Both of the assessments below, as well as Jean Laherrere (on ASPO France), all competent investigators, predict a peak in ALL fossil fuels, not just oil, most probably between 2025 and 2050.   Apparently coal use has already peaked in China. In addition the EROI (Energy Return On Investment) of most fossil fuels probably will continue to decline, so less net will be delivered to society.   My guess is that depletion is going to become more and more serious just as we need more fuel to adjust to climate changes, accelerated or not by CO2.   There is much scientific and political attention being paid to potential climate change but far less to depletion, in my view a problem at least as serious. 

Maggio G, Cacciola G. When will oil, natural gas, and coal peak?. Fuel. 2012 Aug 31;98:111-23.

Mohr S.H., J. Wang, G. Ellem, J. Ward and D. Giurco (2015), Projection of world fossil fuels by country. Fuel 141: 120–135.

Well as you well know there will not be a time when oil reserves will become extinct but rather a peak and then decline.   As this occurs we will turn to ever lower grade resources and squeeze some, presumably a smaller and smaller amount, out of the lower grade resources with ever increasing cost--both economic and energy.   At some point the EROI (Energy Return on Investment) will decline to one unit energy returned per unit invested.  That might be perceived as the end of oil as a fuel, although we can still invest coal or gas energy to get a lower quantity of energy as more valuable liquid petroleum.  But it will probably be much less in quantity than today.

All of this is occurring more or less now.   Some analysts think that we reached peak conventional oil some time between 2005 and 2015 (the increase observed in most data given to the public is for "all liquids" which includes natural gas liquids, biofuels, "refinery gains" (of volume, not energy) and various other lower grade stuff.  Certainly we are in the "undulating plateau"  of conventional oil predicted by Colin Campbell a decade and a half ago.   How rapidly we will decline on the other side of the absolute peak is anyone's guess, but most projections (by Mohr et al., 2012; Maggio and Cacciola 2012; Laherrere and others project an oil peak about now, oil production in 2050 at about half of what it is now,  and a peak in all fossil fuels around 2025-2050.  Meanwhile the EROI will be declining, so net energy will be even less. I do not see any way these are not going to happen more or less as predicted, but we have been predicting oil doom for some time, and reality is more ambiguous.  Few people know that US oil production is down 12 percent from a year ago and we now import again about half our oil.  Look it up in US EIA stats.    

Climate futures are also difficult to predict precisely.   Neither CO2 nor methane is the strongest greenhouse gas, which is by far water vapor.   Predicting that impact is tricky and the IPCC talks about that less than they should.  A resumption of large explosive volcanoes, recently quiescent, could cool us and make us happy to have whatever CO2 warming we do have, but vulcanism  is impossible to predict. I believe a movement from fossil fuels, which have generated most of the world's wealth, to non-carbon alternatives will be a very, very difficult process.  For example agriculture and most transportation by trucks, ships and airplanes by anything besides oil is almost inconceivable (see Freidemann's "When trucks stop running"). The EROI of most alternatives, when correction for intermittentcy is included, are (arguably) considerably lower than fossil fuels. For example corn ethanol, presently making up 10 percent of US gasoline, has an EROI of very close to 1 return for 1 invested.   Most business people will not opt for a more expensive input.  I think moving off of at least 50 percent fossil fuels is very unlikely to happen very fast or maybe at all.  Meanwhile global populations and economic expectations continue to increase.  A grim scenario when one projects more than a decade.

So it may be a close race, but I think that humans are likely to be seriously impacted by a decline in our premium fossil fuels before the Earth becomes uninhabitable due to warming.   But it might be a close horse race.  Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets!  

Dear Charles, thank you for the interest to the topic and quite comprehensive answer. Indeed, there are many uncertainties regarding the critical times for both races. Partly this depends on our actions, but most uncertainty is because we do not know: a) all details of climate change mechanisms, b) amount of sill undiscovered oil and the profile of its extraction cost. It is also true that markets might not give correct signs about how severe is the current state. However, mass belief in what would happen earlier influences the global trend in oil prices. If we have a consensus that oil will end before substantial global warming, its price should grow exponentially already today. Contrary, we see a deep fall in 2014-15 that gives a wrong incentive for faster transition to renewable energy.

