This is a disaster for the environment - yielding even dirtier oil - but quite frankly, you can see how it works - business is going to look for the cheapest alternatives, and absent carbon regulations in the states, these alternatives might outcompete, or at least coexist with, cleaner oil alternatives like ethanol, hydrogen, efficiency, and electric. What do people think about this?

401k: good idea or bad?

Is there any validity to this?  It seems extremely dangerous to me, with a problem quickly expanding to the point of environmental catastrophe?

It seems to me it would be a hell of a lot easier if the busses only had to hook up to the cable on portions of the route where construction costs for electrification are cheap, as opposed to staying connected through every single turn, every single intersection, and every windy subdivision feeder road.

I know there are numerous battery techs coming out now, super and ultracaps are available, that there have been advancements in brushless and wheelhub motors in the last decade or two, and I'm curious if they've been applied to a trolleybus that only has to operate on electrified track half the time.  How far has this brought streetcar technology in the last 120 years, and how much easier/harder will it be to implement than the last time we did it at the turn of the last century?

Below is a copy of what I posted on Reddit to help bring eyeballs to Nate Hagens recent keypost on Windmills:

Energy Returned on Energy Invested [ERoEI] is the least understood, and the hardest to define component of detritovore existence.  A cheetah clearly understands that it needs to catch more gazelles than the energy it expends to run them down, otherwise it quickly starves to death.  Sadly, humans, when filling their car's gastank, or flipping  a light switch, do not consider that the 'gazelle' they are burning was captured over 100 million years ago.  It will be a very long time before the next 'gazelle' comes along.

Capturing energy from wind can be compared to the last deep breaths of the cheetah as it desperately tries to close the distance to bite down on the fleeing gazelle.  No guarantees that sufficient energy will be captured, then the cheetah reaches exhaustion: and can only stop and pant heavily as it watches its future disappear into the home of Olduvai Gorge; the Serengeti.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

     Recent posts continue to foster the belief that Iraq has somewhere in the vicinity of 112 Billion barrels of oil reserves. This would appear not to be so. A report by MK Horn and Associates from an American Petroleum Institute site www.searchanddiscovery.net/documents/gong03/index.html show that in 2003 their 28 largest oil fields held 41 billion barrels. Fig.1 shows a good map of all the Middle East oil fields, whilst Fig.2 shows the 55 Iraqi Oil fields the remainder obviously being below 50 million barrels each.
If one goes below Fig.17 and clicks on Table 1 below Table Captions, the full details of each of these fields is shown in tabular form. It is interesting to note how depleted the major fields are from when they were first discovered. From talking personally with Ali Samsam Bahktairi I believe that his figures for Iran of 35/40 billion are correct but I won't elaborate, therefore Iraq and Iran probably don't have more than about 40 billion barrels each which shows why their production will never reach the figures often mentioned by people who don't know what they are talking about.

BTL:US Sends Warships to Iran, Pre-Election Attack Possible

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/1732742.php

I think my biggest learning is that we should try to electrify as much of our transportation as possible instead of trying to use ethanol. (Alan from Big Easy + Robert Rapier)
 

Otherwise, I would go to the conference for the trivial, inconsequential reason that the global economy depends on what happens in the next 5 to 10 years regarding the production peak of oil -- this will be discussed. It's your choice, but I would go to the conference either way if you can afford it.

There is a live stream that you can access here.
http://live.poptech.org/ Funded by Yahoo, they have a DS3 sat feed sitting on the main street of town. I expect the archive of the sessions will show up shortly.

Dawkins is here to speak as well. Schedule here.
http://poptech.org/schedule/

Don in Maine
http://mainelyenergy.com

Remember in "Hubbert's Peak" when Deffeyes describes how he knew Hubbert was right in 1973? It was no dramatic headline, just a cryptic notice in some journal read by oil patch insiders, mentioning that quotas on production had been lifted (a first).

So I take the recent OPEC quota tightenings as compelling evidence that we have not reached peak.

Another thing, about Kunstler. Didn't he predict that by December 2005 the Dow would be down to 4000? Well December rolled around and it was nowhere near 4000. So he was all, "I was right, I was right... just called it a little early. By December 2006 it will be down to 4000 -- yeah, no way around it. Those Kapitalist Klowns can no way keep this madness up!!!"

Uh, doesn't look like THAT's working out too well... (though seriously, maybe he's just early again :)

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/10/pressurized_oxy.html

http://tinyurl.com/yn4psf

There were segments on the EV1, on bike-sharing in Lyon and cultures in Vanuatu.

Lyon is repeating the freely available bike idea tried in the Netherlands, using electronic monitoring to keep better track of the bikes.

