Slashdot Mirror
Has World Oil Production Passed Its Peak?
dido writes "Princeton University geology Professor Kenneth Deffeyes has been studying world petroleum production data and has come to the conclusion that the world hit peak oil last December 16, 2005. If he is correct, total world oil production will never surpass what was produced last December. From the article: 'Compared to 2004, world oil production was up 0.8 percent in 2005, nowhere near enough to compensate for a demand rise of roughly 3 percent. The high prices did not bring much additional oil out of the ground. Most oil-producing countries are in decline."
I remember in college a geologist was invited to demonstrate a "resource simulator" for our class. By today's standards it would be considered extremely crude (this was after all, in 1978), (wow, weird unintentional pun).
The simulation was basically a giant video game with a simple graphical display of the world's known and projected resources including but not limited to:
About 20 students in the class were given controllers, each to (again, crudely) simulate usage and comsumption patterns of all of these resources. Also, some students had controllers allowing them to spend resources to explore for MORE resources.
At the time, and years subsequent that demo stayed with me -- it left an indelible image of what could and probably would be.
The results? Basically, no matter what the students did to conserve, and what they did to increase the resources, the "world" pretty much always ran out of fuel and resources by the year 2020. At the time that seemed pretty far away and I don't think many people felt the need to care. Maybe that time has come.
Another interesting piece of the simulation: there were those students who pointed out these "estimates" of known and expected future discoveries of resources were just that, "estimates". The geologist obliged, and let the students rerun the simulations with a magnitude of latitude, i.e., ten times the estimated resources were allocated! The results then?, about an additional 10 to 20 years of resources before they ran out.
Note: the results (we ran many different trials) weren't ALWAYS about running out of oil and petroleum. On a few occasions there were severe food and water crises. A very interesting lesson.
Yeah but what time?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Here's the site devoted to peakoil: http://www.peakoil.net/
D E9-42BC-920B-91E5850FB067.htm
A huge chunk of Saudi exports come from one gigantic field. This means our eggs are in this one basket. Here's an article that discusses that field, and the chance that the Saudis might have screwed it by over-extracting. If you do that, you limit how much you can get out later; you might lose the reserves. [I'm guessing you might damage it, but that some future technology might make it recoverable -- just at a higher cost]
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/80C89E7E-1
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
If this is true, it's extremely important news to practically everyone on the planet. With a 3% discrepency in what we produce and we consume (and presumably that discrepency will grow for a while), it's essential that we begin to displace oil with other energy sources. Essential. We are completely screwing ourselves otherwise. I mean right now, I'm sitting here reading slashdot instead of writing a paper that's due tomorrow. That's a really bad idea. But sacrificing what literally powers our lifestyle and existence as we know it is doubtlessly a whole lot worse.
And the scary part is, we've procrastinated for so long, I'm not so sure that we'll find a suitable replacement in time, at least not before there are widespread disruptions in global energy supply.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
The rising prices make ethanol based petrol a much more viable alternative.
Perhaps new cars will implement the required modifications to prevent corrosion throughout the engines from higher percentages of ethanol in petrol.
There are a hell of a lot of other things which do not go to waste during the production process of oil and gas. Examples include the tar/bitumen you put on roads and paths, chemcials that go into make plastics - the list goes on (just hit wikipedia and look up Oil Refinery). Point being that most of these 'by products' are all consumed at the rate they are produced... they are going into useful products. You can expect to see rises across the board for all of these products as well.
Cutting down oil use is not going to be just about cutting petrol/gas usgae - it is going to be about making more durable consumable products than are currently churned out - and being happy to pay top dollar for them (just like out parents had to). Believe it or not, the 'good old days' of 'well built products' may just come back... that should make our grand parents happy.
In my next incarnation, I hope to come back as a code monkey.
Actually I don't think so. Artificially causing spikes in oil price just causes more people to seek other energy sources, causing demand for oil to decrease. Then again, our infrastructure is almost hopelessly dependent on oil, so I suppose there would be a demand either way. Anyway, I don't think this kind of production decrease is really that calculated. Occam's razor; we know we're running frighteningly low on oil (virtually guaranteed depletion in our lifetimes). This naturally causes more difficult/expensive, and thus, lower production. Or, on the other hand, do you really think it's a grand OPEC conspiracy to get the whole world to pay more for oil, that just happens to correspond with overwhelming geologic evidence that we simply don't have an unlimited supply of oil?
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Is this peak simply an artificial creation - an attempt by oil cartels such as OPEC to limit production and maximize profits on a finite resource - or due to some technical issue or actually pumping oil? The author also seems to support simple extrapolation by stating that "By 2025, we're going to be back in the Stone Age" rather than attempting to analyze the actual cause of the problem.
Perhaps I've missed something, but I do not entirely trust his conclusions. If what I've stated is incorrect, please feel free to correct me.
The faster we use up all of the economically obtainable oil, the sooner people can stop whining about using it all up and the sooner we can get on with whatever is next.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
We can only expect these problems to get exponentially worse with all the growth in China and India. Hundreds of millions of people getting wired for electricity and generally starting to use petroleum for the first time will come with a high cost indeed.
I have a minor in Geology and recently took a class on Geology and World Affairs, the Professor has his Ph.D in Petroleum Geology and worked in the field for around 30 years with a focus on the North Sea and Texas Oil. That professor also professed the Peak Oil theory, however a problem with him, and other Petroleum Geologists with a focus on "rock oil" is an over specialzation on "rock oil". When I asked during our discussions on Peak Oil about Tar Sands or Oil Shales, I was told that "...if it don't come up through a pipe most Petroleum Geologists don't know a damned thing about it." And that in particular, this Professor with his 30 years experiance didn't know a damned thing about it because that isn't what his firms worked on.
Now then, I don't know what Professor Kenneth S. Deffeyes background is, but I can see he is writing books on the subject as so has a vested and economic interest in this theory. Furthermore he seems to discount Ethanol, fuel cells, Methane hydrates, oil shale, and Nuclear power, as "shimmering dreams" so I think one needs to take what he is saying with a grain of salt since, as stated before, his vested interest to make money at this point is "peak oil".
The truth behind "rock oil" right now is that there is alot being used, and there is alot out there and there are still a good number of basins which have not been explored, including the Arctic Ocean and there is alot of oil we can recoved in "played out" areas with new techniques and with new technologies.
It was US oil production that peaked in the 1970s, not global oil production. There's a huge difference there.
So the price of oil goes up momentarily for what, a year? And this analyst decides that, since oil producers didn't instantly develop the technology to extract hydrocarbons from shale, or find a whole new set of oil reserves in areas we haven't even yet begun to look, that its all downhill from here? What bullshit.
