Maryland Sixth

To me the most interesting US House of Representatives race of the year will be that in Maryland's Sixth District. I used to work and go to church in this district. Back in the 1970s I worked at Ft Richie, near Hagerstown and near the Pennsylvania border, and went to church in Hagerstown. The district includes Hagerstown and sprawls all the way westward to the border with West Virginia. It is the most conservative of Maryland's congressional districts and only one of 2 out of 8 whose representative is Republican.

The current Representative is 80-year-old Roscoe Bartlett, who is well-known in peak oil circles as the only US Senator or Representative that knows aobut the peak oil situation coming up and is willing to talk about it, to the extent of having conferences about it. For this reason, if I were living in Maryland Sixth, I would vote for Roscoe Bartlett, even though he was Republican and despite some of the stands that he has taken.

But I wanted to see what the Democrats would say. So far, the Democrats have been puny about Peak Oil. They criticize the Republicans, especially President Bush, for the high gasoline prices we have been having, even though those are the result of supply and demand. But they don't come up with substantive proposals for dealing with the problem. I found out that there are two Democratic possible challengers to Repr. Bartlett: Barry Kissin and Andrew Duck. So I tried seeing what these two people would say about Peak Oil.

I looked at Andrew Duck first. He wants to bring the price of oil back to $30! His site recommends this portfolio of actions: Conservation, Increasing the fuel mileage targets for vehicles, Research and infrastructure support for biofuels, Clean coal gasification [sic], Increased support for wind power, and Increased use of natural gas. This sounds a lot what I would recommend: a full court press. I would add plugin hybrid cars to the lis and railroads to the list. How come people in government won't recommend a return to the railroads? But his wanting to bring back oil to an unrealistic level and his not mentioning peak oil at all had me favoring Roscoe Bartlett for election.

I emailed Duck about the 30% and he surprised me with his reply. It turns out that Roscoe Bartlett may not be all the peak oil champion that the peak oil people make him out to be. According to Duck, Roscoe Bartlett voted no on Tokyo accords, no on increased CAFE standards, and at first no, then yes, to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Duck says he votes the Bush and Republican line repeatedly. This makes me wonder about Roscoe, since outside of peak oil, his stands are quite dissimilar to mine, because they are all Republican stands. However, Duck does not mention Peak Oil either.

I looked up Barry Kissin and found his site more interesting. He gives a long dissertation on how Roscoe Bartlett is not what he is cracked up to be. Mr. Kissin actually talks about Peak Oil, whereas Andrew Duck does not. I found Mr. Kissin's paper to be interesting, and it makes me wonder which candidate would indeed be the best from Maryland's Sixth. It makes me wish I were in Maryland, so I could make such an important peak oil vote. However, even he does not call for what I think is really needed: a $1-10/gallon fuel (including diesel and gasoline) tax and compensating reductions in other taxes, especially income taxes.

So if I were in Maryland, I would contact all three candidates and point out the flaws in their positions, and see how they react. This would determine who I would favor to go to Washington representing Maryland's Sixth.

Note my abbreviation for Representative: Repr. I use that instead of Rep., because Rep. is ambiguous and could mean Republican.

Computer Call about the Oil Companies

I received a call from Harris Miller's campaign for US Senator from Virginia at 2006 April 26 19:38. It came on my Caller ID as “Unavailable”, and was a computer call urging me to vote for Miller and help us beat George Allen. I wish these campaigns would not send out computer phone calls? I don’t appreciate them. They bittering my phone and disturb what I am doing. Normally, this would mean the candidate would not get my vote. But there is no way I will vote for George Allen - the worst governor Virginia has had since 1978. I don't like the idea of voting for a third party either - I feel that Sen. Allen must be removed from office. Especially I don’t want George Allen to repeat his term as senator and thereby become a possible Presidential candidate in 2008. But there are ways of sending him back to his home without throwing unsolicited computer calls on my telephone.

I also did not like some of what I heard the message say. The Miller camp said “Stand up to Big Oil.” Now Big Oil is no saint. But attacking oil companies because of record high profits and high gasoline prices is not the right approach to the problem. The oil companies can’t help it if they have all that money. It is because of supply and demand – increasing demand (especially because of China and India) and limited and tight supply are causing the prices to go up and the profits of the oil companies to go up. The problem is that the world is nearing a peak in oil production, and soon world production will decline despite all the desperate drilling in the world. Instead of attacking the oil companies, the Democrats should encourage conservation of oil – car pools, hybrid, diesel, and plugin hybrid cars, and railroads – and development of wind, solar, and (at least for a while) nuclear energy, as well as high taxes on fuel to curb demand, along with substantially lower income and other taxes. This is a problem that confronts all of us, including the oil companies, and I feel that an approach urging these things as well as cooperating with the oil companies and others concerned with this problem will yield better results in the long run.

I also would like to see talk about peak oil and its consequences. So far I have not heard a single Democrat say that the world is headed for trouble because of the peaking of oil production. However, at least one Republican has, namely Repv. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland. If he were running instead of George Allen here in Virginia, I would vote for him, and if Mr. Bartlett runs for President, he has my vote, even though he will be 82 years old.

