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Cash can be converted from dollars to euros and back in the blink of an electron.

Thus, the value of the dollar depends solely on the demand for the dollar.

More info here: Why Iran's Oil Bourse can't break the Buck

M3 was a little more important than you state. As always, YMMV.

The energy returned on energy invested for biofuel is about 1/10th what it is for petroleum, and the current method of food production is completely dependent on fossil fuels, and INSUSTAINABLE.
http://www.energybulletin.net/5045.html

The ONLY answer is to switch to nuclear power, ASAP.

and wish we had moved to it in a big way the way France has, but this Moore fellow is an easily discredited shill for industry. He's not the representative we want to advance our cause. Richard Rhodes, James Lovelock, and Bernard Cohen have a hell of a lot better credibility.

True. The American army is a peak oil believer, and if they believe in even the most tame of drastic scenarios presented in e.g. Roberts' The End of Oil , one wonders why European militaries are still using so much fuel.

Kuwait's largest oil field has peaked and is now in decline,

And...

there is serious speculation that Saudi Arabia's giant Ghawar oil field is either at peak or is very close,

And...

Global warming is clearly a fact,

And...

The antarctic is melting off at an uncomfortable clip not to mention Greenland

And...

Population growth continues unabated

And...

The freakin' idiots in TFA want to go merrily galumphing about the galaxy like a bunch of wide-eyed disease ridden nuclear weaponed kindergartners. All they need to do is SNEEZE on a foreign planet and they could wipe the whole place out and turn it into one giant slimy stromatolite. That's my idea of being a good will ambassador. As if we have enough stored solar power (petroleum) to fuel such silliness.

On a daily basis I battle the darkest nihilists - whether of the Olduvai Theory Peak Oil variety or the Eco-Catastrophe Variety. And when a clueless bunch of science geeks go prancing about like some fourth grade ninnies playing "Star Trek" and cheerfully yapping about the intricacies of hyperdrives, when most of the world can barely feed itself and the privileged fat few use Microsoft Windows... well... it makes the case of the doom-mongers that much stronger.

Hyperdrive, my ass. It's this same inane idiocy that cut jillions out of the NASA science budget so we can send some space cowboys somewhere they don't really belong.

RS

Of course I fully expect the clueless technological fan boys who all to often spend their sad empty lives begging for mod points will give me a -1 Flamebait, regardless of the fundamental merits of my argument.

Correct. Some say that's why Iraq was invaded, and why Iran will soon be invaded. The first time the US government made up lies about WMDs, this time it's nuclear research.

Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse

(Written almost a year ago, it still managed to predict the current nonsense being spread about Iranian nuclear research)

We have been going down this road for a long time. The Bread and Circuses are coming to a stop soon. This is a very interesting read (sorry PDF).

With Iran opening their oil exchange in late March, the US will most likely be forced into some sort of military action.

If oil trading in non-dollar assets catch on, our debt will no longer be sustainable. The powers that be know this. If you read the first link you'll see just how bad the situation is. The goal right now is to stretch the game out as long as possible.

I think its inevitable that we will find some reason to hit Iran soon after their exchange opens.

Site showing a graph of U.S. oil production since 1973: www.hubbertpeak.com/us/

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett's congressional peak oil presentation is also quite good.

"Compared to 2004, world oil production was up 0.8 percent in 2005, nowhere near enough to compensate for a demand rise of roughly 3 percent."

How exactly is demand measured? Does he mean consumption? Consumption must equal production, otherwise we would be rapidly draining/filling enormous reserve tanks. Current production is around 70 million barrels per day. Overproduction of 3% would fill a large oil tanker every day with nowhere to go.

This is a common misunderstanding in talking about oil production. "Oh no, we're consuming 100% of the oil we produce. The world will end next Tuesday!". Do you buy twice the food you need at the grocery store? Will you starve if you have company over next week and your demand goes up? No, you will buy (drill/research) more food when you need it.