That sounds an awful lot like the 1970's analysts who said we'd have no oil at all by 2000.
Or the brainiac reporter who insisted that Apple's iPod was not going to have any effect on Mac sales after interviewing 10 iPod users who didn't also buy a Mac on their visit to the Apple store in 2004.
Anyone can rub together two brain cells and write a report that glosses over market realities with some sensationalist simplifications.
Basic economics indicates that that the market can fall behind reality for several years. But obviously, at some point when oil rises to a level where it can comfortably stay, all kinds of results will kick in: conservation, alternative fuels, alternative oil discovery, alternative oil sources. To suggest that we've hit the end of the oil pan is plainly retarded.
We've only known about the middle east's oil for most of a century. There's plenty of places we haven't looked, and more we know about and chose not to exploit because either the market can't support it yet, or there is lower hanging fruit, or there are political or environmental concerns we can't resolve yet.
Since Hummer owners want to drive a military-style vehicle, I think we should give them the full experience: every hummer should come with an all-expenses paid 6-month stint as a chauffeur in Baghdad. Nothing shows one's masculinity and patriotism more than Supporting the Troops, right?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Each barrel of extracted oil from the tar sands requires the release of more than 80kg of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and about 5 barrels of waste water - not to mention the environmental nightmare caused by strip-mining. There is no easy answer to our oil addiction. It's certainly not to be found in Canada's north. It will stave off the inevitable for a few short years, at tremendous economic and environmental cost, but our world will change forever.
The good news is that we will be "forced" to rediscover local agriculture and commerce. No more "made in China" stickers on our locally made goods, and craftspeople will regain the stature they once had. Just remember that suburban "starter mansions" will be the slums of the future -- to expensive to heat, too far from shops, farmland and gathering places to be worth inhabiting. My advice? Learn blacksmithing in your spare time.
Here are some quotes from the National Center For Policy Analysis, regarding Oil Peaks and attempting to forecast oil production:
In 1855, an advertisement for Kier's Rock Oil advised consumers to "hurry, before this wonderful product is depleted from Nature's laboratory."
In 1874, the state geologist of Pennsylvania, the nation's leading oil-producing state, estimated that only enough U.S. oil remained to keep the nation's kerosene lamps burning for four years.
In May 1920, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that the world's total endowment of oil amounted to 60 billion barrels.
In 1950, geologists estimated the world's total oil endowment at around 600 billion barrels.
From 1970 through 1990, their estimates increased to between 1,500 and 2,000 billion barrels.
In 1994, the U.S. Geological Survey raised the estimate to 2,400 billion barrels, and their most recent estimate (2000) was of a 3,000-billion-barrel endowment.
By the year 2000, a total of 900 billion barrels of oil had been produced. Total world oil production in 2000 was 25 billion barrels. If world oil consumption continues to increase at an average rate of 1.4 percent a year, and no further resources are discovered, the world's oil supply will not be exhausted until the year 2056.
The estimates above do not include unconventional oil resources. Conventional oil refers to oil that is pumped out of the ground with minimal processing; unconventional oil resources consist largely of tar sands and oil shales that require processing to extract liquid petroleum. Unconventional oil resources are very large. In the future, new technologies that allow extraction of these unconventional resources likely will increase the world's reserves.
Oil production from tar sands in Canada and South America would add about 600 billion barrels to the world's supply.
Rocks found in the three western states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone contain 1,500 billion barrels of oil.
Worldwide, the oil-shale resource base could easily be as large as 14,000 billion barrels -- more than 500 years of oil supply at year 2000 production rates.
Unconventional oil resources are more expensive to extract and produce, but we can expect production costs to drop with time as improved technologies increase efficiency.
With every passing year it becomes possible to exploit oil resources that could not have been recovered with old technologies. The first American oil well drilled in 1859 by Colonel Edwin Drake in Titusville, Pa. -- which was actually drilled by a local blacksmith known as Uncle Billy Smith -- reached a total depth of 69 feet (21 meters).
Today's drilling technology allows the completion of wells up to 30,000 feet (9,144 meters) deep.
The vast petroleum resources of the world's submerged continental margins are accessible from offshore platforms that allow drilling in water depths to 9,000 feet (2,743 meters).
The amount of oil recoverable from a single well has greatly increased because new technologies allow the boring of multiple horizontal shafts from a single vertical shaft.
Four-dimensional seismic imaging enables engineers and geologists to see a subsurface petroleum reservoir drain over months to years, allowing them to increase the efficiency of its recovery.
New techniques and new technology have increased the efficiency of oil exploration. The success rate for exploratory petroleum wells has increased 50 percent over the past decade, according to energy economist Michael C. Lynch.
Eh... money isn't the only issue. You also have a basic problem of thermodynamics. It takes X calories to extract and refine gasoline that will release Y calories when burned. As extraction gets harder, X grows. Once X == Y, an oil field becomes an energy sink, not an energy source, even if there are centuries worth of oil left in it.
All's true that is mistrusted
In 1956, geophysicist Marion King Hubbert predicted that _U.S._ oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. In fact, U.S. oil production peaked in 1971, so he was pretty close. U.S. production has been going down ever since. This current article is about _World_ production. Hubbert predicted that would peak around 2000.
Hubbert predicted that US oil production would peak in the 70's. He was right.
Based on his formulas, world peak oil production should occur during this decade.
I read a great article in the New York Times the other day (go figure... its available for free at my law school) about E85. Anyway I was shocked to read that to make a car compatible with E85 it only costs an extra $150. I'm hardly a rich man and I try to save my money, but $150 per car doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things, espically considering the way our modern day governments spend and tax the hell out of everything. I was skeptical, about that $150 figure, but here that price is quoute in another article http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A ID=/20060122/BUSINESS/601220310/1003 And Since its so cheap why doesn't our government mandate all (or 50% of) new cars made and imported be E85 comptabile and let the consumer/market choose their fuel? Even if the federal government won't do this, you think some of the midwestern states would. Since the #1 problem with consumer adoption of E85 is its availability, wouldn't these state economies based on farming want to hurry up its availability so they could increase demand for their own product?
If I were an Iowa Legislator I'd want to make every car sold in the state E85 compatible and mandate every gas station sell E85. If the state can succesfuly force E85 onto the market it'd only be a matter of time until gas stations in the surronding states started selling E85 by choice to get those consumers and it spreads. Kind of like how McDonald's spread across America.
