A New Peak for Your Mapby Jim Walters
Picture a big Easter egg hunt, with a bunch of kids scouring a park where 1,000 Easter eggs have been hidden. As the kids fan out and begin to pick up eggs, let’s plot a graph that shows their production in terms of “Eggs per Minute.” With each passing minute, the number of eggs found in that minute will increase, so our graph will resemble the first half of a classic bell curve, with the production line going upwards and right.
However, a funny thing happens when half the eggs have been found. The rate of finding eggs (production) will flatten out, because the kids have found all the eggs that were in plain sight, and from here on they’ll be rooting around under the bushes and burrowing into the more difficult hiding places. Even later, as the number of eggs remaining gets really small, the production rate really drops, and our production line comes down sharply, completing the bell curve just as the last egg is found.
The Easter egg hunt describes what is happening with global oil production today. Petroleum geologists believe that roughly half of all the oil that will ever come out of the ground has already been pumped up, and so the bell curve that tracks “oil production per day” is reaching a flat peak at around 88 million barrels of oil per day. It’s not a “peak” as much as it is a “mesa top,” but petroleum geologists call it a peak, namely “Hubbert’s Peak.”
Mr. Hubbert was a petroleum geologist with Shell back in the 1950’s, when he first observed that oil production in any field (or group of fields, or continent, or planet) would follow a bell curve (like the Easter Egg hunt). When Hubbert predicted that gross oil production in the lower 48 states would peak in 1970, everyone laughed at him.
They stopped laughing in 1970 when production in the lower 48 states peaked, pretty much when Hubbert had said it would. The peak production rate was around 11 million barrels per day. Would you like to know what it is today? Just over 6 million barrels per day (from the Continental 48 states). Hubbert later passed away, but his successors used his equations to accurately predict the peaking of the Alaska Prudhoe Bay, in the Gulf of Mexico, and even the North Sea. ALL of those fields have peaked.
So, today America burns 22 million barrels of oil daily, but only produces about 9 million, including Alaska and the Gulf. That means we import, from other nations, 13 million barrels a day, at the staggering cost of $100 per barrel, that’s one-point-three billion dollars every single day. That’s the “largest transfer of wealth in history” that T Boone Pickens is talking about.
Half of all the world’s oil endowment is still in the ground. If the geologists are correct, there’s at least another trillion barrels remaining. Note that at the rate of 88 million per day, those trillion barrels will be GONE in about thirty years. And remember, we’ve already used the "easy to find” oil (eg: Texas) and much of what remains is the “hard to find” oil (eg: under deep ocean water) or, it is in the hands of people who don’t like us very much. That’s the long-term problem.
The short-term problem is that while “supply” is peaking, “demand” just keeps growing. Since 2002, India and China ceased exporting surplus oil and now import (just like us) to meet their own needs. We are all competing for the same oil in a “commodities” market, where “supply and demand” factors fluctuate. The price of oil is no longer pre-determined by OPEC or “big oil.” No, the entire market is driven by speculative forces. Oil companies and investors buy like crazy when they think demand is strong; then they sell like mad when supply catches up and demand shrinks. At the last Presidential election, oil rose through $40 a barrel and soared eventually to $140. Now it’s falling through $90. You can expect these cycles to continue, with “higher highs” and "lower lows.” Most places in the world pay more than $5 per gallon of gasoline at the pump. The ultimate problem is, what will we use to first supplement, and then replace oil? Will it be oil shale or oil sands, ethanol, solar, wind, hydrogen, or some of each? Next week I will attempt to explain why none of these options alone will be a simple answer, and why the phrase “The Long Emergency” is a good descriptor of the global energy situation.
For more info: “Hubbert’s Peak” by Richard Deffeyes; “Twilight in the Desert” by Matthew Simmons; “The Long Emergency,” by James Kunstler; or just google “peak oil.”
Showing posts with label End times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label End times. Show all posts
Monday, October 13, 2008
Pastor Jim's View of CHINA
Well, that was fun. Preaching on the End Times, exploring the possible "signs in the sky" and pondering how the end-time events might unfold. And really four sermons isn't enough to cover the subject entirely. Beth Moore's series on Daniel is excellent, and also the new book "101 Answers to Questions on the End Times" (Mark Hitchcock) is proving to be useful.
Someone asked me about the "Partial Rapture" theory, the one that suggests believers might be taken up in a "series of raptures over several years." Fascinating, but I didn't have time to cover it. That said, yesterday I found myself praying for a partial rapture... of all the politicians in Washington.
Back to business: what if Jesus tarries a bit longer? What will the world look like in the near future? People often tell me I'm good at making complex things understandable (an attribute I credit to my days of training fighter pilots -- they're a very simple breed, who like things to be black, white, and straightforward.) So, for part one of "The Big Picture of Global Change" let me tell you about the country that is becoming the 900-pound gorilla of Global Change: China.
