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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Biggest problem I see is not having 1 hour and 13 minutes to devote to watching that. Who has that kind of free time?!?!! :)
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Can you sum it up and tweet it to me? I'm at #giantbrain
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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In the first 2 minutes... he is using an exponential function to model growth. In real systems things tend to follow more of a logistic growth pattern... which is also an oversimplification.
Like C said, I don't have time to watch that... besides, I spend a couple lectures teaching it so...
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monolith
climber
albany,ca
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Fracking.
His peak oil chart looks much different now with fracking.
Just skim the vid or go to around 45 minutes. Didn't take more than a couple minutes for me.
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john hansen
climber
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Sure wish I could get 7% on my savings account,, :)
0.75 % just dont do it.
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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Same concept applies to non-conventional oil, it just extends the inevitable while breeding more dependence on over-consumption of a quick, accessible energy source.
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monolith
climber
albany,ca
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Yep, we'll run out of all oil eventually. Just not as quickly as he's predicting. Actually, we'll never run out of oil. It'll just keep getting more expensive. In the mean time, we'll keep adjusting to less oil dependence, but not without some bad spots.
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monolith
climber
albany,ca
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More than just crumbs. His U.S. peak oil chart would have this huge shoulder in it. What are the fracking reserve estimates now?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Isn't fracking the best arguement for this reality.
Fracking is basically getting at the crumbs that are left.
Without watching the video....yes, this is true. I could give a good ten paragraph lesson as to how we know our production rates in the future, but you would have to pay me.
I just finished up one and the engineers are getting ready to frack it. This is a normal reservoir, instead of a shale, so it neads far fewer stages and much less fluid.
And it is right smack in the middle of a city. I'm not worried a bit.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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I do see that the charts above were at least scarfed from the Energy Information Administration which is THE website regarding production and consumption and markets and anything you are willing to read and learn about oil and natural gas. You can become an expert on the field if you read that sucker from one end to the other...if you can pull it off in one lifetime.
Everybody goes off on the Williston Basin and the Bakken shale as if it is going to be a new Saudi Arabia. In fact, it contributes less than a million bbls/day of our 19 million bbl/day consumption. It has provided a small bump in the decline curve of U.S. production, but only because oil prices are through the roof.
These wells cost as much as 10 million bucks to drill, and you have to drill a lot of them. You have to pay out that 10 million dollars to make the well profitable, and if oil went to fifty bucks from the current ~90 bucks, all Bakken drilling would cease.
There is a thing called "finding costs." That is how much a play costs to find each bbl of oil. The finding costs on horizontal stage frac wells are very high. In Saudi Arabia you can drill a 7000 foot vertical well, which costs about 700 grand in the U.S. It will make millions of bbls per well, so the Saudi's have a finding cost of only a few bucks per bbl. The finding costs in the Bakken are up in the tens of dollars per bbl. After production taxes and royalties, the economic situation gets tougher.
If I wasn't busy packing to fly out tomorrow to go buy my sailboat (Yay!), I would pull some wells out of the Bakken and do full economics, post them, and let you see. I have the software and can do a well in about twenty minutes. I already have every well in the midcontinent to Canada zapped into my computer. Everything. Depths, casing, production tests, frac details, pressures, you name it. Everything. I can place everything on a one terrabyte drive, including all of the software.
So I hate it when Republican as#@&%es bitch that Obama had fewer federal permits than Bush. Permits have nothing to do with the President. Economics dictates where you drill and how many wells you drill. All of these plays are also on private land for the most part.
The Bakken is really interesting, because it is the only true "oil shale" similar to "Shale Gas."
Gotta stop. I could go on for hours. You guys have probably seen it. I know my stuff.
Maybe I will watch the video on my trip, but basically this is all you need to know:
We are running out of oil. Yes, there are places where I can drill hundreds of wells and hit oil in all of them, but they won't come close to paying out the drilling cost.
It is all about economics. Government policy has very little to do with it, and there isn't any "corporate welfare" or subsidies for the oil industry. There are two tax writeoffs, and they aren't even used by most companies.
Another thing. Reagan was the worst president for the oil industry. Go read, "The Prize" and email me in a month.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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OK. Above is a quicky map of the Elm Coulee Field in NE Montana, one of the better Bakken Shale fields. Each little square is a square mile.
The black dot is the surface location. The line of the wellbore is shown, so you get to see which direction the hole is drilled.
