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Out of Gas 1098
Oil -- and energy in general -- has long been a big topic among
Slashdot readers. Predictions about The End of the Age of
Oil (about which, claims the subtitle, this book provides "all you need to know") certainly are not new --
and if civilization lasts long enough, one day they'll prove true.
It's nice to consider that automobiles aren't necessarily
tied to petroleum, but mine certainly runs on 87 octane gasoline,
and there aren't enough turkey guts or grease to power everything that we use petro-fuels for right now (though places like Iceland are trying hard to tap other sources). Current gas
prices (in the U.S. at any rate) are higher than they have been in a
decade or so, but in constant dollars, gasoline prices have certainly been worse. How much to panic, and when? Read on below for Arthur Smith (apsmith)'s brief review of David Goodstein's Out of Gas for a rather gloomy look at the future of oil-based energy.
Americans have started to notice prices at the pump with an unfamiliar '2' on the sign. Meanwhile, crude oil prices are hitting 13-year records close to $40 per barrel. As the International Energy Agency reports, there is "no relief in sight". All this should come as no surprise to readers of David Goodstein's Out of Gas - the only question is, have we left it too late to survive the inevitable shocks that are coming?Out of Gas: All You Need to Know about the End of the Age of Oil | |
author | David Goodstein |
pages | 128 |
publisher | W.W. Norton & Company |
rating | 9/10 |
reviewer | Arthur Smith |
ISBN | 0393058573 |
summary | Why replacing oil is the world's most urgent and ignored problem. |
In this slim and subtly illustrated volume Dr. Goodstein, physics professor and vice provost at Caltech, explains in clear and simple terms why the fossil fuel age is coming to an end. A "massive, focused commitment" is needed to develop alternatives, and every year of delay in that commitment adds immeasurably to future human suffering.
In years, or at best a decade, we will reach the global "Hubbert's peak" for conventional oil, when production starts to decline even with rising demand. Such a peak was reached for US production in 1970. "Foreign oil" has sustained us until now, but Goodstein shows why it cannot for much longer.
A number of books on this subject have come out in recent years, some very pessimistic about the future (for example Heinberg's "The Party's Over", which warns of a greatly decreased world population). Goodstein offers some hope in alternatives, substantially based on the analysis of climate scientist and space solar power advocate Martin Hoffert.
Solar-based renewables and fusion are the only long-run energy solutions. According to Goodstein, natural gas and nuclear fission can help tide us over. All of these have problems, with the most scalable (solar power from space) still the least mature. Goodstein's longest chapter discusses thermodynamics and the physical laws that explain usable energy and its relation to entropy. As a physicist, I was pleased and surprised to learn something from Goodstein's clear explanation here.
Goodstein also discusses global climate problems with continued use of fossil energy, particularly an increasing dependence on coal. He concludes: "Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we find a way to live without fossil fuels."
There were a few minor things to complain about. Transitions between the chapters are too abrupt, perhaps caused by the wide range of discussion in such a short book. A few technical things seemed wrong - for example, it is quite feasible to run transportation systems off grid electricity (electric trains, subways, etc. do this) - would it be so hard to do it for personal transport too?
But Goodstein's book is the clearest explanation yet of our need to get beyond fossil fuels. Is it enough to get the public, and our leaders, actually paying attention?
You can purchase the Out of Gas: All You Need to Know about the End of the Age of Oil from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
These are all lies (Score:4, Funny)
Re:These are all lies (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh. I can't tell if you're making fun of Bush, or if you're making fun of the perception of Bush. Way to make a political joke that means something to both sides!
Damn I wish I had a mod point.
Re:These are all lies (Score:5, Interesting)
----------
George Washington - In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own... No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.
Herbert Hoover - It is a dedication and consecration under God to the highest office in service of our people. I assume this trust in the humility of knowledge that only through the guidance of Almighty Providence can I hope to discharge its ever-increasing burdens.
James Monroe - with my feverent prayers to the Almighty that He will be graciously pleased to continue to us that protection that he has already so conspicuously displayed in our favor.
William Harrison - I deem the present occasion sufficiently important and solemn to justify me in expressing to my fellow-citizens a profound reverence for the Christian religion and a thorough conviction that sound morals, religious liberty, and a just sense of religious responsibility are essentially connected with all true and lasting happiness.
John Adams - And may that Being who is supreme over all, the Patron of Order, the Fountain of justice, and the Protector in all ages of the world of virtuous liberty, continue his blessing upon this nation and its government and give it all possible success and duration consistent with the ends of His providence.
Calvin Coolridge - America seeks no earthly empire built on blood and force. No ambition, no temptation, lures her to thought of foreign dominions. The legions which she sends forth are armed, not with the sword, but with the cross. The higher state to which she seeks the allegiance of all mankind is not of human, but of divine origin. She cherishes no purpose save to merit the favor of Almighty God.
Dwight Eisenhower - This is the hope that beckons us onward in this century of trial. This is the work that awaits us all, to be done with bravery, with charity, and with prayer to Almighty God.
Teddy Roosovelt - No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness.
Woodrow Wilson - I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me.
FDR - The Almighty God has blessed our land in many ways. He has given our people stout hearts and strong arms with which to strike mighty blows for freedom and truth. He has given to our country a faith which has become the hope of all peoples in an anguished world. So we pray to Him now for the vision to see our way clearly--to see the way that leads to a better life for ourselves and for all our fellow men--to the achievement of His will to peace on earth.
Abe Lincoln - Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on him who has never forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.
Re:These are all lies (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not forget synthetics...and politics... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let's not forget synthetics...and politics... (Score:5, Interesting)
We've been led astray by believing the estimates of the OPEC nations with regards to their reserves. Well, the price they get, according to their agreement, is tied to how large their reserves are. There is zero incentive for any of the OPEC nations to provide an accurate estimate if it means lowering the number. In addition, many of the wells are pumping out large quantities of water that was pumped down into the oil fields to force out more oil. They are beginning to go "dry" so to speak.
