All a bit trite, Chris. Your simplistic analysis of needing a barrel of oil to produce a barrel of oil is cute but way off the mark. You are extrapolating to a highly improbable extreme. Unless I am mistaken, it takes a whole lot of other inputs to produce a barrel of oil and if the price of oil goes up then more of those inputs can be made to produce that barrel.

I am more interested in the apparent consistency deficit between the two major schools of catastrophic theory. On one hand the Global Warming Wallahs (the CO2 Flux Clan) are telling us that reduced hydrocarbon emissions must be imposed, by force if neccessary, to save the planet. And on the other hand the peak oil people are telling us that hydrocarbons and most of the economic activity behind it, will be history by 2030.

That would seem to be a pretty good argument for ignoring Kyoto altogether because hydrocarbon emissions are about to collapse. Isn't that what the eurospivs wanted anyway? Or did they just want to have their cake and eat it too?

First a correction:
M King Hubbert wrote in the journal Science in 1949 that there would be a peak of oil production. In 1956 he published his famous paper which predicted a peak of oil production in the 48 states of the USA. He was a little off but close enough. USA production peaked in 1970/1971 and has been declining ever since. (I believe 2004 production was about equal to 1950 i.e. substantially down)

From a geological point of view there should be no dispute that oil wells peak, oil fields peak and world oil will peak. There is a nice table published every year by BP (in Excel format) that presents world oil production broken into 54 regions. As of 2003 29 of the 54 regrions were past peak.

Thus far in 2005 we have seen two of the 4 largest fields in the world pass peak. First: Cantarell in Mexico and then this month (November) Burgan's peak was announced by Kuwait. The biggest of all - Ghawar in Saudi Arabia - is rumored to be in big trouble with HUGE quantities of water being pumped in to keep the flow. So much so that more than 30% of what comes out of the ground is now water.

Will we run out? Not soon. Not ever (there will always be a few barrels around). Will we need to find other sources of energy. Yes. and fairly soon. Remember we still have coal, oil shale and tar sands. Abundant quantities of all three but it WILL BE COSTLY in both money and the amount of energy used to produce oil out of these sources.

Economically - We will conserve like crazy and don't be surprised
if we see cycles like the recent one in the USA where the price of gasoline goes way up and then drops by a third as people change their driving and other habits.

The USA uses so much oil/energy per capita that they (we) could cut consumption in half and still use more per person than Japan.

tbc - maybe

Chris, when you break open a donut you will find a lot of little holes. So there is not only the big hole but the donut has a lot of little holes, thousands of them.
I see there is one person so far who has concentrated on the hole and broken through to what you are supposed to be writing about.
I am sorry I took you literally and am concentrating on the donut and not the bloody great hole in the groundbreaking argument you are trying to make.
What is the argument please you are trying to make as donuts come from the USA and Lamingtons are Australian. Now am I supposed to be concentrating on the coconut in my lamington or the chocolate. What has donuts got to do with oil? Donuts are cooked in peanut or safflower oil.

Oh Perseus, peak oil does not mean that hydrocarbon emissions (carbon emissions) are about to collapse. “Remember we still have coal, oil shale and tar sands”, says jiMNy.

So those who care about global warming are the “CO2 flux clan”! Your extremist terminology undoes your credibility, no two ways about it.

Chris, things are going to change radically long long long before oil becomes totally uneconomic (your “expend a whole barrel of oil to produce a barrel of oil” scenario).

Oil prices don’t need to rise very much at all for really bad things to start to happen, such as the prices of just about all food and basic commodities rising to the extent that many people really can’t make ends meet, essential foodstuffs not being transported to outlets, businesses collapsing, and inflation setting in so that the dollar devalues at just the same time as essentials become a lot more expensive.

And alternative energy sources just aren’t going to cut it. As you say, oil is the supreme example of compact energy. And we use it on such a massive scale, so any alternative, or all alternatives put together, are going to have to be absolutely massive in their production.

George Monbiot has done the calculations for biofuel production from the highest yielding crops such as rape and oilpalm. The extent of production needed to come anywhere near substituting current fossil fuel consumption would be of such a scale that it would need to replace an enormous portion of the world’s food crops, thus leading to massive starvation.

So while the point at which oil becomes totally uneconomic may be many years away yet, and actual peak oil also a fair way off, I reckon we are right now on the cusp of enormous changes, as rising prices start to bight.

Hmmmm...

Time to butt back in.

Yes, it's trite. Childish even.

But I made it simple so you could understand it.

If I want to illustrate a point in the style of Dr Zhivago, or The King's New Suit of Clothes, I'll pick the latter every time.

As for the race between oil depletion and global warming, we will be facing sporadic crop yields without the benefit of our faithful Genie.... cheap and easy oil. We might be doubly damned.

Anyone know how to turn a plasma screen into a ploughshare? Make soup out of a Raoul Merton? Fertiliser from a set-top-box?

Just joshing. 3/10 for comments.

Homework: go back and read it again.

Hello Ludwig.

I posted that.... seconds after your contribution, it seems. I take it all back in your case.... Cheers.

Ludwig, George Monbiot uses selective reasoning for his article, he is also quoting crops grown in Europe. Look at what Brazil's done with ethanol and biodiesel, to see how viable it really is. Seed oil also provides better by-products compared to petro oil, another bonus.

Biofuels will not solve our problems, but they certainly will for those that have the foresight to adapt now and not wait. Sadly for those enslaved within cities, it will be certain calamity as their shops shut, transport systems collapse. Monbiot also uses wheat as his guide, which is not that good for biofuels, bracken, mustard, are great providers of biodiesel and far outweigh food crops. Plus most oil crops can be grown on inferior land so removing the need to use food crops.

