We may be among the last generation of airline pilots

[C-GGGQ]

well if you think a 747 is 200 tons fully loaded 12 tons might not be too hard to accomodate in a wide body like the 380 or something. might mess up a regional though

[FICU]

Remember "Y2K"... the biggest scam of all time? People and companies made billions of dollars by scaring the world's population and making them believe there would be an electronic "crash" of epic proportions on January 1, 2000.

"Global warming"...

Is this topic in the news every night? Is our Government making dire oil shortage warnings?

Nope but "green" is in the news daily and going "green" is HUGE business and many people and companies and making billions off of the "green" movement. "global warming" is used to scare the population into going "green".

[KAG]

yes but is that a bad thing? yes global warming is a catch phrase for a much larger problem - polution. But what ever brings it main stream, and if we do turn ourselves around (stop polluting our air, water sheds, and food supplies) is that really a bad thing? Call it what you want, as long as the job gets done.

[Strega]

The concept of "peak oil" is a myth,,,

The driving force that lead the price of oil to over $150 per barrel had nothing to do with demand, supply, or usage, but moreso the moronic "speculators" we call futures traders.

There is more recoverable oil in the bakken formation than is in the middle east period,
fossil fuels are here to stay folks,

What will go the way of the Dino, is the idiot "accountants" and beauocrats that contribute nothing to our society.


S

[Intentional Left Bank]

kunstler's polemical guttersniping is fun to listen to for about five minutes but he's a bit too much of a hack to take seriously. his critique of the second half of the 20th century is the same sophomoric, watered down malthusian/dialectical diatribe that fills spacing and adbusters but offers little praxis. he paints a neo-luddite vision of the future that looks like the lovehchild of taggart's(rand's) railways and walter benjamin's arcades. while this all sounds nice, i think we're in too deep to expect "context-appropriate development" to ever coalesce.

Nice!

[KAG]

The concept of "peak oil" is a myth,,,

The driving force that lead the price of oil to over $150 per barrel had nothing to do with demand, supply, or usage, but moreso the moronic "speculators" we call futures traders.

There is more recoverable oil in the bakken formation than is in the middle east period,
fossil fuels are here to stay folks,

What will go the way of the Dino, is the idiot "accountants" and beauocrats that contribute nothing to our society.


S

The Bakken potential resource, while large by US onshore field standards, will have only a minor effect on US production or imports. Using 2006 US imports and consumption for comparison, the Bakken undiscovered resource of 3,649 million barrels of oil, if subsequently discovered and fully developed, would provide us with the equivalent of six months of oil consumption or 10 months of imports, spread over 20 or more years. In reality, the reserves developed are likely to be many times smaller than this value.

thats a quote from this
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3868

Note the actual amount recoverable - 6 months worth of consumption in the USA. Sure it’s a lot of oil, and money, but it’s only 6 months of use!!! Also, even if we improve extraction techniques, what about the enviromental impact? Would you want to take a swim, or drink/eat anything from the water sheads around the tar sand project?

I am just trying to get conversation going, and maybe make a few people think “what if”.

I don't have any more answers then what I can Google, and read about and these are debatable facts at best. But I choose not to stick my head in the sand and pretend everything is perfect.
I’m not running to the hills and building my bunker, but I am going to be watching. To see if these oil price cycles do start to happen, if more conflicts arise for oil.
I’m also trying to do what I can to reduce my carbon/pollution footprint. That just because I think as North Americans we can change our lifestyle to better our fragile eco system and still maintain a modern standard of living while teaching by example.

Oil shortage, global warming, climate change; call it what you want, but something has to give. And if it’s the planet then all our marvelous technology won’t save us.
I can’t believe how many people are walking around blind to the damage we are causing and unwilling or unable to see what is in front of you.

As can be said for so many topics/arguments we’ve had on this site, time will tell.

I hope I’m way off base.

[square]

Of course peak oil is true. All it's saying is that there's a certain amount of oil in the ground and it's gonna be harder to get out when we don't have much left. Bit of a no brainer.

What matters isn't when exactly "peak oil" is, yes it could've been yesterday, and we wouldn't have even known, so obviously "the peak" doesn't matter. It's how many more years we have to depend on it, and whether we'll be prepared to move onto new resources. Energy consumption and alternatives are the real factors. That's what we should be focused on. But consumption rates are still steadily climbing, especially with the rise of emerging economies. There's a few billion people still riding bikes.

There are alternatives, just not much reason to bother with them. It's not the consumer's job to plan 50 years ahead, it's not the markets job to plan 50 years ahead; we live in free market economies, their job is simply to be greedy. It's a legal problem and a political issue. You have to incentivize one thing and tax another.

