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165 comments on DrumBeat: April 3, 2007

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westexas on April 3, 2007 - 12:36pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

A suggested question to ask friends and family:

Q: What percentage, of all the crude oil that the world has consumed through 2005, was consumed worldwide during George W. Bush's first term?

A: About 10%

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ckaupp on April 3, 2007 - 6:18pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

That number never ceases to just blow me away...

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westexas on April 3, 2007 - 8:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

It would be interesting to see what kind of average answer that people give.

Even among semi-Peak Oil aware people I have asked (not the Peak Oil geeks like us), most answers I have gotten have clustered around 3%.

It really is comical in a dark comedy sort of fashion that we were debating about exactly when the peak occurs, when, in four years we used up about 8 Prudhoe Bays or about 18 East Texas Fields.

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ckaupp on April 3, 2007 - 8:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"It really is comical in a dark comedy sort of fashion that we were debating about exactly when the peak occurs, when, in four years we used up about 8 Prudhoe Bays or about 18 East Texas Fields."

Try this: At current consumption rates (no economic growth and no population growth whatsoever), if we started using oil today, we would use up all of the currently known recoverable reserves in 40 years. Forty years is approximately half the life expectancy of a human female in the US or slightly less than 2 generations (2*22).

What's that old Saudi saying? My father rode a camel, I drove a car, my son flies a jet airplane, my grandson will ride a camel. That pretty much nails it.

I still can't wrap my mind around it.

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Cid Yama on April 4, 2007 - 2:29am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You need to check out Fractional_Flow's Post under the Ain Dar article. He just proved Northern Ghawar is almost totally depleted.

"... the impact of that paper is that if what I did above is correct or close to correct .... then 2 MMBOPD-- is essentially gone."

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2426#comment-175877

Stated Proven Reserves are meaningless. This is why Saudi Arabia has announced extensive export cuts.

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b3NDZ3La on April 4, 2007 - 6:00am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I still can't wrap my mind around it.

Well, there's the rub. Like you, I've been studying this for years, and my bones still ache with incredulity.

Every day, a small part of me says, "Nonsense!"

Only seeing will be truly believing for the rest of humanity, and of course by then the fat lady is not only singing, but sitting on people...

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ckaupp on April 4, 2007 - 5:25pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Yep, the logical part of my brain says it makes perfect sense, but the emotional part says it just can't be.

In reference to Cid above, I never miss F_F. I've read every word at least 3 times and tried to follow all of it. Having no geology in my background makes it a little obscure at times, but I can follow the math because we used trig and algebra to analyze electronic/electrical circuits in a few of my past careers.

The other night the power went off again for about 4 hours. No water pump, can't flush the toilets, can't wash dishes, can't take a shower, etc. I keep reading that our grid is in bad shape too and I find this even more frightening than lack of gasoline. I can't imagine going night after night with no lights and no running water (we're on catchment and pump). Every time it happens, I get a little more freaked out about the whole "peak everything" that seems to be coalescing on a similar point in time.

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Cid Yama on April 4, 2007 - 7:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You need one of those water pumps with the handle that you pump, like they used to have on all the farms 40 yrs ago. You also need to learn how to make candles/lamp oil from animal products for when wind and solar break down.

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