German Military Braces For Peak Oil 764
myrdos2 writes "A study by a German military think tank leaked to the Internet warns of the potential for a dire global economic crisis in as little as 15 years as a result of a peak and an irreversible decline in world oil supplies. The study states that there is 'some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later. ... In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse.' The report closely matches one from the US military earlier this year, which stated that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact."
Re:Transition Movement (Score:4, Insightful)
Oil Company Stock (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Prophecy (Score:3, Insightful)
Global warming won't be a self limiting concern until we run out of things to burn.
So if anybody thought that BP was in trouble... (Score:3, Insightful)
Authors are out of their senses (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Old news, buy oil stocks. (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember back in the 70s that oil was going to run out by the 90s. Now in 2010, oil is going to run out by the 2030s. In 2030 I guess oil will be going to run out by the 2050s.
I don't think that oil will run out by 2030s either, but it will be a lot more expensive.
There are oil basins that were considered unprofitable years ago but now, after the low-hanging fruits are gone, are being exploited.
Right now there are known hard-to-exploit reserves just waiting for a higher oil price in order to make economic sense.
Countries already are planning to cold turkey (Score:2, Insightful)
As I know, lot of Western Europe countries already laying out plans of going cold turkey of petroleum (first for warm distribution). In fact, Europe is more ready than US, where Obama and similar thinkers are struggling to get message out - even after bay nightmare.
It can get nasty, but we still have time to fix it.
Re:Old news, buy oil stocks. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Peak wood, peak peat, peak coal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, possibly, if we were all Italian plumbers from the Bronx....
It's In the Air (Score:4, Insightful)
The Baby Boomers put all the oil into the air as CO2.
We should put solar panels on the moon, laser the power down into the Earth's atmosphere, and crack that CO2 back into liquid hydrocarbons for making plastic, releasing its oxygen for the double whammy.
Go Nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people here are confusing 'global warming' and the 'green movement' with peak oil. You can argue all you want about whether global warming is really true or not, but Oil is limited, and we're running out fast. That is reality, face it.
The real enemies are those who scream bloody murder whenever the N-word is brought up. Mankind needs energy, and in the near future, our best and cleanest bet is nuclear power.
Re:Prophecy (Score:4, Insightful)
So you think that as soon as we run out of fossil fuels, all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will magically disappear?
Re:Prophecy (Score:5, Insightful)
The climate is already changing because of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere. We could stop burning fossil carbon today and global warming would still be a problem.
And what, you don't believe in peak oil? You think the earth is like a Tardis, bigger inside than out, with infinite reserves of oil? There will have to come a time when production starts to decline.
I just don't get how deniers can ignore simple logic. Oil companies will always find new reserves. We can keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere without it ever affecting anything. Yeah, right. Just because things are bigger than your tiny mind can comprehend doesn't mean they're infinite. If something isn't going to happen in your lifetime, that doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
Do you have children?
Re:What I find amusing ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Britain came close to collapsing in the early 19th century. They had deforested the whole place and were heating their houses with coal that they had to get out of deep dark mines. They had a problem in that the mines would flood and they had no way to drain them. Their civilization could have easily collapsed at that point. However, they then invented this thing called the steam engine, and the rest is history.
Re:Old news, buy oil stocks. (Score:1, Insightful)
Are you aware that Jupiter is mostly hydrogen and traces of methane? It's about as easy to get at. Now do you see the problem facing the human race soon? No? Well go back to sleep. Go buy a TV in your SUV and drive to a McDonald's on your way back to the 'burbs.
Re:Tar sands (Score:2, Insightful)
It is basic economics: the price point is determined by supply and demand.
No its not. Oil lives entirely outside of basic supply and demand economics. I'll also pretend oil isn't a future; which is basically a way of saying we'll make up a price for tomorrow based on some absolute bullshit reason. That's not to say market forces are without any effect. After all, oil does ultimately feed into a supply/demand economy. Just the same, OPEC [wikipedia.org] controls pricing entirely at their whim. In theory its based on supply and demand which is in turn driven by oil reserves and forecasts. In reality, OPEC fails miserably at controlling any of this.
Furthermore, if you've heard someone talk about the gas shortages of the 70's, its because OPEC decided to quadruple prices overnight as political retaliation. Such changes had absolutely nothing to do with actual oil shortages.
