Whaling and Fossil Fuels

[BrianG]

Moderation Note: The following 8 posts were moved from the thread http://hypography.com/forums/earth-science/8290-d-i-y-planet-cooling-20.html as they were off-topic.

 

The last peak oil crisis nearly led to the extinction of several whale species. It took innovation to find a better replacement for whale blubber oil and a myriad of whale based products. Global agreements didn't save the whale, fossil fuel did.

 

I've withdrawn this claim in post 9

[freeztar]

The last peak oil crisis nearly led to the extinction of several whale species. It took innovation to find a better replacement for whale blubber oil and a myriad of whale based products. Global agreements didn't save the whale, fossil fuel did.

 

Can you support this claim?

[BrianG]

Can you support this claim?

 

Whale Oil

 

Through all this, whale fisheries continued to hunt the sperm whales, and a great number of uses for the oil and the other whale products continued to develop. However, refined products from petroleum began to replace some of these other products as well and even whale ambergris, the valuable base for perfumes, was finally replaced by synthetics.

[freeztar]

Whale Oil

 

That quote does not support your claim. It merely points out that uses for whale products were replaced with petroleum and synthetics. They make no link to causality, as you have done.

 

Try again...

[BrianG]

Freeztar, would you please be more specific. I've made a compound claim, again. Would you please tell me where you find a problem?

 

 

I wrote: "It took innovation to find a better replacement for whale blubber oil and a myriad of whale based products." The quote support this.

 

Then, is "Global agreements didn't save the whale, fossil fuel did." is the problem? That cheaper fossil fuel products replaced whale products is fact. Hunting whales continued, mostly for food. That hunting is limited by global agreement, in fact it's banned but the ban is not observed in many countries.

[alexander]

Brian, freezy (i think) as well as i, have a problem with

The last peak oil crisis nearly led to the extinction of several whale species. It took innovation to find a better replacement for whale blubber oil and a myriad of whale based products. Global agreements didn't save the whale, fossil fuel did.

Please support those claims

[BrianG]

The IUCN notes that the Atlantic population of gray whales was made extinct around the turn of the eighteenth century. Examination of remains found in England and Sweden found evidence of a separate Atlantic population of gray whales existing up until 1675. Radiocarbon dating of subfossil remains has confirmed this, with whaling the possible cause.

Whaling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Are we OK so far?

 

Whale oil is little used today and modern commercial whaling is done for food

ibid

 

The first principal use of whale oil was as an illuminant in lamps and as candle wax. It was a major food of the aboriginal peoples of the Pacific northwest, such as the Nootka. Whale oil later came to be used in oiling wools for combing and other uses. It was the first of any animal or mineral oil to achieve commercial viability.

 

Fossil fuel oil and Jojoba oil has replaced all its uses.

 

Eventually in 1986 the International Whaling Commission introduced a moratorium on commercial whaling so that stocks might recover.

 

The moratorium followed the replacement of whale products, both the moratorium, and the discovery of replacements were driven by fears of whale extinction. One might say, fossil fuel oil and jojoba oil led to the whaling moratorium.

 

So, I would modify my claim so:

 

The last peak oil crisis led to the extinction of several whale species. It took innovation to find a better replacement for whale blubber oil and a myriad of whale based products. Global agreements didn't save the whale, fossil fuel and jojoba did.

[freeztar]

Wikipedia does not directly support your claim. This, on the other hand, seems to refute it.

 

From the figure, it is evident that the production of whale oil followed a bell-curve according to Hubbert's theory, modelled with a simple Gaussian curve, albeit showing strong oscillations. These data are in excellent agreement with the report on Right Whale abundance by Baker and Clapham (Trends in Ecology and Evolution Vol.19 No.7 July 2004), indicating that the fall in production after the peak was caused by depletion and not by the switching to different fuels. Indeed, "Rock oil" (or "coal oil") began to replace whale oil only in the 1860s, after the invention of the kerosene lamp by Michael Dietz in 1859. Despite the availability of kerosene, whale hunting continued well into the 1870s and 1880s, driving Sperm and Right whales to near extinction.

Prices and Production over a complete Hubbert Cycle: the Case of the American Whale Fisheries in 19th Century | Energy Bulletin

 

In other words, whale production (strange term) declined not because of switching to other fuels, but because of depletion from over-whaling.

