DrumBeat: September 12, 2006
Posted by threadbot on September 12, 2006 - 9:13am
Canadian crude oil production dropped in 2005, while profits soared
CALGARY (CP) - Canada's oil production dropped in 2005 for the first in six years as conventional supplies wane, but that should change as oilsands operations continue their rapid ramp-up.According to a Statistics Canada report released Monday, companies pumped out 858 million barrels of crude last year, down 2.3 per cent from the year before. One of the key reasons for this drop was a major fire at Suncor Energy, which cut production at Canada's second largest oilsands operation in half for three-quarters of the year.
"In general, this occurred mostly because of lower output from the conventional sector as well as unplanned interruptions in the non-conventional sector," the statistics agency said.
OPEC quota cut comes into view as prices fall
Report: Chevron may avoid $1B in payments
Incomplete lease agreements could allow oil giant to avoid paying royalties to federal government on new oil field.
BP gets 'first step' OK for bypass line
Clean technology key to French coal revival
PARIS (Reuters) - Surging demand for energy, coupled with high oil and gas prices have revived France's enthusiasm for coal but it may be short-lived without fast development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.
CNN 'In the Money' Drops Conspiracy Theory When Interviewing Oil Analyst
America's Significant Oil Find for the Coming Decade
...Finally, this discovery is doubtlessly a hard lesson learned for advocates of the 'Hubburt Peak' oil theory, who have been calling for years now to an end to the dependency on oil; the only reason is that the approaching end prompts dependence on alternative sources of energy.
Wind power ready to meet looming energy gap
Updating Prescriptions for Avoiding Worldwide Catastrophe - an interview with James Lovelock.
Mongolia seeks more profit from rich coal deposits
Finland offers experience in clean energy
Russia: Exxon cannot book new Sakhalin reserves. But Exxon is in denial.
Nigeria: President Obasanjo Says Ethanol Will Be Compulsory for Nigerian Fuel
President Olusegun Obasanjo has said the Administration would make the use of ethanol in fuel compulsory, like the cassava flour in wheat for bread.
Pesticide use worldwide touches 2 kg per hectare
The use of pesticides worldwide has risen dramatically from 0.49 kg per hectare in 1961 to 2 kg in 2004 and with this the export of pesticides has touched an all time high of $ 16 billions, the World Watch Insititute (WWI) has said.The increase in the use of pesticides is attributed mainly to the rising use of herbicides on genetically modified crops in China, it said.
[Update by Leanan on 09/12/06 at 3:29 PM EDT]
Coming soon: Hydrogen-powered BMW
Luxury sedan will burn both hydrogen and gasoline. It will be provided to selected drivers.
...be prepared to be surprised if the oil price goes down much further than seems possible.
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This morning -
http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/11/markets/bc.markets.oil.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
'The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided Monday to keep current production limits unchanged at 28 million barrels per day but left the door open to a supply cut before the end of the year.
"There is no need to cut now but if there is a deterioration in the global economy and prices fall quickly, then we will need a meeting before December," Algerian Energy and Mining Minister Chakib Khelil told Reuters after Monday's talks.
For a year, OPEC has been pumping close to its fastest rate for 25 years to guard against price shocks and ease pressure on consumer economies. But forecasts that demand for OPEC oil will decline in 2007 are beginning to worry some in the group that pumps a third of the world's oil.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi, OPEC's most influential voice, sought to calm those fears, saying oil demand would remain healthy next year.
"Market fundamentals are very sound," he told reporters. "We are beginning to see a slight decrease in economic growth, very slight.... It is nothing alarming."'
Highlights -
1. Prices way beyond OPEC's target from just a short 18 months ago -
http://www.finanznachrichten.de/nachrichten-2005-01/artikel-1868605.asp
28.01.2005 20:13
OPEC target band is effectively above 22-28 usd/barrel - Kuwaiti minister
VIENNA (AFX) - OPEC's target price band for oil of 22-28 usd a barrel is effectively dead and 32-35 usd would "be a good price," OPEC president Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah said.
"What I can say is 22-28 dollars is not any more a target for OPEC," he told reporters upon arriving for an OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna on Sunday.
- OPEC is essentially pumping full out, but for a year, that fact had little influence on spot prices.
- The nice "slight decrease in economic growth, very slight.... It is nothing alarming" comment must be comforting to everyone, right?
- I wonder if the Texas Railroad Commission minutes from the eartly 1970s are now a part of OPEC's reading list?
After all, pumping full out didn't cause prices to decline, by any realistic measure, suggesting that the world's swing producers just aren't swingers anymore - age catches up to everyone, I guess.Markets are made by supply and demand, of course, which is reflected in price. But these days, it seems as if flooding the market with oil doesn't work like it used to. Or maybe the market can no longer be flooded?
Manipulated, I grant, but flooded? And remember, it was the Saudi Oil Minister quoted as remarking about what seems to be confirmed demand destruction that 'It is nothing alarming.'
So, lucky that the Saudis are our biggest and best buddy, ready to do what that bunch of bumbling Texas oilmen couldn't do - remain an eternal swing producer, setting the price of oil both up and down.
Around noon -
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=adhtqG4KvKGU&refer=us
'Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps 40 percent of the world's oil, decided yesterday to keep production quotas unchanged. The group wants prices to stay above $60 a barrel, Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh told reporters today in Vienna, speaking through a translator,
``The price we favor is not below $60'' a barrel, for OPEC's basket oil price, Vaziri-Hamaneh said. ``Supply is more than demand and stocks are at a very high level, and because of these two factors, prices are very fragile.''
Oil pared early gains today as the International Energy Agency cut global oil demand estimates for 2006 and 2007, spurred by a slowdown in the U.S., the world's largest energy consumer.
IEA Forecast
Worldwide oil demand will be 84.7 million barrels a day for 2006, 100,000 barrels a day fewer than estimated last month, the Paris-based IEA wrote today in a monthly report. Oil consumption next year was cut by 160,000 barrels a day to 86.2 million, the e- mailed document said.'
- $60 as OPEC's floor price? Wow - has anyone told the American public about this?
- You don't need a swing producer to create or maintain higher prices - you just need an absence of a swing producer.
- A 100,000 barrel a day estimated demand drop in one month? See the other point 3 above.
Around 3pm -http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,213430,00.html
'OPEC's output quota will remain at 28 million barrels a day, the 11-nation group said, acknowledging that supplies are "more than adequate" to satisfy world demand. Including Iraq, which is not bound by the quota system, OPEC's daily production is roughly 30 million barrels.'
...
'In its monthly oil market report, the energy watchdog cut 100,000 barrels a day from its earlier growth projections for 2006. It also said OPEC's output fell by 270,000 barrels a day in August. The IEA cut its estimate for demand for OPEC crude in the third quarter of this year by 400,000 barrels a day.'
...
'Analysts said one alternative to formally cutting production targets, which could unsettle markets and send prices soaring again, could be to have members quietly and informally pump less.'
To sum up -
Catch that last line? See, if oil prices don't decline much, it is because OPEC will be informally delivering less, as compared to officially meeting its quotas. Remember the old days, when they used to pump over their quotas? Now, the trick is to pump under their quotas, it seems.
But notice what has world oil production been doing for the last 9 months or so, even as high prices seem to have finally led to that 'slight decrease in economic growth'? Which has led to falling oil prices, if you only look at the past 12-18 months or so. Of course, since 2001, it is up fourfold, but hey, that is the past.
Take it as you wish, but my conclusion remains peak has arrived, and though objects may appear closer than they are in the rear view mirror, this is about the time where they start fading into the shrinking distance. This should not be confused with peak price (more in OPEC's hands than any time since the mid-70s, I would guess), nor should it be confused with the end of the oil age. What this means, in my eyes, is that anyone planning for a future involving for 100 million barrels a day in the future should just sit down with those optimistic Texans, who are certain that technology will again bring back the glorious days of Texas riding the top of the market.
In the real world, it might be time to start planning with the idea that the world does not have 10 or 20 years to get ready for peak. That clock started ticking sometime when it was still morning in America, with a movie actor replacing the Naval Academy graduate.
This morning -
http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/11/markets/bc.markets.oil.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
'The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided Monday to keep current production limits unchanged at 28 million barrels per day but left the door open to a supply cut before the end of the year.
"There is no need to cut now but if there is a deterioration in the global economy and prices fall quickly, then we will need a meeting before December," Algerian Energy and Mining Minister Chakib Khelil told Reuters after Monday's talks.
For a year, OPEC has been pumping close to its fastest rate for 25 years to guard against price shocks and ease pressure on consumer economies. But forecasts that demand for OPEC oil will decline in 2007 are beginning to worry some in the group that pumps a third of the world's oil.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi, OPEC's most influential voice, sought to calm those fears, saying oil demand would remain healthy next year.
"Market fundamentals are very sound," he told reporters. "We are beginning to see a slight decrease in economic growth, very slight.... It is nothing alarming."'
Highlights -
1. Prices way beyond OPEC's target from just a short 18 months ago -
http://www.finanznachrichten.de/nachrichten-2005-01/artikel-1868605.asp
28.01.2005 20:13
OPEC target band is effectively above 22-28 usd/barrel - Kuwaiti minister
VIENNA (AFX) - OPEC's target price band for oil of 22-28 usd a barrel is effectively dead and 32-35 usd would "be a good price," OPEC president Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah said.
"What I can say is 22-28 dollars is not any more a target for OPEC," he told reporters upon arriving for an OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna on Sunday.
- OPEC is essentially pumping full out, but for a year, that fact had little influence on spot prices.
- The nice "slight decrease in economic growth, very slight.... It is nothing alarming" comment must be comforting to everyone, right?
- I wonder if the Texas Railroad Commission minutes from the eartly 1970s are now a part of OPEC's reading list?
