We're all going to die!

[Denny Crane!]

Or at least lose our pensions and go a little hungry.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011...-wikileaks.php

Looks like peak oil might be even closer than we thought -- the most recent Wikileaks cable released by the Guardian has revealed that US diplomats are convinced that Saudi Arabia has overestimated its vaunted oil reserves by a stunning 40%. Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil supplier, and is widely believed to be sitting atop the largest supply of the stuff in the world. But this revelation shows that the country may not have enough oil to keep prices from rising drastically over the next couple years.

Here's the Guardian:

The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels - nearly 40% ... Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, met the US consul general in Riyadh in November 2007 and told the US diplomat that Aramco's 12.5m barrel-a-day capacity needed to keep a lid on prices could not be reached.
According to the cables, which date between 2007-09, Husseini said Saudi Arabia might reach an output of 12m barrels a day in 10 years but before then - possibly as early as 2012 - global oil production would have hit its highest point.



By the Saudi geologist's estimation, that means that the world may hit peak oil next year. This won't surprise many peak oilers who've long suggested we surpassed peak oil already, or those who've been predicting the event to occur this decade. Even the US military has openly predicted that the world may see severe oil shortages as soon as 2015.

But hitting peak oil as soon as next year would have a momentous impact on the global economy, which is still extremely dependent on oil. As we speak, oil prices are creeping above the $100 a barrel mark. As usual, analysts have counted on the Middle Eastern nation to pump additional oil if the prices rise high enough, and threaten to choke off demand, as the Guardian notes. But this cable suggests the era when Saudi Arabia can stabilize oil demand is well past its twilight.

There has never been a better and more urgent reason to begin a serious push for renewable energy and alternative fuels -- it's time to take serious action to eliminate our dependence on oil once and for all.

In a shift from my usual thoughts on the energy debate I'll give in to the nuclear people and say hell yes lets adopt as much nuclear as possible as well as investing pound for pound in all the renewables possible.

FYI fusion won't save us if oil prices cause an inflationary disaster in the economy. It is almost certain that nothing will lower oil prices now as they continue to rise past the $100 a barrel mark, and the effects on our economy will be disastrous.

[Rolling Thunder]

Awww .

[Denny Crane!]

Awww .

Ironically Britain should be well placed to get over this but instead of spending our spare cash on windfarms or other we're buying nuclear weapons...

Ironically it is the prime pillock Alex Salmond who may be the one person making a significant move by building a massive electricity connection between here and Norway which makes for a more stable renewable energy environment. Will the UK government link up with Germany and France? Don't be silly, as English we take pride in stupidity.

At least in Scotland they take pride in being drunk, you can get done when your pissed. It is just hit and miss on whether or not it is the right thing.

Oil wont run out overnight. We will have plenty of time to adjust.

Yeah that plenty of time started about 10 years ago mate.

[Rolling Thunder]

Ironically Britain should be well placed to get over this but instead of spending our spare cash on windfarms or other we're buying nuclear weapons....

How about we use those nuclear weapons to demand other nation's energy?

[Enemy of the State]

Oil wont run out overnight. We will have plenty of time to adjust.

[Ahlerich]

i think nuclear weapons are irresponsible in times of global warming and stuff. there must be a way to make alternative weapons as efficient as nuclear ones.

until then every individual can make the change. in stead of driving to work alone one can ride a nuclear missile with up to 20 co-workers to commute to work.

[Poach]

Might be time to give ITER a lot more money.

Also, amusingly, Salmond has been pretty good in this area. As a staunchly pro-Union Scot, I only wish he'd give Scottish Independence up so I could like him.

[Denny Crane!]

Might be time to give ITER a lot more money.

Also, amusingly, Salmond has been pretty good in this area. As a staunchly pro-Union Scot, I only wish he'd give Scottish Independence up so I could like him.

So you want to save the worlds economies by giving a load of money to a project that probably won't be ready for 50 years and we're not even sure will work...maybe we could also hope Jeeberz will come down and fill up the oil wells, quick give the catholic church another cheque!

I quite like the idea of Scottish independence you know

[Poach]

So you want to save the worlds economies by giving a load of money to a project that probably won't be ready for 50 years and we're not even sure will work...maybe we could also hope Jeeberz will come down and fill up the oil wells, quick give the catholic church another cheque!

I quite like the idea of Scottish independence you know

According to google, 2026 (15 years...) is when ITER is expected to be fully up and running and will end as an ongoing experiment in 2038 (which is 27 years, not 50). It is expected to be the project that achieves feasible Fusion power.

