Oil

[jiacinto]

What will happen when we run out of it?

[David Zephyr]

1. Olive or Suntan?

?

[greatauntoftriplets]

4. Black gold, Texas T.

Next thing you know, Jed's a millionaire....

[Wonk]

5. I wonder if Carlos is starting to regret his choice to buy an SUV? nt

[Wonk]

2. http://www.peakoil.net/ http://www.dieoff.org/#oildepletion

http://www.peakoil.net/ http://www.dieoff.org/#oildepletion

[Clete]

3. Those who heavily rely on it for their needs are

going to be crying bawawawa. The rest of us probably won't notice.

[xray s]

6. Before we run out...

...we will probably all be killed in wars over the last drops.

[HEyHEY]

7. We as in the world? Or we as in the current supply?

[mike_c]

and here's the real fun, kids....

The peak of oil production will co-occur with peaking human population, rising sea level, and bottoming out of fisheries, natural carbon storage, and ag production growth rate. A fun time will NOT be had by all.

[thebigidea]

8. They'll finally get around to finding alternatives

that and Dick Cheney's family somehow makes a killing.

[wuushew]

9. The Germans made synthetic oil from coal

We have 4,000 years of coal left so if you are willing to pay the price you can have oil for a long time. I am not saying this will happen just saying that it is possible.


-snip-

Having mastered liquefaction, activator and other key techniques in the process of coal conversion, China is now fully capable of establishing plants with a transformation capacity of up to 1 million tons.

Taking the cheap coal and labor resources and other factors into consideration, the cost of each barrel of coal-transformed oil product will be around 20 dollars in China, less than the price of 22 to 28 dollars per barrel valorized by OPEC, said Sun Yuhan, head of the Shanxi Coal Transformation Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.


http://www.china.org.cn/english/scitech/76628.htm
http://fpeng.peopledaily.com.cn/200009/25/eng20000925_51192.html
http://fpeng.peopledaily.com.cn/200103/02/eng20010302_63840.html

[Flying_Pig]

10. Read the book "Last Hours Of Ancient Sunlight" by Thom Hartmann

It will tell you... In the book, he also correctly predicted the war in Iraq, a full year and a half before it happened. It's a great read for those interested in our energy future.

[angka]

11. water, baby.

or, should i say, hydrogen and oxygen?

[wtmusic]

12. Nuclear energy

Yes, that's right. We will learn to love and be responsible with energy which can meet our needs for a thousand years and keep the environment cleaner as well.

[ThomWV]

29. Exactly

The first thing the alarmists don't seem to understand is that we will never run out of oil. As it becomes less abundant the price will rise to the point where it is impracticle for use and what is left will simply stay in the ground.

Coal? Right. 4,000 years of the worst pollution immaginable, and if you think the Department of Energy's "Clean Coal" program is worthwhile you are wrong.

Did you know that if you were to take all of the waste products produced by all of the Nuclear plants in the United States and put them in a football stadium that it would only fill a couple of feet. We produce more waste material from coal powered plants than that every single day, and much of it is carconigenic (sp?).

Natural Gas: Strike another point for the foolishness of Government. The Department of Energy pushed the building of gas fired power plants with absolutly no one looking to fuel availability. All that was said was that it was abundant and that it was cheap. Now, with spot prices which have rarely been below $5 in the last year, as compared to $3.50 in previous years, the foolishmess of that move is becomming clear.

Hydrogen is a joke (ready made for the perpetual motion crowd) and if you think visions of 3-Mile Island are what drove the Nuclear industry into the ground you might want to take a look at the film clips of the Hindenburg.

In the end it has to be nuclear, as well it should be. The toxicity of the wast is greater, and that can be dealt with, the volume is lower than for coal, and that is a very good thing. The actual volume of fuel is so much lower that it isn't worth discussing. Ther is a side benefit to it as well. Reactors can be built to utilized the materials from the decades of production of weapons we have been stockpiling, and we are not the only supply by a long shot/

[kwolf68]

13. Republican response

Who cares, Ill be gone anyway...let someone else deal with it. I want my freedoms man.

[htuttle]

14. Biomass, in various forms, is going to be the next big fuel

Because it's low tech and decentralized.

Not that we're going to plan it that way -- We aren't planning. So it's likely that things are going to 'change' rather quickly, with no effective response from either government or the corporate sector.

So, given those conditions, home-grown biomass, at least in areas where it could be supported, is probably going to be what comes after oil.

Note: Burning trash in a barrel to stay warm could be considered using 'biomass' fuel.

[wuushew]

16. Coal to oil is slightly more efficient than hemp to alcohol

Pyrolysis has the advantage of using the same technology now used to process crude fossil oil and coal. Coal and oil conversion is more efficient in terms of fuel-to-feed ration, but biomass conversion by pyrolysis has many environmental and economic advantages over coal and oil.

http://www.ccguide.org.uk/forfuel.html

Obviously biomass technology would be cleaner and non-exhaustable. The economics would initially favor coal however.


(on edit)actually I think that article refers to the efficency of converting coal or oil into alcohol, if anyone has the energy figures for the conversion of coal into petroleum, please post them.

[htuttle]

17. If you live near a coal mine, sure

And if you do, is there a coal conversion plant near the mine? A coal-powered vehicle and infrastructure to deliver it all over the country?

No. And nobody is actively planning on doing so from what I can see. How much time do we have before oil fuels become unaffordable or suddenly unavailable?