So please, Mr. Miller, if you want to be serious about beating both the oil crisis and George Allen, start talking to us about the possible consequences of big oil.

And when you call, have a human call. OK? Thanks.

Oil Price Correction?

I am now hearing reports that oil's price will drop 20% this year to something like $55 a barrel. I find this in http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/060419/b041964.html, but don't go there after a few days; you probably will get "not found". Instead I quote some of it here:

The recent runup in commodity prices is due to speculative activity that sets the stage for crude-oil and base-metal prices to drop by 20 per cent by year-end, a TD Economics report (TSX:TD) warned Wednesday.

This comes from CBC, the Canadian network. The article says that a correction in both energy and "base metals" (including gold) will occur sometime this year.

Do these people know that peak oil is coming?

Now I do think that retractions in oil and gold prices do occur. A major correction occurred last year when Hurricane Katrina hit, taking refineries off line and preventing crude from being refined, decreasing its value. I lost thousands (which I have gotten back this year) during this time. Most of these are small contractions and they are followed by big increases, which are happening now.

This is because oil may be nearing the peak where no matter how hard the suppliers pump and pump, they still can't meet world demand. The world market is tight as a snare drum, and any disturbance in it causes immediate reactions. Oil and gasoline will continue to increase in price in the next few years as demand rises, and supply stays the same for a while, then declines.

I am not sure I want to keep shuffling money in and out of energy shares every time Ahmadinejad goes nucleuckoo in Iran or hurricanes smash rigs and refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. The long term trend is up, then up, then way up. I am just hoping supply and demand will help us find alternatives before some really drastic things happen. It's going to be nip and tuck. (that's why I call this blog Cliffhanger). But a change once or twice a year might be advisable.

So what do I predict? I think oil and gold will keep rising through the middle of the summer, to $3.10/gal and $75 a barrel by the end of April, $3.30/gal and $85 a barrel by the end of May, and up to a peak of $3.45/gallon and $95/barrel by the middle of summer. It then will decline to about $2.40/gallon in December and maybe $75 a barrel, and then rise again in 2007, to even greater heights. If a hurricane strikes in the Gulf, oil will hit $90/barrel and then decline moderately, maybe to $65 a barrel by October, while gasoline will hit $4.70/gallon and there may be shortages.

So what to do about stocks and other investments? I say hold on to those energy and gold shares, because they are not ready for a correction. They will continue to head upward for a while. Sooner or later, probably late summer, the US and world economies will be hit by these prices and a downturn will occur. This has not happened yet. People are still driving all over the place as before. When the downturn occurs, oil and gold prices will go down. So if there are strong signals that this is happening, pull out of oil and gold shares. In fact, pull out of all stocks and put everything in money market funds. When oil and gasoline start rising again, then put the money back into oil and gold. If a hurricane threatens the Gulf, pull everything out, including oil, gold, tech, medical, and everything else, immediately. Being able to access weather models such as the Global Forecasting System (GFS) can help you decide this will occur before the media starts harping all over the place about it, so you can pull out and retain all of your gains.

But even if you pull back, eventually get back into oil and gold, for the money of the future is in these, with oil in ever increasingly scarce supply.

That's Right, Blame the Oil Companies Again

The price of oil and gasoline is going steadily up again, as I had expected. Earlier, I predicted that some time this summer, the price of oil would peak at about $95 a barrel and the price of gasoline at about $3.40. This is because we are somewhere near peak oil production, although it is hard to tell just how near, due to the damage by Hurricane Katrian. In general, prices are going to go up, because demand is up and supply is either going up slightly or staying steady. The only way to get them down is through lower demand.

Nevertheless, people are blaming the oil companies again. New York Senator Charles Schumer is calling for an investigation to see whether oil companies are deliberately holding back production to raise prices. He says they are running at 85% capacity, when they should be running at 90%. Apparently he does not know or does not want to admit that there is a supply problem with oil that is driving up the prices.

If the oil companies are running at 85% when they could be running at 90%, they are really doing us a favor. They are using less oil. That will delay the day that shortages and other undesirable effects come because of the dwindling supply of cheap oil. Why does Sen. Schumer want us to go full tilt with the oil production? Why does he want to gobble up the stuff faster and run out faster?

Prices are going up because supply can't meet demand or can just barely meet demand. Now that may bring in huge profits to the oil companies. If so, they should use the money to sponsor looking for new sources of energy or for conservation. Paying their executives hundreds of millions of dollars per year certainly is not going to help their reputation. But the oil companies can’t be blamed for gouging the public, regardless of what it does for their profits.

Stop blaming the oil companies and do something that will help. If prices are higher, curtail consumption, and encourage development of renewable energy.

Kurzweil's Singularity

I ran into a book by Ray Kurzweil (a name which reminds me of synthesizers) called The Singularity is Near. In this book he states that major events in the Universe are happening faster and faster and at some time in the future, an infinite number of events will occur just before a certain time which he calls the singularity. These events could start with the creation of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. Kurzweil then follows that with formation of the Earth and Sun, formation of life, Cambrian explosion, and so forth until he concludes with the Industrial Revolution, the car and airplane, the television, the computer and the Internet. Each of these events come sooner by a certain factor than the previous. If this factor is constant, it follows that these events converge to a point in the future, the singularity, which Kurzweil calculates will be somewhere around 2045. Kurzweil continues to describe events beyond this; in fact, two of his six stages of existence follow the singularity.

