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DrumBeat: January 26, 2007
Posted by Leanan on January 26, 2007 - 9:56am
Long Beach LNG plans halted: "The project is dead"
After four years of scrutiny, Long Beach officials Monday pulled the plug on a controversial energy project that promised an abundant new source of clean-burning liquefied natural gas for California but posed insurmountable safety concerns.
Author to discuss sustainability issues affecting Hawai'i
"Developments distinctive to our time are telling us that Empire has reached the limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will sustain. A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and an imbalance U.S. economy dependent on debts it can never repay is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life. We have the power to choose, however, whether the consequences play out as a terminal crisis or an epic opportunity. The Great Turning is not a prophecy. It is a possibility."
Cambodia's coming energy bonanza
If the United Nations, World Bank and Harvard University are to be believed, Cambodia is poised to become a major new global energy exporter, with a fossil-fuel windfall that promises to double the country's current gross domestic product (GDP) and potentially lift millions of Cambodians out of poverty.
IEA Says Oil Costs Too Much; EU Official 'Happy' With Prices
The International Energy Agency's chief economist, Fatih Birol, said current oil prices of more than $50 a barrel are too high, at about five times the average cost of production. The European Union's senior energy official, Andris Piebalgs, said he approved of the current prices.
The crunchy mystique: Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and its Return to Roots
You wouldn't expect a cultural conservative to quote Henry Miller in referring to certain aspects of modern existence as "the air conditioned nightmare." But then, challenging your expectations is one thing this book will likely do.As a sustainability activist there were many times when I turned the pages and nodded my head in strong agreement. In fact, there are many points of convergence between this newly identified brand of crunchy (slang for counter-cultural) conservative creature and the eco-hippie crunchy liberal and author Rod Dreher, former columnist for the National Review, readily acknowledges this. He discusses the social and environmental breakdown caused by a corporate consumerism run amok and the antidotes of simple, small, local, and organic that is in many ways indistinguishable from Greens. And he's even peak oil aware, citing the inevitable decline of cheap and easily accessible crude as one of several events that will require an eventual reorientation of American society toward a more local and conservationist way of life.
Australian of the Year lashes government on climate change
The Australian government came under attack for its environmental policies from Tim Flannery, the scientist it named as citizen of the year just a day earlier.The leading environmentalist and author slammed Australia as the "worst of the worst" on global warming, highlighting its failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol.
Revolution arising from the Earth: Part I and Part II
The center of the empire, the U.S., is maintained by debt as the petrodollars and other dollars come into the U.S. at the rate of at least two-and- a-half billion per day (purchasing U.S. government bonds) in order to continue the cycle, which keeps the empire and its military power expanding As the elite carry out their strategies of domination they are racing against time. The monster trends of Peak Oil and energy exhaustion, climate change-- which will severely disrupt the seasons of growth in the food supply system, the weakness of the dollar and ecological collapse are pursuing them. An exponentially growing world population with growing material consumption based on dwindling resources and a dying planet won't work, but they have no other option to maintain their power and profit.
China Says Major Shift on Dollar Policy Coming
Some very worrisome news came out of China this Saturday — but it got little more than a blip in the U.S. press.
Hydrogen cars sound ideal, but there are practical problems. First, the hydrogen tank takes eight minutes to fill and it takes up most of the boot space. Even then, the hydrogen tank provides a range of only 125 miles. To get enough hydrogen into the fuel tank it has to be chilled and liquefied. Gradually it warms up and boils away, so if you don’t use the car over the weekend you’ll find less in the tank. Park up at the airport while you take your three-week holiday and when you get back it’ll be nearly empty.
Indian-Based NGO Harnesses Biofuel From Sweet Sorghum
Manila, Philippines - Indian-based non-governmental organization, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, on Wednesday presented to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo sweet sorghum as an alternative source of biofuel.
Greece: Farmers seek biofuel funding
Farmers said yesterday they will need more European Union subsidies if they are to begin the cultivation of plants that generate biofuels and decrease Greece’s dependence on polluting fossil fuels.
Ethanol fires hope for China's poor Guangxi
Now, hope runs high in China for Guangxi's about 30 million farmers to jump on the biofuel fever. Beijing has begun encouraging ethanol made from non-grain crops, such as cassava -- known also as tapioca -- the region's other main crop."We are talking about sugar televisions, sugar washing machines and even sugar brides," said Pan Xunxin, an official in Chongzuo, Guangxi's top sugar cane city west of Nanning.
Energy roadmap backs renewables
Half of the world's energy needs in 2050 could be met by renewables and improved efficiency, a study claims.
The age of technological revolution is 100 years dead
No, research and development do not equate with economic progress. No, the computer is not a stunning technological advance, just an extension of electronic communication as known for over a century. No, the internet has not transformed most people's lives, just helped them do faster what they did before. No, weapons technology has not transformed warfare, merely wasted stupefying sums of money while soldiers win or lose by firing rifles.
Lab plans to make its ideas a reality - “There is no energy shortage. There is no energy crisis. There is only a crisis of ignorance.”
Energy Research on a Shoestring
The hopes for this neglected lab brightened a bit just over a year ago when President Bush made the first presidential call on the lab since Mr. Carter and spelled out a vision for the not-too-distant future in which solar and wind power would help run every American home and cars would operate on biofuels made from residues of plants.But one year after the president’s visit, the money flowing into the nation’s primary laboratory for developing renewable fuels is actually less than it was at the beginning of the Bush administration. The lab’s fitful history reflects a basic truth: Americans may have a growing love affair with renewables and the idea of cutting oil imports and conserving energy, but it is a fickle one.
Noble CFO: Congress 'Will' Pass Anti-Tax Haven Bill in 2007
The U.S. Congress is all but certain to pass legislation this year addressing the tax status of U.S. corporations that have based themselves in countries with low or non-existent income taxes, Noble Corp. (NE) Chief Financial Officer Thomas Mitchell said Thursday.
State Of The Union: The Danger of a Few Little Words
For anyone concerned about Peak Oil and global warming, Bush’s State of the Union speech Tuesday evening fell far short of establishing a sound program for dealing with the nation’s energy woes or gargantuan carbon emissions. With the exception of a small increase in fuel efficiency standards, the president’s set of recommendations were about producing more energy: more oil, more coal, more solar and wind, and especially more “renewable and alternative fuels.”
Twenty Billion - a Drop in the Barrel for Renewable Energy
Last week, by nearly a 100-vote margin, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to do what OPEC has been unable to: defend a higher price for oil.Although oil was just at a 19-month low, I’m sure that wasn’t precisely the intent of H.R. 6. The “Clean Energy Act of 2007” could have been more accurately titled the “Cleaning Up Our Energy Act of 2007,” because it was mainly about repealing tax credits and royalty exemptions for the oil and gas industries so that the money could be squirreled away in a fund for later spending on home-grown renewable energy and efficiency.
My friend Pat Meadows, a very, very smart woman, has a wonderful idea she calls "The Theory of Anyway." What it entails is this - she argues that 95% of what is needed to resolve the coming crises in energy depletion, or climate change, or most other global crises are the same sort of efforts. When in doubt about how to change, we should change our lives to reflect what we should be doing "Anyway." Living more simply, more frugally, using less, leaving reserves for others, reconnecting with our food and our community, these are things we should be doing because they are the right thing to do on many levels. That they also have the potential to save our lives is merely a side benefit (a big one, though).
Is globalisation retreating? - "Reality's revolt against theory"
Another factor unraveling the globalist project is its obsession with economic growth. Indeed, unending growth is the centerpiece of globalization, the mainspring of its legitimacy. While a recent World Bank report continues to extol rapid growth as the key to expanding the global middle class, global warming, peak oil, and other environmental events are making it clear to people that the rates and patterns of growth that come with globalization are a surefire prescription for ecological disaster.
Peak oil production in the Middle East's Arabian/Persian Gulf region could be delayed if oil companies would invest more heavily in drilling and extraction technologies and push to explore new sites.
Does nuclear power now make financial sense?
On Sept. 16, 1954, in a speech to a group of science writers, Adm. Lewis L. Strauss, then head of the agency now known as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, made a bold prediction. The potential for peaceful uses of nuclear energy was so great, he said, that electricity produced by nuclear power plants would one day be “too cheap to meter.”Over the coming decades, the economics of nuclear power turned out to be more problematic.
Rethinking Alternative Energy: Some potentially powerful sources not getting attention
While no research has yet pointed to cold fusion as being a definite possibility or a permanent to solution to the energy crisis, a sufficient number of people are convinced that it is a possibility, enough in fact for there to be an annual cold fusion conference.
Saudi Aramco to Award First Contract on $10B Manifa Field
Saudi Arabian Oil Co., the world's largest oil company by production, is expected to award by the end of January an estimated $1 billion contract to Belgium dredging contractor Jan De Nul to help it develop the 900,000 barrel-a-day Manifa offshore oil field.
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I call your attention to page 16 of this document:
Saudi Arabia’s Strategic Energy Imitative: Safeguarding Against Supply Disruptions
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/061109_omsg_presentation1.pdf
Though this document was produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC on November 9th of 2006, it is based on a recently issued directive by the Saudi leadership.
The first statement on page 16 reads: The Kingdom’s average state of reserve depletion for all its fields is approximately 29%. Now file that away in the back of your mind for a moment.
The third statement reads: Without “maintain potential” drilling to make up for production, Saudi oil fields would have a natural decline rate of a hypothetical 8%. As Saudi Aramco has an extensive drilling program with a budget running in the billions of dollars, this decline is mitigated to a number close to 2%. Now keep in mind that Saudi is not talking about drilling in new fields to lower their decliner rate from 8% to 2%, they are talking about holding their existing fields to a 2% decline rate from the otherwise 8% they would experience without new drilling. The new fields are supposed to increase their production by a couple of million barrels per day by 2009.
I have serious problems with the above statement. Before a field reaches its peak, there is no decline due to production. Due to constraints of each well and the associated pipelines, a field will usually produce at its peak, or plateau, for several years before it goes into production decline. And when it reaches the decline state, that is the point where the capacity of each well or the total pipeline capacity is no longer the factor limiting production, but production is falling, this means that depletion is now the culprit. And when this happens it means that production from that field is usually well past its peak. Prudhoe Pay is the perfect example of this fact. The combined production from several fields usually produces the classic bell curve, production from a single field usually produces a bell curve with a flat top or plateau instead of the classic rounded dome.
Of course there are special cases, like Cantarell, that fits neither template. Cantarell had a rise, then a plateau at around 1 million barrels per day, then a sudden burst up to 2 million barrels per day due to a massive nitrogen injection program, then a sharp peak at around 2 mb/d followed by a catastrophic decline. But I digress.
What Saudi Arabia is saying here is that all their existing production fields have a decline rate of 8%. However with their extensive drilling program they hope to reduce this decline rate of these old giant fields to 2%. And by opening up new fields or more correctly, reopening old formerly closed fields they hope to increase production potential to an astounding 12,550,000 bp/d by 2009.
Does this make sense? If it does, why would not Pemex initiate an “extensive drilling program” and cut Cantarell’s decline rate to 2%. And should not BP do the same with Prudhoe Bay? An extensive drilling program should cut the decline rate of Prudhoe to at least 2%. Then there is the Forties Field in the North Sea, and Yibal in Oman that could dramatically benefit from such an extensive drilling program.
But first, let us let the truth sink in. Saudi Arabia is admitting that Ghawar, Safaniya, Abqaiq, Berri, Zuluf, Marjan and Abu Sa’fah, Saudi’s seven largest fields, whose combined production, until recently, totaled more than 8 mb/d, are declining at an average rate of 8% per year. But an extensive drilling program, (actually replacing their old vertical wells with new horizontal wells), they have so far been able to keep the decline rate to around 2%. And by opening the last remain area of Ghawar, the Haradh section in the very southern tip, and opening the Shaybah field, deep in the Empty Quarter, they even managed to increase production until mid 2005. But those horizontal super straws were really not able to create any more oil, just suck what was left out a little faster. This is what they did until even these horizontal wells began their inevitable decline.
So there you have it. IF Saudi can suck hard enough on their super straws and continue to hold the decline rate down in their old giant fields to 2% per year, and IF their planned projects come in on time and IF they produce at the rates planned then Saudi will increase her production capacity by almost 1.5 mb/d by 2009.
I don’t believe there is any chance of that happening. In fact, I think that their “extensive drilling program” has already petered out and the decline rate in their old giant fields is once again approaching 8%. In fact, due to their super straws pumping so much more oil out for the last decade or so, it is quite possible, nay, quite probable, that Saudi has already started a Cantarell type collapse.
And just a couple of other points. Obviously all of Saudi’s giant fields are not declining at exactly the same rate. Actually they are declining at a rate of between 5 and 12 percent according to Aramco Senior Vice President Abdullah Saif. The 8 percent figure is only an average of all the fields.
And last but not least, how, in face of all this decline, can they possibly say that they are only at 29 percent depletion? Well, it is simple math. If Saudi actually has, as they claim, 262 billion barrels of proven reserves, a figure that has remained virtually unchanged for almost two decades, and they have already produced around 107 billion barrels, then the math says they have produced only 29 percent of their reserves. Of course Middle East oil expert Dr. Samsam Bakhtiari says Saudi Reserves are actually in the 120 to 140 billion barrel range. My guess is that Dr. Bakhtiari is wildly optimistic.
Ron Patterson
Wow...excellent commentary here Darwinian. A VERY sobering assessment if all true.
"if all true"
It is not a matter of being true, moreso of being correct. When we discussed this document last month (and in Nov) i mentioned that readers should take care when reading Nawaf Obaid's text 'cuz his is the realm of KSA Security ... not geology.
Ron's pg16 includes glaring errors with "decline rate" and "depletion rate" used interchangeably. Therefore, one cannot use logic to interpret Ron's points.
"decline rate" refers to the drop in extraction rate as expressed in "mbd"
"depletion rate" refers to the drop in URR as expressed by "Gb"
In almost all cases, Obaid means depletion rate of reserves ... not monthly or annual production.
Going back to the presentation, it is typical KSA or Aramco rhetoric in their press releases and presentations to include how much field decline is happening each year. This one is no different.
On pg6, they openly admit that the "present" operating fields face the reality of an apparent 0.8-mbd/day decline rate. But not on a net basis. On their published production rate of 8.6-mbd, this equates to 9.3% YOY (apparent). It is clear that some older fields suck big time.
But if one turns to pg9, one sees that the planned closure of the older fields, unshuttering of dormant fields and opening of new fields brings to their operations a new decline of 0.5-mbd on proposed production of 10-mbd in 2009 (assuming maintenance of the 2.55-mbd surplus capacity). This equates to an apparent decline rate of 5% YOY in 2009 and drops to 4.6% by 2011.
Ron is neither right nor wrong. He is neither brilliant nor an idiot. Mistakes happen. This was one that confused many (but not all). I studied Geology and Economics in university. All of us at TOD have our specialties with which to contribute via formal Education or Schools of Hard Knocks.
Link does not seem to be working...Simmons is starting to look more and more like the "True Prophet"
Both the links he posted work for me.
Do you have Adobe installed? The first one is a PDF.
Reffering to an individual as a 'prophet' only reinforces the opinion in others that Peak Oil is more of a doomers cult then a scientific debate.
Hoth,
You obviously have me confused with somebody else. The Prophecy I was refering to was Simmons statements on the prospects for Saudi oil. As for "Peak Oil Theory", I find infathomable that someone cannot grasp the concept of a finite resource not having maximum in its extraction rate. Maybe if more than 20% of this country took a calculus course we would be in better shape. The only debate is a socio-econonic one on what the downside of the peak will entail. There is no scientific debate except for when the peak will occur.
Prophets are religious icons. Prophets announce prophecies. Prophets are idolized by overzealous religions fanatics. The doomers who refer to them as 'prophets' and their statements as 'prophecies' or religious fanatics.
And there we go again, someone is implying that I do not believe in Peak Oil. For the 10000000000th time, I'm a firm believer in PO. Any finite resource must reach a maximum exploitation rate and decline until nothing is less. A kindergarten student could probably figure that out. My question is only about the timing of the peak, and debunking ridiculous statements that are only backed up by religious fanaticism.
I have been reading this site since the summer of 2005 and I can tell you that I have not come across a "poster" more obnoxious than you. You seem to take joy in taking the comments of others out of context and misconstruing their meaning. I initially thought that it was your inexperience, but I have come to believe that you have a "true believers" mission of poisoning the pool every chance you get. This is one perfect example (among many). Any sensible person would understand that the term "True Prophet" used above was not used in the religious sense. Nor was the context in which it was used such that it could be construed that way. If you check any standard dictionary, you will see that the term "prophet" is also commonly used to mean "the chief spokesman of a movement or cause." There is nothing fanatical or overzealous in its use in this context. And there is nothing wrong with being a bit hyperbolic in calling Simmons a potential true prophet.
Hothgor.
Since you subscribe to Peak Oil, I would be interested in knowing what sort of time scale you think peak will arrive.
When do you think it will be?
Mudlogger,
I will loosely quote Hothgor:
Peak Oil will happen around 2015
Roger From the Netherlands
Fine
I can go with that.
"Prophet" also means "a person who foretells or predicts what is to come". Since Simmons predicted terminal decline for the Saudi fields some time ago, I'd say that he qualifies as a prophet, "by definition" you might say.
-pop
I can see it from Hothgor's point of view.
If you come to this website as a skeptic, you're going to read pro-peak comments with a hostile attitude.
If I went to the Scientology forums and saw something about Tom Cruise being a "prophet", I'd probably throw up a little in my mouth (at the poster). :)
That being said, I do believe it was more likely you were playing with words than any kind of religious adulation.
End of threadjack
I think that the problem is that many TOD posters have probably irreversably committed themselves via "prophesies of doom" to their friends and family to "kook-head" status if Peak Oil doom doesn't arrive very soon (or if mitigation works reasonably smoothly).
So their posts in TOD are increasingly anxious and anticipatory -- looking for *any* bad news that would confirm their vision. Skeptics arriving at TOD will pick up on this fervor. This defensiveness leaks over into quick attacks of any positive/mitigating news or evidence. The recent correction in the price of oil has probably also increased their apprehension about being thought of as "chicken little".
So if Freddy, Hothgor, or whoever present a semi-rational case that PO won't arrive for 3, 4, or 5 years or whatever -- that only makes them apoplectic at the thought that they will have to continue defending "doom" for that long. Peak MUST arrive soon for them! It's personal!
I think to be fair to most of us, there are people very highly respected and listened to by almost all here who do not believe we are at peak yet - Khebab and Robert Rapier are two outstanding examples. Many others such as myself are a bit on the fence and try to listen to everyone thoughtfully.
No, it isn't what they believe that is offensive, it is their offensive, demeaning (esp Hothgor), antagonistic, disdainful manner. Hothgor in particular doesn't tend to respond thoughtfully to counter argument. Instead he will take words and phrases, twist them and throw the back in a belittling manner, just baiting the other. Sometimes he's kind of ok, but then comes back with the old garbage and detracts not only from the blog but from whatever point he might have been trying to make.
I would further add the names of Chris Skrebowski, Euan Mearns, and Rembrandt Koppelar to those very highly respected and listened to contributors who do not believe we are at peak and contribute directly and indirectly to the discussion when it is conducted thoughfully and with respect.
Its funny now no one that you just listed considers me to be antagonistic, offensive or whatever the new flavor of the month name calling people seem to come up with. I'm vocal? Yes. Opinionated? Undoubtedly. Rude? Hardly! :laughs:
I don't know how you can speak for any of them.
If you don't understand my comments you should review your history on this site and think about it a little. You have been extremely rude on a number of occasions and it certainly hasn't gained you any credibility.
Funny how you CAN speak for them. If they have a problem with me, they can come out and say so.
I have a feeling that we will be waiting here for a LONG while :P
:laughs:
This is an example of misrepresenting the point and twisting the discussion - you just made my point for me. My point was that many here respect the named individuals who do not believe we are at peak yet and that therefore the issue is not whether we respect people with divergent views. Obviously we can respect them when they engage in reasonable debate.
Chris?
peakearl,
I think that if oil was back up to $75+, etc, etc, that folks would be less sensitive to "baiting". The antagonizing works only because folks are being defensive -- especially if that person is particularly smug.
My wider point is that it seems folks in TOD are allowing their anxiety to creep over into hyping things like "Bush Attacking Iran", "Hedge Funds Must Be Manipulating Oil Price", "Oil Inventory Number Are Fake", or whatever -- virtually confirming "kook-head" status. Skeptics arriving at TOD will see this.
Again, I believe this is driven by people here being personally committed by their prophesies of doom -- soon! Yet, the oil business is a slow moving one, and easy to implement mitigation just raises their anxiety by delaying and delaying doom. Egads! if they see another A123 battery improvement or the promise of the new CT drilling technology. "It'll never *ever* work..." they shrilly cry in kneejerk response.
