Peak Oil

Originally Posted by Gechmir

I still hold to the Global Warming one being a crock. If anything, you'd see lots of smog, issues with respiratory functions in certain regions, and lots of acid rain.

I've mentioned this before in the global warming thread (or perhaps I didn't), but I strongly think that global warming (nee: climate change) is the wrong thing to focus on when it comes down what we put out in the air. Like you, I am more interested in reducing the local and regional affects of air pollution which would have a far greater impact on our well-being than chasing after reducing global temperatures a degree or two. Focusing on smaller-scale effects would invariably mean we will have to reduce our emissions to create a healthier living environment. But instead, we get the sort of thing that grabs people's attentions: global warming. That's hype propaganda for you.

Originally Posted by Soluzar

Yeah, I've heard of such things as oil shales, but I was under the impression that it was still economically unviable to extract them. If it costs more fuel to extract this oil than eventually will be derived from the process, then it's a waste of time. Do you have any reputable sources outside the oil industry that can clarify this matter?

Unfortunately no. As a geology major, I am knee deep when it comes to catching wind of the affairs of oil companies (though I'm quite far in the telephone line), so I can't provide you with more neutral sources. To be honest, given the increase in demand for people like me from these companies, it seems like they are embarking upon a new age of exploration and acquisition as we get into more sophisticated processes to get what we cannot earlier, or as I am also told, there is a severe generation gap in the industry and we are filling in for the retiring Baby Boomers.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

If you haven't heard about alternative fuel sources lately, pardon my rudeness as it may sound, but you must've been under a rock. I don't think I even need to point to an article on this... It's happening but it doesn't score news. Bad news sells and the media reports on things such as gas prices spiralling out of control or scandals or war coming soon, etc.

It's not that I haven't heard about alternate fuel sources, rather that I've only heard about hydrogen, which is a technological dead end, and other things similar to it, which are equally a dead end, and for the same reason. Hearing about so-called solutions which aren't even remotely viable is the same as hearing about nothing, in my book. Somewhere down the line, they still require fossil fuels in order to be viable, because that's the only way we have of generating the electricity that is involved in the process of manufacturing these new fuels.

That's not what I call a sustainable solution. I'd agree with you, if I'd heard even the slightest mention of anything that could actually generate the electricity that these processes clearly require. Solar power, along with wind and wave power seems to have fallen right off the map. Nuclear fission carries with it a collossal waste management problem, and fusion has never been proved to be viable.

To judge from your posts, I'd say that you are probably more capable of recognising these shortcomings than I am, so you must understand where I'm coming from. There has been lots of news about grand, glorious follies of science, but almost nothing that was even remotely credible. We're still in the same position. There's nobody who is visibly working on anything that seems likely to solve this problem. If for some reason Aquygen isn't really the dead end that it seems to be, then I'll eat my words, but I'll need you to explain why, since I fail to see it.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Dullenplain

I've mentioned this before in the global warming thread (or perhaps I didn't), but I strongly think that global warming (nee: climate change) is the wrong thing to focus on when it comes down what we put out in the air. Like you, I am more interested in reducing the local and regional affects of air pollution which would have a far greater impact on our well-being than chasing after reducing global temperatures a degree or two. Focusing on smaller-scale effects would invariably mean we will have to reduce our emissions to create a healthier living environment. But instead, we get the sort of thing that grabs people's attentions: global warming. That's hype propaganda for you.

Unfortunately no. As a geology major, I am knee deep when it comes to catching wind of the affairs of oil companies (though I'm quite far in the telephone line), so I can't provide you with more neutral sources. To be honest, given the increase in demand for people like me from these companies, it seems like they are embarking upon a new age of exploration and acquisition as we get into more sophisticated processes to get what we cannot earlier, or as I am also told, there is a severe generation gap in the industry and we are filling in for the retiring Baby Boomers.

There is a huuuuuge generation gap. I'm Geophysics and plan on jumping into oil while the getting is good. The average employee working in the oil industry is about 55 years of age. Just barely younger than my father. Right now, the total number of Geoscientists working in petroleum are half of what they need. Get out of college, secure a spot, and you're bound to climb the ladder and *fast*.

Global warming is just an agenda-pusher. Global cooling was the big scare in the '70s, and all the major backers for cooling are now for warming. They've never heard of scatter-plot data before, evidently. Hell, I was doing work under a fellow in that Atmospheric Sciences department here who was doing aerosol research. We built hardware that could actually analyze particles in the air to see if they were cloud-builders per se. Could figure out if they were going to cause rain, even. A huuuuge meteorological climb if it gets further along.

