Out of Gas 1098
Oil -- and energy in general -- has long been a big topic among
Slashdot readers. Predictions about The End of the Age of
Oil (about which, claims the subtitle, this book provides "all you need to know") certainly are not new --
and if civilization lasts long enough, one day they'll prove true.
It's nice to consider that automobiles aren't necessarily
tied to petroleum, but mine certainly runs on 87 octane gasoline,
and there aren't enough turkey guts or grease to power everything that we use petro-fuels for right now (though places like Iceland are trying hard to tap other sources). Current gas
prices (in the U.S. at any rate) are higher than they have been in a
decade or so, but in constant dollars, gasoline prices have certainly been worse. How much to panic, and when? Read on below for Arthur Smith (apsmith)'s brief review of David Goodstein's Out of Gas for a rather gloomy look at the future of oil-based energy.
Americans have started to notice prices at the pump with an unfamiliar '2' on the sign. Meanwhile, crude oil prices are hitting 13-year records close to $40 per barrel. As the International Energy Agency reports, there is "no relief in sight". All this should come as no surprise to readers of David Goodstein's Out of Gas - the only question is, have we left it too late to survive the inevitable shocks that are coming?| Out of Gas: All You Need to Know about the End of the Age of Oil | |
| author | David Goodstein |
| pages | 128 |
| publisher | W.W. Norton & Company |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | Arthur Smith |
| ISBN | 0393058573 |
| summary | Why replacing oil is the world's most urgent and ignored problem. |
In this slim and subtly illustrated volume Dr. Goodstein, physics professor and vice provost at Caltech, explains in clear and simple terms why the fossil fuel age is coming to an end. A "massive, focused commitment" is needed to develop alternatives, and every year of delay in that commitment adds immeasurably to future human suffering.
In years, or at best a decade, we will reach the global "Hubbert's peak" for conventional oil, when production starts to decline even with rising demand. Such a peak was reached for US production in 1970. "Foreign oil" has sustained us until now, but Goodstein shows why it cannot for much longer.
A number of books on this subject have come out in recent years, some very pessimistic about the future (for example Heinberg's "The Party's Over", which warns of a greatly decreased world population). Goodstein offers some hope in alternatives, substantially based on the analysis of climate scientist and space solar power advocate Martin Hoffert.
Solar-based renewables and fusion are the only long-run energy solutions. According to Goodstein, natural gas and nuclear fission can help tide us over. All of these have problems, with the most scalable (solar power from space) still the least mature. Goodstein's longest chapter discusses thermodynamics and the physical laws that explain usable energy and its relation to entropy. As a physicist, I was pleased and surprised to learn something from Goodstein's clear explanation here.
Goodstein also discusses global climate problems with continued use of fossil energy, particularly an increasing dependence on coal. He concludes: "Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we find a way to live without fossil fuels."
There were a few minor things to complain about. Transitions between the chapters are too abrupt, perhaps caused by the wide range of discussion in such a short book. A few technical things seemed wrong - for example, it is quite feasible to run transportation systems off grid electricity (electric trains, subways, etc. do this) - would it be so hard to do it for personal transport too?
But Goodstein's book is the clearest explanation yet of our need to get beyond fossil fuels. Is it enough to get the public, and our leaders, actually paying attention?
You can purchase the Out of Gas: All You Need to Know about the End of the Age of Oil from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Inflation. (Score:2, Insightful)
Milk is up 0.60 cent per gallor
Butter has went from 1.99 to 3.49
Ice Cream has increased in price by 35-45%
Store brand products are increasing in price by 5%-8%.
Namebrand products are increasing in price by 6%-7.5%
As to why none of this is being reflected in the inflations numbers...well, you tell me.
Let's not forget synthetics...and politics... (Score:4, Insightful)
Start by banning plastics for consumables (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:These are all lies (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh. I can't tell if you're making fun of Bush, or if you're making fun of the perception of Bush. Way to make a political joke that means something to both sides!
Damn I wish I had a mod point.
Remember this about US gas prices (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, this concept is almost completely unknown to most people, I find.
Grmbl... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be way worse if the dollar was higher, I guess... after all the barrel is quoted in dollars.
