Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 4:27 pm Post subject: Re: Peak When?
Hydro wrote:
ASPO says 2008, Savinar says 2005, Simmons says 2010, IEA says 2030, Department of energy says somewhere between 2010-2020.
So here's the damn point. How the hell can anyone just arbitrarily pick one of those as "the one" because its a fact that none of them can, with 100% certainty, say how much proven reserves there are left. On top of that, we have no idea what the demand for oil will be with the alternatives coming online, and further, we have no idea how to predict technology's role in prolonging well declines.
Point being, nobody knows, and nobody can say for sure. So cut the crap.
entropyfails wrote:
Hydro wrote:
Baloney. Nobody knows when this so called "peak" is going to happen. There is all the time in the world to set these things up. Obviously they can't become a "source" for oil because they're just pulling up 85% efficiency. However when you consider how much human and animal waste, garbage, and left over agricultural waste there is, this could extend the peak for oil, way into the future if at all.
ASPO says 2008 for peak oil. Do you have better data? I doubt it, because you didn't post it.
Human waste, as I pointed out, is 134 times less than agricultural waste. It doesn't even form a blip given the quantites we are talking about.
Agricultural waste, as I pointed out, does not have the ability to give us more than 10% of our current oil requirements. Now if you use your critical thinking skills, and see that 9 out of 10 calories that we eat come from oil related processes, you will find that 10% quantity will shrink AS we run out of oil due to there not being enough agriculture to convert.
Garbage, as I pointed out, serves only as a non-renewable resource as we go back, dig up the garbage, and convert it back to oil. We hopefully will do this, but no one has as of yet. So we don't even know if we CAN get much back from our dumps. Hopefully we can start reclaiming our tires, however. That seems like the biggest "win" right now. But all of these processes require TONS of work, ie not cheap oil.
I don't even know where to begin to correct this issue. No one else does either, other than fight over the scraps. Your blind faith in civilization, well, blinds you. Civilizations cannot work. They rely on false premises and eternal war against other species and thus ultimately cannot keep sustaining themselves. 200 years from now, no civilizations will exist. The question to us, our choice, comes down to this.
"Do we want humans to exist in 200 years?"
I say yes. Most other people, due to their ignorance, say no. I hope their minds will change.
--
EntropyFails
Actually, Savinar says the years 2000 to about 2010 will be remebered as the "Petro-Plataeu"
Just because we don't have an "exact" date, does not mean it isn't right around the corner.
My grandmother is over 90 years old. Nobody knows the "exact" date of when she is going to pass. But I'm relatively sure it's time for her to get her affiars in order.
BTW, Deffeyes does give an exact date: Thanksgiving 2005.
The optimists put the date 2020-2030.
So based on available data, from wide ranging sources, we can say with a high degree of confidence the year of worldwide peak oil production will be between 2005-2030.
But we don't have to hit the true peak for tsthtf. Demand is already outstripping supply, supply could be interuptted by terrorism or other instability, the Saudis are pumping at full capacity and may even be past their peak, etc. . .
When you look at the facts, you realize it is quite laughable to believe we have "all the time in the world."
So based on available data, from wide ranging sources, we can say with a high degree of confidence the year of worldwide peak oil production will be between 2005-2030.
But we don't have to hit the true peak for tsthtf. Demand is already outstripping supply, supply could be interuptted by terrorism or other instability, the Saudis are pumping at full capacity and may even be past their peak, etc. . .
When you look at the facts, you realize it is quite laughable to believe we have "all the time in the world."
A taste of the facts-"Australian oil production declining fast
by Liamj Friday July 09, 2004 at 10:37 AM
Latest US EIA data confirms Australian oil production dropping through the floor. Pity Howard is too busy shovelling subsidies out to industry to consider responsible government.
The latest global oil production data from the Energy Information Agency (USEIA 2004) includes a significant revision for Australian production. The EIA now estimates that in 2003 Australian oil production fell by 18%, and that in the first four months of this year it is down by 15% in comparison to the same period last year.
