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...In a letter to the Prime Minister, the heads of Alcan, Bombardier, Shell Canada, Falconbridge, Home Depot Canada and Desjardins Group, among others, said Canada needs a 50-year strategy to deal with the fallout from climate change...

..."We note that Canada is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change," they said...

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Edit: This link has more text, including a list showing who signed the letter.

[ 17 November 2005: Message edited by: Contrarian ]

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Originally posted by North Shore:
Leaving oil (as it should be) as a vital feedstock for petrochemicals etc...

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This is largely a misconception. Crude has a whole buncha different stuff in it, some thin and volatile, some viscous and syrupy, some downright solid and waxy. It gets fractionated, and it is the "light, sweet" crude that gets burned as fuel. The thicker, gunkier stuff is more suitable for plastics and is used as such. Still thicker and gunkier is waxes and tars; a bunch goes into the making of blacktop.
If anything, as the stuff gets more expensive, they're putting more into methods of refining the thicker stuff currently used for plastics or blacktop into fuel.

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North Shore:

I'm beginning to wonder, a little, about reducing CO2 emissions. It seems to me that Peak Oil will take care of it for us.

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I've often said this myself, something like - it's a race between global warming and peak oil.

However, the CO2 problem is not only with oil, but also with coal, and there's plenty enough coal left to continue the rapid rise of atmospheric CO2.

It's probably true that without oil, the machinery and infrastructure required to mine coal will be much harder to come by, yet it will still be a problem.

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Originally posted by Bubbles:
The trouble with lowering our consumtion is that it also lowers the price of oil, and we know what that does. We need to charge a progressive waste disposal fee (tax) on the production of greenhouse gasses from non regenerating carbon based fuels.

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Originally posted by nonesuch:
A fifty-year plan?
Do you of know anyone - nation, group, business or private person - who has ever been able to carry out a 5-year plan?
Jay-sus! This is an emergency. A one-year strategy might possibly be of some use, if we had the will to start acting on it today. A 50-year strategy is pretty much like folding one's hands and giving up.

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We certainly need much more than a fifty year strategy to reduce emissions, that's for sure. But since a certain amound of climate change is probably inevitable at this stage, we should also be making plans for how to cope with its consequences over the next 50-100 years.

No, Ofcourse I did not mean to suggest that we should not try to lower our consumption. It is that by itself it does little to solve the problem. Many of us could be buying smaller cars only to find that we free up oil that others then buy at lower prices to fuel their SUV's.

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Originally posted by Vigilante:
Or we could just end modernity.

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Originally posted by Vigilante:
Or we could just end modernity.

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Thre is no need to 'end modernity' in order to reduce our use of non-renewable resources. It is a matter of priorities.

For instance, every day millions of people spend hours sitting in their cars, motors running, and going nowhere fast. Here is BC there is currently a lively debate going about doubling the size of a bridge that is used by commuters coming to work in Vancouver from Surrey, and further up the valley.

The level of waste in this mode of production is utterly unecessary. Public transit could supply the same value to society for a fraction of the cost in resources. No need to 'end modernity', just a need to end waste.

Recently I was in Seattle, and the problem there is even more apparent. Driving through Seattle in rush hour, I was one of the few with more than one person in the vehicle. They have special lanes for so-called high-occupancy vehicles (two or more), and almost no one bothers. They would rather sit alone and not moving than make arrangements to share a ride. The reason for this is the high subsidies society pays for this economic model.

This is by no means the only waste in our society. Look at the time and effort spent in advertising, the enormous waste of resources in packaging and marketing. Again, we don't have to forego any modernity to eliminate this waste, although I'll grant that if one defines modernity as including enormous waste, then we would be foregoing 'modernity'.

There are literally hundreds of ways to eliminate waste in 'modern' society, but a captialist economy can have no part of that. Capitalism is exploitation, and any attempt to hinder exploitation is viewed as detrimental.

No society on earth generates as much garbage as the 'modern economy does. We literally make stuff to be thrown away.

Even if we set our sights on reducing waste by, say, 10 percent, that would be a step in the right direction, and would entail almost zero sacrifice of 'modernity'.

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Originally posted by Raskolnikov:

Anyone know any good stone masons?

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Originally posted by North Shore:
I'm beginning to wonder, a little, about reducing CO2 emissions. It seems to me that Peak Oil will take care of it for us. In addition to forcing us to figure out viable renewable energy sources, it will also price oil-burning transportation solutions out of the market, and reduce emissions. Leaving oil (as it should be) as a vital feedstock for petrochemicals etc...

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Originally posted by Bubbles:
The trouble with lowering our consumtion is that it also lowers the price of oil, and we know what that does. We need to charge a progressive waste disposal fee (tax) on the production of greenhouse gasses from non regenerating carbon based fuels.

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Good idea, if over the heads of some people.

Yes, idealy every one should be involved, And one could maybe accomplish that by making CO2 emission taxes progressive sothat people in a place like Zaire, who use little in the way of fossil fuel, would pay very little, wereas heavy users would pay a lot more. It would have to be a fairly steep progression, almost exponentialy. Since there is such a huge difference in fossil fuel use between individuals.

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Or we could just end modernity.

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C'mon! We're a clever enough animal to figure out how much of the crap we don't need; how much of the stuff we actually use doesn't need to travel half-way around the world; how many clean ways we can get energy for the things we really need to do. Think of it as post-modernity. Or think of it as survival. Or just think.

[ 19 November 2005: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

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We need to get China, India, and the rest of the developing world on board as well.

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Oil consumption per capita:

Canada - 51.9 bbls/day per 1000

United States - 67.9 bbls/day per 1000

China - 3.5 bbls/day per 1000

India - 2.0 bbls/day per 1000

In per capita consumption of BTU's, the difference is almost as stark

Canada - 303.21 (millions per capita)

United States - 327.49 (mpc)

China - 26.66 (mpc)

India - 10.73 (mpc)

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Originally posted by North Shore:
I'm beginning to wonder, a little, about reducing CO2 emissions. It seems to me that Peak Oil will take care of it for us. In addition to forcing us to figure out viable renewable energy sources, it will also price oil-burning transportation solutions out of the market, and reduce emissions. Leaving oil (as it should be) as a vital feedstock for petrochemicals etc...
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This is exactly why the myth of peak oil is so pernicious. There is no such thing as "peak oil." Even if there were, it wouldn't make a dent in greenhouse emissions without a "peak coal" phenomenon. We need to make choices as a society -- nature's not going to do it for us.

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Of course peak oil would not be a case of nature doing the job for us; that might apply if there were some negative feedback mechanism to global warming that negated all of the positive feedback mechanisms.

Incidentally the peak oil concept has been at least implicitly accepted by the International Energy Agency and the US Energy Information Administration and USGS, but of course they see it happening decades from now and do not see it as a serious or immediate concern. To be an absolute skeptic one has to believe that oil is formed abiotically and at a rate in excess of current production (which is highly unlikely if not in the realm of mythology and places these absolute skeptics on the same level as absolute enhanced global warming skeptics). It may well be a myth that peak oil as a global phenomenon is imminent or has already passed, but given the systemic lack of accurate oil reserve data (largely due to manipulation for political ends), it may be years before we know conclusively when the peak occurred. Unless one believes in very rapid formation of coal, then peak coal in the same sense as peak oil is a plausible concept. Of course coal production could be reduced as a societal choice.

