Peak Oil, OMFG! [Archive]

Undelia

06-02-2006, 03:57

Energy can be gotten from other sources, and cellulose from vegetals. It will be more expensive, but the economy will adapt to the new costs over time.
The site addresses this.

People tend to think of alternatives to oil as somehow independent from oil. In reality, the alternatives to oil are more accurately described as "derivatives of oil." It takes massive amounts of oil and other scarce resources to locate and mine the raw materials (silver, copper, platinum, uranium, etc.) necessary to build solar panels, windmills, and nuclear power plants. It takes more oil to construct these alternatives and even more oil to distribute them, maintain them, and adapt current infrastructure to run on them.

Each of the alternatives is besieged by numerous fundamental physical shortcomings that have, thus far, received little attention
Biofuels such as biodiesel, ethanol, methanol etc. are great, but only in small doses. Biofuels are all grown with massive fossil fuel inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) and suffer from horribly low, sometimes negative, EROEIs. The production of ethanol, for instance, requires six units of energy to produce just one. That means it consumes more energy than it produces and thus will only serve to compound our energy deficit.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:01

Oh, so now you pay attention?

Some of us have been screaming we need to end oil dependence for over 20 years!

But Iz is right to an extent, alternate technologies will likely make it not neearly as bad as projected in that site. Many of them are already developed, just not financially backed or viable in the era of cheap oil. When large corporations can make large sums of money off of them they will become available. Just you wait and see...
Well, we have less than a one to three years. Oil doesn't have to disapear, the supply just has to get to a point where it can't reach the demand.
Besides, none of the known alternate fuels can power moving vehicles, at least efficiently.

Ashmoria

06-02-2006, 04:02

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:08

oh for gods sake calm down.

its only oil. geez it will take some adjustments but we'll do it. it might be troublesome for a while but we'll get through it.

whats the sense of panicking when you could be working on the problem now? maybe you can keep it from getting to a crisis.
No. There is no way to prevent it. Any attempts to conserve energy could actually be more harmful!

Pretend you own a computer store and that your monthly energy bill, as of December 2004, is $1,000. You then learn about the coming energy famine and decide to do your part by conserving as much as possible. You install energy efficient lighting, high quality insulation, and ask your employees to wear sweaters so as to minimize the use of your store's heating system.

After implementing these conservation measures, you manage to lower your energy bill by 50% - down to $500 per month.

While you certainly deserve a pat-on-the-back and while your business will certainly become more profitable as a result of your conservation efforts, you have in no way helped reduce our overall energy appetite. In fact, you have actually increased it.

At this point, you may be asking yourself, "How could I have possibly increased our total energy consumption when I just cut my own consumption by $500/month? That doesn't seem to make common sense . . .?"

Well think about what you're going to do with that extra $500 per month you saved. If you're like most people, you're going to do one of two things:

1. You will reinvest the $500 in your business. For instance,
you might spend the $500 on more advertising. This will
bring in more customers, which will result in more
computers being sold. Since, as mentioned previously, the
average desktop computer consumes 10X it's weight in
fossil-fuels just during its construction, your individual
effort at conserving energy has resulted in the
consumption of more energy.

2. You will simply deposit the $500 in your bank account
where it will accumulate interest. Since you're not using
the money to buy or sell anything, it can't possibly be
used to facilitate an increase in energy consumption,
right?

Wrong. For every dollar a bank holds in deposits, it will loan out
between six and twelve dollars. These loans are then used by the bank's customers to do everything from starting businesses to making down payments on vehicles to purchasing computers.

Thus, your $500 deposit will allow the bank to make between $3,000 and $6,000 in loans - most of which will be used to buy, build,or transport things using fossil fuel energy.

Everything is dependent on oil!
approximately 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten in the US.

Iztatepopotla

06-02-2006, 04:08

Terrorist Cakes

06-02-2006, 04:10

The site addresses this.

People tend to think of alternatives to oil as somehow independent from oil. In reality, the alternatives to oil are more accurately described as "derivatives of oil." It takes massive amounts of oil and other scarce resources to locate and mine the raw materials (silver, copper, platinum, uranium, etc.) necessary to build solar panels, windmills, and nuclear power plants. It takes more oil to construct these alternatives and even more oil to distribute them, maintain them, and adapt current infrastructure to run on them.

Each of the alternatives is besieged by numerous fundamental physical shortcomings that have, thus far, received little attention
Biofuels such as biodiesel, ethanol, methanol etc. are great, but only in small doses. Biofuels are all grown with massive fossil fuel inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) and suffer from horribly low, sometimes negative, EROEIs. The production of ethanol, for instance, requires six units of energy to produce just one. That means it consumes more energy than it produces and thus will only serve to compound our energy deficit.

What about hyro-power? Once the dams are built, do they require oil to function?

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:12

Sure, alternative energy sources look expensive when compared against oil because the initial investment for oil was made by plants millions of years ago and not by us. But as oil gets more and more expensive, more and more research will be made on these alternatives, making them more and more efficient. They will never get as cheap as oil, but perhaps they'll enjoy a longer run. Heck, you could build an internal combustion engine that burns coal, it won't be pretty or a marvel of efficiency but you can do it, and if you need to use it, you will.

Coal is the only other form of energy that can practically be used in transportation, and it is running out as well. Not to mentin the terrible effects on global warming switching to coal would have.
And, sure, some countries will suffer a lot, others less, and others will benefit. In the end humanity will continue to tick along as it has always done.
No one will benifit. Any country that does will simply be consumed in war by those that didn't.
Sure humanity will survive, but we could possibly be living in the last days of industrialization.
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Pictures/EnergyCurveHistory3_op_800x203.jpg
The Energy Curve of History

Ashmoria

06-02-2006, 04:14

if it is inevitable WHY WORRY ABOUT IT?

if you cant do anything to change it, worry is just a useless emotion.

so enjoy your life.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:16

What about hyro-power? Once the dams are built, do they require oil to function?
They require oil to mantain. How are you going to get workers and material to a remote dam?
Plus, how is a dam going to power freight trucks?
We are screwed.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:18

if it is inevitable WHY WORRY ABOUT IT?

if you cant do anything to change it, worry is just a useless emotion.

so enjoy your life.
There are things we can do to prepare.
We need to prepare our minds, bodies and finances to deal with the futrure. I suggest infesting your savings in conrete goods, not some abstract "federal reserve." Buy gold bars and diamands.

Texoma Land

06-02-2006, 04:18

Somebody tell me this isn't true. Please! If it is, everything is pointless! Everything! *scared shitless smiley*

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Coal, another hydrocarbon fossil fuel very similar to oil, will take up much of the slack. You can even make gasoline from coal. And there is enough coal to last from 500 to 5000 years depending on who you listen to. The US alone has massive reserves of the stuff.

It is dirtier and more expensive than oil. But with increased efficency coupled with the use of other "enviromental" power sources, it will all work out. No need to loose much sleep over this.

The industrial revolution began on coal, not oil.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:20

Coal, another hydrocarbon fossil fuel very similar to oil, will take up much of the slack. You can even make gasoline from coal. And there is enough coal to last from 500 to 5000 years depending on who you listen to. The US alone has massive reserves of the stuff.

It is dirtier and more expensive than oil. But with increased efficency coupled with the use of other "enviromental" sources, it will all work out. No need to loose much sleep over this.
Fool
Even a 50-75 year supply of coal is not as much as it sounds because coal production, like oil production, will peak long before the total supply is exhausted. Were we to liquefy a large portion of our coal endowment in order to produce synthetic oil, coal production would likely peak within 2 decades.
In other words, with an EPR of .5, it will take twice as much energy to produce the coal than the coal actually contains. It will thus be of no use to us as an energy source.
Most importantly:
In his book, Out of Gas:The End of the Oil Age, Dr. Goodstein tells us that a large scale switch to coal could produce such severe global warming that life on planet Earth would cease to exist.

Iztatepopotla

06-02-2006, 04:21

Coal is the only other form of energy that can practically be used in transportation, and it is running out as well. Not to mentin the terrible effects on global warming switching to coal would have.
But not as fast as oil. Methane can also be used, although it needs some research going into it. Nuclear power seems to be the best alternative in the short to mid term. You can use it to break up hydrogen or to make up some other kind of molecule to store energy in the same way that gasoline does.

No one will benifit. Any country that does will simply be consumed in war by those that didn't.
In the same way that the US has been consumed by war with those countries that have not benefited from industrialization. Actually industrialized countries went to war and the US benefited from those, and what do you know? They came out the winners! Same could happen for some other country in the after oil thing.

Sure humanity will survive, but we could possibly be living in the last days of industrialization.
Or perhaps only our brand of industrialization.

Terrorist Cakes

06-02-2006, 04:21

They require oil to mantain. How are you going to get workers and material to a remote dam?
Plus, how is a dam going to power freight trucks?
We are screwed.

Or, we could try living without freight trucks. Or televison. Or cell phones. Or NS General...

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:23

Or, we could try living without freight trucks. Or televison. Or cell phones. Or NS General...
Like I said, we will still live, but the industrial age will end, and many of us will die, from formerly treatable diseases, famine, the inability to obtain water and the violence that is likely to spring up, both on a local and international scale.

Terrorist Cakes

06-02-2006, 04:27

Like I said, we will still live, but the industrial age will end, and many of us will die, from formerly treatable diseases, famine, the inability to obtain water and the violence that is likely to spring up, both on a local and international scale.

Like what's already happening in 160 of the world's countries?

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:28

But not as fast as oil.
What part of wiping out all life on earth didn't you understand?
Methane can also be used, although it needs some research going into it.
...there is the problem of where to grow the stuff, as we are rapidly running out of arable land on which to grow food, let alone fuel. This is no small problem as the amount of land it takes to grow even a small amount of biofuel is quite staggering. As journalist Lee Dye points out in a July 2004 article entitled "Old Policies Make Shift From Foreign Oil Tough:"
Nuclear power seems to be the best alternative in the short to mid term.
We are running out of uranium.
You can use it to break up hydrogen or to make up some other kind of molecule to store energy in the same way that gasoline does.

The average cost of a hydrogen fuel cell is one million USD. Plus, we are running out of platinum, as well.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:28

Like what's already happening in 160 of the world's countries?
Exactly, soon we will all be miserable.

Wojcikiville

06-02-2006, 04:30

im not too sure about all the implications of this website. The graphs on the site, showing the peaking of the oil supply, are highly arbitrary. what they view as the peaking of the oil supply is, in reality, the peaking of the politicization of oil. if u actually look at the graphs, ull notice that the plateauing of the oil supply began after the formation of OPEC, the enormous middle-eastern oil oligopoly. If u know anything about economics, you know what an oligopoly can do to a market, especially in regards to price and supply. Basically, although oil certainly isnt an infinite resource, the "peaking" of the oil supply at this point is not at all the result of actual shortages, but rather it is a result of politics in the form of an industry oligopoly.

CSW

06-02-2006, 04:32

We are running out of uranium.

Bullshit. We're running out of easily enriched uranium, but not uranium itself. Uranium is as common as dirt.

Lunatic Goofballs

06-02-2006, 04:32

Iztatepopotla

06-02-2006, 04:33

What part of wiping out all life on earth didn't you understand?

None, because you don't mention it. Besides, it's possible to make coal cleaner and combine it with other technologies to make gas emmissions more manageable.
...there is the problem of where to grow the stuff, as we are rapidly running out of arable land on which to grow food, let alone fuel. This is no small problem as the amount of land it takes to grow even a small amount of biofuel is quite staggering. As journalist Lee Dye points out in a July 2004 article entitled "Old Policies Make Shift From Foreign Oil Tough:"
You now that there enormous (as in several centuries worth) reserves of methane on the ocean's floor, right?

We are running out of uranium.
Yeah. We only have a few thousands years worth of reserves. Clearly, not enought time to again find something else, like mastering fission. Even so, fission will only give us a few more million years. I see what you're saying. We're doomed.

The average cost of a hydrogen fuel cell is one million USD. Plus, we are running out of platinum, as well.
Mhm, and those costs will never ever come down and platinum will never ever be replaced because...

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:34

Bullshit. We're running out of easily enriched uranium, but not uranium itself. Uranium is as common as dirt.
Yeah, but you can't power your car with a nuclear reactor in the trunk.
Also, what good is uneasily enriched uranium?

CSW

06-02-2006, 04:37

Yeah, but you can't power your car with a nuclear reactor in the trunk.
Also, what good is uneasily enriched uranium?
Yes, BUT YOU CAN RUN IT OFF OF BATTERIES CHARGED FROM A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT.

About as good as oil. It's just a matter of cost.

Texoma Land

06-02-2006, 04:37

I tell you what, kid. Come talk to me in a couple of decades and we'll see where we are then, ok? When I was your age, I fell for all that chicken little stuff too. I was convinced we would not make it into the 21st century. But here we are. And with a much higher standard of life to boot. Go figgure.

Yes there are serious problems out there to deal with. But what you fail to realize is that for every problem there IS a solution. And there are some very smart scientists and engineers out there working on it as we speak. Just because you can't see a way out doesn't mean there isn't one.

Now, either get a degree in the sciences and work on a solution to this problem, or stop worring so much and enjoy your childhood. Not that I expect you will. But remember, once it's gone, you'll never get your youth back.

That's all I have to say on this subject. Have fun.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:38

None, because you don't mention it. Besides, it's possible to make coal cleaner and combine it with other technologies to make gas emmissions more manageable.
We'll need years and years of stablity to impliment these technologies and adapt aour old machines to them.
You now that there enormous (as in several centuries worth) reserves of methane on the ocean's floor, right?

That we need oil to get to, not to mention that it is probably more expensive to extract and we will need to put more enery in than we can get out of it.
Yeah. We only have a few thousands years worth of reserves. Clearly, not enought time to again find something else, like mastering fission. Even so, fission will only give us a few more million years. I see what you're saying. We're doomed.
We need oil to find, mine and transpot those reserves.
Mhm, and those costs will never ever come down and platinum will never ever be replaced because...[/QUOTE]
Because we only have a few years!

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:40

Yes, BUT YOU CAN RUN IT OFF OF BATTERIES CHARGED FROM A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT.

About as good as oil. It's just a matter of cost.
The cost of food would be so high, we may as well grow our own, thus no more organic society. Hello mechanical society!
Plus, we don’t have enough uranium!

Wojcikiville

06-02-2006, 04:42

Iztatepopotla

06-02-2006, 04:44

We'll need years and years of stablity to impliment these technologies and adapt aour old machines to them.
Nope. We only need a good incentive. Plus research is quite advanced, is just a matter of economy to implement those changes. Once oil gets too expensive the change will come relatively quick.

That we need oil to get to, not to mention that it is probably more expensive to extract and we will need to put more enery in than we can get out of it.
Oil or another source of energy, like coal or nuclear. Then you get in and extract it, once economies of scale kick in it'll get cheaper, as well as more efficient and then it'll make sense in terms of energy investment to exploit it.

