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What's more, we'll be billed for each of those at least once more, in direct and/or indirect costs. Now that those messes have been made, the best case scenario is that we will bear the burden of cleaning them up very soon. More likely is that they will be allowed to fester until the cost of righting the mistakes of the corporatist elites will be far more. Consider corporate welfare. Each of the $10,100,000,000 bestowed on Exxon-Mobil and other petroleum cartels not only comes from our tax payments today, it adds to our future tax and household expense burdens by prolonging the use of petroleum as the primary transportation fuel source beyond sustainable levels, and discouraging rapid adoption of alternative energy sources. Switching away from petroleum will without doubt be required. On cannot reasonably argue that it will not run out eventually, and it will be more trouble than it's worth much sooner than the "Drill, baby, drill" morons want to believe.

By postponing this inevitable switch, we only shorten the time available in which to do it and constrain ourselves to endure the transition with lower supply and higher demand, thus higher prices. From Econ 101/102, the relevant graph is a demand curve. Corporate welfare, like all mismanagement of collectivized expense, costs the collective at least twice: once to screw up, and at least once more to get it right. In the special case of a shrinking supply, the nature of economic forces states beyond a reasonable doubt that exponentially increasing long-term costs will be the result. Political science tells us in the current petroleum crisis to expect the same pressures, combined with corruption within (throughout is more like it) the military-industrial complex to result in more neo-colonial invasions, which will cause intermittent, marginal reductions in demand. Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians are just the tip of the iceberg, unless petroleum consumption begins to drop faster than supply, very soon.

Agreed. The Federal Government of the United States is clearly the principle enemy of the People of the United States. It already causes far more harm than benefit. How, you may ask, do we resolve this situation? (Note: I am personally dedicated to non-violence, and unconditionally reject any violent approach)

Hint: The Russian people were able to abolish THEIR despicably evil government without resorting to violent revolution, and so can we! Of course, the old Soviet government was replaced by organized crime, but most Russians seem to consider this an improvement.

We just need to wait for impending collapse, shortly after which the US government will fall, too. Of course, it's likely that the US Government will propagate assorted atrocities on its own people, and the rest of the world, as it flails about in its death throes, before finally fading from view. Still, the circumstances of the energy decline and ensuing economic and commercial collapse, combined with the US Government's own dysfunctional reaction to these stimuli, will eventually bring down or render meaningless the US Government. Let us all profoundly hope that our sensible military men and women can prevent use of nuclear weapons by deranged and desperate leaders.

Note: I use Collapse in the technical, anthropological sense - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse . Collapse is a well studied, well understood historical phenomenon. Collapse has occurred within living memory on most inhabited continents EXCEPT North America (e.g. USSR, Argentina, Germany, Somalia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, others) - which has been spared mostly due to its large initial endowment of fossil fuels, which are now mostly depleted. Learn what are the standard historical markers of impending collapse, then look at the current status of the United States, and THEN form your own opinion about the likely near future of the USA.

I personally think this situation will play out well before the 2012 elections, if they are not canceled due to martial law. So, brighten up folks, there's light at the end of the tunnel!

For anyone interested in a direct comparison between the recent Soviet collapse, and the likely prospects of the USA (including practical & local suggestions on how to adapt and prepare, should you decide that collapse might be coming soon to your neighborhood), I encourage you to read Dmitri Orlov. Start with Closing the Collapse Gap or The Five Stages of Collapse.

Who is going to foot the bill to upgrade the US power grid? When windmills generate large amounts of electricity outside of Los Angeles, PG&E shuts down many of the windmills as the transmission lines can't handle the additional electricity.

I found an interesting article about the US Power Grid: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/43823

According the American Society of Civil Engineers, http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=25 gave the US power grid a grade of D,

"The U.S. power transmission system is in urgent need of modernization. Growth in electricity demand and investment in new power plants has not been matched by investment in new transmission facilities. Maintenance expenditures have decreased 1% per year since 1992. Existing transmission facilities were not designed for the current level of demand, resulting in an increased number of "bottlenecks," which increase costs to consumers and elevate the risk of blackouts."

If everyone in your neighborhood upgraded their houses with another 220v circuit, could the transmission lines handle it? The increase in gas powered cars spurred an increase of gas stations, and that was paid for by the gas companies, through profits from selling gas. Remember tho in the US, power companies aren't allowed to be profitable.

If you had to pay 2,3,4x your electrical bill to pay to have your regions power grid upgraded, would you go for it? Better still would you pay for it even if you didn't have an electric car?

You get the point, but there is still a logic flaw in your argumentation.

