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EU to ban cars from cities by 2050

Bob Maxey said:
Where does the power to make the hydrogen come from and what about the environmental impact of vastly increased power generation? What about the economy?
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Well if we would start throwing some decent amounts of money at fusion research we could have practically unlimited supplies of clean electricity.
 
Snedd said:
Well if we would start throwing some decent amounts of money at fusion research we could have practically unlimited supplies of clean electricity.
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Not every researcher agrees that cold fusion is possible. Here in Utah, we had our moment in the sun and we managed to blow it. We were at one time, big news on the CF front.

Old technology is the key. We need to take what we know and improve the technology. There is absolutely no shortage of oil available in the planet and decades of proven reserves here in this country. We have nuclear power. We have oil. We have natural gas aplenty.

I do think research is needed and it must continue in the areas of solar and cow farts, but why should we spend trillions to develop technologies that might never prove viable when we can use technologies your granny used?

Bob
 
Bob Maxey said:
There is absolutely no shortage of oil available in the planet and decades of proven reserves here in this country. We have nuclear power. We have oil. We have natural gas aplenty.
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I suppose we are all being lied to... right down to oil prices rising (this sounds sarcastic, but it is sincere). So where are you getting the information that we have an abundance of oil supply and how are you sure that YOU are not being lied to (it seems someone here is, right)? I suppose it is also worth noting that if said oil stores require the destruction of even more natural habitats and environments, I am not sure that I would be willing to justify that.
 
Stinky Stinky said:
Well, I believe nuclear power is the way to go and also everything should use electricity with stuff like these little guys and bacteria in the works that eat radioactive materials from nuclear waste:

Radiation-hungry fungi could clean up waste - Technology & Science - CBC News

Researchers discover 'radiation-eating' fungi

Chernobyl Fungus Feeds On Radiation

This way we kill 2 birds with 1 stone, so no radiocative waste = unlimited power but it is early days still ... damn.
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Also hay will soak up crude oil but how much of it did you see them use to clean up BP's lil ooopsie?:p
 
lordofthereef said:
I suppose we are all being lied to... right down to oil prices rising (this sounds sarcastic, but it is sincere). So where are you getting the information that we have an abundance of oil supply and how are you sure that YOU are not being lied to (it seems someone here is, right)? I suppose it is also worth noting that if said oil stores require the destruction of even more natural habitats and environments, I am not sure that I would be willing to justify that.
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All you need to do is a little cursory research into oil reserves. Just a little. Not at all difficult. The problem is people like you do not agree because you have it in your mind that we are in trouble. Please take no offense at me singling you out; you are a typical believer in the myth that we are running out of oil.

Many often listen only to those people that are constantly yelling about how we are running out of oil and they are clearly ignorant of the facts everyone in the oil business knows.

We are not running out of oil and that is simply a fact. The oil is harder to get to in some cases, but we are smart people and we can figure out ways to get the stuff. Also, some wells were capped long ago because the cost of getting to the oil was costly. Times and technology changes and this means we have the opportunity to drill deeper and get even more oil.

You should do a little research into how many producing oil wells exist in Beverly Hills, California and around Los Angeles, alone. Not too many reports of oil spills in those areas. One of the back lots (when Hollywood was Hollywood; I'm not sure what is there now) was built around a working oil well. The Beverly Hills Oil Field was discovered around 1900 and still produces oil.

Many people do not know that drilling is done from large windowless buildings on Pico and Olympic Boulevards. They drill under the mansions of the wealthy and last I knew, there was still millions of barrels of oil to be pumped.

In Los Angeles there are more than 2,000 working oil wells off shore on an island near LB Harbor.

My point is simple: we have, in this county alone, vast pools of oil. We also have vast pools of laws and environmentalists that simply make drilling impossible. We are smart enough to drill with minimum environmental impact.

We have the ability to drill safely. But if you are asking for guarantees that there wont be a spill, you can't have one. There is always a possibility that a problem will occur.