Check out www.peakoil.net [peakoil.net] for more information.
Re:Let's not forget synthetics...and politics... (Score:5, Insightful)
PeakOil does the same thing, in spite of his silly rebuttal in the FAQ. They assume that oil consumption will not change, technology will not improve, and we'll cease to adapt.
Re:Let's not forget synthetics...and politics... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that was a mistake. It's also a mistake to liken an equation attempting to predict human behavior with an equation attempting to predict the physical amount of a substance that is left, namely oil. Human beings can change themselves, oil reserves cannot.
As to www.peakoil.net being a scare-monger site, it's hard to imagine what they're trying to scare us into, unless it's thinking ahead. Or perhaps you might be afraid that Colin Camplbell, the founder of peakoil.net is a liberal. I don't know what his exact politics are, but check out his background, taken from this article [fromthewilderness.com]:
Re:Let's not forget synthetics...and politics... (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is what ExxonMobil has to say about the matter. [peakoil.net] Hardly scaremongering.
Add to the mix the fact that some oil companies have been overestimating their oil reserves, [chemicalnewsflash.de] and you have a looming problem that is notscaremongering. Are we adapting (using our oil resources more wisely/conserving)? Not really. [doc.gov]
Unfrotunately, any debate on oil quickly degenerates into partisan bickerring. The fact remains tha gasoline is cheap and we are used to it. Adjusted for inflation, we should be paying almost twice of what we are used to. [fintrend.com] Like it or not, we are headed for sharply higher oil prices. This will likely provide a shock to the stock market [fintrend.com] and and a related price rise in other comodities we consume.BTW, none of theses views are from "liberal environmentalist caremongerers" (whoever the heck they are.)
Cheers- raga
Transportation is an expense multiplier. (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember only a few years ago -- sometime before 2000 -- there was a summer where gas prices dipped below a dollar in my area. Gas prices are now twice that, and diesel prices are in the $1.50-1.60 range. A 50% increase in the cost of transportation hits the prices of everything hard. Oil prices have a ripple effect on the entire economy, not just the ~$20-40 you spend refilling a gas tank.
Re:Transportation is an expense multiplier. (Score:4, Insightful)
I love how the media likes to dramaticize the increase in oil prices by comparing the current peak to the previous trough (instead of against trendline). If businesses relied on the price of oil to stay unusually low, then they were being way too optomistic for their own good.
On a related note.... (Score:4, Informative)
Article by Matt Helms [freep.com]
Snopes Article [snopes.com]
If all the idiots don't get gas tomorrow, just means less of a wait for me!
Re:On a related note.... (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, even with the high prices, I still see lots of people buying gas at the more expensive station on the other side of the street--even if they have to cross traffic to get there. Obviously they don't mind the prices.
And I laugh at those single drivers in their giant trucks and SUVs.
In the land of empty tanks (Score:5, Funny)
Fuckin bring it on.
Re:In the land of empty tanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Enjoy your bicycle dude, but you'll be in the same position as us, just in a differing way.
Re:In the land of empty tanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In the land of empty tanks (Score:4, Interesting)
The real problem here is not that cars will be fucked -- which they will be if they still run on petroleum -- it's that most people live WAY too far from work and from markets/shops/etc.
I walk to work and do most of my shopping on foot or bike. If worst comes to worst, I can do it all by foot: because I live *in* a city and the things I need are convenient.
If we don't have alternative fuel sources when the shit hits the fan, I predict the suburbs/exurbs will become 21st century ghost towns.
Re:In the land of empty tanks (Score:5, Informative)
Cyclists are gods.
A pound of beef takes around a gallon of gasoline to produce. If we run out of oil, where is the energy going to come from to produce the food that you need to eat to power your bicycle? That, my naive friend, is what oil and energy crises are all about.
Re:In the land of empty tanks (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In the land of empty tanks (Score:5, Funny)
What was the other one?
Great Article: (Score:5, Interesting)
A highly recommended read on what appears to be a similar topic. My favorite line:
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
Remember this about US gas prices (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, this concept is almost completely unknown to most people, I find.
Grmbl... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be way worse if the dollar was higher, I guess... after all the barrel is quoted in dollars.
Damn, I should have bought a diesel instead of a roadster that does 10l/100km (25mpg). *sigh*
Re:Grmbl... (Score:3, Funny)
taxes (Score:4, Informative)
The US has what we consider high taxes on gas. Hawaii is 53.5c (as of July 2002), California is 50.4c, and Texas is 38.4c/gallon. (details [ca.gov])
What about alcohol? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, it would take very little to no modification to get a petrol car to run on grain alcohol.
Re:What about alcohol? (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that alcohol is not as efficient as gasoline when used as a combustion fuel. If you'll recall the "gasohol" stuff that was produced in the 70's, it barely dented gas consumption and was eventually scrapped.
More promising is using alcohol in fuel cells rather than gaseous hydrogen. Alcohol is not as good at combustion as gasoline, but it has more hydrogen and less carbon. If you use a Direct Me [h2fc.com]
Something good may yet come out of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Something good may yet come out of this (Score:3, Interesting)
If this is so, it would see that neither Europeans nor Americans are truely aware of what energy costs, both suffering from a tax induced distortion. And of the two the Americans would seem to have the least distorted notion of the price of energy.
Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
So why are European taxes so much higher? Because they tax as a percentage of the price, whereas the USA taxes as a amount per volume. Hence, if the cost of gas before taxes doubles, in Europe the price at the pump doubles, whereas in the USA the price may only go up 25%.
