From:
The Hamburg University of Applied Sciences
Research and Transfer Centre Applications of Life Sciences
Lohbruegger Kirchstrasse 65
D-21033 Hamburg/Germany

T: +49.40.42875-6324
F: +49.40.42875-6079

 franziska.mannke at haw-hamburg.d

www.haw-hamburg.de/ftz-als.html

We learned about an online complete “one-stop” library on much of what matters onclimatechange.

The refernce is:

http://www.klima2009.net/de/ccsl

Subject 1: Re: Nuclear Reactors are going micro.

This is a radically new reactor design with a lot of interesting properties.

I found the patent application with Google patent search.  It’s not that big, so I attach a copy.

To answer Charles’s questions:

You get the heat out with pipes carrying a heat transfer fluid to and from the surface.  No ground water needed.

I believe it’s intrinsically extremely difficult to use this technology to make weapons grade material.

You make electricity with a steam turbine and cooling arrangements at the surface.

The patent application points out that the fact that the hydride fuel is its own moderator whose moderating effect is controlled by the same mechanism that controls the reactor, namely the temperature difference between the fissile hydride core and a  non-fissile hydride hydrogen store, means that the core can be made twice as big as required for criticality. This means that fuel burnup could be as much as 50%. This is a huge increase over current burnup rates of 1 to 3 %, and could dramatically extend refueling intervals.  (Apparently not proposed for the Hyperion product.)

The fuel cycle permits extremely easy separation of low life-time fission products from long-life actinides. All of the actinides can be kept in the purified fuel where they will eventually be burned up in a reactor.  This means that both the volume and half-life of waste can be reduced enormously.

Although proposed for small reactors, this technology could be used for big ones too. It’s a pity it was not invented long ago. It would have changed the whole trajectory of nuclear power.

Too late now, of course.

David

Subject: Nuclear Reactors are going micro; Ok, so what’s the catch?

Steve

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20…

How do you get rid of the heat? Just let it diffuse into the ground? Do you need groundwater flow? No weapons grade is interesting, but it might be partially enriched making it easy to make WG. No moving parts: how do you make electricity with no moving parts? Some kind of fuel cell?

Still, interesting.

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Subject 2: Wind Farms:

Lets see, we just took our class to a wind farm.  You get 1.5 GW machine working 30% of the time for 1 million, so that is $2 million per GW effective.
If this nuclear thing does 20,000 homes that implies (if US) it is 10 GW. for what did they say, 25 million?  That is $2.5 million per GW.
Wind might be marginally cheaper (if I did my math right), a lot less scary, but would need backup.

Charlie

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Subject 3: Interesting conversation between one of ours and a Shell oilman:

There is some data available, but it’s held by groups such as CERA and is only available to subscribers of their various data services.  In one such study “The Cost of Oil”, they analyze lifecycle costs for new oil in a number of countries and environments around the world, looking also at unconventional oil sources (oil sands and shale).

[ph] maybe the friend’s research institution can subscribe.   Do you know if that’s possible?

I can’t share the report or data with you, but in my reading of it and thinking about industry activities in the last few years as oil prices have spiked and then fallen, I’m not sure I know where we are on your curve.

[ph] the energy cost curve and the dollar cost curve follow ‘different masters’ as it were.  What seems to happen is that people coast along not paying attention and then a snag in providing increasing supplies gets the attention of the speculators.  When increased prices do not stimulate increasing supply a price war occurs, breaking all the set relationships and then it collapses in disarray for things to resettle at some semi stable level.    I note that the oil prices plummeted this month, but the food prices did not, for example.    The physical cost of resources follows different learning curves, and that’s what I’m trying to help gather data on.

It’s also not clear whether we can realize we are at a point of diminishing returns until we have moved well past.  Another complexity in oil is that 80% of supply comes from National Oil Companies and they will have very different definitions of diminishing returns than will commercial companies.  What does diminishing returns mean when the “return” is political stability or local employment, or staying in power?

