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.
The fact that, adjusted for inflation, gas isn't at it's higest levels don't matter. What matters is the sudden increase in the cost of gas OVER A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME, that short period of time doesn't give us time to adjust and can result in massive inflation.
Milk is up 0.60 cent per gallor
Butter has went from 1.99 to 3.49
Ice Cream has increased in price by 35-45%
Store brand products are increasing in price by 5%-8%.
Namebrand products are increasing in price by 6%-7.5%
As to why none of this is being reflected in the inflations numbers...well, you tell me.
Our beloved President George W. Bush says that we'll never run out of oil, and since he has been appointed by God to save us from evil, it is truth from the mouth of God. Amen.
I gotta roll my eyes...the sheep are squealing, led by the glowing pictures of news anchors. Gas prices are not that high...they've been much higher historicaly. If a few cents a gallon is making such a huge impact, you are LIVING BEYOND YOUR MEANS...and you'll get fucked eventually.
Blar.
There is no way consumables like soda bottles or food packaging should be allowed to use plastic, which is made using petroleum. Not only do these goods cause ecological damage, they also use a strategic resource.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
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.
Cyclists are gods.
Fuckin bring it on.
Cold Turkey by none other than great hero to the geek race Kurt Vonnegut. It compares America to a junkie who's having trouble finding that last fix.
A highly recommended read on what appears to be a similar topic. My favorite line:
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
US gas prices may seem rediculously high... but they actually aren't that bad. In fact, I'd argue that they should be higher. The US government subsidizes oil.
Of course, this concept is almost completely unknown to most people, I find.
http://mediagoblin.org/
It would be way worse if the dollar was higher, I guess... after all the barrel is quoted in dollars.
Damn, I should have bought a diesel instead of a roadster that does 10l/100km (25mpg). *sigh*
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Sure. The inflation numbers that most people quote exclude 'the volatile food and energy sectors' because those sectors are deemed to introduce more noise usually than information.
If you are trying to figure out whether you have inflation issues or not you don't want to include a commodity that surges %40 for a couple of months and then drops %50 for a couple of months. The oscillations around the equillibrium price is just noise.
Now if the equillibrium price for energy were to rise in the long term that would be a problem, but as energy is vital to all other economic endevors it would be reflected in price increases in everything else. Same with food. So the better part of valor is to exclude them, and let the rest of the economy smooth out their effects on pricing by reflecting any increases in the equillibrium prices for those commodities.
I don't know why nobody is hyping alcohol as a fuel replacement. Liquor is only expensive because it has to taste reasonable and it is loaded with taxes. If we can get distilled water for $1.00 per gallon, I don't see why we can't get a gallon of white lightning for $2.00 per gallon.
Also, it would take very little to no modification to get a petrol car to run on grain alcohol.
Most Americans do not seem to realize that they have been paying ridiculously LOW prices for gas for years. FYI, regular petrol has cost around 2 euro over here for the past two-three years. And before that, it wasn't much less. American prices are still much lower (2 dollars a gallon is about .50 euro/liter - most Europeans pay FOUR times that amount). The low prices have resulted in excessive petrol consumption in the US, with people buying ever more and ever bigger SUVs. The average American consumes about 7 times more energy than the average European and I think that the low gas prices have contributed to the fact that most Americans do not seem to be aware that energy actually comes at a cost. So, perhaps, the current rise in petrol prices will serve as an eye-opener and lead to a more conscious use of energy. One can always hope, no?
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
I don't see what's funny about this. To me energy is an issue and very much more interesting than, say, a dupe article about Lindows being now called whatnot or SCO now claiming black is in fact a hue of white. If energy issues are not interesting to you, you don't have to read the article (as if someone here reads them before posting anyway) but to me, energy IS stuff that matters. And yes, I do believe it takes a fair amount of nerds to do something about it, too. So yes, it belongs to Slashdot, IMO anyway.
Next reply, please.
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
I picked this volume up after researching the issue myself over the web. There is an excellent Scientific American article on this issue from 1998 that serves to provide a similar view from the perspective of another geologist. I highly recommend it.
After reading these materials in early January of this year, as I watched oil prices rise higher and higher, I couldn't help but think about what I read!
The other interesting thing about this book is that it points out how petroleum provides us with benefits far beyond keeping our cars running. Plastics? Herbicides? Fungicides? CD-Rs? Certain medicines? All are dependent on keeping the oil flowing.
Suburbia is the killer. If our lives could be structured such that cars were not *necessary*, we can do fine. Residential infill, cohousing, mixed use zoning are all steps in the right direction. Oddly enough, so are rising gas prices.
Eventually, something will click in someone's head, and they will start to seek alternatives. I started looking at hybrids when my gas pump cut me off at $50.00 without filling my tank ('92 ford bronco, 11 mpg, 32 gallon tank). About a year later, I bought a VW New Beetle with the TDI (diesel) engine. Now it's *possible* to run my car with *no* foreign oil (biodiesel), and to date, about 1/3 of the fuel I've used has been from renewable sources, grown by my local farmers. It costs me $3.00 per gallon at the pump, but thanks ot a rebate program, I'm only paying $1.50 per gallon, net. I'd rather pay $3.00 to the benefit of my local farmer, and local economy, than sending it overseas to support societies that *hate* us. If I get particularly motivated (or more likely, when my warrantee is getting closer to expiration), I can recycle used vegetable oil into fuel at an estimated cost of $0.40-0.50 per gallon.
Not to mention the added benefit of getting 45 mpg without even trying. =)
James Howard Kunstler is my personal favourite "end-of-the-oil-age" critic. He takes the time to posit potential *solutions* to the problem of a transportation-dependent society.
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
The biggest thing I find interesting in this is that in a free market economy High prices are pretty much Required to spur new invention and alternative sources. Ethanol, people complain, costs more than regular gasoline. But as prices increase this isn't going to necessarily hold (please no lon debates and rants about the cost of ethanol production, its just an example).
With totally alternate technologies, as gas prices increase they become more cost competitive with gas. The extra cost/complexity of hybrid vechicles becomes less of a factor. Savings from using (now expensive) gas and moving to other fuels can be calculated. If you project increase in gas prices into the future maybe starting to invest in hydrogen powered vehicles can have a faster ROI (regarding all the infrastructure required) than before gas prices went up.
