Peak Oil News and Message Boards

Yep, that's right - we have so much carbon fuel really there's doubt whether we will ever use it up. Plus climate change is total garbage.

When you've stopped laughing click on the link below to the association of British drivers…

http://www.abd.org.uk/carbon_reserves.htm
Reference
The BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2001, a definitive account of worldwide status. No longer available on line.
Current Version: Statistical Review of World Energy 2005

I've written a bit on my Blog about these Buffoons mainly because couldn’t believe what I was reading…Mind you is it any surprise?

I'm ashamed to say that I used to think exactly like that, and had there been an organization like that in my town (Burlington, Ontario, Canada) I likely would have joined. I hated traffic calming and low speed limits, and the massive amount of "political" stop signs that are put in every block just to appease local parents.

Of course my views on personal transportation have changed somewhat since then. Now I laugh at people who value their cars that much.

I can understand the attraction of thinking that way. Wouldn't it be wonderful if they were right? And even if they are wrong (as most of us believe), I bet they will enjoy their summer much more than most peak oilers. Ignorance is bliss. Is it too late to choose the blue pill? How about a nice mindwipe?

I am planning motoring trips this summer. I suppose it is profoundly selfish.

My excuse is in having my children see and experience some of what I have seen and experienced while growing up through the peak of the easy motoring lifestyle.

MD wrote:I am planning motoring trips this summer. I suppose it is profoundly selfish.

My excuse is in having my children see and experience some of what I have seen and experienced while growing up through the peak of the easy motoring lifestyle.

Great pic

MD wrote:I am planning motoring trips this summer. I suppose it is profoundly selfish.

My excuse is in having my children see and experience some of what I have seen and experienced while growing up through the peak of the easy motoring lifestyle.

do it and enjoy. I drive my bicycle 80% of the time. Once every two years i pack the pickup and go do it. I live in the wild (hiking and fishing and backpacking) and go to a motel every 4 -5 days or so if rivers are too cold so i can shower if i cant find public showers.
Try and drive between 65 and 55. It saves alot of gas and your vehicle. I just went cross country. I love this country.
Have fun with the family and drive safely.

MD wrote:I am planning motoring trips this summer. I suppose it is profoundly selfish.

My excuse is in having my children see and experience some of what I have seen and experienced while growing up through the peak of the easy motoring lifestyle.

God, no. I didn't mean that any and all driving is selfish when I said I had reconsidered my ways. I simply look down on people now who think driving is a fundamental right that deserves to be protected over many other things (like governmental finances, health, and oh yeah, peak oil). I commute to work but still (necessarily) drive to do errands on occasion (I can bike to Canadian Tire to get some plumbing supplies, but I can't easily haul a week's worth of groceries in a backpack...) With the way our society is laid out right now it's extremely annoying to get by totally without a car.

Edit: I don't know if I'm going to enjoy my summer any less than those people. From the tone of that website, it sounds like they're about to have a coronary at any moment. I go biking three to five times a week, there's great trails within a 10 minute ride from where I'm living, I take a bus every couple of weeks to Kingston to see my girlfriend, and I continue to work on my energy-issues scrapbook. Peak oil gives me the willies sometimes, but most of the time I can function without worrying too much about it.

Wildwell wrote:Yep, that's right - we have so much carbon fuel really there's doubt whether we will ever use it up. Plus climate change is total garbage.

When you've stopped laughing click on the link below to the association of British drivers…

http://www.abd.org.uk/carbon_reserves.htm

I've written a bit on my Blog about these Buffoons mainly because couldn’t believe what I was reading…Mind you is it any surprise?

You are all wrong! There's enough oil to last for 2,000 more years, and that's ASSUMING the a 4% annual rate of growth!! There is no global warming! CO2 is dieing at the gates of my ice cube'd castle!

Ah yes - Whenever you see "R/P", it's time to turn tail and run.

no doubt ooil will be around for 200000000 years or more....
Just not in commercialy viable form. A pocket here, a pocket there, a left-over in a Arabian well long since abandoned to the sands.

OK. My favorite line:

Total up the other carbon sources and you will get something like 500 years.

