I understand fully the concept of generating power to sell back to the grid. My sole point has been that solar simply can not replace fossil fuels to any significant extent. I was assuming we were referring to Cecil’s column, and his comment to the effect that it is nuclear that will rpleace fossil oil.
More power to those peple who are prepared to spend their own money test-driving this technology. It’s by doing that that the technology gets refined. But no matter how refined solar power (in its present incranation) gets it isn’t going to make any difference to Cecil’s claim that it is nuclear that will replace oil.
Well Blake, it seems I’ve stumped you.
It makes no difference to me where the debate is held; I know that the truth will prevail. You just have to make the case that discussing the items I mentioned from Cecil’s peak oil column somehow doesn’t belong in this thread.
That you have done little but dodge my factual questions with your accusations is very telling.
Here’s an example question completely separate from any website discussion:
Is vegetation biomass?
Here’s another one:
Where do we get the energy and materials for building new electric draglines, trains, tracks, and nuclear plants?
Vegetation is generally considered biomass if it is usable for power production, some industrial process, or some other useful purpose. Since biomass can be the products or reductions from vegetation, the two are not exactly the same thing (for example, wood pellets are considered “biomass”, although they are not vegetation). Biomass has a generic meaning in the power industry which is often taken to mean “it was made from something which lived and grew recently”.
Since most any carbon and hydrogen-based vegetation will burn if dried sufficiently, I reckon one could say generically that vegetation is biomass.
Thanks Una.
Now that that’s established, the point I was trying to make is that yes, biomass is used for both fuel in and of itself, e.g.
as well as for as a source for carbon/hydrogen atoms to make synthetic oil.
The problem is that in order to use biomass for either purpose, it must be gathered up and brought to the processing site.
It takes energy to gather up the biomass, which is spread out over large areas that are not trivially gatherable.
When you talk of using biomass as a replacement for the petrochemical feedstock used for farming, you still need energy to gather the biomass.
The energy or material expenditure necessary is in most cases more than the resulting energy gained or carbon/hydrogen gained from the process, making it a net energy/material loss.
As such, we are still left with the original problem of not having a suitable replacement for petrochemical use in farming and distribution.
** Blake **, you make some very good points for some alternative fuels. When one adds in vast solar, wind, geothermal infrustructures and reasonable doses of conservation in a world that is exponentially increasing its usage, it seems possible for great reductions in a couple of decades. It mystifies me a bit why you seem so cavalier regarding our using up most of the remaining oil.
I believe we are seeing a strong philosophical difference in place here. One world view believes in taking care of only their own, and if there is anything left over for some charity, fine. A pragmatic and efficient view, but one that I find short sighted and at the heart of the issue. Another worldview believes that civilization is only possible though sharing resources to the point of some self-sacrifice, and that many can provide much more together than a few can provide for themselves. And, as my OP stated, my concern has less to do with when peak oil will pass, or has passed, than with a current certainty of using up all reasonably and economically accessible deposits. I’m less concerned here with using up all the oil and more so with leaving sufficient amounts readily accessible for future use, especially in times of global crisis.
Dinosaurs in one form or another existed for 360 million years. Our scant 2 million or so has been a short passing of time, and since we can control our fate more so than any other species I don’t think that expecting homo-something-or-other existing for a few million more years is unreasonable. Complete extinction of humans is probably most likely by our own hand than by any natural forces as at this time we inhabit nearly all landmasses on the globe.
A precautionary principle gone mad seems to me like it would likely stifle any activity. According to your scenario why invest anything on the unborn at all? How do you know they’ll be successfully birthed, or live past the age of one? Why plan for the future at all? What you suggest seems along the lines of eat, drink, and be merry for we may be gone tomorrow.
I don’t buy into this principle; I don’t think it is one that we see often, not for extended periods of time at least. Could you name a couple examples of it otherwise?
