Slashdot Mirror
Out of Gas
Oil -- and energy in general -- has long been a big topic among
Slashdot readers. Predictions about The End of the Age of
Oil (about which, claims the subtitle, this book provides "all you need to know") certainly are not new --
and if civilization lasts long enough, one day they'll prove true.
It's nice to consider that automobiles aren't necessarily
tied to petroleum, but mine certainly runs on 87 octane gasoline,
and there aren't enough turkey guts or grease to power everything that we use petro-fuels for right now (though places like Iceland are trying hard to tap other sources). Current gas
prices (in the U.S. at any rate) are higher than they have been in a
decade or so, but in constant dollars, gasoline prices have certainly been worse. How much to panic, and when? Read on below for Arthur Smith (apsmith)'s brief review of David Goodstein's Out of Gas for a rather gloomy look at the future of oil-based energy.
Out of Gas: All You Need to Know about the End of the Age of Oil
author
David Goodstein
pages
128
publisher
W.W. Norton & Company
rating
9/10
reviewer
Arthur Smith
ISBN
0393058573
summary
Why replacing oil is the world's most urgent and ignored problem.
Americans have started to notice prices at the pump with an unfamiliar '2' on the sign. Meanwhile, crude oil prices are hitting 13-year records close to $40 per barrel. As the International Energy Agency reports, there is "no relief in sight". All this should come as no surprise to readers of David Goodstein's Out of Gas - the only question is, have we left it too late to survive the inevitable shocks that are coming?
In this slim and subtly illustrated volume Dr. Goodstein, physics professor and vice provost at Caltech, explains in clear and simple terms why the fossil fuel age is coming to an end. A "massive, focused commitment" is needed to develop alternatives, and every year of delay in that commitment adds immeasurably to future human suffering.
In years, or at best a decade, we will reach the global "Hubbert's peak" for conventional oil, when production starts to decline even with rising demand. Such a peak was reached for US production in 1970. "Foreign oil" has sustained us until now, but Goodstein shows why it cannot for much longer.
A number of books on this subject have come out in recent years, some very pessimistic about the future (for example Heinberg's "The Party's Over", which warns of a greatly decreased world population). Goodstein offers some hope in alternatives, substantially based on the analysis of climate scientist and space solar power advocate Martin Hoffert.
Solar-based renewables and fusion are the only long-run energy solutions. According to Goodstein, natural gas and nuclear fission can help tide us over. All of these have problems, with the most scalable (solar power from space) still the least mature. Goodstein's longest chapter discusses thermodynamics and the physical laws that explain usable energy and its relation to entropy. As a physicist, I was pleased and surprised to learn something from Goodstein's clear explanation here.
Goodstein also discusses global climate problems with continued use of fossil energy, particularly an increasing dependence on coal. He concludes: "Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we find a way to live without fossil fuels."
There were a few minor things to complain about. Transitions between the chapters are too abrupt, perhaps caused by the wide range of discussion in such a short book. A few technical things seemed wrong - for example, it is quite feasible to run transportation systems off grid electricity (electric trains, subways, etc. do this) - would it be so hard to do it for personal transport too?
But Goodstein's book is the clearest explanation yet of our need to get beyond fossil fuels. Is it enough to get the public, and our leaders, actually paying attention?
In this slim and subtly illustrated volume Dr. Goodstein, physics professor and vice provost at Caltech, explains in clear and simple terms why the fossil fuel age is coming to an end. A "massive, focused commitment" is needed to develop alternatives, and every year of delay in that commitment adds immeasurably to future human suffering.
In years, or at best a decade, we will reach the global "Hubbert's peak" for conventional oil, when production starts to decline even with rising demand. Such a peak was reached for US production in 1970. "Foreign oil" has sustained us until now, but Goodstein shows why it cannot for much longer.
A number of books on this subject have come out in recent years, some very pessimistic about the future (for example Heinberg's "The Party's Over", which warns of a greatly decreased world population). Goodstein offers some hope in alternatives, substantially based on the analysis of climate scientist and space solar power advocate Martin Hoffert.
