Oil Production

The Four Horsemen, Part Three – The Black Horse

Of all the horsemen of the Apocalypse, I have been dreading the Black Horse the most.

Why?

Because I could see how it would ride, and the utter devastation it would cause. In fact, I’ve been yelling about this particular horse for eleven years. No one has been listening, so I’m a little surprised that we made it this far.

Thankfully, we’ve been able to delay the moment when the Black Horse rides, but delay is the best that we can do. And, the reason for that, has everything to do with energy.

When we hit the limit to how much we can produce, our economy will collapse, and our civilization will die.

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Winter Is Coming

While we have been in a panic over a virus, something has crept up on us. I’ve been screaming about it for years, and it seems that the leading edges of this catastrophe may have arrived:

Peak Energy

We hit Peak Oil years ago, and we thought that things could be fixed by shifting the goalposts. You and I know that this never works, but we tried it anyway. And now that Fall has begun, we have a problem.

Winter is coming, and people will die.

If I was the only one saying this, I’d feel better about what’s coming.

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Before the Storm

After last week’s article, Hurricane Irma blundered through Florida and Georgia. Then, Typhoon Talim set its sights on my apartment building. However, Talim veered off to the North and didn’t do much more than rain on us, here in Taipei. But, Irma left a gigantic swath of destruction in her wake.

Half of Florida might be without power for weeks. People have been displaced. Lives and jobs disrupted and even ruined. And the loss of lives…

That was a terrible hurricane, and Florida hasn’t had one of those in a long time. But, I have an interesting observation, from all the typhoons that my wife and I have been through…

…did you notice how quiet and normal everything was, the day before?

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The Crude Oil Tug of War

I think that we can all agree that it takes energy to make stuff. People don’t get very much done when they don’t have enough food to eat. Tractors don’t go very far without fuel. Power plants don’t produce electricity without coal.

And, we’ve run into two problems with energy.

  • More and more people want a share of it
  • We’re having trouble increasing our production of it

Up to now, whenever we needed more energy, we dug a new well or opened a new mine to produce more of it. So, when the Chinese asked for more, we could give it to them. But, that’s not the case, anymore.

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