With no better alternatives available, me and a couple of other guys could put together a decent sized still, and feed it with mostly found material. The still, in turn, could power a few vehicles or heaters, generators, etc...

Those are the type of economics I'm referring to. I just don't see any sign that the sort of planning needed to smoothly transition to *anything* different from the current fuel infrastructure.
The last transition from coal to oil was not because we were running out of coal (but were choking on it). The economics of oil were better. It was more of a transition of choice.

The next transition from oil to something else is going to be because we're running out of affordable oil. The economics of the fuel industry are all twisted by the oil companies. There's too much money invested in the status quo for it to change by choice (and plan). So the next fuel transition is not going to be smooth and well-planned, but more likely driven by necessity and desperation.

[mike_c]

18. nothing's free....

All that biomass conversion will convert soil nutrients to gaseous forms at a rapid rate, quite possible faster than soils can naturally replenish. That leads to desertification. Using a substantial chunk of the energy output to produce chemical fertilizers and factory farm biomass will decrease its efficiency. There's just to many people, and too many of them want to live like we do.

[cliss]

15. Stan Goff writes that

we have about 30 years of oil left, at the present consumption. He has warned that within 5 years, we will start a steady and treacherous decline in production.

....which means that we're going to be pretty vulnerable.

Sorry, I don't have a link. His article explains it all. Will try to locate it & edit.

[Resistance Is Futile]

19. How fast?

How the final stages of the fossil fuel era play out depends entirely on how fast fossil fuel runs out and how quickly prices rise. Running out in six weeks would be a lot different than running out in six years or six decades. Running out of oil on six weeks notice would bring down western civilization. Gradually running out over six years would make the 1930s look like a minor slowdown. Gradually running out over six decades would radically change the world but wouldn't be a disaster.

[althecat]

20. It is running out now... the final stages have already begun...

and so far it is shaping up as a military response. The sane response of civilisation to this challenge would be to actively manage the price up now.

Nothing, biomass, hydrogen, hydro, coal or anything else can change the physical facts in this game. The parameters are known but the (corrupted) capitalist system is not equiped to respond in a sane fashion.

The only way to prevent a meltdown is careful sane management of it, as a crisis. So far America is doing its best to ensure that its supplies remain cheap for as long as possible, this will hasten the end and ensure that there is no adequate solution.

This is and has been, for the last 30 years at least, humankinds biggest challenge.

[Minstrel Boy]

27. A wise remark that bears repeating:

"The parameters are known but the (corrupted) capitalist system is not equiped to respond in a sane fashion."

[Andy_Stephenson]

21. oil from anything

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:cdeBm0RQldEJ:www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html+oil+from+anything+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&client=REAL-tb

[althecat]

22. The problem is how much energy is required for the process to work...

[rman]

23. we are not prepared : crisis

I give it 10 years at most. There's talk of alternatives, but it's to tittle to late. One realistic solution is a large grid of many smaller local (hydrogen/wind/solar) power stations, but if we want that then we should be working on it now - which we aren't.

If we run out while the neocons are in power, they'll keep the oil reserves (US has the largest reserves) to themselves and the people are screwed. Then we'll enter a Mad Max-like post-oil era.

[scarletlib]

26. The Hydrogen Economy by Jeremy Rifkin

An excellent book on this very topic. Undoubtedly we will enter peak oil production within the next 10 yrs. The most optimistic projections extend that out another 10 to 15 yrs. but it is coming.
What I found most interesting about his book was the explanation about how the entire economic system from oil pump to final distribution is all tied together in a massive centralized system. We really don't think about it in our everyday lives but the entire economic system literally revolves around the petroleum industry. Also people don't realize it but petrochemicals play a big part in our agricultural economy. Running out of oil will affect everything, not just transportation. Think of it this way: Petrochemicals and the system created to process and deliver are the circulation system of the entire economy. If the circulation system dies then the civilization dies.

What he points out in the book is that we, at least, are aware of what is coming and can act to change it, unlike other past civilizations.
Some countries, Iceland for sure, and the entire EU are already working on solutions and converting to Hydrogen. Unfortunately, here in the US we won't be getting any government led initiatives with the current regime in place. Much activity is going on, however, it is dispersed.
As far as I am concerned coal is not an alternative. It will take lots of energy to "convert" it to an oil state. The Germans in WWII tried it. It is not cost effective and there will be adverse environmental effects. We may have energy and destroy the entire ecosphere thus eliminating ourselves. (No doubt Mother Earth will recover, but we may not be here to see it.)


Whether or not one agrees with Rifkin's optimistic outlook for a future hydrogen economy his book is worth the read just to know where we have been and what could happen if we don't act soon.

(Edit for typo's)

[ronatchig]

28. There are some folks working

on this problem, with some really great ideas,here's a link to their website.
http://www.apolloalliance.org/
i would love tosee the democratic party get behind this project 210%.
Since I can see no down side to their ideas. Three million good jobs and freedom from big oil/energy's grip on us all.
The plan is a non-monolithic production using renewable resources.
This is the issue tthat can take out the fascist party in Washington imho.

[ComerPerro]

24. I don't want to be around when it happens

Because it is gonna be messy. Widespread war, and with footsoldiers as cannon fodder for whatever Republican regieme is currently (and most likely unconstitutionally) holding power at that time.

[spanone]

25. Only then will the Iraqis be truly free.