Peak Oil

[davidm]

Forgive me if this has been discussed elsewhere, and if it has, please point me to the thread. I did a search on “Peak Oil” and came up empty.

Peak Oil is the very plausible idea that we are at or near the peak of global oil production. It supported by a lot of data, and dovetails with the fact that most nations have already peaked. The United States, for instance, hit peak oil production in the early 70s, which is why we are an oil importer. Global peak oil discovery was in 1964. A number of geologists and people in the oil industry think we will hit peak in this decade, if we haven’t already. After that, oil production will decline yearly, at a time when demand for oil will be greater than ever.

The general thought seems to be that when oil is in decline, the marketplace, or inventors, or the government, or somebody, will come up with something to replace oil. Most people, if they think about it at all, assume that some combination of solar, hydrogen, wind, biomass, nuclear and the like will replace oil (and natural gas, which is also in depletion).

Unfortunately, these assumptions do not seem to make any sense at all, from the information I have been able to discover. You are not going to run a fleet of cars and trucks on windmills or solar panels. Nor, President Bush notwithstanding, are you going to do this on hydrogen, either. Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source. And to use hydrogen, you’d have to replace, probably at a cost of scores if not hundreds of billions of dollars, our existing infrastructure of pipelines, delivery vehicles, service stations and the like, which are totally unsuited to hydrogen. Furthermore, those who think we can just “switch inputs” from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources usually fail to grasp that making the components of stuff like high-tech windmills and solar panels requires a robust fossil-fuel infrastructure which, if Peak Oil is right, is not going to exist a few decades hence.

There are tar sands and oil shale and the like that can be exploited, but the cost of extraction is so high that it may not be worth the effort. We could return to coal, at the price of producing vast new quantities of greenhouse gases, and with the proviso that coal, like oil, is limited. We don’t know how much extractable coal remains. All of these problems are compounded by the fact that the demand for fossil fuels is at a record high and soaring. The economies of China and India alone will need vast new fossil fuel inputs just to sustain (never mind grow) their current economies.

I realize that this is a forum of skeptics, and there seem to be a fair number of scientists hanging about, so I am hoping that someone can debunk Peak Oil — show that oil really isn’t at or near peak, despite what seems to be a preponderance of evidence that it is; or else show that there is some plausible scenario under which we can account for more than a fraction of our current energy needs with alternative energy sources. Because if Peak Oil is true, and if alternative energy sources don’t scale to support industrial high-tech society, then in a few decades we are not going to be marveling at Rovers on Mars or anticipating the construction of the next great space telescope or sending astronauts back to the moon and beyond. Instead, we are going to be struggling to feed ourselves in a post-industrial world. Comments are welcome.

[TheBlackCat]

You seem to be missing one key fact here. As the price of something goes up, its use declines. Additionally, as the price of something goes up, the use of alternatives that were not economically feasible when the price was low will start becoming economically viable. People, companies, and the entire infrastructure won't suddenly switch overnight. As oil becomes expensive it will gradually be phased out, first by groups for which oil is least useful (probably groups that are close to alternative energy production facilities or have their own), and as oil gets progressively more expensive maintaining the infrastructure will become progressively less profitable and building alternative energy infrastructure will become progressively more profitable. The infrastructure will gradually shift. Remember that no infrastructure is permanent, everything has to be replaced eventually anyway. And if it is not profitable for someone to maintain a particular infrastucture they will cease to do so.

Additionally, alternative energy research is not a high priority because petroleum is so cheap investors do not expect much reward from investing in such research. As petroleum gets progressively more expensive alternative energy technology will become more profitable and companies and investors will be much more inclined to invest in the research since there is greater potential for reward. Even if, as you suggest, oil is at its peak (which it may not be), we still probably have decades of oil left, plenty of time to gradually phase out an infrastructure as it becomes less profitable and phase in a new one as it gets more profitable.

Remember, we won't go from cheap oil to no oil in a day. As the existing oil supplies dry up companies will be forced to start exploiting oil fields that are either harder to reach and/or more expensive to extract from, driving up prices and reducing the quantity demanded. As they get pushed towards more and more expensive oil fields the price will go up and up and people will use less and less oil. Eventually we will be force to start processing coal, tar sands, oil shale, etc, which are far more expensive. These will only be exploited after every even slightly more profitable field has been exploited (or rather, phased in as the least profitable existing oil fields become less profitable than these sources). This will be a gradual process, as less and less profitable oil fields are used. It may even reach the point where it is so expensive to extract oil that more profit will be made by using all-alternative energy, at which point most or all oil extraction will cease even if some reserves remain. That is simple economics.

[davidm]

This is the economic argument that is often heard. It presupposes what is at issue: that there is, or will be, a replacement for fossil fuels that is economically viable, and that can scale to sustain (never mind account for the growth that is required of) industrial civilization. It is far from clear that this presupposition is correct, and it looks as if it’s false. Hence, the economic argument won’t work.

From a study by the United States Army Corp of Engineers: (http://www.peakoil.net/Articles2005/Westervelt_EnergyTrends__TN.pdf)


Oil wars are certainly not out of the question. Disruption of world oil markets may also affect world natural gas markets as much of the natural gas reserves are collocated with the oil reserves.

Quote edited by davidm to make it shorter

This Web site ( http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html) has all the visual hysterics and tabloid-like headlines typical of woo-wooism, but the content does not seem hysterical or woo-woo at all. It presents a number of cogent arguments that are difficult (for me) to refute. As to the economic argument presented above, here is its reply:


As economist Andrew Mckillop explains in a recent article entitled, "Why Oil Prices Are Barreling Up," oil is nowhere near as "elastic" as most commodities:

One of the biggest problems facing the IEA, the EIA and a
host of analysts and "experts" who claim that "high prices
cut demand" either directly or by dampening economic
growth is that this does not happen in the real world.

Since early 1999, oil prices have risen about 350%. Oil
demand growth in 2004 at nearly 4% was the highest in 25
years. These are simple facts that clearly conflict with
received notions about "price elasticity". World oil demand,
for a host of easily-described reasons, tends to be bolstered
by "high" oil and gas prices until and unless "extreme" prices
are attained.



edited by davidm because these quoted passages are a bit long for the rules of this site.

[Van Rijn]

This is the economic argument that is often heard. It presupposes what is at issue: that there is, or will be, a replacement for fossil fuels that is economically viable, and that can scale to sustain (never mind account for the growth that is required of) industrial civilization. It is far from clear that this presupposition is correct, and it looks as if it’s false. Hence, the economic argument won’t work.


Conventional nuclear is the most obvious economic and environmental choice. I hope we won't need to use too much of it, but methane hydrates appear to be a longer term hydrocarbon source. See here:

http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html

[davidm]

Here (http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v33_2_00/methane.htm) is more on methane hydrates. So far as I know, zero methane hydrates have been commercialy recovered to date. Granted the possibility of technological innovations, methane hydrates may prove economically infeasible to extract.

As to nucelar, we are not going to run cars, buses, planes and trains via nuclear power plants, are we? It's also very unclear that nuclear power plants can be built and run at all absent an underlying, relatively inexpensive fossil-fuel infrastructure.

[TheBlackCat]

This is the economic argument that is often heard. It presupposes what is at issue: that there is, or will be, a replacement for fossil fuels that is economically viable, and that can scale to sustain (never mind account for the growth that is required of) industrial civilization.
I don't think it is not a presupposition. The analyses I heard said that there is enough coal to last us into the next century, enough uranium to supply us on fission power for several centuries, and there is no reason to think that fission power, which can last us indefinitely, cannot be completed within that time frame. This is ignoring supplemental power from wind, water, sunlight, and biomass that, although most likely not able to completely sustain us, could certainly lighten the load on our main energy sources.


It is far from clear that this presupposition is correct, and it looks as if it’s false.
What makes you think it is false. You have claimed this, but have yet to provide any energy backing up this claim.


Since early 1999, oil prices have risen about 350%. Oil demand growth in 2004 at nearly 4% was the highest in 25 years. These are simple facts that clearly conflict with received notions about "price elasticity". World oil demand, for a host of easily-described reasons, tends to be bolstered by "high" oil and gas prices until and unless "extreme" prices
are attained.
A gross oversimplification. The fact is that a issues that drive demand up a lot can overshadown issues that drive demand down less. This does not show that the forces driving demand down are not relevant, they only show that at this point in time those particular forces are outweighed by other forces.


The amount of energy contained in that barrel of oil would cost between $100-$250* dollars to derive from alternative sources of energy. Thus, the market won't signal energy companies to begin aggressively pursuing alternative sources of energy until oil reaches the $100-$250 mark.
Once again, a gross oversimplification. Economic profit isn't an all-or-nothing thing, companies move in and out of the market continuously as economic profit changes. Industry does not wholesale shift from one thing to another the instant one becomes cheaper than another, the shift happens gradually and contiuously as the prices come closer together. Remember the economy is not uniform, for some sectors the cost of using alternative energy sources and the cost of using petroleum are different than they are in other sectors of the economy. Sectors that have the most to gain from alternative energy and/or the least to lose from abandoning petroleum will reach the point where it is economically beneficial to make the switch sooner. As they invest in alternative energy, it will drive the price down (the more units of something are built the less it will cost to build each additional unit), allowing sectors that could previously not afford it to use it.

Take, for example, accelerometers. It used to be that they were extremely expensive to use, way to expensive to use in most mainstream applications. That is no longer the case, they are now pretty cheap and are showing up all over the place. What changed? Air bags. Air bags, which are used in every car, often several times, require an accelerometer. The massive number of accelerometers needed for car air bags drove the price down for anybody else who wanted to use them. The same would happen with alternative energy, as it is implemented by those who it costs least its price will go down, allowing more to implement it, further driving down costs, allowing more to implement it, etc. You cannot use the current cost of alternative energy when it is hardly used and take that as some fixed value that will never change. It can and will change as alternative energy can and does get more popular.


This does not even account for the amount of money it would take to locate and refine the raw materials necessary for a large scale conversion, the construction and deployment of the alternatives, and finally the retrofitting of the world's $45 trillion dollar infrastructure to run on these alternative sources.
As I keep saying, the infrastucture will have to be replaced sooner or later anyway. And you have to locate and refine petroleum as well, so an increase in the gross costs of locating and refining alternative energy sources would be offset by a reduction in the gross costs of locating and refining petroleum.


Once they do begin aggressively pursuing these alternatives, there will be a 25-to-50 year lag time between the initial heavy-duty research into these alternatives and their wide-scale industrial implementation.
Hardly. Fission energy is already well-established, it would not require any additional research. Wind and freshwater hydroelectric power is relatively simple and already widely implemented. Solar energy is more a question of figuring out which technique is better for a given location. Hydrogen itself is relatively straightforward, it is more the storage that needs work. The real one that will require work is fusion, and research is already well underway in that.


However, in order to finance an aggressive implementation of alternative energies, we need a tremendous amount of investment capital - in addition to affordable energy and raw materials - that we absolutely will not have once oil prices are permanently lodged in the $200 per barrel neighborhood.
Ooh, a little slight of hand here. First he argues that it will become economically viable between $100 and $200 a barrel (note he said it is already $75). Then he goes and ignores the low end of the estimate and take the high ened, $200, as the definitive value (note he says prices "are" going to be permanently lodged at that value when we begin the implementation, not "might"), without actually telling anyone he is doing it or giving any reson why we should ignore the low, or even middle, of the estimate and automatically accept the absolute maximum value. That is an underhanded tactic that does not belong in a civilized, academic discussion. It is, however, exactly the sort of argument you would expect from "woo-wooism", as you put it.

[clop]

To be perfectly honest I can't wait for the oil to run out, or for a nice big asteroid to hit the earth, or for the sea level to rise and start to reclaim the low-lying land, or for a pandemic, or for anything at all that will make life interesting in again. Let's face it, we live in a contrived, restrictive, man-made environment. It's totally unnatural. Our responsibilities are no longer life responsibilities - they have no intrinsic importance. Our happiness is not based on true life happiness - our happiness is based on a series of perceived successes in a purely artificial system.

I'd love for everything to break down so that we can go back to being humans again. Hunting for food and living outside and being happy to be alive, instead of worrying about whether someone let you in at a road junction, or whether your windows are clean, or whether your clothes are fashionable, or whether you've tied your tie properly, or whether your phone has got bluetooth, or whether you're allowed to walk on the grass or not.

clop

[Van Rijn]

Here (http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v33_2_00/methane.htm) is more on methane hydrates. So far as I know, zero methane hydrates have been commercialy recovered to date. Granted the possibility of technological innovations, methane hydrates may prove economically infeasible to extract.


Possibly. Most likely, however, the key issue is that there hasn't been sufficient interest yet in developing the resource. As the resource picture changes, there will be more interest.



As to nucelar, we are not going to run cars, buses, planes and trains via nuclear power plants, are we?


Why not? See here for example (note, this is a pdf):

http://www.getenergysmart.org/Files/HydrogenEducation/7HydrogenProductionNuclear.pdf

You can produce hydrogen with nuclear reactors, which can be used directly in transportation or as a feedstock for further processing into other fuels. Again, we don't do it today because there hasn't been much interest in it. As economics shifts, this will change.

In the long run, our primary energy sources will be nuclear and solar. The "fossil fuel era" will just be another transition phase in human history. By the end of the 21st century, I expect that total energy use will be substantially higher than it is now, even with more efficient use.



It's also very unclear that nuclear power plants can be built and run at all absent an underlying, relatively inexpensive fossil-fuel infrastructure.

I don't understand that at all. What is supposed to be special about fossil fuel? Nuclear power isn't terribly expensive, and it can support itself.

[Van Rijn]

To be perfectly honest I can't wait for the oil to run out, or for a nice big asteroid to hit the earth, or for the sea level to rise and start to reclaim the low-lying land, or for a pandemic, or for anything at all that will make life interesting in again. Let's face it, we live in a contrived, restrictive, man-made environment. It's totally unnatural. Our responsibilities are no longer life responsibilities - they have no intrinsic importance. Our happiness is not based on true life happiness - our happiness is based on a series of perceived successes in a purely artificial system.

I'd love for everything to break down so that we can go back to being humans again. Hunting for food and living outside and being happy to be alive, instead of worrying about whether someone let you in at a road junction, or whether your windows are clean, or whether your clothes are fashionable, or whether you've tied your tie properly, or whether your phone has got bluetooth, or whether you're allowed to walk on the grass or not.

clop

Oooohkay. You do realize that we've been living "unnaturally" since we developed the first technology, long before we developed agriculture? That agriculture was one of the major technological transitions (the earth couldn't support more than a few tens of millions of humans without agriculture).

Me, I want to see humans and other species from this planet spread out into the universe, not die off from some stupid natural accident sooner or later. And I have no interest in living like a caveman.

[clop]

Oooohkay. You do realize that we've been living "unnaturally" since we developed the first technology, long before we developed agriculture? That agriculture was one of the major technological transitions (the earth couldn't support more than a few tens of millions of humans without agriculture).

Me, I want to see humans and other species from this planet spread out into the universe, not die off from some stupid natural accident sooner or later. And I have no interest in living like a caveman.


Not as far back as being a caveman. Just back away from the hell of what we have created on the earth. Back to living in small communities in unspoilt forests. Back away from the global arrogance. Back away from the ambition - the obsession to achieve better things, to go faster and be richer or make things more convenient. Things are not improving. We've created a situation where we spend our leisure time watching ****e like Neighbours on the television or playing computer games on an XBox. Fat people everywhere stuffing sugar and fat into their mouths. Insular families. Rules that in many cases prevent us from doing the things that life is really all about.

I have spent time living with hill tribes on the Laos/China border. They live in wooden shacks, farm chickens and pigs, grow rice. They've never been in a car or seen a computer. But they are really happy. Really happy.

And you're going to die anyway. It is inevitable.

clop

[davidm]

I’m not going to reply to all of what Black Cat said in a single post. We might as well first back up and look at a few things, and incidentally, it would be helpful if there are any geologists, oil people, engineers, energy experts and the like who would lend their expertise to this matter. I am a layman in these issues, but some of the data looks pretty compelling. Of course I could be missing something, but Black Cat’s economics argument is unpersuasive, at least so far. The central flaw in it is the assumption that something is out there that can be marketed/invented/technologized that will replicate the energy density that fossil fuels provide. This is by no means at all clear, and if it can’t be done, then the free market is not going to help us out of this situation.

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the following, especially the predictive parts — and I don’t think anyone else can, either, because much of the relevant data is unknown. Still, the U.S. chart, at least, corroborates with everything else I have seen. These are the oil depletion charts (http://dieoff.com/42Countries/42Countries.pdf) for 42 nations.

Next, if you wish to characterize the above-linked site as “woo-woo,” that’s fine; it would be interesting, though, to see your point-by-point rebuttals of the information presented therein. At any rate, if that site is “woo-woo,” perhaps Sprott Asset Management (http://www.sprott.com/companyinfo/corporateprofile.php) will have more credibility, specifically Peak Oil: Are we there yet? (http://www.sprott.com/pdf/marketsataglance/04-18-2005.pdf) From the linked PDF:


If one superimposes the actuality of the US oil production experience (which peaked in 1970) with global production today (as this chart tries to do), then the world is on the verge of having
substantially less oil production in the not too distant future. As unappealing and perhaps even
downright scary as this chart is, we believe this is the situation the world currently faces. World
oil production is “peaking” and about to go into precipitous decline following a period when new
oil discoveries have already been in sharp decline for almost three decades. The writing is on the
wall.

Quote edited down by davidm to keep its length within the rules of this site.


As to coal, it’s possibly true that we have a hundred, maybe even a couple of hundred, of year’s worth of the stuff lying in the ground. But this assumes current levels of demand and extraction. If we are forced to go to coal big-time, then the amount of time that coal will last will drop dramatically, almost certainly to a few decades. Of course, coal is horribly dirty and expensive to recover, would require vast strip-mining and would substantially contribute to the very greenhouse gases that we are now trying to suppress.

What makes you think that fission can last for centuries? Do you know how much recoverable uranium there is in the ground? I don’t. I’m not sure anyone else does, either. But even assuming that there’s lots of it, the question remains, what good is nuclear power for anything more substantial than keeping the lights on? Are you going to run a fleet of trains, cars, buses and airplanes on nuclear power? How?

Again, there is the further problem I’ve mentioned, and which needs to be addressed: Right now, anyway, (perhaps this can change?) one needs, in order to build, mass produce and maintain things like nuclear power plants, and the fine equipment necessary for wind turbines, solar panels and the like, a fossil fuel infrastructure. And so the question is, can alternative energy be detached from a fossil fuel platform? I don’t know. Do you know?

[Van Rijn]

Not as far back as being a caveman. Just back away from the hell of what we have created on the earth. Back to living in small communities in unspoilt forests. Back away from the global arrogance. Back away from the ambition - the obsession to achieve better things, to go faster and be richer or make things more convenient. Things are not improving.


Well, I'm not going to agree with you, and this is off-topic, so I'm not carrying this much further. I'll just say that I have a very different picture of the situation: Not perfect (nothing ever is), but the last thing I want is to go backwards.



I have spent time living with hill tribes on the Laos/China border. They live in wooden shacks, farm chickens and pigs, grow rice. They've never been in a car or seen a computer. But they are really happy. Really happy.


So go live there. Myself, I'd go crazy trying to live that way (that's assuming I'd still be alive - shorter life span and all that).


And you're going to die anyway. It is inevitable.


Again, off-topic, so this will be my last word on this: If we go backwards as you suggest, yes, the human species is doomed. However, if we do continue to develop, both here and eventually spreading off the earth, there is no reason why we, or our descendents cannot continue.

[davidm]

Van Rijn, I didn't see your reply to me before my latest post. Will respond later.

[Van Rijn]

The central flaw in it is the assumption that something is out there that can be marketed/invented/technologized that will replicate the energy density that fossil fuels provide. This is by no means at all clear, and if it can’t be done, then the free market is not going to help us out of this situation.


The energy density of uranium is far higher than that of fossil fuels. Mind you, low density energy sources can also be useful if the production cost is low enough - with advances, various types of photovoltaics will have a larger and larger impact in the energy market. I expect thin-film designs will be the bigger players because of lower materials requirements and associated production cost differences.



What makes you think that fission can last for centuries? Do you know how much recoverable uranium there is in the ground? I don’t. I’m not sure anyone else does, either.


Uranium is everywhere - in granite, in seawater. Because it is a high density energy source, the cost of produced energy is relatively insensitive to the cost of uranium production. Even with current generation nuclear reactors and with minor increases in production cost, there are centuries of uranium available.

But it can last, far, far longer with better reactors and somewhat higher costs. See here:

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html

Note that this doesn't consider thorium which improves the picture even more. The short version: There is plenty of this stuff.

[davidm]

The energy density of uranium is far higher than that of fossil fuels.

That is true, of course, and thanks for pointing that out. I haven't had a chance to read your links yet, so maybe some of these answers are supplied, but off the top of my head there are these questions:

1. Nuclear energy is used to produce electricity. Can it be harnessed for manufacturing processes?

2. How many such plants might we need? Can it technically and profitably be used to meet mass transportations needs? (Maybe your first link answered that; as I say, I'll need a chance to read it.)

3. What is the time frame for getting up the plants we would need, in the number that we would need them? The problem that not a few people have pointed out is that if peak oil is real, and if we are at or near peak, then the trouble begins, not when the oil runs out, but when oil production begins to fall. At that point the world gets poorer and poorer; and if demand is driven down that's tantamount to talking about a global recession or depression. One must wonder, then, whether in such an environment, it would even be possible to pay for the number of nuclear plants needed, and whether they could be brought on line in any realistic time frame. That's the real threat of peak oil, if it's true: it quickly knocks the props out from under the industrial West, making it difficult if not impossible to make the switchover to potential alternative energy sources, even if those soruces could be made to scale to meet modern industrial demand.

Will read your links and get back later, probably tomorrow.

[Ken G]

In terms of economics saving us from oil dependence, I think the lesson of Easter Island is interesting. It was a very small economic system, with no real alternative to trees, so for both those reasons it may not apply to us and oil. Let's hope not. What happened there is they cut down all their trees, and they died, horribly. In the end, they were having to kill and eat each other. I don't know how much of this story is completely reliable, but there you have it. Again, let us hope that the much larger resources offered by a planet rather than an island will lead to a very different outcome, but I note that seeing the impending end of trees did not save the Easter islanders-- they simply found no viable alternative.

[Tinaa]

1. Nuclear energy is used to produce electricity. Can it be harnessed for manufacturing processes?


Electricity is used in a local steel mill in Texas.

http://www.cmcsteeltexas.com/manufacturing/eaf.aspx

[TheBlackCat]

I’m not going to reply to all of what Black Cat said in a single post... it would be interesting, though, to see your point-by-point rebuttals of the information presented therein.
I see, so you refuse to discuss what I say and just dismiss it out of hand but demand a point-by-point refutation of what you say. That is a bit unfair.


The central flaw in it is the assumption that something is out there that can be marketed/invented/technologized that will replicate the energy density that fossil fuels provide. This is by no means at all clear, and if it can’t be done, then the free market is not going to help us out of this situation.
It isn't energy density that matters, it is the price of a unit of energy. And I listed a bunch of energy sources, some that are known to be able to replace petroleum to a degree. You don't want to seem to discuss the specifics, instead just dismissing them all for no obvious reason.


I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the following, especially the predictive parts — and I don’t think anyone else can, either, because much of the relevant data is unknown. Still, the U.S. chart, at least, corroborates with everything else I have seen. These are the oil depletion charts (http://dieoff.com/42Countries/42Countries.pdf) for 42 nations.
That paper is from 1997. That allows us to compare their predictions to what really happened. According to them 19 countries were supposed to peak between the release of the study and up to 1995, that last data available. Of those 19, 5 peaked at least 1 year early, 1 peak at least 1 year late, and 2 peak within a year of the prediction. So only 8 of the 19 countures that were supposed to peak actually did. 10 of the remaining countries have not peaked, 2 are in fact producing oil at an accelerating pace in recent years. 2/3 of those that haven't peaked were supposed to have peaked at least 4 years ago. One country I don't have data for. So it doesn't look like their results have spent the test of time, we are talking just over a 40% success rate just in terms of getting the peak within a 8-year window, and 2/3 of those that haven't peaked were off by at least half the time since the study. This does not speak well for the predictive power of these results.


Next, if you wish to characterize the above-linked site as “woo-woo,” that’s fine;
Hey! You're the one who said the site looked woo-woo, not me. I am just saying his argument was consistent with that interpretation.


As to coal, it’s possibly true that we have a hundred, maybe even a couple of hundred, of year’s worth of the stuff lying in the ground. But this assumes current levels of demand and extraction. If we are forced to go to coal big-time, then the amount of time that coal will last will drop dramatically, almost certainly to a few decades.
Do you have any data to back up this claim?


Of course, coal is horribly dirty and expensive to recover, would require vast strip-mining and would substantially contribute to the very greenhouse gases that we are now trying to suppress.
Yeah, if it is a choice between that and the collapse of civilization I don't think people will care much. That is what you are saying will happen if the oil runs out, so talking about strip-mining is completely irrelevant when faced with the alternative.


What makes you think that fission can last for centuries? Do you know how much recoverable uranium there is in the ground?
All the analyses I have heard put it at least a hundred years, maybe a few hundred.


But even assuming that there’s lots of it, the question remains, what good is nuclear power for anything more substantial than keeping the lights on? Are you going to run a fleet of trains, cars, buses and airplanes on nuclear power? How?
Hydrogen. We use alternative power sources to make hydrogen. Hydrogen powers vehicles. Problem solved.


Again, there is the further problem I’ve mentioned, and which needs to be addressed: Right now, anyway, (perhaps this can change?) one needs, in order to build, mass produce and maintain things like nuclear power plants, and the fine equipment necessary for wind turbines, solar panels and the like, a fossil fuel infrastructure. And so the question is, can alternative energy be detached from a fossil fuel platform? I don’t know. Do you know?
Really? What, exactly absolutely requires fossil fuel that can't be replaced with alternatives?

As for the article:
There is no point discussing the first paragraph. it is based on predictions that I have already shown to be wrong, so any conclusions based on those results are inherently baseless. It is just wild conjecture without data to back up their claims. The second parapraph simply assumes that no alternative energy sources exist without showing any reason why this is the case. The author is simply trying to pass off a hypothetical scenario as real life without actually warning anyone that is what he is doing. So we have one paragraph based entirely on wrong data, and one paragraph based entirely on conjecture with no data at all. What else needs to be said?

[davidm]

I really have no interest in arguing with anyone, and the adversarial rhetoric of Black Cat is off-putting, to say nothing of juvenile. I would like to have a discussion, not an argument. Black Cat’s rhetoric is typical of someone who wants to argue a point, and will amass and interpret the data in any way that he can to reinforce what he want to argue for. I’ve no interest in that.

Of course the bloody charts aren’t going to be perfectly accurate, because there are so many unknown and unknowable variables. But in their broad outlines they are certainly accurate. The broad outlines show a bell-curve progression of increase, plateau, and decrease in oil production. That’s the key point. A further discussion of peak oil is here. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil) In fact, do a Google on peak oil, and you will come up with 34,600,000 hits! The New York Times Sunday Magazine made it the cover story last August. See, Black Cat, it’s like I’m making this stuff up, OK?


Hydrogen. We use alternative power sources to make hydrogen. Hydrogen powers vehicles. Problem solved.

Nonsense! (To adopt the rhetorical stance that unfortunately seems to be favored here.) How about demonstrating, in detail, how this is to be done? If peak oil is correct (I don’t insist that it must be correct, but I look at the data and find disturbing reasons to think that it might be) the problem is this: as soon as the peak of world oil production is passed, then by definition production declines year after year, even as demand is skyrocketing. This plunges the world into global recession, if not depression. Now the suggestion that we are going to use alternative power sources to make hydrogen to power vehicles might be feasible, over a long period of time, under flush circumstances. How is it going to be feasible in a world of permanent declining incomes and productivity?

Are we going to build nuclear power plants to make hydrogen to power cars? How? In what time frame? How many nuclear power plants have we built in the last ten, twenty, thirty years? How many such power plants would we have to build to achieve your glib “problem solved?” How much would it cost? How would we pay for it in a world in which fossil fuel inputs are declining year after year? How are we going to store and transport hydrogen in a gas-oil network that is utterly inappropriate for storing and transporting hydrogen? How much would it cost to rip up that network and replace it with one suitable for hydrogen, even assuming that we can fabricate such a network? Ten billion dollars? A hundred billion dollars? Who is going to pay for it in a world in which the peak of oil production is passed and nations are getting poorer and poorer? You?

What about agriculture? The green revolution, which has fed so much of the world, was made possible only by fossil fuels. Pesticides and fertilizers are made from massive fossil fuel inputs. What’s going to replace those inputs, if indeed peak oil takes place and fossil fuel production declines year after year? Are you going to make pesticides and fertilizers from hydrogen? Wind? Solar? Nuclear? How? Do tell.

[Kesh]

To be perfectly honest I can't wait for the oil to run out, or for a nice big asteroid to hit the earth, or for the sea level to rise and start to reclaim the low-lying land, or for a pandemic, or for anything at all that will make life interesting in again. Let's face it, we live in a contrived, restrictive, man-made environment. It's totally unnatural. Our responsibilities are no longer life responsibilities - they have no intrinsic importance. Our happiness is not based on true life happiness - our happiness is based on a series of perceived successes in a purely artificial system.

I'd love for everything to break down so that we can go back to being humans again. Hunting for food and living outside and being happy to be alive, instead of worrying about whether someone let you in at a road junction, or whether your windows are clean, or whether your clothes are fashionable, or whether you've tied your tie properly, or whether your phone has got bluetooth, or whether you're allowed to walk on the grass or not.

clop
... okay.

You go first.

[Kesh]

I really have no interest in arguing with anyone, and the adversarial rhetoric of Black Cat is off-putting, to say nothing of juvenile. I would like to have a discussion, not an argument. Black Cat’s rhetoric is typical of someone who wants to argue a point, and will amass and interpret the data in any way that he can to reinforce what he want to argue for. I’ve no interest in that.

Then why did you post here?

It sounds like you mean "listen to me and agree" rather than "discuss the issue," honestly. If you make a point, someone is bound to challenge it. And on this board, that means responding with evidence to back up your point, rather than simply saying "it is so."

[davidm]

Then why did you post here?

It sounds like you mean "listen to me and agree" rather than "discuss the issue," honestly. If you make a point, someone is bound to challenge it. And on this board, that means responding with evidence to back up your point, rather than simply saying "it is so."

I have not said, "It is so." I have said, we have strong data suggesting that the world is at or near the peak of global oil production. Of course we can't know this with certainty; and indeed we can only know that Peak Oil is real after the peak has passed, a probably a few years after its passage. We will know it then, because oil production will be seen to be declining.

I am asking, if this happens, and if you follow the links I have given, you will find strong defeasible evidence that it is probably going to happen rather soon, then what can be an adequate response? To say that we are going to build nuclear power plants to produce hydrogen to power cars is entirely too quick and glib. We must have some reasonable scenario that makes this possible. Again: How many power plants will we need? How fast can they come on line? How will we overcome the challenges of distributing and transporting hydrogen? What will we do with agriculture? What challenges need to be overcome to make nuclear power, even supposing that we can build the large number of plants that we need, feasible for other than electrical generation? Can nuclear power plants feasibly be used for industrial and manufacturing purposes? There are a huge number of unanswered questions here, and so if someone says, "Problem solved," you'll pardon me if I am unpersuaded.

[peteshimmon]

Welcome to the forum davidm. I think you will
find/have found that many around here are of
the "believe it when I see it" persuasion:)
Thanks for the links.

[Demigrog]

Sheesh, amazing how heated a simple question of economics can get.

First, oil reserves are a very complicated subject that involves at least as much politics as it does economics; wary as I am of Wikipedia, I think their article is pretty good (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves).

Bottom line is that oil will not run out over night; prices will go up over time, with a few possible sudden jumps due to wars and/or demand increases from developing nations.

People are not stupid; everyone in the energy industry sees this coming and every energy related company has ongoing R&D into alternative energy sources. We will not be required to switch overnight, and new technologies can be phased in as they become economically competitive. Many already are—wind turbines are way outselling gas and coal in developed countries at the moment.

In the short term, fuel efficiency will improve. In the medium term, hybrid vehicles will begin to really sell, followed by duel-fuel (hydrogen/gasoline) and some pure-electric vehicles.

To charge the electrics and produce hydrogen (as well as power the other three quarters of our energy consumption that are not transportation related), we’ll build more power plants.

In the short term, Gas turbines, wind turbines, some hydroelectric (particularly in Asia), and trace amounts of solar, biomass, and other alternatives.

In the 2010-2015 timeframe, IGCC coal plants (basically zero emission, other than CO2) will take the brunt of the load in the US.

In the 2015-2040 timeframe, IGCC coal with carbon capture (zero emission) and Gen III+ nuclear.

After 2040 is anybody’s guess, but likely Gen IV nuclear (breeder reactors), and possibly fusion (still hard to say if it will ever be commercially viable—we still haven’t even achieved ignition).

So, our energy needs are clearly going to be met by a changing array of sources in the years to come, but it is hardly a crisis.

[tofu]

I am hoping that someone can debunk Peak Oil

Well, the concept that oil is a limited resource and that its availability will follow a simple bell curve, is not really open to debate, is it? I mean, it is a simple, easily understood fact. So, I'm not sure that Peak Oil as a concept needs to be debunked. It's not bad science.

What is open for debate is what we as a civilization are going to do about it. While Peak Oil isn't bad science, I do believe that much of the alarmist talk surrounding it is. To understand why I say this, try answering the following question.

How is Peak Oil different from Peak Food? Way back in 1798 the respected economist Thomas Malthus made the simple (and scientifically correct) observation that population grows at an exponential rate, while food production grows linearly. That would be bad enough, but there is the additional observation that food production will peak (just like oil) as we reach the point where we have converted most of the good land into farms. Looking at his data, Malthus predicted that we had two generations left (let's say 60 years, or until the year 1858) before we hit a wall and ran out of food, after which there would be mass starvation.

So, way back in 1798, there was a theory very similar to Peak Oil. I just want to point out that every argument for and against Peak Oil's predicted effects can be made about Peak Food. If you and I were around in 1798, and you said to me, "we will hit Peak Food just like Malthus predicts, and then most of us will starve to death or die in the inevitable food wars." I might reply to you, "well don't worry, when food gets more expensive, people will eat less and the food we have will last longer - also, new technologies will come out that allow us to grow more food." And your response would be the same as your responses in this thread. You'd say that we can't survive on less food and that no new technologies look promising - and even if there were new technologies, that doesn't change the fact that the amount of land available is decreasing, so new technologies only delay the problem by a few years, they don't solve it.

So just to repeat my question: how is this situation different from Peak Oil? Why were the arguments against Peak Food valid, but those same arguments against Peak Oil are invalid?