Other Problems with E85:
#2 promblem: You get less energy per gallon about 10 to 15% less. But E85 is aparently cheaper than gasoline. So at some point, I don't know where, and I can't find any information on this, there is a "Cost Per Mile" equilabrium between the two. Sure you have to fill up your gas tank more often if you use E85 because you get less milage, but maybe each mile is cheaper. This is a little harder than calculating "MPG" but I'm betting a savy company can add this metric to an onboard dash. If the Prius can calculate MPG, why not be able to enter how much it cost you to fill up the tank and then you get a cost per mile read out, so you can see which is cheaper for you.
What everyone so far seems to have missed is not "what are we gonna use to drive our cars back and forth to work with?!" but, "How the hell are we gonna feed ourselves?"
Oil is food, people. Don't think so? imagine the lines of connection going back from your local mega-mart - very little food is grown locally anymore, it all gets shipped in, and we, as faithful 'consumers' consume what's presented to us. Wanna move closer to a farm? Nice try, that wont work either, most food cannot be grown or survive without the very extensive use of, you guessed it, petroleum based pesticides.
Oh, well we can switch to a hydrogen based economy! Wrong again, can't make hydrogen without oil. Can't make fancy electric cars without a current reserve of oil.
Get a bike, get spare parts, and start riding, it's gonna be a long 75-150 years, everyone.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
"The more efficient you are, the less they'll produce. Prices will not change."
We're talking about the survival of human civilization, not bargain hunting at the mall. If we're more efficient, the oil companies produce less, the oil lasts longer, and it buys us some time to build out the energy infrastructure to supplant oil.
(This is from something I wrote up a couple months ago, regarding a question I asked Professor Deffeyes during a Q&A session after a talk he gave at my university. If anybody has a better answer, I'd honestly be interested in hearing it.)
Today there was a talk in Beckman Auditorium by Kenneth Deffeyes, Princeton professor emeritus and author of one of the more popular books on that ever-popular meme, peak oil. He discussed his belief that we had hit peak oil sometime around this past Thanksgiving, and that oil prices are going to fluctuate wildly and rise in the next 5 years of so.
During the Q&A period I went up to the microphone and asked the following: During your talk you briefly mentioned the futures market. Currently on the oil futures market, you can purchase a contract for a barrel of oil to be delivered in, say, the year 2010 or 2011 which is actually cheaper than a barrel of oil today. What are your thoughts on why this is the case?
In his response, he had mentioned that he had been asked a similar question after he gave his talk at Merrill Lynch, basically: "If you really think oil prices are going to rise, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and buy up futures contracts?" He said to them that he wasn't too knowledgeable about futures contracts, and afterwards read up on them a little and found some of their intricacies bewildering. He said that he would want to purchase futures options for the coming few years, due to the extreme price fluctuations he expects, followed by regular futures in the longer term.
I'm not sure I bought his answer. Although I'm not sure about how far ahead one can purchase futures options, regular futures can definitely be purchased for 2011, which should be well into the period of soaring prices he predicts.
But getting it out is tough. First, read this fact sheet from the Athabasca Oil Sands Developers. Current production is about 1 million barrels/day. This should be up to 2 million per day by 2010, and 4 million per day in 2015. That's about where the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia is now. If everything works out right, Athabasca might be able to keep up with the decline of Middle East oil fields. (Incidentally, production in Kuwait peaked last November, somewhat to the surprise of the Kuwaitis.)
Money is being spent on oil sands development at increasing rates. In 1995, the forecast was CN$5.7 billion over 25 years. Spending is now at CN$9 billion per year and climbing. Payback is slow; more than a decade. This isn't a bonanza business, although at $60 a barrel, it's looking better than it ever did before. The oil sands industry got clobbered when oil prices dropped in the early 1990s. Investors still worry about that, since the actual cost of extracting Saudi oil is somewhere around $3/bbl.
Extraction from oil sands is a big job. The settling ponds are visible from orbit. Take a look at 57N 111.6W. Those aren't lakes. Those are man-made open pit mines and settling ponds. This is a far more expensive process than drilling and pumping. A ton of sand yields a barrel of oil. You don't even get oil out; you get asphalt, which has to be cracked down to crude oil, then to gasoline. Costs are running around $30/barrel.
Worse, with current technology, natural gas is used to make the steam to separate the oil from the sand. This is currently a substantial fraction of Canada's natural gas consumption. When natural gas prices go up, so does the cost of oil from oil sands. And it's a wasteful thing to do with natural gas. There's a project underway to build an oil-sands project that's self-fueling, using its own product to generate steam, but it won't be running until 2007. If that project doesn't work out, oil sands are in big trouble.
If you want a job as a heavy equipment operator, mechanic, or welder, head for Fort McMurray, Alberta. They're hiring. But apartment occupancy is at 100%, so you may end up in worker barracks.
So that's a more realistic view of Athabasca oil. It's real, but it's not a miracle.
But there are many areas where some minor federal intervention would be very useful.
The first thing the govt. should do is reevaluate the way it calculates fuel economy. The current system is grossly innaccurate, and doesn't give consumers a true picture of the gas mileage they can expect. Consumer Reports had an article about this and the auto industry rep. basically said that the auto companies know how the govt. tests, and optomizes their vehicles for the test (gear ratio tweaking, using prototype vehicles, etc.). Changing the test methods would give consumers more accurate information so they can make a more informed decision.
The second thing the govt. could do is raise the minimum required fuel economy and make light trucks subject to the gas guzzler tax. I work at a Dodge dealership and the fuel economy of new vehicles is attrocious. A new durango gets 14-18 mpg and pays no gas guzzler tax. A station wagon that got similar mileage would have a several thousand dollar tax associated with it. Treat SUVs like the cars that they are replacing and you will find that fewer people will buy one.
The third thing that the govt. and EPA could do to help is to standardize fuel grades. Under the current system, refiners have to produce something like 60-70 different blends to comply with various state enviromental regs. The govt. could reduce this clusterfuck by having perhaps 2 or 3 different blends; one blend for urban/enviromentally sensitive (pacific northwest, etc.) areas, and one blend for areas where pollution isn't as big of a problem. Current refineries in the US are running at or above full capacity, and this would help ease that situation, and allow oil companies to put current resources to better use.
In addition to the step above, I firmly believe that the govt. should raise minimum octane ratings for gasoline. If the US had higher octane ratings, we could use higher compression ratings, and turbochargers would be a lot more effective, allowing smaller displacement engines (like most japanese cars have) to produce the same horsepower as a larger naturally aspirated engine but with increased fuel economy.
Obviously, these aren't complete solutions to Americas oil addiction, but they are things that would help.
P.S. while writing this post, I came across an interesting ad that the sierra club ran in the new york times on Ford's 100th birthday. 100 years of "progress" indeed.
cast the first stone. Sure, that's a great moral philosophy, and it would be nice if people weren't so sanctimonious, but it runs into problems when used to dissuage VERBAL criticism.