After all, pumping full out didn't cause prices to decline, by any realistic measure, suggesting that the world's swing producers just aren't swingers anymore - age catches up to everyone, I guess.Markets are made by supply and demand, of course, which is reflected in price. But these days, it seems as if flooding the market with oil doesn't work like it used to. Or maybe the market can no longer be flooded?
Manipulated, I grant, but flooded? And remember, it was the Saudi Oil Minister quoted as remarking about what seems to be confirmed demand destruction that 'It is nothing alarming.'
So, lucky that the Saudis are our biggest and best buddy, ready to do what that bunch of bumbling Texas oilmen couldn't do - remain an eternal swing producer, setting the price of oil both up and down.
Around noon -
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=adhtqG4KvKGU&refer=us
'Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps 40 percent of the world's oil, decided yesterday to keep production quotas unchanged. The group wants prices to stay above $60 a barrel, Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh told reporters today in Vienna, speaking through a translator,
``The price we favor is not below $60'' a barrel, for OPEC's basket oil price, Vaziri-Hamaneh said. ``Supply is more than demand and stocks are at a very high level, and because of these two factors, prices are very fragile.''
Oil pared early gains today as the International Energy Agency cut global oil demand estimates for 2006 and 2007, spurred by a slowdown in the U.S., the world's largest energy consumer.
IEA Forecast
Worldwide oil demand will be 84.7 million barrels a day for 2006, 100,000 barrels a day fewer than estimated last month, the Paris-based IEA wrote today in a monthly report. Oil consumption next year was cut by 160,000 barrels a day to 86.2 million, the e- mailed document said.'
- $60 as OPEC's floor price? Wow - has anyone told the American public about this?
- You don't need a swing producer to create or maintain higher prices - you just need an absence of a swing producer.
- A 100,000 barrel a day estimated demand drop in one month? See the other point 3 above.
Around 3pm -http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,213430,00.html
'OPEC's output quota will remain at 28 million barrels a day, the 11-nation group said, acknowledging that supplies are "more than adequate" to satisfy world demand. Including Iraq, which is not bound by the quota system, OPEC's daily production is roughly 30 million barrels.'
...
'In its monthly oil market report, the energy watchdog cut 100,000 barrels a day from its earlier growth projections for 2006. It also said OPEC's output fell by 270,000 barrels a day in August. The IEA cut its estimate for demand for OPEC crude in the third quarter of this year by 400,000 barrels a day.'
...
'Analysts said one alternative to formally cutting production targets, which could unsettle markets and send prices soaring again, could be to have members quietly and informally pump less.'
To sum up -
Catch that last line? See, if oil prices don't decline much, it is because OPEC will be informally delivering less, as compared to officially meeting its quotas. Remember the old days, when they used to pump over their quotas? Now, the trick is to pump under their quotas, it seems.
But notice what has world oil production been doing for the last 9 months or so, even as high prices seem to have finally led to that 'slight decrease in economic growth'? Which has led to falling oil prices, if you only look at the past 12-18 months or so. Of course, since 2001, it is up fourfold, but hey, that is the past.
Take it as you wish, but my conclusion remains peak has arrived, and though objects may appear closer than they are in the rear view mirror, this is about the time where they start fading into the shrinking distance. This should not be confused with peak price (more in OPEC's hands than any time since the mid-70s, I would guess), nor should it be confused with the end of the oil age. What this means, in my eyes, is that anyone planning for a future involving a 100 million barrels a day in the future should just sit down with those optimistic Texans, who are certain that technology will again bring back the glorious days of Texas riding the top of the market.
In the real world, it might be time to start planning with the idea that the world does not have 10 or 20 years to get ready for peak. That clock started ticking sometime when it was still morning in America, with a movie actor replacing the Naval Academy graduate.
"The fact is that many of them (remote communities) have few or no roads and they are totally dependent on their dinghies for local transport and for charter aircraft for travel within the region. They are also 100 per cent reliant on delivery of all food items through air and sea barge services. As a direct result of the abolition of this programme, they will see a significant increase in the cost of all these services plus, of course, all their food items."
http://www.nit.com.au/story.aspx?id=7716
In the middle of Australia, the main small airline (Cessnas etc) for the indigenous people has had to close down due to high fuel prices:
"MORE than 60 communities across remote Australia could be without regular flights from as early as tomorrow, after the company that runs them was placed in voluntary administration last week. The board of Aboriginal Air Services voted last Tuesday to bring in an administrator, who is understood to have told staff on Friday the company will fly its last scheduled flights today."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20347844-23349,00.html
Bill Clinton's 60th turns into Toronto fundraiser
Billy Crystal is a fan:
... and I'd expect a little handwaving like the bit quoted above to appear a few more times, for a few more countries, over the next decade.
"In general, this occurred mostly because of lower output from the conventional sector as well as unplanned interruptions in the non-conventional sector."
It sure is.
I heard a happy commentary on NPR's Morning Edition today about why oil prices are dropping. The guy said it was because of all the good news -- OPEC still pumping, Iran nuclear threat easing off, high inventories -- no supply worries.
And then there is Jack in the Gulf of Mexico. This is not being cited as a reason but it hovers in the background. The propaganda machine was in full swing last week. Now, consider this:
The new investment benchmark is $60/barrel. OPEC has decided they like high prices because even at $78/barrel there was no impact on demand. There is a serious disconnect between the day to day NYMEX price and reality.Someone said Stuart lives in Europe, and is probably taking a Europe-sized vacation.
Or the model which says that oil production, according to OPEC, is overwhelming demand, so no problems?
Or the model with the ever harder to grasp definition of what 'oil' is? It seems as if it can be burned, and it is liquid, it is in fashion as oil this year, even if 20 years ago, it was considered essentially worthless sludge maybe worth burning in a freighter, since you couldn't burn it legally on land.
Or the model which says since we didn't lose, oh, another million barrels a day of production in the GOM because hurricane season is only half over, everything is peachy? And next year? And the next? I don't know the future, but it is relatively safe to assume hurricanes will continue to appear regularly in the Gulf of Mexico.
One of the things I find fascinating is the difference between short and long term - how many oil formations are being plundered as compared to husbanded over time to make that growth show up? Decline rates remain one of the truly open parts of the peak oil debate, since they are truly rear view objects - but how a field is produced has major implications for its decline.
And yes, let's not talk about the increase in CO2 which that production increase represents - after all, climate change is likely as far away in the future as oil production peaking.
I bet you even will argue that falling oil prices will lead to a free market economy like America's increasing its investment in energy efficiency and conservation. Just like the models predict.
The future is unfolding as it should? We do have different opinions about the future, it seems.
EIA does show a higher demand, as opposed to supply. I would have thought that when demand is higher than supply, prices rise, which is in fact what happened in 2q, but maybe they mean something else.
For example, maybe higher demand is met by draining stocks... Much is made of the fact that US commercial stocks are higher than last year, mostly because 12mmb loaned from spr is not yet repaid, and won't be until after the election, if then. Meanwhile, per iea, OECD stocks are down 2% yoy, (1 day cover), or say 80mmb. And, although I can't provide a reference (from some link at tod), OECD stocks are apparently at a ten year low.
Maybe when the IEA comes out with the new month, which I think should be this week, he'll make a new chart.
Mass foreclosed-home auction in Michigan
If there already are 100.000 homes being foreclosed nationwide today, that means there must be millions of Americans with great difficulties in making their payments, but managing to hang in so far. The recent reports on the hammer of the ARM oayment rises that's about to come crashing down, starting in a few months, make one wonder where we'll be a year from now.
Ii'd be interesting to follow the auction, and see how many get sold, and at what prices.
Will Peak Oil even be relevant in the world's 1st global depression?
GM to seek flexible production to make cars for fluctuating gas prices
And from the Wall Street Journal (I couldn't find a free version, unfortunately):
Detroit Finally Learns Tough Lesson
The United States should raise taxes on gasoline to encourage the development of more fuel-efficient technologies, the chief of the nation's leading auto retailer said on Tuesday.
"We're at a tipping point here," said Mike Jackson, chief executive officer of AutoNation Inc., at the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit.
"We have to do something to favor the new technologies and send a message to American consumers that gasoline prices are going to be systematically higher," he said. "A gas tax is a statement from the government that this is an issue of national security and we're going to do something about it."
...
"With politicians, they either agree with you and say it's political suicide or you get a Republican market-force answer and you point out that the market forces haven't worked for 30 years," Jackson said.
"Any politician that stands up and says in the same sentence, 'I support alternative energy' and 'I want lower gas prices for the American consumer' -- that is a contradiction. You intellectually cannot hold both positions."
Last week I presented a half-hour talk on Peak Oil entitled "The Iceberg on the Horizon" to the Ottawa chapter of the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome. It was a fascinating experience, not least because this was the first time I've been up in front of an audience talking about this subject.
It was a lunchtime talk, and the audience consisted of about 40 members and guests. The average age was about 60 (they need some new blood!) and there seemed to be a very high representation of engineers and policy wonks. I've put up a rudimentary HTML version of my Powerpoint slides at http://www.paulchefurka.com/peakoil/PO-CACOR.html and the Powerpoint itself is downloadable from http://www.paulchefurka.com/peakoil/PO-CACOR.ppt.
As you might expect from the nature of the organization, they were very interested in the topic. I was expecting a greater depth of knowledge of Peak Oil than was the general case - most people seemed to have heard of the idea, but hadn't thought about it all that deeply. There were exceptions, of course - especially a couple of gentlemen at a back table that I already knew to be even more pessimistic than me.
The audience all got the idea very rapidly and the talk was quite warmly received. My goals going in were to "educate, entertain and frighten", and I apparently accomplished all three. At one point in the talk I present a scenario of an 8% decline for 10 years. You could have heard a pin drop as I recited the litany of calamity, and when I was done I heard a couple of people say, "Oh my God!"
