The Infeasibility of Rebuilding New Orleans

Can the land really drop 20-60 ft. due to extraction of natural gas?

http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/2005/preview4.html

A Sneak Preview - Part 4: Helicopter Commander
by Jim Puplava
www.financialsense.com
Storm Watch Update:  Part 1  Part 2  Part 3
November 18, 2005

Excerpt:

There would come a day that would be unlike any other day. There would be an event unlike any other event. It would precipitate a crisis unlike any other crisis before it. It would emerge out of nowhere at a time no one would expect. It would be an event that no one anticipated--a crisis the experts didn't foresee. It would be an exogenous event--a rogue wave.

When the crisis arrived it caught market participants by surprise. Its arrival was swift and unexpected. Losses hit every sector. The devastation was encyclopedic in its breadth and utterly cataclysmic in its destruction. A financial nuclear chain reaction had been set in motion that rippled across every market and reached into every corner of the globe. It shook the very foundations of the global financial system leaving fear and destruction in its wake.

He must restore a sense of national mission -- a shared sense among Americans that they are part of a great undertaking that will make the future better.

And what should that great undertaking be? To free the world of dependence on petroleum and in the process establish America as the unchallenged leader in the science and technology of the post-petroleum era.

The president should initiate the modern equivalent of the Manhattan Project -- an all-out national effort to achieve breakthroughs that will ensure America's preeminence in the energy technology of the future.

Again with the technology will save the world!!

With the equivalent  of over 4,000,000 BTU's of SunLight Energy falling on the average American roof each Sunny Day,I hearby Proclaim the Largest Energy Discovery this Weekend!Equivalent of 75 SuperTankers of oil if converted to Electric KWHR (1 KWHR=3814 BTU )for 100,000,000 American Houses.

And futhermore a Minor SuperGiant Field exists in the Attic of each of those Blessed Dwellings

A BTU reservoir of approx  400,000 (at temps up to 135 -165 deg F)literally Begs to be harvested for domestic household uses in each
attic.Raw conversion to Nat Gas would be worth
$4.80 or $15.73 (in KWHR @ $0.15)in Electricity per Sunny Day.

I suppose it's too much to hope for a spot on Larry King...

just found this, let the panic buying begin! make sure to fill your tanks. plus some.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/

 For example, when you install solar panels on your house, in the short term you are actually increasing instead of decreasing fossil fuel consumption due to the fact that it takes some time for the energy saved to equal the energy input assoicated with the manufacture and installation of the solar panels. The last time I looked (and that, admittedly, was quite a few years ago), this 'energy payback' period was several years, depending on the type of system and the assumptions one uses.

This is not to say that we shouldn't try to move toward alternative energy, but it underlines the fact that we must do so while there is still some slack in the fossil fuel situation so that we can make that increased investment in fossil fuel energy necessary for alternative energy systems to become a reality.

If we wait until the fossil fuel situation becomes truly dire, then it will be all but impossible to make the transition. The analogy is that of a person waiting till he's almost broke before he decides to go into a new business. Chances are he won't be able to do it. Or to put it in thermodynamic terms, we can't wait until the entropy of our system becomes too great to overcome.

Willits getting attention for taking sustainability seriously
by Claudia Reed

The work of turning the Willits area into a community where necessities are produced and consumed locally has been attracting national attention:

• In June, participants at a national economic localization conference in Great Barrington, Mass. knew all about the Willits effort.

• In mid-August the Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL) group made the front page of the North Bay Bohemian under the banner Peakocolypse Now! a reference to the arrival of peak oil, the maximum amount that can be extracted affordably.

• At the end of August, an article on the subject in The Willits News was reprinted on the website of the national Energy Bulletin:

http://www.energybulletin.net/9502.html

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  Bradford began this last Nov by holding public showings of "The End of Suburbia" several times. Layatonville began a few months later. We've both been holding town meetngs on at least a monthly basis.
 I've also been able to convince other friends by burning and distributing EOS. Most effective. Also started a discussion thread on Silicon Investor which has changed a few minds.

  How seriously is it taken here? Some folks (not the Rat) are starting to save acorns and are learning how to process them.