If the panel generates roughly the same amount of energy as 10 barrels of oil, we've broken even in terms of energy, since the panel has provided power to some end product that would have been provided by the oil otherwise. What was wasted is the effort to build the panel, since it would have been more convenient to use the oil directly.
Alternatively, each panel could produce the energy for making a new panel, so we could have successive generations of panels built with solar energy. Pointless so far but we'll get somewhere when get more energy out of each panel. See below...

If the panel generates significantly more energy than 10 barrels of oil, each panel can deliver the energy for making its successor panel plus some energy for powering end products. So you get a sustainable power source at the expense of a one time investment of 10 barrels of oil. An example:
If the panel generated roughly twice the amount of energy it took to produce, we've got the energy for making the second generation of panels plus the same amount of energy for our end product that the 10 barrels of oil would have provided. So we have more than broken even, because we got our energy back and the second generation of panels.

Back to real life numbers:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/17219 has an article in which a number of estimates is cited from literature. Except for the most pessimistic high estimates, most numbers promise that a panel could deliver more than twice the energy for its manufacture within a lifetime of 20 years (my assumption).

The numbers are all over the place and constantly coming down with new technologies, but you're looking at breakeven after 1-5 years or so.

This is pretty good (EROEI is >> 1), and will continue to get better.

Hmm. That's interesting. Unfortunately, as I said before, LA is a cesspool, plus it's also very expensive to live there unless you live in the ghetto. Pilots don't usually get paid a lot.

It's a cesspool and expensive, because of all the oil there.

I don't know where the oil drilling is in Africa

Nigeria is one place oil is pumped, and it's a dangerous place. Angola, Cameroon and Gabon also produce oil. While Cameroon and Gabon are relatively safe Angola isn't. South Africa also has some oil. allAfrica.com has more articles on Africa countries with oil.

Even Kenya, which used to be a safe place for tourists to visit and see wild animal parks, has lately become violent and dangerous.

Many African countries are no longer safe because of the natural resources they have in abundance and the wealth generated from them are not shared by the ruling clicks. Take for instance Nigeria, the Niger Delta is rich in oil yet those than live there live in squalor because they are from different ethnic groups than those that make up the government. In the Congo the conflict and fighting is over the control of mining for coltan, diamonds, and gold as well as logging. Sadly when the European colonizers went to Africa they set national borders that ignored the different ethnic groups. Latin America didn't have as many colonizers there, basically it was just the Portuguese and Spanish, and for a while Portugal was ruled by Spain. Portugal controlled South America east of the Andes while Spain did the west. While the language in Colombia used is Spanish, it's Portuguese in Brazil.

Not true. They have protected a number of fields (most notably in the eastern GOM and in ANWR), which certainly are the majority of known untapped deposits remaining in US territory/waters, but not *all* new discoveries. Plenty of little ones have come online, and there seems to be little attempt to stop the development of, for example, the deepwater supergiant Jack 2 field. Anyways, there's a heck of a lot more involved than oil fields in US territory, which are somewhat limited (ANWR represents about a year of our annual consumption, while the eastern gulf probably represents half a decade of consumption). The rest of the world is much more important in terms of oil development than the US, which is mostly tapped (but more on that later). Brazil, for example, just last year found *three* new deepwater supergiants (Jupiter, Tupi, and Sugar Loaf). Sugar Loaf may be the world's third largest oil field ever discovered. In 2003-2004, Iran found two new supergiants, one of which also may be the world's third largest (they'll have to fight it out ;) ). Some places are likely huge oil-rich regions that have barely been explored at all due to potentially higher production costs, such as the west coast of Greenland, which has numerous active oil seeps and large amounts of bitumen from old oil seeps, plus a subsurface geology suggestive of massive traps. The arctic as a whole is little explored. And speaking of more expensive sources, bitumen is profitable at $30-$40/barrel, while coal liquefaction is profitable at a little more, and even the price point for shale extraction in the 1970s was less than $100/barrel (I'd be surprised if they couldn't do it for $50-60/barrel today). Venezuela's ultra heavy crude in the Orinoco belt, too, is a Saudi Arabia-scale source, just like Alberta's bitumen, and is easily profitable with prices less than half of what they are now. Our coal resources are essentially boundless on the century-scale. Just coal mineable at current market prices at current consumption rates is something like 200 years worth, just on known reserves alone. Yet, you don't have to actually mine coal to liquefy it; you just need to burn it with insufficient oxygen to create town gas (CO + H2), which can be done subsurface via gas injection, so whether it can be profitably mined or not is irrelevant. So long as you can burn it, you can produce it. Just in 2005, a single subsea coal deposit was found off the coast of Norway that contains over three times as much coal as the world's entire known reserves. By my calculation, that's 60 cubic miles of coal, enough that you could cover the entire state of Indiana 8 1/2 feet deep. And I didn't even cover CO2 injection for oil recovery, which is expected to add dozens to hundreds of billions of barrels to US reserves alone while at the same time doing carbon sequestration.

