Below is a slide presentation given by David Archibald in Melbourne on February 5th. He’s asked me to repeat it here for the benefit of all. I’m happy to do so. He covers climate issues, oil and coal, plus Thorium reactors in this presentation of 110 slides.
He also touches on his upcoming book, which we’ll have more on later. In the meantime, his current book is still available here
Slides below, be patient while they load. There is a wealth of information here. A PDF is also available. – Anthony
Archibald NCC 5th February 2010 (PDF file 6.2 MB)
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jrwakefield says:
February 13, 2011 at 8:12 am
I have been looking at the global data on temperature. Summer TMax is not increasing, there is no increase in heat waves.
I’m not disagreeing with you or the analysis. Although just concentrating on summer Tmax is perhaps not enough. I was commenting on Archibald’s sloppy presentation with all the problems I pointed out. The cause deserves better.
@JRWakefield, etl all. I’m not going to quibble about whether we have passed Peak Oil for the first or four time. Let’s just say that we passed Peak Whale Oil in the late 19th century and we survived the crisis. We passed Peak Pennsylvania Oil and found East Texas. We passed Peak US oil, but found a lot more internationally.
And by extension, where do we go next? Titan? Yes, humans will survive. But what the next version of civilization (after oil) will look like is anyone’s guess. It’s not just about loss of oil, it’s the economic and social consequences of loss of oil. Everything in society is dependant on that one commodity, food production/transportation, as well as the ability to produce other items. It’s all interconnected. It can’t be flipped on a dime to something else (which we keep hearing about be never stated what that “something else” is.) The fact is there is no alternative energy source with the energy density and ERoEI as oil.
I wish this was not the case, I don’t want peak oil to happen. I want nothing more than for my grandchildren to have the society I grew up in, and better. Unlike those who WANT global warming to happen, I don’t want peak oil to happen. I’m sure we will do our best to try and mitigate the effects of dropping oil production, but regardless of our inovation abilities we cannot sidestep the laws of physics.
The chemistry of abiogenic oil is not even controversial since it has already been carried out in the laboratory. However, whether or not oil has actually come about from these reactions 20km under the Earth’s crust, we are still a long way off from knowing.
The best evidence against abiotic oil is the fact that an oil deposit has a unique chemical fingerprint, which can be traced back to the source rock, which has always been a biological sedimentary bed. The biological horizon of the deep Bazillian Tupi field has been found just under the deposit. The Bakken is an in situ deposit, the oil is in the source rock (it’s too tight for the oil to migrate into it.). Plus not all oil is the same. The Green River “oil” shale is in fact not oil, but kerogen. That material has close relationship with marine organism lipids.
The fact is, not one depleted oil field has been replenished from mantle rock. The fact is, the super giant fields are all in terminal decline. The Ghawar field has some 3000 wells around the periphery to pump in millions of barrels a day of sea water, which comes up the production wells cutting the oil. That is only done when a deposit is on its last legs. The days of gushing oil wells is over.
I’m open to the possibility of some fraction of crude oil being “abiotic,” but I have personally performed analyzes for biomarkers in crude oil sources and reservoirs. I worked for a major oil company and know that these analyses and information derived thereof yield profit. Biomarkers are real and they are not formed in FT synthesis. Show me some crude oil w/o biomarkers and I would change my mind on abiotic oil.
This means that even if some oil is produced abiotically, it’s rate of migration into known reservoirs is slower that the rate of extraction.
uh, homework. I appreciate Leif’s posts and Richard Courtney’s posts though I still have sympathy for David Archibald so clearly I need to look at details again. 🙁
Hmmmn. Somehow Washington’s “arithmetic” (arythemagic?) does NOT compute:
In this article reported at http://www.freerepublic.com, our esteemed and highly informed Secretary of Agriculture “expects” a minor 1.8 percent rise in prices while talking about ethanol and federal (ie, Iowa primary voters’) subsidies, but the writer of the article mentions corn prices that have almost doubled since May 2010 ….. Odd math. ( Perhaps he means and increase of 1.8 TIMES the price, rather than 1.8 PERCENT of the price.)
