The threat of oil shortage is undeniably real, but it is not something that will happen tomorrow, which may be part of the problem. The pending oil shortage - the end of oil - is a long-term problem, one that requires us to keep focused on the goal of energy independence. I think what needs to be talked about is the tendency for the public to indulge in extremes: going from apathy to hysteria, without finding the middle ground of long-term planning and commitment.

The following article, written by Tom Mast, author of Over a Barrel - A Simple Guide to the Oil Shortage (March 2005), reminds us that oil will run out, and it is our responsibility to make sure that the next generation has a new source of energy.

The urgency is in the fact that it will take decades to develop a replacement for oil – we must not wait until it is too late! In the meantime, we are at the mercy of Arab dictators and international oil companies...

Oil and its alternatives: Why they are so important

By Tom Mast
March 9, 2005
© Copyright 2005 Union-Tribune

Why is oil so important? For starters, it is by far the No. 1 energy source, supplying 38.7 percent of the world's demand.

Why is oil so popular? In the United States, 27.2 percent of all energy is used for transportation, and 97 percent of transportation fuel is oil based. Why do the transportation industries focus on oil-based fuels like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to power their cars, buses, trucks, planes and ships? The answer is that oil meets transportation's unique requirements whereas other sources of energy do not. These requirements are portability, energy density, safety and ease of handling.

Portability is the key requirement. A vehicle, plane or ship must carry the energy it needs to provide the power and range its user demands. It cannot be tethered by an electric cord or a hose. Try to imagine carrying coal or nuclear energy for power in a car or a plane. Only oil has been available in quantity to meet the portability requirement.

Energy density measures the energy that can be packed into a certain space or weight. We have practical space and weight limits in vehicles and planes. The source of energy must fit into these limits and still provide a satisfactory range. To date, only oil has satisfied the world's need for range in its transportation equipment.

Safety and ease of handling are two other requirements that oil meets for transportation. Some alternatives may have difficulty meeting them.

Oil is becoming even more important because it will soon become scarce – demand will outstrip supply. Oil production will peak worldwide within the next several years and begin to decline. Meanwhile, oil demand will continue to grow unless some very aggressive fuel conservation or implementation of alternative fuels takes place.

The impending shortage of oil is causing increased contention for oil sources. Sixty-three percent of present known reserves are located in the volatile Middle East. Many feel we wouldn't be fighting in Iraq were oil not so important.

China recently has been aggressively tying up oil sources in long-term contracts and initiating purchases of oil companies. The competition for the yet-unused half of Earth's oil will only increase.

We are very unlikely to drill our way out of the conundrum of scarce oil. Nor can we conserve our way out. However, conservation of fuel will give us more time to identify and bring into mass production alternatives to oil.

What are the alternatives to oil, primarily for transportation? We don't really know, and that is the essence of the problem. We have procrastinated until the 11th hour. Alarmingly, we have not even settled on the technologies for oil alternatives. These new alternatives – and surely there will be more than one – are far from obvious today. Huge technical and social implications are attached to all of the proposed options.

Hydrogen and batteries are ways to store energy on board vehicles.

Hydrogen-fueled vehicles have received a lot of press recently. This publicity contributes to a belief that an alternative to oil is at hand, leading to complacency in the search for other fuel sources.

However, the problems hydrogen presents are daunting. Robert Service of The Financial Times wrote, "Recent reports from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society conclude that researchers face huge challenges in finding ways to produce and store hydrogen, convert it to electricity, supply it to consumers and overcome safety concerns. The transition to a hydrogen economy, if it comes at all, will not happen soon."

Battery power is also an energy storage system, rather than a source of energy. A battery supplying energy to power a vehicle gives portability to all the sources of energy that can be used to generate electricity, a major advantage. These sources can be nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar, all of which are non-polluting.

However, the promise of battery power also brings with it the issues of range, power and weight. These are critical, perhaps fatal, concerns for the use of batteries in aircraft. Batteries' weight and short range also have made them fairly unattractive for use in motor vehicles to date.

This brief discussion of just two possible alternatives to oil-based fuels puts in sharp relief the state of our research and development of alternative fuels for transportation. We simply must organize and accelerate our efforts to replace oil before we reach a crisis.

We should have a panel of scientists and engineers providing an evolving technical road map showing the problems and prospects of all energy alternatives so resources can be directed efficiently by policy-makers. And, we should be forcing fuel conservation in order to extend the time we have to identify and implement oil's replacement.

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Tom Mast is author of "Over a Barrel: A Simple Guide to the Oil Shortage" www.overthebarrelbook.com

I think we'll have something to burn in our vehicles, but it may not solve all of the problems that some would like to see solved. If we can't burn hydrogen, we can manufacture other gases like methane that may give a greater energy density. We've been handling natural gas for a long time which is a good part methane.

CH4 will give us CO2 + (two) H2O. While this still produces greenhouse gas, it will be pretty clean.

I think when the demand goes up that some of "artificial" bureaucratic delays in getting plants built and product out the door will be swept away.