Now before anyone gets too hyper about my approach, I emphasized several times that no one knows when "the peak" will be, how long the plateau might last, or what the post-peak decline rate might be. The two decline scenarios I presented were clearly identified as my own musings, with the severe scenario presented mostly for entertainment purposes. It did serve its purpose of getting everyone to think about the implications of the universality of oil in our civilization.
The main points I made were: Peak Oil is primarily a liquid fuels problem; it's a flow rate problem (i.e. reserve figures don't matter much); it's a global problem; and no matter when the peak happens, oil is a non-renewable resource. I then laid out my conviction that within those parameters there is no technical solution to the problem. The mitigations I presented for their consideration revolved primarily around a fundamental shift in human values away from industrial and economic growth.
The Q&A period afterwards was interesting. One gentleman brought up a rumour about a large imminent shipment of electric cars from China to North America. Another wondered if it might be profitable to apply queuing theory to model what happens in a complex system when there is a collision in a queue for a scarce resource (apparently in some models the system will go unstable and "jam up"). A gentleman with a long career in the coal industry took gentle exception to my dissing CTL so heavily. He maintained that there are many techniques for using coal, some with low environmental impact, and that CO2 sequestration is perfectly feasible. I said I was glad to hear it... There was no rejection of the idea of Peak Oil, or the notion that the post-peak period would be one rife with social, political and economic instability.
Overall it seemed to be a rewarding experience for both the presenter and the audience. It made me a little more hopeful about the potential for Peak Oil outreach, and gave me a desire to hunt up some more audiences to educate, entertain and frighten.
"Jamming up" is common. Think about a near-capacity four-lane highway when in one direction it narrows from two lanes to one. Even if the road is under capacity for a single lane, it often jams up at the bottleneck.
The world economy is an awfully complex system to model, however. <conspiracy theory> I bet some government lab has a model of this already in place, but they'll never let anyone know that they have it and what it says is likely to happen. </conspiracy theory>
Awhile back the pentagon let know that they had opened one of these boards. The public reaction to the suggestion that these experts were actually "betting" and gaining on social policy caused the pentagon to shut it down (at least officially).
They certainly used to - while one is now in the Science Museum in London, the wiki article indicates that a number of these economic computers were built.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC_Computer
So it is possible (although probably not likely) that a revised version exists.
Speculation ahead--I don't want to be charged with Sedition!
Sounds like Asimov's Foundation supercomputer-cluster modeling to me! Consider the software programs the Pentagon already uses for military logistics planning, then multiply in your mind.
ARMY WAR COLL CARLISLE BARRACKS PA
http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA326774
-----------------------------
Report Date : 07 APR 1997
Pagination or Media Count : 25
Abstract : The study begins with a futuristic vignette from a hypothetical Middle Eastern war early in the twenty-first century. In this future conflict the U.S. Army finds itself stranded on the battlefield and incapable of sustaining operations because of failures in strategic logistics planning in the late nineteenth century. Using the vignette to create a plausible failure of logistics, the author then critically examines the strategic thinking of senior leadership in regard to the current Revolution in Military Logistics (RML) in light of knowledge of the relationship between past Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMAs) and RMLs. From this perspective the author argues that planners in the 1990s did not recognize the true nature of the RML at the time and focused on technological enhancements to the old logistics paradigm, failing to foresee and develop the requisite doctrine, organizational structure, and new technologies necessary to support the on-going RMA.
--------------------------------------------------
Another important tenet of Asimov's Foundation of predictive collapse and directed decline is that we are to remained uninformed of its existence. Dovetails nicely with Peakoil--don't you think?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
From the '3 Days of the Condor' Scenario:
--------------------------
"Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?"
"No, we play games."
---------------------
Consider that most people deny Peakoil. Now consider that even most of these Peakoil-aware people will even deny that ANYTHING even approximating Foundation might exist. Good anything be sweeter for optimizing the detritovore decline ahead? Hidden in plain sight?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
So far I think I have access to the Canadian New Democratic Party, possibly the Greens, a couple of Humanist groups, my own employer, and the Montreal Anglican Primate's World Relief Development Fund. Unitarians would be a good bet - I grew up a Unitarian! I also want to get to the local City Council, as they are so far in the pockets of the developers, and don't want to hear about anything that might slow their growth...
My talk to the Anglicans in March will be interesting. The title I've chosen is, "Petroleum, the Modern Manna: The Danger of Dominion and the Failure of Stewardship". I'm going to start them thinking about how they might handle the moral dilemmas inherent in post=peak third world "lifeboat triage" situations, especially given their Prime Directive of "Help the Poor."
FYI - Councillor Clive Doucet is behind a meeting this Friday at 7 pm at the High School of Commerce Auditorium on Rochester St. at which James Howard Kunstler is a featured speaker/panelist.
The majority of council may be in the backpocket of the sprawl merchants, but not all. Did you attend the Crude Awakening evening at City Hall last fall?
Friday evening should be interesting as long as Kunstler doesn't go off on one of his middle east rants. Ten bucks entry to cover costs/fees.
Good luck with the NDP; I tried various times from 2000 to 2004. Now I going to work for the Greens, whose new leader appears to understand that re-framing the argument is a more vital task than winning seats in Parliament.
I spent the weekend as an observer at the NDP federal convention in Quebec City, and I agree about them. A party that wants to get elected isn't going to touch PO publically. It would be worse for them than wanting to pull out of Afghanistan. "Here, let us tell you about an insoluble problem that's going to destroy cilization" isn't much of a vote getter. However, having their energy committees aware of the issue couldn't hurt.
It would be refreshing, from my perspective, to have a public official discuss reality for once. Do you think it would fly? If not now, when?
Tom Anderson-Brown
Do you have any more info on that? Like the time? I'm tempted to go.
Be there or be square.
I really enjoyed looking at your slides. One thing I'm a little puzzled about is the reference to population. You seem to say in the beginning of the presentation (on the iceberg slide and the street crowd slide) that population is the real problem. But it doesn't look like it gets discussed any more in your presentation.
So, is Peak Oil just a side show to the main event of Population Overshoot? Can you explain how this was worked into your presentation?
Thanks,
Tom Anderson-Brown
A talk like this has to be tailored to the audience. In a longer version of the talk, or for a different audience, I'd go deeper into the population issue. But for this group it was enough to let them know that PO exists in the context of overpopulation - they are the Club or Rome, after all, they defined the problematique, and they understand Limits to Growth and the population crisis better than most.
To get a benchmark perspective: Al Bartlett said some 10 years ago that the average North American has about 50 times "the impact on world resources", call it footprint, of someone in a developing country. There are a zillion ways to calculate this, but let's stick with Bartlett.
North America has 330 million people. Multiply that by 50.
Yes, "our" impact equals that of 16.5 billion people elsewhere. Bartlett doesn't refer to destitute living dead, just to an average, as in normal people.
That is overpopulation.
There are 30 times as many people per square inch in Bangla Desh than in the US, but they are still gentler with their land than we are. They are 150 million, and that is their footprint. Ours is over 100 times more.
If you do not specify this in your talks, your audiences will be conveniently thinking that the problem lies in Bangla Desh.
It does not. Your audience is the problem.
Population and lifestyle can not be equated. They are related, but are NOT the same thing.Both extreme affluence (us) and extreme poverty (Bangladesh and other third world nations) have disastrous consequences for the environment, even though their eco-footprint is smaller. And don't forget, all those folks in Bangladesh are fed by food grown and transported using fossil fuels.
"Population and lifestyle are not the same thing"
No sense. Please try again after the beep.
My problem is, when people make that kind of statement, and believe it, that Bangladeshis live off imported food, I tend to give up. By then the path gets so long you can't see over the horizon anymore.
There was a spun-out thing about economic growth on the Beat yesterday, and all kinds of stories about how you can grow without growing, or variations on the theme, and there comes a time when you have to give up on people, and accept that some will never understand even the basics. Not funny, but we don't exactly have a sea of time left.
"Mama, why is the grass green?" is very cute, but when there's a tornado roaring towards you, you're not going to sit down and elaborate.
We all individually use dozens of times the resources that a Bangladeshi uses, and our economy will crash once it can't grow anymore, no matter if cows give birth, or corn grows, or we change lighbulbs. And unless we abolish interest, we're heading straight for the waterfall. And it's a darn steep one.
What we have to focus on is: what are we going to do about it?
Not relevant and totally unrealistic, you are blinded by "ethical" concerns, the very old anti-cheaters drive of the monkeys tribe.
First, from ANY sustainable production apparatus there is some "interest" flowing: the valuable outcome which gets credited to the OWNER of the apparatus.
This CANNOT be brushed away, no production apparatus NO OUTCOME, so, who owns it?
Second, it is not the interest per se which is problematic in that it brings growth, it is the compounded interest i.e. the REINVESTED interest, because this assumes that some other production apparatus is available to reinvest in.
It is this last step which implies unsustainable growth because it means grabbing some YET UNUSED ressources.
In a closed world there are NO yet unused ressources beyond the "flow" of renewable productions.
So, WHO OWNS THE FLOWS is the right question.
No more delusions about a "rising tide lifts all boats", let's not forget that the tide eventually subsides.
However, absolute numbers and fertility rates have to be factored into the discussion to some degree. To that end I took a quick look at at fertility rates and population last night. We hear that many countries (Italy, Spain, Germany, Greece, Japan etc.) are well below replacement, and this is often used as an argument for not giving up hope that population reduction will factor into the solution space for resource depletion.
I found that 2.7 billion people live in countries that have fertility rates of 2.0 or less. Unfortunately, 3.8 billion live in countries that have rates over 2.0, and over a billion of those live in countries that have fertility rates over 4.0.
I found these numbers shocking. They reinforce my conviction that humane population control measures will do nothing of any significance to alleviate the problems we're going to face over the next generation. We will have problems no matter what happens to the ecological footprint of the developed world, because all those high growth countries are asking, "When is it going to be our turn to live the good life?"
