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Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by lexcorvus on Friday August 21, 2015 @04:37PM (#10100064)
I remember ten years ago when worrying about Peak Oil was all the rage. You don't hear too much about that nowadays…
Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by TillE on Friday August 21, 2015 @04:45PM (#10100122)
It's obviously a matter of when, not if. It's difficult to put an exact estimate on when oil scarcity will become a true crisis, but we can all agree that it's a non-renewable resource which will not be around forever.
Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by lexcorvus on Friday August 21, 2015 @07:10PM (#10100804)
It's obviously a matter of when, not if

It was just as obvious a hundred years ago that horse manure piling up in city streets was just going to keep getting worse.

we can all agree that it's a non-renewable resource which will not be around forever

True but irrelevant. The oil supply is finite only in physical terms, not in economic terms. It is possible to extract an unbounded amount of value from a bounded resource. All you need is an increasing price, which happens automatically as supplies decrease, and which provides an incentive for substitution. I'd happily take a wager that humanity will transition off petroleum long before we "run out" of oil.

Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by jfoutz on Friday August 21, 2015 @07:55PM (#10100954)
In some sense, peak oil happened. All of the easily accessible, abundant oil has been used up. Now you need a higher level of technology to extract oil. Because that's more expensive to produce than the easy stuff, renewables are catching up.

The stuff really is more challenging to produce, you need much more understanding and higher quality tools. Fortunately we're enjoying the compound interest of computers, software, material science and a million other fields that make difficult things simpler.

I won't take your transition bet, but i would bet if we had to extract oil using only technology older than 2000, we'd be pretty screwed.

Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by chromaton on Friday August 21, 2015 @04:49PM (#10100148)
Here's what I found out about the use of the term "Peak Oil". https://planiverse.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/peak-oil-peak/
Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by DanBC on Friday August 21, 2015 @04:40PM (#10100082)
You do. Oil sands delayed peak oil a bit, but it's still there.
Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by cpncrunch on Friday August 21, 2015 @04:53PM (#10100180)
Not only oil sands, but shale oil, deepwater oil, etc.
Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by api on Friday August 21, 2015 @04:42PM (#10100094)
It's more a misunderstanding of economics.

Conventional "stick a tube in the ground" oil may well have peaked or may peak soon, but there's more oil around than that.

It's also not entirely clear that peak oil would mean "oil prices will always go up." If anything, it could lead to successive rounds of demand destruction. I think the most likely scenario would be a "sawtooth wave" price on the way down the peak as rising costs lead to substitution (gas, EVs) and demand destruction (recessions, people moving closer to where they work) which in turn causes price declines. The ultimate demand destruction would be large-scale investment in public transit, which has to some extent been spurred by crazy gas prices.

Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by dwharrison on Friday August 21, 2015 @04:59PM (#10100225)
All the assumptions underlying the "Peak Oil" theory have been invalided by new technology.

Eventually we'll get there, but not this century...and possibly never if non-petroleum energy sources are developed between now and the end of the century.

Remember, petroleum was the answer to the "Peak Oil" problem of the 1840's & 50's.

We were running out of whale oil...and the solution wasn't more efficient ways to hunt and kill whales (though that did extend the life of the industry by a couple of decades). The solution was an entirely new energy source.

Petroleum will undergo the same transition...and the new recovery technology has bought the world a few additional decades to find that solution...

Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by Dylan16807 on Friday August 21, 2015 @05:06PM (#10100265)
"Peak Oil" just says we stop mining as much oil with a certain graph shape, not that the world ends. Transitioning to a new energy source is compatible and preferable.
Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by xrange on Friday August 21, 2015 @06:09PM (#10100551)
>not that the world ends

Lexcorvus and I apparently have similar memories, because my recollection is that all the articles discussing peak oil had a mandatory section predicting the eminent demise of Western Civilization (and quite a large percentage were giddy at the notion).

Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by vonmoltke on Friday August 21, 2015 @07:37PM (#10100893)
IIRC, the fearmongering was based on the idea that the world's consumption of oil was continuously increasing. Thus, if supply stopped increasing Bad Things would happen because it would put the brakes on society.
Re:Oil Falls Below $40 for First Time Since 2009 as Glut Grows by Dylan16807 on Friday August 21, 2015 @06:33PM (#10100670)
That's just journalism being journalism. Plus, it was harder to see what could replace a significant fraction of oil before solar and battery prices dropped so much, and uncertainty and lack-of-planning is worth some worry.