Normally it's *extractable oil*, although it might (at a given point in time) be uneconomic to extract, but (at another point in time, yet unknown) might become economic to extract. OTOH it is known that there is oil that is *un-extractable* (such as under the poles) which AIUI is not counted, but should technology change and the oil becomes extractable...
Well that might be so, but just as the oil companies can talk up their position so can everyone else, for example those scientist who get their funding (and thus income) from researching 'climate change, IOW be careful when using that sort of argument as it can bite back!
Err, what I was saying is that glib, emotive, comments like "Tell that to the penguins" doesn't serve any worth in the debate due to the fact that the climate has been changing since the beginning of the world, if it hadn't were would probably not be around and the Dinosaurs would still be walking the earth. As for climate cycling, that is the great unexplained, for instance we were told in 2001 that the flood (at that time in York) were the worse for 400 years and thus proved CC/GW, but no one ever explained what caused the even worse floods of 400 plus years ago - IOW is current thing that most man calls "Climate Change" a result of 'pollution' or is it simply the result of a natural cycle?
IIRC, Supply and Demand applies to things with elastic demand.
Energy usage has some elastic components, but a lot is required to keep the world going. Food is certainly a necessity, and if the cost of food starts to rise, demand will not drop. If sufficient alternate energy generation can't be brought online quickly enough, the cost of energy and food will rise to a point where people can't afford to eat.
There is of course some indication that this is already beginning to happen, although that appears to be related to the availability of land to grow food on...
We're into territory where the primitive 'rules' of the market no longer apply. The point about elasticity is well made. Without massive production of nitrogen fertiliser we would not be feeding the world now. The sorts of decisions that need to be made must be made outside the crude profit model.
For example massive investment is needed in public transport, water purification and reuse, energy production particularly small-scale solar-based energy production and so on. Most of this is now in private hands in the UK. I'm not making a political point, just practical. Companies cannot be forced, only bribed. The German government has made a lot of money available to make solar generation more economic, hence it has a very high uptake of photo-voltaics. However I for one don't want to hand out my taxes to shareholders of private companies, so impasse.
On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:13:10 +0100 someone who may be "Bill Wright" wrote this:-
Although the "documentary" didn't stand up to the slightest examination, some people were taken in by it. Some people appear to want to believe it is true, others have an open mind but were taken in by the programme.
Those with an open mind on the documentary should study the links at and decide for themselves.
Mr Lawson is not a climate change scientist. His views on the subject have to be considered in this light.
If one is talking about economics then one needs to compare Mr Lawson's views with those of Nicholas Stern. .
On Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:00:40 +0100 someone who may be "Bill Wright" wrote this:-
Peak Oil is a much misunderstood fact. There is a good introduction at .
One of the links from there is to where I particularly liked the following:
"Listening to the 'market experts' on your evening news, you could be forgiven for thinking that oil production is governed purely by economic theories. It is going to be a painful lesson, but even the economists will soon learn that the production of oil is in fact governed by very sound geological principles and the laws of physics.
"The oil we have built our societies on was actually created one hundred million years ago. More of it is not now going to suddenly appear 10,000 feet underground just because economists say the price is too high. [snip]"
"Some Frequently Asked Questions about 'Peak Oil'
"Our 'market experts' routinely peddle a few simple myths to deny the imminent reality of peak oil. Technology and 'unconventional oil' are a reality in the industry today and will become more important. But they will not be able to make-up for the decline in production of the 'easy oil' which we have squandered.
""The economists all think that if you show up at the cashier's cage with enough currency, God will put more oil in ground." [Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Princeton University Geologist]
"Technology
""Most of the world's oil was found long ago with technology no more advanced than the hammer and hand lens. Some 60% lies in about 300 easily found giant fields. But over the last 20 years, we have seen amazing technological advances in the exploration arena." [Jack Zagar]
"Geochemistry to identify the oil potential around the world. Seismic technology to define the size and shape of reservoirs. Drilling technology for longer, deeper, more accurate and multi-lateral wells. The industry has and continues to use advanced technology, but the trend is inescapable. We can only find smaller fields that are more difficult to produce. New technology often helps to increase production rates and drain oil fields faster, but rarely does it significantly increase the ultimate amount of oil that can be recovered.
"Crying Wolf
"The final argument from the optimists is that people have always been predicting the end of oil and they have always been wrong.
