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Peak Oil

This is a PAST event. See "Meeting Notes" section for audio, video, documents and other information.

Original event date/time: Friday May 26th, 2006, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

"The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century" by James Howard Kunstler followed by dinner. Book Details

Abstract:

This is a past event.

Meeting Notes:

Basically we were discussing the future of oil. Before the meeting I made a price table based on the M. King Hubbert formula, which you can on my personal website at http://www.waynerad.com/0027.php and people had a lot of fun at the meeting ripping holes in it. Amanda correctly pointed out that any time a theory fails to predict what you actually observe, the theory must be wrong. My price table, which I created last year (in June 2005) failed to predict the increase to the current price of oil (between $70 and $75/barrel). Amanda said that since it didn't match the actual oil prices, that the whole M. King Hubbert model was invalid and should be thrown out. The problem is the whole "Peak Oil" theory, on which the "Long Emergency" book and every other bookn on "Peak Oil" is based, is based entirely on the M. King Hubbert formula. I said I thought the recent changes in prices were due to politics and not fundamental shortage in supply as indicated by the M. King Hubbert formula. So we spent quite a bit of time debating the validity of the M. King Hubbert formula.

The other issue with my model was that I assumed constant demand. That works for "energy-saturated" countries like the US, the EU, and Japan, but not for other countries especially China. So the prices in the table must be wrong because they fail to account for increased Chinese economic output and increased demand for oil from China. So I've been thinking about how to fix the math formula to account for Chinese demand.

On other issues, John asked whether it would be a bad thing if the price of oil went up, and people just did a little less driving. The price of oil is higher in Europe and people do just fine. Damon pointed out that higher gas prices hurt people on the fringes of society, like the people in New Orleans who didn't have enough money to buy gas to get out before Hurricane Katrina hit. Damon also raised the issue that oil is needed to produce ethanol from corn. If oil prices go up, it could cause ethanol prices to go up proportionately, giving us no net gain from switching to ethanol.

Paula raised the very serious issue about how many indigenous people, in the Amazon and other places, are threatened with genocide by people exploring for oil. I wasn't very optimistic that native peoples would be able to fight back if the price of oil went extremely high. She was adamant that we should never allow genocide no matter how high the price of oil goes.

I said I thought the world was boxed in, in terms of energy, and would have no way out except to "go nuclear" in the future. People pointed out that nuclear energy can't be used to fuel cars or anything else that runs on fossil fuel, nor can it substitute for oil used to make plastic, synthetic fibers for clothes, or fertilizer for food. Nuclear energy seems relatively safe, with fewer deaths than the coal industry, in spite of Chernobyl. Other people pointed out that nuclear energy's problems with nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear waste disposal have never been solved, nor is there any reason to believe they will be in the foreseeable future.