How Long Will the Oil Age Last?

Popular Science ^ | August 2004 | Kevin Kelleher

[SunkenCiv]

Chief among the pessimists is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, a group of European scientists who estimate that maximum oil production around the globe will peak in 2008 as demand rises from developing economies such as China... Others believe, like Maugeri, that the number of glasses is virtually limitless. John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, argues that peak oil- production estimates are so far off that for all practical purposes we might as well act as if oil will flow forever. "Ever since oil was first harvested in the 1800s, people have said we'd run out of the stuff," Felmy says. In the 1880s a Standard Oil executive sold off shares in the company out of fear that its reserves were close to drying up. The Club of Rome, a nonprofit global think tank, said in the 1970s that we'd hit peak oil in 2003. It didn't happen.

[SunkenCiv]

;')

[SunkenCiv]

Your reference to developing space -- Gerard K O'Neill's vision? Just curious.

[EGPWS]

George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent

You pessimist you! : )

[litehaus]

How long? Just a little shorter than that of the "Self Contained Cartridge."

[laredo44]

Chief among the pessimists is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, a group of European scientists who estimate that maximum oil production around the globe will peak in 2008 as demand rises from developing economies such as China...

In an ideal world, the members of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil would be laughed out of every serious discussion on any topic beginning in 2009. But they never are. And they never have the common courtesy to say, "What the heck do I know..."

[RightWhale]

Not exactly. My interest is more economic. Rockets and astronauts flying between planets and cities floating in space with no apparent purpose are interesting enough but don't make for a successful business. Resource extraction is the key, just like with the oil resource.

[bikepacker67]

The oil age will last until replaced by the Fusion Age.

I want to know why we aren't generating electricity using the Fission age.

Afterall, it's good enough for the French.

[RightWhale]

I want to know

Everybody knows already. Some may not have heard that a new permit is being applied for, and if the permit process works it could mean many new permits coming soon. Soon being 5 years in that industry.

[blanknoone]

I'm surprised that no one has chimed in yet with the theory that oil is a geologic process as opposed to rotten dinosaur.

Or the 'Anything into Oil' article that was all over about a year ago.

[SunkenCiv]

;') What you said is amusing. There is at least one group trying to revive the mammoth (much more recently extinct than dinos, but that effort will also probably fail), but using manure from animals to produce some sort of fuel isn't too efficient. One reason the idea of declining fuel supplies is plausible is that we use something analogous to manure when we consume hydrocarbon fuels. But, hydrocarbons aren't decomposed dinosaurs and extinct jungle growth. :')

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The Deep, Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold foreword by Freeman Dyson 1992 paper

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[TexasCowboy]

It's interesting to me that as many threads as we have seen on FR about this subject, everyone still cannot think past, "How am I going to propel my car down the highway?"
It needs to be understood that IF we ever run out of oil, our world, as we know it, shuts down!

We are NOT going to run out of oil.
What we are going to run out of in America is oil that is easily obtained from areas which are environmentally approved for drilling.

[EGPWS]

Next, as the Earth turns on its axis, when all the oil has been pumped out, we will enter the Age of Squeek.

To quote Jack Bruce, when it happens, "She's gone but I don't worry, for I am sitting on top of the world"!

[SunkenCiv]

You pessimist you! : )

Heh... just call me Doctor Doom. ;')

[SunkenCiv]

Well said.

[RightWhale]

oil is a geologic process

The deal is that oil has just hit a new all time high per barrel, and that was without any special world events. So we are consuming 5 billion years of geological process in a few centuries. No big deal, we'll just burn this oil and then wait a billion years, then do it again.

[danmar]

oil production around the globe will peak in 2008

Blame Haliburton greedy Exec's and Prez. Bush...

[SunkenCiv]

Reason i was curious, O'Neill visualized huge photovoltaic arrays in geostationary orbit, beaming electricity to large reception dishes (in unpopulated areas) using microwaves. That concept made it into the computer game "Sim City", but obviously one wonders what kind of long term heating of the atmosphere would result. Also obviously, there would be a blocking of part of the Sun's radiance here on the surface, which would have a long term cooling result. I'd wonder also about possible increases in microwave-induced cancers and whatnot, and also whether the Luddite Coalition would actually favor this system in order to get rid of coal burning power plants.

System converts smokestack heat to electricity
by Bob Holmes
May 04 2004

The key to the efficiency of the heat-scavenging system is that it uses propane vapour rather than steam to turn a turbine and drive an electricity generator. This allows it to be driven by low-temperature waste heat. When steam is used to turn a generator, it must be pressurised and raised to around 650 °C. Below 450 °C, the process no longer operates efficiently because the steam pressure drops too low. This means that the heat in flue gases below 450 °C cannot be used to generate electricity, and so is lost to the atmosphere... This is one of the reasons why fossil-fuel-powered generating stations have an overall efficiency of only around 35 per cent... Daniel Stinger, a turbine engineer, and Farouk Mian, a petroleum engineer, have developed a surprisingly simple way to harness almost all this waste heat. They calculate that a second turbine, driven by the waste heat from the first, would capture almost all the remaining energy. The first turbine's waste heat would vaporise and pressurise still more propane to drive the second... The pair calculate that flue gases will then emerge at a relatively cool 55 °C... Promising as it sounds, Wow Energy's scheme, called a cascading closed loop cycle (CCLC), remains untested... CCLC also has another potential advantage. Because it cools smokestack emissions to about 55 °C, many pollutants that enter the atmosphere today, such as mercury oxide and cadmium oxide, would instead condense inside the stack, from where they could be disposed of safely through chemical treatment.

[SunkenCiv]

;')

[SunkenCiv]

Well, here in the US we try to have higher standards. ;') Here's some English translations of books which sold fairly well in France:

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Pentagate by Thierry Meyssan

9/11: The Big Lie by Thierry Meyssan

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[RightWhale]

Here's what I would do instead of trying to beam energy down. I would move the metal smelting industries into space, mine a few carefully chosen asteroids for iron and aluminum, and thereby eliminate about a third of the draw on the surface power grid. It's a side benefit. The main reason for space mining is that it can be done cheaper than earth mining and can be expanded to meet future demand such as we see with China and India coming on line.