 

What you need, to make your case, is a source that shows whale recovery alongside increasing use of fossil fuels. Of course, if this were the case, then there would be no need for the IWRC to be formed in 1931 (per the wiki link you gave).

[BrianG]

Wikipedia does not directly support your claim. This, on the other hand, seems to refute it.

 

Prices and Production over a complete Hubbert Cycle: the Case of the American Whale Fisheries in 19th Century | Energy Bulletin

 

Yes, I see the article published in "Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas" by a Sarah Henderson, a political science professor specializing in Russia/Central and Eastern Europe, Democratization, Civil Society, Gender and Postcommunism, Henderson, Sarah | Department of Political Science | Oregon State University does prove you are correct. I wish she was a biologist. Do you think the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas may have some preconceptions about "Peak Oil" theory?

 

Does these links for the graph images work in your browser, they fail in mine: asponews.org

asponews.org

 

That's neither here nor there, you've proved me wrong, I withdraw my claim.

[CraigD]

The last peak oil crisis nearly led to the extinction of several whale species. It took innovation to find a better replacement for whale blubber oil and a myriad of whale based products. Global agreements didn't save the whale, fossil fuel did.

Brian makes a good point, I think, that petroleum is not the only commodity that can experience a peak in production – whale oil in the late 19th century being a good example – but I don’t think it’s accurate to call “peak whale oil” a crisis.

 

While whale oil production peaked ca. 1850, and dwindle to less than 5% of its peak by 1878 (source: By The Fault » Blog Archive » The Whale Oil Peak Curve, which displays without citing a graph from A. Starbuck’s, 1878 "History of the American whale fishery). This was due, it appears to me, not entirely to the increasing cost of finding whales (primarily sperm whales, which produce higher quality oil than others), but also to the decreasing cost of kerosene as the cost of producing crude oil decreased. So, the statement

It took innovation to find a better replacement for whale blubber oil and a myriad of whale based products.

is, I think, more relevant than perhaps Brian reckoned, and more than I believed until researching this post – innovation in the form of the development of effective and efficient oil-drilling, storage, transportation, and refining didn’t fill the deficit caused by decrease in whale oil supply, it caused its decrease, as whale oil production couldn’t match the efficiency of kerosene production, and hence couldn’t match its cost.

The last peak oil crisis nearly led to the extinction of several whale species

Fortunately, extensive 19th century whale hunting declined before the sperm whale population was catastrophically reduced. 19th century whaling is estimated to have reduced their population of about 1,100,000 by 29%. Though other whale population, such as right and humpback whales, may have been more severely reduced, I’ve not found don’t think 19th century whaling caused species extinctions.

Global agreements didn't save the whale, fossil fuel did.

Unfortunately, while kerosene’s takeover of whale oil’s market reduced the hunting of whale so that sperm whale populations began to increase, this reprieve didn’t last. After 1946, greatly more effective whaling technology – ironically, enable in large part by more powerful and efficient kerosene (AKA diesel) ship engines – lead to the killing of whales of many species at far greater rates than ever before. From 1946 to 1980, it’s estimated that the sperm whale population was reduced by about 77%. Blue whales, which were impractical to hunt with the whaling sailing ships of 1850, were by 1890 being hunted effectively with coal-fired steam ships and steam harpoon guns, then even more effectively by even larger diesel ships of the 1940s, their population fell from an estimated 275,000 to fewer than 40,000 in the 1930s, to 2,000 in 1960.

 

Internationally agreements restricting whaling were made, and in 1960 an international ban on blue whale hunting agreed upon, though illegal hunting continued in large scale for another 10 years, and to some extent, through today.

 

So, in the present, global agreements – and, critically, their enforcement – are saving the whales, while fossil fuel is what makes their hunting so effective it must be regulated.

 

Sources: wikipedia articles “sperm whale”, “blue whale”

 

PS:

I found this blog of uncertain credibility interesting, in that it attributes this quote (bolding mine):

My main concern is that my calculations show we are approaching

peak whale oil

and no one seems to be listening. Inspect my numbers below. If my estimations are correct we have surpassed a population of 24,000,000 persons, far more than the estimates of 17.000,000 from the last census. There simply are not enough whales to ... (illegible)

to the writing of someone ca. 1850. His use of the phrase “peak whale oil” seems almost the same as that of the present day phrase “peak oil”, and his timing and reasoning similar. Had 19th century whalers continued to hunt sperm whales, they would, I’m guessing, have hunted them to a true production peak around 1880, near or true extinction by around 1910. Peak petroleum oil is expected around 2020, and its decline to prohibitively expensive levels by around 2050.

