Suddenly Jimmy Carter looks far more prescient, doesn't he?

There is a report out today of a secret military analysis of the world oil markets that says we may have already hit the "peak oil" moment or, if we haven't, that it will happen this year and what that means for the world: German military report: Peak oil could lead to collapse of democracy Peak oil has happened or will happen some time around this year, and its consequences could threaten the continued survival of democratic governments, says a secret Germany military report that was leaked online. According to Der Spiegel, the report from a think-tank inside the German military warns that shrinking global oil supplies will threaten the world's economic foundations and possibly lead to mass-scale upheaval within the next 15 to 30 years. As if that weren't enough, the article points out similar information may be going through Britain, as well: Last Sunday, the UK Observer reported that Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change is refusing to release documents related to peak oil, even though, as the Observer noted, previously released documents argue the veil of secrecy around the issue is probably "not good." Turns out now former President Jimmy Carter was far more wise while he was in the White House after all, then, doesn't it? At the time, people laughed at him because he carried his own luggage (which, admittedly, was pretty dumb and unnecessary, I'll give you that), but also for asking us to wear sweaters and turn down our furnace thermostats. If this report is true, he had his eye much more on the bigger picture for the country than he's been given credit. If we had done what Pres. Carter had said and continued to wean ourselves off oil, the likelihood that we'd be in the Middle East, sending soldiers there to fight and some to die, and then blowing it up and rebuilding it--essentially wasting billions of dollars in resources--that likelihood would have been reduced greatly. So here's to you, Jimmy Carter. We apologize for not listening. (On a more local note for the Kansas City metropolitan area--suddenly that mass transit idea doesn't seem so stupid and unnecessary, does it?) Link to original post: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0901/german-report-peak-oil-collapse-democracy/

"Peak oil": here already? (guest post)

After BP oil spill, 'peak' oil seems nearer than ever By David R. Francis David R. Francis Mon Jun 21, 12:23 pm ET .The oil that's flooded into the Gulf of Mexico has created big concerns about the environmental and economic damage. Another serious outcome has gotten far less attention: peak oil. By prompting President Obama to suspend deep-water drilling in US offshore waters, the Gulf oil spill is pushing up the date at which the world's conventional oil production peaks. By itself, the United States suspension would bring forward that date only a little. But if other nations with offshore oil output or potential also stop risky offshore exploration and drilling, it could speed the arrival of peak oil at a more alarming rate. Without alternative supplies of energy to offset it, a decline in oil production would send shock waves through the world, rattling economies and politics alike. Competition for resources could be fierce. In a geological sense, the world is still awash in oil. The US Geological Survey estimates 3,000 billion barrels of conventional crude are buried in the world, about a 46-year supply if no more oil is found, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis, a public-policy research firm in Dallas. The problem is getting oil out of the ground. Much oil is inaccessible – or so expensive to drill that it's not feasible even if oil prices surged. Sometimes the environmental risks (think BP's Deepwater Horizon fiasco) may be too high. Estimates vary on when oil production will climax. Take your pick. Peak oil: •Happened five years ago, holds Matthew Simmons, chairman emeritus of Simmons & Co. International, a Houston investment-banking firm for the energy industry. •Will be reached within five years – or "we may have already reached it," says Richard Miller, a London consulting geologist who up until 2008 worked for BP preparing private reports on prospects for peak oil. •Will happen around 2025, according to Leo Drollas, chief economist of the Centre for Global Energy Studies in Lon­don. He figures the world has 6 million barrels per day (b.p.d.) of unused conventional oil output capacity, about 4 million of that in Saudi Arabia. In addition, Canada has about 170 billion barrels in its oil sands, and Vene­zuela has some 400 billion barrels of heavy oils, more than Saudi Arabia's conventional oil reserves. A lot more oil could be discovered on land if, say, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, and Venezuela offered reasonable financial terms for international oil companies to come in, Dr. Drollas maintains. Considering the nationalism prevalent in such countries, an open-door policy for foreign oil companies "isn't going to happen," says Dr. Miller. Furthermore, he notes that output from existing oil fields is declining at a rate of 2 million to 3 million b.p.d. a year. Usually production starts to fall after about a third of the oil has been extracted. In the Gulf of Mexico, the decline can be fast. Another major BP platform, Thunder Horse, was brought into production 18 months ago at 250,000 b.p.d. It was already down to 80,000 b.p.d. before being recently shut down for maintenance, says Mr. Simmons. More than 700 other platforms in the Gulf produce an average of only 40 b.p.d. (The costs of disposing of a platform are large.) Typically, production losses are offset by new finds. The International Energy Agency has calculated that it would take the discovery of six new fields the size of those in Saudi Arabia to maintain current world oil output through 2030, Miller says. "I don't know where they [the fields] are hiding," he adds. •David R. Francis writes a weekly column. Link to original post: http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100621/cm_csm/307446

