Political Math problem for you DUers

[EVDebs]

Almanacs, which the administration seeks to declare as tools for terrorists, show us that oil reserves in the world are about
1,000,000,000,000 barrels. Daily consumption is something on the order of 80,000,000 barrels at current rates.

1 x 10 to the 12th power/ 8 x 10 to the 7th power = 12,500

12,500/365 days in a year = about 34 years

So the world has about 34 years worth of oil left.

What are we doing fighting over the last drops of remaining oil when we should be racking our collective brains searching for and empowering alternatives to oil ?

Please review my arithmetic and critique ! Have at it !

[Justitia]

1. From my memory of college geology, you are about right. -eom

[brainshrub]

2. Welcome to the wonderful world of Peak Oil.

I give this thread five minutes before someone posts a series of links to the major peak-oil sites.

[fob]

3. So you're saying the WORLD runs out of OIL 2 years before the SS

fund is predicted to pay out more than it takes in and is in "crisis" per bush*co. Yet bush*co concentrates time. money and energy into making sure SS is destroyed well before then.

/madness


As for the math, given the numbers above it is correct. The challenge is quantifying and verifying the numbers given.

[pscot]

8. Those are roughly the numbers agreed on by most everyone

except the U.S Government, which believes that reserves are about 25% higher. World wide extraction of oil is expected to begin declining this decade. There is simply no replacement in view. The alternatives including bio-mass and hydrogen are too costly in terms of energy input. Wind, solar and nuclear offer possibilities, but you can't put 'em in your car. We're about to run out of gas, and it promises to be really interesting.

[EVDebs]

11. I used the World Almanac 2000 and the numbers are from

Oil and Gas Journal OGJ and World Oil WO with 1020.1 billion barrels of crude oil from OGJ given and 975.0 billion barrels from WO, all as 1998 World Oil Reserves. Rounded estimate as 1 trillion barrels ... got the 80 million / day use figure from memory but I'm sure it's rising even as we speak ! I think 120 million/day with China coming on strong as an oil consumer puts the figure even higher, in which case the situation is even worse and we have EVEN LESS than 34 years of oil left...

[fob]

13. Do they define "reserves"? Is that the sum total of everything they

KNOW about or just the total of what they know they can pump out at a given profitable cost and deliverable at a saleable price?

Not that it really matters, as the demand increases the price will increase and the cost to get the harder to reach stuff will be offset but in the end that's probably only a couple year shift and has no bearing on the lack of looking for a transition to an oiless society.

[EVDebs]

19. Proven reserves ... also you can check the web at sourced at

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0872964.html

and the global security organization IAGS at website

The Future of Oil
http://www.iags.org/futureofoil.html

[unpossibles]

4. that sounds close

although you also have to take into account growth around the world, industrialization of the "third world", and the impact both have on oil supplies.

our energy strategy reminds me of speeding toward a brick wall and catching a glimpse of something up ahead and not slowing down because we are in a hurry and do not want to lose our progress.

No wonder Bushco is trying to get as much oil as possible - it will someday become even more valuable. Quite an investment for them I suppose.

[aldian159]

5. Nothing

We're doing nothing.

Sure, less than one percent of cars sold in this country are hybrids, getting much better gas mileage. That means nothing in the face of over 30% of cars sold being SUVs.

China and India are rapidly expanding economically. Those people are going to be able to afford cars very soon, and bikes won't be good enough.

It isn't really a matter of running out entirely. The more oil is used, the less there is, so the more it costs. Sooner or later (sooner) it is going to cost more than one barrel's worth of energy to extract one barrel, and that's when the problem's will hit.

People who say "Once oil becomes expensive, then we will research more. The market is God." forget that every modern invention has been possible because of cheap energy, and once oil becomes expensive, it will be a lot more expensive to research the alternative.

[12345]

6. Looks about right...

We're probably using more oil to steal the remaining oil than we'll end up with...

Here's an informative site http://www.peakoil.net/

I find the article about Dick Cheney's 1999 speech to the London Institute of Petroleum especially interesting.
http://www.peakoil.net//Publications/Cheney_PeakOil_FCD.pdf
He told them that by 2010 oil demand will exceed production by 50 million barrels a day...