No, we don’t know what will happen 50 years from now. Does that prevent us from anticipating likely outcomes? People do make successful investments in their grandchildren’s education funds. Usually the primary course of doing so is very conservative, and low yield until later to be more diversely reinvested on better terms when the grandchild is ten years away from attending collage. And allowing for later changes, some kids do attend school at least in part on their grandparent’s assistance. Why should we not make investments in the lives of future generations?
Actually, I believe that other than some kerosene based fuels, I don’t believe that petroleum products are a needed major component of rocket fuel. I am all in favor of space exploration and moving beyond Earth. But even looking at the American and Russian space programs, there is no guarantee that it will happen soon or at all, or on a scale that is efficient. Hopefully, we may well be able to partake in many resources floating out in our solar system in the next couple centuries rather than relying on earth to provide them. But space flight will be very expensive in the near future; there are also political and technical difficulties in taking it to an industrial level at this time. The time frames of at least 50 years before doing so and going past the peak oil limit may be in conflict.
I don’t have a problem with maximizing some use of fossil fuels to technically solidify our position in the 21st century to where we are on solid footing to tackle the larger problem in the long run. However, we are not simply maximizing our position. We are wasting oil with often grossly inefficient engines that should be phased out. We are using too much oil in ways that you have demonstrated we need not for transportation, comfort, and industrial use. We leave engines running that could be turned off for periods of time. We could soon add another 10% to 20 % or so to non-fossilized energy usage, not even counting nuclear, with a widespread infrastructure alone.
Yes, conversions are expensive, time consuming, politically difficult, and inconvenient. But we are at this time the only generation or two that will ever be able to make this choice. Uncountable hundreds of billions of lives will be affected by our decisions over the next few years. Sure, total disaster may befall humankind someday, but do we want it to be on our watch? On the other hand, we may be able to make wise decisions that no other generation has had the privilege to make.
Well that sunlight is a renewable source. I could find another warm spor if you are going to hog the one I want. Or the winds will change and it will return. Fossil fuels are finite. How do we determine in the short run that our ways of using it are the best? Regarding best use, the way we’ve seen modern technology improve by leaps and bounds, it’s not unlikely that far more efficient uses of these fuels may be only decades away. But if it’s unfeasible to get them out of the ground it will be a moot point.
I understand that even my own point regarding the possibility of humankind existing over the course of a million years suggests that at some someone may well use up all the fossil fuels. However, does that negate our own responsibility in trying to greatly reduce our usage? Does that negate our trying to finding ways to teach our immediate descendents to bolster this plan and to improve on our initial attempts?
Civilization has, despite our faltering steps, grown into a globally interconnected world that is in general better educated. Despite ignorance and crushing poverty in some places, standards of living have improved over those of our ancestors a few hundred years before. We slowly advance to greater sophistication, leaving some of the past’s misery behind. A multi generational attempt to minimize fossil fuel use might provide us one fulcrum that could help lift our civilization into it’s most forward thinking, mature level yet. It’s a global concern we could all share, and one that requires our first attempts as sentient beings at trying to install millennia-long attitudes and practices.
I have read every post in this thread, and just wanted to say, Snag, that your view was eloquently stated and takes the (IMO proper) moral high ground. We are but stewards of this Earth; it belongs not to us but to all people equally, including those who will come after us.
It is hard for me to believe that people exist who care nothing for their children, or their children’s children, that they will leave them only the detritus which results from their time on this planet. People should want a better life for their descendants, and should comport themselves in such a way to ensure that it happens. To do otherwise is an attempt to disavow any responsibilty for the eventual outcome, and that means living a lie.
It’s not so much that we have X years of oil left. Because much sooner, increasing demand will outstrip decreasing supply. According to the “law of supply and demand,” prices will start climbing dramatically at that point, possibly leading to shortages and crisises.
Actually, if we let prices increase we WON’T have shortages!
Price goes up, and people will use less. That means there’s more available.
