Something useful on peak oil

I have criticized wooly thinking about peak oil in the past, but I have a lot to learn, so it's good to come across some clear thinking on the topic from Jim Murray (pdf). This, for example, is quite neat:

Peak oil hypotheses 

It's not about the reserves 

It's about the production rate 

We are not close to running out of oil 

Never predict the future price of world oil or the date of world oil peak. You will only be proved wrong and discredited.

Six

I used to doubt that a 6°C rise global average temperature this century was likely. Now a study indicates it may be a plausible scenario. [1]

CO2 emissions have risen by 29% in the past decade, and 2% in the last year despite the economic downturn.

Concerns such as 'peak oil' look more misplaced than ever as there is more than enough coal, oil (if Dan Yergin is right) and natural gas to send things over the edge.

[1] P.S. Richard Betts says:

Year-to-year changes in the global economy have quite an effect, and it's too early to discern longer term, robust changes. However, if we continue to let emissions rise without mitigation, there's a strong chance we'll hit 4 °C and beyond. If we want to be staying below 2 °C then it's true to say we've only got a few years to curb emissions.

There will be peak

or maybe not, according to Michael Lynch at MIT. He says:

In the end, perhaps the most misleading claim of the peak-oil advocates is that the earth was endowed with only 2 trillion barrels of “recoverable” oil. Actually, the consensus among geologists is that there are some 10 trillion barrels out there. A century ago, only 10 percent of it was considered recoverable, but improvements in technology should allow us to recover some 35 percent — another 2.5 trillion barrels — in an economically viable way. And this doesn’t even include such potential sources as tar sands, which in time we may be able to efficiently tap.

Oil remains abundant, and the price will likely come down closer to the historical level of $30 a barrel as new supplies come forward in the deep waters off West Africa and Latin America, in East Africa, and perhaps in the Bakken oil shale fields of Montana and North Dakota.

Peaky

Some things in this interesting interview with IEA chief economist Fatih Birol are unhelpful. For example:

* the IEA is taken to task for changing its estimate of the oil price in 2030 (in today's prices) from about $60 to $120. But it should surely be evident that any estimate for so far ahead will in large part be arm waving. Remember that oil prices have plunged over recent months, for a variety of factors, from over $140 to under $50. Few people saw this coming. How can one expect them to forecast more accurately more than 20 years hence, given the much greater number of factors involved?

* the precise year that oil production is likely to plateau: again, this should be treated with real caution: it's quite possible the new IEA report is wrong.

* sounding a warning on social dislocation in the U.S. as a result of 'peak oil'. But serious social disruption is likely already given the current economic crisis, and 'peak oil' has not been a factor in the genesis of that crisis (high oil prices in 2008 occurred for other reasons). Beware one dimensional explanations. [1]

* the conclusion that "either the world economy comes to rely on tar sands for transport oils or economy screeches to a halt." No: there is scope to anticipate the problem and act -- as, for example, is reported to be happening in Denmark and Israel or China.

There is more, but I think the problems boil down to a search for greater certainty than is possible. This is illustrated by the description of the IEA report as "gospel" for the petroleum industry, a term that implies that, right or wrong, it is a text accepted with almost uncritical faith. But that's not the case: the report is an important and in this year's case evidence-based contribution to the debate, but one hedged with caveats.

Ashdenizen recently noted Andy Revkin's observation that "climate change is [just] a subset of the story of our time, which is that we are coming of age on a finite planet and only just now recognizing that it is finite." That's true enough, but it's also the case that our knowledge is necessarily finite and inadequate the challenges ahead.

This does not mean, of course, that we do not have enough information and understanding to see that the challenges are very large and very serious, and to recognize that governments, and others, need to wake up and get moving.

Footnote

[1] In a Jan 2006 article, Jeremy Leggett cites Roger Booth, "who spent his professional life at Shell, and who now believes that, when the peak does hit: 'A crash of 1929 proportions is not improbable.' ". Well, we are experiencing a crash of 1929 proportions. Was this a result of peak oil, or was it, rather, the result of a financial system rotten to the core?

Peak speak

UK will face peak oil crisis within five years, says a report flagged in The Guardian.

World will struggle to meet oil demand, says The Financial Times (The IEA expects oil consumption in 2030 to reach 106.4m barrels a day, down from last year’s forecast of 116.3m b/d).

But peak oil, more accurately termed elsewhere oil, remains a red herring (see this and this).

Climate politics, and a red herring

Articles relating to climate change in the Guardian today are uneven. Hope dries up for Nicaragua's Miskito is more or less below the line advertising for a new Oxfam paper Adapting to climate change: What’s needed in poor countries, and who should pay. (Oxfam says at least $50bn (£25bn) a year in addition to existing aid budgets is needed to help communities like the Miskito adapt to climate change.) The article quotes Nicanor Rizo, a community leader in the Miskito community of Riati on the Rio Coco: "We are a proud people[.] Do you think we want to have to ask for help or depend on handouts from outside agencies?"

All this -- heroic victims with touches of the noble savage to play to unconscious Western stereotypes -- is as fine as far as it goes, but should be read in combination with UK told to pay more for climate change which gives a little more detail on some key money questions and a useful report from WWF on energy efficiency.

But Our blind faith in oil growth could bring the economy crashing down is not up to the columnist's standards (or of some other articles on the UK energy white paper) The idea of general economic collapse due scarce or expensive oil is misguided, as study of the 1970s oil shocks and the options for fuel conversion shows. The Stern Review (part three) is almost certainly right on this if not everything else when it states:

Increasing scarcity of fossil fuels alone will not stop emissions growth in time. The stocks of hydrocarbons that are profitable to extract (under current policies) are more than enough to take the world to levels of CO2 concentrations well beyond 750ppm, with very dangerous consequences for climate-change impacts.