I attended the IPA’s annual H.V. McKay Lecture on Technology in Melbourne last night. Philip Burgess from Telstra was the guest speaker on the topic of ‘Future Proofing’.
He gave an interesting and wide ranging talk that included two reasons why we will never run out of oil:
1. As the price of oil increases, we will find more of it.
2. As the price of oil or any other commodity goes up, inventive people will start looking for substitutes.
He suggested there were all kinds of examples of ‘substitutes’ including: plastic for copper tubing, grain for fuel and aluminium studs for wooden studs in home building.
He also said that we should perhaps strive to use more, not less energy, because it is through the use of energy that we create wealth.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Point 1 assumes there is still plenty of oil to be found. How realistic is that? I thought many in the industry have already concluded we are at, or near peak oil production globally? Where are the new oilfields going to be located? It is clear that as oil becomes more scarce and demand rises, prices will increase and marginal oil fields will become more viable…..but enough to support the current demand for the foreseeable future? I doubt it.
Point 2 is ok, necessity is the mother of invention, but are there/will there be enough inventive solutions to maintain the current growth in energy consumption globally?
“We will never Run Out of Oil” is correct. The more cautious explanation is that we ran out of (USD) $10/bbl oil in the 1970s, $20/bbl oil in the 1990s and may be running out of $30/bbl oil sometime soon. We can never run out of $90 (current USD) oil because at that price point 80% of the uses for oil become viable via alternative sources either energy or chemistry. Active solar is currently in the $80 equivalent range for residential loads. Agricultural price/yield farming practices have breakeven points even lower for fertilizers and harvesting. We use oil because it is cheap an abundant. -IF- it ever stops being cheap or abundant we will transitin with nary a hiccup. Big deal. Anyone remember whale oil lamps?
It was a Saudi foreign minister or someone similar who remarked that we didn’t leave the stone age behind because we ran out of stones. We wring our hands about the impact of the end of cheap oil upon our well being, but I don’t see much optimism for the Middle East when we stop buying such large quantities of crude from them.
>He also said that we should perhaps strive to use more, not less energy, because it is through the use of energy that we create wealth.
Does anyone not think that this statement is idiotic?
You don’t create wealth by using more energy to do the same amount of work. You create wealth by using more energy to do more work, and you create additional wealth by using less energy to do the same work.
Its called energy efficiency.
Suggesting a direct link between energy use and wealth is rubbish. Its like saying that we should be eating more because it is through eating that we stay alive. Doesn’t he know that most industrialised economies are reducing their energy consumed per $GDP?
What an oaf.
Re running out of oil.
This conversation depends on the timeframe. Over a long term, it is likely that we will find substitutes before running out of oil. This is not a profound thing to say, and you have to be either uninformed, or a ‘canapes provided’ eating, wine sipping seminar junkie to be impressed by such shallow discussion points.
Supply shortages and price spikes can still happen in the short term.
Our knowledge about what to do for the future needs better than self-important, about to retire corporate leaders who may have been good at making money and having a short term outlook, but are simplistic and over-indulged in giving their 2cents about what to do for the future.
So that explains why we keep discovering so many new oil fields very day.
Did he say where the plastics were going to come from.
And I hope he gave the price of extracting oil from tar sands, and liquefying coal to oil.
And we haven’t even gotten to India, China growth factors and greenhouse issues yet. But that’s right – we’re “concerned” about greenhouse gases on one hand – but given they fertilise plants and that we’ve now proven that the IPCC are all liars, we don’t have to worry about greenhouse. Phew that’s saved a lot of worry hasn’t it.
And we also don’t have to worry about GMO food crop issues as all arable land will be producing fuel.
Have to say for an evidence based blog this would take the record for the least evidence based post of all time. My mate from Telstra told me.. .. Did you say Telstra ? Telstra !!
Anyway they’ve been so helpful with my telephony over the years I’ve let the SUV idle in the driveway – why bother turning it off.
Phil, no personal slight intended but anxiety is nature’s way of distracting the mediocre so they will not get in the way of the people working on a solution.
no personal slight intended my butt. Such smugness.
Anxiety (fight or flight) ensures that threats are acted upon and not lazily tolerated/ignored, and chances of survival increased.
Ian – well this is a great pub debate isn’t it. But a few “phone a friends” have done some sobering numbers – so here’s some issues for your now battered bankcard envelope:
Can we produce fuel from our arable lands – and how much at what efficiency. If you use nitrogenous fertilser or phosphate work out where it comes from or what our reserves are. At the limit here is the efficiency of conversion of the best net primary productivity.
Or how mature hydrogen is as a technology. Distribution network. Safety. Does it effect the ozone layer? http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18024211.100.html
No special rare metals like platinum needed to make fuel cells work to burn the stuff?
Energy efficiency of tar sands and associated environmental issues ?
What’s a reasonable level of remaining oil ? How many big Middle East size fields are left? What’s our rate of consumption? Argument here is that the oil companies are very clever and have something up their sleeve? They do?
How much will a developing China and India need?
Probably liquefying coal would be your best bet if it comes to it? Does this add up?
Technology has a habit of staying one step ahead of catastrophes of its own
making. We’ll eventually have metro-cars running adiabatic sterling cycle
biomass/low energy content mostly cermet/ceramic engines powering electric
motors with composite flywheel assist. 2018. Expect the equiv of 200mpg on
50 octane fuels. Pizzas will in such a future environment enjoy the social
status of cigars today.
Then we can find “new” sources like fuel cells.
I takes a lot of “persuasion” to convince water to disassociate. Plants
do it though. Water is at a low energy potential compared to hydrogen
rich donor materials. The concept of fuel cells:
Hydrogen rich fuel in the presence of a catalyst membrane creates an
electrical potential when the other side is exposed to an oxygen rich
oxidizer (air). The only way those desperate little hydrogens can
go hang out with their favorite little oxygen buddy is to give up an
electron. Kinda like like a Liberal Party fundraiser separating a progessive
from his money in exchange for face time with the candidates.
The energy potential needs to be downhill. Water is the thing at the bottom
of that energy hill. This is good. The best part is the rest of the story.
Say goodbye to centralized power generation. Say hello to an Exurban
Diaspora. Remote villages are instantly 22nd Century. (Methane is a natural
gas after all.) [Side note: Dairy cows put out something like 5 times the
milk per cow than they used to. Imagine if we bred them for flatuence
instead of milk. The methane potential is tremendous. Then doomsayers can
tell us that we are running out of cattle.]
Most likely the fuel of choice for “cells” will be gaseous CNG.
Fuel cells will also fundamentally change the economics of energy. The US/AUS/etc.
our lucky that our social structure is not bound up in government dependence
on energy revenue to support other programs. Places with permeable borders
and $4 gas taxes (EU) are in for wrenching social pain when fuel cell
technology takes hold. We think we have a problem with drugs under the
Mexican border, imagine a nat gas pipe under the Russian border delivering tax free smuggled CNG to Germany. Fume sniffing border dogs?
Did I mention the possibility of catalytic disassociation of water (the
chemical equivalent of solar cells)? And while largely discredited there’s
still cold fusion.
Any of these technologies or discoveries will directly or indirectly
increase the world’s petroleum reserves. Some will make so much impact that
future generations will think us foolish for paying so much for oil as we do
today.