And did we really need a graph to show linear interpolation between 0.9812 trillion and 1.00748 trillion barrels? The author assumed that the total world supply of oil started at 2.013 trillion barrels, so the halfway point would be reached in 2005. The production rate stayed near his estimate, so the halfway point stayed in 2005. Wow. December 16, 2005 is a day which will live in infamy. Unless of course his supply estimate was off by 0.5%. Then February 28, 2006 shall be a day which will live in infamy. Obviously, the author of Beyond Oil is just trying to sell more copies of Beyond Oil.

I do believe that the world's energy future needs attention. I think we'd be wise to invest $100 billion in fusion and renewable energy, rather than spending ten times that on destroying and rebuilding nations. But I don't think crying wolf is a wise way to change policy.

AlpineR

My car is powered by my own sense of self-satifaction

Besides the best Peak Oil web sites are

http://energybulletin.net/
http://globalpublicmedia.com/

True. However, the USGS is notorious in peak oil circles for having continued to raise estimates of ultimate recoverables (IE, total production possible over human history) in the continental US, even after domestic production had reached and passed the predicted Hubbert Peak (IE, the halfway mark). The USGS 1972 predicted US-48-UR was a value between 2 and 10 times the value currently accepted. (Hubbard, by contrast, was about 10-30% low... from a range of 15 years pre-peak.) And, if you examine the weasel words in their footnotes, you'll see the USGS and similar agencies effectively admit to fixing their supply predictions to equal the value for predicted demand. We're at the absolute brink of Peak Oil. It would also provide a plausible secondary motivation for the Iranian nuclear program, and explain why they are so adamant about pursuing the atom despite having one of the world's largest oil reserves: they also think that Peak Oil is at hand.

If world oil consumption continues to increase at an average rate of 1.4 percent a year, and no further resources are discovered, the world's oil supply will not be exhausted until the year 2056.

This, however, assumes that oil production can remain steady, and that those reseve estimates are accurate. The premise of the Hubbert peak is that production rates will begin dropping at increasing rates, due to increasing difficulty in extraction.

I don't have time to address the problems with each of your silver linings, but looking at a few Peak Oil sites and a quick search for "Energy Profit Ratio" should leave many people skeptical about them.

Which, in Realpolitik terms, might well justify the invasion of Iraq completely, aside from the stupidity how the invasion was executed (IE, without detailed post-invasion planning or comrehensive allied support). And, no, I am NOT a fan of Bush or the Iraq war... largely because of the aforementioned stupidity in execution.

'In 1855, an advertisement for Kier's Rock Oil advised consumers to "hurry, before this wonderful product is depleted from Nature's laboratory."'

Since when do you believe an advertisement?

"In 1874, the state geologist of Pennsylvania, the nation's leading oil-producing state, estimated that only enough U.S. oil remained to keep the nation's kerosene lamps burning for four years."

Even though this is not an advertisement it was in the 19th century. Technology and science progressed enormously since then.

"In May 1920, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that the world's total endowment of oil amounted to 60 billion barrels."

The USGS was proven to be wildy inaccurate even in their own country, I quote: "As recently as 1972, the USGS was releasing circulars that estimated US domestic oil production would not peak until well into the 21st century, and possibly not until the 22nd century. (See Theobald, Schweinfurth & Duncan, U.S. Geological Survey Circular 650)

This was despite the fact US production had already peaked in 1970, just as Hubbert had predicted. Richard Heinberg reminds us, "in 1973, Congress demanded an investigation of the USGS for its failure to foresee the 1970 US oil production peak.""

You say, that: "In 1950, geologists estimated the world's total oil endowment at around 600 billion barrels.
From 1970 through 1990, their estimates increased to between 1,500 and 2,000 billion barrels."

Source?

"In 1994, the U.S. Geological Survey raised the estimate to 2,400 billion barrels, and their most recent estimate (2000) was of a 3,000-billion-barrel endowment."

Actually, no. Please see this link, I quote: "The USGS 2000 divides the petroleum assessments into 'categories of probability': F95, F50 (i.e. median), F5, and Mean (i.e. arithmetic mean). "F" means fractile, as defined by the USGS", and then "TOTAL GCOE at F95 = (approx.) 2,000 Gb
TOTAL GCOE at F50 = (approx.) 2,700 Gb
TOTAL GCOE at F5 = (approx.) 4,900 Gb
TOTAL GCOE Mean = (approx.) 3,000 Gb".

