Here's a lovely little link to the documentary The End of Suburbia which has quite a bit to say on energy usage and oil in the United States. Should be pretty relevant to this discussion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q 3uvzcY2Xug

interesting link nmw pos 25

here's an energy calculator. http://faculty.engineering.ucdav is.edu/jenkins/CBC/Calculator/in dex.html

An interesting posting on wikipedia about the energy crisis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ene rgy_crisis

it talks a little about the economy which can relate to one of the questions asked - Much of energy conservation talks of asking people to change their habits? Should we ask this? Or should we just change the relative costs and use the economic market forces to change habits?

I think that asking people to change their habits would be wonderful if people would change on their own but i think that it is highly unlikely. Basic economics is the real answer to the question. I believe that in most cases if you raise the price of the energy you are going to conserve more because people will use less.

My high school physics teacher showed us the efficiency in producing energy the way it's usually done, and from the mine or pump or wherever you get your raw materials to the lightbulb in your house or your gas tank, a surprising amount of energy is wasted through inefficient transportation and production methods (I forget the actual numbers, but it may have been around 60%). One way we can reduce the resources we consume is by developing more efficient technologies which allow us to take advantage of the full potential energy in those resources. It's like life giving you lemons and you making 40% of them into lemonade and throwing the rest away.

Another problem is the relative availability of alternative energy. It's too hard and often too expensive to take advantage of existing technologies which use clean(er) production methods or emissions. As gas prices go up and alternative energy becomes cheaper, it will be easier to access, but I think we need to make that happen faster.

I read recently an article in which it was determined in Holland that boring holes into some relatively small percentage of the roadways there and filling them with water and then covering them up so that they become solar collectors would produce more energy than all the power plants currently operating to supply electricity.

Can I encourage people to provide a two sentence description of what I would learn if I wasn't too lazy to click the link - beyond "here's a link". =)

-james

Jonathan Chin said:

here's an energy calculator. http://faculty.engineering.ucdav is.edu/jenkins/CBC/Calculator/in dex.html

An estimate done by the Energy Information Administration predicts that by 2030 our oil consumption will peak at 63 billion barrels per year and by 2100 it will be at 5 billion barrels per year, about what the 1950 level of consumption was.

Link: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_g as/petroleum/feature_articles/20 04/worldoilsupply/oilsupply04.ht ml

First of all, I would just like to say that I enjoyed Ali Shakouri’s lecture on Renewable Energy, especially the charts like the “Spaghetti Graph” of U.S. Energy Flow Trends for 2002.

Although, I was not able to find a projection of when we’ll run out of energy, I did find a chart from the “Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government” in their publication entitled Annual Energy Outlook 2007 about the projection of U.S. oil production up to the year 2030. This projection indicates that the use of fossil fuels will still be a significant energy source in the U.S. It seems that the U.S. may turn more towards off-shore oil deposits in the future. In general, the total production is projected to rise a little and remain at a relatively constant state. The website is also a good resource of statistics for future trends in oil consumption and prices as well as for other energy resources.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/

(http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/ pdf/trend_4.pdf) (See page 95 for chart of U.S. Crude Oil Production Growth)

In regards to asking people to change their habits, I would say that a mixture of education and economic market forces would be the most effective. I agree with Kathleen McIvor that it is highly unlikely to generate a large amount of change by merely asking people to alter their ways. Incentives are usually more effective at making people and businesses take action, which is why I feel that the market would be a more powerful tool. (Though it would be great if individuals could make greener choices on their own).

On the subject of solar panels, I wanted to say something that I didn't get a chance to express in class. There is a physicist working on some ultra-reflective plates that could be put over the solar panels, retaining around 75% of the sunlight that would otherwise reflect off of the solar cells. Currently, solar cells are only around 5-10% efficient (they only collect 5-10% of the available sunlight; 90-95% of the sunlight is reflected off). These ultra-reflective plates could increase efficiency to around 20% or so, but the only problem is the solar cells can't currently sustain the heat that is created and fry out extremely quickly. I believe they are currently working on that problem, which is a step in the right direction.

Personally, I think the only way renewable energies will be possible is if we continue to invest money and resources into development of better technology. As it currently stands, it's cheaper to use oil than it is to use solar panels because the technology to burn oil is readily available; we need the price of these new technologies to drop as better technology becomes available.

