Fischer-Tropsch works but is insanely expensive. It is being done (generally under "coal to liquids", CTL) - the Chinese just opened a new plant last year. But it's not an option for large scale oil production. It is only profitable at really high oil prices but oil prices can not get too high before they kill the economy, reducing the price again.
Yes it *is* a recession that creates cheap oil. Contrary to what the tinfoil hat crowds tells you, the oil price is set by supply and demand. OPEC has practically no control and everybody is pumping as much as they can. There is inherent speculation in oil trade because oil has to be shipped (often literally) so oil is bought for delivery in e.g. 6 or 8 weeks. However, speculators have little effect on the price because the oil market is so gigantic and nobody could finance manipulating it in earnest. They can only push it by a few dollars per barrel at most and the speculation actually dampens out some of the price swings.
Price volatility is the problem. Right now the price is high but after the next recession when the price drops again many new projects will be canceled again because they're not profitable. Exactly that happened in 2009. There needs to be a tax that props up the price to some minimum level.
Venezuela is the #3 or 4 source usually, that's the only significant South American source. The other top suppliers to the US are Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Nigeria. Prices are no longer controlled by OPEC but by the market. Close to half the supply comes from non-OPEC countries so they can't dictate prices. All they dictate is production rates for their members and the members generally don't obey them.
All OPEC countries inflated their reserves because their market share was allocated proportionally. In 2008 Saudi Arabia couldn't increase production any more although the price was at a record high and Bush begged them for more. Right now it looks very questionable if they can really increase their production to pick up Libya's shortfall. Nobody measures how much they export so they can tell us anything. The crude oil price will tell us in the end. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7550
All the economics doesn't change one fact: There will be Peak X for any nonrenewable resource X at some point. The question is not if but when. Shale oil can keep us going for a decade or two, at high cost, but it's the last chance to get off fossil fuels. By the time shale oil hits its peak, peak coal will also be imminent - in 20 to 30 years. If the economy is still running on fossil fuels by then it will collapse. Even without that worst case scenario we will be hit by crude price peaks repeatedly - probably faster than the economy can adapt so it will have to shrink.
The main problem with shale oil is that its EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) is only about 3, i.e. to produce one barrel of oil you need the energy equivalent of 1/3rd barrel. And that's with the easily extracted stuff. Once the EROEI gets close to one it doesn't matter how much you have and what the oil price is. http://theoildrum.com/ is *the* resource for this kind of info.
US oil consumption: ~22 million bbl/day. Proven US oil reserves (including Alaska, Gulf of Mexico and the continental shelves): ~21 billion bbl. You call that lots?
You also get jaded after a few decades in the business. My last phone lasted five years or so (yes it was dumb but it had very good call quality) and my main system at home is a Pentium 4. I'll replace the motherboard and power supply with something really power efficient this year, but that's only because it'll pay for itself over a short period of time. It may very well have less CPU power. Oh at work I play with dual hexacore Xeons with 200TB. Meh.
This sounds interesting: >and the creation of much larger bursts of positrons which could eventually enable the creation of an annihilation gamma ray laser.
And it'll all go downhill fast as fossil fuels pass their peak. Back in the 70s, after the first oil price shocks, was the time to act. Now it's too late and the economy will tank repeatedly as fuel demand hits the limits of production. Did you see the crude price today?
>But even if you make it a thousand years, it still the shortest of blips on the time line of our planet. Depends on what you call civilization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory That one may be pessimistic but the basic idea is correct IMO.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot radio homing missiles. Somehow I feel Hams might have a problem with those.
Firefox 4 is not bad compared to Chrome.
Fischer-Tropsch works but is insanely expensive. It is being done (generally under "coal to liquids", CTL) - the Chinese just opened a new plant last year.
But it's not an option for large scale oil production. It is only profitable at really high oil prices but oil prices can not get too high before they kill the economy, reducing the price again.
