 | Efficiency Policy, Jevon’s Paradox, and the “Shadow†Rebound Effect | The Oil Drum | GHAWAR: an estimate of remaining oil reserves and production decline (Part 2 - results) |  |
DrumBeat: April 27, 2007
Posted by Leanan on April 27, 2007 - 9:33am
Topic: Miscellaneous
It would have been impossible to convince anyone ten years ago that such would be the case, but the sprawling tract housing that surrounds most of America's cities has been almost completely abandoned. It all started to happen ten years ago this summer, when the so-called subprime mortgage crisis spread into other housing sectors. Climbing oil prices, now understood to be caused by the peaking of worldwide oil supplies at the time, made interest rates start on a steady upward trend. Millions of middle class American families who were just scraping by saw the payments on their adjustable rate mortgages inch ever upward and beyond their means.
Oil May Rise on Below-Normal U.S. Gasoline Supply, Survey Shows
Fourteen of 33 analysts surveyed, or 42 percent, said oil prices will rise. Eleven, or 33 percent, said prices will decline and eight forecast that oil will be little changed. Last week, 45 percent of respondents said prices would fall.
The big dry: Australia's water shortage
Australia is struggling to cope with the consequences of a devastating drought. As the world warms up, other countries should pay heed.
April weather set to break record
The UK Met Office has released figures showing that this month is likely to be the warmest April since records began.
When asked recently about Iran's proposal to Russia to create a global gas cartel, a number of top Russian leaders and experts commented that the move appeared rooted more in politics than in economics - in particular, the politics of opposition to the United States and of counteracting its growing global aggressiveness.
Schram: A back-burner plan that could save the world
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's universally esteemed former chairman, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and his home-state counterpart, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., have teamed up to sponsor this bill that would make it possible for all of those non-nuclear nations to obtain the nuclear fuel they require to build at last the nuclear-power installations they say they need. And it can be done in a way that can assure the rest of the world that they cannot divert the nuclear fuel to make a nuclear bomb.
Exxon reportedly eyeing oil-shale work on W. Slope
Exxon Mobil could use its long-idle Colony Project site to begin new research into extracting oil from shale, government regulators and industry experts say.News of the possible revival at the site comes nearly 25 years after Exxon Mobil predecessor Exxon Corp. shut down its oil-shale research at the Colony Project and threw thousands of western Colorado residents out of work. May 2, 1982, became known as "Black Sunday."
Denver is seeing a severe crunch in gasoline supply, and pump prices likely will top $3 a gallon in the coming days, industry sources said.Oil refinery problems in Texas and Oklahoma - which supply Colorado with gasoline through pipelines - are the root cause of the shortage. And the situation is being exacerbated by rising demand ahead of the busy summer driving season.
"There is no gas in Denver," said Bryant Gimlin, energy risk manager at Fort Lupton-based Gray Oil Co., a wholesale distributor of gasoline and diesel. "The situation here is worse than how it was after Hurricane Katrina."
Protect God's creation: Vatican issues new green message for world's Catholics
The Vatican yesterday added its voice to a rising chorus of warnings from churches around the world that climate change and abuse of the environment is against God's will, and that the one billion-strong Catholic church must become far greener.
Agriculture for food and fiber represents another significant category of environmental impact. Before we worry about how to farm, we should consider how much agriculture we need. If you read the technical news, when this subject comes up it always centers on how to increase food production for a hungry world.
Kenya to host major oil conference in May
Kenyan authorities said on Friday the country will host international conference on petroleum next month as the east African nation seeks regional petroleum hub status.
Last week, we discussed the “Law of Receding Horizons,” which explains why marginal oil and gas projects can still be uneconomical even with high oil prices, contrary to projections.And back in March, in The Cavalry Stays Home, we reviewed how this phenomenon has caused the delay or cancellation of some highly anticipated new oil and gas projects.
Now let’s review the next rogues’ gallery of cavalrymen who have decided to stay home.
Bear in mind that all of this has happened since April 1.
Mexico's Cantarell oil output inches up in March
Crude oil output at Mexico's huge-but-declining Cantarell oil field rose slightly in March to an average of 1.585 million barrels per day (bpd), energy ministry data showed on Thursday.
Costa Rica's Energy Supply In State of Emergency
One week after a massive blackout swept the country, Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias declared yesterday that the nation's energy crisis has reached a state of emergency.ICE president Pedro Quirós announced that blackouts will begin today and continue until there is enough rain to feed Costa Rica's hydroelectric plants, which are currently low on reserves due to a drier-than-normal year and a growing demand for energy.
