tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19508699.post1381920628606933167..comments2024-03-13T18:55:49.391+00:00Comments on Energy Balance: "Peak oil: postponed"? Dr Richard Pike.Professor Chris Rhodeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12060542089215379056noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19508699.post-55241854209494257302009-01-12T07:50:00.000+00:002009-01-12T07:50:00.000+00:00dear Opit,no this is not my work but I appreciate ...dear Opit,<BR/><BR/>no this is not my work but I appreciate its contents. I have not yet given full vent to how I feel about the deliberate destruction of what was once the greatest university system in the world, and it saddens me that someone is awarded a professorship in Chemical education and rather than retiring to the golf-course is now accepted by the Royal Society of Chemistry as a serious figure on its "Education Division"!<BR/><BR/>If an investigative journalist were to look into the quality of professors and readers in mostly the ex-polytechnics the result would be national embarrassment, but then the whole reason to have expanded the system was not about "opportunity" but getting the youth unemployment figures down!<BR/><BR/>When it is published on march 25th, you might like to tread my comical novel, University Shambles, which though a work of pure fiction does tell the tale of British values!!<BR/><BR/>Regards,<BR/><BR/>Chris.Professor Chris Rhodeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12060542089215379056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19508699.post-31580453633518943562009-01-12T01:41:00.000+00:002009-01-12T01:41:00.000+00:00On the chance that this is not your work - enjoy !...On the chance that this is not your work - enjoy !<BR/>http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2006/11/sustainability-energy-independence-and.html<BR/>And this might explain a thing or three about The System<BR/>http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/opithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01621946866211400380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19508699.post-91871551356240428772008-12-29T08:51:00.000+00:002008-12-29T08:51:00.000+00:00Dear Richard,yes, the EROEI is the ultimate constr...Dear Richard,<BR/><BR/>yes, the EROEI is the ultimate constraint, as you say. As the EROEI falls oil must become more expensive and short in supply with catastrophic effects on the economy as we have seen from the recent huge oil price followed by a market crash, hand in hand with the trigger of sub-prime mortgages and a general lack on confidence in lending money; hence the recession which the world is in now.<BR/><BR/>There is a tendency to equate peak oil = running out of oil, but it is more complex than that, so how ever much there may be left does not change the fact that within a few years a supply-demand crisis must ensue.<BR/><BR/>It is the "gap" that matters, and the "peak" can only make matters worse by enlarging it.<BR/><BR/>I know Professor Hall's work, and I don't doubt his conclusions. If the gap hits around 2012 and the technology to find more fails within five years of that then in effect the oil-age will be over!<BR/><BR/>Keeping the chemical industry going is imperative but without oil, moving goods around - including chemicals - won't be easy. We have precious little time do anything else and so I fear that there will be a collapse of civilization, as we know it.<BR/><BR/>Best wishes,<BR/><BR/>Chris.Professor Chris Rhodeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12060542089215379056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19508699.post-8173008630661359962008-12-28T10:44:00.000+00:002008-12-28T10:44:00.000+00:00You write: "Pike notes that "you can buy your way ...You write: "Pike notes that "you can buy your way out of capacity constraints". This is also quite correct, but it is a dicey business. I agree with him that if you invest in overcoming "surface constraints", as in the number of wells, gas/oil separators, pipelines, storage tanks or jetties, the supply of oil is improved, but the cost of a barrel of oil inevitably and accordingly increases. He says, "The rough rule of thumb that applied three or four years ago was that to get 1 million barrels a day extra, you needed to spend in the order of $10 billion, very approximately."<BR/><BR/>This analysis, and the calculations on the amount of oil there might be in the ground, overlooks the fact that the cost of winning the energy in the oil has to be measured in energy terms rather than monetary ones. In other words, the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) will determine how much oil is produced, not the market price. If it takes more energy to get the oil out of the ground, refined and delivered to the user than the user can usefully extract from it when the fuel is burned, that oil might as well not be in the ground at all. Oil production would have become an energy sink rather than a source and would only continue for uses where a loss of energy was acceptable, such as a chemical feedstock. <BR/><BR/>Professor Charles Hall of the New York State university, Syracuse, is the leading researcher in this area. One of his findings is that, if the EROEI of oil prospecting continues to decline at he current rate, it won't be worth looking for oil with present technologies after about 2017. <BR/><BR/>Richard Douthwaite, Feasta (www.feasta.org)Richard Douthwaitehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10172626619994885915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19508699.post-59863696280523398672008-12-22T07:46:00.000+00:002008-12-22T07:46:00.000+00:00Hi Chuck!No, I'm not a fanatic and have tried to c...Hi Chuck!