Does Peak oil scare you yet??

Looked at Matt Simmons' presentation here:
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/Energy%20Conversation.pdf
He's really waving the red flag. On one slide is "By 2020, the current 80+ mb/d base could be reduced to 25 mb/d." Below it says this is based on a 8% p.a. decline rate, presumably starting in a year or two's time.

In other words, to replace the depletion rate of current oil fields, we would need to discover its estimated 6 NEW Saudi Arabia oil field and develope them(it usually takes about 10 years to fully develope an oil field) just to keep up with current oil production of 80+ mb/d..

I don't think its going to happen folks!!

carrying on about it. You know, you cry "wolf" enough times, and people tend to tune you out...

Redstone

After all, people have been ranting and carrying on about that for the last 30 years too! :sarcasm:

More and more warning lights are starting to flash.

The early bird doesn't get caught in the early rounds of Petrocollapse.

I heard a news report that there may be blackouts this summer here. My relatives in Oregon are letting me know about any job opportunities they read about, so I'm looking into that.

Thanks for asking! I'll let you know when there's good news on that front.

L.A. wasn't even affected by the fake "energy crisis" of 2000,
they weren't deregulated, remain independent of CALISO, and have plenty of capacity.

http://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/cms/ladwp000509.jsp

Electrical Capacity
Total Generating Capacity: 7,200 megawatts
Los Angeles Peak Demand: 5,708 megawatts


http://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/cms/ladwp008217.jsp

NEWS RELEASE
June 28, 2006

<snip>

“Customers can rest assured that the City has sufficient energy generation and reserves to meet our demand. However, we urge customers to use energy wisely to help prevent problems from occurring,” said LADWP General Manager Ronald F. Deaton.

Additionally, LADWP, which kept the power on for Los Angeles during the state’s 2000 energy crisis, sells excess capacity, when feasible, to alleviate potential energy shortages in other parts of Southern California and other Western states. “When there is a high electrical demand anticipated, any power saved by Los Angeles residents helps free up energy that we can provide, when feasible, for Southern California and the West,” said Henry Martinez, chief operating officer – power.

<snip>

They act as if PO will cause all our power plants to go *POOF*.

...someone who thinks we're all doomed. :D

In the case of peak oil, it usually refers to someone like http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/">Jim Kunstler who can't see how western society can function without cheap oil, and therefore when the cheap oil runs out (which it is probably doing) society will implode.

The "non-doomers" hold the view that we'll just adapt out lifestyles and energy systems to cope without cheap oil.

Personally, I'm a doomer: not because we can't live without the stuff - we're more than adaptable enough - but because watching our progress towards an oil-free civilisation is like watching a tortoise on prozac climbing a buttered glass hill in slow motion. I just don't think we'll get there in time.

IMHO, a doomer is more of a realist but is not because we cannot function without cheap oil as you put rather the fact we will face a future with ALOT LESS oil!!

Versus a non-doomer who believes magically that will we be able to continue on our merry way of unlimited economic expansion forever and that "technology" will save the day!

I don't believe that so called non-doomers are realistically looking at a future with alot less oil. As most have posted here, we'll find something else(nothing yet) or we'll use DIRTY COAL(which we are already)!!

I'm sure the non-doomers would make a similar case :D Me, I play the averages.

the way they are talking about it now.. Not any time in the past 30 years has the population becoming more aware that something is very wrong with our oil supplies.. Little do they know that there's not as much oil as they have been lead to believe. Thus most are in denial about the future and refuse to talk about it..

Can you imagine a future using half the oil we do now and possibly is less than 15 years??

and read discussions about the end of the oil age.

I suspect that most people who carp about peak oil aren't over 25 years old, but in fact, in the 1970's their were gas lines. You couldn't get gasoline at any price. The world survived quite nicely. Cars got smaller. More people took the trains. The President of the United States put on a sweater to address the country about the grand ethanol future.

I can recall the Shah of Iran speaking about the end of the era of cheap oil and how oil would easily be over $100/barrel by 1980.

I could certainly imagine a world using half the oil that it now uses; but such thinking would assume an educated and committed population. I'm not an optimist about whether such a population exists.

People should be working like demons to reduce oil consumption by more than half within a decade rather than 15 years. Instead they sit like deer caught in the headlights and insist that nothing can be done. What depresses me is not that the end of the oil age in particular and the fossil fuel age in general. These things are inevitable, but depletion or peaks have very little to do with it. What depresses me is the ignorance and stupidity that insists the only possible reaction is fear. To paraphrase Roosevelt, it is the fear that will kill, not the end of the oil age.

The replacement of oil is relatively easy from a technological standpoint, but the will to do so is essentially nonexistent.

"I don't recall anyone talking about peak oil the way they are talking about it now.."

While in college I attended an 'energy' conference in Dallas. Speaker after speaker proclaimed the world was quickly running out of oil.

Until the downgrading of the Caspian reserves from 200 B to 8 B bbl in the late 90's, Peak Oil looked to be sufficiently distant. Once it was determined that the world had not found a new Saudi Arabia, peak became more of a concern.

And why would the world have been talking about the 'end of oil' in 1976? Only a fraction of the reserves found by that time had been consumed. From what I remember, the problems in the 70's were attributed to political instability.

It even spawned a whole survivalist movement of people preparing for the breakdown of society as natural resources ran out.