Let’s put it this way. Is there a caviar shortage? No, you can go to the caviar store and buy as much caviar as you want. You can load your truck up with caviar. As long as you’re willing to pay for it.
And RSVP, you didn’t understand the point Blake was trying to make about biomass. Yes, some forms of biomass are energy sources. For instance, if you cut down trees and burn them in a woodstove to heat your house. Or you cut down trees and burn them to fire a steam engine.
However, it takes energy to gather that wood. It takes energy to power a chainsaw, it takes energy to load the wood onto a truck, it takes energy to drive the truckload of wood back to your house, it takes energy to load the wood into the fireplace. If the amount of energy required to deliver the wood to your fireplace is greater than the amount of energy released by burning the wood, then it isn’t worthwhile to gather the wood, right?
But not neccesarily. Suppose you have an infrastructure that requires liquid hydrocarbon fuel. Like, say, today’s vehicle fleet. If it takes more energy to pump the hydrocarbons out of the ground than the hydrocarbons themselves have, then it’s not worth it to pump them, right? No, because you don’t have to burn the hydrocarbons themselves to produce the hydrocarbons, you can use other forms of energy that are in a less convenient form.
Don’t think of oil as an energy source, think of it as an energy storage medium, just like hydrogen. A gasoline engine and a gasoline tank is far more compact than an electric engine and a battery. So if you had a nuclear power plant, it might make more sense to use the electric power created by the nuclear power plant to manufacture hydrogen from water to burn in hydrogen engines, even though you get no energy at all from gathering water, or manufacture octane from lawn clippings, even though you get less energy from the lawn clippings than the manufactured octane will contain. You aren’t limited to using the electric energy for charging batteries, there are other ways to store and distribute the energy that take advantage of some of our already existing infrastructure.
The trouble here is Joven’s Paradox. As one group uses less of a resource, more is available for use by another group. That other group still needs that resource just as badly, and will continue using it as much as it can, so we’re left with the same shortage.
Also, a recession caused by less energy use overall is inevitable. I agree that conservation is still necessary on a large scale, it’s just that the choice of using less energy has to incur some loss of available services.
That’s the entire point - those less convenient forms have nowhere near the energy density or availability of oil.
The supposition of having those nuclear plants or other sources to provide the electricity for hydrogen generation is flawed, since they simply don’t exist on anywhere near the scale necessary.
Even without that problem, hydrogen as a storage medium has its own significant problems, not to mention the fuel cells to make use of it (peak platinum).
Or, conversely, higher prices would lead to many viable alternatives that are simply too expensive right now with the price of oil still relatively cheap. I never have understood all this gloom and doom stuff to be honest…there are plenty of technologies that are out today or in the pipeline that can suplant our oil dependency…if and when the price of oil rises to a certain level. The hydrogen/nuclear combination seems (to me) to be the most promissing as it will be the least disruptive. Hell, even solar is getting new life from what I recall…the South Africans have a new solar process that seems to offer some huge advantages.
Let the market control things…and count on human greed if nothing else. The guy (or company) that comes up with the future technology that is adopted will become richer than god. Thats incentive enough to my mind that I’m really not worried about the future…at least not with reguard to energy. (ok, mostly tongue in cheek there, but it still has a core of truth).
As for the Easter Island analogy, I don’t think it really works well when scaled up to an entire world. Nor does it correspond to oil really. Tree’s were a one trick pony so to speak. Not knowing any other way to build boats, once the last tree was gone the folk son Easter Island were essentially screwed with reguard to leaving the island…or fishing off shore for that matter. We DO, however, have alternatives to oil and coal…and at least in theory we have alternatives to even fission. We also have the resources of an entire world at our disposal…and for that matter (though no one has mentioned it) an entire solar system chocked full of resources just waiting (for the economics) to be exploited if needs be. Hell, there is speculation that oil may not be entirely dependent on biological mechanisms to be produced…so its possible that OTHER bodies out there in our neighborhood have hydrocarbons on them that could be exploited. Not that I think we will need them (as a transport fuel source at least) for very much longer…I would be shocked if 20 years from now we are where we are today with reguard to burning hydrocarbons for transport.
