On Rain

It is really difficult to think of anything to write when a guy's been away from the saddle as long as I have. (Two whole days!) Actually two days is not so bad, last week sucked, because I was primary on call looser boy, I rode once, Monday. I got caught in the rain and spent the rest of the week and into the weekend cleaning Jordan. End result, in the last fourteen days, I have been on the saddle just a few times.

So thanks to the rain I have to drive to work. Only it is worse than that, because my mother was in a car accident (she's fine, car needs some body work). Mum is now without a car so I loaned her my old Jetta on the, mistaken, belief that it was going to be a nice week and I could ride all week long. Now I have to ride Lesley's gas guzzler. (Lesley likes her truck, but last night I filled the tank, hoping I could ride today and leave Lesley with a full tank, 3/8'ths of a tank on an Audi Q5 costs as much as a full tank of diesel for the Jetta.)

You know I have to admit, I am too car dependant, I was thinking this morning, I should ride the Coppi to work in the rain (on the other hand 25km on slick roads). But then I look at my baby boomer parents and the very notion of getting around without using fossil fuels fills them with dread.

Frankly this attitude of the car is a god to be worshiped, it's the Rob Ford view of the universe!, or at least North America. We already live in a world of peak oil, that much is obvious, consider the chart below which I pulled from here. Now one thing to note is this chart ends just as the 2008 recession really started to hit. As of October, 14 2010 (Thursday) at 09:20:28 the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (the benchmark crude that the graph below plots) is $83.45.



In other words, with the exception of the pre-recession high, back in July or August of 2008, oil has never been as expensive as it is today, and we are very nearly in a double dip recession right now!

Heck lets, consider the price of oil over the last 150, or so, years. (This graph was also pulled from here.)



So in fact the only time oil has been as expensive as it is now (now being since peak oil set in, which would be, I believe, around 2004) was when we first discovered the stuff and were trying to figure out how to pull it out of the ground.

But really, the real reason we should worry about how we get to keep driving, here is a graph from Wikipedia of non-OPEC and Russian oil. Note that we have in fact peaked.



Now some wise guy is going to comment that there is Russia and OPEC (and unconventional oil) are not included. Well consider this:

[World] reserves are confused and in fact inflated. Many of the so-called reserves are in fact resources. They're not delineated, they're not accessible, they’re not available for production.
— Sadad I. Al-Husseini, former VP of Aramco, presentation to the Oil and Money conference, October 2007.

Or I like this graph, also from Wikipedia.



It is a graph of OPEC reported reserves, the caption from Wikipedia says it all:

Graph of OPEC reported reserves showing refutable jumps in stated reserves without associated discoveries, as well as the lack of depletion despite yearly production.

In an average year oil comes out of the ground and so the lines should drop, then a discovery is made and the lines should go up a little, or an elephant field is discovered and lines rocket up. But often times in this graph we see elephant type jumps without the associated finds.

Perhaps this (from Wikipedia) explains things,

One difficulty in forecasting the date of peak oil is the opacity surrounding the oil reserves classified as 'proven'. Many worrying signs concerning the depletion of proven reserves have emerged in recent years.
...
For the most part, proven reserves are stated by the oil companies, the producer states and the consumer states. All three have reasons to overstate their proven reserves: oil companies may look to increase their potential worth; producer countries gain a stronger international stature; and governments of consumer countries may seek a means to foster sentiments of security and stability within their economies and among consumers.

Okay so oil is running out, the next logical question, will we find a replacement? Because if we don't, well thankfully there is apparently enough arable land within 100 miles of Toronto to feed the city's population. But I hope there are enough horses to pull the food into town.