Re: An oil industry leader's perspective on abundance, etc.

Reply to Don Winterstein:

>>>Al Koop wrote:

"One of the interesting things that I have noticed about the oil/gas
depletion discussion is that the oil/gas industry tends to paint a rosy
picture of the fossil fuel situation while environmentalists tend to
paint a rosy picture of alternative fuels. Neither group seems to be
much concerned about how much longer economical supplies of oil and gas
will be available."

Don:
Perceptive comment--but Glenn is an oil man, and he's painting no rosy
pictures. However, the reasons they may not be concerned are probably
that they
haven't thought through the issues in sufficient depth and breadth.

Al:
I was including Glenn Morton, Colin J. Campbell, Jean H. Laherrère,
Kenneth Deffeyes, etc as the scientists who are asking the hard
questions, not as oil industry representatives who seem to be obligated
(pressured?) to present a rosy picture to the public. I wonder if the
reason is that they haven?t thought it through or if they see no way to
keep their jobs and keep stockholders happy if they call attention to
problems that appear on the horizon but may not be evident for a few
years in the future. The average person in our culture does not look
forward years into the future.

>>>Al Koop wrote:

"David Doty basically claims that he does not see a significant shift to

a hydrogen economy soon, if ever. He writes that although fuel cells
have been around for 40 years, their cost has not decreased as much as
would be expected if new technologies were successful. There is a
further question of the purity of the hydrogen gas (LH2)...."

Don:
Don Paul addressed some of these concerns and others before the House
Committee on Energy and Commerce. See

http://energycommerce.house.gov/107/hearings/06062002Hearing582/Paul1007.htm

His testimony likewise doesn't give you a warm feeling that a hydrogen
economy is just around the corner.

Al:

Thanks for the reference.
It is good to see there is agreement that hydrogen has a long way to go
yet for the sake of truth, but for the public supply of energy it is not
good news. I guess we should continue to work on using natural gas to
generate hydrogen and use fuel cells just to try to make progress in
this area.

Don:

Doty's article is interesting, but I'm one of these guys that isn't yet
convinced global warming is from human causes. Doty seems to take that
as a given.

For one thing, huge changes in climate have gone on in the past when
humans weren't around. For another, radiant energy output from the sun
changes
from time to time, and temperature variations on Earth appear to
correlate. Furthermore, modeling capabilities do not seem sophisticated
enough to
establish whether or not CO2 is a true pollutant. This matter has become
a political football driven partly by hysteria. (As an avid gardener I
kind of like
the idea of a little extra CO2!) (And some Russians clearly would
welcome a little global warming.)

If global warming is real--and I believe it is, even though some data
even challenge the basic assertion, then we've got to deal with it.
Without really good
evidence for causes we should not put limitations on various economies
around the world to try to reverse the trend. Such constraints may not
have any
desirable effect; and to take major actions "just in case" that will
definitely hurt people short-term is unwise. Still, I have mixed
feelings, because I think
natural limits are likely to slow us all down before too long....

Al:

Your comments sound much like they came from my lecture notes, so I
agree with what you say. Indeed you can make a case against global
warming, but the bulk of the evidence leads me to also believe that it
is real. I think that the modeling of clouds, if the temperature really
does increase, leaves it open that some feedback mechanism could reduce
the amount of temperature increase, but I am not sure anybody should
count on that. Today's New York Times has an article that suggests that
global warming started thousands of years ago and kept us from going
into another ice age for all these years. See

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/science/10WARM.html?th

Which coincidence to you like? The one that says we have had a stable
temperature because the global warming canceled the ice age effect up
until the last 50 years, or the one that says the current warming has
nothing to do with carbon dioxide and human effects, but is due to some
solar-earth interaction.

The reason I find this oil/gas depletion question fascinating is that
there is a good chance that I will find out if my reasoning skills in
this area were accurate. We can argue about evolution or global
warming, but it seems unlikely that a highly persuasive event will occur
soon that will convince everyone one way or the other. On the other
hand I am convinced that by New Year?s of 2020 we will have felt many
obvious effects of the oil/gas depletion that are looming in the near
future according to my reasoning. If the world is going along at that
time much like it is today, I will admit that I was really badly wrong
about the oil/gas crisis and the Cornucopians were right--at least up to
that point. Of course, we could avoid the oil/gas depletion scenario if
we have events that are even worse, heaven forbid,--like a bioterrorism
event that wipes out many in the world, or a nasty SARS or flu or Ebola
epidemic that lowers human population numbers, or a nuclear war, or a
worldwide depression. Let us hope and pray for our children?s and
grandchildren?s sake that we soon find some new renewable source of
energy and that there is peace on earth without major plagues and wars.
   

   
Received on Wed Dec 10 14:34:06 2003