Damn, I should have bought a diesel instead of a roadster that does 10l/100km (25mpg). *sigh*
Why energy and food are frequently excluded. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are trying to figure out whether you have inflation issues or not you don't want to include a commodity that surges %40 for a couple of months and then drops %50 for a couple of months. The oscillations around the equillibrium price is just noise.
Now if the equillibrium price for energy were to rise in the long term that would be a problem, but as energy is vital to all other economic endevors it would be reflected in price increases in everything else. Same with food. So the better part of valor is to exclude them, and let the rest of the economy smooth out their effects on pricing by reflecting any increases in the equillibrium prices for those commodities.
Re:In the land of empty tanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Enjoy your bicycle dude, but you'll be in the same position as us, just in a differing way.
Something good may yet come out of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
You know why? Because they are making too much bloody money on it! It's not just the fault of the Environimental Nuts!
Re:Big topic? (Score:3, Insightful)
Next reply, please.
High Prices are Required (Score:4, Insightful)
With totally alternate technologies, as gas prices increase they become more cost competitive with gas. The extra cost/complexity of hybrid vechicles becomes less of a factor. Savings from using (now expensive) gas and moving to other fuels can be calculated. If you project increase in gas prices into the future maybe starting to invest in hydrogen powered vehicles can have a faster ROI (regarding all the infrastructure required) than before gas prices went up.
Basically, to sum up, I'm saying higher gas prices just show the need for new technology, they actulally are required to make it happen.
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
However, there are a number of other things that are still falling in price - telecommunications, electronic goods, etc. The inflation number that governments come up with depends on what they put in the "shopping basket" measured.
If transportation keeps going up and telecommunications keep coming down, that *should* lead to more telecommuting.
Running out of gas (Score:3, Insightful)
At a 1930's World Fair, there was a "robot" answering people's questions about what life in the future would be like. One of the questions was when we would run out of fossil fuels. This is a topic people have been worried about for a long time.
Thus far, all the predictions of doom have been averted. New techniques for locating oil reserves, and tapping resources in previously unreachable places, through technologies like offshore platforms, have allowed new supplies to keep up with demand.
Of course, the total amount of fossil fuel is finite, even if petroleum engineers become clever enough to locate and extract every drop, that won't keep the world running forever. But much like with Moore's law, new advances have kept us from running into a brick wall so far, and will continue to at least for the near future.
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Daniel
www.dieoff.org - depressing news for you (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignorant people think gasoline is unlimited. I'll see the end of it, and the inevitable disaster is not going to be pretty. People think the government should lower prices - that's called communism, and it means shortages. Next time you gripe about the price of gasoline, wonder what you'll do when there is none.
I really hope those stories of the oil companies keeping free energy devices suppressed are true - because the oil companies aren't going to be oil companies for much longer.
Oil is far too valuable to be burning at the TREMENDOUS rate of consumption worldwide currently. There will be NO industrial revolution for most third world countries because of the lack of oil available to build infrastructure.
Green energy sources are a bad joke compared to the amounts of energy we consume from oil. The only long term solution is a 0 growth economy combined with population decrease. The alternatives long-term are not pretty.
Unless, of course, cold fusion works or a feasible technology for extracting energy from the ZPE is found. I sure hope something happens.
Re:Where electricity comes from (Score:3, Insightful)
Q: Does your local electricity come from coal or nuclear?
A: That depends on whether your particular part of the grid is running in excess or deficit at this particular instant.
In other words, once you get everyone to use some non-petrochemical source, you can pick the most efficient means of producing it without forcing your customers to replace their investment again.
Re:Start by banning plastics for consumables (Score:4, Insightful)
And where does that power come from? Could it be fossil fuels?
Right.
Plastics need a lot less heat energy applied to them -- they might actually be cheaper, volume for volume than metals. Less mineing, less hauling, less heat needed... it probably adds up. (note I haven't bothered to search or get any rough numbers, just a gut feeling)
Good News/Bad News (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, fossil fuels cause astonishing trouble. Most of the bad craziness in the Middle East and Africa is fueled by petrodollars. Does anyone think that we'd be quagmired in Iraq if it weren't for oil? Certainly, we'd end more suffering by going into Sudan, or other places. Why do we coddle the House of Saud after they financed al Qaeda, if it isn't for oil and the promise of growing wealth for the House of Bush and the House of Cheney?
