Peak oil conspiracy spreads to compromised military

[Professor Science]

It seems the liberal conspiracy of peak oil has penetrated to German and US militaries. Thoughts on this blatan doom crying?

[IntLibber]

It seems the liberal conspiracy of peak oil has penetrated to German and US militaries. Thoughts on this blatan doom crying?

The amount of oil that peak oilers claim is in the ground, max, is only 1/10th of the amount of oil that the UN IPCC claims will be combusted into CO2 over the course of the 21st century in its projections of doom and gloom from anthropogenic global warming. A contradiction, a paradox. That both peak oil and global warming theories were created and promoted by the Club of Rome, when they contradict each other, demonstrates the falsity of one, the other, or both theories as falsehoods being used in pursuit of a political agenda.

[KitemanSA]

That both peak oil and global warming theories were created and promoted by the Club of Rome, when they contradict each other, demonstrates the falsity of one, the other, or both theories as falsehoods being used in pursuit of a political agenda.

Wow! Two mentions of the political agenda of the "Club of Rome" in one day. "Its a conspiracy, man!"

Shouldn't this be over in "General"?

[TallDave]

Medium-term shortages are always possible, because new projects take 10 years to build out on average, demand is unpredictable, and the economic penalties for overbuilding are much higher than the penalties for underbuilding.

Just remember, for every barrel of oil available at an extraction cost <$50/bbl, there are probably two with extraction cost >$50/bbl. And over $100/bbl things like algae farming, coal oil, switchgrass, etc become viable.

It's true we may reach peak oil production soon, and $10 gas may follow, but it's not the end of the world. Living standards will continue to rise.

[Skipjack]

Admin, please move thread to "General", thanks.
That said, the advantage of the whole peak oil and global warming scare is that governments and private investors are more willing to invest into alternative energy sources, such as fusion. I personally cant wait for the day when we do not have to send money to countries that fund terrorists with it, anymore.

[jsbiff]

"Just remember, for every barrel of oil available at an extraction cost <$50/bbl, there are probably two with extraction cost >$50/bbl. "

I don't know if this is true or not, but I remember reading an argument somewhere, about geologic resources (oil, metals, other minerals), that generally speaking, every time the market price doubles, the amount of available 'reserves' which can be extracted at the new price usually increase by an *Order of Magnitude* (which, if I understand the term correctly, means that there is approximately *10 times* more available to extract at the higher price).

Also, you occasionally get tech breakthroughs that make that next order of magnitude become available at or near the lower price of the 'easy', more concentrated reserves.

Personally, I'm less worried about running 'out' of geological hydrocarbons, and more concerned that because of environmental problems associated with extraction (mining, drilling, etc), pollution, and global warming, we really need to try to get to more nuclear power (whether fusion, fission, or some combination) usage.

Also, if we can manage to get more nuclear power, and enough of it, cheaply enough, it would almost certainly drive the price of oil and coal energy down, so that current production levels are adequate for world demand for quite a long time.

[Roger]

The fisrt study I know on peak oil, was by the DOD during the Nixon admin. About the time US production peaked- circa 1973.

Yeah sure when the price doubles reserves increase. But comeon... The says of API 40-60 crude are long gone. Medium grade with sulfur contents over 2% and a 36API are probably the biggest seller globally. The north slope of alaska has lots of oil... slightly better than bitumen @API 17-23. The US hasn't produced a significant amount of hematite iron ore since 1974. Lesser quality taconite is shallow mines is also gone with mine not @ 1 to 1.5 miles deep.

There is a point of diminishing returns as the resource available drops in quality and ease of procurement. Heavier oil needs to go thru a catilytic converter to crack the long chain molecules before refining. If polywell doesn't work we're going to need fission nukes, solar and wind in large quantities.

[jsbiff]

The fisrt study I know on peak oil, was by the DOD during the Nixon admin. About the time US production peaked- circa 1973.

