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That would be a good step.

Here in the USA, Coal is the #1 energy producer; coal is also subsidized. It's also #2 lowest subsidized, only above Natural Gas for major production.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/chap5.pdf

At 44 cents per 'megawatt-hour', that's 44 cents per 'thousand kwh', or .044 cents per kwh. Eliminating the subsidies would raise my ~$100/month electric bill by 44 cents.

It's just not that significant, on the scale of things.

One of these powers reserved to Congress is the power to create copyrights and patents.

Yes, it has the power to, it is not a constitutional requirement to.

The Congress shall have Power.... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Congress has the power to declare war on Canada also, but that doesn't mean they have to.

A company engaged in nationwide interstate commerce has far more money for legal representation than you will ever have.

So? The only reason why money for legal representation makes a difference is because we live in an age dominated by corporate interests from republicans and democrats. If we had a Libertarian government, the laws would be a lot more cut and dry.

Sure, you could choose not to use the local electric power company, but then you would have to join the Plain People. How does libertarianism handle the natural monopoly characteristic of a public utility?

Most of the time they are not natural monopolies, but rather government-granted monopolies. If you look at most of the electrical/water companies you see that they are not natural monopolies but rather monopolies granted special protection.

Can you give examples of programs under the current Republicratic U.S. government that do not have at least a side effect of protecting citizens from force and fraud?

Federal Assault Weapons Ban (expired recently, but still a good example), The "War" On Drugs, DMCA, etc. And those are just the ones I can think of off my head, I'm sure if I dug into the congressional records I'd find a lot more.

...protects us from force against our energy supply.

According to http://www.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_where and other sources, Iraq isn't even a major supplier of US oil.

That works for companies that don't hold a monopoly on a product considered to form part of the essential standard of living in an industrialized country. Say I want telephone service, but I don't like Verizon or Comcast. Third parties can't enter the market because the government is protecting the public from force (invasion of non-subscribers' land to pull cable to reach subscribers' land).

Yes they can, you mean companies like AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and a whole host of other cell phone providers? Plus what about VoIP?

And even the government not allowing all possible competitors to use public land while allowing a select few should be banned. And that has nothing to do with force/fraud.

Do you know who creates the money supply in the United States? The government has (in a libertarian fashion) outsourced this function to a consortium of twelve private banks called Federal Reserve, which is as federal as FedEx.

What the hell are you talking about? Almost every libertarian believes that ending the federal reserve and returning our money to be fixed on a tangible standard to be the first step to financial sanity.

Yes, the number of refineries has decreased over time:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=8_NA_8O0_NUS_C&f=A

But the overall refining capacity has increased (or if that goes too far for you, it is at least fair to say that it has stayed the same for 30 years):

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=8_NA_8DO_NUS_4&f=A

This well was going to produce at something like 0.1% of U.S. consumption, that is enough to impact prices some, but it isn't enough to send futures into a shitstorm, it is certainly less of an issue than increasing Chinese consumption.

Yes, the number of refineries has decreased over time:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=8_NA_8O0_NUS_C&f=A

But the overall refining capacity has increased (or if that goes too far for you, it is at least fair to say that it has stayed the same for 30 years):

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=8_NA_8DO_NUS_4&f=A

This well was going to produce at something like 0.1% of U.S. consumption, that is enough to impact prices some, but it isn't enough to send futures into a shitstorm, it is certainly less of an issue than increasing Chinese consumption.

> I'd like to find a citation that shows that the people who upgrade their plasma screens also improve their insulation.

Refrigerator efficiency has increased threefold since 1972. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/25opec/sld026.htm

It should also be noted that there are often large tax incentives offered to people who upgrade existing equipment/insulation to better levels. And all new homes here are built using double paned windows and other features because otherwise the cooling costs during summer are ridiculously high.

Sigh. Why don't you guys use Google? How about the first result?

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=energy+use+per+capita

This graph shows that American energy use has stayed roughly the same since 1972, and definitely the same since 1988.

In fact, click on the other countries and you'll see a lot of flat lines. Even the world usage is pretty flat. You have to click all over to find countries that are diagonal lines (steady increase) and even fewer have sharp spikes.

I'm guessing population increase is the major culprit in "the fact that it keeps building energy generators".

> I'd like to find a citation that shows that the people who upgrade their plasma screens also improve their insulation.

Refrigerator efficiency has increased threefold since 1972. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/25opec/sld026.htm For a car analogy, we should be getting 45mpg fleet average by that measure. (And we could, since they do make cars like that.)

Not quite that much, as average households are not the only users of electricity.

The figures I used for that number is actually for housholds only; I have all electric appliances except for building heat and use ~1000 kwh a month.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/ask/electricity_faqs.asp#electricity_use_home

920 kwh/month nation wide for a 'US residential utility customer'.
Tennessee was highest at 1302, Maine lowest at 521 kwh/month.