Colombia recovers power after blackout
Authorities said left-wing armed rebel groups in Colombia were not responsible for the outage.The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have been fighting government forces for more than 40 years, and have previously attacked electric power stations as part of their campaign.
Ghana: The Casualties of Our Energy Crisis
The first casualty of the energy crisis is the manufacturing industries. The Volta Aluminium Company Limited (VALCO) has been made to close down. Other companies, which use much energy, face a similar fate as VALCO. Some companies are producing below their capacity at the same fixed cost of labour. No wonder production by Ghana Cement Company Limited (GHACEM) has gone down, causing the price of cement to skyrocket in the market. Now GHACEM has become an importer instead of a producer.
Iraqi Oil Minister Warns Companies Against Deals Bypassing Central Govt
Iraq's Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani Thursday warned international oil companies from signing oil contracts that bypass the federal government in Baghdad and the Oil Ministry, in a clear reference to deals signed by the Kurdistan Regional Government with a number of foreign firms.
We now have a globalized complex society. This globalized complex society manifests all of the classical symptoms of imminent collapse. The twin problems of peak energy production and pollution-induced climate change coupled with the inefficacy of proposed technological solutions practically guarantee collapse of the global system. The horror show of energy scarcity now playing in Zimbabwe will be coming soon to a theater near you.
Timing right for sour crude futures - but for whom?
The time has never been better to launch a Middle East oil futures contract but there is likely to be only one winner in the battle between two top exchanges to seize the prize.Rising supplies of Middle East sour crude, growing demand in Asia, more sophisticated risk hedging in energy markets and questions about existing benchmark oil contracts are factors that will help a contract succeed.
Ireland: Health service urged to plan for global warming
The health services have been urged to start planning for the impact of global warming and the likely increase in the price of oil in the years ahead.Due to the rising cost of oil-based transport, small hospitals will be a key point of access to healthcare for much of the population, it is predicted.
Looking at Kelowna through a crystal ball
James Howard Kunstler, an American writer on cities, may be the continent's leading suburbologist. With books like The Geography of Nowhere and last year's The Long Emergency, Mr. Kunstler has spent the past two decades building a sustained critique of the postwar suburb, and the energy-wasting, sedentary, under-stimulated lifestyle it promotes.
Solar-farm project doesn't go far enough, critics say
Ontario's decision to host one of North America's largest solar farms is a step in the right direction, but the relatively large project represents a fraction of the total energy supply and does little to clean up the province's act, critics said yesterday.
We are in an energy crisis — again. This time, unlike other decades, there seems to be the legislative will to change our fossil fuel ways. And though it’s not a new idea, farming for fuel seems to be a lead solution as our nation searches for alternatives to oil.
American drivers need not fear the worst, analysts say. That's because, despite tight supply and steady demand, gasoline prices will likely peak soon, meaning relief at the pump isn't far off. Analysts say that troubled refineries in Texas, California, and Indiana will start ramping up production, and there should be enough supply to quench the thirst of America's automobiles as summer driving starts."Everyone likes to hype $4 gasoline because it's sexy," says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, an energy consulting firm. "The reality is that we're nearing the highs of the year, and within 30 days there will be more gasoline on the market. You might see $4 in tony places such as Beacon Hill or Beverly Hills, where they wear the price as a badge of honor."
Uranium's set to make waves in futures: New York Mercantile Exchange, Ux Consulting to launch uranium futures
'Since we are moving off the age of oil and into a nuclear era, it's about time we had some liquidity in the uranium market and some visibility into pricing in outer months.'
Climate change heats up Arctic geopolitics
Global warming has the United States and Canada scrambling to overhaul their strategies for controlling North America's vast Arctic, as sea passage grows easier and natural gas resources beckon.
Planet 'emergency' 55 million years ago was global warming: study
Cataclysmic volcanic eruptions in Greenland and the British Isles brought on a destructive bout of global warming 55 million years ago, an international study revealed Thursday....The findings are important 55 million years after the fact, because the volcanic activity released large amounts of methane and carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures followed -- just as scientists warn is happening today.
Group Says Stanford University Ethanol Study Tainted by ExxonMobil Ties
A widely reported study sounding an alarm against using ethanol to replace gasoline is the most recent example of Stanford University's energy research credibility being undercut by the school's ties to ExxonMobil Corp., the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) said April 26.
