Forum Post: Peak oil. -- Anyone else here worried?
Posted 12 years ago on July 16, 2012, 11:07 a.m. EST by Kinetica
(14)
from Houston, TX
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Anyone here concerned about peak oil and its possible effects on the global economy?
I'm personally afraid that PO will make the subprime mortgage crisis look like a wedding reception.
I used to worry about it a lot so I did "buffering/weatherization/efficiency improvement" and now I feel much better about it. The likeliest scenario is that we are already in "peak oil" (I define it as the 280-day running average of price increases of it [or its derivatives such as gasoline] vastly outstripping the rise of our Consumer-Price-Index over the same period).
However, "peak oil" may very well have a decade-long peak because there are a lot of dirty/heavy/sour, environmentally damaging, technologically challenging and risky, extraction-capital-intensive unconventional oils available around the world: in subsalt layer off the coast of Brazil mile(s) under the sea and then under mile(s) of rocks and salt, Alberta's oil sand under Canada's forests to be felled and polluting river flowing into the Arctic Ocean, Green River Basin oil shale (very little water available and awfully expensive to extract), the fracking of existing tired old oil wells (maybe one of the more benign form where potential poisoning of ground waters may be well tolerated by Texans ["Texas Tea" may be flavor-enhanced]), North Dakota Bakken formation (conventional-oil extraction being actively increased), Deepwater Gulf-of-Mexico extraction (BP-2, ... oil spills, anyone?), and arctic extraction in Chukchi Sea in the U.S. Overseas, Saudi Arabia's oil fields seem to have become somewhat tired but the Arctics (maybe even Antarctica eventually) in Russia for example may be opening up. My advice is to look ahead, get rich (because the poor tends to get the short end of the stick due to price increases), and be prepared.
The U.S. can avoid a crunch if it switches its transportation fuel for truck fleets to natural gas which has become much more abundant through fracking and is widely distributed already through pipelines but avoiding the crunch will take long-term planning and foresight to achieve which I have some doubts about being achieved by the U.S.
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why shouldn't? even buildings can kill
The new forms of extraction are more expensive on the production end and natural gas conversion is expensive on the consumer end. It's good cause for alarm.
PS
The comments on this post show ecological disregard and a lack of understand in energy transmission. Self delusion is a poor substitute for resolve.
Self delusion provides for happiness for a while and avoids ridicules such as what Noah had probably suffered. Remember though, the Ark must be completed before the Flood comes and doing that would be credited as Faith. It is better to be ridiculed than be caught off-guard.
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Actually i think peak oil will be postponed. New fracking technology has aloud us to reach natural gas reserves that wouldn't have been available a decade ago....supposed to be enough to last 50-100 years.
Still wish we'd migrate towards renewable...but yeah.
It wiil, whenever it occurs. However now, the world is flush with oil. The USA has 2 trillion barrels in shale. Saudi Arabia has 300 billion barrels as perspective.
Wind and solar simply do not have the ability to replace oil as a standard of energy. For a layman, just think how much power comes from a gallon of gasoline! Its phenomenal.
Nuclear energy dwarfs oil as an energy source. I think i read somewhere if you measure the mass lost in uranium over one year at a nuclear power plant, it is about 8-15 ounces. OUNCES.