In 1967, William and Paul Paddock wrote a book that made the same predictions as Malthus. The title of the book was Famine, 1975! As the title suggests, they predicted terrible worldwide famines by 1975. Had the internet been around back then, and had you posted a thread asking someone to "debunk Paddock" you would gotten many of the same arguments that you are getting now, and you would have responded to many of those arguments in the same way that you're responding here. But you would have been wrong.

Finally, imagine a peak oil discussion in the early 1950s. This was before there were any offshore drilling platforms. If you and I had engaged in a peak oil discussion at that time, I might have suggested to you that the world has additional oil reserves under the oceans. All we have to do is get to them. Your counterargument would have been the same as the argument you make against shale oil and other technologies now. You would scoff at the idea of drilling for oil in the middle of the ocean. You would say that there is no evidence that this will ever be economically feasible. But you would have been wrong.

And I humbly submit that you (and others) are wrong about some aspects of Peak Oil as well. Peak Oil is coming, I don't doubt that. But it wont be the unmitigated disaster that some people make it out to be. I think that the climate change caused by burning oil is going to cause bigger problems than running out of oil.

[Demigrog]

To say that we are going to build nuclear power plants to produce hydrogen to power cars is entirely too quick and glib.

Nobody within the industry is quick or glib about it; politicians tend to be, but their audience has a notoriously short attention span, so I forgive them.



We must have some reasonable scenario that makes this possible. Again: How many power plants will we need? How fast can they come on line? How will we overcome the challenges of distributing and transporting hydrogen?

One piece of the puzzle at a time. The entire world will not switch over night. Hawaii and California are the obvious candidates to do it first. Hawaii in particular has invested a lot of resources into developing hydrogen technologies and will likely be the first state to have ubiquitous hydrogen fuel stations. Since nobody can drive on a long trip in Hawaii, obviously its easy to geographically distribute hydrogen stations and reach the bulk of the population. Big cities also have this advantage—the bulk of driving miles are commuters or fleet vehicles like taxis that will rarely be far from the city, allowing a relatively small distribution system to reach a large market.

Obviously not every trip is going to be short and in a hydrogen enabled city, so I expect dual fuel cars to be popular for the first few decades of the hydrogen transition. This isn’t really all that different than existing hybrid electric cars—a gasoline engine supplementing a hydrogen fuel cell for recharging a chemical battery.

Over time, more markets will join the hydrogen infrastructure, with rural areas last as always. As the transition gains momentum, there will probably be a federal mandate to complete the switch for all new vehicles, similar to the analog to digital TV mandate (and expect delays, just like with HDTV. :) )



What will we do with agriculture?

Presumably what we do today, except with hydrogen powered engines. I also expect gasoline will stick around in some applications for a long time—the “gas pump” will be like the “kerosene pump” is today.



What challenges need to be overcome to make nuclear power, even supposing that we can build the large number of plants that we need, feasible for other than electrical generation?

Well, nuclear power is already feasible, and plants could be built in large numbers if we needed to. The only thing holding it back is regulatory burden and the NIMBY effect every time a new plant is proposed. Assuming Yucca Mountain is built, there really is no major issue for nuclear power beyond what Glom calls FUD—fear, uncertainty and doubt.



Can nuclear power plants feasibly be used for industrial and manufacturing purposes?

Obviously yes; the electricity is just as good as from other sources. In fact, a switch to nuclear might drive prices down enough to make certain industries like Aluminum profitable in the US again.

Industry requiring steam in its processes can also use nuclear power directly, or hydrogen indirectly. In fact, a lot of industries would be ecstatic to have hydrogen-driven steam boilers, as they currently have emissions caps on other fuels that limit their factories’ uptime.

Also, it is important to note that nuclear power is important in hydrogen production not just to produce the electricity for electrolysis, but to provide high levels of heat to make electrolysis more efficient.

A final plus for hydrogen is that it may make renewable energy more economical. Currently the major limiting factor on wind power is that wind resources are often far beyond the range of existing transmission lines. If the wind farm was powering an on-site hydrogen facility, the energy could then be transported and sold elsewhere—simultaneously solving both the transmission problem and the wind variability issue.



There are a huge number of unanswered questions here, and so if someone says, "Problem solved," you'll pardon me if I am unpersuaded.
Well, the answers to your questions are not really hard to find. It is a common problem with messageboards, really; experts get tired of posting the same answers over and over, especially when you can Google them.

[Trantor]

I hear that Brazil is very close to being completely energy independent. Brazil has been working hard at converting their economy to ethanol since the energy crisis in the early 70's.

Their vehicles all run on ethanol, which they make from sugar cane and citrus peel. They make enough ethanol for their use and actually export what they don't need.

Brazil is also advancing very rapidly in nuclear technology and has one of the biggest uranium reserves in the world.

They are now in the process of building their own uranium enrichment plant. In the past, Brazil has had to ship their uranium for enrichment to Europe for processing. Yes, this is what Iran is currently in trouble for, but Brazil is staying under the radar. Not too many terrorists in Brazil it seems.

Brazil may be in good shape when things start heating up due to the coming energy crisis.

[Van Rijn]

Well, the concept that oil is a limited resource and that its availability will follow a simple bell curve, is not really open to debate, is it? I mean, it is a simple, easily understood fact. So, I'm not sure that Peak Oil as a concept needs to be debunked. It's not bad science.

What is open for debate is what we as a civilization are going to do about it. While Peak Oil isn't bad science, I do believe that much of the alarmist talk surrounding it is. To understand why I say this, try answering the following question.


Well, it depends what you mean by "peak oil." If you mean by that there will come a point of peak production of conventional fossil oil, well, yes, that's true. Along with that will be a shifting to more heavy oil, tar sands, oil shale, coal, quite possibly methane hydrates, along with nuclear and so-called "renewable" energy sources. Where transportation fuel comes from would shift over this time, as would demand, due to changing economics. This will continue to shift over time, until at some point all fossil fuels are out of the picture. There would still be oil for those things it is still needed for (lubrication, for instance) and whatever is the most convenient/economical/clean energy carrier medium (hydrogen, methane, methanol, whatever).

So rather than this proposed hopeless peak, you get a spread out period of shifting production and demand.

[Van Rijn]

Nonsense! (To adopt the rhetorical stance that unfortunately seems to be favored here.) How about demonstrating, in detail, how this is to be done? If peak oil is correct (I don’t insist that it must be correct, but I look at the data and find disturbing reasons to think that it might be) the problem is this: as soon as the peak of world oil production is passed, then by definition production declines year after year, even as demand is skyrocketing.


Except that production and demand would continue to shift as it does today. I expect there will be occasional temporary economic shocks, as there was in the '70s. That's when people buy different/more efficient cars, add insulation, change their actions. That's when companies and governments make a real effort to change production, do more R&D, change policy, etc.



What about agriculture? The green revolution, which has fed so much of the world, was made possible only by fossil fuels. Pesticides and fertilizers are made from massive fossil fuel inputs. What’s going to replace those inputs, if indeed peak oil takes place and fossil fuel production declines year after year? Are you going to make pesticides and fertilizers from hydrogen? Wind? Solar? Nuclear? How? Do tell.

Well, yes, you will make pesticides and fertilizers from hydrogen. Are you familiar with the Haber process (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process)? Today, hydrogen is split out of methane because hydrogen is such an important industrial chemical. You can go the other way, of course. If you have hydrogen and a carbon source you can make methane. Add oxygen and you get methanol. In a refinery, you can make any number of hydrocarbons, many types of "oil." See here, for example:

http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/HYDROGEN/hydrogen.html

Hydrogen is often used to "sweeten" heavy oil. Nuclear hydrogen production would be a good way to stretch oil supplies and help produce synfuels from coal.

I expect to see primary energy production shift over this century to nuclear, solar and related energy sources. For transportation, we will see a shifting to other fuels over time that can be easily integrated - increasing percentages of ethanol or methanol, for instance - that can be more easily be produced (note though, that it is quite possible to make synthetic gasoline). Eventually, we may see more direct use of hydrogen, though that isn't really necessary.

[publius]

David,

Ah, the coming peak oil catastrophe. As others have pointed out, history is packed with similiar doom and gloom predictions, with no way out seen at the time. Somehow, civilization finds a way.

Peak oil is based on equating on "oil" with "energy" (really "wealth", but it takes energy to make new wealth. We can't really say wealth = constant*energy though because it is a lot more complex than that, but for now we'll go with proportionality).

If we did reach peak energy, then we would indeed be screwed as all the peak oil arguments detail. Our economic system is based on exponential growth. In very crude terms, consider the old saying, "it takes money to make money". We get the money to make money by borrowing it, and borrowed money is really "created out of thin air" (many will balk at this statement, but when you deposit $100 in the bank, do they tell you can spend $10 of that because they're going to loan $90 of it out? No, this is "fractional reserve" banking, and $1 "seed" money balloons into, IIRC,
$1/(1 - r) total possible money. {EDIT: Whoops, if r is the reserve fraction, that is 1/r. r = 1 - q, where q is the fraction you can lend out}The original $1 is sometimes called "high powered money" by bankers and this 'r' is one of the main levers of control the Federal Reserve system uses).

At first blush, creating money out of nothing would seem inflationary. After all, inflation is "too much money chasing too few goods". Well, it is only inflationary if the increased money chases the same fixed amount of wealth. If the additional money can create more wealth to match, then it is not inflationary. In reality, some variation does a occur and a dollar is not a fixed "yardstick" for wealth, and that makes things more complicated to analyze, sort of like trying to build a house with a variable length ruler :-), so you can have both inflation and wealth creation. This is why its important to understand the difference between money and wealth. Money is a variable, not fixed, measure of wealth.

But for the system to work, you've got to keep the wealth increasing, and increasing at a certain minimum geometric (exponential) rate, depending on a variety of factors. the reserve fraction, 'r' above, as well as interest rates are important throttles on the process.

If wealth ever stopped increasing, then the system would collapse in a *deflationary* period (sort of like a "Big Crunch" following a Big Bang). The value of money would actually increase, but the supply would dwindle as a cascade of "loan foreclosure" process kicked in and shrunk the money supply. This is what a depression is as opposed to a recession.

To keep the wealth increasing geometrically, our energy consumption must increase geometrically as well (assuming wealth is directly proportional to energy as above, and for the most part it works this way -- you can make things more efficient, but the rate of increase remains exponential).

In light of this "energy conservation" (not in the law of physics sense, but the ecomomizing sense) seems silly. :-) If we ever did reduce our energy consumption, the system would collapse. What we really mean is "smarter, more efficient" use of energy, ie increase the constant of proportionality between wealth and energy.

Again, all the gloom and doom would be true if oil was the only source of energy we had left. It is not, and far from it. As existing oil gets scarcer, that expontential economic engine is going to generate enormous forces to find other sources of energy. In 500 years, I guarantee you'd wouldn't believe what happened. Energy consumption will have continued to increase exponentially, and the wealth ("stuff", if you will) that energy was turned in to will be wonderous.

-Richard

[davidm]

Thanks for all the interesting replies. I was struck by a few comments, such as this one:


Well, the answers to your questions are not really hard to find. It is a common problem with messageboards, really; experts get tired of posting the same answers over and over, especially when you can Google them.

It would be fascinating if we could Google away all our problems, wouldn’t it? As it happens I’ve done extensive Googling (as well as outside, old-fashioned reading) on this topic, and if it is “experts” that count, would David Goodstein, a physicist and vice-provost at the California Institute of Technology, count as an expert? If you think so, then perhaps you might wish to read this interview. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4287300/)

From the interview:


Is there a silver lining here?
I really don’t think so. If the peak comes and we can’t get our act together fast enough to make up for it, you will end up with people all over the world burning coal as fast as they can just for the space heating and primitive industry. And if you do that the effect on the climate is completely unpredictable.
I was also intrigued by this:

How is Peak Oil different from Peak Food? Way back in 1798 the respected economist Thomas Malthus made the simple (and scientifically correct) observation that population grows at an exponential rate, while food production grows linearly. That would be bad enough, but there is the additional observation that food production will peak (just like oil) as we reach the point where we have converted most of the good land into farms. Looking at his data, Malthus predicted that we had two generations left (let's say 60 years, or until the year 1858) before we hit a wall and ran out of food, after which there would be mass starvation.

Malthus was completely correct. What skewed his prediction was the arrival of cheap oil -- abundant amounts of nonrenewable condensed solar energy. Now, when we are past the peak of production of that stuff, we are going to have a problem. It’s a non sequitur to suppose that just because solutions have appeared in the past to daunting problems, that they will appear in the future. Perhaps they will; but to assume that they will is to engage in a bit of wishful thinking. Essentially, oil is a food supply, and you could say that for the past 100 years, we have been eating oil. So Malthus didn’t foresee this new food. But unlike real food, oil food is nonrenewable. You can’t plant a new oil crop every year.

And there is this:

Again, all the gloom and doom would be true if oil was the only source of energy we had left. It is not, and far from it. As existing oil gets scarcer, that expontential economic engine is going to generate enormous forces to find other sources of energy. In 500 years, I guarantee you'd wouldn't believe what happened. Energy consumption will have continued to increase exponentially, and the wealth ("stuff", if you will) that energy was turned in to will be wonderous.
This is the mantra of eternal and exponential growth, the econometric view might call it, and even in the absence of peak oil, I suggest it is a dangerous fantasy. As Jim Kunstler writes in his book The Long Emergency, (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871138883/103-8255277-5955848?v=glance&n=283155) “If we project housing starts ninety-nine years forward at current rates, there wouldn’t be a single buildable quarter-acre lot left in the world.” Yes, I know, perhaps we will expand outward into space colonies. And now we can see the flip side to the comment above, about discussions of peak food or discussions fifty years ago about peak oil: while it’s true those things didn’t come to pass, it’s also true that many things we anticipate or plan for don’t come to pass, either. Fifty years ago, it was believed that by the year 2000, we would have colonies on the moon and perhaps Mars, and we would have computers as intelligent as people. None of that came to pass, did it?

The couterexamples to the threat of peak oil mooted thus far in this discussion lead me to believe that skeptics are often skeptical about everything but their own presuppositions. There is also a tinge of enthrallment to scientism in the remarks thus far, and in the belief that technology can rescue us from every problem. Yet there is no reason to believe this is so.

Ah, the coming peak oil catastrophe. As others have pointed out, history is packed with similiar doom and gloom predictions, with no way out seen at the time. Somehow, civilization finds a way.
It does? History is jam-packed with the collapse of civilizations. In fact, arguably, history is one long record of civilizational collapse! It’s true that civilizations then re-emerge, but there is certainly nothing in history to suggest a linear progression of historic change pointing onward and upward forevermore.

Let me quickly address one earlier point:



Originally Posted by davidmAs to coal, it’s possibly true that we have a hundred, maybe even a couple of hundred, of year’s worth of the stuff lying in the ground. But this assumes current levels of demand and extraction. If we are forced to go to coal big-time, then the amount of time that coal will last will drop dramatically, almost certainly to a few decades.
Do you have any data to back up this claim?
I think the coal-industry cheerleaders say we have about 200 years’ worth of coal left in the ground, and that page to which Van Rijn linked claims that we 800 years of it left. Who’s right? Do you know? I don’t. But here’s the point: the predicted level of coal in the ground must rely on some assumption of demand, extraction and production. I presume those who give highi-end figures for number of years’ left of coal in the ground are relying on current demand, extraction and production rates. But if they aren’t, it behooves them to tell us what model they are using. Because it’s obvious that when we are talking about the number of years left for an available substance, this is a a variable, and the value you plug into that variable will change depending on behavior. If I have a bowl of ten apples (we’ll assume they’re magic non-rotting apples), and my demand for apples is one apple a year, then I’ve got a ten-year supply of apples. Great! But if my demand for apples is one a day, then I’ve got a ten-day supply. Not so great! Surely it’s obvious that the same is going to be the case with coal, or with anything else. Of course, if we didn’t extract any coal at all, then by golly, we’ve practically got an infinite number of years of coal left! The perfect solution to our energy crisis (provided we don’t actually use the energy.)

I hear that Brazil is very close to being completely energy independent. Brazil has been working hard at converting their economy to ethanol since the energy crisis in the early 70's.

Their vehicles all run on ethanol, which they make from sugar cane and citrus peel. They make enough ethanol for their use and actually export what they don't need.
You might wish to read Research shows ethanol isn’t worth the energy. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8607389/)

Finally, let me stress that I don’t wish to defend any particular thesis, which is why I said earlier that I’m not interested in having arguments -- though what I mainly meant there is that I’m not interested in engaging with the “let’s you and I argue” adversarial stance that is so characteristic of message boards (though notably absent in the latest replies, thankfully). I grant it’s certainly possible that technological marvels and innovation driven by necessity can do a lot of good. But we must remember that the Peak Oil scenario has interlocking propositions: That we are at or near the peak of global oil production, and that there is no near-term magic bullet that will let us switch over from an oil-dependent world to a non-oil dependent one. So, even if it were true that, for example, we could ramp up dozens, if not hundreds of nuclear power plants, and that these power plants could be used to make hydrogen, and that this hydrogen could be used to power mass fleets of cars and trucks and so forth, we must remember that we are nowhere near such a state of affairs; that this enormous change-over and retrofitting of our economy will obviously cost hundreds of billions of dollars; and there are still many, many unsolved technical problems, in particular with making hydrogen scalable to a mass industrial society and affordable. (Suppose it turns out that you can build a hydrogen car, but not within a price range that makes it economical to mass produce?)

Now while Peak Oil people may be dismissed as alarmist, they ask a simple question: Given that we are very far away from some dream of a nuclear hydrogen economy, and given that peak oil may well be real and upon us, how are we going to get from “here” to “there” in a world that is relentlessly economically contracting year after year? That is the peril of peak oil. And it has happened before. The last time was during the oil shocks of the 70s. What happened then was American peak oil happened in 1970, and we were no longer self-sufficient in the stuff. And then OPEC embargoed the stuff, and we had a huge crisis. We had soaring gas prices and lines at the service stations and a steep recession. Of course, the crisis was artificial, because of the embargo. Now the peak oil crowd is simply pointing out that if global peak production is real, we are going to have the 70s oil shocks return with a vengeance, and this time the crisis will not be artificial, but real: no OPEC will be embargoing us, but rather nature itself. Therefore the crisis will be permanent and it will worsen with time.

[Argos]

You might wish to read Research shows ethanol isn’t worth the energy. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8607389/)

Corn, grass, wood... The [somewhat superficial] article says nothing about sugar cane [specially the GM varieties], which is the base of the Brazilian ethanol program. The Brazilian experience in this respect is huge, and should not be dismissed as a vanity or a delusion. Brazil just achieved energy self-sufficiency based on these "false premises".

[davidm]

More detailed information (http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/ethanol.toocostly.ssl.html) about the above study.

Of course these things can change, but it's the classic problemof Energy Returned Over Energy Invested: in the old days of oil, which jumpstarted industrial civilization, the ration was 30:1, which meant you got 30 barrels of oil for every barrel used to get at the stuff. Today, I believe, the ratio is less than 2:1. Other energy sources are EROEI losers, meaning that it takes more energy to make or get the stuff than you output, rendering it ultimately wortheless.

[Argos]

Living in an ethanol economy I cannot be convinced by that study, I´m sorry, else I´ll have to conclude that we´re a nation of losers. Empirical evidence has shown that Ethanol economy is viable. Any study that does not take into account the Brazilian experience must be flawed.

[davidm]

Here is a New York Times article (http://www.treepower.org/news/nytethanol2006.html) on Brazil and ethanol. This is good news, but it does look as if Brazil's experience could be anomalous. It looks as if sugar cane is needed to do what needs to be done.

[Argos]

Yeah, I´d agree that Brazil is an anomaly in the sense that the country has an almost perfect combination of territorial magnitude and climate for an ethanol economy based on sugar cane. As I said before, GM sugar cane makes all the difference.

[Bynaus]

These are some very interesting replies and thoughts to the "peak oil" problem.

I think, there will be ways that civilization will go down to "survive" as a whole. The biggest loosers of peak oil will be - once again - the least developped countries with no access to oil. Their underdevelopped economies may collapse under the high oil prices, malthusian catastrophes are very possible there. Countries that aren't able to feed themselves may face enormous problems, especially because oil is widly used as fertilizer. "Globalization" may come to a sudden end with skyrocketing oil prices, the same may be true for mass toursim. Off course, in the long term, everything will recover - but I do not expect a smooth transition to a global post-oil economy.

[pghnative]

Living in an ethanol economy I cannot be convinced by that study, I´m sorry, else I´ll have to conclude that we´re a nation of losers. Empirical evidence has shown that Ethanol economy is viable. Any study that does not take into account the Brazilian experience must be flawed.While I disagree with the OP, it should be pointed out that according to this site (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/brazenv.html), most of Brazil's energy still comes from fossil fuels, with ~ 13% coming from renewable sources. (The data is a few years old, but surely the percentages would not change dramatically in under 5 years)

[Argos]

Most of Brazil´s energy comes from hydroelectric plants. Ethanol makes up about 20% of the fuel consumption of the automobile fleet. Still there is a mature ethanol economy: A heavy industry that makes alcohol distilleries and flexible car engines; research; technology; distribution network and customers.

[Demigrog]

Now, when we are past the peak of production of that stuff, we are going to have a problem.

Only if we assume that nobody knows the problem is coming and nobody is preparing alternatives… a poor assumption.



It’s a non sequitur to suppose that just because solutions have appeared in the past to daunting problems, that they will appear in the future. Perhaps they will; but to assume that they will is to engage in a bit of wishful thinking.

Many people are engaged in actually solving the problem, not just thinking about it. We already have all of the technologies we need to switch from a fossil fuel economy to a nuclear/renewable/hydrogen transport economy. It is now entirely a question of economics, and the rising oil and natural gas prices are quickly making alternative energy profitable. Clean coal technology will also play a key role in the mid-term (though we’ll still have the environmental problems associated with mining it), easing the transition from oil and natural gas.



The couterexamples to the threat of peak oil mooted thus far in this discussion lead me to believe that skeptics are often skeptical about everything but their own presuppositions. There is also a tinge of enthrallment to scientism in the remarks thus far, and in the belief that technology can rescue us from every problem. Yet there is no reason to believe this is so.

Well, in the particular case of our energy supply, technology does have a solution—a quite good one—in nuclear power.



I think the coal-industry cheerleaders say we have about 200 years’ worth of coal left in the ground, and that page to which Van Rijn linked claims that we 800 years of it left. Who’s right?

Like oil reserves, coal reserves are difficult to quantify, and improved mining technology keeps raising our estimates. Various methods of predicting our future coal demand (with inherent assumptions about what we use coal for—synthetic fuel production for example would dramatically increase coal consumption), but almost all models I’ve seen give us more than a hundred years; obviously we’ll have switched to nuclear for the bulk of our energy production by then. So, running out of coal is something of a non-issue.



But we must remember that the Peak Oil scenario has interlocking propositions: That we are at or near the peak of global oil production, and that there is no near-term magic bullet that will let us switch over from an oil-dependent world to a non-oil dependent one.

Which is fine, because it is not a near-term problem (defining near-term as now to 2020)



So, even if it were true that, for example, we could ramp up dozens, if not hundreds of nuclear power plants, and that these power plants could be used to make hydrogen, and that this hydrogen could be used to power mass fleets of cars and trucks and so forth, we must remember that we are nowhere near such a state of affairs; that this enormous change-over and retrofitting of our economy will obviously cost hundreds of billions of dollars; and there are still many, many unsolved technical problems, in particular with making hydrogen scalable to a mass industrial society and affordable.

All of these various issues are being addressed. A good central place to start looking is www.hydrogen.gov.

If we had to implement the changes by 2010, I’d say we had our work cut out for us. Fortunately, we have a lot longer than that. The US department of energy roadmap for hydrogen vehicles has commercialization by 2020. If we finish the switch to a hydrogen economy by 2050, we’ll be fine and have time to spare as far as oil supply is concerned. (greenhouse gasses are another issue, of course, where we might be too late already)



(Suppose it turns out that you can build a hydrogen car, but not within a price range that makes it economical to mass produce?)

There are challenges at the moment on fuel cell cost and durability, but nothing indicates that we won’t meet the challenges. Again I refer you to www.hydrogen.gov.



Now while Peak Oil people may be dismissed as alarmist, they ask a simple question: Given that we are very far away from some dream of a nuclear hydrogen economy,

Define “very far away”. 2020 isn’t all that far away.



given that peak oil may well be real and upon us,

It is real, but it’s a stretch to say it is upon us. Prices are high right now because of growing demand, not shrinking supply.



How are we going to get from “here” to “there” in a world that is relentlessly economically contracting year after year?

I’m curious as to why peak oil would cause the economy any real problems. Oil prices rise, our economy will adapt by finding alternative energy sources and changing our consumption pattern. Heck, the environmental crowd is ecstatic right now—rising gas prices is a major step towards reversing urban sprawl and wasteful energy practices. Public transit usage is already growing dramatically. The alarmist aspect of peak oil seems to be assuming that our economy is incapable of change. That is a rather odd view, given how little time it took to create the oil economy in the first place. Really, you could say that our economy is based on change. Switching to a hydrogen economy will create literally a whole new economic sector—that is how a market economy manages “eternal growth”—it simply creates new markets when the old ones are mature.



That is the peril of peak oil. And it has happened before. The last time was during the oil shocks of the 70s. What happened then was American peak oil happened in 1970, and we were no longer self-sufficient in the stuff. And then OPEC embargoed the stuff, and we had a huge crisis. We had soaring gas prices and lines at the service stations and a steep recession. Of course, the crisis was artificial, because of the embargo.

And you’re missing the key difference—the embargo caused oil supply to drop over night whereas peak oil is a long, gradual process.

[pghnative]

Most of Brazil´s energy comes from hydroelectric plants.
Electrical energy, maybe, but not energy overall. From the linked site

Petroleum accounts for about 51% of Brazil's total energy consumption, hydroelectric power 31%, renewable energy sources 13%, natural gas 4%, and nuclear 1.7%. Nevertheless, I do agree that Brazil's sizeable ethanol contribution (13% or more) is an example of the direction that civilized society would move when oil prices continue to rise.

[Trantor]

The figure on the percentage of Ethanol is different on different sites. The Seattle Times recently ran a report that put it at 40%. I believe this is the same figure used by CNN on a report last week.

Goggle it and you will find a lot of different numbers.

80% of all new vehicles sold in Brazil in 2005 were "flex fuel". They can use gasoline, ethanol, or a mix.

All gas stations in Brazil are required to sell ethanol. The price of ethanol in Brazil is currently 98 cents a gallon.

The US has been slow at developing alternate energy sources. Brazil has been working on this problem for three decades. I believe that it would be wise to put some serious money into ethanol for vehicle use. A solar panel on every new home built would also help the energy grid.

The main thing is to stop the talk and take action.

[Argos]

Pghnative, this (outdated - 1996) site seems to give a better information on the petroleum/electricity consumption down here. Alcohol contributed with 4% to the overall consumption then [1996 was one of the worst for the alcohol business in the last 30 years]. Currently it makes up about 20% of automobile fuel consumption, as I said above.

http://ecen.com/content/eee3/finale.htm#Final%20Energy%20Consumption%20by%20Sou rce%20-%20%

[Van Rijn]

cheap oil[/I] -- abundant amounts of nonrenewable condensed solar energy. Now, when we are past the peak of production of that stuff, we are going to have a problem. It’s a non sequitur to suppose that just because solutions have appeared in the past to daunting problems, that they will appear in the future. Perhaps they will; but to assume that they will is to engage in a bit of wishful thinking. Essentially, oil is a food supply, and you could say that for the past 100 years, we have been eating oil. So Malthus didn’t foresee this new food. But unlike real food, oil food is nonrenewable. You can’t plant a new oil crop every year.


Let's clear a few things up: First, nuclear technology is well established, available when we want it, and not terribly expensive. As I mentioned previously, if you have hydrogen, you can make oil, or fertilizer, or whatever it is you want.

So, yes, you can plant a new oil crop every year. There's a number of ways to do it, but the key issue is having the energy input. And we have that.

On to Malthus: There are several problems with Malthus. One is assuming that humans won't ever change their breeding habits. We're seeing that disproved in many places today, with general population growth dropping from the scare stories a couple decades ago, and dropping below replacement levels in a number of countries.

Other issues are ignoring technological and economic growth. While increased population certainly has negative aspects, it also has positive ones: More scientists, more engineers, more research. Increased production with growing productivity multipliers. The type of development you used to see in the so-called "industrial nations" is spreading to a much larger part of the world's population in countries like India and China. You get good and bad out of that. There are problems, but there are more people looking for solutions.

Obviously, population growth on the planet has to stop at some point. There are also limits to energy use: Eventually, if you had the world population using many times the current U.S. per capita energy budget, you would start to get some significant waste heat. We will continue to have issues and continue to have to make choices. So what else is new?

Now, fine, I agree we shouldn't assume that every problem we will face can be solved. On the other hand, we shouldn't assume problems can't be solved when we can see obvious ways they can be.

[davidm]

You can make oil from hydrogen? I'm not sure how that is supposed to work.

In any event, it remains to be seen what will be done. At the present time, we haven't built any new nuclear power plants in decades. If we want to restart the nuclear industry, we are going to have to figure out how many plants we need, where they will be sited and how waste will be disposed of. If nucelar power is going to be a replacement for fossil fuels, it is likely that we are going to need a rather large number of plants. We are also going to have to figure out a way to adapt the technology to run manufacturing processes and propel vehicles. While I can't say any of this is impossible, there look to be quite a number of difficult problems here. The peak oil thesis is that these problems will be greatly exacerbated by depletion, because at least in th immediate term this implies sharply contracting economies.

It's true that peak oil, unlike the 70s embargo, isn't going to literally happen overnight. But it will happen rather fast, after peak is reached. The key question becomes whether peak is near. Of course, maybe improved methods for extracting oil and the like will put peak off for x number of years. But it can't put it off forever, and then the problem will be upon us. I'd like to share the optimism expressed by some in this thread, but I don't really feel it.

[pghnative]

You can make oil from hydrogen? I'm not sure how that is supposed to work.
You chemically react the hydrogen with a carbon source. For instance:

CO2 + 4H2 + Energy ----> CH4 + 2H2O

That is, carbon dioxide + hydrogen and energy (e.g. from electrical heat) gives methane (prime component of natural gas) and water.

Similarly you can synthesize ethane (C2H6) propane (C3H8), and on and on. More expensive than taking oil and using distillation to separate out the various components, but technologically very feasible.

[davidm]

You chemically react the hydrogen with a carbon source. For instance:

CO2 + 4H2 + Energy ----> CH4 + 2H2O

That is, carbon dioxide + hydrogen and energy (e.g. from electrical heat) gives methane (prime component of natural gas) and water.

Similarly you can synthesize ethane (C2H6) propane (C3H8), and on and on. More expensive than taking oil and using distillation to separate out the various components, but technologically very feasible.

Do you have any links discussing the prospects and commercialization of this process?

What I find is that it is very difficult to get consistent information on this topic that everyone agrees with. It seems to be the case that depending on what you are disposed to believe about peak oil and its ramifications, you will latch on to different sets of assumptions and data. For instance, in this thread we find:


Uranium is everywhere - in granite, in seawater. Because it is a high density energy source, the cost of produced energy is relatively insensitive to the cost of uranium production. Even with current generation nuclear reactors and with minor increases in production cost, there are centuries of uranium available.



But not according to this article. (http://afr.com/articles/2005/06/23/1119321845502.html)

From the article:


If [nuclear power] supplied the world with all its electricity, then the total quantity of useful ores on the planet would be sufficient to keep the nuclear industry going for just six years. If, in addition, the world's road and rail transport fleet were to be run on hydrogen derived from nuclear power, then the useful life of the industry would be about two years.

[davidm]

Some of you may also be interested in this report (http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/The_Hirsch_Report_Proj_Cens.pdf) prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy. From the concluding remarks:


The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation
more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will
not be temporary. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil)
were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.

[pghnative]

Do you have any links discussing the prospects and commercialization of this process?
I guess I mis-understood your original question. I'm not claiming that it is currently commercializable, or that anyone has done extensive research into it. I was just answering the question of how one creates oil (aka hydrocarbons, aka alkanes) from hydrogen. You chemically synthesize it.

[Van Rijn]

You can make oil from hydrogen? I'm not sure how that is supposed to work.


Are you reading my posts? See here:

http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?p=730977&postcount=29



In any event, it remains to be seen what will be done. At the present time, we haven't built any new nuclear power plants in decades.


In the U.S. That isn't true in other countries.



If we want to restart the nuclear industry, we are going to have to figure out how many plants we need, where they will be sited and how waste will be disposed of.


We know how to handle the waste. That is a political problem, not a technical one. As for how many plants: You build to meet need.



If nucelar power is going to be a replacement for fossil fuels, it is likely that we are going to need a rather large number of plants. We are also going to have to figure out a way to adapt the technology to run manufacturing processes and propel vehicles.


If you can produce hydrogen, you have it.



It's true that peak oil, unlike the 70s embargo, isn't going to literally happen overnight. But it will happen rather fast, after peak is reached. The key question becomes whether peak is near. Of course, maybe improved methods for extracting oil and the like will put peak off for x number of years. But it can't put it off forever, and then the problem will be upon us. I'd like to share the optimism expressed by some in this thread, but I don't really feel it.

I see a period of many decades of shifting production and demand. I don't see a "peak oil" scenario at all.

[Van Rijn]

Do you have any links discussing the prospects and commercialization of this process?


Bacteria in your gut produce methane from hydrogen and CO2. As previously stated, hydrogen is already used massively as an industrial chemical. Also, refineries can produce a huge variety of products given methane or other hydrocarbons. Gasoline and denser hydrocarbons ("oils") can certainly be done. The point is we have much of the infrastructure for processing these chemicals already. Obviously, we aren't going to be doing some processes today commercially because we don't need to.

[davidm]

I did read your post, Van Rijn, which is why I asked for some examples of commercial investigation. Your link said:


A subject of much current interest in chemistry is the conversion of synthesis gas (CO + H2) to other products such as methanol (equation 5) and liquid hydrocarbons (equation 6). These substances could be used as synthetic fuels, such as substitutes for gasoline.

Well, all right. This is interesting. But it's a subject of current interest, and now we must see how it would be carried out on a mass scale. Are there more details or resources about this?

As to nuclear-hydrogen, did you read the link to the Australian Financial Review article?

Also, since you say you don't see a peak oil scenario at all, did you take a look at the report I linked to that was commissioned by the U.S. Dept. of Energy? The authors certainly do see a peak oil scenario, and caution that we are going to have real trouble absent a crash mitigation program at least a decade or two in advance of the actual peak.