China urges end to polluters' tax breaks
China's premier pledged Friday to phase out tax breaks and discounts on land and electricity for highly polluting industries, saying that the country's environmental situation was grim and required urgent action.
Sen. wants to tax Big Oil's 'excess' profits - Senator takes aim at Big Oil to help poor people pay for gas
On the same day that Exxon Mobil Corp. reported higher first-quarter profits, a Pennsylvania senator took aim at the oil industry, proposing a tax on “excess” profits to help poor people pay for gasoline.Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., said he would introduce legislation Thursday to put in place a 50 percent tax on major oil companies profits’ from crude oil priced at more than $50 per barrel, where it has been trading for most of the past two years.
Russia to invest oil revenues in shares
Billions of Russian petrodollars are set to be invested in shares of international companies for the first time, boosting Russia’s presence in financial markets.
Oil sands hit by climate change politics
Alberta's oil producers are finding themselves squarely in the cross-hairs of the government's new climate change regulations, which aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, even as industry plans to triple oil sands production.
Is Wind Power Full of Hot Air?
In the U.S., as people recently poured into Earth Day celebrations, they encountered all sorts of booths and speeches extolling the virtues of wind power and other renewable resources. What participants were highly unlikely to hear were the limitations of wind power. Let's revisit wind.
Race On To Increase Biofuel Yields
With controversy surrounding the economics of biofuel production and nagging doubts about its large-scale sustainability, researchers have now turned their attention to ways of producing biofuels more efficiently.
Saudi arrests suspects planning oil attacks
Saudi Arabia has arrested more than 170 suspected al Qaeda-linked militants, some of whom were training as pilots to carry out suicide attacks on oil facilities in the kingdom, the Interior Ministry said on Friday...."Some had begun training on the use of weapons, and some were sent to other countries to study aviation in preparation to use them to carry out terrorist operations inside the kingdom," the statement said.
"One of their main targets was to carry out suicide attacks against public figures and oil installations and to target military bases inside and outside (the country)," it added.
Analyst peaks interest on decreasing oil supply
The students of John Carroll's Peak Oil class sat scattered across the rows of chairs in Huddleston Hall's slightly lit ballroom. For them, the issue of peak oil is nothing new, but for most Americans peak oil is a term they have heard of very little.For Matthew Simmons, who studies the depletion of the earth's natural oil reserves, peak oil is the most important problem the world faces today. Simmons, a banking and investment advisor to the oil industry for approximately 38 years, was the latest speaker in UNH's Discovery program Power to the People, which focuses on energy use. In the past, Simmons served as a key advisor to the Bush administration, as a part of Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force.
Pacific leaders admit petrol and diesel energy is quickly becoming unaffordable
“And added to that they’ve got the complications that the major oil companies have been withdrawing from the Pacific and so they’ve had less security in their supply routes and they’ve have an increase in costs. So one of the main outcomes is a real push for a regional procurement strategy for fuel, but there has also been a focus on both renewable energy resources to substitute for fossils fuels and also improvements in energy efficiency.”
OPEC Eyeing Oil Invest Review On Talk Of Oil Alternatives
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is eyeing a formal review that could eventually lead to less investment in exploring for future oil supplies because of endless discussion in consuming nations to reduce fossil fuel demand and fight global warming.
Rosneft Says It Has Most Oil Reserves
Rosneft said Thursday that it had become the world leader among public companies in oil reserves with a 6.1 percent increase in its total hydrocarbons reserves in 2006.Rosneft said it had estimated proven reserves of 20.09 billion barrels of oil equivalent, including 15.96 billion barrels of oil and 24.76 trillion cubic feet of gas under the Society of Petroleum Engineers classification.
Canada ready to ban sale of traditional light bulbs
Canada will be among the first countries in the world to ban the purchase of traditional light bulbs, part of the government's plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
A new Round-Up has been posted at TOD:Canada.
This is on Round-Up, Oil Drum Canada
"When the fixed exchange rate regime is terminated, then newly minted funds from the foreign central bank no longer act to support the value of the US dollar and maintain low US interest rates. In effect, there is nothing left to support the US consumer anymore. The value of the US dollar collapses and US interest rates skyrocket. The skyrocketing interest rates cause a real estate crash. The collapsing value of the US dollar causes the price of gold to skyrocket. And needless to say, the stock market collapses.
