Slashdot Mirror
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."
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!
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
Slashdot to go redundancy free for 30-40 seconds: whee!
[o]_O
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
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.
The right-up said oil, but the actual article said ending fossil fuels entirely. And given the vast amounts of COAL we still have (enough that your grandchildren won't run out, assuming their willing to put up with unbreathable air and destroyed climates), it's actually a pretty significant goal.
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.
They will probably switch to whale oil.
(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.
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.
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.
The oil will NOT run out in 30-40 years or any time soon. It will probably not run out in our lifetime.
If you do your research, you will find out that there are significant undeveloped oil prospects in the middle east (Afghanistan! ... makes me wonder about the real purpose of the war on terrorism) and in the arctic above Canada.
Also, if you do more research, you will find that the United States has more oil than any other country on the planet. But they do not tap it. They are saving it in case it is needed later and buying up the oil from Saudi and such instead.
And if/when the US does tap this oil far into the future, it will be the last major known oil reserve on earth, thus giving the United States a world monopoly on fossil fuel production and distribution.
Coal as a feul is out of the question anyway. All those lumps of coal are ear marked for Microsoft and their Education Initiative. Sorry.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
Alas, that was my plan, but those nosey kids and their geothermal, hydroelectric energy that won't work in other countries have spoiled my plans once again. But don't worry, the Neo United Nations of 2050 will just bomb them if they don't give us electric goodness.
The difference is that they're actually preparing to phase out their use of it, rather than preparing to fight over what's left.
I found a mirror of a recent Newsday article:
Oil Fields' Free Refill
I am the evil aardvark!
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
Links, please? I'd like to know where you got all this information, because frankly, I don't believe it.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
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.
Typical Environmental B.S.
Environmentalist have been saying that we were going to run out of Oil for years, yet right now in the Gulf of Mexico drilling sites that were previously out of oil are re-filling themselves, allowing us to pump out more for next to nothing.
Every time the price of oil goes up more becomes available because it is economically feasable to drill it and sell it. There are HUNDREDS of capped oil lines where I live (North Dakota) because it isn't feasible to pump it up unless oil is around $25 a barrel, if oil was to go up that high you can bet they would be outthere sucking it up.
Many of you probobly don't know that during WWII Nazi Germany found a way to make Oil from Coal at around $40 a barrel (changed for inflation) we have enough coal in the ground to last 500 years.
Now this really isn't that big of a deal, because in 30 years it is predicted that most cars were be electric/fuel cell driven, we won't need gasoline for our cars/trucks. In their homes they can use electric heat, they have numerous geo-thermal plants that generate an enourmous amount of electricity cheaply.
Infact the entire theory of where oil comes from is under attack, Hyrdocarbons were thought to come from decaying plant matter in the ground but some scientist now think they come from methane deposits in the earth, methane is one of the most abundant gasses in the earth's mantle.
Don't take this for much, it is just crap.
Just like the rest of the environmental jibberish
It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people. - clinko
i have to agree with this. we really don't know how much oil can be squeezed from the planet, but there are better fuels to be had.
with oil, it's basicly a huge dependance on whomever owns the supply. back in the coal days, the US could mine enough to satisfy their needs (afaik).
i know of 2 alternatives that currently exist that could be quickly implemented to cut dependance on oil.
the first is hydrogen. there's a little perception of explosions, but i believe the vehicles exist, and have been safe.
the other is grain alcohol. brazil has been using largely grain alcohol to run all it's automobiles. every automobile in the us could be converted easily to run on exclusive grain alcohol. brazil experience some alcohol price fluxuations (farmers charging alot for the crops?), and some people want to go back to oil becuase of it in brazil. i think it is a viable solution though to wean dependancy on other wacko nations.
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.
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
Couldn't resist the obligatory "Every war the U.S. fights is for money and oil." Think about what you're saying. Could it be that we're fighting the war on terror because we're hopping mad about some camel-jockeys wrecking three buildings with 4 of our airplanes and killing thousands in the process? Nah, it's all a hidden agenda to get at Afghanistan's oil...
Also, if you do more research, you will find that the United States has more oil than any other country on the planet. But they do not tap it. They are saving it in case it is needed later and buying up the oil from Saudi and such instead.
We don't use it mostly because, as high as gas prices are, they are cheaper than what we ourselves would produce it for. Why spend $3/gallon extracting and refining our own gas when we can import it for $1.50? We'll start using our own oil reserves as soon as other sources want to charge more for their oil than we can produce for ourselves. Simple economics.
