oil-Are we screwed?

[ashurbanipal]

I agree with the geological fact, what I don't agree with is when its actually going to happen, IMO.

Well, you could be right, and I hope you are, but I am not hanging my hat on it. The most historically successful models so far, and all the recent news that I've read on the subject converge on a near-term peak.

Technology won't save us from hard times-but it will save us from a irreviserable time.

I'm not sure what the word "irreviserable" means, so I can't comment. Technology will not save us from extreme hardship and, ultimately, die-off.

I expect gas to level off at 3 dollars a gallon by 2010, and I also expect that we start mining shale before 2015.

Well:

1) Do you have any data that might support 3 dollars/ gallon by 2010?

2) We've already started mining shale oil. But we won't be producing even 1 million barrels of oil per day until-at the earliest-2025, and that's only if oil companies start looking into it seriously. They're not.

then there is 4 centuries worth of known coal, and centuries more undiscovered that can be turned into petro...

1) 4 centuries? I've never seen figures that high, even in the USGS estimates, and they're notoriously optimistic. There are, in North America, 495 billion short tons in place, of which about half are economically recoverable. At current rate of consumption, that's 2 centuries worth. But--and this is the critical point--coal supplies very little of our overall energy consumption right now. If we turn to coal liquefaction and coal gasification to support our entire infrastructure (aside from the fact that those may be net losers of energy), we have an 8 year supply left.

Its going to be a bit harder times than before-but I think the human brain tends to solve problems when it has to.

The problem has been understood and taken seriously by the energy industry since 1971, when Hubbert's model correctly predicted the U.S. peak. So far, after close to a trillion dollars in the interim spent on R&D, no viable solution has been found.

I do not wish to degrade human ingenuity, but it's record on this issue is so far no cause for optimism.

 

[128shot]

Well, you could be right, and I hope you are, but I am not hanging my hat on it. The most historically successful models so far, and all the recent news that I've read on the subject converge on a near-term peak.



I'm not sure what the word "irreviserable" means, so I can't comment. Technology will not save us from extreme hardship and, ultimately, die-off.



Well:

1) Do you have any data that might support 3 dollars/ gallon by 2010?

2) We've already started mining shale oil. But we won't be producing even 1 million barrels of oil per day until-at the earliest-2025, and that's only if oil companies start looking into it seriously. They're not.



1) 4 centuries? I've never seen figures that high, even in the USGS estimates, and they're notoriously optimistic. There are, in North America, 495 billion short tons in place, of which about half are economically recoverable. At current rate of consumption, that's 2 centuries worth. But--and this is the critical point--coal supplies very little of our overall energy consumption right now. If we turn to coal liquefaction and coal gasification to support our entire infrastructure (aside from the fact that those may be net losers of energy), we have an 8 year supply left.



The problem has been understood and taken seriously by the energy industry since 1971, when Hubbert's model correctly predicted the U.S. peak. So far, after close to a trillion dollars in the interim spent on R&D, no viable solution has been found.

I do not wish to degrade human ingenuity, but it's record on this issue is so far no cause for optimism.

you can't honestly expect me to uh...believe my world is going to come to a definite end?


I understand there are energy squeezes in the future-but I refuse to accept we won't solve them. Doom and gloom gets us no where.


We should have started building nuclear plants ages ago...

 

[ashurbanipal]

you can't honestly expect me to uh...believe my world is going to come to a definite end?

I honestly don't expect you to do or believe anything in particular. In fact, I expect most people not to believe it. I'm counting on that, really, because if everyone started believing it right now, every one would start preparing for it, and the cost of the materials I'm using to prepare would go up to the point I couldn't afford them. I nevertheless consider it my duty to at least warn everyone I can in as sincere a way as possible.

Surely you're aware of many instances in which people refused to believe something that was true?

The best real-world analogy I can give to what is happening right now is the sinking of the Titanic. Look, the White Star Line thought they had built an excellent ship that could never be sunk. Even when they hit the iceberg and the news began to spread that it might be serious, quite a large number of people refused to believe it. They went back to the bar, or back to bed, expecting everything to be alright because they could not believe the ship would sink and over half the people on board were going to die.

I'm sure it came as quite a shock to them as the ship took on water and eventually sank. "Cognitive Dissonance" probably doesn't remotely sum up what many were experiencing in the final minutes of the Titanic disaster. Now, I ask you: Did any of that matter? Did the refusal to accept what was happening change the outcome? No--and in fact, it made it worse than it had to be. They could have saved another 400 people, but thanks to everyone's cocky self-assurance that the ship just couldn't sink, people lost their lives needlessly.

Right now, we've hit the iceberg. The ship is begining to list imperceptibly forward. The folks in charge have not yet figured out that the ship is going to sink, but it's starting to dawn on them. Hell will be breaking loose soon.

Again, I have to stress that this isn't coming way out of left field or anything. There's so much data that backs these claims up that I have a hard time understanding why people don't pay more attention.

I understand there are energy squeezes in the future-but I refuse to accept we won't solve them. Doom and gloom gets us no where.

Well, OK, don't accept it. I think we have to face up to the full proportions of the problem before we can even begin to solve it.

We should have started building nuclear plants ages ago...

Well, maybe, but we didn't. What is past is past, and cannot be undone. What is coming is what we must worry about from where we are now, and not where we'd like to be.

 

[128shot]

I agree-the fundamental difference between me and you is I'm not going to scream chicken little, you did and are preparing for the sky to fall.


well honestly that is wrong, I already have prepartions of where I would go if this does turn into a hell hole fast.


whoo for wood burners.


Never the less, my head is up high, since I don't think we know everything there is to know about it.



Ever read the bottomless well?

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

Coal is a very dirty fuel. I really hope we don't start using it. Three dollars a gallon is unrealistically optimistic. Places where the government don't subsidize oil are already paying that.

No it's not inherently dirty. It all depends on how you burn it.

But what a bunch of worry warts we've got here. We've enough oil to last us for hundreds of years, coal up the wazoo, uranium, and OH MY GOD! Ten thousand BILLION tons of carbon locked up in methane ices in the ocean, not to mention a handy dandy nuclear fusion device on line and ready.

We won't run out of energy. Heck, switching over to magneto-hydrodynamic generation instead of today's steam turbines would stretch our energy bill by about 50%.

We've got enough fossil fuels to last a thousand years or more. We have even started to see the beginning of the end of the oil reserves, and there's this hysteria about running out.

First we switch to nuclear fission power. Those of you that don't like it are perfectly free to freeze to death in the dark. It's you're privelege, right?

This is not an issue folks. We've got known reserves. When it makes economic sense to tap them, that's what we'll do. Before then, drive an SUV because they win the arguments with the smaller cars.