Personally, I believe Peak is "now-ish" but that mitigation will work quite well for at least 5 years. The decline curves show only about 2% per year for the first 5 years after peak, and I think that U.S. drivers could easily cut back 10% without any doom. By that time perhaps GM will be shipping plug-in cars, etc. And a further wave of mitigation will start -- perhaps with a little pain or "micro-doom" mixed in. The prospect of defending "prophesies of doom" for THAT long has got to be daunting.
I think what you are saying is true for some. I am not a heavy doomer myself but am definately concerned. People may be sensitive, but you still get a much better discussion by trying to discuss facts and avoiding the personal.
It's more than some people to me. It's the general "atmosphere" of looking like fools. TOD is like a party that has gone on too long without the featured guest arriving -- "Mr. Doom".
EXACTLY wstephens. I think you hit the nail on the head.
One (of the many) things that puzzle me about posters here who claim we are peaking now is how can you ignore price? Price signals are just as important as all the cobbled-together data on oil fields, production, decline rates, etc. I would actually argue that it's a BETTER predictor because it's so transparent--the production-related data seems to be pretty suspect in many cases.
I don't think anyone's ignoring price.
Deffeyes, in his first book, predicted that price volatility would obscure the peak (if you look at price alone).
Dear Hothgor,
Lets continue our discussion:
I asked you the following:
1) When do you think peak oil will happen?
2) And what do you think decline rates in production and export will be?
You answered:
1) Around 2015
2) Around 2-3%, I look at total liquids, individual declines will be greater obviously.
I asked:
-Decline rates in conventional oil are in modernized oil fields between 8 and 15 %.
-Where will all the compensating extra oil comming from? Oilsands? Bio?
You answered:
Again, you need to look at the bigger picture. An individual field may decline at 8 to 15%. Hell, all the fields may decline at 8 to 15%.
But not all of the fields are exploited at the exact same time.
Because they are not exploited at the same time, the decline of one field is offset by the exploitation of another field(s). In regards to simple oil production in the US, this has resulted in approximately a 4% decline on average. However, we were not producing as much alternative fuels in the past as we are now attempting to do so in the present. In the end, I think the global production decline will come in at roughly 60% the rate that the US experienced, barring of course a catastrophic world war/nuclear exchange.
I asked:
Theoratically you're right ofcourse. But then; you need to have enough new fields to begin with to ofset the decline in existing fieds.
Where do you think the new fields are now, as country after country is declining?
Just tell me; where do you think this new oil will come from? Tell me the fields or the countries that will provide this extra oil??
You answered:
There are too many fields to list, and I doubt even WT could muster up enough tenacity to look them all up if should choose to do so. That being said, the general categories for these new fields are:
Undiscovered fields
Previously discovered economical fields that have not been exploited
Previously discovered uneconomical fields that have not been exploited
Simple reserve growth via improved technology or evaluations of existing fields :increases of the IOIP:
BTW, the Artic is estimated to have approximately 25% of the worlds total undiscovered petroleum resources in its oceans.
Now I ask you the following:
How much new oil will be comming from your stated sources?
a) Undiscovered fields
b) Previously discovered economical fields that have not been exploited
c) Previously discovered uneconomical fields that have not been exploited
d) Simple reserve growth via improved technology or evaluations of existing fields :increases of the IOIP:
Thank you for your answers!
Roger From The Netherlands
Ron,
Great post.
Excellent fact finding, logicaL assessments and connecting of dots!
I agree that the Saudis have likely maintained a high rate of barrels per day at the expense of future barrels. We have talked about this numerous times on TOD. There is a fixed amount of oil in a field (irregardless of reserve estimates) and pulling oil out faster up front leaves less oil to remove later.
High rates of extraction tell us nothing about reserves. They tell us instead a lot about the sophistication and maturity of the extraction technology used on the field.
NC, thanks for the kind words. Yes, Simmons makes the point very clear that faster extraction does not mean more oil. But Catton in "Overshoot" drives the point home. He coined the term "super-straws" and compared oil reserves to your bank account. He stated that thinking faster withdrawal of oil means more oil would be like thinking that becoming more efficient at writing withdrawal slips would actually put more money in your account.
Oh, by the way, there is no such word as "irregardless". Don't you just hate nitpickers! ;-)
Ron Patterson
Ron,
I like to be on the cutting edge of linguistics! I was using ain't long before it was accepted.
With regard to irregardless see a ,definition http://www.bartleby.com/61/84/I0238400.html. indicating people are trying to convey the use of two words in one.
I know it's wrong, but it sounds so good when you say it!
I believe that the Saudi asesertions do make sense. Ask yourself what controls the rising slope on the left side of the bell curve. It is not caused by the geology of an oil well. A well produces its maximum output on the first day it is drilled. It is all downhill after that. What creates the rising left side of the curve is the installation of additional infrastructure that enables more oil to be extracted, primarily it means drilling more wells. Each well in a field is either plateaued or in decline (even on the left side), but the field's output continues to grow because more wells are being added to the field.
Eventually, there are many more existing wells than fresh ones,and the field's output is dominated by the decline of all those existing wells, even while new ones are added. And finally there are no more opportunities for new wells and the field's decline accelerates down in a fully depleteing scenario.
The Saudis are simply saying that existing wells are declining at 8%, but enough new wells are being added to hold the entire field production to a 2% decline. There is no contradiction in that assertion. Cantarell, on the other hand, appears to be fully developed. It is in the final stage, where there are no opportunites for new wells or where their output is dominated by the decline of existing wells.
This is not accurate. Production from a given well can rise and fall for a number or reasons in the years after it is put on line.
My point is that infrastructure controls the left slope of the bell curve and geology eventually controls the right slope.
I can think of one reason that a wells output would increase, water or gas injection. But that is still from infrastructure improvement, the equivalent of drilling more wells in the field. What are some other reasons why a wells output would increase over time?
The point is that the peak for a field is determined by how extensively that field is exploited, not by the fact that existing wells are in decline.
Re: Production Increases
The operator, and/or regulatory authority, could decide that the field could be safely produced at a higher rate. Also--stimulation, short radius horizontal holes off the main wellbore, etc.
Testudo, every well has a maximum production rate, provided the pressure is kept constant and high enough. This maximum production is based on the diameter of the well bore pipe. See illustration "H1" here:
http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/mainpages/hubbert.html
The wells in any individual field do not decrease in production simply because the well is pumping oil. The production of an individual well will start to drop when the field pressure starts to drop or until the water to oil mix or the gas to oil mix increases.
The primary reason an individual well starts to drop is the area of the reservoir drained by that individual well starts to decline in oil to extract. IF, the field is not entirely drained properly, then drilling new wells in between can increase the area drained and therefore increase production of the well. However that point, in the very old fields of Saudi Arabia, was likely reached many years ago. At any rate the horizontal christmas tree wells Saudi has been using for several years now covers the very old fields like a blanket.
Someone posted a link a few days ago showing how the Haradh area of Gahwar, the newest and last area of Ghawar to be brought on line, was covered with these christmas tree horizontal wells.
In the US, in our very old lower 48 fields, we use wellhead pumps that pump an average of about 20 barrels per day. In Saudi Arabia their wells produce an average of 4.15 thousand barrels per day and will continue to produce that amount until the pressure either drops or they water out. In Saudi, they use a different system. The wells are horizontal and water injection is used to keep up the pressure. The water is injected on the phriphery of the field and the oil is swept toward the wells. Well, that's the way it works in theory anyway.
Bottom line, wells in Saudi do not produce max immediately as you suggest. And they do not start to drop immediately after that as you suggest. They taper up, have a long plateau of constant production, then taper down due to depletion of the area they drain.
Ron Patterson
Nice brush stroking here, especially on this one:
They didn't admit that any one of those fields was in decline. They only said that their total oil productoin, without field maintenance, would decline at 8%, and 2% with proper managment. You can come up with any combination of those fields to meet that criterior. Ghawar could be increasing, the rest declining. Ghawar steady, the rest declining. Ghawar declining, the rest steady, and Ghawar declining, the rest increasing slowly.
You need to have a field by field analysis to have any credibility on this issue. Pure speculation disguised by clumping several fields into one broad category doesn't hold water.
Pure bullsit Hothgor. Read the following very carefully:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/saudi.html
The smallest decline is 5%, the greatest decline is 12%. The average is 8%. I pointed out that in the post. Are you not able to read? No one is lumping anything together.
Ron Patterson
They did not say that 'every single field we have independently has a 5 to 12% decline, they said their FIELDS as in the total sum of their oil producing fields, has a combined decline rate without doing anything of around 8%. That can easily mean that certain fields are increasing while others are decreasing. If they said, Ghawar has a 3% decline, X has a 12% decline, and total its a 5% decline, you might have a point.
They didn't. They said their FIELDS.
You are just playing with words to make your point, don't persist and make yourself look foolish too.
They're sustaining a 5% to 12% decline.
They're trying to maintain a 5% to 12% decline. Ouch.
Anyway you cut it, percentages are percentages, and that sounds pretty bad.
I think Hothgor has right interpretation of that sentence. It's too ambigious to nail down.
For example, field A could be increasng total production at 12%, while field B (Ghawar) could be dropping at 20%. That's still an 8% sustained decline.
Hothgor, you are in serious need of a reading comprehension course. What they said, copied and pasted:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/saudi.html
Their existing fields have a 5 to 12 percent decline rate. All these fields have been in production for over half a century. At least one of these fields is declining by only 5 percent, and at least one of these fields is declining by 12 percent per year. The rest are somewhere in between with the average at 8 percent.
The Petroleum Intelligence Weekly and the EIA and the International Oil Daily concluded that they need 500,000 to 1 million barrels per day of new capacity each year just to stay even. Hothgor says that is not so. Well, this is one time I agree with the EIA, the International Oil Daily and Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, wee all believe the word of the Senior Aramco Vice President. I also belive that Hothgor is full of crap and cannot understand plain English. And I believe that the above orginizations would concur.
Ron Patterson
Hothgar, no need to insult Ron who has a very good understanding of engineering principles. But, I'd like to note that he's an engineer, and the Saudi release was run through a poblic relations agent and a set of guys very aware of the political and economic implications of any discussion of decline in production. So you are very probably correct in your semantic analysis. Those guys are liars and intend to confuse the truth, and I've read Ron long enough to think he's honest and an expert in production, and a guy who makes a real effort.
You need to re-re-read the quote. It says :'One challenge for the Saudis in achieving this objective is that their existing fields sustain 5 percent-12 percent annual "decline rates," '
They are talking about 'decline rates' being between 5% and 12%, not a 'decline rate' between 5% and 12%. This means that each of the fields being referred to, ie. the 'existing fields', has a decline rate between 5% and 12%. I am afraid there is no other way to interpret this quote.
If the quote is right, then clearly all of the major existing fields are in decline, as Ron said.
Agreed, Hothgar. Patterson calls your analysis "bullshit". His arsenal of defences is bankrupt. He's down to the ad hominems. This is the third go around for this same CSIS story. I explained it all to Ron after its release. I've repeated the link three times. He seems to be off his meds for his jr-alz again. Commonplace for him.
And especially since he's been outed for his failed 2003 forecast for a "likely" Peak in 2004, but for sure in 2005. His desperation to come thru with "the big one" keeps eluding him. His friends, family, co-workers, neighbours, co-berthers at the sailing club ... all think he's a wacko. And he needs redemption. A hail mary pass.
But a newbie resurrecting CSIS and its rehash does nothing. KSA and Aramco statements have been crystal clear on their annual shortfall in almost every press release or presentation for 36 months. The more transparent they are, the more idiots like ron get frustrated. Ron's biggest problem is that after many attempts he still does not understand the difference betw capacity and production, betw decline and depletion.
KSA and Aramco have been clear about this shortfall by quoting it in percentage terms or absolute mbd figures since early 2004. They are careful to almost always deduct such losses from future production capacity forecasts.
There was nothing new when we discussed this in November. Nor December. And not today...
In spite of being too harsh for my taste, I find Freddy's comments interesting, but I don't see how he is allowed to insult ("idiots like ron") others posters and not being banned. Other posters have been baned, why Freddy hasn't?
I see a lot of danger for TOD if this kind of behaviour is not stopped, and it is a shame for those posters that bring matters to the personal territory, you should know better! This is not a trash TV talk show! And don't say that "I didn't started the verbal abuse", yours is the responsability of not letting the amount of personal attacks grow!
I am an old reader of TOD, and I am very sad about the way things seem to go here lately.
I absolutely agree. I am sick and tired of these people taking over every thread with their silliness. Characteristics of trolls (entirely MO):
1. make provocative statements, twist words to get responses
2. make the same statements over and over
3. pick "targets," and harass them continually
4. post continually, on every subject, whether they know anything about it or not
5. insult gratuitously, and often
6. are impervious to hints, suggestions, threats of banning, exasperation, or anything else
7. apparently have all day and night to dominate TOD posts
8. never recognize that THEY ARE TROLLS (in fact, decry the very behavior they are engaging in, often in the same post);, and one more:
9. will eventually go away IF IGNORED.
I'd venture to say we'd have 90% agreement or higher on who these people are among TOD members...that's a hint.
Talking about ad hominem: "all think he's a wacko", "the more idiots like ron get frustrated"...
Some more: suppose all OLD Saudi old fields decline completely until 2011 and only capacity additions and new expansions survive. This is a very pessimistic assumption. Then, Saudi Arabia would have 6 M bpd production. (3 M new up to 2009, 1.55 upgrades 2008/09 and 1.4 new by 2011).
More realistic assumption is that Saudi Arabia will have the same production in 2011 as in 2006, but there could very well be an expansion of production as Ghawar is a very complex field parts of which may deplete at a slow rate. Agreed that 12.5 M bpd is unrealistic.
Ron
Interesting points you make but
can you go over the math with me?
29% of 262 billion is 76 billion.
107 billion is 40.8 % of 262 billion.
Have I missed something?
Yes Roll, you have definitely missed something. 262 billion barrels is what they claim that that they have left. 107 billion barrels is what they have already produced. Total the two and you get 369 billion barrels. If they have already produced 107 billion barrels out of 369 billion barrels, and have 262 billion barrels left, then they have produced 29% of their total oil.
Simple math, right? But of course they have nowhere close to having 262 billion barrels left. My guess is they have about 70 billion barrels left so they are at about 60% of UUR.
Ron Patteson
P1 Reserves are 260-Gb
P2 Reserves are 32-Gb
P3 Reserves are 71-Gb
Discovered sub-commercial resource is 238-Gb
Undiscoverd recoverable resource is 200-Gb
Past production to 04/12/31 is 108-Gb
The article refers to accum production as a ratio to P1 + accum prod:
108/(260+108)
108/368 = 29%
If we use the more common accum consumption over P1+P2+past, it is less significant. If we use the most oft used ratio of past over P1+P2+P3, it is even less signifiant.
then there is the TOD method of past/URR (add all six)... which is a blip in the big picture.
When KSA's status is compared in the same fashion as most nations or regions, it is plain to see how ludicrous are discussions of KSA decline.
Hello Leanan,
On the KSA Manifa link: a 41-kilometer causeway to be dredged and islands to be built! The causeway will probably be a couple football fields wide too, maybe more so the equipment can get through. That's just amazing--has got to lower the overall ERoEI for this project.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Bob, no the causeway will likely just be an ordinary causeway. Most equipment can be delivered on an ordenary road. But if they do have one or two very wide peaces, a barge would be far more economical than building a super-wide causeway 41 kilometers long.
But I found this very interesting:
It is strange that they would use aquifer water. The Saudi aquifer is dropping several feet per year due to over pumping already. This aquifer starts at the mountians near the West Coast of Saudi and flows eastward. It pops up in oasis along the way but deep wells are drilled along the way for irrigation and industrial use. It ends several kilometers out in the Persian Gulf and comes up in springs on the sea floor. Divers would often go down, put bags over the springs and capture fresh water. 1.3 million barrels per day will, in my estimation, be devestating to the aquifer.
Ron Patterson
Hello Ron,
Yep--you may be right. My first reading lead me to the conclusion that they needed to dredge long subsea trenches to get ships into the newly created islands to offload the drilling equipment, intial processing equipment, and lay the connecting subsea pipelines back shore-- that is why I thought the trenches would have to be wide. My second reading made me realize it would be above water level. Either way, it has got to really screw up the fishing habitat for decades until it recovers. I don't think the local fishermen are too happy.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
This excerpt says the SA defies "peak oil proponents" by spending $70 billion over the next five years, for example by building a Seawater Treatment plant to pump 4.5m b/d into Khurais field (to get 1.2m b/d oil - hopefully)
Middle East
November 1, 2006
Issue 372
SAUDI ARABIA: PLAYING THE NUMBERS GAMEAs if to confound and defy the 'peak oil' proponents' argument, last September Saudi Arabia announced that it was ramping up its crude production with four mega-projects. Following a key meeting in Dhahran with contractors to discuss two of 25 contract packages, it announced a series of deals to take the Khurais Crude Increment Programme forward, allowing the country to meet the ambitious target of producing 12.5m barrels per day (b/d) by 2010 - up by one third on its current output of 9.5b/d.
This programme is the largest project to be developed under the state oil company Saudi Aramco's expansion programme, and one of the most important oil projects in the world today.
The Khurais Crude Increment Programme covers three of Saudi Arabia's oilfields: Khurais, Abu Jifan and Mazlij. The project's three oilfields cover a total of over 5,000sq km. There are four existing gas-oil separation plants in operation in the largest of the three fields, the 2,890sq km Khurais field, and one in each or the two other fields. Current combined production is 300,000b/d.
In addition, the Khurais Gas Facility is an important component of an overall expansion programme that will take the associated gas produced from the three oilfields to process 563m standard cubic feet a day (SCFD) of associated gas and 70,000b/d of condensates.
The Khurais Gas Facility will complement the Hawiyah LNG project that is due to start production, one month earlier than originally scheduled, in October 2007. Hawiyah will process nearly 4bn SCFD of natural gas and yield 310,OOOb/dofLNG.
Both the Hawiyah and Khurais gas projects are viewed as crucial to Saudi Arabia since the gas produced will become the feedstock for vital petrochemical plants. These plants will create valuable jobs, an equally important government consideration as the increase in crude oil production. And it is confidently expected that the Khurais programmes will create more than 25,000 construction job opportunities over the next three years.
The Khurais crude contract went to Snamprogetti (Italy) and the Khurais gas contract was signed with a consortium consisting of Hyundai Engineering & Construction and Foster-Wheeler Energy.
The crude contract covers the design and construction of production facilities to produce 1.2m b/d of light crude and 4.5m b/d of treated seawater for reservoir injection. The programme, scheduled for completion by June 2009, is expected to be extremely challenging, involving major construction projects at six different locations.
The programme's most important construction project will be the Khurais Central Processing facility. That will require massive new infrastructure, including wells, trunklines, seawater supply, injection lines, a residential and industrial complex, and new product lines. In addition to the 1.2m b/d of crude to be produced and delivered through the eastwest pipeline, the plant will produce 315m SCFD of gas for Shedgum Gas Plant and 70,000 b/d of natural gas liquids for Yanbu Gas plant.
The programme also plans to increase the amount of treated seawater from the Qurrayah Seawater Treatment plant by 4.5m b/d, the largest single seawater injection capacity expansion ever undertaken in one programme.
Completing the picture, Saudi Aramco is planning two more huge projects requiring massive capital investment - the Khursaniyah and Shaybah expansions. Shaybah's expansion alone will add 250,000b/d to the field's current output of 500,000b/d and involves project costs estimated at about $3bn.
Saudi Arabia's oil minister, Ali Al Naimi, told an Opec conference last September, iust days before the Khurais Increment Programme contract announcement, that Saudi's oil and gas upstream and downstream investment programmes will total some $70bn over the next five years.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3356154,00.html
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467815735&pagename=JPost%...
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=...
Yes, we really need more umsubstantiated claims about Iran, SendOil, you're doing TOD a big favor posting that nonsense.
Quit whining and consider it food for thought. As for being nonsense, consider the information and sources within and make your own judgement... (damn titbaby censor-wanna-bees).
The ynet article quotes two Iranian news sources: Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website and Iran's official FARS news agency. Go whimper to them or Iran's president.
The Jerusalem Post article quotes sources from the Herzliya Conference such as Bernard Lewis, Nicholas Burns, Thomas Pickering, Peter MacKay, Canada's Foreign Minister, "German parliamentarians, former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, Canadian Opposition MP and former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler and others. "
Again, go whimper to them if you dislike what they said.
The Reuters article quotes source Wayne White, "who was a top Middle East analyst for the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research until March 2005." Credible source or not, does his assertion sound realistic or not ??? You decide.
The JPost piece is nothing but propaganda. Burns and Pickering are neo-con nut jobs. MacKay is quoted as saying Canada doesn't want Iran to have nuclear weapons, nothing else, the rest of all the names you mention are not quoted at all.
Einhorn from the Council on Foreign Relations is just another war mongerer. All the people creating this evil image of Iran come from the same corner. And it's because of people like you that they may achieve their goals.
If you read the rest of the Reuters article, you would know that Iran is hardly a threat to anyone. See below in the thread.