I'm just wondering if those "other carbon sources" include the members of the association of british drivers?

"And your little dog too!"

Having gone through the site, what I particularly object to is this Myth/Fact stuff. Hardly any of what they talk about is accepted practice or science. You always do get differing viewpoints, and in some cases disputes, usually because of vested interests rather than a philanthropic cause. But just to rubbish the whole of climate change debate because of one book, written, no doubt, by someone with vested interests or a plain maverick is almost fraud (Note – we expose the truth bit!) – Especially considering there are 928 Peer-reviewed papers on the subject.

I actually mailed them about peak oil a couple of months back hoping they would take a responsible view or present both sides of a story. Apart from completely misunderstanding the concept, they have chosen to go for one of the most extreme views possible, a flavour which pervades their website in general.

No one is stopping them driving their cars or forcing them to do anything, except perhaps when they become unaffordable. No one is holding them responsible for the 3500 deaths and 279,000 injuries on British roads per year. So why stick two figures up at those families when someone tries to curb the deaths? Why rubbish any alternatives to the car? For some journeys, especially into cities, cars aren’t actually that convenient. Birmingham, London and Manchester are almost always better by train. I’ve tried cars with all these cities and it’s just slow, difficult to park, and you never get quite where you want because the parking is full, or even when it's not you still have to walk a distance and worry about your car getting done over.

They mention Oxford. The whole reason why Oxford is pro cycling and pro public transport is it’s an old city with just a few main roads leading in, the people that use the park and ride bus services do so because it saves them time, not because of some green agenda, it’s an issue of practicality! Perhaps they would prefer this historic city to be demolished to stick a motorway through, completely missing the point that no one would then visit because it would have been ruined!

Suffice to say I regard these people as at best buffoons and at worst almost criminal in their attitude. Has any one told them it’s a privilege and not a right to drive?

Their views on resource depletion and climate change are totally INSANE. It reminds me of an alcohlic convincing himself 10 pints of beer a day is doing him no harm, just because it makes him feel good.

However they are right about the British Government, who are probably more short-sighted and delusional than the ABD.

Hi

Why does the topic of depleted oil reserves necessarily mean that we need to give up our cars?

Vehicles can be made to run on virtually anything - renewables included - so why does this debate on oil running out appear to resemble more a back-slapping exercise for those who want to stop people using their cars?

Regards

Roger

rogersavage wrote:Hi

Why does the topic of depleted oil reserves necessarily mean that we need to give up our cars?

Vehicles can be made to run on virtually anything - renewables included - so why does this debate on oil running out appear to resemble more a back-slapping exercise for those who want to stop people using their cars?

Regards

Roger

The short answer is any of these energy sources that could potoentially run cars are either depleting like oil (ie natural gas) or are not scaleable to run 700 million+ cars(bio diesal, electricity , hydrogen etc etc)

Hope this answers your question!

PB

The problem is that agriculture takes a lot of energy, you get just over 1 barrel of biofuel out for every barrel of oil you put in. Its like hydrogen, it is a substitute for oil but not a practical energy source.

rogersavage wrote:Hi

Why does the topic of depleted oil reserves necessarily mean that we need to give up our cars?

Vehicles can be made to run on virtually anything - renewables included - so why does this debate on oil running out appear to resemble more a back-slapping exercise for those who want to stop people using their cars?

Regards

Roger

The short answer to why cars don’t fit very well with energy depletion is there is no combination of fuels that can run what were running now, at least at the time of writing. I write some pretty ‘anti-car’ stuff, not because I dislike them, far from it, it’s because the sort of way we are using them now is unsustainable. The more we base society around cars, the worse the end result is going to be.

The first problem with private transport: Its use is ‘at will’. A large proportion of car journeys are replacing journeys which are less than 5 miles and could be walked or cycled. Because it is such a convenient mode of transport, it is by its very nature wasteful.

Now, most people here, me included, would like to carry on the way we are doing now. However the current prospects of that are not especially good.

