The Ghost In The Machine
sirius.tg00suus7038.net> wrote> Rod Speed
gmail.com> wrote>> Bret Cahill
aol.com> wrote>>> Unless you are in a state of denial the hard reality
>>> is that the cost of oil has been spiraling 30%% a year
>> No it hasnt.
> Correct, it hasn't. In June of 2007 oil was $64.20; it is now almost
> double that. However, the inflation-adjusted price in 1980 was $97.68;
> oil then slumped to below $20/bbl in 1998. In 2001 a barrel of oil
> was $27.92 (adjusted for inflation); in 2002 it was $27.22. Only
> then did it start to rise like the proverbial rocket.
Real rockets go up a tad faster than that.
>>> and there is little reason to believe that 30%% rate will drop over the next 6 - 8 years,
>> We'll see...
> I'm not hopeful, myself. China is *thirsty*, and a lot larger than we are.
I still doubt that that will produce 30%% a year every year.
>>> either by drilling, converting to another hydrocarbon fuel or by any other strategy.
>> Wrong again.
> Drilling won't do all that much. ANWR in particular has a thimbleful of oil. The
> Arctic looks far more promising but I suspect it will be a decade or two before
> we even start applying for permits, never mind drilling, extracting, and refining.
I was commenting on his whole list, not just the drilling.
One obvious other strategy would be to heat using electricity from nukes
and use the LPG and CNG thats currently wasted on heating as a transport
fuel in gasoline engines. Perfectly routine and currently used technology.
>>> Retrofitting all of one nation's trucks and buses to natural gas
>>> will simply not have a significant impact on world oil markets
>> Doesnt need to. Its one way of reducing the dependance on oil from out of the country.
> It might help at that.
No might about it, particularly if what is currently used
for heating is replaced with electricity from nukes.
>>> and, if many other countries followed suit, the coupling of fuel
>>> prices would simply drag up the price of natural gas like a rag doll.
>> But its a lot cheaper than gasoline.
> So was diesel in the 1980's.
Different factors involved. It was never as cheap relative to gasoline as LPG and CNG are currently.
> LNG is not a panacea,
No one said it was. It cant be used in diesel engines for example.
> though I could think of worse solutions.
And few better for gasoline engines.
>>> Decreasing supply is only a part of the problem. The bigger effect is the
>>> demand caused by the industrialization of China, India and other nations.
>> The biggest effect on price is actually speculation currently.
> Maybe,
No maybe about it. The current drop cant be due to supply or demand.
> but if the Saudis are smart they'll start to back off production as the recession deepens.
Or they might have enough of a clue to realise that the current price is
having some effect on demand and that they might be better off not backing
off and allowing the recession to get it back to more reasonable levels.
Thats what they did in the 70s.
> However, I'm not privy to their supply/demand curves.
>> As can clearly be seen from the current drop in price, when there
>> hasnt been an increase in supply or a decrease in demand by china.
>>> China's double digit growth rate is akin to the American steel industry
>> Nope, nothing like it.
>>> which increased in size by a factor of ten every decade
>>> for 3 straight decades during the industrial revolution.
>> That wasnt the growth rate for the entire country.
>>> The 19th Century growth rate of that industry was not fueled
>>> by sales to a richer nation so a U. S. recession now cannot
>>> be expected to have much impact on China's growth rate.
>> Thats completely silly when chinas exports are to richer countrys.
>>> If current trends continue, in as little as 6 years China's economy
>>> will be larger than ours.
>> Taint gunna happen, you watch. Living standards in spades.
>>> In sharp contrast to the bleak oil situation, the cost of solar has been plummeting.
>> Nope, just dropping a bit.
>>> When Bell Labs developed the first photo voltaic cell decades
>>> ago, the unit cost/watt was well into the thousands of dollars.
>> Irrelevant. What matters is how much its dropped
>> since it was a commonly used commercial product.
>>> Now the uncontested claims of printed PV are $1/watt or,
>> Pity you cant actually buy them at anything like that.
> Current price is about $5/peak watt for standard crystalline
> PV cells. There is a major shortage of crystalline silicon,
> as well, because of the information explosion.