Stop your braindead propaganda at TOD, and take it elsewhere.
And do see The Power of Nightmares.
Not to dispute your posting but I note that the PDF posted by Ron Patterson upthread on page 2 suggests the possibility of war between Iran and US and indicates that KSA is working to achieve an ability to replace all of Iranian exports by a target date of July 2007.
I sense something in the works.
No doubt there's a possibility (or more) of a war, that's the only reason for all this bloated language. It still doesn't mean Iran is a threat to anyone.
They are being threatened.
And if the Saudi's are planning on being such an active part of the agression effort (good find, thanks), we can take that as a sign that their reserves are indeed depleting.
"It still doesn't mean Iran is a threat to anyone. "
LMOA... no, poor little Iran is innocent and not a threat to anyone. Ahmadinejad has just been misquoted, etc. Everyone else in the region are just warmongering bullies.
head in sand, ass in air, hisflyisopen is deliberately unaware?
Yes, my poor boy, and that is all you have.
So wave that banner already.
You know you want to.
Ahmadinejad supports, defends, the US-backed Iraqi Gvmt. Stability, security, progress. He likes to pretend it is ‘Iraqi’ and sees Bush’s recent surge plans as detrimental to Iraqi advancement and self-determination. (From the mainstream press.) Well. Its the official position.
More importantly, perhaps, he supports fashion-plate Karzai. I have read that stability in Western Afghanistan rests on Iranian influence.
It sounds like you have your own propaganda and an axe to grind yourself.
The people you attempt to discredit with your ad homs are people in positions of authority and power and they have said what they said.
You may not like it or agree with it, but at least you are aware of their "warmongering propaganda" and you get a chance to respond.
Good thing we have freedom from knee-jerk, braindead censors here at TOD ;)
It sounds like you have your own propaganda and an axe to grind yourself.
How so? Because I read beyond empty hullabaluh and you don't?
The people you attempt to discredit with your ad homs are people in positions of authority and power and they have said what they said.
The only people who have said anything are Burns, Pickering and Einghorn. You may call that positions of authority if you wish. But the rest have not, as you falsely implied, made any statements.
You may not like it or agree with it, but at least you are aware of their "warmongering propaganda" and you get a chance to respond.
How does that have anything to do with this? You feel your war propaganda should go unnoticed?
Good thing we have freedom from knee-jerk, braindead censors here at TOD ;)
Yeas, you have the CFR.
There have been instances in history where strongmen/dictators did exactly what they announced publicly. Therefore, to be on the safe side, I believe that Ahmadinejad is honest: he does as he says and works actively to find ways to kill the jews (wipe Israel from the map) and kill as many Americans as he can (US will be destroyed, as in the above links).
It would be foolish not to prepare as he announces this openly. The last time the targeted victims did not prepare to threats like this, the result was a war that left 60 million dead.
OK, then. Sign up to go invade Iran. Just leave me and my family out of it.
If you want to make a point you need to choose something else than Israeli sources. You are not helping your credibility.
reuters.uk is an Israeli source?
And, if sources of info on Drumbeat are of issue, what can we say of the Honolulu Advertiser, Newsmax, AsianTimes, Dissident Voice, etc?
I think the difference is "look at this because it's interesting" vs. "look at this because it's true."
Your wrong. The donkeyfaced assshole in Iran is braying that message about destroying Israel to the whole world.
What about that simple obvious fact are you calling NOT TRUE?
Sheeeesssshhhhhh. Anyone with one functional brain cell can decipher what they see being said on TV when it comes out of the jackasses mouth.
You deal with news. What is the big ass disconnect for you or are you an apologist for the donkey as well?
Interesting? True? WTF!!!!!!!!!
airdale, I can't speak for leanan but I think she was including my post in the "look at this because it's interesting" catagory and defending the latitude she gives sources for the "drumbeat" in general. Which I agree with. Most people here are intelligent and informed enough to think for themselves and excersize some degree of skepticism.
deleted part of comment..not worth the effort but .....
Of late its getting more and more futile to talk reason here.
A donkey with a nuclear program makes threats against two powerful nations and its 'interesting'?
All a terrorist has to do is walk into Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or DC with a dirty , easy to make radioactive explosive device and the world changes in a heartbeat...and its mildly 'interesting'?
The weapons grade material is out there floating around. A dirty bomb doesn't take much skill AFAIK and read. Even hospital grade material can be used.
I myself am getting tired of playing the PC game with Islamic fools with a religious agenda that includes thermonuclear weapons and death to Christianity and Judiasm. Screw them.
We have a trainwreck heading towards us. We don't have time for this. We don't have the money to placate and play nursemaid to them. We are fast approaching the endgame. Kick ass or get out and quit wasting good mens lives.
I will be voting for candidates with that agenda no matter what party.
The party is OVER.
I understand your frustration airdale.
I think there is certainly room for debate about the motives of the US/West, but for some reason some people (misguided apologists and pacificism or ignorance of a foreign culture and religion) do not realize the "donkey" issuing threats bi-weekly truly does entertain Apocalyptic Fantasies where his perverted brand of Islamic god rescues him and his true believers (M.A.D. is in his interest as Bernard Lewis correctly points out).
For me, the comment "of interest, not necessarily meant as 'truth'" applied to the wide range of articles posted here in general. Each reader has to try to determine the accuracy or reliability of each "source" of information.
I really do not think leanan (and certainly not me) meant to imply this particular subject is merely entertaining. That remark was just a defense from attacks by the would-be censors who do not want differing opinions to be heard.
Sendoilplease, you seem to have forgotten that only the United States of America has ever committed nuclear genocide upon the innocent civilians of another nation. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the ultimate acts of terrorism ever committed in the history of humankind on the Earth. 9/11 doesn't amount to much compared to what America and Britain committed on a routine (i.e., nearly daily) basis during World War II.
Western wars killed over 100,000,000 people during the 20th century. The Muslims have never engaged in such an orgy of violence.
America is still murdering civilians today. George W. Bush has murdered more civilians than Osama Bin Laden. Don't you know that American bombs & bullets have killed over 100,000 Muslims since 9/11?
The United States of America is a violent nation, too. We don't spend $500 billion a year on our military for peaceful purposes. No, our military only exists for one reason, and one reason only: To kill massive numbers of our enemies, both real and imagined.
Iran is suffered from insane leadership, that is true, but the United States of America does so as well. We all have bloody hands.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
I really get worried when people say that the US was the first to commit nuclear terrorism or genocide and then start quoting Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples.
It was not genocide. (Last time I looked, the Japenese were alive and well and prospering under 60 years of a nuclear umbrella courtesy of the USA).
It was not terrorism. It was a legitimate act of war against a nation that had formally declared war against the USA, simultaneously launching a surprise attack.
Basically, if you are a number eight, dont pick a fight with a prop-forward.
The alternative; A sea-bourne assault against a nation commited to victory or death would have been bloody for both the American forces and the Japenese civilian population.
In Total war, there is no such thing as a civilian population.
The Almost instantaneous collapse of Imperial Japan after one radio broadcast by the Emperor
Saved the people of Japan from multi-million casualties, and the very likely possibility of above a million casualties in the US Armed forces.
Some say the second bomb was gratuitous.
The ruling caste of Japan probably thought that if they had two bombs, maybe they have more.
And decided that the game was finally up.
Desperate times...
Desperate remedies...
The use of a nuclear device over Japan was no more 'aggressive' than fire bombing Tokyo or Hamburg, or Dresden.
It was a world war.
Now. If POTUS Launches a nuke strike against Iran, or triggers a Tonkin event and goes for a unilateral assault; then that is an entirely different story.
And will be judged by history as such.
Hello Mudlogger,
Osama Bin Laden and the United States of America agree on this principle.
The firebombings of Tokyo, Hamburg and Dresden were all terrorist acts committed by The United States and Britian. Isn't it wonderful to know that our greatest generation committed these horrendous acts of terrorism which put poor Osama to shame?
Osama killed only 3,000 with his terrorism, The United States of America has killed millions of civilians in our terroristic acts. We're a bloody, violent nation. We've committed our share of genocides, too.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Ok,
You obviously have no faith in redemption or that mistakes can happen and that they can be corrected by toil, humility, hard work and repentence.
Every nation in the west has done its share of extermination. The US is just one of the later arrivals at the party.
Though I draw the line at Genocide:
'The deliberate and intentional extermination of an entire race or peoples'.
I suppose you could accuse just about everyone of genocide by incompetence or genocide by accident.
The real culprits though are those that choose to intentionally exterminate a people on the basis of race, or ethnicity.
BTW: I am not an American, and I really dont like what is happening right now in Iraq, but I will not hang 300 million Americans alongside a defective POTUS.
Should America choose to turn away from its current course, America could still become the last, best hope of the human race.
Its pretty much down to you lot, how you deal with the world. You have the talent, drawn from almost every nation on earth.
Shame really.
The world had such high hopes for its last child.
This American believed in redemption when he thought his leaders wanted to make the world a better place. Instead, since 1980 our leaders, with great popular support, have been leading us on a path backward through our past mistakes and crimes. A new Social Darwinism, a new sweatshop economy, a new Robber Barony, a new fundamentalist tyranny, a new Southern ideology, a new Vietnam, a new Alien & Sedition Act. The final stop: a new Victorian world. Why? Because, Mudlogger, the Victorian world was a very, very lucrative place to be:
White
Male
Christian
Capitalist
Conservative.
Why is it a surprise that Whitey wants back White Supremacy? It just took leaders like Reagan and Bush to convince millions of us that we could get away with it this time. After all, the British Victorians killed millions and no one associates them with "genocide" - just sound business practices. They were punished not by their victims but by 1914, and we will be punished by burning too much oil or a new 1914 that results from that.
From the Times:
Flaming heck, first Brits were redheads!
A genetic study has revealed a surprise about our ancestors, says Robin McKie
These genes were then carried into the islands by the original settlers, men and women who
“would have been relatively tall, with little body fat, athletic, fair-skinned and who would have had red hair”, says David Miles, of English Heritage.
Full piece here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2534334,00.html
So... Maybe hunter gathering was a good idea and agriculture was not so bright after all.
My skinny, 6' 2" red headed son likes this Times piece.
Not often that Gingers get so lauded.
Any way to a more serious point:
When agriculture and civis came into being, the general health of the population probably fell. At least for the tillers. The Royalty - Priesthood probably did ok though.
Workload of a hunter gatherer: 4 hours out of 24.
Workload of a proto - agricultural peasant in the fertile crescent: 10 hours out of 24.
Workload of a 21st Cent. Commuting IT Manager: 11 hours out of 24.
But surely, things can only get better?
I only know of one donkeyfaced asshole threatening feasible nuclear war right now who has a track record of utter indifference to mass death. 600,000 in Iraq, 3000 in New York, 3000 in New Orleans. Millions more dead due to failed US Social Darwinist policies from Russia to Latin America which he now imposes on Iraq. It means nothing to Bush. You can see it in his eyes and you damn well know it.
And I will be an apologist for anyone who stands against the one country that is actually trying to control the whole world. As Churchill once said about allying with Stalin, "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons." Hitler used Communism's crimes to justify tyranny and genocide, just as have many other right-wingers in Spain, Italy, South Vietnam, Indonesia, El Salvador, the Shah's Iran, Argentina, and the CIA. Yet we had a war with Hitler and not with mass-murderer Stalin, because common sense told people who was the greater threat to conquer the world.
The surest death of liberty is world conquest, no matter by which empire. When I thought the Soviets were the greater threat of world conquest, I stood for America against them. But the Soviets are gone and it turns out we Americans were lied to ceaselessly about the Soviet threat by the same military-industrial complex that talked us into Iraq and is talking us into Iran. I refuse to ever take their word for who the greatest threat is again. Cheney's PNAC says what I need to see on that subject.
reuters.uk was the one revealing our plans to turn Iran into a pile of rocks. You are right - I needed to explain that I find this one source credible.
The other 2 article are Israeli sources, and if not backed by anything else I'd rather dismiss them as mere propaganda.
"I'd rather dismiss them as mere propaganda"
I think we would all rather dismiss the threats from Iran as propaganda.
But think about this - the arabs in the region have suspected (known) about Israel's nuclear weapons capability for several decades but it was not until the Iranians started their program that the Arabic countries actually were worried enough to threaten to begin their own nuclear programs.
The threats issued by the Iranian president seem to be taken very seriously by ALL of their neighbors in the region.
It's not "propaganda." It's reality.
Here you are talking mainly about 2 countries. One is occupied by US and the other is a close ally of the US and under its explicit protection. There are some smaller guys (Kuwait, UAE), close allies of the second one.
SA does not care about Israeli nukes, because they have sold their asses to the US. But nuclear Iran is their worst nightmare, because it will mean that they and their bodyguard will not be able do everything they want to in the region any more.
I am yet to hear that Syria, Lebanon or Egypt worried about Iran going nuclear. And if anybody seriously believed Iran intends to nuke Israel, they will be the most vocal opposers as they would have to face the initial retaliation plus the radioactive fallout.
This is nothing else than a game a power here and you are being ridiculously naive in taking the propaganda at its face value. Far below the level of this blog anyway.
Yes, the one who is ignorant of even old news from the region says "ridiculously naive" ...
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070119-1300-mideast-nuclear.html
You can "WANT to believe" it's all propaganda but Reality says you might be deluding yourself.
King Abdullah II claims he wants peaceful nuclear. Unless he and the rest of the states commence uranium enrichment program to counter "the Iranian threat"; your claims, and the association made by the article are entirely speculative. Or maybe I should say manipulative.
That's because we are Israel's henchman. If the Arab states ever dared start a nuclear program that was seen as a deterrent to Israel's 200 nukes, you know damn well we and Israel would bomb those countries into glass. They've got us over a barrel now - they can use our own anti-Iran rhetoric to justify getting the nukes, while telling their own people that nukes will piss off Israel. Their real agenda - presumably self-interest, as always.
The real Iranian threat is simple. The Arab governments have betrayed their own people again and again. Those people are the problem. Those people should be a single Arab state, as promised by the British in 1916. The kings and dictators we support are allowed to exist by America and Israel to prevent that from ever happening. The poorer an Arab is, the more betrayed he is, because those kings and dictators are in bed with western corporations. Iran is able to present itself as an alternative. That's why its power base is with the most-betrayed Arabs of all, the Palestinians and the Shia of Lebanon. Presumably it will try to extend that base into the big prize, Saudi Arabia, a Mafia family disguised as a country. If that happens it will be entirely because pro-Western Arab elites were recognized as traitors.
It would be comical if it weren't for the fact that Hezbollah is the closest thing to a government of the people, by the people and for the people in the entire Arab world.
Hezbollah he says: For , of and by the people.
Also pretty good at sawing off heads aren't they?
duplicate post. It could be something wrong with me but posting caused the browser to wait forever...
The new TOD seems to be much slower. I've seen a lot of duplicate posts lately, probably for the same reason.
U.N. officials: Iran set to assemble thousands of uranium centrifuges
A couple Israeli papers and some anonymous sources. The spin that prepares the war has started apparently. For those of you who don't feel comfortable being spun, do go see The Power of Nightmares at Google Video, that offers some perspective.
Other than that, read this from the Reuters article U.S. plans envision "broad attack" on Iran, posted above:
You are being set up, people.
I love that line about Iran being a non-entity.
Does that mean it will be an easier cakewalk than Iraq?
It doesn't seem to mean Iran is so negligible we should watch it fold like a house of cards.
Yeah, we're being set up.
Could you clarify for what you think we're being set up? Are you saying we're being set up for an attack, or set up in thinking that anything's going to happen?
You're being set up for the idea of the next big evil enemy.
You are being set up, people.
Ok, what can be done?
Any 'energetic' energy source can become a weapon. The more energy potential, the more destruction is possible.
If one wishes to NOT have nations enjoy 'legal cover' of 'this nuclear fission facility is for power', then any nations without fission bombs should not have fission power, right?
Looking at Iran, at one point there WERE a 'favored' nation and the US was helping to build nuclear reactors. Now, not so much favored.
If the 'solution' to the worldwide end of cheap energy is going to be fission, the pimper's of fission are going to have to find a way to get fission to places that are considered 'unfriendly'.
If getting fission reactors to 'not friendy' nations is NOT going to be considered an option, then what is the other choices and how shall the other choices be implemented?
No the problem is not fission reactors by themselves, it is uranium enrichment.
That's because highly enriched uranium is the simplest and most reliable technology for nuclear weaponry, especially a clandestine program which will not have the opportunity for significant testing.
Also HEU weapons are the most difficult to track as the emit the least radioactivity compared to plutonium based weapons. If you wanted a terrorist weapon, especially one which could be assembled 'on-site' with less effort, that would be it.
Plutonium, which makes more compact and more radioactive (in the unexploded state) warheads, would have to be reprocessed (in a huge plant) from the radioactive waste, and usually reactors are run (for civilian purposes) in ways which are unsuitable for producing weapons-grade material.
It is not clear that a HEU-only weapon could be made sufficiently small and light for a useful long-range ballistic missile warhead without boosting from tritium. Tritium must be manufactured in a nuclear reactor, and presumably monitors who have access would be able to recognize this.
The US and UN haven't complained about the Iranian nuclear plants, but the enrichment program.
The reality is that the Iranians appear to be uniquely hot for uranium enrichment years and decades before they have enough civilian nuclear power plants to use it.
And especially given that reactor grade fuel can simply be purchased internationally.
If it were an exclusively economic program then clearly the right solution would be to build many standardized fission power plants and purchase the fuel or fuel enrichment outside the country.
As it is now, the expense of the uranium enrichment is an economic drain, not a benefit, so the most likely intent is a capability for nuclear weaponry.
mbkennel,
A very good analysis. I would suppose that any CIA analyst worth his salt has deduced this long long ago and daily briefings are before the President every day. Our spy agencies are dumb but no one is that dumb.
No the problem is not fission reactors by themselves, it is uranium enrichment.
In the case of the bombing of the Iraqi reactor - it would look like the reactor was an issue.
In the case of Iran - if the reactor(s) are bombed, would that change your mind, or how shall the dialogue be spun to keep the idea that the issue is about enrichment and not power?
And again, if fission for power was NOT an option, there would be no basis for a nation to need uranium other than for weapons....right?
Regime change.
While the sources cited may choose to "spin" the information, the president of Iran himself has stated that they intend to install approximately 63,000 centrifuges. That number of centrifuges is adequate to produce a few dozen nuclear weapons per year once they are running full time. The question, of course, is whether Iran would do such a thing. The right wing neocons argue that this is the sole objective of Iran. The leftist butterflies argue that Iran would never do such a thing and want this purely for peaceful purposes. The truth is probably a mix of the two, with Iran wanting nuclear power generation to support a growing (and increasingly affluent) population but also wanting nuclear weapons or at least the option of nuclear weapons given the volatility of the surrounding states and their own drive towards a Shia based hegemony, and further, to establish their status amongst other world powers.
... and further to try avoiding being "liberated" the way Iraq was.
I find the Iranian desire at least to have the capability to produce nukes absolutely logical and consistent with the situation in the region. If the USA really wanted to stop them they would provide guarantees to the Iranian souverenity in exchange of stopping the enrichment program, a thing which USA repeatedly refuses to do.
USA is trying to corner Iran so that it does what is supposed to - supply oil, stop persuing its own interests and eventually surrender its oil resources to foreigh companies. One way or the other. This of course is intentional policy, and whoever believes the opposite is either naive or interested in believing it.
Hello Leanan,
Recall my Aviation Week link in yesterday's Drumbeat on the upcoming Iranian satellite launch. I think the US and Israel don't want Iran to get the performance and telemetry feedback from this blastoff to improve this launch vehicle to engineer future long range ICBMs. I also think they don't want the Iranians to have any satellites spying down over the ME. Europe & KSA would be worried too. But that is just my speculation.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Old news, I know. From yesterday's DrumBeat was an article on Creating Myths About Oil Production Is Easy, Too Easy. In the article, there is a link to a presentation by Nawaf Obaid.
If you use the daily production numbers in the presentation, the decline rate is something like 2.3% per year. The hypothetical decline rate of 8% was startling to me. This would mean replacing 50% of your production every 8 years. Ouch.
Can anyone shed any insight into how typical a "natural decline rate" of 8% is? Also any idea how reliable this data is?
I see Ron types faster than I do....
Engineer, please catch my post, the very first one on this Drumbeat. The 8% decline is very reliable because it comes from an Aramco Senior Vice President:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/saudi.html
The 8 percent figure is an average decline obviously. Some fields are only declining 5 percent, others more and the greatest decline is 12 percent. This 8 percent figure has been repeated by the EIA and by the think tank "Center for Strategic and International Studies". I have also came across it in several other publications.
In my opinion, to deny this near catastrophic decline rate, which many on this list are doing, flies in the face of all common sense. After all when Aramco admits to this decline, you can take it to the bank. The overwhelming tendency for Aramco is to deliver only very optimistic data. But when they are forced by reality to be very pessimistic, then by God stop denying and start paying attention.
