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Guest Post: The Scientific Challenges To Replacing Oil With Renewables
So, assuming the Peak Oil camp is on to something, what's the likelihood for a disruption-free transition to another energy source that can replace the energy output we currently enjoy from oil? There's no shortage of promising claims from new laboratory experiments, and there is a lot of optimism in political and entrepreneurial circles that renewable, alternative forms of energy (wind, solar, biofuels, etc) may be able to fill the "energy gap" in time. How realistic are these hopes?
Not very, says Robert Rapier, energy specialist and Chief Technology Officer of Merica International.
The problem is one of return on invested energy. It is extremely difficult to create fuels with the same energy-density Nature has concocted over thousands of millennia without using up as much (or more) energy in the process.
When you think about what oil is then you understand why these biofuels companies have a tough time of making it work. I mean, oil is accumulation of millions of years of biomass that has accumulated. Nature has applied the pressure, it’s applied the heat and it has cooked these into very energy-dense hydrocarbons. Now, what we are trying to do in real time is speed all this up. Somebody has to plant the biomass, somebody has to grow the biomass where nature did it in the first place. We have to transport it, we have to bring it into a factory, we have to get it in that form, we have to convert it from biomass into some fuel. We are adding energy and labor inputs all along and then finally we get a fuel out of the back end.
A lot of the time, a lot of these so-called biofuels are very heavily dependent on fossil fuels to begin with. So for some of them it is not even clear that they would be viable if you took the fossil fuels out of the process. When you think about all the labor and energy that goes into making a biofuel from an annual crop it becomes apparent why oil has been the dominant fuel for the last 150 years. It is much easier to go poke a hole in the ground and get that oil out of the ground than it is to go through all the labor of actually producing the fuel. So companies are competing against that.
On top of this, false hope and confusion is frequently created in the marketplace by new companies announcing "breakthroughs" that may indeed work in optimal laboratory environments, but just simply don't under real-world conditions, at scale:
The scale-up issue is the most important issue because in my experience, most technologies get wiped out as they go up in scale. So something you may be able to do in a lab, 90% of those lab ideas don’t work and only 10% will go on to make a pilot plan. And for lab experiments there are going to be all kinds of things: your catalyst didn’t work; your actual process didn’t work....
Let’s say your process did work in a lab. In the lab you are doing all kinds of things that are different than what you would do at a larger scale. Your waste products may not be a problem, you may have a small amount of bi-product that can be thrown away. Lab equipment is smaller and so the heat transfer in that lab equipment is very different than it is as you scale up. The example I give a lot is: think of a turkey. We are coming up on Thanksgiving. If you are cooking one turkey and you imagine an oven with the heating elements on the sides, that is simply one factor and not everybody gets that right: the turkey is too dry, it’s overdone, it’s not cooked enough.
Now imagine taking that turkey and scaling it up to cook, say 1,000 turkeys an hour. You can imagine that the issues there are very, very different than they would be in a smaller oven. You maybe have turkeys in the middle that would still be cold while the turkeys on the outside are burnt to a crisp. So you are trying to get an even heating distribution across this larger oven and it is the same as a reactor. As the reactor goes from lab scale up to larger scale, as you get heat differences and temperature differences inside that reactor you can make different products, different byproducts, more things that you didn’t want to make or not as much of the thing that you did want to make.
And some companies will skip those steps. As you skip the steps, if you think about it – most technologies get knocked out at each step. So normally a company would go from lab scale to pilot scale to demonstration scale to a commercial scale. If somebody is jumping over steps they are greatly reducing the risk or their chance of success...
That will be the case with most of the biofuel companies out there making promises. They get out there; they will build their pilot plant. They will discover that things don’t work as they thought they would and then they will close down.
While it is critical we invest our current resources to finding solutions to the approaching energy gap, it's also essential we approach the situation realistically and with as little magical thinking as possible. Currently, the US is consuming 10 million barrels per day more than it produces domestically. For perspective, our best ethanol refineries can produce around 4,000 barrels per day (at a much lower EROEI). And if we decided tomorrow to begin converting our transportation fleet to full-electric vehicles (i.e. away from liquid fuels), it would realistically take somewhere between 30-50 years to fully build out the infrastructure and retire the combustion-engine vehicles. The short of it is there is going to be no single fuel source that replaces oil, and the transition to a post-Peak Oil future is going to involve a period of "less energy" for society for an undetermined period of time.
I think that we hope and we believe that our energy predicament can be solved by technology. We have seen technological advancement in so many different fields and we expect this is what we are going to see in the energy field. If you look at where computers have come over the last 30 years we expect that to happen with our energy production that the whole society is going to be running off of solar and wind power going forward. I sometimes say there is not always a neat solution to every problem.
We have still got the common cold. It is still with us. That has not been cured despite it being around forever. So not all problems can be solved easily. And the energy problem is one that is not going to be solved easily in my opinion. Our society has grown up on something that was rich, abundant, and pretty easy to get to. We are trying to replace that with something that the energy required to get it and process it and produce it is a lot higher than the energy required to process oil.
There is not going to be one thing that replaces oil. I think there are going to be a lot of different things and, more importantly, I think it is going to take a lot less oil than we are using now. The good news is we have dropped a million and a half barrels a day over the last five years. The bad news is a lot of that is because of the recession; it shows we do have some capacity to reduce our oil consumption. There is still a lot of low hanging fruit in my view. It is going to be painful as we scale down and some of the alternatives are going to have to meet somewhere -- at some level higher than they are today and at some level of oil consumption lower than we are today -- those will have to meet.
Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Robert Rapier (runtime 52m:46s):
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Wow the balls to bring "our childrens future" into the talk while spouting some technofantasy cornicopian shit about all plentiful alternatives. SCALE THEM UP? YOU CANT GENIUS.
says who,... 'the grand fatalist party of the last half century'!
Talk about what you know sheeple, Jiang zemin's son (himself a Phd in electrical engineer - his father is only an electrical engineer) is building it now, unfortunately in the US the leaders are lawyers..... It Won't ready before oil shoots because of war with Iran, but again, if you build a 10 MW and already able to run for 4 years, you faaaaaaar beyond the proof of concept stage. Forget about oil and about synthetic oil production scale issue, weare talking nuclear here. BTW molten salt reactor had passive safety relying only gravity and thermic melting point of asafety valve.
15 TRILLION WATTS. Thats what your nukes need to put out...for todays consumption. How many nukes is plants is that? How much oil will we need to build thousands of nuke plants? When we are done ofcourse demand will have doubled and we will be in the hole again.
That's it someone here also knows about THORIUM NUCLEAR!!. And yes it is sad to see that this 100% US unbelievable prowess of technology was put in the attic by some fucking congressman commited to weapon nuclear and oil. But it is notstaying in the attic for everyone, the Chinese, French and russians are working on it, ultimatelythat will force the US to change this ridiculous policy about thorium and extraction of Lanthanides. Don' t Monazite mining stocks people bad idea... I would be long at any price though.
been talking it up for years - many years -
tptb don't want alternatives, period!
it's a control thing to monopolize wealth and create wars as diversions
as the sheeple just blindly give up their mutton souls at the gamy savoir`d 'october fest' banquet - the late evening oligarch daily feast,... with all said, 'brine tongues', as the prized appetizer - bona`petite
In a nutshell. The governments are the body responsible for preparing infrastructure - even if the Democracies have relegated that responsibility to corporations, someone should have been planning for 'peak-oil'.
Through the 70's and 80's, the OECD tested Thorium fuels in test-reactors running for 4-6 years. So the designs for running a Thorium infrastructure are known well-enough. The fuel cycle of Uranium/Plutonium is shockingly expensive - but of course, government subsidizes it - and it has always been about extracting fissile material for warheads. Already there is insufficient U235 to supply existing Nuclear reactor fleet, so.. Thorium mixed-oxide fuel should begin to phase in - it's only twenty years after the people of earth could have opened the door to unlimited, super-cheap electricity. ...Twenty years where the financial markets have blown-up their deriviative monies, in the hope of what, either astronomical pay-checks, or if they play their cards right, maybe even getting to keep some of the monopoly money. How many people have seen their children killed and raped so that you Bankers can eat cake, and because governments would not come out and openly control the mining of fissile material for National Security reasons. - your reap what you sow -
There is more than enough power in wind to cover all of mankind's energy needs, it's just that wind turbines are inherently inefficient. A much smarter, cheap way to extract this clean and plentiful energy is:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kitegen+stem
With such cheap electricity, hydrogen cells for cars become competitive with oil, and curb pollution as well.
More on electricity from kites:
Unlike wind turbines which are limited to the slow and irregular winds near the ground, kites can tap into the stronger and much more persistent winds at 1km altitude and higher. When there is no wind at ground level, there is typically more than enough where kites can reach.
Strikingly, kites can extract more energy from the no-fly zone above a typical nuclear power plant than what the plant itself produces.
Zero pollution, fully renewable, almost free energy.
Kitegen website: http://www.kitegen.com/en/?page_id=7
oh yeah, you will get gigawatts from a fucking kite...GTFO here, idjit
Yes, gigawatts from multiple kites.
Each kite pulls on its two cables, activating generators that produce electricity. A prototype not much larger than a regular kitesurfing sail generates up to 30 KW at 800m altitude, see it here: http://www.kitegen.com/en/?page_id=48
And this shows how 100 MW requires multiple kites sweeping a 1 KM seuare area, with current technology. Installations producing up to 60 Gigawatts are under study: http://www.kitegen.com/en/?page_id=7
I'd say you are quite good at your job, trying to disrupt conversations in order to maintain the status quo your employers so enjoy. But wouldn't you profit more, as they would, by turning away from hate and lies and violence, and begin to like and respect yourself, at least a little at first? Everybody has some good inside, all it takes is to let it grow: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+Basics+of+Non+Violent+Co...
Ok, let's say this works. They can't install windmills in many places because people don't want their view spoiled. A giant kite 1 KM in the sky is going to have a massive visability; where in this world are you going to build them without NIMBY protest? You have to build them away from populated areas and then lose 30%+ to transmission.
It's multiple small kites, you barely see them. Airliners are much larger and if it weren't for the trails they leave, or the noise, you wouldn't notice them. Kites are silent.
Peak oil won't affect our lives. maybe down the road.
libertarian86.blogspot.com
OT: The rot is finally starting to creep onto the surface in Spain.
This one has gone pretty much unnoticed but now Bloomberg has written a small piece on the topic.