When you say that people in America or Europe who try to lesson the damage they are doing to the planet shouldn't bother trying to convince other people to do the same through social pressure, you are basically saying that it's not worth doing any good unless you can do infinte good. Your foolish rhetoric can be used to justify any amount of waste, and to (bizarrely) criticize those who are TRYING to act ethically.
If the social pressures of the Left in America were to reduce the ecological footprint of everyone from 60 times that villagers to 50 times that villagers, a few hundred million villagers would be able to increase their consumption of the Earth's resources by 10-fold with no extra strain on the environment over the current model.
Furthermore, pressures for ecological soundness would, as has been shown in most market situations, drive further innovation in that direction, the opposite of the effect that SUV purchases have.
If you are unwilling to understand that small improvements are better than no improvements, you might as well just kill yourself now, since the logical extension of your espoused philosophy would be that if your life is not perfect in every way, none of the good in it matters.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
Instead of worrying about the fact that oil has reached it's peak shouldn't we be figuring out ways of leaving the carbon in the ground? (Remember that greenhouse thingy?) The focus in these debates always seems to be on how to produce more energy not use less. And that while we could easily save almost 50% of consumption using currently available technologies. If youu're interested in more details see this link from the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4633160. stm "Energy's 'low hanging fruit'" by Dr Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
Oil from the ground is so 20th century I could care less about stories about it. Europe has begun licensing TDP tech and we have a full-scale refinery running near Kansas City. If we ever get serious about putting domestic oil production the whole idea of oil from the ground will be beyond quaint.
t ion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymeriza
It works, it provides clean water and high grade deisel oil, cleans the air by providing higher octane product, less emissions from refinery gasses, can empty landfills of plastic, can clean the water supply from biomass waste. Don't as me why the hell the DOE hasn't gotten behind it. A tenth of the cost of the Manhatten project could make us the largest oil producers on the planet*.
Also check the Wiki references to plastic conversions. Say good-bye to plastic waste and ocean pollution as well. Grey water dumping would also be convertable on the cruise ship level. Plus domestic production nullifies the middle east cartels, and puts tanker accidents off our coasts to an end. The middle east argument alone is a national security problem and it's criminal that this tech hasn't gone into a crash program status.
And this blows all previous gas alternatives out of the water, doesn't require massive leaps in corn production and doesn't require an change in transportation systems or distribution.
I'm confident that we will engage in this tech at some point - but it'd be nice to hear more about it. Try googling it sometime - you'll find almost nothing in the pop-press. I've even had dialogue with MSNBC about it - and they claim they're aware of it - but never say dick. Neither did Wired and they were talking new-oil on the fricking cover of their rag less than a month ago. FEH!
* The KC Star reported that from bio-waste alone via agribusiness we could convert all organic waste-fodder into 20 billion barrels of oil. We consume 12 billion barrels at present. We could ergo go from being the largest consumers to the largest producers.
Your comment about the footprint on nature is important. Think about this, though.
I live in a studio apartment. I use energy efficient lightbulbs. I recycle. I mostly walk, but very occasionally take the bus. I haven't driven in five years.
Really, how much larger is your footprint than mine?
Now, my lifestyle is mostly maintainable because I'm young, it's true, but a Hummer still takes *five times* as much gas as an energy efficient vehicle. You don't need a Prius to get around 50 MPG.
It also reduces traffic efficiency because it's slow to accelerate and blocks peoples' view. Even apart from gas consumption, it takes vastly more resources to build a Hummer than to build a S.M.A.R.T. car.
Worse, people generally drive in SUVs alone. A vehicle that could carry four people is carrying only one. A carpool in an efficient vehicle is therefore *twenty times* as efficient as the usual SUV trip.
When you get to that kind of difference it really does become a moral imperative. You're using more than your share, and you're not even *trying* to get down to what your share might be.
"I'll never use as little as a starving villager does, so I might as well use as much as I like."
That doesn't fly.
Mankind is of course a cancer on this earth, and will soon exhaust all resources like yeast cells in a vat of merlot, however:
The article uses an unfounded and probably incorrect basis that production will peak when half the resurces are extracted. This can be a rule of thunb at best. Then it goes on to use this rule to extrapolate a date with 4 decimal digits. That's a joke.
There are for example enormous oil reserves in oil sand. Possibly more than all other known resources It costs maybe $30/barrel to extract, but at current prices, that is economical.
Prices will most likely continue to grow moderately as other new resouces become economical. This includes alcohol from grain and sugar cane, natural gas, and nuclear power (At least for stationary power)
"Fix it"
Despite all this noise about peak oil, oil futures remain reasonable, and oil prices are coming down in light of new supplies, suggesting that our access to oil isn't nearly as stripped as doomsayers want us to believe.
China and America have already begun investing in alternative sources of energy, all while new refineries are being built to increase supply. The futures market sees this as evidence that oil is heading for oversupply, just like it did in the mid to late 1990s.
If you're convinced that the market is mistaken, well, maybe you're right. But rather than argue with me, I have some simple advice for you: buy. Prove how convinced you are by putting your money where your mouth is, and if you're right, you'll amass a fortune. You can buy us all copies of Mad Max with the words "I told you so" painted on the front in sweet rare crude. Thales will tell you, there's nothing that says "I'm smarter than you" like money.
But if anyone was confident enough in their predictions of peak oil to bank on it, the futures market would adjust to reflect it. Why hasn't that happened?
It hasn't happened because this apocalyptic pessimism is shortsighted.
I'm sympathetic, it's easy to get worried when you're told something is finite, though its consumption is increasing. But in a market, if consumption is increasing, that's a good sign nothing's wrong. Consumption will increase only so long as it's unproblematic, then it will slow, a market is a proportional negative feedback system.
To further allay any fears, keep in mind the imminent end of oil has been predicted routinely for the last 125 years.
Before that, the exhaustion of coal was the fun thing to predict. While we're less reliant on coal these days, we still have mountains of it to mine. Cheap oil, not depletion, brought about the end of the coal era. And likewise, cheap x, not depletion, will bring the end of the oil era.
Even if all this analysis is wasted breath, if peak oil has certainly and suddenly hit and we're all staring at a future of expensive oil, even then, I'm still not worried. [R]ising oil prices are... an invitation to corn and coal and hydrogen. For anyone with a fresh idea, expensive oil is as good as a subsidy. Expensive oil only means we shift to something else, probably something cleaner, and I'm fine with that too.
