[Vogelzang]

Hi, from Alaska. I remember being in line to buy gas in the 70's during the Arab oil embargo, but didn't worry too much then. Later, I woke up to the peak oil problem when studying physics and chemistry at college. I look at the time I was taking Physical Chemistry (first semester) in the early 1980's as the time I started to worry. Studying thermodynamics in depth, the Carnot cycle, entropy, Gibbs free energy, why you can't make a perpetual motion machine, etc. made me realize how some forms of energy are more practical or economical than others. The realization that we were so dependent on oil made me think about how we should start developing alternatives. I read things about energy for years to see where this was leading to. I remember in the 70's, a lot of people were into alternatives, like wind and solar, but all of that went away after the price of oil fell. I noticed that we used less and less oil over time for generating electricity and used more coal and natural gas. On my last electric bill, it said the sources were 33% nuclear, about 54% coal, a couple % for natural gas and oil each and some renewable energy. I've talked to people about this for about 27 years and noticed most people were clueless about the problem. They thought that we would just develop alternatives, or that when the oil does run out, they'll be long gone, anyway. I'm still wondering how all this will play out. Recently, I stopped driving to the subway I take to work and walk there, instead. Its only a mile away from my house. I figure that the subway runs mostly on electricity from nuclear power and coal and shouldn't be as vulnerable to the peak oil problem. So far, they haven't raised the fair this year because of energy prices. Work slows down sometimes at my company, but we have had enough work so far.

It seems strange to see so many other people here who worry about this. For years I've been trying to prepare for it. I lived with my father until I was 39 years old. He passed away from lung cancer in 1999 and I still live in the same house without a mortgage. I own the house completely and have practically no debts. I never got married and have no children. All of my investments are in defensive dividend paying things, like REITs, utilities, energy, etc. My energy and mining stocks have gone up a lot. I had those mainly as a hedge against inflation.

Looking over the forum I can see a lot of people seem to be even more pessimistic than I am. I always thought there would be a lot of time before an economic disaster took place. Looking at Hubbert's Bell curve for the world, it looks like half the production is still there in 2050, so I didn't think it would get too bad anytime soon. I probably won't live until 2050, anyway. I figured that it would affect the stock market to some extent, and decided to stay mostly in the defensive stocks. If the economy gets too bad, even they won't hold up. I noticed OPEC representatives saying that there is no shortage of oil and everyone can get enough right now. Reserve isn't as high as it was before. Part of the price of oil seems to be driven by speculators as well as demand.

I think as alternatives, we can use heavy oil, oil sands, oil shale, and coal for generating electricity and coal to liquids for liquid fuel. Man made global warming is a hoax. See: link for information debunking man made global warming.

[Cashmere]

I think as alternatives, we can use heavy oil, oil sands, oil shale, and coal for generating electricity and coal to liquids for liquid fuel.

We can use many things, but in total they won't offset more than a fraction of the oil we lose to depletion.
That's the key.
Oil shale and tar sands are more far fetched, IMO, than GW.
Good that you're here.
I encourage you to read muchly. If you do, you will eventually become as doomerish as the best of us.

[socrates1fan]

I think as alternatives, we can use heavy oil, oil sands, oil shale, and coal for generating electricity and coal to liquids for liquid fuel.

We can use many things, but in total they won't offset more than a fraction of the oil we lose to depletion.
That's the key.
Oil shale and tar sands are more far fetched, IMO, than GW.
Good that you're here.
I encourage you to read muchly. If you do, you will eventually become as doomerish as the best of us.

I think that if we majorly reduce our consumption I think alternatives can really play a major role in todays world.

[Ferretlover]

Welcome to PeakOil.com, Vogelzang. There's a great deal of material available here on a variety of subjects by a variety of personalities. Do ask questions as the need arises.

[Ayoob]

I think we had a new peak this year, and might hold steady or increase a bit (assuming nobody turns off the taps on purpose) through 2010. At that point, Pickens says it's an 8% decline. Nine years til the first 50% daily flow loss (halving time).