This is bad news in anyone’s book, worse than older Geoscience Australia and Australian Bureau of Agricultural & Resource Economics estimates. Geoscience Australia estimated that, “Australian stocks of crude oil (in the ground) will be exhausted in 8 (now 5) years if the current rate of production is maintained and there is no discovery of new reserves” (GA 2001a). There have been no significant discoveries in Australia since that time.~ References
Akehurst J (2002) 'World oil markets and the challenges for Australia.' ABARE, Canberra.
http://tinyurl.com/49ysu
HoR SCIR (2003) Chapter 2 - Inventory, Draw-down and Replenishment. In 'Inquiry into resources exploration impediments'. Parliament House, Canberra. (Hansard)
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/reps/commttee/R6228.pdf
Geoscience Australia (2001) 2000 Oil and Gas Resources of Australia. Quoted by the ABS at http://tinyurl.com/5chfn
Why do you think Bush/Cheney attacked Iraq, sent seven aircraft carriers and their support battle ships and fuel ships to the China sea?
OIL!
Bush/Cheney will do anything to secure "our interests" even WAR with anyone who dares to challange our "right" to middle eastern OIL.
A few more facts-"July 09, 2004
UK close to losing status as oil exporter
Britain came within an ace of becoming a net oil importer for the first time in 13 years in May, helping the country's trade deficit widen unexpectedly to £3.4 billion.
National Statistics said that the surplus on trade in oil was £137 million in May compared with £184 million the month before and nearly £400 million in March.
By volume, imports have already exceeded exports, with inflows of 4.91 million tonnes of oil in May exceeding inflows of 4.80 million tonnes."
Now you know why Tony Blair was "willing" to join the US in attacking Iraq, OIL.
The SIATHTF not far in the future but sooner than any of us could possibly want. _________________ Live like there's no tomorrow
Australia produces 700k barrels per day!? That's a drop in the hat of the global oil production. Nice to see you pick one arbitrary country that is declining and run with it like the world is ending.
Australia produces 700k barrels per day!? That's a drop in the hat of the global oil production. Nice to see you pick one arbitrary country that is declining and run with it like the world is ending.
Nice try guys, once again, you have nothing.
So your position is what then? Discovery didn't peak around 40 years ago?
The world has never faced a real deficit in energy. For the entire history of industrial civilization our energy supply has been a simple function of economic demand, as you pointed out I think.
Since WWII the global economy has grown without interruption despite recessions in many markets several times since then. There is every reason to believe that this growth will continue as history demonstrates.
I tend to get deceived by the seemingly small percent gaps between supply & demand when looking at this data. We should all be reminded that these "small" percent gaps don't translate 1:1 with cascading inflation resulting from higher energy prices. In addition, it can be misleading to consider 1% as a small amount, when in fact 1% of our combined global energy budget is a massive figure. It's not hard to get lost in the scale, and misunderstand the impact of these estimates.
The OPEC embargo caused massive economic disruptions which lasted a decade, crippling the economy and causing a recession. It's a misconception to think that we reduced our energy consumption after the embargo through conservation measures and efficiency gains. The real drop in energy consumption was from our damaged economy being unable to consume prior levels of power.
And that was what amounts to a 5% shortage of oil which lasted a few weeks, and didn't involve the entire world.
This is what classic economics misses in this equation. We have thus far always found a better energy source than our previous one, as the world economy has developed. For the very first time, we face being forced to use alternative energy sources which are significantly more expensive than oil & gas. So much so that more & more serious scientists researchers and even leaders of industry are calling for a more comprehensive approach to solving our energy future.
That's the problem... thus far no clear consensus has emerged in the scientific community on which combination of alternatives can hope to match the energetic properties of oil. As Smalley says, "perhaps mother nature has played a joke on us, and we simply will never discover another source of power to match oil & gas. But we should still try... it's a moral obligation."