Great presentation!
A few comments.
You don't state what your source is for a 2:1 EROEI on the tar sands (p. 20 or so in your presentation). Suncor has stated that they use one barrel of oil equivalent to obtain 8, and they're trying to improve on that. See http://ca.news.finance.yahoo.com/26042006/2/finance-suncor-energy-faces-uphill-battle-curb-costs-ceo -tells.html
Personally, I'm not overly pessimistic about our post-peak future, at least not in the early phase. I think there is vast energy wastage in N. America which can be wrung out of the system. To give but one example, replacing incandescent bulbs with LED lighting will increase lighting electrical efficiency by about 800% (see http://carmanah.com/content/products/technology/lightemittingdiodes.aspx - disclosure, I own stock in this co.). Not only that, but such efficiencies make LED's ideal for pairing up with solar power technology (more on solar below). Imagine converting most of the world's outdoor lighting to solar powered!
I would think that the continually increasing cost of all forms of energy under a "post peak oil" scenario will ensure that Jevon's Paradox will not occur to any great extent. The situation will be "power down" not "party on."
Finally, I think our post-peak lifestyles will stabilize once we have achieved a balance between energy consumption and sustainable, non climate-threatening forms of energy production (note that I say "energy" and not "oil" production). Since, other than nuclear, all energy sources can ultimately be traced to the sun, the solution will involve efficiently capturing and efficiently using sun power through a broad mix of technologies (hydro, wind, solar PV's, biofuels,etc etc.). Stability will be maintained if these can power up as oil production correspondingly winds down. (Not so sure jet aircraft can function on biofuels, though. Might be a little slower getting to holiday destinations in a sail-powered cruise ship!)
Just some thoughts/opinions interspersed with a few facts. Hope I've been of help.
Larry
Calculating the EROEI of an energy processs is both a technical and a political activity. When I've gone Googling, the number that pops up most often for oil sands is 1.5:1. I'm frankly suspicious of Suncor's 8:1 calculation, mostly because the number I hear quoted most often for North American conventional oil production is 10:1. In that article Suncor doesn't give the assumptions for their calculation, and it's presented by the CEO at an AGM. That makes me suspect that the political content of the calculation outweighs the technical, and that the number was arrived at by strictly limiting the definition of "an input barrel" to the direct production process.
After much contemplation of the whole question of energy replacement both pre and post peak, I've decided to constrain my discussion of Peak Oil to the transportation fuel arena. Expanding the discussion beyond that does nothing but muddy the waters and give the cornucopians a toehold :-) Wind will not power the world's cars, nor will nuclear reactors. The real problem IMO isn't "energy consumption", it's a "getting people and their stuff from here to there" issue.
When one starts to think about solving just that one portion of the problem without diluting the argument, it becomes more obvious that we are probably facing an insoluble inflection point. It's nice to think about all the good things that wind and solar could do for civilization, but outside of electrified trains and streetcars (fixed route modes where you can use a "thousand mile extension cord") there isn't a prayer that electricity can be the global transportation answer.
Given that the main component of the Peak Oil problem is transportation fuel, I think the domain is well enough bounded that Jevons will indeed apply. Actually, I think invoking Jevons makes the idea too complex. The simple way to look at it is this: The world is full of competetive consumers, all of whom want to improve their own position or capabilities. If I decide to conserve transportation fuel, and thereby save a barrel of oil, there will always be someone else willing to buy that barrel so they can transport more people or stuff. I don't think we will see world-wide demand destruction until a global depression starts to bite. And that, of course, is what we'd all like to avoid.
Regarding tar sands EROEI, I'd be equally suspicious of using a number on the basis that it comes up most often in a Google search, unless, of course, each estimate has its own substantiation. Otherwise I suspect its often the same estimate being repeated over and over until it becomes accepted as fact. My observation is the more "doomer" the person quoting a tar sands EROEI the lower the number being quoted.
Another way of looking at tar sands EROEI is that if it costs $20 to produce a barrel of oil that can then be sold for $60 then the EROEI is likely to be at least 3:1. My best guess is that its probably about 5:1. It's certainly not 1.5:1.
I appreciate how you're approaching the topic of peak oil by focusing on transportation fuels. Barring some miracle with fuel cell development (which still leaves the problem of where does the hydrogen come from), seems to me that the fleet will have to convert largely to electric power. You seem dismissive of this, but what is your alternative? I'm not a fan of nuclear power but in my opinion its certainly one source of electricity for personal vehicle transportation (except air transport of course). I saw my very first electic vehicle 2 weekends ago, by the way, so the trend is already beginning.
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate that the problem of transportation fuels is massive. I just think that it is solvable. Converting from an SUV to a Smart Car to transport a single person, for example, is maybe a 4-fold reduction in gas consumption. Add hybrid technolgy to the Smart Car and we're up to, say, a 6-fold reduction. Drive half as much (2 persons carpool to work) and its 12-fold, over a 90% reduction in consumption. Like I said before, there is a huge amount of wastage in N. America.
Simply put, Jevons assumes that what one person conserves another person uses, or the conserving person merely uses it in a different way. I'm suggesting that conservation is forced and that what one person "conserves," disappears. Hence no paradox.
Larry
I don't just "seem" dismissive of electric cars as any kind of large scale solution, I discard the notion out of hand. The main reasons I'm so adamant include low energy density, technological immaturity, fleet changeover costs, the capital costs of new generating and distribution capacity and the global scale of the problem. It's that last one that gets short shrift in most of these arguments. While it's entirely probable that electric road vehicles will gain market share in the developed world, it's hard for me to imagine a Kenyan truck driver who can't afford gasoline any more buying a new electric Mercedes truck.
I also agree whith you about forced conservation. That's what a global depression is all about...
-What's your age?
-What's your family status? (wife, husband, kids, etc)
-Do you live primarily in a urban, suburban, or rural area?
I'll volunteer myself to start:
-age 27, single, no kids, live in a city of about 700,000.
thanks ^^;
Most will never answer, for obvious reasons, while most of those that do will lie straight to your face, and you will never be the wiser. But good luck.
I've been working lately in Hudspeth County, Texas. Its east of El Paso in the Chijuawan desert, and land sells for $150-$200 per acre in large ranches. Lately promoters have been buying the land and selling lots for $1000 an acre or more on the internet to people with a yearning for a bit of dirt to call their own. There are no jobs, few roads or electric lines and no fences or surveying on the tracts. They buy the land over the internet mostly sight unseen. So anyway, thats my explanation, but, its an unsupported theory by a person who's a landman, not a headshrinker.
Why, I'll be one of them in 18 years. But I won't be lying then, either. I'm not the president.
More rural than most. Maybe 5000 people in a 400 square mile school district; 80K in a 10,000 square mile county.
I own 40 acres, my sons about 350.
80 K in the county? It's time to move; I need elbow room.
D. Boone
67, married 45 years, chose not to have kids. Both Rat and I have lived in the area a long time. My wife and I bought our first land in 1972 and moved onto it in 1974.
I think the population here is probably closer to 3,500 but I don't think anyone knows for sure. I agree, there are far too many people. Although there is a local sustainability group here, this area is far too overpopulated to ever be sustainable. Plus, there are lots of people off the grid who depend upon FFs for generators, lights, water/well pump, etc. They will be dead meat eventually. Further, very few have sufficient water to produce enough crops to survive.
Todd
modesty?
Live in Humboldt County, California with 2 dogs, 3 cats, chickens, bees and a big garden.
Tomorrow I'm I doing my Peak Oil lecture for my international Relations class. I'm going to add Gliderguider's HELP acronym- Hope that's OK.
Interesting - please post a summary of your findings.
Gotta luv my BlueTooth fetal monitor/PDA
Suburban, but walking distance to the downtown of our seaside city, pop. 100,000 +/- (200,000 in the county). Near the S.F. Bay Area.
fwiw: 5kw pv grid-tied, 1 diesel work truck burning B100, 1 small 4-cyl gas vehicle. 4 bikes. Gardens, Chickens... :-)
Looking for land...
We live in a mighty metropolis of ~1000 citizens in rural NH, USA, on 15 acres of land, mostly wooded. I heat with wood that I drag in from my woodlot with my big ol' Percheron mare. Though it gets harder for me every year - I seem to be getting a bit creaky. It's the splitting that kills me - must rent a splitter one of these days. We have gardens, apples, peaches, canefruits, etc. And excellent, competent neighbors.
- sgage
city of 800000 (metro >1000000), in the suburbs.
Yes, my outlook isn't good. :(
Have a cush well-paying telecommuting job part time. Living 7 miles outside a 9000 pop. Oregon town with big garden and chickens. ...... terrible place to live, you don't want to come here ;->
...do you have any single daughters around my age?
Currently living in Prague, Czech Republic (very population dense, great public transport, 1.2mil people)
Next month moving back to Edinburgh, Scotland (smaller, worse transport, but planning to live walking distance from work)
Thinking about rationalising arrangements with my girlfriend and her 3 kids who live on the edge of town, but I'm never going to sell the house.
Living in house on 1/2 acre in a walkable, 30,000 population city called Hastings in the Hawkes Bay region of NZ.
Work for IT company 8 mins bike ride from home.
Study ties warming to intense hurricanes
Another GW story...
This broader story should be number one in the world right now... discussed and related endlessly on tv, radio... above PO, above wars, above everything. (Though related to PO because the required action is a quick shift away from fossil fuels -- a monumental societal effort.)
The lastest data are suggesting that the predictive models will be left in the dust
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1223131.ece
Changing climate: 'Compost effect' may cause global warming to reach crisis point in 2050
By Sarah Cassidy
Published: 01 September 2006
The world faces a catastrophic rise in global warming in 2050 unless urgent action is taken to cut human-induced carbon emissions, a leading academic warned yesterday.
