Clarke's Wager
20 Nov, 2007 11:04 am
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Reduce text sizeSome 350 years ago, mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that it is better to wager for the existence of God than against it since the benefits of believing in God are so great. The argument became known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager">Pascal's Wager</a>. Today, author Duncan Clarke asks us to make a kind of inverted Pascal's Wager in favor of continued abundance in world oil supplies. Is it a good bet?
A recent public exchange between David Strahan, author of The Last Oil Shock: A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man, and Duncan Clarke, author of The Battle for Barrels: Peak Oil Myths & World Oil Futures, illustrates a key point in the debate over the timing and consequences of world peak oil production. Peak oil, for those who are hearing about it for the first time, is the point after which world oil production will begin to fall irreversibly. It should be obvious that if that point is nearby, we could be in for huge and perhaps catastrophic difficulties. We are just not ready. But if the peak is far away, then perhaps we have time to find alternatives and adapt our economies to a world without oil. In brief, this debate matters, and it matters greatly.
So it would seem that those such as Duncan Clarke who pillory the peak oil movement for its failed predictions of peak (of which there are quite a few) might seek to provide some precision as to the eventual fate of hydrocarbon man. His main arguments feature all of the usual responses to those who believe a peak is nearby: 1) The oil resource is very large and we've used only a small portion of it; 2) peak oil forecasters fail to take into account the growth in reserves that typically occurs in existing fields over time from a better understanding of those fields and from additional drilling; 3) future technology will increase oil recovery rates and discoveries; 4) the marketplace will direct investment into oil and its alternatives and quell demand through high prices; 5) and finally, peak oil models are too simplistic to capture all of these dynamics.
The adepts in the peak oil movement, that is, the petroleum geologists and modelers, have responded quite robustly to these arguments. Whether their responses are adequate and convincing is a topic for another day. Here I want to focus on a request by Strahan, who believes a peak is nearby, that Clarke give us at least some idea about when the oil age will begin to fade. To this Clarke responds that the issue is too fraught with nonlinearities to give an estimate.
It is curious that for Clarke all of the surprises in a world full of nonlinearity seem to fall on the side of more oil rather than less. But there is no reason for this to be so. With all its curves and unexpected changes of direction, a nonlinear system can go down as well as up. And so, in a way the admission by Clarke that we live in a nonlinear world, at least when it comes to oil production, defeats his whole case. For his case isn't really about oil per se, but about whether any immediate and purposeful preparations for a world of declining oil are necessary. What he is saying essentially is that because he can make out a strong case for continued abundance, we don't need to worry about doing anything just now about our oil dependence.
We'll call this Clarke's Wager, a sort of inverted Pascal's Wager about oil and the future of civilization. (I say inverted because Pascal's Wager at minimum obliges us to think about the moral life even if we reject his argument, while Clarke's Wager encourages us to take the easy route and move obliviously into the future without any changes.) Clarke is betting that we'll have a distant peak. This would obviate the need for any early preparations and thus any time or resources out of our current consumption that might be devoted to such preparations. Nor should we bother to change the way we live to meet such a challenge, at least not for some time to come. If Clarke is right, then we'll save ourselves as a society from some rather burdensome inconveniences for now. If he is wrong, however, we may all simply go down having made no preparations whatsoever for a possible catastrophe.
Wagering against Clarke would mean that we would instead move quickly to create a sustainable, nonfossil fuel based economy. Such a move would cost us something, perhaps a lot, in the short run; but sustainability is something we need to achieve for other reasons as well including climate change, threats to biodiversity, water depletion, deforestation, soil erosion, toxic pollution and other concerns.
Of course, it doesn't pay to worry about small things that may or may not happen. But, given the severe consequences that a nearby peak could have and the limits of our knowledge about the future of oil, whose side would you take in this bet, Clarke's or Strahan's?
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| [1] | Comment by donnie joe - 23 Nov, 2007 05:24 am clarke the oil companys ,W are just lieing world disstroying asses. Soon they will face the linch mob. |
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| [2] | Comment by Matt - 23 Nov, 2007 08:27 am As somebody who will still be alive 50 years from now (hopefully), I don't think it really matters all that much who is correct. Either way, it will take decades to transform America into a post-carbon society so we should not be stupid and start now. Nobody is claiming that the peak will happen beyond 2040. Supposing it comes in 2040, then we have 3 decades to transform suburbia into something more sustainable. So, I guess if you love you children and grand children then this shouldn't be a 'debate' for you. Either way, they will be around when TSHTF and so we need to get moving now before it is too late. |
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| [3] | Comment by Jason - 24 Nov, 2007 12:42 am Ten years time will make a liar out of one of these gentlemen. There's always the argument that there is plenty of oil remaining in the ground (this is likely). However, the oil that remains is more difficult to acquire, placing real limits on the rate at which oil can be put on the market. It takes time and even more money to ramp up production. World oil production has been pretty flat for the past 3 years. My money is on $6 gas by 2012. |
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| [4] | Comment by Mindessence - 24 Nov, 2007 02:56 am Clarke ignores the obvious. A finite resource will eventually run dry, particularly at the usage rates now extant. The time frame is a perfect function of usage. Since we now know that "reserves" or "in-the-ground" resources of oil have been lied about by virtually every producing entity from BP to the Saudis to keep CEO bonuses at their maximum, plus the fact that it has been discovered that when an oil basin reaches 50% depletion, it quickly becomes extremely difficult if not impossible to pump the remaining half out since it requires pumps with great power than any in existence, it should be obvious that we are much closer to the end of oil than anyone has estimated. |
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| [5] | Comment by Diana Korchien
- 26 Nov, 2007 12:09 am After reading several books analysing oil geology, extraction and the many reasons why extracting very last dop would be environmentally destructive as well as uneconomical, it amazes me that suppposedly educated people like Mr Clarke can have the confidence to publish such ill-founded claims. He is merely arguing that the glass is half full rather than half empty. |
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