Ron Patterson
If Saudi Arabia produces 8.5 mbpd (crude + condensate) in the first quarter of 2007, they will have shown an 8% net annual decline rate, from the 9/05 production level of 9.6 mbpd.
Simmons defines Gross Decline Rate as the decline rate of a field/region without any new wells, workovers, etc. He defines Net Decline Rate as the decline rate for a region, after new wells, workovers, etc.
The long term net decline rate for the Lower 48 has been about 2%, for Texas about 4%. For the North Sea, since 1999, about 5%. (All crude + condensate)
An interesting question I have been posing is what happens to a region's overall production when a super giant field, accounting for half or more of the region's production starts declining or crashing. One example I have cited is Prudhoe Bay, which caused Alaska to have an overall net 6% decline rate in the 10 years after Prudhoe Bay peaked.
Then we come to my two "Warning Beacons Burning Brightly in the Night Sky," Ghawar and Cantarell. One could argue that Saudi Aramco and Pemex have gone to superhuman efforts to keep production up in these two super giants, the two largest producing fields in the world. But when the water hits, there is not a whole lot that they can do, e.g., the Yibal Field.
So, there may be two factors at work in Saudi Arabia and Mexico--they are both heavily dependent on one field and their biggest field is highly depleted, which would lead to very high initial net decline rates. Because the initial decline rate may be so high, both regions may be able to later increase production, albeit to a level much lower than their peak production. However, one key problem for Pemex is that they are out of money, and they can't do deals with anyone on a joint venture basis.
In any case, Pemex and Saudi Aramco are both notifying some refiners that they are cutting crude oil deliveries to levels below what the refiners want to buy.
WT, I am convinced that you could turn the whole state of Texas into a burning beacon in the night and still many would say its bogus nonsense and 'you are being set up folks'...
Keep speaking reality. Forget the Hotgars and InfantileProtuberances nonsense.
We all know that Hottie has the inside track and IP has all the knowledge in the universe sewed up and is dispensing it here for the great unwashed multitudes. I do sense he has a 'thing' for Leanan and makes me believe he could be an apostate and defrocked preacherman gone bad.
I think I saw him long ago beneath the loop in Chicago with a chicken on his head preaching to the winos shambling by. Yes I think the message was the same. The chicken was more interesting than the message though.
If your going to bash me, at least get my name right :laughs:
To me its Hottie. You despoil the name Hrothgar. :derides:
Get a life childe. Go back to thee twitchgames from whence ye came master of inanities and purveyor of naught.:insults:
inanity-lack of meaning or sense,empty of same:convulses:
despoil- plunder,destroy,rob
deride-to speak of with contempt
purveyor-use your advanced degrees to figure that out on your
own:chuckles:
From yesterday's open thread, in regard to using Alaska as a model for regions dependent on one large super giant oil field for half, or more, of their production:
It looks like the first year of the decline in Saudi production will be on the order of 5%, year over year from 2005 to 2006 (crude + condensate).
The real anomaly may be Mexico, with a projected 25% drop in total production in one year. This decline is probably aggravated by the cash problems that Pemex has. In any case, it is very bad news for net export capacity.
regarding "The age of technological revolution is 100 years dead"
Although I disagree with some of the specifics, I agree broadly with the thesis.
When my grandfather was born in rural Italy in 1896, there were no cars, planes or even telephones to speak of and there was little work outside of farming and menial industrial. By the time he died, his life was radically different.
When I was born 30 odd years ago, I could communicate with just about anyone in the world instantly, I could travel by car roughly 60 mph and travel by plane roughly 300 miles an hour. The internet is convenient, but my life is not fundamentally different today from what it was a few decades ago- at least not like it was for my grandfather.
We falsely believe that we've had all sorts of big breakthroughs in medicine, I'm skeptical about that. Antibiotic discovery peaked decades ago. Many new breakthroughs turn out to be disappointments such as the "breakthrough" of an anti-inflammatory that didn't have the side effect of potentially fatal ulcers (Vioxx), or the wonder drug that will raise the good cholesterol and radically extend life (torcetrapib which in trial stages was killing people and will never come to market). True, an appendectomy is now done with scopes and you're out of the hospital in days rather than weeks, but the overall survival rate of appendicitis ain't much different and the cost is much, much greater.
This is basically what brought me to peak oil. I used to be a techno-cornucopian. Technology saved us from Malthus' Doom before; surely it will continue to do so.
But then I realized that technological innovation is slowing down. My grandfather was born in 1898. He was born before the Wright brothers' flight, and lived to see the rise of commercial aviation, man walk on the moon, the space shuttle, etc. I don't expect to see similar advances in my lifetime, even if I live as long as he did, or longer.
This thread reminds me of a cartoon in the New Yorker from May 2006:
Two bearded cavemen are sitting crosslegged in their cave talking. One says to the other
"Something is just not right -- our air is clean, our water is pure, we all get plenty of excercise, everything we eat is free-range, and yet nobody lives past thirty."
Not true, of course.
Average lifespan was probably short back then, but a lot of it was due to high infant mortality. If you lived to adulthood, you could live to be old.
Of course it is an exageration that "nobody" lived past thirty,
and it is true that some of them "could" live to be older.
But I would bet that the lifespan of those who lived past the age of five was much less than in technologically advanced countries at present.
And all of those infants do count for something.
Interesting. Improvements in infant mortality are also slowing down.
Longer life span from 1900 in the West is due mostly to: hygiene, both in the home and in the village / town; better, more caring, child nurture, better diet, and less backbreaking and dangerous physical work. Social policies such as schooling for all and more ‘equality’. Medecine: antibiotics, the rest can be argued about.
Infant mortality: there is a threshold that cannot be overcome. Many of the differences in the 'west' are trivial really. The slow down (or even downturn) is generally attributed to the fact that pregnant women are today often employed, work a 'double day' (home + work) and thus are subject to considerable stress. And/or, to growing class differences, which leaves some % of women to live pregancy and birth in very poor conditions - inadequate housing, no support, no health care, and a too heavy load, usually in the form of living children that must be fed - third world in the first world.
I wouldn't. It's arguable, of course; the record back then is pretty spotty, to say the least.
Infanticide was likely used as birth control back then. Anthropologist Marvin Harris used to argue that the only technology that actually benefitted humankind in the long run was birth control.
I do find human lifespan a fascinating subject. We are quite long-lived for our size, suggesting that there has been some selective pressure toward longevity. I don't think a lifespan of 30 or 40 years was normal in our evolutionary history.
The average life spans of the kings of Judah, according to the Bible, was 49 years. Most, though not all, died of natural causes. None of them lived to be over 70.
Since its time for endless conjecture I will throw this out to you NASAguy and ask what you think of it. I would like to read your response.
The longevity of the biblical patriarchs. Hundreds of years in age.
How could this be? Its fantasy some say. YET....
science has discovered that we replace all of the cells of our bodies in a remarkable short period of time. If that is so then why do we age if we get new cells? The answer is that the replacement cells are 'aged' while being created.
Why are they aged? The DNA strand is the tool to reproduce various cells. On the end points of DNA is what is called telomeres. A current hypothesis holds that aging of cells is due to the telomeres becoming 'frayed' as life progresses.
Various aging syndromes are attributed to this area.
Also the fraying may be due to the actions of 'free radicals'. These are what anti-oxidents help fight and destroy. Free radicals are supposed to be caused by many factors of modern life...pollution is one. Bad food is another...
Consider that if the patriarchs had differing enzymes or their telomeres functioned a bit differently. Say due to a substance they had access to or it was genetic(which I would prefer) and they passed it on but something in the earth at that time was destructive of the process or perhaps intermarriage destroyed it. Or perhaps the mystical "Tree of Life"?
In any event it becomes clear that it might be easily possible for life to continue for hundreds of years. Remember that the world was entirely different then than now. There was no pollution , and no host of viral material, no mutated microbes. Clean water , pure air and the
organic food was supremely suited to mankind. Dying early of many of the ills that are now circling our planet was not possible then. Only natural death or accidents or deliberate killing.
I can buy this theory. The science is there but still unproven. Our scientists now claim that most of what we are is in our genes and genetics predispose us to what we are and become and are not able to ward off. A gene for everything.
I submit that the concept of advanced aging cannot be so simply discarded as hokum.
In my case I was born in 1938. I was not born in a hospital. Living and growing up on a farm I was not subjected to various diseases contracted communally. I had very good food, good exercise and lots of clean air and water. I have never been a patient in a hospital except for appendicitises and that was when I was a teenager. I take no medication. I have extremely good health. All my blood work is perfect.
Others I know of my generation are aged far beyond what I look. They die and are sick far more than myself. Many have already passed away.
My wife who is 6 years younger takes massive doses of many medications, has had 2 hip operations, has had 9 major operations and 2 back to back coronaries. She was raised in town and her father fed them garbage so he could advance his own causes(gambling,drinking,etc). Noodles and neck meat with no milk for calcium was common. Trash food filled the rest in.
I will easily outlive her and many of my friends just because of how I was raised on a farm and possibly due to genetics. My mother of 89 is still living alone and in fair health. BTW I find and use several herbs that the old folks knew about. I find ginseng and goldenseal in my own woods and keep a handy supply which I use in a "tincture of alcohol"....translated as....(put the roots in a bottle of bourbon and drink straight up as desired).
The theory of long life for the patriarchs is my own.
Below one of many sources in this area.
http://www.basis.ncl.ac.uk/biology.html
airdale-ride to live-live to ride, fly aircraft,never say die,drink as needed,live with a good woman and cook/eat good food
Your theory of long life for the patriarchs seems possible to me. The world of the patriarchs would have been different in many ways - environment, lifestyle, diet, and as you note, maybe even genetics. One cautionary point would be to remember that some of the factors you mentioned (clean air) were still in place in the 900-600 B.C. time frame. Those kings of Judah I mentioned in my previous note lived then,and their life spans were not appreciably longer than kings in the Middle Ages 2000 years later. In discussing the topic, another thing to consider is the rate at which animals age.
I've read about telemores before, and recall something to the effect that why we age at our current rate is not well understood. I can't say that I know much about the subject, though.
I've often wondered what our average life span would be today if we all lived in the healthy environment you described.
Biblical scholars explain these long spans as a form of mythology present in the Bible. I think that this is the most reasonable explanation. All of the ancient cultures idealized the past. The Israelites were no different.
There is no scientific evidence that humans lived to extreme ages (250 - 1000 years old) at any point within the last twenty-five thousand years. So there's no need for any extraordinary scientific theory to account for the Patriarch's alleged life spans.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Proof of that is that they gave a reasonable average of 49 years for the kings of Judah. It's easy to report on what's going on in front of you in the 6th century BC, but in the absence of written records of your past you can pretty much make up anything. I bet plenty of societies early in their literate age wrote down legends of long-lived ancestors, but if we correlate the times when these supposed ancestors lived in various lands, they're all in different centuries. Unless we assume that it's literacy that destroys life expectancy - uh oh.
Airdale...the gold standard of longevity therapy: decrease calorie intake of orgasnism gradually to some optimal percentage(humans aound 30%). Make sure all vital elements are found in the rest of the diet. Every species studied improve longevity: from bacteria to higher mammals. We know now that processing sugar pulls enzymes away from the SIR 2 gene. So eatting food pulls this enzyume into the krebs cycle to process the sugar. Then the SIR 2 doesn't work: it is a suppressor gene which surpresses common aging diseases. An organis compound found in french red wine allows the SIR 2 gene to work in the presence of sugar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol
http://www.prwebdirect.com/releases/2006/11/prweb467364.php
Grok, Thank you for the references.
I have also looked at polyphenols.
I also have looked at probiotics in the form of fermented cabbage and other vegetables.
Apparently many items which are very good for the digestive system and in fighting disease are not part of our modern diets.
"If you lived to adulthood, you could live to be old.
"
Quite true. I saw a graph one time on probable lifespans for those at birth, and those from age 30ish and up.
From about 1900 till now we only gained about 5 years or something to a person's lifespan for those who had successfully made it to 30.
If you made it to 30 in 1900 you had just about as much chance as you do now to hit 70.
Now if you start with a base at birth, then those born today have a much greater chance of making it to old age than those in 1900 did.
The big advances have been as you said, if infant mortality.
Yea, I hear you. Your comment made me think of the scene in Monty Python's "Life of Brian"
Q: What have the Romans given us?
A: Nothing other than the Aqueducts, sanitation, the roads, medicine, education, public order, wine, fresh water- other than that what have the Romans ever done for us? NOTHING.
Obviously technology has given us a lot. I'm glad to live in the 21st century rather than the rural 19th century life my grandfather was born into, but really the main point here is whether technology in general is still growing exponentially along a sort of Moore's law or whether it is in a stage of slowing growth. If the former, perhaps we'll avoid disaster and alternatives will indeed mitigate the effects of PO. If the latter, well we're in big trouble. A lot of IT people suppose everything in the modern world works along a sort of Moore's law (read Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity") and therefore we needn't concern ourselves with trivialities like PO.
Best laugh today. No matter what side of the fence you're on to its accurracy, that's good.
Obviously we are seeing growth in techology in many areas but like you said not at the rate of a few generations ago. In some of the areas you mention, we've even seen a regression of technology in our lifetime:
The concorde fleet has bee retired and it now takes longer to cross the Atlantic than we could have in the 70's, 80's and 90's.
The space shuttles are being retired bc/ despite our supercomputers and everything else to track every little valve and O-ring, we still can't fly them with better than a 98% or so safety factor. The US is reverting to rocket technology very similar to what was used for the 1960's Apollo missions for the next generation of space exploration (assuming we can still afford to explore space at that time).
You might live longer. Many, or most, innovations today are in medicine. Doctors are now really fixing things where before they just treated symptons or watched patients die. Various phases of biology are the new frontier, and some of these are being looked to for energy solutions.
I concur. The article had some interesting observations, but used some examples that don't hold up well to scrutiny.
Personally, I'd refine the thesis to have less emphasis on 100 years, and more on the decline in the rate of monumental advancement.
Along a similar vein..
100 years ago, we moved trains around the country using straightforward pencil and paper planning / scheduling, and had an operator at every switching position to manually (with human power) control the switches. Simple and straightforward and trains moved at an acceptable level of efficiency.
Today we have very sophisticated electronic switch control equipment, requiring years of design and safety validation by highly trained engineers not just for the initial buildout, but also to maintain and support the system during it's operation. Everything is remotely controlled from a central dispatching center again built and maintained by highly trained computer engineers and relying on a communications infrastructure that no single individual can fully understand. Efficiency (trains moved per hour) may have doubled or tripled compared to 100 years ago, but at a an increase in the cost of complexity of many orders of magnitude. In addition, the system is at greater risk from power outages, communication outages, vandalism, theft, and common mode failures such as software bugs in the equipment.
I personally expect the railroads to dramatically scale down their control complexity as peak oil impacts their operations. They will revert back to simple systems that need more manpower, and get rid of systems relying on extended fragile infrastructure.
An example of a looming tradeoff may be found in crossing gates. (In the US - a crossing gate (or level grossing guard) is a set of gates that is automatically lowered to stop cars from crossing the tracks while a train is approaching).
The federal government spends about $500m per year (though the highway appropriations bill) installing and renovating crossing gates. Initially this money had a big impact in saving lives, but the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and since the original equipment is now 40 years old, more and more of this money is being spent on replacing obsolete equipment as opposed to equipping new crossings. So the cost per additional live saved is going up relentlessly. The railroads are responsible for maintaining these crossings, and it is probably in the right ballpark to assume that it is as big a financial and logistical task to maintain the crossings as it is to maintain the actual train signaling equipment. (I.e. 50% of their signaling maintenance effort goes to maintaining and testing crossings).
Each of these crossings cost about $150,000 to install, and require reliable grid power and standby battery banks for their operation.
Crossing gates are a non-essential overhead burden in railroad operations. As expensive energy costs starts biting, it will become more and more burdensome to maintain and support these crossing gates. Throw in vandalism, theft of batteries/copper wiring, and unreliable power, and you can see how economic pressures will mount to abandon crossing gate protection and accept the lives lost as "the cost of doing business".
Look at railroad crossing gates as another "canary in the coalmine" with respect to the level of technological complexity our society can maintain.
Francois.
You must be some kind of railroad expert [wink]
Francois, the Russians just purchased the steel plant in Pueblo that apparently makes super-long railroad rail. Something like 400 feet long.
Is this another item like crossings that will become too complex to install in the future? Or is it a really good innovation that makes sense in an energy-starved future?
I dont know much about actual rail. Each railjoint is a big deal, since the two ends have to be electrically jumpered together and jumper breakage is a frequent source of problems with track circuits. So longer rail has advantages in installatio / maintenance. I would imagine that you would want to manufacture long sections of rail on the continent where you are going to use it, since how do you load these things on a ship?
I also dont know the technology involved in making long sections of rail - not sure if it is a artifact of complex societies or just an ordinary, albeit specialized, steel making operation with a small market?
Francois.
Francois,
I have sitting right here on my computer desk a gold railroad watch. It has 21 jewels and two back covers(to further keep out coal dust and such). Inside it is a work of extreme craftsmanship. The train engineers name is engraved on the watch works inside. The quality is something that cannot be purchased or created today. It is superb and I treasure it greatly.
It has unbelievable accuracy because 'back then' the railroad prided themselves on punctuality and being on time such that most all had pocket watches of very good accuracy. It is made and has the name "Illinois Special" on the clock face.
We do not see the kind of attitude and skills those railroaders possessed back then. We spend hours sitting in airport terminals while numberless computers fray the systems and peoples nerves.
Its unbelieveable how far backwards we have progressed. I used to have a railroad for my account and spent years there keeping their mainframes running. I helped develop the software as well. They were the only railroad that did make a profit. The rest needed subsidies.
The world has not grown measurably better. It has worsened IMO. Technology has been used against us and not for us.
Crossings? Many crossing where I live have no gates. Stop,Look,Listen.Thats it. Only at major roads are they installed.
You are right - we should think carefully before stating our technology is now better in ALL cases.
There are still portions of railroad track today controlled by electromechanical technology developed in the 1940's. These old engineers would take a handful of electromagnetic relays, wire them up and use them to send remote control commands down a pair of copper wires along the track. They are still in service today, 50 or 60 years later, because of their reliability, maintainability and simplicity. Compare that with our modern "electronic" equivalents that go obsolete in less than 15 years.
Francois
You forget Lipitor. Lipitor is a true wonder drug: the more you look, the more benefits are discovered, and it has virtually no side effects.
So no, the age of technological revolutions has not ended, there just was a sector rotation: from physics and inorganic chemistry to organic chemistry, pharmacology, biology. The revolutions in biology in the last 50 years are mind-boggling.
As for my life, it is quite different from what it would have been 30 years ago: life expectancy is higher, medicines like Lipitor and antivirals are available, and the technology for telecommuting exists. The latter is actually very important for mitigating any decline in crude oil production that the future may hold.
Surely you jest! Lipitor is a statin drug and as such has very serious side effects. These include muscle spasems, severe muscle pain, liver damage, memory loss and many others. Check it out:
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/061109_omsg_presentation1.pdf
I take Zetia for high cholestrol. I would not take a statin on a bet. Of course even Zetia has side effects but they are not nearly as serious as the side effects of statin drugs.
My doctor told me that because of the very serious side effects of statin drugs that he prescribed them for only the most serious cases of very high cholestrol.
Ron Patterson
Ron,
You might consider all natural Neptune Krill. It has lowered my cholesterol by 30%, raised HDL about the same. There are clinical studies backing the results.
GJ, thanks for the tip. I will try it.
Ron Patterson
Darwinian,
I think you must have a very good and wise doctor. Not long ago my husband had to stabilize a critically ill woman in her 60s (and prior to admission in generally good health) whose liver failed from the statin drug used to treat her moderately elevated cholesterol.
IMO, the cholesterol heart disease paradigm is terribly flawed and statins owe their success to pleiotrophic effects (refer to Appendix Table 1 in link), not to lowering LDL. More evidence is unfolding showing that the ability of statins to lower inflammation is the primary reason for a reduction in cardiovascular events. In fact, some recent studies comparing fish oil supplements and statins found that fish oils reduced the number of cardiovascular events and overall mortality risks more than the statins.
Given the tremendous costs and risks statins pose it makes more sense to combine an appropriate anti-inflammatory regimen (e.g. aspirin) with diet and exercise esp. in those patients with low to moderate risk for a heart attack.
The best compilation of data examining the legitimacy of the cholesterol paradigm written for public consumption is The Cholesterol Myths written by Uffe Ravnskov MD, PhD and a slightly more updated book, The Great Cholesterol Con, written by investigative journalist Anthony Coplo.
Lipitor is good, but don't forget Viagra;-)
In small doses Viagra is harmless, but in large frequent doses (more than 10 times per day) it affects the ego and results in ProlificConquestAssertation syndrome.
