Tha Black Stuff: How Should It Be Divided Up?
Offline ...So, it looks as though we're starting to really strain the oil supply. Shouldn't really be a big surprise (thought the cluelessness of the average North American never ceases to amaze). I wonder: when we do hit that critical point, and we have to make really tough decisions about who gets the magical goo and who gets the short end of the stick, who do you think should get the biggest shares of it?
I honestly think, personally, that a fairly generous reserve should be left at the disposal of the space exploration community. They need an awful lot of it to do what they do, and ultimately, they're the ones who might someday provide us a means for finding a new home when this one isn't a suitable living space anymore. Agriculture and medical fields need a solid percentage too, since without it we'll see a fairly horrifying die-off (and perhaps state of warfare).
Energy and transportation can get fucked, as far as I'm concerned. Oil in those sectors is generally used simply as a form of low-cost convenience, and neither make essential contributions to human well-being. I'll miss my appliances and the short-lived digital age without having access to an arbitrary amount of household electrical power - but I can live without them.
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
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Is oil really running out or is it just more 'the sky is falling' crap spread by conspiracy theorist?
If oil begins to run out it will probably spark off WW3 and know that we have nuclear weapons we are all going to be fucked. We need to find alternate sources of energy and fuel.
If Jesus was born today he would be institutionalized as a schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur.
'Running out' isn't quite the right word. There's plenty still here.
The problem is, there's no new discoveries to be made. What we access to now is the most we're likely to ever have access to - and the problem is that our demand for it is constantly increasing. This is going to create a lot of economic problems, among other things.
That's actually kind of besides the question, however (it's merely what made me think of it). Oil is a finite thing, absolutely unreplenishible, and we use a lot of it up a year. When we are down to the nitty-gritty - who do you think deserves the biggest slice of the pie?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
It's a sign of how inherently stupid people are that when oil starts running really short,instead of conserving what's left,it'll quickly get used up by the war machine.
On the OP's point. At the rate petrol prices are increasing personal transport could soon become redundant anyway. I agree with the space exploration idea, though it could be a double edged sword. What if we give them the last of our oil and they come back with nothing to show for it? I think the best thing to do is dedicate our remaining resources to finding a new energy source.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
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With nuclear power, and alternate energy resources, I doubt that the future is quite that dire.
If oil completely ran out this year, we would change regulation of nuclear power, and maybe even nuclear decay batteries.
I honestly think the loss of oil would be a good thing...
We would Chanel monies that are now going to foreign oil barons, to home resources.
In stead of funding terrorists, we would begin funding our own science community, to solve our problems.
A far as I am concerned concerned consumers and producers should get the oil. We keep the economy running. Traveling to space is all well and good but at the price of starvation?
If Jesus was born today he would be institutionalized as a schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur.
While I agree that the future isn't necessarily so 'dire', what you've suggested is foolish - and the notion that we don't have a problem to deal with down the fairly immediate road is naive.
How do we simply 'swtich' to an alternate energy source? We can't exactly snap our fingers and magically replace our gas-fired plants with nuclear sources (...and I really do wonder where people think we'd get all of the uranium necessary to run such a setup from, and what we'd do with all of the radioactive waste) or 'green' energy. Yes, we do have the means of using alternative sources of power - but when exactly were we planning to actually implement said ideas? Waiting until the oil supply is really stretched is a terrible idea - yet that's exactly what's being done, largely because of the 'we'll just fix it tomorrow' logic you just used.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Something to think about: do you think our current idea of 'the economy' that we live in, as far as western culture is concerned, is a realistically sustainable thing?
Now, there's a line between 'keeping the economy going' and 'letting people starve', and I agree it shouldn't be crossed. But I don't know that it's such a good idea to continue feeding into something that's just going to grind to a halt anyway.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
A scientist friend of mine was relating a really depressing story to me. A very well respected ecologist was talking with some students and fellow scientists. He said that the smartest people in the next fifty years are the ones who are going to invest in futures for things like tuna and other large ocean fish. To paraphrase, the question is not whether or not they will go extinct, it's when. Essentially, he said, enjoy the diversity of food now, because it's potatoes for your grandchildren. If you can profit from selling the last tuna, you'll get a retirement account from it.
To be honest, I'm a fatalist when it comes to environmentalism and human survival. I have seen nothing to give me any hope that humanity will do anything other than consume as much as it can until there's nothing left. It simply isn't in our nature to do anything but continue to reproduce and consume.
The sad thing is that I'm not just saying this from a gut feeling. If you haven't noticed, I'm a student of the science of human nature.
With oil, the good news is that there are other options, and when the oil runs out, we'll start using them. The only real question is how many people will be smart enough to reduce their individual dependence on the oil economy. It may sound like paranoia, but I've already got the means to produce a lot of my own food, should the need arise. I already walk or bicycle just about everywhere. If I move out of the house I'm in now, I'll build a house that's as energy independent as possible. I'm not doing all of this because I think all the nasty shit is coming down in my lifetime, but because I don't expect prices to do anything but go up.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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I don't know of any ecologists who aren't paid by oil companies who think that our growth rates are sustainable. Our consumption per person in America is revolting.