Some of the classics:
"The Population Bomb"
"Limits To Growth"
"Diet For A Small Planet"
There was also a simulation called "The World Game".


"The Population Bomb"

"Limits To Growth"

"Diet For A Small Planet"

"The World Game"

or Cheney's so-called energy task force wouldn't have been eye-balling world oilfield maps.

Maps and Charts of Iraqi Oil Fields

These are documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under a March 5, 2002 court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force. The documents contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents are dated March 2001 ... http://www.judicialwatch.org/iraqi-oil-maps.shtml

busy being terrified about Global Climate Change.

Seriously.

But one up side to Peak Oil is that if petroleum products get TOO expensive, we will use way less and maybe mitigate climate change.

Maybe that's just the wishful thinking of a frightened woman.

for mobilization of mitigation.

Instead, we are building more highways and . . .

...you probably aren't paying enough attention.

that's just one phase. Eventually, you get to
acceptance; I'm getting there.

Truth be told, there really aren't any mitigation
strategies that will work. Yes, I realize some
believe strongly in technological solutions, and
I'm confident they'll be tried - but they won't
suffice.

Bottom line, global population is going to
come down to 2 billion - and maybe to as few
as 500 million. Your life and mine will probably
not be as long as we had hoped and expected.

But people don't want to think about that. They'd
rather lull themselves back to sleep with stories
of grand solutions ranging from thorium fast-breeder
reactors to switchgrass biofuels. And if that makes
them happy, that's OK I guess. Perhaps a pleasant
dream is better than a very unpleasant reality.

Of course do nothings have been a feature of most of recorded history, except they are recorded mainly along the margins.

Somehow I believe that those who work on technological solutions, who understand them, are less asleep than those who appeal to intellectual and moral laziness.

Of course the lazy often think themselves superior to those who work, and invariably the lazy skate by, but no one who understands the difference between shit and not shit really agrees.

I know that you're a strong advocate of nuclear power.
Society will probably give it a try.

That said, I've concluded that there isn't a viable
technological solution. If you wish to regard that
as smug, or lazy, or whatever else, that's your
prerogative - but you might wish to consider the
possibility that a review of the available information
has resulted in different conclusions than you
favor.

Then again, it's so much easier to just apply a
label, isn't it?

Our unsustainable society and our growth oriented macroeconomy completely depend on it. What worries me is that once enough of the traders finally get a clue, there'll be a panic followed by something akin to the Great Depression.

That could happen much sooner than we think and it will make the inevitable restructuring that much harder for us to do.

there is no alternative to firewood. A growing shortage of firewood in the 1700's because of the deforestation of the countryside for farmland and shipbuilding lead to the use of coal as an energy sources, and eventually resulted in the Industrial Revolution. Oil is just the next resource that humans will have a shortage of and will eventually find a replacement that is better then what came before. To claim that oil is unique is to be ignorant of history.

Up until the mass use of oil, virtually everything was done by human or animal labor. Without oil you do not have cars, internal combustion engine, modern tires, plastics, fertilizer, many textiles, etc, I could go on endlessly. Just think of everything around you. How was it made? how was it transported?

The amount of energy contained in a single gallon of gas would have required the equivalent of 30 hours of work by human hands a century ago.

Also if you look at the rise of technology and modern society, it is directly related to the mass use of oil.

Again, if you chart population growth, it is also related to the mass use of oil.

To claim that we will find something better than oil is like whistling past the grave yard.

If you are putting your hopes on hydrogen, you have quite a wait. 15 years if we are really lucky, but more like 40 years in reality. And even then it won't provide the variety of various other by products that are produced from oil refinery.

There is an old saying, you can hope in one hand and poop in the other. See which one fills up first.

We are heading for a brick wall fast. Someone posted a little interesting fact on here today. It takes 7 calories of oil to produce 1 calorie of food. Think about that for a while and then tell me if you are really that confident that we as a civilization are going to find something to fill that colossal void of energy that will be getting very expensive, very soon.

Peak oil isn't about running out, it's about how hard it will become to extract the oil from the ground once the easy stuff is gone. There is still plenty of oil in the world, but the issue at hand is: the stuff that is left, is very hard to reach and very expensive to extract.

At some time there comes a point of diminishing returns.

If you think that something will be replacing oil, have a look at www.energybulletin.com. There are several good articles on there this past week regarding the oil sands in Canada and the myth behind ethanol. Both are well researched and absolutely terrifying.

My advice: learn to live lean, learn to live without, and foresee a life of simpler means.

Those who aren't prepared will perish. Conservation is the key.

I do regard it as smug and lazy and wrong.

If the label is appropriate, I apply it.

I have not met one peak oiler who is so convinced of their position as to have committed suicide. The "it's hopeless!" cry flies in the face of thousands of years of human history. This may come as a surprise to people who believe that life on earth depends on access to the Sunoco station, but the human race existed for a long time with no knowledge whatsoever of petroleum.

By the way, I don't see any indication of a systematic "review of information" on your part. The post to which I responded is a simple platitude and nothing else. Your response is another platitude. There's not a trace of anything else in it.

One of the more amusing things about peak oilers who disparage nuclear power is that while they claim nuclear power is dangerous they are perfectly willing to have a vast portion of humanity to die of inaction. I really can't think of too much that is intellectually weaker that that rather incredible position.