There is also a growing body of evidence that pollution is bad (prior to recently, it was purely conjecture).
It would be great to switch from fossil fuels, and to do it quickly. A Manhattan-Project-like effort for fusion reactors would be appropriate.
Unfortunately, the average SUV-driving American pinhead will keep this from happening for a long time.
It's only a matter of time (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't a matter of giving up our SUVs for hybrid cars. That isn't going to matter one bit. The fact is, we've spent the last 100 years building an entire economy around absurdly cheap energy. This energy is going to run out. If we do not find a way to run our world without petroleum and coal, we are doomed. What's really going to be fun is, when this peak occurs, the powers of the world are going to fight more and more visciously for the remaining scraps. We will face war, poverty, and social upheaval which will grow ever worse as the lights slowly dim... and then burn out.
The only way around this is some serious technological advances. We need to develop a sustainable energy economy, and we need to do it yesterday. Lifestyle changes, solar panels, wind farms, and hybrid cars won't do a damn bit of good without massive new technology.
Boys and girls, we have about 25 years. I suggest you study physics and chemistry. Hard.
Another "Beyond the Limits" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In a decade? (Score:3, Insightful)
While $2.017 is a record for gasoline, adjusted for inflation the price hit $2.99 a gallon in March 1981, according to the Energy Information Administration
There is this thing called inflation. Perhaps you have heard of it?
Re:Inflation. (Score:2, Insightful)
Good thing tax isn't proportional to the price. Otherwise we would be paying $8 or so a gallon by now.
Fact is, your petrol is still incredibly cheap when compared with other countries. I think you can start complaining with reason when it hits $3 or $4 a gallon. Maybe it'll make people think twice about buying an SUV.
Re:Start by banning plastics for consumables (Score:5, Insightful)
If you use and recycle glass, you have to ship it around.
Are you sure you know which method uses the least petroleum?
Re:In the land of empty tanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why energy and food are frequently excluded. (Score:2, Insightful)
Hell, If you leave out everything that is going up in price the inflation rate looks good.
They are gaming the system.
Start by banning plastics for useless crap (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and we could ban auto-racing, truck pulls, the robosaurus that shoots flame and eats cars...
Re:Running out of gas (Score:4, Insightful)
The big questions to ask today are
As to the first, I don't know. Some say India might have some unexploited basins. Certainly, North America and Europe don't have any frontier exploration areas. As to the second, well, that's why I'm in grad school :) But, there are certain physical limitations that mean we will only be able to extract so much oil without spending lots of money and/or energy. That money and energy might be better spend elsewhere.
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
You should try reading William Clark's essay [ratical.org]. It's about the US dollar vs the Euro being used by oil producing countries.
Re:These are all lies (Score:1, Insightful)
christians at home peddling their loonie fantasys
religious jews killing the palestinians and vice versa
fundementalist islamics trying to kill everyone who disagrees with them
The world would simply be better off without religion. There are no two ways about it. Simple as that.
It wouldn't all be happy families, but we'd be much better off.
All I see from religions these days is hate, they are simply peddling hate.
Transportation is an expense multiplier. (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember only a few years ago -- sometime before 2000 -- there was a summer where gas prices dipped below a dollar in my area. Gas prices are now twice that, and diesel prices are in the $1.50-1.60 range. A 50% increase in the cost of transportation hits the prices of everything hard. Oil prices have a ripple effect on the entire economy, not just the ~$20-40 you spend refilling a gas tank.
Re:if, and that's a big if (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The only real answer is to reorganize society. (Score:2, Insightful)
All of those folks huddled together in high-rise apartments still need:
-To heat their homes
-To run their refridgerators
-A job to go to (what exactly can we make or do when cheap energy goes away?)
-Food to eat.
Personal transportation is still a very very tiny part of the equasion. We could all drive self-sufficient solar supercars, and it would not change our situation. Everything we do and touch is dependent on cheap energy.
