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http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/12/hyundai_unveils.php
The (Accent) design is a mild hybrid--the motor assists the engine, supports regenerative braking, and handles idle/stop functions, but is not capable of powering the vehicle in electric mode alone.
A plug in hybrid might work better as a series hybrid. It would be essentially an electric vehicle with an on-board generator with sufficient capacity to allow it to cruise indefinitely on gasoline - perhaps with reduced performance, but it does not take all that much power to cruise on the highway at a reasonable speed. It will take quite a bit of development time to produce one.
Whatever happened to flywheel storage? I always thought that sounded like a really good solution.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Hearings/12072005hearing1733/hearing.htm
THIS IS ON RIGHT NOW 10AM EST
!!!!!!!!!!!
Listening to some back-dated parts now
CERA: Saudi oil will "moderate" by 2015 ...
11/mbd increase in liquids by 2008 ...
eventual peak = undulating plateau, no rapid decline..
risks for 2010 peak are above ground ones rather than geological ones ... (but if "unexpected extreme decline" in ME then loss of 25/mbd might happen ....
Dr. Hirsch coming in next ...
... economic conversion of coal to oil
... is it a viable source other than in S. Africa?
... viability of NG to gasoline conversion questionable
... oil sands from Canada, is it a potential alternate?
... oil shale
... hydrogen fuel cells ? is it realistic?
Dresser:
... coal is after 2020 ... co.s have chosen to focus on other areas ... oil sands in Canada is the most intense oil play in the world now ... 2015 to 2020 expect 40 mbd (?) ... company R&D is intense & will overcome EROI concerns for oil sands ... LNG will come from Qatar ... Iran will export LNG ... gas t liquid is relate to "stranded gas" ... can't get it to market
Hirsch?: on hydrogen ... tech feasible but not economic .. fuel cell needs breakthru's .. on board storage needs break thru's ... don't bet on it ... coal 2 liquids makes excellent sense & can be done w existing tech, Miter tech can do at $35/b
Acker: 30 billion b per year is huge, that is big problem, no more big field ... tar sands will only give 3 billion, EROI bad ... use nukes to heat up tar sends
Congessmn Sullivan: more than I can understand ... what are national labs doing ? ... like an asteroid hitting US ...
Dr. Y: must be a world-wide will to address the problem ...
Congresswoman: distane to supermarket is longer in USA
Congssman Allen: ... challenge is not the "date" of peak so much but ... price ... it will be too late then to take action even as undualting plateus in 2020 (per CERA) that is ascary date ... too soon for speed at which this Congress reacts ... expect a dramatic rise in price ... US economy can't handle price rise ....
CERA guy: undulating plateua will not stop dramatic rise in price ... once mkt realizes we are on the plateu ... Saudi will not give us more that 14 mbd increase ,they say 12 mbd increase
spkr Z: othe analyst from CERA used different decline rates, this other analyst come to conclude we have problem cause decline rates higher ... we lack good data
cg man: how is US auto industry doing? ... our MBA's look only 6 months forward ... Japan engineers look long term ... Japan has hybrid mkt ... I'm disappointed that US auto private sector did not respond to challenge
europe dr. X: Sweden volvo has PO in their mind ...
Some thoughts. Hirsch's point about RISK is very important. Thank God there is one rep, Bartlett who has a clue. The Chairman, Barton(?) seems clueless. Esser from CERA seems to concur that, yes, we have a problem. Esser says CERA doesn't bet at all on Saudi above 14mbpd. Excellent stuff from the Swedish guy. This was really some excellent public discussion at a very high level.
If anybody can find a link to the whole thing in Realplayer/WMA, please post. And a super thank you to whovever put the original post on yesterday. I think that was you, step back, wasn't it?
I was listening at the end after the hearing had adjourned. The CERA guy was talking to someone else next to an open mike, and was talking about having worked at Mobil (or was it Exxon) prior to the merger with Exxon, and then having gone on to CERA. I think he said he started out as a geologist. It was hard to tell - they weren't standing close enough to the mike.
