I have recently found out about peak oil from a member of my local U.U.
he held a confrence and showed all of the graphs, including population
and oil production. I am at the point now where I am trying hard to
disprove this theory. I want your responces from my questions before I
make up my mind.(I also read some 184 page E-book that my friend's
dad e-mailed me.)
#1 Why do you not incorperate coal into the time before the crash, sure 2010-2020 is shocking, but isn't it misleading to suggest that such a enviroment ignoring country such as ourselves wont use coal? Wont that add about 40 years before the crash? That makes my age from 25, to 65 untill this crash occurs.
#2 The power outages in california were brought on by companies trying to get rich, not shortages. right? If so then why is it constantly linked to what will happen in the futer in regards to PO.
#3 Oil supplies 40% of our power, why dont we make that up with nuclear, or others?
#4 With the extension of coal, how can you be sure that zero of our alternative energies will work? What about fusion? What about Free energy? When people see that we only have coal and natural gas left wont people really start to put their rear in gear in regards to these power sources?
#5 I hear "net energy loss" alot and people say solar panels require more energy to create and maintain then they provide in their lifetimes. A "lifetime suggests that solar panels die. How? What if we upgrade our technology to make them easier to make? I heard about people making them from silicone.
#6 Really how important is petrolium fertilizer?
#7 Before oil, the population was over 1 billion. Why is there the suggestion that it will drop to only 1/2 of a billion?
#8 If this were true, more people would know! No one besides my friend's dad and that kid at the U.U. knows!
PeakOil is You
A few questions from a newbie
A few questions from a newbie
by Nairb » Mon 11 Apr 2005, 19:09:21
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by spot5050 » Mon 11 Apr 2005, 19:36:19
Welcome to PO.com Nairb.
I'm sure plenty of people will have answers to your questions, but I'd suggest that you do some more reading on the subject before getting into debates with people here. Read stuff by ASPO and Colin Campbell etc, then read stuff by the opposition eg. USGS, and make up your own mind.
From reading your questions, it seems that you might not have got the full PO picture from the conference given by a member of your local U.U.
I'm sure plenty of people will have answers to your questions, but I'd suggest that you do some more reading on the subject before getting into debates with people here. Read stuff by ASPO and Colin Campbell etc, then read stuff by the opposition eg. USGS, and make up your own mind.
From reading your questions, it seems that you might not have got the full PO picture from the conference given by a member of your local U.U.
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I will answer a few.
by UIUCstudent01 » Mon 11 Apr 2005, 19:54:38
I'm answering these questions in regards to my more green-leaning views. I am not an expert in any sense really, but here's my answers from what I've read and understood.
1. Oil and such is a major disruption for travel and industry. As one of the more environmental leaning crazies here, burning coal is the dirtiest of the energies. Would 40 years of continued living as we are now be worth it if you screw over the rest of the generations by screwing up the climate? (There are no scientific papers that have argued that CO2 changes the climate, all the evidence you hear are from public relation/propaganda groups funded by the industry.) Especially if the world is going to be increasingly agrarian.
No doubt, coal will be used though. But it doesn't solve all the problems. There's a recent post about how much energy goes into making aluminum cans.
2. Not sure. Most people link to Cuba and North Korea as PO future. Maybe they are trying to show the effect in the States than in some far off country...
3. Nuclear has problems, short-term gains for LONG-term problems (You can't be certain that the nuclear waste [which is much more than the leftover uranium pellets like most nuke activists say] won't leak into our environment -and our water/food supply. 10,000 years of prediction is alot - too much. Nuclear poisoning is horrible.
4. Alternative energies won't gaurantee our everday usage of energy these days. It is a matter of scale (there isn't enough hydro, solar, and wind) as well as a matter of the fact that our WHOLE INFRASTRUCTURE is based on cheap oil. Industry and suburbia is dependant on cheap oil.
5. Not sure about all the things about solar panels. But, the effect is that all the energy that goes into a solar panel isn't repaid for 2 years. Also, I guess solar panels could break down and lose efficiency over time... but I'm not sure at all - just my experience that complicated things tend to break down.
6. Petrolium fertilizer is very important. But, I guess it could be possible if our sewage system could be connected with farms. In terms of food production, sprays are just as important (increased efficiency with land use).
7. I don't know. I never heard that it will be 1/2 of a billion. If you could find the exact source, that'd be helpful. That could be some kind of statistic using the energy usage usage of Europe around the world or something.