[ph] To me it means that whatever you measure you then study the learning curve *for that measure*.   I think the effort of physical economists to measure some ‘scientific’ value judgment for resources (in place of money denominated market judgments) can work better if putting the scientific judgments down stream of the hard measures.   The better alternative seems to be to look at empirical learning curves using physical measures, and make a value judgments about the implied feedbacks in the systems producing them, as well as use them to read signals of environmental responses.

Some general numbers from my own study and thinking that might bear on this.  In conventional (easy) oil fields, the energy return on investment is very large.  I would say typically in the range of 20-100:1.  This can include some very challenging environments such as arctic or deepwater, but the resources have not been exploited so there are high returns to be had on the energy invested.  As we move down the resource pyramid, these numbers change significantly.  For oil sands developments, such as in Canada, or oil shale developments in the US (not being done yet) utilizing new technologies, the range is more like 3-10:1.  Numbers I’ve heard quoted for ethanol are something like 8:1 for sugarcane, and a range of 0.6-1.3:1 for corn.  The CERA study by the way looks at financial returns that tell a very different story.

[ph] I guess the one I’d be interested in is the curve of changing net energy return rates for new fields and for new  methods to increase extraction.  I understand that some proposals for going back to old fields with new technology are now becoming economic, but that surely must also involve spending more energy to get it done too.  It’s the curvature of the mean change over time that shows the environmental response to efforts for maximizing the resource.

I had an interesting debate in the mid-1980’s with an economist.  At the time, I was Exploration Economics Manager for Shell.  The question was if it takes more than a barrel to make a barrel, but the barrel made is worth more than the barrels used (rising prices and futures markets), is that good business?

Does this help at all?

[ph] Sure, it helps a good bit.   What I’m trying to do is help pin more of this down.   I think the point of vanishing returns is not close to 100% energy extraction cost, though that question does help point to how economists have no model for connecting reality to what they say we can do with it…. :-)     I think the greater concern I have is that when resource supply snags for necessities are hit (whether permanent or temporary), the scarcity drives up the price and encourages investment.     If the system has guessed wrong, and the supply snag is terminal diminishing returns, all the investment really drives is accelerating price increases and wasteful depletion of a critical resource.    It’s that positively negative feedback loop that concerns me.    Do you know of anyone else who has thought about that?

Subject 4: AND THIS IS WHAT GETS PUBLISHED! Stick to the oil drum folks!

 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200…

Scientific Community Called Upon To Resolve Debate On ‘Net Energy’ Once And For All

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2008) — “Net energy is a (mostly) irrelevant, misleading and dangerous metric,” says Professor Bruce Dale, editor-in-chief of Biofuels, Bioresources and Biorefining (Biofpr) in the latest issue of the journal published November 7.

Net energy is a metric by which some scientists attempt to assess the sustainability and ability of alternative fuels to displace fossil fuel but recent debate in Biofpr shows that scientists are undecided on its merits as a tool.

Instead, in a series of corresponding articles clearly stating the case for and against net energy, Professor Dale calls for a more holistic approach which takes into consideration issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, petroleum displacement and economic growth, particularly in the developing world. He is calling on the scientific community to come together to help establish, once and for all, parameters by which to calculate fuel efficiency by using not just one, but several metrics that can be used in conjunction to give a fuller picture.

The articles – Net energy: still a (mostly) irrelevant, misleading and dangerous metric, Bruce E. Dale; Net energy and strategic decision making: response to Professor Dale, Franzi Poldy; and Response to Dr. Poldy’s questions in this issue, Bruce E. Dale – are the culmination of the ongoing heated exchange, which has already attracted a huge response, between those in favor and those against the use of ‘net energy’ as a metric.

Professor Dale says: “The election of the new USA president, Barack Obama, who is an open supporter of biofuels will put them very much on the agenda. We need to resolve this issue of appropriate metrics once and for all so we can concentrate on the real task at hand – to deliver viable alternative fuels and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.”

He adds: “Net energy is misleading because it does not give us the whole story of a fuel but instead asks us to make a judgement using a very small component of the decision making process, albeit an important piece of a large jigsaw. When trying to determine whether a fuel is viable or not, we not only need to consider energy in versus energy out but also the overall context such as petrol displacement, land usage and economic growth – this requires a balanced approach with several metrics.”

However, in a corresponding article, Dr. Franzi Poldy, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Australia, disagrees, arguing that in order for policymakers and governments to make decisions about which fuels are best, they need to have numbers to work with to establish a way of calculating the benefits of potential fuels – net energy is the best way to do this.

He says: “Although net energy is not the whole story about any fuel, it is an important part of the story for those concerned with long-term energy supply at the whole-economy level.”

Untapped energy source fuels a paradox.

By MICHAEL RICHARDSON, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008, The Japan Times.
SINGAPORE — Ice that burns? It sounds like a magician’s trick. So do some of the exotic names given to gas hydrate — “flammable sorbet,” “crystal gas” and “burning ice.” But recent scientific surveys and test drilling in Asia and elsewhere have proven that this substance exists in massive, potentially recoverable quantities and that it could be an important commercial energy source for the future.

Indeed, some of the world’s biggest economies and energy users, including the United States, Japan, China, India, South Korea and Canada, are racing to develop production techniques and equipment to tap gas hydrate and bring it to market within the next decade. For all of them, except energy self-sufficient Canada, the ability to tap new domestic sources of natural gas offers the prospect of substantially reducing dependence on expensive gas imports.

Hydrate deposits up to several hundred meters thick are generally found in two places: on or beneath the deep ocean floor, or underground close to the Arctic permafrost layer, where high pressure and cold temperatures turn natural gas (methane, ethane and propane) into semi-solid form.

Gas hydrate looks like ordinary ice, although it is sometimes discolored. But when brought to the surface and allowed to warm, it can be lit with a match. It then burns with a soft orange flame. One cubic meter of gas hydrate releases as much as 164 cubic meters of natural gas, in which methane is usually the chief constituent.

While global estimates vary considerably, the U.S. government’s energy department says that the energy content of methane in hydrate form is “immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels,” meaning coal, oil and conventional gas.

The presence of hydrates has been inferred from seismic surveys and subsea sampling along most of the world’s continental shelf margins. Some of the biggest deposits so far found are on the ocean floor off Japan, South Korea, India and China, and on and off U.S. and Canadian Arctic land territory.

Japan’s economy, trade and energy ministry announced last year that there were over 1.1 trillion cubic meters of methane hydrates in a Pacific Ocean trench, called the Nankai Trough, some 50 kilometers from the coast of Honshu, the main Japanese island. This reserve is equivalent to 14 years of gas use by Japan, which imports nearly all the oil, gas and coal needed to run its vast economy, the world’s second-largest after the United States.

Three years ago, the Japanese government said it believed commercial exploitation of methane hydrate was economically viable when oil traded above $54 a barrel, less than half its present price. In November 2007, the government in Seoul said it had found enough gas hydrates in the sea between South Korea and Japan to meet 30 years of demand. Six months earlier, China announced that it had for the first time managed to tap into seabed sediment containing gas hydrates in the northern part of the South China Sea. It said initial estimates indicated that the find contained the equivalent of more than 100 million metric tons of oil — about one-third of China’s annual oil consumption.

In doing so, China became the fourth country after the U.S., Japan and India to achieve this technological breakthrough in the deep sea search for energy. India announced in 2006 that it had made several huge discoveries of gas hydrates off its east and west coasts.

Since last April, the U.S. has signed separate agreements with India, South Korea and Japan to cooperate in hydrate research, exploration and production. Japan, the U.S. and Canada, working in close collaboration, have achieved several days of continuous extraction of methane from underground hydrate reserves in the Arctic permafrost. Large-scale production tests are planned in the Canadian Arctic this winter and in the U.S. Arctic next year.

Test production from offshore Arctic finds is expected to lag by three to five years, because marine deposits are less well documented than those on land. Sea sampling and drilling are also much more expensive. Japan said recently it plans to start test drilling in the Nankai Trough in 2012, possibly leading to commercial production by 2016. Korea has a similar production timetable.