If peak oil occurs before we are well on the road to reducing absolute energy consumption significantly and replacing oil and other fossil fuels with sustainable renewable sources, it may well limit global warming, but not necessarily in a way we would like, partly if coal production and use is not reduced significantly.
The possibility of peal oil in the near future, rather than being a pernicious myth (as opposed to a testable hypothesis), merely adds to the urgency of addressing global warming, since the policy solutions are much the same.

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Originally posted by Bubbles:
rsfarrell

Yes, idealy every one should be involved, And one could maybe accomplish that by making CO2 emission taxes progressive sothat people in a place like Zaire, who use little in the way of fossil fuel, would pay very little, wereas heavy users would pay a lot more. It would have to be a fairly steep progression, almost exponentialy. Since there is such a huge difference in fossil fuel use between individuals.

What to do with the collected taxes? Education, learning how to have a good time with a minimal of 'stuff' and clutter.

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I like that. I've thought that perhaps you could work a "per emission times per capita income" formula, so that poor but heavy-polluting nations would have an incentive to reduce emissions without breaking the bank.

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Originally posted by maestro:

What we need to do is start reducing our consumption. There's no way some other country like India is going to take conservation seriously while we sit back and consume, consume, consume, no matter what sort of 'commitments' we make.[/QB]

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Back to reality. What has the possibility of becoming a reality.

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To be an absolute skeptic one has to believe that oil is formed abiotically and at a rate in excess of current production (which is highly unlikely if not in the realm of mythology and places these absolute skeptics on the same level as absolute enhanced global warming skeptics).

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This is true, if by peak oil you mean only that at some point we will stop producing more oil every year and begin to produce less. That's a given. Anyone familiar with the Second Law of Thermodynamics knows that.

However, the people talking about "peak oil" are asserting far more than that. They generally assert that a production peak is imminent, irreversible, and rapidly progressing to near-total unavailiblity.

Believers generally hold a second series of assumptions about the centrality of oil to the world economy; that oil does not follow the supply-demand curve; that you cannot produce energy without massive amounts of oil; that the lack of oil will trigger a total metamorphsis of our civilization a la "The Lord of the Flies."

That is the kind of "peak oil" the original poster implied, which would save us from global warming by ending CO2 emissions in the near future. That is mythical -- specifically, it's a Rapture-type end-of-the-world, fall-of-wicked-Sodom myth.

Peak oil theorists like to start with the self-evident idea that (logically) there has to be a year of maximum production. They proceed, by sometime oversimplified but evidence-based arguments, to say that the Rapture, as it were, is upon us; that we are living in the End Times. So far, still reasonable.

Then, and I have never seen any evidence supporting this leap, they drag in all the other elements of the myth; the rapid plunge in oil production; the end of large-scale electrical energy, the fall of civilization.

So, my "peak oil" skepticism comes in three parts; the first thesis is trival; the second thesis is plausible but unproven; the rest are silly.

[ 19 November 2005: Message edited by: rsfarrell ]

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Peak oil theorists like to start with the self-evident idea that (logically) there has to be a year of maximum production. They proceed, by sometime oversimplified but evidence-based arguments, to say that the Rapture, as it were, is upon us; that we are living in the End Times. So far, still reasonable.

Then, and I have never seen any evidence supporting this leap, they drag in all the other elements of the myth; the rapid plunge in oil production; the end of large-scale electrical energy, the fall of civilization.

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You have misrepresented the arguments and are missing a few stages, as your second and third stage are essentially the same (Rapture and End-Time reasonable???!!!). I see a range of possibilities and would characterize the debate this way:

1. Oil production will peak at some point in the future (unquestionable).

2. Timing: largely depends on the believability of global oil reserves. The main proponents of Peak Oil have lost credibility and will continue to lose credibility as their specific predictions don't pan out, but even skeptics admit that it will probably occur within the next few decades.

3. Impact: a range of possibilities depending on timing, the response to global warming, and the acceptance that peak oil before it occurs will have serious consequences, or the response to unambiguous evidence that it has occurred).

Dependence of industrial civilization (as it exists now) on petroleum is a given, particularly for transportation and food production. A decrease in the supply of oil does not necessarily mean collapse but it will take time to develop alternative sources. Increasing demand has also been a given; how long it will able to continue is debatable, as are the circumstances in which demand will fall. To say that there will be no consequences of peak oil is irresponsible, as a fall in production with still increasing demand cannot fail to have consequences. There are possible scenarios that are catastrophic (given that access to resources has been a contributing factor to a number of wars), as there are for global warming. There are also far less catastrophic scenarios.

As soon as it takes a barrel of oil to retreive a barrel of oil, then oil is at an end, regardless of how much is left in the ground. Or, to put it another way, when EI/EO = 1, we're out of oil.

(no jokes about Oil Macdonald had a farm EI/EI/O )

This could happen long before oil physically runs out, and in fact most likely will. One of the interesting factors in Alberta's tar sands is how close it is getting to EI/EO = 1.

A recent article I read in the financial press concerned something called diluent. Much of the production of tar sands oil requires diluent to allow it to flow in a pipeline. According to the article, one barrel of diluent was being used to facilitate the flow to 2 barrels of oil. Also according to the article, for a period of time last winter, tar sands producers were paying US $75 a barrel for diluent, making them lose money on every barrel of oil shipped. Now there's economics for you.

Projected demand for diluent in Alberta - 500,000 barrels a day. Enough to force producers to buy the Methanex plant close to Prince Rupert, where LNG will be offloaded and rendered, then shipped by pipeline to Alberta.

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Ah, but if it was only peak oil production how lucky we would be. We'd have all that time to figure out the next energy supply. But peal oil could be rendered immaterial by the energy in/energy out equation.

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Originally posted by maestro:
A recent article I read in the financial press concerned something called diluent. Much of the production of tar sands oil requires diluent to allow it to flow in a pipeline. According to the article, one barrel of diluent was being used to facilitate the flow to 2 barrels of oil. Also according to the article, for a period of time last winter, tar sands producers were paying US $75 a barrel for diluent, making them lose money on every barrel of oil shipped. Now there's economics for you.

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Um, yeah, maybe. Depends on what you mean by EROEI.

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Originally posted by Dex:
Actually, this process is a dramatic improvement in efficiency of extraction over earlier technology. Before, they used to physically transport the oil sands all the way back to the plant for processing via enormous (as in the size of a large house) trucks. Now, they simply pour the bitumen-coated sand into a hot pipeline. This method may require lots of diluent (naphtha), but it's a closed system and the bulk of the diluent is recycled and used over and over again. At the processing end, the naphtha is boiled off, condensed, collected, and returned back to the field to be used again. Where once almost all machinery used there was run by diesel, a lot of it is now run by electricity.

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Here is the original article. It makes it clear that diluent is needed on an ongoing basis, and the projection is for up to 500,000 barrels a day by 2015:

Terasen unveils pipeline proposal

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Vancouver-based Terasen -- being taken over for $6.9-billion by Kinder Morgan Inc. of Houston -- wants to build a line from the town of Kitimat on the northwestern coast of B.C. to Edmonton. It would import 100,000 barrels a day of what is called diluent, which is a condensate, a very light oil.

