I wish I hadn't deleted my old blog. Google no longer has my January 1, 2008 predictions cached. No luck at the Wayback Machine either.Some of the predictions were no-brainers (Obama vs McCain). IIRC, I said US markets would be down 20% for the year, but this would be considered good compared to other markets. I said the euro would slide and the dollar would gain. I also said oil would be at $50 by the end of the year. It may not make it to $50 by the end of December, but I think it will within a year and then drop even further.
The oil despots are desperately trying to keep prices propped up, but their attempts no longer work. The bubble psychology has been broken. The bombing of the Turkish pipeline last week was met with yawn. Two months ago if news broke that Russia and Georgia were at war, oil futures would have soared. Melonhead's mask has been removed, and what we see is a dinky little tyrant wannabe witnessing his power slip away. The evil dwarf rattles his sabers against Israel and The Great Satan, but the energy markets no longer care. The US is slipping into a recession (a mild one compared to other countries, in my opinion), with dropping demand taking away the last prop that keeps the oil despots in power. When China and India stop subsidizing gasoline, demand will drop even more. Putin, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, these assholes are all on borrowed time and they know it.
"Peak oil" is a fraud. There is no oil shortage. The only reason why "proven" reserves appear to be dropping is because most of the world's reserves are controlled by the oil despots who refuse to allow modern western drilling techniques and state-of-the-art measuring systems. You think it's coincidence that Mexican and Venezuelan oil output is declining when these oil companies are nationalized and run by corrupt cronies of the political leaders?
5 comments:
One point I'd make, Lou, about your statement that " "Peak oil" is a fraud." I imagine it is undisputable scientific fact. There is a finite amount of oil available in the planet, and we will at some point hit the maximum production point, after which production will decline. Unless we discover that oil is a renewable natural resource or something, I think we have to assume that peak oil will at some point come into play.
I'm not an alarmist, but I'm a little less sanguine about the need to move onto another energy source, pronto. Check out my blog - a few days ago, or maybe weeks, I linked to a MIT discovery that should make home solar fuel cells much more pragmatic in the relatively near future. Things like this give me hope.
I say not to worry, the second coming will be here before MIT has a solution. Just a hunch.
The folks talking peak oil are good (not as good as Lou), but like all projections you gotta take it as being only slightly better than flipping a coin. IMHO
Peak oil is a fraud. There is no evidence that oil is supply constrained.
Since the dawn of the petroleum industry in the mid-19th century,
concern
has been expressed about the imminent exhaustion of the world's
petroleum
supplies. From today's perspective, such concerns were certainly
premature, and even ludicrous:
* "Hurry, before this wonderful product is depleted from Nature's
laboratory!"
--advertisement for "Kier's Rock Oil," 1855
* ". . . the United States [has] enough petroleum to keep its kerosene
lamps burning for only four years . . . "
--Pennsylvania State Geologist Wrigley, 1874
* ". . . although an estimated two-thirds of our reserve is still in the
ground, . . . the peak of [U.S.] production will soon be passed--possibly
within three years."
--David White, Chief Geologist, USGS, 1919
* " . . . it is unsafe to rest in the assurance that plenty of petroleum
will be found in the future merely because it has been in the past."
--L. Snider and B. Brooks, AAPG Bulletin, 1936
Rapeseed, sunflower/safflower, algae, the list is long before we even start
fiddling with the genes. We only use oil because it's all over the place,
cheap and easy. Whale oil is really good for lubricating the chain on my
motorcycle so that it doesn't yank so much.
Peak oil better be a fraud; otherwise, I wouldn't be able to buy petroleum jelly for various... uhh... unsavory activities in which I participate. ;-)
Bob,
The MIT thing is another scam - no need to use fuel cells at your home when there are already lithium batteries available.
Making hydrogen from water via room-temperature electrolysis is less than 60% efficient.
Subtract another 10% for the energy needed to compress that hydrogen to a manageable volume.
Then you have to run it back through a fuel cell (nowhere near 100% efficient)
On the other hand, you could just run that electricity into a set of 95% efficient lithium batteries.
Most analysts think Tesla's 53 kWh battery pack (and associated electronics) costs under $25K - that capacity would meet an average home's night-time power needs just fine.
The costs of a fuel cell alone suitable for residential power production is at least an order of magnitude more expensive than that.
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