By Andy May
The end of oil and gas has been predicted on a regular basis since 1885, yet today we use more of both than ever before and no end is in sight in the data available. Figure 1 shows worldwide energy consumption by fuel since 1965 and projected to 2035 by BP in billion tonnes of oil equivalent, it shows substantial growth in both oil and gas.
Figure 1. Worldwide energy consumption by type of fuel. Source: BP Energy Outlook 2017.
Figure 1 shows 35% growth in oil consumption from 1990 to 2015 and projects 14% growth from 2015 to 2035. Similarly, natural gas grew 77% from 1990 to 2015 and is expected to grow 37% from 2015 to 2035. The projections of ExxonMobil, the IEA and the EIA are similar. So, how do we make sense of the recent claims that we have reached peak oil or are about to?
Ian Chapman, in a 2013 paper in Energy Policy conveniently lists recent “peak oil” dates as estimated by recent authors in Table 1 (his Tables 1 and 2) by late and early projected dates (Chapman 2014).
Table 1. Ian Chapman’s compilation of late and early “peak oil” projections from the literature. Source: (Chapman 2014).
As we can see in Chapman’s tables there is a distinct difference between the ExxonMobil, BP and IEA projections and the earlier dates presented in some of the academic literature. Let’s review some historical predictions of the end of oil and discuss why there is so much uncertainty.
Many of the following quotes are from the post “We’ve been Incorrectly Predicting Peak Oil for over a Century,” by Matt Novak, here. Others are from Daniel Yergin’s book The Prize (Yergin 1991).
1885, the Pennsylvania State Geologist: “the amazing exhibition of oil was only a ‘temporary and vanishing phenomenon – one which young men will live to see come to its natural end.”
1885, John Archbold, partner in Standard Oil: “I’ll drink every gallon of oil found west of the Mississippi”
1909: Titusville Herald: “Petroleum has been used for less than 50 years, and it is estimated that the supply will last about 25 or 30 years longer. If production is curtailed and waste stopped it may last till the end of the century. The most important effects of its disappearance will be in the lack of illuminants. Animal and vegetable oils will not begin to supply its place. This being the case, the reckless exploitation of oil fields and the consumption of oil for fuel should be checked.” Link.
1919, Oil and Gas News: “In meeting the world’s needs, however, the oil from the United States will continue to occupy a less and less dominant position, because within the next two to five years the oil fields of this country will reach their maximum production and from [then] on we will face an ever-increasing decline.”
1920, US President Wilson: “There seemed to be no method by which we could assure ourselves of the necessary supply [of oil] at home and abroad.” Link.
In 1920 oil prices spiked to $38 (2017 $). Everyone seemed to think that the end of oil was near. Demand was going through the roof due to the popularity of gasoline powered automobiles, especially the iconic Ford Model T, which sold for $250 in 1914. At this time the Model T dominated the market and the production time had dropped to 93 minutes per car.
In 1909 the new Hughes two-cone drill bit was entering the oil field and was so successful that by 1914 it was in use in eleven U.S. states and 13 foreign countries. The new bit (see figure 2) drilled wells as much as 11 times faster than the earlier spade type “fishtail” drill bits. The current “tri-cone” drill bit was invented in 1933 by Hughes Tool Company engineers, it provides more downhole stability than the original bit.
Figure 2. The Hughes “two-cone” or “bi-cone” roller drill bit, introduced in 1908. Source (Wells 2016)
Another early innovation that helped discover and produce more oil and gas was the invention of surface mapping to find subsurface anticlines that often form traps for oil and gas. In 1910-1915 Charles Gould, Everett Carpenter, Erasmus Haworth and others (Skelton 2012) used this technique to map an anticline that became the giant El Dorado oil and gas field in Kansas in 1914. El Dorado has produced over 300 million barrels of oil and is thought to be the first oil field found with scientific techniques (Kansas Sampler).
Not long after surface mapping became a common exploration technique, reflection seismic began to be used to find structural traps in Oklahoma. This technique was used to find the Seminole Field in 1928 (Figure 3). The final new technique to increase oil production discovered during the 1920 “oil crisis” was water flooding. This came into common use in Pennsylvania in 1921 when the state legalized the practice. It extended the life and increased the production of oil in the large Bradford oil field. Water flooding is being tried in unconventional shale reservoirs and many show a positive response, see here and here.
Figure 3. A granite marker placed on I-35 in Oklahoma where the first discovery was made using reflection seismic mapping. Source: The American Oil and Gas Historical Society.
These four exploration and production technologies, along with advances in wellbore surveying (wireline logging) and in coring (removing rock cores or cylinders from wellbores) and rock core analysis, greatly increased the volume of oil and gas that could be found and produced. This kept prices stable for decades.
1937, Captain H. A. Stuart, director of the US Naval Petroleum Reserves (NPR): “We have been making estimates [of oil supply] for the last 15 years,’ Stuart said. ‘We always underestimate because of the possibility of discovering new oil fields. The best information is that the present supply will last only 15 years. That is a conservative estimate.”
An article on this estimate, from the time is shown in Figure 4. This estimate was widely circulated and believed at the time. It is interesting that the newspaper shown in Figure 4 also has a front-page article on the growth in oil production.
Figure 4. A 1937 newspaper article claiming oil will only last 15 years.
1941: US Dept. of the Interior: “American oil supplies will last only another 13 years.”
1943, Oil and Gas Journal: “There is a growing opinion that the United States has reached its peak oil production, the Oil and Gas Journal pointed out in its current issue. Since 1938, discoveries of new oil have not equaled withdrawals, in any single year, although there is a very good chance that 1943 will see enough new Ellenburger oil in West Texas to provide an excess.”
1956, Hubbert: “M. King Hubbert of the Shell Development Co. predicted [one year ago] that peak oil production would be reached in the next 10 to 15 years and after that would gradually decline.”
1957: The residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma buried a car as part of a large time capsule. They buried containers of gasoline with it because they feared there would be no gasoline in 2007 when the capsule was to be opened. Link.
May, 1972, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Richard Wilson: “At any rate, U.S. oil supplies will last only 20 years. Foreign supplies will last 40 or 50 years but are increasingly dependent upon world politics.”
1977, US Department of Energy Organization Act: “As a nation, Americans have been reluctant to accept the prospect of physical shortages. We must recognize that world oil production will likely peak in the early 1990’s, and from that point on will be on a declining curve. By the early part of the 21st century, we must face the prospect of running out of oil and natural gas.” Link.
1978: Glenn Seaborg, chairman AEC: “We are living in the twilight of the petroleum age.”
1980, Dr. Hans Bethe: The world will reach peak oil production before the year 2000.
1996, Dr. Richard Smalley: “…oil production will likely peak by 2020 and start declining. “
In 1997 Mitchell Energy, in The Woodlands, Texas tried the “slick water frack” in the Barnett Shale. This was a technique, originally developed by UPR that used water, sand and small amounts of polymers for lubrication to hydraulically fracture a reservoir. UPR (Union Pacific Resources) had not used the technique in shale but had used it successfully in other rocks. Nick Steinsberger, a Mitchell Energy engineer, obtained the details and from UPR and their permission to use the technique in the Barnett shale play and it worked beyond their expectations. The first well they tried it on was the S.H. Griffin #4, which produced 1.3 million cubic feet of gas a day for the first 90 days, an unbelievable amount for the time (A North Texans for Natural Gas Special Report 2016).
They were also one of the first companies to use microseismic monitoring to evaluate their hydraulic fractures, this is a critical technology used to optimize well spacing in a reservoir. These two technologies, the slick water frack and the microseismic, were in use at Mitchell Energy when Devon Energy bought the company in 2001. In house, Devon had a very experienced horizontal well completions team and after the acquisition of Mitchell they combined the three technologies to build a successful shale gas and shale oil operation by 2005.
2002, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden: “Global supplies of crude oil will peak as early as 2010 and then start to decline, ushering in an era of soaring energy prices and economic upheaval — or so said an international group of petroleum specialists meeting Friday.” Link.
2005, Chris Skrebowski, editor of the Energy Institute in London Petroleum Review: “We should be worried. Time is short, and we are not even at the point where we admit we have a problem … Governments are always excessively optimistic. The problem is that the peak, which I think is 2008, is tomorrow in planning terms.”
Massive shale gas and shale oil development had just started and would become a major source of new oil and gas by 2008, so Skrebowski’s timing was awful. Link.
The Current Oil “Crisis”
In constant U.S. dollars, oil prices peaked between 2011 and 2014 (see Figure 9) and then began to fall due to oversupply. The oversupply was primarily due to the rise in shale oil production in the U.S. and Canada, Iran’s re-entry into the oil markets and growth in offshore oil and gas production. Other important factors were the reopening of Japan’s nuclear reactors, a decline in industrial production in Japan, Germany, France and China; all in 2014 (Austin 2014).
We are hearing a lot about “Peak Oil” and “the end of oil.” These claims have always been with us whenever there are price fluctuations. However, this author thinks we are entering a period of relative price stability in the oil and gas markets. As in times past, whenever oil and gas prices rise, new technology brings more oil and gas to market. The great innovations emerging from the most recent price instability are the shale revolution and advances in deep-water oil and gas production. These have opened vast new technically recoverable reserves. The shale revolution is well entrenched in the U.S. and Canada where the technology was developed, but it is only beginning to be used in other parts of the world. As the rest of the world adopts shale production technology oil and gas production will increase and become cheaper with scale and experience.
New innovations in deep-water exploration and production may be even more important than the shale revolution. Seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, and as oil and gas exploration and production reaches deeper water, new reserves become accessible.
Technology, Price and Oil Supply
I’ve previously written that technically recoverable oil and gas reserves (or resources, if you prefer that term) are much larger than assumed by peak oil enthusiasts. But, even that conservative estimate of over eight trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil equivalent (at prices seen recently) is probably too low. Advancing deep-water drilling and production technology has opened huge new prospective areas, as seen in Figure 5.
Figure 5. The new areas opened with recent advances in technology are shown in purple.
Additional areas will be opened as the nascent technology matures. In particular, portions of the submerged continent of Zealandia and even parts of the Ontong Java submarine plateau might be added to the list soon, see Figure 6.
Figure 6. Location map for Zealandia and Ontong Java. Source: The Guardian.
In Figure 7 we see the steady march of oil exploration (green triangles) and production (red boxes) into deeper and deeper water. With current technology there may be no water-depth limit to exploration or production of hydrocarbons.
Figure 7. Water depth is shown on the Y axis in feet on the left and meters on the right. The green curve is the water depth for drilling, the red curve is the depth for subsea production infrastructure and the blue curve is the water depth for floating production facilities, such as FPSOs (Floating production, storage and offloading ships). Source (Barton 2014), a full-size image of Figure 6 can be downloaded here.
As of 2014, the deepest water-depth actually drilled in was 10,411 feet, although deeper depths are possible with existing equipment. The deepest water depth for existing subsea production equipment and pipelines was 9,627 feet and the deepest water under a floating production facility was 8,200 feet. There is no reason why these depths cannot be exceeded in the future as the technology improves. This opens a new world of prospective oil and gas reserves that is much, much larger than what we can explore today.
We have listed numerous false predictions of the end of oil, so let’s look at a successful prediction of oil and gas technology. See Figure 8.
Figure 8. Across the top of the figure are artists conceptions of future offshore oil and gas technology from 1947 and 1959. Across the bottom are modern pictures of the technology come to life. Source: (Barton 2014).
Discussion and Conclusions
Technology drives oil and gas exploration and development opportunities and price drives technology development. It is a pattern that the world has seen time and time again. Demand increases, supply is slow to follow, and prices go up. High prices kick the oil and gas industry into high gear and it develops new technology that increases reserves and production rates and prices fall. Figure 9 compares the history of oil and gas to technology developments and to world events.