Basically, to sum up, I'm saying higher gas prices just show the need for new technology, they actulally are required to make it happen.
At a 1930's World Fair, there was a "robot" answering people's questions about what life in the future would be like. One of the questions was when we would run out of fossil fuels. This is a topic people have been worried about for a long time.
Thus far, all the predictions of doom have been averted. New techniques for locating oil reserves, and tapping resources in previously unreachable places, through technologies like offshore platforms, have allowed new supplies to keep up with demand.
Of course, the total amount of fossil fuel is finite, even if petroleum engineers become clever enough to locate and extract every drop, that won't keep the world running forever. But much like with Moore's law, new advances have kept us from running into a brick wall so far, and will continue to at least for the near future.
Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth Deffeyes. I read this book shortly after it came out. If I recall, Deffeyes was a colleague of M. King Hubbert. Estimates of when the peak will come vary (10 to 50+ years), but few doubt it will come (except those who buy into Thomas Gold's hypothesis that most hydrocarbons originate from primordial methane dating from the earth's formation rather than the breakdown of organic material). It will be interesting to see if OPEC is able to lower prices by increasing production. Until now, we've relied on Saudi Arabia to open the taps when prices get too high. If they can't, then that's a good sign the peak is near (or already here).
More generally (and more importantly) oil is underpriced, period. Look at the costs to society:
Yes, we are of course running out of oil, and we of course need to find new energy supplies. People have been beating this drum for years. If it has taught you anything, it should be that scolding people and chanting predictions of disaster doesn't actually make people change their behavior. If you believe it's morally reprehensible that not everyone sold their SUVs and bought a Prius, that's fine, that's your viewpoint, but whining about it hasn't really changed much.
On the other hand, what will change things is the rising price of gas. This is a big news item lately, and the reactions kind of freak me out. People everywhere are outraged, and want to know when this will be "fixed". Like maybe they'll go back down next month, or if we boycott ExxonMobil for 24 hours. This is crazy. In the long run, they're gonna go up, forever. It's a resource we have in finitie quantity. It's running out. As it runs lower, it will get more expensive, until eventually nobody is using it to power their cars.
In the short term, the US has far lower gas prices than European countries. It's not like "they're screwing you" with crazy, unjustifiable markup. If you really think that "Big Oil greediness" is to blame, I suggest you start your own gas company and sell for $1.25. You'll certainly have plenty of customers, if you can sustain that profit margin.
Has all you need to know, and it's not crackpottery - just thousands and thousands of pages of studies and data from the Horses's mouth - Congress and the US Petrochemical industry. The people in power know what the deal is and it's not pretty. We will fight wars over oil in the future.
Ignorant people think gasoline is unlimited. I'll see the end of it, and the inevitable disaster is not going to be pretty. People think the government should lower prices - that's called communism, and it means shortages. Next time you gripe about the price of gasoline, wonder what you'll do when there is none.
I really hope those stories of the oil companies keeping free energy devices suppressed are true - because the oil companies aren't going to be oil companies for much longer.
Oil is far too valuable to be burning at the TREMENDOUS rate of consumption worldwide currently. There will be NO industrial revolution for most third world countries because of the lack of oil available to build infrastructure.
Green energy sources are a bad joke compared to the amounts of energy we consume from oil. The only long term solution is a 0 growth economy combined with population decrease. The alternatives long-term are not pretty.
Unless, of course, cold fusion works or a feasible technology for extracting energy from the ZPE is found. I sure hope something happens.
..don't panic
Q: Does your local electricity come from coal or nuclear?
A: That depends on whether your particular part of the grid is running in excess or deficit at this particular instant.
In other words, once you get everyone to use some non-petrochemical source, you can pick the most efficient means of producing it without forcing your customers to replace their investment again.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I've been hearing about the near end of fossil fuels for most of my 40+ years. It hasn't happened yet, and I have no reason to believe that it's about to happen. We keep finding new reserves, and whatnot.
On the other hand, fossil fuels cause astonishing trouble. Most of the bad craziness in the Middle East and Africa is fueled by petrodollars. Does anyone think that we'd be quagmired in Iraq if it weren't for oil? Certainly, we'd end more suffering by going into Sudan, or other places. Why do we coddle the House of Saud after they financed al Qaeda, if it isn't for oil and the promise of growing wealth for the House of Bush and the House of Cheney?
There is also a growing body of evidence that pollution is bad (prior to recently, it was purely conjecture).
It would be great to switch from fossil fuels, and to do it quickly. A Manhattan-Project-like effort for fusion reactors would be appropriate.
Unfortunately, the average SUV-driving American pinhead will keep this from happening for a long time.
This isn't a matter of giving up our SUVs for hybrid cars. That isn't going to matter one bit. The fact is, we've spent the last 100 years building an entire economy around absurdly cheap energy. This energy is going to run out. If we do not find a way to run our world without petroleum and coal, we are doomed. What's really going to be fun is, when this peak occurs, the powers of the world are going to fight more and more visciously for the remaining scraps. We will face war, poverty, and social upheaval which will grow ever worse as the lights slowly dim... and then burn out.
The only way around this is some serious technological advances. We need to develop a sustainable energy economy, and we need to do it yesterday. Lifestyle changes, solar panels, wind farms, and hybrid cars won't do a damn bit of good without massive new technology.
Boys and girls, we have about 25 years. I suggest you study physics and chemistry. Hard.
dinner: it's what's for beer
For those that have read it, you know what I'm talking about. Any of these titles disregard markets as a means to force the hand of technology. Believe me, markets reflect scarcity, and new solutions arise as a result. Read back to the timber crisis in the early 1800's during the railroad boom, or the rubber crisis which led the way to synthetics and recovery/recycle programs. If we're running out of oil, it WILL get damn expensive and we'll find a better way of doing things. Many of these books seem to ignore this, making them very aggrivating to read. For a change, I suggest "The Doomsday Myth". For the record, I have a degree in economics and I've done a lot of environmental economic research. I'm tired of turning page after page of text basically written to shock the public.
