Chevy Volt and Gen III Prius discussion about: "green" energy, mileage, etc

Here Yergin, you, and I agree, we should use less of it. Where I disagree with most of the peak oil politicians is that we should fight to control the oil. This is the military should be able to fight iran and china for oil. If there are demand plataus we ought to be able to buy what we need, it will just be expensive. I hope you agree with that also. We also have time to use phevs, and don't need to cold turkey oil and get to fuel cells tomorrow. Plug-in subsidies, cafe standards, and oil taxes seem prudent.

Where Romm seemed to get mad at Yergin, is the idea that we should exploit the unconventional oil here instead of importing it. If we are using the same amount of oil, I see no problem with using the oil sands. We should just do it in a more environmentally sound manner. If we decide saudi oil is too sour, and we want less ghg intense libbian oil, someone else will just use that. The same goes for oil sands. Romm seems to think if we don't use it, no one else will, but that violates the profit motive. Those canadians already left kyoto, there is too much money involved to not sell the oil to china, if we don't want to buy it. The only way to reduce the footprint of oil, is to use less oil, not to pretend other countries won't use the stuff.

 

I agree with much of what you say Austin, but this just seems so out of touch with reality?
First, I don't recall any president or policy influencing politician that could be categorized as a 'peak oil' politician.
When military intervention is mentioned in an oil producing country it is always to 'stabilize the region'. To my knowledge, we have never taken control of any oil fields in another country.
Many presidents have talked about getting the USA off of its foreign dependancy on oil. But I have never heard one say that we need to get off all oil (which a catastrophic peak oiler would suggest is necessary). This is generally attributed to fiscal health of the USA, not to oil reaching a peak.

 

Sorry, I missed this reply. First, the doctrine you quoted made no mention of peak oil, much less going off a cliff.
Second, do you dismiss religion because politicians have used religion as an excuse for wars?
You seem to have a disconnect between politicians policies and the principals they say they are basing those policies on (or in this ase, don't say).

 

Speaking on the topic of oil - try living without it. That is not going to happen, at least in our lifetime. Oil is a large part of our daily living - lubricants, plastics, power generation, manufacturing. This is just a fraction of the use of oil in modern society.

On slightly different subject dealing with carbon issues, try living without carbon - HA!

DBCassidy

 

I agree completely. Oil is something currently we cannot do without. And carbon of course is the foundation of our form of life.
I am curious, why did you bring that up? I don't think anyone would argue either of those points.

 

Sure the policies could have been reversed by the next president and should have been. Not to get into personalities, but we have those peak oil people claiming that one past president was right, that if we had only listened. Well unfortunately congress did listen. This was previous in the thread, and previous to the war for oil doctrine.

This was predicated on the hubbert curve, which did not take many things into account. That speech was in Summer 1979, but the concept quickly dropping oil production was in one of his speaches in 1977. His secretary of Energy, James Schlesinger, was a strong advocate of quickly peaking oil. He still speaks of it today. Schlesinger is an iconic figure, before becoming the first secretary of energy, He served as the Head of the CIA under Nixon, and Nixon and Ford's secretary of Defense. The carter doctrine was unleashed while carter was talking about peak oil.

According to Brezinski, the carter administration armed foreign fighters, in afghanistan to fight the russians, before Russia invaded. Then carter made the carter doctrine speach that justified war for oil.

I learned the history of war with afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran for oil, using the carter doctrine, in 2002. I had no idea that anyone would justify a war in afghanistan for oil control. Bresinski did say it was about the cold war, we will have to wait for the documents to be declasified.

We did have gas lines caused by the continuation of Nixon's price controls, along with the windfall profit tax - oil companies could make more money importing oil than producing domestic oils - along with sanctions against Iran to not import their oil. All of this might have made the idea of a cliff seem much more likely. The first thing that happened under Reagan was oil price controls were removed. Market price for oil, along with Ford's cafe standards, along with recession, greatly reduced US demand. The high price created incentives to increase production, which created an oil glut, and lowered prices. This glut of oil, happened at the time carter had predicted that we would not be able to buy oil at any price. That poor prediction made the public not believe in the oil cliff. The carter doctrine had created centcom by then though, and the fear of peak oil had created the foreign policy that led to the next two iraq wars and the afghan war.


