Atlantic: What if we never run out of oil?

'Indefinite future' usually turns out to be roughly 100 years. I don't see screwing my great-great-grandchildren as that much of an improvement. Methane hydrates will certainly have other downsides, if they aren't mentioned that is a matter of ignorance not lack.

 

Methane hydrates were big in the news a few years back especially off the coast of China (also known as fire ice). There will always be alternative sources of oil. The question is will it be the most desirable type?

I just always prefer efficiency no matter the source over any particular fuel which is why I like electric. Its just simply more efficient to generate electricity at a high efficiency power plant (40-60%), and transport it to my vehicle (95% transmission, 80% conversion, 90% to wheels), vs. oil at (80% refining, 20% wheels efficiency).

All that natural gas? Burn it in a power plant. Thats the best way to go.

 

What if we never run out? .... what if we do.
Isn't the question really posed get folks to, "don't worry about it "? More importantly it's not really about running out of oil ... it's about running out of the cheap stuff that our global economy runs on ... because without the cheap stuff you can't pay off trillions and trillions of ever growing debt. It's the cheap stuff that truly makes the system flow. Sure - the alternatives give us something ... but they don't make things run smoothly the way they used to.
The author's question truly makes me doubt his intelligence. After all ... if your cheap fuel stock is running low - even as you're trying to grow a world economy - not only do you have to replace the cheap supply - you also have to increase your new supplies. Show me how that's gonna happen.

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We should be using and burning the methane hydrates that are already melting and venting due to warming. Converting it to CO2 reduces its greenhouse potency. And using it as an energy source would reduce that amount of geologically stable carbon (coal and oil) that we need to pull out of the ground.

But I suspect that the hydrates melting and venting right now, or soon, will be very difficult to collect. It will probably be easier to mine some more stable deposits that wouldn't be self-venting soon.

 

+1

To give you the bizzaro global warming calculus, mining the melting hydrates, then burning them would reduce ghg warming. This is because A) they should already be part of the ghg sensitivity (feedback) of around 2-4.5 degrees c per doubling of carbon dioxide concentration. Burning them converts them to carbon dioxide which has less warming potential. Burning should starve out other fossil fuels partially at least in theory. If transportation runs on phevs powered by electricity or methanol from the methane hydrates instead coal or oil, there is a reduction in ghg climate change, but that means less change not no change.

Some of the big energy players are already investing for this other source of fossil fuel. Investments in this seem like a better bang per buck to reduce climate change than food based ethanol.

 

Why exactly do we NEED a bridge fuel? If we are going to need to create new infrastructure, new vehicles, and new everything else, why not just do it with renewables? Solar with Federal (but not state) subsidies beats retail electricity already in many places (like here in Maine). Wind is about as cheap as electricity gets. With its small subsidies is out competing Nuclear with huge subsidies, in pretty every case. Imagine if the money, research and market share was put into those instead of methane hydrates? We could do much better than sec. Chu's prediction below.

"The unsubsidized cost of [wholesale -c] renewable power produced from solar and wind energy will be no more expensive than that from oil, natural gas, and coal by the end of the decade" Energy Secretary Steven Chu

 

The only relevant question to ask here is: "Do we really want to make a wager like this?"

 

We will run out of environment before we run out of oil. Gulf of Mexico is mostly dead zone now from oil based runoff and the BP deep water drilling disaster.

US will run out of money fighting oil wars before we run out of oil. We are $15T in debt now from just 20 years of oil wars, add in the $10T in Oil Import Tax US payed over the last 30 years when the pro-oil party defeated the pro-US party.

 

Source?

Last year I read that fish stocks had actually risen. The fishing bans during and after the spill did more good than the spill did damage.

 

Source?

 

We, I mean you and me, don't need a bridge fuel. The world would be much less polluting with inexpensive natural gas, though, at least in the mid term of the next 25 years.

