We have our own oil, the Tar sands, oil shale.....

Originally posted by Amur Tiger
That's what's you're missing if it's economically viable then you haven't stopped or helped the peak oil problem oil prices will still be higher then we can afford for many of the more common uses.

According to the artical you are wrong. It says with current oil prices it is economically viable. That is the whole reason they are revisiting the idea!

Also between the energy costs and the fact that none of the systems for extracting the oil are very efficient would easily make you lose more oil then you get.

Sorry, but you are wrong. It is working in Canada as we speak with the same kind of condition (did you even read the artical?). With US federal backing, the methods would become even MORE effecient.

I'm not talking about using more processed oil I'm taking about the difference between what's in the ground and what you get out of it. For example it could well be(I don't know the exact figures obviously) that for every 4 barrels estimated in the ground you only get one out. If you still consider yourself covered then you should take a look at how well the U.S. economy has done with current oil prices, if oil prices are so high that it's worth getting it out of all of these places then your economy may have already collapsed or been reduced considerably.

First off, the US economy is growing faster then the EU is. In fact, in all of Europe, only Ireland is growing faster. Secondly, again, oil prices are high enough RIGHT NOW to make it economical! That is the whole damn point! We don't need to wait for it to get up to $100 a barrel!

nightbreid says:

"I'd like to see us get weaned off fossil fuels altogether, but sustaining our own oil habit will have to do for now."

I think that's a short-sighted approach. If we wait until we have no oil at all, how will we possibly power our infrastructure changeover? And don't think any effort to get out of our hydrocarbon-addition will be easy; it'll be more complex than the Manhattan and Apollo Programs combined, in terms of technological innovation, cost, and national will.

If we don't start now, we'll probably fail.

"There's so much free power out there, we just need to simplify the technology and make it more accessible and attractive to the majority of consumers."

"Free power"? Care to amplify (pun intended)?

jprophet 420 says:

'hfuel cars exist and are stable, there is no need for crude oil at all."

Where does the power come from to crack the hydrogen, and compress it, and store it, jprophet?

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
jprophet 420 says:

'hfuel cars exist and are stable, there is no need for crude oil at all."

Where does the power come from to crack the hydrogen, and compress it, and store it, jprophet?

I know

I know

Pick me


OIL.


Or hydrocarbons in the big picture.

[edit on 17-4-2005 by edsinger]

According to the artical you are wrong. It says with current oil prices it is economically viable. That is the whole reason they are revisiting the idea!

However does that mean all of it is viable? not by a long shot. Only the very largest of the fields(like Alberta) are viable with current oil prices, by the time it's viable for the smaller ones and therefor the majority prices will have climbed too high already to avoid major economic damage.

>>>I think that's a short-sighted approach. If we wait until we have no oil at all, how will we possibly power our infrastructure changeover? And don't think any effort to get out of our hydrocarbon-addition will be easy; it'll be more complex than the Manhattan and Apollo Programs combined, in terms of technological innovation, cost, and national will.

ulshadow says:

"yep, it's not going to be easy but don't we already got most of the hfuel cells research done, the only big problems is to get everyone to get hfuel cells cars."

Ulshadow, I think you believe the hydrogen fuel cells are a new type of energy.

They're not. They're just a new type of battery.

Just like it takes energy to charge up a battery for later and more convenient use, it takes power (and a lot of it) to separate the hydrogen from the water, compress it, store it, and move it from one location to another where it will be loaded into fuel cells to release its energy.

As a matter of fact, given unpleasant things like the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, it will take more energy to charge up the cells than the cells will produce, given inefficiencies in the production processes.

So the neat thing about h-fuel is that it's a good method for storing energy, but that's all it does. It's not creating it, and we still have to deal with how we'rer going to produce the energy to produce the hydrogen.

Although bacterial processes will liberate hydrogen, it is not yet cost-effective, and it may never be cost effective for large quantities. www.afrlhorizons.com... is an example of research that the US Air Force is doing in this field, but it is very preliminary.

Photovoltaics are another source of energy to liberate hydrogen from water, but they are extremely expensive for the power they put out, and tharte are a lot of environmental, as wel as engineering and cost concerns, that people don't seem to be paying attention to.

Stirling-cycle engines in offshore platforms running off the thermal delta between deep- and surface ocean water temperatures are a possibility, but a lot of work still needs to be done since we don't have any really large Stirling-cycle enginese in place. In other words, it would work in theory, but it hasn't been proven in large-scale practice.

