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Topic: Peak Oil (Read 8697 times)
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Greenbacks
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Geez! Economics, anyone? geez! humor, anyone? And just how to you undeplete it? ah...stop using it until it regenerates? |
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rdeacon
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Actually, fertilizer is made from natural gas and the chemical industry uses a miniscule amount of oil as compared to just BURNING the stuff! My apologies, as both are peaking I often combine my arguments. BZZZ. Wrong. That would be URANIUM! Do I need to explain the difference in energy density of chemical vs. nuclear reactions? Did you know that the Uranium found in coal has more potential energy than the coal itself? Do you know why nuclear energy was called "too cheap to meter" and why it didn't fufill that promise?
There's a reason why I didn't refer to nuclear energy in this regard, here's the analysis from lifeaftertheoilcrash.net: Nuclear energy requires uranium - of which the US has enough to power existing reactors for 25-40 years. As with oil, the extraction of uranium follows a bell-curve. If a large scale nuclear program was undertaken the supply of US domestically derived uranium would likely peak in under 15 years.
Even if such a program is undertaken, there is no guarantee the energy generated from nuclear sources would be any cheaper than energy generated from fossil fuels. Attempts by China and India to scale up their use of nuclear energy, for instance, have already caused uranium prices to skyrocket.
Uranium supply issues aside, a large scale switch over to nuclear power is not really an option for an economy that requires as much energy as ours does. It would take 10,000 of the largest nuclear power plants to produce the energy we get from fossil fuels. At $3-5 billion per plant, it's not long before we're talking about "real money" - especially since the $3-5 billion doesn't even include the cost of decommissioning old reactors, converting the nuclear generated energy into a fuel source appropriate for cars, boats, trucks, airplanes, and the not-so-minor problem of handling nuclear waste.
Speaking of nuclear waste, it is a question nobody has quite answered yet. This is especially the case in countries such as China and Russia, where safety protocols are unlikely to be strictly adhered to if the surrounding economy is in the midst of a desperate energy shortage.
There is also the small problem of what to do if a tsunami (or other similarly destructive catastrophe) hits an area where these plants are located.
Assuming we find answers to all questions regarding the cost and safety of nuclear power, we are still left with the most vexing question of all:
Where are we going to get the massive amounts of oil necessary to build all of these reactors, especially since they take 10 or so years to build and we won't get motivated to build them until after oil supplies have reached a point of permanent scarcity?
Again, as with other alternatives to petroleum, nuclear should certainly "be on the table." But if you're hoping that it's going to save your butt from the ramifications of Peak Oil, you are sorely mistaken. |
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Herself
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...So, when's a tsunami going to hit, say, Indianapolis? If you don't want nuke plants in your pure, clean, mud-hut back yards, then you'll be burning coal. And I'll take the fission plant. Fine by me, we have coal plants already.
More made-up "facts" and figures pulled out of the air, rdeacon -- don't you see these people are simply trying to manipulate you through fear?
--Herself
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Civilization in the United States ended by 1913.