[pghnative]

I did read your post, Van Rijn, which is why I asked for some examples of commercial investigation. <nitpick>No, you initially simply asked "You can make oil from hydrogen? I'm not sure how that is supposed to work". It was only after I lobbed some basic chemistry into the thread that you started asking about commercializability.</nitpick>

[TheBlackCat]

Also, since you say you don't see a peak oil scenario at all, did you take a look at the report I linked to that was commissioned by the U.S. Dept. of Energy? The authors certainly do see a peak oil scenario, and caution that we are going to have real trouble absent a crash mitigation program at least a decade or two in advance of the actual peak.
Uh, according to your sources the peak is supposed to happen sometime between 2005 and 2007. It is now near the middle of 2006, it is a little late to set up a decade-long program considering we have at most 19 months (if your sources are correct). We'll see in a year whether the peak prediction was correct or not.

[davidm]

<nitpick>No, you initially simply asked "You can make oil from hydrogen? I'm not sure how that is supposed to work". It was only after I lobbed some basic chemistry into the thread that you started asking about commercializability.</nitpick>

<nitpick1>No, I did read it, and found it unimpressive. It remains for you to flesh out the details.</nitpick1>

<nitpick2>I won't respond to "message-boarditits", that peculilar syndrome that likes to make people argumentative for the sake of argument.</nitpick2>:naughty:

Those nitpicks out of the way, how about the nitpick that no one seems to be responding to the links I have provided that are not (as might be convenient) to the ravings of of nosering-wearing, back-to-the-earth alarm freaks, but rather to sober people, including a person who prepared a 91-page report for the U.S. Department of Energy warning of grave, unprecedented problems lying ahead? A financial writer who explained the practical limitations of using uranium, no matter how much of the stuff is lying around? Warnings from a professor physics and vice provost at Cal Tech? Who, by the way, gives another interview here. (http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~frank/BerkeleyGroks_Goodstein.htm)

From the interview:


in order to make enough nuclear energy to replace all of fossil fuel we burn today, you would have to build ten thousand of the largest nuclear plants possible. Ten thousand, that's not impossible but it is certainly a daunting task. Even if you did that, the known uranium reserves would last at that burn rate for only one or two decades.

Also notice:


Economists tend to think that the universe is ruled by price. When the price is high enough, something will come along. But the laws of economics never trump the laws of physics.

[davidm]

Uh, according to your sources the peak is supposed to happen sometime between 2005 and 2007.

Uh, right. That's the point. That's why I started this thread. Once again, notice that the model used to predict peak oil has worked in the past. It worked most famously in the case of the U.S., in which the model was used, in the 1950s, to correctly predict U.S. peak oil in 1970. It came off like clockwork.

Of course everyone understands that there are unknown variables and so peak may happen later, but I don't think anyone who has studied the matters disagrees that it will happen. And, also, see my last post.

[davidm]

I think this page (http://www.oilposter.org/posterlarge-x.html) graphically illustrates the situation. Scroll down a few screens to see readable type. If you scroll down far enough you’ll see the Energy Returned Over Energy Invested rates for the various sources of energy. In 1930 oil yielded 100 times more energy than was invested to produce it. This incredible ratio is precisely what made the modern world possible. Today the rate is 20 to 1, and much lower depending on the oil field. Notice how low the EROEI is for all the other alternative energy sources.

Perhaps that can change with new technology, but perhaps not. That’s one of the big worries. If new technology was all that was necessary, one would think that the energy yield of oil would be greater than ever, but it’s falling all the time. It’s true that new technology has probably prevented it from falling lower still, but the main point is that new technology is not going to defeat the laws of physics. Of course if EROEI falls to 1:1 you have an energy sink.

The worry among those fearing peak oil is that the fossil fuel endowment can’t be replicated by any plausibly understood means in terms of EROEI. If it can’t, we can’t possibly keep the world’s industrial-tech sector going the way we have, never mind accounting for the growth that is necessary to make this system work. If the world doesn’t grow every year then the whole thing collapses like a house of cards as soon as there is not enough growth to pay back loans, if nothing else. I might add that there is a process, thermal depolymerization, that basically turns junk to oil, but it doesn’t look very scalable and has a low EROEI. Maybe that will change, who knows?

[folkhemmet]

One of the worries here is that the infrastructure in developed countries is based upon the assumption that there will always be a cheap supply of oil. It is not clear that we will be able to sustain the rates of growth (e.g. 6% more cars, computers, etc.) immediately after the oil supply runs out. The oil supply will run out--the question is when. The problem is that not enough R & D has been going into developing alternative energy sources THAT WILL BE ABLE TO TAKE THE PLACE OF OIL ON A SCALE NECESSARY TO SUSTAIN CURRENT LEVELS OF GROWTH AND CONSUMPTION.

Indefinite growth and consumption should not be the sole goal of humanity anyway. Conservation and rational social planning should be the goal. Instead of more growth and consumption we should reorganize the economic system so as to make sure the needs of people who are already here are being met in a sustainable manner. Centers of wealth and power need to be challenged and dismantled if necessary. Ultimately, it would be good for humans and the planet for the human population to reach a steady state in the midst of a just and sustainable world. All this should be capable for a society that was able to put men on the moon in a decade.

[TheBlackCat]

Of course everyone understands that there are unknown variables and so peak may happen later, but I don't think anyone who has studied the matters disagrees that it will happen. And, also, see my last post.
They question is when the peak will happen, small changes in the peaks of key countries can have a massive impact on when the peak will occur and how serious the drop-off will be. If their peak dates are unreliable then their conclusions regarding the severity and time scale of the problems are even more unreliable.

Notice how the plot of oil supply looks roughly like a normal distribution. Moving the peak, say 10 year into the future will result in pushing everything beyond the peak back by 20 years. That makes a huge difference to how it impacts the world economy. Notice that besides the US none of the types of oil listed have peaked yet. You dismiss issues regarding the uncertainties in the time frame, but the time frame is critical to the impact it will have. 10 years can completely change the technology we have available, and it may very well be more than that. Note that they say that estimates of the oil peak range between 2005 (which is no longer possible) and "beyond" 2025 (who knows how far beyond). A peak at 2025 will push things back by about 35 years, a huge amount of time in terms of technology. Obviously there is not much agreement on the time frame here, which is absolutely essential to determining how well we will be able to cope with it. They also don't seem very sure about how quickly it will fall off after the peak.

The EROI of coal is 50% higher than that of oil, hydropower is half oil,. Nuclear looks to be about 1/3 of oil today, yet it makes up only 2% of the world energy production. As I said before, the more of something you do the cheaper it becomes. Expanding nuclear power, or any power source, would reduce costs, and oil would have a far lower EROI if it wasn't so popular.

And no one says we should only use nuclear power, the idea is to make nuclear fission central to a much more diversified power production and distribution system. That is assuming fusion isn't working by that point, which would solve all our problems.

[Demigrog]

They question is when the peak will happen, small changes in the peaks of key countries can have a massive impact on when the peak will occur and how serious the drop-off will be. If their peak dates are unreliable then their conclusions regarding the severity and time scale of the problems are even more unreliable.

More to the point, the "peaks" of individual countries have little actual relation to overall oil production or reserves. Consider that the OPEC nations are artificially limiting their production to keep prices high, and the US production has only dropped off because it is cheaper to import it than produce it domestically (like practically every thing else). Supply is merely shifting around to the cheapest sources. That is not to say that supply is unlimited, but it is certainly not going to dry up before we can deal with the issue. Prices will rise, obviously, but not catastrophically.



And no one says we should only use nuclear power

Actually, I'd say that. :) With a few exceptions where geography or logistics limit options, Gen IV nuclear power is by far the best choice environmentally and economically. We might get some mileage out of residential solar PV, but it'd be a drop in the bucket of total energy demand. Wind farms, coal mines, and industrial scale solar power all have significant environmental downsides.

[ASEI]

Malthus was completely correct. I don't see how Malthus could have been correct. It should be obvious that food production is proportional to the amount of effort put into cultivating it, with an upper bound on the total available arable land (which we're nowhere near hitting). Theres nothing linear about that. Food production is proportional to the population farming food and the percentage of our population that we put to it. Seeing as how he was completely wrong, empirically, I don't see why people still insist on his rectitude. Same with Ehrlich and the population bomb.


US production has only dropped off because it is cheaper to import it than produce it domestically (like practically every thing else). One of the only reason's it's cheaper to import it is NIMBY and the costs of having protesters shut down your multi-million$ refinery/drilling program. Sort of like having random lawsuits shut down your multi-million$ reactor that you thought you had legal permission to operate.

[davidm]

More to the point, the "peaks" of individual countries have little actual relation to overall oil production or reserves. Consider that the OPEC nations are artificially limiting their production to keep prices high...

Do you have evidence to support this? Several OPEC nations have passed peak, and the Saudis appear to be pumping full blast, according to the best available data. The New York Times Sunday Magazine discussed this in detail last August.


...and the US production has only dropped off because it is cheaper to import it than produce it domestically (like practically every thing else).

Nope. Would that it were so. But's it's not. U.S. production hit peak in 1970. That was the halfway point of all the recoverable oil we had sitting under ground owned or occupied by the U.S. No one disputes this. There is an extensive literature on this subject. Moreover, global peak oil discovery took place in 1964.



Actually, I'd say that. :) With a few exceptions where geography or logistics limit options, Gen IV nuclear power is by far the best choice environmentally and economically. We might get some mileage out of residential solar PV, but it'd be a drop in the bucket of total energy demand. Wind farms, coal mines, and industrial scale solar power all have significant environmental downsides.

But then someone needs to address the points raised that if you retrofit the entire U.S. fossil fuel economy to go nuclear, you'd need to build ten thousand power plants and you'd have a burn rate at those plants of two decades based on economically viable recoverable uranium. Honestly, I can't imagine any scenario under which we are going to build anything remotely like 10,000 nuclear power plants. And if we do pass peak oil, there is no magic bullet solution to retrofit the mining-metallurgy-delivering-construction process of nuclear power plants to make them non-oil-based, as oil is the platform for all of this!

As to other replies:

Malthus may have been wrong in detail, and this is partly because he lacked data (such as the existence of a miracle substance called oil that in its early days returned 200 units of energy for every 1 unit invested) but he was right in the big picture. The world is finite. Therefore human growth must stop at some point. Right now, capitalism describes a picture in which growth rates must be between 3 and 7 percent each year just to keep running in place. Obviously this can't go on, on a finite planet. It can't go on even without peak oil. It most especially can't, and won't, go on with peak oil.

Perhaps it's true that we're not quite at peak, and peak will be pushed down the road. So what? This isn't going to rescue us. The idea that technology is going to rescue us is simply a non-starter. This confuses two different things: technology and energy. We've got oodles of technology right now. What we are going to have a problem with is not technology, but energy. If the lights go out, your wonderful piece of PC technology is nothing but a hunk of junk. It's even worse than a hunk of junk, because you can't eat it.

Fusion looks to be a pipe dream. We've been trying to build fusion plants since the 50s and the process is still an energy loser. Maybe that will change, but based on the track record, why should we have any confidence that it will change?

We can have a diversified economy based on wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectrics, nuclear and the like. The catch is that it will be a fraction of the economy today, and even this assumes that we can run this complicated and highly refined machinery absent a robust fossil-fueld platform. As of now, we couldn't. Unless someone comes up with a miracle -- zero point energy? -- then after peak, we are going to have to change our priorities. As someone wrote at another site on this matter, if we plan intelligently now, there is no reason that our grandkids can't have an 1800 life style.

[TheBlackCat]

Fusion looks to be a pipe dream. We've been trying to build fusion plants since the 50s and the process is still an energy loser. Maybe that will change, but based on the track record, why should we have any confidence that it will change?
So? Just because we haven't reached the break-even point yet does not mean we never will. There has been a lot of progress. The early reactors had extreme energy losses. We are now near the break-even point. There is no reason to think we won't surpass it if we continue the research.

[Ilya]

Malthus may have been wrong in detail, and this is partly because he lacked data (such as the existence of a miracle substance called oil that in its early days returned 200 units of energy for every 1 unit invested) but he was right in the big picture.
No, Malthus was wrong because he assumed human beings are incapable of NOT reproducing. That was not a "detail", but a fundamental basis of his argument.

[eburacum45]

I'm sorry, but I refuse to contenance an 1800 lifestyle. For the majority of the population in that era life was uncomfortable and short.

However we can certainly live more efficiently; one great tool that should enable this is sitting on your desk right now. Computers, internet communications, working from home, home based entetainment; all these things could work together to reduce the mileage travelled by people to and from work and for leisure. Energy conservation measures of many kinds can reduce energy use by individuals, and (I am sure) in the commercial world this is also true. Efficiently designed local industry and food production could cut down on movement of commodities around our planet.

But we will still need energy; if the entire world has a comfortable but sustainable lifestyle there will still be a fairly large demand for power. Coal and oil will last long enough to allow a move to an intermediate nuclear powered economy. Fission will last as long as there are economically recoverable reserves of uranium and thorium; it seems entirely possible that breeder reactors are a feasible technology, and such plants will extend the useful reserves of fissionable elements for another hundred years or more (given the somewhat reduced demand I suggested earlier).

But eventually fissionable elements will become uneconomic to mine and process. Unless fusion becomes available (which actually I believe will happen, but this may be misplaced optimism) we will have to rely on renewable sources of energy. Two hundred years from now we will probably be relying on solar power collection of various kinds (incidentally this is becoming 4% cheaper each year, and eventually could be the dominant source of usable energy on our planet) - wind power, biofuels- (two hundred years of genetic engineering could make this as efficient everywhere as it is in Brazil); also, wind power, wave power, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion...
there is a lot of renewable energy potential.

At the end of the day the Sun puts out a trillion times as much energy as we use at the moment- given some of the wilder schemes we could end up using a significant fraction of that, and (as Van Rijn suggested) our main problem will be waste heat, not global warming. Obviously the Earth cannot continue to increase its energy use forever, as we would be cooked; the population also cannot grow in an unlimited fashion.
But there could be enough renewable energy available to enable a world population similar in numbers to the present figure to have a comfortable, relatively efficient, hi-tech lifestyle without regressing to an '1800 world'.

[Squashed]

If [nuclear power] supplied the world with all its electricity, then the total quantity of useful ores on the planet would be sufficient to keep the nuclear industry going for just six years. If, in addition, the world's road and rail transport fleet were to be run on hydrogen derived from nuclear power, then the useful life of the industry would be about two years.

Here's the thing with nuclear fission power: isotopes. America currently uses U235 to create electricity. U235 is the stuff that atomic bombs are made from - the fissionable kind. U235 is the rare isotope of uranium, the plentiful isotope is U238 or "spent uranium". Spent uranium is the stuff we make ballistic projectiles from because it is more dense and packs more punch when delivered at the same velocity as lead. U238 is non-fissile and therefore unusable for nuclear power generation.

In a breeder reactor U238 can be converted into Pu239 - plutonium, which is fissile. Breeder reactors are more expensive and dangerous to operate than U235 reactors. That being said Canada has their CANDU reactors which are heavy water reactors that can use U238 because breeder permutations occur to convert the U238 to Pu239 which then fissions to produce power. It is a very elegant solution and attractive alternative to breeder reactors unfortunately heavy water is expensive to isolate which makes the operation of a CANDU reactor more expensive (but less expensive than the breeder reactor solution). So economics prevents the U.S.A. from using this technology.

There is enough U238 in the earth to meet the world's energy needs at their current energy usage levels for the next 5 billion years. There is currently now only 72 years worth of U235 recoverable at a cost of US$130.00 per kilogram of uranium (notation: US$130/kgU). The logical thing to do is switch to CANDU reactors and "burn" U238 but unfortunately, in a capitalistic society, cost is paramount and so nothing will be done until other forms of energy become more expensive than this alternative.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/b2179-a/B2179-A-508.pdf

[davidm]

See my interview with Jim Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, here. (http://www.galilean-library.org/kunstler.html)

[Demigrog]

Do you have evidence to support this? Several OPEC nations have passed peak, and the Saudis appear to be pumping full blast, according to the best available data. The New York Times Sunday Magazine discussed this in detail last August.

I agree that some individual nations have reduced production. I’m saying that other nations increased their productions over the same time, so overall production has not dropped. I’m also pointing out that where production has dropped the cheapest reserves have been tapped. As long as prices from some countries are low, more expensive reserves in other countries are not going to be tapped. As prices rise, many nations will increase their production, including the US and Canada, and possibly even set new peak production records.



Nope. Would that it were so. But's it's not. U.S. production hit peak in 1970. That was the halfway point of all the recoverable oil we had sitting under ground owned or occupied by the U.S. No one disputes this. There is an extensive literature on this subject. Moreover, global peak oil discovery took place in 1964.

“Recoverable oil” is the key—that definition changes every year as new technologies are developed. Pure crude oil near the surface on land is the cheapest to exploit, and has obviously been tapped in much of the US. Don’t forget that the US also has about 800 billion recoverable barrels in oil shale deposits (or about 110 years of our current level of demand). If prices were high enough, we would be extracting it.
It is good old comparative advantage. It is cheaper to import oil than to produce it locally, so naturally our production has fallen. As prices go up, our production will go up again. Of course, Canada’s 308 billion barrels of oil sands will be cheaper, so the US will probably not produce much until that reserve is fully developed.



But then someone needs to address the points raised that if you retrofit the entire U.S. fossil fuel economy to go nuclear, you'd need to build ten thousand power plants and

I have no idea where you’re getting 10,000 nuclear plants. In 2003, 441 nuclear plants produced about 16% of the world’s electricity. Scaling that, obviously we’d only need 2315 to meet 100% of 2003’s world demand. And, since the majority of those 441 plants are smaller and less available (CF) than a modern plant, even that number is way high.

A modern Gen III+ reactor like GE’s ESBWR would be 1500MW with a CF around 90%, producing around 11.8 terawatt hours annually. US energy production is predicted to be between 4500 and 4800 terawatt hours by 2010. That’d be about 400 reactors (actually less, since 820 tWh is already nuclear). Consider that there would probably be between 2 and 4 reactors per site, and we’re talking 100 to 200 new power plants.

For reference, the GE ABWR (predecessor to the ESBWR) took 52 months to build in Japan. The ESBWR will be quicker because of reduced construction size. Of course, red tape and NIMBY delays will probably hurt that time a lot in the US. In practice, the Toshiba/Westinghouse AP1000 will probably be more common than ESBWR, but I don’t know as much about it.



you'd have a burn rate at those plants of two decades based on economically viable recoverable uranium.

U235 based Gen III+ reactors are an intermediate step. We will not be switching 100% of our capacity to them. The “waste” from a Gen III+ plant is actually useable fuel for Gen IV breeder plants, which will meet the bulk of our future energy needs. There are also other reactor types, as Squashed pointed out, that use much more abundant fuels.



Honestly, I can't imagine any scenario under which we are going to build anything remotely like 10,000 nuclear power plants.

Neither can I, since we don’t need 10,000.



And if we do pass peak oil, there is no magic bullet solution to retrofit the mining-metallurgy-delivering-construction process of nuclear power plants to make them non-oil-based, as oil is the platform for all of this!

This is like the “irreducible complexity” argument of ID supporters. It assumes that we’d have to go from 100% oil based to 100% hydrogen based instantly. Isn’t it obvious that A) oil based fuels are not going to disappear instantly, and B) there are many alternatives that we can use anyway? Even in a worse case scenario of aliens instantly teleporting every drop of oil off of the planet as a joke—we’d still be able to produce ethanol and synthetics to power our cars, trucks, and mining equipment. Granted that would be a disaster, but temporary if managed well. (bring it on, alien scum! :) )



Perhaps it's true that we're not quite at peak, and peak will be pushed down the road. So what? This isn't going to rescue us. The idea that technology is going to rescue us is simply a non-starter. This confuses two different things: technology and energy. We've got oodles of technology right now. What we are going to have a problem with is not technology, but energy. If the lights go out, your wonderful piece of PC technology is nothing but a hunk of junk. It's even worse than a hunk of junk, because you can't eat it.

I thought we were talking about oil? Oil reserves have little to do with the electricity picture; even without nuclear, we’re going to be fine as we are for centuries (ignoring CO2, if it is indeed really a problem).



Fusion looks to be a pipe dream. We've been trying to build fusion plants since the 50s and the process is still an energy loser. Maybe that will change, but based on the track record, why should we have any confidence that it will change?

Because the scientists and engineers involved actually have a roadmap for getting there. In the 50s, we had dreams of fusion power and some general ideas for how to achieve it. Now we have experimental data and working prototypes for much of the technology. We also know exactly what we need to get it to work, and are fairly confident we can build it eventually. Fusion is now an engineering challenge as much or more than a scientific one.



We can have a diversified economy based on wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectrics, nuclear and the like. The catch is that it will be a fraction of the economy today

Why?



, and even this assumes that we can run this complicated and highly refined machinery absent a robust fossil-fueld platform. As of now, we couldn't.

Yes we could. We have hydrogen powered cars, machinery, etc. We could build a hydrogen production and delivery infrastructure. We could generate synthetics for most non-transportation uses of oil. It is just expensive still, so switching now would be premature. A few more decades of research and engineering will reduce costs significantly, so it makes more sense to wait than to invest money in hydrogen infrastructure now.

[Squashed]

Isn’t it obvious that A) oil based fuels are not going to disappear instantly, ...

Actually a drastic oil output decrease in any of the supergiant oil fields would be disastrous for the world's energy infrastructure.
.
.
.
.
.
The World's Giant Oilfields

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This 67 page report details the major oil producing oilfields in the world. Rather than use the speculative and typically used "reserves" definition for "giant" oilfields the author uses the more reliable and realistic characteristic of oilfields: current oil production per day.

The author using this measuring stick has determined that there are currently only 120 giant (at 100,000 barrels or more of oil per day) oilfields in production today.

Super Giant Oilfields – Ghawar is at the top.

Only 14 of these 120 giant oilfields produce over 500,000 barrels per day and these 14 produce 20% of the world's oil.

See page 16 for an excellent graphic that displays the disparity between these 14 super giants with the rest of the world’s oil production.

See page 19 for a chart that details the age of the 10 largest oil fields.

Page 22 has a list of the top 20 oilfields and each field’s current production in comparison to the field’s peak production.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The World's Giant Oilfields

http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/giantoilfields.pdf

[Trantor]

This all very interesting and informative. I wonder how much oil will be left on Earth in 100 years?

Do we have the right to take almost all the oil in the Earth and leave none for future generations? There are many uses for oil other than energy production.

Developing renewable energy resources and safe nuclear energy should be the direction we should take.

[Van Rijn]

Do you have evidence to support this? Several OPEC nations have passed peak, and the Saudis appear to be pumping full blast, according to the best available data. The New York Times Sunday Magazine discussed this in detail last August.


You don't build capacity you don't need. What they are pumping at currently doesn't tell you what the peak resource limit is.




But then someone needs to address the points raised that if you retrofit the entire U.S. fossil fuel economy to go nuclear, you'd need to build ten thousand power plants and you'd have a burn rate at those plants of two decades based on economically viable recoverable uranium. Honestly, I can't imagine any scenario under which we are going to build anything remotely like 10,000 nuclear power plants.


First, how did you arrive at that number? Second, as previously noted, the cost of uranium is a minor factor in the cost of nuclear power. The amount of available uranium is extremely large. Extraction from seawater is a perfectly viable option with a higher price. See here for example:

http://www.sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad8301cohen.html


And if we do pass peak oil, there is no magic bullet solution to retrofit the mining-metallurgy-delivering-construction process of nuclear power plants to make them non-oil-based, as oil is the platform for all of this!


That just doesn't make sense. You seem to have this notion of a single big oil tank in the ground, and seem to assume we've about drained the tank. You seem to think that tomorrow there will be no light or heavy oil, no natural gas, no tar sands, oil shale, or coal.

Also, as repeatedly noted, if you have nuclear, you can make oil and fuel. Sure, you need the current infrastructure to build plants, but as time goes on that infrastructure will shift to more and more nuclear and "renewables" as the primary energy source

[Demigrog]

Actually a drastic oil output decrease in any of the supergiant oil fields would be disastrous for the world's energy infrastructure.

Depends on your definition of a disaster. We've seen what happens with a sudden disruption of supply, when Katrina hit last year. Prices jumped painfully, but not disasterously.

If a particular field were to shut down, production from other fields would be increased, and prices would begin to return to normal within a few weeks or months. Longer term, new fields would be brought online. Prices would settle down a little higher than before.

If a large enough disruption occurred, we might have to dip into the strategic reserve to stabilize prices until new sources came online.

[davidm]

I agree that some individual nations have reduced production. I’m saying that other nations increased their productions over the same time, so overall production has not dropped. I’m also pointing out that where production has dropped the cheapest reserves have been tapped. As long as prices from some countries are low, more expensive reserves in other countries are not going to be tapped. As prices rise, many nations will increase their production, including the US and Canada, and possibly even set new peak production records.

That’s not right. It’s at variance with all known facts and data. U.S. oil is in depletion, and has been since 1970. We are not going to be setting new peak oil records. Our oil production will continue to decline. Again, see here. (http://www.oilposter.org/posterlarge-x.html) Scroll to the bottom for a list of nations past peak and in depletion, and what that means.



“Recoverable oil” is the key—that definition changes every year as new technologies are developed. Pure crude oil near the surface on land is the cheapest to exploit, and has obviously been tapped in much of the US. Don’t forget that the US also has about 800 billion recoverable barrels in oil shale deposits (or about 110 years of our current level of demand). If prices were high enough, we would be extracting it.
It is good old comparative advantage. It is cheaper to import oil than to produce it locally, so naturally our production has fallen. As prices go up, our production will go up again. Of course, Canada’s 308 billion barrels of oil sands will be cheaper, so the US will probably not produce much until that reserve is fully developed.

Oil shale might be doable but see this Rand report for the U.S. Department of Energy. (http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.pdf) It notes that production stage for oil shale is at least 12 years away if companies commit now, which they haven’t, and production of 3 million barrels a day is 30 years in the future. If peak oil is imminent, this isn’t going to help. And while we can grant the possibility of improved technology, this stuff is going to be hard to get out. It’s going to have a low, perhaps very low, energy returned over energy invested ratio. In that case, it’s not going to be much help. It will still mean, at the very least, extremely high energy prices with all the distortions that will impose on the economy. Still, it is an option, and hopefully one that can be exploited. But a lot of experts (geologists) aren’t very sanguine about it.



I have no idea where you’re getting 10,000 nuclear plants.

I guess people aren’t reading the links I’m giving. It comes from here, (http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~frank/BerkeleyGroks_Goodstein.htm) in an interview with David Goodstein, vice provost and professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology:


in order to make enough nuclear energy to replace all of fossil fuel we burn today, you would have to build ten thousand of the largest nuclear plants possible. Ten thousand, that's not impossible but it is certainly a daunting task. Even if you did that, the known uranium reserves would last at that burn rate for only one or two decades.

The 10,000 figure is also referenced by Dr. Stephen Leeb in his book, The Coming Economic Collapse, (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446579785/002-5979417-8661616?v=glance&n=283155) which he describes as a hopeful book, despite its title. Leeb, of Leeb Capital Management Inc., predicted the bull market of the 90s, the downswing of the tech sector early in this decade and the recent upswing in oil prices. He surveys all the alternatives to oil in his books and says to forget about them, including nuclear. His suggestion is that we will need to produce hydrogen via electrolysis powered by windmills. To do this, he says we will need to start immediately on a 10-year crash program to build a lot of windmills at a cost of over a trillion dollars. This cost does not cover what it will take to replace our oil and gas pipeline system for hydrogen storage and distribution, since hydrogen would leak right through the current system. It’s not even clear that this can be done.

More later as I'm pressed for time, but quickly:


Even in a worse case scenario of aliens instantly teleporting every drop of oil off of the planet as a joke—we’d still be able to produce ethanol and synthetics to power our cars, trucks, and mining equipment. Granted that would be a disaster, but temporary if managed well. (bring it on, alien scum! :) )

No, these things are net energy losers. I've already linked to studies on this.

[Squashed]

There is enough U238 in the earth to meet the world's energy needs at their current energy usage levels for the next 5 billion years. There is currently now only 72 years worth of U235 recoverable at a cost of US$130.00 per kilogram of uranium (notation: US$130/kgU).

I got to thinking about the great disparity between the 72 years and the 5 billion years and here is what I have "discovered".

U235 is supposed to be present in uranium deposits at only 0.7% of the total uranium recovered with the bulk 99.3% represented by U238. This ratio has been scientifically determined and should be reliable and so the following calculations:

0.7% x 5 billion = 35 milliion years of U235

or

72 / 0.7% = 10,286 years of U238

So either the 5 billion years supply of U238 is bogus or the 72 years of U235 is bogus. The 72 year figure seems more reliable since I believe it came from the government resource whereas the 5 billion year figure was from an unreliable nuclear proponent's webpage.

I believe I read somewhere that nuclear currently only provides like 16% of the world's energy needs and so if the world switched over to only nuclear energy then the 72 year figure drops to only 6.25 years and then if we plug that into the above calculation then U238 will give us 1,646 years of energy at today's energy usage per capita.

A little more sobering than the 5 billion years.

[Van Rijn]

I got to thinking about the great disparity between the 72 years and the 5 billion years and here is what I have "discovered".


What was the reference for those two statements you mentioned? Let's analyze them:

There is enough U238 in the earth to meet the world's energy needs at their current energy usage levels for the next 5 billion years.

-and-

There is currently now only 72 years worth of U235 recoverable at a cost of US$130.00 per kilogram of uranium (notation: US$130/kgU).

These are two separate statements that have no connection.

The first statement is about how much uranium is available that could be used.

The second statement is about how much U235 that can be recovered at a certain cost. Change the cost, change the amount recovered*. Since the cost of the fuel plays a small part in the cost of nuclear power, we don't need to stick with rich ores. Actually, a number of countries are looking at seawater production just so they don't need to import the stuff.

There is a lot of seawater. And, yes, it has U238 as well.


-------------------------------------

*It also depends on technology (cost goes down with better technology) and how hard we look for the stuff. Currently, there isn't much incentive to look for much more uranium. There's plenty of it around.

[sarongsong]

...a number of countries are looking at seawater production just so they don't need to import the stuff [U235}. There is a lot of seawater. And, yes, it has U238 as well...Wonder what quantities might be recovered in this 50-million-gallon-a-day desalination plant (http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060427/news_lz1ed27carlsb.html), planned for the city next-door.

[Van Rijn]

I guess people aren’t reading the links I’m giving.


Sounds familiar.



It comes from here, (http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~frank/BerkeleyGroks_Goodstein.htm) in an interview with David Goodstein, vice provost and professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology:
[snip]
The 10,000 figure is also referenced by Dr. Stephen Leeb in his book, The Coming Economic Collapse, (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446579785/002-5979417-8661616?v=glance&n=283155) which he describes as a hopeful book, despite its title.


Here's the quote in two parts:

That is, in order to make enough nuclear energy to replace all of fossil fuel we burn today, you would have to build ten thousand of the largest nuclear plants possible.

Nice figure, but without showing how it was calculated, it is useless. I have no idea what assumptions he is making. What are the numbers he is using for "largest nuclear plants possible"? How much energy, exactly, is to be replaced? How is he assuming it is replaced (assumed efficiency, and so forth)? Over what time frame is it to be replaced? And so on. Currently, very little of the U.S.'s electricity is produced using oil. It is mostly coal and nuclear, and there is quite a lot of coal - even the pessimists admit it won't go away tomorrow. So we primarily would need to look to additional power generation beyond what we use for electricity today, with coal being phased out last.

Ten thousand, that's not impossible but it is certainly a daunting task. Even if you did that, the known uranium reserves would last at that burn rate for only one or two decades.

(emphasis added) Hoo Boy! That's a good one! Known reserves are not the same as available resources. Known reserves depend on current price, how hard geologists are looking, and technology. Having known reserves for two decades is actually very good. His statement in no way contridicts the vast amount of uranium resources that are available. I'd say he's playing with words.


[snip] This cost does not cover what it will take to replace our oil and gas pipeline system for hydrogen storage and distribution, since hydrogen would leak right through the current system. It’s not even clear that this can be done.


Which is why you don't use hydrogen that way. Problem solved.


No, these things [biofuels] are net energy losers. I've already linked to studies on this.

Sometimes yes, but not always. And if you are producing biofuels as a sideproduct to something that's going to be produced anyway, it can act as a way to improve total system efficiency.

[Demigrog]

That’s not right. It’s at variance with all known facts and data. U.S. oil is in depletion, and has been since 1970. We are not going to be setting new peak oil records. Our oil production will continue to decline. Again, see here. (http://www.oilposter.org/posterlarge-x.html) Scroll to the bottom for a list of nations past peak and in depletion, and what that means.

*sigh* You still have not grasped the difference between economically recoverable reserves and total reserves. Yes, we have largely depleted cheap, easily extracted oil in the US. We have not even begun exploiting oil shale, a reserve larger than the world’s conventional crude oil reserves combined. We also have untapped reserves in Alaska, and unproven reserves offshore that we cannot explore for political reasons.



Oil shale might be doable but see this Rand report for the U.S. Department of Energy. (http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.pdf) It notes that production stage for oil shale is at least 12 years away if companies commit now, which they haven’t, and production of 3 million barrels a day is 30 years in the future. If peak oil is imminent, this isn’t going to help.

As I’ve pointed out ad nauseam, there is little incentive to tap our oil shale reserves because we still have plenty of cheap foreign oil available. If we needed the oil shale, we’d develop it a lot faster. Also, as I’ve already pointed out, Canada’s oil sands will be tapped first, as they are cheaper. Canada expects to produce 3.9 million b/d by 2015, up from 2.6m b/d in 2004.

As you rightly pointed out, the energy required to produce oil from oil shale is high (3:1 is the best I’ve heard), so it will be the last source to be used. However, it will get used if necessary, so we’re simply not going to run out of oil in the near future. Period. Plenty of time to build the hydrogen economy.



I guess people aren’t reading the links I’m giving. It comes from here, (http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~frank/BerkeleyGroks_Goodstein.htm) in an interview with David Goodstein, vice provost and professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology:

Whomever he is, he is totally and completely wrong. Sorry. The math is pretty simple, read my last post.

The fuel issue pretty much means that the Gen III+ reactors we build between now and about 2050 will be the last of their kind; we’ll move on to other types of reactors over time. That is why we store the “waste” from existing reactors—it will be the fuel for the reactors of the future.



The 10,000 figure is also referenced by Dr. Stephen Leeb in his book, *snip* His suggestion is that we will need to produce hydrogen via electrolysis powered by windmills. To do this, he says we will need to start immediately on a 10-year crash program to build a lot of windmills at a cost of over a trillion dollars.

Heh, the guy is worried about 10,000 nuclear plants and instead suggests wind power? Seriously, it would take 1000-2000 1.5MW wind turbines (depending on site capacity factor) to replace a single nuclear reactor. That’s a sizeable chunk of the world’s production of wind turbines for 2005. Even with next generation 2.5 MW turbines and a lot of 5MW offshore turbines, we’d never be able to build enough, even if we had enough wind to turn them all (which we don’t).



