Science: Fuck yeah (Oil 2.0)

[Sephirius]

Actually, sneaking around Eastern Europe looking for Metal Gear. The most I've had to mentally deal with oil this past week has been the thought of the oil economy failing and giving birth to the "war economy" in MGS4, which was quite interesting. I digress.

Ironic, seeing as how this technology was discovered in 1999 in the Metal Gear-verse, and was in fact the basis for MG2's plot.

The first thing I thought of when I read this thread was making the connection to MG2 as well, except Oilix was an algae, and these are bugs.
Maybe like those cleanup insects aboard Big Shell?

This is great news, hopefully things turn out. The Dept. of Energy should be funding this like crazy, if they get wind of it.

[Death from the Sea]

*can consume anything, from sugar cane to garbage

did that line make anyone else think of the "Mr. Fusion" from Back to the Future?

[Galvatron]

So are we all still gonna die or what?

Yes, unless you found the Holy Grail and didn't tell me.

I meant, are we all still going to die in some during some apocalyptic event in a Peak Oil dystopia?

[Singular Intellect]

So are we all still gonna die or what?

Yes, unless you found the Holy Grail and didn't tell me.

I meant, are we all still going to die in some during some apocalyptic event in a Peak Oil dystopia?

Really unlikely. As I understand it and assuming a worst case scenario, you'll just see a large population decline as our virtually free energy lunch disappears.

Afterwards, we might actually get back up to large populations with better planning and technology. But as of right now we're just victims of stupidity, lack of foresight, selfishness and stubborness.

Let's face it, the amounts of energy we could harness from renewable resources is actually quite vast; we just found an energy source that was incredibly easy to access and cheap to work with, and virtually ignored all others in favor of it.

Solar energy hitting Earth at any one time is some twenty thousand times greater than our current energy consumption, for example. Dams are not new concepts, harnessing wind power is a centuries old technology, harnessing geothermal energy isn't that complicated, etc, etc. Never mind all the newer technologies we've devoloped, such as harnessing wave power, tide power, radio wave power, and many others.

[Drooling Iguana]

Unless it's due to widespread use of condoms and contraceptives, "population decline" pretty much translates to "we're all gonna die."

Well, maybe not all, but you get the point.

[Singular Intellect]

Unless it's due to widespread use of condoms and contraceptives, "population decline" pretty much translates to "we're all gonna die."

Well, maybe not all, but you get the point.

As inhumane as I may sound, I'm not exactly going to weep because humanity fucked itself over with stupidity and will now pay the price.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'd guess that the best case scenario for the United States is a mere additional 3 million early deaths from starvation between now and 2085, so it isn't that bad. The worst case will still see the country survive largely intact.

[Galvatron]

This is all very disappointing.

Can I at least count on a sharp decline of my standard of living?

[TheMuffinKing]

This is all very disappointing.

Can I at least count on a sharp decline of my standard of living?

You can take my credit card debt! That'll put you back a few pesos.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I meant, are we all still going to die in some during some apocalyptic event in a Peak Oil dystopia?

Only if you don't stock up on 5.56 mm.

Really unlikely. As I understand it and assuming a worst case scenario, you'll just see a large population decline as our virtually free energy lunch disappears.

Afterwards, we might actually get back up to large populations with better planning and technology. But as of right now we're just victims of stupidity, lack of foresight, selfishness and stubborness.

Let's face it, the amounts of energy we could harness from renewable resources is actually quite vast; we just found an energy source that was incredibly easy to access and cheap to work with, and virtually ignored all others in favor of it.

Solar energy hitting Earth at any one time is some twenty thousand times greater than our current energy consumption, for example. Dams are not new concepts, harnessing wind power is a centuries old technology, harnessing geothermal energy isn't that complicated, etc, etc. Never mind all the newer technologies we've devoloped, such as harnessing wave power, tide power, radio wave power, and many others.

Worst case is total thermonuclear war, which, by the way, kind of fucks over the US too, regardless of energy policy.

A note on renewables: in order to be reliant on them, we need to use energy to create them first. Consider where that vast amount of energy is going to come from, then consider how we don't have a global economy based solely on creating renewable energy and how government subsidies still go into solar and wind to name two.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

This is all very disappointing.

Can I at least count on a sharp decline of my standard of living?

Yeah, standard of living will decline in the US back to what it was in, say, 1980 at minimum. We could get as bad as the USSR in 1980 in a fair number of scenarios, though. Worst case scenario when we bottom out is 1919 in Russia.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The loss of VenMex and Canada alone will set you back to the '70s at the very least. We're not even talking about global net export declines. If you had to survive on what you're still able to pump in the US, then your way of life as per the last half of the 20th century is over.