Is there any such thing coming up? Certainly an infinite number of events can't occur in a finite time. As this singularity is reached, the process breaks down. So what's going to happen? I tried to see if there were any singularities in my life. I found at least two of them, and possibly others. Both of these two singularities had catastrophic results. This says that singularities are not necessarily positive. Indeed, what could be happening is a conversion to a time when we run out of oil, have huge global warming effects, have a number of wars going on, and so forth. The consequences for humankind of this kind of singularity are huge; maybe our world civilization will collapse.

What will things be like if a singularity like the one Kurzweil occurs? In both of my singularities, I wound up in a world or existence substantially different from what went on before. It was like entering a new world. So that is how I expect this singularity will behave. Something earthshaking will occur then, and a new world order will ensue. In 2045. Well, we will have to see if this happens.

We Were Warned, or Were We?

I saw "We Were Warned: Tomorrow's Oil Crisis" on CNN at 2006 March 18 2000 EST (8 pm) and was disappointed by the documentary for several reasons:

1. The ads did not go with the documentary. One of them was a Lexus ad for this fancy schmancy car that advertised all that's great about it except fuel economy. Another one was about how cool it was to have a cell phone that wasn't a cell phone because it was a video game with cell phone capability.

2. An executive from Exxon-Mobil said we had 100 years (or was it billion barrels) of oil left in this country if they could dig for it. What I know is I think of this Hubbert curve for our country peaking in 1970s after a discovery peak in the 1930s, and then I think of world production peaking in the 1960s and drawing the curve from there, except that the executive wants to push out the right side of the curve as though it were Pinocchio's nose.

3. The main problem I found with this documentary was that it used an unlikely double disaster scenario as its base point for discussion. I think it would have been better if it had shown absolutely no Katrinas, Ritas, al-Qaedas, bin Ladens, planeattacks or any other such deviations from business as normal and still shown that the effects of the crisis would still occur: high oil prices, empty Wal-marts, no tourism, people fighting with each otehr, and plunging stock markets.

4. I do note that that point that another poster made about the ethanol from sugar cane solution working only in Brazil showed up absolutely nowhere in the documentary.

5. I also note that for the hurricane on Houston they used footage from Rita, and for the disaster in Saudi Arabia, I think they used footage from Persian Gulf War I.

A better documentary is "The End of Suburbia". I have heard of a 90-minute documentary called "Oil Crash" but have absolutely no idea as to how to see it. In the meantime, CNN needs to try again with its documentary on peak oil and come up with something that is more likely.

Telescopes Will be Better in 2050

At the latest meeting of the Richmond Astronomical Society, someone brought up an article in the BBC on the Internet that said that telescopes will be worthless by 2050. The article maintains that global warming, which increases cloudiness, and jet contrails will combine to form a haze that ground telescopes will not be able to penetrate.

Global warming is a serious problem. However, I think that telescopes will be better in 2050. This is because of peak oil. Professor Gerry Gilmore of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy maintains that air traffic will increase, increasing the number of jet contrails, which produce artificial cirrostratus clouds that obscure the sky. He says, "You get these contrails from the jets. The rate at which they're expanding in terms of their fractional cover of the stratosphere is so large that if predictions are right, in 40 years it won't be worth having telescopes on Earth anymore - it's that soon."

No, Professor Gilmore. You did not take Peak Oil into consideration. There may not be any jet planes flying in 2050 to make contrails with. These planes require fuel, and you assume that jet travel is just simply goinjg to increase without limit. Instead, oil production will peak, probably between 2008 and 2010, and decline from that point on. By 2040, only a fraction of today's oil will be produced. From this must come the fuel for jet aircraft. It follows that far fewer aircraft will be flying, unless some way can be found of powering aircraft other than with petroleum products. So actually, the contrail situation will be better.

Global warming will wane, also. It is fueled by fossil fuels, and these will decline after 2010, and so will global warming. There may be some temporary increase due to coal, but if clean, renewable alternative fuels are developed, these will dominate in 2050, meaning a sharp decrease in CO₂ emission. Further, energy prices are sure to rise dramatically, due to peak oil, and so people will invent new means of conserving electricity, and hence generation of power from power plants. These may include such things as a device that will turn out lights unless people are in the room. If these proliferates, the cities will turn dark at night, and the stars will come out.

All of this means much better viewing in 2050 than now. Don't move or take apart Lick, Wilson, or Palomar Observatories! These telescopes will be much more useful functioning under beautifully starry skies in the year 2050. That is, unless peak oil and an energy crunch prevents power for clock drives and equipment from coming into the observatories.

This blog also appears in Here and Above.

