To be fair, I think the "peak oil scare" was good. That's when we all started to focus and take renewables seriously. I find it funny that OPEC never learned from its mistake from the 70s when there was the oil shortage and fuel efficiency became a thing. To be aware, fuel efficiency before then was never worth mentioning in a car sale. Yes, it never became too big because the shortage ended, but it at least got started.

Without the peak oil scare, we wouldn't be "this" far, I think. Humans need a burning fire under their ass to actually do something.

Promise you this though. Don't think big oil will be down and out. They're going to collect all the cold hard cash they can this next few years. Then, they're going to strangle the commodities needed for renewables. They'll start buying rare earth mining rights, processing plants, manufacturing companies and all. Making sure they make the biggest dollar from the beginning of the energy food chain to the consumer's doorstep. If they can't make money from oil, both God and I as their witness, they'll make their money from lithium and battery manufacturing. To think they're a bunch of mustache twirling dummies is the biggest folly people have.

> they'll make their money from lithium and battery manufacturing

This isn't much of a problem though I think? It would be a problem if they bought mining rights then refused to mine causing shortages of raw materials needed for renewable tech.

As a capitalist, I want to own all the lithium mining rights in the world. I dictate the price and flow when I seem fit. Like De Beers in blood diamonds... cough, sorry, "ethically sourced diamonds".

As a consumer, I want many, many capitalists owning different lithium mining rights in the world. They fight each other to lower the price and be competitive. Then find cheaper and cheaper ways to obtain lithium or even figure out better alternatives.

I am a capitalist. But I'm also not a total fucking monster. Oil companies don't play massive competitive games. They like working together. So no. I don't want them to have a hand in the future.

By the way, research lithium mining. A lot of big media have reported on it. It's fucked up and pretty much a modern day humanitarian/slave crisis.

Lithium is easily sustainable to mine and there are wildly ample amounts of reserves in the US. Almost all negative articles about vehicle electrification are hit pieces that intentionally conflate lithium and rare earth materials like Cobalt.

I agree with you, but Cobalt is not a rare earth material.

And just to reiterate: lithium is abundant, widely distributed, and cobalt isn't required for batteries (LiFePO4 is a common chemistry, uses no cobalt, and has very long cycle life... good especially for grid applications).

> To be fair, I think the "peak oil scare" was good. That's when we all started to focus and take renewables seriously. I

No not really. It made me focus on looking into the 'peak oil' claims and I then realized that was major nonsense and people who proclaim it should not be taken seriously and are instantly discredited in anything they say.

Peak oil was a major distraction about the actual issues that should have been talked about.

I remember listening to a Michael Moore book in 00s where he talked about peak oil and had a funny story about a grandparent telling kids what it was like to have petroleum products like plastic and whatnot. He listed all the things made with oil that would disappear. I thought that was a bit crazy so did some research on the topic and realized that he was either full of horse apples, or stupid, or being deceitful, or some mix.

Since then, I’ve been curious about peak oil claims and they all seemed really wrong headed.

The best I can think is that they were trying to trick people into using renewables. But I think tricking people is short sighted because when the trick wears off, I don’t trust the person again.

I don't think that's fair. Our methods of determining oil reserves and our technology to extract oil from previously un-economic raw materials (shale oil, tar sands, heavy crude) have improved dramatically, which is the main reason for the glut of oil that we see today.

Good point. I think the challenge is trying to figure out what is BS put out by the oil companies (that never showed peak oil) vs BS put out by other people (that I guess inaccurately failed to include technology improvements in their forecasts).

I think the part that is fair is the belief that we would run out of oil to the point that we wouldn’t be able to make plastics. That’s just me not taking into account of the supply demand curve where plastics would be able to use oil even if we were not able to affordable fuel cars.

That what brought the price down. But there are huge known fields in the Golf and other places that have major potential, but those are rationed by a cartel.

"The house is burning! The house is burning!" A child laughs.

Parents take the child out of the house quickly in fear. After a moment a plane crashes into the house, obliterating it.

While yes, the child was full of shit. It still led to something marginally good. Maybe the parents should have left him in the house because he's a little shit. That might make the situation better. But that's an ethics question I don't feel like exploring.

Peak oil might have been a false flag scare, true. I'm not going to argue with you on that. Fuck it, I'm going to agree with you. It was a total bullshit scare! But it was a scare that led to a big push in getting away from fossil fuels. So still, it was a good thing. Ends justify the means.

The problem with this is when a group cries wolf, are the people going to continue to listen? Eventually, Machiavellian tactics turn your credibility to mud. You end up in a place where folks don't believe anything a group says. Then you're stuck shaking your fist at "the stupid general" public when your organization's tactics are largely to blame. This is where both sides of the environmental discussion have ended up and why the issue is so polarized (in part).

