Re: Hubbert's peak
Let's be clear: Louis Proyect and I are the only list members who can legitimately claim expertise in oil forecasting. The rest of you are just a bunch of amateurs. But that's okay. Louis will continue sharing his wisdom by Lexis-Nexing an endless stream of well selected journalistic articles, and forwarding them to the list under soothing thread names like The End is Near, See? I told ya this is it!, Me and my friends have been right since we were born, etc. And I'll continue educating the patient readers with long tirades where paragraph (b) refutes paragraph (a). Read on and learn. #1 At this point in time, is there an absolute amount of oil in the depths of our planet, say, the absolute reserve? Yes, of course. There must be. If we had an infinity ability to MRI-scan our planet, we would know it for sure. #2 Is global oil production near, at, or beyond its peak level already? Is the known oil reserve about to be exhausted? Who the hell knows? Michael Perelman, of course, but who else? Questions #2 are very tricky, but their answers do NOT depend on the answer to #1. Forecasting oil reserves and oil production (and consumption) is NOT the same as trying to figure out the absolute amount of oil on earth as of today. In fact, the latter has little if any relevance to the former. This is why. The known oil reserve at a point in time is a variable -- NOT a constant. In fact, it is the point estimate of a random variable based on assumptions about some imputed probability distribution. The assumptions depend on the current state of the art in prospection, production, consumption, technology, science, etc. Whenever any of these assumptions changes (and they change all at once and all the time), whenever new information pops up, the estimates are subject to revision and updating. Forecasting oil reserves and production/consumption is NOT a purely technical-geological exercise. In fact, for the time being, forecasting oil production and consumption is tantamount to forecasting oil *supply and demand*: the path of the oil market. Nothing less. Because, for the time being, oil production and consumption is regulated by market incentives. The path of the known reserves depends on the path of the market. For a given state of technology, geological prospection depends on the size of the oil rents that can be secured by prospecting. At the margin, changes in geological prospection (like changes in supply) depend on expected excess demand. The current state of the oil market depends somehow on expectations about the future path of the market -- sometimes very flimsy expectations that add noise. No wonder forecasting the path of the oil market (quantities and prices) is a very tricky thing. The oil market is global in scope. If we are to believe the Oil Gas Journal or World Oil (as reported at the U.S. EIA's web site), then the known reserves of crude oil as of 1/1/2003 were between 1 and 1.2 trillion barrels, which at the going market price should be valued between 40 and 50 trillion USD, 4 or 5 times the U.S. annual economy. Given the rents at stake, the oil market is competitive in a very complex way. The big guys play a game of strategy that involves not only bluffs, negotiation, and short-run manipulation of quantities and prices, but also the deployment of substantial amounts of other resources, including those of a political and military nature. Markets of this kind are highly self-referential, which is to say, very hard to figure out. (See Keynes's General Theory, chapter 12.) Moreover, since the oil market is closely linked to all other markets, oil forecasting is premised on a broader forecast of the global economy, which is also a pretty wild animal. Even though aggregates tend to be more stable than dis-aggregates (somebody here mentioned the law of large numbers or the central limit theorem), the world economy is not ergodic. Economic forecasts tend to fail when they are most needed -- i.e., when they are supposed to anticipate sudden changes in the direction of the economy. We see the failures of economic forecasting all the time. Serious economists know that long-run forecasts of the economy (like those at the base of the 10- or 15-year budget projections politicians use) are full of shit. Forecasting how the economy will do in the next quarter or next year is hard enough to do. That said, as devastating as the non-ergodic argument is, we shouldn't be entirely nihilist about predicting. Pinning down the *precise* path of the oil market (conditional on current information blah blah) may be beyond human ability, because the market is self-referential or whatever. But, even under capitalism, social life has some measure of stability. In a loose ballpark sense, things can be and are anticipated. But by whom? Well, by people who are highly motivated to know and have the resources to enter the serious guessing game. (Politically, the left should be very motivated to know,
Time of Oil (Hubbert's peak)
Julio wrote: #1 At this point in time, is there an absolute amount of oil in the depths of our planet, say, the absolute reserve? Yes, of course. There must be. If we had an infinity ability to MRI-scan our planet, we would know it for sure. #2 Is global oil production near, at, or beyond its peak level already? Is the known oil reserve about to be exhausted? Who the hell knows? Michael Perelman, of course, but who else? It's fascinating that the concept of time is missing in all the PEN-l discussions of oil, except in Tom's postings. Why translate the question of time (e.g., Tom's question: Will it come to take more labour time than it saves to find and produce the oil?) into that of space (i.e. absolute and known oil reserves). -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Time of Oil (Hubbert's peak)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: It's fascinating that the concept of time is missing in all the PEN-l discussions of oil, except in Tom's postings. At 6:47 PM -0400 6/1/04, Doug Henwood wrote: Someday we may run out of oil, but I suspect we'll choke ourselves or ruin the climate completely before we do. At 4:41 PM -0400 6/2/04, Doug Henwood wrote: So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Before is a time-related concept, no? Doug
Re: Time of Oil (Hubbert's peak)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: It's fascinating that the concept of time is missing in all the PEN-l discussions of oil, except in Tom's postings. At 6:47 PM -0400 6/1/04, Doug Henwood wrote: Someday we may run out of oil, but I suspect we'll choke ourselves or ruin the climate completely before we do. At 4:41 PM -0400 6/2/04, Doug Henwood wrote: So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Before is a time-related concept, no? Doug Yeah, but saying before we choke on the smoke and CO2 and saying before we exhaust all known oil reserves both have the same End-Time status in discussion of time -- which is to say, irrelevant. Marx and Keynes' innovations concern the introduction of secular time -- time of production, time of circulation, time of consumption, and perilous dependence of each on the others -- to political economy. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Time of Oil (Hubbert's peak)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: At 4:41 PM -0400 6/2/04, Doug Henwood wrote: So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Before is a time-related concept, no? Doug Yeah, but saying before we choke on the smoke and CO2 and saying before we exhaust all known oil reserves both have the same End-Time status in discussion of time -- which is to say, irrelevant. Marx and Keynes' innovations concern the introduction of secular time -- time of production, time of circulation, time of consumption, and perilous dependence of each on the others -- to political economy. - Gosh, I didn't know that. Thanks! What do you suppose in the economic, not physical sense means? Doug
Re: Time of Oil (Hubbert's peak)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: At 4:41 PM -0400 6/2/04, Doug Henwood wrote: So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Before is a time-related concept, no? Doug Yeah, but saying before we choke on the smoke and CO2 and saying before we exhaust all known oil reserves both have the same End-Time status in discussion of time -- which is to say, irrelevant. Marx and Keynes' innovations concern the introduction of secular time -- time of production, time of circulation, time of consumption, and perilous dependence of each on the others -- to political economy. - Gosh, I didn't know that. Thanks! What do you suppose in the economic, not physical sense means? Doug The reference to the economic is put in the sentence about running out of oil, though -- it's the End-Time discussion again. We have to be able to think about oil and other natural resources, as well as other ecological questions, in contexts other than that of the End-Time discourse. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Hubbert's peak
The stone age didn't end because people ran out of rocks (Sheik Yamani)
Hubbert's peak
Tom Walker wrote: It may be helpful to non-statisticians to point out that the bell curve is not a theory, a fact or a physical law. It is an observed regularity that occurs often when looking at large numbers of cases I don't think that the validity of the bell curve is that important to the discussion of Hubbert's peak. His basic point -- or rather, that of his followers -- is the same as that of David Ricardo Thomas Malthus: long-term diminishing returns in the supplies of natural resources leads to increasing misery and/or conflict. Of course, as with Ricardo Malths, that ignores such matters as technical change (improvements in the efficiency of oil use, etc.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Hubbert's peak
Devine, James wrote: I don't think that the validity of the bell curve is that important to the discussion of Hubbert's peak. His basic point -- or rather, that of his followers -- is the same as that of David Ricardo Thomas Malthus: long-term diminishing returns in the supplies of natural resources leads to increasing misery and/or conflict. Of course, as with Ricardo Malths, that ignores such matters as technical change (improvements in the efficiency of oil use, etc.) There is another dimension to this question that was not really explored in the time of Malthus. Whatever the technical breakthroughs in farming that invalidated Malthus, they come at the cost of environmental despoliation. The same thing is true of oil. Finding new supplies of oil, as tenuous as this appears today, will only exacerbate problems of global warming and pollution. To really attack these problems at their root, it will require bringing population and resources into balance. There is nothing in socialism that will provide some kind of magical solution to soil fertility or greenhouse emissions. This is a question of science, not political economy. All socialism can do is provide the framework in which planning and science can reign supreme. But it will not be able to furnish some kind of philosopher's stone that will guarantee a limitless supply of salmon, fresh water, oil, etc. for a population that will reach into the multibillions before long. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Hubbert's peak
Hasn't been a decade since a major oil discovery has occured? Authorities have been increasing their estimates of proven reserves, at least, until Shell had to reduce theirs. On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 11:34:15AM -0700, Devine, James wrote: Tom Walker wrote: It may be helpful to non-statisticians to point out that the bell curve is not a theory, a fact or a physical law. It is an observed regularity that occurs often when looking at large numbers of cases I don't think that the validity of the bell curve is that important to the discussion of Hubbert's peak. His basic point -- or rather, that of his followers -- is the same as that of David Ricardo Thomas Malthus: long-term diminishing returns in the supplies of natural resources leads to increasing misery and/or conflict. Of course, as with Ricardo Malths, that ignores such matters as technical change (improvements in the efficiency of oil use, etc.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Hubbert's peak
discoveries of new oil aren't the main issue (at least not for me). The fact is that we can economize on the use of oil. Higher oil prices encourage such actions, including technical change. BTW, not all technical change involves greater pollution. For example, my Prius doesn't just get a lot of miles per gallon. (Currently, it's 37 mpg -- it needs a tune-up.) It also is a super ultra low emission vehicle. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 1:07 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hubbert's peak Hasn't been a decade since a major oil discovery has occured? Authorities have been increasing their estimates of proven reserves, at least, until Shell had to reduce theirs. On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 11:34:15AM -0700, Devine, James wrote: Tom Walker wrote: It may be helpful to non-statisticians to point out that the bell curve is not a theory, a fact or a physical law. It is an observed regularity that occurs often when looking at large numbers of cases I don't think that the validity of the bell curve is that important to the discussion of Hubbert's peak. His basic point -- or rather, that of his followers -- is the same as that of David Ricardo Thomas Malthus: long-term diminishing returns in the supplies of natural resources leads to increasing misery and/or conflict. Of course, as with Ricardo Malths, that ignores such matters as technical change (improvements in the efficiency of oil use, etc.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Hubbert's peak
