Peak Oil revisited

So there's the doom and gloom side of the earth running out of oil, including such dire things as global economic collapse, widespread disease, famine and death. I included some links to articles about that a couple of weeks ago. LINK . Not everyone sees it that way, including Spencer Reiss with Wired magazine. His article, Why $5 Gas is Good for America, explores the more Pollyanna side of running out of oil. A couple of points jumped out at me.

In the first place no one really seems to be arguing that we are not in imminent danger of running the world out of oil. It will happen, the question is when. Not many people who have researched the question argue that it won't happen in our lifetimes. When you take into account the fact that global consumption of oil is on the rise, and production is falling as more oil fields pass their productive peak, it becomes obvious that we are on a slippery slope and losing ground faster every day.

Reiss' point in this article is that, yes, we are running out of oil. Prices will skyrocket. But that is a good thing because it will make alternative energy sources economically viable. Sources that have been partially or fully developed but not implemented because oil as an energy source has undercut all competitors. His evidence that we will be successful in making the change to oil alternatives is simply that "the history of energy innovation suggests something very different - and a lot less dire."

He does not really take into account the massive changes in infrastructure that would be necessary to change over to an alternate fuel source, or the fact that transportation is merely the tip of the iceberg when you start looking at the economic implications of oil scarcity. He mentions the trillions of dollars oil companies have at their disposal now, without taking into account the fact that our banking system is completely dependent on a steady and affordable supply of oil.

Rising oil prices making alternative fuels suddenly affordable sounds great, and on the surface it sounds right. But consider, just in the case of biodiesels, that the massive farming infrastructure, from equipment to fertilizers and pesticides are all oil dependent in both their production and their implementation.

The fact seems to be, as Matt Savinar states"Once oil prices are sky-high, our economy will be shattered, and we won't be able to finance an aggressive switch-over to whatever modest alternatives are available to us."

Reiss' central argument is that we will successfully make the switch to alternative sources because we've always done it before. Then he shoots his argument in the foot with his own evidence.

"It was James Watt's steam engine that chained sailing ships to their berths - not lack of wind. Petroleum sent coal and horse power packing, even though mountains of coal waited to be mined and plenty of stallions remained in the barn."

In both of these cases a cheaper and more powerful source of energy replaced one that was still abundant. How sucessful will an energy changeover be when there are no more stallions in the barn?

I would love to be proven to be just another "petro-pessimit." I sincerely want the doom-and-gloomers to be wrong about the devestating global effects of oil scarcity. However, I keep finding evidence supporting their dire predictions, and am offered very thinly researched or supported claims to the contrary.