I don't think you should talk about not crossing lines without talking about why you're not crossing lines. Medical science and industry have had undeniable consequences. In the west, the infant mortality rate is so low as to be irrelevant. Lifespans are over double that of a 'natural' state. We are big creatures who eat a lot and produce a lot of waste. The planet is only so large.
Just for shits and giggles, let's assume that humanity actually could and would do something about sustaining our existence in harmony with the rest of the environment. At our present population, we have only a few choices (All morality aside for the moment).
1) Voluntarily or forcibly reduce the birthrate drastically.
2) Voluntarily or forcibly reduce per capita consumption drastically
3) Voluntarily or forcibly remove humans from large sections of ecologically fragile land.
4) Some combination of 1-3.
Each one of these options produces very bad short term consequences. A drastic drop in the birthrate will cause a drastic drop in production when the geriatric population becomes much larger than the working population. Drastic drops in consumption produce economic depression, poverty, and starvation. Preserving fragile ecologies produces overcrowding which leads to poverty, economic depression, disease, crime and starvation.
While it's certainly true that there is a mathematical 'best case scenario' which is a combination of all possible solutions which minimizes human suffering, the simple fact is that we've made our bed, and our children are going to starve because of it.
Eventually, unmoderated human growth will cause ecological disaster, which will cause massive human suffering. Voluntary measures now will cause massive human suffering.
There is no god. We did this to ourselves. It's going to suck. We might go extinct, or we might not. But it will suck. I have already had a vasectomy. I can't in good conscience inflict that suffering on another human being.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
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Com on, I said nothing of the sort...
Ethanol exists, and is presently used.
Nuclear exists, and is presently used.
Nuclear wast can be used to produce nuclear decay batteries.
Hydrogen exits, and is currently used in a number of ways.
Hydroelectric plants, in use for many years now. (possibility...use ocean currents in the same way.) have underwater fields of hydro-plants.
Lets not forget the abundant coal reserves. (which can be used to produce coal oil by the way.) and can fire the old oil plants just fine till we get other resources going.
Also there is solar, and wind power, which both are in use every day.
I did not say it would happen overnight, nor did I say it would be easy.
All I said was it could be done. (and without any magic.) no need to be condescending.
We're also smart, and - more reasonable times willing - have the means to quite easily cull our own birth rates. It shouldn't be that tough to figure-out the mathematical 'magic number' of offspring a given generation needs to produce in order to keep things balanced and also ensure a solid labor force.
I'd also note that, as has already been mentioned, our current, centralized economy is not sustainable. It will fail. That said, I'm not so pessimisstic about such an event - it simply means we'll have to get together in smaller communities and learn to live independently (which isn't such a terrible thing). This would drastically reduce the need for our current, massive labor force.
I don't look forward to what that will do for progress, but, as you said - we've made our bed already.
We've weathered previous extinction events and civilization collapses, so I'm skeptical of the notion we'd be completely wiped out either way. Yes, it'll suck. So did the Great War, so did World War II, so did any number of other tremendous disasters of human making. I'll wager there'll be more to come long after the oil economies have caved-in on themselves.
I'm (perhaps only dreamily) hopeful that the future will yield knowledge of how to get us off the Earth before we've eaten the whole thing away (a few of my friends are actively involved in SETI, because they themselves hope that, at some point, help may arrive in the form of friends from out of town).
It isn't a matter of whether or not it can happen overnight - it can't replace our current oil-based economy period. How would we find the time and resources to swap-out one major power source for another? And that's not even taking into consideration that oil is simply an amazing substance, from an industrial standpoint, with incredible energy output for it's expense and availabiliy. Simply put, there is no comparable energy source to it (that we know of).
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
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I disagree with Hamby about the idea of using policy to reduce the population. After all, the largest effort in history to do so took place where I live, in China. The policy was first laid down in the Maoist era, when Chinese demographers informed the CCP that if population growth continued at the present rate, there would be mass starvation. If the population growth rate could be halved, on the other hand, living standards would double. There are those in the West naïve enough to call the famed One Child Policy draconian, but China is no stranger to overpopulation, and there has indeed, never been a more widely supported governmentally implemented policy in China itself. In hindsight, the policy was both desperately needed and a success. This is not to say it has not produced a serious demographic problem, but unlike what Hamby was implying by his suggestion of what would come from such measures, the problem was not an aging population. It was the sex ratio. Because China was still an agrarian nation and most families understandably desired a male child, and could only have one, female infanticide was common, and the sex ratio in China became skewed. So, now they are facing another demographic crisis: A large number of brideless men.