"The Middle Kingdom" as they themselves call it, has been around a very long time. Most of the major dynasties in China lasted longer than the history of the USA from George W (Washington) to George W (Bush). And even the smallest province in China has more people than any nation in Western Europe. So when you think China, think "big."
Even with their policy of "one child" per family, the population still creeps upward, now reaching 1.3 Billion (roughly four times that of the USA; and a little more than India). Their economy grows at the blistering rate of 9% a year, so it doubles every eight years! In 1978 they produced a total of 200 air conditioners. Last year they exported 48 million air conditioners. Every single day, China exports more products in that one day, than they did in the entire YEAR of 1978 -- just thirty years ago.
And when products go out, money comes in. They've moved 400 million people from rural poverty to urban almost-middle-class. Take all of the construction projects in the USA and multiply them times Five -- that's what they are building in China. Make a list of the twenty fastest-growing cities in the world, and guess what? All twenty cities are in China. And these facts I've listed are from one book, "The Post American World" by Fareed Zakaria, a Newsweek editor.
China is also a new and massive market for US products. Proctor and Gamble sells $2.5 billion/year into China. Chinese drivers import new cars from Japan and from USA, at the rate of, are you ready, 20,000 cars a month!! Starbucks is expanding so fast that by 2010 there'll be more Starbucks in China than in the USA. (Imagine a billion Chinese, amp'ed up on Double Espressos...)
What's the point of all this? That China is going to play a large, large role in the future. It's a good thing that we are friends with them, and as their economy is dependent on us, as we are also dependent on them. (I've read also that 10% of all the Treasury notes out there, ie: our national debt, is held by Chinese people or businesses or government.)
In my opinion, the 2008 Olympics "re-shaped" the openness of the country, in a way that will not be reversed. They are learning English, they are going on-line, they are hearing the gospel of Christ in numbers that are unimaginable. They won't pass the USA as a military power (not for at least a century) and their economy will not be as large as ours, but where there were two major economies (USA and European Union) there will be soon be a third -" BRIC" is the acrostic for it -- Brazil, Russia, India, China -- and China is the big dog on that block. So get used to the idea of China, and pray for its people, its churches, its future.
stay tuned: next week: I will attempt to explain "Why Oil Costs So Much."
Someone asked me about the "Partial Rapture" theory, the one that suggests believers might be taken up in a "series of raptures over several years." Fascinating, but I didn't have time to cover it. That said, yesterday I found myself praying for a partial rapture... of all the politicians in Washington.
Back to business: what if Jesus tarries a bit longer? What will the world look like in the near future? People often tell me I'm good at making complex things understandable (an attribute I credit to my days of training fighter pilots -- they're a very simple breed, who like things to be black, white, and straightforward.) So, for part one of "The Big Picture of Global Change" let me tell you about the country that is becoming the 900-pound gorilla of Global Change: China.
"The Middle Kingdom" as they themselves call it, has been around a very long time. Most of the major dynasties in China lasted longer than the history of the USA from George W (Washington) to George W (Bush). And even the smallest province in China has more people than any nation in Western Europe. So when you think China, think "big."
Even with their policy of "one child" per family, the population still creeps upward, now reaching 1.3 Billion (roughly four times that of the USA; and a little more than India). Their economy grows at the blistering rate of 9% a year, so it doubles every eight years! In 1978 they produced a total of 200 air conditioners. Last year they exported 48 million air conditioners. Every single day, China exports more products in that one day, than they did in the entire YEAR of 1978 -- just thirty years ago.
And when products go out, money comes in. They've moved 400 million people from rural poverty to urban almost-middle-class. Take all of the construction projects in the USA and multiply them times Five -- that's what they are building in China. Make a list of the twenty fastest-growing cities in the world, and guess what? All twenty cities are in China. And these facts I've listed are from one book, "The Post American World" by Fareed Zakaria, a Newsweek editor.
China is also a new and massive market for US products. Proctor and Gamble sells $2.5 billion/year into China. Chinese drivers import new cars from Japan and from USA, at the rate of, are you ready, 20,000 cars a month!! Starbucks is expanding so fast that by 2010 there'll be more Starbucks in China than in the USA. (Imagine a billion Chinese, amp'ed up on Double Espressos...)
What's the point of all this? That China is going to play a large, large role in the future. It's a good thing that we are friends with them, and as their economy is dependent on us, as we are also dependent on them. (I've read also that 10% of all the Treasury notes out there, ie: our national debt, is held by Chinese people or businesses or government.)
In my opinion, the 2008 Olympics "re-shaped" the openness of the country, in a way that will not be reversed. They are learning English, they are going on-line, they are hearing the gospel of Christ in numbers that are unimaginable. They won't pass the USA as a military power (not for at least a century) and their economy will not be as large as ours, but where there were two major economies (USA and European Union) there will be soon be a third -" BRIC" is the acrostic for it -- Brazil, Russia, India, China -- and China is the big dog on that block. So get used to the idea of China, and pray for its people, its churches, its future.
stay tuned: next week: I will attempt to explain "Why Oil Costs So Much."
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