Because we only have a few years!
If research started now, but it's been going on for several years. Hydrogen fuel cells are becoming cheaper and cheaper, new methods of converting it back to energy without the use of platinum are being researched and even research in energy-storing molecules has advanced quite a bit. That may be even more promising than hydrogen.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:44

Yes there are serious problems out there to deal with. But what you fail to realize is that for every problem there IS a solution.
There is no solution to this one.
And there are some very smart scientists and engineers out there working on it as we speak. Just because you can't see a way out doesn't mean there isn't one.
It doesn't matter how smart they are. This problem is beyond humanity's ability to handle.
Now, either get a degree in the sciences and work on a solution to this problem,
There is no solution, nor is there enough time.[/QUOTE]
Come talk to me in a couple of decades
In all likelyhood, we'll both be dead in ten. The average human isn't suited to stone age- middle ages life (depends on where you live how things will work out).

Hirvorn

06-02-2006, 04:45

Heh, all I can say is don't believe EVERYTHING you read. Especially on the internet :)

Kishijoten

06-02-2006, 04:46

How could it not possibly be as bad. Everything is based around oil! We're all fucking screwed!

Chill out. We are far from screwed.

Lunatic Goofballs

06-02-2006, 04:47

There is no solution to this one.

It doesn't matter how smart they are. This problem is beyond humanity's ability to handle.

There is no solution, nor is there enough time.

In all likelyhood, we'll both be dead in ten. The average human isn't suited to stone age- middle ages life (depends on where you live how things will work out).

I like you. You're silly. :)

Ekland

06-02-2006, 04:49

So here's what we do:

We invent time travel. No, not for some silly reason like "altering history". We use the past as a place to dump our garbage. Specifically, organic waste. You know: potato peelings, rotten food, corpses, etc. We toss them all into the bogs thousands of years in the past. As the organic materials degrade over the centuries, they will increase the supplies of oil!

My god, it's so easy! :D

That is what we have Thermal Depolymerization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization) for.

Lunatic Goofballs

06-02-2006, 04:50

That is what we have Thermal Depolymerization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization) for.

Yes, I read about it some years ago. It has incredible potential. *nod*

OntheRIGHTside

06-02-2006, 04:53

This is a good time to put a lot of support in to the scientists trying to create fusion technology, eh?

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:53

Nope. We only need a good incentive. Plus research is quite advanced, is just a matter of economy to implement those changes. Once oil gets too expensive the change will come relatively quick.
Not quickly enough!
Oil or another source of energy, like coal or nuclear. Then you get in and extract it, once economies of scale kick in it'll get cheaper, as well as more efficient and then it'll make sense in terms of energy investment to exploit it.
You don't get it. Once the problem starts, there will be no way to reverse it.
If research started now, but it's been going on for several years. Hydrogen fuel cells are becoming cheaper and cheaper, new methods of converting it back to energy without the use of platinum are being researched and even research in energy-storing molecules has advanced quite a bit. That may be even more promising than hydrogen.
This will all take to long and there is no way to make it inexpensive enough ti impliment.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:55

This is a good time to put a lot of support in to the scientists trying to create fusion technology, eh?
There isn’t enough time to build a fusion reactor!

Undelia

06-02-2006, 04:56

That is what we have Thermal Depolymerization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization) for.
You have to put in more energy that you get out! It's pointless!

OntheRIGHTside

06-02-2006, 04:59

There isn’t enough time to build a fusion reactor!

Gah... everyone should just nuke every place which is currently supporting a holy war. That'd kick the oil crisis in the balls.

The middle east would be a big crater, and the US and Britain would also be extremely screwed.

Then there'd be enough time to build a fusion reactor :-D

Lunatic Goofballs

06-02-2006, 05:00

You have to put in more energy that you get out! It's pointless!

Did you even read the article?

Ashmoria

06-02-2006, 05:02

OntheRIGHTside

06-02-2006, 05:07

you really have to stop reading this shit.

people will try to scare you your whole life. it gives them power over you. it will happen to you over and over again

when i was a kid (well OK when my sisters were kids) we had to practice nuclear attack drills by hiding under our desks. there never was a nuclear attack.

you must remember the whole Y2K thing where all the worlds computers were going to crash and we would be sent into an economic catastrophe..... nothing happened.

have you noticed how many times the feds have scared the crap out of you since 9/11? did you notice how many of them happened in '04 and how few since the election?

if you arent going to get out there and actively work on the peak oil problem then FORGET IT. it will happen or not. its not worth worrying about.

The nuclear scares are before my time, so I really don't know about them.

Y2K would have been a massive problem if no one cared. Good thing programmers did. Some of the problems were pretty out of proportion, though.

There never really was a problem after 9/11. All the danger after 9/11 was fabricated so everyone would like Bush.

This definetely seems like a huge, real problem, no matter how scare-tactic-ee the site is. If nobody cared about it, and did nothing, and just went on with their "MUST FEED ON OIL!!!!!" lifestyles, this would definetely be a truly humongous problem. Telling everyone to not care is flat-out retarded.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 05:08

people will try to scare you your whole life. it gives them power over you. it will happen to you over and over again

No one has anything to gain from telling this story.
The media and the government are keeping this story hidden for fear that knowledge of peak oil will cause the colapse of Wall Street, not to metnion mass hystaria.

Iztatepopotla

06-02-2006, 05:09

You have to put in more energy that you get out! It's pointless!
Everything requires more energy to put in than you get out. Everything. Including oil. The difference with oil is that we didn't make the initial energy investment.

That's not a problem, though, because there's plenty of energy all around us. We only use a diminute fraction of the energy that surrounds us. The problem is converting this energy into a form that we can practically use. We've become too used to oil because it's very cheap. It's the lazy man's source of energy, but by no means is it the most efficient or best system to store energy.

Currently new systems are being researched to extract all that energy that we don't use and convert it to a more practical form. Some of that research is quite advanced, some not so much. Nothing will ever be as cheap as oil, but in the long run can become better than oil. It doesn't have to spell the end of civilization. And if it does, we all had our fun :)

Notaxia

06-02-2006, 05:10

Somebody tell me this isn't true. Please! If it is, everything is pointless! Everything! *scared shitless smiley*

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Boooooool-pucky.

My province alone has enough oil, for the WHOLE world, for 100 years, AT current usage levels, IN one place. Another location several hundred miles away has another formation, 50% of that size. AGAIN, 150 years of oil left.

This is just the oil sands. It doesnt include regular oil wells. Long after alternate technology takes over, there will still be unbelievable amounts of oil in the ground. Look at it this way. we've been drilling for oil for just over 100 years. there is still 3/5s of the oil left. further more, this stuff is just starting to reach moderate production levels.

This page estimates lower than i quoted, and doesnt mention the smaller formations.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 05:12

Boooooool-pucky.

My province alone has enough oil, for the WHOLE world, for 100 years, AT current usage levels, IN one place. Another location several hundred miles away has another formation, 50% of that size. AGAIN, 150 years of oil left.

This is just the oil sands. It doesnt include regular oil wells. Long after alternate technology takes over, there will still be unbelievable amounts of oil in the ground. Look at it this way. we've been drilling for oil for just over 100 years. there is still 3/5s of the oil left.
You are living in a fucking fantasy world.
...we would have to expend 20 times as much energy to generate the same amount of oil from the oil sands as we do from conventional sources of oil.

Ekland

06-02-2006, 05:12

You have to put in more energy that you get out! It's pointless!

Bullshit. It uses the steam and some of the natural gas created to power the process. Over 80% pure efficiency.

Best part is, no time machine required. :D

Undelia

06-02-2006, 05:14

Bullshit. It uses the steam and some of the natural gas created to power the process. Over 80% pure efficiency.

Best part is, no time machine required. :D

Thermal depolymerization is an intriguing solution to our landfill problems, but since most of the feedstock (such as tires and turkey guts) requires high-grade oil to make in the first place, it is more "high-tech recycling" than it is a solution to a permanent oil shortage.

While the following analogy is certainly a bit disgusting, it should clearly illustrate why thermal depolymerization won't do much to soften the coming collapse:

Expecting thermal depolymerization to help solve our long
term energy problems makes as much sense as expecting
the consumption of our own feces to help solve a long-term
famine.

In both cases, the energy starved party is simply recycling
a small portion of the energy they had previously consumed.

On a less grotesque note, the technology is besieged by several fundamental shortcomings that those desperately hoping for a techno-messiah tend to overlook:

First, there is the problem of production costs. According to a recent article in Fortune Magazine, a barrel of oil produced via the thermal depolymerization process costs $80 to produce as of January 2005. To put that figure in perspective, consider the fact that oil pulled out of the ground in Saudi Arabia costs less than $2.50 per barrel, while oil pulled out of the ground in Iraq costs only $1.00 per barrel.

This means that with spot oil prices in the $50/barrel range, a barrel of oil produced via thermal depolymerization in January 2005 would have to sell for between $1,600-$4,000 per barrel to have a return on investment comparable to oil produced from Saudi Arabia or Iraq.

Oil prices of $1,600-$4,000 per barrel would put gas prices at roughly $80-$200 per gallon.

If the technology was the miracle many people are desperately hoping for, the company would likely not have needed a grant from the Department of Energy to keep its head above water. Nor would it have been the subject of an April 2005 Kansas City Star article appropriately entitled, "Innovative Turkey-to-Oil Plant Eats Money, Spits Out Fowl Odor."

Sky-high production costs and horrific odor problems aside, a look at the history of thermal depolymerization tends to show it will never amount to more than a tiny drop in the giant barrel that is our oil appetite.The technology was first developed for commercial use in 1996. Here we are, ten years later and there is only one thermal depolymerization plant online and it is producing less than 500 barrels of oil per day, despite record high oil prices. Even if oil production from thermal depolymerization is upscaled by a factor of 1,000, and the cost of production brought down by a factor of 10, it will still only be producing 500,000 barrels of oil per day. While that may make a tremendous amount of money for the company, it won't make much difference in our overall situation as the global need for oil is projected to reach 120,000,000 barrels per day by 2020.

If thermal depolymerization sounded "too good to be true" when you first heard about it, now you know why. Again, as with other alternatives, we shouldn't let these challenges discourage continued research, development, and investment into the technology. However, we have to be realistic about what the technology can and can't do. If you're a big agribusiness or energy company, you may want to look into thermal depolymerization. If, on the other hand, you're just a regular person trying to figure out how you're going to acquire things like food, water, and shelter in a post-cheap oil world, you may as well forget about thermal depolymerization. It is never going to make a discernable contribution to your standard of living.

Tynaria

06-02-2006, 05:19

This is pure idiocy, and I'm fairly certain that the OP knows it and finds this all terribly amusing.

First we have to realize something. We are not going to run out of oil. You will not wake up one day to find global petroleum reserves at zero. Like any other commodity, fossil fuels must be analyzed in terms of economics. As demand rises, supply must rise as well - this you know. The part you aren't seeing is exactly what happens when the supply starts to decrease. As we exhaust reserves of easily-accessible oil, the total profit that can be extracted by bringing a liter of oil to market will drop - and, of course, those oil companies will start to decrease the supply to market. The natural effect of this changing supply curve will be a new intersection with the price curve - a higher equilibrium price per unit of oil. Got that? As supply decreases, price increases - this is not in doubt. This increasing price, in turn, decreases demand. Oil doesn't suddenly stop flowing - it just gets slightly more expensive. As it gets slightly more expensive, it becomes comparatively *more* economical to invest resources in alternative power sources - nuclear, solar, etc. This process doesn't proceed in great steps - it proceeds incrementally.

What I am saying is that the oil supply is best represented by a bell curve (offset for technological advancements, which will continue to make more oil available at lesser prices even into the future). After the crest is reached, there is a gentle slope - not a cliff.

Calm down.

Ashmoria

06-02-2006, 05:20

The nuclear scares are before my time, so I really don't know about them.

Y2K would have been a massive problem if no one cared. Good thing programmers did. Some of the problems were pretty out of proportion, though.

There never really was a problem after 9/11. All the danger after 9/11 was fabricated so everyone would like Bush.

This definetely seems like a huge, real problem, no matter how scare-tactic-ee the site is. If nobody cared about it, and did nothing, and just went on with their "MUST FEED ON OIL!!!!!" lifestyles, this would definetely be a truly humongous problem. Telling everyone to not care is flat-out retarded.
it is "retarded" to worry about something you have no control over. IF its inevitable then it stupid to worry about it. (not that i believe it is inevitable) if you arent going to work on it, why worry about it?

i didnt worry about Y2K. its not my field; there was nothing i could do about it. its stupid to obsess over things you cant change and dont want to work on.

besides, i didnt tell everyone not to care, i told undelia not to care. he is getting all worked up needlessly.

AMW China

06-02-2006, 05:21

...we would have to expend 20 times as much energy to generate the same amount of oil from the oil sands as we do from conventional sources of oil.

Really? Has the author of the alarmist website cited his sources?

Alan Herbst, an energy consultant with Utilis Energy, said that in recent years the economics of oil sands production have become more seductive. It costs under $20 a barrel to produce a barrel of oil from oil sands.

"With crude oil (selling for) over $50 a barrel, it's definitely a winning deal,'' he said.

http://www.petroleumworld.com/story05040506.htm

OntheRIGHTside

06-02-2006, 05:23

Actually, achieving a truly efficient supplementary cementious material, preferrably a waste of any other industry, would probably help a lot more than any of you have any clue about.

Producing cement sucks, for the consumption of fossil fuels and especially huge taxes on the environment.

Concrete is THE most used man-made material in the world, only used less than one non-man-made material, water.

Getting a similar but far easier to produce material to cement would own.

Neu Leonstein

06-02-2006, 05:28

Pffft. Biodiesel it is.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 05:28

-snip-
You don’t get it. The point is the economy and the devolved world’s infrastructure can’t take a significant increase in oil price, not that oil will run out. In fact, there will still be oil left in some wells after they are abandoned.

Oil will not just "run out" because all oil production follows a bell curve. This is true whether we're talking about an individual field, a country, or on the planet as a whole.

Oil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.

In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2000 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2020 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2020 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.
The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

In a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.
Really? Has the author of the alarmist website cited his sources?
He cites he sources admirably, look at the website and you'll find them right in the text.
Also, by 2015, the sands will only produce 2.2 million barrels a day.
We need 85.3 million.

Notaxia

06-02-2006, 05:29

The other large formation of oil sands in Peace River, just west of Fort Mac Murray, doesnt even require steam for extraction. I'd also like to state that these are not likely to be unique in the world. They are simply the largest ones found yet.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 05:30

Pffft. Biodiesel it is.
Most of the feedstock (soybeans, corn) for biofuels such as biodiesel and ethanol are grown using the high-tech, oil-powered industrial methods of agriculture described above.