At any rate, for a contribution to this discussion, in the not very likely event (I say 50/50) that humanity’s 10,000 year experiment with civilization survives the next century, what will drive the un-fucking-up of the biosphere will surely not be policy, for we have seen that humans are too lazy and unable to think long term for that. Again, it will surely not be ridiculous feel-good campaigns such as “green products” and “shopping environmentalism”. I suspect it will be technological in nature. Compounds that destroy pollutants in the environment, agents that convert chemical waste into useful hydrocarbons, that sort of thing. Nothing irritates me more than the vapid phenomenon known as anarcho-primitivism, those who cannot wait for civilization to fall on its arrogant face, for they maintain multiple ridiculous delusions concomitant with Rousseau’s Noble Savage, such as the idea that pre-civilized people and primitive civilizations took care of the environment and were “in tune with nature”. In reality, ideas of conservation and environmentalism are largely modern ideas. Primitive societies and ancient civilizations understandably considered their resources boundless, with the result that most of them collapsed. The Mayans practiced slash-and-burn agriculture. Sumerian irrigation caused the “fertile crescent” to become the desert that it is today because of saline run-off. The Easter Islanders completely destroyed their island in pursuit of building Maoi statues. Even before civilization, the hunter-gatherers, as they grew more efficient and lethal after the thaw of the last ice age, exterminated well over 200 species of large birds and mammals. Very impressive considering there were only several hundred thousand humans at maximum. Only with the advent of a global civilization-and a human presence on the Earth so utterly colossal that it was rather hard to ignore the fact that our “boundless resources” were being eroded in rapid order, did the environmental movement truly arise.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
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Actually both power and transportation are vital - those of us not living in tropical areas would starve without being able to bring food here in winter and keep it refrigerated year round. Also most peoples' heat requires electricity nowadays.
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Feh. I was kind of winging that response. You're correct. I didn't list the right consequences of population reduction policy.
To be clear about my own beliefs, I would quibble with you on a time frame, but I see human civilization coming to an end, and I don't hold any hope for people to use policy or volunteerism to change that course, at least in the long term, which is the only term that would be meaningful. I don't feel like opening another window, but I'm pretty sure that before I opined on possible solutions to the population/consumption problem, I said something appropriately snarky to indicate that I didn't think such things would ever happen.
This, of course, is why I don't believe humans have more than a 10% chance of making it another thousand years. Things that make big booms have always been more fun to make than things that don't. If there's no immediate profit margin in saving the environment, the environment will not be saved.
The Noble Savage is, indeed, bullshit. My whole contention in discussions about human nature is that civilization is just a more organized example of what has always been our nature.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Little note: Rockets don't use oil. Space travel is only dependent upon gas to get the pieces to the shuttle/rocket.
Am I the only one content to live in Bregna/San Angeles/Dome City as a Beta or a Gamma?
Why must you 'wild men' with belly buttons persist?
How do you know that you don't like sex with the special little helmets on until you've tried it?
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This thread combines two of my favorite subjects: religion and environmentalism. They're my favorite subjects because I think that the damage we've done and continue to the environment actually rule out the existence of God. You can read how here:
http://whybelieve.blogspot.com/2007/11/lottery-winner-theory-of-human-behavior.html
Contrary to what the OP said, there are still new oil discoveries being made. Methods and technology for oil deposit locating and extracting are improving every year. And with the price of oil continuing to skyrocket, alternative oil sources such as the oil sands of northen Canada - which used to be unprofitable at any market price of less than $60 per barrel - are now a gold mine with oil trading over $100 per barrel.
But the earth is finite, and therefore so is oil. We all know that necessity is the mother of invention, so it would be easy to say that as oil exploration technology improves we will eventually know with a fair degree of accuracy when the world's oil supply will run dry. And at that point there will be a massive push to develop alternative fuel sources to sustain civilization.
Here's the problem though - what kind of state will the environment be in if we burn all that fossil fuel until it's gone?ly The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used computer models to figure that out, and the answer is here:
http://www.universetoday.com/2005/11/02/what-if-we-burn-everything/
The answer is - we're screwed if we wait that long.
So it doesn't matter, taking the long-term view, how oil is "divided up". We have to stop burning fossil fuels, period.
That's going to take a massive investment in research and development of ways to bring down the cost of alternative energy production. And some of that investment is going to have to come from oil profits.
I'm particularly irritated with my country of origin - Norway. The country is one of the world's largest oil exporters (the largest outside of the Middle East) and announced with much fanfare last year that is was going to be carbon-neutral within five or ten years, I can't remember which. But sometime in the near future. However, the government conveniently left out of the equation the millions of barrels of oil it exports each year to be burned elsewhere. I would be thrilled if they would take a few billion dollars of that profit and plow it into alternative energy research. Or any one of the major oil companies. Anyone could go into that field right now with a huge investment and become a dominant player in alternative energy. We're going to have to move away from fossil fuels at some point. Why not get in early and take the lead?
</rant>
Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.
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Patent bullshit. Oil discovery, worldwide, peaked back in the 1970s. The only significant find in recent years has been one single oilfield in Saudi Arabia. Nothing outside the Persian Gulf of any real volume is known to exist, and we've been looking awfully hard.
No, they aren't. Three decades have provided the best imaginable super straws and seismic graphs we're ever likely to need or want - and, at the end of the day, in no way actually do anything to improve the oil supply.
...So what?
For starters, the oil contained in the oil sands does not produce the same energy as standard crude oil. It doesn't matter what dollar value we put on it - it doesn't burn and provide the kind of output our economy needs to keep itself upright.
Secondly, that stuff is considerably harder to extract than free-flowing oil from a well, to the extent that it's nearly inefficient to use it at all.
Oh? May as well scrap all those programs out there that scan the sky for any hazardous NEOs, then; necessity will surely birth a solution if we a see an asteroid burning through the atmosphere.
Did the ihabitants of Easter Island see their demise approaching in time to stop building statues? Did the Romans see their demise approaching in time to address their many political and population concerns?
It is the height of ignorance to consider ourselves 'different' somehow. I'm an optimist, so call me stupid, and I reject both Hamby and Deluded's opinions that our millennia are numbered - I think we can get off our little island in the universe, and perhaps be the first ones to do so, and really open the door for some wild possibilities down the road. But we're not going to get there by continuing to be stupid.
And that's exactly what we're doing with our current economy.
Where we sit right now is directly due to the discovery and exploitation of hydrocarbons. We had the Green Revolution, followed by a population boom, followed by huge industrial and technological growth. Now, we're sitting atop a big machine that absolutely needs an abundance of cheap, high-density energy to keep moving.
And there's just no way we can keep it fed. Certainly not the way we're currently doing it, given how unlikely it is we're going to discover enough new oil in the near future to replace what we're going to deplete (much less leave an overhead for our growth).
I agree. Though certain industries simply cannot exist without the kind of energy hydrocarbons provide.
...And this is exactly why I talk about this kind of thing. We're going to peak-out on oil production within 5 to 10 years, most people either don't seem to realize it or don't care, and what can we do when it's become scarce and expensive?
Right now: not a damn thing.
Solar power is awesome, and I myself am absolutely fascinated with Tesla's work regarding atmospheric eletrical power. There's so much of this kind of energy that it could easily fulfill any fathomable power requirment. But, right now, it's expensive and it's underdeveloped. So we can't exactly 'just switch over' to a viable high power density green source, because we apparently aren't willing to do the research and development?
This has to change. And I'd like it to change before we discover that we've converted all of our resources into moai, and starve to death.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
...Really?
What do we use as a propellent to get shuttles into space, then? I thought it was just high-octane jet fuel.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Indeed! I share your distaste for this anarchist strand.
However, as an anarchist of sorts myself, I did explore anarcho-primitivism (which has a large cross over with 'green anarchy'). I think that anarcho-primitivism has a couple of merits:
- they dared to question the totality of civilization. Whether they are right or wrong, it was good to at least see the topic explored.
- they recognised the fact that anarchistic tendencies were present in peoples before the times of say, Bakunin.
But after considering anarcho-primitivism I have to reject it. Destroying all technology and civilization itself will not lead to liberation. It's totally absurd.
30/01/2008
Argentina finds new oil field
Chubut province's Coordination Minister Norberto Yahuar said Tuesday that this new discovery, equivalent to 100 million barrels of crude oil, lengthens Argentina's reserve term from nine years to "some 22 years and three months."
http://www.buenosairestimes.com/ing/diario_nota.php?seccion=Economy¬a=2023&edicion=New%20Edition
November 9, 2007
The government-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, said the new "ultra-deep" Tupi field could hold as much as 8 billion barrels of recoverable light crude, sending Petrobras shares soaring and prompting predictions that Brazil could join the world's "top 10" oil producers.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/11/08/brazil.oil.ap/index.html
September 5, 2006
Known as the Jack Field, the reserve – some 270 miles southwest of New Orleans – is estimated to hold as much as 15 billion barrels of oil.
http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51837
December 01, 2005
The China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China's largest offshore oil company, announced Wednesday that it discovered 200 million cubic meters of oil in Bohai Bay this year.
http://english.gov.cn/2005-12/01/content_114910.htm
23-JUL-04
Article Excerpt
HANOI, July 23 Asia Pulse - A new oil reserve has been discovered in Vietnam's Cuu Long basin by the Russia-Viet Nam oil and gas joint venture Vietsovpetro.
The first exploration pumps produced 150 tonnes (1,100 barrels) of crude oil in a day. The oil reserve was found 60km...
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-526388/NEW-OIL-RESERVE-DISCOVERED-IN.html#abstract
hehe. Sorry Kevin. I couldn't resist. :P Humanity is still finding more oil to destroy the enviroment with. Don't cast our desperate attempts at global homicide out the window just yet.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
This is exactly the kind of thing that makes me pretty fatalistic about the future of humanity and the environment. Countries like Norway can afford to be carbon neutral because, quite simply, they can afford it.
