"Peak Oil" --- a term being used a lot. But what does it really mean?

Here we have a person looking at it from the point of view of an economist arguing that there is no issue about peak oil because ........

a) It won't be happening SOON (apparently things not in the immediate future aren't real -- they don't affect next quarter's or next year's or maybe even next decade's balance sheet)

b) That a difference in the CONSTANT affects the slope of a curve whose equation is O = R - CT
(the amount of Oil remaining is the original Reserve amount minus the amount Conusmed each year times the amount of Time elapsed)

There is an entirely different way of looking at the matter, physical reality. For which the equation looks like.........
O = R + BT - CT
where we now consider R to be the constant not of what Reserves are known to exist but which DO exist (ignoring whether economic of extraction or not) and where B is the constant rate at which Biological oil is currently being created > and again C is our rate of Consumption and T the Time

Looked at this way, the only thing that matters with regard to IS there a thing such as "Peak Oil" is whether B < C --- if we are using oil faster than the sustainable rate of oil production -- and in THIS case I do NOT mean "economic production" but PHYSICAL production, then the curve dO/dT WILL have a maximum as long as B < C and this truth is irrespective of the size of the constant R. The only thing changing R does is to change WHEN "Peak Oil" happens, not IF "Peak Oil" happens.

There is 33 cubic miles of oil left in world reserves. That’s a lot, and petrol is still cheaper than fizzy drinks or milk.

We use 1.2 CM every year.

So there is less than 28 years left of supplies.

However we are now at maximum output to service maximum demand as both China Europe and America expect to raise demands soon.

As oil pressure gets weak, water is pumped into the depleting reserve, which costs money, so petrol becomes more expensive than Iced Soda, and milk cost more to get to the supermarket and then before you know it everything that is a petrochemical or needs a petrochemical costs more money.

That’s everything BTW.

So the economy loses the unnecessary, and buys only the essentials.

I Hope your working for a primary producer as oil becomes too expensive in 8 years time.

urrrmmm Yes!

And, what if we're not? Does that make everything OK if we are not?

Why do you ask?

Jools

who cares that oil is running out? because of 100 years of a benefit for a small number of people we have killed and destroyed culture, communities and enviroment around the world. expecially in the last 50 years almost all wars, ones with lot of highlight in the news and those more silent, are fought couse of oil.
this system of explotation is possible thanx to oil.
so again who cares if oil is running out?
are we scared to lose our privilege?

I think you answered your own question Pedro. I guess the Iraqi people care that the oil is running out. The people of the Niger delta care whose land and health is poisoned by Shell. The Colombian peasants tortured and decapitated by BPs death squads. They might not have benefited much from having oil, but they certainly suffered when they were slaughtered for its scarcity.
Even those that can feed themselves without oil-sustained monoculture, permaculturalists and peasants, know to fear the end of oil as you should fear a starving mob. The US war-machine is an oil vampire. Oil is literally power now that our elite have stumbled into an evolutionary dead-end, and when the going gets tough, the tough kill the rest of us for what little we have. I think the amount of violence in the world will increase as the oil runs out. Fossil fuels have fucked the climate and were unsustainable anyway but I hate the bullshit PR for nuclear that is being railroaded through. It's based on the fallacy that we couldn't switch to renewables in time to avoid climate change. We could switch to renewables within a year if we stopped building shit like weapons and planes and racing cars. The real reason we haven't already switched to renewables is because once any community gets a sustainable source of energy it becomes effectively autonomous, like Scoraig is. Nothing to do with me, but when I was on Skye one village applied for a wind generator simply for when things go belly up - and they'll blow the Skye Bridge to stop the rest of us joining them !