 

[ashurbanipal]

No it's not inherently dirty. It all depends on how you burn it.

There have been some pretty good advances in clean coal technology.

But what a bunch of worry warts we've got here. We've enough oil to last us for hundreds of years,

Prove it. If you've got figures by a reputable geologist that support this, I'd love to see them. The absolute most optimistic projection I've seen--from an economist, not a geologist--says that we peak in 2050. Geologists who actually understand how oil is produced put peak far earlier.

Now, we won't run out of oil. In fact, I think there will be recoverable reserves in place for billions of years. That's got NOTHING to do with the situation. Imagine that you have a trillion dollars in the bank, and initially, you're allowed to pull out a thousand dollars a day. But the bank keeps tightening on you, and pretty quickly you're only allowed to withdraw 15 cents a day. There's plenty of money still in there, but does it really matter? That's the issue with oil peaking.

coal up the wazoo, uranium, and OH MY GOD! Ten thousand BILLION tons of carbon locked up in methane ices in the ocean, not to mention a handy dandy nuclear fusion device on line and ready.

No one is close to fusion being commercially viable. Coal will last 8 years if we turn to it as a complete energy source and fertilizer feedstock. We do have Uranium, but that will also eventually run out, though if we manage it successfully it won't be for some time.

We won't run out of energy. Heck, switching over to magneto-hydrodynamic generation instead of today's steam turbines would stretch our energy bill by about 50%.

What you're ignoring is the cost of doing so and the time involved. Oil will become too expensive to allow us to do this.

We've got enough fossil fuels to last a thousand years or more. We have even started to see the beginning of the end of the oil reserves, and there's this hysteria about running out.

Again, you're failing to grasp the problem. Of course we're not running out. But we're approaching the point where we'll pump per day as much as we can ever pump, no matter what we do, and every single day after that we'll be able to pump less and less.

First we switch to nuclear fission power.

How are you going to run cargo ships and airplanes or cargo trucks (you know, those devices we use to distribute, among other things, food to the masses) on fission power?

Those of you that don't like it are perfectly free to freeze to death in the dark. It's you're privelege, right?

It will be a necessity soon enough. For some people, it will be a necessity this winter.

This is not an issue folks. We've got known reserves.

No, our known reserves are for the most part already tapped. ANWR is one notable exception. The rest of the reserve figures that get bandied around are P30 or P10 reserves, and by definition, they probably don't exist.

When it makes economic sense to tap them, that's what we'll do.

I will pay anyone all the money I make for the rest of my life if they can tap a conceptual reserve. Because if you're saying that we've got reserves to last hundreds of years, that's what you're talking about.

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

Prove it. If you've got figures by a reputable geologist that support this, I'd love to see them. The absolute most optimistic projection I've seen--from an economist, not a geologist--says that we peak in 2050. Geologists who actually understand how oil is produced put peak far earlier.

Will the USGS do?

Oh, look at that, potential reserves in the Orinoco Basin are estimated at 4 trillion barrels. Add in a trillion barrels of oil equivalent in Colorado/Utah oil shales, the Alberta tar sands, and other crap elsewhere, and we're not even close to peaking.

Oil demand will increase, and then decrease, both as unit efficiencies reach theoretical peaks and as populations drop because that's what industrialized countries do.

As for fusion, please read what I said. I'm talking about hundreds of years in the future. If we're so stupid we can't solve a simple engineering problem like that with that much time, well, we deserve extinction anyway. Doesn't seem insurmountable to me.

Now, we won't run out of oil. In fact, I think there will be recoverable reserves in place for billions of years. That's got NOTHING to do with the situation. Imagine that you have a trillion dollars in the bank, and initially, you're allowed to pull out a thousand dollars a day. But the bank keeps tightening on you, and pretty quickly you're only allowed to withdraw 15 cents a day. There's plenty of money still in there, but does it really matter? That's the issue with oil peaking.

Well, if it was my bank, I'd hack the computer system and make it give me more. Sorta like the guys that developed a means to extract useful oil equivalent from the Colorado oil shale for a cost of less than $20 per bbl.

No one is close to fusion being commercially viable. Coal will last 8 years if we turn to it as a complete energy source and fertilizer feedstock. We do have Uranium, but that will also eventually run out, though if we manage it successfully it won't be for some time.

Yeah, that's why I said "500 years". That's more then enough time. No point in wetting our pants now.

What you're ignoring is the cost of doing so and the time involved. Oil will become too expensive to allow us to do this.

See above where I said there's some guys in Colorado that learned how to extract oil from shale for $20 per bbl. There's a trillion barrels estimated to be there. Your predictions on cost are terribly inflated.

Again, you're failing to grasp the problem. Of course we're not running out. But we're approaching the point where we'll pump per day as much as we can ever pump, no matter what we do, and every single day after that we'll be able to pump less and less.

Your estimates are needlessly apocalyptic. And wrong. And if worse comes to worst, we'll stop selling food to the starving masses, burn ethanol, and once the masses die off, there'll be less demand for energy, anyway.

How are you going to run cargo ships and airplanes or cargo trucks (you know, those devices we use to distribute, among other things, food to the masses) on fission power?

Well....hmmmm....you start with a glob of U-235. You alloy it with zirconium, typically, then form it into sheets and plates, encase it in zircalloy and Inconel, run water through it, put in a bunch of cadmium control rods, run it to criticality, extract the heat from the fission and use that to eventually feed steam to turbines. It's pretty easy. You ought enlist in the Navy and learn how to run nuclear submarines. I did. :roll:

Proven techology, safe, efficient, clean, but sorta expensive. What's the problem?

It will be a necessity soon enough. For some people, it will be a necessity this winter.

See? They shouldn't have been voting in loser liberal environmental wacko,s they should have educated themselves on their options, and they should have fired all the loser NIMBYists that have kept the US in it the energy dark ages all this time. Then they'd have electric power via uranium/plutonium/thorium, and the decreased demand on oil and coal would have reduced those costs as well.

But there's an inviolable law of nature: The Stupid Shall be Punished.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Oh, look at that, potential reserves in the Orinoco Basin are estimated at 4 trillion barrels.

I'm afraid I don't see that at all in the graph you posted. It appears that there are 98.9 billion barrels in all of Central and South America. That doesn't equal 4 trillion.

The total reserves according to the USGS graph are 1.044 trillion barrels for the entire world. That would be reserves yet to be extracted.

Anyway, potential reserves (aka P10 or conceptual reserves, depending on usage) are reserves that someone thinks might be there. The USGS has a pretty horrible record on such matters. In one of their reports, I forget which, there's a footnote that explains that they fit reserves to demand.

