I attended the IPA's annual H.V. McKay Lecture on Technology in Melbourne last night. Philip Burgess from Telstra was the guest speaker on the topic of 'Future Proofing'.
He gave an interesting and wide ranging talk that included two reasons why we will never run out of oil:
1. As the price of oil increases, we will find more of it.
2. As the price of oil or any other commodity goes up, inventive people will start looking for substitutes.
He suggested there were all kinds of examples of 'substitutes' including: plastic for copper tubing, grain for fuel and aluminium studs for wooden studs in home building.
He also said that we should perhaps strive to use more, not less energy, because it is through the use of energy that we create wealth.
Interesting site on the aluminium industry:
http://www.baddevelopers.green.net.au/Docs/Alcoa.htm
Seems that subsidies are OK after all.
This report is from the US Army Corps of Engineers dated Sept 2005 "Domestic production of both oil and natural gas are past their peak and world petroleum production is nearing its peak."
Geee, now where have I heard this before? Oh yes:
* "Hurry, before this wonderful product is depleted from Nature's
laboratory!"--advertisement for "Kier's Rock Oil," 1855
* ". . . the United States [has] enough petroleum to keep its kerosene
lamps burning for only four years . . . "
--Pennsylvania State Geologist Wrigley, 1874
* ". . . although an estimated two-thirds of our reserve is still
in the ground, . . . the peak of [U.S.] production will soon be
passed--possibly within three years."
--David White, Chief Geologist, USGS, 1919
* " . . . it is unsafe to rest in the assurance that plenty of
Petroleum will be found in the future merely because it has been in the
past." --L. Snider and B. Brooks, AAPG Bulletin, 1936
$60 oil has gone on this long because the consuming economies have been so strong that they haven't tipped into recession. That's all. No other reason. None. We aren't "running out of oil" and everyone who says that $60 oil is their evidence of scarcity had damn well better be ready to shout from the rooftops that trillions of barrels will be generated spontaneously should the price revert back to $40 because it is the same argument.
http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=A440265&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
This report is from the US Army Corps of Engineers dated Sept 2005
On page iii of the Executive summary it reads:
"Domestic production of both oil and natural gas are past their peak and world petroleum production is nearing its peak."
On page vii
"The doubling of oil prices from 2003-2005 is not an anomaly, but a picture of the future."
detribe - and you seem to he accepting a bit too much pseudo religious dogma about free markets and farming without fertilisers.
Any farm product grown will deplete the soil and requires fertilisers. The fertiliser can be organic or artificial with the artificial being the easiest and most productive hence it use. The real expansion of food production was enabled by the Haber Process that fixed nitrogen artificially.
Making ethanol is a political decision based more on acceptance and maintenance of the status-quo rather than knowledge of comparative EROIs. Replacement of liquid fuel leaves the profitable distribution network intact however does not solve the real problem. We cannot grow enough food for 6 or 8 billion people AND grow fuel for their cars and trucks. Ethanol is a farm subsidy not a solution to Peak Oil.
As far as switching to solar panels and wind turbines, youll have to ask the Brazilians why they continue making so much ethanol when you apparently have a much better option they so stupidly ignore.
I imagine its because it would cost them a fortune and have no garantee [sp/] of working this year.
Ender
Your assumptions about fertiliser use are wrong, in MHO and from my usually faulty memory, on this I am so clear headed, Ill risk not checking the documents I read just a few months ago in preparation for an article I published in the IPA review, latest issue.
Youve been accepting at face value too much pseudo- religous dogma as a substitute for checking real world facts is my guess. Not all farming in the world relies heavily on syntheic fertilisers.
Why not check out whether my clear recollection of practices in Brazil is accurate, and my vivid memory of spray recycling of waste streams back to the cane field is supported by the many websites on the net describing alcool production in Brazil. I can't remember the Portugese word for the spraying equipment just now, but there is one underneath a slide in a powerpoint file on the web.
And no, ethanol does not in itself remove either N or P as its chemical formula is CH3CH2OH.See, only Carbon and water. The carbon comes fron the air.
detribe - so you are saying that Brazilain farmers do not use fertilisers? How does the soil not deplete. Producing ethanol requires nutrients that are not replaced because the ethanol is taken away and used elsewhere. Unless those nutrients are replaced the soil will deplete. Also Brazilian ethanol is the exception rather than the rule - Brazill cannot supply 83 million barrels per day of fuel equivilents.
Why go to all the trouble of growing fuel when solar panels and wind turbines both have a better energy return than biomass?
As is pretty obvious Ender, EROI for agriculture always leaves out the solar energy component, and the values greater than 1 do not break laws of thermodynamics.
Sunlight is actually "free" but land and water are not.
I've commented elsewhere that Brazilian sugar industry doesnt use much fertiliser as they are a petroleum poor country. That why they started the ethanol biofuel game in the first place - to save on oil imports. They actually recycle their ethanol related water waste streams as fertilisers to conserve nutrients. That's part of the reasons their EROI is now so good. That's why your Brazilian fertiliser comments are off target.
detribe - so you are getting energy for nothing? In this case the input is solar energy. A solar PV panel has an EROI of about 5 or 7:1 so an electric car on PV panels has a better energy return that biofuel. Brazilian ethanol is only sustainable with fertilisers and its energy return is exeptional.
All those things you cite are as important however you must consider the energy return of different resources. You cannot replace directly a 20:1 EROI resource with one that is even 10:1.
yes I understand that Ender, but when the crude EROI is around three there is plenty of room for generating a stream of useful energy with no required net input. At around a crude EROI of 10, as in Brazilan ethanol, discussion of input energy is essentially irrelevant. There are also plenty of technical options to increase biofuel EROI by known technologies. I would argue that the actual key limitations are available arable land (eg in China and India) and flow on effects to food prices (already occuring with sugar) and wilderness encroachment, water demand also (especially in India, possibly also Australia).