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I can find no ray of hope emanating from any source on this problem at the moment. Bubbling technological innovation? Give me a break. Doubts about the Saudi's? No kidding. Where in hell is any close observer of the situation supposed to get any good news here? We all know here at TOD what is coming into production, quantities, what is delayed, etc. HO and Stuart have reported on the CERA projections. Worldwide demand is not decreasing except in the 3rd world countries who were marginal anyway. There is no real alleviation on the way and deepwater will not save us.
Here's the main point: Can anyone, anywhere, point to a large new secure supply of crude coming online anywhere in the next few (5) years that solves the supply and demand equation in that time frame and beyond? I think not.
I invite Yergin, Lynch, USGS, IEA, et. al. to post here. Show us the Error of Our Ways.
Not only have we over-fished many a species to near extinction, but the krill are now disappearing thanks to Global Warming. Without krill, the whole ocean dies.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/foodchain110504.cfm
http://www.ecobridge.org/content/g_dgr.htm#chain
As a kid growing up in the 1950s, we used to have fish almost every Friday. Fish was considered a cheap food, and a guest did not feel particularly complimented if he was served fish by his host. Today many types of seafood are considered delicacies, particularly such things as shrimp and lobster. I read that during the turn-of-the-century lobsters were so plentiful along much of the New England coast that they were commonly used as bait by striped bass fishermen!
The family fisherman has already gone the way of the family farmer. And as fish get more scarce, fishermen will have to put more miles on their boats to get an equivalent amount of fish, and with fuel prices rising, the fisherman gets hit with a double-whammy. The time is soon coming when all of our fish will come from fish farms.
I thought it was pretty cautious. It was obstensively a "modern marvels" show about factory ships, but repeatedly noted that efficeincy was what killed other fisheries.
The show was just called "commercial fishing."
(on PO, I think "the Oil Drum Concensus" is pretty rational. I'm finally reading "Beyond Oil" and finding it pretty consistent with what I've learned here and elsewhere on the web. As cornucopians dwindle, we'll get a chance to see exactly how responsive the world will be ... how fast we regear or downshift)
The next ten to twenty years will be very strange times for everyone.
We've already seen:
peak cod fish,
peak forests,
peak fresh air,
peak truth,
peak intelligence,
soon we will see
peak oil
peak natural gas
peak fresh water
Any bets on when we will experience:
peak soylent green?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green
The error in your ways is that you are thinking only in terms of supply side solutions. You think that the failure to meet demand is a terrible problem. It's not. Most oil demand is for frivolous, wasteful uses (like single person commuting in the U.S.) It's a form of addiction, and demand destruction isn't a bad thing, it's "healing" or "getting better".
To answer your question: The large new supply of secure crude is going to come from conservation, i.e. U.S. commuters riding two-to-a-car instead of one-to-a-car etc.
To use the junky analogy...
A junky says to me: "Man, are you admitting that there might be a drug supply problem?"
And I say: "The problem isn't the drug supply. The problem is your addiction to drugs. What you call a 'supply problem' is actually the solution to your problem."
So, no. There is no supply problem.
YOU CANNOT "CONSERVE" WHAT YOU DON'T HAVE.
Conservation is DEAD. Let's call it "adaptation." Adaptation to scarcity. And no one can even pretend to know how this is going to affect a nation like the US that has ignorantly hogged oil for decades.
What you call "waste" is another fool's necessity.
So WTF are you doing here?
I couldn't agree more.
You can conserve wood when there is still a forest left to cut.
You can't conserve wood after it has all been clear cut. You just do without.
Likewise with oil. We could have conserved oil for 25 years but we didn't because we were told it wouldn't run out. Hell people are STILL telling us it won't run out. Well it is running out and now conservation isn't going to buy us much time.
Oh, and unlike forests, oil isn't going to regrow in a generation or so for more controlled use. When oil is gone it is GONE FOREVER - never to be replaced in any humans lifespan.
Even with conservation, the demand-supply gap will keep growing as long as human population climbs up the exponential "hockey stick" handle.
Use of mass-transit is not as wonderful a solution as one might think because closeness breeds bird flu (and other communicable diseases).
