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Post by sigurdur on Aug 24, 2009 22:13:13 GMT
Ian: What you have written is mostly correct. It is very correct when you are talking coal. Oil, on the other hand seems to have plateaued as some new fields have been found. Whether they can be brought to production fast enough to overcome the current decline in production remains to be seen as you pointed out that the cost of a barrel of oil will have to be at least $100.00 for them to be economical. We do need alternative energy NOW as the available recoverable supplies of esp oil are maxed out.
From a long term economic view, we need to use nuclear, solar, and wind as the major source of electricity. Natural gas is finite, as are coal and oil.
I wish the AGW thing would go away, as it is irrevelant in the long term picture. All the money being used to study that "co2 problem" should be being used to develop alternatives. The worst thing that could happen would be a co2 tax. That would slow growth, and not allow the normal market development of alternatives.
The true threat is not co2 or temp increase. We all know that a 2C temp increase on a global scale with a rise in co2 would be much more benificial to the world at large than the negatives of such. The true threat is a co2 tax....that would stagnate development of alternatives.
I do not think in the present political environment, and with the obvious evidence that co2 is a minor player in temps, that a cap and trade bill can pass in the US. The only way for the US to overcome its huge debt is through economic growth and a halt in current spending levels by governments. A tax would put the worlds economies in a free fall and that is a much much greater threat than warming as well.
As far as ozone and plants....even after reading a bit of the IPCC study, it is a red herring. The amount of land affected would be so minute in the aggregate that it isn't even a plausable worry.
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Post by hunter on Aug 25, 2009 0:45:03 GMT
Steve, Now you are just boring. AGW is nothing without its alarmism. And the batting average of apocalyptic cults is .000. So you offer nothing. Cya. On to something interesting: Here are coal reserves int he US: www.clean-energy.us/facts/coal.htmen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalwww.energybulletin.net/node/48240Once we get past the AGW claptrap, and back towards rational energy policies, we can mine the heck out of coal, until we hopefully get nuke power on line. AGW has in its own pernicious way, created a climate of fear and negativism and futility. It is time to brush aside the bs and utterly contemptible lies of AGW promoters and true believers. The world is not going to end. No apocalypse is on its way due to our burning fossil fuels. We have plenty of good practical energy available. AGW is imploding between its increasingly impossible to hide falseness, and the push back by people of reason. We can build a good future for us all, and will do so, once we put this current round of fear, hype and doom behind us.
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Post by sentient on Aug 25, 2009 3:48:02 GMT
Well, it doesn't seem to do much good to try and focus the discussion. So I give in. For now.
I have to weigh in on the side of sigurdur on this one. Ever so gradually, the Pleistocene record is trending cooler in terms of ice ages and interglacials. The odd exceptions not withstanding. The Holocene, so far, has not been all that spectacular a period of global warming, as far as the record goes. Warmer than MIS-7, but paling against MIS11 and MIS-5e.
So as far as energy and civilization goes, the more energy the more civilization. Our best options are to carefully explore alternative energies, recognizing their inherent limitations at this stage of the technologies, and perhaps think about the scaleable architecture the French have worked with for fissile materials. Fusion is the best option, but it, like wind and solar, lack anywhere near the theoretical traction they need to supplant present energy sources, much less power, civilization as we know it today.
At the end of the day we are left to consider that we evolved to our present sentient state, surviving somehow, ice age after interglacial after ice age. On a steadily cooling world. The biota with us. CO2 is growing as a GHG. But what is the tipping point? Nothing in the paleoclimate record suggests to me that it is anything more than us, a spectator at these remarkable natural climate change events. I have difficulty conceiving of a CO2 precipitated ice age, but much less difficulty with the fact that it took thousands of years for CO2 levels to go down one an ice age is triggered. And unless certain reserachers are right, and maybe we will skip a half-precessional cycle this time, we are precariously close at the moment.
And the sun has gone all quiet on us.
But in reference to sigurder's well considered post, energy is the key. The slow degradation of CO2 concentrations evident in the Pleistocene is a worry to some, but the short term is ever populated with more and more humanity. Civilizations achieved their present levels via the infusion of affordable energy. The universe has gotten along pretty well creating the 92 naturally occurring elements and lots of power with fusion.
It continues to strike me that every penny not spent on fusion research may turn out to be a penny wasted. Those of you in this argument with offspring at stake, or offspring in the offing, may wish to consider that even if an ice age or a warmer climate is imminent, plentiful, affordable power can keep the A/C or heat on.
