Accessing those 70,000 years worth is very costly. The carbon in accessible fossil fuels is around 1600 gigatons, which will be exhausted in much closer to 100 years than 70,000. Doing so would pitch our atmospheric carbon content around 2200 gigatons, nearly three times the current content of 600 gigatons.
Based on physical models pointing at similar conclusions from a plethora of different directions, this will raise temperatures. By how much? We'd reach approximately 1650 ppm carbon. At only 1000 ppm, many models predict a raise of temperature from 3.5 to almost ten degrees C (varying across the world). Most importantly, the heat will mostly be circulated to polar regions, melting them. The last step of the argument is quite well known: at 4.5 degrees C, the land borne glaciers will begin to melt, drowning entire cities and countries. Before that happens, 20-50% species will be lost, and billions will face water shortages. The ensuing ecological niches and prevalence of human targets may end up creating many new diseases.
That might objectively be the case, but it is not the case, according to ESR -- and it is his article that we are discussing. Did you read the article?:
[I] don’t believe [CO2 emissions are] driving global warming. ...
The pressing question, then, remains: What’s going to replace oil?
So, aside from greenhouse-gas considerations, why replace oil?
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accessible fossil fuels ... will be exhausted in much closer to 100 years than 70,000.
For 150 years, oil supplies have continuously been pronounced to be on the verge of running out. And for 150 years, oil production has continuously increased.
• 1879 -- US Geological Survey formed in part because of fear of oil shortages.
• 1882 -- Institute of Mining Engineers estimates 95 million barrels of oil remain. With 25 milliion barrels per year output, "Some day the cheque will come back indorsed no funds, and we are approaching that day very fast," Samuel Wrigley says. (Pratt, p. 124). ...
• 1906 -- Fears of an oil shortage are confirmed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Representatives of the Detroit Board of Commerce attended hearings in Washington and told a Senate hearing that car manufacturers worried "not so much [about] cost as ... supply."
• 1919, Scientific American notes that the auto industry could no longer ignore the fact that only 20 years worth of U.S. oil was left. "The burden falls upon the engine. It must adapt itself to less volatile fuel, and it must be made to burn the fuel with less waste.... Automotive engineers must turn their thoughts away from questions of speed and weight... and comfort and endurance, to avert what ... will turn out to be a calamity, seriously disorganizing an indispensable system of transportation."
• 1920 -- David White, chief geologist of USGS, estimates total oil remaining in the US at 6.7 billion barrels. "In making this estimate, which included both proved reserves and resources still remaining to be discovered, White conceded that it might well be in error by as much as 25 percent." ...
• 1928 -- US analyst Ludwell Denny in his book "We Fight for Oil" noted the domestic oil shortage and says international diplomacy had failed to secure any reliable foreign sources of oil for the United States. Fear of oil shortages would become the most important factor in international relations, even so great as to force the U.S. into war with Great Britain to secure access to oil in the Persian Gulf region, Denny said.
• 1932 -- Federal Oil Conservation Board estimates 10 billion barrels of oil remain.
• 1944 -- Petroleum Administrator for War estimates 20 billion barrels of oil remain.
• 1950 -- American Petroleum Institute says world oil reserves are at 100 billion barrels. ...
• 2000 -- Remaining proven oil reserves put at 1016 billion barrels.
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Oil production has continuously increased as society has gotten continuously better at finding and exploiting the oil in the earth's crust. Why should we assume that that process would stop any time soon -- especially in the face of estimates of total in-place oil that put our supply lifetime in the tens of thousands of years?
You cannot separate the argument from the objective reality the argument claims to describe.
Regarding the wild swings in the estimates of remaining oil, the largest discrepancy comes from the fact that oil in different places requires different amount of toil to extract it. At a certain point, this is too much to pay for all but a few applications (where energy density is needed most, or where the stored hydrocarbons can be used for other purposes).
Already the oil infrastructure is some of the most complicated and costly equipment in the world. We don't know where that economic break even point will be, but we do realize that one must exist. This, among other things, is driving futures. Each new type of oil requires a new type of capital investment. The involved parties are making gambles on future technology. Further influencing this is the fact that it's polluting enough to, potentially, influence much of the world away from it, thereby reducing the attractiveness of such bets.