However, apart from the high costs and technical challenge, all the hydrate explorers face another possible danger — environmental disaster. While governments are attracted to an abundant clean fuel, scientists are concerned that drilling when combined with global warming risks disturbing the seabed and triggering an uncontrolled release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The British government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, warned recently that one big unknown about global warming is the stage at which dangerous tipping points may be reached that lead to runaway heating of the planet. He cited as an example the release of methane hydrate deposits in the Arctic.

Some evidence suggests that a catastrophic release of methane from the ocean 55 million years ago, possibly caused by undersea volcanic explosions and landslides, was responsible for making the earth much warmer.

The modern hydrate quest is built on a paradox. When released to the air, methane is a greenhouse gas that traps around 20 times more solar heat in the earth’s atmosphere than carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. But when burned, methane releases up to 25 percent less carbon dioxide than combustion of the same amount of coal. It also emits no nitrogen and sulfur oxides, which poison the air and human health when coal is burned without effective filters.

The world’s abundant methane hydrate deposits have been safely stored for thousands of years in the ocean depths and Arctic permafrost. Those who now seek to exploit what is probably the world’s greatest reserve of new fossil fuel must therefore be sure that in doing so they improve, not harm, the global environment.

Michael Richardson, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is an energy and security specialist at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.

The World Values Survey is available at: www.worldvaluessurvey.org www.happyplanetindex.org

Download the reports
Download the Happy Planet report (2006, pdf)
Download the European Happy Planet report (2007, pdf)

See the Global HPI map:  http://www.happyplanetindex.org/map.htm

From:    jeh1 at columbia.edu
Subject: Complete Trip Report.                                                                                                                                    Date: August 4, 2008

- July 3, 2008: Dear Prime Minister Fukuda: A letter to the leader of Japan before the G8 meeting
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2…

- July 2008: *Climate Threat to the Planet: Implications for Energy Policy*
Slides for presentation given July 4 at United Nations University in Tokyo, available in PDF and Powerpoint.
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/Tokyo…
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/Tokyo…

Above is a summary of the State of the Science and a hint to the State of the Politics.

The links are here and we will post this also in our data base.

From:    jeh1 at columbia.edu
Subject: Dear Prime Minister Fukuda
Letter sent to Prime Minister Fukuda before the G8 meeting is at http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2…

makes some very interesting points about relative parts of coal, oil, and gas in 2007 emissions and their historic part in the present composition of the air, and the various sources of these emissions.

He makes suggestions and asks for Fukuda’s leadership. Please open the above link in order to read Jim Hansen’s intervention to the G8.

The US is single market for Venezuela, Mexico, and Canada, but also a market for every other oil exporter.
Will the US now try to monopolize also the Brazilian future exports?

With World Vegetarian Week here, Bruce Friedrich, Posted May 19, 2008, on AlterNet, his Top Ten Reasons To Go Vegetarian.

1. Helping Animals Also Helps the Global Poor While there is ample and justified moral indignation about the diversion of 100 million tons of grain for biofuels, more than seven times as much (760 million tons) is fed to farmed animals so that people can eat meat. Is the diversion of crops to our cars a moral issue? Yes, but it’s about one-eighth the issue that meat-eating is. Care about global poverty? Try vegetarianism.

2. Eating Meat Supports Cruelty to Animals. The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past are now distant memories. On today’s factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy windowless sheds, wire cages, gestation crates, and other confinement systems. These animals will never raise families, root in the soil, build nests, or do anything else that is natural and important to them. They won’t even get to feel the warmth of the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter.

3. Eating Meat Is Bad for the Environment A recent United Nations report entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow concludes that eating meat is “one of the … most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” In just one example, eating meat causes almost 40 percent more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, and planes in the world combined. The report concludes that the meat industry “should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.“

4. Avoid Bird Flu - The World Health Organization says that if the avian flu virus mutates, it could be caught simply by eating undercooked chicken flesh or eggs, eating food prepared on the same cutting board as infected meat or eggs, or even touching eggshells contaminated with the disease. Other problems with factory farming — from foot-and-mouth to SARS — can be avoided with a general shift to a vegetarian diet.

