http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj05cavallo
The entire world’s infrastructure is built on oil with no serious plans for anything else …
Alarmist? Maybe. We’ll all find out here before we get much older.
cheers,
-TB
Hey, Bush said he wants more nuke plants. Whether he ponies up for him remains to be seen but if we all work together (lol lame) there’s little doubt in my mind we can harness new technologies (pebble bed nuke reactors!) to fulfill whatever requirements we’ll end up having.
Go team world!
It’s obvious that it has to happen sooner or later. Maybe just a bit sooner than many anticipated.
Yep. Deal is we have been building a world economy totally dependent on oil for transportation for 100 years. I don’t think we have 100 more years to transition to something else. Ingenuity will save us, but it’s gonna be expensive. Frankly I would rather suffer a little now in order to suffer less later. I don’t see many businesses or governments telling it like it is, though. It’s not what we want to hear.
I’m with you on suffering a little now rather then a lot later but with how fast science moves today I don’t think it will take 100 years for man to master the next worldwide fuel source. We are still probably a few years away from the world really starting to take action to find alternative fuel sources, right now it seems like the majority of our government would prefer to keep their heads in the sand and pretend we are all playing in rivers of oil with gumdrop smiles.
The dependence on an oil economy is consumer driven. Technology already exists to decrease our consumption of fossil fuels. Until energy prices rise to levels where consumers begin to look at alternative sources industry has no reason to offer any alternatives.
"Until energy prices rise to levels where consumers begin to look at alternative sources industry has no reason to offer any alternatives. "
They have plenty of reasons, it’s just that none of them are as appealing as the status quo. Eventually there’s going to be a point at which the momentum shifts away from oil, and then all these companies are going to be scrambling to position themselves as the “New alternative” or the “Leader in clean fuels” and instead of getting there now, they are content to ride this wave as long as they can. It’s a giant gamble in which no one wants to jump to clean fuel too early, but no one wants to fall behind either.
In terms of automobiles the imports have the leg up on offering hybrids…Toyota and Honda are leading the way in that regard. GM, Ford, Chrysler rode the lucrative SUV market for the longest time and the bill is coming due.
It’s more complicated on the utility side but we are seeing alot of activity and interest towards nuclear and wind stations. The turn on a nuclear station is 10-15 years long from inception to production…shorter if the blocks and permits are already in place. The seeds for the return to nuclear are being planted…
Don’t you think the technology already exists to severely decrease our dependance on oil? Wonder why it isn’t being put to use? My guess is that someone stands to lose big $$. When that isn’t so much an issue, wait to see all the “hey look what we just developed”.
Oil is guaranteed $$$$ in the short term; alternatives are not, maybe not ever. Some alternatives will succeed, others will fail. Hydrogen, for example, has been developed and redeveloped and no money has been made off it (yet). And no money may ever be made off it if it doesn’t end up replacing gasoline … Plus we have $$ trillions in oil infrastructure already in place. The scary thing is we are really almost starting from scratch, which is why switching to something other than oil will be so expensive. The free market will work things out but we will suffer in the mean time as the free market never looks to the distant future.
I agree with you, in reality even 5 or 6 dollars a gallon won’t stop people from buying gas, we are still years (decades?) from desperately needing alternative fuel sources. I’d find it comforting if there were some obvious strides being made towards a switch in the future though.
I saw a program the other night saying there is enough oil off the coast of Nova Scotia to power all of New York State for the next 30 years.
I would still love to see alternative fuels soon though.
I would dive a nuclear powered car!!! 
“Yeah don’t screw with me buddy or I will toxic goo your ass”
Much of the demand for oil is due to the fact that it’s cheap. The US has some of the cheapest fuel prices in the world, and it’s a political hot potato to raise the price significantly. No president would double the cost of fuel, as it would be political suicide.
Most people don’t care what’s going to happen to the world in 30 years. They’re not prepared to pay the extra today, to safeguard a supply for the future they won’t be a part of. Yes there is a finite supply of oil, which is why we shouldn’t be burning it for fuels. There is more oil available than generally predicted, the oil peak has been redefined every few years for decades, but it’s going to cost much more to access it. 40 years ago, it was considered impossible to pull oil out from under the north sea, because of the conditions. In fact, the head of a major oil company was once quoted as saying that he’d drink all the oil you could get from the North Sea. Yet within 10 years of that remark, BP was pulling oil out from the new Forties field and we’ve seen a growth in technology to deal with the harsh environment.