Wow, what insight. So he’s taken High School economics and learnt what supply, demand and substitution are. Can’t wait for the bit of the lecture where he informs the audience of wonders of something he likes to call ‘compound interest’.
Better than your insight Simon C. It always worth reminding people about the laws on supply and demand. It is often forgotten by commenters on this site.
Robert – as I implied above – add up the arable land, give us your best efficiency of conversion from your best net primary productivity – does it add up? Do fuel cells need any special metals?
Phone-a-friend says:
Australia consumed 52,908, million litres of refined petroleum products in 2003-04. Since 1960-61 this amount has gown on average by 2 per cent each year and is expected to continue growing at this rate until at least 2010. In 2003-04 approximately 80 per cent was locally produced and the balance was imported, either as feedstock for refineries or pre-refined products. Around 5 per cent of Australian refined product was re-exported to the region.
Conventional crude oil as feedstock for petroleum products grew rapidly in Australia from 986.7 MMbbl in 1970-71 to a peak production of 2,689 MMbbl in 2000-01. In 2001-02 production declined to 0.95 percent of the peak. In 2002-03 it was 0.93 per cent of the previous year and in 2003-04 it was 0.85 per cent of the previous year implying accelerating decline. Figure 1 presents historical data from 1965-66 through to 2003-04. From 2005 through to 2010 consumption is forecast to continue to grow at 2 per cent annually, and then through to 2020 at 1 per cent annually. This is in line with Federal government, CSIRO and IEA forecasts.
Production decline is calculated at 12 per cent annually 2005-2010 and then at 10 per cent through to 2025; this is based on issues outlined below.
-Federal government downgraded commercial reserves of crude and condensate by more than 50 percent in 2004 to 1.49 billion bbl remaining commercial reserves. This is the amount that falls below the curve through to 2025. Geoscience Australia downgraded production to reserves ratio from 11 years in 2004 to 5 years in 2005 however it is assumed that there will be some new discoveries and improvements in extraction that will allow smaller production volumes beyond 2010.
-BHP/Esso (Bass Strait) forecast 17 per cent annual decline through till 2008, Santos downgraded reserve estimates (Mutineer-Exeter) off Western Australia by 40 per cent in 2005 and Shell (Carnarvon Basin) downgraded.
-Woodside Petroleum/ABARE study states; “.. .Australia is facing a rapid decline in liquid petroleum production over the next decade. Liquids self-sufficiency is expected to decline from an average of 80-90% over the past decade to less than 40% by 2010.” In the light for downgrades this forecast would appear to be overly optimistic. Woodside’s proved plus probable oil reserves were downgraded in 2004 by 20.3 MMbbl giving a 2004 reserves replacement ratio (RRR) of 47 per cent (over 100 per cent is required for growth).
-Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) claimed that Australia needed to spend $1 billion a year in frontier exploration (off-shore deep water) just to stand still . However there has been little success despite generous support and concessions from Federal and State governments and also high global oil prices that should be conducive to bringing less profitable plays into production. In the first quarter of 2004 no Australian offshore oil discoveries were reported and 2003 was the worst year for discovery of the past 13 with a major decline in drilling success rate. .
-The largest projects coming online in new provinces e.g. ConocoPhillips Bayu/Undan Timor Gap Zone yield a maximum of 42 MMbbl/y of oil equivalents from gas condensates and LPG are exclusively for export . Residual LNG via Darwin is also scheduled for export.
-No oil company or geological report specific to Australia’s existing resource basins or frontier areas, to date, has produced adequate data to refute the forecasted decline rate, however all have published data support it. “the general view within the industry [is] that Australia has low oil prospectivity and fields yet to be discovered are of small to medium size and becoming more technically demanding As a result the international oil majors have almost ceased oil exploration in Australia”.
-The Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) modelling predicts rapid decline .
This report suggests that in 2010 Australian domestic production will only meet 25 per cent of consumption and 8 per cent in 2020. Australia will need to import 280 MMbbl in 2010 and 381 MMbbl in 2020 unless action is taken to reduce consumption, or price and supply constraints impose conservation, figure 2.
These findings are in stark contrast to the Federal Government’s White Paper Securing Australia’s Energy Future of June 2004 .
I found an interesting quote, it goes: If we accept that peak oil is a real phenomenon, then the next obvious question is; “When will the peak of extraction from the earth occur?” The answer to this depends on who you ask and ranges from 2007 to after 2067. Oil geologists tend to favour 2007; economists tend to favour 2067. That does expose the whimsical contradiction that economists appear to think themselves far better at finding oil than geologists.
Refs:
CSIRO 2002, Future Dilemmas: Options to 2050 for Australia’s population, technology, resources and environment, CSIRO, Canberra
Landwehr, M, and Marie-Lilliu, C, 2002. Transportation Projections in OECD regions: Detailed Report, IEA, Paris
Oil and Gas Journal, 20 December 2004, p. 18
BHP Billiton Petroleum, 2004. Operational & Financial Review October 2004. (39% reserve replacement 2003-04 with largest drop in Australia.) and Myer, Rod 2003, BHP hit as Strait oil shrinks, Sydney Morning Herald, January 30 2003.
See http://au.biz.yahoo.com/050215/19/3cq0.html or
http://ogj.pennnet.com/articles/article_display.cfm?Section=ONART&C=DriPr&ARTICLE_ID=221607&p=7
Fleay, B. 2005. Australian O&G reserves. http://stcwa.org.au/journal/150105/1106124615_17030.html
Akehurst, J, 2002. ‘World oil markets and the challenges for Australia.’ ABARE, Canberra.
ASX Announcement 19 January 2005, Mike Lynn Woodside Petroleum, Forth Quarter Report for period ended 31 December 2004.
APPEA 2002, Flowline January Issue 10, National Energy Policy. See also Fleay, B, 2002. Natural Gas “Magic Pudding” or depleting resource, Murdoch University Western Australia. See also
Powell T.G.,2001, Understanding Australia’s petroleum resources, future production trends and the role of the frontiers; APPEA Journ. 2001.
Geoscience Australia 2004, Australian Petroleum Exploration and development Activity
ABARE, 2004. AustralianCommodities, vol 11, no 2 p329.
Akehurt, J. 2002. “World Oil Markets and the Challenges for Australia”, Woodside Australia Energy & ABARE
ASPO issue 174
http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiry/energy/subs/sublist.html#list see submission from Matt Mushalik 2004, Critique on “Securing Australia’s Energy Future”, Focus: Oil & Gas Depletion
And some bedtime reading
http://www.rechsteiner-basel.ch/pub/41/wcre%5Fspeech%5Fand%5Fgraphs%5F27%5FNovember%5F2005%2Dfinal1.pdf
Phil, ask your departmental phone a friend how much flat arid land we have within 100km of a salt water source (sea or land) on which salt water algae can be grown for biofuel?
Makes Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen,
Baluchistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania look like pretty good long term prospects too. Better add Somalia, South West Africa, Mexico and Arizona as well.
No shortage of suitable land, no shortage of salt water, especially if sea levels actually rise, and no shortage of farmers willing to give it a go.
It seems your ASPO hasn’t heard of the price mechanism either. The US Senator’s paper ruled out Oil Sands and Shales on the basis of a $30 barrel. At $60/barrel the Rundle Twins are in megaprofit and net energy surplus.
