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Drumbeat: September 18, 2010
Posted by Leanan on September 18, 2010 - 10:42am
‘Peak Oil’ : Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Energy sounds the alarm (Interview with Robert L. Hirsch)
What happened after you published your 2005 report on ‘peak oil’ for the US Department of Energy (DoE) ?The people that I was dealing with said : « No more work on peak oil, no more talk about it. »
People that were high in the administration hierarchy ?
The people that I was dealing with were high in the laboratory level. They were getting their instructions from people on the political side of the DoE, at high levels.
After the work we did on the 2005 study and the follow-up of 2006, the Department of Energy headquarters completely cut off all support for oil peaking and decline analysis. The people that I was working with at the National Energy Technology Laboratory were good people, they saw the problem, they saw how difficult the consequences would be – you know, the potential for huge damage – yet they were told : « No more work, no more discussion. »
That was in 2006, under Bush administration. Has anything changed with the Obama administration ?
It has not changed. I have friends who simply won’t talk about it now. So I have to assume that they are receiving the same kind of instructions.
Crude Oil Falls a Fourth Day Concern U.S. Economy Will Be Slow to Recover
Crude oil dropped to a two-week low on speculation that the U.S. economic recovery is slowing, reducing fuel use in the world’s biggest oil-consuming country.Oil fell 1.2 percent after the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary September index of consumer sentiment fell to 66.6 from 68.9 a month earlier. Enbridge Energy Partners LP started its 6A pipeline. The link that sends Canadian oil to refineries in the Midwest shut because of a leak on Sept. 9.
“The consumer sentiment numbers are what’s driving us today,” said Phil Flynn, vice president of research at PFGBest in Chicago. “If the consumer isn’t happy, you aren’t going to see demand pick up.”
Karl kills 2 in Mexico, now a tropical depression
VERACRUZ, Mexico — Hurricane Karl smashed into Mexico's Gulf Coast on Friday, killing at least two people and forcing the country to shut down its only nuclear power plant and its central Gulf Coast oil platforms.
Plaintiffs up Alleged Chevron Damages in Ecuador
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) -- The plaintiffs suing Chevron Corp. over oil contamination in a large swath of Ecuador's jungle have raised their estimate of damages to a range of $40 billion to $90 billion.The plaintiffs' previous damages claim of $27 billion had been endorsed by the court-appointed expert in the bitter, long-running case.
China brings suspicious machine to gas field
China has brought a machine resembling an excavator to one of the disputed gas fields in the East China Sea, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said Friday.The government has made inquiries about the machine to the Chinese government, which replied that the machine is for repair work, Okada said.
"It would be in breach of a promise [made to Japan] if China has begun drilling. I've said this to Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. I strongly hope such a thing has not happened," Okada said at a press conference held after the Cabinet meeting on Friday morning.
A High-Wire Act for Nigeria's Oil Minister
Diezani Alison-Madueke, the first female minister in OPEC, hopes to keep foreign companies happy while shifting more oil wealth to Nigeria
Poll: Most Americans would spend more for 60 mpg car
How much more would you pay for a car that gets 60 miles per gallon? A new poll finds that 74% of likely voters favor such a fuel-efficiency standard and 66% back the idea even if it adds $3,000 to the price of a new car.
MSHA says explosive coal dust found at W.Va. mine
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – More than 1,400 samples collected inside West Virginia's Upper Big Branch mine show excessive amounts of coal dust were present before an explosion killed 29 miners in April, a federal official said Friday.A majority of the samples came from areas affected by the explosion, but show only that coal dust played a role in the blast, Mine Safety and Health Administration official Kevin Stricklin said during a conference call with reporters.
Brady is a woman with decided beliefs: rural housing, she says, should be built in partnership with the landscape.She also believes that good architecture should be available to everybody, and her firm has worked on many social housing projects in the UK, as well as St Catherine’s in the Liberties, a successful Dublin City Council youth centre. Another passion is getting people committed to sustainability, which Brady insists is a question of nothing less than survival. “It is estimated that we reached peak oil two years ago: everything is made of oil, we rely on oil. Unless we all wean ourselves off oil, and plan a future without oil, we’re in big trouble.”
Anyone betting against Chinese ambitions in green power had better run the numbers. China has been doubling wind-power capacity each year in recent years, making it the world's biggest wind-equipment market today. The government plans to spend $265 billion through 2020 to shift the country into generating 15% of its power from renewables, outside of hydroelectric sources. The plan includes a $146 billion investment in seven huge wind farms, situated in northern and coastal regions, which will have a combined capacity of up to 120 gigawatts, six times that of the controversial Three Gorges Dam.
Finland to Push for Renewable, Wind Energy With Feed-In Tariff Subsidies
Finland will promote renewable energy with fixed prices for wind and biogas power to encourage producers to meet emission targets set by the European Union.Feed-in tariffs, a set price guaranteed to producers, come into force on Jan. 1 and will last for 12 years, the government in Helsinki said today in an e-mailed statement.
California Licenses World’s Biggest Solar Thermal Plant
California regulators have licensed what is for the moment the world’s largest solar thermal power plant, a 1,000-megawatt complex called the Blythe Solar Power Project to be built in the Mojave Desert. By contrast, a total of 481 megawatts of new solar capacity was installed in the United States last year, mostly from thousands of rooftop solar arrays, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group.
Czech Solar Power Guarantees Threatens Surge in Industrial Power Prices
The sun is supposed to be free for all. Tell that to Czech industrialists, whose electricity bills may jump as much as 25 percent next year due to a boom in the solar power industry.
Could the garbage heap help save us from global warming?
Fortunately, there is a way to capture and store excess carbon from the atmosphere that is cheap, efficient and environmentally friendly. It relies on two technologies that have been in use for more than 8,000 years: agriculture and the garbage heap.
China Is Set to Lose 2% of GDP Cleaning Up Decades of Pollution
China, the world’s worst polluter, needs to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product a year -- 680 billion yuan at 2009 figures -- to clean up 30 years of industrial waste, said He Ping, chairman of the Washington-based International Fund for China’s Environment. Mun Sing Ho, a senior economist at Dale W. Jorgenson Associates and a visiting scholar at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, put the range at 2 percent to 4 percent of GDP.
U.N. panel delays ruling on green rewards for Indian coal plant
LONDON (Reuters) – A United Nations panel has delayed key decisions on a scheme meant to reward projects that cut carbon emissions in developing countries, including whether to approve a modern coal plant in India for such incentives.
Low-emission lifestyle possible in developing countries: scientist
COPENHAGEN (Bernama) -- Although emerging economies will witness a major buildup in carbon emission in the years ahead, smarter technologies could help them to mitigate the effects of global warming, Danish scientist Bjorn Lomborg said.
Will L.A. lose its cool? An optimistic look at global warming
Global warming is a given, writes UCLA economist Matthew Kahn in his new book, "Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future." But Kahn's perspective on this isn't gloomy: He says we could flourish in warmer climes. With pop-culture-friendly references sprinkled throughout, the book examines what weather patterns will look like across the nation in the next 50 to 60 years.Kahn creates optimistic blueprints for how life might unfold in 2070. He imagines New York City-style high rises by the beach, ponders whether koi ponds are the best use of our water supply, and considers whether moats should be built around the mansions of Malibu. He writes of making the most of it and of happy endings - not what we're used to reading in works on global warming.
Sparkling Wine, Storms Await U.K. in Warmer Future, Panel Says
The U.K. must adapt to warmer temperatures and more frequent storms that may damage roads and power plants while making champagne-style wines and apricots more viable, the government’s climate change adviser said.Britain must prepare five key areas to ensure it’s ready for the more intense storms and increased flooding that global warming is projected to bring later this century, the Committee on Climate Change’s adaptation panel said today. They are: land use planning, infrastructure, buildings, natural resources and emergency preparation, the group said.
Religion Has Scant Effect on Environmental Views, Poll Suggests
Few Americans say their religion influences their environmental views, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press.
Scientists React to a Nobelist’s Climate Thoughts
Earlier today, I wrote about the way internal filters can influence how scientists perceive and convey risks (in this instance, risks of human-driven climate change) and how the public weighs scientists’ views. As I stressed, what social scientists call “cultural cognition” is only one factor shaping perceptions of phenomena revealed by science.Another is simply someone’s general familiarity with relevant research. In weighing one keystone climate question — what risks come with rising concentrations of greenhouse gases — a background in physics alone is hardly sufficient, for instance. A variety of scientists immersed in research on the human influence on climate sent me reactions to a pair of central elements in the earlier post — a climate essay in The American Scholar by Robert Laughlin, a Nobel laureate in physics, and a related commentary on Laughlin’s piece by George Will.
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>Re: Scientists React to a Nobelist’s Climate Thoughts
Anyone who doubts the science behind the problem of climate change due to global warming should read the comments from the experts about the opinions of other experts whose work lies outside the field of atmospheric science. It is perhaps a fatal flaw in the minds of the highly intelligent and well educated to think that their expertise gives them the right to comment as an authority on a subject which they clearly do not understand...
E. Swanson
Yes, very interesting read. One of the things that a lot of people forget is that the famed scientist Svante Arrhenius was the first (before 1900!) to predict the greenhouse effect due to gases such as CO2. He wasn't necessarily a climate scientist either but was able to use the nascent science of physical chemistry (which he helped formulate) to predict interactions with the atmosphere.
So the most important aspect is to use first principles properly, independent of your credentials.
[added] And to top that off, many of the skeptical scientists mentioned, such as Dyson and Happer use only the argument that the CO2 forcing function is logarithmic so that it would cease to have an effect after awhile. And that logarithmic property was the main principle that Arrhenius postulated long ago. So there is some sort of weird disconnect in the minds of Dyson, Happer, and Laughlin that prevents them from going beyond this point. Yes, the forcing function is logarithmic but that does not say anything about the temporal dynamics. I think that is the key. CO2 has this strange residence time which has a very fat-tailed distribution. It has a relatively fast drop-off but the tails extend as a power law with time, which is the bad news.
Bad news indeed, one of the quotes cited an estimate that up to 20% of our carbon emissions could still be resident in the atmosphere tens-of-thousands of years from now.
I've seen other estimates that even if we completely stopped all carbon emissions tomorrow sea levels would continue to rise for at least the next one or two hundred years, possibly the better part of a millennium.
Think about it:
No combustion of any kind whatsoever, everyone in the world voluntarily doing nothing else except sitting in the cold and the dark, eating cold food (if there is any) and bathing in cold water (where available).
And yet, even for all that, countless generations would still suffer the consequences of all the emissions already spewed from our fat tail pipes so we could move our fat tails to the office parks, and the shopping mall buffets, and back again.
When lag times are measured in centuries, or even decades, humans are woefully ill-prepared to recognize the problem, never mind formulating an effective and appropriate response, at least not until it is far too late. Something I first learned (much to my astonishment) from the much maligned "Limits To Growth" report.
It is a sorry fact indeed, one that is routinely savaged as "fatalism" (despite fate having nothing to do with it), and one that has been most succinctly summed up by people much smarter than I am:
"The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: Too late."
— Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"We have only two modes - complacency and panic."
— James R. Schlesinger
Cheers,
Jerry
Don't you mean Shakespeare on the first quote?
I normally don't respond to trolls, but Dr. King's 1967 speech at Riverside, NY is a magnificent read, so I nonetheless feel compelled to post a link to it here:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
Cheers,
Jerry
My bad. The quote began very much like the passage in Shakespeare's "There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune"
However, you are a jerk for calling me a troll when all I was doing was making a simple mistake.
It took me all of about 5 seconds on google to verify the quote before I posted it, a similar amount of effort on your part could easily have avoided the mistake.
I won't speculate on how much experience you have posting to online forums, but when one completely ignores the entire content of a post just to fire off a one line snark that is completely unsubstantiated and totally unrelated to the topic of the thread, well, that is generally considered classic troll behavior, regardless of your ability to perceive it as such.
It should go without saying that to then follow up with hot-headed insults can only make matters worse.
Cheers,
Jerry
That was not intended as a snark. You are being overly sensitive.
tstreet's been a member of theoildrum for one year and 19 weeks longer than you Jerry. Everyone makes mistakes, even you Jerry.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about climate change and public perception. I've finally figured it out . . . the situation is hopeless. The hopelessness of the situation can be described with a single word: "evolution".
Just look at this:
.
That chart shows people's acceptance of biological evolution.
We have literally millions of fossils showing evolution. We have the geographic distribution of animals & plants showing evolution. We have AMAZING molecular biology evidence. We have experiments that have run for decades showing evolution among bacteria.
Yet people don't understand and believe evolution. And this is something that happened in the past. It happened. We have the evidence.
What is the problem? I think it is time scales. People can't comprehend geological time scales. So they can't comprehend the slow change of life over time. And for the same reason, they can't understand the climate changing slowly over time.
If after 200 years and mountains of evidence, we still can't convince people about something that happened in the past then there is no hope for convincing people about something we believe will happen in the future.
