January 8, 2007 at 11:51:23

The Closer We Get, the Worse It Looks

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By Richard Heinberg, Posted by Kuzminski (about the submitter) Page 2 of 5 page(s)

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For many Climate Change activists, theirs is primarily a moral issue having to do with the fate of future generations and other species. Their message implies an appeal to self-preservation, but since they cannot prove that the most horrific climate consequences being predicted (the drowning of coastal cities by rising seas, rapidly expanding deserts, collapsing agricultural production) will occur within the next decade or two, the motive of self-preservation is often downplayed. This emphasis on the moral dimension of climate activism is clear in Al Gore's documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth.

It is probably safe to say that most Peak Oil activists are motivated more by their immediate concerns for preservation of self, family, and community. They see the peak of global oil production as happening soon and the effects accumulating quickly. This concern for self-preservation is prominent in the quasi-survivalist tone of several Peak Oil websites.

Perhaps because Climate Change activists see that a dramatic reduction in emissions must be undertaken voluntarily and proactively, and that the depletion of fossil fuels will not occur quickly enough to deter catastrophic emissions levels, they tend to accept generous estimates of remaining fossil fuels as a way of dramatizing the need for action. They see the argument that depletion will take care of the carbon emissions problem as a threat, because it could lead to apathy. They argue that there are enough fossil fuels left on the planet to trigger a climatic doomsday; and, to underscore the argument, Climate Change often quote robust estimates of remaining oil reserves and amounts awaiting discovery issued by agencies such as the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), and by companies like ExxonMobil and Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA)-most of whose forecasts seem unrealistically optimistic compared to the majority of expert forecasts. Climate protectors understandably feel fully justified in doing this, because these, after all, are official estimates and forecasts.

Peak Oil activists adhere to more pessimistic resource estimates and production forecasts, and it is tempting to think that this is partly because doing so makes their case appear stronger. However, the track record of prediction by the optimists is not good:

-- During the 1960s, the U.S. Geological Survey issued successive reports forecasting a peak in U.S. oil production around the year 2000; this followed M. King Hubbert's controversial forecast of a peak around the year 1970. Confounding the official view, U.S. oil production did reach its maximum in 1970 and has been generally declining ever since, despite the subsequent discovery of the largest conventional oilfield ever found in North America-on the North Slope of Alaska-in the 1970s.

-- In their International Energy Outlook (IEO) 2001 report, the EIA stated that "The United Kingdom is expected to produce about 3.1 mb/d by the middle of this decade, followed by a decline to 2.7 mb/d by 2020," implying a peak around 2005. Britain's oil production from the North Sea actually peaked in 1999, two years before this forecast was issued, at 2.684 mb/d, declining to less than 1.7 mb/d by 2005.

-- In their IEO 2003 report, the EIA predicted that the country of Oman was "expected to increase output gradually over the first half of this decade" with "only a gradual production decline after 2005." In fact, Oman's production had already peaked in 2000, three years before the forecast was published.

This pattern of unrealistic optimism on the part of the official forecasting agencies continues with regard to other countries, and thus probably, by extrapolation, to the world as a whole. So it might be unrealistic for the climate protectors to give credence to such forecasts, official though they may be, or even to assume that the truth lies somewhere equidistant between the extreme resource estimates of the so-called optimists and pessimists.

Parenthetically, both groups have reasons (though different ones) to regard ExxonMobil as an arch-foe. That company has consistently funded groups undermining public concern about Climate Change. And recently ExxonMobil has placed prominent magazine ads proclaiming that the global oil production peak is so far in the future that it is something we need not worry about. One ExxonMobil executive has been widely quoted as saying, "Peak oil theory is garbage."

Differing Recommendations

These differences in perspective lead to somewhat diverging policy recommendations.

For Climate Change analysts and activists, emissions are the essence of the problem, and so anything that will reduce emissions is viewed as a solution. If societies shift from using a high-carbon fossil fuel (coal) to a fossil fuel with lower carbon content (natural gas), this an obvious benefit in terms of climate risk-and it is potentially an easy sell to politicians and the general public, because it merely requires a change of fuel, not a sacrifice of convenience or comfort on the part of the general public. And so, again, climate analysts tend to accept at face value official high reserves estimates and production forecasts-in this case, for natural gas.

However, as with oil, production forecasts by the official agencies for natural gas supply have tended to be overly robust. For example, in the U.S. the EIA issued no warning whatever of future domestic natural gas problems prior to the supply shortfalls that became painfully apparent after 2000, as prices more than quadrupled. Nevertheless a few industry insiders had noted disturbing signs: companies were drilling at an accelerating pace in order to maintain production rates, and newer fields (which tended to be smaller) were depleting ever more quickly. By 2003 the U.S. Energy Secretary was proclaiming a natural gas crisis. In the following three years, warm weather (perhaps due to Climate Change) and demand destruction (from the off-shoring of many industrial users of natural gas due to high domestic prices) led to a partial relaxing of prices and general complacency. However, U.S. domestic production appears set to decline further, and likely at a rapid pace.

For depletion analysts and activists, societal dependence on vanishing, non-renewable energy resources is the essence of the greatest dilemma that our society currently faces. We have created a complex, global economic infrastructure built to run on fuels that will start to become scarce and expensive very soon. From this perspective, natural gas is not a solution but an enormous problem: even if the global peak in gas production is 10 to 20 years away, regional shortages are already appearing and will continue to intensify. This means enormous risks for home heating, for the chemicals and plastics industries, and for electrical power generation. Natural gas is and will always be a fuel that is, for the most part, regionally traded (as opposed to liquid fuels, which are more easily shipped). Thus for many nations critical to the world economy-the U.S., Britain, and most of continental Europe-gas cannot serve as a "transition fuel."

Coal presents another controversial topic for both depletion and emissions analysts. Most members of both groups feel a keen need to articulate some politically palatable transition strategy so as to gain the ears of policy makers. If coal were entirely ruled out of the discussion, such a strategy would become more difficult to cobble together. However, the two groups tend to think of very different future roles for coal.

Some emissions activists and analysts look to "clean coal" as a partial solution to the problem of Climate Change. "Clean coal" practices include gasifying coal underground, in situ, and then separating the resulting greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide) and then burying these in ocean sediments or old oilfields or coalmines This theoretically allows society to gain an energy benefit while reducing additions to atmospheric greenhouse gases.

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