Merging GCC and Peak Oil movements

[zephyrr]

While many people are aware of both Peak Oil (fossil fuel depletion) and Global Climate Change issues, I continue to be surprised that the movements are still fairly distinct, as if one or the other could be in any way meaningfully addressed without the other.

Folks, these two are deeply intermingled and can only be resolved together. They are of course just the flip side of each other, as exponential growth meets limits in both sources and sinks. However, they are both of similar magnitude of importance to our civilization, and they are both coming home to roost at nearly the same time historically. Neither can be set aside in favor of the other. The critical action time for both issues is right now, these years we are living now.

Sometimes the proposed remediations may seem consistent - becoming more energy efficient is good for both. Sometimes not - burning more coal to replace lost petroleum could make GCC worse, especially if the expense of sequestering carbon is economically unbearable in a faltering economy.

If you watched Al Bartlett's videos posted by wm42, let me add something. (I may need to do my own video sometime) Some of you know this of course. At the time of the peak, approximately half the world's usable petroleum is still in the ground (much of that actually being not yet discovered but predictably discoverable). However, the *net energy* of the upside of the curve is far higher than that of the downwide. We went for the best and easiest petroleum first, which had net energy ratios as high as 95% (ie: it took only 5% of the extracted petroleum's energy - mostly from earlier developed sources - to explore, extract, refine and distribute it), a 20:1 ratio. I'm not sure what we are down to in 2008, perhaps 5:1 give or take. Much of that tail end of the curve is down to 2:1 or 1.5:1, meaning that you only get 50% or 33% as much net energy per volume of oil. So half the volume of oil may be in the ground, but not half the usable energy. That's because it's harder to find, comes in smaller pockets, requires deeper or more difficult drilling, and is harder to transport and refine.

Also - once the net energy gets too low, it doesn't matter how high the price of oil goes, it's unusable. If it takes more energy to find and extract and refine than you get back in the end, then even $1000/bbl or $10,000/bbl still won't make it profitable. And the predictions already include expectations and assumptions of future technology improvements, no dramatic new petroleum technology is not going to save us, at best even the most extreme good luck on that frount could push the crisis off a few years.

So at oil peak (perhaps already passed), we may have used 70 or 75% of the net oil energy available to us. One of the things that means is that we probably could not rebuild our currnet physical infrastructure again. That's new. The world rebuilt in half a generation after WWII, to be fancier and larger than before - because the energy curve continued upward. This time we've shot our wad. We either use the one time fossil fuel bonanza to build out the expensive infrastructure for the next phase of technological society, or we subside or collapse.

What does this mean to GCC? Well, first off, what I read in the IPCC and other sources is that serious GCC is already inevitable, no matter what we do now to reduce CO2 emissions. We can strongly affect how bad the second half of this century is going to be, but a very serious effect is already a given for even this half.

Just how do we handle feeding a populace with both GCC and energy decline hitting at the same time? How do we rebuild sea flooded cities on higher ground - or new cities for the permanent refugees - without cheap energy? Or rebuild weather torn infrastructure? How do we fertilize depleted soils to sustain food production in the face of shifting climate challenges, without enough natural gas to produce it?

I'm not saying it's hopeless, but I am saying that there are no meaningful solutions that don't take both issues into (roughly) equal consideration. These cannot in any way be separate movements or issues. When somebody goes to the county government to get them to plan for global climate change, they have to take peak oil into consideration and vice versa.

Besides the logical connection, there's a psychological issue. People are overwhelemd with crises. Now we are trying to hit them with the message: set aside saving old growth, baby seals, and whales; fighting invasive species and saving the salmon; etc, etc. because we have an issue that trumps them all, threatening our civilization from the roots. Well, that's exactly where peak oil is at, too. People will deal with this better emotionally as one integrated issue, rather than two competing doomsdays to avert or ignore.

By the way, just in case anybody here hasn't studied peak oil; there's no magic bullet waiting in the wings. This is not an issue which can be ignored in favor of dealing with GCC first because industry is going to pull of a transition to "the hydrogen economy" or something. (It's also probably going to hit real crisis sooner). For example electric cars and hydrogen cars need some HUGE new source of energy to generate the electricity and/ore hydrogen, and there's nothing waiting in the wings that begins to match fossil fuels. Wind energy is cool, but nobody who does numbers really thinks it can make up for the shortfall. Nor can nuclear or tides or waves or geothermal (?). Not even solar, when you do the numbers. And our civilization is DEEPLY dependent on that energy, it's not optional.