They don’t seem to know much about hot rock technology either. A big sleeper at $30/barrel but might prove to be a pretty useful method of cooking oil shale.
But given you absolute certainty of the adverse impact of peak oil, then you must also agree that the IPCC’s CO2 projections are pure fantasy. You can’t have it both ways.
Didnt the phone-a-friend pundits call oil $100 bbl by end of last year? P-a-f pundits have been ramping up the $ of oil, you would think they had shares in resources, there has been no shortage only a perception fanned by the collective neuroses of the planet-savers.
On the IPCC – was waiting for it. Simple we’ll be using coal ! Lots of it. And lots of biospheric feedbacks to boot.
And probably lots of carbon released from saltwater algae farms (OK – I made the last part up).
Ian I cannot believe with your famous Pentium V “dual-core” envelope that you have not given me a Saharan falt land by area x efficiency of photosynthesis minus harvesting costs calculation on submerging the entire region in salty water – and won’t it sink into the sand??
Of course one of the “Paf”s gave me the duty of care/disclosure statement saying that he still had shares in oil shale from the 1970s.
Are there any hot-tish rocks near Rundle? Any environmental issues perhaps?
Rog – maybe we havn’t peaked yet. So why would there be peak shortages (except for Katrina type issues) if we were not over the hump.
Anyway it would be boring if we just let Jen get away with this post and went – “yea that’s right without thinking about it!”. Telstra execs indeed ! Bah humbug.
And why isn’t Ian Castles working on this ? Ian would sort this out in no time (having written this he’ll probably tell me he indeed has, here’s the paper, and he knows the entire IEA and Exxon board personally).
P.S. For Rog I’m still driving and smiling, and optimistic (well smiling at least). The End s only sorta nigh if we don’t sort you guys out soon. And let’s face it – where else would you find out about Cloncurry?
Yeah, uh-huh rog, oil traders pay attention to ‘planet savers’ when deciding how much they will pay for oil.
It wasn’t ‘phone a friend pundits’ who suggested $100 a barrel, nor was it by the end of last year.
It was investment bank Goldman-Sachs who put out the $100 a barrel potential figure, without a timeframe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4399537.stm
If you smooth out the month-by month bumps, the price of oil has been rising steadily since Sep03.
see
http://www.oilnergy.com
You can download monthly jan 03 to jan06 oil price data in excel format with graphs from the International Energy Agency here:
http://www.iea.org/textbase/stats/oilresult.asp
Of course this whole Peak Oil issue is about growth. Is that what we really want ?
http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2006/01/happiness_the_h.html
As usual Steve is wrong, shooting from the lip again, brain not fully engaged, the $100 bbl by next december was cheerfully reported by Phil Done’s comrades at the Guardian http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1519745,00.html
Hey phil, this sounds like you,
*’It’s fear,’ said Kyle Cooper, an analyst at Citigroup. ‘It’s not based on what is happening now. It’s based on fear of what could happen.’*
Posting for Phil Done:
Peak Metal ?
href=”http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/01/27/cnmetal27.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2006/01/27/ixcity.html”>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/01/27/cnmetal27.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2006/01/27/ixcity.html
I see palladium is now getting a run as a diesel exhaust catalyst
href=”http://www.platinum.matthey.com/media_room/1080900006.html”>http://www.platinum.matthey.com/media_room/1080900006.html
href=”http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KWH/is_6_43/ai_n14809486″>http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KWH/is_6_43/ai_n14809486
And how predictions of Cambridge Energy Research Associates are faring
href=”http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2006/03/another_look_at.html”>http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2006/03/another_look_at.html
from Phil Done.
Rog – it’s a conspiracy by those who don’t want you to know 🙂 Be very afraid.
And we’re providing you with good data here (well more data than quips)
Try the Review of the IEA World Energy Outlook 2005 by Jőrg Schindler and Werner Zittel
http://www.energybulletin.net/11629.html
My colleagues at the Guardian !! I wanted to join their club but they said you couldn’t have a gun, tattoos or a shaved head.
I stand corrected rog. But who would have thought you read the guardian?
Point 1 assumes there is still plenty of oil to be found. How realistic is that? I thought many in the industry have already concluded we are at, or near peak oil production globally? Where are the new oilfields going to be located?
Robert nailed this one already but just to clarify:
There is already more oil we know of than we could ever hope to use in the forseeable future. The problem is that most of it is located in places where the effort required to extract it would cost more than what you could sell it for.
The more the price goes up the more likely someone will be willing to drill for that oil, and at the same time substitutes become more attractive.
So it is quite likely that at some point in the near future we will stop using oil for energy, but it won’t be because there’s none left, it will be because there are better alternatives.
It was a Saudi foreign minister or someone similar who remarked that we didn’t leave the stone age behind because we ran out of stones.
I love that quote.
Oh, HTML stripped 🙁
Dear Jen,
Seems to me that a common thread on your blog is energy crisis – without much wider thought about this. So I suggest:
Energy Crisis 1. Was solved when humanity learned to produce and manage fire as a source of warmth, cooking etc. The start of the carbon cycle in domestic and industrial (heat hardened wood for tools). And I can picture the ancestors of some of your commenters waxing from the front row of the warmth on how we were looking at the demise of the known human race (the demisers) – people were getting too comfortable and lazy, the rocks and sticks thrown in hunting were losing aim and the food supply was in danger etc. No government cherrypicking and subsidy though.
Energy Crisis 2. Was the decrease in availability of forest products for timber (ships particularly) and charcoal. This was solved by the adoption of coal. Again no government cherrypicking and subsidy – some prompting from secretaries for navy maybe to metal ships without wind power. (And the demisers were still there)
Energy Crisis 3. Was the dependence (particularly urban) on horse drawn transport, when the dire ecological predictions of the day were for city streets three feet deep in horse manure . Petroleum and the dreaded IC engine appeared just in time. (Again no government cherrypicking and subsidy, but the demisers were still there)
Energy Crisis 4. Peak oil etc? Maybe time for another bet on the time, place and circumstances for ingenuity again? And save the money going to government cherrypicking and subsidy? And the demisers are still here.
Anon.
But the difference today is the sheer number of people on Earth. The level of expectations. And whether alternatives actually stack up.
Ladies and Gents
I am a geophysicist works in the petroleum exploration industry
Point 1. – Is there plenty of oil to be found – depends who you speak to – estimates of future discovered oil range from 200 Billion barrels low case, (Campbell et al), 400-500 (Robertsons, BGR, Maxted etc, I think this is about right) to over 1000 BBO (USGS) – This ignores reserves growth in existing fields which has significantly increased the size of the reserve base. Current Reserves estimates are 800 to 1500 BBO with about 900 BBO consumed since 1850.
However new discoveries have been shrinking in the last 10 years despite new technology. We are currently discovering in new fields about 25% of our annual consumption with reserves growth replacing most of the rest. Oil discoveries are determined by Geology, Price is very much a secondary factor.
