OT: Peak Oil and the Road Warrior

[Kymus]

prison planet is not exactly the best sourcing on stuff.

How do you figure? The editorials that they post are filled with mainstream, national, and international news sources.

if it can be drilled through to the source that's a bit different.

Considering that it's a lengthy article, I can see your point. But really, this one is a collaboration of dozens of articles. To be honest, I don't feel like refomatting each one to BBS code and repasting it.

If you can drill through to 3, 1st degree connected sources, well you got a high level of probability going on there.

I'll count them (as I go down the list):
Consumer Watchdog
Wall St. Journal
USA Today
NY Times
Bellville News
Arab News
Power Politics (Blog; dunno anything about it)
BBC
Vialls.com (page won't load; I think it's a blog)
Rolling Stones Magazine
Dr. Nick Begich
The Center for an Informed America (know nothing about them)
Political Physics.com
World Net Daily
Science Frontiers
Gas Resources.net
Energy Information Administration
Free Energy News
Gas Resources.net
The Col. L Fletcher Prouty Reference Site
Popular Science
Educate-yourself.org
Online Journal.com
Ludwig von Mises Institute
Philly.com
Scotsman.com

..is that good enough?

[Crushing Fist]

wow you're right.

i just hear all these ohe noes we'z fuxor3d without teh oilz!!!!!!! posts and i never gave thought to the fact that it probably wouldnt happen overnight.

if given enough time to accept that we may have to regress technologically (or at least sacrafice a bit to make the transition to other forms of energy) then i think we could do it.

its one thing if gas becomes a luxury item...


its entirely another if food becomes a luxury item.

its a fact that modern agricultural practices are impossible without petrochemicals.



keep up the gardening

[neilhytholt]

The thing is, this has been predicted as happening for a long, long time now. But they do absolutely nothing about it, and still are doing absolutely nothing about it. Bush's administration's attitude still is basically, "This is okay. Let the market decide." ??? WTF ???

I guess Bush must have been stoned during the mid '70s gas crisis, and the recessions around 1980 and around 1990 and never had to deal with any economic shocks on a first-person basis.

That and the fact that no new refineries are coming online in the U.S. and they're all operating at peak capacity. It's like planning went right out the window on this one.

Just wait for oil over $100 a barrel and gas to go up to $6 a gallon within a few years.

[Crushing Fist]

years...



if we're lucky



or unlucky if you like road warrior zombies





oil could hit $100/barrel a lot quicker than that, the way things have been going



especially if they go all mideval on Iran like they keep not threatening

[SimonM]

I'll bite...

what are the alternatives which are available now?

Ethanol is a biggie.

Also BMW has produced a prototype car that uses a hydrogen fuel cell. Problem is that it's expensive.

[PlumDragon]

its a fact that modern agricultural practices are impossible without petrochemicals.

Crushing Fist, I say the following in the kindest most respectful way I can muster:

In large part, my job as an engineer is "innovation". Over the years, I feel Ive become rather excellent at applying varying solutions to a variety of general and unique problems, and so should any good engineer in R&D. Some very high-profile pieces of this countrys defense depend in part on my solutions. But I hear engineers talk as you do above, engineers who have the same impact that I do, and nothing ****es me off more. Now granted youre probably not an engineer so you probably dont see where Im coming from, so Ill explain as briefly as possible:

TODAY, it is a fact that modern agricultural practices are impossible without petrochemicals...TODAY, its an impossibility...not tomorrow (where "tomorrow" is defined as some point in the future when there is a differentiable difference in the processes and technology used in agricultural practices).
Today, it is impossible to process information in a computer as fast and as parrallel of a fashion as the human brain.
Today, it is impossible to travel to nearby stars in an expedient manner.
Today, it is impossible to .... etc etc etc

Its this sort of uninsightful thinking that seeks to halt the progress of what we do, what we make...what we overcome! Do you think breaking the sound barrier was seen in our eyes as "possible" before we set out to do it?? What about walking on the moon?

The sooner you stop saying "its impossible" and the sooner you start getting invovled in the innovation of a new solution, the better off everyone will be (By you I mean everybody, not you specifically). If you want to keep saying its impossible, then stay out of the god**** way and let the rest of us come up with a viable solution.

Sorry to banter so...I know that I addressed perhaps a part of yoru post which you didnt put much weight on...But this sort of attitude that I see in those who come up with the solutions is a big problem in our country, especially in the Defense industry...

[WanderingMonk]

oh, yes, the corn to ethanol, green technology.

I was listening to a radio show couple weeks ago, and the guest made a very important point.

corn is a industrial corp. you can plant a bunch, put in the fertilizer, and harvest a bunch at the end. however, the fertilizer are made using gas and petroleum. you can't get all those nitrogen without putting in energy in the first place. which means, you use gas and petroleum to make fertilizer to grow corn to produce ethanol. yeah, very efficient. you going to use more oil to grow corn than the oil you replace with ethanol.

there are a group of people doing bio-diesel. they use a particular enzyme found in Guam to break down plant fibers (hence it can use paper, grass clippings, etc. as raw material) Hence, you get rid of some unwanted waste and covnert it to ethanol through enzyme chemistry. that is a better alternative than the corn -> ethanol route.

[neilhytholt]

Yes, the thing about agriculture relying on petrochemicals now is because they use petroleum for fertillizer and for running the tractors.

But if you study agriculture, there's no reason you can't use better methods of agriculture. The Amish till with horses, and their soil gets better every year. They produce a profit without government subsidies or any of that.

But the problem is that right now THEY ARE DOING NOTHING. That's the problem. It's as if they want a big crisis and with Bush's oil background, it's no wonder they don't want to limit prices because his friends are raking in the $$$.