Now some will argue that the taxes are too low, as they don't cover all the related costs, but all of those studies have included environmental impact costs that are wildly subjective at best.
Excellent review of the book (Score:4, Interesting)
After reading these materials in early January of this year, as I watched oil prices rise higher and higher, I couldn't help but think about what I read!
The other interesting thing about this book is that it points out how petroleum provides us with benefits far beyond keeping our cars running. Plastics? Herbicides? Fungicides? CD-Rs? Certain medicines? All are dependent on keeping the oil flowing.
The only real answer is to reorganize society. (Score:5, Interesting)
Eventually, something will click in someone's head, and they will start to seek alternatives. I started looking at hybrids when my gas pump cut me off at $50.00 without filling my tank ('92 ford bronco, 11 mpg, 32 gallon tank). About a year later, I bought a VW New Beetle with the TDI (diesel) engine. Now it's *possible* to run my car with *no* foreign oil (biodiesel), and to date, about 1/3 of the fuel I've used has been from renewable sources, grown by my local farmers. It costs me $3.00 per gallon at the pump, but thanks ot a rebate program, I'm only paying $1.50 per gallon, net. I'd rather pay $3.00 to the benefit of my local farmer, and local economy, than sending it overseas to support societies that *hate* us. If I get particularly motivated (or more likely, when my warrantee is getting closer to expiration), I can recycle used vegetable oil into fuel at an estimated cost of $0.40-0.50 per gallon.
Not to mention the added benefit of getting 45 mpg without even trying. =)
James Howard Kunstler is my personal favourite "end-of-the-oil-age" critic. He takes the time to posit potential *solutions* to the problem of a transportation-dependent society.
We don't use oil for Electricity (Score:5, Insightful)
PS: If you are stockpiling food and clothing to prepare for the collapse of civilization, you fail to understand what the collapse of civilization means. You should be stockpiling guns and ammo.
High Prices are Required (Score:4, Insightful)
With totally alternate technologies, as gas prices increase they become more cost competitive with gas. The extra cost/complexity of hybrid vechicles becomes less of a factor. Savings from using (now expensive) gas and moving to other fuels can be calculated. If you project increase in gas prices into the future maybe starting to invest in hydrogen powered vehicles can have a faster ROI (regarding all the infrastructure required) than before gas prices went up.
Basically, to sum up, I'm saying higher gas prices just show the need for new technology, they actulally are required to make it happen.
Running out of gas (Score:3, Insightful)
At a 1930's World Fair, there was a "robot" answering people's questions about what life in the future would be like. One of the questions was when we would run out of fossil fuels. This is a topic people have been worried about for a long time.
Thus far, all the predictions of doom have been averted. New techniques for locating oil reserves, and tapping resources in previously unreachable places, through technologies like offshore platforms, have allowed new supplies to keep up with demand.
Of course, the total amount of fossil fuel is finite, even if petroleum engineers become clever enough to locate and extract every drop, that won't keep the world running forever. But much like with Moore's law, new advances have kept us from running into a brick wall so far, and will continue to at least for the near future.
Re:Running out of gas (Score:4, Insightful)
The big questions to ask today are
As to the first, I don't know. Some say India might have some unexploited basins. Certainly, North America and Europe don't have any frontier exploration areas. As to the second, well, that's why I'm in grad school :) But, there are certain physical limitations that mean we will only be able to extract so much oil without spending lots of money and/or energy. That money and energy might be better spend elsewhere.
Re:Running out of gas (Score:5, Interesting)
What Hubbert, and so many of his followers fail to realize is the reason U.S. oil production peaked in the 70's. It had nothing to do with failing reserves, or empty oil fields. It had everything to do with rising costs for extracting oil in the U.S. My family has owned mineral rights in western Oklahoma for over 100 years (land rush in 1889). The first oil and gas wells were drilled on family land around 1940. From about 1978 untill 2002, those wells were pumping at "maintenance levels" only. This means they pumped just enough to keep the self lubrication working and fill the holding tanks as slowly as possible. This was because, the cost of maintenance and transport in the U.S. for that time meant that a barrel of oil cost the oil company $38 to deliver it to the refinery. During that same time avareage world oil prices were $20 - $35 per barrel. The royalty checks for the family, that used to run $4,000 a month or more during the 60's dropped to a couple hundred a month during the 80's and 90's. Most of the family sold thier share of the mineral rights during that time. Now, with higher oil prices those wells are being put back into pruduction and the royalty checks are looking better. Last estimate we received from the oil company surveyors was that we still have probably over 50 million barrels sitting under our land. But if the price per barrel drops again, our wells will be shut back down until they can be profitable.
For more on this subject see... (Score:4, Interesting)
Still a Peak (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if you accept this hypothesis, you still run into a crunch because the rate of metabolysis for oil is incredibly slow over human timescales. Whereas our economic growth rate and thirst for oil is incredibly rapid by comparison. Waiting for new petrol to be squeezed out of rocks is not goin
Cost to society (Score:4, Interesting)
More generally (and more importantly) oil is underpriced, period. Look at the costs to society:
Adjustment is tough (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, what will change things is the rising price of gas. This is a big news item lately, and the reactions kind of freak me out. People everywhere are outraged, and want to know when this will be "fixed". Like maybe they'll go back down next month, or if we boycott ExxonMobil for 24 hours. This is crazy. In the long run, they're gonna go up, forever. It's a resource we have in finitie quantity. It's running out. As it runs lower, it will get more expensive, until eventually nobody is using it to power their cars.
