The Long Emergency

I bought a copy of Jim Kunsler's new book "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century"
http://www.kunstler.com/

He paints things pretty gloomy compared to the rosy future most people see. I've only read the first couple chapter. I think he could use more qualifications on his "facts" overall, although I think if I tried writing a book I'd overqualify until it was unreadable.

Well, take his "facts" on page 66:
* Total conventional oil (before we started using it): 2 trillion barrels
* The world has consumed roughly 1 trillion barrels.
* A substational portion of the remaining "half" will never be recovered.
* After [world] peak, depletion will proceed at 2 to 6%/year.

The USGS would argue with the first one above. They have different numbers:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/presentations/2000/long_term_supply/sld010.htm
They say there's a total of 6 trillion ultimate reserves, with 3 trillion unrecoverable. They expect a total of 3 trillion to be producible, with 0.8 trillion already consumed (in 2000 apparently), 0.9 trillion in proved reserves, 0.7 trillion in undiscovered, and 0.6 trillion in added reserves with new technology.

So they claim a 95% confidence for 2.2 trillion ultimate reserves, and 50% confidence for a 3.0 trillion ultimate reserves, and 5% chance for 3.9 trillion ultimate reserves.

So subtracting past production (rounding up a bit to 1 trillion for 2005), gives ultimate reserves from 1.2 to 2.0 to 2.9 trillion barrels left.

Sure, they're perhaps being overly optimisic, and I'd rather take lowball numbers for planning my future, but it does make a big difference which number is correct. Kunsler's words ought to give some statement of a range at least.

In comparison, ASPO, low-ball estimate:
http://www.asponews.org/docs/newsletter52.pdf

Says ultimate recoverable reserves 1.85T to 2.4T (depending on definition of oil sources), with 0.945 to 1.04T barrels consumed past, again depending on categories.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe "simplification" is best stated as "1 trillion consumed, easy part in friendly lands, and 1 trillion left, mostly in unfriendly lands.) Time to chart a new course!

SECONDLY, Kunsler's statement that "substational portion of the remaining half will never be recovered" may or may not be true, but it's not consistent with general statements of reserves as "proved recoverable". Even Campbell and ASPO call their 2 trillion ultimate RECOVERABLE reserves. That means to me "positive energy balance".

Admittingly it is worth considering energy costs. Even if there's a net positive energy balance, the ratio is important. If there's 1 trillion barrels left, and it will take 500 trillion barrels of energy to extract all of it, then (on average) you can't really say you have more than 500 trillion barrels NET available energy.

LASTLY the 2-6% depletion curves are important to note for projections, but of course not "facts" but opinion. Since we've never had a "world peak", we can't say, but I accept 2-6 is a wide range.

Well more later!