"Beyond Oil", by Kenneth S. Deffeyes

This sounds like a book very much worth reading. See the following review from Amazon.com
Peter




Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak (Paperback) by Kenneth S. Deffeyes (Author) (36 customer reviews)
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A fine introduction to fossil fuels and the consequences of their depletion., September 27, 2006
By
Donald Wulfinghoff "author, Energy Efficiency... (Wheaton, MD USA) - See all my reviews For everyone who wants a quick and credible answer to the question, "Are we really running out of fossil fuels?", this is the book. Kenneth Deffeyes explains why your life and the lives of your children may soon become unimaginably different from what our comfortable generation expects. His book will make you a better citizen and a cocktail party expert, while providing you with a few evenings of top quality entertainment.

For most of the book, Deffeyes talks about what he knows best, which is predicting the availability of fossil fuels. He covers all of them: oil, gas, and coal, including their strange variations and hopeful new sources. Included is the history and technique of fossil fuels - especially oil - and its astounding political effects. A petroleum geologist who began his career working with M. King Hubbert, Deffeyes provides the easiest interpretation of Hubbert's method of predicting the depletion of resources. Deffeyes doesn't explain Hubbert's underlying rationale, which was murky, but he clarifies the "Hubbert curve" in a wonderful way. This analysis, along with its limitations, should be understood by every educated citizen.

The big question is whether Hubbert's analysis could be wrong or irrelevant, so that we may be saved by new sources of hydrocarbon energy. Deffeyes covers the known and conjectured alternatives. A few proven alternatives are not big enough to make much difference. One huge resource, methane hydrates, is tentatively estimated to contain many times more energy than all fossil fuels combined. The trouble is, nobody knows how to extract it. Tar sands, another huge resource, consume precious natural gas to extract the oil, and they are an environmental horror. Oil shale ("neither oil nor shale") is a vast store of organic material that has defied attempts to extract it with a significant energy profit.

Deffeyes deals briefly with Thomas Gold's conjecture of deep supplies of primordial methane, and he is unconvinced. He then gives a brief gloss on uranium, perhaps the most important alternative to fossil fuels. His main contribution is to clarify how much uranium is actually available. Deffeyes himself played a role in making this information public. The last of his topics is a genuflection to the "hydrogen economy." While suggesting a variety of applications for this less-than-zero-sum game, his telling adds little hope that hydrogen will help much in the long run.

He ends with a few pages of musing on the future, where unfortunately he steps outside his expertise. Like most experts on the supply side of energy, he seriously underestimates the potential and necessity of energy efficiency. This common error doesn't seriously tarnish an otherwise exemplary exposition. As the author of a book on energy efficiency that is eight times longer than Deffeyes', I envy his ability to cover so much in a book that can be read over a weekend.

While sharing the lecture circuit with Deffeyes, I saw him as a Falstaffian figure with a jolly sense of humor about a grim subject. Retired as a Princeton professor, he is proud of having spent most of his career working with roustabouts. His personality shines through in his writing style, which is a hoot. The one major flaw is a misleading title. This book says essentially nothing about the period "beyond oil," when civilization must be fully converted to new energy sources and extreme efficiency. Its main focus is the present declining period of fossil fuels, when we may still be able to make the transition successfully. As Deffeyes makes clear, that transition must be made quickly.

No More Oil? No More Civilization As We Know It?

This article is now 2 1/2 years old, but the basic premise put forth, that the world will run out of oil and gas, remains as true today as when this it was written. What has changed is there is now a "consensus" that the world must wean itself off of oil, gas, and coal, (fossil fuels), but not because we are going to run out of those sources of energy, but because they produce carbon dioxide emissions and cause global warming. I find this stance being taken by governments and industry to be a bit odd. I intend to explore the issue farther.
Peter

from: http://www.livescience.com/environment/end_oil_041214.html

End of Oil Could Fuel 'End of Civilization as We Know It'
By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 14 December 2004 03:28 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO -- Opponents in a long-running debate over when the world will run out of oil squared off Tuesday in a crowded room of scientists, reaching only one conclusion: The supply of fossil fuels is fixed and the world economy will eventually have to wean itself from oil.
The most dire and perhaps speculative forecast calls for global oil production to peak next year -- specifically on Thanksgiving.
Others say the end can't be accurately predicted, but that it is likely decades rather then centuries away, and that the consequences will be grave: huge inflation, global resource wars -- China vs. the United States was emphasized as a possibility -- and the end of civilization as we know it.