That we will have oil when the world has sucked the Middle East dry is just an additional strategic benefit. :)
and in the arctic above Canada.
Guess it depends upon who paid for the study....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
that airplanes flying into/out of Iceland have to bring their own refill fuel?
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
But likely quite a bit more than 30-40 years. There are approximately 30-40 years left of proven reserves that are economical to extract. However, it's extremely likely that more will be found in the next 30-40 years. And even if not, as the economical ones dry up, oil prices will go up, and others will begin to become economical to extract. And some of the others (such as the oil in oil sands) are extremely vast reserves. So oil may get more expensive in the next 30-40 years, but it's extremely unlikely it'll actually run out completely.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
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!
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Kinda sad I've been reading Slashdot for so long I didn't even notice.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
That's not to say that there areen't any more oil reserves out there, but sands and shales aren't the answers, at least not today...
Chris
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Everybody knows the worlds oil was created when the fifth elephant crashed into the ground....
oh no - that was the discworld !!!
I worked in the industry for a couple of years in processing and archival. Basically what your seeing is better technology pointing to larger than expected exploitable resevoirs.
The basic idea when searching for oil is to find feeder rocks which can be tapped. These are typically pourous regions which may contain hydrocarbons. 4d maps (3d maps generated over various time periods) are used in conjuntion will well logging to predict sizes. There's basic formulas which combine pressure, yield, temperature, cost and volumetric measurements which combine to produce yields.
As with any scientific scientific observation, your data is only as good as your instrumentation.
In other words, we can only estimate what we see.
Other factors that have affected resovoir under-estimation is the costing factor. The cost to retrieve oil has actually come down over the years. Innovations such as horizontal drilling (see Arco and the north slope), and deep sea drilling (see Gulf of Mexico) have decreased cost which means more oil is available.
It's been 10 years since I was there, so things have probably changed.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
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?
Of course, if we all got away from internal combustion, we'd save a lot of energy. Turbine engines, powerplants, and cowboyneals all generate energy from fossil feuls far more efficiently.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Actually, you want us (Canada) to invade.
Think about it, better beer, lower drinking age, etc.
Unfortunatly we have been unable to get the Canadian Geese to carry any significant payloads when they fly south.
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-.
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.
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.
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.
There was an old crack-pot scientist Tom Gold who had a theory that oil is being produced as a by-product of deep-underground microbes, and is a renewable resource.
In April, there was a study that revealed that a number of previously capped oil wells around the Gulf of Mexico are "mysteriously" refilling. As my sister (a chemical engineer) explained to me, underground oil is trapped at a very high pressure; this is why oil fields can get at the oil so easily, these are spots where the pressure is literally squeezing the oil out of the ground. After a while, the pressure equalizes with respect to the admosphere, and you actually have to work to get the oil out. After more time, it becomes too cost prohibitive to remove the oil, and the well is capped (even if there is still more oil to gather!).
Well, since you've been pumping all this liquid out of the ground, there is now low pressure in the well with respect to the oil that has been dissolved into the rocks around the reservoir, and oil will seep back into the well, so that the liquid pressures are equalized... and viola, the well refills!
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.
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.
They will simply wait for the price to go through the roof due to scarcity, then the same assholes, oops, I meant anti-environmentalist oil-hogs that tend to infest slashdot, oops, I meant god-fearing righteous conservative citizens can complain about welfare mothers using up all the cheap oil while Congress votes in a massive government subsidy to get production back in gear.
That's how we're planning to play it out in the US, anyway, your mileage may vary.
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?
As other posters have pointed out we are NOT going to run out of oil. It's very unlikely we will EVER run out of oil. The world is not static, it's dynamic. As one variable changes (the availablitly of oil) the system responds to that change naturally. As oil gets more scarce the price will go up. As the price goes up new reserves of oil that are more expensive to access become economically feasible and will be exploited (stabilizing the price at a new plateau). Worst case scenario converting coal to synthetic petrol becomes economically viable, and we have LOTS of coal. At the same time other methods of obtaining energy that are currently uncompetitive compared to oil will become competitive. Long before we "run out" the price will be high enough that those alternatives will be used as a matter of course and the comparatively expensive oil will be used as a fuel only in applications where it has some unique advantage that makes it worth the price. To some degree this has already happened. We used to use a lot more oil to generate electicity, today we use very little for that purpose. Most of our oil consumption is for transportation because oil has unique advantages for that purpose. Technology may change that - as the price of oil goes up it will almost certainly change that.
