Peak Oil: The Real Scoop?

[RTFirefly]

@Sam Stone

Yeah. Since I left that message, gas here went from 87 cents/litre to 97. In some places in Canada it’s now well over $1.00/L

Ouch. That’s all I’ve got to say. That’d be like a 32¢/gallon price hike down here, if I’m doing the currency and liquid measure conversions right - and believe me, a price hike like that would grab people’s attention if it happened that quickly.

Absolutely. I made the same point in another thread just a little while ago. The median age of cars in the U.S. is around 9 years right now, and going up dramatically. The quality of cars today is quite high. The scrappage rate last year was only 5% of the fleet. If that rate holds, it’ll take 20 years to turn the entire fleet over. And my guess is that it’ll take longer than that, because the scrappage rate today is based on decade old cars or older, and the quality was lower then.

The median age is 9 years?! Wow. I’m having a hard time seeing that, though - that there could be as many 1995-and-earlier cars on the road as there are 1997-2005 cars.

That’s certainly possible. The big factor is is the rapidly increasing demand for oil in China and other emerging asian nations. China is expected to triple the number of cars on its roads in the next decade. China is currently the world’s largest consumer of concrete. They’re building like mad over there. It remains to be seen if oil production can ramp up around the world fast enough to keep up with the growth in demand. Even if we haven’t hit ‘peak oil’, we could still be in a position where the growth rate in supply can’t match the growth rate in demand.

Still, there are limiting factors. If gas gets high enough, you will see conservation start to really take off. High energy prices could put the brakes on development in China.

The problem (as you’ve pointed out) is, the only quick way to conserve gasoline is by not driving. And it will take scary-high gas prices for that to happen enough to make a difference. I’m reasonably sure people will drive less when gas hits $7/gallon than when gas is $2.33/gallon, but my bet is that we’ll have the stagflation of the ‘70s return - higher prices due to increased transport costs; decreased economic activity as a result - before we get enough change in drivers’ habits to make a difference.

And if energy gets expensive enough, I think you’ll see the opposition to nuclear power fade very quickly and we’ll see a rapid buildup of nuclear power plants.

I’m ready for more nuclear, as soon as we figure out how to safely transport the waste across the country to Yucca Mountain. But we’re still a good ways away from getting the power from any sort of power plant to fuel automobiles.

I’m not convinced that people behave in a particularly irrational way with respect to energy today…I can tell you I personally feel a lot more incentive to remember to turn off the lights if failing to do so is going to cost me $1.00 instead of a few pennies. And if wearing a sweater in the house will save me $200/mo in heating costs, I’ll do it. But I won’t live uncomfortably to save $5/mo. That’s just the reality of the way most people make such decisions.

Well, yeah, I can’t disagree with that. But those decisions are rational at the micro level, at present prices. And that’s what one can reasonably expect out of consumers, in quantity. I’m not going to berate consumers for buying gas guzzlers that are perfectly affordable now, but might not be two years from now; I’m going to berate the people running this country for ignoring the trouble approaching.

It’s calculations like that that will push widespread adoption of more efficient vehicles and of conservation. Not government regulation or the pleas of environmental groups.

But in the meantime, you have 10-20 years’ worth of old, inefficient vehicles out on the road that will take that long to phase out. Sure, it’ll all eventually come to pass, but we coulda planned ahead, included all 4+ wheel vehicles marketed to the noncommercial-user market in the CAFE standards, and then raised the CAFE standards. That would have eased the demand side considerably, and bought us a bit more time to figure out how to power cars with fuel cells or something.

Except your tax cut may wind up being regressive, so it’s not really ‘dem style’. Without exemptions, you drive up the cost of food and transportation. For poor people, that’s a bigger chunk of their income than it is for rich people. A new BMW gets better gas mileage than the '74 Impala the poor guy is driving.

Which is why I (in my fantasy) have created a tax cut that gives everyone the same actual amount of money, so the tax cut is also a much bigger chunk of the poor person’s income than the rich person’s.

And how many '74 Impalas are on the road anyway?

Right with you on that. Farm subsidies are ridiculous.

Glad we can agree on that, at least!