The problem as I see it isn't Petroleum Liquids, it is TRANSPORTATION Liquids, since almost all transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, even bunker fuel comes from petroleum.

But you can't get transportation fuel from Natural Gas Plant Liquids, and even condensate probably can't make anything more than gasoline. So the amount of transportation liquids gets less and less, even as "petroleum liquids" gets more and more. Even "Processing Gains" are suspect, since they come from the same number listed as "Crude+Condensate), so are counted twice.

Someday, when I get the chance, I will try to quantify the actual amount of Transportation fuel that comes from these "liquids", but I think this is where a lot of the smoke and mirrors is right now, since without transportation fuel, this economy (world, but especially US) is dead.

Looking at the EIA data on fuel consumed at refineries, oil refineries are using less of their own products as fuel for refining processes and are instead relying more on natural gas, purchased electricity and purchased steam. Could it be that this is enhancing refinery gains (more barrels of net output), and if/when natural gas prices go up, refineries might use more of their own products as energy sources again?

Comparing the year 2006 to 2011, consumption of refinery products for fuel at refineries is down 12%. Use of natural gas is up 13.5%, use of coal is down 9.2%, use of purchased electricity is up 16.9%, and use of purchased steam is up 59.1%.

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_capfuel_dcu_nus_a.htm

Their attempts to hide the decline are punningly crude in sophistication, yet very effective.

how about introducing a new unit. a square foot yard is approximately 2 barrels

Is there any way that someone (other than me :-)) could begin routinely reporting the long term production of crude +condensate) in metric tons (in a nice simple graphic)rather than barrels?

Well... no, not me anyway. That is because no reporting agency reports all nations production in metric tons. Some nations, like Russia, reports their production in metric tons but most do not. You could simply divide the production numbers by 7.33 and you would be pretty close, but not exact. That is because the heavier the oil, well, the heavier the oil. If its API gravity is greater than 10 °API, it is lighter and floats on water; if less than 10 °API, it is heavier and sinks. So the heavier the oil the fewer barrels per ton you get.

From the EIA: Barrels of Crude Oil per Metric Ton by country.

East Timor	8.343
Algeria		7.9448
Australia	7.89
Saudi Arabia	7.4029
United States	7.3329
Russia		7.27
Canada		7.18
Mexico		7.08
Venezuela	6.685

Ron P.

I will try to explain to my accountant wife who doesn't understand how the MSM could be publishing all the recent optimistic article if they aren't true.

http://www.metafilter.com/75174/Oh-sht#2274275

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.

"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.

"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?

"We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

(Source: Labor's Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)

Vehicle miles traveled per capita has been declining since about 2005. It could drop another 25% to get back to 1970s levels. That, plus a doubling of miles per gallon since the '70s should significantly reduce gasoline usage.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/11/22/vehicle_miles_per_capita_...

It's becoming more and more obvious to me that without all that pointless and stupid individual driving (or how to use a one-ton vehicle to carry one tiny human being), the situation would not be so dire. It would buy us a good 30 years of oil consumption.
Rush hour makes me want to cry at the sheer imbecility of it.

Perk, I'd say we were witnessing abrupt climate change right now and whatever we do will not stop us going past 2c without even slowing down.

Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years

Figure S3 from the supplementary material of Marcott et al

As a consequence we will use every bit of energy we can get to survive, even though the consequences will be dire. But even before we see major climate change, I believe we will see major changes to our weather because of what's happening in the Arctic. I think we will struggle to even cope with these altered weather patterns, let alone abrupt climate change.

Our institutions are not going to respond or adapt fast enough to shield us from the worst of what's coming. We're on our own and the devil take the hindmost. Also, if we are to survive we will need access to energy, lots of energy.

I thought methane releases moderated since around 15 years ago.. I don't think the laggards will do anything else but smell car tailpipe exhaust. I have enough experience riding a bicycle to know this.

If you look carefully at the scale on those methane maps, you'll see that the colours go from an "everything's fine" blue to an "oh no we're doomed" red, over a range of a couple of percent. Its a graphic scam to exaggerate what is actually a pretty small effect.

Its worth keeping an eye on, but there isn't any significant methane release. Yet.