My advice would be to learn to live off of the grid. We should be building self-sufficient communities that can grow their own food, make their own clothes, and build and maintain shelters. Plan for the collapse of civilization as we know it, and be prepared to live in a gridless world, because there's a good chance we'll see it come in our lifetime.
Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
So why are European taxes so much higher? Because they tax as a percentage of the price, whereas the USA taxes as a amount per volume. Hence, if the cost of gas before taxes doubles, in Europe the price at the pump doubles, whereas in the USA the price may only go up 25%.
Now some will argue that the taxes are too low, as they don't cover all the related costs, but all of those studies have included environmental impact costs that are wildly subjective at best.
its a hell of a lot more then just no gas (Score:2, Insightful)
When oil is too costly to use as an energy source how are we going to make the metal to build the factoies that make medical supplies? How are we going to build cleaner (nuke?) power plants when we don't even have the resources to make the raw material?
And this would be all happening after the wars over oil rich land. The first obvious war over oil have already happened.
Drill the coasts... (Score:2, Insightful)
If we were to develop those resources, get rid of the stupid EPA's '8 different types of gas' rules, and build more refineries, then the prices would drop back down.
But the people of the US (or at least enough of them in powerful positions) don't want that. So gas prices will remain high for now. But we won't be running out of oil in the lifetime of anybody here.
Re:Inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Wanna bet? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I also remember is a $1000 (US) bet between the author of the book and a professor who's name escapes me at the moment. The bet was that the cost of a cross section of commodities, picked by the author, adjusted for inflation, would be LOWER in 20 years than they were at the start of the bet. The book's author lost. Every time, he lost.
The problem? The books author took advantage of the then crises going on (stagflation, unavailable gasoline in the US because we wouldn't buy from countries like Iran) to prey upon people's fears to make money, or to promote their particular dicipline (physics professor pushing for fusion research? Who would have thought that?). This book seems little different.
Saying that we're going to run out of fossil fuels is fine. It'll happen. Saying it's gonna happen in the next decade, and that solar and fusion are the only long term replacements is assinine. What happens if someone figures out a way to make a gasoline replacement from genetically engineered microbes next year? The unpredicibility of the human mind and spirit in finding solutions are completely ignored, and when the author's predictions turn out to be as false as every other prediction, I have little doubt that thsese same attributes will be the culprit.
The current hike in the price of gasoline is not solely based on the availabllity of crude. It's as much, and possibly more, affected by the inability of refineries to process the crude oil into gasoline that is driving prices up. If prices, or demand, were going to stay this high, you'd think oil companies would be falling over themselves to build more refineries...but they're not. Why not? Because they know that, in the longer term, those refineries won't pay for themselves when the price of gasoline drops again.
---Postscript
Finally, I noticed that one of the authours wrote about a lower population in the future? Wouldn't that lead to lowered demand for petroleum? And a longer lasting supply? Or did doomsayer #2 forget to talk to doomsayer #1 before publishing (again)?
misunderstandings (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear power would be a great short term stop gap, it's only problem is that it takes a decade to build a reactor.
My last point is that this issue is HUGE. Oil is used in the production of EVERYTHING including alternative energy sources and research. Just imagine how much time and money it would take to produce enough ethenol (or what ever) for everyone's cars, distribute/store it (would current distribution systems work?), and convert every car, truck, big rig, ambulance, firetruck, motorcycle, etc in the country! That only covers land transportation.
Look around you. There is in everything you see a number that represents the ammount of oil it took to create whatever you're looking at and bring it to the spot that it's currently at. Oil was used to produce and transport everything you own (except unimproved realestate). Oil is the constant in equation of everything we make or raise.
Re:What about alcohol? (Score:2, Insightful)
Gasoline is not a source, it is a pipe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gasoline is solar energy converted to hydrocarbons by plants, then processed by time and pressure.
But the real source of Energy is the Sun. Mankind's total energy useage per year is still MUCH less than the Sun's total output per year, and is even less than the amount of energy the sun delivers to the planet earth in a year.
It should be obvious that we might be forced to find other ways of converting that energy into useable forms, but that we have no need to worry about running out of energy.
Re:www.dieoff.org - depressing news for you (Score:5, Insightful)
The future is already here, my friend.
