Peak Oil, peak Gas Peak Coal.

[Stuart Mackey]

Peak Oil 2010, Peak Gas 2015, Peak Coal 2025.

Link to Page 5 of pdf of power point presentation

Don Elder is CEO of Solid Energy, a State Owned Enterprise in New Zealand.
This explains why the NZ government is not kicking up a hue and cry about their lignite to fuel plant in Southland, despite the emissions problem (allthough Solid Energy is investing in carbon capture technology, which I understnd is being tested now).
NZ has, apparently, reserves of coal 'per capita' to last 1500 years.

[Admiral Valdemar]

All the fossil fuels are expiring long before most analysts would have predicted. Even if they weren't, the net export decline is serious enough that we may see the US hit a major export crisis by the end of summer.

There is no mitigation now, it's simply how we go about powerdown. Do we do it civilly and accept frugal lifestyles, or do we go to war over what's left?

[Adrian Laguna]

That reminds me of that article Valdemar posted a while back, regarding the question as to whether we were in for a slow grind or a rapid collapse, with the conclusion being that the floor was going to go right under us.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Slow collapse is pretty much ruled out. Things have accelerated FAR beyond what I was predicting last summer.

And last summer I recall being called a doomsayer a lot with nothing of substance. It's funny how the EIA/IEA, OECD, BERR, KSA, CERA and many others are now doing massive U-turns.

I say "funny", but really the first thing that pops into my head when I wake up in the morning now is checking the price of oil and export rates on Wednesday. It's getting scary.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

All the fossil fuels are expiring long before most analysts would have predicted. Even if they weren't, the net export decline is serious enough that we may see the US hit a major export crisis by the end of summer.

There is no mitigation now, it's simply how we go about powerdown. Do we do it civilly and except frugal lifestyles, or do we go to war over what's left?

No, I am not going to accept a frugal lifestyle. I'd kill half the population of the United States--myself included--to preserve technological civilization, if it came to that. Human life is valueless when compared to the absolute imperative of the overall improvement of humanity and our endeavours in knowledge and science. We'll do it through forced labour if nothing else, and if you think any human will react differently when put to that test, short of the pathetic nihilists who will curl up and die, you are simply to far gone for caring. Mitigation will happen: It may just be mitigation that involves forced labour of tens of millions in atrocious conditions of starvation to bring about a minimal base which we can then rebuild in a fashion no longer dependent on fossil fuels.

[Admiral Valdemar]

No, I am not going to accept a frugal lifestyle. I'd kill half the population of the United States--myself included--to preserve technological civilization, if it came to that. Human life is valueless when compared to the absolute imperative of the overall improvement of humanity and our endeavours in knowledge and science. We'll do it through forced labour if nothing else, and if you think any human will react differently when put to that test, short of the pathetic nihilists who will curl up and die, you are simply to far gone for caring. Mitigation will happen: It may just be mitigation that involves forced labour of tens of millions in atrocious conditions of starvation to bring about a minimal base which we can then rebuild in a fashion no longer dependent on fossil fuels.

Good luck producing a society anything like ours when you've no fossil fuel input. We're not going to cutback, we're not going to bring alternatives on-stream and the task is going to make horrific climate change a sudden certainty.

China alone is going to be a juggernaut putting the world at risk. The US, EU and rest of the OECD is not going to do anything without kicking and screaming, and it's long past there being anything but that action now.

[Galvatron]

I hate reading Valdemar's posts now. He's the harbinger of the apocalypse.

When does Resident Evil 5 come out?

[Stuart Mackey]

No, I am not going to accept a frugal lifestyle. I'd kill half the population of the United States--myself included--to preserve technological civilization, if it came to that. Human life is valueless when compared to the absolute imperative of the overall improvement of humanity and our endeavours in knowledge and science. We'll do it through forced labour if nothing else, and if you think any human will react differently when put to that test, short of the pathetic nihilists who will curl up and die, you are simply to far gone for caring. Mitigation will happen: It may just be mitigation that involves forced labour of tens of millions in atrocious conditions of starvation to bring about a minimal base which we can then rebuild in a fashion no longer dependent on fossil fuels.

Good luck producing a society anything like ours when you've no fossil fuel input. We're not going to cutback, we're not going to bring alternatives on-stream and the task is going to make horrific climate change a sudden certainty.

China alone is going to be a juggernaut putting the world at risk. The US, EU and rest of the OECD is not going to do anything without kicking and screaming, and it's long past there being anything but that action now.

You know, you remind me of the Old Men of Britain that Mussolini spoke of loosing their empire, no shades of Drake in you.

[Adrian Laguna]

I really hate it when the guy you were pegging as Mr. Worst Case starts saying, "Oh, I was wrong, it's going to be much worse."