Jim is obviously correct. When the energy crisis hit in 73, Dow Chemical realized that it had not been shutting down its electric sidewalk in the Summertime. Frozen food containers were open. Books have been written about corps. saving money by saving energy. The first savings -- low hanging fruit -- are relatively easy. Better city planning would be an obvious example of something that would have high payoffs. Business Week had a stat about how many people commute 50 miles or more one way for their job. Of course, the industrialization and modernization of poor parts of the world will create a serious ramp up in demand. On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 01:13:23PM -0700, Devine, James wrote: discoveries of new oil aren't the main issue (at least not for me). The fact is that we can economize on the use of oil. Higher oil prices encourage such actions, including technical change. BTW, not all technical change involves greater pollution. For example, my Prius doesn't just get a lot of miles per gallon. (Currently, it's 37 mpg -- it needs a tune-up.) It also is a super ultra low emission vehicle. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 1:07 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hubbert's peak Hasn't been a decade since a major oil discovery has occured? Authorities have been increasing their estimates of proven reserves, at least, until Shell had to reduce theirs. On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 11:34:15AM -0700, Devine, James wrote: Tom Walker wrote: It may be helpful to non-statisticians to point out that the bell curve is not a theory, a fact or a physical law. It is an observed regularity that occurs often when looking at large numbers of cases I don't think that the validity of the bell curve is that important to the discussion of Hubbert's peak. His basic point -- or rather, that of his followers -- is the same as that of David Ricardo Thomas Malthus: long-term diminishing returns in the supplies of natural resources leads to increasing misery and/or conflict. Of course, as with Ricardo Malths, that ignores such matters as technical change (improvements in the efficiency of oil use, etc.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Hubbert's peak
Michael Perelman wrote: Hasn't been a decade since a major oil discovery has occured? So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Doug
Re: Hubbert's peak
I don't know. Water might be a bigger bottleneck. On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 04:41:44PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: Hasn't been a decade since a major oil discovery has occured? So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Hubbert's peak
it's interesting that (according to MS SLATE on-line magazine) a whole bunch of conservatives, including Gary Becker, are endorsing steep taxes on gasoline in the US, to encourage conservation and gas-saving technical change, while punishing the oil producers. (W. Europe did this years ago.) Good idea, though there should also be a hefty tax on SUVs (on top of making environmental laws as strict with SUVs as with other cars). Of course, the Bushwackers won't allow it... I'm told that if anyone says carbon tax within a mile of Dick Cheney, the Secret Service will wrestle the miscreant to the ground and send him or her to Gitmo. After all, he might have a heart attack and who then would be President? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 1:22 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hubbert's peak Jim is obviously correct. When the energy crisis hit in 73, Dow Chemical realized that it had not been shutting down its electric sidewalk in the Summertime. Frozen food containers were open. Books have been written about corps. saving money by saving energy. The first savings -- low hanging fruit -- are relatively easy. Better city planning would be an obvious example of something that would have high payoffs. Business Week had a stat about how many people commute 50 miles or more one way for their job. Of course, the industrialization and modernization of poor parts of the world will create a serious ramp up in demand. On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 01:13:23PM -0700, Devine, James wrote: discoveries of new oil aren't the main issue (at least not for me). The fact is that we can economize on the use of oil. Higher oil prices encourage such actions, including technical change. BTW, not all technical change involves greater pollution. For example, my Prius doesn't just get a lot of miles per gallon. (Currently, it's 37 mpg -- it needs a tune-up.) It also is a super ultra low emission vehicle. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 1:07 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hubbert's peak Hasn't been a decade since a major oil discovery has occured? Authorities have been increasing their estimates of proven reserves, at least, until Shell had to reduce theirs. On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 11:34:15AM -0700, Devine, James wrote: Tom Walker wrote: It may be helpful to non-statisticians to point out that the bell curve is not a theory, a fact or a physical law. It is an observed regularity that occurs often when looking at large numbers of cases I don't think that the validity of the bell curve is that important to the discussion of Hubbert's peak. His basic point -- or rather, that of his followers -- is the same as that of David Ricardo Thomas Malthus: long-term diminishing returns in the supplies of natural resources leads to increasing misery and/or conflict. Of course, as with Ricardo Malths, that ignores such matters as technical change (improvements in the efficiency of oil use, etc.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Hubbert's peak
On Wednesday, June 2, 2004 at 14:07:19 (-0700) Devine, James writes: it's interesting that (according to MS SLATE on-line magazine) a whole bunch of conservatives, including Gary Becker, are endorsing steep taxes on gasoline in the US, to encourage conservation and gas-saving technical change, while punishing the oil producers. (W. Europe did this years ago.) Good idea, though ... Given the elasticity of demand for gasoline, isn't taxing gasoline a punishment for consumers? Bill
Re: Hubbert's peak
yes, but (in theory at least) the increased gas tax could be compensated for by lowering the payroll tax. Of course, no progressive reform will ever happen unless the balance of power in society swings toward working people and other dominated groups. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Bill Lear [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 2:29 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hubbert's peak On Wednesday, June 2, 2004 at 14:07:19 (-0700) Devine, James writes: it's interesting that (according to MS SLATE on-line magazine) a whole bunch of conservatives, including Gary Becker, are endorsing steep taxes on gasoline in the US, to encourage conservation and gas-saving technical change, while punishing the oil producers. (W. Europe did this years ago.) Good idea, though ... Given the elasticity of demand for gasoline, isn't taxing gasoline a punishment for consumers? Bill
Re: Hubbert's peak
Michael Perelman wrote: Hasn't been a decade since a major oil discovery has occured? So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Doug Higher prices can cause stagflation, before the oil industry invents new technology to make oil production cheaper again and/or other industries learn to economize on oil. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Hubbert's peak
It is possible to twist and turn and refer to statistical relativism and do all sorts of things to make Hubbert appear less Hubbertist than he was and his predictions appear more accurate than they are, but doing that obscures the kernel of the Hubbertist message-- and that message is not one of conservation, price increases, tax, etc... It is quite clearly a message of approaching apocalypse, an absolute, irreversible, depletion of hydrocarbon fuels. These fuels are mis-identified as fossil fuel where there is in all actuality very little evidence that supports the notion that oil, natural gas, and gas liquids are the products of compressed and heated biomass. The Hubbertist message, the ringing sound of the bell curve, is extinction. Read Campbell, Deffeyes, etc. and see for yourself. One can say the bell curve isn't important, but it absolutely is essential to the Hubbertists; Campbell, Deffeyes, Laherrere includeed. To say the bell curve applies quite well to mineral production is to beg the obvious question, where? Nickel? Iron? Bauxite? Are we running out? Has production of those minerals followed a bell curve based in ascent and decline on reserves, reserve discovery, and depletion? The curves produced by the post-Hubbert Hubbertists rely on data manipulation, not true data analysis-- see for example the Hubbertists manipulation of data on North Sea discoveries to show that over time the size of the discoveries systematically declined. Which gets us to another point, and the one where industry, ideology, and cash flow meet: The Hubbertists have created a veritable industry out of predicting catastrophe. They've been at it for awhile, and after 1999 OPEC rescued them, just as it rescued the oil industry, from low rates of return. Hubbert and the Hubbertists are in no way shape or form describing, analyzing, marginal rates of return. They pretend to describe absolute, inevitable depletion. They manufacture an ideology, a pseudo-erudite hysteria which is a self-blind product of a falling rate of return in the industry. If you examine rates of return on investment in the oil industry in the US, you will see that the return peaks on 1970 and then falls, along with production. What I haven't seen is Hubbert's 1956 paper predicting this exact date. It may exist. I would appreciate a reference to the original prediction I would like to know where the bell curve has correctly predicted, not increased costs of extraction, but absolute depletion and scarcity-- and a deficiency where say it takes more aluminum to find bauxite than the bauxite can yield? Has the bell curve explained iron ore production, nickel, - Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 3:42 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hubbert's peak Michael Perelman wrote: Hasn't been a decade since a major oil discovery has occured? So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Doug Higher prices can cause stagflation, before the oil industry invents new technology to make oil production cheaper again and/or other industries learn to economize on oil. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Hubbert's peak
I am not well versed in Hubbert, but I think that David's characterization might be inconsistent with H's association with technocracy. On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 07:55:50PM -0700, sartesian wrote: regarding Hubbert: It is quite clearly a message of approaching apocalypse, an absolute, irreversible, depletion of hydrocarbon fuels. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Hubbert's peak
sartesian wrote: It is possible to twist and turn and refer to statistical relativism and do all sorts of things to make Hubbert appear less Hubbertist than he was and his predictions appear more accurate than they are, but doing that obscures the kernel of the Hubbertist message-- and that message is not one of conservation, price increases, tax, etc... It is quite clearly a message of approaching apocalypse, an absolute, irreversible, depletion of hydrocarbon fuels. You seem obsessed with a particular person, Hubbert, rather than really interested in the topic. Clearly many people have taken some things from Hubbert but have formed their own perspective around what they take from him. Your post resembles someone attacking Einstein because he took Newton seriously. What needs to be debated is the views of those involved in the debate, not an antiquarian issue about some particular person not involved in the debate. Carrol
Re: Hubbert's peak
sartesian wrote: Which gets us to another point, and the one where industry, ideology, and cash flow meet: The Hubbertists have created a veritable industry out of predicting catastrophe. Which brings me to a question about the politics of this. Mark Jones, may he rest in peace, was a big fan of Petroconsultants, who are major catastrophists, right? But aren't the catastrophists in the oil industry eagerly lobbying for tax breaks and reduced environmental regulations? Aren't they, in a phrase, apologists for the industry? Is this another case of politics making strange bedfellows, or am I missing something? Doug
Re: Hubbert's peak
