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Iceland to Voluntarily Go Oil Free in 30-40 Years
scottennis writes "Yahoo is carrying a
story about Iceland's plan to wean itself from fossil fuels.
The article states that Iceland is giving itself 30-40 years to kick the oil habit completely. Of course some researchers estimate that in 30-40 years we won't have much of a choice."
Iraq to follow suit. Pshh.
Oops!
this doesn't strike me as being a Big Deal, you know?
We could stand to take a page from Iceland's book on this one. They need to now to end heavy energy dependance, and we should to the same for that reason alone, to say nothing of the stacks of environmental benefits.
You are not the customer.
Saudi Arabi, Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait plan an invasion of Iceland in 30-40 years...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
What can i say besides good start? But didn't an island in Ireland already do this? Hopefully this trend will move out of the artic circle and into Europe, though sadly i can't imagine the US and third world nations doing this anytime soon.
Carpe meam simiam!
Now the IRS's "voluntary" tax system makes more sense anyway.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
They benefit from sitting on one great big source of geothermal energy for a limited population. This isn't going to work for the rest of the world. Natural sources of energy are limited and the world's energy needs are exploding, which points to a shortage in the years to come.
I'm happy to see the alternatives being used and discussed, but we have got to start getting really serious about getting cold fusion to work, or else we're in big trouble in about 40 years.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
It would be nice if the U.S. started making some long term goals. I think one of the biggest problems the government has is its band-aid approach to everything. We should be setting long term goals. Where should we be 20 years from now, 100 years from now, 1000 years from now? Much of who you are derives from the direction you take and the goals you set. How do you view someone who has no long term goals and no clear direction?
Cat
Are they going to stop using plastics? Other products made as further generation processing of oil? Products transported to iceland with the use of oil or derived products? What are they going to run their planes on?
Don't get me wrong, reducing oil dependance is a good idea, even if I don't believe the people saying we're running out in 30-40 years (in case you weren't paying attention, they've been saying that for...oh...30-40 years). But is it practical to say they will outright stop? I don't think so.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
What about this talk of oil fields refilling themselves? Maybe we don't know as much about oil as we originally thought. Does anyone have some good links on this topic?
scottennis writes "Yahoo is carrying a story about Iceland's plan to wean itself from fossil fuels. The article states that Iceland is giving itself 30-40 years to kick the oil habit completely. Of course some researchers estimate that in 30-40 years we won't have much of a choice."
Slashdot to go redundancy free for 30-40 seconds: whee!
[o]_O
While I appreciate the sentiment of what they're looking to do, I think taking 30-40 years for ONE COUNTRY (and a small one, at that) to do this is absurd. In my opinion, the world is nearly at critical mass in terms of population and resource usage. If we don't take measures to wean ourselves from our oil dependencies NOW, I think we're acting too late!
I mean, it's not like the technology is not there. It may be a little incovenient right now, but demand will drive innovation, just as it always has.
If Iceland takes the step of pushing Big Oil out, maybe they'll also push out Microsoft. Does anybody know any IT managers in Rekyavik that we could email? We should take advantage of this ASAP!
How many times have we heard we are going to run out of oil? And guess what: it never happens. I'm sure it will happen eventually, but I don't see it happening any sooner than running out of other important resources like vandium, molybdenum, etc.. New deposits are always being found, and the majority of the world's oil is still present in oil sands (which are becoming much more economical to extract)
The environmental reasons for switching away from oil are a lot more reasonable, however I imagine the replacement is really going to be more fossil fuels, probably hydrogen harvested (or reformed) from natural gas for fuel cells. So keep those oil rigs pumping.
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
Bjork's parents are the King and Queen of Iceland? Wow.
(Haha nice troll)
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
Why hydrogen powered cars? Why not just use electric and eliminate the middle man?
1. Plans and commitment for oil independence.
2. Damn good anti-virus software (including a free linux scanner.)
An alternative to geothermal would be huge mats of seaweed in the oceans that have been genetically engineered to convert the CO2 back into oil or ethanol.
At any rate, Iceland probably has a better chance with geothermal than with solar given its location.
It's amazing how many posts here are saying "Free our dependence? Hahaha, no way!" as if A)there are no other energy sources and B)We've been using oil for energy for the entirety of humanity's existance.
It's no wonder we support the oppression of the peoples of Saudi Arabia. We don't know any other way.
I find it humorous that oil supply graphs always show the supply peaking at the present, so it's not surprizing to see the including graph showing oil supply peaking in 2002, when suddenly it'll perilously start dropping as the world's supply of oil disappears. As much as I advocate and hope for advances in alternatives (or even just greatly increased efficiency), I find these graphs all to be universally a bunch of BS : Hell we're just starting to process the tar sands in Alberta, tar sands which have more oil than all of Saudi Arabia (interesting fact: The US gets more oil from Alberta than it gets from Saudi Arabia, yet watch the fascinating ass kissing the US plants on the asses of the Saudis. Very odd, and unjustifiable). When I was in Grade 4, some 20 years ago, I remember them showing us a similar graph perilously showing the drop that was imminent as the Earth's supply of oil was forseen to be gone within 10 years (no kidding).
Just a bit of pessimism about, well, pessimism.
The cynics here have all chimed in about the difference between making a pronouncement and following through, but we in the US have yet to make it to even the pronouncement stage. Aside from a few paltry tax breaks for SULEVs and allowing carpool lane access for motorcycles and other LEVs in certain places, nothing significant has been done to reduce our dependence on oil. A bill to require automakers to improve fuel economy over a period of several years was recently defeated, and the number of gas guzzling SUVs and Trucks on the road keeps rising, despite the fact that few of them offer useful performance enhancements and even fewer drivers would take advantage of them even if they did. My mom said to me last weekend, "I don't really like SUVs, but lately with all the cars on the road getting larger, I just don't feel safe in a small car." I realize that technology continues to improve our ability to stretch the supply of petroleum, but there are limits that too many of us refuse to acknowledge. We should take a lesson from Iceland instead of mocking them.
-- Adam
Maybe Iceland is in a way challenging other countries to follow suit. I mean America has this strong urge to out do everybody at everything, while keeping a good public image. Well what better than to help save the planet and promise you will do it in 20!
"where are we going, and why am I in a handbasket"
They will probably switch to whale oil.
It isn't like the Icelandic economy is booming, but 'weaning' themselves from fossil fuels will only put them at a disadvantage to the rest of the world. People need to face facts -- Fossil (which may not really be fossil after all) fuel is what drives the most successful economies in the world right now.
We are not going to run out of fuel, and even if we were, we'd figure out something else (move to hydrogen, etc.) but purposfully crippling your economy is just plain dumb.
But it is an interesting experiment, I just don't want to see it imported to the US, we have enough problems with the Enviro-Whackos increasing our energy costs.
Brian
Remember Lexington Green!
First, they have a relatively small population, with a weak economy (on a global scale), and an infrastructure that isn't yet as dependent on fossil fuels as other developed countries are. This means that the political momentum isn't driving nearly as hard towards the use of fossil fuels as somewhere like the US is. It's much easier to nimbly steer a small power boat than a fully laden oil-tanker.
Second, natural resource-wise, from the article at least, it appears that they have a significantly higher ratio of available energy density (through geothermal and hydro opportunities) per capita than most industrialized countries. Which would make them a significant exporter of energy, more like the Saudi Arabia of the post-fossil-fuel era than a country weaning itself from oil because it thinks it's the right thing to do for moral reasons.
Alternative energy and a hydrogen based economy is great and all, and this certainly won't hurt the argument, but let's not think that just because Iceland moves away from oil and into hydrogen that it will be a no-brainer to apply their model anywhere else.
I think the best we can hope for is that major manufacturers use them as a testbed to get more reliable, safer, and cheaper technologies developed for use in those countries that are currently more entrenched in the business of oil. Once those techs are developed, and the kinks are worked out, and a bigger country can use them to successfully transition away from petroleum, then there's a more reasonable discussion to be had about how ready the US is to go there.
Everything you ever wanted to know about Iceland (but were too stupid to ask)
Bjork, super stable gov't, low unemployment, more cell phones than land lines.
Sounds about right
--
pants ahoy
(By Bruce Bartlett)
On April 16, Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, published a startling report that old oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico were somehow being refilled. That is, new oil was being discovered in fields where it previously had not existed.
Scientists, led by Mahlon Kennicutt of Texas A the remaining 60 percent, which is known to exist, cannot be produced economically and is therefore not included in proven reserve estimates. However, higher prices and advanced technology can easily make it profitable to expand production in existing fields.
Higher prices also encourage exploration into areas that geologists strongly suspect to have oil, but where drilling costs are too high at present. Only a small portion of the Earth's surface has ever been explored for oil, and there is no reason to believe that there are not many large deposits yet to be discovered.
If oil were really becoming more scarce, we would expect to see prices rising over time. In fact, the real price of oil, adjusted for inflation, has been remarkably stable at around $15 per barrel. Temporary price spikes by OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) have not proved sustainable because they brought forth new supplies, encouraged substitution of oil with coal or gas, and stimulated conservation by consumers and businesses.
In short, even if the new scientific evidence about oil is wrong, one can still say the world will never run out of it. Higher prices will always bring new supplies to market. As Bjorn Lomberg points out in his new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press), $40 per barrel oil will immediately increase world reserves from a 40 years supply to 250 years because vast known oil shale deposits will become economically viable.
Of all the things we have to worry about in this day and age, running out of oil should not be one of them.
Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C., writes for Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century, Suite 700, Los Angeles, Calif. 90045.
Much easier for them than in many places in the world. They allready manage to heat almost of their homes with the abundance of the islands' geothermal power. And they are working vigorously to increase the amount of the elictricity they produce from it as well.
Don't get me wrong, it's very cool that they are making the most of their situation, but not many places in the world have it quite as easy as they do.