If natural climate change, which beggars AGW predictions, still remains capable of rocking this world, with triggers we know not yet, what would you do when faced with a threat of such overwhelming magnitude?
The last glacial maximum was perhaps 20C lower than present. Would it seem reasonable, given the maximum IPCC single digit, single variable hypotheses for a trace gas that might double from less than 1/10th of a percent in 300 years to still less than 1/10th of a percent, that we are on the wrong side of the decimal point?
Food for thought..........
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wylie
Level 3 Rank
Posts: 129
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Post by wylie on Aug 25, 2009 3:54:14 GMT
Hunter,
Here are the key quotes from the Wikipedia article on Coal Production/Depletion. Note that it mentions peak coal (in tonnage) in "as little as 15 years", but in terms of energy (the only metric that makes sense) before that.
Fortunately, renewables and nuclear are alternatives. Unforutnately, they cannot be scaled fast enough given the limitations. We may have to learn to live with less energy (tough on the economy!!!
Ian
*****************************
People's Republic of China
The People's Republic of China is the world’s largest coal producer and has the second largest reserves after the United States. The Energy Watch Group predicts that the Chinese reserves will peak around 2015.[4] The EWG also predicts that the recent steep rise in production will be followed by a steep decline after 2020. The US Energy Information Administration projects that China coal production will continue to rise through 2030.[5]
[edit] United States
Coal production in the United States, currently the world's second largest producer, has undergone multiple peaks and declines, but total coal energy output peak was reached in 1998 (aprox.).[citation needed] Coal production peaked in the early 1900s, then declined sharply during the depression years of the 1930s. Coal production peaked again in the 1940s, then declined during the 1950s.[1] Then coal production revived, and has been on a nearly continual increasing trend since 1962, exceeding the previous peaks. Production in 2006 was a record 1.16 billion short tons.[6] High-grade anthracite coal peaked in 1914;[1] and declined from 44 million tons in 1950 to 1.6 million tons in 2007. Bituminous coal production has also been declining since 1990. The slack has been taken up by large increases in subbituminous coal production.[7] Comprehensive analysis of historical trends in US coal production, reserve estimates along with a possible future outlook has been recently published scientific journals on coal geology .[8]
In 1956, Hubbert estimated that US coal production would peak in about the year 2150.[1] In 2004, Gregson Vaux used the Hubbert model to predict peak US coal production in 2032[9]
[edit] United Kingdom
Coal output peaked in 1913 in Britain at 287m tons and now accounts for less than one percent of world coal production. 2007 production was around 15m tons.[10]
[edit] Canada
According to the Earth Watch Group, Canadian coal production peaked in 1997.[11]
[edit] Germany
Germany hit peak hard coal production in 1958 at 150 million tons. In 2005 hard coal production was around 25 million tons.[12] Total coal production peaked in 1985 at 578 million short tons, declined sharply in the early 1990s following German reunification, and has been nearly steady since 1999. Total coal production in 2005 was 229 million short tons, four percent of total world production.[3]
[edit] World peak coal
* 2150 M. King Hubbert
M. King Hubbert's 1956 projections from the world production curve placed world peak coal at 2150.[13]
* 2025 Energy Watch Group
Coal: Resources and Future Production[14], published on April 5 2007 by the Energy Watch Group (EWG), which reports to the German Parliament, found that global coal production could peak in as few as 15 years.[15] Reporting on this, Richard Heinberg also notes that the date of peak annual energetic extraction from coal will likely come earlier than the date of peak in quantity of coal (tons per year) extracted as the most energy-dense types of coal have been mined most extensively.[16]
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Post by sentient on Aug 25, 2009 4:18:53 GMT
On Wylie's post. In 1989, I migrated to Australia on a permanent residence visa. On my own. My goal was to see and experience the country and the culture. In exchange, I offered the environmental technology of California, which at the time led the US which led the world. I soon found myself swamped with toxic magic sites. One of my more important clients was the Japanese government, which reeling from the 1974 oil shock, implemented the Sunshine Program, with the intent to develop a replacement for liquid hydrocarbon supplies for a world economic powerhouse with little of its own.