This cost does not cover what it will take to replace our oil and gas pipeline system for hydrogen storage and distribution, since hydrogen would leak right through the current system. It’s not even clear that this can be done.

Again, the cost problem is spread out over decades. It is also not clear that we’ll need an extensive pipeline system; we do with oil and natural gas only because they come from specific refinery sites that in turn have to be close to ports. Hydrogen can be produced within the area it is intended to be used in.


No, these things are net energy losers. I've already linked to studies on this.
And again completely missed the point: the ethanol is an energy carrier, it isn’t intended to produce energy. The energy is produced by power plants, used to create fuels that can be more easily used in transportation.

[Demigrog]

I got to thinking about the great disparity between the 72 years and the 5 billion years and here is what I have "discovered".
*snip*
So either the 5 billion years supply of U238 is bogus or the 72 years of U235 is bogus.

Comparing apples and oranges for one thing. U238 is used in completely different types of reactors that makes different use of the fuel. So, the ratio of abundance is only one part of the puzzel.

The 5 Billion year figure comes from a 1983 journal article by Bernard Cohen. His basic argument is that with a certain maximum level of extraction from seawater, natural geological processes will restore what we use--basically making uranium a renewable resource. I can't remember the exact figures, alas, and am too lazy to look.

[eburacum45]

Incidentally, electricity works fine for running trains, tram systems, urban light railways, underground systems, electric haulage vehicles, even (horrors) electric cars; there is no need to convert nuclear or solar electricity into hydrocarbons for many transport needs. Trains are getting faster all the time; the 300km/h Train &#224; Grande Vitesse runs on electricity, much of it provided by French nuclear plants.

If we had an energy economy not based on oil, then hydrocarbons could be synthesised for certain uses- they are very good fuels for aircraft, for example, and also good for heavy liftng rockets like the Saturn V.
But for other uses electricity is adequate. One transport concept I find intriguing is the vacuum train; a train tunning in an evacuated tube on Maglev track at aircraft-like speeds. If electrically powered transport concepts are used as miuch as possible the world transport infrastructure could be made much more efficient; synthesising fuel is not an efficient process.
But the most important saving on transport energy will be home working- wherever possible, the smart worker of the future should work at home. Video conferencing is becoming routine nowadays thanks to MSN and Skype; this will become the norm very soon, and is very energy efficient. I am all for an economy which reduces the impact of humanity on the environment- information technology is a vital part of that economy.

[Van Rijn]

*sigh* You still have not grasped the difference between economically recoverable reserves and total reserves. Yes, we have largely depleted cheap, easily extracted oil in the US. We have not even begun exploiting oil shale, a reserve larger than the world’s conventional crude oil reserves combined. We also have untapped reserves in Alaska, and unproven reserves offshore that we cannot explore for political reasons.


This is an incredibly common issue with this type of argument. I first ran into this with the "Limits to Growth" book, which would point to proven reserves for metals, minerals, oil and so forth. Then they would say "even if we assumed there was five times as much, it will run out in 20 years" (or some short period).

"Reserves" depends on economics and technology. It isn't unusual for "proven reserves" to only extend a few years. It also isn't unusual for that number to increase: In 1980 the proven reserves for X might be 10 years, and in 1990 they might be 20 years.





Whomever he is, he is totally and completely wrong. Sorry. The math is pretty simple, read my last post.


Also note my posts and references. He's using the "reserves" argument. :doh:



The fuel issue pretty much means that the Gen III+ reactors we build between now and about 2050 will be the last of their kind; we’ll move on to other types of reactors over time. That is why we store the “waste” from existing reactors—it will be the fuel for the reactors of the future.


There are two sides to this issue: On one hand, the available resources are incredibly large. We aren't going after some of yet because it is more expensive. This makes sense: Why go after more expensive fuel when you don't need to? Nevertheless, it can be used when needed. On the other hand, reactors with more efficient fuel cycles are being built, and that will continue. The "once through" U235 fuel cycle is ridiculously inefficient. Even without fast breeders, advanced reactors and reprocessing can make far better use of the fuel.

[davidm]

Rather than going over these responses point by point at this time, let me just state some reasonable inferences that we can draw from the data. But quickly, let’s look at this:


*sigh* You still have not grasped the difference between economically recoverable reserves and total reserves. Yes, we have largely depleted cheap, easily extracted oil in the US. We have not even begun exploiting oil shale, a reserve larger than the world’s conventional crude oil reserves combined. We also have untapped reserves in Alaska, and unproven reserves offshore that we cannot explore for political reasons.

I’m afraid that it is I who should be sighing, as it is you who has not grasped the essential point. All the untapped reserves in Alaska that you can dream about will buy us a little time at best. The charts I’ve shown you are oil depletion charts, not, as you seem to erroneously believe, mere “downswings in production” because we can currently get oil cheaper elsewhere. This is a dangerous fantasy.

Of course I understand that these charts do not include oil shale, nor were they ever intended to do so, but the Rand report makes it explicitly clear that we are 12 years away at a minimum from even beginning any oil shale production at all, and that’s if companies commit right now. They aren’t. And the fantasy of oil shale recovery wishes away the big problem of energy returned over energy invested.

Here’s the basic point that everyone seems determined to wish away: If the peak oil thesis is true – and the idea that we are at or near global peak is a reasonable, albeit defeasible, inference to draw from the available data – then we are not going to be mining oil shale, or ramping up the next generation of nuclear power plants, or plastering the landscape with windmills or solar panels, or ludicrously replacing our entire car, truck and bus fleet with hydrogen-powered vehicles and ripping up and replacing, at a cost of billions of dollars if not more, our gas and oil distribution pipeline network to retrofit it to carry hydrogen (even assuming that this can be done) because we won’t have the money to do these things. Why do I say this? Because we’ve been down this road before. Let’s take a trip down memory lane.

In 1970, the United States hit peak oil. This peak was accurately predicted in the late 50s by the same method now being used to forecast global peak. There followed the oil shocks of the 70s. There were gas lines, and closed service stations, and a steep recession – the worst since the Great Depression – and a combination of high unemployment as well as inflation that no one had ever seen before (and according to conventional economic analysis was not supposed to be possible) that was even given a name: stagflation.

Why did this happen? Because we were no longer self-sufficient in oil, and because OPEC embargoed the stuff in an effort to influence our foreign policy. The crisis was artificial. But the results were jarring.

If global peak oil is right, then you can take the oil shocks scenario, and consider them a permanent and worsening conditon, year after year. Since every nook and cranny and facet of our economy is simply saturated with oil – a real addiction from top to bottom – if nature, rather than OPEC, embargoes us, then we are no longer going to have the resources to switch over to an entirely new energy infrastructure even if that were possible. Trillions of dollars in capital investment would be required for this, and we’re not going to have the money. Capitalist society requires an annual growth rate of between 3 and 7 percent to maintain viability. Instead, after peak, economies everywhere are all going to contract year after year, and hence any hope of retrofitting our economy for a new energy platform will be futile. That is the threat of peak oil. And if you don’t believe this can happen, please remember the 1970s: It already did happen. What saved us was the fact that the crisis then was artificial. This one will be real.

[LynnF1]

I seem to recall a similarly impassioned thread (maybe even two or three threads) on the airliners.net site a few months back, and it is never clear to me exactly what the point of these threads are; there are never solutions presented along with the horror story.

davidm, what exactly would you have us do? You have beaten back (or at least atempted to) every suggestion for alternative energy sources and conservation measures, even used in combination. The same thing was done on the airliners.net site; seemingly no solution or combination of solutions or even potential error in calculating the peak oil scenario was deemed acceptable by the initial poster. So, if this is the case, what do we do? Do we need to build bomb shelters in our cellars and horde food and batteries? Is there no hope? What is your point??? Just to tell us that?

Pardon my confusion; I see civilization doing many things already to alleviate our dependence on fossil fuels that weren't done twenty or thirty years ago. I also see no reason why we can't do more, to whatever scale is necessary to keep a strong resemblance to today's society - we may need to cut some leisure activities, cut down on travel, take more mass transit, but the developed world will mroe or less move along. We are nothing if not adaptable and resourceful (pardon that pun!). Just a layperson's two cents.

[davidm]

You're right, there is probably no point to this thread. Notice, however, that I have already stipulated that the actual date of peak is uncertain; I don't insist that it must be now. New data could push it back some years; with luck a decade or two. I doubt it, but it's possible.

We could be doing a lot of stuff, but we won't. The problem is that capitalism can't afford to plan for the long term, especially since no one can predict the future. Even if everyone agreed that there was a 99 percent probability that peak was right around the corner, no corporation would do anything about it, because there would always be the chance of error and hence altering investment patterns would prove ruinous.

We could restore our national railroad system and waterways, phase out the car, relocalize life, try to revive agriculture on a local basis, and install as many solar and wind energy systems as we can, and restart nuclear to a limited basis. If we did those things, we could begin the transition to a zero-growth sustainable society. This would mean ending capitalism as we know it. We won't -- can't -- do that, because capitalism is the secular religion and progress is the God of modernity. It fascinates me that naturalists and materialists who mock theism don't recognize that they are in thrall to their own God. I'm not singling out anyone in this thread, just making a general observation.

If peak is right and we don't plan, industrial civilization will be repealed for us whether we like it or not. If we do plan, we can at least ease the transition.

We are not going to carry on as we have without ever-rising oil supplies. As soon as supplies turn downward, we will have sharp discontinuities and permanent contraction. This will not be avoidable, unless someone comes with a totally unexpected scheme to save the day. Maybe someone will. I wouldn't bet on it, but I concede it's possible. What's interesting is that those in this thread making their various (and very weak, IMO) arguments for a virtually unlimited energy-growth future don't seem to be able to take a step back a wonder whether they may be be laboring under some seriously flawed assumptions.

Even conservation won't work. In fact, conservation makes our energy supply problem even worse. I could link to Jevon's Paradox to show why conservationi makes things worse than better, but I won't because you've convinced me that this thread is utterly pointless.

[peteshimmon]

Its not pointless at all you have made a few
people explain why they are optimistic. I
certainly do hope the crisis is decades off
but we certainly need to encourage thinking
and planning. Scenarios were millions may go
cold and hungry will happen unless governments
know exactly what to do. It has happened in
recent history I understand. The industry to
watch is Aviation and this is a vast economic
driver so it is a bit frightening. In the
meantime folks should start living nearer
their work and setting up a well insulated
set of rooms in their homes that can be
heated at much lower energy cost.

[Ilya]

We could restore our national railroad system and waterways, phase out the car, relocalize life, try to revive agriculture on a local basis, and install as many solar and wind energy systems as we can, and restart nuclear to a limited basis. If we did those things, we could begin the transition to a zero-growth sustainable society. This would mean ending capitalism as we know it. We won't -- can't -- do that, because capitalism is the secular religion and progress is the God of modernity. It fascinates me that naturalists and materialists who mock theism don't recognize that they are in thrall to their own God. I'm not singling out anyone in this thread, just making a general observation.

It is true that capitalism requires continuous growth of wealth, but it does not require continuous increase of energy use. If I invent a more efficient microwave oven and people start buying it, the world's wealth increases, but its energy use decreases. An awful lot of wealth creation over last 40 years has been in the "get more for less" realm, and that trend is increasing.


What's interesting is that those in this thread making their various (and very weak, IMO) arguments for a virtually unlimited energy-growth future don't seem to be able to take a step back a wonder whether they may be be laboring under some seriously flawed assumptions.

Whether an argument is weak or strong is in the eye of the beholder. People are often very resistant of arguments which disagree with their cherished positions. Demigorg explained very clearly why at most 2315 (fewer, in practice) nuclear power plants -- not 10,000, -- could meet all of the worlds energy needs. That alone makes hash of the entire thesis you claim to want criticized. You completely ignored that post, did not even try to address Demogorg, and continue quoting David Goodstein as gospel. Note that David Goodstein a) gives NO basis for his "10,000 nuclear power plants" figure -- at least none you quoted; b) destroys his credibility by his call to meet world's energy demands with wind power -- any power engineer will tell you this is a pipe dream; and c) makes me highly suspicious just by presenting such nice round figure as "10,000". Anyone who tosses off a power of ten without qualifiers "approximately" or "on the order of", is a ** artist until proven otherwise.

Judging from this thread I can only conclude that you WANT civilization to collapse, and will not listen to anything that suggests otherwise. You did not come here for an explanation why David Goodstein and Malthus may be wrong -- as far as you are concerned, they are RIGHT. You came here to preach.


Even conservation won't work. In fact, conservation makes our energy supply problem even worse. I could link to Jevon's Paradox to show why conservationi makes things worse than better, but I won't because you've convinced me that this thread is utterly pointless.
I agree with you here. You made this thread utterly pointless.

[sarongsong]

Peak oil seems more like Peak Greed, what with Prudhoe Bay's Gull Island (4X Saudi Arabia), Alberta's oil shale, the Falkland's fields, and the current revelation of an enormous field off Cuba. Interesting times, indeed.

[Van Rijn]

I’m afraid that it is I who should be sighing, as it is you who has not grasped the essential point. All the untapped reserves in Alaska that you can dream about will buy us a little time at best. The charts I’ve shown you are oil depletion charts, not, as you seem to erroneously believe, mere “downswings in production” because we can currently get oil cheaper elsewhere. This is a dangerous fantasy.


But you miss the factor that price plays in oil recovery. Yes, we're moving to heavier, more costly oil. That is not the same as saying the oil is gone. Oil is produced based on what is the most economical choice. We aren't going to produce more expensive oil here when we can buy it cheaper from elsewhere.



Of course I understand that these charts do not include oil shale, nor were they ever intended to do so, but the Rand report makes it explicitly clear that we are 12 years away at a minimum from even beginning any oil shale production at all, and that’s if companies commit right now. They aren’t.

And I wouldn't expect it to be that soon. There is no economic need for it.



Here’s the basic point that everyone seems determined to wish away: If the peak oil thesis is true – and the idea that we are at or near global peak is a reasonable, albeit defeasible, inference to draw from the available data


For anybody to "wish away" anything, we would have to accept that the "Peak Oil" scare scenario, with the empty oil tank in the ground, is actually reasonable and defensible. I do not. It is based on an incorrect view of resources and economic and technological responses to changing resource availability.



In 1970, the United States hit peak oil.


No, the lower cost of foreign oil made it the more economic choice.


There followed the oil shocks of the 70s. There were gas lines, and closed service stations,and a steep recession – the worst since the Great Depression – and a combination of high unemployment as well as inflation that no one had ever seen before (and according to conventional economic analysis was not supposed to be possible) that was even given a name: stagflation.


Price controls caused the gas lines and didn't allow a reasonable response to the changing energy prices, hence stagflation.




Why did this happen? Because we were no longer self-sufficient in oil, and because OPEC embargoed the stuff in an effort to influence our foreign policy. The crisis was artificial. But the results were jarring.


It caused a huge increase in non-OPEC production and more efficient use of the resource.



If global peak oil is right, then you can take the oil shocks scenario, and consider them a permanent and worsening conditon, year after year. Since every nook and cranny and facet of our economy is simply saturated with oil – a real addiction from top to bottom – if nature, rather than OPEC, embargoes us, then we are no longer going to have the resources to switch over to an entirely new energy infrastructure even if that were possible. Trillions of dollars in capital investment would be required for this, and we’re not going to have the money.


Emphasis added. Why not? Money and resources didn't disappear in the '70s. No, if it was real, I would expect an expansion of the effort that was made in the '70s. We did put money into synfuels and oil shale and other energy alternatives, but the cost of oil was brought back down quickly so those became uneconomic. We did move to more efficient use.

In the long run, I do expect we will shift production, but not because of the scare scenario you advocate.



Capitalist society requires an annual growth rate of between 3 and 7 percent to maintain viability. Instead, after peak, economies everywhere are all going to contract year after year, and hence any hope of retrofitting our economy for a new energy platform will be futile. That is the threat of peak oil. And if you don’t believe this can happen, please remember the 1970s: It already did happen. What saved us was the fact that the crisis then was artificial. This one will be real.

That can only be true with the "empty tank in the ground" scenario. That is, you seem to be assuming that all resources will instantly disappear tomorrow. It doesn't work that way. Resource use shifts. You make more efficient use of resources when that becomes the more economic option and switch to other resources.

[ASEI]

davidm, what exactly would you have us do? You have beaten back (or at least atempted to) every suggestion for alternative energy sources and conservation measures, even used in combination. The same thing was done on the airliners.net site; seemingly no solution or combination of solutions or even potential error in calculating the peak oil scenario was deemed acceptable by the initial poster. So, if this is the case, what do we do? Do we need to build bomb shelters in our cellars and horde food and batteries? Is there no hope? What is your point??? Just to tell us that?
The real problem with these people is that they don't want a solution, much less multiple solutions to our energy "crisis". They want the crisis, because they want to see our civilization collapse, because to their minds, our civilization is wrong/evil/intolerable. That is why they hate oil production, coal production, nuclear power, and now windfields (after they were proven viable, remember, they were for all for green windfields before it was shown to actually work) all with equal determination. They don't want us to have energy, period. We don't deserve it.

I still haven't gotten an answer from the drive-by Malthusians as to why food production can only increase linearly. Why is food production not supposed to be proportional to farmers and farming capital, as has been economic reality these past centuries?


Price controls caused the gas lines and didn't allow a reasonable response to the changing energy prices, hence stagflation. No kidding. To all of you who are fantasizing about sticking it to those eeevil oilmen today by issuing price controls - remember what that caused a mere 30 years ago (not that this isn't elementary school economics, but...) - shortages. If you want to see our nation run out of gasoline tomorrow, keep clamoring for price controls.

[Taks]

one of the points rarely mentioned, btw, is that the "high profits" being raked in by the oil companies are actually, on average, under 10% of total sales. qualcomm, OTOH, earns 35.6% (net, latest margin).

taks

[Van Rijn]

Just noticed this article. It makes points similar to some of mine - Methanol: The New Hydrogen (http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16629&ch=biztech). A couple of quotes:

Olah notes that methanol, a clean-burning liquid, would require only minor modifications to existing engines and fuel-delivery infrastructure (see "The Methanol Economy"). And manufacturing it could even make use of carbon dioxide, a source of global warming. Methanol's benefits have long been understood -- now recent advances in methanol synthesis and methanol fuel cells could make this fuel even more attractive.

Making methanol from natural gas -- which still involves fossil fuels and increases carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- is just the first step, says Olah. Chemists have long known that methanol can be made by combining carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Such a process requires considerable energy, for example, to harvest the hydrogen from water, but this energy could come from carbon-free sources such as nuclear or wind power.

There's also an interview here:

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16466&ch=biztech

Anyway, this emphasizes the point that nuclear (or other long-term energy source) hydrogen production can be integrated into the existing infrastructure in an evolutionary way.

[davidm]

Judging from this thread I can only conclude that you WANT civilization to collapse, and will not listen to anything that suggests otherwise. You did not come here for an explanation why David Goodstein and Malthus may be wrong -- as far as you are concerned, they are RIGHT. You came here to preach.

All of the above, of course, is absolute nonsense, but an ad hominem typical of people who talk about this issue. There is really nothing to discuss here, because the people making responses haven't got a clue what they're talking about. For example, just a few posts back, when I noted, yet again, that the U.S. hit peak oil in 1970:


No, the lower cost of foreign oil made it the more economic choice.

This is completely, utterly, comprehensively, fundamentally and totally wrong. There is not even a debate about it.The U.S. is pumping out half of what it did in 1970, not because imports are more "economic" (at 75 bucks a barrel with gas prices at the pump approaching $3.50!) but because we are pumping all we can get! For heaven's sake, even the oil industry concedes this. No one disputes it -- except people here, who merely assert it because it's convenient to do so!

Look, how about you folks, who think you're so well-informed, figure out who Ken Deffeyes is, and then get in touch with him? His e-mail is here, (http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/about-ken.html) at his home page. He's been an oil geologist for decades. Go have a conversation with him, yeah? From his Web site (I'll bold it for you, just so you don't miss it, and even bold-italic the really critical part):

World oil production will start to fall sometime during this decade, never to rise again.

Yeah, a veteran oilman really wants this to happen. :wall:

[davidm]

Also, please see here. (http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/the-peak.html)

Now, if you want to attack my credibility, and babble about "drive-by Malthusians" (as if I have been a drive-by poster in this thread), then know that your own credibility is in tatters until you can grasp the central point that peak oil is not an economic but a supply problem. If you can't or won't understand this, there is nothing more to talk about it.

Please Google "Peak Oil" and four and a half million hits will be returned. It was also, as a I pointed out earlier, the cover story of the New York Times Sunday Magainze in August; but I guess everybody is wrong but you, becausse you have to "win an argument" at any cost.

[davidm]

Here, Check this out from Fox News, two days ago. (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193624,00.html) Fox News, the megaphone of the Bush administration.


But many scientists warn that there will come a day when rising oil prices will not be due to political or economic pressures, but because a natural peak in global oil production will have been reached.

Once we reach this tipping point, known as "Hubbert's Peak," also known as "peak oil," global oil production will begin an irreversible decline and less oil will be available with every passing year, scientists say.

Energy experts no longer debate about whether Hubbert's peak will occur, but when.

Bold type by me.

Get the picture now?

Expecting me to make point-by-point rebuttals to arguments from people who do not even grasp what peak oil is, is like expecting someone to rebut theories of gravity by people who think the sun revolves around the earth.

[Taks]

Fox News, the megaphone of the Bush administration. comments like this are not very professional. keep your politics to yourself, please.

then you go on to criticize everyone and wonder why nobody wants to buy your story with this statement:

Expecting me to make point-by-point rebuttals to arguments from people who do not even grasp what peak oil isjust because you don't like their comments on the matter does not make them less important nor does it mean they don't understand. the concept of peak oil has been discussed at length here and elsewhere. sorry if you don't agree with some of the conclusions in here, but they aren't that far out of line from similar discussions.

taks

[davidm]

This is known as consensus trance.

Did you even read the links I gave in the last three posts? Peak oil is a supply problem. If you don't understand this, then yes, you are in the position of someone insisting that the sun revolves around the earth.

Moreover, calling me a drive-by Malthusian, in a thread where I have made nearly 30 posts, and suggesting that I want peak oil to happen, are violations of the rules of this board, as I understand them. They are ad hominem attacks.

Further, if you claim peak oil is merely an economic problem and that production will take an upswing when it is profitable to do so -- something that no one in the oil industry claims or believes -- then you have the burden of proof to show why everyone is wrong on this, and as I understand it, the rules of this board require that you support your assertions.

On Feb. 11 of this year, Deffeyes produced statistics purporting to show that global peak oil in fact took place on Dec. 16, 2005. Let's hope he's wrong.

[Taks]

This is known as consensus trance.
or maybe, just maybe, they're making a better argument? you're coming dangerously close, why not criticize their arguments directly rather than calling them sheep?


Did you even read the links I gave in the last three posts?more insults...


Peak oil is a supply problem. If you don't understand this, then yes, you are in the position of someone insisting that the sun revolves around the earth.rather than insult them, make salient points.


They are ad hominem attacks.three of the comments you led this post off with are as well. don't expect much sympathy.

taks

[TheBlackCat]

World oil production will start to fall sometime during this decade, never to rise again.
Did you even read your own sources? That poster you cited as evidence for your position specificaly said peak oild might not happen for another 20 years or even more. Your claim is clearly and explicitly refuted by your own sources! It may happen this decade, but it may not happen for several decades. As you yourself keep stating, nobody knows. And the predictions of the model that put it happening within the next few years are completely wrong, so obviously there is no reason to trust their predictions on the peak oil time-frame either. Your conclusions are simply not supported by your own data.

Nobody is debating whether peak oil will happen, we are debating when. When makes a huge difference. You are making very specific conclusions about when it will happen, and predicting what the results will be based on that time frame. If the time frame is different, which all evidence points to it being, then the results will be different. This is a time-dependent thing, the longer we have oil and the slower the drop-off after peak the easier it will be to deal with. You brush this aside as irrelevant, but it the central issue in this whole debate. All oil disappearing overnight is a lot harder to deal with than a gradual decline in oil output and a gradual increase in prices over decades.

[davidm]

Black Cat,

Maybe you're not debating whether Peak Oil will occur, but others are. At least two different respondents have suggested that the down curve of oil production is just a phenomenon of economics, and that once the proper incentives are in place, crude oil production will swing up again. One poster even predicted that the U.S. would eventually surpass its peak output of 1970. It is to those posters I directed the latest links, to try to demonstrate (futiley, I suppose) that peak oil is a supply problem. So, no, my argument is not refuted by the data at those links. It is confirmed, because my argument, in this case, is to show Peak Oil doubters that Peak Oil, whenever it occurs, is real. They don't seem to think it is.

Notice also, however, as I indicated in my last post, that Deffeys on Feb. 11, 2006, produced data puporting to show that global peak oil did in fact occur on Dec. 16 of last year.

As to Taks, how am I insulting you by asking whether you read the links? Did you? You seem to be buying into the argument, as best I can tell, that peak oil is merely some incentive problem. That's why I asked you whether you read the links.

I have insulted no one in this thread. I, on the other hand, have been called a drive-by Malthusian and accused of wanting peak oil to happen. Those are clear insults, clearly ad hominem, and clear violations of the rules of this board as I understand them.

[davidm]

Ah, well, I’m done with this. I certainly hope Deffeyes is wrong, and peak oil has not happened. I hope it can be staved off for a number of years. Suggestions that I hope otherwise are indefensible ad hominem attacks.

I’ve also conceded that I could be wrong about the prospects of our energy future, but have said that dismal prospects are reasonable inferences to draw from the data. For this I have been savaged. Strange. Peak Oil is not a controversial thesis among scientists, geologists and oil men. They all know it’s coming.

Anyway, if you want, I suggest e-mailing Deffeyes. I’ll also leave you to chew on the following, by another petroleum geologist, Dr. Richard C. Duncan:

Olduvai Cliff Revisited. ( http://www.mnforsustain.org/oil_duncan_r_olduvai_cliff_revisited.htm)


The Olduvai theory states that the life-expectancy of Industrial Civilization, defined in terms of world energy use per capita ("e"), is less than or equal to 100 years. History: We know that the peak of "e" occurred in 1979 and that "e" declined from 1979 to 1999 (the 'slope'). Future: The Olduvai theory predicts that "e" will decline even faster from 2000 to the so-named 'cliff event' (the 'slide'). A previous study put the 'cliff event' in year 2012 (Duncan, 2001). However, it no appears that 2012 was too optimistic. … The 'modern way of life' is history by ca. 2025.

Duncan: “Industrial Civilization can be described by a single pulse waveform of duration X, as measured by average energy-use per person per year. The life-expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than one-hundred (100) years: i.e., X < 100 years.

The data show that X peaked in 1979.


Olduvai theory states that later in this century, we will return to Olduvai Gorge: stone-age technology. But we all know how kooky those drive-by Malthusian petroleum geologists are.

[TheBlackCat]

Maybe you're not debating whether Peak Oil will occur, but others are. At least two different respondents have suggested that the down curve of oil production is just a phenomenon of economics, and that once the proper incentives are in place, crude oil production will swing up again. One poster even predicted that the U.S. would eventually surpass its peak output of 1970. It is to those posters I directed the latest links, to try to demonstrate (futiley, I suppose) that peak oil is a supply problem.
You are completely missing their point. They are not saying peak oil will never happen, they are saying some countries that seem to have reached it haven't yet. They will eventually reach it, but what seemed like a permanent peak was merely illusory, the real peak is yet to come. Whether this is the case or not I don't know, but they are not saying a peak will never occur, they are just saying it hasn't occured yet. And you have to seperate an absolute peak versus a local peak, there may, and likely will, be an upswing in US oil production, but it may never reach its pre-peak levels. That does not mean that oil production will remain at its current level.

Once again, they aren't debating whether peak oil will occur, they are merely debating when.


So, no, my argument is not refuted by the data at those links. It is confirmed, because my argument, in this case, is to show Peak Oil doubters that Peak Oil, whenever it occurs, is real. They don't seem to think it is.
No, that is not your argument. You specifically stated peak oil will happen this decade, you specifically stated we will not be able to develop any alternative energy sources to replace it, and that the world economey will collapse. All these arguments are based on an assumption regarding the time frame that is simply not backed up, and is likely directly countered, by the evidence you have supplied. You have made your argument perfectly clear.


Notice also, however, as I indicated in my last post, that Deffeys on Feb. 11, 2006, produced data puporting to show that global peak oil did in fact occur on Dec. 16 of last year.
I assume you are talking about This (http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events-06-02.html). The only evidence he has is his own assumptions about when peak oil will occur. He doesn't actually have any data showing peak oil has occured, he just made what looks like a guess about how much oil is in the ground, then made a guess about how much oil would signify a peak, then fitted the data to that peak. His assumptions do not seem valid. I don't really see how he expects to figure out how much oil is in the ground when nobody is sure of that. His assumption that the peak must occur at the half-way point is silly, the situation is far, far more complicated than that and there is absolutely no reason to assume that peak oil must occur at the half way point, and even if we did there is no reason to think we are at the half-way point. Based on This Data (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/reserves.html), and assuming his data on the cumulative oil production in 2004 is correct (which is suspect), the real oil reserves would be somewhere between 2.273 trillion and 2.063 trillion, between 50 and 260 billion barrels above his estimate. Now these estimates may be wrong, but so might his.

Also, the cumulative oil production he plots is a straight line. That is just silly, if you look at the data oil production is anything but a straight line.

[Taks]

As to Taks, how am I insulting you by asking whether you read the links?first, i didn't say you insulted me... as you say "did i?"


Did you?i didn't make any value judgements on your argument, either, did i?


You seem to be buying into the argument, as best I can tell, that peak oil is merely some incentive problem. That's why I asked you whether you read the links.where did i make any value judgement on your argument?

if you'd like, i've read about the peak oil argument for years, not just today.


I have insulted no one in this thread. I, on the other hand, have been called a drive-by Malthusian and accused of wanting peak oil to happen. Those are clear insults, clearly ad hominem, and clear violations of the rules of this board as I understand them.hehe, if you wish. hate to tell you but outside observers obviously don't see it the same way. drop your tone a bit and maybe others will be more willing to listen.

taks

[Taks]

I have insulted no one in this thread.
and

This is known as consensus trance.
sorry, but this is also known as an ad-hominem. you've essentially accused everyone you're debating of just playing along with the consensus. disregarding every technical point they have made, because it does not suit your position.

taks

[Van Rijn]

Maybe you're not debating whether Peak Oil will occur, but others are.


During this discussion, I've repeatedly wondered whether you have actually been reading what others have written.

I've been debating the "Peak Oil empty tank in the ground" scare scenario that you seem to be advocating. For your argument to make sense, there would have to be only one type of fossil fuel (light sweet crude), it would all have to come from one place, and economics and technology would have no effect on the amount of fossil fuel that can be recovered.

I have never said that the supply of fossil fuel is infinite, and in fact have specifically discussed alternative primary energy sources. As previously stated, through this century I expect that we will see a process of shifting production, with total energy use increasing, though with efficiency improvements as well. Fossil fuel use will reach a peak when it is no longer the most economic choice, and starts to be phased out.



At least two different respondents have suggested that the down curve of oil production is just a phenomenon of economics,


No, local drops in oil production are not just a phenomenon of economics. Economics is, however, a vital factor that cannot be ignored. Again, you are ignoring the difference between total resources and economically available supply. Yes, there is a limit on total resources. Cost determines how much of that we will use.



and that once the proper incentives are in place, crude oil production will swing up again. One poster even predicted that the U.S. would eventually surpass its peak output of 1970.


It most certainly could! We have a great deal of oil in oil shale and elsewhere (Alaska, off-shore, higher production of heavy oil, etc.). Whether it will happen depends on the economics and political choices we make. We may very well decide there are better choices, but it is certainly possible. That's part of the problem with the peak oil argument: North Sea oil was known for some years, but it was too costly to develop until world prices increased. Canada's tar sands (easier to develop than the U.S.'s oil shale) are also a perfect example of the price issue. With the right price, Canada can become a huge oil producer, and their available reserves increases dramatically.



It is to those posters I directed the latest links, to try to demonstrate (futiley, I suppose) that peak oil is a supply problem. So, no, my argument is not refuted by the data at those links. It is confirmed, because my argument, in this case, is to show Peak Oil doubters that Peak Oil, whenever it occurs, is real. They don't seem to think it is.


Not as you state it, no. Not the "empty tank" scenario with a world-wide super depression. I most certainly do think there will be an ongoing transition in primary energy sources, and I do expect that there will be temporary political and economic issues along the way.

If there were no alternatives to fossil fuels, you would have an argument, whether it was an immediate issue or a century off. But alternatives do exist, and we can expect more and better alternatives as technology improves.

Now, if you wanted to discuss how we should best plan for the transition, rather than just saying "Doom!" you would get a lot more interest here. We could make the energy transition much easier by boosting all forms of energy R&D now, by putting more incentives into alternatives, getting moving quicker on nuclear and the methanol economy, etc. I have no doubt we will see interest in that increasing sooner or later, but I would prefer it sooner.

[eburacum45]

It has been repeatedly demonstrated on this thread that there is ample energy available on this planet and in this solar system to sustain a complex and advanced civilisation; That is a Fact.
The thesis of Hubbert, Deffeyes and others seems to be that our civilisation will collapse before we can start to exploit this essentially limitless energy; that is a Prediction, and a particularly pessimistic one.
There are much more optimistic predictions of the future of our civilisation; rather than lasting a hundred years, I would suggest that our civilisation is set in for the long haul now- say the average duration of a species, giving us approxiimately 2.4 million more years of human development.

[GOURDHEAD]

I would suggest that our civilisation is set in for the long haul now- say the average duration of a species, giving us approxiimately 2.4 million more years of human development...and then some.

[Demigrog]

Maybe you're not debating whether Peak Oil will occur, but others are. At least two different respondents have suggested that the down curve of oil production is just a phenomenon of economics

Nobody has said that. We've merely pointed out the obvious, that existing crude oil reserves are not the only future supply. Obviously oil production will decline over the next century; the question is how quickly. My point has been that even if doom-and-gloom predictions of our undiscovered crude reserves are correct, we can still produce sufficient fuel from non-conventional sources to hold us over until the hydrogen economy can take over.



, and that once the proper incentives are in place, crude oil production will swing up again. One poster even predicted that the U.S. would eventually surpass its peak output of 1970.

I assume you're referring to me; I actually referenced Canada as passing its previous peak output, but the US is also a possibility (though a long shot). Production in 1970 was about 9637 MMBbl/D. Oil Shale could produce as much as 10000MMBbl/D long term, though to reach 2MMBbl/D by 2020 would require an aggressive development plan.



