Posted on 08/13/2004 10:47:51 AM PDT by spetznaz
Quick, how many years will it be before the world runs out of oil? Don't know? Join the club. Actually, choose one of several clubs, each of which vehemently disagrees with the others on how much usable crude is left on the earth. The question is far from an academic exercise: This year oil hit a near record-high $40 a barrel, and Royal Dutch/Shell Group downgraded its reserves by 4.5 billion barrels.
While consumers pay for perceived shortages at the pump, scientists and economists struggle to reach consensus over "proven oil reserves," or how much oil you can realistically mine before recovery costs outstrip profits. Economist Leonardo Maugeri of Italian energy company Eni fired up the debate this May with an essay in Science that accused the "oil doomsters" of crying wolf.
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. "If you squeezed all the oil in Iraq into a single bottle, you could fill four glasses, with the world consuming one glass of oil each year," says physicist and ASPO president Kjell Aleklett. "We've consumed nine bottles since oil was discovered, and we have another 9 or 10 in the refrigerator. How many more are there? Some say five or six, but we say three."
Others believe, like Maugeri, that the number of glasses is virtually limitless......
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
The correct answer is, from an economic standpoint, "never." Oil never completely replaced coal, and coal never completely replaced wood (I have a woodburning stove as supplemental head in my home).
What will happen is that oil will eventually rise to a sufficiently high price that some other energy source will become more competitive for some applications.
Those energy sources are probably already in development and just waiting for world energy demand to outstrip production capacity.
Somehow desert doesn't seem like the best place for farming and processing algae (or fish, for that matter).
"The Fuel cell will start replacing the internatl combustion engine in the next 5 - 10 years, making fuel efficiency much much higher.
Apples and oranges. You can't directly compare the efficiencies of fuel cells and IC engines like that. When you look at the entire energy cycle, you find that fuel cells aren't better, just different. In the end, the energy still comes from oil.
Fuel Cells that DON'T run on hydrocarbons will be a reality in 20 years (Bush even talked about it his State of the Union Adress).
Hydrogen fuel cells have been around a long time. It's pretty basic chemistry, and all the hand waving about research is political theater for the scientifically ignorant.
Fuel Cell Generators for homes already exist, but nobody's really buying them yet. They'll proliferate too.
That's a joke. Fuel cells just store energy, they aren't a source of energy.
Hydrogen power plants? Yup, they're 20 - 30 years away.
If you are talking about fusion, you're wishing. Fusion is snake oil.
If you are talking about chemically burning hydrogen, well, you are either talking more snake oil or you are scientifically illiterate."
-- Sure, Fuel Cells have been around for a long time, but have been neither (1) efficient or (2) cost-effective.
Regarding Home units, units have been designed, ranging from 250Kw to 2Mw that would convert natural gas MORE efficiently than burning it. The natural gas feed already going to your home simply goes through the generator to power your entire home. We'd have a much more decentralized electrical system as a result, avoiding losing electricity as it's trasported over power lines. Check it out: http://www.fuelcellenergy.com/
Also, massive LHFCs (liquid hydrogen fuel cells) can be constructed at stationary plants. LHFCs for automobiles aren't really feasible (a really bad fender bender).
Can you use a fuel cell to power the trans-flux capacitor that the Kerry Administration is sure to promise all of us any day soon?
Whatever problems we have transporting electricity it is a heck of a lot easier than transporting hydrogen.
"I think the $30 figure for oil shale is a little old. I saw that figure in 1980 or so."
It is. It is actually a bit less expensive now. When oil was at $26 a barrel in 1998 tests were being conducted by the Canadian gov't. If prices would stablize at anywhere near their current $40+ per barrel price, shale oil would go into production permently.
"The waste material (processed shale) is also a problem... It becomes 33 percent larger after the oil is harvested."
Whats the problem with that? Use it to build up low lying coastal areas which are about to go under water due to global warming...hehe. Might make good ski slopes too.
"We'd have a much more decentralized electrical system as a result, avoiding losing electricity as it's trasported over power lines.
Whatever problems we have transporting electricity it is a heck of a lot easier than transporting hydrogen."
-- We're not transporting Hydrogen! We're transporting natural gas! In fact, FuelCellEnergy, the people putting out the 2Mw and 3Mw (which is a lot of power) fuel cell generators, state their product is so useful because IT DOES NOT need a "hydrogen infrastructure". The FuelCellEnergy generator also has :fuel flexibility" and can run on additional fuels such as municipal digester gas, coal gas, and biomass fuels including ethanol and biogas from farms. This sounds like a good idea for rural Americans; how much money do we spend stringing out energy to rural areas?
Natural gas pipelines typically burn some of the gas to run the compression stations (some crazy situations require electric pumping). Comperable in efficency to power lines but even more expensive to build. These days the problem for both is getting the right of way.
I know of a case where a electric pumping station got itself a good deal on power by making itself curtailable (the same kind of deal the power company offers you to turn off your AC when you need it most for a lower rate). What that ment is that on the hottest day of the year the power company called and unknowingly shutoff the pumping station for the pipeline that supplied one of it's biggest generation stations.
The natural gas infrastructure is already there. How many millions of homes already have a natural gas line?
Are you sure they have the same transmission efficiency as power lines? Can you prove that to me?
Plus, you've got to look at the NIMBY (not in my backyard) factor that's killing some states right now, with California being the best example. This avoids that little problem. Lefties love Natural gas too because it's "clean burning", so it will become politically popular.
Hydrogen generators that run with only a garden hose and a 9 volt battery are already available. Once they get the hydrogen storage problem solved, they will be available for everyone's garage. In addition, Canada alone has enough hydrides to provide our current energy needs for 700,000 years. Hydrogen is the energy source of the future.
So? Any fluid is going to be more expensive to transport than electricity. Besides which, we already have demand-induced spikes in natural gas prices.
You are in love with the technology for the sake of the technology.
Besides which, how are natural gas fuel cells supposed to free us from fossil fuels?
Probably the lowest pollution fuel that is also an economically storable fuel in liquid propane gas.
I was driven in such a car in Korea. They are on the road today and not much different from regular cars.
" "Pure" hybrids will become the standard transportation vehicle. They already have displaced all other power sources for one of our most important commercial transportation systems, the railroads. "
GOOD POINT. Btw the navy is going that way too. they are building a hybrid-electric destroyer. it is more efficient to run all theweapons systems off electricity.
same goes for cars.
"Imagine city streets - and major intercity routes - equipped with some kind of spot charging facilities that could transmit power to these electric cars, enabling them to shut off their on-board generation facilities and operating pollution free. "
This is possible through the 'magic' of inductive charging.
I believe a hybrid + a battery that can keep you going for ~60 miles could 'electrify' the majority of transportation energy use... this plus nuclear power generation could end our reliance on fossil fuel imports, or at least make us "north america self-sufficient".
sand = silicon
oil = carbon-based
"cant get there from here"
oil came from microscopic organisms. but lots of them.
I just can NOT believe or Fathom how so many organisms got into only a FEW places!
Diamonds are carbon based, correct? Isn't a diamond just a stone under Tremendous pressure???
guesstimates from articles I read on the subject.
They are producing oil from Alberta's Athabasca (sp?) tar sands today. (Forbes article on it).
http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/102spring2002_Web_projects/M.Sexton/
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