At this time, the key foreign central bank that is artificially supporting the US economy at present is the central bank of China.
The point is rapidly approaching when China’s central bank will be forced to abandon their fixed exchange rate regime. On March 20, 2007, the governor of China’s central bank stated for the first time that they “will not stockpile foreign exchange reserves any more” (an extraordinarily important comment that few people took note of). Given the present state of affairs, how could that possibly be accomplished without the abandonment of the fixed exchange rate system? They will realize that the alternative to this (keeping the policy in place) can only result in the destruction of the Chinese economy. When the peg on China’s foreign exchange rate is dropped, the US economy (as well as the global economy) will implode."
http://www.prudentbear.com/articles/show/2001
Ol' Charley stole the handle, and the train it won't stop going, no way to slow down. - Jethro Tull
As I recall, Prudent Bear's track record stinks.
After reading over, I don't want to leave the wrong impression. There are plenty of financial observers with excellent track records who say the same thing as Prudent Bear. The difference is that the excellent observers get the timing right, instead of being a stopped clock.
Euan Mearns' Ghawar results article is on TOD Europe for those of you who cannot wait for it to appear on the main site.
To lighten the mood on a friday, I thought this was kind of neat from a novelty standpoint.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article...
Car made of wood, and gets 55 to 70 miles per gallon according to the article. Weighs in at 900 pounds.
Oh man, wooden cars. gotta love it.
Im a certified lurker on this site. gotta say that up front. I waste far too much time during the day, away from my 'hi intensity' bs silicon valley job reading so many of the posts.
I chide myself sometimes for wasting so much time...But tonight I started thinking that this place, this virtual reality of opinion and thinking people is my refuge. So much of what happens around me and in the world is so flip'in upside down/un-real. I value my 'little community' of outsiders so very much. Just wanted to say thanks to all: the common sense, down to earth, and just plain real human beings on this site who really give a crap about what happens to us on this little blue marble floating through the void (actually really enjoy the nut-bags also...come on.. ya'all knw who you are... I might be in that catagory ;-). OK, enough with the sappy shit. Thanks to all.
PS.. gonna buy me a wooden car. Is there a dealer in San Jose??
It is THE only community where you can openly discuss such cr*p without being labelled a nutjob. Congrats on finding the beauty of TOD...it's NOT just for the techie oil folks. I've been coming back off and on for 2.5 years now for that reason. Stick with it...it's worth the effort.
d_d, great sentiment. TOD is like a party/gathering, it sometimes gets "out of hand", and the "Peak Oil" featured guest doesn't seem to arrive, but I also enjoy slinging ideas around. My current opinion is that the technology to solve the PO problem is currently ramping up, but there's going to be a nasty pot-hole before we are saved. Anyhow, my sentiments exactly re TOD.
No attack here but reading the comments section night after night, one is struck by notion of most posters that Peak Oil is a bad thing because it will reduce our abilty to burn more oil. After reading the link "Gaia's Fever", below, one realises that all of humanity's efforts should be directed at returning the carbon that has already been burned BACK into the soil and that somehow the burning of all fossil fuels, particularily oil, should CEASE IMMEDIATELY. Failure to do so PROMISES a return to the climatic conditions that forced oil formation originally. Climatic condtions that should properly be known henceforth as GLOBAL HEATING. Lovelock is not off the mark with his dire warnings and prediction of lifeless, superheated deserts throughout the mid lattitudes and stagnant, uniformly warm oceans because THEY HAVE OCCURRED IN THE PAST, making a "Post Peak die-off" pale by comparison.
Understanding this gives humans a new or maybe our only, purpose on Earth, namely HELPING THE EARTH MAINTAIN A TEMPERATURE THAT ALLOWS LIFE TO CONTINUE, because "what we call “fossil fuels” were never meant to be a gift for us."
http://www.aspoitalia.net/aspoenglish/documents/bardi/gaia.html
Putting the carbon back....
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/
In the past, the global temperature has been 20 degrees warmer and 12 degrees colder. Both of these are natural states of the Earth - and life continued.
The Earth is currently bumping along in an Ice Age, with both temperature and CO2 levels at all time lows. Indeed, the low level of CO2 contributes to our current Ice Age.
We are currently in a brief warm spell (interglacial), but shortly the temperature will drop 12 degrees and we'll be back into a glacial period. It is pretty unlikely we will break out of the Ice Age, there just isn't enough stuff to burn. Release of large methane deposits could put off glaciations by a few thousands years, but in the long term, human activity will cause only a minor blip in the geological record.
