PEAK OIL - The New Y2K or The Beginning of the Real End? Message Board

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Gold/Mining/Energy : PEAK OIL - The New Y2K or The Beginning of the Real End?

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To: Jurgis Bekepuris who wrote (323)	4/19/2005 4:21:36 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) of 1183

Hi Jurgis, Re: Jurgis, who thinks there are alternatives Recently I've read Ken Deffeyes' "Hubbert's Peak" and Richard Heinberg's "The Party's Over". Both books make the point that petroleum makes up about 40% of the energy mix in the U.S.A. And they point out that exclusive of hydropower, alternative energy sources make up less than 1% of our national energy budget. Not only are they sure that alternative energy cannot possibly make up for a significant shortfall in petroleum production, but that most if not all alternative energy developments face insurmountable hurdles in EROEI, or Energy Returned on Energy Invested. Say we want to drive around in hydrogen powered vehicles. Fine. The only problem is that we probably need to build a trillion dollar infrastructure to make this feasible. And we have no rational plan on how to build this infrastructure with the existing technologies of today. As far as I can tell, wind power makes sense today, as does the renewal of the nuclear power industry. But other schemes, such as biomass to ethanol conversions seem pretty crazy to me, considering the fact that producing ethanol in most instances in the U.S. fails to meet the EROEI hurdle. Brazil is blessed in this regard with its much more abundant sunlight. As to nuclear fusion, I think that we certainly should continue with basic research into this source of harnessable power. However, realistically speaking, we seem no closer to solving the fusion engineering issues than we did in the 1970s. So I do not put much faith in this as a viable solution within the next couple of decades. *** Here's an interesting chart on "Conceivable Harnessable Alternative Energy Sources" fas.org

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