They were showing these two groups on Vanuatu. One group had a bunch of ersatz military uniforms and raised the American flag in a ceremony. The leader sat near a volcano and complained about waiting for the Americans to bring them trucks and cargo. I had read about this in Diamond's books, but it was strange to actually see it.

Second: I believe this is a first rate forum, very in touch with the reality of peaking.

BUT.....

Why is there no discussion of War?  Surely there will be war over oil which will greatly skew the downside of peak oil.

For instance:  If I was a leader of a country with vast oil reserves I would have a choice before me in the coming years.

Choice 1: Countinue to sell oil at market prices, hoping that the profit I make and invest will benefit my country for years to come. In other words, I will make a fortune now and hope that when I run out of oil in the years ahead the world economy is the same (stable) as now so that I can buy what my country needs for years to come with my riches.

Choice 2: I realize that the world is peaking. I see that in ~20 years oil will be the most valuable substance on earth. It is irreplaceable. So I sell the bare minimum of oil I have to to keep things going knowing that in the years ahead my oil will be worth a thousand times what it is now and my countrymen will live like kings. And we will dictate our selling terms to the world. Or we will be the only nation with oil and we will be powerful (Russia????)

Soon, I think, some nations will choose number 2 and that is when the other great powers will choose war as the only alternative to oil starvation.

1.  Wood, an abundant resource in my neighborhood, was once used to run trains.  Is there anything in the literature on the efficiency of steam engines versus diesel coming from the Fischer Tropsch process?

2.  Is there any serious work on the oilseed potential productivity of hemp versus soybeans?  This is a favorite topic for long-haired dudes in coffee shops.  

I read an interesting debate regarding the economists who say that we have always maintained 40 years of reserves; and of course the more geologically minded (majority here) who take the hard line that there is a finite amount of reserves left.

If there is anything I can add to this debate, its this: they are both potentially correct, simultaneously.  Once explained, this should make sense.

As the finite reserves are consumed, prices will rise. Few would argue this.  The economists believe that this will spur extra developments, alternative energy supplies, and so on.

It might do, but its irrelevant to the argument.  We price oil such that there is 40 years of reserves; or rather the price of oil has sparked enough investment and exploration to about this time line and beyond this companies and governments lose interest in further exploration.

People take this as a justification for a future ability to expand - as prices rise more oil fields will be found.

That is where the argument fails - there is nothing in this that implies that new oil sources need to be found for a 40 year reserve to be maintained.

If the price rise in oil were to halve demand (and extreme example) then our 40 year reserve becomes an 80 year reserve, without any more exploration.

I'm not saying that the idea of 40+ years of reserves will be maintained, just that as prices rise, the amound of oil purchased will eventually fall (although its relatively inelastic in response).  Therefore the known world reserves increase, when expressed in years remaining at the reduced level of consumption.  We will never run out of oil, and will therefore always have some known reserves of it. This says nothing about the quantity of the reserve, nor its cost, and I think that people are using one economic relationship (which may well be valid, or might not be) to justify another thing (that thare are an infinite number of new sources).

It seems to me that rising prices will spur alternatives, and I'm not doom and gloom about that - but its clear that the adaption will be harder than alot of people realise (ie oil prices will go up because so far we haven't found a cheaper alternative - we will know the true cost of an alternative when the oil prices fail to rise further) and that in particular the energy density of hydrocarbons has made energy storage for the purpose of transport very easy; without them it will be very hard.

Anyway, this is my first post here, so apologies if I have misunderstood something here, but I hope that this commentary on oil reserves might be of some interest to some readers.

Michael

Anywho I was hoping that someone at some point in time, before its all over, would put up a vote/poll of those who are doomers vs cornucopians. Two categories. Good/bad.

I know there are many who would want more catergories however it really boils down to these two in the end. Either you are hopeful that things will turn out ok or you are not and see a bad moon on the rise. Its gonna be ok or its gonna be bad.

How about it? Has one been done in the past?

I would like to know the makeup of the members.

In regards to the Jack2 "oil find" in the Gulf of Mexico: as I understand it, they were drilling in 7000 feet of water. What I want to know is this: assuming that the oil companies decide to go ahead and commercially exploit this field, how will the oil be moved from the drilling platform to the shore? I used to think that oil tankers could park at the drilling platforms, but from some of the posts I've read, that isn't how it's done. Oil is normally sent from the platforms to the shore by pipeline, correct?

And if the above is true, does the technology exist to build pipelines in 7000 feet of water? I really know nothing about underwater pipeline construction - how is it done? For example, are divers sent down there, or submarines? In 7000 feet of water, would it be feasible using existing methods, or would it be necessary to use robots? Or can you float a pipeline on the surface and then sink it to the bottom? Don't you need people down there to weld sections together (not to mention making repairs later on should a leak develop)?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can answer.

cheers,
Robert (Ozonehole)