Of course, America could afford it, too, but at what cost to our precious individual freedom to have a big house, a big car, and drive two hours into the city every day with our one-passenger-per-SUV-and-fuck-mass-transit mentality? While the absurdity of primitivism of any form is readily apparent, so too is the absurdity of unrestrained population and consumption growth.
Of course, other than a few social malcontents, is anyone willing to step up to the front of the line and turn in their car for a bicycle, and get a low paying job down the street instead of the high paying job in the city?
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Deep, offshore oil 'discoveries' are hardly legitimate entries. If we can't reach it, as is likely the case with the Jack 4 and Tupi fields, what good is it to us? Moreover, how significant are finds that - at their highest estimated volume - able to make contributions for 1 to 2 years at best (and that's not even taking into consideration the fact that the expensive, hard to get offshore light crude oil is going to have to not only supply the increasing demand for energy, but also patch-up losses in conventional production due to the depletion of our present wells).
There are trillions of barrels of oil left on Earth. Most of it, however, cannot be produced cheaply, or - in many cases - is not viable to produce at all. Our economy rides on the assumption of inexpensive and abundant high-density energy. Our current agriculture depends on the notion that it can garner thousands of man hours worth of energy for just a few dollars. If farmers can't afford to fuel their tractors, combines and swathers because the price of oil has skyrocketed due to a peak in conventional oil production, I very seriously wonder what you and I plan on eating?
http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf
...The Hirsch Report, created by the US Department of Energy, essentially concedes that worldwide sustainable production has either already peaked, and is now on the decline, or that production peak is right around the corner.
http://www.feasta.org/documents/wells/contents.html?one/campbell.html
Campbell's work here is extremely comprehensive, well-sourced and supported. That particular article isn't peer-reviewed, I don't believe, but...
http://www.peakoil.net/publications/peer-reviewed-articles
All of those listed here certainly are. And all of them support the notion that global discovery peaked in 1970 (actually, again, I'm being generous. Most list dates prior to 1970).
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
The solid rocket boosters, which provide most of the force at liftoff, use Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant. It's complicated, but doesn't seem to use any oil as far as I can tell. The rest of the shuttle's fuel is simply hydrogen and oxygen. However, that says nothing about the fuel needed to prepare all of those components.
As far as the rest of the oil needs, I believe that market forces will probably be sufficient to drive alternative fuel research. The skyrocketing price for a barrel of oil has finally gotten people to wake up to the necessity. As a forward thinker, my next vehicle purchase will be something that runs on electricity, and there are a lot of other people out there ready to do the same. A sudden change in the availability of oil would be disastrous, but that's not going to happen. It will be a price climb stretched out over decades that will slowly force people to other sources of energy. And I have no doubt the oil-burning electricity generators will also be replaced by other methods or fuels.
Unfortunately, this says nothing about larger forces that are not as readily "inspiring" to the common person. For instance, there is the possibility that global warming is already past the point of no return. I believe that it would take something like that to really wipe out humanity. Our best trait is the ability to adapt to circumstances, but they have to be right in our faces for the average person to get involved.
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I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
- Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt
Offshore drilling rigs, anyone? I have friends that work on them. Also why would people say that the find off of Brazil would turn it into one of the world's "top 10" oil producers if they couldn't get to it?
However, the world's largest oil reserve is not the middle east. It's Canada. The "Alberta tar sands". Normally oil takes $2 a barrel to extract. The oil in Canada takes $12 a barrel to extract.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/4/20/201246/566
If it only takes $2 a barrel for the middle east to obtain their oil then why oh why is a barrel of oil going for over $100 a barrel? Nervousness and demand. That's it. Hell, if it costs Canadian companies only $12 per barrel to extract and they can make a profit of $88 plus for a single barrel then....
Hell sign me up for some of that. It's ridiculous how the price of oil has skyrocketed.
Why don't you Canadians get down to business and start making some money, eh? Sell us your oil, buddy.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
Any new discoveries are legitimate. As the price of oil increases, difficult-to-reach deposits will become more economically viable.
As oil prices rise, industries that depend on oil will charge more, and consumers will reduce their dependence or will make other sacrifices to accommodate the price change. Industries will increase their demand for alternative energy sources and shift over accordingly.
Historically speaking, the low cost of food is very recent. Perhaps we will go back to spending a third or half of our household budgets on feeding our families. That would suck, but it isn't going to end life as we know it.
Stop trying to harsh on my mellow.
-----
I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
- Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt
Which is great. The question remains: when were we planning on doing this research?
We'll be in something of a jam if we wait until economic problems really begin to escalate before research is done, given that we have to have the time to implement the results of our research before it has meaninful consequence for us.
So this is a positive claim that runs contrary to past trends (see: domestic oil peaking in the U.S.). Where is your evidence for it? I've provided plenty to back my statements, and I'm rather irritated not to be offered the same courtesy.
Far more expensive to set-up, operate and man than conventional inland rigs, and limited in their drilling depth. It is largely admitted that Jack 4 may well be out of reach for the time being by even the most advanced offshore drilling equipment currently available.
