As an aside, I work in solar cell industry, and I come across numerous pro-solar groups which are very ideologically isolated. They have 'conventional wisdoms' and phrases so often repeated that no one questions them anymore. Some close-minded political ideologies have radicalized solar cells and view solar cells as if they were part of a communist revolution, literally giving power to the people and overthrowing the tyrany and pollution of corporate utilities, ushering in an age of harmonious co-existance with each other and the planet (think Berkeley, CA). They reinforce each other's views through certain web sites and new groups which never challenge their own views and deeply held assumptions. The pseudo-communist view of solar cells is ironic, since I, and other solar businesses, are tapping into venture capital and other capitalist institutions to fund, what we hope will grow into large profitable corporations. We deal with such un-harmonious things like business plans, return on investment, fiance rates, capital depreciation, etc.

About the only thing I think we can really predict is turbulence and lots of it.  The problem with predictions is that they are, at best, really crude compared to the complexity of the system we attempt to model.  I'm not saying they aren't a worthwhile effort - just that we shouldn't take them for gospel.  And I don't think most of us here do.

I think the ultimate irony and a likely outcome would be the discovery and mining of vast new oil reservoirs under the Arctic Ocean due to melting of the ice caused by global warming.  We already know its a good candidate given the success at Prudhoe Bay.

If we discover another 1GB of reserves up north then the question will become how fast can that oil be extracted.  Perhaps such a discovery coupled with relatively modest extraction rates could be a good thing since it would give us more time to transition to whatever comes next.

I'd be much happier if we called what's happening now the age of "expensive energy" rather than "peak oil."  It would resonate with a greater audience because I think almost everyone agrees that the cheap energy has been harvested.  The likelihood of finding another oil field like Ghawar with low extraction costs at high volume is essentially zip.  We now climb the price curve.  China has reduced labor costs for production to zero so the cost of energy has to become the primary factor in the price of finished goods.

So if we just batten down the hatches, put up the storm shutters and hang on tight, the hurricane will pass over and we can start the clean up and everything will be alright again?

No, this is not some incident we have to survive. This will be a fundamental change in the way we live. There is no other side to the problems of peak. The question is what new kind of life, new kind of economy, new kind of society will we create. And this is going to take a bit longer than 20 years.

The big question is the timing, and I know I don't have the answers.  I know I could be quite mistaken in the assumptions I have arrived at, regardless of how convinced I am.  The specter of the Y2K doomsayers I laughed at always hovers over my head!  All I can do is try to stay educated and be ready and willing to change direction.  The internet may provide too much positive feedback, but then the "news" provides none.  So we're left to search out the truth as best we can.  I find that overall, this is the best way, as it forces us to make decisions on our own, while the alternative is blind acceptance of the propaganda.  Reading the arguments from the opposing side of the argument is valuable - but it can be hard to wade through to find ones of value.  

So a proposal - TOD should post links to articles/discussions of opposing/contrary opinion, but limited to well reasoned and rational ones.  It could be a section like the "Peak Oil Primers", or a defined part of the "Blogroll".  This would reinforce the reality of TOD as I see it, which is that it is a balanced discussion of people trying to learn and understand, not mindless ideological preaching.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/contents.html

Here is an interesting graph of predicted world oil production growth, let's see if I can inline it:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/gifs/Slide9.gif

This shows the actual growth (or decline) in each region in 2005, and the predicted growth in 2006 and 2007. Of note is the U.S. which fell enormously in 2005 due to the hurricanes but is predicted to recover most of that. One odd thing is that I don't see many OPEC countries listed, and you'd think that would be important.

Another interesting datum is that they predict that the North Sea declines in Norway and the U.K. will be LESS (in absolute terms) this year due to new production coming online. Many people have commented here on the supposed collapse in North Sea production so it will be interesting to see if they can at least reduce the decline rate as the EIA predicts. They also predict that Mexico will have an increase in 2006 after coming off a declining year in 2005.

The EIA has kind of a bad name around here for over-optimistic forecasts, but predicting only one year ahead I would think they would try to be accurate. For example they are predicting higher oil and gas prices for 2006 than for 2005. So I am inclined not to write off their predictions as anti-peak oil propaganda. As I said it will be interesting to see how they do.

Figure 20 above must be proof to you that these guys are smoking some good shit!

Forecasts even the best ones are best guesses and hopes.

I got one last year from a well regarded bank on oil prices and it was wrong from day 1. It did not get any better for the other 364 days in the year past.

I just can't wait to see all that production coming on line and driving down prices. North Sea and Mexico humming along merrily disregarding decline opportunities.  

Maybe we might keep this and compare it with reality in 365 days time.

Can't wait.

(pags 338-339)
What is called for is a moderation of demand so that the affluent Western nations would reduce their extraordinarily high per capita energy consumption not just by 10% or 15% but by at least 25%-35%. Such reductions would call for nothing more than a return to levels that prevailed just a decade or no more than a generation ago. How could one even use the term sacrifice in this connection? Did we live so unbearably 10 or 30 years ago that the return to those consumption levels cannot be even publicly contemplated by serious policymakers because they feel, I fear correctly, that the public would find such a suggestion unthinkable and utterly unacceptable? I will return to these fundamental questions later in this chapter.

