Posted on 07/30/2006 10:23:17 PM PDT by humint
Within the next weeks, the British government is expected to unveil its strategic energy plan for the next quarter of a century. According to those familiar with the draft, the plan is build around a single motto: energy security.
The United Kingdom is not the first major industrial power to put energy security top of its national agenda. In the United States, President George W Bush made that a priority of is administration over two years ago. Since then France, Germany and Japan have also begun to rethink their long-term energy strategies. In every case, the strategy adopted is aimed at reducing dependence on imported oil and natural gas by developing alternative sources of energy, notably nuclear.
It was no accident that the latest G-8 summit, hosted by Russia in Saint Petersburg, was built around a discussion about energy security, with President Vladimir Putin casting himself in the role of a reliable supplier in an uncertain global energy market.
Also present at Saint Petersburg was Brazil's President Igancio Lula da Silva with proposals to tell his Latin American giant of a country the principal exporter of bio-energy, the environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels.
The quest for alternative sources of energy is not limited to governments. Almost all the major oil companies have set up new units to look for non-fossil fuels while several car manufacturers plan to invest in developing engines that use alternative sources of energy. (This month Ford announced plans to £1 billion on such research in Britain.)
Until even a couple of years ago, experts believed that oil would remain the principal form of energy at least until the middle of the current century. Now, however, many experts envisage a shorter lifespan. One minister from a major Arab producer told me recently that he now believes oil would lose its current dominant position within the next three decades at most.
Why are those who once so eagerly sought oil now seek to flee from it as fast as they can?
The obvious answer may be the sudden rise in oil prices over the past tree years.
The money paid by oil importing nations to exporters over the past decade looks like the largest transfer of wealth from one part of the world to another since the Spanish looted South America's gold and silver. That answer, however, may be misleading. For even at $75 per barrel, crude oil today is cheaper than in the mid-1970s in constant dollars. In fact, compared to recent increases in prices of raw materials across the board, the rise in oil prices falls below the median.
The attempt to move away from oil may be motivated by other considerations. Chief among these is the realisation that with the arrival of hundreds of millions of new consumers in the energy market- especially in China and India- there will simply not be enough oil to go around. By mid-century, China and India may well have a combined population of almost five billion. Even if they were to stabilise per capita oil consumption at current levels , say in Belgium, there would not be enough known oil reserves in the world to satisfy their needs for more than a couple of decades.
All that means that the era of easy access to oil may be over. Those who want oil will soon have to fight for it. The demagogic slogan "no blood for oil" is already popular in the West, although, as yet, it there is no war for oil.
Another consideration for the quest to move away from oil is the growing popularity of doomsday scenarios based on real or imagined climate change. Even the Bush administration, regarded as the last bastion of sanity against climate doomsters, now admits that global warming may be something more than a figment of scientific imagination, after all.
Many consumers, especially in the major Western markets, are also concerned about some of the regimes that control the world's oil resources. The image of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Islamic Republic threatening a war of civilisations may appear as mildly amusing to most Iranians. To most Westerners, however, it is a disturbing image. Venezuela's populist caudillo Hugo Chavez may charm Latin Americans with his mock Bolivarian rhetoric. However, he also frightens oil importers in the West. The fact that a good part of the world's oil reserves is in some of the most unstable and strife-ridden corners of the globe is not reassuring.
Finally, there is the popular assumption in some importing countries that the money spent on oil supports undemocratic and even despotic regimes in exporting states some of which even sponsor international terrorism. No nation worth its salt would wish to be held to ransom by a handful of despotic or at least autocratic regimes that control the spigots.
The situation as seen by many the largest oil consuming nations looks like this: one is paying a high price for a commodity that is finite in quantity, props up unsavoury regimes, finances terrorism, and, last but not least, destroys the environment.
The former Saudi Oil Minister Ahmad Zaki Yamani once observed that the age of oil would not end simply because supplies might run out. After all, he quipped, the Stone Age did not come to a close because the world was short of stones. What brought the Stone Age to an end was a cultural and political sea change that, in turn, inspired a technological revolution that developed alternatives to stone.
Whether or not we are witnessing a similar sea change in the case of oil is hard to tell. What matters, however, is that the world should not be invited to jump from the fire into the frying pan. And yet, this is what many nations, including some major industrial powers, seem to be doing by planning a massive switch to nuclear energy.
Nuclear energy may well cover some of the concerns with regard to dependence on finite and uncertain oil supplies. But, this new magic wand raises a whole host of other, perhaps graver, questions to which there are no obvious answers. The world should take a deep breath and consider practical ways to address the legitimate concerns of both exporters and importers of oil over the next three decades or so that is left of the "Age of Oil". A hastily concocted energy strategy may give too many hostages to fortune in an era already beset by uncertainty.