In the short term, the US has far lower gas prices than European countries. It's not like "they're screwing you" with crazy, unjustifiable markup. If you really think that "Big Oil greediness" is to blame, I suggest you start your own gas company and sell for $1.25. You'll certainly have plenty of customers, if you can sustain that profit margin.
www.dieoff.org - depressing news for you (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignorant people think gasoline is unlimited. I'll see the end of it, and the inevitable disaster is not going to be pretty. People think the government should lower prices - that's called communism, and it means shortages. Next time you gripe about the price of gasoline, wonder what you'll do when there is none.
I really hope those stories of the oil companies keeping free energy devices suppressed are true - because the oil companies aren't going to be oil companies for much longer.
Oil is far too valuable to be burning at the TREMENDOUS rate of consumption worldwide currently. There will be NO industrial revolution for most third world countries because of the lack of oil available to build infrastructure.
Green energy sources are a bad joke compared to the amounts of energy we consume from oil. The only long term solution is a 0 growth economy combined with population decrease. The alternatives long-term are not pretty.
Unless, of course, cold fusion works or a feasible technology for extracting energy from the ZPE is found. I sure hope something happens.
Re:www.dieoff.org - depressing news for you (Score:5, Insightful)
The future is already here, my friend.
Re:www.dieoff.org - depressing news for you (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the thing, no one knows how much oil we have left
No, but the experts who are paid a huge pile of money note the rate of discovery of new oil is far below the consumption rate of existing reserves.
What will happen is that we will use up all the oil that can be easily extracted at a net energy gain. If you have to burn 25e6 million barrels of oil to get 20e6 million barrels - there is the problem.
Re:www.dieoff.org - depressing news for you (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, someone did. In 1997. If you do a WayBack search for the site in this thread, dieoff.org, you'll find this tidbit:
http://web.archive.org/web/19980113194457/dieoff.o rg/page128.htm [archive.org]
Jay Hanson predicted a war in Iraq in 1997, and he thought that it would coincide with a peak in oil prices that could occur around 2005. Search on that page for the word Iraq and you'll find this:
Rather chilling, I think. A conspiracy theory, yes. And I had to don my tinfoil hat while reading it. But the prediction is thought provoking. He was right about the war, but he was wrong in that he predicted the American people would throw their support behind a war for oil. In fact we didn't go to war for oil, we went to war to find weapons of mass destruction. Which we haven't found.
Tin foil had still on ...
Good News/Bad News (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, fossil fuels cause astonishing trouble. Most of the bad craziness in the Middle East and Africa is fueled by petrodollars. Does anyone think that we'd be quagmired in Iraq if it weren't for oil? Certainly, we'd end more suffering by going into Sudan, or other places. Why do we coddle the House of Saud after they financed al Qaeda, if it isn't for oil and the promise of growing wealth for the House of Bush and the House of Cheney?
There is also a growing body of evidence that pollution is bad (prior to recently, it was purely conjecture).
It would be great to switch from fossil fuels, and to do it quickly. A Manhattan-Project-like effort for fusion reactors would be appropriate.
Unfortunately, the average SUV-driving American pinhead will keep this from happening for a long time.
It's only a matter of time (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't a matter of giving up our SUVs for hybrid cars. That isn't going to matter one bit. The fact is, we've spent the last 100 years building an entire economy around absurdly cheap energy. This energy is going to run out. If we do not find a way to run our world without petroleum and coal, we are doomed. What's really going to be fun is, when this peak occurs, the powers of the world are going to fight more and more visciously for the remaining scraps. We will face war, poverty, and social upheaval which will grow ever worse as the lights slowly dim... and then burn out.
The only way around this is some serious technological advances. We need to develop a sustainable energy economy, and we need to do it yesterday. Lifestyle changes, solar panels, wind farms, and hybrid cars won't do a damn bit of good without massive new technology.
Boys and girls, we have about 25 years. I suggest you study physics and chemistry. Hard.
Another "Beyond the Limits" (Score:5, Insightful)
Dismally Realistic Science (Score:4, Interesting)
Bully for you!
In the long run, of course, we are all dead, but also in the long run human cultures can and will adapt to a world of incredibly expensive, rare oil.
The question is whether that is a world that can sustain 8+ billion people at anything like the current astonishing consumption rate.
I'm given to understand that economists spend a lot of time measuring the theoretical epiphenomenon known as "productivity" within an "economy". I put it to you that a major input into measurements of productivity is in fact trapped solar energy in the form of fossil fuels.
The transition from a medieval society based on slaves/serfs and water/wind power to the consumption of fossil fuels on a vast, increasing scale over past few centuries is what has enabled us to move from agrarian to an urban societies. We no longer require vast armies of slaves and serfs to till our fields and shit in them - instead we burn fossil fuels to till the, and convert more fossil fuels into fertiliser. By burning 400 years worth of solar energy input every year, we have increased producitivty massively, freeing up hundreds of millions of bodies to work in urban manufacturing and service jobs. We have created our economies, literally, by burning fossil fuels.
Unlike economics, physics and geology doesn't work in a vacuum or a finely divisible continuum of graduated, switchable inputs. There is a finite limit to growth, dictated by several realities: total solar output, diameter of the earth, effectiveness of photosynthesis, energy conversion efficiencies, and so on. We could, as you say, transition our cultures to move from fossil fuels to other power sources, but what are the consequences?