Point 2
What we need are the services provided by oil – Substitutes such as Coal to Liquids, non-conventional oil and biofuels exist. They are however not very scalable, expensive and can be environmentally damaging. They do have a role to play and will form the floor price in the future
I do not personally think that renewables are much of an answer for technical reasons and as for hydrogen fool cells, dont get me started
Alan
It is stunning what value for money we are getting from our captains of industry and government mandarins these days. First a chairman of the wheat board who can’t hear (an impediment to negotiation one would think), now a communications executive who appears to believe in magic puddings. The audience must have thought they were getting a bedtime story. I hope we (i.e. taxpayers/consumers) weren’t paying for this as well, if so I want a recording for my 3 year old daughter.
What’s Burgess on about? They haven’t future-proofed Telstra very well. He should be taking lessons on this subject, not giving them.
Is anybody with a brain saying we’ll run out of oil? We didn’t leave the Stone Age because we ran out of rocks.
Joe no-one here is overlooking supply & demand, but is the law broken? No-one is demanding your troll quips but you keep supplying them anyway. Clearly you’ve got nothing else to offer.
Alan F geological explorations won’t continue without money to pay for them and that depends on the price of oil v’s opportunity costs v’s cost of substitutes and alternatives.
Phil in saying “why would there be peak shortages (except for Katrina type issues) if we were not over the hump” you’re asking to be told that we have medium-term extraction/processing infrastructure limitations that will be overcome with more investment, all in good time. So no need to sell the Hummer yet.
Phil asks; “Robert …add up the arable land, give us your best efficiency of conversion from your best net primary productivity – does it add up?”
I’m not sure why arable land is necessary to generate electricity from solar. Indeed, I’m more inclined to use wasted space. My rambling 1960s sunny Southern California home could go “off the grid,” generate more than it consumes with about 50 M^2 of cells unfortunately that would also cost about 400 times what the typical monthly enegy bill runs so it doesn’t make sense. I won’t go into the egregious public policies that forbid one from going off the grid as well. At the current rate I expect the costs to halve in about a decade so I expect the crossover point for western residential energy installations to occur 6-8 years from now. Even sooner if source point electricity utilities get smart and agree to subsidies in exchange for peak demand capacity sharing.
Then there’s the future of GM crops and animals. Drought resistant corn that can be used to produce some plastics comes to mind as a way to both reduce oil dependency and increase the amount of arable land by putting marginal areas to better use.
Fuel cells do indeed currently need special metals but I thought that complaint was dealt with decades ago with the famous bet. In 1980, economist Julian Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich decided to put their money where their predictions were. Ehrlich had been predicting massive shortages in various natural resources for decades, while Simon claimed natural resources were infinite.
Simon offered Ehrlich a bet centered on the market price of metals. Ehrlich would pick a quantity of any five metals he liked worth $1,000 in 1980. If the 1990 value of the metals, after adjusting for inflation, was more than $1,000 (i.e. the metals became more scarce), Ehrlich would win. If, however, the value of the metals after inflation was less than $1,000 (i.e. the metals became less scare), Simon would win. The loser would mail the winner a check for the change in price.
Ehrlich agreed to the bet and chose copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten.
By 1990, all five metal were below their real price level in 1970. Ehrlich lost the bet and sent Simon a check for $576.07. Prices of the metals chosen fell so much that Simon would have won the bet even if the prices hadn’t been adjusted for inflation. Remember when we were going to run out of platinum because of catylitic converters for automobiles? Does anyone remember that the Club of Rome in 1975 said in no uncertain terms that we would be absolutely out of gold by 1997? That was before they even knew about the explosion in commercial consumption for electronics.
Phil, you are right that we don’t have enough land to say grow material for bio-diesel to replace what we now extract from the ground but we don’t need to, we just need to price alternatives at the margin. At current prices we have some 37 years of proven extractable worldwide reserves. At the low end of the 35-45 year range that we’ve maintained since 1920. Interesting eh? In 1920 we had exactly the same world oil supply balance we have today. We’ve consumed more oil since 1970 than was proven to exist at that time. Someday the peak oil theory might be right about finiteness of the resource but even then the theory will be completely wrong as to the consequences.
Robert – I’m not talking solar electricity. I’m talking energy for mobiles – cars, trucks, tractors. Convince me we can run our mobile fleet on solar.
There is no doubt biofuels work but you have to look at some fundamentals. Firstly there’s how much solar energy is received at a location – that sets and overall limikt on CO2 fixation processes. Then assume some efficiency of conversion factors. (Thought Motty would have fired up the “envelope” by now). Some of the best biofuel sources are probably wheat, corn and sugar but feel free to argue. In the end it’s how much energy “net” you get out.
On metals – don’t pick Erlich’s list – pick platinum and palladium. All necessary for air pollution control and fuel cells. Then find out where they come from and what reserves you think there are. Then add in China and India’s demands – does it add up. I personally think it’s a concern if these materials are needed in large quantities for decades to come for development of replacement technologies.
Club of Rome were dead wrong in woefully underestimating the technological effciencies to be gained and undiscovered resources – but does this argument go on forever? Will we never reach any limits. Are there no limits to growth at all?
I beleive that with the current population of the world, energy demand growth rates, and India and China demanding our standards of living – that we may be seeking alternative fuels earlier than we think.
And it won’t be the last drop of fuel that gets you – it will be the effect on western stock markets and the economic repercussions that get us first and foremost.
So very strange that in the global warming debate we’re all quantitative and arguing about every detail. But with energy supply – “she’ll be right mate” – in God and Exxon we trust.
Phil explains; “I’m not talking solar electricity. I’m talking energy for mobiles – cars, trucks, tractors. Convince me we can run our mobile fleet on solar.”
Repeat after me; “All energy is fungible.” Is there any discussion on this point? Every joule that comes from nuclear or solar or gains in efficiency or deep sea hydrates or room temperature superconduction or regenerative interial recovery is a joule less of whatever is the most expensive energy alternative. When we stop using oil and natgas for super inefficient electric point source generation those geopetrol commodities are freed up to provide transportation fuels. Sempra Energy has a standby natgas powered peak load generator about 30km from my home. It only comes on line durring peak demand periods which in Southern California are also the brightest sunny summer days when my 50m^2 rooftop cells would be most useful. That’s why I commented that it would be in the local electric companies’ best interests to subsidize my solar array. Like I said, fungible. See Dilbert:
http://tinyurl.com/b7vug
I think you miss the point of my tedious repetion of the timeworn examples of Maltus, Erlich, Club of Rome Hubbert, et al. Point being; THEY’VE ALWAYS BEEN WRONG. And every time it was because of events/circumstances they never envisioned. Given 3 centuries of uniformly unbroken failure of the limits crowd it is a suckers bet to think they finally got this one right. My personal bets for their “I never thought of that” excuses are RTSC, amorphous solar, monopoles and Fullerenes. Physics has no limits. I met Buckminster Fuller once, second or third smartest man I’ve ever met. They just don’t operate on the same plane as we mere mortals. I’ve no doubt that were he around to comment on global warming he’d recommend patience.
Platinum or Palladium? I expect if we run short we’ll whip up a few geneticaly modified blue-green algae to extract what we need from seawater. Problem is I don’t think we have enough expertise to target valuable materials and there will most likely also be collected tons of junk metals like Gold and Wolfram.
Article at the back of the fin review today (9th March) titled “Save us with $100 oil”.
Well, this blog is certainly one step ahead of the trends.
Fair enough – technological optimism. That’s a point of view. I don’t think we have the time to not suffer some dislocation. IHMO
How advanced really have motor-cars become in the last 100 years – perhaps refinement of the basic idea to the maximum (with air-con and DVD player)?