I agree with some of what you say, but I think the market itself is not adequate in this situation. The only way to really get alternatives off the ground in a timely manner is for governments to step in and create an open-market Apollo type program to do so. I could also see DARPA and substantial university grants used for a lot of the research.
The problem with waiting simply for market forces to take hold, regarding my position, is that much oil will be used up by then leaving less for future generations.
But moreover, we are also in a situation where an emerging market for this need must happen sometime. A governmental economic engine to kick start the program puts us ahead of the curve and the misery that will occur when suddenly the world is faced with oil that is unaffordable in many places and the conflicts that will come with it. You think the Middle East is screwed up now.? Ya ain’t seen nothing yet baby.
Well, the government IS spending money on alternatives right now. So are major corporations…and they are taking different tacks to solve the problem (some are researching hybrids, some hydrogen or other alternative fuel, some are working on efficiency and some are looking into solar). I don’t really see the need for a massive Government program to jump start the thing…its already happening after all and we really aren’t up against any kind of wall right now. And won’t anytime soon, though gas prices will continue to rise. Thats the beauty of letting the market handle things…once the price rises to a certain point SOMEONE will provide a most cost saving alternative. Think of the money they will make after all!
It seems you’re not familiar with the Hirsch report:
"Optimists also insist that the market can take care of the problem: high oil prices will stimulate more exploration, the development of more efficient cars, and the deployment of alternative energy technologies. Interference with market mechanisms would be harmful, they say, and so the government should steer clear of the problem by avoiding setting higher efficiency standards, subsidizing renewables, and so on.
**The report’s authors dismiss these claims. Price signals warn only of immediate scarcity; however, the mitigation efforts needed in order to prepare for the global oil production peak must be undertaken many years in advance of the event. **Hirsch, et al., maintain that, “Intervention by governments will be required, because the economic and social implications of oil peaking would otherwise be chaotic. The experiences of the 1970s and 1980s offer important guides as to government actions that are desirable and those that are undesirable, but the process will not be easy.”" http://www.energybulletin.net/7524.html
I agree with RSVP. xtisme, it seems to me that if the market would take care of a problem where costs for oil will inevitably rise forever due to limited resources, markets would be already throwing Apollo-style money (at least many tens of billions annually) to head it off. But the problem with markets is that they don’t necessarily react fast enough until doom is upon them.
Sure, to some extent markets will start moving at $60.00 or so per barrel to reduce usage to some extent. Mostly through the efforts of those who are trying to produce alternatives.
However, markets sometimes work against such common sense as well. Some people are sitting very pretty with the prices so high, such as US gasoline producers who are setting record profits. Where is their demand to quell the current situation? Unless people, including those in China and elsewhere, start drastically cutting back petrol producers will ride this wave as long as possible. For a moment, even ignoring my OP - where I suggest we need to minimize worldwide petroleum use yesterday to avoid the human race from ever having our industrial age advantages - we will likely see within a couple generations at most, limited resources going beyond the peak. Why hasn’t this been a growing movement over the decades if markets are the ultimate benefactors?
The market has not addressed peak oil in a substantial way. As another example, US automakers are only now hesitantly realizing they need to increase mileage standards, 30 years after the OPEC incident. Why didn’t they see this coming? Would better technology have hurt sales in the long run for them? In theory, it seems to me that a smart US market would have been constantly competing with some of its product based on ever better fuel economy.
Markets, or at least those at the helm, can be selfish and short sighted. We wouldn’t need governments if markets took care of everything. On the other hand, governments can set things in motion that are impossible for markets to do on their own. Wisely used, governments can adapt markets to changing situations as needed and then bow out, using sunsets and such, once the adaptations are in place.
