The Oil Drum

Only a moron would suggest something like that.

Please inform yourself.

:laughs:

How about a "Don't Feed the Trolls" moratorium day?

If it weren't for the trolls what sort of conversations would occur here?

Hothgor and Infinite Possibilities seem to make the same arguments every day and experience the same results:

Hothgor: You're wrong about Peak Oil.
Anyone else: You're an idiot, Hothgor.

or ...

Infinite Possibilities: Technology will save us!
Anyone else: You're an idiot, IP!

Certainly not enough changes from day to day to justify repeating the same argument over and over again. It makes no difference if these two individuals actually believe what they repeatedly affirm: An argument which was not resolved yesterday will suffer the same fate today.

Time will resolve these arguments in a more effective manner than perpetually engaging in the same arguments ever will. The only significant contribution of the daily threads is the news stories which Leanan and others provide throughout the day. The news is interesting and occasionally very important (such as the reports coming out of Mexico today, the world certainly is changing).

These daily debates which degenerate into insult exchanges don't benefit the Peak Oil movement at all. Do they? Does anyone seriously believe that they help?

As for myself, I believed in Peak Oil from the first moment that I heard that it is an approaching threat. The only real argument is about the timing, and that argument is irrelevant within the time scales which concern me. Undoubtedly Peak Oil will occur within this century, perhaps before 2010, possibly it has already occurred. Regardless of the various opinions about the matter there is no possibility whatsoever that information gleaned from the news today will resolve the issue conclusively either for believers, skeptics or the disinterested public.

Why then go through the trouble of repeating the same tiresome argument every day?

The Peak Oil controvery cannot help but resolve itself in time. Patience is a virtue, incessant strife a vice.

David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1

yea i am getting tired of the same arguments too..

For those interested in hearing a scientist speak about the future of humankind and life on the Earth in a serious fashion with an appropriate mixture of doomsday and naive techno-salvationism, visit the Princeton University Webmedia page:

http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/

Listen to Peter Ward's lecture series, "The Undesigned Universe", and in particular the first two lectures (January 9 and 10). Peter Ward also presents a substantial argument against human space exploration in these lectures, too, so we pretty much can forget about any sort of Star Tredk-type future for our species.

For another scientist's view on the approaching catastrophes facing humankind, there is the eminent Tim Flannery. He advocates:

To avert biological disaster, Flannery's suggestions are radical: the coal industry should be shunted aside, traditional methods of producing power junked, and a desert metropolis established and placed at the centre of Australia's electricity grid. "We need to 'decarbonise' the economy extremely rapidly - which we could do if we were on a raw footing," he says. "We could just close down the coal-fired power plants. We could. We could mandate we are going to have electricity rationing, we are going to close things down, we are going to build a new infrastructure as quick as we can."

Flannery is unmoved by the possibility that this approach might cripple the country's economy - currently riding a commodities boom thanks to north Asia's hunger for Australian resources. "Won't the Australian economy collapse if climate change continues? There are a lot of ways to make electricity. Burning coal is just one of the more antique and stupid ways of doing it. We've got solar, we've got wind, we've got geothermal."

Ending the coal industry is an excellent idea but these alternatives won't provide the energy-intensive lifestyle that prosperous people demand. Too bad for the consumers, or (more accurately) too bad for the environment because that means that humans will keep on burning coal until civilization itself collapses.

How could civilization collapse? Tim Flannery provides a chilling scenario:

Flannery, who later this year will take up a post at Macquarie University in Sydney to research climate change, has sobering predictions for the future. "Let's project ourselves 50 years out and imagine that the rate of melt has continued so that the sea level has come up three or four metres. What that would mean is that there's barely a functioning port facility on the planet.

"So how do we go about international trade which is actually the centre of our global civilisation? Every coastal city is under enormous threat. People would be spending trillions just trying to keep their cities going. You've got refugees on a scale that is unimaginable. The stresses on peace would be enormous. Does that sound like a stable situation? That's just projecting what we've seen so far. That's just saying if we continue as we are, that's where we will end up."
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/987

But no one should imagine that humankind is wise or honorable enough to cease all of these self-destructive activities until the oceans actually do rise and take away the world's coasts. At that point the climate change skeptics will concede that the climate has changed but they probably will still deny that humans bear any responsibility for the change.

The destruction of the Earth continues ...

David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1

Hello Everyone,

I have a question addressed to The Oil Drum's Editors (sort of like asking God a question, I know ...):

When you allowed Robert Rapier to become a prominent contributor at The Oil Drum you did know that he is employed as a lobbyist for a major oil corporation, right?

I had to look into this myself since I had formed my opinion of Mr. Rapier intuitively simply by reading his posts. I never actually researched it until today. Using a simple Google search I found the evidence:

Robert Rapier, Chemical Engineer, Conoco-Philips, Billings, handed out "The Cost of Grain-Derived Ethanol." He said that he worked on Bio-Mass to Ethanol in graduate school and believes that Montana has a lot of potential for producing alternative energy sources.

Mr. Rapier did not believe that corn Ethanol is a viable alternative. He referred to a 2002 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) study that found there is a 34% energy gain when making corn-based Ethanol, which amounts to 21,000 BTUs gained for one gallon of Ethanol produced. There are 125,000 BTUs in a gallon of gasoline, and six gallons of Ethanol would have to be produced to displace a one gallon of gasoline. With a $.51 Federal subsidy and a $.20 proposed State subsidy, consumers would be paying $4.25 to displace a single gallon of gasoline based on USDA studies and $33.81 per million BTUs. Mr. Rapier stated that the cost of natural gas is $7.00/million BTUs. The subsidy on wind power is $5.00/million BTUs. He said that is what Montanans should be going after.

Mr. Rapier asked, "Do you think that constituents understand that bringing mandated Ethanol to Montana means that they will pay $4.25 to displace a single gallon of gasoline?" He read the response from the USDA when he questioned the amount: "If we want to produce fuel Ethanol from bio mass and crop residues then Ethanol should compete with gasoline on the BTU bases. We do not have the technology yet, but in the future it is a possibility." He said that is what he concluded ten years ago. He said he will be available for questions and noted that the USDA report is referenced and goes into more detail in his handout.
http://data.opi.state.mt.us/legbills/2005/Minutes/House/Exhibits/agh63a0...
{Tape: 1; Side: B; Approx. Time Counter: 16.8 - 23.3}

[As referenced here: http://www.logicalscience.com/energy/quotes.html ]

I fear that anointing an oil lobbyist the primary authority regarding ethanol on the Oil Drum constitutes some sort of ethical violation. Would the editors kindly justify this decision and, more importantly, never explicitly identifying Robert Rapier as a lobbyist employed by an oil corporation?

David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1