[Surlethe]

A note on renewables: in order to be reliant on them, we need to use energy to create them first. Consider where that vast amount of energy is going to come from, then consider how we don't have a global economy based solely on creating renewable energy and how government subsidies still go into solar and wind to name two.

Therefore, once fossil fuel production peaks, energy will no longer exist to go into developing alternatives?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Therefore, once fossil fuel production peaks, energy will no longer exist to go into developing alternatives?

Not without catastrophic repercussions for the economy. Unless you're going to put everyone into a job dealing with renewables, you're going to upset the growth economy we've had since industry started up.

But this is a moot point. There is no way in hell you are going to replace even a fraction of current global demand with renewables in any meaningful time-frame without bankrupting the whole OECD and more besides. All that energy going towards those projects is energy not going to heat homes, power cars or give people work for jobs they're already in now. There isn't even the manpower to make drilling for more oil anything but a lethargic process.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The loss of VenMex and Canada alone will set you back to the '70s at the very least. We're not even talking about global net export declines. If you had to survive on what you're still able to pump in the US, then your way of life as per the last half of the 20th century is over.

We can make corrections and compensations in the overall standard of living, by simply moving into the city cores. You're basing everything off oil and that doesn't accurately model the actual standard of living at all, because losses in oil production can be offset by moving closer to your place of work and an urban core with extensive resources still available.

[Admiral Valdemar]

We can make corrections and compensations in the overall standard of living, by simply moving into the city cores. You're basing everything off oil and that doesn't accurately model the actual standard of living at all, because losses in oil production can be offset by moving closer to your place of work and an urban core with extensive resources still available.

Fossil fuels, not oil, although oil is the most important. Natural gas and coal are issues too, as I've previously stated. If you think living standards can't be affected by those, then think again. A massive nuclear build is all that could get around that.

[Master of Ossus]

Fossil fuels, not oil, although oil is the most important. Natural gas and coal are issues too, as I've previously stated. If you think living standards can't be affected by those, then think again. A massive nuclear build is all that could get around that.

Do you want to cite a source for your claim that the world is running out of fucking COAL? Every single source I've seen have shown that there are just astonishingly huge recoverable reserves of coal in a multitude of countries. In fact, very recently there was more coal in England alone than humans had consumed since the steam engine was invented.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Do you want to cite a source for your claim that the world is running out of fucking COAL? Every single source I've seen have shown that there are just astonishingly huge recoverable reserves of coal in a multitude of countries. In fact, very recently there was more coal in England alone than humans had consumed since the steam engine was invented.

I'll go one better... well, three actually.

[Galvatron]

I'm glad Valdemar is always there to squash my renewed optimism.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

We can make corrections and compensations in the overall standard of living, by simply moving into the city cores. You're basing everything off oil and that doesn't accurately model the actual standard of living at all, because losses in oil production can be offset by moving closer to your place of work and an urban core with extensive resources still available.

Fossil fuels, not oil, although oil is the most important. Natural gas and coal are issues too, as I've previously stated. If you think living standards can't be affected by those, then think again. A massive nuclear build is all that could get around that.

We're not going to run out of coal for substantial lengths of time, and production peaking will not be nearly as urgent an issue when production of petroleum has already peaked, forcing us to take such matters seriously. We'll have plenty of coal left (It's also easier to extract) to fuel mass conversion.

Granted, as I've said before, that's America. The UK may well be donkey-fucked.

[Master of Ossus]

I'll go one better... well, three actually.

The first link provides a single cryptic line with no empirical support, and then calls for a mere $10 million/year to explore the impending disaster (which from the tone of the writing and the rest of the article they're not even worried about). None of the other three links work, but assuming that the quotations you pulled from them are accurate I am unimpressed by their findings. I especially love the statement that the American anthracite reserves are vanishingly small compared to the English ones, which you seem to cite in support of a lack of coal left in the world, despite the fact that the American anthracite reserves constitute a spectacular energy resource even after being mined for well over a century (much of which at a far greater rate than they are being used, today).

The only source that you quote which even attempts to quantify the alleged end of cheap coal seems to be concerned with production trends, rather than with physical reserves (for instance, noting increased Chinese use of nuclear power), but moreover does not recognize the potential for additional production facilities to be brought online. As I have said before, the Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of rocks. Coal has simply been outcompeted by oil to such a degree that only the absolute most inexpensive coal can be economical in comparison to oil--it has nothing to do with the physical quantity that is left in the ground, or even the physical quantity that is recovered.