I have insulted no one in this thread. I, on the other hand, have been called a drive-by Malthusian and accused of wanting peak oil to happen. Those are clear insults, clearly ad hominem, and clear violations of the rules of this board as I understand them.
I think I'm guilty of the text equivalent of rolling my eyes, but I hope none of my comments were actually insulting. If so, I apologize. We're hardly the only people to debate this issue; both sides can be mathematically correct, depending on what assumptions you make about oil production, demand, and alternative energy growth. I feel that I’m taking a middle-of-the-road approach to oil supply forecasting. I feel you are working from a rather pessimistic forecast. That is the basic disagreement here.

[publius]

I just heard something interesting related to this thread on a local radio station. I live near Greenville, SC, and BMW built a large plant nearby several years ago.

Because of increasing fuel costs, they are ramping up their use of methane gas derived from landfills. I had never heard of this before, but garbage breaking down generates methane, and it is possible to recover it. It has to be purified after extraction which adds to the cost.

But now fuel prices are high enough to make that cheaper, and BMW is ramping up its use of this. They are powering 4 turbing generators to make their own power(and I assume they will have a typical co-generation contract with the local power company (Duke) -- you have to follow certain rules to tie your own generation into the local grid (basically to ensure control and stability), but you can get a deal sometimes if you agree to supply power to the grid at the request of the power company when local demand on the grid gets high. This can save the power company transmission losses and so forth that allows them to charge a lower rate for power you pull from them. But you have to your generators ready to go online within some time limit after they call for it.

They are also using the methane for boilers, plus some painting process. The result is fully 1/2 of their total energy consumption comes from this landfill methane, which I think is pretty amazing.

-Richard

[sarongsong]

BMW seem to be on the chemical bleeding edge; they've also been playing with hydrogen-powered combustion engines for years now:

...setting nine international speed records for hydrogen-driven vehicles...a limited-production 7 Series model capable of running on [liquid] hydrogen or gasoline...BMW has opted for the fuel of the future - hydrogen. carlist.com (http://www.carlist.com/autonews/2006/autonews_270.html)

[publius]

I read an article about BMW experimenting with hydrogen fueled internal combustion engines several years ago. I believe it was in Popular Mechanics. There has been a lot of talk of fuel-cell powered cars, using the fuel cell to generate electricity and using that to power a motor to drive the car. But that seems like a big rigomorole; why not just burn hydrogen in a regular engine? The article was about the pros and cons of doing that.

It is possible and not that hard to do, but there are a bunch of little details. Energy per pound of H2 is less than gasoline, so you get less power per mass of mixture per stroke. Supercharging can make up for that but there are problems with that. Hydrogen's "octane" rating is very high indeed :) so higher pressures and compression ratios are possible, but there's something that offsets that, IIRC -- may be temperatures and burn rates and all that good stuff.

Since there's no carbon, there's no CO2, CO, and (HC)x emissions to worry about. However, there's still nitrogen in the air, and NOx is still a problem, and IIRC tend to be higher. Supercharging and higher compressionr ratios would increase this. EGR can reduce it, and I don't know what the balance they finally decided on. But besides the NOx emissions, hydrogen burns very clean indeed, and that would be great for the oil, making propane look dirty by comparison.

Second, a backfire into an intake manifold containing the H2/air mixture is more dangerous than with gas, and could severely damage the intake, if not blow it right off the top of the engine. So fuel delivery has to be carefully done, and I think you want direct injection right in the cylinders just like diesels.

Then there's the fuel tank. It has to be cryo liquid, and very cryo indeed for liquid H2. Most people assume that would be very dangerous, but it turns out it's not that bad at all. You just use a well insulated, and very strong dewar. Sitting there, the liquid H2 will be slowly boiling off and if not used, it will have to be vented. The better the insulation, the slower, but it's still a use it or loose it proposition. You wouldn't want to let a liquid H2 car sit unused with a full tank. :)

One might think it would be very dangerous in crashes, but H2 gas is so light it floats up out of the danger zone very quickly. Make the dewar itself strong enough to withstand impact and you're okay. Of course, it is very dangerous in an enclosed space, like the passenger compartment, so you don't want any chance of fuel getting in there.

-Richard

[TheBlackCat]

Fuel cells are far more efficient that internal combustion engines. Internal combustion engines waste inordinate amounts of energy in the form of heat. Fuel cells use much more of the energy available. They are also much smaller, much simpler, have no moving parts, don't produce NO or NO2, and have no change of exploding. The whole point of using hydrogen is that we don't have to worry about all the problems with internal combustion engines.

[publius]

Well, I would disagree that whole point of hydrogen is to get away from internal combustion engines. I would say the main point is to get away from oil, and second to get away from CO2 output. But since we don't have vast reserves of H2, hydrogen would only be a type of "working fluid" anyway -- we need something like nuclear to be the actual energy source, which will split water to make H2, then burn the H2 to make water again and start the working fluid cycle over.

IC engines aren't that efficient compared to fuel cells, that's certainly true. But there's a lot more to it than just efficiency. The main thing is power, how fast the energy source can dump out its energy, and then power to weight (and size) ratios. If your power plant rig weighs many times the size of the box you're want to push up the hill and through the air, it's a losing proposition. Generally, efficiency goes inversely to max power and power to weight. For stationary applications, like electric motors, you can stand some weight for the sake of efficiency. But for a vehicle where you've got to move your own weight as well as the additional load, it's a killer.

Look at how heavy and big the fuel cell-electric motor rig would have to be to produce the needed output for a car. You want enough power to be able to accelerate quickly. You've got the size and weight of the fuel cell itself plus the size and weight of the 100s of HP electric motor required. You can make a lightweight 100HP motor, but the efficiency is going to be very low, plus the thermal stresses of all that waste heat make it a very "short fuse" device.

Superconductors would change this drastically, and you can make a 100HP motor the size of conventional 1HP motor -- basically an electric motors size (and weight) depend on something they call "gap shear" in the trade, which in turn is directly proporitonal to current density in the coils. But resistive power loss density goes as the square of that gap shear. With a superconductor, you don't have to worry about that, but until someone discovers a room temperature (or close to it) superconductor, the cyro cooling system would add far more weight and energy burden than it would be worth.

Hydrogen fueled IC is something that is do-able. Fuel cell power plants are not with current technology and material capabilities.

-Richard

[Ara Pacis]

I think people might be forgetting that the world is not necessarily run by capitalism. The US and many others are mixed economies, with government regulation making mandatory what capitalism might procrastinate. Some socialist and communist countries might be even quicker in responding to issues related to petrolem decline.

If all else fails, we can always burn wood or charcoal to power steam devices that can dig up uranium so that we can restart electrical production when oil runs out and in case it causes an economic crash. If humans can build pyramids for one dead guy, then we can probably manage to transition away from petroleum.

[TheBlackCat]

Look at how heavy and big the fuel cell-electric motor rig would have to be to produce the needed output for a car. You want enough power to be able to accelerate quickly. You've got the size and weight of the fuel cell itself plus the size and weight of the 100s of HP electric motor required. You can make a lightweight 100HP motor, but the efficiency is going to be very low, plus the thermal stresses of all that waste heat make it a very "short fuse" device.

The GM Sequel (http://www.gm.com/company/gmability/adv_tech/images/fact_sheets/sequel.html) has a 90mph top speed, 300 mile range, and goes from 0 to 60 in 10 second, yet doesn't take up any more space than a current engine (even including fuel storage). I am not an automotive engineer, but it would appear the torque is on par with a Chevy Silverado pickup truck (actually a little higher). And that is only using technology available today.

[publius]

That shows how far behind I'm getting. <sigh> That is some impressive electric motor engineering. However, I'll still have to put it in the "short fuse" category until I see how long it will last in service.

Looking at the specs, we've got a roughly 100kW class fuel cell system, which drives a VFD inverter (variable frequency AC from DC input) to drive a 3-phase induction motor for the front wheels and twin permanent magnet synchronous 3-phase motors on the rear wheels. These little buggers have impressive power to weight ratios, indeed. The front motor is about 80HP and weighs just 200lbs.

That is something, indeed. However, they achieve that by making it very high speed, 12,000RPM maximum in fact. Very basically for electric motors, torque is proportional to current and speed to voltage (with AC frequency gets coupled to speed as well and tends to hide the basic voltage/speed relation which is easily seen with DC motors, but it's still there just hidden pretty well. For VFD drives, you must keep voltage in proportion to frequency). And torque is what is proportional to weight and gap shear and all that. But power is torque*speed, so for constant power, you can keep torque and weight low by making speed very high, then gearing it down, which is what they're doing here, but I imagine they still have some pretty high current densities. But higher speed means higher centrifugal stresses.

12,000RPM is something else for a 80HP motor. I'd like to see better specs of those motors' innards. :) And that's why I put it in the short fuse category. I want to see how long it will last in service.

-Richard

[publius]

Just looked in my Grainger catalog. 80HP is not a standard size, closest standard is 75HP, and an 1800RPM (4-pole 60Hz synchronous speed, actual speed is less due to slip for induction motors) weighs on average 900lbs, while 3600RPM is about 700lbs on average (1200RPM is around 1200lbs). You can see weight to power is falling slightly less than 1/speed. 200lbs for 12,000 RPM looks "about right" for this rough curve. Interesting.

However, as I remember it, for traditional materials and design centrifugal stresses kill you and start to flatten out and then turn it back up past some point that varies with size.

ETA: Another thing I didn't notice at first because I was so interested in the electrical side, was the hydrogen storage. It's using compressed gas storage at 10,000psi! I'd be a bit leery of sitting next to a 10,000psi tankful of compressed gas. :) I'm sure they're sastified with the safety of it, but I'd still be a bit squeemish, myself.

-Richard

[sarongsong]

In an intriguing GM-Daimler/Chrysler-BMW hybrid-vehicle transmission collaboration (http://www.gm.com/company/gmability/adv_tech/100_news/hybrid_042806.html):
"...an overall mechanical content and size similar to a conventional automatic transmission, yet this full hybrid transmission can operate in infinitely variable gear ratios or one of the four fixed-gear ratios..."

[Argos]

US and ethanol.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14514213.htm

[davidm]

Reality check: hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source. It requires more energy to produce it than it gives back: the little matter of Energy Returned Over Energy Invested. The same problem plauges all other possible alternatives to oil: either they do not come anywhere near oil's EROEI, or they actually are energy sinks. Schemes for powering your car on french fry grease or whatever are subsidized, behind the scenes, by the very oil-based economy that will be going downhill if peak oil is right.

Curious, how the laws of physics don't really care about human civilization.

[TheBlackCat]

Reality check: hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source. It requires more energy to produce it than it gives back: the little matter of Energy Returned Over Energy Invested. The same problem plauges all other possible alternatives to oil: either they do not come anywhere near oil's EROEI, or they actually are energy sinks. Schemes for powering your car on french fry grease or whatever are subsidized, behind the scenes, by the very oil-based economy that will be going downhill if peak oil is right.

Curious, how the laws of physics don't really care about human civilization.
We've been through this more times than I can count. Anybody who has read this thread knows hydrogen is an energy carrier. We have already been over the energy return on investment thing several times (for a reminder, that is based on current levels of investment, the return on a net increase in investment increases the more widely used something is). I am not sure why we have to go over these same things again.

[ASEI]

So we build nuclear plants and when oil becomes too expensive to use anymore, people will automatically switch over to running battery cars/trucks. (Or, if hydrogen can be used in a feasable storage/engine system, people will buy those instead). If the battery has to be ten times bigger than the equivalent gas tank to get the equivalent range, oh well. We can build bigger trunks/hoods.

Human civilization is fine. I'm really mystified as to the foaming at the mouth schadenfruede directed at human civilization for a projected price increase due to declining supply of an energy source. It seems there is rage at people for daring to burn gasoline.....

One of the things that annoys me about the contemporary attitude about switching to alternative fuel sources is the need to meddle in consumer choices. People want subsidies for alternative cars, special breaks, ect to make these choices competitive when they're really not. If politicians want to give a subsidy for an electric car now, will they subsidize the entire nation later when electric cars actually become a viable choice with respect to gasoline? And if they won't, why do they want to force the decision now? People know best when to switch, and what to switch to. Each individual consumer knows what he wants, and what his money can really buy.

[eburacum45]

There is even a possibility that demand could create a new peak in oil production, after the first peak has passed. If we still need to use hydrocarbons for certain purposes - transport for example- then it could easily be cheaper to produce oil from oil shale than from direct synthesis. Producing oil from oil shale will always be a very inefficient process; but it will be less energy intensive than direct synthesis for a long time, because the oil shale itself does have some intrinsic energy value. The energy required to process the oil shale would need to come from other primary sources; coal, nuclear, or renewable energy.

However I would like to see the use of oil reduced drastically; particularly in the West, oil is wasted in car use. I personally don't drive a car at all, and use a bicycle to get around; York has excellent rail links, many of these trains are electrically powered by coal-fired power stations. Other cities in the West have fallen victim to excessive motor traffic; over-use of cars has lead to urban sprawl.
I truly believe that mass commuting by road can be avoided, by an increase in working from home, better public transport, and a rethink of urban living. Cities in 2100 will need to be organised very differently than the cities of 2000;
that is fine, because cities do evolve over time. The cities of today are very different to the cities of 1900 or 1800.

[Ara Pacis]

I think electrically powered mass transit could solve many issues of urban living, but it's not as useful for suburban living. Stations are often so far away that it is impractical to walk or bike. Using a taxi doesn't reduce the petroleum usage and their manner of continuous operation might actually increase petroleum usage and pollution per passenger mile, but it would alleviate parking issues at train stations. The costs of mass transit does not seem to be competitive in some cases. I've paid $5 for a 30mi trip into a large city (not counting cab fares) which could have cost me less in gasoline and less in transit time and less in parking.

[davidm]

...schadenfruede... This is ad homimen, as well as untrue.

This site (http://www.planetforlife.com/oilcrisis/oilpeak.html) spells it all out.

The idea that we are going to increase oil production to have “another peak” is a fantasy. These are not charts of production falling due to economic factors. These are depletion charts. This is all well known and undisputed by people in the oil and gas industry, by scientists who understand the field.

The following is from the Bush administration:


Oil and natural gas are the dominant fuels in the U.S. economy, providing 62 percent of the nation’s energy and almost 100 percent of its transportation fuels. By 2020, the Energy Information Administration expects the United States will need about 50 percent more natural gas and one-third more oil to meet demand.
U.S. oil production is expected to decline over the next two decades. Over the same period, demand for natural gas will most likely continue to outpace domestic production.
It’s a historic fact that U.S. domestic oil discovery peaked around 1930. Peak production in the U.S. came 40 years later. That is also a historic fact. At that point, the U.S. had extracted about half of all the economically extractable oil within its boundaries. We are now producing half of what we produced then. There is not going to be another peak. Oil is non-renewable, and the U.S., as well as most of the rest of the world, is in irreversible decline.

The charts at the linked site show uneven bell curves. That’s because economic and other factors do play a role in the data, but cannot alter the overall trends. For example, look at Russia. Today we read how Russia is making a resurgence because of oil clout. This is totally misleading. The chart shows that Russia hit peak in the late 80s, when it was still the Soviet Union. Production declined significantly after that, because of the collapse of the Russian economy. Then it trended back upward, because of economic recovery. Now it is going back down again.

When we go past peak oil, we will be in a situation where falling energy supplies intersect demand higher than ever before, and rising fast (with India and China among those with the biggest appetites. This situation will be unsustainable. I have already provided numerous links to credible, credentialed sources who explain that we are not going to simply switch “inputs” overnight from oil to solar, wind, biomass, nuclear and the like, for the following two reasons: the first is that all those alternative sources, either by themselves or in some combination, do not economically scale to sustain even a small part of global industrial society, much less account for the three to seven percent per year growth that capitalism requires to maintain viability. That is, their energy returned over energy invested is very low. This is true even for nuclear power, which, although technically more energy dense than hydrocarbons, is extremely expensive to sustain. Thus its EROEI is very low. And the second reason we are not going to switch inputs overnight is that it will be technically and financially impossible to do that. I already linked to a Department of Energy study that indicated we would need at least 20 year’s mitigation time before peak oil in order to make any appreciable difference in terms of energy switchover. The available data suggest that peak oil is not 20 years away, but is happening now.

[eburacum45]

This image shows the land area that would be required to produce enough electricity from solar power to replace the entire worlds's electricity production in 2003. The small black dots are all that would be required if we assume a conservative 8% efficiency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_land_area.png
EROEI for solar power is getting better every year, of course, so that by 2050 solar power could be the cheapest form of power available.

To replace the oil use in transport would take quite a bit more area, because of the inefficiencies involved in synthesising hydrogen or hydrocarbons. And assuming that the rest of the world would quite like to acheive a western level of wealth and energy use, these black dots would need to be expanded quite considerably to provide the whole world with an extravagant life style.
The deserts of the world would disappear under a welter of black spots if the world of 9 billion people expected in 2050 have to rely on solar power at 8% efficiency to have a western lifestyle.

But of course solar power is not going to be the only source of power we will have in 2050; there will still be plenty of oil shale which could be extracted to power transport if necessary, and could possibly lead to another, even higher peak in hydrocarbon production (although that is not a very likely or desirable scenario, as the processing of oil shale consumes a lot of precious energy itself).
Oh yes, and coal, very important in the USA if not in Britain.
And there is nuclear power- it appears I was too pessimistic, and breeder reactors could extend the life of the nuclear power industry for thousands of years. The EROEI of nuclear power is poor because the waste products are expensive to dispose of; but with breeder reactors the waste products produce more energy and pay for themselves.
Some of the other methods of power production could also have competitive EROEI if scaled up; I am particularly interested in Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion; the energy needs of the world of 2050 could (in theory) be met from energy extracted from the Gulf of Mexico alone.

[GOURDHEAD]

Has anyone worked out how much energy is required to manufacture and emplace all the required photovoltaic units and the conversion losses going from DC to AC to minimize transmission losses?

[Argos]

It think a distributed generation [the energy being produced locally, next to the consumer]approach [photovoltaic cells allow for that] could get around those conversion/transmission losses.

[sol88]

Stuff Richard, well done. Your post sums it up nicely I believe, its all about the $$$ in the end.

When Oils EIOER reachs 1=1 then it's shop shut!!

Might be a little "Fun with Dick And Jane" comming up.

Sol

[Demigrog]

Reality check: hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source. It requires more energy to produce it than it gives back: the little matter of Energy Returned Over Energy Invested. The same problem plauges all other possible alternatives to oil: either they do not come anywhere near oil's EROEI, or they actually are energy sinks. Schemes for powering your car on french fry grease or whatever are subsidized, behind the scenes, by the very oil-based economy that will be going downhill if peak oil is right.
Curious, how the laws of physics don't really care about human civilization.

The EROEI of the system is what is important; ERORI of the energy source (ie nuclear) multiplied by the efficiency of hydrogen production, transportation, and consumption.


This site (http://www.planetforlife.com/oilcrisis/oilpeak.html) spells it all out.

Graphs like the one that site show assume the most pessimistic estimates of oil reserves are correct, that synthetic oil production growth will be basically negligible, and ignore the long term effect of high oil prices and alternative energy on demand (and hence consumption). I suggest reading the DOE’s official take on the oil situation (http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/oil.html).



The idea that we are going to increase oil production to have “another peak” is a fantasy. These are not charts of production falling due to economic factors. These are depletion charts.

You are still missing the basic economic concept of comparative advantage. As long as we can continue to get cheap oil from overseas ($3 a barrel to produce oil in Saudi Arabia), there is no incentive to develop additional domestic reserves. Think about it; if you owned 800 billion barrels worth of oil shale, would you start selling it now at $30 a barrel with technology that costs $25 a barrel to produce, or wait 20 years and sell it at $50 a barrel with technology that costs $15 a barrel to produce? Besides, the cost of oil is predicted to drop in the next few years. Oil-shale investors were already burned by oil price drops once, and are not going to do it again until it is clear that oil prices are going to stay high.

Oil shale is also largely a strategic reserve for the US; we’ll hold onto it as long as we can, because when the rest of the world has run out of conventional oil we’d still be able to power our military and economy. It is also a hedge against war or politics cutting off our oil imports. Remember, we have much larger reserves in oil shale than we ever had in conventional crude. It is entirely possible (though economically unlikely) that we could surpass our 1970 output, particularly if our proven conventional reserves grow with exploration and improved technology.



This is all well known and undisputed by people in the oil and gas industry, by scientists who understand the field.

That is a bit misleading; everyone agrees that oil reserves are being depleted. Nobody, however, agrees on how long it will take to become significant. The oil industry is obviously not too concerned, as prices are still pretty low. If there was a real chance of oil production declining significantly in the next decade, prices would be a lot higher. Accounting for inflation, prices are actually lower than the 70s and early 80s, and have only been driven higher because of demand and political instability in supplier nations.



When we go past peak oil, we will be in a situation where falling energy supplies intersect demand higher than ever before, and rising fast (with India and China among those with the biggest appetites. This situation will be unsustainable.

Heh, we are already in that situation even without peak oil. That is why I don’t worry about peak oil—economic conditions are going to force a change to nuclear/hydrogen well before we actually run out of oil.



I have already provided numerous links to credible, credentialed sources who explain that we are not going to simply switch “inputs” overnight from oil to solar, wind, biomass, nuclear and the like, for the following two reasons: the first is that all those alternative sources, either by themselves or in some combination, do not economically scale to sustain even a small part of global industrial society

Sources like the ones that claim it will take 10,000 nuclear plants to meet US demand? No matter how credentialed, such sources are obviously biased. Simple math proves how wrong they are. You have not made any credible argument that we cannot meet our energy needs with nuclear power and a hydrogen based economy. At best, you have argued that with a very pessimistic forecast of oil production, we’ll have to make the switch sooner than generally assumed. You have not proven your case that we could not switch if we had to.



That is, their energy returned over energy invested is very low. This is true even for nuclear power, which, although technically more energy dense than hydrocarbons, is extremely expensive to sustain. Thus its EROEI is very low.

Low EROEI? Nuclear? Even with diffusion centrifuge technology it is above 10, and closer to 20 with today’s 90% capacity factors. Gen III+ and Gen IV reactors will be even higher. Most electricity from existing-plant nuclear is between $0.03/kWh and $0.06/kWh. That is not a price you could get with a low EROEI technology.



And the second reason we are not going to switch inputs overnight is that it will be technically and financially impossible to do that. I already linked to a Department of Energy study that indicated we would need at least 20 year’s mitigation time before peak oil in order to make any appreciable difference in terms of energy switchover.

You and the DOE apparently disagree on what the DOE is saying (http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/experts/expertanswers.html#Running).



The available data suggest that peak oil is not 20 years away, but is happening now.
The available data suggest no such thing; global production is still increasing. All predictions of the actual date of peak oil are based on forecasts. The US DOE does not expect peak production until 2030; only the most pessimistic forecasts (that assume little or no additional reserves will be discovered) predict a peak before 2020.

[Demigrog]

It think a distributed generation [the energy being produced locally, next to the consumer]approach [photovoltaic cells allow for that] could get around those conversion/transmission losses.
At least in the near term this is exactly correct. Consumer photovoltaics are on the cusp of becoming mainstream, with recent cost reductions for the power conversion and control electronics. In some markets, residential PV now pays for itself in about 7 years—which makes it a sound investment for anybody with some roof space to spare. We’ve come a long ways on aesthetics also. I also expect a lot of businesses to put their flat roofs to good use. :) Biggest problem at the moment is that demand for PV has totally outstripped supply; we cannot produce the purified silicon in sufficient quantities for the industry to really take off. Industrial scale solar is totally out until the PV supply is larger.

Solar thermal technology has not had much investment lately, which I think is a shame. On a prior thread, I calculated that we could need to cover 17690 square miles (about 16% of Nevada) with mirrors and solar towers to meet current electrical demand using Solar 220 technology (which we have not been keeping up development for). That would be about 3200 Solar 220 plants at a cost of around $1.65 trillion. :) Alas, I’m afraid the closest we’re going to get to a real Solar Tower is the CGI one in the movie Sahara.

[davidm]

The EROEI of the system is what is important; ERORI of the energy source (ie nuclear) multiplied by the efficiency of hydrogen production, transportation, and consumption.

EROEI of the system is indeed important; and that’s why you have to cost out all the production, mining, transportation, decomissioning, storage, and waste disposal factors associated with nuclear energy. And when you do, the EREOI is very low. What’s more, the end product of nuclear energy is electricity. I believe there are something like 775 million gas-powered vehicles on the world’s roads; how are they going to be powered by nuclear? How are industrial and manufacturing processes, and mining and refining processes, going to take place powered by nuclear? Are we going to fly airplanes on nuclear power?


Graphs like the one that site show assume the most pessimistic estimates of oil reserves are correct, that synthetic oil production growth will be basically negligible, and ignore the long term effect of high oil prices and alternative energy on demand (and hence consumption). I suggest reading the DOE’s official take on the oil situation.

All graphs and forecasts, including anything that the DOE says, are obviously estimates. What else could they be? But what those graphs also show is history. The history is not encouraging: Conventional peak oil U.S. discovery took place in 1930. Conventional peak oil U.S. production took place in 1970. Conventional peak oil global discovery took place in the early 1960s. The trends are clear. There is, of course, a huge economic incentive to discover oil, at least. And despite all our technological improvements and incentives, the peak of global discovery took place more than 40 years ago, and continues to trend downward. Finally, if you don’t trust the pessimistic data, why do you trust the rosier data of the DOE? You give no reason to trust one over the other. The fact is that independent experts — people in the field who have studied it, oil geologists — flat out disagree with the DOE. Some might even suppose — on occasion — that the government does not tell the truth, for reasons of its own.


You are still missing the basic economic concept of comparative advantage. As long as we can continue to get cheap oil from overseas ($3 a barrel to produce oil in Saudi Arabia), there is no incentive to develop additional domestic reserves. Think about it; if you owned 800 billion barrels worth of oil shale, would you start selling it now at $30 a barrel with technology that costs $25 a barrel to produce, or wait 20 years and sell it at $50 a barrel with technology that costs $15 a barrel to produce? Besides, the cost of oil is predicted to drop in the next few years. Oil-shale investors were already burned by oil price drops once, and are not going to do it again until it is clear that oil prices are going to stay high.

Oil shale is also largely a strategic reserve for the US; we’ll hold onto it as long as we can, because when the rest of the world has run out of conventional oil we’d still be able to power our military and economy. It is also a hedge against war or politics cutting off our oil imports. Remember, we have much larger reserves in oil shale than we ever had in conventional crude. It is entirely possible (though economically unlikely) that we could surpass our 1970 output, particularly if our proven conventional reserves grow with exploration and improved technology.

I have already said — I don’t know how many times I’ve had to say this — that the peak oil charts deal with conventional oil, not tar sands or oil shale. Now then:

I have to wonder if anyone is reading these links. Once again, please look at the Rand Report for the U.S. Department of Energy. (http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.pdf) It notes that production stage for oil shale is at least 12 years away if companies commit now, which they haven’t, and production of 3 million barrels a day is 30 years in the future. If so, this is not even to be a drop in the bucket, so to speak, of help.

See also the Hirsch report (http://www.pppl.gov/publications/pics/Oil_Peaking_1205.pdf), prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy, to which, again, I have already linked. In that report, recall, Hirsch outlined the following three “mitigation” scenarios for addressing peak oil:


• Scenario I assumes that action is not initiated until peaking occurs.
• Scenario II assumes that action is initiated 10 years before peaking.
• Scenario III assumes action is initiated 20 years before peaking.


The bottom line with “oil” shale (actually kerogen) is that is, at least currently, extremely energy-intensive to extract, and so the EROEI is going to be very low. Buried deep in the Hirsch report is the following disturbing information:


We excluded a number of options for various reasons. While the U.S. has a huge resource of shale oil that could be processed into substitute liquid fuels, the
technology to accomplish that task is not now ready for deployment. Because
various shale oil processing prototypes were developed in years past and
because shale oil processing is likely to be economically attractive, a concerted
effort to develop shale oil technology could well lead to shale oil becoming a
contributor in Scenarios II or III. However, that would require the initiation of a major R & D program in the near future.

Bold-faced by me. If peak oil theory is correct, and we are at or near the peak now, then according to Hirsch, oil shale is not going to work, because we will start turning to it after it is too late to make any difference. Thus, the Hirsch report largely agrees with the Rand report. Let’s also recall this, from the summary of the HIrsch report:


The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented.


Sources like the ones that claim it will take 10,000 nuclear plants to meet US demand? No matter how credentialed, such sources are obviously biased. Simple math proves how wrong they are. You have not made any credible argument that we cannot meet our energy needs with nuclear power and a hydrogen based economy. At best, you have argued that with a very pessimistic forecast of oil production, we’ll have to make the switch sooner than generally assumed. You have not proven your case that we could not switch if we had to.

Indeed, the source you are dismissing is a professor of physics and the vice provost of the Cal Tech. And he explains how he arrived at his figure; I’ll leave it to you to track down the links.

Of course we can’t meet our economic needs — not even a fraction of them — on nuclear and hydrogen. Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not a source, and its production costs more than energy yield. Hence, it’s an energy sink. Perhaps this could change with large-scale construction of nuclear power plants or windmills to do electrolysis, but this would require trillions of dollars in capital investment that we will not have if peak oil is correct and the world’s energy resources go into decline. We also have no method of storing or transporting hydrogen right now, our current gas and oil pipeline system being useless for the task, as hydrogen would leak right through it. Hydrogen fuel cells also depend on platinum, which itself, according to studies I have read, is going to be in short supply if it is not already in short supply. So I have made a very powerful case indeed that these are economic pipe dreams, and it is for you to show otherwise and not merely assert otherwise.

[Van Rijn]

EROEI of the system is indeed important; and that’s why you have to cost out all the production, mining, transportation, decomissioning, storage, and waste disposal factors associated with nuclear energy. And when you do, the EREOI is very low.


According to . . .? Please present the study and how they arrived at their figures.



What’s more, the end product of nuclear energy is electricity.


High temperature (Gen IV reactors) could produce hydrogen directly:

http://www.mpr.com/pdf_files/hydrogen.pdf



I believe there are something like 775 million gas-powered vehicles on the world’s roads; how are they going to be powered by nuclear? How are industrial and manufacturing processes, and mining and refining processes, going to take place powered by nuclear? Are we going to fly airplanes on nuclear power?


And again I wonder whether you are actually reading what others have written. You repeat issues that have already been discussed. See here:

http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?p=730279&postcount=8

http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?p=730977&postcount=29

http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?p=734868&postcount=91

To quickly repeat: You produce hydrogen. You can use it directly, or with many available carbon sources (such as C02 from the air) you can produce hydrocarbons. Methane and methanol could be easily and quickly worked into the current distribution network. Yes, you can make jet fuel too.



Indeed, the source you are dismissing is a professor of physics and the vice provost of the Cal Tech. And he explains how he arrived at his figure; I’ll leave it to you to track down the links.


I'll like to see how he came up with his numbers, however Demigrog and I have already shown where he is (at best) being misleading and shown references by other learned people that disagree with him.



Of course we can’t meet our economic needs — not even a fraction of them — on nuclear and hydrogen. Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not a source, and its production costs more than energy yield. Hence, it’s an energy sink. Perhaps this could change with large-scale construction of nuclear power plants or windmills to do electrolysis, but this would require trillions of dollars in capital investment that we will not have if peak oil is correct and the world’s energy resources go into decline.



Emphasis added. By "Peak Oil" you mean the "Peak Oil empty tank in the ground scare scenario" which is not to be confused with the fact that fossil fuel will reach a point of peak production. We have shown major problems with your scare scenario. We do not agree with your scare scenario.



We also have no method of storing or transporting hydrogen right now, our current gas and oil pipeline system being useless for the task, as hydrogen would leak right through it.


That's funny, you wouldn't know it was a major industrial chemical, being used every day in this country. And, this has also been discussed previously. We've heard the speech. Do you have new material?

[sarongsong]

Interesting historical footnote:

...Henry Ford designed the famed Model T Ford to run on alcohol -- he said it was "the fuel of the future". The oil companies thought otherwise, however... Journey To Forever (http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol.html)

[Ilya]

Sources like the ones that claim it will take 10,000 nuclear plants to meet US demand? No matter how credentialed, such sources are obviously biased. Simple math proves how wrong they are. You have not made any credible argument that we cannot meet our energy needs with nuclear power and a hydrogen based economy. At best, you have argued that with a very pessimistic forecast of oil production, we’ll have to make the switch sooner than generally assumed. You have not proven your case that we could not switch if we had to.

Indeed, the source you are dismissing is a professor of physics and the vice provost of the Cal Tech. And he explains how he arrived at his figure; I’ll leave it to you to track down the links.

Sorry, but "Appeal to an authority" is a well-known example of faulty argument. Just because someone has a Ph.D. does not mean he has no biases, or does not cherrypick his data to support these biases. There are plenty of Ph.D.'s in UC Berkeley who are convinced that Marxism is a viable and superior economic system, and had produced tons of research supporting that thesis. None of which makes it true.

And as I wrote earlier, anyone who tosses off exact powers of ten ("10,000 nuclear power plants") without modifiers "approximately" or "on the order of" is a) B.S. artist, and b) believes that his audience is so easily overawed, it will swallow such numbers as true and precise. With good reasons, judging by the examples of said audience such as davidm.

[davidm]

Sorry, but "Appeal to an authority" is a well-known example of faulty argument. Just because someone has a Ph.D. does not mean he has no biases, or does not cherrypick his data to support these biases. There are plenty of Ph.D.'s in UC Berkeley who are convinced that Marxism is a viable and superior economic system, and had produced tons of research supporting that thesis. None of which makes it true.

And as I wrote earlier, anyone who tosses off exact powers of ten ("10,000 nuclear power plants") without modifiers "approximately" or "on the order of" is a) B.S. artist, and b) believes that his audience is so easily overawed, it will swallow such numbers as true and precise. With good reasons, judging by the examples of said audience such as davidm.

Oh, please. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy when the authority appealed to is not an authority in his field. This doesn't mean, of course, that the authority appealed to, even in his own field, is necessarily right, but there is no fallacy involved in doing so. Anway, how he parsed out 10,000 plants is available if you look.

[Argos]

Oh, please. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy when the authority appealed to is not an authority in his field.

Lacking a proper taxonomy of fallacies, in my opinion that would be the strong appeal to authority. The weak variety would be when the authority is an authority in his/her field. Still, on my book, any appeal to authority whatsoever is a fallacy.

[davidm]

Discussion of appeal to authority. (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html)


After searching a bit more, it turns out that this topic was done to death here not that long ago. See here. (http://bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=32481&highlight=fischer-tropsch)

Van Rijn was in that thread as well, peddling the same don’t-worry-be-happy stuff that’s he’s flinging here. We’ll go nuclear. We’ll make hydrocarbons. And anyway, there is nothing to worry about. Why? Well, because Van Rijn remembers the same stuff happening in the 70s, and it turned out to be a fake.

