The Ultimate Race: Peak Oil vs. Global Warming
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 03.10.08
Which will end the world first: peak oil or global warming? In the spirit of apocalyptic competition, the team at ESPN The Magazine recently put the question to the test. "We thought it might be fun to run the two doomsday scenarios head to head, based on a mostly random reading of current events. What can we say? We like competition."
So, when it comes down to the Oilers (no, not those Oilers) versus the Hockey Stick in a bare-knuckle brawl to the end of time, who comes out on top? Based on the past week's events, and with tongue firmly in cheek, the winner is...
Peak Oil! Yep, "Hugo A Go-go" (that's Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela) pulls this one out, thanks to record-setting oil prices topping $104/barrel due, in some part, at least, to Chávez's saber-rattling south of the border, massing troops at neighboring Colombia's doorstep and making the oil-based world's economy just a little more unstable.
Though we would have voted for global warming -- it's a bit semantic, but we've always thought peak oil and global warming have something of a cause and effect relationship, so it's a bit of apples and oranges here -- it's tough to argue against the pure volatility of an oil-thirsty world when the well starts to run dry. Global warming wins the marathon, but peak oil the sprint, this week, at least.
Perhaps the most sentient point made by the piece is this, though: "And still, in the Western world, not one call for conservation!"
Does this mean that NASCAR is on board to fight peak oil and global warming? ::ESPN The Magazine
Oooh, that's a tough one. But I think I'd put my money on Climate Change "winning" the race.
Peak oil's big trouble, but humankind's pretty darn resourceful. While I don't really believe in technofixes, I do think when desperation strikes people could pull through (with World War 2 style rationing, and huge changes to life. Think Cuba, or a blockaded 1940's Germany and all the inventiveness that went on there...). Climate change however, I think will be much nastier, and harder to avoid (some say we're already at the tipping point *today*)...especially as it would involve reining in industry...and they fight it tooth and nail, lobbying gov'ts, cheating & misreporting to try to stay on the "business as usual" track, as biomes around them undergo cascade failure...things'lll just get real ugly.
Climate change gets my vote... (maybe we'll finagle our way out of both of 'em, but if one of them's going to punch our ticket, I think it's that one)
We don't really need conservation (i.e. Drive Less)
We need is fuel efficiency, and to go electric.
Consider this:
http://greyfalcon.net/iraqvsenergy.png
http://greyfalcon.net/greenenergy.png
We're capable. We just aren't really trying.
GreyFlcn:
Say that when gas is $12 a gallon and gas stations, not just oil wells are running dry.
Suddenly, the people who didn't see the writing on the wall years earlier will see their lives fall apart as they start searching desperately for work within biking distance from their suburban homes... and find there are none.
I agree with OM, Oil has only been in widescale use for 100 years, so I'm sure people could adapt back pretty quickly.
The trouble is, without all that lovely, easy oil and it's massive energy, how the hell are they going to build all these wacky geo-engineering projects??!
It's going to be tricky to get those 5 mile wide mirrors into space with pulleys and donkeys!
I don't think any of those events will end the world or humankind.
Both scenarios will have a very large impact on society, but humankind will definitely survive them both.
Question is how many people will be around to claim they survived...
My personal guess is that (barring a global nuclear war) 1.5 to 2 bil people max will be able to live without cheap oil on the remaining arable land.
On the other hand (concerning climate change) there is always the possibility that a Dalton Minimum returns, and the coming 50 years will be significantly colder...
Nozzie
The way I see it, if peak oil "wins" then it should start to take care of climate change by making renewable energy cost competitive...if only the US was approaching peak coal.
I think we could actually take advantage of scaling prices of oil to promote the use of cleaner (and cheaper) energy sources.
Sad, but maybe the only thing that could make us switch into cleaner energy (and therefor fight climate change), would actually be or pocket.
Peak Oli does not have the capacity to drastically alter the ecosphere, so by world, you clearly mean "Western Consumerism". Sadly, we have much larger problems than the end of Western Consumerism.
Global Warming VS. Peak Oil???
Maybe the Earth will provide us humans with the precise exact amount of oil that we will need to heat our atmosphere beyond the point of return and cause devastating climactic shifts.
Our challenge is to find new ways to support ourselves that are not selfish and short term. Our current behavior is undoubtedly causing extinction in the natural world, and ultimately our own extinction.
The real question is:
When will we see peak stupidity?
Global warming is a scam, peak oil is overrated and will be a non event.
I see here a strong reflection of the very poor news coverage you get in America. Chavez might have been sabre-rattling to US reporters who just swallow everything Washington tells them but in reality the problem was caused by Columbia's illegal invasion of Ecuador and their subsequent ridiculous claims that Chavez had supported genocide. This was based on an email where the term "300" was liberally interpreted as meaning "300 million dollars paid by Chavez to the terrorists" rather than the more obvious "300 hostages" or even just the number 300. Chavez in fact holds most of the heavy oil in the world and the US administration would love to get their hands on it so it's perhaps no surprise that Chavez, having survived one US-backed coup would be somewhat suspicious this time around too. Happily Uribe saw sense at last and backed off. Unhappily the US public are still blaming Chavez, just like the Bush administration wanted them to - and just like the disinformation about Iraq. It's all the more sad because Chavez has officially offered the USA oil at 50 dollars a barrel in exchange for help in processing the heavy oil so conflicts aren't even necessary - it's just the way Bush likes to do things.
Peak oil will cause global warming. When companies go after the harder to extract oil. Tar sands, oil shale, and liquefying coal. It takes one barrel of oil to get two barrels of tar sands oil. One for twenty barrels of conventional oil. The US just jumped on board to import this stuff. Classifying it as clean.