Figure 9. The light green line is the crude oil price back to 1861 in 2017 dollars. Source of the price graph: The 2017 BP statistical review, page 20. Significant world events are shown across the top and significant advances in oil and gas exploration and production technology are shown in the boxes in the interior of the graph. A larger and easier read graph can be downloaded here.
In Figure 9 we see that oil prices are quite volatile through most of the 150 years plus of the “Age of Oil,” the only period of price stability is the period from 1930 to 1973. This period includes a worldwide depression and World War II, so it cannot be attributed to politics. As seen on the graph, the period from 1910 to 1930 saw the oil and gas exploration and production industry grow from drilling near oil seeps and pumping the heck out of each well, to using well developed scientific and engineering technology to find and produce the oil and gas. This technology kept supply high and prices low for a long time. This was the period of developing what we now call “conventional” oil and gas.
There has been a great deal of debate over the definition of “conventional” and “unconventional” oil and gas. Some define conventional oil as any oil less dense than water and some define it as oil from higher permeability rocks (Höök 2014). Some writers lump ultra-deep-water production in with unconventional production, due to the high costs associated with ultra-deep-water developments (energy.gov and (Somarin 2014)). But, most writers simply define conventional oil so their prediction of “peak [conventional] oil” will be correct and, generally writers who define “conventional” in similar ways, make similar predictions:
“There is more or less a consensus about peak [conventional] oil among experts, although this haven’t [sic] seeped into the public mindset yet.” (Höök 2014)
“But the evidence is that conventional oil production has peaked, and prices will rise, though this is unlikely to benignly encourage a shift to new fuels.” (Chapman 2014)
“Given these complexities, we suggest that there is a significant risk of a peak in conventional oil production before 2020. At present, most OECD governments are failing to give serious consideration to this risk, despite its potentially far-reaching consequences.” (Sorrell, et al. 2010)
Notice I had to add “conventional” to the first quote, although, in the context of his slide, that was clearly what Mikael Höök and the UKERC (UK Energy Research Centre) meant. In our opinion, the consensus “peak [conventional] oil” concept hasn’t seeped into the public mindset, because it doesn’t matter. Predictions of peak “conventional” oil are pointless, ephemeral academic exercises. In reality, there are economic oil and gas wells and uneconomic oil and gas wells. No one cares if the gasoline going into their car is from some arbitrary definition of conventional or unconventional oil. Unconventional oil today will be conventional tomorrow, this is truly a distinction without a difference.
Some writers claim only conventional oil matters:
“The core issue for future supply is the extent and the rate of depletion of conventional oil, since this currently provides around 95% of global all-liquids supply.” (Miller and Sorrell 2013)
One solution, offered immediately after this quote by Miller and Sorrell, is to replace the conventional oil with unconventional. Why would conventional oil continue to be 95% of global supply? When all known surface oil seeps had been drilled in 1910 similar things were said, but then geologists simply started mapping surface anticlines and using reflection seismic to look for oil. As problems are encountered, we fix them.
There are a mix of economic (i.e. profitable at current prices) wells and uneconomic wells, companies work hard to increase the former and decrease the latter, they do this for both conventional wells and unconventional wells. Experience in a hydrocarbon play, for example the Barnett Shale or the Eagle Ford shale helps a great deal, as does experience in a play type. In the early days of a play, the ratio is not very good, as time goes on the ratio improves and costs go down. The Barnett Shale can be called a mature play now, the good areas are known, the best completion techniques are known, and it is very profitable. In the Eagle Ford, which is a newer play, it is getting better, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
In short, just because 95% of the oil is from historical “conventional” field types, does not mean that will continue. Other sources of oil will be found and developed if there is demand at the price required to make the fields profitable. The limit on the supply of oil has nothing to do with whether it is conventional or unconventional. It has everything to do with demand at the price required to make a profit. Once the price reaches a level where people find another energy source preferable, oil and gas will decline. As long as the price can go up, additional resources will always be found. We agree with Peter Jackson and Leta Smith:
“We do not dispute that supply will plateau and eventually fall; the question is when, how and at what price? As the plateau approaches, oil prices are likely to increase strongly, with some very severe spikes along the way.” (Jackson and Smith 2013)
The pessimistic academic studies do not understand how the oil and gas business operates, Jackson and Smith (2013) make more sense. They do not expect the plateau of oil production to occur before 2040, but it will happen eventually. The timing will be determined by the demand response to increased oil and gas prices. Higher prices will be required to pay for new extraction and exploration techniques and prices cannot climb forever. The current large price advantage of fossil fuels must end sometime.
The pessimists are attempting to study the dynamic supply-and-demand oil and gas market as a static business. All established oil and gas companies have very positive cash flow from old fields, mostly “conventional” fields. This money is used to fund new ventures, currently these are usually “unconventional” or deep-water fields. These may not even be cash-flow positive, but they could be in the future. If they work, the company learns how to operate them profitably and is successful, this is often called the oil and gas development “learning curve.”
The learning curve in shale oil and gas wells has been very successful and the average annual production cost has dropped from around $29 in 2008 to $23 per BOE in 2016 (Kim and Lee 2017). If oil and gas prices are increasing, the learning curve will show little improvement and can be negative if a lot of new operators are entering the play. Besides new operators, new service companies can cause cost increases. But once prices are static or falling the learning curve really kicks into gear as service companies must decrease their prices to retain business. Efficiency gains by operating companies (oil and gas companies) are dramatic in a falling price environment as unsuccessful operators go out of business and only the most successful and efficient companies survive. The oil and gas business is all about managing risk and opportunity over very long periods of time, in high price environments and in low price environments.
As oil and gas prices go up, the available supply increases rapidly as expensive EOR (enhanced oil recovery) techniques (Muggeridge, et al. 2014), and shelved deep-water prospects, and unconventional fields suddenly become profitable. Project portfolios become riskier in periods of increasing prices, but managed correctly, the winners make more than the losers lose.
One thing that is always true, if you stand still you get run over. Many companies go bankrupt trying new things and we don’t hear much about them, all ideas do not work. A few try new things and succeed big, those we hear a lot about. Existing companies that stay static and don’t try new things also die, frequently. Static analysis of the oil and gas business is inappropriate.
Works Cited
A North Texans for Natural Gas Special Report. 2016. “An Energy Revolution: 35 Years of Fracking in the Barnett Shale.” http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/themes/55dc9a8f2213933dc0000001/attachments/original/1464723479/BarnettShale.pdf?1464723479.
Austin, Steve. 2014. “Oil Price Drops on Oversupply.” Oil-Price.net, Oct. 6. http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/oil-price-drops-on-oversupply.php.
Barton, Christopher. 2014. Introduction to Deepwater Development. Expert Lecture, Wood Group Mustang and the University of Houston. http://www.uh.edu/technology/departments/et/pti/students/expert-series/lecture-series-presentation-Oct-29-2014.pdf.
Chapman, Ian. 2014. “The end of Peak Oil? Why this topic is still relevant despite recent denials.” Energy Policy 64: 93-101. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151300342X.
Höök, Mikael. 2014. “Depletion of conventional hydrocarbons: recent perspectives on oil, gas and coal.” Beyond Peak Oil: the future of energy. Barbastro, Spain.
Jackson, Peter, and Leta Smith. 2013. “Exploring the undulating plateau: the future of global oil supply.” Edited by Richard Miller and Steve Sorrel. Philopsophical Transactions of the Royal Society.http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/372/2006/20120491.short.
Kim, Jong-Hyun, and Yong-Gil Lee. 2017. “Analyzing the Learning Path of US Shale Players by Using the Learning Curve Method.” Sustainablity 9. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0b6e/6ecb972aa22edce4af231b3c40a5b730821a.pdf.
Miller, Richard, and Steven Sorrell. 2013. “The Future of Oil Supply.” In Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, by Richard Miller and Steven Sorrell, 1-27. Royal Society Publishing.
Muggeridge, Ann, Andrew Cockin, Kevin Webb, Harry Frampton, Ian Collins, Tim Moulds, and Peter Salino. 2014. “Recovery rates, enhanced oil recovery and technological limits.” Edited by Richard Miller and Steve Sorrell. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/372/2006/20120320.short.
Skelton, Lawrence. 2012. “Striking it big in Kansas.” AAPG Explorer, November. archives.aapg.org/explorer/2012/11nov/historical1112.cfm.
Somarin, Ali. 2014. Unconventional Oil Exploration, Part 3: Ultra-deepwater Oil. Oct. 21. https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/mining/unconventional-oil-exploration-part-3-ultra-deepwater-oil/.
Sorrell, Steve, Richard Miller, Roger Bentley, and Jamie Speirs. 2010. “Oil futures: A comparison of global supply forecasts.” Energy Policy 38 (9). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510002946.
Wells, Bruce. 2016. “Energy Pipeline: Making Hole – The Rock Eater.” The Tribune, October 9. https://www.greeleytribune.com/news/business/energy-pipeline-making-hole-the-rock-eater-2/.
Yergin, Daniel. 1991. The Prize, The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. New York: Touchstone.
Good discussion of the prospective petroleum supply situation, depending upon the price of crude.
There’s also the demand side. Widespread adoption of nuclear power could supplant petroleum-powered transport with electric cars, and trucks could go with natural gas. Economics might make coal gassification more attractive, or liquefying NG.
Yes. The detail that went into the article is appreciated.
Its a fool’s game to make predictions, but I predict that renewables will not grow as fast as projected in the above plot.
Within the coming 7 to 10 years, there will be ever growing realisation of the problems with renewables caused by their unreliable and intermittent nature, and that they do not in fact lead to any significant reduction in CO2, because of the need for reliable back up from conventional fossil fuels. In 10 years time many windfarms will have come to the end of their useful life, and many will not be renewed, and it will be uncommercial to repair them. They will simply fall out of the grid./
This together with a realisation that Climate Sensitivity is far lower than currently considered, is likely to result in a scale back of renewables.
Nuclear is simply too politically toxic for Governments to handle, and is likely to come of age only when fission is commercially viable.
Fracking and a switch to gas is the short term future, at least until there is a very significant breakthrough in battery technology.
Except of course where governments don’t care much about peoples’ opinions.
http://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx
Communist China has 37 nuclear power reactors in operation, 20 under construction, and more about to start construction. The reactors under construction include some of the world’s most advanced, to give a 70% increase of nuclear capacity to 58 GWe by 2020-21. Plans are for up to 150 GWe by 2030, and much more by 2050.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/06/a-double-first-for-china-with-two-new-nuclear-power-plants/
Despite its fossil fuel riches, Russia too is backing nuclear power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Russia#Recent_history
Felix :
Norway is using mostly “Hydro” and selling it’s oil and gas and
creating a FUTURE FUND ……..which is very sensible !
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-swf-ceo-factbox/factbox-norways-960-billion-sovereign-wealth-fund-idUSKBN18T283
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country
Top Ten by total capacity generated: US, France, China, Russia, RoK, Canada, Ukraine, Germany, UK and Sweden. Japan has dropped to 13th, behind Spain and Belgium.
The East; converting to a range of energy sources to provide a balance because their population deserves cheap energy. Capitalism.
The West; restricting every source of energy except renewables, because it’s controlled by minority groups. Socialism.
Who the fork turned the world on it’s head?
HS,
To your point, in September 2015, TerraPower and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) signed a memorandum of understanding jointly to develop a Traveling Wave Reactor. TerraPower plans to build a 600 MWe demonstration plant, the TWR-P, by 2018–2022, followed by larger commercial plants of 1150 MWe in the late 2020s
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-TerraPower-CNNC-team-up-on-travelling-wave-reactor-25091501.html
Don’t know the current status of the project.
