Peak oil is now official

ED
In case the editors at vive decide to not publish please forwrd it to me at my email addy
i am certian I am not the only one with interset in your research
David

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Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.
Ezra Pound

"The proposed alternatives are also usually not as versatile as oil (it's hard to operate 747s or bulldozers with solar panels) and can not play all the different roles that oil has up to now easily played in providing energy in various forms and products to our economies."

If you read what i wrote, I distinctly said the following:

"We have easy access to all sorts of alternative energy: tidal power, wind, a new generation of high efficiency solar panels, nuclear, in the future POSSIBLY fusion.

Any of these has proper place and use, even if it's providing the energy required to make hydrocarbon fuels."

Did you read that last part of the second paragraph?

We have the capability to manufacture hydrocarbon fuels, it's just a matter of manipulating the molecules into a form we can use.

That takes energy, not necessarily PETROLEUM energy.

As for your diminishing returns approach: obviously.

It's as it is in nature: 1000 pounds of plant matter is converting into 100 pounds of plant eater, and is in turn converted into 1 pound of carnivore.

Just one question: where the hell did you get the notion that I believed even for a millisecond that 747's could be kept aloft by solar panels unless you never either fully understood what I wrote or never fully bothered to read it through completely?

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"and the knowledge they fear is a weapon to be used against them"

"The Weapon" - Rush

I'd publish that in a heartbeat.

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"I think it's important to always carry enough technology to restart civilization, should it be necessary." Mark Tilden

Just one question: where the hell did you get the notion that I believed even for a millisecond that 747's could be kept aloft by solar panels unless you never either fully understood what I wrote or never fully bothered to read it through completely? Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you believed this yourself. I just made the observation to reinforce the point to anyone reading my little blurb that part of the great attractiveness of oil as an energy source is, in addition to the fact that it has up to now had a low EROEI, is that it also has great versatility when compared to many of the current proposed alternative energy sources such as wind, tidal, solar etc. which are mainly limited to generating electricity. Oil and hydrocarbons make a nice and convenient transportation fuel for multiple modes of transportation, construction equipment etc. and can also be used to generate electricity by running diesel generators etc. It's like a mechanic having a tool that can be used as a screwdriver, socket set, hammer and centre punch. If that tools is discontinued by the manufacturer without a replacement on the market, the mechanic has to go out and buy 4 new separate tools do do the same job one tool did before, adding to the inconvenience of doing his job (more frequent trips back and forth to the toolbox) and greater expense in equipping his toolbox with the necessary equipment. Our consumer driven economies have evolved to run on the assumption that we will always have cheap energy avaiable to fuel perpetual economic growth until the end of time. Using alternative energy sources to manufacture hydrocarbon fuels is unlikely to be anywhere nearly as cheap or as easy as just drilling a hole and having the hydrocarbons flow out of the groud into our pipelines and storage tanks. For one thing, it seems to me we would run up against the effects of the laws of thermodynamics which tell us that in any transaction involving energy, some energy will always become lost and unrecoverable. It takes energy to manufacture and install the alternatives and collect their output, whether they are solar panels or windmills or whatever, and therefore we loose energy in those transactions, and then we loose more energy again to thermodynamic ineffiencies as we convert that alternatively-sourced energy once more into hydrocaborn fuels. Our current industrial civilization is like a spoilt, rich kid who inherits several million bucks from a deceased relative, and instead of investing his inheritance and living off the interest, blows through the capital buying sports cars, fancy houses and vacation homes, partying it up with friends and going on frequent vacations abroad. At some point he'll awaken with a hangover one day to hear his accountant on the phone informing him that the capital is dwindling away, and he has to start selling off his assets to maintain his lifestyle. If he persists in living high off the hog and extravagantly spending his remaining capital, our rich young friend will probably find one day that he has to go to work digging ditches (you can be sure with all his wild partying he didn't have time for an education) in order to have enough income coming in so that at least he can still buy Kraft Dinners, the occasional can of corned beef or sardines, and can afford the rent on a basement apartment so that he at least will have some type of a roof over his head. Just like the spoilt, rich kid blew through his capital, we are now just waking up to the fact that we've blown through roughly have the world's inheritance of oil and numero uno source of high quality energy, and we've probably already recovered most of the easily accesible and highest grades of oil, so we're left like the wastrel youth with the only option being to go to unaccustomed and extraordinary efforts to really work for the oil we will need in the future, whether by the thermodynamically inefficient process of manufacturing it from alternative sources as you suggest or by turning to low EROEI alternative sources of oils like tar sands etc. While we might well be able to survive the Peak Oil crisis, it will probably still mean drastic changes to our lifestyles and a probable end to the consumer driven, energy hungry lifestyles we have all come to know and love and which the teeming masses all over the world are doing their best to emulate.

No prob. We all make mistakes.

And yes, a drastic change in lifestyles is certainly in the works.

Fossil fuels are/were the best bang for the buck we had.

Now we have to adapt.

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"and the knowledge they fear is a weapon to be used against them"

"The Weapon" - Rush

What has been occuring to me lately with such a push on to provide foriegn investment is what if interest rates rise dramatically. All the people and businesses with mortgages and loans will lose everything. As well as the provinces and country for that matter. Some people stand to gain a great deal of money and power. A lot of people I know are mortgaged to the hilt.

This comment is meant to remove excess italics. Please disregard.--- "Beer Garden'? You mean, a real garden of beer? I thought they only had those in Canada!" --Largo

Two things:

Diogenes, please keep your illuminati comments confined to the "social chatter" section of the forums; they have NO BEARING on the conversation at hand.

Your rambling paste-job incited me to reinstate the moderation/voting. Congratulations, your ramblings are now being marked as off-topic, and are being hidden as appropriate.

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"Beer Garden'? You mean, a real garden of beer? I thought they only had those in Canada!" --Largo