Now the rest of the 5.9999 billion people in Earth has just to move to Iceland where they can just make a hole on the ground and use geothermal energy and we won't need to use any more oil...
And I've got two more news for you:
-The forecasts that announce the inminent depletion of oil are flawed. Extraction techniques are advancing all the time.
-As oil becomes scarcer and dearer to pump out the market will provide new sources of energy. In this case free market definitely works.
Unlike other countries contemplating hydrogen power, Iceland has a chance to develop a genuinely carbon dioxide-free system, since the electricity to make hydrogen from the electrolysis of water will come from hydro or geothermal power , not fossil fuel.
..i bet the electric car is safer ..
So basically its still electricity ?
Now whats the difference between an electric car and a hydrogen powered car
I'm 40 years old. I remember being in middle school and learning that we would be out of oil by the year 2000.
Of course some researchers estimate that in 30-40 years we won't have much of a choice.
And others tend to disagree. Ever since the oil industry has come into existance there has been dire predictions of oil running out "real soon now," none of which have come true. Most estimates come from provable, recoverable reserves which are not static. New discoveries are made, as are new, cheaper methods to extract oil that was previously thought to be uneconomical.
I'd wager that we'll still be swimming in oil in 30-40 years.
even if I don't believe the people saying we're running out in 30-40 years
Right...because the world just has to have an unlimited supply.
-Greg
If you think you are running out of oil, Iceland, instead of acting like a silly celebrity thinking the sky is falling, call my friends down in Texas. I am sure they will be happy to sell you some oil from the massive underwater oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Its so abundant in the Gulf that if you SCUBA dive to the bottom you can see oil leaking from the sea floor all by itself. After that call, give Sting a ring and see where all that money that was donated to his Amazon forest campaigns went because it sure didn't go to the trees (the trees have no wallets or bank accounts...believe it or not).
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I don't find it suprising most of you claim not to care because we'll be out of oil in 30 years or because the population of iceland is less then most US cities. American is big and bad gets old and makes us seem ignorant to the rest of the work. But I do think you have to give them at least some credit for at least looking in the right direction if not taking one step that way.
Pravda.ru 20:56 2001-07-12
A NEW WAY TO PRODUCE ENERGY DISCOVERED BY RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS. USING NUCLEAR FUEL, GAS, OIL AND COAL CAN BE REFUSED
Russian scientists have made a sensational discovery. Some fundamental investigations realized by them could entail a real revolution on the field of industry and power engineering and allow to make series of new inventions.
Traditional ways of producing energy are becoming now unworkable. Completely new materials and technologies are being created. In particular, it is possible today to build so-called airborne vehicles of non- supported moving, like UFO...
According to the Russian Academy of Science member, Doctor of Technics Valeri Sobolev, a special electrochemical process has been discovered - "exhausting process" - which results in appearing high- temperature materials in a new condition". Therefore a new condition of a material, a new power source and a new superconducting matter have been received and magnetic charge has been discovered.
Scientists are intending now to work out completely new current sources for domestic and industry aims, which could continuously produce energy without using any kinds of fuel. It would allow to renounce using nuclear fuel, gas, oil and coal. Environment's condition could be bettered too. On the basis of "exhausting process" new ultrastrong materials are supposed to be created, which could be used in producing cars, planes and rockets. Metals and other constructing materials could be replaced with them.
The group of scientists has already sent a letter addressed to the Russian President, which informs about their discoveries. Now is the state's turn to give a government contractual work.
Good for them. The sooner people give up oil and adopt alternative energy sources, the sooner we can release ourselves from the grip of the mideast oil countries. Its sad to see countries bow to their demands all because they control the one thing the world needs to run on.
Iceland forsees giving up on oil when the price gets too high.
we wont run out of oil in 30-40 years, theyll just make it prohibitively expensive to use. remember supply and demand?
I want 2D games back.
Source: Washington Times
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
while the country waits for long-term storage solutions, such as carbon nanotubes.
.
I can't wait to take a picture of that
Thomas Gold of Cornell University says oil deposits may not actually be from decaying animal life but from methane left over from the Earth's origin. If that is the case, vast deposits would apparently exist throughout the earth, not just the surface deposits we are using now.
What that says about man's ability to destroy his environment, given a potentially limitless supply of tools, I hate to even think. No idea whether Gold'll be proved correct or not, but it's an interesting counterpoint.
I'm a child of the 80s, and every time we had a lecture on petroleum in grade school we were always going to run dry by 2012. When I debated in high school, we were at most going to have enough oil to last until 2020. Now I see that the date has been pushed back yet again -- these sorts of games do not rally confidence to the cause. Now that oil fields are being refilled, perhaps they'll have to re-hash their guesses yet again?
Now, I'm all for real, workable renewable resources -- and the best bet right now is with nuclear and crop-derivated oils -- but when a doomsday case is misstated repeatedly it does the cause no good at all.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
What does that mean?
No fuel oils, gasoline, kerosene?
Or does it mean no products made from oil at all?
Reading the article makes it sound like Iceland isn't going completely oil free.
Sure, it's going oil free for fuels, but what about ink, crayons, bubble gum, dishwashing liquids, deodorant, eyeglasses, CDs, tires, ammonia, road pavement or plastics?
Yea, they said this (running out of oil) 30 years ago. And they'll say it again 30 years from now.
In 1939 the Department of the Interior predicted we had 13 years of oil left.
Current predictions say we have 40 years of oil left (Fairhead and Leach 1998). That's "known reserves", and assumes that technology will stagnate, the price will stay constant and more oil will not be found. If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
They're still not counting the oil sands as part of known reserves: even though they are now profitably extracting. I've heard estimates that there are 100 years of oil in the Alberta oil sands alone.
Bryan
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/PAO/X-Press/stories/05080 2/ppl_morgan.txt.html
Also, there are companies that are designing airframes to be powered by electric motors and fuel cells. I can't find a link for that one. It was in Flying magazine a couple a months ago.
Umm, Afghanistan is not in the middle east.
if we don't follow iceland's lead (which i'm sure we won't) we'll probably be asking them for help in about twenty-five years. that or we'll wage a full-scale war on them for whatever excuse we can find or make up (icelandic copyright infringement mafia? not enough dunkin' donuts? um, them being smarter than us?)
a friend of mine recently moved to iceland to go to school and become a chef. it's a big deal over there, i guess. maybe i should go join him.
Uranium oxide is about as abundant as Tin in the earth's crust, and is a lot more effecient per pound than fossil fuels-- one uranium pellet contains the energy of 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas. If fossil fuels will indeed run out in a relatively short time frame, maybe nuclear energy should get a second look.
You define ignorant American...
Mod me down, but you know I'm right!
Blasted chrisd, he Does It Again... Another Spoiler!
...So getting oil from the ground was the next best thing. Getting rid of oil for energy usage is cheap and (technologically) easy. Just tell me where would you like those new nuclear power plants located? Or which mountain ranges get the 100,000,000 windmills? Or which desert should we cover in photovoltaics? Or which rivers we should dam. Finding suitable replacement for industrial use will be a bit of a challenge. Petrochemicals are used as a base material in so much of what we use every day. Conservation, however well intentioned, will not by itself save us. 3/4 of the world's population wants the standard of living the western world enjoys, and the western world isn't about to voluntarily reduce its standard of living. Don't believe me? Try telling your neighbor that he should give up his SUV because it isn't fair to sub-Saharan Africans. But do it from a safe distance.
The core problem with this is that it acts as a serious disincentive to other countries "why should we bend over backwards to save our environment when the US continues to pollute it?".
The US government claims that they want to stamp out terrorism, but that is like complaining about crime in your neighborhood while buying drugs from your local dealer - if you do business with dirty people, expect the mud to splash back every now and then. The only real way to do this is to stop interfering in the middle-east, and that means finding an alternative to oil (and no, the answer is not to start digging up Alaska, that would, at best, delay the inevitable).
Since they benefit from incredible geothermal power reserves naturally - it's just a matter of converting their already overwhelming amount of energy into something to propel vehicles.
The U.S. will have a tougher time of it - but every day we wait, our long term stability becomes more dicey.
Next thing you know we'll run out of oxygen because all the trees are gone!
...because Iceland is feeling the crunch of the Kyoto protocol in trying to expand its economy industrially. They want to cut down on CO2 emissions in things other than industrial output so that they can expand industrially and still maintain Kyoto standards.
So if I'm not mistaken the net impact on CO2 emissions is going to be the same as it is now. The CO2 will just come from a different source.
Those posts pointing out the world's dependency on fossil fuels are dead on. Ground and sea transportation are just one small part of the problem. Theres a lot more that needs to be addressed before any country in the world can get the "Oil Free" stamp.
"Unlike most of you, I am not a nut." - Homer J. Simpson
If oil was so scarce, or certain to become so in the near decades, one would think the oil companies would start raising prices by large proportions. A few pennies every year or so doesn't jibe with the "sky is falling" claims of so many people.
Guess it depends upon who paid for the study....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
that airplanes flying into/out of Iceland have to bring their own refill fuel?
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
I seem to remember back in the "Oil Crisis" of '78 that some experts said that we would totaly run out of fossil fuel by 1990. On the other hand, if this scares people into looking for alternatives....I'm all for it.
But likely quite a bit more than 30-40 years. There are approximately 30-40 years left of proven reserves that are economical to extract. However, it's extremely likely that more will be found in the next 30-40 years. And even if not, as the economical ones dry up, oil prices will go up, and others will begin to become economical to extract. And some of the others (such as the oil in oil sands) are extremely vast reserves. So oil may get more expensive in the next 30-40 years, but it's extremely unlikely it'll actually run out completely.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's really bloody simple. Though it doesn't go too in depth, you can get all the information from reading the article: "Converting all the country's 180,000 vehicles and 2,500 fishing trawlers to hydrogen won't happen overnight." It doesn't mention airplanes or plastics so it is safe to assume they're focusing on cars, buses and boats. Would any country be free of fossil fuels if they decided to stop using them? No, probably not, but there's a big difference between using them wisely and just being over-dependent.