In short, the so called "alternatives" to oil are actually "derivatives" of oil. Without an abundant and reliable supply of oil, we have no way of scaling these alternatives to the degree necessary to power the modern world.
Sorry Leonstein.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 05:31

Neu Leonstein

06-02-2006, 05:39

Sorry Leonstein.
While I agree with the view that if it happens, it happens (and I'm not actually familiar with what this Peak Oil Society advocates), I have to say that Biodiesel can be used to do pretty much everything oil can do machinewise, and we do have alternatives (from gentec to nanotec) to oil in the fabrication of fertilisers.

Gakuryoku

06-02-2006, 05:40

Thermal Depolymarization is a likely partial solution, but it fails to fix the underlying problem. The amount of energy being used (overwhelmingly from fossil fuels) is growing exponentially, while the amount of energy available is not. Failing some new source of energy vastly larger than current cunsumption rates (as cold fusion would be if we ever got it to work), or significantly increased use of existing large scale energy resources (by which I mean nuclear--wind and hydroelectric power are significant in some regions, but are ultimately insufficient), industrial society will face a collapse that is likely to be on the same scale as the historic fall of Rome. It's not that most of us won't wake up the next day (although a large number of people may starve to death in the following months)--it's just that society may take a couple of centuries to readjust itself. By this point there is very little short of cold fusion that will save industrial society as a whole. With one possible exception.

The one thing that could forseeably preserve modern society would be a sudden, vast decrease in the consumption of oil that could basically only be brought about through a world economic collapse akin to the Great Depression. And there are some indicators that such an economic collapse may be looming on the horizon. The US represents approximately one fourth of the world economy (by GDP). And yet the US trade deficit is huge. Many countries (China among them) maintain their reserves in US dollars. And yet the average American saves between 1 and 2 percent of the money they make. At some point, there will be a rush on the dollar. (Brought on by a precipitous rise in oil prices? Who knows.) When that happens, the value of the dollar will fall through the floor (as compared to any other currency you want). But this, on turn, will force US corporations to withdraw their investments from overseas, precipitating a collapse in most of the rest of the world.

Things are pretty bleak when your preferred likely scenario is a large scale economic collapse.

Tynaria

06-02-2006, 05:42

You don’t get it. The point is the economy and the devolved world’s infrastructure can’t take a significant increase in oil price, not that oil will run out. In fact, there will still be oil left in some wells after they are abandoned.

Oil will not just "run out" because all oil production follows a bell curve. This is true whether we're talking about an individual field, a country, or on the planet as a whole.

Oil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.

In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2000 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2020 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2020 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.
The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

In a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.

He cites he sources admirably, look at the website and you'll find them right in the text.
Also, by 2015, the sands will only produce 2.2 million barrels a day.
We need 85.3 million.

Ah... much better. At least we agree on the proper model - that of the bell curve. The argument you are making now is a much better one - no longer of absolutes, and merely of degrees. I agree that this is a problem; I disagree that we are screwed. There are several reasons behind this:

1) Technology. As I mentioned in my earlier post, oil production doesn't follow a true bell curve. As new technologies are developed, massive new oil reserves are opened up for exploitation. This has been true throughout history. If only ancient methods of oil drilling were practiced, we would have run out a long, long time ago. There is no reason to believe this will change, and every reason to believe that it will continue.

2) Alternative Power Sources. Certainly, if we compare the world twenty years after peak oil (which will, as mentioned above, likely see *higher* oil production than the "peak oil year"), there will be apparent problems. However, it is fallacious to extrapolate current trends in use out that far. As I said before, we are looking at an incrementally changing system - and the increments in question are very short. Global oil demands will not continue to rise at their present rates - the short-term, minor price changes will lead to a decreased demand. An ever-shifting equilibrium will be reached. There will be time to implement alternative power sources - I use "implement" instead of "develop" because the vast majority of these systems are merely awaiting a change in the economic situation to become competitive. If we had a suitable infrastructure for dispersing hydrogen (as we have a massive network of oil pipelines and gasoline stations), or if the current gasoline infrastructure were weak enough to allow competition, fuel-cell powered cars would already be common.

Ftagn

06-02-2006, 05:44

Thou fool!

If I had a penny for every time some lunatic predicted the end of the world, or the end of civilization as we know it... Well, I'd have a lot of pennies!

Undelia

06-02-2006, 05:44

(and I'm not actually familiar with what this Peak Oil Society advocates)
It advocates being prepared, since even atempting to conserve oil could actually make the problem worse (1/6 of the US economy is directly conected in some way to either Ford or GM).

I have to say that Biodiesel can be used to do pretty much everything oil can do machinewise.
Things would have to work out perfectly.

Evil Woody Thoughts

06-02-2006, 05:44

Meh, we're only screwed for as long as oilmen rule the United States.:D

(Seriously, though, while adapting to Peak Oil will likely cause another Great Depression, we've gone through those before and survived...one in the 1890's and the more famous one in the 1930's. It'll suck for sure, but it's not "OMG teh end of teh wurld!!111!!")

Undelia

06-02-2006, 05:47

fuel-cell powered cars would already be common.
Ah, no. The average fuel cell costs one million dollars and still requires platinum.

Gakuryoku

06-02-2006, 05:55

1) Technology. As I mentioned in my earlier post, oil production doesn't follow a true bell curve. As new technologies are developed, massive new oil reserves are opened up for exploitation. This has been true throughout history. If only ancient methods of oil drilling were practiced, we would have run out a long, long time ago. There is no reason to believe this will change, and every reason to believe that it will continue.

2) Alternative Power Sources. Certainly, if we compare the world twenty years after peak oil (which will, as mentioned above, likely see *higher* oil production than the "peak oil year"), there will be apparent problems. However, it is fallacious to extrapolate current trends in use out that far.

Is it just me, or are you saying both that we should extrapolate existing trends, and that shouldn't extrapolate existing trends?

Also, it is fallacious to assume that just because historically we have found "massive new oil reserves" "as new technologies are developed" that the oil supply is growing as quickly as the demand. Even if it were true that we will continually find more sources of oil, there is no indication that these new sources will keep up with demand.

Tynaria

06-02-2006, 05:59

Ah, no. The average fuel cell costs one million dollars and still requires platinum.

The platinum requirement is no serious objection. Surprised? Platinum is almost certainly already used in your car for a different purpose - it's in your catalytic converter. We are in absolutely no danger of running out of platinum - the amount required for use in such a situation amounts to nothing more than a coating.

Also, fuel cell costs are not so high as you suggest (I'm honestly not sure where that came from, so I can't really investigate it), and would certainly be significantly lower if economies of scale could be brought into effect for their production. There is nothing fundamentally expensive about one - in fact, the process is far simpler than the construction of an internal combustion engine.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 06:03

(I'm honestly not sure where that came from, so I can't really investigate it),
http://www.energybulletin.net/2401.html?ENERGYBULL=3f111b51386b890bdf16abbd3c38e150

Tynaria

06-02-2006, 06:05

Is it just me, or are you saying both that we should extrapolate existing trends, and that shouldn't extrapolate existing trends?

Also, it is fallacious to assume that just because historically we have found "massive new oil reserves" "as new technologies are developed" that the oil supply is growing as quickly as the demand. Even if it were true that we will continually find more sources of oil, there is no indication that these new sources will keep up with demand.

I was waiting for someone to be confused on this point. We should extrapolate trends in some situations, but not in others. To be more accurate, the trend I was referring to in the first place (that of the amount of fossil fuels demanded by the market) isn't something we can extrapolate because we have every reason to believe it will change. I gave the reasons for this in my previous post. We can extrapolate in terms of technological advancements (or rather, we make generalizations, as no precise extrapolation can be made in this case) because these have been constant and show no sign of changing.

The indication that these new sources will keep up with demand isn't an indication - it's a definition. The demand will subside as prices rise - it's really elementary economics. What I am saying is that the price increase will be damped greatly by new technologies that make previously inaccessible oil reserves commercially feasible - especially combined with rising economic incentive in terms of prices.

Also, I am going to go to bed now - I'll check up on this thread when I get a chance tomorrow, but I won't be able to reply quickly to any more posts here tonight. Sorry.

Gakuryoku

06-02-2006, 06:26

The demand will subside as prices rise - it's really elementary economics.

This assumes elasticity of demand. Demand for oil is highly inelastic in our current society. Just look at the oil use over the past decade. Even though the cost of a barrel of oil has more than doubled, the demand has not been appreciably affected (indeed, it has continued to increase, more or less unchecked).

To be more accurate, the trend I was referring to in the first place (that of the amount of fossil fuels demanded by the market) isn't something we can extrapolate because we have every reason to believe it will change.

We have every reason to believe that the rate at which more oil fields are found will change, too.

Finally, as a side note, although the costs of producing fuel cells have been dropping, the platinum used in fuel cells is also subject to "really elementary economics". If fuel cells are mass produced, the price of the platinum will skyrocket with vastly increased demand. And although economics of scale (which would certainly apply here) tend to decrease the average production costs of an item, they cannot decrease the cost of the raw materials needed to create that item. If fuel cells can find a cheaper alternative to platinum, they may become a viable escape similar to the possibilties of cold fusion (perhaps even better, in the short term, than cold fusion, since any fusion reactor is unlikely to be portable, or fit in your trunk).

Tynaria

06-02-2006, 06:41

Last post tonight, I swear...

This assumes elasticity of demand. Demand for oil is highly inelastic in our current society. Just look at the oil use over the past decade. Even though the cost of a barrel of oil has more than doubled, the demand has not been appreciably affected (indeed, it has continued to increase, more or less unchecked).

In such a case as we are discussing, the demand is likely to become far more elastic. The reason we see so little elasticity at present is that there is no way for alternative power sources to compete in the current world. It isn't just a question of cost of production - static costs, especially those fronted by other independent companies and individuals - prevent the adoption (and, to a lesser extent, the research) of even efficient and cheap alternative methods of transportation. Think of the massive infrastructure associated with gasoline - we have pipelines, oil tankers, and, most importantly, a gas station on every block (along with the trucks to supply them, the people to run them, etc.). Once this becomes less relevent (as will happen over time with demand and price changes), alternative methods will become increasingly competitive. When that happens, the price elasticity of demand will start to drop.

In other words, the inflexible market that we see today is the result of the natural monopoly that is energy. Massive fixed costs prevent new competitors from entering the market at current prices. Once those prices begin to change, competitors will appear, and the market will become more flexible.

Ultimately, we are arguing about degree rather than method. You think it will happen quickly - I think it will happen more slowly. We both agree on the nature of the changes to come.

Finally, as a side note, although the costs of producing fuel cells have been dropping, the platinum used in fuel cells is also subject to "really elementary economics". If fuel cells are mass produced, the price of the platinum will skyrocket with vastly increased demand. And although economics of scale (which would certainly apply here) tend to decrease the average production costs of an item, they cannot decrease the cost of the raw materials needed to create that item. If fuel cells can find a cheaper alternative to platinum, they may become a viable escape similar to the possibilties of cold fusion (perhaps even better, in the short term, than cold fusion, since any fusion reactor is unlikely to be portable, or fit in your trunk).

You speak the truth - however, to my knowledge, terrestrial platinum reserves aren't in question. New development of that resource will bring prices down after an initial upward spike. The important thing to consider here is that the amount of platinum required will be minor on the whole - after all, it is used in nearly every car's catalytic converter right now. The real difficulty with fuel cells is in generating and transporting the reactants - hydrogen and oxygen, or in providing enough electricity to allow for on-site electrolysis of water.

Also, why the fascination with cold fusion? To my knowledge, we are far closer to achieving useful "hot fusion" than we are to cold fusion, which, as we presently understand it, presents vanishingly little potential for use as a power source. Have I missed some recent development?

Notaxia

06-02-2006, 06:52

We need pertroleum fuel for three things; Transport trucks, airplanes, and trains. These are the only things that need the "oomph" that oil gives. The rest of the vehicles can use electricity and hydrogen to motor you on your way. Cargo ships can use nuclear.

Lubrication can be provided with artificial oils, graphites, et cetera.

It might not seem like it, but thats way more than 10 per cent of petroleum use. Way more than they produce in Fort Mac.

But... how long did it take to build the alaska highway? It took 36 months for the US army to make a 2500 mile long highway.. while they fought a war. The trick was there was will and effort applied.

another thing, for a while i worked at DeBeers Canada. At that stage DeBeers was doing exploration, crushing drill core samples, looking for minerals that indicate the possible presence of diamonds. In a core sample at the drill site they found a ten carat diamond. The site boss got on the phone, called for a C130 plane, walked outside, and told the crew to start bulldozing an air strip. Basically, he was saying, "screw the exploring, start mining". Get the equipment here by air.

If political will power is applied, things happen fast. They would have fiddled for years getting a mine going. If it were not for a war, they would have spent a decade or more making that highway, if at all.

If it came down to no oil, say from the middle east, those oil sands would be strip mined faster than you can say "Oppress me, my american overlords!". In the case of not enough oil, the effects will be just about as fast.

Uldarious

06-02-2006, 07:01

If any of you happen to remember I posted topic like this a few months ago, I even sited the exact same webpage and yet my topic got almost no attention.

Well in any case, if any of you want to discuss the issue more I advise you visit www.peakoil.com they have answers to most questions you could ask if you care to.

Jimusopolis

06-02-2006, 07:04

What does it matter? We'll all be dead from the bird flu before any of this can happen...

:rolleyes:

Cameroi

06-02-2006, 07:05

the refrence you need, if you really need any, might be richard hienberg's "power down".

first off, the end of cheep fossle power, isn't going to be the end of anything other then the use of combustion to generate energy. for that matter the end of oil isn't even the end of combustion power. but really the sooner we run out of oil the better everyone and especialy the environment is going to be once the big human population die off has come and gone.

which incidently there doesn't have to be. and we could be getting by just fine without using combustion to generate energy and transportation right now if our pollicies weren't drivin by the backward headed circular illogic of little green pieces of paper.

i'm sorry you'll miss the combustion powered automobile, but people did get along without them for millinea just fine.

flanged wheel on steel rail uses energy 5 TIMES more effeciently then rubber tyre on pavement and there's no reason it can't be build to human scale rather then the behimoths which are all that most people in the developed world are any longer familiar with.

wind+solar 32% + hydro (including small to medium scale) 41% = 73%
the point of that exercise in basic math is that 100-73 leaves on 27% energy consumption defficit to be made up.

yes those who survive the next 20 to 50 years are probably going to have to do a lot more walking, but maybe not.

as for that 27%, that's where the 5% to 15% from nuclear might come in temporarily handy, along with other odds and ends like bio diesel, geothermal, and just plain not using so damd much.

nuclear of course isn't a free lunch either and i don't expect to see it ever providing more then that five to fifteen percent.

but what can we really not get by without that we need to consume all that much energy for? our refrigerators, computers, and transportation, and even those there are work arrounds for, one need only look back to times before they were invented. but my point is we don't need to go all the way back to those times to live without using combustion for anything other then home heating and cooking.

and instead of the big starve off when the power goes off in the cities and doesn't come back on again, like i said, we could, and if we had collectively any kind of sense, would, be moving to a noncombustion powered economy now.

so what's the hold up? obviously that of course is the political stranglehold the robber barons of the oil and automotive industries have over heirarchal soverignty today.

all things do however chainge, and trying to force them not to is often one of the major forces forcing them to.

yes food and energy IS going to get damd expensive, and a lot of the majority of people who live in urbanized areas stand a good chance of facing famine in the forseeable future, but this isn't some inevitable demise of the human species. just a major wake up call. time to lower our reproductive fertility and stop being profligately careless with the green capital nature has given us which enables us to exist.

and of course peak production doesn't mean we suddenly run out, it just means that increasing scarcity becomes irriversable.

the qualitative experience of individual daily life remains collectively up to the priorities we actualy individualy choose to live by. which basicly boils down to less and less likelyhood of getting away with the thoughtlessness to which we have become accustome.

and that isn't exactly news, to anyone who'se been using good sense, or trying to, all along.

