Anyone still believe peak oil will not happen?

[Chi Meson]

... People aren't going to stop going out to movies, restaurants, parties, visiting shopping malls, entertainment, sports, etc. I know what we can do to stop wasting fuel and I also know people (except for a very small percent) won't make those changes unless they're cut off. It's just a sad fact, people are selfish and wasteful and won't change until they're forced to.

I emphasized the key point that I think will make the difference. Oil will not "cut off." Prices will rise, dramatically but not catastrophically, as oil availability slows to a trickle. People will indeed stop going out to movies in favor of on-demand downloading. It's going that way anyway, high gas prices will seal the coffin on theaters. Air travel will be the domain of the ultra rich. The "upper middles" will probably return to sailboats and horses. Low-wage manual labor will return as soon as it is no longer feasible to have huge backhoes digging small holes, etc.

We are looking at at least a half century of steadily rising costs (rising even when adjusted for inflation). Economy is what propels human desires, it seems.

 

[corra]

life is what you get out of friends and family.
a man from ny guinea chopping down tree's at day and going home to his family and friends for community dinners and trade some sugar they have acquired for some meat another family has can be just as happy as a N.Y lawyer earning 600k a year driving a fancy car and goes home to his home and eats in fancy resturants.

i don't really need a car, i can take the buss.
i don't really need a tv. i can read a book or have fun with friends.
i don't really need a trip to a fancy resturant. i can visit my mom for some good cooking.
i don't really need a vacation to some tropical island. i can go somewhere else in my own country to meet new people and see new things.
i don't really need the latest fashion clothing, my jeans are comfortable.
i don't really need the latest cell phone, ipod, disc man, mp3 player, playstation that is just expensive toys for the wealth fixated thing that man has become.

what does man need?
food, sleep, clothes, friends and love.
do we really need to use 80 million barrels of oil each day to get those things?

 

[Andre]

If this thread is how to reduce the oil consumption by changing habits then the first and singlemost important thing to do is getting rid of electrical heating.

An American friend complained about the electricity bill, we analyzed it and it turned out that the monthly bills were a very close proxy to the monthly temperature. Electrical heating is probably the singlemost largest waste of fuel.

The engineers here can tell how much energy is lost between burning fuel in the power plant, transferring that to electricity, transporting that electricity to the consumer etc. If you'd burn the fuel at home yourself you only need a fraction of the fuel that the powerplant requires to heat your home.

Alternately, there are also heat exchange system that cool in summertime, storing the heat in the ground to use it for warming in winter time.

 

[scpg02]

Sounds like someone's listening to Fox News. I assure you, people are drilling, building and cutting. Environmentalists are in a perpetual losing battle for their cause. It seems that the need for cheap energy trumps the need for unspoiled wilderness.

Unchecked energy exploitation has been seen before and no one likes it. Big business does not act magnanimously on it's own accord. They say they do, but that is always after the lawsuit or settlement.

Not here in California or the US. Our large, multi national foundations have seen to that so they can exploit third world resources. And NO I don't listen to fox news. I actively fight enviros. They don't care about the environment and their solutions are worse than the problems.

 

[turbo]

IThe engineers here can tell how much energy is lost between burning fuel in the power plant, transferring that to electricity, transporting that electricity to the consumer etc. If you'd burn the fuel at home yourself you only need a fraction of the fuel that the powerplant requires to heat your home.

It's not just electrical heat, though that is an expensive way to heat your house. Oil heat requires that crude be drilled for, pumped, transported (often thousands of miles by ship), refined, transported again (often by ship again), stored in a tank farm until local dealers send their tanker trucks so that it can be transported again to local holding tanks, from which it is pumped into smaller delivery tankers for transport to your home. In each step of transport, oil is consumed by the engines of the transports, and soot and chemicals are pumped into the air.

I have a chain saw, a truck, and a wood splitter and almost 10 acres of trees. My wood stove is modern and very efficient, and almost all the heat energy goes into heating my small log house. The amount of gasoline and oil my machines consume is dwarfed by the energy that I get back by burning the wood. I know that burning wood is not an option for many people, but when it's done right, it has far less impact on our environment than relying on oil heat or electrical heat. Plus, the trees grow back, so I could never run out.

 

[turbo]

I actively fight enviros. They don't care about the environment and their solutions are worse than the problems.

Please do not lump all people with environmental concerns together. It's childish, short-sighted, and wrong. Sounds like something that Bill Oreilly or Rush Limbaugh would spout for ratings.