One might gather that price will similarly effect heating costs and flight usage. Fuel economy is one of the foremost items on the minds of Americans now, according to Gallup (#2 in national issues, apparently).
Countries might increasingly wish to reduce their economic dependency on the oil market, as it becomes cheaper and cheaper to do so. There has been much support for an ethanol economy in the US; for example the bipartisan bill to introduce biofuel installations in gas stations.
Already Brazil has an ethanol economy, provoked by the 1973 oil crisis. Nations with similar agricultural capability and high oil dependency have the same incentives to guard
against future market downturns.
Finally, there's the global warming problem. I assume you don't believe CO2 has a major role. But from a pure economic standpoint, it is likely the governments and the populace will increasingly believe it has a major role and will probably do something about it, either collectively or individually. This will probably influence demand to drop, though it may not do so suddenly. Anticipating this, oil companies have a riskier bet to make in large capital investments in heavy oil extraction. Increasingly, such companies will try to diversify into the broader energy business, as many are already making efforts to do.
The oil price today, unlike twenty years ago, is determined behind closed doors in the trading rooms of giant financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank or UBS. The key exchange in the game is the London ICE Futures Exchange (formerly the International Petroleum Exchange). ICE Futures is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Atlanta Georgia International Commodities Exchange. ICE in Atlanta was founded in part by Goldman Sachs which also happens to run the world’s most widely used commodity price index, the GSCI, which is over-weighted to oil prices.
As I noted in my earlier article, (‘Perhaps 60% of today’s oil price is pure speculation’), ICE was focus of a recent congressional investigation. It was named both in the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' June 27, 2006, Staff Report and in the House Committee on Energy & Commerce's hearing in December 2007 which looked into unregulated trading in energy futures. Both studies concluded that energy prices' climb to $128 and perhaps beyond is driven by billions of dollars' worth of oil and natural gas futures contracts being placed on the ICE. Through a convenient regulation exception granted by the Bush Administration in January 2006, the ICE Futures trading of US energy futures is not regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, even though the ICE Futures US oil contracts are traded in ICE affiliates in the USA. And at Enron’s request, the CFTC exempted the Over-the-Counter oil futures trades in 2000.
So it is no surprise to see in a May 6 report from Reuters that Goldman Sachs announces oil could in fact be on the verge of another "super spike," possibly taking oil as high as $200 a barrel within the next six to 24 months.
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Yes, an economic breakeven point for oil exploitation exists. And it continuously moves higher, because oil-exploitation technology continuously improves. The current extraction price of $5/bbl (http://www.google.com/search?q=oil+cost+%22%245+per+barrel%2...) is not dangerously close to the $200/bbl, or $500/bbl, or $1,000/bbl that the market might accept -- is it? Speaking of what the market might accept, that, too, continuously moves higher, because technology continuously improves the efficiency of end-use. As gas-powered devices become more-efficient, the world's practical oil supply grows. More on how this process works can be found here:
http://www.wattzon.org/plan/pages/GamePlan_v1.0%20050.htm
Based on physical models pointing at similar conclusions from a plethora of different directions, this will raise temperatures. By how much? We'd reach approximately 1650 ppm carbon. At only 1000 ppm, many models predict a raise of temperature from 3.5 to almost ten degrees C (varying across the world). Most importantly, the heat will mostly be circulated to polar regions, melting them. The last step of the argument is quite well known: at 4.5 degrees C, the land borne glaciers will begin to melt, drowning entire cities and countries. Before that happens, 20-50% species will be lost, and billions will face water shortages. The ensuing ecological niches and prevalence of human targets may end up creating many new diseases.
http://www.wattzon.org/plan/pages/GamePlan_v1.0%20046.htm
http://www.wattzon.org/plan/pages/GamePlan_v1.0%20054.htm
Why replace oil? Because it's tremendously risky not to, and not nearly so hard as people seem to believe.