Robert Hirsch On Gas Prices

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Thu May 29, 2008 3:28 pm

Now we can have a nice discussion about the best way to encourage that kind of financing. Hint: it involves a certain amount of government policy, although probably not a whole lot.

Go to the McCain thread. He buys AGW. (Does he believe it? He is a politician - who knows?). If he carries out his general principles re: Polywell there will be plenty of funding - with milestones. And he knows about Polywell.

In any case, I think no matter who wins his principles will be adopted.

tombo · Post by **tombo** » Thu May 29, 2008 5:15 pm

I've kept a good job because I had the guts to tell the customer the truth when everyone else was afraid to.

Yes, the truth is important.

But arguing against anthropogenic CO2 heating is kind of like arguing against evolution.
Sea level rise is measureable etc. etc. but you can't prove it one way or the other until it is too late.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Thu May 29, 2008 5:51 pm

Sea level rise is measureable etc. etc. but you can't prove it one way or the other until it is too late.

Yep the current worst prediction for sea level rise is on the order of 3.3 mm per year. At that horrendous rate the seas will rise about .33 m in a century. About a foot. Run for your lives before we all drown.

BTW current measurements are in the 1.8 mm a year range. i.e 6" in 100 years projected forward. The sky is falling. Give Al Gore all your money and keep the poor of the world poor. Otherwise who knows what could happen?

Let me add that the sea buoys currently measuring sea temps say they are slowly falling. Satellites also confirm falling Earth temps.

The solar guys say a Little Ice Age is coming. No sun spots today.

http://spaceweather.com/

What if we do the wrong thing? And sure men survived the ice age. How many men will the Earth support when 1/2 of North America, Europe, and Asia are under ice?

The best thing to do? Nothing - while technology evolves.

There are plenty of reasons to improve our energy supply situation. Global Warming is not one of them.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Thu May 29, 2008 7:40 pm

But arguing against anthropogenic CO2 heating is kind of like arguing against evolution. Sea level rise is measureable etc. etc

Sea level rise is pretty minimal, about the same as it's been since the last Ice Age ended.

Warming is a near-certainty, a significant anthropogenic component to that warming is likely, significant net negative consequences by 2100 from that putative anthropogenic warming are unlikely, the lack of catastrophic consequences is a near-certainty.

When Al Gore shows you a movie where Florida is covered by water, he's being very disingenuous.

Did you know the latest prediction is there will be no net warming from 1998 - 2018?

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Thu May 29, 2008 7:57 pm

TallDave wrote:
But arguing against anthropogenic CO2 heating is kind of like arguing against evolution. Sea level rise is measureable etc. etc
Sea level rise is pretty minimal, about the same as it's been since the last Ice Age ended.

Warming is a near-certainty, a significant anthropogenic component to that warming is likely, significant net negative consequences by 2100 from that putative anthropogenic warming are unlikely, the lack of catastrophic consequences is a near-certainty.

When Al Gore shows you a movie where Florida is covered by water, he's being very disingenuous.

Did you know the latest prediction is there will be no net warming from 1998 - 2018?

Yeah. That one is a real hoot. The Climate Science geniuses only started predicting that after record temperatures did not show in 2005, did not show up in 2006, and worst of all despite record highs predicted for 2007 temps actually fell off a cliff in 2007.

You know. I have to wonder why they didn't predict it in 2006. The science being so iron clad and all.

And do the vaunted climate scientists have a super model (wooo hoooo) that gives them all their super predictions? Why no. The have 22 models and they average them. Why do they do that? Because they do not know which friggin model is right and they hope by averaging they can come closer to reality. Voodoo Science. Totally.

We have computers. We have code. We have scientists. The sky is falling. Give us your money.

And did you know your money has a gypsy curse? Give us the rest.

Best of all: We are from the Government. We are here to help. Give us everything you have got. Otherwise how can we help you?