I still wonder if I have something using way more power than it should, but I've gone around with the meter and haven't found anything.

Looks like I overestimated household usage a bit.

10k miles is 2k kwh/year. Figure 4k kwh/year for the EVs, up against the 11,040/year for current average usage, you're looking at a 36% increase in electricity usage from the Electronic vehicles.

Given that light bulbs aren't generally a major expense when it comes to electricity, and energy star appliances typically only save 10-20% electricity over non-energy star, I repeat my statement: We NEED additional electricity generation systems, especially if we want to get off of gasoline.

Gas prices in Europe are about 3-4 bucks a gallon.

I was under the impression that they were more than that...

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/prices.html#Motor

And yes, you’ve hit upon what I suspect is the answer. Our commutes are long, and our gas is cheap. We don’t think so much about “how much is this costing me?” when we’re driving just across town... 15 or 20 miles. We think “when am I going to have to fill up? can I make it until I get paid on Friday, or will I have to put $5 or $10 worth in it to avoid running out before then?”.

The only problem is that this is the equivalent of burning up all that oil

The US uses as more oil in a single day, for transportation alone , then the total of the leak. The C02 emissions from the eventual death and breakdown of the organisms [more on that...] is a very, very, small drop in the bucket.

those microorganisms break down, and how bad will be whatever's left over? Will there be other bacteria to devour that mess; if so -- are we going to get massive CO2 bubbles coming out of the ocean, potentially sinking ships?

Have you ever heard of limestone?

"Any solution that does not prevent future blow outs from happening in the first place is far too expensive to justify"

Okay. [Cuts USA oil production by ~33% and natural gas production by ~13%]

Also, I presume any solution that does not prevent future plane crashes should also mean airlines should be grounded.

Accidents will happen. It's part of the cost of using the stuff at all, and, yeah, it's a BIG cost that's always been there as a risk and that I think people are finally starting to clue into. Few people in the USA cared about the blowouts and other oil spills elsewhere in the world that happen from time-to-time. Not on their shores, so who cares? Now that it's on the Gulf Coast instead of remote Alaska or Indonesia, they care. Good.

Should we do better with safety? Yes. Should we severely penalize companies and people who cut corners? Yes. But beware of setting the bar for safety so ridiculously high that the practical repercussions are severe.

I'm so tired of the fact that people don't understand the real situation here. Can the USA easily drop 33% of it's oil production? Good luck with that. People who think they can simply decide tomorrow to "stop offshore drilling" if they wanted to do so, or drill twice as many wells (1 well + one simultaneous relief well) do not understand the scale of the problem they are messing with. The world produces an average of ~85 million barrels of oil a day. The USA consumes about 20 million barrels a day, more than any other country by more than 2x. The USA produces about 7 million barrels a day, a number which has been in decline since the 1970s, and about ~33% of which comes from the offshore Gulf Coast. DO THE MATH. Signing a petition or writing your representative to demand perfect safety or cancellation of offshore drilling is a foolish idea, because perfect safety is impossible and, no, you probably can't afford to do without offshore drilling. Companies aren't drilling in exotic and expensive areas like this because it's easy money, they're drilling here because all the easy stuff has already been found and is in decline. Worse, even if you did stop drilling, guess what? You make it up in imports. Guess how those get into the country? With the exception of Canada and Mexico, usually by oil tankers, which could possibly run around or be trashed in a storm and spill the same stuff in the same spot.

If you really want a way to be as safe as you claim you do, then don't use oil. Everybody. It is the equivalent of not flying in order to prevent plane crashes from occurring, and is the only way to stop something like this from ever happening again. Find alternatives and use them exclusively. And if you can't do that now and won't make the heavy investments and personal changes necessary to make it happen in the future, then your heart may be in the right place but you will never solve the problem. The risk will always be hanging over your head.

More realistically, the thing to demand is improved safety, more oversight, more research into containment systems for the inevitable accidents that will still occur despite our best efforts, and continued drilling. Simultaneously we must demand enormous investment in the alternatives that will be used more and more as the supply of conventional oil eventually dwindles. Ideally, we could also try to decrease consumption, but it's pretty tough to convince people. If you want to make a difference, buy an efficient car, bicycle, and invest in public transit systems. It's not impossible. But if all people do as a result of this disaster is "blame BP", then we'll just be blaming someone else when this happens all over again in 20 years. Rage at something useful for a change.

You're the one that chooses to live in Hawaii buddy (or some other country, but HI is the only state in the US with those kind of rates). I pay about $0.20, but that is really high for the US.

Take a look at http://www.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_factors_affecting_prices ...

