

German Military Study Warns of Drastic Oil Crisis - all
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,715138,00.html

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eande
The leaked military information was published in German about a week ago and
when reading it you find multiple references to US studies.

One of them is from the City of San Francisco who had a task force installed
to look into the Peak Oil&Gas
www.sfenvironment.org/downloads/library/peakoil_final_report.pdf It is pretty
dark report when you read through the paper. One of the statements “events
will unfold so badly that unemployment, hunger, and crime are prevalent, and
the basic structure of society is unable to function”. But there are some
interesting and specific recommendations like "City government could push much
harder to promote small businesses” or "develop southeast waterfront" and rail
projects. Although I am not sure if anything will happen. But it seems some
politician and planers are looking at these scenarios.

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zeteo
What is the competency of the military for assessing 1. world petroleum
reserves and consumption 2. the economic consequences of an oil shortage?!

I think it's far more likely that Spiegel is misrepresenting the context of
the study. The German military, in particular, has a reputation for making
contingency plans for everything. It seems to me far more credible that the
purpose of the study is rather "in the unlikely event that 'peak oil' is
reached soon AND this leads to 'total collapse of the markets', the German
Army should respond with actions A, B and C".

Discovering such a plan would then have no more significance than finding out,
say, about a study of the defensive measures required if Germany is invaded by
the Czech Republic.

~~~
blantonl
Do you not think that the United States (and any other country for that
matter) hasn't progressed down this same path?

The competency of any military assessing world petroleum reserves and
consumption is enormous! Petroleum is the achillies heel of an army. Petroleum
is probably the single most valuable commodity for maintaining any army's
fighting posture in this day and age. With maybe water and food being a close
second.

But remember, petroleum must be continuously and logistically transported to
troops fighting on the ground or in the air. You can't just locally procure a
sustainable petroleum source for an army on the move.

~~~
zeteo
Yes, modern armies do depend on a good supply of petroleum. That doesn't mean
they are fully staffed with geologists, economists, market analysts etc.
Pretty much the entire economy is highly dependent on fossil fuels, but the
competency to estimate the reserves is concentrated in a narrow field, and
estimates of a whole economy's response to oil shock are mostly speculation.

~~~
blantonl
I'd bet the single largest consumer of intelligence data from the CIA is the
US Military, which, is considerably staffed by the US Military.

I might be splitting hairs here, but it is a well known fact that a tremendous
amount of CIA employees are geologists, economists, and market analysts.

Realistically, while the CIA's job is to supply the nation's President and
governmental agencies with intelligence, the end result of a lot of work the
CIA does is for the US Military. And you can bet a ton of work is done around
the Petroleum supply.

~~~
zeteo
Look, this is not a study by the CIA. It's been prepared by the German
military, and the article sources no other primary information. If there is a
study done by actual geologists and market analysts, I'll get excited when I
see it.

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ojbyrne
Not to commit either way, but today we have this:
<http://www.businessinsider.com/the-coming-oil-glut-2010-9>

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elbrodeur
Non-renewable resources running out is scary and peak oil is fascinating, but
with such wildly differing estimates on how long we have it's hard not to be
skeptical.

That being said, we should definitely be planning for the future, and it's
great to hear that the UK and Germany are taking giant strides (Germany
generates the largest amount of solar energy, for instance).

~~~
acqq
Estimate errors are not important -- the certainty that the peak comes however
is!

Try to think about it, you know how exponents of 2 work:

1

2

(...)

1024

2048

Now note that to move from point n to the point n + 1 you need to use as much
as in all points from 1 to n - 1: when you're at point of 1024, to move to the
point of 2048 (double) you'll need 1+2+4+8+...+512 + 1 of something.

According to

<http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/colombia/oila.html>

the doubling time of world oil consumption is 30 years (just as little as 2.3%
usage growth per year makes that!) That means that during the next 30 years
the world needs as much oil as the total oil used from the beginning of the
oil use to the 1980(!) Think again about that simple fact!

Now if you know that all oil in the Earth formed from the preserved remains of
prehistoric zooplankton and algae, which had settled to a sea or lake bottom
in large quantities under anoxic conditions, you can imagine that the supply
is really limited.

~~~
jacquesm
Coal can be converted to oil. At present prices this is not economical. But
when the oil price goes up above the point where it is economical suddenly the
'reserves' will have to include all the coal reserves.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process>

That would (iirc, can't find a quick and reasonably reliable source) double
the total available oil for the next 50 years or so, and then there are
currently uneconomical sources such as tar sands.

So, in short, yes, it will run out and fairly soon but not as soon as you
might think based on just the oil reserves.

~~~
ams6110
Agree. Think about life 100 years ago. Sometimes I just sit in wonder at what
human civilization has accomplished since the start of the 20th century,
compared to all of human history before then.

I think it's pretty likely that sometime in the next few decades we'll have a
replacement for oil. It may very well be technology that hasn't been
discovered yet. But I see no reason to think that we'll just use up all the
oil and have no alternatives.

~~~
jacquesm
I think we agree less than you think :)

We won't come up with some magic replacement for oil, unless ITER is
successful, and we manage to adapt the fusion principle to a scale small
enough for transportation use, but that's not something I would bet on at this
stage.

More likely we'll see incremental change together with market forces reshape
our society in a way that we can currently not predict.

My best guess would be more nuclear (pebble bed?), more solar, more wind, more
oil from weird places and _much_ more conservation efforts driven by prices
that you can (probably) not imagine today.

In Europe a Gallon of gasoline sells for ~$6 today, imagine what would happen
to the US if it had a gas prices that high.

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mkramlich
Keep in mind:

1\. many militaries do studies like this. contingency planning. they consider
it part of their overall mission of defending their country and interests

2\. as the supply of cheaper oil shrinks relative to demand, price increases
and then more expensive-to-deliver oil becomes marketable (like from
shale/sands, or synthetics). and alternate energies become more attractive and
economically feasible (solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, nuclear, etc.) and
people increasingly try to use less oil. all of this adds up.

3\. nobody can predict the future with certainty, and the accuracy and
reliability tends to go down the farther into the future one tries to evaluate

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d2viant
Peak oil seems like a complete non-issue to me. As a resource, it is in such
high demand that when we run out someone will step in with a replacement.
There's simply too many capitalists and entrepreneurs in this world to let
that void go unfilled.

The primary reason alternative fuels haven't caught on yet is because they're
not cost effective. As oil becomes a rarer commodity and it's price goes up, a
replacement for the fuel supply will gradually emerge as being cost effective.

~~~
Devilboy
The problem is not running out of oil, the problem is that the price increases
will increase the cost of living because so much depends on cheap oil.

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SoftwareMaven
Personally, I'd love to see the difference between this "draft" version that
says things like "Germany may have to sacrifice Israel" or "We are going to
have to screw Poland in favor of Russia", and the "final" version that has
gone through the political correctness police. I think that would be a
fascinating insight into the political process of a nation.

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afterburner
Hmm, the German military are perhaps even more sensitive to the possibility of
an oil shortage thanks to its experience being starved for oil in WWII.

But really, every (good) military worries about this, and has researched the
possibility. Hence the US military's research into battery powered humvees.

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what
Reminded me of this from a while back:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1382456>

Talks about peak oil in part 6: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU>