In the past Barton has made particularly inane comments regarding global warming. I cannot find a quote online, but it was to the effect that he would fight with every means available any attempt to treat carbon as a pollutant.
Barton also was trying to intimidate scientists studying global warming with an anal-probe type of financial investigation:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/17/AR2005071701056.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/21/AR2005072102186.html
When the Canadians asked Mann et al for for the computer programs and data he used for the paper, he refused to give it to them. This is against scientific ethics, particularly in view of the enormous amount of money being spent on "global warming". Because Mann et al's research funds came from the Federal Government and because Congressman Bartlett chairs an energy subcommittee, the Congressman requested that Mann and some other researchers supply their data to people who asked for it. Details of this can be found on the web site climateaudit.org. I believe that Mann et al have supplied some of their data but not all.
The Mann data look strange to me because they do not show the Medieval warm period (a time when the Vikings lived on Greenland for many years) and the Little Ice Age, a period when extreme cold in Englad, Europe and North America meant that crop yields were very poor. It is indisputable that these unusual events occurred.
There are also problems with the warming of the earth's atmosphere due to CO2 emissions. The bulk of the warming is caused by water vapor and, at the present time, not all of the details of the spectrum of water vapor have been calculated.
More importantly, the IPCC report of course doesn't rely on one little paper to make its point. Like any heavily studied scientific problem it's a tapestry of many, many independent arguments and contributions, just one of which is the Mann et al paper (whose results have of course been improved upon, but little changed in character, in the 7 years since then).
In that sense the whole hockey stick argument is really a tempest in a teapot. and the congressional probe of Mann really was silly and pointless (if symbolic) political grandstanding.
650 thousand years of data shows a pretty strong correlation between CO2 and climate. I'm not saying that water vapour isn't important, but it could be a symptom rather than a problem.
You won't get much argument from me about Mann et al's work, but it isn't exactly standing in a corner all by itself. There is an already large and quickly growing body of peer-reviewed literature that supports human-compounded climate change.
There's been some pretty serious criticism of McIntyre & McKitrick's work as well. This debate has been going back and forth for quite some time now. But it's important to put it in context: These guys are arguing about details of their simulations while Siberia is melting. Faced with that fact, I don't much care about the details of the effect of different PC normalizations used in the simulations.
Personally, I find it alarming! We have already passed 380 ppm, rising by nearly 2 ppm/year. Looking back as long as the ice-cores go (800.000 years?), the CO2 concentration has never before been above 300 ppm.
How can you possibly believe the hockey stick when:
(a) Mann refuses to supply all of the "data" and programs he used;
(b) The hockey stick does not show that the climate was warmer when the Vikings were living in Greenland? Do you think they were never there?;
(c) the hockey stick does not show the very cold period in the Middle Ages, when crops were failing in Europe and North America.
The Web site realclimate.org does not post the arguments of its critics. Climateaudit.org does. You will learn much more from the latter site than the former.
Two distinguished econcomists, Ian Castles and David Henderson have made strong criticisms of the IPCC's economic arguments. If you Google Ian Castles you can, and should, read these arguments. Or you can read them at climateaudit.
Fred Singer is a good scientist with strong views on "global warming". Read his site. sepp.org, and you'll learn that Blair has stopped Britain's "global warming" initiatives.
(more on Fred Singer on pgs 51 and 52.)