The reason for being done with oil has very little to do with a peak. The reason to be done with oil is moral and environmental. Crying about the peak, worrying about it, is, for lack of a better term, dumb.

I have not met one peak oiler who is so convinced of their position as to have committed suicide. The "it's hopeless!" cry flies in the face of thousands of years of human history. This may come as a surprise to people who believe that life on earth depends on access to the Sunoco station, but the human race existed for a long time with no knowledge whatsoever of petroleum.

There's no need to be in a hurry. The march of events will perform those offices in due time.

As for life existing without access to a Sunoco station, you merely belabor the obvious.

By the way, I don't see any indication of a systematic "review of information" on your part. The post to which I responded is a simple platitude and nothing else. Your response is another platitude. There's not a trace of anything else in it.


I suppose you're referring to the lack of citations, the dearth of links, the lack of references? No thanks, I'll let others do their own research. I don't particularly care if anyone is convinced by my position. In fact, it's best for me if people rock along, leading their lives, unconcerned about such matters.

One of the more amusing things about peak oilers who disparage nuclear power is that while they claim nuclear power is dangerous they are perfectly willing to have a vast portion of humanity to die of inaction. I really can't think of too much that is intellectually weaker that that rather incredible position.

Dangerous or not, effective or not, nuclear power will be used. I should think that would please you.

That said, it doesn't change the reality of overshoot - or the consequences.

The reason for being done with oil has very little to do with a peak. The reason to be done with oil is moral and environmental. Crying about the peak, worrying about it, is, for lack of a better term, dumb.


Crying? Worrying? Hardly. I've recognized reality and accepted it.

But if you wish to strive and fight against the coming twilight, please feel free. Enjoy.

NNadir, you know that I appreciate the work you do on this forum, even if I don't completely agree with you. Well, this is one of those times.

I mostly agree with brokensymmetry's conclusion here -- and if you give me a moment to explain before jumping on me about being a "do-nothing", I'll try and explain my perspective. ;-)

I think that the problem we're in is because people have spent way, way too much time working on technological solutions; and way, way too little time working on understanding ourselves and how we fit into our world. A good deal of this is because as we have become industrialized (and then crossed over into post-industrialization), we have increasingly lost touch with the things that help us understand ourselves and our world. While nuclear power will certainly enable us to continue some semblance of industrial civilization, someone like me looks at that and asks if that is really the best option. I also would argue that such measures condemn us to continue the kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place -- that we can indefinitely "innovate" in order to control nature and bring it to our purposes, rather than seeking to live in harmony with and emulate the cycles of nature. Continued centralization and complexity will, IMHO, only impede us in these efforts to explore new paradigms.

Just because some of us do not share your enthusiasm for nuclear power does not mean that we are somehow intellectually or morally lazy. Rather, we may see the impetus for serious work in different areas -- developing alternative social arrangements that put us back in meaningful contact with one another, developing patterns founded on respect for nature and local self-sufficiency. I firmly place myself in this category -- and if that constitutes intellectual or moral laziness in the eyes of others, that's their problem rather than mine.

I have to laugh at every individual that believes "technology" is going to save the day when technology is not the issue!!

The issue is OIL DEPLETION!! If, in as little as 15 years, the world known oil fields are pumping 25mb/d, we are collectively screwed and no amount of technology is going to change that!!

It's magic?

It comes from devine intervention?

Actually oil is very much a technological issue and always has been. All the magical thinking in the world cannot change that fact.

It is a conservative notion that everything must be done exactly as it is done now. I still have to see one peak oiler who has stopped using technology.

Kunstler's books, I'll bet, were transported by truck.

Now it happens that I think they could be transported by rail, and electrified rail at that, as in, say, France, but I wouldn't want to disturb the happy horseshit.

sorry to say again but technology and oil depletion are two seperate subjects no matter how slice and dice it.. Inasmuch as technology is used to get oil out of the ground, and its being used to get more out of the ground faster, technology is not going to "save the day" as you envision it will..

Sorry to say, you just repeat rote statements. You still have an oil fetish and you still view oil magically. You still cannot name one compound in oil that cannot be replaced.

I repeat that there have been tens of thousands of years of human technology without oil, and people with whom you have little familiarity - that would be scientists - understand matter better than it has been understood at any point in history.

Maybe you think that atomic theory will be forgotten when the oil fields shut down? That all the world's infrastructure will go *poof* overnight? Physics will disappear? Materials science?

The point for people who think rather than chant is to see that the technology employed is the safest possible. This means people who think should be opposing the Fischer-Tropsch coal based strategy, as the real issue is not oil depletion so much as global climate change. But let's not make any mistake. Fischer-Tropsch can replace oil and has already done it several times in several places. Rational people do not make a fetish of oil by pretending that we must have it or die. Rational people understand the options.

You have no knowledge of the options, deny them all with a completely cavalier smug attitude that comes from the popular press, and you want us to be impressed by that. My personal opinion is that your inability to understand technology is willful and lazy.

Doomers seem to act as if oil was the most unique thing in human history, It isn't. It can be replaced just like any other resource. Plastics, fetilizers, insecticides, etc. can be made from coal, plants, and organics from chondridic asteroids. We can build an intensive electrified rail system to minimized the amount of biofuels and hydrogen needed to replace oil. Cargo ships could used nuclear reactors and/or solar. Airliners could use hydrogen and biofuels.