Supply isn't the problem. Even the price of producing what supply is out there isn't really the problem. The problems are existing infrastructure, domestic instability, the weak dollar, wars and threats of war, and the stocking of the strategic reserves. All of this is overwhelming our existing production capacity, and it takes 5-10 years to build new capacity.

Read this article for 2006: http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html

I am with you on the Iran oil market theory - in fact I would say that would be the primary reason for military action in any case.

Of course, there's increasing evidence that contradicts the "ship's anchor" theory as well.

I didn't read any other articles, but this one seemed sourced and made sensible arguments. Try these if you didn't like that one:

DOE - 2037

Michael Lynch - 20 to 30 years

Peter Odell of Erasmus University in the Netherlands - year 2035

The US and other major world economies already went thru this "Peak Oil" crisis, although they didn't use that specific term at the time. Nevertheless, there were no shortage of educated economists predicting absolute DOOM for civilization. Economies would crumble. Our way of life would regress. Nothing short of disaster.

Of course, as has often been a trait of humanity, we rose to the occasion and, true to form, Peak Whale Oil was not the disaster so many thought it would be. Why? The biggest reason, of course, was the ingenuity of American business to not just lie down and die, but to innovate. They found that the black liquid bubbling up from the ground could be tapped as a brand new energy source, and they built out the huge infrastructure that was needed to make it happen.

The same thing will happen again. Nobody is going to just lie down as our world falls apart. If for no other reason than there's a (huge) buck to be made in preventing that.

Don't under estimate the powers of greed and self-preservation.

because it owes far more than it could ever payback and the the USA has been bankrupt since at least 1971
http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

If you think thats not a problem i suggest you talk to an argentianian about what happens if all the banks
go bankrupt . Heres a hint , having a fat salary and swanky car won't mean sh*t anymore .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_debt_restructuring

Toodle-pip
Amias

I thought it was common knowledge that china has more dollars than the USA ?
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=10&year=2007&base_name=how_many_dollars_will_china_ho

All the chinese need do is start to sell a few trillion dollars of their reserve to start a slide in the value of dollars ,
then more oil producing nations will switch to selling oil in euros instead of dollars and you can kiss goodbye to the american economy.
http://www.energybulletin.net/7707.html

Sure they would loose lots of money but its got to be less than the cost of having a war against the USA and without all
that messy killing , you also get to tell the next generation it was americas fault and they wont care because , well , it is really isn't it ?

Toodle-pip
Amias

It is certainly more fun to watch two Capitalist parties go at each other than just having the one Communist party to vote for. The things they fight over in public are generally symbolic little tokens of social policy, chosen for ease of public posturing. The Communist party offered just one bitter pill. The two Capitalist parties offer a choice of two placebos.

Perestroika and Glasnost were all about democracy, and in my opinion it had the same chance of success as the hopelessly gerrymandered system that passes for democracy in the US, (although much less than any proper, modern democracy, in which the Bush regime would have been put out of power quite a while ago, after a simple parliamentary vote of no confidence and early elections).

I know this is all a bit over the top etc., but for the few people I know in the USA, and a few others such as Gore Vidal (who may not live to see it happen anyway), Jared Diamond and Oprah Winfrey and Ralph Nader and other people I admire, here's an interesting essay on what to do/not to do in case your society collapses: written by a Russian eyewitness of the pudding-like collapse of the USSR: THAT's how you do it, the alternatives of pudding-like collapse are probably worse.

Without further ado:

Dmitri Orlov: Closing the "collapse gap"

Just read this essay just in case, please? Consider it advertised by an over-zealous worry-wart who means well, and give it a chuckle and a few minutes of your time.

Our agriculture are already today depleting our soil, read more at http://www.energybulletin.net/28610.html. This new bio-technology will make it worse.

http://energybulletin.net/23259.html

I didn't know of the Wikipedia entry, thanks for the link. I began taking notice of this interpretation by reading, many months ago, Ron Paul's very detailed Congress discourse on the subject, way before I even knew he was a presidential candidate. It's linked from the Wikipedia entry, but it's so interesting and full of historical details I cannot avoid reposting the link here: The End of Dollar Hegemony.

Energy balance and efficiency are different things.

Having a "positive" (>1) energy balance means it is physically possible to use it as a fuel, that you get more energy out of it than it took to produce it in the first place.

You know that; you went to that conference thingy. Petroleum ranks at around 10 on the energy balance (or EROEI) charts, in case you're curious.

