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> There are big new discoveries all the time. Someday it will start to tail off

It has already tailed off. Discoveries peaked in the 1960s:

http://www.energybulletin.net/image/primer/growing_gap.png

We do find new techniques and sources of extraction, but it's highly unlikely that we'll ever find enough to make up for the depletion of existing fields.

The UK is oil independent - It doesn't need imports.

That has changed.

EIA

Energy Bulletin

And I won't [provide a reference] for the simple reason that you'll just claim my source is invalid.

Maybe because you know yourself that the source is invalid? What kind of argument is this?

I have yet to see a proper counter argument based on independent data from somebody with an EE degree (solid state physics will do as well).

Well, I do have a Masters degree in solid state physics, a Ph.D. degree in spectroscopy, and I work in the semiconductor industry. But I do not claim that I have in-depth knowledge of the economics of the solar-cell industry. Your statement that it depends on air pressure (separately from the amount/quality of sun light) makes no sense to me. The performance of GaAs cells is not relevant in this discussion because they are not used to compete with conventional power plants.

I have no idea where I read the analysis in 2003, but this is what a minute of Google provides today:

• US DOE: What is the energy payback for PV? - Energy payback for current thin-film modules is 3 years (including frame, mining, transportation, and so on) "Based on models and real data, the idea that PV cannot pay back its energy investment is simply a myth"
• Energy Payback of Roof Mounted Photovoltaic Cells with an overview of different estimation methods, and discussion of how to account for the human labor involved. Most estimates are a couple of years, but indeed, there are estimation methods that will lead you to large values, e.g. if you assume that single-purpose concrete structures have to be erected to mount the PV cells, and that it is a one-off project involving a large amount of engineering.

DISPROVEN.

Using capital letters hasn't proven anything. All it has proven is that if you can't pound on the facts that you will pound on the table.

Keep trying, me laddo. You'll succeed never.

It only creates water as a byproduct! It's so clean! So innovative! So environmentally responsible! Luckily, liquid hydrogen can be found anywhere! No need to burn any of those nasty fossil fuels or evil nookyaler things, no sir! This is the real deal! Clean, clean, clean! Next stop, The Hydrogen Economy!

Didn't take long for that to get modded down. Cognitive dissonance too much for you? :)

Oh, and the U.S. Military is the biggest user of fossil fuels in the nation, and the biggest polluter too. Maybe if this bureaucrat thinks climate change is such a big threat he can start by not wasting 395,000 barrels of oil per day on the useless wars he's prosecuting in the name of "national security."

With a little work, there's also Hydrogen, compressed air (for really short ranges), and there's always the totally renewable option of burning wood in steam powered cars. Not ver convienient, but it *is* an option.

Unfortunately, none of this even begins to be remotely competitive with oil as soon as it has to scale, that is, as soon as it has to be a viable substitute for everybody. Oil is an incredible resource, and there is nothing remotely comparable. If you want, a gift of the gods to get our civilization bootstrapped.

Compressed air: you need energy to compress it, and to build the tanks that hold enough of it. When you add all of this together, it stops making sense. Hydrogen? Unfortunately, the numbers do not add up either. And: it is notoriously hard to store. This is one of the reasons why you can buy battery cars but none that run oh H2.

As to burning wood - there is the thing. There isn't nearly enough wood (not by a large, large margin) to even begin to cover a tiny fraction of the oil we consume. Our current energy consumption is just so way off scale that it is off scale squared.

e-ink.

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=619831&postcount=11

The vast majority of trees which are cut for paper pulp are quick-growing loblolly pines which will be re-planted almost immediately, larger, older, nicer trees are usually cut for lumber, so one should be able to let the 8.85 pounds of CO_2 for per book figure stand for paper products w/o concern for deforestation.

Here's a page which indicates most CO_2 production is for energy:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html

And here's a page which indicates that CO_2 production is a much larger problem for the manufacturing of electronics:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730
w/ a ratio of 12 to 1 for energy usage to weight, so my PRS-505 weighs roughly 9 ozs., so presumably required 108 ounces of fuel to manufacture (on-going energy usage is discounted as being negligible so is not considered)
http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm
gives us a figure of 19.4 pounds of CO_2 per gallon of gasoline which equals roughly 16.36875 pounds of CO_2 to make the ebook reader.