about geothermal energy (Score:3, Interesting)
in january i had the pleasure of visiting the largest such natural steam generator facility in the world on another island cursed/ blessed with geothermal activity, on the island of leyte in the philippines [calenergy.com]
it powers virtually the entire island, for free, as well as parts of samar and lower luzon
the natural steam sources are really quite amazing up there in the mountains: it is always raining, for example, downslope from the facilities because of all of the steam that is always issuing forth... and run off rivers of steaming brilliant cobalt blue from superheated hyperdissolved minerals from deep in the earth mixing with the cold muddy waters in the middle of the mountain jungle... and to find, deep in the poor rural mountain jungles where water buffalo roam free on dirt roads and unhusked rice dries by the roadside, to find what looks like an evil genius's lair of ultramodern technology and giant steaming generators surrounded by nervous machine gun toting filipino forces at military checkpoints
unfortunately, a few weeks after i visited the facility, it was overrun by local npa (communist) guerrillas... this was tied to election politics in the philippines, where remote rural guerilla forces often demand protection money in exchange for allowing voting to proceed... it would be hoped that the poor rural areas in the mountains north of ormoc city around lake danao [mobilemediaph.com] would benefit from this facility more directly through tourist facilities and other infrastructure development
then they would be invested in the success of the plant, rather than it having be controlled by manila and calenergy from afar
but for those who are hellbent on imagining a dystopic future where civilization fails because we don't make the transition from oil to fusion energy, for example, know that there are oases in the world like iceland and leyte where mankind's power hungry needs can and will be satsified for centuries to come, virtually for free
Fission and coal, if we have to (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear waste disposal isn't really a problem. It's a political football in the US, but that's a political problem, not a technical one. There are rock formations that have been stable for twenty million years. (Yucca Mountain isn't one of them, though.)
The problem is Chernoybl-sized disasters and air pollution from the coal. Everybody worries about the first, but the second is more dangerous.
Wanna bet? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I also remember is a $1000 (US) bet between the author of the book and a professor who's name escapes me at the moment. The bet was that the cost of a cross section of commodities, picked by the author, adjusted for inflation, would be LOWER in 20 years than they were at the start of the bet. The book's author lost. Every time, he lost.
The problem? The books author took advantage of the then crises going on (stagflation, unavailable gasoline in the US because we wouldn't buy from countries like Iran) to prey upon people's fears to make money, or to promote their particular dicipline (physics professor pushing for fusion research? Who would have thought that?). This book seems little different.
Saying that we're going to run out of fossil fuels is fine. It'll happen. Saying it's gonna happen in the next decade, and that solar and fusion are the only long term replacements is assinine. What happens if someone figures out a way to make a gasoline replacement from genetically engineered microbes next year? The unpredicibility of the human mind and spirit in finding solutions are completely ignored, and when the author's predictions turn out to be as false as every other prediction, I have little doubt that thsese same attributes will be the culprit.
The current hike in the price of gasoline is not solely based on the availabllity of crude. It's as much, and possibly more, affected by the inability of refineries to process the crude oil into gasoline that is driving prices up. If prices, or demand, were going to stay this high, you'd think oil companies would be falling over themselves to build more refineries...but they're not. Why not? Because they know that, in the longer term, those refineries won't pay for themselves when the price of gasoline drops again.
---Postscript
Finally, I noticed that one of the authours wrote about a lower population in the future? Wouldn't that lead to lowered demand for petroleum? And a longer lasting supply? Or did doomsayer #2 forget to talk to doomsayer #1 before publishing (again)?
Doomsayers (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you know that the average mile per gallon today in the US is lower than in the mid-80s?
What would be the reduction in gas consumption if we all dumped our SUVs and bought Honda Civics?
Now, what if we then switched to Hybrids?
What if we gave up the back seat for our one-person commute and we all switched to smart cars?
What if we equipped said smartcars with super-efficient bicycle-like wheels as California is suggesting we do?
Mark my words: in two years people won't be able to give away for free their gas guzzling SUV (people who are old enough will remember that in the late 70s you could not give away your LTD Crown Victoria).
misunderstandings (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear power would be a great short term stop gap, it's only problem is that it takes a decade to build a reactor.
My last point is that this issue is HUGE. Oil is used in the production of EVERYTHING including alternative energy sources and research. Just imagine how much time and money it would take to produce enough ethenol (or what ever) for everyone's cars, distribute/store it (would current distribution systems work?), and convert every car, truck, big rig, ambulance, firetruck, motorcycle, etc in the country! That only covers land transportation.
Look around you. There is in everything you see a number that represents the ammount of oil it took to create whatever you're looking at and bring it to the spot that it's currently at. Oil was used to produce and transport everything you own (except unimproved realestate). Oil is the constant in equation of everything we make or raise.
Gasoline is not a source, it is a pipe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gasoline is solar energy converted to hydrocarbons by plants, then processed by time and pressure.
But the real source of Energy is the Sun. Mankind's total energy useage per year is still MUCH less than the Sun's total output per year, and is even less than the amount of energy the sun delivers to the planet earth in a year.
It should be obvious that we might be forced to find other ways of converting that energy into useable forms, but that we have no need to worry about running out of energy.
Other side of the story (Score:4, Insightful)
Or great, depending on how you view it. Here in Norway, whose economy is based on the export of oil and natural gas, high oil prices are viewed as good.
I'm not saying that a high usage of oil is any good (to the world as a whole), but for some of us, high prices on oil is just perfect.
We, the US, brought this on ourselves... (Score:5, Interesting)
See, when that crazy SOB was running loose in Iraq, Saudia Arabia and the other OPEC nations were scared. They needed their big buddy, the US, to keep him in line. Now that he is gone and Iraq has declined into a state of continuous *local* guerrilla war, the possibility of Kuwait or Saudia Arabia being invaded is zero. So now, things are a little different between the US and OPEC. Sure, we did them a huge favor by removing Saddam, but now, the US has nothing over them. So, if oil prices should drift up and up and up. So sorry. Pay me, sucker.
Economics motivation for conservation (Score:5, Interesting)
The US has a VERY large reserve of oil, and the world's oil fields are completely under produced. We have at least enough oil for 50-100 more years, unless everyone in China & India start to drive. US consumption can be supported for quite some time.
