We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

[BadJuju]

Re: We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

It makes me sad to think things could develop this way, & I hope I am wrong about it...but having been an Eagle Scout, I have found that when a big storm appears to be coming, hope alone is a shitty survival strategy.

So I'll "Be Prepared', hope for the best & help anyone I can as I progress along the path we're all walking through this life

I am not quite as sanguine. As I have said before, almost half of all of our oil consumption comes from personal transportation. That's about 9 mbpd for personal transportation, not the transport of goods. There is so much room there for conservation just in America alone. I don't drive anymore, but I do not live in a place like NYC either. I live in your run-of-the-mill southern small city with a crappy public transportation system and lots of sprawl.

I think people will adapt, but they may not like the adjustments because it won't be convenient to them. Well, too bad! Things have been too convenient for Americans for a long time, which is why they are so fat. Maybe some inconvenience for once will jolt them into better lifestyles.

edit: I'd love to see everyone driving scooters and motorcycles, hah! I did it despite bad weather for over two years.

[coolhand]

Re: We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

I am not quite as sanguine. As I have said before, almost half of all of our oil consumption comes from personal transportation. That's about 9 mbpd for personal transportation, not the transport of goods. There is so much room there for conservation just in America alone. I don't drive anymore, but I do not live in a place like NYC either. I live in your run-of-the-mill southern small city with a crappy public transportation system and lots of sprawl.

I think people will adapt, but they may not like the adjustments because it won't be convenient to them. Well, too bad! Things have been too convenient for Americans for a long time, which is why they are so fat. Maybe some inconvenience for once will jolt them into better lifestyles.

All true - only thing I'd add is that IMO, the perhaps more immediate problem is the fact that cheap oil supplies are what implicitly back our currency & all that debt...so it's not bad enough that we have a peak oil problem alone, we have a massively overlevered financial system in the US that is the reserve for the global financial system, that is based on a faulty premise at heart - that cheap oil supplies will rise forever.

Given that getting Americans to "share nicely with the rest of the world" is a political impossibility b/c it would require an impossible downshift in living standards, unfortunately the only conclusion I can come to is that much of the world & a few places in America (poor inner cities?) are going to become very, very violent & dangerous places at some point for some time to come.

[vt]

Re: We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

Why drive much at all. Telecommute, work from home, be part of your own community. Save energy save dollars. Walk more and ride bikes. This will also reduce obesity.

Sur there are days you'll have to go to an office, but they can be significantly reduced for a sizable percentage of the population.

[charliebrown]

Re: We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

Agree with this at the surface, but ...

Face time in the office still counts.
If your job can be done 15 miles from home on a laptop and cell phone, your job can also be done done 5000 miles away. get my point?

[GRG55]

Re: We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

...I'd also note that the use of electric vehicles in Europe is astonishingly low - but that is because electricity in Europe is also much more expensive.

Maybe it's because the price of electric vehicles is astonishingly high...

[Roughneck]

Re: We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

One thing you are seeing in the industry with cheap natural gas is that cracking slates are getting much lighter. Many of the plastics are being made from cracking gas,not liquids. The margins with cheap natural gas feed stocks are very high. The end result is you have more liquids available for gasoline blending that would have been cracked for chemical ie plastic production.

[GRG55]

Re: We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

...The above facts are a key reason why i think the "China will take over the world" theme is overplayed...any country that can't feed itself & is short water seems like a bad bet to take over the world in the long run...

...

The nattering about China today sounds much like the "Japan is taking over the world" nonsense we heard in the late 1980s.

The interesting thing is that we haven't yet seen the business section bookstore shelves fill with volumes on "Chinese management methods" the way we did re: Japan back then. And for some reason, I don't think we ever will...it's not kosher to write books about business strategy based on thievery.

[rogermexico]

Re: We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

The nattering about China today sounds much like the "Japan is taking over the world" nonsense we heard in the late 1980s.

The interesting thing is that we haven't yet seen the business section bookstore shelves fill with volumes on "Chinese management methods" the way we did re: Japan back then. And for some reason, I don't think we ever will...it's not kosher to write books about business strategy based on thievery.

+1

[GRG55]

Re: We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

Why drive much at all. Telecommute, work from home...

If human nature actually allowed this to work on a large scale (it obviously does not) there wouldn't be a need to build a single additional office tower anywhere, there wouldn't be a need for a "business class" on the airlines, and there wouldn't be so much punditry about the "death of the American suburb" on iTulip :-)

Hell, if we could make this work most of us would be taking our iPad and going to work at the beach or a mountain chalet.

[raja]

Re: We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

There is the issue of how much oil is available in the ground . . . but two other factors bear consideration:

1) Increasing global demand -- On CBS News last night they had a segment on Ford opening up several car factories in China. In about 1980, there were 5000 personal vehicles in China . . . now there are some huge number. (I can't recall exactly.)

2) Oil companies are going to greater lengths -- and depths -- to get the oil from the Earth, such as deep sea rigs. These methods are very vulnerable to Mother Nature's vagaries (hurricanes, etc.), and can produce environmental disasters affecting food supply and human health. The fact that they have to use more involved processes to extract the oil increases the risk of accidents.

Given the growing demand for oil and the threat of environmental degradation posed by natural events, I think there is no question that oil will become increasing costly in the future, perhaps dramatically so. However, this trend will be opposed by conservation and reduction of demand due to global economic slowdown. The unavoidable result is that humanity is going to suffer a lower standard of living -- even if oil price remains constant, who will be able to afford to use it in the manner to which we have become accustomed?

[c1ue]

Re: We are "Wrong" on peek oil..

Let's get crazy. Let's say peak oil is worse than expected & oil goes to $250/bbl. The US declares a state of emergency & says "we are going to use the 40% of grains we export to make biofuels for our citizens."

Completely not credible. I've looked closely at 'biofuels' - and the notion that somehow they replace oil consumption is completely wrong. There are huge amounts of energy inputs, especially oil and natural gas, in biofuel production.

It is far more economical that the US goes into coal gasification or CNG than biofuels.

Oh, there will definitely be a lot of pain. People that have hedged themselves based upon cheap oil in the form of suburban/rural housing and fuel-intensive lifestyles are going to be bled dry until they make some major fundamental changes to their lifestyles. And it is going to be a bitch for them when their properties fall in value even further and their vehicles become untenable as transportation options. They are going to lose big because their money went towards an unsustainable lifestyle. They have had years to make changes in the face of a changing world. It is their problem and they will just have to reap what they have sown. I've already made the transition.

I don't agree with your notions above - for one thing you completely ignore the work force flexibility aspect to oil-based transportation. Having a car means being able to go to work in a far greater radius, hence much more flexibility, than public transportation.

Secondly people live in suburbs for all sorts of reasons including schools. Much as I like living in a major city, the reality is that the public schools in them are almost always worse than what you can find in a middle class suburb.

There are all sorts of other reasons on top of the two above. Peak cheap oil appeals to all sorts of urbanization fantasies, but $8 gasoline isn't going to rebuild suburban US into dense urban areas.

I'd expect curtailment of other activities like soccer mom, after school shuttling of kids rather than wholesale displacement from the suburbs.

Maybe it's because the price of electric vehicles is astonishingly high...

Europe's, or at least the Scandinavian countries, have even more impressive subsidy programs for electric vehicles than the US - which is why I think the price differential is much less of a factor.