I have the full depth, azimuth, inclination surveys for each well. I have the production decline plot for each well. The wells make most of their oil in the first 4 years and then taper off and pump at a low rate for a long time.
This is one of the better Bakken Fields. I've read that it is the biggest onshore field found in the lower 48 in over fifty years. It's reserves are less than 500 million bbls. 500 million bbls isn't that much, considering that the country has already produced 190 billion bbls of oil. So that big ass field is less than half a percent of all U.S. production since day one.
It is nice for North Dakota, because that is a lot of money for the mineral owners. The shitty thing is that it and all of the other Bakken fields aren't enough to matter a bit.
There have been several much larger fields found in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico in the last twenty years. Thunderhorse is one. The field that the BP Macondo well discovered will probably be much larger than the onshore Elm Coulee field, and they will be able to produce it from four or five platforms. You can drill alot of wells from one platform, and depending on depth, you can reach a several mile radius around the platforms.
I don't work offshore. Anyway, hate to say it but the Bakken is nice and all that, but it isn't a drop of piss in the world market.
Understand? Take wild claims about the Bakken with a grain of salt. It would be a big deal if we didn't consume a quarter of the world's production output.
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karodrinker
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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I'd like to see a Macro economic breakdown of all the good and bad that oil has done for humanity. Obviously there would be far too much speculation and subjectivity determining the net damage that oil has caused to be truly scientific, but it really has caused so much damage.
Oil transformed the world, but I'm not sure I'm happy with the transformation. Pollution, commuting, suburbia. The Industrial revolution really revved up once oil became the go to energy source, which just inadvertently sped up the decline of the family and also of society overall by demanding that 1, or often 2 parents leave the house daily, all day, to go work. This leaves the raising of the children to be done by others, institutions and televisions.
Sure modern marvels like cars and plastics and bright shiny light everywhere are cool, but are they worth it?
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zBrown
Ice climber
chingadero de chula vista
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Can anyone find a problem with this reality? (the long version)
Why not make it a double feature.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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John M
climber
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He gives some long winded explanations for what exponential growth means and its affects in support of zero population growth. For all those who still believe that we have 500 years worth of coal as a backup to our oil, he explains why this isn't true.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Nothing new since 1798.
Just another neo-malthusian.
Didn't Paul Ehrlich loose a whopper of a bet about 15-20 years ago?
Something about the price of raw materials?
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Scared me into catatonia yesterday morning.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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The point is that because of exponential growth we will use the remaining amount of oil much faster than we have used the oil we have already consumed.
Oh. That one is easy. Hell yes. We are using the last third or so of our oil and natural resources with a fully functioning modern hydrocarbon and mineral intense species. It took us 100 years to get here, and I would guess that the thing that will slow population growth will be the huge cost of energy in the future.
No more airplane rides except for the ultra rich. Airplanes are the least efficient form of transportation fuel-wise.
It is that way with all of our resources.
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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Not many people realize how much petroleum is absolutely required to get them their food. Many deadbeat washed up old climbers may have a garden and be just fine, but those scary inner city folks that kill each other every night don't. They will be coming after YOURS.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I jumped through the video...
...it amazes me that anyone can argue against it, basically the number of people is increasing and their energy requirements are increasing, and that spends out the resources at an increasing rate.
As Base points out, the reserves are declining, the cost of the petroleum is going up and it makes it economic to recover, but that is also a limited resource. That combination results in using up all the reserves...
You can mine all the data out of this site that you need:
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/index.cfm#resources
When you look at graphs like the above it's important to know what you are looking at graphed...
looking at the graph of Petroleum and Other Liquids Overview, you can see that oil production is currently about 50% of consumption, and while there is an "uptick" around the late 2000's it's not a very big one... the reason being that our consumption has, for the most part, increased.
To put that "bump" into even better perspective, look that chart "Crude Oil Production and Crude Oil Well Productivity, 1954-2011" and you see how this might fit on the chart in the video... there is a similar "shoulder" on the plot around 1984, the peak was 1970.
In the energy resources section one sees that the cumulative production since 1977 exceeds the cumulative reserves, now by a factor of 2 for crude oil, and about 1.5 for natural gas, which is to say that we're using up the source faster than we're finding new sources.
Proved natural gas reserves started to increase in the early 2000's.
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karodrinker
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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just watched the whole thing. Good lecture. We are what, at 11:58 in the bacterial metaphor?
base, ed, how much longer do you guys expect civilized society to keep going?
