Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

If you extrapolate their upward line forward, it'll take an extremely long time before % of EVs becomes greater than 50%.

And as for electric air travel, as far I know it's not even happening yet in the commerial passenger planes and the air travel industry moves even slower than the automative industry.

In 100 years ago, I would agree with you. But, for now, we're stuck with using oil for quite a long time.

You give no reason at all why you think any of this is true.

>Towards the end of the decade, we will also have short length, all electric aircraft operating.

This is quite optimistic. Realistically, this market is yet to be proven viable at all, and even if it is it's likely to be much more than a single decade (assuming you didn't actually mean the "end of the decade" coming two months from now) to reach beyond the prototype stage.

>Natural Gas growth long term... no way. Not happening. Within this decade, we will see the price of solar and batteries drop to levels never before imagined.

Again, why? All of this is pie-in-the-sky optimism without any attempt at justifying it.

I'll take your bet on that one. The difference between having to keep an animal alive and in useful physical condition and maintaining a model T or A in roadworthy condition is far, far greater than the difference between one source of motive power and another.

I think your overall predictions are generally right but your timeline is too aggressive by at least half an order of magnitude.

Electric car demands increases demand on the grid, which will centralize demands for fuel. Electric aircraft are a long way off, except in the private jet world. Battery energy density just isn't there and would massively increase costs. Plus there's the whole issue of explosive failure modes; contrasted with avgas which is relatively safe in liquid form.

Renewable energy technologies are made with petrochemicals, so they have their own built in oil & NG demand.

The most, wealthiest (on average) people live where renewable energy is least effective.

The numbers do show that we can drastically reduce our oil dependence, but ONLY if we're willing to trade quality of life to do so. There's little chance of that happening.

There is no indication ‘green’ energy will be a significant portion of the world energy supply. There is no indication we are removing our dependency on oil. We are continuing to consume coal, oil, and natural gas at increasing rates. All metrics that show positive change are local and not global. All coordinated global efforts results are over promised and under delivered.

That makes the switchover seamless. Which means it's only production and price limited. Not like the original cars when there was only a few hundred miles of paved roads and no gas stations.

2. You are overlooking the power of existing industry. Natural gas has massive lobbying power vs electric and solar and is seen as 'greener' than coal. It is also easier to retrofit existing power plants to natural gas from coal than to build massive solar fields keeping jobs at their current locations.

3. You will have distributed "grids", where many more people are generating their own power, and borrowing from their neighbor when necessary - see the above point. Entrenched industry, lobbyists and industry capture are working hard to prevent this, at least in the US. Laws already exist in many states to prevent this.

Use of combustibles is only increasing: https://yearbook.enerdata.net/natural-gas/gas-consumption-da...

I would love to transition to a green, renewable infrastructure but unfortunately I don't think it is going to happen for a very long time.

Also, if you think going from gas cars to EV is a greater jump than horse buggy to automobiles, then you simply don't have a clue. As for china and india, EVs account for 0.0001% of cars.

If you think we are going to be using "all electric aircraft" at the end of this decade and that it will dent the need for oil for air travel, once again, you haven't a clue what you are talking about.

If you think natural gas growth is going to slow anytime soon, once again you haven't a clue what you are talking about. The bigger growth in energy has been in natural gas. It has solely been responsible for the collapse of the coal industry in the US. And there are tremendous room for growth in natural gas production in the US, Russia, etc.

> Your peak oil will be in the past once you see entire areas of housing in BRIC countries running on Solar/batteries. Goodbye. Oil.

Dumbest thing I've ever read. It much more likely that these countries are going to increase coal production to keep up with energy demand needs than going "solar/battery" route.

> War profiteers say the same thing. They never come out on the right side of the history book.

Nope. This is the dumbest thing I've ever read. War profiteers are some of the biggest winners we have.

> Oil and Gas will NOT have growth for a long time.

If you say so. But then again, people like you were claiming the end of oil a decade ago.

Getting all of the required cobalt out of the Congo to make millions of large batteries isn't exactly ideal either.

Storage and long distance transport abilities make natural gas extremely attractive.