There are large deep water deposits that we’re only now developing the technology to produce. I did the surveys off Angola 10 years ago, that led to Elf’s Girassol 1 field, one of the largest discoveries outside the middle east, in the last 30 years. It’s huge. There are fields off Brazil, newly discovered that are in 4000 feet or more of water. You need technologies like tension leg platforms and disconnected riser drill strings to deal with those depths, which are expensive and will continue to push the price of oil, as will the political instability in the middle east.
We’re at $60 a barrel now, and I’m going to guess that we’ll be at $100 within 2-3 years unless the current geopolitical climate changes, which I don’t think it will. At that point, the cost of petrol in the US is going to have to change significantly, as the majority of US oil is imported. There’s no alternative to that. When people have to pay the higher prices, you’ll start seeing much more effort being put into alternatives. I don’t think the US will give up it’s big car lifestyle soon, as it’s inherent to the american culture, and the size of the coutnry, but I do think you’ll start seeing different ways to power them, such as hydrogen or natural gas. The only real thing stopping that at the moment is the cost of the fuel supply infrastructure. With the recent developement of cheap home units that can take your domestic gas supply and use it to fuel your regular vehicle overnight, things may start to change.
My 2c.
Good info. Thanks. Efficiency is where its at, but we have to be tricked into doing do it or somehow forced to, economically. New homes are much more efficient than new homes 40 years ago, but our homes are twice as big, that’s a problem … New appliances are way better but we have so many more now … The key is huge incentives to conserve and we need to do it now. There are a million ways to do it, but there needs to be more immediate, tangible reasons and easy ways to conserve.
When oil hits $100 a barrel and stays there and gas hits $3.50 a gallon in the U.S., well, that might be the impetus. But when that happens, the hot Asian economies will slow and we’re in for global recession and that will suck.
All true, but a lot of western economies have one option open to them that the US doesn’t. Taxation. In the UK for example, fuel is taxed at around 80%. You could drop that and temper the increase in oil cost. In the US you can’t, as the tax is so low on fuel.
Not that I think other economies will do that. Governments will just reap more in tax and we, as consumers, will continue to get reamed for it.
As you say, conservation is where it’s at. If we took the money needed to build a couple of new powerstations, and applied it to adding roof insulation and possibly double glazing, to the older houses in the US, you just wouldn’t need the power stations, saving on the use of fossil fuels, and the resulting emissions.
Somehow, people just don’t see that.
Conservation is a nice idea when dealing with fossil fuels. I also believe fuel efficiency is key. Efficient homes and automobiles are some obvious easy places to save. I don’t mind the idea of opening new fields for drilling like what Freeflyer mentioned, but we need to get our energy from a variety of sources. Nuclear, IMO, is a good option. (No I’m not talking about cars at this point.) But, and I never thought I’d be saying this, solar is such an obvious benefit. The advances in the efficiency of solar cells is quite impressive. I have a friend with a small solar field that powers his entire large house, heats his pool and hot tub, and has enough power left over almost every month to put power back into the grid. Yes the cells are expensive, but they’re a one time cost. Even the military is slowly beginning to take advantage of them. There is solar in use at the Pentagon, and in Coronado the Navy has taken advantage of solar:
http://www.powerlight.com/case-studies/naval_base_cor.shtml
This installation produces enough power daily to power over 935 homes. I really believe these ought to be more common.
Someone mentioned that there is no immediate need to move away from oil. I guess technologically that might be true, but geopolitically it’s not.
You realize that very little of the electricity in this country, used to power homes and offices, is generated by burning oil (think coal and natural gas)? Solar and nuclear power will do little to ease the oil crunch that is to come.
Cool. I also heard the Guvernator has instituted a program to promote more solar power in homes in Cali. I guess for about $25,000 you can install solar panels that provide power, heat water, etc. You can get half that money back from the gov., then with the money you save in energy costs over the course of 10-15 years or so the panels pay for themselves. I heard some Green touting this program on the news. Anyone know any more about this?
There have been incentive programs around for a while. There is a pool established at the beginning of the year, and how much of a subsidy you get depends on how many people are requesting them and how much is left. So timing is key. But there are also tax incentives. I dunno about anything specific that Arnold is doing beyone that though. These programs were around since before his time.
Ken I’ll take your word for it when it comes to electric power generation. Seems to me though that sunlight is free, if we can make use of it then great. I’m a big fan of one time costs and I hate the “subscription model” that many businesses use. Maybe there’s an alternative for some home utilities.
klehner: Yes, much electricity comes from coal and natural gas. But if you take more stress off the power grid, this frees up those energy sources to be used in areas that are traditionally oil based. Think LNG or propane powered cars and coal liquifaction.
TB: As far as incentives to conserve, well, there is no incentive like price. We can begin to provide incentives to stoke efficiency, but realize that these are only effective in the face of higher costs.