The end of the last ice age provides information about the possible rate of sea-level rise. At that time the global average temperature rose by around 4-7 °C, an amount that is also reached in pessimistic scenarios for the future. But the warming at that time took around 5000 years, which is much slower than the present trend. From 15,000 to 10,000 years ago sea level rose by around 80m, an average of 1.6m per century (Fairbanks, 1989). During some intervals rates of up to 5m per century were reached (Clark et al., 2004).

These values cannot simply be applied to today's situation. The ice sheets at that time were considerably larger, which means the melting regions on the margins were greater, allowing a greater flow of meltwater. In addition, due to Earth's orbital cycles around the sun (Milankovich cycles; Ruddiman, 2000), the incoming solar radiation at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere was considerably stronger, a situation that cannot be directly compared with the global increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. These two factors suggest higher melting rates at the end of the ice age than during the present warming. The much slower warming at that time, by contrast, would suggest lower melting rates. In fact, the disappearance of ice sheets at that time for the most part kept pace with the gradual climate warming, so the assumption that ice masses would have melted significantly more rapidly with faster warming
is quite plausible.

Two conclusions can be drawn from this discussion. Firstly, rates for sea-level rise of up to 5m per century are documented, and these probably do not represent an upper limit. Thus climate history shows that a much more rapid rise than that expected by the IPCC for the 21st century is possible. Secondly, such rates of sea-level rise suggest dynamic melting processes of the ice sheets, also taking account of the conditions at the end of the last ice age. This means there can be not only a simple melting through contact with warmer air, but also an accelerated flow of
the ice into the sea.

= ----------------------------------------------- =
In daily live we are familiar with the last type of melting, when we clean up ice from our freezer. I'm aware that the boundaries of the cases are different, but it explains well why we can expect higher melting levels. Already are some glaciers increasing their flow speed.

Bart

Brick Wall Ahead. Grab a cold one and a chair and sit back and watch.

http://www.figmentfly.com/bb/q45.html

We don't need to stop driving when the energy that already goes to waste now can be utilized into a transportation source.  What we need to stop doing is heating/cooling our entire homes and stop flying/driving ICEs :)

Stop cheer leading the ILL Doomer and start practicing what you preach :P

The first step to rehabilitating the population would be to replace their grossly inefficient ICE with a vastly more efficient 'and safer' EV.  The second would be to help them realize the usefulness of 'work rooms' in their homes that are the only places to be heated/cooled the majority of time.  The third would be to reduce our air travel binge.  The fourth would be a migration of travelers to mass transportation in a hopefully better planned city.

Pulling the rug out from someones feet tends to make them really angry :P

It would be an interesting question to calculate our total energy consumption in Europe for two weeks, including jet fuel, versus two weeks back home.  Since we didn't drive a car in Italy, our actual net energy consumption may have only modestly increased.

http://www.chooseclimate.org/flying/mapcalc.html

From Texas to Italy (6000 miles, one way) I come up with about 700 kg per person, or about 250 gallons. That's a lot of BTUs. From an energy standpoint, forget CF lights or hanging clothes out to dry or buying a Prius--just take one less trip a year.

I don't think personal attacks are warranted, but this is not a trivial issue. We all make decisions everyday which are somewhat at odds with a realization of Peak Oil.

I'll ask this question again: given PO, what do you/will you do differently? Go on a flying vacation now because you won't be able to later? Buy the big SUV? Spend $24M to be flown to the ISS?

If the public at large has the same response to PO (use it now before the price goes up), then things will be very interesting and I am more pessimistic about prospects for the climate and for society.

I appreciate the information you provide to this community, but I don't think the "P" in ELP should stand for "Party". It's sort of like insider trading--get yours before the word gets out. Personal conservation might not make economic sense, but then economics are largely responsible for this mess.

And there you go, I KNEW you would be the one to evoke Jevon's Paradox!  'Why NOT travel to Europe and waste energy.  If I don't do it, then someone in China/India will!