5. If You Wouldn’t Eat a Dog, You Shouldn’t Eat a Chicken Several recent studies have shown that chickens are bright animals who are able to solve complex problems, demonstrate self-control, and worry about the future. Chickens are smarter than cats and dogs and even do some things that have not yet been seen in mammals other than primates. Dr. Chris Evans, who studies animal behavior and communication at Macquarie University in Australia, says, “As a trick at conferences, I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens and people think I’m talking about monkeys.”

6. Heart Disease - Our Number One Killer Healthy vegetarian diets support a lifetime of good health and provide protection against numerous diseases, including the United States’ three biggest killers: heart disease, cancer, and strokes. Drs. Dean Ornish and Caldwell Esselstyn — two doctors with 100 percent success in preventing and reversing heart disease — have used a vegan diet to accomplish it, as chronicled most recently in Dr. Esselstyn’s Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, which documents his 100 percent success rate for unclogging people’s arteries and reversing heart disease.

7. Cancer - Our Number Two Killer Dr. T. Colin Campbell is one of the world’s foremost epidemiological scientists and the director of what The New York Times called “the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease.” Dr. Campbell’s best-selling book, The China Study, is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about cancer. To summarize it, Dr. Campbell states, “No chemical carcinogen is nearly so important in causing human cancer as animal protein.”

8. Fitting Into That Itty-Bitty Bikini Vegetarianism is also the ultimate weight-loss diet, since vegetarians are one-third as likely to be obese as meat-eaters are, and vegans are about one-tenth as likely to be obese. Of course, there are overweight vegans, just as there are skinny meat-eaters. But on average, vegans are 10 to 20 percent lighter than meat-eaters. A vegetarian diet is the only diet that has passed peer review and taken weight off and kept it off.

9. Global Peace - Leo Tolstoy claimed that “vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.” His point? For people who wish to sow the seeds of peace, we should be eating as peaceful a diet as possible. Eating meat supports killing animals, for no reason other than humans’ acquired taste for animals’ flesh. Great humanitarians from Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi to Thich Nhat Hanh have argued that a vegetarian diet is the only diet for people who want to make the world a kinder place.

10. The Joy of Veggies - As the growing range of vegetarian cookbooks and restaurants shows, vegetarian foods rock. People report that when they adopt a vegetarian diet, their range of foods explodes from a center-of-the-plate meat item to a range of grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables that they didn’t even know existed.

Sir Paul McCartney sums it all up, “If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty.”

So are you ready to give it a try?

Check out VegCooking.com for recipes and meal plans and to take the World Vegetarian Week 7-Day Pledge.

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11. We just saw an article about the KOBE CLUB Restaurant at 68 W. 58th St., New York City.

When you dine under the 2,000 dangling Samurai swords, you might as well indulge in the signature meat (the Kobe Steak - we assume it is the original imported from Japan - unless they found it more economical to produce it somewhere in Kansas) “that will make all other steak dinners look like McDonald’s mystery meat.”

You can order the EMPEROR’S FLIGHT OF ALL-JAPANESE WAGYU BEEF for $395. -

The Flight is of 4-ounce fillet, 4-ounce sirloin and 10-ounce rib eye, cut from the highest grade Wagyu with a fat marble of 8 or higher. so for 18 ounce of highly fat meat - let’s say one pound when the fat comes out - you pay $395.

This is clearly a further good reason to become vegetarian.

[OPINION by Charlie Hall About His: Charlie Hall’s Balloon Graph -
19 December 19, 2007.

Energy researcher Charlie Hall’s balloon graph challenges the notion that alternative energy sources will provide a smooth transition to a post-fossil fuel society. Scale and energy return remain huge obstacles.

Charlie Hall is one the best-known energy researchers you’ve never heard of. That’s because he puts his effort into understanding whole energy systems such as human civilization rather than perfecting headline-grabbing energy panaceas such as corn ethanol. From the early 1980s onward Hall and his colleagues–some of them former students–have been warning that a society hooked on fossil fuels would find itself up against limits not easily breached–probably sooner rather than later.