This means, by their EXTREMELY flawed logic, that if they take the probabilities and get a mean value from them, then thats how many oil is out there, while anything below F50 probability is wishful thinking only, if not outright dreaming. I'd say that the quote: "and the estimates for the world Grown Conventional Oil Endowment will converge somewhere between 2000 and 2200 BBO (i.e. near the F95 estimate in the USGS 2000 report). The peak of world oil production is within sight." is very accurate in describing the real reserves.

"By the year 2000, a total of 900 billion barrels of oil had been produced. Total world oil production in 2000 was 25 billion barrels. If world oil consumption continues to increase at an average rate of 1.4 percent a year, and no further resources are discovered, the world's oil supply will not be exhausted until the year 2056."

The problem is not that oil is gone, but that consumption is bigger than production and that production cannot be increased by any significant numbers!

We currently need 83.5 million barrels per day. We are projected to need 120 million barrels per day by 2020. On the other hand, when|since we hit peak oil production (will) decrease by around 1 million barrels per day of production per year. We just cannot tap into the remaining oil reserves quickly enough and in such way that it would be worth the costs (in monetary and energy terms)!

Dick Cheney said, that "By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline in production from existing reserves.That means by 2010 we w

Only so much oil was produced. It took millions upon millions of years. Some was easy to find and pump out, some hard. Most was in the middle. We started with easy. We just reached middle. Now it gets harder and harder.

Up until now a given amount of effort got so much oil. A little more effort got a little more oil. On the down slope it's the other way around. A little more effort gets a little less oil. Next time still more effort, still less oil. Eventually it takes more energy to get the oil than you can get from the oil.

At that point everyone decides to give up and go home.

As for facts and figures about oil fields, how much, etc. Start with "Peak Oil Primer."

In 1972 the "Club of Rome" published "Limits to Growth", full of dire predictions about how the world was destined, among other bad things, to run out of oil by 2000. Yawn. It didn't turn out that way in 2000, and it probably won't turn out that way in 2025. In fact, recent history has shown that dire predictions usually don't come true.

Personally, I think the collapse of the dollar would be the most likely scenario that would bring about major change in the US in the next 10 years.

And fending off this collapse is the real reason we replaced saddam and will IMO start a war with Iran. It's not just about oil, but about oil being defined SOLELY in terms of the dollar

The dollar is on its last legs IMO.

By 2050, industrialized nations will be emitting little CO2. By 2100, if necessary, we will be pumping it back into the ground.

I agree that we can and should pump carbon back into the ground, and I've proposed a way to do it. I just don't think we will absent a radical change in direction.

The only "tipping point" we are approaching is the point where renewables become cheaper than dino power.

adaption is cheap, while prevention is hideously expensive at the moment.

About 43% of our electical power in the United States comes from coal power plants.

But coal has several problems. First, there are the obvious environmental issues... although I doubt many people will care about those once oil hits $150 a barrel. (Environmental issues have a tendancy to take the back burner when people can't afford to heat their homes.)

The second problem is that while coal is certainly more plentiful then natural gas and oil, it too is a limited natural resource. Coal production could peak as early as 2035.

As far as oil sands, it is just too expensive to produce sweet crude from oil sands. By too expensive I mean more $100 a barrel. Sure, as peak oil makes itself more clear oil sands may indeed become a viable alternative, but only viable insofar as cheap will be redefined. The economy will still collapse and wars will still be fought over the remaining "cheap" oil supplies. Our current way of life is simply not sustainable.

One hope I do have is for oil shale. Shell has come up with some new techniques to extract sweet crude from oil shale at a cost of about $30 a barrel! This would be absolutely fantastic and would give us at least another 30 years to deal with peak oil... not to mention the fact that the United States has the world's largest deposits of oil shale and it would give us a MASSIVE edge in the global conflicts that are likely to arise over the next few decades regarding oil.

