Posted on 12/04/2006 4:49:44 PM PST by SJackson
There is the story about a motorist evacuating New Orleans at the onset of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The motorist ran out of fuel on a crowded expressway. When later asked why he did not turn off the motor to conserve fuel, he replied, "Why would I do that? I needed the air conditioning."
The story illustrates a fundamental obstacle in our country's critical need to conserve energy and use it wisely.
"Even when you are running for your life, with no fuel supply in sight, people do not make the connection with the fact that their fuel tank contains a finite amount," says Tadeusz W. Patzek, an engineering professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
Patzek, a recent guest lecturer of the UW Energy Institute, suggests that people must think of the Earth as a bigger tank, which is also finite, and is being drawn down rapidly of its petroleum reserves.
Patzek admits that societal change in the face of depleting resources is difficult to accomplish.
"We are wired to react to here and now. Evade dangers here and now. Take action here and now," he says. "Talking about what will happen a few years from now is an absolute muddy obstruction for most people."
Instead, people must be stimulated by other reasons to conserve, and he adds that even higher prices at the pump may be in the foreseeable future.
The age of cheap oil is long gone. When today's baby boom generation was learning to drive, gas was no more than 35 cents per gallon. The U.S. had its own oil reserves and set about wasting them.
In 1949 M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist with Shell Oil, predicted that the fossil fuel era would be of short duration. Seven years later in a speech to the American Petroleum Institute, Hubbert predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s and decline thereafter.
His predictions were considered outrageous, but when they came true, Hubbert's prestige soared.
"If someone tells you that there will be plenty of oil forever, well, there won't be," says Patzek. "We should be worried - deeply worried - about oil supplies."
According to Patzek, we are in the plateau of oil production today.
"There will not be one sharp, well-defined peak," he says. "New generations of fields will be gradually brought on line, and they will diffuse the peak and make it shallower and wider. These may contribute to some gradual increases in production for a while, and then be followed by more rapid declines.
"But, folks, this is it - this is as good as it gets," he explains.
The recently publicized Jack 2 well in the Gulf of Mexico was heralded in some quarters as a major discovery. Patzek doesn't agree and regards the news as more of a political find than an actual find.
"Much of this discovery extends beyond U.S. territorial waters and into Mexican waters," he says.
The well, in 7,000 feet of water and about 176 miles off the coast of Louisiana, was touted with great fanfare by Chevron as a significant boost to the industry. It remains uncertain how much oil will flow from Jack 2 and whether pumping it will be economically viable. Estimates put the find at 3 billion to 15 billion barrels.
Even at the higher end, the well would meet U.S. consumption demands for less than two years.
Since the decline of U.S. production, the country has been forced to rely on imported crude and on volatile economic and political circumstances. At the same time, our energy appetite has grown.
"We are wasting oil in unbelievable quantities, and there is no good reason to do so," Patzek says.
The U.S. must initiate sweeping programs in conservation and efficiency, he says, and those programs must be aimed at the country's transportation system, which accounts for two-thirds of all oil burned in the U.S.
It is estimated that if we were to increase the efficiency of the transportation system by 50 percent, we could save 7 million barrels of oil daily.
Unfortunately, the U.S. does not possess a sterling history when it comes to energy conservation and wise use of a treasured resource.
"We are 20 years too late and we have achieved little compared to the rest of the world," Patzek says. Europe uses 15 percent less fuel for transportation today than it did 20 years ago; the U.S. uses 10 percent more.
What do we need to do? We need to build vehicles that use less fuel. We need to devote more time and energy to public transportation systems and development of those infrastructures. And we need to take individual and simple steps: inflate our tires properly, shut off our engine when idling for longer than 30 seconds, and dump the SUV. Here is a quote from Hubbert that has special meaning today: "Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know."
There is little doubt that as a society, we know more today about our world than we did 50 years ago. The challenge is, can we use what we know to our advantage and our children's advantage?
This article fails to note the price system will deal with shotages better than conservation laws.
Hydrogen could work with nuke power, but only if the nuke power is cheap. Even if it were cheap, hydrogen has a lot of other issues it must overcome (infrastructure, storage, etc.). Hydrogen is a potential longterm solution.
Coal and oilshale gassification is viable now but, isn't being persued because gov't is pushing ethanol and bio fuels.
You are correct however, we are immediately dependent on foriegn oil and that is not good.
Dang! I gotta dig my 1/4 acre garden by hand this spring versus using my fossil-fueled tiller, a big, black Toro named 'Darth Vader?'
I don't think so, Sparky, LOL! I'll conserve on gasoline, natural gas and electricity, but only because I'm CHEAP. I don't care what the rest of the idiots on this planet get conned into by the EnviroWackos. ;)
How many times have I heard dems say (Ted Kennedy comes to mind) that ANWAR would only supply 18 months worth of oil, he knowing full well that his legions of dumbocrats will interpret this as 18 months after production starts.
The US is an amazing piece of real estate. We actually have more resources than places two and three times our size. The only reason we have shortages is that we refuse to actually create our own supply. Its like growing your own vegetables but refusing to eat and then calling yourself starved. Cuba, Mexico and Canada all will be drilling oil which runs under US soil or coastlines and we are letting them take it from us without a fight or even a protest. As dumb as we are as a country, we deserve high oil prices and all the extortion we suffer.
"Let's use the world supply first, then our domestic supply."
Amen! And the likes of a future Fat Teddy and a John F'n Kerry will be the FIRST to do something about it when it actually effects THEIR lives...like Ted can't get his case of Scotch delivered via taxi to the hotel he's crashing in that night, or Kerry can't get on a friggin' airplane fast enough to get away from his screeching wife for the weekend, LOL!
This is more of that "peak oil" nonsense. Whenever anyone mentions Hubbert with reverence as this guy does, it's a big red flag.
Talk about hyperbole: I daresay that every motorist is aware that the fuel tank needs to be refilled occasionally.
Exactly. Moreover, the price system does a much better job than any "energy policy" of ensuring that scarce resources will be used wisely and not wasted.
In other words, if the environmentalists really want conservation, they should simply make sure that reasonable laws are in place to prevent pollution and other externalities, then stand back and let the market do its magic.
It makes sense to use petroleum so long as it is cheaper than the alternatives. Indeed, using more expensive fuels likely means that resources are being wasted.
As economist Julian Simon bravely contended in the '70s the only actual resource we have is between our ears...in the form of technology. Any other commodity is useless unless we know how to use it...as was oil, until about 150 years ago.
The best way to develop and use technology is through the free market of demand and supply. As we use up the oil...and/or demand becomes greater than production (as it has in recent years) prices will rise, and with that incentive, inventors will develop new oil-free technologies.
Fear of running out of fossil fuel, or anything else for that matter, is born of ignorance of basic economics. Far from government intervention, market forces should be allowed to work--without artificial suppressions of price.
Great (possibly biased, though) link. I'm definitely pro-biodiesel. I hope we can make enough of it without really causing the price of food to skyrocket. If the numbers in your link are right, it's a much better bet than ethanol.
I have run a few gallons of BioDiesel, both straight and as a mix with PetroDiesel. Seems to work fine except it solidifies in the winter. 20% biodiesel seems to be OK at 20 deg F so far. 40% is marginal and 60% & 80% are also frozen solid. (I have some sample mixtures in bottles on the back porch to check it out.)
Not to mention biodiesel...which would be a much better product from all that corn than ethanol.
I'm sure the technology exists, with additives and/or processes, to render biodiesel which works as well or better than fossil diesel in the cold.... we'll work it out!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.