To be fair to Hubbert and his followers, I think Hubbert's basic point was precisely about the need for technical change and energy efficiency. We are not starting from zero. He was quoted in a 1983 article, We have an enormous amount of existing technical knowledge. It's just a matter of putting it all together. We still have great flexibility but our maneuverability will diminish with time. That's not exactly *ignoring* technical change. It's more like advocating it. To the extent his followers anticipate misery and conflict, it may have much to do with the hitherto desulatory track record of the market and the state about responding to the need for change. Another point is that the scale and scope of change necessary here is epochal not merely adaptive fine tuning. Who's to say whether a couple of world wars and a depression is not too high a price to pay for the transition? People who ignore such details of technical change are not really giving misery and conflict their due. Can you see the devil in the previous sentence? Like Keynes(!), Hubbert talked about the need to move from growth to a steady-state economy. And, by the way, he does mention the need for stabilization of the world's population. Come to think of it, though, one couldn't have a growing population and a steady-state economy without at least a quantitative immiseration of that pop. could one? Do people actually read anything by Hubbert before they pronounce sentence on him or do they rely entirely on second-hand characterizations and vague impressions? You know, I happen to think Hubbert may be right for reasons that have little to do with proven or probable or as yet undiscovered reserves of petroleum. He may be right for all the wrong reasons. Rather than marking some half-way point along the road to depletion, I would see the impasse as arising from the Contradiction between the foundation of bourgeois production (value as measure) and its development... ...to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose 'powerful effectiveness' is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production. In other words, to *realize* the now necessary technical and cultural changes would require abandonment of what Marx called value as measure and what Hubbert called American folk-lore about the work ethic. Most employment now is merely pushing paper around. The actual work needed to keep a stable society running is a very small fraction of available manpower. Jim Devine wrote, I don't think that the validity of the bell curve is that important to the discussion of Hubbert's peak. His basic point -- or rather, that of his followers -- is the same as that of David Ricardo Thomas Malthus: long-term diminishing returns in the supplies of natural resources leads to increasing misery and/or conflict. Of course, as with Ricardo Malths, that ignores such matters as technical change (improvements in the efficiency of oil use, etc.) Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: Hubbert's peak
Carrol Cox wrote, What needs to be debated is the views of those involved in the debate, not an antiquarian issue about some particular person not involved in the debate. Hear! Hear! Thank you for saying it, Carrol. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: Hubbert's peak
Excuse me, you obviously haven't read closely anything written. I could care less about Hubbert as a person. I have criticized the ideology of Hubbertism and his followers, the real meaning of their apocalyptic pseudo science. - Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 5:13 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hubbert's peak sartesian wrote: It is possible to twist and turn and refer to statistical relativism and do all sorts of things to make Hubbert appear less Hubbertist than he was and his predictions appear more accurate than they are, but doing that obscures the kernel of the Hubbertist message-- and that message is not one of conservation, price increases, tax, etc... It is quite clearly a message of approaching apocalypse, an absolute, irreversible, depletion of hydrocarbon fuels. You seem obsessed with a particular person, Hubbert, rather than really interested in the topic. Clearly many people have taken some things from Hubbert but have formed their own perspective around what they take from him. Your post resembles someone attacking Einstein because he took Newton seriously. What needs to be debated is the views of those involved in the debate, not an antiquarian issue about some particular person not involved in the debate. Carrol
Re: Hubbert's peak
Hear hear, my ass. I provided factual counterpoints and specific questions, try taking your head out of your ass and answering them. - Original Message - From: Tom Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 5:50 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hubbert's peak Carrol Cox wrote, What needs to be debated is the views of those involved in the debate, not an antiquarian issue about some particular person not involved in the debate. Hear! Hear! Thank you for saying it, Carrol. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: Hubbert's peak
David, cool it. On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 09:27:49PM -0700, sartesian wrote: Hear hear, my ass. I provided factual counterpoints and specific questions, try taking your head out of your ass and answering them. - Original Message - From: Tom Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 5:50 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hubbert's peak Carrol Cox wrote, What needs to be debated is the views of those involved in the debate, not an antiquarian issue about some particular person not involved in the debate. Hear! Hear! Thank you for saying it, Carrol. Tom Walker 604 255 4812 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Hubbert's peak
Doug Henwood wrote: Which brings me to a question about the politics of this. Mark Jones, may he rest in peace, was a big fan of Petroconsultants, who are major catastrophists, right? But aren't the catastrophists in the oil industry eagerly lobbying for tax breaks and reduced environmental regulations? Aren't they, in a phrase, apologists for the industry? Is this another case of politics making strange bedfellows, or am I missing something? Like the sadism to which they are closely linked, envy and insatiable greed are protean. Marx points to them as the psychological basis of crude communism. General envy constituting itself as a power is the disguise in which greed re-establishes itself and satisfies itself, only in another way. The thought of every piece of private property as such is at least turned against wealthier private property in the form of envy and the urge to reduce things to a common level, so that this envy and urge even constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of this envy and of this levelling-down proceeding from the preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited standard. How little this annulment of private property is really an appropriation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and crude man who has few needs and who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet even reached it. The community is only a community of labour, and equality of wages paid out by communal capital by the community as the universal capitalist. Both sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality labour as the category in which every person is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm A more modern psychology can explain both the number mysticism (Keynes says insightfully of the mistaken use of mathematics and statistics in econometrics that it becomes like those puzzles for children where you write down your age, multiply, add this and that, subtract something else, and eventually end up with the number of the Beast in Revelation) and the catastrophic, apocalyptic Book of Revelation conclusions the number mysticism is used to prove. Ted
Re: Hubbert's peak
Ted Winslow wrote: Like the sadism to which they are closely linked, envy and insatiable greed are protean. Marx points to them as the psychological basis of crude communism. General envy constituting itself as a power is the disguise in which greed re-establishes itself and satisfies itself, only in another way. The thought of every piece of private property as such is at least turned against wealthier private property in the form of envy and the urge to reduce things to a common level, so that this envy and urge even constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of this envy and of this levelling-down proceeding from the preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited standard. How little this annulment of private property is really an appropriation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and crude man who has few needs and who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet even reached it. The community is only a community of labour, and equality of wages paid out by communal capital - by the community as the universal capitalist. Both sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality - labour as the category in which every person is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm I'm in awe. Really. This is sublime stuff. I haven't read this in years, so thanks for the reminder. Doug
Mike Davis on Hubbert's Peak
(This appears in the British SWP magazine Socialist Review at: http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=8930. It is similar to an article that appeared on tomdispatch.com a month ago, but contains critical support of Ralph Nader, something that was absent in the earlier article.) The View from Hubbert's Peak Column by Mike Davis, June 2004 Diminishing oil supplies have epochal implications for the world economy. Angry truckers celebrated this May Day by blocking freeways in Los Angeles and container terminals in Oakland and Stockton. With diesel fuel prices in California soaring to record levels in recent weeks, the earnings of independent container-haulers have dropped below the poverty line. Lacking the power of big trucking companies to pass rising fuel costs on to customers, the port drivers - many of them immigrants from Mexico - have had little choice but to share some of their pain with the public. In one action, abandoned big rigs blocked the morning commute just south of downtown Los Angeles on Interstate 5. Tens of thousands of motorists became temporary hostages of the fuel crisis. As one exasperated commuter complained to a radio station, 'This is really the end of the world.' Perhaps it is. Although real (inflation-adjusted) fuel prices are still well below their 1981 maximum, a large and ever-growing chorus of voices, ranging from former British environment minister Michael Meacher to National Geographic magazine, are shouting from the rooftops that the age of cheap oil is ending. Even if the current oil prices rises are slowed or reversed by higher Opec outputs, we will soon arrive - petroleum pundits claim - at the genuine summit of 'Hubbert's peak'. M King Hubbert was a celebrated oil geologist who in 1956 correctly prophesied that US petroleum production would peak in the early 1970s, then irreversibly decline. In 1974 he likewise predicted that world oilfields would achieve their maximum output in 2000 - a figure later revised by his acolytes to 2006-10. If the curve of global oil production is indeed near the point of descent, as these experts believe, it has epochal implications for the world economy. More expensive oil will undercut China's energy-intensive boom, return OECD countries to the bad old days of stagflation, and accelerate the environmentally destructive exploitation of low-grade oil tars and shales. Most of all, it will devastate the economies of oil-importing Third World countries. Poor farmers will be unable to afford artificial fertilisers, just as poor urban-dwellers will be unable to afford bus fares. (Already rising oil prices have brought chronic blackouts to cities throughout the South.) The only certain beneficiaries of this coming economic chaos will be the big five oil corporations and their corrupt partners - the Nigerian generals, Saudi princes, Russian kleptocrats and their ilk. Crude oil truly will become black gold. The rising value of an increasingly scarce resource is a form of monopoly rent, and a permanent regime of $50 per barrel (or higher) crude would transfer at least $1 trillion per decade from final consumers to oil producers. In plain English, this would be the greatest robbery by a rentier elite in world history. The oilmen in the White House, of course, have the best view of the terrain on the far side of Hubbert's peak. No wonder, then, that a map of the 'war on terror' corresponds with such uncanny accuracy to the geography of oilfields and proposed pipelines. From Kazakhstan to Ecuador, American combat boots are sticky with oil. To cite two examples; first, the Malaysian foreign minister warned in May that Washington was exaggerating the threat of terrorist piracy in order to justify the deployment of forces in the Straits of Malacca - the chokepoint of East Asia's oil supply. Secondly, Christian Miller, reporting in the Los Angeles Times, revealed that US Special Forces, as well as the CIA and private American security contractors, are integrally involved in the ongoing reign of terror in Colombia's Arauca province. The aim of 'Operation Red Moon' is to annihilate the left wing ELN guerrillas threatening the oilfields and pipelines operated by LA-based Occidental Petroleum. The result, Miller reports, has been a slow-motion massacre: 'Mass arrests of politicians and union leaders have become common. Refugees fleeing combat have streamed into local cities. And killings have soared as right wing paramilitaries have targeted left wing critics.' Latin America (Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador) supplies more oil to the US than the Middle East and, from the very beginning, the White House has defined the 'war on terror' as including counter-insurgency in the western hemisphere. Is there a pattern here? Indeed, is there a US masterplan for the control of oil in an age of diminishing supply and soaring prices? Obvious questions, but don't ask a Democrat. Although many ordinary Americans have little difficulty connecting
Re: Mike Davis on Hubbert's Peak
Anybody interested in knowing just how flexible and elastic the speculations about peaks really are would do well to read the original peakist himself, the petroleum Malthus, M. King Hubbert. Take a look at http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/nehring.pdf and you will read the King predicting a peak in the non-communist world's oil production in the early to mid 1980s, etc. etc. etc. Didn't exactly happen that way, now did it?