If it was any other commodity I would agree that market forces will sort out any supply problems. But not energy... It's unique defining quality is that every other industry on earth depends on, and is directly affected by energy markets. Name another market which has this unique relationship... _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Australia produces 700k barrels per day!? That's a drop in the hat of the global oil production. Nice to see you pick one arbitrary country that is declining and run with it like the world is ending.
Nice try guys, once again, you have nothing.
Poor "Hydro" he won't accept the evidence untill his SUV stalls on the freeway because it's out of gas and all the gas stations are closed untill further notice.
Some more facts-"London Times January 26, 2004 North Sea exploration a loser, say oil experts By Carl
Mortished, International Business Editor
OIL GROUPS face growing pressure to quit the North Sea amid evidence of global failure to find big new oil deposits. The world’s top ten energy companies are failing to find enough new crude to replenish their reserves, according to Wood Mackenzie, the oil consultancy, which sees exploration in the UK North Sea as the industry’s biggest waste of money over the past five years. "
Australia ,United States and the United Kingdom were once EXPORTER of oil, now they must import ever increasing amounts of it.
China's and India growing economies have greatly increased it's imports of OIL."
More facts-"
Gary North's REALITY CHECK
Issue 362 July 20, 2004
IS $30 OIL HISTORY?
Yes, according to T. Boone Pickens, the legendary Texas
investor, who specialized in oil plays. He was interviewed on
"The CBS Evening News" (July 1.
He was careful not to say that he had special information.
He was making a "gut" prediction. The Saudis, he said, are not
in a position to increase their oil output significantly. They
are straining to produce today's output.
He said that he thinks oil is headed to $50/barrel. Thirty
dollar oil is history. Gasoline could hit $3 a gallon before the
end of the year.
~Now, let us turn from geopolitics to energy resources
-- although they are getting so intricately linked
that distinction between the two will soon prove to be
almost impossible. In energy terms, the Middle East's
importance is clearly undergirded by its vast petroleum
reserves -- reserves which clearly dwarf those of
other regions, as the Oil and Gas Journal reminds us
year in and year out.
This is stating the obvious. But sometimes we tend to
overlook the obvious.
It should, however, be borne in mind, that even Middle
Eastern oil reserves are limited. Oman's abrupt output
plunge of 2002-2003 was but the first warning; Syria
has just entered its terminal oil decline; even Yemen
seems to have peaked. Some would argue that these are
only minor producers. Correct. But that doesn't mean
major producers won't some day follow suit. Even that
greatest of all producers, Saudi Arabia, the allegedly
unsinkable "producer for all seasons," has its limits."
And more facts-"Exxon Head: Energy Independence Is a Myth
Tue Jun 8, 8:19 AM ET Add Business - AP to My Yahoo!
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The idea of American energy independence is a myth and the United States must maintain "constructive relationships" with oil-producing countries for its own prosperity, the head of petroleum giant Exxon Mobil Corp. said Monday night.
"We do not have the resource base to be energy independent," Exxon Mobil chairman Lee R. Raymond said in a speech in which he outlined some of what he called the "hard truths" about global energy markets. "
"Army guard on food if fuel crisis flares
Mark Townsend and Martin Bright
Sunday June 6, 2004
The Observer
Hundreds of troops will be deployed to defend vital supermarket depots in the event of fresh fuel protests in the autumn.
Supermarkets have been told by Home Office officials to expect military assistance as part of draconian government plans to protect Britain's economy from a repeat of the events of 2000 when protesters brought the country to a standstill.
In addition, a series of large-scale rehearsals will be held over the coming month to test how measures to protect vital food and fuel depots would cope if protesters opt to press ahead with a series of blockades later in the year. ~Major retailers have also been assured that the intelligence services are stepping up their monitoring of potential protest ringleaders to ensure any major blockade is thwarted before any disruption is caused.
The secret plans have been agreed between the Home Office and the Food Chain Emergency Group, set up after the 2000 fuel protests and incorporating Britain's biggest supermarkets and food manufacturers. Their plans to safeguard the food and fuel chain from disruption go much further than tactics used by the police to quash previous fuel protests.