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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We nearly wiped out the whales, now we'll wipe out the mineral traces of the dinos--coal and oil--in a relatively short time. We humans waste better than any other critters.
These are two of our basic problems: prodigality and greed.
Then there are ignorance and want, our children.
It's common sense to know we can't sustain our way of life without some major changes in the near future.
No problem here, Riley.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Ed,
In one day today, I saw you and another guy grabbing data from the Energy Information Administration. That site is THE source of data for the industry statistics, and is used throughout the industry as well as commodity traders.
It has some really cool articles, like "Understanding Oil Markets."
Everyone should read that one before they pop off the next time gas prices go up.
EAI.doe.gov rules. It has everything going back to the beginning of the first production and consumption. Endless data on production and consumption by all countries. It is really good on OECD countries.
Yep, we are screwed. It won't be as sexy as the Mayan apocalypse, but my son will grow up in a different world than me.
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Borut
Mountain climber
Ljubljana, Slovenia
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Can anyone find a problem with this reality?
No, no one can. The problem seems to be the disbelief this function is treated with.
What is soothing is to remember that we live from one day to the next.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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One of the many epiphanies I had while watching this video was that this is why Ed has dedicated his life's work to finding us a safe alternative energy source. Carter, a nuclear physicist, also tried to ameliorate some of the compounded growth - of course we know what occurred there.
thanks for the thought but I have to say I've recently started to do work associated with fusion, it is not the dominant theme of my career. And this particular energy source has a ways to go before it delivers kW to your home. But it is an important problem, energy, one of many.
The EIA also had a graph of USG energy use, and it is dominated by petroleum, and the dominant use is "jet fuel." In the age in which petroleum resources are being used up, alternatives to fossil fuels will be required in order to supplant that stock. My guess is that "jet fuel" is primarily used by the DoD.
Defense uses roughly 1,000 Trillion BTUs a year, 80% of that is petroleum, and 80% of that is jet fuel, so 64% of the energy the USG uses is for "jet fuel."
Interesting to contemplate where this will come from in the future and what the effect on defense will be.
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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These are pretty cool figures. [url=" https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/"]https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/[/url]
They have them by year and by state (2008 only). They show how various sources of energy are used in various sectors of our society.
[99.2, 94.6, 98, 97.3] does not fit an exponential curve... just saying.
Water use in LA peaked in 1990. Conservation alone saved over a million acre-feet of water a year. Two decades later, after a 30% increase in population, they consume about the same amount as they did in 1990.
Conservation and innovation.
Note: rejected energy is wasted energy in the form of heat, etc.
Final question: how does the amount of rejected energy compare to energy services? How might this be changed?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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These are pretty cool figures. https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/
If you look at the numbers there's been a net increase in efficency of 1.9% from 08-11. All of the change can be accounted for from the waste energy side.
As energy costs rise there will be more pressure on the waste side of the equation and other sources developed or existing ones expanded in the input side.
Markets work!
Little items like that are why the Malthusians have continued to get it wrong ever since 1795
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Rock!...oopsie.
Trad climber
the pitch above you
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The end is indeed nigh. I am going back to the boobs thread to be soothed.
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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1.9% increase in efficiency over 3 years impresses you? That's barely more energy than we produce through solar (Solyndra!... sorry, I just love saying that around you people).
This whole time I've been thinking the fact that we WASTE 30% more energy than we USE was the impressive take home message!
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nah000
Mountain climber
canuckadia
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the problem with the tone of "this reality" is that it does not consider incentives, adaptation, and discovery.
there is no question that if we don't consider those [somewhat arbitrarily chosen] three we are "doomed", at least in the sense of collective standard of living reductions.
but the two premises that this type of argument is based on: historical population growth and the end of inexpensive fossil fuel energy sources is ultimately very reductive.
when our backs move closer to the metaphorical wall, incentives to find solutions are increased, and collectively we are motivated to make changes to our way of life.
all that this argument ultimately proves is that we are collectively going to have to change.
if one looks at this need to change and thinks it's time to become a "prepper" and prepare for the apocalypse it is due only to a lack of imagination.
if one were to look back 25 years it would be almost impossible to imagine the information world that we have collectively created and now live in.
as our backs are moved closer to the wall, the metaphorical fox news viewpoint and their fear-driven, reality-denying following, will become more obviously mistaken and irrelevant. as this happens, more human and financial energy will be placed into finding solutions. given our history and the means at our disposal, i'm actually quite optimistic that we will find solutions.
is there anyway to "prove" this optimism? of course not. at the end of the day how we view the future is based on our past experiences as individual humans and is to some degree or another "choice". we as individuals have little control over the future and even if we are ultimately destined to end up in a cormac mccarthy post-apocolyptic world, i'd rather focus my energy on searching for solutions along the road [even if it is inevitable] then trying to figure out what kind of shotgun to buy.
tl;dr: assuming that the future will unfold in the same manner as the past is as lacking in imagination, as assuming that it won't.