It is true that R&D for transitory technologies for renewable are not easy. We have written this chapter with Franz Wirl about this issue: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273707005_Renewable_Energy_Models_Implications_and_Prospects

We may hope that most of electricity will be soon produced out of renewable energies. But we have to solve 2 problems: a) cheap storage technology, b) lowering costs of solar and wind power units for their survival without subsidy. I think that cars can shift to gas in the middle run, but I see no technology to use non-liquid fuel for airplanes. Finally, there is a technology to produce oil from coal, and we have global reserves of coal for 200 years (to contrast with only 40-50 years for oil).

Chapter Renewable Energy: Models, Implications, and Prospects

Well we are certainly on the same page (of uncertainty, perhaps!) .  But I would like to add a few details: 1)  while oil is plentiful and medium priced it may be as much or more due to the cessation of demand (global economies are growing at a far slower pace than earlier -- and I have seen one estimate of a contraction of nearly 5 percent this year) 2) there may not be as much coal mineable as we once thought: studies by David Rutledge and also the studies I quoted in my previous post suggest that coal will be far more limited than had previously been thought.

I have written this response to Yuri's  question which will appear (slightly edited) in the next issue of the Journal  BioScience : 

Review of Heinberg and Fridley’s “Our Renewable Future, laying the path for 100 percent clean energy”

Island Press, Washington D.C.

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice-

Is also great

And would suffice.

Robert Frost

                Will civilization find its demise in global warming (fire)?  Or depletion of premium fossil fuels (ice – as in ”let the bastards freeze in the dark”, heard in once oil-rich Louisiana in 1973)?   Richard Heinberg is a prolific and graceful writer about many aspects of energy, and David Fridley is an energy scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Lab.  They bring much expertise to this question and start with the Statement that “The next few decades will see a profound and all-encompassing energy transformation throughout the world.  Whereas society now derives the great majority of its energy from fossil fuels, by the end of the century we will depend primarily on renewable resources like solar (they mean photovoltaic), wind and geothermal power.  Two forces will drive this transition.... avoiding catastrophic climate change .. and depletion of the world’s oil, gas and coal” .   Much of Heinberg’s  earlier  work, e.g. “The Party’s Over”,  focused on peak oil and its implications (ice),  while the present volume assumes that CO2 – induced climate change (fire ) will be so important that humanity must switch to 100 percent renewable (i.e. non carbonaceous ) fuel as quickly as possible.   This brought to my mind Frost’s great little poem, which appears to have been inspired by Frost questioning the Astronomer Harlow Shapley about how the Earth will end.  Despite much scientific and media pronouncements, we do not know for sure whether climate change or depletion of our best quality fossil fuels is more likely to cause a severe wrenching of civilization, or will occur first, although I am pretty sure that our grandchildren or their children will certainly know which is the more correct – or maybe both or maybe neither.

                In “Our renewable future” Heinberg and Fridley  believe the need to avoid climate catastrophe will be worth it even at enormous cost (estimated on page 123 as 10 times the present rate of all investments).  Much of the rest of the book delineates the possibilities and difficulties with each step of this proposed transformation.  To give an example of the difficulties, today most renewable energy comes from hydropower and biomass, and the contribution of the latter is declining, so that the total contribution from all renewables in the U.S. has barely increased  from 11 % in 2010 to 12.6%  in 2016  to a projected  16.1% by 2040 (U.S. EIA).  Meanwhile, they project that all fossil fuels will continue to increase in absolute terms.  So much for reducing CO2 emissions.   Some solar advocates project a much higher transformation rate, in line with what these authors see as necessary, as prices for e.g. PV--generated electricity decline.   We shall see.  Meanwhile the world’s economy has essentially stopped growing, perhaps in response to increasing resource limitations, implying a very different future that might greatly change our projections and options.