Peak oil to my mind is a wonderful opportunity to do things right.

Coal should be a last-resort option because of the destruction caused by mining (and couse we don't have to worry about CO2 if it's being made into plastics).

Doomers seem to act as if oil was the most unique thing in human history

Oil is perhaps the most unique substance we ever discovered and we have not replacement for it!! Oil has also been essential in the increase in the capability to produce and distribute food worldwide and in the
advances achieved in medicine, contributing to the world population explosion, from 1,000 million human beings at the middle of the 19th century to about 6,500 million today. (http://www.crisisenergetica.org/ficheros/The_Oil_Peak_and_the_World.pdf)


When will cargo ships be powered by nuclear reactor?? When will airliners used hydrogen and biofuels to fly?? How much will it cost to make your dreams come true now that the era of cheap oil is over??

The issue is: as we have set our society, we use a LOT of oil. we use 25% of all the oil produced in the world, yet we only have 5% of the pop. Now, it has been clearly stated that if we converted all of our available crops to corn to produce ethanol and ethanol only, it would only still produce enough for just 25% of our fuel needs. And would leave nothing for food production, let alone nothing left over for any other sort of refinement for use in other goods.

The reality is this: there will be no one single source of energy.

Even the use of coal as much as we want to believe that it will solve all of our energy woes, it will not, why? three reasons, 1) the railroad infrastructure that was once dominate in the U.S. is a mere shadow of what it was a century ago. So in order to provide the new coal demands for all the coal plants around the U.S. (not including the huge amount that we export) a significant investment needs to be provided for the rail system to keep pace with demand and years for it to be installed. 2) Global warming, if you think oil pollutes, you haven't seen anything yet until read up on coal. At the height of the industrial revolution when coal was king, coal cities such as Pittsburgh were so filthy with coal dust and smoke, that one could not tell day from night.(this is not even taking into account the health risks) 3)at current needs, coal will last 150 years. That is at current needs. The world is growing, China and India especially. We will have by all calculations a pop of 12 billion in 20 years. On top of that the rising demand of a new car oriented society in a current 1.2 billion population in china is going to stress the need for fuel. Extrapolate that and you have coal running out a lot sooner than 150 years.

Nuclear energy: various breeder reactors are being built around the world at a breakneck pace. but reality also hits here, the various radioactive ores that are refined and used for nuclear fuel are also a finite resource. Reports vary on this one, but the optimists have nuclear fuel running out sometime in about 200 years. But again, the demand is rising and this will stress the need for more. We could recycle the spent fuel rods but no one appears to want to even discuss this on a world level.

Beyond all of this is the environmental question. People say, hey grow more corn, that will fix it. It's not that simple. Erosion from corn crops takes a huge toll on the farm land. The stalks that were once tilled back into the ground will now be used for fuel. How then does the farmer re-enrich his soil? And what about crop rotation? If the fields go fallow then what? What about drought with global warming coming on?

Or the process of mountain topping for extracting coal? This process is cause major environment havoc in West Virginia. The fall out from this is yet to have it's full impact upon us, but when it does, I can assure you, it will not be pretty.

And as far as Nuclear reactors. People go on and on about 3-mile Island or worse Chernobyl. Let me as you this? Are you willing to live with one less than a mile from you home? I'm not.

The bottom line is: we as a nation, as a civilization have to live simpler. We really don't have much of a choice.

not a nuclear one!! Inasmuch as you keep referring back to nuclear for whatever reason, peak oil is a liquid fuel problem and nuclear power has little to do with that..

Maybe you think that atomic theory will be forgotten when the oil fields shut down? That all the world's infrastructure will go *poof* overnight? Physics will disappear? Materials science?

Keep drawing up your straw man approach but one this is certain, all advance societies of the past have collapsed and our society is no different.. It won't happen over night but it will happen.. I firmly believe we are seeing the beginning of that collapse but it will take decades to complete..

why your argument is absurd.

Right here in this forum is a thread with a scientific review article on the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide, with authors from 30 scientific institutions (not one of whom seems to know James Kunstler) explaining why nuclear is a liquid fuel option.

If you limit your intellectual horizons to reading panic stories, you probably would necessarily be completely incapable of understanding the implications of this article.

The oil fetish, the feeling that we must have oil at any cost, is what is preventing us from acting on these superior solutions and causing us to turn to Fischer-Tropsch chemistry.

Once again, I need to repeat, not that you give a rat's ass, the reason to ban oil is not that the supply is running out. The reason to ban it is that it is too dangerous to use. We can get by with far fewer liquid fuels in any case. The notion that we must have liquid fuels for automobiles is a dangerous conservative notion.

1)Fischer-Tropsch chemistry will bring about more gas house gasses!!

2)The Fischer-Tropsch process will never be able to replace the amount of free flowing oil we get now from worldwide oil fields..

3)Dirty coal is another finite resource(but you knew that)...

I am quite sure that you know zero about this subject, since you know nothing about any topic including the word "chemistry."

I am on record as furiously and frequently opposing coal based Fischer-Tropsch chemistry, a product of oil fetish thinking, since I oppose oil fetishes in general. I clearly despise petroleum mimetics, since I regard them as inferior to much better options.