It makes more long term economic sense for EVERYONE to conserve 'as you pointed out'.  But in order to do so, they need to be shown how its done and how it doesn't necessarily mean a massive reduction in their standard of living.

I would recommend you read Philip Longman's piece at the following url, from which I have posted below some paragraphs.  Longman, who appears unaware of the problem of declining low entropy inputs into the economic process, is mostly concerned that the 'global baby bust' is going to devastate economies worldwide as the elderly impose an increasing burden on the young.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040501faessay83307-p10/phillip-longman/the-global-baby-bust.html

 "Yet because Mexican fertility rates have dropped so dramatically, the country is now aging five times faster than is the United States. It took 50 years for the American median age to rise just five years, from 30 to 35. By contrast, between 2000 and 2050, Mexico's median age, according to UN projections, will increase by 20 years, leaving half the population over 42. Meanwhile, the median American age in 2050 is expected to be 39.7.

"Those televised images of desperate, unemployed youth broadcast from the Middle East create a similarly misleading impression. Fertility rates are falling faster in the Middle East than anywhere else on earth, and as a result, the region's population is aging at an unprecedented rate. For example, by mid-century, Algeria will see its median age increase from 21.7 to 40, according to UN projections. Postrevolutionary Iran has seen its fertility rate plummet by nearly two-thirds and will accordingly have more seniors than children by 2030.

"Countries such as France and Japan at least got a chance to grow rich before they grew old. Today, most developing countries are growing old before they get rich. China's low fertility means that its labor force will start shrinking by 2020, and 30 percent of China's population could be over 60 by mid-century. More worrisome, China's social security system, which covers only a fraction of the population, already has debts exceeding 145 percent of its GDP. Making demographics there even worse, the spreading use of ultrasound and other techniques for determining the sex of fetuses is, as in India and many other parts of the world, leading to much higher abortion rates for females than for males. In China, the ratio of male to female births is now 117 to 100 -- which implies that roughly one out of six males in today's new generation will not succeed in reproducing.

"All told, some 59 countries, comprising roughly 44 percent of the world's total population, are currently not producing enough children to avoid population decline, and the phenomenon continues to spread. By 2045, according to the latest UN projections, the world's fertility rate as a whole will have fallen below replacement levels."

How 'bout another rural raying: "the car was going to the supermall anyway, so I just decided to sit in the driver's seat."

Getting past that gem, of course the actions of one person are trivial (unless you're Paul Allen). But everybody in China now wants to  fly too.

But, the consequences are not trivial, and to dismiss them with "The plane is flying anyway" reinforces the tragedy of the commons. Same with buying SUV's. ("They'll sell them to somone?") If even a small percentage of people make more environmentally sensitive decisions, it will slow the deterioration, giving us a little more time to make plans and adjustments, and it may awaken others to the seriousness of our current death march.

You have had a number of posts here saying how independent the Iraq government is.  Isn't it the wildest coincidence that the Saddam verdict will happen two days before the midterm?  Ha!

I consider it instructive when I can look at past actions of the leadership/leadership class and ask 'how will this time be different?'

The present leadership got to where it is by 'strip mining' the earth.  When the resources could become gone via continued stripping....what will have them pick a new course of action?

(sorry couldn't help meself)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eruv

Sometimes they are created by simply stretching a string around an area making it magically exempt from the rules of the sabbath.

Hmmmm, maybe we could invent some kind of Peak-Oil-Exemption system that would exempt us from the effects of PO.

However I am convinced that we are post peak. I could be wrong of course, but I think there is absolutely no doubt that we are at the plateau. Any month might spike up and surpass the current peak we hit in December 05, (crude + condensate). But even if that happens I think there is no doubt that we are currently at peak or past it.

Yeah, coherent. I think Ron's a little confused. Listen to what he is saying.

...I am convinced...but could be wrong...absolutely no doubt...plateau...spike...peak. Yeah makes a lot of sense. With logic like that how could you ever be wrong?