The reason we have so much coal, and will continue to do so is pople keep fighting gas. Just about all the coal built in texas was built from a misguided federal policy that stopped gas base load power plants from being built. My local utilities costs last year for wholesale (not including grid charges, etc) 2 cents natural gas ccgt, 4 cents coastal wind (6.2 cents unsubsidized), 20 cents for solar (I'm not sure if that is before subsidies). Unfortunately the wind does not blow all the time and we need natural gas to fill in, especially in hot states like texas where air conditioning demand makes the year quite unlevel. New coal and nuclear doesn't make any financial sense in that environment, but old plants have been paid for, so these things need to compete with simply fuel and maintenance. Natural gas is cheap enough to decomission many coal plants, wind is not, but fear of natural gas prices going up a great deal stops more coal plants from closing.

Wind is mature, it really does not need more R&D. Solar's R&D will get paid for by China anyway, so our investment doesn't really make it much less expensive. Solar is subsidized about 65% locally from state/federal/local moneys. Forbes estimated costs would drop 40% simply if the government would make clear solar regulations like germany. Wind and solar don't need any more subsidies, but could use better state and federal policies. Wind in the last two years grew rapidly.

I found the source of chu's comment
AFP: Wind, solar becoming cost competitive: Chu

I think we have already lost the world market for solar chips to china, and that is not a bad thing. There is a surplus of manufacturing, so China Inc is actually subsidizing less expensive solar panels. The bulk of the jobs are in putting the chips into panels, and installing the panels anyway.

In the 70s they made the wager that we would run out of inexpensive natural gas, and subsidized coal instead. I say our air pollution lost that wager. The current wager is we run out of fossil fuels soon, so we are diving head long into using food for fuel. We can look at the world and say, energy is not going away tomorrow, and make better choices.

 

Source? BP says so. Their commercial says they're spending 20 billion to clean it up. So there you have it. Everythings fine

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Sure it does. Providing a market, causes increased production, and thus lower prices.

Must be nice, we don't get nearly that here.

Cite please? We are trying to pass a FiT law here, and that would help.

Solar as well. The US installed more solar PV in 2012 (4.3 GW) than was installed in all previous years combined (4 GW). Imagine if we got really serious about it... If we did that every year we could have 100% of all our energy from solar by the year 2026 (not that that would be the best plan).

 

Just to be clear. There is a dead zone in the Gulf Of Mexico caused by agricultural runoff into the Mississippi River and then into the Gulf. This dead zone is a problem and is being addressed more and more seriously, but there is an immense distance to go. However, since I live, swim, and eat a whole lot of seafood from the Gulf, I have first hand knowledge that most of the Gulf is very alive and well. Overfishing is a vastly more worrisome problem than anything else right now.

It does little good to use extreme hyperbole in every post. It has the same effect as using a megaphone to talk to someone a couple of feet away. Discussions of the issues are swept aside by the delivery technique functioning as a barrier.

 

Well...there's always today's headlines.

Empty nets in Louisiana three years after the spill
By Matt Smith, CNN
updated 1:37 PM EDT, Sat April 27, 2013

Empty nets in Louisiana three years after the spill - CNN.com




Prior to BP Gulf disaster, 10% of the Gulf of Mexico, the most productive inner shelf region was a Dead Zone and that is increasing by 10% per year on top of the release of oil and the disaster by BP to use dispersants to try and hide the extent of the disaster which only made it worse.

 

It is not being addressed at all and the Dead Zone is increasing by 10% per year. It is fatuous to say "everything's all right" when the Dead Zone is increasing every year on top of the BP oil disaster of 200 million gallons of crude dispersed by 2 million gallons of toxic Corexit to hide it multiplying the disaster literally a billion fold as the oil film got on everything in the water, polluting the entire Gulf.

 

I don't claim that is wasn't a disaster, but the "mostly dead zone now" hyperbole is unwarranted.

Researcher: Fish numbers triple after oil spill fishing closures:

Scientists puzzle over fish increase after oil spill fishing ban

Science Daily: BP Oil Spill, Two Years Later: Natural Recovery Far Greater Than Expected

Huffington Post: 2012 Gulf Fish Catches Above Some Pre-Spill Levels, Long-Term Effects Unknown

Scientific American: BP Drilling Disaster Plus 2 Years: Is the Gulf of Mexico Healthy Again?

Time: The BP Oil Spill, One Year Later: How Healthy Is the Gulf Now?