I just kinda find it interesting that at least in this discussion everyone seems to be talking about the issue of energy in economic terms, ie: What increases efficiency and which source of energy is cheapest. I am an economics major and have been trained to think this way thus far until one of my friends pointed out that all decision making shouldn't be based soley on the most efficient economic outcome and that other factors, such as polution and effect on the environment are also, if not more important. Since many of the the alternatives are environmentally friendly, my comment goes without saying. But in the case of choosing between gasoline, coal and natural gas, I just wanted to re-state the fact that I'm sure has been and will be mentioned many times that negative externalities are a crucial consideration when deciding which source of energy to use.

someone (at) ucsc.edu said:

I just kinda find it interesting that at least in this discussion everyone seems to be talking about the issue of energy in economic terms, ie: What increases efficiency and which source of energy is cheapest. I am an economics major and have been trained to think this way thus far until one of my friends pointed out that all decision making shouldn't be based soley on the most efficient economic outcome and that other factors, such as polution and effect on the environment are also, if not more important. Since many of the the alternatives are environmentally friendly, my comment goes without saying. But in the case of choosing between gasoline, coal and natural gas, I just wanted to re-state the fact that I'm sure has been and will be mentioned many times that negative externalities are a crucial consideration when deciding which source of energy to use.

~~

i really like that you bring this up, because i think it is a crucial part of the coming debate over alternative energies. i think solar is the most appealing because it literally does nothing to the environment except take up space, whereas a dam completely changes a river, often for the worse. economy-dominated thinking seems to dominate the debates of all issues. but hey, money makes the world go round, right?

I took this from the website below on Peak oila dn our energy crisis. they talk about when they think we will run out and how our economy is based on oil and it doesn't take much to make it crumble. they also talk about the oil cycles and that every year it will go down but the amount of people living will go up doubling the price reguardless of how much it actually decreases. they worded it better than i can so here is a summary:

if 2005 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2030 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2030 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.

This is an interesting way of looking at it: The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

In a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash. net/

p.s. my comment was in response to

When are we out of energy?

What are the projected future costs of energies?

From my own personal opinion i don't believer people very easily change their habbits unless a) someone shows them exactly how to do it without altering much of their life and b) unless it is forced upon them by cost, etc. from our other forum i found numerous things that seemed like they would help the energy crisis immensly (among them the new Air Car!!) but what confuses me is when do these inventions come out and what can we do to help before they come out? riding bikes is a key thing, if people were to ask elementary schools to have "ride your bike or walk to school day" at least 2 days a week can you imagine the amount of carbon that would be prevented from just mothers not driving their kids? since most children live relatively close to their elementary school this would be a good idea. In response to when we are suposed to run out of energy. i feel we will not run out of energy but as long as it is sustainable. we will run out of oil, there is no question about that, but you cannot run out of wind and windmills are a good way to make energy. however, if people conserve more than the energy issue will significantly shift.

also something i found interesting about the guest speaker's lecture was how he compared a car to wats of energy from a light bulb. the question he asked was how much energy does the average US citizen consume? 1000w 1000j/sec x 3600 x 24 = 75x10(6) --> 75 mj/day. thats how much energy we use and it is 10 TIMES the amount we need per day... very sad. with the car analogy 150hp x 750w = 12 x 10(5)w = 12,000w. The truth is, if people jsut drive less we can all help without doing much. you save one pound of carbon for every mile you DONT drive. although technology is amazing and new advances are a great step forward it seems the real solution can be found if people would just conserve and use less. even if you use a clothesline instead of a dryer whenever possible You can save 700 pounds of carbon dioxide when you air dry your clothes for 6 months out of the year. it's amazing what simple changes can do.

I read a great article from BBC where it states Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking for the movement to promote environmentalism in this country to be more hip and try to appeal the younger citizens in our society. I think this is a great approach to on how to instruct people to change their habits to fight global warming and wasteful energy uses. The article also states that Schwarzenegger will attempt to dispel the label that is placed on environmentalist as only tree “huggers” and “hippies”. I find this to be true, a lot of people do stereotype environmentalists as being these things and it turns a lot of people off to the thought of becoming more energy efficient environmentalist.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ameri cas/6546975.stm

Sarah Michelle Kahn said:

From my own personal opinion i don't believer people very easily change their habbits unless a) someone shows them exactly how to do it without altering much of their life and b) unless it is forced upon them by cost, etc. from our other forum i found numerous things that seemed like they would help the energy crisis immensly (among them the new Air Car!!) but what confuses me is when do these inventions come out and what can we do to help before they come out? riding bikes is a key thing, if people were to ask elementary schools to have "ride your bike or walk to school day" at least 2 days a week can you imagine the amount of carbon that would be prevented from just mothers not driving their kids? since most children live relatively close to their elementary school this would be a good idea. In response to when we are suposed to run out of energy. i feel we will not run out of energy but as long as it is sustainable. we will run out of oil, there is no question about that, but you cannot run out of wind and windmills are a good way to make energy. however, if people conserve more than the energy issue will significantly shift.

I agree, especially for most American citizens it's very hard to try and change their habits on car usage. I think a lot of it has to do with the way many cities are designed; most are not very accessible for people to access public transportation or riding a bike. Most of the urban sprawl that goes on in a city happens on the outer most layer of a town forcing these citizens to use their cars as a primary means of transportation.

While this is certainly a compelling and chilling read, I don't think it gives us (the human race) enough credit in our amazing ability to adapt and innovate. While, yes, peak oil could spell the imminent and catastrophic end of human civilization as we know it, that's assuming that things happen exactly as predicted, with no new innovation or changes in the the world works, economically, socially, or politically. Essentially, it seems to me like the author is expecting us to sit on our asses and wait for the sweet release of death. Maybe it's misguided, maybe it's sadly idealistic, but I have faith in the human species to create, to cope, and to figure out a solution. It may not be the most complete solution, but I think we can come up with one(s) that at least alleviate the problem to the point at which we won't be fighting tooth and nail for a gallon of fuel or emptying their bank accounts due to the collapse of the entirely oil-dependent global economy.

That's just my own personal sentiment, not rooted in fact or figure, more sentiment than science, but I feel pretty strongly about it.

Anyway, that aside, there are some scientific criticisms of Hubbert's peak oil theory, off which a great deal of this article is based:

The Cambridge Energy Research Associates released a study stating, "Hubbert's methodology falls down because it does not consider likely resource growth, application of new technology, basic commercial factors, or the impact of geopolitics on production."

This is reflected in data that shows increased efficiency in drilling, exploration, and other areas has resulted in the pushing back of the "life-index of world reserves," which is the amount of time that current production rates would take to use up the remaining reserves, from 20 years in 1948 (extremely primitive drilling and exploration techniques) to practically 40 years in 2003 (much more advanced techniques). This all during a time when oil has been relatively cheap and available--if the crunch is upon us as this article asserts, then there's no telling what far-fetched extraction concepts will suddenly become cost effective. Oil sand in Canada was once a nuisance, but now is an increasingly large source of oil, because the rising price of oil made the more complicated extraction process cost-effective.

I am by no means saying that oil should continue to be our primary source of energy, and that we shouldn't be looking to the future and developing alternative energy sources. What I am saying, however, is that this type of fearmongering--disguised as urgent fact--vastly oversimplifies the range of issues at hand and has the sole effect of causing unnecessary anxiety and panic, which never in the history of humanity has led to long-term, rational decision-making.

I found both of these articles highly relevant, and while they too may have their flaws, they have the upside of letting facts and history make their points, rather than rhetoric.

http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/j on/world-oil.dir/lynch/worldoil. html

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/co ntent/full/304/5674/1114

Sarah Michelle Kahn said:

I took this from the website below on Peak oil adn our energy crisis. they talk about when they think we will run out and how our economy is based on oil and it doesn't take much to make it crumble. they also talk about the oil cycles and that every year it will go down but the amount of people living will go up doubling the price regardless of how much it actually decreases. they worded it better than i can so here is a summary:

if 2005 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2030 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2030 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.

This is an interesting way of looking at it: The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him.