But, my point was that gasoline is a more efficient fuel because of its greater energy content - that, independent of "Energy Balance" or "Expected Return on Energy Investment" scores, that your car will go further on gasoline than on ethanol or any mixture of gas and ethanol. More kJ/gallon, more miles/gallon.

Petroleum is a one time gift, and we are squandering it on a bunch of obese retards driving SUVs three blocks to go pick up a pack of smokes and a six pack of the piss they call beer. Every gallon of oil blown on an Escalade is a gallon that won't go to heat their grandkid's house in 30 years. Stupid myopic self-centered idiots.

Hybrid cars in 2020? What we need is NO CARS in 2020.

RS

Is this idea viable? My guess is no, you only get hurricanes because thousands of square miles of surrounding atmosphere are rotating, and have angular momentum to carry in towards the centre. On the other hand I know nothing about atmospheric physics: my objection might be silly

I agree with just about everything you say. CSP + HVDC seems to be one of the few renewable energy ideas that have the potential to be scaled up to the truly massive scale that would be needed if we ever want to get rid of fossil fuels, be it for global warming, resource depletion (peak oil etc.), "national security", or whatever reasons.

Here's an interesting large scale csp+hvdc study:

http://www.trecers.net/

http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/reports.htm

As for the current political favorite, biofuels, I fear that its a disaster waiting to happen. Competition for arable land with food, poor efficiency (photosynthesis ~0.1% vs. ~30% for CSP, more than two orders of magnitude!), soil erosion, aquifer depletion, you name it. From an US perspective, http://energybulletin.net/28610.html sums it up.

Here's another one.

Clean burning energy? Only if the burning bit is our whole planet.

it would simply be far, far easier to just use the backend offices of the banks which have been offshored, and take out our economic system.

Good idea, but if taking out the US economy is your goal, there's an "easier" way: just try and make the oil business move away from the Dollar, thus destabilizing the Dollar (even more) and consequently ruining the US economy and the country. By chance, Iran is just trying to do that by establishing Iran's upcoming oil bourse based on the Euro rather than on the Dollar. Consequently, Iran is on top of the list of countries to be bombed next. Go figure.

We are not rapidly running out of natural gas. We're running out of domestic natural gas, but world natural gas supplies are still quite plentiful.

And, GW emissions aside, how exactly does this helps our energy security and balance of trade situations? There is considerable resistance to LNG terminals also.

Note that the US used to use a significant amount of oil for electricity generation.

A point I've made frequently. (Note that "petroleum" in that table includes refining byproducts such as petroleum coke, so the total of liquids is even less.)

The primary replacements for oil-fired electric plants were nuclear and coal. Recently we've added a lot of gas-fired capacity. We can't add more gas due to supply limits, coal is a pollution and GHG nightmare and nuclear has a 10-year or so planning horizon. The immediate problems require other solutions, and I think the primary ones are going to be wind, efficiency and cogeneration.

When it became expensive, we switched, and now oil is almost unused in this country for power generation (except for backup power). Barring some instant, "ooops, we're out of natural gas -- when the heck did that happen?" moment (which is essentially impossible), there's not going to be an electricity shortage.

Impossible? It happened to New Zealand:

The Maui gas field has been responsible for 25% of New Zealand's electricity generation. When it runs out in a year or two, not only will a multibillion dollar infrastructure become essentially obsolete overnight but New Zealand will have lost 25% of it's electricity generation capacity. If you thought New Zealand's electricity crisis was a concern it is about to get a whole lot worse.

It ain't what you don't know that'll get ya. It those things you know that ain't so.

As for a charcoal fuel cell: it's not about whether or not you can get energy from charcoal in a variety of manners. Feeding it and removing the byproducts, even in a slurry, is the problematic element -- especially when you factor in the cost of making your charcoal consistent enough.

Consistent? It only has to be fine enough (and ball mills are very good at guaranteeing that). The actual feeding is an engineering problem; if engineers can build gravimetric feeders for powdered coal in furnaces which require steady flames, the management of a carbonate bath which needs feeding every half-hour or so can't be all that difficult. And here's what the originators say about ash:

The ash in coal may be chemically extracted and thereby reduced to levels below 0.5% at minimal cost and energy penalty. At this level, its impact on electrolyte life no longer limits cell economy.

In other words, you're going to need to deal with other things before the electrolyte composition changes enough to bother you. More about ash on pages 11-12 of this PDF.

As for charcoal itself, its production is a lossy process. Much of the original energy is contained in the released gasses -- namely CO, H2, and volatile oils/tars -- but they're mixed in with lots of CO2 and H2O, making for less efficient combustion (not to mention the energy loss involved with the process heat).

