EUR Oil

-----Original Message-----
On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Boris Stremlin wrote:
>> Tell me, doctor, how is it the case that the world is on the brink of
>> disaster due to outmoded "social thinking", when it was only after our
>> "physical world knowledge" began expanding exponentially that we arrived
>> at where we are today?  Physician, heal thyself.

> Behalf Of Wiliam Kirk
>
>a process will not tell you when it will end. Only when the process does
end
>is it possible to carry out an analysis of its nature.

Geologists and petroleum engineers have a pretty good idea of how much oil
can be recovered from any given basin.  This is known as "Estimated
Ultimately Recoverable" (or EUR) oil.  Oil production from any given field
"peaks" and begins to decline when about half the EUR oil has been
recovered.

For many years geologists and oil companies have published estimates of the
total amount of crude oil that will ultimately be recovered from the earth
over all time. Remarkably, these assessments of EUR oil have varied little
over the past half century.  [ MacKenzie, 1996,
http://www.wri.org/wri/climate/finitoil/eur-oil.html ]

Global oil production is expected to "peak" around the year 2005 and oil
companies have known about it for many years ... they just aren't telling
anyone.

There is NO substitute for energy. Although the economy -- and the
economist -- treats energy just like any other resource, it is NOT like any
other resource. Energy is the precondition for ALL other resources and oil
is the most important form of energy we use, making up about 38 percent of
the world energy supply.

NO other energy source equals oil's intrinsic qualities of extractablility,
transportability, versatility and cost. These are the qualities that enabled
oil to take over from coal as the front-line energy source in the
industrialized world in the middle of this century, and they are as relevant
today as they
were then.

Optimists tend to assume that the "quality" (e.g., liquid vs. solid) of
energy we use is not significant, that an infinite amount of social capital
is available to search for and produce energy, and that an infinite flow of
solar energy is available for human use. Realists know that none of these
assumptions is true.

"If one considers the last one hundred years of the U.S. experience, fuel
use and economic output are highly correlated. An important measure of fuel
efficiency is the ratio of energy use to the gross national product, E/GNP.
The E/GNP ratio has fallen by about 42% since 1929. We find that the
improvement
in energy efficiency is due principally to three factors: (1) shifts to
higher quality fuels such as petroleum and primary electricity; (2) shifts
in energy use between households and other sectors; and (3) higher fuel
prices. Energy quality is by far the dominant factor." [Cleveland et al.,
1984
http://dieoff.com/page17.htm#ENERGY ]

What do sociologists think that an ever-dwindling energy base will do to
global society?  Where will the bombs fall first?

Jay -- www.dieoff.com