Nuclear power can run a city power grid, but it can’t fuel a car. It might, possibly, power an electrolysis plant that generates hydrogen as automobile fuel, but there are still a lot of bugs to be worked out there.
No, I’m familiar with it…I’ve seen it in several threads on this subject in GD. Thanks for asking though. I just don’t agree with its conclusions. Would you like me to dig up conclusions by another institute that are exactly opposite? I’m sure I could. Would you be convinced?
Thats not really how the market works…prices never ‘rise forever’, there never are ‘unlimited resources’, etc etc. Simply (REALLY simply) put when a resource becomes scarce its price goes up (if the market is allowed to operate freely). Eventually it gets to the point where the price of the resource begins to outstrip alternatives (in the case of an energy resource), making those alternatives economically attractive. Eventually the price of the original commodity drops due to lack of need. For example, how much do you pay for whale oil these days? Probably not too much. As for the reaction time of the Market…well, myself I think it has a MUCH better feed back look and reaction time than the government. YMMV.
Will this be disruptive? Almost certainly…in the short term. Its not going to happen suddenly though…more a gradual increase in price over the next several years. Its not like we are going to run out of oil next year…or 10 years from now. Of 50 even. It may be that in the next 10 years the price of oil will double in price at the pump…perhaps it will even triple. Who knows? The point is that as it rises OTHER technologies will become economically viable…unlike today when they aren’t, even at the current gas prices.
In addition no one here KNOWS what the best alternative is going to be…we can merely speculate (and the Gloom and Doomers™ can fret about a Mad Max world). Certainly the Government doesnt have any inside knowledge on whats going to be the best solution to the problem…and really they don’t CARE in the end. They are going to give you what THEY think is best…for our own good of course. And they are going to protect their little government fiefdoms in the process.
Thats why I’m opposed to an ‘Apollo like’ massive effort program by the Government to solve all our problems. They basically suck at such things IMHO. In fact, I’m not even all that impressed WITH the Apollo program itself…it was simply the government throwing money (MASSIVE amounts of money) at a problem…and it was a fairly linear problem at that (i.e. going to the moon and getting back alive). Oh, it got us there and back…for a huge amount of money and no real though to following up. Just a boat load of money for flags and footprints and a few rocks, a brute force approach to solving the problem tht is the hallmark of Governments throughout history.
Alternative fuels or alternative energy however ISN’T really a linear problem as there are several possible results…even combinations of possible alternatives that solve the ‘problem’. I don’t trust ANY Government (much less ours) to solve that problem…instead I expect them to throw tons of money at the problem and then give us what they THINK is best, whether it is or not. YMMV.
The number of spin offs from the Apollo program alone that have been used in daily life is huge. Products resulting from the Apollo program include CAT scan & MRI technology, kidney dialysis machines, miniaturized computer technology, the forerunner of the all weather tire, cordless tools and appliances, material for athletic shoes, scratch proof lenses and on and on. These have certainly paid back the public sector the tax investments made on the program.
Government has given us the Internet too. For what it’s worth, it changes the world we live in profoundly. Not too shabby an investment for a government that can only throw money at problems and can’t do anything right. MMMV indeed.
No, the government does not know what the best solutions are. But it could find out if the leadership is there to do so. Likely this tiger team approach would be done mostly through private means by providing seed money and again, with research done through government’s traditional resources. We could have a well-prepared market ready when the inevitable happens. And we will have severe problems long before the oil runs out if worldwide usage continues escalating at the rates we now see. But we may avoid the worst problems if we can aggressively market affordable alternative energy systems worldwide to bring an early reduction in oil use.
And likewise, we might see many unanticipated spin offs from an reasonably well managed energy program.
From my vantage point, I don’t believe the market is designed to place us ahead of the curve in such a manner. It tends towards reactivity, not proactivity.