Either way, if you think that gas-powered cars are evil, you should be rooting for higher oil prices. Otherwise, no serious effort will be made for alternatives.
That said, a serious effort at an alternative has been found and it is called nuclear energy (pronounced "new-clear" -- i know these new fangled science terms are hard).
It harnesses the power of the atom and can be made small enough to power your small car or large enough to power your small country.
Too bad that people think it is unsafe. It is understandable though, given a total of ZERO deaths caused by meltdowns in the western world.
The bigger picture -updated version (Score:4, Informative)
You can find it with many slides at http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/lewis1/
The summary is roughly that we need to make photovoltaics about 10 fold cheaper than they are today(about $4/watt ->$.40/watt), on the way to making them as as cheap as housepaint (say $.20/watt). There is no theoretical obstacle to doing this, and several promising lines of research. If (really when) we can do this ($.20/watt), solar electric energy will be cheap enough to electrolytically reduce CO2 to methanol (CH3OH) which is a fine fuel for transportation, etc., and is already nicely interfaced to out current energy distribution and use systems.
At this low cost, we can even pull CO2 out of the atmosphere directly, directly reversing the CO2 greenhouse effect (my own addition).
Furthermore, this is by far the best option, e.g. otherwise we would need 5000 new 1GW fission reactors to supply the growth in energy needs contemplated in the next 50 years (construction of 2/wk for 50 yrs.) This seems much too dangerous.
Since this is the best apparent practical way out, since we are really talking about a major determinant of the fate of the earth, and timing is critical, one might wonder why the federal funding is so low (about $10M/yr in the US maybe).
Some of the recent research, and the progress made by startup companies is summarized at
http://www.konarkatech.com/news_articles-forbes
http://www.konarkatech.com/news_articles-solrac
http://www.st.com/stonline/press/news/year2003/
http://www.nanosolar.com/advantages.htm
(this is an updated version of a previous post)
.
Umm Ethanol (Score:4, Interesting)
Much of this country's corn is wasted, or sent to other places as 'aid'. We dont need any of the gasoline we are using now.
Even most lubricant oil can be replaced with soy oil..
The only real reason we still have an oil industry is due to the $$ it generates for washington.
Excellent Timing to scare the masses... (Score:5, Informative)
Meanwhile, the USA is filling its strategic oil reserves to the highest levels ever [quicken.com]. The thought is that with the proper reserves, they could soak any future terrorist attack that may cut off supply... recall that Bill Clinton tapped the oil reserves in 2000 [bbc.co.uk] for price control, a move widely seen as covering up effects of the dot-com recession that had begun earlier in the year. In 2000, it was noted that the reserves could support 100% production levels in the USA for two months, and that was at 571m barrels. Prices at the time were only about $26/barrel as shown on this graph [oilnergy.com].
Obligatory Blues Brothers quote (Score:5, Funny)
Jake: Yep. Fill 'er up.
Attendant: No. We're out of gas!
Methanol from coal. (Score:5, Interesting)
Coal is in the long run a better choice because we have so much of it--about four trillion tons in the US alone which translates roughly to 8 trillion barrels (global oil reserves are estimated at about 1 trillion barrels). One problem is that coal conversion plants are relatively expensive to build, and since there's little demand right now we don't have the capacity to start producing huge quantities immediately if there is a sudden spike in gas prices.
Methanol has about half the energy density of gas (so you'd have to refill more often) but it also has lower emissions. On the other hand the lower emissions are offset by the environmental damage from coal recovery, i.e. strip mining.
Water, not Oil. (Score:5, Informative)
The energy sector will move completely to natural gas alternatives (condensates, gas hydrates, LNG) long before it moves to free hydrogen. But this movement has already been happening and is already proving highly profitable for domestic and international companies (Double Cross, TXO, Chesapeake, Devon, CDX, Marathon, etc.). The petroleum industry is economically the largest industry on the planet. It has the resources to adapt to changing energy markets. In a way, the companies and people who work to bring you your hydrocarbon energy will never be out of business, their model will merely change. The end of the oil age shouldn't concern you nearly as much as the end of civilization due to demand for water and the rapidly declining availability of usable water.
Almost every part of the globe is seeing a decrease in available water supply. Disputes over water will be much more devastating than the disputes over oil have been. Not one hydrologist I've talked to has an optimistic outlook on the future of the worlds usable water supply. It's a problem that doesn't have even half of a percent of the resources or attention that is poured into petroleum and that's unfortunate because it's a problem that will kick the worlds ass a lot sooner than the lack of fossil energy.
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Informative)
Business will abosrb rising energy costs for a short period of time (the market keeps a downward pressure on price increases), but eventually, there will be overall rises in prices if energy prices stay high.
There are a couple of things affecting gas prices:
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
You know why? Because they are making too much bloody money on it! It's not just the fault of the Environimental Nuts!
It's worse than that (Score:5, Interesting)
What this probably means is that we screwed up when the mergers were allowed. Then again, we also screwed up 25-odd years ago when we used the half-assed measure of CAFE regulations instead of just taxing fuel. We screwed up again when we allowed the California Air Resources Board to try to mandate use of ZEVs (in practice, battery-only electric cars) before the battery technology was remotely ready rather than far more achievable HEVs. If 30% of all new vehicles sold in California since 1990 had been hybrids, we'd be way beyond Toyota and Honda technologically and the reduced fuel demand would have eliminated the refinery capacity squeeze too.
Right now we need to aim at plug-in hybrids, so that our cars aren't totally dependent on petroleum for energy. Even if they didn't get radically better mileage than current vehicles, the flexibility in energy supply would add elasticity to fuel demand and moderate prices.