[1] https://youtu.be/bXFHgoon7lg

People want something that's AWD, has a belt-line lower than your nose and a trunk that's integrated with the rest of the cab. In order to get that in a package that meets modern safety requirements it needs to be decently big and decently heavy. To make a decently big and decently heave vehicle comply with modern fuel economy and emissions rules you have to be able to call it an SUV with a straight face. Enter the "crossover".

Sedans and compact hatches make great commuter cars but if you can only afford one payment at a time then you can only really justify buying a multi-tool of a vehicle. On the small end that gives us things like the HRV. On the large end that gives us crew cab pickups.

In 1987 I remember you could get a 4Runner, a Pathfinder, a Cherokee, a Blazer, or a Bronco.

I've driven a few and they also offer a different perspective when you're driving (you feel "taller"). Also, they might be safer than tiny sedans (although not sure how they compare with the German ones w.r.t safety).

If you live in Suburbs, its also nice to have one for the occasional lugging around of furniture or moving heavy stuff.

If you look at the marginal cost of a second vehicle[1] it is quite high. Thus you may be limited to owning exactly one vehicle, and that vehicle is going to consume a chunk of your income (insurance/gas/maintenance). In that scenario the most financially prudent choice can seem to be a truck over another choice. Towing things is another aspect, if you vacation a lot by camping rather than staying in hotels it costs less per day to camp/hike then to spend it at a resort somewhere. Or boating/fishing, same calculus.

[1] Things like parking, insurance, inspection/license fees, maintenance all add up. And the opportunity cost of that capital tied up in a car loan vs doing something else.

I mean, think about it, what's the most minimal, lightest, cheapest form a motor vehicle could possibly take? It would have wheels, of course, some sort of frame to attach everything to, somewhere to put the engine, and somewhere to put the driver. That's it! A cab up front to house the engine and driver on a frame with wheels. Add some simple low sides to the frame to keep stuff in and that basically describes a pickup truck.

The truth is, for any particular load carrying and/or towing capacity, a pickup truck is the most efficient and least expensive common consumer option. Adding a cover over the back, additional seating, and other amenities just adds weight and cost. A tiny subcompact pickup truck version of even the smallest little hatchback can be cheaper and lighter then the hatchback can ever be simply because it's the same thing but made with less stuff.

I suspect the real question you want to ask, is this: why are such high cargo/towing capacity vehicles so popular? In other words, why do we buy such huge vehicles?

Worryingly I am seeing the same trend in London, UK where I live. At my local train station , which is 20 mins from City, I see the F150, Rams and what not parked. The owner clearly working/taking train into City. They are sparkling clean and occupy parking bay edge to edge.

London where space is constrained, public transport is readily available and rental vans can be arranged on your phone, I fail to understand why City working person would need it except for the messaging impact of owning a macho looking vehicle.

With three kids in car seats, I found the F-150 4-door cab to be a great option. They are designed with enough room for 3 large adults to ride in the back so fitting the car seats is no problem. It's really tough to fit three proper car seats in the back seat of a sedan.

While I could get a large SUV, I don't want to banish one of the kids to two rows deep in the back of a large SUV. We are all together in the cab. Comfortable.

I take it you don't own a pickup.

Try owning one and it will surprise you how many friends, co-workers, etc. will come out of the woodwork and show you reasons why you/they need one.

If you regularly have up to 5 people in your vehicle, get an extra cab. If it's usually just you, a regular cab works (if you can find one). If you need 6 or more people, you could put seats in the bed, but probably get a van.

If you want to occasional carry large items, but save gas otherwise, get a small engine; a compact truck with a 4-cylinder is no prius, but should be better than CAFE average. If you're towing a boat every weekend, stronger engine options are available.

Maintenance is generally easier than on a modern sedan because things are more accessible. And parts are easier to find because model generations are longer and some parts work for multiple generations. Tires are often more expensive though.

If you want butt warmers and leather everything, that's an option too.

And then you have things like visibility advantages due to ride height and a big, unobstructed rear window (at least for a regular cab).

It's also amazingly easy to clean the bed, if you care. Park on a hill, open the gate, spray water at the top until it runs clean. Or wait for a rain.