The project, which had been in play for over a decade in 1989, was completing its pilot stage, developing a new coal to oil conversion process which utilized brown coal, which lies between peat and lignite, well below sub-bituninous coal. The experiment was conducted in Morwell, Victoria, and was then ready to be scaled to the Demonstration Plant stage from 50 tons per day (pilot plant) to 500 tons per day (demonstration plant). I got to run around the huge site on the hundreds of liters of high-cut naptha remaining from the experiment on a modified moped supervising my crews of diligent shallow drillers/samplers.
The Japanese often told me that the Morwell region had enough brown coal to satisfy current world liquid hydrocarbon demand at their process cost for the next 500 years at $2/US gallon. Siberia, the next largest reserves of brown coal, had several times that amount, but was politically distasteful to the Japanese.
As the pilot plant was sited over dense clays, the impacts from their "experiments" was minimal in terms of soils impacted. Groundwater evinced no impact. So I closed the site, the evidence passing the most rigorous statistical tests of the day, allowing me, as the first appointed auditor, to sign off on the site.
So, we have the "coal", or the reasonable equivalent thereof, to "have a go" for awhile. However, destabilizing methane clathrates from any global warming scenario could be interesting to be sure.
But with MIS-11 peaking at 21.3 meters above present sea level, I have a really hard time getting all worked up about displacing folk uninformed enough to covet beachfront property. You take your risks, but get your own insurance, sending me the bill......now that's a risk.
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Post by steve on Aug 25, 2009 6:53:27 GMT
Steve, Now you are just boring. AGW is nothing without its alarmism. And the batting average of apocalyptic cults is .000. So you offer nothing. Cya. On to something interesting: Here are coal reserves int he US: www.clean-energy.us/facts/coal.htmen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalwww.energybulletin.net/node/48240Once we get past the AGW claptrap, and back towards rational energy policies, we can mine the heck out of coal, until we hopefully get nuke power on line. AGW has in its own pernicious way, created a climate of fear and negativism and futility. It is time to brush aside the bs and utterly contemptible lies of AGW promoters and true believers. The world is not going to end. No apocalypse is on its way due to our burning fossil fuels. We have plenty of good practical energy available. AGW is imploding between its increasingly impossible to hide falseness, and the push back by people of reason. We can build a good future for us all, and will do so, once we put this current round of fear, hype and doom behind us. Well at least this tortuously mind-numbing engagement has ended with your single agenda becoming clearer.
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Post by steve on Aug 25, 2009 6:54:49 GMT
Ian: As far as ozone and plants....even after reading a bit of the IPCC study, it is a red herring. The amount of land affected would be so minute in the aggregate that it isn't even a plausable worry. You're a fast reader!
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Post by woodstove on Aug 25, 2009 12:51:12 GMT
One of the things that I find interesting is that the people who tell you they are fighting to "save Nature" are the ones stuck indoors staring at computer screens modeling nature.
They like to talk about how "robust" their models are.
They should take a peak at nature, up close, from time to time.
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Post by hunter on Aug 25, 2009 12:53:26 GMT
Steve, Now you are just boring. AGW is nothing without its alarmism. And the batting average of apocalyptic cults is .000. So you offer nothing. Cya. Well at least this tortuously mind-numbing engagement has ended with your single agenda becoming clearer. Yes, outing the stupidity of the AGW belief circle is a worthy enterprise.
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Post by woodstove on Aug 25, 2009 13:03:21 GMT
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Post by sentient on Aug 26, 2009 2:09:09 GMT
An eye opener woodstove, gracias amigo!
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Post by hunter on Aug 26, 2009 3:20:07 GMT
And those assertions are made by people who rely on the models instead of reality.
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Post by northsphinx on Aug 26, 2009 7:05:52 GMT
It seems to me that the AGW hypothesis is used by politicians to achieve another goal that they cant say in public.
It is handy to have something far away in the future that scare people enough to enable funds to this area. They don't care if the AGW is right or wrong as long as it suits their bigger picture. The bigger picture is to get independent. Independent from middle east oil, Russian oil and large oil companies. Independent from fluctuation oil prices that cause economical turmoil. That is why politicians do not really want to question the AGW hypothesis. It is a very good reason for large investments in renewable or should i say independent energy sources.
I believe is it not wise to use fear of AGW as incitement to invest in independent energy sources. It have its own value, far larger than a 0,15 K/decade risk. Because when reality show that the AGW theory is not working is there a long way to go to build up trust in science and politics again.
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