2019, not 2050.

[Aaron]

Man made global warming is a hoax ehhh?

Hoax like crop circles, or hoax like Oceans 11?

Anything else you would like to debunk while your at it?

JFK? Elvis? Area 51?

Oh right, you mentioned Tar Sands... all is well.

Your dog wants deductive reasoning.

[Cashmere]

Area 51?

Oh no please, not area 51. Don't debunk area 51!

[mos6507]

I think as alternatives, we can use heavy oil, oil sands, oil shale, and coal for generating electricity and coal to liquids for liquid fuel. Man made global warming is a hoax. See: link for information debunking man made global warming.

You wonder why people can be in denial of peak oil and you end your essay about how you are smarter than the average bear by brushing off global warming? Get loooost you hypocrite!

[TheDoctor]

I think as alternatives, we can use heavy oil, oil sands, oil shale, and coal for generating electricity and coal to liquids for liquid fuel. Man made global warming is a hoax. See: link for information debunking man made global warming.

You wonder why people can be in denial of peak oil and you end your essay about how you are smarter than the average bear by brushing off global warming? Get loooost you hypocrite!

Now. Now. There is nothing hypocritical in believing in peak oil and not in man-made global warming. I give Vogelzang credit in that he mentions "Gibb's free energy". How many here understand what that is and how critical it is to alternative energy schemes? If you understand Gibb's free energy, you understand why water can never be used as a chemical fuel source.

As to global warming, I did take the time to go to the link he references. Some interesting counter-arguments. I personally like to keep an open mind and not accept that we humans fully understand any system as complex as the climate. I'm not saying I think global warming is bunk, but I do leave open the possibility that there is a small chance the majority are wrong. Whenever something becomes trendy, most people jump on board because they want to be part of the majority. Scientists are no different - they are human and subject to being pursuaded by social status (and funding available thereof) as much as by scientific facts.

[Vogelzang]

Rejecting the myth of man made global warming is critical if we are to survive the next century. Belief in man made global warming is far more dangerous than communism and Islamic extremism.

Read this article about oil shale.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/30/magazin ... 2007110111

For some reason some politicians oppose it.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/06/news/ec ... 2008060614

We also need to keep coal-fired power plants and also build more so we can conserve on natural gas.


Read this about Sasol's coal to gasoline technology.
http://www.slate.com/id/2152036/

[Vogelzang]

Read this article about heavy oil. There's plenty of it in the world. Use of heavy oil, oil shale, oil sands and coal can be used to push the Malthusian nightmare farther into the future, probably far passed our own lifetimes.


Scroll down here http://www.oil-price.net/ to this article:
A likely stop before the end of Oil by Giuseppe Marconi - 2007/12/14

[Vogelzang]

I think as alternatives, we can use heavy oil, oil sands, oil shale, and coal for generating electricity and coal to liquids for liquid fuel. Man made global warming is a hoax. See: link for information debunking man made global warming.

You wonder why people can be in denial of peak oil and you end your essay about how you are smarter than the average bear by brushing off global warming? Get loooost you hypocrite!

This demonstrates how dangerous the global warming psychosis is.

Read this Wall Street Journal article. Global warming is sick-souled religion.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1214868 ... inion_main



Global Warming as Mass Neurosis
July 1, 2008; Page A15

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").

But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science.

So let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.

The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.

A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.

And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.

Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.

Write to [email protected]

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.

And add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.

[Canuk]

Hi from Canada - new to the site and making my first post so forgive any
I've been up on peak oil for a few years now and also global warming.
I know that the majority of the population still has doubts about global warming but the risk of being incorrect is too large.