Chain Reactions

I am a member of a church supper group. Dinners are scheduled once a month, in which a bunch of couples come to this one couple's house who hosts them and prepares a dinner for them. This allows us to get to know each other better. I thought of what happens if not enough couples are assigned to the dinners. If only 4 couples are assigned at a time, then if one or two can't make it (this can easily happen), then the hosts have to reschedule the dinner so that they all can make it. So there would be a large number of reschedulings; these would conflict with other dinners, church, and other events and cause more reschedulings. This reminds me of something I saw back in the 1950s in shows, perhaps on Walt Disney's Tomorrowland, of a demonstration of a nuclear fission chain reaction.

In such a chain reaction, a neutron hits an atom of Uranium 235 or Plutonium 239. This causes the atom to split, ejecting energy according to E=mc², two smaller atoms such as those of barium and krypton, and one to three more neutrons. These in turn would hit other atoms, which in turn would break up into two smaller atoms and produce more neutrons. The number of free neutrons grows exponentially until the entire chunk of uranium or plutonium is consumed. The resulting energy is tremendous, and produces the familiar mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion.

In the 1950s they demonstrated the concept by covering an empty room's floor with mousetraps with ping pong balls on them. Then someone would throw a ping pong ball into the room. The result is dramatic. Almost instantly, the air would be filled with balls pinging and ponging all over the place. This demonstrates the concept well, but I realized that this experiment can be used to model other things as well, after seeing a Java applet from my alma mater that demonstrated this concept at http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Mousetraps .

For example, Peak Oil. If you clicked on the mousetrap URL and ran the Java app, notice the graph on the bottom, measuring the number of balls in the air. Now compare this with the curve that is used to demonstrate the concept of Peak Oil. Don't they look similar? It's because similar concepts are involved.

Oil was discovered in 1859. At first, only a handful of Pennsylvanians used the oil. But these people talked to others about this wondrous substance, and other people started to dig for oil. These in turn did wondrous things with the oil, such as invent and operate automobiles and aircraft, and this led others to want the oil. This kept spreading all over the world, resulting in a growth in the use of oil that resembles the up side of the Peak Oil bell curve. However, as people began spreading around drilling for the oil, less and less oil was available to find and drill for. This puts a damping effect on the growth of oil production, until eventually the damping will exceed the growth and turn it into an exponential descent or decay. The same thing happens with mousetraps or uranium, as the chain reaction runs out of mousetraps to spring or uranium atoms to fiss.

In both cases, the determining differential equation is the same: y' = Ay(C - y) . C is the total capacity of the system, and A is the rate at which neutrons or ping pong balls are generated per neutron or ball strike. Solving the equation and graphing the solution results in a bell-like curve called the logistic curve.

The equation can be used to describe other behavior as well. Take people living in a city around 1900. They live in decent neighborhoods. But some get dissatisfied and move out farther from the city so they can have more room. These people are like ping pong balls that get ponged and hop out to land on another mousetrap. This causes more people to move out. This accelerates as the once livable neighborhood deteriorates in the inner city. Eventually the suburbs get crowded and people move out even farther from the city. This causes the inner suburbs to deteriorate as well. Look at the Java applet again. Doesn't that red blob remind you of a typical city with development going on? It's fueled by oil, of course.

The equation can be used to describe bacteria in a Petri dish, viruses in the body of a large animal, the growth of the Internet, the growth of automobiles, and in fact, the growth and decline of just about any product or fad. It's an equation we need to live with. We live in a world that moves on in logistic curves, and Peak Oil happens to be one of these curves.

World Civilization Nearly Bought the Farm Today

Turn on the news. What did you hear today? The big story was the destruction of a mosque in Iraq and the reaction that it caused among Shiite Muslims in Iraq. Right now, CNN is highlighting the low-key Mardi Gras that New Orleans after Katrina will celebrate next week. It's not even Mardi Gras yet. A port deal was approved giving operation of 6 US ports to a Dubai company, and legislators are griping about it. ABC has up front the story of some prima donna having breast cancer. The local news is all in arms about the euthanizing of two black bears at a local zoo because one bit a boy; this after we found out about how Chesterfield's supervisors and other officials have been flying extravagantly (or vainly, to use Carly Simon's term) all over the place at taxpayer expense. Some of this is relatively important. It seems the lives of prima donnas and murder cases of lily white young females dominates the news.

All miss the big one. Our civilization almost bought the farm today. Some suicide bombers came into Abqaiq terminal and blew themselves up. They only blew up some minor stuff. If they had blown up the pipeline from Mideast oil to the Persian Gulf, a huge amount of oil would have been taken off the market. This would have caused skyrocketing oil and petrol costs all over the place and would have caused massive shortages as well. Much economic trade would have ground to a halt amidst the $300 a gallon oil and $9.50 petrol. Look at EV World and you will see what I mean.

It's time the hypermedia quit with the murders, the divas and other Hollywood personalities, and the continual harping on tragedies that have already happened such as Katrina. They need to focus more on peak oil, and to throw these other things aside and give stories like today's Saudi attack top billing.