Spain’s Rajoy Said to Ask Academics for Proposals on Creating a Bad BankSpanish Prime Minister-elect Mariano Rajoy has asked for at least two papers from academics on how to create a so-called bad bank, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Both proposals outline mechanisms for a state-backed agency to buy soured assets such as real estate from banks at a discount, said the people, who declined be named because the process isn’t public.
According to one of the proposals, Spain needs external financing of about 100 billion euros ($133 billion) to absorb the cost of transferring assets to the bad bank and should seek it from the European Financial Stability Fund or the International Monetary Fund, one of the people said. Both options call for valuations of real estate to be made by independent appraisers, the people said.
Read the rest from here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-25/spain-s-rajoy-said-to-ask-acade...
Spain is toast and so is the political utopia called eurozone. There's nothing left to do than start defaulting and DISINTEGRATING.
You must be a little englander, packing packs at half time thinking "we won!". The game is still on and if Spain does this it will be exactly the right way to do it.
The issue is not necassarily energy. It is portable fuel souces. In the future portable fuel sources may be very expensive, so aternatives may include electric vehicles, public power transportation grids, public transportation, etc.
Fuel cell buses. Made in the U.S., even. http://www.calstart.org/news_and_publications/CALSTART-in-the-news/CALSTART-Press-Releases/AFCB-Unveiled-November-2011.aspx
http://www.sunline.org/sunline-unveils-7th-generation-hydrogen-fueled-vehicle-
oil is not a fossil fuel. oil is a renewable resource.
I'm not convinced either way, but I think Titan needs to be explained first. The people junking you are idiots BTW. Peak oil has similarities with the Global Warming hysteria.
Oi peaked in 2005 You are going to have a first hand view of the results.
"You are going to have a first hand view of the results."
That's what the Global Warming alarmists were saying right before that theory blew up. I do think the end is coming, but we disagree on the causes.
the theory has not blown up, the global warming is very much there and its man made. See the new data.
Climate change is real, as it has been for billions of years.
So we've been melting the poles on Mars for years too have we?
If you have found proof, from the "new data" or otherwise, that climate change is anthropogenic you are nothing but a sucker falling for a predatory agenda based on ridiculous lies masquerading as back-assward high school science I'm afraid. Good luck with that.
Now please tell us how a gas comprising .038% or so of our atmosphere (a fraction of which is created by mankind directly), capable of virtually no IR retention or positive feedback (aside from that which was written into these so-called "climatologists" read politicians models) in terms of temperature was causing "global warming". How is it that levels of industrialization and polution have continued to increase yet warming ceased years ago? Everyone needs a chuckle once in a while. Please, indulge us.
yes because it's ridiculous to think that perhaps if you extract some of the most condensed carbon energy sources ever produced on the planet over a few hundred million years and burn more than half of them into the atmosphere in less than a hundred that it might have some kind of unique effect that the earth has never experienced. It only takes a few degrees for massive effects. The change rate is faster than the earth has ever experienced
just because predators are taking advantage of the phenomenon doesn't make the phenomenon false, that's what predators do
Ok so oil is renewable. We are still in the exact same perdiciment we were prior to that admission.
Don't think we're ways off from making big break through in the energy space. The big question is how will those with "much" to lose act to prevent industry wide acceptance of this new form of energy - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1351341/Relief-pumps-Revo...
There is no shortage of oil/nat gas/coal, etc. also known to believers in fairy tales as "fossil fuels".
However, the days of cheap, affordable energy are nearing an end for most obviously.
Compromise "Western" standards of livings by a few hundred years or so or...
Cull a few billion people from the planet.
Or both.
"Renewables" cannot support our current societal expectations, not even close.
SRS Rocco has, as many have seen by now, presented a well thought-out EROI argument before and it literally applies to everything going forward I submit.
Standard of living, meet environmental stress, Darwinian stylie.
Just think how much energy could be saved if we made quality products which span decades instead of importing Chinese junk which span months... My guess is that alone would buy another century on a fossil fuel based economy. Of course the bankers and their consumerist usury complex would have to be destroyed.
you mean people over profit ?
What are your thoughts on this? Scalability, etc ...
A section of the fusion machine being tested at General Fusion's facility outside of Vancouver, British Columbia. General Fusion is hoping to implement a long-shot strategy that could produce fusion energy in the next few years.
http://tiny.cc/72jgr
It's not called a long-shot for nothing.
If any real contender appears on the horizon, big oil will buy them up in their infancy and dispatch with them ASAP.
Funny, I've been off the grid for over 39 years, and my solar panels were made by solarex (owned by amoco), and now BP solar. They work fine, thanks. And they didn't prevent my Chevy Volt from being made, which I charge from all solar...and almost always run as pure-electric. Nor have they bought up wind power. Nor good battery tech, not that there is a lot of that. Nor nuclear. Get real. Get out more and see how it is out there. See my post below.
if you bought a Volt then you're an idiot. eDrive Prius or Leaf is a much better car
There's no shortage of promising claims from new laboratory experiments, and there is a lot of optimism in political and entrepreneurial circles that renewable, alternative forms of energy (wind, solar, biofuels, etc) may be able to fill the "energy gap" in time.
**************
Not one word about Nuclear-
How bullish is that-
Buy Uranium producers?
"fill the gap in time" - the problem is, if you still have a society where the economy is based on growth, it never ends; each resource will eventually hit its peak production.