Re:www.dieoff.org - depressing news for you (Score:1, Insightful)
No you won't. You won't see the end of petroleum any more than I will see the last tree chopped down. It simply won't happen.
Also, no one really believes that gasoline is unlimited. No one really believes that the water in the ocean is unlimited. No one really believes solar energy will last forever, since the sun will eventually go dark.
Here's the thing, no one knows how much oil we have left. All that we really know is how much we have found so far, and we know that we always keep finding and extracting more than we would have predicted.
Will oil run out? Yes. Will it run out today? Tomorrow? Next year? April 17, 2045 at 11:42 a.m. PDT? No one knows. What we do know is that the last drop (or barrel, or millions of barrels) will never be used.
Just like the last cell of whale blubber was never used.
Bad economics and incorrect facts. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, of courrrse.... A lack of refineries makes their input product (crude oil) more expensive? Shouldn't a lack of demand drive down the price of a supplied good? Perhaps you flunked the supply and demand portion of macroeconomics.
2. Environmental regulations forcing specialized, region-specific formulations across the country.
This effects the $40/barrel price of crude oil how? Hell, it doesn't even effect the gas price of people outside of those regions much, and if it did, the answer would be to adopt the better standards rather than to increase the smog in the big cities.
3. OPEC fighting against us in Iraq with the one effective weapon they have.
It seems that in talks to increase production. [ft.com] Only Venezuela and Iran are vocally against this.
"We will fight wars over oil in the future" (Score:2, Insightful)
If the Middle East (and Iraq) were not full of oil, then the U.S. would not be fighting a war in Iraq today. I am not saying that the U.S. sent troops into Iraq to steal their oil. The neocons sent troops into Iraq in the hope that they could stabilize the region and create a reliable source of future oil for the world.
A side benefit would be that the money spent on oil (e.g. to fillup your SUV) would be less likely to support terrorism (where do you think bin Ladin got his millions?). At this stage, however, it seems that the utopian vision of the neocons will not come to pass, and the future of the region looks more unstable than before the Iraq war.
Other side of the story (Score:4, Insightful)
Or great, depending on how you view it. Here in Norway, whose economy is based on the export of oil and natural gas, high oil prices are viewed as good.
I'm not saying that a high usage of oil is any good (to the world as a whole), but for some of us, high prices on oil is just perfect.
Re:www.dieoff.org - depressing news for you (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the thing, no one knows how much oil we have left
No, but the experts who are paid a huge pile of money note the rate of discovery of new oil is far below the consumption rate of existing reserves.
What will happen is that we will use up all the oil that can be easily extracted at a net energy gain. If you have to burn 25e6 million barrels of oil to get 20e6 million barrels - there is the problem.
Re:In the land of empty tanks (Score:2, Insightful)
And a human being on a bicycle is ludicrously more efficient than any other form of transportation based on energy expended vs. miles traveled. Nothing else even comes close to as efficient, and you don't need bio-diesel, just eat the fries yourself!
Fun With Oil Numbers. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently they were wrong, because the book was made in 1976. It's 2004 and I'm not living in a real life Post Apocalyptic "Mad Max" world full of thugs and killers spilling Blood for Oil.
Getting back to the point, I'll believe we'll be out of oil when I see it. Particulary since so far the analysts doing these studies haven't been right so far.
Pretty much all of the other stuff your going to find here is DittoHeads Vs FrankenSteins to see which radio Talk show host has the biggest head
Re:Dismally Realistic Science (Score:2, Insightful)
What about the other oil products? (Score:2, Insightful)
We don't use oil for Electricity (Score:5, Insightful)
PS: If you are stockpiling food and clothing to prepare for the collapse of civilization, you fail to understand what the collapse of civilization means. You should be stockpiling guns and ammo.
Re:In the land of empty tanks (Score:3, Insightful)
how many gallons of gas does it take to produce one pound of vegetables?
Well, if it takes x gallons, then in almost all cases x is less than the amount of gas required to produce a meat-based meal with the same nutritional value. Unless, of course, we're talking about some weird-ass luxury vegetables. Your point was...?