Gelbspan is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
I tuned in late, after the presentations but during the questioning, and I agree that this appears to be very significant. The committee members displayed a strong level of interest and concern. They kept asking, you're telling us we have this huge problem but what should we be doing? The point was made repeatedly that what is important is not what the peak date is but that we need to start preparing now, with conservation and efficiency (stressed by Aleklett as the first line of defense), and investment in all kinds of alternatives; the big problem is the political will. I didn't have the visuals so couldn't tell who was speaking other than Aleklett, but it sounded like the committee members were mostly getting the point. They got that if we wait till there is a crisis - which is what will get the public's attention - we are in big trouble. I look forward to reading the transcripts which were posted yesterday as being at http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house/house05ch109.html
But here are some follow up links:
Kjell Aleklett summarizes and welcomes questions at:
http://www.peakoil.net/TheHouse.html
Bush thanks Bartlett:
http://www.postcarbon.org/node/1692
Post Carbon announcement
http://www.postcarbon.org/node/1687
CNN on the money:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/07/markets/peak_oil/
http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/07/markets/oil/
"You've told us about your field by field database, and the predictions you've talked about here include non-conventional sources. Since you have all of that data, has CERA done any projections using just the conventional oil resources in your database, and if so, what date did you find for the peak, and if you have not yet performed those calculations, why not"?
ExxonMobil Rolls out New Breakfast Sandwich Line at On the Run Stores; ''On the Run Cafe Breakfast Sandwiches''
Business Wire - December 07, 2005 10:00
FAIRFAX, Va., Dec 07, 2005 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- ExxonMobil has introduced a new line of proprietary gourmet breakfast sandwiches at its 680-plus On the Run(R) convenience stores in the U.S. The new sandwiches are presented under the brand name On the Run Cafe(R). The five sandwiches include Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit; Ham, Egg and Cheese Croissant; Bacon, Egg and Cheese English Muffin; Sausage, Egg and Cheese Bagel; and Sausage Biscuit.
"This new high-quality, gourmet breakfast food line is consistent with the underlying goal of our entire On the Run offering," said Mike Gore, U.S. convenience retail manager, ExxonMobil Fuels Marketing. "On the Run is built around fast service and fresh quality products in a friendly atmosphere. That's something our customers expect, and something we work to deliver every day."
The sandwiches are made with a premium mild white-cheddar cheese; an extra-thick smoky bacon round; a higher-profile egg; and a premium sausage patty that has a flavor unique to the On the Run Cafe brand.
The new On the Run Cafe Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit breakfast sandwich was recently named "Best New Product of 2005" in the Packaged Grab 'n' Go Food Category by CSP magazine.
On the Run convenience stores offer a wide range of brand-name products and food offerings, including its own proprietary Bengal Traders gourmet coffee and teas. Most sites have state-of-the-art car washes, inside ATMs, as well as ample store-side parking and clean, indoor restrooms.
Each On the Run store accepts Speedpass(TM), the cashless payment system that is linked to a customer's existing credit or check card, helping get customers in and out quickly and conveniently. Speedpass can be used both at the pump to buy gas and inside the On the Run store.
Information about On the Run stores, including a store locator, can be found at www.ontherun.com.
ExxonMobil, On the Run, On the Run Cafe, Speedpass and Bengal Traders are trademarks of Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM)or one of its subsidiaries.
SOURCE: Exxon Mobil Corporation
ExxonMobil
Media Line, 703-846-4467
Copyright Business Wire 2005
Apparently XTO finds the current pricing good enough for their tastes. Anyone buying into the hedge has guaranteed XTO revenue while guaranteeing themselves to avoid any price volatility in 2006. It would be interesting to see how fast their daily allocations are bought up, which would tell us more about what businesses are expecting about future energy prices.
Ford seen cutting up to 30,000 jobs
Report: Restructuring could close up to 10 plants, cutting far deeper than earlier reports.
The petro-euro cometh
Oil has always been bought with dollars, but with two-thirds of Russia's oil and gas exports going to the EU, the first euro deals are imminent.
An energy consultant warned Tuesday that "sudden extremely cold weather" could cause power outages in New England this winter.
The warning from Cambridge Energy Research Associates is based on forecasts of electricity demand, or load, made by the region's grid monitoring agency and the possibility that New England power generators may not be able to secure enough natural gas to run their plants.