Tesla technology is alive and well, and in daily use by the NWO to control weather, generate earthquakes, create missile shielding, shot down airplanes or satellites, bang out nuke like explosions, or implosions, without radiation. But, this technology is only avialable to NWO. Y'all peons are fcukden screwed.
Following web site offers details on six applications: EM wave function, weapons, healing, etc. ....
Take you pick.
http://www.prahlad.org/pub/bearden/scalar_wars.htm
You forgot bring down the World Trade Towers also PLove. There was physical evidense of The Hutchison Effect everywhere. To this day there have been no explanations of how most of the concrete and steel in those towers was converted into sub-80 micron powder in less than 20 seconds other than DEWs. Please don't say it was done with thermite or mini nukes although thermite had and served it's purpose and was evident... ;)
The MIC has been successfully using fusion for decades now.
Meant to respond to TheAkashicRecord with the fusion comment.
Cheers
www.ecat.com
Thermal Depolymerization, frankly converting human waster alone is enough to power the entire fleet,
the solutions are there, the leadership is not
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtS6K43np9o
www.ecat.com
Thermal Depolymerization, frankly converting human waster alone is enough to power the entire fleet,
the solutions are there, the leadership is not
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtS6K43np9o
James85306,
Please put some analysis into it. What are the energy inputs for thermal depolymerization? How does it scale? Did you read the article?
There is a moon which orbits Saturn that has oceans of liquid methane. I'm not convinced that hydrocarbons are 100% biological in origin. Unless there is life on this moon producing methane which would be even more bizarre...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_%28moon%29
Methane is abundant in the cosmos and pretty much none of it is biotic in origin. Sabatier reactors are planned for manufacturing return rocket fuel out of (light) hydrogen and (available) carbon dioxide for manned missions to Mars.
Sabatier reactors could in principle make natural gas for use in our energy systems using existing pipelines and the most efficient power plants ever devised--combined cycle, the dominant new build in the industry today. Guess what? It'll cost ya. No one knows how much.
So is the Methane found deep in the Earth biotic or abiotic in origin? And the Ethane? Could more complex hydrocarbons form from these compounds naturally? These seem like pertinent questions to me, but I'm not an expert in Chemistry or Geology. Interestingly, the typical response to these questions is to laugh, which is the usual defensive mechanism to a revolutionary theory that may be true. That is, the abiotic formation of oil.
Even if abiotic, at what rate does it replenish? If not high enough, too bad.
I have no idea. Maybe we should stop hemorrhaging just a little less money to alternative energies and divert it toward exploring these questions.
The Russians claim that the deep "abiotic", longer hydrocarbon chain oil is produced from calcium carbonate (limestone) under very intense heat and pressure. It is noted that limestone is actually not abiotic.
Reducing energy consumption is absolutely the wrong move, unless your goal is to lower population, kill people. We must massively invest in infraastructure, such as NAWAPA, here and around the world. We need to manufacture nuclear plants like Ford did Model Ts. Then move on to fusion.And then ... we'll see.
If we don't get into gear and move, we are finsihed.
One billion to live offplanet by 2112!
We won't get "into gear" in time. We're also not finished, although there will be a large die-off that starts well before the century is out. I'd guess, however, that perhaps as many as 200 million of us might survive worldwide, assuming we're not too enthusiastic about throwing nuclear weapons around and we can minimize the number of power plants that melt down due to a lack of power.
Well, if people are waiting for researchers - or better yet, real businesses that make things, to come up with a magic box you can clip to your toyota and make it "green" - you're going to be waiting quite a long time - time enough for all your hedges to get to zero. Whatever is finally come up with, it's got some real daunting challenges, and yes, I AM a physicist doing work in alt energy - see my handle. And I'm off the grid (Solar PV since 1980...works great), and drive a new Chevy Volt (love it) that has enough battery only range to do nearly all I need done by a car. I heat with wood off my own woodlot, which also sequesters some carbon for the parts I make into lumber.
But I'm semi retired and living on 50 acres in what's more or less heaven (sorry west VA, you're only almost there) - Floyd VA. Even if everyone was willing (And able! It wasn't easy) to cut the cords of "wage-slave-apt-dweller-in-debt" and adopt my lifestyle, sorry guys, there ain't enough more like this to go around. It takes acres to live sustainable, and I do it partly to prove just how hard it is - and I'm not there, even with over 3 decades of working on it. I still use some gasoline, but I try to use it where I get max "gain" - like in a chainsaw, or a rototiller. I burn coal in a blacksmith forge...but no way I'm making my own iron, copper and so forth. Nor am I able to grow more than about 30% of the food I eat without depending on that good ol factory farm and grocery store setup. Which themselves will have a lot harder time making a go of renew-ables than I.
The big deal with liquid hydrocarbons is that they don't have to carry 15/16th of the total weight around - the air you use to burn them is free. That hurdle isn't being overcome by anything yet on the horizon for transport, and we seem to have designed a world where transport is key to everything. The integrated circuits I design with have often been around the world more than once, from fab, to test, to packaging, to a distributer, to me before I get my hands on them. That one's probably the easiest one to change. But how about food, out of season as we spoiled westerners demand?
Fuel cells, the "practical ones" so far, need Pd or Pt to catalyze the O and H into monatomic ions to work. Even at mono-molecular layer levels, there's about enough of those PMs on the planet to make enough cars for say, Pennsylvania, maybe. We could hope nano-tech and designed materials could replace that - but they haven't yet and there's nothing on the horizon.