Unfortunately, this is not what our own propaganda always wants us to fool. The Chinese population does not dislike nuclear power plants, especially those of the latest generation. Nuclear power plants are considered to be environmentally friendly in China. All a question of propaganda (which one sits or not).
Agree with your thinking about renewables, but you meant to say fusion I think, not fission.
Fusion is the energy source of the future. Always has been, always will be. When did they first start promising us fusion in 30-40 years, was it 50 years ago roughly?
IMO, instead of awaiting fusion, we should be building modern fission power plants right now.
Sure, let’s. I approve. Too bad we’re badly outnumbered by the folks who are haunted by the thousands of senseless deaths in Fukushima. Yeah, I know, nobody died. Well, there’s also Three Mile Island. Yeah, again nobody died. But Chernobyl. Millions died there, didn’t they? Well, apparently 28 firefighters died of radiation after a reckless experiment using an inherently unsafe reactor. In 1933, 29 firefighters were killed fighting a wildfire in Los Angeles.
There were more traffic fatalities (36) in the US in the year 1900 (not a typo, 118 years ago), than died in Chernobyl. It’s unbelievable that they allowed cars to continue after that calamity. As of the latest statistics from 2016, we have about 3.7 Chernobyl death tolls PER DAY from traffic fatalities in the US alone.
And also CO2 is a beneficial trace gas, but the world doesn’t run on facts, does it?
Apparently not.
Japan is also a geologically active island chain with frequent tsunamis. Modern power plants are inherently safer, nor need they be built in earthquake-prone areas, close to the sea. The US has lots of convenient inland bodies of water for cooling purposes.
Is fission not the current driver of nuclear power plants?
New fusion reactor designs are supplanting the failed tokamak approach of magnetic confinement. Some designs are very elegant and entering the final phase of the experimental phase that will use Hydrogen -Boron fuel to create super-high temperature (3 B degree C), aneutronic reactions and very cheap electric power production.
LPPFusion and affiliate labs art UC-San diego and Polish national labs are prime example of a technology called Dense Plasma focus.
Great explanatory videos here.
video/211492763
LPPFusion.com
UC San Diego Collaboration with LPPFusion
https://cer.ucsd.edu/_news-events-articles/2017/news-LPPFusion.html
That’s interesting, checked the videos on their lppfusion.com website and the claim is that they could be mass-producing within a decade. All they need is for us to make a contribution. Hmmm. So they have the most promising technology that will give us near-infinite pollution-free electricity that costs far less than any existing source of energy, but they need me to donate because governments won’t, and apparently no rich folks can see an angle on how to make money with this?
Call me a skeptic. Have we forgotten cold fusion already?
Sure hope that I’m wrong.
LPPFusion has already hit two of three criteria for achieving net fusion and published the results in peer reviewed literature. That’s why there is an affiliation agreement in place with UC Sand Diego and Polish National Labs in Warsaw. Currently LPPFusion is #5 on fusion energy output and is far and away the most cost-effective fusion research project underway.
http://lppfusion.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ntauT-chart.png
So your implication of something untowardly going on is no more than a slur and has no basis in fact.
Venture capitalists want control the entire project and could have buried it. The US government early on invested a small amount but prefers to waste billions on failed tokamak programs. LPPFusion has turned to private, crowd funding and succeeded in raising sufficient funds to complete the final phase of the experimental design.
LPPFusion has been reviewed by teams of top fusion
I’m not suggesting it’s a scam per se. I’m suggesting that if the research were as promising as they would have us believe, investors would be beating a path to their door.
I’m sure we all hope they succeed. Except for those of us in the pay of evil oil companies, of course/sarc
You’re naive about VC money. They come with lots of strings attached. One critical factor is that LPPFusion chief scientist Eric Lerner is committed to providing electricity from the FF-1 reactor at the lowest price possible (about one cent a kWhr).
He also wants to license the technology to engineering firms to commercialize the technology, rather than create a rent seeking-monopoly. If successful, investors stand to reap gigantic profits.
But for VC types, only monopoly windfalls are acceptable… so they’ll seek to price electricity just low enough to drive out all competitors and then reap monopoly profits. Lerner refuses to play that game.
Hence, the turns to smaller investors and crowd-funding.
Basically we have already hit Peak Fusion.
But seriously, I loved this presentation and the discussion which has followed. I’ve worked in the petrochemical industry for 30 years. R&D, Production QC and now Logistics.
I keep hoping for a revival of fission and the development of fusion. I’ve thought having a nuclear power plant near the ocean for the purpose of creating hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles would be a great way to power vehicles.
I’ve heard it here before. The Stone Age didn’t end from a lack of stones. Oil and gas will power us into the next energy revolution.
Not true. LPPFusion plans to load the Hydrogen Boron fuel into their reactor by early ’19… then we’ll see what “Peak Fusion” looks like… until then claims that the Peak has been reached already have no basis in fact.
Yes, I did mean fusion.
Brain fade. That is the problem of commenting at 2 am in the morning, after having had a few drinks celebrating England’s win in the world cup. That is a rare event in deed.
There is no reason to believe that fusion is just around the corner, but then again, breakthroughs often come suddenly and unexpectedly. I am not holding my breath on it, and there is no need to since fortunately, we have plenty of gas and coal for this century and the next.
According to Dr Lerner at LPPFusion, the promises started in the 50s.
So 60 years ago, the promise was commercially-viable fusion power 30-40 years in the future, and it’s probably still at least 30-40 years away today. In the 2050s, when they will have been promising for a century that fusion is theoretically possible but its practical application is probably 30-40 years in the future, there will still be plenty of people who fervently believe. Like a donkey with a carrot on a stick strapped to its back, it’s a tantalizing prize, just out of reach. If we just keep moving forward…
I hope that I will still be alive to admit I was wrong. I will take no pleasure in saying “see I told you so!”
I hope to see a Libertarian president attend her Inauguration speech, arriving in a ceramic capacitor powered electric flying limousine, charged by inherently safe and clean fusion power in 2028. After the USA defeats defending champion England to win the World Cup for the second time. Yes, I believe, I believe!!
Virtually all fusion research has been conducted on a single design, namely the tokamak. According to the former chief of fusion energy for the DoE, Robert Hirsch, tokamaks will NEVER be a viable commercial design. Yet governments persist on this path, including the US government.
Since 2000 several private firms have developed new designs for fusion reactors based on other aspects of plasma physics. LPPFusion has been the most successful to date and the most promising. We’ll know for sure on a relatively short timeline measured in months, not decades.
If only there was something like a worldwide communications network so that they could get the word out to investors and get funding. We could call it the worldwide net, or something.
It’s hard to imagine something I’d be more pleased to be wrong about.
Richard–you should acquaint yourself with current fusion reactor technology … some have made amazing strides, such as LPPFusion.
The chart says that ‘Renewables’ account for about 25% of world consumption. HOGWASH!
Hydro & Nuclear are listed separately, so what exactly is included in the Renewables category, and how does BP have the nerve to claim 25% of world consumption for wind, solar, and whatever other inconsequential power source?
In the US, it’s a percent or so. In China, they’re using mostly Coal & Nuclear. France uses Nuclear, Germany uses coal, and Japan uses gas and coal. And, that’s just for electricity generation. Add in transportation fuel, and there’s no way that renewables is anywhere close to 25% worldwide.
The chart shows “renewables” as much less than 25%.
???????
Figure 1?
Renewables are shown as a tiny sliver of the whole.
What are you looking at?
Well oil is renewable isn’t it?
I mean if we continue to burn it, and there is no ‘peak oil’ it must be being renewed in some way or we would inevitably run out!
I think its called abiotic isn’t it?
Ensures endless supplies of oil created out of nothing more than people’s imaginations!
Far OUT man!
When renewables become viable, reliable, and cheap then all is forgiven. Until then no.
Excellent article Andy…..thank you
If I had to guess….my guess would be we haven’t even tapped 1/10th
I agree – excellent article – thank you Andy.
Recently posted:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/30/quote-of-the-week-rex-murphy-on-why-trump-hatred-is-like-global-warming/#comment-2393995
Here is the story of an engineer named Nick Steinsberger who, I suggest, has done more for America than all your Presidents since Eisenhower.
The fracking revolution has put America first after decades of financial decline. If Steinsberger didn’t have such an unusual name, you should name a large state after him.
You owe him… everything.
Regards, Allan
The Texas Well That Started A Revolution & Changed The World Forever
Russell Gold, The Wall Street Journal, 29 June 2018
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-texas-well-that-started-a-revolution-1530270010?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=54840a798a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_07_02_11_44&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-54840a798a-20138661
Two decades ago, an engineer tried a new way to get gas out of the ground. Energy markets and global politics would never be the same.
DISH, Texas – Twenty years ago this month, a well was drilled here that changed the world.
Nothing at the time suggested the unassuming well in this rural town north of Fort Worth would hobble OPEC, the powerful oil cartel that had governed prices of the world’s most important commodity for more than a generation. Or that it would help turn the U.S. into a global energy exporter, or shuffle the geopolitical deck.
But it did all of that – and more. The well used hydraulic fracturing to crack the incredibly tight shale rocks below. It fired the first shot in the fracking revolution–a blast soon felt in Riyadh, Tehran and Moscow.
“I had no idea it would cause so much change. I was just trying to keep my job,” said Nick Steinsberger on a recent visit to the well pad. He was the engineer who obtained permission to try a new approach to completing the well that had been drilling a mile and a half deep into a thick grey wedge of rock known as the Barnett Shale.
Mr. Steinsberger, now 54, called the experiment “my slick-water frack.” It was the first commercially successful use of sand, water and chemicals, pumped into the shale under high pressure, to break open the rock and unleash the natural gas trapped inside. It was the beginning of modern fracking.
“It was a good well, cost $600,000 or $700,000,” Mr. Steinsberger said, walking over the pad to the chain-link fence that surrounds the well. A sign identifies it as the S. H Griffin Estate 4.
Today, most wells drilled in the U.S. use some variation of Mr. Steinsberger’s fracking technique. It has unleashed an unimaginable wealth of natural gas, gas liquids and crude oil, turning the U.S. from an energy pauper into a muscular exporter. It also started an often acrimonious environmental debate about the potential impacts and trade offs of fracking.
“It is one of the most extraordinarily important, disruptive, technologically driven changes in the history of energy,” said Ed Morse, global head of commodity research at Citigroup. “It was revolutionary for the U.S. economy and it was revolutionary geopolitically.”
Mr. Steinsberger’s modest experiment demonstrated that the oil and gas industry had the tools to fracture the rocks where fossil fuels were slowly baked over the millennia. A huge trove of natural gas was accessible at an economical cost.
It was such a novel idea that it spread slowly at first, as doubters couldn’t believe that anyone could successfully tap the source rocks. After a few years, more companies began to copy the wells drilled by Mr. Steinsberger’s employer, Mitchell Energy , the firm founded by the late George P. Mitchell.
It started in the Barnett Shale. Then other gas-bearing shales were discovered. The Marcellus Shale in Appalachia turned out to be larger and more fecund than the Barnett.
Thanks (!) for that excellent historical treatise, Andy May!
Advancing technology keeps driving efficiency improvements and wealth creation in the oil and gas industry. And it keeps making fools of the Prophets of Doom that see resources and wealth as finite commodities.
This is what we know. Petroleum is finitely available and accessible inside a near time and space, limited frame of reference (i.e. scientific logical domain). Every other pronouncement and prophecy is due to personal faith (and interest) and conflation of logical domains. What is a credible concern is the economic value of recovery, processing, conversion, and reclamation, which may indeed by a concern in a limited domain, and perhaps extra-scientific but that cannot be predicted.
“Petroleum is finitely available and accessible inside a near time and space, limited frame of reference (i.e. scientific logical domain).”
