Re: Hybrid Cars
 

"Peak oil" predictions have been around since the 1880's. Just like all Malthusians they have been proven wrong time and time again. The Peak Oil guys just keep moving their peaks back every time they get proven wrong.

One must ask, if "Peak Oil" was happening now, why is oil cheaper than it was 25 years ago? Note: problem most people have is they don't incorporate inflation and higher living standards into their cost comparison. The median American family income buys twice as much oil now than it did 25 years ago.

I'm not saying we will never run out of oil. I'm saying that the market price indicates we still have a long ways to go. The peak oil guys will continually predict it until they are finally right, probably around 2040 or so. And no comment on the global warming, which is essentially a different issue.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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Wow, way to go. You picked a fiction book to counter my endless supply of peer reviewed scientific journals and Nobel prize Laureates. Way to go.

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i was thinking EXACTLY this when i read his post, lol

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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The Peak Oil guys just keep moving their peaks back every time they get proven wrong.

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Is that why the peak in the 1985 study I posted (from the president of shell) is exactly the same as the 2004 study?

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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The Peak Oil guys just keep moving their peaks back every time they get proven wrong.

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Is that why the peak in the 1985 study I posted (from the president of shell) is exactly the same as the 2004 study?

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I don't know. I'm not sure whether the former president of Shell is a "Peak Oil" nut or not. I do know these predictions have been made for a very long time, usually by malthusians who don't understand how free markets and innovation impact their predictions.

Remember the Club of Rome "limits to growth"? Wrong, absurdly wrong as world living standards continue to rise for thirty years after their ghastly predictions. Oil is a currently "convenient" energy source. There are actually other sources of energy that are cheaper. Eventually we'll run low on oil and will switch to cheaper, better forms of energy that we already have today. For example, if you could power your hybrid directly from the electrical grid, it would be cheaper than gasoline today. But the technology isn't good enough to make it worth switching while gas is so plentiful.


Here's an opinion written by a financial analyst I have a great deal of respect for.

"Two current "Kings" of Hubbertian prediction, Colin Campbell and Jean Laherre, started much earlier. Campbell published a paper in 1989 that claimed a 1997 peak with oil prices skyrocketing in the early '90s as the peak became visible. Oops. Every year he slides the peak out a year or so. Incredibly, people still listen to him. He currently predicts 2014, I think.

<<....my own independent research places the peak of world oil production late this year or early in 2006>>

Deffeyes' 11/2001 paper put the peak in 2004. Another oops. His current prediction is borderline absurd. New fields coming online in the Caspian Sea and SE Asia regions should more than offset existing field declines until at least 2010.

These guys are as useful as a stopped clock. Oil production WILL peak someday. If we could see the peak five years in advance it would be quite helpful. But we can't.

Besides getting the dates wrong, Peak Oil cultists also tend to make apocalyptic predictions which are completely contradicted by known facts. Hubbertian models show a post-peak decline rate of 2-3%/year. We had such a decline from 1980-85 (artificially imposed by OPEC in an effort to keep crude above $30/bbl). There were painful adjustments, but civilization did not collapse. Conservation alone could keep things running for 20-30 years at such a rate of decline, buying plenty of time to develop alternative sources. "

For a more direct attack on the "peak oil" theory, try this detailed summary of the theory's problems.

To summarize, the authors of key peak oil research made a number of errors and don't provide sources for their data so they can't be peer reviewed. Some key issues they don't understand include assuming that oil recovery and discovery aren't driven by economic and political factors. "To an economist, the drop in exploration reflects optimal behavior: they do not waste money exploring for something they will not use for decades".

"two recent discoveries, Kashagan in Kazakhstan and Azedagan in Iran, reportedly would together equal over ten percent of Campbell and Laherrere’s estimated remaining undiscovered oil"

"The result has been exactly as predicted in Lynch (1996) for this method: a series of predictions of near-term peak and decline, which have had to be repeatedly revised upwards and into the future. So much so as to suggest that the authors themselves are providing evidence that oil resources are under no strain, but increasing faster than consumption!"

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

My parents got one a couple of weeks ago and i checked it out a bit when i stopped by on Sunday. It's an insight and gets about 47mpg on average with my father driving (i believe honda claims 53-55 or so).

To me it looks small and stupid, but he likes it so whatever. Given it's size it doesn't really perform much better than most fully gas vehicles in its class. I'm not really sure that the extra 7-10 mpg is worth choosing it over a non hybrid vehicle.

The only real reason to get one over something like a geo metro would be styling, or the fact that it can use both the motor and the engine to produce more power when accelerating. Other that that though hybrids seem to simply be slightly more fuel efficient, rather than anything truely revolutionary.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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To summarize, the authors of key peak oil research made a number of errors and don't provide sources for their data so they can't be peer reviewed.

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I don't use those sources and good luck finding those kinds of sources in Nature, Science, or Cell.


