Peak oil, peak coal, green house gasses

It is certainly true that one can low-tech all possible methanol from wood, and then low-tech the remaining heat energy from it by combustion. I see refs. indicating 2% methanol yield per dry wood but I don't claim that as the upper limit. Would be surprised if it's 10% though.

Global annual wood production (assuming forests are in steady state) is about 7 Pg C. Add fires, Yude Pan's regrowth (IOW not steady state) and wood-product harvest, the total exceeds 10 but certainly less than 15 pgC. This is a big number, substantially exceeding the current fossil-C burn. Much could be done (methanol or otherwise) with a fraction of that.

Meanwhile many trees grow in 'inconvenient places' (Siberia, Congo, etc.) and many people like the idea of leaving most of them in situ because trees do 'good things' even if we do not use them. Still, there must be ways to to get more $$ out of some trees.

Especially trees that you plant yourself on your own patch.

 

This sounded like good news:

Then I read in the second paragraph:

Uh, Oh! The new management team has arrived:


Bob Wilson

 

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US is a net natural gas importer​

US currently imports about 10% of its natural gas use​

Natural gas is 20% of US energy need.​

Oil is 41% of US energy need.​

Replacing 50% of US oil needs with natural gas would double US natural gas use and then 50% of US natural gas would be imported vs. current 50% of US oil.​

The same $500B trade deficit is then for natural gas vs. oil.​

Fracking pollutes massive amounts of fresh water with oil and natural gas. There is no way to "protect water" from fracking. They pump horribly polluted, too expensive to clean up water into the deep aquifers, eventually polluting 100% of fresh water.

 

GE's Immelt sees this trend, and you know he buys Volts and has the POTUS ear

Cost Effective U.S. And World Energy Resources Are Evolving Away From Nuclear And Toward Natural Gas - Forbes

 

...since I tend to be critical of management anyways, I am speechless.
You gotta hand it to Pennsylvania for saving two refineries: one to Delta and now one to the three Stooges.
Odd couple, I know. But I like the fact that someone sees the value and potential.
Also although I did not approve, they went to gambling in PA, but now they are giving the money back to the people via low tax rates. In NJ, don't think we ever felt the +benefit of allowing gambling.
So PA ends up being a good low tax retirement state, but of course be careful of the mineral rights under your property.

 

A note I heard on the radio today spoke about the rising of Nat. Gas prices, after being her record lows. Demand curve changing dramatically buy the conversion of coal fired elect. plants to Nat gas. And yet, in North Dakota, fracking gas, as a by product of the quest for liquid oil, is merely flared off by the millions of cu. ft. The last estimate I read was that they flared enough gas in N.D to heat 600,000 homes. Not only do we get non of the benefits of burning that gas, but we get all the emissions. It is immorall, and should be criminal!

Icarus

 

True - but at what cost $80/barrel? $100? $200?
The mega economy that we have come to think of as our norm, is what it is because of huge middle class consumers that came about because of REALLY cheep fuel ... and lots of it. Lower class can't afford 'stuff' ... and upper class is too small to sustain the mega economy. It's not just people being "willing" to buy more (energy/stuff) It's a question of whether they're "able" ... which turns on price. Alternatives have not shown their self to be nearly as abundant and cheep as the good ol' sweet crude that we've not been able to discover any more of, since the 1960's. Yep ... that's when "Cheep / High Quality oil Field discoveries" plateaued or peaked. soooo . . .

bye bye middle class - there's no denying that we had a nice run

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Yes it would be very good to recover all of the energy.
But in some ways gas is fundmentally harder to deal with, which is partially why so much is left in the ground.
Ironically the cleanest fossil fuel is the hardest one to use, so it is possibly the nat gas age coming next?

 

We are not good. The integral of the consumption curve HAS TO BE the SAME regardless of its shape. It represents the total oil supply. Whether you want a peak, or a plateau followed by a cliff, the area under the curve is EXACTLY the same. Anything else violates basic physical laws like conservation of mass.

If you are going to include bio-fuel in the discussion, you need to provide power per area calculations, and show total land area which needs to be devoted to fuel production.