Two Dollars and Twenty-Fix Cents a Gallon

What's the price at East Coast? Two dollars and twenty-fix cents a gallon, that's what. What's a fix? It looks like it is part 5, part 6, and doesn't know what it means or which it is. Maybe it is $2.25 1/2 a gallon or $2.255 a gallon, or considering that they always put a 9/10 of a gallon on the big price, maybe it's $2.264 a gallon. Maybe it is some new number or mathematical concept that looks like some digit, like the symbol for infinity looks like an 8 on its side. Of course it can't be infinity, although it is trying to reach that impossible level.

Apparently it is a malfunction of a bipartite sign in which the bottom and top halves of the digits are operated separately. If so, what other new digits can we come up with? A woo (top looks like a 1, the bottom like a 2) looks like a question mark? without the dot. A throur (between 3 and 4) looks like Captain Hook's bad hand. A seight (between 7 and 8) looks like a bird riding on a unicycle. And so forth.

But can these newfangled digits really measure what's coming up with oil? It may be nearing a peak, in which case we can expect those price signs to continue to go up frantically, like a bouncing Wal-Mart happy (or maybe sad) face hitting a price sign and causing the price to go up instead of down. Indeed, I wonder where we will get the energy and the oil we need in the future after we reach the peak. Maybe if that happens, the crazy digit in the price will mean exactly what means: we will all be in a fix.

Cliffhanger Developments for 2006

Well now, 2005 has come and gone, and along with it the Deffeyes Thanksgiving of 2005 November 24, supposedly the date that Peak Oil occurs. It has been an eventful year all right. Both petrol and oil went up in price dramatically, raising the price of oil to about $66 a barrel and the price of petrol to $2.54 near where I live. The hurricanes then came, possibly sent to us by Peak Oil's brother, Global Warming. That destroyed so much in the Gulf of Mexico that the price of petrol went all the way to $3.25 on average near where I live, and at some stations hit $3.49 a gallon. Then they went down rapidly, down to $1.95 a gallon, because refineries came back on line, oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve arrived, and so did oil, petrol, and natural gas from Europe. I expected this because of the rebound effect. Petrol prices should now go up, and I have observed this, as they are now about $2.15 a gallon. The price of crude oil actually went down when the hurricanes struck, because with fewer refineries operating, there is less demand for crude oil. It is now going back up, around $61 a barrel. The world is operating without any slack, producing and consuming 82 million barrels of oil each day.

So what's ahead for 2006? I think prices are going to go up. Oil will probably hit about $95 a barrel, just short of the century mark. Petrol around here will be $3.50 a gallon in the summer. Prices should then edge back again, provided a new batch of hurricanes don't cause trouble in the Gulf.

I do not think oil has peaked yet, but it could soon. Some people are saying the peak will not come until 2020 to 2025, and they may be counting oil from a number of unconventional sources, including deep ocean, Canadian tar sands, liquefied coal, and oil shale. These take a substantial part of a barrel of energy to produce one barrel, hardly efficient. I think the progress to the peak will be slow, and the ill effects that James Kunstler predicts in his Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles for 2006 may eventually come up in future years. For example, I hardly think that the Dow will go to 4000. I think it will end the year around 10,700, about where it is now. If you want your money to earn money, try energy stocks and funds, gold, gold stocks and funds, and money market funds. Inflation should be coming up, but I don't see that happening. I find it interesting that Kunstler thinks that China is going to go cuckoo and that South America is going to go loco. In other words, the whole world is going to go bananas soon. Further, he thinks that China will wag the dog and attack a central Asian nation to divert attention from domestic troubles caused by a worsening fuel situation. I don't see any evidence that will happen any time soon.

There are some ominous developments, hwoever. The price of oil is going back up again. Russia is denying Ukraine gas because Ukraine will not pay $230 per 1000 cubic meters of gas. This price corresponds roughly to a monthly bill here for gas of about $1,400. Pretty high. Ukraine has enough to last 6 months. Its pipelines also feed western Europe, so the result could be a skirmish between western Europe and Russia. Even worse yet, Euripe could cut gas to the United States, causing serious problems here. There could be cold snaps here this winter. And as Kunstler points out, the price of gas goes up when the weather is colder than normal and down when it is warmer.

So what's going to happen in the future? As I said before, this one may go down to the wire. It's a cliffhanger. Supply and demand is pretty powerful and will push alternative energy sources into the marketplace as the cost of fossil fuels go up. Whether this will be enough to cause a catastrophic shortage remains to be seen. Conversion to the new sources will cause a series of crises in future years, and the outcome of these will determine what kind of future our world will have.

Note that I use the word "petrol" to describe fuel for motor vehicles, rather than gasoline or benzine. Gasoline is confusing because it shortens to "gas", which also means methane from the ground. Benzine can be confused with benzene, the aromatic compound with ring molecules.

Conspiracy Theories

I read with interest John Kunstler's weekly column today in his Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles. He addresses the numerous conspiracy theories that have emerged about the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks in the US. He does not mention any of them in particular, but he does mention the idea of the government letting it happen. He sees the conspiracy theories as a delusion that is distracting us from tackling the problems of Peak Oil directly.

Some of these say that the Bush government knew what was coming but let it happen to get an excuse to put troops all over the place near where the oil is. Others go further and say that the 2001 September 11 attacks were somehow choreographed by the US government. Is there anything to these? Kunstler says not.