A New Direction--for the US, the World (and this blog)

Rather than staying negative and emphasizing what a screw-up Presient George W. Bush is and has been for and to the United States for his 8 years in office in so many ways--and besides, he's winding down to his last days, thank God--I've decided I'm going to emphasize solutions to the United States' and the world's problems of war, war for oil, the intractable Middle East conflicts, pollution and climate change.
Pointing out what's going right in technology and, specifically, solar power, is one of the best ways to do that. It helps that we are, seemingly, on the verge of significant, seemingly revolutionary and affordable answers to our problems.


Promising Solar Power Technologies

New cost effective solar energy products are on the near horizon. Let's take a look at some of the promising ones.

MIT reports prototype solar dish passes first tests.

A team led by MIT students this week successfully tested a prototype of what may be the most cost-efficient solar power system in the world--one team members believe has the potential to revolutionize global energy production.

The system consists of a 12-foot-wide mirrored dish that team members have spent the last several weeks assembling. The dish, made from a lightweight frame of thin, inexpensive aluminum tubing and strips of mirror, concentrates sunlight by a factor of 1,000--creating heat so intense it could melt a bar of steel.

MIT Sloan School of Management lecturer David Pelly, in whose class this project first took shape last fall, says that, "I've looked for years at a variety of solar approaches, and this is the cheapest I've seen. And the key thing in scaling it globally is that all of the materials are inexpensive and accessible anywhere in the world."

Pelly adds that "I've looked all over for solar technology that could scale without subsidies. Almost nothing I've looked at has that potential. This does."
Raw Solar

The website Raw-Solar has this diagram explaining the practical application.

A solar thermal dish reflects the rays of the sun onto a small receiver using specially curved mirrors, concentrating the sunlight 1000 times. The high concentration increases the efficiency of the energy collection by reducing the surface area for thermal losses. A robust tracking system keeps the dish pointed directly at the sun all day, maximizing the available sunlight.

Water is pumped through the receiver where the high intensity sunlight heats it to 212-750F (100-400C), making steam. The steam can then be piped into an existing steam system, such as a district energy system or food processing plant.
What makes this system special vs. its competition is that it can use small flat flexible mirrors that can bend in exactly the right shape to concentrate the reflected sunlight on a precise spot. The materials are all easily produced and the team could put this dish together by hand.

Inquiring minds will want to consider this MIT video demonstration of their solar power dish.

Hot Thin Roofs

Let's now turn our attention to Hot Thin Roofs.

A new solar energy product, thin enough to be built into shingles, may finally make the technology competitive.

With energy prices soaring, affordable solar power would be welcomed by any entrepreneur looking to trim the electric bill. Trouble is, power generated by the most widely available technology - panels covered with photovoltaic (PV) systems, which translate sunlight into AC current - still costs two to three times more than electricity generated from coal and other fossil fuels. That may be about to change.

Several startups, including HelioVolt in Austin, Miasolé in Santa Clara, Calif., and Nanosolar in Palo Alto, are working on a new technology called flexible thin film that's on the brink of making solar more competitive. Nanosolar has just begun to ship its thin-film solar systems to a German utility.

Made from pliant sheets of foil, the solar panels can be molded onto roof shingles, which are at once more attractive than clunky, heavy glass panels and less expensive to produce. In fact, the cost of making thin film is so much lower than traditional solar panels that experts say it could produce electricity for about the national average of 10.4 cents a kilowatt hour.
Selling Green

CNN Money is reporting on Selling Green - Making Solar Pay.

Solar energy may be hot these days, but it still costs two or three times more than the power your local utility provides. SunEdison, a Beltsville, Md., startup, has created a new financing model that allows solar to make financial sense for businesses.

The roof of Sea Gull Lighting Products' distribution center in Burlington Township, N.J., is covered with solar panels that the lighting maker did not pay a cent for. They are installed, operated, and maintained by SunEdison. The company acts as a bank, soliciting investors interested in a return on solar energy. SunEdison's investors own the solar panels, and Sea Gull agrees to buy the power.
The problem with the model above is that it requires subsidies to be cost effective. The winning products in this space will need no subsidies.

