[ambush]

What do you think?

Conservatives: is this still a "liberal lie"?

This is no a political thread. It affects our lives directly.

[davesimondotcom]

Politics affects our lives directly too.

I've always had trouble with those who wouldn't learn to slow consumption as well as those who wouldn't make an effort to find and refine our own oil reserves.

If both sides could meet in the middle, it would be better, I think.

[ambush]

Well the US at least decreased its dependance on Saudian oil by invading Iraq... but those reserves won't last eternally.

[davesimondotcom]

I don't think that there is any less reliance on the Saudis. And that's a problem.

Anyone have any statistics for how much oil is actually coming out of Iraq bound for US consumption?

[Atomic Rooster]

What end?

The supplies are just changing to other parts of the world where they do all the manufacturing and where most people live.

And not where most of the oil goes for gas guzzlers.

[Doofy]

Thoughts on the end of the petroleum era?

Yes. 2140 will be a bad year.

[ambush]

that's the point... why think of the future generations... and it's not as far as you think

[KeriVit]

Appealing, but a long way off.

[Kerrigan]

This is what happens when you have a president who sits around at his ranch doing nothing 10 months out of the year.

People start freaking out and cooking up doomsday stories about the end of petrol and the beginning of a new era of killer hurricanes and tsunamis.

[KeriVit]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan

This is what happens when you have a president who sits around at his ranch doing nothing 10 months out of the year.

People start freaking out and cooking up doomsday stories about the end of petrol and the beginning of a new era of killer hurricanes and tsunamis.

Some guy at work was giving stats on that- how much time Dubya is on "break"... what;s that at? Oh damn, it's getting political.

[greenamp]

Just b/c you say " this is not a political thread " doesn't mean it isn't. Do you really think this thread won't turn into 10 pages of political bickering?

Wrong forum.

[zerostar]

Originally Posted by ambush

What do you think?

Conservatives: is this still a "liberal lie"?

No one is going to admit anything until it is too late, we have plenty of oil for at least what 100+ years, to some that is plenty and we don't need to do anything, to others we need to start consuming less and less every day.

I think the real end we will live to see is going to be CHEAP oil, I think shortly it will make sense to invest in alternate energies even if just from a financial standpoint.

[baw]

Originally Posted by ambush

What do you think?

I think this is the wrong forum.

[tracemhunter]

i think you need to read "The Party's Over" by Richard Heinburg.

[meelk]

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

These people who think we have hundreds of years of oil left are ill informed. I'm hoping for the best but planning for the worst, as the saying goes. I think most people will be too blinded by their consumerist lifestyle to accept that something is happening until its too late. These are the same people you see denying global warming as a very real fact.
oh well.
I'll be ready.

[macaddict0001]

It won't be the end for a while.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by meelk

These are the same people you see denying global warming as a very real fact.
oh well.

Bring it on. The only thing we're missing here in The Banana Republic of Great Britain is the ability to grow bananas.

[Warung]

I just hope it's going to end soon. That will largely depend on the influence of the "fossil fuel" lobby though, and how much politicians will be corrupted by them.

Technically, we could already reduce the usage by about 90% within the next 10 years or so. Hydrogen and fuel cell engines aren't too far away, and many many people are thinking about building their new homes in a ecologically sustainable way.

China will be deciding factor here. If they chose to essentially "skip" the fossil fuel era and go straight to using alternative sources of energy, we have a chance to enjoy an enduring and sustainable global ecology.

If not, we will run out of resources by roughly 2012, and global warming will be a big pain in the arse.

[meelk]

Originally Posted by Doofy

Bring it on. The only thing we're missing here in The Banana Republic of Great Britain is the ability to grow bananas.

According to the climate models Ive seen, england and most of Europe will grow substantially colder.
Global warming doesnt mean everywhere on the planet will get warmer, it really means climate shift more than anything.
Europe not being able to grow its own food entice you?

[meelk]

Originally Posted by Warung

I just hope it's going to end soon. That will largely depend on the influence of the "fossil fuel" lobby though, and how much politicians will be corrupted by them.

Technically, we could already reduce the usage by about 90% within the next 10 years or so. Hydrogen and fuel cell engines aren't too far away, and many many people are thinking about building their new homes in a ecologically sustainable way.

China will be deciding factor here. If they chose to essentially "skip" the fossil fuel era and go straight to using alternative sources of energy, we have a chance to enjoy an enduring and sustainable global ecology.