There are some very rational reasonable people who believe that we can and should clean up our dirtiest industries, like coal-fired power plants, while creating jobs and wealth in the process. The biggest roadblock is the money and political connections of the people heading these industries, and the willingness of our elected officials to let these companies continue to pollute the air and water that belongs to all of us without having to pay the costs of cleanup and prevention.

 

[russ_watters]

Peak oil is a definition...

We know all that. Your opening post implied you had some new information about it from the past 6 months. Do you?

 

[corra]

We know all that. Your opening post implied you had some new information about it from the past 6 months. Do you?

i did put up a link that has new info every day about peak oil.
all you have to do is click it.

would be a bit of a waste for me to cut and paste the thousands of pages of information contained there to this forum. would most likely get me banned aswell.
here is the link again if you missed it the first time.

http://www.energybulletin.net/

it has daily updated news about the energy sectors all easy to access.
there are headlines that you click once u see a topic that catches your interest.

 

[Chi Meson]

Not here in California or the US. Our large, multi national foundations have seen to that so they can exploit third world resources. And NO I don't listen to fox news. I actively fight enviros. They don't care about the environment and their solutions are worse than the problems.

Well, I know I do not need to listen to anything you say for a while. To say that "enviros" don't care about the environment is the epitome of not knowing what you are talking about.

 

[scpg02]

Well, I know I do not need to listen to anything you say for a while. To say that "enviros" don't care about the environment is the epitome of not knowing what you are talking about.

I see, dismiss instead of engage. That works, then you don't have to argue the point.

 

[scpg02]

Please do not lump all people with environmental concerns together. It's childish, short-sighted, and wrong. Sounds like something that Bill Oreilly or Rush Limbaugh would spout for ratings.

Bad habit from debating on political forums. When I say enviros I'm talking about the environmental industry not the average Joe concerned about the environment. I find that the environmental industry is more concerned with pushing a leftist agenda, more government, regulation and control than actual concern about the environment itself. It's politics not conservation.

I advocate conservation through real science with real results. That has been lacking in the environmental movement. Most of the environmental law suits are funded by large foundations. They are effectively shutting down domestic competition to their over seas investments. Follow the money and you find their ulterior motives.

There are some very rational reasonable people who believe that we can and should clean up our dirtiest industries, like coal-fired power plants, while creating jobs and wealth in the process. The biggest roadblock is the money and political connections of the people heading these industries, and the willingness of our elected officials to let these companies continue to pollute the air and water that belongs to all of us without having to pay the costs of cleanup and prevention.

Yes there are rational people but part of the problem is they are listening to the wrong voices and buying into the rhetoric without seeing what is really going on. The air in the US is getting cleaner all the time. Why then do you think that it is the polluters that have the political clout? Take California for instance. Our Republican governor's environmental policy was written by the Natural Resource Defense Council. The same people who pushed MTBE that is now polluting out water supply in the name of cleaner air. He pushed and signed AB32, it was a pollution reducing bill that has driven industry from our state. Wonder Bread is leaving because they can't meet the new air standards. We passed two Water Conservation bond issues. Both are spending billions on protecting our water. They were really nothing but government land grabs. Arnold put one fifth of our state into a conservancy containing over 60% of our water shed.

The Sierra Nevada Mountain range historically had 20 trees/acre now we have over 300 trees/acre. Consequently the forests are unhealthy and subject to major fires that sterilize the soil. The spotted owl was used to shut down our timber industry. Science showed that the decline of the owl was do to the barred owl encroaching on it territory. The barred owl was able to increase it's habitat because of the trees we have planted in our cities.

The Washington Post, hardly a right wing paper, did a wonderful series on the Nature Conservancy and how they were scamming the public. It was quite an eye opener.

 

[Chi Meson]

I see, dismiss instead of engage. That works, then you don't have to argue the point.

But you are not arguing. You just made a grand sweeping, over-generalized statement that effectively said that you knew my intent better than I know myself.

You are insulting. There's no argument.

Edit: well now I read your "qualification" in your response to Turbo. Still disagree with you.

 

[scpg02]

Still disagree with you.

Explain.

 

[Chi Meson]

If there are situations where corporate greed has infiltrated environmental groups such that they act as covers for land grabs, then we are talking about a wolf in sheep's clothing. The Nature Conservancy has in the past been very successful in activley preserving greenspace around the country. The Washington Post reports (four years old now) found several situations of what were either "best intentions gone awry" or underhandedness from greedy bastards who got inside the system.

