Oil Crisis

vector

Oil won't run out happen for a while some say 2040 others say later, but one thing is for sure as it gets scacer and more expensive things will change.

I'm worried. I forsee famine, in Ireland, where you live in 40 years.

All those housing estates with postage stamp gardens, and concrete soils, self-sufficiency isin't possible there, what about farms, well they have been reduced in size by the building of those houses, and tractors need fuel etc etc.

Transport of food in trucks requires fuel

Comments...

Rabies

We probably won't be using fossil fuels by then so it doesn't matter.

Esel

Soylent Green.

breadmonkey

My chemistry lecturers seem certain that Ireland will eventually have to turn to nuclear power.

Rabies

Maybe on a small scale but i think there would be so much opposition that the government will be forced to import power from other EU countries. Renewable energy will be major drive in this country, wind farms will increase to fill the gap of solid fuel.

lomb

Rabies wrote:

Maybe on a small scale but i think there would be so much opposition that the government will be forced to import power from other EU countries. Renewable energy will be major drive in this country, wind farms will increase to fill the gap of solid fuel.

i dont believe renewable sources are viable as they reakon to generate the same power as a medium sized powerstation would need thousands and thousands of acres of solar panels even considering extracting more than present out of the suns energy.
it will be all nuclear at some future point, when that will be is anyones guess. id say its at least 200 years away anyway.

vector

Even if you could generate electricity from the air, another problem remains...
plastic

Plastic is made from oil

Xcom2

esel wrote:

Soylent Green.

Soylent Green is people! :eek:


X

Xcom2

Methane is the future!

It's a renewable fuel source that can be turned into natural gas or compost.

In the future every time you take a dump it will be sucked off into an airtight container and all the little bacteria will get to work.

Fart for your future!

Remember that slogan,I have copyright on it!

X

tuxy

Rabies wrote:

Maybe on a small scale but i think there would be so much opposition

might not be who knows it might be much safer in 30-40 years

tribulus

Other sources will be developed.

biofuels will probably become more common.
If a safe way to harvest the energy from the likes of methane or hydrogen gas could be developed that could become the new 'wonder fuel'.

I's just a matter of research imo

edit: damn fast typers :mad:

Xcom2

tribulus wrote:

edit: damn fast typers :mad:

Fart for your future!

Remember that slogan,I have copyright on it!

X

Kernel

Three words people:

Zero Point Energy.

Google is your friend.

seamus

Moved from AH

breadmonkey

to generate the same power as a medium sized powerstation would need thousands and thousands of acres of solar panels

That's inconsequential because you need a certain type of silicon to make solar panels, and there simply isn't enough of this on the planet to make enough solar panels.

Xcom2

Zero Point Energy is hundreds if not thousands of years from where we are now.

Just look at the site http://www.zpenergy.com/ and you'll see.There is lots of talk about atom's gravity and magnet's.
There are also talk's about sceptic's and many book's to be bought on the subject.This is usually a factor that lead's me to believe it's all science fiction.

X

the_syco

lomb wrote:

thousands and thousands of acres of solar panels

Also, this is Ireland. We don't get much sun.

=-=

I'd say nuclear is the way that'll cure our problems.

Its not safe, its not stable, but it lasts a long time.

Also, we can just open up the one in Trinity (or was it Cork?).

Doper Than U

Also, this is Ireland. We don't get much sun

Ireland is actually in an excellent position for solar. We get more "sun" than Germany. Just not as much heat.

The hotter it is, the worse it is for solar panels. They do better in moderate climates than super hot countries.

Nuclear is hailed as the panacea for all our energy problems... but Uranium (especially usable Uranium) is a finite source in itself.. if the entire planet were to turn Nuclear tomorrow, we'd have about 3-10 years of Uranium left. Also, nuclear cannot solve the problem of transportation if there's no oil.

Oil won't run out happen for a while some say 2040 others say later, but one thing is for sure as it gets scacer and more expensive things will change.