I am not sure. Some of what these theories say can be disproven easily. For example, bombs did not bring down the World Trade Center. Every floor (below the plane hit lines) of the towers was in perfectly good shape until the floor above it collapsed on it. This is in line with the theory that high temperatures in the weight-bearing columns caused them to give way. It is not in line with the theory that bombs brought the Towers down. If that had happen, we would have seen explosions all over the place in the Towers. Further, some say a small plane with a bomb aboard hit the towers. A comparison of the outline of a Boeing 767 and the holes left by the terrorist planes seems to show that the two match each other.

However, questions remain. Why did World Trade Center 7 collapse? It was farther away from Towers 1 and 2 than other buildings that stood were. And why did every single building with the name World Trade Center was destroyed, but all other buildings stood? And how about the infamous eight "My Pet Goat" minutes between the time Bush knew about the attacks and the time he announced it to the elementary school class and the world?

I suspect these have answers somehow that don't involve what the conspiracy advocates are saying. But I can't rule out some kind of complicity. It was in the interest of the Administration to take control of large parts of the Middle East, since that is where much of the remaining oil is. So to me I could see where he would see the attacks as an opportunity to take this control. It probably did not happen that way, but it can't be ruled out.

In any case, weapons of mass destruction were not the reason why the US invaded Iraq. Neither is getting rid of a ruthless dictator. That was the good thing about the invasion. Saddam can no longer shred people. But helping the Iraqi people and setting up a democracy, although it may be a generous act by the US to that country, was not the reason why the US invaded. It invaded because of oil. That is not the way to deal with the upcoming crisis; cooperation with nations and companies is the way.

Kunstler also says that there is an elephant coming up the python and that sooner or later it will be here. I wonder if he is aware of the other elephant in the python - the retiring Baby Boomers. This huge group of people is all of a sudden going to consume instead of save. Could this cause the economy to crash?

Oil Shale and Energy

This morning I read an article about the deposits of shale in the western states of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, centering around the triple-point at which the three states meet. The article said that there is a tremendous deposit of oil here. It said that there are a billion barrels of oil per square mile. I looked at the map and I could easily see two or three areas at least 30 miles wide. So this is a total of well over 2-3 trillion barrels of oil.

Then I read further to find out what this mining would be like. The idea is to take a rod and plunge it deep into the earth, and heat it to 700 degrees Fahrenheit. This melts the rock and after a while of doing this, the melted stuff, consisting in large measure of an oil-like substance, comes to the surface and it can then be refined into distillate products such as gasoline.

The problem with this is that it takes a tremendous amount of energy to heat the rock to 700 degrees. The article said this would have to be done for four years before any oil comes from it. Further, the column would have to be surrounded by a cold layer, I suppose, at least 100 degrees below zero. That would require more energy. And further, the operation requires a lot of water, which is not in great supply in Wyoming, Colorado, or Utah.

The question is whether it takes more than a barrel of oil's worth of energy to get a barrel of shale oil out of the ground. If it does, this will not be an energy source for us - in fact, it takes up energy instead and would make the problem worse. Already, a few hundred thousand barrels of oil were extracted from these fields in the 1980s, according to the article, and it did not earn any profit.

Oil shale is a possibility, but mainly if a new technology not requiring so much energy could be used to get the oil out.

This is indeed a cliffhanger

I have been away for some time due to a family problem. While that was going on, like everyone else, I witnessed on TV and other media the damage and suffering caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I have never seen anything like the destruction of an entire city, as though it were nuked, and the struggles that went on afterwards. Now people are pointing fingers at each other and vowing it would not happen again. It seemed to have worked with Rita. Now the opposite pattern has appeared. Some people are going to ride out hurricanes rather than roast for hours on a traffic-clogged interstate at 100 degrees F and 1 mph.

My main concern with these storms is the damage that they cause to oil facilities. Several refineries are now offline, and much production of oil and natural gas has been disrupted. The question is whether there is enough capacity to handle all the demand now. Gasoline prices rose from $2.51 to $3.29 after Katrina, and there were some stations out of gasoline. Since then the prices have been receding. After Rita, prices jumped, then fell back, and are now rising again. I was afraid that real shortages will appear.

They may not. Now that the $3 barrier has been reached, demand is finally going down. People are driving less and they are carpooling and otherwise saving gasoline. This lowered demand, and that has caused prices to fall. It's the supply and demand equation working. When prices of a commodity rise, demand for it will decrease, and other alternatives will become profitable and will activate. It seems that supply and demand will take care of this peak oil problem.

However, oil and other hydrocarbons are non-renewable resources and there is only a finite amount of these substances. Sooner or later we are going to run out, and supply and demand may not take care of this sudden change easily. That is why I say this situation is a cliffhanger. It could go either way. Supply and demand and other energy sources are tending to ease the situation, but the continued demand overseas and finiteness of the resources are taking us the other way. It is not clear what's going to happen; it could be anywhere from a gradual changeover to other resources to a world catastrophe. That is why I think this situation is a cliffhanger, and why I have named this blog that.

I will, if I have a chance, post again this Monday; I chose this day for this blog because that's when James Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles comes out. If you follow this link, you may have to increment the number "15" to make the chronicle current.