I think it is going to take about a foot rise in sea level before people even begin to take climate change seriously. :-(
So 40% (Blue) says evolution is true; 40% (Red) says evolution is false. And 20% in the middle are undecided. This seems remarkably close to American politics! (Is that why the colors "red" and "blue" were chosen?)
Speculawyer: I think the ignorance is worse than you and your graphic say. At least in this country, today. One vignette:
A dozen years ago I rode public transport (Chicago) to work, the only one in Engineering to do so. Five young newly-hired college grads (two engineers; the others, liberal arts) asked me about a book I was reading, "The History of Henry Esmond" by Thackery. None of them had heard of the novel; none of them had even heard of Thackery. I mentioned that the book made frequent mention of "Don Quixote" by Cervantes; none of them had heard of that book or its author, either. Seeing my shock, they told me that in this modern day, what with computers and all, that kind of education didn't matter anymore. One of the Liberal Arts guys, however, added that, because of his Italian heritage, he at least knew that "Paradise Lost" was written by an Italian named Dante.
This is considered normal and acceptable by young folks today. In literature, and likewise in science. Everything is a matter of opinion.
A grandson was shocked to find that a clear majority of the guys on his football team said they didn't believe in Evolution, but rather, in "what the Bible says." But it didn't take him long to find out that they didn't know what the Bible said...
LOL. I was hoping someone would convince me that I was wrong. Thanks for the story.
Whew, you're lucky you were talking about Thackeray. I recently had dinner with some recent college grads who didn't know who Mao Tse Tung was. I almost spewed my appetizers into the flower pot.
Isn't that some kind of pork dish ... ?
Ask any teacher who has ever worked in the vocational wing of a public high school and is now doing something else and able therefore to tell the truth-the actual situation is , to paraphrase somebody, not inly worse than you imagine;it's worse than you can imagine.
Well, that's simply yet another blowback from the deconstructionist political correctness taught throughout much of academia, which holds every "text" to be of equal value, no matter that a good many "texts" are merely the incoherent gibberings of blithering idiots. One can't actually have it both ways - either absolute 'democracy' holds, in which case everything is indeed a matter of opinion; or else some "texts" are actually worth more than others, and absolute 'democracy' does not hold.
[Likewise for factual aspects of AGW. Either science has some authority, so that "texts" informed by science are worth more than "texts" that ignore (or contradict) it; or else we adhere to absolute 'democracy' and it follows that in the interest of "equality", everyone is entitled to believe whatever they feel like it without ever being called on it - and if ever they are, then they're entitled to yell "discrimination", "elitism", or "unfairness" in the court of public opinion (or maybe even a real court.)]
That sounds like a canard that Rush Limbaugh made up. Who is it that teaches that? I've never heard such a thing.
Actually, everything is a matter of opinion. Religious belief is opinion backed up by authority and tradition. Science is opinion, tested and backed up with evidence. It's all ideas stewing in our minds -- what we've learned in recent centuries is that narratives can be tested and some of them established as accurately reflecting reality -- a reality that we can know only as mediated by our senses. (And, as noted, the stories we tell seem as real as our other experiences.)
Deconstruction doesn't teach that all texts are equal -- it teaches that everything is a text, a symbol, a representation of some kind. One must then study the text to see where it holds up, where it contradicts itself, where it points to something of value.
Yes, a lot of nonsense has been promulgated under the banner of "deconstruction" by academics looking for a fresh angle for their five hundredth paper on an over-studied literary canon. But the insight that all our knowledge is expressed in language, remembered in language, recorded in language is inescapable. But, if we're having trouble convincing people that our industrial civilization consists of forms of oil, no wonder people have trouble realizing that everything they know consists of words (as those gorgeous wheat fields of Van Gogh are daubs of paint). Talk to fish about water!
Yes, and this assumption is what drove me out of graduate studies in English. It assumes everything is language-centric: that English majors are the Masters of the Universe.
"Holds up," "contradicts itself," "points to something of value" are all value judgments. The criteria for making such judgments is not evidence but "whatever I can get away with saying, using as much obscure jargon as I can."
See Sokal Hoax.
I pointed out that much nonsense has been promulgated in academia in the name of deconstruction, esp. in literary commentary. Sorry the English Majors got to you. You might have had better luck in language theory or philosophy (but much philosophy is divorced from reality).
Yes, value judgments permeate our discourse. How could they not? What's worth going to trouble about, what's not? I'm too long out of school to point to literary examples, but in the Bible we have the cases of First and Second Genesis, with different stories of creation, and the Nativity stories of Matthew and Luke, which are mutually exclusive. Texts tend to contradict themselves, often illuminatingly. And they're all formed with words. It's a good idea (value judgment) to be familiar with your lab equipment and how it works.
speculawyer, good post, sad but true conclusion. Our cause and effect programs are designed for life in the wild as limited creatures. Over eons it helped tribes learn what is safe to eat, how to make arrows etc. It can give birth to superstitions. (The strange woman looked at me with an evil look and I got sick, she must have something to do with it, she is a witch). We refined cause and effect programs with the scientific method but hey that takes work. Easier to let Rush Limbaugh tell you climate change is bunk than to study it yourself. Even if you can't understand the science it is not hard to understand the consensus. If you trust scientist to design your car, computer, refrigerator you could just give the vast majority of climate scientists the benefit of the doubt.
I read once that if you predicted the weather tomorrow to be the same as today you would do as good as the local weatherman. Perhaps that expectation of relative sameness is also part of our base program because it worked for what we needed when we roamed the savannas.
I've given up trying to educate anyone about peak oil or climate change - but greenman3610 has some excellent and also humorous vids on climate change that do a good job of counteracting the deniers http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610
I don't believe it is so hopeless, speculawyer. If people from countries so Catholic and, can I dare say ignorant? as Spain (I am Spanish, and too many Spaniards don't understand the difference between 18 and 108 -zero is worth nothing, isn't it?), Portugal, Ireland and others such, and nearly 70% of their populations understand that humans evolved from other forms of life, then there's hope.
If you look at the chart the only Western country that refuses to acknowledge rationality and science is the USA. It is an obvious result of the dismal teaching there, maybe of a low take up of culture by too many people. I can't say I understand that, I know your textbooks and they are very good --maybe they go unread?
Pehaps you can start by dropping absurd sports from the schools and the students could develop their brains not their muscles.
If you took a sample of opinions about Global Warning or Peak Oil in Spain, etc I think that the showing would be very poor, but it is because many people believe it is a con by the Americans to rip us off.
Funny. Hey . . . where do I get my payment for ripping you off with our peak oil & climate change conspiracy theories?
Well . . . after persuading your country to join us in a war over mythical non-existent WMDs, I can't blame too much for being suspicious of the USA.
Its obviously more than that, otherwise we wouldn't be similar to rather than much worse than Spain (I'm taking the liberty of assuming Spain has equally poor education [wholly because of your comment, I have no other data point]). But in fact we have had a long tradition of anti-intellectualism here. We also have strong anti-elitism, which is easily diverted into anti-expert opinion. And most of our institutions are corrupted by those with lots of money and cultural.political axes to grind. A good part of the showing on that graph reflects the effectiveness of the science based propaganda techniques used by such groups.
Whats really distressing is the whole Tea Party thing. People have sorta-figured out that ultra-rich elites have changed things so that a tiny minority gets most of the goodies. But they are diverted away from focusing on teh oligarchs, and instead focus on public servants, and scientists.
Yes, people are uninformed and misinformed, in most cases, expertly so. We tend to believe what our tribe believes, and to pick up our knowledge from our environment. Which is why the sponsors of our media environment make sure that what we hear all around us is what they want us to hear.
I ran across a statement today that seems to put it concisely:
That chart truly is depressing.
Good point, although I would add that it is feedback delays in general that are at the root of the problem. Nate would probably have more to say about this (MUCH more), but it would seem our brains just aren't wired to think in non-linear terms.
I'm reminded of an old video game that I used to see on visits to the local science center many years ago. The object of the game is to launch a lunar lander from the surface of the moon, pilot it across a short stretch of terrain, and safely land on top of a small lunar mountain on the other side of the screen.
What's the catch?
The high inertia of the mass of the lunar lander in weak gravity meant a relatively short span of lag time between the application of thrusters and their eventual effect on speed and momentum.
The result?
Everyone who played the game, and I mean EVERYONE, would spend the first few minutes of the game hammering on the acceleration thrusters, naturally being impatient at the time it took to get off the ground and flying at a good clip.
Without fail this would lead to the last few minutes of the game spent hammering on the deceleration thrusters, always in a sheer panic to slow down the now runaway lander which was still responding to the exuberant acceleration applied just a scant few minutes before.
But, of course, it was far too late to slow the lander in time, never mind making it to the now hopelessly overshot landing pad, and the inevitable result was a horrible crash, much to the anguish of all involved.
Sound familiar? Certainly does to me, except for one important detail: Planet Earth has no "PLAY AGAIN" button.
Cheers,
Jerry
Did you know there was a hidden McDonalds in that game (going back to PDP-11) - tricky to reach and most likely if you did reach it you would crash land into it with no fuel and be told "Congratulations. You have just destroyed the only McDonalds on the moon"
The obvious cure. Analyze the strategy mathematically ahead of time. Then if you did your homework right, you can get it right on your first and only attempt. Our problem, is not that we lack people that have done that. Our problem is that we are jealous of these peoples capabilities. Our problem is we don't like the strategy they tell us to use (it is nonintuitive, and just plain not as much fun). So we dismiss out experts as elite vermin, and wing it instead........
Lunar Lander!
http://www.atari.com/play/atari/lunar_lander
Have fun!
("You landed hard you are hopelessly marooned.")
speculawyer,
Little hope as most people can't think for themselves and are led around by wishful-thinking Sunday morning pundits. I have often said that Carl Sagan's book "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark" should be required reading in high school. Alas, most citizens have closed minds, would the reading really help?
If large numbers of people cannot understand basic science (and a Republican war against science) I doubt our future is very bright here in the USA, considering the impending (?) drop-off of the peak oil plateau and our basic competition, economically, on the world stage. Really, the world literally made in six days, and many people believe this...scary
Kevin Spoering
A number of readers have earlier questioned how the Collapse of the Roman Empire led to the Dark Ages. How did all the knowledge get lost?
I think we're seeing how right here under our very noses.
Maybe collapse in education and intelligence came first?
Maybe every Empire lapses into an Idiocracy phase?
Maybe success is the spawner of its own demise?
Our children had it too good.
They played video games and neglected their real studies.
Crash and burn became a reality of our own making.
Good points. Since people are evolving and the climate is evolving this will ensure survival. It is built into nature. If everything remained static, great problems would arise. Does not matter what people believe, because people have very little power to change the course of evolution. The earth has been here a long time and will be here until the sun burns out. See you then on the next planet.
And my favorite saying is : "The Universe Does'nt Care What You Think"...LOL.
"What is the problem? I think it is time scales. People can't comprehend geological time scales."
I was out with my 5 year old son walking in the park by the old city walls when we came across some old cannon. He didnt know what they were so I explained it was like a big gun which people used in the past to defend the city.
"Was that for when the dinosaurs attacked Dad?" He said.
blame the popular media, they fostered the image of a scientist that makes them look like they are equally knowledgeable in all fields of science. i get glassy eyes from people when i try to explain that scientists specialize in specific area's within a field. for example while i view Steven hawking as a leading authority on Physical cosmology, and would take what he says on things in such field as his expert opinion. i know i have to take what he says with a HUGE grain of salt if he is on a show talking about something else.
another but better fitting example is Neil Tyson a astrophysicist, he routinely lends his credibility to other fields of science on shows about robotics, medicine, and genetic engineering even though he does not have degrees in such fields and is as knowledgeable as you and i in them. It's gotten so bad that people take what they say with little critical thinking as fact. in this example of that we have neil tyson talking to a large audience of people and after explaining 'naming rights' goes on to say that the entire 1.2 billion people who practice a particular faith, in this case Islam. are all anti science and must be fought against with all available force to prevent a 'loss of knowledge' what he uses to back this up is citing that only 1 Nobel prize winner practices Islam(compared to 12 or so jews) and a slightly out of context quote from a Islamic scholler who lived through a horrible time for them called the crusades which he does not mention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIMifWU5ucU
if the general populace understood that just because scientists appear smart doesn't mean they know more then the field of science they specialize in then we would not have the whole trouble with doubters and the like..
LOL
I see glazed eyes too.
I see glazed-over eyes all the time. (Sometimes at the donut shop.)
(Is it a Sixth Sense?)
If anybody is still reading this: post here to have Robert L. Hirsch to appear on the Daily Show:
http://forums.thedailyshow.com/?page=ThreadView&thread_id=30792
I don't usually spam like this, but it would be entertaining and informative to have somebody like Dr Hirsch to be interviewed by Jon Stewart.
Hopefully his new book will reach even a wider audience than the original 2005 PO study.