Re:Running out of gas (Score:3, Insightful)
But of course Smith's invisible hand will guarantee we make the best of the bad decisions left to us only when we absolutely have to instead of an optimal solution ahead of time.
I don't have a solution, just ranting.
gov't should encourage telecommuting (Score:2, Insightful)
And I would be the first to sign up. 30 miles to and from work is a dog in traffic.
It's all about markup... (Score:2, Insightful)
20 percent markup on $20 a barrel means $4 profit
20 percent markup on $40 a barrel means $8 profit
It is not in their best interest to get the prices down.
register to vote, and follow through.
regards
dbcad7
Re:Let's not forget synthetics...and politics... (Score:3, Insightful)
And, as the price rises, the "larger" our available reserves are, as more oil becomes economically availalbe. If prices keep rising? We'll start refining bitumen, methane hydrates, and using a higher portion of ethanol (and you don't want to get me started on the "ethanol uses more energy to create than it produces!" line - it doesn't, by a long shot, and even if it did, that's irrelevant for a number of reasons).
Re:Let's not forget synthetics...and politics... (Score:5, Insightful)
PeakOil does the same thing, in spite of his silly rebuttal in the FAQ. They assume that oil consumption will not change, technology will not improve, and we'll cease to adapt.
Re:Transportation is an expense multiplier. (Score:4, Insightful)
I love how the media likes to dramaticize the increase in oil prices by comparing the current peak to the previous trough (instead of against trendline). If businesses relied on the price of oil to stay unusually low, then they were being way too optomistic for their own good.
NO SYMPATHY!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In defense of suburbia (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in a charming, walkable, 80-year-old city neighborhood, in a 3-bedroom brick rowhouse that is anything but characterless. Our neighborhood organization sponsors a "painted lady" contest that encourages residents to paint and decorate their home. Contrast that with my relatives who live in newly-minted suburbia: windy streets dotted with houses build according to one of three or four floorplans, all with off-white exteriors and strict homeowners association rules that prevent you from doing anything to the exterior that stands out in any way. Their houses and yards are larger, but tend to be bland and feel cheap (try knocking on the walls). And of course (the original point of this discussion) you have to drive if you want to go anywhere out of the subdivision -- and the subdivision is entirely residential.
I have nothing against the sort of cute suburban neighborhoods you describe -- but be aware that when most people buy a suburban home, that's not what they're buying. And my experience with strict suburban homeowner's associations, along with the mindset of people who live there, is that the suburbs are less, not more, encouraging of individuality.
jf
Re:Let's not forget synthetics...and politics... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that was a mistake. It's also a mistake to liken an equation attempting to predict human behavior with an equation attempting to predict the physical amount of a substance that is left, namely oil. Human beings can change themselves, oil reserves cannot.
As to www.peakoil.net being a scare-monger site, it's hard to imagine what they're trying to scare us into, unless it's thinking ahead. Or perhaps you might be afraid that Colin Camplbell, the founder of peakoil.net is a liberal. I don't know what his exact politics are, but check out his background, taken from this article [fromthewilderness.com]:
you won't have any choice, you'll pay it (Score:3, Insightful)
people seem to think it won't matter, ot that the "market" will taker care of it. what they always forget is that this oil stuff is a finite resource, we cannot make any more of it. with energy, as sophisticated as we think we are, we are still in the hunter/gatherer stage of existence. It looks snazzy and lotsa blinkenlights, but all we do is extract it, and it's running out fast. They've about exhausted any gains to be made from effieicny, because it doesn't matter if you can throw money at it, once it takes the same amount of energy to extract, refine, transport petroleum products as you can get from it, then production ceases. You can't run the energy business in a negative, and that negative leaning break -even point is rapidly approaching. people argue about that point, say it's centuries in the future or whatever, but I think you can find out it's within a decade or two and we'll have some SERIOUS problems on the old ball of mud here. Demand is going up dramatically, it is going to be so bad we WILL be seeing major wars over it, and I contend all this mid east jazz going on is directly tied to "who will own the oil for the next two decades". I don't think even the most optimistic figures show that it is possible for the bulk of the planet to have any sort of "middle class" existence like we have now, the raw materials simply do not exist, and the energy doesn't exist, and it won't exist. And this stuff is coming down hard, and fast now.
