PressCoverage

Sounding an Alarm on Oil

Independent journalist Michael Ruppert predicted the global recession. Now he's foreseeing an imminent energy crisis His new film, "coLLapse" opens in New York tomorrow (Nov. 6)

The Wall Street Journal: What is the central message of your movie?

Mr. Ruppert: It is not possible to continue infinite consumption and infinite population growth on a finite planet.

WSJ: So what do you believe needs to be done first?

Mr. Ruppert: Two things are critically important: A real worldwide transparent effort to determine how much oil is really left. Screw state secrets. I don't care what the Saudis, Russians, BP or Chavez want to hide. We have to clean up those books just exactly as the same way that we need to clean up the books on Wall Street. Secondly, we need to establish a second strategic petroleum reserve of refined product for state, county and municipal use because I really foresee a serious oil shock coming as soon as this ersatz recovery starts to push up the global GDP and demand for electricity. We have to make sure we have basic services.


... (continued)

alvinnf

This has been dropping like a stone with no response. I guess nobody is willing to give up their hunt for oil.

PressCoverage

So, instead of not responding at all, your M.O. is to be a smarmy jerk. Typical, actually.

No one responds to peak oil discussion anymore because no one can dispute it. Even the new conservative moderator admits it's happening.

When you wanna roll up your sleeves and do the work, and not punt to irrelevant "ancillary value," please grow up and do so.

Meanwhile, the WSJ thought enough of the man to interview him on a subject no one can really debate beyond a surface denial/dismissal of "no way."

alvinnf

Good interview, he seems like a unbiased voice. I think the point about strategic oil reserves per country is frghtening here. We use a 1/4 of the current supply, I find it hard to believe we could survive or abide by some reserve standard. On top of that hopefully we can start getting on top of the energy pyramid by moving more progressively in the nuclear department. I don't see that happening here anytime soon. Unfortunately, the American mindset is to be reactionary, so we'll wait until we are in a real energy crunch until we can sway public opinion on nukes. I don't know why any country would be willing to provide any real disclosure on how much oil they have left or in reserve. It seems like they would lose leverage, unless they had the most or lie.

PressCoverage

The nuclear discussion was dealt with in the thread by the new conservative moderator. In a phrase: Nuclear is not a silver bullet. That is the reason not a single nuclear facility has been built in this country in over 30 years.

Nuclear expansion will not grow crops, will not power vehicles with combustion engines, will not pave roads, will not produce medicines, will not make plastics, will not make tires. On top of that, there is a very real limit on recoverable uranium and thorium reserves.

The only viable solution is conservation and renewables.

IcyPatriot

What baffles me is our country knows these things and yet shows no emergency to tackle the problem. The private sector can handle some of it but the government holds the most power through tax incentives and similar to help with the change. Why does the government not act with greater impetus? I don't get it?

PressCoverage

Because not enough people are freezing to death here yet, and we survived the summer without a brown-out like we had in 2003. But they are coming, as the grid gets more and more over-burdened, and the infrastructure is not maintained.

Meanwhile, it's getting worse and worse in Europe, where governments are finally being forced to acknowledge an energy problem they can't just keep blaming the Russians for:

Winter crisis could see UK 'run out of gas in hours' | Business | The Observer

PressCoverage

Government failure to acknowledge oil supply crunch risks conflict and threatens the climate

There is an imminent oil supply crunch that governments have failed to acknowledge or act upon, the impacts of which will be felt throughout every aspect of modern society which is heavily reliant on oil, according to a new report published by campaign group Global Witness today.

Governments have not taken on board the four underlying oil production factors which clearly show there is a problem. Heads in the Sand outlines these factors - declining output, declining discoveries, increasing demand and insufficient projects in the pipeline - which clearly show that the world is facing an imminent oil supply crunch. Some of these factors have been apparent for many years. [1]

Governments and multi-lateral agencies have failed to recognise the imminence and scale of the global oil supply crunch, and most of them remain completely unprepared for its consequences. The report calls for governments to officially acknowledge the crunch and to shift urgently into safe sustainable energy alternatives.

(continued)...

patsfan13

You certainly made that assertion but were refuted by the amount of Uranium available as established by the paper from the U Pitt. The lack of building of nuclear plants is a political issue not a technical one.

I agree about the need for liquid fuel. Where I disagree is whether the shortage is due to a peak in available supplies, or due to a lack of use of resources and refusing to look for political purposes.



BTW here are a couple of papers showing that methane can be produced by abiotic processes at pressures and temps readily seen in the earth's mantle.

ABIOTIC METHANE PRODUCTION AT MANTLE PRESSURES

In Situ Diamond-Anvil Cell Observations of Methanogenesis at High Pressures and Temperatures - Energy & Fuels (ACS Publications)



Rupert is correct in the sense that we will see an oil shock but it will be because of irresponsibility by our political class.

__________________
"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."

PatsFanInVa

I posted on another thread doing very, very rough math based on modest energy consumption for a single family home and extrapolating to american dwellings of all kinds. The typical single family home would need about 285 square feet of solar cells -- ignoring heat and AC. I got the rundown from a site giving practical advice and given present expense, that was the practical advice: do the big ticket items another way.

But think about how little 285 square feet is, compared to a rooftop. That gets you your fridge, lights, TV, computers, etc... everything but climate control.

Reasonable AC and heat needs could certainly be made to fit in the other 3/4 of a modest home's roof.

What the thread was about is the silly part: one of our number had dug up one noted science guy saying that renewables don't have the "energy density" to handle our energy needs. The truth of the matter is that you can power most homes using the roof space available to those homes. Yeah a renewable economy involves huge challenges, and it involves a ton of work. Well guess what we have for right now and might have for a couple more years? A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WHO NEED JOBS.

There's no doubt that the go juice will run out. The term "peak oil theory," from what I can tell, seems to be related to an answer of "now" or "soon." "Soon" is pretty much the standard answer anyway.

What's amazing to me is we all knew it was running out all along, and we all knew in the 70s what it's like when suddenly you have less of it. But of course we decided the problem was we didn't invade those blasted foreigners enough, and pretty much forgot about it in favor of puppy dogs, rainbows, and fairy tales peddled by de-reg kings and happy warriors.

This is fixable. It's not fixable in a lurching fad-driven way. It's only fixable in a decades-long way. We need to replace the majority of an energy infrastructure.

I have no idea what the hell someone is thinking when he declares this impossible because, basically, it's hard to do.

Once we get started the one thing that troubles me is our gnat-like national attention span will end up writing our epitaph.

It is unavoidable that we will need to rely on nuclear as a stopgap, in my opinion. I could easily see the same "Gimme all the candy now!" mentality kicking in, aided by a newly rehabilitated nuclear lobby, and the cry of "everything's fiiiiiine" going up while we're in the stopgap phase.

You can already see the formation of the next phase of propaganda; because it's better to look into carbon capture than to just spew particulates into the atmosphere, we call this imperfect half-solution "clean coal." Because nukes don't spew particulates into the atmosphere but oh yeah leave around concentrated deadly poisons with half-lifes in the thousands of years, we talk about nuclear as if it's a magic bullet.

We're at point A, we need to get to point B, and my worry is that with the paucity of real thought that goes on in much of the country, we just turn into a nation of quitters when something looks "good enough."

Sometimes threescore and ten doesn't sound so bad, yanno?

PFnV