Re: Mike Davis on Hubbert's Peak
sartesian wrote: Anybody interested in knowing just how flexible and elastic the speculations about peaks really are would do well to read the original peakist himself, the petroleum Malthus, M. King Hubbert. Take a look at http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/nehring.pdf and you will read the King predicting a peak in the non-communist world's oil production in the early to mid 1980s, etc. etc. etc. Didn't exactly happen that way, now did it? Wow, those are some spectacularly wrong projections. But there's a long history of this sort of thing, isn't there? There's a chart reproduced in Baumol et al's Productivity American Leadership - must remember to dig out the book scan the page - that tracks oil production over the last 100 years with similar projections marked at various points in the history. Someday we may run out of oil, but I suspect we'll choke ourselves or ruin the climate completely before we do. Doug
Re: Mike Davis on Hubbert's Peak
sartesian wrote: Anybody interested in knowing just how flexible and elastic the speculations about peaks really are would do well to read the original peakist himself, the petroleum Malthus, M. King Hubbert. Take a look at http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/nehring.pdf and you will read the King predicting a peak in the non-communist world's oil production in the early to mid 1980s, etc. etc. etc. Didn't exactly happen that way, now did it? What I read on page iv of the report is a disclaimer that says Hubbert was one of several people who reviewed the technical memorandum but did not necessarily approve, disapprove or endorse this report. How is that the King predicting a peak? Anywhoo... the report gives a high end estimate for 2000 of 60 mbd for non-Communist world oil production. So, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, world oil production averaged 79 million barrels a day in 2003. Subtract about 18 million barrels a day for Eastern Europe, China and North Korea and that leaves 61 mbds for the non-Communist (as of 1980) world. So where's the great come uppance here, or am I missing something? All sniping at unwarranted snickering aside, my opinion is that Hubbert perhaps either misunderstood his own curve or deliberately obfuscated what it is really about. It's not primarily about just the physical quantity of crude in the ground -- although he seems to leave that impression. It's about the _relationship_ between the financially-dictated growth of the economy and the physical constraints imposed by the finite quantity of resources and also by the finite limits of technological improvement. Where Hubbert started out from is, I think, better revealed in his graph labeled Figure 1 in his 1936 article for Technocracy on Man-Hours and Distribution. That graph is titled Theoretical curves showing relation between production, man-hours per unit, and total man-hours, for U.S. (see: http://www.technocracy.org/pamphlets/man-hours-distribution.html). Undeniably, there is something fetishistic and reifying about Hubbert's and his acolytes' attachment to his curve -- sort of like a one-shot Kondratieff wave. But I think that can be attributed to the difficulty in distinguishing between the image and an explanation. It's a bit like explaining sheet music. To someone accustomed to graphing statistics, the relationships shown in the graph are almost self-explanatory. Any attempt at verbal elaboration, though, teeters between truism and hubris. The rub is that what Hubbert and his curve were up against was and still is folklore -- the hoary folklore of the work ethic and compound interest. Hubbert's curve simply says if you believe in one then you can't believe in the other or you can't have your cake and eat it too. American free enterprise folklore *insists* that you *must* believe in both simultaneously. Most people do and they are utterly baffled the moment you try to show in any way that the two are irreconcilable. I guess you just keep dumbing down your explanations with ever more 'concrete' examples until suddenly one day your dogma is written in stone. Snicker all you want at King Hubbert's small incoherencies. After all, the folks in the Hummers couldn't care less even if Hubbert successfully predicted fifty years in advance the exact date, hour and minute that world oil production will (or already did?) peak. As far as I'm concerned, world oil production has peaked when the U.S. has to have 130,000 troops occupying Iraq and Saudi Arabia has 30,000 guards protecting its oilfields and still its not enough to secure the supply. Doug Henwood wrote, Wow, those are some spectacularly wrong projections. Which ones specifically? And WHO made them? Someday we may run out of oil, but I suspect we'll choke ourselves or ruin the climate completely before we do. That's a reassuring thought. But actually, Doug, ruining the climate and choking ourselves are, effectively, ways to run out of oil. One also runs out of oil when one expends the better part of the productivity gains won from the use of energy in military action to secure the supply. You could call it robbing Peter to pay Paul. Conceivably, it might also be feasible to boost oil production by blasting it out of the ground with low-yield nuclear devices. The contaminated crude might make us glow in the dark but at least we wouldn't run out. Tom Walker
Re: Mike Davis on Hubbert's Peak
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, sartesian wrote: Anybody interested in knowing just how flexible and elastic the speculations about peaks really are would do well to read the original peakist himself, the petroleum Malthus, M. King Hubbert. Take a look at http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/nehring.pdf and you will read the King predicting a peak in the non-communist world's oil production in the early to mid 1980s, etc. etc. etc. Didn't exactly happen that way, now did it? Checking out the 1980 report you posted says: Enough is known about world oil supplies to make a few specific observations: (1) Assuming political stability in the major exporters, non-Communist world oil supply is likely to range between 45-60 MBD* in 1985 and 40-60 MBD in 2000 (compared to 52 MBD in 1979). The sizes of potential increases in Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Iraq and of the decrease in the United States account for a major portion of the variation in production possibilities (10 MBD or approximately 50% of the variation in the year 2000). --In fact, 2002 was about 63 MBD, after subtracting out USSR and China from: http://www.worldoil.com/INFOCENTER/STATISTICS_DETAIL.asp?Statfile=_worldoilproduction (2) As a group, the non-Communist industrialized countries will experience no significant increase in production. In fact, production in these countries may decrease by as much as 50% by the year 2000. 2002 OECD was 21.88 (ibid), but I can't immediately find 1980 (except U.S. at 10+). (3) In the short term, U.S. production may decline from its current level of 10.2 MBD to a level of 7.2-8.5 MBD in 1985. Production in the year 2000 may range between 4-7 MBD. The high estimate for the year 2000 (7 MBD) depends on both the annual addition of 1 billion barrels to proven reserves and the extensive use of enhanced recovery techniques. 8.06 MBD in 2002 for the U.S. (4) OPEC production during the next 20 years will not differ significantly from its current level of 31 MBD. Any increases in the production rate will be strongly dependent upon Arab OPEC producers. Except for Iran, only Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates have the reserves and Iraq the estimated potential to increase production rates. Substantial dependence on Arab OPEC (the Persian Gulf region) is likely to continue with its obvious implications for foreign policy. 28.57 in 2002 (ibid., while your report p. 45, predicted 27-37 for 2000) In sum, I don't understand the objection to this report of 1980. A new book is Dale Allen Pfeiffer's book The End of the Age of Oil and a major proponent of peak oil is http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ . Paul
Re: Mike Davis on Hubbert's Peak
From the website: http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/ With Richard Nehring, Hubbert wrote a book World petroleum availability 1980-2000 [pdf, 419k], also available at http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1980/8023/8023.PDF. [1980] So it seems the disclaimer does not apply to Mr. Hubbert, at least not according to his acolytes. Perhaps we can quote Mr. Hubbert directly: 'THE END OF THE OIL AGE is in sight,' says U.S. petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert If present trends continue, Dr. Hubbert estimates, production will peak in 1995 -- the deadline for alternative forms of energy that must replace petroleum in the sharp drop-off that follows. This quote is from 1974. The reference to Hubbert as the petroleum Malthus is not a slick (pun intended) bit of tarring with a bad brush as Hubbert himself was consistently forthright in linking his analyses of resource to depletion to the need for stabilizing human population growth rates and restraining human demands for improved living standards. There is no snickering involved in opposition to this pseudo-science of resource scarcity and over-population. Just a plain, blunt criticism of its content. Regarding the production issues: Neither as Russia or the USSR has the Russian/Caspian/Georgia/Armenia area ever accounted for 18 million barrels of oil production daily. China's production has only recently reached 3 million barrels a day. North Korea has almost no production. USSR production peaked, I believe, in 1989-1990 at around 11.5 to 12 million barrels daily, collapsing drastically as the productive apparatus was literally worked to death, and the fields themselves severely damaged in an attempt to compensate for the post 1986 price break through accelerated, and destructive, extraction. Russia is now producing 8.3 million barrels/day. Regional oil production in the Caspian is about 1.5 million. Regarding the predicted daily extraction rates: The estimate fluctuates by 20 million barrels daily, from 40-60 million barrels. That, the 20 million, is like taking the US out of the picture all together, so I think the number is, as I called it, a little be elastic, too elastic to be regarded as a prediction. Regarding the non-communist world. We have here a problem of consistency. The Hubbertists are quick to argue that their position is non-ideological, based purely on geological facts, and that the peak of production is blind to social organization. To then move from that to arguments about developed communist non-communist OECD is to acknowledge the economic, social, and ideological bases for this theory. Regarding the graphing and the famous bell curve-- only the production histories of 8 out of 51 non-OECD countries follows the bell curve. I believe it is important, essential really, that we not be stampeded into supporting, reproducing, endorsing scarcity theorizing for several reasons, first of which is that there is little data to support the grand theories of peak and depletion. Second of which is that scarcity is an ideology deployed to curb the unsupportable, as Hubbert would have called it, demands of an unsustainable population, i.e human welfare.
Re: Mike Davis on Hubbert's Peak
sartesian wrote: I believe it is important, essential really, that we not be stampeded into supporting, reproducing, endorsing scarcity theorizing for several reasons, first of which is that there is little data to support the grand theories of peak and depletion. Second of which is that scarcity is an ideology deployed to curb the unsupportable, as Hubbert would have called it, demands of an unsustainable population, i.e human welfare. There is little data to support any grand theories one way or the other. Either that or there is data that can be marshalled to support whatever one wishes to believe. I say this as an expert witness whose job it is to marshall data for arbitrations. The other side is always able to marshall its data that emphatically and unequivocally backs its case. Sometimes you have to crawl deep inside the so-called data to know whether it does or not. In the case of resource depletion, only data after the fact might be decisive but even that could be pooh-poohed as failing to take into account the as-yet unknown. Scarcity is hardly the problem. The problem is learning to live responsibly with abundance. We haven't learned to do that yet and unless we do the population is unsupportable because most of it is already not being supported while a tiny fraction of it is being gorged. Scarcity or no scarcity, non-renewable resources *are* finite. That's why they're called non-renewable. Or do you consider Bill Rees and Mathis Wackernagel hopelessly Malthusian, too. Not being myself versed in the collected works of M. King Hubbert, it's conceivable that your image of him as a raving Malthusian has some basis in something he wrote. I will admit I've encountered followers of Hubbert who give off an unmistakable whiff of Malthusianism. There is also, however a humanistic side to Hubbert that is incompatible with strict Malthusianism. So while not a stampeding endorser of Hubbert, I find some of what he has to say intriguing and useful. Some, I find awkward and nerdish. You seem to have an axe to grind against either the man or his epigones. I suppose working backwards from Kim Sung Il, I might disown Marx. You put curb, unsupportable and unsustainable in quotation marks and couple them with the phrase as Hubbert would have called it. Are you then paraphrasing something you project Hubbert would have said but never actually said? Or are you constructing a phrase out of separate words that Hubbert actually used? One needs to know what deep design lies behind such a peculiar and radically ungrammatical construction. Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Hubbert's Peak
For Mark:- positive review of book in New Scientist by Kenneth Deffeyes http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opbooks.jsp?id=ns23137 Chris Burford London
Re: Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Sam Pawlett [EMAIL PROTECTED]: How are they [poor countries as they develop] to pay for it [limiting environmental damage]? World Bank loans? I try not to assume anything, but it's safe to say that LDC countries will follow the path of least resistance (i.e. the cheapest) towards industrialization. That's what has and is happening. I mean, why import natural gas for 'clean' power boilers when you have lots of domestic coal? Most LDC's are already heavily in debt to the North and will (and should) try to keep an independent energy policy. The premise is that they will grow and become richer countries. By definition, richer countries have more opportunities and resources to, among other things, limit environmental damage. Of course, wealth is not a sufficient condition. But my question was, why should we think that poor countries -- as they grow -- won't develop the will and mechanisms to use these additional opportunities and resources in a way that limits environmental damage? Ha. Maybe in the 19th century [Marx's dictum that undeveloped capitalist countries will tend to develop capitalistically], but it will not happen as long as imperialism and capitalism are hegemonic in the world system. Imperialism (extra-economic forms of exploitation of workers in poor countries by capitalists from rich countries) certainly has a negative influence on the development of capitalism in the poor countries. To put it mildly, colonial plunder didn't help the poor countries to grow. But, important as it is, the relative role of imperialist exploitation in the overall exploitation of workers in the Third World tends to decline as capitalist production proper expands. And I'm talking about capitalist development in the Third World. IMO, the main obstacle to the development of capitalism in the Third World is not imperialism. We would expect the poor countries to pollute like hell as the rich countries have done. Why would that be the case? Why should we not believe in the great wisdom of the old man: One nation can and should learn from others? Not that the learning process is smooth and straightforward. Some leftists (Bello,Martin K.K.Peng) argue that rich countries setting environmental standards for poor ones constitutes a form of imperialism since env. standards are a barrier to economic growth. Northern environmentalism is just another means of keeping the South under the boot. I am sensitive to that argument. If higher environmental (and labor) standards are the weapon of choice of capitalists from rich countries to compete against capitalists in poor countries, why should we oppose them? I'd let the capitalists in the poor countries take care of themselves. Higher environmental and labor costs imposed on capitals that operate in poor countries put these capitals at a