The cost will be high until the capital costs of the new plants are paid off.

I hope you are right about that, because the "artificial" bureaucratic BS is a big part of the problem.

Yes, the "capital costs are high", but we seem willing to fund military ventures that are far more costly than building new plants... of course not knowing what plants to build is also a big part of the problem.

Both renewable and nuclear energy could be used to provide the carbon-free energy needed to "recycle" CO2, taken out of the atmosphere, and reduced it to CO + O. The Carbon monoxide can then be combined with hydrogen gas to make synthesis gas, which is feedstock for synthetic fuels including methanol.

Nobel laureate George Olah, professor of chemistry and director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute at the University of Southern California, is advocating the recycling of CO2 as a replacement for fossil fuels and a solution for global warming.

www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/recycleco2.html

This web page also tells about Scientists who have invented an "artificial tree" that can suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, and then release it on demand in a concentrated stream that can be used as feedstock for Dr. Olah's CO2 recycling technology, or sequestered. These artificial trees could conceivably continue to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, and reverse the global warming trend... Wow!

So let's enact a carbon tax. It's been discussed many times. Bring the price of gas up to the world price of $5.00 a gallon. take the $3.00 in tax money and offset it with a sliding scale tax credit to every person with a JOB: a $5.00 per hour (or whatever the math comes out to) tax rebate, tapering off with higher base pay rates.
This will make possible a living wage; it won't cost businesses a nickel; it will discourage the use of big SUV's and encourage the use of carpools.

An idea whose time has come.

Cheap energy in America has always been an illusion. It's time to wake up.



Or, why don't we match the Arabs dollar for dollar with an oil tax to make gas cost $5.00 a gallon, like it does all over the world. Offset the tax with a REBATE to people earning under $200k, to make it revenue neutral.

Then watch the market adjust - fewer SUV's, more carpools, less traffic

Freedom4All, let me first begin by thanking you for your contributions here and at AmericanEnergyIndependence. But I'm afraid I must take issue with a couple of points:



The end of oil, the point in time when the exploration/extraction/refining of even sour (high-sulfur) conventional oil becomes economically unviable, may in fact not be so long-term. In fact, several experts have posited that the 'peak' may occur in 2005, or may have already. Among these are Matthew Simmons, a former Bush economic adviser, and Kenneth Deffeyes, Professor Emeritus of Princeton University. The end of the Oil Age, (or Carbon Age), doesn't refer to the final utter depletion of the planet's reserves, but to a point where the rising demand curve nears (it doesn't have to meet, much less surpass) the actual peak global production. There has been a fair amount of volatility in oil prices lately, to say the least. This will continue for a time, dependent on refinery capacity, manufacturing demands, political factors, etc. But that volatility will find itself increasing dampened out, with higher and higher prices becoming the new OPEC standard.



There is no arguing with this statement. Unfortunately, the decade we needed to have begun serious alternative-energy efforts is not the Twenty-oughts, but the 1960's. There is far too much ground to be made up for any meaningful relief from alternative energy sources, even including some of the more promising ones: biomass and solar-thermal, for instance.

While it may be admirable to maintain a positive outlook in the face of imminent danger, taking a hard look at the geologic, economic, and technological realities will probably get you further along the road of survival in the event an actual oil emergency occurs. What I have found during my exploration of PO (Peak Oil) is that basically two mindsets exist, and that each is unwilling to acknowledge the relevance or importance of the other two.

Firstly, there are those who believe that the "Peak"; the point on the geologic/economic curve when global demand for petroleum exceeds the production capacity of the oil industry, will result in terrible, even horrific circumstances. The worst of these, notwithstanding the loss of heat and light, is the loss of the critical infrastructure of Industrial Age food production; processing, packaging, transportation to market, refrigeration, and of consumers driving to market and returning home to cook or freeze the produce. In this worst-case scenario, a massive die-off of the human population occurs as a result of the shutdown of western industrialized agriculture.

Secondly, those who believe that as petroleum prices increase, demand will decrease. Energy prices will lower along with periodic cooldowns of overheated economies such as China, India, and the US. Along the way, energy alternatives will be either discovered or advanced to neatly fill in the gap as required. There have been a few encouraging advancements made, and vigorous efforts are being made by industry and government, together or seperately. However, the various solar/wind/biofuel/etc technologies while potentially valuable for light-industrial and small community electrical power, cannot together replace the role oil has had on Western Agriculture/Industry.

Thirdly, the geo-optomists, who believe in a perpetual process of ongoing discovery and new extraction techniques as technology progresses. No need to worry about a lack of the bubblin' crude until after the middle of this century. Wildly optomistic is one thing, delusional is another..

i'm adding your site to our blogroll on the new blog don.

i was looking for it earlier, thanks for pointing it out again.

ok it's up there:

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...=blog&blogid=1&

I kinda like your idea, Jeff. Although living in the country and working in town, hurts the car pooling idea for me. But we sure as hell have to do something.

