Peak oil! time to go nuclear!

http://arstechnica.com/...nent-price-volatility.ars



This next article is really good, read it!

http://physics.ucsd.edu/.../11/peak-oil-perspective/

at this rate gasoline costs here 1.9-2 euros per liter and diesel will cost around 1.8-1.9 euros per litre.

I have seen many many things to counter what is said in anything claiming we are at peak oil. Estimated oil left has stayed the same for about 40-50 years now

nice first article. will try to read the other one in a little bit.

locket, so you think that oil is replenishing itself in the ground as fast as we are burning it? :)

The fact is that to recover fuel you have to burn fuel. To recover light fuel near surface in the Middle East you spend like 1/10th as much energy as it takes to recover a barrel from the tarsands.

So even though the recoverable barrels are going upwards with continued exploration and technology, the energy cost to retrieve and process the barrels is also moving up.

Just like the easy mineral veins at surface have all been picked away, so too with oil, as well as natural gas.

It will take a long time to convert our way of life to meet the new reality of finite resources. Right now, thanks to wars, propaganda and the cult of money we're able to mostly ignore physical realities and the pressing need for us to make changes in how we live. But that willful ignorance comes on the backs of soldiers, personal freedoms, and future crisis. We've made such little progress over the past decade that I find it laughable to think it will take any less than 40 years to divert ourselves from oil dependency. Our infrastructure is dependent on oil and to reform it will be a very long process.

People who try to ignore this reality are simply shifting a much greater burden to their children. The only way we're not heading for an energy crisis is if the bet the zionists/'christian' right are making is correct and the rapture happens before a crisis. If that doesn't happen then we might appreciate all the wars to secure energy so we can remain oblivious to the problem for slightly longer, passing the burden off to our grandchildren instead of children.

locket: the biggest problem is, we're burning oil at a rate that's *much* higher than the rate at which we're discovering it, almost double; furthermore, you can't just pump oil from the ground as fast as you want, there are geophysical limitations; and our production has levelled off; as demand continues to increase, with level OR *dropping* production... that's the problem with peak oil.


Sure there's lots of oil left. But it's harder to get, and we'll be extracting it at an increasingly slower rate, all the while demand is going up.

also locket, read the second article.

Oats, I didn't say that. What I said was that they said there was lets guestimate 50 years of oil left 40 years ago and we are still there. I realize that we use it faster and it is a resource that wont last forever. I firmly believe however that they lie or stretch the truth to keep oil prices as high as they are though. They have no reason to go find more oil when they can keep prices high at this amount.

Also, if the oil in Venezuela I think it is works out I am pretty sure they have more than the rest of the world combined. Not gonna go too far on record with that though since I havn't read much :P

They should definitely find a different source that they can make cost efficient though.

This one is also good:

http://motherjones.com/...k-oil-and-great-recession


Also locket, you should read that second article ;)

too lazy :P I'll just go back to studying instead and leave with my half read facts from elsewhere :P

you mean your half-read hand-wavy arguments? hehe

With more recent trade embargoes slapped on Iran in response to their nuclear program, we could see oil go up %30 in the VERY near future.

qzjul wears tinfoil undies.

Actually, this thread is full of fun. Locket says Venezuela has more oil than the rest of the world combined. With supposedly so much oil, it's surprising that Venezuela is producing less and less.

We're not going to wake up one day and hear someone say, 'Oh fluff, there's no more oil, we need to switch to something else.' What's really going to happen is as oil becomes more expensive, the consumers of oil will switch to the next cheapest form of energy to power things. Such as natural gas. Here's a hint: It's already happening. Look up Wesport Innovations.

Maybe when we're 'out' of oil and natural gas, the government will finally release the blueprints for the 100-mpg car, right qzjul? :P

Unless anyone that has posted in this thread is actually making investments and betting with their pockets I say go back to bed.

The proven oil reserves in Venezuela are claimed to be the largest in the world, according to an announcement in early 2011 by President Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan government. The reported proven reserves reach 297 billion barrels (4.72×1010 m3), surpassing that of the previous long-term world leader, Saudi Arabia.[1] OPEC said that Saudi Arabia's reserves stood at 265 billion barrels (4.21×1010 m3) in 2009.[2]
According to the United States Geological Survey (a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior that employs approximately 8,670 people), the Orinoco Belt alone is estimated to contain 900–1,400 billion barrels (2.2×1011 m3) of heavy crude in proven and unproven deposits.[3] Of this, the United States Geological Survey estimated that 380–652 billion barrels (1.037×1011 m3) could be technically recoverable, which would make Venezuela's total recoverable reserves (proven and unproven) among the largest in the world.[4][5]

There, that's for the Venesuela doubters

The fact that you felt the need to state how many people the USGS emplys further strenghtens the need for me to disregard what you just wrote.