Exactly. We've hit "the point of no return" in regards to climate change at least twice in the past 10 years and depending on who you ask, we're projected to hit another "point of no return" in 2024 if we don't change our ways. Look up the early climate change movements and there have been people predicting the imminent death of the earth for the last 70 years.

So, yeah, I don't blame people when they eat their plastic wrapped burger in their F150 while giving up any efforts to "save the world".

>Peak oil might have been a false flag scare

Oil is a limited resource, the value of its extraction is differentiable, it started at 0, and will finish at 0, following Rolle's theorem, it has a maximum, the peak oil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolle%27s_theorem

> Oil is a limited resource

So oil is like every other resource, good to know.

> It was a total bullshit scare! But it was a scare that led to a big push in getting away from fossil fuels. So still, it was a good thing. Ends justify the means.

When this kind of thinking is common, though, you lose the ability to engage at all with people who might not believe that "getting away from fossil fuels" is valuable as an end in itself.[1]

Is it valuable for other reasons? Certainly not any reasons that might come out of your mouth.

[1] Which, frankly, should be everyone. What kind of terminal goal is that?

I'm not saying it's right.

I'm saying it's effective.

If you say the right thing but people still do the wrong thing... who cares?

If you say the wrong thing, but people do the right thing, is that bad?

If you say the wrong thing, and people call you on it, and you demonize them and call up the mobs against them for it, then yes, it's bad.

The "ends justify the means" mentality has been the cause of many (most?) atrocities in history because it takes the assumption that one side just knows what's right without being able to recognize our own fallibility

Is it effective? I think there’s some confounding factors involved. For all we know the narrative made it worse and kept us on oil longer because companies tried to pump faster and drove prices down.

The notion of crude oil becoming a stranded asset seems a little silly. It will be many decades before the transportation infrastructure transitions off fossil fuels. And even then there will be demand for oil as a feed stock for chemical manufacturing (plastics, fertilizers, etc). (I'm not claiming that this is a good thing, it's just the economic reality.)

I can't remember where I saw the numbers and I'm pretty sure I'm off a bit. But I think only half of all crude oil gets distilled into "fuel". The rest ends up as plastics and other chemicals, as you mention. I just remember it's a very significant of non-fuel oil use is out there. A quick google search, I can't find the chart I saw. Maybe someone can chime in better on that?

Edit: Listen to Retric's comment below, not me on my stats

Worldwide, only 1/4 of oil is used for industry.

46% of oil is turned into gas. However, include diesel, aviation, plus boat fuels and transportation adds up to 69% of oil used.

Home heating is 3%, and electricity is 1%.

Personal transport going close to 100% electric is going to take a long time, but combine all electric vehicles with plug in hybrids and demand may start to drop within 10 years. Especially if bio fuel production remains steady, the total demand for oil could actually start to fall significantly within ~15 years.

Remove oil as an energy source and industry would still keep 1/4 of current demand. So, oil is not going to become stranded, but that’s still going to crush any company or country depending on current profits.

We have a LOT of oil in the ground. If most of it doesn't get stranded we're in for much, much worse problems.

I don't understand why people say oil is useful for plastics and such as though that was fundamentally different from its use as fuel. In either case, the reason we use it is because it is a pre-existing store of energy. If you have an energy source, then you can make oil, plastics, and whatever else you want. I have, or had, a mug from a former employer that was made out of plant-based plastic. It appeared no different from any other.

Sure synthetic hydrocarbons will eventually take over for those purposes. But we don't have anywhere near enough renewable energy to make it economically viable today. It will take decades to build the necessary infrastructure.

I think the peak in "peak oil" is a very wide peak with a lot of noise in it. That makes it easy for certain people to make-believe it's not going to happen. But it is... we just might not be able to predict which decade with certainty.

Perhaps this is a kind of an intelligence test for human civilization. Can we stop the global guzzling of petroleum resources before there's a profound ecological and economic shock? I think not.

There's no "free-refill" of oil unless we all go extinct, get covered by sediment for a million years before we're liquified to petroleum.

Look, I'm just about a complete package when it comes to being an asshole. My history on HN is more than enough to prove that.

But, I don't' think humans are that useless to where they're going to fail in fixing this. This can be reversed and we're in the beginning stages. The hole in the ozone layer was deemed doomed and without repair. NASA has it in track on being fully recovered in around 2060 since we stopped using shit aerosols in the 90s.