With the current boom in biofuels, wind, and solar, and even a revival in nuclear power, many people believe that a smooth transition to a post-fossil fuel economy is already a foregone conclusion. But a careful look at Charlie Hall’s balloon graph tells a different and much more disconcerting story (1). (To view a larger version of the graph, click here.)

First, let’s look at the components of the chart. On the vertical axis we have energy return on investment (EROI) expressed as the ratio of energy output versus energy input for each energy source. (Hall, an ecologist by training, appears to have coined the term by adapting “yield per effort” concepts from fisheries.) It is not always obvious to modern industrial people that it takes energy to get energy. The more energy we spend on finding, extracting, refining, and transporting energy resources, the less we have for all the other activities of society. The horizontal axis of the graph represents quads or more precisely, quadrillion BTUs (British Thermal Units). The graph depicts energy use in the United States. But the principles it demonstrates apply to the world as a whole.

The various colors put focus on the annual production totals and energy return of oil at different times. The sizes for all the balloons represent a very rough guide to the uncertainties in calculating EROI ranges. (As we shall see, even with these uncertainties there is a very large discernible gap between what we currently get from fossil fuels and what we can expect to get from alternatives.)

Oil, which makes up the largest percentage of U.S. energy consumption today (40%), has shown a substantial increase in its total output even as its EROI has fallen. To see this on the graph look at the blue balloon labeled “Domestic Oil 1930,” the purple balloons labeled “Imported Oil 1970″ and “Domestic Oil 1970″ and the red balloons labeled “Domestic Oil Today” and “Imported Oil Today.” That same move to a lower EROI is also being seen for natural gas and coal though the balloon graph does not depict these trends.

Everyone knows that at some point fossil fuel supplies, which are finite, will begin to decline. To replace them we currently have biofuels such as biodiesel; other renewables such as wind, photovoltaic, and hydroelectric; and nuclear power. Oil from tar sands is also shown in the lower left-hand corner, but you have to look hard. And, that’s just the point. You have to look pretty hard to see these alternatives on the graph. There are two reasons for this. First, some of these new sources are not very far along in their deployment. As they are more widely deployed, they will supply more total power and move to the right on the graph. Second, the EROI for biofuels such as biodiesel and for unconventional oil such as that extracted from tar sands is extremely low. Given current technology, these alternatives are not likely to move upward very much on the graph anytime soon.

Hall believes we have two problems illustrated by his balloon chart. First, in order for these alternative sources to move rightward on the graph–that is, produce much larger quantities of energy for society–they will have to be deployed on a vast scale which few people contemplate or understand. Two examples come to mind. The worldwide installed capacity of solar photovoltaic cells is 10.9 gigawatts. With the total worldwide installed electrical generating base at 3,872 gigawatts, it would take more than 2,000 years at the current rate of installation (1.74 gigawatts/year) to reach today’s capacity. And that’s without even considering future growth in electricity demand. If we include the installed base of wind (74.3 gigawatts) and the current rate of wind installations (14.9 gigawatts/year), we can bring the figure all the way down to about 230 years, again without considering growth in demand. Of course, the rates of installation will grow, and there are other renewable and nonrenewable energy sources available. But the challenge of scale remains huge.

When it comes to biofuels, the scale problem gets no better. Biofuels researcher Tad Patzek uses corn ethanol as an example. To fuel the American vehicle fleet using corn ethanol:
[o]ne would have to grow corn on 1.8 billion acres, year-after-year, for decades. There are about 400 million acres of arable land now in cultivation in the U.S. Therefore, one would have to use the land area equal to 4.5 times the current arable land area….
If we want to continue living in the kind of energy-drenched civilization we now enjoy, we will have to move simultaneously rightward and upward on the balloon graph. Hall estimates that if society were to average less than a 5 to 1 ratio of EROI, anything resembling our modern civilization would probably not function. The balloon graph suggests a minimum EROI for the United States of around 40 to 1 for 100 quads of energy generated. Therefore, without major breakthroughs in the efficiency of alternative energy sources, no combination of those sources has the prospect of giving us both the high energy returns and the large total production we are accustomed to from our current energy sources.