News that troops will be involved in any future fuel blockades follows reports that army chiefs had strongly opposed the use of soldiers to guarantee supplies in the event of fuel protests across the country. A network of vital fuel and food depots classified as 'vulnerable' to blockade have been pinpointed by industry experts from the Institute of Grocery Distribution and sent to the Home Office.
Although Chancellor Gordon Brown's decision on whether to risk a rise in fuel duty has been postponed to August, supermarkets have been told to remain on high alert. 'The Home Office has been in close contact and the security services are monitoring the situation, this is not just a police matter,' said a leading industry source. "
"Break out the bicycles
Oil is running out, but the west would rather wage wars than consider other energy sources
George Monbiot
Tuesday June 8, 2004
The Guardian
Some people have wacky ideas," the new Republican campaign ad alleges. "Like taxing gasoline more so people drive less. That's John Kerry." Cut to a shot of men in suits riding bicycles.
Sadly, the accusation is false. Kerry has been demanding that the price of oil be held down. He wants George Bush to release supplies from the strategic reserve and persuade Saudi Arabia to increase production. He has been warning the American people that if the president doesn't act soon, he and Dick Cheney will have to share a car to work. Men riding bicycles and sharing cars? Is there no end to this madness?
Like the fuel protests that rose and receded in Britain last week, these exchanges are both moronic and entirely rational. The price of oil has been rising because demand for a finite resource is growing faster than supply. Holding the price down means that this resource will be depleted more quickly, with the result that the dreadful prospect of men sharing cars and riding bicycles comes ever closer. Perhaps the presidential candidates will start campaigning next against the passage of time.
But a high oil price means recession and unemployment, which in turn means political failure for the man in charge. The attempt to blame the other man for finity will be one of the defining themes of the politics of the next few decades.
This conflict was exemplified last month by the leader of the British fuel protests of 2000, Brynle Williams. "I'm afraid to say I'm not very proud of what happened three years ago," he admitted in a documentary broadcast on S4C on May 4. "We all want turbo-charged motors now ... but we must remember that it's some poor sod at the other end of the world who ends up paying for it." Five days later, on May 9, he told GMTV that he was ready to start protesting again. Self-awareness and self-interest don't seem to mix very well.
To understand what is going to happen, we must first grasp the core fact of existence. Life is a struggle against entropy. Entropy can be roughly defined as the dispersal of energy. As soon as a system - whether an organism or an economy - runs out of energy, it starts to disintegrate. Its survival depends on seizing new sources of fuel.
Biological evolution is driven by the need to grab the energy for which other organisms are competing. One result is increasing complexity: a tree can take more energy from the sun than the mosses on the forest floor; a tuna can seek out its prey more actively than a jellyfish. But the cost of this complexity is an enhanced requirement for energy. The same goes for our economies.
They evolved in the presence of a source of energy that was both cheap to extract and cheap to use. There is, as yet, no substitute for it. Everything else is either more expensive or harder to use. Without cheap oil the economy would succumb to entropy.
But the age of cheap oil is over. If you doubt this, take a look at the BBC's online report yesterday of a conference run by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. The reporter spoke to the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol. "In public, Mr Birol denied that supply would not be able to meet rising demand ... But after his speech he seemed to change his tune: 'For the time being there is no spare capacity. But we expect demand to increase by the fourth quarter by 3m barrels a day. If Saudi does not increase supply by 3m barrels a day by the end of the year we will face, how can I say this, it will be very difficult. We will have difficult times.'" The reporter asked him whether such a growth in supply was possible, or simply wishful thinking. "'You are from the press?' Birol replied. 'This is not for the press.'" So the BBC asked the other delegates what they thought of the prospects of a 30% increase in Saudi production. "The answers were unambiguous: 'absolutely out of the question'; 'completely impossible'; and '3m barrels - never, not even 300,000'. One delegate laughed so hard he had to support himself on a table." And this was before they heard that two BBC journalists had been gunned down in Riyadh.
