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Not Enough Oil? (Politics)
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AJMorton



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Half Gone: A book by Jeremy Leggett.

There is a reference to the unseen experts behind the world's oil in THOBR. So when I started reading this rather frightening book (Half Gone, not Mick's opus), I thought about the members of AE (not because you frighten me but because I value your opinions on the matter). I haven't completed it yet but will let you know when I do. Anyway, here's an excerpt (starting with the blurb on the back - the bit in red):


Jeremy Leggett, a geologist who spent the 1980s in the service of Big Oil before jumping ship in the 1990s to become Chief Scientist at Greenpeace UK and then launching his own renewable energy initiatives, understands the scale of the impending crisis and the need for us to act now. With watertight knowledge and sobering clarity, Leggett explains how we became addicted to oil and how this habit is dragging us into an increasingly dangerous dependence upon the Middle East and toward economic and environmental catastrophe.

We have allowed oil to become vital to virtually everything we do. Ninety percent of all our transportation, whether by land, air or sea, is fuelled by oil. Ninety-five percent of all goods in shops involve the use of oil. Ninety-five percent of all our food products require oil use. Just to farm a single cow and deliver it to market required six barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from New York to Los Angeles. The world consumes more than 80 million barrels of oil a day, 29 billion barrels a year, at the time of writing. This figure is rising fast, as it has done for decades. The almost universal expectation is that it will keep doing so for years to come. The US government assumes that global demand will grow to around 120 million barrels a day, 43 billion barrels a year, by 2025.

The International Energy Agency, the organization set up by industrialised countries to give them advice on oil and other energy matters, is scarcely less bullish. Its 2004 Energy Outlook forecasts 121 million barrels a day by 2030. Few question the feasibility of this requirement, or the oil industry's ability to meet it. They should, because the oil industry won't come close to producing 120 million barrels a day.

This half century of deepening oil dependency would be difficult to understand even if oil were known to be in endless supply. But what makes the depths of the current global addiction especially bewildering is that, for the entire time we have been sliding into a trap, we have known that oil is in fact in limited supply. At current rates of use, the global tank is going to run too low to fuel the growing demand sooner rather than later this century. This is not a controversial statement. It is just a question of when. One purpose of this book is to explain why.

A great battle is raging today, largely behind the scenes, about when we reach the topping point, and what will happen when we do. In one camp, those I shall call the "late toppers", are the people who tell us that 2 trillion barrels of oil or more remain to be exploited in oil reserves and reasonably expectable future discoveries. This camp includes almost all oil companies, governments and their agencies, most financial analysts, and most business journalists. As you might expect, given this line-up, the late toppers hold the ascendancy in the argument as things stand.

In the other camp are a group of dissident experts, whom I shall call the "early toppers". They are mostly people who have worked in the heart of the oil industry, the majority of them geologists, many of them members of an umbrella organisation called the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO). They are joined by a small but growing number of analysts and journalists. The early toppers reckon that 1 trillion barrels of oil, or less, are left.

In a society that has allowed its economies to become geared almost inextricably to growing supplies of cheap oil, the difference between 1 and 2 trillion barrels is seismic. It is roughly the difference between a full Lake Geneva and a half-full one, were that lake full of oil and not water. If 2 trillion barrels of oil or more indeed remain, the topping point lies far away in the 2030s.

If only 1 trillion barrels remain, however, the topping point will arrive some time soon, and certainly before this decade is out.


This is truly frightening, and if Leggett is truly in a position to know and, more importantly, is telling the truth, we are in trouble.

But what makes this book and these warnings different from any other "the end of the world is nigh" text?

I don't trust the oil industry, big business and business journalists. But I do trust the guys who work with the black gloop.

Even the big businesses remain curiously optimistic about their own projected 2030 cut off point. But this doesn't comfort me at all. It is horribly close. Both the "late toppers" and "early toppers" have got me twitching because both deliver horribly near dates.
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AJMorton



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However, according to Leggett's early toppers, the cut off starts within the next two years (before the decade is out) and the Oil Industry is deliberately keeping quiet about it.
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Mick Harper
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The official Applied Epistemological position on oil is an application of the "What is is what was" rule. Since the oil industry has been claiming "There are only thirty years of reserves left!" since they first started drilling for oil in the 1860's, it is a reasonable assumption that this will always be the case.

In other words oil is not limited. There is, for all practical purposes, an infinite supply.
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AJMorton



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Which can't be so. So we must apply the second half of the rule and look for evidence to the contrary.

His book seems to suggest that he has that evidence and that his silence has been forced upon him by big oil.
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AJMorton



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Don't get me wrong Mick, if it is possible that Oil is a quick forming naturally renewable source, then it may very well be infinite (climate change aside) and the concerns are unfounded. But from what I have read so far, Leggett acknowledges that peoples have said similar things in the past but that today this is somehow different.

But will keep you posted. Now...I am going to get some fake Gaelic train station signs (c.1990s) and see what we can say about them.
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Hatty
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Googled Jeremy Leggett and the first reference that came up said

Dr Jeremy Leggett is chief executive of solarcentury, the UK's largest independent solar electric company, ...


Ach so... he's not just working for Greenpeace, a charity, he's got a personal business interest. In other words he isn't impartial, he's just as interested in making a potentially huge profit from energy resources as the oil tycoons.

The company specialises in the design and supply of low carbon products and works with architects and developers to incorporate solar technology into commercial, residential and public buildings.

He's even won an award as Environmental Entrepreneur of the Year, Solarcentury being described as "the fastest growing British renewable energy company in 2006". Shares, anyone?
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AJMorton



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And doubly suspicious that he omits this from his book, only including his charitable efforts.