The global warming issue is no simple matter, clearly. This post reminded me of the fact that the ocean, not just land, is an important carbon sink. And with the warming of the oceans, more carbon will be released, think of a warm bottle of carbonated softdrink. Further, the ocean's currents work like a giant conveyor belt, to warm cold areas like Europe, or bring cool water to hot areas like California and Central America, but global warming alters the dynamics of this system. From a high-level view, the significant changes to the earth, such as greenhouse gases, impact the "buffers" available, similar to the impact of a Krakatoa exploding would have on the earth, for example - but this is something we will simply dig out of once the dusts settles, unfortunately.

So I think that one of the complexities of global warming is that there is such a tremendous amount of factors and systems (remember, supercomputers are used to model global warming), that to say "if I do x, then y", is a bit naive.

You can find some information from Simmon's book "Twilight in the Desert". You can also see one estimate here: http://www.energybulletin.net/358.html That artical is from May, 2004. Since then Canadian Natural Resources and others have announced expansions.

When Ghawar goes into decline - then all major oil fields in the world will be in decline with the exception of the few new ones that have been discovered. There is a rather nice development taking place in the Caspian - and it is frequently touted as a counter example to the peak oil idea. However - those fields are not going to make the difference. Neither will the Tar sands. Also we have the Orinocco heavy oils and those resouces are in the vicinity of 1.6-1.8 trillion barrels - same as the Alberta Tar Sands. This leaves vast resources in oil shales like the Green River formation in the USA and the Stuart oil shales in Queensland.

The tar sands will last a good long while. However the rate limiting factor is how quickly they can be developed. We are facing TERRIBLE obstacles.

One of the obstacles is illustrated by a major Calgary company that decided not to increase its heavy oil production in the Lloydminster area about 2000. Their project would have doubled the population of Lloyd. They didn't have the manpower available so the project was shelved.

Companies like Canadian Natural Resources have announced they are TRIPPLING their investments in the tar sands operations (about $30 billion). Suncor, Nexen, Shell and others are moving ahead as fast as they can with huge projects. Then we have laughable outfits like Habanero which looks to me like a pump and dump scheme.

One of the biggest issues to face is the shortage of hydrogen. Liquid fuels in general have about a 2:1 ratio of hydrogen to carbon. In heavy oils and bitumin it is close to 1:1 and by the time we get into coal it is as low as 0.6:1 Thus for every atom of carbon dug out of the tar sands we have to find an atom of hydrogen. One of the best sources is to crack water.

If we were to do this with say steam hydrolysis then we would need to build about 75 nuclear plants in the range of 1GWe. Nobody has put forward plans with the possible exception of Total SA. The other option is to use the Fisher-tropsch reaction and this creates massive amounts of CO2 (and CO). In fact if we have a stream of say 5 million barrels of oil flowing from Tar Sands and all hydrogen is derived from water using Fischer-tropsch, then we would have a flow of something like 2-3 million barrels of liquid CO2 flowing as well. Since we can use the CO2 to make beer we could have quite a nice flow of beer too. However we can get CO2 for beer from other sources - so we are still left with the issue of what to do with the CO2.

By far the best solution is to hook that carbon to yet more hydrogens instead of hooking it up with Oxygen and stuff the result into the pipelines. Another viable but unfortunately non-politically correct solution is to release it into the atmosphere where plants can get at it and re-combine it with hydrogen through a process known as photosynthesis using solar energy. Perhaps the reason this is not politically correct is that the Canadian government has not yet figured out how to tax photosynthesis. As for greenhouse gas issues and global warming - well - that is more or less bunk - but I'm not going to talk about that here.

Production of the CO2 is a political issue of course because Ottawa is working on how to slip in a carbon tax. The problem is there simply is no alternative unless we undertake a massive nuclear expansion.

In the end - even when all these alternatives are considered and even if the BEST and MOST INTELLIGENT choices were made - we are still going to face a crisis.

I have to laugh at the well meaning fellow who commented that when the price goes up people will simply use less. Let me ask if he has shut off his furnace. It is 20 below outside and mine

That implies you need about 270 bushels of corn to produce the fuel for your vehicle for a year.

