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“Heading Out” on ASPO-USA Sacramento
Heading Out, The Oil Drum
This is the post where I try and draw my own conclusions from the Conference. And not recognizing many of the papers in this does not mean that they weren’t important, but rather that from my own perspective that this is what I got most from.
The recurrent word that cropped up, again and again, was Scale. It was an attempt by the speakers to try and convey to their audience the size of the problem that is coming at us, increasingly rapidly. That one word encapsulates the difference between those who talk of the world energy problem in Quads (quadrillion Btu’s), as opposed to those that talk of the solution in terms of kilowatts and Megawatts. (The handy Dashboard on my Mac tells me that a Megawatt is 56,869 Btus/min. A Quad is 1,000,000,000,000,000 Btu.) The current shortages of gasoline are largely brought about by a transient closure of refineries that affects around 1 mbd of oil supply. The time is not far distant when such shortages will become more regular as we compete for supply in a more competitive global market.
The tipping point that seemed still a comfortable distance away three years ago when the American ASPO meetings began in Denver, is now just about here. And the solutions that have been discussed do not approach, as yet, the millions of barrels a day (mbd) of fuel replacement that we may need before long. At the same time, to return to the theme of my own paper, we do not have the educated human resource that we need. Data from my Dean of Enrollment shows that ACT report high school student interest in engineering was at 14% in 1982. By 1992 it had dropped to 9%. By 2005 it was down to 5%, and has fallen below that since.
… The net result is that we are heading into trouble. As Matt Simmons, I think, said “it will make what happened in the past week look like a picnic.” Glancing back through Richardson Gill’s The Great Maya Drought I found the section where he talks of the impact of famine, and how priorities switch from nation, to community, to family, to self. We’re still at the nation level, or even, some might say, still thinking globally, but one wonders how long that will last. Because the numbers are real, the decline in global production is coming, and it is going to be soon. And the decline curve will be greater than we anticipate.
In that regard I do have to tip my hat to the organizers for inviting Peter Wells to give what might be considered the cornucopian view. And he came and talked to a room full of cynics, so my hat is tipped again. But that being said, the CERA/IHS position and predictions have been proven wrong so consistently, that some of the value of the talk came from seeing how intelligent people can be led so far astray. Though to be fair, his predictions were less optimistic than those coming from CERA. And I appreciate his giving us the view “from the other side of the fence,” ….
(5 October 2008)
Previous posts by Heading Out on the conference:
Gloom and Doom – with a smile – the ASPO-USA 4 meeting in Sacramento
Day 2
Day 3
From ASPO-USA to MinExpo – a Study in Contrasts
The Oil Drum honored at ASPO-USA Sacramento
Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum
Before we leave the topic of the ASPO-USA Conference in Sacramento, I wanted to make sure a few things didn’t get missed. The big one was that The Oil Drum was one of the recipients of the M. King Hubbert Award, for Excellence in Energy Education. The other recipient of the Hubbert award was Global Public Media.
In this post, I include Dr. Kyle Saunders’ (Prof. Goose’s) acceptance speech. I also show photos of TOD participants and give brief summaries and links to the presentations TOD folks gave.
(5 October 2008)
See photos of the TOD media stars at the original! Congratualations to TOD for some well-deserved recognition. -BA
Peak oil and retirement
Michael Lardelli, On Line Opinion (Australia)
Stockmarkets are plunging worldwide and retired people everywhere are watching with great discomfort as the value of their investments decline. Declining retirement incomes and inflating food and fuel prices are placing great stress on the elderly. The current dramatic volatility in the oil price is symptomatic of the tight supply (amplified by speculation and the current financial chaos) and is what one expects as the world peak of oil production is approached.
For many of us in the middle of our working careers the state of the stockmarket may not be as immediately worrying. However, the Australia of 2020 and beyond into which we will “retire” will be a very, very different place from 2008.
In only 12 years time Australia’s oil production will be but a small fraction of its peak rate in 2000. More importantly, the volume of oil available to buy on the world market is predicted to be at least 30 per cent lower than today meaning that oil prices will be far higher. (And if high oil prices are causing us to run a trade deficit in these commodity-export driven boom times then imagine the consequences of oil at far higher prices!)
… What does declining energy availability mean for those of us entering retirement age beyond 2020? If we have some retirement savings now, what should we do with them? Will we be able to retire at all?
(6 October 2008)