Peak oil is not about the decline of oil, it's about the decline of CHEAP oil. Some would dismiss peak oil as another Malthusian doomsday. However, one needs to consider the fact that oil is such a huge part of our lives, and the discovery of cheap oil (and the fertilizer made from petroleum products) helped stem the tide. It's not simply energy, it's also plastics and a multitude of other products. While we *may* find alternative sources of energy, can you imagine a life without cheap plastic? Go through your day today and see how often you use plastic.
Oil will always be present on our planet. The problem is that the Return on Investment (ROI) may be severely diminished. Right now, it's cheaper to find, drill, and transport oil than it is to use it. If it becomes more expensive to find and transport oil, we will have to find another source of energy. In case you hadn't noticed, energy consumption is going UP and not down.
It's not something to take lightly. There are people working on it, but we really need alot more effort behind it. I'm imagining bacteria in a petri dish consuming all of the resources. If people don't wake up soon, we could easily be faced with a situation where we simply will not be able to find a solution. Consider that research itself takes up resources, which will become more scarce and valuable. There is a doomsday possibility out there, but I like to hope that some governments will wake up and put alot of effort into finding alternatives. Humans should hopefully be able to think their way out of the petri dish.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
Unless you are already living off the grid, growing all your own food, and never traveling farther from your home than you can walk, you have no moral standing to criticize my choice of vehicles.
Is cycling ok?
Quite frequently recently, OPEC has been producing at 100% capacity and still not producing enough to keep the price of oil down. This is one of the oft-quoted symptoms of the "Peak Oil" theory.
All that means is that what oil is left will be efficiently allocated by selling it at $20/gallon when it becomes scarce enough.
Also, if you think the U.S. is one of the best examples of a purely capitalistic system in the world, you're still living in the pre-Great Depression era. China's current economic policies make it _much_ more capitalistic than the U.S. (although not democratic) right now, including all the bad parts of capitalism like screwing over the poor people.
For an academic, this is a dangerously unthoughful piece. Or rather, while it is quite possible we have passed peak oil production, the understanding of economics in the piece are terribly naieve.
If oil production continues to decline (which it may well), then prices will rise. We'll see $100 oil. But, and this is the big but, if we see $100 oil then world oil demand will not rise 3%, it'll be down 5%. High oil prices mean less consumption of oil.
This happens in several ways: firstly, in areas like power generation, then oil become more expensive than (existing) competing technologies. Oil fired power stations cease to make sense relative to coal fired ones. (And it is no surprise that we are seeing an upsurge in interest in nuclear.)
Secondly, economic growth slows - especially in areas which are energy intensive. The price of a Ryanair, or Easyjey, or SouthWest Airlines plane ticket rises to reflect higher oil prices. Fewer people fly. Airlines mothball planes. Oil consumption falls.
Thirdly, we will see purchases (and usage) of cars change. In the 1970s, the average horsepower of a new American car more than halved. When people make the school run, they'll use a little car rather than their SUV. It's a fair bet too that we'll see hybrid sales rise and rise. (Similarly, we'll see the proportion of ethanol in diesel increase.)
Finally, rising oil prices make other energy sources economic. There is a wonderful piece from the IEA on the various costs of different power sources. Solar isn't cheap now. But if the oil price is $150 a barrel, it doesn't look so bad.
The Princeton professor poo-pooes oil sands, but if the oil price is more than $100, then there'll be an awful lot of energy produced from them. Similarly, we'll see coal to oil plants (again), and no doubt a second commercial gas hydrates "mine".
So: if we have passed Hubbert's peak, we'll see our energy consumption fall, and we'll see the proportion of energy production that is oil fall. This will not be painless. But nor will we return to the stone age. We may well see GDP growth drop to subnormal levels - perhaps even for a decade - but this is very different to total economic collapse.
--- My dad's political betting
...and may I just mention that you can thank the so-called European Left that there is a thriving industry developing energy conserving technologies for power plants, heating plants and transportation. I'm telling you, forget about the IT business, microelectronics, pharmaceutical companies. They won't save the world. Energy conservation is The Next Big Thing.
Oh, and by the way, we Europeans aren't all French. Actually, most of us can't stand them at all.
Not true, OPEC has always stated that oil should be in the $30 to $40 barrel range, not in the high sixties where it has been for a long time. They recognise that over $50 per barrel, it becomes economic for consuming countries to invest in alternative sources of energy such as oil sands and tar. Overpriced oil hurts producers long term plans.
What is almost unique about this situation is not that oil production is being throttled such as 1973-74 or 1980, it is that demand is running way ahead of supply. OPEC has called for consumers to cut back on consumption as there isn't enough infrastructure to get the stuff out of the ground, move and refine it fast enough to meet current let alone future demand.
Saudi Arabia is practically the only major producer that is planning on major increases in production in the near future, but there are plenty of geologists who believe that the Saudi reserves have been wildly overstated and that there is no way the country can ever meet these figures.
With respect, the return to an agrarian economy ain't gonna happen. As soon as an energy crisis arises, we're going to start building nuclear reactors like they're going out of fashion. You can run your cars on nuke-electrolysed hydrogen and heat your home with nuke electricity. Uranium supplies a problem? Use fast breeder reactors. OK, you're going to upset a few people and need a small army to protect the reactors from fundamentalist nutters, but no way are people going to accept a Pol Pot style regime.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Peak Oil News and Discussion has a lot of info and discussion topics on Peak Oil. It even mentions the current slashdot peak oil thread.
Nuclear reactors are the way to go! The Canadian Tar Sands need to build up the Nukes to power the extraction of the remaining Oil Sands; this will save all the Natural Gas that they are burning now. We need that Natural Gas to heat the homes in the North and to warm the planet with the green house gases so that we don't have as cold winters up north.
Nukes are clean environmentally friendly energy and with new reactor designs can use up to 95+% of the energy content of the fuel.
Let's get fuel from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and their moons. There's plenty of fuel there.
Hydrogen is awesome. Let's use Hydro, Nuclear, Wind and Solar to power the conversion of abundant water into pure hydrogen.
Let's save our fossil fuels. When we run out lets use the garbage dumps which have plenty of fuel potential in the methane and plastics embedded and not rotting quickly.
Let's mandate the replacement of all lights with LEDs as they are more energy efficient. Everyone needs to upgrade their computers and monitors to the latest energy efficient models.
Oh ya, how about GeoThermal energy. Just a few miles beneath the surface of the Earth is hot hot hot... let's make us of that and slow the planet's orbit down by letting it cool faster.
Let's take advantage of green house gases and warm up the planet so that we don't need to burn as much fuel in the winter.
Let's move to the tropics by encouraging mass migrations. Canadians move to Mexico, Americans move to Costa Rica and Panama while those in Quebec can move to the Caribean French Islands.