Until we actually DO start "running out" of oil we will continue to use it and only play around with alternative fuels at the margins because oil is plentiful and cheap and the alternatives aren't.
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.
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
good deal of military brass were nixed when the pentagon got nailed... explaining that one away could be kind of tough
e rreurs_en.htm
fnah. not THAT tough.
http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/
Doesn't even look like a Photoshop job, to me.
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
Um...we aren't exactly having any food shortages in this country. If we were, why would we be paying farmers to not grow crops? We grow enough food crops to keep everybody here pretty well-fed, export substantial amounts of food to all other parts of the world...and still have leftovers that we don't know what to do with. If anybody is starving, it's not on account of any food shortage. (More often than not, it's lack of motivation on the part of some people to get and keep a job...and even for those people, Uncle Sam steps in with food stamps to make sure they're kept in ice cream and Ding-Dongs. (Yes, people use food stamps to buy stuff like that. I see it all the time.))
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
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.
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.
I can understand that some people, like yourself, are just simply ignorant... I'm more concerned with the fact that there are people modding you up as Insightful. You obviously have NO idea how wrong you are.
In addition, the major problem with fossil fuels is not whether we have enough of it (which we will not, soon enough), it's the damage to our environment our use as caused.
Nosce te Ipsum
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!
I don't give a flying fuck if the terrorists just wanted us to give them a peanut butter sandwich. Appeasement is stupid, and terrorists are murderers, and unless you want to hand over the keys to civilization to these ragheads, whether they want peanut butter sandwiches, or righteous justice for Palestine, terrorism must be fought and destroyed.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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
Yeah, well, I was curious and opened up the page. I haven't found the stuff on the oil conspiracy, but his current "opinion" story was enough.
Who is this idiot? Is he just anti-Bush/anti-Republican or pretty much anti-eveything? He criticized Bush for failures of the Clinton administration, attacked the Bush with virtually the same words that "the right" attacked Clinton during his presidency, and he himself admitted that he has "nothing on Bush... yet."
This guy is a dufus with an opinion. I'll probably read some more of his stuff because it looks humerous, but don't take it too seriously.
Bull!
There have been no significant 'adjustments' to the predicted life of the worlds pertroleum reserves since M. King Hubbert made his prediction more than 60 years ago. King's estimated US oil production would occur in 1970 but it actually occured in 1969. Test: When did Hubbert say the world production would peak?
See Fig. 4 for oil produced in the 48 states: http://www.dieoff.org/page191.htm which shows we are about 16 years away from our 1920 oil production levels... i.e. out of oil, considering how much we burn every year. And see Fig 13 for world production.
A SUSPICIOUS JUMP in reserves reported by six OPEC members added 300 billion barrels of oil in 1988 to official reserve tallies yet followed no major discovery of new fields. It was done for political reasons that had nothing to do with improved detection or recovery technology. So if any 'story' is changing it is the figures on total recoverable reserves, not Hubbert's prediction dates.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
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.
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).
In the three articles I read, this guy basically said that Bush is a murderer, should resign and face charges for attempted murder, blamed Bush for 9/11 because he didn't do anything to improve airport security in his 8 months in office, blamed him for not having more fighter planes protecting the American homeland as if their first reaction would have been to destroy domestic commercial aircraft, believes most Americans "consider themselves environmentalists," and that "the recount is alive and has legs" but only if the Democrats "renominate Gore in 2004." He thinks Bush is so far right that he has alienated his own party, and thinks Bush's approval scores (as high and higher than Clinton's) are indicative of failure. He thinks Bush destroyed the "Clinton economy" in 8 months, when it turns out things were already heading downhill during the Clinton presidency--tax increases tend to do that.
This guy is a waaaay out there. He's like the Rush Limbaugh of the left, but this guy only spews opinions with no facts to back it up.
I went for the conspiracy, but I stayed for the laughs.
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
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.
Already farmers and heavy machinery is moving towards natural gas or propane.
... oil!
LPG is made from
Didn't someone figure out a way to make fule from soy beans? Why are we paying farmers NOT to grow soy beans?
t'nera semordnilap
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.
...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.
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
I guess you haven't heard of General Smedley Butler, USMC, and his famous speech. Keep in mind this was in 1933.
"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).
Hahaha....wow...look at all the misspellings, the inexplicable capitalizations, the lunatic "science". This is a parody, right?