Environmentalism in general has had mostly success since the 70s, but success of environmentalism is (almost by definition) unnoticeable. The conservation and repair of wetlands, despite abuses that have occurred and unfortunate losses suffered by some property owners, produce the lack of blight in protected areas. These successes are much like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. IF you can swim at a beach anywhere near a major river, or especially at a beach on a river or lake, we have those acts to thank for. The environmental check on vehicle emissions and corporate emissions has curtailed particulate pollution and acid rain to the point that few complain about it. This was not the move of industry, but of people who simply did not want industry to continue with such devastating practices.

Where I live on the Connecticut coast, the shellfish are still poisonous. For half a century, gold dredges (the perfect pollution machine) scoured the Yukon and Alaska ripping up square miles of land and leaving lifeless rubble laced with mercury and arsenic. Right now in Alberta Canada, there is strip mining on a scale never seen before. To say that somehow environmentalists are making the environment worse...?

I disagree.

As you said, our air is quite clean now. If taking care of effluence bit into coprorate profits, and the corporations moved their practices elsewhere, and now their effluence is worse, do not blame the "enviros."

When you said that you "actively fight the enviros," I comically envisioned someone burning tires in their back yard, throwing plastic shopping bags into the sea, dumping used motor oil down the sewer. But the enviros of whom you speak are obviously not really environmentalists. How does one "actively fight enviros"?

 

[Chi Meson]

This thread belongs in the political sub-forum, doesn't it?

 

[corra]

no, general discussion is where it belongs.
peak oil is a subject that involves absolutely everyone.

it will impact every person on this planet in some way.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The engineers here can tell how much energy is lost between burning fuel in the power plant, transferring that to electricity, transporting that electricity to the consumer etc. If you'd burn the fuel at home yourself you only need a fraction of the fuel that the powerplant requires to heat your home.

The transmission and distribution or “T&D” system, then, includes everything between a generation plant and an end-use site. Along the way, some of the energy supplied by the generator is lost due to the resistance of the wires and equipment that the electricity passes through. Most of this energy is converted to heat. Just how much energy is taken up as losses in the T&D system depends greatly on the physical characteristics of the system in question as well as how it is operated. Generally speaking, T&D losses between 6% and 8% are considered normal.

http://www.nema.org/prod/technologies/upload/TDEnergyEff.pdf

 

[Andre]

http://www.nema.org/prod/technologies/upload/TDEnergyEff.pdf

From the same link:

...The efficiency of generation varies widely with the technology used. In a traditional coal plant, for example, only about 30-35% of the energy in the coal ends up as electricity on the other end of the generator. So called “supercritical” coal plants can reach efficiency levels in the mid-40’s, and the latest coal technology,...

That's the main loss. In your home basically 100% of the energy of the burned coal ends up as heat, albeit that some of it disappears in the chimney

 

[Ivan Seeking]

That's the main loss. In your home basically 100% of the energy of the burned coal ends up as heat, albeit that some of it disappears in the chimney

And what about distribution of coal or other fuels to millions of homes, and the terribly inefficient heat systems [due to the small scale]. I would guess that more like 80% of the heat goes up the pipe in the woodstove, and fireplaces are so lossy that they are only for show in cold climates.

You are effectively arguing that a delivery truck is more efficient than a wire.

We quit using wood heat because it was tremendously lossy as compared to our clean hydro-power produced right up the road.

 

[Andre]

Since the oil crisis in 1973, optimizing energy efficiency has been a major item in the Dutch economy. The most common way of heating is with natural methane gas from a gas pipe line system directly delivered at home. It is burned in a so called "hoogrendementsketel" (that's googleable) or high efficiency stove, >90% effenciency.

Tricks to minimize heat loss is getting the fresh air through a double sided chimney, exchanging the exhaust heat to the intake air.

Furthermore, it's probably more reliable to do the math on the total losses of a electrical system and a fuel distribution system. Here in Germany, there is no natural gas pipeline but virtually everybody has an oil tank in the cellar for the central heating system.

 

[Chi Meson]

I would guess that more like 80% of the heat goes up the pipe in the woodstove, and fireplaces are so lossy that they are only for show in cold climates.

Actually, a high efficiency woodstove (Such as an Aladin "Quadra Fire") can get 70% (sometimes better) efficiency. http://www.epa.gov/woodstoves/efficiently.html
It depends on the installation, appropriateness of size, venting, attention to burn rate.

My own installation has the additional advantage of having the stand pipe rising through 12 additional feet of living space. The smoke is cool by the time it leaves the stack; this causes it to sink immediately, right over our front door.