And they used to be so optimistic...
http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events.html
(see bottom of page on this link)
It didn't sound like much of a change in tune to me. He was predicting a peak in the year 2030 or some such.
CERA: Oil supplies won't run out soon
just got this off of yahoo, heres the link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051207/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_al_qaida
great. looks like it's gonna get a litter colder here in the U S of A.
FT
especially the part about the southern fields being damaged.
See for instance this article on the gas crisis from the scottish Energy magazine (produced in Aberdeen - UK equivalent of Houston):
http://adserver1.harvestadsdepot.com/nscotland/ss/039425/001/001.shtml#
This probably makes the whole peak oil think seem a lot more real from the UK POV.
What this means is that there are now plenty of ways to put money into the markets, but there are likely restrictions against selling (versus swapping one stock for another).
So, with money coming into the market; restrictions on outright selling; and no reason to sell (huricanes, earthquakes, terrorism, corporate fraud, governmental lying, etc. does not seem to matter anymore).
It has been shown countless times recently that our government is propagandizing everything. Likely the economic statistics are more examples of the progaganda, which may account for the difference in how people feel compared to the statistics. But Wall Street has to go with how they are directed to act, or they will no longer be part of the chosen few.
The fix is in.
The government never wants to make itself look bad, and it will provide 'funny' statistics to keep from looking bad. Always has; always will.
2)The stock market is hardly booming ahead. Depending on what index you are looking at or even if you average a bunch together, you are looking at at most +%5 year-to-date. That could easily be gone in a month. It is only booming relative to its lows.
The End
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051207110626.htm
A third is a surprisingly large fraction to me. Maybe Peak Food will be here/ has arrived before Peak Oil?
Old but new to me (please forgive me if it had been here before).
But anthropologist Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii at Manoa first blames the Polynesian rat. The rats probably deforested the 66-square-mile island's 16 million palm trees. "Palm tree seeds are filet mignon to rats," Hunt says.
Working with colleagues at the island's anthropology museum and elsewhere since 2001, Hunt's team has undertaken an extensive archaeological survey of the island:
* Charcoal remains show that Polynesians settled the island in 1200, much later than supposed from earlier, inaccurate dates of such deposits.
* Pollen and ash deposits show that the number of palm trees declined swiftly in the years before fires, the signature of human occupation, appeared on the island.
* Rat remains indicate that the rodent population spiked at 20 million from 1200 to 1300 and then dropped off to a mere 1 million after the trees were gone.
* Skeletal remains and digs of old homes show little or no evidence of early warfare.
Instead, the disappearance of Easter Islanders probably was caused by visiting Dutch traders in the 1700s, who brought diseases and, later, slave raiding, says Hunt, who presented his findings at an American Anthropological Association meeting last week.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2005-12-05-easter-island_x.htm
But abstract #4 from this recent conference seems fairly consistent with the scenarios put forth by Diamond and Wright in their respective books.
http://www.islandheritage.org/conferenceV.html
The first stage seems to have lasted no longer than a generation or two, perhaps 50 years, during which the Islanders themselves knew they were in short supply of resources, in particular, trees. The traditional culture tenuously held on to the previous habits but knew they were going to have to prepare for a new order. Culturally unable to reforest, priorities redefined statue form, statue moving, ahu construction, and disposal of the dead. At least two major ahu illustrate large scale cooperation in their new constructions though the workmanship is very poor and incomplete. Several others show a similar reduction in workmanship but maintain large scale cooperation.
The second stage seems characterized by a free-fall collapse in cultural organization, dominated by conflict, the formation of discrete districts, territorial to the family level, warfare, and ultimately cannibalism. It is proposed that this change reduced population to a level commensurate with the carrying capacity of the defoliated island, slowly leaching and eroding soils.
Even on Easter Island, collapse took several generations. And it sounds like they began losing their technology before their social cohesion. Perhaps that is to be expected; technology depends on resources more directly than social structure.