Quite right! Charcoal produced by flash carbonization yields about half the input energy as gas and heat (a pyrolysis process driven by external heat would convert more to carbon and le

There is so much energy available that the whole world's energy consumption could be supplied with very minimal effect on the oceans. Quote below is from here

Indeed, the Earth has an enormous natural solar collector - the tropical oceans. "On an average day, 60 million square kilometers (23 million square miles) of tropical seas absorb an amount of solar radiation equal in heat content to about 250 billion barrels of oil." [1] Energy "equivalent to at least 4000 times the amount presently consumed by humans." [2] If we can tap into this renewable source, considering thermodynamics and entropy, approximately 1% of it could provide the entire current worldwide demand for energy. More than enough energy is available, we only need a way to get it - in a practical, cost-effective, ecologically safe and sustainable way.

Based on models and real data, the idea that PV cannot pay back its energy investment is simply a myth.
[...]
During its projected 28 years of clean energy production, a rooftop system with a 2-year energy payback and meeting half of a household's electricity use would avoid conventional electrical-plant emissions of more than half a ton of sulfur dioxide, one-third a ton of nitrogen oxides, and 100 tons of carbon dioxide

Major limitations to the accuracy of this assessment are the difficulties in determining realistic energy conversion factors, and in determining realistic energy values for human labour. For this reason an allowance of up to 100% has been allowed, thus the range of payback is between 2-8 years. Thus small-scale roof mounted PV systems have a positive energy payback and are capable of contributing to a sustainable energy future.

"The inverters are still temperamental, solar advocates acknowledge. They chug along well enough for five or six years, then often conk out."

A 2004 article that talks about Gardner, the solar power city project that started in 1985 and some changes from then to now.
http://www.energybulletin.net/648.html

That war was about oil alright, just not in the way you think. Iraq had started selling that oil for euros instead of dollars. That problem didn't take long to rectify after the liberation of Iraq. How do you think the USA is able to sustain such a huge trade deficit? Hint: it's not by promoting the euro.

The threats to Iran were made for exactly the same reason.

One last thing to think about: If this was all really about WMDs, then why isn't north korea being invaded? They even bragged about developing WMDs!

From a quick scan - "Even with aggressive assumptions about biological productivity, we project costs for biodiesel which are two times higher than current petroleum diesel fuel costs".

If that was in 1998, then at should be very feasible with current petrol costs, especially taking into account the added value of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Indeed so! The 2006 inflation adjusted price in 1998 was $18 a barrel, last I checked it was three and half times this right now. In fact the average inflation adjusted price over the last 33 years is about double the 1998 price.

If the DOE algae biodiesel cost estimate is correct then it has already been on average a break-even technology for a third of a century.

Both the total world production of oil and the production of oil available for export are peaking about right now. This has been predicted for years: http://www.energybulletin.net/147.html and current studies verify this.

Thus the cost of oil is not likely to experience any significant downward trend from now on, ever.

The original article's production estimates are a bit suspect though. The 20,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre they give as the upper range of production is 47 g/square meter a day. The DOE gives a maximum annual production of 50 g/square meter of algae (not biodiesel) a day.

Still, the technology looks really good.

Therefore governmental policies must be put in place to drive of the price of consumption..... To reduce consumption in societies that vote for thier leaders will require decisions to be made by those leaders that will be uniformly despised.

And those leaders will be removed from office at the peoples' first opportunity.

I'm continually amazed at the ubiquity of the notion that any problem can be solved by passing a law. Fuel shortages? No problem - just impose a 55 MPH national speed limit and there'll be plenty for everyone. (You'll recall how well that worked out.) Global warming? Just slap a 700% "carbon tax" on fuels and everyone will be driving Priuses (Priii?) and showering with solar-heated water before the decade is out. Enact a treaty, and the rest of the world will eagerly follow suit.

Reality check (1): Any elected officials putting such measures into law would be turned out of office at the next election - if not sooner - and their successors, well-knowing why they were elected, will immediately repeal those measures.

Reality check (2): China, IIRC, has under construction over 50 new coal-fired power plants. Although a Kyoto signatory, their CO2 emissions are projected to surpass USA's by 2010, with no end in sight. No law passed by USA or any other country can temper China's behavior if the Chinese decline to cooperate. And it appears they have no intention of doing so.