So getting two books for the Sony should make it roughly break even, and each printed book beyond that which is not purchased should result in a net reduction of CO_2 emissions, since the energybulletin.net page indicates that the embodied energy usage for electronics is much greater than the lifetime usage.

I'm not worried about reserves so much, as about production decline.

The Bundeswehr paper is useful if you want to get an overview of the different peak oil predictions. Figure 9 is interesting. Ok, I should have said coming decades.

http://www.energybulletin.net/sites/default/files/Peak%20Oil_Study%20EN.pdf

The daily production came from the CIA factbook from 2009. I have seen their number elsewhere.

Carter started in the right direction, but Regan trashed it all.

Ummmm did the author of this do NO real homework...or do they just have a personal axe to grind against E85?

While the end of the subsidies may sound bad...the $0.45 per gallon US subsidy loss was also complimented by a dropping of the US import tariff of $0.54 per gallon.

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-01-09/end-us-ethanol-tariff

All this does is stop local protectionism and might actually result in a net DROP in e85 prices.

Problem, comprehension? If the house has solar panels, wind turbines, etc, as well as being energy efficient in usage, then yeah, it could easily generate more electricity than it produces. You know, like a power plant.

Problem, engineering? Even if the house has solar panels (optimistically 20W/sqft cite), wind turbines (in a heavily suburban area with trees, neighbors, kids who like throwing things into other things... cite = maybe 200kwH per year), etc., as well as being energy efficient in usage...

Okay, let's just stop there. Your fridge alone needs 600kwh. Hate to break it to you, but unless you live in a temperate climate that requires no heating, cooling, and the only major appliance in your house is a fridge, forget it hippy. There's a reason this is a major government backed initiative: It's almost hopelessly optimistic given today's technology.

p.s. recursion is fun.

You may want to listen to some of the more "contrarian" sources instead of business-as-usual la-la land. They have proven a lot more reliable lately.
The Automatic Earth and Energy Bulletin are good starting points. Once you've digested those you can go to more hardcore places like George Mobus's or Guy McPherson's blogs.

You lie! http://www.energybulletin.net/node/17219

Some argue hat oxen are more patient with clueless geeks on the field than draft horses:

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-08-09/our-future-our-past

I heard that my grandfather had to use an ox on the field when the Russians took the horses. He wasn't happy about it. Contrary to the author of the above article speed does matter on the field, especially when you are being squeezed by an energy starved society that doesn't wan't to work on the fields.

With a production rate that has been dropping since 1970.

http://www.energybulletin.net/image/uploads/27804/us-production.jpeg

This is the major reason why the military has been investing heavily in green tech. A gallon of diesel fuel at the front lines in Afghanistan costs the military something like $400 because it first needs to be shipped in-country, then trucked through hostile territory on roads, and sometimes lashed to a mule and packed in. Plus, supply convoys are ripe targets - casualties due to roadside bombs these days are comparable, if not higher, than actual combat. The military realized this a couple of years ago, looking at the single-walled canvas tents they are cooling with A/C run from diesel generators in a 110 F desert. Being one of the biggest users of, well, everything in this world, their economies of scale and opportunities for savings at home and in theater are huge. They have been working on it, but it's a huge infrastructure and logistical change to undertake. If anything, it should give us all pause to realize how big a job the rest of the world will have to change our own infrastructure and habits to become more efficient.

I couldn't believe your claim but it seems you're right...

I found informations about the PV installation at the main train station in Freiburg - it was build (mostly for political/design reasons) with vertical solar cells (see page 38 for a picture).

according to the details on page 41 (upper table in the right column, German only...) the annual output is 59 kWh/m2, this paper estimates the energy requirement for monocrystalline cell modules (including frame, supports, inverter and human labour) to 7900 MJ/m2.

Amortization time 37 years, or 120-150% of the expected lifetime.

It's also not including the fact that the known global reserves keeps growing, not declining, despite our huge rate of consumption. In 1920, the world estimate was 60 billion barrels of reserves. In 1950, 600 billion barrels. From 1970 to 1990, estimates increased from 1,500 to 2,000 billion barrels. In 1994, the USGS estimated world reserves at 2,400 billion barrels. In 2000, the same estimate was raised to 3,000 barrels. Note that these estimates are not limited to "proved reserves" and only cover conventional crude. In short, we've been finding conventional crude faster than we've been taking it out of the ground, and faster than we've been expecting to find it -- at least in the long term.