I think Musk is a complete and utter cunt, but I also recognize the good he's done for electronic cars. Now, all the big players are releasing real electric cars. Hell, VW is doing so to fix their PR image after the diesel scandal. This is good. Still will take time, but you can't have a critical mass breaking point without a slow beginning. A point will be reached (when, I'm not smart enough to answer) and fossil fuel cars will look like a home phone compared to cell phones. If you're old enough, you'll remember that cell phones were "secondary" phones. Then, in a flash, people realized "Oh, we all stopped paying for landlines". And few people have landlines anymore.

The moment Dodge/Ford/GM come out with an EV that has the same feel and balls as a muscle car, that's my personal breaking point. Right now it's all focused on the luxury, feather, Italian aesthetics feel. Fuck that dumbass nonsense. Give me a mean and angry electric vehicle. Or an ultra long range EV Jeep. That'd be cool.

> The moment Dodge/Ford/GM come out with an EV that has the same feel and balls as a muscle car, that's my personal breaking point. Right now it's all focused on the luxury, feather, Italian aesthetics feel.

There's nothing stopping them from doing so from a technology perspective (and heck, the Dodge Charger has an ideal name for a EV remake). It's just that they don't believe there is a market today for EVs among people with your tastes. Add to that the fact that margins on muscle cars are probably huge vs an equivalently specced EV, because muscle cars are decades old technology (big V6-V8 engine) repackaged.

I've had people with similar tastes tell me that the sound and vibration of a gasoline/petrol engine in a ICE car is something they don't want to give up. They like the uneven jerky feel of switching gears, even if they are accelerating more slowly overall. When I point out that both of these things could be simulated relatively easily in an EV, they often pivot to cultural nostalgia and "authenticity" of a petroleum burning engine.

Depending on their political beliefs, some at that point invoke political arguments against renewable energy and denying climate change.

For the most straightforward evidence of how hard it is to change the cultural addiction to gasoline, just look at Harley's struggles to market its electric motorcycle.

But the segment that matters more than muscle cars or motorcycles is the family hauling/commuting crossover/SUV. This is both the fastest growing segment, accounts for far more miles driven, and is also the segment historically plagued by poor fuel economy. This is also where many manufacturers are introducing EVs and PHEVs.

The ozone hole was mostly fixed by changing refrigerants. This was fought at first until it became apparent that substitute refrigerants could be produced. At that point, the refrigerant manufacturers and the manufacturers of air conditioning equipment saw that there was a pot of gold in the transition and dropped their opposition. The consumer paid for it, but consumers are often led astray and aren't organized enough to fight for their self interest.

No.

Montreal Protocol of 1987 forced a ban on the production and use of ozone depleting chemicals without alternatives. This was a way bigger problem than just refrigerants and aerosols. Asthma inhalers contain ozone depleting chemicals, but those are allowed due to no good alternatives (at the time). Those same companies "found" the alternatives and made them work because of it. By found, a multi-national decade long study through the UN found them before the protocol was signed. Those companies continuously fought the need to ban the old chemicals well into the 90s. No one cared or listened because of the environmental repercussions. Consumers didn't suffer from this in the least bit.

The idea it was some anti-consumer endeavor is just as silly as going green is anti-consumer because the consumer has to then pay more for oil down the road.

> This was fought at first until it became apparent that substitute refrigerants could be produced.

You mean that once costs become reasonable people moved fast and in concert to resolve the problem?

> where a supply crunch would cause the price to skyrocket

Hum... How do current prices compare the the 90's? What is the definition of "skyrocket" you were expecting?

Or are you talking about the people that kept saying we'd be back to a medieval economy? Apocalipse fantasizing is a hobby since that book exists; and I'm pretty sure it just had a different name before it, it's not sane to take those people seriously (it's not healthy to fight them either), and it's not sane to pretend everybody is like them.

Like... do inflamed Canadians hold the door open for you but not tell you to have a good day...ah?

Jokes aside, Canada actually stands to profit well from global warming. With thousands of years of resting, fertile top soil, lands not suitable for agriculture due to short growing seasons... well, you'll have better growing seasons. Plus still be cool enough to not be a scorching wasteland. Just being realistic. Many countries used for agriculture will dwindle in the average increase of temperature. Canada will actually increase. Same with Russia, most of Siberia is fantastic top soil, just really, really shitting growing seasons... well, lack there of.

Har har stereotypes.

Most of Canada's north is in fact granite "Canadian shield" country with thin or non-existent top soils. See map here: https://cdn.britannica.com/s:700x450/98/180898-050-810A6879/...

Also the bulk of the population lives next to the border, in areas as far south as northern California / southern Oregon.