Well, you're right, but "I can show you two power plants" is not a good argument. It's fairly easy to take a look at the DOE list of US electricity sources to see that we get (as of 2009) 48.2% of our energy from coal, 1.1% from petroleum liquids and "petroleum coke" (whatever that is). Another 21.4% comes from natural gas, which I guess could be considered oil, but usually is in a separate category.

It would definitely be accurate to say that most of our energy comes from fossil fuels or non-renewable resources, but we actually only get a small amount of our electricity from oil.

How much more do you want to pay for, well, everything?

Well, I for one would rather pay more for gas, but the same amount for everything else. How would I do this? By eliminating all of the massive subsidies for gas. According to this 1998 report, if you combine the annual tax breaks ($9.1 to $17.8 billion), program subsidies excluding spending on roads ($1.9 to $2.6 billion), and protection of oil-rich nations and the national reserve ($60 to $102 billion), we (as in taxpayers) are subsidizing the oil industry to the tune of $71 to $122.4 billion per year (and this was in 1998). This is not including the amount spent annually on roads ($36 to $112 billion); negative environmental, health, and social externalities ($231 to $942 billion); and other costs, such as travel delays due to road congestion, subsidized parking, and damages due to accidents (totaling $191 to $474 billion). Overall, including the less direct subsidies (environmental, insurance costs, etc), the total local, state and federal subsidies to the oil industry is $558.7 billion to $1.69 trillion per year in 1998 dollars, which is $746 billion $2.26 trillion in 2010 dollars.

According to the report, were these external costs of gasoline internalized into the cost per gallon at the pump, the price would be $5.60 to $15.14 per gallon (in 1998 dollars). Given that the cost of gas in 1998 stayed pretty much exactly at $1 per gallon ($1.34 in 2010 dollars), that's a 5- to 15-fold increase in prices. Although it is not directly comparable, a 5- to 15-fold increase in prices today (from a current price of $2.786 per gallon, according to the DOE) would result in $13.93 to $41.79 per gallon.

The thing about subsidies is, we are already paying this much per gallon, just in the form of taxes rather than at the pump. If we were to eliminate subsidies to gas and lower taxes by the amount saved (which would be difficult in practice), an average consumer would spend the same amount of money for the same set of products, just with more money spent on gas and less on taxes. This would also remove the market distortions that a lower apparent gas price causes.

So we are paying about an order of magnitude too little for gasoline, and part of that cost is in failing to correctly account for the risk of something like the gulf spill happening. Where is the money to mitigate this disaster going to come from? I would bet money that the full cost of cleaning up the spill is not going to get factored into the pump price of gasoline, meaning that the money to clean it up is coming out of our tax dollars, further hiding the real cost of oil.

We're talking, what, 50% more expensive than the cheapest reliable electricity in the country? While it's not the cheapest, it isn't terrible.

While it's not quite 50%, it's pretty significant (see here). It may not sound like much in general terms, but it's going to add up.

As an example, here in NC, one can get power for around $0.08 per kwh compared with $0.12 per kwh in California. Let's assume a data center using 5000 KVA on a constant basis (data center loads are pretty static). Let's also assume a .8 Power Factor. So

5000 * .8 = 4000 KW.

Now let's extend that 4000KW per hour out for the month:

4000KW * 24(hours) * 30 (days) = 2880000 kwh per month.

Now the pricing:

NC = 2880000 kwh * $0.08 = $230,400 monthly power bill (excluding demand charges)
CA = 2880000 kwh * $0.12 = $345,600 monthly power bill (excluding demand charges)

What does the Department of Energy have to do with this?

Or did you meant the the Department of Education!

See for example, the P5 Report:

"Particle physics in the United States is in transition. Two of the three high-energy physics colliders in the US have now permanently ceased operation. The third, Fermilab's Tevatron, will turn off in the next few years. The energy frontier, defined for decades by Fermilab's Tevatron, will move to Europe when CERN's Large Hadron Collider begins operating. American high-energy physicists have played a leadership role in developing and building the LHC program, and they constitute a significant fraction of the LHC collaborations--the largest group from any single nation. About half of all US experimental particle physicists participate in LHC experiments."

Fermilab plans to keep running neutrino experiments, and working on Project X, which will be developing small accellerator sections which could be combined to make a new, more powerful than ever, linear collider, or possibly even for Accellerator Driven Subcritical nuclear reactors, which could burn fuel that won't undergo fission on its own, or waste from curent reactors, and which would shut down when you turned off the beam.

So there is life for Fermilab beyond the Tevatron. But it is a little sad that what I see out my window isn't the Worlds Most Powerful Accellerator anymore.

Yes. I've said the following in my petroleum geology class many times (or something like this): "The ultimate destiny of >90% of the oil and gas generated in the subsurface is to leak to the surface and be destroyed by biological degradation processes. Our goal as petroleum geologists is to find the rare exceptions that haven't yet leaked completely away."

