From: Al Koop (koopa@gvsu.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 11 2003 - 21:37:04 EST
I wish to further support the efforts by Jan DeKoning and Ken Piers and
others to argue that the oil depletion problem is indeed an appropriate
topic for ASA discussion. ?
The subject brings to mind two Biblical passages. ?
(1) In II Samuel 12 Nathan tells David the story about the rich man with
many sheep and cattle who goes to the poor man and takes his one lamb
from him and prepared that lamb for a meal. ?I fear that the story may
apply to those of us in the US, Canada, Australia and western Europe
with regard to energy supplies. ?Recently there were strikes in Bolivia
when the government was selling fuel to the US when its own citizens
lacked sufficient energy for their lives. ?
(2) ?The story of Joseph comes to mind as well. ?It seems we may have
just experienced 150 fat years of energy supplies and we may well be on
the verge of experiencing 150 lean years of energy supplies. ?I hope
that soon a pharaoh and Joseph appear who have enough vision and
political clout to persuade the world to stock up (or at least conserve)
for these lean years. ?Unfortunately I don't see any such leaders on the
horizon.
I am a geneticist and before that a physicist who ended up teaching
environmental science and became very interested and intrigued by the
oil situation. One thing I find so interesting is that the thought
processes of those who tend to think the oil depletion situation is just
a bunch of bunk mirror very closely some of the same thought processes
of those who think that evolution from a common ancestor is also a bunch
of bunk.
I have been reading in this area now for several months. I find the
topic is right up my alley because it is small enough to read almost
everything worthwhile written about it, but yet be a very important and
somewhat complicated issue.
If you happen to be looking for information in this area in addition to
Glenn Morton?s web site, you may wish to look at the following:
Internet:
One of the best basic introductions to the situation is a poster by
Lester B. Magoon, of the US Geological survey at :
http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/open-file/of00-320/of00-320.pdf
He gives what I consider to be evenhanded, brief, concise picture of the
oil depletion situation in the world.
A more updated and extensive set of views is found at :
http://www.asponews.org/
This is the web site of an organization APSO (The Association for the
Peak Study of Oil and Gas) dedicated to publicizing the problem of oil
depletion with a series of monthly newsletters in addition to holding
conferences and speaking to any government organizations that will
listen. ?In the last 18 months one section of the newsletter has focused
on a single oil-producing nation, presenting an interesting history of
the nation as well as an assessment of the oil reserves of that nation.
In the recent November 2003 newsletter in article 276 you can see a
graph that illustrates the stark lone peak of oil production/use over
the centuries. ?In the next article in the newsletter, 277, there is a
link to a recent talk by Matthew Simmons, the CEO of a Houston
investment bank that specializes in energy company financial affairs.
?Simmons has been lecturing around the world in the past years
proclaiming the coming crisis of oil depletion in the world and natural
gas depletion in North America. ?(It has been reported that Simmons is
buddies with Bush and Cheney and was one of the people on the energy
policy team that Cheney consulted.) ?It might just be worth your while
to look at his slides just to see the one of the satellite photo of
North America the night of the recent blackout with much of the
Northeast in the dark. (Slide 7 in site listed in the November
newsletter)
If you have days or weeks worth of time (and you have read everything on
the Glenn Morton site) you can explore all the links that you will find
at the following sites:
http://www.healthandenergy.com/ ??????(under the oil crisis or renewable
energy sections)
http://oilcrisis.org/
http://quasar.physik.unibas.ch/~fisker/401/oil/oil.html
http://www.postcarbon.org/
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/PFE307A.html
Books: ?Heinberg, Richard. ?The Party?s Over: ?Oil, War and the Fate of
Industrial Societies, 2003.
New Society Publishers ?ISBN 0-86571-482-7
From the book publisher: ?
The world is about to change dramatically and forever as the result of
oil depletion. ?Within the next few years, the global production of oil
will peak. ?Thereafter, even with a switch to alternative energy
sources, industrial societies will have less energy available to do all
the things essential for their survival. ?We are entering a new era as
different from the industrial era as the latter was from medieval times.
Journal;
The Oil & Gas Journal in July and August of 2003 had a series of six
articles dealing with future energy supplies, probably because they were
being asked to address the claims of the APSO group. ?They are pretty
upbeat about the situation. ?The editorial of August 18 concludes with
these two sentences: ?"Oil is, after all, a finite resource. ?The target
message in OGJ's series is that human ingenuity is not."
I am quite sure that human ingenuity is not infinite. ?No doubt there
will be some ingenious answers to the depletion of oil, but how
successful these efforts will be in total cannot be clear to anyone at
this time. ?Optimists seem to think that things will get even better,
but pessimists see anarchy across the world and a world with billions
less inhabitants 75 years from now than are alive today.
The question is what anyone can do, and, more specifically, do
Christians have a good answer? ?I do not see world leaders doing very
much before the demand for oil exceeds the amount that can be produced,
because there are not enough citizens who recognize a problem and demand
that it be addressed at a political level. ?At that point it will become
obvious enough to world leaders that they will begin to be concerned and
start the process of looking for other energy sources. The time that
point is reached will depend on the amount of human population increases
and the amount of increased economic activity in less developed
countries.
Ironically, I do not see that it will be much help for us to conserve
now. I think I am hoping for a booming economy that increases oil
demands in the developing world, in China, and in India, so that the
peak will manifest itself sooner when there is more fossil fuel left
that can be used in addressing the situation. The later the situation is
evident to the world, the less fossil fuel will be available to help us
find these ingenious solutions the optimists are telling us will appear.
?I do not see that energy-efficiency methods and conservation by a few
individuals will help the world, except for slightly reducing the
production of pollutants. ?I also think that one thing we could do is to
try to preserve the railroad infrastructure, since that will be the most
energy-efficient transportation method. Other natural resource
depletion, (like water as mentioned by others) will manifest itself in a
more local manner, whereas oil is a global entity that will affect
everyone. ?As soon as the world in total demands 30 billion barrels in a
year, and it can produce only 29 billion, it will affect the entire
world. Some areas of the world just will not be able to get the billion
barrels they want.??There will be price increases that leave the poor
behind, there will be wars where the powerful will take the oil they
want, or/and there will ingenious solutions that find some way of making
up the energy deficit. ?Most experts really don?t see any way that the
short term will be anything but nasty. ?Only some unseen new energy
breakthrough is likely to avoid a bad situation.
I hope it is not that way, but.... Take care and God bless us all.
Al Koop?
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