My point though is – does it add up for what percent of 9 billion humans we expect. Who is going to miss out. Who gets a Toyota Prius and who doesn’t. Who gets a hydrogen car and who does not. Australia doesn’t have the oil nor the technological base. We’ll be using good ol’ USA ingenuity I’m sure (at a price !).
And what if the Chinese and Indians decide the remaining stocks are theirs. And are willing to use our uranium that we so gladly sold them to back up their position ?
Market prices or technology or science alone are insufficient to bring about the necessary technological change at the necessary pace. It’s not jsut a matter of energy joule for joule substitutes and quick-fixes a la overnight instant-mix-just-add-water highly productive algae. There are long lead times, and disruptive technology that cuts to the core of productive and distributive activities in such an intertwined economy with centralised production has far-reaching consequences.
Given the uncertainty, doubt over the winning solution & the high development costs, private companies will respond by spreading themselves quickly across the business-as-usual bases and thinly across the riskier alternatives: ie only invest small hedging bets in emerging markets, while also trying to block change, while also putting pressure on govts to lead the way with energy policy and incentives to reduce the risks that corporations otherwise face.
The social pressures (incl. greenie doomsayers and industry rebels) & govt policies & scientific bodies are each just as crucial to kickstart the mix as are markets forces.
Technology of and by itself doesn’t provide the solutions. It’s inseparable from the complex social structures from which it arises and with which it interacts. It responds to the wake-up calls.
Saudi Oil reserves tripled.
http://armor.typepad.com/bastardsword/2004/04/saudis_triple_o.html
Never read that in the media did we. Talk about selective reporting.
Apart from the other irritating fact for the greens that oil is a product of the earth’s mantle and is emphatically NOT compressed biomass.
http:www.gasresources.net
Well said Monkey Wretch.
Louis – you tell us many interesting things.
The abiogenic theory stands in contrast to that of Peak Oil, which presumes a fixed and dwindling supply of oil that was formed through biological processes. So there are vested political and philosophical interests as well as scientific interest in pushing this line.
Wiki says (a potted summary)on abiogenic petroleum.
The idea of abiogenic petroleum origin was championed in the Western world by Thomas Gold based on thoughts from Russia, mainly on studies of Nikolai Kudryavtsev. The idea proposes that large amounts of carbon exist naturally in the planet, some in the form of hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are less dense than aqueous pore fluids, and migrate upward through deep fracture networks. Thermophilic, rock-dwelling microbial life-forms are in part responsible for the biomarkers found in petroleum.
This theory is very much a minority opinion amongst geologists. This theory often pops up when scientists are not able to explain apparent oil inflows into certain oil reservoirs. These instances are rare.
A reasonable critique is here:
http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=331&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
So Louis give us some evidence to convince us You’re right. At present petroleum geologists have enjoyed some success by drilling in likely biogenic places – if you are correct there may be many profitable places ignored. Do we have any cincher evidence? Or is this just any crackpot theory?
Phil,
It is generally accepted that Gold plagiarised it from the Russians.
I have given you the evidence – it is all there on the gasresources link. I can do no more than that.
Science is not opinion and it is not a question of whether I am right or wrong, it is whether the theory is right or wrong.
Biological oil relies on contradicting the second law of thermodynamics since at the pressures and temperatures of buried sedimentary basins, only methane can be produced.
You have not taken on board the triping of Saudi oil reserves at all, I note.
I would also suggest you read Kenney’s papers and the other Russian translationsn before coming to premature conclusions.
I would also look carefully at the Gold’s drilling experiment – oil coming out of deep granite.
Your reference is known to me.
So Phil, you have been shown the resources, so go and do some work yourself on the matter instead of demanding me to supply all your answers.
Louis – “Biological oil relies on contradicting the second law of thermodynamics since at the pressures and temperatures of buried sedimentary basins, only methane can be produced.”
This is an explanation of the second law
” Like Carnot, Clausius worked out a general equation, his being devoted to the measurement of entropy change over a period of time: (change)S = Q / T (the change in entropy is equal to the amount of heat added to the system [by an invertible process] divided by the temperature in degrees Kelvin). The beauty of this equation is that it can be used to compute the entropic change of any exchange in nature, not solely limited to machines. This development brought thermodynamics out of the industrial workplace, and opened the possibility for further studies into the tendencies of natural order (and lack therefore of), eventually extending to the universe as a whole.
Applying this knowledge to nature, physicists found that the total entropy change (change in S) always increases for every naturally occurring event (within a closed system) that could be then observed. ”
Note the CLOSED SYSTEM. Ancient oil production is not a closed system because it takes input from solar energy.
The tripling of Saudi oil reserves was a political thing to do with quotas. Kuwait recently halved their reserves and Bergan peaked.
The scientists’ theories of oil formation have produced ALL current oil discoveries. No oil has been found out of these sedimentary oil basins from the shallow seas when Gondwana split up. There are also biomarkers in oil and fossils associated with oil basins that could not be there if the oil was not generated from biological processes.
Finally even if abiotic oil was true we would still run short of oil. Our current demand is 83 million barrels per day. Aboitic oil, if it was true, would only happen over millions of years so the current reserves are to all intents and purposes finite to this current society no matter how the oil is generated.
Louis, I note that your tripled Saudi oil story is a couple years old, and references a publication called ‘Arab News’.
I also note that
The US Energy Information Administration – the provider of “Official Energy Statistics from the US Government”, has not not taken on board the tripled figure, and still has the Saudi reserves at 260 billion barrels.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/saudi.html
And there has been plenty of media since 2004 about skepticism of reserve estimates, esp. once it was revealed that the world’s 2nd biggest oil field in Kuwait was past its prime.
Ender,
http://www.gasresources.net/ThrmcCnstrnts.htm
And there are other papers discussing this concept at that link. They are technical but Kenney has written a simpler article without the horrendous mathematics and thermodynamic theory.
It is here http://www.gasresources.net/Science_JunkScience.htm
So why do you find so hard to accept basic physics?
This http://www.gasresources.net/DDBflds2.htm describes a practical test of the Russian-Ukrainian Abiotic oil theory.
This is a recent paper on the oil potential of Vietnam etc
http://www.geus.dk/publications/bull/nr4/nr4_p97-100-uk.htm
Various interesting comments are made by petroleum is an excellent solvent of organic material and if gthe oil is coming from the hypothesised ‘kitchen sink” and migrates through sedimentary strata, the it will pick up all the biological markers unique to each sediment.
All sedimentary basins are riddled with biodebris, oil or no oil.
Louis the CIA doesn’t seem to believe that article either – they’ve got Saudi Arabia with 262.7 billion bbl. In the article the good minister also said that oil won’t rise to more than $28 a barrel (now $60) and “if required, we can increase output from 10.5 million barrels a day to 12-15 million barrels a day” currently, nearly two years, they’re pumping 9.5 million barrels a day.
So in conclusion – the article is rubbish.
Louis – “So why do you find so hard to accept basic physics?”
Because the basic physics says you are totally wrong. The basement oil that is in Vietnam, the abiotic theory is only one of the possible explanations and it is not even the best.