I kept our house (1700 sq ft) very nicely heated (occasionally too hot) on 1.5 cord of wood and 0.5 tank of oil last year.

I'm going for even better this year

 

[turbo]

I kept our house (1700 sq ft) very nicely heated (occasionally too hot) on 1.5 cord of wood and 0.5 tank of oil last year.

I'm going for even better this year

Our winters in central Maine are quite a bit colder than in CT, and we heated our log house with a little over 3 cords of wood last year, though I had to use a few gallons of oil (probably less than 25 gal) to keep the house from freezing up when I had to be away on cold days and the wood-fire would burn down. Our wood is drier this year (we got it much earlier in the year) and I have split it smaller than last year to enhance drying and improve temperature control. Burning big pieces of wood can lead to overheating, which is wasteful.

 

[Chi Meson]

I still have the other half tank from last year. I was planning to not buy oil this year at all, then I realized that oil will not be getting cheaper next year. So in a way, I'll be buying "futures." I'd like to see this next tank make it through 3 winters.

 

[turbo]

I filled this tank when we moved in over 2 years ago, and there's still way over 3/4 tank left. Actually, when the tank was filled the indicator did not read "Full" so I'm not sure how much we've used in that time. My wood shed is full of ash, maple, cherry, and other great woods - not too much oak like last year. I've learned my lesson. If you want to burn oak, put it up two years in advance. Spring cutting for fall-winter burning does not allow adequate drying time for oak, and efficiency suffers.

 

[wildman]

Of course there is peak oil if you only count liquid petro. There is only so much oil in the World. The question is where is the peak? The answer is who knows?

 

[corra]

no.. the answer is most likely in late 2005, we haven't produced more then we did then and the amount of production capacity projected to come online in the next few years does not make up for depletion in other wells since 2005 until now.

also. the demand for oil has risen markedly and supply is strained to the limit.

 

[Andre]

My own installation has the additional advantage of having the stand pipe rising through 12 additional feet of living space. The smoke is cool by the time it leaves the stack; this causes it to sink immediately, right over our front door.

The complication with that might be, that the water, produced by the oxidation process, condenses on the inside of the stand pipe. That might give a corrosion problem but also; condensation adds additional -latent- heat.

Actually, the energy equation for burning fuels only accounts for the capacity of heating. it does not account for the latent heat contained by the water vapor, produced by the oxidation. This energy returns when the water vapor condenses. This is bonus, which leads to paradoxal high efficiencies. But actually the energy produced by oxidation is higher than the direct heat alone.

Anyway, given the inevitable 60-70% loss of converting fossil fuel burning heat to electricity for electric heating, which is not happening in direct fuel heating, I think it is paramount to do some feasibility studies for efficient alternatives for electrical heating on a nation wide scale, not only for the happy rural few. There may be some nice examples in west Europe.

 

[Chi Meson]

Of course there is peak oil if you only count liquid petro. There is only so much oil in the World. The question is where is the peak? The answer is who knows?

The cost of oil indicates a clear inverted-peak at 1998. THe actuall, down to the barrel peak of oil production can only be vaguely determined, and only in retrospect, but we are clearly on the upslope of oil (and therefore all fossil-fuel) prices. I (personally) believe that this is the more significant indicator both economically and politically.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, the rosiest predicitions, the MOST opimistic, hopeful, working-for-the-oil-industry-here's-good-news-for-you (from CERA), puts peak oil at 2040.

So, you are right. Who knows? Sometime between 10 years ago and 30 years from now. What's the difference? Start modifying your lifestyle now, because prices are going up, right now.

 

[corra]

this should get your interest.
former chairman of shell oil is holding a press confrence on peak oil.
http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=40

 

[Chi Meson]

this should get your interest.
former chairman of shell oil is holding a press confrence on peak oil.
http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=40

I should have been an Oil CEO:

Q: Are you referring to peak oil, are you basically saying the global oil production is going to peak within the next 20 years?

A: It may or may not. In a way it scarcely matters; what really matters is the gap between gap in production and demand. I don’t know whether there is going to be a peak in world oil production, whether it’s going to plateau and then slowly come down. It could well plateau within next 20 years and I guess I would be surprised if it hadn’t. The thing is that demand is almost certainly going to outstrip availability, for whatever reason, and that is what is going to cause us difficulties. We’re never going to run out of oil, it’s simply going to become too expensive to use as we traditionally have. And that may happen much sooner than we expect.

