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)
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/
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Ok, take a look at the graph at tamino. Where does he start his regression? At a high point in ice coverage some months BEFORE the start of 1980. You can see it better at the site, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
The fact that he starts his “significant” downward trend starting with a cherry-picked point where the ice coverage anomaly that was about 1.5 MILLION sq. km. above the average should clue you in that he’s playing fast and loose with the truth. That was one of the highest levels in the entire 30+ year record! OF COURSE he shows a “significant” downward trend! With his starting point, it is impossible to show anything BUT a decline. Note that if he had used 1-1-1980 as the start, of his regression, the ice coverage anomaly would have been exactly 0. Redraw his curve using 1-1-1980 instead of the date he selected, and you do away with virtually all the decline.
Is the ice coverage below the average, sure, maybe by 6 – 8 %, but it was just as low in mid-1980. If you can’t explain the NATURAL forcings that resulted in such a low anomaly in 1980, then you can’t expect me to put much faith in the theory that CO2 is responsible for a similar decline today.
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.
I will explain this carefully, again.
Peak oil is not about what is in the ground. It’s about flow rates, it has to be extracted fast enough to meet demand. It’s also about ERoEI. Once it takes a joule of energy to extract a joule’s worth of oil, what’s the point?
jrwakefied – could you summarize Glasby’s argument against abiotic hydrocarbons that you referenced earlier?
I read it about a month ago and wasn’t impressed. “A better understanding of pathways” doesn’t overcome thermodynamic constraints until you can specify what those pathways are. And Titan didn’t rate a mention:
http://esse.engin.umich.edu/PSL/PRESS/Titan_Cassini_Huygens/AP_Wire_012705.pdf
Does Titan have an oil window?
Khwarizmi your best bet is to read this:
http://static.scribd.com/docs/j79lhbgbjbqrb.pdf
The mantle is just too deep and too hot for oil to be stable. The longer oil is subjected to high temperatures, the more volitile molecules (light chains) are converted into gases leaving tar behind (hence why we have tar formations). The oil window is way above the depth of the mantle under continental plates (20-35km thick).
There may be some carbon compounds on Titan, but unless there was wide spread marine life in shallow seas on Titan there won’t be oil.
That said, carbonate rock is subducted back into the mantle
http://www.earth.edu.waseda.ac.jp/lab_ogasawara/products/abstracts/200108_UHPMWS_1a01.pdf
http://www.perplex.ethz.ch/papers/kerrick_geology_98.pdf
jtom writes,
Ok, take a look at the graph at tamino. Where does he start his regression? At a high point in ice coverage some months BEFORE the start of 1980.
Tamino starts in 1979 because the data start in 1979, he’s not cherry picking anything — he’s using all the data we’ve got from the satellite era.
And he chose to graph monthly average anomalies, which look a bit different from the more or less daily raw values. But either one yields the same trend.
BTW, I wrote earlier that the 1979-present trend is 38,000 km2/year, but I should have said 36,000 based on simple regression.
And as I said, if you start in 1990 (as Archibald’s graph does, though his text says “30 years”), you get a downward trend that’s steeper than Tamino’s, 50,000 by my reckoning. Or if you start in 2000 it’s steeper still, 69,000 km2/year.
@jrwakefield on February 13, 2011 at 4:47 pm
“I will explain this carefully, again.”
Repetition does little good, in fact, it hurts your cause. Peak Oil alarmists have been wrong every time in their prediction of the world’s oil production declining. This is a sure sign that they do not understand the oil markets, and their model is wrong. An accurate model provides a valid prediction. Peak Oil alarmists have neither valid predictions, nor an accurate model.
Frantic arm waving, noise-making, reading and citing hyped-up reports, and all the rest cannot overcome the hard facts that we are not running out of oil and never will.
Peak Oil alarmists could make a fortune in the oil futures markets. I will applaud loudly when I read of the instant billionaires who had the shrewd foresight to invest in oil futures. “After all, Peak Oil is real!!!! It will happen REAL SOON!!!!!” [sarc off now]
I’ve read the paper, JR Wakefield. My comment made that clear. Let me quote:
Please specify those pathways. If you can’t explain what the link says in your own words it means you probably don’t understand it.
Titan has methane seas and an atmosphere estimated to be similar to crude oil, all of it produced by geological action according to NASA:
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Based on data collected by Huygens’ instruments, Sushil Atreya, a professor of planetary science at the University of Michigan in the United States, believes a hydro-geological process between water and rocks deep inside the moon could be producing the methane.”I think the process is quite likely in the interior of Titan,” Atreya said in a telephone interview.