All the trillions of barrels of oil found to date have been found in areas that the biological origin of oil would predict them to be. Only a minute fraction has been discovered where aboiotic oil can be considered to be one of the less likely explanations. Considering the weight of evidence the biological origen of oil is far far more likely to be correct.
Ender,
you still have not produced experimental evidence showing how hydrocarbons are formed from biological debris at the pressures and temperatures in sedimentary basins. And I do not mean methane. I mean grease, basically Saudi crude.
This is basic physics.
Kenney shows it cannot be done.
Oh and don’t forget the oil in Yemen is precambrian, which makes it predate the biosphere.
Oil dated at 1047 +/-35 Ma http://www.gsajournals.org/gsaonline/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1130%2F0091-7613(1985)13%3C334:POIILV%3E2.0.CO%3B2
I only need one fact to sink a theory.
Kenney has supplied more.
But perhaps many facts reduce theories to Swiss cheese:
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/abstracts/2005research_calgary/abstracts/extended/mello/mello.htm
Anything that Louis evangelises about makes one immediately suspicious.
Phil
This is not proof at all. All it describes is what they find in oil.
Proof is when someone produces typical Saudi Crude from biological detritus in the laboratory to show that at basin temptures and pressures heavy hydrocarabons are produced.
No one has done this yet.
And oil was found in Siljan.
Sorry Phil, what really becomes suspicious is the evangelising of AGW.
Given long enough they just might.
What was found in Siljan?
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011205_no_free_pt2.shtml
Seems to me that we have a big case of denialism as with anti-AGW. Don’t think we’re getting anywhere are we?
The abiotic hypothesis remains just that, an hypothesis which has failed in prediction and so cannot be elevated to a theory. It is completely ignored by the oil industry worldwide, and even within Russia. And that is the final testament to its failure.
Louis – “you still have not produced experimental evidence showing how hydrocarbons are formed from biological debris”
So where is your evidence that the incredibly complex mix of hydrocarbons that comprises crude oil can be formed by abiotic processes?
BTW most Saudi oil is light sweet crude not grease.
Hate to tell you this however precambrian does not predate the biosphere:
“The Precambrian era was a period in earth history before the evolution of hard-bodied and complex organisms. Throughout the extent of both periods, dominant Precambrian and Vendian organisms were soft-bodied, simple, and entirely marine. Diversification of the hard-bodied organisms did not occur until the beginning of the Cambrian, when the first shelly fauna appeared. ”
from http://hannover.park.org/Canada/Museum/extinction/venmass.html
Precambrian Oil
http://conferences.minerals.nt.gov.au/cabs/pdfs/abstracts/A11_Dutkiewicz_et_al.pdf
More Precambrian Oil.
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf048/sf048p14.htm
The name of T. Gold appears often in Science Frontiers. Currently, he is promoting the theory that many of the earth’s hydrocarbon deposits (gas, oil, graphite, etc.) are not of biological origin but are formed rather when primordial methane outgases from the planet’s interior. A vanishingly small number of geologists buy Gold’s theory. Nevertheless, the Swedish State Power Authority and some private investors have been impressed enough to fund a drilling project at the Siljan Ring, a meteorite crater 150 miles north of Stockholm. There are no significant sources of biogenic hydrocarbons nearby, but oil seeps are not uncommon around the Ring. Mainstream theory cannot account for these seeps, but Gold’s theory can: primordial methane streaming up through the cracked granite shield is converted, probably with the help of bacteria, into oil and hydrocarbon sludge. “Ridicuous,” say the mainstreamers.
Recently, the drilling program, which has reached the 22,000foot level, brought up 60 kilograms of very smelly black sludge with the consistency of modeling clay. The gunk seems to have a biological origin. In addition to the black sludge, the drillers have been encountering increasing quantities of various hydrocarbon gases as the hole went deeper. All very supportive of Gold’s hypothesis.
Establishment geologists are having difficulties explaining these results. They blame contamination by drilling lubricants and/or the surface oil seeps. Gold discounts these explanations. (Anonymous; “Going for Gold,” Scientific American, 259:20, August 1988. Also: Begley, Sharon, and Lubenow, Gerald C.; “Gushers at 30,000 Feet,” Newsweek, p. 53, June 27, 1988. Cr. C.H. Stiles) Reference. The problem of methane’s origin is covered in ESC13 in our catalog: Anomalies in Geology . To order, visit: here
And when you can point to experimental (lab) evidence that you can create grease from biomass at the PT conditions of sedimentary basins where it is found, it biotic oil remains speculation.
Louis – “brought up 60 kilograms of very smelly black sludge”
Well thats the end of the Peak Oil problem then.
Unconvinced on the sludge:
Only 80 barrels of oily sludge were taken from the field. While Dr. Gold claimed this oil to have an abiotic origin, others have pointed out that the early drilling used injected oil as a lubricant, and that this is the likely origin of the oily sludge.3 It has also been mentioned that sedimentary rocks 20 kilometers away could have been the source of hydrocarbon seepage.4 Others have observed that during World War II, the Swedish blasted into the bedrock to produce caverns in order to stockpile petroleum supplies. The Swedes now face environmental problems as these petroleum stockpiles are leaking into the groundwater.5 These stockpiles could well provide the source of the oil produced from the Siljan crater.
Meanwhile after that diversion back to estimating Peak Oil !
Ender
You obviously have not read Gold’s book, nor made any effort to familiarise yourself with the Russian Science.
That sludge was analysed and found to be microscopic biogenically derived magnetite.
You still have to find experimental evidence to support the claim that oil is biotic. Until that happens, the laboratory evidence of hgh pressure data described by Kenny, the presence of hydrocarbons in preCambrian igneous rocks, are facts not theories.
Get back to the debate when some facts can be marshalled.
so where are the vast reserves of biogenic oil? By sitting on that secure knowledge Louis, you’re punishing the international economy and causing unnecessary wars. Perhaps the Russians know?
So how many prospecting companies share your views Louis?
Phil,
Until my reasonable request for confirming experimental lab data proving petroleum can be produced from biomass at the PT conditions present in deep sedimentary basins, I don’t see any need to answer diversions at present.
uh-oh, extended conversation with louis about one of his theories. I better forget this thread and go and find something more pleasant and rewarding to do.
*Steve goes off to find a car door to repeatedly bang his hand in*
Steve,
They are NOT my theories and never have been.
That is simply a lie. Nor have I ever assumed authorship of these theories.
Proof of the mantle origin of hydrocarbons are found here:
Inorganic origin in upper mantle seen likely for solid hydrocarbons in Syria plateau basalt.
http://www.gasresources.net/Mafoud-91.htm
Comment on “Mantle hydrocarbons: Abiotic or biotic?” by R. Sugisaki and K. Mimura.
http://www.gasresources.net/Sugisaki(JFK-comments).pdf
The Search for Mantle Markers: Examination of the Gravberg 1 “black gunk.”
http://www.gasresources.net/MantleMarkers(Hannover).htm
I suggest you, Phil, Phil Done and Ender do some serious Googling and see if you can find another method of synethesising hydrocarbons apart from the Fischer-Tropsch method.
So by the answer then, we assume no petroleum companies subscribe to the abiogenic theory.
Phil Done,
I have said no such thing explicitly or implicitly.