<BR/><BR/>No, I'm not a fanatic and have tried to continue these postings in a spirit of reasonable optimism, but the oil production peak is nigh, or more severely and immediately the gap between demand and supply. The peak will just enlarge that gulf.<BR/><BR/>The newspaper headlines are not good for Britain this morning and I really do wonder what 2009 will unfold upon the world.<BR/><BR/>I think too that the world has been "fooled" by the dramatic drop in the oil price but yet this is a symptom of the falling global economy, which ironically was precipitated by the hike in oil price last summer. Now all seems to be in melt-down. I think this is the Long Emergency that Kunstler has written about.<BR/><BR/>Regards,<BR/><BR/>Chris.Professor Chris Rhodeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12060542089215379056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19508699.post-55219439778131614292008-12-21T20:17:00.000+00:002008-12-21T20:17:00.000+00:00Good article. I appreciate your scientific approac...Good article. I appreciate your scientific approach. Also, I am a Peak Oil advocate and have spent a good deal of the last four years trying to educate my profession - the supply chain world about the possible impacts of Peak Oil on global supply chains.<BR/><BR/>I am continually amazed at how many people dismiss the Peak Oil discussion as one populated by idealogues and fanatics. I don't think I am either. I simple try to take the best facts available and look at probably secenarios and ways to adapt.<BR/><BR/>The recent price decline has lead to a whole flood of dismal of the whole Peak Oil hypothesis. I really don't see the price decline changing any of the basis arguments. <BR/><BR/>Oil is finite. Conventional fields are declining at a rate of 5-9%. Major finds are rare. Geopolitics is still an issue. Massive investment is needed. The current infrastructure continues to rust. There are no quick fixes.<BR/><BR/>I don't know what the price will be in 2009 but I do this, the world: will burn about 30 billion barrels; find maybe 5 billion; see current fields deplete at a rate of 5 to 9%; cut back on exploration and development in hard ; reduce or scale back maintenance and equipment upgrades further weakening an already stressed supply chain; and not make any real progress toward reducing dependence on cheap oil. I also know the world oil industry will not survive for long in its current state with oil a $40 a barrel. <BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/> I just hope President Obama and team don’t believe the hype and push forward with the transformations we need to reduce long-term consumption of oil. So far he is saying the right things. This could be the last chance and the time is short.ChuckThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16454763085791473090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19508699.post-45994658214482669762008-12-20T07:42:00.000+00:002008-12-20T07:42:00.000+00:00Hi Dave,many thanks for your applause at my effort...Hi Dave,<BR/><BR/>many thanks for your applause at my efforts on here. Really, this is just me and my thinking aloud a lot of the time.<BR/><BR/>I do try to be objective and to put the facts in, do a few sums which most environmentalists don't seem to. Perhaps they don't like the answers. The University of Sussex did a reasonable job on me, probably, and has produced 3 Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry.<BR/><BR/>I agree with you completely about the crassness of what has become of the British education system, once regarded as the finest in the world, but no longer.<BR/><BR/>You will enjoy my novel "University Shambles", due to be published by Melrose Books in March 2009. It is a wry black comedy/satire on the state of play!<BR/><BR/>That is the best way I could think of presenting my ideas... oh yes, technical colleges that are now universities and professors with no academic credibility.They get e.g. a professorship in Chemical Education, with no published work in the subject in which they are supposed to "profess".<BR/><BR/>In Slovakia, so my colleagues there tell me, a professorship is awarded by the Prime Minister or the Minster for science, and so it bloody well should be. I worked hard for mine and when I see them handed out like sweeties to a bunch of ex-poly tossers who've done nothing apart from teaching, admin., committee work and so on it makes me feel like a mug!<BR/><BR/>If an investigative journalist took the trouble to look into the quality of senior staff in some of the new universities and also in older ones, in subjects like Pharmacy Practice, where they can't get the staff unless they off a Chair, otherwise they can't pay them anything like what they are on in the industry, they could have a field-day.<BR/><BR/>As I mentioned in response to your previous comments, I literally walked out of the last university that employed me, on these grounds and many others, and set up my own consulting firm, and began writing seriously, so actually they did me a favour!<BR/><BR/>So, for now Dave, wishing you to, a very Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year!