RE: [asa] $4 gas is here to stay

This is for Burgy, Iain and George

> -----Original Message-----
> From: j burg [mailto:hossradbourne@gmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 1:50 PM
> To: Glenn Morton
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: [asa] $4 gas is here to stay
>
> On 6/5/08, Glenn Morton <glennmorton@entouch.net> wrote (in part):
> >
> Steve Forbes said the other day that 80% of the rise
> > in the price of oil was due to the falling dollar.
>
> Forbes is also a GW denier. His credibility is about zero.

I simply hate that term as it lessens the strength of the original term,
'holocaust denier'. But thank you for starting out by insulting me. I too
think global warming hysteria is crap. The earth is warming but geological
evidence says CO2 has very little correlation with O18 paleotemperatures.
There was 3000 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere in the Cretaceous and the GW
scaredy-cats are worried about 600 ppm. Of course, on this antiquated email
list one can't post pictures to show that. One also can't post pictures of
the dearth of sunspots and there is a well known variation in solar output
with the number of sunspots with the atmosphere having a 6 year relaxation
time. The solar cycle 24 is over a year late getting started. May 2008 had
only 2.9 spots per day on average, and they had snow in southern California
at the end of May, last winter was one of the coldest in quite a long time
and the winter before was also quite cold for the southern hemisphere. If we
go into a Maunder type minimum for sunspots (as some have predicted) it will
get colder over the next few years even with rising CO2.

So, with that, I presume I have just destroyed my credibility. Is it now
zero? Thanks for the insult, Burgy.

>
> >Sean Hannity citing a USGS report which claims that there
> > are huge volumes of oil in the Bakken formation of North Dakota
> thinks that
> > we have enough oil there to run our nation's cars for several years.
> He
> > doesn't seem to understand the difference between oil in place and
> what can
> > be gotten out and moved to market.
>
> Hannity is infamous for making issues simple enough to appeal to the
> fanatic right. He also has about zero credibility.

This is ridiculous. Thank you for again insulting my views, this time, my
politics. I am politically on the right. I am a rabid right-winger with a
bit of irritability towards your prejudices about me and my views. Is my
credibility zero? Do you say this of anyone you don't want to listen to?
Often you have told me not to paint with a broad brush. Now you do it.

Burgy, you should read a logic book. This is called the ad hominem (abusive)
by Irving M. Copi Introduction to Logic, MacMillan, 1972, p. 74 This
connects the truth or falsity of what someone says to their beliefs.
Everyone knows that a muslim, a communist, a rabid-rightwinger, can't be
trusted to say the truth, therefore one doesn't have to listen to them on
anything. That is an example, but pick your favorite to plug into that
informal logical fallacy, which you committed twice here.

And frankly, I get very tired of the arrogance of the left in thinking that
if you don't' agree with them you are not worthy of being listened to. That
is the way YECs feel about those of us who hold to an old earth.

>
> > George Soros thinks oil is a bubble.
>
> To some extent, I suspect that is true. But when the "bubble" deflates
> oil prices are not going back to the $40 a barrel range. At least I
> don't see that.

Today's $11/bbl upward move is speculative. The fundamentals support a
price of about $115 to $120. Production has been absolutely flat for 3 years
and demand in India, China Russia and Brazil has gone up about 5%, 10% 4%
and 5% respectively. What gives? Price gives.

>
> A fair question. I think I can give you a possible scenario

I look forward to it. I am always looking for why I am wrong. I will even
listen to people who insult my views because they might be right on
something else.

>
> How the future of all this will work out is an interesting debate. If
> I look out to -- say -- 2050 -- I can forsee the complete demise of
> oil as an auto propellent. But forecasting is a hard job --
> particularly about the future!

All one needs to do is look at the production numbers vs. the discovery
numbers. I would love to post a picture somewhere but this email list won't
let me do it. The deficit between what we find vs. what we pump out of the
ground is growing each year. In 1980-1982 the world began producing more
oil than they found. Today we find only 3 barrels for every 10 we burn

Iain wrote:

>>>> Concerning Tritium, do the figures you quote take into account the fact
that tokamak fusion reactors are designed to breed tritium by having lithium
blankets in the reactor wall? The neutrons from the fusion reactions
interact with lithium to breed more tritium . Lithium is one of the most
abundant elements.

Iain<<<<

No, but show me a commercial fusion reactor running right now. New
technologies need about 50 years to be brought into use. Fusion isn't a new
technology---it is a non-existent technology.

George wrote:

>>> I not only "should know" but do know that hydrogen has to be extracted
from its oxide at an energy cost, so that it has to be regarded as a carrier
of energy from other sources. Apparently you missed my phrase " together
with nuclear power plants to supply the energy for hydrolysis."<<<

I did miss that phrase, but, I still say that the quantity of available high
quality uranium sources is limited. There is uranium in phosphate deposits
and they might extend the numbers but even at the high uranium prices today,
they are not being accessed so something is economically flawed about the
idea or it would be being done now.

>>>Which brings us to the issue of nuclear energy. I grant that the
concerns about it that you cite are legitimate, though too dismissive of
prospects for breeder reactors & ignoring possibilities for recycling spent
nuclear fuels (yes, I read the article by Von Hippel in the recent Sci Am) &
recycling of a great deal of our weapons stockpile (though not
unilaterally). & I doubt that fusion will always be 50 years in the
future.<<<

George, unless we have numerous working breeder reactors by 2014 (something
well nigh impossible) we will experience huge problems. I think you are
working under the assumption that the peak of world oil production is 20
years away. It isn't. The numbers are quite simple. Today's oil fields
produce about 86 million bbl. In 16 years, they will produce only 43 million
bbl. That is using a decline rate of 4% per year, which is about the average
decline of an oil field (modern technology can suck an oil field so fast
that the decline rate is faster but we will be generous here). The UK has
been declining at an 8% rate! If the world production drops at the former
rate, starting from 2009, which is when I think it will begin (from looking
at the numbers), then we will need something like 20% of our oil energy
replaced by breeders and whatever in merely 6 years. Care to guess how many
permits are being issued right now for all these new breeder reactors?

>>>But the main point of my argument was the desirability of replacing a
large fraction of our petroleum powered transportation with a modern
railroad system. Whether or not that system would run on hydrogen, & if so
whether the energy to obtain it would come from nuclear sources, are other
questions. If solar or geothermal, e.g., can make an important
contribution, fine. & no, that doesn't mean that I'm either ignoring or
downplaying the need for an adequate energy supply or that I imagine that
we're guaranteed always to have such a supply.<<<

Ok, George, you once convinced me that I was wrong on an argument I had
with hydroplate--it took you a bit of work, but you succeeded and you were
right and I was wrong. Run the oil numbers. Look at how few big projects
are left to do in the Gulf of Mexico. So far only 4 deepwater offshore
areas have been prolific oil producers. These are the Gulf of Mexico,
Nigeria, Angola and Brazil. All others have only been minor players or dry
holes. Look at how little oil has been found each year compared to how much
we burn. And I haven't even touched on natural gas yet--but one can't post
pictures here as one can do on a modern list, so you will just have to do
without them.

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Received on Fri Jun 6 16:26:29 2008