There's a lot of distortion about oil reserves from the doomer crowd. For example, doomers love to point to graphs like this:

Link

Dear god! Run out and panic, right? Well, no. This graph is about as distorting as a graph can get. It's all based on backloading data. For each field, its current proven size is marked at the point in time when the field was discovered. What that should tell you is that regardless of however the actual rate of oil discoveries, you'd expect that shape on the graph! Oil fields aren't suddenly proven at their maximum capacity they're discovered. An oil field isn't proven until you start to produce from it, and there are even supergiants out there that we haven't started producing from yet. And the proven size continues to grow as you expand and explore the field. So for example, Ghawar, when it was first discovered in 1948, it was estimated to have "billions" of barrels. This grew to "60 billion barrels" in the 1970s. It's now produced 65 billion, and is estimated at 100 billion. Graphs like this backload that whole 100 billion to the 1940s.

It's trivially easy to disprove graphs like this. Let's just list some of the more noteworthy discoveries of the past decade or so. Jack 2 (3-15B), Noxal (~10B), Azadegan (~42B), Ferdows/Mound/Zagheh (~38B), Sugar Loaf (~25-40B), Tupi(5-8B), Jupiter(5-8B), West Kamchatka (10.3B), Tahe (29B), Jidong Nanpu (7.5B; potentially 146 in all of Bohai Bay), Kashagan (9-13B), and on and on. See those on the graph? But I guarantee you that a graph like that made a few decades from now will have them all conveniently showing up for this point in time.

There's this notion that "the biggest fields are found first, then everything else goes on the decline". Really? The US drilled its first well in 1859. It took us another 109 years to find Prudhoe Bay. And today we've got the absurdly massive Bakken field looming which back in the 1970s was assumed to be small and impossible to extract (Elm Coulee has proven otherwise). The same can be pointed to all over the world. Just simply pointing to Ghawar is not a counterexample. Look at coal; a single subsea coal deposit found off Norway in 2005 more than triples the world's known coal reserves. Or natural gas -- Israel has spent pretty much its whole existence in a vain search for sizeable deposits of oil or natural gas, only to hit the motherlode last year. How is this sort of thing possible? Simple. New exploration tech beats the pants off old exploration tech; new production tech makes far more things that used to be unviable, viable; there's always more "down" (especially with advancing technology); and most of the world haven't even been surveyed at all or has been only poorly surveyed -- sometimes even in known oil-rich areas (a good example of this is Iraq, which due to decades of war and sanctions is poorly explored and has just been living off its earlier finds).

Hubbert Peaks are the epitamy of fitting a particular curve to whatever arbitrary dataset you want (sometimes by hand) and the insisting that it matches. The US is a popular one, but the best-fit curve for the US is closer to a poisson than a normal (the US oil production

That may be so, but some politicians, analysts and CEOs are then very good at pretending they do believe oil won't run out in a century and/or alternatives will be found fast. Anyways, the IEA recently acknowledged that peak of conventional (easy, cheap) oil had happened already http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-11/iea-acknowledges-peak-oil . We may find alternatives, but economic growth is heavily dependent on cheap oil, which is becoming scarce fast. I guess nuclear power plants are going to stay with us for a while, even after the Fukushima incident and subsequent panic.

Let's hope for the best.

Coal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process

No one really believes we won't run out.

That may be so, but some politicians, analysts and CEOs are then very good at pretending they do believe oil won't run out in a century and/or alternatives will be found fast. Anyways, the IEA recently acknowledged that peak of conventional (easy, cheap) oil had happened already http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-11/iea-acknowledges-peak-oil . We may find alternatives, but economic growth is heavily dependent on cheap oil, which is becoming scarce fast. I guess nuclear power plants are going to stay with us for a while, even after the Fukushima incident and subsequent panic.

Let's hope for the best.

I know this is slashdot where kicking America it the thing to do,

Your post pissed me off sufficiently to make this long rant. Thank you!
I grew up in Western Europe. I like kicking America in exactly the same sense as how you'd kick a rich fat drunk who collapsed and fell asleep outside in -20 deg. C (that's -4 deg. Fahrenheit for you Americans), so that he gets his ass into gear to save his life from hypothermia.

Business as usual is over. Welcome to the 21st century. This is the century of transitions, of steady-state economies instead of growth economies, of humanity adapting to live from only the energy influx to our one planet that's provided by sunlight. This concept begins to dawn in most intelligent people in our world. It's just that you Americans have been so rich, so powerful, so much on top of the world, that you have lost important concepts in your vocabulary and thought-patterns:

Sustainability is not a dirty word, it's been business as usual everywhere up until the Industrial Revolution (see Medieval demography).