1. I'm tall and it fits me much better. I have plenty of headroom, and the seat is high enough from the floor to support the backs of my legs. In many sedans, my heels get sore on long drives because they're taking much of the weight of my legs.

2. I like the better visibility. In particular, I have fantastic visibility out the back of the vehicle. Any time I drive other cars, I feel like I have blinders on and can't see behind myself well.

3. It has real steel bumpers. I once caught the edge of the truck on a fence and yanked the bumper out a few inches. To fix it, I just gently drove into a tree and pushed it back into place. Good as new. In most sedans with plastic covered crumple zone panels, that would be a thousand dollar panel replacement. A few weeks ago, I watched a poor parallel parker repeatedly bounce off my truck as she wormed her way into a spot. Not a ding on it.

4. It's a tank. The reliability of pick-ups is generally great because manufacturers have to cater to work truck consumers who care about reliability over all other considerations. If it's good enough for that landscaping company who puts 50k miles on it a year while hauling a trailing, it's going to be good enough for you. My Tacoma will likely outlive me.

5. It was cheap. Sedans are often designed to cater to an audience that wants superficial luxury and then charges people for it. I don't care about heater leather seats and touch screens. I just want something comfortable and solid. My truck was $18k new and I've gotten 18 years out of it so far. The amortized cost of ownership is incredibly good, even when you factor in the lower fuel economy.

6. It stores stuff. 90% of the time, the bed is empty. But that other 10% of the time is really convenient. I've moved apartments using it. Numerous camping trips. I lived in the bed for two days for the last eclipse. Dozens of trips to Ikea and the hardware store. When I was in a band, I put amps and instruments back there. I bought a couch on a whim the middle of a road trip. Sure, you can rent a truck for days you need the storage. But in practice, that can add so much overhead that you just do fewer things. If I want to hang some new closet doors or do some gardening, I can just go.

7. I like the way trucks look. Maybe it's a side effect of a childhood in Texas, but I like the design of older trucks. They feel simpler more "iconic" to me. They have an elegant form over function aestehtic. Most sedans all look the same to me. The parts that are functional -- the aerodynamics -- make them both and the other parts feel like pointless decoration. (That being said, newer truck designs turn me off because they're now all huge jacked-up monuments to masculine insecurity. The new Tacomas make me want to cry.)

Really, trucks are great, simple, cheap, utilitarian vehicles. People always complain that "the beds are empty 90% of the time", but 90% of the seats are empty in any given sedan, so what's the difference? A vehicle always has more capabilities than you need at any point in time. My truck doesn't have as many passenger capabilities, but it has a hell of a lot more hauling stuff ones.

1) Get the obvious out of the way: they are big. This is both a negative and a positive, but with an energetic 6 year old, 2 full sized dogs, parents, and gear on a trip, there is enough room in our F-150 to relax and spread out. Negative is the gas mileage of course, mine gets about 20 all around. For commuting I drive an electric to pay back the gas karma tax.

2) Hauling stuff. Sure, you can rent a truck from the local hardware store, but the instant accessibility of loading up and go has appeal and value, at least to me.

3) Camping. I distinguish this from "off-road" because that's a different animal. Camper on the bed or trailer behind, truck is your supplies, bike haul, power, emergency living quarters and with appropriate care in drive lines can go almost anywhere after you unhitch.

4) Surprisingly, ride. This is entirely subjective of course but both the wife and I enjoy the ride quite a bit in the truck. It doesn't HANDLE well in performance situations, but that's not what trucks are for.

5) Also surprisingly, ergonomics. We both love the livability features of the truck. Storage all over, comfy seats, practical control layout, various automation assistance features. In the right trim they are pretty luxury, and we didn't even buy a particularly high end version.

Negative values that exist for some but not me are looks tough, usual male insecurity compensation stuff, it's bigger in the intimidate others sense, etc. There's a vanity identity to being a "salt of the earth" type with a truck, and of course the truck has nothing to do with the person driving it being one of those people, but there are those who believe it does.

