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Peak Oil (was "petroleum geologist explains US war policy")

Hmmm. Not sure about it. I agree it's a subject that spans topics (politics and science) but I don't think we need an entire forum. I'll ask the other mods.
 
Maybe a sub forum that covered global warming and peak oil? Their both interconnected global issues.

It would include stuff on the global economy, food and energy supply, alternative energy, social implications, campaigns and protest movements, debate about how to respond - individualy, collectively and at international level, latest science on global warming, a deniers/head in the sand thread for bigfish ;), a survivalist thread just in case ...



I agree that this thread is too big now - thats why I started a new thread to try and open up/freshen up the debate. The fact that the threads been going for 5 years demonstrates the importance of the issue.
 
Kaka Tim said:
And now it looks like time has run out. I find the level of complacency on this staggering. If we are at peak oil it means things could turn pretty unpleasant very quickly (like within the next five years) and then accelrate down hill. Are environmentalists in a comfort zone? Do they think the PO will help combat global warming and therefore to be welcomed or something?
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I think you misread my post. The context of the post was in trying to avert Bigfish from taking over the thread. I wasn't denying climate change, I was saying that there are good reasons we should be changing our ways now regardless of climate change.
 
Yep. Adverse material conditions is fertile soil for radical politics of all kinds.
 
bigfish said:
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html

http://www.ecofascism.com/index.html

http://www.greens.org/s-r/32/32-13.html
Click to expand...

Ha! Second link: "Welcome to the Environmentalism Is Fascism Website" :p

I think not, if you don't mind.

Actually, you'd be nearer the mark saying some Deep Green philosophy is sort of Eco-Marxist, putting limits on economic growth and needing state rationing and intervention to allocate resources...but I get the feeling that sort of subtlety might be a bit beyond your paygrade.
 
Here is a short video of Jimmy Carter in 1977:

http://remixamerica.org/videos/president-jimmy-carter-address-to-the-nation-on-energy-0

Obviously there were some discoveries, political changes, and some temporary demand destruction, which meant the bleakness that Jimmy described did not come to pass in that era. Another large factor was that it was America rather than the world that had peaked, so by further increasing imports they were able to postpone the doom.

All the same I find it fascinating to hear the words used to describe the situation at that time, and although I do feel peak has arrived now, its a valuable lesson in why some are cynical, and how seemingly inevitable catastrophe's can sometimes be delayed until a time further away than we anticipate. His comments that the problem required a response on the scale of a war-effort, is similar to some talk we hear today, either in relation to climate change or peak oil. I assume one day we will not be able to postpone this effort anymore, and hope it doesnt become a real war.
 
Crispy said:
Energy forum advocates - make me a list of suitable existing threads...
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I will when I get some spare time, although I wasnt actually suggesting the time had come for an energy forum right now. Its hard to tell, I suppose even if there is a big crisis, it will affect so many areas of life that an energy forum may not be as sensible as I first considered. Also depends under what circumstances its deemed appropriate to have things in one thread rather than many. This single peak oil thread contains many topics that might be better as seperate threads if there was a whole subforum for such matters, or maybe not. Im certainly not going to rock the boat whatever is decided, Im just happy to have somewhere to discuss these issues at all.
 
elbows said:
Here is a short video of Jimmy Carter in 1977:

http://remixamerica.org/videos/president-jimmy-carter-address-to-the-nation-on-energy-0

Obviously there were some discoveries, political changes, and some temporary demand destruction, which meant the bleakness that Jimmy described did not come to pass in that era. Another large factor was that it was America rather than the world that had peaked, so by further increasing imports they were able to postpone the doom.

All the same I find it fascinating to hear the words used to describe the situation at that time, and although I do feel peak has arrived now, its a valuable lesson in why some are cynical, and how seemingly inevitable catastrophe's can sometimes be delayed until a time further away than we anticipate. His comments that the problem required a response on the scale of a war-effort, is similar to some talk we hear today, either in relation to climate change or peak oil. I assume one day we will not be able to postpone this effort anymore, and hope it doesnt become a real war.
Click to expand...

Very interesting. Carter also installed solar panels on the roof of the White House - which Regan promptly dismantled.

I'd always assumed Reagan's "It's Morning Again in America" was simply deft political positive thinking - I didn't realise it was a straight foward response to Carter's more realistic gloom-mongering.
 
Russia takes control of Turkmen gas

From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.

[...]

There must be deep frustration in Washington. In sum, Russia has greatly strengthened its standing as the principal gas supplier to Europe. It not only controls Central Asia's gas exports but has ensured that gas from the region passes across Russia and not through the alternative trans-Caspian pipelines mooted by the US and EU. Also, a defining moment has come. The era of cheap gas is ending. Other gas exporters will cite the precedent of the price for Turkmen gas. European companies cannot match Gazprom's muscle. Azerbaijan becomes a test case. Equally, Russia places itself in a commanding position to influence the price of gas in the world market. A gas cartel is surely in the making. The geopolitical implications are simply profound for the US.
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(emphasis mine).
 
It's interesting, but ultimately it's a form of solar power - gotta have sunlight to grow algae. Would be interesting to see what sort of conversion rate they get compared to, say, electrolysis of water using solar power...
 
He added: "They also have the classic renewables problem in that you're dealing with the ultimate energy source, the Sun, which is quite diffuse, so you're only getting in peak conditions around 0.5KW per square metre. You need vast, great big farms."

Algae can easily be grown in open ponds, but these result in very low-density blooms and are therefore an inefficient way to produce lots of fuel. Skill said that Sapphire would need advances in technology called photobioreactors to make a successful leap to commercial production.