I'm worried. I forsee famine, in Ireland, where you live in 40 years.

All those housing estates with postage stamp gardens, and concrete soils, self-sufficiency isin't possible there, what about farms, well they have been reduced in size by the building of those houses, and tractors need fuel etc etc.

Transport of food in trucks requires fuel

Comments...

Ok. Yes, oil may not run out til 2040, but, like you said, higher prices are going to grind things to a halt sooner or later. Peak Oil is going to hit within the next 5 years, if it hasn't already hit. Pemex (Mexico's giant field) is dying. Ghawar (Saudi's biggest.. and the worlds biggest and most important field) is dying. Meanwhile, demand is increasing at a massive rate (China and India). New oil projects are few and far between, and none of them can replace the amount of oil that Ghawar used to produce. Saudi is currently over-producing it's key fields, which means that if there's gonna be a crash, it's gonna be a fast one. Saudi is oil.

ANWR, Canada, Caspian Sea... these are all new oil developments coming online within the next few years. Their contribution will be marginal... it won't replace the lost fields by a long shot. Also, their oil isn't the lovely light sweet crude you get from the Saudi fields.. it's sticky dirty heavy crude, that takes a lot more energy to refine.

Self-sufficiency is fully possible for Ireland as regards food. Yes, suburbia is a planning disaster. But, you mentioned gardens? Well more food can be grown in a garden than you might imagine.. but that won't solve our problems. Ireland is fortunate enough to have massive amounts of arable land, good arable land. We can grow all we need here. Transport? Yup.. that's a humdinger of a problem. Thankfully, we have a semi-decent rail system that can run very efficiently (assuming we use bio-diesel or steam power). Biodiesel can also be used for trucks. Get rid of all the cars on the road, and it'll be possible to grow enough bio-diesel to get food to where it's needed. Ireland will cope quite well. Famine is not a possibility unless we grow only potatoes again (talk about putting all your eggs in one basket :roll: ).

Heating will be a problem, as will eletricity. But, it can be managed. I feel sorry for places like Las Vegas and Phoenix Arizona... look at those places! They're cities in the desert! You can't grow anything but cacti out there.

Interesting fact : Ireland is the 7th most oil dependent nation in the world. The US is 30th. Now that sucks.

For those who are interested (and those who are skeptical) I recommend these sites :

www.energybulletin.net
www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
www.peakoil.com


Also, there are two conferences about PO in June in Ireland :

http://www.energybulletin.net/5384.html in Kinsale, Co Cork. Speakers include Colin Campbell and Richard Heinberg

http://www.feasta.org/events/foodconf/food_conference.htm In UCD. Richard Heinberg will also speak here.


And for those who don't believe that oil will run out, or even those who prefer the economics of oil over the geological facts I recommend : http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches

Simmons & Co. International is the ONLY independant Investment bank for the Energy sector in the world, and the CEO is one of the main authorities on Peak Oil : Matthew Simmons.

netwhizkid

Originally Posted by Kernel

Three words people:

Zero Point Energy.

Google is your friend.

Well what ever about Zero Point Energy, Anti-matter maybe a solution, whatever about making anit-matter bombs to blow up the vatican while its in conclave, ala Dan Brown Angels and Demons, this technology may be useful for more for electricty generation if CERN gets it right.

Thats my opinion but anti matter won't exactly fill up those gas guzzlers will it ?

Regards netwhizkid

NeilJ

What about alcohol? Or is that what you mean when you say biofuel? Cars can be run on many different things, we're just addicted to petroleum. Diesel cars can be run on cooking oil. In Latin America cars are run on alcohol which can be fermented from sugars. Then there's the fuel cell which we will have on cars as soon as the manufacturers can get the costs down i.e. find cheaper catalysts for the reactions. Then you'll have cars run on hydrogen and oxygen mixes producing water as your biproduct. I don't think it will be all doom and gloom. I do think that the world economy is going to suffer really badly but thats more because governments are going to be force to make a lot of massive changes to our energy infrastructure very fast as they haven't bothered to slowly scale things in now for the future.