Re:It's worse than that (Score:4, Insightful)
You are mixing two different things that don't go together. There are three hybrid cars in common production right now--Honda Insight, Honda Civic hybrid, and the Toyota Prius. There are a few more to come out later this year and next year. You selected the 3-cylinder engine from one car and matched it with the lowest fuel economy from one of the other cars. The Insight has the 3 cyl and gets 60+mpg. My 2002 Prius is of the first generation of it before the large set of improvements they made for the 2004 model year. It routinely got 47-50mpg in actual gas mileage. The newer Prius gets in the 50-60 range. The Civic is a little less; I believe they are around 45mpg. I did have a 1991 Metro with the 3 cylinder. With mostly highway miles, I could get about 47mpg--generally mid 40's, and as someone pointed out, that was a tiny low-powered car. The Prius and Civic have 4 cylinders + electric motor power added to that when needed, so they have better power than a traditional 4-banger.
Your quote about the Metro getting 59mpg is a complete load of fertilizer. This claim sheds some light on your 66mpg hybrid Taurus mentioned earlier. (You hauled your Taurus up a mountain to start your gas mileage test, right?) I fear I have fed a troll, but at least the information is good for other people.
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you think there's some sort of conspiracy to keep oil prices high, then you're just a kook because all the facts are against you. Why did gas prices ever come down after the 70s oil embargo if what you say is true? Why were gas prices at record lows two years ago? I guess "big oil" is pretty incompetent as well as evil.
It's a well-known fact that specialized region-specific formulations
Re:Inflation. (Score:5, Informative)
The only OPEC country that isn't pumping at full capacity is Saudi Arabia. This shortage isn't a result of OPEC manipulation.
Bad economics and incorrect facts. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, of courrrse.... A lack of refineries makes their input product (crude oil) more expensive? Shouldn't a lack of demand drive down the price of a supplied good? Perhaps you flunked the supply and demand portion of macroeconomics.
2. Environmental regulations forcing specialized, region-specific formulations across the country.
This effects the $40/barrel price of crude oil how? Hell, it doesn't even effect the gas price of people outside of those regions much, and if it did, the answer would be to adopt the better standards rather than to increase the smog in the big cities.
3. OPEC fighting against us in Iraq with the one effective weapon they have.
It seems that in talks to increase production. [ft.com] Only Venezuela and Iran are vocally against this.
Re:Inflation. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why energy and food are frequently excluded. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are trying to figure out whether you have inflation issues or not you don't want to include a commodity that surges %40 for a couple of months and then drops %50 for a couple of months. The oscillations around the equillibrium price is just noise.
Now if the equillibrium price for energy were to rise in the long term that would be a problem, but as energy is vital to all other economic endevors it would be reflected in price increases in everything else. Same with food. So the better part of valor is to exclude them, and let the rest of the economy smooth out their effects on pricing by reflecting any increases in the equillibrium prices for those commodities.
Re:Inflation. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
However, there are a number of other things that are still falling in price - telecommunications, electronic goods, etc. The inflation number that governments come up with depends on what they put in the "shopping basket" measured.
If transportation keeps going up and telecommunications keep coming down, that *should* lead to more telecommuting.
Re:Inflation. (Score:5, Interesting)
Take a look around the room your in: --from here I have a desk, vinyl sided windows, two computers w/monitors, picture frames, book covers, folios, CDROMs, waste paper basket [and bag]. It seems that almost everything is made of petrol--people focus on the gas, but if it disappeared, lack of gas would not be the top problem on this list.
I'm curious to know how much petroleum goes to fuels vs products . . . anyone know?
Some related notes:
I believe that Chevron-Texaco posted its most profitable quarter EVER last month.
The process of petroleum use is so refined/efficient that it would be more efficient to simply burn the alternatives [e.g. corn-plastic] to heat the factories that petroleum-based products are fabricated in. [Or, this was the case a few years ago]. There's a long road of process engineering to hoe before we really even have the ability to replace petroleum in a serious manner [better start now!].
Rhetorical question: if the price of oil is not as high now as it was in 1981, why was the price of gas in 1981 about 1/3 of what is is now [adjusted, and from a US perspective]?
Re:Inflation. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Daniel
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
WAY simplistic (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't even need a book, a simple two line graph will suffice. One graph shows world wide demand-that is going UP. Another graph line shows production-that will be going down as fields leave their "peak" where it's the cheapest to extract in terms of BTU's --> in to get BTU's -- out. Those lines will cross, then go in opposite directions, and the result is quite literally madmax, the movie, in spades.
In most fields outside the middle east, it's passed peak, and even the big fields in the middle east it's getting closer.
Those lines more or less cross within 15 years most places, some places earlier, other places later, but short of them developing some extremely energy efficient extraction techniques, and especially something that doesn't require high pressure water injection, we will be enscrewed.
BUT, the hard choices will not be made until it's too late to do much about it. We should already be using a significant proportion of the worlds petroleum energy to mass produce alternative enrgy devices, instead, we are using only a tiny fraction, waiting for the Mr. Fusion back yard perpetual motion machine generator.
Nuts, but there ya go.
I also think the "proven reserve" numbers aren't accurate, I think it's less in the middle east than what they say, but slightly more in the arctic circle. And there's some more to be gained in the gulf of mexico, etc, currently off limits to drilling, but once fuel gets to be about 5$ a gallon in the US, you won't find many people who give a care where we drill, unlike now when it's still fatcity and cheap and no one really is hurting yet-easy to complain OR ignore the problem as long as you are well fed, comfy, and want for naught. Once that changes, we could see what are euphemistally called in history books "major social changes".