But just hydrogen fuel cells or something isn't going to solve it, because you still need a cheap source of electricity. They've talked about using geothermal, but they haven't gotten even to that, yet.

Right now with our existing technology the best bets are probably a) hybrids b) solar cells c) ethanol d) hydrogen fuel cells + (either nuclear or geothermal). But there isn't a lot of movement on any of those fronts. Hybrids are a very small percentage of cars on the road right now.

For some reason our governments and industry seem to never want to do anything until it's a crisis. Well it's pretty much at that point now.

These oil shocks + an inverted yield curve will in all probability lead to a big recession.

If the oil prices lead to too much inflation, they'll have to raise interest rates more to counteract that, and with all the ARMs out there that could mean a big problem for the real estate market as well.

Add that to our current deficits, trade deficits and budget deficits, and it starts looking like the perfect economic storm is brewing.

[neilhytholt]

The other solution is tapping cow's butts. Literally. The average cow produces 120 liters of methane gas.

Anyways, there's enough energy out there. The U.S. has an estimated 3 trillion barrels of oil shale that becomes economically producible at around $50 per barrel (we're past that now).

Plus, they had a huge find in some middle eastern country (can't remember, it's on the coast), with something like an estimated 10 trillion litres of natural gas reserves or something like that.

So the bottom line is there is fuel out there, and enough, but they need to start getting it out of the ground now.

[Blacktiger]

I wondered what you were all talking about "Road Warrior" - in Australia the film was released as Mad Max.

[SimonM]

The road warrior is mad max 2.

[joedoe]

One point that seems to be overlooked is the grade of oil being pumped out of the ground. Not all oil is of the correct quality to be refined into fuels, hence some of it is only good for use as lubricants or as ingredients in other substances e.g. rubber, plastics etc.

I also find it interesting that there seems to be a perception that oil/petrol should be cheap.

[Crushing Fist]

Crushing Fist, I say the following in the kindest most respectful way I can muster:

In large part, my job as an engineer is "innovation". Over the years, I feel Ive become rather excellent at applying varying solutions to a variety of general and unique problems, and so should any good engineer in R&D. Some very high-profile pieces of this countrys defense depend in part on my solutions. But I hear engineers talk as you do above, engineers who have the same impact that I do, and nothing ****es me off more. Now granted youre probably not an engineer so you probably dont see where Im coming from, so Ill explain as briefly as possible:

TODAY, it is a fact that modern agricultural practices are impossible without petrochemicals...TODAY, its an impossibility...not tomorrow (where "tomorrow" is defined as some point in the future when there is a differentiable difference in the processes and technology used in agricultural practices).
Today, it is impossible to process information in a computer as fast and as parrallel of a fashion as the human brain.
Today, it is impossible to travel to nearby stars in an expedient manner.
Today, it is impossible to .... etc etc etc

Its this sort of uninsightful thinking that seeks to halt the progress of what we do, what we make...what we overcome! Do you think breaking the sound barrier was seen in our eyes as "possible" before we set out to do it?? What about walking on the moon?

The sooner you stop saying "its impossible" and the sooner you start getting invovled in the innovation of a new solution, the better off everyone will be (By you I mean everybody, not you specifically). If you want to keep saying its impossible, then stay out of the god**** way and let the rest of us come up with a viable solution.

Sorry to banter so...I know that I addressed perhaps a part of yoru post which you didnt put much weight on...But this sort of attitude that I see in those who come up with the solutions is a big problem in our country, especially in the Defense industry...

I'll say this as politely as I can


first... I'm no engineer


second, I'm not seeking to halt anything but the mad rush towards suicide that our society seems bent on.

progress can be good... but what about progress towards walking off a cliff. I'm all for solutions, good realistic innovative solutions.

Going back to using horses to plow fields won't feed 7 billion people. There will have to be a sharp "population adjustment" soon unless you engineers come up with some serious engineering voodoo pretty quick...


like TODAY


not some fanciful future where everything will be perfect.


and while I'm on the subject, Mr Engineer...




where's my flying car?






now stop taking everything so seriously and save the world!

[PlumDragon]

I'll say this as politely as I can

first... I'm no engineer

second, I'm not seeking to halt anything but the mad rush towards suicide that our society seems bent on.

progress can be good... but what about progress towards walking off a cliff. I'm all for solutions, good realistic innovative solutions.

Going back to using horses to plow fields won't feed 7 billion people. There will have to be a sharp "population adjustment" soon unless you engineers come up with some serious engineering voodoo pretty quick...

like TODAY

not some fanciful future where everything will be perfect.

and while I'm on the subject, Mr Engineer...where's my flying car?

now stop taking everything so seriously and save the world!

Good post, CF, good post. =)

I agree going back to horses to plow fields wont be the answer. It might be a *fraction* of the answer but the rest will come from some other type of post-modern evolutionary path. There are some good non-petro based methods of relaxing frictional dependencies and that might be a start--or perhaps a whole new way of looking at the problem. Well see what happens.

Fortunately, while the problem is hovering near our doorstep, we do still have some time to get all our ducks in a row--the only other alternative is that people die and the Earth, as it always seems to do, brings us back to its own natural equlibrium...

Oh BTW...Im still working on the flying car, dont lose faith in me! =)

[Crushing Fist]

Oh BTW...Im still working on the flying car, dont lose faith in me! =)

I have faith in you



but I'm losing faith in this guy

I mean how long does it take???


then there was that solotrek... it looked cool but then it was just an artist's rendering.




but on the topic of massive depopulation...


I think it would help if people weren't so opposed to eating sea algae


I mean everytime I drink a supergreen with a little chlorella and some norwegian dulce everyone is all like