RE: Educated Opinions on Climate Change . . . . Peak Oil 3

[ornerynorsk]

Not to derail the original thread from its focus of discussion on AGW, but the argument is often made that we are running out of fossil fuels.

Disclaimer (flashing lights and sirens) I am no geo or petro expert, not even a novice, not even by the furthest stretch of the imagination. With that in mind, let me bring up the subject of peak oil as it relates to some supposed successes the Soviets had with ultr deep wells and rejuvenation of wells which had apparantly suffered flow reduction to the point where, conventionally, they would have been abandoned and removed from service.

Interesting stuff, and I would very much like to hear back from folks who are genuinely knowledgeable in the field. Total bunk, something to it, or have we all been handed the deluxe bill of goods from big oil and our collective western governments?

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[bigTomHanks]

You will know when the world is experiencing a real fuel crisis because there will a war that the world has never seen before. Under the oceans there is more fuel available than we could ever use and we haven't even come close to getting all the oil under the land. The whole world uses around 1 cubic mile of oil in a year. The earth is 260 billion cubic miles total. Do you still think we are running out of fuel?

 

[SnTMan]

TGS4, cranky108, you two are like I am with cars. I don't worry about the resale value. By the time I am done with them they don't have any

Regards,

Mike

 

[cranky108]

In pure $$$$ terms, driving to work is more efficent.

SnMan, If I were to sell my small truck, I might get $1500. It would cost more for me to replace it than I would get to sell it. It gets good millage, and still runs. And even if it did not run, it probally would cost less to fix it than to buy another.

About the only reason I would sell it is if one of these lead footed @#$%^ were to hit it.

The problem is the newer cars are so much more expencive because they have all this complicated stuff that we really don't need.
Air bags? If you are wearing seat belts, what does the airbag do for you?
Electric heated seats? On-star? Power stearing?

If you want to make car more fuel efficent, then get rid of all this extra stuff that wastes energy.
And I mean with reason. Anti-lock breaks do save lives.

 

[TGS4]

Oh, but crank108, the electrically heated seat makes life soooo much better. My next car will likely also have a heated steering wheel, too.

From where I stand, the NPV of the FV of my current car when I am done with it is essentially zero.

zdas04 - you're right. But we actually have the "power" to prevent ludicrous spending of public dollars on transit. I have no issues if spending approaches what you describe happened in Denver. Unfortunately, that's a 3-sigma outlier.

 

[dvd]

OP: peak oil, ultra-deep wells, well rejuvenation?

 

[SnTMan]

cranky108, well not to brag, but I have TWO small trucks, each worth less than yours

Plus, you can't get small trucks that are SMALL anymore.

Regards,

Mike

 

[SomptingGuy]

Incremental costs are important once you've shelled out for a car and it's fixed costs (insurance, tax, maintenance).

A return train ticket from my home to Plymouth is more than £100 these days. It costs £70 to fill my car with diesel. That will do the return trip, carry all my luggage and avoid the cost of taxis to/from the stations. If I have a passenger, they go for free.

Plus sticking a few hundred miles on the car makes it go better - fully charged battery, empty DPF, dried out exhaust.

I use the train when travelling into Londinium, partly because of the cost (congestion charge, parking), partly because it's easier and partly because I'll no doubt be on the sauce.

- Steve

 

[ornerynorsk]

Thank-you DVD. Things do tend to go off on a tangent, even though the two are related! Often guilty of it myself. LOL.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[SnTMan]

SomptingGuy, you want to take a train around here you're hopping a freight.

 

[moltenmetal]

David: I'm afraid your ideology is influencing your analysis again, even with the AGW thing off the table in this thread.

I OWN a Prius, have over 125,000 km of mixed city/highway on it. My average year-round fuel consumption on the thing is about 5.2 L/100km which is about 45 miles per US gallon. The car has NEVER gotten anything close to as bad as 20 mpg, even when I was dragging a parachute in the shape of four bicycles on a rack at 130 km/hr!

I drive this car no differently than I drove my tiny Civic hatchback and the best I did with that thing was ~ 7 L/100 km year-round average. With my commute, that's made a big difference in my fuel bills. My foot hasn't gotten any lighter, although I do anticipate my stops a bit more than I did with the Civic. The Prius has A/C and the CVT, whereas the Civic had a 5 speed and no A/C. It's a much larger and MUCH more comfortable car.

5.2 is worse than the EPA mileage stated for the vehicle which is 4.0/4.2 city/highway, but not by much, and that's true for any car. Based on contact with many Prius owners, my mileage is typical unless you take lots of very short trips. 45 mpg is WAY better than any SUV, much less a freaking Land Rover!

For pure highway driving, you can do modestly better than the Prius with a turbodiesel, but the emissions- the ones we BOTH agree are harmful, not the CO2- are far worse with the turbodiesel, and in North America your turbodiesel choices are few. The Prius is a super-low emissions vehicle which also happens to have excellent fuel efficiency.

The battery in the Prius has 20 kg of nickel in it. That doesn't make much of a difference to the embodied energy of the vehicle. And embodied energy doesn't make much of a difference to the overall energy consumption of a vehicle anyway, unless you pack it in after 100,000km or less.