My favorite goofy truck thing is people who get super jacked lift kits. Reason given is often ground clearance; rarely does this allow for much - it's the differential that often matters, and even with bigger tires, you're moving that thing maybe an inch or two up. It makes the center of gravity often pretty terrible as trucks don't do well in that regard to start with. I've seen people with massively jacked kits who then have to buy drop-down hitches to be able to haul anything.

It wasn't fun to drive and was loud on the highway, but it was cheap.

I think there was a break on registration as well.

Trains can also be electric and powered by a third-rail type system. Trucks and drones can be electric.

Obviously there are political barriers but if it really came down to this or the end of sea shipping I suspect those barriers could be overcome.

IF you exclude government subsidies, these evil capitalists that are out for a buck are not rushing into implementing what you are talking about.

Which means that: It is not nearly as close to parity as you apparently believe that it is.

I mean no insult, but: If evil capitalists are not rushing towards doing it without government subsidies - it isn't as close to parity as you think it is. YMMV.

And what happens when those revenues are threatened by people responding to the incentives and cutting out oil? Any money earned by environmental tax needs to go 100% into matching environmental restoration program with a hard limit defined that decommissions the program once the incentive is "complete" with acknowledgment that this is the preferred result. Otherwise you get ridiculous pervasive incentives in government that don't fix the problem and destabilize politics further

Without the peak oil scare, we wouldn't be "this" far, I think. Humans need a burning fire under their ass to actually do something.

Promise you this though. Don't think big oil will be down and out. They're going to collect all the cold hard cash they can this next few years. Then, they're going to strangle the commodities needed for renewables. They'll start buying rare earth mining rights, processing plants, manufacturing companies and all. Making sure they make the biggest dollar from the beginning of the energy food chain to the consumer's doorstep. If they can't make money from oil, both God and I as their witness, they'll make their money from lithium and battery manufacturing. To think they're a bunch of mustache twirling dummies is the biggest folly people have.

Perhaps this is a kind of an intelligence test for human civilization. Can we stop the global guzzling of petroleum resources before there's a profound ecological and economic shock? I think not.

There's no "free-refill" of oil unless we all go extinct, get covered by sediment for a million years before we're liquified to petroleum.

Hum... How do current prices compare the the 90's? What is the definition of "skyrocket" you were expecting?

Or are you talking about the people that kept saying we'd be back to a medieval economy? Apocalipse fantasizing is a hobby since that book exists; and I'm pretty sure it just had a different name before it, it's not sane to take those people seriously (it's not healthy to fight them either), and it's not sane to pretend everybody is like them.

Maybe I did give a partial answer? And I'll paraphrase Neil deGrasse Tyson on this one, "You can't save the world with an app." Get INTO the industry you want to fix and fucking fix it. Enough people do it, someone is bound to figure it out.

Once you have mass production of nuclear power plants, you can start using nuclear power to create liquid alcohol fuels. Start a process of changing cars to electric or alcohol based fuels, the same goes for ships and eventually planes.

The process of switching to alcohol based fuels can be started in parallel, with early on using fossil fuels.

Start taxing fossil fuel usage to make people move over to liquid fuels.

This vision was created out by one of the nuclear innovates. He invented the PWR (currently used nuclear) but rejected it as a terrible design for human energy production. His insistence that PWR were not 'perfectly save' got him essentially fired. He had come up with Molten Salt reactors to fix all the issues of PWRs.

His vision was more to use nuclear heat to turn salt water into water you can use for irrigation. Not really produce Liquid fuels in a carbon neutral way but the vision makes sense.

Now, unfortunately this should really have started in the 70s, but it would have been the most systematic approach to actually solving the problem. But of course that requires the population not to freak out about nuclear and to accept potentially higher oil prices.

Corodra above says: "Don't think for a second I'm "for oil". But I'm a realist. A lot more needs to happen to end oil's stranglehold. Not drum circles, UN circle jerks climate summits with teenagers crying nor bullshit "plant trees" PR stunts(past tree planting stunts have real piss poor success rates of the trees surviving after a year."