Add in a trillion barrels of oil equivalent in Colorado/Utah oil shales, the Alberta tar sands, and other crap elsewhere, and we're not even close to peaking.

Again, you don't understand. You're thinking about what would happen if Jesus were in charge of everything, and all real-world constraints were somehow abolished. But Jesus is not in charge, no miracles are forthcoming, and real-world constraints have not been abolished. We have to deal with what energy companies can actually do, and what they will actually do. Not what you might like them to do in some dream world where your every desire comes true or something.

Oil demand will increase, and then decrease, both as unit efficiencies reach theoretical peaks and as populations drop because that's what industrialized countries do.

Populations will drop? Hmmm...sounds like what I've been saying.

As for fusion, please read what I said. I'm talking about hundreds of years in the future. If we're so stupid we can't solve a simple engineering problem like that with that much time, well, we deserve extinction anyway. Doesn't seem insurmountable to me.

Well, I read what you said, and it doesn't have anything to do with hundreds of years in the future. It's not a simple engineering problem. Also, you think that the worthiness of a species and its claims for survival depend on how smart it is?

Well, if it was my bank, I'd hack the computer system and make it give me more. Sorta like the guys that developed a means to extract useful oil equivalent from the Colorado oil shale for a cost of less than $20 per bbl.

I don't recall if it was you that posted the website, but I looked it over. As I mentioned, they seem disingenuous about their claims. But we'll see if they actually get operations going on a high enough level to make a difference. I believe that they will not, because they'll need to be doing so NOW for it to be of any consequence.

See above where I said there's some guys in Colorado that learned how to extract oil from shale for $20 per bbl. There's a trillion barrels estimated to be there. Your predictions on cost are terribly inflated.

Won't matter. We won't extract it to any great degree. Again, I'd love to be proven wrong; but right now I'm not seeing the kind of scale up that would be necessary to alleviate this problem.

Your estimates are needlessly apocalyptic. And wrong. And if worse comes to worst, we'll stop selling food to the starving masses, burn ethanol, and once the masses die off, there'll be less demand for energy, anyway.

We're already doing that to some degree. How is that not apocalyptic? Isn't the food being cut off to the starving masses more or less what I said would happen? The starving masses will be swelling their ranks in the next decade.

Well....hmmmm....you start with a glob of U-235. You alloy it with zirconium, typically, then form it into sheets and plates, encase it in zircalloy and Inconel, run water through it, put in a bunch of cadmium control rods, run it to criticality, extract the heat from the fission and use that to eventually feed steam to turbines. It's pretty easy. You ought enlist in the Navy and learn how to run nuclear submarines. I did.

Yeah, try scaling that up to a couple hundred thousand cargo ships and see where it gets you, especially when you discover that cargo ships weigh rather a lot more than submarines. Try scaling that up to the 75 million cars currently on the planet (or, scaling down--I'm guessing that a submarine reactor and engine won't fit in most cars, even SUV's). In fact, try scaling that up to half of them. Try scaling that up to the huge fleet of aircraft that fly the world daily. Try doing all that in the face of the fact that western countries will be scrambling for nuclear energy to power their electric grids as well.

Proven techology, safe, efficient, clean, but sorta expensive. What's the problem?

Engineering and physics appear to be the problem from my perspective.

See? They shouldn't have been voting in loser liberal environmental wacko,s they should have educated themselves on their options, and they should have fired all the loser NIMBYists that have kept the US in it the energy dark ages all this time. Then they'd have electric power via uranium/plutonium/thorium, and the decreased demand on oil and coal would have reduced those costs as well.

Who cares? It's not just the U.S. Most countries will be suffering fairly soon. Generating electricity is nice, but what do you think is going to happen when we can no longer ship food to the local Wal-Mart? It's going to be quite ugly.

But there's an inviolable law of nature: The Stupid Shall be Punished.

Yeah, and people who don't heed these warnings will be at the front of the line.

 

[-Demosthenes-]

Prove it. If you've got figures by a reputable geologist that support this, I'd love to see them. The absolute most optimistic projection I've seen--from an economist, not a geologist--says that we peak in 2050. Geologists who actually understand how oil is produced put peak far earlier.

Ironic how Scarecrow Akhbar needs to "prove it" but you are seemingly excluded from these rules. What economist, where, when?

Alarmist (annoying people) say that it will peak tomorrow, eternal optimist think that it will last indefinitely. The fact is, neither side is particularly bright, and very, very probably wrong.

Non-OPEC and non-Former Soviet Oil has peaked, a few years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hubbert_world_2004.png

ASPO says all oil will peak in 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ASPO_2004.png
United States Department of Energy not until after 2025
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:World_energy_consumption,_1970-2025,_EIA.png
USGS in 2037
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil >section: "Peak Prediction"

It is likely that we will not know about the peak until years after it happens, and as for Hubberts peak theory (that it peaked in apx. 2000), oil prices and consummation don't seem to be following his prediction well, but it is hard to tell (again, need the benefit of retrospect).

Oil will continue to be cheap and useful for years and years after the peak anyways. Alarmists want want you to believe that it will peaked, and the world will implode and the sun will burn out, but that's not so true. This is almost as annoying as those who think that it will last forever.

As far as what will happen after that, we have a lot of time to decide while oil declines, even if it peaked in 2000. Bio-diesel and ethanol would easily replace gasoline in cars, maybe even hydrogen can become marketable (provided that it become more cheaply made).

The think that annoys me is how people want hydrogen because it's cool and new, not because it's better than other alternatives. Bio-diesel can run in an unmodified (replace some connections with rubber) diesel engine, it can use any type of vegetable oil (even used/dirty), and has better gas mileage. It does have to be processed, but with basic chemistry skills, supplies, and a free Saturday a month it is very do-able.

Ethanol can be extracted from sugar, and a flux fuel car (that runs on ethanol and gasoline) can run off of ethanol for about half the price (and start using gas in cold weather, because ethanol cannot start the engine in the cold). Brazil's economy is now based on the ethanol usage in cars, and it works quite nicely.

Energies from non-oil origins are on the rise, especially in Europe. Germany, Denmark and Ireland are moving along with wind power. Denmark want half (50%!) of it's energy to come from wind eventually, with similar plans by other European countries.

Hydroelectric power now supplies 20% of the worlds energy (20%!), and on a nation basis: Canada get 70% of it's energy from hydroelectric power, Austria 67%, Iceland 83%, Norway nearly 100%.

Geothermic, solar, and nuclear energies have amazing potential (if people can ignore the nuclear stigma).