=^^=
.../\...

Ephebe-Tsort

06-02-2006, 07:23

-snip-
...the qualitative experience of individual daily life remains collectively up to the priorities we actualy individualy choose to live by. which basicly boils down to less and less likelyhood of getting away with the thoughtlessness to which we have become accustomed.

and that isn't exactly news, to anyone who'se been using good sense, or trying to, all along.

=^^=
.../\...

Good work man. :)

Uldarious

06-02-2006, 07:27

All right guys just a few points I should make.

1, The author of LATOC.net sites many of his sources and does indeed create a very well made arguement that shows your own ignorant ramnbling for what it is.

2, Read the goddamn site before you start dissing it, he knows what he's talking about and has the answers for most of your "the market will adapt" or "alternatives will save us" crap.

3,There are a lot of different opinions on how the end of oil will effect us, there are those who see a tempory solution in Nuclear or Coal and other, more optimistic poeple, who see potential in the alternatives such as solar and wind, Matt Savinar just puts forth the most logical view.

4. Remember that Hydrocarbon depletion is NOT an exceptional thing, if you begin to consume a non-renewable resource it will eventually run out.

Now my arguement is a very pale reflection of the well supported and well thought out arguement of Matt Savinar or the skilled posters at www.peakoil.com but the idea is that you fools will open your eyes to the truth and give it a chance, visit the sites with an open mind and examine his arguement if you want and you'll see the truth of the matter.

Or you could stay here, wrapped in your lies and ignorant idiocy untill you die, which probably won't be too long now, the oil is running low.
See if I care, say what you will now every moment you spend today believing your lies is a moment you're not preparing for the future, tick tock times running out.

Gakuryoku

06-02-2006, 07:33

Last post tonight, I swear...

In such a case as we are discussing, the demand is likely to become far more elastic. The reason we see so little elasticity at present is that there is no way for alternative power sources to compete in the current world. It isn't just a question of cost of production - static costs, especially those fronted by other independent companies and individuals - prevent the adoption (and, to a lesser extent, the research) of even efficient and cheap alternative methods of transportation. Think of the massive infrastructure associated with gasoline - we have pipelines, oil tankers, and, most importantly, a gas station on every block (along with the trucks to supply them, the people to run them, etc.). Once this becomes less relevent (as will happen over time with demand and price changes), alternative methods will become increasingly competitive. When that happens, the price elasticity of demand will start to drop.

In other words, the inflexible market that we see today is the result of the natural monopoly that is energy. Massive fixed costs prevent new competitors from entering the market at current prices. Once those prices begin to change, competitors will appear, and the market will become more flexible.

Ultimately, we are arguing about degree rather than method. You think it will happen quickly - I think it will happen more slowly. We both agree on the nature of the changes to come.

While I do agree that, if price changes occurred sufficiently slowly, viable (or, at least, semi-viable) alternatives could be introduced, I remain convinced that the price change will be sudden. As production rates in current major oil reserves in the Middle East decline, price should rise. However, energy price hikes would tend to damage already ailing Western economies. In order to protect themselves politically, Western governments (particularly the US) will tend to try to tap major reserves in order to control prices. However, when these reserves begin to run dry (pass their peak production) will approximately coincide with the steepest decrease in production by current major producers such as the Middle East. Hence the sudden precipitous drop in supply.

You speak the truth - however, to my knowledge, terrestrial platinum reserves aren't in question. New development of that resource will bring prices down after an initial upward spike. The important thing to consider here is that the amount of platinum required will be minor on the whole - after all, it is used in nearly every car's catalytic converter right now. The real difficulty with fuel cells is in generating and transporting the reactants - hydrogen and oxygen, or in providing enough electricity to allow for on-site electrolysis of water.

In the end, I don't know that much about the problems faced by the use of fuel cells. However, based on the wikipedia article on hydrogen fuel cells (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_cell#Economy), current costs in the use of fuel cells are primarily driven by the platinum--a cost that one would expect to rise significantly with increased production.

Also, why the fascination with cold fusion? To my knowledge, we are far closer to achieving useful "hot fusion" than we are to cold fusion, which, as we presently understand it, presents vanishingly little potential for use as a power source. Have I missed some recent development?

"Hot fusion" faces the same fundamental problem as nuclear fission--if something goes very wrong then a serious catastrophe is likely to result. (Never mind that the probability of something like that happening is very small--the poor public image the idea causes is sufficient to prevent its use until it is too late to usefully implement.) "Cold fusion", an idea still very much an element of science fiction rather than science fact, would theoretically be less prone to catastrophic problems, since the reaction would be far more easily contained and controlled. While less useful as a fuel source, it is more agreeable to the average person's stomach for technologies they do not understand.

wind+solar 32% + hydro (including small to medium scale) 41% = 73%
the point of that exercise in basic math is that 100-73 leaves on 27% energy consumption defficit to be made up.

If wind and solar really could make up 32% of our power needs and hydro-electric power really could make up 41% of our power needs, you'd be right. But in order to run the world on wind power, we'd need to cover about 13% of the world's surface with wind power plants to meet current use--including most of europe. Hydro-electric power, in addition to being heavily environmentally invasive, still only amounts for under one fifth of world energy usage. And solar power is completely impractical--even under ideal conditions it would take about 27 million square kilometers of solar arrays to meet current global power consumption rates--about 3 times the area of the Sahara desert.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 07:36

If any of you happen to remember I posted topic like this a few months ago, I even sited the exact same webpage and yet my topic got almost no attention.
The trick is to direct your posts at posters. Phrase them in such a way that unresponsiveness would make it appear that they are giving up.

GreaterPacificNations

06-02-2006, 09:31

The thing that most people seem to be overlooking is that the imminent disaster represented within the advent of 'peak oil' is not overly concerned with energy supply/alternatives. I would have to agree with undelia that most of you haven't properly read the site in question thoroughly.

As far as energy demand goes, the people of the world will find a way. As long as there is a huge demand for energy, there will be someone who is happy to take everyone's money and find it for them (regardless of how difficult it will be without oil).

The true disaster lies in the economics. The whole argument is that the US economy is masively overvalued, because some very clever US polititians set up an amazingly simple and legitimate scam to inflate the value of their currency beyond what it truly is. The scam in question is totally based on middle eastern oil. Even if we find massive resevoirs of oil that could last us forever (elsewhere in the world), the economic disaster will still occur.

This is the basic layout of the ploy simplified so that I and all of the non-economists in the forum, understand it: When the US was originally in the middle east, messing around with the nations and people that existed there (they have been doing it for a while), the set up a massive oil mining infastructure mostly at their own expense. When it came to what the concerned nations owed the US for doing them this great favour, the US pretty much only stipulated 1 main clause: When you trade oil, trade only in US$s. "What a bargain", thought the arabic nations, and so the would sell oil for US$s and convert the money back into their respective currencies 24 hours later. So the statistical analysis of the world economy shows that there is an extremely high level of demand and traffic of the US$. However, the truth is that all of these hundreds of billions of US$ are only in existence for 24 hours doing nothing but waiting to be converted back into the truly desired currency. This is the reason behind the US being so infallible in the economy. As long as people buy oil, the US appears to perform much better than it does.

When peak oil arrives we will begin to see less and less trade of oil, if it runs out then we will see all oil trading virtually cease. Either way, the US will lose its unfair advantage generated by the oil ploy, (and they will have to compete like everyone else). Basically the US economy will rapidly drop in value, and initially no-one will know why.

The good news (or bad, depending on where you are from) is that the US economy won't be completely obliterated by this for 2 reasons. Firstly, using all of it's dirty 'false wealth' the US has actually set up a very healthy economy with strengths across a variety of industries. So the US will only lose the 'Oil part'. Secondly, the US government is acutely aware of the situation at hand adn, beleive me, they are making big preparations for it.

Why do you think they went to Iraq in the first place? WMDs? Justice for the Iraqi people? Revenge for the gulf war? No. They went because they NEEDED to, really badly. Oil defines the US economy, and soon it will all be gone. This is why the US has never stopped interfering in the Middle east. They would be irresponsible if they did.

The bad news. It is definite that the drop in the value of the US$ will have reprocussions on the entire world economy, after all they are the keystone of it all (at the moment). However there is a possibility that it could be much, much worse. There is a small chance that if the drop in rapid and large enough that people worldwide could lose faith in all forms of non-tangible currency (which constitutes about 80% of all money worldwide). If you have ever seen 'Mad Max' (or 'Road warrior' as it is called in the US), then you have a decent indication of how things will be if that happens. But it probably wont.

The most likely situation is that the US will just become like evey other country, and after a breif recession, things will pick up again. In this very desirable situation, the US will no longer have the world by the balls and their economic empire will fall to shambles (for the most part).

So if you live in the good ol' US of A, start stocking up on tinned food (just in case). Better yet invest your life savings in non-US owned tangible goods (not oil!), then sell them after the collapse for a huge profit.

I can't wait to see how this all plays out...

Undelia

06-02-2006, 20:46

-snip-
Interesting, but I would extend your advice to those outside the US as well. After all, the world’ economy is not just linked to America’s because of the USD. We also have a disproportionate amount of the world’s investors and people with enough money to invest. If they pull their money out of the myriad countries of the world because of some crises, everyone will suffer. Peak oil isn’t just a US problem, it will reduce the entire Industrialized world to African conditions.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 20:56

I don't think there is going to be a serious problem. There will be little or no economic damage from the decline in oil production, simply because there are many alternatives to petroleum and natural gas on the market. We have the technology, the equipment, the people, and the resources to more than provide for the world's energy needs without significant new oil production. As price rises and supply tightens, we've seen a growing shift towards alternative energy sources, almost all of which are superior to oil both in terms of price and energy efficency.

The market will respond accordingly; honestly, the only reason why we've continued to use oil is because many of the things that could replace it were more expensive to use and begin production of. If we were to just replace the oil we consume as fuel, we would have little or no difficulty in meeting our demand for plastics and other oil derivatives.

To put it in perspective, there is enough untapped wind power in the state of North Dakota to meet 100% of US energy demand (including power generation as well as oil consumption). This does not include any other sources of generation, just wind. All we need is the motivation to pursue these alternatives, and I think higher prices will continue to do just that.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 20:57

Interesting, but I would extend your advice to those outside the US as well. After all, the world’ economy is not just linked to America’s because of the USD. We also have a disproportionate amount of the world’s investors and people with enough money to invest. If they pull their money out of the myriad countries of the world because of some crises, everyone will suffer. Peak oil isn’t just a US problem, it will reduce the entire Industrialized world to African conditions.

No it won't. Honestly, we have the technology to replace much of our oil consumption with literally hundreds of alternative sources of energy generation, and if we really wanted to we could produce oil from the huge amounts of coal in the US and Canada. The nations that will be hurt are the nonindustrialized ones that don't have the money to implement these technologies.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 21:09

Something is going to happen, of course, but it won't be a disastrous end of the world apocalypse.

Sure, alternative energy sources look expensive when compared against oil because the initial investment for oil was made by plants millions of years ago and not by us. But as oil gets more and more expensive, more and more research will be made on these alternatives, making them more and more efficient. They will never get as cheap as oil, but perhaps they'll enjoy a longer run. Heck, you could build an internal combustion engine that burns coal, it won't be pretty or a marvel of efficiency but you can do it, and if you need to use it, you will.

And, sure, some countries will suffer a lot, others less, and others will benefit. In the end humanity will continue to tick along as it has always done.
Yeah, the techno quick fix. There are two serious fallacies in yoru argument.

1. You grew up in the age of oil and have seen all of these marvelous things. Men on the Moon. Computers. The internet. This has left you and most other people with this unfailing faith in human enginuity. What you fail to take into account is that ALL of that has only been possible because of oil. Without it the industrial age would have never happened. We rebuilt the Pacific Fleet with oil. We landed on the Moon with oil. We fly because of oil. Computers are made out of oil. Plastics are made of oil. The ores we mine that make our advanced industrial complex work are mined with oil. There is no reason to believe that any of this will be possible without the huge energy surplus oil provides - to the tune of about 30 to 1. Ethanol, for example, even in the rosiest of estimates is about 1.5 to 1.

2. You also assume that oil was just the "next step" in the evolution of our energy consumption. This leads you to assume that the move from oil to another energy source will just be the next step in a long chain of energy sources we have exploited at one time or another. That's not true. Humanity has switched energy sources twice. We used wood - biofuels - for about 70,000 years. When Europe became almost completely denuded of trees and brush in the 17th century we switched to coal and then in th 19th century we switched to oil. There is no reason to believe there's an equal or better energy source waiting in the wings. The age of oil has allowed us to map the Earth, not only from the ground to teh atmosphere, but several miles underground as well. If there's another energy source waiting we have not found it yet. As mention by a few posters already, all of the "alternative" energy sources that we do know about are heavily dependent on oil. Windmills, for example, are usually made from plastic which, of course, is made out of oil. Nuclear energy and solar energy require huge amounts of oil to mine the materials needed to make the plants.

Peak Oil will be the biggest catastrophy man has known and will test our abaility to maintain civilization and our own survival.

Tactical Grace

06-02-2006, 21:12

Yeah, it's true. No, nothing can be done except delay the inevitable.

People are however welcome to enjoy the peak of human industrial civilisation in denial.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 21:18

1. You grew up in the age of oil and have seen all of these marvelous things. Men on the Moon. Computers. The internet. This has left you and most other people with this unfailing faith in human enginuity. What you fail to take into account is that ALL of that has only been possible because of oil. Without it the industrial age would have never happened. We rebuilt the Pacific Fleet with oil. We landed on the Moon with oil. We fly because of oil. Computers are made out of oil. Plastics are made of oil. The ores we mine that make our advanced industrial complex work are mined with oil. There is no reason to believe that any of this will be possible without the huge energy surplus oil provides - to the tune of about 30 to 1. Ethanol, for example, even in the rosiest of estimates is about 1.5 to 1..

The energy ROI of oil is 20:1, the energy ROI of wind power is as high as 80:1Coal provides around 20:1, and solar power provides up to 30:1. So, in regard to power generation oil is becoming increasingly irrelevant and inferior to renewable energy. This doesn't even include coal power, hydroelectric, wave power, geothermal, or any of the hundreds of other alternative energy sources.

