Comments on: Nano Energy and “the Peak”

By: Dean Esmay

Dean Esmay — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:59:20 +0000

I’m pretty much with Michael. I’ve been hearing that the sky is falling my whole life and while I suppose it might be I’m no longer convinced. Proven reserves keep going up, technology for extracting usable oil from formerly unusable sources keeps improving, and alternatives continue slowly but surely coming online.

I suppose a short-term crisis would cause a global economic slowdown but I think that would only just spur development and improvements in the current alternatives. So let’s say the worst is going to happen: why is that worse than the slowdown that would be cause if we forced people to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in conservation and alternatives energy technologies by government fiat? I just don’t see it anymore.

By: Michael Gersh

Michael Gersh — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 14:32:13 +0000

- since oil demand is relatively “inelastic,” the price of oil will be bid up until it slows the global economy enough to reduce demand. That’s an ugly picture. -

No reason to get crazy. Already we are seeing a move toward other fuels, and at $50, oil is still pretty cheap, historically, if you account for inflation. At prices well under $80 many current technologies become economical, including “stripping” oil from depleted oil fields that have been paved or built over, so there is no reason to believe that oil will ever go above that. Considering that the same “experts” have been predicting that we will run out of oil since 1965, and we have had seen increased proven reserves every year since then, I see no reason to worry.

Petroleum is one of the most abundant materials in the known universe. Jupiter is over 80% hydrocarbon by weight, for example, as are many of her moons, other planets, and some asteroids. There is research being done that has observed large oil fields in Kuwait being refilled from below.

Like all rantings of catastrophists, there is no reason to believe that we will ever run out of oil. The worst case scenario is more like a modest reduction in GDP. That’s a recession, which is, IMHO, something short of an “ugly scenario.” The only real question about petrochemicals is whether or not, or when, we will find it economical to stop burning it.

By: Karl Hallowell

Karl Hallowell — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 09:47:33 +0000

Some concern here is warranted, but I think fears of an oil crunch are overblown. Developed countries particularly the US are the most susceptible to a decline in cheap oil. But these countries are also the ones that can adapt the quickest to changing conditions. My real concern here is what happens if the global economy happens to be playing financial shell games at the time that a large rise in oil prices occurs?

By: Engineer-Poet

Engineer-Poet — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 17:25:50 +0000

As I recall, the amount of turkey guts, sewage solids and even municipal waste is nowhere near sufficient to supply our energy demands (just where do you think that energy came from, anyway?). Higher plants just have too many housekeeping losses to be good light-to-fuel converters; we’re already using about 40% of the net biological productivity of the world (http://www.speakeasy.org/~boba/energysl.html) and adding all fossil-fuel demand to it is just asking to clearcut the world in a few years.

I’m of the opinion that thermal depolymerization is going to be a great way of eliminating waste-disposal problems at a profit, but it’s not going to make any great difference in our energy economy. To do that we need artificial light-to-chemical energy converters or their natural equivalent.