Link up top: ‘Peak Oil’ : Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Energy sounds the alarm(Interview with Robert L. Hirsch)
Second part: Peak oil : “A conspiracy to keep it quiet” in Washington, says Robert Hirsch
Dr. Hirsch is a doomer. And he is correct, people don't like to talk about bad things. That is why all the silence. That is why we have so many deniers... even among peak oil believers.
Ron P.
Jimmy Carter went down in flames because he dared to tell the truth to the American people. Hirsch, obviously, is well aware of that history. Obama will not make the same mistake, although I think he will go down in flames, anyway.
At some point, horrible things will happen. Someone will be left holding the bag. In the mean time, Presidents will be passing the bag forward.
It was the sweater that did it.
LINK
Nobody wanted to admit that Mr. Roger's Neighborhood was going to sh#t.
"Can you say 'collapse'? Betcha can!"
Sorry, had to replace the image with a link. It's a really huge file for such a small image.
Sorry Leanan. I edited it down to 72KB. Must have uploaded the original. Such a cute picture, too.
Carter's problems were more than just that. The Iranian rescue mission disaster put a nail in his coffin. Had the mission succeeded, he may have been viewed as a hero. I'm not sure you can blame him for the military's failure but it was a risky mission and the leader gets the rap (which is both fair and unfair).
And on energy had some some very good points. But he (or his advisers) picked too early of a date for peak oil and they pursued shale oil which completely flopped. (And still remains economically infeasible today it seems.)
But overall . . . yet, he pointed us in the right direction. It is too bad we didn't keep going in that direction.
Obama should do a symbolic (and very real) move by putting up PV panels on the whitehouse. The technology is MUCH better now. (The original Carter solar system was just a hot water system . . . which is nice but not as cool as the modern PV systems.)
Reagan, Bush and others, including Oliver North made sure the mission was a failure.
http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/104
It was us, the Children of the Corn (Syrup).
We wanted cotton candy canes and Hollywood Happy trails to us.
We wanted that "Shining City" on the hill and a tall cowboy on a white horse to lead us there.
Grinning Ronnie understood back then.
The Tea Party Hatters understand it now.
We're not only mad as hell. We're also simply mad and ready to take our corn fields back.
Interesting point about people not liking to talk about bad things. How universal is this behavior? Say that a new disease materialized that had very bad outcomes. Some segment of the population would talk about it, and the medical sciences establishment would ramp up quickly to deal with it. However, most of the population would tend to ignore the discussion depending on how far we are from some virulent tipping point stage.
Curiously, that doesn't seem to be the case with oil depletion, as the science is rather mute. However climate change science doesn't have the same problem. It's not hard to find lots of people interested in the bad outcomes of global climate disruption (to use the new vernacular).
I see a huge difference in a new disease, like a plague or whatever, and peak oil. A disease, AIDS for instance, is something that is documented by medical science and cannot be denied. Peak oil can simply be denied. As long as there are people, like Yergin or Economides that deny peak oil, then people will simply believe these "experts" rather than the other experts who tell them bad things are about to happen.
It is just a whole lot easier to deny peak oil and very easy to deny the consequences of peak oil as even many peak oil believers do. People desire to believe what they desire to be true. But some things are so obvious and well documented that belief in them are not subject to the whims of desire. A plague is something that simply can not be denied. Peak oil is just so easy to deny or ignore. Just point to some expert who says it ain't so and then ignore the whole thing.
Let's face it people, Peak Oil is just damn easy to deny.
Ron P.
I completely agree.
If people starting dropping like flies, coughing, bleeding out of their eyes, then such a phenomenon would be impossible to deny.
However, the price of gas in my city is currently ~ $2.74 at my favored station. I could drive across town and get a gallon for ~ $2.64.
Over all, the price has been slowly meandering between ~ $2.54 and $2.94/gallon during the last year (maybe two), usually staying within ~$2.65 and $2.80.
SO, for most folks, this means the price has essentially remained unchanged for the last year or two, which is in the 'here and now' buffer of their experience.
There have been no gas lines/shortages. The Sunport has been flying about the same number of airline flights in and out. Traffic is the same. The have been no shortages of almost anything at the stores, and prices have been flat or only slowly climbing for some goods. Stories featuring folks such as Brittaney Spears still are prevalent in the news.
WRT PO, there won't be a crisis recognized by the masses until there is one.
This would be indicated by: Gasoline(read diesel in with gasoline) rationing..gasoline lines...greatly increasing gasoline prices...noticeable cuts in airline service...knock-on effects showing up as goods shortages in stores....etc.
Until the Joe Lunch-buckets and their wonderful spouses and kids see at least some of these things, PO isn't real...it isn't even on the edge of their radar screens.
this is true
unless my wife sees PO on
eastenders
corrination street
emmerdale
and my kids see it on
hollyoaks
that Oz one Kylie was in
and so on
( I can't remember them all - I don't watch them!)
its not real , despite any facts or figures I may bring to their attention ( in fact the more maths = less interest )
Face it - we're toast!
Forbin
It got a brief mention in Dr Who recently. Can't remember the exact words
Hi forbin
May I make a suggestion?
Start a "family home evening" or some equivalent version (in case this particular phrasing is too connected to the source from whence I lifted it). Examples of activities: cook, talk, play games, sing, sew, or do any number of things - TV free.
It will help clear their minds and open their enthusiasm for doing something positive when the realities represented by your "maths" come to your neighborhood.
Maybe just once a week. See what happens.
OK, the response to bad diseases are explainable, nothing beats first hand observations, I will go with that argument.
So it puts oil depletion into the climate change category -- people deny climate disruption all the time and it is easy to do based on weather observations. Yet, GW has a huge climate science establishment behind it and oil depletion has virtually nothing. How to explain that inconsistency?
Maybe it's the 60 year head start...
Check back in 2070 I think by then you'll see a bit more acceptance >;^)
Expanding on the diseases analogy... Its like the Black Death in the 14 century, where no one knew about infections diseases so blaming cats sounded very reasonable.
Great idea !!!
I'm all for blaming Cats!!
Peak Oil? It's the Cats.
Climate Change? Those pesky Cats again.
Now I have a great reason to boot my girlfriends' Cat out the door.
Oh, how I hate Cats.......really.
Until pretty recently, when a certain political party decided to politicize AGW, they could largely study how these systems worked, out of a pure desire to understand the (natural) system. For oil, almost all of the data is closely held by commercial or national interests. So it makes it hard to come up with good hard data. Also when peak hits depends somewhat strongly upon things we can't know very well. Things like, is oil from oil-shale (marlstone)
extractable in a practical, and large scale fashion? How much of the original oil present in the Bakken can be produced? There are a lot of low quality high difficulty reserves out there, but whether extraction from them is possible isn't well known. Then of course the data on the conventional oil isn't publically available, and even it if was we just don't know how far EOR can go. So remaining reserves are unknown by quite a large amount.
And know of course is peakoil were widely believed that would have a huge impact on both economics, and politics, and some powerful interest groups who think that knowledge might be harmful to their interests are willing to spend heavily to discredit it.
Good points, and it makes me realize how deep into this research topic I have gotten.
Something else that I find depressing. I was watching collapse on Nat Geo channel. A pretty good show by the way. But, here we have an entire two hour presentation devoted to whether we can survive the end of fossil fuels, and what we need to do, and what is being advertised during the commercial breaks 300plus horsepower sports cars! Obviously, the sponsers don't expect the audience to take this thing seriously, just more entertainment on the way to consumer nirvana!
I think the insistence on SILENCE can be described much more simply.
Unlike Climate, Oil is POWER. The power structures of government and business know how quickly perception of Power can change Actual Power. Authority and the Value of Currency are hanging on perception.
People talk about the weather, but noone really expects it is controlled. Oil is another thing entirely.
Finally, the idea of someone (or more like, everyone) OWNING their own power for heating, transportation and utilites is a level of Power Independence, or maybe Extreme Democracy- that HAS TO BE extremely threatening to those who gain their power from Selling these things on a 'Subscription' or a 'Refill' basis.
That makes it awfully important to downplay PassivHaus, Efficiency and Alternative Energy.. which have been proving themselves all over the place, just the same.
Hi jokuhl/Bob,
re: "People talk about the weather, but noone really expects it is controlled. Oil is another thing entirely."
Excellent point.
I like the direction you take it.
I'd also like to take this another direction.
It's partly (largely?) due to the fact people *believe* that oil is controlled that leads them to think there is a political solution of the type: do away with oil companies, get the oil companies, get the PO "conspirators", etc.
There is a lack of either acceptance or understanding (most likely both) that diverts attention from the fact that the limits of the oil resource (and all the other resources) are actually beyond our control, in the bigger picture.
A couple of yeas ago I was on the bus and was treated to a conversational rant about how Al Quaeda controls the oil and won't let us have it. And I've heard the same argument, slightly different players, from much more highly educated people: someone (you name it) controls the oil and won't let us have it.
Nary a geological concept to be found.
If you were at ground zero, you would recognize that denial was a huge part of the the response to the AIDS epidemic, initially from some sub-groups of the gay population which believed the science was part of a government conspiracy, that HIV was not the virus responsible. In addition, the response of the population at large was very slow in funding research and treatment because of the perception that it was a "gay disease." Initially, there were many scientists who did not want to touch the subject because the disease predominately (in the USA) affected gay men. Only when stories of non-gay, non drug using persons affected by the disease became known did the public change its attitudes (Ryan White). When famous people (Rock Hudson) who were well-liked started dying, only then did the public start developing some empathy for gay men. There was no denial that HIV existed--there was denial that it was important or mattered because of who was dying. President Reagan did not not mention AIDS for years while many were dying. Denial is still a huge part of what maintains or increases high levels of transmission of the disease. Denial is operative in many segments of the population in different ways.
Denial has positive functions: it serves to help us survive when the information presented to us is too overwhelming to contemplate. However, it is in many cases a counter-productive defense. We can survive perfectly well without alcohol, so the denial involved with alcoholism is not helpful and many die because denial overrides evidence that one is addicted and needs help.
The problems involved with communication about climate change and peak oil is that both have implications for our survival and well-being. In the USA in particular, we have very short memories. The problems that others have mentioned regarding the ignorance of the public, even the "educated" public, about science, literature, religion, history, and a host of other subjects combine with the natural tendency to avoid contemplating pain, suffering and death. We prefer to believe in our own invincibility rather than recall that many species and many civilizations have come and gone before us and that we too shall ultimately face oblivion.
For some reason we prefer, especially in the US, to hear about hell-fire from preachers rather than hear about problems with our relationship to nature. Peak oil and climate change require us to change in response to problems perceived to be far in the future. It is comforting to hear what Michael Lynch says much more than what Robert Hirsch says. Even if CERA, et al, was correct and oil depletion won't be a problem for thirty years, we would still need to prepare and we are not. Only when the wolf is at the door do we act. We did not enter World War II until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. So too, will we wait until the economic impacts of peak oil are obvious. When comfortable, we only change when pain increases to a certain threshold. Many will still deny even after it is obvious for years.
Robert Hirsch is responding by writing about what he believes is likely to happen within 5 years. I am fairly well convinced that he is right, but know that we could be wrong and it might be 7 or 15 years off, basically because our data is uncertain. I think that is all we can do, to speak and write so that others have the opportunity to hear. Whether others listen is not up to us.
Of course, the problem is that gas prices can change fast. Gas ramped up to $4/gallon pretty quick. With PO, oil prices may be very volatile and gas can shoot up to $5/gallon within a few months. Cars last 10 to 17 years. I am predicting that we are in the midst of a 'gas guzzler bubble'. People are buying cars with relatively low MPG. In 5 to 7 years, the re-sale value of those cars is going to drop like stone . . . faster than the home value drop. I'm looking forward to buying a really nice sports car or SUV in a few years for a dirt cheap price. That vehicle will be a toy or utility vehicle. I'll have a high-mileage or EV commuter.
Hi H,
re: "WRT PO, there won't be a crisis recognized by the masses until there is one."
The thing is, the "crises" you speak about may not appear to be directly related to Peak Oil, given the way the thing plays out WRT intersection of PO and the economy. (See Gail's posts.)
Many people and even regions (take your pick) are in crises now, and yet do not understand the fundamental causes, or that we are entering a turning point in human history.
I don't this it's even necessarily the case that the lunch-bucket carriers - (BTW. saving money by taking meals from home - sounds like a "green" thing to do!) - have to recognize the PO problem.
Most people accept the conditions they find themselves in and attempt to make the best of them. (They do what's right in front of them, in other words.)
So, this is all to say...it may be that a few ideas can have an impact that is positive: Re-localizing agriculture, sustainable agriculture, water conservation, improved rail and electrification of rail, and culture change (got to stop the list somewhere).
re: Once again, to refer to: "a crisis recognized by the masses until there is one."
And at that point, where is the "Plan A" - or B?
That's why we need the NAS study. www.oildepletion.com.
