Episode-189- Peak Oil – Fact? Fiction? Or Both?
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Today we discuss the concept of peak oil and what it means in the coming two decades. Is the oil going to run out? Will capacity exceed demand, will it create more wars? Regardless of environmental wackos, global warming hoaxes and carbon credits what does it all actually mean for the individual and what should you be doing about it.
Today we also do a brief update on the Swine Flu (now called the North American Flu), a bit about the truth vs. the myths of what went wrong in 1976 with a different variant of the Swine Flu and an update from a Doctor at Parkland Hospital on the severity or lack there of, of swine flu.
Tune In Today to Hear…
- Is Tamiflu a government plot to kill us all, NO!
- What the 1976 Flu screw a conspiracy or incompetence, bet on incompetence
- What exactly is Peak Oil – perhaps not what you think
- Do we need to run out of oil before we have peak, no
- Can we have peak oil even if there is still lots of oil in the ground, yes
- If we don’t use oil for electricity will peak oil still increase the cost of electricity, yes
- Understanding the capacity and demand equation in oil
- How do we know the oil isn’t running out, the government is build a tax system based on it
- The myth that taxes are designed to change behavior and we we learn by looking at pricing models
- Why the message is save the earth vs reduce dependence and increase self sufficiency, no foil hat required
- Why you should increase your ability to produce your own electricity and it has nothing to do with saving the polar bears
- The inconsistency of the environmentalist claiming peak oil is here
- What we were told about “climate change” in the 70s and 80s
- What a school text book had to say about remaining oil in 1985
- The new battleground over oil is Africa, it is coming sooner then you think
- Where the environmentalists are right, the US using 25% of the worlds oil is very bad
- The difference between the end of oil and the end of easy oil
Resources for Today’s Show
- PandemicFlu.gov – Great Resource for planning and news.
- Props to Alex Jones (yes really) The Myth of Peak Oil
- An Example of a Global Cooling Article from the 70s – There is now a propaganda campain saying there was not consensus or agreement about Global Cooling, I agree with that and I mean it in the same way that there is no consensus about global warming today.
- Global Warming on Mars – Must be the Marian SUVs?
- Region 5 Get Together
- Members Support Brigade
- Dirt Time 2009
- Lights Out Audio Preview
Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show.
You also now can call in questions or comments for the host at 866-65-THINK, (866-658-4465) please read the suggestions for calling in before you do for the best chance of getting your comments on the air.
great show. I see the food shortages weakening enough people that they will get sick and die. Peak oil is hype to waste our money on this snake oil scam.
Individual energy production is the best way to reduce our dependency on others. Unregulated prices can push us out of the oil,gas and food markets.The biggest mistake ever made was the deregulation of utilities here in Calif,we now enjoy the highest home energy cost in the nation. Solar panels and home gardens make a lot of difference. One other thing that will help you control your own cost is producing your own Hydrogen for your car or truck. There are companies selling what appear to e-books on how to build your own Hydrogen generator for your transportation needs. Its not too difficult if your mechanically inclined, the items needed are available locally at a low cost. You also can buy some complete kits and just install them. The gas generated would supplement your engines and reduce the cost of driving. Hydrogen is made using H2O and splitting the Hydrogen from the Oxygen.
Thanks for not bagging on Canada … we’ve got enough to worry about what with having to live down both Bryan Adams and Celine Dion!
@Dennis
Your link went to a godaddy placeholder (probally taken down for spamming) so I removed it.
I want to say not just to you but to my audience this “drive with water” stuff is absolutely a scam. Anyone buying those “info kits” simply proves that old saying, “a fool and his money are soon parted”.
I figure your comment is a spam comment designed to promote this thing but allowed it anyway because it lets me make my point.
My comment was not intended as a spam and I guess I\’m just a fool. I do have the e-book of which I speak and it seems to be possible. Feel free to remove my e-mail from your podcast. Damn I was going to join the support Brigade this Friday.
No, no, they work. You just need to have the Tornado Fuel Saver, the magnets on your fuel line, and Gas Booster in your tank as well. With all of those addons, my old Duster 340 gets over 9000mpg! Buy my book to find out how, and I’ll throw in the Brooklyn Bridge, absolutely free!