We're going to have to move towards a much reduced energy diet, finding a way to gracefully live on far fewer KWh, quads, gallons, BTUs, etc - the amount we can generate sustainably. And even to get there, we're going to have to refine a bunch of metals and implement some of the largest human engineering feats in history to build expensive new infrastructure - using that remaining petroleum - and impacting our carbon emissions. There are going to be a lot of tradeoffs to be intelligently made - at times deciding to for exmaple burn a bunch of diesel fuel (there are no solar powered bulldozers) to build a refugee camp for GCC.

There could be other tradeoffs - where we need to slow some needed reform good for GCC in favor of the energy crisis, or vice versa need to worsen the energy shortfall in order to reduce climate impact. The win/win options won't be enough by themselves to avoid all such tradeoffs.

The two movements - and their education and action proposals - need to more or less completely merge. And one of the first steps is cross education. If you know a lot about GCC, teach it to peak oil folks and learn in turn from them.

(Energy efficiency and permaculture and such submovements will be partial solutions within that umbrella)

I guess we need some catchy new name for a combined movement. Basically it's about pulling out of an exponential economy that's about to crash and finding a sustainable civilization - and we have to do most of the heavy lifting of that shift within a generation or so.

I do believe it can be done, but not without a lot of clear thinking (logos if you will). We have to triage our environmental concerns, for example. As best I can see, GCC and PO come out at the top together. (Locally, where I live, earthquake preparation needs to join that pair on the local planning agenda.)

I grew up under the shadow of nuclear holocaust. That was a similar issue, with the potential to destroy civilization and cause billions of deaths at the end of the day (and it's not over). But it was just a "risk" - maybe it will happen, maybe not. We are now facing two similar magnitude issues that are virtually certain. There seems no scientific question that GCC is happening and will get serious no matter what we do; it's too late to dodge the bullet, tho we can make it more or less survivable. Fossil fuel depletion is the same - it's definitely going to happen in the coming decades, we can only reduce the impact. We need to address these together.

Zephyrr

[zephyrr]

One followup. Above I indicated that there are no real replacements in sight to step in and replace fossil as an energy source - to create the electricity or hydrogen that we would need. I put a question mark after geothermal, tho.

Conventional geothermal (liky hydro) is fairly well developed; higher energy prices might double or triple it, but it would still be a miniscule part of the picture. Don't count on that for much.

There is however one new energy technology that seriously intrigues me. Link at the end.

Basically, this company claims to have a process for much more efficiently separating water into hydrogen and oxygen from a steam source (as compared to hydrolysis). And of course this is much better than creating hydrogen from natural gas! (GCC note: switching to a "hydrogen" economy powered by natural gas just means putting the fossil carbon dioxide into the biosphere when you create the hydrogen rather than when you burn it. It's no cleaner than just burning methane to being with.)

As I understand it, they use microwaves (at certain known absorbtion frequences in the 10+ GHz bands) to split water gas (invisible steam) into hydrogen and oxygen, and then they have a process for separating the two physically. This supposedly utilizes the latent energy of the steam (gas vs liquid) as well as some dynamic energy (pressure, like conventional steam turbines use) to gain its efficiency. The power needed for this process could come from another source (eg: hydro), or it could come from the steam via conventional turbines. In fact with a good steam source, you could generate a bit of net electric power along with the hydrogen. No carbon involved! All you need is a heat source and water. When you burn the hydrogen, you get water (and perhaps *extremely* small amounts of nitrogen compounds from the heat, assuming you burn air). The heat could be from solar concentrators, or it could be geothermal. In particular, they believe that many abandoned oil wells in this country could be used to generate steam from geothermal heat. By some calculations, that source really could become large enough to replace fossil fuels, and run for hundreds or thousands of years. (Ultimately of course the heat of the earth comes from very diffuse radioactive decay, which isn't going away soon).

I don't know if this will pan out, but it's the only exception I've seen to the dismal prospects of a large enough sustainable source of hydrogen which is also truly carbon neutral.