The thing is, most natural seeps (e.g., the La Brea in Los Angeles) don't flow as quickly as a blowout -- not even close -- although there can sometimes be intermittent "eruptions" that flow faster for a little while. There is fairly good information on seeps in the natural environment on land and sea because they are often a clue that additional oil and gas lays buried beneath the surface somewhere. Seep surveys are a pretty common exploration tool [PDF] and say a lot about the nature of a petroleum system. Read the PDF file for loads of technical details on the seeps in the offshore of California. They're pretty impressive. In a way, all humans are doing is short-circuiting the natural process to extract oil and gas that otherwise would have taken many millions of years to leak out, and converting most of it into CO2 by burning it, but that doesn't make it natural even though it emulates the natural process. We are doing it at rates far in excess of the natural process for a given area. For example, natural seeps in the Gulf of Mexico are on the order of 2000 barrels/day of oil. By contrast the artificial production from the Gulf of Mexico averages over a million barrels per day collected from thousands of wells.

Is the DOE good enough? Probably not, but whatever:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/reserves.html

You mean the way the anti-war activists kept us from waging war in Viet Nam and Iraq ?
From the DOE website:

There are several reasons why there are no firm plans to build new nuclear power reactors. First among these in the short term is that many if not most regions of the Nation presently have surplus baseload generating capacity. There are exceptions to this conclusion. California imports much of its base load electricity needs but also effectively discourages new production from the typical base load power sources, coal and nuclear. This short term base load surplus must be worked off before any new nuclear construction can be seriously considered.

A longer-term reason why no nuclear power has been built is that the capital costs of building a new nuclear power plant have historically been high. There are also considerable financial costs and risks related to the long construction periods in the industry. The last completed nuclear reactor, Watts Bar-1, took 24 years to complete. There has been a history of regulatory uncertainty. The extreme case is the Shoreham plant on Long Island that was essentially completed before it was decided that it would not be allowed to operate. Policy issues such as spent fuel disposal methods, liability insurance questions, and overall safety concerns on the part of the public have also adversely affected nuclear construction.

Humans have shown over and over that in large groups we use all the resources available, don't slow or restrain ourselves in time to save ourselves, and unless there are consistent, strict rules and provisioning in place, we exhaust available resources.

ORLY?

Is there a correlation between the amount of methane hydrates and the distance from shore?

The correlation is between distance from shore and depth + temperature.
Here's some nice graphs showing depth vs temperature for methane hydrates

And here's a picture of seafloor depths for context

As maxume noted, you have both diesel and LNG. According to the DOE, 'Alternative Fuel' vehicles are approximately 60% LPG(Propane), 5% ethanol, ~2% electric, 20% Natural Gas.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/issues_trends/fig5.html

So I'll add ethanol, bio-diesel, and hydrogen*.

*Though the best generation method would use electricity; it's better to burn the NG in the engine than to crack it into hydrogen for that purpose.

I will grant that I may be up to 1.1% wrong in my statement.
The linked chart HERE indicates that up to 1.1% of electricity is generated by "Petrolium".
Graph data is represented as such:
Coal 48.2%
Petroleum 1.1%
Natural Gas 21.4%
Other Gases 0.3%
Nuclear 19.6%
Hydroelectric Conventional 6.0%
Other Renewables 3.1%
Other 0.3%

It is true that you CAN produce fuel oil with which to heat a home, and thereby supplant the need for electricity in that home, from crude oil. This is, however, one of the lowest ROI products of a commodity that you've gone to all the trouble of carting around the globe (or at least across the border).
I submit that little or none of that 1.1% of electricity generated by petroleum was imported. The cost factor simply nets out better when you sell whatever commodity you produce to the highest-paying consumer, which would mean you're going to be selling that imported commodity to a wholesaler at markup, not a power station. My understanding is that natural gas plants use petroleum as a primer. If someone has a link regarding this hit us up. Otherwise I'm betting that this petroleum that is being consumed is byproduct and made in the USA my friends.

the U.S. Energy Information Administration would disagree with you there. They claim (data from 2008, report released Jan 21st 2010) that 1.1% of the U.S. electrical power is generated from Petroleum products while 3.1% is generated by "Other Renewables" (solar, wind, etc)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/figes1.html

They are the only ones left. Those that didn't carry the torch lost funding, lost credibility and had to find other lines of work. All that is left are the scientist who played ball with those that pay the grants, the politicians!

An interesting and extraordinary claim, that tens of thousands of scientists are in concert with politicians worldwide. I will be awaiting your extraordinary evidence, which I'm sure will be forthcoming shortly.