What I need to see is the link TO the USGS site from where you quote this, all else is moot.

The price/supply of oil is very heavily controlled by OPEC.
Truthfully we have all the technology to remove most of our dependency on oil right now, we just aren't motivated to for financial/political reasons.

The other issue not mentioned here is that with China/India industrializing (kind of), the demand for oil is going to increase a lot faster than it has in the past.

@Mr Snow: the other issue is non-fuel products made from oil AND good luck powering a jet with propane or an electric engine:P

Natural gas is a renewable resource in a way.. just ask all those cows.

link or it ain't true!

should be sources


http://bizmology.hoovers.com/...th-the-most-oil-reserves/

In short Venezuela indeed has almost half of the world proven oil reserves, but no one with the expertise to extract it as Hugo Chavez wants nothing from the oil companies that took most of the profit of oil extraction for years, and if they won't be taking most of the profit, they aren't investing.


As sure as hell when oil production stars to heavily decline, oil companies will be forced to reach a deal with the Venezuelan government and get that oil flowing off the ground.

I'm not claiming conspiracy here; merely discussing that we've hit peak; peak does not mean it all ends; peak just means supply starts to decline, and unless demand *ALSO* declines (when has demand ever declined...?) then the price will go through the roof (and be crazy volatile); the articles suggest the economy will start going, oil demand will rise, price will rise, and that will stagnate the economy, causing oil prices to drop; an oil-cycle, if you will, where attempts to restart the economy run into the oil ceiling.


Nuclear is a good option as a replacement, but only if we use breeder reactors -- and obviously that's not liquid; electric all the way.



@martian:

The biggest problem with replacing our dependence on oil is the scale, the AMOUNT, that needs to be replaced; replacing oil with straight nuclear, for example wouldn't last us too long, as we'd have to increase our nuclear generation capacity by a factor of 10, which would eat through our uranium deposits pretty quick.

Chaos: even according to your link, the Venezuelan reserves are heavy and extra-heavy oil; not exactly equivalent of saudi arabia in terms of cost, or net energy produced... also something that couldn't scale up as fast.



The point is *NOT* that we're running out of oil (we're not, we've probably burned about half of it so far, given the way peaks work), the point is that we're reaching the point where we can no longer extract oil from the ground as fast as we used to. And our economy has become *based on fact that oil production continually increases*; this, in my mind, is what has fuelled a large part of our growth; yes technological gains help too, but many of those are founded in the fact that we've had abundant energy available.


I'm not saying a return to the dark ages; just that this could be quite the shock for our civilization; we will necessarily transform do a different sort of economy. It should take us as long to burn the rest of the oil left as we've been burning oil thus far, so nearly 200 years; but it won't be as reliable or cheap a source again.

Exactly right about change to different sort of economy. Our generation, and maybe 2 generations of Chinese/Indian children, will be able to live the 'American' dream of big cars and high material consumption. Maybe a generation in less dense areas will continue to see the disgusting urban sprawl explosion before a complete reversal to a sort of implosion or area contraction.

In other words we can't simply look to replace our fuel consuming tools with tools that do the exact same things but only consume slightly less fuel. It's more like we need to change our living environment to require different tools that inherently have lower energy expenditures. Example of this is electronic movement of information versus post. Obviously to move humans and physical goods we require high energy expenditure. The solution to that is to not move the goods as far and to use more concentrated/massive forms of transport between hubs. Also human powered transportation.

Anyways, if we're waiting for market signals to tell us when we need to start panicking we're setting ourselves up for chaos. Wildly fluctuating markets dull people to initiative and confuse people about what really needs changed. Reliance on today's money markets to tell us to the value of something conditions us to rapid shifts and responses in priorities, plans and outlooks.

Central money/economic planning that is occuring through tools such as the Fed Reserve, aggressive intelligence/military force campaigns and monetary warfare is going to condition into the American public habits that we don't know much about.

The impression I get is that it will take generations to change our infrastructure and environment to meet the physical realities of our fuel situation. However it seems we're setting ourselves up for several large shock/crisis situations along the way as we continue to rely on manipulated markets/money to reflect physical reality. When reality and market values diverge so much there's no doubt that shocks/crisis will continue to mess us around.

We're conditioned to instantaneous market responses thanks to rapid communication but we're restricted by the slow changes of physical reality when it comes to engrained habits, infrastructure. We anticipate what is coming as we see in the market swings but there is a lot of dissonance between our predictive/informational capacities versus our physical capacities to react and match that knowledge.

@qz: do a research on thorium reactors:)
I'm not claiming that it would be fast/easy. I'm just claiming that we do have the ability to do it, just lack the will.

@oats: under our system of government it appears that that's ultimately the only way. Sadly the PRC's solutions aren't going to be any better.

martian: what do you mean is the only way? our unannounced/discreet form of central planning? To what kind of PRC solutions are you referring?

martian: yea i know about thorium reactors :) I worked at a nuclear reactor for a month using a neutron beam remember? heh; the problem is, we're not using them! we haven't developed them!

