Quote:
Originally Posted by Rochard
I disagree. Figures on peak oil is based on data that is ten years old. Methods more commonly used today didn't factor into their data. Improvements in fracking has greatly improved in the past ten years and opened up entire new fields of oil. Then factor in that electric cars are becoming more common and the entire concept of worrying about peak oil will be pointless. Before we reach peak oil our oil usage will start to decline.
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you are either confusing, possibly conflating, peak carbon and peak liquids with peak oil, and social activist positions with geology.
understandable, you dont really care about the geology, your position is political.
peak carbon is pretty far away. Most people expect peak liquids around 2040, but, like you just said, those curves seem to be based on projections that we will just start to use less, so who knows, it could be 2080, thats what I expect personally.
As for peak oil itself, that is, peak crude petroleum, geology and industry opinions vary, some say it has already happpened, for example
here(sciam, natire, and petrogeologists) and
here(eia.gov, government economists),. Personally I think when the iraqi fields are finally brought online it may happen soon enough that the declines in other fields is matched, so we might see it in another 10 years.
But, the EROI on liquids (bitumen distillates, synthetic crude from oil shale kerogen) is much lower than the EROI (energy return on investment) from petroleum with current technologies, so, the energy profit margin is much lower. So, the available energy profit to drive our economy is going to be lower. Maybe we can adapt to that, we shall see.
Anyway, peak oil, that is peak petroluem extraction, is a matter of geology. It will happen. We will be able to turn coal and bitumen and kerogen and natural gas into liquids, but petroluem extraction will hit a peak and will decline. It's a finite supply and a finite supply gets extracted at a rate that will give us a bell curve pattern, (or maybe a sawtooth curve, we dont know), and such a curve means there will be a peak.
Peak oil is not in question, only what it will mean, and when we will know the decline has actually begun.