Chevy Volt and Gen III Prius discussion about: "green" energy, mileage, etc

Austin, your request for people to not use the term 'denier' my be better Recieved if you stop using the ter 'alarmist'

 

Come on Jeff, you must be oblivious. It was in common use as hollocost denier. It was then recoined by some in the global warming comunity for someone that was denying the holocost ghg would cause. My grandfather used the word colored. I"m sure I can find that in a definition. It was used so often when he was growing up, he didn't even know there was anything wrong with it.

One of the fathers of the term denier for global warming.
James Hansen: Coal-fired power plants are death factories. Close them | Comment is free | The Observer
The concentration camps where the nazis gassed the people they thought were evil were called death factories.

Ignorance is an excuse the first time. Now that you know what it means I hope you refrain from weakening the word.

Climate change is another grim tale to be treated with respect - Opinion

​

 

+1

Thanks. I was hoping by offending, people might notice the other offensive terms. But of course this may be backfiring on me.

 

I hear you Zythryn you are correct there is a winter/summer MPG impact on most cars.
I agree my proposal for EPA to include winter/summer debit to their CO2 calcs only matters much if there is a difference, I was under the impression from my reading that Volt for example has bigger air cond/heat debit than say a Prius. So far I am getting no support for my proposal but I will research it more.

 

When I hear the term peak oil I think of things like this which was written in 2010, and predicted peak oil in 2012 -2015

http://www.countercurrents.org/auzanneau180910.htm

But what does he mean by a mess?

We have all heard the mad max scenario before. The guy that wrote the forward to that book, likely helped with this speach

Jimmy Carter — the peak oil president - Salon.com

Bold italics mine. What is wrong with these predictions? They forget some basic economics. Easy to get oil is running out, but at the right price technology can find more unconventional researves. For example Canada's peak conventional was 1973, its peak unconventional is predicted to be 2020 if only oil sands are included. Add more to the price you find more oil with higher technology. As commented in this next article the stone age did not end because we ran out of stone. Peak oil production will happen because we have found something we would rather use.
Peak oil predictions | John Sauven | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Gasoline will get more carbon intense and expensive. Part of the ghg problem is because there is plenty of expensive unconventional oil.

Those that argue against running out of oil soon, will likely be proven right, just as they have every other time That doesn't mean gas won't get expensive. Deushe bank predicts expesive gasoline, then substitution, then drop in the price of oil as demand goes away The future may be bright or frightening. Electrified cars will get cleaner, conventional gasoline and diesel cars will generate more ghg.

 

Its the rising prices issue that attracts me to EV (one of the issues I suppose).

When I put in my PV panels I now have a fixed finance cost for my electric power for the next 15 years (useful life of the system is supposed to be about 20 years). I can tell you right now what my monthly expense will be for electricity in 2026 (barring some massive increase in consumption), anyone care to speculate what gas prices will be in 14 years?

The average gas price 14 years ago was $1.03 a gallon.

 

Actually the report being discussed said product would decline in 2012-2015..not predicting the actual peak. Predicting decline in production is easier since the delay from exploration to production is pretty easy to consider.

The article is discussing something the anti-peak people have been often ignoring. Not only is demand increasing, which is exponential growth, the eventual decline will eventually be an exponential decay in the other direction. Few people really understand the rapid "mess" one gets into with exponential growth in demand coupled with exponential decrease in supply. One side will quickly stop its pattern.. and supply will be physically constrained.

Those like Yergin that yergin that go around publically we are not running out of oil are just fueling the wasteful usage of many that don't look deeper. I consider "denier" be someone that publicly goes around supporting a position that denies the facts with an attempt to convince others of an illogical position. If Yergin were saying we could switch away from oil.. rather than "there will be oil". He has some good stuff in the Quest, but it overshadowed by the presentation that focuses on how we will keep finding more oil can can extract more from our existing wells (he really likes fracking) and then discussing but really ignoring he GHG issues.