BTW, Jean Laherre doesn't have any published peer reviewed papers.

As for Hubert and Campbell, here is a nice couple of articles from science:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten...386/47d?ck=nck
http://intl.sciencemag.org/cgi/conte...9/1470a?ck=nck

Deffeyes's projection of an imminent drop in world oil production is based, however, on a questionable methodology. Proponents of Hubbert's methods are always quick to point out his success in predicting that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s. Deffeyes does so and, like other advocates of Hubbert's approach, he does not discuss the failures of the methodology in other cases. Hubbert's unsuccessful prediction curves for natural gas in the United States and for oil on a global scale go unmentioned. Colin Campbell, currently the best-known user of the Hubbert methodology, has had to repeatedly revise his predictions because the forecast date of the peak has passed



So I think we can both agree that they aren't the best sources either.

Next time you attack what I say, attack my sources, not some source you happen to choose.

I also never said we will run out of oil, I simply said the next century will not be a prosperous one due to expensive energy. There is a big difference.

What do I think we need to do? Have 5 cent tax on each gallon of gasoline to fund an Apollo style energy program to put America back on top of the worlds largest industry. That's it. Worst case scenerio we develope tons of new technology that will drive our economies well into the future. Why is that so difficult for right wingers to agree on? They love technology.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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Next time you attack what I say, attack my sources, not some source you happen to choose.

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Your "source" for peak oil is just some dude's web site where he collects links to peak oil stories. I gave you some direct responses to the key claims that inspired the peak oil controversies. I was just responding to that.

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I also never said we will run out of oil, I simply said the next century will not be a prosperous one due to expensive energy. There is a big difference.

What do I think we need to do? Have 5 cent tax on each gallon of gasoline to fund an Apollo style energy program to put America back on top of the worlds largest industry. That's it. Worst case scenerio we develope tons of new technology that will drive our economies well into the future. Why is that so difficult for right wingers to agree on? They love technology.

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The problem is your central thesis is wrong. Energy is getting less expensive, not more. This has been the trend throughout mankinds recorded history. Even today, oil is cheaper than it was 25 years ago. And we already have replacements for oil today, but oil is just too damn cheap and conveniant to be replaced by any time soon.

If you believed in a free market, you'd realize that if we ever really started running out of oil, it would start to get expensive. And this would drive conservation as well as the development and adoption of replacement energy sources.

Hybrids are a great example. We could conduct a crash program today to replace 100M cars with hybrids, for a total cost of approximately 2 trillion dollars. If that doubled gas mileage from 20 mpg to 40 mpg, and people drove an average of 10,000 miles per year, it would save 250 gallons of gas per car per year, or 25B gallons a year.

This would net $60B per year on a 2 trillion dollar investment, or a tiny 3% per year. Decent investment returns in our economy should be closer to three times that. That waste of investable capital would be one of the most colossal blows to our economy since the great depression or perhaps, the internet bubble. This is because it diverted $2 Trillion of investment capital could have been much more effectively invested in other goods (power plants, new energy efficient homes) and research, that offered more benefits and return on investment than in replacing perfectly good existing automobiles.

The best approach is to wait five to ten years for hybrid technology to get much cheaper (and better). And if the "Peak Oil" malthusians are correct, this will concide with oil prices doubling or tripling. Suddenly the payback for making the hybrid investment is so immediate that no politician has to lift a finger, as people will overwhelmingly go hybrid because it makes financial sense. Not only will their return on investment will easily justify the switch, but because of the lower hybrid costs, the diversion of capital will be much, much less painful.

I.e., the free market works. Crash government programs never had, because they are typically divorced from economic reality. You remember all the grand alternate fuels programs of the seventies don't you?

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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Your "source" for peak oil is just some dude's web site where he collects links to peak oil stories. I gave you some direct responses to the key claims that inspired the peak oil controversies. I was just responding to that.


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Kjell Aleklett, professor in Physics Uppsala University, Sweden and member of the Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group, is hardly just "some dude".

As for your "free market", normally I would agree with you 100%. But not in this case. Free markets could not be depended on to develop the polio vaccine(discovered at University of Pittsburgh), or any vaccine really. The real money is in treatment not cures. But our society as a whole is much better off with vaccines. This is a basic concept that is beyond debate really. If you are honestly argueing that federal funding for research is useless then you have a lot to learn about how research works. Also, you can't expect fusion to pop up in 5 years, or 10 years, or even 20 years. No coorporation is going to fund a fusion project. You need to realize that the "free market" isn't the perfect answer for every situation.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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As for your "free market", normally I would agree with you 100%. But not in this case. Free markets could not be depended on to develop the polio vaccine(discovered at University of Pittsburgh), or any vaccine really. The real money is in treatment not cures. But our society as a whole is much better off with vaccines. This is a basic concept that is beyond debate really. If you are honestly argueing that federal funding for research is useless then you have a lot to learn about how research works. Also, you can't expect fusion to pop up in 5 years, or 10 years, or even 20 years. No coorporation is going to fund a fusion project. You need to realize that the "free market" isn't the perfect answer for every situation.