Professor Peter Cox, of Exeter University, told the Royal Geographical Society annual conference that temperatures could rise 8C by 2100 because of a "compost effect" which could see carbon dioxide levels increase 50 per cent faster than previously estimated.
Currently, around one quarter of carbon emissions are absorbed by the soil and one quarter by the oceans. It had previously been assumed that these proportions would remain the same. But Professor Cox said that global warming is damaging the soil's ability to absorb carbon emissions.
He said this vicious circle would reach crisis point in 2050 when a key threshold would be passed. After this point the land would begin to release carbon into the atmosphere. He predicted that this "compost effect" would lead to carbon dioxide levels rising from the current 380 parts per million to more than 1,000 parts per million by 2100.
Professor Cox warned that the Amazonian rainforest would be lost unless urgent action was taken to keep carbon dioxide levels below 500 parts per million. Higher levels of CO2 would see rainfall move away from the Amazon basin causing its lush vegetation to die.
In a separate report, the growing threat of climate change to Britain was highlighted yesterday with an urgent call for the reintroduction of salt marshes along the country's coasts and estuaries.
And another. All of these are the Lovelock scenario playing out in its early stages, IMO.
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/082906EA.shtml
Cascades' Reddened Forests Signal Threat to Humans
By Pat Rasmussen
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
25 August 2006
Signs that our local forests are stressed by global warming recently struck me while traveling over North Cascades passes in Washington state.
The forest is dying near the top on both east and west sides; trees are still partially green but turning red - old trees, young trees, the forest itself. Tents, and campers, in the Lone Fir Campground were surrounded by these dying trees.
The same reddening trees can be seen hiking through the Glacier Peak Wilderness on the trail to Spider Meadow in the Chiwawa River watershed of the Wenatchee National Forest. People are reporting that forests are dying near Mt. Rainier, on Chinook and White passes and down to central Oregon.
Huge expanses of forest in central British Columbia have died and turned red. A friend living in the Quesnel River watershed of central British Columbia said, "It's all red, and next come the fires."
Millions of acres of lodgepole pine have been pushed over the mortality threshold by global warming. There is no longer suitable habitat for the trees that have been growing there.
In northern Canada, forests are showing signs of heat stress. Tracking forest changes between 1982 and 2003 using satellite data, Scott Goetz, an ecologist at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, found that a wide swath of the northern forest was getting browner, not greener as he had expected. Goetz believes this is some of the first evidence that high latitude forests may be in decline following an initial growth spurt associated with warming.
A massive Alaska yellow cedar die-off on 500,000 acres of land in Southeast Alaska has been documented by the US Forest Service. Scientists investigating the dramatic decline in yellow cedar eliminated all other possible causes except climate change. Yellow cedars live in the higher latitudes and altitudes of the coastal temperate rainforest from Alaska to the Olympic Peninsula. The trees that are dying have been living there for up to 1,000 years, in a climate conducive to life.
Forests have an upper heating limit that they can tolerate. When heating goes beyond that limit, trees and other plants go into a rest state, a kind of hibernation, where they rest until conditions might improve. In that state they do not convert carbon to oxygen. Further stressed, they die.
Forests created and maintain the planetary atmosphere. They are having a difficult time maintaining the conditions for life as it is known because humans have removed so many of them.
Now, as massive amounts of forest are dying and no longer convert carbon to oxygen, the conditions necessary for our life here are being lost. Which other forests are at or nearing that stress point from global warming?
As I look around, I see humans continuing life as usual, seemingly unaware that the planetary forests that make life possible are more and more stressed, pushed toward death, by our actions.
We stand at the edge of a catastrophic precipice, where life as we know it may no longer be possible.
We don't have to go further down this path of self destruction. We have alternatives. We just need to choose them.
Germany is the world leader (PDF), by far, in installed wind capacity, total on 01 01 2006: 18.428 MW, newly installed 2005: 1808 MW. Total EU 30 GW, world 60 GW.
GWEC claims the world could install 865.000 MW in 10 years, 2010-2020, or 940 GW in 14 years, or every year 150% of total capacity to date. And I doubt that this is realistic.
There is the money issue. A 1 MW wind turbine costs on average about $1 million. There are bigger turbines, but they only fit in the "top spots", and there's only so many of these spots.
So the bill would be $865 billion. But let's not quibble over a few pennies.
A bigger problem: a few months back, I read two reports, one that cited a Chinese government minister who claimed China had the potential to install 1 million MW windpower, the other that the German wind industry had become the steel industry's no.2 client. That got me thinking.
At over 20% of world total, the German steel industry is not small!
If that no.2 spot is correct when they produce less that 2000 MW, it would seem that there is not enough steel available in the world to build over 450 times that much in a decade. Or productiion facilities and specialized personnel for that matter,
A similar problem might occur in the solar panel industry:
That's $145 billion US a year for 20 years, or $2.9 trillion, to get solar to 2 billion people, or $1450 per capita. Now the $865 biilion for wind looks cheap (1 MW powers 500 US homes, but 1000 worldwide).
But the same problem arises, I would guess: the sheer magnitude of what is required in raw materials. You might also wonder how green this all is, when mining, processing and transport is considered.
The solar piece talks about PV, not thin film, but "sheer size" problems would likely remain similar.
It's hard, for me, to find numbers on how much steel goes into one turbine etc. Maybe there's expertise available here in that regard.
Kennecott Copper Mine
It's supposedly the largest man-made hole in the world. And it used to be a mountain.
Aluminum was used for household wiring in the 1970s with bad results.
As for the grid - how much extra transmission line do you think are actually required? The turbines are tied into the normal grid - there isn't a parallel wind grid being built, there are just the local lines from the farm (so to speak) being tied into the grid.
Now it is true that sometimes completely new transmission lines are required - as happened here in this region with a revolutionary new trash burning plant using technology from a company called Thermoselect. As the technology seems to have been fraudulent in use (clever use of air venting to mix fresh air and exhaust to produce a much cleaner burning process than ever before possible), the entire investment of 500 million euros was written off - except of course, the plant is in the process of getting new permits for normal trash burning, the new transmission lines started carrying electricity anyways, and somehow, the failed investment looks more like a paper loss. In this sense, the transmission lines required for wind are roughly the same - the towers and lines required will not simply sit abandoned. (Germany is the world leader in recycling - a concept which is considered blindingly obvious here to essentially everyone.)
The point of wind mainly lies in not burning any fuel, and to a certain extent, like solar or hydro, replacing the idea of burning something with the idea of generating electricity over the long term without creating massive disruption on the scale of coal mining or changing the climate.
It is certainly true neither technology will allow current industrial society to continue without massive changes.
Which is the point for many of wind power's most ardent supporters.
So how do we make steel and silicon when the fossil fuels are gone?
The EROEI for wind is quite good. The first year of 20+ could be used to make it's replacement, and then the rest for society.
I was discussing this very thing with my dad this weekend. He is really interested in using Hydrogen as a carrier of energy, so I asked him "how we are supposed to make the Hydrogen when we run out of oil"? He said solar and wind. I said "Can we make wind turbines and PV arrays without oil? In other words, can we generate enough power from solar and wind to drive the manufacturing processes (including the mining and refining of ore to make steel) required to make more PV arrays and wind turbines?"
At this point he said, "I just don't know if that's possible."
I suppose there's Nuclear.
This is the discussion that goes around in circles. We may be able to do it if we start now. Or if we had started 10 years ago. We just won't know until we get there.
The thing that frustrates me in trying to organize a likely course of events in my brain is that there are so many variables and unknowns. We may work our tails off to develop a system that meets our energy needs, but then people are able to have more babies (overshoot), and the Earth is too hot to grow food (mass starvation), so it doesn't really matter anyway.
Tom Anderson-Brown
All the brainstorming at TOD amounts to creating an "informal" model distributed among the brains of participants who hold different sets of knowledge, assumptions, definitions of terms and intellectual capabilities.
The overall result is "interesting" but certainly not very reliable as a PREDICTIVE model.
However, given the amount of informations handled and the rate of exchange it is surely more relevant than what was achievable by political/philosophical ruminations in previous periods of history.
capitalising a low EROEI future is a whole topic in itself, a bit like the repair vs replace theory in accounting courses. To calculate EROEI on a non fuel burner you would have to amortise the embodied energy and divide this into the output; example for a miniturbine we could get EROEI = 10 = 1000 mJ electrical output/ 100 mJ energy amortisation annually.
Where I live (Tasmania) has an aluminium smelter on the north coast and a zinc-copper-lead smelter on the south coast powered until recently entirely by hydro. It's hard to envisage metal smelting done by wind power. That's why I think we have to use nuclear power to build lots more wind turbines, solar panels and storage systems. If uranium runs out and there is no breakthrough with breeders/fusion we will be prepared for lean times. We're just pissing away fossil fuels on joyrides and aircons. Also a smaller population would help.
As commenters there point out, wind power should be seen as a carbon-free energy supplement, not a grid capacity enhancer
And who is looking at the value on the rating plate and saying 'this is how much power we should get'?
The biggest issue with very high % of wind penetration is the seasonality. Wind typically peaks (in most but not all areas) in the winter and a minimum in the summer.
The US has over built NG fired electrical plants (90+% of new plants for over a decade). We will have enough NG, however, to run them for a couple of weeks every few years for a long time yet. So reserve generating capacity is unlikely to be an issue for quite some time yet.
The picture would look different with solar generation, as it would be highest during heatwaves, since heatwaves almost always coincide with very sunny conditions. Note that it's the light not the heat generating solar PV power, however (and it's almost impossible to produce enough power with PV even if your whole roof is covered to support a damnable AC with thermostat set to 72 degrees).
The simple reality is people cannot expect to run their ACs as much as they do. The horrendous power demand exceeds reasonable generation using alternative sources. I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy for the complete babies out there who believe they need to keep their house a constant 72 degrees (even when it's 105 degrees outside).