The product is in short supply in Western Canada because of rising production in the oil sands of northern Alberta. Condensate is used to dilute the ultra-heavy bitumen from the oil sands that hasn't been upgraded into synthetic oil, so that the viscous crude can flow on a pipeline.

For every two barrels of bitumen, about a barrel of diluent is required.

...EnCana believes the industry could need 500,000 barrels of diluent a day in 2015.

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From the same article:
"With predictions that Canadian oil production could rise by roughly a million barrels to 3.6 million a day by 2015"

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Originally posted by Dex:
All I was trying to point out was that the 2:1 quip was a little disingenuous. The article projects 3.6 million barrels of oil per day, while projecting a need of 0.5 million barrels of diluent. Thus, because of the recycling I pointed out in my prior post, the ratio is more like 1 barrel of diluent per 7+ barrels of oil. This pipeline/diluent technology is brand spanking new. When I was up in Fort Mac in '96, all major operations up there were draglines/bucket wheels and trucks (i.e., didn't use diluent at all). By the time I returned in 1999, they were starting to use the pipeline/diluent operations at Syncrude. My understanding was that Suncor wasn't using it at all at that point (those two companies are the two biggest players up there). Bottom line: the 7+ ratio will only drop from here as they improve and refine this new technology.

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Gee, talk about disingenuous. The figure of 3.6 million bbls/day applies to all Canadian production, not just tar sands production. The diluent isn't used off the coast of Newfoundland, nor for conventional oil production in Alberta.

The point I was making is that tar sands production of oil brings the EI/EO equation closer to EI/EO = 1, and the use of diluent clearly is part of that equation. They mix the diluent with bitumen in a ratio of one bbl of diluent to two bbls of bitumen. That is the ratio given in the article, and has nothing to do with conventional oil production, which is included in the 3.6 million bbls/day.

By the way, you can add roughly 1 billion cu. ft./day of natural gas to the energy input side of the equation for the tar sands, as well as an untold amount of water. Oh yes, and the 2% of natural gas production that was halted to help maintain underground pressure for some of the 'almost oil' tar sands.

As the conventional oil production becomes a lesser part of total oil production, the energy cost per barrel will rise. The diluent is a significant factor in that rise.

The overall point is that once it takes a barrel of oil to retrieve a barrel of oil, oil is finished as an energy source, regardless of how much is left in the ground, and what wonderful technology exists to bring it to the surface.

Enormous numbers for barrels of tar sands oil are bandied about, but an actual figure of EI/EO for tar sands is very hard to find. In the end, the most likely source of energy for retrieving tar sands oil will be nuclear, because that will be the only economic way of doing it. And none of this addresses the environmental cost of tar sands production.

The problem is not so much with the peak itself, but the fact demand keeps increasing at about 2-3% a year. Projected demand for 2020 is around 115 million barrels a day (85 million today). The world will need 3 to 4 more Saudi Arabias; where is all that oil going to come from? The 'optimists' always weasel out of that question.

The fact is that last week Kuwait's main oil field (world's 2nd largest) has now peaked, years sooner than expected. In that case the day demand exceeds supply cannot be that far away. Maybe just 5 or 10 years.

I for one don't believe in a single Doomsday when that time occurs. It will simply be a repeat of the oil crises of the 1970s, writ larger: oil price will shoot up, the economy will crash, shortages/rationing will occur. As the demand drops, price will go down, the economy may recover a bit, and the cycle will replay itself. The only difference is now the supply will keep dropping year after year. Not the end of the world, but certainly a recession that may go on for years, if not decades.

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The pollution created by the Third World is already a huge problem and is going to get drastically worse as those countries continue rapidly modernizing. You can point the finger of blame at rich countries all you like, but the fact is that a conservation strategy that ignores two-thirds of the world's people is doomed from the start.

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Originally posted by nonesuch:

True enough, but here is the finger: much, if not most, of third world industry feeds the first world. (Geez, but i hate those designations!) Much, if not most, of the industry is owned by 'multibnational' or 'transnational' (read western) corporations. Those countries don't institute or enforce adequate standards of environmental or worker safety, because their short hairs are well and truly curled by economic organizations with foreign headquarters. They might not want to 'modernize' - rapidly, slowly, or at all - but they have no choice.

Dry up the market for imported crap, and you give them a choice.[/QB]

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These are nations which are in most cases perfectly able to stand up to multinational corporations when they chose to do so. As destructive a role as capital sometimes plays in bribing and bullying third-world governments, those governments are still where the ultimate power and responsibility lie -- just as in the first world, where corporations also have more power than they should.

Despite this power, in my opinion poorer countries already have a choice, and as evidence, I would point to the fact that different countries with similiar amixtures of poverty and multinationalism nevertheless have radically different records on enviromental stewardship(link).

I don't think reducing trade is going to liberate poorer countries from the power of multinational corporations; capital is perfectly capable of abusing democracy in an autarkic regimes.

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Originally posted by Mandos:
SG: The value of EROEI and an "energy theory of value" has been discussed at length on The Oil Drum and James Hamilton's Econbrowser. Most people approaching this as a physical/engineering problem point out that most of what we do has no value if there's no energy to use it...

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"Mostpeople" need to realize that oil is unnecessary as an energy source. It is far more vital as a source of petrochemicals, plastics, and the like. It's stupid to burn it in the first place, and we only do it because it's ridiculously cheap.

If it gets more expensive, we'll phase it out and get our energy from different sources. There's no shortage of ways to generate a lot of energy; nuclear, coal, wind, solar, gas, tidal, geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass, etc. Some are more enviromental destructive than burning oil, some less so. But there is no energy shortage, the "barrel in barrel out" ratio is irrelevant, because it refers to oil only as a source of electrical energy, which is its least vital function in the world economy.

US power generation in 1990

[ 23 November 2005: Message edited by: rsfarrell ]

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"Mostpeople" need to realize that oil is unnecessary as an energy source.

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Production And Consumption - World (1998)
In BTU's percentage of total

Oil - 40.0%
Natural Gas - 22.5%
Coal - 23.3%
Nuclear - 6.5%
Hydroelectric - 7.0%
Biomass (and other2) - 0.7%

Note that oil and natural gas are almost 2/3's of energy consumed every year. Seems like an awful lot for something which is 'unnecessary'.

Yes, it's true it's too cheap, but the fact remains that other sources of energy are more expensive in terms of BTU's returned for BTU's invested.

When oil is no longer around, a greater percentage of energy created will be used in it's own creation.

And someone will have to find a different way of getting airplanes into the air, because no other natural source of energy has the number of BTU's per volume necessary.

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"Mostpeople" need to realize that oil is unnecessary as an energy source. It is far more vital as a source of petrochemicals, plastics, and the like. It's stupid to burn it in the first place, and we only do it because it's ridiculously cheap.

If it gets more expensive, we'll phase it out and get our energy from different sources. There's no shortage of ways to generate a lot of energy; nuclear, coal, wind, solar, gas, tidal, geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass, etc. Some are more enviromental destructive than burning oil, some less so. But there is no energy shortage, the "barrel in barrel out" ratio is irrelevant, because it refers to oil only as a source of electrical energy, which is its least vital function in the world economy.

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At this moment, oil is absolutely vital for all of the above energy sources. The exception may be natural gas, but even that resource will probably be depleted before this century is halfway through.

