I was going to make fun of Michael Lynch’s incredibly witless op-ed in the New York Times which boiled down to “despite the fact that absolutely everybody in the world says that peak oil is either upon us or nearly so, they are all wrong and in fact the entire world is made of oil, basically,” but then I found out that actual energy analysts had made fun of it for me.
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Why are there so many “experts” who don’t understand the concept of scarcity?
I’ll be generous, and give Mr. Lynch the benefit of the doubt about 10 trillion barrels of oil being out there.
Even if that is true, we still do not have *infinite* oil reserves in the world. Humanity has two options regarding oil: gradually reduce consumption to zero, or eventually run out.
For me, the most amusing portion of the article was misthinking Lynch’s name as DAVID Lynch. “What the… what’s he know about oil? …ohhhh.”
But the rest was pretty funny, too.
Actually, Lynch and the (non-crazy) peak oil people are talking past each other. MGK, you’re in law school, you should recognize that when it happens.
(Incidentally, there’s a whole nexus of ties between Matthew Simmons mentioned by Lynch and the Washington Republican establishment, starting with Simmons’ introduction to the world as a self-taught oil geologist by David Ignatius in the Washington Post. This never gets mentioned, but it’s the far business right in the U.S. that benefits from talking up oil scarcity more than anyone else, since past a certain point, it’s pure gravy for the oil industry. And they’re more than happy to use the left as cover. What bugs them is *conservation*.)
Anyway. There’s probably oodles of oil technologically available (i.e., reserves) at some ungodly price point. It’s still coming out of Saudi at $3/bbl at the wellhead, incredibly cheap but technically demanding. (Yes, that’s a 2000+% markup. Most of it goes to keep the country from turning from Alabama into Somalia.) The Iraq war was fought in part because the far business right believed that Iraqi oil might be available at $2/bbl. Everywhere else, it kind of sucks.
And it won’t ever come back, unless you believe Tommy Gold’s theories.
Pressure-volume relationships are tricky. Sometimes, when you’re in the middle of raising one number, the other one goes way down for, like, no reason. SCIENCE HAS YET TO EXPLAIN IT!
10 trillion barrels of oil? Why not one billion, gajillion, fafillion? (give or take)
Sometimes it is best to leave it to the professionals.
“I only caught the first two thirds of the McHammer Behind-the-Music video, but if there’s one thing it taught me, it was that MONEY NEVER RUNS OUT!”
It’s a funny post, for sure, and he makes a decent point. I’m pretty sure those experts are fictional, though.
–d
I think “yada yada yada… Hitler!” is my new evil catchphrase.
Why do you all hate freedom? Why do you all hate America?