Oil and diamonds lives entirely outside of supply/demand economics. Artificial scarcity, monopolies, price fixing, collusion, market manipulation, futures speculation, and cartel controls are entirely different from fundamental, supply/demand economics.
Re:It's In the Air (Score:3, Insightful)
We did, however, invent the Green Movement, the demand for alternative energy, alternative lifestyles, etc., etc., etc. You should go read the back issues of The Mother Earth News [motherearthnews.com]...the attempt to save this planet from the greed of a few has been a way of life for many "Boomers" for a very long time.
By the way: I hope you didn't ask your "Baby Boomer" parents for a car when you turned 16...
Re:Old news, buy oil stocks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Its so simple. 'You' were wrong in 1970 - "haha" - therefore any prediction of oil running out, including the fact that oil is running out right now and has ran out any many places already, will be automatically dismissed and ridiculed by us no matter what. No analysis, no fact checking, onward christian straw men...
Peak Oil is not the same thing as running out of oil.
What these systems analysts working for the military industrial complex are saying is that the rate of production of oil can no longer keep up with our increasing demand for it. And increased demand does not automatically create new oil into the market forever - the same way that the hunger of the economists locked up in my cellar do not create sandwiched for them. At some point the 'laws' of economics meet the laws of physics - one of them wins and its called resource depletion.
Resource depletion is just that: depletion. Initially you discover a resource, you bring it to production at a certain rate. That rate is not arbitrary. The more 'contact area' you have with the resource, the greater the rate can be. Eventually however the resource depletes to a 'level' where your contact area can no longer increase but begins to decrease. From this point on your rate of production will decrease no matter what until the resource is exhausted or the rate of production no longer justifies continuing. The rate of discovery did peak at 1970. Finally now its the turn of production.
This is exactly what you are taught if you're into petroleum engineer. The rigs out there aren't simply sinking their pipes into liquid gold and sucking free money to the surface. Every stake is carefully evaluated, every well is a huge risk to take. Will it produce, at what rate and for how long? And there is no technological fixes left. We have already thrown the kitchen sink into the play for decades: from 3D-seismic modeling, from fracturing to horizontal drilling. All used extensively in all the largest oil fields of the world - most of which are now in decline. The reason is that many of these 'production enhancing technologies' are just 'super straws': they artificially increase your initial rate of production - but they don't increase the amount of oil down there - you are just sucking it dry faster. There is no engineering around Peak Oil.
The many years I have been following theoildrum [theoildrum.com] and I have come to learn a great deal about the capability of people to deny and dismiss the reality around them. With the global warming it was way too easy for them - the science was difficult even for the experts. With Peak Oil it was always only misunderstanding or pure ignorance that worked - because a lot of the facts were out there plain to see with no complex math involved. In fact there was no debate amongst the 'experts' either. Any rig hand you talked to seemed to know exactly what you were talking about and some of the big oil companies like Shell, PB for example are now publicly talking about Peak Oil as well as some governments and the military are starting to publicly use the Peak Oil term.
What is left then for the denilists? Hide in slashdot world? At least have the courtesy of informing yourself [wikipedia.org] and coming up with more then the lame same cliches. There is the mandatory criticism section [wikipedia.org] down there although its been struggling recently. Good luck.
Re:Old news, buy oil stocks. (Score:1, Insightful)
Are you aware that the last time all the methane clathrates where burned, the temperatures rocketed and oxygen levels plumeted and resulted in a mass extinction?
I think we should leave these clathrates alone
Re:Prophecy (Score:1, Insightful)
You don't understand how this works do you? The oil market and the global economy requires a certain elasticity in the supply of oil. That is the role that Saudi Arabia has always played because they had huge reserves and could supply these surges of oil. Notice they aren't nearly as willing to do that anymore. Peak oil means an end to the ability to respond to demand and that plus even a little less supply will be catastrophic. Markets as well as whole industries assume this. Once they can't have it? Watch out. This is why the german and US military are warning of this change so you can also assume much more warfare as countries fight for resources.
Oh and those of you talking about oil shale and other sources of oil waiting for the right price? Well we are already tapping a lot of those but a higher price, dramatically higher, will also wreak havoc. We are screwed as a result of years of the oil, auto and other industries doing everything possible to prevent R&D to other energy sources that might interfere with their profits.