If you argue petroleum itself is finitely available, then don’t you also presuppose that the processes which cause petroleum to be created (and therefore, replenished) are also finite?
If so, what caused them to stop?
I love the smell of a total non sequitur in the morning.
“Darling, we are bankrupt”
“Did you lose your job and stop earning?”
“No dear, you just spent more than I earned”.
“I love the smell of a total non sequitur in the morning.”
That’s because you buy Popper…
You just cannot help yourself can you. Off you go again with another one
Well I could help myself, but I like you, so I don’t.
Clearly – petroleum is a finite resource. That said, it’s important to understand what inning we are in. 99% of the petroleum most of us have consumed came from a perfect geologic trap with a three or four way closure and an impermeable layer of some sort. This “perfect” setup was fed by source rock, which is a lot more pervasive then the traps it has filled. All of that changed in the lat 1990’s when a young engineer, Nick Steinsberger, convinced George Mitchell to give him a shot at making a commercial completion/well in the source of the hydrocarbons rather than the trap. It worked and the unconventional shale revolution was born. Initially with nat gas – who ever thought the USA would export LNG and then with oil in the Bakken in 2009 (thanks Brigham). As such, we are in the nascent stages of oil shale revolution and likely have 200+ years or more of petroleum supply because there is infinitely more source rock than the traps it filled in the early innings.
Wonderful documented history. Thanks, this is great.
You add in the methane hydrates and the oil shale, (kerogens) and the potential supply is essentially unlimited.
The deeper we drill the more we find too. Look at the incredible flows from deep water wells.
Maybe not “unlimited”… But the volume of crude oil, natural gas and equivalent hydrocarbons in Earth’s crust is large enough, that we’ll probably never exhaust half of the resource.
“You add in the methane hydrates…”
Yes no discussion of natural gas should omit methane hydrates…plentiful and very widely dispersed:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/grossbild-523178-1046027.html
Good review.
Can someone explain please why “Hydro” is not a renewable ?
A good rhetorical question deserves a good answer.
In a word, politics. In the US, at least, the greens *hate* hydro. Hydro has two main features, a big dam and a reservoir behind it.
The greenies hate:
A) The dam because it is not natural and they believe it kills fish, or at least prevents them from spawning.
B) The reservoir because it is not natural and they believe reservoirs emit huge quantities of planet destroying *methane*. The fact that the reservoir supports all kinds of life both aquatic and terrestrial and does not really emit methane, makes no impression on the greenies at all.
A a political payoff to the greens, hydro was deemed “not renewable” so as not to encourage its use.
Other countries will have different rules, of course. But the greens are pretty much the same throughout the western world, so similar considerations may apply to various extents.
Boffing 77 and TonyL,
Herein lies a study of the irrational ‘green’ mind.
Dams are ‘bad’ because they are unnatural, prevent fish from spawning, and interrupt the ‘natural’ flow of a river, while making renewable, free, clean, reliable and dispatchable electricity from falling water for 50 to 100 years per installation. And naturally people use the reservoirs behind the dams for irrigation water, fishing, swimming, boating, etc…… and that’s bad too.
Wind turbines are ‘good’ because they use free, clean, intermittent wind to produce ‘renewable’ intermittent energy, while using huge oil and gas resources to mine, melt, refine, assemble, and transport all of the materials needed to make a wind turbine operational and maintained…. for 25 years, maybe. While unnaturally scimitar slicing up birds and bats during their entire service life but that’s OK! If they don’t get smashed in a wind or hail storm first.
Solar panels are ‘good’ also because they use free, clean, intermittent sunshine to produce ‘renewable’ intermittent energy, while using huge oil and gas resources to mine, melt, refine, assemble, and transport all of the materials needed to make a solar panel operational and maintained …. for 25 years, maybe. While unnaturally occupying large tracts of land that can no longer be used by nature or man but that is OK too! If they don’t get smashed in a wind or hail storm first.
Don’t ask me to explain how they manage the cognitive dissonance from such environ-mental gymnastics….
Who qualifies as a “green”? And if their arguments are so dubious and over-simplified as you suggest, how would they have any political power? Perhaps some of their arguments actually have merit. Hard to imagine, I know, since greens would all have to be imbeciles to think as you think they do – but that is a measure of what you think, not what they do.
How about land use, for example? The Balbinda hydroelectic dam in Brazil floods an area the size of Delaware for 250 MW power generating capacity.
I’m no more against hydroelectric than I am against fossil fuels – I’m not. My stance is that all sources of energy should be considered according to their present and future economic, environmental and social merits and demerits in a particular situation. That means that in some instances, coal will be the best and in others, solar, or hydro, or gas, etc. The problem comes when people think about the options narrowly, without considering all the factors. Or worse, when people think about the options in terms of what the other guy thinks, and so reject a power source just because the opposing political party is in favor of it.
Stop narrow, partisan thinking! Stop hating and despising the Other long enough to listen! That goes for EVERYONE!
“Who qualifies as a “green”?”
You certainly do not, Kristi.
As evidence:
“That means that in some instances, coal will be the best and in others, solar, or hydro, or gas, etc. The problem comes when people think about the options narrowly, without considering all the factors.”
Like I said before…it’s so easy…just take that small, little, step …you belong over here and we’d love to have you!
No, I don’t belong here. That has been made very clear. I’ll find some other site. Thanks anyway.
Kristi,
You castigate others contributions here as “narrow partisan thinking” and then have the temerity to malign everyone else to “stop hating and despising the other long enough to listen”??? That is some fine cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics exhibited there….
Ancient knowledge suits best here:
“But why lookest thou on the mote that is in the eye of thy brother, but observest not the beam that is in thine eye?”
No. You missed the part about “everyone.” I’m not talking about those who are here, I’m talking about all Americans. The left are just as guilty as the right. I’m guilty, too.
No, you’re way more guilty than any on the Right.
“And if their arguments are so dubious and over-simplified as you suggest, how would they have any political power? ”
And once again Kristi proudly displays here political naivete for all to see.
Politicians exist for over simplified and dubious arguments.
If we required political arguments to make sense, socialism would vanish.
PS:
“Stop narrow, partisan thinking! Stop hating and despising the Other long enough to listen!”
Irony is lost on the left.
Very large resevoirs in the wrong place can cause seismic activity detrimental to cities near the area. China killed thousands with it’s huge reservoir.
Davis B :
“China killed thousands with it’s huge reservoir.”
REALLY ????
WHERE and WHEN please ?
about 150,000. 1975
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#Casualties
LEO SMITH : Thanks ……BUT………….DAVID B ……. NO !
That dam collapsed DUE TO FLOODING overwhelming it !
It was NOT seismic activity……but still a disaster !
MOST died from the epidemics and famine….those who drowned
were probably the LUCKY ONES …in hindsight !
“Casualties :
According to the Hydrology Department of Henan Province, approximately 26,000 people died in the province[14] from flooding and another 145,000 died during subsequent epidemics and famine. In addition, about 5,960,000 buildings collapsed, and 11 million residents were affected. Unofficial estimates of the number of people killed by the disaster have run as high as 230,000 people”
Any seismic activity caused by a dam would have happened anyway in a few years.
Hydro is a renewable. It is usually inventoried separately from non-hydro renewables, like wind and solar, because the latter are insignificant.
boffin77 Definitions depend on whether one is trying to gain the political benefits from pushing to develop more “renewable energy” or claim the political benefits of having achieved “renewable energy” goals. e.g., New York is including hydro below 50 MW as renewable in current legislation. e.g., see:
“State Authority in NY to Preempt Local Laws Regulating Renewable Energy Projects”
https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2018/05/09/state-authority-in-ny-to-preempt-local-laws-regulating-renewable-energy-projects/?slreturn=20180607202316
Senate Bill S5549B 2017-2018 Legislative Session Relates to maintaining the continued viability of the state’s existing large-scale, renewable energy
https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2018/05/09/state-authority-in-ny-to-preempt-local-laws-regulating-renewable-energy-projects/?slreturn=20180607202316
I had the pleasure of driving from Vancouver to Oregon to see the eclipse last year. Saw whole landscapes around the Columbia River Valley visually polluted beyond belief by forests of unnatural windmills (few of which were rotating, strangely enough) and I saw hydro dams at places like The Dalles that were much less visually jarring, and were generating electricity.
So if “green” means “natural” or “unobtrusive” or “made from organic materials” then windmills fail on all counts and hydro generators do better because 99% of their mass is water, which is natural and organic (no, not “organic” as in “based on carbon” but “organic” as in “contains no added unnatural stuff”) and arguably “unobtrusive” because they are well camouflaged as lakes. And if “renewable” means “extracts energy without permanently depleting a resource” then hydro is renewable but windmills I’m not so sure about because they were mostly not extracting energy when I saw them.
TonyL: your answer sound perfectly plausible, but illustrates the doubletalk that we contend with. In Newspeak, the term “renewable” is a synonym for “something that we like” which I suspect means “something we want you to buy from us.”
Because it doesn’t need a subsidy.
Boffin77, Hydro is renewable. But, it takes a lot of land for a small amount of power. Most of the places in the world where that much land can be taken by the government already have dams on them. It’s renewable, but not scalable.
Many, if not most, people refuse to count the surface area of the reservoir as part of the hydro footprint… They would get F’s in Engineering Geology & Geotechnics.
I live on a pumped hydro lake – it is a wonderful reserve of water and peaking power!
“But, it takes a lot of land for a small amount of power.”
Unlike wind and solar.
These arguments miss the point. There will NEVER be a shortage of oil and gas. NEVER!!! As long as the Fischer-Tropsch process exists, and carbon sources litter our forests, yards and garbage dumps, there will never ever ever be a shortage of oil and gas. The company Renewable Energy Group Symbol REGI makes a drop-in diesel fuel out of used restaurant oils. Unless we run out of carbon sources that can be converted to SYN Gas, we will never run out of fuel. These are all nonsensical hysterical arguments. kIOR, now bankrupt, has technology that uses a catalyst to convert wood into fuel. As long as forests exist, we will never run out of oil and gas. Anyone that has ever taken Organic Chemistry knows that oil and gas are nothing more than carbon chains, and everything organic has the needed carbon that can be reassembled into different length chains. Oil and gas are simply he cheapest forms of oil and gas, but the FT Process is largely economical above $60 or $70 a barrel of oil, and once investment starts in that field, the coasts will likely fall rapidly. Unfortunately, we have made solar cheap and ignored the real solutions to our energy problems.
Google Shell Pearl Plant Gas to Liquids to see this process at a full-scale refinery.
CO2isLife is technically correct, but clueless about economics. You can transmute lead into gold with a particle accelerator but it is not economic.
Once again, google Shell Pearl Plant Gas to Liquids. If my economics are wrong, Shell just invested billions into nonsense, and the production they claim must be a lie. South Africa and Sasol has used the FT Process for decades. Facts are this process is already in use.
The Shell Pearl Plant uses natural gas as a feedstock, so when the natural gas runs out, this plant because a boat anchor.
“becomes” not “because”
That is not true. Natural Gas is simply the cheapest feedstock for the location. Natural Gas is simply CH4 or C2H6 or C3H8 or C4H10. The process simply needs the Carbon to resemble. You can turn tree and grass clippings into syngas . Once they run out of natural gas, they will simply start importing Coal or other dense carbon sources. Once again, this is nothing but simple organic chemistry.
The plant is designed for natural gas. It would need extensive re-work to use an alternative feedstock.
https://www.shell.com/about-us/major-projects/pearl-gtl.html
Not much coal in Qatar
@ CO2islife:
Is the FT process really compatible with cellulose feedstock?
After all, cellulose is a polymer of sugar which generically is C6H12O6. That is a lot of Oxygen to deal with and it seems you would have to reduce the feedstock like crazy to get a workable product.