Photobioreactors are closed vessels that would provide plenty of light and carefully tuned conditions that could intensively grow the microorganisms. Several teams around the world are testing designs for growing algae in them but none have so far made it to market.
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The age old question, is it scalable economicaly? I.e. once you have to produce 10 billion liters a day (current global oil consumption) is it economic to produce farms that big. Massive huge amounts of pools, giagantic amounts of fertilisers and nutrients and what do you know.... you need electricity to run these photobioreactors to produce it.

Hmmm I wonder what the fertiliser stocks will be and how that will impact global food production.

Start powering down now and stop dreaming of a cargo cultish belief that a new energy source is going to drop out of the sky.
 
david dissadent said:
The age old question, is it scalable economicaly? I.e. once you have to produce 10 billion liters a day (current global oil consumption) is it economic to produce farms that big. Massive huge amounts of pools, giagantic amounts of fertilisers and nutrients and what do you know.... you need electricity to run these photobioreactors to produce it.

Hmmm I wonder what the fertiliser stocks will be and how that will impact global food production.

Start powering down now and stop dreaming of a cargo cultish belief that a new energy source is going to drop out of the sky.
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Cheers for that - I was expeceting a bucket of cold water to be poured over this latest 'solution' and was not dissappointed.
 
I reject the bucket of cold water way of seeing such ciritcisms. We need to be optimistic enough to invest, investigate and try things, and realistic enough not to pin all our hopes on one solution, to be lulled into a false sense of security, or to fail to recognise the sheer scale of the problem that alternatives will need to overcome.
 
david dissadent said:
Start powering down now and stop dreaming of a cargo cultish belief that a new energy source is going to drop out of the sky.
Click to expand...
Yep. It's the only way we're going to survive.

Powering down and moving to renewable energy and sustainable technologies should have been started 30 years ago...
 
Oil Doesn’t Come From Dead Dinosaurs

Sinclair.jpg


Green Energy News

Now that NASA has discovered liquid hydrocarbons – black gold – on Titan, a moon orbiting Saturn, scientists may have to rethink how hydrocarbons, like oil and natural gas, came to be on planet Earth.

Some people still think that oil came from dead dinosaurs. (I know some of these people.) This is a myth probably perpetuated by the dinosaur logo used by the Sinclair Oil Corporation. The logo is cute and attractively friendly but has little to do with the origins of oil.

Common thinking is that crude oil (and natural gas) were formed by the compression and heating of ancient organic materials over many millennia. Dead prehistoric zooplankton and algae that settled to the sea bottom were eventually covered up by sand or muck that turned to stone. High temperatures and pressures eventually turned the dead organisms into oil..

But finding a lake of hydrocarbons on a cold celestial body, far from the Sun, is a game changer. If hydrocarbons are a spin-off of dead organisms does this mean that Titan, frighteningly cold at minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit, has life? Possibly, if there’s a source of heat under Titan’s skin. Does it mean that hydrocarbons, crude oil for instance, can be formed in ways other than decomposing life? NASA thinks that the nitrogen rich, smoggy atmosphere of Titan actually rains hydrocarbons. Ethane and several other simple hydrocarbons have also been identified in the atmosphere. It rains enough hydrocarbons to create rivers, NASA thinks.
...
There’s a lot we don’t know about our planet. We don’t have the ability to scour the entire ocean bottom that makes up 2/3 of our planet’s surface. Nor do we have the ability to travel through the Earth’s crust to view with the naked eye what’s going on.

Hydrocarbons on Saturn’s largest moon should be an eye-opener for scientists and may eventually turn the petroleum world upside down. There may be more oil on our planet than we think, which would be unfortunate.
http://www.green-energy-news.com/arch/nrgs2008/20080064.html
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it would only be "unfortunate" for people who are nuts. For people who aren't nuts, it's great news.
 
NASA Confirms Hydrocarbon Lake on Titan

IMG003160-br500.jpg


Titan's Ethane Lake

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA scientists have concluded that at least one of the large lakes observed on Saturn's moon Titan contains liquid hydrocarbons, and have positively identified the presence of ethane. This makes Titan the only body in our solar system beyond Earth known to have liquid on its surface.

Scientists made the discovery using data from an instrument aboard the Cassini spacecraft. The instrument identified chemically different materials based on the way they absorb and reflect infrared light. Before Cassini, scientists thought Titan would have global oceans of methane, ethane and other light hydrocarbons. More than 40 close flybys of Titan by Cassini show no such global oceans exist, but hundreds of dark lake-like features are present. Until now, it was not known whether these features were liquid or simply dark, solid material.

"This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid," said Bob Brown of the University of Arizona, Tucson. Brown is the team leader of Cassini's visual and mapping instrument. The results will be published in the July 31 issue of the journal Nature.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/jul/HQ_08_193_Titan_lake.html
Click to expand...
 
Bernie Gunther said:
Problem solved!

Now we just have to work out how to get it to the petrol pumps ...:rolleyes:
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There's really no need Bernie, as hydrocarbons are already abundant on Earth. Why do you suppose world reserves of oil, gas and coal, keep rising year after year? Obviously, we're not running out of the stuff - in fact, as our knowledge of the H-C system and our technologies improve in time, we are running into it in ever increasing amounts.

But the really great news is that our scientists have not been able to find a relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption, and global temperatures. Increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide does not - indeed cannot - lead to a warming planet and so there is no compelling necessity for humanity to switch to the incredibly inefficient and grossly expensive alternative energy sources greenshirt crackpot's like you recommend.
 
You know your bonkers, Big Fish. We all know you are. But consider this. Say "our scientists", whoever they might be, are right - and the world is heating up without contribution from man-made emissions. Think about it. We're even more fucked. 'Cos then we really can't stop it.
 
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