[Essay]

Yes, I see the article published in "Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas" by a Sarah Henderson, a political science professor specializing in Russia/Central and Eastern Europe, Democratization, Civil Society, Gender and ....

 

That's neither here nor there, you've proved me wrong, I withdraw my claim.

 

I haven't followed all these links ...yet, but I'm sure the issue is more complicated than just "fossil-oil did, or did not, replace whale oil;" including the rise of chemistry, commerce, and world wars.

===

 

But whatever, it's interesting to realize that "whale harvesting" was using a "renewable bio-oil" similar in terms of carbon management to any agriculturally-based biofuels program.

 

In other words, that whale oil had been sequestered from the atmosphere only a few years before its use, whereas the use of fossil-oil releases additional or "new" CO2 into the system; CO2 that was sequestered back in the hot slimey or swampy epochs, when atmospheric CO2 levels were many times higher than currently range in our epoch.

 

~

 

fyi... previous page....

 

Brian makes a good point, I think, that petroleum is not the only commodity that can experience a peak in production – whale oil in the late 19th century being a good example – but I don’t think it’s accurate to call “peak whale oil” a crisis.

 

While whale oil production peaked ca. 1850, and dwindle to less than 5% of its peak by 1878 (source: By The Fault » Blog Archive » The Whale Oil Peak Curve, which displays without citing a graph from A. Starbuck’s, 1878 "History of the American whale fishery). This was due, it appears to me, not entirely to the increasing cost of finding whales (primarily sperm whales, which produce higher quality oil than others), but also to the decreasing cost of kerosene as the cost of producing crude oil decreased. So, the statement

 

is, I think, more relevant than perhaps Brian reckoned, and more than I believed until researching this post – innovation in the form of the development of effective and efficient oil-drilling, storage, transportation, and refining didn’t fill the deficit caused by decrease in whale oil supply, it caused its decrease, as whale oil production couldn’t match the efficiency of kerosene production, and hence couldn’t match its cost.

 

Fortunately, extensive 19th century whale hunting declined before the sperm whale population was catastrophically reduced. 19th century whaling is estimated to have reduced their population of about 1,100,000 by 29%. Though other whale population, such as right and humpback whales, may have been more severely reduced, I’ve not found don’t think 19th century whaling caused species extinctions.

 

Unfortunately, while kerosene’s takeover of whale oil’s market reduced the hunting of whale so that sperm whale populations began to increase, this reprieve didn’t last. After 1946, greatly more effective whaling technology – ironically, enable in large part by more powerful and efficient kerosene (AKA diesel) ship engines – lead to the killing of whales of many species at far greater rates than ever before. From 1946 to 1980, it’s estimated that the sperm whale population was reduced by about 77%. Blue whales, which were impractical to hunt with the whaling sailing ships of 1850, were by 1890 being hunted effectively with coal-fired steam ships and steam harpoon guns, then even more effectively by even larger diesel ships of the 1940s, their population fell from an estimated 275,000 to fewer than 40,000 in the 1930s, to 2,000 in 1960.

 

Internationally agreements restricting whaling were made, and in 1960 an international ban on blue whale hunting agreed upon, though illegal hunting continued in large scale for another 10 years, and to some extent, through today.

 

So, in the present, global agreements – and, critically, their enforcement – are saving the whales, while fossil fuel is what makes their hunting so effective it must be regulated.

 

Sources: wikipedia articles “sperm whale”, “blue whale”

 

PS:

I found this blog of uncertain credibility interesting, in that it attributes this quote (bolding mine):

My main concern is that my calculations show we are approaching

peak whale oil

and no one seems to be listening. Inspect my numbers below. If my estimations are correct we have surpassed a population of 24,000,000 persons, far more than the estimates of 17.000,000 from the last census. There simply are not enough whales to ... (illegible)

to the writing of someone ca. 1850. His use of the phrase “peak whale oil” seems almost the same as that of the present day phrase “peak oil”, and his timing and reasoning similar. Had 19th century whalers continued to hunt sperm whales, they would, I’m guessing, have hunted them to a true production peak around 1880, near or true extinction by around 1910. Peak petroleum oil is expected around 2020, and its decline to prohibitively expensive levels by around 2050.

 

~ :) Very Cool, Thanks!