And this still fails to acknowledge the fact that these discoveries hardly make-up for the general decline in oil discovery since 1970.
Yes. A 'mere' increase of six times the cost, without even factoring-in things like time and extra resources (like natural gas). And the 'mere' fact that this far more expensive oil produces far less energy than traditional light crude oil and is more difficult to process.
Why would that have an effect on our economy once we're forced to use it as our mainstay source of hydrocarbons?
You're tossing-out demand like it's irrelevent.
When the demand for the inexpensive oil has driven it's cost so high, that's a matter of very serious concern. What happens when that demand can't be met?
In the best case scenario, it means you can't afford to drive a car anymore. In the worst case scenario, we see massive agricultural failure and a bottom-out of the economy.
Neither is really appealing, and the latter notion should chill you to the bone.
How would it become economically viable all of a sudden? More likely, it would just seem that way to a bunch of elites who don't really care what the cost of living is, while the price of oil skyrockets in general due to increased cost in accruing it. When the cost of extracting oil from tarsands is the new idea of cheap and efficient energy, I really don't want to be around.
Problem: Every inudstry relies on cheap and abundant oil. Our economy was built around it. So when everyone starts hiking their prices, and transport and agriculture fold like a player holding Ace Little, how do you cope with the fact that grocers are suddenly being emptied-out in a panic and food prices reach a 'mortgage your home to get fed' level?
Other Problem: Price changes do not reduce actual demand. If the supply cannot meet the demand on terms of energy, serious problems will occur.
Again - when? the whole point of raising this issue, for me, is to cement the idea that we can't just keep-up a 'we'll do it tomorrow' attitude towards alternative energy. If we're going to go solar, we've got to do it today, because it's foolish to wait and react to what may potentially snowball into the collapse of western civilization before bothering to do anything.
Cheap food is largely the result of the green revolution, which - again - was a result of fossil fuel usage. Our population is dependent on this readily available, inexpensive food that modern agriculture provides. With the ability to inexpensively fuel the machinery we use for farming, the starvation we'll see will be catastrophic.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Yes, I'm in the US right now and having a very odd culture shock, since I drove across the border from Canada, and flew from Hong Kong to Canada to get there first. The three places could not be more different. As you can deduce from that and from my signature, I had to drive all the way down basically the entire length of the I-5. The first thing I noted was the fact that I kept passing billboards saying things"Jesus Loves You" and "One Day Every Knee Will Bow and Every Tongue will confess", or, the best "He will come quickly" (don't they have drugs to make you do that now?). Of course, there is definitely none of that nonsense where I am now. I was just looking at a student research project in mathematical biology. They are building mathematical models to explain the evolution of intercellular signalling pathways in multicellular Eukaryota, a process which is enormous and daunting;y complex (for the cells and for the students). Since the protein components of these pathways have binding sites which are extremely modular in nature, they assemble like lego bricks, which gives an utterly enormous potential in terms of novel combinations that could arise from recombinative mechanisms. And since cells respond to, integrate, and bifurcate hundreds of individual signals, in manners depending on their cell type because that in turn determines their pattern of gene expression, and that most complex signals are the result of multiple combinations of juxtacrine, autocrine, panacrine, synaptic and endocrine signals, the number of posssible signals is in the billions. And since many signalling molecules activate parallel pathways, but in turn different receptor types on the same cell, or the same receptors on different cell types but with a different effect because of the intracellular signalling components, the complexity of the molecular computing is extremely difficult to get one's head around. These students essentially had to compute the number of viable signalling pathways, a task similar to the physicist Claude Shannon's calculation of the number of possible chess games of 40 moves, except with the added twist of there not being any concrete rules the way chess has. They also had to model the evolution of cell signalling in the same manner. Say what you will about the American public's terrible knowledge of science, but you will find nothing of that sort in her scientific institutions, for the US institutions are surely the best of the best in the world.
The second thing I am noting is the utterly bizarre consumption desires. I'm in CA right now, which is basically a desert, and everyone is supposed to be "nervous" about the extreme water shortages, yet...every house I passed in Pasadena, LA, Sacramento, San Fransisco, has a little non-desert garden. The driving is utterly insane. Nobody drives where I live. Here though...don't you think it would be better to construct a country that did not constitute a scattering of large urban centers with a whole lot of absolutely nothing in between? I am impressed by the Interstate Highway System, it is big, and I haven't even taken the largest, I-90, but this is ridiculous. And there is this bizarre matter of the "individual freedom" to own an SUV and consume enough such that if everyone followed suit, we'd need 12 planets. The fact of the matter is that nobody has the "individual freedom" to consume over 12 times their fair share of natural resources. That is completely ridiculous. And the only reason people physically can do it is because no-one else can.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Really? It's far more expensive than $100 a barrel? And limits? Like how high we can fly? We've put men on the moon before I was born, we can get that fucking oil. Where there's a profit there's a way. Even if it costs $50 a barrel to harvest that's still 100% profit for the companies that harvest it, yes? Is 100% profit a bad profit margin? C'mon, man.
