Is Peak Oil the End of Civilization?
Doomsayers claim that peak oil will produce worldwide panic and disaster, but the lessons of history make a very different prediction.
Filed under Environment
| Skeptoid #100 May 13, 2008 Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe |
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By Brian Dunning, Skeptoid Podcast
Episode
100 , May 13, 2008
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/
4100
Think back to the days following 9/11, when all commercial and civilian air traffic was grounded. People were stranded everywhere. Only take it a step further: Take away the trains, the buses, and the rental cars. Imagine every gas station closed, and cars abandoned on the roadside as they too run out. People can't get to work and the nation's businesses can't even declare bankruptcy because there's no way to get to the courthouse to file the papers. The mail stops. Supermarkets are empty because there are no delivery trucks. And then, in a final shriek of terror, the power plants shut down, darkness falls everywhere, water pressure stops, and humanity devolves into a battlefield of hand-to-hand combat over who gets to eat the neighbor's dog.
This is the extremist scenario painted by peak oil advocates. Peak oil refers to the point at which world oil production must start to decline as reserves are emptied and pumps run dry. Oil is a finite resource, and so there's no doubt that at some point, peak oil will occur. The world's appetite for oil continues to grow exponentially, fueled by the explosive growth of most of the world's population in China and India. When the rift between increasing demand and decreasing supply gets to a breaking point, advocates say that the apocalyptic scenario described above must happen.
In some places, peak oil has already happened. In the United States, oil production peaked about 1970, when we produced about 3.4 billion barrels per year. Today we produce about 1.5 billion. The curve has followed the 1956 prediction by American geophysicist M. King Hubbert who described the oil production of any given region over time as a bell curve. This is called Hubbert's curve. Every region in the world has its own separate curve. Some, like the US, are already on the downside. Others, like Canada, which is just beginning to exploit its oil sands, are only just now hitting the steepest climb on the upside. In addition to Canada, the middle east and China are also still climbing their upsides. Russia has just barely tipped past its peak. The most pessimistic estimates for world peak oil say that it's already happened; the most optimistic give us another 30 years before we peak.
Oil production in any given region is not determined simply by physical factors such as the amount of reserves remaining and the technology required to develop it, but also by political and economic pressures. For example, Russia peaked way back in the Soviet days when their economy was falling apart, but their oil industry recovered throughout the 1990's and they've managed to find a second peak. The same could happen in the United States, if continental shelf and rocky mountain reserves were to be developed. They probably won't be, due to political pressures, but it's nice to know that they could be, if things came down to eating your neighbor's dog.
The biggest error made by the peak oil doomsayers is in failing to recognize the adaptive nature of the world economy. When demand goes up and supply goes down, prices go up, and consumers look to alternatives. As alternatives become more popular than the original, prices drop in reaction to the reduced demand, and eventually a marginalized industry disappears. Markets react and adapt. Currently, we have very high gasoline prices. Consumers are reacting by clamoring for alternative fuel vehicles. Many industrial products depend on oil, such as fertilizers, solvents, and plastics to name only a few; and as the price of producing these climbs, industry turns to alternatives. Alternatives become increasingly commoditized and prices come down. Oil becomes less relevant, and eventually nobody will care when reserves finally do run dry.
If consumers and industry failed to react to oil prices that climb astronomically for decades, then yes, it could be possible that we'd have an overnight shutdown of everything and the world would turn into a tumultuous battlefield of cannibalism. But neither consumers nor industry have ever acted this way, don't now, and aren't likely to in the future. Everyone wants to spend less money, and the most expensive options will always be least desirable.
Part of the reason that the doomsayers don't see this is that what's most visible right now is gasoline prices, and the total nonexistence of any viable alternative fuel vehicles. That's our worldview: Expensive gas, diminishing production, no alternatives. But outside of this worldview, some very interesting things are happening. Believe it or not, tremendous research is going on to develop alternative fuel vehicles: Supercapacitor technologies, fuel cells, hydrogen production. Silicon Valley is investing into alternative energy like a bat out of hell. And worldwide, industry is developing alternatives to petroleum based plastic like fructose. Agricultural fertilizers can be made from seawater or atmospheric nitrogen, but they're not in production because the market has not yet reacted that far. Eventually, when the price gap closes, these non-oil based sources may become the inexpensive standards.