We are too stupid to use nuclear wisely, and that's said as a proponent. We don't allow new designs into the field, we have NIMBY about where to store the quite valuable byproducts till we find a use (and there are uses, some space probes and other things need them and can't get enough now). And anyway, batteries are at a basic limit, or near it now - the energy density in an LiIon battery is already close to that of C4 - the best you can do with all the chemistry in the periodic table, and there's no missing stuff there - it's a hard limit in physics.
So, glitch free? No way. After massive restructuring, and probably a vast reduction in the number of humans, sure. After we put 99% of our current "Stuff" into landfills or recycling centers and build anew from scratch with better stuff. No easy conversions, that's sure. I pulled off "enough to suit me", to be sure, and it had nothing to do with being "green" though I'm kind of fond of the nature I live in. It had to do with power and control - over my own life, and not needing to kiss ass to other humans to have that life, pure and simple. So if the rest of y'all self destruct - keep it away from me, and I'll be OK. Fucking morons describes a huge fraction of humans.
I have some of that stuff described here:
http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/index.php
I find it really hard to take any of this very seriously. Especially when one considers the fact that a man by the name of Charles Pogue developed, successfully tested and patented a carburetor in the 1930's and made that old gas hog V8 get 200+ miles to the gallon. Of course the panic that ensued in the oil markets at the time demanded swift and decisive action. So the heads of the major oil companies cornered Mr. Pogue and forced him to sell his invention which they then immediately shelved, while at the same time, they started adding lead to the fuel to prevent future similar innovations. And the supposed "best" we can do now is around 50mpg and your car has to be half battery and all sissy. One should never under estimate the impact of progress, even if it is in the wrong direction.
http://fuel-efficient-vehicles.org/energy-news/?page_id=986
Any carb designed in the '30s would have been reinvented 20-times over...
You seem to be pretty gullible....I have a bridge to sell you...
I have a 10 year old Skoda Octavia car (engineered by VW), 1.9 litre turbo diesel. I cannot get under 50mpg and I drive too fast for most passengers of mine. On a long journey (say 200 miles) on a motorway/interstate I can average 60+ mpg. No half battery hybrid shit, just good engineering.
American cars and their buyers are decades behind Europe. Your government should double fuel taxes and that should kick your 5 ton SVUs into the nearest recycling yard post-haste.
Thank you for bringing some sense to the conversation. We are truly looking at a massive decrease in complexity and all the things that it implies.
Congratulations on having the mental capacity to be a physicist. Fascinating stuff but it's way beyond my ability. 50 acres is a nice chunk of land. Don't blame you for not wanting to be bothered. If I could afford that much property, I'd probably tell everyone to fuck off too. :)
One more thing, DCFusor. I wouldn't mind joining your forum and I notice you require real names. I also notice that you didn't use your real name here at ZeroHedge. Another requirment at your forum is to refrain from using foul language. You have no problem using the "F" word here, however. I don't have a problem with forum owners/administrators having rules of conduct, but I expect them to adhere to their own rules (regardless of the forum). I'm not a machinist but I do operate precision machinery. I'd like to join your forum.
An erudite man has the ability to quickly identify the LCD and rise above it... Tell me where you think the LCD is on the Isreal related threads??
We just need to stop worrying about being able to switch to something else completely, and just switch as much as we can. I myself long to be able to afford solar panels. If I ever get ahold of a chunk of money again, I would certainly spend it on solar panels to not have to put up with the monthly electric bill payments. I hate monthly payments.
Changing the way we live to not be so energy wasteful would the oil we do have last longer.
China ships us plastic forks across an ocean and we ship China chop sticks across an ocean. Surely we could save some fuel by making what we can at home and only importing things we can't grow or make at home.
We need to start rezoning here at home. This suburbia thing is too wasteful. I live in a small, old town where my house is right next to my business, and it is so sweet to not need to drive. Right now, the local governments mostly try to zone business and farming away from housing. It is much nicer for people and for not wasting energy to zone things closer together.
I knew when I saw the word 'scientific' in the title that there wouldn't be much science in it.
All about 'competition' and whining about scale and hassle factors.
Yo, the 'thesis' is Peak Oil. As in, there won't be any to compete against. There, that problem is solved.
None of the 'scientific' problems noted in this article are insurmountable. Just expensive. There are other, more serious issues but this article does not get to those.
This article would be better titled 'Why Cheap Oil is Difficult to Compete Against' but then...it wouldn't be very interesting or relevant, would it?
Cause we all know exponential function is a slave to finance.
No, finance is a slave (and you and me as a taxpayer) to the exponential function!
The bottom line never changes. Whatever the fuel is, how much work can you get out of it? If thermal efficiency had been pursued with that intensity that raw power was coveted, the world would be a very different place.
http://georgesblogforum.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/the-daily-climb-2/
Save Gas - Fart In A Jar. There. Problem solved. If you are unemployed, off to the fart farm for an 8 hour day, menu of pickled eggs, beer, sausage, and beans. Fart harvester tube shoved up your ass, and plenty of patriotic FRN's to spend for your service. Criminals, same program, but double down on the fart generator diet, 12 hour days, no FRN's. That'll teach them about law breaking, 'specially on Black Friday when they are locked up farting, no cash, no shopping. There's capital punishment for ya ! USA ! USA ! USA !
ha ha, we are so fucking screwed
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/nov/25/2nd-electric-car-battery-fire-involving-chevy-volt/?ap
I thought they just figured out we have more oil in ND than the Saudis have? And then there's Canada.