6 times the cost is still a profit of $88 a barrel. And that's how much it costs to extract traditional light crude oil from the Alberta tar sands that has the same energy production of the oil in the middle east. Demand is what is making a $2 barrel of oil cost 50 times it's cost to extract. Expand the supply and the cost will drop. Canada can extract it for $12 and make a huge profit. Hell even if their extra supply drops the price of oil in half they are still making 4 times as much as it costs to extract it.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
I don't worry much about the environment or resource shortages having a real long-term impact on the survival of the species. Humans will always find a way to survive when pushed to do so, it just may not be as organized or proactive or cheap in lives lost as we might like it to be. At the end of the day, we could pretty much completely destroy the biosphere and some percentage of the population would be able to keep going in domes with hydroponics. Same thing with oil: there's lots of ways to drive a car and the only difference between one and another is economic. Switching to different propulsion systems means making different economic trade-offs: annoying, yes, but hardly species-threatening.
Real threats to the species: some kind of punctuated evolution in infectious microbes that generates superbugs faster than we can figure out how to kill them. That, and nuclear war, which is only really a threat if you consider the effect of religion on human society. So we can put religion in there too.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
Considerably more expensive in terms of time and energy to construct offshore equipment, yes. You also seem to be confused about $/Barrel correlations, which are not based on profit but demand vs supply. Frankly, $/Barrel rates are hardly damning to my argument:
At the beginning of 1999, oil prices hit an all-time low of $11/Barrel. After reaching this low price point 'peak', if you will, $/Barrel has exponentially increased ever since - to the point where, a mere nine years later, we're now at just under $110/Barrel. And there's no sign that the price is headed anywhere but up.
Yes, limits. Can we drill to the Earth's core? Can we take a trip to a shopping mall on Mars? Can we even visit the deepest and most isolated waters on our own planet?
I'm not dismissing human ingenuity or even the notion that drilling 6 miles below the ocean floor to extract oil there may be feasible with enough research. I want you to consider:
a) What are the connotations when our exploration efforts are focused on oil that is so difficult to reach?
b) Are these finds sufficient replacements for the overall decline in oil discovery since 1970? We now consume 6 barrels of oil for every one we find:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/jun/08/renewableenergy.oil
c) Worldwide oil production has been on a slow decline since 2006. Since oil production follows a bell curve, it's likely that the production decline will follow an exponential degradation. How likely is it that unconventional sources can halt this trend?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Exactly! Increase the supply to better meet demand! Canada has the power to do so. And they are working on it to a certain degree. If not then why have they spent over $6 billion over the last three years to start harvesting the tar sands? Hmmm?
Could we go to the moon on May 25, 1961? No. However, Kennedy announced we were going to do so. And then by July 20, 1969 we were there. So don't go off about saying nonsense like that. The only things that limit humanity is ourselves.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
It has been happening for some time, and is accelerating. Of course I am speaking mainly of the automotive industry, but when people talk about oil, that's what I think about. There are a number of mass-produced electric vehicles, though they mostly suck. However, the Tesla Roadster is the spearhead of a new class of real cars which are realistic replacements for personal vehicles. Every major car manufacturer is coming out with gas-electric hybrids in the next few years, that will pave the way to mass produced plug-in hybrids and pure electrics. As further evidence of the trend away from oil, many of the buses here in LA use compressed natural gas, which I don't know much about, but it's cleaner than oil. I admit that the shift away from oil should have started in the 90's, but it has started now.
Sorry, I thought this was just common knowledge. Oil fields don't just suddenly stop producing. The pressure starts to drop, so that fewer barrels per day get produced. Then there are a number of environmentally questionable techniques that they use to pull more oil out, such as pumping water or steam into the ground. More oil comes up, but it is diluted and needs more refining.
Oil fields die all the time and are reinvigorated when new techniques are discovered to pull up a few more barrels. Even without new techniques, we have a few decades of estimated oil reserves.
Sorry, I don't have references, this is just stuff I've picked up through Discovery channel and such. But it's logical, I have no reason to doubt it.
Kevin, I'm sensing a kind of panic in your responses. Are you expecting oil to be suddenly unavailable within the next few years?
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I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
- Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt
By the way, I just received the latest issue of Popular Mechanics, which has a cover article about how oil companies are improving technology to recover oil that was previously unreachable. Just seemed appropriate to this discussion.
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I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
- Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt
Yes, "running out of oil" is sort of going to happen, and in the near future.
If you google "peak-oil" you'll see a ton of very good research on the subject.
Even the peak oil proponents don't claim we will literally "run-out" of oil. We will, however, run out of easily obtained oil fairly soon. We have already crossed the "peak oil" threshold, which is to say that we can no longer meet demand easily. Which is why you see oil prices climbing so dramatically.
