I would like to see some sources for the "more than 100 years of oil left" claim. If it's at all based on 'public reserve levels' declared by oil producing countries, those are basically totally fabricated.
> At present consumption rates, know reserves will last less than 50 years
But those reserves are growing not shrinking over time. In the 1950s there was only 10 years of known reserves. We need to start worrying when the known reserves start getting smaller, rather than growing over time.
>And don't try to predict peak oil - every single prediction ever made of it has been wrong. And not just a little bit wrong, wildly incorrect.
Leaving aside that that's a terrible reason to stop even trying to predict something, I haven't found this to be the case at all.
Since about 2000 the date that's been put out was 2004-2006. The recession did indeed delay that a couple years, but we've still never extracted more oil than we did in 2008 despite continued high prices (vs. say the 1979 peak, after which oil prices collapsed).
>Every time we seem to run out of oil or natural gas we find more - known oil reserves have never been higher.
Helped in part by the fact that the OPEC nations (which account for ~80% of those reserves) allocates daily production limits in proportion to known reserves. So the more oil you claim to have, the more oil they let you produce! When the rules changed in the 1980 there was a gold rush of "revisions" that increased global oil reserves by 33%.
Peak oil is not "running out of oil," so the fact that that hasn't happened is not a real argument.
If you honestly believe that a global economy in which oil production has been flat for 4 years despite high prices, in which only 14 of the 54 oil-producing nations are growing production, in which another 30 are in active decline–forcing them to import more oil and more every year just to maintain current consumption (let alone fuel growth)–is a global economy in which peak oil isn't taking place, then I honestly don't know what to say.
> Fossil fuels reserves are going to collapse in the coming decades
Source? Quick internet searches seem to say we have more than 50 years left of coal, oil, and natural gas that we know we can extract. And that will expand as we find more and get better at extracting it.
To be clear: we do need to dramatically reduce our fossil fuel usage. Just saying that, so far as I can tell, we're not going to run out of anything in the next 30 years.
If the cost of extraction rises due to oil and gas being more and more difficult to access (because it's limited, obviously), you could claim demand has peaked but it would still be due to production cost (i.e production peaking). "The Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil" (Ahmed Zaki Yamani, former SA Minister of Oil)
> We already have problems recycling blades from wind turbines and most are still not at the end of their lifespan.
> And never mind solar and wind still suck for base load management since we still lack cost effective energy storage that can scale at the grid level.
This argument is not quite up to snuff because, as it turns out, only a tiny fraction of the oil ever can be made to come out. The truth is that even after the wells have been abandoned most of the oil remains stuck in the rocks that it started in. I found this out while wondering whether or not it would be possible to burn all of the oxygen in the air (it's not, sadly ;) )
Also the oil reserves are not really running low, if they were that would be a lucky answer to carbon control.
> Right. Only about 1 trillion in proven reserves, a number which often increases over time due to technology and economics and exploration.
I get that, but you are claiming that the unproven reserves of one portion of the US are more than five times the current proven reserves of the entire world. Where is your evidence for that?
> We cannot rely on Peak Oil (or Peak Coal for that matter) to stop our reliance on fossil fuels and the ensuing climate change.
No, we need to stop burning them. That is unrelated to extracting them except for extraction being the first step in the process.
> Now the received wisdom is that we'll have a glut of supply stretching into the far future.
Uh, source? We have a short term glut caused by production picking up, but our long term reserves haven't changed tangibly. There's about 1,324bil barrels in proven reserves (among the largest 17 reserves, ending with brazil at 13bil); global use is 95mb/d -- which is about 38 years of use. That's not 'stretching in to the far future'.
"If you look at the US for example for the first time in 30 years. They've been oil reserves. Oil they save for nation security to turn it into profit before it's worthless."
Huh? We've had reserves for practically a century:
Interesting I see an opposite trend but that's a 7 year window. AFAIK discoveries are slowing and the general trend is for newly discovered fields to have lower returns on energy.
> Turkey has no native oil or natural gas sources.
Wrong. Turkey has vast oil resources[0] but they are unexploited due to current oil&gas pipeline treaties. As can you see in [0], European part and South of Turkey is full of oil reserves. More reserves are available in the shores.
>The end of oil as a resource has been predicted many times over the past century, including 1909, 1937, 1945, 1966, 1972, 1980, and 2007. Each time, the end was paired with attempts to move industrial use to other fuel types. But with the exception of a few price shocks, the adjusted price of oil only slightly trends upward over the last 70 years. This, in spite of demand that definitely trends upward over the same period. Where is the end? Did the belief that oil use was going to end lead to new methods of exploration and production?
Well, that and wars to get cheaper control of more oil resources (the cost of which wars is not factored in to the cost of oil, as they're fought with public money). Plus more effective extraction while piling externalities to the environment, e.g. by fracking (the costs of which externalities is also not factored in).
> the US runs on diesel. We don't produce much heavy oil so we import it
Diesel is a medium-weight distillate; we can turn light oil into it fine. We refine most of our diesel and import the balance from Canada [2].
> Fracking, anyway, is an economic mirage enabled by cheap credit and expensive oil
Our production costs mirror Russia’s [3][4]. (They’re dwarfed by Saudi Arabia’s fiscal break even.)
Consider citing your comments. I’ve sometimes started writing something as riddled with errors as yours, only to find myself corrected when searching for citations.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilan...
In any case, it's the first claim in the article, he should back it up.
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