At this point, we are reminded that “cellulostic ethanol” did a spectacular crash and burn because nobody knows how to make the stuff. And all this because the US Congress *mandated* the use of it, in pursuit of the “oxygenated fuels” mandate.
Yep, read below how Sasol does it. You just need a carbon feedstock to oxygenate and turn into SYNGAS. You can do it with anything that is carbon and will burn. CO can be converted to carbon chains and H2O.
the FT synthesis reaction can be presented by:
CO + nH2→(-CH2−)x+H2O
@ CO2islife:
Thanks for the information.
CO2islife: I know FT chemistry quite well. The objection I would make to your comment is the use of the word “just.” It’s “just” not that simple.
You should consider that FT involves catalytic reactions, usually cobalt, especially for natural gas, but sometimes iron based. Cobalt is particularly sensitive to catalyst poisons and requires a 2:1 hydrogen ratio, which is good for natural gas derived syngas from reforming, which is also a catalytic process, almost always nickel based, the nickel catalyst also being very sensitive to poisons. These catalysts are not inexpensive.
So, great effort must be placed on syngas cleanup and generation of syngas with the correct H:C ratio.
CO likes to form metal carbonyls, which believe it or not, are more toxic than CO itself, but which corrodes normal carbon steel, placing demands on the metallurgy and making it more expensive, in addition to the moderately high temperatures and pressures used in the process. The need for compression is an energy sapper.
In addition to producing hydrocarbons and water, FT also makes oxygenates, especially acids, alcohols and aldehydes. These must be hydrotreated or otherwise dispositioned.
Fischer and Tropsch developed the foundation of this chemistry almost 100 years ago, but detailed mechanisms are still being debated, i.e. it’s not settled in detail.
OK, it isn’t as simple and making coffee, but it can, has and is being done today. It seems almost every other day I read about new advancements in the catalysts. Had we invested in this technology instead of wind and solar we would be energy independent right now.
Here are some of the advancements.
https://www.crcpress.com/Fischer-Tropsch-Synthesis-Catalysts-and-Catalysis-Advances-and-Applications/Davis-Occelli/p/book/9781466555297
http://197.14.51.10:81/pmb/CHIMIE/petrochimie/Advances%20in%20Fischer-Tropsch%20Synthesis%20Catalysts%20and%20Catalysis.pdf
I also forgot to mention that the FT process generates a lot of CO2.
Yea, that is the beauty of it, the heat used to produce it can power the plant.
But where does that carbon feedstock come from? Coal? Natural gas? Biomass?
There isn’t enough of it ultimately to do the job.
Leo, Let’s say that there is sufficient coal in the word as oil feedstock for the next 300 years, so yes ultimately you are right, but that is merely an academic conclusion. There are giant untapped coalfields under the North Sea which could be mined by robots at the end of this century, that is, if the environmentalists let you do it..
Once again, your grass clippings can be used to make fuel. The plastic water bottle can be used to make fuel. The waste newspaper can be used. Etc etc etc. kIOR built their now bankrupt plant next to a wood pellet plant.
Anything that contains carbon and burns can be a feedstock. The FT process and other methods have been used on grass clippings and wood chips. This company went bankrupt, but the technology exists.
https://youtu.be/ioEQBEBYTH4
All the above and far more. As I’ve said, every carbon source that can be burned can be turned to fuel. Coal, Wood, Grass, etc etc. Algae and waste oil can also be used to create fuel. As stated above REGI already had a commercial refinery making a drop-in diesel fuel using waste oils.
Shell has extensive expertise in coal gasification. To support Mr. Klipstein’s point, Shell has not coupled coal gasification with FT anywhere in the world on a commercial scale.
Qatar doesn’t have many grass clippings or trees for that matter. (Grass clippings make lousy syngas by the way because of high water content and contaminants.) Qatar does have lots of cheap natural gas and I think both you and Mr. Klipstein would agree about that.
Point being? That is one refinery. By the time Qutar runs out of NatGas that refinery will be buried in sand. The fact is, you can build FT refineries near lumber companies, waste facilities, farms, etc etc etc. Right now Hawaii burns their sugarcane, why not use that waste to make fuel? The entire corn stock can be used to make fuel. Strip the ear of corn and turn the stalk into gas. Etc etc etc.
more ignorance on display, where does the energy in grass clippings come from?
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to simply replace grass with a solar panel?
Grass is a carbon source, you can burn it in low O2 to get CO. Just what ignorance am I displaying? Are you denying the FT Process works? REGI has a hydrolysis process that makes 75 million gallons per year using waste oil from restaurants. That is being done right now. Other firms are also making renewable diesel. Are you denying they exist?
Video demonstrating what you say can’t be done.
https://youtu.be/z9eq7R1VJVk
sigh. you have totally missed the point. SASOL used it to turn coal into gasoline, because they had a lot of coal, and no gasoline.
The COAL power drove the reaction.
FT process creates secondary energy storage = liquid fuels – but where is the primary energy to come from?
Only nuclear power can really provide the answer, but that puts synfuel up around 10 times the current price of gasoline or avjet
Only if you want to make fossil free oil, there is plenty of coal to make oil cheaper at 70$/bbl
That isn’t even close to true. There are commercial plants today that are competitive at today’s prices. Once again, look at the Pearl Plant, or Sasol. What difference does it make that coal powers the plant? That is a huge bonus. You get fuel and the energy to power the plant all in one. Creating SYNGAS is exothermic as is creating CO2.
Sasol has used the FT process successfully to make oil out of coal, there is no shortage of coal, and the FT process is economical at 70$/bbl, but so is deepwater oil. Both were mothballed in the recent oil price slump. All brown fields have seen peak oil, I am waiting for Saudi-Arabia to announce it’s real reserves in place volumes, the oil price will get a shock.
Oil is presently simply not expensive enough for FT or deep water production.
The Sasol Slurry Phase DistillateTM Process (Sasol SPD™ process) is at the core of Sasol’s GTL technology. The three stage process combines three leading proprietary technologies.
In the first Reforming stage, natural gas is combined with oxygen to form a syngas which is then subjected to conversion in the Sasol Low Temperature Fischer TropschTM (Sasol LTFT™) Process for the production of waxy syncrude. Finally this product is cracked down and refined in a Product Work Up step to produce the synthetic end products.
The strength of the Sasol SPD™ process is not simply the inherent quality of the three component technologies but the way they are combined and further integrated to increase efficiency and optimise output.
This efficient integration is founded on Sasol’s unrivalled experience spanning more than 60 years of synthetic fuels production.
http://www.sasol.com/innovation/gas-liquids/technology
It’s difficult to generalize about comparing economic process viability to the price of oil because as the price of oil moves up, for example, the cost of transporting goods and materials also increases. That said, break even for FT is well above $70/bbl oil and further, there is only so much biomass that can be harvested (on the order of a billion tons or so for the U.S.) and one ton of biomass yields roughly one barrel of hydrocarbon products, mainly because biomass contains so much bound oxygen.
On the other hand, as you point out, FT is viable in a number of circumstances at present, but obviously KiOR’s wood to fuel process was not. Shell has a couple of large FT refineries that use cheap natural gas as the feed. There are a number of smaller players that use similar technology applied to stranded natural gas. And Sasol is the dominant player having converted coal to fuels and chemicals via FT for decades in South Africa. Shenhua and Synfuels China do very much the same as Sasol.
These are not simple or cheap processes, however.
economics is a red herring, Think about EROEI.
synthetic fuels take at least twice as much energy to make as you get out.
Unless you have nuclear power, they only place to get that energy is the very fossil fuel you are trying to synthesize.
Co2islife has simply missed a huge and glaring problem. Synfuel is NOT A PRIMARY ENERGY SOURCE.
So it does not replace fossil fuel, which is for all practical purposes.
Negative EROEI processes are not economical, except for those that benefit from subsidies, i.e., not taxpayers.
In any case, you are correct and consuming coal, natural gas or even biomass directly yields a higher EROEI. You are not correct in saying that one loses twice as much energy as is gained in the case of FT.
In the case of Shell’s Pearl GTL, the production of liquids makes products that can be easily marketed in the immediate area and beyond, whereas only local natural gas pipelines exist. So, this makes up for the loss in ER. Essentially, the natural gas there is being unstranded.
By the way, the enthalpy of FT is driven by formation of water and carbon dioxide. It does deliver net energy, just not as much as could be gotten through direct combustion.
R. Shearer
I will politely disagree with you there, with the caveat only that Economic Return on Economic Investment is the ONLY applicable law.
Industrial Diamonds and Carbides and Carbon Fibers, for example, require significant artificial energy to create and fabricate useful items from the newly created raw stock, but they repay their process costs by significant amounts. When the time is right, energy (petroleum-synthetic fuels (etc) from coal or other stocks (now NOT economical)) will be economical to develop from not-drilled sources. Just as whale oil was replaced by kerosene and petroleum products. As celuoid collars were replaced.
Negative EROEI for ENERGY is a farce.
No one is saying that constructing anything else is not negative EROEI
Of course it is. That is why we need energy, idiot!
To reverse entropy and create ordered structures we have to create disorder somewhere else. So we burn an ordered low entropy source like coal to make another lower entropy substance like cement and make low entropy buildings with it. Creating high entropy CO2.
But the buildings are not as low entropy as the coal was, and the coal is not as low entropy as the sunlight that created it was,and the sunlight is not as low entropy as the hydrogen that created it was. And the hydrogen is not as low entropy as the quark soup that crated it was, and the quark soup is not as low entropy as the big bang was, and the big bang is not as low entropy as the singularity that caused it was.
And this is the house that Physics built.
Once you look at things in terms of entropy, green nonsense becomes obvious.
There is ultimately only one source of energy in the Universe. The singularity that created it. What we have left upstream of ALL the energy we have available to us as humans, is nuclear power.
Nuclear [fusion] power drives the sun that is the source of all ‘renewable’ energy. I put it in inverted commas because the sun is about halfway to extinguishing all life on earth when it gets to be a red giant.
Nuclear [fusion] power drives the sun that is the source of all ‘fossil’ fuel – the remains of millions of years of photosynthesis, and other organic life, whose rotted corpses are the batteries that now run our human world.
Nuclear [fusion] power drives the supernovae that created all the heavy elements that form planetary cores, which allow geothermal energy and tidal energy to exist
Nuclear [fusion] power drives the supernovae that created all the heavy elements that form fertile and fissile elements that both keep the planets core warm, and are another battery of energy we can tap to make fission reactors.
Every single watt hour of energy we use is one way or another a downstream result of nuclear power, and the more upstream we go towards nuclear power the more energy we have available. So a solar panel produces more for a given area of planet than a windmill or a hydro power installation or a field of biomass does.
(But when biomass (or what ate it) become concentrated, or water up a hill becomes concentrated, by natural processes, it IS useful).
But when you actually go further upstream and start to fission elements or fuse them, you have access to so much more energy, that there is no point in footling around with renewables, or fossil fuel. That is why you are taught to hate and fear nuclear power, because it threatens the fabric of our society, the coal industry, the oil industry, the gas industry and above all it totally wipes out renewables like windmills and solar panels.
That is how the world works. We take low entropy stuff to build less low entropy stuff out of more entropy stuff.
All process are negative EROEI EXCEPT the process of ‘mining’ energy itself. If that is not (once the energy is liberated) overall positive EROEI then there is no point in doing it.
It is simply unsustainable.
If it takes 10 gallons of biodiesel to plough plant fertilise and harvest and process a field of oil crop that only produces 9 gallons of biodiesel, it is not ‘sustainable’ Its fricking UNSUSTAINABLE.