disadvantage, but they are not -- by far -- the main obstacles to capitalist growth in these countries. If you imply that, in the long run, capitalist growth is a necessary condition for the living and working conditions of workers in the Third World to improve, I agree. Of course, things would change if a union of rich socialist countries showed up to assist the poor ones. _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: Re: Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Rich countries reduce pollution, in part, by exporting it to poor countries. On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 10:44:00AM -0400, Julio Huato wrote: Sam Pawlett [EMAIL PROTECTED]: How are they [poor countries as they develop] to pay for it [limiting environmental damage]? World Bank loans? I try not to assume anything, but it's safe to say that LDC countries will follow the path of least resistance (i.e. the cheapest) towards industrialization. That's what has and is happening. I mean, why import natural gas for 'clean' power boilers when you have lots of domestic coal? Most LDC's are already heavily in debt to the North and will (and should) try to keep an independent energy policy. The premise is that they will grow and become richer countries. By definition, richer countries have more opportunities and resources to, among other things, limit environmental damage. Of course, wealth is not a sufficient condition. But my question was, why should we think that poor countries -- as they grow -- won't develop the will and mechanisms to use these additional opportunities and resources in a way that limits environmental damage? Ha. Maybe in the 19th century [Marx's dictum that undeveloped capitalist countries will tend to develop capitalistically], but it will not happen as long as imperialism and capitalism are hegemonic in the world system. Imperialism (extra-economic forms of exploitation of workers in poor countries by capitalists from rich countries) certainly has a negative influence on the development of capitalism in the poor countries. To put it mildly, colonial plunder didn't help the poor countries to grow. But, important as it is, the relative role of imperialist exploitation in the overall exploitation of workers in the Third World tends to decline as capitalist production proper expands. And I'm talking about capitalist development in the Third World. IMO, the main obstacle to the development of capitalism in the Third World is not imperialism. We would expect the poor countries to pollute like hell as the rich countries have done. Why would that be the case? Why should we not believe in the great wisdom of the old man: One nation can and should learn from others? Not that the learning process is smooth and straightforward. Some leftists (Bello,Martin K.K.Peng) argue that rich countries setting environmental standards for poor ones constitutes a form of imperialism since env. standards are a barrier to economic growth. Northern environmentalism is just another means of keeping the South under the boot. I am sensitive to that argument. If higher environmental (and labor) standards are the weapon of choice of capitalists from rich countries to compete against capitalists in poor countries, why should we oppose them? I'd let the capitalists in the poor countries take care of themselves. Higher environmental and labor costs imposed on capitals that operate in poor countries put these capitals at a disadvantage, but they are not -- by far -- the main obstacles to capitalist growth in these countries. If you imply that, in the long run, capitalist growth is a necessary condition for the living and working conditions of workers in the Third World to improve, I agree. Of course, things would change if a union of rich socialist countries showed up to assist the poor ones. _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Julio Huato wrote: IMO, the main obstacle to the development of capitalism in the Third World is not imperialism. What is? Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Rich countries reduce pollution, in part, by exporting it to poor countries. If Third World countries get to grow, they are likely to be in a position to limit or negotiate this in better terms. _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Julio Huato wrote: IMO, the main obstacle to the development of capitalism in the Third World is not imperialism. What is? Doug To state it in general may not be particularly helpful. But here it goes. In my opinion, the main obstacle to the development of capitalism in the Third World is not imperialism, but (1) the persistence of pre-capitalist or semi-capitalist forms of production and (2) 'superstructural' constraints, such as laws, lack thereof, etc. Furthermore, these conditions allow for the imperialist proclivity of the rich countries to take easy advantage. Just like capitalist industrial production in the north of the US and in England benefited temporarily from (and reinforced) slave production in the south, imperialism uses and reinforces traditional forms of production, weak legal systems, corruption, etc. in the poor countries. Over time, the benefits dwindle as does the commitment of the capitalists in the rich countries to their old allies. _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
This sounds like the articulation of modes of production approach reviewed back in the late 70's in NLR by Aidan-Foster-Carter. Another part of what Julio says sounds like to me like the Peruvian economist touted by Mario Vargas Llosa, and the late Richard Milhous Nixon, whose name I'm blanking on. Hernando de Soto? BTW, the son of Mario, has a newish book, I just saw with two other co-authors, newly issued by the libertoons at Madison Books, Guide To The Perfect Latin American Idiot, by Plineo A. Mendoza, Mario's son and another author. Blurb on back claims it is funny and was a bestseller in S. America. Looks like on a quick look see a polemic against dependency theory and Fidelismo. Less scholarly than say, The Dependency Moment, by Robert Packenheim published by Princeton Univ. Press a few yrs. back. Comments, please on Packenheim or this idiot book. Michael Pugliese From: Julio Huato [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 7/12/01 12:06:08 PM Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Julio Huato wrote: IMO, the main obstacle to the development of capitalism in the Third World is not imperialism. What is? Doug To state it in general may not be particularly helpful. But here it goes. In my opinion, the main obstacle to the development of capitalism in the Third World is not imperialism, but (1) the persistence of pre-capitalist or semi-capitalist forms of production and (2) 'superstructural' constraints, such as laws, lack thereof, etc. Furthermore, these conditions allow for the imperialist proclivity of the rich countries to take easy advantage. Just like capitalist industrial production in the north of the US and in England benefited temporarily from (and reinforced) slave production in the south, imperialism uses and reinforces traditional forms of production, weak legal systems, corruption, etc. in the poor countries. Over time, the benefits dwindle as does the commitment of the capitalists in the rich countries to their old allies. _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
RE: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
The New York Times Magazine had a lengthy article about Hernando de Soto on July 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/01/magazine/01DESOTO.html?pagewanted=all What is especially interesting is that he is apparently catching on in various places: Aristide in Haiti and Mubarak in Egypt, among others, are working with him. He also made the following comments: At our hotel the last night, I asked de Soto if he expected to see any country he has worked in turn around in his lifetime. If one nation succeeded with his plan on each continent, he told me earlier, it would set the continent on fire. This night there was less bravado. I'll probably see it by the end of my life, he said, shrugging. You don't know. One thing he felt sure of, however. If something like his agenda didn't catch on, a backlash against globalization was unavoidable. The social war is going to be terrible unless you do something, he said. You can't wait 30 years, and it's not just Oliver Twist. It's Oliver Twist with James Bond's weapons. I asked about critics who say he's peddling an idee fixe that ignores the critical role of culture in development. De Soto could barely contain himself. I'm not writing for Harvard students, he said. I'm writing basically for Aristide and Hosni Mubarak and Gloria Arroyo and Fox. Political leaders know this isn't a one-shot idea. They know it amounts to a revolution. David Shemano
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
michael pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED]: This sounds like the articulation of modes of production approach reviewed back in the late 70's in NLR by Aidan-Foster-Carter. Another part of what Julio says sounds like to me like the Peruvian economist touted by Mario Vargas Llosa, and the late Richard Milhous Nixon, whose name I'm blanking on. Hernando de Soto? BTW, the son of Mario, has a newish book, I just saw with two other co-authors, newly issued by the libertoons at Madison Books, Guide To The Perfect Latin American Idiot, by Plineo A. Mendoza, Mario's son and another author. Blurb on back claims it is funny and was a bestseller in S. America. Looks like on a quick look see a polemic against dependency theory and Fidelismo. Less scholarly than say, The Dependency Moment, by Robert Packenheim published by Princeton Univ. Press a few yrs. back. Comments, please on Packenheim or this idiot book. Michael Pugliese I hope that doesn't make me guilty by association. To be fair with these authors, I haven't read any of the materials referenced above. In my own silly mind, what I said follows from Marx. _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Michael Pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I knew I should have phrased that differently! No. It's fair, Michael. And thank you for all the URLs. I have heard of de Soto before. Louis Proyect already honored me by associating me with him. But I haven't read him directly. Now I should. _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Why should we assume that Third World countries, as they industrialize, will not act to limit environmental damage? How are they to pay for it? World Bank loans? I try not to assume anything, but it's safe to say that LDC countries will follow the path of least resistance (i.e. the cheapest) towards industrialization. That's what has and is happening. I mean, why import natural gas for 'clean' power boilers when you have lots of domestic coal? Most LDC's are already heavily in debt to the North and will (and should) try to keep an independent energy policy. The population of the now rich countries may not have a monopoly over environmental concerns. Hope not but as history has shown the poor countries are willing to make huge sacrifices vis a vis the environment. If the infamous statement that, under capitalism, the country that is more developed industrially only shows to the less developed the image of its own future (Marx) has any bit of validity, Ha. Maybe in the 19th century, but it will not happen as long as imperialism and capitalism are hegemonic in the world system. then we'd expect the newly industrialized countries to take some action -- set environmental standards, and try to enforce them. We would expect the poor countries to pollute like hell as the rich countries have done. Some leftists (Bello,Martin K.K.Peng) argue that rich countries setting environmental standards for poor ones constitutes a form of imperialism since env. standards are a barrier to economic growth. Northern environmentalism is just another means of keeping the South under the boot. I am sensitive to that argument. I'll stop here since I've forgotten what the point of this whole exchange was. Sam Pawlett
Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Jim Devine wrote: In any event, people can and do figure out ways to use oil more efficiently each year. = In last December's Monthly Review (vol 52, no 7) John Bellamy Foster wrote a good article resurrecting the Jevons Paradox: Chapter Seven of The Coal Question was entitled 'Of the Economy of Fuel.' Here he argued that increased efficiency in using a natural resource, such as coal, only resulted in increased demand for that resource, not a reduction in demand. This was because such improvement in efficiency led to a rising scale of production. See http://www.monthlyreview.org/1200jbf.htm Michael K.
Deindustrialization? (was Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak)
Jim Devine wrote: In any event, people can and do figure out ways to use oil more efficiently each year. = In last December's Monthly Review (vol 52, no 7) John Bellamy Foster wrote a good article resurrecting the Jevons Paradox: Chapter Seven of The Coal Question was entitled 'Of the Economy of Fuel.' Here he argued that increased efficiency in using a natural resource, such as coal, only resulted in increased demand for that resource, not a reduction in demand. This was because such improvement in efficiency led to a rising scale of production. See http://www.monthlyreview.org/1200jbf.htm Michael K. Foster correctly argues against the tendency to substitute a technological solution (= more efficient technology) for a political one (= ecologically sustainable socialist relations of production reproduction). Unlike Mark, however, Foster doesn't argue against a possibility of a technological solution _under socialism_: * Insofar as Jevons' paradox continues to apply to us today -- that is, insofar as technology by itself (given the present framework of production) offers no way out of our environmental dilemmas, which generally increase with the scale of the economy -- we must either adopt Jevons' conclusion or pursue an alternative that Jevons never discussed and which doubtless never entered his mind: the transformation of the social relations of production in the direction of socialism, a society governed not by the search for profit but by peoples' genuine needs, and the requirements of socio-ecological sustainability.* * An energy revolution is both possible and necessary, but it will be achieved only as part of a broader revolution that takes power away from capital and puts it in the hands of the people where it belongs. Paul M. Sweezy, The Guilt of Capitalism, Monthly Review, vol. 49, no. 2 (June 1997), p. 61. http://www.monthlyreview.org/1200jbf.htm * In contrast, Mark's framework -- the second law of thermodynamics, the law of diminishing returns, etc. -- suggests that he thinks that the problem is not so much capitalism as industrialization that the solution is deindustrialization under socialism, substituting labor-intensive production for energy-intensive one. Yoshie
Deindustrialization? (was Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak)
Yoshie writes: In contrast, Mark's framework -- the second law of thermodynamics, the law of diminishing returns, etc. -- suggests that he thinks that the problem is not so much capitalism as industrialization that the solution is deindustrialization under socialism, substituting labor-intensive production for energy-intensive one. = I won't speak for Mark, whose erudition in this matter is beyond reproach IMO, but I will say that, historically, it is capitalist development that has been the model. Even Lenin (and later Stalin, and now China) drank from the well dug by Taylor, Gantt et al. That is, what we supposed to aspire to has been driven by capitalist logic primarily, which naturally skews priorities and distorts the full development of human personality and community. And before some bore hits back with an utterly predictable (and defeatist) Well how would socialism differ? it would, by definition, be far more democratic. Capitalism has replaced labour intensity with energy intensity against the wishes of many former skilled trade practitioners, often reducing the quality of the end product in the process. Construction and home furniture spring to mind here. Food and agriculture even more so (think of recent British experience). Meanwhile increased reliance upon electronics and cyber-technology will only intensify energy demand. And there is much capitalist industry that can, without great disagreement among socialists, be decommissioned. That pertaining to the military sector would be a good place to start. Other readily dispensable accoutrements of waste, as highlighted by Veblen, Baran Sweezy, etc., would be the embedding of the sales effort in the production process. I agree with a point made by Michael P. some time back: future generations, as well as the present, have much to be grateful to Cuba for, given its remarkable resilience in the face of significant hardship. Michael K.