As what's easy to pump starts running out you'll see more and more price increases, rising to the point that things like shale oil and coal-oil actually would be profitable to produce, but the problem is that our entire society and infrastructures are currently based on not just oil, but CHEAP oil.
That's the big deal: What the hell do we do when oil is no longer cheap?
I don't foresee a doomsday on this issue, but I think the emerging third world is likely to suffer devastating consequences. The USA, Europe, the Chinese and probably the Indians, along with the rest of the developed world will manage, though there is likely to be some VERY hard times ahead -Think great depression. -30% unemployment, unstable financial institutions, etc.
In the U.S. even with oil at only a tad over $100 per barrel, which is still actually fairly "cheap," you're seeing drastic increases in prices of energy and everything produced with it, from food prices, which have seen the largest inflation in many years, to Airline tickets, which have skyrocketed.
No, take what we're already seeing, and magnify it all a couple hundred percent. That's a giant amount of economic displacement.
Eventually, we're going to stop allowing Shell and BP and Exxon-Mobil etc. to continue to assert they have the only fuel available and start developing alternatives that really work. We already have a LOT of the technology we would need to run on a nearly totally oil-free economy. Build a shit-pot of new nuclear plants, use that electricity to among other things, recharge batteries and produce hydrogen. Add to that solar and wind-power and add to that a serious geothermal power generation effort. I can see for instance a giant hydrogen manufacturing facility near Mount Lassen in California.
Eventually, the market will find a way, because it will be in people's own self-interest for that to happen. The bad news is that things are likely to get mighty uncomfortable for a good long while as short-sighted as we tend to be as a species.
As far as policy goes, as long as money controls politics, you're not going to see meaningful policy changes from government. Not until capital sees it in their own relatively short-term interests. Seriously, if energy producers didn't have so much money to spend on controlling policy makers, we would have already had a several dollar-per-gallon gas tax in place to encourage alternative forms of transport and fuel.
As to how it should be divided? SHOULD has nothing to do with it. SHOULD is a pipe-dream. What will happen is what's always happened. The powerful will get the lion's share of resources, because no one can stop them from taking it. The more the militarily powerful nations feel the crunch, the more aggressive and ruthless they will be. Trust me, if we had large numbers of people starving to death in the US and Venezuela et al were sitting on something that would immediately alleviate the situation, We'd just drop neutron bombs, kill the population so we didn't have to worry about security, and send in the army to run the production facilities. It's an ugly truth about humans, but it's the consistent record of our species.
When essential resources are scarce enough to kill each other over them, the blood will flow.
Being open-minded isn't the same thing as being vacant.
5 to 10. I'm an optimist - but I'm not an idiot.
The most optimistic projections for the availability of sustainably cheap oil, as published in scientific, pee-reviewed journals (like the ones I linked to) say 2010. Maybe 2015. A vast majority acknowledge that global production has already peaked, so it's just a matter of guessing the mathematical 'magic number' that oil and gas prices need to hit before the economy caves-in.
I mean, whatever. I'm not some doom and gloom prophet, and I don't enjoy telling people, 'Hey, dude. We're boned. There's no hope," but I also don't want to sit with a smile on my face and watch as nothing is done about how disgustingly wasteful North Americans are until our faults drag us under. Maybe the experts are wrong, and you guys are right. That's great - I guess there's no problem, and I'll just look like some dumb asshole.
If the experts aren't wrong, though, and nothing gets about the problem before it arrives because most people don't want to accept the notion that we're consuming an unsustainable amount of energy, I'll be a frozen to death asshole instead when heating costs inflate to the point of being unaffordable for the average person. Which is why I'm a tad concerned.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I started reading some of the articles you linked, but some of them are $30 to read, and all of them are so thick with statistics and jargon that they are rendered nearly meaningless.
I'm not saying that this issue isn't worthy of consideration and discussion, but as a resident of an area that doesn't require artificial environment controls, I just can't muster up enough determination to wade through the conflicting information.
I must say that I'm excited about the possible changes that will happen during our lifetimes. I hope that people don't get hurt, but this kind of shakeup may be something that's needed in the big picture of human history.
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I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
- Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt
All morality aside, euthanasia would also work, if applied liberally enough....
This probably makes me one sinister fuckwit, but:
Were I in charge, a voluntary self-euthanasia program would be the first thing I'd set-up. The demonizing of suicide is stupid, in my opinion: yes, some people make rash decisions and kill themselves as a result of emotional angst, without considering the consequences. That shouldn't be projected onto people making an informed, rational decision about terminating their own life on beneficial merits.
If there are too many people for a space to handle, and some of those people wish to leave, does it make sense to insist that they stay?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I totally disagree We already have too many euthanasia. Just look at all the kids in India and China!
-Sorry, I could ....not....stop...myself
Being open-minded isn't the same thing as being vacant.
For those economist insisting the financial market can curtail problems related to resource depletion (rather than being dragged into oblivion by them, as it becomes obvious that virtually every company on the market is over valued without access to cheap oil), articles like this one ought to leave you scratching your head.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940