Fossil fuel is the inefficiently stored solar energy from the last 3.4 billion years or so, that’s all. Thats getting on for half the suns expected life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_photosynthesis
We have probably used the easy to get at 5% of it. When we need to spend more energy to get it out than it gives at, its use as a fuel becomes zero. It will still be there in huge quantities for making plastics etc, and it will still be useful as a secondary fuel in e.g. aircraft provided some other form of primaryenergy is used to extract it – more than the synthetic fuel will produce. Where do we get that from?
There is only really one place – nuclear power.
So e.g. pop a nuke down some oil shale, detonate it, and fracture all the shale and vaporise it, so you create an underground chamber into which all the oil and gas can seep…
Or build nukes and use them to create syndiesel etc.
But what you cannot do is create synfuel out of zero energy.
Only the Big Bang did that.
Maybe.
What I meant was that someone can benefit financially even though the net benefit is negative.
I agree that if one is after energy, on an overall perspective, then only a highly positive EROEI is worth pursuing.
Here is another plant that is up and running at a nice profit.
https://youtu.be/KiiP47UeroI
These firms operate at a profit.
https://youtu.be/tnTQSPqRp30
EROEI = Science Fiction
Crude oil (WTI): $73.80/bbl
Natural gas (Henry Hub): $2.85/mmBtu
https://www.eia.gov/Energyexplained/?page=about_energy_units
Crude oil (WTI): $12.91/mmBtu
Natural gas (Henry Hub): $2.85/mmBtu
You could burn 4 mmBtu of gas to produce 1 mmBtu of crude oil and still make money. There’s a reason they flare gas in North Dakota… There’s a reason we burn as much gas as fuel as we can in the Gulf of Mexico… There’s a reason why a 6 BCF discovery might be P&A’ed, while a 1 million bbl discovery is completed, despite being energy-equivalent.
I have never paid for gasoline, my electricity bill, my natural gas bill with Btu. I pay them with $$$.
My company has never paid for a well with Btu, we pay for it in $$$. When we market our oil & gas, we get paid in… $$$. The decision to drill or not drill a well is based on ROI in $$$, NPV in $$$… EROEI is not, nor will ever be a factor, outside of academia and science fiction..
This video highlights how the market for waste oil was created.
https://youtu.be/O8L7tsAHsnw
Once again, that isn’t even close to the truth. SASOL does it as a commercial scale and for a profit. So does Shell with the Pearl Plant. You can take all the corn stalks in Iowa and turn them into fuel and never run out of feedstock. Burning corn stalks powers the plant. The SYNGAS produced is converted into fuel. As stated above, once the refineries are built, they create markets for the feedstock. Waste oils used to be a cost, restaurants used to pay people to haul it away. Now people show up and buy the stuff to supply biodiesel plants. People literally pay a nice price for used cooking oil, and it trades near soybean oil, as well as inedible corn oil from ethanol plants. This is all being done. More of it would be being done if we hadn’t wasted so much money on wind and solar.
The biomass in Iowa Corn Fields is enormous, and it all goes to waste. The biomass in Hawaii sugarcane fields in enormous and it all goes to waste. The biomass of ocean algae is enormous and goes to waste. The biomass of lumber processors is enormous and goes to waste. The biomass in waste cooking oil used to be a waste, now it sells near soy oil because of the demand from biodiesel and renewable diesel plants.
CO2isLife Re: ” There will NEVER be a shortage of oil and gas.” Germany lost WWII for lack of fuel. The Allies turned World War II by causing a “shortage of oil” in Germany. Despite Germany having the Fischer-Tropsch process, when the Allies bombed the coal to liquids facilities that was the beginning of the end of Germany’s war effort for lack of fuel to run its tanks etc. See:
TURNING POINT: A HISTORY OF GERMAN PETROLEUM IN WORLD WAR II AND ITS LESSONS FOR THE ROLE OF OIL IN MODERN AIR WARFARE
http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=AD1020261
I don’t think cutting/destroying supply lines in order to cripple an enemy’s means of running their war machine is equivalent to running out of ground resources because there aren’t any.
Well in fact it is, because the effect of both is the same. Shortage of fuel.
You have as odd a view of meaning as you do truth.
In the one case (WWII), the shortage was deliberately instantiated for a purpose, and in the other case the “shortage” is due to nature, which isn’t really a shortage at all, it’s a total lack thereof of the product, anywhere on the planet, over which we have no control, and to which we cannot prescribe anything near a sentient purpose.
Good Lord you’re making another mess of it Leo!
The master of the straw man.
Whether I cut your leg off with a chainsaw, or a falling tree smashed it off, is I suggest not really as germane an issue to your survival as te fact that you have lost a leg.
Troll someone else.
“The master of the straw man.”
I don’t need Straw Men to deal with the ilks of thee, however, if I did I’d be better at it than you are below:
“Whether I cut your leg off with a chainsaw, or a falling tree smashed it off, is I suggest not really as germane an issue to your survival as te [sic] fact that you have lost a leg.”
Nonsense. The two scenarios are completely different to describing what actually happened, or in the OP’s context, what is actually happening with oil. What a mess, Leo…what a mess.
“Troll someone else.”
Hypocrisy…you started it.
I”m still having fun and you’re still the one making me smile!
🙂
sycomputing Read deeper – Germany BEGAN with a shortage of fuel to start with – so they tried to capture oil fields to the east and in the Caucuses and then to synthesize it from coal. The Allied bombing amplified the shortages already there and shortened the war.
Just what does that have to do with today? We have better technology and the resources. What is your point?
“CO2isLife Re: ” There will NEVER be a shortage of oil and gas.” Germany lost WWII for lack of fuel. ”
That wasn’t because the FT Process didn’t work, it was because the Allies blew up all their refineries. What an awful analogy.
Oh dear.
Oh dear oh dear.
I simply cannot believe your ignorance.
Of science.
You have missed one entire term out of the hydrocarbon synthesis.
H20 + CO2 + A LOT OF ENERGY = synfuel (photosynthesis)
H2 + CO + A LOT OF ENERGY = synfuel (Fischer Tropsch)
H2O + A LOT OF ENERGY = H2 +O2 (Electrolysis)
CO2 + A LOT OF ENERGY = CO.
where is A LOT OF ENERGY going to come from?
Fossil fuels?
Synfuel?
Co2islife believes in perpetual motion and pixie dust!
CO2islife is just missing some of the details. I don’t think he believes in perpetual motion and pixie dust.
In fact he does. He just doesn’t know it.
His beliefs amount to that if examined critically.
Is this Pixidust?
https://youtu.be/O8L7tsAHsnw
I haven’t missed anything, and as I said, these processes are up and running TODAY!!! If I have a FT plant in Iowa and use corn stalks to make my CO, who cares if I have to burn some corn stalks to power the plant? I’m burning waste. What is your point? Yes, a lot of energy is used in the FT Process, but that energy comes from burning waste. If I burn newspaper I can get a lot of heat and CO, if I burn corn stalks, I get a lot of CO and heat, if I burn a lot of sugarcane I get a lot of CO and heat, if I burn forest waste I get a lot of CO and heat. What is your point? Are you saying we can’t burn carbon based waste? Once again, there are plants up and running today. There is no Pixidust other than what you have been sniffing.
Zealandia certainly has hydrocarbon potential, but not Ontong Java which is a basalt plateau.
Only microcontinents with continental rocks are of interest for oil and they are rather few: the Seychelles and the Rockall Plateau are about the only ones outside Zealandia.
Reply to tty
There is probably a lot of oil and gas in Zealandia but with New Zealand’s green leaning government no more exploration permits will be issued until the voters change the government .
Talk about putting the governments head in the sand and running the country to an agenda of carbon neutral in the next 20 years .
I tell my Auckland based relations who have voted for the green party that unless they sell their motor vehicles they are hypocrites .
And then they are against hydro dams and never nuclear in this country .
We have extensive wind farms and the balancing of the load works well only because of our extensive hydro stations that can be started remotely and stopped when the wind picks up and the water builds up and is ready when the demand comes on.
The editorial in the Waikato Times news paper ( unsigned ) predicted the end of beef on the menu because of the methane that cattle emit .
The world is being run by crazies .
tty, subduction of the Australia plate is occurring on the southwest side of the Ontong Java Plateau in the West Melanesian trench. This is a possible location for oil and gas accumulations to form.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiNxeKmrI_cAhUPnawKHSnND9EQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedirect.com%2Fscience%2Farticle%2Fpii%2FS0040195113003417&psig=AOvVaw3FmP4FCGPDBGdwuda_wSkw&ust=1531133820473976
tty, here is a map:
So it seems that the scientific consensus since the late 1800s has been that we would reach peak oil in 10 to 30 years. That sounds a lot like the modern consensus on climate change. We are always 10 to 20 years away from disaster. It would be interesting to study how often the “scientific consensus” of the day has turned out to be wrong. I suspect it has been erroneous more often than not. That’s because science does not operate by consensus. It never has. When consensus is forced on science, progress in scientific knowledge is suppressed, as it was during the dark ages until the enlightenment began to dispel the darkness of forced ignorance.
“It would be interesting to study how often the “scientific consensus” of the day has turned out to be wrong.”
You could begin with the history of science in the various disciplines and that would give you a good idea.
“I suspect it has been erroneous more often than not.”
Each time there’s an advancement in science, e.g., bloodletting dropping out of favor, that’s one time the consensus has been shown to be erroneous.
That reminds me, I need to call the barber shop to see if their leeches arrived. I can’t seem to get rid of this peptic ulcer because I’m so worried about global warming.
No worries…in lieu of leeches, just have a few cigarettes and all will be well!
Yes, the healthy Dr. recommended kind.
sycomputing and R Shearer and Louis Hunt
and Kristi ( so you still feel included ! )
Don’t KNOCK LEECHES !
They are very useful in draining haematomas and ARE still used today !
https://www.healthline.com/health/what-is-leech-therapy
Since the time of ancient Egypt, leeches have been used in
medicine to treat nervous system abnormalities, dental problems,
skin diseases, and infections.
Today, they’re mostly used in plastic surgery and other microsurgery.
This is because leeches secrete peptides and proteins that work to prevent blood clots..
Louis :
You will probably NOTE that almost ALL new scientific
breakthroughs ( like CANCER CURES ) are ALWAYS 10 years away !
Hope springs eternal…and it always depends on PERPETUAL FUNDING……
…..just like RENEWABLE and SUSTAINABLE which are basically
part of the same delusion , but it used to be only an aspiration
to drive human civilisation and now it is merely part of the
political process unfortunately !
As a matter of fact leeches are still used in medicine. They are indispensable for some types of delicate surgery to prevent clotting and forming of scar tissue.
But they are usually applied under a bandage and without telling the patients.
Good point, tty and Trevor.
They are applied without telling patients? Huh. Weird. What about when the bandage begins to puff up as the leeches get nice and fat? What if they squirm? And when the bite itches like mad? I suppose that’s preventable with medication?
I’ve had plenty of experience with land leeches in tropical Australia, but I’m still squeamish about swimming with the water ones.
My personal theory is and always will be, every scientific theory will be disproven and replaced given enough time. Every one of them. Some basic ones may take a thousand years, but our understand always helps fit the theory, and once our tools to test those theory improve, we usually find a better “answer” to the questions.
“My personal theory is and always will be, every scientific theory will be disproven and replaced given enough time.”
Does the same hold true for your theory?
j/k
🙂
No, because his theory is metaphysical, not scientific. His theory is a theory about theories, and is of a different order.
Look at you, Leo…you can’t even recognize a joke when it’s written right in front of you?
Must you be so serious all the time?
You know, you’ll never get me to start paying rent for living in your head until you clean it out in here…what a mess!
Correct. If science itself survives that long. Science is just a collection of theories that haven’t been shown to be wrong – yet.