Solar-based renewables and fusion are the only long-run energy solutions. According to Goodstein, natural gas and nuclear fission can help tide us over. All of these have problems, with the most scalable (solar power from space) still the least mature. Goodstein's longest chapter discusses thermodynamics and the physical laws that explain usable energy and its relation to entropy. As a physicist, I was pleased and surprised to learn something from Goodstein's clear explanation here.
Goodstein also discusses global climate problems with continued use of fossil energy, particularly an increasing dependence on coal. He concludes: "Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we find a way to live without fossil fuels."
There were a few minor things to complain about. Transitions between the chapters are too abrupt, perhaps caused by the wide range of discussion in such a short book. A few technical things seemed wrong - for example, it is quite feasible to run transportation systems off grid electricity (electric trains, subways, etc. do this) - would it be so hard to do it for personal transport too?
But Goodstein's book is the clearest explanation yet of our need to get beyond fossil fuels. Is it enough to get the public, and our leaders, actually paying attention?
You can purchase the Out of Gas: All You Need to Know about the End of the Age of Oil from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
In case any of you got that "May 19th is Gasoline Boycott Day!" e-mail, here are some articles on why it won't work:
Article by Matt Helms
Snopes Article
If all the idiots don't get gas tomorrow, just means less of a wait for me!
I belong to the ______ generation.
Business will abosrb rising energy costs for a short period of time (the market keeps a downward pressure on price increases), but eventually, there will be overall rises in prices if energy prices stay high.
There are a couple of things affecting gas prices:
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Please come to the UK, where it is around $5.50+ a US gallon most of the time. Of course, because we are a smaller country and have had this fuel price thing going for many a year, we usually live closer to where we work than many people in the US [do to their place of work]. We aren't as reliant on personal transport.
Here's a two year chart of US gas prices from the Chicago affiliate of gasbuddy.com.
3. OPEC fighting against us in Iraq with the one effective weapon they have.
The only OPEC country that isn't pumping at full capacity is Saudi Arabia. This shortage isn't a result of OPEC manipulation.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
How much of your 4$/gallon is EU or local taxes? From my quick search it looks like the UK and France have gas price + 300% tax. That suggests $1gas plus $3taxes. These are 1997 numbers too. It's likely taxes have increased since then. (details)
The US has what we consider high taxes on gas. Hawaii is 53.5c (as of July 2002), California is 50.4c, and Texas is 38.4c/gallon. (details)
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Cyclists are gods.
A pound of beef takes around a gallon of gasoline to produce. If we run out of oil, where is the energy going to come from to produce the food that you need to eat to power your bicycle? That, my naive friend, is what oil and energy crises are all about.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
It is not a measure of the amount of energy in the fuel. If you're using a higher octane fuel than required to keep your car from pinging, and your car isn't a new model that self-tunes based on the fuel's octane rating, then you are wasting your money.
So, either you're driving a high-performance "gaz-guzzler" (your term; I have no problem with high-performance engines) or you're an idiot - your call.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There is a very clear online recent lecture on this topic by Nathan Lewis, a chem professor at Caltech who is active in this field. It is titled "The Future of Power and Energy in the World"
_ no v.php
s -h ybPV.php
t 13 55h.htm
You can find it with many slides at http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/lewis1/
The summary is roughly that we need to make photovoltaics about 10 fold cheaper than they are today(about $4/watt ->$.40/watt), on the way to making them as as cheap as housepaint (say $.20/watt). There is no theoretical obstacle to doing this, and several promising lines of research. If (really when) we can do this ($.20/watt), solar electric energy will be cheap enough to electrolytically reduce CO2 to methanol (CH3OH) which is a fine fuel for transportation, etc., and is already nicely interfaced to out current energy distribution and use systems.
At this low cost, we can even pull CO2 out of the atmosphere directly, directly reversing the CO2 greenhouse effect (my own addition).
Furthermore, this is by far the best option, e.g. otherwise we would need 5000 new 1GW fission reactors to supply the growth in energy needs contemplated in the next 50 years (construction of 2/wk for 50 yrs.) This seems much too dangerous.
Since this is the best apparent practical way out, since we are really talking about a major determinant of the fate of the earth, and timing is critical, one might wonder why the federal funding is so low (about $10M/yr in the US maybe).