Iceland gets about 40% of it's energy from fossil fuels, this is what it wants to get away from. All of this fuel is for cars, busses and ships. It has a huge electricity surplus from hydro and geothermal plants built after it got it's independence when European colonialization collapsed in the 40's. A lot of this energy is exported in the form of aluminum but you can't easily burn that, so hydrogen just makes a lot of sense. Iceland was also burned by leaded gas, they kept using it until some time in the 80's or early 90's, and it became the number one pollutant in the capital. This was discovered in the city playgrounds, which had hundred of times the safe limits for lead. Just image the media fiasco.
The whole running out of oil was based on the continental US oil reserves running down, but then the middle east oil was discovered. If you listen carefully the experts don't say we'll run out but that the cost will increase to a point where other fuels cost less. There will still be plenty of oil for candles and plastics, but it will be too expensive to simply burn for fuel just like we no longer burn whale blubber for fuel.
We can also make candles and plastics out of agricultural oils, and eventually we will. Whether that will be in 200 years or 2000 I can't tell you, and frankly don't care.
Just wait till OPEC decides to buy Iceland.
what about lubricants, paraffin, plastics, ...
FERTILIZER
So while we are thinking of solar and fuel cell based cars (trucks, tractors, generators, lawnmowers), we better come up with substitutes for the rest of life's little "necessities". Are we going to clear more forest and wear out more soil trying to produce biomass to make up for this? Obviously this is a non-trivial problem.
On the plus side, there would be much less smog in cities without infernal combustion engines.
I've heard that before, I think 30 years ago they were saying the same thing, that in 2000 or so we would run out of fossil fuels ect. And sometimes I wonder if these type of statements are simply ment to force people to change the type of engery they are using.
Om, nomnomnom...
Now I can eat Iceland with all of the taste, but none of the guilt.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
hasn't this already been proven, that it's a renewable resource that is naturally produced by earth..? HELLoooo.......
when I forgot to pay the gas bill. Those were some really cold showers. [Serious note: The power plant that we get the juice from uses coal, and I don't own a car, so I truly was off of oil.]
You're only as smart as your brain.
Iceland.
Population: 277,906 (July 2001 est.)
There's more people in an average city.
Anything Iceland does is not really relevant on a world scale.
In other news: Grandma Fluegelbaum decides not to buy any more prunejuice!
Let's all follow her example!
There will be a prunejuice shortage in 30 years anyway!
They are a teansie weansie little country in comparison to most in terms of oil consumption.
Heck, I couldn't find any stats on it, but I am willing to bet that the city of Sao Paulo, Brasil consumes more oil(related products) than the entire country of Iceland on a daily basis.
Try this with a LARGE country(in terms of dependance on fossil fuels) and see how far it gets.
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
They didn't say they were going to stop using oil outright, just stop using it as fuel.
30-40 years ago they did say we were going start running out of oil. Well today, just go to any small West Texas town. Oil was the only industry were I grew up. It was booming the 70s and 80s, but now the reserves are so depleted it is getting too expensive to get the oil out of the ground so the oil companies are pulling out.
Maybe we have more than 40 years, but people that say it will never run out are mistaken.
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Everybody knows the worlds oil was created when the fifth elephant crashed into the ground....
oh no - that was the discworld !!!
So most Icelanders use geothermal energy to heat their homes, and mroe is on the way with the plan to kick the oil habit. But where does this energy come from?
As I understand it, it comes from the warmth of the earth, which in turn is created by the gravitational pressure cooking our core and the sun. If we start depleting this energy, what could be the side effects? Maybe Iceland alone isn't enough to have a noticable effect, but neither would Iceland have a big effect if they were the only fossil-fuel-exhaust producing nation.
Would rampant geothermal use (say as high as our current fossil fuel usage) cool the earth to some damaging end?
And the usage of plastic is of course very high (irrationally so), but that can be cut back as well. When's the last time you walked into a McDonald's and your hamburger was in a strofoam case?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One thing that hydrogen enthusiasts often seem not to know is that hydrogen is already produced on a large scale, a megatonne or two annually in North America, from fossil fuels.
Nor is a hydrogen infrastructure absent. There are lH2 tanker trucks. Not enough of them, of course, to support tens of millions of hydrogen cars.
Abundantly enough, though, to support the number of such cars that that deep-pocketed clean-motoring enthusiasts, not affiliated with government nor with a car company's research division, have insisted on pioneering. (To the best of my knowledge, that number is holding steady at zero.)
And hydrogen cars, too, exist and have existed for many years (http://www.hydrogen.org/h2cars/overview/cardata/6 7.html, http://www.hydrogen.org/h2cars/overview/cardata/78 . tm).
This makes greenie hydrogen enthusiasts' position seem to boil down to, "Nothing's missing but much higher-priced hydrogen."
A more respectable sort of hydrogen advocate, indeed almost as good as me, since I once was so, is the kind that expect cheaper-than-fossil-derived hydrogen to be made using nuclear thermal methods such as this: http://inisjp.tokai.jaeri.go.jp/ACT00E/09/0903.htm
There was a very interesting article in a recent issue of Astronomy. To summarize (from memory)...
Carbon Stars (A particular period in the life of a star where the carbon produced in the core has reached the surface), seem to produce complex hydrocarbons in great numbers. This is suggested by spectrograms of the light produced. Some of these spectrograms seem to indicate that the building blocks of coal and oil (ketones) are being produced as well. The numbers, from memory are around 1 million Earth masses a year.
If the star previous to our sun had a carbon cycle (which i believe from reading this its quite common) then the deposits we are finding could be the remnants of what was deposited on the earth during the formation of it, rather then from organic matter.
If that were to be the case, then this could be the source that this article mentions.
That would mean that hydrocarbon energy could be nearly limitless.
Personally, I always had a hard time beliveing that enough plant matter could die in the same spot and be covered over to create oil fields that would hold millions and millions of barrels of oil. I mean, what plant matter/animal matter could possibly have died under the sea floor in those great #'s?. I can see the amazon rain bason, but there's alot of oil and gas and coal just about everywhere on earth.
The downside to this abundance, would be that everyone would just get SUV's and gas guzzlers and our air would go to shit. But we might just have to have the strength to let that be the reason to use less rather then keep talking about how the sky will fall. But the hydrocarbon family of molecules is a very efficiant energy store, and it just happens to be in the dirt.
There's far more oil in the USA then in all of the middle east, just a small group of luddites won't allow anyone to pump it out. Put you won't hear that on the news, as it isn't Politically Correct.
Fusion plants will be banned as soon as the green crowd see's them being built, as they ban -everything-.
because we'll be out of oil the way our consumption is growing.
http://www.dieoff.org/
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
This doesn't mean we'll always be able to sqeeze another drop, simply that predictions of The End [tm] are always wrong.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
The article was saying that this was generally meant for transportation use of oil. They have a lot of busses and fishing trawlers and stuff over there and therefore end up with a high per capita amount of greenhouse emissions. So, they want to switch to engines that use hydrogen.
...I like Iceland so much.
Plusses:
Good club scene
Clean
Little air pollution (even with gas vehicles)
No shortage of hot water
Gorgeous women
Decent exchange rate for tourists
Nearly unlimited supply of cod
Cheap airfare
Minuses:
Crappy beer
Awful native food
Expensive everything
No trees
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
Entire United States furrows its brow quizzically, and then forgets this story...
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
In 20 years we will all be flying about using machines out based from href="http://www.americanantigravity.com/">ANTI GRAV and they seem to have come up with a decent clean power supply.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
Iceland is a good candidate to make the big leap, since they draw a great bulk of their energy from geothermal and hydroelectric means. I'd like to say that's all policy-related and that they would be an excellent model for the U.S. -- but then, few countries come close to Iceland in terms of volcanic activity...
noted environmental scientists like Woody Harrelson, Cher, Sting and Bono
By "Bono" do you mean "Bono" from the band U2 or the late "Bono" who sang with Cher and gave Michael Ei$ner everything he wanted?
(Yeah, I know, -1 Offtopic...)You're right that the long term point isn't about whether oil is going to run out, but it's also not about how high the price goes.
In the long term, the point is about how much easily accessable oil we leave for our descendants to use. I mean the descendants that will need to bootstrap themselves after the next ice age or big asteroid impact. Because we're going to do squat to prepare for the first one; it's only after it happens (and it will) that our descendants will realise that we'd better get the hell off the planet while we still can.
Let's leave them some easily accessible resources, huh? This isn't some hypothetical piece of science fiction. We either care enough to plan for it, or we don't. What's it to be?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
And The Washington Times. If they print something, it's GOT to be true. Never mind who wrote this editorial, or who he works for. Never mind that the Times is run by the Unification Church and is a mouthpiece for the right.
Gold's "Hot Deep Biosphere" theory is just a theory, and a highly dubious one.
This theory has become popular with folks on the right, because, well, they'll be damned if anyone is going to make them change the way they think about things.
Taking responsibility, facing facts, and planning ahead, well, damn, that's just plain bad for profits.
Has anybody seen "A Kentucky Fried Movie"? In the movie, there is an fake ad for a company that is harvesting the oil from the faces of teenagers. If we could only do that! ;^)
testing out my trending skills
Greenpeace is down in the Antartic screwing it up in the name of the "environment" and claiming to keep an eye on the scientists there.
They are just a bunch of beggers that want to vacation in exotic places on the donations of the naieve.
The only good thing france ever did was blow up that damn Greenpeace boat.