Solidarity is needed for functioning societies. When Hurricane Katrina came I followed the Slashdot discussions. You didn't even know the word.

Economic growth is a historical trend, not a natural law

The biblical story of the seven fat years followed by the seven meagre years (aren't there Americans still alive who lived through the Great Depression and Dust Bowl years? ask them if debt has to be paid back at some point.)

It's either adapt *RIGHT NOW* or head for ecological overshoot. And you are unprepared. Where's your railroad infrastructure? Where's your smart electric grid? Where's your long-term nuclear waste storage, in case it becomes too expensive to build one later on in this century? Where's your functioning health-care system? (every other rich country has 'em). Those infrastructures cost a lot of time and energy to build. Your time is running out.

You are unprepared because your politics by TV soundbites deals in trifles (gay marriage, abortion) and not in real problems (phosphate cycle, global warming, infrastructure for after Peak Oil). So does politics in many other countries, but you *are* the richest, most developed and most powerful up until now. You have set a very bad example.

You don't listen to other countries; you have your own units system (Imperial) 100 years after everyone else except Burma has switched to metric. This points to the idea that you expect other countries to do as you, not the other way around. That's fine, but don't expect them to come helping you with advice on boring subsistence agriculture in your garden plot when you're in trouble.

We see you lying on the ground in a stupor and freezing. But OK, if you don't want us to kick you, we won't kick you anymore: it's true that you never asked for help from anyone so we understand if you don't appreciate help now. It was nice knowing you; thanks for the old Hollywood films.

Here's one last kick especially for you: Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US by Dmitry Orlov

I understand your point, but I think you're underestimating the impact of grain fed to animals. I'm more likely to trust info with a credible source, like the reports put out by the UN

I really think the 90% number is inaccurate. That is true in part, but it's certainly not a universal truth, definitely not for all animal types. Here in the midwest US 99% of hogs are kept in confinements and fed grain.Cattle, many of those used for beef are grazed, but not all, and dairy cows are fed indoors, mostly hay or silage plus grain. Poultry animals, again mostly if not all, grain. Come see the volume of corn that is grown that is not designed for human consumption-- millions of acres grown across several states, elevators full of it.

I guess my point was to tackle the things that we had the technology for and the capability today,

Where is this nuclear technology?

France successfully powers the country on Nuclear power very economically

"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

though their reactors are generally much more modern designs that waste far less fuel

Citation needed. Here's some of my own:

Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant, designed and being built by the French Government owned AREVA was supposed to be compleated last year, 2009, but is not scheduled to be done before 2012 3 years behind schedule. And because of cost overruns "there is a real risk now that the utility will default". In Finland, Nuclear Renaissance Runs Into Trouble.

"Cost overruns and delays have jeopardized the fate of nuclear plants around the world." Study warns of steep cost overruns at new reactors. Is it time to press reset on nuclear?: "Cost overruns, delays in building reactors are sapping a nuclear revival".

"Boiling The Frog: Nuclear Optimism Hides True Costs Till It's Too Late".

And those are just some of the links I have in my bookmarks.

What I think people fail to realize is that we don't have to solve all our problems in a day

But isn't that exactly what proponents of nuclear power are advocating today? "Build more nuclear power plants, we'll fix the problems later." It's either that or they ignore the problems and say they don't exist.

Falcon

No, that is not happening,. the idea the oil comes from bacteria has long since moved from interesting, to stupid.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/2423

You're not taking into consideration the energy required to make the book, or to transport it to the marketplace. The amount of carbon sequestered in the physical pages of a book is insignificant in comparison.

The production of a book releases 8.85 lbs. of CO_2:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity/2008/06/paper-vs-paperl.html

Here's a page which indicates most CO_2 production is for energy:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html

And here's a page which indicates that CO_2 production is a much larger problem for the manufacturing of electronics:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730
w/ a ratio of 12 to 1 for energy usage to weight, so my PRS-505 weighs roughly 9 ozs., so presumably required 108 ounces of fuel to manufacture (on-going energy usage is trivial and not considered)
http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm
gives us a figure of 19.4 pounds of CO_2 per gallon of gasoline which equals roughly 16.36875 pounds of CO_2 to make the ebook reader.

