Scary Stuff.... Oil currently at $106.95

bendix

You can't trust statistics produced by Oil companies, mate. They're all part of the big discovery. Pastor Williams said so.

He knows these things, you know.

PeterZ_2

AD9898 wrote: »

Oil is still cheap, but for global economies to work oil as to literally be as cheap as chips. To put into perspective just what kind of society we've created think of this.

A single barrel of oil as the equivalent energy of at least 12000 man hours of labour. We use 85 million a day, 1 cubic mile per year. We've now pumped out of the ground half of what was there, the easy stuff.

What's left will be much harder and crucially much more expensive to get. Peak discovery was in 1970, we currently use 3 barrels for every 1 that is discovered.

Spot on. Thats why 90% of the population no longer have to work all day in the feilds to grow just enough food to survive.

Oil is many things to us and our modern way of life - energy, heat, transport, chemicals, pharma, air travel, fertiliser and agriculture. Our whole world and way of life is entirely based on cheap oil, thats why its such a big deal, but many people sadly just bury their heads in the sand!

PeterZ_2

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

So we are basically screwed. We could have led the world in clean coal, in renewable technology AND maintained our self-sufficiency in coal gas and oil. Instead we sold it off and let the market enrich itself on our doom. Bravo Tories and Labour!

Agree 100%, but I'm a little more optomistic.

Short term the Feed In Tariffs have really given small scale renewables a boost. While this will only ever make up a few percent of our total generation every little helps as they say.

Large scale wind and tidal is our best bet in the short term to ease the pressure while we develop some new nuclear plants.

We should be making a big investment now in R&D for energy tech, renewables, nuclear and clean coal. Transport is not so easy to solve, but better rail links will help with haulage and some personal transport.

Electric cars are improving but still no match (in terms of range) for a petrol or diesel. But if petrol hits £3 a litre then I'm sure most people will find the short range better than walking or getting the bus.

What really gets on my nerves is the NIMBYs who block any form of progress in this country. We should be forcing through more wind and nuclear, if a few locals dont like it then tough luck I'm afraid. I'm sure that the majority of the population are like me and don't really want to go back to a victorian standard of living.

purch

but many people sadly just bury their heads in the sand!

.......and guess what they find ??

OIL :eek:

Wookster

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Wookie - elsewhere I've even been defending Osberk over fuel duty.

There you go bashing the Tories again. Just typical of your low level of intellect.

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Course that would mean building a shitload of new nuclear power stations which isn't going to happen until the lights actually start to go off

Labour had 13 years. What did they do? Sweet fanny adams.

Rochdale_Pioneers

Wookster wrote: »

Labour had 13 years. What did they do? Sweet fanny adams.

Yeah. I made that point.

FATBALLZ

PeterZ wrote: »

Spot on. Thats why 90% of the population no longer have to work all day in the feilds to grow just enough food to survive.

Oil is many things to us and our modern way of life - energy, heat, transport, chemicals, pharma, air travel, fertiliser and agriculture. Our whole world and way of life is entirely based on cheap oil, thats why its such a big deal, but many people sadly just bury their heads in the sand!

Not so much based on cheap oil as cheap energy, with oil currently being the best form of it. In the big scheme of things humans are an invisible speck in the entire universe, there are unfathomable amounts of energy out there, if we invest now I'm sure we'll be able to get at it somehow :think:

And I agree with your point about NIMBYs, they should be turned into biofuel to provide energy to their own neighbourhoods if they don't want any wind turbines nearby.

leveller2911

PeterZ wrote: »

Agree 100%, but I'm a little more optomistic.

Short term the Feed In Tariffs have really given small scale renewables a boost. While this will only ever make up a few percent of our total generation every little helps as they say.

Large scale wind and tidal is our best bet in the short term to ease the pressure while we develop some new nuclear plants.

We should be making a big investment now in R&D for energy tech, renewables, nuclear and clean coal. Transport is not so easy to solve, but better rail links will help with haulage and some personal transport.

Electric cars are improving but still no match (in terms of range) for a petrol or diesel. But if petrol hits £3 a litre then I'm sure most people will find the short range better than walking or getting the bus.

What really gets on my nerves is the NIMBYs who block any form of progress in this country. We should be forcing through more wind and nuclear, if a few locals dont like it then tough luck I'm afraid. I'm sure that the majority of the population are like me and don't really want to go back to a victorian standard of living.

Agree with you except the bit about windfarms.We have a windfarm near us at Little Chayne farm in Kent and I can see it every day I go to work and I can say with hand on heart it doesn't work.Wind power is a red herring IMO.

Only around 50% of the turbines work at at one time, then they are all shut down as the wind speed is too high and then they aren't working at all as theirs not enough wind.I believe this is typical of wind turbines and the industry as a whole.
On top of that there is a real problem with subsidance high maintenance as the turbine bearings break down regularly.All we seem to get from Government is lipservice and pandering to the tree huggers.

We need to reslove the problems with disposing of nuclear waste and in the mean time build Nuclear Power stations.


With regards to the Oil price why are we not giving Government more flack over the high tax on Petrol?...

PeterZ_2

FATBALLZ wrote: »

Not so much based on cheap oil as cheap energy, with oil currently being the best form of it. In the big scheme of things humans are an invisible speck in the entire universe, there are unfathomable amounts of energy out there, if we invest now I'm sure we'll be able to get at it somehow :think:

And I agree with your point about NIMBYs, they should be turned into biofuel to provide energy to their own neighbourhoods if they don't want any wind turbines nearby.

Yes, very well put. Oil gives us not only cheap energy, but energy in a form that is both convenient and energy dense.

The tricky part is transport. E.g. for home heating we can very easily switch to electric, but for transport we still have the issue of battery tech not being advanced enough. Maybe we should forget about elecric cars and focus on trains instead?

PeterZ_2

leveller2911 wrote: »

Agree with you except the bit about windfarms.We have a windfarm near us at Little Chayne farm in Kent and I can see it every day I go to work and I can say with hand on heart it doesn't work.Wind power is a red herring IMO.

Only around 50% of the turbines work at at one time, then they are all shut down as the wind speed is too high and then they aren't working at all as theirs not enough wind.I believe this is typical of wind turbines and the industry as a whole.
On top of that there is a real problem with subsidance high maintenance as the turbine bearings break down regularly.All we seem to get from Government is lipservice and pandering to the tree huggers.

We need to reslove the problems with disposing of nuclear waste and in the mean time build Nuclear Power stations.


With regards to the Oil price why are we not giving Government more flack over the high tax on Petrol?...

Yes, wind power is variable and will never meet all our needs. The varibility of the wind is not an issue as some would have you believe. The National Grid have to constantly adjust generation due to a demand that varies wildly (e.g. kettles at half time) and they say they can handle up to 20% of UK power from wind before it gets hard to balance.

We need around 10% wind, 5% solar, 10% coal, 20% gas, 50% nuclear and the rest from hydro, biomass etc

As for the high tax on petrol, dont forget that labour left us all with a huge debt. Which other tax would you like to see increased to recover the lost revenue?