On a decent year, corn yields about 250 bushels per acre.

Opps, sorry I didn't get all the quote in there with regards to biodiesel:

Biodiesel is considerably better than ethanol, but with an EROEI of three, it still doesn't compare to oil, which has had an EROEI of about 30.

Regarding ethanol, this April 2005 article claims it takes 6 energy units to produce just 1 unit of ethanol energy. If that is correct you can see why biodiesel would be much preferred over ethanol, but even so it would simply not be an effective replacement for oil.

These guys factor in the energy requirements from planting, fertilizing, harvesting, processing, transporting, etc.

Unless, of course, they provide a way for the average consumer to melt their play-once dvds into fuel for their car.

I agree, except that I have great hope for solar towers and pebble bed nuclear reactors in the short term.

Note that biodiesel could provide for the needs of the western world if we convert 3rd world food production into fuel production. My view is that significant biodiesel production will occur, since we can afford to pay more for fuel than they can pay for food (and massive famine will result).

Europe is already starting the plan for buring Africans as fuel:

http://www.energybulletin.net/3288.html

"The European Union wants 2% of the oil we use to be biodiesel by the end of next year, rising to 6% by 2010 and 20% by 2020."

Link was http://www.energybulletin.net/7707.html (I hit Submit before I finished)

Iran is planning to sell its oil in Euro rather than US dollars, undermining the dollar hedgemony:

Will we see fireworks in Iran before March next year?

You're comparing apples to oranges. How much energy does it take to get petrol to the pump?

Consider the oil sands in Alberta. (They give Canada the second largest proven oil reserves in the world.) It takes a huge amount of energy to extract the oil from these sands (through boiling). It costs about $10 to extract a barrel of oil from them, compared with $2 to pump it in Saudi Arabia. So here I've given two examples that suggest the cost of getting oil, and I haven't even mentioned transportation and refining.

they were concerned the government did not fully appreciate that science
in peace was as vital as science in war.

the real meat of the bill? Oh wait, there is none.
See http://www.energybulletin.net/7473.html, http://uspirg.org/ and others.

Ironically, the Wall Street Journal had an article last November about how the US is rapidly becoming a net importer of food.

The US certainly wouldn't starve---its food trade is essentially balanced, and much is used inefficiently for high-fructose corn syrup and the like---but it's not likely anyone else would starve, either.

http://www.energybulletin.net/7088.html

"Over all--including energy costs for farm machinery, transportation, and processing, and oil and natural gas used as feedstocks for agricultural chemicals--the modern food system consumes roughly ten calories of fossil fuel energy for every calorie of food energy produced"

Of course, that footnote goes back to a David Pimentel source.

http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html

http://www.css.cornell.edu/courses/190/exam2002a.h tm

Non Pimental source:

http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/energy/

That's 3 calories to produce 1 calorie, but it doesn't mention distribution (the 3000 mile caesar salad example).

Guess what - they're still finding (some major) new sources of oil.

But "Overall, worldwide oil discoveries have been declining steadily for the past 40 years" and "Annual consumption has exceeded new discoveries every year since the early 1980s". (http://www.energybulletin.net/3168.html)

I wouldn't count much on new discoveries.

They're also developing technology to extract previously-unextractable oil (oil sands, oil shale, etc.)

This may provide some expensive oil, but not much. It eventually has a natural limit: when you need more energy to extract the oil than the energy you will get from the extracted oil.

The major obstacles to switching to renewable energy are political, not economic or technical. The primary source of resistance to changing to a sustainable, functional energy system is rooted in oil being priced and sold exclusively in dollars, trade imbalances, reserve currencies, debt and the corresponding implications for financial markets.

Put another way, when the costs of burning fossil fuels (CO2 emissions, acid rain, smog, particulates, etc.) as well as subsidies to the fossil fuel industry are fully accounted for, just how economically viable is the current system?

