Charles C. Mann writes for
The Atlantic:
This perspective has a corollary: natural resources cannot be used up. If one deposit gets too expensive to drill, social scientists (most of them economists) say, people will either find cheaper deposits or shift to a different energy source altogether. Because the costliest stuff is left in the ground, there will always be petroleum to mine later. “When will the world’s supply of oil be exhausted?” asked the MIT economist Morris Adelman, perhaps the most important exponent of this view. “The best one-word answer: never.” Effectively, energy supplies are infinite.
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posted by the man of twists and turns
on Apr 29, 2013 -
86 comments
Daily Telegraph:
Why the world isn't running out of oil:
"Moreover, as well as bountiful oilfields in North America, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other producers in the Middle East, there are massive, barely tapped reserves in South America, Africa and the Arctic: not billions of barrels’ worth, but trillions. So the planet is not about to run out of oil. On the contrary, according to a Harvard University report published last year, we are heading for a glut.
The 75-page study, by oil executive Leonardo Maugeri, was based on a field-by-field analysis of most of the major oil exploration and development projects in the world, and it predicted a 20 per cent increase in global oil production by 2020."
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posted by Wordshore
on Feb 21, 2013 -
69 comments
In September, a privately held and highly secretive U.S. biotech company received a patent for a genetically adapted E. coli bacterium that feeds solely on carbon dioxide and excretes liquid hydrocarbons.
Joule Unlimited, co-founded by
George Church, appears ready to forever alter the way we produce fuel.
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posted by Baby_Balrog
on Jan 18, 2011 -
140 comments
Inspired by a recent
Wall Street Journal* article, Robert Rapier, chemical engineer, peakist, blogger, and currently chief technology officer for a bioenergy company, reviews the
pretenders,
contenders, and
niche players in the emerging field of green energy, with particular consideration of liquid fuels. Meanwhile, the boffins at Foreign Policy consider the
risks of the coming of the green energy era, and
depict the end of the oil age. (Both part of FP's extensive look at the
end of oil;
previously.)
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posted by Diablevert
on Sep 8, 2009 -
19 comments
A
Saudi Prince tells America to give up futile dreams of energy independence.
Op-Ed in the NYT says Peak Oil is a waste of energy and an illusion. Meanwhile, the OECD's energy advisors, the IEA are saying cheap oil will
run out in ten years, a decade sooner than estimates made as recently as 2007.
posted by bystander
on Aug 26, 2009 -
88 comments
Pickens Plan -- oilman T. Boone Pickens has a plan to reduce America's oil dependency problem: exploit the country's massive windpower potential for domestic energy, replacing natural gas, and then use natural gas to power cars instead of foreign oil. Some
problems with the plan.
posted by Laugh_track
on Jul 10, 2008 -
41 comments
"
The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This
change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost
all aspects of our daily life."
The new Oil Report from Energy Watch Group makes a strong case that we have now passed peak oil.
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posted by roofus
on Oct 22, 2007 -
87 comments
The Paradigm is the Enemy: A sobering but cogent account of the state of Peak Oil, what it's already led to (reported and ignored), and what is in store for us in the near future. The worst part is the political impossibility of addressing the problem constructively: that would require acknowledging the problem.
posted by LeisureGuy
on Apr 29, 2006 -
99 comments
Zeitgeistfilter: Lumpen Leisure and
Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown... Now Shut Up and Buy Something -- two fine rants about our current state of disunion by James Howard Kuntsler, author of
The Long Emergency (
excerpt), and writer and Vietnam vet
Joe Bageant. "All over but the keening for our soon-to-be-lost machine world," Kunstler predicts in
The American Conservative, while Bageant taps the inner stream-of-unconsciousness for
Dissident Voice: "Things cannot be as bad as the alarmists say. They cannot be as bad as I often suspect they are. If there really were such a thing as global warming they would be starting to do something about it. And besides, even if it were true, science will find a way to fix it. If there really were genocide going on in so many places far more people would be concerned... If the earth were heating up we would surely notice it. If our soldiers and government agencies were torturing people around the world it would make the news. If millions were being exterminated, it would be more obvious, would it not?" (Kunstler's book previously discussed
here, Bageant
here.)
posted by digaman
on Feb 14, 2006 -
52 comments
Boundless energy or bad math? Randell Mills thinks he has the solution to our energy problems. In his company's patented
process,
"energy is released as the electrons of atomic hydrogen are induced to undergo transitions to lower energy levels producing plasma, light, and novel hydrogen compounds." It also implies that quantum mechanics is wrong.
posted by Espoo2
on Nov 5, 2005 -
73 comments
Running on Fumes -- a fascinating essay by
the Nation's Sasha Abramsky on what rising gas prices will do to poor exurban communities.
posted by digaman
on Oct 4, 2005 -
165 comments
Peak Oil? Include Me Out, is one of the best reads about the whole issue of peak oil. Its author, Mick Winter "is a former Y2K community activist who currently suffers from chronic déjà vu and still hasn't figured out what to do about Peak Oil." I am a
peaknik and I can tell you this is a good read, no matter your stance on peak oil! (
psssst, if you are already a peaknik, or just curious, Winter maintains a good a peak oil metadirectory. )
posted by samelborp
on Oct 18, 2004 -
41 comments
Greenspan on oil (speaking to the the National Italian American Foundation, which
De Niro would never do :) "We will begin the transition to the next major sources of energy perhaps before midcentury as production from conventional oil reservoirs, according to central tendency scenarios of the Energy Information Administration, is projected to peak." And just to make it political, here's
a chart relating presidential approval ratings to gas prices!
posted by kliuless
on Oct 15, 2004 -
9 comments