Re:It's In the Air (Score:4, Insightful)
The Baby Boomers voted in Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes, and Clinton too who didn't undo the Reagan/Bush setbacks. They bought and burned more of that oil than anyone else.
The Boomers who invented the Green movement were the tiny minority of Boomers, who the majority of Boomers mocked and beat up from high school to the country club.
I asked my Baby Boomer parents for their old station wagon, and have driven only used cars getting above the median MPG ever since. Though I've also driven motorcycles and mostly have mass transited, though even more than that I've telecommuted. My Baby Boomer parents have driven the biggest cars and trucks with the lowest MPG available, just like the vast majority of Baby Boomers. Like the rest of the Boomers' children and grandchildren (etc), I've learned from their mistakes as I clean up their mess and learn to survive the aftermath.
But nothing amazes me about you Baby Boomers more than your deathless commitment to sticking together, regardless of how your own generation screws you.
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny that you are getting modded funny on this comment.
The Germans DO have experience with this. The article states that the German and US military both are planning ahead for this.
On a serious note, I keep hearing that the next World Wars will be fought over resources. It might be hard for us to imagine this right now, since most Slashdotters get to wake up in soft beds, in airconditioned/heated rooms, take hot showers with nice smelling bath products, and drive the 1-2 miles to Starbucks to enjoy over priced coffee and free Wi-Fi.
All of our amenities, seemingly abundant and unending, provide a natural barrier to understanding just how quickly and totally society can break down when the "basics" become extremely hard to obtain.
Most of us probably don't remember World War II or the Great Depression. My grandparents do though. They always told me that I would never really understand just how good and easy that I have it.
They are probably right.
So although your post is modded as funny (which it really kind of is), I am taking it on a more serious note too.
Re:"Dire Global Economic Crisis" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:5, Insightful)
If peak oil is around now, and you're youngish, I think it's pretty likely you are going to understand very well.
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thorium Reactors people! (Score:5, Insightful)
Both types of reactor produce less radioactive waste then coal [ornl.gov], the current main source of electricity production. You also know exactly where the radioactivity is instead of just letting the wind blow it around.
But yeah, Thorium FTW.
Re:Old news, buy oil stocks. (Score:1, Insightful)
There's a natural limit to these "hard-to-exploit" reserves. When it takes more energy to extract, refine and transport the oil than what you get out of it, then that barrel of oil won't get extracted - no matter what the oil price is.
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:5, Insightful)
>>Well, the German military does have some past experience in having to manage without petroleum. : - )
Right. They used the Fisher-Tropsch process (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process) to generate oil from coal.
Or, as our lovely senator from California, Diane Feinstein put it, "An unproven, untested, and new method of generating gasoline."
Right before she voted against it in the senate.
Re:It's In the Air (Score:3, Insightful)
>>I asked my Baby Boomer parents for their old station wagon
You know that greens like you killed the station wagon and gave us the SUV, right?
>>as I clean up their mess and learn to survive the aftermath.
What aftermath? Has there been some sort of disaster I've missed? Is driving a wood-paneled station wagon cleaning the environment somehow?
The problem with greens, is that they're by and large complete fucking idiots.
No offense.
Re:Well I don't think it'll be a problem like that (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing you may notice is that humans are pretty good at solving problems.
smart people
They aren't so good at mitigating problems, looking ahead and making sure they never happen,
Management
but when a problem does happen they are pretty good and solving that problems.
the same smart people who have been warning about those problems for months/years/decades
Re:Oil From Coal (Score:4, Insightful)
The second half of the "peak oil" phrase is oil - that stuff you can get out of the ground and turn into liquid fuel without much effort at all.
Coal seam methane could fill some of the transport gap without having to go the expensive and wasteful step of making a liquid fuel from coal. The entire point of oil as fuel is cheap energy, and it's no longer cheap if you've got to muck about with a complex process with a fairly large energy input.
Re:Well I don't think it'll be a problem like that (Score:5, Insightful)
Like strip mining the Rockies for Oil Shale.
Re:Old news, buy oil stocks. (Score:4, Insightful)
When it takes more energy to extract, refine and transport the oil than what you get out of it, then that barrel of oil won't get extracted - no matter what the oil price is.
Not quite. While this is true if it takes more oil to extract the oil than what you get out of it, there may come some time in the future where oil becomes more valuable than its energy content.
