[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Correction: (See also this chart from the same page – http://photos1.blogger.com/img/243/2888/640/oilsector.jpg – showing how much of that oil is used for motor fuel and how much for other purposes.)
No, it doesn’t help. It doesn’t answer my questions at all. It doesn’t even answer the most basic question, is this graph showing production or consumption of oil or simply the amount in reserves or resources? You posted that graph as a support for your position, yet you apparently don’t even know whether it is supply, demand or resource.
How do you know that it doesn’t support my case? How do you know that it doesn’t show a decline in demand for oil over the coming years? Yes, I realise that’s silly, I was overstating the case to make my point. With no legend and no original source the graph is meaningless. While it’s unlikely that on that webpage it would support my position it’s so meaningless that it conceivably could. You certainly can’t use it as evidence for your position until you can tell me what it means.
I think we can disregard it as useless can’t we?
And how much of that is due to the fact that ME oil is cheaper and how much is due to actual reserve depletion? Without those figures this tells us nothing, it’s not even correlation, just coincidence.
Can we have a cite, with examples, that shows that governments and industries respond more slowly to supply changes than the consumer? Intuitively I would have said the exact opposite was true. Consumers react out of habit as self-interested hedonistic individuals. I will continue to buy my favourite products just because I like them even when I know they are overpriced. In contrast governments are forced to be accountable to foreign creditors and the electorate. Industry is even more rapidly influenced because it is accountable to both creditors and shareholders annually at the very least.
Intuition tells me you are dead wrong here, but feel free to provide a reference that shows otherwise.
Really? So you couldn’t utilise an electric car, or utilise an electric bus or train? You have to utilise petroleum, and liquid petroleum at that, not biodiesel or coal oil.
Can you possibly explain how that could be the case? I really can’t imagine why anyone in the US would ever require liquid petroleum derived gasoline and never have the option of utilising other technologies.
But once again, you assert this with no reasoning or examples. Why can’t we as a country utilise shale oil or biodiesel or biomass conversion hydrocarbon coupled with nuclear and coal electric energy? What is the magical ingredient in liquid crude petroleum that our economy can’t run without?
But nobody is talking about new technologies. We already know how to build electric cars and coal power stations and how to make biodeisel and how to extract sand oil. What new technology has anyone actually proposed? These are all old established technologies.
Right, so how long, according to that graph, do we have before we hit the level of 20.99 billion barrels? Is it less than 20 years?
Let’s see, you’ve already said that Campbell predicts a peak within the next 5 years and that few new reserves are available for discovery. In contrast the USGS has some figures here on mid-range estimates of undiscovered oil resources. Note that using 2000 technology undiscovered resources amount to around 75% of the current known reserves. (http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-060/ESpt5.html )
Campbell predicts an oil peak within the next 5 years and then decline. In contrast:
“Global crude oil refining capacity is projected to increasee by an average 1.3 percent a year, reaching 121 mb/d in 2030”
Good enough refernces for you?
That is precisely why it is one sided. The three most highly regarded and credible organisations dissenting get no mention. That’s the very definition of a one sided debate isn’t it, when only the weakest and least credible detractors are given mention, and only then in passing?
Just tried to found the reference, but he has apparently since retired and the name is too common for Google to return anything stating where his income is derived form now. So you can take it or leave it as you like, but he used to work for (was on the board of IIRC) a firm that was an investment advisor to the energy industry.
You can provide an alternative reliable reference for where he does get his income these days if you want a retraction.
Production. (Look at it on each site in context.)
It has a legend. Look again.
It’s actual reserve depletion. See Out of Gas by David Goodstein (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393326470/qid=1121743656/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4084109-1540069?v=glance&s=books&n=507846).
As I said, IANA economist, but intuition (and a great deal more) tells me that consumers can change their daily buying choices more rapidly than governments and industries can effect more far-reaching systemic changes. That is, when consumers can change their buying choices at all. WRT gasoline, we don’t really have that luxury. There’s a little slack in my fuel budget, trips I need not take, but once I’m rid of those I’m down to basic daily necessities (work, shopping) without having saved much on the frills . . . I could car-pool, but only for commuting . . . one sees the problem?