Well, Tom DeLay got busted, all the items he championed were up for grabs as a result. One of which was a huge chunk of federal funding toward Atmospheric Science studies across the state of Texas. Federal funding for these public universities is a huge part of our funding. The state funding is pissant in comparison. So, his money that was set aside for our research was snagged up and put toward Global Warming research. Just like that, we lost 70% of our funding. I had to quit shortly thereafter, since there wasn't much to do and I didn't want to be a leech on my boss' thinning wallet. Was a shame because I loved that job. Even if it wasn't my cup of tea (Meteorology), the tools I got to use and the engineering skills I had to make use of to build hardware was invaluable. Wish I scored more welding experience...

So, I've got personal issues with this political item that run deep.

Originally Posted by Soluzar

To judge from your posts, I'd say that you are probably more capable of recognising these shortcomings than I am, so you must understand where I'm coming from. There has been lots of news about grand, glorious follies of science, but almost nothing that was even remotely credible. We're still in the same position. There's nobody who is visibly working on anything that seems likely to solve this problem. If for some reason Aquygen isn't really the dead end that it seems to be, then I'll eat my words, but I'll need you to explain why, since I fail to see it.

Well, lots of science is just trial & error. Even if we find an alternative source, you run the problems of mainstreaming it, but you have to go through various avenues (ie: EPA) to make sure you aren't stepping on toes or letting loose something potentially bad on a major scale.

Aquygen seems just like a lot of alternative plans. I've seen many glorious & wonderful supposed alternative sources crop up, but something arises that shows it as a flop. For starters, let's look at a few things...

I'm reading on the website right now. This fellow pract near invented this in his garage with a bucket of water. After decades of people pushing for alternative sources, Joe Schmoe from Maple Avenue found out how to make an alternative fuel source-running engine in his garage by working on it a couple hours a day for a few months! "LOOK OUT, OIL", says Foxnews.

The first indicator that went off. "Aquygen" is such a horrible name. It just screams non-Chemist. Oxygen plus Aqua? I was skeptical of it right there. I read up more on this "Aquygen". Mein gott, he invented something like this himself! Is he a genius? Noooooo. Aquygen is a neo ghetto-name for Brown's Gas. This is nothing new in itself. It's just like in the olden days, where some guy would be selling a tonic for Twenty-five cents that could cure cancer and rid your family of baldness. It gets coverage and attention by the desperate. No offense to the folks in this thread, but as soon as it was tossed up, it snagged a good amount of attention. This is what they thrive off of.

Claiming this as credible is like a fourth grader messing around with chemicals on a petry dish discovering a cure for cancer on sheer accident. There is lots of money & resources pitched toward this field, and a hefty amount of effort. It'll probably come from government-funded research. All this "Klein" yahoo did was take Brown's Gas, rename it as Aquygen in his own usage, and patent a generator. But generators have run off of Brown's Gas for quite some time. He's applying it to a car? Cute. Doesn't take a ton of effort to convert a generator into the fuel source for a car if you put the effort into it. Hell, you could run a car off of peanuts or grow corn and harvest your own ethanol if you wanted to, but it sure as hell wouldn't be feasible.

The pot is boiling but the soup isn't done yet. Give it time and something will come of this, trust me. It's all trial, error, and being under-the-hammer that'll give rise to the alternative. Until then, plan on Hybrids being mainstreamed along with cars with very good gas mileage. Gas will go up in price, but the demand per person will alleviate.

For extra reading, even this Brown fellow was a nutcase/non-credible. It's a foolish fuel source alternative founded by another fraud. Aquygen isn't worth the time of pulling out your credit card -- ignore it.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Very intresting topic, nice to see someone else is aware of this 'problem', I say problem between " because a problem is a situation with a solution where the oil peak is unsoluble and boils to 3 points:

1. Even if we wanted to change to renewable energy sources these don't produce enough energy and it would take dozens of years to change everything to these enegyies.

2. Even if we tryed point 1 there may not be enough oil energy to conclude it, we may start to build but halfway through it we'll run out of energy

3. The most importanto point: human bewaviour. People will just choose not to change out of lazyness/conformist. Just go tell someone that in order to have a decent life in 2050 he/she will have to drop every previlege that oil grants them today. They'll tell you to fuck off and die in the spot, belive me I've done it just for kicks. Yeah mankind suck, have fun.

I was speaking idiomatically.