Fossil fuels vs. renewable energy

[BasketCase]

There were no "new" sources of oil. As time passed and technology improved, oil drillers (#1) gained new and better methods of finding oil fields, and (#2), developed better methods of drilling to reach oil sources that had once been too deep, too dangerous, or otherwise inaccessible to old technology.

Oil and gas reserves are naturally finite. However, the planet is always creating more. The question is whether the planet is creating oil and gas faster than we're drilling it.

 

[carlosMM]

There were no "new" sources of oil.

Why thank you - you said that there ARE (rather: will be).

nature is producing it.

We know it's not happening in the oil fields we know and (partly) exploit - so where else?

As time passed and technology improved, oil drillers (#1) gained new and better methods of finding oil fields, and (#2), developed better methods of drilling to reach oil sources that had once been too deep, too dangerous, or otherwise inaccessible to old technology.

yadda yadda - still finite, not renewable.

Oil and gas reserves are naturally finite.

False, the KNOW deposits are finite. New ones may come into existence, though.

However, the planet is always creating more.

exactly! see? why be so imprecise in your previous sentences?

The question is whether the planet is creating oil and gas faster than we're drilling it.

Common wisdom is: we are faster in use than nature in reproduction - so I asked you if you have any data that shows otherwise. if not - why do you bring this up nayways? Just to stirr trouble?

 

[BasketCase]

We know it's not happening in the oil fields we know and (partly) exploit - so where else?

Oil fields we haven't discovered yet.

False, the KNOW deposits are finite. New ones may come into existence, though.

I already said this. I quote myself:

Since then, known oil reserves have actually gone UP as we discover new fields.

Over the last thirty years, new technology allowed us to discover oil fields that had always been there, but had not yet been discovered. That's what I meant by "new" oil fields.

 

[bathsheba666]

Stick the tax up in advance until researching alternatives becomes cost efficient. Avoid the potential chaos at the tipping point.

What they should do is put a super-high tax on cars newly bought that are fuel-inefficient. So the more fuel-inefficient they are, the higher the tax. So maybe make a fuel-chugging SUV cost TWICE as much due to the taxes. That way only rich people will get them and the taxes they pay will make up for the loss of energy.

Hate to ruin the apple pie, but it's much simpler to just tax gas, surely...

{If a by-product of this is a revolution in the US, that would be an added bonus.}

 

[carlosMM]

Oil fields we haven't discovered yet.

Doh - now again you are talking what we have found, not what is actually being created

Over the last thirty years, new technology allowed us to discover oil fields that had always been there, but had not yet been discovered. That's what I meant by "new" oil fields.

why then did you do this weird 'they ARE renewable' - 'they are finite' nonsense?
nagging for the fun of it, I'd say.....

 

[BasketCase]

Just about everything on the whole planet is both renewable AND finite. Food, oxygen, fresh water, wood. Chop down a tree, burn the wood in the fireplace to heat your home, a new tree grows where the old one was, generating more wood.

Oil is renewable this way: plants and animals die. Their corpses rot underground and are compressed under enormous pressure into oil. If it's not renewable, then....what??? God came along and created our oil???? No thanks, I'm an atheist. The stuff had to be produced somehow, and that same process that produced it in the first place, can produce more.

 

[carlosMM]

Just about everything on the whole planet is both renewable AND finite. Food, oxygen, fresh water, wood. Chop down a tree, burn the wood in the fireplace to heat your home, a new tree grows where the old one was, generating more wood.

Oil is renewable this way: plants and animals die. Their corpses rot underground and are compressed under enormous pressure into oil. If it's not renewable, then....what??? God came along and created our oil???? No thanks, I'm an atheist. The stuff had to be produced somehow, and that same process that produced it in the first place, can produce more.

sigh....

first, you again post absoluetly obvious yadda yadda - a tiny bit condescending, don't you think?

then, you just rehearse your (false) starting argument - you again misinterpret the term 'renewable'. Thus you have come full circle and I ask you to answer sensibly this post:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3096883&postcount=20

in case you're too dense to undersand the point - here it is again:
if talking about our energy needs, 'renewable' is in this case obviosuly meant to include only those sources that do not take millions of years to form.....

 

[BasketCase]

"Renewable" in a thread like this normally means solar, geothermal, wind power, and sources like that.

My original argument does not conflict with this. I stated that oil can be included as a renewable resource because it was produced by a natural and ongoing process that requires zero action from humans.

 

[carlosMM]

"Renewable" in a thread like this normally means solar, geothermal, wind power, and sources like that.

wrong - renewable here includes solar, thermal, wind because they all 'replentish' quickly, while new cola, oil, gas or urnaium takes very much longer than human timespans.

My original argument does not conflict with this. I stated that oil can be included as a renewable resource because it was produced by a natural and ongoing process that requires zero action from humans.

]And wrong again, your statement conflicts because you apply an impractical and dumb definition of 'renewable' that is in this discussion useless. As pointed out before..... if you'd read.....

