David Archibald on Climate and Energy Security

Roger Sowell and Stephen Rasey:
Thankyou for your comments at February 12, 2011 at 9:20 pm and February 12, 2011 at 10:25 pm, respectively, which concur with my post at February 12, 2011 at 4:56 pm.
I now write to draw attention to the salient points because – as several posts above demonstrate – ‘true believers’ in Peak Oil are as as blind to the importance of these points as ‘true believers’ in CAGW are blind to the importance of the missing ‘hot spot’ and Trenberth’s ‘missing heat’.
These salient points are the only significant considerations concerning ‘peak oil’, and all other points – whether numerical or not – are irrelvant. So, I iterate them and I add a further explanatory point here.
Roger says;
“It is even more interesting to consider the present price of oil, which the Saudis have repeatedly stated should be $70 to $80 per barrel. Adjusted for inflation, that $32 in 1980 is almost exactly equal to $80 in 2010. The Saudis are no fools. They know exactly what they are doing, and will keep the price of oil below the coal-to-liquids incentive point. There may be temporary excursions above $80, but these will not last long. The price spike in 2008, driven by speculators in the oil market as the real estate prices collapsed in the US, is a good case in point. The price rapidly declined again to the $70 to $80 range.
This is nothing new, as it is common in many industries to maintain prices at or just below a threshold point at which a competing technology becomes attractive.”
Yes, as I said;
“The ‘oil-from-coal’ processes (including the Fischer-Tropsch process) are merely an alternative source of crude oil. And if they were a cheaper source of crude oil then natural crude oil then they would displace the natural sources.”
And I also said;
“But two important facts remain.
1. The existence of the LSE process constrains the maximum oil price: if oil became too expensive then it would pay the UK to start producing LSE syncrude instead of Brent crude with resulting drop of crude oil cost.
2. There is sufficient coal for at least 300 years (probably 1000 years) so oil production will not ‘peak’ from supply exhaustion for at least 300 years even if natural crude oil supplies were to exhaust.
And nobody can know what fuel will be needed 300 years in the future. Hay as feed for horses was the major fuel 300 years ago, but hay is not considered to be a significant fuel today.”
Stephen rightly says:
““It is unrealistic to believe the oil and gas is inexhaustable. We may very well have had Peak Oil. But it is also completely unrealistic to expect production to fall off a cliff. Price will rise, more supply will be made available and demand will drop to restore the market equilibrium.
With the expectation of rising prices, people will develop alternatives, be it Gas to Liquids, Coal to Liquids, Fission-to Hyrodgen, or some other portable energy source.”
Yes! That is exactly the point.
The only issue worthy of discussion is the time frame that would be required for the transition from crude to syncrude (e.g. oil-from-coal) in the improbable event that oil reserves were to exhaust. In that unlikely event, the oil supply would not suddenly stop but would decline for one or more decades. Hence, the need for the transition would be obvious.
And there would be plenty of time for conduct of the transition which energy companies would conduct because they do not want to go out of business. The transition would be driven by the desire of energy companies to continue their business and, thus, to make profits.
The required growth of the required coal supply to obtain syncrude as oil-from-coal would be similar to the growth of the oil industry that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, but it would be easier to achieve because no new coal fields would need to be found.
Are oil companies building oil-from-coal plants?
No.
What does that prove?
Oil companies know there is no foreseeable ‘peak oil’ crisis that threatens their business. (They are not fools and they would not want potential competitors getting oil-from-coal plants operative before they did if they saw their existing product supply were exhausting).
Richard

I still don’t buy this sea-level rise business.
These are the cliffs east of Antalya, Turkey. The Med is a good model for sea level monitoring, because it has no tides to confuse the issue.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antalya_undercut_lr.jpg
Note the size of the wave-scoured undercut. The sea level is normally exactly level with the lower platform – I had to wait ages for a low swell to pass and reveal the lower platform. There is only one undercut, none above or below.
For this undercut to form like this, with a very precise lower platform and single undercut, the sea level will have to have been very stable for some considerable time. For how long? Well this is an image of the calcite deposits that have formed on the cliff-face itself.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antalya_calcite_lr.jpg
Now I think a calcite deposit that thick will take a long time to form. Say 500 years?? In which case, these cliffs have been in their present state (not retreating) for at least 500 years. So the undercut is at least 500 years old. So therefore sea levels have not changed for 500 years.
The only wild card here is land movement. However, for sea levels to have really risen over the last centuries, then we must imagine a case where the land and sea have risen in precise unison – otherwise the undercut would be deformed. This is an unlikely state of affairs.
In summary, the evidence from the Med seems to show that sea levels have been steady for some considerable time.
.