Other experts at the face-off, held here during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, said there is nothing to worry about in the short term.
U.S. peaked already
The argument stretches back to a 1956 prediction by M. King Hubbert that oil production in the lower 48 U.S. states would peak in the early 1970s. He was right. The United States now imports nearly 60 percent of the oil it uses.
Kenneth Deffeyes, a Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, has taken Hubbert's logic a step further and predicts the world's oil production will top out late in 2005.
"It's Thanksgiving plus or minus three weeks," said Deffeyes, who grew up in the oil fields and was a researcher at Shell Oil for several years.

Deffeyes second book on the topic, "Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak" (Hill and Wang) is due out in March. His crystal ball is full of complex formulas and, most scientists agree, numbers that are impossible to accurately pin down, such as the amount of oil in known fields and how much more will be found.
"This is not science," said Michael Lynch, a political scientist and energy consultant. "This is forecasting."

Lynch agrees there are problems with relying so heavily on oil, and he sees more price volatility ahead. But he argues that many smaller deposits will be found and they will add up to "a lot of oil" over time. He also faults the running-dry-soon predictions as being based not on geology, but on politics and economics: Oil production in various countries has flattened or fell at certain times for reasons having nothing to do with how much they could produce, Lynch says.
Further, Lynch contends, it is not possible to predict the discovery of new oil fields or the true size of existing in-ground reserves. He likens current oil forecasts to stock market prediction. Charts fit history well, he says, "but they're not predictive."

Alternatives?
Likewise, analyst Bill Fisher of the University of Texas at Austin sees plenty of oil over the next few decades. Fisher sees no reason to panic. He expects the world to gradually transition to an economy based on natural gas during the first half of this century, then to a hydrogen economy before 2100. He pointed out that estimates of oil reserves tend to grow over time, no matter who does the guessing.

The debate got more complex at this point.
Caltech physicist David Goodstein sees little hope for hydrogen, which he said requires fossil fuels in order to extract. And natural gas, like oil and coal and shale (another proposed alternative) are all finite, Goodstein argues.
"The oil will run out," he said. "The only question is when."

Goodstein puts little stock in nuclear fusion, which for decades has been proposed as the cousin of fission with unlimited potential. "Fusion and shale oil are the energy sources of the future, and they always will be," he quipped. Solar energy shows promise, he said, but "we haven't figured out how to use it."
So Goodstein takes a pragmatic approach. It doesn't matter so much when we run out, he argues, but what we do about it.

Global trap
Goodstein, author of the book "Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil" (W.W. Norton & Company) sees a looming world crisis that could fuel war and bring society to its knees.
"We have created a trap for ourselves," Goodstein said.
The United States has so far avoided serious consequences from the trap by relying on imports. The country uses about 7 billion of the 30 billion barrels of oil produced annually around the globe. And it makes us rich. Oil consumption equals standard of living, experts agree.
Meanwhile, other countries are beginning to clamor for oil at unprecedented rates, and therein lies the recipe for potential disaster.

China uses a comparatively modest 1.5 billion barrels a year (perhaps 2.4 billion this year) according to some estimates. India consumes less. Both countries' economies are becoming increasingly dependent on oil, however. China's consumption is expected to grow 7.5 percent per year, and India's 5.5 percent, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security.
By 2060, oil production will have to triple just to meet global population growth and maintain current standards of living, said Stanford University geophysicist Amos Nur.
Yet China's own production has been flat since the 1980s and it now imports 40 percent of what it needs.

'When do we panic?'
"What matters in the short term is, when do we panic?" Nur said. "In my opinion, the point of panic has already taken place."

It's a behind-the-scenes sort of panic. The two largest economies on Earth -- China and the United States -- have already incorporated the finite nature of oil into their national security policies, Nur argues, citing policy statements from both governments reflecting the need to secure stability in oil-producing countries and a free flow of the resource. The war in Iraq, a country second only to politically unstable Saudi Arabia in oil reserves, is another clue, he said.
"There is a huge conflict that might be emerging," Nur said.

Some of the fine points of the various presentations were argued, even resulting in one shouting match over how much oil is in Saudi Arabia. But none of the roughly 500 scientists in the room voiced disagreement with Nur's view of the potential for war.
If the world is sliding toward global conflict over oil, the skids may be pretty well greased, politically speaking.

Governments do not have the political will to prepare for the end of oil, says Goodstein, the Caltech physicist.
"Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime this century, when the fuel runs out," Goodstein said, adding that "I certainly hope my prediction is wrong."

Nir J. Shaviv, Associate Professor, Phsyicist and Climate Scientist

This is some background and more information from Nir J. Shaviv.

The Author
This site is maintained by Nir J. Shaviv, who is an associate professor at the Racah Institute of Physics in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. According to PhysicaPlus: "...his research interests cover a wide range of topics in astrophysics, most are related to the application of fluid dynamics, radiation transfer or high energy physics to a wide range of objects - from stars and compact objects to galaxies and the early universe. His studies on the possible relationships between cosmic rays intensity and the Earth's climate, and the Milky Way's Spiral Arms and Ice Age Epochs on Earth were widely echoed in the scientific literature, as well as in the general press."


from: http://www.sciencebits.com/myresearch


Home
Personal Research
Other -->
I am an associate professor at the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Below are links to some of the more serious research I do, all explained in laymen terms. (A friend of mine always says, if you cannot explain your research in laymen terms, you probably don't understand what you're doing!).
Very Luminous Stars (and other astrophysical objects)
Passing the Eddington limit without getting a ticket: A detailed summary of the theory of porous atmospheres and how they can explain the existance of super-Eddington objects.
Cosmic Rays, their effect on the Terrestrial Climate, Global Warming, etc.
The Milky Way's Spiral Arms and Ice Ages on Earth: A detailed summary of the evidence linking between passages of the Solar system through the Milky Way spiral arm, and the appearance of ice age epochs on Earth. This including the cosmic ray flux reconstruction from iron meteorites.
The Cosmic Ray / CO2 / Climate Debate: During 2003/04, a debate raged over the question of whether CO2 is the main climate driver over geological time scales, or whether it is the cosmic rays which are dominent. Here you'll find the attacks and rebuttels.
Cosmic Rays and Climate: A general review on the development of our understanding of the link between cosmic rays flux variations and climate.
Natural or Anthropogenic? Which mechanism is responsible for global warming over the 20th century?
A primer on Climate Sensitivity, why global circulation models cannot predict it, and why empirical evidence suggests it is small. Summary of the Current Evidence for a Cosmic Ray Climate link -->Polarization Behavior of light near Magnetized Neutron Stars -->
Related research:
Celestial Climate Driver: A Perspective from Four Billion Years of the Carbon Cycle - Summary of the above research from a geochemist's point of view, that of my colleague Prof. Jan Veizer.

Carbon Dioxide or Solar Forcing?

This is an excellent article and warrants saving and reading.
Peter

from: http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar

Home
Carbon Dioxide or Solar Forcing?
PersonalResearch -->
By: Nir J. Shaviv
Natural or Anthropogenic? Which mechanism is responsible for global warming over the 20th century? According to the common perception, the temperature over the 20th century has been warming, and it is mostly anthropogenic in origin, with greenhouse gases (GHGs) being the dominant driver. Others, usually called "skeptics", challenge this view and instead claim that the temperature variations are all part of natural variability.

As I try to demonstrate below, the truth is probably somewhere in between, with natural causes probably being more important over the past century, whereas anthropogenic causes will probably be more dominant over the next century. Following empirical evidence I describe below, about 2/3's (give or take a third or so) of the warming should be attributed to increased solar activity and the remaining to anthropogenic causes.

Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye.

Population Control, Environment, Global Warming.....