What country do you live in? Not the U.S. of A., to be sure. I can’t use an electric car because none are on the market, nor likely to be until they come up with one that can perform comparably to a gasoline-powered car, and go nearly as many miles before recharging as my gas-car can before refueling. Which might be impossible. And if they lick those problems it’ll be several more years before their price is down where the average car buyer can think of owning one. I can’t use an electric bus for the same reasons. I can’t use an electric train because there aren’t any, where I live, nor likely to be – there’s a plan on the drawing board to build a light-rail system in this county but taxophobic activists keep shooting it down. And if we built it, it still wouldn’t relieve most people of auto-dependency. Problem is, we’ve been building this country around automotive transportation ever since WWII. Mass transit just wouldn’t work in the suburbs, they’re too spread out. Coal oil and biodiesel I don’t know much about, but I’m pretty sure it would involve more than some kind of engine retrofit – I would need a whole new car. Everybody would. Think about that – everybody would. Including people who can’t afford a new car and will get not one dollar for trading in their old outmoded gas-burner. Maybe alternative fuels can be made to work, but nothing less than a complete change-out of the American private automobile fleet would be sufficient to certainly avert economic collapse through transportation-paralysis caused by skyrocketing fuel prices. I don’t know if we have the time!
See above. I’m all for building more nuclear power plants. (Not coal, too much CO2 emitted, etc.) But all they generate is electricity, and while that’s good for everything else, we’re still pretty far from (and might never reach) the point where it’s practical to use electricity to run cars.
But we don’t know how to make biodeisel, or extract petroleum from sand oil or shale, profitably. And by “profitably” I mean in terms of energy, not money; it takes more energy to make/extract this stuff than is released when the resultant fuel is burned. See The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0871138883/qid=1121745404/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4084109-1540069?v=glance&s=books&n=507846).
The graph to which you are referring (at http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2005/04/oil-impact-on-us-economy.html) shows only the history of U.S. oil consumption with no future projections. I was merely pointing out that it is no assurance to say, “The U.S. was an oil based economy in 1950” without relating that to our level of consumption in that period, compared to to the present. As for “how many years before we hit the level of 20.99 billion barrels” – 
That (plus a bit) is how much the U.S. is burning now, every day. Or were you asking, “How long before we can’t get that much every day?” I guess that depends on how big a share of the world’s slowly-declining annual output the the U.S. is in a position to buy or otherwise acquire. Which depends on unpredictable geopolitical factors. But I would guess, yes, considerably sooner than 20 years.
Based on those bar graphs, the “Undiscovered Conventional” supply of oil is less than one-third of the “Reserve Growth (Conventional)” plus “Remaining Reserves.” Also, just how do they know all this “undiscovered” oil is actually in the ground?
Linky no worky. Besides, what does global refining capacity have to do with the actual amount of unburned oil remaining?
:rolleyes: I meant, of course, only that the Wikipedia article on this subject, in its present form (and to which you, like anyone, are free to make additions – bear in mind that this particular source is not the product of any scholastic gatekeepers with an ideological agenda), gives no mention of the sources you mention as dissenting from Campbell’s predictions, which moves me to doubt that the “debate” you mention even exists in the way you are describing it. And none of your cites to this point support any other conclusion.
When a government goes on a ‘war footing’, it can enact sweeping society-wide changes, including investment of massive amounts of resources on critical problems. It does this for natural disasters, wars, and other crises.
Industry changes *very fast, because huge amounts of capital are in play and when the underlying conditions of a market change the company has to change right along with it. The more lag it has between where it is and where the economy is, the less profitable it will be. I’ve seen multi-billion dollar corporations change strategic direction literally overnight.
In general, I would share your worry if there was a fundamental gap in basic science between us and a replacement for oil. Say, if we absolutely had to use fusion, and we don’t know how to use it at all, or even if it’s theoretically possible.
But this isn’t the case. There are already plenty of alternatives to oil, and the only thing stopping them from being used today is the lack of investment in engineering that comes from the alternatives not being forseeably cost-effective. That’s what held up the tar sands for so long. And look what happened there - after being unexploited for a long time, as soon as oil hit $30/barrel Alberta ramped up production of the oil sands. 700,000 barrels a day. And when oil went to $50 a barrel, billions more flowed into the region, and our output will be quadruped over the next ten years. If we absolutely had to, we could increase our use of solar and wind power dramatically. It would be very expensive, but it could be done. You’d see massive investment in things like ocean thermal power generators, wave powered generators, and nuclear power
See the article I posted above. There are already hydrogen fuel cell cars on the road. One of them has 134HP and a range of 250 miles. We CAN do this. We know how. What’s left now is to refine the technology and bring the cost down. But my confidence that this can be done if needed is very high.
