the concept of "peak Oil " is blarney
 

Right. Just like housing prices are going to go up forever, Wall Street banks are financially sound, Bernie Madoff is a really great investment adviser - and Santa's going to bring you a new SUV for Christmas, too.

Two points to make on this topic.

One, our country is sending 5 billion dollars per week to a foreign country for their oil. We will never see this money again in our country.

Two, will it really matter how much oil the earth has for our use, if we discover that global warming is real, and now we've painted ourselves into a corner we can not get out of?

We are getting poorer and hotter. Or are we?

Something to think about.

Jim.

When we wake up and really commit to efficiency as a population, we will stop sending our net worth overseas, or over borders. We can easily double the efficiency of every vehicle we drive daily, if we could only look far enough into the future, without agendas driven by greed and short term gain instead of long term benefit.

It will happen globally and the supplies of oil will not run out any time soon. Hype driven price hikes may be the only way for many to wake up and we need to dedicate funding towards efficiency. I have been an advocate of efficiency all of my 61 years, raised by a Father who was an efficiency expert and a perfectionist.

Since 1971 when I read about an Opel that averaged 26 MPH and got 125 MPG, I have spent many hours researching efficiency in cars. Hypermilers (wonder what they were 50 years before that term was coined). Today I rode to meet my friend for lunch. 20 miles on less than a quart of gas. We should be driving cars that average 1 ounce of fuel for 1 mile of distance travelled. This is possible right now, 128 MPG averaging 25-30 MPH. Go ahead tell me it's not possible when it was done 41 years ago.

What would $300,000,000,000 dollars in capital kept in the US do to any economic situation. Multiply that by 10 through the banking system. They would be desperate to loan you that money and the budget could be balanced and it would be possible to reduce the national debt. Those who prevent that from happening will be the ones whose graves are the spitoons of our descendents.

Back to peak oil. Does any rational person actually believe we have located all of the potential reserves on this Planet. Probably the same ones who believe Social security is actually a retirement fund. I read that airborne auto emissions in the Los Angeles basin have been reduced by 98% in that same 40 year period. We alredy have the technology to fix all of our transportation issues, right now, TODAY. The future will only provide us with better solutions.

regards
Mech

If? Sorry, but you're a couple of decades behind the times.

We have demonstrated a virtually infinite demand for a finite commodity. What happens next doesn't seem too complicated.

nice to see "constructive" arguments! :rolleyes:

...instead of the typical "...half FULL or half EMPTY..." quandry

...it's more like "...1% FULL or 99% EMPTY..." oil reserves.

Just a proactive reminder that the forum has a policy of non-political subject matter, and also ... civil discourse! (Mwebb, please keep that in mind. Thanks.)

No problem with this thread's subject matter, otherwise.

But I have a prediction (based on years of experience!) of where this is going. :)

If we keep eating fast food, we'll have an infinite source of cooking oil to match demand

mwebb

the question is
why is the price
still so high? ...what the market will bare...

and why are we importing oil ...it is the most profitable for the oil companies...

As a confermed left wing nut let me say that it is cheeper for me to drive on 1 hours work now, than it has ever been in the last 30 years. I wil let you guess how and why.

Here is a question. What incentive would an oil company have to reveal the discovery of a huge new untapped reserve of oil?
Here is a prediction. Assuming we are actually intelligent enough as a race of people, oil will be around for centuries in some useful purpose.
Why should domestic producers try very hard to discover new oil reserves when they can just wait and let the price rise.
Oil and gold prices have followed a close parallel for decades. Both are finite materials, but both remain unknown as far as how much is left.

regards
Mech

Is the price really that high. The original owner bought my 1971 CB350 for $692. I bought two points and a double condenser.
Price?
$92
Wonder what they cost in 1971 when a gallon of gas was 32 cents?
Say $7.50, would just about be the same.

regards
Mech

As Mark Twain said: "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." Trust me, it is not only the "left wing nuts" that fib and fabricate... if you think one political side or the other speaks the pure truth, you are deceiving yourself.

Why are we still importing oil? Well, because the discovery of (and writing reports on) a particular oil reserve on one day does not translate to the production of 19.5 million barrels a day of usable product the next. Estimates indicate it will be between 15 and 20 years before there can be any useful production, and that is only if it makes financial sense to do so (i.e. there is no cheaper alternative domestically or imported). Extracting oil from shale is not quite as easy as just pulling it out of the ground in liquid form.

I do agree with the premise that we will never run out of oil... but I do believe there will come a point where it is no longer affordable for lower class, then no longer affordable for middle class, and then only the upper class can afford it. At that point, there will be many alternatives available, so while the neighborhood teenage kid won't go ripping down the street with a big gasoline powered V8, I wouldn't be surprised if he did it with a pair of big AC electric motors, along with the V8 soundtrack pounding through external speakers... :) In other words, I believe economically we'll be fine even if the cost of dino-fuel gets out of reach of the middle class.

What still bothers me is that we insist on digging up a carbon-based material that has been 'sequestered' by mother earth for millions of years and we spew it into the air and spread it on the ground and spill it into our oceans and yet a good portion of our population doesn't think that's a problem or thinks that those actions won't cause / aren't causing a problem... There is no possible good that can come of that. Mother earth will take care of herself, but that does not mean she will take care of her occupants.

