The question is have *you* read "these forums"? It seems not. You're as much faith and straw man as I have seen in awhile here. You've been here for two months, and you've got everything pegged. Who is the faithful dupe here?

You write,

"Having been duped a lot, I hope I am moving to the skeptic range, but never into the land of cynics?"

I rip roared a good guffaw out of that one. Yeah, it just isn't appropriately conservative to be cynical about the world, is it? Everything is just so wonderful and exuberant, evidence everywhere! God surely loves his little children. Another funny one, are you a stand-up comedian in your spare time? At least you have the "honesty" to use the unfriendly term "tar sands", the wholly "unbiased skeptical optimist" that you *surely* are...

Yes, biofuels are ramping up, with minimal impact on liquid fuels supplies. And, oh boy, we should really be excited about ruining the environment and the planetary climate with the likes of tar sands and oil shale.

This is not good news you are providing here; the news should be that we are doing everything in our power to live within and below our existing oil supplies, not discovering new ways to screw up the planet even worse.

I asked you some questions on May 10th designed to see if you were serious and or merely trying to instigate a circle jerk. The answer was not forthcoming which I have preliminarily equated with you trying to intitate the aforementioned circle jerk. Reference:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2529#comment-188487

Others have done the same sort of thing with a similar lack of substantive response.

Please don't suck up every poorly written under researched bit of nonsense that gets published. Do a little critical research. There are some very positive things that likely to occur in time IMO. I am not doomer. With some googling and a little critical review you can find them. Try not to give optomism a bad name.

A little prefunctory bebunking: The net energy gain on 4 million bbls per day of Canadian tar sands is nothing like even the return on ultra heavy crudes

... and

If by the "big Chevron strike" you are referring to the Jack #2 Discovery it will be a long time if ever before production begins and it will hardly be the cure for what you believe is expensive [$60] oil. It might be the sort of thing that keeps oil from doubling from here if there are enough of these high risk high investment prospects ... and enough ultra deep water rigs to explore them.

The facts on Jack II IIRC:
1.) A mulitfeature string of possible traps --
2.) at about 22,000 feet subsea -- 15,000 feet of rock in 7,000 feet of water --
3.) A hundred and fifty miles from existing infrastructure--
4.) With the published multi billion barrel projection of reserves based on a couple of wells both of which are either temporarily or permanently abandoned.

Jack II may turn out to be a big find a decade or so from now. For now, the publicity it receieved is not comensurate with its apparent economics.

These are the facts as we know them. Research Benjamin research.

North American fossil crude output should move to new all-time records in coming years, thanks to Canadian tar sands ramping up to 4mbd, and the big Chevron strike starting up

Hardly !

One third to one half of the net# new tar sands production will go to replace conventional Canadian production, whch is in steep decline (royalties to Alberta Gov't are taking a hit despite the boom).

Chevron (50% owner of Jack #2) wanted to influence US public opinion and did.

One 25% owner of Jack #2 is Statoil, 5/8s owned by the Kingdom of Norway, which could care less about US public opinion (and has a cultural thing about honesty). According to the 25% owner of Jack #2, more wells are needed before a decision to produce will be made.

Still, by the time tar sands get to 4 million b/day and Jack has produced it's first barrel, Prudhoe Bay oil production will be so low it will not be worth keeping the pipeline open. US Lower 48 production will be down some more (2+ million b/day on a long term trend of -200k b/d each year).

Best Hopes for Reality Based Planning,

Alan

# In the year of Peak Coal in the UK (1913) 13% of the coal produced was used to mine coal (stat from memory).

A lot of natural gas and a far amount of oil products are used to produce and upgrade the tar sands. So producing an extra XX barrels/day of tar sands takes a lot of energy up front to build and even more to produce. One should net that. So, for me, 4 million b/day of tar sands = 3 million b/day of new oil supply (+ GHG & environmental degradation). I value NG like oil since they can substitute for each other in some markets.

"no cows at all"?

Wait until NCBA gets wind of their new slogan "Beef is not what's for dinner..."

How about we make an an exception for Kobe cows? I mean, while we're using up energy on cows, lets at least throw in beer and massages for 'em before it's "off with their heads". Uhrmmm, marbling.

Just a thought...

/me runs from rabid vegans

Excellent comment, Nate. Just like we all learned in school, from the sun's rays to plants to herbivores to carnivores, energy is lost every step of the way. Getting more from a cow than was put into feeding the cow would mean that energy was created out of nothing, and that's impossible. Even oil, which would not be around if not for the sun and is great because it has soaked up solar energy for millions of years (and is thus more dense than solar energy), is terribly inefficient, too. The best bet is to go directly to the source.

I've said before that 80% of American cropland is dedicated to feeding livestock, and there are many other reasons why growing livestock (at the very least the way we're doing it) is in no way beneficial to humanity (much less to the livestock, themselves).