[Gasification] Collective Cluelessness

[Jeff Davis]

Dear List,

A must read! It's a long article (link at the end of snippet) but worth
reading. Make sure you read the last paragraph..

Jeff




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AS THE AMERICAN PUBLIC CONTINUES sleepwalking into a future of energy
scarcity, climate change, and geopolitical turmoil, we have also continued
dreaming. Our collective dream is one of those super-vivid ones people
have just before awakening. It is a particularly American dream on a
particularly American theme: how to keep all the cars running by some
other means than gasoline. We'll run them on ethanol! We'll run them on
biodiesel, on synthesized coal liquids, on hydrogen, on methane gas, on
electricity, on used French-fry oil . . . !


The dream goes around in fevered circles as each gasoline replacement is
examined and found to be inadequate. But the wish to keep the cars going
is so powerful that round and round the dream goes. Ethanol! Biodiesel!
Coal liquids . . .


And a harsh reality indeed awaits us as the full scope of the permanent
energy crisis unfolds. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, world
oil production peaked in December 2005 at just over 85 million barrels a
day. Since then, it has trended absolutely flat at around 84 million. Yet
world oil consumption rose consistently from 77 million barrels a day in
2001 to above 85 million so far this year. A clear picture emerges: demand
now exceeds world supply. Or, put another way, oil production has not
increased despite the ardent wish that it would by all involved, and
despite the overwhelming incentive of prices having nearly quadrupled
since 2001.


There is no question that we are in trouble with oil. The natural gas
situation is comparably ominous, with some differences in the technical
details—and by the way, I am referring here to methane gas (CH4), the
stuff that fuels kitchen stoves and home furnaces, not cars and trucks.
Natural gas doesn't deplete slowly like oil, following a predictable
bell-curve pattern; it simply stops coming out of the ground when a
particular gas well is played out. You also tend to get your gas from the
continent you are on. To import natural gas from overseas, it has to be
liquefied, loaded in a special kind of expensive-to-build-and-operate
tanker, and then offloaded at a specialized marine terminal.


Half the homes in America are heated with gas furnaces and about 16
percent of our electricity is made with it. Industry uses natural gas as
the primary ingredient in fertilizer, plastics, ink, glue, paint, laundry
detergent, insect repellent, and many other common household necessities.
Synthetic rubber and man-made fibers like nylon could not be made without
the chemicals derived from natural gas. In North America, natural gas
production peaked in 1973. We are drilling as fast as we can to keep the
air conditioners and furnaces running.

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http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/07-1om/Kunstler.html




-- 
Jeff Davis

Some where 20 miles south of Lake Erie, USA