Nope.
>>> inverted to AC, less than 8 cents/kW-hr over a 10 year life span.
>> Pity you cant actually buy them at anything like that.
>>> Californians now pay 50%% more than that for grid power. No one
>>> in academia or industry will deny that the advances will continue.
>> But at nothing like the same rate.
>>> Up until now electrical energy storage has been prohibitively expensive
>> Wrong, most obviously with pumped water in hydro systems.
>>> and Europeans have astutely favored conventional drive train
>>> diesels over hybrids. This cannot be expected to last.
>> We'll see...
>> And plenty use LPG and CNG for cars etc now too.
>>> Batteries have been improving rapidly
>> Nope.
> Batteries will never equal diesel, for the simple reason that
> diesel engines garner almost 80%% of the mass of their
> regents from the outside air. That's a 4x-5x energy gain.
The mass of their reagants isnt the problem.
> Hydrogen will never equal diesel, for the simple reason
> that the O-H bond is less powerful than the C=O bond.
Again, that isnt the problem.
> Also, hydrogen is a gas, which makes for many storage issues;
Yes, but when the hydrocarbon liquids have increased in price substantially, it can be viable anyway.
> one might liquefy it, which makes for an excellent
> weight/energy ratio, but with still more issues.
There isnt just those two alternatives. Its currently used as a transport fuel.
>>> and no one in academia or industry will deny that more advances are guaranteed.
>> How significant those advances are is a different matter entirely.
>> And pity about the metals that those advances use too.
>>> It's a hard fact to accept but extracting and
>>> burning hydrocarbons will soon be only for the rich.
>> Just claiming its a hard fact doesnt make it so.
> There's a number of factors here. I frankly don't know
> how much more oil is in the ground, but as demand
> goes up and supply goes down, prices will rise.
Sure, but that also means that more becomes available too.
>>> For the majority of Americans to survive with any quality of
>>> life either short term or long term the grid is the only hope
>> Wrong again. Pity about hydrogen from nukes.
> ITER looks promising.
Trouble is that its just that, not a demonstrated technology.
>>> but it's a reliable hope.
>> Nope, not for the sort of long distance commutes that
>> so many are stupid enough to engage in in cars.
> Not stupid.
Very stupid.
> Cheap. Housing price distribution will change as the price of commuting goes up.
And plenty with a clue will telecommute instead.
We already do that with callcenters outside the country.
>>> Any concern about polar bears or tropical frogs is another issue altogether.
>> Easily fixed by changing to nukes.
> Not even close to simple.
Tell that to the french. They generate something like 80%% of their electricity that way.
> Fission nukes are damaging to the environment,
Coal burning damages the environment MUCH more.
> though not for the reason one might think.
> A major problem is the tailings from mining;
Nope, thats trivial to deal with.
> the actual waste products are an issue but are mostly
> solid or liquid, and more easily contained than, say,
> radioactive CO2 and fly ash from coal (though the latter can
> be fed through scrubbers, and currently is required to be).
And even with that they damage the environment much more than nukes do.
> Fusion nukes are still in progress, and I have
> no idea exactly when they will become profitable,
They arent even available, let alone profitable
except for the rather large one we orbit around.
> though with any luck the oil price and hydroelectric
> shortage (there's only so many rivers!) will help in
> that respect, to get back to some sort of equilibrium.
Makes more sense to use fission nukes until they become viable.
> Also, fusion currently uses a mix of deuterium-tritium,
> and tritium is a problem if it gets out in the environment.
> Even deterium is an issue, since the atoms are slightly
> smaller and react just slightly differently from ordinary
> hydrogen. (Other reactions are theoretically possible.)
Yep, fission nukes are currently much more viable.
> There are also oil sands and oil shale, which are
> possible, if expensive, to extract (and even more
> expensive to do so without major environmental damage).
But still worth doing as the other oil starts to run out.
> I do not like synfuels from coal, mostly because the waste
> product looks problematic. However, that's another possibility.
Yep, and the waste products are easy to deal with.