In discussions about global warming, the environment, and climate change, the subject of population control comes up often. Many people seem to think that reducing population is the key to everything. My question is, how could that possibly be done?

Here is a graph showing the relative number of people living in different countries, from the largest number to the lesser. I think this graph is an important thing to keep in mind when discussing any of these issues. The top four countries are China, India, United States, Indonesia.

Peter

Science Versus Faith

This is the difference between science and faith. Make what you will of it.

Peter

Payback Time: Democrats Plan To Tax Oil and Gas, While Subsidizing Alterntive Energy

This a rather long article and hints at the changes coming in US Energy Policy. The one thing people can be sure of is our energy will cost us more. Does anyone think that new taxes on oil and gas companies will not be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices?

Is it smart for the government to tax the public (which is the ultimate effect of subsidies) to pay for unprofitable alternative energy sources? Will these taxes really significantly reduce our "dependence on foreign oil"? Will this shift in government spending really control "global warming"?

The bills essentially transfer billions of dollars from oil and gas companies to producers of "renewable fuels". This is like "robbing Peter to Pay Paul". Is it any wonder why the large oil and gas companies are investing in solar, wind, ethanol, and coal-to diesel technology. They'll be taxed in one area and rewarded in another, maintaining their profits, while the consumer continues paying more.

Or is all of this political gamesmanship, and as some Democrats are saying, "it's payback time", (no doubt with big grins on their faces)? Does any of this make sense to you? Is there a better way?
Peter

from: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/washington/18oil.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Democrats Press Plan to Channel Billions in Oil Subsidies to Renewable Fuels
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: June 18, 2007
WASHINGTON, June 16 — Senate Democrats are seeking a major reversal of energy tax policies that would take billions of dollars in tax breaks and other benefits from the oil industry to underwrite renewable fuels.

The tax increases would reverse incentives passed as recently as three years ago to increase domestic exploration and production of oil and gas. The change reflects a shift from the Republican focus on expanding oil production to the Democratic concern about reducing global warming.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee will take up a bill that would raise about $14 billion from oil companies over 10 years and would give about the same amount of money on new incentives for solar power, wind power, cellulosic ethanol and numerous other renewable energy sources. The bill is one of the signature issues this year for Democrats, along with immigration and the war in Iraq, and one in which they hope to clearly distinguish themselves from the Republicans.

But Senate Democrats are expected to go beyond the $14 billion in tax changes in the draft bill. Democratic officials said the committee is all but certain to adopt a proposal by Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico that would raise $10 billion from companies that drill for oil and gas in federal waters but do not currently pay royalties to the government.

“We are cutting back subsidies for the oil and gas industry and using that money to finance the development of new and cleaner sources of energy,” said Mr. Bingaman, who plans to attach the entire tax package to the energy bill on the Senate floor next week.
It is unclear how much President Bush or Republicans in Congress will fight the proposed tax shift. The ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, has already endorsed the $14 billion package.

But the plan could easily founder because of opposition to any one of many hotly disputed provisions in the broader energy bill. Just last week, a threatened filibuster by Republicans forced Democrats to postpone a floor vote on requiring electric utilities to produce 15 percent of their power from renewable fuels. The White House, meanwhile, has threatened to veto the bill if lawmakers do not drop a provision intended to prosecute what Democrats call “unconscionably excessive” gasoline prices.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York has proposed that oil companies be prohibited from using an accounting method called “last in, first out” for inventories that saves them as much as $5 billion in taxes a year.
Because Senate Democrats want to offset the cost of any new tax breaks with tax increases elsewhere, many lawmakers are pushing for even more tax raises from oil companies.
Oil executives are protesting loudly, saying that the proposed changes would take money away from exploring and drilling in the United States and increase the nation’s dependence on imported foreign oil.

“They talk about our companies as if they’re owned by space aliens,” said John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association. “They talk about energy security, but these provisions could have the opposite effect in terms of reducing our production here and increasing our imports.”
The oil industry has ample reason to worry. With consumers seething about gasoline prices increasing to more than $3 a gallon and oil profits reaching record highs, oil companies would be short of friends in Congress regardless of the party in power.