I'd agree many attempts to predict the peak, generally using bad or no processess, produce bad results. Hubbert's results were pretty good because he addressed, with a good model, an area where exploration was largely complete. New reserves maybe found, but the concept of the Peak is still valid. To make predictions of the actual peak or the shape takes more data/assumptions on unfound vast reserves which is beyond Hubbert's process.

Well I disagree. The stone age had no "peak stone" problem.. it was replaced because stone tools were not very good, and something better came along. The dark ages did not occur because we found a better system than the Romans had, but because of a multitude of issues including inflation, raising costs and the inequitable allocation of resources.

Energy infrastructure takes a long time to change, and I don't believe have anything in the pipelines that will displace oil before the peak occurs. Those denying that reality are just slowing the advancement of investment and development of real alternatives.

At least we can agree on the future of eletricified cars and the demise of gas/disel cars, just not on the timeline ;-)

 

Austin, there are extremists for any point of view. Taking the extremist and dismissing the basic foundation doesn't logically follow.
Most peak oil supporters would agree that we aren't going to 'run out of oil' anytime soon. The peak oil idea is based on mathematics and is completely valid an undeniable unless you believe oil is created as fast as we use it.
The difficulty is two fold.
First, when will we hit peak global production. This is a moving target, as when we make technological advances in recovery, we all of a sudden can produce more.
Second, and this is the really interesting one. What will the affects be? Will it be a cliff, or a long plateau that then slowly declines, or something else.
How ready will society be to deal with it, and how will different countries handle it?

In shorty, peak oil is a physical and mathematical fact.
When and how it will affect our society is up for great debate.

 

With respect to the "quest" by Yergin.. maybe I was also disappointed because I was really hopping or more. The video clip I saw about it sounded much better than the book. Part of the book is, as Austin seems to be taking, more of an overall energy view. But I was vastly disappointed with the focus on fossil fuels. A decent review of some of the problems of Quest can be found here: http://peakoil.com/generalideas/the-quest-questioned/

"peak energy" (which is also true as total energy on the planet is fixed and the sun only add so much per year) is at least a very very long way away. I think we reach peak food before peak energy (at least until we can generated food directly from energy), but fear climate change will impact food in a very negative way.

Exponential grow/decline is the real issue for our planet we cannot keep growing and growing and using more and more oil. I'm not arguing we should stop or behave as it will happen tomarrow, but we should be investing in a sustainable furture, not just drill-baby-drill.

 

Quest is a fantastic book for lots of energy facts and background, tells you how we got to where we are today.
If you do not agree with Yergin, you at least have the basis to work off of for own your personal policy development. We are fortunate Yergin gave us this book in his lifetime...basically an energy history book. To the extent that Yergin supports a mix of energy sources (fossil fuels+renewables), he is politically incorrect for those who feel fossil fuels should be left in the ground. I would accuse him of being a softy - he really does not offend anyone since is pro-energy from any source, only if one is anti-(insert your energy dislike) you may not like his views in some areas.

 

Well it predicted in the article -

That doesn't seem to me to be a temporary reduction in production.

When you have a false flag for catastrophe, I need to look hard to get past the prediction. Now we have seen production increase a great deal from the first peak predictions of the 80s, the 90s peak, the 2004 peak, etc. A reasonable person looks at opec production capacity, not cartel restriction, not predicted peaks. The way to see a peak is after the fact. We are in a global recession right now, with $90/bbl oil. Some techniques can not make money here. When we climb out of recession, check back. If prices rise to $110/bbl for a time, you can expect more production. The predictions are not for more european or North American demand. Demand is expected to come from asia.

​

​

Certainly the plateau people would tell you we just don't have the demand at $110/bbl to increase production. The way to find out is after the fact. Supply is constrained at each technological and price level. Hubert was off by a factor of 3 (1.5 predicted versus 5.5 actual in 2010) on how fast oil production would decrease after the peak North American oil quantity so far, and I expect that his error will increase. That gives us a more plateaued reduction instead of an exponetial reduction in production.