 

And could again if we start voting for FDR's and JFK's and not Reagan and Bushes (and Democrats) who fantasize about how the world has plenty of oil and all we have to do is destroy the planet to get it and use it and not care about who we have to bomb and occupy to get it.

Majority of the "Middle class" has voted against its own best interest, against US best interest for the last 30 years. Looking at the oil issue, voters overwhelmingly vote for political representatives who are against energy efficiency, against US national interest.

 

Yes it is based on that. If less is used, then the integral has to be LOWER. That makes plateaus lower or shorter, and cliffs sooner, (or peaks steeper, however you want to look at it). In other words, my assumption is the BEST case. To the extent that it is incorrect, the situation is that much worse.

All the peak oil curves I have seen are based on ALL oil, including an estimate of undiscovered. Many of them are updated with each new find.

Oil discoveries in the US peaked around 1930. In the world around 1960. Current production rate is around 5 times the discovery rate. You mention that US is pumping 5mb/day. We are consuming 20mb/day.

YOU brought it into the conversation, not DOE. If YOU want people to take it seriously, neglecting to mention the land use, is counter productive.

 

...you know, the Peak Oil theory was based on the Hubbert equation which suggests a bell-shape curve. The bell shape curve suggests a steep downward slope to rapidly depleted oil. If its a plateau, then its not a bell shape curve, then the Hubbert Peak Oil equation can be thrown out the window, which many (eg; Yergin/Quest) do not feel the Hubbert equation is very realistic.

So 5-10 years ago (before the shale boom) many people felt Hubbert equation applies and we are rapidly depleting oil. Then there were innovative advances in drilling technology villified as "fracking" which now brings us to realize we the rapid depletion of fossil fuels may not be a realistic model, actually it now seems we have a lot of oil and gas. So now, in my view, the USA pro-environment argument has shifted from " we need green energy becuase there is no oil and gas left" now its changed to "oil and gas (and optionally coal) must be left in the ground as an ethical and planet saving matter". In other words, a more divisive argument now because rather suddenly it looks like we have planty of oil and gas, so the old Peak Oil argument is falling apart. My analysis anyways.

 

The shape doesn't matter. That is what I am trying to get through to Austingreen. Whatever you think the available resources are, that doesn't change no matter what your consumption curve is. This is simple calculus, and is strictly a mathematical proposition, having nothing to do with oil at all. Hubbert used a bell shaped curve as that seemed a reasonable match to his observations about oil well production and oil discovery. Who cares, it doesn't change the area under the curve no matter what you do. Here is an exercise if you aren't agreeing with this point, draw any curve you like, make sure that the area under that curve is 1 (an arbitrary unit, defined as ALL the oil we will EVER remove from the ground), make one of a similar scale for Hubbert. Now, make an argument for why your curve is better than Hubberts.

Hubbert's equation doesn't say we are rapidly depleting oil, it just shows a curve for how oil production is likely to go (though perhaps his data might say that). If you are claiming we have more oil, that just moves where on the curve we think we are (changes the data), NOT invalidating the curve itself, which would involve an argument about rates of well depletion and discovery.

 

Perhaps we need to define "Demand". If all fuel stock was only 10¢ per ton - we'd darn well manufacture all the buildings / guzzlers / roads / planes / plastics that we could sell. So we all want more fuel. That's true demand. But it's tempered by cost. That's the beauty of cost. It tempers use / acquisition. So demand is declining due to cost. The peak/curve is in big part tempered not just by extinction of the product fuel - but due to the rising cost ... the Return on Investment (of source power) requires delivery at a profit. No buyers? Drop the price. No room for ROI? ... your production curve necessarily drops off. Fast or slow - it drops. By the looks of the last half decade, it looks like the drop will be slow. 10 years? 20? In any event - w/out cheep power ... you get no more growth. Without growth, you don't pay off your country's trillion dollar debts. It's gona be an interesting ride.

.

 

...I am certainly very worried about supplying limited resources to the exploding world population.

 

LPG is liquefied petroleum gas and it's called that for a reason. The other way you get it is from natural gas wells. Either way, it's a fossil fuel, but it's better to use it than have it burned off.

Importing energy isn't a problem. Importing it for anything other than the manufacture of exports is a problem.