I'm of the same opinion as Engineer-Poet that we as a society need to make a rapid transition to electrically powered transportation as opposed to chemically-powered transportation.
We need to start building roadways with embedded electromagnetic energy exchange nodes. When your car approaches a red light or stop sign, braking energy is dumped into the grid as your car decelerates to a stop near an exchange node at the traffic light or stop sign. The grid sends a repayment surge of energy back up to your car when it is time to accelerate out of the stop.
This can't be done everywhere (i.e. rural areas), so we will need to remain hybrid.
Your goodbuddy, JD
More crap here:
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2005_08_14_peakoildebunked_archive.html
It sounds like your arch nemesis, JD, does believe in Peak Oil, just not in the die-off extreme end of it:
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2005/10/138-why-call-it-peak-oil-debunked.html
Also with the improvment of batteries it will be possible to eliminate internal combustion engine completely in the near future.
Truth be told, we are not "fuel constrained" --we are energy storage constrained
We need to come up with creative new ways of storing energy in distributed mini locations
Fossil fuel cannot be the one and only way of storing energy
Huh? Part of the basics of peak oil that we're always preaching to newcomers is not that we'll run out, but that it will become very expensive, eventually too expensive to use as we do now. We will stop using it for economic reasons, not because there is no oil. Call that conservation or adaptation or whatever, but it is NOT a case of not having oil.
JD has an excellent point about how we look at this situation. We have to look at both the supply-side issues (which the PO community does extremely well, IMO), as well as demand-side factors, such as technological improvements in the consumption of energy, market psychology, overall demand response to rising prices, etc.
Anyone who looks at just supply or just demand is willingly casting him/herself as one of the blind men examining the elephant, and laying the groundwork for reaching wildly incorrect conclusions.
I believe that an objective look at consumption patterns shows that there is indeed a LOT of low-hanging fruit to be picked, particularly in the area of US transportation. Yes, a major reduction of oil consumed by US drivers in the short run will very likely mean a sizable economic impact (it can only come via fewer miles driven, as it takes a while to convert a significant percentage of the rolling stock of vehicles to more efficient models); I'd never suggest that such savings would be painless. But price-driven conservation can happen, and we're already seeing a sizable demand/behavior pattern response, long before US gasoline prices become what I consider truly expensive.
Economists tend to be overly optimistic about PO, because they focus too much on markets and the demand side of the picture. Geologists and PO adherents tend to be overly pessimistic because they focus too much on the physical limitations of oil supply. IMO, the most useful approach, and the one most likely to yield correct predictions and therefore the best public and private policies, requires us to look at the big picture.
If you can't afford it, then you don't have it. I never said we're running out of oil.
GOT IT?
Hasn't this issue been addressed in detail in some of the better Peak Oil literature? Does anyone have any references?
Of course there is an enormous demand problem. And yes, high prices will spur long-term changes in behaviour. But I've got concerns that stickiness of demand will blunt a lot of elasticity, and I can't see how the changes will be paid for. I'd appreciate your comments.
The increase in oil price is basically a huge, regressive tax that hits hardest on those people and companies least able to afford higher costs. And they are the bulk of the consumers.
On stickiness: lots of consumption is pretty locked-in.
Can a bankrupt airline (half of US passenger seats) retire a fuel-guzzling older jet while the lease is still in force, and afford to finance a new fuel efficient model with rising (but still low) interest rates? A house in the distant exurbs is an inelastic distance to the workplace--you can get one-off savings by carpooling or buying a small car, but the housing stock is permanent. And if a driver trades their SUV at a big loss, it doesn't disappear--it goes to a used car buyer who continues to guzzle along for another 15 years. The gas consumption simply shifts from one individual to another.
On numbers and affordability:
Those who are most able to afford high prices are also the most able to buy the Prius, or insulate, or put in solar. They have a high proportion of wealth, but are low in numbers--so their impact in demand reduction is not very big. A million Wal Mart associates aren't going to go on the Prius waiting list.
If we get a big reduction in economic growth, and we're already over-leveraged, where will the aggregate wealth to pay for the improvements come from?
The same goes for car pooling. It doesn't cost anything to car pool, and in fact it will save you a lot of money.
The cost of entry is not the real barrier in cases like this.