The world's problem is as follows. We now consume six barrels of oil for every new barrel we discover. Major oil finds (of over 500m barrels) peaked in 1964. In 2000, there were 13 such discoveries, in 2001 six, in 2002 two and in 2003 none. Three major new projects will come onstream in 2007 and three in 2008. For the following years, none have yet been scheduled.
The oil industry tells us not to worry: the market will find a way of sorting this out. If the price of energy rises, new sources will come onstream. But new sources of what? Every other option is much more expensive than the cheap oil that made our economic complexity possible.
The new technology designed to extract the dregs from old fields is expensive and doesn't seem to work very well, which is why Shell was forced to downgrade its anticipated reserves (other companies, under pressure from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, will surely follow). Extracting oil from tar sands and shales uses almost as much energy as it yields. The same goes for turning crops such as rape into biodiesel. Nuclear power is viable only if you overlook both the massive costs of decommissioning and the fact that no safe means has yet been discovered of disposing of the waste. We could cover the country with windmills and solar panels, but the electricity they produced would still be an expensive means of running our cars.
Just as the oil supply begins to look uncertain, global demand is rising faster than it has done for 16 years. Yesterday morning, General Motors announced that it is spending $3bn on doubling its production of cars for the Chinese market. Seventy-four minutes later, we saw the first signs of entropy: the International Air Travel Association revealed that the airlines are likely to lose $3bn this year because of high oil prices. The cheap carriers complained that they could be forced out of the market.
If the complexity of our economies is impossible to sustain, our best hope is to start to dismantle them before they collapse. This isn't very likely to happen. Faced with a choice between a bang and a whimper, our governments are likely to choose the bang, waging ever more extravagant wars to keep the show on the road. Terrorists, alert to both the west's rising need and the vulnerability of the pipeline and tanker networks, will respond with their own oil wars.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle," HG Wells wrote, "I no longer despair for the human race." It's a start, but I'd feel even more confident about our chances of survival if I saw George Bush and Dick Cheney sharing a car to work.
· George Monbiot's book The Age of Consent: a Manifesto for a New World Order is now published in paperback
Of course I could go on like this for a very long time, the facts boils down to this, oil and natural gas are a fossil fuel that was "made" over 60 MILLION years ago under very special geological conditions.Those conditions don't exist anymore.
For every 6 barrels of oil we use, we find only ONE.
Shouldn't that tell you something?
Oil wells all over the world are either in decline or at their peak, with decline soon to follow and yet our excessive population and demand for fossil fuels continues to RISE.
Don't you see we have one hell of a problem with energy?
Without oil, the world can support only about 1.5 to 2 billion people.
We have at this point in time over 6.3 BILLION PEOPLE and growing!
I think "hydro" needs to get his head out of the sand.
"Either deal with reality or reality will deal with YOU! " _________________ Live like there's no tomorrow
The Carthage, Missouri plant went online in May, and word at the time was, within a couple of months they'd be producing 500 barrels a day.
It's August, and there hasn't been any kind of press release to brag about their productivity, so I suspect there's more snags in the technology than they let on in the gosh-wow slick magazine articles.
If you put the phrase "200 tons of turkey waste" into Google, you will find a whole bunch of sites claiming that the plant is turning that much crap into oil; but one site says 500 barrels, another 450 barrels, and a third says 600 barrels! Usually sites aren't that bad at copying one another so I suspect CWT hasn't got their story straight yet.
One of their websites says the factory won't reach full production capacity until the second half of 2004.
I haven't got any confirmation on this but heres a guy claiming that the second plant is planned for Colorado.
In terms of agro-waste, you're right it can't replace our oil needs. Even if TCP is used for all sewage treatment and all agrowaste, we still come up short. That doesn't mean this sort of thing won't be good to help a "soft landing," or to provide something other than natural gas to power those hydrogen cells.