In reality Canada will not likely benefit economically from global warming because for its entire history it's been mostly an exporter of resources, not a producer of finished goods. Right now a large part of GDP from exports is from oil and gas, and the dominant economic class here benefits from keeping it that way. Similar to Russia, actually.

Canada already has plenty of fertile soils (rapidly being destroyed by urban sprawl, but that's another story). And it used to be one of the world's biggest food exporters. It is now a net food importer. Because it's cheaper to produce food elsewhere with dirt cheap labour in Mexico and so on. That isn't likely to change.

I know stereotypes are fun. Us yankee-pollocks are consistently drunk and shooting off guns, all the time.

Also... humans... if there's a will, there's a way. Just because today is not true, does not mean tomorrow is not. That's been human history. If the food starts to not come in from other countries, I highly doubt Canadians, in all their kindness, won't result to scorching the earth and planting potatoes. Hopefully they don't use them to make vodka. But that's still plenty of land in the west that if the population goes hungry, they're going to figure it out... let's see, in America we have invading to spread freedom... oh! Canadians! "Looks like you all need some kindness!"

That and when it comes to Russia, you anglo-saxon-frenchie descendants have an extremely bad habit of underestimating that bear. If the Russians have the ability to adequately utilize that hell hole called Siberia, they will. Right now, there's nothing to be gained from a 2 month growing season. If temps rise enough to about a 4-6 month season. They will force farmers out there. As working farmers or as ground up fertilizer. Because they've done it in the past.

The rural parts of Canada that aren't currently being used for growing are in the arctic/near arctic.

The changing climate won’t make the days longer. Canada will always have a shorter growing season.

As per this article[0], "The eastern provinces rely on an oil supply that's imported from Saudi Arabia, Africa and Venezuela."

Canada, an oil rich country, imports oil from Saudi Arabia... how does that make sense.

It would be better for Canada and the environment if a pipe is built. First, Canadian environmental standards vs. Saudi, Africa, Venezuela. Second, less tankers burning diesel and oil tanker accidents. Third, Canada keeps the economic benefits.

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-imports-oil-while-ba...

Logistics and refinery technology. It can be easier to move a cargo of crude via ocean than build a pipeline. And refineries are not all identical, western canada has tar sands that produce very heavy oil which require a much more complex refinery with more capital expense, the existing refineries in eastern canada have lower complexity refineries that are well suited to refining Saudi Arabian oil.

Actually incorrect. Bitumen from Alberta shipped through Line 9 is now refined in Ontario and Quebec and is now the majority of oil consumption in central Canada. The poster above posted an out of date article and then drew incorrect conclusions from obsolete information.

No, it's not out-dated dude. In a different post from you, you're quoting the National Observer which I've never heard of. In Wikipedia's entry it says this: "According to an article by Vivian Krause in the Financial Post, the National Observer has received funding from The Tides Foundation of San Francisco, and Linda Solomon Wood is the sister of a former chairman of the Tides Foundation. Terence Corcoran in the National Post referred to the National Observer as a "left-wing Vancouver online magazine".

For facts: As per BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019 report, Canada consumed 108.8 millions tonnes of oil equiv. It imported 29.1 of crude. 65% from US, remainder from rest of world. 19% from Saudi.

Come. On. Read what you just posted. It does not disagree with the article I posted. 108.8 million tonnes of crude vs 29.1 tonnes imported means only 25% of _all of Canadian_ oil is imported, and of that 65% of it is from the U.S., not Saudi.

By your own quoted numbers only 5% of Canadian crude comes from Saudi Arabia. (20% of 29.1 = 5.82 million barrels, 5.82 million barrels out of 108 million barrels is 5.3%)

The CBC article was 2012. Before Line 9 reversal. You may not want it to be true, but it is. And you actually just confirmed it.

And in fact most of that Saudi oil is going to eastern provinces, not central Canada:

https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/nrg/ntgrtd/mrkt/snpsht/2019/03-03m...

Breaks down oil imports by source and province and -- this is the NEB, not a 'left wing' source -- its first sentence is: "Canada imports around one barrel of crude oil for every seven and a half barrels it produces."

Note that the rest of the page only breaks down imports and doesn't show domestic sources, which as I pointed out is 75% of consumed oil _nationally_ and 90% of Ontario's.

Also here from the NEB: https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/nrg/ntgrtd/mrkt/snpsht/2019/08-01q...

Look a the pie chart "crude oil supplies to Quebec" and look at how small the "Other" in the pie chart is. There's Kenney & Scheer's "saudi tankers."

Even if you accept your argument, as you pointed out, a pipeline (Line 9) helped the situation.