Phil replies; “Fair enough – technological optimism. That’s a point of view. I don’t think we have the time to not suffer some dislocation. IHMO”
It would be “technological optimism” if I were relying upon every one of the possible magic bullets I described. I agree it is unreasonable to expect all to pan out but by the same measure it is a safe bet that enough will prove practical to save my model.
I also agree as to dislocation. Crisis is opportunity. The tree of capitalism needs to be shaken up at least as often as the tree of liberty.
“How advanced really have motor-cars become in the last 100 years – perhaps refinement of the basic idea to the maximum (with air-con and DVD player)?”
Wow, the changes are many orders of magnitude in nearly every category. Where to start? My grandmothers’ Dueseberg that cost the average persons 5 years salary? That consumed a weeks wages in fuel, tires and oil in 2 hours of driving? Safety? Pollution? Speed?
“My point though is – does it add up for what percent of 9 billion humans we expect. Who is going to miss out. Who gets a Toyota Prius and who doesn’t. Who gets a hydrogen car and who does not. Australia doesn’t have the oil nor the technological base. We’ll be using good ol’ USA ingenuity I’m sure (at a price !).”
There’s always going to be a bell curve of some sort as to these issues. What I do know is that wealth raises other boats and if as some many imagine energy will constrain then wealth helps at the margins, helping all.
“And what if the Chinese and Indians decide the remaining stocks are theirs. And are willing to use our uranium that we so gladly sold them to back up their position ?”
I’m still undecided as to whether China can hold social tensions in check long enough to get through the Summer Olympics ’08. It’s too late to use force to answer these questions. The genie is out of the bottle. But this is just a distraction from the core topics above, give it no mind.
What are we all worried about? As long we have the US to save us.
Cote said: “What I do know is that wealth raises other boats”. Ahhhhhh, the old rising-tide-lifts-all-boats analogy. Fill in the blank: a rising tide in one part of the world requires a ________ tide in another.
Interesting point, Robert Cote. If the projections include the assumption that the average Chinese household will be cruising around in a 3 tonne SUV then they are in for a reality check. The under 20 years chinese cohort is 2 males to one female so we know perfectly well that half the households will still be using a Vespa in 2050. And even if the other half were inclined to buy an SUV the reality of congestion and parking will still be there to knock that little fantasy on the head quick smart.
So if projections of future energy use are to assume substantial development in existing lesser developed countries (LDC’s) then they will need to feed in the Japanese consumption patterns, not the US or European ones.
What a try on – a 3 ton SUV comaparo to a Vespa. Seen the streets of Shanghai lately? Chinese worried about congestion and parking ?
Try something a bit more rigorous: Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?2574
Of course if you really want to have a discussion:
Revisiting The Limits to Growth: Could The Club of Rome Have Been Correct, After All?
http://greatchange.org/ov-simmons,club_of_rome_revisted.html
Since we have resisident geologist Louis online can I ask him a question (somewhat related, in that it relates to potentially massive fuel reserves).
In my reputable Ecology textbook by Paul Colinvaux (Ecology II) there is mention of proven massive precambrian burial of microscopic carbon in sedimentary basins corresponding to massive release of oxygen to the atmosphere. Evidence emerged from studies of isotope anomalies.
It seems to me this carbon could be a source (in principle) of methane and other hydrocarbons, for example by activities microbes active in deep sediments.
Is there any evidence for such a process (biotic occuring in deep sediments deposition date ? ? 2 billion bp. approx.
Don’t have the text with me, possibly Schopf did the work, maybe Gold. (my memory not perfect).
Phil, the SUV’s in Shanghai are only early days. Car ownership is still very limited and the Chinese word for crowd, “Bik Yan”, has yet to acquire an automotive dimension. When it does it will still be a very long way from comparable car ownership rates in the west.
China toyed with banning bicycles in its city. luckily they’re going green these days, investing loads in greening cities, renewable energies. It’s not just coal. They see the need for renewables and they’re cautiously making some healthy investments for a greener future.
Oh but India is pumping out its own cars now. Good ones too – with Italian designers. Cheap and slick and combust dinsaur fossils just as well as the rest.
I was in Shanghai six months ago.
There were enough cars on the road that they had traffic jams and pollution, and cars and busses seemed a common mode of transport – i had foolishly been expecting to see masses of bicycles everywhere. no.
I dont think china will have the same level of car ownership as western countries, for the simple reason that I’m not sure it would be possible to build a road network to support that many cars. Shanghai is already full of massive concrete freeways and cloverleafs, and is already jammed.
Then what Chinese city was Monkey Wrench in?
I have perused the above debate with some interest……and offer a few comments of my own.
* Limits to oil resources……..during the 1980’a a $300m coal to oil pilot plant was built and tested in the latrobe valley. It was german chemistry, ( albert speer and all that ), applied to our crappy brown coal. Naturally enough it worked. Estimates of the break even price were about $30/40 per barrel. But like the athabasca tar-sands, and other such responses to the first oil crisis, by the time it was built the oil price was $15 bb.
All bets were off. People lost money.
My point is that, at todays price of $50/60 bb ALL the known substitutes, including oil shale, coal to oil, gas to petrol ( heaven forbid….see later under Gas profligacy….), tarsands and ( especially )venezuelen heavy crude, are profitable.
The Athabasca venture,an embarrassment to the alberta govt for twenty years,is now making billions, and investment ( including chinese money ) is pouring in. The venezuelan heavy crude, under lake maracaibo,is profitable at $40bb. Requires Steam injection etc, and has never been seriously tapped…contains as much oil as has ever been pumped….Shell, and others are negotiating to spend tens of billions on it.
The rundle oil shale project was to be profitable around the same price. The gladstone plant was to produce 15% of our transport fuels. It crashed because of “environmental concerns “. Now people talk of converting a huge slab of our arable land to biomass instead!
Anyway, given that coal supplies are almost inexhaustable, it stands to reason that $60 will be a medium term cap on oil prices. Geopolitical considerations (war) might create spikes, but we will not run out. Any greenie waiting for the world to run out of oil so as to hasten the day of reckoning should not hold their breath.
* I too am a fan of using ” genetically tweaked up algae in ponds ” as a technique of producing many products that are currently grown on broad acres. ( carbohydrates, oils and fats, fibres, and so on… An order of magnitude less land req, and strike a blow for lifting the heavy hand of man from the land too.
* Limits to growth…none.
phil sawyer
Phil Saywer – You need to understand the concept of energy return on energy invested. Oil started at an energy return of 100:1 and now is about 20:1. This means for every unit invested in obtaining oil you get 20 units of energy to do work out. Following on from this our society is set up to expect 20 units of available energy to be available to be used.
Tar Sands and Heavy Oil have an energy return (EROI) of 5:1 at best. Shale Oil is about 3:1 at best. It takes 1000 cu feet of natural gas to produce 1 barrel of oil from tar sands. Given Canada’s entire natural gas output then the Tar Sands could be ramped up to 10 million barrels per day by 2020. As demand is 83 million barrels per day now and is expected to be 120 million barrels per day by 2020 then this is a drop in the ocean. We will run out of gas before we run out out of Tar Sands. Tar Sand oil is also extremely bad on the environment. Tons and tons of water are needed to wash the sand before refining making it toxic and requring massive tailing dams to contain the waste water.
Coal is not inexhaustable. There are about 1 trillion tons of known reserves. Assuming we try to replace current oil supply with coal to liquids and continue to use coal for electricity we will reach Peak Coal in about 2046 and our coal reserves will be exausted about 50 years later.