Actually, if your read your article you would see:
While $2.017 is a record for gasoline, adjusted for inflation the price hit $2.99 a gallon in March 1981, according to the Energy Information Administration
There is this thing called inflation. Perhaps you have heard of it?
Let's face it; high oil prices are bad for them because it encourages the US to seek alternatives. For all you anti-US trolls who are now foaming at the mouth, if you are honest with yourselves, you will admin that we are seriously the only ones who will 1) come up with a viable solution and 2) implement that solution.
Do we need an alternative solution? Damn straight. Burning petrochemicals is bad all the way around. To paraphrase the Late, Great Douglas Adams, we took all this poisonous stuff that was safely buried far underground, pumped it up to the surface and turned it into asphalt to coat the ground with, smoke to fill the air with, and the rest we dumped into the sea.
Are solar energy and/or fusion the answer? Solar in its current earth-based form is too erratic and takes up too much land to be workable. As for fusion, the technology is just not there yet either. And the same environmental shills that are screaming about oil will scream even louder about anything "nuculer." Perhaps space-based solar energy will be a better answer, but it will be extremely expensive to implement unless we break NASA's currentl monopoly on launches ($40,000 per pound of payload is a bit pricey).
--If something I said could be taken two ways, and one of those ways made you cry, then I meant the other way.
Had world oil supply peak around 1981. Coal in the Eastern United States tapped out by 1990.
Predictions worked! People were in a panic state. Lines at the gas pumps. Price of coal reached unbelieveable high. Life was good if you lived in Texas or West Virginia.
A few years ago, one hell of a lot of "Singing Billy Bass" and "Rock Lobster" gag gifts were given at Christmas. At the time I said "All the oil used to make and transport these stupid things was completely wasted."
Oh, and we could ban auto-racing, truck pulls, the robosaurus that shoots flame and eats cars...
How much of your 4$/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.
What this probably means is that we screwed up when the mergers were allowed. Then again, we also screwed up 25-odd years ago when we used the half-assed measure of CAFE regulations instead of just taxing fuel. We screwed up again when we allowed the California Air Resources Board to try to mandate use of ZEVs (in practice, battery-only electric cars) before the battery technology was remotely ready rather than far more achievable HEVs. If 30% of all new vehicles sold in California since 1990 had been hybrids, we'd be way beyond Toyota and Honda technologically and the reduced fuel demand would have eliminated the refinery capacity squeeze too.
Right now we need to aim at plug-in hybrids, so that our cars aren't totally dependent on petroleum for energy. Even if they didn't get radically better mileage than current vehicles, the flexibility in energy supply would add elasticity to fuel demand and moderate prices.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
As one of the first posts in the article indicates, prices for all goods are going up because it costs more to ship them. Milk is more expensive because refueling milk tanker trucks is more expensive. Products derived from milk, like ice cream, take on the burden of the expense to ship the milk to the factory (which is passed on to the customers) and then pass on the cost of shipping THAT product to the stores' warehouses to the customers while the stores pass the cost of shipping from the warehouse to the retail stores to the customer. This is slightly multiplied by each company in the chain desiring to maintain the same relative profit margins.
I remember only a few years ago -- sometime before 2000 -- there was a summer where gas prices dipped below a dollar in my area. Gas prices are now twice that, and diesel prices are in the $1.50-1.60 range. A 50% increase in the cost of transportation hits the prices of everything hard. Oil prices have a ripple effect on the entire economy, not just the ~$20-40 you spend refilling a gas tank.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
...but it might cost too much to get at it.
There are current theories (that the oil companies don't want you to consider) that suggest that oil does not originate in dinosaur-era plant life, but in reactions to high pressure and temperature in carbon-bearing rock in the earth's crust. See here for an article.
Points to consider: Some of the major oil basins have no connection to the primordial seas, and are much deeper than life ever existed. Also, no remains of life have ever been found in oil-bearing rock. Lastly, the makeup of petroleum is consistent with what can be made from meteoric carbonaceous chondrite rock.
Design for Use, not Construction!
Our ancestors did survive without petroleum. However, there were about 5 billion less of them than there are of us. I guess people in the suburbs can start converting those 3-car garages into stables, though.
Actually, Brazil prouduces alcohonafta (alcohol from "can~a de azucar") that can be used as a direct replacement for GAS (the mesures shows a 20% power drop from GAS).
For GasOil there's bio-diesel produced from any vegetal oil (simply choose the cheapest one) that works great for big diesel engines (I'm not so sure if it works on direct injection diesel engines).
Both options are far more clean that traditional petroleum based Gas.
Obviously there's no enough surface in the world to produce enough alcohonafta or bio-diesel to run every engine out there, but you can replace a lot of the consumed petrol, slowing down the burn out rate, giving time for the world to migrate to more eficient internal combustion engines (that can be drive with the world produced alcohonafta).
Fly-Weels are doesn't allow big shocks becouse of it giroscopic nature, and would require a hole new kind of machinery, while acohonafta won't change current technology.
As far as I remembered alcohonafta is profitable when petrol exceeds U$S40 the barrel (nowadays), I'm not so sure about bio-diesel but I think it's about U$S35 the barrel.
As others are pointing out, the difference between the price of gas in Europe and the USA are mostly due to taxes. In Massachusetts, the combined state and federal taxes are $.399 if I remember what was posted at the pump when I last filled up. Other states have different tax rates, and there may be additional indirect taxes factored into the price as well.
So why are European taxes so much higher? Because they tax as a percentage of the price, whereas the USA taxes as a amount per volume. Hence, if the cost of gas before taxes doubles, in Europe the price at the pump doubles, whereas in the USA the price may only go up 25%.