Therefore, if we gave the project much more funding, they could probably speed up their operation and give us a working prototype for a Fusion reactor sooner. Therefore, we can move away from Oil-based power supplies.

[Denny Crane!]

Sounds like a good excuse to push up prices some more,i dont think you can take it to seriously.
Why wind farms and nuclear?it's not very cost effective,in Australia we have plenty of cheap coal isnt there reserves in Briton?But nuclear sounds like a good alternative in other cases but wind farms cmon it's the best way to push up power prices on a lot of families that cant afford it.

Nothing wrong with windfarms, just as cheap as nuclear and we can take care of problems like intermittency through connected grids.

Too bad it takes until something like this for people to change their minds. We could have, and should have, been working on this decades ago.

Just working on it now would do. Besides there wasn't the technology decades ago to be fair.

According to google, 2026 (15 years...) is when ITER is expected to be fully up and running and will end as an ongoing experiment in 2038 (which is 27 years, not 50). It is expected to be the project that achieves feasible Fusion power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Ti...current_status

Date Event
2006-11-21 Seven participants formally agreed to fund the creation of a nuclear fusion reactor.[9]
2008 Site preparation start, ITER Itinerary start[12][Full citation needed]
2009 Site preparation completion[12][Full citation needed]
2010 Tokamak complex excavation start[citation needed]
2011 Predicted: Tokamak complex construction start[12]
2015 Predicted: Tokamak assembly start[12]
2018 Predicted: Tokamak assembly completion, start torus Pump down[12]
November 2019 Predicted: Achievement of first plasma[18]
2026 Predicted: Start of deuterium-tritium operation[18]
2038 Predicted: End of project

and that is IF it works. Bet our future on a gamble? ing amazing idea.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Jan Vande Putte of Greenpeace International said that "Governments should not waste our money on a dangerous toy which will never deliver any useful energy". "Instead, they should invest in renewable energy which is abundantly available, not in 2080 but today."[29]
A French association including about 700 anti-nuclear groups, Sortir du nucléaire (Get Out of Nuclear Energy), claimed that ITER was a hazard because scientists did not yet know how to manipulate the high-energy deuterium and tritium hydrogen isotopes used in the fusion process.[30]
The ITER project confronts numerous technically challenging issues. French physicist Sébastien Balibar, director of research at the CNRS, said, "We say that we will put the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is, we don't know how to make the box".[31][32]
A technical concern is that the 14 MeV neutrons produced by the fusion reactions will damage the materials from which the reactor is built.[33] Research is in progress to determine how and/or if reactor walls can be designed to last long enough to make a commercial power plant economically viable in the presence of the intense neutron bombardment. The damage is primarily caused by high energy neutrons knocking atoms out of their normal position in the crystal lattice. A related problem for a future commercial fusion power plant is that the neutron bombardment will induce radioactivity in the reactor itself[34]. Maintaining and decommissioning a commercial reactor may thus be difficult and expensive. Another problem is that superconducting magnets are damaged by neutron fluxes. A new special research facility is planned for this activity, IFMIF.
Rebecca Harms, Green/EFA member of the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, said: "In the next 50 years nuclear fusion will neither tackle climate change nor guarantee the security of our energy supply." Arguing that the EU's energy research should be focused elsewhere, she said: "The Green/EFA group demands that these funds be spent instead on energy research that is relevant to the future. A major focus should now be put on renewable sources of energy." French Green party lawmaker Noël Mamère claims that more concrete efforts to fight present-day global warming will be neglected as a result of ITER: "This is not good news for the fight against the greenhouse effect because we're going to put ten billion euros towards a project that has a term of 30-50 years when we're not even sure it will be effective."[35]
A number of fusion researchers working on non-tokamak systems, such as Robert Bussard and Eric Lerner, have been critical of ITER for diverting funding that they believe could be used for their potentially more reasonable and/or cost effective fusion power plant designs.[36][37] Criticisms levied often revolve around claims of the unwillingness by ITER researchers to face up to potential problems (both technical and economic) due to the dependence of their jobs on the continuation of tokamak research.[36]

Therefore, if we gave the project much more funding, they could probably speed up their operation and give us a working prototype for a Fusion reactor sooner. Therefore, we can move away from Oil-based power supplies.

Move away from them after they've already ran out to the point where they are so expensive and our economies have collapsed? Great.

And if it doesn't work? Win.