The process is called serpentinisation and is basically the reaction between water and rocks at 100 to 400 degrees Celsius (212 to 752 degrees Fahrenheit), he said.
http://esse.engin.umich.edu/PSL/PRESS/Titan_Cassini_Huygens/AP_Wire_012705.pdf
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jrwakefield says:
February 12, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Can someone elaborate on the empty cities in China as an indication of war(?).
The book “Energy Security 2.0” is coming out of a Washington think tank, the International Strategic Studies Association: http://128.121.186.47/ISSA/index.htm
Yossef Bodansky’s second chapter in that book describes these cities. The financial community thinks that the empty cities are part of China’s real estate bubble, but that could not explain why they are completely uninhabited. The cities are built complete with museums, heroic statues and so on. They are spare cities for when China’s coastal cities get thrashed in the war they are going to start.
rbateman says:
February 12, 2011 at 3:12 pm
The only thing I would change is the Probabilities of a Quiet Period.
Modelling I respect has solar activity going back to normal (as we have known it) by mid-century. The only unknown now is how much snow and ice is going to build up during this minimum and whether or not that is enough to trigger the next glaciation.
Mike Smith says:
February 12, 2011 at 3:53 pm
Will David give us permission to use these slides, with credit?
Please use my stuff as you see fit.
Snowlover123 says:
February 12, 2011 at 7:42 pm
Hi Dr. Archibald,
There was a person on theenvironmentsite.org/forum that claimed that “he was David Archibald.” Was that person you?
It wasn’t me.
G. Karst says:
February 12, 2011 at 11:42 pm
Victoria has 208 billion tonnes of lignite which will be made into 120 billion barrels of diesel and the like.
Keith Battye says:
February 13, 2011 at 1:09 am
Yes it is a damped spring, paper in press. The force involved is the force that dare not speak its name.
Lucy Skywalker says:
February 13, 2011 at 2:36 am
On peak oil, the best source is that link I gave to the American Chemical Society paper from early 2010. It was produced by three Kuwaiti engineers applying the Hubbert model to every major oil-producing country. I don’t believe all of the paper though. For the non-OPEC countries, their production profile matches history. To achieve a different result requires simultaneous changes in trend all over the planet. Found the link: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef901240p
Scintillating set of slides! It might be more effective to break this up into multiple posts and add some text from the presentations to explain the slides. In particular, it would be awesome to have a post about the LFTR section of the slides.
A quick note to explain why horizontal drilling/formation evaluation while drilling (FEWD) are so revolutionary and increase our capacity to recover oil so radically.
It is common for geological formations to be in layers. Some of these layers have oil. Traditional drilling would punch through an oil bearing layer so that recovery of the oil would not be that efficient if the oil bearing layer was not thick.
With horizontal drilling and FEWD, the driller knows what kind of formation layer he is drilling through in realtime. He can control the direction of the drilling to stay in narrow oil bearing layers (rather than just punch through them) and increase the amount of oil recovered by orders of magnitude.
The R&D to make this technology was quite impressive and required the development of new sensors and communications technology to make it possible to analyze what kind of rock the bit was currently drilling through and to get that information back to the surface immediately so the driller can make realtime decisions to optimize his drilling.
ferd berple says:
February 13, 2011 at 10:43 am
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.
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I’m not surprised he wouldn’t let you post your comment – nor am I surprised that you can post it here. Why? Because it’s wrong.
Linear regression assumes normal errors, independent observations and equal variance. Alternative procedures can be used when these are violated. It does not assume a constant mean. It does not assume that there is no natural variability.
The null hypothesis is that the mean is constant. This is not an assumption. If you think that it is, you need to retake some statistics courses. Short term natural variability would make it harder to reject the null hypothesis. Long term natural variability is a trend, which is inconsistent with Archibald’s statement.
Linear regression does not allow us to infer causality. The declining trend in sea ice could be due to purely natural factors, black carbon, leprechauns or global warming. But it does prove that Archibald’s claim that there has been no change in sea ice over thirty years is false.
[you seem to not understand the tolerance on here for diverse opinions. You are always free to argue against those opinions you feel are wrong as that helps others to understand the flaws which seems to us to be better than simply censoring them out. Furthermore you should bear in mind that being snarky about this website is simple bad manners, Anthony has gone to great lengths to make this the most popular and informative climate website around and if you don’t like the way it is run please feel free to embark on your own project and show how it should be done better]
Robert of Texas says:
February 12, 2011 at 6:44 pm
There’s the Achilles heel for us, that wee-bit of common sense proves to be so elusive.
By the way, Archibald’s paper has triggered a very good discussion. I’ve learned a lot, as usual. I really do wish he could be a little less sloppy.
Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but a couple of weeks back I read somewhere that British scientists have developed a synthetic petrol based on hydrogen that works in todays production cars and should be commercially available in around 3-5 years time at a cost of around 90p per gallon (not litre) before tax.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1351341/Relief-pumps-Revolutionary-hydrogen-fuel-cost-just-90p-GALLON-run-existing-cars.html
[Snip. Strike two. ~dbs, mod.]
[Also, I did not make the moderator comment above. Mods, please identify yourselves. Thanks. ~dbs]
Please specify those pathways. If you can’t explain what the link says in your own words it means you probably don’t understand it.
Yes, I have read it, and yes I understand it. If you want a good explanation on how oil forms get it from the horse’s mouth, get the book Oil 101.
As for Titan. So what if there is methane there? Methane is a long way from complex long chained organically derived hydrocarbons.
Frantic arm waving, noise-making, reading and citing hyped-up reports, and all the rest cannot overcome the hard facts that we are not running out of oil and never will.
Sorry, but this shows you still do not understand. Of course we will never run out of oil, as we will be leaving more oil in the ground than we will have consumed. We will continue to extract oil for generations. No one is saying oil wil be all consumed nothing left. That is not peak oil.
It does not matter what the economics says, once we cannot produce what the demand requires, then we have a price increase (2008) until the economy cannot handle the increase in energy costs and a recession starts, dropping demand, reducing the price. Then recovery happens and demand returns to the supply limit, which by that time s lower than the limit prior to the recession due to depletion from older fields and not enough new supply coming on line. Another price spike occurs putting the economy into recession again, and so on down the far side of the supply curve. This does not include the social problems caused by this (specifically food prices).
Do you not believe in the supply numbers from specific fields? Is Cantarell not in terminal decline? Is the North Sea not in terminal decline?
The other issue is ERoEI. Do you understand what that means? Economics cannot sidestep the laws of physics. Soon as it take one joule of energy to extract once joule of oil energy, regardless of what’s still in the ground, how is economics going to fix that?
The Alberta tar sands is very close to break even. Surface mining ERoEI is a mere 6:1 (and that comes from the industry, not speculation), in situ extraction will be lower than that. One proposed mechanism to mobalize the bitumen to flow into a well is to burn the bitumen at depth to liquify the rest to flow. Extraction from that process will yield only 1% of the bitumen. Now that’s getting desparate to burn 99% to get 1%.
jrwakefield, are you claiming that the world will never produce as much oil as it did in 2006/2007? Are you claiming that peak oil production has already occurred?
Also, you shouldn’t ignore the fact that horizontal drilling ruins your ERoEI argument. The oil industry has actually seen an increase in ERoEI from horizontal drilling.
I don’t know if we’ve hit peak oil production or not. Do you?
Are you claiming that peak oil production has already occurred?
Production has been flat since 2005. 2008 production was flat out around the world with no spare capacity. Super giant fields around the world are in terminal decline and new fields are not of sufficient size to offset those declines.
Also, you shouldn’t ignore the fact that horizontal drilling ruins your ERoEI argument. The oil industry has actually seen an increase in ERoEI from horizontal drilling.
You have evidence to back that up? Horizontal drilling has been used for decades, common usage in Saudi Arabia, yet ERoEI has dropped from 100:1 to 25:1. If gas shale drilling is any indication, it has a much smaller ERoEI than convensional gas fields. Shale gas fields are also very short lived, depletion starts after 6 to 8 years compared to 25-30 years for convensional fields and take more drilling rigs to produce than convensional fields.
I don’t know if we’ve hit peak oil production or not. Do you?
No one knows until after peak has passed. We are just noting the warning signs shows depletion is near. When was the last supergiant field discovered?
jr wakefield – If you want a good explanation on how oil forms get it from the horse’s mouth, get the book Oil 101.
As for Titan. So what if there is methane there? Methane is a long way from complex long chained organically derived hydrocarbons.
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You referenced a deficient paper that pretends to circumvent thermodynamic constraints by invoking “other pathways” that remain unspecified. I asked you to specify those pathways and you replied, “get the book Oil 101.” No thanks. You should get the book “Thermodynamics 101” instead.
Titan, contrary to your crude misrepresentation, likely has an abundance of geological hydrocarbons in long chains and other heavy arrangements. Please note:
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“..huge reservoirs of liquid methane and ethane. Solid carbon-based molecules are also present in the dune region around the equator, dwarfing Earth’s total coal supplies.”
http://www.universetoday.com/12800/titan-has-hundreds-of-times-more-liquid-hydrocarbons-than-earth/
“Crude oil minus the sulfur is a decent estimate of what the haze is…”
http://www.space.com/4470-titan-dreary-drizzle.html
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Biological markers are a consequence of microbes that feed on hydrocarbons extending their reach from the ocean sediments to the deepest layer of the earth’s crust. These microbes are ancient, ubiquitous, and corrosive to the sedimentary hypothesis.