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That's not my argument, though clearly no drugs have ever been created by a private business, so clearly you win there.

My argument is we don't need fusion, there are many other energy sources to get us through the next hundred years or so. And if fusion is the eventual solution, it will definitely be cheaper to develop fifty years from now than today, just due to the ever marching improvements in technology.

The problem is we are awash in cheap energy, so huge investments in new sources of energy don't make much sense, for private or public research. The peak oil people say our prices are about to sky-rocket, well, I'm waiting...

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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Kjell Aleklett, professor in Physics Uppsala University, Sweden and member of the Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group, is hardly just "some dude".

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Viewed outside the context of this thread, this sentence is hilarious.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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though clearly no drugs have ever been created by a private business, so clearly you win there.

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I don't know how you mixed up unprofitable vaccines with any and all drugs, but ok. Way to twist my words beyond all recognition.

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My argument is we don't need fusion, there are many other energy sources to get us through the next hundred years or so.

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You really need to watch the smalley video.

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The problem is we are awash in cheap energy, so huge investments in new sources of energy don't make much sense, for private or public research. The peak oil people say our prices are about to sky-rocket, well, I'm waiting...

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So what, we wait till gasoline is $5 a gallon before we start to worry? When 1 billion Chinese people start to become oil hungry and Russia comes back online we still wait and sit back to see what happens? I really don't think you understand how long it takes to train a physical scientist let alone develop these technologies. You add those two together, not to mention the current scarcity of those professionals, and you are talking about one hell of a delayed response time.

I also don't think you understand the amount of energy China will require once it develops.

As for fuels, yes we can always squeeze more out of mother earth. But there are costs. Research can offer clean cheap energy and a plethora of technologies to drive our economy. If we keep on squeezing mother earth, energy will become more and more expensive and the damage we do mother earth will increase dramatically. That is of course unless you don't believe the past 400,000 year C02/temp correlation from the Vostok Ice core has any value at all.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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Kjell Aleklett, professor in Physics Uppsala University, Sweden and member of the Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group, is hardly just "some dude".

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Viewed outside the context of this thread, this sentence is hilarious.

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Well I'm glad atleast somebody is paying attention and my words aren't wasted on a single pair of deaf ears. I really hate these arguements.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

What a surprise. Wacki gives incredible and valuable information from reputable sources, and a handful of dopes display their ignorance.

Why do you waste your breath? 90% of us get it, the rest are just grasping at straws.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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I'm saying that I don't expect a major distrubtion for more than a few years in our way of life due to energy shortages

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Read the Hirsch report (look in the Politics forum). It's an interesting read. That guy is basically an optimist, and even he says that unless a crash-program is initiated at least 20 years before peak-oil we will face decades of liquid fuel shortages (wich spells out as severe depression in the world economies). And when he says crash-program, he means exactly that. Basically, unlimited funds and every political desition made instantaneously.

I'm not that optimistic.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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There are actually other sources of energy that are cheaper. Eventually we'll run low on oil and will switch to cheaper, better forms of energy that we already have today. For example, if you could power your hybrid directly from the electrical grid, it would be cheaper than gasoline today. But the technology isn't good enough to make it worth switching while gas is so plentiful.

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This is so ignorant I don't know if to laugh or cry.

What sources do you propose? There is none. Nothing we have today can even begin to make up for oil. If you belive they can, you need to read up on things like extraction rates and EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Input). Not everything can be abstracted to money, you know.

Power hybrids from the grid?!? How exactly do you belive electricity is generated? Mined out of thin air?
50% coal, 20% nukes, 20% gas, roughly. There's a fair bit of coal left, but it's getting harder to mine it. Gas in the NA is close to it's peak, or maybe even behind it. Nukes? Takes a while to build, plus NIMBY is a problem there... and if we don't get breeders that really work we don't have enough uranium to scale it.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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Remember the Club of Rome "limits to growth"? Wrong, absurdly wrong as world living standards continue to rise for thirty years after their ghastly predictions.

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It's been a while since I read it myself, but I seem to remember that they have so far been esentially correct.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

Wow, DesertCat said some really dumb things and I didn't even catch them. I guess that means I need some sleep. Thanks Il Mostro, you too pfunk.

Re: Hybrid Cars
 

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Remember the Club of Rome "limits to growth"? Wrong, absurdly wrong as world living standards continue to rise for thirty years after their ghastly predictions.

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It's been a while since I read it myself, but I seem to remember that they have so far been esentially correct.

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It has been even longer probably since I read it but I am pretty sure thier end of the world should have happened by now. You could argue being off by 20-30 years really doesn't change much. I think the other thing is that population growth has slowed much more rapidly thant they expected. Of course this is all off the top of my head.