US population - 300 million +This site is international but I'll assume you are in the US if you don't tell me otherwise.
Earth's population - 6 billion +
Should one be readdressing one's defaults?
Just a thought.
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Although I'm willing to concede the relative population difference, we aren't dealing with overall population. What we need to know is the percentage of SPCR readers that are in the US, North America, and other continents.aristide1 wrote:US population - 300 million +This site is international but I'll assume you are in the US if you don't tell me otherwise.
Earth's population - 6 billion +
Should one be readdressing one's defaults?
Just a thought.
I don't think anyone would question your motives or your willingness to help, and members stating their location in their profile is obviously a good idea for the reasons you've given.dhanson865 wrote: You may find it provincial of me to default to North America but it is where I live and all my google/pricegrabber searches default to US dollars.
I think it simply reflects the common occurrence of Psychological projection/mirroring. Whether I say it or not I'm likely to assume you are like me. I happen to live in America.nick705 wrote:I don't think anyone would question your motives or your willingness to help, and members stating their location in their profile is obviously a good idea for the reasons you've given.dhanson865 wrote: You may find it provincial of me to default to North America but it is where I live and all my google/pricegrabber searches default to US dollars.
Still, given that this *is* an international forum and we're all in a sense ambassadors here, perhaps the statement: "I'll assume you are in the US if you don't tell me otherwise" projects a certain negative (and in my personal experience mostly inaccurate) stereotype of America and Americans that some of your compatriots might find uncomfortable, and prefer to avoid?
Apologies for the OT, it's not particularly important in the overall scheme of things I suppose.
I'm sorry, I don't see a date in there, or a reference to any peer-reviewed studies. Go ahead and cite your sources so we can see how much it costs to convert from fossil fuels to sustainable energy over a 5 year, 10 year, 20 year, 50 year, 200 year, etc timeline. You simply cannot make a statement "it will be made worse" without any data to quantify how much worse, and over how much longer.NeilBlanchard wrote:Global climate change is what is happening, and it will be made worse the longer we keep burning carbon fuels.
given relative buying power of americans versus the rest of the world, (as well as population in proportion to buying power), it's more likely that any person you meet online is going to be an american as compared to any other single country.nick705 wrote:I don't think anyone would question your motives or your willingness to help, and members stating their location in their profile is obviously a good idea for the reasons you've given.dhanson865 wrote: You may find it provincial of me to default to North America but it is where I live and all my google/pricegrabber searches default to US dollars.
Still, given that this *is* an international forum and we're all in a sense ambassadors here, perhaps the statement: "I'll assume you are in the US if you don't tell me otherwise" projects a certain negative (and in my personal experience mostly inaccurate) stereotype of America and Americans that some of your compatriots might find uncomfortable, and prefer to avoid?
Apologies for the OT, it's not particularly important in the overall scheme of things I suppose.
Better still.If in doubt, assume a person is from the US.
http://planetforlife.com/oilcrisis/oilsituation.html wrote:This graphic is worth careful study. It shows oil discoveries and oil consumption since 1930 to 2008. The black line shows oil consumption. Notice the peak in consumption in 1979 corresponding to the first oil crisis. The subsequent 5 year decline in oil consumption is attributed to more fuel efficient transportation and a slowing world economy. The grey bars show oil discoveries. Notable grey bar features include Kuwait's big oil field, Burgan, which was discovered in the late 30s and Ghawar, the world's largest oil field, which was discovered in 1948. Note that the discovery rate peaked around 1966. Note also that consumption exceeds discoveries every year since 1984. Now there is a large gap between discoveries and production. None of this is controversial--it is only history.
oh and I saw a new term biflation that I found interesting.http://planetforlife.com/oilcrisis/oilsituation.html wrote:What happens after 2008 is extrapolation and speculation. The EIA (Energy Information Agency) has projected a 1.6% annual growth in oil demand which is shown in red. Developed countries, for example the USA, Germany and Japan are not expected to increase consumption. In fact, consumption might decrease because of efficiency gains. But China and India both have booming economies. Automobile ownership increased by 37% in China and 17% in India in 2007.
The yellow bars represent a guess about yet-to-find oil. The yellow bars show no declines in the discovery rate until 2021. That seems optimistic given the declining discovery rate in the previous decade.
If you go to http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5521 they discusscordis wrote:Interesting graphs. Do the deposits also consider tar sand/shale oil deposits?
You apparently don't realize what you just said.cordis wrote:Yeah, I dunno, I'm not really that worried about the world running out of oil, I'm more worried about the atmosphere filling up with CO2. I went to a talk years ago by a guy named Dean Kammen, he's a professor up at Berkely working on alternative energy stuff, I think he advises Steve Chu occasionally. The talk happened right around when gas prices started shooting up, and there was a lot of peak oil paranoia at the time. The beginning of his talk emphasized how things like shale oil and coal gasification could keep us in fossil fuels for a very long time. Although prices would go up. And that's probably a good thing for fossil fuel alternatives, until alternatives become common enough that fossil fuel supply prices come back down via supply and demand. That's why we really need some price on carbon, so we don't just slide back into fossil fuels when prices drop again.
So which half of this statement did you mean? Is itthe distinction between coal gasification (that is, producing electricity in IGCC coal plants) and coal-to-liquids (that is, producing liquid diesel fuel from coal via the Fischer-Tropsch process).
The former might some day be environmentally tolerable, if accompanied by carbon sequestration. The latter will never be tolerable, because even if the CO2 created in manufacturing is sequestered, the fuel itself releases twice as much CO2 as gasoline when combusted.
When it comes to CTL, we have two choices:
* CTL + carbon sequestration: This will be grotesquely expensive, and will only happen with massive government subsidies. The net result will be a liquid fuel that is just as bad for the atmosphere as current liquid fuels.
* CTL without carbon sequestration: This might be economically viable without subsidies, but it would be an utter disaster in terms of global warming.
or is it"I'm not really that worried about the world running out of oil, I'm more worried about the atmosphere filling up with CO2."
because if we start using coal to power our cars it's just going to get worse if you actually care about CO2.I'm not really that worried about the world running out of oil, I'm more worried about the atmosphere filling up with CO2."
Code: Select all
Fuel Tonnes of carbon per GWh
Coal 238
Oil 207
Gas 99
All fossil fuels 167
All fuels (inc nuclear and renewables) 124