Re:Old news, buy oil stocks. (Score:2, Insightful)
No one wants an oil well in their back yard until we are all screaming for oil to lubricate the gears off the economy. That sentiment will change.
Re:Well I don't think it'll be a problem like that (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you sleep through it when gas prices in the US were hitting $5 a gallon? It was unbelievable how many alt fuel technologies were crawling out of the woodwork.
Peak oil is sensationalist bullsh*t. When petroleum based products become more scarce, prices will rise making these alternative technologies more attractive. Once they get established they get cheaper due to economies of scale, etc., and gradually oil isn't relevant anymore. The entire world economy is optimized for petroleum simply because it's cheap. When it isn't cheap anymore things will change.
Re:Previous world war was fought over oil (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Well I don't think it'll be a problem like that (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:1, Insightful)
I live alone, and can live a sustainable lifestyle (everything is in walking distance.)
That does not mean the people or businesses around me are. If energy quadrupled in price overnight, I can gaurantee that all these "Fresh" groceries at the supermarket are going to go up , and that the employees who work there are going to want higher wages, etc.
The grandoise problem is that we need to work on a much larger scale to come back into sustainability, mainly: :: http://www.silversurfertoday.co.uk/News/Story/?storyid=2030&title=%E2%80%98Jobless_scroungers%E2%80%99_to_have_12th_child&type=news_features
1. Overpopulation - Too many people exist. Period. Maybe a world war will solve it, maybe not the way we want it to. The solution here is that when things become expensive, the middle class stop having more children, and the poor... well don't because they live on the governments teat and don't give a shit
, so unless the US wants to become a third world country full of deadbeats (*cough*Nigeria*cough) it's time to stop giving handouts to people who have more than 2 kids. Better yet, forget this "tax bracket" nonsense, and move entirely to VAT type taxes that are built into the price of everything. Either they will realize they can't afford children, and not have any, or they will move to where they can afford it (eg out of the city.)
2. Refundable Deposit (taxes :/ ) on everything that can be recycled. It's the deposit that makes people return it. Unfortunately the deposit value hasn't changed in like 30 years, and some states (eg Alaska) don't even recycle anything. This includes cars, how many of these damned things do you see in peoples front yards in your city? How many do you see in junkyards? Why do we have junkyards full of rotting husks of cars?
3. Rapid Prototype (3d printer) equipment available everywhere. Instead of 'throwing" everything away when it breaks, recycle the part that is broken, and have the local "replacement part" store make you a new one. This requires cooperation from every company that makes plastic parts. Metal, I'm not sure if there is an efficient process for this.
4. No more paper. For fucks sake we've had email since the 60's and it became commodity around 1996 (Thank you Windows 95), why the hell are we still hell bent on paper? Why can't I click on my credit card statement online and see the 'receipt' from the fucking store. Geez. Why does the newspaper company keep insisting that I have a PAPER subscription. Ugh. When was the last time it was even worth reading a printed newspaper. If it can be sent by email, IM/SMS or viewed on the web, STOP FUCKING PRINTING IT. STOP MAKING PRINTERS WITH INK MORE EXPENSIVE THAN WINE.
5. No more "personal" transportation. Why does everyone need a car and need to drive 30 miles from their home to work, shopping etc? Put it the other way around and have everything delivered, scheduled, as needed on more efficient vehicles, or better yet, live closer to where you work or shop.
6. We have the internet, why does everyone have to drive into down (Rush hour, etc) only to sit in an office. Why not simply make telecommuting the rule instead of the exception. Government force might needed for this. eg "reduced payroll taxes for telecommuting employees. Of course this won't be a possibility until we stop building garbage condos.
7. Build sustainable condo/apartment/MDU's. They don't need to be the latest and greatest tech, but they do need to stop using only the cheapest inefficient materials. I hate how where I live, every single place is baseboard heating, even though gas, forced air, and even geothermal heating is available.
I have to laugh, when I played simcity, I always built this way:
R/C/R/C/R/C/R/C
I/I/I/F/P/I/I/I
That should look like staggered Residential and Commercial, with the Industry right beside it. I always thought, wouldn't it be more efficient if everyone lived beside their workplace? Yeahyeah pollution...
But yes, the fact that people commute at all to "office" space is just plain ass backwards, why do we do this? There's no bloody assembly line to goto!