Gasoline and other fuels have a negative EROI, so ethanol would actually be superior as a fuel. Also, with large quantities of renewable enenrgy, if we were to use hybrid ethanol vehicles we could make it even more efficent. This doesn't include biodiesel, which would also have applications.

We already make synthetic motor oil and other machinery fuels and lubricants and it wouldn't be hard to do the same for many plastics. Nanotechnology is already providing oil-free alternatives for plastics and their derivatives, and the cost is falling. The oil peak may be one of the greatest opportunities in the history of energy generation and consumption, finally freeing us from dependence on finite supplies of fossil fuels.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 21:20

People are however welcome to enjoy the peak of human industrial civilisation in denial.

I think that peak oil is the beginning of a newer, better era in human economic and industrial development. There are more than enough alternatives, even at this relatively primitive stage, for us to supply our energy needs without oil. The only reason we haven't is because oil has been so cheap.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 21:21

While I agree with the view that if it happens, it happens (and I'm not actually familiar with what this Peak Oil Society advocates), I have to say that Biodiesel can be used to do pretty much everything oil can do machinewise, .No it can't. mainly, it can't be produced as quickly. We burn 85 million + barrels of oil a day. producing that much biodeisal or ethanol would require Africa to be a big farm in constant turnaround and that's if we can do it tomorrow. If we are to keep our economy growiing by teh time we bring it online we will be needing much more than that.

having said that, the people in here who argue that the market will take care of the poblem are right. The problem is that the market solution will probably involve massive demand destruction through a human die-off.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 21:23

I think that peak oil is the beginning of a newer, better era in human economic and industrial development. There are more than enough alternatives, even at this relatively primitive stage, for us to supply our energy needs without oil. The only reason we haven't is because oil has been so cheap.
Like?

Relkan

06-02-2006, 21:24

Calm down, everyone. All you lemmings don't need to run into the ocean yet. Here's what needs to be done.

Use Nuclear Power! I don't want to hear any crying about waste. We have safe ways of storing it. It produces no airborne contaminates. At least half of you people out there love France. They get like 70% of their power from nuclear and no one gives them trouble about it.

Nuclear is great. Crude oil produces 45-46 megajoules of energy per kilogram. In contrast, uranium produces 500,000 megajoules of energy per kilogram. There is no shortage of uranium out there either. In fact, half of the uranium we consume in power generation right now comes from decommissioned nuclear warheads.

80% of all shipping is done by truck in the United States (I heard that on the History Channel). We need to do most of our shipping by rail. Trains can be run on electricity which can be produced by the nuclear plants.

In the short run, we can use coal more. With clean coal technologies (yes, they exist) coal is not really any more dirty than the oil we use now.

Anybody who can should put solar panels on their roof or in their yards if they have enough room. If you do your own solar (or even geothermal in some areas), you don't have to pay any companies for energy other than the company from which you bought the panels.

Synthetic oils are more costly to produce for cars than natural oils, but they last much longer and are better for engines. I recommend Mobil. It works great in my truck.

For anyone who says ethanol is cost prohibitive, they use more ethanol in Brazil than gasoline, and I believe it costs the equivalent of 73 cents per gallon.

The point is, we have plenty of options, so there is no need to run around in circles screaming and wetting ourselves. We just need to get going on some of these viable alternatives.

Gakuryoku

06-02-2006, 21:27

No it won't. Honestly, we have the technology to replace much of our oil consumption with literally hundreds of alternative sources of energy generation, and if we really wanted to we could produce oil from the huge amounts of coal in the US and Canada. The nations that will be hurt are the nonindustrialized ones that don't have the money to implement these technologies.

I don't know exactly how much coal there is in Canada, but the US coal supply is only sufficient to meet current energy demand (i.e., to replace oil), assuming perfect efficiency for the removal of coal from the ground and no loss in transporting it from the mine to the consumer, for about 200 years. Realize that this is at current energy demand; even given the ideal conditions assumed (which are certainly far from the truth), increases in consumption cuts that supply from 200 years to between 50 and 100. Actual inefficiencies in transport and extraction result in much lower estimates.

To put it in perspective, there is enough untapped wind power in the state of North Dakota to meet 100% of US energy demand (including power generation as well as oil consumption). This does not include any other sources of generation, just wind. All we need is the motivation to pursue these alternatives, and I think higher prices will continue to do just that.

Think about what your saying here. If everyone moved out of North Dakota, and we covered the entire state with wind power plants, and had perfect transportation methods, we could power the US. How do you plan to construct that many power plants? Or move that many people? (By force?) Or transport that much energy with any resonable efficiency rate? And what about the rest of the world? North Dakota is mostly made up of Class 4 and Class 5 wind production areas; there aren't that many large areas that reach that class rating and aren't heavily populated (unless you want to evacuate Europe to meet the world power demands)?

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 21:30

No it can't. mainly, it can't be produced as quickly. We burn 85 million + barrels of oil a day. producing that much biodeisal or ethanol would require Africa to be a big farm in constant turnaround and that's if we can do it tomorrow. If we are to keep our economy growiing by teh time we bring it online we will be needing much more than that.

43% of world oil consumption is in fuels (gasoline/distillates). However, a lot of that is consumed by the United States. The US has a lot of capacity to produce alternative energy, so if we utilize it we can single-handedly reduce oil consumption by 6-10%.

We have massive amounts of underutilized land in North America for the production of crops for biodiesel and ethanol, not to mention the rest of the world. I don't think it would be particularly difficult to meet that demand

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 21:36

I don't know exactly how much coal there is in Canada, but the US coal supply is only sufficient to meet current energy demand (i.e., to replace oil), assuming perfect efficiency for the removal of coal from the ground and no loss in transporting it from the mine to the consumer, for about 200 years. Realize that this is at current energy demand; even given the ideal conditions assumed (which are certainly far from the truth), increases in consumption cuts that supply from 200 years to between 50 and 100. Actual inefficiencies in transport and extraction result in much lower estimates.

There is a lot of coal; the problem is, we're not mining it because there isn't enough demand at present. Also, technology in coal extraction has progressed slowly due to low prices; if demand were to increase considerably, technology and efficency would follow. However, coal would only be a temporary measure to help cover some of the demand for oil until we can fully switch over to alternatives.

Think about what your saying here. If everyone moved out of North Dakota, and we covered the entire state with wind power plants, and had perfect transportation methods, we could power the US. How do you plan to construct that many power plants? Or move that many people? (By force?) Or transport that much energy with any resonable efficiency rate? And what about the rest of the world? North Dakota is mostly made up of Class 4 and Class 5 wind production areas; there aren't that many large areas that reach that class rating and aren't heavily populated (unless you want to evacuate Europe to meet the world power demands)?

It's only meant to show how much untapped energy there is in North Dakota alone. Even if we were forced to use lower quality sites, the vast improvements in technology have continued to reduce the cost per kWh to points where we can use these sites profitably. Wind power could also be generated offshore; ironically enough, abandoned oil rigs are perfect sites for wind generators.

This would not be the end all of power consumption, just one aspect of it. There are a multitude of alternative power sources, and wind would be one of many. Even geothermal energy can get a 30:1 EROI with present technology, and the West Coast of the US has plenty of sites as does much of Asia.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 21:37

The energy ROI of oil is 20:1, the energy ROI of wind power is as high as 80:1Coal provides around 20:1, and solar power provides up to 30:1. So, in regard to power generation oil is becoming increasingly irrelevant and inferior to renewable energy. This doesn't even include coal power, hydroelectric, wave power, geothermal, or any of the hundreds of other alternative energy sources.

Gasoline and other fuels have a negative EROI, so ethanol would actually be superior as a fuel. Also, with large quantities of renewable enenrgy, if we were to use hybrid ethanol vehicles we could make it even more efficent. This doesn't include biodiesel, which would also have applications.

We already make synthetic motor oil and other machinery fuels and lubricants and it wouldn't be hard to do the same for many plastics. Nanotechnology is already providing oil-free alternatives for plastics and their derivatives, and the cost is falling. The oil peak may be one of the greatest opportunities in the history of energy generation and consumption, finally freeing us from dependence on finite supplies of fossil fuels.
Wow. Just about every statistic you quoted there is contrary to everything I've read and I do nothing all day except read about energy. I'm in school now getting my masters in petroleum geology and have not heard stats like that from any reliable source. gasoline does not have a negative EROEI. Windpower can only have that kind of EROEI if you don't take into account the energy inputs into the materials the windmills are made of (oil). As for oil be irrelevent to power generation, yu are right. It's actually never really been used to generate much electricity. Oil is mainly for transportation and to make things like windmills, geothermal plants and nuclear plants. We also use petro chemicqls to make thinsg like solar panels. There are no substitutes for any of those things. We do not know how to make good windmills out of anything other than oil. We don't know how to make solar panles out f anything other than oil and minerals mined with oil. We do not know how to make the linings of pipelines and tanks that hold hydrogen out of anything other than oil. the synthetics you are talking about, motor oil and plastics, are actually still made of oil, they're just not directly refined from oil. the chemical constituents of synthetic motor oil are still petrochemicals.

Nano tech is made of materials mined with huge, oil burning machinery and I am not aware of any fuel that is in use today that is not either made of petrochemicals or made of crops grown with huge petrochemical inputs and planted, harvested and irrigated using oil.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 21:41

43% of world oil consumption is in fuels (gasoline/distillates). However, a lot of that is consumed by the United States. The US has a lot of capacity to produce alternative energy, so if we utilize it we can single-handedly reduce oil consumption by 6-10%.

We have massive amounts of underutilized land in North America for the production of crops for biodiesel and ethanol, not to mention the rest of the world. I don't think it would be particularly difficult to meet that demand
6-10%?

How much good will that do us when oil production falls by 6-10% per year? Also, you have to take into account that our economy will collapse if it does not grow. Which means that we use 85 million barrels/day now. Ib 10 years teh estimate is that we will be needing 120 million barrles/day, which I doubt we're gonna have.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 21:42

Vetalia, you are usually quite insightful and I usually enjoy reading your posts, but really, did you even read the site?

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 21:44

Like?

Geothermal, wind, hydropower, solar, and wave power can all offer EROI comparable to or better than oil.

Ethanol and biodiesel offer better EROI than gasoline and distillate fuel, and their EROI is becoming increasingly positive (as much as 1.26:1 for ethanol, compared to aroun 0.91:1 for gasoline). Even a 10% mix of ethanol in to conventional gasoline has had considerable results in fuel efficency.

Plastics at present are more limited in their alternatives, but there have been breakthroughs recently. However, given that about 1/2 of world oil consumption is fuel, if we were to eliminate that aspect we would be able to meet oil-based plastic needs for far longer than projected.

Also, only 23% of plastic is recycled. Increasing that would further reduce our demand for oil. It seems that the main obstacle to total independence from oil is how inefficent we utilize the products produced from it. A significant boost in efficency would address the shortfall current technologies have in covering our oil needs.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 21:50

Geothermal, wind, hydropower, solar, and wave power can all offer EROI comparable to or better than oil.

Ethanol and biodiesel offer better EROI than gasoline and distillate fuel, and their EROI is becoming increasingly positive (as much as 1.26:1 for ethanol, compared to aroun 0.91:1 for gasoline). Even a 10% mix of ethanol in to conventional gasoline has had considerable results in fuel efficency.

I'm sorry, but that is simply not true. Gasoline has a tremedous EROEI. If it did not, it would never have ended up being a fuel because there was no other energy source when we started to use it to subsidize its use like there is for ethanol. Ethanol get's you worse mileage, not better. Ethanol is subsidized with oil. We use oil to grow the crops and then turn them into an oil alternative. Where do you get yoru stats? They make no sense. Did you get them from one of those hippy "legalize hemp" sites? :confused:

Tactical Grace

06-02-2006, 21:57

Geothermal, wind, hydropower, solar, and wave power can all offer EROI comparable to or better than oil.
Energy returned on energy invested only takes you so far. There are little practical considerations such as logistics, manufacturing capacity, discounted cashflow and my favourite one, public opinion.

People hate windfarms, and they vote.

Photovoltaics require semiconductor technology. Considering the size of semiconductor plants and the tiny quantities of solar panels produced, we're not scaling it up any time soon.

Hydropower works in a few countries. Elsewhere, you're lucky if you can use it for system frequency regulation.

Wave, omfg the civil engineering costs. Too great an economic risk.

Geothermal, haha. Keep redrilling those boreholes.

All electrical power sources mentioned, need all sorts of fancy expensive power converters to produce harmonic-free power with the desired voltage and frequency.

And of course even given technological feasibility, you're screwed if the bank doesn't get its money back in a decade, and the public doesn't want it in its back yard.

For electricity, choose three from nukes, CCGT, wind and existing hydro.

For transport, forget about it. Electric trains and sailing ships 4tw.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 21:58

Vetalia, you are usually quite insightful and I usually enjoy reading your posts, but really, did you even read the site?

I did read it. The main concern they are advancing is that we are not implementing alternative energies and methods of extraction fast enough to meet the upcoming slide in oil production. Also, there is a lot of dependence by financial serivces and the money economy on oil; nevertheless, the economy can readjust itself and it will. The main concern will not be the price of oil, but how fast it reaches those levels. Our economy has absorbed prices over 6 times what they were in 1999, even with multiple external shocks; this leads me to believe that we can tolerate higher prices provided the increases are gradual.

They draw their conclusion from the Hubbert peak, which has come to pass ot a degree; however, the Hubbert peak was prolonged considerably by the increase in oil efficency prompted by the 1970's embargo. Given the gross inefficency that still remains in many sectors of the economy, we could prolong it even further if we were to impose these standards on all aspects of the economy.

However, many of the technologies that require the use of oil to implement would become self-sustaining fairly shortly (wind power requires three months, tops) if we put the effort in to deploying them. Generally, there will have to be significant efforts on both the demand side and supply side to meet the replacement of oil, but it can work. The fact that oil demand in the United States fell year over year in 2005 when gasoline prices were only on average around $2.40 is considerable given the lack of change made in terms of efficency and alternative fuels.

We're also not factoring in wild cards such as the Canadian oil sands, the rapid increase in natural gas discoveries, or the increasing efficency of alternative methods of oil production. Not to mention technological breakthroughs like fusion, which is a very real possibility.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 21:59

A little help for you all...

Soem of the statistics that have been quoted here seem to come way out of left field so here's a little help in understanding why oil is so unique and why it's so important.

www.eroei.com

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 22:06

I did read it...
...and then you go on to prove that you did not. Nothing you said in the rest of this post gives any indication that you read the site.

Super-power

06-02-2006, 22:08

The good news is that, after peak oil, those crooks in the Saudi Royal Family will no longer have their precious resource with which they hold our politician's balls with.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 22:10

We're also not factoring in wild cards such as the Canadian oil sands, the rapid increase in natural gas discoveries, or the increasing efficency of alternative methods of oil production. Not to mention technological breakthroughs like fusion, which is a very real possibility.
tar sands will not be able to provide the flow rates necessary to feed the enormous apatite and growing demand for oil in transportation. Period.