Now some will argue that the taxes are too low, as they don't cover all the related costs, but all of those studies have included environmental impact costs that are wildly subjective at best.
for places like iceland, who are cursed with volcanoes and earthquakes, the silver lining is, of course, the potential ability to remain completely free of oil dependency because of steam generators that can be plugged right into the ground
in january i had the pleasure of visiting the largest such natural steam generator facility in the world on another island cursed/ blessed with geothermal activity, on the island of leyte in the philippines
it powers virtually the entire island, for free, as well as parts of samar and lower luzon
the natural steam sources are really quite amazing up there in the mountains: it is always raining, for example, downslope from the facilities because of all of the steam that is always issuing forth... and run off rivers of steaming brilliant cobalt blue from superheated hyperdissolved minerals from deep in the earth mixing with the cold muddy waters in the middle of the mountain jungle... and to find, deep in the poor rural mountain jungles where water buffalo roam free on dirt roads and unhusked rice dries by the roadside, to find what looks like an evil genius's lair of ultramodern technology and giant steaming generators surrounded by nervous machine gun toting filipino forces at military checkpoints
unfortunately, a few weeks after i visited the facility, it was overrun by local npa (communist) guerrillas... this was tied to election politics in the philippines, where remote rural guerilla forces often demand protection money in exchange for allowing voting to proceed... it would be hoped that the poor rural areas in the mountains north of ormoc city around lake danao would benefit from this facility more directly through tourist facilities and other infrastructure development
then they would be invested in the success of the plant, rather than it having be controlled by manila and calenergy from afar
but for those who are hellbent on imagining a dystopic future where civilization fails because we don't make the transition from oil to fusion energy, for example, know that there are oases in the world like iceland and leyte where mankind's power hungry needs can and will be satsified for centuries to come, virtually for free
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Think bigger. A million cars all over the globe with no gas isn't the big problem.
When oil is too costly to use as an energy source how are we going to make the metal to build the factoies that make medical supplies? How are we going to build cleaner (nuke?) power plants when we don't even have the resources to make the raw material?
And this would be all happening after the wars over oil rich land. The first obvious war over oil have already happened.
Nuclear waste disposal isn't really a problem. It's a political football in the US, but that's a political problem, not a technical one. There are rock formations that have been stable for twenty million years. (Yucca Mountain isn't one of them, though.)
The problem is Chernoybl-sized disasters and air pollution from the coal. Everybody worries about the first, but the second is more dangerous.
America has huge oil fields off of all three of our coasts, yet only limited drilling is allowed in the gulf. And no more at all apparently will be allowed in Alaska.
If we were to develop those resources, get rid of the stupid EPA's '8 different types of gas' rules, and build more refineries, then the prices would drop back down.
But the people of the US (or at least enough of them in powerful positions) don't want that. So gas prices will remain high for now. But we won't be running out of oil in the lifetime of anybody here.
I remmeber there was a book (Malthusian something or other?) that said that the whole world was going to end in 20 years or so because of the inability of people to be fed, destroying the climate, etc, etc. The ususal doom and gloom stuff. Written in or around the 70's, IIRC.
;)
What I also remember is a $1000 (US) bet between the author of the book and a professor who's name escapes me at the moment. The bet was that the cost of a cross section of commodities, picked by the author, adjusted for inflation, would be LOWER in 20 years than they were at the start of the bet. The book's author lost. Every time, he lost.
The problem? The books author took advantage of the then crises going on (stagflation, unavailable gasoline in the US because we wouldn't buy from countries like Iran) to prey upon people's fears to make money, or to promote their particular dicipline (physics professor pushing for fusion research? Who would have thought that?). This book seems little different.
Saying that we're going to run out of fossil fuels is fine. It'll happen. Saying it's gonna happen in the next decade, and that solar and fusion are the only long term replacements is assinine. What happens if someone figures out a way to make a gasoline replacement from genetically engineered microbes next year? The unpredicibility of the human mind and spirit in finding solutions are completely ignored, and when the author's predictions turn out to be as false as every other prediction, I have little doubt that thsese same attributes will be the culprit.
The current hike in the price of gasoline is not solely based on the availabllity of crude. It's as much, and possibly more, affected by the inability of refineries to process the crude oil into gasoline that is driving prices up. If prices, or demand, were going to stay this high, you'd think oil companies would be falling over themselves to build more refineries...but they're not. Why not? Because they know that, in the longer term, those refineries won't pay for themselves when the price of gasoline drops again.
---Postscript
Finally, I noticed that one of the authours wrote about a lower population in the future? Wouldn't that lead to lowered demand for petroleum? And a longer lasting supply? Or did doomsayer #2 forget to talk to doomsayer #1 before publishing (again)?
Look, we can curtail consumption dramatically overnight if need be. In fact we could increase the car efficiency by a factor of 3 overnight. Not only the technology is already here, but you can drive it off the parking lot today!
Do you know that the average mile per gallon today in the US is lower than in the mid-80s?
What would be the reduction in gas consumption if we all dumped our SUVs and bought Honda Civics?
Now, what if we then switched to Hybrids?
What if we gave up the back seat for our one-person commute and we all switched to smart cars?
What if we equipped said smartcars with super-efficient bicycle-like wheels as California is suggesting we do?
Mark my words: in two years people won't be able to give away for free their gas guzzling SUV (people who are old enough will remember that in the late 70s you could not give away your LTD Crown Victoria).
For one, the problem isn't running out of oil, it's running out of cheap oil. It takes some energy to get oil out of the ground. The less oil in the well the more energy it takes. When it takes one barrel of oil to pump out one barrel of oil, the well is abandoned (zero sum). The problem isn't running out of oil, it running out of oil that's relatively easy to get out of the ground.
Nuclear power would be a great short term stop gap, it's only problem is that it takes a decade to build a reactor.
My last point is that this issue is HUGE. Oil is used in the production of EVERYTHING including alternative energy sources and research. Just imagine how much time and money it would take to produce enough ethenol (or what ever) for everyone's cars, distribute/store it (would current distribution systems work?), and convert every car, truck, big rig, ambulance, firetruck, motorcycle, etc in the country! That only covers land transportation.
Look around you. There is in everything you see a number that represents the ammount of oil it took to create whatever you're looking at and bring it to the spot that it's currently at. Oil was used to produce and transport everything you own (except unimproved realestate). Oil is the constant in equation of everything we make or raise.
"public transportation" DOESN'T produce, package, or deliver your food to the stores and restaurants you frequent. Nor does it in the US-or any place else. The goods you all buy at the stores, from clothes to Cds to various hardware to..whatever--inevitably is reflected cost wise with the price of petroleum-and it's availability.