Take a look at this web site and then start looking for 2011 figures. Expect some changes so do a little more digging:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/international/reserves.html

Bob
 
So from that link there is an estimated 3,765.307 BILLION barrels of oil available globally. America alone burns 19.6 million barrels per day (AT 25% of world use). That is 7,154 million barrels per year. Assuming we don't change our ways (no increases or decreases worldwide - which I think is an unreasonable assumption seeing as it keeps going up - for the US those numbers have been about 2% per year) that puts the world at just over 131 years of oil left. So... at what point do we begin to worry? 131 years may not be my lifetime, but should I care any less?

EDIT: In fact I may have made a mistake in those numbers as I added the three statistics from BP, Oil and Gas, and WOlrd Oil when I think I should have averaged them, leaving us with lower number still...
 
Bob Maxey said:
Not every researcher agrees that cold fusion is possible.

Bob
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It was hot fusion I was referring to. I read a statistic somewhere that here in the UK people spend more money annually on ringtones than the government invests in hot fusion research.
 
lordofthereef said:
So from that link there is an estimated 3,765.307 BILLION barrels of oil available globally. America alone burns 19.6 million barrels per day (AT 25% of world use). That is 7,154 million barrels per year. Assuming we don't change our ways (no increases or decreases worldwide - which I think is an unreasonable assumption seeing as it keeps going up - for the US those numbers have been about 2% per year) that puts the world at just over 131 years of oil left. So... at what point do we begin to worry? 131 years may not be my lifetime, but should I care any less?

EDIT: In fact I may have made a mistake in those numbers as I added the three statistics from BP, Oil and Gas, and WOlrd Oil when I think I should have averaged them, leaving us with lower number still...
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I agree. the oil is not unlimited, but three thousand seven hundred billion plus is lots of oil. I do think alternatives will be discovered. That said, what pushes the left's agenda is scare tactics and that is wrong. We are green because of faulty science. We "need" this and that because we are running out of oil. Scare tactics sell ideas that a gullible public swallows.

Bob
 
The error in calculating world reserves is, they're always finding more. a field will have a certain depletion rate until a new technology comes along that allows you to extract more out of it.

Shale is a perfect example, they used to never be able to get anything out of it. Then they invented hydrological fracing. That opened up a number of new fields and plays no one ever thought of (and still more undiscovered) There is enough natural gas under Louisiana to power the US for 100 years (if we utilized it.)

Peak oil takes the same argument Tomas Malthus did about over population. He claimed population grew exponentially(2,4,16,256) and food production only arithmetically (2,4,6,8) so he said food will not keep up with population, and there will be mass extinction events when the population starts to hit that upper limit.

But new technology was able to greatly increase food production and keep up with population... same with oil production I believe.
 
what about food supply?
I used to be pro fuel crops too, but we are just screwing the third world again, its just different to the way AGW does it
 
shadowninty said:
oil took millions of years to form.
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So, that doesn't mean we've found all there is to find, and new technology won't allow us to extract oil we never could before.

Yeah, its theoretically possible to use it all up, but I think that day is much further away than peak oil people claim.
 
shadowninty said:
what about food supply?
I used to be pro fuel crops too, but we are just screwing the third world again, its just different to the way AGW does it
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Yup, biofuel seems like a nice alternative until you realise just how much agricultural land is needed.
 
shadowninty said:
whay about the financial and environmental cost of shale oil?
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financial, its profitable, thats why its being drilling today. environmental costs, if planned and regulated properly, can be mitigated easily, its happening today.


what I mean by 100 years of power generation from natural gas, if we utilized it, is converting more power plants over to natural gas. Right now, we still get most of our electricity generation from coal. Start switching more of that to NG, the demand goes up, and we will start to utilize that resource more. Their drilling shale gas all over the US today, but NG prices are low, more resources are directed to oil extraction. If that changed, drilling for NG would pick up, creating lots of jobs, and cleaner electricity generation.

We can offset our need for foreign oil as well, by switching cars over to NG, but thats a bigger task.
 
Here is a question for you all.