[Admiral Valdemar]

We're not going to run out of coal for substantial lengths of time, and production peaking will not be nearly as urgent an issue when production of petroleum has already peaked, forcing us to take such matters seriously. We'll have plenty of coal left (It's also easier to extract) to fuel mass conversion.

Granted, as I've said before, that's America. The UK may well be donkey-fucked.

I'd hardly call less than a century at present rates all that much time when you need to replace that infrastructure ASAP and deal with your horribly poor power grid. The UK is at least next door to the largest NG and conventional oil deposits, it just means spending more money getting it and we can see that trillions being thrown away by the US today right now hasn't ended the thirst.

The first link provides a single cryptic line with no empirical support, and then calls for a mere $10 million/year to explore the impending disaster (which from the tone of the writing and the rest of the article they're not even worried about).

Aside from the hardly cryptic remark and the debunking of the "We have centuries of coal!" bullshit, yes, hardly anything.

None of the other three links work, but assuming that the quotations you pulled from them are accurate I am unimpressed by their findings. I especially love the statement that the American anthracite reserves are vanishingly small compared to the English ones, which you seem to cite in support of a lack of coal left in the world, despite the fact that the American anthracite reserves constitute a spectacular energy resource even after being mined for well over a century (much of which at a far greater rate than they are being used, today).

The only source that you quote which even attempts to quantify the alleged end of cheap coal seems to be concerned with production trends, rather than with physical reserves (for instance, noting increased Chinese use of nuclear power), but moreover does not recognize the potential for additional production facilities to be brought online. As I have said before, the Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of rocks. Coal has simply been outcompeted by oil to such a degree that only the absolute most inexpensive coal can be economical in comparison to oil--it has nothing to do with the physical quantity that is left in the ground, or even the physical quantity that is recovered.

I cannot do anything about EU and US servers being inundated. They were working perfectly fine when posted.

Additional production which no OECD nation is doing anywhere near fast enough, you mean? If the US was so confident of this resource, you'd be helping the Chinese out a lot more with their incredible growth. As I repeatedly say, it's production rates, not reserves that are key here. China is way over their national limit and needs to import, which is not easy with coal, as they have found out.

In any case, the more definitive report on this matter is the EWG one published last year. The myth that we have tonnes of coal to rely on and fall back on after oil needs to be axed here and now.

But even if wrong, using coal means you're just substituting one catastrophe for another: runaway climate change. Choose your poison.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'd hardly call less than a century at present rates all that much time when you need to replace that infrastructure ASAP and deal with your horribly poor power grid. The UK is at least next door to the largest NG and conventional oil deposits, it just means spending more money getting it and we can see that trillions being thrown away by the US today right now hasn't ended the thirst.

We have enough coal for 200 years or more. This has been established countless times, and even major accelerations in consumption will not change that. Your papers tend to focus on high-grade coal, which is a bit disingenuous, as even the reduced energy yield from low-grade coal is compensated for by the fact that open-pit mining is considerably easier than the deep-shaft mining required to recover most anthracite.


Also, you completely ignore the fact that though refining oil shale into oil may be pointless, we can burn the stuff, effectively giving us larger coal reserves.

[Admiral Valdemar]

We have enough coal for 200 years or more. This has been established countless times, and even major accelerations in consumption will not change that. Your papers tend to focus on high-grade coal, which is a bit disingenuous, as even the reduced energy yield from low-grade coal is compensated for by the fact that open-pit mining is considerably easier than the deep-shaft mining required to recover most anthracite.

No, they don't. All coal types are looked into and it is well established that expecting coal to last anywhere near centuries with a stable economy is foolhardy. The US peaked in energy production for coal years ago. What's the point in claiming you have so many years of coal that is next to worthless to extract?

Also, you completely ignore the fact that though refining oil shale into oil may be pointless, we can burn the stuff, effectively giving us larger coal reserves.

I sure hope you find carbon neutral oil shale then, or are you, yet again, ignoring this little thing called climate change?

[Master of Ossus]

No, they don't. All coal types are looked into and it is well established that expecting coal to last anywhere near centuries with a stable economy is foolhardy. The US peaked in energy production for coal years ago. What's the point in claiming you have so many years of coal that is next to worthless to extract?

The US peaked in energy production for coal in the 1920's. I tend to be unimpressed by claims that we're running out of coal imminently because our production has dropped off continually only because coal has been massively outcompeted by oil since then--it's not because we've run out of supply, but because demand has dropped off so precipitously.