Nothing to see here. Go back to your lives, citizens

Found this story debunking the idea that oil production is a problem, filled withwith gems of wisdom like...

• On a daily basis, roughly 85 million barrels of oil are consumed across the world, almost exactly matching the amount produced each day.

Ummm. that's kinda what Peak oil means...Since it gives us absolutely no slack in the system. And then there's this one

Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) argues that the remaining global oil resource base is 3.74 trillion barrels; that's more than triple the peak oil estimate of 1.2 trillion barrels.

That includes the hard to get to reserves that are under the sea and in the tar sands that the technology to extract either doesn't currently exist or is very money and energy intensive.

But go buy another SUV. Everything's fine.

The most depressing peak oil story of the week

What's scary about the current boost in oil prices, when seen through the peak oil lens? One fearsome thing involves extrapolating timelines. Here's Matt Savinar's alarm:

while it is still impossible to answer the question of "How much time is left", we might be able to use the price of oil and gas as some rough indicators of where we're at. We're hovering around $125/barrel and $4/gallon right now and already seeing significant slowdowns in the housing, banking, airline and automotive industries. Shutdowns likely begin around $200/barrel and $8/gallon. At $300/barrel and $12/gallon most everything simply stops.

But there's a silver lining: at least there won't be civil liberties problems with emergency measures...

I don't think you need to worry about the police state or the KBR camps much past $200/barrel and $8/gallon. At those prices, the economic machinery that simultaneously feeds hundreds of millions and imprisons tens of millions begins to shutdown. At that point, a cessation of food and fuel shipments is, in my opinion, much more likely than are mass round ups and imprisonment.

I'm off to fly in a giant airplane now. I'm going to land in a far-off state, and be driven around for a while.

checking local gas prices

This is a handy tool for checking gas prices by local areas within the US. Here's where we live:

Peak oil and other oil

A good survey of the current oil price crisis comes from the Telegraph. It covers many bases in a short time, leading up to this explanatory model:

Perhaps the most sensible conclusion is that many factors are at play: maturing oil fields; rising demand from India and China; a wall of speculative money; Opec’s cartel; underinvestment in new wells; and a falling US dollar exchange rate.

Note some interesting rhetorical moves: peak oil is mainstream enough that other explanations can now be called conspiracy theories.

Note, too, the concluding observations: peak oil and climate change combining positively, which is an optimistic take on the big picture.

Peak oil gets into mainstream liberal media discourse: Krugman

Peak oil has been a marginal theory for the past few years, either easily derided or simply too odd to mention. But this year's oil price spike has driven peak oil theory towards the mainstream. I'm seeing more instances in various journalism outlets. Even Paul Krugman gets peak oil.


Now, when the price rise stalls, then prices fall a bit, we should expect to see peak oil mocked as conspiracy theory, another instance of inaccurate doomsaying, etc.

Learning curve

We've been learning alot of new skills for the past couple years, my husband and I. I've learned how to build a shed, raise and slaughter chickens, raise goats, tap trees, milk a cow, make soap, can fruits and veggies, heat with wood.

We bring to the table willing hands and faith that if one can read one can learn anything.

We've had a lot of failures and I have always been glad that feeding ourselves did not rely on my weird hobbies.

I grew up in the suburbs. Gardening was something you did on the weekends for fun. Food was to be found in the grocery store. Any thing over 1/4 mile was too long of a walk and anything over two miles was too long even by bike.

Bryan and I were born at the beginning of the long, slow, downward spiral of the American economy over the last 40 years. Remember when someone with a high school diploma could earn a living wage for a family of four?

I don't.

I was born in 1969. American oil production peaked in 1971. Where once our economy depended on making things (electronics, clothing, shoes), our economy is now plagued by legalized pyramid schemes (dotcoms, Enron, flipping houses, the service industry). Plus, we've gone from the biggest creditor nation, to the biggest debtor nation in the world. I don't think there's any coincidence there.

Generation X: Cleaning up after a party we were too young to attend.

Intimations of peak on a Sunday afternoon

As we watch our chickens hatch (literally) and stack our supply of wood for this fall, we observe and consider tensions and connections between US and global markets, along with emerging ways of talking and planning about peak.

• Bush's begging trip to Saudi Arabia, where he was to win more oil from the monarchy, has failed.

• Oil prices have reared back from last week's high (in the $120s)... due to US reserve stocks having less than expected oil content, and a drop in demand, especially in the US. But prices might resume their upward surge, as "developing markets" continue to demand more oil, and if some nations' subsidized demand continues. Some hedge fund folks guess a height of around $200/barrel.