No one is close to fusion being commercially viable. Coal will last 8 years if we turn to it as a complete energy source and fertilizer feedstock. We do have Uranium, but that will also eventually run out, though if we manage it successfully it won't be for some time.

I'm not sure where this number comes from (8?), and there are current studies being done with extracting usable uranium from sea water. As soon as oil become more expensive, more money will be put into these research programs, and new energies will be found.

We won't run out of energy. Heck, switching over to magneto-hydrodynamic generation instead of today's steam turbines would stretch our energy bill by about 50%.

What you're ignoring is the cost of doing so and the time involved. Oil will become too expensive to allow us to do this.

The cost of oil is irrelevant to switching over to magneto-hydrodynamic power, if anything it would stimulate it.

Again, you're failing to grasp the problem. Of course we're not running out. But we're approaching the point where we'll pump per day as much as we can ever pump, no matter what we do, and every single day after that we'll be able to pump less and less.
[...]
No, our known reserves are for the most part already tapped. ANWR is one notable exception. The rest of the reserve figures that get bandied around are P30 or P10 reserves, and by definition, they probably don't exist.

But who cares? Other energies have already started to replace it.

How are you going to run cargo ships and airplanes or cargo trucks (you know, those devices we use to distribute, among other things, food to the masses) on fission power?

The same way a nuclear sub does. The only reason we don't is because (1) oil is slightly cheaper, and (2) the word "nuclear" has a social stigma that makes it scary, so people don't use it.

It will be a necessity soon enough. For some people, it will be a necessity this winter.

Alarmists and doom sayers will always exist I suppose. Why don't you care that you've been wrong every time before?

The total reserves according to the USGS graph are 1.044 trillion barrels for the entire world. That would be reserves yet to be extracted.

Again, we will need the benefit of retrospect to know this. There is no way to know how much oil is in the earth, there are only estimates. There may be deep oil yet untapped that can last thousands of years (improbably but possible).

Again, you don't understand. You're thinking about what would happen if Jesus were in charge of everything, and all real-world constraints were somehow abolished. But Jesus is not in charge, no miracles are forthcoming, and real-world constraints have not been abolished. We have to deal with what energy companies can actually do, and what they will actually do. Not what you might like them to do in some dream world where your every desire comes true or something.
[...]
We're already doing that to some degree. How is that not apocalyptic? Isn't the food being cut off to the starving masses more or less what I said would happen? The starving masses will be swelling their ranks in the next decade.

Apocalyptic? You were one of the people who thought the world as going to end in 2000 weren't you?

You are thinking of a world where everyone is too stupid to realize what's going on and it will take you to save us all. What's worse, a optimist complex or a savior complex?

Well, I read what you said, and it doesn't have anything to do with hundreds of years in the future. It's not a simple engineering problem. Also, you think that the worthiness of a species and its claims for survival depend on how smart it is?

It is far more complicated then that, as I have already shown.

Yeah, try scaling that up to a couple hundred thousand cargo ships and see where it gets you, especially when you discover that cargo ships weigh rather a lot more than submarines.

Actually it works quite nicely.

Try scaling that up to the 75 million cars currently on the planet (or, scaling down--I'm guessing that a submarine reactor and engine won't fit in most cars, even SUV's). In fact, try scaling that up to half of them.

Who said cars had to run on nuclear power? I don't think you understand the complexity of the the situation. There are a multitude of possible energy sources for cars and normal transportation (bio-desel, ethanol, hydrogen, ect...).

Engineering and physics appear to be the problem from my perspective.

Or rather your ignorance of them, we will inform you on them if you wish.

Who cares? It's not just the U.S. Most countries will be suffering fairly soon. Generating electricity is nice, but what do you think is going to happen when we can no longer ship food to the local Wal-Mart? It's going to be quite ugly.

Oil will gradually taper off, it won't one day be gone. Event he most pessimistic alarmists know this.

Yeah, and people who don't heed these warnings will be at the front of the line.

Informed people don't heed alarmists or end of the world prophets, because of the sheer stupidity of their ideas.

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

I'm afraid I don't see that at all in the graph you posted. It appears that there are 98.9 billion barrels in all of Central and South America. That doesn't equal 4 trillion.

The total reserves according to the USGS graph are 1.044 trillion barrels for the entire world. That would be reserves yet to be extracted.

Crap. I see the graphs (there were two) were actuall two seperate images. I'll find the link later and repost.

But Jesus is not in charge, no miracles are forthcoming, and real-world constraints have not been abolished. We have to deal with what energy companies can actually do, and what they will actually do. Not what you might like them to do in some dream world where your every desire comes true or something.

Don't know why you're introducing fictitious historical figures here. I'm talking real world modern day engineering and existing patents. I guess you haven't studied the issues, have you?

Can someone please explain why so many left-wing lunatics think that their betters are automatically religious evangelists?

Well, I read what you said, and it doesn't have anything to do with hundreds of years in the future. It's not a simple engineering problem. Also, you think that the worthiness of a species and its claims for survival depend on how smart it is?

No. Most species, all but one, in fact, rely on their physical abilities for survival. Only one can cite intelligence as it's key trait.

And it is simple engineering. That's what solves all problems, in the end, as any cursory review of history reveals.

Who cares? It's not just the U.S. Most countries will be suffering fairly soon. Generating electricity is nice, but what do you think is going to happen when we can no longer ship food to the local Wal-Mart? It's going to be quite ugly.

I buy my food from Ralph's, so I'll be fine.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Ironic how Scarecrow Akhbar needs to "prove it" but you are seemingly excluded from these rules. What economist, where, when?

Huh? Did you not see all the links I posted earlier in this thread? The economist is named Michael Lynch, google for papers. There's also a thread on Peakoil.com where he's defending his thesis.

Alarmist (annoying people) say that it will peak tomorrow, eternal optimist think that it will last indefinitely. The fact is, neither side is particularly bright, and very, very probably wrong.

1) When did I say we'd peak tomorrow? It's possible, of course--Deffeyes thinks we have peaked already. I'm betting on roughly 2012. That's not enough time for us to get our act together.

2) How do you derive probabilities for something like that? The notion that the truth always lies between two extant extreme positions is demonstrably flawed.

ASPO says all oil will peak in 2010

That's peak for all liquids, including natural gas condensates and tar sands distillates and other such liquids that aren't normally included in the definition of "oil." Light Sweet crude, according to the ASPO model, peaked in 2004.

It is likely that we will not know about the peak until years after it happens, and as for Hubberts peak theory (that it peaked in apx. 2000), oil prices and consummation don't seem to be following his prediction well, but it is hard to tell (again, need the benefit of retrospect).