And we also know that we can increase the efficiency of cars dramatically. "Plug in hybrids are essentially electric cars that work and are practical. You take a standard hybrid, and you beef up the battery. Then you plug it in at night and charge it up. When you first drive, you run on battery power only. For people with short commutes, the gas engine may never come on. Likewise, for a run to the local convenience store and back, the motor never comes on. But once the battery runs down to a specific point, the gas engine starts and the vehicle behaves like a regular hybrid.
It’s been estimated that these things will get on average around 80mpg. Small ones maybe 100 mpg.
If we can do that, we can augment the electric system not with a gas engine, but with a hydrogen fuel cell. Now suddenly you don’t need a huge tank of hydrogen to go reasonable distances. You can use a smaller fuel cell because you have the battery working with you.
The first plug-in hybrids will be on the road in a couple of years.
So we’ll have to wait about 20 years for the entire fleet to turn over. That’s about what it takes. We have 20 years. We’ll still have 20 years when the price of oil is high enough to start a mass exodus. And actually, if the incentive to scrap old cars was greater, the fleet turnover rate will be higher.
The good news is that the poor, who will be the last to switch over, will have an easier job of it because as everyone else flees the market, the demand for gas will drop, stabilizing prices.
And people who see this as a fundamental problem are attacking a straw man. The point is not that the tar sands have to be energy self-sufficient, but that we have a means to produce fuel that burns in cars without having to change the infrastructure. For example, using a nuclear power plant to generate the steam required in the tar sands extraction process would work fine. So instead of using nuclear power to make hydrogen, you’re using it to make gasoline.
But the tar sands, at least the easiest layers to extract, are a net source of energy.
I’m no expert on this stuff, but it seems to me that there are all kinds of ways to estimate this. One might be by looking at the number of fields discovered in certain types of strata, and comparing it to estimates of how much of that strata there is on the planet in areas that would have been candidates for oil production.
Or, you could simply use statistical methods applied to the curve of discovery rates and get some crude estimates abut how many more fields will be discovered.
Then there’s also the number of fields that have been abandoned because they became unprofitable, but could be reopened at certain prices of oil. This number is known very well.
So you can’t actually provide a quote where it says production. So it’s useless. We have no idea what itmeans.
Good, quote the legend so I can find it. The graph has axis labels, no legend.
Quote please. Simply saying that the figures to back you up are somewhere in an entire fricken’ book is not a reference. I counter that by saying I have read Goodsetins’s book and he makes no such claim. Now what?
If Goodstein said it you need to quote it, not jus claim he said it somewhere in an entire book.
And my intuition says your wrong. We can now discount that entire line of argument because it’s baseless. Unless you can provide something to actually support your position it’s argument form assertion and worthless.
Really? Better tell Nissan that, they seem to think they are selling them, as do Reva and numerous other manufacturers. (http://www.nissanusa.com/insideNissan/ThinkingArticle/1,,840,00.html http://www.revaindia.com/design/index.htm)
I think you are a bit under-informed on this subject to be entering this debate.
But hang on, you didn’t say it would be expensive. You said that you couldn’t live as you live without using a set amount of gas. Now you are saying that it would simply be more expensive. Lets get the situation straight here and say what we mean. Unless you contend that the extra few grand for an electric car will totally destroy your lifestyle those two claims are totally different.
So once more your argument has gone from being the US public unable to live without a certain amount if liquid crude products to being unwilling to do it due to expense.
Once again I say, these are two totally different arguments. Your claim that it was impossible to live your lifestyle without using X barrels of crude week is clearly untrue. You admit we could do it if we decided to or if we had to. It’s just that we don’t want to or need to.
As such the whole argument has no bearing whatsoever on the supposed catastrophic effects of a reduction in liquid crude production.
Cite please.
I’ve noticed you make a lot of these claims, but you show an amazing inability to support most of them.
Please provide a cite that shows that a system of buses connecting to trains “wouldn’t work in the suburbs”.
No you wouldn’t. Coal oil is cracked and refined exactly the same as liquid crude. You wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference unless someone told you.
Once again a bold assertion, but can we have a reference that allows you to make such claim in GD?
That depends entirely on what you mean by ‘practical. The Altra, Reva etc all have ranges in excess of 50 km and recharge times of less than 8 hours. In what way are they impractical for you to live your lifestyle using no liquid crude for your daily life?
