On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 17:52:28 GMT, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 05:00:34 -0500, Gary Coffman
brought forth from the murky depths:

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 08:40:04 +0100, Jan Nielsen wrote:
For those wondering what "Peak Oil" is all about:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

You can look at it as yet another doomsday site, but it does
raise (and answer) some pretty sobering questions.

It asks many of the right questions, but it gives wrong answers
to several of them.

Aren't you going to tell us which?

I really don't feel up to addressing all of the points raised on that
site today. But I will try to hit a few high points.

While Peak Oil is a real issue, it isn't clear that it is as near or as
dire as the website states. The 2000 dip wasn't unusual, there
have been a number of production dips throughout the 20th century
(and cries that we were immanently running out of oil as far back as
the 1920s Standard Oil scandals).

The USGS has been maintaining recently, based on the best currently
available information, that the oil production peak will occur between
2040 and 2050. But the date has been a running target all throughout
the 20th century, being pushed further into the future with every new
forecast.

The USGS prediction is also based on the conventional biological
theory of oil and gas formation. There's increasing evidence that
theory is at least partly incorrect. As I've mentioned here before,
Dr Thomas Gold has been a proponent of a different theory which
says that oil and gas are primarily of nonbiological extraterrestrial
origin (ie the result of non-organic processes involving the primordial
constituents present when the Earth was formed), and that the
quantities deep in the Earth are far vaster than a theory based
on biological origin would permit.

There is a growing body of evidence that Dr Gold's theory is the
correct one, at least for natural gas (for example deep test wells
have found large quantities of natural gas where no biological
process could explain its presence). For more information on this,
see Dr Gold's book "Power From the Earth". If Dr Gold is correct,
at least the dire predictions about natural gas aren't true.

Whether Dr Gold is correct or not (and it is hard to argue he is
wrong when you look at the gas giant planets or the hydrocarbon
seas of Titan), lets now address some of the claims about other
alternatives.

The big gaff I spotted immediately was the notion that nuclear
fuels would reach their "Peak Uranium" point in 25 years. The
actual number is around 200 years for U235, but that assumes
we won't do reprocessing, and completely ignores the well proven
breeder technologies we have in hand.

With reprocessing and breeder technology, we can use plentiful
U238 and Thorium as our raw materials. Using technologies we
have on the shelf today, we can confidently predict that nuclear
fission could economically supply all of our energy needs for the
next 100,000+ years. The issues surrounding nuclear power are
not primarily technical or economic, they are political and emotional
(ie nuclear hysteria).

The website is essentially correct about hydroelectric. We've tapped
nearly all the economic sites for that already in the US. So we can't
expect a large increase in the amount of hydroelectric power available
to us.

The website is also essentially correct about solar and wind power.
While the potential amount of energy is vast, it is dilute, it isn't
scheduleable or throttleable, and can't become a large proportion
of the grid without introducing stability problems which are intractable.
Most credible analyses of this issue say that such non-scheduleable
sources can't exceed about 5% of grid capacity without introducing
intractable grid stability problems.

Several of the things said about hydrogen are misleading or untrue.
It is true that hydrogen isn't a primary energy source. It needs to be
considered as a way of *transporting* energy from generation sources
to consumption sinks, particularly mobile consumption sinks. It basically
frees us to use any primary energy source we like to supply energy for
mobile uses.

The big advantage of the hydrogen economy is that efficiencies
can be high. Electrolyzers can approach 100% efficiency, fuel cells
already exceed 50% efficiency and there's good reason to believe
80 to 90% efficiency is not out of reach. This means we may be able
to use up to five times less energy for mobile power sources than is
the case with burning oil in internal combustion engines. Also, if
you're concerned about greenhouse gases, there are none produced
by the hydrogen economy.

The big disadvantage of hydrogen is that it is a low density energy
transport medium. That means bulky tanks, large pipelines, and
high pumping costs. Those issues aren't intolerable for most uses,
but they do mean that hydrogen isn't likely to be a viable mobile
energy transport medium until oil hits about $40 a barrel (in constant
year 2000 dollars) and stays there. That should occur sometime
after 2040 barring unforseen political events.

Note that for all but agricultural and construction uses, an alternative
to the hydrogen economy for land based transport could be use
powered roadways. The necessary technological pieces are rapidly
falling into place to make externally powered self-directed roadway
vehicles a reality.

This would solve a number of difficult problems associated with our
current transportation systems. The costs associated with upgrading
the roadway infrastructure would be huge, of course, on the order of
the costs (in constant dollars) of the original interstate highway system.
The benefits are great, however, and this is something we should be
considering seriously, even if Peak Oil weren't hanging over our heads.

Some of what the site says about coal, tar sands, shale oil, etc
is right on target. Some of it ignores newer technologies. There
is a huge readily available supply (several thousand years worth
if we consumed it for energy generation), but there are heavy
environmental costs associated with it. IMHO the best use of
this resource is as feedstocks for the chemical and agricultural
industries. This BTW negates most of the concerns expressed
about running out of cheap oil for such uses.

What the site says about biomass and other renewables is
mostly on target. With current practices, they are net energy
sinks rather than sources. With foreseeable technical advances
and practices, they're still uneconomic on the scale required
to meet our primary energy needs.

The sticky issue with renewables is that we have to replace
the nutrients we take from the soil when we harvest and burn
biomass. Otherwise it isn't renewable. The primary way we do
that today is with oil based fertilizers. That won't be an option
after Peak Oil.

The social, political, and economic issues surrounding running
out of cheap oil are so potentially complex that the simplistic
doomsday scenario painted by the website, while possible, is
not incredibly likely.

What society will look like in 100 years when the cheap oil is
mostly gone is sheer guesswork at this time. The large die offs,
and the collapse of industrial civilization is *one* possibility, but
it is far from the only one. There is at least one known viable
alternative to oil (nuclear power and the hydrogen economy),
there are very probably several others.

The only scarey thing is that we might wait too long to start
utilizing alternatives to oil. But I'm not as pessimistic as the
author of the website that will be the case. There are already
clear and viable economic and environmental reasons to be
starting down the road to implementing alternatives to oil.

The USGS and other credible sources also say that the
decline following Peak Oil won't be so rapid that there won't
be time or resources available to accommodate the decline
with crash programs. It isn't the best or most efficient way
to deal with the issue, but such crash programs are a viable
method of avoiding the die off and collapse of industrial
civilization.

Gary