1) Continental U.S. peak snuck up on everyone because Hubbert's theories were not held in high regard. Now we're aware of the problem, and have developed some good means of anticipating it. That said, of course you're correct--we won't attain certainty that we've peaked until after we have. I'm not sure I understand how this goes to support your case, though.

2) Hubbert's initial methods did not include adjustments for political and climactic factors. Geologists have since improved on his methods. In fact, Colin Campbell (whose model you linked to, above) uses Hubbert's methods as a starting point for his own predictions.

Oil will continue to be cheap and useful for years and years after the peak anyways.

Useful, yes. Cheap, no.

Alarmists want want you to believe that it will peaked, and the world will implode and the sun will burn out, but that's not so true. This is almost as annoying as those who think that it will last forever.

My argument for why peak will be very, very bad is simple:

1) We are overwhelmingly dependent on cheap oil.

2) Even a slight contraction of a necessary resource can cause highly disproportionate price spikes.

3) Population levels prior to the use of oil as an energy resource and fuel were much lower than they are now, and much of the support system we use to sustain life worldwide depends on oil.

4) Once oil contracts enough to make oil unaffordable, population levels must decline quickly.

Now, if you've got a counter argument that doesn't rely on calling me a "prophet of doom" or something like that, I'd like to hear it.

As far as what will happen after that, we have a lot of time to decide while oil declines, even if it peaked in 2000.

To replace the fuel usage per annum in the world would require that we convert 400 times the biomass currently present on planet earth to biodiesel every year. See www.monbiot.com for details on this and other such things. Keep in mind this guy was in favor of biofuels before doing the math.

Bio-diesel can run in an unmodified (replace some connections with rubber) diesel engine, it can use any type of vegetable oil (even used/dirty), and has better gas mileage. It does have to be processed, but with basic chemistry skills, supplies, and a free Saturday a month it is very do-able.

Doable on a small scale. Where are we going to get the inputs for 75 million cars when it comes to that?

Brazil's economy is now based on the ethanol usage in cars, and it works quite nicely.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/Politics/beyondcorn070105.cfm

1) They started in 1975.
2) In 30 years of effort, they've managed to replace 40% of their fuel usage.
3) They did so at a cost of millions of acres of what was formerly rainforrest. That is not a sustainable practice.

Energies from non-oil origins are on the rise, especially in Europe...Denmark want half (50%!) of it's energy to come from wind eventually, with similar plans by other European countries.

Sure, they want that. Will they get it? I don't know, people in hell want icewater, too. But if I hold out any hope for any region on earth not descending into anarchy, it's Northern Europe or the Pacific Northwest of North America.

Hydroelectric power now supplies 20% of the worlds energy (20%!), and on a nation basis: Canada get 70% of it's energy from hydroelectric power, Austria 67%, Iceland 83%, Norway nearly 100%.

According to the BP statistical review of world energy (go to www.bp.com to download the pdf), it's only 6%. Canada gets 25% of their energy from Hydroelectric, Australia about 3%, Iceland about 62%, Austria about 22%. Where do you get your figures?

Geothermic, solar, and nuclear energies have amazing potential (if people can ignore the nuclear stigma).

I agree. Potential does not equal actual, though, which is what we have to deal with.

The cost of oil is irrelevant to switching over to magneto-hydrodynamic power, if anything it would stimulate it.

Huh? If we have to use oil powered machines to build magneto-hydrodynamic power infrastructure, and the cost of oil gets up to around $300.00 per barrel, how will that not affect the cost of building that infrastructure?

Ash: No, our known reserves are for the most part already tapped. ANWR is one notable exception. The rest of the reserve figures that get bandied around are P30 or P10 reserves, and by definition, they probably don't exist.

Dem: But who cares? Other energies have already started to replace it.

Yes, but not nearly at the needed rate.

The same way a nuclear sub does. The only reason we don't is because (1) oil is slightly cheaper, and (2) the word "nuclear" has a social stigma that makes it scary, so people don't use it.

I'm sure there's quite a lot of money in nuclear airplanes. Perhaps you should develop one.

Alarmists and doom sayers will always exist I suppose. Why don't you care that you've been wrong every time before?

I don't think doomsayers have been wrong every time before. That would be remarkable if it were the case.

Again, we will need the benefit of retrospect to know this. There is no way to know how much oil is in the earth, there are only estimates. There may be deep oil yet untapped that can last thousands of years (improbably but possible).

There could be a lot of things. What is, however, is a separate and distinct issue.

Apocalyptic? You were one of the people who thought the world as going to end in 2000 weren't you?

No. And I didn't buy peak oil at first, either. It took quite a while and a lot of research before I became convinced.

You are thinking of a world where everyone is too stupid to realize what's going on and it will take you to save us all. What's worse, a optimist complex or a savior complex?

I don't plan on saving anyone except myself and my friends, who will have to contribute to the process. I do try to warn as many people as possible, just because I think that's the honorable thing to do. But I can't save you, and I'm not so sure I want to try.

Ash: Yeah, try scaling that up to a couple hundred thousand cargo ships and see where it gets you, especially when you discover that cargo ships weigh rather a lot more than submarines.

Dem: Actually it works quite nicely.

So you're saying that the cargo fleet already runs on nuclear? That's news to me...

There are a multitude of possible energy sources for cars and normal transportation (bio-desel, ethanol, hydrogen, ect...).

Akhbar suggested it as a solution. I debunked it.

See my remarks on biodiesel above.

Ash: Engineering and physics appear to be the problem from my perspective.

Dem:Or rather your ignorance of them, we will inform you on them if you wish.

I wait with bated breath.

[/quote]Oil will gradually taper off, it won't one day be gone. Event he most pessimistic alarmists know this.[/quote]

Decline type III will be in the 7-8% range. We'll very quickly get to an inflection point beyond which our distribution systems will disappear. Of course, oil won't disappear altogether. But the things that depend on ever increasing supplies of oil will disappear.

Informed people don't heed alarmists or end of the world prophets, because of the sheer stupidity of their ideas.

As if social and economic collapses haven't happened before.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Don't know why you're introducing fictitious historical figures here.

I was using sarcasm.

I'm talking real world modern day engineering and existing patents. I guess you haven't studied the issues, have you?

Do you know me personally? I bet probably not. So how do you know what I have and haven't studied? I'll freely admit that I've not read everything to do with oil and energy. That would be impossible. If you've got something you want me to look at that you think really pokes some holes in what I'm saying, I will be happy to do so. Just post it.

Can someone please explain why so many left-wing lunatics think that their betters are automatically religious evangelists?