8. ALOT OF PEOPLE KNOW! It's just that it is scary and most who know it, don't preach it. Also, mass media has a responsibility to not spread panic (very bad for stock market). But, information has leaked through. For example, there's alot of books on it. There's "End of Suburbia". There's scientific papers. Republican Congressman Roscoe Bartlett has presented it to congress. It's been presented in the Australian parliment. I think in Europe it's been hidden in the guise of Climate Change. Also, ASPO is presenting it to european leaders soon (or something, don't pay attention to Europe much... I'm American).
Also, remember that our economy requires for growth - growth depends on energy. By definition, energy is the ability to do work. Our economy will take a continuous beating from now on - part of it is because most people depend on cheap oil every single day. It should be unnecessary to drive 1-2 hours to work like alot of people do in the suburbs. If there was a somewhat planned infrastructure (which you know, is blasphemy), our energy usage would have been much less.
Of course, if we suddenly found out how to harness energy from nuclear fusion lots of problems would be solved. "Free energy" isn't. I don't think I've seen any credible free energy things ever.
1. Oil and such is a major disruption for travel and industry. As one of the more environmental leaning crazies here, burning coal is the dirtiest of the energies. Would 40 years of continued living as we are now be worth it if you screw over the rest of the generations by screwing up the climate? (There are no scientific papers that have argued that CO2 changes the climate, all the evidence you hear are from public relation/propaganda groups funded by the industry.) Especially if the world is going to be increasingly agrarian.
No doubt, coal will be used though. But it doesn't solve all the problems. There's a recent post about how much energy goes into making aluminum cans.
2. Not sure. Most people link to Cuba and North Korea as PO future. Maybe they are trying to show the effect in the States than in some far off country...
3. Nuclear has problems, short-term gains for LONG-term problems (You can't be certain that the nuclear waste [which is much more than the leftover uranium pellets like most nuke activists say] won't leak into our environment -and our water/food supply. 10,000 years of prediction is alot - too much. Nuclear poisoning is horrible.
4. Alternative energies won't gaurantee our everday usage of energy these days. It is a matter of scale (there isn't enough hydro, solar, and wind) as well as a matter of the fact that our WHOLE INFRASTRUCTURE is based on cheap oil. Industry and suburbia is dependant on cheap oil.
5. Not sure about all the things about solar panels. But, the effect is that all the energy that goes into a solar panel isn't repaid for 2 years. Also, I guess solar panels could break down and lose efficiency over time... but I'm not sure at all - just my experience that complicated things tend to break down.
6. Petrolium fertilizer is very important. But, I guess it could be possible if our sewage system could be connected with farms. In terms of food production, sprays are just as important (increased efficiency with land use).
7. I don't know. I never heard that it will be 1/2 of a billion. If you could find the exact source, that'd be helpful. That could be some kind of statistic using the energy usage usage of Europe around the world or something.
8. ALOT OF PEOPLE KNOW! It's just that it is scary and most who know it, don't preach it. Also, mass media has a responsibility to not spread panic (very bad for stock market). But, information has leaked through. For example, there's alot of books on it. There's "End of Suburbia". There's scientific papers. Republican Congressman Roscoe Bartlett has presented it to congress. It's been presented in the Australian parliment. I think in Europe it's been hidden in the guise of Climate Change. Also, ASPO is presenting it to european leaders soon (or something, don't pay attention to Europe much... I'm American).
Also, remember that our economy requires for growth - growth depends on energy. By definition, energy is the ability to do work. Our economy will take a continuous beating from now on - part of it is because most people depend on cheap oil every single day. It should be unnecessary to drive 1-2 hours to work like alot of people do in the suburbs. If there was a somewhat planned infrastructure (which you know, is blasphemy), our energy usage would have been much less.
Of course, if we suddenly found out how to harness energy from nuclear fusion lots of problems would be solved. "Free energy" isn't. I don't think I've seen any credible free energy things ever.
Last edited by UIUCstudent01 on Mon 11 Apr 2005, 20:11:22, edited 1 time in total.
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www.911myths.com - To the 9/11-ers, give it some thought.
www.911myths.com - To the 9/11-ers, give it some thought.
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by Nairb » Mon 11 Apr 2005, 20:00:58
I got the 500 million from the 184 page e-book. The title to this e-book is "pages1-184" so i can't really help you with that one. I think that he is the "matt" from lifeaftertheoilcrash.net. Thank you for your responce! I liked the format of your answer! (Don't worry I'm not a republican, and I'm an athiest, so for a 15 year old I am free-thinking enough to handle the implications that such a crises would mean to my life.)
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Re: A few questions from a newbie
by Such » Mon 11 Apr 2005, 20:41:09
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nairb', '
')#1 Why do you not incorperate coal into the time before the crash, sure 2010-2020 is shocking, but isn't it misleading to suggest that such a enviroment ignoring country such as ourselves wont use coal? Wont that add about 40 years before the crash? That makes my age from 25, to 65 untill this crash occurs.
