extraction of oil from the earth reaches its highest point and then begins to decline. We won't be able to say with certainty when we have reached peak oil until after the fact. Many experts say we have already reached the peak. Others say not yet, but within the next few years.What does Peak Oil herald? It heralds the end of cheap energy.
A shame we have a president who gets driven around in a gigantic, black SUV instead of one with the sense to get behind alternative energy in a big way.
Here's a compelling counterpoint.
Years ago, someone said the problem with atheists is that they're dull, because they only want to talk about God.
On the secular side, these same folks often need to sell their religion (environmentalism) by promising economic Hellfire for nonbelievers.
I'm 46 years old; Earth Day happened in 5th grade, and cataclysm has been foretold for each decade since. It's beginning to get a little tiresome.
Cridland at April 11, 2005 11:13 AM
Also, people get sunburned more quickly now because there's less ozone, summer temperatures in Europe are at record highs, and in Scandinavia, the permafrost (so named because it's supposed to be permanently frozen) is melting.
The major side effects of environmental abuse may not be coming quickly to Crid-Land, but they do exist.
LYT at April 11, 2005 4:20 PM
> ...major side effects of environmental abuse...
No, in C-land the food is always fresh, the music is always lilting and everybody gets laid.
Life is better in an industrialized, democratic, cheap-energy economy, which is the part people want so badly to forget. (See adjacent post, where Amy feels free to burn as much total fuel as she can buy, but having saved a little on her trips to Ralphs, roundly mocks the aspirations of those with different tastes.)
I got no quarrel with the Blue-tufted Valley Warbler or whatever species we need to protect this week. BUt I wish people who live in the outlandish wealth that this economy provides would acknowledge that it WORKS... People are fed, educated, enabled and medicated like at no other point in cosmic history.
LYT, don't you want the Chinese to live as well as the Americans?
Crid at April 11, 2005 4:43 PM
Luke is right. Sometimes people cry, "The sky is falling the sky is falling!" And sometimes they're right.
Amy Alkon at April 11, 2005 7:22 PM
I was in Alaska a couple months ago, and went trekking along a glacier where the glaciers retreat has been tracked for about two hundred years. As you drive up, about a mile away, there is a signpost that says something like 1776, which is where the edge of the glacier was. Then you see the progress through the years up to the present... not much left nowdays.
Texas was once covered in ice.
There will soon be a northern passage above Canada where ice has been for the last (at least) 25,000 years. The Russians and Canadians are already planning on shipping through this area when the final ice is passable.
Kilamanjaro will soon be without the famed snows.
I think this process started long before industrialization, but industrialization is certainly speeding along the process. There are just far too many people on the planet.
eric at April 11, 2005 9:26 PM
The notion that the oil might run out is laughable. No one knows how much oil is beneath the surface of this planet. What is true is that, where we know oil exists, there are some places where it is cheap to extract it, and there are places where it is not. With the rising prices of late, it has once again become profitable to drill offshore. For a few years there, offshore rigs were losers, and many were vacant. The bottom line is that it comes down to what we're willing to pay for oil.
When our prices get like they are in Europe (about 3x what they are here), the free market will have to choose between drilling in more and more expensive locations or adopting new energy sources. In short, the market will take care of our "energy crisis" just like it takes care of pretty much everything else.
The sky is *not* falling. Crid's got it right. What if all the sour pusses took a day off to recognize that, though our economy, like all others, has its downsides, it is solely responsible for the greatest prosperity ever seen on this planet? Why not, at least once, dance with the date who brought you?
Chris Wilson at April 11, 2005 9:36 PM
You've seen the sky fall?
Crid at April 11, 2005 10:14 PM
Chris Wilson wrote: "The notion that the oil might run out is
laughable."
Well, maybe it's laughable to those with a lack of basic
mathematical skills. To others, that statement itself supplies
comedy relief.
If you have a finite supply of any resource that isn't being
replenished, any regular usage of that resource guarantees
that it will run out. It may be difficult to figure out when
that will happen, but the end result is beyond question.
Energy and technology have done great things for us. That
doesn't mean it's a good thing to needlessly waste energy or
ignore the side-effects.
Ron at April 12, 2005 6:39 AM
Most all of the oil has been found where we can get at it. Whether it's in danger of running out in the next, say, 50 or so years is anyone's guess. I can't tell who's Chicken Little, who's Nero and who's right. I say get off the oil so we can let the middle east nuke itself, without having to care. As to the alternative? I don't know what we'll do, but we should have spent that Iraq money figuring it out.
>No one knows how much oil is beneath the surface of this planet.
Are you talking about beneath the crust? If we drill below that, all we'll get is a new lava vent.
Not to mention oil is fossilized organic matter. Contrary to literature, there never were Elms and dwarves and dinosaurs living below the crust of the earth. So, no oil down there.
Little ted at April 12, 2005 10:39 AM
> Most all of the oil has been found where
> we can get at it.
Ted, read the article in the first reply. (It's not a pretty link, because it's a cut-&-paste of a copyrighted piece.) The EASY oil has been found, but as prices rise and human ingenuity continues to chip away at it, there's still plenty of energy. To say it's "anyone's guess" horribly understates the degree of concentrated genius that's addressing the matter.
People seem to think that oil was just this little gift bag that God tucked under our arm as we stepped out of the cosmic limo on the way into the Earthly hotel. But oil was an economic and human solution to an economic and human problem. Generations struggled through the the past to make to work, and now we struggle to move forward.
Do not panic.
Crid at April 12, 2005 12:27 PM
to make IT work... etc
We need comment editing!
Crid at April 12, 2005 12:28 PM
Yeah, I get the point, but it seems to me that the best evidence that we've reached the peak of the oil age comes from an oil executive/lobbyist that I saw talking about how we needed to drill in the ANWR on PBS a few years back. The questionner asked him if his company would build any more refineries that would be necessary to harness the new crude. He skirted the issue but essentially said, 'no, because we don't think it will be worth it in the long run.'
As a side note: some of the best analysis of the oil situation and green technologies that I've ever read comes from some engineer.
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/06/AnewManhattanProject.shtml
Looks like we're going to be stuck placating these savage mullahs for some time, unfortunately.
Little ted at April 12, 2005 1:56 PM
> ...stuck placating these savage mullahs...
Actually, recent events highlight efficacious options.
Cridland at April 12, 2005 2:53 PM
I wasn't referring to Iraq, which never really had much of a religious presence in the first place, and hopefully will have some sort of distance between mosque and state (who knows as of now). I was referring to the Saudis, for whom democratization means decreased rule by oligarchy and increased rule by nutcase.
Little ted at April 12, 2005 5:50 PM
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