There has been considerable literature in recent years on biomass based Fischer-Tropsch chemistry, and I have posted many examples here from the scientific journal Energy and Fuels in my tenure here. This topic was also featured in my recent short thread relating to liquified biomass referring to an article from the scientific journal Chemical Reviews. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x59526 Therein it is estimated that the potential for biomass is between 150 to 450 exajoules. Certainly the realization of any part of that potential will probably involve Fischer-Tropsch chemistry, and I note that I would support biomass based Fischer-Tropsch chemistry, particular where the heat is obtained by nuclear means. I, like the authors of another scientific journal I have referenced here http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x59612 believe that biomass can be a partial wedge in global climate change stabilization.

Note that I don't give a rat's ass about "peak oil" or "oil depletion" since I regard them as good things, since the continued reliance on fossil fuels is dangerous to humanity. My concern is climate change, climate change, climate change and not puerile fantasies about the alleged "dangers" of peak oil. The reason for this concern is that I don't linger too long over the latest issue of Rolling Stone, but confine my reading mostly to science. Since I read quite a bit I am aware simply will not survive in a "business as usual" scenario, of which oil fetishes are a part.

I have gone on too long though. It is a waste of time to discuss scientific issues with peak oil panic driven people.

OIL IS JUST ANOTHER RESOURCE, IT IS NOT SPECIAL!

Fischer-Topp conversion of coal to oil. It will continue to amplify global warming, but it will be used.

However, I do see an issue with rail transportation to move that coal around the country.

After reading several things regarding the current state of our railroad industry, there will need to be a substantial investment into that area if we as a nation are to use coal to replace oil.

If there is one area to invest in, it would be the railroad.

What makes it different and not "just another resource" is that it is a source of energy. And it's the only source abundant enough to support the energy-intensive civilization we've come to expect. All the renewables put together would replace only a fraction. It's a quantitative issue: numbers matter.

There are many things with much higher energy density. One kg of plutonium for instance, is the equivalent of more than 600,000 gallons of gasoline - and much cleaner too.

In fact, oil is not a source of energy so much as it represents stored energy. All of the energy on earth has a primary source, nuclear interactions. All of it.

There is not one compound in oil that can't be replaced through hydrogenation of carbon dioxide. Not one.

One of the interesting facts about peak oil proponents is that, despite a kind of morbid fascination with energy, they seem to have a poor concept of energy.

You've made a pretty sweeping assertion here:

> One of the interesting facts about peak oil proponents is that,
> despite a kind of morbid fascination with energy, they seem to have a poor concept of energy.

Now let's see the facts and cogent argument to back it up.

If you'd like to question any of the assertions I've made here based on your knowledge of physics and chemistry, I'm sure I'd be willing to address your concerns.

If on the other hand you seem to think that I should spoonfeed you what every educated citizen who wishes to make assertions about energy should know, I decline.

Let's start here: Name a compound in oil that cannot be replaced by a synthetic alternative.

Name the synthetic alternative that will replace oil barrel for barrel!!

It's cleaner, safer, more flexible than oil and can be made from energy in literally hundreds of ways.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x60314

Personally I feel ambivalent about the case. On one hand, I know how these companies will make DME: From coal and from natural gas. As a person whose main concern is global climate change, I'm certainly not please by this prospect. Already many coal to DME plants operate on a commercial scale and all use coal or natural gas sources.

On the other hand, I cannot help but be happy about the creation of a DME infrastructure, since by DME is by far the cleanest burning transportation there is, lacking a carbon-carbon bond. I am fully aware that DME can be obtained by clean energy approaches, including nuclear and renewables.

Both coal and natural gas are finite resources. The US and Canada both have about a 10 year supply of NG and coal is about a 50 year supply.. thus most of any amounts of DME would have to come from OVERSEAS unless you use nuclear.. Again with more finite resources..

Also researching DME I found these postings you failed to mention but perhaps could clear up:

We concluded that in terms of its comparative carbon monoxide and nitric oxide emissions, DME is a viable alternative utility fuel," says Boehman.

With a favorable emission profile, Boehman is now investigating DME as a replacement fuel in diesel engines. While burning DME produces fewer emissions than burning diesel fuel, DME has very poor lubricating properties.

"Diesel engines rely on the lubricating properties of diesel fuel to lubricate the fuel injection system and other components," says Boehman. "DME has no natural lubricating properties and we will need to add a lubricating additive for diesel engine use."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/10/991013075254.htm

And apparently the OCTANE rating for DME is much lower than gasoline and thus is not a likely replacement for gas. Yet may work better for deisel motors..

While DME may look good on the surface, it doesn't look like the replacement for oil we will so badly need in the next decade..

DME fueled buses operate all around the world. Your reference, which you have misconstrued, dates from 1999. The lubrication problem is well understood, and can be addressed in a number of ways. One way is to spray tiny amounts of biodiesel on the cylinder walls. This has the immediate effect of making biodiesel stretch hundreds of times further than it would be able to do if used neat. Another option is to add DMC (dimethyl carbonate). There are actually, hundreds of other options.

(The best option is to dispense with internal combustion altogether, as discussed below.)

I have pointed out that DME can be made from syn gas, which is available by literally thousands of different means, and has been available technologically for almost a century now on an industrial scale. Coal is just one way that syn gas can be made. Scientific journals and monographsy contain tens of thousands of references to other ways that syn gas be made, everything from walnut shells to direct separation from air (for carbon dioxide) and the admixture with hydrogen, hydrogen being readily available by renewable and nuclear means.