We agree about the benefits of all this shale gas, and the potential to use this for transport fuel. We disagree about whether or not gas to liquids technology has much room for improvement. Currently you end up with less than 1/4 of the feed carbon in the (useful) products- that's terribly energy inefficient relative to upgrading bitumen etc. regardless how cheap your gas is.

Improving reservoir recoveries is an obvious consequence of increased prices. But that will only take you so far.

As to peak oil: we'll run out of planetary carrying capacity for the effluent long, long before we run out of gas, oil, heavy oil, bitumen, kerogen, coal, methane hydrates and the like. But these resources are finite, or renewable but only on the geological timescale, and have higher value uses than as fuels. Those non-fuels uses are very much more difficult to substitute with renewables or alternatives than it is to use fuels more efficiently.

 

[zdas04]

mltenmetal,
I was just relaying an observation of a popular TV show. Their analysis was not in any way to be considered a scientific analysis. Now that I think of it, they may have been comparing a diesel LR3 to the Prius so the range was more likely 48 mpg and 47 mpg instead of the numbers I suggested above, I just remember that the Land Rover did better in miles per unit of fuel.

I don't like the Prius because everyone I know (or know of) that has one has this annoying holier-than-thou attitude that they are personally saving the planet from us SUV drivers. Maybe they are. Don't know. Don't care. Just don't want to be talked down two because of the fact that I feel I need two 7,000 lbm SUV's that don't come in diesel in this country. I would buy diesel Land Rovers if they were available in the U.S., not for conservation but for increased distance between fill-ups. Transportation fuel is not a significant portion of my budget and until/unless it is, conservation is not an overriding concern.

David

 

[SomptingGuy]

Distance between fill-ups is why I like my diesel. My odometer is sitting at about 400 miles at the moment and I'm thinking it might be time to fill up again soon, needle below the 1/4 mark.


- Steve

 

[TGS4]

noltenmetal - thanks for sharing your real-world experience with the Prius. I've always wondered about how they perform in Canada's colder weather, in actual day-to-day use.

With the lower fuel consumption, do you think that you have paid off the higher initial cost? Have you seen a decline in battery performance - vis-a-vis the lady in California suing Honda over their hybrid Civic? What's your outlook on replacing the battery? (I'm just curious - my better half is thinking about buying one, but I don't know anyone who has owned one).

 

[cranky108]

I actually like having a small truck, and have had a few offers.

I won't sell because I don't like all the extra stuff in the newer ones. But rear wheel drive can be a drag in winter.

Because of the packages to convert smaller trucks to electric I suspect there will be a market for them, just not enough to make me sell.

 

[SnTMan]

cranky108, the biggest market for them here is for "export" to Mexico. I could sell both mine in a minute if I wanted.

 

[hokie66]

What are the reasons for the dearth of diesels in the US market? In the much smaller market of Australia, many of the sedans and almost all of the SUV's and utes (pickups) are available with diesel engines. For instance, and since David so much likes Land Rover, the 2.7 litre V6 Land Rover Discovery engine is now (since mid 2011) selling like hotcakes in the Ford Territory SUV.

 

[zdas04]

I was talking to a Mercedes salesman about the time that their diesel SUV was introduced in the U.S. (4-5 years ago) and he said that the EPA test protocol requires several years and costs $3-4 million USD to complete and document. Then the EPA takes another couple of years to review the paperwork before they send it back because of a typo or two. He said (and this is just a salesman talking to a prospective purchaser so take it for what its worth) it took them over 10 years to get the design approved and he thought that any change to the engine would require them to start over. He said that there is no problem with any of the modern turbo-diesel's meeting the standards, it is just that the test protocol is so difficult. I recently reviewed the EPA test protocol for certifying combuster destruction-effeciency (which is a pretty simple beast compared to an engine) and I don't see how it could be done in less than 6 months. Those guys are out of control.

I don't know if it is true that the hold up is the EPA test protocol or not, but my Land Rover dealer says that he could sell 3-4 times as many diesel LR4's (Discovery 4 in the rest of the world) as he's selling of the gasoline engines and he's selling the gasoline engine version as fast as he can get them on the lot, it really is a fantastic vehicle. I don't think that the dearth is economics.

David

 

[jgailla]

The diesel issue could also be the cost.
Up until a couple of years ago, diesel was a little cheaper than regular unleaded.
Now it is more expensive than premium unleaded.
I see fewer diesel light trucks on the road now than five years ago, but it could just be my perception.

 

[zdas04]

From what I'm seeing, the cost of diesel isn't a driving factor in the analysis. The Mercedes dealer I was talking to (when diesel was just slightly higher price than gasoline) said he could sell 3 diesel SUV's for every gasoline. His clients were setteling for gasoline rather than wait for a diesel. Now that diesel is 30% higher, I would still run to it to double my range.

David

 

[SomptingGuy]

Ford Focus, with Lynx engine. Endura, as some call it.

67 mpg (bigger UK gallon though) on a run.
Takes a while to heat up in the winter (too bloody efficient).



- Steve