Lipitor does indeed dramatically reduce LDL. It has been shown to decrease heart attacks and death. Can't argue with that. There are significant side effects such as muscle pain, even to the point of rhabdomyolysis (muscle tissue death) and liver damage. If I had high cholesterol and could take lipitor without side effects, I undoubtedly would.
But consider this, a few decades ago a pharmaceutical company might have tested a dozen agents at a cost of millions of dollars to find one that could be safely brought to market. Now they test hundreds of agents at a cost of 10's to 100's of millions of dollars in order to bring a single agent to market safely. Even so, medications like vioxx keep slipping through the cracks.
Say you have a Cancer with a 100% death rate if left untreated. The traditional therapy (chemo A, discovered in 1955) gives you a 50% survival rate and costs $1000 dollars. A new agent (chemo B) was discovered in 1995 and is just now coming on the market at a cost of $10000 per treatment. Research does indeed show it works better than agent A because the survival rate is now 60%. So for $1000 we got a 50% cure rate, for 10x that amount of money we now get only a 10% addition onto our cure rate. Not much bang for the buck. Furthermore, today you'll be put on injections to prevent your blood counts from dropping. You'll feel more energetic during your treatment but it won't increase your chances of survival and it will add thousands of dollars to the cost of your treatment. Certainly if it's me and I can afford it, I'll go with chemo B and the injection to increase my blood counts. Yes progress is still being made but not at the same rate and at much greater cost. We're not reaching the absolute limits of technology by any means, we just are reaching a point of diminishing returns.
Also, speaking of cancer, our progress in treating cancer is often overstated. We are getting better at diagnosing cancer earlier but this creates a statistical pitfall. Say People with cancer Z are now living 5 years on average after diagnosis whereas just 20 years ago they lived 3 years on average after diagnosis. Researchers hold a press conference announcing the breakthrough. But are we better at treating Cancer Z or are we just diagnosing it 2 years earlier on average than we used to (due to advances in CT, PET and MRI scans)? It's hard to account for this statistical effect.
Phineas Gage, MD
I have always heard that the greatest lifesaving strides in medicine were not wonder drugs or surgery, but sanitation. Teaching people to wash their hands, don't drink dirty water, has had the greatest effect.
Can anyone identify that statement?
As a broad category, infant mortality is undoubtedly the biggest contributor. Water/ sanitation is part of that as is vaccines against childhood diseases, general safety measures and basic neonatal care. Anything done to decrease infant mortality has a proportionate impact on the lifespan of a population. If you prevent a 2 yr old from dying from measles and she lives to 76, you've done a lot to increase the average. If you do coronary bypass on a 70 year old and he lives to 76, you've done very little. As stated in other comments in this thread, if you look at the average life span of those who made it through childhood alive in previous centuries, we haven't really added a lot.
This CDC site reports 25 of the 30 years of life extension in the 20th century is attributable to public health measures.
http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00056796.htm
I have also read that about 10 years of the increase in lifespan is attributable to vaccines. Can't find a link for that one.
Phineas Gage, MD
Thanks for your response and link. I had attributed that idea of sanitation to a more world-wide statistic, specifically in the third world. I was thinking Albert Schweitzer. However, googling that led nowhere. Broader searches cited works that included lifespan and sanitation didn't pin it down enough.
Soap and Tea.
The most important discoveries in Medicine to date.
Making tea requires you to boil water.
Soap,
Well, thats obvious at every level:
'Wash yer bot and live a lot'...
and aspirin, I would place it as first, before tea and soup
Biologist
My wife takes Lipitor. I believe this is for cholesterol control
After her coronary I had a long talk with her cardiologist. I asked him why she was taking it and his answer was to keep the cholesterol under control.
Ok fine. Cholesterol is a clotting agent. Its secondary to the problem and really a bandaid. Its goes to the site of an injury or anomaly on the wall of the vessel and covers it.
So the real problem , correct me if I am wrong, is not what cholesterol
does by why it is doing what it does. The real problem is what is happening to the walls of the cell. I have read that our diets and other factors are causes(even bad teeth and the pylori microbes) are the causes and the underlying causes need to be rectified otherwise the problem remains and the drugs are just a bandaid.
True or false.
BTW I have no cholesterol problem. My HDL and LDL are fine and yet I eat bacon, eggs , pork BBQ , butter and so on. All the things I am supposed to avoid. Without getting into the health addict craziness is there any substance to what I speak of.
I might be wrong but much of what I see practiced as medicine is just an investment tool for physicians. The HMOs I once was covered by were trashed in my area by the physicians. I suppose that preventative medicine is not to their liking.
I see it as a car dealership who wants to keep the shop bays crowded. The Dr. wants to see his waiting room filled. Waiting rooms are something I try to avoid. Its obvious that sick folks are in there and why should one walk and sit for hours in the lions den except to get sick themselves?
Can you proffer an opinion? 'Preciate it. Thanks.
Yes, cholesterol is a complex problem. Has at least these components:
- diet
- genes (e.g. ApoE4)
- reactions of one's genes to one's diet
- exercise
- reactions of one's genes to exercise
- infections (maybe Helicobacter pylori as you said, I have heard Chlamydia more often: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol4no4/campbell.htm
- reaction of immune system to infections (can cause damage to far-away tissues because some bacteria seem to redirect the immune response to attack the body and not the bacteria)
- environmental pollution
- interaction of genes with pollution
That's enough topics for research for the next 100 years.
Of course, most doctors don't push very hard for prophylactic treatments and lifstyle changes. One reason is that they don't get paid for lifestyle advice, another reason is that many patients don't take that kind of advice well, and that it is difficult to manage. How do you get an overworked office worker to walk two miles every day in a suburb without sidewalks? Also, if they prescribe drugs or surgery, they have covered their butt in terms of liability, because that's the currently accepted forms of treatment.
Human guinea pigs eat "ape diet" for 12 days, experience remarkable health improvements
A good article about "Healthy" foods. The ones the doctors/Big Pharma doesn't make any money promoting.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_3847.cfm
I'm not biologist, but I'll hazard an opinion on this.
you raise excellent questions that are illustratvie of our limited knowlege. Lipid metabolism has been studied about as well as any human biochemical process yet there are still many gaps in our knowledge.
"The real problem is what is happening to the walls of the cell"
True but cholesterol in the bloodstream is an integral step in this process. If you decrease LDL, the progression of plaque in the arterial wall slows, maybe stops entirely, and in some cases even reverses somewhat.
So far our only pharmacologic tools are to prevent cholesterol absorption from the gut (Zetia) or to reduce LDL production by the liver (statins). Your point about the walls of the cell (probably better worded as "walls of the artery") begs the question why can't we prevent the arteries from taking up the cholesterol and other gunk that forms the plaque? In a sense this is what torcetrapib was supposed to do by increasing the good cholesterol (HDL). Either torcetrapib just had an unfortunate side effect (killing people) or there's something about lipid metabolism that we still don't understand since it really did increase HDL.
Anyway, high cholesterol is a true independent risk factor for heart disease and death, but it is only one of many. Other independent risk factors include diabetes, smoking, family history of heart disease just to name a few.
Diet may be a true independent risk factor, but a relatively weak one at that. The relative risk of high cholesterol for heart disease is around 1.6, meaning your about 60% more likely to develop heart disease if you have high cholesterol. Diet is much more weakly linked. The difference in risk between those who eat the very best heart diet and those who eat the very worst is only about 20 to 30%.
One might be tempted to say, yes but high cholesterol is due to diet, thus we shouldn't blame the cholesterol so much as the American diet. The reality is, cholesterol levels are more genetics-influenced than diet-influenced. Even the strictest dieter/ exerciser will only lower their cholesterol by 5 to 10%, maybe 20% in very rare cases. Anyone on lipitor can expect a 30% reduction and 50 to 60% is quite common.
That has been my experience. Both my parents have high cholesterol, even though they eat healthy (low fat, mostly vegetarian), exercise, and are not overweight. My dad runs five miles every other day, my mom works out at the gym two or more hours a day (once in the morning, once in the evening - it's how she socializes). She weighs 90 lbs. soaking wet, has blood pressure so low the doctors always think she must have a thyroid problem when she goes in for a checkup...but still has cholesterol so high she's on cholesterol-lowering drugs.
Your parents experiences are interesting and I think quite common. But where do the "bad genetics" come from? A lot of bad genetics I am convinced comes from the diet of the parents and the diet the child was brought up on. The effects often carry over into adulthood. If an individual has crooked teeth or extensive dental caries that is a big clue (side note, if the decay was drilled out and filled in with mercury it can add insult to injury - I have personal experience with this).
I also think the low fat, high carb, near vegetarian diet often recommended by mainstream dieticians, usually including lots of bread and packaged and processed foods, is far from an optimal diet. Something mimicking a 'paleo' diet is much healthier. Grains are needed for civilization because they allow us to feed billions we could not feed otherwise, but biologically for any individual a grain based diet is clearly inferior to a diet of some combination of vegetables, low-sugar fruit and free range animal products with some fatty foods like avocados, butter, nuts and seeds.
Unfortunately if one does not grow their own food a truly optimal diet is impossible even with all the organic "superfoods" available given the depleted soils supermarket and even farmer's market or local organic foods are grown on.
It is not about a 'paleo diet' per-se, but reading Dr. Weston A Price's "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" was a life altering experience for me.
When I was a medical student in Cincinnati we used to get a fair number of appalachian patients from Kentucky. We tabulated a "tooth-to-tatoo ratio". If the number of tatoos exceeded the number of teeth, you knew that the patient would not do well.
Good point. We should ask what causes the atheroma in the first place. A few main categories of likely culprits include:
1. Oxidized fats
2. Advanced glycated end products
3. General free radical damage
The first category correlates with cholesterol levels and provides a potential confounding variable for the correlation of high cholesterol levels and heart disease (important to remember that correlation is not causation).
The second category is a factor in the Western diet due to the presence of a high level of refined carbohydrates in the typical diet.
The third category is very broad as free radicals are ubiquitious and even a byproduct of normal metabolic processes. A good example of a free radical link to heart disease is a study in my state showing that a smoking ban reduced the number of emergency room admissions for heart attacks by 27% obstensibly due to reduced exposure to the numerous free radicals generated by cigarette smoking.
Once the damage to arterial walls occurs the inflammation process exacerbates the problem of atheroma development.
Better to retard the process by addressing the initiating events and then work with diet and/or medication to inhibit the inflammatory process. But, as you say, preventive medicine is not a priority due to laziness, inertia, as my husband jokingly says a desire for job security.
"Good point. We should ask what causes the atheroma in the first place. A few main categories of likely culprits include"
It seems more likely that humans are engineered to die around 50 to 70 years of age. From an evolutionary standpoint, it was best for the old generation to just die after procreating and raising children rather than competing with one's children and grandchildren for resources. If you think about it, the human body fails in many ways after 6 or 7 decades- arthritis, heart disaese, dementia, etc. We can take this as some unnatural consequence of bad health decisions, but probably it just has to do with the fact that that's how Nature or God inteneded us. Eating healthy will, on average, lead to a longer life, but the fact remains that the human body was not designed to live well beyond 6 or 7 decades.
I don't think Nature intended us to die at 70 ("threescore years and ten," as the Bible puts it). But we aren't designed to live much longer than that, either.
There has not been selective pressure for senescence. Rather, there has been selective pressure against the cell maintenance that would allow us to live longer. Energy used for cell maintenance cannot be used for other things (like reproduction). So it's a balance: long life vs. reproductive success.
This may be why calorie restriction works. Insufficient food tells the body that this is not the time to put a lot of energy into reproduction. (Hormones, etc.) Instead, the energy goes into cell repair, so you'll still be around to try again next year.
I think the evidence points against that. Namely, menopause. Why menopause? It's not just a natural part of aging. Very few animals go through menopause. The ones that do tend to be social species (such as whales). Why? The "grandmother hypothesis" holds that in middle age, a female is better off helping raise grandchildren than she is having more kids of her own. Not least because it takes a long time to raise a human kid, and she might not be around the whole time.
Curiously, there's some research that suggest it's childhood that prevents competing with one's own offspring, not old age. Why is human childhood so long? Anthropologists expected to find that it took that long for the brain to develop. Instead, they found that preschool children are mentally capable of learning just about everything a human needs to do to survive. Where they didn't measure up was physical strength. So why does it take so long to develop that strength? Possibly to avoid competition with one's own parents.
The consensus in the scientific community is that calorie restriction works because a less active metabolism means fewer free radicals generated during production of ATP and to a lesser extent the contribution from a reduced consumption of foods that have been oxidized or which might otherwise stimulate pathways leading to free radical generation. The fact that rodents fed a diet rich in antioxidants (e.g. blueberries) show a very similar pattern of extended life and reduced age-related morbidity supports this view.
Eight years ago I became immersed in this topic after working on several research projects examining the role free radicals play in the development of various neurological diseases. This work plus some previous graduate level studies in oncology underscored the nature of free radical contribution to disease. For this reason I strongly support the attempts by some researchers to educate the public that their bodies, esp. their digestive systems, are bioreactors and the addition of a generous amount of antioxidants at each meal is prudent and more tolerable than a very low calorie diet.
Is it really less active, though? Humans report greatly increased energy while on calorie restriction, and animal studies have showed similar results. Calorie-restricted mice are much more active than their fully fed brethren. Probably because in nature, insufficient calories means you need to go looking for food.
Another data point in support of the reproduction vs. cell repair thing: having kids shortens your life. Even for males, where you'd think it wouldn't make a difference.
I agree that there are natural limits to the human life span and extraordinary intervention to extend that life span by a few years does not make sense.
On the other hand, I am intrigued by the prospect of a more advanced medical paradigm of reducing one's exposure to elements that accelerate the onset of age-related illness. This is not really about mortality, its about contracting the period of morbidity closer to the end stage of life resulting in a higher quality of life for middle-aged and elderly persons with less dependence on polypharmacy.
I realize disease is a multifactorial process and implementing a new model based on self-discipline will be tough (esp. given the widespread view that there is always a silver bullet around the corner) but I think you will agree that in the face of a declining energy base new ways of thinking need to quickly take hold.
Khosla on CNN Money
I thought this was an interesting comment:
Nothing about EROEI, scalability, soil depletion, etc.
The other funny thing to me is that he accuses those involved in petroleum of being disingenuous and not forthcoming. The same could certainly be said of, say, some ethanol proponents...
And your point is... ?
Hello Bman,
Yes, Bman, the critics of ethanol do come from the oil interests. Robert Rapier, a lobbyist for an oil corporation who is featured prominently here at The Oil Drum, has engaged in a battle against ethanol through this blog and elsewhere. Remarkably, news accounts of his activities often err in claiming that he is engaged in a "personal crusade against ethanol" when it is evident that he is crusading on behalf of corporate interests.
I am not speaking here on behalf of the ethanol industry. From my standpoint, transforming food into fuel is an obscene act. Transforming oil into pollution is also obscene, too, so I am no friend of the oil industry, either.
But it is very important to keep in mind that The Oil Drum has served this same interest: Pretending to be an outsider it has spoken out on behalf of the oil corporations' interests. I hardly imagine that this happened accidentally. I wish that the Editors would actually reveal their names, their jobs, their conflicts of interests, and which corporations have "inspired" this blog into existence. That's a lot to ask, though, and it is not going to happen. People often hide their identity for a reason, and more often than not it is not a good reason.
Accusing the oil corporations of lying is equivalent to accusing the birds of pooping on your car: They both do it and they both don't care. The oil corporations are looking after their own interests and they really could care less about the dreadful consequences which must ultimately fall upon the consumers. When the dark days come the oil executives and oil millionaires will move to a secure place (Peru?) and watch the rest of the world go to hell while they continue to enjoy the good life.
The Earth certainly is going to hell. The apocalype is coming.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Robert Rapier, a lobbyist for an oil corporation...
I am responding from an airport, and not much time. Other posters have largely decided to ignore you, which is a good thing since you have offered nothing of value. But I want to make something very, very clear to you. I am not an anonymous poster. Therefore, libel and slander laws apply to the statements you make about me. You are making libelous statements, as I am not a lobbyist, nor are my positions "on behalf of corporate interests." I am a chemical engineer, who was called in to provide expert testimony on an ethanol bill. The reason I was called in was because of prior experience with making ethanol (my grad school research), and having taken a stand against it previously. When I testified, I did so on my own time. I was actually on vacation at the time. But don't let the facts get in the way of your rush to judgement. The company asked if I would like to go. If I hadn't thought corn ethanol was a bad policy for a state that doesn't grow much corn, I would not have testified.
People often hide their identity for a reason...
Yes, often it is to avoid fanatics like yourself who have no regard for making accurate statements, and who believes he can state his opinion as fact - even when it is defamatory. Continue, and you will learn that this is not the case. With people like you running around defaming people and obsessing over them, is it any wonder so many posters are anonymous?
Oh, and one final word, genius. If you had ever bothered to click on my profile, you would have learned that your little witchhunt was quite unnecessary. I have never concealed what I do since day 1 here. Sometimes my positions will be the same as those of my company. Sometimes they won't. And believe me I take lots of positions that don't. But all you do is search for that which confirms your preconceived notions. You are like the Creationist who has to filter out the part of the information that you don't like.
Further communications, if necessary, will be through my lawyer. Try me, but "I didn't know" isn't going to cut it as an excuse. I have told you the truth, and so have lots of other posters.
Hello Robert Rapier,
Oh, I see. I was mistaken. You are not a lobbyist. You are just a hobbyist who happens to obsess on a matter which mysteriously coincides with the interests of your corporation. It is wonderful to hear that you are volunteering on behalf of your employer, Robert. Very good, indeed. Am I to conclude that you are not compensated in any way for all of this time you spend in your hobby of fighting against ethanol and legislation harmful to the oil industry?
Am I defaming you, Mr. Rapier? Perhaps you are also guilty of defaming people, too, Mr. Rapier.
Are you certain that you haven't misrepresented yourself, Robert? And, yes, I am certain that you sometimes have opinions that differ from your employer. But regarding ethanol and the legislation in California your "views" appear to exactly coincide with your employer and industry. Shall I assume that this is purely accidental?
I noticed in researching your activities on Google that you were involved in a nasty argument with creationists moderators on a discussion board. Is this what you are referencing or something else?
Even if you are technically not a lobbyist, Robert Rapier, you are behaving in exactly the same manner as a lobbyist. I could care less about your job title -- you know, Robert Rapier the environmentalist, but I am merely observing your behavior over the last year.
Now tell me, Robert, why would anyone reach the incorrect conclusion that you were working as a lobbyist for the oil industry? Think really hard now, Robert, and tell me why I would reach this conclusion based upon your anti-ethanol "hobby"?
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Am I to conclude that you are not compensated in any way for all of this time you spend in your hobby of fighting against ethanol and legislation harmful to the oil industry?
That is absolutely correct. Now that you know, implications to the contrary will be considered libelous.
But regarding ethanol and the legislation in California your "views" appear to exactly coincide with your employer and industry. Shall I assume that this is purely accidental?
You can assume that you are just an idiot. My company neither extracts oil from California, nor did they contribute money to the campaign. So they had nothing at stake. As far as "my industry", it is not my concern whether ExxonMobil has to pay higher taxes. You have just done a bit of sloppy research, and you defame people as a result of your sloppiness.
I noticed in researching your activities on Google that you were involved in a nasty argument with creationists moderators on a discussion board.
I think it is safe to say that your behavior is perilously close to cyber-stalking. You know, the kind of person that causes people to post anonymously. A person might review your messages to/about me and conclude that you have a problem.
Think really hard now, Robert, and tell me why I would reach this conclusion based upon your anti-ethanol "hobby"?
Stupidity? Fanatacism? A secret agenda? Who can tell why you have come to some of the wacky conclusions you have reached. My guess is that your brain is wired up wrong, somehow causing you you to jump to conclusions, and then you only let in the data that supports the conclusions. But I am no psychologist.
Getting on the plane now. Take some advice, Dave. Seek help from a professional. No joke. But my guess is that you heard this from whatever board you were kicked off of before you decided to infect this one.
Hello Robert Rapier,
Criticizing Robert Rapier is cyber-stalking? Give me a break. Are you above criticism?
You are no psychologist, nor any sort of environmentalist. But you are an ethanol hobbyist. You are doing a good work, Mr. Rapier. Saving the world for the oil industry.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Would you just shut up and give the rest of us a break?
Oh, for an ignore button!
Hello peakearl,
My argument with Robert Rapier has nothing to do with you, peakearl, so you need not involve yourself. If you want to ignore it go ahead and do so.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
You are posting to a public forum! Every one of us has to read your drivel to get to the next post, so we are all involved. PLEASE have some consideration.
"Oh, for an ignore button!"
Amen, brother!
Robert, I used to debate creationists in the public forum. Then one day I read a single line, by a notable scientist, about creationists that inspired me to stop this practice, in spite of the utter enjoyment I gained from it. That line was:
These people are idiots, idiots should be ignored, not argued with.
David Mathews is a complete idiot and should be ignored, not argued with. True, I did argue with him several days back. But that was before I learned what an idiot he truly was. On his website he claims to "Live at Peace with All and Refuse to Hate Anyone", yet his posts reek with hate. And he hates Americans above all.