The book is divided into three parts.  The first is “Context, its all about energy” gives basic facts and definitions related to energy and its importance in society.    The second part “Energy supplies in a renewable world” constitutes the majority of the book and includes sections on renewable electricity, transportation, substitution, and other energy resources such as solar PV.  The third section, “Preparing for our Renewable Future “, includes chapters on “Energy and Justice” (a peripheral but important issue not previously receiving much attention), “What governments can do” and “What the people can do”.   But the “can” in these are mainly technical, not political.   Given recent political events in the United States, and despite the concern and strong leadership of President Obama, a very large conversion seems unlikely.  Also there is little or no financial incentive to go beyond, say, the first ten or twenty percent.  The progressive movement, which might be the only possible political apparatus to generate a truly “carbon-free” approach, is (not inappropriately) completely focused not on restricting economic growth (a necessary program in these authors’ opinion) but on bringing a modicum of wealth (and hence more energy use) to people who have been by passed by economic growth.  Our use of carbonaceous fuels in a usually capitalist, free enterprise system has generated enormous wealth for a growing world population, and especially a politically powerful small subset of the global population.   Heinberg and Fridley call for, essentially, the abandonment of that system and its replacement with a “universally shared agreement … that all human beings...have a right to safe and stable environment, and the responsibility to sustain and protect it”.   How we should do this is not given.   Given the power of corporate interests in the US and elsewhere, and the desire of most people in the world for a higher material standard of living, I find this extremely unlikely.  I hope that I am wrong.    

There is little in this book that was new to this reviewer, but given the ignorant statements one hears routinely from various political and “green” entities their thoughtful considerations are quite needed.   What is most useful is a listing of the huge difficulties and costs involved with each process.  They appropriately recognize the importance in future assessments of the EROI (Energy Return on Investment) of each alternative.   What is missing more generally is a comprehensive  quantitative assessment, including the energy costs of each suggested transformation of our existing energy infrastructure, which will have to be paid for with our fossil fuels—at least if there is to be much net energy out of the alternative energies.  Without such quantitative assessments we often do what sounds good but may not be.  For example, LEED building standards are supposed to generate buildings that require less energy, but in fact when “green” LEED buildings are assessed against similar non-LEED buildings  their energy use is similar (e.g. Scofield 2009 ).  

                The suggestion to limit human economic activity for environmental reasons is not new.  In 1971 biologist Paul Ehrlich and physicist John Holdren proposed the environmental IPAT equation, which says that Impact equals population level times per capita affluence times a technological factor (which could be positive or negative).  To many of us this was a pretty good summary of where environmental impact comes from.  But population is an issue that we have been unwilling to talk about -- let alone do anything about -- and since that time has disappeared from our public view.   Reducing affluence to reduce environmental impact is even less popular, and is political suicide.    Most governments of the world are doing more or less what they can to get back to the higher economic growth of even a decade ago.  Thus society has focused on only the technical factors which are woefully unequal to the task. 

                In conclusion, this is an excellent place for anyone interested in our possible energy transformations to begin.  I would argue that while the book’s conclusions are optimistic in many ways, it is still probably far more realistic than most of the alternatives, and it is written very clearly.   Future generations may indeed find it is necessary to make the transformations to renewables, and this book can start as a thoughtful roadmap.

Citations:   

Ehrlich, P. R. and Holdren, J.  P. (1971). "Impact of Population Growth". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 171 (3977): 1212–1217.

Scofield, J. H.   Do LEED-Certified buildings save energy? Not really. Energy and buildings.  41: 1384-1390.  

U.S. Energy Information Agency. 2016. International  Energy Outlook  2016

I think I am, isn't that (part of ) my point?  Anyway I think we are on pretty much same page which is NOT where most people who claim to be making us green are not.

Sir,

We may look into the topic differently, but both of them are relative to the prevailing situation. There is a slight difference between the two. Firstly, acceptable global warming is rather relative terms and more dependent to the localized effect (of a global event) of it. On contrary, extinction of oil reserve is more of a imaginary prediction based on available technology however have some economic consequences also. It is more related to demand-supply mechanism and its cost effectiveness. The relation is more subjective, and can only be responded based on critical arguments of hypothetical future condition only.

My short response to your original question would be... global warming on average in short term perspective may happen quicker than the extinction of oil reserve [I am not talking about long term global warming of our planet (?)]. As oil reserve is a naturally occurred physical resource, therefore it is unlikely to become extinct, how meagre they might be. It's scarcity in future (if and when that really happen) will force peoples to either pay more and more or look at other alternatives. Hence, the availability and use of alternatives (renewable or non-renewable) will emerge much faster in such circumstances. 

I was to thank all discussants for the interest to this topic. Indeed, there is much uncertainty in temporal scales of evolution in both processes. The mean expectations seem to be comparable – something bad will happen in both processes in about 50-100 years.

