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I do believe Peak Oil is real, even an oil industry expert's gone on record about the reality of the situation, and with oil being a finite resource and a growing world population using more and more of it, we will be in deep doo-doo in the coming years.
Can technology save us with alternative energy sources? Nice to think so, but likely not. We've grown our lifestyle based on the use of cheap and easy oil. Those times are fading fast.
I wonder what a post-oil world will look like? So much petroleum goes into plastics, too. And they're used for everything these days... Interesting times ahead...
Technology has always been to solution to finite resource issues. The renewable resource base is many times our current consumption. We need technology to capture and harness it. We have the technology to produce autos that get 100 mpg of gasoline. We could cut our imports in half. That would bring the price of oil back to about $15/bbl.
I do agree that technologies have been great in the past to help alleviate many of our problems, but unless it can recreate dead dinosaurs I'm not sure how it will save us in time this time...improving extraction procedures will help, more gas mileage will help, but only to buy us a bit more time. Our population's exploding world-wide. Much higher demand on oil. No new discoveries of size. A finite resource, once gone will not come again. Have you read a book called Overshoot by William Catton? Illuminating. He addresses the role of technology.
I do agree that technologies have been great in the past to help alleviate many of our problems, but unless it can recreate dead dinosaurs I'm not sure how it will save us in time this time...improving extraction procedures will help, more gas mileage will help, but only to buy us a bit more time. Our population's exploding world-wide. Much higher demand on oil. No new discoveries of size. A finite resource, once gone will not come again. Have you read a book called Overshoot by William Catton? Illuminating. He addresses the role of technology.
Renewable energy is the ultimate solution, and a very good one. Whether it's algae based oil, hydrogen from water, or battery powered vehicles is yet to be determined, but the PHEVs that are about to get introduced will get 100 mpg in urban driving. That alone will buy us 10-15 years of R&D time. We just need to keep our eye on the ball this time. Reagan dismantled the energy program because it had worked -- dumb move.
The problem is who can we believe and trust?
Two things come to mind---whatever happened to the Eugene Island accident? Need to re-google that, but it was on the WSJ how oil at eugene island decreased in production and then increased....
...and then, the memo by the gas companies on limiting supply to increase prices..
HOUSTON -- Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330.
Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while, it behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island 330's output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day.
Then suddenly -- some say almost inexplicably -- Eugene Island's fortunes reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing 13,000 barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million barrels from 60 million. Stranger still, scientists studying the field say the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different from the oil that gushed 10 years ago.
then the following event:
The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) released three memos that purportedly demonstrate a nationwide effort by the American Petroleum Institute to encourage major refiners to close refineries in the 1990s.
"Large oil companies have for a decade artificially shorted the gasoline market to drive up prices," said Jamie Court, president of the FTCR, who successfully fought to keep Shell Oil from needlessly closing its Bakersfield, Calif., refinery this year. "Oil companies know they can make more money by making less gasoline. Katrina should be a wakeup call to America that the refiners profit widely when they keep the system running on empty."
The internal memoranda themselves have been made public before, in a 2001 investigative report by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who this week said the primary reason for sky-high prices is that "the government isn't in the consumer-protection business anymore." Much of U.S. paying at least $3 per gallon in wake of Hurricane Katrina
The memo from Chevron states: "A senior energy analyst at the recent API convention warned that if the U.S. petroleum industry doesn't reduce its refining capacity it will never see any substantial increase in refinery margins. ... However, refining utilization has been rising, sustaining high levels of operations, thereby keeping prices low."
Consumer Watchdog: Cheaper, Cleaner Energy: Articles (http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/energy/articles/?storyId=12156 - broken link)
Good to hear about the PHEV's getting 100 MPH. Yep, we could have done much, much more, much earlier. We started to back in the 70's as you said. Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof. Reagan came in and tore them off.
Even with super efficient cars (and bicycles are the ultimate energy-efficient transportation mode), we still need oil for home heating, generating electricity, in manufacturing, and in the fertilizers used in agri-business.