Before that's all gone someone will figure out fusion or mini nuke generartors for every neighborhood.
Technology will solve scientific problems. It's economics where we'll have the doomsday.
All Americans at one time were off the Grid. They heated with wood, cooked with wood and used candles for light.
Horses for transportation. Oxes for plowing the field. Donkies for transporting goods.
No one wants to go back to the old days but they may upon us. Back to the simple life.
Just look at the Amish who have not changed for 100's of years and survive just fine.
Yeah, let's do that deal there. Life expectancy back to 45 for men, 35 for women. If you are lucky. Every scrap of daylight utilized for growing or hunting enough calories just to stay alive ONE MORE DAY, so you can do it again. I guarantee you that less than ten percent of the population would survive long enough to live like that if socioeconomic conditions get to the point that your Amish utopia becomes a reality.
Not to mention that the US would look like Haiti after folks strip mined trees for firewood for 10 years of dying lifestyle, leaving the survivors treeless in America. Quantum leap, anyone? Pray the next Tesla has been born already, or is in the pipeline to save our asses before the days of Mad Max / Road Warrior American Style are here for real rather than as a new TV show.
Ah, the genetic-memory of the peasant
We are so spoiled. Just think about the Kings and Queens in days gone by.
We here in America have so much more than any King or Queen ever had. We have central heat, running water in our homes, toilets that flush.
Can you even imagine what a King or Queen would have said walking into one of our Grocery stores? They would have been absolutely amazed at the quantity and selection of foods, spices and anything one could desire from all over the World.
I think we all need to be grateful for the bounty we have.
I know that many of you think we're fcuked because of some enemies out there, but the unwillingness of so many of you to deal with reality is quite astounding. Gee, daddy, if the big, bad government would let us drill wherever we wanted, we'd have 40 million barrels of oil per day produced in the USA and carbon dioxide emissions would decline, too!
Reality? Hello, McFly!!! The reality is the banking system is on the verge of collapse. None of this will really matter after that. In or lifetimes anyway...
As a side note, China is currently constructing the world's largest windfarm. Recently, there has been alot of intrigue regarding mysterious lines appearing in the eastern Gobi desert. It appears that one of the mysterious line formations is, in fact, a windfarm which covers several square miles. It is located at approximately 44 42'40.81"N 93 31'46.18"E.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=44+42%2740.81%22N+93+31%2746.18%22E&hl=en&...
About 10 miles northwest of the above coordinates, you can see that the Chinese have begun constructing wind turbines at the nodes of this massive structure. You must zoom in to the highest magnification in order to see it, but it's there. If this is what they plan to do with the rest of the massive structure, this is destined to be the largest windfarm on the face of the Earth.
it will probably last about as long as their highspeed rail system did
@ a frequency of .7 microns the earth is recieving 6 thousand watts of power per square centermeter. ALL DAY LONG!
Oil is the alternative energy source.
And now the economic response to "The Scientific Challenges to Replacing Oil With Renewables:"
"neoclassical theory cannot hold in static form! A steady profit rate and a steady capital-output ratio are incompatible with the more basic law of diminishing returns [law of entropy] under deepening of capital. We are forced, therefore, to introduce technical innovations into our statical neoclassical analysis to explain these dynamic facts. . . .
The tendency toward diminishing returns has just been offset by the technical shift, with interest remaining at the same horizontal level and the wage rate rising just as much as output per head."
[Paul A. Samuelson, Economics, 9th ed (New York: Mcgraw-Hill Book Company, 1973), 747.]
“Malthus failed to realize how technical innovation could intervene—not to repeal the law of diminishing returns [law of entropy], but to more than offset it.” [Ibid. 737.]
Compensation and substitutability overcoming all challenges, economics conquers both physics and chemistry every time. Remember folks, Samuelson's Economics had the highest sales of any text book in history, shaping generations of economists to the present moment. Revealed by economists, as opposed to physicists and other dismal Malthusians, is the promised land of plenty, of infinite growth crushing entropy underfoot.
Lets look at this from the perspective of a higher being, i.e. an E.T. someone who is capable of traveling across galaxies. What are humans doing? We are still setting shit on fire!! Even nuclear, what do we do with that? Heat up water to make steam!! Yeah, our technology is SO advanced...And as far as nuclear, do you really think we are smart, stable, and diligent enough to handle it? We can't even update our aging reactors in order to keep them safe. The nuclear regulatory industry simply lowers the saftey standards so that the reactors are compliant. Did we forget about Fukushima so soon? What about when we ALMOST lost Ft. Calhoun? And please give me a fucking break about natural gas. You want to be able to light your fucking drinking water on fire? Be my guest. Why don't we use that to heat our homes? Nothing can replace the edifice built on fossil fuels, and even if you think that they will last forever, or at least long enough, what the hell do we do with all that CO2? All the trash? Just how big does the Eastern Garbage Patch have to get? Just how small does the Arctic ice sheet have to get? Wake up people, and quit trying to make a few more fiat dollars or whatever bullshit currency you are stockpilling. Until you change the way money works, you change nothing.
