You got it half right. Its the rate of net extraction less the rate of consumption. Supply - Consumption = Surplus/(Shortage). And his/my side fully understands. That is why resources are spent developing NEW and improved technologies to more efficiently extract, transport, refine, and deliver the energy.Jeemie wrote: The problem with your side is you do not understand that what determine ultimately whether we have a shortage of oil is not the amount of oil in the ground, but the rate at which it can be extracted, and the amount of energy that's left over after it's been extracted than can be used for useful work like growing the economy.
His/my side does. Its your side that doesn't understand. His/my side is not pushing the inefficient process of growing a food source and turning it into a less efficient fuel. Burning food is not the answer.Jeemie wrote: Your side doesn't understand that we could have 60 trillion barrels of oil in the ground, but if it takes us the equivalent of 1 barrel of oil to extract one barrel of oil, then it's like we have no oil at all. Or if we can only produce 95 mbpd, but the world needs 100 mbpd in order to sustain even moderate growth in the economy, then we are going to have a shortage.
Really? How should the potential supply of a reservoir of energy be explained? "at current consumption" is a real number. Are you proposing that saying how long a supply will last based on a made up number is better? Then you get into arguments over the assumptions that feed that made up number.Jeemie wrote: Your side also doesn't understand the power of the exponential function, and how fast even modest growth in energy consumption can cause a large increase in the product being consumed. I know your side doesn't understand this because every time it evaluates a new source of oil and how long it can sustain us, I hear/see the dreaded words that are fingernails across the chalkboard for me- "This oilfield has enough oil to fulfill 1/5 of the US' needs at current rates of consumption.
I'll admit, I don't know what you are trying to say there. Perhaps it is "if people would quit trying to make money then everything would be better".Jeemie wrote: Your side doesn't understand that a symptom of Peak Oil actually can be periodic gluts and lower prices because of a couple of factors- one being, that if economic growth is constrained, then people's wages can't grow fast enough, and demand for oil crashes even as the price does, and the second being investors start using oil as a hedge as opposed to actually using the oil to do things, because there are no investments in real economic growth worth going after.
Jeemie wrote:Everything we have seen hints that that constraint is primarily the change in the availability of energy to keep the whole modern economy going.
Energy, people, food & water. The inputs to an economy. The desire to improve one's position in or quality of life. The catalyst. Same as its been for as long as humans have been around.
Jeemie wrote:I am actually quite disheartened at the lack of technological progress in the area of renewable energy.
Perhaps it is your side that doesn't understand.