 | DrumBeat: April 8, 2008 | The Oil Drum | EROI on the Web part 2 of 6, (Provisional Results Summary, Imported Oil, Natural Gas) |  |
80 comments on Shell Sponsoring Peak Oil Communication?
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Robert,
I thought your first post was valid, I just wanted to add my views, because Matt Simmons behaviour is somewhat odd for a man in his position, and vested interests cross my mind also, its just on balance I do feel his motives are (or were) to give out timely warnings. I say were, because he has been ranting on for about 8 years now, and nobody has listened. Many of his predictions are now looking much more plausable than when he first made them.
I am also a fan of renewables, and you're right that many people do twist the figures against renewables, particularly the nuclear lobby, while the anti nuclear lobby twist figurs against nuclear. Its all a bit of a mess and the truth is I'm not sure if anybody actually knows for sure what will hold without a fosssil fuel platform to fall back on, but we are fiddling while Rome burns. The twisting of figures to suit ones arguments are prevelent every where. The electric car lobby use the worst case figures for the ICE, and unrealisticly high figures for the electric drive system, often omiting to mention the losses of the battery charger (transformer/rectifier) it self. It won't help anybody when push comes to shove because the true sustainability of the alternatives will be out there for all to see and it will be "shit or bust"
We will need a massive effort and as JH Kunstler puts it, we may need to do a lot more hard physical work in the future and we have a few generations of our workforce not well prepared for this. Governments keep creating work by increasing legistlation. This has created a huge "non productive" body of people employed to ensure compliance, and it gets in the way of the "hardware" side of life that will keep us alive in the long term. I certainly don't have much optimism that sufficient volumes of the human race will behave in a rational enough way to make the changes necessary. If you are from the UK, just remember how people behaved during the fuel blockades in 2000? Sharing no, grab what I can get and sod the next person yes. I was lucky I drove a car that could run on LRP, that was all that was available because most cars had catylysts by then and could not use it.
I hope I am wrong!
Robert and Partypooper, Matthew Simmons is an investment banker to the energy industry.
Simmons & Company has a vested interest in being right! To suggest that Simmons' motives are only to drive the price up to increase his bottom line is cynical in the extreme. Simmons has recently been advising his clients to get out of Big Oil. His advice is to his clients has recently been to concentrate their investments in the oil service industry. His advice has been to concentrate their investments in companies like Schlumberger and Baker Hughes.
But my point is the primary job of Simmons & Company is to give advice. Simmons, like Jeremy Leggett, has a vested interest in being correct with his prognostications and advice.
Ron Patterson
Darwinian,
I know exactly what Matthew Simmons is. I read practically all his literature on energy with great interest and have listened to many of his interviews. I simply implied one could be suspicious of his motives, but I had overcome any suspicion. I said he has been "ranting on" and has been ignored, doesn't mean I think he was wrong, I said just the opposite.
I may not have worded my post that well, but if you read it again you may see I am an admirer of Matthew Simmons. I said (a little sarcasticly perhaps) that as time moves on he is looking more and more correct. John Tierney may have to dip into his pockets! I think MRS talks much sense, and as I stated in my post he has been ignored too long.
I hope you will read my posr again, sorry for missleading you if thats what I have done.
You got that right, 'pooper! ;)
I think we need someone without an agenda to do an honest assessment of EROI (maybe impossible) across the spectrum of alternatives -- wind, nuclear (nearly renewable with reprocessing), solar. My understanding is that they are all positive in a range that could sustain civilization if a large enough infrastructure were established.
One other point to make is that since no new easy oil is available the EROI imputs for oil are becoming worse and worse with time. Kunstler notes that average EROEI for oil in the US is 2:1. Not much different from that much maligned energy source -- ethanol. Perhaps the reason we are using so much ethanol now is because it has become nearly as economic to use it as oil and the infrastructure change for a rapid ramp up was available short term.
Now before we go into a huge flame out on ethanol, I want to say that I don't favor it as a long term solution. But I do see it as bridge, hopefully, to a V2G infrastructure. There is no way we can power all our transport on ethanol in any case but we can power a percentage. Even if it's just that all vehicles in the US run on 10% ethanol and we can use ethanol to keep our farm machines going then it helps us mitigate. If you know anything about emergencies, effective response is all about the timing and availability of mitigation.
All in all, increased use of depleting resources will not solve this problem. So oil, coal, and natural gas are not future energy sources. Rather, they are resource traps that sink our ability to create sustainable infrastructure. Furthermore they degrade the environment and negatively impact the carrying capacity of this planet. Not something you want in an energy crisis where food production is one of the primary mechanisms coming under stress.
Trouble is, everyone has an agenda. Opinions, attitudes, methodologies, etc., are predicated on normative criteria which differ from person to person. Dr. Hall himself said that how broad the input considerations should be is an important issue that needs to be addressed. I don't think there will ever be consensus on how to value intangible inputs. I don't even think that Mr. Spock the Vulcan could pull off an objective EROI analysis.
I won't go into a huge flame out on ethanol, except to say that I think it's morally wrong to grow food for fuel in a world where hunger exists. I feel that corn ethanol is wrong, and I feel the same way about growing alfalfa for cattle feed. Ligno-cellulosic ethanol may not seem quite so bad, since people can't eat the biomass feedstocks, but all that logging slash, grain stover, bagasse, whatever... needs to be returned to the soil in order to 1.) restore soil tilth & micronutrients, & 2.) sequester reduced carbon as humic substances.
I agree.
"Kunstler notes that average EROEI for oil in the US is 2:1. Not much different from that much maligned energy source -- ethanol"
But the quantum efficiency of energy conversion for gasoline into mechanical power is nearly twice that of ethanol. Talking about EROEI of "oil" is meaningless, because we have to run "oil" through a fractional distillation processor, then mix and blend the various components to end up with the various types of motor fuels. If we're talking about the EROEI of gasoline, then the comparison of the EROEI of ethanol is valid, since both ethanol and gasoline are used in internal combustion engines to produce motive power.
And at 10-20% blends ethanol adds to gasoline's efficiency.