 

[BasketCase]

wrong - renewable here includes solar, thermal, wind because they all 'replentish' quickly, while new cola, oil, gas or urnaium takes very much longer than human timespans.

You're mistaken about uranium--there's almost nothing natural on Earth that replenishes it. Current theory is that heavier elements were produced by stars performing fusion of lighter elements.

Any given deposit of oil does, in fact, take a very long time to form--but how many deposits, of what size, is the Earth producing at any given time? That is completely unknown. It's possible that undiscovered deposits of oil are forming faster than we're sucking the stuff up.

 

[carlosMM]

You're mistaken about uranium--there's almost nothing natural on Earth that replenishes it. Current theory is that heavier elements were produced by stars performing fusion of lighter elements.

depends - I was thinking of uranium that is accessible to humans - and that DOES get slowly replentished by volcanism.
You are, though, roughly corret, if you view the TOTAL amount of uranium on earth. That is only negligibly added to my radioactive decay of other elements that happen to produce new uranium either as a product or by bombarding other elemtents. indeed in extremely tiny amounts.

Any given deposit of oil does, in fact, take a very long time to form--but how many deposits, of what size, is the Earth producing at any given time? That is completely unknown. It's possible that undiscovered deposits of oil are forming faster than we're sucking the stuff up.

Nope, sorry - that's why I asked you for e.g. a map that shows potential depoists - we have a pretty good pic of how oil is produced. Today, there's hardly any depositional environments that might harbour large oil reserves in the future.

 

[BasketCase]

Now, THAT is a good post. Actually an extremely scary one, because that paragraph on uranium sounds like you and I are in semi-agreement on something.

Nope, sorry - that's why I asked you for e.g. a map that shows potential depoists

Thirty years ago, we humans were certain we were going to run out in 30-40 years. We turned out to be wrong. There are always new things we're discovering.

 

[Hakim]

Hate to ruin the apple pie, but it's much simpler to just tax gas, surely...

{If a by-product of this is a revolution in the US, that would be an added bonus.}

(slightly off topic: related to the CO2 emissions rather than oil shortage, but dealing with the former will soften the blow of the latter)
Increasing the gas tax seems to be more effeicient since ppl will take it into account everytime they are going somewhere. Once the high-taxed SUV is bought, the owner isn't likely to sell it the next day, and until he sells it he will consume just as much as before. However: cierdans idea is still interesting because it offers a path for those countries where high gas tax isn't politically feasible - like US.

Another suggestion is to include gas outlets in the tradeable emission right scheme (if there is one) so that they have to own emission rights for the gas they sell. When the corresponding amount of gas have been sold, the gas outlet need to buy more emission rights to be able to sell more.

 

[carlosMM]

Now, THAT is a good post. Actually an extremely scary one, because that paragraph on uranium sounds like you and I are in semi-agreement on something.

nope, not semi - we DO agree! The only difference was the reference systems we used

Thirty years ago, we humans were certain we were going to run out in 30-40 years. We turned out to be wrong. There are always new things we're discovering.

very true - but in those 30 years we have actually collected the data that was back then still lacking (sedimentology and seismology classes do cover that stuff quite well). There's no new TYPE of deposit in view, and those known will take millions of years to come into existence.
Also, there's no large supply of 'deposits-to-be' (e.g. peat deposits tht have a decent chance of sufficient burial).
So, we WILL in a relatively (compared ot the ime it takes for oil or coal to form) time run out of them, while wind and insolation will still be there.

Thus the view that FOR THIS DISCUSSION, the term 'renewable' should not be applied to fossil fuels. (I 'fear' you will agree to the logic of this, too - as again we only differ in the reference system)

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Now, no way. In the future, when we are forced to make the switch yes.

 

[zjl56]

America I think can at least do it. We have ways of creating bio diesel which most cars could switch too. Plus we have a huge supply of crops like maize that can be turned into bio diesel. Also nuclear energy should be upgraded . With nuclear energy we could create hydrogyn alot more effciently.

 

[wit>trope]

Hate to ruin the apple pie, but it's much simpler to just tax gas, surely...

{If a by-product of this is a revolution in the US, that would be an added bonus.}

I don't see why it would be simpler. The tax rated based on fuel inefficiency could be paid -- technically -- by the producers ... and it's not like they would have a tough time calculating it or that it would be hard to enforce. Elementary or Junior to Senior High school level math would be all that is required. Of course even if it is technically paid by the producers, the consumers would also be paying part of it in effect with the higher prices.

The problem with a "simple" gasoline tax is that it taxes all vehicles the same when clearly vehicles that are fuel inefficient should be taxed more per unit of gasoline ... IOW, the price you pay for fuel inefficiency should not just be a linear relationship -- it should be more "exponential" if you will than that. If is twice as fuel inefficient, you shouldn't only pay twice as more ... you should pay like three or four times as more.

I would be fine with a gasoline tax instead if it was rated based on fuel inefficiency ... but that's not practical because the gasoline stores will not be inspecting to see how fuel effecient the cars are. So it's much more easy to tax it at the sale level. Also, taxing it at the sale level avoids the unfair penalization of old people who have already long ago bought old fuel ineffecient cars. ALSO, it avoids the unfair penalization of people who have to use their car -- even a very fuel efficient vehicle -- for work purposes (like truckers, etc.)

