Huh? I'm not sure I understand your point Ct :/ The problem with oil these days seems to be the oil companies, and the fact that its on the open market. Prices aren't regulated basicly, so the ayatollah gives a little speach and prices are free to go up $1. It's absolutely rediculous, no military action is going to happen for a good bit yet, if it even does, but a single talk from a single dude and the world gets screwed for another $1 per barrel. Secondly the oil companies, are restricting supply these days. I don't know if it's legal or not, but I do know they're doing it, basicly just shipping oil from around the world into huge(and by huge I mean really, really, really huge) underground oil containers, and saving it there for another day when the price is higher. This has the effect of lowering overall oil availablitiy, and also giving them the ability to sell that oil in a few years time for $100 or $125 a barrel, which is more likely to happen because of the fact that they're saving it for then. It's a problem, and one that needs to be sorted out. Oil companies should not be getting year on year increases in profits of as much as 40% or 50%.
Well, a couple of things. One I was posting the article for it's value, not so much to make a point. Second, It's obvious to me that the only way to not be chained to OPEC is through alternative fuels. Obviously OPEC sees this and is concerned about it. They're worried that as prices get higher and higher people will start paying attention to the alternatives to oil rather than just buying more. Our current fossil fuel based energy paradigm is unsustainable for a number of reasons such as consumption growth, global warming, diminishing supply, etc. For example, if China consumed as much oil per capita as the US does (and they're getting there), they would be consuming more oil per day than the entire world produces. And that's just one country. As we are very aware of in theis forum, technology doesn't mature overnight. It takes time to be developed, debugged, and implemented. If we are going to have sustainable energy in 10 or 20 years, we need to start working hard on it now. This work is going to take a commitment of resources and capitol, and that's exactly what the head of OPEC is afraid of.
We have sustainable energy though Ct, we dig it out of the ground, and stick in reactors. That's sustainable for somewhere between 10,000 and a few billion years, if we make use of fast breeder reactors using U236(IIRC, one of the U's that we're not using now, a few of the reactors exist already). China will never use as much oil as the US, because China's power production is going to be almost exclusively coal based, they're building around 1 coal power plant per week for the next 5-7 years, thats where their power is going to come from, so they'll never use the 21Gigatonnes per year that the US burns through. Oh and I wasn't asking your point in relation to the quoted article, but to the "never let reality..." comment, I was just a bit confused by its meaning in relation to the article.
That's power production. Very few places use oil for electrical production. A lot of natural gas, but not oil. Oil pretty much all ends up in transportation one way or another, with some going to chemicals and synthetics. Both the US and China's oli consumpton is in transportation, and so the arguement is valid. I agree with you on nuclear, and in fact so does the head of Greenpeace (scary, huh?). Nuclear power, especially the newer designs such as pebble bed reactors and prompt neutron designs, are definatly part of the future of power consumption. They are not however feasible for transportation needs an so that brings us back to oil and alternative fuels. Ok, no problem. I was thinking in terms of denial of the reality of global warming and alternative fuels contribution to reducing real CO2 emissions. Sorry if I was unclear.