Profit is not the question. We are starting to come up against physical barriers of energy return that at the moment we cannot breach. We cannot simple substitute a resource with an EROI of 20:1 with one that has an EROI of 5:1. Where does the extra energy come from?
To continue we need to make fundamental changes to adapt to lower EROI energy resources. Failure to do this will lead to adjustments. If we start now the adjustments could be benign. Denial of the problem will lead to the adjustments being anything but benign will subsequent massive loss of life and property.
The extra energy, Ender, comes from using part of the output as input. For an EROI of , say three, as in biodiesel, there is enough output to spare to give 2 units of output to usde per pass.
And I wouldnt putdown profit Ender either- its a strong driving force to make useful things happen.
detribe – if you have to use part of the output as an input then that lowers the energy return. If we require 20 units of energy to maintain the economic system as it is now then at the moment this only requires the input of 1 unit. Alternatives require 4 units of energy to obtain this same output. This energy has to come from somewhere OR we have to make 5 units of energy do the same as 20 units used to OR just have the economic output of 5 units of energy.
Energy return is not affected by profit it is just basic physics
yes I understand that Ender, but when the crude EROI is around three there is plenty of room for generating a stream of useful energy with no required net input. At around a crude EROI of 10, as in Brazilan ethanol, discussion of input energy is essentially irrelevant. There are also plenty of technical options to increase biofuel EROI by known technologies. I would argue that the actual key limitations are available arable land (eg in China and India) and flow on effects to food prices (already occuring with sugar) and wilderness encroachment, water demand also (especially in India, possibly also Australia).
detribe – so you are getting energy for nothing? In this case the input is solar energy. A solar PV panel has an EROI of about 5 or 7:1 so an electric car on PV panels has a better energy return that biofuel. Brazilian ethanol is only sustainable with fertilisers and its energy return is exeptional.
All those things you cite are as important however you must consider the energy return of different resources. You cannot replace directly a 20:1 EROI resource with one that is even 10:1.
As is pretty obvious Ender, EROI for agriculture always leaves out the solar energy component, and the values greater than 1 do not break laws of thermodynamics.
Sunlight is actually “free” but land and water are not.
I’ve commented elsewhere that Brazilian sugar industry doesnt use much fertiliser as they are a petroleum poor country. That why they started the ethanol biofuel game in the first place – to save on oil imports. They actually recycle their ethanol related water waste streams as fertilisers to conserve nutrients. That’s part of the reasons their EROI is now so good. That’s why your Brazilian fertiliser comments are off target.
detribe – so you are saying that Brazilain farmers do not use fertilisers? How does the soil not deplete. Producing ethanol requires nutrients that are not replaced because the ethanol is taken away and used elsewhere. Unless those nutrients are replaced the soil will deplete. Also Brazilian ethanol is the exception rather than the rule – Brazill cannot supply 83 million barrels per day of fuel equivilents.
Why go to all the trouble of growing fuel when solar panels and wind turbines both have a better energy return than biomass?
Ender
Your assumptions about fertiliser use are wrong, in MHO and from my usually faulty memory, on this I am so clear headed, Ill risk not checking the documents I read just a few months ago in preparation for an article I published in the IPA review, latest issue.
Youve been accepting at face value too much pseudo- religous dogma as a substitute for checking real world facts is my guess. Not all farming in the world relies heavily on syntheic fertilisers.
Why not check out whether my clear recollection of practices in Brazil is accurate, and my vivid memory of spray recycling of waste streams back to the cane field is supported by the many websites on the net describing alcool production in Brazil. I can’t remember the Portugese word for the spraying equipment just now, but there is one underneath a slide in a powerpoint file on the web.
And no, ethanol does not in itself remove either N or P as its chemical formula is CH3CH2OH.See, only Carbon and water. The carbon comes fron the air.
As far as switching to solar panels and wind turbines, youll have to ask the Brazilians why they continue making so much ethanol when you apparently have a much better option they so stupidly ignore.
I imagine its because it would cost them a fortune and have no garantee [sp/] of working this year.
detribe – and you seem to he accepting a bit too much pseudo religious dogma about free markets and farming without fertilisers.
Any farm product grown will deplete the soil and requires fertilisers. The fertiliser can be organic or artificial with the artificial being the easiest and most productive hence it use. The real expansion of food production was enabled by the Haber Process that fixed nitrogen artificially.
Making ethanol is a political decision based more on acceptance and maintenance of the status-quo rather than knowledge of comparative EROIs. Replacement of liquid fuel leaves the profitable distribution network intact however does not solve the real problem. We cannot grow enough food for 6 or 8 billion people AND grow fuel for their cars and trucks. Ethanol is a farm subsidy not a solution to Peak Oil.
http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=A440265&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
This report is from the US Army Corps of Engineers dated Sept 2005
On page iii of the Executive summary it reads:
“Domestic production of both oil and natural gas are past their peak and world petroleum production is nearing its peak.”
On page vii
“The doubling of oil prices from 2003-2005 is not an anomaly, but a picture of the future.”
This report is from the US Army Corps of Engineers dated Sept 2005 “Domestic production of both oil and natural gas are past their peak and world petroleum production is nearing its peak.”
Geee, now where have I heard this before? Oh yes:
* “Hurry, before this wonderful product is depleted from Nature’s
laboratory!”–advertisement for “Kier’s Rock Oil,” 1855
* “. . . the United States [has] enough petroleum to keep its kerosene
lamps burning for only four years . . . ”
–Pennsylvania State Geologist Wrigley, 1874
* “. . . although an estimated two-thirds of our reserve is still
in the ground, . . . the peak of [U.S.] production will soon be
passed–possibly within three years.”
–David White, Chief Geologist, USGS, 1919
* ” . . . it is unsafe to rest in the assurance that plenty of
Petroleum will be found in the future merely because it has been in the
past.” –L. Snider and B. Brooks, AAPG Bulletin, 1936
$60 oil has gone on this long because the consuming economies have been so strong that they haven’t tipped into recession. That’s all. No other reason. None. We aren’t “running out of oil” and everyone who says that $60 oil is their evidence of scarcity had damn well better be ready to shout from the rooftops that trillions of barrels will be generated spontaneously should the price revert back to $40 because it is the same argument.
Interesting site on the aluminium industry:
http://www.baddevelopers.green.net.au/Docs/Alcoa.htm
Seems that subsidies are OK after all.
i came to this link & have read the entire blog & still have one question. is it necessary that ‘fossil fuel’ & abiogenic theory are mutually exclusive. each agrees an ‘insubstantial’ amount of the other. the Malthusians have cried wolf too many times, they have lost all credibility. technology will provide replacements. wired w/ recent article on replacing plastics w/ biotic chems. read closely the comment by the individual discussing recent world oil prices. they will fall & it does NOT signify new reserves being found (or ‘created’), only less demand @ previous prices. (due to world recession). IS ABIOGEN THEORY ACCEPTED in Russia/ Ukraine? furthermore re: market pressures. simply that recent polling idicatate 50% Canadians would prefer government ownership of oil resources doesn’t mean this may not be the 50% badly mis-informed. Look to Mexico’s Pemex (recent WSJ article by M. Anastasia).