It's especially interesting that these politicians got this vast conspiracy together to piece together such elementary concepts as:

• Burning fossil fuels creates a great deal of carbon dioxide. For example, take octane: 2C

  8

  H

  18

  + 25O

  2

  = 16CO

  2

  + 18H

  2

  O. Takes me right back to high school chemistry.

• Carbon dioxide creates a blanketing atmospheric effect. That's not even to high school astronomy, I don't think-but if you're skeptical, I hear Venus is nice this time of year.
• We burn an awful lot of fossil fuel. If you don't believe that, I dunno what to tell you, but here's an idea of "a lot" from the Department of Energy.

I'm not entirely sure why you think a conspiracy is required to advance such simple principles. Seems like a whole lot of work for no reason.

The best advice I got while I was still in school was to apply for internships. I applied for several, and ended up doing 2 summers at a National Lab... which led to a year as a subcontractor while I finished school... which led to a full time position as a software developer a couple months after I graduated.

It's not necessarily too late to apply for internships either. Check out the SULI program through the Office of Science: http://www.scied.science.doe.gov/scied/sci_ed.htm

If you check out the SULI FAQ, you'll see that you can apply as a graduating senior. You will need a few letters of recommendation... and you can apply for spring, summer, or fall term. There are always people looking for good students where I work... and good students often turn into good employees.

That's because it isn't a solution.

It actually is, just one you don't want to consider. The first step is to realize that most of what high energy use society deems as "needs" are actually "wants". Humans made do without profligate energy spending for thousands of years. We can do it again. Once high EROEI energy runs out, we will certainly learn to make do again. With the engineering knowledge we have now, a future society living with a frugal energy budget would look much more similar to our own than say, life in the 1700s, or even life in the early 1900s. We have the internet to transmit that information, and the engineering knowledge exists now to make that a reality.

Yes, there are compromises. Some are functional, most are fashion/style/status/cultural. The main compromise is switch to investing up front to achieve a long-term payoff (which is how most wealthy people become that way, and they end up having a greater quality of life for longer). To use your examples, energy use in sanitation as far as I am aware is not even noise when compared to transport or heating. We will still have sanitation as long as our society has the engineering expertize to implement and maintain it.

Energy use in refrigeration is more significant. However, it is very doable to increase the insulation. Double the insulation and halve the energy consumption. My fridge has 35mm walls and the freezer compartment has 60mm walls. If the walls were quadrupled in thickness (e.g. 240mm freezer walls, 140mm fridge walls), the fridge would use 1/4 of the energy. Will the housewife complain about the ugliness or lack of convenience? Yes. Will the kitchen need to be redesigned to accommodate it? Maybe. Will it require more up front investment? Yes. Will the investment pay off? Yes. For example, my fridge/freezer uses 500kWh per year, so at $0.15/kWh, that's $75/year. Considering that there is no reason the fridge/freezer can't last 20 years, there is $1200 or so of energy savings to be had (which will be less given time value of money calculations), this will offset the cost of manufacture, which is certainly not all in insulation costs.

However, the fact that this is possible indicates that powering your house with "fluffy bunny" wind generators and "happy" solar panels is more than possible if the house is designed properly from the ground up to be energy efficient. If a society has made the decision that powering your house that way is the only option, then unless a miracle occurs with solar panel efficiency, designing your house to use less power is much more viable than spending more on energy. But the important thing is that in order for society to use less energy, fundamental changes in design of everyday items, houses, transport, cities etc. must occur. It's the same principle in designing a computer to be silent - buy the right parts and design it right from the beginning.

The reason this solution is not on the table really is that it requires will - doing hard things now for a future payoff. The average person is lazy. Will for things that are good but the average population is incapable of understanding or lacks the drive to do are not achievable in a democracy, at least not without a good scare campaign.

I could go on, but will instead leave you to read the same links that I have over time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society (ignore the maglev trains, rolling resistance is not the problem). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passivhaus http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec2.pdf

So lets look at your belief using US national averages. In Dec 2008, last full month of Bush the average price of gas was $1.61 under Obama yesterdays average was $2.82. If we look at the historic chart of national gas averages the only other the price of gas was this high this early in the year was the ramp up to the major oil speculation that took place in 2006.

First off, you cited zero sources to back up your claims.

Secondly, you are comparing the price of gas in the middle of winter (when it is traditionally at its lowest) to the price of gas at the beginning of spring (when it traditionally starts to ramp up.)

Lastly, you forget just how bad things got. You are also forgetting that gas reached over FOUR DOLLARS A FREAKIN' GALLON in Bush's last year as President. Scroll down to the bottom of that second link for the graph.

Oh, an look at that...in November, when Obama won, the price plummeted. Whodathunkit.

In terms of historical oil production, google came up with this chart which I was going to link to initially and shows a rather steep decline. But it contradicts the DOE's own chart even though it cites the DOE as a source. So I'm guessing the wiki chart is wrong and uses figures massaged by a peak oil advocate.