I think you should tell your buddy not to bother. People have been debating "peak-oil now" for over a year here. Don't tell Ron, but most people here, including myself, have actually concluded that there's a good chance that might be correct). There's nobody here vehemently denying it. At worst there are a few people thinking there might be a few more years left. Any skepticism is really about the effects and how society will react and transition.

The hardest thing to do is to look outside at that world - and those other 6,500,000,000 people minus the 300 that are on this website and get any notion that anything is different from December 2005. If you can convince yourself that there is something different, that that last barrel we just burned made all the difference - then you are probably insane.

But he's going to lock himself in his secret underground laboratory for a week and present us with the definitive proof when he's done. Uh-huh.

I think the problem here is with the inability for anyone to settle on a definition of what a peak actually is. Is it a month, is it a year, is it a plateau, is it a period of time of a certain length in which a decline occurs, where there is no logical explanation for a decline? Does it matter what price is doing?

But Ron is good at coming up with definitions for things and making sure the rest of us use them, so I have no doubt he will succeed.

Obviously if Ron is going to prove that December was the peak even if a month post-December shows higher production, then the time period encompassing a peak can't be a single month. Start there. I'd give you more help, but I'm having to much fun watching you people stumble over yourselves trying to prove December was it. Like it matters. Who cares!? It doesn't. It's stupid.

In the end Ron is going to prove to himself whatever he wants to prove and you and he are going to believe whatever you want to.

If they are post peak, I can give you their average decline rate.

I can tell you the percentage of consumption over production for the top 160 countries in the world with populations over a million.

I can rank these countries any way you want.

And I can do it right now. If I wanted to, I could give you a website where you could look at all this work, and you could download it and do want you want with it. But I'm thinking I might want to use it in a book.

I'd be careful next time you make comments about people who "never produce any data whatsoever." And I'd be careful about who you tell to do research and collect data. They might have already done it.

What data did you want Ron? Maybe if I help you, you can tell me where Simmons hides all the field data he collects.

I would also use Simmons' quote that the conventional wisdom is almost always wrong.  I find it interesting that a very, very tiny number of people are currently asserting at we are at or past peak world oil production.

I do think that Robert's assertion that we should, in effect, trust the major oil companies and Saudi Arabia is a really weak argument, and I would almost use as a counterintuitive proof of Peak Oil, i.e.,  if the majors and the Saudis are screaming loudly that we haven't peaked, we have probably peaked.  

It's kind of like when the first time that you meet someone, they tell you how honest they are.  Every time that happens, I always reach for my wallet to make sure that I still have it.

I ask because KSA has leased half the drilling rigs in the GoM and shipped them to the Persian Gulf.

Alan

Are you aware that the Alberta and Orinoco tar sands are an expression of oil that has leaked to surface.  As it gets close to surface, bacteria start to eat the short chains (producing H) leaving only the long chains, asphaltenes and  some aromatics - collectively called tar.

Curious think about the Middle East is that, as far as I am aware, there are no tar sand (or tar limestone) belts - suggesting that much of the oil  ever produced (by the source rocks) has been trapped.

You and the CEO should go looking for papers on ME basin modelling, source rocks and volumes of oil produced.

One thing I might work on (with Khebab) is looking at the field size distribution and the parabolic fractal law (?).  One possibility is that a huge amount of the oil ever produced (by the source rocks) is actually in Ghawar.  Ghawar will have started out as several dissconnected giants, but as this massive structure filled these have merged to become a single super-giant - which would essentially distrort any log normal distribution (?) of field size.

"You can't bargain with the planet because it doesn't care whether or not targets are "politically acceptable". So unless we secure a deal determining how much carbon each nation and each person can emit, we simply will not survive"

"carbon rationing represents a total break with business as usual that it is the only climate-change policy that will work. "

How much carbon does burning a cord of wood produce?  How many gallons of gas is the equivalent?