While there is no doubt that oil is getting harder and more expensive to extract (thus, see current oil price @ $100), I don't buy the "technology can't save us this time" argument, any more than I buy "technology will save us" argument. And if I had to choose one, I'd take the latter.
All of the peak oil doomsayers point to the inefficiencies of biofuel, solar and wind, but few of them allow for the rather remarkable ability for humans to invent solutions that were previously unfathomable, particularly when the pay off is in the trillions, as it would be if a breakthrough in energy came to be.
If you asked a person back in the 1970s or 80s if they thought we would ever be able to send messages to one another, wirelessly, to anyone in the world, and practically for free (eg. email) using a hand held device that fits in your pocket, most would have laughed you out of the room. Yet, here we are, firing mass amounts of data using Iphones and IPads.
Obviously, energy appears to be more difficult at the outset, but, don't discount the possibility that technology CAN solve peak oil, and that an "energy revolution" could be the next cycle that spurs humanity forward.
I am as bearish as the next guy when it comes to stocks, debt bubble, dollar collapse, credit depression cycle and/or hyperinflation "name your financial crisis", etc. but a lot of major inventions came out of the 1930s depression, which was followed by a renewed period of growth and prosperity.
I have heard that inventions have already been created to produce mass energy at very low prices but they have been repressed by BIG OIL and the rest of the elite, although I have no real proof of this.
Man converts plastic into oil: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8
The point is, there are a lot of potential "game changers" in the energy world, but all the doom sayers can do is point out how "that could never work on a large scale". Yet here we are with Iphones and IPads - our grandparents a generation ago would have looked at that and thought they were magic if transported back in time...
ZH is by far the best financial blog out there, but "hope" and "blind optmimism" do have a place in the economy, they are the seeds for most if not all of our major technological advances, and a primary contributor to that thing we call happiness... I'd rather hope for a miracle that didn't come true, than wallow in fear and loathing, only to see a miracle come along to dispel that fear... (that said I am fully stocked with Precious Metals, canned goods, and Survival Plans C through Z)
the short and sweet reality is that there simply isn't enough carbon on the face of the earth through biomass, and other available sugar forms to convert into hydrocarbons that is going to put any kind of meaningful dent in the 89 mb/d global consumption.
solar energy can and should be employed, despite the optics of the recently domestically malinvested solyndra debacle. rough estimates put the average energy received by the sun daily outstrips the current consumption by roughly 1000x. there needs to be far more research in this area.
there is no silver bullet to this issue. the most sustainable thing to do would at least be to strip out useless consumption of oil (like leafblowers), and taper down usage... dictating high mileage mandates on new vehicles. of course we know that won't happen. the situation parallels the global economic meltdown waiting to happen, where the wheels must fall off to stop, since the brakes will never be applied.
I'm leaning towards using anhydrous ammonia, as a replacement transportation fuel. There is already a working production, and distribution infrastructure in place, as it is used as a fertilizer, on many large grain farms. It is now made with natural gas, but could be made by thermochemistry, using process heat from a high temperature fission reactor. I would recommend a LFTR as the heat source.
Ammonia, or NH3 is much easier to transport than hydrogen, which has the nasty habit of being absorbed into metals, and embrittleing them. You can't use copper, or copper alloys with NH3 however, as the copper, and ammonia will react. Ammonia is a liquid, under reasonable pressures, at room temperatures, so storage is much simpler, an uninsulated steel tank will do. It also makes a fine refrigerant, having superior thermodynamic properties, and could cheaply replace CFC, and HFC refrigerants, in new equipment.
I grew up 'off the grid' didn't live in a house with electricity or indoor plumbing until I was 18 and moved away lol. It ain't so bad. In fact there's a real satisfaction in relying on only yourself for survival rather than being at the mercy of others for what you need. We are the culture of contentment and that luxury is now going to cost because we've been exploited for our own laziness. Deservedly so imo.
What makes it so bizarre is to make an informed comment on 90% of ZH articles, ya gotta understand compounding growth, that there is no free lunch, and that no skittle-shitting unicorns are going fill er up when she's empty according to EROEI. But what the fuck, its better than listening to sheep bleat on the teevee.
erin burnett sure is pretty though
Can't argue with that!
dup
The Black Swan in all this is a mega-volcano in Indonesia plunging the earth into a winter without end for two years in a row. This will reduce earth's population by 90%. The volcanoes have the nasty habit of blowing their tops every few hundred years. We're way over due. The White Swan will be the sudden emergence from the lab of a ZPG generator, 85% efficient solar cell, neutron generator/Thorium cycle power plant that is inherently safe. If we had only plowed the money we've blown on wars into energy research we'd all be driving methanol from methane cars and only be using oil for feedstocks.
How bloody stupid some of you people are. I've always thought the majority of ZHers were very intelligent but when it comes to science there are plenty of people here who couldn't pass a basic science test.
This black swan you're alluding to must be Toba, in Indonesia. It doesn't blow it's top every "few hundred years", it is more like every 60,000 years. It last erupted some time between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago. If it does erupt it won't kill 90% of people off, plenty but nothing like 90%.
Just do some very basic research before posting a load of shit.
Peak Oil is a FACT!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wSHSvIMro&list=HL1322368984&feature=mh_...
Hey Tyler! Why only one peak oil thread per day? Why not just move the whole fucking oil drum over here?
perhaps Tyler is not as dumb as some and understands the vital connection between hydrocarbons and the economy
If we did not hit peak oil, Saudi would just produce more. Since they do not, we are beyond it. The Bakeen is a feel good high cost US cowboy fun story. Meaningless even mid term.