Jccarlton · Post by **Jccarlton** » Thu May 29, 2008 10:21 pm

i have lived near the sea for my entire life. I have lived on Long Island Sound for a good part of that. I occasionally see the sea wall behind the house I grew up in. Living in that house for almost thirty years I know where the high tide line is. I have photographs dating back to the early part of the last Century. In all the time the high tide line is in the same place. I went by there a couple of months ago. The high tide line is still in the same place it has been for over a century. James Cook made a mark in an obscure place of the high tide line over 200 years ago. The high tide line still goes through the center of the mark. The evidence is that in spite of all of Jame Hansen's ravings, personal observation is that the sea level is not rising.
Last year there was snow in Beijing. It was snowing in the northern US as late as this month. We see a period of zero sunspots. Yet these high powered scientists still talk about AGW. Why? Because it gives them and the people behind them a reason to have us give up our liberties to them and let the ilks of the Club of Rome run things to suit themselves.
http://green-agenda.com/index.html
As far as I am concerned it would better to deal with the worst case of the AGW scenarios than to give people kie this the power they so much desire. I've seen too much of what the Soviet Union was like to think any other way.

frog · Post by **frog** » Fri May 30, 2008 5:32 am

WOW! People making sane noises in the face of the POLITICAL CORRECTNESS maddness!!! How terribly refreshing! MORE...MORE...MORE!!!!

WillKell · Post by **WillKell** » Fri May 30, 2008 4:18 pm

Wow,
I am on the forum!
I have followed you guys for quite sometime and I have read just about all that Tom, Strout, Msimon, Talldave and others have written, here and elsewhere.

I am cautiously hopeful about Polywell fusion. Very exciting except I wish Rnebel would tell us a little more, but I will take what I can get.

I also enjoyed reading the recent discussion on AGW and I must say I am a non believer... However I think it is probably best not to spew carbon into the air into forever, but doing so may be benefical to some point.

On my stupid myspace site, which I keep to track my kids, I have blogged almost totally about AGW, most of it is comedy but the blog titled "I have seen this stuff all my life" is my serious opinion.

But if you can keep from being upset by a denier! I am sure you will get a laugh from it. http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea ... =153756254

Anyway I am happy to be here and look forward to seeing the progress of IEC. One last thing, I believe that if polywell turns out to be a dead end (which I hope not), It will not be a dead end anyway because it will lead us there from what we learn from it.

Saludos All
Will

Roger · Post by **Roger** » Fri May 30, 2008 11:08 pm

[quote="TheRadicalModerate"]

Current US daily production = 5.4 Mbbl/day
Current world daily production = 83 Mbbl/day
So US production = 6.5% of world production.[/qoute]

The 83Mbpd is not crude oil production alone, that includes the Canadian tar sands. World crude oil & condensate production jan '08 is about 74.5 Mbpd

http://www.eia.doe.gov/ipm/

The EIA is the go to source in this case.

Also consider the US uses about 20Mbpd.

Munchausen, you forgot to mention the part about super light crude (API 40+) fields are not being found. And drilling 28k ft, like at Jack, thru a mile of ocean has never been done before.

That so called giant oil field discovered in Kazakhstan also has poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas. Special techniques nee to be developed to safely extract this oil.

Anwar at peak would provide something on the order of 170k bpd.

Jccarlton · Post by **Jccarlton** » Sat May 31, 2008 2:40 am

This begs the question, are we not finding oil because there isn't any or because we are not looking? From what I have seen the oil exploration business essentially died due to low prices and the severe restrictions in the lower 48.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Sat May 31, 2008 6:37 am

And drilling 28k ft, like at Jack, thru a mile of ocean has never been done before

No one's ever built a working fusion reactor either.

Look at the source for that graph; they're a peak oil study group; it's not very reliable.

http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/200 ... g-gap.html

The truth is, we have huge reserves that built up over the last 25 years because they weren't economical at the oil prices of the 80s and 90s. if the peak oil guys were right, the markets would be pricing oil at $1000/bbl.