I was talking about the U2 lead singer as Sonny Bono currently is in the process of turning into a fossil fuel.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Out of fairness and completeness, here's the Amazon.com listing for Gold's book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387985468
Bad: The free market squanders resources into scarcity.
Essentially, the free market works on supply and demand. If the perceived supply is larger than the perceived demand, the price is low. If it's the other way around, the price is high. But there seems to be an underlying assumption that the market can correct supply/demand balance issues. This is where "perceived" comes in. Sometimes we all tend to ignore problems as long as possible. Then when we notice we panic. In free market lingo, this means a price spike.
For some price spikes, adjusting manufacturing output can fix things, and this is the way the free market is supposed to run. For some things like teachers and nurses, there is a necessary lag while the 'teacher and nurse factories' ramp up. For some things, like natural resources, the only recovery path is to shift to another resource, requiring innovation and retooling, probably taking longer than training a teacher or nurse. Reality isn't as flexible as money and manufactured goods.
The other side is that insiders can manipulate the free market, to some extent. IMHO, the oversupply of financial advisors and lawyers certainly hasn't caused a corresponding drop in prices.
Good side: Many, name your favorites.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Colonization is a strange word to use. As if its population did not consist almost exclusively of the descendants of the vikings who settled Island about a thousand years ago.
Would you say that Norway was a colony of Sweden as well?
Oh... 40 years. I think thats when my body will
start it's slow transition too becoming
oil. Guess I'll get buried in Iceland.
So you basically propose modifying plants to cause oil spills or explosive clouds? I just can't wait, but I sure as hell will be holding my breath.
"In related news, a supertanker sunk when crossing an alcohol cloud caused by ModiWeed that ignited due to an electrical spark." Hmmm. I want that stuff!
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
I could be wrong but isn't plastic made from some form of oil? What about candles? Asphalt? Or are they only talking about oil used for nrg?
If we start doing the same thing here, at some point, they listen. I think we take this document and use it as a battle flag. With the availability of ethanol we could solve 3 problems at once:
BTW, in a recent vote taken by Exxon-Mobil, there was increased support for embracing renewable energy. Not too much support, but improving.
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
I'm don't think we'll run out of oil in 30-40 years, and that is what scares me. It could just be that Iceland isn't doing this because they'll have to eventually anyway, but they're doing it because they live in a sensitive area of the planet.
Oil will never 'run out.' An article in the Washington Times today tries to demonstrate this: http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20020529-43772 260.htm.
Regarding environmental concern, greater access to fuels today will result in even greater economic and energy efficiency tomorrow - levels that never would have been reached had acces to fuels been restricted.
and the same with grain once large-population third world countries (Think china and india) industrialize and lose farming land to suburbs and industrial shit.
count on it.
aircraft easily run on synthetic and organic fuels. there have been tons of sucessful tests of using an ethanol (corn gas) fuel in prop aircraft. and there has been sucessful tests with another process to produce kerosene for jet fuel that has only slightly lower efficiency..
the problem is that iceland cant GROW anything let alone corn for their fuel habits..
they had better build a crapload of nuke plants during the next 30 years....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
We kiss Saudi tush because they are the only major oil "swing producer". A swing producer is someone who has a large amount of excess capacity who can influence world oil supply (and thus prices) significantly by turning on their pumps. Within weeks, if they want, the Saudis can start pumping a lot more oil and thus they can cause the spot price of oil to drop a lot. (They did this for six months right after 9/11 by the way, which had the nice effect of mitigating its' impact on our economy. Give em some credit.)
The Saudis could also swing the other way easily, reducing their oil exports and thus causing oil prices to go up (since nobody else has much spare capacity to make up for the lack of supply). However the Saudi's ability drive up prices this way has constricted somewhat since the 1970s due to a number of factors: 1) the Saudi's domestic welfare program has greatly expanded and still requires oil revenues to keep their citizens happy, 2) Saudi Arabia is now a net debtor nation so net revenue shortfalls require borrowing and creditors, 3) the number of oil substitutes at a given price has risen, 4) long term price rises drive conservation response which reduces long-term demand, not in the Saudi interest 5) the US has a Strategic Petroleum reserve at its disposal that was not present in 1973.
As for ignoring friends to the north, I'm not sure we do. (If we did, I'd agree it'd be a stupid mistake.) The northern Alberta oil sands are great, and I think they are novel enough to have not really entered the generic political dialogue. Since I've had people in the oil industry mention them to me since 9/11, I'm sure the oil crowd in power in Washington knows about them. I suspect we just don't advertise it, unless we're in private talks and want to wield a big stick.
The other problems with the oil sands are, as you noted, that it only supplies 2% of our oil and it can't expand production rapidly (without throwing vast sums of money at it, as one might do in a world war.) And while the reserves are apparently huge, they can't all be extracted at that $7 price you mention. It'll get more economical as chemists and others learn how to extract the tar and refine it more efficiently, no doubt. But that takes time. And the Saudis can turn the spigots on or off at their whim, and nobody else has lots of spare capcity they can bring online rapidly at that lower price.
Except perhaps the Russians, as they start exporting more and building more facilities. This came to light a little bit more when certain middle-eastern countries started talking about using the 'oil weapon' against the US a month or two back. Iraq cut its shipments for a month, and I believe Russia boosted theirs. Which is clearly the implied threat we've been delivering to the Saudis since 9/11. Don't screw us or we'll turn to the Russians (and ensure that they have enough pipelines?) to make them the second major swing producer.
All of which is sort of ironic since we used the Saudis to squeeze the Russian economy to collapse back during the Gorbachev era (search Amazon or another equivalent for the book "Victory!" for the full story on that one.)
Verify what I say; I'm not an expert, but I have definitely been reading up on all this and thinking about it more since 9/11.
--LP
Yeah this is great as long as you don't take into account all the green house gases thier damn volcanos spew into the air every year! One good eruption will pump more crap into the atmosphere then all the gas burning cars combined!
but damn don't we FEEL good. let's get into a big circle and start singing kumbiya!
[Emphasis mine]
Airplanes? Tractors? Lawnmowers? Chainsaws? Rototillers? Mobile worksite generators? What about cooking? Are there no gas grills or propane camp stoves in Iceland? I think you're overlooking some things.
"Of course some researchers estimate that in 30-40 years we won't have much of a choice."
Funny, they said the same thing back in the 80s. In fact, we should be living in a Mad Max world by now... Troll me, but it's the truth.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The above post has been trolled to you courtasy of Al Gore, of Washington, D.C. and author of "Earth in the Balance".
Most famous for challenging only counties that he *won* in Florida during the 2000 US Presidential Elections, then throwing a straw-man arguement to the US Supreme Court, essentually asking them to proclaim him emperor of the US environmental movement. His followers, in general, have no grasp of the US electorial process and believe that the overall popular vote counts for something. He did win the 3 electorial votes of his home "State", the District of Columbia, but lost every State south of there.
Another trait of his followers, in general, is a distain for anything powered by oil-based fuel, unless there would-be emporer is using one of course. Were any of those government vehicles in the Vice-Presidential fleet using pure hydrogen? no. Electricity? no. Clean burning Natural Gas? no.
So, beware the "environmentalists" unless they are spreading their word without the benefit of the technology they wish to take away from YOU!
The line is, "Duck Dodgers, we are facing a crisis. There is a severe shortage of the shaving cream atom." Or alternatively, it's sometimes a shortage of the "yo-yo polish atom." Illudium-Pew-36 is Marvin the Martian's invention to blow up the earth because it obstructs his view of Venus. Never mess up your Looney Tunes!
Shutting up. Do you do anything all day, or just read slashdot. Must be a college student or unemployed web developer or something. Jeez, get a life and education.
The fact is that you can find substitutes for gas power in all of these things except for possibly the airplanes. That's the problem with the Slashdot crowd and probably every crowd when it comes to the environment - too much thinking in terms of the way things are now. What ever happened to imagination and thinking towards problems? Hospitals and police stations have been using fuel cell generators for years (because of their critical needs), why not use those at worksites? Yard management things like lawnmowers and chainsaws can be replaced with electric versions, old human powered versions, or better yet none at all (which I imagine is probably the way it is in most cities). Cooking...hmmm. Alcohol or universal camp stoves. What about electric or wood stoves and grills? I think that you are overlooking some/many things, too.
-dr. layyze f. tooth PhD
That's millions of people, you callous bastard.
DNA just wants to be free...
Even at our current rate of consumption, we're not going to run out of oil any time soon. But there is mounting evidence that most of our existing wells (both foreign and domestic) have passed their peak or will do so within the next 10-20 years. This is actually a good thing, IMO, because it means that rather than a catastrophic collapse of our oil-based economy, the oil will just start getting more and more expensive, which means that our economy will hopefully have time to adjust and roll out new technologies based on other energy sources.
But it's not going to be easy or painless, and a scenario like this will happen sooner or later -- you can't consume a finite resource forever -- so it behooves us to start thinking about the transition NOW, rather than while we're staring down the barrel of $5/gallon gasoline. (Sorry 'bout the pun. It wasn't intentional... at least not initially.)
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
We built the atomic bomb in just a few years. Don't you think we also have the brain power to wean ourselves off of oil? Think about it: no Iran-Contra, no Gulf War, no 9/11 attacks, no coming world economic collapse when/if the oil supply suddenly runs out.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I'm surprised that many people react with derision to this article. The US generates more CO2 and uses more energy per capita than any other nation on earth and I would think that they would be interested in some alternate form of energy. Is it perhaps because this *isn't* happening in the US.
The ironic thing about using electrolysis to seperate water is that solar power is just as good for this, so it doesn't have to happen in Iceland. Any country with a fair amount of sun can make their own hydrogen. What's even more ironic is that those countries that presently supply most of the world's oil also have most of the world's sun.
No more plastic for Iceland?
