Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

Peak Oil on Slashdot.org

“Today, the Cambridge Energy Research Associates released a report dismissing the Peak Oil theory, suggesting that world oil production will continue to increase for the next 24 years, and then only level into a plateau. The report, which suggests that world reserves are enough to last 122 years at our current rate of consumption…

“Corporations, governments, and other groups, including nongovernmental organizations, need to have a coherent description of how and when the undulating plateau will evolve so that rational policy and investment choices can be made,” according to the report. “It is likely that the situation will unfold in slow motion and that there are a number of decades to prepare for the start of the undulating plateau.”

I like how the “Oil Industry Activist” Peter Jackson and CERA accuses Peak Oil theorists of delusion, while CERA pretends that demand for oil isn’t increasing. This way they can claim their [unlikely] target of 24 years will be reached before there are energy disruptions.

“world oil production will continue to increase for the next 24 years, and then only level into a plateau.”

Yeah, a plateau is NOTHING like a “peak” - it’s just “an area of highland, usually consisting of relatively flat open country”. Do they expect oil production to never again INCREASE after 24 years? If so, while populations rise and oil production doesn’t, that sounds like brain dead simple economics - Demand will out pace Supply, which results in extremely high prices for an essential commodity we base our daily survival upon. I don’t know about you but “relatively flat” isn’t a comfort if I suddenly had to pay [for example] four times what I do for gasoline, or my power is cut off for a month while supplies recover.

It appears like the wonks in CERA that peg the plateau as far off as 24 years, (which seems unlikely due to their ‘constant demand’ assumption which we know will be wrong) can’t even twist the numbers into something that means my kids will live to the age I am now before their world is shattered by a global transportation and energy crisis. And those kinds of resource shortages always result in wars. Populations don’t just lay down and die when they run out of things, they wage wars on populations that have even a little of the resource they need.

So, thank you CERA, an IHS Company* for providing some misleading and overly optimistic information to the world, during a time we need to be encouraging governments and industries to find alternatives to oil energy.

* About IHS Inc.
Corporate Profile
IHS is one of the leading global providers of critical technical information, decision-support tools, and related services to customers in the energy, defense, aerospace, construction, electronics, and automotive industries. We have developed a comprehensive collection of technical information that is highly relevant to the industries we serve.

That’s a fancy way of saying IHS Inc. is a global lobby and action group for big oil, automotive, and defence industries. They provide “highly relevant” [incorrect] technical information that supports the resource exploitation they make money from.

If I’m being too hard on CERA, maybe it’s because I don’t believe they are interested in governments taking action NOW to prepare over the next two decades for the oil plateau. Remember, it’s taking 15 years of government/NASA preparation to send a just a handful of people to Mars. It’s taking 6984+ days for the Conservatives in Canada to set clean air targets. It’s going to be 44 years before the Conservatives forsee clean air, at a 1990 [or maybe 2003] pollution level (Which wasn’t “clean” anyway). Even if we started moving RIGHT NOW to alternative energy sources to supplement the energy oil provides to 6,000,000,000 people on earth, I don’t think we’ll be close to ready in just 24 years. We may be able to build 12 Olympic stadiums in that time, but where’s the will to build electric motors, solar panels, and wind farms?