BIKE: Re: Energy update

[Scott Kurland]

rcbaker wrote:
> "Either we lay hands on every available source of fossil fuel, in
> which
> case we fry the planet and civilization collapses, or we run out, and
> civilization collapses."

Fry the planet?!

> Bottom of the barrel
>
> The world is running out of oil - so why do politicians refuse to talk
> about it?
>
>
> Tuesday December 2, 2003
> The Guardian
>
> The oil industry is buzzing. On Thursday, the government approved the
> development of the biggest deposit discovered in British territory
> for at
> least 10 years. Everywhere we are told that this is a "huge" find,
> which
> dispels the idea that North Sea oil is in terminal decline. You begin
> to
> recognize how serious the human predicament has become when you
> discover that this "huge" new field will supply the world with oil
> for five
> and a quarter days.
>
> Every generation has its taboo, and ours is this: that the resource
> upon
> which our lives have been built is running out. We don't talk about it
> because we cannot imagine it. This is a civilization in denial.
>
> Oil itself won't disappear, but extracting what remains is becoming
> ever
> more difficult and expensive. The discovery of new reserves peaked in
> the 1960s. Every year we use four times as much oil as we find. All
> the
> big strikes appear to have been made long ago: the 400m barrels in the
> new North Sea field would have been considered piffling in the 1970s.
> Our future supplies depend on the discovery of small new deposits and
> the better exploitation of big old ones. No one with expertise in the
> field
> is in any doubt that the global production of oil will peak before
> long.
>
> The only question is how long. The most optimistic projections are the
> ones produced by the US department of energy, which claims that this
> will not take place until 2037. But the US energy information agency
> has admitted that the government's figures have been fudged: it has
> based its projections for oil supply on the projections for oil
> demand,
> perhaps in order not to sow panic in the financial markets.
>
> Other analysts are less sanguine. The petroleum geologist Colin
> Campbell calculates that global extraction will peak before 2010. In
> August, the geophysicist Kenneth Deffeyes told New Scientist that he
> was "99% confident" that the date of maximum global production will be
> 2004. Even if the optimists are correct, we will be scraping the oil
> barrel
> within the lifetimes of most of those who are middle-aged today.
>
> The supply of oil will decline, but global demand will not. Today we
> will
> burn 76m barrels; by 2020 we will be using 112m barrels a day, after
> which projected demand accelerates. If supply declines and demand
> grows, we soon encounter something with which the people of the
> advanced industrial economies are unfamiliar: shortage. The price of
> oil
> will go through the roof.
>
> As the price rises, the sectors which are now almost wholly dependent
> on crude oil - principally transport and farming - will be forced to
> contract. Given that climate change caused by burning oil is cooking
> the planet, this might appear to be a good thing. The problem is that
> our
> lives have become hard-wired to the oil economy. Our sprawling
> suburbs are impossible to service without cars. High oil prices mean
> high food prices: much of the world's growing population will go
> hungry.
> These problems will be exacerbated by the direct connection between
> the price of oil and the rate of unemployment. The last five
> recessions
> in the US were all preceded by a rise in the oil price.
>
> Oil, of course, is not the only fuel on which vehicles can run. There
> are
> plenty of possible substitutes, but none of them is likely to be
> anywhere
> near as cheap as crude is today. Petroleum can be extracted from tar
> sands and oil shale, but in most cases the process uses almost as
> much energy as it liberates, while creating great mountains and lakes
> of
> toxic waste. Natural gas is a better option, but switching from oil
> to gas
> propulsion would require a vast and staggeringly expensive new fuel
> infrastructure. Gas, of course, is subject to the same constraints as
> oil:
> at current rates of use, the world has about 50 years' supply, but if
> gas
> were to take the place of oil its life would be much shorter.
>
> Vehicles could be run from fuel cells powered by hydrogen, which is
> produced by the electrolysis of water. But the electricity which
> produces
> the hydrogen has to come from somewhere. To fill all the cars in the
> US
> would require four times the current capacity of the national grid.
> Coal
> burning is filthy, nuclear energy is expensive and lethal. Running the
> world's cars from wind or solar power would require a greater
> investment than any civilization has ever made before. New studies
> suggest that leaking hydrogen could damage the ozone layer and
> exacerbate global warming.
>
> Turning crops into diesel or methanol is just about viable in terms of
> recoverable energy, but it means using the land on which food is now
> grown for fuel. My rough calculations suggest that running the United
> Kingdom's cars on rapeseed oil would require an area of arable fields
> the size of England.
>
> There is one possible solution which no one writing about the
> impending oil crisis seems to have noticed: a technique with which the
> British and Australian governments are currently experimenting, called
> underground coal gasification. This is a fancy term for setting light
> to
> coal seams which are too deep or too expensive to mine, and catching
> the gas which emerges. It's a hideous prospect, as it means that
> several trillion tons of carbon which was otherwise impossible to
> exploit becomes available, with the likely result that global warming
> will
> eliminate life on Earth.
>
> We seem, in other words, to be in trouble. Either we lay hands on
> every
> available source of fossil fuel, in which case we fry the planet and
> civilization collapses, or we run out, and civilization collapses.
>
> The only rational response to both the impending end of the oil age
> and
> the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming
> and
> our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure,
> and our problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity. People tend
> to
> take to the streets because they want to consume more, not less. Given
> a choice between a new set of matching tableware and the survival of
> humanity, I suspect that most people would choose the tableware.
>
> In view of all this, the notion that the war with Iraq had nothing to
> do
> with oil is simply preposterous. The US attacked Iraq (which appears
> to
> have had no weapons of mass destruction and was not threatening
> other nations), rather than North Korea (which is actively developing
> a
> nuclear weapons programme and boasting of its intentions to blow
> everyone else to kingdom come) because Iraq had something it
> wanted. In one respect alone, Bush and Blair have been making plans
> for the day when oil production peaks, by seeking to secure the
> reserves of other nations.
>
> I refuse to believe that there is not a better means of averting
> disaster
> than this. I refuse to believe that human beings are collectively
> incapable of making rational decisions. But I am beginning to wonder
> what the basis of my belief might be.
>
> · The sources for this and all George Monbiot's recent articles can be
> found at www.monbiot.com.


The methane ice fields in the Gulf of Mexico contain more fuel than half a
dozen Saudi Arabias.  Running out of fuel is a non-problem.  If you look at
the cost of fuel in terms of percentage of income, it's dropping.

I like the solar power satellites/microwave transmission and ocean thermal
engine models, myself, but running out of fuel just isn't going to happen.