Let's Nuke em by building thousands of the new kinds of reactors. Let's grab all the enriched uranium fuel deposits that can be used for weapons and burn it to protect future generations and enable the extraction of energy now and in the coming future.
Let's continue to develop fusion technologies.
Let's put solar cells into the Lagrange point between the Sun and Earth and beam the energy to the Earth via microwaves.
Let's have all the humans on the planet get on bicycles and generate power or wind hand held energy cranks.
Bring it on. Technology to solve are problems.
Let's stop killing people. State sponsored mass killing won't solve the energy problems since wars consume a lot of energy and production capacity which also takes energy.
Let's Nuke Em by extracting energy from the 10's of thousands of nukes. The energy from the control detonations of the bombs will enable massive collection of energy.
Above all let's not freak out from those that predict the end of the world with their Quatrain's of doom and gloom. Embrace the Global Warming and accelerate it. It's the warmest it's ever been for 1200 years, bring it on! Heat is better than cold. Balance is for sissies. Let's make it happen.
Oh, ya all those other energy sources that I missed; let's do them too.
Oil discoveries have been surpassed by consumption in the mid-eighties. I remember a presentation with a simple chart at the Annual Meeting of AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers) 2005, Cincinnati about this. Since the usual lag between discovery and commencement of production is about 15 years (this is what I remember from my course in energy economy), the production peak was expected already about 2000. A few factors (wars, Russian oil becoming available to the west, etc) delayed this, but it's not like people never saw this coming.
New oil fields are being found all the time, but this is not compensating enough for the depletion of previous oil fields.
In case you wondered what is going to happen, remember that US production already peaked a long time ago (in 1971 if my memory serves me). In 1973 the Saudis noticed that they held the big levers now (Americans could not flood the marked anymore), and took the chance to become the market leaders.
What this means to us is exponential growth in gasoline prices. Smart countries stopped producing power with oil long ago (think oil crisis), moving to coal or nuclear for energy security (not necessarily because they were cheaper). Coal is going to be soon the most competitive fuel for power production. Nuclear will likely stay there in the corner where its poor economics has put it, since there is enough coal to burn all oxygen in the atmosphere.
Given that most transportation and building-heating sectors are based on oil in most countries and that these are big chunks of the total energy consumption, I expect some countries will find it cheaper to steal oil invading oil-rich countries, especially those countries that are very oil-intensive and where conservation is not considered an attractive option.
Furthermore, the US now have a base of operations (Iraq) in the middle of everything in the Middle East, already up and running. Invading the whole Middle East could become a real option in the next decades (it was actually already contemplated in 1973, but then we had the Soviet Union).
Interesting book to read: The end of oil, Paul Roberts, ISBN 0618239774.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
While there are probably quite a few ANWR size fields around, they're only big enough to keep the hummers running for a couple of months. There simply are no new big reservoirs to be found.
There certainly is a lot more oil available in unconvential forms, but the financial and environmental cost of extracting these starts making even hydrogen look cheap. All that new tech can only delay the inevitable by a few years.
If you haven't already, read "The end of oil" by paul roberts. Written by an oil industry journalist, his basic conclusion in the end is that the only way to put back the inevitable is simply by using less of it. No one needs 6mpg autos, expecially not when new production cars now routinely get upwards of 70mpg in europe (without all that hybrid shit). (I'd actually like to see what the author thinks now, it was written before the current price hikes and he said that a price over $30 was unsustainable. It's now been over $50 for a year.)
Your rant stinks like the new attack of 'moral relativism' that American 'conservatives' have started to throw around at everyone they don't like (themselves being among the worst offenders when it comes to bending their morals).
The idea that unless you're an African villager you can't point out great waste is beyond ridiculous.
Lets try it from a lefties perspective...
Unless you stop using the socialist, nationalised road system, you can't possibly say that Communist Russia was excessive, only someone in libertarian Somalia has the 'moral authority' to say that.
That sit nicely with you?
Of course not, but you will bend your morality to fit your argument anyway, as you have done. Now when some neo greenie comes along in this thread and screams that we *should* be living like African villagers you will argue that he is an extremist and he just goes to show how rediculous 'liberals' are, and you will have snuggly wrapped yourself up in a blanket of self righteousness smirking that your 'right' and everyone else is 'wrong' totally ignoring the issue at hand which doesn't matter just as long as you feel like you have won the argument.
We're not talking about the survival of civilation, we're talking about profit. If survival was at stake, we'd have moved to alternative energy sources years, even decades ago. It's not like fossil fuel being limited was news for the past 50 years.
Part of the issue is when he refers to the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia. It produces roughly 6% of the world's oil production (5 million barrels/day). The Burgan Field in Kuwait recently had to scale back its production because it couldn't sustain a pump rate over 1.7 million barrels per day (That's about 2% of the world production). When the two biggest producing oils fields in the World have their production rate capped: you either have to look else where for additional oil or you have to start using less. In the mean time you end up with more people who want oil then can be supplied. Then who ever can pay for it will get it.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
- Thus solving the problem once and for all!
- But...
- ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Did you ever read Jared Diamonds latest book? Bottom line: civilisations collapse at the top of their power, because they rather die than give up their status symbols. So yes, if the choice is driving a hummer and starving, or riding a bicycle and eating, people will keep on driving until it's to late.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Really? I spend all my disposable income on buying tanks of CO2 and venting it into the air...
"Quite frequently recently, OPEC has been producing at 100% capacity and still not producing enough to keep the price of oil down. This is one of the oft-quoted symptoms of the "Peak Oil" theory."
Why would you want to keep the price of oil down?
Yes, people would *like* to have cheap gas. But that's impossible in the long term. Let the price of gas go up, people use less. Eventually it will get high enough where alternate forms of energy are more feasable.
Trying to artifically shortcut to this state tends to blow up in our faces though. So, don't worry, be happy.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
'In 1855, an advertisement for Kier's Rock Oil advised consumers to "hurry, before this wonderful product is depleted from Nature's laboratory."'
Since when do you believe an advertisement?
"In 1874, the state geologist of Pennsylvania, the nation's leading oil-producing state, estimated that only enough U.S. oil remained to keep the nation's kerosene lamps burning for four years."
Even though this is not an advertisement it was in the 19th century. Technology and science progressed enormously since then.
"In May 1920, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that the world's total endowment of oil amounted to 60 billion barrels."
The USGS was proven to be wildy inaccurate even in their own country, I quote: "As recently as 1972, the USGS was releasing circulars that estimated US domestic oil production would not peak until well into the 21st century, and possibly not until the 22nd century. (See Theobald, Schweinfurth & Duncan, U.S. Geological Survey Circular 650)
This was despite the fact US production had already peaked in 1970, just as Hubbert had predicted. Richard Heinberg reminds us, "in 1973, Congress demanded an investigation of the USGS for its failure to foresee the 1970 US oil production peak.""
