Forum Post: Required Viewing: The End of Suburbia, Chomsky on Peak Oil
Posted 12 years ago on Jan. 13, 2012, 8:55 p.m. EST by deloprator20000
(9)
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Much of the reason why the West is so concerned with the middle east is because it has the one resource we need to survive, oil. Not only is it critical for our survival, it is critical for the survival of any other industrialized nation. Hence the country and/or companies that control access to that oil basically controls the world.
The problem is that worldwide oil production rates are close to peaking and with the rapid industrialization of highly populated countries, demand for oil will grow. Yet, with peaking production rates, increasing the production rate will become very difficult and in the long run futile.
Now, you see our modern foreign policy take shape, a reason we may be in the middle east is to control that last significant stores of oil.
Chomsky on Peak Oil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_7ye0xAR6U
The End of Suburbia, (Peak Oil Documentary)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug
A Crude Awakening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sMF1n9EgzU
Crude Impact:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA40A250AA24AE1FB&feature=plcp
Sure they are peaking, but that isn't necessarily going to be the problem. There is more oil in oil sands and oil shale and those are found in abundance in North America. The oil extraction is more expensive and involves more environmental risk, but it's there and will be taken. There is also coal which can be distilled to provide a liquid fuel.
The fact that these resources are here could easily make today's petroleum exporters more willing to sell their resource in an attempt to avoid competing with our oil shale development. Perhaps the greater cost will encourage development of plants that electrolyze water and collect hydrogen for fuel, or hasten the development of more practical solar cells. There are alternatives to controlling the middle east.
Unlike the Canadian tar sands, the U.S. oil shale deposit in the Southwest is in rather dry locations where very little water is available. Porting large amount of water over long distances is rather expensive. We may end up with uneconomical oil shale oil.
Absolutely, at today's prices. If oil production drops and prices rise, that may change. In the end it doesn't matter. If the global economy collapses there are an unlimited number of possibilities that can come out of the chaos. We've been headed into this technology trap since the invention of the plow gave man surplus food.
What are the alternatives? Reliance in China for rare earth metals for solar, put up with the problems developing with wind, begin research on harnessing tides? Industry will slowly move in whichever direction is cheapest. War or creating unrest may or may not happen, Chomsky et al are only offering opinion.
The U.S. has rare-earth metals deposits - they are just not as economical to mine and process as can be done in China (labor and environmental costs). These metals are more important for making extremely powerful magnets that help generate electricity in wind turbines than for solar panels. Besides concentrating solar energy can reduce the usage of rare or expensive materials by orders of magnitude. There has to be transition of technology away from fossil fuels or we may suffer the consequences. It may be a blessing in disguise that many people who clamor to push our cart off of a cliff also have blind eyes for quite a while. Hopefully, they will not see so ignorance becomes bliss.
I agree, the transition will eventually come, but it will require the depletion of oil first. I don't see humanity as willing to plan ahead for these things, we live for today, no matter how foolish that may be.
Yes.
You're right !! ! ! !!!
And there's natural gas. We're finding astonishing amounts. Those predicting energy shortages have become fools overnight.
We'll run out of resources eventually and projections of oil reserves may be too optimistic. We may have passed peak production. My statement is not meant to paint a rosy picture. Our obtaining oil from sands and shale will come at a high environmental price. I'm mainly pointing out that predictions are often based on current conditions, but those conditions are dynamic not static. There are many reasonable outcomes that can be predicted about dwindling oil supplies.
Upgrading of oil from oil sands and shale uses natural gas. When it starts running out, production of these unconventional oils may compete with fertilizer production. It is no laughing matter to force people to choose food or mobility. There is also the water pollution associated with hydraulic fracking, bitumen extraction from tar sands, and Keystone XL pipeline to transport the oil from tar sands. We may even have to add clean water to the list of the forced choices by people.
I agree with you, all those are possibilities and there are a lot of technical problems. My basic point is that there are a lot of possibilities, not just those given by the videos listed above. The Spanish were working on some process to produce oil from carbon dioxide somehow. I'm not sure if they've given up or not, but we don't know what's going to happen. A sort of Haber process for oil could be developed, at $10 a gallon oil shale may be profitable, or the world could collapse into anarchy (at least that would make Chomsky happy). I'm not going to waste time worrying about a hundred different possibilities.
Over the years, I learnt the importance of having a margin of safety. Depending on the matter of course, being safe trumps facing the consequences. If the consequences are of relatively low significance, random decisions work just fine but for serious consequences such as drinking oil-, anti-freeze-, or radioactivity-polluted water, no food, and no getting around with automobiles, conservatism is highly desirable. Also long-term problems can be very easily steered away from by having foresights and making rather small changes along the way. Using technology has not been the salvation of humanity - it exchanged one set of old problems for another set of new problems but we should be thankful for having at least one set of problems controlled or removed.