Anticipating impacts, within an open process (don't you ever wonder what the NSA and CIA are thinking about?) that makes the results available now and also, when the crises hits (or hits "as crises" for particular people and/or segments of the population).
Well, naturally. No use getting too worked up about that. Peak Oil is still more like a prediction, like the forecast for this winter's weather, than it is like a fait accompli, like an epidemic already and obviously in progress. There's nothing (yet) to attribute to it so unambiguously and dramatically that only crackpots would fail to see the connection.
For example, economic crashes or "panics" have been a "normal" occurrence for a very very long time. An economic crash no more proves Peak Oil, than a hot day proves AGW or a cold day disproves it. Ditto for price spikes. The infamous 17th tulip bulb price spike ("mania") did not prove Peak Tulips; it proved merely that something-for-nothing can't go on forever (no matter how fervently folks who offer nothing of value in trade for what they want to consume may wish to believe otherwise), as is also the case with real estate or anything else.
And then there are all the confusing, obfuscatory quasi-religious overtones. Anyone searching the Web on "peak oil" will instantly drown in a sea of contradictory essays and declarations by the perennial crowd of would-be dictators and social engineers seeking to stampede governments into cruelly enforcing one pet idiosyncratic arbitrary social vision or another. (Running a variety of gamuts from forcing everyone into the countryside to live as ignorant, short-lived, broken-backed peasants; to forcing everyone into mercilessly overcrowded urban micro-living quarters and forbidding much of anything in the way of activity beyond mere survival; to forcing everyone to re-enact one or another of a variety of harsh tribal or other pasts.)
Well said,
I would add that for all of our lives we have been treated to Malthusian predictions that failed to come true. This is followed by wise experts explaining how falling for a prediction ends up usually making a mockery of the “gullible” and explaining how difficult it is to predict things over long periods when invention and change enter the picture in a variety of way.
I realize that it is likely that these predictions will come true in someone’s lifetime, but my wife and I had a single child to prevent overpopulation and it happened anyway. Suppose the US adopted a peak oil solution (pick one) but the rest of the world did not?
Colekrc you hit the nail on the head. The US will not adopt a peak oil solution unless China and Russia and Europe do. They will not adopt a solution unless we do. Some solutions (like higher taxes on gasoline or restrictions on births) have been adopted by others, but since the US must be number one we have not followed suit. Thus there is little incentive for others to do more. Not at all dissimilar to the nuclear weapons problem.
Actually, China is doing a helluva lot more than the U.S. on renewable energy and they are cornering a great deal of the oil market as well. And, is there really a "peak oil solution"?
Peak oil cannot be solved within the context that the U.S. will continue to perceive the problem as maintaining our current transportation modalities. The "solution" will to be to try to swap out EVs for ICEs. No solution will be proposed or implemented with interfers with civilization as we perceive it.
Well yes tstreet. I understand they are cornering the market on rare earth metals that are used in solar and wind. But they still are dependent on coal and oil. But as you note there is not really a "peak oil solution" although there are peak oil amelioration strategies. If we would just use the same per capita energy as China that would help a lot eh?
But we won't.
Yes, totally agree that it is all relative.
All around me, when I take the bus to work, I can see fantastic numbers of cars. People are going places, driving around. OK. What could possibly induce these people to replace their cars with wheelbarrows full of hay? What could possibly make them change their minds about the rightness and fitness of their driving paradigm? Nothing could UNLESS many thousands of people everywhere else are forced to travel by horse, heft around loads of hay, feed chickens (in short, live on slower, dispersed solar flows). THEN and ONLY then would all these drivers be convinced that the oil game is over.
So the change happens on the margins. One person drops out of the labor market, and another, across the world. One decides not to have another child, a MCDonalds shuts down, someone postpones marriage for a few years, another moves in with mom and dad, all around the world, slowly, one by one, in millions of ways, billions in fact, people are giving up on oil, and it is surely involuntary. It happens by turn, your turn to really change may not arrive until you are ready to retire anyway. Or maybe it will.
So I don`t think governments can do very much about PO until the problem is more immediate: helping to facilitate rationing, helping to keep hospitals functioning, etc. Because people are aware of what is going on in other countries. If the US has gas rationing, then well, it will be OK to have shortages here too. C`est la vie!
When the financial crisis hit in the US that was an important signal for billions of people all over the world that growth is over. WHether or not they consciously recognize it or not, that is what they believe, growth is over, and it is understood here, deeply, although it is a fact that is painful, and they hope it is not for good. "Growth is over"---seriously, many people do know that in their bones, although they might not want to admit it yet.
It takes many steps from "growth is over" to "I traded my Toyota in for a hay wagon", however.
Pi, Yes, people are slowly, without knowing what they are doing, powering down. However the whole edifice is so shaky that likely slow power down will not stop the whole thing from precipitously crashing. And then of course if you are playing "last man standing" and your position is in danger and you have more nukes than anyone else, no doubt that play will come to mind to TPTB.
So I figure you make what changes seem good to you, live each day for the pleasures of the day. But those who hold on to cars should think about where to park them when the last gas is used up. They should make nifty food dryers.
For us, we have put a hand pump in a drilled well and plan to provide water for any and all who are willing to pump it.
Hi Ron,
re: "As long as there are people, like Yergin or Economides that deny peak oil, then people will simply believe these "experts" rather than the other experts who tell them bad things are about to happen."
Here is an opportunity for me to make a plug to encourage action geared toward: directing the only entity explicitly set up to advise the Nation on matters of scientific import, namely, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), to take up the question of global oil supplies, impacts (of decline) and policy options.
www.oildepletion.wordpress.com
The NAS is doing a four-year energy study that avoids the specific question of global oil supplies.
They do just about everything else, including a number of studies that relate. Also, I encourage TODers to check the NAS website for "Current projects", find those that relate to energy, and send in factual materials on "peak oil" and suggest the studies include the implications of "peak" on the particular study topic.
Back to our proposal for the NAS to take a direct look at global oil: A panel established now could also advise the nation as the crises worsens.
Unless the NAS weighs in, there is no credible reference for (even) local officials to point to - and by credible, I mean pretty much by definition, the NAS. For example, I give credibility to numerous TOD authors, however, this isn't the same as the NAS.
re: "...just damn easy to deny."
On the level of the philosophical (not to quibble, but just to say) I don't know...people tend to deny things that they lack the capacity to absorb.
The issue or topic itself - (whether "peak oil" or something like: "X, whom I've always trusted, couldn't possibly have done Y") - subject to denial may not have much to do with whether or not denial kicks in. Denial is such a strong reaction and there for a reason.
Whether denial is present, or, whether it's present and then a person is somehow able to go beyond it...may have more to do with the inner and environmental (social, for eg.) resources of the person with the denial.
The more emotional and tangible support people have, the greater the odds that the denial can be dropped. (Or, not there in the first place.)
I've always had the personal view that knowing can provide avenues of coping ("paths" or "ways") than not knowing.
But perhaps one has to have some idea of what these ways might be.
"Stronger, together" (co-op motto) helps.
Hence, TOD. (IMVHO.)
Aniya,
This is ground we have covered before but since you've brought up the petition I'll bring up the "mission and overview" page from the EIA web site, which starts out:
This is the agency that was set up to and should be alerting the US government and US business about the truth of long term energy trends. They are instead spreading optimism and promoting faith in the statements of the players in the very market for which they are supposed to "collect, analyze, and disseminate independent and impartial energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment."
While the NAS may be the "only entity explicitly set up to advise the Nation on matters of scientific import", the "EIA is the Nation’s premier source of energy information and, by law, its data, analyses, and forecasts are independent of approval by any other officer or employee of the United States Government." I posit that what needs to happen is for something or somebody that cannot be ignored "call the EIA's bluff" on the fraud being perpetrated on the American people.
I would add to what Ron said "As long as there are organizations like EIA or the IEA that deny peak oil, then people will simply believe these "experts" rather than the other experts who tell them bad things are about to happen."
Alan from the islands
Hi Alan,
Thanks for your reply, and hope we can talk about this, since I'm late getting back to you.
re: "This is the agency that was set up to and should be alerting the US government and US business about the truth of long term energy trends."
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is *NOT* an "agency." That's the whole point.
Yes, the EIA "should" be telling the truth. But they're not. Presumably this is what Hirsch's interview sheds some light on. (I haven't had a chance to go through the entire interview.)
The NAS, OTOH, is set up very differently. The process is different, the funding is different, who they answer to is different. They are not a government entity. They are not a federal agency. That's the point. Do you see what I mean? The Academy members receive no remuneration for their services. No money changes hands (maybe per diem, as is the case with many volunteer activities academics take on). The process is established to remain as free from any kind of outside influence - not just on paper, but in process.
They cannot be fired or hired, unlike with the federal agency.
This is a really different organization.
The citizens of the US have it within their power, right now, to require any number of bodies to direct the NAS to investigate "peak" or P3 (petroleum plummet problem).
We can do this via Congress, via any State legislature making a request (and funding it), and/or via any agency. My best bet for an agency is the umbrella agency for the Center for Disease Control. Why? Because the CDC knows about it and actually does talk and try to prepare.
Now, I've heard many people say the NAS would act in a corrupt fashion, given this topic. However, my reply is that they should be given an opportunity. There are many scientists (some of our favorite TODers) who know the truth and tell it.
Hirsch says he knows the truth and tells it. Does he waffle? Does he backpeddle?
If he knows, then I see no reason for him not to support this. If he doesn't support it, I'd like to really understand why - the reason.
"Too late" is not a reason. The panel can act as a clearinghouse as the crises worsens.
This could already be in place. It would take a very short amount of time to set up. A study can be fast-tracked. If the situation was "incoming asteroid" it would be fast-tracked. Pain and suffering can be avoided.
duplicate deleted.
I recently met a guy who's a weather history buff. (He actually had seen papers written by my grandfather, L. H. Murdoch, on the levels of the Great Salt Lake and the aftermath of the 1901 Galveston hurricane -- which I've now found on the Internet). He mentioned that the word tornado had long been taboo in the weather service as too scary -- twisters, windstorms, and cyclones were the preferred terms. Don't know if he's right, or if I heard properly, but I don't, in fact, remember the word tornado from my Oklahoma childhood. And I remember many nights on weather alert at local radio stations.
I've been following Hirsch for at least five years and I don't remember him bringing up the subject of conspiracies before. My guess even he was reluctant to reveal the truth.
I appear in this 2006 British documentary (from Sky Television – Conspiracies: Iraq) - whose main premise is there was a hidden agenda for the invasion of Iraq. You guessed it: oil.
Simon Reeves in the documentary also alleges that the US government was covering up what it knows about the problems that will be caused by the approach of peak oil. As it turns out he was right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1oPEfa9Lws
Interesting that this should come up today since just last night a close friend and I were talking and the matter of my outlook on the future came up. She has a upper second class honours first degree and a masters in international relations and works in the foreign ministry on her island (not the same as mine). She was trying to make the case that I should be setting up a retirement fund since I am self employed and have next to no retirement benefits due to me from any source. She seems genuinely concerned about my future and when I told her that I was investing funds in renewable energy projects, like solar PV and small wind (oops!) and that I had absolutely no faith in the financial markets, her response was that my form of depression is bordering on insanity. Yes, she thinks I am crazy because I take a doomerish view of the future.
In her mind there is no room for any discontinuity of the path that human civilization is on, no big ones at any rate. She, for example, does not believe that the oil price spike and financial crisis is a "preview of coming attractions" as I do. Peak Oil is just not on her radar.
Similarly, my older sister who lives in the UK, has never really entertained any conversations with me about Peak Oil, on the basis of such conversations being too depressing but, she and her husband read The Guardian. Based on the articles I have been seeing in the drumbeats, that newspaper has had a steady stream of articles about peak oil related issues as well resource constraints, the environment and climate change. As a result I think she is now aware of the Peak Oil and some of it's ramifications but, she still doesn't want to talk about it. I cant talk to her about my reasons for holding on to my dad's house on a six acre plot in the countryside (why not sell it any buy something smaller and more manageable?) but at least she understands that I might have plans and maybe, just maybe, she might be thinking that it would be a better place to be than post peak Britain.
I do not know of a single person outside of you, dear readers of TOD, that is seriously concerned about Peak Oil. All of my friends and acquaintances are all busy engaging in and preparing for, business as usual. Those who know of my preoccupation with things regarding conservation, sustainability and renewable energy, either think that it is cute or that I am off the deep end. Only the close friend referred to in my first paragraph has openly suggested to me that I'm crazy. I get the impression from one other friend that, he just hopes I'm crazy but, secretly fears that I might be on to something.
To be fair, one of my best friends was murdered about 10 years and one month ago, my mom died from complications after an operation a little less than 8 years ago and my younger sister succumbed to cancer in the middle of 2007. That means that I could be suffering from serious depression as a result of these bereavements and I have noticed that there are quite a few other posters who have lost loved ones in the not too distant past. I'm just curious to know what it is about us that makes us believers? It cant be just an appreciation of the facts or the logic of arguments but must be some sort of fatalistic realization that "life's not a box of chocolates" that comes with experiencing personal loss.
