Jacob, thanks for the numerical precision on the Transocean/BP/Anadarko joint venture well. My warnings to BP Oil 24 years ago that they had to be VERY careful having become an American oil company subject to the highly punitive and litigious and crazed-jury legal and political system fell largely on deaf ears. My argument was that the whole company could go under with an environmental disaster.
In Nigeria and other places, costs of problems are more limited. Indeed, the costs are limited in the Gulf of Mexico and those penalties are now being ramped up. For example, the price of a life is not as high as public and politicians now think it should be.
Most of the costs being incurred are because every man and his dog are into the trough and BP is not in a good negotiating position. Hiring hordes of the hopeless to wander aimlessly along clean beaches is not a real cost - it's wealth redistribution. Oil at $1000 a barrel [the penalty and therefore the value of collecting it] is worth more than shrimps and it just floats around waiting to be scooped up.
On photovoltaics, and alternative fuels and energy sources in general, I have been on the case for 30 years and I really like the idea of photovoltaics and chlorophyll/cellulose, not to mention fusion reactions and simple efficiency such as electric motors in all-electric self-driving electronic commuting cars.
Jon is right though - the good old industrial revolution in a bottle internal combustion engine has amazing economic resilience despite it's absurdly complex Gordian knot of gears, cams, shafts, pulleys, sparks, electronics, valves, rods,belts, fluid mechanics, hydraulic pumps, seals, nuts, bolts, screws, clamps, pipes, chemicals, thermostats, batteries, catalysts, lubricants, fuels, oxygen input and gizmoes. The impressive ability to get oil out of holes in the ocean, from kilometres under the sea floor keeps it all going. Materials science, engineering and production techniques continue to keep the industrial revolution going well into the 21st century.
More broadly, oil and energy are interesting, but they are just energy; food equivalents. The excitement about photovoltaics and energy in general is just the old envy factor of loads of loot changing hands and the desire by politicians and everyone else to get a piece of the action. Oil was the biggest game in town. The energy obsession started in earnest with the quadrupling of crude oil price in 1974. It's just boring old energy. It's just the money that gets everyone going. The envy has been flowing since Rockefeller in the 19th century.
The CO2 panic is more of the same - loot to be had. There is no CO2 problem. The sea level won't be rising because of CO2 so that we have to move cities uphill. The sea level rise that WILL happen and it will take seconds rather than centuries is the Tunguska type pressure attack on the surface of the Pacific Ocean causing a $quadrillion tsunami problem. I note that I claimed first dibs on $quadrillion a few years ago.... [as a big deal amount of money when $1 trillion was starting to be used in earnest - now a nominal amount of money thrown around by politicians].
What Qualcomm is taking part in and is right at the heart of it, is the creation of the biggest deal ever, not just since the industrial revolution, but a bigger deal than language, the wheel, the flint, than humans themselves, than everything, including the invention of DNA [though of course all those inventions were necessary precursors so they were just as important in a way]. Qualcomm is building the new sentience. Brains beat everything. Oil is just grass clippings by another name. Photovoltaics are just another kind of leaf.
The cyberspace sentience revolution has only just begun. A somewhat successful Turing Test is already doable. But cyberspace with trillions of sensors will be far smarter than a simple Turing Test.
Oil and photovoltaics are nice but so last century. Peak People is due in 2037. Sheik Yamani [Saudi Arabian Oil Minister long ago] said that the stone age didn't end for lack of stones and the oil age won't end for lack of oil. I take the Camry for a drive sometimes, to remember the good old days, after carefully ensuring the floor mat is not stuck in the accelerator and I stick to the speed limit so that I don't have to come up with an excuse - "Oh, officer, it was terrible - the accelerator pedal stuck. You know how it is with these Toyotas".
Depending on government largess to keep ethanol, windmills, photovoltaics, and what have you afloat is risky [as Jon says]. Oil floats all by itself. Al Gore and his second chakra is a greedy fraudulent hypocrite. <"Climate science is to science what kazoo players are to orchestras."> Jones "Hide the decline" or Einstein as scientists with truth on their side? Popper or Mann Made Warming? Feynman or Briffa?
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