If humans get that much time then I wouldn't bet against us. Maybe in "a few thousand years" we'd actually be able to retrieve hydrogen/hydrocarbons from Jupiter or wherever, burn them, and spit the excess carbon out into space.
Interesting! With todays level of CO2 what it is and us "bumping along in an Ice Age" you just stood all of science and observable data on its head.
"As of January 2007, the earth's atmospheric CO2 concentration is about 0.0383% by volume (383 ppmv) or 0.0582% by weight. This represents about 2.996×1012 tonnes, and is estimated to be 105 ppm (37.77%) above the pre-industrial average.
The longest ice core record comes from East Antarctica, where ice has been sampled to an age of 800,000 years before the present. During this time, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has varied between 180 – 210 µL/L during ice ages, increasing to 280 – 300 µL/L during warmer interglacials."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
Did you actually read your link???
800,000 years ago is still well inside the current Ice Age, which started some 50 million years ago. That is still a small fraction of the Earth's 4,500 million year history. For the vast majority of that time, the temperature has been much warmer and CO2 levels higher. If anything, the current state of the Earth is abnormal.
Best hopes for improved reading comprehension.
Did you read the link I first posted?
"These Gaia’s fevers have happened several times in the past and have been disastrous for the biosphere. At the end of the Permian period, about 250 million years ago, a gigantic volcanic eruption took place in the area which is today Siberia, releasing great amounts of CO2. It may be that it also heated directly the hydrate reservoirs, releasing great amounts of methane. The resulting runaway greenhouse effect heated the planet to a hothouse and almost killed the biosphere. According to some estimates, only 5% of the species existing at that time survived. That was called, correctly, “the mother of all extinctions”. "
Best hopes for actually reading links you reply to.
So there you have it, despite an extreme catastrophic event, life continued. Life is pretty resilient. Catastrophic events will certainly happen again in the Earth's future - supervolcanoes, asteroid strikes etc, will happen. It may be considered an obligation of mankind to restrain his impact on the planet, but far worse events will befall the Earth regardless.
But perhaps you are being disingenuous, and like Alan, are not really concerned about maintaining life on Earth but specifically maintaining human civilization on Earth (a standard bait-and-switch tactic often employed in these debates), and the selected useful livestock or cute furry animals (no-one cares much about the ugly or troublesome ones).
As you have shown, it would be futile for us to attempt to maintain the current temperature within a few degrees as natural variation far exceeds this, which we have no control over. If human civilisation is unable to cope with it's self-induced warming of a few degrees, how is it to cope with temperature variations of plus or minus 10 degrees, which are certain to occur in the future?
Many people argue that the real problem is human overpopulation, even if we reduce Co2 emissions, the burden of 6.5 billion people aspiring to an affluent Western lifestyle is likely to screw up the planet as surely as anything.
The IPCC business as usual scenarios are based on projections of hydrocarbon use that we know are simply impossible. We will soon run out of stuff to burn. We may hold off the next glaciation for a bit (see Ruddiman), but in 50,000 years time, anthro-CO2 will have disappeared from the atmosphere, and Mother Earth will resume her regular course of glaciations. Ice caps will expand, subarctic continents will again be covered in 2km thick ice sheets, and life on land will be forced into temperate equatorial zone. The glacial period may last around 120,000 years. In this case, it would be interesting to see what becomes of human civilisation.
I find science fascinating, it is a pity some people try to turn it into pseudo-religion or anthropocentric dogma.
"life continued"
5%? The argument for divine intervention IMO has a better percentage of being involved with bringing the biosphere back from near oblivion than pure happenstance.
"It may be considered an obligation of mankind to restrain his impact on the planet, but far worse events will befall the Earth regardless."
Well I don't have to imagine an unobliging mankind gleefully returning a great majority of the carbon to the atmosphere. The same carbon that took the Earth many millions of years to squirrel away. All that CO2, back in the atmosphere, at once! Sounds pretty catastrophic by any stretch. In fact I see it happening NOW.
"But perhaps you are being disingenuous, and like Alan, are not really concerned about maintaining life on Earth but specifically maintaining human civilization on Earth (a standard bait-and-switch tactic often employed in these debates), and the selected useful livestock or cute furry animals (no-one cares much about the ugly or troublesome ones)."
It's like you're in my head!