[Gelgoog]

According to google, 2026 (15 years...) is when ITER is expected to be fully up and running and will end as an ongoing experiment in 2038 (which is 27 years, not 50). It is expected to be the project that achieves feasible Fusion power.

Therefore, if we gave the project much more funding, they could probably speed up their operation and give us a working prototype for a Fusion reactor sooner. Therefore, we can move away from Oil-based power supplies.

Yup, and the helium-3 they need for the reactors is plentiful on the moon. It is believed there is enough Helium-3 on the moon to power the earth for 1000 years.

In the meantime while we transition to fusion power, there is enough biofuels left in the world for another several hundred years. The US alone has the largest Shale and Coal supplies on the planet which can be turned into oil (so the rest of you might be screwed, but we will be the new saudi arabia in the meantime).

Even with the expensive nature of bio-fuels, the combination of fuel efficient vehicles alone with energy efficient appliances/lighting/homes, means that the cost will be curbed a bit. Throw in the ever expanding use of green energy (geothermal, wind, solar) and you have a reduced need for fossil fuels.

In 50 years once we have factories on the moon extracting helium-3 in sufficient quantities and once fusion has become mainstream maybe alot of these energy concerns will be lessened.

[♔Goodguy1066♔]

Well, obviously. Everybody dies at some point, it's inevitable!

[bushranger]

Sounds like a good excuse to push up prices some more,i dont think you can take it to seriously.
Why wind farms and nuclear?it's not very cost effective,in Australia we have plenty of cheap coal isnt there reserves in Briton?But nuclear sounds like a good alternative in other cases but wind farms cmon it's the best way to push up power prices on a lot of families that cant afford it.

[Ahlerich]

yeah well you live in australia. big country. you can dump your nuclear waste everywhere and need like 100 years to ruin your continent and its inhabitant. most european countries dont have so much space to ruin.

[bushranger]

yeah well you live in australia. big country. you can dump your nuclear waste everywhere and need like 100 years to ruin your continent and its inhabitant. most european countries dont have so much space to ruin.

Well for starters we dont have nuclear power in Australia but we do have perfect placements for pretty much the whole worlds nuclear wast but the left simply wont let us.It would be a great financial benefit to the country,no fault lines barren dessert and perfect terrain.We wont need nuclear power in the future also because of the amount of coal we have,but the green party has a hopefully brief presence in parliament and is pushing to send the populace back to the dark ages by shutting down the coal plant and trying to implement dream pie in the sky wind farms and the such to supplement the coal power.

Around the world there is plenty of places to store nuclear wast if the far left just get out of the way.

The simple fact is if the loony left really want to reduce greenhouse gas they need to go nuclear but they are against that also,so your left with a lose/lose situation,they really are determined to send us back to the dark ages to save some trees.

[CiviC]

We're all going to die??????? Impossible, I'm going to live forever!

[Matthias]

Or at least lose our pensions and go a little hungry.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011...-wikileaks.php




In a shift from my usual thoughts on the energy debate I'll give in to the nuclear people and say hell yes lets adopt as much nuclear as possible as well as investing pound for pound in all the renewables possible.

FYI fusion won't save us if oil prices cause an inflationary disaster in the economy. It is almost certain that nothing will lower oil prices now as they continue to rise past the $100 a barrel mark, and the effects on our economy will be disastrous.

Too bad it takes until something like this for people to change their minds. We could have, and should have, been working on this decades ago.

[Saturn]

Fire up those nuke plants!

[Rolling Thunder]

Okay, plan!

Firstly, we need to put money into fusion. Because if we are going to be energy-dependant on electrical energy (which we are), we're going to need a lot more energy generating capacity that currently can be provided. Plus we might as well move towards a situation where we have virtually free energy, which would be an economic miracle unseen since industrialisation.

We also need windfarms. Lots of the bastard things. We've got the wind, and it's not as if the bloody things cost a fortune - indeed, they're almost a dream power plant, in that each individual turbine is relatively cheap to construct, meaning you don't have massive startup costs compared to other reactor. Other types of energy generation are also a good idea, but we need lots of them, and we bloody well need them now.

[Matthias]

IMHO, fusion is not going to work at all and cannot be looked at as a credible energy source in the future.

Nuclear is dirty, dangerous to dispose of, and also is only as good as the amount of uranium out there, which ain't a lot.

Energy efficiency, solar, and wind are going to be the big, viable alternatives to oil and coal. Coal will be around a while though, and with a transition to electric cars, oil will not be a factor, at least in personal transportation. But oil makes a ton of other stuff (like plastics) that will have to change as well.