Yeah sure when the price doubles reserves increase. But comeon... The says of API 40-60 crude are long gone. Medium grade with sulfur contents over 2% and a 36API are probably the biggest seller globally. The north slope of alaska has lots of oil... slightly better than bitumen @API 17-23. The US hasn't produced a significant amount of hematite iron ore since 1974. Lesser quality taconite is shallow mines is also gone with mine not @ 1 to 1.5 miles deep.

There is a point of diminishing returns as the resource available drops in quality and ease of procurement. Heavier oil needs to go thru a catilytic converter to crack the long chain molecules before refining. If polywell doesn't work we're going to need fission nukes, solar and wind in large quantities.

If fusion approaches being investigated currently, I still have high hopes for Gen IV fission reactors like the GE-Hitachi PRISM or the Travelling Wave Reactor. They say we should be able to power the whole planet (assuming we don't enter into periods of exponential power consumption growth) for 1000 years (or longer) based on currently available nuclear 'waste' and known reserves, and supposedly the Gen IV reactors aren't susceptible to meltdown events like you have with older generation nukes.

I do have to admit to still having a certain amount of concern about the safety of Gen IV fission ideas, because you ultimately are still dealing with Uranium and it's daughter elements - seems like someone could still cause a problem by using conventional explosives, or airplanes, or who knows what (artillery shells?) to intentionally destroy a reactor and cause environmental contamination; also, I'm not completely convinced that Gen IV reactors would be completely free from the types of problems which have caused accidental environmental release of radioactive elements at other reactors which didn't melt down (like the recent Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station incident).

*sigh*

Well, I still have high hopes for both fusion, and Gen IV fission, but cautiously at that. Fission holds such promise, and yet it seems like 50 or 60 years of chasing the fission 'dream' has only led to lots of problems and cost overruns to the point of making fission not competitive to other forms of energy.

[Skipjack]

The GenIV reactors are meant to be low meantenance and can therefore be burried deep into the ground. This makes them a lot safer in regards to attackes by explosives or airplanes.

[jmc]

I'm not convinced more nuclear reactors means there will be a greater threat of a terrorist attack. If I was a terrorist and I wanted to blow up a nuclear power plant I'd find one and blow it up (if I could).

Nuclear power plants exist now.

None have had a meltdown induced by terrorists.

Therefore the security of the world's nuclear reactors is good enough.

Imagine a future world with a ten thousand nuclear reactors and imagine a future world with ten nuclear reactors. The terrorist will focus their limited resources on infiltrating one reactor at a time if they can (and evidence to date suggests they haven't).

Thus lots of nuclear reactors is no more of a danger with regard to terrorism then a handful.

[Jboily]

The fisrt study I know on peak oil, was by the DOD during the Nixon admin. About the time US production peaked- circa 1973.
....

If fusion approaches being investigated currently, I still have high hopes for Gen IV fission reactors like the GE-Hitachi PRISM or the Travelling Wave Reactor. They say we should be able to power the whole planet ... .

There is a good book on peak oil that just came out yesterday. I read it over the weekend (I got a pre-print copy from the publisher).

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases ... 74364.html

You might recognize the author, Robert L. Hirsch, co-inventor of a Fusor device. For whom Bussard was working (I was told), when he invented the Polywell system.

It is a well written book, and do not appear to be a conspiracy to me. The studies are very well done, by different authors and using different methods.

The gest of it is;

Current oil well extraction is predictable and decreasing steadily, and the demand is predictable and increasing steadily. The new oil fields that has been discovered recently are known when to come on line at specific time, and their oil production is quit predictable. The new discovery yet to be discovered will take 10 to 15 years to come on line and the current discovery rate of discovery will not meet the demand.

We are on a train heading for a cliff, and the breaks are not working. We will see shortage of oil by 2011 to 2015. It will take time to develop and deploy alternative sources. It is not that the resources in the ground will be depleted, it is the rate at witch we can extract it and time to be deployed alternatives that matter !

It is a book to read!

jboily

[icarus]

It is not that the resources in the ground will be depleted, it is the rate at witch we can extract it and time to be deployed alternatives that matter !