I'm sure that it didn't come up at his Energy Task Force Meetings, though. And, of course, that couldn't be the real reason for invading Iraq.

[htuttle]

7. It's a bit worse than that

You did your figuring with a constant demand level. However, demand is still growing quickly. China's oil consumption is growing at about 7-8% per year right now. And that's just China (which eats a lot of oil).

Add to that the fact that you can't get all that oil out of the ground and still make an energy profit on it. The oil near the end is much harder to extract than when you first open the well.

And finally, nobody really trusts stated oil reserves -- NOBODY. Almost all of them are exaggerated to some degree or another.

[EVDebs]

12. ....and India is coming along well just as China is as you've said !

[SoCalifer]

9. Oil Reserves?

10 years ago it was said that if we continue consuming oil at the present rate, that the world's oil reserves would be depleted in 10 to 20 years. And 10 years before that they said the same thing.

Does anybody else see what I see? Does anybody else see this as nothing but Bullshit to manipulate prices? Does anybody else see this as nothing different then what De'Beers does in the diamond market - giving the fake illusion of less supply/greater demand?

Allow me to make these assertions:

- Oil doesn't just come from dead organic materials.

- Oil mostly comes from the near limitless supply of methane found above and below the earth's crust.

- Supporting this, is the fact that astronomers see hydrocarbons in spectral graphs from other bodies in space.

- Also supporting this is the fact that oil fields that were calculated to have already been depleted by now - are not. Giving evidence to the fact that the source responsible for that oil field, is still feeding that field.

- This war (under the guise of fighting terrorism) is really on behalf of big oil interests to secure the world's oil fields so as to eliminate fair market competition the way De'Beers has done with the diamond market.


I Don't Know. This Is Just Me Thinking...

[aldian159]

10. I'll buy your last point

And I love your comparison to the diamond market.

Never thought of it that way, thanks for giving me something to talk about with my foreign policy professor.

[htuttle]

15. The 'abiotic oil theory' is Lysenko era science from the Soviet Union

There is really no evidence to back it up, and is not considered a serious theory from everything I've read.

Interestingly enough, the abiotic oil theory has gained new life recently (or at least new publicity), although without any new science to back it up, one questions whether it is more of a political theory than a scientific one.

on edit: speling

[ComerPerro]

14. Because all Bush administration policies are short-sighted

Most republican policies are.

"Use what we have now, and let some Democrat figure out what to do when the shit hits the fan".

They are lazy.

But its not just that. If they actually showed foresight and concern for the future, they wouldn't be able to stay in the fantasy land in which they now reside. Moreover, they wouldn't be able to tell the same kind of lies to their base.

[mhr]

16. Welcome To The Peak Oil Conundrum

Your figures are in the ballpark.

Welcome aboard!

[dolstein]

17. Answer this question for me . . .

What were prognosticators saying ten years ago about how long the world's oil supplies would last?

While I favor a shift towards renewable energy sources, I think your doomsday scenario is a bit unrealistic, since it assumes we will continue to consume oil at our current rate. Rising oil prices will almost certainly lead to greater conservation, improvements in fuel efficiency and development of technologies that improve our ability to extract oil from areas from which recovery wasn't previously viable.

[EVDebs]

18. In High School they were showing us all "Our Friend the Atom" movies by

Disney. And we were told how great nuclear energy would be. Not that High Temp pebble bed reactors aren't a good thing, just that even with an exemption from the government should there be an accident, nuclear doesn't seem to be that great a back up plan.

You might put your chips on methane in the Arctic like the DoD is now, or my money would go to Zinc Air Fuel Cells, since with hydrogen fuel cells the limiting factor is the platinum catalyst required.

We can even continue with 50 to 200 years worth of coal, but who wants black lung ?

[Just Me]

20. It has everything to do with pure greed and the fastest, easiest profits.

Ya' see, the neoCONspirators don't have anything to lose and everything to gain. They just use our human resources and plummet the nation into debt in order to expand their profit and power.

They live in the present seeking to maximize profit and handing the hat of consequences and problems to someone else.