Trains, planes and automobiles could all run on batteries fed from a breeder reactor that produces no nuclear waste or pollution, and it could be done safely. Are there health risks to nuclear accidents? Could accidents happen? Of course. Could accidents happen on oil fields? Oil tankers? Fossil fuels contribute health risks too.. there was once a low inversion over London that trapped pollution in the city, and the hospitals were flooded with bodies.

[FL_CH]

People should just stop multiplying! That'll solve it all. Noone get hurts, we save lotsa money - no kids to send to college etc, and we "Save the World" from ourselves! I imagine there will be enough oil for this last generation of humans to live pretty comfortably.

Don't developped nations already lead by example? We have one of the lowest birth rates don't we? So I say blame the Chinese/Indians/Africans!

[Lost in Saigon]

People should just stop multiplying! That'll solve it all.

I think people have to stop living together in large numbers crammed into small areas.

I have flown over every part of this planet, and on nice clear days I look down and always wonder where is all the overpopulation that everyone loves to talk about.

The only place on earth that I found densely populated was India. On a clear night you can see lights on the ground in every direction as far as you can see. But even in India there are spaces between those lights.

China on the other hand looks like it is completely deserted. As usual, the population is centered in large cities.

The least populated of course are the oceans. It really puts it into perspective how insignificant humans are on this planet when you fly between Honolulu and Sydney for 10 hours and see nothing but blue ocean and the occasional uninhabited island or atoll.

[v6g]

This subject has fascinated me over the years, and as I've come to spend much of my cash and time on training for an aviation career, it seemed vital to me to gain a wider understanding. It is in a pilots nature to look for an "option out" and to analyse the probability of the worst happening. I try to avoid the sensationalist media (anything with a black cover - or Philip Glass music - why do they all have to do that ??!!) and focus on more analytical data. I agree with the original poster - I think it will hit within the next 5-10 years at most. Here's some everyday examples of the problem:

i) Despite being in the middle of the biggest recession/depression since WW2, oil is still trading at $50/barrel. If that isn't ringing alarm bells then nothing will.

ii) Since 2006, the oil market has been in "contango". That means that people buying big dollops of oil are uniformly prepared to pay more for oil in the future than now or closer to the present. That's not how commodities exchanges usually work - normally it's in "backwardation", where a contract to buy something far into the future is cheaper than today. This situation of contango has held steady throughout all the economic turmoil of late (while oil tankers are sitting idle in the oceans waiting for customers) and across all the future time-spans when oil is traded over (ie: it rules out any effect of the current global recession).

iii) The head-honchos of the oil majors have publicly agreed that the easy, cheap stuff is just about gone.

iv) North-American car makers are on the verge of bankruptcy. Now, these companies have been in long-term decline for a decade - look at their share price - it's not just about the current problems - it's long term. It's just that the credit crunch is going to be the coup-de-grace. By focusing on the american market, they have pitched their product at the market where fuel has been not only the cheapest, but because gasoline is also so lightly taxed in the states, it also means the price the consumer pays is the most volatile - therefore it makes sense that products designed with endless cheap fuel in mind will be the first to really feel the squeeze. (Of course, the end of cheap fuel is only half the problem with these companies. The other is the end of cheap credit).

All-in-all I think the world is in for some significant changes. I don't subscribe to the armageddon view - I still think human ingenuity will find ways of adapting, but as-yet I can't see anything close to an alternative fuel for aviation. Nuclear ... maybe .... but there's still a few technical and public-opinion hurdles

Preparations? Well, I'm not of the "buy-guns-n-ammo" fraternity - does a sane person really want to live in a world like that? But financially, I've started buying into uranium stocks, oil infrastructure, particularly deep-water drilling companies and prospecting juniors involved in areas that were initially explored back in the 80's but have been left idle for long. Professionally, I'm still aiming for aviation, but for me, I consider my personal option-out will be a masters degree in Petroleum Engineering - I can do that in 1 year - there are several places in Canada or abroad where I can do it.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Remember "Y2K"... the biggest scam of all time? People and companies made billions of dollars by scaring the world's population and making them believe there would be an electronic "crash" of epic proportions on January 1, 2000.

It was commonly known in the late 90's that working on the Millenium Bug problem was going to be a lose-lose situation. If they fixed the problem, people would say "biggest scam off all time". If they didn't fix the problem, people would say "Why couldn't they fix the problem?"!

[Blue Side Down]

I read a book by the title 'The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear'

It was a pretty good read on the risk management in the nuke program and its overall good safety record (alright, so long as people limit the doing of dumb things). It also went into the details of oil and coal as energy sources, its hazards as well as lifespan, costs associated with drilling, transportation, refinement, etc etc. Turns out, did you know, radioactive isotopes are present in coal, and when you burn coal, yep, they're all expelled into the atmosphere and eventually find their way into the lungs of the poor unsuspecting inhabitants of the world. This fellow also touched on the issue of pollution, its growing threat to the stability of the world, and the accelerating rate at which its worsening. He closed with a warning that if a societal shift to cleaner more efficient energy was not made soon, dire consequences would follow. All in all, it was a decently enlightening book. The scary part was it was published in 1973.