Now there are a lot of things I agree with Mathews on, but one thing I very much disagree with him about. Mathews blames people for what is going on in this world. And more than anyone else he blames Americans. We are not to blame for this damn mess we find ourselves in. We were born into this life and have lived it in the only way we know how. It is just our nature, Americans, Europeans, Asians, Africans and whomever, to behave as we do. And to continue to spit spite and venom at Americans for their behavior is just stupid.
We are who we are and no one is to blame for the circumstances which fate has dealt him/her. And people who seethe with hate for people whom they blame for our prediciment should be ignored....and pitied.
David cannot help being the way he is, seething with hatred for Americans. But we should not return that hatred, we should just ignore him and pity him. Life has dealt him this hand and we should tolarate him.....in silence.
Ron Patterson
Hello Ron Patterson,
My argument with Robert Rapier has nothing at all to do *with you* so why are you bothering on argue on his behalf?
As to the subject of creationism, you say:
Well, I can see why you had such a tough time changing the hearts & minds of creationists. The mere existence of a disagreement does not constitute proof of your own intellectual superiority.
As for myself, I have argued with creationists, too. And I have also argued with atheists. I will pretty much argue with any person whose views differ from my own. These arguments serve a purpose and that purpose is not to establish any sort of prideful self-esteem affirmations about my intellectual superiority over anyone else. That's a major difference between us, but certainly not the most important difference.
You claim:
I don't hate Americans at all. I spend all of my time with Americans. I see their addictions, their terrible afflictions, and all the evils are committed in their behalf.
Americans are worthy of criticism. So I criticize America. Is America above criticism? Does patriotism mean that I have to affirm every evil that America commits?
Anyhow, the love that I promote and practice has nothing whatsoever to do with any person's nationality. Nationalism appears like the very opposite of love from my standpoint specifically because the patriots love America and justify the killing of Iraqis simply because they are in the way of our bullets. Anyone who truly loves humankind must love the Iraqis. At least, that is, according to my definition of love. Maybe your opinions are different.
The monster that is destroying the Earth is a victim? That's some strange philosophy you have there, Ron Patterson.
Well, I hate to tell you: It makes no difference. Whether Homo sapiens are guilty or merely a victim the species will end of extinct just the same. Only the victors write the histories, but in this case Nature won't. Only fossils will testify of humankind's existence and no intelligent species will appear after us to wonder about us and imagine what sort of life these primates lived during their brief era of dominance over the Earth.
Those who preach silence seldom practice silence. Ron Patterson, you are free to do whatever you wish. If you are silent, I appreciate your silence; if you speak, I will listen to what you have to say.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
David Mathews,
Please don't pick fights with the incredibly generous and enlightened contributors to TOD. There is so much to gain from participating in this amazing forum. The resident geniuses here have opened my eyes to so much.
If you want someone or something to blame for the havoc wreaked by humanity, the process of evolution should be your target. Chimps with brains and hands are winning the large life-form evolutionary race to date, and we did it by being aggressive and selfish, as you point out. But some forms of life, in the many niches on the planet, are going to be dominant at every stage along the evolutionary pathway. Exhibit A would be the dinosaurs more than 50 million years ago. Spielberg's Jurasic Park movie could have applied to humanity, too. That's just the nature of evolution, if there's a niche to be exploited, some life form will find a way to expand into that niche. We are the large life-form that has taken over most of terra firma. But we couldn't help it, our genes were programmed by evolution to expand and exploit.
Resistance is futile, so I suggest instead of railing against humanity, try to add some value here to help this blog get the message out to the world: adapt soon to a world without fossil fuel, or die.
Glen
Glen,
TOD is a lighting rod. The dialogue here is threatening to many who are not prepared to wisely view the energy crisis.
It will draw many who come with but an agenda to disparage, insult and disrupt the flow of ideas and communications that exist.
As I said before. If you want to keep this venue you will have to fight for it. That is the way of the net. Moderation can work but its a killer to do. It can also be destructive in its own way.
I have not been here that long and already I have seen the deterioration created by the attempts of the disrupters and those who come with their own agendas. They add nothing of value.
Mathews blames people for what is going on in this world.
Errr, lots of the goings on in the world are the result of people's action or lack of action.
If the actions deserve blame or kudos, that depends on the action and how you think it is beneficial or harmful and to whom.
How about cellulosic ethanol?
I can't help but wonder if Robert has attracted his own personal "Hothgor" because of his position on ethanol.
BTW, here is one of Hothgor's comments (regarding me) from yesterday's open thread:
To be honest, though, even though Hothgor can be rude, at least he appears sane. The jury is still out on my new stalker.
Hello Robert Rapier (Ethanol Hobbyist, Virtual Lobbyist):
Are you entirely sane, there, Robert?
Did you say the following on Talk.Origins:
Were you dreaming of immortality for Homo sapiens in the past or was this someone else who happened to share the same name as yourself?
Regarding the subject of cyber-stalking, do you have any opinion regarding the behaviors described on the following website:
Mr. Rapier, would you please clarify your behavior in regard to the above?
Sincerely,
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Hello Everyone,
Here is Robert Rapier's version of his dispute with the moderators of a creationism board:
http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/lesson_cre_ethics_rr.htm
and another one ...
http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/response_to_fred_rr.htm
If Mr. Rapier would clarify his behavior in this circumstance, I might gain a little more respect for him as a judge of my own character.
Or is the Mr. Rapier in question a different person that the Robert Rapier (ethanol hobbyist) who happens to possess such a prominent role at The Oil Drum?
Robert Rapier has spoken here about his interest in creationism:
So I suppose that there is some connection between the Robert Rapier who dreamed of human immortality via genetic modification and the Robert Rapier who engaged in an ugly fued with moderators on a creationism board and the Robert Rapier who is an ethanol hobbyist here.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Dude...um...er....uh.....um......
Wow.....I wish I had as much time to waste as you obviously do.
Hello GLT149,
The "time to waste" required was five minutes on Google. Your presence on this blog indicates that you have at least that much time to waste & probably a whole lot more.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Bannable offence???
I second that.
David;
Please adjust your dosage.
It's hard to know who anybody really is in this text-only universe, but it's amazing how much is really revealed in what people consistently say and how they react. R Rapier's comments and posts have never raised a warning bell to me, but in fact entirely the contrary, his discussions are straightforward, restrained and respectful.. even if he works in the industry that gets the Lion's Share of suspicions and demonization cast upon it (some deserved, some not). But try to tune in to your character-judgements, and not your fears and paranoias..
Earth is going to hell? Apocalypse coming?
No More Movies! Go outside and play with your friends!
Bob
Hello jokuhl,
Robert Rapier is getting some much-deserved criticism. Do you really believe that he is above criticism?
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
There is no reason for the oil industry to object to ethanol. Ethanol is a political winner. It doesn't decrease the demand for oil much at all. The economics of ethanol is created by the government. Demand for corn raises the demand for diesel, fertilizer, and chemicals. The construction of ethanol plant creates jobs. Installation of additional tanks and ethanol infrastructure creates jobs. Only after the cost of our food doubles will the stupidity of ethanol production create a political backlash.
If indeed biofuels (not necessarily ethanol) are low EROEI then Khosla et al will lose all their money. Better a sliding scale subsidy to biofuels (50c at $40/barrel to 0c at $75 barrel - fossil crude). Save 100dreds of billions on middle east policing and perhaps even fight global warming.
Not much hope but there may even be an added corollary: Some of the not born/liberated Chickens/Hogs/Cattle on the antibiotic infested factory farms will thank you for not being there.
Nothing about EROEI, scalability, soil depletion, etc.
Soil depletion is bunk....at least accouding to the TOD user
http://www.theoildrum.com/user/practical
The criminals at Greenpeace have come up with another picture for the sheeple consumation:
Let's examine this remarkable Photoshop creation. By 2050 1/3 of our electricity production is going to come from wind. About 100-fold increase. So far so good - but what will balance the grid when wind is not blowing? For this minor detail one finds out that hydro grows almost double to ~10% of 2050 production (goodbye rivers!) and oil and gas is going to triple to some 20%. No peak oil, no peak NG by 2050... and I was beginning to worry about the BS these drummers were talking about.
But the biggest joke is biomass. Biomass by 2050 is going to be double what we have now produced by nuclear - or ~5,500 TWth = 5,500x3.6x10^15 = 19.8x10^18 J ... now... dried biomass energy content is typically around 15 GJ/tonne, and with 40% conversion efficiency to electricity this amounts to the nice number of 3.3 billion tonnes of biomass. Looking at the numbers here, Greenpeace is essentially proposing to divert half the biomass produced by the North American and Siberian forests, or 1/3 the entire biomass produced on cultivated agricultural land to the power plants burners. Very "green", isn't it?
It is about time these Greenpeace idiots to be called what they are: dangerous political opportunists. These are people that never had even the slightest intention to care about the environment and all their goals were to reach those cosy political chairs.
I think you're way over the line. I see nothing wrong with Greenpeace trying to phase out coal and proposing alternative methods of energy production. That's part of their mission afterall. To accuse them of proposing this to "reach cosy political chairs" is laughable. We can evaluate the ability to achieve these goals, like TOD does with other groups' proposals, but your overheated rhetoric seems like you have a personal axe to grind against Greenpeace.
In case you did not read my post, I accuse Greenpeace of deliberately pushing for unrealistic and enviromentaly disastrous "solutions" to our electricity generation future. And I provided analysys to back it up, while you provided jack.
Given that the future of our children depends on this, and given that so many people like you seem to blindly trust them, what they are doing is a crime of the first order. These people should be hanged by their tongues and I mean it.
Starting the post with "The criminals at Greenpeace" sort of gives your ganme away.
Send a job application to NKVD.
oldhippie, you are right and I was frustrated when I wrote it.
Next time first I'll explain why I think they are criminals before using the qualification.
Greenpeace one of my least favored enviro groups & I shrink from defending them. Spoiled rich kids, They do inspire kneejerk reactions. Naive not criminal.
Greenpeace always shrink from the main question:
How do you energise a modern society of many millions or billions in each country?
To keep such societies going you need a high level , stable base load of electricity.
They shrink from the logical conclusion that coal and nuclear will form the high, stable base load and that Alt. Energy will not compensate for this.
Now they are either very niave or calculate on the basis of extensive die-off.
While in dialogue with Green Peace Activists a few years ago, I broached the subject of Peak Oil. The reaction was very hostile. The Idea that the bogey man (oil) may dry up early and ruin their 'project' was anathema.
I think they are taking a different line now because they know that Coal may form another bogey-man substitute.
I now treat them as nothing more than another scare-industry. Another political party, huckstering for votes and money.
The way they went after Lovelock when he suggested Nukes was quite telling.
I think they want to be the Arch - Druid Wizards of some kind of Hobbiton.
Just like the BNP want to be the Iron Legions of a new Reich.
It is all about(political) power and the lust for telling other people what to do.
Was it Lincoln who said 'The only people fit for political office should be dragged kicking and screaming into this place''.
I might be wrong, but the truth is in there.
Hello Mudlogger,
You do not & you should not. Humankind has already inflicted enough harm to the Earth. There's no need to keep this poisonous addiction going for any longer.
Do you know what is going to happen in the near future?
The Earth is going to become angry from all of this abuse which humankind has inflicted upon it. Nature will begin handling humankind in a harsh and deadly manner. Billions will die, civilization will end, and our species will spend thousands of years tettering on the edge of extinction until a day comes in which the very last human falls asleep for the very last time.
Homo sapiens have demonstrated conclusive that primates are not ideally suited to dominate a living planet. Nature has very effective techniques of exterminating unhealthy, self-destructive species from the Earth.
The fossil fuel industry has provided many near-miraculous powers to the prosperous people of the world. Yet billions still suffer and millions are already starving and dying. In the future this situation cannot help but get progressively worse. By working so very hard humankind will inherit one hellish planet.
I think it wise that we stop. I doubt that we will, though, because addicts seldom voluntarily give up their addictions -- how then will an entire species abandon its own suicidal addictions?
For that reason, I am quite certain that Homo sapiens will go extinct. Not today, not tomorrow, but sometime soon. Extinction will occur within a geological moment. While individual humans do possess a survival instinct, the species does not.
For those who insist that humans need electricity in order to survive ... all I can say is: Too bad for humankind.
Why is it that humans looks so unhealthy, unhappy and obese? Because humans are only intelligent in their own deluded minds. A day will come in which humans are deprived of all of life's luxuries and some of life's necessities. Too bad for humankind but the fate is well deserved.
Fossil fuels is the addictive drug that gave us all of these bounties, and fossil fuels are the poision which will exterminate the human pest from the Earth.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Well,
We may as well go quietly into that dark night.
Quietus Anyone?
pps
you sound like those green peace activists i met a few years ago.
Do you really hate humans so much that you take a grim satisfaction (or even weird pleasure) in the thought of extinction?
Perhaps I detect a large slab of self loathing...
Hello Mudlogger,
Well, Mudlogger, do you hate humankind so much that you will addict the species to exhaustible finite resources and turn the planet into humankind's sewer to such an extent that it becomes a hellishly inhospitable place?
Look at this world: Do you really believe that this is healthy for humankind? How much longer do you imagine that humans can keep living like this?
The animals survive for millions of years, but the animals never engaged in a war against nature, and the animals never became addicted to all those drugs that humankind cannot live without. Homo sapiens are a walking-dead species. Extinction is inevitable and inescapable now. Are you proud of your work, then?
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Blow it out your arse.
The people here come looking for analysis and potential solutions to a now reasonably well understood problem.
And yes, I am proud of my work since graduating. I ,in a humble capacity have helped to keep the world a turning place.
Stumbled on a small and unexpected oilfield once...
That is the same world that you type shite on a plastic key pad.
YES! I am an earth-raping oilman. And until somebody comes up with a better solution, I will continue.
But, as an Earth Scienist, I know it wont last, and the solutions at present are not that great and the future (thereby) dont look too good.
Clearly, you hate yourself and by displacement, the rest of humanity.
What was it that did for you?
Potty training?
Now, since you think that humans (including you) are intrinsically bad and should disappear, why dont you set a fine example for us all to follow?
We will come along in a minute.
Leave the keys to your car in the ignition.
"Do you really hate humans so much that you take a grim satisfaction (or even weird pleasure) in the thought of extinction?
Perhaps I detect a large slab of self loathing..."
Oh please just knock it off. Just because some people see that "business is usual" is not sustainable, and that the Earth can not possibly support 6 billion people sustainably, and that the energy issues we face are a lot deeper than techno-glitz drop-in substitutes for petroleum, you go into this "hatred" thing.
Maybe it's love of humanity, hoping for a decent human life for all.
Just maybe we're not talking about nuking out billions of people overnight, but maybe just backing off over time and powering down.
This "self loathing" crap is just that - crap. It's a cheap shot, just like people who claim that anyone who believes that PO has consequences hates people. It's a specious red herring.
No it isnt. It is not a cheap shot.
And I do not see business as usual as a way forward.
And BTW I have been both a subscriber and student of PO since The 90's.
The man hates himself and thereby hates life.
Including your life.
And the lives of those you know and love.
The man is a Genophobe.
He belongs with the 12 Monkeys.
And yes , 6.5 billion people is a significant part of the problem , and no, I am no technophile that thinks technology will resolve our predicament.
We might not make it.
As an Earth Scientist, I (think) I understand this. You cannot study the five prior extinctions and not wonder about our ultimate fate.
But that doesnt mean you have to like it. Or agree with it, or lie down and die.
This guy will only be happy when we are all dead.
Power-down will happen. Whether we like it or not.
And this Genophobe will add to the ways and means of human happiness not one whit.
Aid and abet him if you want.
I dont much care.
"This guy will only be happy when we are all dead.
Power-down will happen. Whether we like it or not.
And this Genophobe will add to the ways and means of human happiness not one whit.
Aid and abet him if you want.
I dont much care."
Of course you don't care. You have found a comfortable position, and you won't for a moment entertain any threat to it. In any case, you seem quite wound up. Sorry, just playing the bullshit pop-psychology game back at you.
Look, I'm not at all interested in "aiding and abetting" him, whatever that means. Is he the enemy, and you're accusing me of aiding and abetting the enemy? You're either with us or against us? You don't seem to admit to any shades of gray.
I just think statements like "This guy will only be happy when we are all dead" are absurd in the extreme. That's my real point here.
When you react to a stated pessimistic outlook by saying "you want it to happen that way" or "you hate humanity", it's not helpful and makes you look ridiculous. Just address the points you have an issue with, and move on.
And I don't care that you don't care.
sgage;
You should consider how often David says that kind of thing. I think Mudlogger is right, that DM is kind of off-the-charts in his ranting against mankind. John Calvin would have been proud.
Bob
Humankind is by far the most violent and destructive animal to have ever evolved on the Earth. We say much worse things about pit bulls, lions, sharks and alligators and all of these animals combined are not even 1% of violent as humankind.
Extinction is also inevitable. The human story cannot help but have only one (tragic) ending. The fossil fuel industries are contributing to humankind's extinction but they are not alone: All industries in one way or another serve to consume the Earth and generate pollution such as to make life hellish for future generations of humankind.
I'd encourage humankind to stop but I know that the species won't. Extinction will bring to all this foolishness and the Universe will become without us (& without any memory of our existence).
Such is life.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Whatever
With all due respect dm is not worth replying neither discussing with.
Hey Dave, clear something up for me. Do you think Americans are obese?
I'm still not sure of your position here.
thx
Obese in every possible way. We consume 25% of the world's resources, excrete 25% of the world's pollution, and still remain unsatisfied because we still don't have enough stuff.
Not only is America obese as a nation the American people are horrendously obese and unhealthy. Too much driving, too much eating and too little physical activity has created this great mountain of fat which is the American people.
But America's obesity is unsustainable. Within the next several decades, undoubtedly, Americans will lose both their cars and their food. The United States of America is a country which is poised to collapse, and by any standard of justice it should.
So much for America. Bring me a flag and I'll wave it.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Hi M,
and thanks,
Well, I'm in a on-going conversation elswhere and, if possible, could use a reference for the conclusion:
"How do you energise a modern society of many millions or billions in each country?
To keep such societies going you need a high level , stable base load of electricity.
They shrink from the logical conclusion that coal and nuclear will form the high, stable base load and that Alt. Energy will not compensate for this."
My questions:
1) Can coal and nuclear actually replace the current base load ((use)? What would have to be done and can this be done? (ie., I haven't yet read the second Hirsch report.)
2) If so, for how long? i.e, with what scenario of increasing consumption?
3) Can the transfer to coal/nuke base (i.e., construction, etc.) take place in time to prevent grid crash?
4) If so, how much time is needed?
And, when you say "alt energy" will not compensate for this. Is this also a matter of "will not because not enough time/money?" Or "theoretically cannot in any case, given X time and Y money?"
(If this question makes sense.)(Do you see what I'm getting at?)
1. The major inputs for the current base load in for example in the UK are approximately as follows:
Nuke : circa 20%
Coal: circa 40 %
Gas: CIRCA 40%
Alts: less than 1 %
In my opinion, as Gas declines and as conventional coal powered stations are retired since the fail to meet emission standards, and since the Nuke fleet is destined to reduce by half between now and 2010 we have a small problem:
If nothing is done to correct the situation, then by 2020 we will have about half our current generating capacity. Assuming luck plays a part and luck is on our side.
At the same time, we will also have to import about 3/4 of our liquid fuel requirements.
Where from, I am not sure, since we will compete for liquid fuels in a world that will be short of liquid fuels
2. Increasing consumption: This cannot happen, and I have long been an advocate of consevartion wherever possible. However, in a world where one mans conservation is another mans cheap energy, then conservation must equal storage. The only real way to equate this to a tangible and useable commodity is Gas Storage. Assuming we can afford to buy the gas
3) No. We are too late. Each day we dither now counts against us. Gas from Norway may help us, but that is not a long term solution.
Gas from Shtokoman is currently entirely theoretical
4) Nukes: from inquiry to switch on in the UK ?
About 15 years
5) Coal? unless you build in carbon sequestration , then never. At least in the UK. Also: Indigenous coal extraction is now a non- starter unless a significant amount of capital is involved. We will import coal.
Assuming we can afford it.
6) Alt Energy:
Wind: Is erratic and will not generate sufficient to even assist base-load on a national level.
On a local level, then there is a reasonable case. But the problem is high energy demand during low wind periods (Anti-cyclone weather patterns in winter) Wind power storage (pumping water uphill) may provide a usefull , local solution, but it will not drive additional capacity for the national grid. It will work best in rural highland Scotland, but
will not work in the Home Counties. But offshore wind in the South East may help.
But the key word is help. Assuming there is a reasonable EROEI.
Tide and Wave: Show me a working prototype.
This is a big unknown. Tidal energy may well help, but the engineering will be difficult.
Overall:
The problems will be:
Have we got enough Time?
Have we got enough Money?
Have we got enough Energy?