The trajectory will be bad, very bad or potentially horrendous depending on how much FF in the ground we decide to extract/dig up and burn, vs. making a more concerted effort to switch to alternatives. How much room for expansion is there with PV's? Why not require any new or remodel construction have solar installed? How many millions of acres of desert is there between Nevada and Arizona that could be utilized for solar arrays? How much more could be done with wind if there was a moderinized electrical grid?

What incentives are there for developing countries to expand renewables? There is so much more that can be done. If we give up on trying and simply burn baby burn FF, we will seal our fate. Not extinction of humans, but the end of civilization as we know it.

Probing Impact of Warming On the World's Food Supply

Yale Environment 360: It has previously been believed that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide would boost crop yields through fertilization. How does your research challenge this?

Stephen Long: The impact of CO2 on crops has been seen as the one benefit we would get from climate change. We do know that if we elevate CO2 in the laboratory, we see a boost in the yield of many crops. But what we’ve now begun to observe is that when we do this under open field conditions, without any enclosures, we do not see the large yield increases that were expected from laboratory experiments.

You are kidding right? Even the most rudimentary search throws this up:

''Land management researchers have heavily criticized the concepts of holistic management because experiments conducted on grazed land in many different places in the last few decades have failed to find any scientific support for their validity.[5] Virtually no active academic rangeland ecology researchers have come forward to espouse holistic management principles''.

The guy sounds like a snake oil salesman.

Your link to Roy Spencer's site makes me a bit irate. Having written a paper which criticized Spencer and Christy's satellite temperature data, I find their continued claims awfully hard to stomach. For example, they still report "temperatures" over the Antarctic, when the other group which works with the MCU/AMSU data excludes everything south of 70S. And, Spencer and Christy extend their data set beyond the range of measurement via "interpolation" to give the appearance of complete coverage of the Earth. Think about it, it's as if they are working with a one dimensional data set and "interpolate" beyond the end of the discrete points.

Not to mention the fact that Spencer's latest starts with the rather warm year of 1998 and then looks only at tropical data, when the greatest change is expected to appear at the poles. Of course, Spencer poo-poos the claim that aerosols might be reducing the warming trend, while lots of us around here regularly comment about how fast China and India are increasing their burning of coal and how bad the resulting air pollution appears to be. Ever heard of the "Asian Brown Cloud"?

E. Swanson

The Savory people also argue that soil with the associated biomass have the potential to store tremendous amounts of carbon, much more than needed to reverse FF contributions. Overgrazing, a worldwide phenomonom, releases carbon. A successful transition to their methods would dwarf any geo-engineering scheme.

you will not be polluting.

Doesn't that depend on the energy source for the electricity? I'm angling towards getting solar for our house, which I'm currently researching. Then for local driving get an EV and charging up from the solar. If that all comes to fruition, then that would constitute pollution free driving.

You can't just plug it in at home or work. There is quite a large cash outlay that must occur in both locations before that can occur.

Despite it's name, the Nissan "leaf" does not grow on trees. Every car produced represents tens of thousands of Kg of solid waste and hundreds of millions of cubic meters of air polluted during the manufacturing process. And that's not counting retirement/disposal of the vehicle. Massive quantities of ore are required to produce each car. The automobile is the most ecologically destructive product the average industrialized nation consumer purchases over his or her lifetime- in fact the automobile fleet is the most ravenous consumer of raw materials mankind has ever conceived.

The average car uses an 1,840 pounds of steel and 300 pounds of aluminum, contains $1,700 in electronics, requires and enormous amount of plastics, copper/brass, zinc die castings, magnesium castings, lubricants, rubber, glass... the list goes on. Then of course you have the attendant infrastructure required by the automobile; a football field sized plot of land paved for every 5 cars. Entire cities eaten away by parking lots and sprawling roads subsidized by the non-driving public.

Electric automobiles are a palliative, salve for whatever flickering conscience remains in a rapacious culture of consumption and domination. Nothing more.

The price of the crop of corn he is talking about was only over $8 before farmers had harvested and knew how much corn they actually had to sell. Cash corn prices since this crop has been harvested have averaged around $7. https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/pdf/a2-11.pdf

They are currently around $7.15-$7.30 in most area's of the corn belt.