You don't even need a book, a simple two line graph will suffice. One graph shows world wide demand-that is going UP. Another graph line shows production-that will be going down as fields leave their "peak" where it's the cheapest to extract in terms of BTU's --> in to get BTU's -- out. Those lines will cross, then go in opposite directions, and the result is quite literally madmax, the movie, in spades.
In most fields outside the middle east, it's passed peak, and even the big fields in the middle east it's getting closer.
Those lines more or less cross within 15 years most places, some places earlier, other places later, but short of them developing some extremely energy efficient extraction techniques, and especially something that doesn't require high pressure water injection, we will be enscrewed.
BUT, the hard choices will not be made until it's too late to do much about it. We should already be using a significant proportion of the worlds petroleum energy to mass produce alternative enrgy devices, instead, we are using only a tiny fraction, waiting for the Mr. Fusion back yard perpetual motion machine generator.
Nuts, but there ya go.
I also think the "proven reserve" numbers aren't accurate, I think it's less in the middle east than what they say, but slightly more in the arctic circle. And there's some more to be gained in the gulf of mexico, etc, currently off limits to drilling, but once fuel gets to be about 5$ a gallon in the US, you won't find many people who give a care where we drill, unlike now when it's still fatcity and cheap and no one really is hurting yet-easy to complain OR ignore the problem as long as you are well fed, comfy, and want for naught. Once that changes, we could see what are euphemistally called in history books "major social changes".
Stuff can happen FAST, too, I personally paid 10$ a gallon for two gallons max back in the OPEC embargo days. And it doesn't matter how much you whine about it when it happens, scam or no scam, you pay, or walk. And with the current middle east situation, chaos theory says-you don't know, the whole dang place over there could el kaboom any day. No one can say it won't, you can't say it will, but the posibility is there for major war to seriously disrupt supply, and that would effect everyone in any nuymber of ways, irregardless if they are an urban bicycle/mass transit rider or not.
We are just way too dependent on oil, our entire economies revolve around it.
Heck, I just came in for a breather, about to go back outside and climb onto a diesel powered tractor, without that diesel, I can't work. PERIOD. Multiple that by another billion guys around the planet, one way or the other everyone goes to work, and diesel and gas make it happen. We simply cannot replace it, even by a massive switch to coal, can't be done now.
Gasoline is solar energy converted to hydrocarbons by plants, then processed by time and pressure.
But the real source of Energy is the Sun. Mankind's total energy useage per year is still MUCH less than the Sun's total output per year, and is even less than the amount of energy the sun delivers to the planet earth in a year.
It should be obvious that we might be forced to find other ways of converting that energy into useable forms, but that we have no need to worry about running out of energy.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Simply make products as close to the consumer as possible, regardless of real cost or end price. Use the internet to distribute the plans, and make the physical hardware locally. Then you've just saved all the fuel that used to go for shipping, AND you've created more jobs locally.
Nah, that's TOO easy.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
1. Environmental regulations preventing the building of new refineries.
Oh, of courrrse.... A lack of refineries makes their input product (crude oil) more expensive? Shouldn't a lack of demand drive down the price of a supplied good? Perhaps you flunked the supply and demand portion of macroeconomics.
2. Environmental regulations forcing specialized, region-specific formulations across the country.
This effects the $40/barrel price of crude oil how? Hell, it doesn't even effect the gas price of people outside of those regions much, and if it did, the answer would be to adopt the better standards rather than to increase the smog in the big cities.
3. OPEC fighting against us in Iraq with the one effective weapon they have.
It seems that in talks to increase production. Only Venezuela and Iran are vocally against this.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The future is now.
If the Middle East (and Iraq) were not full of oil, then the U.S. would not be fighting a war in Iraq today. I am not saying that the U.S. sent troops into Iraq to steal their oil. The neocons sent troops into Iraq in the hope that they could stabilize the region and create a reliable source of future oil for the world.
A side benefit would be that the money spent on oil (e.g. to fillup your SUV) would be less likely to support terrorism (where do you think bin Ladin got his millions?). At this stage, however, it seems that the utopian vision of the neocons will not come to pass, and the future of the region looks more unstable than before the Iraq war.
Bully for you!
In the long run, of course, we are all dead, but also in the long run human cultures can and will adapt to a world of incredibly expensive, rare oil.
The question is whether that is a world that can sustain 8+ billion people at anything like the current astonishing consumption rate.
I'm given to understand that economists spend a lot of time measuring the theoretical epiphenomenon known as "productivity" within an "economy". I put it to you that a major input into measurements of productivity is in fact trapped solar energy in the form of fossil fuels.
The transition from a medieval society based on slaves/serfs and water/wind power to the consumption of fossil fuels on a vast, increasing scale over past few centuries is what has enabled us to move from agrarian to an urban societies. We no longer require vast armies of slaves and serfs to till our fields and shit in them - instead we burn fossil fuels to till the, and convert more fossil fuels into fertiliser. By burning 400 years worth of solar energy input every year, we have increased producitivty massively, freeing up hundreds of millions of bodies to work in urban manufacturing and service jobs. We have created our economies, literally, by burning fossil fuels.
Unlike economics, physics and geology doesn't work in a vacuum or a finely divisible continuum of graduated, switchable inputs. There is a finite limit to growth, dictated by several realities: total solar output, diameter of the earth, effectiveness of photosynthesis, energy conversion efficiencies, and so on. We could, as you say, transition our cultures to move from fossil fuels to other power sources, but what are the consequences?
Da Blog
"gasoline prices have certainly been worse."
Or great, depending on how you view it. Here in Norway, whose economy is based on the export of oil and natural gas, high oil prices are viewed as good.
I'm not saying that a high usage of oil is any good (to the world as a whole), but for some of us, high prices on oil is just perfect.
They used Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. With that, given a source of coal and a source of hydrogen, you can produce almost any kind of hydrogen chain (efficiency of course varying a lot depending on the input and the wanted output). IIRC the Nazis used coal (you know, the black thing you mine and burn, as well as the element) for coal, and water for the hydrogen source and produced gasoline. The gasoline wasn't probably up to today's standard, but technology has improved so today you can make gasoline about as good as the usual dead dino stuff we use.
Do some google searching, there is quite a lot of research going on to use Fischer-Tropsch to produce renewable fuels.
few doubt it will come (except those who buy into Thomas Gold's hypothesis that most hydrocarbons originate from primordial methane dating from the earth's formation rather than the breakdown of organic material).
