the concept of "peak Oil " is blarney

[mwebb]

while this would seem to be a
political post

it is not

both of the major political parties support this fraud and hoax
both are corrupt

the big oil companies are not the enemy and do not make very much profit at all considering what they do .

the speculators
the central banks ( that print money out of thin air )
that purchase the oil and then sell it to the oil companies
so that the oil companies can transform the crude into something usable

are the problem

knowledge is the solution

the speculators / central banks print money , then trade it for crude oil then sell the crude to big oil companies
for real tangible assets , the labor of the masses that has been converted to dollars
the dollars that represent the labor of the gasoline customers

real tangible assets - your labor - ends up in the pockets of the central banks
who devalued your assets remaining , so they can continue the
fraud

you can tell when the central banks are flooding money
(printed with nothing to back it up) into the economy
the price of gasoline goes up

i drive a Geo Metro by choice -

[NachtRitter]

This:

Originally Posted by mwebb

the left wing nuts have been fibbing and fabricating the need for a future
without oil

would make it seem like a political post.

If you later say this:

Originally Posted by mwebb

both of the major political parties support this fraud and hoax
both are corrupt

then maybe you should have said that to begin with if you did not want your post to seem like a political post... or left that first part out altogether. Common sense, no?

[Ryland]

A good friend of mine works in Alaska in the oil fields and he's worried because the amount of oil that they are able to pull out of the ground is dropping off and the quality of it is dropping off, because of this it's getting more expensive to pull out of the ground and the equipment to transport it is wearing out faster because it has more impurities in it and that is exactly what we were warned about as far as Peek Oil, that we are not going to run out but that the high quality easy to get to oil is going to be gone and we are going to be left with thick dirty sludge that is expensive to refine, we can get oil out of tar sand if you boil it first, we can even pipe that tar sand oil to texas to refine it, but it's going to have a lot of grit in it that will wear out the pipe and cause spills like happened here in Wisconsin a few weeks ago when non of the news organizations would cover the story.
We got the easy stuff out of the ground, we've hit the peek, now we have to start working harder to get the left overs out and that will last a while but is part of the reasons I'm happy that I don't have kids because they would be screwed! I get to use up this resource and feel ok about it.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Just a proactive reminder that the forum has a policy of non-political subject matter, and also ... civil discourse!

Huh
Darin, your years of moderating have gotten you weary. The OP was referring to left-thread wing nuts, a purely technical thing.

Wing nuts don't have political views, at best they just screw around

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by IamIan

There are Solar cells able to convert light to electricity at over 40% efficiency ( more than 4x that of plant photosynthesis ) ... to then get useful work out of that electricity is much much higher energy efficiency than the oil path is.

Next you need to factor in the production of PV panels - which is consuming a lot of energy in a potentially dangerous process.

With the cheapest PV panels coming from China, you simply don't know how they were produced, and what the environmental damages are.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by mwebb

the question is
why is the price still so high

This is a low(ish) price period with a barrel around 100 USD.
It's been over 150 USD / barrel, remember mid-2008 ?

Just wait for the economy to catch on again, and demand to rise again.


Dunno about the US, but fuel prices are near record levels here - despite the cheap crude.
Extra taxes, and the falling Euro are the reason for the price hike at the pump.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by euromodder

Next you need to factor in the production of PV panels - which is consuming a lot of energy in a potentially dangerous process.

With the cheapest PV panels coming from China, you simply don't know how they were produced, and what the environmental damages are.

Sure we can factor in the energy needed to produce the PV panel ... just like we can factor in the energy needed for everything else the plant needs to do , that is not photosynthesis ... growing roots costs energy , making seeds costs energy, making fruit costs energy, making the leaves costs energy, etc.

- - - - - - -

No matter how you slice it ... I don't see how the fossil fuel path ( like oil ) is anything but VASTLY less efficient.

My dislike is not about $ Cost ... it is currently comparatively cheap ... that's one big reason why we still do it ... my dislike is about the HORRIBLY low efficiency ... and that will lead to it being not viable , eventually ... unless humans just stop growing our energy usage far bellow the rate of production ( at the crazy low efficiency ).

In regards to the Chinese production ... I don't know lots of things ... not knowing does not = automatically bad ... but lack of information is not a reason to change my mind from what information I do have ... if someone has convincing evidence that the RE ( PV or others ) are less efficient from source ( solar ) to load ( useful work ) ... by all means enlighten me ... Because I just see the oil ( and other fossil fuels ) as horribly low efficient and wasteful source to load.

[NeilBlanchard]

With renewable energy, you don't really need to be concerned with efficiency - as long as you can gather enough energy to do what you need to do. So, if you have solar PV powering your A/C -- turn it cooler if you want to.

The next generation of renewable energy systems can be built using renewable energy from the current generation. So, as long as the sun and the earth exist, we can have energy in abundance.

[SoobieOut]

Great discussion here. I really hate to be a rain on your parade but the model of Oil use is not a static model. Oil consumption is a dynamic force ever changing.

The main driving force behind oil consumption is population growth, and ability of that population to use cheap oil.

Peak Oil is nothing compared to peak "Phosphorus", which is already on the decline. Without cheap phosphorus we can not grow the crops needed for 7-10 billion people. This means that starting in 20 years, the world population will drop off significantly to about 1/3 of todays population. This will solve the peak oil problem.

So there you have it, peak oil problem solved in a dynamic model!

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by euromodder

Next you need to factor in the production of PV panels - which is consuming a lot of energy in a potentially dangerous process.

With the cheapest PV panels coming from China, you simply don't know how they were produced, and what the environmental damages are.

I don't want this to drift off topic, but panels from China are not that much cheaper then the 100% USA made panels, at least when I priced them out and while you are correct that it takes energy to produce them, it takes energy to produce anything! and the amount of energy it takes to produce a PV panel is produced by that panel in less then it's first year, we could say the exact same stuff about not knowing the full environmental damage caused by the shirt you are wearing and in the case of the shirt you are wearing it could be even more true because PV panels will last the rest of your life.

To me the bottom line is, even if we have enough oil to last the rest of our lives, do we want to keep using it at the rate we are? there are better ways to do things so why not do things better? even if peek oil is a hoax, the side effect is that we've made the world a better place, oops! well we can easily undo that!