(It’s important to note that nearly all the good sites for hydro power in the world have already been taken. And, turning to firewood for fuel would simply result in the leveling of the world’s remaining forests, leaving us with nothing for the future and destroying the habitability of the planet in the bargain. The upshot: Neither of these alternatives is going to move much to the right on the graph.)

Many are saying peak world oil production will soon be upon us with peak natural gas and coal following close behind. To live anything like we now live, we are going to have to see some astounding technical breakthroughs in alternative energy sources soon. And those breakthroughs will have to be followed by dramatic and costly efforts to deploy alternatives rapidly and ubiquitously. For now we appear to be on a course that will require drastic changes in the way we live.

Perhaps we will somehow muddle through. But when you look at Charlie Hall’s balloon graph, it’s easy to conclude that even muddling through might end up being a very unpleasant affair.

Notes:

(1) Hall, C.A.S., R. Powers and W. Schoenberg. (in press). Peak oil, EROI, investments and the economy in an uncertain future. Pp. xxx-xxx in Pimentel, David. (ed). Renewable Energy Systems: Environmental and Energetic Issues.

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We Posted the above without being in full agreement with what it says - not because what it says - but rather because what it does not say.

What it does not say is the fact that nobody in his right state of mind will imply that one switches from oil into a different source of energy without first reducing needs for energy inputs to more manageable needs. First deal with conservation and avoid waste - that is the rule of the thumb!

After you do this - only then - you figure what energy source is best suited to a particular need - and you go for it. What this will do - is simple - it will eliminate the anti biofuels arguments that were put forward by Professor David Pimentel already over 30 years ago. The world has changed since, but not Professor Pimentel’s ideas. In those days he went all out to lead the US Department of Energy away from the logical solution of using ethanol for the purpose of increasing octane value of gasoline when switching to unleaded gasoline. Those days Professor Pimentel was plainly trying to prop up the Mobil Oil Company’s opposition to a mandatory use of ethanol - a product that they were not in the business of making it available to the US economy. It was then Senator McGovern who got the scoop on Professor Pimentel - it is all in Congressional records. Pity that Charlie Hall is relying on the Pimentel input to something that otherwise could be viewed as a tool for policy analysis. His blog - http://scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/vie… has in it, at this time, also 15 reactions/comments to his posting. We hope that someday he might indeed converge his analysis with material available from other general policy analysts. We also would like to hope that Tad Patzek mentioned by Charlie can also enlarge the scope of his analysis.

THE OIL POSTER: A Brilliant Tool for Examining the Geologic Realities and Social Ramifications of the Modern World’s Most Prized Resource.

“If a picture is worth one thousand words, then The Oil Age Poster is worth one million words because people can not only see the oil production Hubbert’s peaks in many countries and regions, but also read the facts proving that global peak oil is both inevitable and quite probably imminent.”

- U.S. Congressman R. Bartlett
Maryland (Republican)

Colorful and authoritative, this poster traces the history of the Oil Age from its beginnings in the hills of western Pennsylvania in 1859 to its rise as the engine of global industrial economies. The poster’s main chart features a year-by-year rendering of worldwide oil production from 1859 to 2050 with projections of future production based on Colin Campbell’s Oil Depletion Model. Historical annotations as well as detailed data on production, trade and reserves make this poster a versatile tool for presenting the realities and implications of global oil production and its impending peak. (Size: 36″ wide by 24″ tall; Retail Price: $12.50)  Buy a Poster  from  http://www.oilposter.org

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Increasing Awareness - The primary goal of The Oil Age poster is to increase awareness of the critical role of oil in modern industrial society and to call attention to the impending worldwide peak in oil production.

Benefiting Schools - Sales will help fund the no-cost distribution of The Oil Age poster to high schools, colleges and non-profit institutions. Proceeds will also support the development of teaching guides and other educational tools to be used in conjunction with the poster in classrooms. (View the list of teachers and schools who have been sent posters.)