Sure if you enjoy motoring holidays they might be impractical, but that wasn’t what you said. You said that you need to use a fixed amount of liquid crude just to live your life.
Once again, you are very much under-informed.
First off we have been extracting petroleum from shale and sand with a net energy yield for several decades. (“Oil from Canadian tar sands has an EPR of 1.5, Youngquist (1999).” (Account Suspended)
Now while that isn’t a fantastic energy return it makes a total lie of your claim that it takes more energy to extract oil from sands than it provides. Tar oil and shale oil are net energy yielders and have been for decades.
Quite frankly I can’t imagine what sort person would claim otherwise. Even the most rabid environmental groups have never claimed that sands and shales aren’t net energy yielders, simply that they produce a lot of greenhouse gases due to the relatively low energy yield compared to liquid crude.
I look forward to seeing a quote from a reliable source that supports this claim.
Secondly we are not discussing whether shale oil has a net energy gain. We are discussing whether we can use it to meet this demand for oil that you apparently have. You said that you needed X amount of liquid crude just to live your life, and implied that when that liquid crude wasn’t available your lifestyle would collapse.
Why would it affect your lifestyle if we needed to use 10 Joules of nuclear electricity to extract 9 Joules tar oil for your car if the price doesn’t become prohibitive? You seem to be attempting to argue two unrelated cases. On the one hand you say that you need liquid crude and then when an alternative source of crude is found that is powered by nuclear you say that you need liquid crude energy for some reason. Why do you need liquid crude energy? Why can’t you use tar oil in your car even if it yields negative net energy?
How about where you actually quote where Kunstler says that there is no net energy gain from shale oil and oil sands? Once again, you claim that there is something in an entire book that supports you is not a reference. I counter you by claiming that I have read that book and it makes no such claim. Now what?
If Kunstler said it in that book then quote him.
Does it really? Can you please quote where it says that is what it shows?
You are very confused indeed. And I’m not sure I can help. It really can’t be made any simpler.
The figures from that graph show that using 2000 technology undiscovered resources amount to 649 billion barrels. Remaining current reserves amount to 859 billion barrels. 859/649 * 100 = 75.55%. It’s not complex maths. What part don’t you get? Using 2000 technology undiscovered resources amount to around 75% of the current known reserves
Read the report. It explains the methodology better than I can on message board. If there’s anything specific you don’t understand then get back to me and I will try to clarify if I can. IANA geologist or statistician but it seems fairly straightforward to me.
Nothing at all. Campbell has said that oil production will peak within 5 years. The WEC says that refining capacity will continue to increase for the next 30 years. Unless you are suggesting that oil will be refined that hasn’t actually been produced I can’t see what the problem is.
Refining capacity can’t increase while production decreases. One of those claims has to be wrong. And when it’s Campbell vs the WEO, the WEC, the USGS and fairly much every other major energy organisation in the world it seems like there’s little disputeing who is more likely to have it wrong.
I see. So we have an open source article, which, by your own admission is contributed by no one of authority and can be modified by anyone of no authority particular and who are accountable to no one. And that article omits the fact that the WEO says that refining capacity will increase for the next 30 years while Campbell says that refining will decline in 5 years. It also omits that Campbell says that production will decline within 5 years while the USGS says that 75% of resources are still undiscovered.
And these omissions of the most credible dissenters with Campbell’s opinion are used by you as evidence that the article contains no serious omissions and is fair and balanced? :rolleyes: indeed.
And you can doubt that the debate exists as much as you like. I have just provided links and quotes to the WEO and the USGS disagreeing with Campbell’s assertions. That’s all hat matters on this forum. What you doubt without any evidence doesn’t signify.
That point is just so important and so well put that it deserves to be restated.
BrainGlutton an oil source doesn’t need to be a net energy provider in itself to replace liquid crude. You said that you needed to have access to a set amount of liquid crude to survive and that coal oil wouldn’t do because it might be a net energy user (which simply isn’t true). But that position makes no sense, it is a strawman. You just need oil don’t you? Is there some magical ingredient in liquid crude that your lifestyle depends on or can you make do with iniffecient coal oil or biodeisel as a portable energy storage medium for nuclear power?
Exactly. I look forward to seeing s a refrence (with an actual quote) from someone who claims otherwise. I have neverheard even the most rabid anti sand or shale activist claim otherwise. I was quite surprised to see the claim made here.