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Iceland to Voluntarily Go Oil Free in 30-40 Years
scottennis writes "Yahoo is carrying a
story about Iceland's plan to wean itself from fossil fuels.
The article states that Iceland is giving itself 30-40 years to kick the oil habit completely. Of course some researchers estimate that in 30-40 years we won't have much of a choice."
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
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
For those of you that care the editorial written by Mr Bartlett referenced above is the result of work done by the National Center for Policy Analysis. A rather conservitive group whos self proclaimed mission statement includes the following:
The NCPA's goal is to develop and promote private alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial private sector.
I think it's safe to say that any thinktank looking for a way to turn the worlds problems over to private corporations has a vested interest in demonstrating that there is no energy crisis.
Also please note that the theory upon which all of this argument is based is one put forth by a Mr Thomas Gold. An Astronomer. Not a geologist... an Astronomer.
Furthermore I should point out that no one said we were running out of fossil fuels at a frightening rate. There's lots of coal down there. It's a pain in the arse to get out and will cause more environmental problems than we know what to do with (coal has all kinds of fun trace elements in it) but it's there.
Finaly, in an attempt to address the issue of the ever peeking graph. Remember that the amount we can extract at a given level of economic benefit is changing as technology improves. But also, remember that as technology improves our desire for MORE oil has also increased (historicaly). The trend is inescapable. Oil CAN NOT be infinite. Not unless we start seriously rethinking the fundamental makeup of the earth ("The continents float on a layer of petrolium?")
Sooner or later we're going to run out of this stuff. It might be in 40 years or 100. Either way it will happen eventualy. We also know that burning this stuff puts all kinds of lovely chemicals into the air which kill people. Oil has so many more practical uses than burning it. We should be putting some money into energy sources like fusion (it's not as far off as we think) and saving this suff for future use as plastics etc.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
You're right. I honestly don't think we'll run out of oil in my lifetime. Therefore, I shouldn't do anything about it. Apres moi, le deluge.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
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?"
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!
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.
...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.
"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).
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
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."
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.
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!