Petrol prices hit a new high

Cleaver

AD9898 wrote: »

Take a glimpse at the future people (10 years), at the moment devaluation and tax rises are responsible, but peak oil passed in 2008 I'm afraid and supply is going to get tighter and tighter as we swing through to 2020. The world's enonomies depend on 'cheap oil', once again I'm afraid it's 'last orders at the bar' on this one too.

Apart from slowly rising prices everything looks quite normal at this time, but when the shift starts to come, it will snowball very quickly, going from normality to anarchy within weeks.

...unless, as we always say, he human race finds a way of advancing technology, just as we've done for the past few millenia, and we find an alternative way of fueling things that need fueling.

Kohoutek

Cleaver wrote: »

...unless, as we always say, he human race finds a way of advancing technology, just as we've done for the past few millenia, and we find an alternative way of fueling things that need fueling.

Technology and energy are not the same thing...Your post reminds me of that ridiculous saying that "the stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones".

shortchanged_2

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

POO currently $88 a barrel compared to $147 at its peak. The devaluation of Sterling (1.9854 to the $ on July 11th 2008) along with the numerous (5 or 6?) tax rises in the past couple of years are responsible.

This may well be true but I bet the oil companies will still be announcing monster profits just to rub our faces in it.

abaxas

Kohoutek wrote: »

Technology and energy are not the same thing...Your post reminds me of that ridiculous saying that "the stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones".

To quote from wikipeadia (may not be 100% accurate)

The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year.[6] In 2002, this was more energy in one hour than the world used in one year.[

Fag packet calc

1/(24*365) * 100 = 0.0114% of the energy that hits the earth from the sun is needed to power our current society.


Surface area of earth = 510,072,000 km2
Surface area of saraha desert =8,600,000 km2

8,600,000/510,072,000= 0.0168%

More energy hit the saraha desert each day than we use in the whole of our society.

Where is the problem again?

Cleaver

Kohoutek wrote: »

Technology and energy are not the same thing...

Oh really? Different you say? Thanks for pointng that out.

C'mon, stop being pedantic, you know what I mean. I was just pointing out that one future possibility is that we run out of oil, have mass carnage across the world and all die. The other possibility is that lots of clever people in white coats do some stuff in a lab and come up with a solution to make cars and planes move about without massive use of oil.

I'm basically just saying that Ad always says "we're going to run out of oil and the world will end". Which of course might happen. I just always like to point out that it might not happen.

kabayiri

abaxas wrote: »

Where is the problem again?

Political and economic motivation to change, I guess.

I'm not sure about solar in UK though!

Tidal and hydro power, not forgetting those darlings of the hills, the wind turbines.

But what about alternatives?

There are more people in roles today in desk bound jobs than ever before.

What's wrong in incentivising telecommuting?

We could be pioneers in this area, or limp followers of fashion.

Kohoutek

abaxas wrote: »

More energy hit the saraha desert each day than we use in the whole of our society.

Where is the problem again?

Night

Lack of energy storage technology to enable solar to replace baseload electrical power provided by natural gas, coal, nuclear

Lack of affordable solar photovoltaic technology

Distance between places suitable for harvesting solar energy and place where most demand occurs (loss on transmission lines)

The fact that 97% of all transportation runs on oil-derived fuels

The fact that there is no infrastructure for electric cars

The fact that battery-electric cannot power aeroplanes or ships, or cars for long distance journeys.

The fact that battery-electric depends on rare earth minerals and output is not very elastic (because it takes ten years to bring a mine into production)

The fact that the amount of capital needed to begin this great transition doesn't exist...

Cleaver wrote:

C'mon, stop being pedantic, you know what I mean. I was just pointing out that one future possibility is that we run out of oil, have mass carnage across the world and all die. The other possibility is that lots of clever people in white coats do some stuff in a lab and come up with a solution to make cars and planes move about without massive use of oil.

I'm sure we'll eventually find ways of living without oil, but we certainly won't be able to continue business as usual. The International Energy Agency recently admitted that peak (conventional) oil occurred in 2006. Seems like we've left it a bit late to only just start moving away from a 90% dependency on fossil fuels for primary energy.

AD9898_2

Cleaver wrote: »

...unless, as we always say, he human race finds a way of advancing technology, just as we've done for the past few millenia, and we find an alternative way of fueling things that need fueling.

Cleaver, listen mate I hope your right, for everyones sake, bur we've been through this a million times, even if fusion was bought on stream within 10 years ( and it simply won't be, if ever), the scaling and time just couldn't be met.

There will be blackouts, there will be rioting, looting and anarchy, and the human race will move onto a different level. But the way of life that you, I and pretty much every other human being that is alive today is going to change in an unimaginable way, it's fact, simple as that.

Everything we base our way of life on at this time is finite, and that 'finite' means less than 20- 30 years.

Kohoutek

You'd think, logically, the people who deny an imminent oil crisis would be the crazy ones.

After all, it's unfortunately a fact that the world has used more oil than its replaced through new discoveries since 1981, it's a fact that a very large percentage of world oil supply comes from oil fields that are 50-60 years old. In Saudi Arabia, about 60% comes from Ghawar field (started production 1951) and another 30% from fields of similar age. In Kuwait, also around 60% from a single field (Burgan, started 1946).

Saudi Arabia is the world's largest exporter, Kuwait is sixth. Russia (2), UAE (3) have a similar profile of very old, maturing fields. Iran (4) peaked in 1976, Norway (5) in 2001.

On the facts, surely you'd have to be a moron to deny this is a massive problem – extreme urgency is of the essence. Earlier this year, the UK government held a meeting with some industry leaders such as Branson who raised this issue, in secret. The Department of Energy refuses to discuss the contents of the meeting or release documents relating to peak oil under the Freedom of Information Act. I think you can infer from that that the situation is not so rosy...

Snooze

AD9898 wrote: »

Take a glimpse at the future people (10 years), at the moment devaluation and tax rises are responsible, but peak oil passed in 2008 I'm afraid and supply is going to get tighter and tighter as we swing through to 2020. The world's enonomies depend on 'cheap oil', once again I'm afraid it's 'last orders at the bar' on this one too.

Apart from slowly rising prices everything looks quite normal at this time, but when the shift starts to come, it will snowball very quickly, going from normality to anarchy within weeks.

I'm far from convinced with this "Peak Oil" stuff. In fact, I file it squarely in the tray labelled "BS" along with the CO2, carbon reduction, saving the planet etc etc etc, all of which are simple scare-mongering tactics by the collective governments to extract more money from us. Telling the masses there's only a couple of barrels of the stuff left in the ground is an excellent convincer for charging £5 per litre.

I've no doubt you'll now paste me half a dozen "scientific" links from the Peak Oil believers to try and prove me wrong, but there are an equal number of "scientific" links from the non-believers to counteract them all. :cool: