Peak Oil and Its Relevance To Today’s Energy Picture

Frequent commenter Glenn Doty notes:

Peak oil, or peak anything for that matter, is about production peaking, not about production running out.  There’s nothing uncertain in this, there’s just misunderstanding. Hubbert’s peak (his prediction that the production of oil would hit a peak) happened.  That’s why North American crude production declined from the late 70’s through 2008.

….We do also have to pay attention to peak gas (~30 years), peak uranium (~40-50 years), and peak coal (~80 years). If we don’t take different paths towards better technology, then those peaks will hit us pretty hard, and they will hit just as we’re starting to experience some serious accommodation costs from AGW.

Two good points.  To the first, yes, oil production hit a peak (by which you mean a relative maximum, not an absolute maximum), but in either case, that’s not to say that it can’t go on to fulfill our demands indefinitely.

To the second, given today’s ever increasing techno-velocity (I suppose that’s techno-acceleration), I don’t buy into predictions about the supply and demand for commodities many decades (as many as eight decades) hence.  I have to think that virtually every aspect of our existence will be unrecognizably different by then–energy being one of the most important, insofar as it’s about practices that are actively trashing our planet, e.g., the burning of coal.  These practices cannot continue indefinitely, even if we have free access to an unlimited supply of coal, for instance.

Of course, I’d like to think that certain things will still “apply”:

You must remember this

A kiss is still a kiss

A sigh is still a sigh

The fundamental things apply

As time goes by