What about other resources? Do they peak as well? Yes, they do, at least non-renewable ones do. It's generally believed that we're either just past or right about at the peak of gold production. Some 150,000 tons of gold have been mined throughout history, and the US Geological Survey estimates that there's another 90,000 tons still out there. Considering there's been a constant increase in gold mining efficiency, this all sounds about right. In many countries around the world, gold production has been dropping in recent years as reserves have been tapped out. But, do we need to expect a worldwide panic over gold? Probably not, since it's largely a luxury item and its industrial uses are relatively modest. We expect to see prices rise as supply diminishes, and probably a number of market adjustments until we settle into an eventual equilibrium of old gold being reused to meet demand.
There are other more serious resource peaks. Peak phosphorous, for one. Phosphorous is a crucial ingredient of both synthetic and organic crop fertilizers. And glyophosphate is a principal ingredient in herbicides used in super-high-yield genetically modified food crops. Both have seen dramatic price hikes in recent years as rock phosphate, the source of nearly all industrial phosphorus, is being mined out. If I stopped talking now, this would seem an alarming, terrifying prospect, and you might see doom & gloom web sites predicting global disaster the way you do with peak oil. Peak phosphorus is a painful situation for farmers, but it's one that's not insoluble. In the short term, farmers invest in the phosphorus companies, thus offsetting their production costs with dividend income. In the long term, the fertilizer producers continue their research into alternative supplies. High on their list is seawater, which is after all, the eventual depository of all agricultural runoff. This proposal is essentially an accelerated leveraging of nature's existing cycle.
Another peak that we're starting to hear about is peak silicon. In this case, it's not a physical shortage of silicon; it's the engineering limits of what you can do with silicon to make computer chips. Such a peak would mean that the capabilities of computers could no longer grow with our increasing demand on them. The doomsayer pundits could make an argument here too that overnight we'll start each eating other and burning down our cities and running around with babies on pitchforks. But in fact what happens is that the silicon industry fades and the graphene industry rises. Graphene is only one of numerous next-generation computer chip technologies that obsolesce silicon.
Generally, what tends to happen in any industry, is that by the time an existing resource runs out, inventive scientists have already come up with something better. When a production peak looms (be it oil, phosphorus, silicon, or anything), this provides a kick in the pants to accelerate development. Market economies work in such a way that investors are encouraged to fund such development, and the bigger the looming problem, the bigger the investment to meet it.
Mark Twain used to speak nostalgically of the sad disappearance of the riverboat industry. It was killed by steam trains. Steam trains were later killed in turn by diesel electrics. The glory days of rail travel were ended by the advent of airlines. Eventually airliners aren't going to be able to burn jet fuel anymore. What will happen then? Today, I have no idea; much like Mark Twain had no idea that airliners would one day replace his beloved steamboat. To assume that the current state of technology represents the last and final stage of development is a completely ignorant viewpoint. To listen to the doomsayers is to be completely uncritical and unskeptical. I don't know what's around tomorrow's corner, but all the evidence of history tells us that it's probably not a big scary dragon.
© 2008 Skeptoid Media, Inc.
References & Further Reading
Cordell, Dana, Drangert, Jan-Olof, White, Stuart. "The story of phosphorus: Global food security and food for thought." Global Environmental Change. 1 May 2009, Volume 19, Issue 2: 292-305.
Deffeyes, Kenneth S. Hubbert's Peak, the Impending World Oil Shortage. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Grubb, Adam, Anderson, Bart. "Peak Oil Primer." Energy Bulletin. Energybulletin.net, 11 Dec. 2009. Web. 16 Dec. 2009. <http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php>
Swartz, Spencer. "World Need for OIl Expected to Ease, International Energy Agency Says Conservation Efforts Will Trump Any Global Economic Recovery." The Wall Street Journal. 4 Nov. 2009, Nov. 4: A13.