Beyond the immediate jockeying, however, lies a bigger question: Is Congress putting taxpayers at risk by funneling billions of dollars in subsidies into alternative fuels that are still a long way from being profitable?
Indeed, industry experts said the Senate bill greatly understated the true cost of incentives for renewable fuels. Most of the incentives are set to expire at the end of 2009 or 2010, but Democrats in both the House and Senate have called for an increase in the production of such fuels by 2022. As a practical matter, the vast majority of “temporary” tax breaks are routinely extended once they are passed for the first time.

In addition to higher taxes for oil companies, House and Senate Democrats are hitting at the oil industry in other ways. The Senate bill would give the federal government more power to prosecute companies that engage in “price gouging” on gasoline prices, which is broadly defined in the bill as charging “unconscionably excessive” prices that reflect “unfair leverage.” A similar measure is moving through the House.

Separately, the House Natural Resources Committee passed a bill last week that would, among other things, crack down on companies that cheat on royalties they pay for oil and gas pumped on publicly owned land.
In effect, the various bills would transfer billions of dollars from oil companies to producers of renewable fuels.

The Senate bill would offer $5.6 billion in tax credits over the next three years for companies that produce electricity from renewable fuels like wind and geothermal power. It would offer tax-free bonds for new power plants with renewable or clean energy. It would offer tax credits totaling about a dollar a gallon to producers of cellulosic ethanol, and even bigger tax credits for “biodiesel” fuel. It would extend and expand tax breaks for plug-in electric cars and other vehicles that use alternative energy sources, and it would provide tax breaks for gas stations that offer renewable fuels.

(Page 2 of 2)
In a nod to the politically powerful coal industry, the bill would also provide $1.5 billion in tax-free “clean coal bonds” for advanced coal-fired electricity plants and $332 million in tax credits for plants that make diesel fuel from coal.
Times Topics: Energy and Power
Democrats in the House are moving with similar legislation. The House passed a bill earlier this year that would raise about $14 billion over 10 years from oil companies, and the House Ways and Means Committee is expected to mark up a new tax bill that would offer rich incentives for alternative fuels and increased efficiency.

The Democratic bill contrasts sharply with the energy bill that the Republican-led Congress passed in 2005. The Senate bill offers less than $1 billion in incentives for coal, no tax breaks for nuclear power and tax hikes for oil. But two years ago, Congress approved $11 billion in additional tax breaks, of which $7 billion went to oil, coal and nuclear power.

“It is a dramatic change in policy, targeted at the big oil companies,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. “It will show the country the kind of things we can do by taking away subsidies for fossil fuels and putting the money into new sources of energy.”
Privately, some Democrats say it is payback time: the oil industry’s political contributions have overwhelmingly gone to Republican lawmakers and President Bush, and many Democrats say they have little sympathy for the industry now.

It is unclear whether Republicans or Mr. Bush plan to protect the industry.
In stinging criticism earlier this month, the White House Office of Management and Budget said the proposed price-gouging measure amounted to price regulation that would jeopardize investment in oil production and ultimately hurt consumers.
In 2005, Mr. Bush threatened to veto a one-year measure that blocked oil companies from using the “last in, first out” accounting method for inventories. The Bush administration, echoing charges by the oil industry, said the measure amounted to a one-year windfall profits tax that would frighten investors by raising the prospect of further tax raises whenever oil prices jumped sharply.
Mr. Schumer’s proposal is similar to the 2005 proposal, except that his measure would be permanent.

The oil industry still has persuasive clout in Washington. Exxon, Shell and trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute have hired former Democratic lawmakers and Democratic lobbyists to help press their case.
They have carefully positioned themselves, picking their fights on selected issues that attract fairly little popular interest but affect potentially large amounts of money.
The effort is mostly defensive — fending off tax increases — but also has offensive elements. Royal Dutch Shell and other big companies hope to be big players in coal-based liquid fuels. And the industry in general is still pushing for Congress to open up more areas on the outer continental shelf for deepwater drilling.

But industry executives hold out little hope for emerging unscathed.