Coal, uranium, and the metals needed to build power plants and distribution systems, are all mined, smelted and shipped with diesel or gasoline powered equipment. Surely you don't envision digging up all that coal with a shovel and pickaxe?

Same with renewable: building dams is done with oil-powered bulldozers and cranes. Silicon for solar panels needs a ton of energy and clean water to manufacture. Biomass too requires considerable inputs in fossil fuels as fertilizers, machinery, etc.

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Originally posted by GreenNeck:

At this moment, oil is absolutely vital for all of the above energy sources. The exception may be natural gas, but even that resource will probably be depleted before this century is halfway through.

Coal, uranium, and the metals needed to build power plants and distribution systems, are all mined, smelted and shipped with diesel or gasoline powered equipment. Surely you don't envision digging up all that coal with a shovel and pickaxe?

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Which illustrates exactly what is irrational about "peak oil" thought: the implication is that oil will suddenly cease to exist, and so, because we use oil in industry, and use industry to generate power, power generation will be impossible.

In fact, that's a silly picture to paint. If oil becomes more scarce, we'll need to phase out uneconomic and unnecessarily uses like burning it for electricity. It will not suddenly become as rare as iridium.

Even if it did, you can run the internal combustion engine more efficiently using hybrid technology, or synthesize oil out of coal, or run the engine on natural gas, or run it on ethanol, as Brazil has been doing since the 70s.

The idea that oil will simply vanish from the market, leaving a bunch of people standing around saying "our gasoline engines don't work -- the modern age is finished" is inexpressibly stupid.

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Same with renewable: building dams is done with oil-powered bulldozers and cranes. Silicon for solar panels needs a ton of energy and clean water to manufacture. Biomass too requires considerable inputs in fossil fuels as fertilizers, machinery, etc.

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Wrong for the same reasons as above: most of the oil used can be replaced with substitutes (such as ethanol-powered bulldozers and cranes); the amount of oil needed to manufacture power plants is small compared to their energy output, easily avalible given that, in worst case, oil is going to become more expensive, not vanish from the earth.

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In theory coal could replace oil as a transportation fuel, like it did in the 19th century, but it will be far less scalable than oil. And I just can't see flying in a coal-powered airplane just yet.

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Just convert your coal into oil by a 50-year-old process, and away you go. Or, if that seems like it requires too much planning, purchase an ethanol-powered plane.

[ 25 November 2005: Message edited by: rsfarrell ]

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Originally posted by maestro:
[QB]

Production And Consumption - World (1998)
In BTU's percentage of total

Oil - 40.0%
Natural Gas - 22.5%
Coal - 23.3%
Nuclear - 6.5%
Hydroelectric - 7.0%
Biomass (and other2) - 0.7%

Note that oil and natural gas are almost 2/3's of energy consumed every year. Seems like an awful lot for something which is 'unnecessary'.

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Millions of people die every year of infections easily treatable with cheap antibotics. Is that necessary? No. Why does it happen? For the same two reasons people burn oil for electricity; most people are poor, and; most people are stupid.

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Yes, it's true it's too cheap, but the fact remains that other sources of energy are more expensive in terms of BTU's returned for BTU's invested.

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Which means only that you have to invest more capital to get more power generation. It's pretty easy to dig up some coal and set fire to it. It takes a little more effort to build a windmill, but that extra effort is not going to cause the fall of civilization.

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All the alternative fuels require extensive processing.

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The plastic package my meat comes in requires "extensively processing." It doesn't mean we're ever going to run out of it.

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And someone will have to find a different way of getting airplanes into the air, because no other natural source of energy has the number of BTU's per volume necessary.

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Really? Read on:

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Millions of people die every year of infections easily treatable with cheap antibotics. Is that necessary? No. Why does it happen? For the same two reasons people burn oil for electricity; most people are poor, and; most people are stupid.

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Originally posted by maestro:
From rsfarrell:

I haven't got the time right now to respond to the whole post, but I'll just point out it isn't the poor that are burning the world's oil, it is the wealthiest. Even a short google of where in the world the oil is getting burned would show that.

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Those would be the stupid people.

Poor people are more likely to burn oil to generate electricity; that pushes the overall figures up.

Rich people burn oil mostly in their cars. Fortunately better substitutes exist, so this isn't much of a problem.

The point of the exercise is that we need very little oil to sustain our current levels of production, provided we take simple steps to reduce demand and increase the supply of other fuels and other energy sources; that is why the extravangant claims for "peak oil" do not make sense.

In the context of climate change, the salient point is that many of the easy alternatives to oil -- natural gas as a ethane source for petrochemicals, cracking coal, burning ethanol in our cars -- also cause the release of CO2 into the atmosphere. So in the 50-year time frame an oil shortage, if it comes, is likely to worsen global warming and other forms of enviromental damage, not lessen it.

[ 26 November 2005: Message edited by: rsfarrell ]

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Just convert your coal into oil by a 50-year-old process,

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Actually 80 years, but who's counting. Just because it has been known for 80 years doesn't make it viable economically or in terms of energy inputs.

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Yes, it's true it's too cheap, but the fact remains that other sources of energy are more expensive in terms of BTU's returned for BTU's invested.
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Which means only that you have to invest more capital to get more power generation. It's pretty easy to dig up some coal and set fire to it. It takes a little more effort to build a windmill, but that extra effort is not going to cause the fall of civilization.

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Obviously misunderstanding the difference between capital inputs and energy inputs.

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Rich people burn oil mostly in their cars. Fortunately better substitutes exist, so this isn't much of a problem.

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Debatable, but even so it takes time to develop substitutes, the best of which is to drive less or not at all.

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The point of the exercise is that we need very little oil to sustain our current levels of production, provided we take simple steps to reduce demand and increase the supply of other fuels and other energy sources; that is why the extravangant claims for "peak oil" do not make sense.

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quote:

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In the context of climate change, the salient point is that many of the easy alternatives to oil -- natural gas as a ethane source for petrochemicals, cracking coal, burning ethanol in our cars -- also cause the release of CO2 into the atmosphere. So in the 50-year time frame an oil shortage, if it comes, is likely to worsen global warming and other forms of enviromental damage, not lessen it.

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quote:

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Actually 80 years, but who's counting. Just because it has been known for 80 years doesn't make it viable economically or in terms of energy inputs.

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It was first used on a wide scale in WWII. So, actually, 50 years, but who's counting?

This is just a suggestion, but shouldn't you learn some economics before you pronounce on what is economically viable? Cracking coal is perfectly practical (or "viable") if you don't have oil and you need some. Germany did it in WWII, and the nazis were not known for their wide-eyed idealistic eviromentalism. It was raised in response to a specific example, not as a general solution to a mooted energy crisis.

The poster wanted a coal-powered plane -- the implication being that everything in our society runs on oil, and some startling new technology would be necessary in order to, for example, continue to fly planes. My examples illustrated that that isn't the case; technological solutions exist already, even for airplanes, which the poster evidently felt was a tough challenge for a (mythical) oil-less world.

[ 26 November 2005: Message edited by: rsfarrell ]

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Obviously misunderstanding the difference between capital inputs and energy inputs.

