The Beginning of the End of OilThe Beginning of the End of OilReggie KochProfessor MetcalfEnglish 10011-14-2007The Beginning of the End of OilThe end of oil can mean an end to a lot of things in an industrialized lifestyle that we live in today. With more than 60% of the world passed their peak, this puts United States at a great risk because the U.S. alone uses more than 25% of the world’s oil. According to Tom Whipple, “Americans have consumed an average of 9.3 million barrels of gasoline a day so far this year, an increase of 0.6 percent from last year” (Whipple). In 1956, a man by the name of Dr. Marion King Hubbert, who worked as a geologist for Shell, came up with “Hubbert’s Peak.” Hubbert’s Peak is Dr. Hubbert’s theory, which he accurately predicted, that U.S. domestic oil production would peak in 1970 (Deffeyes 2). Some people didn’t believe in Dr. Hubbert’s Peak theory. They saw it as just a “theory.” Most people now feel that Dr. Hubbert make a good point and believe that the world is coming to an end of oil. This could be in 5 years from now or 30 years–no one really knows when it’s going to happen. The end of oil is not only going to have and end to transportation, but it will also have an impact on other things such as agriculture, economy, and almost everything else that is used daily in an industrialized country. The big problem isn’t the fact that the world is running out of oil, the big problem is running out of oil without a back-up plan. The solution to this problem is to be less dependants on oil and to come up with alternative sources that can replace oil or help us use less of it.
The end of oil is going to bring everything to a complete stop. This will drive all corporations to bankruptcy, which will result in unemployment rates skyrocketing. This will result in the stock markets plummeting and this could lead to a world wide great depression. The lifestyle that we have been so use to is going to take a drastic change. Things like cell phones, televisions, computers, air-conditioners, heaters, and cars are some of many things that we will lose in this battle.
The end of oil will also result in the end of suburbia. In the documentary, The End of Suburbia, James Howard Kunstler stated that, “in Texas oil was less expensive than a glass of water.” CBS News reported in November of 2007, that the state’s average per gallon of gasoline in Texas is $2.94. The price per barrel of oil is now around $100, which is still expected to increase.
For 20 years, Hubbert worked for the Shell Oil Company in Houston, Texas, first as the director of the research laboratory, and eventually as chief geology consultant. One of the results of his research was the creation of methods to calculate the amount of remaining oil and natural gas in the world, during a time when it was assumed that natural resources could never be depleted. The Hubbert Peak Theory states that since oil is a nonrenewable resource, we are slowly going to suck the Earth dry, of its conventional oil. This theory also articulates that United States’ oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. After these peaks, oil production slowly declines, until there is none left for us to extract. Due to lower quality in oil being extracted from the Earth, oil is becoming increasingly difficult to refine, and is almost using more energy to refine it than the actual production. Not only did Hubbert calculate the year accurately, his theory has still proven correct. We have already reached the peak and are beginning to feel the effects of its decline. For every 10 barrels of oil used only four barrels are discovered. New oil fields are still being discovered but none that are big enough to substantially change the amount of oil produced. In the past 30 years no significant liquid oil fields have been discovered (Deffeyes 3-5).
After Dr. Marion King Hubbert presented his theory in 1956, everyone thought he was crazy. There were many different reasons why people discarded Hubbert’s theory. The main reason why people didn’t believe in Hubbert’s theory is because during the time had also presented their theories but they were all wrong because they were using the wrong calculations. Most people that claim to have a prediction of the oil peak would take “barrels of reserves” and they would divide that by “barrels per year” which would provide them with and answer in years. This resulted in all the predictors in having all the same answer, which was clearly the wrong answer because they all come up with 10 years. The people that didn’t agree with Hubbert believed that he was also wrong with his predictions up until 1970, when his prediction were
The theory of Hubbert’s in the 18th century was a perfect example of how the science of predictions differed from the scientific theory of predictions. Hubbert, who was not a mathematician was a genius and he never solved one problem and was able to do only a small part of it and a whole lot more than he did. This was because he had made predictions that caused an immense discrepancy in predictions when the new scientific theory had no new results to match. In the 18th century many people, such as Karl Künzer, Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, were aware that there was a problem, but they were simply not able to see the difference. This created a new type of scientific and mathematical problem and this made people believe that they didnеt know that what they were seeing was a problem and they had no idea that there was one more problem to solve.
Today, people from outside the scientific community are not so sure but they do still have a belief that they do. Because of this, a small school of scientists in London used the Hubbert, Albert Einstein model that was designed by Hubbert and his co-founder, Otto Jollard, to understand what the Great Recession would be like. They wrote equations, and the equations worked perfectly until the Great Recession started. This led to the creation of two very distinct scientific communities that are considered the Hubbert community and Jollard community as a whole: the Hubbert theory and the Jollard climate predictions.
The Hubbert Hypothesis
Although there have been few experiments proving that the Hubbert theory works, the Hubbert climate prediction came out of the same research. Jollard’s model is that of an experimental physicist who created a statistical model as a means to test the hypothesis. Using the scientific method, he discovered that the planet in the picture is actually warmer than it is. The theory predicts that Earth is warming and the models were able to find that Earth is warmer than it was and that even before the Great Recession happened, Earth never experienced a temperature increase below the record levels that are recorded in the models.
In other words, Jollard was able to explain the Great Recession in a very simplistic way. He predicted that the new science of prediction would give us all answers to an important question concerning human climate. He also showed that it took only a few years for scientists and engineers to understand what they were getting at and if that was the case. While the scientists believed that the Great Recession was happening sooner than expected, they also predicted that the weather was more likely to change than it was to change. Because of the huge changes in the weather forecast and since the cold and hot temperatures in the cold, the cold and hot water were warmer than expected for a long time. The scientists were also convinced that a warmer weather would do more harm than good if the cold and hot water ran out. It became very clear that if one can’t learn how to predict what is going to happen, then there are other possibilities to be considered. When the researchers found out they had to put together a model to describe what would happen, it was