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nonluddite
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Actually, fertilizer is made from natural gas and the chemical industry uses a miniscule amount of oil as compared to just BURNING the stuff! My apologies, as both are peaking I often combine my arguments. While oil MAY be peaking, natural gas is not. Maybe you've heard about MONSTROUS reserves of methane hydrate on the ocean floor and in permafrost that may DWARF the amount of all the other fossil fuels COMBINED? But of course, exploration, drilling, new infrastructure, ect. "needs massive amounts of oil that we don't have", so in your professional opinion, we're fucked, so we should just get the resource wars out of the way....  |
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"I'm trying to free your mind, but I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."- Morpheous, The Matrix
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Greenbacks
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But of course, exploration, drilling, new infrastructure, ect. "needs massive amounts of oil that we don't have", so in your professional opinion, we're fucked, so we should just get the resource wars out of the way.... no, only a massive shift to a resource taxation system can create a true cost pricing system without sacrificing liberty that gives us the proper signals about relative abundance... |
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rdeacon
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Actually, fertilizer is made from natural gas and the chemical industry uses a miniscule amount of oil as compared to just BURNING the stuff! My apologies, as both are peaking I often combine my arguments. While oil MAY be peaking, natural gas is not. Maybe you've heard about MONSTROUS reserves of methane hydrate on the ocean floor and in permafrost that may DWARF the amount of all the other fossil fuels COMBINED? But of course, exploration, drilling, new infrastructure, ect. "needs massive amounts of oil that we don't have", so in your professional opinion, we're fucked, so we should just get the resource wars out of the way.... First off, natural gas peaking is not as imminent as the oil peak, but if it's used to absorb energetic fallout from an oil peak it will peak, and quick. But this is where the debate starts getting back into the deep science, and where I need to step off for a while due to debate burnout. The data on peak gas is available on many of the same sites as PO. IMPO (in my professional opinion), we're only fucked because our governments insist on taking a certain path to address the situation. When George Bush says "the American way of life is not negotiable", he's speaking right to the issue, and he's saying "if war is what it takes to preserve the most energy inefficient culture in the history of mankind, then let's roll". |
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Mike Lorrey
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Peak oil is horsecrap. The presumption is that we've used half of all oil. This is clearly wrong. What we have consumed is half of all oil that is recoverable at or below the current price of oil. The oil sands in Alberta alone put this claim to a lie, as there is as much oil there as there is in the rest of the world combined. The oil fields under the Spratly Islands have not even been tapped (19 billion barrels of oil), nor has ANWR, (another 18 billion barrels). The Canadian oil sands have something like 250 billion barrels.
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nonluddite
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Actually, fertilizer is made from natural gas and the chemical industry uses a miniscule amount of oil as compared to just BURNING the stuff! My apologies, as both are peaking I often combine my arguments. While oil MAY be peaking, natural gas is not. Maybe you've heard about MONSTROUS reserves of methane hydrate on the ocean floor and in permafrost that may DWARF the amount of all the other fossil fuels COMBINED? But of course, exploration, drilling, new infrastructure, ect. "needs massive amounts of oil that we don't have", so in your professional opinion, we're fucked, so we should just get the resource wars out of the way.... First off, natural gas peaking is not as imminent as the oil peak, but if it's used to absorb energetic fallout from an oil peak it will peak, and quick. But this is where the debate starts getting back into the deep science, and where I need to step off for a while due to debate burnout. The data on peak gas is available on many of the same sites as PO. IMPO (in my professional opinion), we're only fucked because our governments insist on taking a certain path to address the situation. When George Bush says "the American way of life is not negotiable", he's speaking right to the issue, and he's saying "if war is what it takes to preserve the most energy inefficient culture in the history of mankind, then let's roll". Then we'd have to use coal. But if it's used to absorb energentic fallout from a gas peak, it will peak, and quick.... Whoops! Sorry about that--we have enough coal to last hundreds of years... :'(  __ Maybe it would be in our interest then in taking over Alberta with its plentiful Oil Sands--and as a side effect, we would liberate that Conservative provence from Socialist Canada! Let's roll! |
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"I'm trying to free your mind, but I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."- Morpheous, The Matrix
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rdeacon
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non - I spoke before about coal and posted a link to a site that outlined the effects we'd see if we tried to prop up our energy consumption by using coal. Alas, it appears that we're moving in circles here, which isn't good for a debate!
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Herself
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Moving in circles, rdeacon, because the numbers are highly debateable. There's no avoiding it -- nobody knows! There's all manner of speculation, of varying degrees of trustability but in the end it's just a bunch of guesses, from shady resource estimates slapped onto curve-fitting prognostications which are, themselves, entirely creatures of the would-be prophet's assumptions about the shape of the curve.