Exactly.
Finding new oil is only postponing the inevitable.
It's not being renewed at anywhere near the rate we're using it.
Then we'll ask ourselves why on earth did we just burn most of the good stuff instead of putting it to a better use.

The price we'll be paying for getting it out of the ground is always going up - both in $ and in environmental damage.

...it's sorta like the soldiers at "Little Big Horn," you KNOW you only have so many bullets, so 'when' do you (a) ration them or (b) wait until the last one and use it on yourself?

It's an interesting subject, but mwebb, why not state assumptions and facts, and draw conclusions for your position? When the first approach is personal attack, I, among others I'm sure, think you don't have a reasonable position. Perhaps you can start again, and just remind us what you think "peak oil" is supposed to be...

Is the earth finite, or not?

My issue is with the horribly low energy efficiency of the oil path... or any 'fossil fuel'... or even any 'bio-fuel' for that matter.

Step #1>
Solar energy converted by photosynthesis into chemical energy ... usually less than 10% of the initial energy is converted.

Step #2>
Most of the chemical energy the plant converts either gets used by the plant itself for living , or by the rest of the food chain above it ... herbivores not 100% efficient ... and need energy to live ... carnivores not 100% efficient and need energy to live ... decomposing organisms of everything are not 100% efficient ... etc.

Step #3>
A small % of the original biomass energy content was not used above might get converted through geological processes into oil ... or other 'fossil fuels' ... but not 100% of it , and not at 100% efficiency.

Step #4>
Of the oil that does get produced naturally it is not found , or extracted without spending more energy... and not 100% of what is naturally produced will be found and extracted.

Step #5>
Of the oil that gets extracted it takes more energy to refine the 'crude' into marketable products in a useful / desirable form ... and it is not 100% of it.

Step #6>
The refined products take more energy to transport around to distribution and retail locations.

Step #7>
The refined goods get used at far less than 100% efficiency at to do useful work.

- - - - - - - - - -

To me the energy efficiency of this path is horrible.

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.

To me ... It doesn't matter all that much , what the rate of natural fossil fuels like oil are being produced in the world ... and it doesn't matter all that much to me how much of a head start and build up there is out there to find , and use ... The horrible energy efficiency of the path to get out useful work from the initial energy input is the deal breaker for me.

The only way the horrible energy efficiency of the fossil fuel path like oil ... doesn't itself eventually end up meaning it will eventually become a non-viable option ... is if our total global use it not only stops growing ... ie we stop our increasing consumption rates ... but we also stop well bellow whatever the natural rate of production is.

And whatever that rate of production is ... and even if someone thinks we will just stop our consumption increase well bellow whatever that rate is ... for me personally ... even if all of that does happen ... I still don't like the horribly low energy efficiency of that path to get useful work from the initial energy source.

- - - - - - - - -

We already have devices that can do about 4x the amount of useful work out from the same amount of initial energy input ... than just at the plant biomass chemical energy stage... any further stage above it is even less efficient than that.

This is the way 99% of the companies nowadays decide if they will build/import product from another country or at home..

A. to import it costs $X to labour, + $X for production, + $X for freight/transport and + $X for other = $4.98 total per product

B. make it at home $X to labour, + $X for production, + $X for freight/transport and + $X for other = $5.00 per product

and they will choose A to save the $0.02 per products because it's money in their pockets even though it will support someone elses economy and pollute our earth even more.

not political
 

This:
would make it seem like a political post.

If you later say this:
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?

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.

Huh:confused:
Darin, your years of moderating have gotten you weary. The OP was referring to left-thread wing nuts, a purely technical thing.
http://www.nutmanufacturers.com/pict...s-wing-nut.jpg
Wing nuts don't have political views, at best they just screw around;)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

If we strip all but the essentials away, then all we really need is a 30 hp or less personal streamlined hybrid vehicle the size of a mini van or smaller that get over 100 mpg. These could still get you any kind of speeding ticket you like...

What do they call it when something goes up, then stops going up, and then starts going down instead? (You know, that point when something was at its highest, p-something)

max ordinant...

Well at least in guns it is. That is the point when the bullet stops going up and starts to fall. And turns, eventually, from grazing fire into plunging fire.

Apogee?

FYI: That is a right-threaded wing nut, left-threaded ones are extremely rare.

Still waiting for that incisive, irrefutable explanation on why "peak oil" is "blarney"....

Or even that the concept is understood.

...apogee (highest point), the opposite of perigee (lowest point), in non-circular (ellipsoid) orbital science.

...for things oribiting the SUN, it's aphilion (furthest point) and perihlion (nearest point).

...for guns & bullets:

http://img.ehowcdn.com/article-new/e...ry-800x800.jpg

Pinnacle?
:confused::D

But of course. This is just basic economics: say a US solar panel maker can profitably make & sell at $2/watt, while a Chinese company can make them at $1/watt. Is the Chinese company going to sell them in the US for $1/watt, or for $1.95/watt?

And that's what I get for being lazy and not mirror-imaging it in a picure editor:rolleyes: