Magicians and Illusionists Penn and Teller have a popular TV show on the Showtime channel called, ahem, “Bullshit”. In homage to their debunking mentor, James Randi, they take on a number of subjects they feel could use a little “clarity”.
Click image to watch the video
They recently (last Thursday night) took on Al Gore and carbon credits. The entire 30 minute show is available via the website VREEL (update You Tube has it now, VREEL started installing Zango a couple of days ago – a spyware)
Warning: more than a few obscenities are uttered in the show, but mostly for comic effect.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
David Hagen: Yes, noted. (And well put.) But shales, tars, bitumens are what’s really plentiful. It becomes profitable at around 30 to 50 bucks a barrel and is essentially unlimited.
And there may be a lot of light crude out there–exploration is still very restricted. The Bakken Shale is light crude (though it requires horizontal drilling to get that dolomite strip) and may run a half trillion barrels by the time they’re through with it. The 3+ billion barrel number is up 20-fold from a few years back. Expect that number to keep growing.
I think the Peak Oil flap is the same basic error the Club of Rome made back in the ’70s and ’80s, recycled.
I saw a Toyota Prius with a TerraPass bumper sticker on it today – now that’s some serious eco guilt when you need to buy carbon offsets for your Prius!
Who the f**k wrote the f**cking script for that show? F**king Al Pacino?
Bill P (12:46:36) :
In the context of your post, you might find this article interesting:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/0081908
Evan Jones
“I think the Peak Oil flap is the same basic error the Club of Rome made back in the ’70s and ’80s, recycled.” – You apparently are not familiar with the foundational geophysics or economics and logistics of transitioning to other resources with high capital costs.
Peak Oil = Resource Half Consumed (typically 55% consumed at peak). Yes 45% will still be discovered. BUT the price rises till you have “demand destruction” OR provide alternative fuels in sufficient supply to meet transport desires.
The challenge is the dynamics of the transition the transition. Welcome to the fuel transition roller coaster!
And pray that you don’t crash.
re: Microwave density from Solar Power Satellite.
Assuming a ‘rectantenna’ 10km x 20km in size (how many GaAS diodes will that need?) and 1 GW power at 100% conversion, it works out to about 5 watts/m^2 on average. Assume Gaussian distribution and you have 10 W/m^2 near the center, or 1 mw/cm^2. The Federal exposure standard is 10 microwatts/cm^2, the Euro standard is 1 microwatt. So you are 100x over the limit. Death Star, anyone ?
Conversion efficiency: Glaser didn’t invent the concept, he was a strong proponent. He claimed 90% end-to-end efficiency. My associates in the microwave business said 1% was probable. NASA tried it, put 2 MW in, got 100 W out. Not a lot of publicity on that one. Space isn’t empty, you will have absorption and scattering losses. The air will cause as much or more, even though it is only the last 10 or so miles. PV conversion runs no more than 20%. Assuming 10% RF conversion, you’ll need to start with at least 10 GW to get 1 GW out, and that will require a collector of about 36 million m^2 (9000 acres). A whole lot of silicon, for 1 GW output power. The U.S. currently produces around 100 GW of electricity.
Assuming geostationary or geosync orbit, the satellite should see sun all the time, with the Earth’s axial tilt. With a big enough dish antenna on the transmitting end, you could keep the beam focused. But every antenna has side lobes, and with a multi GW source, not trivial. Even 0.01% (absurdly small) gives you 100+ KW. Compared with the 100 W of comm satellites. Goodbye communication. And radio astronomy. Not the same frequency, doesn’t matter. You de-sensitize the RF front end of the receiver on all frequencies. (been there, done that)
Somehow, I rather doubt space access will get much less expensive. The physics of that hasn’t changed since Goddard was tinkering 80 years ago. Rutan’s Space Ship 1 could never make orbit. And building high efficiency solar cells on one of the dirtiest places in the neighborhood doesn’t sound overly practical, let alone getting the equipment needed to the moon in the first place.
These were only a few of the problems with the SPS, which is why it was abandoned in the early 80’s.
/anti-SPS rant off
Evan Jones ( 21:21:46 )
Before we get too excited about Peak Oil, there’s some interesting thinking in that arena which, if true, would make concerns about natural resource exhaustion (at least for oil) a bit silly. Check out this article:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3952
As well, check out a more in-depth look at the resurrected theory of the abiotic origins of oil at:
http://www.gasresources.net/index.htm
Now if (and that’s a mighty big if) this idea holds water, then oil will never run out as it’s being continuously created. Just some fascinating thinking for the geology community.
For those people using Mac OS X, there is an excellent quicktime codec that will play just about any format, including divx. It’s available at http://perian.org/. And it’s free! I’m not affiliated with them, but this little gem has opened up a world of videos by allowing them to play, and it’s never caused any compatibility issues. Enjoy.
[…] Penn and Teller on Carbon Credits […]
i add this too my blog
http://steveward.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/live-better/
bullshit=awsome show that “calls” the best BS in the world today. Damn hippies – the world has been warming since the ice age.
A few months ago, I got myself 80 trillion carbon offsets from http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com and haven’t worried about eco-guilt since.
Dude,
I agree with your stance on global warming, but that Penn & Teller video link tries to install Zango on your machine. Zango is spyware. Telling people it’s safe is not cool.
REPLY: Hmmm, I didn’t notice any such thing when I connected, and my spyware scan comes up clean
REPLY 2: from charles the moderator–Anthony, I just checked and this requirement has been added, so IT Guy may be correct, but the need to install Zango was not there last week when you originally made this posting.
REPLY 3: Thanks for the heads up, I’ve removed the link to VREEL and added links to YouTube, which has the video now. When it first was released, only VREEL had it, and yes VREEL has started installing spyware. I’ll never use them again for any purpose – idiots. – Anthony
The obscenities in Penn & Tellers bullshit aren’t for comic effect but because if they call people liers then they can be sued, however calling someone names is legally safe.
Ok, Pen and Teller and bending the facts a lot here, shame, they should be better informed. Here is a link to a serious website that will crush anyones ignorance about the facts of global warming, which is absolutely real: http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php