Overall that's a good thing, I guess. A "free" (no grid or fossil power needed) non-polluting continuous sustainable and highly scalable hydrogen source could potentially dramatically change the equation for both GCC and peak oil. In the big picture however, if it allowed our society to continue the exponential growth paradigm rather than living on a steady state sustainable energy and materials (and waste) budget, we'll just hit another threshold later. But maybe we'll be wiser by then, from the accumulated scientific knowledge and from cultural experience - because the transition would still be rough in even the best scenario.

Anyway, I'd love to have the physics folks check out their website.

http://www.genesys-hydrogen.com

In particular, do read the technical papers.

Disclosure: I know the inventor behind this socially (quite a remarkable fellow), but I'm not invested in the company financially and I am not certain of how well their technology works.

I'm not trying to sell the company (they aren't seeking individual investors anyway). It's more a matter that we are looking for some positive and optimistic options to offer people, not just doom and gloom. If it pans out, this is about the most seriously useful technological mitigation I've seen. It's something I could get behind, if so.

Zephyrr

[Lugubrizione]

Goosebumps... If this is true, the implications are staggering. I cannot tell you how excited this makes me feel.

I just browsed through the first of two patent applications, and as far as I can tell the inventor have discovered a physical property of water hitherto mostly unknown and most certainly untapped. Few people realize the multitude [of] useful properties of water, the most notably in this context being the availability and [the] high capacity for storing and transferring energy. Without the steam engine for instance, there's a good chance we would still be waiting for the Industrial Revolution...

The principle:
If I understand the technique correctly, the inventor mr Bar-Gadda has found a very important frequency or resonance area of water, somewhere in the microwave spectrum (300 MHz - 300 GHz). Exposing water vapor to this frequency causes it to break up into oxygen and hydrogen ions, which in turn is separated using a membrane. This discovery in and of itself is a major scientific breakthrough. The pure brilliance of the concept is that condensing hydrogen gas into a liquid causes it to emit (radiate) said frequency, which is what makes the process scalable and cyclic. Once the separation has started, there seems to be little or no need to use external power, as long as there is a steady supply of steam. There's even a possibility of surplus electricity...

In short:
Using microwaves to manipulate atomic spin in water and hydrogen molecules, exploiting the energy transfer properties of phase change thresholds between liquid, gas and plasma. This principle makes it possible to manufacture hydrogen at very low cost without polluting or using hazardous chemicals.

Benefits:

• Cheap and clean energy
• Using raw materials and energy already present in the atmosphere upholds and respects the climate equilibrium. Fossil fuels and nuclear power adds energy to the system. Burning 1 kg of gasoline produces approximately 1.4 kg of water and 3.0 kg CO2, plus energy (heat).
• This idea allows for cheap, large scale production of various carbohydrates using for instance solar energy, seawater and carbon dioxide.
• The byproduct of burning hydrogen is pure, clean water, suitable for human and animal consumption and irrigation.
• It might be possible to use this cheap energy source to sequester carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

If this idea is correct and the design possible, we are going to experience a milestone event in the history of mankind: Peaceful Global Revolution.

Here is The most wonderful video you'll ever see! Visit the website and read more at www.genesys-hydrogen.com

Greg, you are the physicist here: please tell me that Ronny is on to something?

[Lugubrizione]

Zephyrr, do you have any inside info about the company and the propagation of the idea? I've signed up on the site, but have received no info apart from the confirmation of my registration.

I find the lack of enthusiasm for this idea somewhat surprising. It might be the intention of the inventor and investors, but still... Cheap, transportable, non-polluting and carbon neutral energy with freshwater production as a "byproduct", that should raise some eyebrows, right?

[mamainaction]

Hello,

I'm brand-new to the group, so I hope this isn't repetitious. For clear thinking on merging issues watch all the videos from the IFG Teach-In:
Confronting the Global "Triple Crisis" "Climate Change, Peak Oil, Global Resource Depletion & Extinction" available at: www.ifg.org.

Also, learn about the work of Jeremy Rifkin; he spoke at a conference I'm attending today & pulled the same concepts together into "Four Pillars" or major categories of solutions that address both peak oil & GCC.
http://www.foet.org/JeremyRifkin.htm

Best wishes on your work--I'll help as much as I can!