Yes it *is* a recession that creates cheap oil. Contrary to what the tinfoil hat crowds tells you, the oil price is set by supply and demand. OPEC has practically no control and everybody is pumping as much as they can. There is inherent speculation in oil trade because oil has to be shipped (often literally) so oil is bought for delivery in e.g. 6 or 8 weeks. However, speculators have little effect on the price because the oil market is so gigantic and nobody could finance manipulating it in earnest. They can only push it by a few dollars per barrel at most and the speculation actually dampens out some of the price swings.
Price volatility is the problem. Right now the price is high but after the next recession when the price drops again many new projects will be canceled again because they're not profitable. Exactly that happened in 2009.
There needs to be a tax that props up the price to some minimum level.
Venezuela is the #3 or 4 source usually, that's the only significant South American source. The other top suppliers to the US are Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Nigeria.
Prices are no longer controlled by OPEC but by the market. Close to half the supply comes from non-OPEC countries so they can't dictate prices. All they dictate is production rates for their members and the members generally don't obey them.
All OPEC countries inflated their reserves because their market share was allocated proportionally.
In 2008 Saudi Arabia couldn't increase production any more although the price was at a record high and Bush begged them for more.
Right now it looks very questionable if they can really increase their production to pick up Libya's shortfall. Nobody measures how much they export so they can tell us anything. The crude oil price will tell us in the end.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7550
All the economics doesn't change one fact: There will be Peak X for any nonrenewable resource X at some point. The question is not if but when.
Shale oil can keep us going for a decade or two, at high cost, but it's the last chance to get off fossil fuels. By the time shale oil hits its peak, peak coal will also be imminent - in 20 to 30 years. If the economy is still running on fossil fuels by then it will collapse. Even without that worst case scenario we will be hit by crude price peaks repeatedly - probably faster than the economy can adapt so it will have to shrink.
Steven Chu is trying to get small, prefabbed modular nuclear reactors going:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0330/Nuclear-power-Obama-team-touts-mini-nukes-to-fight-global-warming
The problem with Thorium reactors is that they are not ready yet. Yes they sound good but they are years away.
The turmoil will come to other places first: When the oil countries reduce their oil exports because they need it for domestic energy.
The main problem with shale oil is that its EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) is only about 3, i.e. to produce one barrel of oil you need the energy equivalent of 1/3rd barrel. And that's with the easily extracted stuff. Once the EROEI gets close to one it doesn't matter how much you have and what the oil price is.
http://theoildrum.com/ is *the* resource for this kind of info.
US oil consumption: ~22 million bbl/day.
Proven US oil reserves (including Alaska, Gulf of Mexico and the continental shelves): ~21 billion bbl.
You call that lots?
Hack into one of those systems, put the pics on WikiLeaks and pass the popcorn.
This also reminded me a lot of Quantum's TeraStor project.
You also get jaded after a few decades in the business. My last phone lasted five years or so (yes it was dumb but it had very good call quality) and my main system at home is a Pentium 4. I'll replace the motherboard and power supply with something really power efficient this year, but that's only because it'll pay for itself over a short period of time. It may very well have less CPU power.
Oh at work I play with dual hexacore Xeons with 200TB. Meh.
Nothing is stable. All orbits change chaotically in the long term.
Corollary: There are no planets.
I didn't say it's a bank. It is definitely part of the system.
So what prevents people from modifying their gcc to allow malicious code?
I can't wait for the leaked X-ray pr0n pics.
Paypal is part of the banking system. And you expect them to tolerate a librul cause? ROFL.
Of course my Gentoo is bigger than your Ubuntu. And longer, much longer... to install.
This sounds interesting:
>and the creation of much larger bursts of positrons which could eventually enable the creation of an annihilation gamma ray laser.
And it'll all go downhill fast as fossil fuels pass their peak.
Back in the 70s, after the first oil price shocks, was the time to act. Now it's too late and the economy will tank repeatedly as fuel demand hits the limits of production. Did you see the crude price today?
>But even if you make it a thousand years, it still the shortest of blips on the time line of our planet.
Depends on what you call civilization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory
That one may be pessimistic but the basic idea is correct IMO.
FWIW, Peak Crude Oil was in 2005. The slightly higher peak in 2008 was only after adding natural gas liquids and nonconventional sources.