"In the 1980's, resource companies often only had stated reserves equivalent to ten years or so of production. Ignoring new discoveries, which at that time still matched production, some people reached the simple but incorrect conclusion that oil would run out in that time frame. Now, though, we are discovering a lot less than we use each and every year. Technically competent analysis does not describe oil 'running out', but shows that production must soon peak and begin an inevitable decline.
"In 1956, geophysicist M. King Hubbert working for Shell predicted oil production in the continental United States would peak in the early 1970s. He was proven right, but even in 1970 the industry scorned his prediction. They gloated that production levels continued to set records, only to see the predicted decline commence in the following years.
"Following the same methodology, Hubbert predicted a world 'peak' in oil production for around the year 2000. This will be only a few years early, not because we have discovered more oil than he predicted, but through the oil shocks of the 1980's we used a little less in the meantime, slightly delaying the peak. Made half a century ago, Hubbert's prediction is still sound because he understood the principles of geology which underly discovery and production of oil.
"In "The End of Cheap Oil" [Scientific American, March 1998], with more than 40 years of oil industry experience, Colin J Campbell and Jean H Laherre predicted that world oil production would peak in this first decade of the 21st century. As in the United States in
1970, the economists scorn these predictions, but science is not on their side."
No one other than with a anti oil agenda, such as those you cite have said anything diferant, FFS the oil companies have been saying that since they first drilled in the North Sea!
No, but new fields do get discovered, then with the price of crude oil increasing, there are the previously un-economic fields/sources that become economic - a prime example is oil retrieved from oil shale, high cost of retrieval for relatively low production returns, but if the barrel price is high enough...
Lumme that stirred it up - and it was only the RF pollution I mentioned!
A couple of points guys on that long discussion:
Colour Temperature - the CFL is a lot closer to daylight for our
3-colour-sensor eyes than the old incandescent. I daresay people said that the incandescent was too blue, and lamplight was better... And no, I wouldn't want to mix paint under a CFL. Nor choose it.
On costing - IMHO the only energy that isn't fully costed is fossil. The cost of dealing with all that waste CO2 just isn't being taken into account. Oil taxes should be way higher - and then we could get rid of all those stupid thing like "road fund licence" too.
But don't confuse colour tempereature with colour rendition index. As I understand it, the CFLs tend to have a tricolour phosphor for producing their light, and by varying the mix of the three colours, you can alter the colour temperature. However, the three phosphors have deep wavelength 'dips' where they overlap, and this is what affects the CRI and gives the light that sort of 'sick' quality to our eyes, no matter what the actual colour temperature. The daylight that reaches us from the sun has a much 'flatter' spectrum and, whilst the light from an incandescent lacks significantly at the blue end compared to daylight, it does have a 'smooth' spectrum with comparable levels at the longer wavelength end, which gives the light a 'quality' which our eyes and brains are much happier with.
Daylight covers a wide range, from dawn (2100K), through to midday (5600K), through to just before twilight (2100K). Incandescent (2700K) is a damn good match for daylight at the time we need to start enhancing light levels for our own comfort at home. What we in effect do in our homes is stretch out the early evening period before twilight for which daylight is 2700K way into the evening/night, both at the colour temperature and comenserate lumen level (illumination level).
Office and other workplaces generally have more demanding lighting requirements to keep us working more optimally rather than dozing off. Hence office lighting tends to operate at 3500K and higher lumen levels, mimiking a natural daytime period even further from night time than we chose to do at home.
For a natural feel, it is reasonably important that the colour temperature and lumen level are reasonably well synchronised. If you turn on a 5600K fluorescent in the evening, it will look horribly blue, but this is because the lumen level is completely wrong. Unfortunately, to get the lumen level up to midday levels, you are going to have to completely cover your ceiling with fluorescent fittings. If you do this, that colour temperature will then appear natural at that lumen level. (This effect is named after someone, but I've forgotten the name, and a google search was no help.)
You probably want to do that under the conditions you are most often going to view it. In a bedroom for example, in most cases, that's not going to be with daylight streaming in the windows.
On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:45:57 +0100 someone who may be The Natural Philosopher wrote this:-
As it says at
"The simplest observation to begin with is that you must discover oil before you can produce it. Figure 1 shows the worldwide trend of oil discovery and production. This chart reveals several important facts:
"* There were enormous early discoveries (in the Middle East) in the late 1930's and late 1940's
"* Worldwide oil discovery peaked in 1964 and has been falling ever since
"* Every year since 1984, we have been discovered less oil than we have produced
"* We currently find one barrel of oil for every four that we use"
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