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No. What you don't understand is that energy inputs are a red herring. Every source of power used commercially, including those which harvest low-density energy sources, such as solar and wind, produce more electricity than must be consumed to build them. This means that, even supposing that the ratio of energy extracted vs. energy invested is closer to one for some non-oil energy sources, all that means is that it is necessary to invest more capital, in order to build more facilities, to extract a larger amount of energy.

[ 26 November 2005: Message edited by: rsfarrell ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Mandos:
SG: The value of EROEI and an "energy theory of value" has been discussed at length on The Oil Drum and James Hamilton's Econbrowser. Most people approaching this as a physical/engineering problem point out that most of what we do has no value if there's no energy to use it...

However else the value is computed above this "zero" is, to them, not relevant.

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If there were no energy resources available (and this would include the brute force in our arms and legs), then yes, zero energy means zero output. And I'm also willing to accept the proposition that - for a given level of technology - output is a non-decreasing function of energy. But that does not mean that output is proportional to energy. Or even that the relationship between energy and output is constant. And it certainly doesn't mean that there's any particular stable relationship between oil inputs and output.

[ 26 November 2005: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]

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It was first used on a wide scale in WWII. So, actually, 50 years, but who's counting?

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This is just a suggestion, but should't you learn some economics before you pronounce on what is economically viable?

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quote:

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The poster wanted a coal-powered plane -- the implication being that everything in our society runs on oil, and some startling new technology would be necessary in order to, for example, continue to fly planes. My examples illustrated that that isn't the case; technological solutions exist already, even for airplanes, which the poster evidently felt was a tough challenge for a (mythical) oil-less world.

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quote:

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No. What you don't understand is that energy inputs are a red herring. Every source of power used commercially, including those which harvest low-density energy sources, such as solar and wind, produce more electricity than must be consumed to build them. This means that, even supposing that the ratio of energy extracted vs. energy invested is closer to one for some non-oil energy sources, all that means is that it is necessary to invest more capital, in order to build more facilities, to extract a larger amount of energy.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Policywonk:
[QB]

Now who's producing a red herring.

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That would be you, again:

quote:

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It's not just the energy (not just electricity, which is a carrier not a source) required to build the facilities, but the fuel to run them (if applicable), plus their maintenance.

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And it's still a red herring because the energy produced is still greater than the energy invested. Maintenance costs are a given; but I assumed (foolishly) that even you know enough about power plants to know that they are capable of producing more energy than they consume while operating.

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And a given amount of financial capital may be put to better use investing in energy conservation or a more efficient (in terms of energy return on energy invested) source of energy.

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Since I didn't specify what source of energy I was talking about (except that it be something other than burning oil), suggesting a "more efficient" source makes no sense -- which makes it a fitting addition to the rest of your nonsensical argument.

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And it's still a red herring because the energy produced is still greater than the energy invested. Maintenance costs are a given; but I assumed (foolishly) that even you know enough about power plants to know that they are capable of producing more energy than they consume while operating.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Policywonk:
[QB]

Only if they have greater than 100% efficiency, which is impossible according to the law of conservation of energy.

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There you go; energy production is impossible. End of debate, we can all go home.

Unfortunately you're wrong again; you can get more energy out of a power plant than you put in, by using machines to capture energy produced elswhere; solar power captures the energy generated by a fusion reaction in the sun, for example.

The efficiency of a power plant measures how close it comes to perfectly extracting energy from a source. It has nothing to do with how much energy you expended to extract the energy. You are confusing inefficiency with entropy.

quote:

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And I was also talking about the energy required to extract, process, and transport the fuel.

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And it still produces more. You are happy to imply the contrary by dazzling yourself with the interconnectedness of all things (and the coffee cart that supplies the nuclear power plant runs on gasoline! And the bricks were baked in a kiln -- which used electricity!) but again, the energy inputs required over the lifetime of the plant are far less than the energy produced (or captured as electricity, if you prefer to suddenly begin using the scientific definition of energy, which no one, including you, has been using up to this point -- whatever).

[ 27 November 2005: Message edited by: rsfarrell ]

quote:

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Originally posted by rsfarrell:
The point of the exercise is that we need very little oil to sustain our current levels of production, provided we take simple steps to reduce demand and increase the supply of other fuels and other energy sources; that is why the extravangant claims for "peak oil" do not make sense.[ 26 November 2005: Message edited by: rsfarrell ]

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Originally posted by Policywonk:
You were talking about the energy consumed while operating a power plant, not the energy required to obtain a source of energy.

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No, I was talking about all the energy needed to generate electricity.

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I've been talking about the physical definition of energy all along; what have you been talking about?

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Really? You said: "If peak oil occurs before we are well on the road to reducing absolute energy consumption . . ."

But according to the "physical definition of energy" you cannot consume it -- only change its form.

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When the EROEI of a resource becomes 1 or less, that energy source becomes an energy sink and can no longer be used as a primary source of energy, and merely throwing financial capital at the problem will not solve it. EROEIs of greater than one exist because the source is easily accessible due to location and/or naturally occuring phenomena (such as pressure, which causes newly tapped light crude oil to rise to the surface).

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You can say it all kinds of ways, it's still wrong. You have yet to cite a single piece of evidence which supports the notion that other forms of power generation require more energy than they generate.

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You either really don't know what you are talking about or are being deliberately misleading or obscure. I vote for the latter.

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You are confusing inefficiency with entropy.

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Not at all; they are related. Both the first and second laws of thermodynamics apply to electrical generation. You still can't get more than 100% efficiency.

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Originally posted by maestro:

Well, what would those simple steps be, and what are the 'other' energy sources?

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For power generation, see higher in the thread; I gave a list.

There are some very exciting technologies coming to the fore right now, including tidal power, cheaper solar, windmills for low-altitude and low-windspeed sites; and this week's Scientific American has an article about a fuel recycling process that lets a nuclear power plant burn one tenth the fuel and produce waste toxic for a few hundred years, rather than tens of thousands.

On the conservation side, there are some easy things. Phase out non-hybrid cars over the next ten to fifteen years. All new cars must be hybrids.

Phase out lightbulbs. Fluorecents are more efficient.

Improve building codes, and re-insulate old homes for free.

Raise taxes on gas. Institute a carbon tax. Tax electricity generally.

Phase out grandfather clause exemptions to enviromental regulations.

quote:

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Originally posted by Policywonk:
[QB]

Not at all; they are related.

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They are related (most concepts are) but they are different.

quote:

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Both the first and second laws of thermodynamics apply to electrical generation.

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But they are still different.

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You still can't get more than 100% efficiency.

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Which doesn't mean what you think it means. Less than 100% efficiency means you cannot capture all the energy in a source. It does not mean that you have to expend more energy in harnassing the source than you get from it.

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And by the way, while Ethanol can be used as an aviation fuel, it is quite inferior to Kerosene for a number of reasons.

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UC scientist says ethanol uses more energy than it makes

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A clean-burning fuel produced from renewable crops like corn and sugarcane, ethanol has long been a cornerstone of some national lawmakers' efforts to clear the air and curb dependence on foreign oil. California residents use close to a billion gallons of the alcohol-based fuel per year.

But in a recent issue of the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, UC Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad Patzek argued that up to six times more energy is used to make ethanol than the finished fuel actually contains.

..."People tend to think of ethanol and see an endless cycle: corn is used to produce ethanol, ethanol is burned and gives off carbon dioxide, and corn uses the carbon dioxide as it grows," he said. "But that isn't the case. Fossil fuel actually drives the whole cycle."