[776281]

Please excuse a little rant

Don't people get just how much oil we are consuming. Huge find Alpine oil field on the North Slope Alaska. 1 Billion bls oil in ground, of which they expect to extract 400 million barrels. Yes it is a significant find, but the world consumes well over 80 million barrels a day so the Alpine oil field represents less that 5 weeks world consumption. We need to find an Alpine sized oil field within 5 weeks to keep pace.

Don't people get how expensive some of the new fields will be. Chevron is drilling in nearly 7,000 ft of water then 30,000 ft of rock, talk about tecnical difficulties. China and Russia are drilling over 40,000 feet in experimental wells, how much energy will be required to get the oil up?

Don't people get just how much energy is used extracting oil from unconventional sources.

And peak oil is just a myth spread to gain world domination.

Sorry folks

Who is the Rev Lindsey Williams trying to convince?

[Lugubrizione]

Peak oil is not a myth, quite the contrary. Some say the peak is now, others say we've passed it 5-10 years ago. It is a question about definition, at least to a certain degree. (Some say we should add oil we expect to find, and there's different predictions, of course.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

I wish we had passed peak gas and coal as well: That would force an energy solution fast. Woe onto us; Even with exponential growth, there's coal for 20 years or more. You can be sure at least some people will take the "easy" solution and replace oil and gas with this extremely polluting fossil fuel...

Edit:
We consume HUGE amounts of oil, 86 million barrels pr day in 2006, according to wikipedia. Burning fossil fuels is a triple whammo for the environment:
Burning 1 kilogram of oil give approximately 2 kg of water and 3 kg of carbon dioxide, plus energy (heat).

[776281]

[quote=Lugubrizione;1589]Peak oil is not a myth, quite the contrary. Some say the peak is now, others say we've passed it 5-10 years ago. It is a question about definition, at least to a certain degree. (Some say we should add oil we expect to find, and there's different predictions, of course.)[quote]

I do realize that peak oil is not a myth It is just that I have been told more than a few times that it is. Even if we have not seen the end of oil, we have seen the end of cheap oil. Sormwind seems to accept the Analysts that suggest that the world peaked 2005? and Stormwind does seem to have his finger on the oil pulse and I have found nothing that would suggest otherwise.

The point I was trying to make is that although recent finds are significant, they only make a difference of weeks in the world oil supply

The large number of unsold SUVs in car yards would suggest that people are starting to realize high prices are here for good

[Tempest Stormwind]

Originally Posted by 776281

Sormwind seems to accept the Analysts that suggest that the world peaked 2005? and Stormwind does seem to have his finger on the oil pulse and I have found nothing that would suggest otherwise.

There's reason to believe this, and very little to not. Reserves and lower quotas are enough to keep the impact localized for a while, but there'll be a backlash. We were seeing the first wave of that this year, with the US basically saying "pony up" to OPEC, as if more supply was the answer.

The real point, though, was that even if the peak occurs in 2015 (the average of all estimates -- note that this includes some optimistic estimates skewing it up. Also note that very, very few put the peak after 2020), demand is still rising, which means the impact of a decline in growth rate (i.e. the "slow down" before it hits the peak and starts faling) is going to be mean even if the peak isn't here yet.

Therefore, it seems prudent to me to adopt the worst-case scenario when choosing what to argue for -- and that worst-case scenario is "the peak already happened". If we assume the peak hadn't happened and continue using outdated policy, we'll get an *epic* oil shock. (If you remember the 1970s shock, the impact was as rough as it was because US domestic oil production peaked in 1970, meaning the US went from an oil exporter to an oil importer, and the policy and lifestyle hadn't changed accordingly.) If the peak's happened or is happening now, these changes are essential and crucial. If the peak's nearby but coming up fast, then these changes will lessen the shock. The only harm that'll come out of this -- under the assumption going oil-free will cost the economy, which I don't believe in, but let's be pessimistic here -- is if the peak is far off, which is unlikely enough that you'd need a serious proof of economic disaster to argue for inaction here.

[Lugubrizione]

Did anyone check out the original topic, by the way?

Originally Posted by Lugubrizione

...
Here is The most wonderful video you'll ever see! Visit the website and read more at www.genesys-hydrogen.com
...

Just thinking of this makes me all warm and fuzzy...