Prius Really Does Have Good Gas Mileage

It is now 2005 August 1. We are in the year of 18 projects, and apparently they are keeping the oil flowing in the world, although the market is so tight that a little hint of hurricane or a little flame at a refinery can send oil prices soaring towards the Space Shuttle. I heard today that Ford's average gasoline mileage is only about 19 mpg. This is averaged over all of Ford's vehicles. Evidently Ford can't get out of the SUV habit. One of these days it will bankrupt them. Toyota is much better, surely. They make gasoline-frugal cars such as the Corolla and the Matrix, and hybrids such as the Highlander and the Prius. But no, they are not the most gas-frugal brand of car. Honda is, at 25 mpg, and even that is not good in my opinion. Evidently Toyota has too many SUVs, too. They roar down TV news advertisements and car dealerships with a huge army of Tundra SUVs, ruining the good gasoline mileage they get from the Prius. Hopefully this will change soon.

But the Prius does indeed get good gasoline mileage. It gets nearly 50 mpg! This, plus conserving on when you drive, anyway, will help you through the high gasoline prices ahead of us. To show you what I mean, here is a record of our Prius, which we bought last Christmas Eve:

Date	Gallons	Price	Panel mpg	Actual mpg	Miles Driven
2005/06/12	8.088	16.98	49.1	49.0	396
2005/06/20	8.608	17.55	48.1	46.1	397
2005/06/29	8.424	18.27	48.8	48.9	412
2005/07/07	7.736	16.16	49.3	51.6	399
2005/07/16	8.584	19.65	48.3	43.0	369
2005/07/31	8.4	18.22	49.8	49.3	414

Pretty good, isn't it? The display on the Prius shows the number of miles since the last refueling and the mpg at that time. "Panel mpg" refers to this number on the display panel on the dashboard. "Actual mpg" is obtained by subtracting the mileage from the past refueling mileage, and dividing by the number of gallons. There is a bit of bouncing around, caused by uneven places at which gasoline pumps cut off. But the trend is clear. This vehicle averages at least in the high forties, and many times it comes close to or exceeds 50 mpg. Even with today's high prices, it still costs only $18 to fill the tank.

This is the car of the future. Either auto makers must make hybrids like this one or fail. Toyota is destined to be the top automaker in the United States, and in the entire world, by far.

Global Warming Special

On CNN last Saturday night, I watched a special on global warming on CNN. According to the special, the effects of global warming are being felt right now. In Tuvalu, the water is rising, and even strong ordinary waves will flood houses and lawns. There is fear that this atoll, just above the water, will get submerged in the years ahead, and then where with the Tuvaluns go?

The ice is melting in the Arctic. The Inuit depend on it for their activities. The polar bear feed on seals during the winter, when the water is frozen solid. The frozen part of the year is getting shorter every year, and now there is fear that polar bears, which don't eat much at all during the summer, will become extinct.

The city of New Orleans is especially subject to damage by global warming. Over the past few decades, much marshland in the Mississippi delta went under water.

And so on it goes. Every coastal city, including 13 of the 17 largest, is subject to damage by global warming.

Or are they? How much energy does it take to melt all that Arctic and Antarctic ice? Is there enough energy in the oil and natural gas still remaining to do all this damage? A recent study suggested not. The Club of Rome report in the 1970s suggested in their basic computer run that the thing that will get civilization in the 21st century will be running out of resources (such as oil), not pollution (global warming). To me, much of this material about how the world will flood with global warming is hype.

However, most of the remedies for global warming would also deal with the problem of peak oil as well. These include cleaner and more efficient automobiles, limits on pollution at factories, and more efficiently operating industry, together with conservation. Further, the Club of Rome also suggested that if we get a gift from the heavens (or Alpha Centaurions) of a century's worth of oil, then pollution; i.e., global warming, will be a serious problem - it will cause billions of deaths and make the planet unlivable. So we need to heed the warnings of this special. In particular, President Bush needs to sign the Kyoto Treaty now.

Oil gets to 60 before I do

Well, it looks like oil has done it. It has hit the big six zero more than a year before I will hit mine. Crude futures today in New York sold for $60.55 a barrel, or $1.44 a gallon. It is making gasoline and other oil-based products go up as well. It is due to the Saudis and other OPEC members not being able to convince the rest of the world that they can increase production. In fact, many in the oil business say that they no longer can, and if so, then maybe peak oil has been reached. Kenneth Deffeyes has been predicting that magic moment for 2005 November 24.

To me the important thing is when demand exceeds supply. If reduced supply reduces demand, that postpones that exceeding point. I predict that to occur in 2008. It then remains to be seen whether this will cause severe economic problems for the world, or whether it will cause such a reduction in demand that an oil glut will develop, despite production ability being in decline.

Once again I hear that part of the reason for crude's upward rise is refinery shortages. I don't know why they keep saying that. Maybe it's something they just say. But it does not make sense. Refinery shortages should cause crude prices to go down. If I am crude and can't get refined, then I am worthless. My price should drop then. No, the reason for the increase in crude prices is a perceived crude shortage, which is probably based on a real one. The latest fear is that Gödelized Iran will halt or slow down oil shipments.