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
"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?
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.
Actually, that came from some comedy movie in the 80s. Can't remember which one right now, but talking about the scum that crashed the airplanes into WTC/Pentagon I have no qualms whatsoever in calling them camel-jockeys. Heck, that's more of an offense to CAMEL-JOCKEYS than it is to the low-life that killed 3000 innocent people.
FWIW, I have many friends and business associates that are Arab and/or from the Middle East. I get along with them 100% fine. People from Israel, peopl from UAE, Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan... I've done business with them all. Most of them seem like nice enough people.
Incidentally, since you feel it's okay to wage war against an entire country because of the actions of a few
If you followed the news after 9/11, you'll remember that we didn't invade the next day. Not even the next week. President Bush didn't even deliver his terms to the Taliban for 9 full days.
When the terms were delivered--and they weren't unreasonable--the Taliban didn't take them seriously. They waffled, they talked, they chose to give refuge to a terrorist. They did so at the cost of their government.
We didn't invade Afghanistan because of the action of a few. We invaded Afghanistan because they were unwilling to control their own domestic problem (terrorism), and their domestic problem was a threat to the U.S. and, really, all of the world.
The Taliban sealed their own fate with their decision not to cooperate. If they had even talked about the possibility of working with the U.S. in resolving the problem it would have taken a heck of a lot of wind out of the United States' effort to get the whole world on their side. But no, they dicked around and the world noticed. The few friends they had, Saudia Arabia, UAE, and finally Pakistan, broke off relations. Why? There was no way to justify the Taliban's position. It was absurd.
then I'm sure you felt that we should have sent in the military to Michigan after Timothy McVeigh's act of terrorism.
It wasn't necessary. We aprehended him domestically with no problem. Short of invading Afghanistan, how do you propose we should have gone about resolving the problems inside Afghanistan that WERE threatening the world and the Taliban was unwilling to deal with?
Oh, please. I have asthma but I don't appreciate being used as a scapegoat and I would NOT ask the world to go "cold-turkey" and abandon fossil fuels without an viable and economical alternative just to avoid asthma.
Come on, environmentalists contaminate the media more than the worst polluters contaminate the environment.
First, we have to stop using fossil fuels because it's causing global warming. Debunked.
Ok, well, then, we have to stop using fossil fuels because, uhm, we're running out of it. Debunked.
Uhm, we have to stop using fossil fuels to help all the poor kids that have asthma...
Come on... Envrionmentalists would be a lot more convincing if they chose a REAL reason for their cause. They should just come out and say, "We want to make the poor countries richer, the rich countries poorer, and eventually we should all live in the stone age again." Their ideas would still be rejected, but at least they might earn some respect for stating what their intentions truly are/were.
Pentagon crash conspiracy debunked.
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.
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
I'm sure your grandkids will be happy to hear that you chose a few pennies over their health.
They will if those few pennies are used to discover cures to terminal diseases. Pollution has a cost, but that cost is not infinite.
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."
World oil consumption is around 27 BILLION barrels of oil a year.
try that math again
+++ ATH0 +++
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.
Now we're getting to the heart of the liberal mindset. Liberals are against the death penalty except for those that disagree with them. For those, the penalty is death.
Thanks for illustrating so clearly that which I would have been called cynical in otherwise stating.
Personally, I don't think liberals should be euthanized. They just shouldn't be given any political or economic control... And your comment proves 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?
Fossil fuels are a finite resource. Whether it's the 15 years I've heard geologists estimate, or 30, 40, or 500 years, we will run out. And when we do, there will be large gaping holes where Kentucky, Ohio, and other coal-rich states used to be, not to mention all the other energy resources (uranium for example). God knows how much poison there'll be from the byproducts of producing and using mineral resources for energy.
At some time, there will be a real crisis -- either the resources will be gone or the environment will be damaged. There will be a major shift in the way the world works, and it can be a positive change or it can be disasterous. It may not be in our lifetime, but it will happen. It's a fact, and your own numbers show it. Unless we can come up with renewable or unlimited energy. Being more efficient and turning to resources that were once not economically feasible only postpones the inevitable.
Saying it's okay to rape and abuse the Earth simply because we won't see the effects in our lifetimes is irresponsible and ignorant.
And, so you know, I'm a registered Republican, so don't mumble your "damn liberals" gibberish at me. Sound capitalism thinks about future profits as well as today's -- an economy that depends on non-renewable resources without looking for alternatives and destroys the Earth in the process is not an economy with a future.