Deindustrialization? (was Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak)
Yoshie writes: You might clarify your political program, then. If not deindustrialization labor-intensive production under socialism, what do you think would allow human beings to live with the constraints that you have us posit? Do you agree with Sweezy Foster that an energy revolution will be possible under socialism? Or you don't have a political program consistent with your theory? = One reason why listers might be afraid to jump into any discussion is this sort of challenge. Given the vastness of the task facing socialists, such false holism is not worthy of a casual email; rather, it would be the subject of a whole discussion group. Maybe PEN-L could evolve that way. But you could sound a bit more constructive, rather than an implicit offer to put up or shut up. Given the obvious time and effort Mark has spent contributing of late, that's unjustified. Michael K.
Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Sam Pawlett said: Ok. I think I've nailed the problem: the energy base of capitalism is only sustainable as long as technological change and efficiency improvements offset the increasing marginal costs associated with exploiting the declining quality of the resource base, (( CB: Is it the declining quality or the declining quantity of the resource base ? so much so that the marginal costs of expanding energy supply may exceed the marginal benefits (once environmental factors are factored in.) So, I think, it makes more sense to speak of the end of cheap energy and a transition to costlier energy. This is exactly the discussion we need to have and to which economists can indeed contribute. And this decline in available energy is an unprecedented situation in the history of industrial capitalism. Mark Jones
Deindustrialization? (was Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak)
Yoshie It's not clear to me that we disagree on anything substantive. The implication that I'm somehow having a go at Lenin is misplaced, because the point is not how mistaken Lenin was, but how constrained by his circumstances he was. Those circumstances included civil war and the unwarranted intervention of Britain and the United States. There's not much room for utopianism in those circumstances. You also say: Today's eco-socialists, who tend to think they are so much smarter more ecologically sensitive than Lenin, et al., will also encounter a multitude of comparable political problems if they ever get around to actually making a transition to socialism. = Of course they will. Given what we have discovered in the meantime, however, I don't think it's an indictment of Lenin or anyone else _at that time_ that they were not as attuned to ecological problems as present-day activists and theorists. But who are these eco-socialists that you cite? I don't regard Mark as one of these. = You continue: Decommissioning the military sector would be an excellent idea once the entire world left capitalism imperialism to the dustbin of history. An unfortunate reality is that socialists can't lay down arms altogether until war against them ends. If socialism is to be democratic, freely associated producers of a possible socialist future (if such a future comes) -- rather than today's eco-socialists -- _must decide for themselves_ whether they would rather have labor- or energy-intensive production, or more likely what mixture of both, in view of social natural constraints that they face. I agree with a point made by Michael P. some time back: future generations, as well as the present, have much to be grateful to Cuba for, given its remarkable resilience in the face of significant hardship. No doubt, but I also believe Cubans are relieved to find a friend in Venezuela (see for instance Cuba, Venezuela Sign Oil Deal at http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/cuba/US-Cuba/ap103000.html). = Well all of this sorta goes to show, just like Mark's energy stuff (in my reading anyway) that socialism in one country is even less likely to work now than before. Again, I don't really understand what is the problem here. Where is the beef? Elsewhere you write: ...if Mark stopped dismissing others' political programs on the grounds that such are utopian based upon the constraints that he has us posit (the constraints that others have yet to accept, mind you). Naturally, one is curious as to what then is not utopian in the terms of his theory. Spelling out what isn't utopian doesn't amount to a blueprint. It merely should indicate the limits of the possible. = Well, without expressing a view on the content of Mark's posts, it's a fairly hard and unreasonable taskmaster who would take him to task for lack of details. His posts have been lengthy and have cited sources. The argumentation is fully supported. What I've seen in response is skepticism (no bad thing) and caricaturisation (definitely a bad thing) together with unhelpful belittling of Mark and his sources as Jeremiahs. Maybe you or Doug could explain for everyone's benefit what exactly is Judith Butler's programme. Or even your own -- Doug, at least onlist, did not respond to Charles Brown's invitation last week to do just that. That's his prerogative. But pushing people for programmes is generally not helpful, and only invites tit-for-tat responses of the style championed by an erstwhile participant of PEN-L. Especially if it is done to discredit an analysis of the present that stands or falls independent of any programme that may derive from it. Michael K.
Re: Re: Deindustrialization? (was Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak)
Michael Keaney says: It's not clear to me that we disagree on anything substantive. The implication that I'm somehow having a go at Lenin is misplaced, because the point is not how mistaken Lenin was, but how constrained by his circumstances he was. Those circumstances included civil war and the unwarranted intervention of Britain and the United States. There's not much room for utopianism in those circumstances. Yoshie writes: If we are ever successful in making a transition to socialism, we will likely face civil war unwarranted intervention (with increased military powers on the part of imperialists, compared to what the Bolsheviks faced), which will have to lead to the postponement of ecologically-minded socialism until military threats to the existence of socialism get put down, our increased scientific knowledge regarding the environment notwithstanding. There is nothing more ecologically destructive than war. in addition, Louis P. has argued (pretty convincingly) that the early Bolshevik regime was pretty ecologically-minded (especially by the standards of the day), until the rot set in Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Deindustrialization? (was Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak)
I wrote: in addition, Louis P. has argued (pretty convincingly) that the early Bolshevik regime was pretty ecologically-minded (especially by the standards of the day), until the rot set in says Yoshie: Many Greens understand the rot in question to be the ideology of productivism, but I think that the main problem was rather the construction of the national security state, which imperialism made necessary ( the bureaucratic elite inflated). The national security state meant that social movements from below -- including environmental movements -- had a difficult time getting started, with a result that citizens didn't have the means to put political checks upon the extent of ecological destruction. in addition, as Isaac Deutscher argues, there were internal problems within Russia, such as the structural conflict between the peasants and the proletariat. see you next week... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Deindustrialization? (was Re: Yet another takeon Hubbert's peak)
And there is much capitalist industry that can, without great disagreement among socialists, be decommissioned. That pertaining to the military sector would be a good place to start. Michael K. Military spending is 2% of OECD GDP, of which only 1/4 is the procurement of products that are peculiarly military. We don't live in the late 1950s, when military spending was 10% of GDP and even Eisenhower was scared of the military-industrial complex. Try to keep your arguments from being more than one generation out of date, OK? Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Deindustrialization? (was Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak)
The last sentence is unnecessary. On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 02:01:30PM -0700, Brad DeLong wrote: And there is much capitalist industry that can, without great disagreement among socialists, be decommissioned. That pertaining to the military sector would be a good place to start. Michael K. Military spending is 2% of OECD GDP, of which only 1/4 is the procurement of products that are peculiarly military. We don't live in the late 1950s, when military spending was 10% of GDP and even Eisenhower was scared of the military-industrial complex. Try to keep your arguments from being more than one generation out of date, OK? Brad DeLong -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RE: Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
I think most people agree with you to the following: 1)there is an impending global energy shortage that will cause a crisis within capitalism 2) the New Economy doesn't alter the fact that capitalism is dependent upon traditional energy sources . You seem to suggest two somewhat contradictory causes of the energy crisis:: an accumulation crisis so that even existing reserves cannot be developed but also a resource shortage of conventional energy reserves that will not be replaced by alternative sources. There seems to be disagreement about the time frame of the crisis and the degree to which capitalism could mitigate the effects of the crisis through development of alternative energy etc. Personally I think that similar crisis scenarios could be offered based on Global Warming -as Paul Phillips suggested a long time ago. Shortage of quality water. Population growth that threatens the environment in all sorts of ways, and would threaten the environment even more as developing countries use resources at rates per capita of developed countries. I will make some detailed commentary on some of your other posts ,meanwhile I think that it is well to point out that it is not easy to make accurate predictions about energy reserves and production over the short term. Even though it may be clear that say before the end of the century or earlier most if not all of the oil and natural gas reserves whose extraction is economically feasible within captialism will have been exhausted this tells us little about what will happen in the next decade. However it surely is important how quickly the crisis develops because this gives time to develop alternatives. You seem to have an apocalyptic vision and a touching faith in prediction in an area where exact predicition over the short term is difficult. When Lynch points out that Campbell has erred in the past a number of times on the side of pessimism. You dismiss this as having nothing to do with your arguments. Yet you use Campbell. Your response makes no sense. Here is a post from my son who has obviously decided that he can add nothing to the debate Cheers, Ken Hanly I am not certain if I can really add much more to the debate. I have just tried to suggest some factors that might make the immediate concerns about over-all shortages of energy in the next five to ten years less of a concern. In ten years, it is certainly difficult to tell. Of course in recent experience, California has had a crisis in electricity and natural gas supplies so there is no denying that an energy crisis can't or won't occur. The article about the North Sea was very interesting. It certainly seems likely that there won't be any further increases in North Sea output unless there are some deeper resources that might be drilled. The article's suggested decline rate for the North Sea looks higher than would be typical for a large producing region even a mature one, however. The next few years in the energy market should be interesting. I will certainly be monitoring what happens to market supply and demand in different energy markets in the next two to three years to see what happens. I haven't made a detailed analysis so I certainly don't know whether there will be substantial increase in oil prices in the next ten years. So many factors must be considered. How fast will demand grow? Even a small error in predicting the average growth of demand and its adjustment to changing prices creates a large difference over ten years. Predicting supply is also a hard question because it requires forecasting the rate of new discoveries and the success of exploitation of existing discoveries across the world. Even forecasting future output in existing fields based on steady declines in output can be substantially wrong. Existing fields that have been in production for a long time can increase production from current levels and have extended production life if investment is made in enhanced recovery techniques such as CO2 flooding. For example, oil fields in Saskatchewan in the south-east that have been in production since the late fifties are now expected to experience expanding output again as CO2 flood is implemented at a cost of roughly C$1.1 billion over the life of production. By world standards, it is a minor field and has declined to 15,000 barrels/day but it is expected to increase to 30,000 barrels/day with CO2 flooding. The net additional output is expected to be 120 million barrels so it is not cheap oil but it is economic thanks to OPEC pricing policies. With simple recovery techniques a lot of oil is left in the ground but enhanced recovery techniques (water flood and then CO2 floods) make it possible to extract considerably more oil without discovering any additional oil reserves. With the potential for enhanced oil recovery techniques, one has to be very careful about predicting large decline rates even in old fields in the next five five to ten