If not, we will run out of resources by roughly 2012, and global warming will be a big pain in the arse.

yeah. most of the people I've seen on tv specials and read about tend to say 2012, 2015 latest, these are people without policital agendas, or people who USED to work for various parts of the oil industry and dont now. They are simply telling the truth as they know it, and they all seem to have *very* similar dates and theories in mind as to what will happen. You can only listen to so many experts in their field tell you the same things over and over again before it hits home.
Things will get bad before then though, as first carpools are enforced for going anywhere, then travel by car will be all but cut off except for goverment, military, emergency services, and police (with odds and ends things like school busses, and essential services allowed).
I'm sinking a substantial amount of money into my parents home shortly. New cabinets, floors, appliances, closets, insulation, etc etc. I want them to be comfortable even when things get bad, and I do believe they will. If necessary, I'll change my own plans on building a home and simply build an addition on to their house. I cant see the shame in it, even though I'm sure other people would (for now anyway, but their minds may change).
At least we dont live in a city, we have a sizeable back yard to grow crops in, as do all our neighbors.
Cities will be hell holes.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by meelk

According to the climate models Ive seen, england and most of Europe will grow substantially colder.

Well, those climate models are wrong. It's either getting warmer or staying the same. Which is why the Thames hasn't frozen since 1814.

Damn those ancestor dudes with their gas-guzzling SUVs!

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by meelk

Cities will be hell holes.

So, no change there then.

[meelk]

Originally Posted by Doofy

Well, those climate models are wrong. It's either getting warmer or staying the same. Which is why the Thames hasn't frozen since 1814.

Damn those ancestor dudes with their gas-guzzling SUVs!

Wikipedia as a reference always amuses me. Its open source (well, openly editable) after all. You could have george washington be a chimp on there if you wanted to.

As for climate shift, we will see.

[meelk]

Originally Posted by Doofy

So, no change there then.

except jobs will be almost non-existent, food will be scarce, and guns will be plentiful.

[meelk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington
matter of fact, check george's picture on the right.
I'll change it back by tomorrow.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by meelk

Wikipedia as a reference always amuses me.

Of course, Wikipedia is only ever a starting point for one's own research. And as such does an adequate job.

Originally Posted by meelk

As for climate shift, we will see.

We will indeed.

[mojo2]

Originally Posted by ambush

What do you think?

Conservatives: is this still a "liberal lie"?

This is no a political thread. It affects our lives directly.

http://www.sound-effect.com/sounds/h...e/cheer_8k.wav

[mojo2]

Originally Posted by meelk

except jobs will be almost non-existent, food will be scarce, and guns will be plentiful.

http://www.sound-effect.com/sounds/h...e/cheer_8k.wav

[mojo2]

Originally Posted by tracemhunter

i think you need to read "The Party's Over" by Richard Heinburg.

http://www.sound-effect.com/sounds/h...e/cheer_8k.wav

[mojo2]

Ladies and gents, the oil 'party' will soon be over. It started in 1850 with the first commercial oil well. The estimated 2 - 3 Trillion barrels that once were has been used HALF up.

One of the major oil companies recently said so in an ad in a national publication.

Once we use it up there will be no more.

But, you say we have lots of time for other people to figure out a solution and we needn't worry about it until it's all used up.

No, actually, that's not true. Using an analogy or two, you will die of dehydration well before your body runs out of water. You will die from blood loss well before you completely bleed out.

The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

In a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.

The effects of even a small drop in production can be devastating. For instance, during the 1970s oil shocks, shortfalls in production as small as 5% caused the price of oil to nearly quadruple. The same thing happened in California a few years ago with natural gas: a production drop of less than 5% caused prices to skyrocket by 400%.

Fortunately, previous price shocks were only temporary.

The coming oil shocks won't be so short-lived. They represent the onset of a new, permanent condition. Once the decline gets under way, production will drop (conservatively) by 3% per year, every year.

That estimate comes from numerous sources, not the least of which is Vice President Dick Cheney himself. In a 1999 speech he gave while still CEO of Halliburton, Cheney stated:

By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent
annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead,
along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline
in production from existing reserves.That means by 2010 we
will need on the order of anadditional 50 million barrels a
day.

Cheney's assesement is supported by the estimates of numerous non-political, retired, and now disinterested scientists, many of whom believe global oil production will peak and go into terminal decline within the next five years.

Some geologists expect 2005 to be the last year of the cheap-oil bonanza, while estimates coming out of the oil industry indicate "a seemingly unbridgeable supply-demand gap opening up after 2007," which will lead to major fuel shortages and increasingly severe blackouts beginning around 2008-2012.

The long-term ramifications of Peak Oil on your way of life are nothing short of mind blowing. As we slide down the downslope slope of the global oil production curve, we may find ourselves slipping into what some scientists are calling a "post-industrial stone age."

Peak Oil is also called "Hubbert's Peak," named for the Shell geologist Dr. Marion King Hubbert. In 1956, Hubbert accurately predicted that US domestic oil production would peak in 1970. He also predicted global production would peak in 1995, which it would have had the politically created oil shocks of the 1970s not delayed the peak for about 10-15 years.