..."Taking grain apart, fermenting it, distilling it and extruding it uses a lot of fossil energy," he said. "We are grasping at the solution that is by far the least efficient."

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So, in fact, the ethanol airplane is using fossil fuel, only second-hand. It is the fossil fuel input in ethanol that makes it work. And it also qualifies under my condition of requiring 'extensive processing'.

In any case, the amount produced is negligible.

A peak year of production was 1997, when a total of 33 billion litres was produced.

For the sake of comparison, there are about 13 billion litres of oil produced daily, making total ethanol production per year (in a year of very high production) equal to about 3 days of oil.

Ethanol is not an energy source, it is the product of an energy source. As such, the more you use it, the faster your supply of oil is depleted. In terms of energy use, it would be better to not make any ethanol, and just burn the oil you save.

This also applies to hydrogen, by the way. In an interview recently in the Report On Business, the CEO of Ballard was asked about the source of hydrogen for their fuel cells.

quote:

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Originally posted by Clog-boy:
I don't know why people aren't doing more with hydrogen..?
I know thye're experiencing problems on how to store. But when I was in high-school, we performed this little experiment. We'd set up a frame filled with water and run an electric current through it. At one of the poles oxygen would from and at the other pole hydrogen would form. This principle is called electrolyse (in Dutch at least, but I think it the same in English)
What I've never come to understand though, is why they haven't been able to produce such a device for cars..? I mean, if you can build such a device in a car, only very small amounts of hydrogen would be present in the vehicle. This would lower the danger of explosion and all you need to fill your car with is water...
If I'm not mistaken, this would also create much cleaner exhaustfumes than with fossile fuels.
But there must be some flaws in my explanation, otherwise I think someone else would have pattented such an idea/device...

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The flaw is forgetting where the electricity comes from. In your school experiment you obviously got the electricity from either a battery or from a wall outlet.

Yes, hydrogen is 1/3 of water, and if you just separate the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen atoms, you got yourself some hydrogen fuel. Problem is, it takes more energy to separate the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen than there is energy in the hydrogen.

So, for the foreseeable future, hydrogen used in fuel cells will come from natural gas, in which the hydrogen is much easier to separate.

However, natural gas itself is becoming more difficult to find. According to an interview I heard with Gwynn Morgan, the CEO of Encana, 'All the big easy stuff is gone'. In other words, from here on in, the natural gas 'finds' will be smaller and more difficult to bring to market.

If all you wanted to do was make cleaner burning fuel for cars, you'd be better off just to burn the natural gas. You wouldn't be wasting the energy required to get hydrogen out of the natural gas.

And therein lies the problem with almost all of the solutions to oil shortages. All of the solutions deliver a lesser amount of energy than you get from the oil itself.

Oil is the result of thousands of millions of years of storing energy from the sun. It is the most BTU dense of oil, coal, and natural gas, and is more portable than coal or natural gas.

Anyone who thinks coal is the answer only has to look at history. In the past ships, trains, and many industrial machines were run on coal. Coal was replaced by oil because oil is a more convenient source of power.

quote:

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Though his work has been vetted by several peer-reviewed scientific journals, Patzek has had to deflect criticism from a variety of sources. David Morris, an economist and vice president of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, has attacked the Berkeley professor's analysis because he says it is based on farming and production practices that are rapidly becoming obsolete.

"His figures (regarding energy consumed in fertilizer production) are accurate for older nitrogen fertilizer plants, but newer plants use only half the energy of those that were built 35 years ago," he said. He also cited the increasing popularity of no-till farming methods, which can reduce a corn farm's diesel usage by 75 percent.

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Typically, natural gas is used to produce fertilizer, not oil. So though ethanol may require signifigant "fossil fuel inputs" it may still not require much oil. And, as you can see, the professor's figures are disputed.

Ethanol production is basically a form of solar power, in which photosynthetic organisms convert low-energy bonds to high-energy bonds, which ultimately become a combustible fuel.

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No, I was talking about all the energy needed to generate electricity.

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Take another look at what you wrote:

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Maintenance costs are a given; but I assumed (foolishly) that even you know enough about power plants to know that they are capable of producing more energy than they consume while operating.

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However this is interpreted the energy consumed is more than the energy produced, because both the energy produced and the energy consumed in the process of producing the electricity increase with time (as well as the difference between them, since the process is not 100% efficient). To proclaim that saying the process of generating electricity uses more energy than it produces means that energy production is impossible is absurd, because electricity is a carrier, not a primary source of energy. We convert energy from primary sources to electricity because it is so convenient and useful.

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But according to the "physical definition of energy" you cannot consume it -- only change its form.

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Conversion to another form that is unusable in terms of further work because it dissipates (heat, for example) is essentially consumption. That said, we have been talking about energy as a commodity at the same time.

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Which doesn't mean what you think it means. Less than 100% efficiency means you cannot capture all the energy in a source.

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Or convert all of the energy in one form to another usable form (or other usable forms) during a process such as electrical power generation. You were implying from the language above that electrical power generation could be more than 100% efficient, which is still impossible according to the Second Law. Efficiency and entropy are so related that the Second Law is often described in terms of the efficiency of a heat engine, which is what all thermal electric power plants are.

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Take it up with the people who built the ethanol-powered jet

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No-one has built an ethanol-powered jet, despite what headings might come up in a search. If you care to investigate further you will find that the Ipanema is a single engine propeller-driven crop duster. There are hundreds of aircraft in Brazil that have been converted to ethanol but they are all propeller-driven (single and multi- engine). Richard Branson is talking about converting Virgin Airlines but ethanol is not suitable as jet fuel for a number of reasons, including safety.
tinyurl.com/9htrj

quote:

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Originally posted by rsfarrell:
The article also says:

Typically, natural gas is used to produce fertilizer, not oil. So though ethanol may require signifigant "fossil fuel inputs" it may still not require much oil. And, as you can see, the professor's figures are disputed.

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As you can see, the professor's work was vetted by 'several peer-reviewed scientific journals'.

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Conversion to another form that is unusable in terms of further work because it dissipates (heat, for example) is essentially consumption. That said, we have been talking about energy as a commodity at the same time.

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Thank you; we have been discussing it as a commodity, which is why playing "gotcha" with the laws of thermodynamics is not really on point.

That said, I've said some unfriendly things to you in the course of this discussion, such that I hardly hold the moral high ground regarding semi-flames. I resolve to be nicer.

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You were implying from the language above that electrical power generation could be more than 100% efficient, which is still impossible according to the Second Law.

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I don't think that I was, but reguardless, it's off the point, which is alternative energy sources as a commodity; can they replace oil if oil becomes more scarce?

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No-one has built an ethanol-powered jet, despite what headings might come up in a search. If you care to investigate further you will find that the Ipanema is a single engine propeller-driven crop duster. There are hundreds of aircraft in Brazil that have been converted to ethanol but they are all propeller-driven (single and multi- engine).

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You're correct, I misspoke. Of course, a propeller plane will get you where you're going, if not quite as fast. Ethanol can also be used in cars, which are, of course, an even more signifigant source of oil consumption.