Time is slipping by and money will become increasingly scarce as we export more money to import more oil and gas. Building major capital investment costs energy.
You missed out access to food calories bn your questionnare.
Lets not even go there tonight.
IMO:
A crash program of Nukes, at least 20, starting right now may help save the bacon of 60 million souls in these islands. While we have the money. Time, Construction Energy and food.
We have a problem.
And answers from Green Peace came there none.
Great Post - It combines all of the problems into a single position. The human's great ability is too see future problems and deal with them effectively. In the days when power generation was constructed it was done by mythical beings as they brought light and energy to the natives. The power industry lost that mystic as those Gods were replaced by the Gods that manipulate money. These God's of the Economy have convinced the world that this system will address the long term issues confronting us.
The reason most are doomers is based on the very reasonable belief that the Developed World is not making the proper investment to sustain life. The country should be making the investment in energy infrastructure RIGHT NOW, while we have the money.
Take heart engineers and scientists, because our day is coming again; the longer the politicians and Wall Streeters wait, the more demand their will be. The Engineer will be king again, and the money boys will pay for the expertise.
Full disclosure – I am environmental consultant with a BS in Geology and I believe, like WT, that Geologists should be in charge of Engineers. A little too narrow minded those Engineers.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. What is dismaying about the green movement is how the tendency for the political mind and the technical mind to be rarely housed in the same body. Using the Canadian government as an example, one would be hard pressed to find an engineer, chemist, or scientist in the House of Commons, and probably the US Congress is similar.
That Greenpeace is technically naive puts it in no different a position from most governmental bodies. Whatever scientific expertise exists is many pay grades down and out of sight and often pathetically sycophantic.
When there are as many engineers and BSc's as accountants and lawyers amongst our lawmakers, I will begin to have hope that political solutions will be relevant to the problems. The strength of TOD is the technical expertise that it attracts. You can't expect much from a legal solution to a technical problem.
Canada has been plagued by a sucession of francophone constitutional lawyers dominating politics. It's a bit like having a marriage counselor in to fix your fridge. The upcoming debacle between the powers that be purportedly wanting to up the output from the 'oil'sands from one million to five in FIVE!!!??? years is headbutting the probable/possible future PM's commitment to GW abatement. When said p/p future PM has a dog named Kyoto and Exxon has huge deals on leases in Alberta, the crux of the matter will be in every craw.
Mexico is no longer viable as a source long term and, while production may not be fast, Alberta has the quantity. The Conservative Party is greenwashing themselves in a rather pathetic display, but it isn't credible to the ever sceptical Canadian populace. And GW is pretty much accepted up here what with being on the front lines. It IS warmer up North. We've noticed. Nuff said.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity
If you don't understand something the normal practice is consult the specialists. Did Greenpeace consult any utility/energy company about how feasible this is? I strongly doubt that, given the obvious flaws I noticed at first reading. In this case (if we assume well-intended incompetence), what they do is the same as me telling my mechanic how to fix my car, or my doctor what is my diagnose and how to treat me. But of course there is the option that they don't understand that they don't understand, which would be rather unfortunate, and I strongly doubt it - esepcially if you present your suggestions as a result of "extensive study".
Greenpeace does not have a lot of direct power in making decisions, but it has the power to influence the public, and the public is what influences decision-makers. This means they are quite influential in the end... and this means that they have responsibility towards that same public. Either incompetent or malicious they don't stand up to that responsibility.
Roscoe Bartlett. My hero.
http://www.naturalhub.com/slweb/fading_of_the_oil_economy_timeline.htm#2...
"But the biggest joke is biomass. Biomass by 2050 is going to be double what we have now produced by nuclear - or ~5,500 TWth = 5,500x3.6x10^15 = 19.8x10^18 J ... now... dried biomass energy content is typically around 15 GJ/tonne, and with 40% conversion efficiency to electricity this amounts to the nice number of 3.3 billion tonnes of biomass. Looking at the numbers here, Greenpeace is essentially proposing to divert half the biomass produced by the North American and Siberian forests, or 1/3 the entire biomass produced on cultivated agricultural land to the power plants burners. Very "green", isn't it"
Seems that doubling our nuclear capacity instead seems much more intelligent, no? Doubling by 2050 is, let's see
(1+r)^(2050-2008) = 2, results in a required 1.7% yearly growth in nuclear power capacity. Is that really disruptive?
I think this shows the reality of the underlying immutable physics in scaling energy sources.
If they instead allowed nuclear to double instead of eliminating it, the plan would be much more realistic.
Obviously they prepositioned phasing out coal and nuclear and were trying to fix the reality by filling the enormous gap with whatever they thought sounds feasible. No technical analysys, no resource limits constraints analysis, nothing. To call this wishful thinking is an understatement, for me this is intentional manipulation.
In the end you present that nice graph to the average Joe, to help him drive his SUV with clear conscious - knowing that "those up there" have finally figured out how to fix that "Global Warming thing". And this same average Joe will continue opposing everything near his house - even wind turbines, because he is lead to believe that there are "so easy" solutions out there and he does not have to bear even minor inconveniences.
From Kerry Emanuel's essay in the Boston Review
"The study, by the German Aerospace Center, was commissioned by Greenpeace and Europe's Renewable Energy Council."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6298467.stm
You should re-direct your hatred towards the German Aerospace Center, since they came up with the numbers.
Don't be naive. Whoever pays the bill orders the music.
Maybe they order the "music" - but they do not pick the instruments, or play the notes. The poster was suggesting a level of involvement by Greenpeace that was impossible to say with any veracity.
I think we are all familiar with the "research" that Exxon and the cigarette industry funded. This seems to be a much more credible report than that type of industry funded product and it seems to deserve more respect than the poster was according it. Again- if he hates Greenpeace- he should hate the others involved.
(re: the Greenpeace report)-
"The report was developed in conjunction with specialists from the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and more than 30 scientists and engineers from universities, institutes and the renewable energy industry around the world. It provides the first comprehensive global energy concept which gives a detailed analysis of how to restructure the global energy system based only on a detailed regional assessment for the potential of proven renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and the utilisation of efficient, decentralised cogeneration."
I didn't say I "hate" GP, I said I am considering them a dangerous opportunistic organization. Hate is irrational, I know exactly the rationale of my opinion.
I am also questioning a report created with the major participation of the renewable industry, which is currently accounting for less than 1% of electricity production worldwide. Such reports have no more value than Exxon making a research about the possibility of Peak Oil mitigated by biofuels. It amazes me how the greens are getting in one bed with the multibillion "renewable" industry and still continue its claims of being liberal, for the small business etc.
Of course the company you just described will produce the crap I showed it to be. After all, all those government subsidies are justified with reports like this.
What is the source of your charts? I was intrigued about the units for the vertical scale so I went to the Greenpeace site. There I found a document energy [r]evolution: A Blueprint For Solving Global Warming. It had graphs for a reference case and an alternative scenario case that were very similar to yours, but with different scales and colors.
Looking through the document, I found the tables containing the actual numerical values used for the reference case (table 15, page 17) and the alternative scenario (table 21, page 19. The table values were in TWh/a.
For the alternative case, the projected use of gas and oil shown in the table is:
Also, the projected nuclear and biomass electricity generation numbers are
By those numbers biomass is only projected to reach 43% of the 2003 nuclear-based electricity generation by 2050 rather than the equivalence you claim.
As best as I could find, in 2005 the U.S. had 103 fully licensed and operational nuclear power reactors which produced about 750 terawatt-hours/year. This is very close to the 788 value shown above. Given that I am not the most knowledgeable person in energy terminology, I am forced to assume the term you use for nuclear power electricity generation, TWth, is significantly different that TWh/a that the Greenpeace article uses. However, I see you use 3.5 petajoules per TW/h for your calculation so perhaps TWth and TWh/a are the same.
In any case, the Greenpeace report contains this caveat on page 12: "This scenario is only one possible renewable future. Relative growth rates should not be taken for a Greenpeace endorsement of one technology over another, but instead reflect the current understanding of resource potential and somewhat conservative assumptions about expected technological development.There are several renewable resources and technologies that could provide a much larger source of energy in the future than projected here."
This seems to say that in terms of possible replacements for fossil fues and nuclear powere they are not pushing any one technology or energy source over any other.
Greenpeace is not my favorite group either, but that said, I wonder if the charts you are showing unnecessarily make their suggestion of an alternative source for USA electricity worse than it might otherwise be.
The numbers you quoted are for USA, while the original graph was for the world total - therefore the difference in numbers. I estimated the biomass numbers by simply eyeballing the graph and taking the nuclear production of ~2700 TWth as a base, so they should be about right.
Sorry for not providing the link for the graph... it is one of the articles Leanan refered at the top.
Here it is
I'm guessing the measurement unit for the graph is Trillion KWth. World electricity production is 16.54 Trillion Kwth (2003) according to Google and cia.gov, and the 2000 production looks about there.
"Greenpeace is not my favorite group either, but that said, I wonder if the charts you are showing unnecessarily make their suggestion of an alternative source for USA electricity worse than it might otherwise be."
Again the article was about the world. The pdf you linked was for USA, but what caught my eye was that by 2050 some 80-90% of the demand is going to be satisfied by "efficiency gains". This is enough for me to dismiss it as a total junk.
TWth
I assume this is the same as TWh/a, could you please explain what the t in TWth means?
In proper engineering nomenclature, it would mean thermal energy.
Iceland uses an average of 900 MWe (electrical) and 900 MWt (geothermal heat) for their population of 280,000. The geothermal heat is largely used for heating (homes, offices, commercial, outdoor swimming pools, sidewalks, etc.)
Alan
Similarly the Norwegian consumption is about 13.7 GWe (120TWh/a, not counting gas-turbine power on offshore installations). And 265 MWt for district heating (supplied to consumers). For firewood and other biofuels for heat, the average consumption is assumed to be 1.36 GWt.
What I was getting at is that while 2700 TWh/a or 308 GWe seems to match the nuclear production as given by the bp statistical review, the unit TWth was completely new to me.
And though I hate to be a nitpicker, I still don't know what it means.
308 GWe would seem to correspond to a 770 GWt production in the nuclear plants.
TWth is Terawatthours of thermal energy.
It is in contrary sure that the coal and oil industry cares a lot about environnment.. and therefore, we have to encourage them to produce more... not the wind industry..
Yesterday someone posted a question RE - the 60 lbs of soybeans gets you 5 gallons of oil.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/SoybeansOilcrops/background.htm
Soybean oil generally has a smaller contribution to soybean value, as it constitutes just 18-19 percent of the soybean's weight.That would be about 12 lbs of oil. Less than 2 gallons.
They also take the FEED mash and gassify it.
Soybean meal is the most valuable component obtained from processing the soybean, ranging from 50-75 percent of its value (depending on relative prices of soybean oil and meal). By far, soybean meal is the world's most important protein feed, accounting for nearly 65 percent of world supplies. Livestock feeds account for 98 percent of soybean meal consumption, with the remainder used in human foods such as bakery ingredients and meat substitutes.Personally, I'd rather:
Mill the outer coating off the soy bean (it interfears with protein absorbtion and soaks up oil)
Sort the heavy beans from the outer coating/bits
Put the heavy beans through a oil press
Feed the seed cake to animals
Make fuel/soap/cook with the oil
Given where soy beans fit in the food chain - turning them into 'energy for human machines' and so much dust doesn't sound like a good plan. A fine way to be rid of excess production, if such exists.
China Says Major Shift on Dollar Policy Coming
The Cornacopian Congregations of the Church of Technology and Science like to make little calculations on the back of napkins and pretend they have solved the Energy Crisis.
But, like the Jerkin Yergins of CERA, these disciples of Technology and Science seem to think we live in a test-tube where all variables - like Finite Fiat Currencies such as the dollar - are under their control.
The techno-saviors never seem to take into consideration the Real World variables like a crashing currencies, war, limited availability of materials (like silicon) etc on their cute little "on paper" ProjeCTions.
Head in sand, ass in air, Mother Nature catches them unaware.
"Head in sand, ass in air, Mother Nature catches them unaware."
Love that one. Thanks.
Mother Nature Bats Last
Charles Krauthammer - Charles Krauthammer - has an op-ed in today's paper (behind a paywall at Washington Post and not available on my home paper’s website) 1) debunking ethanol's potential, 2) arguing for a gas tax to get some real energy savings, and 3) (predictably, perhaps) pushing to open ANWR and GOM for drilling.
Actually it is not behind a paywall at all. You just have to register but that regeristation is free. Thanks for the tip however because the article is quite good.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR200701...
Ron Patterson
Krauthammer is a blood-stained imperialist who deserves to be strung up as much as the newspaper editors who hectored their readers into marching off to the killing fields of 1914. It tells you volumes about his values that only after his preferred solution of destroying a few wrong-colored countries was proven impractical, he then swallowed the bitter pill of calling for conservation and taxation.
I was able to read it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501547.html
As a chemist, I liked this quote:
For an example of how this message is received outside the confines of TOD, here is the unsurprising response on a blog at the National Association of Manufacturers:
Interesting piece on energy from (usually) wise man Charles Krauthammer in today's WaPo that gets it two-thirds right on energy. He makes the case for tapping our own resources in ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf and also makes the case for nuclear, two areas in which we would absolutely agree. However, he also includes as the third leg of the stool a higher gas tax, in order to lessen consumption.
Let's put aside for the moment that a higher gas tax hits the poor and those on a fixed income disproportionately. Think of the impact on manufacturing and on all things that are transported, which is just about everything. Reference Red Cavaney's point, noted yesterday here, that 92% of everything we buy has petroleum in its lineage. All those prices would rise if you boost the gas tax.
American manufacturers are already struggling mightily to compete in a pretty daunting global market while we have the highest legal costs, pay the highest prices for natural gas, have among the highest corporate tax rate, etc., etc. Let's not add to this more expensive gasoline. A nice theory, maybe, but in practice would be deadly to America's manufacturers and ultimately, consumers.
The piece is here. I think it is behind a free-registration-required wall (I can read it, and I am a registered but non-paying customer).
Energy Independence? A Serious Plan Requires Taxes, ANWR and Nukes
As the subtitle suggests, he is also suggesting nuclear energy:
Well , Well,
I never thought I would agree with Krauthammer but, Tax Gas, Goto Nukes, Drill.
Tax Gas: If you tax it now, yes there will be pain up front, but people will change habits and go for smaller, economical vehicles.
Dont go over night for a major tax hike. Just tell people you will escalate it over time, tell them why and this gives people time to make alternative arrangements.
Do it now while oil is relatively cheap.
Remember. You can always reduce tax as oil prices increase thereby numbing the pain over time and enabling some cushioning of price shocks.
That is the problem in the US: little tax means that price shocks go straight to the wallet. Tax, and the ability to modulate the tax allows a government to cushion price shocks.
One condition: Tax revenues should be hypothecated for urban rail.
Go Nuke: Contentious though this is, I dont see how you get round generating a stable base load without it. It also generates high quality jobs which cannot be offshored.
Drill: This will happen anyway, but will not go anywhere to meeting energy independence.
This is the weakest of the three points. But if it keeps the oil lobby off the backs of politicians, then it is usefull in the short term.
Gas Tax would do the most, with discernable and immediate results, but the blow back from the Saurus Utility Vehicle Lobby would be very strong. Serves them right: 'Evolve or go the way of the Dinosaur' should be the stock answer to GM and Ford.
Hi M,
The problem I have with "drill" is: if the proceeds are not directed towards solving (silver bbing) the problem, they are only setting us up for a bigger problem. (Taking the very last scap and heaping it on the cliff edge... or something)
Do you also see this as a problem?
If so, do you have a suggestion?
Drilling around the US Coast and ANWAR will happen.
Right up until the last barrel can be economically extracted.
It is not a solution or a real problem.
The likely amounts yeilded will be a fraction of Americas current consumption
So long as it is economically real and not subsidised by the tax payer then it falls into the category of 'harmless fun'
There is no ethanol 'debunking' to speak of in this article, only a reference to another WaPo writer Robert Samuelson.
From that link, one finds the following assertion from Samuelson, "The great danger of the biofuels craze is that it will divert us from stronger steps to limit dependence on foreign oil."
True, however, he then states, "At most, biofuels would address part of the increase in oil demand; it wouldn't reduce our oil use or import dependence from current levels." which is not true.
This statement is then followed by the concluding remark, "Biofuels are certainly worth pursuing. Up to some point, they're even worth subsidizing."
Sounds about right.
Does anyone know a way to get the information on China's announced change in dollar policy referenced above without signing up for their financial newsletter? Does it appear somewhere else?
Put in a fake e-mail address and zip code. They don't check.
Thanks.
A couple of news reports on the housing implosion:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070126/oil_prices.html?.v=15
Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil producer and exporter, was the quickest to implement OPEC's production cuts; its exports in December were 1.1 million barrels a day lower than before the OPEC's October call for production cuts.
"The market has been concerned about the rate of OPEC compliance. Yesterday, it was worried compliance was bad. Today, it's worried that it's good," said Tim Evans, an energy analyst at Citigroup Global Markets. "Overall, the larger story is that OPEC production is declining."
Anyone get this. Saudi Arabia cut exports more than required?
KSA has cut more than what the market thinks OPEc as a whole had cut.
Sorry for the grammar there. did not know how else to frame it.
According to the EIA, the Saudis produced 11.1 mbpd total liquids in 2005, consumed 2.0 total liquids, and exported 9.1 total liquids.
Their crude + condensate production for 2005 was 9.55 mbpd.
Their consumption is growing quite rapidly, about 22% from 2004 to 2005, if memory serves. In any case, let's assume that current crude + condensate consumption is about 2.0 mbpd. Their 9/06 crude + condensate production was 9.0 mbpd, which suggests crude + condensate exports of about 7.0 mbpd.
If the captioned news story is reporting C+C, it suggests that Saudi C+C production in December may have been down to about 7.9 mbpd.
Kind of interesting that we have reports (confirmed for Mexico) of declining/crashing production for both Saudi Arabia and Mexico in December. Remember that the Saudis are increasing the cuts in crude deliveries to some refineries for February?
Let's see, where (with slight exaggeration) is Bush sending most of the US military?
From Fireangel's link above:
Woah! What is going on here. Saudi's share of the proposed 1.2 million barrel per day cut, was 380 kb/d. Yet they are exporting 1.1 million barrels per day less!
Methinks there may be more here than meets the eye.
Ron Patterson
Ron,
I just sent the EB guys an e-mail, with the above link, and with my suggestion that they start a new section called: Collapse Watch: Ghawar & Cantarell
It's kind of uncanny how we are getting the collapse reports for both Mexico and Saudi Arabia, for the same month.
As I have said a gazillion times, keep your eye on these two fields--"Two Warning Beacons . . . . "
Recall how the Saudis admitted that "Ghawar has become a very expensive field to operate?" If nothing has changed, why has it become more expensive to operate?
Never mind Jeffery, I think I have it all figured out. Saudi wanted to cut production by only the agreed upon 380 kb/d. However they could not find enough buyers so they were forced to cut production in December by 1.1 million barrels per day. Buyers are scarce these days you know.
Ron Patterson
Odd how Mexico is having the same problem, but as I have previously noted, we have had similar problem in finding buyers for Texas oil for about 34 years.
By now it's best to leave it in the ground, it's just not worth it anymore.
Let's face it, the days of oil are over.
Relative to 9/05, if the news report is more or less correct, C+C production from Saudi Arabia and Mexico combined is down by about 2.1 mbpd (from a combined 13 mbpd to about 10.9 mbpd, C+C).
From 2004 to 2005, their combined total liquids consumption was up by about 500,000 bpd. I don't see why the rate of increase would be much different for 2006, which would put their total liquids consumption at about 4.6 mbpd (C+C consumption probably around 4.0 mbpd).
You can see which way the export situation is headed. These two factors turned the UK from a net exporter of one mbpd in 1999 to a net importer in 2005.
Jeffery,
Do you think that this major cut is the reason KSA is confident that oil prices will rebound? Also based on tanker times shouldnt we be seeing some effects already. Imports still look ok. Your thoughts?
At the risk of rekindling the whole export/import debate again. . .
First, while we consume about one-fourth of all the oil produced, we are not the world.
Second, total petroleum imports have been down since the start of the fourth quarter, and I think that we have drawn down total petroleum inventories by about 50 million barrels since early October, although they have been rising in January.
IMO, product demand has been weak because of the (until recently) warm winter, and probably a slowing economy. If we had had a very cold winter in the Northeast, our product inventory numbers would probably have looked very different.
Basically, IMO, the mild winter and perhaps a slowing economy have obscured the decline in exports. Or more accurately, the decline is there to see, but it didn't have much of an effect because of weak demand, which brings us back to the same argument. However, we know that Cantarell is crashing , and we very strongly suspect that Ghawar is in decline or crashing.
I'd be very interested in your reaction to this report, suggesting that the refilling of the SPR was behind the higher prices of last year. The writer is an economist, but I don't know anything about him or whether his argument stands up to scrutiny. It may be hogwash, or he may be on to something.