Alan from the islands
Islandboy, my guess is that most of us here are like you in that most of the people in our lives are not interested in discussing the situation we are facing. And TOD or sites like this are the only place we find like-minded people to discuss the subject.
I think it really is the appreciation of the facts and the logic of the arguments that draws us to this subject. I think most of us here are the type of people who tend to look deeper into issues and maybe less likely to be caught up in superficial distractions of our society. I don't know about others, but depression, or the loss of loved ones etc had nothing to do with my path to doomerism - I was a bonafide progressive industrial techno-optimist until I learned about peak oil.
Man discovered fire and the myriad ways for creating it for his own uses all the way from hunting down wild game to covering a better part of the planet with gas guzzling machines that threaten civilization, such as it is, and the viability of the planet to support both human and non human life forms.
We have discovered better and better ways of harnessing that fire but still do not have the sense to use it wisely. Human beings have been given more than enough time to sort this out and have demonstrated that they are incapable of showing sufficient restraint to salvage what is left of the atmosphere and the planet.
My first choice would be to have man and nature as well. But that does not seem to be in the cards or in the stars.
Depressing? Not really. It just is. On the bright side, watching Debbie Downer on SNL gives us a chance to laugh at ourselves.
snarlin aardvark, what I want to know is why a bonafide progressive industrial techno-optimist can appreciate of the facts and the logic of the arguments, while a upper second class honours international relations professional would not even want to hear them?
Speaking for myself, I was a regular gearhead, interested in the latest gadgets OLED televisions, cars etc. but, with one twist. I was really keen on technology that was more efficient than what it replaced, hence my interest in OLED televisions, technology like the Intel Atom family of CPU chips and electric cars. As a matter of fact, it was while reading a story on either www.autobloggreen.com or www.evworld.com , that I came accross the term Peak Oil and did a google search for it. Boy, did that ever open a can of worms. I ended up watching the following documentaries:
1. "Crude, the incredible story of oil" - produced by ABC (the Australian BC)
2. Crude Impact .
3. Crude Awakening
4. The End of Suburbia
5. Oil, Smoke and Mirrors
6. An Inconvenient Truth
Thing is the thing, from the moment I watched that first five minute video on youtube, I was sold. The arguments just seemed irrefutable to me. So what is it about us that makes us receptive to these gloomy but likely projections?
Bereavement and depression aside, for a long time I have been more concerned with function than form. In my teens I had a ten speed bicycle that ended up looking quite shabby but, was always well tuned and lubricated so much so that anybody I let ride it was always impressed by how well it ran. Once I started tinkering with cars, the two old cars that my parents drove were always well looked after in terms of engine tune-ups and electrical systems although they both were obviously quite old.
Added to that I have never been easily influenced by fast sales talk, usually being able to sift through the crap and tell whether the salesman just wanted to make a sale or had a genuinely good product to sell. Is this skepticism something that is common to most/all TODers?
Alan from the islands
A 17-year-old boy who saved another kid from drowning in Wisconsin had this reaction:
Hi Alan,
I'm so sorry for your losses. Some of them sound particularly shocking and hard to deal with.
I hope you and your sister can become closer and better able to communicate. It's so important.
To that end, I offer references I post occasionally: www.cnvc.org; www.walkyourtalk.org, www.newconversations.com.
Oh, there's no communication problem between my sister and I, except if the topic is Peak Oil. We discuss matters related to the care of our father very often lately and other stuff, just not Peak Oil. The thing is I've found Peak Oil/Resource Depletion to be a real conversation killer.
Alan from the islands
It's almost as if there is some basic social credo that 'people can talk about a wide range of topics, but they better make darn sure it's positive or people will be turned off'. I've never understood why people are unwilling or uninterested in looking at something, even if it is very negative, if it's true. Shouldn't truth be the measuring stick by which a topic is seriously discussed or not? But people will say, "oh, I can't talk about this". Oh really, why not, knowing it might turn out to be the most important topic ever discussed as it pertains to our future?! "Oh, I just don't like to talk about anything negative." Ah, poor baby, there, there now, let's get you some ice cream to help you feel better.
Dear me. Have you never heard of The Power of Positive Thinking, or The Secret? And who likes a party-pooper anyway? Really, all you need to do is to wish upon a star... ...
Actually, positive thinking is a good thing; however, it probably doesn't work all that well when it comes to geology.
I tend to encourage an attitude of finding positives in one's world. I think it's essential for mental health, but I don't think it has to keep a person from seeing the real problems, either. (Knowing your posts, I would assume that's not generally incompatible with your views..)
It got me thinking of the Poem that Rocky Dennis writes in the movie 'MASK' .. about the boy with Elephantisis?? Eric Stoltz, Cher, Laura Dern
He's dying from this disease, and the effects have made him Isolated from all but a blind girl and a devoted Mom.. but he would look at the positives and negatives, and hold them together like this.
I'm not sure Hirsch is a doomer, but I'm sure he sees the Many, Dark Clouds that are gathered, as much as he can see the Sun.
Because we are all constantly pressured to be positive thinkers...
Acclaimed journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich explores the darker side of positive thinking.
RSA Animate - Smile or Die
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo
Hi again, Ron,
re: "And he is correct, people don't like to talk about bad things."
Argument: People don't like to talk about bad things they don't know what to do about.
Version 2: People don't like to talk about bad things, if they feel they are going to be abandoned, dealing with them alone.
Version 3: People absolutely need to talk about bad things - about bad things they have experienced or fear they might experience. It's the most natural way to begin to cope - talk. Talk in an open way, that leads somewhere.
Hirsch is coping.
I'd like to see him talk more about what his personal experience was and is. He's done so in a previous interview back in '05.
The catastrophic things are not necessarily foregone conclusions, though, of course, I can estimate the very slender odds of "not foregone."
We need to talk about that path.
From the Hirsch interview:
(emphmine)
Funny! I was just reading my new mushroom catalogue.
Happy little mushrooms,,,,until they're not.........
What angers me is that the politicians are more interested in keeping their power and staying in office rather than doing what is right and necessary. Truly a bunch of gutless wonders.
Todd
You are correct, of course. However, it is also their view that putting the other party in power will only make things worse. Besides, the people are not in the mood to do anything about peak oil, global warming, or any other problem they see as part of the socialist agenda. Faux news is in charge.
My natural impulse is to go for the truth, however, painful. But then I think of Jimmy Carter, our greatest one term president.
The cliche` "we get the leadership that we deserve" applies here (to most of us).
We get what we deserve.
Perhaps Christine O'Donnell, Sharon Angle, Sarah Palin, et al. will provide us with enlightened leadership and energy policies.
I might be wrong, but I think their collective policies would revolve around 'drilling our way to energy independence', ensuring there is much less regulation and letting the 'free market' figure things out, and muscular military crusades to protect Israel, neuter Iran, and spread peace and democracy in the ME...and secure our rightful access to our oil over there. Hugo Chavez will be on notice as well.
And the band will pay on, and the shot clock will continue towards zero.
I really don't think that cliche has much meaning because far more often we get what we don't deserve.
Ron P.
Some of us. It depends on how you define "we". (here 'we' go again...)
Well, given that hardly anyone cares about epistemological issues, like how can we maximize our chances of knowing the truth, they are easily influenced by those with the desire and means to lead the sheeple. Psychological emotional marketing/brainwashing works quite well, and there is plenty of money to be made by being a cog in the deception machine. So by enjoying the distractions they are setting themselves up to get what they deserve.
Todd, our leaders will do "what is right and necessary" (based on their definitions).
Considering what Hirsch says about their directive "do not do research on peak oil, do not discuss peak oil."
It sounds like our government is following the script from Three Day's to the Condor.
Pigman Clinton, Pigman Bush and Pigman Obama were just following the roles they were assigned.
I tried to order The Impending Energy Mess at Barnes and Noble. They couldn't find a reference to it. Makes me wonder if they couldn't find it on purpose? [I know it isn't due until October 1st, but the last book I bought wasn't going to be released for another week, and that presented no problems (and it arrived in the mail on the official release date).
Doesn't show up on their website either. It is on Amazon though http://www.amazon.com/Impending-World-Energy-Mess/dp/1926837118/ref=sr_1...
Deleted
Never let a crisis go to waste! When the reality of Peak OIl is acknowledged at all the right levels of decision-making, then some fantastic, positive change can happen, starting with total focus on fuel efficiency, and a complete rejection of our big-gas-guzzling-engine-worshipping culture. Just imagine if every family that can afford to goes and purchases a 50+ MPG car or two that will replace their 18 MPG SUV/Sports car. Everyone that can starts to use a bicycle to get to work or school or do local errands. Public funds going into mass transit instead of the Iraq or Afganistan wars. Twenty viable electric car models to choose from that are manufactured by the millions yearly that will be charged by an ever smarter grid with ever more wind, solar, geothermal and yes, nuclear power. Folks, this can happen, but I suspect it will need a real crisis, a "nation-at-war" mode and state of mind which for some mysterious reason we do not have even though we were fighting two wars! Go figure!. Please, OPEC, choke off our oil!
Grabbing at straws, halfway down the cliff. This could work :-0
Is there anything else to grab at?
Guns... just in case...
DD
Will all rainbow-emitting unicorns please move to the right lane.
Thank you.
Sadly, when the reality of Peak Oil is acknowledged at all the right levels of decision-making, then I expect a carefully hyped mass panic that will attempt to impose a dictatorship. If that succeeds, then we get Soylent Green without the cannibalism. If the dictatorship fails, then we end up somewhere between the 1930's and A World Made by Hand. If the power grid and the internet both stay running, we might not even slide that far back.
The majority of the electricity generation and distribution infrastructure of most of the developed world was run by the state up until not too long ago. I fully expect this will come back, and only the big stockholders will complain. As for liquid fuels, when Peak Oil hits the fan we will get runaway pump prices followed shortly thereafter by rationing. Kinda like WWII, and for those of you who remember this, I think those who stayed at home to produce the war material survived OK despite rationing of just about everything. It can definitely work for some years while we clean up the worst of the current situation.
Todd,
With respect to rationing, North American authorities need to review and update their plans for oil supply emergencies.
Both the Canadian and the US plans are decades old and appear very unworkable.
Current info indicates that energy authorities are aware of that, and will be extremely reluctant to consider allocation or rationing schemes. Instead, governments appear intent on staying out of the way and allowing market pricing to reduce demand.
However, this approach ignores some obvious problems.
Net farm income is at record lows, and many family farmers could not absorb a doubling or tripling of diesel prices, and would be forced to cut back on their activities.
Meanwhile, the cost of imported food would also be affected, so the combination of the two (plus other related factors) would surely lead to a food supply crisis (on top of the fuel crisis).
Second, the recommended policy of "full price pass-through" will increasingly cut off low-income citizens, who may not accept this quietly.
Do you know how Norway's emergency plan is set up, or when their gov't last reviewed it?
The most proactive work that I've found has occurred in Australia and UK, but Norway is progressive in many respects, so perhaps they have done good work as well.
- Rick M in Canada
The American economy and now the global economy is based on growth. We create money by loaning it, thus there is always more and more debt that can only be paid by continued growth. Since the true basis for growth is energy and resources, finding stockpiles of energy and resources fuels growth. This can be piles of guano on S. American islands, rich topsoil in a largely non-agricultural "new world", the invention of tools to access previously unaccessible resources, fossil water supplies now accessible via powered pumps, fish stocks now accessible by dredging the oceans, old growth forests, not to mention oil. When these become more energy intensive to obtain, or run low, when the flow rate can't continue to increase, growth stops. When growth stops the whole economic edifice collapses. We see the cracks in the edifice start to form already.
An economic system that is inherently dependent on growth has to end sometime. We live in interesting times....
"Sadly, when the reality of Peak Oil is acknowledged at all the right levels of decision-making, then I expect a carefully hyped mass panic that will attempt to impose a dictatorship."
Kind of goes along with the old saw that politicians have only two modes of behavior - 1) complacency and 2) panic. We are still in complacency mode now - a little scary to imagine what panic mode will result in.
ToddInNorway said . . . yada yada.
Dude. You are in Norway, a country that became rich off oil! ;-)
But honestly, Norway is a model country. They have very high gas taxes. They have great renewable energy in the form of hydropower. They created a big solar company with REC solar. They are working hard on large scale wind. Norway even has TWO electric car companies (Think and Buddy) and no gas car companies!!!
"They created a big solar company with REC solar."
RECsolar has just been put up for sale. More exactly, Orkla is going to sell off it's 40% stake. The Norwegian Gov't has already declined to buy them out. So it's on the block.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-08/orkla-names-wiggen-chief-execut...