It would have been impossible for him to tell farmers to sell all their corn before harvest when they don't know yet how much all was. He was telling farmers to price some corn when it was over $8. With the current very high basis levels prices to the farmer are currently near the highest levels they have been since harvest.

Hi Alan,

Hope your dad is doing better.

I was one of those lazy bastards that looked but didn´t comment >;-)

Been a bit busy myself! I´ll go back later...

Cheers!

Fred

Waiting to have time to give it some thought. Working a lot right now..

Have now read it through. My main thought, and then instantaneous hesitation at commenting, is the same question that lingers over this whole set of topics. Energy, Climate and Societal Cooperation.

I completely agree with your premise, and I don't doubt that we either have or can help mold the population densities into shapes that will make this a highly successful effort in numerous Cities, small cities and large towns, including mine. The pause comes in trying to restrategize how to advocate for it in an environment that is so hostile to proposals which seem to insult the status quo, as if our pride as Americans was dependent upon treating energy like so many Ben Franklin's ($100 bills for you outlanders) that we can light up and roast our artificial marshmallows over.

Of course, no small part of this battle is one of reclaiming what it is to be an American, and pry off the superficial brand allegiances and similar facades of cheap patriotism that have insisted that they get to define our land and our culture for us.. Our progress, even in having this conversation move forward, has been repeatedly hamstrung by a set of artificial ideals that have gotten impressed into our common imagination, for the purposes of selling us a lifestyle that ultimately impoverishes and hobbles us.

Best,
Bob

Your comparison of average size of single family homes between the '50s and today triggerd the question of whether there has been an equivalent increase in floor space of units in multiple dwelling units. This may be hard to find out and it may be complicated by the rise of condominium ownership today, while in the '50s, apartments were mostly rented.

Part of the reason for bringing this up is that the building of multiple dwelling units appears to be recovering faster than the construction of single family homes. http://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/newresconst.pdf has 2011 and 2012 numbers that show single family up 29.2%, 2-4 unit up 14.6% and 5+ unit up 50.3%. As for the Jan 2012 versus Jan 2013 comparison, the percentage increases are 29.2%, 50.0%, and 46.7%. This is all consistent with news stories that tell about a strong demand for rental units.

More renting also increases workforce mobility and allows people to move nearer their jobs.

I applaud your efforts, Alan, as always, yet understand that, using your metaphor of rolling boulders downhill (yes, some of us do keep up with your work), at this transitional time, you may be pushing boulders up hill. I say this understanding the very reality that makes the transitions you envision and promote necessary. Most of US society is deeply entrenched and invested in their status quo. They like things the way they are more than ideas of change. They also have some pretty good reasons for this. In your article you mention that:

The author recently saw a "real world" example of the market demand for TOD while visiting "Old Town" Alexandria, Virginia. Ten blocks from the Metro station (still close enough to walk or bike, but a good walk) an advertisement read "Condos from $300,000"). And as the author walked towards the station, he saw another advertisement, two blocks from the station, that read "Condos from $700,000").

Yikes!. What are the implications of this when it becomes obvious to the collective which will be affected?

Is the Beltline Bad for Atlanta?

Class has always been the shadow cast by New Urbanism. The idea of curbing sprawl and promoting greater urban density runs up against material realities time and time again. Consider Oregon’s much-lauded urban growth boundary system, which set a limit for growth around the state’s cities beginning in the 1970s. The policy was put in place by a liberal Republican governor, Tom McCall, who hoped to prevent “grasping wastrels” from gobbling up Oregon’s farms and scenic countryside. It has since promoted infill – intensive reuse of existing urban space, in lieu of expansion – and contributed to the famously walkable and bike-friendly urban culture of cities such as Portland. But setting a limit on growth necessarily restricts the amount of land available for development, making the remaining land both scarcer and dearer. Housing becomes smaller and more expensive. Working class Oregonians have not been wrong to ask whether the new urbanist ideal comes at too great a cost when they look in vain for homes they can afford to rent or buy. The walkable city, it turns out, might be a luxury of the upper middle class.