I think there's a lot of truth in this. The current propaganda/meme-based approach (repetitive half true newspaper articles, Greta Thunberg, etc) to the issue is not only not moving the ball forward, it's actually causing unrest and resentment in our populations. It is causing people who likely don't really differ all that much in underlying beliefs to split into opposing psychological/ideological camps, and as the conversation continues in this same form, become further entrenched in their opposing stances. If you pay close attention when reading forum discussions, this seems quite apparent to me, even here among relatively more intelligent HN folks.

I believe people need to start realizing this, and then we have to study the nature of the problem, and then we have to find a new approach to the global public discussion on this topic, and others like it.

For the oil and gas industry this would translate into a tax at the pump.

There are places where that makes sense economically, but there aren't very many of those.

Of course there are countries that will try to avoid doing that, but they can be coerced to join via carbon tariffs.

No, it wouldn’t.

Not all biomass turns into fossil fuels. And a lot of carbon is stored in living and recently-deceased biomass.

A gallon (US) of gas is about 3350 grams. So if you drive 5 miles round trip in a car getting 20 miles/gallon for local driving, it uses 837 grams of gas. The oil in the bags is about 6% of the oil used on such a shopping trip.

Of course that doesn't include the plastic packaging of food, soft drinks, bottled water, etc. which is probably more comparable to the amount of oil used by the car.

Yeah people need to get real: any and all hydrocarbons will be dug out at some point. Unless you want to make a pact to nuke the countries that do it beyond a certain level (which can double as a nice way to mitigate global warming at least for a while). For some nations such as Saudi Arabia, digging and selling hydrocarbons is the core and essence of their existence and is what separating them from bedouins/forest people living in the wild in total savagery. There is absolutely no way they could do something else for a living.

Developed nations could stop doing it. Europe for example, almost did (it has even more shale oil and gas than U.S. does and made a conscious decision to ban it's extraction), U.S. could do too if it wanted, but many poor countries just can't.

True, but the most desirable wells to oilmen once drilled do actually produce oil at such a high rate naturally without further energy input that they need to have their flow rate restricted in order to become manageable. Processing, maintenance and further drilling can then be accomplished from revenue itself without further capital investment.

Relative to other things on Wall Street, it might as well extract and process itself.

We will consume all convenient oil sooner or later.

If indeed energy storage costs dominate beyond 40% renewable penetration (total energy) then the exponential curve we see today at the 5% level will likely level off.

In 2018 carbon emissions increased by 2% worldwide even though renewables grew by 15%.

It took banning whaling and putting the sperm whale on the endangered species list and banning the sale of sperm oil to stop its usage. I have a feeling fossil fuels will be the same. Even if many countries no longer use coal for primary electricity production, fossil fuel use will continue at far-too-high rates until there's effectively a global ban on net CO2 emissions.

China also has far less stringent regulations on pollutants, so net loss for global pollutant emission prevention.

Use nuclear for baseload and solar for daytime demand and even without any storage technology, you limit the need for generation from fossil fuels to the high demand period in the evening after the sun goes down. Then add in demand-based pricing to load shift anything that can be (like charging electric vehicles) into the solar generation period.

Going from burning coal 24/7 to a couple hours of burning natural gas in the evening is a huge reduction in carbon emissions.

At that point it's a question of economics. Alternatives exist -- synthetic fuels produced in the daytime with energy from solar generation and then burned at night, biofuels, etc. They're not used because they're more expensive; impose a carbon tax and maybe they're not.

And that's assuming no one comes up with anything creative. Here's an idea -- run a nuclear reactor 24/7 equipped with thermal storage. Then you can store the heat from the reactor during the day when you can get cheap electricity from solar, then use the stored heat to satisfy the few hours of peak demand in the evening after the sun goes down, then generate electricity directly from the reactor for the rest of the night until the sun comes up.

I'd love for some of these people to go to these countries and tell these people to do without electricity and fuel for their transportation and generators.

Provide economic stability to enough people in the short-term to reach a critical mass of people that have the privilege to care about the longer-term. Until then, I don't see most areas (e.g. many regions in India) have the bandwidth to trade-off short-term economic gain for long-term health.

To clarify: I agree with your point. I just don't see the current economic climate in many parts of the world allow for shaping local policy that promotes long-term environmental stability.