But guess what? The circumstances of the 70s, and of now, are totally different, as I have tried to explain. The 70s crises were artificial – that was even known at the time. This is different, but I am not going to keep beating a dead horse. The above-linked thread has many more offsite links to this the problem, but perhaps the most telling one is the Exxon Mobil (http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj05cavallo) take on the situation. That’s an oil company – not doomsayers trying to sell books. According to the above article, Exxon Mobil’s people predict non-OPEC Peak Oil before 2010, and in that article you can see why things like tar sands and oil shale are not going to help us. The cavaet of OPEC picking up production is very unlikely to be true, as the Saudis may well be at peak as well. The would mean global peak.

To get a glimpse of our probable future that belies with facts all the happy talk and wishful thinking, see The Long Emergency. (http://www.countercurrents.org/po-kunster280305.htm) You might also see the last post in the thread I linked at the beginning of this post, though he is wrong about nuclear. Nuclear isn’t a solution, either, though we’ll probably have to try it.

[ASEI]

With 200 something million vehicles, each operating at (conservatively) 50 horsepower (37300 W), to completely replace all that power would require generating it at a rate of 7460 GW. (around the order of 10,000 GW). Assuming that each plant generates on average of 1 GW (though I'm sure specific plants can be scaled up or down as needed, the hoover dam generates something like 20 GW), then it would take on the order of 10,000 plants.

So that isn't so unreasonable. Assuming that the world is blind to a problem that only you and a select few can see coming, and that there needs to be someone from your camp to lead the world through this "impending catastrophe" is unreasonable. It won't be a trainwreck, but building 10,000 powerplants isn't something you just go out and do before there is a demand for it. As the demand increases, the plants will be built at increasing rates.

We'll probably keep going on nuclear driven coal gassification and nuclear driven oil shale extraction for a few decades. That's assuming battery energy density and electric motor technology doesn't improve to the point that just running cars off the power grid becomes as practical. The demand for electricity will ramp up as oil prices increase. The demand for oil will trend downwards as we move on to more difficult deposits. (We haven't explored but a fraction of the ocean so far, also). Eventually (provided our energy companies are still in buisness and no noble leader has gummed up the economic works) we'll transition to some electric cycle.

[korjik]

I have a quick question. This discussion is about oil going thru the classic peak production curve then becoming scarce. What other commodities are farther along their peak curve than oil?

copper is one I think is farther along, but has the production rate actually gone down, or is it just harder to produce.

I ask cause all the doom and gloom about peak oil is based on the peak production theory, but I have never seen any good evidence that that theory is a good one

[ASEI]

But guess what? The circumstances of the 70s, and of now, are totally different, as I have tried to explain. The 70s crises were artificial – that was even known at the time. The supply crises of the 70's were fake because of price controls. The supply crises of the 00's are also fake, because of regulation and obstruction preventing us from developing supply infastructure. This isn't the peak oil scenario you're so scared of, which is still decades away.

The key to defeating the present supply bottleneck is to get politicians out of our way so we can continue to mine our own remaining easily accessable crude oil deposits. (Rather than, say, letting South American and Asian dictatorships mine them for us).

[pghnative]

... (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html)The above-linked thread has many more offsite links to this the problem, but perhaps the most telling one is the Exxon Mobil (http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj05cavallo) take on the situation. That’s an oil company – not doomsayers trying to sell books. According to the above article, Exxon Mobil’s people predict non-OPEC Peak Oil before 2010, and in that article you can see why things like tar sands and oil shale are not going to help us.
The Exxon Mobil report (http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Citizenship/Imports/EnergyOutlook05/index.html) does not support your position of doom. Which might explain why you didn't link to the report, but rather to a commentary.

Exxon's prediction of petroleum liquids production (http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Citizenship/Imports/EnergyOutlook05/slide_16.html)shows a plateau, not a sharp "peak". This is exactly what Van Rijn and others have said on this thread. We agree that petroleum will eventually run out. But the evidence shows that it will run out gradually, with plenty of time for alternative sources of energy to be made commercializable.

[davidm]

The supply crises of the 70's were fake because of price controls. The supply crises of the 00's are also fake, because of regulation and obstruction preventing us from developing supply infastructure. This isn't the peak oil scenario you're so scared of, which is still decades away.

It is? Evidence?

Did you read the link that I just gave to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' report on the study by Exxon Mobil? Exxon Mobil doesn't think it is decades away.

:think: I must admit these sorts of responses dumfound me. I have certainly produced a significant amount of evidence, not from doomcryers, but from people who study these things, study them intensively, that we are indeed at or near the peak of global oil production. This is not a matter of price controls, or regulation, or economics. You can throw all the money in the world at recovering oil, but if there is less and less of it to recover, it's not going to make any difference.

Why is it so hard to notice that the basic problem is one of a world constantly growing, which means constantly growing energy demand, vs. the inevitable peak of a finite resource? And the tenor or responses either is to deny the peak oil is imminent, without addressing the actual evidence that it might be very imminent indeed (and I have already produced the information of one oil geologist who thinks we are past peak) or to suggest that we are going to seamlessly switch inputs to some other energy source, without addressing all the daunting challenges this raises, not least being that these phantom "other energy sources" do not scale to meet current demand (never mind growth).

[davidm]

The Exxon Mobil report (http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Citizenship/Imports/EnergyOutlook05/index.html) does not support your position of doom. Which might explain why you didn't link to the report, but rather to a commentary.

Exxon's prediction of petroleum liquids production (http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Citizenship/Imports/EnergyOutlook05/slide_16.html)shows a plateau, not a sharp "peak". This is exactly what Van Rijn and others have said on this thread. We agree that petroleum will eventually run out. But the evidence shows that it will run out gradually, with plenty of time for alternative sources of energy to be made commercializable.

I think the author is suggesting that you read between the lines, given that this is an oil company report, and the last thing one would expect of an oil company is an admission that we might be close to peak oil.

Anway, "peak" is a relative term. Sure, there could be a plateau for awhile, but that makes no difference. On the other side of the plateau is a downswing.

[davidm]

I have a quick question. This discussion is about oil going thru the classic peak production curve then becoming scarce. What other commodities are farther along their peak curve than oil?

copper is one I think is farther along, but has the production rate actually gone down, or is it just harder to produce.

I ask cause all the doom and gloom about peak oil is based on the peak production theory, but I have never seen any good evidence that that theory is a good one

Really? How about the fact that the peak oil profile was used to predict, correctly, peak oil in the U.S. about 15 years before it happened?

[Demigrog]

I think the author is suggesting that you read between the lines, given that this is an oil company report, and the last thing one would expect of an oil company is an admission that we might be close to peak oil.

I cannot read the commentary (site was down when I tried) but you'd have to basically insert a completely different report between the lines to get a peak oil crisis out of that Exxon Mobil report. The report basically concurs with the USGS assement that worldwide we've produced about 1 trillion of about 3 trillion potential barrels of crude. Like the USGS, the Exxon Mobil report expects that OPEC oil will make up an increasingly large percentage of production. The Exxon Mobil report does not even show a world supply peak, out to 2030.



Anway, "peak" is a relative term. Sure, there could be a plateau for awhile, but that makes no difference. On the other side of the plateau is a downswing.
Er, the width of the plateau makes all the difference in the world. The longer we have to develop non-oil alternatives, the more of a non-issue peak oil becomes.

[Demigrog]

Ok, read the commentary on the Exxon Mobil report, and it is pretty much what I expected. It deals with non-OPEC production peaking, tossing in some questions about whether OPEC can increase capacity fast enough to meet demand.

The commentary basically assumes that Exxon Mobil's prediction of shale/tar production and crude oil reserves growth is a max-case, when in fact it represents what would happen in a scenario where crude oil continues to be abundant and cheap. As long as OPEC production is expected to grow and have sufficient reserves for cheap crude, non-OPEC nations are not going to spend much on developing non-crude reserves like oil shale and oil tars, or exploring for oil in ecologically sensitive areas.

The increasing reliance on OPEC oil is troubling for political and economic reasons, but not so much because of oil reserves depletion.

[pghnative]

... (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html)but perhaps the most telling one is the Exxon Mobil (http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj05cavallo) take on the situation. That’s an oil company – not doomsayers trying to sell books.


...Exxon Mobil doesn't think it is decades away....



I think the author is suggesting that you read between the lines, given that this is an oil company report, and the last thing one would expect of an oil company is an admission that we might be close to peak oil.

So you now seem to agree that Exxon's predictions agree with what Van Rijn and others are saying.

edited to add the word "now" , for clarity

[Van Rijn]

Discussion of appeal to authority. (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html)


After searching a bit more, it turns out that this topic was done to death here not that long ago. See here. (http://bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=32481&highlight=fischer-tropsch)

Van Rijn was in that thread as well, peddling the same don’t-worry-be-happy stuff that’s he’s flinging here. We’ll go nuclear. We’ll make hydrocarbons. And anyway, there is nothing to worry about. Why? Well, because Van Rijn remembers the same stuff happening in the 70s, and it turned out to be a fake.


I believe I said more than once that I would expect shocks during the transition. Countering your "empty tank" scenario with facts is hardly "don't worry, be happy." I fully expect that there will be rough spots on the way through energy transition. At the same time, there are obvious and known ways to supply our energy, and we aren't running out of fossil fuels (which includes all sources of oil, natural gas and coal) today.

As I see it, you are "peddling" a doom and gloom scenario, and going out of your way to discount anything that would counter it.




To get a glimpse of our probable future that belies with facts all the happy talk and wishful thinking, see The Long Emergency. (http://www.countercurrents.org/po-kunster280305.htm) You might also see the last post in the thread I linked at the beginning of this post, though he is wrong about nuclear. Nuclear isn’t a solution, either, though we’ll probably have to try it.

So because this guy says nuclear isn't a solution, that's "evidence"?

Let's see the numbers, the assumptions behind the numbers, and how they were calculated.

[Van Rijn]

Oh, please. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy when the authority appealed to is not an authority in his field. This doesn't mean, of course, that the authority appealed to, even in his own field, is necessarily right, but there is no fallacy involved in doing so. Anway, how he parsed out 10,000 plants is available if you look.

Where? Please provide a link or reference to how he calculated this figure. Also, note that I showed where he was being very misleading here:

http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?p=733271&postcount=77

There is enough uranium and thorium to run a high energy civilization for millions of years.

[davidm]

I believe I said more than once that I would expect shocks during the transition. Countering your "empty tank" scenario with facts is hardly "don't worry, be happy." I fully expect that there will be rough spots on the way through energy transition. At the same time, there are obvious and known ways to supply our energy, and we aren't running out of fossil fuels (which includes all sources of oil, natural gas and coal) today.

As I see it, you are "peddling" a doom and gloom scenario, and going out of your way to discount anything that would counter it.

Not true. I'm pointing out that the proposed solutions have deeply flawed assumptions.





So because this guy says nuclear isn't a solution, that's "evidence"?

I think you misread him. He is in favor of nuclear.

[davidm]

Where? Please provide a link or reference to how he calculated this figure. Also, note that I showed where he was being very misleading here:

http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?p=733271&postcount=77

Please read this interview. (http://www.energybulletin.net/3322.html) From the interview:


One of them is you would have to build 10,000 of the largest power plants that are feasible by engineering standards in order to replace the 10 terrawatts of fossil fuel we're burning today.

It is a simple math calculation, which does also not take into account the 3 to 7 percent annual growth rates that modern industiral societies need to remain viable. So 10,000 power plants would not even be enough.

Now of course you are going to protest that we do not need to replace all fossil fuels with nuclear plants, but his intention was to draw attention to the magnitude of the problem we face. Plenty of people say, No oil? No problem! Switch to nuclear! And so Goodstein obliges them by showing what that would actually entail, just to meet current energy needs.


There is enough uranium and thorium to run a high energy civilization for millions of years.

I believe you provided one reference for this claim, which I'll have to go back and look at. I believe it was at a page that also touted abiotic oil theory, if I recall correctly. I'll take such claims with a metric ton of salt, if you don't mind, until I seem them independently substantiated.

For those following this discussion, I suggest you get ahold of Prof. Goodstein's book, Out of Gas, (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393326470/102-2010526-8056114?v=glance&n=283155) which discusses every issue brought up in this discussion in some detail. It's sobering reading, and no, it is not a fallacy to appeal to an authority who actually knows what he is talking about, and is an authority in the field of which he speaks.

[davidm]

People might also wish to read a Goodstein interview (http://www.americanscientist.org/template/InterviewTypeDetail/assetid/34501;jsessionid=aaa4KxL1uKYE6) with American Scientist.

[davidm]

Finally, here (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/111704_end_oil.shtml) is a complete and concise presentation of the problem by Goodstein, which is really just a very condensed version of his book.

[eburacum45]

Ten terawatts eh?
Chicken feed.
I expect there will be twenty terawatts of energy production a hundred years from now; that might be a conservative estimate.
There are four hundred nuclear plants in our world today; by 2100 there could easily be four thousand using uranium and thorium to produce four terawatts or more. There might even be ten thousand nuclear plants by that time; but this will be overkill, as there are many other sources of energy.

This page shows how much land would be required to produce eighteen terawatts from solar energy alone;
http://www.loster.com/ml/solar_land_area/
it is a small fraction of the available land area. But a large proportion of solar power will be generated near to the point of consumption, on the roofs of houses and other structures.
Wind and tidal power could provide a terrawatt or three; so could Ocean Thermal energy, a source which could become surprisingly important; combined solar and OTEC plants in the warm oceans could provide tens of terawatts of power without taking up any land surface area at all.

Solar power EROEI is improving all the time, and as long as there is more energy coming out of the system than going in, the generation of electricity by this (and any other) method will be feasible. As Wilkins Micawber said,
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." There will be enough happiness to go round for an indefinite period if we concentrate on renewable sources of energy.

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Ah, but a note of caution; our civilisation will eventually reach the limits of growth, but they might not be the ones the doomsayers are predicting. If and when the majority of the population of the world is no longer struggling to make a living; the birth rate will come down; we will enter what is known as a post-transition demographic, with low birth rates and low death rates.
a note about that concept here
http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/Population/Hunger/FoodFirst/Transition.asp

we can say with confidence that there is abundant evidence that the human population-growth rate is slowing and will eventually stop. It is hardly out of control.

But the next big thing after that will be a further drop in the death rate... medical science is progressing towards an increase in longevity, and once that happens the birth rate will need to decline even further, or our world will be full of two hundred year old couples having new families...
You see, Malthus will get you in the end one way or another.

[korjik]

I have a quick question. This discussion is about oil going thru the classic peak production curve then becoming scarce. What other commodities are farther along their peak curve than oil?

copper is one I think is farther along, but has the production rate actually gone down, or is it just harder to produce.

I ask cause all the doom and gloom about peak oil is based on the peak production theory, but I have never seen any good evidence that that theory is a good one


Really? How about the fact that the peak oil profile was used to predict, correctly, peak oil in the U.S. about 15 years before it happened?

Note please that I said other than oil. My counter arguement is that the down curve in the peak scenario is not completely correct. Exploitation of marginal rescources makes the decay much slower, and this slower decay will allow time to replace fossil fuel with a new source.

I am looking for a non-oil peak useage to see which arguement is more correct.

[Natural-Philosopher]

Sheesh, amazing how heated a simple question of economics can get.

First, oil reserves are a very complicated subject that involves at least as much politics as it does economics; wary as I am of Wikipedia, I think their article is pretty good (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves).

Bottom line is that oil will not run out over night; prices will go up over time, with a few possible sudden jumps due to wars and/or demand increases from developing nations.

People are not stupid; everyone in the energy industry sees this coming and every energy related company has ongoing R&D into alternative energy sources. We will not be required to switch overnight, and new technologies can be phased in as they become economically competitive. Many already are—wind turbines are way outselling gas and coal in developed countries at the moment.

No only the government subsidies keep windmills alive...

In the short term, fuel efficiency will improve. In the medium term, hybrid vehicles will begin to really sell, followed by duel-fuel (hydrogen/gasoline) and some pure-electric vehicles.


To charge the electrics and produce hydrogen (as well as power the other three quarters of our energy consumption that are not transportation related), we’ll build more power plants.

We won't reqaly ned to as offpeak recxharging jsut uses presemnt palnts when they are now idle, increasing efficiency, lowering costs and substituting the import of oil with absolutely NOTHING, but phase shifted "offpeak" power demand.

In the short term, Gas turbines, wind turbines, some hydroelectric (particularly in Asia), and trace amounts of solar, biomass, and other alternatives.

In the 2010-2015 timeframe, IGCC coal plants (basically zero emission, other than CO2) will take the brunt of the load in the US.

Nope.

In the 2015-2040 timeframe, IGCC coal with carbon capture (zero emission) and Gen III+ nuclear.

Yes.

After 2040 is anybody’s guess, but likely Gen IV nuclear (breeder reactors), and possibly fusion (still hard to say if it will ever be commercially viable—we still haven’t even achieved ignition).
So, our energy needs are clearly going to be met by a changing array of sources in the years to come, but it is hardly a crisis.

Not a crisis at all. You are correct. Its an opportunity to do things better and make a biuck all around, while allowing every planetary soul to have and live a western lifestyle long before 2100.


Fusion and the inexhaustible energy era is here and has been for a while. Ignition is really irrelevant, because you don't need it or even really want it. No one drives his vehicle or operates any piece of equipment at full speed all the time. Just because my car can go 150 mph, I don't drive at that speed. The real need is for thermonuclear fusion to be controllable and have a net positive energy gain, that is, to have a net gain or "Q" greater than 1. And if engineering efficiency conversion to electricity is whats wanted a Q > than 3, (assuming 33% conversion effiiecny thermal to electricity).

Well we have routinely produced controlled fusion experiments all around the world that have Qs over 10 and some as high as 20. We get ten times the energy out that we put in. Its just that these are still experimental and require big experimental rigs. In 1997 we could produce enough power for ciries the Size of St Louis or Cinncinnatti and we did but only for a few seconds at a time. We have engineering refienments to improve the prototypical Ford Model "T"s we have, into reliable devices as the rudimentary Model T became a modern Lincoln automobile and just transportation. Thats simple engineering refinement. But don't discount where we could have been in 2005. Marseilles or Toronto were projected to have lit up their cities albeit very intermittentaly with fusion electricity in 2005but for lack of will and some misguided human environmental blockage. It will be slowed by a decade or two, but controlled Fusion electric power plants with virtually no pollution and fuel supplies good for at least the remaining age of the Earth are here.

(Gee I need enough to supply power to supply LAs electricity for a year, I guess I need to get quart of water or two.)

[davidm]

...controlled Fusion electric power plants with virtually no pollution and fuel supplies good for at least the remaining age of the Earth are here.


Nope. (http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=14&click_id=116&art_id=qw114824700068S525)


In the various tokamaks, no one has achieved a self-sustaining fusion event for longer than about five seconds, and at the cost of using up far more energy than was yielded.

[Argos]

Recent developments tackle the instabilty problems. Expect to see increasingly longer sustained fusion.

[ASEI]

There's nothing wrong with fission. It's easier, simpler, works now, and has thousands of years worth as a fuel supply for land based deposits and reprocessing.

I have only one problem with fusion research: It is being used by politicians as a distraction and a deflection whenever someone tries to hold them to a serious policy on nuclear power.

[Natural-Philosopher]

Nope. (http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=14&click_id=116&art_id=qw114824700068S525)

david m,

Just what is your background?

You seem to be genuinely intersted in the technology of the world, but betray ignorance but not stupidity. But sometimes you seem awfully obtuse as you compare unrelated facts and compare apples and oranges. You certainly are willing to denigrate the capitalistic system when statist systems were never very original nor progressive in any technical or scientific sense, and made massively inappropriate investments in technology, & scientific research, by and large. Certainly not a preferred way to promote progress.

You are quite correct as far as you go. The JET torus designed in the early seventies and built in the 70s and 80s holds the actual current worlds record for an output of 17 Megawatts for about 6 seconds, burning DT. It had a net peak gain of 10 times over its input.

When the community designed ITER we did not do it blindly. Since the design criteria were specified, the state of the art has progressed significantly. The emasculated ITER, that our good Democrat windmill lovers gave us, can actually well exceed design specification, based on advances we already have tested in smaller devices. We knew what we were getting; actually building it will only confirm what we ALREADY know.

We hoped to evolve to continuous operation. We have done so on smaller devices in the meantime. We hoped to improve confinement over our projections; we have done so already on smaller devices. We hoped to show methods for non-Ohmic startup to allow continuous operation; we have already dsicovered how to do this in smaller devices in the interim.

Even the long awaited and emasculated version of ITER being constructed is projected to produce 400 MW thermal with a max gain of 10 times over input for short periods of hours or a day at a time. Converted to electricity thats about 150 MW; enough to power the something like a samll city, say the city of St Louis, when running.

But thats is not what its going to get. In reality with improvements that we know how to do, already, ITER might peak out at a gain of about 18 or 20 awfully close to the theoretical "ignition". even though it was not a design goal. ignition means exactly nothing. Thermal power might get to 550 MW which is about all the reserve cooling being designed into it, so will have to throttle it back and hold it about there. How much we could get we probably won't know but will have to extrapolate as we won't be able to ..".git er up and let her rip...".

It probably won't run for just the 400 seconds at a time as spec'ed, but could actually run for 4000 or 40,000 or longer seconds, with that kind of gain and under higher Betas allowed by better than designed confinement, which will get as we have already learned how to do it.

I feel quite confident that the standby MIE will be invoked, to build "DEMO" ITER Phase II, long before planned. Fusion power has arrived. All we need do is technically demonstrate the fact. It seems a long wait until first plasma in 2014-15.

I couldn't go out and order a Gen IV fission plant today; the detailed design doesn't exist yet. The companies and the engineers haven't completely designed it yet but if you want it they could commence to complete the design and try to build it.

Fusion "DEMO" the Next Step after ITER I, is in about the same situation. After groundbreaking shortly, it would be fun to see if we could spec and design DEMO. Would it still be a normal aspect tokomak or a Spherical torus ? Should we wait to see what the compact stellerator does is a few years. But those are questions for a second DEMO; we know now today, how to design and spec a standard aspect DEMO Tokomak that will be the equivalent of the Yankee atomic fission plant that ushered in nuclear power.

[davidm]

It is curious that you keep saying that “Democrat windmill lovers emasculated ITER,” even after I have already proved that this statement is wrong, and after you have been warned to quit talking politics.

What is so hard to understand about this problem? Here is a summary of the facts:

U.S. peak oil discovery took place in 1930. This was followed, some 40 years later, by U.S. peak oil supply. This peaking was predicted in the 1950s by the geophysicist Marion King Hubbert, who worked for the oil industry. The industry begged him not to disclose the prediction, but he did. After he did, the industry worked to disparage it and him, but his prediction proved to be right. Today, we are producing half the oil we produced in 1970. This isn’t because, as some have suggested in this thread, that it is more economical for us to import oil. It’s because we don’t have the oil to produce: we can’t ramp up production of a diminishing resource.

In the past 40 years, most other oil-producing nations have peaked. It is thought that only a few nations have not yet hit peak, among them Iran and Iraq, curiously. Many analysts believe that the Saudis are at or near peak.

Note that global peak oil discovery took place in the early 60s. Recall the 40-year gap between U.S. peak discovery and U.S. peak supply, and recall that it is a historical fact that most nations have peaked, and we have a good inductive case that the whole world is at or near the peak of oil production/supply.

It is hard to understand how anyone cannot see that if this is the case, then we are fated to suffer severe economic dislocations as soon as we start going down the other side of the bell curve of oil production. Each year, we will have diminishing fossil fuel production in a world that is demanding more fossil fuel than ever before. Have we forgotten about the growing economies of India and China, never mind our own growing economy?

ITER means nothing in this situation, because even fusion proponents concede that economical widespread fusion power will come mid-century at best. Hence, forget about fusion.

What about coal? Forget about it. The coal industry says we have 250 years of coal in the U.S. ground at current use rates. The physicist David Goodstein easily showed that to ramp up coal production to replace phased-out oil supplies would reduce the supply of coal to less than that of a human lifetime. And that represents the total supply of U.S. coal; the problem is that within a few short decades we would have used half of it – peak coal – and then head down the other side of the coal supply bell curve, with the same economic consequences as peak oil.

U.S. natural gas supply is believed to have peaked in 2001. Natural gas will have its own global peak and is nothing but an energy stopgap.

Forget nuclear fission. I’ve already demonstrated how Goodstein arrived at his calculation that we would need 10,000 fission plants to replace our current oil inputs, and this figure does not even account for the economic growth that all capitalist societies need, year in and year out, to remain viable.

Tar sands, oil shale, methane hydrates, uranium from seawater and the like all suffer from very low EROEI that might make all of them unfeasible.

I have already linked to the U.S. Energy Dept. Hirsch report that states massive mitigation efforts must start now if there is any opportunity to find an escape from the consequence of peak. The report clearly states, however, that if peak oil is actually occurring now, then mitigation efforts will not work.

Solar, wind and other alternatives appear to lack the energy density and scalability, under currently understood technology and economics, that would allow them to replace more than a relatively modest fraction of our current industrial economy, never mind meet the growth that our economy requires.

Hydrogen is a energy carrier and not an energy source. It requires more energy to make than you get out of the process.

Ethanol and other alternatives suffer from the usual problems of scalability, EROEI and the like. It does not appear likely that this can change.

Bottom line? We are in big trouble. This is not the conclusion of windmill-hugging Democrats, or whatever. It is the conclusion of many financial analysts, physicists and other scientists, petroleum geologists, investment bankers and the like.

[korjik]

I will ask my question again. Is there any other resource which has shown a peak curve and then stopped being used?

This whole arguement is that all oil will disappear in our lifetime, because we have reached the peak and the supply will dry up. I would like to know if this arguement has a basis in fact or is just theory.

[davidm]

I will ask my question again. Is there any other resource which has shown a peak curve and then stopped being used?

This whole arguement is that all oil will disappear in our lifetime, because we have reached the peak and the supply will dry up. I would like to know if this arguement has a basis in fact or is just theory.

The answer to your question, I would think, is no. Over history we moved from one energy source to another, when the new energy sources became more profitable or versatile. The argument then is that, when oil becomes too expensive or supplies begin to shrink, we will move on to the next energy source. The problem is that there may not be a next energy source that has the density and scalability of oil.

We will not run out of oil. Running out is not the problem. The problem beings when production declines year after year.

[pghnative]

...ITER means nothing in this situation, because even fusion proponents concede that economical widespread fusion power will come mid-century at best. Hence, forget about fusion.

What about coal? Forget about it. The coal industry says we have 250 years of coal in the U.S. ground at current use rates. The physicist David Goodstein easily showed that to ramp up coal production to replace phased-out oil supplies would reduce the supply of coal to less than that of a human lifetime. And that represents the total supply of U.S. coal; the problem is that within a few short decades we would have used half of it – peak coal – and then head down the other side of the coal supply bell curve, with the same economic consequences as peak oil.

U.S. natural gas supply is believed to have peaked in 2001. Natural gas will have its own global peak and is nothing but an energy stopgap.

Forget nuclear fission. I’ve already demonstrated how Goodstein arrived at his calculation that we would need 10,000 fission plants to replace our current oil inputs, and this figure does not even account for the economic growth that all capitalist societies need, year in and year out, to remain viable.

Hmm...let's look at some scenarios.

A) Oil stops being pumped tomorrow. -- I think we all agree that chaos would ensue
B) Oil is pumped at current rate, then stopped abruptly at any time in future (1 year; 5 years; 100 years) -- I think most agree that chaos would ensue.
C) Oil is pumped at a steady decline, till production is next to nil in 5 years. Yet again, we all agree that chaos would ensue
D) Oil is pumped at steady decline over 20 years.

DavidM -- which scenario are you advocating? Your rhetoric implies you believe in either A, B or C. To me, "D" seems much more likely, and even there I'd bet (based on the Exxon report that you used to glowingly point to) that oil will be pumped at steady decline over more like 50 years.

But let's stick to scenario D. Oil is pumped at steady decline over 20 years. Price of oil increases. Coal is increased to make up the slack. According to your numbers, coal would then only last another ~40 years. Add in a little biofuel, a little wind power, a little nuclear (don't need 10,000 now, since most of the slack is caught up by coal) and I'll bet you stretch beyond 40 years, but no matter. To me, it looks like we're good till at least 2065. That's 15 years past mid-century, when we can plan for fusion to be on line. Or more efficient solar cells. And if, in 10-20 years, fusion looks hopeless, we still have 40 - 50 years to figure out a new plan.

[HenrikOlsen]

... the economic growth that all capitalist societies need, year in and year out, to remain viable.
I keep seeing this mentioned, are there any confirming evidence of this, or is it just an axiom of (procapitalist) economics used without substantiation to block regulation?

[TriangleMan]

I don't think it has been mentioned yet but last week's eskeptic article link was on peak oil. It is an article in ReasonOnline (http://www.reason.com/0605/fe.rb.peak.shtml). His conclusion:
One day, the oil age will end. As with all resources, there is ultimately a finite supply of oil. So it is not yet clear how the world will power itself for the bulk of the coming century. But we have at least another three decades to find alternatives to petroleum.
He does note that there could be a crisis in the upcoming years, not due to dwindling supply but because a large amount of reserves are in areas with unstable governments.

[Jim]

All fossil fuels are finite. They will all eventually run out, or get so low and rare that they must be abandoned.

Yes, most estimates place that point some 30-50 years away.

The real problem is adopting an attitude that 30-50 years is "plenty of time" so we don't need to do anything now. That's not just courting disaster, that's setting it up in a penthouse apartment with a platinum Visa card.

There's an old axiom, "The best time to look for a job is when you have a job." The reasoning is that you can look carefully and critically, and you will not become so suddenly deperate that you make a wrong choice.

That's where we are now. We have a "job" and we should take advantage of that. Start looking for our next "job" now, when we can afford to be choosy and find the right one.

[Van Rijn]

All fossil fuels are finite. They will all eventually run out, or get so low and rare that they must be abandoned.

Yes, most estimates place that point some 30-50 years away.


Actually, the estimates are that peak world production of conventional oil will occur sometime in the next several decades. That is quite different from saying all fossil fuels will be gone, or uneconomic, within that time period.



The real problem is adopting an attitude that 30-50 years is "plenty of time" so we don't need to do anything now. That's not just courting disaster, that's setting it up in a penthouse apartment with a platinum Visa card.


I do partly agree with this - I would like to see a serious shift to nuclear now, and more government R&D in all reasonable energy research areas. On the other hand, options do exist, and when prices go up, people will get much more interested.

[pghnative]

The real problem is adopting an attitude that 30-50 years is "plenty of time" so we don't need to do anything now. That's only a problem if you think that decision makers can intelligently do better than market forces. Because I don't believe that to be true (and it is a belief system -- I'm not sure either position can be quantitatively proven), I think it is better to allow energy prices to increase and let the most efficient new energy source win.

[HenrikOlsen]

Market forces are always reactive, not predictive, if a replacement technology requires 30 years for maturation, the time to start developing is 30 years before market forces wants it, otherwise you're going to have 30 years with nothing, this can only be done with intelligent decision makers that are not controlled by market forces.

Edited for slight modification, people planning from market forces have very limited prediction horizons, planning 30 years ahead only happen in forestry, 15 years ahead you see for whisky distilleries, everything else is 5 years or less.

[ASEI]

Market forces are always reactive, not predictive, if a replacement technology requires 30 years for maturation, the time to start developing is 30 years before market forces wants it, otherwise you're going to have 30 years with nothing, this can only be done with intelligent decision makers that are not controlled by market forces. Market forces are reactive, but political visionaries simply enshrine any random vision and don't react at all. What people unconcerned with market forces do is not respond to changes, period. Furthermore, what you're asking for isn't vision, it's prophecy. In 1940, could a political visionary plan for the smallest aspect of the world of 1970? No.

If the market is allowed to operate, it will react. Maybe not as fast as you would like. But God save us from "intelligent" unconcerned decisionmakers!


people planning from market forces have very limited prediction horizons People planning from market forces are very concerned with the outcome and are putting their buisnesses and fortunes on the line. If their predictive horizons aren't good enough, then I'd honestly like to know whose are. People who pretend to know the future are nothing new. But the people who knew are never the people who pretend to know, and given an infinte population of pontificating visionaries, one of them is bound to blither something resembling what actually ends up happening. Does this make it a sound basis for decisionmaking?

[ASEI]

... the economic growth that all capitalist societies need, year in and year out, to remain viable. PS. What's supposed to happen to a capitalist economy that doesn't grow anyway? Capitalist economies tend to cause growth. It seems to me to be an effect, not a precondition.

[davidm]

Actually, the estimates are that peak world production of conventional oil will occur sometime in the next several decades. That is quite different from saying all fossil fuels will be gone, or uneconomic, within that time period.

No, that is one estimate, a government one that is severely contested. A number of other estimates place peak oil in this decade. Ken Deffeyes says it has already happened. If it has happened, we won't feel the economic effect immediately, but there could be a couple of years of uncertainty before it is noticed that production is definitely in decline.

[Natural-Philosopher]

PS. What's supposed to happen to a capitalist economy that doesn't grow anyway? Capitalist economies tend to cause growth. It seems to me to be an effect, not a precondition.

It is an effect not a precondition. Statism under any name from totalitarainism through all the various permutations to monarchsim have been around for millenia. Many but not all, were thoroughly non progressive and even froze themselves into a static fuedalism to preserve the status quo. China went to sleep in 1424 and didn't awake until the 1930's, for example.

Creative destruction as Schlumpeter says is why capitalism generates growth,as the new sweeps away the old, when its better.

[Natural-Philosopher]

[QUOTE=HenrikOlsen]Market forces are always reactive, not predictive, if a replacement technology requires 30 years for maturation, the time to start developing is 30 years before market forces wants it, otherwise you're going to have 30 years with nothing, this can only be done with intelligent decision makers that are not controlled by market forces.

Edited for slight modification, people planning from market forces have very limited prediction horizons, planning 30 years ahead only happen in forestry, 15 years ahead you see for whisky distilleries, everything else is 5 years or less.[/QUOT

That is not quite correct. There are many examples of advances that had no payoff for decades. The conquest of many diseases took that long. The effort to make aviation a routine method of transport took just as long.

Controlled fusion has been pursued since the 1950's. By the late fifties it was clear they did not understand how to cure the multitude of plasma instabilities to hopefully improve their ability to hold a fusion plasma in place. They needed to improve by 7 orders of magnitude or 10,000,000 times. But the journey begins with single step; for fifty years that journey has proceeded. instabilities were encountered , puzzled over, understood and fixed or worked around; only to encounter yet a new method of failure just a little further along the path. But individuals and governments have persevered.
The long journey is not finished but 6.5 orders of magnitude have been overcome but half a order yet remains. They weren't sure back then but we know now that the journey can be finished. ITER will conquer the last half order of magnitude and then it becomes only a difficult but mundane engineering job to make it reliable and economical.