I really am not a Yergin expert. I read some of his stuff after this thread. He seemed to say the US needs to reduce oil consumption, as China was increasing consumptioin and this would lead to higher prices. That seemed quite reasonable. It is economics though, its not about some false assumption that we can not produce unconventional oil at any price. There are large gas to liquids projects to produce gasonline from natural gas. These can be switched to biogas and coal when natural gas runs low. There is great productivity in creating diesels from algea, but that requires $150/bbl oil prices right now. Miss the technology and you get to oil wars, and the carter doctrine -war for oil- that seemed to get us involved in the afghan and iraq war. The excuse to arm islamic fundamentalist foreign fighters in Afghanistan was to prevent Russia from getting "our" oil The US does not need the military to control the oil. Thugs and dictators will sell it to us just fine, and probably for less than the oil wars cost. There is plenty of it at a high price. I really hate the peak people that raise these false flags, and much comes from the militaries of the world, that want military solutions to control the oil. First it was to keep it from Russia, now China. Drop the catastrophe, aknoledge the technology, and plateau oil and peak oil can live on the same government policies.

And I explained to you how that is not how the term came to be. Could you use a different term, now that you know the origin.

I really don't know much about Yergin, and you obviously have problems with him. The wall street journal article seemed to hit his opinion of fracking. We either frack or import, and if we can frack in an environmentally sound way we should frack. It is not as if we import lng from nigeria they will do it in an environmentally sensitive way. That is better from an employment and balance and trade point of view. Others prefer nuclear to fracking. No one searious in the space can see renewables replacing coal quickly. Part of the spanish financial mess is trying to do this too quickly. My brother after talking to some of those in the German power industry say they plan to get rid of the nukes by greatly reducing energy use. Those are the choices. According to the CP hack job, he does talk about ghg in his book, he just doesn't address it when he talks about policy. If you look at the cap and tax program passed by the house, they seemed to give a great deal of money to the coal industry. hmm. As I said a per barrel oil tax would help lead to the trnsition, but there is a great deal of politics. Very few seem to be working on reducing ghg.

We didn't end the stone age because we ran out of stone. The peak production will come from peak demand caused by high prices. Hubbert could be right about the US, because we could import oil without the price getting high enough to reduce demand or technology coming into play. Milton freedman said of the oil policies of the 70s we know how to make shortages. There were price controls to keep oil prices low, and other taxes to cause importation of refined products. This starved domestic oil from investment, and stoked demand with artificially low prices. Doing the opposite, Raising taxes on crude, not domestically produced gasoline might actually reduce demand while not starving technology. Hubbert did not understand substitution, and his prediction world wide of 1995 is way off.

The stone tools were as good as they ever were. Technology found better tools. Wind and natural gas are better tools for healthy electricity production than coal. Eventually solar PV will get cheap enough that it will be part of the mix. Read the rise and fall of the roman empire. It did not fail because of scarce resources - corruption, misallocation, and enemies with war technology.

I don't know anyone in the plateau camp that thinks changing doesn't take time. The peak oil idea seems to have created an excuse for a far flung military industrial complex that must control the scarce oil. If this money was used instead to help transition beyond oil that would be better. 37% of ghg in the US is from burning oil in transportation, yet some are so focused on this years ghg, they forget about tomorrow. The reason to transition away is because of cost and pollution though, not because we are going to run out.

Probably on more than that. Remember modern cars stay on the road for a long time, the right paced transition will reduce pain. The ZEV mandate then distruction seemed to stall PHEVs. If you see catastrophe by 2020 you need a strong military and need to go zero instead of encouraging flex fuel PHEVs. You also get large lobbies that make sure we get non-optimal solutions. Picken's says the Coch brothers are against his natural gas big truck plan, because they want low prices for fertilizer also needing natural gas. And this gets to the ethanol lobby making sure we don't import it, and we don't use methanol or butanol instead. Lots of PACs standing in the way of progress.