Even if you accept this hypothesis, you still run into a crunch because the rate of metabolysis for oil is incredibly slow over human timescales. Whereas our economic growth rate and thirst for oil is incredibly rapid by comparison. Waiting for new petrol to be squeezed out of rocks is not going to keep those Hummers on the roads!
Da Blog
...and I don't mean just by buying huge SUVs and being generally glutonous. I mean by defeating Saddam!
See, when that crazy SOB was running loose in Iraq, Saudia Arabia and the other OPEC nations were scared. They needed their big buddy, the US, to keep him in line. Now that he is gone and Iraq has declined into a state of continuous *local* guerrilla war, the possibility of Kuwait or Saudia Arabia being invaded is zero. So now, things are a little different between the US and OPEC. Sure, we did them a huge favor by removing Saddam, but now, the US has nothing over them. So, if oil prices should drift up and up and up. So sorry. Pay me, sucker.
I remember when I was in High school, reading in my science book, that they were Predicting that the oil supply would be dry in 25 years.
:)
Apparently they were wrong, because the book was made in 1976. It's 2004 and I'm not living in a real life Post Apocalyptic "Mad Max" world full of thugs and killers spilling Blood for Oil.
Getting back to the point, I'll believe we'll be out of oil when I see it. Particulary since so far the analysts doing these studies haven't been right so far.
Pretty much all of the other stuff your going to find here is DittoHeads Vs FrankenSteins to see which radio Talk show host has the biggest head
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
How are we going to get along without plastics? What about lubricants for our engines? I think the oil crisis is beyond just gasoline.
I mean there are oil powerplants, but almost none in the US. We use Coal. Of that, we have much. At LEAST 100 years worth on deposits available in our country alone. This is not to mention that we could produce a lot of enegry via nuclear power, if the restrictions to it's generation were removed.
PS: If you are stockpiling food and clothing to prepare for the collapse of civilization, you fail to understand what the collapse of civilization means. You should be stockpiling guns and ammo.
Provide businesses with tax/other insentives for having a certain portion of their work force telecommute for 3-4 days out of the week would greatly reduce the amount of fuel use caused by suburbia.
And I would be the first to sign up. 30 miles to and from work is a dog in traffic.
20 percent markup on $20 a barrel means $4 profit
20 percent markup on $40 a barrel means $8 profit
It is not in their best interest to get the prices down.
register to vote, and follow through.
regards
dbcad7
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Someone in the audience mentioned Goodstein and Lewis made kind of a scoffing noise. Lewis seemed very skeptical of Goodstein's estimates of how soon we will run out of coal.
The real problem, according to Lewis, as I understood it, is not that we will run out of oil, but that we will probably not be able to meet energy demands without putting significantly more carbon into the air than there has been in the last half million years.
I would like to point out a simple fact that while oil prices are as low as they are, there is little or no hard incentive for alternative sources of energy.
The US has a VERY large reserve of oil, and the world's oil fields are completely under produced. We have at least enough oil for 50-100 more years, unless everyone in China & India start to drive. US consumption can be supported for quite some time.
Either way, if you think that gas-powered cars are evil, you should be rooting for higher oil prices. Otherwise, no serious effort will be made for alternatives.
That said, a serious effort at an alternative has been found and it is called nuclear energy (pronounced "new-clear" -- i know these new fangled science terms are hard).
It harnesses the power of the atom and can be made small enough to power your small car or large enough to power your small country.
Too bad that people think it is unsafe. It is understandable though, given a total of ZERO deaths caused by meltdowns in the western world.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
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)
.
We have plenty of corn ( and soy ) to make ethenol to drive our cars and trucks..
Much of this country's corn is wasted, or sent to other places as 'aid'. We dont need any of the gasoline we are using now.
Even most lubricant oil can be replaced with soy oil..
The only real reason we still have an oil industry is due to the $$ it generates for washington.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
Attendant: Out of gas.
Jake: Yep. Fill 'er up.
Attendant: No. We're out of gas!
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Coal is in the long run a better choice because we have so much of it--about four trillion tons in the US alone which translates roughly to 8 trillion barrels (global oil reserves are estimated at about 1 trillion barrels). One problem is that coal conversion plants are relatively expensive to build, and since there's little demand right now we don't have the capacity to start producing huge quantities immediately if there is a sudden spike in gas prices.
Methanol has about half the energy density of gas (so you'd have to refill more often) but it also has lower emissions. On the other hand the lower emissions are offset by the environmental damage from coal recovery, i.e. strip mining.
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
Awww...lookee like the poo widdle amewicans are starting to pay more for gas. Boo freakin hoo! Hey: here's a solution: Why don't you fools vote Bush in for another 4 years, so he can invade other countries that provide oil (talk about biting the hand that feeds you) so he and his Texas buddies can keep the price of a barrel of oil high, and try and justify it on fictional, manufactured "evidence". That way, he and his buddies can continue to be super rich can maintain a stranglehold on the world. Then you Americans can continue to think he's the bestest president EVER, while the rest of the world angishes at his complete and udder stupidity. I can't wait for Moore's next film to come out - talk about timing!! TO HELL!!! Hey, this handbasket looks like it'll be mighty fine transportation to get us there!!
...I like this place for the layman. The oil industry has it's own intelligence, and keeps their cards close to their cheast, but we just saw royal dutch shell a few weeks ago busted for over reporting what they claim they had-by 20%! That's an astoundingly LARGE amount of oil they claimed existed and does not exist. I have no idea if any of the other companies do it, but I sure wouldn't bet against it.
anyway, here ya go http://dieoff.org/
Best named website on the net if ya ask me
the best article off that site, for my loot, is
http://dieoff.org/page224.htm
I hate to break it to you, but most of suburbia looks nothing like your charming bungalow, just like most cities don't look like the somewhat dull building you present as New Urbanism's pinnacle.