The most important concept is ENERGY RETURNED ON ENERGY INVESTED, or EROEI. In short, this is how much energy you are getting in return for energy you are putting in. Most alternative liquid fuels are net energy losers. IE You are putting in more energy than you are getting back.

It can be summed up like this:

ENERGY INVESTED is this -
In order to ACQUIRE energy, it TAKES ENERGY.
In order to TRANSPORT a form of energy, TAKES ENERGY.
In order to STORE energy, TAKES ENERGY.
In order to USE energy, also TAKES ENERGY.
ENERGY RETURNED is this -
After you have taken into account all the energy used above...how MUCH ENERGY do you have left? OR How much energy does it actually COST in order to USE a particular form of energy?

For more info see:

http://www.eroei.com/the_chain/eroei.html

Biofuels and hydrogen tend to be (but are not always) net energy losers.

The other thing to consider is scalability: How much land do you need for biofuels? The answer is an awful lot. For hydrogen, you need to make the element and store it, which is energy intensive and problematic. You need a lot of extra power sources against a crunch in sourcing natural gas, oil and at some stage other fossil fuels.

A lot has been written about hydrogen both in favour and against.

http://www.energybulletin.net/2563.html

http://www.energybulletin.net/4541.html

Here is a quick primer, but there’s plenty on this site about Hydrogen and Biofuels as well as energy sources. Most people would be delighted to be able to keep running cars, but as it stands the current way the road and air system is being run is unsustainable.

smallpoxgirl wrote:

Total up the other carbon sources and you will get something like 500 years.

I'm just wondering if those "other carbon sources" include the members of the association of british drivers?

The short answer to why cars don’t fit very well with energy depletion is there is no combination of fuels that can run what were running now, at least at the time of writing. I write some pretty ‘anti-car’ stuff, not because I dislike them, far from it, it’s because the sort of way we are using them now is unsustainable. The more we base society around cars, the worse the end result is going to be.

By using a combination of the current, commercially viable alternative fuels, we could buy ourselves more time and reduce our usage and reliance on oil. Future technology is likely to reduce oil depletion even further. Modern life is already built around the car - part of the progress we've made over the last century. Personal transportation is essential for modern life and perfectly viable as it's currently used. Far more energy is used to power and heat homes, but nobody would argue that this is a necessity. I'm afraid if attempts were made to dramatically reduce car use/ownership, economies and lifestyles would be decimated. In short, this would be society going backwards - regression. Cars are a necessity in the modern, civilised world.

People live in homes, people drive cars. Perhaps we should therefore ask ourselves how many people the world can accommodate...

Roger

I hear this argument quite a lot: We must have cars. Well, 27% of British households don’t have cars, rising as high as 63% in some cities. Most cities have 50% car ownership per household. (Source census 2001).

60% of trips made by cars are less than 5 miles while 25% are less than 2 miles. In some areas as high as 71% of trips by cars are under 5 miles and 43% are less than 2. All these journeys would have been walked or cycled previous to the 1950s when car ownership became popular. Is it any wonder there is an ongoing obesity and congestion problem in towns?

It is myth that all trips generate GDP or contribute in some way to the wellbeing of society. While no one can deny that car travel has increased people’s liberty and mobility this has come at social cost. A little less car use might actually be beneficial, but the point is when you start looking at the figures of fuel consumption you soon begin to realise that is it a tall order to replace the fuel used by these vehicles by some other means. I’d be delighted if someone could come up with a sensible and sustainable plan to fuel increasing car usage and other heavy oil use (Eg airlines) but so far there is very little, if any evidence that this could be done, certainly in the timeframes being talked about, if at all.

Many people on this forums believe that population reduction and economic collapse are a certainty. While I don’t hold such negative views, I do hold the view that what we are running today and the way we are running it is unsustainable. Whether that lettuce flown in from Israel at a 127:1 calorie benefit loss, or wasteful methods of transport or means of production. This does not mean that I am (or anyone is) necessarily anti car, it does mean there are a number of limits that we face.

As for population reduction, what do you suggest, shooting Chinese people in order for you to visit the supermarket by car instead of walking? I guess I’m not alone in finding that entirely unacceptable.