Why would migration lead to war? (I'll be honest: this is a rhetorical question.)

What countries are these? The conflict areas in Africa I'm familiar with (e.g. Great Lakes region), seem to be driven almost entirely over access to valuable resources.

Carbon emissions may very well be a valid concern, but that concern is not obviously more valid than people dying of privation, a condition that we know for sure is solved by economic development (which, to date, requires fossil fuels).

The idea of someone typing on some website about how people in the developing world shouldn't burn fossil fuels to lift themselves out of poverty is appalling. "How dare you" -- or something.

> Several countries in Africa are suffering from wars worsened by climate change driven migrations.

Now only if these african countries used more oil to develop and get rich so that they wouldn't have to fight over scraps. Are you seriously saying that a continent where a significant portion of the population lacks reliable electricity won't benefit from cheap oil and development?

> Countries like India have a mix of cities running out of water, cities flooded by water and cities drowning in pollution which is almost certainly gonna erase years of people's lives eliminating any improvements caused by better medicine.

A country with a per capita income of only $2K? Where hundreds of millions of its citizens live in poverty. You are claiming these people won't benefit from cheap oil and development?

The only people who are against cheap oil for africa, india, etc are privileged white liberal parasites who are already rich from a century of cheap oil. It's pretty pathetic to try and deny these people are chance at a better life because you want to help bankers enact a carbon tax on the world.

Battery tech will get there. Electric motors will deliver more torque and independent torque vectoring will open up even more terrain to ruin.

Range can probably be done with a range extending generator, and PVs on the roof can charge while you camp.

But I'm not going to shed tears that BEVs don't fit the 200 mile offroad romp use case. BEVs won't come to Jeep segments until some other commercial application does it. Jeep buyers generally don't care about the environment when it comes down to it, they've been buying horribly inefficient dinosaur burners for decades and really aren't any different than Hummer buyers.

My alternative viewpoint is that it is really one of choice and substitutes.

For the last century, fossil fuels by in large had no generally viable substitutes. Now, substitutes are coming online to replace previously heavy fossil fuel uses (think, electric cars powered with renewable energy for getting around town or the emergence of plant based burgers to replace beef burgers -> fossil fuel related as a primary input to agriculture is fertilizer, which is sourced from natural gas. Real meat requires significantly more fertilizer for the same amount of calories).

And - is investing really a zero-sum game? What about the opportunity for primary energy production to be substituted by renewable energy sources? Is that a promising opportunity that will be financed? If that does amount to an opportunity, wouldn't it be better to invest in that then Exxon? Particularly if you use the fuller definition of investment rather than just buying public shares?

Similarly regulation and impact fines and levies will come. Maybe Exxon gets bought by someone looking to asset strip or use the remaining oil to pivot them elsewhere...

Would you pick up $100 and put it in your wallet in front of a police officer?

Note on meat - American and Argentinian meat specifically - other parts of the world manage to raise livestock in a far less destructive manner.

Everybody knows about the suffering the animal industry inflicts on billions of cows, chicken and pigs.

The awareness of these problems does not seem to lead to widespread and lasting changes in behavior.

The taste of a burger and the sensation of driving a powerful car seems to trump moral considerations for a majority of humans.

As an example: Green party members in Germany are the ones who fly the most

During the recession and auto industry bailout, Ford was the only auto company to almost immediately repay their TARP funding and was also giving out loans to people. They were practically unaffected and didn't even need the TARP funding in the first place.

Today's F150 is made out of mostly aluminum - not steel.

Today's F150 only comes in 4 and 6 cylinder models. 8 cylinder was dropped, and I think the smaller engines are turbocharged to make up for the difference (what if anything this does for emissions or fuel usage, I am not certain).

There are probably more than a few other differences as well that might make the vehicles objectively better than their forebears.

That isn't to say they are better than other options, just that they are possibly and likely better than what they used to be - but are still frequently used as "scare fodder" for a public who doesn't generally follow or understand how the vehicle has changed.

By the 80s it was clear that oil prices were back on the decline, so many thought demand might return to the earlier growth rate (making the 70s crisis a "hiccup" rather than having a permanent affect).