Don -

I appreciate your observations. I did not intend to suggest that "long-term" means we can sit back and relax.

You are right, the problem cannot wait.

I said, "I think what needs to be talked about is the tendency for the public to indulge in extremes: going from apathy to hysteria, without finding the middle ground of long-term planning and commitment."

Then I followed with, "The urgency is in the fact that it will take decades to develop a replacement for oil – we must not wait until it is too late!..."

Are you saying "It is too late"... because, yes it is urgent, but it is never too late... we don't have a choice, do we?

Do you agree that the general public is swinging between hysteria and apathy, with the vast majority remaining in apathy?

Your observations - the three groups:

The first group is hysterical, the third group is both delusional and apathetic, and the second group is made up of Libertarians who are content to let the market solve the problem.

Where are the concerned citizens? Where is the call to political action?

I am continuing to drop 'suggestions' wherever I can that point to viable technologies that can be developed now.

There are many to choose from:

Biodiesel can replace transportation fuel now:
http://www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/biodiesel.html

Peroxide and Sugar could replace transportation fuel now:
http://www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/peroxide.html

Both are liquid fuels and would also eliminate CO2 from the global warming picture.

We can also create synthetic fuels from our huge resources of carbon, such as coal, tar sands and shale:
http://www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/...drocarbons.html

Plug-in hybrids can reduce our fuel demand to 1/10 of what it is today, if all cars on the highway were PHV's:
www.missouri.edu/%7Esuppesg/Hydrogen.htm
"The first technology which enables utilities to move us around is plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A plug in hybrid electric vehicle is in essence a souped up version of the hybrid vehicles (e.g. Toyota Prius) currently entering the auto market. In addition to a battery with a 20-50 miles range that can be charged using a standard electric outlet, plug-ins also have a fuel tank. Thus, unlike the electric-only cars that entered the auto market in the 1980s, plug-ins offer the same driving range as gasoline powered cars... Unlike conventional hybrids which use gasoline from mile zero, plug-ins use electricity to power most of the range of the battery. When the car exceeds its battery range, its shifts seamlessly to gasoline power. Since 50% of cars on the road in the U.S. drive 20 miles a day or less, most of the driving in a plug-in is fueled by electricity. Overall, plug-ins can reduce gasoline use by 85%. This is so dramatic a reduction that a plug-in SUV actually would consume less gasoline than a standard compact car... Most of America's electric power is generated from domestic resources such as coal, nuclear power, and natural gas (barely 2% of U.S. electricity is generated from oil.) While the money spent on gasoline ends up increasing the trade deficit and padding the coffers of corrupt and dictatorial oil producing countries who funnel large sums of it to the terrorists with whom we are at war, money spent on electricity for the most part stays in America. Since most of the power for a plug-in vehicle comes from domestically generated electricity, wide use of plug-ins can shift the transportation sector from imported to homemade energy."
-How utilities can save America from its oil addiction
by Gal Luft, Co-Director, Institute for the Analysis of Global Security

http://www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/efficiency.html


Home heating oil can be replaced with "renewable" Boron, regenerated by solar, wind or nuclear energy:
BORON: A BETTER ENERGY CARRIER THAN HYDROGEN

http://www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/energystorage.html

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The reason why I keep "dropping" these American Energy Independence links all over the place is because you never know when someone who has not heard of these things may click and learn something they didn't know before.... and maybe that someone might just be the next President of the USA!

Hey, if you know of any new technology that you would like to see included on the American Energy Independence website, send an email to: Ron@AmericanEnergyIndependence.com

The site is a growing library of energy links. The political bias is clearly stated on the main page... Cut off the flow of oil money to the Middle East, and you will stop the expansion and threat of militant Islam.

I think the terrorism connection with oil is a more imminent concern than peak oil, but they are directly related.

If we had only had the cojones...

WE could have captured the carbon tax money and used it for OUR PEOPLE instead of GIVING IT to those despicable low lifes, OUR GOOD LOYAL FRIENDS, the SAUDIS, exporters of HATRED and TERROR worldwide.

But, no. The Bushies are like family to the Saudis.

In fact, they ARE family.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

You know, people will agree with you, until they realize it will raise the price of gas.

They don't like it but they will pay the oil companies and the Arabs, but if an American politician trys to do what you suggest... they "destroy" him/her.

So, no politician will do it... that means you and I have to do it...

Who

Yes you and .... Grassroots!!!!!

Keep talking it up Jeff!!! eventually it will sink in. We the people are paying 5$ a gallon now, only we don't see it at the pump, we see it in budget cut-backs, on all social services - so we can put the money into the military to defend the flow of oil!

Hey, check out the link I put on the previous post to Don..

The Plug-in Hybirds: Why PHEV is so Important

Yes, I believe in http://www.americanenergyindependence.com . In fact I think http://www.americanenergyindependence.com is just super!

BIODIESEL AND ETHANOL!

WE CAN BECOME FULLY SELF-SUFFICIENT!