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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Well than, is it better then no punctuation"?
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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If it ain't used it is wasted.
From one of the authors of those figures:
"Rejected Energy often manifests itself as "waste heat." When that heat is rejected at near-environmental temperatures, it is truly waste, and cannot be re-used to create useful energy services. There are other cases where energy is rejected at high temperatures and we simply choose not to put that energy to use, and still more cases where energy is rejected in some form besides heat transfer."
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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That's a pretty petty grammatical correctiction.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Also misses the point.
You'll never have a Carnot cycle without a sink or a lossless electrical transmission system. Even a superconducting one is going to have refrigeration energy costs.
Not that there isn't the potential for huge improvements. There's been a huge increase in the efficency of polyphase electric motors just in the last 10 years or so. The savings from that probably outstrip the contributions of both solar and wind together at a small fraction of the cost. Improvements in lighting efficency probably several times as much.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Biofuels take nearly as much petroleum to produce as is created.
And when there is no petroleum we will also have no fertilizer - which will obviously be a huge double hit to food production
This assertions was on the basis of a paper writen by Pimental, widely circulated and quoted.
However, it has turned out that there were a number of assumptions in his paper that turned out to have practical implications when put into practice, that significantly shifted the efficiency equation. Not to mention the issue of efficiency of growing operations, themselves. He was also looking at certain grain crops. What they are actually using now are certain weed-type plants, that require much less in terms of fertilizer/water treatments
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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So, find a useful sink... instead of dumping the heat back into the atmosphere or streams.
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abrams
Sport climber
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energy efficiency of the new sh*t replacing old wasteful sh*t has the Energy
Generating corps sh*tting bricks.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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So get busy finding a use for low enthalpy waste heat.
You'll be rich!
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mechrist
Gym climber
South of Heaven
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Okay, I will. OR we could focus on sources of energy that don't produce as much waste heat?
As an aside, right now, it is 17F outside. Thermostat is set at 62F, it is 81F in my house. The sun is a wonderful thing. I'm keeping my coffee warm via the heat generated from my laptop fan.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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what kind of sailboat (the old Commodore asks?)
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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After 2 days of thinking about it I can't find a problem with his logic.
After 2 days? It seemed pretty obvious after about 2 minutes.
Our bottle is getting pretty full. It's not logic, it's math. Math is simpler.
Dave
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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But then the dinosaurs might have been worried about the size of their bottle too. It's not a problem for them now, is it.
Dave
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Big Mike
Trad climber
BC
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It does seem dismal. Our dependance on fossil fuels must end. This is promising though; http://www.newenergytechnologiesinc.com/technology/solarwindow,
I saw a video awhile back that was talking about a guy who had invented a film like this to reflect the sunlight in the warmer months and then allow it to enter when winter came. They were directed to go down the hall and talk to the people working on wireless charging solutions.
These guys were harvesting energy from the ir field of light which means that if you combined the two technologies you could have windows that feed off both the solar and ir spectrum. You could even make a paint with the right molecular structure and it would act like an IR panel and power anything!
I wish I could find that video again..
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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All we know is things are going to change in a big way, not for the better, and relatively fast.
Our economic system is based on growth and this growth will stop hence the system will collapse.
The world will not end, there will be fewer of us living at a lower standard.
Shale gas, shale oil,wind and solar will not save us, just give us a little more time until the inevitable.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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just crazy conspiracy theories
keep your attention focused on politics, celebrities, sex and violence, internet news, TV, movies, and sports
put all your faith in your church and government and big corporations
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Base & Ed have a good handle on this. (Happy BD, Ed!)
Interesting book, "The End of Growth" recently came out re the effect of ever more expensive oil on economic growth. Didn't seem to entirely address the effects of more gas due to fracking, but fracking can be its own nightmare.
I'd be interested in hearing some of our competent scientists comment on the book, "Limits to Growth, 30 Year Update" and its two predecessors.