Like any good peak oiler hanging on the oracular words of Kunstler and Simmons, you assume that gasoline is the only possible motor fuel. This is pure nonsense, and conservative nonsense at that. Why is it conservative? Because it is wholly dependent on the pretense that everything must remain static and the same. This may come as news to you and Jim Kunstler, but the diesel engine is well understood, and has long been an item of industrial commerce in automobiles as well as trucks. Millions upon millions of diesel cars have already been sold. The octane number is therefore irrelevant, although the cetane number is relevant.

I keep pointing out that gasoline is a shitty fuel. Why? Because it pollutes.

I have pointed out many times that DME is superior because it can be burned in internal combustion engines and yet, is totally suitable for use in fuel cells, including those being actively pushed by Chemistry Nobel Laureate George Olah, who has made them his personal quest. DME can replace LPG gas. It can replace natural gas. It can replace almost all of the applications now touted for hydrogen, a far inferior fuel.

I hate to rain on your suicide parade of doom but there are magic bullets, and while I had my doubts just a few years ago, I am now confident that DME is it. When I look in the literature, it's very clear that the subject is out of the lab and rapidly coming into the real world. It's not a game for a few enthusiasts any more.

The argument for environmentalists, as distinct from peak oilers who think that oil depletion is somehow a bad thing, is to try to see that when DME is made, it is made sustainably. Obviously the sustainable option is renewables and nuclear. The battle is thus against the coal and natural gas boys. Right now we are losing this battle, but having watched DME grow in the minds of the world for more than a decade, I believe we have a chance to win, and thus save the world. Our odds may be difficult, but we have a shot, at least if we set aside conservative ignorance.

I'm actually pretty much in acceptance. And to be honest, I see it as much as an opportunity as a crisis.

While the transition will by no means be easy, I am hopeful that a fair number of individuals and communities will discover and re-discover ways of living that reconnect us with each other and the world in which we live. One reason I do not buy into "technofixes" is that industrial civilization is, in my opinion, an aberration of the human condition. It has effectively separated us from nature, and from meaningful social interaction with each other. Prolonging those arrangements will not solve anything -- it will only exacerbate existing problems.

The hope lies in developing sustainable models of living. The scary thing is that many people who are living horribly unsustainable lifestyles (like the majority of the population of Phoenix, AZ, for instance) will bear a great deal of pain during this transition.

This is a fellow I take quite seriously

Some excerpts:

And when is peak? "Realistically, we’re probably at peak now. If not, production will fall faster later" as a result of rising demand. This definitive conclusion is from a data specialist on the main assets of the petroleum industry: reserves and the whole industry’s ability to extract, refine and distribute at a profit. He is not surprised that peak is here, nor that we are caught unprepared. He offers his audiences instances of the public and leaders ignoring past warnings, such as M. King Hubbert’s on the peaking of domestic and global oil extraction.

How did oil analysts and the government get caught with their pants down? "Price volatility masked price signals." People were and are expected to trust samples for oil reserves, but he has seen "no proof that reserves still grow." There has been "only a theoretical 1.5 million barrel a day production cushion" to last three years. But the spare refining capacity is not there: if there is, it’s only for light, sweet crude that’s dwindling fastest. "The best Saudi oil is gone… Middle East production will go down by one third by 2012." He reported that an Occidental Petroleum official told him that they’re in the business of producing "brine stained with oil." Saudi Arabia has been depleting its precious fresh water by pumping it into its aging oil fields, and this has meant using more and more salt water to the detriment of the fields and the equipment.

Simmons said that if any of the larger Saudi fields pumping up to six million barrels a day went off line, as he seems to anticipate will happen, then we can hit $500 a barrel: "A lights out issue."

Given what Simmons knows, and speaking to a largely Pentagon audience sprinkled with Republicans from Capitol Hill, it was surprising to hear him confidently inform us that "A call to arms may be wrong. We may not even know who the enemy is. And maybe the enemy is us." In Simmons’ PowerPoint presentation he refers to "phony wars."

More: http://www.energybulletin.net/17555.html

... is the way they've shown his progression from a free-market endless growth guy to a virtual ecotopian. He's probably more on the side of permaculture now than the side of technofixes and a continued growth-oriented economy.

ON EDIT -- providing link: http://www.energybulletin.net/17555.html

After all the constant caterwauling about peak oil for two years on DU and some other places, nothing has really happened. I am starting to doubt. The US will just outbid small developing countries through cold hard cash(already happening), and the Hummer-McMansion pigfest will go on for at least another decade or two(albeit at higher prices), by then some alternative(s) might really be viable.

Sounds like a real progressive energy policy.

Oh, what happens to our ability to 'continue the pigfest' when that developing country China calls in the loans?

". . nothing has really happened. I am starting to doubt."

Then again, you apparently have some reading to do.

lem that will necessitate doing something else
and there are plenty of something elses to do-
including using fossil fuel in a less harmful manner
such as fuel cells and liquifying coal,
mass transit,
and lots of cost effective energy efficiency

I don't believe it will be Peak Oil that will "doom us". The problem will be a combination of population growth, diminishing returns for energy invested, economic depression, a failed economical model predicated on limitless growth and totally divorced from physical realities and out of control pollution and byproducts of industrial civiilization. Interestingly, one of the best texts on this issue is a review that Matt Simmons did of the "Limits of Growth" book by the Club of Rome, entitled "Could the Club of Rome be right after all?". I won't post it in its entirety, but I will post a few relevan quotes (it should come as something of a shock to everyone that a capitalist investment banker of impeccable neo classical training even entertains the possibility that Limits of Growth is correct!). I do believe that technofixes won't be able to save us, not without a drastci (and probably immoral) downsizing of the earth's population. But I am willing (and would love to) be surprised on this issue.