I live in a charming, walkable, 80-year-old city neighborhood, in a 3-bedroom brick rowhouse that is anything but characterless. Our neighborhood organization sponsors a "painted lady" contest that encourages residents to paint and decorate their home. Contrast that with my relatives who live in newly-minted suburbia: windy streets dotted with houses build according to one of three or four floorplans, all with off-white exteriors and strict homeowners association rules that prevent you from doing anything to the exterior that stands out in any way. Their houses and yards are larger, but tend to be bland and feel cheap (try knocking on the walls). And of course (the original point of this discussion) you have to drive if you want to go anywhere out of the subdivision -- and the subdivision is entirely residential.
I have nothing against the sort of cute suburban neighborhoods you describe -- but be aware that when most people buy a suburban home, that's not what they're buying. And my experience with strict suburban homeowner's associations, along with the mindset of people who live there, is that the suburbs are less, not more, encouraging of individuality.
jf
you have two choices, live with technology and keep paying the price, or live completely raw native primitive. If you live in any industrialised world, you will not only be paying more, you'll be getting less and your standard of living will be dropping. This is inevitable now, it's going to happen, the only argument is "when". We have zero replacement for petroleum. You won't say no when the two choices are, go to work, make at least something, at least have something to eat, etc.
people seem to think it won't matter, ot that the "market" will taker care of it. what they always forget is that this oil stuff is a finite resource, we cannot make any more of it. with energy, as sophisticated as we think we are, we are still in the hunter/gatherer stage of existence. It looks snazzy and lotsa blinkenlights, but all we do is extract it, and it's running out fast. They've about exhausted any gains to be made from effieicny, because it doesn't matter if you can throw money at it, once it takes the same amount of energy to extract, refine, transport petroleum products as you can get from it, then production ceases. You can't run the energy business in a negative, and that negative leaning break -even point is rapidly approaching. people argue about that point, say it's centuries in the future or whatever, but I think you can find out it's within a decade or two and we'll have some SERIOUS problems on the old ball of mud here. Demand is going up dramatically, it is going to be so bad we WILL be seeing major wars over it, and I contend all this mid east jazz going on is directly tied to "who will own the oil for the next two decades". I don't think even the most optimistic figures show that it is possible for the bulk of the planet to have any sort of "middle class" existence like we have now, the raw materials simply do not exist, and the energy doesn't exist, and it won't exist. And this stuff is coming down hard, and fast now.
I am non complacent about it, I live rural, I try for a bigger garden every year, and I'll be adding to my personal altenate enrgy supply, and be working on transportation next. Once iot gets real expensive, the worlds rich and the worlds governments and militsaries will "own" all the good energy, joe civvies in any nation won't be getting much, and they will be working lots harder than they do now, that's for sure.
That's my opinion, but I think the data supports it.
We are IN the "good old days" now, in other words.
We had a sort of warning in the 70's, and they said we would run out sooner. Thankfully they explored, found more, and developed more sophisticated exploration and extraction techniques, but they about milked that dry now. What's left hat is "new" is at bad, expensive places to get to, and is very costly, energy-wise. There AREN'T any more, stick a pipe in the ground get a gusher fields left, the kinds that fueled the rise of industrialised west and japan, and built those strong economies. That stuff is gone, we used it up already..
May 14, 2004--Portrush Petroleum Corporation is pleased to announce the results from the Mission River Oilfield in the Gulf Coast region of Texas, near Corpus Christi, in Refugio County, Texas...Out of the 120 cores removed from the well-bore 44 were analyzed as having "probable Production" of oil, natural gas and/or condensate (light oil carried in the gas streams)...Due to tremendous improvement in energy industry technology, rising prices for energy products and vast expansion of market outlook, the gas bearing strata in particular and thinner oil-bearing horizons previously penetrated but never produced during the original development era (1920-1950), many were overlooked or then unidentified oil and natural gas sands were left behind as being "non commercial".
..
...
...etc...
The Scotsman, UK - Apr 20, 2004
CAIRN Energy, the Edinburgh-based oil and gas exploration group, today announced a third and "potentially significant" oil discovery in Rajasthan, India.
Kerr-McGee makes deepwater Gulf of Mexico oil discovery - Apr 19, 2004... reported Monday the discovery of more than 250 ft of net high-quality hydrocarbon pay, primarily oil, with its Ticonderoga discovery well and initial sidetrack
May. 18, 2004 - Daugherty Resources went looking for natural gas in Eastern Kentucky early this year and got "a costly surprise." It struck oil. "We certainly didn't expect to find the oil field we found," the Lexington company's CEO, William S. Daugherty, said yesterday.
Connacher Reports First Quarter Results - May 11, 2004... Thirteen wells were drilled in the period. All were cased. - A significant oil discovery was made at Tompkins, Saskatchewan.
14/05/04 Oil Search Limited (OSH) this morning reported to shareholders that logging of their 25% jointly owned Neheb-1 well in Yemen has been completed. The oil and gas explorer explained that the data received has indicated the presence of hydrocarbons in surrounding sandstone.
Tullow Oil plc 2003 Preliminary Results... In May the company announced a significant oil discovery on the Acajou prospect, southeast of Espoir
May 5 -- Goodrich Petroleum Corporation today announced a Cotton Valley discovery on its North Minden Prospect in Rusk County, Texas.
May 12, 2004 - WOODSIDE Petroleum Ltd may have struck commercial oil in a new exploration well in Western Australia's Exmouth Sub-basin.
Repeat after me, Synthetic Fuel. It's made from coal. The technology is mature, Germans fought during WWII using it. The only problem is that there is no guarantee of prices going down! Last synthetic fuel factory in Germany was closed in sixties being unable to compete with ultra-cheap arab oil. When investors will be sure that prices will stay high we'll see factories popping around the world.
If you read Yergin's "The Prize" about the first 120 years of the Hydrocarbon Age, the complaint about "running out of oil" occurs with regularity every 20 years or so. (Also a PBS documentary at your library.)
I think my first respondant didn't get the speculative, rather than totalitarian, tone I was using.
... was gas rationing in WWII totalitarian, or patriotic? The trouble with waiting for pure market forces to take care of waste like Billy Bass and Robosaurus is that by the time the market fixes the problem, the damage is done, the resource wasted. In WWII, the government (and all of us) needed gas to remain at a reasonable price for essential activities while not wasting it on the non-essential. Thus rationing. By the time it's uneconomic to manufacture and transport Billy Bass, it's uneconomic to manufacture and transport a heck of a lot of more important items.