In a similar sense, an oil-based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10-15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash. net/

I agree with everything being said here, especially that new technologies will undoubtedly provide us with more answers as we try to find new sources of energy. What slightly disconcerted me about Professor Shakouri's lecture is that he seemed to be saying that currently, we have no promising alternative to oil consumption for our future energy source; all alternatives seemed to either have negative side effects attached, or just couldn't give off enough power to provide for the entire population. Is this to say that currently, upkeeping our destructive oil consumption rates is our best option? This seems like a ridiculous idea to me. Professor Shakouri also brought up the amount of wasted energy lost in transmission, so to speak. Though I haven't been able to find anything saying it's possible to harness this energy and use it, it sounds like a promising concept to me, which I'm sure we could develop technology for. Lastly, in my small group yesterday in class, we touched on the question of it being possible to teach people to be selfless enough to cease their endless consumption of necessary resources. I, personally, believe it's human nature to be selfish, making it a trait almost impossible to completely obliterate in a population, though it's an idea which could theoretically provide many benefits. I just thought I'd throw that out there, and see how others thought of it as a way of conserving resources, as well.

Ali's guest lecture was a very good idea. I appreciate having people that seem like they care very much about the subject. He really brought home how complex the energy issue is because of how he mentioned potential solutions, and then shot down every one of them because of one thing or another. It seems like there are viable solutions out there, but that the majority of the public just doesn't care enough to devote the time and energy to it. To give a famous of example of the American people willing the seemingly impossible to get done: we put a man on the moon in the 1960s (and brought him safely home). Compared to today, we had almost no computing power/sophistication back then. If we were able to channel that same amount of desire to the energy crisis that is now facing us, things could get done. The huge solar panel project, for example, although very large, is not impossible to envision given the appropriate level of resources.

One of the main complicating factors is that there seems to be so many of these huge issues, and people don't know where to invest their efforts. If I might make one small suggestion: we might do much better on all fronts if we table our desire to maximize economic growth (at least until we get some of this stuff taken care of).

I enjoyed Mr. Shakouri's lecture. It was very informative; he pointed out flaws in otherwise fool proof alternatives to energy. He made me look at all the solutions from all kinds of different angles; which helped a lot.

Anyhow, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel oil will run out in 32 years, gas in 72, and coal in 252 years. A popular alternative to fossil fuels is solar power. According to http://mcsolar.com/residential_p v2.htm?gclid=CPT8v9XXvYsCFRs_ggo dQ03mJQ it would cost eighteen cents in for each kWh. It would save around $133 a months and top $31,000 in savings by year twenty. As for some of the sources that I read, some say that it is not an issue of fossil fuels running out, but of peoples’ demand for it. The demand of the fuels surpasses what the world can supply. I believe the costs will not occur to the extent that fuels are at right now since the sun is a renewable source of power; until it ultimately bursts. It would be nice if you asked people to change and they would; but it is just not the case. A lot of people just do not care about the environment and what happens to it. It would be ideal if they actually did change; but I doubt it would happen. I don’t think that we should try and find new sources completely; it would help if we tried to perfect old resources like electricity. I believe this since we have been using electricity for soem time and we have a better understanding of it and how to use it.

Mr. Shakouri's lecture was great; it gave me a different view on certain issues and made me more alert for other solutions for the social global issues we are currently having. The issues were facing today are so large and very difficult to look at; which makes it hard to just focus on one thing. Everygthing or mostly everything is related to one another. There is always a base to a certain problem. It is hard to overlook at one thing and dont pay attention to another because you may offend someone that is actually facing that exact problem that you dont feel as of right now. Each person's view will be different base on what they see and what is more important to them. Im glad that Mr. Shakouri came; it made people realize and become more alert and not be bias.

I felt that Professor Shakouri's talk on Renewable Energy was something that was very useful and eye opening. I personally believe that there is no threat to the run out of oil in the world, and that the threat is simply to imply economic changes that will benefit a few individuals in the short run. However, the rising market for fuel cells and ethanol will, I believe establish an Oligolopy in the field of Energies, in which there will be a minimum of three major energy options with a more wide spread of money, and possbly a more equal distribution of wealth (as it's not $1 billion + into some Saudi's pocket). So, all in all, utilizing renewable energies could be a good thing, but it is not necessary to eliminate the ones that we are already using.

Professor Shakouri's presentation was very good because he did not oversimplify all the problems facing renewable energy. Anyone can just say that electric cars are great and solar energy is efficient but not everyone realizes the problems behind harnessing these resources. E85 is a prime example as on the face of it, its a great alternative to using purely gasoline but when we look at what is required to produce E85, it suddenly doesn't look as appealing. The presentation was great as it told us a lot of alternatives to our current energy needs but what set it apart was it delivered deeper information as to why they aren't all viable.