An orthodox Jew won the popular vote for the vice presidency in the last election.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. While it makes sense, the jury is still out. Please refer to other messages in this thread that point to links in places such as the Washington Post that report that old, "dry" oil wells suddendly seem to be "filling up" again.
either the resources will be gone or the environment will be damaged.
Well, I'm not going to get into the whole "oil is bad for the environment." That's more a "religion" than something that can be debated.
Being more efficient and turning to resources that were once not economically feasible only postpones the inevitable.
Which makes good economic sense while we're searching for an alternative.
Saying it's okay to rape and abuse the Earth simply because we won't see the effects in our lifetimes is irresponsible and ignorant.
I guess it depends on your definition of "rape the earth." I don't consider extracting and using oil raping the earth. The environmental impact of doing so does not need to be significant. Strip mining, on the other hand, I believe is quite ugly.
And, so you know, I'm a registered Republican, so don't mumble your "damn liberals" gibberish at me.
Registered Republican or not, you have been affected by the environmentalist (won't even say liberal, actually) propaganda. Republicans are not immune to that propaganda. They are very good at what they do.
Sound capitalism thinks about future profits as well as today's -- an economy that depends on non-renewable resources without looking for alternatives and destroys the Earth in the process is not an economy with a future.
And I absolutely agree that we should be looking for alternatives. 100%. Hopefully, someday, there will be a cheaper and cleaner alternative to power our economy.
In the meantime, however, "sound capitalism" demands that we do NOT sit around waiting for that miracle alternative energy source to come and not taking the precautionary step of exploiting our known oil reserves in the event that that miracle energy source takes longer to be developed than expected. If it gets developed "on-time," no big deal--we don't have to use the oil we've found. But if the energy source is 80 years off, I'd sleep better at night knowing we have something to power our economy until then.
Sure, it can be. It's usually somewhat funny, though, and not suggesting the execution of someone. Whatever, we all have our own senses of humor and I won't attack you for yours.
By making sweeping claims without evidence and generalizing based on personal experience, you end up sounding pretty silly.
And what was my sweeping generalization? That liberals are against the death penalty except for those that disagree with them? While I didn't put a smiley on that either (because it's not exactly funny), it is obviously tounge-in-cheek--except for the few liberals that actually DO believe that.
More than anything, and more than actually demonstrating you believe that those that disagree with liberals should be executed, you HAVE shown typical liberal intolerance. And that is NOT a joke.
By the way, I don't really want to kill you. :)
That's comforting. That's certainly enough to convince me to vote for Gore in 2004. :) (NOT!)
Breeder reactors cannot be used until we have the Islamists eliminated.
And then we'll be perfectly safe, because white Christian Americans would never try to blow shit up. Oh, except that one in Oklahoma City. Oh, and that Unabomber guy.
By the way, the religion is Islam, and its practioners are called Muslims, not Islamists.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
New Jersey citizens have been up in arms about the sh*t Canada Geese are dumping on them en masse for months.
Really? I thought the New Jersey folks were just pissed about the ass-whipping the Devils were given by the Carolina Hurricanes (the Team Formerly Known as the Hartford Whalers).
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
First, we have to stop using fossil fuels because it's causing global warming. Debunked.
Ok, well, then, we have to stop using fossil fuels because, uhm, we're running out of it. Debunked.
Uh, when were the two of these debunked? It's pretty much accepted by all scientists that WE are harming the environment and causing global warming with our use of fossil fuels. The ONLY people who say and think otherwise are on the payroll of those whose interests lie in with the Big Oil companies. And people like yourself who are just so poorly educated, it's frightening. And fossil fuels ARE a finite resource... we may not know when we are going to run out but we WILL DEFINITELY run out.
Nosce te Ipsum
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
Not so much debunked as it has never been proven by the environmentalists to start with. Nevertheless, read on (you asked the question, now I'm going to answer |grin|).
It's pretty much accepted by all scientists that WE are harming the environment and causing global warming with our use of fossil fuels.
It is often said that the "vast majority" of scientists belive in the greenhouse effect--this is often misunderstood by the public to mean that the vast majority of scientists believe that humans are causing global warming and that we should reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
The "greenhouse effect" refers to the theory that certain gases, such as CO2 and water vapor, form a kind of "blanket" around the earth that allows the sun's energy to get to Earth but doesn't allow it to escape back into space. This causes the Earth to be warmer than it would be without these greenhouse gases. This theory IS generally accepted by everyone.