Polywell should have released data by 2015 ... perhaps. Then a real engineering effort can take over from the academic naval gazing.

[WizWom]

We are on a train heading for a cliff, and the breaks are not working. We will see shortage of oil by 2011 to 2015. It will take time to develop and deploy alternative sources. It is not that the resources in the ground will be depleted, it is the rate at witch we can extract it and time to be deployed alternatives that matter !

You - and apparently, the author - have absolutely NO CLUE about the current real state of explored and ready to pump oil. And very little clue about the amount of oil that could be very quickly drilled for quite cheaply.

At the moment - with no new drilling - the world has 54 years worth of oil ready to pump and ship AT TODAY'S PRICES.

Not only that, but as oil becomes more expensive, additional production will be worth doing. Wells that "only" produce a couple hundred barrels a day will come back online. More old fields will be subjected to water recovery. More shale oil sands will be exploited.

Add to this the fact that actual build time for a Nuclear power plant is ~2 years - the delays past that are regulatory nonsense that quite simply WILL go away if we (or whoever) desperately needs power.

You've been fed a line of bull, and you bought it hook, line and sinker.

[rjaypeters]

You've been fed a line of bull, and you bought it hook, line and sinker.

Would that be "...book, line and sinker."?

[GIThruster]

We are on a train heading for a cliff, and the breaks are not working. We will see shortage of oil by 2011 to 2015. It will take time to develop and deploy alternative sources. It is not that the resources in the ground will be depleted, it is the rate at witch we can extract it and time to be deployed alternatives that matter !

You - and apparently, the author - have absolutely NO CLUE about the current real state of explored and ready to pump oil. And very little clue about the amount of oil that could be very quickly drilled for quite cheaply.

At the moment - with no new drilling - the world has 54 years worth of oil ready to pump and ship AT TODAY'S PRICES.

Not only that, but as oil becomes more expensive, additional production will be worth doing. Wells that "only" produce a couple hundred barrels a day will come back online. More old fields will be subjected to water recovery. More shale oil sands will be exploited.

Add to this the fact that actual build time for a Nuclear power plant is ~2 years - the delays past that are regulatory nonsense that quite simply WILL go away if we (or whoever) desperately needs power.

You've been fed a line of bull, and you bought it hook, line and sinker.

Wiz, no offense but you're not thinking clearly about the issue. Very little oil gets used for power generation and out of all those resources used for power generation, oil makes up a very small percentage.

Look here:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6935

The "Peak Oil" argument does have merit, but it doesn't pertain to electrical power generation. We can certainly stave off some of the peak oil troubles by removing oil from power generation entirely, but we do need to be building the next generation of fission reactors RIGHT NOW in order to do this because indeed, we don't have infrastructure in place to pull the stuff out of the ground fast enough according to current trending. People have known this would happen for decades. The oil companies have known and said so, and been ignored thousands of times as they've been denied rights to offshore drilling sites, etc.

The peak oil issue has very little to do with the best reasons to build fission reactors. Every fission reactor that comes online makes our air cleaner, and leaves us less reason to strip-mine. All good. Fission reactors don't impact motive power supply unless you have a viable electric car, so the peak oil issue and the fission power generation issue are only distantly related.

At the moment - with no new drilling - the world has 54 years worth of oil ready to pump and ship AT TODAY'S PRICES.

That's nonsense. Twenty years ago we knew that the fantastic growth of oil use in places like India and China was going to make the resource in fantastic demand and so drive the price sky high. It's just a matter of time. We are not developing the resource but the demand is skyrocketing. There WILL certainly be trouble. This has nothing to do with what's in the ground. It has to do with our ability to pull it out in a timely fashion, and arguments that we COULD pull it out in time are simpleminded nonsense the oil companies say is pure rubbish.

Likewise, the fact it takes 2 years to build a fission reactor is useless tripe. It takes twice that to get through the organizational red tape, so why post nonsense like this?