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    The Future of Fossil Fuels: From Hubbert's Peak
    The Future of Fossil Fuels: From Hubbert's Peak
    The Future of Fossil Fuels: From Hubbert's Peak
    Ebook43 pages39 minutes

    The Future of Fossil Fuels: From Hubbert's Peak

    By Kenneth S. Deffeyes

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    About this ebook

    As debates about the effects of fossil fuels on our climate and foreign policy intensify, the question of just how much longer we can depend on this finite source of energy becomes more and more pressing. This selection from Hubbert's Peak, the leading book on the limits of our oil supply, forecasts what the future will bring for fossil fuels and what the alternatives are likely to be.


    Princeton Shorts are brief selections excerpted from influential Princeton University Press publications produced exclusively in eBook format. They are selected with the firm belief that while the original work remains an important and enduring product, sometimes we can all benefit from a quick take on a topic worthy of a longer book.


    In a world where every second counts, how better to stay up-to speed on current events and digest the kernels of wisdom found in the great works of the past? Princeton Shorts enables you to be an instant expert in a world where information is everywhere but quality is at a premium. The Future of Fossil Fuels does just that.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateSep 29, 2008
    ISBN9781400841134
    The Future of Fossil Fuels: From Hubbert's Peak
    Author

    Kenneth S. Deffeyes

    Kenneth S. Deffeyes, a former researcher for Shell Oil Company and author of When Oil Peaked and Beyond Oil, is emeritus professor of geology at Princeton University.

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    • 4/5
      Comprehensive and detailed, sometimes even down to industry anecdotes, it reviews oil and adjacent fossil fuel areas in historical and industry segment perspectives. With numerous illustrations, schemes and facts enlisted, author gives no single gap on one single message - peak oil has started and now we are on the way down. And then suddenly he pushes reader into hands of nuclear energy lobby like if nuclear *fuel* rods are not excavated from ground only once and arguments both laughable and sketchy - you can't teach old geologist for new tricks. Book leaves mixed feeling of love and hate: probably the best explanation of why peak oil has started and where we are going with it, and then all of sudden stripping off all future and tossing back to square one. Yet marked good as this probably the only 100% honest petroleum engineer/geologist/economist/scientist book on peak oil, just skip ending about kiss-your-nuclear-energy.

    Book preview

    The Future of Fossil Fuels - Kenneth S. Deffeyes

    978-1-400-84113-4

    CHAPTER 9

    The Future of Fossil Fuels

    Years ago, a visitor to Switzerland asked how people earned a living in those high Alpine villages. Each village gets paid for doing laundry for the next village. Today, an equally silly answer would be, Each village uses the Internet to sell toilet paper to the next village. The lesson for the global village: we can’t all work in the service economy; somebody has to be down grubbing at the base of the economic pyramid. The list of fundamental activities is short: agriculture, ranching, forestry, fisheries, mining, and petroleum.

    Consider the names on some great art museums: Getty (oil), Guggenheim (copper), de Menil (oil services), Gulbenkian (oil). Huge wealth used to be accumulated at the base of the economic system. Today’s dot.com billionaires up at the apex of the pyramid may not be able to see all the way down to the base. They might have the illusion that everyone can earn a living by selling software to the next village.

    A permanent drop in oil production will pull one of the blocks out from underneath the pyramid. The previous chapter strongly suggests that the drop will happen in this decade. Major disruptions likely will follow. What should we do? The question exists at two levels:

    1 What can individuals and institutions do, in their enlightened self-interest, to minimize the impact of a global oil shortage?

    2 As a society, how can we rearrange the global economy to lessen our dependence on oil?

    Republicans choose line 1; Democrats pick line 2. The division is not that simple. I’m a registered Democrat, but I still feel authorized to protect myself while the world gets its act together. That’s why line 1 says "enlightened self-interest." This chapter discusses fossil fuels; chapter 10 treats alternative energy sources.

    A fossil is the remains of an ancient organism. A fossil fuel is solar energy stored by organisms in ancient times. A major lesson: the source of the world’s oil accumulated over hundreds of millions of years; most of the world’s oil has been discovered during my lifetime. Large-scale use of fossil fuels began with the Industrial Revolution, of which coal was an integral part. In a sense, the fossil fuels are a onetime gift that lifted us up from subsistence agriculture and eventually should lead us to a future based on renewable resources.

    A fad of 10 years ago was finding oil on Wall Street. Publicly traded companies with undervalued oil and gas reserves became targets for stock traders and merger-and-acquisition specialists. An individual today could offset his or her family’s petroleum

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