But I just think it's much easier to see doom then it is to see oppurtunity.  

How many people in the 60's thought Volkswagon would never be able to sell the Beetle?

How many beetle's are there going to be in the new energy paradigm?

 For you D&D crowd, that like Humor in real time, with lots of fun poking at the real world.

 The Black Knight of Monty Python is remembered in Nodwick, he is always being healed with an almost endless supply of Duct Tape.

 No Oil, No Duct Tape, No Duct Tape, We are all doomed.

Cement and quicklime suck CO2 out of the atmosphere as they cure.

Actually I also thought so, but I was shown to be wrong.

First article.

I noticed that there is a large lead time, perhaps up to 15 years, but this is only about 50% longer then current nuclear power plant construction, and its based on a conservative estimate, not an optimistic.  Currently, thorium is mixed in with uranium in classical nuclear reactors to help cut down on the amount of plutonium that is produced.  

Second article.

Some quotes of interest:

"In an accelerator-driven nuclear reactor based on thorium, the fuel in itself is not fissile.  The thorium would have to be bombarded by a proton beam in order to produce a nuclear reaction. The thorium nuclei which are hit, are converted into uranium-233. The energy which is produced when this uranium is split is enough to drive the particle accelerator and at the same time create a solid energy surplus which can be converted into power. If the proton beam is stopped, the nuclear reaction immediately stops. The reaction cannot therefore spin out of control as in an ordinary nuclear power plant."

"The thorium reactor is also unsuitable for the production of material for nuclear weapons, in contrast to conventional nuclear power plants, mainly because it can only produce small amounts of uranium-232. Uranium-232 is highly radioactive and very difficult to handle. This is not a problem in connection with the small amounts produced in the reactor, but the use of this technology to produce uranium for the production of weapons would not be practicable."

Also, the thorium reactor can not create the plutonium isotope used in nuclear weapons.  That means that it would be virtually impossible for someone to gain the materials form a thorium power plant to produce a bomb at any point.

And you want to know whats REALLY interesting?  We can use a thorium reactor to CLEAN UP nuclear waste!

"The thorium reactor could also provide a solution here, because the proton beam that drives the reaction can be used to transmute plutonium nuclei: when they are bombarded with protons, they transmute into heavier atomic nuclei, which have different properties. This is exactly how uranium-233 is formed when thorium is hit by proton beams in the proposed thorium reactor. It has therefore also been proposed to build new thorium reactors next to the old, more dangerous uranium reactors, so that the plutonium waste can be got rid of simultaneously."

Depleted Uranium itself isn't a very toxic hazard.  I know this can be argued but it should be kept in mind that the earths oceans have billions of tons of uranium floating in them already.  And uranium can be used in fast burners eliminating the vast majority of hazardous materials.

Of course, you are probably asking yourself "If this setup is so good, why hasn't it been used by now?"  The answer is two fold:  

First, the technology for a thorium reactor was limited by a commercial grade particle accelerator.  A recent technological breakthrough enables us to build the right kind of proton accelerator, which in turns allows us to now build an all thorium reactor.

Second, thorium reactors will be direct competitors with classical uranium reactors.  The Nuclear industry DOESN'T want competition.  Competition leads to lower profit margins as both technologies fight each other for dominance.  Its good for the consumers but bad for them :P

One more thing before I end this post:  Thorium is vastly more abundant then Uranium is currently.  There is roughly 4x as much thorium thats commercially available NOW then our uranium reserves.  Of course, if people start LOOKING for thorium 'it currently has almost no commercial application outside of a small % used in nuclear reactors' we could potentially discover vast additional quantities of it.  When you combine both stockpiles, we have enough fissile material to last us for at least 100 years if we produced 100% of our power needs from them!

And of course, I have to be the thorn in the side of so many doomers by pointing out that this is a NEW power source with a vast EROEI potential.  So much for there being nothing left for us to discover! :P