Oil shock / peak oil and transport in Ireland

monument

A former BP staffer and others says peak oil is still a problem and the short-term oil boom will make it worse:

http://t.co/SS1iOJRTgc

While Ireland is making strong efforts on the renewable power generation front, and, even without getting to peak oil, we are still very exposed to any oil shock across the board on transport.

Can that change? Or should we just wait until it's more expensive and damaging for us to act?

Roger_007

monument wrote: »

A former BP staffer and others says peak oil is still a problem and the short-term oil boom will make it worse:

http://t.co/SS1iOJRTgc

While Ireland is making strong efforts on the renewable power generation front, and, even without getting to peak oil, we are still very exposed to any oil shock across the board on transport.

Can that change? Or should we just wait until it's more expensive and damaging for us to act?

I see that Dr Millard is a geologist, one of those 'experts' who constantly make predictions which prove to be untrue. Back in in the days of the oil shocks of the 1970s all the experts were predicting that the world would run out of oil by the year 2000. Those predictions were bad on consumption levels at that time. Despite an exponential increase in consumption since then it still hasn't run out.
Of course it has to run out eventually, but nobody can predict when that will be.

Unfortunately most of the alternative sources of energy are, as yet, unreliable or unacceptable, (nuclear). So, although we may have good intentions, we do not have a solution to the long-term energy problem. It may be be that a major lifestyle change will be required. We may have to revert to a pre-oil way of living.

corktina

Probably what will have to happen eventually, whether by legislation or by market forces, is that private use of oil-burning vehicles will be limited.
Technology will mean many more people could be working from home , this could be promoted more now in fact but doesn't seem a popular option. Hard to see why really, because if you were to dedicate a room in your home as an office and your employer contributed towards this, plus the savings in fares/fuel. I would have thought this is the obvious way to go for many jobs.
The Age of the Car is drawing to a close, just as other forms of transport have been eclipsed. Many will see this as an opportunity for Public Transport but I think the Information Highway will be the successor.

Of course Oil won't actually run out, it will just be too expensive to use.

(not in my lifetime though)

mickdw

We are many years off having to worry about our oil supplies. When it is genuinely visible to all that another power source is needed, I think it will be Much much easier to get worldwide acceptance of nuclear power.

bk

Roger_007 wrote: »

We may have to revert to a pre-oil way of living.

Bull, that would effectively mean the death of hundreds of millions of people and severe poverty.

A massive amount of our energy goes into food production. Without that energy we would have massive famines.

The reality is that when push comes to shove, we are going to go Nuclear. When you have other options, people shy away from Nuclear, in particular spineless politicians. But no one is going to opt to give up their energy driven life styles over some minor worries about Nuclear.

As for transportation, we are pretty well set here in Ireland. The Tesla electric car already has enough battery power to get from one end of Ireland to another on just one charge and that is with todays batteries, which will only improve. The reality is Ireland is a small island, with generally small distances and thus it is perfect for electric cars.

monument

bk wrote: »

As for transportation, we are pretty well set here in Ireland. The Tesla electric car already has enough battery power to get from one end of Ireland to another on just one charge and that is with todays batteries, which will only improve. The reality is Ireland is a small island, with generally small distances and thus it is perfect for electric cars.

Has a solution to the lithium ion problem been found yet?

http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1544

Chris_5339762

If we can last out about another 100 years until Nuclear Fusion is cracked, there will be no more energy production worries. Storage in the form of batteries will still be an issue however, but as with all technology gain, when there is a need, or money to be made, there will be a way.

MGWR

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

If we can last out about another 100 years until Nuclear Fusion is cracked, there will be no more energy production worries. Storage in the form of batteries will still be an issue however, but as with all technology gain, when there is a need, or money to be made, there will be a way.

"Cracked" is the word indeed. The problem of creating a miniature star on the planet's surface is a very large scientific problem to surmount.

The current problem is not production of oil, but the attitudes of the leaders of the countries that produce oil; depending on the location, they are either very authoritarian or religiously maniacal or both. The refinement of oil into useable fuel is also a problem; the left-wingers in the USA put a moratorium on new refineries, which has squeezed the supply of refined petrol for the free world for a bit too long.

el pasco

bk wrote: »

Bull, that would effectively mean the death of hundreds of millions of people and severe poverty.

A massive amount of our energy goes into food production. Without that energy we would have massive famines.

The reality is that when push comes to shove, we are going to go Nuclear. When you have other options, people shy away from Nuclear, in particular spineless politicians. But no one is going to opt to give up their energy driven life styles over some minor worries about Nuclear.

As for transportation, we are pretty well set here in Ireland. The Tesla electric car already has enough battery power to get from one end of Ireland to another on just one charge and that is with todays batteries, which will only improve. The reality is Ireland is a small island, with generally small distances and thus it is perfect for electric cars.

Nuclear?? Good luck to that they're more than enough coal to last us hundreds of years so no worries
Anyway the uranium won't even last that long

MGWR

el pasco wrote: »

Nuclear?? Good luck to that they're more than enough coal to last us hundreds of years so no worries
Anyway the uranium won't even last that long

Well, in the case of either coal or nuke, I don't see DB pushing too hard to convert buses to trolleybus in order to make better use of the energy.

spank_inferno

el pasco wrote: »

Nuclear?? Good luck to that they're more than enough coal to last us hundreds of years so no worries
Anyway the uranium won't even last that long

All depends on whether governments are serious about a low carbon future.

If not, you are correct.
There is many a decade of coal & gas to replace the role of crude oil.

If governments are indeed serious about low carbon (remains to be seen), nuclear & only nuclear can deliver today the worlds energy demands.

monument

MGWR wrote: »

Well, in the case of either coal or nuke, I don't see DB pushing too hard to convert buses to trolleybus in order to make better use of the energy.

Err.. there's other options than trolleybus...

LA Metro two years ago finished a move to compressed natural gas buses -- a report in 2011 said their fleet now includes 2,221 CNG, 1 all-electric and 6 hybrid buses. This year, LA Metro said it was ordering 25 more all-electric buses.

Transport for London meanwhile this month started to trial just two all-electric buses.

Forget about reserving or placing restrictions on oil, maybe we should be reserving lithium ion supply for buses rather than cars?

hfallada

There has been talk of peak oil is coming since the 1970s, but a new source of oil was always found. Take the tar sands in Canada which are now a massive source of oil. There is the arctic circle which Russia cant wait to start drilling very soon.

But yet the demand for oil will probably not increase much more. Although their is more demand from the developing countries, demand is falling in the west

monument

hfallada wrote: »

There has been talk of peak oil is coming since the 1970s, but a new source of oil was always found. Take the tar sands in Canada which are now a massive source of oil. There is the arctic circle which Russia cant wait to start drilling very soon.

But yet the demand for oil will probably not increase much more. Although their is more demand from the developing countries, demand is falling in the west

While demand declined in Westren countries because of the recession, this has already started to rebound and, in any case, the longer term trends seem to at best show the growth in developing countries overall overshadowing any decline in the developed world.

According to the IEA global demand is up on stronger-than-expected 2013 Q3 demand from Westren states (ie those in the OECD)...

"The estimate of global oil demand for 2013 has been revised up by 130 kb/d, to 91.2 mb/d, on stronger-than-expected 3Q13 OECD demand growth of 320 kb/d. Global demand is now seen advancing by 1.2 mb/d in both 2013 and 2014, to reach 92.4 mb/d in 2014."

http://omrpublic.iea.org