Huh? I don't think you're my better, and I don't think you're a religious evangelist, and I don't think that anyone who is a religious evangelist is somehow "better" than me, unless you mean better at some activity or other.

And it is simple engineering. That's what solves all problems, in the end, as any cursory review of history reveals.

Missing the point. There remain unsolved and unsolvable problems--for instance, people would like not to have to die. So far, engineering, medicine, biology, etc. have not solved that problem. It appears that it may not be solvable.

I buy my food from Ralph's, so I'll be fine.

Do they use wormholes to ship their food?

 

[aquapub]

What is this elusive solution that we'll find before the peak in world oil production? There's no signs of one coming along that is good enough to keep things runnning like oil does

The solution to oil is hybrid/hydrogen. The solution to high gas prices is to overturn idiotic liberal laws banning the creation of refineries.

 

[Kelzie]

The solution to oil is hybrid/hydrogen. The solution to high gas prices is to overturn idiotic liberal laws banning the creation of refineries.

More refineries aren't going to create more oil reserves.

 

[scottyz]

The solution to oil is hybrid/hydrogen. The solution to high gas prices is to overturn idiotic liberal laws banning the creation of refineries.

Why are oil companies closing refineries in CA?

 

[ashurbanipal]

The solution to oil is hybrid/hydrogen.

No, it is not. So far, no one has figured out a process that gets more energy out of hydrogen than what goes into creating it.

The solution to high gas prices is to overturn idiotic liberal laws banning the creation of refineries.

Are you aware of any law that bans the creation of a refinery?

If you are, perhaps you are also aware that Senator Barbara Boxer, a liberal democrat, led the charge in 2003 and 2004 to increase refinery capacity, and that she was blocked by conservatives?

 

[-Demosthenes-]

[After oil peaks, oil will be...] Useful, yes. Cheap, no.

Prices will not all of a sudden shoot up after a peak. There will be a good while (according to Hubbert himself) before oil becomes particularly expensive.

My argument for why peak will be very, very bad is simple:

1) We are overwhelmingly dependent on cheap oil.
[...]

Countries everywhere, many industries are all moving toward other forms of energy. "Overwhelmingly" is an slight overstatement, and soon it will become an "overwhelming" overstatement.

[...]
2) Even a slight contraction of a necessary resource can cause highly disproportionate price spikes.
3) Population levels prior to the use of oil as an energy resource and fuel were much lower than they are now, and much of the support system we use to sustain life worldwide depends on oil.
[...]

See above.

4) Once oil contracts enough to make oil unaffordable, population levels must decline quickly.

Not even during the depression did people starve to death. If all of a sudden all oil every somehow vaporized (everything alarmist claim minus the implosion of the earth) people probably wouldn't starve. You might have to wait in line somewhere for hours, but we'd live.

People don't live off of oil, and we need it less and less all the time. As soon it gets expensive, then the switch will happen. If it is predictable like you say you think no one knows anywhere but you? If it's so predictable then companies and industries are preparing for it.

To replace the fuel usage per annum in the world would require that we convert 400 times the biomass currently present on planet earth to biodiesel every year. See www.monbiot.com for details on this and other such things.

Tries searching for it, can you give me a more specific link?

Doable on a small scale. Where are we going to get the inputs for 75 million cars when it comes to that?

In maybe 15 years people went from having no home computers, to having one in every home. Drastic changes can occur in relatively short amounts of time.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/Poli...corn070105.cfm

1) They started in 1975.
2) In 30 years of effort, they've managed to replace 40% of their fuel usage.
3) They did so at a cost of millions of acres of what was formerly rainforrest. That is not a sustainable practice.

1) In 1985 when oil prices were up, 91% of the cars produced that year ran on ethanol. Now oil is less expensive, why use ethanol when it's not that much cheaper now? When oil gets more expensive then ethanol can go back up.

2) How is the destruction of rainforrest make it not a sustainable practice? The US has decimated forests to create cotton, potatoes, or corn, but economically it has no bearing on ho sustainable those crops were. In fact I saw some potatoes at the store yesterday!

3) You can literally grow you own freaking gas! Sugar cane, sugar beats, and other crops are used to create ethanol, that works just as well as gas, except the cold weather thing, which is fixed by the flux fuel system.

Sure, they want that. Will they get it? I don't know, people in hell want icewater, too. But if I hold out any hope for any region on earth not descending into anarchy, it's Northern Europe or the Pacific Northwest of North America.

I really don't see your point. Soon Denmark will reach their goal, there is no evidence to the contrary.

According to the BP statistical review of world energy (go to www.bp.com to download the pdf), it's only 6%. Canada gets 25% of their energy from Hydroelectric, Australia about 3%, Iceland about 62%, Austria about 22%. Where do you get your figures?

See:

Hydroelectric power, using the potential energy of rivers, now supplies 20% of world electricity. Norway produces virtually all of its electricity from hydro, while Iceland produces 83% of its requirements (2004), Austria produces 67 % of all electricity generated in the country from hydro (over 70 % of its requirements). Canada is the world's largest producer of hydro power and produces over 70% of its electricity from hydroelectric sources.

I agree. Potential does not equal actual, though, which is what we have to deal with.

Then we'll deal with it.

I'm sure there's quite a lot of money in nuclear airplanes. Perhaps you should develop one.

Why can't one be developed?

I don't think doomsayers have been wrong every time before. That would be remarkable if it were the case.

Well... Nazis never took over the world, communism never took over the world, the soviets never nuked anyone, the earth wasn't destroyed by nano-bots yet, small pox hasn't kill everyone yet... We're all pretty much here and doing fine, how are doomsayers ever right again?

There could be a lot of things. What is, however, is a separate and distinct issue.

Yep the fact that we have little idea about how much oil is actually contained in the earth has not bearing to the debate.

No. And I didn't buy peak oil at first, either. It took quite a while and a lot of research before I became convinced.

I thought alarmists were just pessimists, it took a lot of research to find that they were just insane.

I don't plan on saving anyone except myself and my friends, who will have to contribute to the process. I do try to warn as many people as possible, just because I think that's the honorable thing to do. But I can't save you, and I'm not so sure I want to try.

Do you know that you are claiming that you have so much more information and intelligence than actual government departments, whole researching corporation boards, and thousands of geologists and economists?

So you're saying that the cargo fleet already runs on nuclear? That's news to me...

I didn't mean to say that they were, but why can't they?

Decline type III will be in the 7-8% range. We'll very quickly get to an inflection point beyond which our distribution systems will disappear.Of course, oil won't disappear altogether. But the things that depend on ever increasing supplies of oil will disappear.