Keeping the same cafe standards along with lower prices of oil increased gasoline use. High prices have put us now back at the level of 2000, with 31 million more people, but... The Chinese are planning to add 125 million more cars in the next 5 years. If the US doesn't accelerate its demand reduction, there will be major price increases to balance supply, technology, and demand. The other parallel to the late 70s is we are in another period of sanctions against iran, but this time it is less damaging to the economy. We also still have idiots that want price controls or think we can drill our way to cheap oil prices.

 

You still have a disconnect here.
Yes, Carter was wrong in his speech to the American people about peak happening in the 80s.
Most of the rest of it was spot on, and still valid today.
However, the war for oil, while used quite a bit, has never been about fear of peak oil.
If it were, we would have taken over oil fields and kept them for ourselves.

It is about keeping the cost of oil low (relatively) by trying to keep things calm. It is about power and greed, not fear of peak oil.

 

I thought that that was most of it. Soon we will run out of oil. It will be a catastrophe. It was in 5 not just one speach. The bell shaped curve of decline was part of that. That is why one of the policies was to replace natural gas electricity with coal. Since natural gas must be running out soon too. Schlesinger, Carter's Energy secretary, wrote a forward to a peak oil book in 2010, saying the peak will be in 2012-2015, then production declines of 2%-4% per year. This is more mild than they were talking about back then. This does reflects between 33%-61% less oil in 2035. You will find links to this in previous posts. That book does talk about catastrophes, and much worse than reasonable predicted. You can bet if that happens the chinese will be buying all the asian and african oil, and Europe will be SOL.

Now if you are simply saying oil is finite, it takes time to get new resources, so production can't grow fast. That as you need higher technology to get harder and unconventional reserves. That this will make oil more expensive. That costs will eventually make production and demand go down. That is all fine. If these are the assumptions than some oil will be left in the ground because it is simply too expensive to get out. The US has about 200 years worth of unconditional oil in the ground. Part of the expense is environmental costs. Peak and plateau oil are very similar here, its just about some nuances in the curve.

Think of it this way, reasonable people can agree that sea levels are rising, but when you say the sea level will rise 20' in the near future. That is where a reasonable person should say Wth.

Let us agree to disagree. I wasn't around, but it appears that

During Carter's dealings with Iran, there was fear of the soviets if we invaded Iran directly. We can look at arming "freedom fighters" or "foreign muslem fundementalists" some of whom have become terrorists in afghanistan to occupy the soviets as part of the plan. That is when the speach was made. The soviets would need to be occupied before we seized the oil fields. The green lighting of Iran Iraq war, would weaken the armies to make it easier to take over. The Bushes and Clinton didn't believe the quick bell curve decline of peak oil. That is why territory was not seized. But it was this fear that laid the groundwork for much bloodshed.

Gulf War II actually raised the cost of oil. Afghanistan, which is the reason I read up on the carter doctrine, the protesters with no war for oil, created blow back. But brezinski in his interview about it before 9/11 pooh poohed the idea that "riled up muslems" would be any threat to america. Certainly when the militaries talk about running out of oil, and needing to fight 2 fronts, one of these is in the gulf. We still have the fear of rapidly declining oil production, but this time we need to seize it from the chinese not the russians. It would be great if the president would create a doctrin that said no war for oil to repudiate the carter doctrine. 2014 won't be fast enough for me, to get out of afghanistan. We certainly don't need to keep men there later, so that we have a base to invade iran.

 

There was a sidebar in today's Wall Street Journal that mentioned a shift in power plants in the USA from coal to cheaper natural gas. Apparently, as a result, coal shipments to Europe have increased significantly as it has become more cost effective for them. Doesn't really matter which dino fuel you are using, they all get burned, they are all limited in supply and they're all gonna be taken out of the ground regardless of cost or impact if we keep using it like we are now...

 

What I find ironic is people bragging about reducing their carbon footprint. I then drop the question on them: do you have any kids?, they say yes, I respond: hypocrit, and walk away. They are left standing, thinking about how stupid they are with the reducing their carbon footprint. When they realize they expanded their carbon footprint by having a kid(s). There is no other way to rapidly increase the carbon footprint.

DBCassidy

 

Yep, the world needs all the energy it can get. Population explosions tend to drive this demand.

DBCassidy

 

On an off-topic note, perhaps it's time to consider getting rid of tax breaks for having children and possibly even adding taxes for families like mine that have more than two kids. Slowing the growth of the population will also slow the growth of dino fuel use in the future.

 

Wouldn't that approach only influence the folks that pay taxes?

 

Don't overlook that a portion not paying taxes is because of the child deduction.