Atlantic: What if we never run out of oil?

Up here, red tides are usually accompanied by bans on shellfish harvesting due to toxins harmful to humans.

Wikipedia -- Red Tide:

 

I'm not a commercial fishing expert. It makes sense though

 

Methane is important because battery and other forms of energy storage are still extremely expensive. Natural gas not only is great for pairing with intermittent renewables, but it can be burned relatively cleanly and cheaply in ICEs for transportation.

But the great long-term advantage of shifting more of the economy to methane is that methane can itself be a renewable (I've read an estimate from a few years ago that something like 8% of the then current US natural gas use could be produced (economically) just from biogas from farms, landfill and sewerage). Even in a 100% renewable economy that optimizes for efficiency natural gas would play a significant part.

 

I've posted facts not "positions". The 10% and growing hypoxic dead zone is a fact. The 200 million gallons of oil and 2 million gallons of dispersant are a fact. The oyster die off a fact. The fishing die off a fact.

We have a guide for this in the Exxon Valdez where the oil's killing power showed by year four as surviving adults died off and there was no next generation. The herring are gone.

The global warming is real and oil a major part of it.

Oil use is increasing and there will be more BP disasters on top of disasters. It is not that we will run out of oil, we will run out of ecosystem, we are running out of ecosystem, long before the oil runs out.

 

Santa Barbara California oil spill created legislation that stopped drilling within 3 miles from the coast. In the 1980's congress stopped giving out off shore leases in California. I believe Alaska and the Gulf us what's left for new leases.

 

Something needs to be done, perhaps improved safety

 

Yes it is, however your original statement was

. Which is not a fact.
At the very least it is an exaggeration which then causes the rest of your statement to also loose credibility (most of which I agree with whole heartedly).

You do your argument a disservice, and therefore my position as well, when you are either so careless with your qualifiers or intentionally exaggerate.

All I ask, is that people try to be accurate and not misleading.
Once again, reality is bad enough, no need to exaggerate.

 

The Gulf is not a pond.

I would be more interested in a survey of the current location and quantities of the oil and dispersants.

Bob Wilson

 

None of which addresses the need for a 'bridge fuel' (methane or otherwise). Let's figure out what we want for a sustainable energy future, and work toward that, rather than some half-assed substitute chosen, as far as I can tell, to make people comfortable.

 

Earth is a "pond", a closed loop system. The 200,000,000 gallons of oil and the 2,000,000 gallons of dispersant were the worst oil spill in history due to the interaction of the two, magnifying the spill millions of times over. The die off of the oysters being a key flag of the extent of the damage going forward.

The Gulf is considered a moderately closed loop system. NOAA explanation for currents.

NOAA Ocean Explorer: Gulf of Mexico 2002

 

+1

You may not need a bridge fuel, but the numbers point to natural gas being an important part of the energy mix. Do some simple math in a state like west virginia, that is heavy coal with good wind potential.

If you add 10% renewables to the west Virginia grid, because coal is going to fill in you only drop pollutants about 5%. Coal is very inefficient at scaling to meet demand.

If you take the same rate hike to add 16% ccgt and 8% renewable, you drop NOx, SO2, mercury, and particulates by 24%, and drop ghg by 16%. That is quite a bit larger bang per buck, especially for the unhealthy pollutants.

Think of how long it would take to make west virginia all renewables. It will take forever if you place natural gas off limits.

States like California and Texas that already have a great deal of natural gas, can more easily add renewables. It also takes grid upgrades though. Methane can as was pointed out be made in a renewable fashion, it simply is less expensive to do it with natural gas today, and likely will remain that way for awhile. California especially needs to upgrade its natural gas infrastructure to be more efficient with ccgt instead of old steam natural gas plants, and this will allow them to import less coal power from out of state.

 

Bridge fuel seems to mean different things to different people. There is date in the future when we run out of oil and we need to go to 100% wind/solar/nuke/etc because there is no choice...we are out of ammo. Nat gas bridges to that point (on the assumption coal is too damaging to rely on 100%). Others feel ALL fossil should be left in the ground...in that case who needs a bridge fuel?

 

If you want to live in the US and not provide your own batteries to the survivalist outpost, you are going to use fossil fuels. If you think providing your own batteries makes you pure it doesn't, nor does it help the environment as much as simply adding renewables to the grid.

No fossil fuel either means Survivalist, normally some type of cult if not living remotely - or....

