So we can count on the coming astronomical increases in energy prices”

Are you investing in oil? Given the confidence exuded in this article, your mouth should be stuffed with money.

Well, historically that simply isn’t true. Between Malthus’s time and about the 1880s when artificial fertilisers came in, advances in technology made absolutely no difference to Malthusian pressures. During that period of about three generations they receded for other reasons:-

- political changes that allowed food imports from further afield (mostly following from a period of peace and relative strength in Europe);

- opening up new lands from which to bring food and to which some emigrants could go (also largely a consequence of these political changes).

The technology needed to take advantage of these changes was already in place in the mid 18th century, even before Malthus. Advances made long distance freight even cheaper – but it was already practical, except for human interference like laws and wars.

“There are a myriad of ways that we can dodge the Malthusian bullet…”.

This doesn’t address the Malthusian argument, which acknowledges this but merely notes that the ability to dodge, so to speak, appears to grow more slowly than the need to dodge. Malthus agreed that there was no fixed barrier, that it could always be pushed back – he just noted the nature of the pressure growth and noted that it grew faster. So, historical successes in pushing back the barrier do not refute the argument unless they reveal a pushing back process that grows faster; if they don’t, they are just one offs and only change the parameters.

Some people have speculated that self reproducing machinery coupled with even slower than light interstellar travel would do it, as the means of support could grow exponentially faster than people and their needs. Alas, someone once looked into it and found that this was not so; cube square laws of expansion to new resource bases bring in the same pattern of limits, in the very long run but nevertheless in the end. So, what does “soon” have to do with “the total collapse of Western Civiliation [sic]“? And what does Malthus’s argument have to do with the latter anyway?

There are at least two things wrong with that: it’s “Reverend”, not “Professor”; and, he has not been proven wrong. That is, while he personally suspected a food bottleneck was looming in the near future of his time and place, his theories could not be that specific and only told the nature of the constraints to look out for. And in fact what occurred was not contrary to his reasoning but merely a shift in parameters – some one off increases in access to new lands and in land fertility from artificial measures. The situation still fits his pattern, so events have not disproven it any more than someone living through Russian Roulette shows that it will not, after all, kill you sooner or later.

Yes it does, because of what I brought out about substitutability – on those time scales.

“reserves equal to 57 years’ total energy needs is meaningless without additional information about the highest feasible rate of extraction and the energy cost of extracting it”.

The thing is, figures of that sort – if they are properly derived – have already done calculations of that sort, maybe implicitly by using methods like the graph I mentioned, and those issues are factored into the final result. It’s reasonable to challenge whether they were properly derived and ask for references and so on, but that information does not need to be adjusted for afterwards if they were.

We probably are close to Peak Coal, in terms of the life of the industry, but that still means it’s decades further off than Peak Oil and represents a realistic alternative until then (subject to there only being slow change, etc.). That means that Peak Oil probably does not provide much of a constraint to carbon dioxide emissions. Granted, higher prices might lead to lower liquid fuel end consumption – but the liquid fuel production will embed more coal burning to produce that smaller amount of end product, unless and until nuclear or other as yet unknown or undeveloped technologies are used to power the conversion processes. For Peak Oil to become the constraint, something else would have to constrain using coal for the substitute, probably both as fuel for the processes and as feedstock.

Although conservatives have tended to see the “liberal” believe in global warming as amounting to religious faith (a perspective with which I cannot wholly disagree), I would have to say that the conservative rejection of global warming is just as religious, just as faith-based. I remain too much of an agnostic to simply accept either side.

I have read very little on the subject of global warming itself, with the exception of two articles (1, 2) by David Evans, wherein he argues that the evidence appears to indicate (1) that global warming is real and (2) that global warming is not man-caused. How accurate is Mr. Evans views? I don’t know.

With that said, your point about Peak Oil is an important one to make. Whether or not we’ve actually reached Peak Oil or not can be debated, but that CO2 emissions will decrease as a result of diminishing oil supplies seems pretty apparent.

Of course, I cannot agree with your statement about the business cycle, but that’s another topic for another time.

Cheers,
Alex Peak

1) the ability to sustain current production rate does no good at all, because it doesn’t offset the loss of oil, while

2) reserves equal to 57 years’ total energy needs is meaningless without additional information about the highest feasible rate of extraction and the energy cost of extracting it.

The second point is exactly the same kind of statistic those API ads use: “enough to fuel 60 million cars for 60 years,” or whatever. But the size of the reserves has nothing to do with how fast it’s feasible to extract them, or how much it will cost to do so.

I strongly suspect that when those factors are taken into account, we’re also close to Peak Coal.

And from a libertarian perspective, I don’t see how the coal companies could get away with mountaintop removal without some sort of preferential access to the land, and some sort of protection from ordinary common law tort liability for the negative externalities.

Remaining reserves of conventional fossil fuels are estimated as:[8]
Fuel Energy reserves in ZJ
Coal 290.0
Oil 18.4
Gas 15.7

As you can see, total worldwide reserves of energy are mainly in the form of coal, not oil. Coal is dirtier and more expensive, but it puts a cap on the energy prices from peak oil. There is enough coal to sustain current production rate for 155 years, or to supply all the world’s energy for about 57. So don’t expect us to run out of fossil fuels anytime soon.

I totally agree w/ the market-based perspective on fossil fuels, but oil is not the whole picture.