The Chair of the department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology had this to say about nuclear fusion:

"Nuclear fusion is the energy source of the future... and always will be."

You really need to find a better place to get your energy information from.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 22:11

The good news is that, after peak oil, those crooks in the Saudi Royal Family will no longer have their precious resource with which they hold our politician's balls with.
Actually, they will be more powerful than ever before.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 22:13

tar sands will not be able to provide the flow rates necessary to feed the enormous apatite and growing demand for oil in transportation. Period.

Again, it provides an extra source of oil, enough to buy us a considerable amount of extra time if managed efficently.

The Chair of the department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology had this to say about nuclear fusion:

"Nuclear fusion is the energy source of the future... and always will be."
You really need to find a better place to get your energy information from.

Fusion's not going to be practicable for a while, which is why it's not going to be part of any energy plan for the near future.

Super-power

06-02-2006, 22:14

Actually, they will be more powerful than ever before.
Well yes, there'll be a spike in their power - but then once the oil runs out for good, there goes their vice.

Jamalio

06-02-2006, 22:16

Peak oil is real, but overblown. We're in for some pain and readjustment, but we're not sliding off into the Olduvai Gorge either.

In the short run, we're going to have to get used to using less energy. This means car lots can't keep their 50kW worth of lights running all night. We won't be turning on our heaters when it drops to 50 degrees outside. People will have to find jobs closer to home.

Some effects of Peak Oil might actually be beneficial. Less fossil fuels burned means less pollution and less global warming. In the United States, some manufacturing jobs might return as the comparative advantages of far-off countries like China diminish.

But we're going to see a crash program of R&D into solar, fusion, wind, biomass, and so forth. And in the end, we'll have a new energy source. We always have, and always will.

Cheese-wizia

06-02-2006, 22:17

The rich part of our world (where you probably live if you own a computer) works on a 'boom/bust' time scale. This means 10 years of the easy life, then 10 years of depression....or 20 or 30...depends... but we'r coming to the end of a boom, and with it, will come the rise of the bust era. Ever hear of the american great depression? or the english depression? or the downfall of rome? all those were busts...the only reason rome was destroyed and quartered is because it was a nation built on war...and im not going to get into that. So this(like global warming IMO) is just that natural way of things, it may be good now, but when we hit rock bottom...it can only get better, in 100 years, we'll be panicing about having too little water...then we'll realize something like "oh! the moon is made of ice!"(...just an example...dont attack me pleas). And thats my 2 cents...

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 22:20

Again, it provides an extra source of oil, enough to buy us a considerable amount of extra time if managed efficently.Do you knwo anything about tar sands? At their PEAK they are expecte to provide about 2.5 million barrels/day in 15 years. By that time the world is expected to need more than 120 million barrels a day and if the depletion models I'm seeing are correct we will only be producing about half that from conventional oil fields. Will it help? Yeah. In the same way that pissing on a forest fire helps a little. Or the same way giving a starving man a sandwhich piece by piece over thirty years helps.

Fusion's not going to be practicable for a while, which is why it's not going to be part of any energy plan for the near future.Or ever. Especially when we don't have the oil we need to build the plants and mine the extremely rare and exotic materials needed to run one.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 22:20

...and then you go on to prove that you did not. Nothing you said in the rest of this post gives any indication that you read the site.

That's because not everything on the site will necessarily happen. They are assuming that the energy costs to produce most of the oil-dependent technologies will remain constant, which they haven't. Even in the past five years, many high-tech components have become considerably more efficent to produce. That site isn't really taking improvements in efficency in to account, which is something of a problem with the projections.

Jamalio

06-02-2006, 22:22

Fusion's not going to be practicable for a while, which is why it's not going to be part of any energy plan for the near future.

I disagree. Take any technology, and some people are always going to step up and claim it will never work or it's not possible or viable. The CEO of IBM once said, way back in the Fifties, that global demand for computers would never rise above five or six units. As late as the early Sixties, there were respected scientists who said rockets could not work outside the Earth's atmosphere because "there is nothing to push against."

If we put in $10 billion or so a year into fusion R&D (chump change compared to the costs of maintaining the oil-based economy), I guarantee you we would have viable fusion power. If we had started putting in $10 billion a year back in 1980, we'd probably have it now.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 22:23

But we're going to see a crash program of R&D into solar, fusion, wind, biomass, and so forth. And in the end, we'll have a new energy source. We always have, and always will.
There's that "we've always found a new energy source myth again. We've switched energy sources twice in history. From biomass to coal and from coal to oil. That's it. We do not have some long history of finding and exploiting new energy sources when we need to.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 22:24

I disagree. Take any technology, and some people are always going to step up and claim it will never work or it's not possible or viable. The CEO of IBM once said, way back in the Fifties, that global demand for computers would never rise above five or six units. As late as the early Sixties, there were respected scientists who said rockets could not work outside the Earth's atmosphere because "there is nothing to push against."

If we put in $10 billion or so a year into fusion R&D (chump change compared to the costs of maintaining the oil-based economy), I guarantee you we would have viable fusion power. If we had started putting in $10 billion a year back in 1980, we'd probably have it now.
Are you kidding me? The world has been spending much more than that for decades and we still can't make fusion do anything other than level cities.

Jamalio

06-02-2006, 22:25

CSW

06-02-2006, 22:26

The cost of food would be so high, we may as well grow our own, thus no more organic society. Hello mechanical society!
Plus, we don’t have enough uranium!
We have literal hundreds of thousands of tons of the stuff. We won't run out any time soon, more then enough time to find another method of energy production.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 22:28

Do you knwo anything about tar sands? At their PEAK they are expecte to provide about 2.5 million barrels/day in 15 years. By that time the world is expected to need more than 120 million barrels a day and if the depletion models I'm seeing are correct we will only be producing about half that from conventional oil fields. Will it help? Yeah. In the same way that pissing on a forest fire helps a little. Or the same way giving a starving man a sandwhich piece by piece over thirty years helps.

That's assuming that oil production everywhere else will not increase. Any attempt at predicting production in many regions is speculative at best; this also assumes world oil demand will continue to grow at its current pace, which is highly unlikely now that China no longer needs as much oil to produce power. Furthermore, it is assuming that there will not be a significant change in technology or fuel efficency.

Simply put, we need to do as much as possible to increase use of alternative energy now to ensure that there is no fuel crisis regardless of how productive capacity changes.

Or ever. Especially when we don't have the oil we need to build the plants and mine the extremely rare and exotic materials needed to run one.

Again, we're assuming that there will be a collapse in oil production, even though higher prices have previously caused a massive decline in demand. Nevertheless, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't do anything. If necessary, we need to impose a carbon tax not unlike those in Europe.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 22:29

That's because not everything on the site will necessarily happen. They are assuming that the energy costs to produce most of the oil-dependent technologies will remain constant, which they haven't. Even in the past five years, many high-tech components have become considerably more efficent to produce. That site isn't really taking improvements in efficency in to account, which is something of a problem with the projections.
No, teh reason I do not think you read teh site is because you misstate everything you think his concerns are. You said, for example, that he thinks we are not developing alternatives fast enough. Nowhere does he say that. His concern is that there are no alternatives because they are all oil dependent. that's just one example. Most of what you said in that post about his site have nothing to do with anything he talks about there except the broad concept of oil depletion.

BTW - Matt savinar is not the God of Peak Oil. I happen to disagree with him on a number of things. But its still a good site. Well researched and, unlike many other sites, he quotes all of his sources and his sources are not kooks.

Jamalio

06-02-2006, 22:31

There's that "we've always found a new energy source myth again. We've switched energy sources twice in history. From biomass to coal and from coal to oil. That's it. We do not have some long history of finding and exploiting new energy sources when we need to.

Market-based economies have a long history of solving problems like this through innovation. Industrial civilization is not just going to say, "Oh, the oil's run out, woe is us, let's pass out the poison Kool-Aid and call it a life."

The oil companies know the writing on the wall. They're making record profits, and you can bet your bottom dollar those profits are going into R&D for other energy sources. Shell and ExxonMobil aren't saints, but neither do they want to drink the Kool-Aid in twenty years when oil runs out.

I'm not saying there won't be some pain and dislocation, but civilization will continue. And fusion is viable, BTW. We haven't been spending anywhere near $10 billion a year on R&D, as this source (http://aries.ucsd.edu/FPA/OFESbudget.shtml) proves.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 22:33

Again, we're assuming that there will be a collapse in oil production, even though higher prices have previously caused a massive decline in demand.
Let me translate "massive decline in demand." Another way to say that is "have a depression."

A massive decline in demand means that we will not produce as much food. It means that the economy collapses as people curtail discretionary spending because there energy and food bills are so high. you say "massive decline in demand" as if that means that a line on a graph will turn downward. What it means in the real world is economic chaos.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 22:37

I'm sorry, but that is simply not true. Gasoline has a tremedous EROEI. If it did not, it would never have ended up being a fuel because there was no other energy source when we started to use it to subsidize its use like there is for ethanol. Ethanol get's you worse mileage, not better. Ethanol is subsidized with oil. We use oil to grow the crops and then turn them into an oil alternative. Where do you get yoru stats? They make no sense. Did you get them from one of those hippy "legalize hemp" sites? :confused:

I'm pretty sure gasoline produces more than it uses; I haven't really seen anything that shows it to be different. Crude oil has a higher EROI than it consumes, but gasoline doesn't. Gasoline was cheaper to make than any other fuel on the market when the ICE was invented, but now that is shifting.

Ethanol works; look at Brazil for the success of ethanol as a fuel. They are able to meet 50% of their fuel demand with it and export large quantities, and the ethanol is eaily 40% cheaper than gasoline even without government subsidy. It is more energy efficent than gasoline and burns cleaner. There is no reason why we cannot do the same.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 22:40

Market-based economies have a long history of solving problems like this through innovation. Industrial civilization is not just going to say, "Oh, the oil's run out, woe is us, let's pass out the poison Kool-Aid and call it a life."

Actually, market based economies have never been run on anything other than oil so, no, they do not have a long history of solving problems like this. In fact, they have never had a problem like this.

It always amazes me when people start preaching "the market will fix it" as if we've never had a depression. As if civilizations haven't collapsed in the past because of depletion of resources. Sure human enginuity has helped us solve a lot of problems. In fact its solved almost as many probelms as its failed to solve. People have died. Economies have collapsed. Civilizations have crumbled. History is rife with examples of human enginuity failing us. Markets have failed to prevent recessions and depressions.

BTW - I said the world has been spending much more than that. Not just the US.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 22:45

Let me translate "massive decline in demand." Another way to say that is "have a depression."

Oil demand fell by about 7% in one year following the 1973 embargo; there was economic damage, but it was by no means a "depression". The demand was destroyed sufficently to a degree that oil demand didn't return to its 1970's levels until the year 2000, even with lower prices from 1982-2000.

A massive decline in demand means that we will not produce as much food. It means that the economy collapses as people curtail discretionary spending because there energy and food bills are so high. you say "massive decline in demand" as if that means that a line on a graph will turn downward. What it means in the real world is economic chaos.

Energy costs and demand as a percent of GDP fell in the US dramatically despite two periods of prolonged economic growth, low unemployment, and rapid increases in the production of high-tech components and services from 1982-2000. This means that it is possible to sustain strong economic growth while keeping oil demand flat or down.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 22:48

I'm pretty sure gasoline produces more than it uses; I haven't really seen anything that shows it to be different. Crude oil has a higher EROI than it consumes, but gasoline doesn't. Gasoline was cheaper to make than any other fuel on the market when the ICE was invented, but now that is shifting.No, that's wrong. Gasoline is the easiest fuel to produce from oil. It evaporates at room temperature which means all you have to do to capture it is let the crude sit there and catch the condensates and you have gasoline. It was actually discovered by accident. People were using oil to get kerosene and what was left over was gasoline which they usually just burned off. When the ICE was invented people found out that they ran really well on gasoline so they started to capture it and the rest is history. Gasoline has a very high EROEI. You're just wrong on that count.

Ethanol works; look at Brazil for the success of ethanol as a fuel. They are able to meet 50% of their fuel demand with it and export large quantities, and the ethanol is eaily 40% cheaper than gasoline even without government subsidy. It is more energy efficent than gasoline and burns cleaner. There is no reason why we cannot do the same.
Yeah, I kinda like the way we live here. I wouldn't want our economy to be like Brazil's. Just not big on the whole poverty, hunger, infant mortality thing.

You simply can't compare the energy consumption of an economy like Brazil's with the US or any industrialized nation.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 22:49

No, teh reason I do not think you read teh site is because you misstate everything you think his concerns are. You said, for example, that he thinks we are not developing alternatives fast enough. Nowhere does he say that. His concern is that there are no alternatives because they are all oil dependent. that's just one example. Most of what you said in that post about his site have nothing to do with anything he talks about there except the broad concept of oil depletion.

That's implied in the sense that it costs oil to implement the technologies, with the result being that we're going to run out or at least suffer a crisis before we can do anything a

BTW - Matt savinar is not the God of Peak Oil. I happen to disagree with him on a number of things. But its still a good site. Well researched and, unlike many other sites, he quotes all of his sources and his sources are not kooks.

He knows what he is talking about. Nevertheless, there is a very real possibility that even the most researched and supported statistics can be very wrong; the projections of the USGS in regard to US oil demand were amazingly wrong. As late as the 1970's, they were predicting US oil production would peak in 2000. It peaked in the mid 1970's. I suggest we implement alternate energy as fast as possible, regardless of whether the predictions come to pass.

Mooz Kow Body

06-02-2006, 22:49

:mp5: :gundge: :sniper: :mp5: :gundge: lets gard 60billion tons of it for when the world runs short. weal roul the world untill were shot or blown up.:sniper: :sniper: :mp5: :mp5:or we could envest in e85 ethanol. its clean mean and realy green. so :upyours: oil comps.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 22:52

We have literal hundreds of thousands of tons of the stuff. We won't run out any time soon, more then enough time to find another method of energy production.
But how do we transort it?

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 22:53

Oil demand fell by about 7% in one year following the 1973 embargo; there was economic damage, but it was by no means a "depression". The demand was destroyed sufficently to a degree that oil demand didn't return to its 1970's levels until the year 2000, even with lower prices from 1982-2000.You really need to get better states. Oil demand took less than seven years to get back to where it was prior to the embargo. By 2000 we were using twice the oil we were in 1973.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 22:53

No, that's wrong. Gasoline is the easiest fuel to produce from oil. It evaporates at room temperature which means all you have to do to capture it is let the crude sit there and catch the condensates and you have gasoline. It was actually discovered by accident. People were using oil to get kerosene and what was left over was gasoline which they usually just burned off. When the ICE was invented people found out that they ran really well on gasoline so they started to capture it and the rest is history. Gasoline has a very high EROEI. You're just wrong on that count.