I agree with you, but unfortunately humans don't seem to take the long view very often. We go for the instant gratification and live for the moment. It's not smart but that's what we do. We've been in a technology trap since the invention of the plow gave us surplus food. Letting our numbers grow and expanding across the planet as though there were no end to resources. We should take your advice, but the majority won't.
I found that talking to people about their children's future and their grandchildren's future helped them take the long view. I know that I do not want to live hungry in the dark in a trash dump with depleted resources everywhere. People with children can sometimes relate to that and picture what binds they may be putting their descendants into and perhaps change their behaviors now somewhat. Each generation is about 25 years so the events that we are talking about now will become clear-and-present dangers in our children's and grandchildrens' lifetime.
They do, at least as far as their own family is concerned, I'm not sure the feelings last for enough people when they experience inconvenience every day. I'm simply pessimistic about people.
Try it anyway. If it works, great! If it does not, so what? Remember that we share this Earth together. The rich or the naive can fancy insulating themselves from the problems but I think that it will turn out to be a pure fantasy as many civilizations that came before ours had found out.
When we run out of natural gas, it will occur rather abruptly and we may be caught unprepared. Natural gas is used now for creating hydrogen that is converted to ammonia to make fertilizer for growing food for people. We may have as much as two BILLION people whose lives depend on the artificially synthesized fertilizer. If we do not plan well with a new and abundant source of hydrogen, we can have widespread famine. All natural gas is depletable and in the late 1970s, some factories in the U.S. were shut down due to not having natural gas available. History can repeat itself eventually.
Why would we run out of natural gas "abruptly"? There's no reason to think that at all. It seems far more likely that the decline would be gradual and bumpy, including periods of outright reversal where apparent supplies increase (like right now).
Natural gas wells do not spew out gas if its internal pressure drops too much and it tends to drop rather quickly near exhaustion. Once that happens, there is not much that can be done to flush out any remaining gas. Oil is different in that respect where detergent and carbon dioxide can help. Carbon dioxide mixed with natural gas needs fancy and energy-intensive technology to separate so it does not make economic sense. We have outright reversal of natural gas supply right now because we are drilling more gas wells but EACH gas well nearing its exhaustion will go out with a rather final gasp. Ask gas well operators' experiences with gas well pressure and what their investors say about the difference between projected gas reserve and actual gas extracted.
So what that gas wells are shorter lived. That says nothing about gas supplies suddenly falling off in aggregate as we eventually run down the supplies.
I am concerned about the lack of alternatives when the gas supplies rather quickly reach exhaustion with a final gasp. In the long run, I only see concentrated sunlight as the ONLY widely available and durable energy supply. We saw these energy booms before such as the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay but it only bought us time. The inevitable decline of production WILL come but will we be READY to deal with that?
There's gas supply for centuries to come. Canada has huge untapped reserves.
That being said, I agree solar power is an important source of energy for the future. It's being looked into, but the problems are many.
Canada's gas is not easily accessible. In fact, the Canadians are thinking of importing natural gas from the U.S. to help keep their tar-sands-to-oil operations going. Canada has also withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol, probably largely due to their tar sands operations. It is good that the untapped reserves are huge but they are in very cold and remote places that do not do people much good without expensive pipeline constructions.
Canada dropping out of the Kyoto accord was a huge embarrassment for myself and many other Canadians. The main reason for this is our current prime minister, Harper, a right wing lunatic modeled after George Bush.
The long term goal for countries like Canada is to first use up all the oil reserves of other countries. That's why they buy a lot of oil. After this, other countries will pay a lot of money to Canada since they won't have any oil left. At that point, it won't matter how expensive it is to get the oil from the tar sands or under the permafrost.
America is using this strategy in the middle east. It buys their oil to empty it there before it's empty in Texas and Alaska. This ensures that US will have control for years to come.
I do not see it as a deliberate "strategy" of Canada or the U.S. It was probably the all-powerful price factor that drove the "strategy." Middle-Eastern oil is relatively easy to get (shallow and not much processing is required) but tar sands oil in the permafrost is more expensive to extract. The U.S. is of course very concerned about being dependent on Middle-Eastern oil because of the huge geopolitical risk in the powder keg there. Canadian tar sands oil is close by and much more dependable due to the pretty friendly relationship between the two countries. Canada's tar sands oil is however somewhat stranded due to its geographical location so the U.S. benefits from it due to its extensive oil infrastructure but Canadian cities do not enjoy the boon as much.
You might be right. Whether or not the strategy I mentioned has been implemented, the fact remains that the oil reserves in the middle east will be drained before we start to seriously use our own oil. This means we will be in control for years to come.
The oil age will die with a whimper with more and more people being priced out of its usage but the trailing end WILL come. I hope that we would be ready by then. Our "Moral Equivalent of War" to get off of oil has been MEOWing since the late 1970's. When the pussy cat will turn into a tiger is anyone's guess.