The solution to peak oil is first to admit we are beyond peak oil. Then use a bridge. The US has a huge natural gas load as does Russia. That could get us to a better solution if we first admit there is a problem and find a real solution. Natural gas is not the solution, just a fix. Solar may be the solution, it isn't now. In a $1,000 a barrel oil world, maybe it's a little more palatable. Same with wind and hydro.
Why does the USA continue to dismantle hydroelectric dams? Why does the USA military continue to burn meaningful amounts of oil in pursuit of more oil? Don't they know about Peak OilTM?
Is the miltary's behavior (and its targets) proof for or against peak oil? Your logic needs help
If oil is biomass, then you'd expect that there would be plenty of oil where there has always been biomass. Since we've never drilled in the center of South America or Africa, I expect there would be a Saudi Arabia in both places. For you fans of plankton = oil, perhaps anywhere out in oceans. The oceans cover 2/3 of the earth's surface, so another 5 or 6 Saudi A's.
You really do have a problem with "Deep time" and geology....
Any idea why the Atlantic Basin is fairly poor for hydrocarbons?
Its not a problem at all to produce enough renewable energy from the wind, sun, wave or geothermie. There is lots more than mankind needs. The only technical problem not yet solved is the storage of this energy, but this is also making giant progress in the next years because many people around the world are now tackling this problem. In technicals schools and universities there are now many young people as well as there professors engagaged to find many different solutions for this problems. I know that this is the situation in Germany and Im sure in China, Japan and other places having no secure source of energy the people do the same.
So dont worry. Its not so difficult. it only needs attention, ideas, devotion, fantasy and in the end some money to pull this off. German engineers have an old saying:
Dem Ingenieur ist nix zu schwer. This is rhyming a bit in German language and means full explained: A real engineur loves to have difficult tasks because the more dificult the higher the recognition he gets from his work. And a real engineur loves his work he does it not for the money only. Also for the fun of tinkering and the working in a team.
Since this mentallity is a general quality of people of all kind around this world I m very sure that the problem of storing energy is going to be solved in dvanced industrial countries in practical terms within 15 to 20 years. The industry is jumping on this theme and funding for the basis research and idea finding is not a problem at all.
what is your definition of "enough"?
What is your definition of "needs"?
In society's present form, we NEED 7% annual growth in energy supply, or the whole system collapses. Zero Growth for the next 20 years means collapse of the current system. Which in turn means a massive reduction in resources available for research and development.
I do not believe society in its present form can be sustained for much longer.
Please don't ever fall for the sophistry of "peak oil". We do not burn crude oil in our cars, trucks and airplanes. We burn very carefully refined fuel products made of molecules that are assembled, atom by atom, by a process that breaks down the molecules from some raw, hydrocarbon rich, feedstock.
Crude oil is the primary feedstock for the only reason that, for the time being, it is the least costly source of those atoms. But when crude oil was in short supply during World War II, the Germans used coal as the source of molecules. Based on today's prices, it becomes less expensive to convert coal to diesel fuel when crude oil costs more than $80/bbl. But we can use other sources of hydrocarbons. A company in Carthage, Missouri was selling a form of diesel fuel that was made by rendering the waste products of slaughtering turkeys. It went bankrupt not because the process didn't work, but because the resulting product was more expensive than customers wanted to pay. The company had previously run successful tests to convert municipal solid waste and sewage sludge into diesel fuel. They computed that there was enough sewage sludge in the US to supply around half of its diesel fuel needs if properly converted.
The end issue is cost. Presently, fuels made by refining crude oil cost less than fuels made by refining coal, sewage sludge, or turkey carcasses. But the instant those later sources are less expensive, the market will start to use them. We don't fret about 'peak whale' because when overhunting caused the price of whale oil to rise, other sources of oil for lamps was found from coal and crude oil. Then electricity came into use for lighting of homes and streets. Today, even the use of Coleman lamps (that burn a form of gasoline) for illuminating camp sites is giving way to lights that use efficient LEDs and batteries. We can no longer buy whale oil, and who would light their home with it anyway? Neither would they use an open gas flame, as was done for decades.
An exciting frontier of research is to use genetically engineered algaes to produce usable fuel molecules. A recent article stated that at the present time, the break even costs were in the ballpark of $200/bbl. The carbon atoms for algae-produced fuels would come from the CO2-rich gasses from coal-fired power plants.
The plain truth is that we are awash in hydrocarbons that can be converted to usable fuel products. The only issue is cost, that is if government will not intrude and distort economic decisions like it presently does with corn-based ethanol.
"Peak Oil" is a lie that is used in an attempt to stampede policymakers and the public into choices that cannot be productive in the long run, and certainly ones will raise costs and destroy liberty in the process.
so you believe we can produce more than the Earth's entire mass in hydrocarbons, every day, by 2440?
There are only two possibilities: Either there is an infinite amount of oil, or there is a finite amount of oil.
If you believe that the amount of oil is truly infinite and we can produce and use more oil than there is mass for the entire planet, we cannot discuss anything further as our perceptions of reality defer too greatly.
If you believe that there is a maximum limit to the total amount of oil that can be produced, then you believe in Peak Theory.
Two words:
hamster wheels.