Lots of people apparently do not want to drill for crude in the U.S. of A. Suppose we were cut off from most current supplies of crude and if we needed oil, our only choice would be to drill in this country.

How fast would the sentiment change?

Remember, oil is needed for hundreds of thousands of products, not just the fuel for our cars. Corn and sunflowers can't provide most of those things we require.

Discuss?

Bob
 
shadowninty said:
Natural Gas is a fossil fuel too.
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Yes, but the cleanest burning fossil fuel there is, about half the emissions as coal. Its a perfect bridge to truly green energy.




shadowninty said:
And shale is like peat, its crap
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Crap how? I'll tell you now its being drilled and produced all over the country, right now, and there is a butt load more in the ground. But the demand is low, so we're not utilizing it to its full potential.

whats "crap" about shale plays?

You might want to let the oil&gas companies paying thousands of dollars an acre and producing lots of shale gas about your ground breaking theories.
 
fair enough, my mistake
The issue is that if you build Gas plants, they'll be there for 50+ years
That's 50 years of huge emmisions... in my opinion all fossil fuel plant building should be ended ASAP

Still, Gas is the best large scale fossil fuel
 
You guys are effing funny.

I'm sure dubai is almost bankrupting themselves(read: can't pay back 60 billion to the UK) to create a tourist hot spot because they are as sure as bob is, that oil will last forever.

Oh, and deep horizon was miles underwater and a mile past that into bedrock because there's so much easy to get to free oil under louisiana, I forgot. I heard it could last us a billion years if it weren't for the liberals.

Oh, and I'm sure we'll be fine with another couple billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. Don't let the larsen ice shelf bother you. Its just part of the earth's natural cycle or something.

Oh my, they drill oil in california? I thought all those things in long beach were metal dinosaurs. That's what my daddy told me.
 
shadowninty said:
fair enough, my mistake
The issue is that if you build Gas plants, they'll be there for 50+ years
That's 50 years of huge emmisions... in my opinion all fossil fuel plant building should be ended ASAP

Still, Gas is the best large scale fossil fuel
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Current coal fired power plants can be relatively cheaply converted to NG. Then you can transport the gas around in pipelines, don't need trucks burning fuel to transport like you do with coal.

Yes, its still a fossil fuel, but the cleanest there is, and abundant here in the US, so it makes a perfect bridge to truly green technologies.

Tempusfugit said:
You guys are effing funny.

I'm sure dubai is almost bankrupting themselves(read: can't pay back 60 billion to the UK) to create a tourist hot spot because they are as sure as bob is, that oil will last forever.
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New energy technology will take over one day, but its still a ways off, and we have to power our society with something till then.

Tempusfugit said:
Oh, and deep horizon was miles underwater and a mile past that into bedrock because there's so much easy to get to free oil under louisiana, I forgot. I heard it could last us a billion years if it weren't for the liberals.
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No, its shale GAS not oil I'm talking about in Louisiana, its called the Haynesville Shale, largest shale gas play in the US and 4th largest in the world. Trouble is, we don't use a whole lot of NG, so prices are really low, so while companies are drilling and producing it, they are devoting more resources to producing other areas, like off shore oil, because thats where the big money is. But, if we utilized NG more, by converting more dirty coal fired power plants to NG, demand would go up, then prices would go up, then companies would spend more resources drilling more wells getting more out and utilizing it more.

We have the means to be energy independent in this country while transitioning to greener fuels, if the politics wasn't so messed up.

Get this:
While leaving U.S. oil and jobs in the ground, our itinerant president tells a South American neighbor that we'll help it develop its offshore resources so we can one day import its oil. WHAT?!?
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Obama: Drill, Brazil, Drill! - Investors.com


Tempusfugit said:
Oh, and I'm sure we'll be fine with another couple billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. Don't let the larsen ice shelf bother you. Its just part of the earth's natural cycle or something.
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If your that worried about it, why are you contributing by using electricity and gasoline? Get a bike, some candles and a stern-o can for cooking, shut off your PC and be part of the solution.
 
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