National Geographic did a blurb on CWT and claimed that the US has 4 billion tons of agrowaste a year, that represents more than a drop in the bucket; the same article indicates that, once a few plants are in production, the cost to CWT will be $10 per barrel. They also say that the process used by CWT differs from depolymerization techniques that have been around since the 80s -- it's more energy efficient, which is why it's now practical for a large scale project. Unless someone can verify that their techniques don't differ, I don't think we can be sure that it would have the exact same returns as the 1999 swine manure deal.
I agree that any holes that can be poked in this stuff should definitely be poked. However, let's not fall into a cultish orthodoxy, or encourage abandoning ideas that may actually reduce the pain. _________________ http://www.openspeech.org - please visit and post!
Discover had an article last year about the turkey-parts plant, called "Anything Into Oil." It got a tremendous response - so much so, that they planned a follow-up article for May or June of this year. But the plant wasn't running yet. Unexpected technical snags.
However, they did confirm that another plant is planned for Colorado. I believe that one is supposed to run off cow parts. It got a huge boost after Mad Cow disease was found in the U.S. last winter. The prions that cause Mad Cow are not affected by cooking, so dealing with the corpses of infected or possibly infected cows is a real problem. But the process that turns "anything into oil" does denature prions, so making oil out of mad cows is perfectly safe.
mmm...too bad "Big Daddy" Roth (creator of "Rat Phink") is gone, I would like to see him draw a mad-cow mobile. _________________ http://www.openspeech.org - please visit and post!
Heres my simple and small minded argument.
I have car insurance, because I MIGHT get into an accident.
I have health insurance, because I MIGHT get sick.
I have dental, because my teeth MIGHT need work.
I have life insurance, because I WILL die.
I am planning for Post Peak and learning survival skills, because we WILL run out of oil.
I dont give a damn if its tomorrow or 900 years from now. And I dont car if I get into a car wreck tomorrow or 900 years from now. I' take precautions against both, and as such, am not going to worry about it.
Think of preparing for Post Peak and a bad collapse as insurance, not a sign of a Doomsdayer trying to scare the world.
Heres my simple and small minded argument.
I have car insurance, because I MIGHT get into an accident.
I have health insurance, because I MIGHT get sick.
I have dental, because my teeth MIGHT need work.
I have life insurance, because I WILL die.
I am planning for Post Peak and learning survival skills, because we WILL run out of oil.
I dont give a damn if its tomorrow or 900 years from now. And I dont car if I get into a car wreck tomorrow or 900 years from now. I' take precautions against both, and as such, am not going to worry about it.
Think of preparing for Post Peak and a bad collapse as insurance, not a sign of a Doomsdayer trying to scare the world.
Well, what do you recommend I do.
I have car insurance only because it is mandatory and have never been in an accident of any consequence in >50 years behind the wheel
I have no health insurance because it's a scam and cheaper if I pay my own bills (and I'm 72, have cancer, wear a pacemaker and have had 2 strokes, AND it's still cheaper)
I have no dental insurance for the same reasons
I have no life insurance, because it's a scam and it is cheaper to manage my own finances.
So ??????
Should I take out insurance against oil running out, knowing that the premiums I'll pay will be to allow some get-rich-quick mogul to run around in a gas-guzzling BMW 5 or 7 class or a Mercedes 600, while I have a little Honda runabout. _________________ Devil
{removed embedded quote - see above for last text - OilBurner}
Then do nothing
I have insurance cause I drive a $40,000+ car. I dont want to cover expenses out of pocket for some jackass who hits me.
Health care provided by employer, but I wouldnt be without it anyways. Not cost effective, especially if you end up in the hospital for a few days. Of course, in your situation it might be cheaper due to you pre existing conditions jacking up the price although frankly I think your full of crap. Cancer is NOT a cheap disease to have.
Dental, same deal for me, provided by employer.
So all insurance is a scam eh? Well, you live in your world, I'll live in mine.
That doesn't sound too good. Don't these kind of powerful smells suggest strong chemicals (possibly carcinogens) being released into the local environment?
Devil - you seem to know everything about everything (I mean that in a nice way!), what's your take on that? _________________ Burning the midnight oil, whilst I still can.
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