Stuff can happen FAST, too, I personally paid 10$ a gallon for two gallons max back in the OPEC embargo days. And it doesn't matter how much you whine about it when it happens, scam or no scam, you pay, or walk. And with the current middle east situation, chaos theory says-you don't know, the whole dang place over there could el kaboom any day. No one can say it won't, you can't say it will, but the posibility is there for major war to seriously disrupt supply, and that would effect everyone in any nuymber of ways, irregardless if they are an urban bicycle/mass transit rider or not.
We are just way too dependent on oil, our entire economies revolve around it.
Heck, I just came in for a breather, about to go back outside and climb onto a diesel powered tractor, without that diesel, I can't work. PERIOD. Multiple that by another billion guys around the planet, one way or the other everyone goes to work, and diesel and gas make it happen. We simply cannot replace it, even by a massive switch to coal, can't be done now.
Trains anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not public transit as such, but yes, most places other than North America still use trains a great deal to move goods. You just don't see very many huge semis on the highways in Europe like you do in the US and Canada. And trains just are a hell of lot more efficient at moving stuff -- it's just that the absurdly cheap gas in NA screws up the economics here.
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
You should try reading William Clark's essay [ratical.org]. It's about the US dollar vs the Euro being used by oil producing countries.
Re:Inflation. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Inflation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Refineries are incredibly complex, expensive, and unpopular items. The environmentalists want you shut down, period, and spend a lot of money trying to get you to do so. Instead, they just make it more expensive for you to stay in business. Meanwhile, you've got competitors trying to cut your legs out from under you, and, as high as prices might go - you've still got contract customers (airlines, power generators) who have capped prices. Transporting oil, everybody wants triple-hulled tankers that look like cruise ships, but they want to pay the prices they got when 30-year-old, leaking hulks run by the cheapest labor on the planet were the standard.
You want cheap oil, you got it. The Saudis sell us the stuff for less than it costs to pump it out of our own wells. American oilfield workers don't complain about their jobs being "outsourced" - they simply found other careers when their jobs disappeared 20 years ago. Move one coding job to Bombay and you get a senate inquiry. Move 120,000 oil jobs to Riyadh, Jeddah, and Bahrain... and you can buy a bigger SUV! woohoo!
But now you've got a problem. All those Chinese peasants who make those cheap computers and appliances we love so much? Well, they are all buying houses. And televisions. And cars. And they want electricity for them... Guess where they're buying it from??
Instead of being the only bidder on that tanker 'o' crude, you're now one of perhaps four or five. All of a sudden the local crack dealer has five customers instead of just you.
Oil companies making big profits? Nope. Building power plants is a dead business; anyone making a profit runs the risk of getting their plant "liberated" by a governor who needs votes. Opening up a new refinery, well.. you've got a three to five year lead time from the shovel hitting the dirt 'till your first truckload of super unleaded goes out thr gate. Except nobody wants a refinery near their house. Or anywhere else, for that matter - a permit might take six months or six years before you even know if you can build. And refineries ain't cheap. You need to convince enough investors that you can get the permits, build the plant, get the ships to offload oil... and of course, that the price will still be high enough to turn a profit over the 25-year lifespan of your refinery.
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Interesting)
I say make gas more expensive, tax the shit out of it and get some better public transportation going (much of which already is running on Natural Gas or electricity). We need a kick in the ass to hope
Re:Inflation. (Score:4, Interesting)
Taxing the shit out of petroleum in the U.S. would have consequences so dire you can't even begin to imagine. The United States is NOT Europe. Most people live 20 to 30 miles away from their place of work with some living even farther. Because of the lack of a usable and succesful form of mass transit in most U.S. cities, a massive gasoline tax would take a huge amount of money right out of the hands of the people keeping our economy alive. The U.S. rail system is not an option in many cases, and remember that most every consumer product you buy is shipped for the most part by diesel trucks. The United States isn't Europe, and a high tax is ABSOLUTLY NOT the first step to reducing dependence on the automobile.
1. Build and finance usable forms of mass transit
2. Make sure that the public transit is capable of sucessfully allowing wage workers to commute.
3. Gradually make cars less attractive.
Re:Inflation. (Score:5, Informative)
It is not a measure of the amount of energy in the fuel. If you're using a higher octane fuel than required to keep your car from pinging, and your car isn't a new model that self-tunes based on the fuel's octane rating, then you are wasting your money.
So, either you're driving a high-performance "gaz-guzzler" (your term; I have no problem with high-performance engines) or you're an idiot - your call.
Re:Inflation. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Start by banning plastics for consumables (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Start by banning plastics for consumables (Score:4, Insightful)
And where does that power come from? Could it be fossil fuels?
Right.
Plastics need a lot less heat energy applied to them -- they might actually be cheaper, volume for volume than metals. Less mineing, less hauling, less heat needed... it probably adds up. (note I haven't bothered to search or get any rough numbers, just a gut feeling)
Re:Start by banning plastics for consumables (Score:5, Insightful)
If you use and recycle glass, you have to ship it around.
Are you sure you know which method uses the least petroleum?
Re:Start by banning plastics for consumables (Score:3, Interesting)
Start by banning plastics for useless crap (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and we could ban auto-racing, truck pulls, the robosaurus that shoots flame and eats cars...
Re:Start by banning plastics for consumables (Score:5, Funny)
When have they ever sold glass bags of Doritos?
Re:Big topic? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where electricity comes from (Score:3, Insightful)
Q: Does your local electricity come from coal or nuclear?
A: That depends on whether your particular part of the grid is running in excess or deficit at this particular instant.
In other words, once you get everyone to use some non-petrochemical source, you can pick the most efficie
Re:In a decade? (Score:3, Insightful)
While $2.017 is a record for gasoline, adjusted for inflation the price hit $2.99 a gallon in March 1981, according to the Energy Information Administration
There is this thing called inflation. Perhaps you have heard of it?
Re:if, and that's a big if (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Coal? (Score:3, Interesting)