However modest, or even timid, any calls for living with less may be, they are fundamentally incompatible with the core belief of modern economics that worships not just growth, but sustainable growth at healthy rates (judging by the comments of ubiquitous Chief Economists commenting on the last quarter's GDP this means at least 2-3%/year). Only the widespread scientific illiteracy and innumeracy-all you need to know in this case is how to execute the equation y=x·e(rt)*-prevents most of the people from dismissing the idea of sustainable growth at healthy rates as an oxymoronic stupidity whose pursuit is, unfortunately, infinitely more tragic than comic. After all, even cancerous cells stop growing once they have destroyed the invaded tissues.

If we are to prevent the unbounded economic growth doing the same to the Earth's environment then the preservation of the biosphere's integrity must become a high purpose of human behavior. Inevitably, this must entail some limits on human aquisitiveness in order to leave room for the perpetuation of other species, to maintain irreplaceable environmental services without whose provision there could be no evolution and no civilization, and to keep the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from rising so rapidly and to such an extent that the Earth would experience global tropospheric warming unmatched during the evolution of our species from ancestral hominids.

(* "rt" should be superscripted)

(pags 349-350)
What Really Matters
The first question-is the moderation of our transformation of the biosphere des ir­able?-is the easiest one to answer. We know enough about the true foundations of our civilization to realize that it is not imperiled by our inability to sustain high rates of economic growth for prolonged periods of time but rather by continuing degradation weakening of the biospheric foundations of their environment. Histori­cal record shows that many societies collapsed because of local or regional environ­mental degradation (Taintner 1988). During the twentieth century this degradative process had become evident even on the planetary scale. This is a matter of high concern because the existence of complex human societies depends on the incessant provision of essential and hence invaluable environmental services.

What ecologists take for granted, most of the economists-transfixed by human actions, and viewing the environment merely as a source of valuable goods-have yet to accept: no matter how complex or affluent, human societies are nothing but open subsystems of the finite biosphere, the Earth's thin veneer of life, which is ulti­mately run by bacteria, fungi, and green plants (Smil 2002). Advanced civilization, humane and equitable, could do very well without Microsoft and Wal-Mart or with­out titanium and polyethylene-but, to choose just one of many obvious examples, not without cellulose-decomposing bacteria. Only these organisms can take apart the most massive component of plant matter accounting for about half of all trunks, roots, lea ves, and stalks. In their absence more than 100 billion tons of plant tissues that die every year (the mass more than ten times larger than all fossil fuels we now extract in ayear) would begin piling up in forests, on grasslands, and on fields.

If ours were a rational society we would be paying much more anxious attention to nature's services than to Dow Jones and NASDAQ indices. Above all, we would not be destroying and damaging with such abandon the stock s of natural capital­intricate assemblages of living organisms in forests, grasslands, wetlands, fertile soils, coastal waters, or coral reefs-that produce the astounding array of environmental services. Our pursuit of high rates of economic growth has resulted in an ever larger share of the Earth's primary productivity being either harvested for human needs or affected by our actions, it has already destroyed large areas of natural ecosystems, polluted, modified much of what remains, and it keeps on impoverishing the global biodiversity that took immense energy flows and long time spans to evolve.

These trends cannot continue unabated for yet another century. We canno't double the share of the photosynthetic production that we already harvest without severely imperilling the availability of irreplaceable environmental goods and weakening the delivery of indispensable ecosystemic services (Daily 1997; Smil 2002). As energy uses are responsible for such a large share of this worrisome anthropogenic transfor­mation it is imperative to at least begin the process of limiting their environmental impacts in general, and the threat of unprecedented global warming in particular.

In the PO theory, oil production reaches a plateau, then irreversibly declines. But at the plateau, and even before, oil becomes more difficult to recover, requiring more energy to be invested. The oil extracted is more polluted (with water for instance) or of less quality, requiring more energy for refining to maintain the flow of end products. Thus the EROEI decreases.

When individual wells are on the downslope, this decrease of EROEI is no issue when there are cheap sources of energy available (when oil is available elsewhere at low cost for energy production).

But when the world peaks, the increasing energy required for oil production will have to be paid for. In my understanding, if EROEI really decreases, even if we maintain production, this is a basic factor increasing the price of oil.

I have read elsewhere (I think it was on Matt Savinar's) that the EROEI of oil had decreased from about 15 to 7. If this is the case, and if this trend continues, then I don't see how we can maintain growth when oil peaks even with a smooth plateau. However I am not able to verify these figures because the estimates vary wildely and are not often adressed synthetically.

Michael Lynch - Disputing Peak Oil
Peak Oil is here!

Overall, I judge that this isn't as much of a comment on peak oil, as it is an attack on the Hubbert curve...

... Oh its there, remove the comma from the end of the Wiki word. Badly formed Wiki-linki.

In terms of the number of people dying in armed conflicts, the five-year period preceding World War I was one of the most peaceful periods of the 20th Century. Yet, during this same time period enormous stresses were building up among the major European powers that were finally released a cataclysmic war of unprecedented scale.

Sometimes the quieter things seem, the more dangerous they are.