Maybe yes and maybe no- If the energy runs out soon- the earth will survive! And around 1 billion humans, with it. If there ends up being lots and lots of oil and natural gas- all life on earth will perish. A dead world.. ------------------- I do not want humanity to become extinct.-- It is the laws of physics that will decide mans fate-
There's an abundance of resources, but the production rate will hardly be higher because these resources will be more difficult to obtain due to higher energy returns. In fact, that's the reason why we are now resorting to unconventional oil.
That's peak oil.
I don't disagree with you, that we've past peek oil. That will, in my opinion, lead to several obvious changes. Rising prices, more efficient use of fuel, more research into alternatives, and the exploitation of tar sands and oil shale. New more efficient methods of extracting oil from tar sands and shale may or may not be developed. That will be reflected in the ultimate price.
My original point of disagreement with Chomsky is that today's oil producers are not the "only game in town". At the moment they are simply the cheapest. Based on the known amounts of oil trapped in shale and tar sands, North America has the greatest reserves. It's simply a matter of getting it out at the best price. Canada's exploitation of its tar sands is a good example. As prices rise the more difficult to obtain oil shale will become more attractive to mine. Chomsky is right that our society requires oil, that may make North America the new middle east for petroleum.
With peak oil, global warming, geometric world population growth and the funny-money; unless we radically change, we're doomed.
Who knows what will happen. Technology often seems to come out of no where. If not the world may slide into a new dark age and populations may drop. If mankind has doomed itself then nature will find some other species to take our place in the food chain. Extinction is just another natural process that happens to most species.
Given enough time, extinction happens to all species, not only some of them.
I avoided the all because I'm not a biologist and don't know if any of the microbes have managed to avoid that fate as yet, obviously everything goes when the sun dies too.
If we do not find a way to explore other solar systems, we will be extinct before our Sun. Our end will be spelled by the most powerful of poisons: boredom. If long distance space travel is impossible, the only cure against this poison will be the creation of a virtual world.
I've forgotten my geologic history, Mammal species average something like 10 or 15 million years before they go extinct, reptilian go quite a bit longer. You're right as long as all our eggs are in this one planetary basket we're more at risk of extinction. We're a long way from an interstellar technology though.
Do the math on interstellar road trips. There's no way to get around some really prohibitive numbers. Think we better assume this ol' mud-ball is is gonna be home for the foreseeable future.
I wonder if we could use banksters as fuel? That would be inhumane, I guess. Opinions?
I certainly know that, even moving out into this solar system is a long way off. Interstellar is just a dream.
Yup. We are stuck on the 3rd Rock. Peace.
Is that such a bad thing? Extinction of a species or a way of life is always a possibility. The videos above give us a story built around the assumption oil production has peaked, maybe they are right. Maybe we'll start to work more on alternatives and the story will follow a different path. No one can predict the future.
If we started to change in 1970 , humanity had a chance- presently we are way past the point of no return- nature will solve the problem for us-
Yeah, Jimmy Carter (one of the best presidents) mentioned it in his "Malaise Speech" and was trashed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Jimmy_Carter#.22Malaise.22_speech
I really didn't like voting up your post ...
Are you saying we should stop trying to improve ourselves and our world, and, instead, party like savage animals until our inevitable doom?
You might be interested in this recent Chomsky interview as well! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se-Nq_rBQHk
Except we have oil here to use after we run down everyone elses
Ouch! And then we can lecture the rest of the world on not being so foolish for giving up their oil so easily, at the end of a barrel of a gun in one hand, and filthy rich greens in the other.
Never said anything about that
I know you didn't, just being sardonic.
Although I will admit that there are people like that.
Hence, Iran should be rapidly developing solar energy while exporting oil and Uranium.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/why-doesnt-iran-go-solar-instead-of-the-nuclear-op/
Iran can become an energy giant if they put their mind to it - there are some very smart western-trained technical people in Iran. They even have resources in the Caspian Sea. However, they will probably be fixating on their history and be hell-bent on becoming a nuclear state instead. That will most likely trigger retaliation by you-know-which-country and it will be most unfortunate for the world.
Well stated, grapes.
We're doomed if global warming causes some shit like another Younger Dryas, but barring something like that ... we'll adapt. When supplies become too diminished, prices become prohibitively high, then we'll be forced to find alternative sources to fuel our vehicles.
The only other way it could happen is if government made it happen (through regulation), not implausible, but given our corporatocracy, it seems unlikely at the moment.
Also, population is projected to peak towards the end of this century, and begin to decline globally (western population is essentially already in decline). Geometric growth is more like a sine graph than a parabolic function (which increases to infinity). It goes up (exponentially), but then comes back down (for reasons that are not entirely understood).
However, I think energy will limit economic growth. Oil production (as it stands now) is not sufficient to meet demand at a reasonable price level, so we're already in a situation that demands new energy solutions (unfortunately, our government is nearly impotent when it comes to this issue, while Europe, China, Russia, etc., are not). So this issue needs to be one of the areas where we apply pressure.
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You mean the Myth of Peak oil????????