Hubert’s Curve –  The Bankruptcy of Fossil Fuels – The Change to prove ourselves

In computing  the Law of Moore that predicts the exponential growth of computing power and until now hasn’t let us down. In the field of energy consumption we know the sad or promising prediction of the Hubert’s curve.

 Top geologist Marion King Hubert studied the American Oil Production.  In 1949 he published his findings and predicted a sharp increase in production and consumption followed by a top in the production but a growing demand and finally a sharp decrease in production.

At the time he was heavily criticized, the common opinion back then was that if you needed more oil the thing only thing you needed to do was to dig a few extra holes. History is now telling us a different story.

When we became more and more dependent on oil the production sharply increased, demand grows and production of the finite resource increases even more.  The growing availability of the resource increases demand further.  But because we are dealing with a finite resource eventually the production will get problematic. And after peaking the production will drop.

He was right about American Oil Production. We saw the production peaking in 1974. And dropping afterwards. The US became increasingly dependent on foreign oil reserves. In 2005 president George Bush agreed that the US had become addicted to oil.

This story is repeating itself for the oil and gas production in Europe which topped in 2000 and is falling now.  In fact you can say that this story repeats itself with every finite resource. 

The funny or sad part is that it seems to be so inevitable, no matter which oil field, no matter with production company or method. Production  follows the Hubert’s curve. Of course this doesn’t mean that there will be no oil, natural gas or coal available.

But in the supply and demand economy we will see, actually we are seeing it now, an increase in price. And with the dependency or as Mr. Busch puts it, the addiction we become at the mercy of foreign fuel reserves.

The story seems sad and prediction a bleak future. But in reality there is no energy shortage. Never was and never will be. We are surrounded by unlimited energy sources. Wind, Sun, Water. To maintain our way of life we need to find ways to harness that energy freely available.

There is no other option, and as humans we are capable of doing it.  John F. Kennedy told is that before the decade he lived in was over there would be people walking on the moon. And although the odds seemed against it, our determination  made that Neil Armstrong in 1969 could say: “On small step for a man but a giant leap for mankind”.

We need to  get into action and instead of fighting a losing battle use our resource to find new ways of energy production. The top of world production is predicted between 2020 and 2040. But with the increasing demand of  the emerging economies we might have to face the inevitable sooner.

Therefore we need to prove to ourselves and to the world that we are capable of finding alternatives instead of being taken hostage by powers that are at another point in the bell curve.