 

Other peak oil propaganda
http://peakoil.com/business/the-hidden-cost-of-peak-oil/
What it says is give haliburton your money because we are running out.
I like this from the comments

Peak oil talk is mainly about fear and greed. There are real facts out there. We can act responsibly, but there are a lot of people with there hands out, and bad public policy decisions around this peak oil stuff.

Peak oil history-
The US must control the oil
Price controls
War for oil including arming islamic fundamentalist foreign fighters in Afghanistan before the russian invaded. Making friends with Saddam. Encouraging Iraq to Invade Iran, Iraq war I and II. Afghan war.
Making friends with thugs and dictators.
Huge money for oil services companies

Proper policy for higher gas prices not oil catastrophe
No War for Oil
Foreign policy run by principle, not for the oil companies
Oil Taxes
Encouragement of development of alternative energy vehicles
Cafe standards

 

Don't get me wrong, I believe the difference between summer and winter efficiency IS bigger in for a Volt than a Prius. Probably more-so for an EV.
My main point was that it appears that the study may have taken that difference into effect for the EVs, but didn't for the ICE vehicles. If that is the case, then the results don't favor the EVs as much as they should.

 

I only have problems with those that see something terrible coming that needs some drastic action. In the 70s we had the price controls, then the encouragement of coal, and the doctrine of war for oil. Most of those that think of an oil plateau see a peak to easy oil. The disagreements come on how fast production must come out. If you see a peak, then lowering demand as the price goes up, I am in agreement.

There are two kinds of math. The 1995 date, has demand rising even with higher prices, and unconventional oil not coming on line. If you add economics and unconventional oil to the equation, then we can likely find some good math.

Those are very good questions. Let's consider the Nixon policies of price controls. Under these policies, if they had continued we would see a cliff as predicted. Extractioin of unconventional oil would be too expensive and would be left in the ground. Gas lines might have sped up transition, but it would have been very rough with prolonged recession and perhaps even bloodier wars than we had.

Now say if instead we took the plateau approach. Ford started it with cafe standards, but these were not tightened again until recently. Smaller military would have freed up more money for R&D on phev. Tax incentives might have lead to a much more efficient fleet by now. Instead we go from government policy of a catastrophic peak then cliff, to one where oil is limitless but cheap. Let's not make the mistake of assuming cheap or no oil.

It is when you use proper economics to set up the equation. Set it up wrong and you get policies like - we need to fight wars for "our" oil. We need to build coal power plants. We need to spend money on a huge military, and fight proxy wars. More money must be speant converting coal to oil. All of these were the political answer to a peak oil cliff in the late 70s and early 80s. They also decided that oil companies would make windfall profits from this problem, so there was a windfall profits tax. It really didn't raise any money, as oil companies simply imported oil they could profit on instead of developing domestic sources. Sure there is a finite quantity of gasoline at each price point. What I am against is ignoring economics in the equations. If gasoline was $50/gallon, don't you think every one would be driving a plug-in? There are price points for the technologies in transition.

One diference between plateau and cliff is the funding of fcev. If we have a plateau then flex fuel phevs seem like a good choice. If we have a cliff then the freedom car fcev is necessary. In 2006 until now, policies favored phev and cafe standards over BEV and FCEV. A cliff might order price controlls again as we are going to run out anyway. A plateau would encourage an oil tax - and perhaps a cap and trade on ghg of electrical production.

 

Wars have been fought over resources for millennia. This was never about a mathematical predictions. It was over wealth and power and on rare occasion actual scarcity.
Arguing bad policies is fine, but please realize policies are not equal to scientific facts.

 

No reasonable model of "peak oil"has a cliff. Its a peak on a broader curve -- and its actually a fairly smooth curve because its the integration of lots of little independent processess and decisions. Even the first "peak" models included the concept of demand response which is why the production fall off is as a smooth slow curve and not a cliff -- as prices/costs go up it allowing increased recovery but at continuing lower levels.