His text should be required reading (it is also a scary one).

Best

José de Freitas
Portugal

http://greatchange.org/ov-simmons,club_of_rome_revisted.html

---------------------------------

Over the past few years, I have heard various energy economists lambast this "erroneous" work done. Often the book has been portrayed as the literal "poster child" of misinformed "Malthusian" type thinking that misled so many people into believing the world faced a short mania 30 years ago. Obviously, there were no "The Limits To Growth". The worry that shortages would rule the day as we neared the end of the 20th Century became a bad joke. Instead of shortages, the last two decades of the 20th Century were marked by glut. The world ended up enjoying significant declines in almost all commodity prices. Technology and efficiency won. The Club of Rome and its "nay-saying" disciples clearly lost!

(...)

Since becoming aware of this Club of Rome work in 1994, I continually hear the "Club of Rome" shortage thesis raised by various energy economists who thoroughly condemn the work as being absolutely wrong. But I have never given any thought to what the Club of Rome's specific predictions actually were, nor have I ever known who this "mysterious" Club plotting the end of the world even was.

The primary reason I have never pursued more knowledge about this work is that I have never subscribed to the theory of the world ever encountering a permanent energy shortage. "Running out of oil" has never borne any relationship to my growing concern over the past decade that "not all is well in the energy world."

My energy worries have always centered on the simple prospect that demand could some day start outstripping supply. This is a totally different problem than running out of energy. Both are definite problems, they merely address different issues.

(...)

As I finished this China study, it left me wondering whether the world really had the sufficient resource base to allow China to achieve its dream of economic success. From the work I did on per capita energy use, if China ever becomes the equivalent of Japan in 1960, let alone finally convert its vast body of people to the prosperity of the United States today, this transition would consume so much energy that it raises the question of whether such added energy really exists. At the least, it would strain the world's energy resources to its limits.

(...)

After reading The Limits to Growth, I was amazed. Nowhere in the book was there any mention about running out of anything by 2000. Instead, the book's concern was entirely focused on what the world might look like 100 years later. There was not one sentence or even a single word written about an oil shortage, or limit to any specific resource, by the year 2000.

(...)

While many readers concocted various "imaginary" assumptions, the book's conclusions were quite simple. The first conclusion was a view that if present growth trends continued unchanged, a limit to the growth that our planet has enjoyed would be reached sometime within the next 100 years. This would then result in a sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.

The second key conclusion was that these growth trends could be altered. Moreover, if proper alterations were made, the world could establish a condition of "ecological stability" that would be sustainable far into the future.

The third conclusion was a view that the world could embark on this second path, but the sooner this effort started, the greater the chance would be of achieving this "ecologically stable" success.

The book, in its entirety, is beautifully written. It takes only a few hours to read. I would highly recommend it to anyone. It is an interesting mixture of simple, tried and true economic laws, combined with a terrific dose of logic. Without a doubt, there are some serious doomsday elements laid out which our world would face if the conclusions of this modeling work were ignored, and key trends continue to rise at exponential vs. linear rates. But, the book essentially lays out an optimistic outlook on how easily these limits to growth can be altered if a real effort to accomplish this is made at an early stage, rather than attempting such changes too late.

The most amazing aspect of the book is how accurate many of the basic trend extrapolation worries which ultimately give raise to the limits this book expresses still are, some 30 years later. In fact, for a work that has been derisively attacked by so many energy economists, a group whose own forecasting record has not stood the test of time very well, there was nothing that I could find in the book which has so far been even vaguely invalidated. To the contrary, the chilling warnings of how powerful exponential growth rate can be are right on track. The thesis that it is easy to misjudge this type of growth has also been proven by the volumes of misguided criticism that the report engendered.

(...)

The book detailed the economic and population growth rates for 10 countries in 1968 and how this translated into a GNP per capita in each country. The report then used simple arithmetic to calculate extrapolated values for GNP per capita from 1968 to the year 2000. While their text states, "the values shown... will almost certainly not actually be realized. They are not predictions. The values merely indicate where the general direction of our system, as it is currently structured, is taking us. The report demonstrated that the process of economic growth, as it is occurring today, is inexorably widening the absolute gap between the rich and the poor nations of the world." Exhibit 2 and 3 detail the 1968 data and the extrapolated GDP to 2000.

(...)

The most profound message which The Club of Rome passionately urged people to consider is the power of this type of exponential growth and the danger of the gap that existed between the world's rich and poor. That message is still alive and well. On September 26, 2000, the World Bank's top economists issued yet another warning of the urgent need to begin reducing what used to be a rich/poor gap but has now evolved into a rich/poor gulf.

According to these economists, while the global economy grew by 2.3% a year between 1965 and 1990, the gap between rich and poor countries is 10 TIMES wider than what it was 30 years ago. Both were measured in per capita terms, and the gap between rich and poor is also growing within many affluent countries.