I am non complacent about it, I live rural, I try for a bigger garden every year, and I'll be adding to my personal altenate enrgy supply, and be working on transportation next. Once iot gets real expensive, the worlds rich and the worlds governments and militsaries will "own" all the good energy, joe civvies in any nation won't be getting much, and they will be working lots harder than they do now, that's for sure.
That's my opinion, but I think the data supports it.
We are IN the "good old days" now, in other words.
We had a sort of warning in the 70's, and they said we would run out sooner. Thankfully they explored, found more, and developed more sophisticated exploration and extraction techniques, but they about milked that dry now. What's left hat is "new" is at bad, expensive places to get to, and is very costly, energy-wise. There AREN'T any more, stick a pipe in the ground get a gusher fields left, the kinds that fueled the rise of industrialised west and japan, and built those strong economies. That stuff is gone, we used it up already..
Re:These are all lies (Score:3, Insightful)
Without going into the infinite flame war which is religion - the main problem is that Bush and his belief in God is that of an external anthropomorphized embodiment of a God in Man's image - rather than God as a principle of creation underlying all things as thought and intelligence does.
The God principle gives justification and validity to all existence - not the freewill choices to abuse power to dominate other expressions of consciousness.
For, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Re:Inflation. (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact that gasoline prices go through these wild gyrations is exactly because the market *is* competitive, so there isn't any deliberate control which can be used to smooth things out.
Cartels like Major League baseball and monopolies like Microsoft do have price changes, of course, but not daily, and not with such violent disruptive effects. Instead, they apply the slow squeeze.
Re:These are all lies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's worse than that (Score:4, Insightful)
You are mixing two different things that don't go together. There are three hybrid cars in common production right now--Honda Insight, Honda Civic hybrid, and the Toyota Prius. There are a few more to come out later this year and next year. You selected the 3-cylinder engine from one car and matched it with the lowest fuel economy from one of the other cars. The Insight has the 3 cyl and gets 60+mpg. My 2002 Prius is of the first generation of it before the large set of improvements they made for the 2004 model year. It routinely got 47-50mpg in actual gas mileage. The newer Prius gets in the 50-60 range. The Civic is a little less; I believe they are around 45mpg. I did have a 1991 Metro with the 3 cylinder. With mostly highway miles, I could get about 47mpg--generally mid 40's, and as someone pointed out, that was a tiny low-powered car. The Prius and Civic have 4 cylinders + electric motor power added to that when needed, so they have better power than a traditional 4-banger.
Your quote about the Metro getting 59mpg is a complete load of fertilizer. This claim sheds some light on your 66mpg hybrid Taurus mentioned earlier. (You hauled your Taurus up a mountain to start your gas mileage test, right?) I fear I have fed a troll, but at least the information is good for other people.
Re:Inflation. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In the land of empty tanks (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? Where did you get that from? Often times a pound of beef costs LESS than a gallon of gasoline (depending on the form and quality of that beef, sure.) I'd love a citation if you've got it.
Re:It's worse than that (Score:3, Insightful)
- An air conditioner (hooked up)
- A radio (hooked up)
- power steering
- power brakes
- anything other than "power to the wheels"
- any (power robbing) polution controls for the gasoline part of the system.
- "get up and go"
- a battery system that doesn't need to be replaced every few months.
- an electric engine/generator with a reliable long life.
- any room for people (after adding the electic engine, batteries, and large generator)
- was the entire system crash tested.
I have heard many complaints that the hybrids are "living up to the hype", but in realitiy they are just starting the learning curve for the technology. Just think, your school's 1997 test bed, was an ancsector of today's production hybrid, that a steep learning curve in an industry that is know to be lumbering.My bother had an `88 Honda CRX HF (the high fuel efficentcy model, I think it was the "HF"), I remeber that it was rated by the EPA to be "over 50 mph Highway". In reality, when I drove it in (like) `93 it got about 35-40 mph and it wasn't very quick. That car was the high water mark for the fuel effiency boom started in the early '70s with the gas crunch. Relitively cheap gas in the late `80s and all of the `90s killed the market for them.
