Oil Production to Peak in 2014, Scientists Predict
source: http://www.livescience.com/environment/oil-production-peak-100312.html
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- JanforGore
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Their work represents an updated version of the famous Hubbert model, which correctly predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil reserves would peak within 20 years. Many researchers have since tried using the model to predict when worldwide oil production might peak.
Sponsored LinksA 9mm is a Futile DefenseDiscover What Survivalist Masters & The Army Don't Want You To Know www.CloseCombatTraining.comBlood Pressure DiscoveryHugh Downs Reports: Artery clearing secret from Nobel Prize Winner www.bottomlinesecrets.comHow to make Electricity$49 kit has energy co's execs calling for a ban on its sale. www.Power-4-Homes.com Some have said production already peaked. One earlier model by Swedish researchers suggested that oil would peak sometime between 2008 and 2018. And other researchers have argued there are decades to go before oil production goes into irreversible decline. The only thing they all agree on: Oil is a finite and very valuable resource.
The issue's profile was raised today with a new report projecting increased demand. After peaking above $130 a barrel in mid-2008, crude oil prices dipped to below $40 in early 2009 as global demand tanked amid the recession. Prices have been rising ever since and are above $80 now. Today, the International Energy Agency said it expects demand to resume the sort of growth that was common in recent years. Much of that growth has involved the modernizing economies of China and India.
Updated model
The scientists from Kuwait University and the Kuwait Oil Company adopted a newer approach by including many Hubbert production cycles, or bell-shaped curves showing the rise and fall of a non-recyclable resource. Earlier models typically assumed just one production cycle, despite the fact that most oil-producing nations have historically experienced more of a rollercoaster ride in production.
Such production cycles reflect the influence of new technological innovations in the oil industry, government regulations, economic conditions and political events. The factors include the discovery of new oil deposits, the recent economic recession and the rise of renewable energy.
Take Mexico as just one example. The nation that has long represented a top oil exporter has experienced plummeting oil production, and might even begin importing oil within the decade, the New York Times reports. Its troubles have arisen from a lack of technology to explore more inaccessible oil deposits, and a conundrum stemming from a 1938 law that banned foreign oil companies.
Caltech physicist David Goodstein has argued for a practical approach that focuses on preparing for the end of oil, regardless of when it happens. He noted that the latest prediction seems to represent a serious, thoughtful estimate.
"Of course there are large uncertainties in estimates of this kind, but this one is as good as any I've seen," Goodstein told LiveScience.
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JanforGore
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2JCCXejE7Y
Vandana Shiva with a logical rational solution to begin us on the road to sustainability after Peak Oil. And this is also the chief reason that ties into people in developing countries not having enough food to sustain themselves. It is not about lack of food as much as it is about ACCESS to food. Large multinationals and land grabbers are buying up tracts of land in Africa to grow vegetables and other luxury items such as coffee, flowers, etc. that are then exported to the Western nations for profit. This takes away land needed for the farmers and people who live there to be able to grow their own food and increases greenhouse gas emissions. They then in turn must rely on imports from Western countries with high tariffs, many times GMOs being forced on them that then contaminate their natural crops leaving many in poverty who cannot afford it.
One sure way to ease the inevitable transition from Peak OIl to a sustainable society is to encourage large scale local sustainable organic farming! Give people in countries like Zimbabwe the tools they need to farm their land, to save their seed, to refresh their soil. Allow them to live on their land and benefit from it! Local organic farming in developing countries across the board would not only reduce reliance on fossil fuels, but would decrease Co2 emissions that exacerbate global warming and drought thus leading to crop failures. Yields would increase within four to five years to a level where all would be fed, especially if we keep the WTO and IMF OUT of these countries and allow them to have more local control of growing their food, selling it, and living off their land sustainably.
- 2 years ago
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JanforGore
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JanforGore
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jan/29/peakoilmeetsorganicfarming
Peak Oil Meets Organic Farming.
On Friday and Saturday last week, a potentially historic meeting took place in the rather unpromising location of the CIA, otherwise known as the Cardiff International Arena. Britain's organic farming community gathered en masse for the annual meeting of the Soil Association, and their theme was peak oil and farming in the post-petroleum era. Organisers and peak-oil whistleblowers alike thought that perhaps this was the first time an organisation in a critically affected sector has held a conference on the theme of peak oil.If the peak-oil proposition is correct, the tipping point of global oil production will happen - largely unexpectedly - in this decade or early in the next, accompanied by a dire energy shock. The people in the room will be in the front rank of those first affected. They can also be in the vanguard of those who can offer a proactive vision of what a survivable post-shock future could look like.
Discussion ranged across many potential impacts and implications. Let me choose just two: the number of farmers, and where they farm. So oil-dependent is modern industrial agriculture, and so relatively few are the people employed in it, that we will need to redefine the very concept of a farmer after the peak hits us. Today our typical farmer might tend 500 acres with tractors and other expensive bits of oil-addicted kit. But in the post-peak era - with the oil price sky high, and oil supplies fast-shrinking and therefore probably rationed - our farmers will need to be tending an area of maybe one-tenth the size, using more human labour and strategic use of a tractor powered by something other than petroleum, plus good old-fashioned draft animals. Many more people will need to be working the land if we are to feed ourselves. When the collapsing Soviet Union turned the oil taps off on Cuba, 15-25% of the population had to take to the fields in some form or other. (The good news is that they succeeded, to the extent that nobody starved.) Today in the UK, 1% of us farm. In 1900, before mass addiction to oil, fully 40% did.'
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Although, I am sure if this comes to pass, we will be digging hard and deep to suck out any drops of oil to prolong the addiction. - 2 years ago
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JanforGore
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JanforGore
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If we want to continue to be able to sustain ourselves, we better think more about sustainable agriculture. Industrial agriculture will be obsolete.
- 2 years ago
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JanforGore