But looking at both reponses, let's explore further
I'm not saying massive government intervention is always the answer, but I think the free market is going to need some help on this one. Maybe the combination can get us to biodiesel/electic hybrid engines.
I mean, how much milk and ice cream can you eat in a month? Even if the price doubles...how much more is that out of your pocket?
The point is that everything that is shipped by truck, plane, train, or sea increases in price when oil prices rise. Everything. Milk and ice cream are just concrete examples. Do I need to demonstrate the supply chain for every product sold in the US, or are you going to quit being myopic about the network effect of transportation costs?
I just don't see the temporary increase being all that much!
Many other parts of the economy act on a completely different timeframe from the ephemeral consumable goods markets. Take your phone company, for example. The cost of repairs and other maintenance work on their network goes up as the cost of driving around their repair vehicles goes up and as the cost of electricity in areas with oil-burning power plants goes up. If the company's planners do not see these higher prices as a temporary thing but instead as a long-term increase, your phone bill will go up.
This same sort of planning affects every industry in the nation as they must cope with effects from the subtle ones on the banking and healthcare industries to the massive disruption of airline and petrochemical fertilizer and pesticide suppliers.
I feel people have become complacent on a stable economy...they've forgotten that things can happen to throw it out of wack, and they've stopped preparing for such situations.
While the price rise is real, I feel it is poor spending habits that give the rises the enormous impacts they do.
I agree wholeheartedly with this, but to dismiss outright the effects of surges in oil prices as nothing to worry about if you've got some financial sense is a bit naive. Transportation costs will hit the values of your stocks and bonds as they hit corporate and government purses. Never forget too that the consumption of many of these poor planners are the driving force of our economy. If they get into the trouble, it will have ripple effects on you even if they don't leap out in your face.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
One of the best ways to reduce your dependence on fossil fuels to to walk or bike to work. Tommorow is bike to work day. http://www.bike2work.com/ In San Francisco, the San Francisco Bike Coalition will be on the streets handing out snacks and goodies. http://www.sfbike.org Walking and Biking can be effective ways of putting your money where you mouth is when it comes to energy independence, have great health benefits, and are a great way to meet people. Want to reduce your gas usage by maybe 20%? Bike to work one day a week.
Changing World Technologies is the company behind the "turkey guts" thermal depolymerization (TDP) plant in Carthage, MO, USA.
Running some back of the envelope calculations shows some interesting figures. First establish what we use today. In 2002, the United States used an estimated 19.7 million barrels. Per day.
A plant of this size produces 180,000 barrels of oil per year; it is claimed that this is over and above the energy it uses. That works out to 493.15 barrels per day out of 200 tons each day. There are 160 million tons of wood waste per year (1998 figures) alone. That works out to 1,080,876 barrels per day if we assume the same conversion rate of 200 tons of organic matter to 493.15 barrels per day. 5.4% of our daily total oil demand from wood waste alone. Enough to affect prices at the margin, where it counts. At current rates, we will import 68% of our oil by 2025. This same reference cites DOE figures that say we currently import about 50%, or about 10 million barrels. If we put this in place today, the percentage of imports this represents rises to 10.8%.
Pulling our focus back a bit, we find that agriculture produces about 1 billion tons of waste per year. Remember, agricultural waste streams are not the only feedstock; some manufacturing waste streams are also eligible. But for the sake of back of the envelope calculations, let's assume that all eligible waste streams for TDP amounts to 1 billion tons per year. That works out to 6,755,479 barrels per day, or about 67% of daily import demand today.
Even if we project out increased demand for petroleum in the future, the potential for this technique to affect prices at the margin should not be dismissed out of hand. It is highly unlikely that we can use this technique (assuming all the engineering, business and logistical details are worked out --- the reaction chambers need to be calibrated for the feedstock, and they don't have many "recipes" worked out yet, and don't even know what is or is not feasible) to supplant import demand. Fortunately, we don't need it to wholesale replace imports: if we can make it affect the marginal price, that's still a useful tool in our national assets.
If the Changing World folks really are on the up and up, and they produce a small net of oil from these big brother versions of the pilot plant, then this is a strong piece of evidence for the school of thought who contend that market mechanisms will produce solutions as the need arises. As others in this thread have already pointed out, we certainly have nowhere approached the theoretical physics-imposed limits of available energy that can be gathered from the sun.
The whole coal will last 100/200/250 years, or whatever, is total bullshit. Such numbers are based on taking some number for coal reserves and dividing it by present consumption. But present consumption is small because we get most of our energy from oil. Even in electricity generation coal generally makes up less than 50 percent of production (and it is used for very little else at present). If the switch from coal to oil and gas had not been made at the beginning of the the 20th century, all the coal on earth would have already been used up. Once oil and gas production starts to fall, coal consumption will rise dramatically and these numbers like 100 years will get a lot smaller.
Check that site out, www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
It explains it all.
Either find the oil, or make it cheap using slave labour, or find a magic alternative.
Who knows, the fight of oil may be cause a www3 to start.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Sure- you take paypal.
"public transportation" DOESN'T produce, package, or deliver your food to the stores and restaurants you frequent. Nor does it in the US-or any place else. The goods you all buy at the stores, from clothes to Cds to various hardware to..whatever--inevitably is reflected cost wise with the price of petroleum-and it's availability.
Not public transit as such, but yes, most places other than North America still use trains a great deal to move goods. You just don't see very many huge semis on the highways in Europe like you do in the US and Canada. And trains just are a hell of lot more efficient at moving stuff -- it's just that the absurdly cheap gas in NA screws up the economics here.
They are pleanty of ways to get power..
... well you get the picture.
We will use all the oil until its gone, that is just human nature. Then we will make the change and not until.
Oh and as I said before just fix the F@#King traffic problems and we would save plenty of gas. Build some more roads, work from home, stagger office hours etc. If you cut 5 minutes off everyones drive time
In places where public transit is good more "normal" people use it.
I have lived in two different college towns where the buses were used mostly by faculty and staff of the university. I use it myself when the weather sucks, stops one block from my apartment very 15 minutes during commute time...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...