Anwar at peak would provide something on the order of 170k bpd.

Again, questionable sourcing. Here's what the USGS said:

Low and high ANWR yearly development rates ranging from 250 to 800 million barrels per year are postulated for each of the three USGS estimates, forming 6 cases.
Projected ANWR peak production rates range from 650,000 to 1.9 million barrels per day across the 6 cases.
For the mean resource case (10.3 billion barrels technically recoverable), ANWR peak production rates range from 1.0 to 1.35 million barrels per day

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petr ... mmary.html

Roger · Post by **Roger** » Sat May 31, 2008 6:46 am

Jccarlton wrote:This begs the question, are we not finding oil because there isn't any or because we are not looking? From what I have seen the oil exploration business essentially died due to low prices and the severe restrictions in the lower 48.

Low prices back in '88 seems to have put a damper on things. Yes there is oil being found, but at increasing depths, no longer less than a mile, and as deep as 5 miles, and in tuff spots, like a salt layer over the reservoir. And in much smaller fields.

No super giant fields have been found since 1960, no giant fields since 1980. TO give you some perspective the largest oil field in the world is Gahwar in Saudi Arabia, 164 miles long. which at best used to pump about 6 Mbpd, ANWAR, if developed would pump 160k bpd. The largest field in decades is probably Mexicos Jack, predicted to yield about 1.5 Mbpd. Gahwar was 1st drilled circa 1949, water injection started in the early 1960's, and now Gahwar is pumping out over 60% water at the north end, some wells at the north end have been plugged because they pumped out 100 % water.

BAck in the day, the best place to pump was the shallow high quality oil, API over 40, for reference deisel is API 30, gas is API 60. Also important is rock porosity, Gahwar's north end has porous rock, easy to pump, the middle and south ends are progressively less porous. So all the easy high quality oil has been found, and mostly pumped out.

Also important are impurities like sulfur & poisonous hydrogen sulfide. With Light sweet crude all but gone, medium crude with sulfur contents over 2%, means refinery's have to build catalytic crackers to process crude before it can be traditionally refined.

Less pure, deeper, smaller fields cost more to develop.

I have no idea what you mean by severe restrictions in the Lower 48, whose production peaked in 1971.... again all the good big easy oil was found before WW2.

Mexico peaked in 2004, Saudi Arabia 2006, Kuwait Iran have both peaked, US in 1971, Alaska 1988, North Sea 1999. Only Russia and Iraq have not peaked.

TallDave · Post by **TallDave** » Sat May 31, 2008 7:23 am

again all the good big easy oil was found before WW2.

Probably true, but not very relevant at today's prices. Even $50/bbl oil is profitable today -- but you can't drill offshore in the lower 48.

Also, a lot of places still haven't been explored, such as Greenland.

Roger · Post by **Roger** » Sat May 31, 2008 12:40 pm

TallDave wrote:
again all the good big easy oil was found before WW2.
Probably true, but not very relevant at today's prices. Even $50/bbl oil is profitable today -- but you can't drill offshore in the lower 48.

Sure, thats why the tar sands shifter into hi gear after 60/bbl. Greenland: sure, but we dont yet have the technology to drill in Greenland. As far as offshore drilling in the lower 48, I'm not familiar with any significant fields on the scale of ANWAR or larger. I was trying to find info on the Florida straights
I've heard there is oil there, how much? I dunno, but it seems to fall under the radar at 10kbpd or less. Maybe Cuba is interested.

TallDave wrote:

Also, a lot of places still haven't been explored, such as Greenland.

And the western half of Iraq too. But the geology doesnt look promising in the first place.

The real problem is the old giant fields are declining, trying to replace a 6mbpd field with a 1mbpd field doesnt cut it.

drmike · Post by **drmike** » Sat May 31, 2008 1:11 pm

70% of the earth is covered with ocean. There are a lot of places that have not yet been explored, Most are really hard to get to, but that is beside the point. There may well be lots of large fields in the deep ocean.