Well, not really. Gasoline doesn't require a high temperature to produce, but the barrel of oil has to be refined by heating it to very high temperatures to remove its various components; the gasoline rises to the top and is siphoned off, but the oil still has to be heated to well over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit to remove the heavy components. That's where the energy efficency comes from.

Yeah, I kinda like the way we live here. I wouldn't want our economy to be like Brazil's. Just not big on the whole poverty, hunger, infant mortality thing

You simply can't compare the energy consumption of an economy like Brazil's with the US or any industrialized nation.

No, you can't. That's why it's even more remarkable; in a nation without the infrastructure, educational levels, economic complexity or money of the developed world they have been able to implement alternative fuels on such a large scale. If they can do it, the West certainly can.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 22:54

The good news is that, after peak oil, those crooks in the Saudi Royal Family will no longer have their precious resource with which they hold our politician's balls with.
Your pathetic vendetta will not mater after peak oil. We will barely have any contact with the Middle East and I doubt the US government will survive beyond the reach of Washington DC and perhaps a few military bases that remain loyal to the feds.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 22:55

You really need to get better states. Oil demand took less than seven years to get back to where it was prior to the embargo. By 2000 we were using twice the oil we were in 1973.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_publications/oil_market_basics/images/ussectorcons.gif

Sorry, it was a mislabel. Oil demand peaked in 1975 after the oil embargo of 1973, and then fell again reaching a bottom in 1982. It then took until 2000 to reach its levels of 1975.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 22:57

But how do we transort it?

Well, you could transport it by vehicles running on alternative fuels.

PsychoticDan

06-02-2006, 23:00

Well, not really. Gasoline doesn't require a high temperature to produce, but the barrel of oil has to be refined by heating it to very high temperatures to remove its various components; the gasoline rises to the top and is siphoned off, but the oil still has to be heated to well over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit to remove the heavy components. That's where the energy efficency comes from.The point is, getting the gasoline's the easy part. It just evaporates off at room temperature. The heavier oil that needs to be heated to extract is used mostly for chemical feedstocks and plastics. The really heavy stuff is asphalt and tar. In teh middle you have diesel, heating oil and jet fuel.

No, you can't. That's why it's even more remarkable; in a nation without the infrastructure, educational levels, economic complexity or money of the developed world they have been able to implement alternative fuels on such a large scale. If they can do it, the West certainly can.
The point is they don't use nearly as much energy as we do so small, local biodeisal plants are enough. That won't power the US or Europe's economies. They haven't implemented it ona large scale because they are a third world country and don't use enough energy to need to implement it on a large scale.

Cute Dangerous Animals

06-02-2006, 23:06

Somebody tell me this isn't true. Please! If it is, everything is pointless! Everything! *scared shitless smiley*

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Relax guys. There's plenty oil in the world.

Middle East oil (which is likely to peak soon, esp if you believe Matthew Simmons 'Twighlight in the Desert', which I do) doesn't quite account for 33% of the oil on the planet.

Get this ... another 33% of the world's oil is that dangerously lunatic place ... Canada. Another 33% is in Venezuela - granted, not so good given that it is ruled by that idiot Chavez. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands)

OK, so excluding Venez, we still have more than double the amount of oil currently in the Mid East. Problem with it is that it's expensive to extract - but technology is improving all the time and that cost will fall. Plus, there could be a change in govt in venezuela.

And remember, we're talking about 'recoverable' oil. As tech improves, production at old oil fields gets extended and fields which we thought we couldn't tap come online e.g. like the deepwater fields off of Nigeria.

Ok, next point, even if production falls in the Mid East and there is no-where else to get it, then I have three words: Natural Gas Hydrate.

Basically, it's a form of ice with natural gas (methane) trapped inside it. It is located all over the world in water just off the continental shelf. And there is a lot of it - about 404 TRILLION CUBIC METRES. That's a lot, but just how much is it? Well, put it this way, if you took the world's biggest oil tankers and put all the natural gas hydrate into it, then you would need about 1.6 BILLION OIL TANKERS to carry it all at once. That's a lot of fucking hydrate. AND, when you melt the hydrate it relases over 160 cubic metres of gas. 160m3 from 1m3 of ice? that's a lot of gas. they've found enough of the stuff off the coast of Japan to power the country for the next 100 years. And they've just found enough off the coast of california to power the US for the next 100 years. And they're finding more and more all the time.

We won't run out of energy, that's for sure. Not anytime soon.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 23:07

Well, you could transport it by vehicles running on alternative fuels.
Those alternate fuels are all derivative of oil. How many times do I need to say that before it gets through your thick skull?

Undelia

06-02-2006, 23:08

CSW

06-02-2006, 23:10

But how do we transort it?
Nuclear powered ships or battery powered trucks.

Cute Dangerous Animals

06-02-2006, 23:11

It will take too much time and too much oil to develop the sites and extract the fuel.

No it won't. There's huge amounts of research and investment going into it now. BP, Shell, all the oil majors are looking into it. There are NGH centres all of the globe. The National Energy Lab in the US is well into it and the Japanese are pumping a shitload of cash into it.

the big industrial majors in Japan - Mitsui, MOL, NYK etc they're all got big programmes going. There's a demo plant being built right now in Japan and a pilot plant is scheduled for a couple of years.

Anywho, the fuel is easy to extract - it lies just off shore, just under the sea bed. It would be an exaggeration to say you can get it by poking a stick in a mound ... but not much.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 23:13

The point is, getting the gasoline's the easy part. It just evaporates off at room temperature. The heavier oil that needs to be heated to extract is used mostly for chemical feedstocks and plastics. The really heavy stuff is asphalt and tar. In teh middle you have diesel, heating oil and jet fuel.

But, you have to heat the entire barrel of oil to the highest temperature to get it, so it doesn't really matter what product you're producing; all of the various components are produced in the same tower, so the same amount of energy is being used to produce all of them. Now, if it were possible to extract different components from oil in different places, the process would be much more efficent, but it isn't. This will become even less efficent as more sour crude has to be refined.

The point is they don't use nearly as much energy as we do so small, local biodeisal plants are enough. That won't power the US or Europe's economies. They haven't implemented it ona large scale because they are a third world country and don't use enough energy to need to implement it on a large scale.

Europe consumes only 18% as much gasoline per capita as the US does, and they have both a larger population and economy. So, even compared to the rest of the developed world, the US is incredibly inefficent in its fuel consumption.

Brazil has a fairly large economy and population along with a large agricultural sector that has to be transported over large distances; it may not be a perfect match for the US but has had major success with ethanol relative.
The ethanol market is profitable and self-supporting, which means that a similar process could work in the united states.

Ethanol production in Brazil has an energy ROI of 34%, because the waste produced during the process is burned as fuel. This means that it is possible to create energy self-sustaining ethanol distilleries, a key part of the logistic chain from farm to gas station.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 23:14

No it won't. There's huge amounts of research and investment going into it now. BP, Shell, all the oil majors are looking into it. There are NGH centres all of the globe. The National Energy Lab in the US is well into it and the Japanese are pumping a shitload of cash into it.

the big industrial majors in Japan - Mitsui, MOL, NYK etc they're all got big programmes going. There's a demo plant being built right now in Japan and a pilot plant is scheduled for a couple of years.

Anywho, the fuel is easy to extract - it lies just off shore, just under the sea bed. It would be an exaggeration to say you can get it by poking a stick in a mound ... but not much.
We have less than two maybe three years.
Nuclear powered ships or battery powered trucks.
And I suppose you are the one who will lead this mass conversion of engines and manufacturing? Please. By the time people realize what is going on it will be too late; especially since any push to create battery compatible freight trucks and ships would require oil to carry out.

Vetalia

06-02-2006, 23:16

Those alternate fuels are all derivative of oil. How many times do I need to say that before it gets through your thick skull?

No, not really. Sugar-based ethanol can be 100% self sustaining after construction; the waste produced can be burned to power the facility, and the fuels produced can be used to power the vehicles to produce and transport it. Following construction, there would be almost no oil needed save for some used in the replacement of parts or equipment.

However, this is sugar based ethanol and not corn based; I don't know the exact EROI of corn-based ethanol but it has become close to self-sustaining as of recent.

CSW

06-02-2006, 23:23

We have less than two maybe three years.

Bullshit. We have another saudi arabia under Canada.

And I suppose you are the one who will lead this mass conversion of engines and manufacturing? Please. By the time people realize what is going on it will be too late; especially since any push to create battery compatible freight trucks and ships would require oil to carry out.
Please. It isn't as if we're going to lose all of our oil overnight, increased prices over a gradual period will make battery/nuclear power a lot more attractive, and market forces will do the rest. Quit playing chicken little, we're not amused.

Undelia

06-02-2006, 23:28

No, not really. Sugar-based ethanol can be 100% self sustaining after construction; the waste produced can be burned to power the facility, and the fuels produced can be used to power the vehicles to produce and transport it. Following construction, there would be almost no oil needed save for some used in the replacement of parts or equipment.

The bolded is the key.
Bullshit. We have another saudi arabia under Canada.
We don't have the time, and there isn't enough.
The good news is that we have a massive amount of untapped "non conventional" oil located in the oil sands up in Canada.

The bad news is that, unlike conventional sources of oil, oil derived from these oil sands is extremely financially and energetically intensive to extract. Whereas conventional oil has enjoyed a rate of "energy return on energy invested" (EROEI) of about 30 to 1, the oil sands rate of return hovers around 1.5 to 1.

This means that we would have to expend 20 times as much energy to generate the same amount of oil from the oil sands as we do from conventional sources of oil.

Where to find such a huge amount of capital is largely a moot point because, even with massive improvements in extraction technology, the oil sands in Canada are projected to only produce a paltry 2.2 million barrels per day by 2015. This doesn't even account for any unexpected production decreases or cost overruns, both of which have been endemic to many of the oil sands projects.
Please. It isn't as if we're going to lose all of our oil overnight, increased prices over a gradual period will make battery/nuclear power a lot more attractive, and market forces will do the rest. Quit playing chicken little, we're not amused.
Oil doesn't have to run out!
The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

In a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.

Cute Dangerous Animals

06-02-2006, 23:44

No it won't. There's huge amounts of research and investment going into it now. BP, Shell, all the oil majors are looking into it. There are NGH centres all of the globe. The National Energy Lab in the US is well into it and the Japanese are pumping a shitload of cash into it.

the big industrial majors in Japan - Mitsui, MOL, NYK etc they're all got big programmes going. There's a demo plant being built right now in Japan and a pilot plant is scheduled for a couple of years.

Anywho, the fuel is easy to extract - it lies just off shore, just under the sea bed. It would be an exaggeration to say you can get it by poking a stick in a mound ... but not much.

We have less than two maybe three years.

Do you mean less than two or maybe three years of oil? I very much doubt that and, am reasonably sure I could prove it. Especially if you take into account the amount of oil in the Canadian Oil Sands (see my earlier post above).

If you mean less than two or maybe three years of NGH. That's completely wrong. There's enough round the coast of Japan to satisfy 100 years of domestic consumption. And they've just discovered another 100 years of supply for America just off the California coast.

Mooz Kow Body

06-02-2006, 23:45

So here's what we do:

We invent time travel. No, not for some silly reason like "altering history". We use the past as a place to dump our garbage. Specifically, organic waste. You know: potato peelings, rotten food, corpses, etc. We toss them all into the bogs thousands of years in the past. As the organic materials degrade over the centuries, they will increase the supplies of oil!

My god, it's so easy! :D
:headbang: lisen you fool.
IF WE WENT BACK IN TIME TO FIX OIL PEAK IT WOULD ALREADY HAV HAPPENED. WE ARE EATHER GOING TO SOMHOW FINED A LARGE CAVE OR POOL FULL OF OIL IN THE GROUND OR WERE GOING TO ADAPT TO OLD WAYS(WHICH DIFFYS GOD FOR ADAPTION MEANS TO EVOLVE IN SOM WAY).:rolleyes:
SO :upyours: GOD ALL MIGHTY!!!!!

Undelia

06-02-2006, 23:49

Do you mean less than two or maybe three years of oil? I very much doubt that and, am reasonably sure I could prove it. Especially if you take into account the amount of oil in the Canadian Oil Sands (see my earlier post above).

If you mean less than two or maybe three years of NGH. That's completely wrong. There's enough round the coast of Japan to satisfy 100 years of domestic consumption. And they've just discovered another 100 years of supply for America just off the California coast.
Must I repeat the same thing over and over again?
We have two to three years before peak oil destroys the world economy. Sue we have more oil than that left, but when our need outpaces the supply we are done.
Those new oil deposits will take too long to develop.
There is a reason that new oil refineries aren’t being built. The oil companies know all about this. Why build refineries for oil you aren’t going to ever mine?

Cute Dangerous Animals

06-02-2006, 23:58

Must I repeat the same thing over and over again?

Basically, yeah, mostly because I can't be bothered to read the whole thread :D

We have two to three years before peak oil destroys the world economy. [
Please supply proof. Links, quotes from respected authorities etc.

Cheers

Cute Dangerous Animals

07-02-2006, 00:00

Must I repeat the same thing over and over again?
We have two to three years before peak oil destroys the world economy. Sue we have more oil than that left, but when our need outpaces the supply we are done.

Anywho, depending upon how the post-peak is managed, that can provide an awful lot at an awful high volume for an awfully long time. In the interim there is much that can be done to increase efficiency.

And, right now, I just don't believe that we are within 2 years of a peak. Check out the Wikipedia page on oil reserves

Mooz Kow Body

07-02-2006, 00:12

No. There is no way to prevent it. Any attempts to conserve energy could actually be more harmful!

Pretend you own a computer store and that your monthly energy bill, as of December 2004, is $1,000. You then learn about the coming energy famine and decide to do your part by conserving as much as possible. You install energy efficient lighting, high quality insulation, and ask your employees to wear sweaters so as to minimize the use of your store's heating system.

After implementing these conservation measures, you manage to lower your energy bill by 50% - down to $500 per month.

While you certainly deserve a pat-on-the-back and while your business will certainly become more profitable as a result of your conservation efforts, you have in no way helped reduce our overall energy appetite. In fact, you have actually increased it.

At this point, you may be asking yourself, "How could I have possibly increased our total energy consumption when I just cut my own consumption by $500/month? That doesn't seem to make common sense . . .?"

Well think about what you're going to do with that extra $500 per month you saved. If you're like most people, you're going to do one of two things:

1. You will reinvest the $500 in your business. For instance,
you might spend the $500 on more advertising. This will
bring in more customers, which will result in more
computers being sold. Since, as mentioned previously, the
average desktop computer consumes 10X it's weight in
fossil-fuels just during its construction, your individual
effort at conserving energy has resulted in the
consumption of more energy.

2. You will simply deposit the $500 in your bank account
where it will accumulate interest. Since you're not using
the money to buy or sell anything, it can't possibly be
used to facilitate an increase in energy consumption,
right?

Wrong. For every dollar a bank holds in deposits, it will loan out
between six and twelve dollars. These loans are then used by the bank's customers to do everything from starting businesses to making down payments on vehicles to purchasing computers.