However you look at it, it appears that our economic "progress" and consumption is outstripping our capability to innovate, and our path is not sustainable. I'm sorry for my kids.
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paganmonkeyboy
climber
mars...it's near nevada...
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perhaps humans will be a little more involved in the next extinction event than we care to think ?
how will the rapid warming of the globe when we scream past the tipping points offset the rapid rise in energy costs ? less heating needed, maybe more land becomes realistically farm-able...in the far north and south, of course...mostly north...til we look like mars, i suppose...
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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This is where gov't really has a role.
The private sector will not do it.
I say, slap a $.30/gal tax on ea gallon of gas/diesel, which goes directly to research on producing alternative sources of gas/d.
There WILL be a price point where it will be economical to produce these things, and the more advanced the research, the lower the price point will be.
This WILL respond to research dollars. It can also be seen as a national security protective action.
By the way, Biodiesel IS already available, and it seem competitive. I buy it when I can, the problem is that there is only one place in Los Angeles where I can buy it, and it is somewhat out of the way.
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WBraun
climber
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The future is pain.
Pain creates change.
By it's true nature the living entity is ever blissful.
When that bliss is checked it seeks to restore it .......
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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OK. I'm in a motel 6 in virginia and I just watched the entire video. Towards the end, stopped it repeatably and wrote down much of the summary.
While I have always been quite aware of this with regards to oil....that we would consume the last 10 per cent in about the same amount of time that we produced the first 90 per cent, but this lecture puts it in an extremely elegant and utterly simple mathematical terms.
That is probably the best hour I have spent in years. If you don't watch it, you are an idiot. It is absolutely non political and absolutely simple. Anyone can easily understand it and if you don't watch it, your basis of knowledge just went down about 75%. It is that true.
Wait until you have the time, then sit down and watch it. All it is is a one hour college lecture applying simple math to our resource usage.
I'm going to send it to everyone I know in the oil business.
Contrats for finding and posting that. My dad has been on to this for a while, and he will appreciate it, because his work was in applied math and computer science. He was a college professor.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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OK. I know the Bakken and Eagle Ford (and most of the other plays) quite well. I also know how the bulk of the oil is found. So post your questions, and if I don't know them, I will look them up in the literature.
The big modern plays are all in reservoir rocks with extremely low permeability. You could try to produce it in a vertical, but it wasn't economic.
Now you drill horizontal wells with stage fracks. This means you drill down, 500 feet above the pay zone you start a 90 degree turn, and if your geologist is any good, you will land flat in your zone. Casing is then set all of the way to the landing point.
Then you drill a mile horizontally, because the typical drilling and spacing unit is 640 acres, a square mile. This is changing and now we are seeing 10,000 foot laterals as regulations modernize.
So if the zone is 50 feet thick and 8000 feet deep, on a vertical well you will have 50 feet of zone in the wellbore. On a horizontal, the entire lateral is pay rock exposed the the wellbore.
On a vertical well, you can put a frack on it and maybe drain ten acres in these types of ultra low permeability rocks. On a horizontal, they selectively perforate the production liner, which is run over the lateral and then cemented along its full length. Again, you may perforate the lateral in ten shot clusters for five feet along the lateral, at different differences. Now as many as 30 clusters along a lateral. You then go in and frack each hundred foot stage one at a time. There is a method to do this that only takes a few days. To frac more than one zone in the old days took at least a week.
So you see, they thoroughly frac the rock along its full length, and injection pressures and rates of injection control the frack for maximum results. All that a frack does is artificially induce fractures in the target rock, with the aim to maximize the amount of rock that is heavily fractured. These zones have super low permeability. Although they are quite porous, and your typical shale may have 30-40% pore space, the low permeability is cause by the tiny grain size of a shale, which is basically a mudstone. The pore throats are typically way too small for an oil molecule to move through. It may take a year for a methane molecule to migrate to one of these induced fractures, so the fracks are designed for maximum fracture density to a distance of a couple of hundred feet or even less sometimes, from the wellbore.
Low permeability zones usually act the same way as they decline. Depending on the petrophysics of each area in the play, these wells come in screaming at very high rates. The downside is that the decline curves are steeply hyperbolic, meaning that the initial decline may be 50% or more in the first year, 40% in the second, and so on. This means that although they make a lot, they make the bulk of it in the first two or three years, by which time they are down to producing at a low level, which then flattens out to a very modest annual decline rate. So unlike the video, the hyperbolic decline, by definition, is not steady.