If you don't like the heat, don't move to a sunny area. Life is about experiencing some degree of discomfort. In the summer in California that means some days your well insulated house might get up to 85 degrees. People will have to learn to live with it. Dress lightly and turn on a fan. It's really not that bad. As a bonus, when you step outside it's not quite as shocking because the temperature is only 20 degrees higher, instead of 33.
As far as I'm concerned AC thermostats should be legally mandated to be set no lower than 80 degrees.
And on what BASIS are you making such a statement?
So how do we make steel and silicon when the fossil fuels are gone?
The same way its being done now. With electric power.
http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/enviro.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/gui_ministeel_WB/$FILE/ministeel_PPAH.pdf#se arch=%22mini%20steel%20mills%20electric%22
http://neg-micon.com/uk/sustainability/lifecycleassessment.asp
Please note that wind turbines are NOT mature. They point out that the V90 uses slightly more material than the smaller V80 but produces much more power.
http://strickland.ca/efficiency.html
I need more "real-life" data for the table, but the advantage of electrification is pretty clear. Take the TGV Duplex trainset as an example of the best of electric rail: over 500 passenger-mpg (gasoline equivalent), operating at up to 300 km/h with 80% average occupancy. Even a diesel-electric pulling 10 bilevel cars with all seats full at less than half the speed can't match that efficiency.
If the amount of electrical power from other sources decreases (because of less available oil or natural gas, or because global warming reduces available hydroelectric power), it would seem like this will reduce the maximum amount of usuable wind power on the grid. I wonder if the projections for the big increases in wind usage consider this.
Yes, I've seen that number banded about. I've also seen 100% as theoretically possible for Denmark with 2 weeks' storage of hydrogen. I guess this could also be hydro storage, or compressed air, or flow batteries etc.
That 20% assumes no investments and a 100% take on wind.
Simply throwing away 5% of the potential wind energy "at the worst possible times" will up that 20% significantly.
Also, building more transmission lines, pumped storage, etc. will help raise the %.
I can see a North American grid of 55% wind (by energy) as quite doable and economic.
Bypass cost up $40 million; phasing from two to four lanes possible
By Claudia Reed/TWN Staff Writer
Bypass cost up $40 million; phasing from two to four lanes possible
In one year, the cost of building the Willits bypass increased from $220,000,000 to $260,000,000.
http://www.willitsnews.com/localnews/ci_4306930
Can't we somewhow use PO to kill this sucker off once and for all? For that kind of money, we could repair the rail line to Eurkea. Even relocate parts; maybe bring it along the highway thru Laytonville. It would be nice to have a rail link to W if things really fall apart. We already have access to an 0-4-0 switcher and some cars; all we need are tracks.
Rat droppings for the rest of youse; when I moved up here 20 years ago, they were having siting meetings for this project. The Whirled Serious Earthquake in '89 sucked up all the money for bridge and highway retrofit. Then came the '93 quake in LA. Still no road, but US 101 is in seriously bad shape in at least 2 places.
I may be going to hell in a bucket, but at least I'm enjoying the ride.
Rat Dawg
Gas back to $2.05 in Iowa today. Crude about to break below $64 on Nymex.
World awash in oil again - just like the 70's - OPEC losing control of the markets again - just like the 70's.
History may not repeat it self - but it sure rhymes sometimes.
Pretty soon buyers will be back in dealerships to buy SUVs to drive on all those new roads.
was seen at $2.02 in Ohio. How can gas go from
$3.00 to $2.00 on a $14 barrel drop? Maybe there
is a push to pacify the voters in a key swing
state, Hmm?
Here's hoping the gainfully employed on this list maintain their status.
But $2 a gallon? That's smells fishy to me...
On the contrary, world oil production is down since December (annual decline rate of 2.5% through June, EIA crude + condensate).
Net exports by the top 10 net oil exporters are falling at about 9% per year since December.
We have a credible report that Ghawar is crashing. Saudi Arabia is down by 5.2% through June at 9.1 mbpd, from 9.6 mbpd last year. A Saudi minister put August production at 9.0 mbpd, versus industry estimates of 9.3 mbpd.
We know Cantarell is crashing.
Burgan and Daqing are both declining.
Canadian oil production is down about 10% since December.
The Prudhoe Bay Field--producing oil with a 75% water cut--has surface corrosion problems.
The North Sea is down 30% since peaking in 1999.
Shall I go on?
There are a lot of short term reasons for volatility in oil prices--we have passed the peak hurricane season for the GOM, World War Three has not yet broken out in the Middle East, and we are seeing strong deflationary winds as businesses and consumers try to liquidate highly leveraged assets, but I see no evidence that rising oil production is causing lower oil prices.
IMO, in the very near future the US is going to have to bid oil prices back up to keep gasoline stations supplied.
That's why my curiousity piqued and I think the sudden drop is fishy -IMO the market fundamentals shouldn't be causing the price to go down right now unless we are headed into a recession.
And this:
I think may be right on.
It's time people, even those here, start realizing how far we have advanced in the game. And that is much further than we would like.
We're not talking a 10 year window anymore. Anybody want to predict, based on Jeff''s numbers above, what we'll see a year from now? You add it all up, that's a lot of oil leaving and never coming back....
The majority of the numbers are still more or less "unadmitted". And we are way better informed than others. But the numbers don't lie.
So let's have it, where will we be 365 days from now?
I think things have overshot to the downside here. We'll probably see $66/$67 again before we see $60.
I believe we have a lot more clarity on the long term, and much more confidence in the production erosion of the large fields that have constituted the bulk of the production historically. But we need to accept that even if there is a short-term surplus, it doesn't negate the long-term issues.
If we put aside the desire to see a current crude shortage for just a moment, there is plenty of evidence that right now there is a surplus of crude on the market. Prices are dropping. Storage is full. Swing producer KSA has cut back production. Accept the obvious. There is more crude available than needed at $65 per barrel.
That doesn't mean that we aren't approaching PO. If oil production is down, it means some consumers (likely 3rd world) have dropped out of the market. It's pretty clear that the run up in prices this Spring were due to consumers building up inventories in fear of the hurricane season and threats directed towards Iran. As those fears dissipate, the price is reflecting that supply exceeds demand... at least for now.
Stick to your long-term guns, they are fully loaded. But insisting that KSA has run out of supply is simply not supported by the evidence.
First, I'm not arguing that the Saudis are "out of supply."
Based on EIA data, KSA started declining in October, 2005, and the latest EIA data (through June) show that their production is down by 5.2% since September. Note that this also when the Saudis pledged to raise production because of the hurricanes. Oil prices have been trading in a 10% to 30% higher price range than late 2005, while Saudi production has been falling. (We saw this same pattern in Texas.)
Based on our mathematical HL modeling, KSA was at the same stage of depletion in 2005 that Texas was at when Texas peaked in 1972. In an Energy Bulletin article, Khebab and I presented data suggesting that KSA was on the verge of a permanent decline.
Their largest field, Ghawar, is at the same stage of depletion at which the Yibal Field--same reservoir, same drilling practices--started crashing, and Heinberg has reported that Ghawar is crashing.
So, your statement is true. Nothing suggests that the Saudis are running out of oil, but the evidence does suggest that their production decline is not voluntary.
We always have production shut-in for some reason. We also have unconventional production in Canada, that does not fit the model, that is included in the production numbers.
I don't know how many times I have said this, but I can't see any way that we are going to have rising oil production when the four largest producing fields are declining. At least one field, Cantarell is crashing, and we have a credible report that another field, Ghawar, is crashing. Ghawr accounted for more than half of Saudi production last year. Wishing that Peak Oil isn't here will not make it so.
Cantarell probably started 2006 at around two mbpd. This suggests that Cantarell is probably going to be in the vicinity of the worst case decline scenarios (up to 40% per year).
'2006Q1 set a new record of 85.17-mbd & the monthly record is now July 2006 with a revised IEA figure of 86.2-mbd. This compares to 84.3 in July 2005. The future is unfolding as it should... in line with almost all the Depletion models.'
I always love a good discussion with facts, damn facts, and lies. Well, not lies, but dueling facts which can only leave one set standing in the end.
On the other hand, the timing of such a price 'collapse' (remember those old, old, old days of lets say 2000, when gas was what? $1.20 a gallon?) does seem strange.
But then, peak oil and price are not really the same thing, otherwise oil production in Texas would have gone up significantly over the last couple of years to take advantage of such massive increases in price - 4 fold since 2000.
And yet, Texas oil production hasn't gone up in any significant way. Strange - somehow, the standard laws of economics, supply and demand, profit, and so on, just don't seem to apply to Texas, the North Slope, or the North Sea. Must be an Anglo-American thing, since Anglo-Americans likely just don't understand the eternal writ of economic laws. I remain certain that OPEC can avoid that little cultural quirk, and just keep pumping any amount they wish, forever.
Though I still think peak is now, my being off a year or three or five is not really relevant (in the sense we are never reaching 90, 100, or 120 million barrels per day - fluttering around the top is not all that relevant in my opinion). What is relevant, for example, is how well insulated your home is, or how much debt you carry, or what line of work you are in, or how dependent you are on a car or food delivered from Chile or South Africa.
I don't think peak will happen in 2016 - I think the debate of when peak occurred will be a very simple one to answer to by then. Assuming anyone is still interested.
So, Fred baby, What is your prediction on the date when Cantarell will get up to 4 million barrels a day??
GM stock up 4.25% - smart money knows those Tahoes are going to be rolling out of showrooms soon.
Jeeze, I don't know. I'm really torn.
First, I think there are too many vested interests to stop the by-pass at this point. Second, as much as I like rail, I don't think that amount of money would come close to re-opening the railroad to Eureka. Plus, there is less freight as the lumber mills have closed. Third, there are major traffic jams especially after events like Raegge (or however it's spelled) on the River and the Kate Wolf Memorial concert and Earth Dance at the Hog Farm. Were I living in Willits, these traffic jams would get old.