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Alternatives to fossil fuels exist, but they will not magically appear overnight on the scale necessary to replace fossil fuels even if it is possible to develop them quickly and deploy them at that scale at all (which is why reducing energy use is so important and the choice of how to encourage these alternatives so crucial). This idea is as absurd as the notion that peak oil will immediately cause the disappearance of petroleum and the end of civilization, or that it will have no impact at all.

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I never said, and don't believe, that these alternatives will appear overnight. What I believe is that any decline in oil extraction will be gradual, that it will necessarily be accompanied by rising prices, and that there are many technologies which exist, and more which will be developed, which will naturally come to the fore as prices rise. Many of these "natural" (in a market sense) solutions will, unfortunately, be even more enviromentally destructive than rampant oil-burning.

So I agree, but for a different reason, that developing and incentivizing the right technologies, and the right social changes, is crucial. Because while I believe our economic system can rapidly adapt to the decline of our oil fields, it will not be as successful with the consequences of habitat descruction, mass extinction, climate change and rapid population growth, all of which tend to increase the fraility of our food webs and decrease their ability to absorb shocks.

So to summarize, you think we need to prioritize conservation and clean energy in part because decline oil production will cause havoc, while I think we need to prioritize conservation and clean energy only because the majority of our species looks to be wiped out by enviromental collapse if we don't.

quote:

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Originally posted by maestro:

As you can see, the professor's work was vetted by 'several peer-reviewed scientific journals'.

The disputing was done by 'David Morris, an economist and vice president of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance'.

---

David Morris ia a very credible source in this field.

he has a PDF on this subject here:

NASA has embarked a frantic search for more information about our sun. Over the last few years it has launched a slew of satelites and probes to further this agenda.

There's a good reason for this.

The sun is doing a lot of things we don't understand, not the least of which is that it seems to be warming up. This could mean great changes for us here on earth.

It is possible that humans aren't causing global warming. It is probable that humans aren't the ONLY cause of global warming and it is a certainty that the earth won't support life indefinitely.

I'm not suggesting that we stop trying to cut back on consuming fossil fuel but it's classic human arrogance to believe that we can somehow control climate change and that we can make the earth a safe place to be.

A 50 year plan for climate change MUST include more than a discussion about oil and commerce. We need to work the science out before we run out of resources. Ultimately, we need to figure out a way to allow human's to be independent of the solar system.

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It is possible that humans aren't causing global warming. It is probable that humans aren't the ONLY cause of global warming and it is a certainty that the earth won't support life indefinitely.

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It is as much a certainty as anything else in science that without the greenhouse effect the earth would be some 33 degrees cooler. It is also quite certain that humans are adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and increasing their concentrations significantly.
It can be expected that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will cause further warming, and this thesis can be tested by modelling and observation. The relationship is not linear, and there are positive and negative feedback mechanisms that are not fully understood; however much if not most of the uncertainty of warming predictions has to do with economic and social parameters rather than the science. The probability than humans are not causing enhanced global warming is vanishingly small. It is also quite certain that there are other factors affecting global temperature, such as solar radiation, albedo, and tiny atmospheric particles (aerosols), both natural (e.g. volcanic ash) and anthropogenic (soot from fossil fuel burning). These contribute to both warming and cooling. Knowing what makes the sun shine is nice to know, but reducing greenhouse gas emissions might be a little easier than trying to change the solar constant.
It is a certainty that the earth won't support life indefinitely, but that isn't particularly relevent to the question of global warming, being a somewhat longer term problem.

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I'm not suggesting that we stop trying to cut back on consuming fossil fuel but it's classic human arrogance to believe that we can somehow control climate change and that we can make the earth a safe place to be.

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Thank you; we have been discussing it as a commodity, which is why playing "gotcha" with the laws of thermodynamics is not really on point.

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It is quite legitimate and necessary to discuss energy as both a commodity and a physical parameter, thus arguments from the point of view of thermodynamics and other physical sciences are at least as valid as economic ones (in general, which is not to admit or suggest that either of us are completely right on specifics).

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I never said, and don't believe, that these alternatives will appear overnight. What I believe is that any decline in oil extraction will be gradual, that it will necessarily be accompanied by rising prices, and that there are many technologies which exist, and more which will be developed, which will naturally come to the fore as prices rise. Many of these "natural" (in a market sense) solutions will, unfortunately, be even more enviromentally destructive than rampant oil-burning

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Feasibility will be determined by technological and physical constraints, as well as by market forces (and other social factors), which I don't feel can be described as "natural", due to the effects of subsidies and taxation regimes, plus outright manipulation. Which is why I am not as confident as you that about the ability of the economic system to respond to a decline in oil supply. That some of the solutions to declining oil supply are even more socially and environmentally destructive than rampant oil-burning is considered one of the possible consequences of peak oil. I also don't think we can be that confident that the decline in oil production will be gradual, given political and social factors.

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So to summarize, you think we need to prioritize conservation and clean energy in part because decline oil production will cause havoc, while I think we need to prioritize conservation and clean energy only because the majority of our species looks to be wiped out by enviromental collapse if we don't.

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Close. The problem with peak oil is that I don't think anyone can make accurate predictions about timing because of uncertainty in proven and probable reserves. There may or may not be
catastrophic consequences depending on timing as well as what our responses to global warming are, as I have stated previously that the preferred responses are essentially the same; use much less energy, especially oil and other fossil fuels, and develop renewable sources as quickly as possible. It is naive to expect that this will not be accompanied by profound social and economic changes, both positive and negative.

Thank you for a quite civil response. It can be difficult not to respond to certain implications and tone in a similar fashion and I also apologize. I tend to react to what I consider absolutist arguments, which doesn't stop me from making them myself on occasion.

quote:

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Originally posted by saskganesh:

David Morris ia a very credible source in this field.

he has a PDF on this subject here:

http://www.newrules.org/agri/netenergyresponse.pdf
many other resources here:
http://www.newrules.org/agri/netenergy.html

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These pdf's are Morris's response to studies, they don't speak to his credibility.

However, the first paragraph of the first pdf should be noted:

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It is important to state the obvious at the outset. The soil cannot satisfy 100 percent, or even a majority of our energy needs. To supply 100 percent of our fuels and electricity we would need over 7 billion tons of plant matter, over and above the 1 billion tons Americans already use to feed and clothe ourselves and supply our paper and building materials.

Even the land-rich U.S. lacks sufficient acreage to come close to growing that quantity.

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This brings up a relatively important point. That is, using biomass which is grown for another purpose, wherein you are making use of a waste product, is obviously more economic than growing the biomass for fuel only.

As David Morris says, there isn't enough biomass grown to make ethanol a replacement fuel, only a partial replacement. At the same time, if most of the biomass is grown for other purposes, and if the leftover is used to make fuel, the cost, in both money and energy, is absorbed by the first use.

If you are growing biomass strictly for fuel, all associated costs have to be taken into account.

It's the same with using recycled cooking oil as a diesel fuel repacement. It makes sense if you're just going to throw the stuff away. But if you manufactured cooking oil just to be turned into diesel replacement, it wouldn't make sense.

In any case, in the US the question is probably moot, in that when the midwest aquifers run out of water, they won't be growing much of anything, food or otherwise.

Ethanol makes a lot more sense in Brazil, because the cost of production for sugar cane is far lower than the cost of production of corn in the US (cost in both monetary and energy terms). Still, Brazil too has problems, not the least of which is turning the rain forest into agricultural land. The environmental damage done must also be considered in the equation.