However, not everyone that believes in the greenhouse effect believes in human-induced global warming.
Human-induced global warming is a theory that suggests that human production of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, are overwhelming the planet. Since so much CO2 is being produced, the theory states, we are essentially building a thicker blanket around the Earth which traps more heat on Earth--thereby raising temperatures.
These are two very different theories. Almost everyone believes in the first theory, but not nearly everyone believes in the second. That is not to say that the second theory is wrong--it makes sense, in theory, to believe that if we produce more greenhouse gases that the earth will tend to warm. However, we have virtually no information as to how much our CO2 production affects the earth's climate and most respected scientists recognize this. They don't discard it as a possibility, they don't reject that more study is needed--but no self-respecting scientist that follows the scientific method would be willing to make predictions or suggest solutions to a phenomenon that hasn't yet been proven, let alone understood.
That said, "global warming" itself hasn't even been proven.
Neither of the two most accurate methods of monitoring the atmosphere's temperature, climate satellites and traditional radiosondes (weather ballons), show any warming in the last 23 years. In fact, both satellites and radiosondes indicate a slight cooling trend since 1979. Radiosondes indicate a change of -0.07 deg. C per decade, satellites indicate a change of -0.01 deg. C per decade, neither indicate a warming trend--this while the surface record suggests a +0.15 deg. C per decade warming trend. Source: NASA, Greening Earth Society
Groups that suggest that global warming has been observed during this time inevitably use this "surface record" which consists of data obtained at small weather stations distributed throughout the inhabited world. Compared to satellite readings, the surface record is less consistent, subject to more human and machine errors, changes in recording procedures, and are in the vast majority of the cases located near large urban centers where the station temperature can and is affected by "heat islands" created by the nearby city. In many cases, stations that used to be located in open farmland far from human activities are now located within the limits of growing cities. A surface record only exists for land positions and doesn't contain any information about the 77% of the earth covered by the planet's oceans.
While the satellite and radiosonde record doesn't span as many years as the surface record, they are invariably much more accurate than the surface record. Satellites are our most accurate method of measuring worldwide temperature without any bias from local heat islands, inconsistent temperature readings, and which also covers almost all of the planet. While the surface record only records the temperature at the surface where the weather station is located, satellites take the temperature of all the atmosphere in the column below the satellite providing a more complete temperature of the atmosphere.
Interestingly, most environmental groups and the IPCC ignore the technically superior satellite record and prefer to use the surface record despites its many potential and obvious errors.
The ONLY people who say and think otherwise are on the payroll of those whose interests lie in with the Big Oil companies.
Prove that. That's your perception based on what the environmentalist and the media have been feeding you. I have absolutely nothing to gain from not believing in global warming. I have no stocks, interests, etc. in anyone or anything that stands to gain or lose from any of this. But I call bunk when I see it.
And fossil fuels ARE a finite resource... we may not know when we are going to run out but we WILL DEFINITELY run out.
Prove it.
The fact is, it sounds logical. But many others have already posted messages in this thread citing references such as the Washington Post that report that previously "empty" oil sources are "mysteriously" filling up again. We're not just talking about better technology getting at more oil--we're talking about oil returning to where it had been previously depleted.
I will agree that your belief that we would one day run out of oil sounds logical. But the facts of the matter, given reports of oil wells "refilling," is that it's far from proven that we will run out of oil--and certainly doubtful that we will run out of it so quickly so as to justify abandoning it before we have a viable alternative.
And people like yourself who are just so poorly educated, it's frightening.
Well, I've answered your questions. I've provided links to NASA and other big oil companies.
So, now, you prove to me that global warming is happening and that we are the cause. Don't point me to some IPCC or other politcal report that uses flawed data to come up with flawed conclusions that suggest political solutions. Point we to real, SCIENTIFIC, proof that proves that global warming is happening and that we are the cause.
I'll be checking for your reply. Most environmnetalists tend to shut up at about this point, so I'll be pleased if you actually come back with something we can debate.
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
Wow... I am impressed. That was truly a well thought out and intelligent response. I believe we may have to agree to disagree on this for I believe you are just flat-out wrong.
However, not everyone that believes in the greenhouse effect believes in human-induced global warming.
Perhaps not everyone... There are certainly scientists, particularly in recent years, that are coming out with studies that show that humans are not the cause of global warming and/or that global warming isn't taking place. However, I believe the majority of scientists support the evidence that humans are causing global warming and that it does exist.