Some of the recent research, and the progress made by startup companies is summarized at
http://www.konarkatech.com/news_articles-forbes
http://www.konarkatech.com/news_articles-solrac
http://www.st.com/stonline/press/news/year2003/
http://www.nanosolar.com/advantages.htm
(this is an updated version of a previous post)
.
Oil futures prices are down 2.7% today. The rumor on the Drudge Report is that Iraq is already pumping oil above expected output...
Meanwhile, the USA is filling its strategic oil reserves to the highest levels ever. The thought is that with the proper reserves, they could soak any future terrorist attack that may cut off supply... recall that Bill Clinton tapped the oil reserves in 2000 for price control, a move widely seen as covering up effects of the dot-com recession that had begun earlier in the year. In 2000, it was noted that the reserves could support 100% production levels in the USA for two months, and that was at 571m barrels. Prices at the time were only about $26/barrel as shown on this graph.
As a geoscientist I can attest to the leaps and bounds that are made monthly and yearly in the petroleum industry for exploiting, locating, and distributing hydrocarbons. The transition to alternative forms of energy for personal transportation will eventually come, but it will hardly spell the end for the petroleum industry. Movement to pure hydrogen energy will only happen when a methods for producing free hydrogen don't require more energy than the use of the hydrogen itself produces. It requires energy to make that hydrogen folks. Hopefully all of you proclaimed physicists realize that.
The energy sector will move completely to natural gas alternatives (condensates, gas hydrates, LNG) long before it moves to free hydrogen. But this movement has already been happening and is already proving highly profitable for domestic and international companies (Double Cross, TXO, Chesapeake, Devon, CDX, Marathon, etc.). The petroleum industry is economically the largest industry on the planet. It has the resources to adapt to changing energy markets. In a way, the companies and people who work to bring you your hydrocarbon energy will never be out of business, their model will merely change. The end of the oil age shouldn't concern you nearly as much as the end of civilization due to demand for water and the rapidly declining availability of usable water.
Almost every part of the globe is seeing a decrease in available water supply. Disputes over water will be much more devastating than the disputes over oil have been. Not one hydrologist I've talked to has an optimistic outlook on the future of the worlds usable water supply. It's a problem that doesn't have even half of a percent of the resources or attention that is poured into petroleum and that's unfortunate because it's a problem that will kick the worlds ass a lot sooner than the lack of fossil energy.
NMG
Not that interesting...unless you like tinfoil hats....
You're correct that most oil doesn't orginate from dinosaur era plant life, most of it is (or was before we burned it) older than that. Aboitic oil formation however does not account for any significant amount of oil.
Oil does not only form from marine life, so primordial seas are irrelevant. The basins are so deep because they have been buried by miles and miles of sediment being continuously deposited over millions of years. In fact it is the burial (heat + pressure, you were partly right about that) that produces oil from the organic matter, so all oil originates fairly deep. Oil that is found in shallower rocks has migrated upwards over time due to it's low density or the rocks themselves have been uplifted.
The rocks that the oil is found in (reservoir rock) is not usually the rock that the oil formed from (source rock) and remains of life are often found in reservoir and source rocks (which is why oil companies are the main employers of paleontologists) so that part is just plain wrong.
I don't know what the statement about chondrites is based on, but about the only thing carbonaceous chondrites have in common with oil is carbon and oxygen, so by that reckoning oil is consistent with the makeup of cement or cardboard. The isotopic signatures of carbon and oxygen will be very different in a chondrite than in organic matter though, and oil's signature matches what would be expected from an organic origin.
Disclaimer: IAA(Geologist), but not a paleotologist, and I don't work for an oil company.
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
Many experts agree that biofuels have negative thermodynamic efficiencies, i.e. consume more energy in aggregate than they produce.
Biological photosynthesis has a net thermodynamic efficiency of 0.3% = 3E(-3). Compare this to 10-30% efficiency for photovoltaic.
There is the possibility of direct solar photochemical reduction of CO2 to methanol say, which could be very efficient, but this is only in early stages in the lab now, and is expected to take several decades to develop. However it may be close to what you require.
In the meantime solar (any form) is the only technology which has the right scale (unlike wind and hydro, more than 1-2% of total energy requirements are extractable), is relatively safe, and is close to being practical soon.