"As you have shown, it would be futile for us to attempt to maintain the current temperature within a few degrees as natural variation far exceeds this, which we have no control over."
I have shown no such thing and instead argue the opposite. As Earths only sentient beings(apparently) we HAVE it in our control to push or not push the Earth into runaway global heating.
"We will soon run out of stuff to burn. We may hold off the next glaciation for a bit (see Ruddiman), but in 50,000 years time, anthro-CO2 will have disappeared from the atmosphere, and Mother Earth will resume her regular course of glaciations."
No one knows what percentage of CO2 need be present to kill the biosphere and make runaway global heating permanent. There may have been greater percentages of atmospheric CO2 present in the far distant past but solar output was much less as well. One thing is for certain however, we're heading in the direction where we may find out. Remember, all that carbon, back again, now!
"I find science fascinating, it is a pity some people try to turn it into pseudo-religion or anthropocentric dogma."
No pity at all since science cannot stand on its own. Science and religion are only a few of the things we clever, resourceful, resilient humans have INVENTED to help us understand ourselves, the Earth and our place in the universe.
Well, since homo sapians evolved (and basically all primates; 50 million is about back to the first primate from memory) under "abnormal" conditions; we should do our VERY best to avoid creating "normal" conditions.
Under your definition of "normal"; grasses are not normal, since they evolved recently as well.
The POV of looking at the earth from the perspective of billions of years has no validity for human beings. So your "normal" is utterly without meaning for us.
Best Hopes for human centered problem solving,
Alan
"Best Hopes for human centered problem solving,"
It's funny how this debate swings from "save the planet!" to "never mind the planet, save the humans", in the space of a few posts.
Well,yeh, now that you have stipulated that maintaining the human species is not important and that wiping out 95% of all species is no big deal either, I can understand why you wouldn't be concerned with global warming or much of anything else for that matter. But I think the debate generally springs from the consensus view that human beings matter and most of the existing species of other animals matters also. Now that we understand that you are operating from a radically different premise, there is not much sense in carrying on this debate with you.
Please review your geology and anthropology. The current alternating regime of ice ages and warm ages did not begin 50 million years ago. Try a bit over 3 million years ago. The period from 65 million years ago to about 3 million years ago was considerably warmer than today with higher CO2 levels. The period since the ice age cycles began has had considerably lower CO2 levels. This is the environment in which homo sapiens has evolved and to which we are acclimated. A significant change in this environment might lead to unpredictable results. Antarctica formed an ice cap a bit over 40 million years ago, changing the climate somewhat but the real ice age regime did not start til shortly after the central American isthmus rose from the sea changing the thermohaline circulation in earnest.
For instance, climate researchers in the Carolinas tested a large area by enclosing it in plastic wrapping and deliberately pumping in higher concentrations of CO2. Poison ivy responded strangely, not only growing more prolifically but producing a new and different toxin than that to which we were accustomed. Other plants failed to respond at all to higher CO2 concentrations.
The main point is that we have 7 billion lives dependent on today's climate. Rushing to alter that climate (either warmer or colder) when we do not have a good handle on what it might cause is foolish.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
"The main point is that we have 7 billion lives dependent on today's climate. Rushing to alter that climate (either warmer or colder) when we do not have a good handle on what it might cause is foolish."
Agreed. We sure did rush to release all that CO2 during the last 150 yrs or so. Now lets bring it back to pre-industrial levels, 260–270 ppmv, just to be sure.
Spaceman,
I wasn't trying to imply that humans actually know the answer now, just that if we actually have "a few thousand more years" that we'd figure it out -- e.g. when importing fuels from outer space whether to eject the carbon or not. I'm assuming that "Science" would get it right well short of thousands of years (look how far we've come in the last thousand).
Actually I was replying to the poster BobCousins.
With all the holes our present "advanced technological society" has it seems doubtful we could even make it back to the Moon! But following your thought and we figure a way to make it through this mess and expand into the solar system, Mars sure could use some extra CO2 if'n we want to live there someday. ;-)
Of course, like many things new, the wooden car is not new. The great British designer Frank Costin designed race cars, sports cars, and what can only be called a real "post peak" super efficiency car in the 1950's through '60's, and built many of them using marine grade plywood (which by the way is a bit more environmentally acceptable but a bit less exotic than mahogony)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Costin
Costin's reason for the plywood chassis of cars was strenth to weight ratio, which is very high on marine grade plywood, near the level of carbon fiber and higher than most steels and aluminum.