Why is this message so mute to so many? Will it take a hasty wake-up call to finally create the meaningful questioning of how this enigma is solved? The Club of Rome got the whole picture right. It was the rest of us who missed the mark!

(...)

What can we infer about the state of the world over the next 30 years from continuing this extrapolating exercise? Is it realistic to assume that the gap between the rich and poor will never narrow? Could the world remain at peace if the gap never narrows or even widens? And, if it does narrow, as the World Bank head warned must occur to keep the world prosperous and peaceful, are we really certain that the world has sufficient resources in place to accommodate such changes?

These are the issues that should now be dominating the think tank discussions of the world's public policy planners. At least the energy aspects these issues raise deserve close examination. To extend the analyses embodied in The Limits to Growth out another 30 to 50 years no longer takes a supercomputer. Any hand held calculator can now do compounding growth rates. When a simple extrapolation in the growth trends for population, industrial activity, consumption of both agricultural and natural resources and the resultant pollution is done, the alarms raised are more discomforting today, with the benefit of an added 30 years, than the authors of The Limits to Growth contended three decades ago.

(...)

In the book's chapter defining the deceptive powers of exponential growth and the apparent suddenness with which it approaches a fixed limit, the authors describe the French Riddle of the Lily Pond. In this riddle, the lily pond has a potentially virulent lily that apparently will double in size each day. If the lily grows unchecked it will cover the entire pond in 30 days, choking off all other forms of life in the water by the time it covers the entire pond. If a skeptic waited until 50% of the pond was covered before taking any remedial action to save the pond, when would he act? The answer: on the 29th day of the month! But by then, would be too late.

(...)

I have no good data or knowledge about agricultural or non-energy consumption data. A casual reading of the possible future limits to water, arable land, fish stocks, etc. causes one to question how the world could even cope with continued population growth an a narrowing of the rich/poor gap.

But simply focusing on the energy issues which should concern the world argues that the world probably cannot wait another 30 years to begin pondering whether we could begin to experience problems and sheer limits to non-renewal energy consumption. The lead times for any corrective actions or alternative energy alternatives are simply too great.

Take the energy needs of China as an example of the problem. This giant population pool is struggling to remove the shackles of poverty suffered throughout the 20th Century. There is a case to be made that by 2030, or at least by 2050, China could become the Japanese Miracle of 1960, or even what Japan is like today. At the least, China could become the equivalent of a Thailand, Greece or Turkey today.

If such a transformation were to take place, are the world's resources sufficient for this miracle to safely occur?

(...)

Examine carefully the demographics of the entire Middle East and ponder how any of these countries can safely plan on being energy exporters through 2030, let alone 2050 to 2070. If these countries finally use up so much energy that they have nothing left to export, is this the "final event" which The Limits to Growth warned us about?

The Limits to Growth was never meant to be a doomsday book. Rather it was hoped that it would trigger a change in the flow of human trends to avoid such a doomsday. But, the sponsors of this project were clear that it was simply a non-starter to leave the world's wealth so unevenly distributed. They were equally clear that "short of a world effort, today's (1972) already explosive gaps and inequities will continue to grow. And the outcome of this trend can only be a disaster."

They were also clear that the closer we got to the material limits to the planet, the more difficult this problem would be to tackle. (The old French Lily Pond Riddle coming back to haunt us once more.)

(...)

It would be naïve, in my opinion, to assume the gap between rich and poor could stay as it is now, and even more naïve to assume this gap can grow without finally creating massive civic turmoil. If the gap gets too great, the poor will finally "come over the walls of prosperity" and attempt to redistribute this wealth. History has shown this to be the case, time after time. Most of our worst wars were not ideological battles but true fights over the redistribution of wealth.

But closing the rich/poor gap needs very carefully implementation, as the exponential changes in both energy resources and a staggering number of other factors, including the pollution these increases imply, will strain the world's logistic and resources availability to its limits.

(...)

Interesting reading indeed.

> ... a drastic (and probably immoral) downsizing of the earth's
> population.

It's coming, whether we like it or not. The more preparation we
do, the less drastic the event (and less likely to trigger an immoral
"solution").

One thing that strikes me about the conversion of people like Matt Simmons from free-marketeers to virtual ecotopians is that it displays the ability of people to change. That gives me hope for the future, and the crises we and subsequent generations will have to face. However that change is predicated on an individual's ability to look critically at reality, and adjust one's conclusions to better fit said reality -- instead of trying to make reality fit their conclusions. That is what gives me pause in times like these, because there is too little critical thinking going on in our society as a whole.

The thing I keep trying to bring into focus is our need to live in much greater harmony with natural systems than to try and control them -- especially if we want to have a sustainable economy. In order to do this, we need to try and get back in contact with natural systems, and the humanity that we all share. The biggest problem with industrial and post-industrial society is that they both pull people away from these two grounding forces, with dangerous consequences.

Until we take into account whether our daily actions and economic activities put us in greater touch with each other and our shared earth, or if they take us away from them, we will not be able to effectively address these crises. We need to significantly change the way we go about our daily business, as if the fate of the world depends upon it -- because it does.

is just when will all these oil "exporters" decide they can no longer export oil for their very own livelyhood and keep whatever oil they do have for themselves?? If we won't face this question surely our children will..

It's PO combined with global warming that scares the living shit out me.

We are the frying pan that has burned off all it's oil. Not a pretty picture.