Remember that there were reports here around october 2006 that the IEA had lowered global consumption forecast by 95,000 barrels a day - and that was the third lowering of forecast demand that year.
July 2006 saw record oil prices of around $77 a barrel, october sees an easing in demand, with reports of Asain buying being down.
By october crude had dropped to around $57, unsuprisingly. No wonder OPEC was worried.
Announced cuts are a form of 'talking up the market'.
Warmer winter conditions foiled the plan.
What do you do when oil hits absurdly low points of $50, as it did at the beginning of this year?
Maybe the point is being reached where the Saudis realise that a little (carefully managed) truth on the state of North Ghawar will have a more positive effect (from OPEC perspective) on holding up prices than announcements of quotas and allocations on a weak market.
Lorenzo
The 1.1 million drop compares the October figure to the December one.
Dow Jones did not break down exactly what the December level was for SA in million b/d, however based on other press reports the revised Feb 1 quota for SA is 8.3 mbpd. It would appear that Lloyds thinks they are less than that level already.
Maybe there is a bright spot to all this, maybe the US will learn a lesson from the upcoming ethanol/biofuel disaster in China, and see the error of its ways. But what are the chances when billions of dollars are at stake?
China is a net inporter of grain, cassava and sugar (their possible ethanol feedstocks), and its population gets richer fast, demanding more of everything. Desertification grows faster than the economy, and water problems in agriculture outdo even that.
In that setting, it is preparing an enormous push for green fuels. Somehow, that smells of depair.
Alternative energy in China is a toughie. It's not ideal for wind or solar compared to some other countries, so the law of competitive advantage says that it should export windmills and solar cells to those other countries, while continuing to burn its nasty coal at home.
However, a couple of years ago I heard of research by Japanese scientists on raising giant seaweed mats off their coast which could be processed into biodiesel. China's southern coast waters might be warm enough to support this - if they weren't getting so polluted. Maybe they could put all the soon-to-be unemployed fishermen to work tending the nets.
Actually when I was last in China I saw substantial solar cell sites, and the largest windfarm I have ever seen*
Since the coal is also in these localities (to an extent), generating power there and shipping it by long distance transmission isn't necessarily a worse bet than digging out coal and shipping it by train.
In NW China, there are huge opportunities for wind power, and in south China, for solar. There may also be some offshore wind opportunities on the East Coast, although I would agree generally the (rich, power consuming) eastern provinces are quite energy poor.
One of the issues in Chinese development is that most of the key investment decisions are made at the state level. So a province like Shanghai might opt to build a local coal fired station, rather than importing power from another state. The local officials would then get the benefit (and, cynically, the bribes) from the development in their locality.
* about 300MW. I obviously haven't seen the largest!
I'll add to that. The Chinese are very keen to use their own technology and manufacturing.
So wind is favoured, because it is a relatively 'low tech' (for a country that builds fighter planes and satellite launch rockets) technology.
They are importing nuclear technology (Canadian and South Korean nuclear, I believe).
First-time visitor here, and must say I'm very impressed with most of the comments. Running across a group like this makes me think we can find solutions even to the supposedly unsolvable problems. Of course it won't be easy, but hey...
So...pat yourselves on the back, and then let's get to work:
Re decline rates: 8% *gross* (i.e. without considering new drilling) isn't at all unusual for a field that's being 'pushed hard.' If you do an exponential decay curve for U.S. oil since our peak year, IIRC it averages around 5% per year decline--and that's NET, with new drilling. So I don't see a plot or attempted disinformation in that one.
Re Iran seeking nuclear weapons--and more specifically, the argument advanced by some here that Iran is *not* so inclined, despite their announcement that they'll be bringing 63,000 centrifuges on line: Try your sophomoric deception on the rubes. Developing a HEU capability is so ridiculously expensive that no rational leader would undertake it if his country's economy was struggling--except in time of war when you feared the other side might get the bomb first.
Also, Russia offered to sell Iran fuel rods ready for nuke-power use, but the Iranians declined. The excuse was "We want to have control of the entire fuel cycle," but if your stated goal in going nuclear is "for the electricity", why not get plants up and running the easy way for the first few years, then work on your own enrichment? The most plausible explanation is the obvious one: electricity is just a cover for the real goal of weapons.
Re the "criminality" (or incompetence, or mendacity) of Greenpeace and similar folks: Their own cutesy graph indicts them more surely than any words. It's a great illustration of why it's so important to insist that Luddites and leftists put forth their own *detailed* proposals for solutions to any of the problems they're bitching about. As long as they can hide behind warm-fuzzy, feel-good rhetoric, without having to actually put hammer to nail, they can dodge and tapdance and carp all day, at the expense of the rest of us who'd actually like to *make some progress* without just turning off all the lights and calling it a day.
Thanks for the forum. Looking fwd to future exchanges--yes, even with the resident Luddites and propagandists.
--sf
Thanks for your comments. Hope you come back. If you haven't been reading the longer stories, you should look at them. A lot of them are worthwhile.
I suppose the Luddites solution would be to get rid of the machines.
Seems as good as anything else I've heard recently.
Green economist, Richard Douthwaite, has a chapter in his book 'The Growth Illusion' which is entitled 'Ned Ludd was right', and I have to admit that I agree with him that their analysis was very reasonable, and makes a lot more sense than current prevailing ideology.
Every now and then you see an argument that is so bizarre and counter to established thought that you at first reject it, but it sticks in your mind and over the years grows into a possible explanation for the things you have subsequently seen.
Once I was at the University of Michigan library, and happened to pick up a journal from a shelf and browse an article. The author, his name long forgotten by me, stated simply: the problem is not capitalist or communist economics. The problem is economics.
In other words, the use of economics to optimize how people must perform every act in their lives is tyranny. Whether it is communist planning or capitalist profit-mania, vast populations are standardized into activities that leave them miserable. This is a relatively recent development. It is unnatural for our sloppy, improvisatory species, and thus inhumane.
By now I've come to think there's something to this. Economics is just a tool, but it can presumably be used by the few against the many.
Hello sf44,
To begin with, let me make my views clear: I am opposed to coal power, nuclear power and wind power. I am also opposed to the oil industry, the auto industry, the chemical industry, and the consumer lifestyle.
My solution is very simple: Humans must cease all of these suicidal addictions which have so horrendously polluted and poisoned the Earth regardless of the economic consequences. Which would you rather have: A luxurious technology-dependent survival or a living planet?
I will give you a little hint: On a hellish, polluted, degraded and depleted planet there's a pretty good chance that Homo sapiens will go extinct. Technology and luxury and economic growth don't mean much to the dead, do they?
Homo sapiens are by far the most violent and destructive animal to ever evolve on the Earth. Mercifully, humankind won't exist for too much longer. The Earth will recover from humankind's foolishness, but humankind will certainly not.
Have you noticed how unhealthy Americans look? Americans might "enjoy" a long life but Americans don't seem to enjoy life at all. Observe all of the unhappiness, obesity, drug addictions, anger, bitterness, envy, self-hate, and the incessant violence which occurs across the entire scale of human society. Humankind is an animal suffering self-inflicted torture.
I don't imagine that humankind will survive for too much longer. We have already entered the era of humankind's decline and the extinction era is looming ahead. Enjoy these good days while they last because future generations will live in hell-on-earth. We created this hell for them to inherit, but fortunately (for us) we won't live long enough to suffer the consequences for our foolishness.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
re: the Consumer Lifestyle;
Dave, Kill your computer.
Welcome sf44!
TOD greatly appreciates all newbies. I would like to see all 5,000 members participate at least once a week with a posting. Especially the lurkers from the CIA, NSA, DOE, EIA, KGB, CERA, MI-6, Exxon, Aramco, USGS, etc, etc....Hi guys & gals--> WASSUP??
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I would like to see all 5,000 members participate at least once a week with a posting. Especially the lurkers from the CIA, NSA, DOE, EIA, KGB, CERA, MI-6, Exxon, Aramco, USGS, etc, etc....
Bob,
What makes you think they are not already "participating"?
:-)
Podcasts from the Soil Association's 'One Planet Agriculture - preparing for a post-peak oil food and farming future' can be downloaded here. Speakers include Colin Campbell, Richard Heinberg, Jeremy Leggett, Jonathon Porritt and others.
I haven't seen that argument made. Please point it out.
Announcing something is step 1. Doing it is something different altogether.
No, you try your sophomore qualities. They can say they'll undertake it, to scare off people. That's why dogs bark. Fear, Iran is scared shitless. Thay have plenty reason to be, there's a huge PR campaign being set up, and they are the target.
One little detail: they KNOW the other side has the bomb. And, judging from the western comments, war is about to be declared. But not by Iran. Wouldn't you be scared when you know you have things, oil, land, that the "bomb havers" want? When you realize the House of Saud sees an opportunity to get their hands on your treasures, and settle some religious counts in the process? Never mind, I can answer that for you.
There can be a zillion reasons not to buy fuel rods from Russia, and most of them have nothing to do with bombs. Canada wouldn't take Putin up on the offer either, or Spain, or New Zealand.
Iran wants to be independent from both sides, Russia AND the US. Is that so stupid?
The easy way being putting your neck in either Putin's or Bush's noose? If they sell you the rods, they'll be in your kitchen 24/7. Do you think either is up for a Nobal Peace Prize?
No it's not, it's just one explanation.
Look, iran is allergic to anything US. The 20th century experiences made them. And today, that allergy is flaring up again, They know what's going on, they know they're a target. They try to find something to defend themselves with. Sure, they'd like an A ot H bomb, that would scare off the likely invaders.
But the way the story is told in our media is that they are the agressor. And there is no proof for that. The IAEA, in years of inspections, never found one single bit of evidence. Just like in Iraq. Can we learn something from that history?
Iran is not planning to attack anybody, simply because they have no strength, and they know it. But people are planning to attack them, and they know that too. What are they to do? They get no voice in western media, they can't tell their side of the story here.
Never forget: Iran has no history of violence, and is a highly developed culture, unlike some of the other parties in this tragedy.
That's not to say they wouldn't ever turn agressive, if they had the means. But that goes for 99% of countries and leaders, no reason to single them out. It's also not to say Iran's leaders are one hair better than ours. But it is to say that they are not the agressors.
1. Persia has a huge history of violence
2. Iraq invaded Iran. But 3 years later, when Iraq offered a peace treaty, Iran refused, and spent another half million lives on human wave assaults
3. the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) which controls Iran is anything but pacifistic. The Iranians killed 50 US personnel in Saudi Arabia (the Kharq bombing) and are implicated in a number of terrorist attacks against the US in Lebanon and elsewhere. They have the Middle East's largest and most effective secret service, and a force specifically tailored for international terrorism (the Quod force).
4. remember Hizbollah? They got their weapons from Iran. Ask anyone living in Northern Israel whether Iran is a threat.
Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Iran is surrounded on all sides by US bases and US forces.
The Pakistanis have nuclear weapons.
Iran has real enemies, (Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni states, the United States and Israel), and real security issues.
Unsurprisingly, the Iranians want the bomb. The US does nothing about North Korea. Why? Because North Korea has the bomb (or close enough). If Saddam had had the bomb, the US would not have invaded.
The Iranians want the bomb and both 'reformist' and 'conservative' Iranian governments have been working towards it. The difficult question is, in light of their bellicose declarations towards Israel, denial of the Holocaust, whether the US will allow them to get the bomb, or move first.
The current President of the US has said he will not.
So the stage is set for the next war.
Let me put it another way.
If the President of Croatia, Serbia, Belarus or Germany announced that Israel should be wiped from the face of the earth, and held a conference to state that the Holocaust never happened
do you think we would allow Croatia or Serbia or Belarus or Germany to obtain atomic weapons?
Business Week has a new story out about biofuels:
Food vs. Fuel: As energy demands devour crops once meant for sustenance, the economics of agriculture are being rewritten
The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.
A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.x...
Oh my, who is going to turn the sun down? It is getting so bright I cannot see.
The fossil fuel industry has worked very hard to turn the entire Earth into humankind's sewer. Do you suppose that they might share some of the blame for humankind's extinction?
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Try reading the whole article:
"Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact."
See? BOTH! If there is a significant contribution from a warming sun, which I tend to doubt, then that's just more bad news. It doesn't cancel the effects of increased CO2, which are very real, it just adds to the problem.
The headline writer for this article might have read down a few paragraphs, too!! Just another clear example of the politicizing of Global Warming by the Denial Dinosaurs...
and also.......
NASA scientists are reporting that the climate on Mars appears to presently be warmer than it has been for at least several decades, possibly even centuries. This is based on pictures of Mars dating back to 1999. These images document substantial changes in the polar ice caps that Michael Malin, the principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera describes as shrinking at a prodigious rate?.
http://www.nationalsummary.com/Articles/Science_Tech/science_tech__warmi...
Didn't you get the memo? We've been sequestering CO2 there for 150 years ~_~
Well not quite. Visitors to my site will know that i have studied solar cycles for some time and frankly, it was to illustrate a correlation with long term solar cycles and GW. Unfortunatley, it ain't there.
This abstract behind this report is a couple of years old. And the 10Be data stops in 1985. Sorry. But that was not the point. The 10Be was shown to be a proxy for sunspot (solar flare) activity. We have enuf current info on this century's activity. This study served to show us what happened before the sunspot monitoring started in 1610AD.
Since the correlation is excellent from 1610 to 1985, we can assume it is a good proxy going back the previous seven hundred years compared to the previous proxy ... tree rings.
In summary, tree rings and 10Be illustrate that the sun was hottest in a thousand years in 1980. We already know 1980 was hot. We didn't know if that was any kind of "recent record" for sure.
Since 1980, the sun has weakened slightly. It is part of a cycle that will last over 100 years into the future. It is based on the 11-year cycle getting sparser. When the cycle is close to 8 yrs for several cycles, Earth gets warmer. When the cycle is over 13-years, Earth cools. It is not a perfect 11-yr cycle.
Very interesting. In your studies of solar cycles have you also come across the "tilted earth" theories as explanations for the ice age cycles?
http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050330_earth_tilt.html
I have come across this idea several times and it has always seemed plausible to me. Of course, GW, in my opinion, is very real and would tend to accelerate the effects of the change in the tilting of the earth's axis. According to the link, we are due for a new ice age.
I would love to write an editorial against this, but I have no idea where to start. This is from my hometown newspaper.
Durango scientist to debunk ‘myths’
Says predictions about peak oil, global warming overblown
^/\swco
If Cohen wants to present a peak-oil-is-hogwash viewpoint, he has to move beyond soundbites and into specifics.
How did he get that 3.7 trillion barrels figure? How difficult will that be able to extract? How fast will we be able to extract those barrels?
What oil and gas technologies does he see on the horizon? How will they have an impact? How expensive are they? What do they do?
Answers to the above questions should not involve hand-waving.
Please show your work.
:)
Cohen does need to show his work. Comments such as "incoherent set of anecdotes" by Cohen shows his strong bias against Peak Oil. However this should be expected as he worked at ExxomMobil(XOM) for over 25 years. XOM wants Peak Oil discredited because it could reduce XOM's profits.
The two graphs below are from XOM's 2005 and 2006 Energy Outlook.
XOM 2005 SUPPLY FORECAST
This graph shows non OPEC crude & condensate peaking in about 2015 at about 50 million barrels/day. XOM then assumes that OPEC will be able to supply the additional demand. This assumption is based on an "incoherent set of anecdotes" about OPEC's production capacity. XOM assumes that OPEC can increase their production by over 50% from 30 million barrels/day in 2010 to 47 million barrels/day in 2030!!! That's equal to 3 more Ghawars for the increase and an additional 3 Ghawars to offset natural field prduction decline. XOM's supply forecast requires that OPEC find an additional 6 Ghawars.
XOM 2006 SUPPLY FORECAST
This graph doesn't even mention OPEC. This graph has the word "Supply" in the title but is really a graph of demand with the hope that supply will come from OPEC.
Cohen said "As for a peak and then abrupt decline in world oil production, Cohen called such predictions "an incoherent set of anecdotes."" He used the words "abrupt decline". Perhaps he believes there will be a slow decline.
The release of ExxonMobil's seemed to indicate a 4.7-Tb URR. Deducting past consumption (1.1-Tb) would leave the 3.6-Tb figure. In fact, that includes a "possible" component. They have since clarified that 4.1-mbd is more prudent. We adjusted the TrendLines Scenarios in December to reflect this.
Their 115-mbd Peak in 2030 is in fact demand-inspired ... by a factor of estimated global GDP growth. I have large problems with this; but we see similar issues on the opposite end with bottom up flow analysis that must be continually upward revised.
The XM URR is on the high end. The avg is 3-Tb ... compared to their 4.1-Tb. But again, URR estimates have been continually upward revised (140-Gb/yr since y2k).
The highest Peak rate is currently projected by CERA (126-mbd). The high has been dropping by about 3-mbd/yr in our tracking. And the bottom forecasts are rising by approx 2-mbd/yr. In that light, 110-mbd is the indicated merging.
While Cohen is promoting one of the most optimistic outlooks, it is an easily defensible position in light of the forecasting errors since 1956 by the pessimist camp. These errors are consistent to the point that they can be used to illstrate a significant statistical baseline extrapolation.
WRT Ace's silly comment about XM wanting to quiet the talk on Peak Oil for profit reasoning, in actual fact the opposite is true. The Peak Oil discussions of 2006 gave speculators and the uninformed the disinformation required to boost contract prices to %69. When the realities of false demand and coming capacity were illumintated in August, the marketplace corrected. There was for a moment in time what some thought was a depletion premium in the price. In fact ... it was an idiot premium!
The reason that XOM (and CERA) want to discredit Peak Oil is due to a trend called oil nationalization.
The article below states that 77% of known reserves belong to government owned oil companies.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/36645.html
For example, Venezuela & Russia continue to nationalize their oil assets.
http://www.mosnews.com/money/2007/01/22/offshorefields.shtml
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/oil-companies-venezuelas-first-nat...
If XOM supports Peak Oil in any way then the oil price goes up and the fiscal terms(tax) offered by countries for new licences and even existing production become more unfavourable to oil companies. Nationalization would also increase. An example of unattractive fiscal terms is Indonesia which takes 85% of an oil discovery made by an oil company.
Wood Mackenzie did a slide show on changing fiscal terms.
http://www.woodmacresearch.com/content/portal/energy/highlights/wk2_Mar_...
The final result is that the upstream oil assets of XOM, BP, and Shell shrink. In the long term, XOM, BP and Shell transform into oil service companies such as Schlumberger and Halliburton.
A high oil price due to peak oil may help XOM's profits in the short term but it won't be of any benefit when XOM has no oil to sell once it becomes an oil service company.
Complete nonsense. The momentum towards nationalization etc far precedes Peak Oil concern.
There is currently fear of some legislative action against the multinational oilco's due to excessive profits and for environmental purposes, but even that is a weak case for this new conspiracy theory. Some people have too much time on their hands...
Well, cancer preceds modern meicine, so I guess modern medicine is complete nonsense. It does not matter when the movement toward nationalization began, Exxon will do anything in their power to stop it, even if their efforts have begun long after the movement started.
You need to use a little common sense in your analysis Freddy. So far I have witnessed absolutely none.
Ron Patterson
The decline at Cantarell has finally hit the MSM. It is now the top story at the Wall Street Journal Online; perhaps it will appear in Saturday's print edition:
Mexico's Oil Output Cools ($$$)
Here is a graphic that goes along with the story:
Calorie,
Thanks for the news! The graphic shows that Cantarell's decline rate is accelerating. I found these graphics on estimated Ghawar production from this website.
http://www.crisisenergetica.org/staticpages/ASPO_Mayo_2004.htm
http://217.76.137.42/staticpages/ficheros_boletin/ghawar_2.gif
http://217.76.137.42/staticpages/ficheros_boletin/ghawar_3.gif
Obviously the Wall Street Journal doesn't read TOD. If they did they'd know that collapsing oil fields means increased production!
:laughs:
That was never said. Stop engaging in doomer spin in an attempt to make other people look stupid to cover up for your own lack of research on the matter.
All I said was collapsing super giant production != absolute global oil production decline.
We have 20+ years of history that prove that, as 13 of the 14 super giants are confirmed to be in decline/crashing as we speak. Only 3 of those fields left produce more than 1 million bpd.
But every trader of size reads the WSJ, so it will interesting to note the oil futures prices on Monday morning. Stories like this one can have an impact on markets.
And some read the Financial Times where on page 12 today a columnist looks at "How to hedge against a fall in the oil price" Remarkably perverse timing I predict.
DING! DING! DING!---Post of the Day. Hard to get more mainstream MSM than the Wall Street Journal. Now the question is: What are Bush & Calderon going to do about it?
Hi Bob,
I think they're going to have to make a deal with Chavez and bring the Bolivar Revolution (and some oil) to Mexico.
Hey, it worked for Nicaragua ...
That news has been around since 2005.
Cantarell's decline, and the impact this is going to have on Mexico, is also getting coverage in The Los Angeles Times