I did a least squares fit on oil prices from 2004 January 1 to 2005 June 22, using data from the tax department of the state of Alaska. The resulting equation is:

Crude Oil Price = 35.12599281*exp(0.000852*t)*(1+0.044513*sin(0.0793*t+3.213698406))

where t is the time in days since 2004 January 1 and the argument of the sine is in radians. If you graph this function, you get a wavy exponential increase. There is oscillation going on, probably caused by 2004's huge increases. The formula predicts the following prices:

2005 July 1 57.25
2005 Sept 8 61.95
2005 Oct 12 58.46
2005 Nov 27 66.28
2005 Dec 30 62.55
2006 July 22 81.17
2007 Jan 1 92.69
2008 Jan 1 120.38
2009 Jan 1 163.51
2010 Jan 1 236.55

So that we will hve $237/gallon oil in 2010.

Oil crash coming?

I found an article on CNN's Money web site today. Since this link will probably go dead in a few days, here is a quote:

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The oil market may be quickly headed for a massive crash as global economic growth slackens, alternative energy gains ground and financial traders sense a price peak, an economist with Morgan Stanley said Thursday.

His projection for a multi-year bear cycle stands in sharp contrast to the super-spike scenario envisioned three months ago by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley's arch-rival in the world of oil derivatives trading, where they are the two biggest players.

"As evidence of weakening demand and ample supply accumulates, the market may panic," Andy Xie, Greater China economist in Hong Kong, said in a report. "I believe it could correct in the most speculative fashion -- it could collapse."

This article is further evidence that people just don't seem to understand or want to talk about the possibility of cheap oil running out soon. They say that growth will slacken, that advances in alternative energy will be made, and that economists will think the price is getting too high and is forming a bubble. Sure these things will influence oil prices for a while, but there are many people that say that these are not going to make much difference. I happen to think that oil prices will continue to go up for the foreseeable future.

The price may very well crash. It may go down into the 40s or even the 30s. But then it will go right back up again, just like it did in February. If indeed the price is headed for a crash, it presents an investment opportunity. Sell out of energy stocks and bonds, wait for the crash to occur, then rebuy into them.

Peak Oil Looks Like a Real Cliffhanger

Welcome to Cliffhanger, my newest blog. This blog will be devoted to Peak Oil and related issues, such as Global Warming, alternative energy, hybrid and fuel cell cars, development encroachment, and anything else that impinges on the health of this planet or on our supply of resources.

In my opinion, we have a cliffhanger coming in the next few years, and it is hard to say what will happen. According to many experts, including Kenneth Deffeyes, Colin Campbell, and Matt Simmons, world production of oil is nearing a peak, and despite rapid demand growth, especially from the United States, China, and India, production will decrease rapidly a few years after the peak is reached. Projections of the peak are anywhere from right now to 2112, with the median seeming now to be somewhere around 2008. After this, oil and gasoline prices will rise dramatically, and economic recession or depression, world tensions, possible famines, and other undesirable things will start to happen. A good review of what will happen to Suburbia can be found in the film The End of Suburbia, published by Postcarbon Books. A good site for describing these changes rather frankly is Clusterfuck Nation, by James Kunstler, especially his Chronicles.

Or will all this happen? Disaster has been predicted over and over again, especially by Colin Campbell, who always seems to be predicting imminent disaster. President Jimmy Carter in 1977 said that the peak was coming in the 1980s, but developments in oil extraction technology and discoveries in the North Sea and Prudhoe Bay has delayed this peak. The economists say that supply and demand will take care of the situation. There are alternative sources of energy, such as wind, tar sands, hydrogen, solar, coal, nuclear, and natural gas (but each of these has their own problems, especially the latter three). When oil becomes too expensive, these other technologies will take over. Further, technological developments will make what use of energy we do have more efficient. A good example of this is the Toyota Prius, which uses a motor to help maximize the efficiency of an internal combustion engine, resulting in a car with 50 mpg fuel economy. Because of this cliffhanger I see coming up, I have purchased a Prius.

So what will happen in the future? There is no denying that supply and demand is a powerful force. But will it fully address the Peak Oil problem? I think it is going to be a close call. This one is a cliffhanger, folks. This is why I have named my blog "Cliffhanger". I have chosen this blog as my Monday blog, on the most depressing day of the week, and after James Kunstler publishes his next installment of his Clusterfuck Chronicles. I expect that demand for oil will drop drastically when oil rises in price, causing conservation and technological developments to increase. This happened in the 1970s, resulting in a huge oil glut. It will happen again. But supplies will continue to dwindle. In my opinion, supply and demand will kick in, but it will result in a massive disruption in our way of life, as we convert from one set of lifestyles to another. The result will be a crisis, and this may be well the Fourth Turning that Strauss and Howe are calling for. The results of this disruption and adjustment to me are uncertain. And that is why I am monitoring this situation and have constructed a blog for it, in which I will report any developments I see on it and also my feelings about what is going to happen. I am hoping for a happy conclusion to this crisis but am still concerned.