Not trying to be a doomsday person, and who knows, maybe we'll be fine in the end, and technology will triumph and save the day. I'm all for it as I care about the survival of our planet and all its inhabitants.
I've been reading many scientific journals and books that postulate our world's over-populated and our global resources are being gobbled up faster than they're available. And some, like oil, are finite. And the Co2 continues to be sent into our atmosphere...
And developing nations, those with the highest birth rates, are rapidly cutting down their forests to plant more crop acres for a growing and hungrier population...
Seems many scientists and academics think it's not only Peak Oil but our Peak Population that are the problem--that our numbers have exceeded earth's carrying capacity.
General Motors has been at the center of one of the nation’s largest controversies over clean emissions-cars. In 1996 the company introduced the EV-1 electric car in California and Arizona. Hundreds of the electric cars were soon on the road. Then they all disappeared. The mystery behind their disappearance is the subject of the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” We’re joined by the film’s director Chris Paine, and Chelsea Sexton, a former GM employee who worked on the EV-1 electric car.
Good to hear about the PHEV's getting 100 MPH. Yep, we could have done much, much more, much earlier. We started to back in the 70's as you said. Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof. Reagan came in and tore them off.
Even with super efficient cars (and bicycles are the ultimate energy-efficient transportation mode), we still need oil for home heating, generating electricity, in manufacturing, and in the fertilizers used in agri-business.
Not trying to be a doomsday person, and who knows, maybe we'll be fine in the end, and technology will triumph and save the day. I'm all for it as I care about the survival of our planet and all its inhabitants.
I've been reading many scientific journals and books that postulate our world's over-populated and our global resources are being gobbled up faster than they're available. And some, like oil, are finite. And the Co2 continues to be sent into our atmosphere...
And developing nations, those with the highest birth rates, are rapidly cutting down their forests to plant more crop acres for a growing and hungrier population...
Seems many scientists and academics think it's not only Peak Oil but our Peak Population that are the problem--that our numbers have exceeded earth's carrying capacity.
What do you think?
A lot to cover. Try Friedman's book Hot Flat & Crowded IMO he's got it about right.
The big energy challenges are in the rapidly industrializing nation. They do a lot of environmental damage, but morally we can't try to make them stay third world. They have to have renewable energy and better farming technology. BTW 20% of anthropogenic CO2 comes from deforestation.
I'm very optimistic about the industrialized countries. We will make the shift and develop renewable, sustainable biofuels as well as renewable electricity. The developing nations need slightly different solutions and they need leadership to show them the way.
Thanks. I need some optimism right about now. Been reading too many books that lean more toward ecological pessimism. I've read Friedman's book, a good one. Catton's Overshoot is perhaps more scholarly, but still worth a read, too. Many regard it as one of the bibles of earlier ecological studies. It was written in 1980 and reads as fresh as a new book. Cattons' writing a new book, I believe.
And the developing nations--yes, we can perhaps lead by example and share our technologies with them.
Wish more developing nations followed China's lead in limiting births...as repressive as that might seem to us, it's a solution to the no-win scenario of over-capacity. Hard to sell in Catholic countries, though.
Funny how Ehrlich's Population Bomb was a popular book more than thirty years ago and then we forgot about skyrocketing population.
Well, now that we've solved the future challenges of Peak Oil, I can get back to my writing much relieved.
People keep saying oils dropping, and the sky with it...but so far it's been lacking greatly in the predictions (hell, according to MSN we should have $15+ oil now). I think it will happen eventually, as in not even in the medium term but long term, which is no reason to freak out and change ones living/driving consumption patterns in a panic now because of it.
I drive a pretty fuel efficient car now, and I live where I can commute on a bus with all the other wage slaves. Not really that I want to conserve gas, but my cash. No need to part with it then don't see a reason. I'll get a car that takes less gas when they are better and cheaper, when mine has given up it's ghost and it's time to replace it anyways.
Let those who buy on the latest fad, sippers when the prices are high and guzzlers when it's low, buy their new car every few years.
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