posted
For college next year, I had to read a book entitled Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil by David Goodstein. It is a short book (123 pages) [sidenote: which cost me a upsetting $22, which is about 17 cents per page].
The opening paragraph:
quote: The world will soon start to run out of conventionally produced, cheap oil. If we manage somehow to overcome that shock by shifting the burden to coal and natural gas, the two other primary fossil fuels, life may go on more or less as it has been--until we start to run out of all fossil fuels by the end of the century. And by the time we have burned up all that fuel, we may well have rendered the planet unfit for human life. Even if human life does go on, civilization as we know it will not survive, unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels.
The book continues in the first chapter to give information like:
In total, there was about 2 - 2.7 trillion barrels of oil on the earth. Of that 2.7 trillion, we have already consumed about half of it.
At the current rate of consumption, we have anywhere between 40 to 100 years left of oil.
That last note does not take into account the increasing demand for oil, which, if taken into account, brings that prediction down to...well...about a decade.
A Hubbert's peak (a theory by a guy named Hubbert) states that problems will not start when the last drop of oil is drilled, but rather when its global demand becomes greater than its global production/discovery. The Hubbert's peak for oil is expected to occur any year now.
When oil runs out (or the Hubbert's peak is reached), we will need to switch to alternate sources of energy, which may include natural gas, methane hydrate, coal, controlled nuclear fusion, and nuclear fission.
All of these alternates are either fossil fuels themselves or to dangerous/complicated for us right now.
At the end of the first chapter, Goodstein concludes with
quote: Worst case: After Hubbert's peak, all efforts to produce, distribute, and consume alternative fuels fast enough to fill the gap between falling supplies and rising demand fail. Runaway inflation and worldwide depression leave many billions of people with no alternative but to burn coal in vast quantities for armth, cooking, and primitive industry. The change in the greenhouse effect that results eventually tips Earth's climate into a new state hostile to life. End of story. In this instance, worst case really means worst case. Best Case: The worldwide disruptions that follow Hubbery's peak serve as a global wake-up call. A methane-based economy is successful in bridging the gap temporarily while nuclear power plants are built and the infrastructure for other alternative fuels is put in place. The world watches anxiously as each new Hubbert's peak estimate for uranium and oil shale makes fron-page news.
I expected the book to list solutions to the oil problem, but instead I found it full of a review of earth-science and physics.
Later it focuses on Hydrogen powered vehicles:
1 kilogram of compressed Hydrogen =(about) 1 gallon of gas [[[in distance]]]
1 gallon of gas can produce about 10 kilowatt-hours.
1 kilo of H requires about 60 kilowatt-hours to make, which is equivalent to 6 gallons of gasoline.
So 6 times the amount of energy is required to produce Hydrogen batteries that can drive a car the same distance as one gallon of gasoline.
Sadly, the book does not offer any positive, or even neutral, proposals for our future. I must say I was very disappointed by the time I finished this book. It didn't really offer any solution.
P.S. earth-science is typed as it is because without the hyphen a link appeared, and I'm not sure if thats something through Hatrack or something through my comp.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:1 kilo of H requires about 60 kilowatt-hours to make, which is equivalent to 6 gallons of gasoline.
So 6 times the amount of energy is required to produce Hydrogen batteries that can drive a car the same distance as one gallon of gasoline.
but how much energy does it require to refine those 6 gallons of gasoline? seems like there's a glitch in the analogy, unless you're saying that it requires the equivalent of 6 gallons of gas more energy to produce hydrogen power.
anyway, the book sounds a bit alarmist. there's a long history of this chicken little thing happening, since the 60's. that's not to say the author is mistaken, just that the future is a notoriously slippery thing to predict
Posts: 380 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
The book implies that there is no other rational source to create hydrogen batteries than from fossil fuel. Sure you can make it from solar/wind whatever power, but not in amounts large enough to bring a change to our fuel society.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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