Fossil fuels have stored carbon dioxide from a period of time prior to the emergence of placental mammals. In the previous eras there was significantly greater percentages of CO2 in the atmosphere and the makeup of life on the planet was also much different. During our current Holocene era the atmosphere has had a lower CO2 percentage which is a likely contributor to the rise of placental mammals (of which we are included) to our current position of dominance. It seems unwise to risk changing the chemistry on which the system we depend upon for our survival.

That being said I'm sure that the course we are currently on of "wait and see" will continue as action would require major change and major change does not win elections.

[mos6507]

Great post Vogelzang. Glad I am not the only one who believes like you do.

Huddle together because your numbers are shrinking faster than the northern ice cap.

[mos6507]

Read this article about heavy oil. There's plenty of it in the world. Use of heavy oil, oil shale, oil sands and coal can be used to push the Malthusian nightmare farther into the future, probably far passed our own lifetimes.

There seems to be a glut of heavy oil right now. Refining capacity has to be built out to handle it and I'm surprised not to hear more news of that happening. You'd think they would be interested in that long before skipping down the EROEI scale to the level of tar sands and shale.

[mos6507]

Now. Now. There is nothing hypocritical in believing in peak oil and not in man-made global warming.

Yes there is. Both are macro-level phenomena that involve charts, statistical prediction, and reams of data. People who have learned to believe in peak oil have studied oil well enough to get somewhat good a grasp of the amount of hydrocarbons we've burned since the industrial revolution which would begin to open one's eyes about the cumulative effect on the climate.

The inexplicable links between the two is well demonstrated in the History Channel's Crude: Incredible Journey of Oil when it visualized the volume of oil consumed in a year.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/crude/

Whenever something becomes trendy, most people jump on board because they want to be part of the majority. Scientists are no different - they are human and subject to being pursuaded by social status (and funding available thereof) as much as by scientific facts.

The whole "science is groupthink" argument is what creationists like to use also to fight evolution also. It's an all-too-convenient way to brush aside scientific concensus that you don't want to believe.

[Vogelzang]

Read this article about heavy oil. There's plenty of it in the world. Use of heavy oil, oil shale, oil sands and coal can be used to push the Malthusian nightmare farther into the future, probably far passed our own lifetimes.

There seems to be a glut of heavy oil right now. Refining capacity has to be built out to handle it and I'm surprised not to hear more news of that happening. You'd think they would be interested in that long before skipping down the EROEI scale to the level of tar sands and shale.

The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, successfully pressured the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to block ConocoPhillips’ expansion of its Roxana, Ill., gasoline refinery, which processes heavy crude oil from Canada, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

You can read the entire article here.
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/conte ... /1379/218/

The environmental extremists will destroy us all if we let them.

[Vogelzang]

Global Warming Petition Project

31,072 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,021 with PhDs

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many benficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

http://www.petitionproject.org/

[mos6507]

The environmental extremists will destroy us all if we let them.

Look, there is peak oil and there is global warming. I know you don't believe in global warming, but if you did, like me, you'd understand that any respite in oil supply is a MIXED BAG. It pushes off the day of reckoning in exchange for pushing the environment further into its mass extinction (and extending overshoot). So if we DON'T wind up processing every drop of recoverable oil on the planet, that may not be such a bad thing in the long run.

Roscoe Bartlett's proposal to go ahead and drill drill drill in exchange for bootstrapping renewables I think is the best possible compromise. But to just continue business as usual, not preparing for transition until the eventual collapse will do nothing but buy us a little time.

[Vogelzang]

There appears to be a large CO2 sink in North America. It may be large enough to absorb all of the CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels in Canada and the US. These articles come from Science magazine. This seems to have been neglected or is unknown by many people debating the global warming problem.


http://ephysics.fileave.com/scimag/386.html

http://ephysics.fileave.com/scimag/442.html

http://ephysics.fileave.com/scimag/442.pdf

http://ephysics.fileave.com/scimag/504a.html

http://ephysics.fileave.com/scimag/Scie ... 86-387.pdf

http://ephysics.fileave.com/scimag/386-1-med.gif