(Can't get Google to spit up the link to this one; but I made a copy earlier)
Sep 15, 2010 (NORDIC BUSINESS REPORT via COMTEX) --
15 September 2010 - The Norwegian state is not considering to buy the stake of Norwegian conglomerate Orkla ASA (OSL: ORK) in solar group Renewable Energy Corporation ASA (OSL: REC), Norway's Minister of Industry, Trond Giske, told yesterday newswire TDN Finans.
The short version is that the Scandinavian operations are not cost-effective compared to the Chinese, the Singapore operation might be able to hold it's own, but maybe not, depending on how fast the Chinese can improve their yields (or if they even need to**) and the US units are making money, but not as much as was hoped. The Norwegians seriously underestimated how complex a silane production plant was, and how cranky and unforgiving a fluidbed reactor can be, especially when you scale it up from the previous size that had taken 15 years to fully debug.
So Orkla has decided to stick to processes it does understand, like aluminum.
** If the Chinese are cheap enough, it would cost less to buy a few extra modules to make up the difference in efficiency than to buy more expensive but more efficient REC modules. If you are space constrained, you will probably go with single crystal cells anyway. REC does have a product in that space, but it's not where they are focused. If demand goes up, REC will do OK. If the global financial mess increases (one or more PIIGS default, or California or NY state for that matter) and capital dries up, they will be hurting.
The Hirsch book will be a big help. I read his 2005 report then and have been telling college students ever since. A more substantial statement in book form will have a large multiplier effect.
I still remember laughing out loud in 2004, when I read Colin Campbell's statement in The Coming Oil Crisis to the effect of "I've discussed this problem with my stockbroker, and neither of us knows what to do." Prolly should give a copy of Hirsch's book to my financial advisor!
In thinking about oil production, exports and ELM, there are quite a few examples of countries showing increasing or at least stable domestic consumption in the face of falling production. But in looking at the history of FSU production and consumption, something really interesting pops out. When the Russian economy collapsed around 1991, domestic consumption fell even faster than exports. In fact, consumption fell below 1960 levels! But even more interesting is that when oil production soared, domestic consumption remained flat even though GDP grew rapidly. I find this fascinating and am searching for an explanation. The only one I can think of is that energy use under the Soviet regime was incredibly wasteful due to artifically low prices. Could it have been that wasteful? I don't know. But I also wonder if this has any meaning for the United States. Is it possible that we could cut our oil consumption in half and still have a viable economy as Russia has done, albeit after a period of terrible disruption?
Absolutely. Electrification of US surface transport (predicted by Deutsche Bank as response to the next oil crunch) would reduce US oil consumption by 60%.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24860052/Deutsche-The-Peak-Oil-Market-Oct-4-2009
There’s a chance algal biofuels could scale up to provide irreplaceable liquid fuel for the aviation fleet (military and commercial).
http://biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2010/09/15/join-the-navy-and-free-the-...
The normative TOD story that we can’t possibly address the coming problems is incorrect IMO.
"...There’s a chance algal biofuels could scale up to provide irreplaceable liquid fuel for the aviation fleet (military and commercial)."
This has been discussed for a long time on Drumbeat. Problems are scalability at a reasonable cost. IIRC Robert Rapier reviewed the technology earlier this year and found cost per gallon of algal based duel above $20 per gallon. Fuel at that cost is not feasible for commercial aviation at todays ticket prices. Count on commercial aviation to shrink by the same margin as decline in US oil imports - 25% to 50% drop in ten years. Transportation by air in year 2020 will be very high priced, just like it was in the 1950's.
One needs to think about the new algal biotechnologies under development, though, and not just assume current costs going forward. That is the same backward thinking that leads WSJ to constantly state that renewable energy has no future, whereas actually wind energy is already at grid parity in many places and solar will be so in 2012 or 2013. Lots of backward thinking on TOD.
I agree that wind power and solar (thermal and PV) are a good substitute for FF in producing electricity.
But algal biofiels use complicated processes to convert the sun's energy into hydrocarbons that in quantity will power transportation. Perhaps they can be scaled up with new technology but my question is always at what cost? The law of receeding horizons seems to come into play: as the cost of oil,natural gas & coal goes up so does the cost to implement competing fuels, especially those that require complx processes.
The railways of India had funded a program to use Jatropha seed oil to power their diesel locomotives. The idea was to grow it along the RR right of ways and other unsued plots (had many miles of grassy areas to do this), use local labor to collect the seeds, use regional companies to press the seeds/filter the oil. This type of plan has some chance of success as it is very low tech and uses arable land not currently in production, while not requiring vast amounts of resources like water and NPK fertilizer.
Fuel from algae is not in this catagory of low implemetation and operational costs and thus at a disadvantage to being brought into production anytime soon to offset peak oil, IMHO.
I have two solar arrays on my roof, one grid tie and one battery backup.
So keep that in mind when I say that Solar has a poor EROI. Your comment position doesn't take into account that solar panels are "cheap" only because the energy to create transport and install solar panels is all provided by abundant and ridiculously cheap oil.
How much oil is used to:
Mine the raw materials.
Transport the raw materials to be processed.
Process the raw materials into finished goods.
Transport the finished goods usually have way around the world.
Don't forget the energy to:
Have the sales rep drive out and do his dog an pony.
Deliver and install the panels on large trucks for period of days.
Don't forget the inspector who has to drive over and back.
And PG&E has to drive over, replace the meter with a new meter (which also has to be built), and sign off.
Did you remember to amortize the energy used to create all the buildings, machines and vehicles used in this process?
Now do all the above using only the energy generated by solar panels.
I can drop 20 grand just to make sure my lights and TV stay on during the Super Bowl but I doubt there are enough in my position who can and fewer who would.
There is a lot of backward thinking on TOD. It's encourged for both entertainment purposes and to keep others honest.
So to keep you honest. Show me an analysis of how many solar panels and wind turbines it would take to create everything necessary to create, distribute, and install solar panels and wind turbines and support all of the people involved and their energy needs. Then tell me how many of each would be produced over the life of the enterprise. Keep in mind those factories won't work at night and barely during the winter.
Renewable energy only works now economically precisely because it's not needed. When it is needed I can assure you that the economics will change both negatively and materially.
I'm not a big fan of the mass media, but I'm sure at least a few at the WSJ can and have done the same math.
Jteehan;
The boundaries for PV are revisited regularly. You're spreading them pretty far, I think. If that calc still must be done, don't forget to add Hydro, Geothermal and Ocean Power to it.
Did you see the Homepower story about the 30 year old Arco panels that were just tested and were still producing power ABOVE their factory specs? I wouldn't claim that all panels will achieve this, but with that result out there, it seems likely that such panels will be able to be produced again, if current models don't hold up like those.
http://homepower.com/article/?file=HP139_pg36_ReadersDIY
“Your test results don’t surprise me. Solar modules are the most reliable electricity generation source in the known universe. A PV cell is a rock that makes electricity. Unless something corrodes the electrical contacts, it will still keep working.”
Considering in addition to that, that there are panels now that are getting full energy payback (within standard boundaries) within a year now, I'm hard-pressed to believe that there isn't a very solid window of net-energy available in this technology, and that's even before we know much about the mfg energy needed to simply recycle retired cells back into new ones, which should have even greater advantages.
@jteehan, PV technology is not static, and it is improving by leaps and bounds almost monthly. So if your PV system was produced even just 3-4 years ago, and you have not followed the industry lately, I can understand why you have your point of view. But it is nonetheless backward, obsolete and now completely wrong.
First Solar, the world´s low-cost leading producer of thin-film PV, has publicly stated (under penalty of punishment for committing fraud if it is untrue) that First Solar PV systems, that is the panel, the mounting and BOS, produce in just 0.8 years in sunny sites all the energy used to make it all. Their production costs for complete PV systems is under $3/Wp (US). Installation comes on top of this.
The PV panels and mounting can last 30-50 years with some degradation, the inverter needs replacing every 5-7 years. All in all, the system will easily produce 30 times more energy than used to make it. If this is not good enough, what is?
I do not work for First Solar or have any shares in them.
Among other problems with the algae is that they are a living creature that like all living creatures can be preyed upon by other living creatures. Imagine if we were able to make this a big part of our energy source and an algae plague hit. Evolution in microbes is much speeded up and and think if we put lots and lots of biologically identical algae in one place we will be faced with endless problems of keeping them from becoming prey. This problem is NOT UNKNOWN to science, but scientists have their flaws and are able, when hot on the trail of a solution to one problem, to ignore known facts. Thus we have had to design ever stronger antibiotics as the germs that attack us evolve resistance to our wonder drugs. Yet we are encouraged to wash with antibiotic hand wash, stuff our meat full of antibiotics and give out antibiotics to every mom or dad with a sick kid and not beat into their heads that the instructions to take the whole prescription are important to keeping our antibiotics useful.
In addition to the high cost for algae oil, no one has come up with a workable solution to the scale issue.
Algae is still plant, and needs sunlight to grow. yes, it may yield 10x the energy per acre of corn, but to produce millions of tons of the stuff, will require millions of acres. You can't do that in fanyc plastic bags, glass tubes or covered ponds. You will struggle to do that in open ponds, and then contamination is a real problem.
It is theoretically possible to take an inland water body, like say the Salton Sea in California and turn that into a huge algae farm, but there are still many problems with doing that.
But short term, small scale hopes are for places like tailings ponds at mines, power stations, or open lagoons for polishing of sewage effluent. But even for all these, you are building an expensive pond, in open uncontrolled conditions - many other algae species will grow, and other waterborne weeds.
A better approach, IMO, is to just grow the waterborne weeds, like duckweed, water hyacinth, etc. These have proven their ability to out compete everything else, harvesting the biomass is easy, you then just need to decide how to process it. A wet fermentation to ethanol, or dry it and gasify etc. Same issues as most other raw biomass fuels - if you upgrade to a liquid fuel, you lose at least 50%, and usually 75% of the energy along the way. Use it at the source for electricity, and you can get 25% net electricity production - much better value.
This still doesn;t address the issue of how to cover millions of acres with water. The areas of nice flat land are either desert, or already productive farmland, and no one wants to see exiting waterbodies turned into algae blooms.
To produce enough algae oil for all the jet fuel used (2mbd) in the US would need 50 million acres of algae (40bbl/ac/yr - very high production). That is an area the size of Kentucky to be FLOODED with water and algae farmed.
It can be niche player, but that's about it.
Actually some algal (cyanobacterial) biotech doesn't require any sunlight. You're not paying attention, so imagination fails.
An ecological system that doesn't run on sun at its base is a rarity and all the ones I know about depend on redox reactions wherein the microbe metabolizes some handy chemical/mineral down to a lower energy state.
Such a system as you mention might also run partly or wholly on the energy in sewage or other biologically derived feedstocks by digesting it, but sewage is not available in the requisite quantities-nor is any other suitable bio feedstock, more than likely.
Of course it is possible that this could change, but given the difficulty of commercializing a far, far simpler process-making cheap cellulosic alcohol in bulk-the odds against look very long indeed
As far as mining the few suitable minerals goes-this is a completely and totally laughable non starter.
I used to believe that liquid biofuels would eventually be cheaply manufactured from waste such as sewage plus lots of sun in greenhouses or open ponds.
I no longer believe it can be cheaply done-not in my lifetime anyway.
But the twoferone or threeferone of affordable methane plus partially cleaned waste water looks as if it might fly on a large scale in some places-the three in the "three fer" being useful leftovers- nice valuable fertilizers and possibly some biomass suitable for livestock feed supplement or solid fuel if a species such as duckweed is employed along the way .
Adequate space close to town, suitable terrain, and plenty of water appear to be the keys to a good location. and
In any case, only people who know very little about biology or agriculture will fail to realize that any such system, if one is ever developed that really works, will require a constant input of several essential elements or compounds;microbes don't live on sun , water, and co2 alone.
The required amounts of essential nutritional additives might be relatively small if they can be mostly recovered for reuse during the oil seperation and refining processes;if they can't, then ....................
I mispoke above, sorry. I was thinking of the LS9 process, which uses genetically engineered Esherichia coli bacteria in dark chambers to convert agricultural, industrial, or cellulosic feedstock to biofuels.
However, the Joule Biotechnologies approach might prove even better, using cyanobacteria (bluegreen algae) to produce same using as inputs only sunlight, carbon dioxide, and two catalysts (no biological feedstock and no fertilizers, since bluegreens fix nitrogen from the air). The downside is relatively inefficient conversion of photons to fuel, since much energy is used in fixing the nitrogen. Apparently the genetic engineeering is aimed at enhancing efficiency of conversion. At commercialization, Joule projects production of up to 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre per year, at a cost of ~$30/barrel equivalent.
It's much too early to know how all this will sort out, but very interesting things are under way
The downside is relatively inefficient conversion of photons to fuel, since much energy is used in fixing the nitrogen
But this is the limiting factor for all biofuels. Plants didn't need to maximise their production from sunlight anymore than they have, because other things (water, nutrients) would limit their growth anyway.