The study you provided is just one of many and again, I think you can find many more indicating the opposite conclusion than the one you have linked to. 23 years seems like an awfully small timeframe to be looking at, as well.
As a counterpoint though to your study, I read a different study that determined that global warming would actually cause an ice age due to disruptions in the tidal currents/jet streams. This would be in line with the study your provided
The foundation of my beliefs is that over the past ~100 years since the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, there have been released vast amounts of 'greenhouse gases'. I am concerned that the earth/nature does not have the capability to adapt in that (relatively) quick amount of time to such a radically different environment.
Humans are drastically changing the environment. The earth may be used to such things and handle it all in stride. What if it can't though? I find this all the more likely and I guess I would rather be safe than sorry.
Nosce te Ipsum
I can agree to disagree and coexist with environmentalists as long as they don't cost me money or restrict my freedoms. :)
That said, I was trying to make it a question of science, not a question of belief...
There are certainly scientists, particularly in recent years, that are coming out with studies that show that humans are not the cause of global warming and/or that global warming isn't taking place. However, I believe the majority of scientists support the evidence that humans are causing global warming and that it does exist.
That's where I guess we do disagree, and I'm not sure either of us have data to directly support our position.
I would agree that the the scientists that believe in human-induced global warming are getting more airtime on the news. I would agree that we see more "pro-global warming" reports on the news. I would agree that the IPCC *says* there's a consensus and that's what the news reports. I wouldn't agree, however, that any of this suggests that more scientists do truly believe in any significant human-induced global warming.
Global warming is a "pop culture topic" that also has a doomsday tendency so the news loves to report it. The IPCC wants global warming to be true to forward their agenda so they use the inacurate surface record and carefully use words that imply that there's a consensus without really saying there is (read the IPCC document carefully... There's "wiggle room").
I've seen polls of scientists where those that outright BELIEVE in human-induced global warming is about 30%. There's another 50% or so that believe "it may be true, but it hasn't been proven conclusively and more research is needed" and another 20% that doesn't believe it. Forgive me, I don't have the link handy--I saw that about a year ago.
The point is, I'm not at all sure that most scientists believe in human-induced global warming just because the IPCC says so and because we hear a lot about it on the news.
The study you provided is just one of many and again, I think you can find many more indicating the opposite conclusion than the one you have linked to. 23 years seems like an awfully small timeframe to be looking at, as well.
Yes, you can find many others indicating the opposite, but they invariably use a potentially VERY flawed surface record.
Yes, the surface record spans 150 years and the satellite record only spans 23. But in those 23 years we are seeing global cooling whereas the surface record for those 23 years supposedly indicates further global warming. If the 23 years of GOOD data shows that the last 23 years of surface record data is broken, what confidence do we have in the accuracy of the other 127 years of surface record data?
I'd rather base my conclusions on 23 year of good, accurate data than 150 years of data of questionable accuracy. But that's just me, I guess.
As a counterpoint though to your study, I read a different study that determined that global warming would actually cause an ice age due to disruptions in the tidal currents/jet streams. This would be in line with the study your provided.
That's interesting, I hadn't seen that one yet. Kind of ironic that global warming could cause global cooling. :)
there have been released vast amounts of 'greenhouse gases'. I am concerned that the earth/nature does not have the capability to adapt in that (relatively) quick amount of time to such a radically different environment.
You do realize, of course, that the #1 greenhouse gas is not CO2, but water vapor (clouds)?
Water is MUCH more efficient at trapping heat than CO2, and even with all the CO2 we've pumped into the air over the last century, H2O accounts for up to 4% of the atmosphere by volume (depending on humidity). Meanwhile, CO2 currently accounts for only 0.0366% of the atmosphere (Source: USA Today ).
I understand your concern, it may seem like a lot of CO2 has been produced. But there's still about 109 times as much H2O in the air as there is CO2, and H2O is more efficient at blocking heat. I just don't think the amount of CO2 is critical when compared to the vast amonut of H2O...
I find this all the more likely and I guess I would rather be safe than sorry.
I agree we should look for alternative energy sources. I just don't believe it is in anyone's best interest to arbitrarily cut CO2 emissions "just in case." The data suggests it's not causing any harm, but the harm to the world in forcing CO2 reductions before we have an alternative could be devestating--and I'm not just talking about oil barons losing their money. When the economy breaks down it's not just the rich that get poorer, the poor get poorer, and there is more suffering.