Neil

bonkey

Doper Than U wrote:

Also, nuclear cannot solve the problem of transportation if there's no oil.

Yes. It can. You just have to think slightly laterally.

You generate electricity using unclear power. You store said power in batteries of some description (which could also include the use of using teh electricity to generate hydrogen for Fuel Cells). You power your "free-directional" transport via these batteries. You power your "fixed-directional" transport (trams, trains etc) directly from nuclear-power powered power cables.

Indeed, SciAm did a comparison some time in the last year or two, and pointed out that with current technology and infrastructure, the centralised generation of electricity, followed by existing distribution, localised battery-charging, etc. was far and away the cleanest and most practical alternative right now.

jc

p.s. don't forget nuclear subs etc.

Capt'n Midnight

vector wrote:

Oil won't run out happen for a while some say 2040 others say later, but one thing is for sure as it gets scacer and more expensive things will change.

There won't be a sudden switch off anytime soon. Coal won't run out for about 400 years and the Canadian oil sands will last even longer. Both are just uneconomic to use compared to middle east oil (which is sold at a discount because many of those countries make more on thier investments in the oil dependent west than in the profit on the oil - they could nearly give the stuff away for free !!)
wind power/wave power is all around us.

The ONLY reason why road transport uses internal combustion instead of electric motors is because storage/generation of electricity is too heavy. if any of the projects in to lithium batteries / methanol fuel cells / "mole" capacitiors / hydrogen storage ever works out say goodbye to petrol engines.

Most "diesel" trains and large dump trucks are already diesel-electric - a generator and motor set has advantages over mechanical gearboxes !

One other option would be hybrid steam cars. You'd use a steam turbine or diesel engine to convert 45% of the energy in to motion/electricity and then you'd have a storage battery and regenerative breaking so you loose a lot less on stop/start and hills. Electric motors means ABS is included in the price and all wheel drive comes at very little extra cost. Steam turbines would take time to startup - but for a loss in effeciency you could use flash boiling - or the battery until you got up to running temperature.

Doper Than U

Why nuclear isn't the answer

Canada currently produces 1 million barrels of oil per day from its oil sands (2004). The worldwide demand for oil stands at 25 billion barrels per year. 1 million bpd is basically a fart in a stiff wind. It's nothing. Also, in the ASPO projections for Peak Oil, Canada's Oil Sands have been taken into account, so their Peak "date" remains as it is. The EROEI is also shockingly poor, you need to process two tonnes of sand for one barrel of oil. Compare it to Saudi Arabia and Russia, who each produce about 9-9.5 million bpd, and you see how insignificant Canada's conrtibution is. Also, China and the US both have deals with Canada for this oil, the rest of the world won't even get a whiff of it. It gets worse, this oil is the heavy, sh1tty, sticky crude that takes enormous energy to process. It's not like that beautiful light sweet black gold that we get from Saudi.

bonkey

Doper Than U wrote:

Canada currently produces 1 million barrels of oil per day from its oil sands (2004). The worldwide demand for oil stands at 25 billion barrels per year.

Why is it that people compare two things using inequal scales when trying to show how insignificant something is?

1m bpd == .365bn bpy. With total demand at your estimated 25bn bpy, that makes Canada's "utterly insignificant" contribution from the oil sands to work out at just shy of 1.5% of the total. Small, sure, but utterly insignificant? Hardly.

Especially when the giants of production are managing less than 10 times that, going by the figures you've provided.

Also, bear in mind that the reason more isn't extracted from the oil sands at present is a mix of factors, mostly revolving around the notion that its simply not profitable - as opposed to not possible - to do so.

The EROEI is also shockingly poor, you need to process two tonnes of sand for one barrel of oil.

Y'know...the EROEI on nuclear fuel is also shockingly poor. Doesn't stop anyone, though, because the economics and lack of alternatives make it worthwhile.