So while the Eagle Ford and the Bakken can make a lot of money, if you don't pay out in the first year or two, you will never pay out, because after 2 or 3 years you are too deep into that hyperbolic decline.
The significance is obvious. These plays make a lot of oil and gas, but within 5 years, their production is no longer statistically significant. They may be profitable to produce for 30 more years, but barely, and at small quantities.
The behaviour of each well can be incorporated to the fields at large, and the bump in the national production decline that has been provided by the Bakken is small and will be short lived. The idea of 20 billion bbls of recovery is totally false. It might be 2 or 3, which in the scheme of things is not that good, nor all that economic, given the high cost of the wells.
I can provide decline plots, but i can't export the declines as .jpg's. I can do it in .pdf files for you, but not as simple pictures.
I have every well in the entire mid-continent and the rocky mountain states already downloaded into my laptop right now. I can click on individual wells and see everything about them. I also have economic analysis software that does incorporate the log functions of each decline curve.
Anyway, if you want to understand world oil reserves and where they are, these wells don't amount to a fart. By far, the majority of the World's oil is found in the giant and supergiant fields, which tend to have really obvious geology and were found by the end of the sixties with the discovery of Prudhoe Bay. The U.S. has reserves of 190 billion bbls, more than those of any country in the world other than Saudi Arabia. Our problem is that we have already used almost all of it.
I can make a sound case that the ultra high growth of the United States was directly tied to our massive oil fields. Now look at them.
Prudhoe Bay is on secondary recovery, a waterflood, and is almost done. The East Texas Field, or "Black Giant," is basically done, although it won us WWII. Yes, here and there are still good discoveries, but none of them have exceeded the 11 billion bbl mark since Alpine, west of Prudhoe Bay.
All of the Saudi Fields were discovered decades ago. They were found by western companies who were then kicked out as each nation nationalized their oil industries. Saudi Aramco is always highering, but they haven't found a big field in decades. All of their oil is tied up in a small number of supergiant fields.
It takes thousands of smaller fields to add up to one supergiant, and that is what we are now doing, finding smaller fields that wouldn't even be economic if high oil prices fell.
If you want to understand this, read "Hubbert's Peak," "The Prize," and keep up on what is going on in the industry. There are still billion bbl fields to find in the deepwater gulf and arctic Alaska, but these are areas that nobody even considered in the old days, simply because the technology and expense is truely massive.
I know a fair amount of the distribution of oil reserves, so I'll try to help with the discussion.
This thread is very important and needs a better name to get more people involved with it.
That lecture was unreal, though. Nobody in the oil business thinks that way. It is all short term thinking.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Did you pay attention? He discussed the same thing as you, where somebody said that Copper could be made from other metals. It was incorrect, but that was the attitude.
Our entire culture is tied up in oil. Look around you at everything that was made with it, shipped with it, and is powered by it. If it is electronic, it has a good chance of being powered by coal.
From what I know, I think you are being irrationally optimistic. Just to straighten it out, describe how we will move beyond oil and a warming planet. You don't have to believe in AGW. The planet IS warming, and the population within ten feet of sea level is quite large.
Also there is the matter of feeding everyone.
It might not mean extinction, but it will be a big change from business as usual.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Ken M.
I was for a HUGE gasoline tax twenty years ago. Even then it was becoming obvious that the resource was running out and we weren't conserving because gas was cheap. No way will we switch to alternatives until they are cheaper and better than oil. Which is nigh impossible. A gallon of gasoline is incredibly energy dense. It is amazing stuff.
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WBraun
climber
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Magnetic energy will be the deal.
There's other stuff too but not yet ready for this age.
They're still too stupid and don't deserve it yet.
Mankind only gets what it deserves not what some lab coats think they can come up with on their own .......
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okie
Trad climber
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The water resource is on a similar disturbing trajectory.
Glad I've always known how to f$ck without making kids...
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Big Mike
Trad climber
BC
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Even if we do figure out the energy crisis we have to implement population control Or we'll end up with more humans than planet.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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The water resource is on a similar disturbing trajectory.
Most sensible post on this thread so far.
We could learn to live without oil. A lot tougher to live without water.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Another troubling aspect of fossil fuel use is the fact that dry natural gas is used to produce ammonia, which is used to make fertilizer for crops. World agriculture is totally dependent on these nitrogen fertilizers.