No, you are mixing up charts for "total oil production" and "crude oil production" - see both side-by-side, and "crude oil" is the smaller amounts with the steeper decline. Click the "i" button next to "total oil" - I guess the extra is due mainly to "natural gas plant liquids." Crude oil production has indeed fallen (pp 166) from 9.64 million barrels in 1970 to 5 million by 2008 - nearly a 50% drop. There is no peak oil trickery going on here, just a rather stark example of it.

In terms of historical oil production, google came up with this chart which I was going to link to initially and shows a rather steep decline. But it contradicts the DOE's own chart even though it cites the DOE as a source. So I'm guessing the wiki chart is wrong and uses figures massaged by a peak oil advocate.

No, you are mixing up charts for "total oil production" and "crude oil production" - see both side-by-side, and "crude oil" is the smaller amounts with the steeper decline. Click the "i" button next to "total oil" - I guess the extra is due mainly to "natural gas plant liquids." Crude oil production has indeed fallen (pp 166) from 9.64 million barrels in 1970 to 5 million by 2008 - nearly a 50% drop. There is no peak oil trickery going on here, just a rather stark example of it.

In terms of historical oil production, google came up with this chart which I was going to link to initially and shows a rather steep decline. But it contradicts the DOE's own chart even though it cites the DOE as a source. So I'm guessing the wiki chart is wrong and uses figures massaged by a peak oil advocate.

Nice assumption, but you know what they say about assumptions. The DOE chart shows "petro" values declining from a peak of 11M barrels in 1983-ish, while the Wikimedia chart shows a decline from about 9M barrels in 1985-ish. This should indicate to you that the DOE chart includes petrochemicals that are not oil - like LNG and coal.

Oh, and check the DOE's raw data for a chart that is specific to crude oil, that lines up pretty much exactly with Wikimedia chart.

In terms of historical oil production, google came up with this chart which I was going to link to initially and shows a rather steep decline. But it contradicts the DOE's own chart even though it cites the DOE as a source. So I'm guessing the wiki chart is wrong and uses figures massaged by a peak oil advocate.

Nice assumption, but you know what they say about assumptions. The DOE chart shows "petro" values declining from a peak of 11M barrels in 1983-ish, while the Wikimedia chart shows a decline from about 9M barrels in 1985-ish. This should indicate to you that the DOE chart includes petrochemicals that are not oil - like LNG and coal.

Oh, and check the DOE's raw data for a chart that is specific to crude oil, that lines up pretty much exactly with Wikimedia chart.

1) About half their govt budget came from selling oil... Their wells are now in permanent, fast decline. Once its all pumped out, its gone. That doesn't mean there is no production, just like the US has been in permanent oil production decline for 40 years but still produces a little oil. Higher tech means the extraction rate is higher so the decline is faster. And producers become importers at a much faster rate than total gross production decreases. Mexico is going to stop exporting oil pretty soon. Most of which, went to the USA. Ooops. So we're out of oil and they're out of cash. This won't turn out well.

Minor nitpick, but the U.S. produces more than "a little oil". It's the third largest oil producer in the world, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia, and produces more than Canada and Mexico combined (2 of the 3 biggest suppliers of U.S. oil imports, Saudi Arabia is the 3rd).

In terms of historical oil production, google came up with this chart which I was going to link to initially and shows a rather steep decline. But it contradicts the DOE's own chart even though it cites the DOE as a source. So I'm guessing the wiki chart is wrong and uses figures massaged by a peak oil advocate.

1) About half their govt budget came from selling oil... Their wells are now in permanent, fast decline. Once its all pumped out, its gone. That doesn't mean there is no production, just like the US has been in permanent oil production decline for 40 years but still produces a little oil. Higher tech means the extraction rate is higher so the decline is faster. And producers become importers at a much faster rate than total gross production decreases. Mexico is going to stop exporting oil pretty soon. Most of which, went to the USA. Ooops. So we're out of oil and they're out of cash. This won't turn out well.

Minor nitpick, but the U.S. produces more than "a little oil". It's the third largest oil producer in the world, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia, and produces more than Canada and Mexico combined (2 of the 3 biggest suppliers of U.S. oil imports, Saudi Arabia is the 3rd).

In terms of historical oil production, google came up with this chart which I was going to link to initially and shows a rather steep decline. But it contradicts the DOE's own chart even though it cites the DOE as a source. So I'm guessing the wiki chart is wrong and uses figures massaged by a peak oil advocate.

Shouldn't our priorities be focused on more energy-expensive things like heating/cooling?

Well, since 90% of an incandescent bulb's electricity usage is lost as heat, and central air-conditioning is responsible for the greatest share of household electricity use, I'd say that incandescents and cooling costs are intimately related.