Algae Power

Another in the series of innovative technologies in the CNN Money report is on Algae Power.

Isaac Berzin, who founded GreenFuel Technologies in 2001, is working with Arizona Public Service to scale his process to commercial levels. He has built a small algae farm next to one of the utility's natural-gas plants. The algae, which grow in racks of plastic bags, feed on the carbon dioxide in the exhaust of the power plant. The system not only reduces the greenhouse gases coming from the power plant by 40% but can also produce biodiesel and animal feedstock as a byproduct without competing with the global food supply.
I find these products exciting and at least two of them seem commercially viable. All of them might be. And the higher oil prices get, the more economically viable some of these and other products become.

Raw-Solar's beauty is a simple design using basic components, without the high cost of custom designed parabolic mirrors. There are plenty of desert areas in the US with huge percentages of cloudless days where such a system could be commercially viable.

Interestingly, the Bush administration halts solar energy projects on federal lands.

The Bush administration has put a two-year stop to solar energy projects on federal lands in Arizona and other Western states while it studies their environmental impact.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Department of Energy will study the impact of solar energy production and other facilities that could be developed on public lands in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California, Colorado and Nevada.

There are 125 applications by solar energy companies to build facilities on public lands in those states.

The final analysis will show that the cure for peak oil is high enough energy prices.

Instead, the government sponsored solution was ethanol from corn. That "solution" was a complete disaster. US biofuel plants are going bankrupt as fuel prices rise at the pump and grain and fertilizer costs soar. Producing ethanol from corn makes no sense. To make matters worse, ethanol producers receive a taxpayer subsidy. And finally, tariffs make importing ethanol 3 times as expensive as it should be.

See the original post--with pictures of some of the technology--from Mike "Mish" Shedlock here:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

From Slate Magazine, yesterday, on Pres. "McSame" (God forbid)

Slick John McCain and the offshore oil ruse

The safety and economics of offshore drilling are distractions from the much larger challenges that humanity faces: Climate change and peak oil.
By Andrew Leonard

Jun. 25, 2008 | An example of leadership or reckless chutzpah? On Monday, John McCain visited Santa Barbara, the scene of one of the great environmental disasters in American history, and proceeded to downplay the potential consequences of lifting the federal moratorium on new offshore drilling. Modern drilling technology is environmentally safe, he told the audience. According to the Associated Press, McCain "cited the examples of Louisiana and Texas, noting they have allowed drilling and weathered two devastating hurricanes with minimal or no oil spills."

McCain exaggerated. A 2007 report by the U.S. Minerals Management Service unearthed by Outside the Beltway documented the damage caused in the Gulf of Mexico by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: "124 spills were reported with a total volume of roughly 17,700 barrels of total petroleum products."

Now, 17,700 barrels of oil equals 743,400 gallons. Whether you consider that a lot or a little depends on your perspective. Compared with the 1.5 million barrels pumped out of the Gulf every day, it is a trivial amount. But it's also within shouting distance of the 3 million gallons of oil spilled in the Santa Barbara offshore oil disaster of 1969.

That spill is considered the "environmental shot heard 'round the world." The catastrophe crystallized the environmental movement into a potent political force, resulting in the quick passage of the National Environmental Protection Act later that year, the creation of the EPA in 1970 and, ultimately, the ban on new offshore drilling.

But the safety of offshore drilling is a distraction from what's really at issue in the current tussle over energy policy. An oil spill here or there is irrelevant to the much larger challenges that humanity faces: climate change and peak oil.

The truth is, we can probably make offshore drilling as safe as we reasonably want it to be. Norway, with its environmentally aware citizenry and tight coordination between a watchful government and a state-oil owned company, has been drilling for decades in the North Sea with reasonably good environmental results (notwithstanding the horrific explosion of the Piper Alpha offshore platform in 1988 or the spillage of 24,000 barrels of oil just last December). Then again, for an example of how it can all go terribly wrong, visit Nigeria, where lax environmental controls have resulted in a huge mess in the Niger Delta, and where rebel forces attacked an offshore oil platform just this week.

But drilling practices and technology have improved. With the appropriate government oversight and regulation, it may be possible to drill off the coasts of Florida and California without covering the beaches with sludge and killing thousands of seabirds. Provided we acknowledge, of course, that a few nasty hurricanes in Florida will make at least a little bit of mess, and an earthquake in the wrong spot in California could be a slight problem. And provided we are capable of following the example of Norway, where the government and the people tell the oil company what to do, rather than the example set by the current Bush administration, where the energy industry is in charge of policymaking.