As I see it, one has to differentiate between a scientific consensus that has been around for centuries and new theories and information have overturned it, and a consensus that builds within decades to overturn the long-held consensus. In the case of climate change, the long-held consensus is that humans cannot change the climate, with new theory and evidence overturning that old view. The new ideas have gradually gained scientific support, so that there is now a consensus among those who know most about the subject (measured in a variety of ways, not just through one study). (It’s just distracting to place a number – 97% – on the level of consensus
Contrarian scientists have not offered any theory or data strong enough to overturn the AGW consensus. Even the ideas put forth by contrarians aren’t universally supported by them – they are all over the board, with the one unifying idea being that (C)AGW is wrong. Saying something is wrong is not the same as developing a new theory that makes enough sense to gain widespread scientific support. I challenge everyone here to describe a particular theory that has gained more and more support over the years within the contrarian climate scientist community. For instance, why hasn’t the idea that global warming is the result of solar variation become widespread?
(A related question: why have so many vocal contrarian scientists become associated with partisan think tanks, resulting in the perception that their science is biased by policy concerns? And why have those trained in other fields, like McIntyre and McKitrick, become acceptable to the skeptic community as “experts” in climate science? Why is climate science such a partisan topic, when it should be a scientific one? Is it not related to the fact that the EPA is now led by those who are more interested in protecting business interests than the environment? Couldn’t it be possible that conservatives are by and large more interested in short-term economic impacts than in long-term environmental health and its associated impacts on humanity? Do conservatives generally even see the environment in terms of human welfare? I guess that’s more than one question!!! I sincerely want to understand these things, and I value others’ views as long as they aren’t simply insulting or dismissive.)
As Crichton noted, “If it’s consensus, it’s not science. If it’s science, it’s not consensus.”
As Feynman observed, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”.
McIntyre and McKitrick clearly know a lot more about statistics than does Mann. That’s the expertise that mattered.
If there be a consensus that man-made CO2 is dangerous rather than beneficial, it’s clearly wrong, as shown repeatedly by the time-tested scientific method.
Having been shown false over and over again, the consensus can be supported only politically, not scientifically.
sadly that simply isn’t what has happened.
Its more akin to people suddenly believing that drinking radium would cure arthritis.
Kristi :
” Do conservatives generally even see the environment in terms
of human welfare? ”
Yes. That has been the driving force for all civilisations….
..the improvement of living conditions ….more food…better housing.
….piped water ….sewage disposal..anti-biotics…..improved crops
and livestock …….irrigation…….and so on.
So land ( forest removal ) has to be cleared and developed
( less wildlife habitat ) so some adverse effects ..
………..but improvement for humans ! ………..That’s us !!
All focused on profit OR on human welfare….or both ?
Well….based on history…..unless it is profitable it won’t last !
The benefits to humanity are manifest and numerous.
Taxation pays for public services like water and sewerage
( paid for by rates) ,electricity and public transport
( both heavily susidised )and on and on !
Adapting the environment is what ALL life-forms do but humans
are the most capable at adapting their life-styles and their
environment. I can’t see the problem.
“Environmental health” as you use the term probably means
that you see human pollution as destroying the environment.
Sure ! In the past nomads exploited ( and possibly wrecked )
their local environment to the point where they were forced
to move-on to greener pastures.Some Tibetans still do !
That method is no longer practical , but very few of us
advocate a return to that time , so development has occurred
and it is BENEFICIAL overall.
Pollution and mining damage is controlled and remediated.
So …….no LONG TERM problem then.
Mining and extracting materials has enhanced and indeed
ALLOWED mankind to develop this modern civilisation…..
….and that includes Solar Panels and “wind-mills” and concrete
for “Hydro” dams and all the other ( so called )”green” technologies
…..and the entire process has despoiled so little in terms of
land-area or life-forms irretrievably damaged that I think the
COST or TRADE-OFF has been well worthwhile.
( as in , I don’t think the loss if the genetic information of the
subterranean life-form Paradraculoides bythius would forever
damage the planet….but the W.A. EPA refused a mining permit
on the basis that this thing even existed !
No one knew it was there until the mining company
PAID FOR A SURVEY to be conducted ! Incidentally , it is
quite widely distributed elsewhere….
.but what the heck ! No mine …no jobs ! ).
AND Kristi , this is where the conflict of ideas occurs.
The practical ideas of developers are constantly thwarted
by the “airy-fairy”anti-development ideas of the “greens”
who claim to be acting in OUR best interests BUT would
frequently appear to be advocating the direct opposite.
Conservatives ARE conservationists as well.
It is NOT the preserve of the “politically motivated greens”
and their environmental-organisations .
As for your other questions :
Please READ the other people’s comments.
They KNOW a lot more than I know in this field !
But I leave you with this from an Environmental Site :
“The dawn of the nuclear age in the 1950s and 1960s and the
popular imagination’s understanding of the damage such
weapons could reek ( sic )upon the planet, ”
“The revelations of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring brought
to the public imagination the real effects we may have already had
“Silent Spring began with a “fable for tomorrow” – a true story
using a composite of examples drawn from many real communities
where the use of DDT had caused damage to wildlife, birds, bees,
agricultural animals, domestic pets, and even humans.
Carson used it as an introduction to a very scientifically
complicated and already controversial subject.
This “fable” made an indelible impression on readers and was
used by critics to charge that Carson was a fiction writer
and not a scientist.”
AND MILLIONS OF PEOPLE DIED from malaria WHEN THE
USE OF DDT WAS STOPPED.
So……there is A LOT of emotion attached to this debate !
Especially when MOST of the advocates FOR AGW are
LEFT-WING neo-marxists who conveniently overlook their
murderous COMMUNIST HERITAGE tocondemn our
CAPITALIST FREE-ENTERPRISE , and SUCCESSFUL
Western Civilisation.
I hope that you did not find this insulting or dismissive !
Regards , Trevor.
Kristi:
I responded to your similar question on April 16, 2018 at 8:18 pm, here:
You further comment now:
From the earliest days environmentalists have flocked to the field, encouraged by government and foundation funding, and urged on by the alarmism of environmental NGOs like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, etc. (Save-the-world climate change alrmism has benefited those organizations bigly in terms of donations and membership levels..) Courses on the subject attracted environmentalists to teach them. If climatologists were polled on their membership in green organizations, I strongly suspect that a high percentage of them would belong—much higher than, say, meteorologists—and that the alarmist climatologists would have higher membership rates than those who are less alarmist.
I also strongly suspect that many alarmist climatologists are “affiliated with” green organizations (and liberal think tanks), and that they receive some financial benefit from speakers’ fees, article reprints, consulting or advisory services, prizes (e.g., Hansen got a $100,000 award from the Heinz foundation while employed by the government), job offers or recommendations, etc.
The lens through which such people view man’s intrusion on nature is never balanced; it is usually a highly partisan “threat or menace?” position. Environmentalists” excessive alarmism and twisted science and logic in support of their emotional dislike of industrialism and/or capitalism and/or America goes way back—see Aaron Wildavsky’s book, But Is It True?
Their partisanship can be detected in the unprofessional way they behave themselves—e.g., by the AGU’s attempt to bury the minority report on its climate change statement, and the APS’s similar tactic when dealing with the Koonin committee’s report.
Their avoidance of debate is another “tell.” (E.g., the Dutch government’s “Climate Dialogue” site had difficulty recruiting warmist scientists to participate.)
Reply to Kristi Silber,
I am certain that the theory of global warming has never been proven .I met John Maunder and knew him well and he came to stay with me .He was a meteorologist and belonged to the WMO and he attended the very first climate conference in Villach in Austria and also the second conference in Rio De Janiro in Brazil .
John Maunder was a meteorologist who taught at universities around the world before coming back to New Zealand to head our weather service .
He stated that the IPCC ignored the medieval warm period and the Roman warm period and that the Vikings had farmed in Greenland until the little ice age and that the 1930’s and 1940’s were just as warm as the present warm period .
We know that the scientists that want to believe in global warming have stated that these facts are a problem and they have done everything they can to erase these historic facts from the record by adjusting former records down and recent records up
The I PCC then ignored the science that was put before them as they are a political organization driven by an agenda to bring about one world government through a massive climate fund supplied by wealthy nations which will do little to help poor nations facing challenges .
The theory of global warming has to rely on positive feed backs from an increase in water vapor as doubling of CO2 will only theoretically raise the global temperature by .6 C.
The increase in water vapor depends on the tropical hot spot that has never been located .
Come back Kristi with some rebuttals to these facts .
Essentially all past scientific consensuses have been wrong. Today’s consensuses are also probably wrong.
The history of science since 1543 is a saga of overturning consensuses.
I just said that…
🙂
If that were true there would be no scientific advancement at all.
You have that 180 degrees backwards.
Scientific advancement is made precisely by overturning consensuses. Always has been. Always will be.
Einstein did not overturn any “consensus”
You just keep piling on the laugh riot!
I see that your understanding and knowledge of the history of science are no better than of US history.
That is precisely what Einstein did. He showed the Newtonian consensus false. There is scarcely a better example of overturning a consensus since Copernicus first challenged the geocentric consensus.
The Newtonian consensus claimed that space and time were absolutes and that gravitational attraction was instantaneous. Einstein thoroughly shattered this consensus, showing that spacetime was relative, not absolute, and that gravity worked at the speed of light.
Einstein’s brilliant insight was that Maxwell and Newton could not both be right. He showed that Maxwell was right and Newton wrong.
Einstein did not show Newtonian physics false.
..
Launching a rocket into orbit uses all of the principles that Newton developed. In fact, launching a rocket today has no dependency on Einstein’s theory.
Betty,
Please quit displaying your ignorance and digging your hole deeper.
Both Newton and Einstein’s theories work for launching rockets.
Where Newton fails is in GPS satellites, which require Einstein’s theory of relativity in order to work. Einstein’s theory has been repeatedly confirmed and Newton’s shown false by observations outside the realm in which Newtonian physics are good enough.
Newton’s theory has never been proven “false.” So, your “consensus” argument is bogus.
I am afraid it has.
PS, please provide me with proof that Washington was a member of the Federalist party.
Newtonian physics works fine at non-relativistic velocities.
That’s not the point.
The point is that, contrary to your ludicrous assertion, Einstein most certainly, indubitably, showed Newton wrong. He overturned the Newtonian consensus.
You could get a job shifting goalposts.
A true Christian is humble, and knows when to admit she’s dead wrong. False price goes before a big fall.
Einstein did not show Newton wrong. Nothing in Newton’s theory was “wrong.” There were a few observations that were unexplained in Newton’s theory, which were better explained with Einstein’s. A “better” theory doesn’t necessarily invalidate it’s predecessor.
Clearly, you’ve never, ever studied physics or the history of science.
I’ve already showed you precisely where Einstein found Newton dead wrong. I’ll repeat, so you won’t have to refer back to my previous comment:
1) Newton said that space is absolute.
2) Newton said that time is absolute.
3) Newton said that gravity works at a distance instantaneously.
Einstein showed all three of those propositions false. Observations of nature have repeatedly confirmed Einstein and falsified Newton.
It would behoove you to study a subject before presuming to comment upon it.
Newton’s theory has not been “falsified”
…
If it was “falsified” then we would be launching rockets with Einstien’s theory and not Newton’s
In a similar vein, all climate models are “false” but some are more skillful than others. The same thing applies here. Newton’s theory is much more “skillful” than Einstein’s. One does not need relativistic time distortion analysis when performing an accident reconstruction involving two automobiles.
Betty,
You are spouting pure gibberish.
What you apparently don’t understand is that Einstein’s theory works just as well as Newton’s for purposes such as rocket launching.
But Newton is totally wrong about space, time and gravity.
Einstein works for all speeds. Newton doesn’t work in all cases. Why is this so hard for you to grasp?
“Einstein works for all speeds.”
..
NOPE
..