')#1 Why do you not incorperate coal into the time before the crash, sure 2010-2020 is shocking, but isn't it misleading to suggest that such a enviroment ignoring country such as ourselves wont use coal? Wont that add about 40 years before the crash? That makes my age from 25, to 65 untill this crash occurs.
I think you get a wide variety of opinion on this forum. I am not convinced that an "end of the world" crash will happen. When oil production peaks, I think there will be a very slow application of economic pressure mostly on liquid fuels and chemical feedstocks. I suspect that we will acutely feel this pressure BEFORE production peaks as demand expansion outstrips supply expansion. We will absolutely be using more coal to make up for the reductions in energy from oil. I can say one thing for certain... if hydrocarbons remain the principle source of wealth in the world through the 21st century, then it will not be a prosperous century, but a very difficult one.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nairb', '#')2 The power outages in california were brought on by companies trying to get rich, not shortages. right? If so then why is it constantly linked to what will happen in the futer in regards to PO.
I suspect that there was a combination of problems. The best comment I ever heard was by Matt Simmons when he talked about the 2003 outage out East and asked "How did we ever allow ourselves to get so close to peak grid capacity where a falling tree branch can wipe out the entire electrical system?" Running the electrical grid at peak capacity is the most efficient in terms of economic theory. But economic theory assumes steady-state conditions and does not account for the TIME it takes for markets to adjust to problems (or tree branches). I think that it is clear we need a capacity cushion.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nairb', '#')3 Oil supplies 40% of our power, why dont we make that up with nuclear, or others?
We will try... the question is whether it can be done... and for how long... I haven't seen any data what-so-ever that convinces me we (as a society) have any understanding of exactly how much nuclear fuel is extractable. I'm sure that the political barriers to nuclear energy will disappear quickly when people start spending $100 for a tank of gas. (to quote Kenneth Defeyyes)
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nairb', '#')4 With the extension of coal, how can you be sure that zero of our alternative energies will work? What about fusion? What about Free energy? When people see that we only have coal and natural gas left wont people really start to put their rear in gear in regards to these power sources?
A very good and very short article on alternative energy is Salameh, Mamdouh G. “Can Renewable and Unconventional Energy Sources Bridge the Global Energy Gap In the 21st Century?” Applied Energy 75 (2003): 33–42. You should be able to find it at your local university library.
"Free energy" is only a thermodynamic term used to describe the lowest energy state of a system, and has nothing to do with energy with the capacity to do work.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nairb', '#')5 I hear "net energy loss" alot and people say solar panels require more energy to create and maintain then they provide in their lifetimes. A "lifetime suggests that solar panels die. How? What if we upgrade our technology to make them easier to make? I heard about people making them from silicone.
I think you mean Silicon. The same stuff that the semiconductor in your computer is made of. PV cells are Light Emitting Diodes run in reverse, and if LEDs are so efficient, why aren't solar cells? Well, when you run photodiode forward, the large amount of light that comes from them is all concentrated in a very tight wavelength band producing a single color... making the diode extremely efficient in operation at a specific wavelength. The problem is that sunlight is a mix of all sorts of wavelengths of light... but only one wavelength actually triggers the diode to run in reverse and generate electricity.
However, there is much development in organic based electro-chemistry such as LEDs and PV type cells. The interesting thing about this is that the range of wavelength of light which triggers electron/hole separation in the energy band of the material is much wider than for silicon based materials - increasing the efficiency. They are also much cheaper to produce. For example, some can also give negative differential resistance, in which V=IR does not directly apply (over a specific range of voltage potentials, the resistance of the device actually decreases insead of increases). The possibility to build more efficient PV devices seems quite promising.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nairb', '#')6 Really how important is petrolium fertilizer?
Fertilizer is made from natural gas, not oil. Oil is a feedstock for pesticides, however. I'm no farmer... but my understanding is that fertilizer is important enough to essentially force farmers to use it in order to remain competitive against institutional agriculture and produce a profit. Organic is more expensive, but there is a market for it.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nairb', '#')7 Before oil, the population was over 1 billion. Why is there the suggestion that it will drop to only 1/2 of a billion?
Read the following paper for an outline of the argument:
Youngquist, Walter, “The Post-Petroleum Paradigm – and Population.” Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 20.4 (1999), 304.
He calculates about 2 billion, but other estimates vary.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nairb', '#')8 If this were true, more people would know! No one besides my friend's dad and that kid at the U.U. knows!