Reality check (3): Arbitrary restrictions on peoples' behavior do not work. See the 55MPH thing, the War On Fill-In-The-Blank, any 4th of July in a state that outlaws fireworks, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

The way to wean people off fossil fuel is to present them with a better and/or easier and/or cheaper alternative. The way to bring those about is with incentives, not with mandates or subsidies. Since 1980 the USA government has pumped something like $50 billion into energy R&D, with nothing significant to show for it. Suppose it were to establish an X prize to pay, oh, $25 billion to the first organization demonstrating an alternative energy process that (1) is renewable, (2) has less end-to-end environmental impact than coal or petroleum, (3) is at least as end-to-end efficient as coal or petroleum, (4) yields end-user cost and performance comparable to gasoline in a typical mid-size automobile, and (5) is practical on a commercial scale. Would you bet that we wouldn't be retooling the nation for such a process by, say, 2020?

Not very long:
http://www.energybulletin.net/22442.html
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/2/204936/5 16
http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Archives/2006/2 0061115.html

Unfortunately the study costs over $1000, so it will be some time before a full debunking is finished. Someone has to go buy the damn thing.

http://www.energybulletin.net/ and in particular: http://www.energybulletin.net/22442.html

http://www.theoildrum.com/ and in particular: http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/14/18285/6 47

Whether we will ever exceed current production levels is an entirely open and empirical question. Even if we do, that doesn't prove that "Peak Oil" is "wrong"... just that we haven't hit it yet. The evidence I read suggests we're approaching the top.

Read this too:

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/2/204936/5 16

http://www.energybulletin.net/22213.html

http://www.energybulletin.net/ and in particular: http://www.energybulletin.net/22442.html

http://www.theoildrum.com/ and in particular: http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/14/18285/6 47

Whether we will ever exceed current production levels is an entirely open and empirical question. Even if we do, that doesn't prove that "Peak Oil" is "wrong"... just that we haven't hit it yet. The evidence I read suggests we're approaching the top.

Read this too:

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/2/204936/5 16

http://www.energybulletin.net/22213.html

http://www.energybulletin.net/ and in particular: http://www.energybulletin.net/22442.html

http://www.theoildrum.com/ and in particular: http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/14/18285/6 47

Whether we will ever exceed current production levels is an entirely open and empirical question. Even if we do, that doesn't prove that "Peak Oil" is "wrong"... just that we haven't hit it yet. The evidence I read suggests we're approaching the top.

Read this too:

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/2/204936/5 16

http://www.energybulletin.net/22213.html

From the link to the Chairman Daniel Yergins wikipedia page-

Daniel Yergin also wrote and hosted a PBS production called "Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy". This 3-part television production was an advomentary (advocacy documentary) which made the case for free markets by interpreting the economic history of the 20th Century from a capitalist perspective. Yergin interviewed many high profile free-market advocates such as Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and Robert Rubin who presented economic history as a battle between centralized command economies and free market economies.

If he is seriously suggesting that Dick Cheney is interested free markets why does Halliburton get no-bid contracts... DOH! Next they will be telling you the 30% water cut on the Saudi Ghawar oil field is nothing to be concerned about, oh and remember Saddam has WMD and is helping AQ and global warming doesnt exist, oil companies don't conspire with corrupt governments and oh yes fairies and elves really do exist. /sarcasm

No, Peak Oil has never predicted that we'd "run out".

Actually that is precisely what peak oil predicts. Peak oil is ONLY about the fact that oil production will peak out at some point and will thereafter decline. It will keep declining until there is no more oil that can be economically extracted -- in essence, we will run out. Peak oil doesn't really say anything about demand; it is all about oil production.

See this link for a much more detailed, less biased analysis of the pros and cons of peak oil theory. Down at the bottom you'll find a table with predictions of when we'll reach the global production peak. Note that some of the predictions putting peak production in the next few years are from people who work (or worked) for oil companies.

This group CERA has a prediction on there, too; in 2004 they believed in peak oil theory and thought the world would peak in 2020. Their new "oil plateau" idea basically says that as traditional oil becomes more scarce, technology will bring new sources (tar sands, oil shale, etc.) on line, thereby increasing reserves. Whoever they work for, they have some interesting, if not compelling, points.

http://energybulletin.net/22442.html

iraq started trading oil in euro and now iran is doing it too. coincidence? i think not.

-- cut --
With speculation mounting over the possibility of a US- or Israeli-led military attack of Iran sometime later this year, it has been suggested that real motivation for US antipathy towards the Iranian government has little to do with concerns that Tehran is developing nuclear weapons. Some commentators have instead suggested that Iran's real Iranian threat to the US and its economy is that, in defiance of the US administration, it is attempting to establish an oil 'bourse' (exchange) in March of this year which would enable oil to be traded in euros. This would move oil sales away from their usual denomination in dollars and would, it is argued, undermine the American currency with grave consequences for the US economy.
-- cut --

http://www.energybulletin.net/12463.html

-- cut --
The Iranians are about to commit an "offense" far greater than Saddam Hussein's conversion to the euro of Iraq's oil exports in the fall of 2000. Numerous articles have revealed Pentagon planning for operations against Iran as early as 2005. While the publicly stated reasons will be over Iran's nuclear ambitions, there are unspoken macroeconomic drivers explaining the Real Reasons regarding the 2nd stage of petrodollar warfare - Iran's upcoming euro-based oil Bourse.
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CLA410A.html

google

Yeah... that was (unfortunately) bullshit. And to compound it, conveniantly timed bullshit.

