Hoarding is exactly what the government is doing right now by filling the SPR, and frankly it's the best thing that could happen. It drives prices up. High prices encourage demand destruction. They also finance new well development. The hoarded oil gives us a buffer to fall back on once shortages become more prevalent. High prices are what we need in order to adapt to what's coming, and the sooner they happen, the better.
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 1188 Location: Zoorope
Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 4:21 am Post subject: Volkswagen switchs to Abu Dhabi!
Sorry, no links: just read today on the main italian newspaper "La Repubblica":
Volkswagen is planning to switch some of its car production to Abu Dhabi opening a factory there. Cause? Lower cost of oil, about -30%. Big discussions in Germany after the announcement. The German govt is also rethinking about the law they made some years ago, to close nuclear plants before 2020. They plan to let them open. German govt states that "Energy price will be a big problem in few years. We have to make a big effort, in a rush, to develop nuclear, wind, solar and other alternatives."
Coudn't believe my eyes when I read it: a car manifacturer doesn't switch its production just because "momentary high prices". And if the Germans said those things I tend to believe them.
PS: We didn't think of that aspect of peakoil/globalization: factories switching to lower-cost energy countries. This will likely happen...
Joined: May 23, 2004 Posts: 276 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 4:55 am Post subject:
One thing I wonder about from time to time is that if North America is so dependent on Natural Gas and the products produced by it, is it better to try and import more space-effective finished goods (like fertilizer) or import the gas in scarce and expensive LNG tankers to try and preserve a few more local jobs?
While ammonium fertilizer's safety record is somewhat worse than LNG's (Texas City 1947 and Oklahoma City 1995 come to mind), it is still far easier to find ships to transport the stuff around the world.
Not that I expect it will automatically happen, nor is it one that needs non-market intervention (which LNG tanker production would if it's to EVER get off the ground in a sufficient way), but it is an option that deserves a bit of thought.
What other LNG derivatives or alternatives could be imported on normal bulk or container carriers to reduce the need for LNG imports to North America, and would the amount of NA domestic NG output replaced be sufficient? _________________ The purpose of human life revolves around an endless need to extract ever increasing amounts of carbon out of the ground and then release it into the atmosphere.
Wow big news there barbara thanks for posting it. I knew the germans would never shut off their nuke plants, that would literally be suicide. It is HUGE if they are saying to build more though!! That ought to get the green people's panties in a knot:).
And yes energy cost is the foundation of a wealthy society. That is the TRUE reason companies are moving manufacturing to china. Labor is only about 10% of the cost of manufacturing. But energy is 33-50%. China has cheaper energy costs, so they go there. Very few people realize this, even very high level investors.
Joined: May 31, 2004 Posts: 920 Location: Brno, Czech rep., EU
Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 5:03 am Post subject:
When real peak hits, im convinced that many countries will transfer production back and closer to consumer to reduce transportation prices. Moving a factory is not problem now. I see it here, it takes 1/2 of year to build a factory and they often dismantle it after 3-5 years of operation (when they usually enjoy tax holidays here) and move it somewhere else again.
To comment MrPC, there was just recent fertilizer disaster in North Korea just a month ago, killed hundreds.
Wow big news there barbara thanks for posting it. I knew the germans would never shut off their nuke plants, that would literally be suicide. It is HUGE if they are saying to build more though!! That ought to get the green people's panties in a knot:)
I don't think what they are saying is that they are going to build more muke plants. I read just last week where they determined that new nuke plants cannot beat wind in cost effectiveness. All this suggests is that they have come to a rational conclusion that since already stuck with the myriad problems of the present generators and given the dire energy situation coming, they will phase them out more gradually over a longer period of time than was initially planned.
I will repeat again, if future civilization is to be sustainable, nuclear fission in particular has to be banished from the face of the earth. Scaling up the indistry to the levels required especially at a time of distress would increase the radiactive load on the environment over the long term to the point at which higher lifeforms are compromised in ability to survive. Nuclear radioactivity and its associated industry and products like weapons etc. is every bit as much a threat to life as global warming, just a different kind of threat. Please see this link for just a sample of online material on the hazards of radioactivity, even low-level. link
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 103 Location: Cornwall, NY
Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 9:25 am Post subject:
I agree that radioactive waste is a problem. However, breeder reactors reduce the problem and vastly increase the energy extracted from any given sample of uranium. Nuclear fission, and possibly fusion, are the only sources of power that have even the remotest possibility of producing enough energy to touch oil. If there's a die-off and any sort of technologically advanced civilization manages to come about, its main source of power is going to have to be nuclear.