   "S-shaped" curves, actually looking more like slanty steps or a stack of integral signs, are as common in the world as bell-shaped ones (in fact, they share topology, just flip the right half of the bell curve along the horizontal axis at the peak and you've got an S-curve.
   One of the things that follows an S-curve is "energy available to humans on a per-capita basis." Which is to say that, though I might now use more energy to while away a sunny Sunday than was available to the Navigator King of Portugal in the 1500s, the line from him to me is not smooth or straight -- it zooms up and levels, zooms again and levels....
   Right now, the line is levelling. You say it's fixin' to drop. Maybe. Might be ready to zoom up, too.
   One horse runs faster than another. But the critical question, the one the makes race tracks rich, is which one? Statistically, it's the one that has already been running faster than the others.
   Betting the human race will fail is self-defeating. It leaves few options -- hunkering down in the bunker and hoping to husband your stocks of diesel and firewood through the winters, hoping your five acres under cultivation isn't overrun by starving mobs, that might be a way to survive not matter what happens but it's no way to live.
   As a species, we run ourselves right up to the edge; but we haven't jumped over yet and I see no reason to think we will. Might things get a little hungrier, by and by? They might; nobody ever regrets having some extra food, blankets and candles handy. But on a planet brimming with fuel and water, in a solar system brimming with energy and complex hydrocarbons (and ice), I see no reason at all to panic.
   If you panic, the demagogues win; they've got you by the nose. Or by the gas tank!
   --Herself
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« Last Edit: April 17, 2005, 11:36:58 am by Herself »
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Civilization in the United States ended by 1913.
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Greenbacks
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There's all manner of speculation, of varying degrees of trustability but in the end it's just a bunch of guesses, from shady resource estimates slapped onto curve-fitting prognostications which are, themselves, entirely creatures of the would-be prophet's assumptions about the shape of the curve. Hubbert's prediction in the 50's of US domestic (lower 48) oil peak in the early 70's was based on actually oil field discoveries and a 20 year production lag period... |
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nonluddite
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non - I spoke before about coal and posted a link to a site that outlined the effects we'd see if we tried to prop up our energy consumption by using coal. Alas, it appears that we're moving in circles here, which isn't good for a debate!
Let's see http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/. I've posted on it here (May 4, 2004) and here (May 13, 2004) What is your memory failing too?  (I kid.) This is a bit interesting. "the oil companies don't give this theory [abiotic oil] the slightest bit of credence even though they are more motivated than anybody to find an unlimited source of oil as each company's shareholder value is based largely on how much oil it holds in reserve. Any oil company who wants to make a ridiculous amount of money (which means all of them) could simply find this unlimited source of oil but refuse to bring it to the market. Their stock value would skyrocket as a result of the huge find while they could simultaneously maintain artificial scarcity by not bringing it to the market." So the author says that Big Oil has a incentive to withold ABIOTIC oil reserves from the market, but for some reason not "conventional" oil!  That's a tough one to swallow! And then there's his math.  Alluding to what I said in one of my posts about Thermal Depolymerization of turkey offal, the author states that a 85% conversion efficiency (100% being theoretical) is equal to 0.85 EROEI!  No, that means if you put 15 units of energy in, you get 100 out, which is an EROEI of ~6.7! Then it just gets bizarre. "On a similar note, the construction of an average car also consumes 120,000 gallons of fresh water...Thus, the  only way for us to replace our current fleet of gas-guzzling SUVs with fuel-efficient hybrids is to to seize control of the world's reserves of both oil and fresh water and then divert those resources away from the billions of people who rely on them." Amazing, since Lake St. Clair, between Detroit and Ontario, holds 1 cu. mile of water, or 1.1 TRILLION gallons, enough for over 9 million cars--and it refills every 7 days (nearly 500 million cars per year)! There's also this gem, which seems to have been "lost" down the memory hole! "In March 2004, the price of oil hit $38 a barrel, the highest since 1991. The average nationwide price of a gallon of gasoline in America reached a record high of $1.77 this month.  In some parts of the country (San Francisco, CA.), gas has already hit $2.40 a gallon. Many analysts are predicting gas prices will exceed $3.50 a gallon by the summer of 2004." Whoops.  What do they say about the boy who cried wolf?   |