Re: Re: RE: Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Ken Hanly wrote: I think most people agree with you to the following: 1)there is an impending global energy shortage that will cause a crisis within capitalism 2) the New Economy doesn't alter the fact that capitalism is dependent upon traditional energy sources I'm not sure I agree with 1); it's been wrongly asserted so many times in the past - staring over 100 years ago - that one should be pretty careful about predicting it again. I notice that Mark forwarded an item from the FT about a dry hole in Azerbaijan. There was a story next to that in the print edition of the paper on Japanese investment in Iran which will develop that country's reserves and production capacity. But I guess a glass at 50% capacity is always half empty. Doug
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
At 01:19 PM 7/9/01 -0400, you wrote: But I guess a glass at 50% capacity is always half empty. pessimist: the glass is half empty. optimist: the glass is half full. realist: it's half a glass of water. surrealist: it's a cow. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
At 01:19 PM 7/9/01 -0400, you wrote: But I guess a glass at 50% capacity is always half empty. pessimist: the glass is half empty. optimist: the glass is half full. realist: it's half a glass of water. surrealist: it's a cow. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine = nerd: it's a bunch of 0's and 1's. nonnerdly, Ian
Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/09/01 01:19PM Ken Hanly wrote: I think most people agree with you to the following: 1)there is an impending global energy shortage that will cause a crisis within capitalism 2) the New Economy doesn't alter the fact that capitalism is dependent upon traditional energy sources I'm not sure I agree with 1); it's been wrongly asserted so many times in the past - staring over 100 years ago - that one should be pretty careful about predicting it again. ( CB: Offhand it would seem straight forward that quite a bit of fossil fuels have been used in the last 100 years, which would suggest a bit of a difference between the prediction 100 years ago and the prediction today. (( I notice that Mark forwarded an item from the FT about a dry hole in Azerbaijan. There was a story next to that in the print edition of the paper on Japanese investment in Iran which will develop that country's reserves and production capacity. But I guess a glass at 50% capacity is always half empty. (( CB: Wouldn't it be moving toward more than half empty , hasn't the half used up been in a little over 100 years, and aren't we using it up at a much faster rate today than it was being used up 75 to 100 years ago ? So, _if_ it is half empty, wouldn't the other half be used up in less than 100 years at the current rate ?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
post-modernist: it's two glasses, one is the panoptical (phallocratic) glass, the Other is its decentered (womanist) subject. - Original Message - From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 2:02 PM Subject: [PEN-L:14847] Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak At 01:19 PM 7/9/01 -0400, you wrote: But I guess a glass at 50% capacity is always half empty. pessimist: the glass is half empty. optimist: the glass is half full. realist: it's half a glass of water. surrealist: it's a cow. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine = nerd: it's a bunch of 0's and 1's. nonnerdly, Ian
Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Charles Brown wrote: CB: Wouldn't it be moving toward more than half empty , hasn't the half used up been in a little over 100 years, and aren't we using it up at a much faster rate today than it was being used up 75 to 100 years ago ? So, _if_ it is half empty, wouldn't the other half be used up in less than 100 years at the current rate ? Yeah, except that the glass keeps filling - maybe not at the rate it's being drained, but discoveries happen all the time, and old fields give up more oil than was thought possible because of technological trickery. And, there was that story in the WSJ a year or two ago saying that some geologists think that oil is burbling up from deep in the earth - that maybe it's not as finite a resource as was thought. Doug
Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/09/01 03:47PM Charles Brown wrote: CB: Wouldn't it be moving toward more than half empty , hasn't the half used up been in a little over 100 years, and aren't we using it up at a much faster rate today than it was being used up 75 to 100 years ago ? So, _if_ it is half empty, wouldn't the other half be used up in less than 100 years at the current rate ? Yeah, except that the glass keeps filling - maybe not at the rate it's being drained, but discoveries happen all the time, and old fields give up more oil than was thought possible because of technological trickery. And, there was that story in the WSJ a year or two ago saying that some geologists think that oil is burbling up from deep in the earth - that maybe it's not as finite a resource as was thought. (( CB: Seems like the most rational (:)) approach would be to prepare for a worst case scenario, given even the experts don't seem to be sure. Then if there's lots more than the worst case scenario, hey, preparing for the worst won't have hurt anything. I don't mean to say preparing for the worst case ( in this case) is easy; and eventually some new types of fuels we would have to find. But even if it is not as finite, I find it hard to believe it is not finite, so eventually the worst case will come anyway , so why not start preparing for it , even if it's 500 years. Might take that long to discover new fuels. I realize this is very longviewism, and in the long run we are all dead , and all that. Then when you add in global warming, that adds another jag.
Re: RE: Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Mark Jones wrote: Doug Henwood wrote: Yeah, except that the glass keeps filling - maybe not at the rate it's being drained, but discoveries happen all the time, and old fields give up more oil than was thought possible because of technological trickery. And, there was that story in the WSJ a year or two ago saying that some geologists think that oil is burbling up from deep in the earth - that maybe it's not as finite a resource as was thought. Doug, this is delusional. We need to ground the debate in serious study, or move on. Serious study = positions that support yours, right? At the risk of alarming Don Roper... Doug Wall Street Journal - April 16, 1999 Odd Reservoir Off Louisiana Prods Oil Experts to Seek a Deeper Meaning By CHRISTOPHER COOPER Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL HOUSTON -- Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330. Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while, it behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island 330's output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day. Then suddenly -- some say almost inexplicably -- Eugene Island's fortunes reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing 13,000 barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million barrels from 60 million. Stranger still, scientists studying the field say the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different from the oil that gushed 10 years ago. Fill 'er Up All of which has led some scientists to a radical theory: Eugene Island is rapidly refilling itself, perhaps from some continuous source miles below the Earth's surface. That, they say, raises the tantalizing possibility that oil may not be the limited resource it is assumed to be. It kind of blew me away, says Jean Whelan, a geochemist and senior researcher from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Connected to Woods Hole since 1973, Dr. Whelan says she considered herself a traditional thinker until she encountered the phenomenon in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, she says, I believe there is a huge system of oil just migrating deep underground. Conventional wisdom says the world's supply of oil is finite, and that it was deposited in horizontal reservoirs near the surface in a process that took millions of years. Since the economies of entire countries ride on the fundamental notion that oil reserves are exhaustible, any contrary evidence would change the way people see the game, turn the world view upside down, says Daniel Yergin, a petroleum futurist and industry consultant in Cambridge, Mass. Oil and renewable resource are not words that often appear in the same sentence. Mideast Mystery Doomsayers to the contrary, the world contains far more recoverable oil than was believed even 20 years ago. Between 1976 and 1996, estimated global oil reserves grew 72%, to 1.04 trillion barrels. Much of that growth came in the past 10 years, with the introduction of computers to the oil patch, which made drilling for oil more predictable. Still, most geologists are hard-pressed to explain why the world's greatest oil pool, the Middle East, has more than doubled its reserves in the past 20 years, despite half a century of intense exploitation and relatively few new discoveries. It would take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs and prehistoric plants to account for the estimated 660 billion barrels of oil in the region, notes Norman Hyne, a professor at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. Off-the-wall theories often turn out to be right, he says. Even some of the most staid U.S. oil companies find the Eugene Island discoveries intriguing. These reservoirs are refilling with oil, acknowledges David Sibley, a Chevron Corp. geologist who has monitored the work at Eugene Island. Mr. Sibley cautions, however, that much research remains to be done on the source of that oil. At this point, it's not black and white. It's gray, he says. Although the world has been drilling for oil for generations, little is known about the nature of the resource or the underground activities that led to its creation. And because even conservative estimates say known oil reserves will last 40 years or more, most big oil companies haven't concerned themselves much with hunting for deep sources like the reservoirs scientists believe may exist under Eugene Island. Economics never hindered the theorists, however. One, Thomas Gold, a respected astronomer and professor emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., has held for years that oil is actually a renewable, primordial syrup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by
Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Charles Brown wrote: Then when you add in global warming, that adds another jag. Like I've said many times, that's the real worry. Mark's petro-malthusianism isn't the main worry by far. Doug
Re: Re: RE: Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
I'm no geologist (nor do I play one on TV), but it's possible (as Thomas Gold suggests) that the supply is like the supply of magma under the ground. It would go away _very_ slowly as the earth cools. In any event, people can and do figure out ways to use oil more efficiently each year. Wall Street Journal - April 16, 1999 Odd Reservoir Off Louisiana Prods Oil Experts to Seek a Deeper Meaning By CHRISTOPHER COOPER Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL HOUSTON -- Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330. Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while, it behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island 330's output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day. Then suddenly -- some say almost inexplicably -- Eugene Island's fortunes reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing 13,000 barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million barrels from 60 million. Stranger still, scientists studying the field say the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different from the oil that gushed 10 years ago. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/09/01 04:15PM Charles Brown wrote: Then when you add in global warming, that adds another jag. Like I've said many times, that's the real worry. Mark's petro-malthusianism isn't the main worry by far. CB: Perhaps . In a table turning way, petro-malthusianism is a sort of dogmatically Marxist ,negative epithet.
Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Have we any examples from the past of people making 100 year predictions re energy? Are any near the mark? Were they mostly too optimistic or pessimistic? Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Sam Pawlett [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Marxism [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Pen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 6:44 PM Subject: [PEN-L:14869] : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak Today, in terms of both entropy and accumulation, the indicators are all set the opposite way. The great hoped-for innovations like fusion energy, the Internet etc, haven't panned out. Meanwhile, accessible, low-entropy reserves of fossil energy have started to run out and extraction of the remaining reserve is becoming more costly in both energy and value terms. Ok. I think I've nailed the problem: the energy base of capitalism is only sustainable as long as technological change and efficiency improvements offset the increasing marginal costs associated with exploiting the declining quality of the resource base, so much so that the marginal costs of expanding energy supply may exceed the marginal benefits (once environmental factors are factored in.) So, I think, it makes more sense to speak of the end of cheap energy and a transition to costlier energy. As the costs of exploiting the declining resource bases increase, so does the share of energy as a percent of total economic product. And an energy system that claims a constantly rising share of economic product is not sustainable (in the long run). The problem then becomes one of both paying too much and 'having too little (a positive feedback mechanism there). Cost increases mean the economic benefits of expanding energy supply will flow in an extremely unequal manner. Alternatives to fossil are worse. Even though the raw energy is free (e.g. the sun) the technology and labor required to make electricity is high, from 1.5 to 5 times as high as fossil according to the most optimistic views. At best, costlier energy means that less developed countries will not be able to industrialize the way the North has: through cheap energy. The only way will be for the North to decrease consumption. Because of acute capital shortage, countries of the South will follow the cheapest energy supply for their industrialization efforts and the subsequent bid to raise their standards of living to Northern levels. This means burning coal and biomass (there are new coal-fired boilers coming online almost daily in places like Indonesia.) This will (and is) wreaking havoc on the global ecology and environment. According to one energy 'expert' the following is the most optimistic scenario: From John P. Holdren The Transition to Costlier Energy. Intro. to *Energy Efficiency and Human Acitivity* Lee Schipper and Stephen Myers Cambridge U Press.1992. Here's Holdren's kick at the can (which I think is hopelessly utopian barring significant drastic political change): The scenerio is constructed, for simplicity, using just two subpopulations, consisting in 1990 of 1,2 billion rich and 4.1 billion poor. (The dividing line is an average GNP per person of 4000 US dollars per yer.) I assume that energy per person among the population of the rich countries can be reduced by 2% per year between 1990 and 2025, with gains in economic well-being to dcome from increases in energy efficiency exceeding 2% per year...For the poor countries, I assume that the rate of energy use per person increases at 2% per year, which, together with efficiency improvements, would yield a much higher rate of increase in economic well-being. The result is a halving of energy use per person in the rich countries between 1990 and 2025 and a doubling in energy use per person in the poor countries. After another 25 years, during which rich country energy use per person falls at around 1% per year and poor country energy use per person grows at just over 1% per year, the rich-poor distinction has disappeared. Because of the momentum built into the age structure of the world population, the population does not actually stabilize, at around 10 billion people, until after the year 2100. I assume that energy per person holds constant at 3 kilowatts per person after 2050, with gains in economic well being coming from innovations that further increase energy efficiency. p45. Population energy/person totalenergy (billions)(kilowatt/person) (terawatts) 1990 Rich 1.2 7.59 Poor 4.1 1 4.1 2025 Rich 1.4 3.8 5.3 Poor 6.8 2 13.6 2050 9.1 3 18.9 2100 10.0 3 30
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
to separate the tar from the sand and rock. A slurry of the tar sand with water is heated to 50 to 80 o C. This lifts the tar from the sand surface and the tar, which floats can be separated from the sand, which sinks. Other processes are under development, including: SOLVENT BASED EXTRACTION Really a solvent assisted hot water process, suitable for lower grade tar sands. Treated with water and a solvent, hydrocarbon or methylene chloride. Counter current operation, with water and solvent recycled. Obtain a purer bitumen, and a solid tailings, but more expensive. AOSTRA TACUIK PROCESS Direct retorting or heating (Coking) of tar sands, Heat to evaporate oils, so separate oil sands and partially upgrade at the same time. Leave behind as much carbon (coke) as possible, so the hydrogen content of the rest is incrased. However, similar systems for upgrading oil shale have nor worked out well. IN SITU RECOVERY Steam The 70% of the resource that is below 170 m depth will have to be extracted using in-situ methods as it is too deep to mine using open pits. One advantage is that it is warm enough at this depth to keep the tar in a viscous fluid form. The methods most likely to be used would involve heating the tar in some way in order to make it less viscous, so that it will flow to a well and can be pumped out. This is being done by Imperial Oil at Cold Lake. The bitumen here is more like a heavy oil than tar. A huff and puff technique is used. Steam is made at the surface and pumped down into a 3 thick sand layer which lies under the 27 metre thick layer of tar sands (huff). After many months the temperature of the tar is high enough for it to flow through the sand, pushed by the pressure of the steam and it can be pumped out (puff). ( huff, h for heat, puff, p for pressure). Up to 50% of bitumen/oil can be obtained in this way. Cold Lake produces about 130,000 bbl per day. Add things to reduce surface tension of oil/water, to steam, such as CO2, surfactants and hydrocarbons. Combustion Another way to heat the tar is to burn, underground, some of the oil. It has proven very difficult to control the fires so that they mainly heat the tar sand layer and not the surrounding rocks and also move slowly across the tar sand layer. BITUMEN UPGRADING This will be discussed later in the course. The bitumen from the tar sands has a low hydrogen content ( 10%) which has to be increased to 13% in order to convert the bitumen into a synthetic crude oil which can be sent to a refinery and treated in the same way as a natural crude oil. The amount of sulfur and nitrogen in the bitumen must also be decreased, from 5 to 0.2% and from 0.5 to 0.02 % respectively. Waste Products The waste sands could be processed to obtain titanium and vanadium. They are eventually taken back and used to fill up the open pit mines. Tailings (waste slurry) are a problem with this process as they are very stable and cannot be easily separated into water and solids. They are pumped into large tailings ponds, over time the tailings will probably separate out. - Original Message - From: Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2001 3:20 AM Subject: [PEN-L:14806] RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak Ken Hanly: Of course I forgot. References you supply demolish the idea that tar sands ,or anything else I expect, make an atom of difference. The discussion is about the articulation of accumulation crisis and energy crisis. In that context, Alberta tar sands are simply a distratcion. They are a grave threat to Canada's environment and add to GHG emission. That's the only relevance. Mark Jones
Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Ken Hanly: Have we any examples from the past of people making 100 year predictions re energy? Are any near the mark? Were they mostly too optimistic or pessimistic? Yeah, well I think Jevons predicted the end of coal. But more to the point, it's time to move beyond 'the boy who cried wolf objection.' I used to make it myself. Besides being an uninteresting conversation stopper, it is an evasion of the issues. Because people were wrong in the past does not mean people will be wrong now or in the future and that people should not go about trying to understand where the world is headed based on contemporary knowledge. It's like sceptical arguments in epistemology but how do you _really_ know that is a dagger you see before you? or what about the problem of induction and the fallibility of human knowledge? or what if a giant meteor hits the earth? Simply assuming that some magical solution will appear in the future that will solve humanity's problems requires a leap of faith that Kierkagaard would not sanction let alone any Marxist supposedly wedded to a scientific conception of the world. The point of trying to track trends into the future is to change things now to give people a guideline of what and where to change , rather than placing faith in magic and mad scientists developing time machines. If you disagree with the analysis and the projections then refute them. Sam Pawlett
Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Sam Pawlett [EMAIL PROTECTED]: At best, costlier energy means that less developed countries will not be able to industrialize the way the North has: through cheap energy. The only way will be for the North to decrease consumption. Because of acute capital shortage, countries of the South will follow the cheapest energy supply for their industrialization efforts and the subsequent bid to raise their standards of living to Northern levels. This means burning coal and biomass (there are new coal-fired boilers coming online almost daily in places like Indonesia.) This will (and is) wreaking havoc on the global ecology and environment. Why should we assume that Third World countries, as they industrialize, will not act to limit environmental damage? The population of the now rich countries may not have a monopoly over environmental concerns. If the infamous statement that, under capitalism, the country that is more developed industrially only shows to the less developed the image of its own future (Marx) has any bit of validity, then we'd expect the newly industrialized countries to take some action -- set environmental standards, and try to enforce them. After all, the core of the environmental movement is located, well, in the core countries. _ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7121.html Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage Kenneth S. Deffeyes Cloth | October 2001 | $24.95 / £16.50 285 pp. | 6 x 9 | 25 halftones, 50 line illus. Shopping Cart Endorsements Were the energy concerns of the past year a preview of everyone's future? Will gas lines in the coming years make those of 1973 look short? Is the present chaos in oil prices the leading edge of a more serious crisis that will rock national economies around the world? According to Kenneth Deffeyes, a geologist with extensive personal experience in the oil industry, the answer to all of these questions is yes. World oil production is peaking and will start to fall for good sometime during this decade. In 1956, geophysicist M. King Hubbert--then working at the Shell research lab in Houston--predicted that U.S. oil production would reach its highest level in the early 1970s. Though roundly criticized by oil experts and economists, Hubbert's prediction came true in 1971. The hundred-year period during which most of the world's oil was discovered became known as Hubbert's peak--a span of time almost comically shorter than the hundreds of millions of years the oil deposits took to form. Using the same methods that Hubbert used to make his stunningly accurate prediction, Deffeyes finds that a peak in world oil production is less than five years away. And he argues that new exploration and production technologies can't save us. While long-term solutions exist in the form of conservation and alternative energy sources, they probably cannot--and almost certainly will not--be enacted in time to evade short-term catastrophe. Perhaps most surprising is that none of this is news to most specialists and many associated with the petroleum industry. But politicians, the media, and the public at large aren't hearing about it. Deffeyes wants to make sure they do. Thoroughly accessible and filled with entertaining anecdotes, his book demonstrates to the general reader why a global energy crisis is just around the corner. And, though the near-term scenario is ugly, he tells us what we can do as countries and individuals to thrive after Hubbert's peak has passed. Kenneth S. Deffeyes is Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Before joining the Princeton faculty in 1967, he conducted research at the Shell Oil research laboratory in Houston and taught at the University of Minnesota and Oregon State University. The coauthor of Physical Geology and the author of numerous papers, he is perhaps best known to general readers as the guide/mentor in John McPhee's series of popular books on geology, collected and republished under the title Annals of the Former World. Endorsements: ''This book is important in that it is addressed to the general public, which is overwhelmingly ignorant of the fundamentals of earth's resources and basic economics. It will be very useful to teachers, news media personnel, and public policy makers.''--Craig W. Van Kirk, Colorado School of Mines ''The timing of this book is excellent. Energy issues will be heard with increasing frequency during the next five years, and the general public will be looking for information with which they can make sense of changes in energy supply and prices.''--Robert K. Kaufmann, Boston University ''I read this book with pleasure and profit, learning a great deal painlessly.''--Robert M. Solow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Re: RE: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Tar sands as a source of oil will remain fantasy? Already just the mining of the Alberta sands produces over 15 percent of Canadas oil. See the chart at as well: As conventional production declines, tar sands production is rapidly expanding. In situ extraction is being used NOW as well as mining. There are substantial extractable reserves. The tar sands are already on stream at least the Alberta ones are; and they are among the largest if not the largest in the world. Here is the Alberta govt. website: http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/sands/royalty/oilsand1.htm Cheers Ken Hanly . As for non-conventional resources like tar-sands--let alone hydrogen--they will remain mere fantasy. In the wake of a sever slow-down, neither capital--nor, crucially, effective demand-- will exist capable of bringing the alternatives onstream. World capitalism can slip into a post-crash equilibrium state which can endure for decades or longer, amid unprecedented social stress and immiseration. To say this is not (obviously) to seek it or to welcome it; but only by resolutely analysing historical processes, and not by hiding from them, can we hope to positively influence outcomes.
Re: RE: Re: RE: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Of course I forgot. References you supply demolish the idea that tar sands ,or anything else I expect, make an atom of difference. Nevertheless the development of the tar sands is reality not fantasy. It may be that they will not make a large difference but they surely will make some difference. It does not further your case either to call something that is a reality a fantasy or claim that what will make some difference will make none. But how do you know that your own references are so reliable. See for example the following on some of the problems involved: http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/jon/world-oil.dir/lynch/worldoil.html Anyway the Alberta Oil Sands are on line and production is increasing. However I guess the companies involved must be going broke- although that is news to me- since according to your sources their development is not logistically or economically feasible. How then is it that production is increasing? Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2001 6:55 PM Subject: [PEN-L:14799] RE: Re: RE: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak Ken, only today I sent you offlist the refs which inter alia demolish the idea that tar sands will ever or could ever make an atom of difference. Even if they were environmentally feasible (like most unconventional petroleum, they're not) they are not logistically or economically feasible. The EROEI (energy return on energy invested) is just too low. The economics are just staggeringly adverse. What we are talking about here is not a few percentage points plus or minus at the margins, which is all Alberta tar sands could ever be. The *whole* of renewables (photovoltaic, wind, wave, geothermal etc) PLUS Athabasca and Orinoco heavy oil, tar sands etc amounts to less than 5% of commercial energy supply. There will NEVER be an absolute shortage of even conventional oil and Shaikh Yamani is right to worry, as he did recently, that Opec can put itself out of business long before oil runs out. When BP reinvented itself as 'Beyond Petroleum' a Fleet St wag said they meant 'Beyond Parody': 99% of BP's business is and almost certainly always will be, in fossil energy. You have to look beyond the hype. Mark -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Ken Hanly Sent: 08 July 2001 00:23 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:14795] Re: RE: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak Tar sands as a source of oil will remain fantasy? Already just the mining of the Alberta sands produces over 15 percent of Canadas oil. See the chart at as well: As conventional production declines, tar sands production is rapidly expanding. In situ extraction is being used NOW as well as mining. There are substantial extractable reserves. The tar sands are already on stream at least the Alberta ones are; and they are among the largest if not the largest in the world. Here is the Alberta govt. website: http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/sands/royalty/oilsand1.htm Cheers Ken Hanly . As for non-conventional resources like tar-sands--let alone hydrogen--they will remain mere fantasy. In the wake of a sever slow-down, neither capital--nor, crucially, effective demand-- will exist capable of bringing the alternatives onstream. World capitalism can slip into a post-crash equilibrium state which can endure for decades or longer, amid unprecedented social stress and immiseration. To say this is not (obviously) to seek it or to welcome it; but only by resolutely analysing historical processes, and not by hiding from them, can we hope to positively influence outcomes.