Rat

I have given up talking to people about oil unless an unusual set of circumstances arise to justify it. In my family, I am just considered crazy and obsessive compulsive about the topic. Maybe that is partly true. At work or elsewhere the danger of being judged a kook is too great. No one wants to hear bad news. Common human nature is to shoot the messenger and thus make the problem "go away".

Peak Oil is just one of numerous problems that threatens the exponentially growing human population. The Club of Rome was right in the 1970's and we all laughed at them. Well most of us did --simply because we did not understand what "doubling time" meant. And after all, "seeing is believing" --there was lots of empty land all around back then.

One of my favorite lines in Kevin Costner's movie, "Dances With Wolves" is where he says, "I want to see the frontier sir, before it is all gone." Kids born today have no concept of a time when ocean waters were clean and teaming with fish, the air was fresh and breathable, and you could run off to the "country" to find a quiet spot where the sound of an automobile or another human being was not to be heard.

We are now entering the last phase of the Petri dish experiment, where the population doubles once again, and the 49% empty dish becomes full to beyond capacity (to 102% of the sustaining space & resources being consumed by the doubled population; 51%x2=102%). Sad --and apparently unstoppable.

I'm kind of in agreement.

If you were to simply remove China from the face of the earth, many problems would disappear. Likewise, if you were to remove the US, other problems would disappear. But the reason that things would get better is population reduction and associated decline in resource demand. Whoever is left will grow to take up the slack, and then we would be right back where we are.

I think that Liebig may be right - it may be that we have to hit the resource wall and be forced into adjustment in spite of our larger brains.

Ethanol will work to replace gasoline, from economic and societal perspective. It's a straight ahead swap for a cleaner fuel. Biodiesel will also work. Solar concentrators will work. But without concurrent reduction in personal automobiles, nothing will work. Strapping any appreciable amount of additional electric demand on our current infrastructure will crash it. Energy prices rising will cripple the current working economies across the world in a very short period of time.

The problem isn't that we cannot switch to something else - it's that we cannot continue to consume as we do and switch to anything else. We are at the end of cheap energy, i.e. oil and natural gas.

It's going to have to be a fundamental shift. We will need to think about and use and save energy the same way we think about and use and save money today. Energy will be worth much more money to us in the near future, taking a much bigger slice of our economic wherewithall.

When it comes down to heating your home and cooking your dinner or driving the car, the car will rust in the garage. But IMO, it will have to come that far down in order to become the highest priority in the life of every American. Right now, our way of life is "non-negotiable", and that means we are driving towarss the recource depeltion wall at full throttle. A crash is inevitable.

If these numbers are real, the output decline is astonishing. Anyone have any insight as to what's going on, or if I'm misreading something?

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/gm_to_close_9_f.html#more

Some folks just won't learn.

   There is currently a mild debate between the biological origin of petroleum and geologic or abiotic origins of petroleum.  The accepted, mainstream idea that petroleum resulting from the pressurized decay of biological material over the last 250 million years has resulted in the discovery and extraction of nearly a trillion barrels of oil over the last 150 years.  The contrarian's abiotic theory that oil has its origins from geologic processes happening deep within the earth, has resulted in the drilling of one very deep dry hole in Sweden plus the extraction of the same trillion barrels that the abiotic theorists say came from geological processes.  Peak Oil is the theory proposed by M. King Hubbert in 1956 that the rate of oil production in a finite province will follow a bell-shaped curve, growing to a peak followed by somewhat a symmetric decline

   In mathematics, one can prove or disprove certain theorems by throwing out an assumption and following its implications to their logical conclusion and see what falls out.  In using this logical process, I hope to demonstrate that Peak Oil is not only supported equally well by the theory of biological origins and abiotic origins but will happen sooner under the theory of abiotic origins of petroleum.

   Now, let's establish some assumptions that we can all agree on:

Assumption I.  Under either abiotic or biological origins, it takes a long time to produce oil so let's assume that in 1850, when the oil industry began, there was approximately 2 Trillion barrels of oil in the ground between 7,000 and 15,000 feet deep where successful oil drilling normally occurs.

Assumption II.  At some point in the distant past, no petroleum existed on the earth.  In the case of biological origins, this Zero Point was around 250 million years ago when the plants and dinosaurs began to flourish and provide the biological material for the oil.  In the case of abiotic origins, the zero point was about 4 billion years ago when the earth cooled and the geologic processes began that would eventually bring us to the point where we are now.  