[776281]

Originally Posted by Lugubrizione

Did anyone check out the original topic, by the way?



Just thinking of this makes me all warm and fuzzy...

There is a lot they don't say.

They are trying to patent any method of producing Hydrogen and Oxygen from water vapor or steam and any method of separating the oxygen and hydrogen and subsequent recombination with Nitrogen or carbon dioxide.

They are claiming that it is easier to split water when it is in the form of steam, possibly true. They are not claiming to produce energy out of nothing, but come close.

You still need a primary energy source, geothermal, wind, boimas or waist heat. They have not produced a magic bullit. They may have developed a more efficient way of hydrogen production, but even there I have doubts.

[Lugubrizione]

According to their company timeline, they were granted an EU patent last year. Admittedly, it could be for another invention or concept, but still... This gives them some credibility.

I looked into the first of two patent applications, and I have to admit I was baffled by the calculations. That could of course be the exact purpose of including it; Giving the paper an aura or feeling of of complex, well documented science. My math skills are not up to par, though.

I didn't get the feeling they were trying to "hijack" all and any methods for producing Hydrogen and recombining it etc... If that is the case, then I hope their application is denied, since I feel no one should have a patent on such a wide array of principles.

[776281]

Update on the patent

Starting with wide generalisations gradually getting more and more specific is the way of patents. Trying to patent the world was probably the patent lawyer not the company.

Apologies if I misled you

[Lugubrizione]

A debate need people expressing their opinion. To differ is healthy, since both parties then needs to argue their point and eventually find out what is really happening...

In other words: No apologies needed.

[hunter]

In regards to Genesys, LLC, I am very suspicious on several grounds.
My suspicions are very high from the quality of the video.
It is all nice talk about Peak Oil and AGW. Nothing about the tech, and no examples of how it works or how efficient it is. They spend too much time talking about source energy for the splitting. And way too much time talking about to use H2 to make organics. If this was as great an energy deal as coal or oil or fission power, it would not take outside energy to gear it up.
I do not think using microwaves to split water is new.
I also think it will take a lot of energy to do it, likely more than is available in the H2. IOW, it is probably an energy sink, not an energy source. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but as we learn with corn based ethanol, it is a big red flag. In this case, if the source energy for the split is really plentiful and cheap, then it *may* be OK to lose energy in the conversion of the transport fuel.

[Lugubrizione]

Hydrogen is not like oil or nuclear power, for a number of reasons. It might be helpful to compare hydrogen with electricity. Both are produced from other sources, like heat, motion or chemical energy. The main difference is storage. It is difficult to store electricity due to limitations in battery technology. Comparing by volume and weight, hydrogen can store more energy, and cheaper, than existing batteries. There's another difference between electricity and hydrogen: Hydrogen when burnt produce clean water, but only in the best case scenarios will electricity leave no residues or pollution.

It is important to not see the RET principle as a Perpetuum Mobile style hydrogen production. As stated by the inventor, it needs a steady supply of hot water (or steam) to work. Water have huge capacity of storing energy, which means the process require huge amounts of energy to run.

One can build a plant where few things will grow (deserts), and with only seawater and sunlight produce fuel, fertilizer and freshwater. That means creating farmland without ruining nature or taking areas needed to grow food, and at the same time being carbon neutral. A plant could in fact contribute to stop deserts spreading, which would in fact mean a reduction with regards to carbon...

In short: If this works one can store and transport energy from areas of surplus to those in need, and the only 'byproduct' is clean water.

As you can see, I really hope this is the real deal...

[hunter]

I agree completely on what H2 is. Unlike gasoline, it takes more energy to make it than you get from it. The issue I have is that Genesys is opaque about what they actually have. Their patent application sheds little light on what they are doing. Most of the app reads like a very basic intro to shallow aspects of the energy problem.
That has nothing to do with pulling H2 out of water.
It is like these cavitation boilers I have started hearing about. If it is in fact a cheaper way to get hot water or steam, then it is a good tweak. But so far I am hearing all of this over unity talk, which to me makes things very dubious. But hey, even it is only a cheaper way to make steam, then it could help supply feedstock for Genesys to microwave their water molecules and capture H2.
But again, the Genesys is so opaque, it is difficult to make any sort of assessment.