This article runs down the Machiavellian details of the situation:

"The second pillar of American dominance in the world is the dominant role of the U.S. dollar as reserve currency. Until the advent of the Euro in late 1999, there was no potential challenge to this dollar hegemony in world trade. The Petrodollar has been at the heart of the dollar hegemony since the 1970's..."

http://www.american.edu/TED/projects/tedcross/xoil pr15.htm
http://www.pinr.com/index.php(more general region info)
http://www.energybulletin.net/4673.html
and many many more

All the economic arguments ASSUME that oil is going to last forever, yet clearly that is not the case with a finite resource. In fact there is some evidence that we are near or at peak oil now. This not just speculation from wild eyed tree huggers, Republican congressman Roscoe Bartlett gave this excellent presentation on peak oil before the congress March 14th 2005:

http://www.energybulletin.net/4733.html

and video & PDF

http://www.energybulletin.net/5080.html

Unless we stop listening to economists who obsess with price and start planning a fuel efficent infrastructure change like high speed trains trains like Europe is already doing we are going to be in real trouble in the next 10-15 years. We have to do this now because the infrastructure will take years to build. Waiting for the price signal for building this infrastructure after peak oil will be too late. For the price of one year of Bush's war for oil in Iraq we could build a lot of train infrastructure.

All the economic arguments ASSUME that oil is going to last forever, yet clearly that is not the case with a finite resource. In fact there is some evidence that we are near or at peak oil now. This not just speculation from wild eyed tree huggers, Republican congressman Roscoe Bartlett gave this excellent presentation on peak oil before the congress March 14th 2005:

http://www.energybulletin.net/4733.html

and video & PDF

http://www.energybulletin.net/5080.html

Unless we stop listening to economists who obsess with price and start planning a fuel efficent infrastructure change like high speed trains trains like Europe is already doing we are going to be in real trouble in the next 10-15 years. We have to do this now because the infrastructure will take years to build. Waiting for the price signal for building this infrastructure after peak oil will be too late. For the price of one year of Bush's war for oil in Iraq we could build a lot of train infrastructure.

I really wish they wouldn't fill these things with helium, what with the upcoming helium shortage.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3135.html and http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/heli um.html
detail the problem.

Helium should be restricted to uses where there is no practical replacement. Cold temperature research should be the top of the list. Fusion should be next, but this probably won't significantly impact the He market since He-3 is a pretty rare isotope. Gas mixes for deep divers should be somewhere following (commercial before recreational of course). Balloons and Blimps shouldn't even be on the list: Hydrogen is a perfectly accptable replacement, is renewable (can be extracted from water and hydrocarbons) and the danger can be mitigated. hydrogen in childrens balloons would produce a very loud pop if ignited, but you'd have to put a candle to the balloon to do it. Hydrogen in blimps should be safe as long as we don't make the skins out of rocket fuel.

Yes I am aware that divers sometimes replace He with hydrogen, but it has many trade-offs that should not be forced: Under pressure, He/O2 mixes can be explosive, so the mixer must be very careful to limit the partial pressures of each, thermal properties of hydrogen, and the rate of hydrogen take-up in tissues are all factors to consider there.

High volume, low impact uses should at least try to avoid using He, leaving more for people who can get more use out of it.

Darn you hindenburg for creating a huge negative perception of hydrogen. And your crazy announcer too. Think how much cooler our cities would have looked with derigibles floating all over the place.

To produce enough nuclear power to equal the power we currently get from fossil fuels, you would have to build 10,000 of the largest possible nuclear power plants.

Conspiracy? Maybe. Big-Oil Crisis? Definitely.

Commercial quantities of helium come out of the ground in Texas. People think the Strategic Helium Reserve was such a big joke. Except for the fact that without helium, we can't make computer chips, can't do inert gas welding, can't do a lot of science and (most important) can't make squeaky voices at kid's parties. So, the government has decided it's in the best interests of all to privatize the collection, storage, and the distribution network for what is a non-renewable, economically critical element.

Even Wired magazine has mentioned the potential helium shortage. We'll run out eventually. The American Chemical Society puts it at around 2015. That's not good. The spring of 2002, there was enough of a shortage that the distributors of air products had to clamp down on helium- there was rationing for a few months. And the government's concept is to *privatize* it. Wonderful.