thoughts today best expressed in an email to mom. (my mom is
margaret leinen, an assistant director at the national science
foundation-- the non-medical science funding arm of the us government.
she manages the geosciences
division, which is responsible for most public funding of scientific
research in geosciences in the united states)
------
.... also, i have been doing quite a bit of reading about
'peak oil' (google:
peak oil). i'm sure you're all over this, but i hadn't really heard
of it yet--or at least, heard it expressed the way i have over the last
couple day's reading-- so i thought i would forward it to you.
'peak oil' refers to the concept first identified by a Shell geologist in
the 1950s named king hubbert that oil production peaks from any given
well at a certain point, and that after that point, it declines rapidly.
(hubbert predicted US oil would peak in the 1970s, and as it turns
out he was deadly accurate--- but he was nearly laughed out of his
profession for saying so)
interestingly, one never runs out of oil, it simply gets insanely
expensive to extract. (at some point, the amount of energy--power,
technology, labor, etc--needed to extract it becomes greater than the
energy that you get back. at which point, of course, you stop
drilling). what makes all this noteworthy of late is that a some
very informed individuals are predicting that we will
hit peak oil within the
next several years. in fact, one of the truisms about the peak
is that you really don't know whether you have hit it until several years
after the fact. oil production varies from year to year in any
given well, and it is only after several consecutive years of lower
production that you can draw conclusions. in light of this, some
folks are pointing to the last several years of lower production and are
hinting that we, in fact, may have already hit peak oil.
the more i read, the more it scares the hell out of me mom. given the
staggering
royal dutch shell reserves revision of the last month...
and new evidence coming that the energy dept. is already admitting that
it's current 37 year timeline for peak oil is based on a flawed model
between supply and demand scenarios, and essentially has no relationship
at all to what's coming out of the ground... we're looking at a much
shorter horizon than anyone is really willing to seriously admit to...
except a few key honest men. and the oil companies? ha!
though they are all denying the hell out of it right now, you can bet
that there is a whole universe of misleading bullshit going on in oil
industry numbers right now. wall street likes a business with a future,
and oil is a business with no future, so the trick is to make it seem as
good as possible for as long as possible. i.e. Support Your Stockprice
and Save Your Ass. given that the oil folks don't seem to have a long
history as a credible group of people, you can bet your bottom dollar
that they are overestimating the hell out of this thing. think
enron, times a thousand.
and what is so important about the peak? its that after the peak,
oil gets really expensive to produce-- and hence --> gas prices rise
significantly --> we hit a recession on a global scale. but one
much worse than we have experienced before. our world, with its
heavily concentrated populations in large cities that depend on the
smooth functioning of these infrastructures for their lives, has become
much less resilient than it used to be to recessions and depressions, and
the net effect is that this planet with 6 billion people, will no longer
be able to support them-- mass starvation, especially in the poorer
countries.
Matt Savinar
has the most eloquent description of this i have read yet. as i
think about it, it seems the people who still live in nearly completely
agrarian ways will be the ones least affected. i think of the
quechua/incan people here in peru, up in the high mountains... and i'm
quite sure that they will have no problem at all.
interestingly, it is not necessarily oil, but natural gas where we may
see our first real crisis--especially in the US. a fellow named
matthew simmons who is a fairly influential fellow in the energy industry
and apparently an energy advisor to bush (though a google search reveals
many such people) has an excellent review of the
natural gas situation. he seems to think as other sources i've
been reading do, that natural gas is the first major pressure point for
us. and his powerpoint is an excellent source for those supporting
points.
the thing i'm still trying to wrap my head around is why many people
think that natural gas has the shortest horizon while other obviously
smart people, (like cal-tech vice-provost David Goodstein in his new book
"Out of Gas") are recommending as part of a near term strategy a shift to
natural gas, since its so plentiful. how can two such brilliant people
be so far apart? where the hell is the good data? that is what we
really need right now--> good data. can you help? for my $.02, i
think simmons has probably got the right read of the situation... he is
much closer to the problem.
with simmons saying that natural gas has already peaked ... i.e.
in 1973, and that people are seriously out of touch with reality, and
with his comment that the current severe market price volatility is the
classic early warning sign of a market in distress.... we are looking at
perhaps 5 years before incredible turmoil in this country. natural gas
is THE key fuel for a majority of electricity generation in the US due to
hugely misguided (nay, criminal) policy decisions in the 1980s and 1990s,
and nearly the exclusive fuel for producing most industrial chemicals,
uh... not to mention heating and cooking. without it we are toast, and 5
years is not enough time to retool. (i'm laughing at the absurdity
of that statement as i reread it) already, many folks in states
with high electricity bills cannot afford it already... senior citizens
going cold in the winter, etc. i wouldn't normally go alarmist at a
single data point, but simmons has credibility written all over him.
his company is a major investment banking firm to the energy industry,
managing tens of billions of dollars worth of projects, etc. and
he's not the only one... the cacophony of knowledgeable voices is getting
quite loud.
the environmental crisis / global warming is a problem, yes, but without
a stable society and a stable economy, we will not have the means to
engineer a solution to any of our problems. we may ultimately have the
environmental problem solved for us: lights out.
mom... it seems you are in such a tenuous position there in so many
ways... you fund a lot of the brains out there in geo-sciences, but i'm
sure you are ham-hocked by DOE and the white house in terms of what you
can do with energy-related projects, any relation to your field
notwithstanding... no? such a political situation. i guess in
reality though, it is what is going on in the oil fields themselves that
is the issue... and of course, no one knows but those closest to the
industry.
what are your thoughts about these things.... do you follow these issues
as closely as others? i know the pressures on your time are extreme.
best list of sites i have found so far on peak oil (scroll down the page
a bit to find them after you click):
http://www.oilempire.us/peakoil.html
of all i've read though, simmons' powerpoint presentations seem the
biggest treasure, they are technical but bring the points home with
a hammer that even a layperson like me w/ a rocks-for-jocks level of
geology knowledge can understand. the level of sophistication in his
modeling of electricity use and air conditioning during summer months in
different states is simply astounding. i would put these high on
your reading list. this guy is a close friend of bush and cheney -- not
an environmentalist by any stretch of the imagination. if he's saying
this stuff, its got to be right. (we won't even bother to ask why
bush doesn't seem to be listening....)
the two most recent are probably the best. the list of his
presentations is here:
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches
much love,
dan
----------
an aside on hydrogen as the savior for all things energy related ... as
my father is fond of pointing out, quite correctly, the big problem with
hydrogen (that seems to elude so many people) is that it is an energy
storage mechanism... not an energy source... you still have to
add energy to get free hydrogen in that form. in nature, hydrogen is
always tied up in other forms... for instance, water... or... get this...
natural gas.
yes, and if this isn't the biggest knee-slapper you've heard recently
then forgive me, but the most likely near-term source of large-scale
hydrogen, as proposed for use in transportation systems, etc. is
natural gas! come on! what the hell are these people
thinking? in fact, the disconnect from reality is so extreme, you
have to stop and ask yourself what the hell is really going on. i'm
no conspiracy-bound tree-hugger, but sometimes i wonder...
The only benefit that hydrogen has is that it is a clean burning energy
system. So once we figure out where to get all that energy from, yes,
perhaps it will come in handy.