Jesus...by telling us all that he knows for a fact that oil will run out within the next three years, he would stand to make a bundle, very very quickly.

Nice one Hatty.
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Ishmael


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AJMorton wrote:
His book seems to suggest that he has that evidence and that his silence has been forced upon him by big oil.

So "small oil" played no role in his prior silence?
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Ishmael


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AJMorton wrote:
(climate change aside)

Can you please identify the direction in which the climate is changing?
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Mick Harper
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Which can't be so..........if it is possible that Oil is a quick forming naturally renewable source, then it may very well be infinite

You entirely underestimate the power of Applied Epistemology. There is no question of oil being a naturally renewable source. I said it was infinite for all practical purposes. The fact that we have had thirty years of reserves for the whole of the oil industry's lifetime can really only be true if the following conditions hold:
1. The oil industry runs on an amortisation period of roughly thirty years (highly likely)
2. It can discover oil at will
which implies that
3. Oil is everywhere and it is only cost that dictates what is found and/or exploited.

It is true that everything on earth is theoretically finite but nobody talks about, say, iron ore running out. Why not? Because everybody knows if the price is high enough you can get the stuff anywhere. Evaporating sea-water will supply as much as you want. As long as you can pay. 'Sjust the same with oil.

On the question of cost, everyone always talks about the World Economy imploding when oil reaches x or y dollars per gallon. But the fact is the British Economy has been motoring along quite serenely with oil costing the equivalent of several hundred dollars a barrel (ie after punitive taxation) since the First World War. Oil is a tiny percentage of total costs anywhere you look. And where it isn't alternatives are always available.

Another AE point to make here is that everyone, EVERYONE has an axe to grind when it comes to high oil prices. So it is our bounden duty to point out that it doesn't matter a tinker's cuss.
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AJMorton



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Ishmael wrote:
So "small oil" played no role in his prior silence?


What is 'small oil'?

Ishmael wrote:
Can you please identify the direction in which the climate is changing?


In which direction? No. It was an aside. Quite irrelevant to the discussion.

There is no question of oil being a naturally renewable source. I said it was infinite for all practical purposes. The fact that we have had thirty years of reserves for the whole of the oil industry's lifetime can really only be true if the following conditions hold:
1. The oil industry runs on an amortisation period of roughly thirty years (highly likely)
2. It can discover oil at will
which implies that
3. Oil is everywhere and it is only cost that dictates what is found and/or exploited.


Very persuasive argument. Especially point 3! Looks like Legget is becoming an oily and suspicious money grabbing character just like those he targets in his book.
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Hatty
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It would be interesting to know what Dr. Leggett says about solar panels -- even if he isn't a reliable source he's almost certainly inserted a 'plug' in his book for his own products... they're extremely efficacious in countries like the Middle East but haven't been taken up en masse here.

Apart from being unsightly I imagine the cost of installation is enormous and outweighs potential savings on energy bills; you'd probably have to stay put for twenty years or more just to recoup the original outlay. That aside, it seems counterintuitive to install solar panels in a cold climate but it's claimed that the amount, not the strength, of sunlight is the important factor (people with conservatories say much the same thing).

There's a talk in a couple of weeks' time entitled "Global Oil Crisis -- Reality or Hype?', the blurb starts off "The days of reasonably priced and plentiful energy sources are under threat". Was oil ever "reasonably priced" or even "plentiful", everywhere that is?
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AJMorton



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Hatty wrote:
Was oil ever "reasonably priced" or even "plentiful", everywhere that is?


The fact that Rock Hudson in Giant was so excited to find oil in a film set almost a century ago probably means the answer is a resounding no. Oil must have been a wealth-making commodity in Texas as soon as it was found and sold.

Good question! If it was never "reasonably priced" then such a label becomes a part of hype and not reality.
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AJMorton



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Here is a fairly vague yet suspicious (considering what Hatty uncovered) hint at why he wrote the book:

...launching his own renewable energy initiatives, understands the scale of the impending crisis and the need for us to act now.


My emphasis. I mean, if the guy wants to save the world from impending doom why not do it for free? Most likely answer is that he can't afford it. In that case what makes him any different from the rest of us?

"I want to save the world, but I want the world to pay me first."

This concept contains something very revealing. If the world is fucked because of what he claims to know, he too is fucked with the rest of us. If we don't pay him...he won't do it. In which case he won't even be able to save himself. Which makes the whole thing look like a big shitty lie!!

Please excuse my language but I am a big angry at having been roped in to reading the first half of the book.

Good God it would be great to get him on here so we call all lay into him. I for one would like to give him a good slapping!
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Hatty
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Have been asked to go along to this talk entitled "Global Oil Crisis -- reality or hype?" being delivered by Dr. Roger Bentley. Turns out this Bentley works for a company called Whitfield Solar Ltd. which appears on Reading University's website as

A new spin-out company from The University of Reading, Whitfield Solar Ltd, has been established to develop and manufacture solar concentrators, a new approach to photovoltaic (solar power) systems which offers significant cost savings over standard solar power generation.


....a company which is clearly aiming to be part of Big Business

...and is now set to enter the UK's rapidly expanding renewable energy market.


And Dr. Bentley himself is not disinterested

Dr Roger Bentley, one of the founding academics, has taken the role of Chief Technology Officer.


No doubt the salary is somewhat higher than a university lecturer's usual pay packet. I suspect that the conclusion garnered from the evening will be that the "oil crisis" is indeed a "reality".

It's significant that the university has received a generous grant from the government which is encouraging scientists to liaise with local companies. When I was working at Reading recently I could hardly fail to notice that the Marketing & Management were expanding exponentially, they were advertising for four new posts while other departments were wondering if they'd get enough funding to continue.
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