Metro Atlanta is now grappling with similar issues, as both the Tea Party right and activists on the Left line up in opposition to the Beltline – a plan to build a ring of parks, bike and walking paths, and eventually light rail around the city’s in-town neighborhoods. The project mostly traces the path of old rail lines that have long been out of use....

[snip]

...Let’s look at the specifics, as best we understand them. By its own definition, the Beltline will create “a network of public parks, multi-use trails and transit along a historic 22-mile railroad corridor circling downtown and connecting 45 neighborhoods directly to each other.” Like many public-private partnerships, the project is held together by a patchwork of federal funds, local government support, individual donations, volunteer work, and help from private entities like Bank of America. Understanding its myriad funding sources and the multiple arms of its projects is not easy to do.

The biggest critique centers on gentrification. “Since it’s inception, the BeltLine has received almost no criticism from self-identifying progressives,” says Atlanta Indymedia. This despite the fact that it is basically a “gentrification project for white people,” which involves the “forced displacement of Black families from the city.” The argument here is twofold: the Beltline runs through communities, such as the Old Fourth Ward and Reynoldstown, that have been traditionally working class and African American, but which have already begun to be transformed by largely white, middle-class urban newcomers who fix up the housing stock and raise property values, eventually pricing out the older residents because of rising property taxes and rents.

I personally know folks who were essentially priced out of their neighborhoods in Portland. I doubt they see this as a silver bullet, even if it was a step in the right direction for the city. That said, I've also seen many who were priced and zoned off of their family farms as the suburbs encroached. Point being that people and businesses are already in most of these areas, quite committed and invested in things as they are; not so concerned with how things could or should be.

If the effect of TOD is to push lower income folks farther away from the areas of new TOD development, then this needs to be accounted for. What are the gains (other than profit for those who bought low, developed, and sold high)? Increased tax bases, revitalization of neighborhoods, etc., and, of course, the also very real advantages that motivate you. I'm sure you've considered these things, and hope you'll comment a bit on the downsides to TOD. Thanks, Alan, and keep pushing that boulder.

BTW: I empathize with your family situation; been there, done that, but this too will pass. Chances are I wouldn't be in this better place if I hadn't given up a lot to come and care for my aging parents. Truly a turning point, especially the eventual moment that one realizes one is an orphan ;-/

Off to plant some new black raspberries. You may get more responses during the week if you re-post this. Weekends are a bit slow as of late.

What I'm curious about is what happens when the current tight oil revolution slows down and prices rise . . . is there a next tier? Or is it more a continuous spectrum. Conventional oil that was $20 to $30 per barrel became scarce so oil prices shot up and with $70 to $100 per barrel you can afford to drill & frack shale formations for tight oil.

What happens when demand grows and/or tight oil locations run scare such that oil prices rise to $140 to $170 per barrel. Are there new formation types that then become in play? I don't think the Green River oil shale will work at that price. Perhaps just more complex tight oil? Deeper deepwater oil? Smaller pockets of tight oil?

wood – Someone must have snuck in and frac’d a well close to your farm when you weren’t looking. LOL. That’s been the problem in many of the trends where they’ve been frac’ng shale wells: a long history of naturally occurring NG in the fresh water aquifers. A few months ago I found a significant (but not commercial for my company) NG reservoir at 46’ in one of my deeper wells. Not sure how much but it could easily be enough to supply the land owner with enough energy for his household and farming needs for a 100 years. But I won’t let him access to it until we’re off the lease: too much liability. Many natural seeps occur in areas where there are deeper commercial NG fields.

In Alan’s case in Jamaica it’s encouraging but no guarantee. But I did another search and couldn’t find hopeful statements from companies that go back 5+ years and nothing promising recently. But as I heard long ago the first major field in the North Sea was found by the 93 well drilled. If companies drill enough maybe they find something worth developing. On the negative side there’s been huge NG reserves discovered in the Caribbean with a very small available market. That means a lot of potential production for the LNG market. But that also would discourage exploration to develop more NG for a saturate market.

Thanks for the great story woodincreek. So, you were "flaring" a NG well? Totally acceptable.

Hey Ghung,

There are 12v DC wired thermostats such as this: http://www.fujitsugeneral.com/wired_remote.htm but I'm not sure they will do the trick.