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"I'm trying to free your mind, but I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."- Morpheous, The Matrix
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Herself
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There's all manner of speculation, of varying degrees of trustability but in the end it's just a bunch of guesses, from shady resource estimates slapped onto curve-fitting prognostications which are, themselves, entirely creatures of the would-be prophet's assumptions about the shape of the curve. Hubbert's prediction in the 50's of US domestic (lower 48) oil peak in the early 70's was based on actually oil field discoveries and a 20 year production lag period...    And it was, like most of Hubbard's "predictions," wrong. The man was worse the Jeanne Dixon -- especially for rewriting his work, essentially "predicting" the past.    Go ahead, stampede yourself. I'm reminded of the various religious groups that routinely predict the imminent end of the world in a few years and then, once the date has passed, predict a new one, over and over, and keep right on taking donations from their ever-faithful followers. Here's one of the biggest holes in "peak oil" even on its own terms -- "when" (ha!) crude oil hits hundreds of dollars a barrel, the oil companies will not burn those dollars; they can't eat them -- they'll have to do something with them, and what? ...Invest in alternative fuels, perhaps, so as to keep their corporate selves around and profiting. Heck, if it ever even approaches that price, those Canadian oil sands will start get verrrry interesting to the biggo oil companies of this world; they can lay their vast profits into steaming out the black gold and selling beach sand on the side....    --Herself |
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« Last Edit: April 17, 2005, 08:54:26 pm by Herself »
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Civilization in the United States ended by 1913.
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rdeacon
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"the oil companies don't give this theory [abiotic oil] the slightest bit of credence even though they are more motivated than anybody to find an unlimited source of oil as each company's shareholder value is based largely on how much oil it holds in reserve. Any oil company who wants to make a ridiculous amount of money (which means all of them) could simply find this unlimited source of oil but refuse to bring it to the market. Their stock value would skyrocket as a result of the huge find while they could simultaneously maintain artificial scarcity by not bringing it to the market."
So the author says that Big Oil has a incentive to withold ABIOTIC oil reserves from the market, but for some reason not "conventional" oil! Â That's a tough one to swallow!
And then there's his math. Â Alluding to what I said in one of my posts about Thermal Depolymerization of turkey offal, the author states that a 85% conversion efficiency (100% being theoretical) is equal to 0.85 EROEI! Â No, that means if you put 15 units of energy in, you get 100 out, which is an EROEI of ~6.7!
Then it just gets bizarre.
"On a similar note, the construction of an average car also consumes 120,000 gallons of fresh water...Thus, the  only way for us to replace our current fleet of gas-guzzling SUVs with fuel-efficient hybrids is to to seize control of the world's reserves of both oil and fresh water and then divert those resources away from the billions of people who rely on them."
Amazing, since Lake St. Clair, between Detroit and Ontario, holds 1 cu. mile of water, or 1.1 TRILLION gallons, enough for over 9 million cars--and it refills every 7 days (nearly 500 million cars per year)!
There's also this gem, which seems to have been "lost" down the memory hole!
"In March 2004, the price of oil hit $38 a barrel, the highest since 1991. The average nationwide price of a gallon of gasoline in America reached a record high of $1.77 this month. Â In some parts of the country (San Francisco, CA.), gas has already hit $2.40 a gallon. Many analysts are predicting gas prices will exceed $3.50 a gallon by the summer of 2004." These sound like good points to bring up with him. As it's not my math, I can't help you there. You might want to check ASPO.org or one of the other sites, they are official organizations - Matt Savinar's site just happens to have everything in one place, hence my links to it. Whoops. Â What do they say about the boy who cried wolf? Â Only that nobody listened to him when there really was a wolf at the door.  |
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