Yeah... that was (unfortunately) bullshit. And to compound it, conveniantly timed bullshit.

It's a broad mixture of viewpoints. The wide consensus is that the peak will be somewhere from 2005-2025. We're really, really running in the blind here. I read "I hope to god that it's not this decade" several times a day.

Those who do follow daily developments in conventional oil tend to be more pessimistic - there was a month late last year that we still havn't surpassed in production. They generally wholly reject OPEC's paper recoverable reserves war of the '80's (wherein OPEC one by one doubled their estimated reserves, to protect themselves in the case of a rules change where national reserves would determine allowable experts), and tend to follow decline rates as much as they can - because oil companies making projections almost refuse to acknowledge them, and use advanced drilling techniques that greatly shorten the chronological life of the well, in order to keep yields up. The End Of Oil begins: with a particularly good passage. We have list of fields coming online, but delays are widespread, and depletion rates are even less predictable.

So there is a small, well educated movement that says the peak is now. Most people tell them 'The peak may well be now, but if you run with that, the first price downturn the public sees, they'll dismiss you, and the inevitable will come in 10 years without anyone paying attention because you cried wolf now.' The community will always be a balance of alarmism and counter-alarmism because of this. We saw that type of criticism come to fruition when the Jack II "data" (actually a single 6000 barrel per day well tested for a few hours, which was extrapolated to thousands of $100m wells accross an area the size of Alaska operating for decades to produce a theoretical 50% increase in US reserves) was released, and newspaper columns everywhere declared that that Peak Oil was a millenial cult, and we have infinite reserves. This came in the middle of a commodities market shift away from oil.

The concept of oil depletion itself is older than Malthus and Hubbert. And yes, it's been pushed as an imminent event several times since the 1860's. It may be an imminent event now. It may not be. That doesn't make it any less of a threat - there is a steady trend in reserve discovery, which peaked 42 years ago. We now consume four times as much oil as we discover every year. Production is gonna start declining at some point, and we're gonna see the effects in our lifetimes - hopefully, those effects won't shorten them.

we manufacture a soft product called the US dollar

The value of the US Dollar is almost entirely dependant on it's status as the dominant international means of exchange for oil trades. This is where the bulk of "spare" USD "manufactured" goes.

In effect, it represents an enormous loan. There are a number of problems with this strategy for propping up your currency.

• Sooner or later, people want their "value" back. (they traded something to get the dollars, and whoever ends up with them will want their "value" for them.).
• If the amount of oil on the market should decrease (as it is), the amount of USD used to purchase it should decrease (unless, say, some untoward events were to occur that raised the price per barrel enormously).
• Should anyone consider trading oil for something else, like Flainian Popple Beads or (I dunno) Euros, the enormous crowd of people demanding value for their dollars will totally hump your economy

The "strength" of an economy does not relate to the (misplaced) trust that people have in that economy, it relates to the ability of that economy to add value to the greater world economy, through extraction of resources, production of goods, and provision of services. Not printing treasury bonds which you have no means of backing.

for those soon to be empty pipes.

From The Myth of the Hydrogen Economy: All free hydrogen generated today is derived from natural gas. So right off the bat we have not managed to escape our dependency on nonrenewable hydrocarbons. This feedstock is steam-treated to strip the hydrogen from the methane molecules. And the steam is produced by boiling water with natural gas. Overall, there is about a 60% energy loss in this process. And, as it is dependent on the availability of natural gas, the price of hydrogen generated in this method will always be a multiple of the price of natural gas.

Ah, but there is an inexhaustible supply of water from which we could derive our hydrogen. However, splitting hydrogen from water requires an even higher energy investment per unit of water (286kJ per mole). All processes of splitting water molecules, including foremost electrolysis and thermal decomposition, require major energy investments, rendering them unprofitable.

Any time someone brings up the greenhouse effect as an arguement for alternative energy, the debate over anthropic global warming re-erupts and the issues are forgotten about amidst the flames and political bullshit. Better to simply avoid that debate, leave it for the environmentalists and the neocons to fight it out, and focus on the other issues so that people understand why we need to quit fossil fuels.