But drilling for more oil in the United States will not lower the price of gas in the short term -- even McCain admitted as much when he said on Monday, "I don't see an immediate relief, [but] the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial." Bush's own Department of Energy concluded in 2004 that the long-term impact of lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling on oil prices would be "insignificant." The only way that expanded drilling, offshore and in ANWR, could make a difference at the pump is if global production of oil started significantly outpacing the growth of global demand. Which would probably require that Saudi Arabia crank open the spigot and China, India, and the rest of the world's rapidly emerging economies start to lose their enormous thirst.

In other words, not only is it unlikely, it is completely out of our hands.

For those who accept that burning fossil fuels is contributing to climate change and that there are finite limits to the amount of inexpensive oil that can be pumped out of the earth, a new offshore oil rush is a psychological and practical disaster. It would accelerate climate change and, in the unlikely scenario that new drilling even momentarily slowed down global oil price appreciation, would still postpone that inevitable day of reckoning with the even higher fossil fuel energy prices sure to arrive.

The longer we wait to deal with either problem, the more painful and expensive our options for coping with these challenges will become and the more constrained our maneuvering room will be. The sorry truth is that from the perspective of grappling with climate change, and encouraging investment into alternative energy technologies, expensive gas now is far preferable to even more expensive gas later.

Of course, there are plenty of people, mostly on the right-wing of the political spectrum in the United States, who do not accept that climate change is real or caused by human industrial activity, and who believe there are no real constraints to the global oil supply. They'd prefer to blame environmental activists, present-day descendants of the rabid left-wing commies who exploited the Santa Barbara spill to pursue their anti-business agenda, for today's "high" gas prices.

Such accusations are the stuff of daily grandstanding rhetoric from Congressional Republicans and constitute a major, longstanding front in the culture wars.

There's a large contingent of Americans who do acknowledge that global warming is real and that it would be smart to consume less oil. But the prospect of $5 gasoline tends to reduce their focus from the long term to the here-and-now. The oceans haven't flooded their homes just yet, but their pocketbooks are hurting today.

And there's an election campaign going on.

In Las Vegas on Tuesday, Barack Obama delivered a significant speech on energy issues. He criticized McCain's proposal for new offshore drilling and commented that McCain's reference to "psychological impact" is "Washington-speak for 'It polls well.'" No joke.

In Santa Barbara, McCain attempted to assuage Californian sensitivities by saying that his real position on the moratorium on offshore drilling is that it should fall under the rubric of "state's rights" -- meaning that if Californians want to keep their coastline pristine, they will have the power to do so under a McCain administration. But McCain knows he's not going to win California, so it doesn't matter what he says in Santa Barbara. The offshore oil ploy is a calculated gambit aimed at cashing in on the pain that economically stressed voters in swing states far from the coast (as well as Florida, where environmental sensitivities seem to be on less solid ground than in California) are feeling. In Ohio and Michigan, the ugliness of oil derricks blotting out the sunset isn't a number one problem on anyone's priority list.

McCain's goal is to marry the anti-environmentalist Republican base with the I-like-the-environment-but-am-economically-hurting moderates. Call it the coalition of the unwilling to pay high gas prices.

In his speech, Obama set forth a pretty straightforward platform of vastly increased investment in renewable energy, conservation and efficiency, and proposed to ease the pain of working-class Americans with an economic stimulus plan. One can question how he would end up paying for his proposals or whether he will succeed in steering them through Congress, but one thing that must be conceded is that his approach represents a clear difference from McCain.

Suppose that McCain's strategy works. Suppose voters in enough swing states decide that the pain of high gas prices is so great that they will go with the candidate who is promising them the easy way out -- the gas tax holiday and offshore drilling and a nuclear power plant in every pot. What will that tell us about the American ability to suck it up and face down the challenges of the future?

Easy. It will tell us that we've lost the battle before we've hardly begun to fight. It will tell us that the environment is toast. We will have established that we, the citizens of the richest and most powerful country on the earth, are unwilling to pay the price necessary for embarking on a long-term ecologically sustainable path for existence on the planet. If $4 gasoline is enough incentive to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling, then $10-a-gallon gasoline will inspire even more drastic consequences. We will drill for every drop of oil, we will dig up every ounce of coal, we will sacrifice every environmental regulation, because we just can't take the heat. And then we'll fry.

It will also tell us that the environmental movement that took so much power from the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 has failed. That sustainability and conservations were luxuries we decided we could not afford.

(The original link:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2008/06/25/mccain_offshore_oil/print.html)