Also, Rick, I don't understand your general approach to the problem of peak oil. You seem to be saying it is impossible for the U.S. to substantially reduce oil consumption because it is "locked in". But we both know that the U.S. will reduce its oil consumption due to peak oil. "We can't use less because of blah, blah, blah" is not going to be an option when supply strangulation sets in.
It's a funny thing. As a peak oil optimist, I think conservation is easier than it looks, and it will really help us. On the other hand, the pessimist peak oilers have a tendency to talk like Dick Cheney, i.e. "conservation may be nice, but it's basically incompatible with the American economy and infrastructure". Which seems weird because peak oilers don't like Dick Cheney.
We should do line drying, and carpool, and turn down thermostats and a hundred other things. But small, quick fixes won't do the job of reducing the base load. One aluminum plant probably uses more kilowatts than all the clothes dryers in the US put together. Cut power there, and you cut output and jobs.
Energy consumption does get locked in. Once you build a distant exurb, or a house in the Phoenix desert, or a Ford Expedition, or a big McMansion, or a city with minimal public transport, those assets will guzzle more energy than they should for as long as they exist. You can reduce some energy usage in any of them at the margins, but not nearly enough to make them energy efficient.
Will they? Aren't you assuming (in contradiction to the basic tenet of peak oil) that the fuel they need will always be forthcoming? If there is an interruption in their fuel supply, they definitely won't guzzle more energy than they should for as long as they exist.
You're not squarely facing the idea of fuel shortages. If the fuel isn't forthcoming, conservation will get done regardless of all the excuses (slow, difficult, expensive etc.) It just has to happen. Otherwise you have to conjure fuel out of the air.
Do you have doubts that peak oil will lead to fuel shortages?
This is a typical case of manipulating people with easy phrases and I'm sorry to say it but also for a shortsighted American-type of thinking. Everyone sees the frivoleous driving here in the US and somehow tends to think that if all americans trade their SUVs for Priuses this would solve a world-scale problem. But how, I might ask? A moderate 3% decline would mean 2.4 mln bpd less per year. If you use your "untapped reserve" only the whole US consumption will evaporate in 8 years. And believe me the rest of the world is already too much on the edge of efficiency to make a difference.
Damn it! The only untapped reserve we have now is TIME TO PREPARE. And people like you are doing their best to waste this too.
Don't wait for the government to do something. They won't until they have to; when the public transportation system is overwhelmed they'll get the message and expand it. There is enough oil to grow and transport food for many generations if you morons quit burning it in your cars. Cars have no future - except maybe for doctors on call.
I don't believe you about the rest of the world either. Europeans drive way too much - even in the poorer countries. Brazilians drive way too much. Australians drive way too much (OK, I've never been there. But by all accounts their lifestyle is similar to ours).
Once we get our livestyles in order then we can start making demands of the Chinese.
Why not? Poor people can ride the bus. Poor people can ride a bicycle. They do it all over the world. Why can't they do it in America? Is there something wrong with their legs?
Squeaky, you're another peak oiler talking like Dick Cheney, or the Exxon public relations department: "Conservation may be a virtue, but it's not going to work in the real world." Whose side are you on?
I'm a security guard and I barely get by. Without a car I can't even get a job because the buses don't run at night, or to all my job locations.
Sure, if all the low paid immigrants went home I could afford to buy a house because unskilled jobs would pay higher and house prices would collapse, or if the high skilled immigrants went home I could finish up my four year degree and get a job as a programmer (I only have a two year degree), but that just transfers the problem to Mexico and India.
Well put !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Many of us live in a "let them eat cake world".
Your comment flashed me back to my graduate student days.
I didn't have a car.
I had a bike.
When not in use, I had to hang it on the wall in my small dorm room. People who left their bikes chained outside soon had them stolen. That is "real world" as opposed to theory.
Going back to the "good old days" is not an answer. You are so right. We have to invent our way out of this mess before our imploding civilization swallows each of us one by one.
What are your ideas?
Matt Simmons says gasoline prices could go through the roof ($12.50 to $25.00/gallon) this winter. What's your plan if something like that happens?
I'm generally less interested in the question of what we should do, and more interested in the question of what we probably will do.