<BR/><BR/>Deep regards,<BR/><BR/>Chris.Professor Chris Rhodeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12060542089215379056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19508699.post-46342229355604472442008-12-19T20:44:00.000+00:002008-12-19T20:44:00.000+00:00Chris can you tell me what the use is of all this ...Chris can you tell me what the use is of all this University expansion if there is only a certain percentage of the population, that are able to benefit. I would take a guess that you need to have an IQ of at least 120 to take a technical course, especially when maths is involved. The concept of imaginary numbers is difficult enough to get your mind around and that is simple maths that are needed for electrical engineering among other things. Why this obsession with calling every mediocre technical college or learning institute a University, is it that the brain dead that seem to run these institutions want to garner the kudos of the name University without the effort. M.I.T. And Caltech seem to get by without the tag university after it's name. I would certainly have liked to have had an education at one of those two. Both had more than their fair share of Nobel laureates. I have said before in an earlier post that if you expand the Universities system to take in a larger and larger percentage of the population, you have to except people of a lower IQ because there are not enough people with high IQ's. Can't anybody understand a Gaussian distribution curve. The result is that you lower standards to maintain the pass mark ratio. It seems that under the present system if you don't get a good enough pass mark quota then you have failed as a University and you don't get the requisite Government grants. What do they do they move the academic goal posts. As far as I am concerned you have failed as a University if you have failed to maintain academic standards. I am not the sharpest tool in the toolbox but I despair when I read about the new proposals for the educational system in Britain, it seems to me that everybody gets a prize, if you attend 90% of the time you get an A. They are now going to do away with History and Geography from what I understand. I presume they are too politically incorrect for the Multicultural nutters that run the ministry of education. We must not offend the under performing, inbreed, low IQ immigrants of a khaki tint, who have been pouring into the country over the last few decades especially when they have got the vote. Nobody seems to have asked the question of these immigrants from failed states because that is mainly where they come from why they are failed states , could it be that you are a failed state because you are just too thick (polite form, do not have the requisite level of Problem solving ability), to even be able to form a state. Mind you if you don't know anything about History how are you to know that there was not a city, roads or any other form of civilization in Black Africa before the Europeans came while in China and Japan they had gunpowder roads canals paper money and while not quite understanding perspective they could at least paint and not daub. <BR/> <BR/> Chris how are you going to get more graduates in the hard sciences if you continue to dumb down the population by an educational system that is now aimed at equality not quality, however bad the system was when I grew up after World War 11 and it certainly was bad, there were 50 in my class alone and we kept our school books in cardboard boxes in the corner of the methodist chapel where we were taught, we had a least an equal chance to be unequal, the 11+ did at least give a certain number of the more intelligent of the working class a chance of escaping from the confines of the system. Under the new orthodoxy not only are the best of the working class kept down but many of the middle class and however many go too University a mediocre university system is still a mediocre university system. Until we get away from this equality crap in our schools and teach equality of opportunity to be unequal along with teaching real subjects, like English Maths History and Geography, nothing is going to change, all those job as Chemists engineers etc are going to remain unfilled. Orwell in Animal Farm certainly understood the problem when he said “all animals are equal but some are more equal than others”. <BR/><BR/>Like you I certainly approve of Dr Pike for his proactive stance, what ever that may mean, but he might just as well go and piss into the wind, in fact I think it would be more useful because he would at least get a positive feed back. <BR/><BR/>I am sorry if I seem a bit cynical, but it is mainly anger and frustration at the antics of the so called ruling elite who embrace fantasy not reality and spend countless millions of public money paying for a Quango to arrange the deck chairs on the deck of the Titanic and countless more worrying over where to seat the Black Jazz musician and the Peruvian nose flautist, in the Orchestra as it is sinking, we must be inclusive, and not offend anyone. <BR/><BR/>Anyway rant off, may I say Chris that I enjoy your Blog. It has many good points. The main one being that it attempts to be objective and succeeds. Another one is clarity, always a plus point, I tend to be sarcastic and crudely verbose. A third point it is full of information which get me off checking the references especially if I am not too well informed on the subject. A fourth point is a genuine striving for honesty. I might not reply to many of your articles but I certainly read them and will certainly be reading them with pleasure in the New Year, so if you don't receive a comment it doesn't mean it has not been read with pleasure by myself and I am certain many other people but because we tend to agree with what you write.<BR/><BR/>Chris one last thing, A Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year<BR/><BR/>Deep Regards<BR/><BR/>DaveYorkshireminerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03364251607711042067noreply@blogger.com