Well, I'm still glad France is mostly self-sufficient, has a decent military, and has atomic weapons. If the US goes to hell that's a good back-up option via Spain (yay EU passport!). If both go to hell, well at least I know I won't starve to death.

[Stuart Mackey]

I really hate it when the guy you were pegging as Mr. Worst Case starts saying, "Oh, I was wrong, it's going to be much worse."

Well, I'm still glad France is mostly self-sufficient, has a decent military, and has atomic weapons. If the US goes to hell that's a good back-up option via Spain (yay EU passport!). If both go to hell, well at least I know I won't starve to death.

Indeed, same is true of NZ, with out the well equipped military and nukes, nice to know that I wont starve if its really bad.

[Ford Prefect]

I hate reading Valdemar's posts now. He's the harbinger of the apocalypse.

I hear he wears a robe and has a beard now, and sports an wild eyed look of contempt for the mindless peons of the world. As Adrian says, it's not exactly heartening when the guy with most pessimistic predictions of Peak Oil turns around and says 'as it turns out, I was being very optimistic last summer'. Valdemar, it must be terrible to be you.

But hey, my city basically runs on hydroelectric power and everything worth going to is in walking distance. Might have to get an electric oven to prepare for the inevitable decline in natural gas. Oh, and I hope that the dams don't all dry up meaning all the power in Tasmania is provided by this windfarm located in a lost corner of the state. That would be a right slap in the face - escaping Peak Oil only to be defeated by climate change!

When does Resident Evil 5 come out?

Not soon enough.

[Stuart Mackey]

Another article

CEO of Shell admits to Peak Oil

From: Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive
To: All Shell employees
Date: 22 January 2008

Subject: Shell Energy Scenarios

Dear Colleagues

In this letter, I'd like to share reflections about how we see the energy future, and our preferred route to meeting the world's energy needs. Industry, governments and energy users - that is, all of us - will face the twin challenge of more energy and less CO2.

This letter is based on a text I've written for publication in several newspapers in the coming weeks. You can use it in your communications externally. There will be more information about energy scenarios inthe months ahead.

By the year 2100, the world's energy system will be radically different from today's. Renewable energy like solar, wind, hydroelectricity and biofuels will make up a large share of the energy mix, and nuclear energy too will have a place.

Mankind will have found ways of dealing with air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. New technologies will have reduced the amount of energy needed to power buildings and vehicles.

Indeed, the distant future looks bright, but getting there will be an adventure. At Shell, we think the world will take one of two possible routes. The first, a scenario we call Scramble, resembles a race through a mountainous desert. Like an off-road rally, it promises excitement and fierce competition. However, the unintended consequence of "more haste" will often be "less speed" and many will crash along the way.

The alternative scenario, called Blueprints, has some false starts and develops like a cautious ride on a road that is still under construction. Whether we arrive safely at our destination depends on the discipline of the drivers and the ingenuity of all those involved in the construction effort. Technical innovation provides for excitement.

Regardless of which route we choose, the world's current predicament limits our maneuvering room. We are experiencing a step-change in the growth rate of energy demand due to population growth and economic development, and Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand.
As a result, society has no choice but to add other sources of energy - renewables , yes, but also more nuclear power and unconventional fossil fuels such as oil sands. Using more energy inevitably means emitting more CO2 at a time when climate change has become a critical global issue.

In the Scramble scenario, nations rush to secure energy resources for themselves, fearing that energy security is a zero-sum game, with clear winners and losers. The use of local coal and homegrown biofuels increases fast.

Taking the path of least resistance, policymakers pay little attention to curbing energy consumption - until supplies run short. Likewise, despite much rhetoric, greenhouse gas emissions are not seriously addressed until major shocks trigger political reactions. Since these responses are overdue, they are severe and lead to energy price spikes and volatility.

The other route to the future is less painful, even if the start is more disorderly. This Blueprints scenario sees numerous coalitions emerging to take on the challenges of economic development, energy security and environmental pollution through cross-border cooperation.

Much innovation occurs at the local level, as major cities develop links with industry to reduce local emissions. National governments introduce efficiency standards, taxes and other policy instruments to improve the environmental performance of buildings, vehicles and transport fuels.

As calls for harmonization increase, policies converge across the globe. Cap-and-trade mechanisms that put a cost on industrial CO 2 emissions gain international acceptance. Rising CO2 prices accelerate innovation, spawning breakthroughs. A growing number of cars are powered by electricity and hydrogen, while industrial facilities are fitted with technology to capture CO 2 and store it underground.

Against the backdrop of these two equally plausible scenarios, we will only know in a few years whether December's Bali declaration on climate change was just rhetoric or the beginning of a global effort to counter it. Much will depend on how attitudes evolve in Beijing, Brussels, New Delhi and Washington.