I am more than a little concerned with the concept of genetically engineering an algae, that is prone to "blooms" already, to make it a super algae. If we put it into wide scale production, then we can;t keep it locked up, and what happens to the rivers when we have a warm summer with higher nutrient levels and slow or no flowing water?
A (then) world record blue-green algae bloom in Australia in 1991 was caused by just such a situation, how much more often would we see this with a "super" blue green algae?
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/wate/1997/00000099/F0040001/00...
And we should treat their claims on yield as being "hopes", until they are actually proven in field trials, and data released.
Their claim for 15,000 gal of diesel/ac/yr works out to the equivalent of 152 kWh/sq.m/yr (based on HHV for diesel of 146MJ/gal)
With an average solar insolation of 5hrs/day, this works out to an 8.6% conversion efficiency - better than thin film solar panels!
If this was sugarcane, or trees, or corn growing at this efficiency, it would be 121 dry tons/acre/ year (world record corn yield is 11t/ac).
And this assumes that 100% the sunlight energy is going into the oil production, and not other biomass of any other form, or being used for internal energy by the algae, etc etc.
That is quite an amazing claim to make, when they are still doing their genetic engineering.
As for the $30/barrel ($0.67/gal), we should question that too. Their "farm" looks like a green version of a solar farm - lots of angled plate glass collectors, and then pipes etc etc.
But let's just consider the capital cost. If we assume it is similar to large scale PV farms (and I don;t see how it can be much cheaper), then you are looking at a minimum of $200/sq.m ($2/W for PV, though the real world, installed costs are always higher). So for an acre, that will be $800k, to produce 15,000gal/yr at $0.67, or $10k/yr. Now, as OFM will concur, $10k/ac gross is great for a farm, but it will take you 80 yrs to to pay off the capital cost and that's assuming you get maximum yield every year.
Plus it needs a concentrated source of CO2, likely a coal fired power plant, and this has to be put into the water, circulated, oil must be separated etc, etc, so unlike PV, there will be some operating cost.
So how realistic is their claim? What is the track record for these biotech companies actually producing as much as they say, as cheaply as they say? Yes, these guys may be different, but they have to prove that. If this was one of your students at the university, who brought this to you on paper, would you be asking him to vigorously verify his claims?
And, it is not "infinitely scalable" as they say, because concentrated sources of CO2 are not infinite, and they are not all located on flat land in the Arizona desert.
I wish them well in getting an algae to diesel process to work. I hope their genetic engineering to improve yield does not, as I think that is asking for trouble. I also hope they take a realistic look at what's involved with large scale production - it is never a case of just multiplying lab, or even trial plot results, and costs almost always turn out to be higher when implementing.
To quote the great physicist Richard Feynman, "When introducing a new technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, because Nature cannot be fooled" Which side of the line does it look like Joule is on?
Overpromising and underperforming is problem #1 for the biofuel industry - Joule is doing nothing to reverse that trend.
Multinational companies are installing high-end video conferencing equipment across the globe as a hedge to travel costs and problems. You would be amazed how much it is being used.
DD
The slightly modified version, "that we won't even try to address them until it is too late" is very likely correct, at least in the US.
In terms of Russia's growing GDP, look at all that oil that they were/are exporting. That, I believe tells much of the story. Based on current rates of production, for the US to export ~9 million barrels a day and receive the financial benefit from such, internal oil consumption would have to fall to less than zero, an impossibility (an admittedly ridiculous way of stating the problem, but I think you can get my point).
Edit: In fact, roughly speaking (based on just looking at the supplied charts) the rise in Russian GDP from the bottom of the collapse appears to very closely follow the rise in oil exports--an interesting correlation.
-best,
I agree that oil is a major component of Russia' GDP is fed by oil production, but what's interesting is that GDP growth has not translated into higher domestic consumption. And it can't be explained by use of alternative fuels, unless Russia has massive wind and solar farms I don't know about.
Again, I wonder how much was the result of wasteful industrial consumption under Soviet rule. After all, I don't think the Russian people were using tons of it in their daily lives.
Interesting.
If you investigate the condition of the Russian people, you will see they have yet to recover to the standard of living prevailing prior to 1991. What happened there was truely horrifying, especially for elders. Millions died long before their time--Millions. Thus a lot of people that would use petroleum products disappeared as users--the ultimate in Demand Destruction--and those left have much fewer resources to spend. If you only look at Moscow, you are missing the whole picture. Further, as with the USA, The Soviet military, which morphed to CIS then just Russia, used the largest amounts of petrtoleum products, and really didn't start to recover until 2002, and I'm pretty certain current Russian military usage is well below that of the USSR 20 years ago. With Russia's population rising while becoming more affluent and its military exercising more, usage will climb and net exports will decline quicker.
Looking at the two graphs, it jumps out as a strong possibility that perhaps much of the increase in GDP is likely due to the corresponding increase in oil production and export during the same span of years.
If I am not mistaken, Russia also has significant natural gas resources and has exported a large amount of NG to Europe over the past decade or so.
Well . . . where is all that money going? In Venezuela & Saudi Arabia, a lot of money gets spread out in social programs & spending so the local population gets some money and they subsidize the gasoline prices massively so people use oil wastefully.
But in Russia, a lot of the money goes to rich oligarchs and there are only so many big black SUVs you can buy. And I don't think Russia massively subsidized oil as is done in the mid-East oil states and Venezuela.
I believe Russia did subsidize oil tremendously during the Soviet era -- not to citizens but to industry. The inefficiencies of Soviet industry is legend, so it is conceivable that with the de-subsidization of oil, things have gotten a lot more efficient. Even so, could the inefficiencies have been so great to account for the huge drop off? I don't know the answer to this riddle, but it does stand out in contrast to other countries.
Russian consumption levels in 1997 were down 48% from 1989 levels. EIA provides USSR consumption to 1991, then the various nations arising therefrom thereafter. When I attempt to build up a FSU series with EIA data adding up all the individual components of the USSR I get a 26% dropoff in 1992, which seems excessive. BP's Russia series only shows -8.06% in that year.
I've looked at lot at belt tightening in the past. US consumption in 1983 was only 73.15% of 1978 levels. Figure you double that for a collapsing empire and you're in the ballpark. Prices spike and some businesses fold up, perhaps for good; later they begin to rebuild and expand once more; if they're utilizing oil for industrial purposes the demand builds for those streams, and transport use grows as well, since you need demand at all stages of production/consumption to bring the goods to the consumers, or the consumers to the goods for that matter.
The pattern of peak-descent-trough-slope shows again and again here. What interests me the most is that we seem to lack the means to make the slopes very pronounced any more, unless we begin to voluntarily curtail consumption, which will hamper economic growth unless viable substitutes are implemented. Some of these substitutes are readily welcomed - online shopping vs driving to brick and mortar outlets, for instance. But in the case of this very example there are obvious externalities.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_16075448?nclick_check=1
The US Navy is proving that algae can be used to convert sun's energy to oil that powers ships. If an aircraft carrier uses 1200 gallons an hour, then this 150,000 gallons will power one ship for half a day.
I would like to know what the cost is for those 150,000 gallons and at what delivery rate. My guess is close to $20 per gallon and only a few thousand gallons per month. Any more details to refute me?
Check your math. I calculated 125 hours of power for that carrier. Still not much of a gain is it, is it?...
E. Swanson
All U.S. aircraft carriers are nuclear=powered...the Nimitz class uses two nuke reactors.
The Enterprise (one-of-a-kind) uses eight nuclear reactors, and it is being retired in 2012.
POL is used to fly the embarked aircraft, of course.
They did say they were producing other things as well, food, and cosmetics were mentioned. It is possible that the algae is grown for niche materials, and the oil is a byproduct that can be sold at relatively low price. But, if thats the case it is not scalable.
Interesting, but it is not like this is normal commerce. This is the Navy subsidizing research by buying fancy expensive biofuel. I think that is good for the Navy to do but I'm going to get worked up about this being some viable commercial technology outside of niche applications.
The Navy is creating an industry, bringing startups to commercial viability, just as Germany did with solar.
If the US military is consuming 350 kb/d in total then 150kg/d = 8kb/d = 2.2% of total. Do all branches consume equal amounts? So you're at 8.8% of Navy total, or more/less, depending on the actual relative sizes and needs here, if anyone wants to keep crunching #s.
Also that number is in all likelihood gal/year, not gal/day, so .006%, depending on the meaning of "Solazyme says it is likely to produce about 100,000 gallons of its algae-based oil by the end of the year." 6.5 b/d would be .0018%. Makes you wonder why the Navy's even bothering - PR reasons, probably. Make the Feds think they're doing their bit to be Green. I see that Barbara Boxer's rooting for them.
At least the Navy could conceivable power all of its larger ships (Carriers, cruisers, destroyers, subs, probably larger transports ships, and maybe even ships down to the Littoral Combat Ship in size.
Naval aviation could rely much more on unmanned aerial vehicles which could reduce fuel consumption.
However, in a seriously fuel-constrained World, the USAF and US Army would not have the nuclear power option. They could, however, also make greater use of unmanned vehicles (air and ground).
Of course, the military could attempt to consolidate bases more, and invest in dedicated solar and wind energy sources, as well as make major investments in buildings' energy efficiency.
Lastly, jettisoning our expeditionary posture of playing global beat cop and concentrating on playing North Am zone defense would also greatly reduce energy usage.
Climate change, stem cell research, banning morning-after pill, etc.
Even though I appreciate the fiscal conservative aspects of the GOP (well . . . if they actually followed them instead of preach them), the GOP makes it impossible for me to even consider them with their war on science. That and mean-spirited theocratic aspect. Ugh. At least conservatives like the late Matt Simmons, T. Boone Pickens, and James Schlesinger won't allow themselves to be silenced on this issue.
I don't see that political party makes much difference with respect to peak oil.
And the environmental movement is by and large as much in denial of peak oil as anyone else.
I think it makes a big difference on how they react to peak oil. Cheney knows about oil depletion . . . his response is to invade Iraq. Obama & Chu know about peak oil. Their response is to fund the smart-grid, fund battery companies, fund EV companies, fund EV component companies, give tax credits for EVs, support public transportation, etc.
I agree with Gail. I don't think there's that big a difference. Hirsch comes right out and says Obama isn't doing any more than Bush (and presumably Clinton, who knows about peak oil but only talked about it once he was out of office).
And it's sure not just Republicans who have a problem with science. Americans in general don't have much of a scientific bent. Look at the popularity of things like The Secret - which preaches that you can create your own reality, just by believing in it. Lose weight by simply deciding that food doesn't make you fat. Get rich by "telling the universe" that's what you want. If something bad happens to you, you attracted your own fate with negative thoughts. This type of thing seems to attract new-age lefty types. Along with "ghost hunting," UFOs, etc.
I think it is starting to make a big diference, and that difference will grow in the future. The people who are promoting drill-drill-drill, oil-shale, and even abiotic oil are almost all on the right. The strategy of waiting for an energy cruch, and blaming it all on the environmentalists, and their liberal allies is just too tempting to avoid. Also, they get plenty of money and political muscle from people who have an interest in higher prices for fossil fuels, so they will follow the path of least resistance and become deniers. Also you note that any thing that smacks of a tragedy of the common, or of serious externalities, just cries out for a government role, and that message is counter to the (US) rights agenda and marketting.
Generally the liberals are just not thinking about the issue, some want to push the alternatives/efficiency route, but others just want to get brownie points saving cute furry animals, and will easily be roped into the role of the treehuggers who (allegedly) got in the way of more drilling. I think PO, like climate change before it, will become highly polarized before long. Those who find themselves on the wrong side of the divide will have to choose between their (political) tribe, or their beliefs. Most will choose their tribe.
I think you have this all wrong. Yes, there are the treehuggers on the left who will want to save small furry animals, but they are not in power . . . they are just fringe.
The people in power (Steven Chu), know about PO. Do I need to find the link to a presentation Chu gave that includes PO slides? And you can see their views reflected in their actions (as mentioned above: support for battery makers, support for EV makers, support for EV components, support for public transport, etc.). And as is often discussed here, they will not talk about PO publicly since it is a downer topic.
So they know it exists, they are implementing policies, but they won't talk about it. (And I'd say that is the same for the right as well . . . the policies are just different.)
Sadly, unfortunately, what the people think about pretty much everything, doesn't really matter very much, as long as they don't act. Actions speak louder than words, so the people can say pretty much what they like, think what they like, but any form of action that threatens the rule and power of the 'ruling class', is irrelevant.
If we lived in a functioning democracy, what the people thought would matter; only we don't, not really.
The reason Hirsh's report is dynamite, is that if one was aware of the dire situation the US faces in relation to Peak Oil, then the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq... the coming war with Iran, the tension with Venezuela, the rapid encirclement of China, the thrust towards Central Asia, the interference in the Middle East, the support for the arab dictatorships in the Gulf... all of it seems to make some kind of sense, the empire attempting to grab as much of what's left of the world's oil while its still got the strength.
