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?
shut off our engine when idling for longer than 30 seconds and dump the SUV.
Aside from the idiocy of turning the car off every red light, I'm sure someone more knowledgable will be along to comment on the fuel consumption issue. Dump the SUV, you need to move south.
The US is foreign oil dependent by choice. Let's use the world supply first, then our domestic supply. M2C
Turning off the engine at a light is actually a good idea. That technology has been available in JApan for 30 years.
I don't think there is a fuel consumption issue any more. There used to be the myth that it took 45 seconds worth of gas to start a car but I believe that has been debunked.
When I was in college in the early sixties I was told we would run out of oil by the year 2000. Obviously better technology, better ways to find oil and fuel efficiency has made this prediction a joke. If energy prices get too high alternatives will be developed that will be feasible.
I'm so sick and tired of this rampant hippie hysteria. It's sickening. Don't these morons have anything better to do than start scaring a poopulation of people already stressed from war, terrorism, and employment? Sickening. I wish people would jsut shoot thes brats and use their bodies for fertilizer. I'm fed up with doomsday hysterics running the media nad in some worse cases, the country.
Tractor can idle
What about all those trucks idling at truck stops?
This story has been around since the 1920s. I don't know how many times someone has predicted the end of the oil reserves, it's occurred too many times in my life. What all these predictions ignore is that new reserves are being discovered on a fairly regular basis, plus new technologies allow more oil to be recovered.
I'll worry about it when it happens.
No, it's not, but it's policy on the cheap, an no one is going to come out against "conservation".
Articles like this one claim that "oil" is in short supply, and therefore hydrocarbon fuels will be in short supply.
This is just as silly, ignorant or disingenuous as saying that natural climate change is man's fault, that "climate change" is the same as "Global Warming". Like Peak Oil, this is more about political issues and ideology than about hard facts and hard science.
In truth, the United States is almost awash in hydrocarbons in many diverse forms, such as coal, oil shale and sewage sludge. The *all* can be *converted* in to liquid fuels with existing technologies. The *only issue is cost*.
I'm not about to conserve just to make greenies happy. If oil ran out tomorrow, we have enough oil and coal to gassify that we really don't have to worry. I ani't hanging my hopes on hydrogen, solar or wind.
I'm intrigued by hydrogen and nuclear. It's a combo that I think could work, albeit after another decade of research and development. And it would be a great feeling to wake up every day and know that your enemies can't shut off your energy supply and criple your economy. Because right now, we are seriously at risk. I obsess over it a lot, granted, but we get a sizable chunk of our energy from people who would rather see us dead.
What is is about these folks? Y'know, I agree with the need to minimize oil consumption, but why do the environmentalists so rarely offer any ideas or insights that are even remotely outside the four corners of their standard socialist rhetoric?
Let's try some different insights. First, let's look at one reason why conserving oil makes sense. Try this reason; it has nothing to do with the environment or hugging trees or saving cute little furry seals. We import most of our oil from countries like Venezuela and what we pay for that oil helps to support cretins like Hugo Chavez. You fill up your tank, you might as well be scratching them a check. I don't like that thought, so I'm going to try to minimize my fuel consumption where I can.
And what is with this fixation with SUV's? I don't like them much personally, but you know what? I don't lie awake at night worrying that somewhere, somehow, someone is driving an Escalade. Why not stress the economics of owning a smaller car? Like the fact they cost less to purchase and cost less to fill up. And what about the simpler ways to save energy that don't take much effort at all, like buying a more efficient washing machine when the old klunker finally gives up the ghost? The new front loaders do a better job of washing your clothes, and save water and energy. Or how about installing compact fluorescents in your house. Net cost, about $3 each.
You know, energy conservation does make sense. But I fear that as long as we have to listen to nothing but environ-socialist rhetoric about energy conservation, what we'll get is 1/2 of the population simply ignoring the message.
The Greens and Democrats are certainly doing something about our undeveloped domestic oil supply. They are putting it all off limits.
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