A half-baked solution would be to fool the standard remote control that comes with the unit with a small amount of heat. Slip the remote inside a 12-volt heated mitten (e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL1_klWMOXg) and when the batteries are full, close the relay that feeds power to the glove and when it gets toasty warm the remote should kick the heat pump on [channelling my inner MacGyver].

Cheers,
Paul

If the indoor/outdoor connection is a 3-way cable, check if the 3rd wire acts as a 'live to activate' the a/c/heater. If it does just put a relay in that line so it can only connect and turn the unit on when the solar commands it. Pick a hpac with a low standby power.

NAOM

I often use my Playbook which typically draws less than 3-watts, and I'll probably shift some of that to the Q10 when it's released next month (approximately 1-watt in active use and 0.03-watts standby). I'll also look for a portable solar-powered battery charger that will allow me to recharge the Q10 off-grid.

But, in all honesty, if we're talking 7.5 kWh a year or even twice that, I won't lose any sleep.

BTW, my current laptop pulls anywhere from 20 and 25-watts unless I'm pushing the CPU hard, and the external monitor bumps that to between 45 and 50-watts (I have the screen brightness set to "0"). My old desktop and Trinitron monitor consumed roughly four times that.

Cheers,
Paul

See ASUS Transformer. It's a tablet with a keyboard and hours of use.
http://eee.asus.com/en/transformer-prime/specification/

Sure. The main idea is that minimizing capex is much more important than maximizing efficiency.

I doubt hydrogen will ever be important for small vehicles - that's mostly a red herring.

So, have you seen good cost estimates for large-scale electrolysis units, including capital cost per unit, clear cut inputs, outputs and conversion efficiency?

The Sabatier reaction from memory is CO2 + 4H2 = CH4 + 2H2O
It is claimed that wind electricity that would otherwise be curtailed could be used to generate hydrogen from water. A German auto maker Audi proposed to get the CO2 scrubbed from biogas which leads to the possibility of mixing natural gas, biogas and synthetic, all >80% CH4. When natural gas is gone by mid century it retains a use for the gas grid. Methane while a potent greenhouse gas doesn't cause metal embrittlement the way hydrogen does nor is cryogenics to liquid form essential. Moderate compression at room temperature is compact enough to fuel engines.

I guess another source of CO2 could be from pure oxygen burning of biowaste. That oxygen from water splitting would otherwise be vented. The economics are supposed to be better since you get both realtime wind electricity and when windpower is not needed it makes 'unnatural' gas. In low wind periods the synthetic methane creates the backup, either gas turbines or fuel cells. However I haven't yet seen a convincing economic analysis. I suspect it could work for a much smaller world population adapted to very high energy prices.

There's no need for a hydrocarbon for grid storage - that would just add costs. It might be good for other uses, but that's another discussion.

So, seen good cost estimates for large-scale electrolysis units, including capital cost per unit, clear cut inputs, outputs and conversion efficiency?

Speaking of which, has anybody noticed this?

http://www.carbonrecycling.is/

Thanks Ulenspiegel. The first link is to a mainly German language web site. The second link however is to a PDF in English with an excellent introduction to the goals and challenges of Energiewende. Recommended.

In principle, large storage caverns are available in northern Germany.

That's very helpful. It doesn't show direct costs, and it's a bit old, but they came up with $1.32/kg capex, $.37/kg for opex, plus electricity ($/kWh x 40kWh/kilo of H2). Assumes 97% utilization, 40 year life for most of system. Target electrolytic efficiency is 78%.

Capex costs *highly* dependent on size of unit.

I believe underground storage works about the same for hydrogen and methane: exhausted wells, salt caverns, etc. I don't believe flooding, embrittlement or small molecule leakage are problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_hydrogen_storage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage

The comparison though was between bus drivers and bus conductors who handled the fares/passengers while the driver just drove the bus. The drivers would have been paid more but the hours were the same.

As the article said, some of these greenhouses are right by high tide. Not much of a stretch to see how the plastic could end in the ocean. Sickening.

You really are a Prince among Panglossians.

This video really is worth watching.

Thanks jmygann.