The biggest problem we face is the negativity of the populance and their desire to be looked after instead of looking after themselves. That is followed by the vested interests of those wishing to retain total control over energy supplies. You could grow enough fuel in the average house block to run your car for the year, with proper crop rotation. We run our home and business on biodiesel and alternative energy, it isn't hard and the benefits are enormous and long lasting as well as cheap.

We are in the final stages of this society and those in control still believe that big is best, but if the people took their energy futures into their own hands, then it wouldn't be long before they realised that little is best for them.

Dear Alchemist, I agree.

Just one thing;

While Brazil may be leading the way with biofuels, there is a big downside – soya is the largest single cause of rainforest destruction in the Amazon, and as the demand for fuel oil increases, this is likely to escalate. Similarly with palm oil in southeast Asia

Very true ludwig, sadly this planet can't support the current human population in its present form which means changes must occurr. History shows us that this occurrs regularily and I beleive that it will happen again within the next 5 years. The Amazon destruction has reached the point where it can't recover so massive climate changes will over run us.

If we are lucky enough to see 2010, then society may only consist of those that prepared energy and food wise. I doubt that we can stop the rot nor the religious war that is being thrust upon us once again.

I have no answers to these situations, but beleive that not preparing in some way is basic stupidity, but humans being sheep, will just go down the drain waiting for theri illusons to ovecome reality.

So tell me, Ludwig, if we are all to scale back our activities, which items of government expenditure would you cut the most? It seems all the people talking sacrifice are on some form of welfare, either the dole or the public service. And they all seem to assume that it will be someone else making the sacrifices while they get to swan about in a diminished economy on full pay. Chances are, you would be the first to go. You also seem awfully sensitive about extremism. Could that be because the wider voting public have too much common sense to have any truck with your views?

Another twisted post Perseus. I have read and re-read it twenty times. Stuffed if I know what you are on about.

You repeatedly failed to answer my straight questions put to you on another thread on this forum, so you can hardly expect me to answer yours. But I would address them directly anyway, if they made sense. In fact, I really want to, but they just don’t compute!

Scale back what activities? Where does this come from? Your whole post is based on this, which… comes out of the ether!

You write; “It seems all the people talking sacrifice are on some form of welfare, either the dole or the public service.” That’s too whacky for me. Do you drink heavily Perseus?

Make sense, and I will entertain your lines of debate. Let me help you. Do you think that my above-expressed views on the impending effects of rising oil prices are unfounded?

Ludwig, all you posts of late have had a highly defamatory nature. It is standard green operating procedure to portray a critic as extreme etc. And you are no exception. Your sidesteps feigning incredulity are legend. To spell out my last post, just for you, all the talk about scaling back economic activity to reduce oil consumption or Greenhouse emissions avoids any consideration of the likely consequences. You argue for a sacrifice based on a vague and highly speculative threat and then simply sidestep the fact that such drastic cutbacks will have a devastating impact, mostly on the poor. The reality is, though, that a decimated economy will mean a major decline in government expenditure as well and you did not answer my simple question, what areas of government expenditure would YOU cut to make the adjustment?

Maybe this will help (or hinder?):

Basically, economics used to be a pretty good way of organising society.

Economics used imaginary stuff (money) to transact the relative merits of real stuff across time and distance. Money allowed a store of "value", so that perishable goods might be fairly exchanged for non-perishables.

Unfortunately, economics has been captured by human desires. It no longer represents what is naturally possible. Classical economics has broken free of the laws of physics and has, by slow degrees, become a standalone belief system.

A cult.

We plebs now live in a cargo cult, while the (oh, so successful) "haves" will be Rapture Ready, if only, if ONLY they could stash another million imaginary dollars. Then all will be well and all will be well and all will be well.

Amen.

If the nation's books don't balance, the Federal Treasurer just rules another column in the ledger and calls it "time-delimited reverse-stepover negatively-geared foreign-exchange deposit bonds", or somesuch nonsense. With a straight face (mostly), the high priest fiddles pseudo-scientifically, like a dabbler in astrology.

* * *

Like most people, I am unable to see how we might circumvent this economy thingie when it runs out of gas. It's really hard when that system is all you have known for your entire life. I am pretty sure of this though:

1. The geniuses who built the economy forgot to install a reverse gear.

2. The economy is a barbed-wire canoe. When it starts to go under, it will drown those who insist on keeping it afloat

In the article, Chris said "Would you think me a jester if I said that the one true currency is energy? It always was and always will be. "

Technically, the 'currency' is the desire to use energy, represented by dollars. Not the energy itself. The perception of supply helps to determine the price, but what the PTB are playing with is the perception, not the actual supply. When they take Iraq out of the supply, the perception of the supply goes way down, and the price goes way up. As time goes on, the desire to buy the energy goes down somewhat, but the supply changes slowly. As long as the perception of the supply changes, that's all that matters on the commodities boards.

The population explosion of the 20th century was fueled by cheap oil. Now that the PTB want oil to be expensive, what plans have they already laid for the population problem?

"It's not me." -Martin Blank in "Grosse Pointe Blank"

Continued...sorry.
I forgot to say that the donut is the oil and the desire for oil is the hole. Unfortunately, we are being ruled by the hole, not the donut. You can watch the oil all you want, but the real issue here is the behavior of the human race in response to its own actions. If we spend too much time watching the donuts and not enough time looking in the mirror, we won't understand that all the PTB have thier power because we still buy the donuts just so we can poke our finger in the hole and entertain ourselves.
There isn't going to be enough donuts, since they are just grease fried in oil, unless we start the Soylent Green plant pretty soon.
What is the Net Creativity of the human race going to be? Surely we can do a better job of individually evaluating the things we do, the usefulness we contribute to the universe, and how many of us there needs to be without 'Them' to sell us a plan or a corporation.