And thats the kicker. No matter how sh1tty the oil in Canada and similar places may be, its still going to be financially worthwhile at some point, and the current energy moguls are going to make more money sticking with the current approach (i.e. oil-based) as long as possible.

So pointing out how today's supplies and today's tech makes it a bad deal is a bit disengenuous.

jc

crazy angel

some wind farm that was going to be off the coast of wicklow has stopped being built half way through, because the government wont fund it.

Capt'n Midnight

bonkey wrote:

Y'know...the EROEI on nuclear fuel is also shockingly poor. Doesn't stop anyone, though, because the economics and lack of alternatives make it worthwhile.

Nuclear power is
* safe,
* economic and
* the waste can be managed
But you can't have all three - two if you do it properly. Decontamination costs alone

One of the main reasons nuclear power is used is a front for weapons, it allows you an excuse to produce enriched uranium (Pakistan) or to setup a small (house sized) breader reactor to produce plutonium (everyone else). There is a case to ban plutonium, tritium and some other artifically generated isotopes as they serve very few useful functions in amounts over one gramme - even for nuclear power the clean up costs more than the extra power generated. (South Africa is the only country to have disarmed !)

Very few nuclear stations are being built compared to the numbers being decomissioned or just kept running while replacments are being sourced

Biomass would be one way to go - coppiced willow, using machines on stilts to harvest the branches might be the way for us to go with the rainfall we have. other options would be to have green houses with elevated CO2 levels and a load of biotechnology as it CO2 and not light that is the limiting factor for biomass generation in most cases.

Doper Than U

bonkey wrote:

Why is it that people compare two things using inequal scales when trying to show how insignificant something is?

1m bpd == .365bn bpy. With total demand at your estimated 25bn bpy, that makes Canada's "utterly insignificant" contribution from the oil sands to work out at just shy of 1.5% of the total. Small, sure, but utterly insignificant? Hardly.

It's pretty insignificant when you think that China's demand will rise by at least 3% this year alone, some say as much as 10%. Point is, even at current rates from all the oilfields (most of which are in decline, Ghawar, Canterell etc) demand is soon to outstrip supply.

Y'know...the EROEI on nuclear fuel is also shockingly poor. Doesn't stop anyone, though, because the economics and lack of alternatives make it worthwhile.

And thats the kicker. No matter how sh1tty the oil in Canada and similar places may be, its still going to be financially worthwhile at some point, and the current energy moguls are going to make more money sticking with the current approach (i.e. oil-based) as long as possible.

I agree. Point is, there is a finite amount of oil on the planet, with major fields in decline and supply skyrocketing we are going to hit problems. There just won't be enough oil to meet demand. As soon as it costs one barrel to extract one barrel, people just won't take oil out anymore.
No-one's saying there won't be attempts to take more oil from existing and ailing fields, no-one's saying there won't be new technology, the question is how much of a difference it will make. As I said, Canada's oil fields were taken into ASPO's peak projection.

jman0

did you ever read about Peak Oil?
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Fairly frightening stuff.
One of things they site as proof that oil is running out is that oil refineries are not being constucted, in USA the last one built was in 1976.

However i dunno about this because i think there could be other reasons why.

Also, alternative energies are not exactly independent from oil. In fact, they depend on oil availablity.

mike65

crazy angel wrote:

some wind farm that was going to be off the coast of wicklow has stopped being built half way through, because the government wont fund it.

Berie Ahern is opening the GE wind farm on the Arklow bank tomorrow (May 26th). airtrcity is still involved but its future development is in question apparently.

http://www.airtricity.com/opencontent/default.asp?itemid=397&section=WIND+FARMS

Wind farms are quietly popping up all over the place but they are'nt the solution to replaceing fossil fuel only a way of diverting some power needs.

The future is going to be a pic and mix one, with all possible ways to reduce demand and generate clean power - wind, sun, sea, biomass, thermal can all be used but I suspect not on a large scale. The biggest impact we can have is more straightforward - turn things off! Insulate and regulate.

Mike.