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.
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.
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.
I travel around 400-600 miles every week (Usualy drive from LA to SD at least once). Living in Los Angeles, where the price is about .50 higher then what I remember a year ago I spend an average of $15 more each week or about $50 per month. While this sounds pretty bad, I have to add that my rent has increased by $200 in the past year, my insurance is up by at least $100 and my average living cost went up by at least another $100 for the same things I used to buy last year. The $50 doesnt faze me, the $500 does.
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.
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)
On the contrary: Petroleum use should be limited to producing plastics and other petrochemical products that are harder to replace than gasoline. Alternative energy sources are easier to come by than alternatives to plastics. (Environmental issues aside.)
Here's a two year chart of US gas prices from the Chicago affiliate of gasbuddy.com.
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.
Milk prices are up due to a reduction in dairy cows. I read a good article on that the other day. Basically farmers are going away from dairy to other things that are more profitable and causing milk to go way up.
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
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.
Another aspect that is overlooked is the proportion of petroleum-based products that are not gasoline.
Take a look around the room your in: --from here I have a desk, vinyl sided windows, two computers w/monitors, picture frames, book covers, folios, CDROMs, waste paper basket [and bag]. It seems that almost everything is made of petrol--people focus on the gas, but if it disappeared, lack of gas would not be the top problem on this list.
I'm curious to know how much petroleum goes to fuels vs products . . . anyone know?
Some related notes:
I believe that Chevron-Texaco posted its most profitable quarter EVER last month.
The process of petroleum use is so refined/efficient that it would be more efficient to simply burn the alternatives [e.g. corn-plastic] to heat the factories that petroleum-based products are fabricated in. [Or, this was the case a few years ago]. There's a long road of process engineering to hoe before we really even have the ability to replace petroleum in a serious manner [better start now!].
Rhetorical question: if the price of oil is not as high now as it was in 1981, why was the price of gas in 1981 about 1/3 of what is is now [adjusted, and from a US perspective]?
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
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.
When have they ever sold glass bags of Doritos?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Yabbut packing soda in plastic makes the whole package weigh less, which means you can put more of them on the truck, which means the truck can make fewer trips, which means it uses less fuel, or if you're very lucky, that you don't need as many trucks.
If you use and recycle glass, you have to ship it around.
Are you sure you know which method uses the least petroleum?
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
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").
I love the excuses they come up with. A refinery closes right before the high demand summer driving season. Last year, the excuse was a shortage of the summer blend, never mind that summer doesn't exactly come by surprise. Do they really think people are stupid enough to not see the price gouging? If it were a competitive market, I would be more understanding, but since all oil companies buy oil through the same channels which are run by cartels, its definitely gouging. The oil companies' record profits seem to back this up.
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.
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.
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)?
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?
"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
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").
...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 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.
What Hubbert, and so many of his followers fail to realize is the reason U.S. oil production peaked in the 70's. It had nothing to do with failing reserves, or empty oil fields. It had everything to do with rising costs for extracting oil in the U.S. My family has owned mineral rights in western Oklahoma for over 100 years (land rush in 1889). The first oil and gas wells were drilled on family land around 1940. From about 1978 untill 2002, those wells were pumping at "maintenance levels" only. This means they pumped just enough to keep the self lubrication working and fill the holding tanks as slowly as possible. This was because, the cost of maintenance and transport in the U.S. for that time meant that a barrel of oil cost the oil company $38 to deliver it to the refinery. During that same time avareage world oil prices were $20 - $35 per barrel. The royalty checks for the family, that used to run $4,000 a month or more during the 60's dropped to a couple hundred a month during the 80's and 90's. Most of the family sold thier share of the mineral rights during that time. Now, with higher oil prices those wells are being put back into pruduction and the royalty checks are looking better. Last estimate we received from the oil company surveyors was that we still have probably over 50 million barrels sitting under our land. But if the price per barrel drops again, our wells will be shut back down until they can be profitable.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
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)
.
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
Energy is an extremely competitive, high-risk market. The margins are razor-thin, and prices change minute to minute... and unlike milk, there are no guarantees that you'll make a profit on the oil you produce, or even that you'll be allowed to keep your plant if SUV drivers think the free lunch is going off the menu.
Refineries are incredibly complex, expensive, and unpopular items. The environmentalists want you shut down, period, and spend a lot of money trying to get you to do so. Instead, they just make it more expensive for you to stay in business. Meanwhile, you've got competitors trying to cut your legs out from under you, and, as high as prices might go - you've still got contract customers (airlines, power generators) who have capped prices. Transporting oil, everybody wants triple-hulled tankers that look like cruise ships, but they want to pay the prices they got when 30-year-old, leaking hulks run by the cheapest labor on the planet were the standard.
You want cheap oil, you got it. The Saudis sell us the stuff for less than it costs to pump it out of our own wells. American oilfield workers don't complain about their jobs being "outsourced" - they simply found other careers when their jobs disappeared 20 years ago. Move one coding job to Bombay and you get a senate inquiry. Move 120,000 oil jobs to Riyadh, Jeddah, and Bahrain... and you can buy a bigger SUV! woohoo!
But now you've got a problem. All those Chinese peasants who make those cheap computers and appliances we love so much? Well, they are all buying houses. And televisions. And cars. And they want electricity for them... Guess where they're buying it from??
Instead of being the only bidder on that tanker 'o' crude, you're now one of perhaps four or five. All of a sudden the local crack dealer has five customers instead of just you.
Oil companies making big profits? Nope. Building power plants is a dead business; anyone making a profit runs the risk of getting their plant "liberated" by a governor who needs votes. Opening up a new refinery, well.. you've got a three to five year lead time from the shovel hitting the dirt 'till your first truckload of super unleaded goes out thr gate. Except nobody wants a refinery near their house. Or anywhere else, for that matter - a permit might take six months or six years before you even know if you can build. And refineries ain't cheap. You need to convince enough investors that you can get the permits, build the plant, get the ships to offload oil... and of course, that the price will still be high enough to turn a profit over the 25-year lifespan of your refinery.