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 309 Location: Ontario, Canada
Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 5:58 pm Post subject:
[quote="Andy"]
Quote:
Nuclear radioactivity and its associated industry and products like weapons etc. is every bit as much a threat to life as global warming, just a different kind of threat. Please see this link for just a sample of online material on the hazards of radioactivity, even low-level. http://www.ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/DDoverV.htm
And there are also studies that indicate a small dose of radioactivity is healthy; nevertheless, all plants are designed to assume it's a risk. Most low-level radioactive materials aren't even that bad, unless you happen to ingest them where they can do long-term damage. Which is what happens a lot in your link.
The radioactive outputs from modern plants is ridiculously small. I think the numbers are: most health regulations say get under 1000 msv/year to be safe. Dental x-rays are 20 msv. Living on the fence of a nuclear plant for an entire year is 0.01! Flying, living at high elevations, and all sorts of other things are more radioactive then a well-run plant.
But I agree, decomissioning and that last bit of high-level waste you can't recycle mean it's not the permanent answer. It's very expensive and inelegant, but I don't think a generation or two of plants would kill us, if we recycled the waste more. _________________ "Our forces are now closer to the center of Baghdad than most American commuters are to their downtown office."
--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, April 2003
One cannot look at just the routine releases from modern plants. You have to consider the all too frequent "incidents" that release more than normal emissions. These are when you here them say "there was no danger to the public" despite a release two orders of magnitude higher than routine. In any event, the nuclear plant itself is probably the least radioactively polluting part of the chain. The other areas are where the serious concerns occur. Mining, reprocessing, enrichment, disposal etc. Collectively, these other aspects of the nuclear cycle are continuously increasing the radiactive burden on lifeforms. By the way, the professional health organizations WHO etc. all agree to this statement. "There is no dose or dose rate of radiation at which it can be catergorically proven that no harm will result right down to the lowest possible dose" In other words, radiation is a giant game played by all lifeforms of Russian roulette albeit with much longer odds. Radiation from flying, background radiation, x-rays, cosmic radiation are all capable of triggering the process of cell destruction that eventually leads to cancer, sometimes heart disease and genetic mutilation in future offspring. Please do a google search on the "medical effects of low level ionizing radiation" if you are still in doubt. NO RADIATION IS ABSOLUTELY SAFE. ALL RADIATION CAN TRIGGER HEALTH PROBLEMS RIGHT DOWN TO THE LOWEST POSSIBLE DOSE.
Quote:
Nuclear fission, and possibly fusion, are the only sources of power that have even the remotest possibility of producing enough energy to touch oil. If there's a die-off and any sort of technologically advanced civilization manages to come about, its main source of power is going to have to be nuclear.
Nuclear fission cannot even remotely have the energy return of oil because of the huge infrastructure simply needed to keep it operating as safely as possible. All the domes, bombproof transport containers, deep geological repositories, expensive robotic eqiupment, intense security, tricky logistics etc. negate the extraordinary energy contained in the atom and makes it contribution just average and declining into the future. Nuclear fusion, if they can eventually get it working may be a more palatable option given that its radioactive byproducts are not as long lived but it is still unlikely to come close to fossil fuels.
The only absolutely sure sustainable, long term option for mankind is to mimick the plants and use the energy supplied (free of entropy increase on earth) by the sun. Life could not possibly have survived if this process was not adopted by photosynthetic organisms. To do that, humanity MUST (we have absolutely no option) scale down our footprint and reverse the ridiculous exponential madness of the last 200 years. Attempting any other course will lead to ruin even if we mastered nuclear technology to render it completely safe. Simple mathematics of the nature of exponential growth should quickly illustrate that exponential growth must end soon.
Wind is a net energy loss throughout its lifetime. At best you could maybe run a nigeria level economy on wind, and pray that the wind stayed on.
Radiation is not that dangerous, only at high levels is it dangerous. We get exposed to radiation every day of our lives. For example if you live in a building with concrete you are getting exposed to 1000 times the radiation then if your house was built right beside a nuke plant. I don't see people terrified of their house foundation, but they are terrified of nuclear plants. Coal plants emit about 10,000 times the radiation a nuclear plant does, and much of that is uranium particles sent up into the air. Yet I don't see people freaking out over it.
The only real cost of chernobyl was the eurotwit socialists who increased their abortions by 200,000 that year out of fear of mutations.
Nuclear waste adds up but already we have technologies to use up that energy in the waste, and that technology is growing rapidly. 100 years from now we will be so far beyond our current technology it is inconceivable to even guess what they might be doing, or actualy we will be doing.