Tinker, Scott. "Of peaks and valleys: Doomsday energy scenarios burn away under scrutiny." News Releases and Features. Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas, 25 Jun. 2005. Web. 16 Dec. 2009. <http://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/rels/062505a.html>
VanDerwater, Michael. "Oregon Builds a Solar Forest." Solar Today. 1 Jul. 2008, Volume 22, Number 4: 20-21.
Reference this article:
Dunning, Brian.
"Is Peak Oil the End of Civilization?" Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc.,
13 May 2008. Web.
3 Feb 2012. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4100>
Discuss!
5 most recent comments | Show all 75 comments
Remember, you should always read with skepticism the comments of anyone too lame to put their real name & city.
You have to learn about Peak Oil before you can understand it. There are many sources, but I suggest starting here:
Who Killed Economic Growth?
http://youtu.be/EQqDS9wGsxQ
If you think the reasoning in that condensed version is faulty, or have never heard of Richard Heinberg, try this from the Club of Rome (yes, it still exists):
Peak Oil - Club of Rome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxIINmkE2eQ&feature=colike
Graham, Hong Kong
October 10, 2011 8:24am
ah, tip of the hat, acknowledge peak oil as a reality, and then shrug it off with the usual "miracle technology, and markets will magically solve everything," answer. Very well thought out, and you parrot a million other idiots with your utter lack of intelligence. Listen, wacko, the oil platform is the delivery system for EVERYTHING. how ya gonna build wind turbines without the oil infrastructure that puts them together? wind turbines and everything else, which IS EVERYTHING ELSE that makes this world economy run will fall to pieces without the super cheep and super efficient thing known as OIL. You claim to be an expert on reality. It isn't "doomsday prophecy" it is reality, butternuts.
anthony rock, menomonie wi
October 15, 2011 5:20am
i agree with the last post, the oil platform is nearly gone, and if we wanted to be unaffected by peak oil we would have had to prepare id say 30 years ago if not more. I do believe that Humans are very inovative and very adabtive when the SMART ones are able to utalize a solution, but that rarely happens. OIL SHALE AND TAR SANDS WILL NOT SAVE US. if you think they will you might as well kill yourself now, in the final hours of oil we will try and exctract them and destroy the Boreal forest in canada, which is the size of florida and destroy the Rocky mountains, ( where I live). many think we peaked oil production in 2008, i believe that the peak will be in 2014 or 2015, so prepare, because though humans are inovative and adaptive, oil has allowed us to grow to 7 billion people, when the earths carrying capacity is 1 billion, and how many people do you know who can live off the land and be 100% self sufficient. the day peak oil happens is not the end, the end will come 1 or 2 years later when food is becoming more scarce and we uneconomically extracting tar sands and oil shale with an already bad economy. people will panic, which turns into chaos, which turns into anarchy.
Trevor, Fort Collins Colorado
November 23, 2011 1:31pm
This is not so much about ‘Peak Oil” as such but about a peaking of the energy base, upon which industrial civilisation stands.
For about as long as humans have been around, the energy base was derived from biomass via carbohydrates produced by photosynthesis…..the original ‘renewable’ solar energy…and human population and economic development was thereby constrained, i.e. we got nowhere.
Then about a century and a half ago, along came hydrocarbons, and with it, an explosive increase in population, development, technology and human welfare.
It was the injection of fossil hydrocarbons into the system leading to a massive increase in the available energy base which is the very reason our industrial civilisation exists on its current scale.
It is delusional to think that a return to insolation as the primary energy base will sustain human welfare at anything like it’s current levels and scale….technology is not energy and energy occupies primacy…everything is manufactured and driven from it, it cannot itself be manufactured.
Nuclear resources may be exploited to release millions of times the potential energy from carbon oxidation over and above that of the production of the planetary biota, but however much can be made available, the energy quality differs greatly from hydrocarbons.
No electrical storage systems, even those which only exist theoretically within the upper bounds imposed by foundational physics approach the energy densities yielded by hydrocarbons.
Perry Curling-Hope, Johannesburg
January 03, 2012 4:01am
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October 06, 2011 7:47pm