The problem is not that we can do it; the problem is, if we assume a 3-5% decline per year in oil, we necessarily have to build something like one large nuclear installation per week to make up the energy deficit; assuming, of course, we want to keep using the same amount of energy.

If we had 20 years to build them out more slowly, that would be totally different.



We need an engineering revolution! or rather, a revolution led by engineers lol... remove the traditional politician and replace him with a committee of engineers in relevant fields...

^true that

Depends on what the focus of the engineers is.

- To engineer things so that people don't have to change their habits
- To engineer things that force people to adapt to new realities
- To engineer innovative and new technologies that throw out entirely new possibilities, beyond our mechanical, and new electrical world. But I think this is more reliant on lab/experimental science.

Despite all this talk of conventional engineering needs we have plenty of social engineers floating around Ottawa, Brussels and Washington...

I prefer the middle one

but yes

Or, at the very least, to address reality; as current washington politics doesn't really...

The current attitude is basically:

"We're running out of a finite resource! Let's used what's left as FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE in an attempt to preserve our way of life for as long as possible, hopefully the remainder of OUR lives!"

That's correct. And it's done in such a fashion to not alarm the masses, to preserve the status quo, as they say.

It's basically top down social engineering. They know how to placate the masses and tickle their ears with what they want to hear. There actions, however, are separate from their speech, their intents far different from what the public is led to understand.

Most people, however, are still working and acting under the impression that constitutional rights and principles to empower the masses are still at play. We still half heartedly believe in a sort of bottom up democratic social engineering process where the people are cognizant of what is happening and leaders are appointed to engineer what the people want to happen. Instead it's what the leaders want to happen, whether the people are consenting or not.

Now we've just got this massive class of legal framework being instituted to form a top down process while we're eating up and believing propaganda that says we're still a democratic society. Disconnect. Why is it relevant to the energy situation? Because people are dealing with two 'realities' and they don't know where to put their efforts. Government is empowering entrenched monetary interests to move in an anti-environmental direction, eliminating pressure to change. But people are hearing from statistics, numbers etc. that physical reality dictates change. Collectively I think we recognize the necessity of change, and that should reflect in the democratic bottom up process. But we're also part of a cult of money that disconnects us from that reality and forces us back to the dictates of top down social engineering to preserve our sense/understanding of wealth.

And hence an impending energy crunches that will cause huge turmoil.

@oats: the way democracy works is that unless there is a crises/stress we will be unmotivated to change or cooperate. Mind you that's human nature for you. Your points are valid. But to get back to more participation you need some kind of motivating factor (some kind of a reset). Things are not bad enough for that. Alternatively you need an incredibly charismatic leader with the right intentions. People with that skill set aren't motivated to go into politics under the current situation.

The problem with China is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They can develop clean energy whatever but they ram it through without consultation. That's how they can build massive amounts of subways and high speed rail for example (well that and lack of safety concerns). China is researching Thorium reactors right now.

@qz regarding engineers: And this is why you don't have engineers do city planning. There are social and other considerations and engineers aren't trained to think that way (not a swipe at geers). The term is "professional arrogance".
You can't "socially engineer" people to force them to accept a paradigm shift.. not without killing a lot of people and even then we don't have many examples of it truly working.


Regarding democracy: things are only as democratic as the population is motivated for them to be. The vast majority of the population is not motivated to want to change anything in a serious way and one cannot force this motivation on people.
The biggest irony is that in canada at least people focus the least on what influences them the most: municipal politics. That impacts you directly and most profoundly. It also is where it's most possible to impact the system without needing big money (I cite what is going on in Toronto right now as an example) not to say that big money isn't a corrupting influence. In spite of the power structure in canada, municipal can force provincial change, especially in our current environment where provinces have abrogated their responsibilities..
If you doubt me, the rise and strength of the US conservative movement was due to starting locally first and building out.

i squishing qzjul's links. it's totally non-sexual. they don't even seem to be affected by my squishing actions.

Hello ww3!

hey less people in the world = WIN

Hmm, perhaps imag should dec the alliance with the most fasc oilers next set, to celebrate these happy times!

47% of Canadians use natural gas for heat? gawd, no wonder they're trying to dump their useless oil off onUS.

Sigh . . .

fwiw, 50 years ago, I doubt anyone ever said there was only 50 years of oil left... I have never heard of such a claim being made - and given the people I talk to, I expect I would have heard about it.

and martian.. I believe you can socially engineer and force people to accept a paradigm shift... just look to this game! ;)

i filled up yesterday for 3.39 a gal for regular

this is in va

va = vancouver?

;)

virginia?`

the greatest commonwealth EVER! virginia