Oil has gone up and down that much before, it's done it in the 10's of percents before. People have had to wait in line for gas sometimes, but that's about it. There was no economic collapse. If oil peaked in 2000, the next 10 years will hold nothing that hasn't happened in the last 30.

So how do you know what I have and haven't studied?

By the content of your posts.

No, it is not. So far, no one has figured out a process that gets more energy out of hydrogen than what goes into creating it.

I don't think that that is a goal of hydrogen, and I'm pretty sure that it's physically impossible. The goal is to make a energy storing fuel that can be used to run vehicles.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Prices will not all of a sudden shoot up after a peak. There will be a good while (according to Hubbert himself) before oil becomes particularly expensive.

He thought this because he thought we'd by now abandon our insane money system. We haven't.

Countries everywhere, many industries are all moving toward other forms of energy. "Overwhelmingly" is an slight overstatement, and soon it will become an "overwhelming" overstatement.

Name me any economic activity that takes place anywhere in the Western World that does not rely on inputs of oil. ONE.

Not even during the depression did people starve to death.

During the depression, raw materials, including oil, were expanding their supplies. The Depression was about money and only money, government was able to subsidize food lines. This is about something else entirely--it's only got tangentially to do with money.

If all of a sudden all oil every somehow vaporized (everything alarmist claim minus the implosion of the earth) people probably wouldn't starve. You might have to wait in line somewhere for hours, but we'd live.

There's no way to test this of course, but I think you're incorrect. We harvest, process, and ship food with machines that run on oil. If you go for 2 weeks without food, you die. Most people could live about 2 weeks on the food they have in their homes, and then what's in stores could maybe last the community another 2 weeks. That's six weeks before people stop dropping. You think we could re-tool our infrastructure in six weeks?

People don't live off of oil, and we need it less and less all the time.

Again, name me one economic activity that does not rely on inputs of oil, either directly (as in the airline industry) or indirectly (as in about anything else, but if you can think of something, I'm all ears).

As soon it gets expensive, then the switch will happen.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/sto...DD1-46E3-BA8E-B7B891A9BDCC}&siteid=mktw&dist=

http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/13/markets/oil.reut/index.htm

It appears dangerously close to "expensive" right now. That said, I expect oil prices to rise only gradually until mid next year. Depending on how certain projects soon to come online do, it might stay steady until 2009.

If it is predictable like you say you think no one knows anywhere but you? If it's so predictable then companies and industries are preparing for it.

No, I think there is a lot of evidence to suggest that governments and oil industry insiders do know about it. See the Hirsch Report (posted earlier in this thread in a reply to you, I believe), read Matt Simmons' book Twilight in the Desert, and listen here:

http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/ram/12072005_eaq.ram

Or read about Roscoe Bartlett's presentations to the house of representatives:

http://www.bartlett.house.gov/SupportingFiles/documents/energyspeech.pdf

Or read what Exxon Mobile has to say (note that they don't get any of their oil from OPEC nations, so they use the IEA numbers from 2003 for OPEC, which have already turned out to be way wrong):

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj05cavallo

Or read about Chevron's admission:

http://www.energybulletin.net/7388.html

Or Pemex's:

http://peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9616

And that's just what I could think of in 60 seconds or so. There's plenty more to be found.

I'll leave you to decide why they're not doing anything about it.

Ash: To replace the fuel usage per annum in the world would require that we convert 400 times the biomass currently present on planet earth to biodiesel every year. See www.monbiot.com for details on this and other such things.
Dem:Tries searching for it, can you give me a more specific link?

Sure: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/

In maybe 15 years people went from having no home computers, to having one in every home. Drastic changes can occur in relatively short amounts of time.

When fueled by a highly concentrated form of energy, sure. Like, say, oil.

1) In 1985 when oil prices were up, 91% of the cars produced that year ran on ethanol. Now oil is less expensive, why use ethanol when it's not that much cheaper now? When oil gets more expensive then ethanol can go back up.

I can't find any statistics about how much ethanol was actually produced in Brazil in 1985--which is very different from talking about how many cars could run on it. I suspect, if they've replaced only 40% of their fuel with it, they were probably using less than that then, but there's no way to tell unless you've got that information.

2) How is the destruction of rainforrest make it not a sustainable practice? The US has decimated forests to create cotton, potatoes, or corn, but economically it has no bearing on ho sustainable those crops were. In fact I saw some potatoes at the store yesterday!

Amazonian rainforrest sits atop very unfertile soil. Crops grow in it for a year or two, and then fail without lots of fertilizers. We make fertilizers from natural gas, which is also going to be peaking.

3) You can literally grow you own freaking gas! Sugar cane, sugar beats, and other crops are used to create ethanol, that works just as well as gas, except the cold weather thing, which is fixed by the flux fuel system.

We'll never replace even 5% of the gas we use today with ethanol. Going beyond that will cost too much biomass.

Hydroelectric power, using the potential energy of rivers, now supplies 20% of world electricity. Norway produces virtually all of its electricity from hydro, while Iceland produces 83% of its requirements (2004), Austria produces 67 % of all electricity generated in the country from hydro (over 70 % of its requirements). Canada is the world's largest producer of hydro power and produces over 70% of its electricity from hydroelectric sources.

Electricity and energy are different. You claimed numbers for the latter, not the former.

Why can't one (nuclear airplane) be developed?

Reactor's too heavy, will never get one sizeable enough to move the reactor and the plane. Also, what happens if it crashes?

[/quote]We're all pretty much here and doing fine, how are doomsayers ever right again?[/quote]

Saying that there are doomish claims that have been wrong before is not the same as saying they've never been right. The trick is to distinguish methodology. I don't believe in religious doomsaying, but if the facts and good reasoning point towards doom, I believe it. Given that global warming now appears to be a reality, that terrorism appears to be a force like never before, that oil prices are rising to rates that were not seen possible in 1999 (you ought to go back and read what people thought then, except for a few doomsayers like Matt Simmons), etc. I'd say that doomsayers of a certain ilk have a pretty good record.

Yep the fact that we have little idea about how much oil is actually contained in the earth has not bearing to the debate.

Depends on what you mean. If you're saying that we haven't explored the planet fairly carefully looking for oil patches, you're wrong. No one's spending a whole lot of money on discovery any more. Most estimates for URR center on 2 trillion barrels.

If you mean that, ultimately, we don't know the precise number of barrels in place, I agree. But that really does have no bearing on the debate.

Do you know that you are claiming that you have so much more information and intelligence than actual government departments, whole researching corporation boards, and thousands of geologists and economists?

