JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE CONCEPT OF "PEAK OIL" - WHY THOMAS MALTHUS WAS SO COMPLETELY WRONG IN THE LATE 18TH CENTURY - BOTH ABOUT THE LIMITS TO RESOURCES LIKE FOOD AND ABOUT POPULATION GROWTH - HOW OUR FOOD WILL BE PRODUCED BEFORE VERY LONG - HOW HUMAN POPULATIONS STOP GROWING AND EVEN SHRINK - A WORD ON INTELLIGENT SCEPTICISM

John Chuckman


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY F WILLIAM ENGDAHL IN RUSSIA INSIDER



'Peak Oil' Turns out to Be Complete Nonsense - Affordable Global Reserves Seem Virtually Limitless

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Response to a comment:

Yes, there is not yet evidence enough about the formation of oil, whether it is a geological process or biological, as perhaps most commonly assumed. If it proves to be a continuous geological process, operating out of the earth’s interior as this article’s author assumes, reservoirs may indeed be virtually unlimited over time.

As for your comments on Malthus, he unknowingly left out something that has proved to be extremely important, growth of productivity.

It is that fact that makes his reckoning so bleak.

And so completely wrong, as we've proved with immense growth of productivity in all industries and especially farming.

And I think we have big leaps ahead still.

The day is coming we won't even need most of our farm fields.

We'll grow most of what we eat in hi-tech, hi-rise facilities. They will be right in or near cities, so fleets of transport trucks will no longer be needed. Chemical sprays perhaps also will not be needed.

The facilities will be controlled by complex computer programs and will need little attention.

And there will be harvests multiple times a year.

After that, who knows, maybe totally synthetic stuff, requiring no horticulture at all?

Like oil basins, future productivity of food production is not "cut-and-dried," as Malthus unwittingly assumed.

Much the same productivity argument applies to petroleum too, actually. We 've been able to make completely synthetic gasoline for many decades. Nationalist South Africa had a few synthetic fuel plants, based on a technology from WWII Germany.

It is much more expensive fuel, but, as with all technologies, costs come down over time. And higher product costs stimulate more efficient user technologies, as more efficient cars.

But before even getting to synthetic fuel, the world still has huge resources of "unconventional" oil - very heavy sources of crude that are more difficult and costly to extract and refine. The Alberta tar sands and the Orinoco Belt in Venezuela and still other places have vast deposits.

Again, such oil is more expensive because it must be "upgraded" and extraction deals with far greater volumes of material to be handled than classic light crude, but costs do come down over time.

Malthus, in his concept of a growing mismatch between population and its needed resources, also assumed continuous growth of population. Again, he was quite wrong, as the experience of all advanced countries now has proved.

The socio-economic fact of Demographic Transition brings population growth to a halt in all advanced nations. Births do respond to increased affluence and the likelihood of the survival of almost all children born - that is, to falling death rates.

Infant mortality (deaths of children before reaching five-years old) provided a big portion of historical death rates.

In Malthus’ day, infant mortality claimed a good half of children born. People kept having children as a response. After all, there were no pensions or care facilities for aging parents. Your children, especially for rural people, were the embodiment of both.

Today, some countries without adequate in-migration, actually face declining population, a very serious problem, as is the case for Japan.

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Response to a comment saying, “A word to the wise: never take anything Engdahl says at face value. I made that mistake once and quoted him in a book. The man is a dangerous loon, a Larouchite and a fantasist”

Never take anything that anyone says at "face value." That is, anything about which you have little personal knowledge.

Intelligent scepticism is the best guiding philosophy. David Hume was right.