Shell traditionally uses its scenarios to prepare for the future without expressing a preference for one over another. But, faced with the need to manage climate risk for our investors and our grandchildren, we believe the Blueprints outcomes provide the best balance between economy, energy and environment.

For a second opinion, we appealed to climate change calculations made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These calculations indicate that a Blueprints world with CO2 capture and storage results in the least amount of climate change, provided emissions of other major manmade greenhouse gases are similarly reduced.

The sobering reality is that the Blueprints scenario will only come to pass if policymakers agree a global approach to emissions trading and actively promote energy efficiency and new technology in four sectors: heat and power generation, industry, mobility and buildings. It will be hard work and there is little time.

For instance, Blueprints assumes CO2 is captured at 90% of all coal- and gas-fired power plants in developed countries in 2050, plus at least 50% of those in non-OECD countries. Today, there are none. Since CO2 capture and storage adds cost and brings no revenues , government support is needed to make it happen quickly on a scale large enough to affect global emissions. At the very least, companies should earn carbon credits for the CO2 they capture and store.

Blueprints will not be easy. But it offers the world the best chance of reaching a sustainable energy future unscathed, so we should explore this route with the same ingenuity and persistence that put humans on the moon and created the digital age.

The world faces a long voyage before it reaches a low-carbon energy system. Companies can suggest possible routes to get there, but governments are in the driving seat. And governments will determine whether we should prepare for a bitter competition or a true team effort.

That is the article, and how I see our challenges and opportunities. I look forward to hearing how you see the situation (please be concise).

Regards
Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive

[Darth Wong]

No, I am not going to accept a frugal lifestyle. I'd kill half the population of the United States--myself included--to preserve technological civilization, if it came to that.

Who says that we have to undergo technological regression in order to accept a more frugal lifestyle?

The fact is that there's no choice: a more frugal lifestyle will be forced upon most of the population, one way or another. But that doesn't mean we're going to become shit-flinging medieval primitives; it just means that all of our juicier luxuries will become the exclusive province of the wealthy again, and the middle-class will have to accept smaller homes, train-based commuting, narrowed food choices, far less meat in their diet, and self-rationing of energy. And this will persist until a post-oil infrastructure is created, but it's hardly the end of technological civilization.

[Starglider]

Slow collapse is pretty much ruled out. Things have accelerated FAR beyond what I was predicting last summer.

Right, could you give me a solid date for the total collapse of civilisation please, so that in the remote possibility that you are mistaken we know when to say 'Admiral Valdemar, you were full of shit, admit it'. K THX.

[CaptainZoidberg]

How could anyone not accept peak oil? If you take any given nation - say, the US - you can clearly see that oil production has consistently gone down since we hit the peak. It doesn't exactly take a genius to conclude that a large reserve should follow the same pattern.

Yeah, I get that it's an oil company, and they don't want to scare their investors - but still - if I were an investor I'd honestly be a little bit worried about their mental stability if they didn't accept peak oil.

[Darth Wong]

How could anyone not accept peak oil? If you take any given nation - say, the US - you can clearly see that oil production has consistently gone down since we hit the peak. It doesn't exactly take a genius to conclude that a large reserve should follow the same pattern.

Yeah, I get that it's an oil company, and they don't want to scare their investors - but still - if I were an investor I'd honestly be a little bit worried about their mental stability if they didn't accept peak oil.

They assume that there are huge new oilfields out there which we haven't discovered yet, and that the increased demand will spur greater efforts to find these untapped fields.

Alternatively, they may assume that "biofuel" = "infinite supply".

[Rogue 9]

So now can we switch the grid to nuclear power, or will the people who keep going on about the problems of fossil fuel (i.e. the environmentalist movement) continue to oppose the only practical means of totally replacing it for electricity generation?

[Gerald Tarrant]

No, I am not going to accept a frugal lifestyle. I'd kill half the population of the United States--myself included--to preserve technological civilization, if it came to that.

Who says that we have to undergo technological regression in order to accept a more frugal lifestyle?

The fact is that there's no choice: a more frugal lifestyle will be forced upon most of the population, one way or another. But that doesn't mean we're going to become shit-flinging medieval primitives; it just means that all of our juicier luxuries will become the exclusive province of the wealthy again, and the middle-class will have to accept smaller homes, train-based commuting, narrowed food choices, far less meat in their diet, and self-rationing of energy. And this will persist until a post-oil infrastructure is created, but it's hardly the end of technological civilization.

I couldn't find where the numbers came from, but this guy is normally a pretty source. Link

It seems the good people of ExxonMobil have seen fit to advertise on my blog, and far be it from me to question the sincerity of a giant oil company when it says it's interested in developing new technologies to generate cleaner energy. It is, however, always worth saying that using less energy is probably the cleanest energy option out there. One way to achieve that would be for our country to become much, much poorer, but there's a lot of variation among countries of comparable wealth.