Being that I live in the NYC area and was in Manhattan on 9/11/2001, I think that a better revenge than following the Taliban through caves would be to begin severing our oil umbilical cord. All of those countries complain about us all the time, but their upper echelon is filthy rich off of the money we pay them for their black gold. Let's see how they like it when we don't even need them for that anymore! Although it won't stop them from hating us any more... probably just use the new focus as a way to stir up even more hate over there (if that's even possible).
The worlds addiction to oil is what gives the middle east power. THAT, is a big enough reason to stop using oil. saudi arabia and their neighbors have unchecked control and influence through oil. I cant think of a larger group of humans who are less worthy of such power. The world lets saudi arabia sponser mass murder and hide the murders out of the fear the saudis might cut production. In the US, having a second generation oil pimp at the helm is a problem too. I know nothing will change as long as big oil has such a corrupting influence on US politics and policies. The civilized world should of started to wean themselves from oil back in the 70's. What a wonderfull world it would be if the middle east had the power they are worthy of and deserve-NONE, and my car ran on water.
why would they want to build more power plants? - They got enough electricity from geothermal plants
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Hydrogen is a really nifty way of storing energy from solar cells or wind farms, it also provides a good method of moving the energy from point A to point B.
Imagine solar-thermal or solar-electric plants in the the Mojave or wind farms on Altmont pass or the Great Plains. As for water to crack into hydrogen you can use seawater, untreated sewage, or other sources not suited for drinking or agriculture. Also liquid O2 is a somewhat valuible commodity and can be sold.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
That is like saying, "I'm not going to eat anymore, since the Second Coming will happen any minute." Only it is worse since he was in a leadership position and therefore forced everyone else to participate in his point of view.
Lasers Controlled Games!
How the fsck is it that a government forcing its citizens to give up something can be called "voluntary"?
Everybody knows that we don't have to worry about depleating oil wells any longer. Now that the world has the Jasker this is a moot point.
Hey.. did I mention that drunk Irishmen are a renewable resource as well?
mod me neyah.
And all we need to do is got to the corner and buy it from the guy that killed your brother.
Now that may be a little overly dramatic but the point is the same. I agree that we are not about to run out of oil. What I have a problem with is that countries that we do not like and that don't like us have us in their pocket due to oil. Most of the 9/11 terrorists came from saudi arabia but are they in the "axis of evil"? No, cause they gots the oil. I also don't like that to keep our gas prices low, the government uses tax dollars to subsidize the industry. I think americans would care more about getting off oil if we had gas prices similar to europe. But that will never happen as long as we have oil-rich people in power.
-matt
The day someone invents Cold Fusion or some other TRULY cheap & clean alternative to oil...
1) Goodbye Palestine!
2) Goodbye USA kissing up to our "friends" the Saudis! (holding telethons for suicide-murder bombers??? WTF?!?!?!?!?)
A drop in karma may be necessary here, but it had to be said.
During the earth's differentiation heavy elements (iron, nickel) settled towards the core and light elements rose to the crust. This is confirmed from orbital mechanics. This means that the earth isn't one big ball of "star oil". The reason why the plant/animal theory of fossil fuel origins exists is due to the multitude of fossils found in coal deposits from specific time periods. The oil deposits undersea come from millions of years of ocean microorganisms dying and settling to the ocean floor. The ocean has a very thick layer of fine mud and dead organisms on the seafloor. How do you think thousands of feet thick layers of limestone formed? (composed of microorganisms, etc) This is not a fast process but the earth has had about 4 billions years (start of the pre-Cambrian) to arrive at this point.
If stars were responsible for fossil fuels then how did the carbon compounds get deposited in such large amounts without wiping out life? And if they arrived during planetary formation shouldn't we see signs of them on other planets? (i.e. seepages).
Regardless of the amount or sources of fossil fuels the exhaustion of them is becoming incidental to the problems caused by their production and overuse. The earth's bio/atmosphere can only absorb so much. Sacrificing the earth's climate because people don't want to ride the bus isn't a good reason.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
So we can have cheap and clean geothermal energy everywhere.
Only, not in my back yard, please...
well, of course they will always be wrong. Until the one time they're right. Ignoring them based simply on the fact that they haven't been right yet is tempting but illogical. Russian Roulette is completely safe right up until the one time it isn't.
This is not to say the predictions can't be dismissed for some other reason, but the idea that something is ok simply because nothing bad has happened yet is a recipe for disaster.
Won't they miss the threats, the terrorism?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Plastics can be made from coal. Eastman Chemical does just that. Do a search on "Coal Gassification."
The U.S. has an estimated 400-year supply of coal.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Running out of oil is not the point.
There are two points:
Ecological:
Will we run out of oil before the air is too toxic to breath.
Iceland's economy:
They are better off making energy at home for ~free than paying to import it.
Just because there is a lot of oil, that does not mean we should burn it.
This is not a political statement. This is not legal advice. It's a frick'n Slasdot post. However: I'm Running For
Ummm, ever heard of Hemp?
Dude, Iceland is an amazing place. It is one of the very very few nations/states in the world. The people that run the state government are also, more or less, the native people.Despite the fact that Iceland has had abundant coal supplies, it really has not been screwed to much by other large superpower states such as the US.
What's really interesting is that since Iceland is so small, run by native people, and self sufficient, the population is a LOT more aware of what happens when you start to pollute. Here in the americas we have a lot of land and the long term affects of pollution are diluted. We have more space to put our cancer causing filth out of site, moreover, we're not as connected to our home as the Icelandic are, we're nothing more then a bunch of immigrants.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
don't get me wrong, our dependence on oil is a damn shame, and weaning ourselves of oil would solve a whole plethora of problems, political ones in the middle east and environmental ones everywhere. but iceland should hardly be held up as an example of what we all could do, due to the fact that iceland has geothermal sources of energy like no other place on earth. they can stick pipes in the ground and heat every building on the island through the hardest winter ferchrisake, so they hardly serve as a shining example for us all. they are merely blessed with a renewable, easily and economically tapped, pollution-free source of energy unlike any place on earth.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How can one NOT be dependent on fossil fuel when the tool responsible for generating more than half of a countries export income is powered by fossil fuel. (I'm talking about the trawlers here).
Iceland is small enough and homogeneous enough that they can all pretty much agree on anything, especially if it'll help bolster Tourism which this latest announcement certainly will. It's easy for them to announce to the world, "Hey! Look at us. We're all riding bikes now!" Ding ding! when their entire country is the size of a postage stamp. How much immigration do they have in Iceland? How did they help in Somalia? Who invented rock and roll? ; )
**>>BELCH
and Europe is better? How about the anti-immigration movement and the popularity of far right thinking? I would venture to say it is a result of this "community" at a country scale you speak of.
Future planning such as this is socialist thinking, and don't forget that with socialism there are a number of problems.
The question is which problematic political system are you willing to accept?
(BTW, I'm not from the US or Europe, and my country has problems of its own too, but it bothers me that you can be so smug when Europe is in some ways *fucked* up)
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Nobody knows how much oil is left. The best we have are "estimates", which themselves have have significant degrees of uncertainty. Based on my reading, I'd say the amount of actual known reserves might vary by a factor of 2-3x due to various players hiding their cards and understating or overstating their known/suspected reserves. It's not in each players' interest to disclose how little or large their reserves are.
And I'd guess current estimates of reserves could underestimate actual supply by 10-1000x based on what we don't know about geological areas around the world, about how oil is formed, about how to efficiently extract it. While these might not effect "reserves" under a strict version of your definition, they obviously would affect "supply" which I think was what your initial question was asking ('how much oil is left?')
With those caveats in mind, I offer you two links to address your question.
The US Department of Energy's global reserve estimates, and
a mid-2001 analysis of defining and analyzing the primary sources of global reserve figures by Jean Laherrere. I can't vouch for his analysis (the chart on the bottom of page 5 shows reported reserves going up but his analysis of them going down, something I haven't read closely enough to understand) since I've only run across it today, and a website named oilcrisis.org might indicate some bias, but I've seen his name before and its a resource worth checking out if you want to know how much oil is left.
--LP
Man the Greenies are vicious today! :) I think this is a great case of over moderation. A whole 10 points wasted. I post at Score: 2 to start with. Imagine if those points would have been used on other worthwhile posts.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Airplanes?
yes
Tractors?
yes
Lawnmowers?
Not really, electric and manual are used, doesn't
grow so fast.
Chainsaws?
Maybe a dozen, most of the trees were cut down a thousand years ago.
Rototillers?
Not everyone is an American.
Mobile worksite generators?
Hospitals and such may have them, there has been a move to decentralize power for some time, hence the geothermal. The problem is that if a long distance transmission line goes out for some town of a 100 in the North it's really hard to reconnect them in the middle of a snow storm.
What about cooking?
Electric Range is universal.
Are there no gas grills or propane camp stoves in Iceland?
There are some propane camp stoves, grills use charcoal, makes for better burgers.
I think you're overlooking some things.
And you've overlooked the point.
Those uses are too tiny to even worry about.
I was going to say just transportation instead of listing the three things that use 99.9% of the fuel, but I doubt you would have had a much different reply. I'm surprised you didn't list home heating, but I guess that would have made you too obvious a straw man.
Iceland has to import all its oil, which accounts for near hald of it's energy needs. It would be absolutely idiotic not to fix that since it's relatively easy and painless. It's running a small trade deficit which would be a large surplus if it weren't for the oil addiction. Its economy is growing quickly for a developed nation and pollution is already a problem that looks to get worse if nothing is done.
Yeah, hemp grows really well up near the arctic circle. And I'd be realllly interested to see something plastic made from hemp.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Petroleum is used in a lot more than simply oil and gasoline! Clothing, styrofoam, food products/additives, plastics, etc.