Sumanta, you are a bit optimistic about global oil reserves. According to BP (see https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/pdf/energy-economics/statistical-review-2015/bp-statistical-review-of-world-energy-2015-full-report.pdf , p.8) the total world proven oil resources are only for 52 years of extraction at the present level. Clearly, this calculation depends on price (and hence acceptable cost); at $ 100 per barrel there will be more, at $200 – even more, but even at infinitely high price the resource stock is finite (simply because the Earth is finite). As for the process of oil creation, it takes millions of years to replace what we have taken. The time scales are not comparable.

So I guess that in few hundred (or thousand) years from now there might be some extreme of climate reached (since it is also driven by nature) and we might somehow adapt to it (although this is not for sure). But by that time there will be no fossil fuels left on the Earth at any reasonable economic price. So we have to rely on renewable sources. The problem is that nobody cares of what will be in hundred years, since no human has a rational planning horizon of  longer than 50 years (as children are not yet rational). Politicians have it much shorter. I am also glad that this topic became so important to  Charles that he is writing a book about that. I guess that ordinary people still do not understand what is going on.

Both of the assessments below, as well as Jean Laherrere (on ASPO France), all competent investigators, predict a peak in ALL fossil fuels, not just oil, most probably between 2025 and 2050.   Apparently coal use has already peaked in China. In addition the EROI (Energy Return On Investment) of most fossil fuels probably will continue to decline, so less net will be delivered to society.   My guess is that depletion is going to become more and more serious just as we need more fuel to adjust to climate changes, accelerated or not by CO2.   There is much scientific and political attention being paid to potential climate change but far less to depletion, in my view a problem at least as serious. 

Maggio G, Cacciola G. When will oil, natural gas, and coal peak?. Fuel. 2012 Aug 31;98:111-23.

Mohr S.H., J. Wang, G. Ellem, J. Ward and D. Giurco (2015), Projection of world fossil fuels by country. Fuel 141: 120–135.

  Capellán-Pérez, Iñigo, Iñaki Arto, Josué M. Polanco-Martínez, Mikel González-Eguino, and Marc B. Neumann. “Likelihood of Climate Change Pathways under Uncertainty on Fossil Fuel Resource Availability.” Energy & Environmental Science 9, no. 8 (August 2, 2016): 2482–96. doi:10.1039/C6EE01008C. (open-access PDF)

I agree with Prof. Hall, both challenges (climate change and fossil fuel depletion) are in fact interconnected: to perform an energy transition with abundant fossil fuels might be very different than to perform it with scarce fossil fuels. In this sense, we have recently published a paper that might be of interest, where we have introduced URRs values for fossil fuels in a integrated assessment model, as well as combined uncertainties:

I want to thank Charles for attracting public attention to the importance of depletion of fossil fuel resources. Economists are usually overoptimistic about coal reserves (estimates for 200 years or more, while discovered oil is only for 50 years). But many think that a lot more are not discovered yet, and that rising oil price will bring a lot of additional supply.

Inigo, your reference is interesting and I had a brief look at it. There is high uncertainty (of scale 10 of Fig.2) about reserves and resources. Fig.4 justifies acceptability of +2 C threshold. Many economic articles do something similar, and policy makers already agreed on it. But I think that the discussion with physicists (see https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_does_ever-changing_Global_Climate_maintain_its_Dynamic_Equilibrium_with_Global_Water_Cycle_Which_one_is_the_initiator_of_Change_Any_evidence#57cd76b45b49529ca37fb805 ) shows that uncertainty is much wider and their knowledge about climate change science is very limited. In particular, we are likely to be now on natural positive trend, which is accelerated by human contribution.

Kenneth, many economists might not understand the difference between the stock and flow. If the stock of CO2 does not dissipate for natural reasons (and perhaps it happens very slowly, and you are right that there is no technology so far to make it much faster), then a complete stop of emissions flow will keep CO2 stock at the present level of 400 ppm. And this level will fuel slow processes, like ice melting, that might result in equilibrium ocean level very different from present, but perhaps in hundreds of years.

I want to thank again all contributors to this topic. Most of them have probably physical education. I see that I was not very sharp in formulating the importance of this question, which comes from economics, and now will explain it briefly. It may happen that only few people had a glance on my conference paper inside the question formulation.

Economic literature considers markets as correct indicators of all public information (including uncertain, but for which probability distribution is known). Markets create incentives not only for profit maximization but also for innovations. We definitely need a transition to renewable energies to solve both problems (fossil fuel scarcity and climate change) even if we do not have exact knowledge about details of both processes. A clear incentive would be a continuing positive trend for oil price (like it was in 2000-2013, apart from short turbulence in 2008-09); see the graph 2000-2016 here: http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/crude-oil/all/ .