So getting two books for the Sony should make it roughly break even, and each printed book beyond that which is not purchased should result in a net reduction of CO_2 emissions, since the energybulletin.net page indicates that the embodied energy usage for electronics is much greater than the lifetime usage.

Licensing costs are too expensive to justify anything but the 1600 MWe behemoths using standard fuel cycles with proven technology.

Citation needed.

Here's my own, The average non-fuel O&M cost for a nuclear power plant in 2009 was 1.46 cents / kWh. That includes licensing. Or this:

Issue #1: The New Licensing Process [ppt]

• The Mythology: The old licensing process was a major factor in the collapse of nuclear power in the U.S.
• It has now been repaired by changes in law and regulatory policy, paving the way for the renaissance.

As if that's not enough here are some more links:

1. Hooked on Subsidies...
   "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."
2. Is it time to press reset on nuclear?
   "Cost overruns, delays in building reactors are sapping a nuclear revival"
3. Study warns of cost overruns at proposed reactors - MarketWatch
4. Cost Overruns at Finland Reactor Hold Lessons
5. Boiling The Frog: Nuclear Optimism Hides True Costs Till It's Too Late
   "The Frog Jumps: The Ontario Story. Last week the Ontario government put plans to build 2 new next-generation reactors on hold, after it received bids "more than three times higher than what the Province expected to pay", according to a story in the Toronto Star. The only "compliant" bid -- one where the supplier would be sufficiently at risk if costs exceeded the amount quoted -- was reportedly a $26 billion quote from Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd, equal to roughly $10,800 per kW."
6. Nuclear construction delays in Finland's Olkiluoto 3
7. Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant

Our brown coal won't run out for thousands of years at the current rate!

Are Reserves of the Largest US Coal Field Overstated by 50%? Coal reserves: "Perhaps no question has more relevance to strategies for dealing with the global warming crisis than the distribution and quantity of coal available for future mining." How much coal is out there?

Falcon

And a a bit more reading just might show you that it might be just a tad more complicated than you seem to believe.

Besides, coming across as an ass is rarely a useful form of debate unless your in politics.

I crunched the numbers on this a while ago ( http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=619831&postcount=11 ).

Given that each hardcover book releases ~8.85 pounds of CO_2 ( http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity/2008/06/paper-vs-paperl.html )

And a Sony ebook reader (I used the weight of my old Sony PRS-505, 9 ozs.) requires ~16 pounds of CO_2 to manufacture (CO_2 footprint for energy: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html role in manufacturing: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730 and ratio of 12 to 1 for energy usage to weight: http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm )

Reading 3 books on an ebook reader (which otherwise would have been purchased as printed books) puts one ahead (of course in a library situation this is ameliorated by the sharing out of the book among many readers).

That said, I mostly read public domain classics which I get from sites like www.mobileread.com

William

Point #2, or the Hockey stick, considers more than just the last 10-15 years... To see the "stick" you have to look at the last 1000 years. Assuming measurements are proper, there is a noted effect in the last 100 years... Unfortunately, this does depend heavily on "proxy" indicators. There is a good size error field, which certainly contributes to the debate. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3569604.stm [bbc.co.uk]

First, the Hockey Stick graph is only based on about 500 years data. Second it is based on to very different data collection techniques - tree ring data for temperatures older than about 150 years, and direct measurements for the most recent 150 years. Why not use tree ring data all the way to the present to keep the data consistent? I'm not surprised that a more precise measuring method shows more drastic results for the last 150 years.

If you go back 1000 years you see things a little more clearly. If you go back 20,000 years the picture is entirely different. We're still at an average temperature for a warm period. We are not now even close to the hottest it has ever been since the last ice age.

Here is an excellent graph showing the last 20,000 year temperature history of the earth via ice cores from Greenland. It doesn't mean the hockey-stick is false - in fact that same website is talking about the dangers of climate change and has many of the other traditional AGW graphs to support that point.

In any case I have no doubt that AGW is at least true in part. The question is, what's the real damage? Is it actually something to be concerned about? Or is it within the Earth's normal range of climates? These are the questions that are only being speculated about, and there is no data at all to support the dire predictions of AGW alarmists.

Just look at the GoM spill - it's the largest in US history, predicted to be the greatest environmental disaster we have ever seen, yet five months in and it has caused a tiny fraction of the damage the much smaller Valdez spill caused.