Re:Inflation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Refineries are incredibly complex, expensive, and unpopular items. The environmentalists want you shut down, period, and spend a lot of money trying to get you to do so. Instead, they just make it more expensive for you to stay in business. Meanwhile, you've got competitors trying to cut your legs out from under you, and, as high as prices might go - you've still got contract customers (airlines, power generators) who have capped prices. Transporting oil, everybody wants triple-hulled tankers that look like cruise ships, but they want to pay the prices they got when 30-year-old, leaking hulks run by the cheapest labor on the planet were the standard.
You want cheap oil, you got it. The Saudis sell us the stuff for less than it costs to pump it out of our own wells. American oilfield workers don't complain about their jobs being "outsourced" - they simply found other careers when their jobs disappeared 20 years ago. Move one coding job to Bombay and you get a senate inquiry. Move 120,000 oil jobs to Riyadh, Jeddah, and Bahrain... and you can buy a bigger SUV! woohoo!
But now you've got a problem. All those Chinese peasants who make those cheap computers and appliances we love so much? Well, they are all buying houses. And televisions. And cars. And they want electricity for them... Guess where they're buying it from??
Instead of being the only bidder on that tanker 'o' crude, you're now one of perhaps four or five. All of a sudden the local crack dealer has five customers instead of just you.
Oil companies making big profits? Nope. Building power plants is a dead business; anyone making a profit runs the risk of getting their plant "liberated" by a governor who needs votes. Opening up a new refinery, well.. you've got a three to five year lead time from the shovel hitting the dirt 'till your first truckload of super unleaded goes out thr gate. Except nobody wants a refinery near their house. Or anywhere else, for that matter - a permit might take six months or six years before you even know if you can build. And refineries ain't cheap. You need to convince enough investors that you can get the permits, build the plant, get the ships to offload oil... and of course, that the price will still be high enough to turn a profit over the 25-year lifespan of your refinery.
But we do use natural gas (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole coal will last 100/200/250 years, or whatever, is total bullshit. Such numbers are based on taking some number for coal reserves and dividing it by present consumption. But present consumption is small because we get most of our energy from oil. Even in electricity generation coal generally makes up less than 50 percent of production (and it is used for very little else at present). If the switch from coal to oil and gas had not been made at the beginning of the the 20th century, all the coal on earth would have already been used up. Once oil and gas production starts to fall, coal consumption will rise dramatically and these numbers like 100 years will get a lot smaller.
i agree, www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net (Score:2, Insightful)
It explains it all.
Either find the oil, or make it cheap using slave labour, or find a magic alternative.
Who knows, the fight of oil may be cause a www3 to start.
Trains anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not public transit as such, but yes, most places other than North America still use trains a great deal to move goods. You just don't see very many huge semis on the highways in Europe like you do in the US and Canada. And trains just are a hell of lot more efficient at moving stuff -- it's just that the absurdly cheap gas in NA screws up the economics here.
clean/safe public transit (Score:3, Insightful)
I have lived in two different college towns where the buses were used mostly by faculty and staff of the university. I use it myself when the weather sucks, stops one block from my apartment very 15 minutes during commute time...
False dichotomy (Score:1, Insightful)
> the price, or live completely raw native primitive.
Or take choice #3: USE LESS OIL!
That's EXACTLY what the US did last time there was an oil crunch (70's) - cars were designed for better mileage, processes were designed to use less oil, homes were better insulated, and national oil usage dropped so much that it's _only recently_ getting back to 1980 levels (http://www.federalreserve.gov/BoardDocs/Speeches
Considering that Canada's tar sands contain more oil than the proven liquid reserves of the entire world, but are largely uneconomical to obtain, the problem isn't a shortage of oil, but a shortage of CHEAP ENERGY. If we really needed, we could use solar energy to refine tar sands to create the plastics we need.
Our oil consumption is a problem, but the "we're all dooooomed!" voices are just irrationally panicking. The likely worst case is that we run out of cheap oil and prices go up (and our standard of living drops somewhat) to pay for the creation and usage of alternative energy sources. We're not going to wake up one morning and find all the oil suddenly gone, so there's not going to be the catastrophic crash people are screaming about.
That doesn't mean it might not be painful; it just won't be fatal.