A set of numbers and links appear below.
The consumption of dry natural gas has been growing slightly in the US since 1980. The growth of reserves of dry natural gas have not been growing at the same rate over that time period. However since 2005 the growth of reserves has increased significantly while the consumption has increased also but at a much lower rate.
At the current rate of consumption, the total reserves today would be used up in 13 years.
The rate of increase of reserves is greater than consumption which will extend that lifetime somewhat, depending on the length of time this condition persists.
Fertilizer would then be made using other fossil fuels, at a greater cost. Or natural gas would be imported into the US (or fertilizer).
edit Either no one caught the mistake I made or no one felt to challenge it... the Excel tables for US consumption and reservers have the "Date" in the strange units Microsoft uses to encode the format "mm/dd/yy" and so that very low rates I had previously where growth in those units... much less than a year. After inserting a column with the corresponding year (I could also have used the function YEAR(date) to extract the year) the numbers actually look more reasonable.)
This does change the conclusion on the US use, and on the recent natural gas activity. Also, the use of "wet" and "dry" natural gas, "wet" has other hydrocarbons (like propane) while "dry" is mostly methane (which is the ingredient used to produce ammonia and thus the rest of the fertilizers) extracting the methane would be another step...
Efficiencies gained in the use of different processes make a big difference in the cost margins, but do not substantially effect the cost of the end product, at least the energy cost, though small changes could extend the lifetime of this resource, if the majority is burned up for its energy there is nothing left for fertilizer at whatever the efficiency.
"The United States is the world's third largest nitrogen producer and currently has the capacity to produce 12.5 million material tons of ammonia, which is used as a fertilizer, as a building block for other nitrogen products and for industrial uses."
http://www.tfi.org/statistics/statistics-faqs
"Natural gas plays a critical role in the production of fertilizers that serve as the soil ‘food’ that plants – from corn and wheat to pumpkins and apples – need to produce a healthy and bountiful crop. The cost of natural gas - the basic building block for nitrogen fertilizers - accounts for about 70 to 90 percent of the production costs for nitrogen fertilizer."
http://www.tfi.org/issues/energy
"Nitrogen fertilizers are often made using the Haber-Bosch process (invented about 1915) which uses natural gas (CH4+) for the hydrogen and nitrogen gas (N2) from the air at an elevated temperature and pressure in the presence of a catalyst to form ammonia (NH3) as the end product. This ammonia is used as a feedstock for other nitrogen fertilizers, such as anhydrous ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3) and urea (CO(NH2)2). These concentrated products may be diluted with water to form a concentrated liquid fertilizer (e.g. UAN). Deposits of potassium nitrate (NaNO3) (saltpeter) are also found the Atacama desert in Chile and was one of the original (1830) nitrogen rich inorganic fertilizers used. It is still mined for fertilizer."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer
The nitrogenous fertilizer production is a very energy intensive industry, producing a variety of fertilizers and other nitrogen-compounds. Ammonia is the most important intermediate chemical compound, used as basis for almost all products. Fuel use is estimated at 268 PJ (excluding feedstocks) while 368 PJ natural gas is used as feedstock. Electricity consumption is estimated at 14 PJ. We estimate the energy intensity of ammonia manufacture at 39.3 GJ/tonne (including feedstocks, HHV) and 140 kWh/tonne, resulting in a specific primary energy consumption of 40.9 GJ/tonne (HHV), equivalent to 37.1 GJ/tonne (LHV). Excluding natural gas use for feedstocks the primary energy consumption is estimated at 16.7 GJ/tonne (LHV).
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/business/industry/industrial_LBNL-44314.pdf
(reference to "dry" natural gas)
US natural gas annual consumption, 2011: 24 trillion cubic feet
US natural gas reserves, 2010: 304.6 trillion cubic feed
13 years = 305/24
us natural gas consumption growth since 1980: 1.1%
us natural gas reserves growth since 1980: 0.7%
us natural gas consumption growth since 1998: 0.4%
us natural gas reserves growth since 1998: 4.7%
us natural gas consumption growth since 2005: 1.7%
us natural gas reserves growth since 2005: 8.0%
World natural gas annual consumption, 2011: 114 trillion cubic feet
World natural gas reserves, 2011: 6,675 trillion cubic feet
59 years = 6675/114
world consumption growth since 1980: 2.6%
world reserve annual growth since 1980: 3.1%
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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BUMP
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