That is what alarmist predictions get you - not much.

"The Afghani war was legitimate as an attack on US soil was planned and coordinated from there"

Except the attack was planned and funded by Islamic radicals in Saudi Arabia, where Bin Laden and most of the hijackers came from. And Bin Laden was one of the CIAs best assets in Afghinstan, while he was fighting the Russians. And the US was planning to `liberate' mid-east Oil long before 9/11.

"I wrote an award-winning online essay that asserted Saddam Hussein sealed his fate when he announced in September 2000 that Iraq was no longer going to accept dollars for oil being sold under the UN's Oil-for-Food program, and decided to switch to the euro as Iraq's oil export currency"

"The country's natural resources include .. potentially significant petroleum and natural gas reserves in the North

the Core and the Gap

Oil, Conflict and the Future of Global Energy Supplies

"will all be about the fight to successfully manage the earth"

And you got it in one, once you add the part that it's even more about managing people, as in dictatorship.

You will decide what car (if any) I get to drive, you will decide what I eat, when I'll be allowed to have kids, what medical care I'm eligible for, and so on.

That's the not so hidden agenda that riles up people so well. I don't know if you intend to be one of the new slavemasters or not, but someone is pushing for that role. Richard Heinberg is very open about using "Government means" to "encourage" 50 million people to move out to newly confiscated and redistributed lands to take up organic subsistence farming.

As for him, in his own words (I do give him full points for honesty)

http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/189

"Many people (this includes him) who are doing this necessary work (leading others on the path of righteousness as defined by him) will be unable immediately to put much effort into building alternative, off-grid dwellings, and may have to continue using computers and jet transport, at least in modest ways. "

He will milk the system for every luxury he can get because he has to show the true path to the 50 million new eco-serfs who are being marched out into the country at bayonet point.

And this one is really a riot: http://energybulletin.net/node/22584

"Rather than a new peasantry that spends all of its time in drudgery, we could look forward to a new population of producers who maintain interests in the arts and sciences, in history, philosophy, spirituality, and psychology--in short, the whole range of pursuits that make modern urban life interesting and worthwhile."

As if subsistence farmers have time for anything other than subsistence. And you are never more than two bad years from starvation. See the Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan, who has a much more realistic view of subsistence farming, or the opening act of said book;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315-1317

Yes, I grew up on a farm, and even with Friend Diesel and Friend Hydraulic System, it's not easy.

Not an argument a fact.

Here's a cite: http://www.energybulletin.net/51797

I was looking for another specific example. Google returned this.

I consider my position supported.

Including the 'hard greens are undoubtedly morons...' part. (read some of that blither on the link)

Finally fuck you moderator, Flamebait my ass. Hit too close to home.

And the same people who came up with "nuke it" are the same ones who created an inferno that has been burning for 30 years in the desert wastelands on the Asian shelfs. The sea floor in the area which this oil well is located is already extremely delicate, to the point that oil is already seeping from it in thousands if not millions of locations. Simply "nuking it" could cause those other locations to fracture open and instead of having one location with oil gushing out of the sea bed, we could have hundreds of locations, and those wouldn't have a pipe in them which we could eventually seal with concrete or plug with a massive valve. The oil field under the sea in that location is one of the largest in the world, and is also under extreme pressure from the weight of the ocean above it and the natural gases dissolved in the oil contained there. If the pressures involved from the oil well under were found in a well on the land, the "gusher" escaping from it would be almost a mile high. The last measured standing pipe pressure was 6k psi and rapidly rising before the drilling rig exploded:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/52879

Cow manure is obviously produced from plants that have been grown using fertilizer to provide - amongst others - phosphorus. Since we're rapidly running out of phosphate, I think it's an absolutely brilliant plan to burn it.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/33164

Exactly. People should talk more about what's at stake here.

Without internet freedom, it will become harder to expose cronyism, bribery, and other tomfoolery of the ruling class. This makes the system inefficient, and hence result in those dubious sidewalks (among other oddities*) you are talking about.

*For example, http://www.energybulletin.net/node/40581

there are two possible reasons why a 10 year payback period might be too short.

1) Solar cells cost energy to produce.We would like to get at least as much energy back as we put in.

The Energy Returned on Energy Invested for Solar PVs is pretty good, the payback period is less than 10 years. A 1977 Solarex study found the payback period for energy was 6.4 years. And panels come with 20, 25, even 30 year warranties.

