Argument against high gas prices

Will it really peak in 5 years? I think not. Google Thomas Gold and
non-biogenic oil and you will find that the party line may not be
true.

Not sure about the peak - depends on how good the reserve estimates of
the Saudis are, but then we know they never lie, do they?

Thomas Gold and Fred Hoyle were astronomers who between them came up
with a number of pretty wild ideas, one of which was that Venus would
turn out to be solid petrocarbons. So far, apparently Sweden has
actually found 80 barrels of oil in their test of Gold's hypothesis
after spending $$millions of dollars drilling in crystalline rock.
But the source of that 80 barrels might just be percolation from
nearby oilbearing strata.

Would you feel any better if production peaks in 10 years instead of 5
in the face of increasing demand?

Paul kgyy wrote:
Will it really peak in 5 years? I think not. Google Thomas Gold and
non-biogenic oil and you will find that the party line may not be
true.

Not sure about the peak - depends on how good the reserve estimates of
the Saudis are, but then we know they never lie, do they?

Thomas Gold and Fred Hoyle were astronomers who between them came up
with a number of pretty wild ideas, one of which was that Venus would
turn out to be solid petrocarbons. So far, apparently Sweden has
actually found 80 barrels of oil in their test of Gold's hypothesis
after spending $$millions of dollars drilling in crystalline rock.
But the source of that 80 barrels might just be percolation from
nearby oilbearing strata.

Would you feel any better if production peaks in 10 years instead of 5
in the face of increasing demand?

No, but with increases in drilling technology that number might well be 100
years.

On Jun 8, 1:07 pm, "Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net
wrote:

Would you feel any better if production peaks in 10 years instead of 5
in the face of increasing demand?

No, but with increases in drilling technology that number might well be 100
years.

Or not.....
If there are 100 years of production, we might have enough time to
find alternative somethings.
If there are substantially fewer years, worst case we are already in
deep doo-doo.

So, ya feel lucky???? Or do you think that working on conservation
and increased efficiency might be a good idea. After all, there is no
downside to using less fuel to do the same thing now, is there?

wrote in message
ups.com...
On Jun 8, 1:07 pm, "Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net
wrote:

Would you feel any better if production peaks in 10 years instead of 5
in the face of increasing demand?

No, but with increases in drilling technology that number might well be
100
years.

Or not.....
If there are 100 years of production, we might have enough time to
find alternative somethings.

Think of technology 100 years ago. Understand, too, that our biggest gains
are in the past generation and technology is accellerating. Geometrically,
not linerally.

Okay,
If there are substantially fewer years, worst case we are already in
deep doo-doo.

So, ya feel lucky???? Or do you think that working on conservation
and increased efficiency might be a good idea.

Given what I pointed out above, I'd say you're full of poop.

After all, there is no
downside to using less fuel to do the same thing now, is there?

Depends on what you cut. BTU's per $GNP has been falling for 20 years.

Fuel use is motive and it's that factor that moves our economy, our
prosperity, and our well being.

There is so much induced waste that could be eliminated, but it would
require politicians and bureaucrats to get off their asses.

Having said that, I notice a lot of people hotrodding away from traffic
lights. At the same time, I see cities and towns stiffling traffic flows to
produce traffic fine revenue and gridlock. In case you haven't figured that
last one, inducing gridlock gives the bureaucrats a great media ploy for for
money, resources, authority.

I'll mention (again) that studies going wayyyy back have shown we waste 15%
and more of our fuel with streets clogged due to fouled traffic controls.
That doesn;t even bring into account the tens of thousands killed due to
poorly planned/executed systems.

If you answer to nothing above, answer just this: given governments
propensity to create shortages, what would you propose?

I'm guessing more government regulation and coersion. See my remarks about
"gridlock" above.


--
Matt Barrow
Performace Homes, LLC.
Cheyenne, WY

On Jun 8, 9:11 pm, "Matt Barrow" wrote:

Think of technology 100 years ago. Understand, too, that our biggest gains
are in the past generation and technology is accellerating. Geometrically,
not linerally.

Certainly our technology has grown in a century.
However, frequently in the past, civilizations and societies have
collapsed because they have outstripped the natural resources upon
which they depended. Maybe water, maybe wood, whatever.
It can happen again. But now it could also be widespread, as in
worldwide, because of our communications and transportation links.
(Refer for example, to Jared Diamonds very readable book "Collapse",
about the way civilizations fall.)
I'm surely optimistic that we can avoid major problems, by more
quickly developing solar, etc. However, if we don't there could be
huge problems. Primarily I am aware that huge amounts of (primarily)
oil allow us to get food and water to cities. RAPIDLY cut the oil,
and stuff can't get in and people can't get out. Food production
itself is highly oil-dependent.


Given what I pointed out above, I'd say you're full of poop.
I doubt that. But given the enormous stakes, I would hope we do
enough soon enough to avoid the major problems.
After all, there is no
downside to using less fuel to do the same thing now, is there?

Depends on what you cut. BTU's per $GNP has been falling for 20 years.

Fuel use is motive and it's that factor that moves our economy, our
prosperity, and our well being.

There is so much induced waste that could be eliminated, but it would
require politicians and bureaucrats to get off their asses.
They want to stay in office. They will primarily support what we want
them to. And most of the citizenry in this country don't care.
Furthermore, we can act without them. I work to lower my power and
water use, but my neighbors and some family think I'm crazy. They
might be right, but efficiency and conservation are still excellent,
immediately available, low-tech, low-investment ways to stretch our
resources until alternatives are more accepted.

Having said that, I notice a lot of people hotrodding away from traffic
lights. At the same time, I see cities and towns stiffling traffic flows to
produce traffic fine revenue and gridlock. In case you haven't figured that
last one, inducing gridlock gives the bureaucrats a great media ploy for for
money, resources, authority.
I might agree with your "result" but not generally with your motive.
There's just a heckuva lotta cars out there.
Refer to rec.autos.driving for a whole lotta people who agree with
your government conspiracy ideas.

If you answer to nothing above, answer just this: given governments
propensity to create shortages, what would you propose?
I'm guessing more government regulation and coersion. See my remarks about
"gridlock" above.
Not so much MORE regulation, as a shift in what they do, to things
that make more sense.

1. Stop subsidizing energy and resource consumption.
2. Shift some tax burden to fossil energy consumption, and use the
funds to subsidize clean energy, such as solar. (A side benefit of
having solar panels on every house is that the generation is
distributed, and therefore less susceptible to disaster/sabotage/
terrorist events.) Note that I don't want more total tax, just a
shift.
3. Very gradually, but persistently, raise the taxes on gas and
diesel. Use the proceeds to correct the diminishing road funds (they
need to be corrected for inflation), and make sensible fuel-efficient
mass transit. Make it clear that this will happen so that people and
companies can make plans and develop alternatives in good order.
4. Plan cities so that people can live, work, and shop all in close
proximity. We are currently forced to drive to get just a quart of
milk. Many standards actually preclude people from doing this. A few
cities are wising up.
5. Raise the energy standards for home construction. I live in
Phoenix, and the walls in this oven have the same insulation standard
as coastal California: R13 batts from the 1950s, improperly
installed. Raise the minimum standards for air conditioning
efficiency. Most homes being built here now could not be designed to
consume MORE energy if you really tried.
I firmly believe that we could reduce out energy consumption by about
50% with little or no real change in lifestyle. But here energy is so
cheap that we don't care.

Matt Barrow
Performace Homes, LLC.
Cheyenne, WY

In article .com,
wrote:

... and make sensible fuel-efficient
mass transit.

I wonder if the people who are so hot for user fees for us rich pilots
and aircraft owners also support mass transit that is self-funding.

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)

On Sat, 09 Jun 2007 18:37:22 -0700, wrote:

(Refer for example, to Jared Diamonds very readable book "Collapse",
about the way civilizations fall.)

It's certainly very readable, but I happened to read it after visiting
Greenland and reading everything I could lay my hands on about the
Norse settlements in the southwest of the island. (They existed from
about 900 to about 1300, during the Medaeval Warm Period, however
spelled.) My conclusion was that Mr Diamond didn't have a clue what he
was talking about. He was just trying to stuff the Norse into a
formula he'd already created.

The Norse ran sheep and cattle in Greenland, and they survived as long
as they had contact with Europe. But about 1300 the North Sea iced up,
the Inuit moved south, and the climate of Greenland got too cold to
support a European lifestyle. There was probably also some erosion
caused by the Norse. Anyhow, they died out. But here's the kicker:

The Danish/Greenland government in the 1950s successfully
re-introduced sheep to the southwest, and within the past ten years
they've been able to re-introduce cattle. So if there is indeed global
warming, what it has created so far--at least in the semi-Arctic
north--is a climate very like that of Europe in the year 1000.
(Apparently the records aren't good enough to say "the world".)



Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942
forthcoming from HarperCollins www.flyingtigersbook.com

On Jun 10, 5:31 am, Cubdriver usenet AT danford DOT net wrote:

The Danish/Greenland government in the 1950s successfully
re-introduced sheep to the southwest, and within the past ten years
they've been able to re-introduce cattle. So if there is indeed global
warming, what it has created so far--at least in the semi-Arctic
north--is a climate very like that of Europe in the year 1000.
(Apparently the records aren't good enough to say "the world".)


I've yet to finish the book completely--I loaned it to someone else
while I read "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by the same guy.
In general, Diamond writes about various reasons for societal
collapse, and resource depletion is a common cause. Climate change,
such as drought (and cooling) also figure in to human history.
But I don't recall that "global warming" in today's sense was what he
was writing about. In any case it wasn't what "I" was intending to
introduce. The thread started--and seems to be--about gas prices and
running out of fossil fuels. (Global warming is an intelligent topic
that has been politicized to the lowest common denominator. I go
there only with fear.)

Regardless of whether or not fossil fuel use contributes to global
warming, the use also has a number of other downsides, including
pollution. The likely remedy for ANY of the supposed problems is
about the same: conserve and increase efficiency.

The biggest problem I am addressing is the depletion of the resource,
and the idea that this depletion could occur relatively suddenly. We
can delay/soften this through efficiency and conservation, and this
would give time for alternatives to be brought up to speed.

The added problem today is that, if there is a serious fossil fuel
catastrophe, it will be world-wide instead of local. Climate changes
benefit some humans even as it harms others. Fossil fuel depletion
with have global impact, because of the dependence on it for food/
water creation and distribution. The humans who would be least harmed
are those who are currently more on a subsistence level, and fairly
independent of world trade. (I'm not an alarmist, and I'm not
predicting this. It is a worst-case, and possible, scenario.)

To keep this in the newsgroup, if gas gets really expensive, soaring
will be the way to go. Hitch up the horses and have them run really
fast! (Soaring is great NOW, too!)

BTW, (since you brought it up), I just yesterday saw an article about
Greenland. Seems that the few degrees of warming is allowing the cod
to come back to Greenland fairly strongly. But the shrimp will
probably go away. It has to do with changing ocean temps in that
area.

On Jun 8, 1:54 pm, Paul kgyy wrote:
Will it really peak in 5 years? I think not. Google Thomas Gold and
non-biogenic oil and you will find that the party line may not be
true.

Not sure about the peak - depends on how good the reserve estimates of
the Saudis are, but then we know they never lie, do they?

Thomas Gold and Fred Hoyle were astronomers who between them came up
with a number of pretty wild ideas, one of which was that Venus would
turn out to be solid petrocarbons. So far, apparently Sweden has
actually found 80 barrels of oil in their test of Gold's hypothesis
after spending $$millions of dollars drilling in crystalline rock.
But the source of that 80 barrels might just be percolation from
nearby oilbearing strata.

Would you feel any better if production peaks in 10 years instead of 5
in the face of increasing demand?

The amount of oil wasn't the point, the fact that there were 80
barrels of oil in what has been considered non-oil bearing rock
(granite) at a depth where it shouldn't be is a strong support for the
non-biogenic theory. Russia looked at the results of this experiment
and decided to explore the Dneiper river basin, a place where
conventional theory said oil wouldn't be likely. That basin is now
the largest oil producing field in all of Russia. There is a
technical paper written by a couple of Russian petroleum engineers on
this topic that I have read, it is very interesting.

Western oil companies continue to publicly poo-poo the non-biogenic
theory, but the Russians seem to have adopted it.

Coal is clearly biogenic, but there is a lot of coal in the world
which can account for ancient plant and animal life trapped in the
earth. Oil comes from very deep down, and it is harder to believe
that dead plants and animals could be responsible for all that oil at
such great depths. The recent findings that the oil in one of the
Gulf of Mexico fields was being replenished from a deeper source via a
fault line (reported in the Wall Street Journal) also tends to support
this theory.

Thomas Gold was right about the composition of the surface of the
moon, and of the nature of pulsars, and has been right about a lot of
other things that were initially considered far out. Time will tell,
but I think there is a lot of merit in the non-biogenic theory.

While people believe that the supply of oil is very limited, the
prices will remain high. If it is found that the supply is way
underestimated, the value of the oil will drop (standard commodity
rules apply) which is not in the best interest of the oil companies or
OPEC. I expect that we will be told that the oil supply will peak in
5 years for at least the next 100 years. It will just always be 5
years away from whatever day they happen to say it.