You say, that: "In 1950, geologists estimated the world's total oil endowment at around 600 billion barrels.
From 1970 through 1990, their estimates increased to between 1,500 and 2,000 billion barrels."
Source?
"In 1994, the U.S. Geological Survey raised the estimate to 2,400 billion barrels, and their most recent estimate (2000) was of a 3,000-billion-barrel endowment."
Actually, no. Please see this link, I quote: "The USGS 2000 divides the petroleum assessments into 'categories of probability': F95, F50 (i.e. median), F5, and Mean (i.e. arithmetic mean). "F" means fractile, as defined by the USGS", and then "TOTAL GCOE at F95 = (approx.) 2,000 Gb
TOTAL GCOE at F50 = (approx.) 2,700 Gb
TOTAL GCOE at F5 = (approx.) 4,900 Gb
TOTAL GCOE Mean = (approx.) 3,000 Gb".
This means, by their EXTREMELY flawed logic, that if they take the probabilities and get a mean value from them, then thats how many oil is out there, while anything below F50 probability is wishful thinking only, if not outright dreaming. I'd say that the quote: "and the estimates for the world Grown Conventional Oil Endowment will converge somewhere between 2000 and 2200 BBO (i.e. near the F95 estimate in the USGS 2000 report). The peak of world oil production is within sight." is very accurate in describing the real reserves.
"By the year 2000, a total of 900 billion barrels of oil had been produced. Total world oil production in 2000 was 25 billion barrels. If world oil consumption continues to increase at an average rate of 1.4 percent a year, and no further resources are discovered, the world's oil supply will not be exhausted until the year 2056."
The problem is not that oil is gone, but that consumption is bigger than production and that production cannot be increased by any significant numbers!
We currently need 83.5 million barrels per day. We are projected to need 120 million barrels per day by 2020. On the other hand, when|since we hit peak oil production (will) decrease by around 1 million barrels per day of production per year. We just cannot tap into the remaining oil reserves quickly enough and in such way that it would be worth the costs (in monetary and energy terms)!
Dick Cheney said, that "By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline in production from existing reserves.That means by 2010 we w
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Errrr no. Oil and gas (and water for that matter) are held in pores in the rock - just as water can be held in the pores of a sponge. Loose sandstones make great oil reservoirs, the Saudi fields are in limestone deposited as dung in shallow seas.
When you extract the oil the rock remains. No huge caverns, no need for worry.
The phenomenon of oil field replenishment appears to be a fluke in certain fields which are linked by faults to deeper reserves. Lowering the pressure in the upper part of the field forces oil up by gas and water pressure. It has nothing to do with the highly dubious theory of Mantle oil.
HTH.
Problem is we don't know what exactly is sustainable
That's pretty much the nail on the head right there. There's no such thing as one sustainable lifestyle. Sustainability just means renewability. So while everyone is moaning and groaning about how the Americna lifestyle is unsustainable they are forgetting to mention the fact that it is high technology that increases the level of sustainable lifestyles. Until solar power, ethanol, etc "sustainable" meant "what you can build with your hands". It is only thanks to advanced research that we may actually get a sustainable lifestyle that also involves such frivolous things as running water and medical treatment.
People who are all into "you can't justify going farther than you can walk" are the perfect example of a cure that's worse than the disease. If you can't go farther than you can walk you may save the environment but you completely decimate human society. Cities can not exist, universities can not exist, the bottom falls out from underneath society. You get a bunch of isolated pockets of survivalists who have no time for literature, art, or communal society. It's just neo-luditism. Why bother trying to save modern civilization if the answer is to destroy modern civilization? And by modern civilization I don't mean things like shopping malls. I have in mind things like physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, history, and essentially all the human intellectual capital that rests on our ability to talk to one another over long distances and support specialists who don't have to tend their own fields every day.
Technology has made possible our ability to live the type of lifestyle that we currently live. Technology, in my opinion, is also crucial to increasing efficiency to a point where maintaining a semblance of this lifestyle can be done sustainably. It's no questions that we've annointed convenience as king of efficiency and we probably would have to give up things like hummers and civics (and priuses) to really become sustainable. But the question is - do you want to give up these for smaller, ethanol-driven vehicles or for your bare feet?
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Actually there is nothing left behind and the top collapses in. In Campache Mexico, the area is being supported by the largest Nitrogen Injection system on the planet. CO2 Sequestration is being used in some places. The situation is precarious to say the least. During well reserved "proving" blows at the Little Rock gas field in Alabama occurred the largest earthquake in Alabama History. Similarly last Saturday 2/11/2006 a 5.2 quake happened under Shell Oil's Brutus Rig. These are not natural events and they disclose the subsidence of rock due to the relief of pressure in Gas/Oil fields.
The Kuwait oil fired so severely damaged their oil fields that billions of barrels of crude were trapped under ground in the fractured rock strata due to this problem of caverns etc. Sorry for those who think otherwise, but the stuff comes out and it leaves spaces behind to collapse.
At Ache near the Shell gas works there can be seen on recent Google Earth photos (These may get taken down some time soon) at 4deg 44min 17.9 sec N and 95 deg 14 min 37.80 sec E one can see natural Gas Flares. This is massive stuff here. Such gas well proving blows can and do trigger earthquakes. This photo was taken shortly before the Ache Quake and Tsunami. Please look at the size of these flares. Some of these measure more than 8 nautical miles in cross dimension.
Such events leave us with serious questions about what is going on in the Oil Business and how much damage it is doing to our world. Mods get a life if you want to argue with facts. I am presenting fact here not opinion.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
There are NOT caverns down there, there are pores. A good reservoir rock might be up to 30% pores - 70% is still solid material. As oil is extracted from the top of a reservoir, groundwater tends to rise up from below under pressure to take its place. This is called water drive and is the main way oil is recovered from reservoirs in the early days of production. Gas pressure is a smaller component of production, but careful maintenance of gas pressure is needed, over-quick reduction can allow too-much water into the reservoir where it finds its way into the wells and brings an early end to production.
Subsidence is found in very few fields after prolonged extraction, most show no signs of the collapse you describe. The most famous subsidence is around Long Beach in California where there has been some 3m of subsidence - but no wholesale collapse because there isn't a hole to collapse into.
Campeche is receiving nitrogen injection because unlike many fields, Campeche does not receive a huge natural inflow of water into the reservoir below the oil. Water drive is normally relied on to push oil upwards; instead by injecting nitrogren above the oil, it acts to increase the pressure pushing down and keeps oil coming to the surface.
