Al Fin

Fisking Scientific American on Peak Oil

Interesting and cogent point, speculari. You can go back in time to find many such predictions, dating back to the early 1900s, of just a decade or so of oil remaining.

Those predictions were correct, given the information possessed by the prognosticators, just as today's peak oil predictions are all correct, given the assumptions and information possessed.

Leonardo Maugeri has more oil knowledge in is small toenail than Gregor McDonald and Simmons, Campbell, Laherre, Hirsch, Deffeyes, GoodStein, Rubin, Skrebowski and Bakhtiari combined. But all of those men's predictions are certainly correct, within the limitations of their methodology. They deserve all the chump change they are given by their acolytes and disciples.
They and their doomist predictions will be forgotten soon enough.

;-)


On Sep 27 01:47 PM speculari wrote:

> In March of 1978, Scientific American published an article by Andrew
> R. Flower entitled "World Oil Production" in which the author opined
> that there was only about 15 years left in which to find alternative
> means, etc. etc.
> In the same issue there is an article about the "electronic" telephone
> that would remember numbers, take messages, compute, and, talk.<br/>Oh
> yeah, on the page following page 29 - there is an ad for Hertz rent-a-car
> with the sub-title "The Superstar in rent-a-car" featuring a full
> 2/3 page photo of some guy named O.J. Simpson running at full tilt
> in a 3-piece business suit with briefcase and trench coat in his
> right hand. only his left shoe is visible in the photo... which appears
> to be a slip on type with a metal decorative buckle.
> Yes indeed! Time does change things.

Jobless Claims Fall to the Lowest Level in 34 Weeks

Right. Jobless claims are more famous for what they don't tell you, than what they do tell you. Much better to report actual employment figures plus the numbers for those who have dropped out of the employment picture altogether -- alongside the jobless claims.

Even that approach leaves a lot of crucial information unreported, but at least it fills in a few empty spaces.

Why U.S. Economic Growth Will Remain Sluggish for Years to Come

Yes, you nailed it. Low employment, low tax receipts, a continued contraction of the private sector . . . . while government spending and government employment ties up precious resources the private sector needs to launch new enterprises.

An Obama government might have worked during an expansive decade like the 1990s. New technologies were hitting the markets one after the other. The 1990s US Congress was more responsible fiscally than the recent US Congresses have been, and led world investors to expect the US to get its fiscal house in order.

Unfortunately, a big spending president plus a big spending Congress combined with several big-spending chickens coming home to roost from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s all add up to big trouble for the private, productive sector.

Oil Supply: As Russian Production Tops Out, World Supply Will Continue to Slip

Either it is a catastrophe or it is not, make up your mind. Who cares where the liquid fuels come from, as long as they can bridge the gap?

We will see a lot more unconventional "oil" and liquid fuels. This will topple peak oil catastrophe predictions.

The intermediate future (2020 ++) will see increasing gas to liquids, coal to liquids, biomass to liquids, and increased processing of the trillion ++ barrels of kerogen and bitumen to liquids.

Of course all of these unconventional liquids are oil equivalents. It may take ten years for demand to justify the expense of tooling up refineries and new pipelines,

Crude Weakness Ahead? Part III

It is not a novel idea that high costs delay recovery from a depression. And just wait until carbon cap and trade and big energy taxes start to kick in.

Unfortunately, the Obama energy policies all promote higher costs for fuels and energy. This approach contradicts the public proclamations that prosperity is coming any day now.

It amounts to political peak oil, courtesy of your own government.

Political peak oil. The only kind of peak oil you will ever see.

Peak Oil: A Reality or a Lie?

We have peak demand, certainly. The explosion of demand for oil from China, India, and the rest of the emerging world has no doubt placed a strain on an unprepared oil infrastructure -- dominated by corrupt national oil companies in Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia etc. Those jokers are letting their infrastructure rust away before their eyes. Peak incompetence of oil dictators? Sure.

If prices ever do shoot up -- like you keep saying they will -- to $300 a barrel and higher, you can bet that conservation and substitution will explode. As will new exploration and new extraction and refinery technologies. Bring on the higher oil prices, we need oil to cost more so that substitutes can come on line and kick oil out of the marketplace!

Yours is a static view of the energy world. A more dynamic view would admit its own ignorance of future technologies and discoveries, and the dynamic effects of higher prices on the overall economic situation.

The only true peak oil is "political peak oil" like we are getting from Obama, Pelosi, Salazar, and the rest of the clowns. They are choking the US of its energy supplies, one by one. That's not peak oil the way you predict it, though. It's ideological government out the astropipes.