It's wonderfully versatile stuff.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Well, look at it this way. The Rocky Mountains where I live are made up of limestone. Limestone is the accumulation of decayed shells of organisms, most of em microscopic diatoms - where I live, the layers visible to the naked eye are kilometers deep; I'm sure they extend a lot farther down than the cliff faces I can see. So, if there were enough shells produced in the oceans (which cover 75% of the earth, don't forget) to build mountains kilometers thick, I'm not terribly surprised that there was enough dead organic matter there as well to make a small amount (compared to a mountain) of oil.
i mean who cares if we have plenty of fuel what about
the air what will it be like in 40 years ?
...unless decided unanimously by individuals.
If by "Iceland" we mean "Iceland's government", then this is the exact opposite of voluntary, because anything a government does is by nature and definition coercive.
Actually it does, Canada is growing industrial hemp right now...
And I'd be realllly interested to see something plastic made from hemp.
Ummm, did you follow the link? Or was that too much trouble?
I dunno, be a cynical ass if you want, but you might want to do a _wee_ bit of research first...
isn't that like saying you're going to quit smoking in about 3 or 4 years, nothing definate, because you really don't want to quit so you just say something to get people off your back.
All of those countries complain about us all the time, but their upper echelon is filthy rich off of the money we pay them for their black gold.
The second one of those "backwards" Middle Eastern countries tries to nationalize their oil industries, America makes sure they pay with blood and tears.
See the above post about Iran, which today no longer has an "upper elechon (which gets) filthy rich off of the money we pay them," and the US villianizes them to no end, simultaneously making their intentions for the region obvious (witness Suadi Arabia) and making them the laughing stock of Europe (any country that considers Iran even *near* the 'worst' of Middle Eastern countries is borked)
While you would be correct to say that the USA may "run out of energy" if it remains on an oil-based economy, you would be incorrect in stating that this means all the regions of the USA will suffer.
In point of fact, the 1/6th of the US economy in the Western States are on track to use between 10 and 15 percent alternative energy by 2012 (mostly wind, solar, fuel cells, and biofuels), while the rest of the nation is on track to use 5 percent by 2025.
Given that California (which is bigger in GDP than most of Europe) alone is scheduled to phase out gasoline-fuel cars by 2012, this is not much of a concern for those of us in the West - or other places like Vermont, which are forward looking.
So, Iceland may be the only Country/Nation to go oil-free in 30-40 years, but parts of the USA will have gone oil-free by that time as well, even if the Nation hasn't.
[caveat - I own direct shares in Chevron-Texaco, Green Mountain Power (of Vermont), Florida Power and Light, and Peabody (coal) among other energy stocks]
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I'm getting the silly feeling that the average slashdotter seems to be more worried about the fact that oil reserves might not run out than the fact that what the Icelanders intend to do is very applaudable because they are showing some initiative and are willing to develop different energy sources. And so what if there is enough oil for a long time, that doesn't mean that this isn't a good initiative that could be beneficial for others too.
Personally I really like "green" electricity, I think it makes my computer run much better (no, just kidding) I think it is a good initiative and could never be less good than the energy we are using nowadays. Maybe the effect of burning fossil fuels is not as bad as some would like us to believe, but it most likely has some negative effects which can be eliminated using green fuels.
So, kudos to Iceland!
(BTW, the Dutch (all, besides me) really like their ancient windmills which make our flat landscapes look oh so nice, but when you want to build a beautiful, modern energy providing windmill they (again all, besides me) say they're polluting the horizon! and that from a country that is as flat as a mirror and that wants to have 15% green fuels in just a few years)
"We live in our minds, and existance is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality" Ayn Rand
We'd already be completely weaned off petro a long time ago. We've had a viable alternative to petro since 1912.
http://www.biodiesel.com
1) The environment is fucked due to the US and global warming will drown us all in 10 years.
2) The environment is pretty bad, but if we revert to a caveman society we can survive.
3) The environment is bad, but with some tough cuts in pollution and quality of life we can recover.
4) The environment is getting better, but we need to do more to avert a global meltdown.
5) The environment is ok, we can stay at the status quo.
6) The environment is degrading, but we are working on alternative green energy.
7) What a bunch of crap, the US is destroying the entire world.
Ok, if I could I would have made that into a survey, but I do not have that power (curse you Cowboy Neil!). Seriously though, if you read the posts at 0 you will get all of the above idealogies in a very strange sorta-Bell curve.
Anyway, it's kinda neat to see all these differing opinions clash it out. (Personally, I think I should be God-Emperor of the world, but I'm only one guy)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
As for claims of making plastics from cellulose....again I say show me a real product, not claims that "obviously it can be done".
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I think it's a great idea! How often have we heard growing up to save our resources? To recycle? I'm all for it.
draggie69
From Corn no less!
http://www.cdpoly.com/natureworks.asp
And Cargill, while a family owned company, is no small potatoes in the world of business.
"If you listen carefully the experts don't say we'll run out but that the cost will increase to a point where other fuels cost less."
Well, that's sort of double-speak isn't it. Are you asserting that if supply-and-demand did not function, and the price remained steady that the supply would not run out, or are you asserting that the supply won't have a chance to run out because when it gets low enough the price will sky-rocket?
The USGS certainly does assert that the supply will dwindle. Their expectation is (perhaps unreasonably) that the global oil community will curtail oil sales sometime between 2030 and 2060 in order to maintain a 10:1 reserve to production ratio (which is where the US has always been, but the world market is up around 50:1 right now). As that ratio drops, something will have to happen. It would be more disasterous to suddenly "run out" then to curtail sales and strech the budget of oil out into the latter part of the century.
And just to nail the point home, these studies also take into account the discovery of new sources of oil and new techniques. This is factored into the equations as an annual growth in the oil reserves (which cannot accomodate the exponential growth in demand, of course, but every little bit helps).
From: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t11b.txt
Average daily Canadian oil production (in ALL of Canada): 2.1 mb
Oil US imports from Saudia Arabia: 2.5 mb
Produces approx. the same amount of oil as Saudia Arabia, so they can definitely be used as a replacement.
There are an estimated 1 trillion barells in world reserves. The world eats about 27 million barells per year. It's estimated that we increase oil use at about 2.2 percent per year. At that rate we'll only use up about 10 billion barrels, or 1% of the oil reserves, in 100 years.
Look it up in an encyclopedia.
_______
2B1ASK1
Yeah in that case England was once a Danish colony, which sounds rather absurd now ;)
This announcement really has very little to do with oil reserves running low, the wonders of hydrogene, or anything other than the fact that they need to sell shares in this new venture they call "New Energy". Now granted of the many crack-pot schemes the Icelandic government (and private sector) have been involved in, this may be a worthy cause to fight for.
..
But I give it about as much chance of coming to fruition in the near future as some of their other "crazy" plans, such as:
1) Running a super-cooled electric cable to main land Europe.
2) Convincing themselves and some parts of the world that they'll make trillions on DNA research, and that they are close to breakthru's when in reality they are still in the very basic research stages (but hey companies need to raise money - why not make people think they are closer than they are).
3) Thinking that the fur-trade was a growth sector.
4) Hopes of restarting commercial fat-fish catching (more commonly referred to as whales and yes I do know that they are mammals but who really cares?).
And of course not to mention the crazy plan
of a manned-mission to the Americas.
Oh wait
Sure Iceland can say that. They have no choice whether to be to be oil free or not. The majority of the Iceland will be under sea sometime soon (soon relative to the age of the Universe).
Worked for the communists, right?
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
That's why we get all the chicks.
The U.S. gov. could always stop bying oil products itself. It can also tax the externalities caused by oil products (and significantly reduce our income taxes in the process). no one is asking it to ban oil products. We are asking it to stop subsadising oil products.
Understand, the vast majority of the "over regulation" that people bitch about is actually subsadies. Our fat lazy corperations and state governments would prefer to keep their subsadies and be regulated, to loosing the subsadies. But the corperations are not above tring to adjust the regulations to keep out smaller compeditors if t
they can get away with it.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I think you meant to say "sand niggers". You need to embrace your inner racist and not repress the true you. Please don't hide it, we like to keep track of who the idiots are.
"If you listen carefully the experts don't say we'll run out but that the cost will increase to a point where other fuels cost less."
Oil that costs more to get out of the ground than it would be sold for will stay in the ground. First you get the stuff that's easy and cheap to get out of the ground. Then you go after stuff that gets harder and harder.
You don't suddenly run out, but you can suddenly switch from supply exceeding demand to demand exceeding supply. If everybody panics, ithe situation looks like you've run out. Reserves like the oil shales require a long lead time to come online.
Ok, that's trolling, but we're all going to have to work together if getting off gasoline is going to work. Every one of us citizens of the USA who own and operate a gas powered vehicle is in some sense responsible for the events of September 11th. All that Islamic Jihad crap is just to motivate gullable idiots into performing atrocities (that according to the doctrine will damn you to hell but that's another story) in order to gain control of the very valuable oil fields of the middle east. That's all any of this conflict is about. That's all the Get Good Gulf War was about. We could give a rats ass about Kuwait if they didn't have oil. We are sacrificing American lives to our oil addiction people! This is no longer abstract.
Of course, we may have to do some emergency weaning real quick now if India and Pakistan decide to have a little nuclear "skirmish." How many of you have been hiding your heads in the sand hoping that THAT little problem just kind of goes away?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
But I have news for you: the arabs have been war-crazy since long before US intervention in 1954.
You're a brilliant anthropologist, for sure, for sure. Top rate! You've discovered a proof that brown is white! Incredible.
Sigh. I posted a link twice to a real product. Maybe you just don't consider a frisbee to be 'real', but it seems to me if you can make a frisbee you could make plenty of other things too...
Those "experts" were probably predicting that we had 30-40 years worth of oil left some 30 years ago. As for the people of Iceland, I pity them for all the rediculous measures their government will ram down their throats to implement this pet project of theirs. This sounds like the sort of stupidity you'd expect from the French and the Italians.