Ag Secretary ‘Not Worried’ About Effects of Ethanol Subsidy
CNS News ^ | 2/11/2011 | Christopher Goins
Posted on Sunday, February 13, 2011 7:53:22 AM by IbJensen
Washington (CNSNews.com) – Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says he welcomes the extension of the energy policy requiring the extension of tax credits and protective tariffs of corn ethanol and is not worried in the long term about the U.S. economy’s capacity to produce corn for food, fuel, feed, and exports because of it.
“I’m certainly not worried in the long term about our capacity to produce enough corn to meet our food and feed needs as well as our fuel needs,” Secretary Vilsack said Wednesday in a news conference with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Energy Secretary Steven Chu held in the Department of the Interior building.
Vilsack said he is not worried about the inflationary effect that the ethanol subsidy might have on food prices.
“Here in these Unied States, we’re expecting food prices to rise somewhere between 2 and 3 percent, which is relatively moderate,” Vilsack said.
However, the latest Consumer Price Index report shows that fruits and vegetables rose 1.8 percent in December after a previous decline in November. A two to three percent increase would be nearly double the percentage increase of December prices, according to the latest CPI report.
Vilsack attributed the rise in food prices not to ethanol subsidies but to advertising, marketing, refrigeration, transportation, and other expenses that happen in the food chain. He said he was confident that U.S. corn ethanol policies are raising the price of corn only slightly, according to USDA studies, and that the policy will not damage exports.
The agriculture secretary attributed international price increases to weather conditions and export controls.
“I think there is going to be enough corn for food, feed, fuel, and for export opportunities,” he added.
Vilsack noted that after the biofuel tax credit was allowed to lapse, there was nearly a 50 percent decline in production and there were 12,000 jobs lost.
According to USDA and the National Corn Growers Association, the average U.S. farm price for corn increased steadily throughout 2010, going from $3.40 in May to $3.75 in July to $4.40 in September to $5.20 in December to $5.40 currently (Feb. 2011).
The Agriculture Department says that U.S. corn stocks for 2010/11 are projected 70 million bushels lower this month because of “higher-than-expected food, seed, and industrial use” – including ethanol production.
The USDA’s latest commodities report says “corn used for ethanol is projected 50 million bushels higher than the November final ethanol production estimate and weekly ethanol data indicate record output for December and January.”
In December, President Obama signed a bill extending a credit of 45 cents for every gallon of pure ethanol blended into gasoline, as well as protective tariffs for 54 cents per gallon, costing nearly $1 total.
The corn used in ethanol is only about 5 percent of all production, according to Vilsack.
jrwakefield says:
February 12, 2011 at 6:59 pm
“No, that statement is simply not supported by the data. The world demand for oil has increased at a linear rate of 1 million barrels per day per year, from 1986 through roughly 2006.
“Hard to understand how oil consumption has been flat with a growing Western population which has doubled since 1986.”
Nothing to do with the marked improvement in fuel-efficiency then? D’oh
And I wonder, have you ever read the 1972 ‘green’ book: ‘Limits to Growth’? And do you believe it’s all come true?
Although just concentrating on summer Tmax is perhaps not enough.
That is correct, it isn’t enough. Looking atTmin in winter it’s increasing (getting less cold). Winters are also getting shorter, thus a longer growing season.
jrwakefield says:
February 13, 2011 at 9:48 am
Looking atTmin in winter it’s increasing (getting less cold)
Global Warming has morphed into ‘Global Less Cold’ 🙂
Nobody is claiming that oil production won’t peak someday. The “Peak Oil” argument is whether or not global oil production has already peaked.
As more and more new wells are drilled horizontally, I think it’s quite possible to ramp supply above 2006 and 2007 levels.
Btw, Mexican and Venezuelan production declines have quite a bit to do with government (Pemex and PDVSA) corruption and incompetence.
Citing Tamino, Richard Telford writes,
Global sea ice – no change over thirty years?
Look at the red line on the graph – it goes down. And the decline is statistically significant – see
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/monckton-skewers-truth/
to which stephen richards responds,
Don’t quote tamino/foster. Waste of time. Note ‘rate’
Why is citing Tamino a waste of time, when he’s right? And making a point readers here didn’t notice on their own? Contrary to Archibald’s “no change,” the global anomaly actually has been declining. By about 50,000 km2/year, or half a million per decade since 1990, the period shown in Archibald’s graph.
Or going back to the start of the time series, 1979, the rate of decline averaged 38,000 km2/year.
But since 1999, driven by accelerating Arctic change (where “nothing has changed,” says Archibald) it’s been steeper: 69,000 km2/year. Take your pick.
I didn’t get those from Tamino, they’re do-it-yourself easy (simple regression). The declines are each a bit steeper if you switch to simple time series models instead.
>>>Richard Telford says:
February 12, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Global sea ice – no change over thirty years?
Look at the red line on the graph – it goes down. And the decline is statistically significant – see
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/monckton-skewers-truth/
I tried to post on tamino but it appears he doesn’t allow anyone to post that doesn’t agree 100% with his posting. What tamino has tried to show is that 30 years of sea ice data is statistically significant, using linear regression.
Linear regression as shown in tamino’s analysis is based on the assumption that the data has a constant mean over the interval. In other words, that there is no natural variability in average sea ice over a 30 year period.
However, the historical accounts published in newspapers show this assumption to be false. Sea ice coverage has a natural variability on periods longer than 30 years and as such the confidence levels assigned by tamino are statistically meaningless. To yield a statistically significant result, we would need sea ice coverage data for periods longer than the multi-decadal climate cycles.
For example, say it was september and you recorded the temperature outside from early morning until noon. Using linear regession you would conclude with confidence 99.99% than the temperature in october would be much warmer than september, and the temperature outside in a hundred years time would be too hot for humans to survive.
This is what has happened with climate science. They have taken readings over a very short period of time relative to natural climate cycles and used incorrect statistical methods to project those readings into the future and arrived at very misleading results.
The classic example of this is telephone operators. Before the invention of automatic switching, it was projected that everyone on earth would need to be employed as a telephone operator, given the growth rates in the number of operators to handle the number of phone lines.
>>Gneiss says:
February 13, 2011 at 10:36 am
Why is citing Tamino a waste of time
Because his linear regession method relies on the underlying data having a constant mean. When applied to cyclic data like climate it can yields misleading results, unless the sample length is significantly longer than the natural climate cycle length.
For example, if your data is from a warming cycle, linear regression tells you the climate will keep warming forever. If you data is from a cooling cycle, linear regression tells you the climate will keep cooling forever. Both conclusions are wrong, but the linear regression will tell you with 99.99% confidence they are right.
smokie says:
“rwakefield, Once again I have to point out that you’re selling bird blenders”
smokie you are being unfair to him, it is worth to check his windturbine site. from the site:
“Wind Power does nothing to “save the planet”. When the wind blows we often do not need the power as demand is low. When the wind is low, such as on hot summer days, is when we need usually need it the most.”
Excellent slide presentation. Thanks muchly. A couple of rebuttals if I may. Peal-Oil has been forecast and delayed several times over the past few decades. Most recently, it was the financial melt-down that took us back from the edge. In mid-2008, we were down to less than 1mm bbls/day of spare capacity (hence the $150/bbl price). More recently, it is the advent of horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracturing that will bring previously sequestered supply to market. Here in Alberta, the upper Cadium formation was a well known deposit of over 10 billion barrels of light sweet crude that was largely uneconomic to produce. The new horizontal technology has this 10 billion barrels streaming to market now and drilling is proceeding at a frenetic pace.
Moreover, Alberta’s oil sands contain 2.5 Trillion barrels of oil. Technology has progressed over the past 20 years that has taken the recoverable qunatity from 70 billion to 180 billion barrels. In time, it is likely that the recoverable will continue to grow and production will progress from the current 3mm bbls/day to 5mm and beyond. And while natural gas is currently the main cost of producing the oil sands, there has been talk and some action toward replacing natural gas steam generation with nuclear and perhaps thorium-electric steam generation.
>>And I wonder, have you ever read the 1972 ‘green’ book: ‘Limits to Growth’? And do you believe it’s all come true?
I grew up in the 60’s and like many others of my generation believed ‘Limits to Growth’ when it was published. It was what we had been taught in school.
The Club of Rome promoted this idea, that overpopulation, not government mismangement and/or corruption was the cause of the earth’s problems.
This was a popular notion with governments of the day as it absolved them of responsibility. It was the people causing the problems, not the ruling class.
The solution then was to prevent “excess” population. This same idea has been promoted by politicians and scientists in positions of power and responsibility within the US government today, as a means of escaping responsibility for failed policies.
The concept was first put foward under the label Eugenics which was very popular in the US 100 years ago. It fell out of favor for awhile when it was adopted on an industrial scale by the National Socialist party in Germany under its leader Adolf Hitler to solve Germany’s economic problems. However it still remains popular within academic circles.
As has been shown time and time again, the “limits to growth” concept is plain wrong. As prices go up for specific commodities due to supply and demand, product substitution over the long run will natural lead to lower prices and increased supply.
This is self-evident looking at the word around you. As the number of people on earth as increased, so has the prosperity. ‘Limits to Growth’ predicted exactly the opposite.
And I wonder, have you ever read the 1972 ‘green’ book: ‘Limits to Growth’? And do you believe it’s all come true?
Yes, and no. I don’t believe anything. The problem with predicting the future is the future is unpredicable.
Btw, Mexican and Venezuelan production declines have quite a bit to do with government (Pemex and PDVSA) corruption and incompetence.
No, production declines in Mexico has everything to do with Cantarell in terminal decline.
2004: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/1651
2009: http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/16/us-mexico-oil-analysis-idUSTRE55F4HK20090616
2010: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/09aff74e-3b49-11df-b622-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1Ds3TimqA
Gneiss says:
February 13, 2011 at 10:36 am
Citing Tamino, Richard Telford writes,
Global sea ice – no change over thirty years?
to which stephen richards responds,
Don’t quote tamino/foster. Waste of time. Note ‘rate’
Why is citing Tamino a waste of time, when he’s right? And making a point readers here didn’t notice on their own? Contrary to Archibald’s “no change,” the global anomaly actually has been declining. By about 50,000 km2/year, or half a million per decade since 1990, the period shown in Archibald’s graph.
—…—…—
Who is claiming the world has NOT gotten slightly warmer over the past 400 years?
We are (slowly) climbing out of the Little Ice Age of the 1500’s-1600’s-1700’s – despite being ever so “cleverly” hidden by the advocates/propagandists for Mann-Made Global Warming in several mutually-citing “peer-reviewed” scientific papers. The only ones guilty of denying anything are those who deny the Roman Warming Period, the Medieval Warming Period, the Little Ice Age, and the Modern Warming Period all may have a common cause.
Now, Skeptics are honest enough to admit that we don’t know the theoretical cause of those warming periods, but then again, skeptics are at least willing to look for a cause of those warming cycles instead of trying to kill millions of innocents and harm billions of other lives.
R. Shearer says:
February 13, 2011 at 8:47 am
I’m open to the possibility of some fraction of crude oil being “abiotic,” but I have personally performed analyzes for biomarkers in crude oil sources and reservoirs. I worked for a major oil company and know that these analyses and information derived thereof yield profit. Biomarkers are real and they are not formed in FT synthesis.
Of 1000 lbs (or kg) of pumped “raw” oil, how many units of biomarkers are found in these samples?
jrwakefield,
My apologies for not reading enough of your wind power link.
Regarding “peak oil”, I have more faith in the free market to provide plenty of oil, as it always has in the past. Governments are the problem, not the solution. 71% 0f the earth is covered by water, and we haven’t explored 0.1% of it. I suspect there is plenty of oil under the world’s oceans.
Encouraging drilling instead of discouraging it will provide whatever we need. Meanwhile, Obama continues to ignore two separate court decisions telling him to open drilling. He is in contempt of court, and rules by decree. I have a problem with people who think they’re above the law. Especially when it is the President.
@ur momisugly Wagon Lit on February 13, 2011 at 6:05 am
” why would any country capable of these innovative technologies, not build them because a seller is manipulating the price of his commodity? And when the buyer knows what is going on, and that the commodity can only become scarcer over time?
Surely, when it comes to something as important as a country’s energy supplies, the people that make the decisions look beyond the price of oil this week.”
My take on why countries with innovative technologies don’t build them is that actually, some did and still do, while others don’t due to financial reasons. Cases in point include South Africa and their Sasol coal-to-liquids industry when the country was unable to purchase crude oil due to Apartheid. Also, France chose to “go nuclear” rather than import oil for electric power generation – note that France has very very little coal or natural gas. Canada chose to develop their massive oil sands deposits even before the world price of oil rose enough to make them economically viable. Finally, the USA and other countries subsidize renewables even though they are not economic on their own.
The USA did not build commercial coal-to-liquids plants in the 80s primarily due to the choice by government not to subsidize that industry, and no private enterprise would engage in a money-losing venture. There were also many concerns over waste disposal from coal mining and the coal conversion process itself.
Companies, and countries, do look beyond the price of oil this week. Each of the above examples and the decisions that led to them were based upon best estimates of the near-term price of oil, such as over a 10 year horizon. Oil is a rather interesting commodity because there is a production cartel, OPEC which is well organized and has sufficient discipline to make pricing and production decisions.
Finally, there is absolutely no assurance that oil will grow more scarce over time. Our entire experience with oil is exactly the opposite. The BP Statistical Review cited earlier shows that World Proved Reserves have increased at a linear rate of almost 21 Billion barrels per year since 1980, even after accounting for all the oil production during that period. Proved Reserves increased in each year except for 1990 when it decreased a modest 3 billion barrels out of a total of 1000 billion barrels.
YEAR Billion Barrels
World Proved Reserves
1980 667.5
1981 687.6
1982 717.4
1983 728.3
1984 761.6
1985 771.3
1986 878.0
1987 910.0
1988 999.0
1989 1006.4
1990 1003.2
1991 1007.6
1992 1013.3
1993 1014.3
1994 1019.5
1995 1029.0
1996 1050.6
1997 1069.3
1998 1070.2
1999 1085.6
2000 1105.5
2001 1130.0
2002 1190.7
2003 1204.3
2004 1210.4
2005 1220.2
2006 1233.5
2007 1253.0
2008 1332.4
2009 1333.1
My main point is that oil follows the known laws of mineral resource supply and demand. Cheap minerals are due to abundant, easily extracted mineral deposits. When those reserves are depleted or nearing depletion, another group of more difficult mineral deposits are there to be exploited when the sales price rises sufficiently. Yet another group of mineral deposits exists at still higher prices, and so on. Contrary to all the Peak Oil alarmists, there is no cause for any alarm whatsoever over oil. We have barely begun to develop the oil deposits on this Earth.
ferd berple writes,
Because his linear regession method relies on the underlying data having a constant mean.
Er, no, the whole point of a regression in this context is to test whether the data have a constant mean. In the case of global sea ice anomaly, tests say it does not.
For example, if your data is from a warming cycle, linear regression tells you the climate will keep warming forever. If you data is from a cooling cycle, linear regression tells you the climate will keep cooling forever. Both conclusions are wrong, but the linear regression will tell you with 99.99% confidence they are right.
Where did you hear that about linear regression? Regression tells us absolutely nothing about trends going on forever. That mistake is called “out of sample prediction,” a point of caution in most intro texts. Regression is appropriately used to describe average rates of change over a particular interval (among other things), and that’s what I did.
Archibald waved at the same data, and claimed “no change over 30 years.” Tamino, and anyone else who has looked at the data, knows this statement is false. I’m a skeptical guy so I checked it myself, and found significant downward change whether I tried linear regression, fit a curve, used yearly means, allowed for autocorrelation, or did all those things at once.
What’s driving the downward trend in global anomaly is the steep Arctic decline, which could bring us to Archibald’s next false statement, “Nothing has changed.” And we’re only at slide 4.
I suspect there is plenty of oil under the world’s oceans.
Can’t be. Wrong geology. It’s all basalt from spreading ridges. Only on continental margines where the prospect of teaming marine life lived more than 100 million years ago. You should read up on the “Oil Window” to see the limitiations on how oil is formed.
http://oilandgasgeology.com/
racookpe1978 writes,
Now, Skeptics are honest enough to admit that we don’t know the theoretical cause of those warming periods, but then again, skeptics are at least willing to look for a cause of those warming cycles instead of trying to kill millions of innocents and harm billions of other lives.
Well, since in your mind scientists are trying to kill millions and harm billions I guess this won’t get through. But for others, it’s easy to show that there is great ongoing effort by scientists to understand the causes of past natural warming, and (sometimes) what role those play in the present. You can find articles on these topics in almost any issue of Science, Nature, Geophysical Research Letters or many other journals.