Einsteint’s theory doesn’t “work” at 2c.
Twice the speed of light isn’t possible, precisely because of his theory.
You’re an utterly ridiculous, shameless person.
Wow…..first you said “for all speeds”…… now you are excluding 2c.
…
Isn’t 2c a member of the set “all speeds?”
..
Your claims of “all speeds” is false.
Betty,
It applies to all possible speeds. You are a raving lunatic.
Your case appears hopeless, but please try to concentrate as long as you can on reality, rather than engage in idiotic word games.
Not Einstein but nature showed Newton wrong. Einstein came up with the correct explanation.
It became apparent during the late 19th century that there is a conflict between Newtonian mechanics and classical electrodynamics, as I noted, ie Maxwell’s equations. Einstein, and a few others before him, addressed this conflict in a variety of ways. Einstein’s way was to find a new mechanics, consistent with electrodynamics, but which reduces, in approximation, to Newtonian mechanics for objects moving at speeds that are small compared to the speed of light in vacuum.
Experiments with subatomic particles (particularly muons in secondary cosmic rays created high in the atmosphere) moving at nearly the speed of light have shown that Einstein’s theory of special relativity explains the behavior of these particles, but Newton’s mechanics does not.
More recently, as I keep telling you, with satellites used by GPS, it has been necessary to use Einstein’s special and general relativity to keep the calculated positions of objects on Earth accurate. Both the special theory and the general theory of relativity have passed every experimental and observational test to which they’ve been subjected, but Newton’s theory does not agree with experience at the level of accuracy we can now achieve.
1): ” for all speeds.”
..
2): ” all possible speeds”
..
Goal post move.
..
You lose.
No, Betty, you lost before we even started, since you falsely imagined that Einstein didn’t falsify Newton.
It should be obvious that all speeds means all speeds possible in the universe. But since you insist, then, were twice light speed possible, Einstein would still be right and Newton wrong, since gravity does work at light speed.
The universe has expanded more rapidly than the speed of light, yet Einstein still works.
All you do is shift goalposts, without ever admitting how laughably wrong you were in the first place.
Your ignorance is total. Your ego intergalactic, without any justification. You lose.
You’re sick. Please seek help.
PS, “all possible” assumes the fact that Einstein was correct. We may discover particles that exceed the speed of light in order to explain quantum entanglement, better known as “spooky action at a distance”
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_a_distance#Einstein
As I said, if faster than light speed be possible, then Newton is still wrong.
What part of “wrong” don’t you get?
You are confused. Newton is not “wrong.” Einstein is not “right.”
..
Einstein’s theory is better than Newton’s.
PS, alchemists were not “wrong”, they just didn’t have a particle accelerator to transmute lead into gold.
There is no way to make Newton right. He was wrong and will always be wrong.
Gravity works at the speed of light, and has only been observed to do so, never instantly. Space and time are relative, and always will be.
“Wrong” and “right” are (lol) relative. You are stuck applying the true/false paradigm of logic/math/philosophy to science. Theories are neither “wrong” or “right.” Theories are evaluated as “better” or “worse.” Newtonian mechanics works fine for launching satellites into orbit. Einstein’s theory works fine for GPS. Please do not use a screwdriver to hammer a nail into a board.
Betty,
I know that arguing with a crazy person is like mud wrestling with a pig, but I’ll try just one more time to straighten our your twisted psyche.
That Newton was wrong is not in doubt. It is a scientific fact, ie an observation and a measurement.
Time and space are relative, not absolute. Hence, Newton is wrong and Einstein is right.
Gravity works at the speed of light. Hence, Newton is wrong and Einstein is right.
How many times do I have to point out these facts to you?
” Einstein is right”
..
Nope
..
Einsteint’s theory fails to explain quantum entanglement.
It doesn’t explain mental illness either.
Well at last you show some common sense, although by better you are simply saying ‘less wrong’
Speculation without support. It is like saying “Unicorns may exist.”
Its is an observed facts that people who are wring will always switch the argument to semantic nit picking.
Are you a member of the set of ‘all unicorns’ betty?
Isn’t 2c a member of the set “all speeds?”
No.
Its not a member of ‘all speeds’ since it is not a possible speed.
Betty,
Sophistry! 2C isn’t a member of the set of all real speeds because 2C isn’t possible, except as a concept.
Actually I think it may well do.
FSV of ‘work’ and ‘2c’
True, because Newton is a rough approximation to relativity, and good enough for many crude purposes.
The problem is that no climate models are good enough for even a crude approximation, as has been shown by the data.
Human influence on climate is very very small. Human influence on climate measurements, is however significant. Placement of sensors, interpretation of proxies, interpolation of data points mean that we barely know to within several degrees what the ‘average temperature of the earth’ actually IS. Let alone what it was say 500 years ago.
However we can detect changes over the last say 40 years reasonably well.
And this utterly disprove CO2 induced warming, because CO2 has been rising steadily whilst temperatures have not. First they rose, then they stopped.
To a statistician that means CO2 is simply not the reason. No matter how you fiddle with climate sensitivity, you cant match a rise and a plateau to a straight line. If you start to introduce extra variables to explain the lack of 21st century warming, you inevitably make CO2 not the main driver.
Its a perfect catch 22. CAGW is not consistent with the data. It is a refuted theory, and it doesn’t even predict the climate over a couple of decades, sufficiently accurately to be of any practical use whatsoever.
The only use CAGW has is in fooling people to part with their hard earned cash to fund greater abuses against their freedom and pursuit of life and liberty and happiness.
Betty,
You just keep making an ever bigger fool of yourself.
As I told you, Einstein and Newton’s theories both work for rocket launch. The difference is that Einstein’s explains observations for which Newton is simply dead wrong.
Gravity has been repeatedly shown to work at light speed, not instantly. Time has been repeatedly shown not to be the same everywhere all the time. It’s relative. As noted, the GPS system wouldn’t work if Newton were right.
Please learn some elementary physics before presuming to comment upon it. Same with history.
“Einstein and Newton’s theories both work for rocket launch.”
….
So, then Newton’s theory hasn’t been falsified.
..
Thank you.
Betty,
I’ve repeatedly showed you precisely how Newton has been falsified.
That it works well enough for rocket launch is far from the whole story. It doesn’t work for GPS satellites.
Are you really this dense, or merely incapable of admitting error?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_a_distance#Einstein
Newton’s theory has been “falsified”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_general_relativity#Testing_the_theory
Newton’s physics is a special case of low velocity applications. Einstein’s physics works for all situations; however, when high velocities aren’t involved, the computations are easier and quicker for Newtonian. If you have any experience with mathematics you would know that often equations are simplified by ignoring a factor whose influence is negligible. It is the same equation, just simplified to deal with the factors that matter for the domain of the independent variable(s).
Oh dear.
Well yes, it does.
It wasn’t a case of observations that were unexplained. It was a case of observations that did not for the theory. The theory was obviously wrong. The observations fitted Einstein’s theory. Ergo Einstein’s theory was less wrong than Newtons.
All theories are in the limit ‘wrong’ because they are pictures of the world, not the world in itself.
Some are just more wrong than others. Newton is more wrong than Einstein, at this point in time
That’s a bit like saying that absent of microscopes and antibiotics, the evil spirit theory of illness works perfectly well, and there is no need to talk about bacteria.
Betty,
As I keep trying to help you understand, parties in the 18th century didn’t have membership registration.
You’re being ludicrously anachronistic.
Washington was still not a member of the Federalist party. See my link about what George said about political parties.
I know what he and his colleagues said. Perhaps you’ve not noticed that politicians’ words and deeds often don’t quite match. Especially under changed circumstances.
Now, please explain how, in your alternative universe, something happening twice as often as its opposite is not “usual”.
Thanks!
9 out of 44 is not “usual” wheras 22 out of 44 would be.
Betty,
Why do you insist on continuing to make a fool of yourself?
Only those presidents who ran for reelection count. Harrison the grandfather, Taylor, Garfield and Kennedy couldn’t run for reelection because they were dead. Others chose not to run.
In seventeen of the 24 instances of an incumbent running for reelection the sitting president was reelected.
You’re making yourself a laughingstock.
Goal post move: “Only those presidents who ran for reelection count”
…
Some presidents in office knew that running for re-election would end in failure.
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Your score is 9/44
You count dead presidents?
Since you’re so ignorant of US history, you don’t know that some chose not to run, not because they were afraid of losing, but because they just didn’t want to do so. Polk died soon after leaving office, for instance.
Pierce was followed by another Democrat.
Where do you get nine, anyway? Eighteen times presidents running for reelection won.
You’re making a fool of yourself.
9/44 is not “usually” in fact it’s better labeled as “sometimes”
Again, where do you get nine?
And how is that you count presidents who not only didn’t run for reelection, but couldn’t because they were dead?
The whole discussion started because I stated, correctly, that presidents who run for reelection usually are reelected.
Showing you actual historical reality isn’t enough because, clearly, you’re nuts.
A “sitting president” that chooses not to run is a “sitting president” that DID NOT WIN REELECTION
…
So simple that even people that have English as a 2nd language understand.
Betty,
For the last time, we were talking about Trump running for reelection, so presidents who don’t run don’t count, obviously.
But in any case, even allowing dead presidents and those who chose not to run, seventeen individual men have been reelected, not the nine you keep so insanely stating.
Oh dear. Yes he did. He showed that Newtonian theory was an approximation that got less and less accurate the faster you went or the bigger gravitaional field your were in etc. etc.
And of course we DO use Einstein in rocketry, otherwise we wouldn’t be accurate.
Oh yes he did.
Louis Hunt
Science itself is more often wrong than right. Otherwise, there would be no need for experiments, which are always wrong, until they are right.
My favorite is the jackass consensus on the causes of ulcers (everyone remembers this one). Everyone (medical science, the public, me and my mother-in-law, everyone!) had the cause wrong. I remember where I was when I heard the true cause revelation on the radio. So cool to see so many medical experts have to eat crow!
https://hcsmart.com/peptic-ulcers-h-pylori-and-two-australians/
I also love the consensus that has crumbled about Dinosaurs over the last 30 years. They went from slow lumbering gray, to feathers, colors, and running. The running thing was hilarious. Dinosaur footprints proved it, but it took 10 years for everyone to agree that’s what they showed. lol
The revolution in thinking about dinosaurs was kicked off by this guy, in the 1960s, based upon his study of the maniraptor (dino-bird) Deinonychus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ostrom
It may sound like it, but then denying climate change sounds like denying the effects of smoking, to idiots.
To the untrained ear, politicians talking sounds like the braying of a donkey, as do the utterances of very wise men.
This is where critical thinking comes in. And why we practice science, not magic.
Are we using fossil fuels faster than they are being created? If so then we will reach ‘peak fossil’ fuel sometime.
It’s that simple.
Its not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.
The end is near,
Oh woe is us,
It’s almost gone,
All hope is lost!
We shuck and we jive
And we point and we blame
We give serious talks
But our bias is plain.
The future is known
We are experts, not fakes,
If you completely ignore
Forty years of mistakes…
One of these days: “While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”
http://biblehub.com/1_thessalonians/5-3.htm
The previous verse reads (KJV): “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night”.
Those who heard Paul’s letter read in Thessaloniki expected the day of the Lord soon. After going on 2000 years, we’re still waiting.
Let’s hope that fusion arrives sooner than the day of the Lord.
In any case, some scholars argue that 1 Thes. 5:1–11 is a “post-Pauline insertion”, ie forgery, as are some whole letters attributed to Paul.
“Let’s hope that fusion arrives sooner than the day of the Lord.”
Why in the world would I not hope for exactly the reverse were I to believe that such a day was indeed forthcoming?
Because it hasn’t happened after 2000 years and there is no reason to expect it any time soon, if at all.