Love says the Rapa Nui knew that they were low on trees yet still used precious timber (on religious idols, etc) as if it would last forever.
FWIW, though...I suspect they used their trees not on religious idols, but to burn for heat and cooking. Even small woody shrubs were wiped out. They would not have provided timber that was useful for construction purposes, but would have made good fuel for cooking fires.
I think this is comparable to the current situation in Haiti.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31057
Essentially people are out there scrounging for any scrap of wood they can find to make cooking fires.
There have been programs over the years to reforest parts of Haiti, but as long as people go out and scrounge for firewood, these efforts are doomed.
http://www.brookings.edu/comm/events/20051129.htm#TRANSCRIPT
then click open "read full transcript"
"-- China's largest offshore oil producer, CNOOC Ltd., says its unlisted parent company plans to start deep-water oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea with Canada's Husky Energy Inc. next year.
"If the scheduled exploration finds large reserves in a bloc in the South China Sea about 300 kilometres south of Hong Kong, it will be China's first deep-water oil and gas field....
"The two companies explored the other bloc in the western part of the South China Sea in 2004, but the reserves discovered were too small to justify commercial drilling....
"According to CNOOC's website, the company had net oil reserves of 357.7-million barrels of oil equivalent and a net natural gas reserve of 3,215.6-billion cubic feet in the South China Sea as at the end of 2004. The figures represent about 25 per cent of CNOOC's total oil and 70 per cent of its gas reserves."
That doesn't sound like a lot for a country consuming about 7.5 mbpd.
Iraqi oil industry in crisis
Iraqi oil exports fell to their lowest level in two years in November 2005. Bad management of the reconstruction effort, widespread corruption among government figures, and sabotage by insurgents are the reasons for the decline. Experts say that the US strategy of military intervention in oil-rich regions can only diminish, rather than increase, the supply to world markets.
By Heiko Flottau in Cairo for ISN Security Watch (7/12/2005)
Two-and-a-half years after the US invasion of Iraq, the country's oil industry is still in disarray. An official of the Oil Ministry in Baghdad told ISN Security Watch, on condition of anonymity: "We do not know the exact quantity of oil we are exporting, we do not exactly know the prices we are selling it for, and we do not know where the oil revenue is going to."
MORE:
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=13770
Cheers
Mike
that being said, there are 55 fields not developed YET. But, what are the reserve estimates of those 55 fields?
World reserves posted here
Who made those estimates? The Iraqi Oil Minister? Baghdad Bob? Could these estimates be ficticious or fudged?
Are my howls of laughter indiscreet?
it can be found here
It will require realplayer to hear. it's about 2hrs and 20mins long.
>>>
Environmental Evangelism
Sarlo writes
I have recently learned there is another interesting class of believer who ... believe that since God made the world, they should take care of it rather than trash it so that they will be Raptured up faster. Their movement is called Creation Care and is championed by some of the leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals...
Sarlo is right. The group has even issued a statement: an "Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility." "The environment is a values issue," said the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals. "There are significant and compelling theological reasons why it should be a banner issue for the Christian right."
According to the group, it's every Christian's duty to care for the planet.
"We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part," said the statement, which, according to the Washington Post, has been distributed to 50,000 member churches. "Because clean air, pure water, and adequate resources are crucial to public health and civic order, government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."
Signatories included Haggard, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
As my mother used to say: "Will wonders never cease?"
>>>
Paging PhilRelig ...
Oil production: 72 milion barrels/day
Cost of oil world wide: 72 x 60 (light sweet = highest) x 365 = $1,576,000 milion
According to this oil cost is about 2,8% of world spending.
Economic growth for the world is estimated at 4,5% (source)
At: http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman/
Your jaw will drop!
I have the solution to the 'peak oil' problem!
eschatology,End Times,second coming,rapture,secret rapture,Second Resurrection,Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead,
End of Days,Day of the Lord,Endtime,Judgment Day