An environmentalist that misunderstands economics. If you buy your batteries to go off grid in the city, you aren't stopping the guy in Beijing from using coal, your just wasting the battery resources. Yes those batteries took fossil fuel to make and you just added some more.

I don't like the term bridge fuel, since it makes it seem like sometime in my lifetime we will have giant batteries making sure my air conditioning can run, or worse yet some mad max distopian world when you can't buy any fuel for the clean power plants.

 

^^^ "no fossil fuels" could mean the Federal government pursues alternates with a "Manhatten Project style" all-out commitment to build wind/solar/nukes everywhere. Not a survivalist situation.

 

Sure it is. The federal government would need to outlaw fossil fuels, if it wanted zero. I'm guessing you would want to suspend the constitution, since 0 would never happen in a democracy.

What percent of power do you think is renewable now? Even the 10% ethanol in E10 requires a great deal of diesel and natural gas to produce. I don't know how we run our cars or air condition and heat our homes if we need to go to zero without a huge recession happening.

Reducing unhealthy pollution is much less expensive if you don't get religious fervor and start thinking we need to build giant batteries and cover the planet with wind mills and solar cells, because even 0.01% fossil fuel is evil. I don't even know how to build the windmills or solar cells at zero.

Even in California, there is no stomach for zero fossil fuel. Solar is relatively inexpensive there, but get to over 20% and you need battery back up, or it to go to waste. 30% wind and 15% solar are about as massive as you can get without hydrogen fuel cell or battery back up to store the grid power. It just is not cost effective to get rid of gas turbines to fill in for times that the rains don't fall, wind doesn't blow, and sun doesn't shine. Once you have those turbines spinning at 35% efficiency, it seems better to have more natural gas, where you can get ccgt at 60% efficient. You could I suppose mandate that methane must be made in a rewable fashion to force it to be more expensive, but that only will be effective to slow the transition away from coal. Renewable methane takes land

 

Seriously? Is that true?
You are saying that because of the use of the dispersant, the 200M gallons of oil spilled was more like 400 trillion gallons or more?
Source?

Mike

 

It seems some people always like to exaggerate. The spill was a really bad thing. We had a greedy oil company, BP, cutting corners, to try to make a profit. We had a government agency, MMS, that instead of regulating them, allowed all the unsafe practices, in an incestuous relationship. We had another company with equipment that could not pass testing, Halliburton. BP thankfully has sold its texas city refinery, where it caused large amounts of pollution and deaths by mismanagement, and short cutting procedures. BP also manages leaky pipelines. This really was an awful thing, and it took BP, MMS, and Halliburton to make the mess as big as it was.

That doesn't mean that the gulf is damaged for life. We still don't know the damage extent, but the odds are this has been far less damaging than the farm chemical run off that has created the dead zone in the gulf. When we look at the recovery, we also clearly see that over fishing has also been causing a great deal of damage. The widespread destruction of wetlands limits the ability of the gulf to heal.

Those of us that use it, think the gulf is a wonderful place. The oil spill didn't destroy it, the damage appears to be less than we first thought. We do need to protect the gulf though. That means that we still can drill, but safety procedures need to actually be followed. I would ban BP from gulf drilling, they have proved they can't follow the simplest safety precautions. Farm run off needs to continue to decrease. That may mean changing the ethanol mandate. Wetlands should be restored.

 

I suspect we won't even see some of the effects of the damage until much later. Say, for example, that a particular small creature was brought to extinction by this. Their place in the ecosystem might be pivotal, but not even be noticed yet. I would use the same caution you advocate about negative signs, with any positive signs.

In the mean time, yes, let's make sure this doesn't happen again. To start let's make the cost of doing business like that, way too high.

 

They can build more solar farms in the So California desert but the grid to bring it to populations centers is limited.

Evening elec needs can be generated with natural gas powered plants.

Patience and a little bit of incentive and regulation goes a long way.

 

The idea that "we'll never run out of oil" is absurd on the face of it. Pushing such nonsense could lead to an unmitigated disaster, and for any number of reasons. A beginning has been made to move in certain sustainable directions, and all this will do is to divert focus from that. Ultimately, the future holds a drastic reduction in human populations, but whether this is to be done in a controllable and humane manner becomes less likely the more myths like this are pandered. For Americans in particular, such things appeal to all of our worst instincts.