I think I just said that. :smug smiley:

 

[corra]

yeah, you're right.
first there will not be enough oil for everyone and poor countries will suffer.
that is happening already due to the high oil price.
poor countries can't afford to buy oil for their powerplants and blackouts are occurring all over africa.

then shipping and transport will be hit. increasing food prices all over the world.
"wave goodbye to the 10000 mile ceasar salad"

where it goes from there is rather grim.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Back to the wood stoves: I must admit that the new stoves are claiming surprisingly high efficiencies. But there is still the issue of wet or green wood, the amount of energy that went into retrieval, cutting, and distribution of the wood, along with the reduced benefits of having one less tree that will take thirty to fifty years or more to replace.

If you are like turbo with 30 acres of private trees right outside, it might make more sense to burn wood than I thought, but for most people, I suspect that a close look at the energy supply chain and the practical aspects of this - like people burning garbage and green wood - changes the picture greatly.

And there is another issue. In southern Oregon, woodstoves are banned in some areas because of the intense pollution that they cause.

... People think that because wood smoke is all natural, it can't be bad for them," says Philip M. Fine, a research associate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California. "Tobacco is all natural, too," he says. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates the cancer risk from wood smoke to be 12 times greater than from an equal amount of tobacco smoke.

"Residential fireplaces and stoves, like fires, release wood smoke pollution," says Fine, who has been involved with several wood smoke emissions studies. "In some areas, car and wood smoke pollution can be of the same order of magnitude," he says. "Even in Los Angeles, fireplace wood smoke is often a significant source of pollution."[continued]

http://burningissues.org/car-www/latest_news/archives/emagazine-article.html

And I never did mention another really good reason to avoid using wood heat: Wood stoves are dangerous. One innocent slip like forgetting to close the damper can cost you your house. Stove pipe fires are a common problem here in the winter.

And there was the time that Tsu and I nearly died in our sleep because the wood stove in a rental cabin had a leaky stove pipe... We both woke up sick and with terrible headaches. It was a close call that nearly cost us our lives.

 

[russ_watters]

Back to the wood stoves: I must admit that the new stoves are claiming surprisingly high efficiencies.

You probably already know this, but efficiency and cleanliness aren't the same thing. It is relatively easy to make any type of furnace 90+% efficient, but wood is an extrordinarily dirty thing to burn.

 

[turbo]

You probably already know this, but efficiency and cleanliness aren't the same thing. It is relatively easy to make any type of furnace 90+% efficient, but wood is an extrordinarily dirty thing to burn.

Modern wood stoves must meet the EPA standard of no more than 7.5g of particulates per hour, and most stoves are far cleaner than that. When my wood stove is fired up, you cannot see any smoke coming out the chimney - just a refractive shimmer. I did not have to clean my flue even once last season. Dry hardwood burns very cleanly if you know how to control the burn temperature, draft, etc.

If I ordered fuel oil, that diesel delivery truck would pump more particulates into the air in its 15-minute trip to my house than my wood stove would produce all day long. Cleanliness is a relative thing. The only reason that fuel oil seems clean it that it has been refined elsewhere, and all the pollution and energy waste associated with its extraction, transport, refining, etc, happened someplace else.

 

[Chi Meson]

Who the heck is burning wood in LA?
Stop it stop it!

I think Turbo hit the key points, I just want to add:

No one is saying that burning wood is "clean." And in fact burning wood in an open fireplace in LA (where it requires that you ruck in the wood from far away) is about as bad as burning a tire in your yard. But when I use my wood stove, I am burning local wood (mostly gathered within a 1 mile radius, but this year I got a large maple tree that took four 10-mile trips in a large pick-up, but hte alternative was that the tree-removal company would cart it a further distance to chop it into logs to deliver to customers elsewhere...) what was I saying?

right...when I am burning wood, I am doing so instead of burnign oil or using electricity (my other forms of heat). In both cases, the wood is less costly for both environment and wallet. In Connecticut, our coal-fired electricity makes my wood smoke positively inhalable by comparison. And even though the oil is cleaner coming out of my stack, as Turbo mentioned, the filth had already come out some time ago during the retrieval, transportation and refinement, and transportation and transportation and transportation of the oil.

And efficiency is related to the clenliness, since it is the re-burning of the particulate and gaseous pollutants that have raised the efficiency so dramatically in recent years.

I don't think everyone should burn wood, just as I'm sure most will agree that we should not depend on any single source of energy. We need to find a balance of as many sources as possible, using te one that makes the most sense for where ever you are.

And Ivan needs a CO and O2 depletion detector.