The bottom line is this, there are no cheap energy alternatives. If there were, we'd already be using them. All of the alternatives to oil are more expensive, and likely to remain so.

In my opinion, the answer lies not in finding alternatives (at least not in the short run), but in conserving that which we already have.

First thing we need is an inventory of the resources left to us, not just oil, but all of the minerals, the resources of the oceans and the resources of the land. We need a reference point, and an indication of how long we can continue to use resources at the current rate.

Every human on this planet has an equal right to share in the resources available. That is manifestly not happening now, but it must. An inventory would be a step in that direction.

The industrialized nations are using resources at a rate that would require many worlds to give each person on earth an equal share. So we must apportion resources on a per capita basis, and stop stealing resources from the rest of the world.

In other words, we have to start using a lot less resources than we are now. Whether others in the world use the resources or not is immaterial. We can't continue to use their share as well as ours.

For instance, the US uses roughly 20 million barrels of oil every day out of a rough 80 million bbls/day supply. They represent about 5% of the world's population, and are using 25% of the world's most precious resource. They should be reducing their oil consumption to 5% of world daily supply, or about 4 million bbls/day.

I'll grant that that's not going to happen anytime soon, but I would accept a 50% cut in their consumption as a reasonable first step. They would still have to import some, but they could easily retain a good standard of living. In 1960 the US consumed roughly half of what they do now, and the average standard of living was quite comfortable.

quote:

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Originally posted by maestro:

As David Morris says, there isn't enough biomass grown to make ethanol a replacement fuel, only a partial replacement.

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All solutions will be partial. We do not need one alternative -- we need many. While it is valid to point out the shortcomings of alternatives, and I have tried to do that myself, especially as they pertain to the enviroment, the fact that none of them by themselves produce all the energy we need is no indication that they won't work in combination.

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In any case, in the US the question is probably moot, in that when the midwest aquifers run out of water, they won't be growing much of anything, food or otherwise.

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I suppose they'll have to build desalinization plants, then. As I've said, there are some enviromental problems you can't fix, at least with our present level of understanding, but the certainity with which this pronouncement is made is, in my opinion, unwarrented. People adapt to problems, they don't just lay down and die. I feel you don't take the adaptability of people enough into account -- every problem appears as the doom of mankind.

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The bottom line is this, there are no cheap energy alternatives. If there were, we'd already be using them. All of the alternatives to oil are more expensive, and likely to remain so.

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In this scenerio of declining oil production -- if it comes to pass -- oil prices will rise dramatically. That, by itself, would make the alternatives cheaper. A sane tax regime that took into account the damage caused by carbon emissions would also make the alternatives cheaper. The prices of things change as technology finds more efficient ways to accomplish the goals we set it.

Even supposing that energy became more expensive, that is not a catastrophe. Total energy costs for the US economy are about 7% of GDP. If they went up to ten or 12 -- or 14%, as in the oil shocks -- the result would probably be a recession, but nothing worse than that.

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First thing we need is an inventory of the resources left to us, not just oil, but all of the minerals, the resources of the oceans and the resources of the land. We need a reference point, and an indication of how long we can continue to use resources at the current rate.

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This misunderstands what resources are. Resources aren't static. They are relative to the technology which exploits them. Oil without refining capability is a smelly mess -- terrible thing to have your land cluttered up with. The supply of lead looked to be running out fifty years ago -- then we found a cheap way to extract lead from more dilute ore which had previously been useless. Uranium's not a resource unless you have nuclear technology. And so on.

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Atlantic Ocean currents that make northern Europe warmer than it would otherwise be have weakened by about a third over the last 50 years, British oceanographers are reporting.

The scientists, from Britain's National Oceanography Center, said the measured change meshes with what computer climate simulations project should happen as heat-trapping emissions from human activities warm the global climate.

Warming, in theory, could stall salty, sun-heated, north-flowing currents by causing fresher water to build up in high-latitude seas as ice melts and more precipitation falls.

Some climate models have projected that if this process continued, gradual global warming could eventually trigger fairly abrupt European cooling.

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You just can't trust those ivory tower eggheads; first they say warmer, then they say colder. Which is it, Einstein?

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All solutions will be partial. We do not need one alternative -- we need many. While it is valid to point out the shortcomings of alternatives, and I have tried to do that myself, especially as they pertain to the enviroment, the fact that none of them by themselves produce all the energy we need is no indication that they won't work in combination.

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If the Gulfstream has indeed been slowing down we could have an explanation for all those huricanes.
The Gulfstream transports a lot of energy from the Caribbean into the North Atlantic. If more of the energy stays in the Caribbean that would add to the energy available to power up those tropical storms into huricanes.

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You just can't trust those ivory tower eggheads; first they say warmer, then they say colder.

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I have not heard anything about it either. It was just speculation on my part.

Clog-boy

Solar cells are fine for some locations. The trouble I have with solar cells is that they only produce electricity when there is lots of light. But I suspect that the maritime climate you have in Holland , combined with its relative northern location would probably mean that most electricity is generated when you least need it. And storing electricity is still rather problematic and expensive.

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Originally posted by Policywonk:

They're saying both; warmer globally but cooler in northern Europe.

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I was kidding, Policy. Note the wink:

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[irony]You just can't trust those ivory tower eggheads; first they say warmer, then they say colder. Which is it, Einstein?

[/irony]

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And storing electricity is still rather problematic and expensive.

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On a large grid, you just feed excess power back over the power lines. Many utilities in the US are required by law to provide the technology to "buy-back" electricity.

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Originally posted by Bubbles:
How is Holland aproaching this climate change issue? The rising sealevel is nodoubt a bit worrying. Do you still have a lot of Natural gas coming from Slochteren? It is a relatively clean fuel, do a lot of cars run on natural gas in Holland?

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Well, here in Holland we've had some trouble in the past with the climate change, and it's bound to get even worse. It isn't quite the rising sealevel that has given us the jeepers, but the inland dikes that give way, flooding the country from within.
Strangely, I saw this documentary on Discovery a couple of days after Katrina had struck New Orleans (and surrounding area). The documentary was about the current state of the Dutch waterworks and some of it's accomplishments, but they also showed future plans being made. The commentary said: "Future plans are made for Holland, in a place where one wouldn't expect them to be made. A place with a far more exotic and caribean type of weather, it is..."
Guess which particular city the narrator named next? Indeed, New Orleans... Seeing it just a couple of days after Katrina was a pretty weird experience. They showed computer simulations of how New Orleans would look like when flooded. It held absolutely no comparison to the real thing, it even looked Venetian. No debris, no bodies floating, nothing. Just some nice canals, expecting a gondola to come around a corner...
It was a baffling experience. I was eating a hot meal at the time they started talking about New Orleans in the documentary. When the documentary was over, I came to the conclusion that I had been gazing at the tv with my mouth open, not having touched my food in any way...

As for Slochteren, I believe that'll last us till 2030, maybe less, given the current energy crisis. Lot's of people have been changing from regular fuel to gas. And with prices remaining high, I guess more people will keep doing so...
If I'm not mistaken, Holland is already importing energy in huge quantities. So we're pretty much screwed overhere anyway...

[ 01 December 2005: Message edited by: Clog-boy ]