Will Commercial Real Estate Defer Recovery?

Charles, it is clear how badly you are straining in order to put a shiny gloss on this economic morass. I sympathize with your good intentions. But the only way out of this mess is to face reality squarely.

The growth in private schooling only reflects the failures of public education -- a public educational system that is draining ever larger amounts of scarce resources. Spending on power generation sadly reflects unwise investments in government favored and unreliable wind and solar generation -- a wasteful diversion of increasingly rare resources away from more productive power generation like nuclear.

And those are two of the brighter aspects of the economic picture. Commercial real estate is nowhere near the bottom, and is closely tied to a gloomy employment future. Unemployment is driving home foreclosures now, and could become a positive feedback phenomenon as weak banks grow ever weaker. China's bubble is growing more transparent by the day. Europe shows superficial gains, but there is nothing it can do about its own demographic crisis and the fallout it will create.

American voters might have considered the rest of us when they voted last November.

Peak Oil for Dummies

Catastrophic oil shortages are produced by economic and political events.

Oil production is not a bell curve. Instead it is a gently sloping plateau, with ups and downs.

The low hanging fruit is being plucked. Global oil exploration has barely begun. Unconventional fossil fuels swamp conventional fuels in terms of quantity. Clean coal to liquids and gas plus gas to liquids provides a lot of room.

In 20 years microbial biofuels will begin to place a price ceiling on liquid fuels from fossil sources.

Nuclear energy could be a clean and abundant part of the energy and transportation picture within 10 years if not for a neanderthal political system.

Unemployment: Keeping It Honest

At least the government is hiring.

The private sector economy is hunkered down, shell shocked, waiting for the next blow to fall. Large numbers of workers, investors, homeowners, and businesspeople have simply given up. They are no longer counted in the numbers.

As Jimmy Carter said, it is a time of national malaise and uncertainty. Not a time to celebrate, except for people with air filling their skulls.

Joblessness Drops? Hold the Applause

Government is the only employer that is growing. The unemployment rate can go down to 0 if government keeps growing and hiring. We will all be government workers -- and we will be working for ourselves, paying ourselves to work!

Perpetual motion employment is an ingenious invention of an obscure community organizer of unknown origin. It is slated to revolutionize the entire nation.

Nine Roadblocks to a Bull Rally

Important points to ponder, to be sure. But something much worse is lurking in the background, causing consumers and investors to hold back. The problem is the rapid top-down rearrangement of economic incentives away from an opportunity society to a "connected society," such as one finds in the third world.

There is only one way to reverse the collapse of the US economy, and that is from the ground up -- via economic opportunity for individuals, small investors, small businesses and startups, and communities.

Instead the power establishment is attempting to re-inflate pre-existing bubbles while destroying growth opportunities for the middle class. Opportunity is shifting toward large labor unions, trial lawyers, and politically connected speculators -- and away from ordinary people. All of the current government's policies contributed to this rot of opportunity.

Will the Democrats' Massive Borrowing and Spending Binge Kill the U.S. Economy?

Neither Obama nor Pelosi ever needed to understand how a market economy works. Big government ideology is all they needed to get elected and work their way up the power structure.

Their incompetence just gets kicked up to a higher level over time, until they reach the point of maximum destructive potential.

Obama's Economic Failure

Normally when a person goes from a flaming Columbia radical to President of the United States, a certain maturing process of accepting responsibility will set in. In Obama's case, we may have to wait the entire 8 years for the POTUS to stop apologising for past presidents, stop paying off political cronies, and start governing intelligently.

He is a green avocado that may never ripen. If not, the country will be out a few dozen trillion more before it is all over.

Who Is Really to Blame for the Deficit?

Wrong on all counts.
What is called "Bush Policies" are in reality the accelerating expansion of programs in place since the 1960s. Social Security, Medicare, social services, entitlements, etc etc. A big balloon on a programmed trajectory.

Obama is taking that programmed debt expansion and exploding it in unprecedented ways. This is a gotterdammerung of debt, and trying to excuse Obama for his mass destruction of the economy is counterproductive. It just gives him more time to administer the killing blow.

Confirmatory Bias and Oil Investing

Excellent presentation. Of course, confirmatory bias operates both on oil bulls and oil bears. Everyone is susceptible.

I must say that the "peak oil" enthusiasts do have a one-track mind. Whether they are not intelligent enough to weigh more than one variable (cause) at a time, or whether their beliefs are simply too strong to allow a complex mental representation of the reality, they seem to be mired in simplisme.