Suppose fossil fuels were inexhaustible and free. This wouldn't really solve the problem of unsustainability, because non-nuclear fuels don't work on their own. They need to react with oxygen to produce energy.
We're not pumping any new oxygen out of the ground. All we've got is our atmospheric reserve and the contribution of our green leafy friends. Photosynthesis produced our oxygen reserve over 600 million years' time. Does anyone have any figures on how fast we're burning oxygen compared to how fast the trees are regenerating it?
There is a lot of debate about whether fossil fuels are really dead dinosaurs and plants or whether they formed from primordial methane in the cosmos. But even if it's the latter, our whole non-nuclear energy economy is still essentially solar because photosynthesis gives us all our molecular oxygen.
So go plant a fern.
I think I hear the flower children calling!
-- Eric Cartman, South Park
I know! Instead of using all that money to finance crap like alternate energy and oil reserves, we need to build a orbiting satillite network designed to prevent such a meteor strike! That way we can use all the resources we want and not worry about screwing the next generation! Not only that, but we need to produce more oil consuming vehicals to build up an ozone layer to prevent the next ice age! See? I can bend the "facts" with one brain tied behind my back!
But seriously. I agree with the get off this planet part. Seeing as how we seem to be unwilling to invest in any sort imact event defence, keeping all your eggs in one basket is suicidal. Also, I do believe in alternate eneries, if just to make things nicer to look at (and easier to breath).
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Read History before you start commenting on it .. bla bla" but sent in the Navy to take control of the islands within a week, and the Faraoes are still uner Danish control, if that is not colonization what is ?
Iceland was colonised by Vikings from Norway and possibly mainland Europe/Britan but has only limited cultural heritage shared with the Danish colonial power, and Iceland declared independace when Denmark was occupied otherwise it would have shared the fate of the Faraoe Islands that waited until 1948 to declare their independance until and in responce the Danes initally said that "every nation has the right to govern itself
Cooking ?
Er Gas is not used for cooking in any of the scandinavian countries (except for portable uses etc), and never has been used at all in Iceland, you cannot even get a gas cooker there in the local stores except for portable grills etc
The world will not run out of oil in 30 to 40 years. Supply and demand will take control, anyone for a gallon of crude for 200,000 a pint? bidding will go to the highest paying customer, or the most well armed. The net result is the world will be subjected to the cold turkey treatment. Some countries will do that, others will resort to the pillaging / plundering resources, i.e. war directly or indirectly to obtain oil and oil products. For all those supporters of a good world economy the first cold turkey scenario, of politely and publicly moving towards alternative fuels is much more preferable.
The hydrogen (i.e. fuel cell) revolution is inevitable. The main reason it hasn't happened yet is that societies do not yet appreciate the full lifecycle of energy use.
The economics of power production turn in favor of less poluting and damaging processes when the true cost of that pollution and damage is factored in.
We can use market based strategies to ensure that the savings attributable to chosing a more polluting power production process is offset. Governments have this power because they regulate damage to the environment.
Furthermore, it is inevitable that fuel cells will become many times cheaper as time goes on (think how much cheaper transistors got!).
For see things this way, once thing is clear.
Before the masses figure it out is the time to snap up shares in companies like Ballard Power (BLDP), Medis Technologies (MDTL), Fuel Cell Energy (FCEL), Hydrogenics (HYGS), Plug Power (PLUG), H Power (HPOW), Proton Energy (PRTN), and others.
The article mentions DaimlerChrysler busses.
Ballard power is their exclusive fuel cell AND electric drive supplier for 20 years!
Oh, same goes for Ford!
This is turning into a shameless stock plug but only because it logically follows from my arguments which seem pretty incontrovertable to me.
At the end of article when they mention producing methanol... they also mention BURNING it. Um, no. This isn't just about not burning petrolium products, it's about not burning hydrocarbons at all. That what the fuel cell is for. The author of the oriningal article should read up on how fuel cells use methanol at the Medis Technologies site (www.medisel.com).
And for those less familiar with fuel cells, it doesn't mean the end of fossil fuels. Any hydrogen source can be used. Hydrocarbon sources include waste gas from treatment plants and garbage dumps, and any sort of biomass. And since it isn't burned but instead a chemical reaction produces electricity, pollution is minor, and with pure hydrogen, only water and heat are byproducts.
Another thing to note is that fuel cells make other forms of green energy more useful because a fuel cell can just as easily PRODUCE hydrogen from electricity (and water) as vice versa. This means solar and wind enerty, for example, can be conveniently stored in hydrogen form for later use.
I could go on, but I'm just an anonymous coward and if I haven't convinced you to investigate further yet, I doubt more will help.
One more thing: don't need power lines everywhere!
Power to the people
Colonization is a strange word to use. As if its population did not consist almost exclusively of the descendants of the vikings who settled Island about a thousand years ago.
Hmmm, lets see they blockaded the ports and imposed taxes to the extent that people were starving to death... Besides the population is quite different from the other Scandinavian countries, they stopped over at in England and Ireland for slaves. And, well, they took a lot of them, there are a lot of green eyes and red and brown hair in Iceland. Culturaly it's different too, they were literate 700-800 years before Denmark's citizens. They never had a king. Contrary to popular myth the island wasn't empty when the Vikings arrived, there were leftovers of Rome with a few monisteries there already. It was empty enough that there is no record of fighting between the groups, just curiosity. Vikings were quite content with marauding the 'primatives' they didn't live with. The Viking thing is way to played up though, the settlers were more interested in farming than war. If they had killed all the monks they certainly would have written about it, they liked books about that kinda thing.
The only reason that the oil reserves are filling up is because the oil companies are piping oil back down into them to help further our dependance on them!
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
Water is the most important greenhouse gas. Dry desert climates cool very quickly at night because clouds are the most effective way to trap heat.
H2 + ½O2 -> H2O
Hydrogen Combustion
I'm pretty sure I see a water on the right side of that equation. I understand that water doesn't accumulate in the atmosphere... it rains. I would just like it if people used the term "greenhouse gas" correctly.
Oil will probably never run out, it will get more expensive as the supply of it dwindles. The price will rise, but while energy demand will rise other sources of energy will displace it. So the price won't quickly become astronomical, simply because other energy sources will displace the demand. Stationary uses like power plants will move to other sources first, but planes and cars will continue using it, then cars will move to natural gas(which will have it's own rise and fall curve), etc.
./ might have a point when it comes to things like farm subsidies which keep way too much land in agricultural production. If we depopulated the less productive farming (which happen to be more energy and water intensive) areas now it would be easier to carve up parks and 'energy farms' out of them a hundred years or two hundred years hence.
I think the biggest shocks will not come from producers, there are more joining the global market, like Russia & co. The biggest shocks will be as demand is curtailed. At some point gas stations will just cease to exist because there won't be enough demand to support them. The loss of infrastructure will cause more drivers to switch and all of a sudden oil will be dirt cheap for maybe a decade or so. This is many many years out but it is almost inevidable (unless it turns out bacteria are making most of the oil or something. Then, ugh, government will be needed to get us of the tit.)
My biggest fear is that oil will run out before doing enough preliminary research, even solar power can be very destructive of the environment if it uses up land inefficiently. But just image if we switched to Coal in all US and Chinese power plants, we'd all be caughing up gallons of flegm. Or used windmills to the extent that it wiped out bird populations, or disrupted local weather patterns in a negative way. The funny thing is the pure market people infesting
Why drill for old oil when you can make it from whales instead.
I guess sometimes the signals of affection are a bit too subtle? (See page 2 of chapter 8 of our Vice President's (in)famous energy policy to see what I mean...)
--LP
P.S. FYI, Canada and the oil sands are mentioned explicitly on page 8 in that chapter.
P.P.S. By the way, whoever came up with naming gummy tar "oil sands" deserves a marketing medal in my book.
the political instability in the region hasn't ceased since then
It hasn't ceased for millenia. This was a mere five years after the bloody Israeli war of independence, yet you pick an incident in 1954 and blame it for the region's instability.
Just as a butterfly flapping its wings in the Canary Islands may create a hurricane that wipes out Miami, a single act of nation wrecking can lead to the collapse of two skyscrapers 47 years later.
If you are claiming that something as insignificant and unnoticed as a butterfly flapping its wings can create such an enormous impact on something far away and apparently unrelated, then what makes you think you have any credibility in claiming your 47 year chain of causality? What goofy reasoning. Bin Ladin ISN'T killing to encourage democracy in the Muslim world, Iran or elsewhere.
Think about it: no Iran-Contra, no Gulf War, no 9/11 attacks, no coming world economic collapse when/if the oil supply suddenly runs out.
Let's join hands and sing John Lennon songs.
No, we would have wars about other things, like Communism or religion. Oil has only mattered for a century. Did war exist before that? Oh, wait, I forgot. War started with the creation of the CIA.
And as for the oil supply "suddenly" running out, where do I even begin? Does the name Jeremy Rifkin ring a bell? The more technology improves, the more years-worth of oil we can prove we have. The economics of oil will slowly change, and so will the technologies. We'll be able to manufacture it before the end of this century, if we still need it (we won't). Long before we ever run out, the amount of oil in proven reserves will have gradually become irrelevant.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Bin Ladin ISN'T killing to encourage democracy in the Muslim world, Iran or elsewhere.
Iran is already a democracy and Iranians hate the man (him being Sunni and all that), so that's the understatement of the century.
Phrases like "demand exceeding supply" are meaningless without attaching a price. At a low enough price, demand for almost anything will exceed supply. At a high enough price, supply will exceed demand.
The Stone Age did not end because people ran out of stones, and the Oil Age will not end because we run out of oil.
The Stone Age ended because better ways of doing the same things were found, making the old ways uneconomical or obsolete. The same thing will happen with the Oil Age, and it's great to see a small nation like Iceland setting this agenda.