CO2 injection is a well-established technology in much of the US where it has been found that CO2 helps lower the viscosity of the crude. True carbon sequestration has been conducted by Statoil in the Sleipnir West gas field of the North Sea at a rate of approximately 1 million tonnes PA. The CO2 is recovered directly from the gas at the well-head as its concentration are above the legal limits imposed by European export limits.
Yes oil and gas extraction have been linked to Earth tremors at very shallow depth and are linked to the release of pre-existing stresses. The cause and effect of these tremors are well known from experiments conducted at Rangely in Colorado, where it was found tremors could be turned off and on by varying the rate of extraction. Similar tremors are known from fields in California, Texas and the North Sea.
The huge Sumatra 'quake was at great depth (30km) and distance from any hydrocarbon reserves. At 30km, even if oil source rocks existed, the oil would have been cracked into natural gas by a combination of pressure and heat. Furthermore, the physical characteristics of the 'quake are typical of those found in subduction zones, not the minor tremors found in oil fields.
There is no cause and effect between oil and gas production in Sumatra and the seismicity of the region - beyond the fact that the same tectonic pressures that caused the 'quake produce ideal conditions for the formation and entrapment of hydrocarbons.
The Kuwait fields may well have been damaged by a sudden release of pressure at the well-head when the Iraqis set off their explosives. This effect is well-known from oil-drilling history; many of the famous gushers of the early 20th Century that seemed to show vast resources were quickly followed by sudden collapses in production - the Spindletop field in Texas being the most famous example of what happens when pressures in fields are not controlled, it peaked in 1902 at over 17 million barrels p.a, but was down to less than 4 million in 1904.
I challenge your assumption. A world population of less than 2 billion survived for tens of thousands of years before the use of petroleum products. That doesn't say diddlely about the current situation, where the population exceeds 6 billion. This recent increase in population (all of it within living memory: go talk to somebody in their 80s about their childhood) has been powered by fossil fuels. The continuing population growth is unsustainable without a continued increase in energy production and will probably follow the classic pattern of a short plateau (as increasing die-offs balance new births) followed by a catastrophic drop to sustainable levels.
I suggest that you review Economics 101, giving special attention to the reasonings of Malthus, and the reasons why his dismal predictions have not yet come true. You will find that his equations are correct and that his predictions have failed because new sources of energy have occasionally been added to the mix. Now for the first time an energy source is being gradually subtracted from the mix.... This is indeed dismal science.
And another part of the problem is warlords interrupting supply and 'taxing' (extorting money for passage) supplies being shipped. Often times there is plenty of food, but no safe way to deliver it in the quantity needed (air drops can only do so much). If the warlord of Iowa, for example, started blocking food shipments to Chicago you would see Katrina like things happening in Chicago also.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Do you know why they are 20 times more expensive than normal bulbs? Because they take approximately 20 times more resources to make
20 times? Doing a quick look at lightbulbwarehouse.com I see a incandescent for 48 cents. A pin based florescent is $2.98. That's about 6.2 times as expensive, not 20. Secondly, since when were all resources equal in terms of environmental costs? I don't know what extra resources it takes to make a fluorescent, but what if it took more labor? That's not something we're exactly running out of, or something that people are talking about conserving.
You claim you won't save any money over the life of the bulb. Let's do that fairly simple calculation. On a 100 watt incandescent over 10,000 hours (which is the rated life of the fluorescent) you'll use 10,000*100/1000 kilowatt hours of electricity, or 1000 kilowatt hours. A Fluorescent uses about 1/4 of the energy to produce the same amount of light, so that's 10,000*25/1000 = 250 kilowatt hours. Around here electricy is pretty cheap at
The lifetime of the incandescent is 4000 hours (and I'm even giving you LONG LIFE incandescents), so you'll need to buy 2.5 bulbs, at a cost of $1.20. So the incandescent bulb saved you $2.98-1.20= $1.78 in bulb costs, but you paid an extra $52.50 in electric costs. That's an extra expense of $50.72 for the incandescent.
Now you claim that the florescents only last about as long as the normal bulbs. Ok, let's do that calculation. That's not true for most people but it's true for you, so let's say the florescent only lasts about as long as normal incandescents, which is about 1000 hours. You'll have to buy 9 more of them to get that same 10,000 hours. That's an extra $26.82 in bulb costs. You're STILL saving $50.72-26.82=$23.90
AccountKiller
Ah, the beauty of one-dimensional thinking!
What about drilling for more oil to serve our (and emerging countries') current energy needs, while we build more nuke plants, ramp up alternative fuels, innovate with solar (a HUGE energy source), add more windfarms, research large-scale geothermal, and continue work on a hydrogen economy. Eventually we'll also get hydrogen fusion working as an energy source, which will effectively forever end energy as a bottleneck of human expansion and industrialization.
The Oort cloud is the limit! (For now at least...)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Hotelling's rule... which assumes an otherwise stable economy. Of course, the problem is that diminishing petroleum supplies are likely to have substantial effects on the economy, including wide spread inflation.... which does what to interest rates?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Since Hummer owners want to drive a military-style vehicle, I think we should give them the full experience: every hummer should come with an all-expenses paid 6-month stint as a chauffeur in Baghdad. Nothing shows one's masculinity and patriotism more than Supporting the Troops, right?
I assume I can send the pool boy?
"You can replace all of the world's power with a tiny fraction of the US desert southwest's almost worthless 50$/acre barren desert land alone with solar thermal (1.4kW/m^2, 20% atmospheric losses, 70% day/night/seasonal losses, 30% efficiency -> 100W/m^2 avg; 52M GJ/day -> 600 GW -> 6B m^2 -> 6000 km^2; New Mexico is 315,194 km^2)."
It's not exactly that simple. I'm not sure, but I don't think the highest space-grade solar cells get 30%. A better guess would be 10-15% for silicon solar cells. Now, there is the second problem. There is not enough high-grade sand to make that much square kilometers of silicon of the quality required to get that kind of efficiency. So, you would have to go to much lower quality sand, further reducing efficiency, but without reducing production cost. And there is the third problem. Silicon solar cells bottom out at around $5/Watt, so even if the other problems are dealt with you are looking at $3T just to build the total solar plant (not pricing distribution, land usage, political project delays, etc).
Now, that is not to say there isn't hope, because various labs/companies are working on non-silicon solar cells, and some labs are claiming target prices of $0.5-$1/Watt, and some claim good efficiencies too. Not all together (yet), and very much still in laboratory phase, not much experience with durability, etc. But it's hope.
My point is that it's not that simple, but we're on our way, and it needs more time.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.