Sure, an existing pipeline. It was originally built to move oil east decades ago. Then it was reversed because oil coming from the other direction was more economical. Then they reversed it back recently.

My overall point is that almost every Albertan I've spoken to doesn't even know about Line 9, and politicians and media there keep repeating points about Quebec and Saudi Oil and Saudi tankers, and being denied access to markets. This doesn't accord with reality: oil from Alberta is already distributing across the country. Oil from Saudi Arabia is only a minor part of the mix in Quebec and almost none in Ontario.

Also worth pointing out that as a % of GDP and as % of exports manufacturing still tops oil and gas and mining. So the claims that "Alberta is holding up the economy of the country" sound pretty unsound and shrill.

In fact, when Alberta is doing really well because of high oil prices, the manufacturing centres suffer due to a high dollar.

What does it matter if it's existing or not. The pipe helps Canada reduce spending money elsewhere. It helps the environment vs trucks, rail and tankers. A new pipe will help further, whether you think 25% imports is still high or not (it is still high, see next paragraph). You've already shown the benefits of adjusting Line 9.

Oil prices are not high. Today WTI is at $54 and Alberta oil (which is also Canada's oil) is selling at $12 cheaper (21%) because of transportation issues... that's then on top of that we pay an addition cost for refined products! $12 is per barrel... and we import 592 million barrels PER DAY according to the website you linked.

EDIT: you also said in a previous comment "and the world wide price of oil has been sagging for a half decade because of global macroeconomic forces"... but now you're saying oil is high? Ok, I'm really out of this discussion now, you're just making stuff up.

What? I never said oil prices are high. You just didn't read. I said _when_ oil prices are high, central Canada's manufacturing industry suffers.

Stop throwing insults around and read.

I can't reply under your reply.

>imported means only 25% of _all of Canadian_ oil is imported

Yes! 25% of Canadian oil is imported! Don't know why wrote "only". An oil rich country gets 1/4 of it's oil from elsewhere, including Saudi and apparently Azerbaijan.

Anyway, HN reply mechanism is nudging me to move on from this discussion, so I will.

That 25% number does not accord with the CBC article from 2012 you posted. And it's for the entire country -- from looking at the NEB chart the majority of that is going to the Atlantic provinces.

You posted an extremely out of date article.

This is actually incorrect since the reversal of Line 9, 90% of Ontario's oil consumption comes from Alberta. 44% of Quebec's comes from Alberta, with the remainder being other North American sources from the U.S.

Here's my source: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/11/13/news/guess-where...

Suncor's refinery in Quebec now processes 25k barrels of Alberta bitumen a day.

There's links in the article to primary sources, including industry documents.

I know many Albertans think we're burning Saudi oil here, but we're not. Strangely enough, Kenney doesn't seem to advertise this fact, and keeps going on about oil tankers going up the St Lawrence.

P.S. I'm born and raised in Alberta. Moved to Ontario in my 20s. Line 9 runs 2km north of my house.

I replied to another comment of yours. It's not out-dated info.

And from another HN commenter: "This seems more like a heuristically constructed perception of reality, presented as if it is fact."

"Constructed perception of reality" is _exactly_ what's going on in Alberta right now.

Read my reply to your comment. All you did was confirm my numbers.

> This demand whimper thing is inflaming politics very poorly in Canada. There is a very vocal and strong wing of right wing politics centred out of Alberta that blames central Canadian liberalism for its economic woes (for not building pipeline capacity and enacting carbon taxes).

This seems factual.

> Or at least that's their public line to inflame the masses while they know full well that their oil is expensive low quality oil and the world wide price of oil has been sagging for a half decade because of global macroeconomic forces that the rest of Canada has no control over.

This seems more like a heuristically constructed perception of reality, presented as if it is fact.

> It's becoming quite toxic, and is an example (along with Trump's nonsense coal jobs rhetoric) of the kind of thing that we are going to have to deal with as the economic and political realities of climate change become more visible.

This seems to equate the economic feasibility of coal jobs with that of oil in Canada (if a pipeline to transport the oil existed). Again, this doesn't seem consistent with a factual evaluation of reality.

> (That, and xenophobic hostility to refugees which will inevitably increase as climate change further damages the global south.)

  xenophobic having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries.

This seems to presume a specific line of reasoning behind a presumed level of disapproval of refugees (and I would presume this judgement would also extend to immigrants in general?), when the reality is there is actually no way to know with a high level of certainty precisely what and how (or if) large groups of people think on complicated multi-dimensional topics.

The mind is a very tricky thing, it seems prudent to learn the sorts of powerful but error-prone things it does without our conscious knowledge, such that we can improve the quality of discourse on these and other topics, before time runs out.