Costin's cars were aerodynamic masterpieces, expected given his background with De Haviland Aircraft Corp. Colin Chapman of Lotus came from the same background.
Widely regarded as Costin's great aerodynamic and styling masterpieces is the Maserati 450S sports racing car:
http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/pic.php?imagenum=4&carnum=294
http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/pic.php?imagenum=3&carnum=294
The body is hand formed aluminum constructed by the Italian coachbuilder Zagato to Costin's design specification.
The "shopping car" mentioned above is almost impossible to find in photographs. The one photo I have is in "Automobile Quarterly" magazine, and shows a tiny one passenger aerodynamic body, barely above knee high, with a one cylinder gasoline engine, a car so light in weight that it does not have a reverse gear, but instead a handle on the back, so that it can be picked up at the rear and turned around by hand! It was desinged to carry one person, and some 4 sacks of groceries in an enclosed body, with fuel mileage easily above 75 miles per gallon. The closest modern equal would be the Volkswagen 1 liter prototype (designed to go 100 kilometers on 1 liter of fuel).
It is easy to forget now that in the post war period, Europe suffered very badly from fuel shortage, as the Norwegian and British North Sea oil had not yet come onstream, Europe had virtually no home supply of oil. It all had to be imported. This is the situation to which Europe will soon return as the North Sea peaks, and it will be a shockng change, albeit a return to the Europe of the postwar period before the 1970's-80's. This is why such cars as the Citreon 2CV, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Fiat and Autobianchi compacts and the Morris Mini were the mainstay of the European car economy in those days. When it comes to motoring during "peak" oil periods, the Europeans have been there, done that.
The wooden car shows that autos can be built with surprisingly renewable materials, and the range of possible modern designs has only now began to be explored.
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
... Mr Wood then built up layers of African mahogany ...
Cool, I can wreck the earth three different ways at the same time:
Where can I get one?
| The problem will solve itself.
| But not in a nice way.
Saudi arrests suspects planning oil attacks
Well, TOD has almost proven(ACE's post late yesterday's drumbeat, etc) that Ghawar/SA/World has peaked.
I expect to see a "Terrorist" attack on SA anytime now.
The World didn't run out of oil, it was those Terrorists who took it from US(us)
Maybe time to go back and reread Chip's funny diary on just such an event.
Sixty Days, Next Year
http://www.newcolonist.com/dim_ages.html
Terrorist attack? Of course not, SA arrested all 172 of them. No more. No less. That's all of them we will be told.
They are just preparing the public psyche for what is coming.
I am sure the "terrorists" have everything ready by now.
Did that "Draft" bill get passed in the US?
And, Haliburton is itching to build those camps - after all the contract is already almost 2 years old.
Sshhhh! The American public isn't supposed to know that the governments of the world have a history of false-flag operations that are labeled as terrorist acts.
They're most certainly not supposed to know about the camps either! The ability for FEMA to declare martial law is not of concern for the Americna consumer (note I did not say citizen) who doesn't even know that habeas corpus has been removed let alone what it was to begin with.
American Civics class has been replaced with school security drills and dresscode/uniform enforcement.
There are previews for a movie called "The Kingdom" about an attack on a western housing compound in a "Middle Eastern" Country. I told my wife that as soon as that happened in real life, we would not be able to afford gas anymore.
I wonder if they are thinking Saudi Arabia, or some other "Kingdom".
Truth is stranger than fiction. But fiction is based on man's thinking of what could be if X events were to happen, so sooner or later someone will make fiction true life events, if possible.
Yes, we are clearly being prepared for...well, something. Let's not forget that book a while ago that claimed that the Saudi Royal Family has planted bombs themselves at all the oil facilities, which I don't believe for a second but it's certainly an interesting story. But however it goes down and is attributed, ample reasons will be provided to "blame the Arabs" for all our problems. When TSHTF I expect to spend a lot of effort trying to convince people to stop wasting time on the blame game and concentrate on dealing with the new reality of a lower energy world.
Blame game might be American problem. I took a Japanese mangement course and learned the Japanese don't really scapegoat like we do here. We always want someone to pay. Japanese want the problem to be fixed. When TSHTF as a company they find the solution to the problem as a team since the company is a team. Foreign concept here as I've pointed this out to many business types and they all roll their eyes as if their is no chance it can work. Ok, that's why Toyota is kickin so called American auto makers...