[Peakoil] The needs of global warming trump peak oil

[Paul Pollard]

Tony, and friends,

The main argument made by Tony is thoroughly valid: global warming broadly does increasingly trump peak oil arguments. However, there are good reasons to keep putting peak oil arguments.  

It’s worth remembering a couple of things in the recent past.

First, peak oil thinking was proved correct on ‘conventional’ (cheap) oil. This peak arrived about 2006, and it is why, despite world conditions making for low global oil prices, the price is still about twice what it was up to 2002. In other words, peak oil does explain why prices won’t fall to the cost of producing large-scale conventional oil, of less than US$20 a barrel.

Second, peak oil thinking has been a major factor in why we are advanced in fuel efficiency, electric cars, batteries, and so on. It takes years to work up technology of this kind, and clearly strong motivation was needed for this to be done. It wasn’t concern about global warming that was the main basis for this work by industry large and small over the last decade or more: it was the high price of oil from the mid-noughties up to the middle of last year. 

So peak oil thinking, despite the sceptics in recent years, has proved a major contributor to finding solutions to global warming as well. Further, there are I am sure many pockets around the world where the long-term availability of oil is still a concern greater than global warming, because for many oil still means money and global warming doesn’t yet. (Incidentally, peak oil has also contributed by publicising the ‘peak’ concept - we now have lots of other peaks, in relation to sustainability).

If peak oil arguments prove irrelevant in the future, to quite an extent it would be because they have been taken seriously up until now.

However, I am not so sure that peak oil arguments are now irrelevant. The reason is that globally, since prices fell in 2014, we are in a very unusual situation, which can’t last:

- at some point the current low prices must begin to decrease world supplies of oil: major oil firms are abandoning expensive oil projects around the world;

- US shale (tight) oil has been vitally dependent on very low interest rates, and has in effect been subsidised by monetary policy, and this must end at some time;

- the worlds still addicted to oil use, and it is for the foreseeable future very widely seen as indispensable, rather more than, say, coal;

- the underlying reason for low oil prices has been low economic activity world-wide, the Great Recession, and at some point this activity will pick up.

An unfortunate aspect of current low prices is that it undermines work on greater oil efficiency, because people now argue that there’ll never be an oil shortage problem. If we decide that peak oil arguments no longer hold, we assist this view, which is bad for global warming efforts as well.

I think that we still face unstable and, at times, high oil prices, and for the sake of global warming, global economic stability and equity we should keep emphasising peak oil problems, and the scope for vastly greater efficiency in the use of oil. Global warming arguments on their own may not be enough to achieve what is necessary, and every argument helps.  

Paul Pollard 

 



> On 11 Nov 2015, at 5:53 pm, Antony Broughton Barry <antonybbarry at me.com> wrote:
> 
> Folks
> 
> Over a decade ago I realized there were a number of existential threats facing human society and found a rich literature supporting this view with an added worry that many of them had likely impact within the next few decades or current century. The most immediate seemed to be resource depletion and the most significant resource under threat was crude oil, thence my interest in peak oil and my involvement in this movement. I am now considering that I was mistaken. Let me explain.
> 
> I had thought initially that as easy oil was extracted and more difficult sources utilized prices would rise to cover the higher extraction cost and supply and demand would do its thing and the economy would get progressively squeezed leading to a global depression with a risk of collapse. 
> 
> Fracking and a shift to gas has delayed the peak and cycles in the economy disguised what is happening but other things have also been happening mostly in relation to awareness of the need to respond to global warming and the consequent need to get out of fossil fuels. 
> 
> In no particular order a list of trends which indicate a concern for our vulnerability to difficulties with oil supply -
> 
> * Europe and the U.S. have set vehicular fuel standards to increase fuel efficiency. 
> 
> * In developed countries we have reach "peak car" in the kilometers driven has peaked and may be in decline.
> 
> * Demand for oil has dropped as a consequence so prices have dropped even though oil is being extracted from expensive places.
> 
> * Every major car manufacturer is developing electric models although Toyota is still trying fuel cells. Major firms like Google and Apple are eyeing this market and startups like Tesla plan to be a major player. They are not stupid. An electric car doesn't need a transmission , a cooling system, oil changes or much servicing. What it does need is cheap batteries and the IC engine is toast
> 
> * Batteries are declining in cost by 14%pa
> 
> * Best estimates for us to survive global warming give us a carbon budget of how much of the fossil fuels we can burn. These estimates would leave most of it in the ground _including_ most crude oil.
> 
> Where does that leave us?
> 
> * We are going to have to cut our oil use before the peak hits to cut global warming. Our need to react to oil depletion is trumped by the greater need to protect the climate
> 
> * The objective of the Peak Oil movement to alert society to the need to adapt to the certainty of scarcity of oil in the future is now overtaken by the need to tell people to stop burning the stuff to protect the climate.
> 
> In summary to cope with the threat of climate change we have to get out of oil. Rather than our oil use being restricted by supply constraints our demand must reduce faster than supply might drop. 
> 
> Peak oil has become a second order problem.
> 
> The first order problem is global warming and first we need to get out of fossil fuels as fast as we can so it won't get worse, and secondly plan to adapt to a new climate and a changing coastline. Even if we restrict to 2 degrees every port on the planet will need to be rebuilt and tens if not hundreds of millions of people displaced from their homes. 
> 
> The next thousand years will be hard.
> 
> Comments?
> 
> Tony
> 
> 
> 
> 
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