[v6g]

Turns out, did you know, radioactive isotopes are present in coal, and when you burn coal, yep, they're all expelled into the atmosphere and eventually find their way into the lungs of the poor unsuspecting inhabitants of the world.

That's right - most radioactivity present in the atmosphere today actually originates from coal-fired power-stations. There's actually a company (Sparton resources I think) investigating ways of extracting uranium from piles of coal ash in China.

[snaproll20]

Strega.

I am sorry, but you have your head buried in the.......well, Baaken Formation.
Analysts say yes, there is a lot of oil in there, but it is shale which is why it has been ignored for so long. There is no point in punching holes in the ground and using expensive and environmentally unnacceptable recovery processes if you cannot sell your product for its cost. The oil shales do not contain oil fluids, the oil is locked in and has to be released. Energy companies reportedly are having trouble finding the necessary water to do this!
These oil shales have been tried and abandoned before for economical reasons and production can only be justified by high oil prices.
KAG has given you the logical response. Please, go do the research. One analyst recently told the story of a Hummer driver rejoicing as he filled his vehicle up at a gas station. He thought lower gas prices were here to stay, so was filling up for the first time in months instead of doing partial fills. Unfortunately, there are too many people who share that view.
"The true market price for oil is the price we pay for the very last barrel produced."
The only motive force we have to replace carbon energy is electricity, produced by the renewables, wind, solar, ocean, geothermal. The sooner we substitute that for oil, the longer we will be able to fly aircraft burning gas/jet fuel. That is the original thought that KAG put out to the rest of us. It is not (right now)IF we run out of fuel, it is when it becomes TOO EXPENSIVE to do. How many airlines almost disappeared when oil was $140 bbl? Imagine if it goes to $200 or more.
And yes, speculation will play a part in cost escalation. But that is like any other commodity. The difference is, as pointed out, it affects all facets of our lives.

[Strega]

Snaproll,

My full time job has to do with extraction of oil from the bakken formation, with recent advances in drilling and completion technology, it has become simple, cheap, and economical to exploit.

Beleive what you want, but the oil execs and the government, all want you to think there is this huge shortage of oil, so you will be happy to open your wallet and pay more.

[ihavecontrol]

I read Empty Tank not too long ago and it's an excellent book. You can find it at most Chapter's on the sales rack right now for about five dollars. As mentioned, it was published a few years ago, and some if its predictions in regards to the exorbitant rise in fuel prices (somewhat short-lived due to the current economic crisis) were spot on.

I think some people are missing the significance of "peak oil". All that peak oil implies is that we have reached a peak in oil production (not price). It has no bearing on the price of oil unless one considers the other half of the equation used to determine market price - demand. The reason prices have come down is not because we have suddenly discovered new oil reserves or let alone discovered how to further or more efficiently exploit established ones (increase supply), but rather because the current economic crisis has caused a significant decrease in demand. There was also some speculation going on in oil markets that helped to inflate the price of oil on its way up and then assisted in its subsequent collapse, but this is inherent in almost any market (although admittedly, in this case it was a signifcant contributor in price fluctuations). In the future, demand will only increase. With a global economic recovery and the continued emergence of energy hungry third world markets, the price of oil will once again climb. Supply on the other hand will simulatenously decrease (post-peak production), for we have found most of the earth's major oil fields, and the remaining ones will be increasingly difficult to develop.

Will we run out of oil? Absolutely not. This has never been the critical question. As one Iranian oil minister was fond of saying, the Stone Age did not come to an end for lack of stone. What will happen though, as demand increases and supply diminishes post-peak, is oil prices will rise. As the price rises, at each price-level alternative technologies will become economically feasible to replace oil. What these price-levels are remains anyone's guess and will largely be determined by our actions in moving towards a greener economy now and public adoption rates of the previously mentioned alternative technologies. The time interval between oil dependency and alternative technology adoption will be critical, with ecomonic consequences in the interim similar to what we saw prior to this recession due to high oil prices. Just as a side note, the author of a Empty Tank (I can't remember his name at the moment) predicted a serious recession just like the one we are in now. Historically, every peak in oil prices has always been followed by a recession. I know there were many factors at play in getting us into our current economic crisis, but I think high oil prices are often overlooked as a major contributing factor.

[snaproll20]

Strega.

Thank you for your balanced response and I bow to your superior association with the Baaken.

Still, I think we are running out of oil, Baaken whatever.
Cheers,
Snaproll20

p.s. Is it really that GOOD? (I tend not to believe the promoters.)