What I would really like to see is the rail from Dos Rios used for light rail, passenger transportation to Willits, Ukiah, Hopland, Cloverdale and Santa Rosa.
Todd
Sounds good and let's throw in Windsor too. The reality is that much of the Hwy 101 corridor north of San Francisco could have light rail serving the towns along it - probably all the way to Marin; or going from south to north, all the way to Dos Rios/Laytonville.
Unfortunately, such a line would probably end in Willits since Laytonville has trouble getting enough ridership for a mini-bus going south and it has gone from two runs a day to one.
Todd
Arizona seeks to bypass Bush on CO2 emissions
Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Arizona's governor signed an executive order late last week to cut emissions of gases linked to global warming, becoming the second state leader in the U.S. West to try to bypass President George W. Bush's refusal to regulate output of the gases.
=Climate change heads for the US Supreme Court
Lucy Sherriff, The Register (UK)
The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the arguments in the case of Massachusetts vs the Environmental Protection Agency
=
Fear of global warming unites evangelicals, environmentalists
Jeff Barnard, Associated Press via Eugene Register Guard
=
====Christians consider flying in the face of climate change
Staff, Ekklesia (UK)
Christians are to debate whether they should continue to fly given the reality of climate change
http://www.energybulletin.net/20399.html
You may recall my earlier postings on the humanimal ecosystem with the topdogs at the premier level scaling on down to a humanimal gnat on the detritus scale. Well, here is a Yahoo newslink that talks about eight different levels in the USA, but if you are paying attention to my postings you realize there are actually many more. Such is life.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=1951610169657809939&q=911
But it seems very hard to believe.
You mean the 9000 gallons of kerosene directed at the buildings by trained substitute pilots? Or the 19th Jihadi Air Corps, if you like.
It's about the Downslope of "Abundant" energy. It showcases Richard Duncan's work(To which I personnally subscribe), Even though if may be on the fringe of this board, We have talked about less relevant subjects before.
-----------------------------------
Back to the Ancient Future
Chewing Raw Grubs with the 'Nutcracker Man'
<Huge snip>
---------------------------------------------------------
I heard an "expert" say the other day that science will solve the peak oil problem, probably through nuclear energy, as if that did not have its own awful implications. Sure buddy. Just like the "Green Revolution" solved the world's agricultural foods problem by poisoning the earth with pesticides and burning two gallons of oil to produce a pint of milk.
---------------------------------------------------
Boy I love that quote.
And this one.
---------------------------------------------------------
Yes, we will be saved by the very science and technology that evolved from, and is completely dependent upon, an energy source that will no longer exist. I think the pundit probably understands that, but like all media and political people, safely assumes the public has the critical thinking capability of a jar of fruit flies.
Shut up and watch Survivor!
Well hell then. What does keep the American people from looking around them and seeing the obvious? That the earth is a finite thing being used up at exponential rates? Answer: The Spectacle. American capitalism's "media hologram." We no longer have a country, but the artificial spectacle of one. We have a global corporation masquerading electronically, digitally, financially, and legally and every other way as a nation called the " United States of America ." The corporation now animates most of us from within through management of the need hierarchy of goods and information. We no longer have citizens. We have consumers, "purchase decision makers" whose most influential act in life consists of choosing a mortgage banker and an NFL team. And a car. The majority of modernized technical humans, Digitus Cathodus Americanus, cannot perceive the hologram because their self-identities were generated by it. It's "reality" to them -- the only one they will know until the hologram collapses with their electrical industrial civilization.
By design or not, the hologram's primary effect has been to induce the illusion of a national "value system" through hypnotic repetition of images. Thus profit-seeking enterprises are legitimized as the animating spirit of our identities as individuals and as a nation. The end result of course is the mass replication of millions of uniform "market segmented consumer identities." Individuality is circumscribed by brand identification. The overall aggregate of brand identification groups is interpreted to be an inherently superior race or nation (worth fighting for to expand the resource base and markets.) We no longer have lives, just lifestyles that are defined and expressed through ever expanding (and more profitable) consumption.
Net result: The legions of humanity toil to generate the trucks and tofu, munitions, missiles, newspapers, petrochemicals and pizza and millions of tons of ground up cattle sold to fire the furnace of an economic engine that has taken on a life of its own. One that must grow exponentially, devouring everything just to survive. Just to keep from collapsing. And people are taught that it is called "human progress."
------------------------------------------------------
Read the whole thing.
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2005/04/back_to_the_anc.html
Thank you to who ever posted a link to this guy.
The above touches a few different topics we have hit lately.
Our desire to "Get the Message across to the masses" should be reflected upon the above perceptions.
John
We're Toast
Excuse me but to an optimistic pragmatist this is just a "a list of fuzzy concerns" you are making "a gut call".
P.S. I think that beside a "domerosity" index we need an "idiocy" index, or should that be a "mendacity" index?
http://dieoff.org/page125.htm
It is very hard to believe this is accurate. Two gallons of average oil would cost at least $2. Leaving aside all othetr costs of production, this is still significantly more than a pint of milk costs to buy.
The only way this would even be possible is to assume massive subsidies, but the same holds in Thailand where I live and the level of subsidies here isn't at a high enough level.
A pint of milk where I am costs about 25% as much as two average gallons of oil. How is it possible to have a single input in a complex process cost four times as much as the output? The answer: it's not.
The study you linked to states that the food that each American eats is the equivalent to 400 gallons of oil, a far more believable figure. So combining this with the two gallons claim, the entire annual diet of the average American has the energy content of 50 gallons of milk.
400 gallons of oil divided by 365 days is about 1.1 gallons per day. If a pint of milk uses two gallons, then the average American uses the energy content equivalent to that of 8.8 ounces of milk.
Now that doesn't sound so bad, does it?
Thank you for the article though. I do think it is an interesting topic. I have printed it and will read it tonight.
"The Economist" not that long ago was arguing that it was cheaper to deal with the effects of global warming (if it was real) when they happened, rather than mitigating it now.
They've changed their tune, big time. I just got this week's edition, and the cover story is "The Heat Is On: A Special Report on Climate Change."
In the center is a 24 page special report, with a leader saying ""The uncertainty surrounding climate change argues for action, not inaction. America should lead the way."
The chapters in the report are "in the loop" about positive feedback loops; "those in peril by the sea" about the possible shutdown of the gulfstream & rise in sea levels; "bringing back the barley" about mild weather in Greenland; "reaping the whirlwind" about bigger and badder hurricanes; "where the wild things are" about the problems of plant and animal migration to new thermal regions; "Dismal calculations" about the economics of dealing with it; "selling hot air" about Kyoto; "anti hero" about china; "a coat of green" about green businesses; "doing it their way" about the US; and "where to start" about tech and econ solutions, and the problems of politics.
I am now eagarly awaiting some day in the future when the Economist gives P.O. the same treatment.
And pigs may fly! I'll beleive it when i see it!
I'm pretty skinny. I have direct family members who are pretty fat. I've got relatives who are really fat. I've got relatives who are also skinny. I've got relatives with eating disorders. Some make them fat. Some make them skinny. Probably none of those eating disorders make them healthy.
I find the fat thing to be like Black, or Jewish, Catholic. I think of it as racism. I'm colorblind, penny-wise, and pound-foolish. And I'm still trying to figure out the differences between the Bible and the Koran.
Strangely, I have an extremely fat friend who showed me a picture of himself in the army in Vietnam. He was a beanpole. And I also know the rest of the story.
Jews control Hollywood. Fat people control SUVs. That's not what I'm saying you are saying. It is what I'm saying you sound like.
I like Wharf Rat and pigs that fly. I like Pink Floyd.
I'm not holding you up for criticism. I'm holding what you say up. There is far too much of this here.
Let's think about this realistically. Pound for pound, they are getting better gas mileage than you. What are you going to do?
Personally, I like my girls like Paris Hilton. I also like to walk. Paris doesn't like guys who walk. I need a cheeseburger.
How many little nurses do you think it takes to move a 418 pounder? What can you say, when nursing has to call maintenance to send 5 big guys over to move somebody?
It's like second hand smoke, although the effects can be a lot more immediate and painful. Workman's comp forever? That only gives money. Doesn't relieve pain and suffering and limitations on physical abilities.
And what's our answer? Self discipline? Does the doc say "Exercise and diet"?. Nope; "We have this nice little operation where we disembowel you. No effort required. Eat them fries." Trouble is, the town where Todd and I live lost a dear, dear lady to a pulmonary embolus behind this procedure last year . Head of Peer counseling, the riding instructor,ran Healthy Start, I think; gone to a blood clot after her stomach was stapled.
It's really hard for a town of 1500 to replace somebody like her. RIP, Michelle
Skinny Rat ranting
I always try to turn things around and point them at myself. I can't ever be prejudiced. Like I said. I'm blind to hate. But I feel the frustration.
Or more pertinent to the situation, as Axl Rose once said -
"I'd light another cigarette, but I can't see."
Most Americans are upset that our officials in Congress have consistently voted themselves payraises and benefits far in excess of the inflation rate, whle consistently cutting education, healthcare and many other basic services. But this is nothing compared to Mexican politicians, who earn compensation that would even embarrass our pols: Politics, the Wonderful Road to Riches in Mexico.
At the opposite end of Mexico's humanimal ecosystem is this link on the arrest of a couple of biosolar subsistence farmers:
--------------------------------------
According to yesterday's police action, it is perfectly fine to ram a highway through or keep a microwave tower atop an ecological reserve, but not to plant radishes. Prosecutors demand 20,000 pesos (about $2,000 dollars) bail for the release of the two prisoners, an amount that surpasses their average annual income. They are charged with the crime of "change of land use."
-------------------------------------
Reminds me of how Florida officials wanted to use imminent domain in a poor Riviera Beach neighborhood to use the land for exclusive resorts, yacht marinas, and building ever more yachts....I think a better use of the land postPeak is to grow radishes.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Hard for me to tell if they are going to have a civil war or not, but this Forbes Magazine link says the Govt is going to burn the ballots even though BOTH CANDIDATES [AMLO and Calderon] asked them not to burn them. Makes no sense to me.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
AMPOD [Matt Savinar] has a great intro to a link in his Breaking news section:
--------------------
In America our religion is the pursuit of wealth. Oil is the mostly densely concentrated form of wealth ever known.
It is thus, for all intents and purposes, our God. The
reason people aren't showing up to your meeting is your message is their God is about to forsake them.
Even if you do your best to frame this as an opportunity
to worship other gods (like community), that is not going
to work on people fully vested in the petroleum cult. If,
like many peak oil activists, you've been worshipping
other gods (like community or self-sufficiency) for many
years, it might be hard for you to understand this on a
visceral level. You see this as an opportunity to convert
people to a way of thinking that is healthier and more
fulfilling than the petro-cult ideology they are currently
subscribed to. But the average person see this as a
shattering of everything they've ever believed and
invested in. That's why people don't show up in the
numbers you think they would given the size of the crisis.
-----------------------------
IMO, AMPOD is one of the best young writers out there. Hopefully, he can get alot of other youngsters interested. Older farts like me [51 years] don't have much success in Peakoil Outreach.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Oil as God. Very interesting idea. This makes a lot of sense to me. I hadn't thought of it in that context, but it makes complete sense in regards to the resistance people have to Peak Oil.
Tom Anderson-Brown
Thxs for responding. Yep, AMPOD, as usual, hits the nail on the head. When I tell people that we should be tearing up every other street now in Phx's Asphalt Wonderland to relocalize permaculture: they look at me like I am nuts. Psychologically equivalent to me asking them to go burn the church, synagogue, temple, or mosque of their respective faiths. Next time you are driving around, consider that everything you see is an Altar to our God Detritus.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
The total paved area in the US equals the total land mass of the UK
Ain't that just so cute?
PS much, if not most, of that once was prime farm land
"let 'em eat tar"
"let 'em eat growth"
Till the next spiral up again, but as it falls back to the same ole same ole. As housing crashs you will see more lackluster spending on the big things and that will include oil prices.
Yeah I kinda see us heading for lower times, slower living.
IMO, I think the current oil price is only the short-term outcome of legalized gambling and that is often true.
By my rough calculations we have introduced 6.0 million barrels per day of capacity since october 2004 ( megaprojects online 2004 and 2005 + 2 million small unaccounted for fields over 2 years+ part capacity of projects started in 2006 (mega + small))
I am assuming all 2005 projects are at almost full capacity by now ( probably not true).
I am not taking into account the infill drilling.
So I am assuming about 6.0 million capacity minus the current nigerian outage (800,000), current hurricane lost capacity (200,000) and BP outage (200,000).
If we see that there is no statistical difference between october 2004 and now we have depletion at 4.8 million Barrels per day over about 2 years or about 3% AFTER INFILLING.
Is this a reasonable assessment?
Would appreciate your input. Plan to incorporate it in a talk at my University.
Thanks.
Four points: Ghawar; Cantarell; Burgan; Daqing
We have credible reports that all four of the largest producing fields in the world are declining. Cantarell is crashing. Heinberg reported that Ghawar is crashing, which is supported by the overall decline in Saudi production and their new status as a fuel oil importer, combined with their domestic shortage of natural gas (probably as a result of reduced associated gas production).
The reason that we can compare producing regions to each other is that we find the big fields first.
Saudi Arabia is hugely exposed to a decline at Ghawar, since the field accounted for more than half their production last year. In contrast, the East Texas Field accounted for about 7% of Texas production at peak.
The near certain simultaneous declines of the four largest fields in the world is the primary reason that I do not expect to see any increase in oil production.
In regard to oil prices, they can of course be all over the place for a number of reasons. But the key point to keep in mind is that we are not seeing a positive supply response to a huge price signal.
Again, we have seen this before.
To recap, in Texas we saw a 1,000% increase in oil prices, the biggest drilling boom in state history, a 14% increase in the number of producing wells and a 30% drop in oil production over a 10 year period. So far, we are seeing exactly this same pattern in Saudi Arabia.
Past the peak, Higher Oil Prices + More Oil Wells = Lower Production
I agree that we have credible evidence that the big 4 may be crashing simultaneously. But for the past 2 years is a depletion rate of 3% without the effects of infilling a reasonable assumption?
And how cheap will the fuel be?
Kinda cool...
What kind? Infernal combustion engine or fool cell?
What's a fuel cell? A battery that is recharged with hydrogen.
What I don't like about hydrogen: At the mercy of it being available and the price of it(up and down).
What is a fuel cell really? An electric car.
When these new aluminum batteries hit the market, we won't be using gasoline anymore. The only ones using diesel will be the trains, cargo ships, semi trucks, and aviation(kerosene).
http://www.europositron.com/en/background.html
What do you have against an electric car that is fast and powerful and gets 1,000 or 2,000 miles of range on a charge?
All these hybrid cars the OEM's are making... it wouldn't take much to make them full blown electric. Remember the RAV4 EV Toyota made for a couple of years? They still make the RAV4... Just not the EV.. I'm sure they still have the plans..
Ever hear of "Ultra Capacitors" before?
http://electricperformance.com/forum/index.php?topic=11
Why ?
One can travel TODAY (it takes @ 9 days) from London to the Pacific Ocean on a few drops of lubricating oil.
Outside the US, most developed nations use electricity for main line trains (some nations use diesel for lightly used branch lines, soem nations are 98% to 100% electrified).
The US, Canada & Mexico should electrify our main rail lines ASAP.
Back on July 29, Prof. Goose posted a poll:
Oil Price Poll Redux
In your opinion, in the next two months, oil prices (CLU/V6) will...
reach $63/bbl before they reach $83/bbl 2%
remain in a trading range from $63 to $83/bbl 49%
reach $83/bbl before they reach $63/bbl 47%
And today it happened, by some definition: oil fell below $64 and closed at $63.76, hitting $63 ("and change") before $83.
Congratulations to the 2% of The Oil Drum readers who got this right! (I'm not one of them...)
But let's think about this a little. What does it mean when 98% of the readership here gets this question wrong? Those who have followed my writings will know that a persistent theme is the tremendous uncertainty of the future, and what a mistake it is to be overconfident in our predictions about what will happen.
Many TOD readers have very strong views about what they think will happen in the future, and show tremendous confidence that their vision will be correct. But the events of the last two months, events which were considered so unlikely that only 2% of poll takers predicted them, should reminds us of how surprises are always lurking out of sight.
The truth is, we don't know what will happen with oil supply for the next few years, and we don't know what will happen with demand. Supply might falter if Ghawar and other major fields fail, or maybe they'll hang on and new production will come on strong as some forecast. Demand may continue to grow rapidly with China competing with the West for oil, or a U.S. recession may slow growth for the entire world. We could see either a glut or a shortage of oil.
This is the true degree of uncertainty we face. I've also pointed to this excellent Econbrowser post where he shows that oil futures market option prices imply that the 95% confidence interval for oil prices in 2010 is $15 to $250! And there's still a 5% chance it will be outside that range. That is the uncertainty the market recognizes, and it fits very well with the style of analysis I just described.
Don't make the mistake of saying, well, it could well hit $250 but it could never hit $15. That's the same way people were thinking two months ago about $83 vs $63. People were 98% sure it wouldn't happen, and yet it did. There are many ways we could see $15 oil in a few years.
I'd encourage TOD readers to learn a lesson from recent surprising events and remember that only 2% of participants here got the answer right. It should be a lesson in humility for the rest of us and encourage us to be more cautious and less cocky in our blanket statements about the future.
Of course the future could take us out of this range but in that case no one is right because the question didn't allow for such a case !
The sun will rise tomorrow.
Bet your bottom dollar on that.
2% got it right, why helll, that's a record almost as good as Yergin's! :-)
Like I try to tell you all, and everyone gets sooooo pizzzed, we're running completely in the blind......
---------------
Just playing around.....
Nasdaq,
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EIXIC&t=my
Dow,
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EDJI&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
Crude oil, collapse to $10 dollars, in 1999, rebound to over $30, then recollapse to below $20 per barrel
http://www.bts.gov/publications/transportation_indicators/january_2002/Economy/images/World_Crude_Oi l_Prices1.gif
Crude oil price, 2002, the big run up...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1915000/images/_1918428_crudeoil_9_4_2002_300graph.gif
The longer picture
http://www.oil-price.net/5y.gif
Inflation adjusted, from 1982 (the start of the bull market) to 2000 (roughly the top of the bull market run), how much did the crude oil price go up compared to the increase in the:
Dow?
Nasdaq?
S&P?
Overall inflation, or CPI?
Average new home price?
If we go from Sept 13 1982, to todays price (Sept 13, 2006) how much compared to the three indicators above? By the way, FULL ROUT UNDERWAY as of 4:39AM, Eastern time, Brent Crude at 62.97, nat gas to $5.51
Have fun!
Forecast, for fun!
http://www.forecasts.org/images/leading-indicator/oil.gif
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Ron Patterson
The main points seem to be:
The Amazon rainforest is a vulnerable ecosystem that depends on its ability to create its own climate / rainfall.
Its ability to do so is being compromised by a combination of logging and ocean warming.
Air current from the latter have been interfering with the Amazon's micro-weather and rainmaking in particular.
The Amazon ecosystem could collapse after a few years of severe drought.
Collapse would be followed by massive forest fires that could by themselves add an amount of CO2 comparable to several years of human activity.
The threat is real and that the Amazon is headed towards a tipping point.
Predictably, there is disagreement about when the tipping point will be reached.
No one seems to be doing much about it.