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html

What You Can Do

Personal preparations: Reduce energy dependence of family, home, lifestyle. The less fuels and goods you consume, the less the impacts will be.
Workplace: Same.
Work on it with friends: Workmates, neighbourhood, city, governments. The ideal use for remaining oil and mineral reserves is into industries that create inexhaustible alternative energy equipment like windmills, solar water heaters, biomass (vegetation that creates fuels), et cetera.
Share your feeling with others: Try to stay positive and active rather than ignore it or blame people for it. Where there's life there's hope, especially if we collaborate and are creative. "It's not that new." Humans have always faced hardships, and many among us do so constantly now. Learn from them.
Possible emergency measures to consider:
Alert the entire public so people will accept preparations for the oil shortages, participate in implementing solutions.
Relocate food production nearer to cities .
Relocate workplaces nearer to homes or homes nearer to workplaces.
Prepare for conserving and rationing of dwindling oil/other resources that are created using oil.
Population control to prevent children being born into extremely harsh conditions that seem likely, and to conserve soon-scarce resources for those already alive.
Re-Iocalise, to reverse globalisation
Strengthen the police to deal with likely social chaos and to control distribution of vital supplies.
Alert national leaders to cooperate against this major threat that faces us all.

The USA has the exceptional position of being the largest - and still growing - importer. US imports deny somebody else access to oil. For example, starving Africans result. Tax on gasoline is lower in the USA than in other countries by a large factor, so the US could easily curb some excess - in fact, sooner or later it will have no option. The worst thing the US can do is press OPEC to increase production, which will simply make the peak higher and the decline steeper. It just digs itself into a bigger hole, morality apart.

- Colin Campbell in private email June 2000

[JoshuaZ]

Ending? But the US has yet to invade Canada!

[Albert Pujols]

The end is closer then you all think.

[JoshuaZ]

The end is always near man. Where have you been for the past 2000 years?

[mojo2]

Originally Posted by Albert Pujols

The end is closer THAN* you all think.

http://www.sound-effect.com/sounds/h...e/cheer_8k.wav




* fixed

[mojo2]

Originally Posted by Warung

I just hope it's going to end soon. That will largely depend on the influence of the "fossil fuel" lobby though, and how much politicians will be corrupted by them.

Technically, we could already reduce the usage by about 90% within the next 10 years or so. Hydrogen and fuel cell engines aren't too far away, and many many people are thinking about building their new homes in a ecologically sustainable way.

China will be deciding factor here. If they chose to essentially "skip" the fossil fuel era and go straight to using alternative sources of energy, we have a chance to enjoy an enduring and sustainable global ecology.

If not, we will run out of resources by roughly 2012, and global warming will be a big pain in the arse.

Hydrogen is only a temporary answer and not a great one.

"What About the Hydrogen Economy?"

Hydrogen isn't the answer either. As of 2003, the average hydrogen fuel cell costs close to $1,000,000. Unlike other alternatives, hydrogen fuel cells have shown little sign of coming down in price.

Even if the cost is lowered by 98%, placing the price at $20,000 per cell, hydrogen or hydrogen fuel cells will never power more than a handful of cars due to the following reasons:

I. Worldwide Shortage of Platinum

A single hydrogen fuel cell requires 20 grams of platinum. If the cells are mass-produced, it may be possible to get the platinum requirement down to 10 grams per cell. The world has 7.7 billion grams of proven platinum reserves. There are approximately 700 million internal combustion engines on the road. Ten grams of platinum per fuel cell x 700 million fuel cells = 7 billion grams of platinum, or practically every gram of platinum in the earth.

Unfortunately, as a recent article in EV World points out, the average fuel cell lasts only 200 hours. Two hundred hours translates into just 12,000 miles, or about one year’s worth of driving at 60 miles per hour. This means all 700 million fuel cells (with 10 grams of platinum in each one) would have to be replaced every single year.

Thus replacing the 700 million oil-powered vehicles on the road with fuel cell-powered vehicles, for only 1 year, would require us to mine every single ounce of platinum currently in the earth and divert all of it for fuel cell construction only.

Doing so is absolutely impossible as platinum is astonishingly energy intensive (expensive) to mine, is already in short supply, and is indispensable to thousands of crucial industrial processes.

Even if this wasn't the case, the fuel cell solution would last less than one year. As with oil, platinum production would peak long before the supply is exhausted.

What will we do, when less than 6 months into the "Hydrogen Economy," we hit Peak Platinum? Perhaps Michael Moore will produce a movie documenting the connection between the President’s family and foreign platinum companies while following the plight of a mother whose son died in the latest platinum war?

If the hydrogen economy was anything other than a total red herring, such issues would eventually arise as 80 percent of the world’s proven platinum reserves are located in that bastion of geopolitical stability, South Africa.