See links above. Do you know thousands of geologists with experience predicting oil peaks that disagree with a fairly near term peak (say, in the next decade)? In fact, are you aware of one whose methods don't have any obvious flaws? Economists tend to predict no foreseeable peak. CERA, Daniel Yergin, Michael Lynch, etc. all think that peak is a long ways off, but they're not geologists, they're economists. So far, oil prices and production numbers seem to be skewing more towards those silly doomeristic geologists...

I didn't mean to say that they were, but why can't they?

Maybe they could. Could they be retrofitted in the next five to ten years, especially if governments are also trying to find supplies of uranium to power domestic electric production? I don't think so.

Oil has gone up and down that much before, it's done it in the 10's of percents before. People have had to wait in line for gas sometimes, but that's about it. There was no economic collapse.

The steepest decline in production I'm aware of occured in 1972 at about 6% over that year. But it was short-lived. What's coming will be ongoing, and will continue to get worse and worse.

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

Here's the first image

Here's the image I was intending to post. Note the Four Trillion in the Orinoco basin alone.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Scarecrow Akhbar,

First, have you got an actual link for that graph? I can't find it on the USGS website.

It appears to be loosely based on the 2000 study by Thomas Ahlbrandt, which can be found here:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-060/

I didn't find where they think there are 4 trillion barrels of oil in the Orinocco Basin, but I will acknowledge that their reserves estimate is quite rosy. Until you read the details, which are available for study at the link above. What you find is that they developed 2 cases for each basin studied: the F5 case, and the F95 case. The F95 case just means that it's 95% likely that x amount of oil will be recovered from that basin. The F5 case just means that it's 5% likely that y amount of oil will be recovered. To arrive at their estimates of total recoverable reserves, they take the mean between the two.

The flaw ought to be obvious--the F95 case is by definition the most likely case. It extrapolates from discovery trends accurately from data acquired over the past 50 years. It also happens to corroborate the other near-term estimates I've seen from Campbell, Deffeyes, Laherere, etc. The F50 case--which is how they arrive at their reserve number-is the median between the F5 and the F95, and is again obviously derived in a pretty squirrely manner. See the ASPO critique for further analysis:

http://www.peakoil.ie/downloads/newsletters/newsletter16_200204.pdf

It's a short article about halfway through the newsletter.

It turns out that in the 7 years since the data became available (USGS made their data available for review in 1998, published the study in 2000), they've been completely incorrect regarding discovery projections--high by a factor of 2.5.

 

[-Demosthenes-]

I can't find any statistics about how much ethanol was actually produced in Brazil in 1985--which is very different from talking about how many cars could run on it. I suspect, if they've replaced only 40% of their fuel with it, they were probably using less than that then, but there's no way to tell unless you've got that information.

http://www.newstarget.com/001494.html

We'll never replace even 5% of the gas we use today with ethanol. Going beyond that will cost too much biomass.

I still need a source for this.

Electricity and energy are different. You claimed numbers for the latter, not the former.

It's what I meant

Reactor's too heavy, will never get one sizeable enough to move the reactor and the plane. Also, what happens if it crashes?

Normal engines used are pretty freaking heavy too, I don't see why a modified nuclear reactor couldn't one day be used in a plane.

Saying that there are doomish claims that have been wrong before is not the same as saying they've never been right. The trick is to distinguish methodology. I don't believe in religious doomsaying, but if the facts and good reasoning point towards doom, I believe it. Given that global warming now appears to be a reality, that terrorism appears to be a force like never before, that oil prices are rising to rates that were not seen possible in 1999 (you ought to go back and read what people thought then, except for a few doomsayers like Matt Simmons), etc. I'd say that doomsayers of a certain ilk have a pretty good record.

Every generation thinks that it should be the most important generation, and that the world they live in will never change. What would make a generation more important than making it the last generation. It's a sort of short sighted vaguely self centered complex, but we all grow out of it eventually I suppose.

If you mean that, ultimately, we don't know the precise number of barrels in place, I agree. But that really does have no bearing on the debate.

The fact that we don't know how much oil the earth contains doesn't affect the debate?

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

No, it is not. So far, no one has figured out a process that gets more energy out of hydrogen than what goes into creating it.



Are you aware of any law that bans the creation of a refinery?

If you are, perhaps you are also aware that Senator Barbara Boxer, a liberal democrat, led the charge in 2003 and 2004 to increase refinery capacity, and that she was blocked by conservatives?

The second stupidest senator in the US Senate couldn't correctly fix anything. Since you don't post details, and since I have vague recollection of what the bimbo offered, I believe it was opposed because it was packaged with some other details that would make things worse for everyone be environmentalidiots.

That's how Boxer is. She's a stupid hack. I should know, I'm in California.

Oh, and the Most Stupid Senator Award goes to California's own Diane Frankenstein, er Unfinestein, or something like that.

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

Fission powered aircraft are impractical because the thrust-to-weight ratio is far less than that possible with fossil fuels.

There's the development cost issue. A major transport aircraft can cost billions to develop, and they're using off the shelf engines. No sensible investor would risk hundreds of billions more developing a nuclear engine for an airplane on financial grounds alone.

Passengers, if any, would freak out, they being ignorant.

Insurance coverage would be literally astronomical, since the potential for a radiological disaster exists and the clean up costs would be enormous. We've crashed bombs before, that didn't explode. Not a big deal. Crash an operational reactor and say "Chernobyl".

Special permits for flying such a thing into various countries would be expensive, many countries, Japan for example, would most likely refuse, period.

Add a half-million dollars to the cost of training pilots and flight crews.

Add billions to the maintenance costs, and add more insurance for the inevitable spills.

There's reasons the US airforce dropped the notion of a nuclear airplane.

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

The fact that we don't know how much oil the earth contains doesn't affect the debate?

The fact that we know there's more oil than we can map certainly does.

That, and the historical knowledge that malthusian predictions have been the most perfect predictor of how wrong someone can be certainly must be considered.

 

[azreal60]

The reason it does not affect the debate is because your not debating how much oil total there is. Your debating production or extraction level. Their could be billions of gallons of oil in the ground, but if it costs more energy to get it out than is in the oil, what is the point? Yes it is useful in it's form, but there is a point where it doesn't make sense.

And if there is more oil than we can currently map, why did the discovery rate peak in the 1960's and since do something more resembling a plummet than a descent? We simply haven't been discovering at anything approaching in the past, and the newer fields have been smaller and smaller each and every year. Even though more exploratory wells each year are being drilled, we simply aren't finding it. Because it isn't there.

I don't know how much more clear i can be than that. Yes there is still the second half of the peak to go down. But allot of that oil isn't in useable form. It is oil, but it's oil that isn't something you can put in a car or a plane, and requires more energy each and every year to get. That's the difference.