Thus, your $500 deposit will allow the bank to make between $3,000 and $6,000 in loans - most of which will be used to buy, build,or transport things using fossil fuel energy.

Everything is dependent on oil!
approximately 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten in the US.

ARggggggggggggggggggggg.
LISEN WE HAVE NOE THING ON OUR SIDE ABOUT MONEY. BILL GATES.BILL GATES IS GOING TO HAVE TO DONATE ALL THE MONEY WE NEED TO FIX THE PROBLEM USING WHAEVER WE NEED DON, FROM WORKER SALLERYS TO THE EQUIPMENT BECASE HES GOING TO NEED US TO BUY HIS STUFF TO USE ON ELECTRISATY AND OTHER DIVISES.;) HE NEEDS POWER TO SELL HIS MERCHANDIES AND WE NEED POWER TO USE HIS MERCHANDISE.WERE SAFE DON'T WORRY AND BESIDES IF HE DISAGREES WE CAN ROBHIM OF HIS MONEY AND SHOOT HIS LEGS.:mp5: :mp5: :sniper: :gundge:

CSW

07-02-2006, 00:14

ARggggggggggggggggggggg.
LISEN WE HAVE NOE THING ON OUR SIDE ABOUT MONEY. BILL GATES.BILL GATES IS GOING TO HAVE TO DONATE ALL THE MONEY WE NEED TO FIX THE PROBLEM USING WHAEVER WE NEED DON, FROM WORKER SALLERYS TO THE EQUIPMENT BECASE HES GOING TO NEED US TO BUY HIS STUFF TO USE ON ELECTRISATY AND OTHER DIVISES.;) HE NEEDS POWER TO SELL HIS MERCHANDIES AND WE NEED POWER TO USE HIS MERCHANDISE.WERE SAFE DON'T WORRY AND BESIDES IF HE DISAGREES WE CAN ROBHIM OF HIS MONEY AND SHOOT HIS LEGS.:mp5: :mp5: :sniper: :gundge:
See, I thought for a moment this was a serious noob. Nope, we've got a puppet. Come out Drunk Commies.

CSW

07-02-2006, 00:20

The good news is that we have a massive amount of untapped "non conventional" oil located in the oil sands up in Canada.

The bad news is that, unlike conventional sources of oil, oil derived from these oil sands is extremely financially and energetically intensive to extract. Whereas conventional oil has enjoyed a rate of "energy return on energy invested" (EROEI) of about 30 to 1, the oil sands rate of return hovers around 1.5 to 1.

Not really. Shell has come up with some neat new technology that isn't very energy intensive at all and makes the crude literally boil up to the ground (energy intensive meaning coming from oil or coal. One could easily use the loops from a nuclear power plant to heat up the tar). It's just a matter of cost. It becomes more feasable as oil becomes more expensive.

This means that we would have to expend 20 times as much energy to generate the same amount of oil from the oil sands as we do from conventional sources of oil.

Where to find such a huge amount of capital is largely a moot point because, even with massive improvements in extraction technology, the oil sands in Canada are projected to only produce a paltry 2.2 million barrels per day by 2015. This doesn't even account for any unexpected production decreases or cost overruns, both of which have been endemic to many of the oil sands projects.

Oil doesn't have to run out!
The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

In a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.
WE'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE A SHORTFALL OF OIL. IT'S DAMN NEAR ECONOMICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. Get used to it, we're not going to wake up one day and need 15% impossible. Oil will become more expensive, but as oil becomes more expensive people will move to other products. You can see it happening now in the United States. Will the economy be hurt? Yes. Will it crash? No. Get over it chicken little. Hubbert's curve was wrong about 2000.

Overly Priced Spam

07-02-2006, 00:33

Has anyone here ever been to www.dieoff.org ? They have some great resources on this issue.

Overly Priced Spam

07-02-2006, 00:36

I believe that i read somewhere in there that you don't actually have to run out of oil, it just has to get to the point where you are expending more energy to obtain it than you are actually gaining. Then, it doesn't matter how much you are willing to pay.

Begoned

07-02-2006, 00:46

We have two to three years before peak oil destroys the world economy.

World oil production is expected to peak in 2010 if you want a very conservative evaluation. It's probably going to plateau in 2012 and finally plunge drastically in 2017. However, there are many renewable energy alternatives to oil that are not dependant on oil for transport or manufacturing. Sweden, for one, has already taken big steps in decreasing oil addiction. This is indeed a problem, but not as big as some people would make it seem.

http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/3212/a/51058
http://www.peakoil.nl/images/ponlreport.pdf
http://www.oilcrisis.com/apollo2/
http://www.localenergy.org/research_bioenergy.htm

PsychoticDan

07-02-2006, 01:08

Relax guys. There's plenty oil in the world.

Middle East oil (which is likely to peak soon, esp if you believe Matthew Simmons 'Twighlight in the Desert', which I do) doesn't quite account for 33% of the oil on the planet.

Get this ... another 33% of the world's oil is that dangerously lunatic place ... Canada. Another 33% is in Venezuela - granted, not so good given that it is ruled by that idiot Chavez. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands)

OK, so excluding Venez, we still have more than double the amount of oil currently in the Mid East. Problem with it is that it's expensive to extract - but technology is improving all the time and that cost will fall. Plus, there could be a change in govt in venezuela.

And remember, we're talking about 'recoverable' oil. As tech improves, production at old oil fields gets extended and fields which we thought we couldn't tap come online e.g. like the deepwater fields off of Nigeria.

Ok, next point, even if production falls in the Mid East and there is no-where else to get it, then I have three words: Natural Gas Hydrate.

Basically, it's a form of ice with natural gas (methane) trapped inside it. It is located all over the world in water just off the continental shelf. And there is a lot of it - about 404 TRILLION CUBIC METRES. That's a lot, but just how much is it? Well, put it this way, if you took the world's biggest oil tankers and put all the natural gas hydrate into it, then you would need about 1.6 BILLION OIL TANKERS to carry it all at once. That's a lot of fucking hydrate. AND, when you melt the hydrate it relases over 160 cubic metres of gas. 160m3 from 1m3 of ice? that's a lot of gas. they've found enough of the stuff off the coast of Japan to power the country for the next 100 years. And they've just found enough off the coast of california to power the US for the next 100 years. And they're finding more and more all the time.

We won't run out of energy, that's for sure. Not anytime soon.
You miss the whole point of Peak Oil. It's not that we're gonna run out of oil. It's that we will reach a peak extraction rate. As in barrels per day. The tar sands are expected to reach a peak production rate of 2.5 million barrels/day in 15 years. Even if the are wrong on the conservative side and Alberta is able to produce twice that much it won't even come close to covering the depletion rates much less increase world oil production rates. Saudi Arabia currently produces about 10 million barrels/day. If Mathew Simmons is right, and I agree he is, too, then they may only be producing half that in 15 years. 33 of the 45 largets oil producers are past peak. There's no reason to believe that the world outside Saudi Arabia will be able to even stay flat. Even the IEA, who generally tend to be overly optimistic about energy supplies, expects world oil production outside OPEC to peak before 2010.

So where does that leave us? Well, we have two choices. Either bid farely for the most important economic resource on the planet which will drive the prices through the roof quickly and which will most likely wreak havock on the world's economy, or try to control it militarily. A quick glance at Iraq leaves me doubtful that we can sustain the kind of militry deployment necessary to control the world's oil supply by force. So you have to come to a conclusion. Suddenly the most important commodity in the industrialized world goes from being cheap and abundant to scarce and expensive. Even if I grant you that without cheap oil we will be able to maintain the agricultural effort it would take maintain the kind of crop production necessary to get millions of gallons a day of ethanol to the pumps. Even if I grant you that we will be able to maintain the kind of strip mining necessary to produce the materials we need for nuclear power and solar power. Even if I grant you that we will be able to make windmills out of materials other than plastic. Even if i grant you all of that we certainly are no where near ready to just drop in this new energy system to run our economy. Where are the ethanol plants? We currently produce just a few billion gallons of ethanol a year. We'll need to produce a couple hundred billion. Where are the windfarms? All energy alternatives currently running in the US provide less than 1% of our total energy consumption. They'll have to run hundreds of times as much as they currently do. refinaries take years to build and bring online. Oil fields can take 10 years between development and full production and we haven't found one bigger than 100 million barrels in three years.

The world's population is skyrocketing and it is taking increasing amounts of energy to keep this experiment in civilization going. At some point we will hit a wall. A glance at world oil markets looks right now like what it should look like right at or before peak. I know. I invest a lot of money in stock options on energy companies so i watch the price everyday and i know why investords are buying oil and pricing it at $60.00/barrel out to 5 years from now. They expect it to be a lot more expensive then. These are people who study world oil production as their livelyhood.

this isn't going to be something that passes us like a wave under a boat. We're going to have to adapt to a new world that none of us has any experience living in. We're suddenly going to lose the cheapest and most powerful energy source humanity has ever known and I have no confidence that "Alternative Energies" are going to be able to fill the gap cheap oil will leave behind. We have an absolutely tremendous challenge ahead of us and we are not prepared for it.

Cute Dangerous Animals

07-02-2006, 01:18

World oil production is expected to peak in 2010 if you want a very conservative evaluation. It's probably going to plateau in 2012 and finally plunge drastically in 2017. However, there are many renewable energy alternatives to oil that are not dependant on oil for transport or manufacturing. Sweden, for one, has already taken big steps in decreasing oil addiction. This is indeed a problem, but not as big as some people would make it seem.

http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/3212/a/51058
http://www.peakoil.nl/images/ponlreport.pdf
http://www.oilcrisis.com/apollo2/
http://www.localenergy.org/research_bioenergy.htm

This is an interesting, well-researched link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves

There is a possible oil crisis on its way ... but nobody can tell when as far as I can tell. It could well be that new technology comes online (solar, tidal, other), new sources of energy come online (LNG, NGH etc), technology greatly extends old sources (oil, coal gas) , old technology makes a comeback (nuclear) any combination of this. There is the potential for a major energy crisis - but no-one knows if or when it will come. And we could all do our bit by using less energy. Maybe you should completely power down your computer before you go to bed tonite. I know I will.

Night night.

Cute Dangerous Animals

07-02-2006, 01:24

You miss the whole point of Peak Oil ... I have no confidence that "Alternative Energies" are going to be able to fill the gap cheap oil will leave behind. We have an absolutely tremendous challenge ahead of us and we are not prepared for it.

no, I do get the point. i just don't believe the predictions of doom.

Alternative Energies ... check out this wiki link on methane hydrates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

& look up the various bits around it. It's fascinating. I've been doing a lot of research in this area of late and there's some fascinating new technology coming out. They've (Norwegian researchers have) found a way to create a stable, storable, transportable form of hydrate, which could make it economically recoverable (harris, 2006). there's a big Japanese programme underway now to investigate it. hope this gives you cause to be more optimistic. I'll send more details later, but now I'm going for a snooze.

CDA

PsychoticDan

07-02-2006, 01:31

no, I do get the point. i just don't believe the predictions of doom.

Alternative Energies ... check out this wiki link on methane hydrates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

& look up the various bits around it. It's fascinating. I've been doing a lot of research in this area of late and there's some fascinating new technology coming out. They've (Norwegian researchers have) found a way to create a stable, storable, transportable form of hydrate, which could make it economically recoverable (harris, 2006). there's a big Japanese programme underway now to investigate it. hope this gives you cause to be more optimistic. I'll send more details later, but now I'm going for a snooze.

CDA
I know all about methane hydrates and I do hope we can figure out a way to exploit them economically. The probelm is that they suffer from a flaw that's hard to overcome. They are mostly very small deposits that are widely dispearsed. There's no way to fix that. It's kinda like the differnce between me handing you a bag of sand or me spreading a bag of sand all over a parking lot and you picking it up grain by grain.

Mooz Kow Body

07-02-2006, 03:15

See, I thought for a moment this was a serious noob. Nope, we've got a puppet. Come out Drunk Commies.

lisen theres nothing wrong with comynisam exept now people power.
on the other hand the u.s.a. has poor, starving people.
do the russians or chines, NO!!!!!!

SO LISSEN GUNS ARE FUN AND SO IS BURNING SMALL ANIMALS LIKE SQUERRLS AND THE CHANGE FROM OIL TO NO OIL IS GOING TO GO BY SO SLOW AND ALMOST UNOTISABLE THAT IT WONT BATHER US LIKE WE THINK.:D

PsychoticDan

07-02-2006, 06:01

lisen theres nothing wrong with comynisam exept now people power.
on the other hand the u.s.a. has poor, starving people.
do the russians or chines, NO!!!!!!

SO LISSEN GUNS ARE FUN AND SO IS BURNING SMALL ANIMALS LIKE SQUERRLS AND THE CHANGE FROM OIL TO NO OIL IS GOING TO GO BY SO SLOW AND ALMOST UNOTISABLE THAT IT WONT BATHER US LIKE WE THINK.:D
I'm glad you wrote that because after reading it I can tell that you're a really smart person and that it would be a good idea to trust you for advice about the future. :)

SimNewtonia II

07-02-2006, 06:12

no, I do get the point. i just don't believe the predictions of doom.

Alternative Energies ... check out this wiki link on methane hydrates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

& look up the various bits around it. It's fascinating. I've been doing a lot of research in this area of late and there's some fascinating new technology coming out. They've (Norwegian researchers have) found a way to create a stable, storable, transportable form of hydrate, which could make it economically recoverable (harris, 2006). there's a big Japanese programme underway now to investigate it. hope this gives you cause to be more optimistic. I'll send more details later, but now I'm going for a snooze.

CDA

You might want to track down the Hirsch report "Peaking of World Oil Production". It comes to the conclusion that it would take TWO DECADES OF CRASH-RATE MITIGATION to successfully avoid shortfalls. Up to about a decade, you get reasonable results. Any time closer than that, and you're fracked.

Intracircumcordei

07-02-2006, 08:30

How could it not possibly be as bad. Everything is based around oil! We're all fucking screwed!

Oil isn't healthy.. 90% of the uses of oil can be made using other products.
We actually overuse oil and it is bad for the environment. Our level of technology is high enough to create 'fake oil' most synthesis is dependant upon energy. We don't need oil, and the global economy is slowly shifting (not fast enough) but it is up to the public to become self sufficient. People generally arn't willing to invest in their personal independance because it costs more to start.

If youd like to stop the oil dilema don't buy oil products.

Set up a methane pump from your feces invest in solar powering for your electronics (only buy electronics you absolutely need)

don't buy small junk trinkets such as kids meals toys or other toys.

BUy nature based products hemp, vegetable oils, cotton.

Make you own clothes using natural products. Use a fecal waste vehicle or ride a bicycle or vehicle.

Use organic fecal waste treated fertilizers.

don't use petrodrugs or perfume.

etc... etc.. there are a billion and one alternate usages that would make the world more energy and oil effcient but people choose oil because it is proliferated. Honestly we could cut oil use down to 1% or less.

Our main products should be silicate, iron and nickle based because they are the most abundant..

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