Speaking of the energy usage control; the local electric company sent out the promotional flyers for the “smart meters” that can shut off your air conditioning “if the grid is under high demand.” They’re using a $25 rebate on your next bill as a carrot.
Sorry, the ability to not sit in Ball Soup is worth way more than that to me!
@Dennis, I am an equal opportunity offender.
@Chris, you said, “Sorry, the ability to not sit in Ball Soup is worth way more than that to me!”
You win the prize for making me laugh harder then any commenter so far. If you are not an MSB member send me an email with your email, first and last name, and I will set you up for free for 6 months.
Fricken funny! Glad I was not drinking coffee. I have often said I will pay the bill not to have my neck covered in sweat while I sleep, but have never quite put it that way.
I don’t have the time or energy to get into any arguments as to why Peak Oil is a very real event that is taking place right now and how Alex Jones’ “abioitic petroleum theory” is complete crap.
I’m going to simply leave the following links, each which address the latter issue and lead to resources addressing the former.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100404_abiotic_oil.shtml
http://peakoil.com/contentid-25.html
I will however comment that regardless of whether you think that Peak Oil is happening or not, the ‘name of the game’ isn’t simply survival… It’s self-sufficiency. Wouldn’t you at least agree that personal consumption and other dependencies should be decreased based on all the other threats to our way of life?
One good thing about us relying on other countries for oil now is we use up all their oil and still have ours when they all dry up. I’ve said this for a while now. I’m not sure anybody in the government is smart enough to plan this but I sorta like the idea. Don’t get me wrong, the USA would probably be a lot more stable as a country if we didn’t rely so much on foreign oil but in my opinion its relatively cheap right now so lets hold on to ours for now.
‘Ello,
I just wanted to point out that my earlier comment was aimed at a previous poster in this thread and not Jack.
While I stand by my comment, I also stand by Jack’s statements that it is DEMAND that will ultimately be the downfall of our oil-dependent way of life and that we should do whatever we can to be more self-sufficient in this regard.
Gerry, I agree with that and glad you clarified. When I read your fist comment I was going to ask if you listened to the show or were just commenting on the show notes. Glad you heard me out. Of course I agree an eventual peak is something that must happen with any finite resource I just think the way it is being spun to the sheeple is nonsense.
Jack didnt OBAMA preach using US oil when he was running for president. And your right about climate change 30 years ago in MISSOURI winters were cold and we had lots of snow now we rabbit hunt in short sleeve shirts in FEBRUARY. and a lot of times its 60-70 degrees the first week of deer season.2-3 days cold then 2-3 days warm no long hard cold winters anymore. Every 2-3 years we have a freakish snow or ice storm and thats it.
Good show Jack and as usual I agree with you. What\’s interesting to me was the huge nationwide drop in gas usage last Fall — which completely contradicted the predictions/assumptions of Jared Diamond and Peak Oil fear mongers who insisted that Americans \"would never\" reduce their consumption of gasoline, no matter how high the price. Last Fall proved them utterly wrong. Humans — and that includes Americans — will indeed look for alternatives when the price is too high. Ain\’t the free market great?
I think the people who are probably the most informed about peak oil are the ones who deliver gasoline/diesel to us. The producers, the refiners, and the distributors. The fact that they are not investing much more money into rigs and tankers should tell us something, along with the fact that the publicly owned oil companies are buying each other up like crazy.
But let’s get something straight here – it took us several generations to get to 85 million barrels a day of production, we are not about to fall off a cliff here. It will take us another 100 – 150 years to use up the rest of the oil. That’s why the “Hubbert Peak” is a bell curve.
It doesn’t really matter if we peaked 5 years ago, or at 3:37am Central Daylight Time on Easter Sunday 2009, or if we don’t peak until 2030. What peak oil is going to mean to us is that the world is going to gradually become a harder place to live in. Things that used to be cheap for us are going to be more expensive for our children, and may not be available at all for our grandchildren.
The good news is that all the things that make sense as a prepper make sense as a peak oil believer.
Get yourself some land.
Get to know your neighbors.
Grow your own food, keep your own livestock, learn how to put it away for the winter.
Stock up on the things your kids might need now when they are cheap.
Prepare to defend yourself and your family if the need arises.
Basically all the things that have been important for most of human history before the age of the personal car and supermarket.
My 2 cents.