Joined: May 31, 2004 Posts: 920 Location: Brno, Czech rep., EU
Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:05 am Post subject:
AA, it was stated numerous times, wind is not a loss, current denmark's wind turbines have EROEI around 20! They pay they own energy costs during first 9 months (energy required for construction, manufactore, materials, transportation and dissasembling)
The problem with wind (as I have calculated and posted elsewhere on this forum - link on request) is not so much the how much energy is returned, but more to do with finding good sites for turbines that won't inflame the NIMBYs or interfer with the migratory patterns of bird species.
To produce enough energy to replace coal and/or oil will require an ulmost unbelievable number of turbines.
Therefore, although wind power does have promise, it's certainly nowhere near the complete solution.
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3429 Location: California, USA
Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2004 4:58 pm Post subject:
Once again, it's not either/or, it's and/both, and we need it all. I've seen the figures on the comparative radiation releases from coal burning and from nuclear fission, and fission is an order of magnitude cleaner in that regard. I've worked on utility scale wind projects and there is excellent potential but it also requires further development of the grid in remote areas.
As for resistance by NIMBYs: they resist any type of power generating project anywhere they could see it or hear it . So the solution for NIMBYs is to simply turn off the electricity to high-NIMBY zones, and wait for them to get a clue.
Here's a slogan for you: No consumption without production. Put that into circulation in high-NIMBY zones as a prelude to switching off their electricity for a few weeks.
BTW, I am personally aware of a NIMBYzone that resisted a wind installation and ironically has no sewage treatment in their town, so when they flush the toilet, it goes directly to the ocean. I suggested telling them that if they're concerned about the views, they should stop looking out on the horizon and start looking at what's squishing between their toes on the beach. Needless to say, management didn't like that idea:-)
gg3 excellent idea! If the people against us as a society using energy dont' like it, they can all move to a state and vote to stop any energy use. Good for them, and I will be laughing at their 13th century living standards.
Or they can turn off the power to their homes if they feel so strongly about it.
This is why I keep telling you that the answer doesn't lie in America. The problem in democracy is you can have idiots who only know a few propoganda points dictating what everyone else does. America was never built to be like that, it was built as a republic.
The leaders in China are arrogant, but they are also intelligent men. That is why China is developing so well right now, they simply are making the decisions even if the people don't like it. And yes I understand there is tremendous room for corruption, which is why the american system was so good.
Andy: The very reason nuclear costs so much right now is because all of the people who have no clue about its dangers are allowed to vote. So they make sure the plant has ridiculus redundancy on things that could never go wrong in the first place. They make sure the waste is stored to a ridiculus level and that workers can't get near it.
That is why it is so expensive.
Final point: Wind has a good eroi, the problem is you never know when it is going to be windy! And the nature of oil/coal/nuclear/gas plants is that they use LESS fuel running them even all night, so the people keep them running all the time. Therefore it would be pointless to just shut them off when the wind picked up.. you would spend more fuel doing that.
So in michigan for example they were only able to make use of the wind plant's generation 10% of the time. And that was with a vast integrated system. You see energy is something you have to very closely match generation with consumption or bad things happen. Wind is random so it is very difficult to do.
The one place wind makes a lot of sense, besides its environmental problems, is tied up with a hydro dam system. But there are so few of those places in the world that it isn't really a big solution imo.
Maybe when batteries get better I can see it. And I still find wind cool in places like a remote windy island.
To produce enough energy to replace coal and/or oil will require an ulmost unbelievable number of turbines.
Therefore, although wind power does have promise, it's certainly nowhere near the complete solution.
I think most analysts for energy believe that wind could reasonable meet between 30% to 40% of future energy needs for Europe. Intermitency of wind is the main issue with going beyond that. It would take a lot more innovative ways to locate wind turbines to really reach those numbers. Denmark is now doing offshore wind farms that are 20 miles out to sea.
That requires shallow offshore areas. Not all countries have that. But the US has the entire Gulf of Mexico. I did a lot of scuba diving in Sarasota/Tampa. You have to go out 10 miles just to get 40 feet of diving depth. It is like that all the way along the Florida coastline for the Gulf of Mexico. The Atlantic coast gets deep quickly. 200+ feet while within sight of land. Not sure about California or Northeast US.
Besides wind, the only other conventional major sources of power are coal and nuclear. I no longer consider Natural Gas to be a conventional source of electric power. If you look at the actions of utilities, they are starting to write-off their natural gas plans and sell them at a loss. The spike in natural gas by 300% in the past two years has really made that to be a lousy idea. I would shoot the CEO of any utility who builds another natural gas power plant.
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