Benefiting Global Public Media - A portion of each sale will be donated to the non-profit Meta Foundation for the support of its projects and subsidiary non-profit organizations, including Global Public Media and the Post Carbon Institute.

What the Experts Are Saying:

“As this poster makes abundantly clear, we’ve already consumed about half of the world’s total endowment of regular conventional oil,” said Dr. Campbell. “This has provided most supply to-date and will dominate all supply far into the future. Now entering the second half of the Oil Age, we face the relentless decline of production, imposed by nature.”

- Dr. Colin Campbell
Leading authority on oil depletion issues
and co-founder of the Association for the
Study of Peak Oil (ASPO)

“This poster conveys a wealth of carefully researched information about oil depletion in a graphic format that anyone can quickly grasp. It is a map of our recent petroleum past and a glimpse into our post-peak future. No library, office or home should be without it!”

- Richard Heinberg
Energy expert and author of
Powerdown: Options and Actions
for a Post-Carbon World

“The primary goal of The Oil Age poster is to increase awareness of the critical role of oil in modern industrial society, and to call attention to the impending worldwide peak in oil production.”
- Julian Darley
Author of “High Noon for Natural Gas” and
Director of Global Public Media

China’s Fuel Efficiency Kicks America’s Butt - writes Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, March 25, 2008.

The Toronto Star reported an alarming factoid earlier this month: No gasoline-powered car assembled in North America would meet China’s current fuel-efficiency standard.

That’s mainly because:

Oh, and by 2010, China will be the world leader in wind turbine manufacturing and solar photovoltaics manufacturing.

No worries, though, our TV and movie sales overseas still kick butt. For now.

Tagged as: fuel efficiency, cafe, global warming, china, climate change

In Green - sugar-cane growing areas of Brazil - 2008
In Blue    - further potential areas for fuel ethanol purpose

Click to view the article that takes you to the interactive interactive display

Courtesy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur…

Click to enlarge

The following was presented at the COP 10 of the UNFCCC in Buenos Aires in December 2004.

It was prepared by a group of Japanese scientists from the Kyoto University, based on proposals that were put forward earlier by the Brazilian delegation to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
This proposal is also the base for the UK NGOs proposals that come under the name of “Contraction and Conversion Proposals.”

The Japanese calculation uses a formula based on “regional Temperature Change Contributions (TCC)” that are the basis for climate change. The allowances per region, for future emissions, take into consideration the historical TCCs for the various regions.

We believe that the attached graph will be part of the Japanese propsal for the G8 this coming May, so this is why we post it at this time. It is still possible to activate this sort of program starting 2013 for limits to CO2 emissions, in order to stabilize eventually the emissions at 450ppm, as it is suggested in the IPCC studies.
Click to view full size

This almost explains all of the mysteries in life:
>
>
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5
> inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number.
>
>   Why was that gauge used?  Because that’s the way they built them in England,
> and English expatriates built the US railroads.
>
>   Why did the English build them like that?  Because the first rail lines were
> built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the
> gauge they used.
>
>   Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then?  Because the people who built the tramways
> used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that
> wheel spacing.
>
>   Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?  Well, if they
> tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old,
> long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.
>
>   So who built those old rutted roads?  Imperial Rome built the first long
> distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been
> used ever since.
>
>   And the ruts in the roads?  Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which
> everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.  Since the
> chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel
> spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5
> inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war
> chariot.  Bureaucracies live forever.
>
>   So the next time you are handed a Specification/Procedure/ Process and wonder
> ‘What horse’s ass came up with that?’ . . . you may be exactly right.  Imperial
> Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of
> two war horses.  (Two horses’ asses.)  Now, the twist to the story:
>
>   When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big
> booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid
> rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah.
> The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit
> fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch
> site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the
> mountains.  And the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly
> wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about
> as wide as two horses’ behinds.
>
>   So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most
> advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the
> width of a horse’s ass.
>
>   And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important?  Ancient horses’ asses
> control almost everything . . . and CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling
> everything else!!