Of course sending kids from the midwest to fight and die for oil is a 'sell' of harder and different character than the elaborate lie of fighting a non-existant terrorist threat and fighting for democracy, which seems noble, rather than tawdry and obscene.
It makes sense but consider that only a few people have the view that we are fighting for oil in any of our wars or areas of tension. I could as easily say that our tension with Venezuela is because Chavez seeks to nationalize industry and we (in general) oppose this. Of course if Chavez sells his oil on the market, we are free to buy it from the secondary owner so I don’t see how we have any concern for oil in our tension with Chavaz. Chavez could change this by stopping his own oil industry thereby reducing the world’s supply of liquid fuel. That might mean we would have a disagreement with him over the topic of oil.
Note too that some members of organizations like the Sierra Club believe that slowing growth in any area is of benefit. So they are suing the Alberta Oil Sands program because it is a relatively new source of oil. In a way this makes sense as well. Why not try to hinder growth, if growth (representing BAU) is a priori “bad”.
What really matters is what was said up post, namely, that actions matter, and what matters most are the actions of the large independent middle of our society. So far they are pretty much waiting for more insight.
Ding Ding Ding Ding!
We have a winner here!
Only several hundred million more 'merikuns to educate to understand what you have correctly deduced!
I certainly do not endorse the Iraq war, but I think you are being overly cynical. We don't go in there and just steal the oil. We do knock out a dictator we don't like and replace him with a local government that will sell oil on the international market . . . that may not be noble but it isn't like we are just killing people to steal oil.
In fact we are screwing ourselves with such actions . . . we are spending our own money to subsidize the price of oil for the entire planet. It costs us billions while the rest of the world gets cheaper oil without lifting a finger.
I think the original plan was to create a government that could be easily manipulated, and the politically connected IOCs could get overly generous contracts. But, things don't always turn out as planned. I think one of the things that fueled the insurgencies was an (unfortunately largely correct) suspicion on the part of the locals, that we were out to take unfair advantage of them. After all the fighting was over, and the hatred towards American's well established we had no choice but to let non American oil companies win the contracts. Of course we cannot admit, that was our plan, or that we missed meeting our objective, only a claim of victory is acceptable back home, so thats what we will declare.
What we think strongly about in sufficient numbers matters, even if our action is only to vote on that one issue, rather than be swayed by the other political distractions. But, the information pathway is largely blocked. Most of the popular means of communication are largely controlled by the oligarchs, so while the people theoretically have power, they can have their wishes diverted to others purposes.
Why is the 55mph speed limit not reinstated ?
http://www.drive55.org/
That's any easy one JMY, Corporate Interests aren't fond of the idea. You name it from commercial trucking, right down to "pizza in 30 minutes or less".
Right .....so how do you expect folks to be concerned about Climate Change or Peak Oil
I'm a bit cynical, eh? I prefer to think of it as being a realist.
Well, I really don't know what to do about climate change. Keep telling the truth and hope it sinks in.
With Peak Oil, I think prices will be enough to get people concerned.
And Sammy can get one of these:
Actually, I'm bummed Chrysler pulled the plug (hurr hurr) on their Dodge EV Sports car . . . a lower priced EV sports car would be nice. The Tesla Roadster is just way out of the price range of most people.
Edit: Hey . . . how about 55mph limit for all gas cars and a 70mph limit for EVs. Now THAT would get people motivated to switch to EVs. :-)
Coincidentally, I was walking by the Tesla showroom last week, and stopped in to take a look.
They are discussing a "mass produced" car, the model "S", which will hit the market at around half the price of the Roadster (currently retailing at $101K), I think the salesperson said by 2012. Still beyond reach for most people, but trending downwards. They are banking on increasingly wide adoption to lower price.
The Roadster can be charged on a regular garage outlet, 24 hours from zero to full charge at 110 volts. Less, of course, at 220 volts, and the one in the showroom was charging on a higher-voltage outlet - 240 volts, I believe. 4-6 hours from flat to full charge. Range, I think, was stated as 250 miles on a charge.
http://www.teslamotors.com/models
I was curious about efficiency at various temperatures, since I experience way-lower gas mileage performance in my hybrid in cold weather, and I'm told electric cars perform just fine in cold weather, down to around -35 degrees F, at which point, you have to warm the battery to start the car. Or start it from an external source.
The issue with lithium ion batteries, just like cell phones and computers, is that they start accepting less and less of a charge over time, but are apparently good for 15+ years, or 100,000+ miles. And, of course, we have to deal with resource limits on lithium...
Edit :-
I was researching lithium and ran across this article :-
http://blog.gaborcselle.com/2010/06/is-there-enough-lithium-on-earth-to....
"Afghanistan
However, keep in mind that all these numbers stem from a time before the discovery of vast mineral riches in Afghanistan. But I couldn't dig up numbers about how much lithium was discovered. This USGS report from 2007 lists out detailed megaton estimates for most metals that were discovered, but provides no estimate for lithium."
Also :-
"Since China has plenty of lithium deposits in Tibet, "the USA would again become dependent on external sources of supply of a strategic mineral while China would have a certain degree of self sufficiency." "
It has a relatively small effect on gas consumption, mainly because so few people go the speed limit. The speed at which people drive is dependent on the roadway design/conditions more than the number on the speed limit signs. You need massive enforcement to even make a dent.
One way a 55mph speed limit can make sense is an emergency situation. If oil is cut off temporarily (due to a war, hurricane, terrorist attack etc.). People are willing to voluntarily conserve is such a situation, so it can make a significant difference. IMO, that's a better use for the 55 mph speed limit.
There IS one way a 55mph limit could make a difference, and that is if it universally applied, AND all vehicles are designed for it.
By that I mean, if all vehicles are never at more than 55mph, the crash safety requirements are reduced, the vehicles can be built lighter, have smaller powerplants, carry less fuel/batteries for the same range, etc etc.
You would need to have an alternative, like fast rail, for going between cities.
BUt, if the whole traffic system, and vehicles were optimised for 55mph, you would see a big difference.
For a more extreme example, if the limit was 35mph, we could all be driving, today, the NEV type vehicles, we would just have to get used to driving that slowly. But they would be light, cheap and efficient.
Unfortunately, that is not going to happen, ever, and slowing down from 70 to 55, for the rare times you can go 70, only makes a small difference. If you drive long distances at those speeds, get a diesel car and you will save more than by slowing down.
I see that bigtime on my commute home. We have a new stretch of roadway (courtesy of stimulus cash) that now resmbles highway, but the speedlimit signs read 45mph. I like to avoid potential tickets, so I stick to 48, but virtually everyone zooms past me at 60.
I would suspect (based on my experience living through the gas crisis of the '80's) that IF your fellow commuters had to wait 20 minutes in line to get fuel...
You would see much closer compliance with the traffic laws.
After all, somewhere on your road there is a choke point where 3 lanes neck down to 2 or 2 to 1, and the scofflaws depend on the kindness of strangers to let them in.
Or there are 1-800-report-a-speeder billboards posted.
For Americans, waiting in line for gas constitutes a crisis and they will accept collectivist remedies to a degree unthinkable now.
Fear trumps greed and running out of gas and waiting in gas lines are terrifying to Americans.
All of these rugged, selfish individualists will become good compliant Germans when they hear the first thunderclaps of the approaching PO storm.
Like I said...a 55 mph speed limit works best as an emergency measure. There was a study that came out a year or two ago, and it did recommend a 55 mph limit - as an emergency response to a disruption in oil supplies.
Simple: energy is not the sole thing of value. Time (among many other things) is also of value, and it's utterly irreplaceable (i.e. an hour wasted creeping along can never be retrieved.)
Observe, by the way, that despite the European politicians' love of preaching at the world, speed limits there range up to 140kph (87mph), with 130kph (81mph) and 120kph (75mph) very common. This is despite far shorter typical travel distances and far greater crowding (and frequency of motorway exits and entrances) than in North America. Nor, for the most part, did this change even during the 1970s crises, and even where it did, the change didn't last long.
There just doesn't seem to be any great pressure to force Europeans down to 89kph (55mph) despite the short distances. So we can probably conclude that energy is not the sole thing of value even in preachy Europe - and that if the tradeoff is not worthwhile in Europe, it would be ludicrous foolishness (and was so even in the Carter years) with the longer distances in North America.
U.N. panel delays ruling on green rewards for Indian coal plant
I hope people recognise how crazy it is to grant carbon credits this way; if a project emits less GHG than it could have done some other way then the imagined difference gets to offset even more emissions someplace else. Thus we get A's new emissions going from a zero start and B's pre-existing emissions no longer needing to be cut. That's insane. No wonder any global GHG cuts are the result of recession not deliberate action. The geniuses at the UN are just waking up to this.
I suggest working from a position of zero entitlement. The new coal plant must face penalties either a CO2 cap or carbon tax. It doesn't get both to add to GHGs and get additional financial rewards. When the UN finally works this out the carbon trading scam could end and new coal will have to face the tough economics it deserves.
Absolutely agreed.
The whole concept of getting paid "to not do something" is silly, and always leads to gaming of the system.
A simple carbon tax, and zero entitlement is far simpler, and cannot be gamed. And you only get a reward (reduction if you DO something to actively reduce emissions.
Same goes at the other end for carbon sequestration. You should not be able to claim a credit for something that nature is already doing (e.g. forest land accumulating carbon) You only get a credit if you actually do something to put more carbon in the ground (e.g. creating a forest on bare land, burying charcoal, etc)
The whole thing is just a sham, so that governments can say they are doing something, and less developed countries can get 'guilt money" out of more developed ones, even as they raze their forests for oil palm plantantions.
From the article at top - the interview with Jimmy Carter's Secretary of Energy:
The question leads in a way that suggests there is some path out of the badlands of post peak oil. Hirsch earlier describes a panicked response to peak oil of ramping up of GTL & CTL that he apparently thinks will get us caught up on declining oil? I've never heard of that before. Are there others here on TOD that ascribe to that viewpoint?
Lets reset the discussion a bit to the original premise...the "Government" appears to know more than its telling on the subject of Peak Oil and its probable consequences. They wouldn't try to "quash" investigations into this subject unless there was really something they don't want known by the general public. I'm not getting out on a limb very much either by guessing that the Pentagon has run lots of simulations on probable outcomes too. I'd say that the worse the scenario, the "darker" this subject has become, and its not seeing much "daylight" as far as I can tell.
Weighing the above then, are we now in a situation which has such a potentially bad outcome that its been decided to maintain BAU then "pick up the pieces" later?
All I know is that under acting-president Cheney there was a secret "Energy Task Force" that I can neither confirm nor deny actually existed. The group apparently met, made some decisons, and went back to their respective bunkers without making public any of their decisions.
Perhaps Hirsch will say something about it in his book.
Other countries, such as Germany recently have been more forthcoming about their concerns.
Energy Task Force may reconvene? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-taylormiesle/gop-gushing-over-poll...
Here is the google search result URL for Cheney energy task group, http://www.google.com/#hl=en&expIds=17259,25616,26276,26515&sugexp=ldyml...
7,890,000 results
Remember, Politicians almost all universally think they know better than the great unwashed. They think they can 'find a solution' (most often, reflex taxes) and then any problem goes into the 'solved' basket - and the next election cycle is far closer, than any fall-out.
Perhaps you need to ask a better question ?
Ask what they are doing about FF (Finite Fuels) - 'Peak oil' has been cried so many times in the past, has has so many meanings, that it is well past its use-by date.
I think the term should be retired, and a better one used.
It does not look to me like the USA DoE is ignoring the problem of Finite Fuels ?
it doesn't seem to me that there is anything to be gained by playing the word game, except more ridicule from skeptics.
If you admit that ridicule is common, then surely being smarter makes sense ?
'Peak oil' has been cried too many times, and finite-fuel gives a very different focus.
There are so many different 'Peal Oils' that detailed discussion becomes impossible, and for some countries, finite fuel issues will bite far sooner than others.
A few fortunate countries may never hit peak oil.
I agree.
(But the suggestion falls on tone deaf ears here.)
(( I prefer "The Petroleum Plummet Problem" ))
(( I prefer "The Petroleum Plummet Problem" )) - ROLF
Well, yes, that does have a ring to it!
However, the optimist in me likes to think the Plummet can be softened, if we focus on the shape of the tail, early enough.
There are enough examples of GDP increasing while Energy usage holds flat, to show they
can be decoupled from one another. Some will do better than others.
P cubed. I like it.
P^3 can also stand for:
2) The Population 'Plosion Problem
3) The Poptart Planet Problem (Global Warming)
4) The Populist Perception Problem (Ignorant People)
5) The Political Pundit Problem (Manipulative People)
6) The Planet Pollution Problem (Ecology)
7) The Price Pornography Problem (Lusting for Money, a.k.a. Greed is Good)
8) The Pain at the Pump Problem
9) plus plenty o' other problems