   The two assumptions above would seem to be agreeable to both camps.  The actual zero point for either one could be adjusted by a few hundred million years but whatever the assumed zero point would be, they would remain in the same neighborhood.

   In a dynamic fluid system such as the petroleum system, there is a production rate and an extraction rate.  Over the last 150 years, the extraction rate has followed a reasonably linear path from 0 to 80 million barrels per day.  This would seem to imply the need for some difficult mathematics but let's move on to Assumption III and see it that is required.

Assumption III.  The Production Rate for both Abiotic and Biologic have been relatively constant from the Zero Point to 1850 was constant and has continued to the present.  In the case of Biologic Origins, this is probably not a valid assumption but for the purposes of this discussion and the time frames involved, it can hold.  In the case of Abiotic Origins, the conditions for production have existed on a geologic time scale and can be assumed to have been steady state for most of the 4 billion years.

   Now, let's compute those production rates.  

  Biologic Origins:

Production Rate = Barrels in 1850/Time of Production

2,000,000,000,000 barrels divided by 250,000,000 years
=  8.000 barrels/year

So, the rate of production for Biologic Origins is about 8,000 barrels a year.  Now let's look at Abiotic Origins.

2,000,000,000,000 barrels divided by 4,000,000,000 years
=  500 barrels/year

Those are interesting numbers.  Today, the world extracted 80, 000, 000 barrels of oil.  That is 10,000 years of oil at the Biologic Production Rate but it is 160,000 years at the Abiotic Production Rate.  

   So, if the first three assumptions were correct, the theory of abiotic origins would predict a peak in oil production sooner than the theory of biologic origins.  Interesting.

   But wait, the proponents of the theory of abiotic origins say we will never reach a peak and there will be enough oil to last forever.  Ok, so let's work with that.   We will keep the first three assumptions but now add a fourth based on the claim by the Abiotic camp.

Assumption IV.  The rate of production of Petroleum from Abiotic Origins is 80,000,000 barrels/day.  Their claim is that we will never run out so since the production rate has been constant for a long time we can assume that the earth has been producing oil at this constant rate for about 4 billion years.  Let's do that math and find out how much oil the earth has produced.

80,000,000 barrels/day times 365 days times 4,000,000,000 years
         =  116,800,000,000,000,000,000 barrels of oil

That's quite a bit.  It must weigh a lot.  Let's do the math

116,800,000,000,000,000,000 barrels of oil times .125 tons/barrel
    = 14,600,000,000,000,000,000 tons.   That's 14.6 quintillion tons

That much oil must weigh a lot but based on Assumption IV, that is how much oil the earth has produced.  Speaking of the earth, how much does it weigh?

Weight of the earth:
5.972 sextillion (5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000) metric tons

If you do the division, the crude oil in the earth now weighs ¼ of one percent of the earth's weight.  Now, we have a problem.  Carbon only makes up one-tenth of one-percent of the earth's crust and we just found out that there are 2 and a half times as much weight in crude oil produced from abiotic sources.  So, it looks like the rate of production from Abiotic Origins can't be as high as 80 million barrels per day.

    From the failure of Assumption IV, and the other logic we have we can make our conclusion.  Even if the theory of abiotic origins is valid, the rate of oil production is lower than our rate of extraction.  Logically, it is probably a lot lower than the rate of extraction because production in either case has been happening for a long time and left us with only 2 trillion barrels to start.  So, we can conclude that it is irrelevant where oil came from.  The rate of Oil Extraction will Peak and the time when that will occur will be sooner rather than later.  

 A copy of the transcript about peak oil from Australia. Thank goodness it's not about "Peak Fosters Beer"
Quite interesting transcript though. It sounds like the "sheitze" is about to hit the fan soon. Which brings me to the question of new technology. The guy is quoted saying that a 10% increase in new technology would bring about 600,000 to 800,000 extra barrels per day. I keep hearing that new technology will save us all and make us less dependant on oil. Even save the day!
But i've read transcripts here and from Matt Simmons saying that new technology has amounted to absolutely no increase in production.
So who's right?  note I am still leaning towards Matts' comments.    

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1515141.htm