[swordfish]

kunstler's polemical guttersniping is fun to listen to for about five minutes but he's a bit too much of a hack to take seriously. his critique of the second half of the 20th century is the same sophomoric, watered down malthusian/dialectical diatribe that fills spacing and adbusters but offers little praxis. he paints a neo-luddite vision of the future that looks like the lovehchild of taggart's(rand's) railways and walter benjamin's arcades. while this all sounds nice, i think we're in too deep to expect "context-appropriate development" to ever coalesce.

Nice!

"Nice"...?

Maybe for the esoteric academic who understands that writing style, with that level of vocabulary comprehension, but generally a long way from the average comprehension level I see on this site.

And with regards to the Bakken formation, the estimates of reserves appear to vary from 25 billion to 100 billion barrels. That is a wide margin of credibility.

[TG]

http://www.321energy.com/editorials/bai ... 83105.html

f hydrocarbons are renewable- then is "Peak Oil" a fraud?

by Joel Bainerman

Are hydrocarbons "renewable"- and if so- what does such a conclusion mean for the future of the world's oil and natural gas supplies?

The question is critical due to the enormous amount of coverage the issue of "Peak Oil" is receiving from the mainstream press. If the supply of hydrocarbons is renewable- then the contrary to the conventional wisdom being touted throughout the mainstream press today- the world is NOT running out of oil.

Unbeknownst to Westerners, there have actually been for quite some time now two competing theories concerning the origins of petroleum. One theory claims that oil is an organic 'fossil fuel' deposited in finite quantities near the planet's surface. The other theory claims that oil is continuously generated by natural processes in the Earth's magma.

One of the world's leading advocates for the theory that hydrocarbons are renewable is Dr. Thomas Gold who contends that oil is not a limited resource, and that oil, natural gas and coal, are not so-called “fossil fuels.”

In his book, The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels, he explains that dinosaurs and plants and the fossils from those living beings are not the origin of oil and natural gas, but rather generated from a chemical substance in the crust of the Earth.

So, the glass is half empty or half full ?

[North Shore]

WRT Hedley's 'Club of Rome': http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... -data.html

And the 'myth' of Peak oil - 1000 barrels of oil a second, every second of every day - that's what 'we' use. It simply can't go on forever. Economically, we'd better hope that Peak Oil does exist, otherwise the price signals that our economy uses to signal that it's time to move onto another resource won't happen, and we'll be really screwed when the oil stops..

With all due respect, Strega, can you give me a link showing the successful exploitation of one barrel of Bakken oil? Also, what's the EROEI of the Bakken?

[Strega]

north,,

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html ... 3645eeb525

took me 2 secs on google, the FP is a reputable source.

[pilotbzh]

we're not running out of oil, we are running out of cheap oil, 200$ a barel will kill the oil industy because syntetic and bio suply or gaz and electric energy will be cheaper than fosill oil a readjutement of the market that could change the balance of the world, never mind politics....

[v6g]

north,,

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html ... 3645eeb525

took me 2 secs on google, the FP is a reputable source.

Interesting link - thanks.

But:

The Bakken is shaping up to be the largest light-oil pool discovered in Western Canada since 1957, holding at least one billion barrels of oil, of which up to a quarter is recoverable.

Isn't that about 3 days of global supply?

Here's my calculations:
From BP statistical review of world energy (google for it if you don't believe me), 2007 daily world production was 81.5 million barrels per day.

Bakken would keep the world going for three days!

[CanadianEh]

We'll never run out of oil as long as dinosaurs keep dying and replenishing the supply!

+1

If we can find another way to run cars/trucks other than liquid fuels (ie: Electric) that would bring demand down a LOT. Cars and Trucks don't NEED to be run on fuel derived from oil, airplanes do.

[Bushav8er]

Having an engine that doesn't bang or whine isn't natural...like a muscle car (long may they live too) that burns rubber from the front wheels

Supply and demand, yup...control breeding. A lot of those having kids can't afford them anyway so controlled breeding would mean not only reduced demand on energy and food, reduced strain on the social programs, fewer people competing for jobs and more cash in our pockets.

Fewer people would then mean less passengers for the airlines, reducing pollution, and the extra cash allows us to buzz around the skies just for the fun of it...just what flying is supposed to be

Fewer people would mean that they don't all have to be crammed around airports complaining about the noise!

Fewer people would also reduce the need for more housing, which would save the forests...for us to be able to all have log cabins on the lakes and burn fire wood in camp fires...just because we can.

Heck, maybe we can even get fur coats back on our Ladys

Yup...population control is the answer

[Blue Side Down]

So, the glass is half empty or half full ?

It's just twice as big as it needs to be. But that's another story altogether.