Me too. Are you saying that the U.S. will not conserve oil, even though they should, because there's no flexibility? You can't keep guzzling oil while the oil is running out. It's a contradiction -- physically impossible.
The U.S. will be forced to conserve not because it should but because it must. The idea that the U.S. has no other option and will continue business-as-usual sprawl culture in the face of a steep supply decline is a form of denial (cornucopianism).
I don't think it's crazy idealism to say that the U.S. will definitely conserve oil to an extreme degree in the future. It's a direct logical consequence of peak oil.
The entire US economy is built around cheap oil. To assume that we can continue to live and produce just as before because others are doing it now is absurd. To live and produce that way will require infrastructure investments to allow us to live that way. Without that infrastructure things will break down, including society, until such infrastructure (more urban housing, mass transit, etc.) are in place. Right now they are not in place and little effort is being made to put them in place.
The question is not if but when and how much society will break down, and then how it reorganizes afterwards. The sooner such economic and social dislocations occur, the more likely that the result will be something most of us understand and can comfortably transition to. The longer it takes to occur, the more likely that the transition will be harsher, and yield an end result harsher and less pleasant.
Nations can experience degrees of breakdown yet survive in some recognizable form. Look at Russia. They can also break down and never reform as a nation state in a meaningful manner. Look at Somalia and now Zimbabwe. None of those were primarily peak oil driven but all have experienced degrees of social breakdown.
- Switching to more fuel efficient cars.
- Economic contraction
- Subdividing houses close to cities, jobs, and transit and progressively abandoning far-flung exurbs.
These will be adopted to varying degrees depending on the severity of the decline rate. There's just not much evidence that there's much elasticity in vehicle miles.I still drive my old Jeep on occasion, even though it gets at best 14mpg. Why? I can still afford to, it's paid off, and I cannot afford to replace it for the things I use it for. I will still drive my economy car 50 miles a day to work, because the job market sucks and I cannot find anything closer.
If you look at the almost inconceivable quantities of oil we use, what difference would it make? If I don't waste that oil, someone else will. Just like the idea of having individuals open their wallets to fund the New Orleans disaster management, it's clear that this problem is hopelessly beyond the abilities of individuals to solve. It would require the coordinated efforts of the whole nation to make a difference. I don't believe it will happen, and so we will just drive this SUV until it runs out of fuel. Significant reduction in demand will not occur willingly.
You are a cornucopian pretending to be a peak oiler.
Your cornucopian, denialist neighbor wastes oil in his SUV because he thinks there's plenty left. You waste oil in your SUV because you don't give a damn. What's the diff? You're on the same team. You might as well wear matching T-shirts. With regard to the response to peak oil, you're in perfect agreement with Yergin, the USGS and Mike Lynch.
Now you are not talking conservation, the word is collapse.
Conservation is guided by choice.
Once there's fuel scarcity--or it's just out of one's price range--choice is not an option. Bye-bye conservation; hello deprivation.
The difference is like that between holding your breath and being suffocated.
Just how people will "adapt" to this is the Great Uncertainty, and something to be very, very concerned about.
If we continue reverting trucks/SUVs -> small cars/hybrids as we've started doing, we can probably improve fuel efficiency around 4% annually.
Where I agree, there is some demand that can be trimmed, the use of big gas guzzlers, though to solve that, we have to have small gas savers, and to replace all the big gas guzzlers will still take time. Those who have them now, still ahve to pay for them, and find some way to get rid of them, in some cases they don't have the option to just park them.
I disagree in that some demand destruction is going to hurt people. NG and Heating Oil this winter, The prices of which aren't going to hurt the rich as much as they will the poorer folks, or the lower middle incomers. I live in northern Alabama, and the other night the main part of my house hit 50 degrees, I can handle that. But for an older person that 50 degrees can bring on many problems, and I live in the south, what about up north, they have already started the cooling off period.
Sure if your addict is fueling up the big SUV just to go tooling around town. But if "YOUR" same addict is trying to heat their house to keep the chill off their bones, because they ache everytime it gets cold. What would "YOU" have them do??
There might be a lot of fancy numbers here, but there are also a bunch of HUMANS at the end of your post you fail to remember.
My 3.5 cents worth (inflation adjusted to current pricing)