Energy as a problem is something our children will wonder why we puzzled over.

The two technologies that will collectively remove our reliance on fossil energy or any of the other primitives so loved by Lovinites are Plug-In- Hybrid ground transport and fusion/fission electric generation. PHEVs could allow the Us to reduce its fossil fuel requirements by 70%. fusion/fission will eliminate the need to burn solid fossil fuels. Both Will happen within 25- 50 years. We have plenty of fossil fuels until then, As for the climate change it has little effect for a couple hundred years and long before then we will be worried about global cooling rather than global warming.

[Demigrog]

The real problem is adopting an attitude that 30-50 years is "plenty of time" so we don't need to do anything now.

We've already been through this earlier in the thread. The real error is assuming that nobody is doing anything now.

Energy projects are typically mid to long cycle businesses; for example, I'm working on controls for a power plant that won't even break ground until 2010. Some types of plants ("template" Gas turbine and wind) are shorter cycle, but typically the larger the plant the longer the lead time (which only makes sense).

Longer term, every large energy company has large investments in R&D and invests in both pure science and engineering. GE, for example, has a huge corporate R&D center that basically does pure science to support its businesses. Plus, each business division has its own research--GE Nuclear just broke ground on a huge new facility in North Carolina for its advanced research. There are also collaborations with government research centers like the $37 million dollar project GE Energy is doing with the DOE to develop 5-7 MW offshore wind turbines. There are also direct government grants and corporate investment supporting specific research, like a project to develop cheaper more reliable power inverters for residential solar power.

It is also important to realize that there is a spectrum of energy solutions being worked on simultaneously. We may be building reduced emissions coal and Gen III+ nuclear right now while simultaneously designing a Gen IV reactor that won’t see the light of day until 2020. We may ultimately use different alternative fuels in different parts of the country at the same time. No one technology has to solve all of our problems, and certainly not all at once.

[Natural-Philosopher]

In the discussion of the great new bugaboo called Peak Oil or Peak Anything, I would like to direct discussion to the subject I alluded to in another Post. Plug In Hybrids or a better term is electric vehicles without the drawbacks and limitations.

The technology is relatively simple from where we are now, All it requires is the addition of sufficient battery power on a hybrid such as a Prius to allow 20, 30, or 60 miles of electric operation before resort to the IC hybrid engine. Pioneered by Dr Frank at UC Davis, who has demonstrated that up to 80% of daily auto mileage is less than 60 miles per day.

Having that much battery plus a recharger that allows the vehicle to be recharged overnight at the principle residence would convert the US transportation in the time it takes to turn over the US fleet which is about 12 years to effectively electricity from fossil fuels from the time that the technology was adopted. This could be as short as 2-5 years from today. The requirement is for 16-20 KWH of batteries versus the KWH offered in a standard Prius. Substituting Li-ion for Ni-MH would add no weight to a Prius. All else stays the same. There is no technology breakthroughs required.

The US requirement for fossil fuels falls to about 9 MBD. US production is essentially that figure, so the US would cease to be a net oil importer.

Oil would continue to be used for lubricants, pharmaceutical and material manufacture and fuel for aviation and of maritime uses. Only transportation uses will consume CO2 and this represent only about present 12% of all oil use.

The nice side benefit is that overnight recharging would provide this electric fleet without adding any power plants since most plants are idling overnight, generating electricity instead would increase the utilization and drop the cost of generation. As it is, the current cost of an equivalent electric "gallon-of-gas" substitute is about $ 0.75 per gallon. This would drive the adoption and purchase of such automobiles.

Electricity can be produced by lots of methods form falling water to splitting U235 to fusing DT. Eventually most will come from the latter two methods.

End of "so-called" problem. As a side benefit, anthropomorphic generation of CO2 will begin to fall, Plants and the Oceans will rapidly strip the atmosphere of the tiny increased amounts of CO2 added, and with it "Global Warming" scares will join the timber and charcoal disaster-predictions in the dust bin.

BTW... 22% of US electricity is generated in 121 plants,some of which are very small. Converting the 60% of electricity generated by Coal would need not 10,000 more plants but merely three times the existing 121 plants or 363 more. Casandra's ought to be in the right ballpark.

[sarongsong]

...Having that much battery plus a recharger that allows the vehicle to be recharged overnight...End of "so-called" problem...Great!---just what is this battery and where can I buy one?

[Natural-Philosopher]

Great!---just what is this battery and where can I buy one?

Many organizations are petitioning Toyota and other auto manufacturers to offer Plug in Hybrid models. There are at least three small companies that would be willing to upgrade your Prius hybrid, or Honda Civic hybrid or Ford Escape hybrid for $4-5000 dollars to PHEV status, if you can't wait.

Li-Ion is the best battery technology now extent, but Ni-MH would do. Li-Ion battery factories are being built in many countries as the infrastructure automotive parts makers are building capacity to produce Hybrid Auto parts. Hybrid parts are more than just batteries. You need electric motors, power control electronics, electric peripherals. When the manufacturers decide to re-tool as they are doing, it won't take long i.e. months and years, not decades.

[Squashed]

BTW... 22% of US electricity is generated in 121 plants,some of which are very small. Converting the 60% of electricity generated by Coal would need not 10,000 more plants but merely three times the existing 121 plants or 363 more. Casandra's ought to be in the right ballpark.

I figure we will need 550 plants if 121 plants generate 22% of US electricity (we're talking nuclear power, right?):

.22X=121

or

X=121/.22
X=550

and so we will need 429 more power plants.

[Natural-Philosopher]

I figure we will need 550 plants if 121 plants generate 22% of US electricity (we're talking nuclear power, right?):

.22X=121

or

X=121/.22
X=550

and so we will need 429 more power plants.


Why do you want to stop generating electricity from Hoover or Grand Coulee Dam and their cousins? If you let those continue, as well as the geothermal, windmills (kill birds ...echh!) or solar (alter the Albedo double echh!) you only need 360 or so... The typical nuclear is about 900 MWe versus the new ones which would be 1000-1300 MWe so the new ones would be bigger reducing the number needed, but toss in some growth and expect that some of everything will continue to be used, and the figure is about right.

Many so so called planners, who couldn't find their *** with both hands, forget about time phased power generation, sometimes called (off peak generation). During the peak electricity demand of the day, the generation is four to six times what it is on average over the day. The capacity to generate sits and spins at no load during all but a few hours per day. You can recharge the entire auto fleet without building a single new plant by using off peak generation at night while most of the autos sit at home while their owners are asleep. When this demand is up the Plants would consume more fuel no doubt, but falling water, coal and uranium and someday soon deuterium and tritium (which we can make as needed), are very abundant.

If you want to, or need to, there is enough fissile/fertile mat&#233;riel in a ton of granite to provide both the energy a) to mine it, and b) refine it, but also c) to run a power Plant for half a year on it too. We don't do it because there are richer deposits, but we could, if we needed to do so. We'd mine the oceans before we mined granite, IMO. Easy known uranium mines may only have 50-100 years of reserves, but there is sufficient fuel for tens of thousands of years pretty easily accessible. As for deuterium, the easy gotten amounts are measured in multiples of the future age of the Earth until the expanding sun swallows us whole in 4-5 billion years.

There is no raw mat&#233;riel that is not getting cheaper up to and including most of the fossil fuels. With energy available you can make fossil fuels out of water and carbon should you wish to do so, but why bother? Its a lot better to let the newly found, third of the worlds biota, by mass tonnage, continue to make it for us in the bowels of the Earth.

[davidm]

It’s interesting to see how you’ve ended the “so-called” problem, as you put it. When the world’s 800 million (with numbers ever growing) cars, trucks, heavy farm machinery, diesel-powered trucks, tractor-trailers, buses and other vehicles, to say nothing of jet airplanes, runs off electricity, let me know. I won’t stay up late waiting, however.

When fossil fuels diminish, as they inevitably will (including coal) we are going to notice that the entire platform for making electricity-producing facilities like nuclear power plants rests entirely on a foundation of fossil fuels. To build nuclear power plants you have to dig, mine, refine, haul and transport; you have to construct and decommission. All of this is enabled by massive inputs of oil and natural gas. To say that somehow, solar cells are going to be used to make solar cells, windmills to make windmills, or nuclear power plants to make nuclear power plants, is to say something that remains unproven, to put it mildly. No one knows how this will be done, if it can be done. Also, beyond transportation, oil and natural gas pervade ever niche of our economy, crucially agriculture.

And again, capitalism requires constant economic growth. Whether this growth is a precondition of capitalism, or an effect, is irrelevant. Probably it is both. The effect of capitalism is to produce growth, and more growth is a precondition to sustain gains that have been won. If anyone thinks capitalism does not need growth, the counterexample is shown by those years when economies don’t grow, or decline. One such episode was called the Great Depression.

Such growth cannot go on, and will end in this century, probably in the next couple of decades. This is finite world, and the resources that we need — specifically fossil fuels, which cannot be replaced by anything, or combination of things, with the same energy density and scalability -- will decline and vanish from the scene. As Kenneth Boulding said, “Anybody who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” When that growth ends, we will not be able to build 300, or 200, or any nuclear power plants, to say nothing of fusion plants whose potential may never be realizable anyway.

[Van Rijn]

. . . and so we see still another repetition of the same old arguments, again ignoring all the counterpoints throughout the thread.

[ASEI]

(Post removed by author).

[davidm]

He's desperate for "revolution" I guess. There's something about people where they want to see civilization torn down or remade in their image. It corresponds a lot with apocalyptic thinking.

This is straightforwardly ad hominem, and a violation of the rules here. Let me try to walk you through it: an argument stands or falls on its merits, regardless of the motives of those making it. As it happens, I have no desire whatsoever to see any of the things I am talking about take place.

Van Rijn, you have made no persuasive counterarguments, and moreover, you continually repeat points about which serious reservations have been raised without yourself responding to the reservations. So it is passing ironic that you should accuse me of doing what you have been doing.

The strange thing is that this is, presumably, a site filled with skeptics and scientifically minded people. Yet when the laws of nature point toward a conclusion that people here don't like, then their mind-set seems to become fideistic: a touching faith in technogoddism, and a belief, totally belied by human experience (i.e., all civilizations have collapsed sooner or later, and the collapse was usually due specifically to resource depletion and population overshoot), that man is somehow separate from nature and implicitly has a teleological destiny.

Now I should like to ask the moderators here, how many times are ad hominem comments going to be permitted to stand, in apparent violation of the rules as I understand them?

[ASEI]

This is straightforwardly ad hominem, and a violation of the rules here. Let me try to walk you through it: an argument stands or falls on its merits, regardless of the motives of those making it. As it happens, I have no desire whatsoever to see any of the things I am talking about take place.

You're right, that post was ad-hominem. It was about you and wasn't directed at you. I apologize and have removed it.


(i.e., all civilizations have collapsed sooner or later, and the collapse was usually due specifically to resource depletion and population overshoot), that man is somehow separate from nature and implicitly has a teleological destiny. As far as I know, only the Mycenians, the Indus valley civilzation, and one or two cities in Akkad collapsed ecause of resource depletion. Most agricultural bronze age societies collapsed by being invaded, civil wars, or for political reasons. BTW, pre industrial and pre-irrigation societies were far far more vulnerable to environmental and resource restriction than industrial or agricultural societies. As the amount of energy you employ increases, the amount of resources you can extract, recycle, and manage also increases.

We've already made our arguments, and have proposed tons of potential solutions, have shown the oil production peak to be much farther in the future, and have explained how nuclear energy (which has a positive return on energy investment, the only real requirement to be a driver) can drive fuel and mining processes with negative return on energy investment. You've made yours and have attacked every proposed solution essentially by saying "you can't do that", or "there's not enough time"! What about your argument isn't apocalyptic? Do you actually have anything to suggest that doesn't involve the destruction of civilization? Do you actually have a source of energy that you think would work, or is your only proposed option "repent industrial sinners, for the end is near!"?

If your purpose is to inspire guilt for our productive behavior, I for one will never feel guilty for human civilization having existed, or for people to have pursued their happiness, no matter what "punishments" befall us for doing so.

[Ilya]

You've made yours and have attacked every proposed solution essentially by saying "you can't do that", or "there's not enough time"! What about your argument isn't apocalyptic? Do you actually have anything to suggest that doesn't involve the destruction of civilization? Do you actually have a source of energy that you think would work, or is your only proposed option "repent industrial sinners, for the end is near!"?

ASEI --

If you read this entire thread, you will find that Davidm already answered your question. He thinks that lifestyle circa 1800 is the best human race can look forward to. Presumably not capitalist 1800, but some kind of "sustainable" (i.e. forcibly stagnant) version.

[ASEI]

BTW, when people talk about using solar power on a large scale (desert energy stations, ect), why do they talk about photovoltaics, versus solar thermal? Wouldn't it be more efficient to run a heat exchanger pipe along parabolic mirrors and then to a boiler/turbine than to devote the same area to photovoltaics?

[galacsi]

BTW, when people talk about using solar power on a large scale (desert energy stations, ect), why do they talk about photovoltaics, versus solar thermal? Wouldn't it be more efficient to run a heat exchanger pipe along parabolic mirrors and then to a boiler/turbine than to devote the same area to photovoltaics?

You are quite right , other option do exists . for instance using big chimney and vortex to generate power . It is a kind of domesticated tornado.

Two men found the same ideas , Nazarre a frenchman and Michaud a Canadian.

An australian project : http://www.wentworth.nsw.gov.au/solartower/

the Canadian project very similar : http://vortexengine.ca

[sarongsong]

Hawaii is looking into harvesting ocean heat:

..."Most of the energy in the world is solar energy stored in the ocean," Krock said. "In 50 years the majority of the energy in the world will be from this source. It's the only one big enough to replace oil." Star-Bulletin (http://starbulletin.com/2006/06/03/news/story02.html)

[Demigrog]

BTW, when people talk about using solar power on a large scale (desert energy stations, ect), why do they talk about photovoltaics, versus solar thermal? Wouldn't it be more efficient to run a heat exchanger pipe along parabolic mirrors and then to a boiler/turbine than to devote the same area to photovoltaics?

Primarily because in the long run PV will be cheaper and more efficient for industrial scale solar than solar thermal. In a PV system, the solar energy is converted directly to electricity. In solar thermal, the solar energy is used to heat a liquid and then converted to electricity with steam turbines; since both conversions are fairly low efficiency, it leaves limited room for improvement. With current technology, cheap PV systems are roughly on par with solar thermal in terms of efficiency. More expensive PV cells can significantly outperform solar thermal, and the expectation is that high efficiency cells will eventually become cheaper.

O&M costs also are a problem for solar thermal. The mirrors are more sensitive to dust than PV panels, and thus have to be cleaned more often. Solar trough technology has a lot of pipes to maintain, and uses relatively low temperatures which hurts the efficiency of the steam turbine. Solar towers have the advantages of high temperature and consolidation of the hydraulics into one place (and built-in thermal storage, which could allow for nighttime generation), but suffers from the cost of the tower and O&M of the mirrors. Solar dish technology looks promising, but has not been deployed on a large scale yet. Other than solar trough, none of the solar thermal technologies has been commercialized on a large scale.

[Van Rijn]

BTW, when people talk about using solar power on a large scale (desert energy stations, ect), why do they talk about photovoltaics, versus solar thermal? Wouldn't it be more efficient to run a heat exchanger pipe along parabolic mirrors and then to a boiler/turbine than to devote the same area to photovoltaics?

In addition to the points Demigrog mentioned, PV lends itself to small scale applications near where it can be used, and sometimes can be a dual use material. Building a roof with solar panels that can also serve as roofing reduces the total effective cost. They are easily scaled to the application too. Also, PV panels do okay with diffuse (cloudy) sunlight, unlike focusers.

Especially with the cost dropping, PV makes real sense replacing high cost electricity. That has meant mostly remote applications (homes off the power grid and so forth), but with continued price drops you could get significant fuel savings if you could cut back on the use of "peakers" (inefficient power plants used for peak power demand) by getting a significant amount of PV power on the grid. In the summer especially, peak use occurs in the day (in winter it tends toward dinnertime).

I think the key issue with solar thermal electricity is that it is a major maintenance headache. Given the scale, you have a lot of mirrors and moving parts and it all has to be kept working. Also, because it doesn't as easily lend itself to small scale projects, there has been less development in the field.

[Damburger]

We are going to run out of viable oil at some point, it is inevitable. At some point, the energy required to extract oil will be greater than the energy you get from it. Economics can't change that.

And if you think you're clever for pointing out failed collapse-of-civilisation predictions from the past, I'd remind you that only one such prediction will ever turn out to be true anyway. The fact that none of the previous predicted ends of western society have come to pass doesn't actually tell you anything other than that we still exist.

In my humble opinion, its time to end our love affair with the car. Get off your lazy arses and walk places, or cycle. If you insist on being ferried somewhere, buy a horse. Yes, I'm serious. I also practice what I preach - I walk an hour to work every morning.

I think you can kiss goodbye to supermarkets as well. Getting all those products together in one place is only worthwhile so long as its very cheap to transport them and of course that won't be the case. Sure, you could get all trucks and freight trains running on fuel cells - but who is going to pay for that? It will probably turn out to be more worthwhile to produce agricultural products in cities. Greenhouses and chickens on the roofs of tower blocks etc.

[davidm]

It's interesting that ASEI apologizes for committing ad hom, and then goes back to, well, ad hom. I am, he implies, here to "inspire guilt for our productive behavior." This is not an argument.

Specific civilizations have collapsed numerous times. The biggest collapse was that of the Roman Empire, probably. An argument can be made that energy depletion played a central role in that collapse. Sustaining empire, population growth and the rest simply became not worth the effort. Technically, one way to look at the defintion of collapse is: scaling down to less complexity, of necessity.

But we can go round and round on this. I keep seeing solutions offered that have problems nested inside that people do not recognize. That is why I do not think the solutions are persuasive.

Today, there are as many people living in urban areas, worldwide, as the entire population of the earth in 1960! Does anyone think that such growth can go on?

That is, can populaton and energy consumption rise without limits on a finite world? That's the relevant question. Do you think the answer is yes? I think the answer is no.

Ilya talks about "sustainable" as "forcibly stagnant." Anyone can throw around terms. It's surprising to see, though, that on a board where people presumbably have a pretty good understanding of the laws of nature, there seems to be some implicit thought that the laws of nature give a whit about human affairs.

We will have to have sustainability because nature will demand it. You cannot continue to grow in a world of finite resources. And you especially cannot continue to do this when the whole infrastructure of the world's industrial economy is fully sustained by fossil fuels that we are going to start running out of.

[pghnative]

It's interesting that ASEI apologizes for committing ad hom, and then goes back to, well, ad hom. I am, he implies, here to "inspire guilt for our productive behavior." This is not an argument. It is interesting that out of the three paragraphs that ASEI wrote, you've ignored all of his questions and instead focused on one phase of one sentence.

If your purpose is to inspire guilt for our productive behavior, I for one will never feel guilty for human civilization having existed, or for people to have pursued their happiness, no matter what "punishments" befall us for doing so.
Why haven't you answered any of this?

We've already made our arguments, and have proposed tons of potential solutions, have shown the oil production peak to be much farther in the future, and have explained how nuclear energy (which has a positive return on energy investment, the only real requirement to be a driver) can drive fuel and mining processes with negative return on energy investment. You've made yours and have attacked every proposed solution essentially by saying "you can't do that", or "there's not enough time"! What about your argument isn't apocalyptic? Do you actually have anything to suggest that doesn't involve the destruction of civilization? Do you actually have a source of energy that you think would work, or is your only proposed option "repent industrial sinners, for the end is near!"?

[Damburger]

The first casualty of flame war is innocent peoples comments.

[davidm]

It is interesting that out of the three paragraphs that ASEI wrote, you've ignored all of his questions and instead focused on one phase of one sentence.

Why haven't you answered any of this?

Why haven't I answered any of what? Things that he claims were shown, but which weren't? To be sure, such claims were asserted, but not supported. Or, did I miss the post where someone spelled out, in detail, how, for example, nuclear power plants (whose end product is electricity) are going to be used to power heavy vehicles, mining equipment, mass-scale industrial operations, 800 million (and growing) world-wide vehicle fleet, and on an on? No one has demonstrated that it will be economical, or even technically feasible, to do any of this. They have asserted it, and that's all.

I also notice a repeated failure to answer one simple question: Can we have never-ending growth in a finite world?

[korjik]

The answer to that is a very obvious no. The real question is how finite is the world and how never ending is the growth.

You assert that the world is very finite, and that the world is ending soon, and the others assert that the world has more time left, and that this time will be used to make the world more sustainable.

[Ara Pacis]

I don't know about the rest of the world, but the US economy is a mixed economy not a pure capitalist economy. Commerce is balanced with government regulation and social demands. But even if you argue capitalism you do not necessarily need high rates of growth, just some rate of growth. The growth of money reserves (capital) can be either external (increasing sales revenue) or internal (decreasing overhead). Increasing efficiencies in commerce and energy both can contribute to the solution for increasing demand with sustainable resources. Luckily, the increasing demand for energy in the world will allow for economies of scale to develop, further increasing efficiencies in those economies and technologies.

Surely, no rate of growth can continue forever in a finite system. Even the universe is predicted to experience heat death eventually. There is an emmense resevoir of energy available to us in this solar system if we are able to squeeze every last bit out of every known interaction of the electromagnetic, weak, strong, and gravity bonds. That's a theoretical maximum, but it gives us an idea of the limit. The truth is probably a happy medium.

In the meantime, the best solution is not necessarily to use more energy but to use smarter energy. A properly designed solar house might produce a net energy surplus. I read recently that a french company is selling a car that uses compressed air to power cylinders. Combine that with regenerative braking, PV on the roof and maybe a stirling heat engine that runs off the cabin's greenhouse effect and good energy storage in the form of chemical batteries or a magnetic flywheel and you might have a car that uses no fossile fuels or recharges air and batteries at a home that has a solar energy derived surplus. If you're worried about air travel then use hydrogen fueled LACE/SABRE engines for aerodynes or use aerostats (or airship hybrids) powered by biomass fuels or even small and efficient Nuclear Pebble Bed Reactors.

I agree with the OP that a post-petroleum economy is necessary, but I don't think it will be caused by reactions to expensive peak oil but by economic forces that will find cheaper alternatives to cheap oil. I also don't think that we'll return to 1800s type of tech.

[Ara Pacis]

Why haven't I answered any of what? Things that he claims were shown, but which weren't? To be sure, such claims were asserted, but not supported. Or, did I miss the post where someone spelled out, in detail, how, for example, nuclear power plants (whose end product is electricity) are going to be used to power heavy vehicles, mining equipment, mass-scale industrial operations, 800 million (and growing) world-wide vehicle fleet, and on an on? No one has demonstrated that it will be economical, or even technically feasible, to do any of this. They have asserted it, and that's all.

I think I agree that some heavy equipment may need to continue to burn petroleum in remote locations. If we replaced most other fixed facilities and low power vehicles with nuclear generated electricity and let petroleum be used only for those heavy machines that need it, how long would that delay peak oil?

[pghnative]

Why haven't you answered any of this?


We've already made our arguments, and have proposed tons of potential solutions, have shown the oil production peak to be much farther in the future, and have explained how nuclear energy (which has a positive return on energy investment, the only real requirement to be a driver) can drive fuel and mining processes with negative return on energy investment. You've made yours and have attacked every proposed solution essentially by saying "you can't do that", or "there's not enough time"! What about your argument isn't apocalyptic? Do you actually have anything to suggest that doesn't involve the destruction of civilization? Do you actually have a source of energy that you think would work, or is your only proposed option "repent industrial sinners, for the end is near!"?

Why haven't I answered any of what?
Er....that would be the questions from ASEI which I copied into my post.

To repeat
1) What about your argument isn't apocalyptic
2) Do you actually have anything to suggest that doesn't involve the destruction of civilization
3) Do you actually have a source of energy that you think would work
4) or is your only proposed option "repent industrial sinners, for the end is near"

I also notice a repeated failure to answer one simple question: Can we have never-ending growth in a finite world?That most definitely is not a relevent question. Any open thinker on this board would answer "no" to that question, but that doesn't mean we agree with your premise. We have consistently argued that as the price of energy increases, then other sources of energy (nuclear, bio, solar) will become cost effective and replace petroleum. This will happen gradually, such that niche markets ("heavy machinery in remote locations") will pay premiums for the remaining petroleum resources. Meanwhile, as countries develop, population growth will slow.

Now gee... I wonder if you'll answer questions 1 thru 4, or merely criticize us again.

[galacsi]

There is a big energy ressource to tape in : Energy savings .Particularly in the USA Ex USSR, Energy and raw materials are wasted on a large scale.China also has a bad energetic efficiency.

There are economic or politic reasons for that situation but very big improvements are technically possible. See the difference between Japan and the US for the use of energy and raw mateials. And Japan is not returning to the XVIII century.

Market forces are a good incentive to do that but IMO there are not not enough because there are political fight to be won and big economic powers to be defeated to go this way.

[davidm]

Argumentum ad er, and argument ad gee.

The scene: the “think” tank of the BAUT board. Topic: energy depletion.

Well, guys, this davidm is coming here and telling us that something called Peak Oil might be upon us, and could be a big problem. Let’s all check our Scientism Handbooks and Technofix database and come up with the refutation.

What’s Pique Oil? Peeved petroleum?

No, it’s when half the oil that exists in the world has been produced.

So what? We’ll produce more!

But the argument is that production will decline ever year, even while demand is soaring as never before in world history.

Big deal! We’ll replace it with other inputs: nuclear, biomass, ethanol, wind, solar, etc.

Sorry, none of them work. davidm has provided numerous links to experts in the field who have studied these issues intensively, and they are all highly skeptical of proposed alternatives. Take nuclear, for example. When you remove the fossil-fuel platform on which it is based, it looks like its EROEI could actually be less than 1. That’s because it costs an a enormous amount of money (energy) to mine, extract and refine uranium; build, service and protect nuclear plants; maintain them daily and also decommission plants. Recall that with oil in its early days (which is what made industrial civilization possible) you basically poked a stick in the ground and oil gushed out. The EREOI was about, oh, 50 to 1, sometimes 100 to 1. No possible alternative even comes close to that. And without that EREOI of oil, we wouldn’t be having this conversation on the Internet today. Most likely there wouldn’t be an Internet, and there sure wouldn’t be a space program. Or jet airplanes, for that matter.

We’ve got lots of coal. It’d last for 200 years, according to the coal industry. Until we started using it. Then, as Daniel Goodstein at Caltech has shown, the proven reserves of coal in the U.S. decline to a single human lifetime. Peak coal comes in about half of that time. Also, mining coal, if we can’t figure out sequestration, would release tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases, just when we can’t afford to do so.

Picking up uranium from seawater sounds nice, until you realize that so far, it looks uneconomical to do so.

Oil shale (not oil but kerogen, of course, but “oil shale” sounds nice) and tar sands are projected to have an EREOI of little more than 1:1, rendering them effectively useless. Even if that could be improved, oil shale recovery in a major way would be decades away even if we started the industry right now, according to the U.S. Department of Energy — whose Hirsch report, btw, stated that remediation efforts for the “unprecedented” crisis we face will only work if peak oil is some 20 years in the future. Ken Deffeyes, an oils geologist, says global peak in fact happened last December. Many experts agree that it has or will happen soon.

Ethanol, methanol and the rest are net energy users. See Stanford University studies. Fusion is 50 years in the future even if it works, and we haven’t made it work yet. Helium is a carrier, not a source, and hence an energy loser. Solar and wind have potential for small-scale melioration, but it is highly doubtful that we can even mass produce, maintain and repair components for these things detached from a fossil-fuel platform. At least, no one has shown how this is to be done.

What do we do?

Well, Matthew Simmons, the investment banker who has advised President Bush on this very matter, says that we should “pray.”

I know! Let’s go all ad hom on davidm! That should generate some energy! And we’ll throw in some “ers” and “gees” to boot, and demand that he answer stupid questions that have implicit ad hom premises, while squirming with hand-waving evasions to avoid explicitly answering the basic question of how the earth (finite) is going to support an ever-growing population, not just when our prime energy source is running out, but also when widespread desertification, destruction of ocean habitat, the greenhousing of the atmosphere, the destruction of arable farmland in the U.S. and other environmental insults to the planet are spreading around the globe. Just today, The New York Times had a front-page story on the desertification of the interior of China, a spreading disaster that even threatens Beijing. In addition to running out of energy, we've thoughtfully trashed the planet, and are in a standard biolgoical mode seen time and again in nature: population overshoot coupled with resource base collapse. Next stop: die-off. Happens all the time in nature. We just forgot we were part of nature. Oops! Our bad!

But hey, we’re charter members of the church of scientism, which assures us that progress is infinite, man is special and teleology is real. But when people who believe in God try their own “man-is-special, teleology refrain,” we really kick their butts, don’t we?

OK! Let’s go all ad hom on davidm! Obviously the rules here are only enforced against people with unsettling ideas, and never against those who launch the ad hom attacks against those people. That has been proved in this very thread, where many ad hom attacks on davidm have been allowed to stand without moderation, attacks in clear violation of the rules.

(ad hom attacks on davidm continue. Whee!)

[ASEI]

No answers. Sigh.


Picking up uranium from seawater sounds nice, until you realize that so far, it looks uneconomical to do so.
EROEI is positive for the process. It's just more expensive than picking it up off the new mexico sands. Also more expensive than mining it. But the fact that there could even be a net energy return from such a diffuse supply is astounding. (Not to mention that it speaks for the robustness of other nuclear energy sources).


how the earth (finite) is going to support an ever-growing population Easy. The earth (finite, but enourmous) is going to support an ever growing population (finite, but relatively miniscule), because that population is going to use ever growing amounts of energy to recycle what they need/leave less of a mining footprint. Example: We'll never run out of aluminum. It's actually cheaper to recycle today than it is to mine. What makes you think other resources (with the exception of our primary energy source) are not similar in that when it becomes uneconomical to mine/extract it, we'll simply not recycle it.


but also when widespread desertification, destruction of ocean habitat, the greenhousing of the atmosphere, the destruction of arable farmland in the U.S. and other environmental insults to the planet are spreading around the globe 1. If we run out of oil, we won't be able to greenhouse the atmosphere. Pick one disaster scenario or the other, you can't logically have both.

2. The environment is not an angry diety. We can't "insult" it, nor will it punish us for "transgressions". If the earth warms, we can farm more land and build sea-walls. If "desertification" happens, we've had the answer to that for so long that it's written in cuneiform - irrigate. The interior of China was always a rocky wasteland.


population overshoot coupled with resource base collapse The only thing that hasn't happened these past few decades has been a decrease in food production relative to population.
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/007248179x/student_view0/chapter13/web_map_3.html

http://www.historylink101.com/lessons/farm-city/per_capita.htm

China alone has seen 1000% growth in fruit production. (Granted, in the past they were starving). But how much of a threat is their "desertification" when they're throwing around rivers, and increasing their agriculture by leaps and bounds?

My point is, develop an energy source (pick a source, any source: nuclear, solar, tidal generation, what have you), and the rest of the resources will follow. All it takes is energy to recycle a resource.


But hey, we’re charter members of the church of scientism, which assures us that progress is infinite, man is special and teleology is real. But when people who believe in God try their own “man-is-special, teleology refrain,” we really kick their butts, don’t we? Your argument against teleology and from a finite world really only necessarily means that "present trends don't continue", as if present trends ever have continued. They say nothing about when or where or how mankinds fortunes may change (or even if they change for the worse). All you have at the moment is that at some point in the indefinitely far future, assuming population increases exponentially, and no new resources are used, and that we run out of energy and cannot switch to another source, we'll begin suffering for it. Duh.
(PS, eventually, in the very far future, this is one of the reasons it would be nice to expand into space. Though by the time we can eke out a living from the lunar surface, the same technology will allow us to support practically arbitrary populations here on Earth, where resources will always be much easier to get.)

However, where I strongly disagree is that we have thousands of years worth of nuclear energy (hundreds of thousands with breeder reactors), we have a whole lot of agricultural elbow room, we even have some time (several decades at least) with unconventional oil before we really start feeling the "peak oil crisis". The earth is "finite" the same way that the Pacific ocean is finite for a fish school.

So, I've responded to your questions. A little give and take please?

[Ara Pacis]

I get worried anytime someone starts referring to him or herself in the third person.

[Demigrog]

Well, guys, this davidm is coming here and telling us that something called Peak Oil might be upon us, and could be a big problem. Let’s all check our Scientism Handbooks and Technofix database and come up with the refutation.

This is not helping…



No, it’s when half the oil that exists in the world has been produced.

No, it isn’t… it is by definition when production begins to decline. That may or may not have any particular relation to the actual amount of oil remaining. But I’m nitpicking…



Sorry, none of them work. davidm has provided numerous links to experts in the field who have studied these issues intensively, and they are all highly skeptical of proposed alternatives. Take nuclear, for example. When you remove the fossil-fuel platform on which it is based, it looks like its EROEI could actually be less than 1.

There are people highly skeptical of any topic you can name. This does not make them right, “experts” or not. I have not seen a single link from you to a reputable source that proves (or to my recollection even claims) nuclear power has EROEI less than one. Also, you are claiming that uranium mining and processing requires fossil fuels; this is simply not true—nuclear power can (and eventually will) supply the energy for mining and enrichment. In France, it already does.



That’s because it costs an a enormous amount of money (energy) to mine, extract and refine uranium;

But obviously not too much or we would not be doing it… energy costs are generally linear to energy consumption. As a good rule of thumb, if it is cheap (and nuclear generated electricity is), it cannot be using excessive energy…



Recall that with oil in its early days (which is what made industrial civilization possible) you basically poked a stick in the ground and oil gushed out. The EREOI was about, oh, 50 to 1, sometimes 100 to 1. No possible alternative even comes close to that.

You’ve not made a case that it needs to.



And without that EREOI of oil, we wouldn’t be having this conversation on the Internet today. Most likely there wouldn’t be an Internet, and there sure wouldn’t be a space program. Or jet airplanes, for that matter.

No question that cheap, easy energy jumpstarted the modern era. However, there is also no question that we can make do with more difficult energy supplies now that we do have the technology base to tap them.



We’ve got lots of coal. It’d last for 200 years, according to the coal industry. Until we started using it. Then, as Daniel Goodstein at Caltech has shown, the proven reserves of coal in the U.S. decline to a single human lifetime. Peak coal comes in about half of that time.

Depends on the assumptions. If you assume that we’re going to switch 100% of our energy supply to coal, sure, its going to get used up faster. Problem is, we’re not going to.



Also, mining coal, if we can’t figure out sequestration, would release tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases, just when we can’t afford to do so.