SofaMan -- Occasionally Battling Evil With His Mighty Powers Of Indolence.
Iceland is a so beautifull country !!!
But like american walking is not really a choice in Iceland - but you can If you really want to.
none Yet.
Is you learn how to write in English. You've responded to two of my posts with some garbled excuse for paragraphs and sentences.
Try to go there and put yourself up for candidacy
As it happens, there's a romantic side to me that would love to do that very same thing - but definately not "preaching western values and questioning (the) role of Islam," since I find western values to be incredibly chauvenistic (sp) and dehumanizing. When in Persia, you do as the Persians.
And certainly, in a country like the United States, any candidate who was not Christian would not stand a chance in hell of being elected to a position of any significant power. But that's the flip side of the coin, isn't it?
Running out of fossil fuel would be the best thing that could happen to us because it would force even the most corrupt politicians and greedy corporations to face the facts. Sadly, we won't run out; we will be able to do almost unlimited damage to the environment and the planet. If you think a 100% rise in carbon dioxide might perhaps not be so dangerous, what about a 1000% or 3000% rise?
all these arguments about whether or not we will run out of oil are missing the point. They should be arguing about global warming or someting.
.... since most of Icelands oil is used in fishing boats this will be a hard task.
Canberra Aikido
Does anyone remember the little boy who cried wolf? If you guys keep on ignoring people who say oil supplies are going to run out, then you're going to look very silly if they do...
Something that might appeal more to Americans is political control. Drain most of the American oil reserves and you're going to be even more heavily dependant on the middle east/ russian sources of oil. What's that going to do for American dominance?
"after it got it's independence when European colonialization collapsed in the 40's"
Huh?? Iceland is and has always been a European country. Nobody other than Europeans has ever lived there.
I'd love to hear your new theories on the formation of oil, you could lead a scientific revolution if they're true.
Why? simple....
They need to follow Nicolai Tesla's plans to build the gigantic power transmission tower to wirelessly power their aircraft and cars.. granted, radio communication will cease to function... but communication is overrated. Glory is in charging the atmosphere with 60,000 volts AC to power even a Train Locomotive...
silly nutshell42.... dont you think if these obvious things?
But could a muslim ever be president? A buddhist? Or even an afro-american or a woman?
"America is the land of freedom and democracy"
"The attack on America is an attack on freedom and democracy"
That's what some people actually say. Sad ain't it?
You can make plastic from celulose, taken from plants. And it's bio-degradeable (but currenly degrades into nasty stuff!)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Iceland's plan is quite exciting. They're going to replace gasoline and other imported fossile energy carriers with hydrogen.
The hydrogen is to be produced by electrolysis of water using hydro power or geothermal energy. (Both of which Iceland has an abundancy of, so far they have harnessed only 16 % of the total capacity.)
Electrolysis is an expensive way to produce hydrogen. According to the calculations, hydrogen would be 2-3 times more expensive per energy content than imported gasoline. On the other hand, fuel cell applications, in which hydrogen is used, are in general twice as efficient as internal combustion engines. This levels off the price difference.
According to the current plan, land vehicles will use gaseous hydrogen, whereas fishing fleet will be fueled with methanol. Iceland's metal industry produces huge amounts of carbon oxides' which can be collected. Carbon dioxides and electrolytically produced hydrogen are combined into methanol.
By adopting hydrogen as the energy carrier for transportation, Iceland would be able to reduce the dependancy on imported fuels significantly and reduce carbon dioxide emission by up to 50 %.
The transition to hydrogen economy has been championed by professor Bragi Arnason since the late 70's. For more information, see prof. Arnason's latest presentation on the subject (pdf).
The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
-Bertolt Brecht
Just what we need, breeder reactors... We really needs our business sector producing weapons grade plutonium.
Look, our private sector does some things extremely well. They produce desired goods at the lowest cost of anyone in the world. Our private sector truly dominates at the economic game.
However, they don't handle eliminating risks well, because it's expensive. We don't need weapons grade plutonium being guarded by $8/hr rent-a-cops. If we were that irresponsible, we'd be the French.
Too much risk of a single weapon getting out. Without missile defense, a single ICBM can blackmail America. Even with missile defense, a suicide bomber with a nuke in lower Manhattan is too dangerous. They could probably wipe out most of downtown Manhattan (making it a real ground zero), and truly screw up the rest of the island.
Breeder reactors cannot be used until we have the Islamists eliminated.
Alex
It is not just supply and demand that can cause oil prices to rise. Pumps must be powered to pull oil up from the depths and energy must be supplied to run the reactions that crack petroleum into other compounds. The time may eventually come when the total energy cost required to produce a gallon of gasoline is greater than the energy that gallon contains.
Also, a few companies already make plastics from non-petroleum sources. Cargill Dow LLC (who I work for) produces plastics from corn. Novamont's MaterBi is another material dervied, in part, from resources other than oil. Petroleum is not neccesary to produce any given type of chemical or material. It's just really convienent for the time being.
The argument that "At some time, there will be a real crisis" is not a very compelling one. You need to explain the nature of the crisis, as well as show that it is better for us to address it now, rather than later. Given the law of unintended consequences, attacking a not-well-understood global problem with a global all-out effort seems likely to end up sub-optimal to me, particularly if the short term consequences are minor and the likelihood that we'll understand a lot more in a decade are major. For example, can you explain to me why the satellite readings from the last 20 years show no warming of the earth's surface, despite other ground-level thermometer increases in various locations?
Who exactly are you accusing of "depeding on non-renewable resources without looking for alternatives?" Surely not the US government which spends between $500m and $1b of taxpayer dollars every year to investigate renewable energy research. You may argue that we should spend more; if so, at least lets be accurate in saying where things stand now.
I do not think a "major shift in the way the world works" is necessarily a crisis nor that it is likely to be one. There was a major shift from coal to oil from the 1800s to 1900s, and we are undergoing a largely unheralded shift from oil to natural gas (which burns a lot cleaner by the way) as we enter this century. I'm not sure it's a crisis or that a crisis is inevitable.
--LP
Depleted is an ugly word. A large oil company has a tremendous amount of overhead costs, and they need to focus their spending on investments which will provide a return. So they can keep paying the costs to operate a marginal well, or they can plow that money into new wells elsewhere which will provide them a better ROI.
The rights to that well are then sold to smaller operators, sometimes to the point where the land owner ends up with all mineral rights and operates the well himself. Each entity down this chain has lower and lower fixed costs, and can economically produce oil from what becomes termed a 'stripper well'. Production from each stripper well is very low, but together they make up a tremedous amount of oil production.
When the price of oil dips too much for too long, it costs the operator more to run the pumps than what he can sell the oil for. Then the operator might shut the pump off. The only problem is that the well might then be lost, because if you stop running, the well can skin over such that you can't get oil out again. The fact that these stripper wells produce those small quantities of oil for a very long time makes them important though, and oil states like Texas and Oklahoma work hard during low price periods to make sure the small operators can keep their pumps running.
Anyway I got a bit off track there, but it's to demonstrate the just because "the oil companies" are pulling out doesn't mean the oil is gone. They're working in East Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, where there's huge upside potential in drilling for natural gas.
Muslims are practioners of Islam. Islamists are followers of political Islam. They are attempting to establish Islamic states.
Islamists aren't the same as Muslim terrorists, however. The PLO members are Muslim terrorists, but they wish to set up a secular despotic regime (like the Iraqi government).
Hamas is an Islamist terrorist group, that wants to set up an Islamic regime, like Iran or the Taliban were in Afghanistan.
It is extremely unlikely that Christian Americans like Oklahoma City and the Unabomber would detonate a nuclear device in this country. That would advance either individual's aims.
Islamists, however, aren't attempting to change the US, they are attempting to collapse secular Arab states. While the Saudi royal family (the house of Saud governs the bulk of Arabia, hence the name of the kingdom Saudi Arabia) are religious Muslims, they have not imposes an Islamic regime. The goal of Bin Ladin's network was to collapse the House of Saud and impose an Islamic regime there. Attacking the US was an attempt to get the US to stop propping the Saudi regime up (which will happen someday after the Saudi oil fields dry up).
Don't lecture me on dictionary definition, or call me a racist, just because you don't really understand what is going on.
Alex
straight from the mouths of /. babes...8 15213&mode=nested&tid=99
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/05/24/1
apparently it smells like popcorn when you burn it.
The unabomber Ted Kaczinsky was not Christian or religious of any persuasion. That is extremely clear if you read his manifesto.
And Oklahoma City man Timothy McVeigh? His dying words were quoting Invictus by William Ernest Henley "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. " Such sentiments are about as far from Christianity as one could get.
White Americans, yes. White Christian Americans? Try again.
--LP
P.S. Heck, quit talking about the small fry. Stalin (atheist), Hitler (darwinistic atheist/pagan tendencies later on/christian veneer early on) and Mao (atheist) weren't Christian either. Be skeptical of anyone claiming clean hands (including Christians) but lets keep things in perspective here.
Hmm, if oil shale can be delivered for $40/barrel, and oil is currently $25 a barrel, perhaps you better double check your facts or get a new definition of "prohibitively expensive"?
Yup, Europeans colonising Europeans and by God we were glad to be rid of them.
Logi - I can do anything, but not everything.
Do a search on google for "butterfly effect" and educate yourself.
...And if you couldn't see it, maybe you need to educate yourself.
I'm well aware of the butterfly effect, including its implications. The combination of massive amplification with extreme nonlinearity makes it impossible to connect cause and effect with any reliability when you lack perfect knowledge (i.e. outside pure math), given sufficient separation.
If someone is going to quote the butterfly effect as evidence for his assertion of a cause and effect separated by 47 years in the real world, I'd have to say that he doesn't understand the implications of the butterfly effect. If you couldn't see that, maybe you don't either.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."