Great show, Jack. Your take on conspiracy theories reminds me of the arguments, er… discussions that I had with my boyfriend back in the nineties. He was a conspiracy theorist and I was of the mind that politicians and corporations, etc. were either greedy, incompetent or a combination thereof. After we discussed this issue, we eventually came to the conclusion that it probably doesn\’t matter one way or the other. The outcome is pretty much the same. We have to deal with what is happening whether it is designed or not. Ranting and raving relieves some frustration but common sense planning and preparation is our best alternative.
I just wanted to comment on the swine flu in 1976 vs today. Of course, I understand we are now a global society and so on but here is how I remember the presentation and reaction to it then.
It was announced that a particularly bad form of flu was coming our way and when it hit, vaccines were offered BUT mainly to the population of large cities, not ever man, woman and child in the US. It was rather a non-event for me as I lived in a then not large community (Orlando).
Instead of the \\"forcing you to take it\\" fear some folks express about Tamiflu now, it was totally different. If memory serves me, folks were WANTING these innoculations, waiting in long lines in NYC (for example) to GET it. No one, to my limited knowledge, was hog tied and forced to take anything. If anything, people were grumping there was not enough for them. When the reactions to the vaccine came up, the whole thing dropped from the news.
The last thing I\\\’d expect if the government forcing limited stocks of any medication on the public. I\\\’d expect riots over not being treated fairly instead, people being the greedy grubbers they can be when demand exceeds supplies.
Anywho, that is my view of all this.
Jack, I believe in Peak Oil and Climate Change (that the planet is warming and that humans are a significant cause of it); that said, I also agree that part of what driving both issues is the anxiety added to each by the media, governments and
“extremists” on all sides of the arguments. In the end, greater self and community sufficiency, lessening our reliance on government and foreign interests (whether governments or companies) is only in each person’s best interest. We will then learn to live within our means.
As a side note on your early part of the episode on the Swine Flu, it’s interesting that in Canada, the media was reporting that various countries (Israel and some other Middle East countries specifically) were calling it the Mexican Flu as Swine has negative religious connotations for those countries. Personally, I think that’s taking it too far and is being too PC (politically correct); what’s next… I shudder to think.
Oh, PS. I wanted to make comment that I bet most preppers listening to your podcast do *not* live in Metropolis.
If any do, I bet the government will not be beating down their doors with any anti-viral meds. Rather, I think they would have to force themselves NOT to be swept away in the frenzy of the local population who WILL wait hours upon hours to get it. That is all, thanks. 😉
Sorry I’m late to this discussion.
I have been reading the peak oil blogs for a few years now. One of them eventually pointed out this site.
As noted by Jack, peak oil is a FACT, based on the finite reality of our planet. There are lots of ways to look at the problem. You could try to be a pure science geek and think only about the total oil in the ground, and how much of that oil we could ever get out. But, this misses the mark, because we silly humans like to make money and we like to play geopolitics, etc.
The argument about when we will have pumped the most barrels of oil per day, comes down to a combination of all of these factors, and I don’t believe anyone can predict the moment without looking in the rear view mirror.
That said, There are only two possibilities. One, the oil situation presents you with “troubled times” within your lifetime. Or, two, it doesn’t cause a problem in your lifetime.
Presented with these two possibilities, I have decided to stop reading the pointless blogging about exactly when someone thinks peak oil will happen, and decided to protect my family against the one outcome that presents a threat.
As stated here many times, most of the prepping can be useful in many cases. I propose that people just assign some probability to peak oil, along with every other swine flu, hurricane, etc. and get on with it.
I am an independent oil and gas producer. Until we sold our drilling rigs in 2002 we were contract drillers for 53 years. Point is, I have a vested interest in following what’s going on with peak oil. Last Nov the IEA came out with its World Energy Outlook 2008 report. The conclusion was the oil industry must develope the equivolent of 4 new Saudi Arabias between now and 2030 just to maintain the current production capacity. That’s a new Saudi Arabia about every 5 years indefinitely. We also have developing counties trying to get a greater slice of this oil pie. According to the IEA’s report, to offset decline rates and meet the increasing demand 6 new Saudi Arabias needs to be developed between 2007 and 2030. That’s the equivolent of a new Saudi Arabia every 3-4 years.