Many (if not most) neocons are actually very strongly in favor of alternative energy. They even drive Priuses.

Now, they generally become boosters of alternative energy for geopolitical reasons rather than environmental ones (they don't want to subsidize Middle Eastern kleptocracies), but most of them are happy that there are other, pro-environment reasons to do so as well.

The original neocons were generally are ex-Trotskyites (I'm thinking of Irving Kristol here). The second wave were also ex-liberals or leftists (William Bennett, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, James Q. Wilson - members of the anti-communist left that turned rightward). The primary failings of the neocons are the primary failing of the left in general - they think that the world is perfectable, given enough (love/power/use of force/crystal energy).

That leads them to do things you may not like (topple bad regimes in a [misguided?] attempt to liberalize them), and others that you may like (push for alternative energy, campaign to eliminate third-world debt). But they're very different from the corporate Republicanism that has historically been most resistant to new energy.

Now, of course, that they're starting to figure out the angles to make money off alternative energy, you can bet that the corporate Republicans will rapidly become "green". That may not be ideologically "pure", but it sure beats the alternative...

Ah yes, the hard headed realist who advocates a magical space elevator.

Which does very little good for me as I'm right now down here and not up there. Bringing down such things is not easy (can't build your reentry vehicles in space for quite a while) and simply dropping them down would incur even more costs. You can't easily process it in space either. In addition you'd need to overcome the political and technological hurdles of getting a rock that close to earth. Keep in mind that bringing things up would cost around $100 to $200/lb not counting the cost of your investment

I feel like I am talking to myself here. The cost of bringing things up would be much lower with a tower launch, thats the entire point. The whole. Entire. Point. Bringing them down would be the easiest part. Since you don't have to haul up massive engines and drop them again, you can be more flexible in your re-entry vehicle design. Gravity, meet glider. Or even a big balloon.

Quite a few, all of them far away and we don't know that much about them.

Now I know you're trolling. Educate yourself, young man. FTFA:
Another example of wealth can be found on an asteroid called Amun, the smallest metallic asteroid of several dozen known. According to Lewis, Amun contains roughly 30 times as much metal as the entire amount of metals mined and processed over the history of humanity... University of Arizonas Lewis adds that many of these asteroids are relatively inexpensive to reach because they have orbits that are remarkably accessible from Earth.

That would make that one asteroid worth several times the GDP of the US. Seeing any ROI yet?

Not near future and possible on earth as well. You'd need to bring all those materials close which is not feasible in the near future. Then you'd need to again bring the processed goods back down.

No, you wouldn't need to bring it close. You could just saw it up where it is, even process it on the spot and float ingots gently back to earth orbit. Where will you get power for all this? There's a large star right nearby there... As for not near future possible, its already being done.. Anything else you'd like to share with us?

Personally I wouldn't want a new brain and barring that I'll be dead anyway... This could also be more easily done on Earth.

Bleh. Who cares if it doesn't suit you. And I can see many advantages to keeping it in orbit, not least of which is fast deployment in medical emergencies.

Trillions in costs probably, you'd need to figure out new mining methods and manufacturing methods or build complex structures to use earth based ones. Not to mention the general costs of designing things for space.

More figures pulled out of your ass. The only thing stopping us getting into space and taking advantage of it is the cost to orbit. Thats it, nothing else.

Yeah, how about a few which aren't so far in the future as to be worthless due to unpredictability of scientific advance. Someone has been reading way too much sci-fi. In essence your idea is not profitable for at least the next 40 years, so you have no ROI right now.

Blah. If you want an ROI right now, go deal some heroin. This whole operation could be up and running in fifteen years, with a little elbow grease. In more serious business, long term investments with massive potential returns regularily draw companies to the trough. In fact any company without a fifteen year plan shouldn't be in business in the first place.

The question then becomes where do you get the raw materials from and where do they stuff the garbage. Unless they send all their garbage back up into space (See previous numbers for how many flights you'd need per year) Earth would become one giant garbage dump very quickly.

Remember that extremely low cost to orbit I was talking about? Good man.

Because the US is attacking Iran in the next one to five months - before the fall elections.

I guess I've been a little behind on current events, so thanks for the info.

Yes people, it looks like we have another Iraq war on our hands. I'm very much in the minority here with my beliefs, but I'm 99.9% confident that both of these wars are economic ones because Iraq wanted to trade oil in Euros and not US dollars, Iran wants to do the same now (see http://www.energybulletin.net/7707.html), and Venezuela might be next.

The American economy is bullshit. Its based on "the new math". Its all about counterfeit money (not gold backed since 1972), planned inflation, manipulation of credit markets, especially housing. And I just don't know how many wars we can rage to keep our bullshit economic voodoo working.