Denmark, for example, consumes 3832.8 kilograms of oil equivalent per capita, whereas Germany consumes 4203.1, France consumes 4518.4, Belgium consumes 5703.4, Finland consumes 7218.1, and the United States consumes 7794.8 over twice as much as Denmark. And the Danes and Germans aren't living in circumstances of abject poverty or anything. If every American lived in a somewhat smaller house and spent less money on both the house and heating/cooling/lighting it and more money on fancy shoes or platinum cable packages or expensive organic produce we'd be just as well off and the planet would be better off. We just happen to have a lot of public policy in place that encourages lavish energy consumption (big houses, low-density land use, many cars) when policy should probably discourage such consumption or, at a minimum be neutral about it.

Properly done a more energy frugal lifestyle can be entirely livable. i.e. it need not be the collapse of civilization that is sometimes bandied about.

[CaptainZoidberg]

They assume that there are huge new oilfields out there which we haven't discovered yet, and that the increased demand will spur greater efforts to find these untapped fields.

Alternatively, they may assume that "biofuel" = "infinite supply".

The existence of huge oil fields would just push the peak further into the future, it wouldn't mean that oil production would just go up indefinitely.

Since biofuels are just a form of solar, I don't know why they'd be considered in an analysis of peak oil.

But I understand you're just playing Devil's Advocate.

[Surlethe]

All the fossil fuels are expiring long before most analysts would have predicted. Even if they weren't, the net export decline is serious enough that we may see the US hit a major export crisis by the end of summer.

Oh, wow. More vague Doom'n'Gloom(TM). If you're going to post your pessimism, please at least have the decency to make specific claims supported by logic and evidence, rather than handwaving and smoke-blowing.

[Master of Ossus]

I still hate the methodology that's used for these dumb things. The idea that "proven reserves" constitutes the limit of resource exploration is prima facie absurd, because people only bother to explore for resources 25-75 years out. Beyond that is just wasted resources that could be much more easily put to other uses. I especially love the "peak coal" idea, here, since there are more recoverable reserves of coal in England alone, right now, than have been consumed in the entire history of the Earth (actually, that was true as of 1996), and coal consumption has consistently declined since the Second World War and had been declining for decades before then.

The Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of rocks.

[Darth Raptor]

The existence of huge oil fields would just push the peak further into the future, it wouldn't mean that oil production would just go up indefinitely.

You will encounter naysayers who tout an abiotic theory of petroleum production, the gist being that complex hydrocarbons form naturally deep below the planet's surface independent of the biosphere above. Few (if any) geologists that aren't on industry payrolls take it seriously though.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

No, I am not going to accept a frugal lifestyle. I'd kill half the population of the United States--myself included--to preserve technological civilization, if it came to that.

Who says that we have to undergo technological regression in order to accept a more frugal lifestyle?

The fact is that there's no choice: a more frugal lifestyle will be forced upon most of the population, one way or another. But that doesn't mean we're going to become shit-flinging medieval primitives; it just means that all of our juicier luxuries will become the exclusive province of the wealthy again, and the middle-class will have to accept smaller homes, train-based commuting, narrowed food choices, far less meat in their diet, and self-rationing of energy. And this will persist until a post-oil infrastructure is created, but it's hardly the end of technological civilization.

Well, I'm expecting extreme hardship--jesus christ, how could I not be when I propose Stalinism as an acceptable alternative?. You bloody well know this. Valdemar, however, seems to continuously push that things are much worse than that.

[Broomstick]

The fact is that there's no choice: a more frugal lifestyle will be forced upon most of the population, one way or another. But that doesn't mean we're going to become shit-flinging medieval primitives; it just means that all of our juicier luxuries will become the exclusive province of the wealthy again, and the middle-class will have to accept smaller homes, train-based commuting, narrowed food choices, far less meat in their diet, and self-rationing of energy. And this will persist until a post-oil infrastructure is created, but it's hardly the end of technological civilization.

In other words, a lifestyle not too different than my current one.

Wouldn't surprise me if practical gardening becomes much more popular, people start drying their wash on lines out of doors again, and so on. Basically, dialing the lifestyle back to, oh, say 1900-1920 again.

Actually, I could probably adapt to a life without electricity and many modern appliances. I know how to take a live sheep and make a wool sweater from it, or a piece of cloth (I also know how to make the loom). I know how to make paper. I not only know how to make soap, I know how to make the ingredients for soap.

Meanwhile, contrary to the doomsayers, computers and airplanes and other modern marvels won't entirely disappear - we'll use them less, and perhaps in different ways but we're not going back to the stone age.

Although in many ways I'd like to emulate the Mormons and have year's supply of food and other stuff in the house - that's a nifty survival strategy right there.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Finland consumes nearly as much oil per capita as the US? Wow, I dare say I find that a bit odd to say the least.