The GEN IV Nuclear Initiative, the US NGNP and the Chinese HTR-PM nuclear reactor all have synfuels as project goals.
The oil price will never get to $200/barrel for long…synfuels will kick in well before then. The only question is how ‘environmentally friendly’ synfuels will be.
Doug,
You’ve not replied so are you happy with the above explanation? Has the penny dropped yet?
I’d just make one more point: If we were to measure the Venusian temperature from some distance out in space, using its emitted IR radiation, we would measure -60degC, or close to it , which corresponds to a temperature in the upper region of the Venusian troposphere. We couldn’t measure the surface temperature directly as the troposphere is opaque to IR.
But say the atmosphere wasn’t opaque but instead was transparent to IR. In all other respects say it had exactly the same properties (albedo, mass, density etc) as the present one including its transparency to visible light. I know that’s not realistic but this is a thought experiment!. We wait a time for all temperatures to restabilise.
We repeat the experiment and remeasure the Venusian temperature and we should get exactly the same result. -60 degC. Because -60degC is the temperature that Venus needs to be in order to maintain its energy balance when it is in equilibrium.
But, now instead of measuring the temperature in the upper reaches of the troposphere we are directly measuring the surface temperature, because now the atmosphere is totally transparent to IR, and which has cooled by around 600 degC.
No, webby. Unlimited human ingenuity will overcome the laws of physics and the law of diminishing returns. Nothing to worry about. Look what happened in WWII. The Nazis were almost totally cut off from oil supplies, yet they made do with coal to liquids. Of course it helped that they didn’t have many buildings to heat. And not so many locomotives to keep running as those were routinely strafed by P-51 Mustangs returning to base, after escorting the B-17s.
Referencing Adam, Smith – that’s a hoot. Do you really believe that we operate in a free market? And that prices accurately reflect demand?
Even as the US has decreases in prices and the highest oil production in more than a decade – webby continues to promulgate dire warnings. What could be the motivation?
Meanwhile the EIA projects growth in liquid fuels production to 2035 – http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/MT_liquidfuels.cfm – and suggests that the US could be the globes biggest source of liquid fuels.
Odd that at a time when the market is working here at least – that we still hear nothing but tales of dire failure and doom.
“gbaikie
Yes, as I’m sure everyone is aware, the sun warms the oceans. ”
And I am sure everyone is aware that the oceans hold an enormous amount heat.
But they might be uncomfortable saying this in different way, that the ocean traps an enormous amount energy.
They might uncomfortable because they are used to idea that the atmosphere is the only thing which “traps” heat.
But it very obvious that that the Ocean “traps” far more energy than the atmosphere is capable of doing.
And it is as obvious that the average temperature of Earth should measured as the average ocean temperature. The ocean may not be a convenient way to measure global average temperature, but it is actually is the average global temperature. The temperature air of the atmosphere is the weather. The temperature of the ocean is the climate.
Or if “somehow” you were to measure the air of atmosphere and it indicates are long period warming period, but the ocean are not warming, then you don’t actually have global warming.
So it seems obvious to me that we have had global warming for the last 10,000 years. And it seems as obvious to me that last couple centuries were warmer than couple centuries prior to this. Which the same as saying the oceans warmed over the last 10,000 years and the oceans have warmed a bit more over the last couple centuries.
And it seems most likely that we will continue with this last couple century type warming period onto the next century- that global warming will continue.
Which would be not be proven false if global air temperature over next decades were to drop by .5 C.
If air temperature were to drop by 1 C or more, and stay this cool, that would obviously not be such a warmer period [but still part of the 10,000 year warming period. Though it increases odds we may be at the beginning part of entering a glacial period].
“Are you suggesting this is due to more solar radiation / sunspots ?”
If we had centuries of low solar activity [of the kind we had doing the Little Age] that could cause us to enter into a period like the Little Ice Age.
I suspect the solar activity *could be* a major factor explaining the Little Ice Age.
But I do not think solar activity explains why we enter or exit glacial periods.
I believe the major reason for our Ice Age [lasting more ten of million of years] has to do with our arrangement continental and topography of our land masses.
So geology is causing our world to be balanced between entering
longer period of Cooling and shorter periods of Warming.
