A 5/30 post by Odograph, referred to a 5/29 post at Green Car Congress regarding a lecture, A Physicist's View of the World's Energy Situation, given to the Colloquium at Fermilab, by BP’s Chief Scientist Dr Steven Koonin. Koonin has impeccable credentials which are articulated by Odograph. This is a very good presentation which should be viewed by all who have any interest in energy. The presentation evaluates the future of various sources of energy and the global warming implications of energy use.
The first part of the presentation deals with energy. "OPEC's spare capacity is gone ... Small perturbations affect the market." He strikes a balance between geologists ("Hubbert's and all that") and economists view of supply, saying that both are probably right. The future includes deep water drilling, large reserves of heavy oil in Venezuela, 1.3 trillion barrels, and gasification/Fischer-Tropsch conversion to FT diesel, all of which are more expensive than conventional oil. His largest sources of energy in the future included, oil from enhanced recovery, heavy oil, nuclear power, hydrogen for power and biofuels. At some point fuel substitution will be attractive.
The presentation on global warming is the best I have seen , presenting what appeared to me to be a very realistic approach to the subject. He covered all aspects of global warming, where greenhouse gases (GG) come from, how fast GG emissions are increasing and where they could be sequestered. He appeared not to be totally convinced that global warming was coming, but said we had no choice but to take precautionary actions. His approach was to concentrate on the CO2 aspect, considering it the primary indicator of global warming and assuming a critical concentration in the atmosphere of 550 ppm.
His outlook was as to be expected from a representative of the oil and gas industry, implying that oil would be available for quite some time, although expensive. He used R/P ratios (reserves/production) to imply duration of reserves which are misleading. His solution, other than petroleum, for future liquid fuel supplies was biofuels and Fischer-Tropsch liquids. He did not seem to think hydrogen for transportation was likely.
Do you think using coal and gasification/Fischer-Tropsch is going to be as easy as he made it sound?
It seemed to me, not an expert in any way, that if coal -> diesel conversion is economical at $40/bbl then ... no problem.
(until we consider greenhouse gases, but there I think he showed pretty well that people won't wake up until it is too late.)
Odograph,
I am going on the statemnents made by Hirsch, who has the resources to determine the cost, that it can be done at that price. In a few years, when oil production is declining, we will have no choice but to pay whatever the cost is. We have no other liquid fuel that can totally make up the differance between demand and supply. Natural gas liquefaction appears to be the way big oil is going now, but that is only a stop gap measure that will use up our natural gas reserves. The U.S can only make up, at best, 1/3 of its liquid fuel demand from domestic production of biofuels. Brazil currently is exporting a little, but no one else is. Conservation, as motivated by increasing fuel prices and the availability of plug-in hybrids, will play an important role. In about 2050 world population is projected to start stabilizing, reducing the rate of growth of demand. There will still be a lot of growth as underdevoped countries increase their per capital consumption at some equilibrium value. During this time, after their is quite a bit of increase in greenhouse gases, global warming should start to become less of an issue as nuclear power, clean coal power with CO2 sequestration and biofuels become more prevalent. I can not predict when these measures will all come together and some sort of stabilization reached, certainly more than 50 years. We are going to have a rough road until that happens. That will be the end of "The Energy Revolution."
Jim
Posted by: odograph | May 04, 2005 at 10:33 AM
I have just started a climate change blog. The main blog page
will be dedicated to climate change news and campaign links. There is
a sister site entitled climate change resources which is intended to
provide links to all the reports and articles a read in an attempt to
produce a incitefull blog. I have just started the site but please
have a look and decide for youreself if you would like to link to it.
http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/
the sister site is
http://climatechangeresources.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Calvin Jones | July 22, 2005 at 05:43 PM
Shridhan Automation is a Manufactures, Exporters & Suppliers a wide variety of Level switches, Level switches for liquids and Level Transmitters for liquids in India.
Posted by: shridhan | February 27, 2010 at 05:58 AM