I'd rather figure out whether it's necessary before subjecting the world to that... The medicine could be worse than the supposed disease!
I would very much like to discuss that.
Refuting global warming
Refuting importance of CO2 compared to H2O in global warming
Refuting rising sea levels
Please give them a read and we'll continue the discussion on those points. I do eagerly await your response.
Heheh.
Refuting global warming...
You provide evidence that global tropospheric temperatures are decreasing. However, these measurements are actually further evidence of global warming. If the greenhouse effect is trapping heat in the lower atmosphere, less heat makes it back into the upper atmosphere as measured by satellites. Check out this article [noaa.gov] from the NOAA... They conclude that global surface warming is definitely real and that the satellite data does not invalidate these measurements.
That is an interesting take on the matter, I'll grant you. Although that take on the matter would also reinforce the probability that increased temperature is the result of H2O which is found in much larger quantities in the troposphere.
However, if we grant that global surface temperatures are increasing, were are left wondering why atmospheric water vapor is increasing.
Not necessarily. That assumes that the only reason temperature would increase is because some greenhouse gas has increased. If not CO2, then H2O, right? But another very important factor is, obviously, the sun.
Our planet has gone through ice ages and global warmings many times in the past. At least one global warming (after an ice age) 135,000 years ago exceeded the temperatures we are currently observing (Source). Global warming has also been very fast in the past, apparently going from one extreme (ice age) to global warming in 5-20 years (sorry, can't find link. I've gone through so many in last 48 hours I'm brain-fried). And, as the previous link mentioned, CO2 has risen and fallen with temperature in the past.
What I'm getting at is I don't accept that any rise in temperature is *necessarily* a result of increased greenhouse gases. It could also be because of the sun. CO2 has varied significantly in the past, both positively and negatively, without our help (or damage). It is not clear in the historic record whether the changes in CO2 caused the changes in temperature or vice-versa.
There are too many questions to reach a conclusion that CO2 is causing temperature change, or that CO2 is causing increased water vapor that is causing temperature change. These may be causes, these may be effects. But whatever they are, it's nothing new that the planet hasn't seen before.
In a related note, here's an interesting article [nasa.gov] from NASA which suggests that an increasingly moist atmosphere may harm the ozone layer as well. Note the quote in paragraph 7.
I'd stumbled on that in my travels lately, too. I find it ironic. We've gone from "save the ozone" to "stop producing CO2 because it causes global warming" and now we're back to the ozone... but now water vapor causes damage.
I hate to break it to you, but if H2O is a cause of ozone depletion, we're toast.
However, consider the observations [utexas.edu] from the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite, which uses a radar altimeter to map global sea levels. There appears to be a clear upward trend of about 3 mm/year. Judging from the data, it's apparent that the global mean sea level is increasing.
Again, interesting. Of course, if I wanted to use the same arguments as the enviornmentalists I could say that the decade of data they have isn't very compelling compared to the 150 years or so of the site I gave you. :)
That said, I will again come back to the point that what I'm really arguing is about human-induced global warming. It may be that the ocean is rising. I don't pretend to know everything about every science and, compared to global warming, I have done little research as to the rising and falling of the sea.
Although I'll definitely have to look more at that site you mentioned. I find it absolutely incredible that a satellite traveling at various miles per second at an altitude of hundreds of miles can accurately range the surface of the ocean with an accuracy of milimeters. Especially since the ocean isn't a flat surface, but a liquid with waves in constant motion. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is quite impressive if true.
On a final note, I noticed from your previous posts that you seem to be a Bush supporter. It looks like the Bush administration has reversed its position [yahoo.com] on the existence of global warming. I'm totally shocked. Are you? :)
Thanks for bringing that link to my attention. I would have missed it otherwise!
I am disappointed, yes, but I am not terribly surprised. He's taking flack for publically rejecting Kyoto (even though the Senate essentially did that in 1997) and we're coming up on an election cycle... So I'm not that surprised to see something like that, although it is a little more of a concession than is normally given during an election year.
Interestingly, I read the story on Yahoo. But so far I haven't been able to find the report on neither www.whitehouse.gov nor at the www.epa.gov websites. There's also no mention of it at CNN.
I'm surprised this isn't getting more airplay. All I can guess is the whole Pakistan/India and CIA/FBI issues have dwarfed media interest in the environment. :)
...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."