Crude and its products are a one-price market, worldwide. Premia and discounts to a 'barrel' of crude (there is no such thing, btw, it's merely an out-of-date metric) occur only due to different grades, whether 'sweet' or 'sour' and how much so, and whether 'heavy' or 'light' or wherever in between. Plus, of course, shipping costs.
Went out today and began cutting cordwood against the winter of 2006 - 2007. Nearby town has banned woodburning for the sake of its precious astmatics so an important source of past competition, townies, is now removed. Plenty of dead wood due to drought and pine bark beetle damage.
This year's plan involves bringing in two years worth of heat on the chance (very real) that next years' gas transportation expenses will be higher. By first snowfall I anticipate three year's worth of stacked and split wood in my yard. Then I can settle back by the stove with a good book and my Alladin lamp. Yessir, us country boys will survive.
hey when the west finally wakes up to the Muslim threat, we might just have a little depopulation party
Oh you bet it's coming to an end!....just what the radical left in this country wanted...all of us living in mud huts and peddling bikes to work in 140 degree summer heat and 40 below winter weather and each one wearing gas masks at work because the guy in the cubicle next to you has sweat problems that smell like a 2 week old dead cow!
Have you ever thought of what might have happened if this cold fusion experiments whould have worked with significant yields ?
Personal experience : Did a CF experiment years ago for under $100, $50 I gave to the mass spectrometer guy at the University Physics dept. Stainless steel cup($3.89 at walmart + 1/2 pint of copper coated BB beads), sent them off to MN to have them thin coated(650 angstroms)with nickel(in drum, not dipped). Pint of developer fluid, coffee paper filters in bottom of cup, pinch of salt(but no voodoo chants)stainless steel spoon, plastic liner around inside of cup(from brochure)sticking about 1/4" above rim, 6V battery charger. Fill about 1/2" from top w/KOH, scotch tape spoon down at about a 45 deg angle, pour beads in bottom, hook up red lead to spoon, black lead to cup handle(yes, on my kitchen counter). It takes about 3 hours to get COOKING. It takes about 2W to run but in a day the cup is too hot to handle, about like holding a lit 100W lightbulb, roughly 50:1 over unity......After about a week its fizzed out. Took the dregs to MSU for a mass spec test. Besides the ubiquitous tritium the K41 to K39 ratio went from 8%/92% to 16%/84%, a DOUBLING of the K41 nuclei in the original KOH. That is IMPOSSIBLE chemically, and on a KITCHEN COUNTER!!???....So, yes CF/LENR actually works, which is why the hot fusion boys on the federal dole(in the DOE)hate it so much : VESTED INTERESTS. And the main champion for CTNF is none other than Charles Vest of MIT, GWBs science advisor. See how the good old boy system works?
You might want to look at George Washington's angelic visitations at Valley Forge. Three of them, revolutionary war outcome, civil war outcome and WWIII which we win ultimately but with great loss of american life as well. Israel is the canary in the mine, and what's going on there will be coming here soon enough, 911 was just a wake up call. So let the muslim crazies know : mecca gets our first H bomb....
Yes, I occasionally get sarcastic, too many bloggers on FR give me a "north dakota" forehead(an "in" Montana joke). Get past the sarcasm and you might find something interesting...once in awhile.
Okaaaaayy,
is that one published ?
maybe scientists of the future get paid not to do research on specific areas...
I got to enlist in an institute again.
yeah, the first time i was in england i realized that driving from london to northumbria was a good chunk of the way out of the populated part of the island (assuming i count glasglow/edinburg as the practical limit), yet a similar time/distance wouldn't get me from miami to out of florida at an point. avg distance for goods in the UK must be like 25% or less than for the US.
Yes, as a matter of fact, my friend Hal Fox put it in the Journal of New Energy some years ago. Not that big of a deal as CF articles go, just an "aunt millie" experimenting with a "recipe" in her kitchen kind of thing, anyone with $100 extra cash can do it. It works about 9 out of 10 times. Why only 9 of 10? Only GOD knows why it doesn't work 10% of the time.....Speaking of "time", I have another article in the JNE : Bohring Einstein, you want want to see that as well : Wayne Powell, author.
I enjoyed your post for its sarcasm and also for the satire which is its sophisticated older brother.
Keep up the good work! :^)
It's going to take prices like that to get investment into large scale alternative energy production and usage due to economic forces. I can't help that.
The mullahs can't aggravate ME to death! For that, I have the EPA, BATF, IRS, CDC, OSHA, Democrats, liberals and RINOs who's services have been well paid.
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