• Meanwhile, Popular Mechanics offers a breakdown of oil supply mechanisms, along with a sketch of new possibilities: extracting more oil from sites, and establishing new power generation networks (the usual mix of wind and solar, along with conservative; nuclear is downplayed, interestingly).

• Nationalism and hoarding don't seem to be fading. There's even an American variant, namely underextracting local deposits so that some will remain when the rest of the world runs out. That's a weird one, given how we passed our peak a generation ago. Don't start with the western shale deposits - we're not working on them now, and their enormous cost and difficulty whenever we do is classic peak (i.e., we'll have to be that desperate). Not to mention isolationist (at best).

I (Bryan) remain curious about the discourse around peak oil. The term is still being danced around, while its ideas permeate more deeply into media and popular discussions, as far as I can tell. There are some exceptions. There's also the emergence of a middle ground, with things getting bad, but manageable, as per this Popular Mechanics graph:

Bush begging

For the second time this year, President Bush has gone, hat in hand, to beg more oil from the Saudis.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

Meanwhile, Americans are starting to wake up to the idea that their happy motoring culture is endangered. Me, I'm putting in a big garden this year. According to the retailing numbers, I'm not the only one.

Imagining life with gas at $7/gallon

What does the US look like with oil at $200/barrel? This is from CNN:

Gasoline at $7.50 a gallon is something nobody should go into denial over because there are going to be big problems from prices at levels I've suggested, including:



Will there be any U.S.-based auto manufacturers left? The answer depends entirely on how fast they can transform their product lines. Chrysler is in deep trouble already. That probably means more stress for the Midwest.



Will there be any domestic airlines left? The so-called legacy airlines (American, United, Northwest, Delta and Continental) would either try to combine into one big carrier or simply disappear. They're having serious troubles surviving as it is. This means big troubles for cities where these airlines operate hubs that generate thousands of jobs like Atlanta, Cleveland, Newark, Houston, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Memphis and Minneapolis-St. Paul.



How will big convention cities survive? Places like Las Vegas, New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Houston have thriving convention industries, all built around the capacity of airlines to transport conventioneers to and from the destinations relatively cheaply. Emphasis on the word "cheaply."



How will tourist destinations like Florida or Hawaii cope? Add to that places like, say, Williamstown, Mass., whose Williamstown Theater Festival is a big draw, or Ashland, Ore., home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. They're not close to major cities...

(via Bruce Sterling)

Taking solar past the peak

As the peak oil as a concept enters the mainstream, and as oil prices continue to ramp up, discussions of alternatives to oil are flourishing. One way of grappling with the latter is to expect a variety of solutions being deployed at once.

Another way of talking about alternatives is to pick one out as the leading solution. Here's one claim for turning the world's energy production to solar. "Solar" here means both photovoltaic and thermal (cf that blogger's earlier post).

The author draws heavily on Ray Kurzweil's argument that solar should become our leading power source: . Kurzweil imagines solar first becomes competitive with oil, then taking off into Moore's Law-type efficiency increases.

The comments thread to the first post brings up one large obstacle to "the Solar Singularity": power storage.

Coal on the rise this week

Humans are increasing our use of coal for fuel, despite environmental costs and the eventual specter of peak supplies.

• Europe is building up to 50 more coal-fired power plants. Environmentalists protest, but defenders cite technological improvements and rising fuel costs.
• An American project to test burning coal cleanly is about to fire up.

At home on the mountain, we're not using coal now, nor are we planning to start.

Peak oil at home and abroad

A snapshot of peak oil in early May 2008, up here on the mountain:

• Iran's oil exports are declining. Iran's the second-largest OPEC exporter, and is running into problems with internal infrastructure. The linked article wonders when oil will hit $200/barrel. Meanwhile oil's around $120.
  
• We have a new goat, Ghost. Female, so hopefully she's heading down the road to kidding, meaning more milk.
• American urban agriculture is growing. This should be a vital step as oil makes urban food imports more expensive.
• This morning I rented a movie and two games, for which the price had increased one dollar apiece. "It's because of oil prices going up," explained the clerk.
  
• Brazil's oil fields might be big. Or they might be expensive. Or both.
• A Vermont town terminated its peak oil committee.
• Tim O'Reilly wonders if peak oil is the sort of thing that ends civilizations.

Hubbert's Peak, 1956

This article sketches out M. King Hubbert's presentation of his American peak oil theory. This is useful stuff, not least for the echoes of our present:

Hubbert also plotted oil on a scale of 10,000 years - 5,000 years ago to 5,000 years in the future – showing how mankind’s use of petroleum is “a unique event in human history, a unique event in biological history. It is non-repetitive, a blip in the span of time.” He then posited nuclear power as a possible substitute.