This path is not easy, and we tried to survey the situation with different renewable in this chapter (sorry, full text is not available online): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273707005_Renewable_Energy_Models_Implications_and_Prospects

If the public opinion would be more concerned with fossil fuel scarcity, then reserve holders would raise the price and stimulate innovations in this area. However, the followers of fully anthropogenic origin of climate change have now an upper hand in public opinion formation. They say that we cannot extract all available fossil resources because in this case the raise of Earth's surface average temperature will become catastrophic (+5 degrees or more). In this case oil rich countries are in panic and try to sell more even at as low prices as today (below $50 per barrel, but Saudi Arabia and Russia have reached the historical 20-year maxima for oil production and Iran wants to increase it as well, potentially pushing the price down). If such policy will continue, we will lose several years (I guess that this wrong trend will be reversed one day, but an influence of physicists on the formation of public opinion about the truth in both processes is very important) of no incentives in R&D for transition to renewable and will strip ourselves out of substantial fraction of oil reserves.

Chapter Renewable Energy: Models, Implications, and Prospects

For better understanding of those who cannot access the full text of our chapter about renewable energy models I introduce a fragment from conclusions:

"The unambiguous common denominator in this debate is that the availability of cheap renewable energy at a large scale is crucial for achieving both economical and sustainable development without exposing the planet and in particular climate to risk. There exists an urgent need to use more renewable energies, especially for Europe, with its growing dependence on imported fossil fuels. Apart from reducing GHG emissions this also solves the problem of global scarcity of fossil fuels that is becoming a reality for oil nowadays and will occur for natural gas in few decades. 

However, the shift to renewable energy sources might not be as simple and fast as assumed in many economic models. Moreover, market forces may not lead to the desired outcome, while governments might have the wrong incentives and their policies might not work. Unfortunately, the picture does not seem rosy for a number of reasons. While there are several different renewable energies, none of them have seen major breakthroughs so far. And there are physical limits for those that have been proven competitive. For example, wind energy can nowadays be produced at competitive costs, but it requires vast land use. The same situation with biofuels: they will compete fiercely for arable land with agriculture well before the time of substantial substitution of oil. As for PV, it is a potentially vast source of energy, but despite huge investment in R&D there is too little progress in making this source price competitive."

Thanks, Kenneth, for comment. But this citing was a minor argument among others that I paid attention to. You might be right that something similar in climate extreme was about 90 years ago, but we probably do not have full statistics on that. What is important is that public opinion today in formed not in RG discussions but by publications like that: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/27/extreme-weather-already-on-increase-due-to-climate-change-study-finds . If you could find some errors in those studies, and then comment in press like "Guardian", this would be great! And I am referring more to public opinion  like that, because it drives economic markets! I would also appreciate your comment on economic arguments that I have provided above.

Kenneth, I like your comment related to Galileo. As for drought in Russia in 1921, its social implications were indeed severe, but they were partly due to policy issues. The source you cite does not present the level of weather severity. Indeed, we do not have good observations 100 years ago. That is why this research that puts frequency of droughts in Europe centuries ago is of interest: http://www.eu-drought.org/media/default.aspx/emma/org/10863624/DROUGHT-RSPI+Technical+Report+No.35+-+Historic+droughts+beyond+the+modern+instrumental+records+-+an+analysis+of+cases+in+United+Kingdom%2c+France%2c+Rhine+and+Syros.pdf

If we return to the discussion about public perception of climate change, I would say that my personal experience confirms rising frequency of extreme events in the last 15 years comparing with the 2nd half of the 20th century. In particular, Danube river has experienced 100-year flood twice in this century (2002, 2012). Several of recent summers in Vienna were extremely hot, while several winters were extremely warm. Summer in Russia in 2010 was extremely hot, so that even an increase of heat-caused death rate in Moscow has been detected (I heard conference presentation during ERSA meeting in 2013). USA today is exposed to more frequent and severe hurricanes than before.

However, I am still not convinced that the reason for higher frequency of extreme climate events is just in increase of average temperature by just 0.5-0.8 degrees. I have never seen any geophysical model proving that. If you know one, please let me know.