If all new home standards were increased to "PassivHaus" standards, which bring heat/cooling to almost nothing, we'd save HUGE amount of energy.

Amen.

According to this EIA report the maximum net generation in the US last year was about 380 terawatt hours in August. The largest wind turbines typically found in the US are about 2.5 MW each. We'd need 150 millionof those to cover demand, assuming they all operate at 100% capacity. That's about 39 turbines per square mile covering the entire country. One you take into account an average capacity factor of 30%, you're looking at more than 450 million turbines.

Sure, we will get bigger and more efficient designs in the future, but I have a hard time seeing wind becoming more than 25-30% of the US grid.

Incidentally, it is the transportation infrastructure of the US that limits the capacity of wind turbines here. A 2.5MW machine is about all that will fit on a tractor trailer. Europe has a fair number of 5 MW machines, as those are shipped by rail. Off shore is getting up to 10 MW as the limits there are more with physical mass rather than transportable size.

I do believe as you do that wind will play an important part of power generation in the future. I can't agree more about wind being the silver bullet. Now cold fusion on the other hand...

Not really... http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/chap5.pdf page 16/20 the last column is the one to look at. Wind and solar are getting a shit ton of subsidies. Wind which is what the article is about gets 93.5x as much those complainers gas.... wait, maybe they have a point...

It is a solid oxide fuel cell. There is nothing magical.

It is presented like it is a brand new invention and that they are the only ones making the product, however R&D on this technology has been going on since the 1960s by big companies like Westinghouse, GE, and tens of other companies all over the world. DOE has a 10-year old still-active program dedicated just to SOFCs. There is a book about solid oxide fuel cells.

There is no platinum or other precious metals. It is ceramic oxides and nickel, similar to alkaline cells except these run at much higher rates per unit area which promises to make them cheaper than other types of cells. Read the links above for the materials. The electrodes are "inks" only during manufacturing - they are heat treated to form stable solid materials. Recently, developments in materials science has brought them close to commercialization (manufacturing cost and durability have been issues). Of the perhaps 50 companies attempting to commercialize this technology, it seems that the Bloom company is just the one that happens to be funded by silicon valley investors.

This is not to say the technology is not exciting and potentially can improve our use of fossil fuels. The same cells can also be run in the reverse direction as electrolyzers, applying renewable/nuclear (non-fossil) electricity to split water and carbon dioxide to create fuels (link1 link2).

Switch to annual view and your point becomes clearer. Enron collapsed at the end of 2001.

The annual chart clearly shows a drop at that time when the artificial 'propping up' Enron was engaged in was ended.

Thank you for this information

It gets worse if you do an energy balance:
According to the DOE (Table 1), municipal waste contains less than 12e6 BTU/Ton, so your 100 TPD waste stream will contain 1.2 E9 BTU tops.

Disregarding electrical output:

Naptha; 1,240 Gal @118700 BTU/Gal = 1.47E8 BTU
Kerosene: 3400 Gal @134000 BTU/Gal = 4.56E8 BTU
Diesel: 6900 Gal @129500 BTU/Gal = 8.94E8 BTU
Fuel Oil: 3000 Gal @145000 BTU/Gal = 4.35E8 BTU
Total Output: 1.93E9 BTU

So, either they have some energy input they're not telling us about, or it's a scam.

It didn't drop at all. The price is at the still artificial high.

That statement is factually untrue.

Gas prices have been set by the real market. Even in California after Enron.

I've spent several hundred hours researching this issue. Frankly, you're wron.g

>>1/Nuclear energy does not make economic sense. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50308 (translation: it is expensive)

The actual cost of the plants they're building in the south are half this. And a lot of the cost has to do with NIMBYs and (ironically enough) environmentalists, who ought to all be very pro-nuclear. The actual cost of nuclear per KWH is the only source comparable to coal. Dirty coal. CC Coal Plants are 2x to 3x the cost per KWH of dirty coal.

You want to know what doesn't make economic sense? Anything that costs more than double or triple the current cost of energy. Guess what that includes? All green technologies. Solar costs roughly 6x to 150x the cost of coal.

Look up the costs yourself, and become educated. This is a mix of government, industry, and hippie cost estimates:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity.html
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/eiaenergy2016.png
http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nuclear-costs-2009.pdf
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/CEC-200-2007-011-SD.PDF
http://des.nh.gov/organization/divisions/water/wmb/coastal/ocean_policy/documents/te_workshop_cost_compare.pdf

>>2/Having to store waste for over 100000 years is not what someone with any common sense would call 'green'.

The waste problem is a social construct, not a technical one.

>>3/limited liability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

It's a good thing. Because of idiot movies like the China Syndrome, people think that nuclear power is dangerous, when nuclear plants are actually quite safe. Even left-wing France produces the lion's share of its power through nuclear, and has done so very safely for the last 30 years. Compare this with the huge numbers of people killed every year in coal mining accidents and indirectly through the radiation released into the atmosphere by coal.