What peak oil means for consumers is price volatility as economies swing between attempts in economic growth which will drive oil prices through the roof. Those high prices will trigger economic recessions which will then be followed by demand distruction and a *relative* price collapse in oil. On graph it looks somewhat like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7vGDwGLU7s.
In 2004 the Society of Petroleum Engineers debated peak oil. Here’s the Q&A from that debate were price volatility was brought up: http://interface.audiovideoweb.com/lnk/nj45win9664/SPE/qahi.wmv/play.asx The rest of the debate is on my website.
I personally think we are in the first stage of this price volatility cycle. Over the coming years, the trend will be higher oil prices and low standards of living. I look for the gov to attempt price control through rationing.
Energy analyst Charles Maxwell estimates oil price will average $300/bbl by 2015
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB122065354946305325.html?mod=Barron
So this is the first time I’ve listened to your podcast, but I’m already hooked — I love the depth of your analysis and your dedication to rationality. Your conclusion about why to look for energy independence was damn persuasive.
That said, I think your stance on climate change is a bit askew. Can I tell you that the world is definitely getting hotter and we’re definitely going to die? Fuck no I can’t, that’s nonsensical. What I think IS fair to say is that we as a species are changing an enormous number of factors which influence global climate and ecology, and we’re doing it extremely quickly. I don’t know exactly what it implies that we’ve produced this massive amount of CO2 in the last century or so, and I don’t know exactly what the effects are going to be of all the other liberties we’re taking with the planet’s ecosystems, but to assume that we can change this many factors this quickly and NOT see an equally dramatic change in global climate and ecology just doesn’t make sense.
The natural world is a very finely tuned equilibrium system, and we can’t just fuck with it and expect nothing to happen. Will we end life on earth by what we’re doing? Of course not. Life is incredibly adaptable and as you said, very different global climates have in the past given the opportunity for life to thrive. What we need to be wary of is the fact that we truly do not know what is going to happen. We are not some special-case species which can get by without the rest of the planet, and if we alter our environment too much without regard for the consequences then we could very easily be shooting ourselves in the feet.
We, and all other life, is currently adapted to live the way it’s been living for the last many thousands of years. If we turn everything on its head there’s going to be a readjustment period, and I can’t assume that this is going to be a comfortable time to be alive when it comes. But you already appear committed to taking the appropriate action to minimize our impact, so whether you believe me or not I thank you for helping.
@Karl,
Well you are not a koolaid drinking drone and that kicks ass. It is awesome that you are concerned, asking questions and looking for answers. keep looking.
It seems almost heretical to question global warming today as being caused by anything other then man made CO2. When ever industry/government/science seem to combine to have that effect you better ask questions and not just accept it. Follow the money. Money in this equation is big grants for so called scientists, big taxes for government and lots of money for industry in the form of government funded programs. When this much money is involved you can’t trust anyone on the inside of it.
What we as people need to do is be logical and realize how little CO2 our existence creates as compared to many natural phenomena. What is one volcanic event vs. all the cars in L.A. and NYC?
We also need to understand that every animal on the planet exhales CO2 it is NOT a toxin in the way government is trying to make it out to be. We need to understand that with out CO2 every plant form on the planet would die instantly. We need to understand that every spec of carbon released via fossil fuel first existed in our atmosphere before it became part of a life form and then converted to gas, oil, etc. Hence for the same reason “ethanol is carbon neutral” oil is also carbon neutral the time line is just a lot longer.
Last we need to understand that other planets in our solar system are experiencing the exact same percentage change in climate as we are.
With that knowledge HONESTLY accepted by the scientific community and not slandered, lied about and propagandized against as it is today we could then have an honest look at the effect of excess CO2. But it ain’t going to happen anytime soon, why, ask Al Gore how much money he is making off of this and you have your answer.
Jack had other great info in this episode about cap and trade and energy taxes etc. His comments on how we exhale CO2 therefore we are toxin producers and they might even try to \"tax you for existing\" made me laugh out loud!! It\’s like the absurd tax ideas on cattle \’emissions\’. (Makes us rancher people in Wyoming a little nervous) Acutally depressing if you think about it, the sneaky crap from our government and enviro-whackos, but I like Jack\’s sense of humor and when he goes off on the crazy-death-of-common-sense stuff!