Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

(Since the EFL thread is dead I thought I'd start one where we discuss the solutions.)

That oil production may soon decline and prices will certainly go up is surely not in dispute. The market answers this:

1) Conservation, greater efficiency
2) Substitution (beef gets to expensive, you switch to pork)

This page has a rather good analysis of ethanol (although I think it's based on corn). But it lays out many ways to look at any alternative fuel source. well-to-wheel vs pump-to-tank.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4051

Also one must consider if it's really a source of new energy or just an energy carrier. For example it takes a lot of energy to free hydrogen from water. The burned hydrogen only gives back, say, 30% of the energy you used to free it. There is no source of free hydrogen on earth. Oil, by contrast, doesn't take much energy to get out of the ground. It provides way more energy that the energy needed to pump it out, refine it, ship it, etc. A hydrogen economy is really a nuclear/coal/wind economy.

An unfettered market will eventually solve the problem. Regulations and NIMBY can hinder the problem.

[keane]

[The_Conservative]

[mindmetoo]

Yeah, EFL is no longer a user of this board and he's no longer here to argue the points he put forward. There is another thread on Peak Oil but the users seem to have lost interest as EFL is no longer a participant. The sole user of that thread seems to just use it to post articles about something we're all in agreement with. Oil production will decline and prices will rise. This thread, as noted above, I'd like to discuss the solutions to peak oil. Not sure if there's a rule against a lack of creativity in thread naming. The mods are free to alter the thread title if they so desire. If one is keane... I mean keen to see EFL brought back, then one should petition the mods to invite him back to Dave's.

A downside of using ethanol in the American system is that means using products that can otherwise be used as food. This drives up food prices. Ethanol can, however, be made from any plant matter. I believe Brazil has developed a good ethanol economy because it produces a lot of sugar cane. What was otherwise a waste product (corn is certainly not a waste product) of sugar cane can be made into ethanol. Since sugar buyers are largely paying for the collection of the waste products of sugar production, ethanol can be made much cheaper.

Also, corn ethanol can be produced artificially cheaper as corn is highly, highly subsidized by the tax payer. Corn became so cheap because of government money that almost every food manufacturer uses it. Corn syrup replaced cane sugar in almost every product that requires sugar. (Some Coke drinkers swear they could tell the difference in taste.)

It's a bit like in the soviet union where bread was highly subsidized. It was so cheap that farmers used as cattle feed. Which contributed to further bread shortages.

[4 months left]

Sugar ethanol is more efficient than corn. The negatives are too high with corn, gov't subsidies, the high cost of converting it but recently there has been too much corn and it is being put into piles before being processed for food or fuel (see CNBC Squawk Box - Wed. I believe) The next commodity to fly might be soy beans (also see the same Squawk Box.)

The better alternative is cellulosic ethanol which comes from the stalk of corn or sugar. The technology is still being developed with one the leading companies being Sunopta - STKL/SOY.to.

[TheUrbanMyth]

Were you not just asked by the mods to stop responding to MM2's threads?

Why do you feel so threatened that you have to spam the thread with multiple posts saying the same sentence multiple times?


Maybe we should start doing that on all YOUR threads? Hmm? Would you like that?

[keane]

[keane]

Mythical one, what say you to the following? Is his reason for starting the thread not that solutions are not being discussed? That WAS his contention, wasn't it?

[Big_Bird]

Keane, who are you to decide whether or not this thread is to be deleted? MM2 has explained how this thread differs from the other one. Since this topic is of such interest to you, I find it surprising that you don't welcome more discussion. You have just sabotaged a budding thread in the most puerile fashion. Shame on you! Your redundant thread-destroying posts should be deleted.

MM2: Why don't you rename this thread something like "Peak Oil - Let's Discuss SOLUTIONS"

[keane]

[4 months left]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[mindmetoo]

It's important to reflect on that modern society has also had looming peaks before. Malthus gave us "peak food". We had "peak fertilizer" shortly before World War I. Haber figured out how to get nitrogen out of the atmosphere instead of mining the vanishing supply from South America. Both of these were solved before disaster. We clearly have many off the shelf solutions. Nuclear, coal powered hydro, oil sands. We also have wind and solar seems to be making big leaps in terms of price.

(Keane, I'm impressed you're so familiar with my dialog with the long departed EFL. Also there are many threads that I find silly and redundant, so I simply don't visit them. I certainly don't spam them four times. Odd.)

[mindmetoo]

[keane]