EU has it right (Score:5, Insightful)
The West, mainly none EU nations, needs to put on a slowly increasing tax on fuel. In addition, use part of that tax to build up railroads as well electric cars. This approach is far better than spending money later on the military.
Re:Well I don't think it'll be a problem like that (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Old news, buy oil stocks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Estimates [nwsource.com] say there are 10 billion barrels of oil in Alaska. The US consumes about 20 million [nationmaster.com] barrels per day. So all the oil up there will only be good for about 500 days or one and a half year. The point is that the oil will run out whether the Alaskan oil fields are exploited or not. Delaying the inevitable with, at best, 1.5 years is hardly worth the effort.
Re:Old news, buy oil stocks. (Score:3, Insightful)
And even during brownouts, Californians still don't want the safest cleanest mass production power plant available (nuclear) in their back yard.
Re:It's In the Air (Score:3, Insightful)
No I can't. Because any "inference" is yours, not mine. Look it up: inference [reference.com].
Besides your problem with the language, I never implied what you inferred, either. I spoke only about myself, in response to a direct question about myself in the post to which I replied.
I hold only you, not your generation, responsible for the fundamental errors you just made to invalidate the argument you are implying.
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:3, Insightful)
On a serious note, I keep hearing that the next World Wars will be fought over resources
Nearly all wars are about resources.
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay:
Peak oil is not about shortages. There will be plenty of oil around, but the current inventory (underneath the soil) will be on a continual decline. It's like when Sega stopped making Dreamcasts. There was still a huge inventory that took ~2 years to empty out the warehouse. Same with oil. It will take another 100 years or so to empty out the existing inventory under the ground.
Of course as oil grows more scarce, the price will climb. That's the real issue - how will people be able to afford $10/gallon gasoline.
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:3, Insightful)
But they should give the matter some serious thought if they have the slightest interest in the future welfare of their offspring.
Re:Tar sands (Score:3, Insightful)
"Let's also keep in mind that the only reason oil is approaching "peak" is that we aren't continuing to drill."
We are.
"Now, if the government allowed drilling in certain verboten areas, we'd be further away from "peak"."
By one or two years. At most, 5 years.
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:5, Insightful)
There will be plenty of oil in the ground, around as much as has already been used in all of history in fact.
Well, here's the thing: collecting oil, like most other human activity, requires energy to accomplish. Currently, the amount of energy required to collect a gallon of oil is less than the amount of energy obtainable from a gallon of oil... but as the "easy" oil is used up, the remaining oil is (by definition) the oil that is more remote and harder to collect. At some point, the remaining oil will be difficult enough to collect that it will require the expenditure of more than a gallon of oil to get a gallon of oil... at which point, the remaining oil might as well not exist, because after collecting the oil you'd have less oil than you started with. So the fact that lots of oil still exists is a bit of a red herring.
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the problems people like you have is that you think everything is somewhat static. We would have reached peak oil a long time ago if this was true. What is true in reality is that as producing oil becomes more expensive, development is done as a market force in order to contain that costs which in effect makes extracting the oil cheaper and easier.
In short, it's one of those things that can and most likely will be dealt with gradually over the time the necessity approaches. This also ties into global warming. No one is predicting over night drastic changes and none of the so called fixes to date do much to reverse the stated cause- they typically either artificially price necessities out of the hands of the poor or shift resources and money to other people (a redistribution of wealth). but in the end, the reality that holds true is that humans, particularly in first world countries, have a pretty good success rate at dealing with nature and the problems it throws at us. Sometimes this is better then others, other times it's disastrous but we prevail in the end.
What will happen with either is that people, probably the free market, will most likely deal with this in a way that won't be some major disaster as all the doom and gloom scenarios pretend it will be. Realizing this doesn't make be a denier, it makes me a realist, someone who is confident in the capabilities of man.
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what I'm saying. That energy from coal, nuclear, renewables, or whatever will be used to extract oil for it's petrochemical uses (inc perhaps plastic), even after it's not mathematically sensible to extract it for it's energy.
Re:Is this a Godwin-invoking comment? (Score:4, Insightful)
Norwegian gasoline prices: Aproximately 12NOK per liter. That means 7.34USD per gallon of fuel.
Complain all you want about the gas-prices increasing to 8-10USD/gallon, but seriously, other countries can cope. So can you.