[p2p-research] The Whale Oil Peak Curve

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Echoing curves for nuclear materials that Ryan linked to: :-)
   "By The Fault » Blog Archive » The Whale Oil Peak Curve"
   http://www.bythefault.com/2008/05/14/the-whale-oil-peak-curve/
"""
The American whaling industry rose from modest beginnings in the late 18th 
century to become an international giant to feed a growing demand for whale 
oil for lamps and industrial lubricants. The peak year was 1846 when 735 
ships and 70,000 people served the industry out of New England ports such as 
New Bedford and Salem. As whale stocks and reserves decreased, whalers were 
forced to go farther and farther from their New England home ports. 
Increasingly whalers were forced to round Cape Horn and venture to far off 
and desolate locations such Hawaii (whaling led to New England missionaries 
and the rest is as they say is history), Guerrero Negro on the Baja coast 
and up to the Bering Strait.
   By 1850s the voyages became longer, and risks on required 
return-on-investment became higher. The peak of production in 1846-47 led to 
the price of whale skyrocketing in 1855. That lag is similar to one we are 
seeing now in oil and related fossil fuels. The easy money of Atlantic and 
Pacific whaling was no more: the only remaining profitable ventures were to 
Arctic and Antarctic waters. Many ships returned empty, if at all. In 1871, 
most of the Arctic whaling fleet was crushed by early winter ice and lost at 
sea. This calamity, in conjunction with the long-term diminishing whale 
stocks, the diversion of investment capital to more profitable ventures, and 
the discovery, development, and refinement of abundant petroleum crude oil, 
struck the death blow to the American whaling industry. By 1890, less than 
200 whaling vessels remained in operation. In 1971, the American whaling 
industry ceased to exist primarily due to pressure from environmentals 
groups. Today only the Japanese, Norwegians and Icelanders have any 
commercial whaling under the guise of scientific studies. A few other 
societies still engage in whale hunts, most notably the Innuit and the 
Faeroese but these are primarily are for whale meat.
"""

And now we see the same as renewables replace fossil fuels:
   http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/books/pb3/pb3ch12_intro
"The Plan B goals for developing renewable sources of energy by 2020 that 
are laid out in this chapter are based not on what is conventionally 
believed to be politically feasible, but on what we think is needed to 
prevent irreversible climate change. This is not Plan A, business as usual. 
This is Plan B—a wartime mobilization, an all-out response proportionate to 
the threat that global warming presents to our future.
   Can we expand renewable energy use fast enough? We think so. Recent 
trends in the use of mobile phones and personal computers give a sense of 
how quickly new technologies can spread. Once cumulative mobile phone sales 
reached 1 million units in 1986, the stage was set for explosive growth, and 
the number of cell phone subscribers doubled in each of the next three 
years. Over the next 12 years the number of people owning a mobile phone 
more than doubled every two years. By 2001 there were 995 million cell 
phones—a 1,000-fold increase in just 15 years. As of 2007, there were more 
than 2 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide.
   Sales of personal computers followed a similar trajectory. In 1983 
roughly a million were sold, but by 2003 the figure was an estimated 160 
million—a 160-fold jump in 20 years. We are now seeing similar growth 
figures for renewable energy technologies. Sales of solar cells are doubling 
every two years, and the annual growth in wind generating capacity is not 
far behind. Just as the information and communications economies have 
changed beyond recognition over the past two decades, so too will the energy 
economy over the next decade."

So, we're seeing growth in coal and oil of around 1% a year (if that, it 
seems to be falling due to the recession) but wind and solar are growing at 
closer to 30% a year. Still, coal and oil have a big head start. But these 
trends if continued for twenty years or so will see us going towards all 
renewables. But, it is still a long way to grow from small percentages.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/