I agree with you there, so I’m all for nuclear power.



Picking up uranium from seawater sounds nice, until you realize that so far, it looks uneconomical to do so.

You’re ignoring comparative advantage again; nobody has bothered making uranium extraction from seawater economical because there is no need until we’ve tapped the conventional supplies.



Oil shale (not oil but kerogen, of course, but “oil shale” sounds nice) and tar sands are projected to have an EREOI of little more than 1:1, rendering them effectively useless.

By that reasoning electricity itself is useless. Even in a net-loss situation, oil shale and tar sands would be useful to create synthetic oil as an energy carrier; drive the extraction with nuclear power and we’re still ok.



Even if that could be improved, oil shale recovery in a major way would be decades away even if we started the industry right now, according to the U.S. Department of Energy

And if you read the report with some understanding of economics, you’d realize that report makes several assumptions—namely that oil will continue to be plentiful and thus too cheap for synthetics to be profitable. The picture for investment and growth would be much faster if oil production really were in danger of declining.



— whose Hirsch report, btw, stated that remediation efforts for the “unprecedented” crisis we face will only work if peak oil is some 20 years in the future. Ken Deffeyes, an oils geologist, says global peak in fact happened last December. Many experts agree that it has or will happen soon.

The plain truth is that global oil production and reserves data is not complete enough to make that kind of prediction with any degree of certainty. At best we can say with some reasonable certainty that non-OPEC production has passed its peak.



Ethanol, methanol and the rest are net energy users. See Stanford University studies. Fusion is 50 years in the future even if it works, and we haven’t made it work yet. Helium is a carrier, not a source, and hence an energy loser.

Nothing wrong with energy carriers when the energy source is as good as Nuclear power…



Solar and wind have potential for small-scale melioration, but it is highly doubtful that we can even mass produce, maintain and repair components for these things detached from a fossil-fuel platform. At least, no one has shown how this is to be done.

This is an unsupported claim. We already have non-fossil fuel replacements or synthetics for everything we use fossil fuels for now. At best you can try to construct a scenario where fossil fuels become dangerously scarce in a time frame that would make it impossible to switch to alternatives. In fact, I’d like to see you do it, supported by data. Seriously, then we could debate its specific points (so long as it is detailed enough).



I know! Let’s go all ad hom on davidm! That should generate some energy! And we’ll throw in some “ers” and “gees” to boot, and demand that he answer stupid questions that have implicit ad hom premises,

Well, you have gotten a few ad hom attacks, true. I’d suggest ignoring them though, to keep from detracting from your position.



while squirming with hand-waving evasions to avoid explicitly answering the basic question of how the earth (finite) is going to support an ever-growing population,

I’d debate the ever-growing part; most of the industrialized world will be in population decline soon (and already is, in some countries). The non-industrial world is big question mark, of course.



not just when our prime energy source is running out

Ultimately that would be the Sun… and it hasn’t reached peak yet. :) But now I’m being facetious.



, but also when widespread desertification, destruction of ocean habitat, the greenhousing of the atmosphere, the destruction of arable farmland in the U.S. and other environmental insults to the planet are spreading around the globe. Just today, The New York Times had a front-page story on the desertification of the interior of China, a spreading disaster that even threatens Beijing. In addition to running out of energy, we've thoughtfully trashed the planet, and are in a standard biolgoical mode seen time and again in nature: population overshoot coupled with resource base collapse. Next stop: die-off. Happens all the time in nature. We just forgot we were part of nature. Oops! Our bad!

I’m curious where you’re going with this. Voluntary extinction, maybe? Anyway, one problem at a time. Or maybe not—a fully nuclear civilization does eliminate greenhouse gasses, and the cheap energy production would make a lot of green technologies economical.



But hey, we’re charter members of the church of scientism, which assures us that progress is infinite, man is special and teleology is real. But when people who believe in God try their own “man-is-special, teleology refrain,” we really kick their butts, don’t we?

Now who’s tossing the ad hominems? :) Seriously though, I don’t take on faith that technology will solve our energy problems. Quite the opposite! It’ll take a lot of hard work by many people, not the least to overcome ignorance and FUD (BTW I am not talking about you, just in general). Since I work in R&D in the energy industry I’m in a position to see many of the technologies that will replace oil. It does mean I’m probably biased towards optimism, but I also have a very good grasp of the challenges, since some of them are in my inbox in the morning. Nothing I’ve seen worries me that we’ll be hurting for energy in the future.

[LynnF1]

excellent work, demigrog.

[pghnative]

DavidM
To repeat
1) What about your argument isn't apocalyptic
2) Do you actually have anything to suggest that doesn't involve the destruction of civilization
3) Do you actually have a source of energy that you think would work
4) or is your only proposed option "repent industrial sinners, for the end is near"

[Ara Pacis]

Demigrog, what do you think of using Boron/boria (http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/Paper_for_11th_CHC.html) as a recycleable energy carrier?

[ASEI]

I heard once of a boron hydride material that produced boron oxide when it combusted with oxygen. It's promising, if you want something where you don't have to worry about CO2.

[Ara Pacis]

The Boria idea linked above is suggested as a better alternative to the hydrogen economy some like to advocate. In some ways it's more efficient because you don't have the requirement for heavy high compression tankage so the total weight is less.

[Van Rijn]

I think the methane & methanol model makes more sense. It can easily be worked into the existing distribution system, and generally requires minimal modification of current infrastructure. It lends itself nicely to evolutionary introduction.

[Ara Pacis]

But don't methane and methanol burn readily in air? Boron would be safer in that respect and the output products are not as immediately dangerous as carbon-dioxide is WRT respiration. The author of the link suggests a pipeline tribution system for boria return if that infrastructure is available, but truckage may be simpler.. Current gasoline distribution is by truck, not pipeline, so it's likely that distribution of fuel for methanol or boron will also be by truck to reduce capital improvement costs for a pipeline infrastructure.

Methane and methanol combustion are still a fossile fuel and carbon-dioxide polluting system if you are reforming NG for the source. Even with bio-derived methanol, the system is still a carbon cycle that may have ramifications for global warming.

[Ronald Brak]

I don't see much point in mucking around with hydrogen and other fuels that require more infrastructure. The 2008 Prius hybrid is supposed to be able to get 40 km to a litre. Getting one of those and shelling out for say seven litres of fuel a week sounds easier than getting a hydrogen car and trying to find places to fuel it. Even at five U.S. dollars a gallon that's less than $10 a week for a typical driver. Merely by improving efficency we can strech current oil supplies out for a long time. But if you are looking for something cheap to run your car off, try electricity. Although battery prices and lifetimes are still a problem, with today's technology and todays oil prices I think it should be economical to start producing cars that get at least some of their power from being plugged into the electrical grid overnight. Some people have said that this will require too much extra electricity, but to run the entire U.S. car and truck fleet off electricity would only require a 20% increase in generating capacity. If the change was made over 20 years it would only require a 1% increase in capacity per year. (Currenlty the U.S. increases generating capacity by about 3.2% per year. It used to increase it by over 7% per year.) Mind you, England, Australia and Europe have advantages over Japan and the U.S. in that their domestic power supplies pack more punch which makes rechargeing a little easier.

[Natural-Philosopher]

I don't see much point in mucking around with hydrogen and other fuels that require more infrastructure. The 2008 Prius hybrid is supposed to be able to get 40 km to a litre. Getting one of those and shelling out for say seven litres of fuel a week sounds easier than getting a hydrogen car and trying to find places to fuel it. Even at five U.S. dollars a gallon that's less than $10 a week for a typical driver. Merely by improving efficency we can strech current oil supplies out for a long time. But if you are looking for something cheap to run your car off, try electricity. Although battery prices and lifetimes are still a problem, with today's technology and todays oil prices I think it should be economical to start producing cars that get at least some of their power from being plugged into the electrical grid overnight. Some people have said that this will require too much extra electricity, but to run the entire U.S. car and truck fleet off electricity would only require a 20% increase in generating capacity. If the change was made over 20 years it would only require a 1% increase in capacity per year. (Currenlty the U.S. increases generating capacity by about 3.2% per year. It used to increase it by over 7% per year.) Mind you, England, Australia and Europe have advantages over Japan and the U.S. in that their domestic power supplies pack more punch which makes rechargeing a little easier.

There is a little misunderstanding here.

Electric generation is not a steady output by power plants. Demand varies over the day and over the seasons. Over the course of a single day the "normal demand" between noon and four can be up to six times higher than the demand from midnight to four. Electric generation is sized to meet the maximum demand plus a reserve. So there is a tremendous amount of built but unused generating capacity at night.

You could charge a fleet of about 330 million electric vehicles each night when their owners are typically sleeping and the car sits in its usual parking space, garage, etc. WITHOUT building a single new KW of generating capacity, from just the existing idling-at-night capacity.

The US ground transport fleet is under 200 million vehicles at present. So you don't have to build a new plant, (for transportation needs), for a long time of growth in the vehicle fleet. BTW, its almost a totally replacement situation in the USA with about 17 million vehicles built each year and about the same number scrapped. Its also why we mine so little new Iron.

Remelting the scrap provides almost all our needs; and it is much more energy efficient to make new steel from old steel or 99% "ore" rather than 1-2% iron oxide ore.

[Ronald Brak]

You could charge a fleet of about 330 million electric vehicles each night when their owners are typically sleeping and the car sits in its usual parking space, garage, etc. WITHOUT building a single new KW of generating capacity, from just the existing idling-at-night capacity.

Yeah, that's true. Thank goodness there are clear thinkers like you around.

[Natural-Philosopher]

Thanks,

But it is not original with me its fairly common work produced on the work of UC Davis' Dr A Frank and EPRI.

I will say that much of the worry about fossil fuels is just a misunderstanding of what constitutes a fossil fuel. It is not a rigid definition and that is what drives the distraction. There is the classic wager between Dr. Simon and Dr. Ehrlich over the coming "scarcity and resource depletion" as prognosticated in a hundred industrial commodities by Dr. Ehrlich in the late '60s early '70s. Simon wagered that the real price for any or all of the hundred commodities would be less in the future that it was then.

Ehrlich lost.

Every commodity including every fossil commodity became cheaper over time.

Most have long entered into the permanent/sustainability condition in which most of what we need comes from the recycle and reuse of what we previously refined. Growth is typically subsumed by better and more efficient use. I pointed out the at the USA mines little iron ore or gets much virgin aluminum or copper, zinc or other metallic ores from natural sources anymore. The large majority is now recycled. And its cheaper to do so. "Growth" that some say cannot be sustained is more than made up in the substitution of better and more efficient use or outright substitution. High strength steels replace low quality steels from previous generation use. And the same applies in virtually every other case.

Dr Ehrlich posited that fossil fuel would be the one set of commodities that we would not recycle. He is not correct, but the replacement/sustainability cycle is just longer. About 20% of fossil use is for the creation of compounds, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, chemicals all of which can and are fabricated from many sources, even in some cases by construction from raw atoms. Synthetic oil lubricants are better than natural and are entirely synthetically constructed, as an example.

It is only in energy conversion that we have not yet closed the gap in fossil recycling but its coming. It is just taking longer. I have no doubt that for selected energy applications such airplane propulsion we could and will make fuels from scratch materials. But not because there are no "natural" matériels its just that we will want the benefits of custom made fuels with very selective properties e.g. low sulphur, specific BTU profiles, special additives for in-situ engine lubrication et cetera.

The desire for so called static, stable societies is frequently seen, particularly by the ones on the top of the pinnacle. Decentralized power as provided by capitalistic systems provides an avenue for the improved product/process advocated by those who wish to rise in the stratum of society by dint of the adoption and pecuniary remuneration that accompanies its adoption. Capitalism allows that "creative destruction" to occur as the new product obsoletes and sweeps away the older inferior ones.

Most other so-called stable or frozen societies do not offer this method of advance. They are meta-stable; with long periods of little change and building pressure followed by short cycles of dynamic or cataclysmic change.

[Argos]

I think the methane & methanol model makes more sense. It can easily be worked into the existing distribution system, and generally requires minimal modification of current infrastructure. It lends itself nicely to evolutionary introduction.

Yes. Here´s an example of what the future will look like, except that this "future" has been going on in Brazil for almost 30 years now.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/12/alternative.fuel.ap/index.html

[Demigrog]

Demigrog, what do you think of using Boron/boria (http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/Paper_for_11th_CHC.html) as a recycleable energy carrier?

Hadn't heard of that one, actually. I'm pretty much energy-carrier agnostic, at least so long as it meets all of our needs. Wading through the details (not terribly fond of that report's organization), it looks like the Boron cycle would be a swap-your-empty-for-a-full-tank system, which would be ok but has some disadvantages. I'll need to research a bit more before before I could have a useful opinion. :)

I won't be suprised if we wind up with regional preferences for different technologies--not least because of temperature sensitivity and proximity to supply. Maybe we'll wind up with standard hybrid base vehicles with multiple fuel options.

[Ara Pacis]

The report about boron doesn't specify the economic model much more than saying it would be cyclical without using the atmosphere as part of the fuel cycle transport cycle (like hydrocarbons use). I suppose there could be multiple ways to recycle the boron as far as economics goes: swap-out, stockpile, centralized collection and credit, decentralized collection and credit, maybe others. One problem could be theft of boria for recycling credit.

I agree that a standard system of mutt hybrids bight develop, if engines are modular in some fashion. However, that might only work for electric batteries and diesel/biodiesel/veggie oil and gasoline/alcohol internal combustion engines or hydrocarbon turbine engines. A boria turbine engine, fuelcell, compressed air and maybe other technologies might not fit in so well.

[Argos]

Report dismisses (http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/news/pressReleases/pressReleaseDetails.aspx?CID=8444) Peak Oil theory.

[Jim]

The article does question the concept of an oil peak, but their graph shows a "peak" about 2030; even the "undulating plateau" tails off after that. "It will be an undulating plateau that may well last for decades." But they admit it will decline slowly.

Also, their supply curve is based on "Non-traditional or unconventional liquid fuels such as production from heavy oil sands, gas-related liquids (condensate and natural gas liquids), gas-to-liquids (GTL), and coal-to-liquids (CTL)..." Which means we cannot ignore the problem; we must do something to even achieve their slowly declining plateau. Look what happens to supply v demand without their unconventional production.

[peteshimmon]

I think a better expression is they "assert" it will decline slowly. I read that oil shale work is proving expensive in Canada. I wonder if a giant moving plant is coming that lifts the stuff, processes it, extracts some working fuel straight away then dumps the "cleaned" stuff while it moves on. Expensive moving heavy stuff aint it!

[Eoanthropus Dawsoni]

The planet's proven oil reserve is growing everyday and is increasing faster than the demand. I do not know if oil is a renewable resource as some people claim but, I do not accept the claims of those who warn that we are on the verge of running out of oil. For now and into the foreseeable future we have more oil than we know what to do with. The problem is in production and distribution. Presently a great deal of the world's oil supply comes from regions with a high level of political instability. With unstable supply comes high prices.

The United States could go a long way towards solving it's oil problems if it had the political will to drill more wells and build more refineries. There is a vast amount of oil under the USA and offshore which lays untapped due to numerous regulations which make if impractical or unprofitable to drill, or prohibit it all together.

Most of this oil is owned by the Federal Government. By restricting the production of this oil the US government is not only forcing its citizens to pay higher prices for energy, it is also depriving itself of a very substantial income from oil royalties.

[Demigrog]

Report dismisses (http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/news/pressReleases/pressReleaseDetails.aspx?CID=8444) Peak Oil theory.

This report seems to basically mirror my arguments earlier in this thread, that non-crude sources combined with new proven reserves and improved extraction technology push the "peak" out further than the traditional peak oil scenarios predict, with a less precipitous decline. Nothing new here, except that they have crunched the numbers. Peak oil alarmists won't be convinced, of course, because the assumptions going into the number crunching are not pessimistic enough for them.

[Ronald Brak]

Peak oil - a decrease in the amount of oil being extracted - will happen. But a sudden devestating decline is very unlikely. One can't compare the peak in say Texas to the world peak as oil outside Texas kept prices down. There is currently no interplanetary supply of oil so there is no outside oil to prevent world oil prices going up and encouraging conservation and substitution.

[jkmccrann]

The planet's proven oil reserve is growing everyday and is increasing faster than the demand. I do not know if oil is a renewable resource as some people claim but, I do not accept the claims of those who warn that we are on the verge of running out of oil. For now and into the foreseeable future we have more oil than we know what to do with. The problem is in production and distribution. Presently a great deal of the world's oil supply comes from regions with a high level of political instability. With unstable supply comes high prices.

The United States could go a long way towards solving it's oil problems if it had the political will to drill more wells and build more refineries. There is a vast amount of oil under the USA and offshore which lays untapped due to numerous regulations which make if impractical or unprofitable to drill, or prohibit it all together.

Most of this oil is owned by the Federal Government. By restricting the production of this oil the US government is not only forcing its citizens to pay higher prices for energy, it is also depriving itself of a very substantial income from oil royalties.

I agree with what you say in regards to there being much more oil out there to discover - and I'm sure the offshore regions of much of the United States could be very fertile ground indeed for finding more oil - off Florida for example - but I have to disagree with the implication you make that oil is currently expensive!! No way. It is true that with unstable supply comes a higher price - the risk premium, but even with that risk premium one could hardly complain about expensive oil prices. Since 1980 the price of oil has hardly budged, in fact, its fallen!

And I think that is the key, the fact is we don't have expensive oil prices at the moment, and that is also the reason why there isn't great pressure to drill for oil in easily accessible offshore areas - there simply isn't the need. When oil hits $200 a barrel, as I have no doubt it will, some day within the not too distant future, then suddenly drilling in these offshore areas will become a necessity, but at the moment oil is simply to cheap to over-ride all the environmental regulations that currently prevent it.

As to when oil will reach $200 a barrel, I'd say by 2015, but perhaps before that if there were to be a military attack on Iran for instance. First effect would be sinking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, missiles in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE - and as a result - very expensive oil. Apart from such a conflagration though, I can't see oil really being that expensive over the next few years - even $100 a barrel oil is not really that expensive compared to Coca Cola for instance.

[Squashed]

... - even $100 a barrel oil is not really that expensive compared to Coca Cola for instance.

This comparison, although true, is misleading because people do not regularly consume 1 gallon or more of Coca-Cola every day. I have a relatively short easy commute but it requires about 2 gallons for a round-trip - that's a lot of soda-pop.

[Eoanthropus Dawsoni]

I was not referring to the oil which we have yet to discover. I was referring to the oil which we already know exists.

We often see a comparison made between today's oil price and the price in 1980, which when converted to 2006 dollars is comparable to the current oil price. However in 1980 the oil price spiked at an abnormally high level due to disruptions in the oil market resulting from the Iran-Iraq war. Comparisons between today and 1980 are only useful if one wants to compare the price between one crisis and another.

The very high price in 1980 adversely impacted the lives of many people. The doubling of fuel costs was a serious blow to agriculture, transportation, and other fuel dependent industries. Militaries around the world had to significantly cut back on training because they could not afford the fuel for the aircraft, ships, and tanks. Many cities had to cut back on public transportation and many police departments halted patrol and ordered their officers to remain at their stations until a call came in. That was a very difficult time for very many people.

The extremely high fuel prices of this past year were an inconvenience to many people but a disaster for some. Farmers in particular took a hit. Their fuel and fertilizer costs have doubled however the price they receive for most of their crops remained flat or even fell. In 1980 wheat was running around $4.50 per bushel in 1980 dollars. Today wheat is bringing about $4.50 per bushel in 2006 dollars. Many farmers are going broke. Those who survive are kept in business through government aid, paid for by taxpayers.

Very little of the price paid at the grocery store for food goes to the farmer, so the rise and fall of crop prices is not noticed by the consumer. However transportation costs involved in bring the food to the store does make a noticeable increase in the cost of groceries. Most people can probably absorbed this increase with little change to their lifestyle however for lower income people the increase in food prices is a serious issue. The poorest people can receive government assistance for their food purchases. That eases the burden on them, but the cost is paid by the taxpayers. But there are still many people of lower income who are not quite poor enough to qualify for assistance. For them feeding a family can become problematic.

An increase in fuel costs hits the taxpayers in other ways. Many low income people receive government assistance to pay for their home heating costs, paid by the taxpayers. Schools, police departments, public transportation, and many other agencies which operate large fleets of vehicles still have to buy fuel, paid for by the taxpayers. All of this ads up in a hurry and forces governments to either cut back in other areas or increase taxes.

All of this is going on while plenty of oil sits undisturbed under American soil or waters. The oil companies would like to drill and pump it but the government has imposed numerous regulations which make it impractical or impossible. Therefore rather than increasing its income from oil royalties, the government must increase taxes or cut programs in order to cope with increased oil prices.

[Ronald Brak]

All of this is going on while plenty of oil sits undisturbed under American soil or waters. The oil companies would like to drill and pump it but the government has imposed numerous regulations which make it impractical or impossible.

Here the government couldn't pump oil out fast enough and gave all sorts of tax breaks to oil companies back when it was about $5 a barrel and now we have very little left when prices are $60+ a barrel. I wish our government had passed regulations that made it impossible to drill a lot of oil. Then we might have a decent amount left.

[PhantomWolf]

We had a lot of Oil and Gas exploration in the 70's and 80's. Then the Govt tightened up and it stopped simply because it became cheaper to explore elsewhere. Now they have loosened up again and in the past few years things are booming right here. The field I am involved with started up a few months back and is projected to supply NZ's gas for the next 25 years, plus it has has large supply of condensate. Maui, NZ's premier field since the late 70's has been given a new lease on life with further drilling and we have the Kupe and Tui fields about to be drilled and platforms put in. There are also several onshore finds that are going to be opened, and that's not including the wells such as Stratford and Kapuni which are still producing and will for some time.

The field that our project is dealing with wasn't even there according to the geology reports, but it's the second biggest known field in the country. The rest of the country is extremely underexplored with the first explorations in the South Basin and off the Canturbury just starting to take place. This isn't including the other fields that we know about but aren't targeting because currently they are not profitable.

While NZ doesn't have heavy crude like the Middle East we do have large amounts of Gas, Light Crude and Condensate, but much of it we're just starting to find simply because no-one's been looking recently.

[davidm]

Report dismisses (http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/news/pressReleases/pressReleaseDetails.aspx?CID=8444) Peak Oil theory.


Far from dismissing it, it confirms it.

[Van Rijn]

Far from dismissing it, it confirms it.

Apparently, we're not reading the same article, or you are redefining "peak oil" to mean something different than the apocalyptic "oil tank in the ground is empty" argument you've pushed since the thread started.

[davidm]

Apparently, we're not reading the same article, or you are redefining "peak oil" to mean something different than the apocalyptic "oil tank in the ground is empty" argument you've pushed since the thread started.

I've pushed nothing of the sort.

Peak Oil does not mean "oil tank in the ground is empty," and I've never said anything of the sort. In fact, we will never run out of oil. Who'd have thunk it, huh?

Peak oil means that we will reach a global point where half the economically recoverable oil in the world has been recovered, produced and consumed. After that, we will still have, under the ground, half as much oil as we have ever used in history! Unfortunately, that won't mean much when oil production levels are declining each year even while demand is rising. When demand rise intersects supply decline, you get the 1970s all over again, albeit permanently.

Now, that is all I have ever said in this thread.

As to the linked article. This is a product of Daniel Yergin, who apparently is not even familiar with the Department of Energy Hirsch report (are you? I linked to the entire document earlier in this thread. Have you read it yet?) Yergin simply dreams up a whole bunch of extra oil waiting to be found. The vast majority of experts (read: petroleum geologists) disagree with him. But here is the upshot: Even with his dreamed-up oil, he puts the global peak of oil production around 2030. That is, even with his dreamed up oil, we are still a mere quarter-century from peak. If his dreamed-up oil fails to materialize, then we may be at peak now, which is the fear of Peak Oil theorists.

More: Peak oil people use "peak" as an idealization. All of them say it could instead look like a bumpy plateau. Nothing new in Yergins' stuff.

More: Peak oil deals with conventional oil, and I have never said otherwise. So even if Yergin's best-case scenario plays out, conventional oil peak will occur no later than the 2030s. Again, if his dreamed-up oil can't be found, we may be at conventional peak now.

More: If you look at his chart, he substitutes unconventional oil (read: tar sands and oil shale) for conventional oil, and dreams up a massive increase of it way beyond the production of conventional oil. Again, I refer you to the Hirsch report for a discussion of unconventional oil. Suffice it to say (and this topic has been touched on in this thread as well) extraction of this sort of "oil" (oil shale isn't oil, BTW) is going to be extremely environmentally damaging and extremely expensive. Right now it looks as if to get as little as 2 units of energy out of these sources, you have to input 1 unit of energy. Perhaps that could change, but if it doesn't, this stuff, to the extent that it is economically recoverable, will be far more expensive than conventional oil.

More: Yergin makes a big point of saying that Hubbert underestimated oil production after U.S. peak in 1970, but look at his Figure 2! He hardly underestimated it at all, and we see a perfect bell curve of supply/production. That bell curve, please note, is never going to have an upswing. We are on the downside of the curve because (as Hubbert correctly predicted in 1956) the U.S. had drilled, refined, and consumed half the oil that would ever be available to it. More oil finds don't materially chagne these facts, although deep-water finds, for instance, can't be counted against Hubbert's U.S. peak, because that peak was for the lower 48 states only. The recent deep-water discovery that was widly touted in the press would, if completely recovered (doubtful) meet our energy needs for a grand total of five years at current demand rates.

Here (http://www.energybulletin.net/9335.html) is a discussion of Yergin.

Kent Peacock, a philospher of science with a focus on physics, discusses peak oil and climate change here. (http://people.uleth.ca/~kent.peacock/Some%20Untenable%20Verities.pdf)

[Van Rijn]

I've pushed nothing of the sort.


Ok, fine. Given that everyone in this thread agreed that fossil fuels would ultimately reach a point where they would no longer be economically recoverable, then apparently you misunderstood us too, given your many, many arguments. So, no apocalypse due to empty oil cans in the ground, aye?

[Demigrog]

Ok, fine. Given that everyone in this thread agreed that fossil fuels would ultimately reach a point where they would no longer be economically recoverable, then apparently you misunderstood us too, given your many, many arguments. So, no apocalypse due to empty oil cans in the ground, aye?

While I wouldn't use the word apocalypse, I would agree that there would be an economic disaster due to crude oil supply contraction IF:
A) Nobody saw it coming and hence did not have plans in place to deal with it,
B) There were not alternative fuel sources and technologies being phased in while oil is being phased out,
C) Our huge oil consumption was fixed and not largely a function of price (as it is in reality),
D) An unforseen rapid supply reduction occurred (ie war in the middle east)

[Van Rijn]

While I wouldn't use the word apocalypse, I would agree that there would be an economic disaster due to crude oil supply contraction IF:
A) Nobody saw it coming and hence did not have plans in place to deal with it,
B) There were not alternative fuel sources and technologies being phased in while oil is being phased out,
C) Our huge oil consumption was fixed and not largely a function of price (as it is in reality),
D) An unforseen rapid supply reduction occurred (ie war in the middle east)

Oh, agreed. But (A) there is no argument that fossil fuels won't last forever, (B) there are alternative energy sources, (C) both supply and demand are affected by cost, as are the technological and poliitical aspects of production and use (it isn't just about an "oil tank in the ground") and (D) supply disruptions like that from a middle east war cause short term economic distress, not permanent economic disaster. I think almost everyone on the thread agreed that there will be energy disruptions from time to time as the energy picture shifts. It's the Peak Oil apocalypse scenario that is in dispute.

[davidm]

Ok, fine. Given that everyone in this thread agreed that fossil fuels would ultimately reach a point where they would no longer be economically recoverable, then apparently you misunderstood us too, given your many, many arguments. So, no apocalypse due to empty oil cans in the ground, aye?

I continue to wonder whether you have actually read this thread, or the Hirsch report.

*Shrugs* I'm not going to go over and over it with you. Another take on Yergin and his Don't Worry Be Happy energy sceario may be found here. (http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/)

[davidm]

Oh, agreed. But (A) there is no argument that fossil fuels won't last forever.

:lol:

I skimmed through your latest nonsense so quickly that the above didn't register.

Are you sure there isn't an invisible elf, or whatever your sig says, in your backyard?

:lol:

[Van Rijn]

I continue to wonder whether you have actually read this thread,


And I often wondered the same about you (and have said so more than once), given your statements.



*Shrugs* I'm not going to go over and over it with you.


And I feel the same, since it has been covered to death. Nice to see we actually agree on something.

[Manchurian Taikonaut]

US and ethanol.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14514213.htm
I think political people are now look at other options like solar, nuclear, tidal, ethanol etc. The problem with ethanol is that most of America's ethanol is made from corn (maize) and this is not the best energy crop. I think the days of cheap oil are now over, Geopolitics is acting on the oil market at the worst time, there are concerns about Iran, Turkey etc and it is unfortunate the dollar is getting weaker as a currency.


Solving "Fission Impossible"
http://www.slate.com/id/2176189/
Is nuclear power's comeback for real?


In other spoof news

Britney Spears Solves Cold Fusion Formula
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i25495

[SAABMaven]

Folks,

Have only joined this forum recently at an old friend's recommendation, and find this a fascinating thread though abandoned in late 2007. It ran for a year, took an eon to read through and digest what was between the lines, relating it the zeitgeist then.



We have consistently argued that as the price of energy increases, then other sources of energy (nuclear, bio, solar) will become cost effective and replace petroleum. This will happen gradually, such that niche markets ("heavy machinery in remote locations") will pay premiums for the remaining petroleum resources. Meanwhile, as countries develop, population growth will slow.


Fine, I agree. What I am struggling to understand, is the price of energy. Is it publicly traded barrels of oil? Is it the cost per mile for me to own and run a private automobile?

How much of that cost is hidden, subsidised, borne by a society that would rather tax productivity through personal income and capital, that force the Exxon/Mobils of the world to pay fair market value for the privileges that they enjoy, that smaller business cannot, especially businesses connected with the development of 'other' sources of energy. There's no pollution tax; but if I replace my roof, the tax man will take notice.

One clue: The largest single landowner is Standard Oil, and has been for a long time. Land speculators (as they are not producing value) are manifestly not paying taxes on the land that they hold, which means that they can borrow against the speculative future value of their land, and then sink that money not into exploration, but into the stock market. Land failed to go up at the expected rate. We 'failed to make our numbers', as my group of bosses reported last week. The rest is on the front pages, although thanks to the pseudoscience of Economics, the central factor is called not 'Land' or even 'Natural Opportunity' as Adam Smith, Ricardo & Henry George called it, but 'Real Estate', Housing.

At work they won't use the 'L' word, so they are saying that certain disappeared employees have been 'surplused'. A depression is called a recession, the recession was a 'banana', terrorists are now 'militants' and hostages are 'detainees'. Mess with definitions and the whole logical argument lacks any meaning. (I get a terrible attack of the sleepies which lasted all through college.)

What is the fair market value of a gallon or a litre of petroleum-based fuel, at the pump? Mind-boggling, to think it through.

So. Everyone still sticking to their guns now? Recent events have been interesting and it's bound to get interestinger. What are you doing? What preparations are you making, against the possible loss of income, possible hyperinflation, definitely a much higher cost to live and lowered expectations for our children? Have you thought about relocating someplace with decent public transport?

[jlhredshift]

Have you thought about relocating someplace with decent public transport?

My concern is that if a crisis (pick your crisis) should occur that the urban centers will descend into chaos. The survivors will not be in the city centers but will be those that have become somewhat self reliant and have resources that can be bartered.

[Eoanthropus Dawsoni]

Folks,

One clue: The largest single landowner is Standard Oil, and has been for a long time.


Standard Oil was broken up into many smaller companies almost a century ago.

[peteshimmon]

Eeeeee...these old threads are actually read
by people? Marvellous! Davidm had/has very
firm opinions but many wanted a brighter
outlook. It might be crunch time or it may
be adjustment times with some sort of solution
for every energy problem. For instance, the
vast corn belts and Combine Harvesters. It
occurs that they have space to unfirl large
arrays of Solar Cells while working those
plains!


Yeah...solar cells are my thing:)

[Warren Platts]

2005 might go down as the year of global peak oil production. Here's a remarkably prescient article from a year ago.

Oil production constraints to cause "huge recession" (http://www.energybulletin.net/node/40615)

And here's an interesting blog by a 30-year Princeton geology professor (http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events-08-05.html). Check out the graph, there seems to be a wall at about 27 billion barrels per year. The supply seems to be inelastic--it doesn't increase much no matter how high the price goes up. In other words, the price seems entirely demand driven.

[stutefish]

2005 might go down as the year of global peak oil production. Here's a remarkably prescient article from a year ago.

Oil production constraints to cause "huge recession" (http://www.energybulletin.net/node/40615)

And here's an interesting blog by a 30-year Princeton geology professor (http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events-08-05.html). Check out the graph, there seems to be a wall at about 27 billion barrels per year. The supply seems to be inelastic--it doesn't increase much no matter how high the price goes up. In other words, the price seems entirely demand driven.
The first article completely fails to predict the actual cause of this recession. It's not prescient in any way.

The second article was published in the middle of last year. Oil prices, and gas prices at the pump, have dropped considerably since then.

Not very impressive sources, Oliver.

[Warren Platts]

This is what he said:


Robin West said it would be very difficult for the oil industry ever to produce more than 95-100 million barrels per day, and that when output growth stops the oil price will go "through the roof". This will cause "massive demand destruction, [and] a huge recession . . .

That's pretty much what happened. It's a mistake to think that the run-up in energy prices didn't have anything to do with the current debacle. If you had read some of the later posts in the second link (http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html), there you will find a discussion of the link between the energy price run-up with the credit crisis: basically, because of the high costs of fuel and food, people were forced into choosing between buying food to eat and gas to get to work versus making an exorbitant payment on an overvalued house, so people were forced to default on their loans, thus starting the cascade.


Oil prices had already doubled before the first mortgage funds got into trouble. A gradual price rise would have caused a few homeowners at a time to become unable to meet their mortgage payments. The sudden energy price increase caused lots of delinquent payments, all at once. Even if the Obama administration puts in 90 percent of their attention and 200 percent of the available money to fix the financial structure, the world oil situation could turn around and trash the financial system all over again.

And as for low gas prices now, it's too little too late. And don't think that low prices mean that the energy problem has gone away. The low prices aren't because of a massive influx of new, produced oil that outstripped demand; no, the low prices are because of the demand destruction predicted by Mr. West. As Professor Deffeyes says (in his November post): "World crude oil production stopped growing in 2005, it's hard to hide that one behind the curtain" no matter what the price of oil is.

[SAABMaven]

...It occurs that they have space to unfirl large
arrays of Solar Cells while working those plains!

Might as well let it lie fallow and recover from the super-intensive corn and soy crops. Might even get a net gain of energy if you're not careful ! :)