Climate report so yesterday
What were we just saying? When the climate report came out?
That. Climate, oh gosh, that’s terrible, we really have to do something at last, and by the way please up your production of oil.
Tip Jar
What were we just saying? When the climate report came out?
That. Climate, oh gosh, that’s terrible, we really have to do something at last, and by the way please up your production of oil.
It’s gunna be funn when oil supply peaks and goes into permanent decline.
We’ll have climate catastrophe and no energy to build out “clean” mitigation strategies. Just fighting over scraps.
(So far, crude oil supply has not surpassed the peak in November 2018.)
Fuuuuck.
Biden’s been in politics long enough to know how brutal the voters are when gas prices go up. They always blame it on the president. He’s being proactive, but it is really a bad message.
Mike B, we appear to have extended the peak, possibly quite a ways, by use of fracking and synfuels, both of which have horrific environmental impacts. Synfuels are often dirtier than the fossil fuels, and they’re turning Alberta into a wasteland.
Oil supply will never peak, the whole ‘peak oil’ idea was a false hope. Once the price goes high enough, the oilsands and shale oil become viable again, and there are enormous global reserves of both – far more than we can burn before putting the world into a terminal tailspin. A load of existing projects can spin back up production at $70/bbl.
From the political point of view Biden HAS to do this, I know. That’s my point. It’s not to blame Biden (or even the other team), it’s to say there’s no way out. Politically the people who could do anything about it can’t because they’d be gone in an instant if they tried. They can do it anyway but then the other team will take over and go right back to torching the planet. Nothing is going to change.
^
So sad and frustrating. We little people can’t do anything, and the big people also can’t do anything.
I use the phrase “seven (actually eight) billion people” a lot. it’s really probably closer to a billion people who are the “problem”. And few of us in that billion really want to go bac to living lie the other seven billion (especially in a chaotic climate world)
So bemoaning the fact that we aren’t “doing something” may be itself a fatal thought. I am not sure we CAN crash the industrial economy (and agriculture) Certainly not to the degree needed???
But I am a doomer. And we certainly shouldn’t give up.
Once again, “business as usual” is not an option. We can either start a rapid transition away from fossil fuels and hope to maintain some control of our own fates, or we can wait and let nature do it for us and be reduced to helpless spectators as the whole house of cards comes crashing down over our heads. A “good” outcome is no longer a option either. There is no possible consequence of phasing out fossil fuels – for the economy or anything else – that’s worse than failure to do so. There can be no thriving economy on an uninhabitable planet.
The reason the big people can’t do anything is because they’d be voted out by the little people…
Naif, remember that “peak” does not refer to the available oil in the Earth’s crust–the “tank”, as it were–but to the RATE and the COST of getting such oil out–the “tap”. “How Long Can Oil Supply Grow?” my geology professor wrote in an important Nature article in 1998. That is the question, and it’s virtually unanswerable. We can only say, “Not forever.”
As the decline rates of existing fields accelerate, the price rises and lower quality sources become exploited–but there is a price point at which consumers cannot afford that oil, because scrubbing sand is a hell of a lot more capital-and-energy-intensive than conventional oil. Finite resources do not last forever, so your statement that “oil supply will never peak” is absurd.
There MUST come a point when the number of barrels extracted per day must peak and decline. No one can know when, however, because of the numerous variables involved. Failure to predict past peaks does not mean oil will never peak.
Russian has announced its peak. The Bakken in the Dakotas has peaked. In fact, all shale basins except the Permian in the US are in decline. The Permian in Texas/NM will ramp up again post-pandemic and perhaps surpass its peak. But this will not last forever.
All one can do is watch world supply. Right now, November 2018 is the all-time peak.
@7:
If you say “And we certainly shouldn’t give up”, then you’re not very much of a doomer, are you?
Nonsense, it’s a perfect setup for extra doom.