Even if an economically affordable and scalable alternative to platinum is immediately located and mined in absolutely massive quantities, the ability of hydrogen to replace even a small portion of our oil consumption is still handicapped by several fundamental limitations. NASA, which fuels the space shuttle with hydrogen, may be able to afford to get around the following challenges, but there is a big difference between launching the space shuttle and running a global economy with a voracious and constantly growing apetite for energy:

II. Inability to Store Massive Qunatities at Low Cost:

Hydrogen is the smallest element known to man. This makes it virtually impossible to store in the massive quantities and to transport across the incredibly long distances at the low costs required by our vast globaltransportation networks. In her February 2005 article 1.entitled "Hydrogen Economy: Energy and Economic Blackhole," Alice Friedemann writes:

Hydrogen is the Houdini of elements. As soon as you’ve
gotten it into a container, it wants to get out, and since it’s
the lightest of all gases, it takes a lot of effort to keep it
from escaping. Storage devices need a complex set of seals,
gaskets, and valves. Liquid hydrogen tanks for vehicles boil
off at 3-4% per day

III. Massive Cost of Hydrogen Infrastructure:

A hydrogen economy would require massive retrofitting of our entire global transportation and fuel distributionnetworks. At a million dollars per car, it would cost 350,000,000,000,000 to replace half of our current automotive fleet (700 million cars) with hydrogen fuel cell powered cars.

That doesn't even account for replacing a significant fraction of our oil-powered airplanes or boats with fuel cells.

The numbers don't get any prettier if we scrap the fuel cells and go with straight hydrogen. According to a recent article in Nature, entitled "Hydrogen Economy Looks Out of Reach:"

Converting every vehicle in the United States to hydrogen
power would demand so much electricity that the country
would need enough wind turbines to cover half of California
or 1,000 extra nuclea power stations.

Unfortunately, even if we managed to get this ridiculously high number of wind turbines or nuclear power plants built, we would still need to build the hydrogen powered cars, in addition to a hydrogen distribution network that would be mind-boggingly expensive. The construction of a hydrogen pipeline network comparable to our current natural gas pipeline network, for instance, would cost 200 trillion dollars. That's twenty times the size of the US GDP in the year 2002.

How such capital intensive endeavors will be completed in the midst of massive energy shortages is anybody's guess;

IV. Hydrogen's "Energy Sink" Factor:

As mentioned previously, solar, wind, or nuclear energy can be used to "crack" hydrogen from water via a process known as electrolysis. The electrolysis process is a simple one, but unfortunately it consumes more energy than it produces. This has nothing to do with the costs and everything to do with the immutable laws of thermodynamics. Again, Alice Friedemann weighs in:

The laws of physics mean the hydrogen economy will always
be an energy sink. Hydrogen’s properties require you to
spend more energy to do the following than you get out of it
later: overcome waters’ hydrogen-oxygen bond, to move
heavy cars, to prevent leaks and brittle metals, to transport
hydrogen to the destination. It doesn’t matter if all of the
problems are solved, or how much money is spent. You will
use more energy to create, store, and transport hydrogen
than you will ever get out of it.

Even if these problems are ignored or assumed away, you are still faced with jaw-dropping costs of a renewable derived hydrogen economy. In addition to the 200 trillion dollar pipeline network that would be necessary to move the hydrogen around, we would need to deploy about 40 trillion dollars of solar panels. If the hydrogen was derived from wind (which is usually more efficient than solar) the cost might be lowered considerably, but that's not saying much when you are dealing with numbers as large as $40 trillion.

Even if the costs of these projects are cut in half, that makes little difference over the course of a generation, as our economy doubles in size approximately every 25-30 years. In other words, by the time we will have made anyreal headway in constructing a "hydrogen economy", the problem will have already compounded itself.

If the "hydrogen economy" is such a hoax, why then do we hear so much about it? The answer is simple when you "follow the money" and ask "who benefits?" (Hint: GM, Shell, et al.)

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by Doofy

Well, those climate models are wrong. It's either getting warmer or staying the same. Which is why the Thames hasn't frozen since 1814.

Damn those ancestor dudes with their gas-guzzling SUVs!

Yes it's been happening before our time.

I am sure it was Bush, and America's fault then too!

Like I said in the other thread that was moved to the PL (Stink House) like this one should. Bag O Nuts.

[ambush]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Yes it's been happening before our time.

I am sure it was Bush, and America's fault then too!

Like I said in the other thread that was moved to the PL (Stink House) like this one should. Bag O Nuts.

70$+ this morning

America must secure its reserves by invading other countries.... or else.. evil arabs might keep it!

[ambush]

**** KYOTO

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by ambush

70$+ this morning

America must secure its reserves by invading other countries.... or else.. evil arabs might keep it!