2) Solar cells cost money to produce. When the total life energy (KWH) produced is divided into the total cost, we arrive at the cost per KWH. We would like that cost to be lower than the local power utility supply cost.

Coal and nuclear power plants cost money to build, and without subsidies they may not be built. Want to see something ironic if not tragically funny? Watch and listen as Chevron's CEO agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies as well as how Rep Edward Markey crows about how "My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'" In his speech he also says how much nuclear and other energy industries get. While they get billions of dollars all of the subsidies for geothermal, solar, and wind add up to less than $1 Billion.

Falcon

Companies do pay taxes, that is corporations like Exxon-Mobile, Shell, and Chevron do. As does Walmart.

The effect on Exxon's bottom line from a new carbon tax will be negligible, because I'll still have to put gas in my tank to get to work

Aha, yes they pass on the cost of taxes to buyers but those buyers will buy less thus lower the petroleum industry's revenue and thus their profits. If people have to pay more for fuel, as they did leading up to the summer of 2008, they buy more fuel efficient vehicles. That's one reason the Detroit big, well except Ford, had to be bailed out. They did not have the fuel efficient vehicles buyers wanted. Looky now, they are all trumpeting how efficient their vehicles are now. Ford has ads for Fusion, it's hybrid, as does Chevy. Chevy even goes further saying a number of it's vehicles have better mileage than Honda, except for the Honda lawn mower.

So even when they pass on the costs of new taxes they lose.

If the US economy goes tits up, and Exxon can't sell their fuel here, they'll sell the fuel to China, or India, or whichever economy is still going.

Haven't you heard, China and India's economy has suffered too. And they both have their own oil companies. Heck there was an uproar a few years back when a Chinese petroleum business put in a bid to buy a US oil company, Chevron I think, let me check... No, it was Unocal. In 2005 before Chevron merged with Unocal the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation tried to buy it. It was only after a vote by the US House of Reps that referred the bid to President Bush when the Chinese company dropped it's bid. Heck some in the US is worried China will buy all of Canada's production from the Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada. The article China's oil sands role tests U.S., published in 2004, is about that. Here's another article in the BBC about the Oil Sands, China invests in Canada oil sands.

Please stop using the oil companies as boogey men.

Stop astroturfing for the oil companies.

Falcon

This sounds like the University of Virgina is just regurgitating information published by Michael Briggs of the University of New Hampshire. http://www.energybulletin.net/node/2364 This isn't really a new idea nor a new recommendation. It is sad that it is at least 6 years old and it is being treated as new information though.

But IPCC's role is not to set policy, but to present evidence and options.

IPCC is an inter-governmental institution that publishes alarmist reports and policy recommendations, used as excuse for government legislation. Tell me more about them not playing politics.

Tell me more about how scientists only publish results: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23044
http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/052007177503.htm
http://www.prlog.org/10075695-climate-change-petition-pits-scientists-against-each-other.html
Of course, you could google it yourself, but you prefer to keep your head in the sand.

Finally, I don't see any reason as to why any involvement in this way this would influence their research.

O'rly? Promoting policies, which are based on your research isn't going to influence you? But not promoting policies would? You're trolling, my friend, you can't be that blind to the obvious or dumb. If you are, you can't claim you understand the "science".

(This is why I pay attention to the folks at The Oil Drum ( http://theoildrum.com/ ) and Energy Bulletin ( http://energybulletin.net/ ), they're well-intentioned academics/educators who are trying to get the world to live more smartly and sustainably...and the faster we do that, the better off we are going to be.)

I really don't think this is the end of the world. And the best part- for us nuclear fans- is that a big electricity crunch would be just the stimulus needed to build new plants. I know it takes a while to get them online but the transition to electric vehicles won't happen overnight, either.

Ah but nuclear power plants can't be built as fast as wind turbines can. Doing a quite search the Salem Nuclear Power Plant was the largest electrical generation nuclear powerplant. It has 2 reactors, one capable of generating 1,174 MW and the other 1,130 MW for a total of 2,304 MW. However if you erect 20 5 megawatt wind turbines a month in 2 years you'll add 2,400 MW of capacity. Could a nuclear powerplant be built and brought online in 2 years?

