NickBlack.com

It’s clear now that if temperatures do rise an appreciably, by more than 2∞ say, it becomes very likely the planet will experience disastrous climate destabilization. We will need to change infrastructure, power generation, agriculture and transportation within 20 years to have any realistic chance of avoiding runaway climate change. We will need to use fossil fuels to make those changes. So how accurate are the estimates of those who claim we are already at the peak?

In 2000, Colin Campbell, a well respected oil exploration geologist with a lifetime’s experience in evaluating oil reserves, began the Association for the Study of Peak Oil[1]. He had become convinced that, contrary to numerous claims by oil companies and oil producing countries, we were very nearly at the peak of worldwide oil production – named Hubbert’s Peak after King Hubbert, the pioneering American oil researcher who first predicted the US oil production peak in 1971.  Realizing the potentially catastrophic effect an imminent worldwide peak would have, Dr. Campbell founded ASPO with a group of scientists to research and publicize the facts. Over the last 7 years ASPO has moved from being dismissed as group of eco Cassandras, to being understood for what they are: a dedicated group of serious professional scientists with an urgent case.

Despite this, there is still disagreement within the oil industry as to accuracy of their analysis, most notably from Exxon, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA)[2], and the International Energy Agency[3]. These organizations claim there is no foreseeable decline in Oil and Gas production. But what’s disquieting about these counterclaims is that none of them, nor any of the other organizations who oppose the idea of imminent Peak Oil, has been willing (or able?) to dispute the work of the ASPO scientists’ statistical analyses of recoverable reserves. The entire issue of estimating reserves is fraught with technical difficulties, but the main point is that discovery of so called “elephant” or giant fields – those with reserves of more than 500 million barrels (0.5 Gb) – peaked 40 years ago. And production typically peaks 40 years after discovery. We now use 30 Mbd for every 6 Mbd that are discovered. So if there’s no problem, where are the new elephants and why is that they aren’t being discovered?

Suppose that the scientists at ASPO are wrong, and that peak oil is far away. We still have the problem of climate change accelerating as we use the remaining fuel which will require global civilization to adapt to an enormous degree. That would be a better outcome because it would give us more time to adapt.

But suppose that they are right and that the Peak was reached last year. This means that the only fuels we have available to manage global adaptation to climate change will go into steep production decline within a couple of years. If this is true, we are in a brutal time crunch as we may lose the ability to make the changes and build the new infrastructures. Simple risk assessment argues that we lose nothing by assuming they are right.

For myself, I’ve been studying this issue for the past 6 years and I’ve met and interviewed some of ASPO’s members. I’m assuming that we are at the Peak and that in a very short time we’ll see production declines. So now what? Intelligent Design, Fashion and Comics, that’s what.

[1]http://www.peakoil.net
[2]http://www.cera.com/
[3]http://www.iea.org/