Nuclear power is probably the best bet for proven large-scale energy production, whether to crack water into hydrogen or just to squirt electricity into homes and businesses. If course, it has its drawbacks, too, including waste problems, but it's probably the best of a not-very-appealing set of choices.

I don't like the concept of ripping up the ground in Utah/Colorado wherever to get at the Tar Sands. It doesn't upset me from an environmental pov, b/c I'm not much of an environmentalist, but more from a philosophical pov, if that makes sense. Rip it up, tear it up, consume consume consume. I think we should really put a lot of effort into renewable clean energy, not just b/c the oil may run out, but that it will improve the health of our collective unconscious.

"you're a virus, mr. anderson"

That's what I'm reminded of.

yep, it's not going to be easy but don't we already got most of the hfuel cells research done, the only big problems is to get everyone to get hfuel cells cars.

Screw cars, they're a commodity of convinience that we really don't need if good public transit is put in place, based on electrically run trains, trams and trolleys. The 1 hour + commute to work is one of the biggest wastes of resources(presonal and state) and space of this and the last century. First of all we probably shouldn't be living that far away from work and if we must then we should be making use of mass transit instead of hundreds if not thousands of cars for every big office downtown. This commute is a big reason we're considering ripping up the surface of the planet for oil, as zamphir mentioned it's a very virus like activity.

Sure, Amur tiger, that sounds good but how are we going to pay for such things and make them efficient in the huge spaces we live in in the western united states.

You are right about personal transportation, but how can we replace oil in our distribution infrastructure.

You can't run semi's or trains on fusion power.

[edit on 18-4-2005 by LeftBehind]

You can run electric trains on them, and Semi's are just as bad if not worse then cars as an assult on the enviroment and efficiency, only around because the goverment pays for roads. I'm not saying it would be cheap or easy, quite the opposite it would be expensive and hard but probably not as bad as many of the other options.

Okay amur you make some points, but you are dead wrong on the effeciency of semis in the US. With this much space there is no feasible replacement.

By the way keep in mind, I'm not advocating our ridiculous consumption, more just arguing that it's not sustainable.

[edit on 18-4-2005 by LeftBehind]

We used to have a very effective system that covered the entirety of developped North America and it was trains. While I could see short trips for semis between the rail depot and the store being nessesary(though they could avoid this too I think) the long trips simply aren't needed and would lose so much money if they had to pay for the roads they use.
Though if you're reffering to electrical trains you may have a point as I don't know that there are any systems on that type of distance or scale.
BTW I live in Canada while works by the same silly standard

[edit on 19-4-2005 by Amur Tiger]

[edit on 19-4-2005 by Amur Tiger]

It could be done Amur, but not without huge amounts of movey invested in completely reshaping our distribution networks and building thousands of miles of train tracks. It is much more feasible for canada, but here it would be close to impossible.

I know it would cost a lot of money but once again it's cheaper then anything else I've seen proposed, the main cost being the electified train lines penetrating deeper then ever before into suburbia. Transmission lines for the power wouldn't be as big of a problem because there is a pre existing system.
Have they actually torn up the long tracks in the U.S.?
Because I don't see why it would be so much more difficult, I beleive you, but I just don't know why. Even then if this is close to impossible I hate to think how possible the other options are, though there could be reasons for that to work better.

I know for a fact that Los Angeles is almost completely devoid of any suitable public transportation system.

And yes it was the car companies that bought out the rail systems and tore them up.

I'm starting to become skeptical about peak oil, mainly because the benefits to the ruling class are almost equal on both sides of the equation.

One thing to add here is Natural Gas. It would seem that lots of Methane can be had by drilling in coal beds. Hmmm....Nice short term but in the long run we still have lots in that shale. We just need a way to get it cheaply...

It is way too much difficult to develop oil from rocks or shale, must be liquid, must have good pressure out of well bore with good API gravity, and not very good strategeric thought to waste it oil.

Oh it can be done - but at what price? See the sands of Alberta held the same problems 20 years ago but now look at it.

Oil Shale will come, technology must be developed for it and that will take $$ and time.

People have known about the oil for almost 100 years, and for almost 100 years have done nothing significant to develop the oil. Technology won't make a bit of difference as long as there is oil in the ground that is not rock or tar oil.