>>4/fuel-dependency

There's plenty.

That one is obvious, and in the article. The carbon dioxide reduction policies are a economic threat to Utah. They produce the coal for the power plants that the carbon dioxide reduction policies are trying to eliminate.

Nothing much to see here, just a legislature passing a "Don't take our juuurbs!" statement.

Yeah, I didn't quite understand that. What I read in the article:

But it does offer a view of state politicians' concerns in Utah which is a major oil and coal producing state.

Unless it's changed drastically since 2008, Utah is very low in the rankings with 18 working coal mines providing about two thousand jobs. Compare this to 600 working mines in Kentucky, 438 in West Virginia and 361 in Pennsylvania. Wouldn't these states be passing this resolution first and foremost if that was the sole motivating factor of state governments? In oil production, Utah is 13th. I'm not sure what 'major' constituted to the Guardian but apparently they know something about Utah that I don't. Does it traffic coal and oil? Process and refine it from other states? I'm not aware of these industries in the state if they exist.

Even better, according to the numbers given in the article the cost is still higher than gasoline.

If you go to the DOE site that breaks down gasoline prices you see that the costs of the crude oil and refining it into gasoline are approximately 74% of December's retail price average of $2.61, making that part cost $1.93 per gallon. The article has this to say about the price of cellulostic biofuel.

In the United States, Novozymes is working with Poet LLC, the nation's top corn ethanol producer, which plans in 2011 to open a 25-million-gallon cellulosic plant fed with corn husks and corncobs. Over the past year, Poet has nearly halved its total production costs to $2.35 a gallon, and expects to fall below $2 by the ribbon-cutting.

Note that this price is heavily subsidized and it's STILL higher than plain old gasoline. They say in several years they might be able to get the enzyme costs down another 25 cents or so but I don't know if they are taking into account higher prices of feedstock as demand increases. Those increases will surely counteract some of the savings in enzyme costs.

I still don't understand what drives this technology. Years of research for something that is barely in the same price range as what it is intended to replace. Wouldn't we be better off investing in small nuclear reactors? They could be placed every few miles, provide cheap, plentiful, local electricity at very low losses which would charge electric vehicles or break apart water for hydrogen-powered cars.

Overall I dislike the high amount of government subsidies that go into alternative fuels. If a technology is promising then let the companies subsidize themselves, they can go out and get investors just like every other business.

Not sure where you're getting $72 billion a year, when the report linked shows under $7 billion for ALL subsidies including wind and solar...

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Additionally, companies like the dreaded ExxonMobil pay nearly $3 in taxes for every dollar of net profit; they pay more than $100 billion a year in taxes - more than all capital gains taxes collected. And in 2007 ExxonMobil alone paid nearly 16 TIMES more in taxes than the Department of Energy spent on all subsidies combined. That $227 million in total subsidies to Big Oil pales in comparison to the $116 billion in taxes paid by ExxonMobil alone, let alone the other oil companies.

Big Oil is paying its fair share; is little wind or little solar doing so?

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Windmills have a 20 year lifespan meaning they tend to last 1/2 to 1/4 the time of other alternative power generation systems.

Not to mention that wind power is subsidized at a rate nearly 15 times nuclear. We're subsidizing wind at a rate of $23.37 per MWhr, and nuclear at $1.59 per MWhr. Coal is at $0.44 per MWhr and natural gas is just $0.25 per MWhr.

For widely dispersed populations where the cost of transmission lines per user are high then distributed wind may make sense; as a base-load or substantial portion of a high-density energy system, however, wind is more expensive, less consistent, and require more maintenance and replacement than the alternatives.

Hey, I know Christianity is a little barbaric, but give Canada a break. I don't think they condone stoning.

Speaking as a Canadian, not stoning, no; just being stoned.

negotiations with religions ("states") that still stone women.

Hey, I know Christianity is a little barbaric, but give Canada a break. I don't think they condone stoning.

Electric energy can propel your car for $0.03 per mile. If gas taxes were taken out (I used my states gas tax, yours could be several cents different either direction), you are paying roughly $2.30 per gallon and if you car gets 35mph per gallon you are paying $0.06 cents per mile, that's HALF the cost.

$2.30 per gallon is dirt cheap, compared to prices here (Belgium). Gasoline here is about €1.40 per liter, that's almost $2 per liter or roughly $7.50 per gallon. The difference in electricity prices is much smaller: with a separate installation that works only during the night you can charge your car at €0.09 per kWh. Regular daytime prices are around €0.18. Judging from this list, that's not too different from prices in the U.S. ($0.0764 in North Dakota, $0.2028 in Connecticut, $0.2379 in Hawaii)