 

[wit>trope]

There were no "new" sources of oil. As time passed and technology improved, oil drillers (#1) gained new and better methods of finding oil fields, and (#2), developed better methods of drilling to reach oil sources that had once been too deep, too dangerous, or otherwise inaccessible to old technology.

The problem with this fact and idea is that there is an upper limit on how much new stuff can be found or made reachable with technology. So it's not going to solve the problem in the long run. The gains made will become less and less in the long run as that upper limit is approached.

Oil and gas reserves are naturally finite. However, the planet is always creating more. The question is whether the planet is creating oil and gas faster than we're drilling it.

I don't think anyone thinks the planet is creating more oil than we are consuming ... or am I wrong about that? Please enlighten me.

 

[brennan]

@Basketcase. Imagine you had a map of the world that showed deposits that could in the future turn into Oil/Coal/Gas that could be exploited. Let us be generous and say that 100,000 of these deposits existed. Let us assume that these deposits had been lain down at evenly spaced intervals in the past. Let us further assume that these deposits take a mere 100,000 years to turn into exploitable deposits (generous again I think you'll find).

Logical result: 1 deposit per year will become available in the future. This is clearly insufficient to support the world's economy i'm afraid.

Now...

Forget Nuclear and Renewable, support Fusion research:
Source IoP

Europe beats Japan to ITER prize
28 June 2005

The ITER fusion experiment will be built in at Cadarache in the south of France. The decision was announced by the six ITER partners - China, the European Union (EU), Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US - at a ministerial meeting in Moscow this morning. As part of various concessions to Japan, which had also offered a site for the project, the EU has agreed "privileged partnership" status for Japan, which includes support for a Japanese director-general for the project and a significant financial package.

The decision on a site for the €10bn reactor comes after an 18-month-battle between the EU and Japan, and two decades after Mikhail Gorbachev, then leader of the Soviet Union, and US president Ronald Reagan first discussed plans to build an international fusion reactor in the mid-1980s.

ITER, which stands for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, will use magnetic fields generated by superconducting coils to confine a plasma of deuterium and tritium in a donut-shaped chamber called a tokamak. The plasma will be heated to a temperature of 100 million degrees so that the deuterium and tritium nuclei can overcome their mutual repulsion and undergo nuclear fusion - the process that powers the Sun.


ITER tokamak
ITER is designed to produce 500 MW of power and to demonstrate that it is feasible to generate power from fusion. However, it will not produce any electricity. The plasma volume will be 837 cubic metres, which is more than five times the volume of JET, which is currently the world's biggest tokamak.

Supporters of nuclear fusion argue that it has the potential to be a safe and sustainable source of energy that does not produce any greenhouse-gas emissions or long-lived nuclear waste. A fusion reactor would need just 100 grams of deuterium and 3 tons of natural lithium to produce a power output of 1 GW, which is equivalent to a large power station. The lithium is needed to generate tritium.

The EU will pay half of the total cost of ITER, with the remaining five partners paying about 10% each. Most contributions will be "in kind" in the form of actual components for the reactor rather than money to pay for them. However, the EU has agreed to transfer 10% of its procurement to Japan, to support a Japanese candidate for the post of director-general of the ITER Organisation, and to support the right of Japan to have more staff in the project than its 10% share, including the possibility of part of the headquarters being located in Japan.

The ITER parties have also agreed on a "Broader Approach" for the supporting research that is needed to make fusion a commercially viable source of energy. As part of this approach the EU will contribute €339m to the costs of projects undertaken in Japan, which could include a materials test facility or a computational centre for fusion science. And if international agreement is reached to build a demonstration reactor, the EU will support Japan as the site.

Construction of ITER should start by the end of this year and should be complete by 2015. Cadarache is already home to Tore Supra, currently the world's largest superconducting tokamak, and some 500 fusion scientists, engineers and technicians, plus another 4000 staff working in other areas. The Cadarache lab, which is close to Marseille, is run by the CEA - the French atomic energy commission.

The six partners have been discussing where to build ITER since December 2003. However, the situation was deadlocked because China and Russia supported EU plans to build the reactor at Cadarache, while South Korea and the US backed a Japanese proposal to construct it at Rokkasho-Mura, which is 600 km north of Tokyo.

About the author
Peter Rodgers is Editor of Physics World. Belle Dume is Science Writer at PhysicsWeb

ITER is intended to achieve 'breakeven' - the point at which a fusion reactor produces more energy than it takes to sustain the reaction and is intended to be the immediate precursor to a prototype commercial reactor around 2030.

Americans can support the National Ignition facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - which is a prototype 'inertial confinement' reactor - ITER uses magnetic confinement. The Japanese may build their own inertial confinement reactor.

 

[Gogf]

Despite what I want, it is not possible at the moment. As we know it, nuclear power is not renewable energy. It will take a number of years before we can reach this goal.