Overlaying geology is astrophysics- by which I mean the Milankovitch cycles. I s part of reason. Or wiki is generally summarizing it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Causes_of_ice_ages
Montalbano, you seem to be stuck on the idea of absorbers and conduction of heat. The earth radiates much of its heat, and it is that part that is absorbed by the CO2. The CO2 also emits according to its amount, so more CO2 has more greenhouse effect even at the same temperature. It is because the earth’s radiative heat cannot get to space through the atmosphere with GHGs present, that the atmosphere is keeping the heat in, which is described as insulation. From your own definition, an insulator prevents or reduces heat transfer. It can do this by absorption or reflection. The atmosphere does it by absorption. Likewise if a blanket didn’t absorb heat and just let it through, it wouldn’t be much of a blanket.
So I guess the peak, translates to as far as I can see from here.
There are many drilled wells that are not economic at this time, for reason of distance and infrastructure cost, areas unexplored and much we can not foresee.
As for why the market supply does not expand when oil goes above $100/barrel, when or if it stabilizes at a higher price this might happen.
Currently its, a pull the rug exercise, the price falls back before the infrastructure costs can be recovered, most oil money is private and the risk level remains too high.
As the oilsands show, our definition of recoverable resource is undefined.
manacker, that will be how it begins. This type of methane will be described as a non-fossil fuel and therefore OK to burn in some sense. Never mind that it hasn’t been in the carbon cycle for millions of years. Your argument would have to be that these clathrates are still being formed at the rate that they will be extracted and burned. Then you can make the renewable biofuel argument.
What tortuous process making synfuel with nuclear reactor electricity!
Efficiency is way too low to be economical. Storing electricity economically at high density is a holy grail. What can be done is extant in battery technology already even advanced batteries (fuel cells) which are rechargeable with hydrocarbon fuels or some other handy source of hydrogen.
This has been done to death by the military, dude. We’d have had electrical aircraft long ago if the storage density problem could be fixed and/or if nuclear reactors could be made light enough for aviation use.
Nukes (barring no expense) that fit inside submarines and aircraft carriers are as good as it gets and it isn’t for lack of trying.
[...] a discussion over at Judith Curry’s excellent blog, about peak oil. I find the whole madness surrounding [...]
@don monfort
Which laws of physics do you imagine are violated by synthetic biology?
If there any physical impossibilities in that path we wouldn’t be here to talk about it because we’d be impossible to make!
LOL
WHT
Your prognosis on the rapid decline of the shale oil industry is interesting, but rather speculative.
I would think that companies like Shell probably know something that you do not know.
But maybe I’m wrong and these guys are just stupidly pouring millions down a rat hole and you’ve figured it all out.
Guess we’ll see.
Max
Jim D
I’m afraid you are utterly confused about the nature of conductive insulation. However, that is beside the point here – which set forth eg in my posting of February 2, 2013 at 2:39 pm.
If you have comments that do have a bearing on that, I would be pleased to hear them.
David Springer
“some other handy source of hydrogen.”
A nuclear reactor with an outlet temperature of 950C creates a ‘handy source’ of hydrogen.
Jim D
Not to get too deep into a hypothetical discussion of an imaginary pipe dream of commercially extracting clathrates from the ocean floor for natural gas, but do you know at what rate these are being formed?
I think there will be many more less costly ways of extracting/generating energy in the future, so the question is a bit rhetorical, but I just wondered if you had any idea, and if so on what information your knowledge is based.
Max
Joshua “some people want to hold hostage, the philosophical debate about tenets of good science, to score points in the climate debate war”
It appears you may be right. Do you believe that outsiders publishing in an open review, open access climate journal, and now asking for scrutiny are doing something crazy? Is it possible to win them over with an idea that challanges the status quo?
‘In fact, there were only a few items which showed significant changes.’
I’m significantly uncertain about the certainty of significance of this.
==============
Yep, saw that.
Read your first foray into this as well (Sheil & Murdiyaso, 2009).
The question remains, how did an ecologist wind up as a coauthor of a paper on atmospheric physics/chemistry?
Here is a way to fix the NWS computer gap and make climate research useful at the same time. Mainstream media now says that every case of bad weather, now called extreme events, is due to climate change. Clearly we need to adapt to this bad stuff and near term prediction is key to adaptation. So we redirect the US climate research budget to adaptation prediction, which used to be called weather forecasting.
Moreover since roughly half of the $2 billion/year US climate research program is spent on satellites and launches we can rebuild the aging NWS satellite system as well, all in the name of adaptation. Forecasting bad weather is much more useful than the present focus on silly sensitivity studies.