What power-hungry people or moronic politicians influenced by greedy individuals or corporations due with a theory/model is a completely different question. Those at either extreme, peak-oil catastrophe doomsdayiers, or drill our way out of this with a plateaus over this century, are just using different tactics to push an agenda and weakly tying it to the model to try to get credibility. FUD about the peak or its plenty of oil (or about climate change or not, or about ..) just different ways to grow their following.

Just for fun I ask 10 people today about the "denier" title, and what they though it was best refering to. Not one associated it with the holocaust. Number one was climate change denier (3), number 2-4 was a tie for (racism denier, sexisim denier, religious denier). Maybe its a regional issue (or particular social-demographic groups). But in deference to austin I'll try to refrain from using it.

 

Well there is one presidential doctrine, that relied on "peak oil" going over a cliff soon -

Now peak oil may have just been his excuse, but that doctrine has been used ever since. Let me be clear. I find these things quite bad from a public policy point of view. Create a crisis because you want to implement your solution. In this case a proxy war using foreign fundamentalist muslems to protect "our" oil against the soviets. Or maybe it was an imagined and not made up. I do not know. I do know the predictions of oil peaking in the mid eighties were wrong. That is a verifiable scientific fact that is not up for dispute.

Sure, but when the policies have been justified by the predictions, can't we blaim the predictors? No peak oil in the mid 80s, bad policy. WMD used by the Iraqis in the '80s, but the US supported them then - for control of the oil. It was running out any day now according to the above doctrine, right. Then they invaded kuwait, and we had to protect the kuwaiti and saudi oil, because of the above doctrine. Maybe the doctrine and the cliff are wrong? Maybe the cliff was sold as a way to sell bad policies, or maybe people were well meaning and ignorant.

Now there simply are not scientific facts. Policies will affect if and when we run out of oil. By oil people typically mean gasoline and diesel. Gasoline is being made in Gas to liquids plants as we speak from natural gas. bio Diesel is made from algea living off of CO2. They are not limited by the easy oil, or heavy oil, or oil sands, or oil shale. When natural gas runs out we can make it from biogas from sewage and garbage. That runs out we can use wind and solar electricity to make it from CO2 and water. Sure we can guestimate the easy to get to oil, and demand, and say it will run out. The amount of gasoline or diesel is greatly determined by how much people are willing to pay. It is a economic, not a scientific question. The science has been done already, and we can make more.

 

...the thing is the ROW (BRICS et al) do not seem to be responding to the drastic action calls. Apparently they are looking at +CO2 with a less urgent mentality. Certainly one path is to say we must stop the +CO2 experiment, but the other path is to accept we may not be able to stop the +CO2 experiment in the foreseeable. We still need to conserve fuels, I must admit some peak oil feelings. But if you really want to worry about something...guess what: we are running out of Phosphorous too! Being a worrier, I must admit to fear of running out of resources, or disease, etc. or 100 other bad endings. But I am not smart enough to predict which one is going to get us. Whereas tunnel vision focus on CO2 implies some certainty that this is worst experiment we are doing. Actually we have a lot of experiments going on.

 

Thanks,
then the difference between your "peak" and my "plateau" is simply projections of demand response. The hubert curves fell from 10 M bbl/day in 1970 to 1.5 M bbl/day by 2010. In actuality the production only fell to 5 M bbl/day. The difference has been adding unconventional reserves through technology to production. This has made the decline much more gradual. In candada we had a peak in 1973, but a higher peak is projected in 2020. Higher prices improve yield. Hubbert said that opec might delay the peak by 10 years by restricting supply. We are past that point in time. Both opec and technology, along with economics has pushed out the curve and gotten rid of the rapid decline. The demand curves should help change this to a series of plateaus. Whether these are a slow smooth curve, or a series of plateus is affected by government action, opec, and technology. Since people are involved it makes predictions difficult. The shape of the oil production curve is affected by economics and governments more than how much oil is in the ground.

 

It does not matter if its peak or plateau or still on the rising part of either. If we are importing 1/6 of our oil from the Persian gulf, the ability to turn off that much of the imports is an artificial cliff. Policies about that are totally different beasts.