Backed by French government loans Areva, also owned by the French government, started building the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland in 2005. Originally it was scheduled to be built in 2009 as "the world's largest and safest nuclear plant". Today, it's not scheduled to be finished until 2012 at the earliest, and it's 2 to 3 billion dollars over budget. Fact is is cost overruns for nuclear powerplants considerably add to their costs. As the freemarket institute CATO reprint of a "Forbes" magazine article says, the nuclear power industry is "Hooked on Subsidies". Notice where it says "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

Falcon

you cant be serious. military fuel consumption makes the Department of Defense the single largest consumer of petroleum in the U.S.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13199

Regardless of who (or WHO) is right - and as with many of these big threats, you should "do what you should have been doing anyway" - an ecologist mantra that you can read more about here: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/25115.

And in this case this means resting, avoiding stress, getting lots of vitamins and above all avoiding pre processed foods and factory farmed animal meat: eat organic, locally grown food that hasn't travelled the world and been imbibed with chemicals or antibiotics that lower your own natural resistance to infection.

The reason we have pandemics like this one, Sars, Aids or bird flu is because of 30+ years of lowering resistance to disease due to the way we eat and the practices we have.

So if you do well with this, by August - by which time the virus may be much more dangerous - you'll have a nice resistant immune system. And if the virus disappears, you'll still have that nice resistant immune system!

Ale

Read this if you already haven't: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259

Here we go.. Google Paper Mill is first. Then Google Farms, Google Mining, Google Education, Google Hospitals, etc.

Corn Ethanol? uses more energy to produce than it provides.

No, corn ethanol's EROEI, Energy Returned on Energy Invested, is about 1.5 or 1.6 to 1 or 1.2 or 1.5 to 1, about the same as oil sands. While it does make more energy than the energy required to make it, it doesn't even double the energy. Brazil gets from 8 to 10 units per unit of energy used from sugarcane.

PV

PV's produce as much energy in 5 years as it takes to make. PVs are warrantied for from 10 to 30 years depending on the manufacturer, so over their life they produce more energy than they need for manufacturing.

Wind - sure if you're lucky to live where it's windy and you use energy in the spring and fall (you don't).

Wind blows year round not just in the spring and fall. Wind also blows in a lot of places. As the Picken's Plan details the Rocky Mountains alone have enough potential wind energy to provide the 48 continuous states in the US with energy. That's not all though, the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States gives wind's potential in other parts of the US. The Pacific Coast from British Columbia to Southern California has an abundance of potential, along with Southern CA eastward to Texas. In the east the Appalachias and Cascades have good potential as it does off the coast between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras.

Falcon

That's still the wrong question.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/47833

Which add up to what - 10% of domestic energy in the US? 15%?

It was between 6 and 7% in 2004, I don't know how much it is today. I don't want to even attempt to predict anything in this field, but my expectation is that the goal of 100% in 10 years from 2008 will NOT be reached. Not even by half.

I understand technicalities, but I'm talking about reality, where you make mental effort to at least correlate and understand the concept that the author is attempted to present (such as using the common factor between combustion force and watts... joules) . Or go even further and attempt to calculate and account for those factors. But, based on your surface attack via technicality, sure I'm wrong...

My friend's father built an electric porche from a kit car in ~1995 for about $15k. It still runs today, and has about a 250 mile range. What you are asking for has been accomplished time and time again for over a decade; the limitation is one's ability to actually look into it and speak to true professionals that are working on these projects. What you are regurgitating is mainstream media pundit blather. If you would talk to people in the field, you would learn much more than what Slashdot, Wikipedia, or CNN could ever tell you.

As for your very WRONG statements about solar panels, I will reference you to a wide-scope analysis of solar panels. With panels averaging between 25-30 years of service and the general payback time between 2-5 years, the glaring and obvious point is that the energy harnessed for the following 20 years is nearly effortless and has relatively no impact on our environment. What kind of energy does it cost to UNDO combustion? lol. People still don't weigh that consideration into energy efficiency, though they frown at the warming future.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/17219

Read the article, you will be enlightened. Solar is only one of many options we've had for over 2 decades. One of the major barriers to change is the public ignorance of the current state of technology. Another being the evident tendency to accept what the guy on TV says as truth and move along with the rest of the day.

Don't you realize that solar panels are at least a BETTER source than coal and natural gas? Your last line basically argues that solar panels are not a good choice because we cannot be sure that it is the cheapest, cleanest source of power. That is like arguing that, when choosing between a turd or a diamond, that the diamond's clarity is not completely perfect, and that we should accept the turd until such diamond is found.