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'Hubbert's Peak' is a failed theory
EFL: M. King Hubbert, a geologist working for Shell Oil in Houston, is responsible for the concept of "peak production." In 1956, Hubbert produced a graph that looked like a normal "bell curve." The idea was that oil production worldwide would increase until it reached a peak, followed by a decline to zero, the point where we run out of oil. Also known as "Hubbert's Peak," the graph was inherent in the very concept of oil as a fossil fuel. In other words, if oil comes from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs, then inevitably we must run out of oil. After all, there only were a finite number of ancient trees and dinosaurs, so the oil resulting from them must be finite as well. Craig Smith and I wrote "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil" to take exception with the Fossil-Fuel Theory. We argue the science of oil as an abiotic, natural product that the Earth generates on a constant basis. The abiotic oil theory has been central to Soviet science since the end of World War II. Looking deep within the Earth for oil, Russian has advanced from being a relatively oil-poor country in the 1950s, to being today the world's second largest exporter of oil, contending strongly for first position with Saudi Arabia. Hubbert's graph predicted that oil production would "peak" in 1970, and that it would taper off from there until 2050, when we would have used up all the oil that ever was. Unfortunately for Hubbert, these predictions were flat wrong. Today, the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that we have 1.28 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves worldwide, more than ever before in human history, despite decades of increased usage. More... Posted by: BrerRabbit 2005-11-02 |
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