{"id":21463,"date":"2016-07-17T16:31:06","date_gmt":"2016-07-17T21:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21463"},"modified":"2016-07-17T16:31:06","modified_gmt":"2016-07-17T21:31:06","slug":"some-reflections-on-the-twilight-of-the-oil-age-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21463","title":{"rendered":"Some reflections on the Twilight of the Oil Age (Part II)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some reflections on the Twilight of the Oil Age (Part II)<\/a><\/h3>\n
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(Part I here)<\/a><\/div>\n
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Part 2 \u2013 Enquiring into the appropriateness of the question<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
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Let\u2019s acknowledge it, the situation we are in, as depicted summarily\u00a0in Part 1<\/a>, is complex.\u00a0\u00a0As many commentators like to state, there is still plenty of oil, coal, and gas left\u00a0“in the ground”<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0Since 2014, debates have been raging, concerning the assumed\u00a0\u201coil glut\u201d<\/i>, concerning how low oil prices may go down, how high prices may rebound as demand possibly picks up and the\u00a0\u201cglut\u201d<\/i>\u00a0vanishes, and, in the face of all this, what may or may not happen regarding\u00a0\u201crenewables\u201d<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0However, in my view, the situation is not impossible to analyse rigorously, away from what may appear as common sense but that may not withstand scrutiny.\u00a0\u00a0For example,\u00a0Part 1 data<\/a>\u00a0have indicated,that most of what\u2019s left in terms of fossil fuels is likely to stay where it is, underground, without this requiring the implementation of \u00a0difficult to agree upon resource management policies, simply because this is what thermodynamics dictates.<\/div>\n
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We can now venture a little bit further if we keep firmly in mind that the globalised industrial world (GIW), and by extension all of us, do not\u00a0\u201clive\u201d\u00a0<\/i>on fossil resources but on net energy delivered by the global energy system; and if we also keep in mind that, in this matter, oil-derived transport fuels are the key since, without them, none of the other fossil and nuclear resources can be mobilised and the GIW itself can\u2019t function.<\/div>\n
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In my experience, most often, when faced with such a broad spectrum of conflicting views, especially involving matters pertaining to physics and the social sciences, the lack of agreement is indicative that the core questions are not well formulated.\u00a0\u00a0Physicist David Bohm liked to stress:\u00a0\u201cIn scientific enquiries, a crucial step is to ask the right question. \u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n
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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some reflections on the Twilight of the Oil Age (Part II) (Part I here) Part 2 \u2013 Enquiring into the appropriateness of the question Let\u2019s acknowledge it, the situation we are in, as depicted summarily\u00a0in Part 1, is complex.\u00a0\u00a0As many commentators like to state, there is still plenty of oil, coal, and gas left\u00a0“in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10777,328,14201,588,5331],"class_list":["post-21463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-cassandras-legacy","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-louis-arnoux","tag-oil","tag-oil-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21464,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21463\/revisions\/21464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}